city of Komne, near Philippopolis in Thrace. Isaac was born . As Maria had died early, on his deathbed in 1020, Isaac's father commended his two surviving sons Isaac and John to the care of Emperor Basil II. According to Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, the two children were raised with the utmost solicitude and the best tutors at the Stoudion monastery, with care taken to teach them military exercises and hunting. As soon as they came of age, Isaac and his brother joined the imperial bodyguard, the Hetaireia. At a young age, perhaps as early as 1025, Isaac married Catherine of Bulgaria (born ), a daughter of Ivan Vladislav (), the last Tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire. From he held the post of stratopedarches of the East—likely denoting that he was domestikos ton scholon, commander-in-chief, of the eastern field army, but this title is not explicitly attested—and the ranks of magistros and vestes. He was dismissed by Empress Theodora in 1054, and replaced by her eunuch confidant, the proedros Theodore. Revolt of the eastern generals Michael VI and the military leadership When Michael VI Bringas came to the throne in 1056, Isaac was chosen to lead a deputation of eastern generals to the new emperor. Michael VI engaged in mass promotions of individuals—in the eyes of the contemporary courtier Michael Psellos, to an excessive degree—and the military sought to partake in the emperor's bounty. This was not a trivial matter: the debasement of the Byzantine currency under Constantine IX Monomachos () had affected military pay—not coincidentally presided over by none other than Michael Bringas, who was then military logothete—and while civil officials were compensated by being raised to higher dignities (which commanded higher salaries, rogai), the army was not. This exacerbated the already simmering dislike of the military aristocracy for the "regime of eunuchs and civilian politicians" that had dominated the empire during the last decades of the Macedonian dynasty. At Easter 1057, the traditional time when the emperor paid title holders their stipends, the delegation presented itself before the emperor. Along with Isaac, the delegation included the magistros Katakalon Kekaumenos, who had just been dismissed as doux of Antioch; the vestarches Michael Bourtzes, whose namesake grandfather had captured Antioch for Byzantium a century earlier; Constantine Doukas, married to a niece of the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Keroularios; his brother John Doukas, a friend of Psellos; and others not