Staurakios (eunuch)

Staurakios emerged into prominence in 781, when Irene, as regent for her infant son Constantine VI, appointed him to the post of logothetes tou dromou, the Byzantine Empire's foreign minister.

Already holding the high court rank of patrikios, through this appointment Staurakios became, in the words of the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor, "the foremost man of his day and in charge of everything" for most of Irene's subsequent reign.

The generals, intensely loyal to the Isaurian dynasty and its vehemently iconoclastic policies, could threaten her own position: already a few weeks after Leo IV's death, Irene had foiled a palace plot to put his surviving brother, the Caesar Nikephoros, on the throne.

[3] Resentment at Staurakios's appointment to this powerful post is given by the Byzantine chroniclers as the reason for the (initially secret) defection of the prominent Armenian strategos of the Bucellarian Theme, Tatzates, to the Arabs in 782.

On Tatzates's suggestion, Harun asked for negotiations, but when the imperial envoys, including Staurakios, arrived, they were seized and held as hostages.

Staurakios and the other envoys were released only when Empress Irene accepted the Caliph's harsh terms for a three-year truce, including the annual payment of an enormous tribute of 70,000 or 90,000 gold dinars and the handing over of 10,000 silk garments.

Initially, in 786, it was held in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, but the soldiers of the tagmata, founded by Constantine V and loyal to his iconoclastic policies, gathered outside in protest and forced the assembly to be broken up.

[7] In order to neutralise their reaction, Irene sent the tagmata to the army base of Malagina in Bithynia, allegedly in preparation for a campaign against the Arabs.

[9][10] Along with a few trusted conspirators, Constantine planned to arrest Staurakios and exile him to Sicily, while he would assume his position as effective co-ruler of the Byzantine Empire.

On his mother's re-entry, Constantine was either more occupied with his personal amusements or overseeing the army for campaigns, thus leaving the household, government, and finances to her and her eunuchs.

[14][15] As a result, Empress Irene's position within the capital's bureaucracy was strengthened, her influence over the states of the empire increased, and she began plotting against her son.

While Irene bribed the tagmata and drew groups of important nobles, senior courtiers, church clergy and officers of other armies near the capital and provinces and even Constantine's close friends, Staurakios and other agents of Irene foiled an expedition headed by Constantine against the Arabs, afraid that a victory would boost the emperor's standing with the people and the army.