Embassy of Valentinos (576)

In 576 the Roman envoy Valentinos, one of the imperial bodyguard, travelled to the western Göktürks for Tiberius Caesar.^[1] He was to announce that Tiberius had been raised to the rank of Caesar. He was also to have the alliance against Persia confirmed.^[1] The first Göktürk leader he met, Turxanthos, received him with a speech of reproach. Turxanthos was in mourning for his father Istemi.^[1] While the envoys were among the Göktürks, a Göktürk army took the Roman city of Bosporos in the Crimea.^[2] Menander preserves the account. He ends it with the envoys held, mocked and sent home.^[2]

The mission

Menander dates the embassy to the second year of Tiberius as Caesar, shortly before the dealings with Khosrow that he had just told.^[1] That year ran from 7 December 575 to 7 December 576. The dealings with Khosrow fell in the spring of 576, so Valentinos set out in the winter.^[3] He was to ask the Göktürks to confirm the treaty that Istemi and Justin II had made when Zemarchos came. By that treaty the friend of the Romans was the friend of the Göktürks, and their enemy was the same.^[1] Because Rome was at war with Persia, he was also to urge them to attack the Persians at the right time.^[1]

He took with him 106 Göktürks who had lived in Constantinople for a long time.^[1] They had come with earlier embassies. Some had come with Anankhast, some with Eutychius, and some with Valentinos himself, who had gone twice to the Göktürks. Others had come with Herodian and Paul the Cilician.^[1] Menander does not say why all of them left together.^[4]

The road

Valentinos sailed in fast merchant ships by Sinope to Cherson on the western coast of the Crimea.^[1] He passed Apatura and Phouloi and kept the mountains of the Crimea to the south. The Greek of the passage is too corrupt for the route to be traced with certainty.^[1]^[4] The envoys rode across plains covered with marsh water and through reeds, scrub and swamp.^[1] They crossed the land of Akkagas, a woman who ruled the Scythians there by appointment of Anagai, chief of the Utigurs.^[1] At last they reached the war camp of Turxanthos.^[1]

Menander adds that the ruler of the Göktürks had divided the land into eight parts. The senior ruler was named Arsilas.^[1] Arsilas is understood both ways, as the supreme ruler or only as the eldest of the leaders.^[5] Turxanthos was probably a rank rather than a name, Türk-shad, below that of the khan.^[5] He may have been a son of Istemi who governed one of the eight parts.^[6] Or he stood one rank below Tardush, as a governor.^[7]

At the camp of Turxanthos

Turxanthos put his ten fingers in his mouth and asked whether these were not the Romans who used ten tongues and lied with all of them.^[1] The Romans, he said, deceived now him and now his slaves, the Uarkhonitai, by whom he meant the Avars.^[1] “To lie is foreign and alien to a Turk,” he said, and he threatened to kill the envoys at once.^[1] He charged that the emperor spoke of friendship to him while making a treaty with the Avars, the Göktürks’ runaway slaves.^[1]

He asked why the Romans took his envoys to Byzantium through the Caucasus, as though there were no other road.^[1] He knew very well, he said, where the Dnieper flowed, and the Danube and the Hebrus, and where the Avars had crossed into Roman territory.^[1] He pointed to the Alans and the Unigurs. They had trusted in their strength against the Göktürks and were now numbered among their slaves. These words are the source for the subjugation of the two peoples.^[1] Menander calls him an arrogant man who loved to boast.^[1]

Valentinos answered that the killing of envoys had never been done, and that its infamy would travel through all mankind.^[1] Envoys, he said, were agents of peace and ministers of what is holy.^[1] Turxanthos had inherited his father’s land and should inherit his father’s friends, since Istemi had of his own will preferred the Romans to the Persians.^[1]

Mourning and departure

Turxanthos then told the envoys that his father had just died. The funeral rites were held while they were in the camp.^[1] By the custom of his people they had to slash their faces with daggers. Valentinos and his companions cut their cheeks with their own daggers.^[1] When the burial was done, Turxanthos spoke with Valentinos many more times.^[1] Then he sent him on to the leaders of the interior, above all to his brother Tardu, who lived on the mountain Ektel, which means golden.^[1] Tardu is Tardush, Istemi’s son and successor.^[8]

Bosporos and the end of the embassy

As Valentinos left for Ektel, Turxanthos swore that he would soon lay siege to Bosporos.^[1] He sent Bochan with a very large force to take the city, where Anagai was already camped with another Göktürk army.^[1] Menander’s next fragment says that when the city was taken, the Roman envoys were near the Göktürks.^[2] From this it was clear that the Göktürks had been provoked to war with the Romans.^[2] Turxanthos therefore detained Valentinos and his companions. He insulted, mocked and otherwise ill-treated them, and then sent them away.^[2] The passage refers to the envoys’ return journey.^[9]

Two versions of the outcome

Menander’s fragment ends in open war.^[2] The embassy may have ended otherwise.^[7] In it Turxanthos let the envoys go on to Tardush’s court because of his lower rank. There Tardush agreed with Valentinos that the alliance still stood.^[7] There was no war with Byzantium, but the Göktürks kept their hold on the Crimea.^[7] Tardush’s ambition to rule the whole khaganate would then date from his meeting with Valentinos.^[10]

The embassy is the last Roman embassy to the Göktürks of the sixth century that Menander describes in full. It belongs to the Göktürk–Byzantine alliance of 568. In Menander’s account it ended the friendship that Zemarchos had sealed.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
^ a b c d e f Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.2
^ Blockley 1985, p. 274
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 275
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 276
^ Golden 1992, p. 130
^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 321
^ Golden 1992, p. 131
^ Blockley 1985, p. 278
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 313

Sources

Menander Protector

Literature

R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)