Nikephoros I
Nikephoros I was a finance minister who took the Byzantine throne from an empress and died with his skull turned into a drinking cup. He was the general logothete — effectively the treasurer — under Irene, and overthrew her in October 802 in a palace conspiracy, exiling her to Lesbos, where she died within a year. His reign was defined by money, because the treasury was empty after Irene had bought support with tax remissions. He imposed what the chronicler Theophanes calls the ten vexations: land registered and taxed, exemptions for monasteries and charitable houses withdrawn, a hearth tax added, shipowners in the capital compelled to take loans at high interest, and the state taking a share of inheritances and treasure finds. Theophanes was a monk whose institutions he taxed, so the account is not disinterested, and the measures rebuilt the state's finances. He also resettled populations from Anatolia into the Slav-held Balkans to reassert control there, which was effective and much resented by those moved. He faced Harun al-Rashid on the eastern frontier and paid tribute after a defeat, and he negotiated with Charlemagne over the western imperial title, eventually recognising him as emperor without conceding that he was emperor of the Romans. The Bulgarian war finished him. He took and burned Khan Krum's capital at Pliska in July 811, refused peace terms, and was caught in the Varbitsa pass on the way home, where the army was destroyed and he was killed. Krum had the skull silvered and drank from it.
- Lived: 760 CE – 811 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, administrator
