Yes,
Leo III. But first let's have a look at the published
seals:
* These
Dumbarton Oaks seals of other Konon's are different persons. The Kononos/Cononi is too old to be a match, and the Konon metropolites must be a different person because this is a cleric, an archbishop, a different kind of career as our Konon, who was a
military commander and held worldly court dignities.
* There are two seal
types of Konon.
1) The oldest (1 ex in
Athens, Konstantopulos 450a, cited by
Seibt, BBÖ, p. 268), of which your seal is an example has the
military rank of tourmarches. A commander of a tourma, which was a large division of the army of a
Byzantine theme (province) under the command of a
strategos. The seal does not mention the court dignity.
2) The younger seal lists the court diginity of patrikios, but does not mention the office/military rank. Examples in
Vienna (
Seibt BBÖ, 136) and in the
Zacos coll., (Zacos/Veglery 899).
Now, we can be fairly certain these
seals belong to the same person, because the overall design and
epigraphy is very similar, most importantly, both feature the cypress trees to l. and r. of the
legend. These trees might also
help date the seal in the beginning of the 8th century, because the cypresses appear flanking the Virgin on imperial
seals of Justinian and
Theodosius III (707-711 and 715-717) - an important observation made by
Seibt.
Of course it is very tempting to ascribe the seal to the future emperor
Leo III. Leo, under
his birth name of Konon, was raised to
strategos, commander, of the Anatolikon theme by Anastasios II (713-715), who was usurped by Theodosios III in 715. Konon, as
strategos of Anatolikon, colluded with Artabasdos,
his collegue in command of the Armeniakon theme, and they succeeded to depose Theodosios III and Konon rose to the purple as
Leo III. It seems very likely that these
seals belong to him:
1) The date of the seal fits perfectly the early decades of the 8th century in which
Leo III had his military career.
2) The
seals of Konon belong to a
military commander, as attested by the high rank of tourmarches.
3) The rank of
strategos is not known on
seals, but the court dignity of patrikios would fit this supreme command of a theme. In any case, it is too high a dignity for a tourmarches. So when Konon was raised to
strategos of Anatolikon by Anastasios,
his court dignity would have been raised as well to patrikios, if this hadn't happened before.
4) The sources only mention that
Leo III was a
strategos, and remain silent about
his earlier career. It is however very probably that he was a tourmarches at one point, because that is the rank right below
strategos.
Thanks for posting, it was a pleasure looking things about this one.
Regards
Gert
