(Unknown five or six generations of the Tornikes family)

Family/Spouse: Unknown. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. (Unknown) Tornikes was born in of Thebes, Greece.

Notes:

Patrician in 919.

Notes:

"Younger brother of Grigor/Krikorikios, prince of Taron. [...] Grigor had pledged loyalty to the Byzantine emperor Leo VI but was apparently suspected of feeling greater loyalty to the 'chief prince of the Saracens.' [...] This suspicion led the emperor to require hostages from Grigor. Apoganem was sent by his brother Grigor as a hostage to Constantinople, where Apoganem was entertained by the emperor and honoured with the rank of protospatharios before being freed. Apoganem later returned to Constantinople and became a patrikios (patrician). The male-line ancestry of Grigor and Apoganem (and that of the father of Georgios, Demetrios, and Leon Tornikes) traces back to Smbat Bagratouni, killed in the Battle of Bagrevand in 775. Smbat was Armenia's sparapet (grand constable, i.e., hereditary supreme military commander); his wife was a daughter or (perhaps more likely) sister of Samuel Mamikonian, a descendant (through two lines) of Tiridates the Great, the king of Armenia who made Christianity the state religion early in the fourth century. (Samuel also descended from Gregory the Illuminator, who converted Tiridates the Great to Christianity.) Though some details are unclear, Tiridates the Great clearly descended from many of the royal dynasties of antiquity." ["Eirene?, First Wife of Emperor Isaakios II Angelos, Is a Probable Tornikina and Gateway to Antiquity," by Don C. Stone and Charles R. Owens, citation details below.]