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

IV.

Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under
his standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and
obtained the most eminent rewards. The stature of John Zimisces
was below the ordinary standard: but this diminutive body was
endowed with strength, beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the
jealousy of the emperor’s brother, he was degraded from the
office of general of the East, to that of director of the posts,
and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and exile. But
Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the empress: on
her intercession, he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon, in the
neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his
clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano
consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious
husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her
most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night,
Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small
boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and
silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the
female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings
of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the
fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect
Nicephorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every door was
open to the assassins. As he slept on a bear-skin on the ground,
he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers
glittered before his eyes. It is doubtful whether Zimisces
imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign; but he enjoyed
the inhuman spectacle of revenge. 1016 The murder was protracted
by insult and cruelty: and as soon as the head of Nicephorus was
shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and the Armenian
was emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he was
stopped on the threshold of St. Sophia, by the intrepid
patriarch; who charged his conscience with the deed of treason
and blood; and required, as a sign of repentance, that he should
separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of
apostolic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could
neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly violated the
most sacred obligations; and Theophano, instead of sharing his
imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and
palace. In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and
impotent rage; accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted,
with words and blows, her son Basil, as he stood silent and
submissive in the presence of a superior colleague; and avowed
her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegitimacy of his
birth. The public indignation was appeased by her exile, and the
punishment of the meaner accomplices: the death of an unpopular
prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten in
the splendor of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less
useful to the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his
gentle and generous behavior delighted all who approached his
person; and it was only in the paths of victory that he trod in
the footsteps of his predecessor. The greatest part of his reign
was employed in the camp and the field: his personal valor and
activity were signalized on the Danube and the Tigris, the
ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double triumph
over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of
savior of the empire, and conqueror of the East. In his last
return from Syria, he observed that the most fruitful lands of
his new provinces were possessed by the eunuchs. “And is it for
them,” he exclaimed, with honest indignation, “that we have
fought and conquered? Is it for them that we shed our blood, and
exhaust the treasures of our people?” The complaint was reechoed
to the palace, and the death of Zimisces is strongly marked with
the suspicion of poison.

1016 (return) [ According to Leo Diaconus, Zimisces, after
ordering the wounded emperor to be dragged to his feet, and
heaping him with insult, to which the miserable man only replied
by invoking the name of the “mother of God,” with his own hand
plucked his beard, while his accomplices beat out his teeth with
the hilts of their swords, and then trampling him to the ground,
drove his sword into his skull. Leo Diac, in Niebuhr Byz. Hist. l
vii. c. 8. p. 88.—M.]

Under this usurpation, or regency, of twelve years, the two
lawful emperors, Basil and Constantine, had silently grown to the
age of manhood. Their tender years had been incapable of
dominion: the respectful modesty of their attendance and
salutation was due to the age and merit of their guardians; the
childless ambition of those guardians had no temptation to
violate their right of succession: their patrimony was ably and
faithfully administered; and the premature death of Zimisces was
a loss, rather than a benefit, to the sons of Romanus. Their want
of experience detained them twelve years longer the obscure and
voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by
persuading them to indulge the pleasures of youth, and to disdain
the labors of government. In this silken web, the weakness of
Constantine was forever entangled; but his elder brother felt the
impulse of genius and the desire of action; he frowned, and the
minister was no more. Basil was the acknowledged sovereign of
Constantinople and the provinces of Europe; but Asia was
oppressed by two veteran generals, Phocas and Sclerus, who,
alternately friends and enemies, subjects and rebels, maintained
their independence, and labored to emulate the example of
successful usurpation. Against these domestic enemies the son of
Romanus first drew his sword, and they trembled in the presence
of a lawful and high-spirited prince. The first, in the front of
battle, was thrown from his horse, by the stroke of poison, or an
arrow; the second, who had been twice loaded with chains, 1017
and twice invested with the purple, was desirous of ending in
peace the small remainder of his days. As the aged suppliant
approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering steps, leaning
on his two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the insolence of
youth and power, “And is this the man who has so long been the
object of our terror?” After he had confirmed his own authority,
and the peace of the empire, the trophies of Nicephorus and
Zimisces would not suffer their royal pupil to sleep in the
palace. His long and frequent expeditions against the Saracens
were rather glorious than useful to the empire; but the final
destruction of the kingdom of Bulgaria appears, since the time of
Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms. Yet,
instead of applauding their victorious prince, his subjects
detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil; and in the
imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the
courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious
education, which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his
mind; he was ignorant of every science; and the remembrance of
his learned and feeble grandsire might encourage his real or
affected contempt of laws and lawyers, of artists and arts. Of
such a character, in such an age, superstition took a firm and
lasting possession; after the first license of his youth, Basil
the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the
penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and
armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites
a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth
year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person
for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented
by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was
dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the
curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine
enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures,
of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the
succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus;
and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most
obscure, of the Byzantine history.

1017 (return) [ Once by the caliph, once by his rival Phocas.
Compare De Beau l. p. 176.—M.]

A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred
and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the
Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the
usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine the
Ninth, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene
presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do
not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had
preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and
Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took
the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature
age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage
was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold or
pious Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her
sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar.
Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person and fair
reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his declining
that honor, was informed, that blindness or death was the second
alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection
but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety
and greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed the only
bar to the Imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine,
the sceptre devolved to Romanus the Third; but his labors at home
and abroad were equally feeble and fruitless; and the mature age,
the forty-eight years of Zoe, were less favorable to the hopes of
pregnancy than to the indulgence of pleasure. Her favorite
chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian of the name of Michael,
whose first trade had been that of a money-changer; and Romanus,
either from gratitude or equity, connived at their criminal
intercourse, or accepted a slight assurance of their innocence.
But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress is
capable of poisoning her husband; and the death of Romanus was
instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of
Michael the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, however,
disappointed: instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had
placed in her bed a miserable wretch, whose health and reason
were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was
tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of
the mind and body were summoned to his aid; and his hopes were
amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of
the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and,
except restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?)
Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he
groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the
eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a
crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His
administration was only the art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe
became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in the hands
of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline of his
brother’s health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who
derived his surname of Calaphates from his father’s occupation in
the careening of vessels: at the command of the eunuch, Zoe
adopted for her son the son of a mechanic; and this fictitious
heir was invested with the title and purple of the Caesars, in
the presence of the senate and clergy. So feeble was the
character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power
which she recovered by the death of the Paphlagonian; and at the
end of four days, she placed the crown on the head of Michael the
Fifth, who had protested, with tears and oaths, that he should
ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects.

The only act of his short reign was his base ingratitude to his
benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the
former was pleasing to the public: but the murmurs, and at length
the clamors, of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the
daughter of so many emperors; her vices were forgotten, and
Michael was taught, that there is a period in which the patience
of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of
every degree assembled in a formidable tumult which lasted three
days; they besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their
mothers, Zoe from her prison, Theodora from her monastery, and
condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes or of his
life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two
royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate,
and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But the
singular union subsisted no more than two months; the two
sovereigns, their tempers, interests, and adherents, were
secretly hostile to each other; and as Theodora was still averse
to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe, at the age of sixty,
consented, for the public good, to sustain the embraces of a
third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and
number were Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of Monomachus,
the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valor and
victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was
broken by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was
spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and
noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the Isle
of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in the appellation of his
mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with
the title and pomp of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous
apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the
delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and
scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between
his wife and his concubine. He survived them both; but the last
measures of Constantine to change the order of succession were
prevented by the more vigilant friends of Theodora; and after his
decease, she resumed, with the general consent, the possession of
her inheritance. In her name, and by the influence of four
eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen
months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they
persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael
the Sixth. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military
profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see
with the eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers.
Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the
last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily
reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive
period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below
the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of
cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.

From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of
spirit, begins to emerge: the Greeks either preserved or revived
the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary
virtue: and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliances of
the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni,
who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed
the honor of a Roman origin: but the family had been long since
transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was
situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighborhood of the
Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the
paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret,
the modest though honorable dwelling of his fathers. The first of
their line was the illustrious Manuel, who in the reign of the
second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the
troubles of the East: he left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac
and John, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed
to the gratitude and favor of his sovereign. The noble youths
were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts
of the palace, and the exercises of the camp: and from the
domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the
command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled
the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient
nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers,
with a captive princess of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a
patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon from the number of
enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had
served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters; the
elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more
deserving generals; and their discontent was inflamed by the
parsimony of the emperor and the insolence of the eunuchs. They
secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes
of the military synod would have been unanimous in favor of the
old and valiant Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the
veteran had not suggested the importance of birth as well as
merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnenus was approved
by general consent, and the associates separated without delay to
meet in the plains of Phrygia at the head of their respective
squadrons and detachments. The cause of Michael was defended in a
single battle by the mercenaries of the Imperial guard, who were
aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle
of honor and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the
emperor solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the
moderation of the Comnenian. But the former was betrayed by his
ambassadors, and the latter was prevented by his friends. The
solitary Michael submitted to the voice of the people; the
patriarch annulled their oath of allegiance; and as he shaved the
head of the royal monk, congratulated his beneficial exchange of
temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven; an exchange, however,
which the priest, on his own account, would probably have
declined. By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac Comnenus was
solemnly crowned; the sword which he inscribed on his coins might
be an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquest; but
this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic
enemies of the state. The decline of his health and vigor
suspended the operation of active virtue; and the prospect of
approaching death determined him to interpose some moments
between life and eternity. But instead of leaving the empire as
the marriage portion of his daughter, his reason and inclination
concurred in the preference of his brother John, a soldier, a
patriot, and the father of five sons, the future pillars of an
hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might be the
natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate
and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show
of virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty,
and a rare offence against his family and country. The purple
which he had refused was accepted by Constantine Ducas, a friend
of the Comnenian house, and whose noble birth was adorned with
the experience and reputation of civil policy. In the monastic
habit, Isaac recovered his health, and survived two years his
voluntary abdication. At the command of his abbot, he observed
the rule of St. Basil, and executed the most servile offices of
the convent: but his latent vanity was gratified by the frequent
and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in his
person the character of a benefactor and a saint. If Constantine
the Eleventh were indeed the subject most worthy of empire, we
must pity the debasement of the age and nation in which he was
chosen. In the labor of puerile declamations he sought, without
obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious, in his opinion,
than that of Rome; and in the subordinate functions of a judge,
he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior. Far from
imitating the patriotic indifference of the authors of his
greatness, Ducas was anxious only to secure, at the expense of
the republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His three
sons, Michael the Seventh, Andronicus the First, and Constantine
the Twelfth, were invested, in a tender age, with the equal title
of Augustus; and the succession was speedily opened by their
father’s death. His widow, Eudocia, was intrusted with the
administration; but experience had taught the jealousy of the
dying monarch to protect his sons from the danger of her second
nuptials; and her solemn engagement, attested by the principal
senators, was deposited in the hands of the patriarch. Before the
end of seven months, the wants of Eudocia, or those of the state,
called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier; and her heart had
already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from the
scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a treasonable attempt
had exposed him to the severity of the laws: his beauty and valor
absolved him in the eyes of the empress; and Romanus, from a mild
exile, was recalled on the second day to the command of the
Oriental armies.

Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public; and the promise
which would have betrayed her falsehood and levity, was stolen by
a dexterous emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Xiphilin
at first alleged the sanctity of oaths, and the sacred nature of
a trust; but a whisper, that his brother was the future emperor,
relaxed his scruples, and forced him to confess that the public
safety was the supreme law. He resigned the important paper; and
when his hopes were confounded by the nomination of Romanus, he
could no longer regain his security, retract his declarations,
nor oppose the second nuptials of the empress. Yet a murmur was
heard in the palace; and the Barbarian guards had raised their
battle-axes in the cause of the house of Lucas, till the young
princes were soothed by the tears of their mother and the solemn
assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the
Imperial station with dignity and honor. Hereafter I shall relate
his valiant, but unsuccessful, efforts to resist the progress of
the Turks. His defeat and captivity inflicted a deadly wound on
the Byzantine monarchy of the East; and after he was released
from the chains of the sultan, he vainly sought his wife and his
subjects. His wife had been thrust into a monastery, and the
subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of the civil
law, that a prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived, as by
the stroke of death, of all the public and private rights of a
citizen. In the general consternation, the Caesar John asserted
the indefeasible right of his three nephews: Constantinople
listened to his voice: and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in
the capital, and received on the frontier, as an enemy of the
republic. Romanus was not more fortunate in domestic than in
foreign war: the loss of two battles compelled him to yield, on
the assurance of fair and honorable treatment; but his enemies
were devoid of faith or humanity; and, after the cruel extinction
of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and corrupt, till in
a few days he was relieved from a state of misery. Under the
triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers were
reduced to the vain honors of the purple; but the eldest, the
pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman
sceptre; and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach
which he shared with an avaricious favorite, who enhanced the
price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of
Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia
made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric; but his
character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a
monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt of
their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head
of the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at
Adrianople and Nice. Their revolt was in the same months; they
bore the same name of Nicephorus; but the two candidates were
distinguished by the surnames of Bryennius and Botaniates; the
former in the maturity of wisdom and courage, the latter
conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While
Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active
competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The
name of Bryennius was illustrious; his cause was popular; but his
licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and
pillaging a suburb; and the people, who would have hailed the
rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This
change of the public opinion was favorable to Botaniates, who at
length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of
Chalcedon. A formal invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the
synod, and the senate, was circulated through the streets of
Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the dome of St.
Sophia, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their
sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this
unarmed multitude; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own
moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was
rewarded with the monastic habit, and the title of Archbishop of
Ephesus. He left a son, a Constantine, born and educated in the
purple; and a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the
blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.

John Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in
peace and dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his
wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and a policy, he left
eight children: the three daughters multiplied the Comnenian
alliance with the noblest of the Greeks: of the five sons, Manuel
was stopped by a premature death; Isaac and Alexius restored the
Imperial greatness of their house, which was enjoyed without toil
or danger by the two younger brethren, Adrian and Nicephorus.
Alexius, the third and most illustrious of the brothers was
endowed by nature with the choicest gifts both of mind and body:
they were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the
school of obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from
the perils of the Turkish war, by the paternal care of the
emperor Romanus: but the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring
face, was accused of treason, and banished, by the sons of Ducas,
to an island in the Propontis. The two brothers soon emerged into
favor and action, fought by each other’s side against the rebels
and Barbarians, and adhered to the emperor Michael, till he was
deserted by the world and by himself. In his first interview with
Botaniates, “Prince,” said Alexius with a noble frankness, “my
duty rendered me your enemy; the decrees of God and of the people
have made me your subject. Judge of my future loyalty by my past
opposition.” The successor of Michael entertained him with esteem
and confidence: his valor was employed against three rebels, who
disturbed the peace of the empire, or at least of the emperors.
Ursel, Bryennius, and Basilacius, were formidable by their
numerous forces and military fame: they were successively
vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of the
throne; and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid
and cruel court, they applauded the clemency, as well as the
courage, of their conqueror. But the loyalty of the Comneni was
soon tainted by fear and suspicion; nor is it easy to settle
between a subject and a despot, the debt of gratitude, which the
former is tempted to claim by a revolt, and the latter to
discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexius to march
against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed the
merit or memory of his past services: the favorites of Botaniates
provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused; and the
retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of
their life and liberty. The women of the family were deposited in
a sanctuary, respected by tyrants: the men, mounted on horseback,
sallied from the city, and erected the standard of civil war. The
soldiers who had been gradually assembled in the capital and the
neighborhood, were devoted to the cause of a victorious and
injured leader: the ties of common interest and domestic alliance
secured the attachment of the house of Ducas; and the generous
dispute of the Comneni was terminated by the decisive resolution
of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger brother with
the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to Constantinople,
to threaten rather than besiege that impregnable fortress; but
the fidelity of the guards was corrupted; a gate was surprised,
and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George
Palaeologus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing
that he labored for his posterity. Alexius ascended the throne;
and his aged competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of
various nations was gratified with the pillage of the city; but
the public disorders were expiated by the tears and fasts of the
Comneni, who submitted to every penance compatible with the
possession of the empire. The life of the emperor Alexius has
been delineated by a favorite daughter, who was inspired by a
tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate
his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers, the
princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests, that, besides her
personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings
of the most respectable veterans: and after an interval of thirty
years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful
solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the
naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of
her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative
which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and
science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The
genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of
virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology
awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the historian
and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her
judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times
were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every
calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on
his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his
predecessors. In the East, the victorious Turks had spread, from
Persia to the Hellespont, the reign of the Koran and the
Crescent: the West was invaded by the adventurous valor of the
Normans; and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth
new swarms, who had gained, in the science of war, what they had
lost in the ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less
hostile than the land; and while the frontiers were assaulted by
an open enemy, the palace was distracted with secret treason and
conspiracy. On a sudden, the banner of the Cross was displayed by
the Latins; Europe was precipitated on Asia; and Constantinople
had almost been swept away by this impetuous deluge. In the
tempest, Alexius steered the Imperial vessel with dexterity and
courage. At the head of his armies, he was bold in action,
skilful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his
advantages, and rising from his defeats with inexhaustible vigor.
The discipline of the camp was revived, and a new generation of
men and soldiers was created by the example and precepts of their
leader. In his intercourse with the Latins, Alexius was patient
and artful: his discerning eye pervaded the new system of an
unknown world and I shall hereafter describe the superior policy
with which he balanced the interests and passions of the
champions of the first crusade. In a long reign of thirty-seven
years, he subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals: the laws
of public and private order were restored: the arts of wealth and
science were cultivated: the limits of the empire were enlarged
in Europe and Asia; and the Comnenian sceptre was transmitted to
his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the
difficulties of the times betrayed some defects in his character;
and have exposed his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach.
The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his
daughter so often bestows on a flying hero: the weakness or
prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of
personal courage; and his political arts are branded by the
Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation. The increase
of the male and female branches of his family adorned the throne,
and secured the succession; but their princely luxury and pride
offended the patricians, exhausted the revenue, and insulted the
misery of the people. Anna is a faithful witness that his
happiness was destroyed, and his health was broken, by the cares
of a public life; the patience of Constantinople was fatigued by
the length and severity of his reign; and before Alexius expired,
he had lost the love and reverence of his subjects. The clergy
could not forgive his application of the sacred riches to the
defence of the state; but they applauded his theological learning
and ardent zeal for the orthodox faith, which he defended with
his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by
the superstition of the Greeks; and the same inconsistent
principle of human nature enjoined the emperor to found a
hospital for the poor and infirm, and to direct the execution of
a heretic, who was burned alive in the square of St. Sophia. Even
the sincerity of his moral and religious virtues was suspected by
the persons who had passed their lives in his familiar
confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife
Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a
pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant
reply of the empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb,
“You die, as you have lived—A Hypocrite!”

It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving
sons, in favor of her daughter the princess Anne whose philosophy
would not have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of
male succession was asserted by the friends of their country; the
lawful heir drew the royal signet from the finger of his
insensible or conscious father and the empire obeyed the master
of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated by ambition and
revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and when the
design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she
passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes,
and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons
of Alexius, John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the
hereditary virtue of their race, and the younger brother was
content with the title of Sebastocrator, which approached the
dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same
person the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately
united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive
stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes, or
John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously
applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her
treason, the life and fortune of Anne were justly forfeited to
the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but
he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the
rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That
respectable friend Axuch, a slave of Turkish extraction, presumed
to decline the gift, and to intercede for the criminal: his
generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his
favorite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was
the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example
of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by
conspiracy or rebellion: feared by his nobles, beloved by his
people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of
punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his
government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was
abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to
the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and
vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety.
Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal,
abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the
artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not
borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately
magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people,
so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince,
innocence had nothing to fear, and merit had every thing to hope;
and, without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he
introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the public and
private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this
accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds, the love
of arms and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John
the Handsome may be justified, at least in their principle, by
the necessity of repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the
Bosphorus. The sultan of Iconium was confined to his capital, the
Barbarians were driven to the mountains, and the maritime
provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient blessings of their
deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and Aleppo, he
repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and in the
sieges and battles of this holy war, his Latin allies were
astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek. As he
began to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient
limits of the empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates
and Tigris, the dominion of Syria, and the conquest of Jerusalem,
the thread of his life and of the public felicity was broken by a
singular accident. He hunted the wild boar in the valley of
Anazarbus, and had fixed his javelin in the body of the furious
animal; but in the struggle a poisoned arrow dropped from his
quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced a
mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the
Comnenian princes.