Military and Political Career
In 1086 he was sent to Nicaea in an attempt to recapture it from the Seljuks; he was forced to retreat when he learned that Seljuk reinforcements were on their way. Alexius sent him back with naval assistance from Manuel Boutoumites, but although he was able to defeat Abu'l Qasim, the governor of the city, in Bithynia, but could not recapture the city. At the end of the year he was recalled and sent to fight the Pechenegs, who were assisting the heretical Manichaeans revolt against Alexius, near Philippopolis. In 1087 he commanded the Byzantine right wing in the Battle of Dristra against the Pechenegs, and in 1090 he defeated a small force of 300 Pechenegs while leading the Archontopouloi tagma against them.
In early 1094, he was placed in charge of guarding Alexius' tent at Pentegostis. Here he discovered the plot of Nicephorus Diogenes, son of the former emperor Romanus IV Diogenes, to kill the emperor. Nicephorus was an old friend of Alexius and Tatikios and Alexius was reluctant to punish him, but it was clear that Nicephorus was ambitious for the throne. He was exiled and was eventually blinded. Later in 1094, he attended the synod of Blachernae which condemned Bishop Leo of Chalcedon, presumably in some function of security. In the records of this synod Tatikios is given the court title of protoproedros.
In 1095 Tatikios accompanied Alexius in the campaign against the Cumans.
Read more about this topic: Tatikios
Famous quotes containing the words military, political and/or career:
“The transformation of the impossible into reality is always the mark of a demonic will. The only way to recognize a military genius is by the fact that, during the war, he will mock the rules of warfare and will employ creative improvisation instead of tested methods and he will do so at the right moment.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)