 Chapter 48 Part 4 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Volume 4. Chapter 48. Succession and Character of the Greek Emperors. Part 4. Among the warriors who promoted his elevation and served under his standard, a noble and valiant Arminian had deserved and obtained the most eminent rewards. The Statue of John Zimiscus was below the ordinary standard, but this diminutive body was endowed with strength, beauty and the soul of a hero. By the jealousy of the emperor's brother, he was degraded from the office of general of the east to that of director of the posts, and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and exile, but Zimiscus was ranked among the numerous lovers of the empress. On her intercession he was permitted to reside at Calcedon in the neighbourhood of the capital. Her bounty was repaid in his clandestine and amorous visits to the palace, and Theofano consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and panorious husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers. In the darkness of a winter night, Zimiscus, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings of his friends, nor the tidy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress which he had erected in the palace, could prevent Necrophorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every door was open to the assassin. As he slept on a bare skin on the ground, he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers glittered before his eyes. It is doubtful whether Zimiscus imbrewed his hands in the blood of his sovereign, but he enjoyed the inhumane spectacle of revenge. The murder was protracted by insult and cruelty, and as soon as the head of Necrophorus was shown from the window, the turmoil was hushed, and the Armenian was emperor of the east. On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on the threshold of Sensaphia by the intrepid patriarch, who charged his conscience with the deed of treason and blood, and required, as a sign of repentance, that he should separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of apostolitic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly violated the most sacred obligations. And Theofano, instead of sharing his imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignomy from his bed and palace. In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and impotent rage, accused the ingratitude of her lover, assaulted with words and blows her son Basil, as he stood silent and submissive in the presence of a superior colleague, and avowed her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegitimacy of his birth. The public indignation was appeased by her exile and the punishment of the meaner accomplices. The death of an unpopular prince was forgiven, and the guilt of Zimiscus was forgotten in the splendor of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less useful to the state than the avarice of Nicophorus, but his gentle and generous behaviour delighted all who approached his person, and it was only in the paths of victory that he trod in the footsteps of his predecessor. The greatest part of his reign was employed in the camp and the field. His personal valor and activity was signalized on the Danuban the Tigris, the ancient boundaries of the Roman world. And by his double triumph over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of saviour of the empire and conqueror of the east. In his last return from Syria, he observed that the most fruitful lands of his new provinces were possessed by the eunuchs. And is it for them, he exclaimed with honest indignation, that we have fought and conquered? Is it for them that we shed our blood and exhaust the treasures of our people? The complaint was re-echoed to the palace. And the death of Zimiscus is strongly marked with the suspicion of poison. Under this usurpation, or regency, of twelve years, the two lawful emperors, Basil and Constantine, had silently grown to the age of manhood. Their tender years had been incapable of dominion. The respectful modesty of their attendance and salutation was due to the age and merit of their guardians. The childless ambitions of those guardians had no temptation to violate the right of succession. Their patrimony was ably and faithfully administered. And the premature death of Zimiscus was a loss rather than a benefit to the sons of Romanus. Their want of experience detained them twelve years longer, the obscure and voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by persuading them to indulge the pleasures of youth and to disdain the labours of government. In this silken web the weakness of Constantine was forever entangled, but his elder brother felt the impulse of genius and the desire of action. He frowned, and the minister was no more. Basil was the acknowledged sovereign of Constantinople and the provinces of Europe. Butasia was oppressed by two veteran generals, Vocus and Sclerus, who, alternately friends and enemies, subjects and rebels, maintained their independence, and laboured to emulate the example of successful usurpation. Against these domestic enemies the son of Romanus first drew his sword, and they trembled in the presence of a lawful and high-spirited prince. The first, in the front of battle, was thrown from his horse by the stroke of poison or an arrow. The second, who had been twice loaded with chains, and twice invested with the purple, was desirous of ending in peace the small remainder of his days. As the aged supplient approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering steps, leaning on his two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the insolence of youth and power, and is this the man who has been so long the object of our terror? After he had confirmed his own authority, and the peace of the empire, the trophies of Nicophorus and Zemiscus would not suffer their royal pupil to sleep in the palace. His long and frequent expeditions against the Saracens were rather glorious than useful to the empire. But the final destruction of the kingdom of Bulgaria appears, since the time of Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms. Yet, instead of applauding their victorious prince, his subjects detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil, and in the imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious education, which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his mind. He was ignorant of every science, and the remembrance of his learned and feeble grandsire might encourage his real or affected contempt of laws and lawyers, of artists and arts. Of such a character in such an age, superstition took a firm and lasting possession. After the first license of his youth, Basil II devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the penance of a hermit, while the monistic habit under his robes and armour observed a vow of countenance, and imposed in his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily. He was prevented by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty, and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus, and the reign of the two brothers is the longest and most obscure of the Byzantine history. Lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the Macedonian dynasty. Would have been thrice respected by the usurpers of their power, after the death of Constantine the Ninth, the last male of the royal race. A new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and Constantine himself had only three daughters. Eudosia, who took the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold, or pious Theodora, refused to give an heir to the empire. But her sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person and fair reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his declining that honour, was informed that blindness or death was the second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection, but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety and greatness, and her entrance into a monastery removed the only bar to the imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine, the sceptre devolved to Romanus III. But his labours at home and abroad were equally feeble and fruitless, and the mature age, the forty-eight years of Zoe, were less favourable to the hopes of pregnancy than to the indulgence of pleasure. Her favourite chamberlain was a handsome pathologian of the name of Michael, whose first trade had been that of a money-changer, and Romanus, either from gratitude or equity, connived at their criminal intercourse, or accepted a slight assurance of their innocence. But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress is capable of poisoning her husband, and the death of Romanus was instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of Michael IV. The expectations of Zoe were, however, disappointed. Instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had placed in her bit a miserable wretch, whose health and reason were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of the mind and body were summoned to his aid, and his hopes were amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of the most popular saints. The monks applauded his penance, and, except restitution, but to whom should he have restored? Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His administration was the only art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in the hands of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline of his brother's health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who derived his surname of Caliphates, from his father's occupation in the careening of vessels. At the command of the eunuch, Zoe adopted for her son the son of a mechanic, and this fictitious heir was invested with the title and purple of the Caesars, in the presence of the Senate and clergy. So feeble was the character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power which she recovered by the death of the pathologonian. And at the end of four days, she placed the crown on the head of Michael the Fifth, who had protested with tears and oaths, that he should ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects. The only act of his short reign was his base in gratitude to his benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the former was pleasing to the public, but the murmurs and at length the clamours of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the daughter of so many emperors. Her vices were forgotten, and Michael was taught that there is a period in which the patience of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of every degree assembled in a formidable termult which lasted three days. They besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their mothers, Zoe from a prison, Theodora from a monastery, and condemned the son of Caliphatus to the loss of his eyes or his life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate, and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But the singular union subsisted no more than two months. The two sovereigns, their tempers, interests and adherents, were secretly hostile to each other, and as Theodora was still averse to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe, at the age of sixty, consented for the public good to sustain the embraces of a third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and number were Constantine the tenth, and the epithet of Monomachus, the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valour and victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was broken by the tortures of the gout, and his desolate reign was spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the Isle of Lesbos, and Sclarina gloried in the appellation of his mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with the title and pump of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous apartment in the palace. The lawful consort, such was the delicacy or corruption of Zoe, consented to this strange and scandalous partition, and the emperor appeared in public between his wife and his concubine. He survived them both, but the last measures of Constantine to change the order of succession were prevented by the more vigilant friends of Theodora. And after his decease, she resumed, with the general consent, the possession of her inheritance. In her name, and by the influence of four eunuchs, the eastern world was passively governed about nineteen months. And as they wished to prolong their dominion, they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor, Michael the Sixth. The surname Astratio Ticus declares his military profession. But the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see with the eyes, and execute with the hands of his ministers. Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave, the last of the Macedonian or Brazilian dynasty. I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females. From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit, begins to emerge. The Greeks either preserved or revived the use of surnames, which perpetrate the fame of hereditary virtue. And we now discern the rise, succession, and alliances of the last dynasties of Constantinople, and Trebizond. The Comnennai, who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honour of a Roman origin. But the family had been long since transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was situated in the district of Castamona, in the neighbourhood of the Yuxin, and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret, the modest though honourable dwellings of his fathers. The first of their line was the illustrious Manuel, who, in the reign of the Second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the troubles of the East. He left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac and John, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed to the gratitude and favour of his sovereign. The noble youths were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts of the palace, and the exercises of the camp. And from the domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled the force and reputation of the Comnennai, and the ancient nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers, with the captive princes of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon, from the number of enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters. The elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more deserving generals. And their discontent was inflamed, by the parsimony of the emperor, and the insolence of the eunuchs. They secretly assembled in the sanctuary a sense of fear, and the votes of the military synoid would have been unanimous in favour of the old and valiant catecholon. If the patriotism or modesty of the veteran had not suggested the importance of birth, as well as merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnennais was approved by general consent, and the associates separated without delay, to meet in the plains of Frigia, at the head of their respective squadrons and attachments. The cause of Michael was defended in a single battle by the mercenaries of the imperial guard, who were aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle of honour and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the emperor solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the moderation of the Comnennion. But the former was betrayed by his ambassadors, and the latter was prevented by his friends. The solitary Michael submitted to the voice of the people. The patriarch annulled their oath of allegiance, and as he shaved the head of the royal monk, congratulated his beneficial exchange of temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven. An exchange, however, which the priest, on his own account, would probably have declined. By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac Comnennais was solemnly crowned. The sword which he inscribed on his coins might have been an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquests. But this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic enemies of the state. The decline of his health and vigor suspended the operation of active virtue, and the prospect of approaching death determined him to interpose some moments between life and eternity. But instead of leaving the empire as the marriage portion of his daughter, his reason and inclination concurred in the preference of his brother John, a soldier, a patriot, and the father of five sons, the future pillars of an hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might be the natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show of virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty, and a rare offense against his family and country. The purple which he had refused was accepted by Constantine Dukas, a friend of the Comnenian house, and whose noble birth was adorned with the experience and reputation of civil policy. In the monistic habit Isaac recovered his health and survived two years his voluntary abdication. At the command of his abbot he observed the rule of Saint Basil, and executed the most servile officers of the convent. But his latent vanity was gratified by the frequent and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in his person the character of a benefactor and a saint. If Constantine XI was indeed the subject most worthy of an empire, we must pity the debasement of the age and nation in which he was chosen. In the labour of purile declarations he sought, without obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious in his opinion than that of Rome. And in the subordinate functions of a judge he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior. Far from imitating the patriotic indifference of the authors of his greatness, Dukas was anxious only to secure, at the expense of the Republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His three sons, Michael VII, and Dronacus I and Constantine XII, were invested in a tender age with the equal title of Augustus. And the succession was speedily opened by their father's death. His widow Eudosia was entrusted with the administration. But experience had taught the jealousy of the dying monarch to protect his sons from the danger of her second nuptials. And her solemn engagement, attested by the principal senators, was deposited in the hands of the patriarch. Before the end of seven months, the ones of Eudosia, or those of the state, called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier, and her heart had already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from the scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a reasonable attempt had exposed him to the severity of the laws. His beauty and valor dissolved him in the eyes of the Empress. And Romanus, from a mild exile, was recalled on the second day to the command of the Oriental armies. Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public, and the promise which she would have betrayed her faltered in levity was stolen by a dexterous emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Syphilion at first alleged the sanctity of oaths and the sacred nature of a trust. But a whisper, that his brother was the future emperor, relaxed his scruples, and forced him to confess that the public safety was the supreme law. He resigned the important paper, and when his hopes were confounded by the nomination of Romanus, he could no longer regain his security, retract his declarations, nor oppose the second nuptials of the Empress. Yet a murmur was heard in the palace, and the barbarian guards had raised their battle-axes in the cause of the House of Lucas, till the young princes were soothed by the tears of their mother, and the solemn assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the imperial station with dignity and honour. Hereafter I shall relate his valiant, but unsuccessful efforts to resist the progress of the Turks. His defeat and captivity inflicted a deadly wound on the Byzantine monarchy of the East, and after he was released from the chains of the Sultan, he vainly sought his wife and its subjects. His wife had been thrust into a monastery, and the subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of the civil law. The prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived, as by the stroke of death, of all the public and private rights of a citizen. In the general consternation the Caesar John asserted the indefusible right of his three nephews. Constantinople listened to his voice, and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in the capital, and received on the frontier as an enemy of the Republic. Romanus was not more fortunate in domestic than in foreign war. The loss of two battles compelled him to yield on the assurance of fair and honorable treatment, but his enemies were devoid of faith or humanity, and, after the cruel extinction of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and corrupt, till in a few days he was relieved from a state of misery. Under the triple reign of the House of Dukas, the two younger brothers were reduced to the vain honors of the purple. But the eldest, the Pusillanimus Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman scepter, and his surname of Parapinicus denotes the reproach which he shared with an avaracious favorite, who enhanced the price and diminished the measure of wheat. In the school of Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudosia made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric, but his character was degraded rather than ennobled by the virtues of a monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt of their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head of the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at Adrianipole and Nice. Their revolt was in the same months. They bore the same name of Nicophorus, but the two candidates were distinguished by the surnames of Bryanius and Botaniatus. The former, in the maturity of wisdom and courage, the latter conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While Botaniatus advanced with cautious and delitory steps, his active competitors stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The name of Bryanius was delustious, his cause was popular, but his licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and pillaging a suburb. And the people, who would have hailed the rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This change of the public opinion was favorable to Botaniatus, who, at length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of Calcedon. A formal invitation in the name of the patriarch, the Sinoid and the Senate, was circulated through the streets of Constantinople. And the general assembly, in the Dome of Sense of Fear, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this unarmed multitude. But the feeble emperor, applauding his own moderation and clemency, presigned the ensigns of royalty, and was rewarded with the monistic habit and the title of Archbishop of Iphaeus. He left a son, a Constantine, born and educated in the purple, and a daughter of the House of Ducas, illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession of the Comnenian dynasty. John Comnenius, the brother of the Emperor Isaac, survived in peace and dignity his generous refusal of the scepter. By his wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and a policy, he left eight children. The three daughters multiplied the Comnenian alliance with the noblest of the Greeks. Of the five sons, Manuel was stopped by premature death, Isaac and Alexis restored the imperial greatness of their house, which was enjoyed without toil or danger, by the two younger brethren, Adrian and Nicophorus. Alexis, the third and most illustrious of the brothers, was endowed by nature with the choicest gifts of mind and body. They were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the school of obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from the perils of the Turkish War, by the paternal care of the Emperor Omanus. But the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring face, was accused of treason and banished by the sons of Ducas, to an island in the prepontis. The two brothers soon emerged into favour and action, fought by each other's side against the rebels and barbarians, and adhered to the Emperor Michael, till he was deserted by the world and by himself. In his first interview with Botaniatus, Prince, said Alexis with a noble frankness, my duty rendered me your enemy. The decrees of God and other people have made me your subject. Jud of my future loyalty by my past opposition, the successor of Michael entertained him with esteem and confidence. His fellow was employed against three rebels, who disturbed the peace of the Empire, or at least of the Emperors. Ursel, Brienneus, and Basilatius, were formidable by their numerous forces and military fame. They were successfully vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of the throne, and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid and cruel court, they applauded the clemency as well as the courage of their conqueror. But the loyalty of the commemni was soon tainted by fear and suspicion, nor is it easy to settle between a subject and a despot. The debt of gratitude, which the former has tempted to claim by a revolt, and the latter to discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexis to march against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed the merit or memory of his past services. The favourites of Botaneatus provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused, and the retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of their life and liberty. The women of the family were deposited in a sanctuary, respected by tyrants, the men mounted on horseback, sullied from the city, and erected the standard of civil war. The soldiers, who had been gradually assembled in the capital and the neighbourhood, were devoted to the cause of a victorious and injured leader. The ties of common interest and domestic alliance secured the attachment of the house of Ducas, and the generous dispute of the commemni was terminated by the decisive resolution of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger brother with the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to Constantinople to threaten rather than beseege the impregnable fortress. But the fidelity of the guards was corrupted, a gate was surprised, and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George Palaeilogus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing that he laboured for his posterity. Alexis ascended the throne, and his aged competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of various nations was gratified with the pillage of the city. But the public disorders were expiated by the tears and fasts of the commemni, who submitted to every penance compatible with the possession of the empire. The life of the Emperor Alexis has been delineated by a favourite daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person, and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers, the princess Anna Comnenna repeatedly protests that, besides her personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings of the most respected veterans, and, after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by and forgetful of the world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear, and that truth, the naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an elaborate effectation of rhetoric and science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The genuine character of Alexis is lost in a vague constellation of virtues, and the perpetual strain of panagery and apology awakens our jealousy to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark that the discourse of the time were the misfortune and the glory of Alexis, and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on his reign by the justers of heaven and the vices of his predecessors. In the east the victorious Turks had spread, from Persia to the Hellespont, the reign of the Korean and the Crescent. The west was invaded by the adventurer's valor of the Normans, and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth new swarms, who had gained in the science of war what they had lost in the ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less hostile than the land, and while the frontiers were assaulted by an open enemy, the palace was distracted with secret trees and conspiracy. On a sudden the banner of the cross was displayed by the Latins, Europe was precipitated on Asia, and Constantinople had almost been swept away by this impetuous deluge. In the Tempest, Alexis steered the imperial vessel with dexterity and courage. At the head of his armies he was bold in action, skillful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his advantages, and rising from his defeats with an exhaustible vigor. The discipline of the camp was revived, and a new generation of men and soldiers was created by the example and precepts of their leader. In his intercourse with the Latins, Alexis was patient and artful. His discerning eye pervaded the new system of an unknown world, and I shall hereafter describe the superior policy with which he balanced the interests and passions of the champions of the First Crusade. In a long reign of thirty-seven years he subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals. The laws of public and private order were restored, the arts of wealth and science were cultivated, the limits of the empire were enlarged in Europe and Asia, and the Comnenian scepter was transmitted to his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the difficulties of the times betrayed some defects in his character, and have exposed his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach. The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his daughter so often bestows on a flying hero. The weakness or prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of personal courage, and his political arts are branded by the Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation. The increase of the male and female branches of his family adorned the throne and secured the succession. But their princely luxury and pride offended the patricians, exhausted the revenue, and insulted the misery of the people. Anna is a faithful witness that his happiness was destroyed and his health was broken by the cares of a public life. The patience of Constantinople was fatigued by the length and severity of his reign, and before Alexis expired he had lost the love and reverence of his subjects. The clergy could not forgive his application of the sacred riches to the defence of the state, but they applauded his theological learning and ardent zeal for the Orthodox faith, which he defended with his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by the superstition of the Greeks, and the same inconstant principle of human nature enjoined the emperor to found a hospital for the poor and infirm, and to direct the execution of a heretic who was burned alive in a square of sense of fear. Even the sincerity of his moral and religious virtues was suspected by the persons who had passed their lives in his familiar confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head and breezed a pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant reply of the Empress may be inscribed as an epithet on his tomb. You diaries you have lived, a hypocrite! It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving sons, in favour of her daughter, the Princess Anne, whose philosophy would not have refused the weight of a diadam. But the order of male succession was asserted by the friends of their country. The lawful heir drew the raw signet from the finger of his insensible or conscious father. And the emperor obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnenna was stimulated by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother. And when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes, and had endowed Brianias with the soul of a woman. The two sons of Alexis, John and Isaac, maintained their fraternal concord, the hereditary virtue of their race. And the younger brother was content with the title of Sebastocrator, which approached the dignity without sharing the power of the emperor. In the same person the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately united. His swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Callow Johannes, or John the handsome, which is grateful subjects more seriously applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her treason, the life and fortune of Anne were justly fortified to the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor. But he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That respectable friend, Axic, a slave of Turkish extraction, presumed to decline the gift, and to intercede for the criminal. His generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his favourite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by conspiracy or rebellion. Feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman Empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the human theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal, abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained to the arch-less virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not borrowed from the schools, he despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince, innocence had nothing to fear, and merit at everything to hope. And, without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he introduced a gradual, though visible, reformation in the public and private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds, the love of arms and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John the Handsome may be justified, at least in their principle, by the necessity of repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The Sultan of Iconium was confined to his capital, the Barbarians were driven to the mountains, and the maritime provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient blessings of their deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and Aleppo, he repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and in the sieges and battles of this Holy War, his Latin allies were astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek, as he began to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient limits of the Empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates and Tigris, the Dominion of Syria, and the Conquest of Jerusalem. The threat of his life and of the public felicity was broken by a singular accident. He hunted the wild boar in the valley of Anazarbis, and had fixed his javelin in the body of the furious animal. But in the struggle a poisoned arrow dropped from his quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced a mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the Comnenian princes. End of Chapter 48 Part 4. Chapter 48 Part 5 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 4. This is a Librivox recording, all Librivox recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org, recording by Lizzie Driver. Chapter 48 Succession and Characters of the Greek Emperors Part 5 A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the Handsome. Of the two survivors, Isaac Emmanuel, his judgment or affection preferred the younger, and the choice of their dying prince was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valour of his favourite in the Turkish War. The faithful Aczuk, hastened to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in honourable confinement, and purchased, with a gift of two hundred pounds of silver, the leading ecclesiastics of Saints of Fear, who possessed a decisive voice in the consecration of an emperor, with his veteran and affectionate troops, Emmanuel soon visited Constantinople, his brother Aquiest, in the title of Sebastor Creator. His subjects admired the lofty stature and martial graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the flattering promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the activity and vigour of youth. By the experience of his government they were taught, that he emulated the spirit and shared the talents of his father whose social virtues were buried in the grave. A reign of thirty-seven years is filled, by a perpetual, though various, warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Emmanuel were exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the coast of Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece. The influence of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome and Russia, and the Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe. Educated in the silk and purple of the east, Emmanuel possessed the iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled, except in the lives of Richard I of England, and of Charles XII of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek Emperor. In a famous tournament he entered the lists on a fiery coarser, and overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the Italian knights. The first in the charge, the last in the retreat. His friends and his enemies alike trembled, the former for his safety, and the latter for their own. After posting an ambuscade in a wood, he rode forward in search of some perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother, and the faithful Aczuk, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen, after a short combat, fled before them, but the numbers of the enemy increased. The march of the reinforcement was tardy and fearful, and Emmanuel, without receiving a wound, cut his way through a squadron of five hundred Turks. In a battle against the Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched a standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost alone, who passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy. In the same country, after transporting his army beyond the save, he sent back the boats, with an order under pain of death to their commander, that he should leave them to conquer or die in that hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a captive galley, the Empress did a loft on the poop, opposing against the volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail. Nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian Admiral enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In one day, he is said to have slain above Forty of the Barbarians with his own hand. He returned to the camp, dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his saddle. He was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat. And the gigantic champions who encountered his arm were transpired by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword of the invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as a model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks. I will not, to vindicate their credit, indendure my own. Yet I may observe that, in the long series of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the subject of similar exaggeration. With the valor of a soldier, he did not unite the skill or prudence of a general. His victories were not productive of any permanent or useful conquest, and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains of Pesidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel is the contrast and vicissitude of labour and sloth, of hardiness and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace. In peace he appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in the snow, tied in the longest marches the strength of his men and horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the camp. No sooner did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury. The expense of his dress, his table, and his palace surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and wholesome a days were idly wasted in the delicious aisles of the prepontis, in the incestuous love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and dissolute prince exhausted the revenue and multiplied the taxes, and Manuel, in the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured a bitter reproach from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of a fountain was mingled with Christian blood. It is not the first time, exclaimed a voice from the crowd, that you have drunk, O Emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects. Manuel, come-lend-ness, was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha, or Irene of Germany, and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for Bella, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople under the name of Alexis, and the consummation of their nuptials might have transferred the Roman scepter to a race of free and warlike barbarians. But as soon as Maria of Antioch had given a son and heir to the empire, the presumptive rights of Bella were abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride. But the Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers, and displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexis, and at the age of ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his father's decease had closed the glories of the Comemnian line. The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexis had been sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion. By ambition, Isaac, the surpassed her creator, was excited to flight in rebellion. From whence he was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome. The heirs of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial. But John, the elder of his sons, renounced for ever his religion. Provoked by a real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman to the Turkish camp. His apostate was rewarded with the sultan's daughter, the title of Celebi or noble, and the inheritance of a princely estate. And in the fifteenth century, Muhammad II boasted of his imperial descent from the Comemnian family. Andronicus, the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and grandson of Alexis Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the age, and his genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular romance. To justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me to observe that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions of strength and beauty, and that the wand of the softer graces was supplied by manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and the air and deportment of a soldier. The preservation in his old age of health and figure was the reward of temperance and exercise. A piece of bread in a draught of water was often his soul and evening repast, and if he tasted of a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands, it was the well-earned fruits for laborious chase. Dexterous in arms he was ignorant of fear. His persuasive eloquence could bend to every situation and character of life. His style, though not his practice, was fashioned by the example of Saint Paul. And, in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of the Emperor John, he followed the retreat of the Roman army. But in the march through Asia Minor, design or accident tempted him to wander in the mountains. The hunt was encompassed by the Turkish huntsman, and he remained some time a reluctant or willing captive in the power of the sultan. His virtues and vices recommended him to the favour of his cousin. He shared the perils and the pleasures of Manuel, and while the Emperor lived in public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her sister Eudosia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the decencies of her sex and rank she gloried in the name of his concubine, and both the palace and the camp could witness that she slept or watched in the arms of her lover. She accompanied him to his military command of Cilicia, the first scene of his valour and imprudence. He pressed, with active ardour, the siege of Mobsuestia. The day was employed in the boldest attacks, but the night was wasted in song and dance, and a band of Greek comedians formed the choicest part of his routine. Andronicus was surprised by the sally of a vigilant foe. But, while his troops fled in disorder, his invincible lance transpired the thickest ranks of the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia, he was recede by Manuel with public smiles and a private reproof. But the Duchess of Naceus, Branzaba, and Castoria were the reward or consolation of the unsuccessful general. Eudosia still attended his motions. At midnight their tent was suddenly attacked by her angry brothers, impatient to expiate her infamy in his blood. His daring spirit refused her advance, and the disguise of a female habit. And boldly, starting from his couch, he drew his sword and cut his way through the numerous assassins. It was here that he first portrayed his ingratitude and treachery. He engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the King of Hungary and the German Emperor, approached the royal tent at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and, under the mask of a Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal foe. And imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an instrument of flight and safety. The monarch disassembled his suspicions. But, after the close of the campaign, Andronicas was arrested and strictly confined in a tower of the Palace of Constantinople. In this prison he was left about twelve years, a most painful restraint, from which the first of action and pleasure perpetually urged him to escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived some broken bricks in a corner of the chamber, and gradually widened the passage, till he had explored a dark and forgotten recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself and the remains of his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former position, and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the hour of the customary visit his guards were amazed by the silence and solitude of the prison, and reported with shame and fear his incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were instantly shut. The strictest orders were dispatched into the provinces for the recovery of the fugitive, and his wife, on the suspicion of a pious act, was basely imprisoned in the same tower. At the dead of night she beheld a specter. She recognized her husband. They shared their provisions, and a son was the fruit of the stolen interviews, which alleviated the tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed, and the captive had accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought back to Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length he found the moment and the means of his deliverance. The boy, his domestic servant, intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax the impression of the key. By the diligence of his friends a similar key with a bundle of ropes was introduced into the prison in the bottom of a hog's head, and Jonekus employed, with industry and courage, the instruments of his safety, unlocked the doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself a day among the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden wall of the palace. A boat was stationed for his reception. He visited his own house, embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a fleet horse, and directed his rapid course towards the banks of the Danube. At Ankayles in Thrace an intrepid friend supplied him with horses and money. He passed the river, traversed with speed, the desert of Moldavia, and the Carpathian Hills, and had almost reached the town of Halix in the Polish Russia, when he was intercepted by a party of Wallachians, who resolved to convey their important captive to Constantinople. His presence of mind again extracted him from danger. Under the pretence of sickness he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from the troop. He planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it with his cap and up a garment, and, stealing into the wood, left a phantom to amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Wallachians. From Halix he was honourably conducted to Quio, the residence of the Great Duke. The subtle Greeks soon obtained the esteem and confidence of Erosolus. His character could assume the manners of every climate, and the barbarians applauded his strength and courage in the chase of the elks and bears of the forest. In this northern region he deserved the forgiveness of Manuel, who solicited the Russian Prince, who solicited the Russian Prince, to join his arms in the invasion of Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important service. His private treaty was signed with the promise of fidelity on one side, and of oblivion on the other. And he marched at the head of the Russian cavalry, from the Barasshanes to the Danube. In his reinstatement Manuel had ever sympathised with the martial and dissolute character of his cousin, and his free pardon was sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in which he was second and second only to the valour of the emperor. No sooner was the exile restored to freedom in his country than his ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the public misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the succession of the more deserving males of the Commemnian blood. Her future marriage with the Prince of Hungary was repugnant to the hopes or prejudices of the princes and nobles. But when an oath of allegiance was required to the presumptive heir, Andronicus alone asserted the honour of the Roman name. Declined the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the adoption of a stranger, his patriotism was offensive to the emperor. But he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was removed from the royal presence by an honourable banishment, a second command of the Sicilian frontier, with the absolute disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In this station the Armenians again exercised his courage and exposed his negligence. And the same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was unhorsed and almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus soon discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest. The beautiful Philippa, sister of the Empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of Poitio, the Latin Prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments. To his love she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer of an advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for this domestic affront interrupted his pleasures. Andronicus left the indiscreet princess to weep and to repent, and, with a band of desperate adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem. His birth, his martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced him as the champion of the cross. He soon captivated both the clergy and the king. And the Greek Prince was invested, with the Lordship of Eretus, on the coast of Phoenicia, in his neighbourhood resided a young and handsome queen of his own nation and family, great-granddaughter of the Emperor Lexus, and widow of Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem. She visited and loved her kingsmen. Theodore was the third victim of his amorous seduction, and his shame was more public and scandalous than that of a predecessors. The Emperor still thirsted for revenge, and his subjects and allies of the Syrian frontier were repeatedly pressed to seize the person and put out the eyes of the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe, but the tender Theodora revealed his danger and accompanied his flight. The Queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the east, his obsequious concubine, and two illegitimate children were the living monuments of her weakness. Damascus was his first refuge, and in the characters of the great Noradin and his servant Saladin, the superstitious Greek might learn to revere the virtues of the Muslims. As a friend of Noradin, he visited most probably Baghdad and the courts of Persia. And, after a long circuit round the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he finally settled among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies of his country. The Sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to Andronicus, his mistress and his band of outlaws. The debt of gratitude was repaid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of Trebizond, and he seldom returned without an ample harvest of spoil and of Christian captives. In the story of his adventures he was fond of comparing himself to David, who escaped, by a long exile, the snares of the wicked. But the royal prophet, he presumed to add, was content to lurk on the borders of Judea, to slay Anamellicite, and to threaten, in his miserable state, the life of the Eurasius Nebole. The excursions of the Commemnian prince had a wider range, and he had spread over the eastern world the glory of his name and religion. By a sentence of the Greek Church, the licentious rover had been separated from the faithful. But even this excommunication may prove that he never abjured the profession of Christianity. His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret persecution of the emperor. But he was at length ensnared by the captivity of his female companion. The governor of Trebizond succeeded in his attempt to surprise the person of Theodora. The queen of Jerusalem and her two children were sent to Constantinople, and their loss embittered the tedious solitude of banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a final pardon, with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign, who was satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his past rebellion. Nor would he presume to arise unless some faithful subject would drag him to the foot of the throne. By an iron chain with which he had secretly encircled his neck, this extraordinary penance excited the wonder and pity of the assembly. His sins were forgiven by the church and state. But the just suspicion Emmanuel fixed his residence at a distance from the court. Atonoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with rich vineyards and situate on the coast of the Uxen. The death of Manuel and the disorders of the minority soon opened the fairest field to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or fourteen years of age, without vigor or wisdom or experience. His mother, the Empress Mary, abandoned her person and government to a favorite of the communion name. And his sister, another Mary, whose husband and Italian, was decorated with the title of Caesar, excited a conspiracy, and at length an insurrection against her odious stepmother. The provinces were forgotten, the capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order was overthrown in the vicent weakness of a few months. A civil war was kindled in Constantinople. The two factions fought a bloody battle in the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a regular siege in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia. The patriarch labelled with honours zeal to heal the wounds of the Republic, the most respectable patriots, called aloud for a guardian and avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise of the talents and even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement he effected to revolve the solemn duties of his oath. If the safety or honour of the imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose the mischief to the utmost of my power. His correspondence with the patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from the Psalms of David and the Epistles of Saint Paul, and he patiently waited till he was called to her deliverance by the voice of his country, in his march from Honowy to Constantinople, his slender train insensibly swelled to a crowd and an army. His professions of religion and loyalty were mistaken for the language of his heart, and the simplicity of a foreign dress, which showed to an advantage his majestic stature, displayed a lively image of his poverty in exile. All opposition sank before him. He reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus, the Byzantine navy sailed from the harbour to receive and transport the saviour of the empire. The torrent was loud and irresistible, and the insects, who had bashed in the sunshine of royal favour, disappeared at the blast of the storm. It was the first care of Andronicus to occupy the palace, to salute the emperor, to confine his mother, to punish her minister, and to restore the public order and tranquillity. He then visited the sepulcher of Manuel. The spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as he bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they heard, a murmur of triumph or revenge. I no longer fear thee, my old enemy, who has driven me a vagabond to every climate of the earth. Thou art safely deposited under a sevenfold dome, from whence thou can never arise, to the signal of the last trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily will I trample on thy ashes and thy posterity. From his subsequent tyranny we may impute such feelings to the man and the moment, but it is not extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret thoughts. In the first months of his administration his designs were veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude only the eyes of the multitude. The coronation of Alexius was performed with due solemnity, and his bevidious guardian, holding in his hands the body and blood of Christ, most fervently declared that he lived, and was ready to die, for the service of his beloved pupil. But his numerous adherents were instructed to maintain that the sinking empire must perish in the hands of a child, that the Romans could only be served by veteran prince, bowled in arms, skillful in policy, and taught to reign by the long experience of fortune a mankind, and that it was the duty of every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to undertake the burden of the public care. The young emperor was himself constrained to join his voice to the general acclamation. And to solicit the association of a colleague, who instantly degraded him from the supreme rank, secluded his person, and verified to the rough declaration of the patriarch that Alexius might be considered as dead, so soon as he was committed to the custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded by the imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the multitude, the tyrant accused and tried the empress for a reasonable correspondence with the king of Hungary, his own son, a youth of honour and humanity, about his abhorrence of this flogatious act, and three of the judges had the merit of preferring their conscience to their safety. But the obsequious tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any defence, condemned the widow of Manuel, and her unfortunate son subscribed the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse was buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of her beautyous form. The fate of her son was no longer deferred, he was strangled with a bowstring, and the tyrant, insensible to pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it rudely with his foot. Thy father, he cried, was a nave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool. The Roman scepter, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus about three years and a half, as the guardian or sovereign of the empire. His government exhibited a singular contrast of vice and virtue. When he listened to his passions he was a scourge, when he consulted his reason, the father of his people. In the exercise of private justice he was equitable and rigorous, a shameful and pernicious finality was abolished, and the offices were filled with the most deserving candidates, by a prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish. He prohibited the inhumane practice of pillaging the goods and persons of shipwrecked mariners. The provinces, so long the objects of repression or neglect, revived in prosperity and plenty, and millions applauded the distant blessings of his reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of his daily cruelties. The ancient proverb, that bloodthirsty as the man who returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much truth, to Marius and Tiberius, and was now verified for the third time in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a black list of the enemies and rivals, who had reduced his merit, opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes. And the only comfort of his exile was a sacred hope and promise of revenge. The necessary extinction of the young emperor and his mother imposed the fatal obligation of extropating the friends, who hated, and might punish, the assassin, and the repetition of murder rendered him less willing and less able to forgive. A horrid narrative of the victims who he sacrificed by poison or the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be less expressive of his cruelty than the appellation of the Halcyon days, which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose. The tyrant strove to transfer, on the laws and judges, some portion of his guilt. But the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the Greeks, most especially those, by descent or reliance, might dispute the Comnenian inheritance, escape from the monster's den. Nice and Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of refuge. And as their flight was already criminal, they aggravated their offense by an open revolt, and the imperial title. Yet Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable enemies. Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised. The Sicilians were content with the sack of Thessalonchia. And the distance of Cyprus was no more propitious to the rebel than to the tyrant. His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people without arms. Isaac and Jealous, a descendant in the female line from the great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or superstition of the emperor. In a moment of despair, and Jealous defended his life and liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to the church of Saint Sophia. The sanctuary was insensibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd. Who, in his fate, prognosticated their own. But their lamentions were soon turned to curses, and their curses to threats. They dared to ask, Why do we fear? Why do we obey? We are many, and he is one. Our patience is the only bond of our slavery. With the dawn of day, the city burst into great sedition. The prisons were thrown open. The coldest and most servile were roused to the defence of their country. And Isaac, the second of the name, was raised from the sanctuary to the throne. Unconscious of his danger, the tyrant was absent, withdrawn from the toils of state, in the delicious aisles of the prepontis. He had contracted an indecent marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Louis VII of France, and relicit of the unfortunate Alexius. And his society, more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of a young wife and a favourite concubine. On the first alarm he rushed to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty. But he was astonished by the silence of the palace, the turmoil of the city, and the general desertion of mankind. And Johnicus proclaimed a free pardon to his subjects. They neither desired nor would grant forgiveness. He offered to resign the crown to his son Manuel, but the virtues of the son could not expiate his father's crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat, but the news of the revolution had flown along the coast. When fear had ceased, obedience was no more. The imperial galley was pursued and taken by an armed brigantine. And the tyrant was dragged to the presence of Isaac and jealous, loaded with fetters, and a long chain round his neck. His eloquence and the tears of his female companions pleaded in vain for his life. But, instead of the decencies of illegal execution, the new monarch abandoned the criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had deprived of a father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a hand were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss. And a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the bitterness of death. A stride on a camel, without any danger of a rescue, he was carried through the city, and the basis of the populace rejoiced to trample on the fallen majesty of their prince. After a thousand blows and outrages, and Johnicus was hung by the feet between two pillars, that supported the statues of a wolf and a sow. And every hand that could reach the public enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or brutal cruelty. Till, too friendly or furious Italians, plunged their swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In this long and painful agony, Lord have mercy upon me, and why will you bruise a broken reed, with the only words that escape from his mouth? Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the man, nor can we blame his pusillanimous resignation, since a Greek Christian was no longer master of his life. I have been tempted to expitiate on the extraordinary character and adventures of Andronicus, but I shall here terminate the series of the Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The branches that sprung from the Chmimnian trunk had insensibly withered. And the male line was continued, only in the posterity of Andronicus himself. Who, in the public confusion, usurped the sovereignty of Trezeband, so obscure in history, and so famous in romance, a private citizen of Philadelphia, Constantine Angelus, has emerged to wealth and honors, by his marriage with the daughter of the Emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus is conspicuous only by his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and succeeded the tyrant, but he was dethroned by his own vices and the ambition of his brother. And their discord introduced the Latins to the conquest of Constantinople. The first great period in the fall of the Eastern Empire, if we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be found that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty emperors, including in the Augustian line some female sovereigns, and deducting some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the capital, and some princes who did not live to possess their inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine Empire was most tranquil and prosperous, when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession. Five dynasties, the Heraclion, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and Comemnian families enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respected series of five, four, three, six, and four generations. Several princes numbered the years of their reign and those of their infancy. And Constantine VII and his two grandsons occupied the space of an entire century. But in the intervals of the Byzantine dynasties the succession is rapid and broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased by a more fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to the summit of royalty. The fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of conspiracy, or undermined by the silent arts of intrigue. The favourites of the soldiers or people, of the senate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternatively clothed with the purple. The means of their elevation were base, and their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same facilities, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager in a narrow span. To grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment it is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment. The grave is ever beside the throne. The success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize, and our immortal reason survives and distains the sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy, may abate the surprise of a philosopher. But while he condemns the vanity, he may search the motive of this universal desire to hold and obtain the scepter of dominion. To the greater part of the Byzantine series, we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Komnennes was beneficent and pure. The most illustrious of the princes, who proceed or follow that respectable name, have trod with some dexterity in vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish policy. In scrutinising the imperfect characters of Leo the Asaurian, Basil the First, and Alexia's Komnennes, of Theophilus, the Second Basil, and Manuel Komnennes, our esteem and censure are almost equally balanced, and the remainder of the imperial crowd could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity. Was personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I shall not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings, but I may surely observe that their condition of all others is the most pregnant with fear and the least susceptible of hope. For these opposite passions a larger scope was allowed in the revolutions of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph of Alexander or the fall of Darius, but the peculiar infelicity of the Byzantine princes exposed them to domestic perils without affording any lively promise of foreign conquest. From the pinnacles of greatness Andronicus was precipitated by a death more cruel and shameful than that of the mal-factor. But the most glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious without spirit, the nation turbulent without freedom, the barbarians of the east and west pressed on the monarchy, and the loss of the provinces was terminated by the final servitude of the capital. The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the Caesars to the last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen hundred years. And the term of dominion, unbroken by foreign conquests, surpasses the measure of the ancient monarchies, the Assyrians or Medes, the successes of Sirius or those of Alexander. End of chapter forty-eight part five. End of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, volume four by Edward Gibbon.