Eustathios Maleinos Eustathios Maleinos ( ) was a leading Byzantine general and one of the wealthiest and most influential members of the Anatolian military aristocracy during the late 10th century . He held senior administrative and military posts in the East , and was involved in the aristocratic rebellions against Emperor Basil II ( r . 976 – 1025 ) , fighting against Bardas Skleros but supporting the revolt of his nephew Bardas Phokas . After the failure of the latter , he was not punished , but his immense wealth caused his eventual downfall , as Basil II confined him to a mansion in Constantinople and confiscated his wealth after his death . Biography . Eustathios was the son of Constantine Maleinos , a senior general and long - time governor of the theme of Cappadocia . The Maleinos family had by that time , chiefly through their close association with the Phokas clan , become one of the most important and influential clans in the land - holding aristocracy of Asia Minor ( Anatolia ) , which provided Byzantium with most of its generals . Thus , Eustathios could count both on his family ' s considerable authority and its expertise in military matters to secure high office . He became " strategos " of the theme of Lykandos , before his cousin , Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas ( r . 963 – 969 ) appointed him , alongside his original post , as the first Byzantine governor ( " doux " ) of Antioch after the city fell to the Byzantine Empire in October 969 . About a year after the murder of Nikephoros II in December 969 , Maleinos was transferred by his successor , John I Tzimiskes ( r . 969 – 976 ) to the governorship of Tarsos in Cilicia , a post which he still held in 976 , when the young Basil II became senior emperor . Basil ' s assumption of control over the imperial government did not go unchallenged by the military aristocracy , whose members , supported by the army , their large estates , and their extensive network of clients , had dominated it during the previous thirteen years , when Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes had ruled as nominal protectors of Basil and his younger brother , Constantine VIII . Thus , soon after Tzimiskes ' s death in January 976 , his principal supporter , the Domestic of the East Bardas Skleros , was declared emperor . Maleinos , a Phokas adherent and hence opponent of Tzimiskes ' s supporters , remained loyal to Basil . Although he failed to prevent the rebel ' s outbreak from his original base around Melitene across the Anti - Taurus Mountains into Anatolia proper and suffered a heavy defeat at his hands in late summer 976 , Maleinos continued to serve as a loyalist general until the revolt ' s final suppression in 979 . In order to successfully counter the rebel , however , Basil and his leading minister , the " parakoimomenos " Basil Lekapenos , had been forced to recall the general Bardas Phokas the Younger , the nephew of Emperor Nikephoros II , from exile in 978 and appoint him in command of the eastern armies . After his victory over Skleros , Phokas and his adherents now began plotting to overthrow the emperor . The conflict did not break out immediately , but both sides settled in what the historian Mark Whittow terms a " cold war " . In 985 , the emperor moved first by sacking or demoting a number of eastern generals loyal to the Phokas clan : Bardas Phokas himself was demoted to " doux " of Antioch and Eustathios Maleinos was discharged from the army . In 986 , however , after the humiliating defeat of Basil himself by the Bulgarians at the Gates of Trajan and the return of Skleros from exile in Baghdad , the emperor was forced to re - appoint Bardas Phokas as commander - in - chief of the East . Phokas soon tricked Skleros into a meeting and placed him under arrest , but now the decisive conflict over the throne was inevitable : on 15 August or 14 September 987 , in Maleinos ' s house in the Charsianon theme , the assembled leading aristocratic families proclaimed Phokas as emperor . Phokas ' s rebellion spread quickly to all of Anatolia . Eventually Basil , in dire need of loyal troops , concluded a marriage alliance with the Kievan Rus ' : in exchange for his sister Anna , Vladimir of Kiev dispatched 6 , 000 Varangians with whom Basil managed to subdue the revolt , with Phokas himself falling in battle . With the exception of a few of the rebel ' s senior aides , Basil dealt relatively generously with the supporters of the Phokades . Thus , despite being one of Phokas ' s most prominent supporters , Maleinos was allowed to keep his court title of " magistros " and his extensive estates ( Arab sources record that one of them stretched continuously from Claudiopolis in Bithynia to the Sangarios river , covering some 115 square kilometers ) . In 995 , however , as Emperor Basil II was returning from a campaign against the Fatimids in Syria , he stayed on Maleinos ' s estates . Maleinos lavishly provided for the needs of both the imperial retinue as well as the entire army from his own resources . Basil was greatly impressed and alarmed by this display of a subject ' s wealth and power ; he took Maleinos with him to Constantinople as a virtual hostage , and in January 996 , he issued a new law against the unlawful appropriation of communal village lands by the land - holding aristocracy , the so - called " dynatoi " ( " powerful ones " ) , in a bid to reduce their power . Confined henceforth to the capital , Maleinos was well catered for , but , in the words of the chronicler John Skylitzes , " supplying him plentifully with everything he needed , Basil detained Eustathios as if he were nourishing a wild beast in a cage " . After his death , his estates and fortune were confiscated by the emperor .