44 chapter one
with the sedentary people. In this case again, following the principle
of the antithesis, they created the image of the Outside Other: he was
dishonest, arrogant, manipulating and did not respect the contracts.
Turksanth (Turk-shad?), one of the eight most eminent aristocrats
of the West Turkic khaganate in the 570s, is quite eloquent on the
matter as presented by Menander. Turk-shad welcomed with bit-
ter words the Byzantine aristocrat Valentinos who came to ask the
Turks to renew the contract for joint actions against Iran as well as to
inform them about the enthronement of the new Byzantine emperor
Tiberius: “Aren’t you the same Byzantines who use ten languages but
one fraud?” Aft er saying this, Menander narrates, the Turk pressed his
lips with his ten fi ngers and uttered:
As I have ten fi ngers on my lips, the same way you, the Byzantines, use
many languages: one of them is used by you to deceive me and the other
one—to deceive my slaves, the Varkhonites [the Avars]. And in general,
the way you mock all people and fl atter them with various words and
perfi dy, you betray them when they fall on evil days, and you benefi t
from this. And now you, the envoys [are] dressed in lies and the one who
has sent you is the same deceiver. And I am going to kill you right now
without any delay because the lie is alien and unusual for the Turks.^96Th e accusations in perfi dy and lie were topoi in the description of the
sedentary people made by the nomads.^97 Th e Bulgars also commonly
held that the Byzantines possessed these ‘qualities’. Th e fi rst inscrip-
tion on the Madara rocks, dated to the 705 A.D., gives information
about the help provided by khan Tervel to emperor Justinian II for
his re-enthronement in Constantinople in 705 A.D.; it reads: “... the
emperor with the cut nose did not believe my uncles in Salonika
(Salonika region?) and went away.. .”.^98 Th e Philippi inscription was
(^96) Menander 1958, 228–229.
(^97) Litavrin 1986, 103–105, shows with many examples the verbal depiction of the
Byzantines that was typical for other peoples. It demonstrates two main characteristics
that were assigned to the emperor’s subjects; their roots were indeed visible in the
works of the older Roman authors. According to them, and later already following the
established tradition, the Greeks are perfi dious and insincere and, also, cowardly and
incapable of fi ghting as brave soldiers. Th e latter stereotype is later confi rmed even by
a Byzantine basileus, namely Manuel I Comnenus (twelft h century) who named his
warriors-compatriots “clay pots” while calling “metal cauldrons” the Western knights
that were fi ghting for money for the Byzantine’s cause. Th e Byzantines are almost
ubiquitously blamed for perfi dy in the medieval Arab literature—for this see, El-Cheik
1996, 122–135.
(^98) Beshevliev 1992, 99, 102.