ABSTRACT
The only question left is historical: how m uch power did ideology of itself give women in Byzantium between 1080 and 1180? The answer depends on the strength of the em peror. Byzantium was an autocratic society, where the figure of ultimate im portance was the autocrat. In the fifty-three years before the accession of Alexios Komnenos, three women had held supreme power, two of them in their own right and one as regent for her sons. After his accession, until the end of the empire, there were none at all. This was a consequence of the system that Alexios set up with its spawning of num erous heirs and privileging of the male. Alexios has been accused of being under the thum b of his m other and his wife,1 but it is a fact that women never played the same part after his reign. In fact he restored the male stranglehold on power. In times of crisis the latent structures are m ore clearly seen, bu t the most revealing m om ent is when the danger has passed and the m opping up opera tion begins, because victory is followed by repression.
