 Section 9 of the Byzantine Empire. 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 Mike Botez. The Byzantine Empire. The Rare Guard of European Civilization. By Edward Ford. The repulse of Islam. Conan of Germanicia. Leo III. The Isorian. He is one of those men of whom we know too little. His enemies have been his historians, and how much they have blackened his fame we can only guess. They have not merely misrepresented the great emperor's character and aims. They have concocted petty tales as to his origin and upbringing, which still further serve to obscure his personality. On the whole it is probable that Leo III was not an Isorian at all, but a North Syrian, perhaps of Armenian descent. His true name appears to have been Conan, and he would seem to have been born at Germanicia in Comagini. When, however, we first meet him, we find him living with his parents in Thrace. Mardades of Syria had been settled in Thrace by Justinian II. The inference is that Leo's father was one of them. We obtain our first notice of the future emperor in the year 705, when Justinian II, with his Bulgarians, was advancing on Constantinople. He was sent by his father with the presence of 500 sheep to the emperor. Clearly they were people of some state. Justinian perhaps discerned his ability. At any rate he gave him a commission as Spatarius, aid de camp. Leo's subsequent life and adventures have been briefly alluded to down to the day when he was crowned emperor. We know hardly anything of his private life. He was perhaps 35 years old in 717 and had a daughter of marriageable age. That is to say she would be about 15. He was yet to have a son and the wide gap between his two children makes it possible that he was a widower and contracted a second marriage about a time of his ascension. The name of the mother of his only son was Maria. She is said to have also been a native of Germanicia. If we were permitted to draw any inference from the fact that very early in his reign Leo had her crowned Augusta, he loved her and honored her. Never had the political sky appeared so black. Heraclius had at least one faithful province to which he could retire in case of disaster. But now Africa had been in Saracen hands for 18 years. Asia Minor so well guarded under the Heraclius had been repeatedly ravaged. Several of its greatest cities had fallen. The European provinces, if we may judge from their conduct soon after, were apathetic if not actively disaffected. Italy was merely an open sore. Leo's authority was probably confined to the shores of the Propontis. He was known to be an able man, but his Puritan religious tendencies were probably also known. And would hardly increase his popularity. And ability and energy had not saved Leontius and Tiberius III. Shattered as was the empire outwardly, its internal condition was yet worse. The never-ending wars of the 6th and 7th centuries had reduced it to condition almost of barbarism. The one good effect of the general uncertainty had been that Serphage had died out. There was a large and vigorous class of small-holding farmers, a good omen for the future. But in everything else the decline had been great. Of the demoralization of society. During the Heracliid period and the first anarchy, some instances have been given. Art was at a low ebb. Literature had nearly died out. For a century the empire produced not a single historian and only one bad poet. Ignorance and groveling superstition were rife. Yet the people who inhabited the yet broad provinces of the Shattered Empire, had in them the capacity of self-improvement. Though in Asia Minor the original population had been thinned by war and its concomitant evils, it had been swelled by great immigrations from Armenia, Persia and Syria. The result was that while the old population of the empire had fallen off perhaps 40 or 50% since 540, the loss had been largely made up. Further, the peasantry as a whole had better chances of naturally increasing in number than under the old caste-iron Roman administrative system. Could the Saracens be beaten off? There might yet be a chance for the stricken empire to recover itself. The emperor strained every nerve to strengthen the capital for the coming siege. What the result of his endeavors was is doubtful. There is reason to believe that in more than one respect they had comparatively small effect. It must be remembered that the normal civil population of Constantinople was about half a million or more, swelled in the present instance by troops and probably refugees. The practical difficulties of keeping it adequately provisioned must have been enormous. Anastasius II had issued an order that every householder was to lay in two-year supply of breadstuffs. For many, this must have been an absolute impossibility. Probably even those who could afford the large outlay would have found themselves unable to comply with the order, simply because, though they might be willing enough to buy, the necessary quantity of corn would not be forthcoming. Orders of this kind are likely to remain dead letters. It is practically certain that Leo's nightmare was a complete blockade of his capital. As to the strength of the garrison, we know little. It was sufficient for its purpose, but probably not much more than sufficient. Leo ventured as far as we know, only one sortie in force, and this was very late in the siege, when presumably a sufficient proportion of the citizens had been trained to relieve the regular troops and guarding the walls. The main strength of the garrison at the outset probably consisted of Leo's own Anatoliki, but it included the whole or the greater part of the Imperial Navy, a factor of supreme importance. It is not too much to say that everything depended upon it, yet it was too weak to face the great Arab Armada in the open. The Saracens had planned a double advance by land and sea. The land colon concentrated at Tarsus under Maslama. It consisted of about 80,000 cavalry on its arrival at Constantinople. The fleet was led by Suleiman, the Grand Vizier. It counted 1,800 vessels of all descriptions and had on board a force of 80,000, certainly infantry. Probably the number of war vessels was not above 400, but as they each carried 100 soldiers, they were evidently of considerable size. Arab chroniclers, who had every reason to wish to minimize the greatness of the host, and by consequence the magnitude of the disaster, estimate the total fighting force engaged in the siege at 180,000, and in all probability this was merely the land army. The number of marines, seamen, rowers, and camp followers must have been very large. We must never forget that this was the supreme effort of a mighty empire, which for a brief period was the most fiercely vigorous that the world has ever seen. Maslama marched from Tarsus on the Hellespont, while the fleet made its way slowly around Asia Minor into the Aegean. Two more fleets, counting 800 ships, were slowly preparing for a sea in the ports of Africa and Egypt, and a third army was mastering at Tarsus, which the Caliph Suleiman proposed to lead himself to the scene of action. The advance was slow. Maslama did not reach the neighborhood of the Hellespont until July, a circumstance which leads to the inference that his march was impeded by immense baggage and supply trains. He turned aside to besiege Pergamus, a reasonable measure of precaution, since the fortress laid dangerously near his left flank, but involving further waste of time. Some of the Pergamanian garrison, fearing that the place would fall, resorted to magical rites. They murdered a pregnant girl, cut the body and that of the unborn babed pieces, and boiled them in a cauldron. The perpetrators of this frightful piece of butchery then marched past and each dipped his right hand into the hideous mess in the hope that thereby his strength might be redoubled. The affair is even more horrible than the slaughter of the last Heracliad, and after it we can have no sympathy for the garrison, though the writer does not feel himself obliged to be indignant because they repaired their ramparts with fragments of the great altar of Athene. In terrible emergencies the refinements of civilization must go to the wall. Having taken Pergamus, Maslama advanced to the Hellespond, where he was met by the fleet which conveyed his horsemen across the Strait and disembarked its own troops. The army then marched for Constantinople, capturing or occupying the places on the road. On August 15, 717, it was before the Land Ward walls. Maslama spread his huge force across the peninsula, probably also occupying Perra across the Golden Horn. The Saracens entrenched themselves behind huge sanghars of piled up stones. A part of the army was detached into threes to observe Adrienople, where there are indications that a Roman force of some size was stationed. Leo was also in communication with King Terbell, to whom he no doubt pointed out that a Mohammedan invasion was as dangerous to him as to the Empire. On September 1, after a delay of 18 days, probably consumed in landing and forwarding troops and stores, the Saracen fleet arrived. For two days, it lay off the proponent in shore near the Golden Gate. Then, on the third, the huge unwieldy mass got underway to occupy the Strait above the Golden Horn. This movement could not be allowed to be carried out unopposed. The Imperial Navy lay in the Golden Horn, the mouth of which was protected by a boom, consisting of a chain carried on logs and made safe at each end in strong, well garrisoned towers. The current of Seraglio Point is violent, and the heavy Saracen vessels made slow progress and began to fall into confusion. A gap was made in the boom, probably by towing its end aside, and the Roman ships, the Emperor, leading the way, came out with oar and tide, and were among the Saracen armada before it could form a line of battle. Taken thus by surprise, the Arabs could do little. The terror of the Greek fire cleared away for the Christian ships. Twenty vessels were destroyed, and a number taken and towed back into the harbor of Constantinople. When the main body of the Arab fleet began to work its way up to the rescue, the far inferior Imperial squadron had to withdraw, but its confidence had risen enormously. The Emperor ordered the boom to be towed completely aside, and for the rest of the day and all night, the Roman fleet lay in line of battle across the harbor's mouth, defying the enemy to come on. A battle in the narrow waters was the one thing Leo most earnestly desired, but the maritime fire had badly demoralized the Saracen crews. Suleiman refused to repeat the blunder of Xerxes and fell back down the strait. The all-important waterway to the north was left open, and though the Emperor had been disappointed in his hope of entirely defeating the Saracen fleet, he had struck a heavy blow at its morale, and strategically obtained the advantage. The Saracen commanders resolved to fall back upon the slower but safer method of blockade. They evidently knew more than we do of the state of the city's supplies. Fortune was against them. Suleiman died on October the 8th, perhaps partly from exposure. Next the winter set in with terrible severity. Snow fell early and heavily, and the men began to die fast from the effects of the unaccustomed cold. We do not know that they suffered from hunger. They would hardly have come with only a few weeks' supplies. The cold is quite sufficient to account for their wasting away. Meanwhile, in the city, whatever may have been the Emperor's anxieties, the garrison was fairly well fed, well covered, and continued to improve in morale. For many weeks, for a hundred days, says Theophanes and Nicephorus, the snow-covered country, and the Mohammedans could hardly have maintained the siege in the spring of 718, but for their heavy reinforcement. The Caliph ate himself to death at Damascus during the winter, but the army at Tarsus went on under the Emir Merdasan. The Egyptian squadron reached the scene of action in the spring, 400 strong, under the Emir Sofyan. It succeeded in passing Constantinople, perhaps in the night, and took station at Kalos Agros, Buyuk Dere, or Terapia, above the city, thus blocking the Bosphorus. Soon after, the African fleet of 360 ships under Yazid also moved and moored along the Bithynian shore of the Strait. Finally, Merdasan's army occupied the heights of Calcedon. With Maslamas resupplied and reinforced army on the land side, the Great Capital was completely beleaguered. The Egyptian and African ships were protected by the fierce current against fireship attack. The position was undoubtedly critical. The newly arrived squadrons, however, contained many Christians who had little heart in their work. Some of them succeeded in escaping to Constantinople in boats and furnished the Emperor with accurate information upon the position of the Saracens. Leo wasted no time. Once more, the boomers opened and the fleet put out on its momentous errand. Guided by the deserters, it came up on its opponents unprepared and at anchor. The engagement that followed was a rout rather than a battle, another Egos Potami. The Christians deserted their masters wholesale and ranged themselves on the side of the oncoming Romans. The Muslims, demoralized by the suddenness of the attack, could do little. Into the helpless mass of vessels crushed the Roman drummers, running, boarding, using their fire tubes with desperate energy. Many ships were burned, many boarded and taken, many forced ashore. For all practical purposes, the African and Egyptian fleet was destroyed. All the troops who could be spared from the garrison were embarked on the victorious ships, ferried across the Bosphorus and landed on the Asiatic shore and by a well-planned attack, the army of Merda-san was beaten, cut up and driven back into Asia Minor. Leo's envoys had at last convinced Caesar King Terbell that his interests were those of the Empire and he was on his way to assist in the defense of Constantinople. The summer was now well advanced and the army of Maslama was dying fast from disease and famine. Yet it still showed a bold front behind its sanghars and Leo had not troops enough to attack it in its entrenchments. The fleet, though demoralized, was still large in numbers and Maslama would not abandon the siege. Terbell forced his hand, uniting probably with the Roman force at Adornople. He encountered Maslama's covering army near that city and routed it with a loss of 22,000 men. The survivors fell back on the camp before Constantinople and their arrival completed the demoralization of the perishing Saracens. Without delay, the remains of the army were hurried on board the fleet, taken across the Propontis and landed near Saisicus. The fleet cleared the Hellespont safely, but once out in the Aegean it was shattered and dispersed by a storm. The Roman fleet, which was following from Constantinople, captured or destroyed many of the scattered ships. Others were destroyed by the Greeks of the islands. Of the 1,800 Syrian ships, it is said that only five returned. At any rate, the losses were terrible. Not for 30 years did the Caliphate again send a large fleet to sea, while the unhappy land army, stricken with plague and famine, was further harassed and reduced as it struggled on across Asia Minor, so that Maslama eventually reached Tarsus with only 30,000 exhausted men out of a host which even the Muslim chroniclers rate at 180,000. When we consider the army of Merdasan, the swarms of camp followers and the crews of the three fleets, it is probable that the entire loss of life was even greater than is indicated by these figures. Judging from such records as we have, the affair was a catastrophe of the magnitude of destruction of Napoleon's army in Russia in 1812. There were certain factors in the favor of the Eastern Romans. Their tactical position was very strong. Their inferiority of force was offset to some extent by superior training. Their fleet was good and armed with some sort of rocket tubes, very efficacious against Arab ships. On the other hand, the land forces were so inferior in numbers that up to the end Leo could not attack the Arabs in their camp. The strategic position had its weak points, the chief one being the line of supply through the Bosphorus. The fleet won most of the credit for the line of defense. It invariably fought with admirable readiness and discipline and was handled in the most masterly manner. It checked the establishment of the naval blockade at the outset and broke it when it was temporarily formed in 718. It enabled the army in Constantinople to operate at will on either shore of the Bosphorus and it followed up the retreating Saracens and completed the ruin of the great armament. The one weak point in the conduct of the defense may appear to be the Emperor's refusal to take the offensive at the end of the siege. But we must remember that we know very little of the existing circumstances. With this single doubtful exception Leo seems to have made no mistake. He had won the greatest success in Roman history, August or September 718. As he saw the relics of the mighty host of his enemies staggering away in rout and misery from the virgin walls of his capital, Leo's heart was gladdened also by the thought that he was no longer sonless. About the end of the siege his wife Maria had borne him the boy who was to be Constantin VI and to carry on his father's work. The mother was crowned Augusta on Christmas Day 718 in the grand hall of Augusteus and in ancient fashion she came out among the people and flung handfuls of gold to them. Next year, on March 25th, the child was crowned as his father's colleague. Leo's authority was not yet by any means fully established. In 719 the ex-Emperor Anastasius II rose against him. The European provinces were in his favor. He was supported by several great officials and persuaded King Terbell to assist him. The Bulgarians began to advance on Constantinople from the north, but Leo's personal influence quelled the revolt almost with a blow. The Bulgarian king probably saw that there was no popular movement in favor of the deposed emperor. He handed over Anastasius and his chief supporters to Leo and returned to Bulgaria to die in the following year. Leo executed Anastasius and had no more to fear from the north. In 720 a revolt in Sicily was suppressed by the general Paul and Leo was able to press forward his reforms. As to the internal conditions of the empire, enough has been said to make it clear that, though not without certain cheering features, it was very bad. Externally the last great mainland province in the west had gone. In the Balkans the one solid block of territory held was Thrace. Elsewhere only the coast districts were regularly administered. The interior regions being held by Slavonic settlers who required constant punitive expeditions to keep them in subjection. Asia Minor by the close of Leo's reign was again thoroughly reorganized and solidly occupied up to the line of the Taurus and Cyprus was also for the present back in Roman hands. Leo's purpose was steadily set to gather together the strength of the empire between Hamas and Taurus. He was still in the vigor of life and flushed with splendid victory, but without hesitation he resigned all hope of recovering for the present anything that has been lost by his predecessors. He took the field only twice again, leaving the work of repelling Saracen raids to his generals and concentrated all his attention on the gigantic and as it must have seemed at first almost hopeless task of revival. He seems to have deliberately let Italy go. He had apparently come to the conclusion that it was a mere incubus. There can be no doubt that he was right, but it required a man strong among the strongest to declare so much. Under a democratic government, the deliberate abandonment of a useless possession would be an impossibility. Leo made only one digression from this policy during his reign and his failure probably confirmed him in his original resolution. The other object of his foreign policy was, of course, the defense of his dominions against the Arabs in which he was successful. Leo's internal reforms are to be divided into civil, military and religious. They may be summed up in general by saying that he reorganized the civil and defensive services, reformed police control, reestablished the rule of law and order, reformed the judicial system, reorganized the finances, encouraged commerce and industry and made a great effort to combat the prevailing barbaric ignorance and superstition by his so-called iconoclastic policy. The details of these reforms are to be gathered from Leo's famous legal manual, the Ecloga, which, though not published until the end of his reign, expresses well the work of his life. It is to be noted that the spirit of the work is not that of the old Roman, non-religious, but decidedly Christian. The barbarism of the times is more or less expressed in the punishments for certain offenses. Death is comparatively rare, but mutilation common of inflection. In private law, we note that a concubine has all the legal rights of a wife and that the father no longer has unlimited powers over his family, but shares them with his wife. The agricultural code shows that surfage had disappeared and that the peasants were all free, divided between freeholders, tenants and communal holders. The latter were probably chiefly slavs, the communal system being distinctly Slavonic. The maritime code informs us that commerce was largely carried on by joint stock companies. In finance, Leo enforced the principle of solidarity. Each agricultural community was responsible collectively and individually for the amount of its taxes and, no doubt, so long as the obligation was not crushing, the system worked well. Each member had an interest in seeing that land was not allowed to fall out of cultivation through its holder's laziness. The great feature of the criminal code is its democratic tendency. There is no attempt, as in the Code of Justinian, to fix different punishments for rich and poor. All classes alike must pay the same penalty for their misdeeds, a clear advance in the interests of justice. The purity of the judicial administration was greatly enhanced by the establishing of fixed salaries for the officers of the law, who hitherto had depended on presence and fees. Of the military code, there is little to say. The soldier's dignity is insisted upon. Men convicted of sexual immorality were carnivans, but such are to be cashiered. Soldiers must not engage in any trade. The cross and the stake await treasonous deserters. Something has to be said of the gross ignorance and superstition which reigned in the empire, which perhaps found its worst expression in the dreadful Pergamanian incident, but was rife among all classes, including even men like the reigning patriarch Germanus, whose reputation for purity and goodness was great. While the tendency existed everywhere and was especially strong in the European provinces, there was a decided movement in progress against it, especially among the better educated and informed officials and citizens, and very strong in the army, which was in constant contact with the faith of which the best feature was its emphatic denunciation of idolatry in any shape or form. The rational arguments against the adoration of mere pictured or sculptured images are strong, and there is no reason for believing that Leo was incapable of appreciating their force. The fact that he did not make any decided move for eight years shows that he had carefully considered the question. Leo's iconoclastic edict was issued in 726. It forbade image worship as superstitious and irreverent, and ordered the whitewashing of the pictured semblances of saints on the church walls as well as removal of statues. Rioting immediately broke out. When the palace officials began to remove the great crucifix over the main gate, a mob fell upon them and cajoled them to death. The troops and police cleared the streets and killed a number of the rioters. Having put down disorder, the emperor set up a cross in place of the crucifix with an inscription explaining the reason of the change, and everywhere pictures and statues were replaced by the symbol of the Christian faith. Leo did his best to make it plain that his objection was to anthropomorphic representations of the savior and the absurd superstitions which had collected about the use of images and pictures. This moderation, however, was far from contending the clergy who for the most part were as ignorantly superstitious as their folks. Asia Minor as a whole stood by the emperor. The Armenian, Syrian and Isorian mountaineers had no love for elaborate symbolism and had felt to the force of the taunts of the Muhammedans. In Europe, the state of affairs was different. In Italy, the Pope, Gregory II led the opposition. The Italian cities would have set up a rival emperor, but the Pope was afraid of the great Lombard king, Leutprand, who was formidable and near at hand, and gave no approval to the extreme step. As it was, the mischief was done. Leutprand overrun the Exarchate and captured all its towns with the exception of Ravina, which after temporarily failing into his hands was retaken by the Exarch, Utikius, in 729. Nearer home matters were still more threatening. In 727, the theme of Hellas revolted and proclaimed a certain cosmos emperor. It was probably supported by other European districts. The Greeks were all for image worship, and it is possible that they were restive under Leo's new fiscal and administrative measures. Greece was evidently already recovering from the effects of the Slavonic immigrations, for the revolting province raised a large army and fleet, which under a general named Agallianos, and accompanied by its emperor boldly set forth to attack Leo in his capital. Leo moved out to meet the rebels and completely defeated them. Agallianos killed himself. Cosmos was taken and beheaded, but the emperor showed himself very clement towards the prisoners and the rebel province. He was never afraid to strike hard, but no stain of unnecessary cruelty disfigures his character. Leo's domestic troubles encouraged the Caliph Hisham to recommend raids on the empire, and in 726 a small Saracen army invaded Cappadocia. In 727, while Leo was busy with the Greek revolt, two great armies entered Asia Minor under Maslama. Caesarea in Cappadocia was taken, while a force pushed forward to Nicaea, but was repulsed. In 729, Leo held a Selentium at Constantinople, which condemned iconodally, and finding that the ancient patriarch Germanus would not work with him, the emperor deposed him. Next year Leo removed Illyria, Calabria and Sicily from the jurisdiction of the Pope, and united them to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 732 he sent an expedition against Italy, but it suffered much damage from storms, and affected nothing, and thenceforth he seems to have definitely resolved to let the valueless central Italian districts go. Leo's last eight years were for the most part a period of progress, although the border provinces were harassed by sporadic Saracen raids. The work of reorganization was steadily continued. It was probably in these years that the ecloga was compiled, though it was not published until 740. In spite of much secret opposition, especially from the clergy, the iconoclastic edict was generally enforced. One of the emperor's measures was the establishment of a register of births, and we get some insight into the ignorance and impracticability of the clergy when we hear that they violently opposed this sensible innovation. Towards the end Leo was assisted by his son Constantin, already a strong and vigorous young man in full sympathy with his father, who carefully trained him to follow in his footsteps. In 739 there was a more serious Saracen invasion, in which 90,000 men took part. So serious did it appear that Leo took the field in person, and young Constantin accompanied him to see the practical application of the military wisdom which he had learned from his father. We are told that 70,000 Saracens remained in comparative inactivity near Taurus, while only 20,000 horsemen under the famous Abdullah Sid el Batal advanced through the Anatolic theme. I am much inclined to doubt whether a mere plundering force would have brought Leo out in person, and it is quite possible that the greater part of the Saracen invading army composed the force which pushed past Amorium to a cronon where Leo and Constantin met and completely defeated it, with the loss of Sid el Batal and all its principal leaders. Leo returned to Constantinople in triumph to resume once more his great task. In 740 the Ekloga was published and with it Leo put the capstone up on his work. He had done so much that all that remained for his vigorous successor was to follow steadily in his footsteps. The rebuilding of the walls of Constantinople which had been shattered by an earthquake in 739 and the promulgation of the Ekloga were his last important acts. He died on June 18, 740 having raised the shattered heritage of the Caesars from the deepest depths of degradation and set it once more on the high road to recovered power and prosperity. Leo's best monument is his work. We know little of his personality and that comes from his bitter enemies, but we need the words of neither friend nor foe. The facts as we know them are convincing. The 8th century was an age of great men. It was the era of Charles Martel, Pepin and Charles the Great in France, of Ein and Ofa in England, of Lloyd Front in Italy, of the great Umayyad Abdrahman of Cordova, of the Abbasids Mansur and Harun, as well as of the great iconoclast's great son, but Leo need fear no comparison with any of them. There was no statesman among them to compare with him except perhaps Charles the Great, certainly no such legislator and administrator. As a soldier he was at least the equal of the Charles and of his own warlike son. Morally he stands on a level with the best men of any age. He came to an empire in ruins, cowering before the impeding onslaught of its most terrible foes. He opened his reign with the most splendid victory in history, saving his realm and religion from destruction. Once more, staving off from Europe, an attack that could not have been resisted. Out of the wild chaos about him, he built up a fresh and in many respects, an entirely new structure of empire. Throwing into the tremendous task of fierce and enduring energy, a stern and pure religious enthusiasm. Where he inherited ruin and misery, he left strength, order, peace and reviving prosperity. Almost the last act of his life was to lead his armies once more to victory. He went down to the grave in the fullness of years and glory, and left the completion of his life work to a son after his own heart and of his own mind, almost as brave and able as himself. End of Section 9. Recording by Mike Botez. Section 10 of the Byzantine Empire. 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 Mike Botez. The Byzantine Empire. The rearguard of European civilization. By Edward Ford. Section 10. The Iconoclasts. Leo's natural successor was his only son, Constantine VI. But he was not to obtain the supreme power unopposed. Arta Vazdos, general of the Armenian theme under Anastasius II, had supported Leo III in 717. Leo had given him to wife his only daughter, Anna, and had created him Curopalates and Count of the Obsequians. He possibly considered himself as husband of the great emperor's elder child, more entitled to the throne than Constantine. His elder son, Nysiphorus, was general of Thrace. The younger Nikitas commanded their maniacs. He secured also the support of Theophilus, prefect of the capital. Whether he really had any strong belief in Iconoduli is to be doubted, but he expressed himself in sympathy with the opponents of Leo's policy and the revolt against Constantine may be termed an Iconodulic one. Constantine had determined to make an expedition against the Saracens in 741. He moved to the plain of Crassos with his guards and sent orders to Arta Vazdos to join him with the Obsequians. Arta Vazdos killed Bezer, the patrician who brought the order, assumed the diadem and made a dash at his brother-in-law's camp. Constantine only saved himself by a headlong flight to Amorium. There he was safe. The garrison swore to defend him to the death. Arta Vazdos returned to Constantinople and was proclaimed emperor amidst the rejoicings of the Iconodules, but the Anatoliki and Thrace shans would have known of him and marched to the rescue of Constantine in Amorium. Constantine, with his army in a high state of enthusiasm, advanced to Cresopolis, but he found Arta Vazdos too strong to be besieged without a fleet, or some appearance of disaffection in the capital of which there was at present none. He therefore withdrew to Winter at Amorium and to call up the Kyberaiot fleet and army to his assistance. In the spring of 742, Arta Vazdos advanced to Cresium, while Nikitas marched westward with a second-large army, composed partly of the fine Armenian troops, partly of Levis and mercenaries from Iberia and Armenia. Constantine at Amorium was thus exposed to a convergent attack by vastly superior numbers, but he showed that he possessed all his father's military ability. Arta Vazdos hoped to force Constantine to dislocate his army and fight both himself and his son with inferior numbers. Instead of doing so, however, Constantine marched westward with his whole force and, coming up with Arta Vazdos near Sardis, completely defeated him and drove him back on Saizikus and out of Asia. He then faced round on Nikitas, who was approaching from the northeast and defeated him at Modrinne in Bukallarion after a struggle far harder than the Battle of Sardis, for the Armenian troops fought magnificently. Constantine now crossed into Europe and besieged Constantinople, bringing up the Kibirajot fleet to complete the blockade. The citizens deserted to him in crowds as food began to run short. By the admission of his hostile historians, his conduct was humane and forbearing in the extreme. Meanwhile, Nikitas had rallied his beaten army, gathered in reinforcements and affected a junction with some troops who had escaped the route of Sardis. He advanced to relive Constantinople, but near Nikomidia he was met by the indefatigable Constantine, completely defeated and taken prisoner together with the iconogial Archbishop of Gangra, who was immediately executed. Nikitas was exhibited in chains before the walls of the capital and Artavas dos knew that the game was lost. He fled from the city to a fort in Obsikion, where he was captured with his elder son and some of his chief adherents. Constantin entered his capital victorious, after having lost it for two years. He spared the lives of Artavas dos and his sons, but blinded and imprisoned them. The act seems barbarous, but it was perhaps the only alternative to putting them to death, and they have been guilty of treason in an aggravated form. Once firmly seated on the throne, Constantin could take up his father's half-finished work. He had been carefully trained in Leo's methods, and was his not unworthy son and successor, hard-working, hard-fighting, persevering, able and brave, and not destitute of originality in his designs if we may be permitted to judge from the fact that he endeavored to enter into closer relations with the Frankish rulers of the West. Morally, he was certainly the inferior of his father, whose purity even his bitter foes have not impugned. Constantin was distinctly a man of pleasure, somewhat coarse-fibred, occasionally given, as it would seem, to low debauchery, though we need not believe that he was addicted to vice in especially bad forms. His monastic revelers were not men of nice or elevated minds. Such would not have fastened the unsavory epithet of Copronimos on him. He was also, when exasperated by opposition, capable of cruelty, though he was equally distinguished on occasion for humanity. On the whole, he gives the impression of being more swayed by passion than his father. His worst political fault was that he could not understand or practice a policy of conciliation, and his violent measures against his opponents did the cause of rational progress far more harm than good. As Emperor, he had to maintain the Asiatic border to secure that of Europe and to carry on the work of internal development, the last involving a continual struggle against iconodually. He thus had to face a threefold contest, and that he emerged from it on the whole victorious, says much for his untiring energy. For eleven or twelve years after his victory over Artavas dos, he steadily pursued the policy of his father in religious matters, but probably with a harder hand, and growing more and more exasperated as he found his edicts secretly evaded, and everywhere steadily and fanatically opposed by the monks. The most noteworthy incident of these years was, however, the appearance of the bubonic plague in the Empire. It did not have the same terrible effects as in the reign of Justinian. The population was better able to recuperate. But, nonetheless, it caused great harm. At Constantinople, the loss of life was enormous. The Emperor filled the gaps in the population of the capital by introducing settlers from Helas and the islands. The effect was that it became more Greek than it had ever been, while on the other hand the districts from which the immigrants had come were colonized by Slavs, and for the present lost their Hellenic nationality. Externally, Constantin's energies were during this period chiefly directed to the east. The Umead line of Caliphs was hastening to its end. Civil war distracted the Saracens, and Constantin took advantage of their dissensions to take the offensive. In 745, he overrun Comagini, captured Germanicia and Dolikay, and transported the bulk of their Christian inhabitants into the Empire. The Caliph Mervan II retaliated by sending an armament of a thousand vessels against Cyprus, but it was caught by the Kibirajot fleet in the harbor of Keramea and almost annihilated AD 746. The plague prevented further efforts for some years, and in 750, a disaster was experienced in the west by the final loss of Ravina, which was taken by King Aistulf of the Lombards. In the same year, the Great House of the Umead Caliphs came to an end in a deluge of blood, and in 751, Constantin again crossed the Taurus, captured Militini on the Euphrates, ravaged the border provinces, and took Theodosiopolis. He does not appear to have had any illusions as to the possibility of holding these conquests. He took back with his colons as many as possible of the Christian inhabitants, and distributed them as settlers in his provinces, but he left garrisons in the captured towns. Meanwhile, the opposition of the monks to his iconoclastic religious policy had impelled him to take a decisive step. He summoned in 753 a general council of the church. As a fact, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch declined to attend, and the Pope of Rome not only refused, but anathematized the assembly. But 338 bishops, assembled under the presidency of Constantin, patriarch of Constantinople, and gave decisions entirely in favor of iconoclassom defining representations of the Saviour as blasphemous pitfalls, because they endeavored to express his human and divine natures in the mere likeness of a man, and so obscured his divinity in his humanity. It declared the worship of images blameworthy, because all adoration except that paid to the Godhead savored of heathen dom and anthropology. It can hardly be doubted that in the main these decisions were at least rational, but the council put itself in the wrong by proscribing religious memetic art entirely, and by anathematizing the patriarch Germanus, the famous John of Damascus, who upheld iconodually on the ground that pictures and images inculcated reverential ideas and George of Cyprus, the three most distinguished of the opponents of iconoclassom. Having obtained the support of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Constantin began a regular persecution of his opponents. He was cherry of inflicting the death penalty, but there was a great deal of torture and imprisonment or exile. In 766 the patriarch, Constantin, was found to be concerned in a conspiracy against the emperor. He was executed under every circumstance of cruelty and ignominy. Several prominent iconodules had already suffered death, and now Constantin gave full way to his feelings of bitterness and appointed the sternest and most uncompromising iconoclasts to command in all the themes. They are said to have carried out their orders with extreme brutality, though it would appear that it was still almost entirely directed against the monastic order. The most prominent of them was Michael Lacanodracon, general of the Thracian theme, who is said, amongst other things, to have burnt or half-burned many monks alive. In 770 he assembled all the monks and nuns of his theme and gave them the alternative of breach of their vows or immediate exile to Cyprus. Many gave way, but more stood firm, and were forthwith deported. Lacanodracon then plundered the religious houses of their valuables, realizing thereby a large sum, destroyed pictures and relics, pulled down some of the buildings, and converted others to secular uses. Constantin's comment on these violent proceedings was that at last he had found a man after his own heart. On the whole, we can understand the indignation of the monkish analysts. Meanwhile, Constantin was busy in Europe. He was determined to reduce the European lands of the Empire to the same state of order as those in Asia Minor. The main obstacle was the presence of the Bulgarian Kingdom. For many years it had been on friendly terms with the Empire, but the predatory instincts of the people continually gave rise to petty warfare, and when Constantin began to establish a strong military frontier along the Balkans, King Kormisos declared war. The Bulgarians poured through the Balkan passes into Thrace, and were assisted openly or secretly by the Slavs, but they were eventually beaten and forced back. Constantin fortified the passes, and having thus cut off the Bulgarians from communication with the Slavs, marched through the settlements of the latter in 758, and brought them once more under control. Next year he turned against Bulgaria, but his first efforts were unsuccessful. He suffered a severe defeat between Mesembria and Varna, while in Asia the Saracens under the energetic Caliph Mansur, who had succeeded Abdelac the Bloody in 754, recovered Germanicia and Melitani and defeated the Armenians on the Melas. The renewed activity of the Caliphate probably called the Emperor to the East, but in 762 he again took to the field and inflicted a great defeat on the Bulgarians and Slavs at Ankyalus. He then, in the following year, turned against the Slavs south of Hemus, again reduced them to subjection, and cleared the frontier districts of the brigands, Skamars, who had long infested them. Great severity was exercised towards the prisoners. One notorious chief, a renegade from Christianity, was dissected alive. The punishment was not, perhaps, altogether undeserved, but this problematical circumstance cannot be allowed to absolve the Emperor from the charge of barbarous cruelty. Meanwhile, Bulgaria was destructed by civil war and reduced to such a wretched condition that 208,000 Slavs migrated in a body to place themselves under the protection of the Empire. They were settled on the Arthanas in Bithynia. In 764, Konstantin, taken advantage of the dissensions in Bulgaria, invaded the country, killed King Toktu and wasted the land without mercy, right down to the Danube. He intended to complete the conquest in the next year, but his huge flotilla of 2,600 boats were wrecked near Ankyalus, and he then abandoned his design and turned his attention to rescuing the survivors of the disaster, and securing Christian burial for the dead, thereby greatly increasing his popularity, even with icono-jewelig population of his capital. For some years thereafter, the Emperor was busy with his last deadlift attempt to crush icono-jewelism and monasticism. There was a good deal of guerrilla fighting in the Balkans, but the Bulgarians made no impression on Konstantin's strong military frontier. In Asia he was less successful. In 771, a Saracen army and fleet besieged CK in Isoria, and the Anatolik, Arminiak, Bukelarian, and Kibirayot themes, marching to its relief, were severely defeated. The Saracens, however, made no use of their victory and withdrew homeward. Next year a Saracen force made a successful incursion, but on its return was defeated near Mobsuestia with a loss it is said of 10,000 men. In 773 a peace was concluded with Telerig, the new king of Bulgaria. The treaty was a mere blind on the part of the latter to cover an invasion of the Empire as soon as the large army, which Konstantin had under arms, had been disbanded. The treacherous design became known to the Emperor, and when the Bulgarians entered Macedonia they were suddenly surprised by Konstantin at the head of 80,000 men and totally routed. He now determined to make an end to the troublesome half-barbarian state once and for all, but fortune was against him. The march of the Great Expedition, which he had planned, was stopped in 774 by the shattering of the fleet which formed part of it in a storm, and in September 775 he was taken ill on his northward march and died on board ship just outside Konstantinople. He was only 57, but his strenuous life had no doubt worn him out. He had carried steadily forward the work which his father had so well begun. The Empire was well organized, strong to defend itself, and increasing in wealth and prosperity. The defensive services were strong, well organized, well trained, and composed in larger measure of native troops than had ever been the case before. The thematic system had been completed, and in Asia alone could put 80,000 men into the field. Literature and art were reviving. Best of all, the whole moral tone of society was greatly improved. To attribute all this to the great iconoclast emperors is, of course, absurd, but they had a very large share in this extraordinary revival of an apparently decrepit and half-barbarized state. If they did no more than direct the tendencies of the age, they deserved well of their subjects. Konstantin was succeeded by his son Leo, commonly known as the Khazar. His mother, the first of his father's three wives, having been a princess of that nation. He had acted as his father's colleague for several years and inherited the vigour which was the birthright of his line. But his health was feeble. He was, in fact, consumptive. He was married to a beautiful Greek from Athens named Irene, destined to a terrible celebrity in history and to a very undeserved sanctity in the church. By her he had the son, named Konstantin, born in 771. The emperor's feeble health made the question of succession a momentous one. By his other wives, Konstantin IV, had had several children, including five sons, and Nysiphorus and Christophorus, the two eldest of these, who each bore the title of Caesar, conceived themselves entitled to succeed their half-brother. Leo, therefore, crowned the little Konstantin VII with great solemnity and obliged his five uncles to swear allegiance to him. Internally, Leo IV pursued the policy of his father, but with less harshness he was certainly alive to the possible evil effects of high-handed severity. He stopped the persecution of the monks, though in 777 there was again an increase in the harshness of government measure against them. Leo's severities were rather political than religious in their tendency. He had found that his discontented half-brothers were in league with the icono-jewel malcontents in a conspiracy to place Nysiphorus and Christophorus on the throne. The leading plotters were scourged and banished, but the Caesars were pardoned by their injured half-brother. In 778 Leo collected all the Asiatic themes except the Kyberaiots at the frontier and ordered them into Syria. They were at least 80,000 strong, so great had been the results of the military reforms of Leo III and Konstantin VI. The lack of an imperial commander-in-chief rendered the campaign somewhat ineffective, but Comagini was wasted. A great Saracen army defeated it before Germanicia and a mass of Syrian Christians conducted into the empire and settled in Thrace. The Caliph El-Mahdi replied next year by an invasion of Asia Minor. The Saracen army advanced to Dorileum, but failed to take it and retreated in disorder, suffering heavily from the attacks of the imperial troops. In 780, more vigorous measures were adopted. El-Mahdi's famous son Harun was sent to take command and a great eruption organized. Harun took the frontier fort of Semalus, but another division was defeated by Michael Lacanodrakon and the expedition had no result. In the midst of these events, Leo IV died on September 8, leaving his throne to the young Konstantin VII, now 10 years of age, for whom Irene was to act as regent. Leo was only in his 32nd year and his premature death, though not unexpected, was a grave misfortune for the empire. Irene, an Athenian and a Greek, was naturally enough an icono-jewel, though she had more or less concealed the fact from her husband and her terrible father-in-law. She was determined to reverse the policy of the iconoclasts, and began by putting a stop to all anti-icono-jewel measures of repression. Her position as regent was by no means assured. Nicephorus and Christophorus repaid their half-brother's clemency by resuming their plots as soon as the breath was out of his body, and enlisted in their cause Elpidius, general of Sicily, and several other officers and ministers. But the plot was soon discovered, and crushed by Irene, and the Caesar's and their three brothers compelled to take holy orders. The other conspirators were, for the most part, scourged and tortured. Elpidius fled into the Caliphate, AD 781. Meanwhile, the Saracens, under a general named Abd El-Cabir, invaded Asia Minor. Irene acted with vigor on this occasion. She dared not or would not trust any of the thematic generals, who were all iconoclasts. But the chief command was given to Johannes the Saciliarius. The whole army of Asia, 80,000 strong, was concentrated on the frontier in July, and the Saracens totally routed at Melon. Next year came a turn of fortune. Harun again took the chief command. This time the Saracens crossed the frontier before the themes could concentrate. One division, under Rabia ibn Yunz, besieged Nakolia without success. A second, under Yahya the Burmeseid, was beaten by stout old Michael Lacanodracon. But Harun, with 95,000 men, was able to advance to Chrysopolis, and for the last time a Saracen army saw the city of the Caesars. Tatsatis, the general of the Bucularians, deserted to Harun. The Slavs in Europe broke out into renewed revolt, and Irene was cowed. She bought a truce for three years, at the rate of 70,000 dinars a year. Having, in this disgraceful fashion, rid herself of Harun, Irene set herself to deal with the Slavs, and in 783 sent Stavracios, a eunuch of her household, with a large army against them. The campaign was entirely successful. The Slavs in Macedonia, Thessaly and Helas were brought into complete subjection to the central government. The work was completed in the following year, when Irene and her son made a progress through the European provinces, and re-established and re-peopled a number of decayed Greek towns. It was natural that the Athenian Empress should take great interest in her own countrymen, and this pacification and reorganization of Macedonia and Greece was the most useful work of her life. Irene endeavored to follow in Constantine VI footsteps with regard to the West. She entered into friendly relations with Charles the Great, and a treaty was concluded by which the young Constantine was betrothed to Charles' yet younger daughter, Rotrudis. In 794, Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, died, and Irene replaced him by Tarasius, the first secretary of state, a known iconodule. She had for some time been carefully preparing the way for a reversal of the iconoclastic policy, by dismissing as many as possible of the officials of her husband and father-in-law, but found that there was still much to do. The troops were very largely iconoclasts in their sympathies, and broke out into repeated tumults. To break their opposition, Irene disbanded them wholesale, or dispersed them in distant cantonments, a most ill-advised measure, seeing that the truth with a caliphate expired in 786. Finally, after three years of preparation, an assembly of 367 ecclesiastics gathered under Tarasius at Nicaea in September 787. Its decisions were as anti-iconoclastic as those of the Council of 754 had been anti-iconodule, and it unathematized all the iconoclast patriarchs. It drew, however, a distinction between the reverence due to the pictured samplance of the deity or saints, and the divine worship to be paid to God. Meanwhile, the foreign affairs of the Empire were given trouble. In 788 the Bulgarians burst through the Balkans raided Thrace and defeated Filetos, who commanded its troops on the Strymon. Next year the Saracens, now ruled by the energetic and cultivated, but cruel and suspicious Harun, Er Rashid, invaded Asia Minor and defeated a part of the Eastern Army. In 790 there was a fresh raid by land and sea, and for the first time for many years a Saracen fleet gained a success. Defeating the Kibirayot squadron under Theophilus of Atalia. The admiral was taken prisoner, and refusing to abjure Christianity or desert his country's service was put to death, an act which gives a true impression of the character of the much-loaded butcher of the barmasides. While foreign affairs were thus in disorder, Irene's position at home was tottering. In 790, Constantine VII, now over 20 years of age, would endure his mother's domination no longer. It cannot be said that his revolt was either premature or undutiful. His first attempt was frustrated. Irene punished his supporters with much severity and actually imprisoned her son. This, however, was the last straw. The Armenian troops declared in his favor and marched for the capital. The other corps of the army hastened to join them. Irene, in terror, released her son, who presented himself to the advancing army and was joyfully hailed by them as emperor. He punished his unnatural mother only by confining her for a time to the precincts of the palace. In 791, the young emperor invaded Bulgaria, now under King Cardam, without result, and then turned to the east and conducted a raid into Silesia. Next year, he again marched into Bulgaria with disastrous results. He was entirely defeated and lost many of his best officers, including the veteran Michael Lacanodrakon, the man after my own heart of Constantine VI. The beaten troops murmured at the emperor's bed-general ship, and in the capital there was a fresh conspiracy in favor of the five half-brothers of Leo IV. The plot was discovered. Nysiphorus was blinded. The tongues of the other four cut out and all were banished. The act was perhaps justifiable. The princes were incorrigible plotters, but Constantine had evidently inherited the vice of cruelty, whether from his grandfather or his mother it is difficult to say. Constantine's next blunder was to restore his mother to favor and power. He never appears to have lost his affection for her, and he celebrated the reconciliation by raising a statue of her in the hippodrome. Irene repaid her unhappy son by resuming her intrigues so soon as she was restored to power. Constantine, meanwhile, diligently continued to dig his own grave. He alienated his faithful Armenian troops by blinding their general, Alexius Muselay, who had led them to his assistance in 790. The alleged reason was conspiracy. Next, Constantine, without more reason, became involved in a quarrel with a clergy. We have seen that as a boy, he had been betrothed to Rotrudis, the daughter of Charles the Great. But after the Council of Nicaea, Irene broke off the engagement and practically forced the unhappy boy into a quasi-marriage with a Paflagonian girl named Maria. Constantine seems to have felt a sort of romantic affection for his unknown Frankish betrothed, and he soon developed a bitter feeling of hatred for his nominal wife, who was probably as guiltless as and even more helpless than himself. His hatred was quickened by his falling in love with Theodota, one of his mother's maids of honor. He determined to rid himself of Maria, and after much delay coerced the patriarch Tarasius into pronouncing a formal sentence of divorce. Irene's unfortunate tool disappeared into a nunnery. Constantine, their up one, was free to espouse Theodota. But public sympathy was strong for the divorced empress, and it cannot be said that it was unjustified. The clergy voiced it energetically, prominent among them being Plato, abbot of the great monastery of Sacudion in Bithynia, and the afterwards celebrated Theodor Studita, the latter himself a relative of the new empress. Constantine attempted coercion, but they would not give way, and public opinion was entirely with them. AD 795 Constantine, having married a wife of his own choosing, went to the east on an expedition against the Saracens, leaving the field clear for the intrigues of his mother. He ravaged Silesia and defeated a Saracen army at Anusan. Next year, Cardam of Bulgaria, presuming on his great victory in 792, sent an insulting demand for tribute to the emperor. Constantine, in wild rage, collected the Asiatic themes and sent to the Bulgarian a parcel of horse dung. One cannot admire his taste with the message, Here is a tribute, well-fit for thee. Come and take more, if thou choosest. But as though art old and maest grow tired in the journey, I will meet thee at Markelon, a border fort. So great was the emperor's strength, that Cardam fled across the Danube. Constantine, after wasting the country, marched home. In the absence of many of the Asiatic troops, the Saracens pushed another of their ineffectual raids up to Amorium. In 797, the emperor again took the field and invaded Silesia, but his mother's intrigues among the general officers ensured the futility of the expedition. On his return, Irene, who had prepared all for his deposition, carried her design into effect. Constantine was seized by his own attendants but escaped for the time and might have again gained the upper hand. But he seems to have been dumbfounded by his mother's conduct and made no great effort. He was finally captured, taken to Constantinople and blinded, with a refinement of barbarity in the Porphyry chamber in which he had been born. It seems probable that he died soon after. Such was the end of the last emperor of the great Isaurian house, to which the empire had owed more than to any other of its imperial lines. The only remaining scion of the family was Constantine's little daughter, Euphrosine, whom her grandmother spared. Irene had now attained the object of her unprincipled ambition. She was still only in the middle life, but she would seem to have expanded all her energy in her years of intriguing for her son's ruin. At all events, she gave herself up to self-indulgence and display, and handed over the business of the state to seven eunuchs, hardly exercising even a nominal superintendence over them. Her reign was in the highest degree unfortunate and disgraceful. The Caliph Harun again invaded the empire and made his way without opposition to the walls of Ephesus, wasting the Anatolic and Thracian themes and carrying off numbers of captives. Irene's miserable government again purchased peace, and Harun was willing enough to withdraw, for the Khazars had burst through the Caucasian passes and were wasted in Armenia. In 799, there was a revolt in Helas of the Slavs settled in the interior, which never appears to have been put down as long as Irene lived, and in 801, Khasem Harun's son again threatened Asia Minor. At home, the only event of importance was a conspiracy in 797, having as its object the enthronement of one of the mutilated sons of Constantin VI, who were living in exile at Athens. It was discovered the four miserable men who had lost their tongues were now blinded, and the whole five exiled to Panormos. The most notable event of Irene's reign was the natural result of her usurpation. The West had for many years looked more and more to Carl the Great, who was now supreme from the North Sea to the Vulturnus, and from Barcelona beyond the Elbe. On Christmas Day, AD 800, he was crowned Roman Emperor of the West by Pope Leo III in St. Peter's Basilica at Rome. There is no need to discuss the legality of the act. It was a perfectly natural, probably a long contemplated one. The Pope could allege with perfect truth that the legitimate Roman Emperor had been unjustly deposed and that the rule of his blood-stained mother was a monstrous anomaly. Rightly or wrongly, and the writer can see no valid argument against it, the deed was done. The result of Irene's unnatural action was that any union between East and West was finally rendered hopeless. In 802 the end came. Irene had alienated all classes. Even the Iconodjules had no feeling in her favor. Internally, the administration of her creatures was wasteful and bad. The Slavs were in open revolt. The Empire was humiliated in East and West. The Empress cared not. Her treasurer, Nysifras, a descendant of the Arab kings of Ghazan, gained over some of her eunuchs and attendants, seized her at night and hurried her across to a convent on one of the Princess Islands. In the Propontis, which she had herself founded, not a blow was struck for her and Nysifras was proclaimed Augustus without opposition. Irene was soon taken from her retreat to another convent in Lesbos, where she is said to have been deprived of the bare necessities of life so that she was forced to earn a scanty subsistence by spinning. It may be so. It is impossible to feel any pity for her. She survived her fall only a few months. The results of the labors of the Great Isorians, which even the disasters under Irene had not materially affected, were that the Empire had been firmly welded together, that it had been thoroughly reorganized and in a manner regenerated. The political decline under Irene does not imply decreasing material prosperity. On the contrary, there is every evidence that it was steadily on the increase. In Finley's words, the true historical feature of this memorable period is the aspect of a declining empire saved by the moral vigor developed in society and of the central authority struggling to restore national prosperity. This is no more than the truth. People and princes did their duty manfully and well, and their efforts secured for the state three centuries and more of prosperous life.