Around the month of March in 673, an odd atmospheric event occurred in the imperial realm of Constantinople that caused a hysterical public panic. Cosmic, stellar and planetary events, such as comets and eclipses, had long frightened ancient and medieval peoples, but in the case of the 673 event, the panic curiously was caused by a much more commonplace phenomenon—a rainbow. Unfortunately, whatever was strange or scary about this particular rainbow was left vague in the reports of contemporary sources, but the extreme reaction of the public to the peculiar rainbow was recorded in the chronicles of Constantinople. One such chronicler, Theophanes (c. 750s-818), described the bizarre incident, stating, “In this year in March (or Dystros) a rainbow appeared in the sky and all mankind shuddered. Everyone said it was the end of the world” (Theophanes, Chronographia, entry for Annus Mundi 6164 [approx. Sept. 672-Aug. 673]). A dramatic reaction to a rainbow, indeed.
One explanation for the odd account of the rainbow could be the dramatic waves of war that Constantinople was experiencing around that time. Emperor Constantine IV of Constantinople (r. 668/669-685) was then fending off a formidable assault from the Umayyad realm of Mu’awiya (r. 661-680). The year of the rainbow, 673, was historically important, as it was the first year that Constantinople’s great napalm-like superweapon, Greek Fire, was used in battle. That groundbreaking year was followed by the Mu’awiya’s unsuccessful siege of Constantinople (from 674-678), in which the Greek Fire played a pivotal role in defending against the Arab fleets. After dramatic world events such as these, it could be that scholars rediscovered and overexaggerated the account of the Dystros rainbow while looking back retrospectively for a possible omen that may have heralded the emergence of Greek Fire and the siege of Constantinople. Whatever the case, it is not every day that a common rainbow makes all mankind shudder and proclaim that the end is nigh.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Heroic Landscape with Rainbow, by Joseph Anton Koch (c. 1768–1839), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the MET).
Sources:
- Theophanes, The Chronicle of Theophanes, translated by Harry Turtledove. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
