Valentinos

Valentinos was a Roman envoy, “one of the imperial sword-bearers”. Tiberius Caesar sent him to the Göktürks in 576.^[1] The title probably marks a spatharius, a member of the imperial guard.^[2] He found the Göktürk prince Turxanthos in mourning for his father Istemi. Turxanthos sent him on to Tardush. The Göktürks held and mocked him while they took the Roman city of Bosporos.^[3] Through his report Menander preserves the fullest speech of a Göktürk ruler to a Roman envoy.^[4]

Earlier missions

A Valentinos, “one of the imperial bodyguard”, carried Justinian’s gifts to the Avars. He urged them to ally with the Romans and to take up arms against their enemies.^[5] After his arrival the Avars crushed the Unigurs and a Hunnic people called the Zali, and they destroyed the Sabirs.^[5] The embassy followed the arrival of the Avars among the Alans. That arrival is usually dated to 557 or 558, and a second calculation prefers 559 or 560.^[6] Menander does not say whether this envoy is the one of 576.^[5] They may be one man, a diplomat who specialised in the affairs of the steppe.^[6]

In his account of 576 Menander writes that Valentinos had already gone twice as envoy to the Göktürks. He adds that some of the Göktürks then living in Constantinople had returned with him from an earlier journey.^[1] The sentence does not settle whether the two journeys include that of 576.^[4]

The embassy of 576

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.^[7]^[8] The dealings with Khosrow fell in the spring of 576. Valentinos therefore set out in the winter before.^[7]

Valentinos was to announce that Tiberius had been raised to the rank of Caesar, and to have the friendship and the earlier treaty between the Romans and the Göktürks confirmed.^[1] Istemi and Justin II had made that treaty when Zemarchos first came. Istemi had then declared that the friend of the Romans was his friend and their enemy his enemy.^[1] Rome was at war with Persia, so Valentinos was also to urge the Göktürks to attack the Persians at the right time.^[1] The embassy was meant to renew the alliance against Persia.^[9]

He took with him 106 Göktürks. They had come to Constantinople over the years with the embassies of Anankhast, Eutychios, Herodian, Paul the Cilician and his own earlier one.^[1] The Greek does not make clear whether Anankhast came as a Göktürk envoy or went as a Roman one.^[2] Menander does not say why all the Göktürks in the city left together.^[1]

Valentinos sailed in fast merchant ships by Sinope to Cherson. He passed Apatura and Phouloi, crossed a stretch of sand whose name is lost, and kept the mountains of the Crimea to the south.^[1] The Greek of this passage is corrupt, so the route cannot be traced with certainty.^[2] He and his companions rode across plains covered with the water of lagoons and through reeds, scrub and marsh.^[1] On the way he crossed the land of Akkagas. She was a woman who ruled the Scythians there by appointment of Anagai, chief of the Utigurs.^[1]

At the camp of Turxanthos

After many hard roads the envoys came to the war camp of Turxanthos. He was one of the leaders of the Göktürks and the first they met.^[1] Turxanthos was probably a title, Türk-shad, rather than a name.^[10] The leaders of the Göktürks had divided the whole land into eight parts. The elder ruler of the Göktürks was named Arsilas.^[1] Scholars read Arsilas both ways, as the supreme ruler and as only the eldest of the leaders.^[10]

Turxanthos put his ten fingers in his mouth. He asked whether these were not the Romans who used ten tongues and one deceit.^[1] As his mouth now held ten fingers, he said, so the Romans spoke with many tongues. They deceived now him and now his slaves, the Uarkhonitai.^[1] He charged the emperor with making a treaty with the Uarkhonitai. By them he meant the Avars, slaves who had fled their masters.^[1] He threatened to kill the envoys on the spot, since lying was foreign to a Göktürk.^[1] If the Avars so much as saw his whip, he said, they would flee to the ends of the earth. If they stood against him, his horses would trample them like ants.^[1]

He asked why the Romans led his envoys to Byzantium through the Caucasus, as though there were no other road. He said that he knew where the Dnieper, the Danube and the Hebrus flowed and where the Avars had crossed into Roman land.^[1] The Alans and the Unigurs, he said, had trusted in their strength against the Göktürks. Now they were numbered among their slaves.^[1] The Unigurs are the Onogurs of other writers, and an older emendation of the passage reads Utigurs.^[6] In 572, Theophanes of Byzantium says, Saroes, king of the Alans, still fought on the Roman side.^[11] Their subjection to the Göktürks therefore fell between 572 and 576.^[10] Menander calls Turxanthos an arrogant man who loved to boast.^[1]

Valentinos answered that nobody had ever killed envoys. Doing so, he said, would make the name of Turxanthos infamous among all men.^[1] He asked him to keep the law that protects envoys, “for we are agents of peace and ministers of what is holy”. He reminded him that as heir to his father’s lands he was heir also to his father’s friends.^[1] Istemi, he said, had of his own will taken the side of the Roman state. He had preferred the friendship of the Romans to that of the Persians.^[1] The reply passes over the charges Turxanthos had made.^[12]

Turxanthos then told the envoys that his father had just died. He ordered them to slash their faces with daggers by the custom of his people.^[1] Valentinos and his companions cut their cheeks with their own daggers, the rite of cutting the face.^[1] Menander names the dead man Silzibulos, the Sizabulos of the embassy of 569. Scholars identify him with Istemi.^[13]^[14] On one of the days of mourning Turxanthos brought four bound Hunnic captives before his father’s horses. He ordered them, in his own tongue, to go and tell his father how great … ; the text breaks off there.^[1] Menander gives the Göktürk word for the rites for the dead, dochia.^[1]

Detention

After the burial Turxanthos spoke with Valentinos many more times.^[1] Then he sent him on to the Göktürk leaders of the interior, and above all to his brother Tardu. Tardu had his dwelling on the mountain Ektel, which Menander says means golden.^[1] Ektel may be the Ektag where Zemarchos had met Istemi.^[15] The two may also have been different mountains, in the Altai and in the Tian Shan. Valentinos would then also have reached the eastern Göktürks, which would explain eight parts where the envoys of 568 had spoken of four.^[16] A third explanation takes both names for one mountain, named after a Turkic word for lime.^[17]

As Valentinos left for Ektel, Turxanthos swore that he would soon besiege Bosporos.^[1] He sent Bochan with a very large force to take the city, where Anagai already lay with another Göktürk army.^[1] Bosporos was the old Panticapaeum, the modern Kerch.^[16]

A different course of events is also reported. In it Turxanthos, a governor one rank below Tardush, let the envoys pass on to Tardush’s court. There Tardush agreed with Valentinos that the alliance still stood.^[18] There was no war with Byzantium, and the Göktürks kept the Crimea.^[18] In that version Tardush’s ambition to rule the whole khaganate dates from his meeting with Valentinos.^[19]

Menander’s fragment on the fall of Bosporos gives the opposite picture. It says that the Roman envoys were among the Göktürks when the city was taken, and that this made it plain that the Göktürks had been provoked into war with the Romans.^[20] Turxanthos therefore held Valentinos and his companions. He insulted and mocked them, and only then let them go.^[20] Three years later the emperor Tiberius put off an Avar embassy. He told the Avar envoys that the Göktürks were encamped at Cherson.^[21]

The embassy of Valentinos is the last Roman embassy to the Göktürks of the sixth century that Menander describes in full. By his 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 af Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
^ a b c Blockley 1985, p. 275
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1–19.2
^ a b Menander Protector
^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 5.2
^ a b c Blockley 1985, p. 253
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 274
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 240
^ Golden 1992, p. 130
^ a b c Blockley 1985, p. 276
^ Theophanes of Byzantium; Müller 1851, p. 271
^ Blockley 1985, p. 10
^ Blockley 1985, p. 262
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 227
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 241
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 277
^ Gedikli 2022b, p. 13
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 321
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 313
^ a b Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.2
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 25.2

Sources

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)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Yusuf Gedikli, Göktürkçe Ektág, Ektél Dağ Adlarının Köken ve Anlamı (2022)