The Supposed Russian Attack on Constantinople in 907: Evidence of the Pseudo-Symeon

Abstract

ONE of the main arguments against the truth of the account given by the Russian Book of Annalsl of a great Russian raid on Constantinople in or about the year A.D. 907 is that this raid is nowhere mentioned by the Byzantine chroniclers or hagiographers.2 However, a passage in the chronicle of the Pseudo-Symeon (Symeon Magister, De Leone Basilii f., ed. Bonn., pp. 706, 707) may preserve vestiges of a Byzantine account of the raid, which, for reasons which now escape us, was omitted by the writers after the Logothete, and perhaps by the Logothete himself. The Continuer of Theophanes (ed. Bonn., p. 367) gives a straightforward account of the withdrawal of the Saracen ships from the Marmora in July 904, mentioning the names of the various cities and islands they passed on their way from Parium to Samothrace; but, with typical pedantry, the writer halts at each place to give the aetiological derivation of its name, or the circumstances of its foundation; e.g., Abydos, founded by the Milesians; Hellespont, derived from Helle; and so forth. Pseudo-Symeon, in the parallel passage (pp. 705, 706), gives only the names and the explanatory comments upon them, without showing how they fit into the story of Leo of Tripoli's attempt on the capital. In other words, he gives the trimmings without the story; and if we could not check him by the account of the Continuer of Theophanes, we should not know why this string of place-names west of the Marmora was inserted at all. Pseudo-Symeon includes two places, Laodicea and Tenedos, which are not in the list of the Continuer of Theophanes, but which plainly have reference to the Saracen attack, for Leo of Tripoli's fleet came from Tarsus and Laodicea,3 and naturally passed Tenedos on its way into or out of the Dardanelles. The Continuer and Pseudo-Symeon are no doubt drawing upon a common and fuller source, which the former has used intelligently, the latter stupidly; or, to speak more justly, from which the latter has borrowed topographical material which he has not worked up into a coherent narrative. But, immediatelyfollowing the list of place-names connected with the Saracen attack, Pseudo-Symeon has appended another list of place-names, again with archaeological or explanatory comment but again without a story. This second