Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part

II.

In rewarding his allies, and recalling his wife, Justinian
displayed some sense of honor and gratitude; 1114 and Terbelis
retired, after sweeping away a heap of gold coin, which he
measured with his Scythian whip. But never was vow more
religiously performed than the sacred oath of revenge which he
had sworn amidst the storms of the Euxine. The two usurpers (for
I must reserve the name of tyrant for the conqueror) were dragged
into the hippodrome, the one from his prison, the other from his
palace. Before their execution, Leontius and Apsimar were cast
prostrate in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and
Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated
above an hour the chariot-race, while the inconstant people
shouted, in the words of the Psalmist, “Thou shalt trample on the
asp and basilisk, and on the lion and dragon shalt thou set thy
foot!” The universal defection which he had once experienced
might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman
people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe, that
such a wish is unworthy of an ingenious tyrant, since his revenge
and cruelty would have been extinguished by a single blow,
instead of the slow variety of tortures which Justinian inflicted
on the victims of his anger. His pleasures were inexhaustible:
neither private virtue nor public service could expiate the guilt
of active, or even passive, obedience to an established
government; and, during the six years of his new reign, he
considered the axe, the cord, and the rack, as the only
instruments of royalty. But his most implacable hatred was
pointed against the Chersonites, who had insulted his exile and
violated the laws of hospitality. Their remote situation afforded
some means of defence, or at least of escape; and a grievous tax
was imposed on Constantinople, to supply the preparations of a
fleet and army. “All are guilty, and all must perish,” was the
mandate of Justinian; and the bloody execution was intrusted to
his favorite Stephen, who was recommended by the epithet of the
savage. Yet even the savage Stephen imperfectly accomplished the
intentions of his sovereign. The slowness of his attack allowed
the greater part of the inhabitants to withdraw into the country;
and the minister of vengeance contented himself with reducing the
youth of both sexes to a state of servitude, with roasting alive
seven of the principal citizens, with drowning twenty in the sea,
and with reserving forty-two in chains to receive their doom from
the mouth of the emperor. In their return, the fleet was driven
on the rocky shores of Anatolia; and Justinian applauded the
obedience of the Euxine, which had involved so many thousands of
his subjects and enemies in a common shipwreck: but the tyrant
was still insatiate of blood; and a second expedition was
commanded to extirpate the remains of the proscribed colony. In
the short interval, the Chersonites had returned to their city,
and were prepared to die in arms; the khan of the Chozars had
renounced the cause of his odious brother; the exiles of every
province were assembled in Tauris; and Bardanes, under the name
of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. The Imperial
troops, unwilling and unable to perpetrate the revenge of
Justinian, escaped his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance:
the fleet, under their new sovereign, steered back a more
auspicious course to the harbors of Sinope and Constantinople;
and every tongue was prompt to pronounce, every hand to execute,
the death of the tyrant. Destitute of friends, he was deserted by
his Barbarian guards; and the stroke of the assassin was praised
as an act of patriotism and Roman virtue. His son Tiberius had
taken refuge in a church; his aged grandmother guarded the door;
and the innocent youth, suspending round his neck the most
formidable relics, embraced with one hand the altar, with the
other the wood of the true cross. But the popular fury that dares
to trample on superstition, is deaf to the cries of humanity; and
the race of Heraclius was extinguished after a reign of one
hundred years

1114 (return) [ Of fear rather than of more generous motives.
Compare Le Beau vol. xii. p. 64.—M.]

Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the Isaurian
dynasty, a short interval of six years is divided into three
reigns. Bardanes, or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as
a hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant; and he might
taste some moments of happiness in the first transports of
sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left behind him an ample
treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but this useful fund
was soon and idly dissipated by his successor. On the festival of
his birthday, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the
games of the hippodrome; from thence he paraded through the
streets with a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets;
refreshed himself in the baths of Zeuxippus, and returning to the
palace, entertained his nobles with a sumptuous banquet. At the
meridian hour he withdrew to his chamber, intoxicated with
flattery and wine, and forgetful that his example had made every
subject ambitious, and that every ambitious subject was his
secret enemy. Some bold conspirators introduced themselves in the
disorder of the feast; and the slumbering monarch was surprised,
bound, blinded, and deposed, before he was sensible of his
danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward; and the
free voice of the senate and people promoted Artemius from the
office of secretary to that of emperor: he assumed the title of
Anastasius the Second, and displayed in a short and troubled
reign the virtues both of peace and war. But after the extinction
of the Imperial line, the rule of obedience was violated, and
every change diffused the seeds of new revolutions. In a mutiny
of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer of the revenue was
forcibly invested with the purple: after some months of a naval
war, Anastasius resigned the sceptre; and the conqueror,
Theodosius the Third, submitted in his turn to the superior
ascendant of Leo, the general and emperor of the Oriental troops.
His two predecessors were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical
profession: the restless impatience of Anastasius tempted him to
risk and to lose his life in a treasonable enterprise; but the
last days of Theodosius were honorable and secure. The single
sublime word, “Health,” which he inscribed on his tomb, expresses
the confidence of philosophy or religion; and the fame of his
miracles was long preserved among the people of Ephesus. This
convenient shelter of the church might sometimes impose a lesson
of clemency; but it may be questioned whether it is for the
public interest to diminish the perils of unsuccessful ambition.

I have dwelt on the fall of a tyrant; I shall briefly represent
the founder of a new dynasty, who is known to posterity by the
invectives of his enemies, and whose public and private life is
involved in the ecclesiastical story of the Iconoclasts. Yet in
spite of the clamors of superstition, a favorable prejudice for
the character of Leo the Isaurian may be reasonably drawn from
the obscurity of his birth, and the duration of his reign.—I. In
an age of manly spirit, the prospect of an Imperial reward would
have kindled every energy of the mind, and produced a crowd of
competitors as deserving as they were desirous to reign. Even in
the corruption and debility of the modern Greeks, the elevation
of a plebeian from the last to the first rank of society,
supposes some qualifications above the level of the multitude. He
would probably be ignorant and disdainful of speculative science;
and, in the pursuit of fortune, he might absolve himself from the
obligations of benevolence and justice; but to his character we
may ascribe the useful virtues of prudence and fortitude, the
knowledge of mankind, and the important art of gaining their
confidence and directing their passions. It is agreed that Leo
was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his primitive name.
The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an
itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise
to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the
road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman
empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.
A more probable account relates the migration of his father from
Asia Minor to Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a
grazier; and he must have acquired considerable wealth, since the
first introduction of his son was procured by a supply of five
hundred sheep to the Imperial camp. His first service was in the
guards of Justinian, where he soon attracted the notice, and by
degrees the jealousy, of the tyrant. His valor and dexterity were
conspicuous in the Colchian war: from Anastasius he received the
command of the Anatolian legions, and by the suffrage of the
soldiers he was raised to the empire with the general applause of
the Roman world.—II. In this dangerous elevation, Leo the Third
supported himself against the envy of his equals, the discontent
of a powerful faction, and the assaults of his foreign and
domestic enemies. The Catholics, who accuse his religious
innovations, are obliged to confess that they were undertaken
with temper and conducted with firmness. Their silence respects
the wisdom of his administration and the purity of his manners.
After a reign of twenty-four years, he peaceably expired in the
palace of Constantinople; and the purple which he had acquired
was transmitted by the right of inheritance to the third
generation. 1115

1115 (return) [ During the latter part of his reign, the
hostilities of the Saracens, who invested a Pergamenian, named
Tiberius, with the purple, and proclaimed him as the son of
Justinian, and an earthquake, which destroyed the walls of
Constantinople, compelled Leo greatly to increase the burdens of
taxation upon his subjects. A twelfth was exacted in addition to
every aurena as a wall tax. Theophanes p. 275 Schlosser, Bilder
eturmeud Kaiser, p. 197.—M.]

In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of
Leo, Constantine the Fifth, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with
less temperate zeal the images or idols of the church. Their
votaries have exhausted the bitterness of religious gall, in
their portrait of this spotted panther, this antichrist, this
flying dragon of the serpent’s seed, who surpassed the vices of
Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long butchery of whatever
was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his empire. In person,
the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims, surveyed
their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without
satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted
as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or
mutilated by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his
pollution of his baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but
the manly pleasures of Copronymus degraded him below the level of
a brute; his lust confounded the eternal distinctions of sex and
species, and he seemed to extract some unnatural delight from the
objects most offensive to human sense. In his religion the
Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a Pagan, and an
Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could be discovered
only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal sacrifices
to Venus and the daemons of antiquity. His life was stained with
the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of
these accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is
refuted by its own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the
life of the princes, the lie is more easy as the detection is
more difficult. Without adopting the pernicious maxim, that where
much is alleged, something must be true, I can however discern,
that Constantine the Fifth was dissolute and cruel. Calumny is
more prone to exaggerate than to invent; and her licentious
tongue is checked in some measure by the experience of the age
and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks, the
generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under his
reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. 1116
The Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but
even their hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled
the provocations which might excuse or justify his rigor, but
even these provocations must gradually inflame his resentment and
harden his temper in the use or the abuse of despotism. Yet the
character of the fifth Constantine was not devoid of merit, nor
did his government always deserve the curses or the contempt of
the Greeks. From the confession of his enemies, I am informed of
the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the redemption of two
thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon plenty of the
times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise
his activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the
head of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was
various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the
Danube, in civil and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast
into the scale to counterbalance the weight of orthodox
invective. The Iconoclasts revered the virtues of the prince:
forty years after his death they still prayed before the tomb of
the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by fanaticism or
fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white steed,
brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: “An absurd
fable,” says the Catholic historian, “since Copronymus is chained
with the daemons in the abyss of hell.”

1116 (return) [ He is accused of burning the library of
Constantinople, founded by Julian, with its president and twelve
professors. This eastern Sorbonne had discomfited the Imperial
theologians on the great question of image worship. Schlosser
observes that this accidental fire took place six years after the
emperor had laid the question of image-worship before the
professors. Bilder sturmand Kaiser, p. 294. Compare Le Heau. vol.
xl. p. 156.—M.]

Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind 1117 and
body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of
the succession. The association of the young Constantine was
urged by the officious zeal of his subjects; and the emperor,
conscious of his decay, complied, after a prudent hesitation,
with their unanimous wishes. The royal infant, at the age of five
years, was crowned with his mother Irene; and the national
consent was ratified by every circumstance of pomp and solemnity,
that could dazzle the eyes or bind the conscience of the Greeks.
An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the church,
and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who
adjured the holy names of the Son, and mother of God. “Be
witness, O Christ! that we will watch over the safety of
Constantine the son of Leo, expose our lives in his service, and
bear true allegiance to his person and posterity.” They pledged
their faith on the wood of the true cross, and the act of their
engagement was deposited on the altar of St. Sophia. The first to
swear, and the first to violate their oath, were the five sons of
Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these princes
is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them
from the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded
them of a legacy of about two millions sterling; some vain titles
were not deemed a sufficient compensation for wealth and power;
and they repeatedly conspired against their nephew, before and
after the death of his father. Their first attempt was pardoned;
for the second offence 1118 they were condemned to the
ecclesiastical state; and for the third treason, Nicephorus, the
eldest and most guilty, was deprived of his eyes, and his four
brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and Eudoxas, were
punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their
tongues. After five years’ confinement, they escaped to the
church of St. Sophia, and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the
people. “Countrymen and Christians,” cried Nicephorus for himself
and his mute brethren, “behold the sons of your emperor, if you
can still recognize our features in this miserable state. A life,
an imperfect life, is all that the malice of our enemies has
spared. It is now threatened, and we now throw ourselves on your
compassion.” The rising murmur might have produced a revolution,
had it not been checked by the presence of a minister, who
soothed the unhappy princes with flattery and hope, and gently
drew them from the sanctuary to the palace. They were speedily
embarked for Greece, and Athens was allotted for the place of
their exile. In this calm retreat, and in their helpless
condition, Nicephorus and his brothers were tormented by the
thirst of power, and tempted by a Sclavonian chief, who offered
to break their prison, and to lead them in arms, and in the
purple, to the gates of Constantinople. But the Athenian people,
ever zealous in the cause of Irene, prevented her justice or
cruelty; and the five sons of Copronymus were plunged in eternal
darkness and oblivion.

1117 (return) [ Schlosser thinks more highly of Leo’s mind; but
his only proof of his superiority is the successes of his
generals against the Saracens, Schlosser, p. 256.—M.]

1118 (return) [ The second offence was on the accession of the
young Constantine—M.]

For himself, that emperor had chosen a Barbarian wife, the
daughter of the khan of the Chozars; but in the marriage of his
heir, he preferred an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years
old, whose sole fortune must have consisted in her personal
accomplishments. The nuptials of Leo and Irene were celebrated
with royal pomp; she soon acquired the love and confidence of a
feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the empress
guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine the
Sixth, who was no more than ten years of age. During his
childhood, Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her
public administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her
zeal in the restoration of images has deserved the name and
honors of a saint, which she still occupies in the Greek
calendar. But the emperor attained the maturity of youth; the
maternal yoke became more grievous; and he listened to the
favorites of his own age, who shared his pleasures, and were
ambitious of sharing his power. Their reasons convinced him of
his right, their praises of his ability, to reign; and he
consented to reward the services of Irene by a perpetual
banishment to the Isle of Sicily. But her vigilance and
penetration easily disconcerted their rash projects: a similar,
or more severe, punishment was retaliated on themselves and their
advisers; and Irene inflicted on the ungrateful prince the
chastisement of a boy. After this contest, the mother and the son
were at the head of two domestic factions; and instead of mild
influence and voluntary obedience, she held in chains a captive
and an enemy. The empress was overthrown by the abuse of victory;
the oath of fidelity, which she exacted to herself alone, was
pronounced with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the
Armenian guards encouraged a free and general declaration, that
Constantine the Sixth was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In
this character he ascended his hereditary throne, and dismissed
Irene to a life of solitude and repose. But her haughty spirit
condescended to the arts of dissimulation: she flattered the
bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial tenderness of the prince,
regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The
character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit;
but his education had been studiously neglected; and the
ambitious mother exposed to the public censure the vices which
she had nourished, and the actions which she had secretly
advised: his divorce and second marriage offended the prejudices
of the clergy, and by his imprudent rigor he forfeited the
attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy was
formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though
widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the
emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople,
with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this
hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice;
yet before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a
private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his
person, with a menace, that unless they accomplished, she would
reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid; they
seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported
to the porphyry apartment of the palace, where he had first seen
the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every
sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her
bloody council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of
the throne: her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and
stabbed their daggers with such violence and precipitation into
his eyes as if they meant to execute a mortal sentence. An
ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded the annalist of the
church that death was the immediate consequence of this barbarous
execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by the
authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the
patroness of images. 1119 Yet the blind son of Irene survived
many years, oppressed by the court and forgotten by the world;
the Isaurian dynasty was silently extinguished; and the memory of
Constantine was recalled only by the nuptials of his daughter
Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael the Second.

1119 (return) [ Gibbon has been attacked on account of this
statement, but is successfully defended by Schlosser. B S. Kaiser
p. 327. Compare Le Beau, c. xii p. 372.—M.]

The most bigoted orthodoxy has justly execrated the unnatural
mother, who may not easily be paralleled in the history of
crimes. To her bloody deed superstition has attributed a
subsequent darkness of seventeen days; during which many vessels
in midday were driven from their course, as if the sun, a globe
of fire so vast and so remote, could sympathize with the atoms of
a revolving planet. On earth, the crime of Irene was left five
years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external splendor;
and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither
heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world
bowed to the government of a female; and as she moved through the
streets of Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds
were held by as many patricians, who marched on foot before the
golden chariot of their queen. But these patricians were for the
most part eunuchs; and their black ingratitude justified, on this
occasion, the popular hatred and contempt. Raised, enriched,
intrusted with the first dignities of the empire, they basely
conspired against their benefactress; the great treasurer
Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her successor
was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by the
venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with
dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy
of Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her
unsuspicious clemency, and for the throne and treasures which she
resigned, solicited a decent and honorable retreat. His avarice
refused this modest compensation; and, in her exile of the Isle
of Lesbos, the empress earned a scanty subsistence by the labors
of her distaff.

Many tyrants have reigned undoubtedly more criminal than
Nicephorus, but none perhaps have more deeply incurred the
universal abhorrence of their people. His character was stained
with the three odious vices of hypocrisy, ingratitude, and
avarice: his want of virtue was not redeemed by any superior
talents, nor his want of talents by any pleasing qualifications.
Unskilful and unfortunate in war, Nicephorus was vanquished by
the Saracens, and slain by the Bulgarians; and the advantage of
his death overbalanced, in the public opinion, the destruction of
a Roman army. 1011 His son and heir Stauracius escaped from the
field with a mortal wound; yet six months of an expiring life
were sufficient to refute his indecent, though popular
declaration, that he would in all things avoid the example of his
father. On the near prospect of his decease, Michael, the great
master of the palace, and the husband of his sister Procopia, was
named by every person of the palace and city, except by his
envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre now falling from his
hand, he conspired against the life of his successor, and
cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman empire.
But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the
people and to remove the scruples of the candidate: Michael the
First accepted the purple, and before he sunk into the grave the
son of Nicephorus implored the clemency of his new sovereign. Had
Michael in an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he
might have reigned and died the father of his people: but his
mild virtues were adapted to the shade of private life, nor was
he capable of controlling the ambition of his equals, or of
resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians. While his want
of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of the
soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened
their indignation. Even the Greeks of the ninth century were
provoked by the insolence of a female, who, in the front of the
standards, presumed to direct their discipline and animate their
valor; and their licentious clamors advised the new Semiramis to
reverence the majesty of a Roman camp. After an unsuccessful
campaign, the emperor left, in their winter-quarters of Thrace, a
disaffected army under the command of his enemies; and their
artful eloquence persuaded the soldiers to break the dominion of
the eunuchs, to degrade the husband of Procopia, and to assert
the right of a military election. They marched towards the
capital: yet the clergy, the senate, and the people of
Constantinople, adhered to the cause of Michael; and the troops
and treasures of Asia might have protracted the mischiefs of
civil war. But his humanity (by the ambitious it will be termed
his weakness) protested that not a drop of Christian blood should
be shed in his quarrel, and his messengers presented the
conquerors with the keys of the city and the palace. They were
disarmed by his innocence and submission; his life and his eyes
were spared; and the Imperial monk enjoyed the comforts of
solitude and religion above thirty-two years after he had been
stripped of the purple and separated from his wife.

1011 (return) [ The Syrian historian Aboulfaradj. Chron. Syr. p.
133, 139, speaks of him as a brave, prudent, and pious prince,
formidable to the Arabs. St. Martin, c. xii. p. 402. Compare
Schlosser, p. 350.—M.]

A rebel, in the time of Nicephorus, the famous and unfortunate
Bardanes, had once the curiosity to consult an Asiatic prophet,
who, after prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of
his three principal officers, Leo the Armenian, Michael the
Phrygian, and Thomas the Cappadocian, the successive reigns of
the two former, the fruitless and fatal enterprise of the third.
This prediction was verified, or rather was produced, by the
event. Ten years afterwards, when the Thracian camp rejected the
husband of Procopia, the crown was presented to the same Leo, the
first in military rank and the secret author of the mutiny. As he
affected to hesitate, “With this sword,” said his companion
Michael, “I will open the gates of Constantinople to your
Imperial sway; or instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you
obstinately resist the just desires of your fellow-soldiers.” The
compliance of the Armenian was rewarded with the empire, and he
reigned seven years and a half under the name of Leo the Fifth.
Educated in a camp, and ignorant both of laws and letters, he
introduced into his civil government the rigor and even cruelty
of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes
dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the
guilty. His religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of
Chameleon, but the Catholics have acknowledged by the voice of a
saint and confessors, that the life of the Iconoclast was useful
to the republic. The zeal of his companion Michael was repaid
with riches, honors, and military command; and his subordinate
talents were beneficially employed in the public service. Yet the
Phrygian was dissatisfied at receiving as a favor a scanty
portion of the Imperial prize which he had bestowed on his equal;
and his discontent, which sometimes evaporated in hasty
discourse, at length assumed a more threatening and hostile
aspect against a prince whom he represented as a cruel tyrant.
That tyrant, however, repeatedly detected, warned, and dismissed
the old companion of his arms, till fear and resentment prevailed
over gratitude; and Michael, after a scrutiny into his actions
and designs, was convicted of treason, and sentenced to be burnt
alive in the furnace of the private baths. The devout humanity of
the empress Theophano was fatal to her husband and family. A
solemn day, the twenty-fifth of December, had been fixed for the
execution: she urged, that the anniversary of the Savior’s birth
would be profaned by this inhuman spectacle, and Leo consented
with reluctance to a decent respite. But on the vigil of the
feast his sleepless anxiety prompted him to visit at the dead of
night the chamber in which his enemy was confined: he beheld him
released from his chain, and stretched on his jailer’s bed in a
profound slumber. Leo was alarmed at these signs of security and
intelligence; but though he retired with silent steps, his
entrance and departure were noticed by a slave who lay concealed
in a corner of the prison. Under the pretence of requesting the
spiritual aid of a confessor, Michael informed the conspirators,
that their lives depended on his discretion, and that a few hours
were left to assure their own safety, by the deliverance of their
friend and country. On the great festivals, a chosen band of
priests and chanters was admitted into the palace by a private
gate to sing matins in the chapel; and Leo, who regulated with
the same strictness the discipline of the choir and of the camp,
was seldom absent from these early devotions. In the
ecclesiastical habit, but with their swords under their robes,
the conspirators mingled with the procession, lurked in the
angles of the chapel, and expected, as the signal of murder, the
intonation of the first psalm by the emperor himself. The
imperfect light, and the uniformity of dress, might have favored
his escape, whilst their assault was pointed against a harmless
priest; but they soon discovered their mistake, and encompassed
on all sides the royal victim. Without a weapon and without a
friend, he grasped a weighty cross, and stood at bay against the
hunters of his life; but as he asked for mercy, “This is the
hour, not of mercy, but of vengeance,” was the inexorable reply.
The stroke of a well-aimed sword separated from his body the
right arm and the cross, and Leo the Armenian was slain at the
foot of the altar. A memorable reverse of fortune was displayed
in Michael the Second, who from a defect in his speech was
surnamed the Stammerer. He was snatched from the fiery furnace to
the sovereignty of an empire; and as in the tumult a smith could
not readily be found, the fetters remained on his legs several
hours after he was seated on the throne of the Caesars. The royal
blood which had been the price of his elevation, was unprofitably
spent: in the purple he retained the ignoble vices of his origin;
and Michael lost his provinces with as supine indifference as if
they had been the inheritance of his fathers. His title was
disputed by Thomas, the last of the military triumvirate, who
transported into Europe fourscore thousand Barbarians from the
banks of the Tigris and the shores of the Caspian. He formed the
siege of Constantinople; but the capital was defended with
spiritual and carnal weapons; a Bulgarian king assaulted the camp
of the Orientals, and Thomas had the misfortune, or the weakness,
to fall alive into the power of the conqueror. The hands and feet
of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst
the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he
sprinkled with his blood. The depravation of manners, as savage
as they were corrupt, is marked by the presence of the emperor
himself. Deaf to the lamentation of a fellow-soldier, he
incessantly pressed the discovery of more accomplices, till his
curiosity was checked by the question of an honest or guilty
minister: “Would you give credit to an enemy against the most
faithful of your friends?” After the death of his first wife, the
emperor, at the request of the senate, drew from her monastery
Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine the Sixth. Her august
birth might justify a stipulation in the marriage-contract, that
her children should equally share the empire with their elder
brother. But the nuptials of Michael and Euphrosyne were barren;
and she was content with the title of mother of Theophilus, his
son and successor.

The character of Theophilus is a rare example in which religious
zeal has allowed, and perhaps magnified, the virtues of a heretic
and a persecutor. His valor was often felt by the enemies, and
his justice by the subjects, of the monarchy; but the valor of
Theophilus was rash and fruitless, and his justice arbitrary and
cruel. He displayed the banner of the cross against the Saracens;
but his five expeditions were concluded by a signal overthrow:
Amorium, the native city of his ancestors, was levelled with the
ground and from his military toils he derived only the surname of
the Unfortunate. The wisdom of a sovereign is comprised in the
institution of laws and the choice of magistrates, and while he
seems without action, his civil government revolves round his
centre with the silence and order of the planetary system. But
the justice of Theophilus was fashioned on the model of the
Oriental despots, who, in personal and irregular acts of
authority, consult the reason or passion of the moment, without
measuring the sentence by the law, or the penalty by the offense.
A poor woman threw herself at the emperor’s feet to complain of a
powerful neighbor, the brother of the empress, who had raised his
palace-wall to such an inconvenient height, that her humble
dwelling was excluded from light and air! On the proof of the
fact, instead of granting, like an ordinary judge, sufficient or
ample damages to the plaintiff, the sovereign adjudged to her use
and benefit the palace and the ground. Nor was Theophilus content
with this extravagant satisfaction: his zeal converted a civil
trespass into a criminal act; and the unfortunate patrician was
stripped and scourged in the public place of Constantinople. For
some venial offenses, some defect of equity or vigilance, the
principal ministers, a præfect, a quaestor, a captain of the
guards, were banished or mutilated, or scalded with boiling
pitch, or burnt alive in the hippodrome; and as these dreadful
examples might be the effects of error or caprice, they must have
alienated from his service the best and wisest of the citizens.
But the pride of the monarch was flattered in the exercise of
power, or, as he thought, of virtue; and the people, safe in
their obscurity, applauded the danger and debasement of their
superiors. This extraordinary rigor was justified, in some
measure, by its salutary consequences; since, after a scrutiny of
seventeen days, not a complaint or abuse could be found in the
court or city; and it might be alleged that the Greeks could be
ruled only with a rod of iron, and that the public interest is
the motive and law of the supreme judge. Yet in the crime, or the
suspicion, of treason, that judge is of all others the most
credulous and partial. Theophilus might inflict a tardy vengeance
on the assassins of Leo and the saviors of his father; but he
enjoyed the fruits of their crime; and his jealous tyranny
sacrificed a brother and a prince to the future safety of his
life. A Persian of the race of the Sassanides died in poverty and
exile at Constantinople, leaving an only son, the issue of a
plebeian marriage. At the age of twelve years, the royal birth of
Theophobus was revealed, and his merit was not unworthy of his
birth. He was educated in the Byzantine palace, a Christian and a
soldier; advanced with rapid steps in the career of fortune and
glory; received the hand of the emperor’s sister; and was
promoted to the command of thirty thousand Persians, who, like
his father, had fled from the Mahometan conquerors. These troops,
doubly infected with mercenary and fanatic vices, were desirous
of revolting against their benefactor, and erecting the standard
of their native king but the loyal Theophobus rejected their
offers, disconcerted their schemes, and escaped from their hands
to the camp or palace of his royal brother. A generous confidence
might have secured a faithful and able guardian for his wife and
his infant son, to whom Theophilus, in the flower of his age, was
compelled to leave the inheritance of the empire. But his
jealousy was exasperated by envy and disease; he feared the
dangerous virtues which might either support or oppress their
infancy and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of
the Persian prince. With savage delight he recognized the
familiar features of his brother: “Thou art no longer
Theophobus,” he said; and, sinking on his couch, he added, with a
faltering voice, “Soon, too soon, I shall be no more Theophilus!”