Eustathios Daphnomeles

He ranks as one of the most prominent and successful generals in the thirty-year war between Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) and Samuel of Bulgaria (r. 997–1014), helping to end the long conflict by blinding and capturing the last Bulgarian leader, Ibatzes, in 1018.

The main source describing Daphnomeles's life, and indeed the Bulgarian campaigns (986–1018) of Emperor Basil II, is the late 11th-century Synopsis Historion of John Skylitzes, whose chronology is often problematic to reconstruct.

[1] Daphnomeles participated in the subsequent conflicts against Tsar Samuel, but his greatest feat was the capture of the Bulgarian leader Ibatzes in 1018, for which he is given a prominent position in Skylitzes's work.

By 1018, most Bulgarian commanders had surrendered, and only Ibatzes, who had retreated with his followers to the royal estate of Pronishte, a naturally strong and defensible highland position, continued to resist.

At that point, and as local crowds gathered to Ibatzes's palace for the feast of the Dormition, Daphnomeles, now strategos of nearby Achrida, on his own initiative, resolved to end the impasse.