_strategós_ were the _protonotários_ or “judge,” who was a judicial and administrative authority, and two military personages, one of whom, the _kleisourárches_, was so-called because he watched the mountain passes, like the later Turkish _derben-aga_. So far as Greece is concerned, the eclipse of Athens by Thebes, perhaps owing to the silk industry for which the latter city was famous in the Middle Ages, is a very noticeable feature of the new administration. Another reform of Leo the Isaurian aroused the intense indignation of the inhabitants of Greece. We have seen that the spread of Christianity in that country had been facilitated by the assimilation of pagan forms of worship in the new ritual. It was natural that a race, which had been accustomed for centuries to connect art with religion and to seek the noblest statuary in the temples of the gods, should have regarded with peculiar favour the practice of hanging pictures in churches. When therefore Leo, whose Armenian origin perhaps made him personally unsympathetic to the Greeks, issued an edict against image-worship, his orders met with the most bigoted resistance in Greece. It may be that a more searching census for the purposes of the revenue had already rendered him unpopular; but to those who know how strong is the influence of the Church in the East, and what fierce disputes an ecclesiastical question kindles there, the edict of the Emperor will seem ample ground for the Greek rising of 727. An eruption at the volcanic island of Santorin was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure at the doings of the iconoclast sovereign; while Pope Gregory II addressed two violent missives to the Emperor, and probably encouraged the agitation in Greece, which still acknowledged him as spiritual head of the Church. The “Helladikoi,” as they were now called, and the seamen of the Cyclades fitted out a fleet under the leadership of a certain Stephen; and, with the co-operation of Agallianos, one of the Imperial military officials, set up an orthodox Emperor, named Kosmas, and boldly set sail for Constantinople—a proof of the resources of Greece at this period. But the result of this naval undertaking was very different from that which Greece had equipped on behalf of Constantine. A battle was fought under the walls of the capital between the two fleets. The Emperor Leo, availing himself of the terrible invention of the Greek fire, which had been used with such deadly effect in the recent Saracen siege of Constantinople, annihilated his opponents’ vessels. Agallianos, seeing that all was lost, leaped into the sea; Stephen and Kosmas fell by the axe of the executioner. We are not told what punishment was meted out to the Greeks, but, in consequence of the strong attitude of opposition which the Papacy had taken up to the Emperor, Leo in 732 deprived the Pope of all jurisdiction over Greece, and placed that country under the ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.