Unattractive and uneducated, Basil made an unlikely hero in Greek society, which placed a high emphasis on physical beauty and learning. Given the fact that he was raised in the imperial palace—he was the son of Emperor Romanus II (roh-MAIN-us; ruled 939-63)—his lack of education is hard to understand; so, too, is the fact that he never married.
"Basil II was the greatest military genius and the greatest military organizer of his time, one of the greatest of all time."
RomillyJenkins, Byzantium: The Imperial Centuries a. d. 610-1071
Portrait: Reproduced by permission of the Library of Congress.
King Alfred the Great
Many rulers have been given the title "the Great," usually after their lifetime; Alfred (848-c. 900), however, was the only king of England ever assigned this distinguished title. In fact he was the first monarch to unite all of England under his rule: before Alfred's time, the land was divided among a number of smaller kingdoms, ruled either by Angles, Saxons, or Jutes. His own Saxon kingdom of Wessex was just one of these competing states.
The one unifying factor in these lands was religion, thanks in large part to the missionaries sent by Pope Gregory I (“the Great"; see entry). Alfred himself went to Rome as a small child, and was awed by the power of the church, the splendor of the city's imperial legacy, and the great wisdom passed down in Latin books from the writers of old.
Meanwhile, his homeland was in turmoil, thanks to a series of invasions by the Danes—one of the most prominent Viking groups—starting in 787. Young Alfred first made a name for himself in his early twenties, in 871, known as "the year of the battles." He scored a major triumph against the Danes at Ashdown, but lost his brother, King Ethelred, in another battle; subsequently the Witan, the Anglo-Saxon governing body, crowned Alfred king of Wessex.
Subsequent Danish victories forced Alfred to go into hiding. During this time, in an incident shrouded in legend, he went in disguise to a poor peasant's hut. The woman of the house, having no idea who he was, asked him to keep watch over some loaves of bread she was baking. Preoccupied by concerns for his country, Alfred let the loaves burn, and when the wife returned, she rebuked him sharply and
Though he was short, dressed poorly, and hardly spoke, a marriage of advantage could have been arranged with some other ruling house, and it would have been expected, because rulers in the Middle Ages placed a huge emphasis on fathering a son and successor. Basil's decision not to marry was particularly unfortunate, given the fact that none of his successors proved his equal: perhaps if he had had a son, he might have exerted greater influence on the next generation of leaders.
World History
