BOOK TWO

THE BASILIAN DYNASTY

PERIOD OF THE POWER AND GLORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

A.D. 867-1057

 

CHAPTER V

CONSOLIDATION OF BYZANTINE LEGISLATION AND DESPOTISM.

A.D. 867-963

 

Sect. I

REIGN OF BASIL I THE MACEDONIAN A.D. 867-886

 

THE history of Basil I has been transmitted to us by writers who compiled their works under the eye of his grandson, the Emperor Constantine VII, and by that grandson with his own pen. Under such auspices, history is more likely to conceal than to divulge the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. One instance of falsification may be mentioned. The imperial compilations would fain persuade us that the Slavonian groom was a man of noble descent, and that he could trace that descent either through a line of paternal or maternal ancestors to Constantine, to the Arsacids, and to Alexander the Great, yet they allow that his father laboured as a poor peasant in the neighbourhoods of Adrianople, until Basil himself, despising the cultivation of the paternal farm, sought to improve his fortune by wandering to the capital. We are told by other authorities that Basil was a Slavonian, and we know that the whole of Thrace and Macedonia was at this period cultivated by Slavonian colonists. His father’s family had been carried away captive into Bulgaria when Basil was almost an infant, at the time Crumn took Adrianople, AD 813. During the reign of Theophilus, some of the Byzantine captives succeeded in taking up arms and marching off into the empire. Basil, who was among the number, after serving the governor of Macedonia for a time, revolved to seek his fortune in Constantinople. He departed, carrying all his worldly wealth in a wallet on his shoulders, and reached the capital on a summer’s evening without knowing where to seek a night’s rest. Fatigued with his journey, he sat down in the portico of the church of St. Diomed, near the Adrianople gate, and slept there all night. In a short time he found employment as a groom in the service of a courtier named Theophilitzes, where his talent of taming unruly horses, his large head, tall figure, and great strength, rendered him remarkable; while his activity, zeal, and intelligence secured him particular notice from his master, and rapid promotion in his household.

Theophilitzes was sent into the Peloponnesus on public business by the Empress Theodora, while she was regent; and Basil, who accompanied his master, fell sick at Patras with the fever, still so prevalent in the Morea. Here he was fortunate enough to acquire the protection of an old lady of immense wealth, whose extraordinary liberality to the unknown youth induces us to suppose that she was herself of Slavonian race. She made Basil a member of her family, by uniting him with her own son John, in those spiritual ties of fraternity which the Greek Church sanctions by peculiar rites; and she bestowed on him considerable wealth when he was able to return to his master. It would appear that Basil had already acquired a position of some rank, for the widow Danielis furnished him with a train of thirty slaves. The riches Basil acquired by the generosity of his benefactress were employed in purchasing an estate in Macedonia, and in making liberal donations to his own relations. He still continued in the service of Theophilitzes, but his skill in wrestling and taming horses at last introduced him to the Emperor Michael, who immediately became his patron. His progress as boon-companion, friend, colleague, and murderer of this benefactor, has been already recounted.

The elevation of a man like Basil to the throne of Constantinople was a strange accident; but the fact that he reigned for nineteen years seems still more singular, when we recollect that he could neither boast of military service nor administrative knowledge. Nothing can prove more completely the perfection of the governmental machine at the time of his accession, than the circumstance that a man without education could so easily be moulded into a tolerable emperor. Personally, he could have possessed no partisans either in the army or the administration; nor is it likely that he had many among the people. We are tempted to conjecture that he was allowed to establish himself on the throne, because less was known about him than about most of the other men of influence at court, and consequently less evil was laid to his charge, and less personal opposition was created by his election. He succeeded in maintaining his position by displaying unexpected talents for administration. Able and unprincipled, he seems to have pursued a line of conduct which prevented the factions of the court, the parties in the church, the feelings of the army, and the prejudices of the people, from ever uniting in opposition to his personal authority. His knowledge of the sentiments of the people rendered him aware that financial oppression was the most dangerous grievance both to the emperor and the empire; he therefore carefully avoided increasing the public burdens, and devoted his attention to the establishment of order in every branch of the public service.

The depravity and impiety of Michael III had disgusted the people. Basil, in order to proclaim that his conduct was to be guided by different sentiments, seized the opportunity of his coronation in the Church of St. Sophia to make a public display of his piety. After the ceremony was concluded, he knelt down at the high altar and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, thou hast given me the crown; I deposit it at thy feet, and dedicate myself to thy service”. The crimes and intrigues of courts are often kept so long secret in despotic governments, that it is possible few of those present who heard this declaration were aware that a few hours only had elapsed since the hypocritical devotee had buried his sword in the bosom of his sovereign and benefactor.

For two years Basil made no changes in the government of the church. Photius, the actual Patriarch, was unpopular from his connection with the family of the late emperor, and the toleration he had shown for the vices of the court, while Ignatius, his deposed predecessor, possessed a powerful body of partisans among the people and the monks. Basil attached this numerous and active party to his interest by reinstating Ignatius in the patriarchate; but at the same time he contrived to avoid exciting any violent opposition on the part of Photius, by keeping up constant personal communications with that accomplished and able ecclesiastic. Photius was at the head of a party possessed of no inconsiderable weight in the church and the public administration. The aristocratic classes, and the Asiatics generally, favoured his cause; while the people of Constantinople and the Greeks of Europe were warm supporters of Ignatius.

The arbitrary authority of the emperor over the church is as strongly displayed in the treatment of Photius by Basil, as in the persecution of Ignatius by Bardas and Michael. Photius had occupied the patriarchal chair for ten years, and though his election may have been irregular, his ecclesiastical authority was completely established; and there appeared no chance that anything would occur to disturb it, when Basil, to gain a body of active political partisans, suddenly reinstated Ignatius. It is said that Photius reproached the emperor with the murder of his benefactor; but as that Patriarch was allowed to remain in office for about two years, his deposition must be ascribed entirely to political motives. The fact is that Basil was anxious to secure the support of the monks in the East, and of the Pope of Rome in the West, yet he feared to quarrel with the party of Photius.

The negotiations with the Pope had occupied some time, but when they were brought to a conclusion, a general council was held at Constantinople, which is called by the Latins the eighth general council of the church. Only one hundred and two bishops could be assembled on this occasion, for the greater part of the dignified clergy had been consecrated by Photius, and many adhered to his party. Photius himself was compelled to attend, but his calm and dignified attitude deprived his enemies of the triumph they had expected. The acts of the council of 861, by which Ignatius had been deposed, were declared to be forgeries, and the consecration of Photius as a priest was annulled.

The accusation of forgery was generally regarded as false, since it rested only on some slight changes which had been made in the translation of the Pope’s letter to the emperor, and these changes had been sanctioned by the papal legates who were present in the council. The Latins, who expect the Greeks to tolerate them in lengthening the Creed, have made a violent outcry against the Greeks, on this occasion, for modifying a papal letter in a Greek translation. The compliancy of Basil, the reintegra­tion of Ignatius, and the subservient disposition of the council of 869, induced the Pope to suppose that the time had arrived when it would be possible to regain possession of the estates belonging to the patrimony of St. Peter in the provinces of the Eastern Empire, which had been confiscated by Leo III, and that the supremacy of the See of Rome over the kingdom of Bulgaria might now be firmly established. He even hoped to gain the power of controlling the ecclesi­astical affairs of the Eastern Church. Such pretensions, however, only required to be plainly revealed to insure unanimous opposition on the part of the emperor, the clergy, and the people throughout the Byzantine Empire. Ignatius and Basil showed themselves as firm in resisting papal usurpation as Photius and Michael.

In the meantime, Photius was banished to the monastery of Skepés; and we possess several of his letters, written during the period of his disgrace, which give a more favourable view of his character than would be formed from his public life alone. They afford convincing proof of the falsity of some of the charges brought against him by his opponents. The real fault of Photius was, that the statesman, and not the Christian, was dominant in his conduct as Patriarch; but this has been a fault so general at Rome, at Constantinople, and at Canterbury, that he would have incurred little censure in the West had he not shown himself a devoted partisan of his national church, and a successful enemy of papal ambition. The majority of the Eastern bishops, in spite of his exile, remained attached to his cause, and it was soon evident to Basil that his restoration was the only means of restoring unity to the Greek church. Accordingly, when Ignatius died in the year 878, Photius was reinstated as Patriarch, and another general council was assembled at Constantinople. This council, which is called the eighth general council of the church by the Eastern Christians, was attended by three hundred and eighty-three bishops. The Emperor Basil, the Pope, and Photius, all resolved to temporize, and each played his own game of diplomacy and tergiversation, in the hope of ultimately succeeding. The Pope proved the greatest loser, for his legates were bribed—or at least the Latins say so—to yield up everything that Basil and Photius desired. They are even accused of having allowed a covert attack on the orthodoxy of Rome, in lengthening the Creed, by the addition of the words ‘and the Son’, to pass unchallenged. The passion displayed by the clergy of the Greek and Latin churches, during the quarrels between Ignatius and Photius, makes it difficult to ascertain the truth. It appears, however, that Pope John VIII would have restored the Nicene Creed to its original form, by expunging the clause which had been added, if he could have secured the concessions he required from the Fasters church and the Byzantine emperor to his political pretensions. Certainly this is to be implied from the letter addressed to Photius; but papal writers have since defended the consistency and infallibility of the popes, by asserting that the copy of the letter annexed to the acts of the council is a forgery. If either of the churches committed a tithe of the iniquities with which they charge one another, we must allow that Christianity exercised very little influence on the priestly character during the ninth century.

When the Emperor Leo VI succeeded his father Basil, Photius was again banished, in order to make way for the emperor’s brother Stephen to occupy the patriarchal throne. Photius was exiled to a monastery in Armenia, AD 886, and he died in this retirement in the year 891, leaving behind him the reputation of having been the most accomplished and learned man of his time, and one of the last enlightened scholars in the East. Even Leo treated him with respect; and in his letter to the Pope announcing his exile, he spoke of it as a voluntary resignation, which may, perhaps, be accounted a proof that it was the result of a political negotiation. As this distinguished man was one of the most dangerous opponents of papal ambition prior to the time of Luther, his conduct has been made the object of innumerable misrepre­sentations; and the writers of the Romish church even now can rarely discuss his conduct in moderate language, and with equitable feelings.

The most interesting point of dispute to the heads of the Eastern and Western churches in their quarrels, for some time, was the supremacy over the church of the Bulgarians. This was a momentous political question to the Byzantine emperors, independent of its ecclesiastical importance to the patriarchs of Constantinople, for papal influence was sure to be employed in a manner hostile to the Eastern Empire. Besides this, as the claim of Rome to supremacy over Bulgaria rested on the ancient subjection of the Danubian provinces to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, in the times when that archbishopric was immediately dependent on the papal See, the establishment of papal authority in Bulgaria would have afforded good ground for commencing a struggle for withdrawing Thessalonica itself from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and placing it under the control of the Pope of Rome. The conduct of the emperors of Constantinople in these ecclesiastical negotiations was therefore the result of sound policy, and it was marked with moderation and crowned with success.

The financial administration of Basil was, on the whole, honourable to his government. At his accession, he gave out that he found only 300 lb. of gold, and a small quantity of silver coin in the imperial treasury. This served as a pretext for a partial resumption of some of the lavish grants of Michael to worthless favourites, and in this way Basil collected 30,000 lb. of gold without increasing the public burdens. With this supply in hand for immediate wants, he was enabled to take measures for effecting the economy necessary to make the ordinary revenues meet the demands of the public service. His personal experience of the real sufferings of the lower orders, and the prudence imposed by his doubtful position, prevented him, during the whole course of his reign, from augmenting the taxes; and the adoption of this policy insured to his government the power and popularity which constituted him the founder of the longest dynasty that ever occupied the throne of Constantinople. Though his successors were, on the whole, far inferior to his predecessors of the Iconoclast period in ability, still their moderation, in conforming to the financial system traced out by Basil, gave the Byzantine empire a degree of power it had not previously possessed.

The government of the Eastern Empire was always systematic and cautious. Reforms were slowly effected; but when the necessity was admitted, great changes were gradually completed. Generations, however, passed away without men noticing how far they had quitted the customs of their fathers, and entered on new paths leading to very different habits, thoughts, and institutions. The reign of no one emperor, if we except that of Leo the Isaurian, embraces a revolution in the institutions of the state, completed in a single generation; hence it is that Byzantine history loses the interest to be derived from individual biography. It steps over centuries marking rather the movement of generations of mankind than the acts of individual emperors and statesmen, and it becomes a didactic essay on political progress instead of a living picture of man’s actions. In the days of the liberty of Athens, the life of each leader embraces the history of many revolutions, and the mind of a single individual seems often to guide or modify their course; but in the years of Constantinopolitan servitude, emperors and people are borne slowly onward by a current of which we are not always certain that we can trace the origin or follow the direction. These observations receive their best development by a review of the legislative acts of the Basilian dynasty. It was reserved to Basil I and his son Leo VI to complete the reorganization of the empire commenced by Leo III; for the promulgation of a revised code of the laws of the empire, in the Greek language, was the accomplishment of an idea impressed on the Byzantine administration by the great Iconoclast reformer, and of which his own Ecloga or manual was the first imperfect expression.

The legal reforms of the early Iconoclast emperors were sufficient to supply the exigencies of the moment, in the state of anarchy, ignorance, and disorder to which the provinces of the empire were then reduced by the ravages of the Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Saracens. But when the vigorous administration of the Isaurian dynasty had driven back these invaders, and re-established order and security of property, the rapid progress of society called for additional improvements, and for a systematic reform in the legislation of the empire. Enlarged views concerning the changes which it was necessary to make in the compilations of Justinian were gradually adopted. Nicephorus I and Leo V (the Armenian) seem to have confined their attention to practical reforms in the dispensation of justice, by improving the forms of procedure in the existing tribunals, but when Bardas was charged with the judicial department, during the reign of Michael III, the necessity of a thorough revision of the laws of the empire began to be deeply felt. Bardas was probably ambitious of the glory of effecting this reform as the surest step to the imperial throne. The legal school at Constantinople, which he encouraged, certainly prepared the materials for the great legislative work that forms the marked feature in consolidating the power of the Basilian dynasty.

The legislative views of Basil I were modelled in conformity to the policy impressed on the Byzantine empire by Leo III. They were directed to vest all legislative power in the hands of the emperor, and to constitute the person of the sovereign the centre of law as much as of financial authority and military power. The senate had continued to act as a legislative council from time to time during the Iconoclast period, and the emperors had often invited it to discuss important laws, in order to give extraordinary solemnity to their sanction. Such a practice suggested the question whether the senate and the people did not still possess a right to share in the legislation of the empire, which opportunity might constitute into a permanent control over the imperial authority in this branch of government. The absolute centralization of the legislative authority in the person of the emperor was the only point which prevented the government of the Byzantine empire from being theoretically an absolute despotism, when Basil I ascended the throne, and he completed that centralization. Though the senate consisted of persons selected by the sovereign, and though it acted generally as a subservient agent of the executive power, still, as some of the most powerful men in the empire were usually found among its members, its position as a legislative council invested it with a degree of political influence that might have checked the absolute power of the emperor. Basil deprived it of all participation in legislative functions, and restricted its duties solely to those of an administrative council. At the same time, the privileges formerly possessed by the provincial proprietors, the remains of the Roman curia, or of the more recently formed municipalities that had grown up to replace them, were swept away as offensive to despotic power. Cherson had been robbed of its free institutions as early as the reign of Theophilus, but the total abolition of municipal institutions by imperial edict was certainly rather theoretical than practical. The long series of progressive alterations in society, which had destroyed the efficacy of the older municipalities, had replaced them by new societies and corporations having confined and local objects, too far beneath the sphere of action of the central administration to excite any jealousy on the part of those deputed to exercise the imperial power. The bishops now lost their position of defenders of the people, for as they were chosen by the sovereign, the dignitaries of the Byzantine church were remarkable for their servility to the civil power.

The promulgation of the Basilika may be considered as marking the complete union of all legislative, executive, judicial, financial, and administrative power in the person of the emperor. The church had already been reduced to complete submission to the imperial authority. Basil, therefore, may claim to be the emperor who established arbitrary despotism as the constitution of the Roman Empire. The divine right of the sovereign to rule as God might be pleased to enlighten his understanding and soften his heart, was henceforth the recognized organic law of the Byzantine Empire. The compilation of the laws of Justinian is one of the strangest examples of the manner in which sovereigns vitiate the most extensive and liberal reforms, by their conservative prejudices in practical details. Justinian reconstructed the legislation of the Roman Empire, in order to adapt it to the wants of the people who spoke Greek; yet he restricted the benefit of his new code, by promulgating it in Latin, though that language had ceased to be in use among three quarters of his civilized subjects. The conservative principles of the imperial government, and the pride of the higher classes of Constantinople in their Roman origin, induced the emperor to cling to the use of the Latin language as marking their connection with past ages, and drawing a line of separation between the government and the mass of the people. Justinian himself pronounced the condemnation of his own conduct by publishing his latest laws in Greek, and thus leaving his legislation dispersed in sources promulgated in two different languages.

A Greek school of legists, founded long before the time of Justinian, but which flourished during his reign, did much to remedy this defect, by translating the Latin body of the law. Greek translations of the Institutions, the Pandects, the Code, and the Edicts, as well as Greek commentaries on these works, soon replaced the original Latin texts, and became the authorities that guided the courts of law throughout the Eastern Empire. The decline of knowledge, and the anarchy that prevailed during the century in which the empire was ruled by the Heraclian dynasty, caused the translations of the larger works to be neglected, and the writings of commentators, who had published popular abridgments, to be generally consulted. The evil of this state of things was felt so strongly when Leo III had restored some degree of order throughout the empire, that, as we have already mentioned, he promul­gated an official handbook of the law, called the Ecloga. From that time the subject of legislative reform occupied the attention of the imperial government, as well as of those professionally engaged in the administration of justice; and it appears certain that Bardas had made considerable progress towards the execution of those legislative reforms which were promulgated by Basil I, and completed by Leo VI. Indeed, it appears probable that the project was conceived as early as the time of Theophilus, whose personal knowledge of the law was greater than was possessed by his successors, who have gained a high place in history as law reformers.

The precise share which the predecessors of Basil are entitled to claim in the legislative labours of the Basilian dynasty cannot be determined with exactitude, but that it is not inconsiderable, is evident from the internal evidence afforded by the works themselves. Certainly divine right to rule the state as emperor could never have rendered the Slavonian groom, who had qualified for the throne as the boon-companion of Michael the Drunkard, a fit person to direct the progress of legislation. All that could be expected from him was, that he should learn to appreciate the importance of the subject, and adopt the labours of the jurisconsults who had assisted Bardas. It seems, therefore, probable that he envied the popularity the Caesar had gained by his attention to legal business, and understood fully that there was no surer mode of acquiring the goodwill of all classes than by becoming himself a law reformer. Basil, however, though eager to obtain the glory of publishing a new code, remained utterly ignorant of legislation, and personally incapable of guiding the work. A consequence of his eagerness to obtain the desired end, and of his ignorance of what was necessary to the proper performance of the task, is apparent in the first legal work published by his authority, called the Procheiron, or manual of law. The primary object of this publication was to supplant the Ecloga of Leo III in order to efface the memory of the reforms of the Iconoclasts. The Procheiron appears to have been promulgated as early as the year 870, and it bears marks of having been hurried into premature publicity. The first half of the work is executed in a completely different manner from the latter part. In the earlier titles, the texts borrowed from the Institutions, Pandects, Code, and Novels of Justinian, are arranged in regular order, and are followed by the modern laws; this well-arranged plan is abandoned in the latter ties, apparently in consequence of a sudden determination having been adopted to hurry forward the publication. The much-abused Ecloga of Leo III was then adopted as the most available guide-book, and, in conjunction with the Institutes and Novels, became the principal source consulted. The Pandects and the Code were neglected, because they required too much time and study for their arrangement.

This fact suggests the conclusion that a commission of jurisconsults had been named as revisers of the law, who had been sitting from the time of Bardas; and these lawyers had systematically proceeded to compile a manual of the law in forty titles, and a new civil code or revision of the old law in sixty books, in which they had made considerable progress, when Basil suddenly hurried forward the premature publication of the manual in the form it now bears. It is impossible that the same spirit can have directed the latter portion of the work which dictated the compilation of the earlier. The science of Bardas is visible in the one, the ignorance of Basil in the other. For many years Basil remained satisfied with his performance as a legislator, for he was unable to appreciate the legal wants of the empire; but the subject was again forced on his attention by the confusion that prevailed in the sources of the law, to which the tribunals were still compelled to refer.

At length, in the year 884, a new code, embracing the whole legislation of the empire in one work, was published under the title of the Revision of the Old Law. The respect paid to the laws of Rome was so deeply implanted in the minds of the people, that new laws, however superior they might have been, could not have insured the same solid basis for their support, which was claimed by a legislation aspiring to be regarded merely as the legitimate representative of the Roman jurisprudence, clothed in a Greek dress. The code of Basil was nothing but a compilation formed from the Greek translations of Justinian’s laws, and the commentaries on them which had received the sanction of the Byzantine tribunals and legal schools. But this revision of the old law was hurried forward to publicity on account of some special reason, suggested either by imperial vanity or accidental policy. In the Procheiron, Basil had announced that the revised code about to be promulgated consisted of sixty books, yet, when he published it, the work was divided into forty. This premature edition was, however, again revised by Leo VI; and it is the new and more complete code published by that emperor in sixty books, as originally announced, which we now possess under the title of Basilika, or imperial laws; but no perfect manuscript has been preserved.

The object proposed in the Basilian legislation was too simple not to have been long in agitation before the precise plan on which it was ultimately executed was adopted. The Basilika is merely a reunion, in one work, of all the sources of Roman law in vigour at the time, without any attempt to condense them into clearer and more precise rules. Every preceding law or maxim of jurisprudence actually in force, is arranged under its own head in a series of books and titles, distributed so as to facilitate their use in the courts of law and chambers of counsel. Some modern commentaries have been added to the work as we possess it, which appear not to have formed part of the original text.

After the promulgation of the first edition of the Basilika, Basil published a second legal manual, to serve as an introduction to its study. It is called the Epanagoge, but it appears never to have attained the popularity of the Ecloga and the Procheiron.

The Basilika remained the law of the Byzantine Empire until its conquest by the Franks, and it continued in use as the national law of the Greeks at Nicaea, Constantinople, and Trebizond, and in the Morea, until they were conquered by the Ottomans. The want of a system of law growing up out of the social exigencies of the people, and interwoven in its creation with the national institutions, is a serious defect in Greek civilization. Since the time of the Achaean league, the Greeks have not possessed a national government, and they have never possessed a national system of laws; hence their communal institutions and municipal rights have received only such protection as the church could afford them; and even the church was generally the subservient instrument of the Roman, Byzantine, and Turkish governments. The evil still exists—the spirit of Bavarian law and French centralization have prevented an admirable basis for municipal liberties, which existed in the communal institutions, from receiving legislative development in the spirit of the nation. The pedantry of Phanariots, who cling to Byzantine prejudices, induced the rulers of liberated Greece to declare the Basilika, of which no perfect copy exists, to be the law of the new Greek kingdom.

Basil found the army in a much better state than the financial administration; for, even amidst the disorders of Michael’s reign, measures had been taken to maintain the discipline of the troops. Basil had, consequently, only to maintain the army on the footing on which he found it, without augmenting the power of the generals he entrusted with the command of large armies. Being personally without either military experience or scientific knowledge, Basil can only be considered responsible for the general direction of the military affairs of his reign; and in this he does not appear to have displayed much talent. He allowed the Saracens to take Syracuse, while he kept the marines of the imperial navy employed in digging the foundations of a new church, and the ships in transporting marbles and building materials for its construction. Basil, indeed, like all his predecessors, appeared more than once at the head of his armies in the East; for this was a duty which no emperor of Constantinople since Leo III had ventured to neglect. It is probable, however, that his presence was calculated rather to restrain than to excite the activity of his generals, who were sure to be rendered responsible for any want of success, and to be deprived of every merit in case of victory; while any brilliant personal exploit, which eclipsed the glory of the emperor, might have the effect of making them objects of jealousy.

The principal military operation of Basil’s reign was the war he carried on with the Paulicians. This sect first made its appearance in Armenia about the middle of the seventh century, in the reign of Constans II, and it was persecuted by that emperor. Constantine IV, (Pogonatus,) Justinian II, and Leo III, all endeavoured to extirpate the heresy as one which threatened the unity of the church; for unity in religious opinions was then regarded as the basis of the prosperity of the empire, and a portion of its political constitution. Constantine V, after taking Melitene, transported numbers of Asiatic colonists into Thrace, many of whom were converts to the Paulician doctrines. Under this emperor and his immediate successors they enjoyed toleration, and made many converts in Pontus, Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Pisidia. Nicephorus allowed them all the rights of citizens, and they continued to be loyal subjects, until Michael I commenced persecuting them in the most barbarous mariner. This circumstance, though it affords the orthodox historian Theophanes great delight, ultimately prepared the way for the depopulation of Asia Minor. These cruelties continued under Leo V, until some of the Paulicians, rising in rebellion, slew the bishop of Neocesarea, and the imperial commissioners engaged in torturing them, and withdrew into the province of Melitene, under the protection of the caliph. From this period they are often found forming the vanguard of the Saracen invasions into the south-eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Under Michael II and Theophilus some degree of religious toleration was restored, and the Paulicians within the bounds of the empire were allowed to hold their religious opinions in tranquillity. But their persecution recommenced during the regency of Theodora; and the cruelty with which they were treated drove such numbers into rebellion, that they were enabled to found an independent republic, as has been already mentioned. If we believe the friends of the Paulicians, they were strict Christians, who reverenced the teaching of St. Paul, and proposed him as their sole guide and legislator; but if we credit their enemies, they were Mani­cheans, who merged Christianity in their heretical opinions.

The little republic founded by the Paulicians at Tephrike, against which the armies of the Emperor Michael III had contended without any decided success, though it owed its foundation to religious opinion, soon became a place of refuge for all fugitives from the Byzantine empire; and its existence as a state, on the frontier of a bigoted and oppressive government, became a serious danger to the rulers of Constantinople. Chrysochir, the son of Karbeas, succeeded his father in the command of the armed bands of Tephrike, and supported his army by plundering the Byzantine provinces, as the Danes or Normans about the same time maintained themselves by their expeditions in France and England. The number of prisoners taken by the Paulicians was so great that Basil found himself compelled to send an embassy to Tephrike, for the purpose of ransoming his subjects. Petrus Siculus, the ambassador, remained at Tephrike about nine months, but was unable to effect any peaceable arrangement with Chrysochir. He has, however, left us a valuable account of the Paulician community. During his residence at Tephrike, he discovered that the Paulicians had sent ambassadors into Bulgaria, to induce the king of that newly converted country to form an alliance with them, and missionaries to persuade the people to receive their doctrines, which were prevalent in some districts of Thrace. The ravages committed by the Paulician troops, the bad success of the embassy of Peter Siculus, and the danger of an increase of the power of Chryoschir by new alliances, determined Basil at length to make a powerful effort for the destruction of this alarming enemy. It was evident nothing short of extermination could put an end to their plundering expeditions.

In 871, Basil made his first attack on the Paulicians; but, after destroying some of their villages, he suffered a severe check, and lost a considerable portion of his army, he himself only escaping in consequence of the valour of Theophylactus, the father of the future emperor, Romanus I, who by this exploit brought himself forward in the army. Fortunately for Basil, the repeated seditions of the Turkish mercenaries at Bagdad had weakened the power of the caliphate; a succession of revolutions had caused the deposition and murder of several caliphs within the space of a few years, and some of the distant provinces of the immense empire of the Abassides had already established independent governments. The Paulicians, therefore, at this period could obtain no very important aid from the Saracens, who, as we are informed by Basil’s son, the Emperor Leo VI, in his work on military tactics, were regarded as the best soldiers in the world, and far superior both to the Bulgarians and Franks. Basil had found little difficulty in driving all the plundering bands of the Paulicians back into their own territory; but it was dangerous to attempt the siege of Tephrike as long as the enemy could assemble an army to attack the rear of the besiegers in the frontier towns of the caliph’s dominions. The empires of Constantinople and Bagdad were at war, though hostilities had for some time been languidly carried on. Basil now resolved to capture or destroy the fortified towns which had afforded aid to the Paulicians. After ravaging the territory of Melitene, he sent his general, Christophoros, with a division of the army to capture Sozopetra and Samosata; while he himself crossed the Euphrates, and laid waste the country as far as the Asanias. On his return, the emperor fought a battle with the Emir of Melitene, who had succeeded in collecting an army to dispute his progress. The success of this battle was not so decided as to induce Basil to besiege either Melitene or Tephrike, and he returned to Constantinople leaving his general to prosecute the war. In the meantime, Chrysochir, unable to maintain his troops without plunder, invaded Cappadocia, but was overtaken by Christophoros at Agranes, where his movements were circumscribed by the superior military skill of the Byzantine general Chrysochir found himself compelled to retreat, with an active enemy watching his march. Christophoros soon surprised the Paulician camp, and Chrysochir was slain in the battle. His head was sent to Constantinople, that the Emperor Basil might fulfil a vow he had made that he would pierce it with three arrows. Tephrike was taken not long after, and destroyed. The town of Catabatala, to which the Paulicians retired after the loss of Tephrike, was captured in the succeeding campaign, and the Paulician troops, unable to continue their plundering expeditions, either retreated into Armenia or dispersed. Many found means of entering the Byzantine service, and were employed in southern Italy against the African Saracens.

The war with the Saracens continued, though it was not prosecuted with vigour by either party. In the year 876, the Byzantine troops gained possession of the fortress of Lulu, the bulwark of Tarsus, which alarmed the Caliph Almutamid for the safety of his possessions in Cilicia to such a degree, that he entrusted their defence to his powerful vassal, Touloun, the viceroy of Egypt. In the following year, the Emperor hoping to extend his conquests, again appeared at the head of the army of Asia, and established his headquarters at Caesarea. His object was to drive the Saracens out of Cilicia, but he only succeeded in ravaging the country beyond the passes of Mount Taurus up to the suburbs of Germanicia, Adana, and Tarsus, without being able to gain possession of any of these cities. After the emperor’s return to Constantinople, the commander-in-chief of the army, Andrew the Slavonian, continued to ravage the Saracen territory, and destroyed an army sent to oppose him on the banks of the river Podandos. This defeat was, however, soon avenged by the Mohammedans, who routed Stypiotes, the successor of Andrew, with great loss, as he was preparing to besiege Tarsus. In the thirteenth year of his reign, (780,) Basil again invaded the caliphate, but failed in an attempt to take Germanicia. The war was subsequently allowed to languish, though the Saracens made several plundering expeditions against the Christians, both by land and sea; but the fortress of Lulu, and some other castles commanding the passes of Mount Taurus, remained in the possession of the Byzantine troops.

The Saracens of Africa had for some time past devastated the shores of every Christian country bordering on the Mediterranean, and plundered the islands of the Ionian Sea and the Archipelago as regularly as the Paulicians had ravaged Asia Minor. Basil was hardly seated on the throne before an embassy from the Slavonians of Dalmatia arrived at Constantinople, to solicit his aid against these corsairs. A Saracen fleet of thirty-six ships had attacked Dalmatia, in which a few Roman cities still existed, maintaining a partial independence among the Slavonian tribes, who had occupied all the country. Several towns were taken by the Saracens, and Ragusa, a place of considerable commercial importance, was closely besieged. Basil lost no time in sending assistance to the inhabitants. A fleet of a hundred vessels, under the admiral Niketas Oryphas, was prepared for sea with all possible expedition: and the Saracens, hearing of his approach, hastily abandoned the siege of Ragusa, after they had invested it for fifteen months. The expedition of Oryphas re-established the imperial influence in the maritime districts of Dalmatia, and obtained from the Slavonians a direct recognition of the emperor’s sovereignty. They retained their own government, and elected their magistrates; and their submission to the Byzantine empire was purchased by their being permitted to receive a regular tribute from several Roman cities, which, in consideration of this payment, were allowed to occupy districts on the mainland without the neighbouring Slavonians exercising any jurisdiction over such property. The Roman inhabitants in the islands on the Dalmatian coast had preserved their allegiance to the Eastern emperors, and maintained themselves independent of the Slavonians, who had conquered and colonized the mainland, receiving their governors and judges from the central authority at Constantinople.

As early as the year 842, two rival princes, of Lombard race, who disputed the possession of the duchy of Beneventum, solicited assistance from the Saracens; and the Infidels, indifferent to the claims of either, but eager for plunder, readily took part in the quarrel. A body of Saracens from Sicily, who had arrived for the purpose of assisting one of the Christian claimants, resolved to secure a firm establishment in Italy on their own account. To effect this they stormed the city of Bari, though it belonged to their own ally. At Bari they formed a camp for the purpose of ravaging Italy, and made it their station for plundering the possessions of the Frank and Byzantine empires on the coast of the Adriatic. In 846, other bands of Sicilian Saracens landed at the mouth of the Tiber, and plundered the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, both then without the walls of Rome. Indeed, the ‘mistress of the world’ was only saved from falling into the hands of the Mohammedans by the troops of the Emperor Louis II (85o). Shortly after, Pope Leo IV fortified the suburb of the Vatican, and thus placed the church of St. Peter in security in the new quarter of the town called the Leonine city. From this period the ravages of the Saracens in Italy were incessant, and the proprietors who dwelt in the country were compelled to build fortified towers, strong enough to resist any sudden attacks, and so high as to be beyond the reach of fire kindled at their base. The manners formed by this state of social insecurity coloured the history of Italy with dark stains for several centuries. In the year 867, the Emperor Louis II exerted himself to restrain the ravages of the Saracens. He laid siege to Bari, and sent ambassadors to Constantinople to solicit the cooperation of a Byzantine fleet. The fleet of Oryphac, strengthened by the naval forces of the Dalmatian cities, was ordered to assist the operations of the Western emperor; but the pride of the court of Constantinople (more sensitive than usual), prevented the conclusion of a treaty with a sovereign who claimed to be treated as emperor of the West. In February, 871, Louis carried the city of Bari by assault, and put the garrison to the sword. The Franks and Greeks disputed the honour of the conquest, and each attempted to turn it to their own profit, so that the war was continued in a desultory manner, without leading to any decided results; and the cultivators of the soil were in turn plundered by the Lombard princes, the Saracen corsairs, and the German and Byzantine emperors. The Saracens again attacked Rome, and compelled Pope John VIII to purchase their retreat by engaging to pay an annual tribute of 25,000 marks of silver. The south of Italy was a scene of political confusion. The Dukes of Naples, Amalfi, and Salerno joined the Saracens in plundering the Roman territory; but Pope John VIII, placing himself at the head of the Roman troops, fought both with Christians and Mohammedans, won battles, and cut off the heads of his prisoners, without the slightest reference to the canons of the church. The bishop of Naples, as bold a warrior as the Pope, dethroned his own brother, and put out his eyes, on the pretext that he had allied himself with the Infidels; yet, when the bishop had possessed himself of his brother’s dukedom, he also kept up communications with the Saracens, and aided them in plundering the territory of Rome. This lawless state of affairs induced the Italians to turn for security to the Byzantine Empire. The troops of Basil rendered themselves masters of Bari without difficulty, and the extent of the Byzantine province in southern Italy was greatly extended by a series of campaigns, in which Nicephorus Phokas, grandfather of the emperor of the same name, distinguished himself by his pru­dent conduct and able tactics. The Saracens were at last expelled from all their possessions in Calabria. The Byzantine government formed its possessions into a province called the Theme of Longobardia, but this province was constantly liable to vary in its extent; and though Gaeta, Naples, Sorrento, and Amalfi acknowledged allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople, his authority was often very little respected in these cities.

While Basil was successful in extending his power in Italy, the Saracens revenged themselves in Sicily by the conquest of Syracuse, which fell into their hands in 878, and placed them in possession of the whole island. The city, though besieged on the land side by the Saracens established in Sicily, and blockaded by a fleet from Africa, made a gallant defence, and might have been relieved had the emperor shown more activity, or entrusted the force prepared for its relief to a competent officer. The expedition he sent, though it was delayed until nothing could be effected without rapid movements, wasted two months in the port of Monemvasia, where it received the news of the fall of Syracuse. The loss of the last Greek city in Sicily was deeply felt by the people of the Byzantine empire, on account of its commercial importance; and it was reported that the news of so great a calamity to the Christian world was first made known to the inhabitants of Greece by an assembly of demons, who met in the forest of Helos, on the banks of the Eurotas, to rejoice in the event, where their revels were witnessed by a Laconian shepherds Basil, however, seems to have treated the ruin of a Greek city as a matter of less importance than did Satan. The daring with which the Saracens carried on their naval expeditions over the Mediterranean at this period is a re­markable feature in the state of society. The attacks of the Danes and Normans on the coasts of England and France were not more constant nor more terrible.

Some of these expeditions deserve to be noticed, in order to point out the great destruction of capital, and the disorganization of society they caused. For some years they threatened the maritime districts of the Eastern Empire with as great a degree of insecurity as that from which society had been delivered by Leo III. In the year 881, the emir of Tarsus, with a fleet of thirty large ships, laid siege to Chalcis, on the Euripus; but Oiniates, the general of the theme of Hellas, having assembled the troops in his province, the emir was killed in an attempt to storm the place, and the Saracen expedition was completely defeated. Shortly after this, the Saracens of Crete ravaged the islands of the Archipelago with a fleet of twenty-seven large ships and a number of smaller vessels. Entering the Hellespont, they plundered the island of Proconnesus; but they were at last overtaken and defeated by the imperial fleet under Oryphas. Undismayed by their losses, they soon fitted out a new fleet, and recommenced their ravages, hoping to avoid the Byzantine admiral by doubling Cape Taenarus, and plundering the western shores of Greece. Niketas Oryphas, on visiting the port of Kenchrees, found that the corsairs were already cruising off the entrance of the Adriatic. He promptly ordered all his galleys to be transported over the Isthmus of Corinth by the ancient tram-road, which had been often used for the same purpose in earlier times, and which was still kept in such a state of repair that all his vessels were conveyed from sea to sea in a single night. The Saracens, surprised by this sudden arrival of a fleet from a quarter where they supposed there was no naval force, fought with less courage than usual, and lost their whole fleet. The cruelty with which the captives, especially the renegades, were treated, was to the last degree inhuman, and affords sad proof of the widespread misery and deep exasperation their previous atrocities had produced, as well as of the barbarity of the age. No torture was spared by the Byzantine authorities. Shortly after this an African fleet of sixty vessels, of extraordinary size, laid waste Zante and Cephallenia. Nasar, the Byzantine admiral, who succeeded Niketas Oryphas, while in pursuit of this fleet, touched at Methone to revictual; but at that port all his rowers deserted, and his ships were detained until the general of the Peloponnesian theme replaced them by a levy of Mardaites and other inhabitants of the peninsula. The Byzantine naval force, even after this contrariety, was again victorious over the Saracens; and the war of pillage was transferred into Sicily, where the Greeks laid waste the neighbourhoods of Palermo, and captured a number of valuable merchant-ships, with such an abundant supply of oil that it was sold at Constantinople for an obolos the litra.

During these wars, Basil recovered possession of the island of Cyprus, but was only able to retain possession of it for seven years, when the Saracens again reconquered it.

Much of Basil’s reputation as a wise sovereign is due to his judicious adoption of administrative reforms, called for by the disorders introduced into the government by the neglect of Michael III. His endeavours to lighten the burden of taxation without decreasing the public revenues was then a rare merit. But the eulogies which his grandson and other flatterers have heaped on his private virtues deserve but little credit. The court certainly maintained more outward decency than in the time of his predecessor, but there are many proofs that the reformation was merely external. Thekla, the sister of the Emperor Michael III, who had received the imperial crown from her father Theophilus, had been the concubine of Basil, with the consent of her brother. After Basil assassinated the brother, he neglected and probably feared the sister, but she consoled herself with other lovers. It happened that on some occasion a person employed in the household of Thekla waited on the emperor, who, with the rude facetiousness he inherited from the stable-yard, asked the domestic, “Who lives with your mistress at present?”. The individual (Neatokomites) was immediately named, for shame was out of the question in such society. But the jealousy of Basil was roused by this open installation of a successor in the favours of one who had once occupied a place on the throne he had usurped, and he ordered Neatokomites to be seized, scourged, and immured for life in a monastery. It is said that he was base enough to order Thekla to be ill-treated, and to confiscate great part of her private fortune. The Empress Eudocia Ingerina avenged Thekla, by conducting herself on the throne in a manner more pardonable in the mistress of Michael the Drunkard than in the wife of Basil. When her amours were discovered, the emperor prudently avoided scandal, by compelling her lover to retire privately into a monastery.

The most interesting episode in the private history of Basil is the friendship of Danielis, the Greek lady of Patras. As she had laid the foundation of his wealth while he was only a servant of Theophilitzes, we may believe that she was eager to see him when she heard that he was seated on the imperial throne. But though she might boast of having been the first to perceive the merits of Basil, she must have doubted whether she would be regarded as a welcome visitor at court. Basil, however, was not ungrateful to those who had assisted him in his poverty, and he sent for the son of his benefactor, and raised him to the rank of protospatharios. The widow also received an invitation to visit Constantinople, and see her adopted son seated on the throne—which, it was said, she had long believed he was destined by heaven to fill; for it had been reported that, when Basil first entered the cathedral of St. Andrew at Patras, a monk was seized with a prophetic vision, and proclaimed that he was destined to become emperor. This prophecy Danielis had heard and believed. The invitation must have afforded her the highest gratification, as a proof of her own discernment in selecting one who possessed affection and gratitude, as well as great talents and divine favour. The old lady was the possessor of a princely fortune, and her wealth indicates that the state of society in the Peloponnesus was not very dissimilar in the ninth century from what it had been in the first centuries of our era, under the Roman government, when Caius Antonius and Eurykles were proprietors of whole provinces, and Herodes Atticus possessed riches that an emperor might have envied.

The lady Danielis set off from Patras in a litter or covered couch, carried on the shoulders of ten slaves; and the train which followed her, destined to relieve these litter-bearers, amounted to three hundred persons. When she reached Constantinople, she was lodged in the apartments of the palace of Magnaura appropriated for the reception of princely guests. The rich presents she had prepared for the emperor astonished the inhabitants of the capital, for no foreign monarch had ever offered gifts of equal value to a Byzantine sovereign. The slaves that bore the gifts were themselves a part of the present, and were all distinguished for their youth, beauty, and accomplishments. Four hundred young men, one hundred eunuchs, and one hundred maidens, formed the living portion of this magnificent offering. A hundred pieces of the richest coloured drapery, one hundred pieces of soft woollen cloth, two hundred pieces of linen, and one hundred of cambric, so fine that each piece could be enclosed in the joint of a reed. To all this a service of cups, dishes, and plates of gold and silver was added. When Danielis reached Constantinople, she found that the emperor had constructed a magnificent church as an expiation for the murder of his benefactor, Michael III. She sent orders to the Peloponnesus to manufacture carpets of unusual size, in order to cover the whole floor, that they might protect the rich mosaic pavement, in which a peacock with outspread tail astonished everyone who beheld it by the extreme brilliancy of its colouring. Before the widow quitted Constantinople, she settled a con­siderable portion of her estates in Greece on her son, the protospatharios, and on her adopted child the emperor, in joint property.

After Basil’s death, she again visited Constantinople; her own son was also dead, so she constituted the Emperor Leo VI her sole heir. On quitting the capital for the last time, she desired that the protospathar Zenobios might be despatched to the Peloponnesus, for the purpose of preparing a register of her extensive estates and immense property. She died shortly after her return; and even the imperial officers were amazed at the amount of her wealth : the quantity of gold coin, gold and silver plate, works of art in bronze, furniture, rich stuffs in linen, cotton, wool, and silk, cattle and slaves, palaces and farms, formed an inheritance that enriched even an emperor of Constantinople. The slaves, of which the Emperor Leo became the proprietor, were so numerous that he ordered three thousand to be enfranchised and sent to the theme of Longobardia, as Apulia was then called, where they were put in possession of land, which they cultivated as serfs. After the payment of many legacies, and the division of a part of the landed property, according to the dispositions of the testament, the emperor remained possessor of eighty farms or villages. This narration furnishes a curious glimpse into the condition of society in Greece during the latter part of the ninth century, which is the period when the Greek race began to recover a numerical superiority, and prepare for the consolidation of its political ascendancy over the Slavonian colonists in the Peloponnesus. Unfortunately, history supplies us with no contemporary facts that point out the precise causes of the diminution of the relative numbers of the Slavonians, and the rapid increase in the absolute numbers of the Greek agricultural population. We are left to seek for explanations of these facts in the general laws which regulate the progress of population and the decline of society.

The steps by which Basil mounted the throne were never forgotten by the political and military adventurers, who considered the empire a fit reward for a successful conspirator. John Kurkuas, a patrician of great wealth, who commanded the Ikanates, expected to seize the crown as a lawful prize, and engaged sixty-six of the leading men in the public administration to participate in his design. The plot was revealed to Basil by some of the conspirators, who perceived they could gain more by a second treachery than by persisting in their first treason. Kurkuas was seized, and his eyes were put out: the other conspirators were scourged in the hippodrome; their heads were shaved, their beards burned off, and after being paraded through the capital they were exiled, and their estates confiscated. The clemency of Basil in inflicting these paternal punishments, instead of exacting the penalties imposed by the law of treason, is lauded by his interested historians. The fate of Kurkuas, however, only claims our notice, because he was the father of John Kurkuas, a general whom the Byzantine writers consider as a hero worthy to be compared with Trajan and Belisarius. Kurkuas was also the great-grandfather of the Emperor John Zimiskes, one of the ablest soldiers who ever occupied the throne of Constanti­nople.

Though Basil founded the longest dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire, the race proceeded from a corrupt source. Constantine, the son of Basil’s first wife, Maria, was regarded with much affection by his father, and received the imperial crown in the year 868, but died about the year 879. The loss was severely felt by the emperor, who expressed an eager desire to be assured that his favourite child enjoyed eternal felicity. The abbot Theodoros Santabaren took advantage of this paternal solicitude to impose on the emperor’s superstition and credulity. A phantom, which bore the likeness of Constantine, met the emperor while he was hunting, and galloped towards him, until it approached so near that Basil could perceive the happy expression of his son’s face. It then faded from his sight; but the radiant aspect of the vision satisfied the father that his deceased son was received to grace.

Leo, the eldest child of Eudocia, was generally believed to be the son of Michael the Drunkard; and though Basil had conferred on him the imperial crown in his infancy, (AD 870,) he seems never to have regarded him with feelings of affection. It would seem he entertained the common opinion concerning the parentage of Leo. The latter years of Basil were clouded with suspicion of his heir, who he feared might avenge the murder of Michael, even at the risk of becoming a parricide. Whether truly or not, young Leo was accused of plotting against Basil’s life before he was sixteen years of age. The accusation was founded on the discovery of a dagger concealed in the boot of the young prince, while he was in attendance on his father at a hunting-party, when Byzantine etiquette demanded that he should be unarmed. The historians who wrote under the eye of Leo’s son, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, pretend that the abbot Theodoros Santabaren persuaded Leo to conceal the weapon for his own defence, and then informed Basil that his son was armed to attempt his assassination. The charge underwent a full examination, during which the young emperor was deprived of the insignia of the imperial rank; but the result of the investigation must have proved his innocence, for, in spite of the suspicions rooted in Basil’s mind, he was restored to his rank as heir-apparent.

The cruelty displayed by Basil in his latter days loosens the tongues of his servile historians, and indicates that he never entirely laid aside the vices of his earlier years. While engaged in hunting, to which he was passionately devoted, a stag that had been brought to bay rushed at him, and, striking its antlers into his girdle, dragged him from his horse. One of the attendants drew his hunting-knife, and, cutting the girdle, saved the emperor’s life; but the suspicious despot, fearing an attempt at assassination, ordered his faithful servant to be immediately decapitated. The shock he received from the stag brought on a fever, which terminated his eventful life, and he ended his reign, as he had commenced it, by the murder of a benefactor. Though he was a judicious and able sovereign, he has been unduly praised, because he was one of the most orthodox emperors of Constantinople in the opinion of the Latin as well as of the Greek Church.

 

Sect. II

LEO VI THE PHILOSOPHER A.D. 886-912

 

Leo the Philosopher gave countenance to the rumour that he was the son of Michael III by one of the first acts of his reign. He ordered the body of the murdered emperor to be transported from Chrysopolis, where it had been interred by Theodora, and entombed it with great ceremony in the Church of the Holy Apostles.

In every characteristic of a sovereign Leo differed from Basil, and almost every point of difference was to the disadvantage of the philosopher. The Pace with which the throne was retained by a man such as Basil had appeared before he became sole emperor, is explained, when we see a trifling pedant like Leo ruling the empire without difficulty. The energy which had re-established the Eastern Empire under the Iconoclasts was now dormant, and society had degenerated as much as the court. When the foundations of the Byzantine government were laid by Leo III, the mass of society was as eager to reform its own vices as the emperor was to improve the administration; but when Basil mounted the throne, the people were as eager to enjoy their wealth as the emperor to gratify his ambition. The emperors of Constantinople, as the throne was to a certain degree elective, are generally types of their age; and though Leo the Philosopher succeeded as the son and successor of Basil, no sovereign ever represented the character of his age better. He typifies the idle spirit of conservatism as correctly as Constantine V does the aggressive energy of progress.

Leo VI was a man of learning and a lover of luxurious ease, a conceited pedant and an arbitrary but mild despot. Naturally of a confined intellect, he owes his title of ‘the Philosopher’, or ‘the Learned’, rather to the ignorance of the people, who attributed to him an acquaintance with the secrets of astrological science, than either to his own attainments, or to any remarkable patronage he bestowed on learned men. His personal character, however, exercised even greater influence on the public administration of the empire than that of his predecessors, for the government was now so completely despotic that the court, rather than the cabinet, directed the business of the state. Hence it was that the empire met with disgraceful disasters at a period when its force was sufficient to have protected all its subjects. The last traces of the Roman constitution were now suppressed, and the trammels of an inviolable court ceremonial, and the invariable routine of administrators and lawyers, were all that was preserved of the institutions of an earlier and grander period. The extinction of the Roman Empire, and complete consolidation of Byzantine despotism, is recorded in the edicts of Leo, suppressing the old municipal system, and abolishing senatus-consulta. The language of legislation became as despotic as the acts of the emperor were arbitrary. Two Patriarchs, Photius and Nikolaos, were removed from the government of the church by the emperor’s order. Leo lived in open adultery on a throne from which Constantine VI had been driven for venturing on a second marriage while his divorced wife was living. Yet Zoe, the fourth wife of Leo VI, gave birth to the future emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in the purple chamber of the imperial palace, before the marriage ceremony had been performed. A Saracen renegade, named Samonas, was for years the prime favourite of the infatuated Leo, who raised him to the rank of patrician, and allowed him to stand god­father to his son Constantine, though great doubts were entertained of the orthodoxy, or perhaps of the Christianity, of this disreputable favourite. The expenditure of the imperial household was greatly increased; the revenue previously destined to the service of the empire was diverted to the gratification of the court, and corruption was introduced into every branch of the administration by the example of the emperor, who raised money by selling places. The Emperor Basil, like his predecessors, had been contented to make use of a galley, with a single bank of oars, in his visits to the country round Constantinople; but Leo never condescended to move unless in a dromon of two banks of oars, rowed by two hundred men—and two of these vessels were constantly maintained as imperial yachts. Constantine Porphyrogenitus recounts an anecdote concerning the corruption of his father’s court, which deserves particular notice, as proving, on the best evidence, that the emperor encouraged the system by sharing in its profits. Ktenas, a rich man in holy orders, and the best public singer of the time, was extremely anxious to possess acknowledged rank at the imperial court. He secured the support of Samonas, the Saracen grand-chamberlain, and hoped to obtain the rank of protospatharios, by offering to make the emperor a present of forty pound’ weight of gold, the pay of the office amounting only to a pound of gold annually. The Emperor Leo refused, declaring, as his son tells us, that it was a transaction unworthy of the imperial dignity, and that it was a thing unheard of to appoint a clerk protospatharios. The old man, however, by the means of Samonas, increased his offers, adding to his first proposal a pair of earrings, worth ten pounds of gold, and a richly-chased table of silver gilt, also worth ten pounds of gold. This addition produced so great an effect on Leo’s mind, that, according to his own declaration, he disgraced the imperial dignity, for he made a member of the clergy a protospatharios. Constantine then chuckles at his father’s good fortune; for after receiving sixty pounds’ weight of gold, the new protospatharios only lived to draw two years’ pay.

The strongest contrast between the administration of Leo and Basil was visible in the financial affairs of the empire. Though the direct taxes were not increased, the careless conduct of Leo, and his neglect to maintain the strict control over the tax-gatherers exercised by his father, allowed every species of abuse to creep into this branch of government, and the people were subject to the severest oppression. Monopolies were also created in favour of the creatures of the court, which were the cause of great complaints, and one of these ultimately involved the empire in a most disastrous war, with the Bul­garians.

The state of the church in the Byzantine Empire was always important, as ecclesiastical affairs afforded the only opportunity for the expression of public opinion. A considerable body of the clergy was more closely connected with the people, by feelings and interests, than with the court. At this time, however, all classes enjoyed a degree of sensual abundance that rendered society torpid, and few were inclined to take part in violent contests. The majority of the subjects of the Byzantine empire, perhaps, never felt greater aversion to the conduct of the government, both in civil and ecclesiastical matters; and we may attribute the parade Leo made of his divine right to govern both the state and the church, to the fact that he was fully aware of the popular feeling; but no class of men saw any probability of bettering their condition, either by revolution or change, so that a bad government began to be looked upon as one of the unavoidable evils of an advanced state of civilization, and as one of the in­evitable calamities which Heaven itself had interwoven in man’s existence.

The Emperor Leo VI deposed the Patriarch Photius without pretending any religious motive for the change. The object was to confer the dignity on his brother Stephen, who was then only eighteen years of age. Photius retired into a monastery, where, as has been already mentioned, he was treated with respect by Leo, who pretended that his resignation was a voluntary act. Photius survived his deposition about five years, more universally respected, and probably happier, than when he sat on the patriarchal throne, though he had been excommunicated by nine popes of Rome. Leo displayed a mean spirit in his eagerness to punish the abbot Theodoros Santabaren, whom he regarded as the author of his degradation and imprisonment during his father’s reign. Failing to procure evidence to convict the abbot of any crime, he ordered him to be scourged and exiled to Athens. His eyes were subsequently put out by the emperor’s order. But Leo, though a tyrant, was not implacable, and some years later Theodoros was recalled to Constantinople, and received a pension.

The predominance of ceremonial feelings in religion is shown in a remarkable manner by the legislative acts of the Byzantine government, relating to the observance of the Sabbath. As early as the reign of Constantine the Great, AD 321, there is a law commanding the suspension of all civil business on Sunday; and this enactment is enforced by a law of Theodosius I, in 386. During the contests concerning image-worship, society was strict in all religious observances, and great attention was paid to Sunday. In the year affecting the practice of piety, even while he made a parade of ecclesiastical observances, revoked all the exemptions which the law had hitherto made in favour of the performance of useful labour on Sunday, and forbade even necessary agricultural work, as dishonouring the Lord’s day. Arguing with the bigotry of the predestinarian, that the arbitrary will of God, and not the fixed laws which he has revealed to man, gives abundant harvests to the earth, the emperor regards the diligence of the agriculturist as of no avail. Fate became the refuge of the human mind when the government of Rome had rendered the improvement of pagan society hopeless; superstition assumed its place among the Christians, and the stagnation in the Byzantine Empire persuaded men that no prudence in the conduct of their affairs could better man’s condition.

Ecclesiastical affairs gave Leo very little trouble during his reign, but towards its end he was involved in a dispute with the Patriarch Nikolaos the mystic. After the death of Leo’s third wife, without male issue, the emperor, not wishing to violate openly the laws of the Eastern Church, enforced by his own legislation, which forbade fourth marriages, installed the beautiful Zoe Carbonopsina, a grandniece of the historian Theophanes, as his concubine in the palace. Zoe gave birth to a son in the purple chamber, who was the celebrated emperor and author, Constantine VII (Porphyrogenitus). The young prince was baptized in the Church of St. Sophia by the Patriarch Nikolaos, but that severe ecclesiastic only consented to officiate at the ceremony on receiving the emperor’s promise that he would not live any longer with his concubine. Three days after the baptism of Constantine, the Emperor Leo celebrated his marriage with Zoe, and conferred on her the imperial title, thus keeping his promise to the Patriarch in one sense. But Nikolaos, indignant at having been paltered with in a double sense, degraded the priest who performed the nuptial ceremony, and interdicted the entry of the church to Leo. The emperor only thought it necessary to pay so much respect to the interdict as to attend the church ceremonies by a private door; and the people, caring little about the quarrel, laughed when they saw the imperial philosopher showing so much wit. Leo, however, took measures to gain the Pope’s goodwill, and when assured of papal support, he deposed Nikolaos and appointed Euthymios the syncellus his successor. The new Patriarch, though he had been a monk on Mount Olympus, recognized the validity of the emperor's fourth marriage, on the pretext that the public good required the ecclesiastical laws to yield to the exigencies of the state. The populace, to excuse their Patriarch, believed a report that the emperor had threatened, in case the Patriarch refused to recognize the validity of his marriage with Zoe, to publish a law allowing every man to marry four wives at the same time. This rumour, notwithstanding its absurdity, affords strong proof of the power of the emperor, and of the credulity with which the Greeks received every rumour unfavourable to their rulers.

The legislative labours of Leo’s reign are more deserving of attention than his ecclesiastical skirmishes, though he only followed in the traces of his father, and made use of materials already prepared to his hand. We have already noticed that he published a revised edition of the Basilika, to which he added a considerable amount of supplementary legislation. Byzantine law, however, even after it had received all the improvements of Basil and Leo, was ill suited to serve as a practical guide to the population of the empire. The Basilika is an inspiration of imperial pride, not a work whose details follow the suggestions of public utility. Whole titles are filled with translations of imperial edicts, useless in the altered circumstances of the empire; and one of the consequences of the ill-devised measure of adopting an old code was, that no perfect copy of the Basilika has been preserved. Many books fell into neglect, and have been entirely lost. The sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire, except while it was ruled by the Iconoclasts, felt that their power rested on the fabric of the Roman administration, not on their own strength.

The collection of the edicts or ‘novels’ of Leo, inserted in the editions of the Corpus Juris Civilis, has rendered the legislation of Leo more generally known than his revised edition of the Byzantine code. These edicts were published for the purpose of modifying portions of the law, as promulgated in the Basilika. The greater number are addressed to Stylianos, who is supposed to have been the father of Zoe, Leo’s second wife, and it is thought they were published between the years 887 and 893, while Stylianos was master of the offices and logothetes.

The military events of Leo’s reign were marked by several disgraceful defeats; but the strength of the empire was not seriously affected by the losses sustained, though the people often suffered the severest misery. The Asiatic frontier was generally defended with success. Nicephorus Phokas, who had distinguished himself in Italy during the reign of Basil, acquired additional glory by his activity as general of the Thrakesian theme. The Saracens, nevertheless, continued to make destructive inroads into the empire, as it was found impossible to watch every point where they could assemble an army. In the year 887, the town of Hysela in Charsiana was taken, and its inhabitants carried away into slavery. In 888, Samos was plundered, and the governor, with many of the inhabitants, made prisoner. In 893, the fortress of Koron in Cappadocia was taken. In 901, reciprocal incursions were made by the Christians and Mohammedans, but the Byzantine troops were more successful than the Saracen, for they penetrated as far as the district of Aleppo, and carried off fifteen thousand prisoners. This advantage was compensated by the victories of the Saracen fleet, which took and plundered the island of Lemnos. The Saracen fleet also, in the year 902, took and destroyed the city of Demetrias in Thessaly, where all the inhabitants who could not be carried away, and sold with profit as slaves, were murdered. During these calamities, Leo, in imitation of his father, employed the resources of the state, which ought to have been devoted to putting the naval forces of the empire in an efficient condition, in building a new church, and in constructing a monastery for eunuchs. Before the end of Leo's reign, the isolated and independent position assumed by several of the Saracen emirs on the frontier, enabled the Byzantine generals to make some permanent conquests. Melias, an Armenian who had distinguished himself in the Bulgarian war, gained possession of the country between Mount Amanus and the Euphrates, and this district was formed into a new theme called Lykandos. The Saracens were also driven from the city of Theodosiopolis by Leo Katakalon, and the Araxes was constituted the boundary of the empire towards the Iberians.

The ruinous effects of the piratical system of warfare pursued by the Saracen fleets, and the miseries it inflicted on thousands of Christian families in the Byzantine empire, deserves a record in the page of history. Fortunately we do not require in describing what really happened, to indulge the imagination by painting what probably occurred, for time has spared the narrative of one of the sufferers, in which the author describes his own fate, and the calamities he witnessed, with the minute exactitude of truth and pedantry. Many severe blows were inflicted on the Byzantine Empire by the daring enterprises of the Mohammedans, who took advantage of the neglected state of the imperial navy to plunder the richest cities of Greece. But the most terrible catastrophe the Christians suffered was the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire in population and wealth. Of this event Johannes Cameniates, an ecclesiastic of the order of Readers, and a native of the place, has left us a full account. He shared all the dangers of the assault, and after the capture of his native city he was carried prisoner to Tarsus, in order to be exchanged at one of the exchanges of prisoners which took place between the Christians and Saracens from time to time in that city.

Thessalonica is situated at the head of an inner basin terminating the long gulf stretching up to the northward, between the snowy peaks and rugged mountains of Olympus and Ossa to the west, and the rich shores of the Chalcidice and the peninsula of Cassandra to the east. The bay, on which the city looks down, affords a safe anchorage; and in the tenth century an ancient mole enclosed an inner port within its arms, where the largest vessels could land or receive their cargoes as in a modem dock. This port bounded the city on the south, and was separated from it by a wall about a mile in length running along the shore. Within, the houses rose gradually, until the upper part of the city was crowned with an acropolis, separated from the hills behind by a rugged precipice. This citadel is now called the Seven Towers. Two ravines, running to the sea from the rocky base of the acropolis, serve as ditches to the western and eastern walls of the city, which to this day follow the same line, and present nearly the same aspect as in the reign of Leo the Philosopher. Their angles at the sea, where they join the wall along the port, are strengthened by towers of extraordinary size. The Egnatian Way, which for many centuries served as the high­road for the communications between Rome and Constantinople, formed a great street passing in a straight line through the centre of the city from its western to its eastern wall. This relic of Roman greatness, with its triumphal arches, still forms a marked feature of the Turkish city; but the moles of the ancient port have fallen to ruin, and the space between the sea-wall and the water is disfigured by a collection of filthy huts. Yet the admirable situation of Thessalonica, and the fertility of the surrounding country, watered by several noble rivers, still enables it to nourish a population of upwards of sixty thousand souls. Nature has made it the capital and seaport of a rich and extensive district, and under a good government it could not fail to become one of the largest and most flourishing cities on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Leo of Tripolis was the most active, daring, and skilful of the Saracen admirals. He was born of Christian parents, at Attalia in Pamphylia, but became a renegade, and settled at Tripolis in Syria after he embraced the Mohammedan faith. In the year 904, Leo sailed from Tarsus with a fleet of fifty-four ships, each carrying two hundred men, besides their officers and a few chosen troops. The ablest corsairs in the East were assembled for this expedition, and a rumour of the unusual care that was shown in fitting out the fleet reached the court of the idle philosopher at Constantinople. He foresaw that some daring attack on his dominions would be made, and would fain have placed the imperial navy in a condition to defend the islands and shores of the Aegean; but though the commerce of Greece could have supplied sailors to man the largest force, the negligence and incapacity of the admiralty had been so great, that several years of misfortune were required to raise the Byzantine fleet to the condition from which it had fallen. The naval force that was now sent to defend the empire did not venture to encounter the Saracen fleet, but retired before it, seeking shelter within the Hellespont, and leaving the whole Archipelago unprotected. In the meantime fugitives reached Constantinople, who reported that the enemy proposed to attack Thessalonica.

The walls of Thessalonica had been originally of great strength, but the fortifications were in a neglected state, and the city was almost without a garrison of regular troops. The sea-wall was in want of repair, and parts were so low that it was not difficult to mount the battlements from the yards of the ships in the port. On the land side the floors of the towers that flanked the walls had in some places fallen into such a state of decay, that the communications of the defenders on the curtains were interrupted. The emperor, when informed of the defenceless state of the place, increased the confusion by his injudicious meddling. He sent a succession of officers from the capital with different instructions, fresh counsels, and new powers; and, as usually happens in similar cases, each of his deputies availed himself of his authority to alter the plan of defence adopted by his predecessor. As might be expected under such circumstances, the Saracens arrived before the fortifications were repaired, and before the arrangements for defence were completed.

The most alarming defect in the fortifications was the con­dition of the wall that ran along the border of the port. It was too low, without the necessary towers to afford a flanking defence, and in several places the depth of the water ad­mitted ships to approach close to the quay that ran under its battlements. Petronas, the first officer sent by the emperor, thinking that there was not sufficient time to raise the wall or construct new towers, adopted measures for preventing the approach of the enemy’s ships. To effect this, he transported to the port the sculptured sarcophagi, and immense blocks of marble that then adorned the Hellenic tombs on both sides of the Egnatian Way, without the western and eastern gates of the city, and commenced laying them in the sea at some distance from the quay. His object was to form a mole reaching within a few feet of the surface of the water, against which the enemy might run their ships, and leave them exposed, for some time, to the missiles and Greek fire of the defenders of the city. But the inhabitants of Thessalonica showed themselves insensible of danger before it approached, and incapable of defending themselves when it arrived. Their whole confidence was placed in St. Demetrius, who had never deceived them—not in their emperor, whose armies and fleets were every day defeated. They knew that Thessalonica had often repulsed the attacks of the Slavonians in the seventh and eighth centuries—they boasted that it had never been taken by pagan or unbelievers; and they believed that, whenever it had been besieged, St. Demetrius had shown himself active in its defence : it was therefore the universal opinion, that as patron saint he would now defend a place in which he had a strong personal interest; for in no other spot on earth was he worshipped by so numerous, so wealthy, and so devoted a community? The fate of Thessalonica proves the wisdom of Leo III in endeavouring to exterminate the worship of images and saints.

Petronas had not made much progress with his work when he was superseded by an officer named Leo, who was appointed general of the theme of Thessalonica. Leo, finding that the wall towards the port was not higher than the immense stem-galleries of the ships then in use, ordered the undertaking of Petronas to be suspended, and every nerve to be strained to mice the wall. Reports became every day more alarming. At one time it was announced that the Saracen fleet had pursued the Byzantine admiral, Eustathios Argyros, up the Hellespont as far as Parium. Afterwards it became certain that it had quitted the Hellespont and reached Thasos. The people of the city would not, however, shake off their apathy, and their confidence in St. Demetrius. They showed little aptitude for building or for military discipline; the wall advanced slowly, and the militia did not seem likely to defend it with alacrity, even should it be completed. At this conjuncture a third officer arrived from Constantinople, named Niketas. His arrival was of itself sufficient to produce some disorder; but, unfortunately, an accident that happened shortly after threw everything into confusion. Leo and Niketas met on horseback to inspect the defences of the city; the horse of Leo reared, threw his rider, and injured his right thigh and side in such a manner that his life was in danger, and for several days he was unable to move. This accident invested Niketas with the chief command.

Niketas seems to have had more military experience than his predecessor, and he felt that the citizens of Thessalonica, though they formed a numerous militia, were not to be depended on for defending the place. He therefore endeavoured to assemble a body of troops accustomed to war, by calling on the general of the theme of Strymon to send some of the federate Slavonians from his government; but the envy or negligence of the general, and the avarice and ill-will of the Slavonian leaders, prevented the arrival of any assistance from that quarter. Though Niketas threatened to report the misconduct of the general of Strymon to the emperor, he could obtain no addition to the garrison, except a few ill-equipped Slavonian archers from the villages in the plains near the city. The generals seemed all to place too much confidence in human prudence; the people preferred relying on St. Demetrius and heaven. To secure the divine aid, a solemn procession of all the clergy and citizens, accompanied by every stranger residing in Thessalonica, headed by the archbishop and the civil and military authorities, visited the church of St. Demetrius. Public prayers were offered up day and night with great fervour; but long after, when Joannes Cameniates recorded that the intervention of St. Demetrius had proved unavailing, he acknowledged that God permitted the destruction of Thessalonica to show mankind that nothing renders the divine ear accessible to the intercession of the saints but pious life and good deeds.

The Saracens stopped a short time at Thasos to prepare engines for hurling stones, and other machines used in sieges. At last, as the inhabitants of Thessalonica were leaving their houses at daybreak, to attend morning prayer, on Sunday the 29th of July 904, a rumour arose that the enemy was already in the gulf, and only concealed from view by Cape Ekvolos. The unwarlike city was filled with lamentations, tumult, and alarm; but the citizens enrolled in the militia armed themselves, amidst the tears of their wives and children, and hastened to the battlements. The anxious crowd had not long to wait before fifty-four ships were seen rounding the cape in succession with all sail, set. The sea-breeze bore them rapidly forward, and before noon they were at anchor close to the city. The entrance of the port between the moles was shut by a chain; and to prevent this chain from being broken by hostile ships impelled by the strong sea-breezes of the summer months, several vessels had been sunk across the mouth, Leo of Tripolis immediately reconnoitred the fortifications, and examined the unfinished work of Petronas, in order to ascertain if it were still practicable to approach the wall beyond its junction with the mole. After this examination was completed a desultory attack was made on the place to occupy the attention of the garrison, and induced the besieged to show all their force and means of defence.

Next day the Saracens landed and attacked the gate Roma, which was situated in the eastern wall, and not far from the sea. Seven of the engines constructed at Thasos were placed in battery, and an attempt was made to plant sealing-ladders against the fortifications, under cover of a shower of stones, darts, and arrows; but a vigorous sally of the Byzantine troops repulsed the assault and captured the ladders. In the afternoon the plan of attack was changed. It was resolved to force an entrance by burning down two of the four gates in the eastern wall. The gate Roma and the gate Cassandra, on the Egnatian Way, were selected. Wagons filled with dry wood, pitch, and sulphur, were covered over by fishing-boats turned upside down, to prevent those on the wall from setting fire to the combustibles at a distance. Sheltered by these boats, the Saracen sailors pushed the wagons close to the gates, and when they had lighted their fires, they escaped to their companions with their shields over their heads, while the rising flames, the stones from the ballist, and the arrows of the archers, distracted the attention of the defenders of the wall. The iron plates on the doors were soon heated red-hot, and, the door-posts being consumed, the gates fell; but when the fire burned low, an inner gateway was seen closed with masonry, and well protected by flanking towers, so that the Saracens gained nothing by the success of this project. But the real object of the besiegers in all these preliminary operations had only been to draw off the attention of the Greeks from the point where most danger was to be apprehended. The second night of the siege was a sleepless one for both parties. The inhabitants, seriously alarmed at the daring courage and contempt of death displayed by the assailants, deemed it necessary to keep up a strict watch along the whole circuit of the fortifications, lest some unguarded spot should be found by the besiegers during the darkness. On board the fleet an incessant noise of hammers, and of Arabs and Ethiopians shouting, with a constant moving of lights, proclaimed that active preparation was going on for renewing the attack.

When Leo of Tripolis reconnoitred the fortifications, he had ascertained that his ships could approach the wall in several places, and he had carefully marked the spots. The interval had been employed in getting everything ready for an attack in this quarter, and now the night was devoted to complete the work, in order that the besieged might remain in ignorance of the design until the moment of its execution. It was necessary to form stages, in which the assailants could overlook the defenders of the place, and from which they could descend on the wall. The project was executed with ability and promptitude in a very simple manner. Two ships were bound firmly together by cables and chains, and the long yards of the immense lateen sails then in use were reversed, so as to extend far beyond the bows of the double ship. These yards were strong enough to support a framework of wood capable of containing a small body of men, who were protected by boards on the sides from missiles, while shrouds kept up a constant communication with the deck below. These cages, when swung aloft from the yards, could be elevated above the battlements where the sea-wall was lowest, and to the besieged looked like the tops of towers suddenly raised out of the sea. In the morning the double ships were rowed into their positions, and the fight commenced between the besiegers in their hanging towers and the defenders on the ramparts. Stones, arrows, pots filled with flaming combustibles, and fire launched from long brazen tubes, the composition of which had been at an earlier period a secret known only in the Byzantine arsenal, now came pouring down from above on the Greeks, who were soon driven from the battlements. The Ethiopians of the Alexandrian ships were the first to make good their footing on the wall, and as soon as they had cleared the whole line of the fortifications towards the sea from its defenders, they broke open the gates, and the crews of the other ships rushed into the city. The sailors employed to collect the booty entered with their drawn swords, wearing only their trousers, in order that no plunder might be abstracted secretly. The militia fled without a thought of further resistance: the Slavonians escaped from a gate in the citadel, which they had secured as a means of retreat.

The Saracens divided themselves into bands, and commenced slaughtering every person they found in the streets, though they encountered crowds of women and children, who had rushed out of their houses to learn the cause of the unusual commotion. A number of the inhabitants endeavoured to escape by the Golden Gate, which formed the entrance of the Egnatian Way into the city from the west, but the crowd rendered it impossible to throw open the doors. A party of Ethiopians came upon the people as they were struggling to effect their purpose. Hundreds were crushed to death or suffocated, and the blacks stabbed the rest, without sparing age or sex. John Cameniates, his father, his uncle, and two brothers, fled towards the wall that separates the town from the citadel, intending to conceal themselves in a tower until the first fury of the assailants was assuaged. They had hardly ascended the wall when a band of Ethiopians reached the place in pursuit of a crowd of people, whom they murdered before the eyes of the terrified family. The Ethiopians then mounted the wall, but a tower was between them and Cameniates, of which the floor was in such a ruinous condition that it seemed dangerous to pass. As the enemy paused, John Cameniates deemed the moment favourable to implore mercy, and running quickly over a beam that remained unbroken, he threw himself at the feet of the black captain, promising that he would reveal where a treasure was hidden, in case his own life and that of his relations was spared. His confidence won the favour of the barbarians, one of whom understood Greek, and the family was taken under their protection; yet as they were marching through the streets, Cameniates received two wounds from an Ethiopian belonging to another band. On their way to the port the prisoners were carried into the convent of Akroullios, where they found the chief of the Ethiopians seated in the vestibule. After hearing the promises of old Cameniates, he rose and entered the church, in which about three hundred Christians had been collected. There, seating himself cross-legged on the altar, he made a signal to his followers, who immediately put all to death, leaving only the family of Cameniates. From this hideous spectacle they were conducted to the Saracen admiral.

After Leo of Tripolis had heard what Cameniates had to say, he sent a guard to convey the treasure to the port. Fortunately the hoard, which contained all the wealth of many members of the family, was found untouched, for had it not satisfied the avarice of the chiefs, the whole family would have been murdered, as happened in many other cases. This treasure was received by Leo only as a ransom for the lives of his prisoners, who were embarked in order to be exchanged at Tarsus for Saracens in captivity among the Christians. Cameniates found Leo, the general of the theme of Thessalonica, Niketas, the third envoy of the emperor, and Rodophyles, a eunuch of the imperial household, who had stopped as he was conveying a hundred pounds’ weight of gold to the Byzantine army in Italy, all among the prisoners. Rodophyles was brought before the Saracen admiral, who had learned from the captives that he was entrusted with treasure. The eunuch boldly replied that he had performed his duty to the emperor, by sending away the gold to the general of the theme of Strymon as soon as the enemy approached; and when Leo of Tripolis found that this was true, he flew into a passion, and ordered Rodophyles to be beaten to death on the spot.

Several days were spent in collecting the booty in the city, in releasing such of the captives as had friends in the neighbourhoods able to purchase their liberty by the payment of a second ransom, and in negotiating the exchange of two hundred persons, for whom an officer of the emperor named Simeon engaged that an equal number of Saracen captives should be delivered up at Tarsus. When all other business was settled, the Saracens threatened to burn the city, and succeeded in forcing the general of Strymon to deliver up the gold for which Rodophyles had lost his life, in order to save the place from destruction. The hostile fleet quitted the harbour of Thessalonica ten days after the capture of the city. Cameniates was embarked in the ship of the Egyptian admiral, who served under Leo of Tripolis. The crew consisted of two hundred men and eight hundred captives; men, women, and children were crowded together on the lower deck. These unfortunate people, all of whom were of the higher ranks, suffered indescribable misery, and many died of hunger, thirst, and suffocation before they reached the island of Crete, where, after a fortnight's confinement, they were allowed to land for the first time. The fleet had deviated from its course in order to avoid falling in with the Byzantine squadron, for it was impossible to fight when every ship was crowded with prisoners. It had therefore remained six days at Patmos and two at Naxos, which was then tributary to the Saracens at Crete.

The fleet anchored at Zontarion, a port opposite the island of Dia, which afforded better shelter than the harbour of Chandax, and where it could obtain the seclusion necessary for dividing the slaves and spoil among the different parties composing the expedition, in order that each might hasten home before the autumnal storms commenced. The whole of the captives were landed, and three days were spent by them in endeavouring to find their relations, and unite families that had been dispersed, many of which were again separated by the new division. As not only the fifty-four ships of Leo’s fleet, but also several Byzantine men-of-war and merchantmen, taken in the port of Thessalonica, had been filled with prisoners, it is not surprising that the number, even after the loss sustained on the passage, still amounted to twenty-two thousand souls. Of these, with the exception of the small number reserved for exchange at Tarsus, all consisted of young men and women in the flower of their youth, or children remarkable for the bloom of their beauty: they had been saved from the slaughter of the older inhabitants, or selected from those seized in the houses, because they were sure of commanding a high price in the slave-markets of the East. When all the booty had been landed, the spoil was divided by lot, and then the fleet dispersed, the ships sailing from Crete directly to Alexandria, or to the different ports of Syria to which they belonged. Many of the unfortunate prisoners, exposed to sale in the slave-markets of Fostal, the capital of Egypt and Damascus, were transported to Ethiopia and Arabia, and even to the southern parts of Africa; the more fortunate were repurchased from those to whose share they had fallen, by the Cretans, and by them resold to their friends.

The island of Crete had become a great slave-mart, in consequence of the extensive piracies of its Saracen population; and at this time the slave-trade was the most profitable branch of commerce in the Mediterranean. A large portion of the Greek inhabitants of Crete having embraced Mohammedanism, and established communications with the Christian slave-merchants in the Byzantine Empire, carried on a regular trade in purchasing Byzantine captives of wealthy families, and arranging exchanges of prisoners with their relations. As these exchanges were private speculations, and not, like those at Tarsus, under the regulation of an official cartel, the Christians were generally compelled to pay a considerable sum as redemption-money, in order to deliver their relatives, in addition to releasing a Saracen captive. After the buying and selling of the captives from Thessalonica had been carried on for several days, the Saracens embarked their prisoners for their ultimate destination. The wife of one of the brothers of Cameniates was purchased by a Cretan slave-merchant, but he had the misery of seeing his mother, his wife, and two of his children, (for the third had died during the voyage) embarked in a ship belonging to Sidon. Cameniates, with his father, and the greater part of the captives set apart for the exchange at Tarsus, were put on board a Byzantine man-of-war, the upper deck of which was occupied by the Saracens, while the Christians were crowded on the lower, in filth and darkness.

On the passage from Crete to Syria, an event happened which shows that Leo, the Saracen admiral, was a man of energy and courage, well fitted for his daring occupation, and by no means so deaf to the calls of humanity, in the hour of the most terrific danger, as his ferocious conduct after the taking of Thessalonica might lead us to believe. A violent storm threatened one of the smaller galleys with destruction, for it broke in the middle—an accident to which ancient ships, from their extreme length and want of beam, were very liable. The Saracens on board were near the admiral's ship, and that in which Cameniates was embarked, and they requested Leo to order the crew of the Byzantine man-of-war to throw all the captives overboard and receive them. The order was given, allowing the crew to quit the sinking ship, but the violence of the wind had driven the ship in which Cameniates was embarked to such a distance that the signals of the admiral were unnoticed or unheeded. Leo, however, ordered his own ship to be brought as near the galley as possible, and succeeded in saving, not only the Saracen crew, but every Christian on board, though the crews and captives of the two vessels amounted to upwards of one thousand persons. The Byzantine generals, Leo and Niketas, who were on board Leo’s ship, recounted the circumstances to Cameniates, and declared that their ship was ill-calculated to contain so great a crowd, and was navigated with great difficulty. After refitting at Cyprus, the squadron reached Tripolis on the 14th of September. The father of Cameniates died there, before the prisoners were removed to Tarsus. While waiting at Tarsus, in fear of death from the unhealthiness of the place, Cameniates wrote the account of his sufferings, from which the preceding narrative has been extracted; and we must pardon what he calls the feebleness, but what others are more likely to term the in­flation of his style, on account of the interesting matter embalmed in its verbosity. The worthy Anagnostes appears to have returned to his native city, and obtained the office of koubouklesios to the archbishop.

The taking of Thessalonica affords a sad lesson of the inefficiency of central governments, which deny the use of arms to the people, to defend the wealthy and unfortified cities of an extensive empire. The tendency of a court to expend the revenues of the state on the pageantry of power, on palaces, churches, and fêtes in the capital, without bestowing a thought on the destruction of a village or the loss of a parish, reveals to us one of the paths by which despotic power invariably tends to degrade the mass of human civilization.

The wealth the Saracens had obtained at Thessalonica invited them to make fresh attacks on the empire, until at last the public sufferings compelled the Emperor Leo, in the last year of his reign, to make a vigorous attempt to put an end to the piracies of the Cretans, AD 912. Himerios, who had gained a naval victory over the Saracens in the year 909, was entrusted with the command of a powerful fleet, and commenced his operations by clearing the Archipelago of the Cretan pirates. His fleet consisted of forty dromons or war-galleys of the largest size, besides other vessels; and it was manned by twelve thousand native sailors, besides seven hundred Russians, who are considered worthy of especial enumeration. A powerful army, under the orders of Romanus the future emperor, was assembled at Samos for the purpose of besieging Chandax; but after eight months of insignificant demonstrations, the expedition was defeated with great loss by the Saracens, under the command of Leo of Tripolis and Damian, off the coast of Samos. Himerios escaped with difficulty to Mitylene, but Romanus saved the remains of the imperial force.

In southern Italy, everything was in such a state of confusion that it is not worth while following the political changes it suffered. The dukes of Naples, Gaeta, Salerno and Amalfi were at times the willing subjects of the Byzantine emperor, and at times their personal ambition induced them to form alliances with the Saracens of Africa and Sicily, or, with the Pope and the Romans, to carry on war with the Byzantine generals of the theme of Longobardia (Apulia). The Italian population, as in ancient times, consisted of many nations living under different laws and usages, so that only a powerful central government, or a system of political equality, could preserve order in the discordant elements. The state of civilization rendered the first difficult, the second impossible. The popes were always striving to increase their power, allying themselves alternately with the Franks and the Byzantines; the native Italian population in the cities was struggling for municipal independence; a powerful aristocracy, of Germanic origin, was contending for power; the Byzantine authorities were toiling to secure an increase of revenue, and the whole peninsula was exposed to the plundering incursions either of the Hungarians or of the Saracens. In this scene of confusion the Emperor Leo was suddenly compelled to take an active part by the loss of Bari, which was seized by the Duke of Beneventum. A Byzantine army regained possession of that city, and revenged the injury the Greeks had suffered by taking Beneventum, which, however, only remained in possession of the imperial troops for four years. The Byzantine fleet in Italy was subsequently defeated by the Sicilian Saracens in the Straits of Messina. In short, the administra­tion of Leo the Philosopher in Italy was marked by his usual negligence and incapacity, and the weakness of his enemies alone preserved the Byzantine possessions.

The kingdom of Bulgaria had for a considerable period proved a quiet neighbour and useful ally. It formed a barrier against the Turkish tribes, whom the ruin of the Khazar Empire drove into Europe. Leo, however, allowed himself to be involved in hostilities with the Bulgarians by the avarice of his ministers. Stylianos, the father of his second wife Zoe, established a monopoly of the Bulgarian trade in favour of two Greek merchants. To conceal the extortions to which this monopoly gave rise, the depôt of the Bulgarian commerce was removed from Constantinople to Thessalonica. The Bulgarians, whose interest suffered by this fraud, applied to their King Simeon for protection; and when the Emperor Leo, after repeated solicitations, took no steps to redress the injustice, the Bulgarian monarch declared war. An almost uninterrupted peace of seventy-four years had existed between the sovereigns of Constantinople and Bulgaria, for only temporary and trifling hostilities had occurred since the treaty between Leo V and Mortagan in 814. Bogoris—called, after his baptism, Michael—had governed his kingdom with great prudence, and not only con­verted all his subjects to Christianity, but also augmented their means of education and wellbeing. His own religious views induced him to join the Eastern Church, and he sent his second son Simeon to Constantinople for his education. Bogoris retired into a monastery, and left the throne to his eldest son Vladimir, about the year 885. The disorderly conduct of Vladimir drew his father from his retreat, who was compelled to dethrone and put out the eyes of this unworthy prince, before immuring him in a monastery. He then placed his second son Simeon on the throne, (A.D. 888,) and, retiring again to his cell, died a monk, A.D. 907.

Simeon proved an able and active monarch. His education at Constantinople had enlarged his mind, but inspired him with some contempt for the meanness and luxury of the Byzantine court, and for the pedantry and presumption of the Greek people. He was himself both a warrior and a scholar, but he followed the military system of the Bulgarians, and wrote in his native language. The Bulgarian nation had now attained the position occupied some centuries before by the Avars. They were the most civilized and commercial of all the northern barbarians, and formed the medium for supplying the greater part of Germany and Scandinavia with the necessary commodities from Asia, and with Byzantine manufactures and gold. This extensive and flourishing trade had gone on increasing ever since a treaty, fixing the amount of duties to be levied on the Byzantine frontier, had been concluded in the year 716, during the reign of Theodosius III. The stipulations of that treaty had always formed the basis on which the commercial relations between the two states had been re-established, at the conclusion of every war; but now two Greek merchants, Stavrakios and Kosmas, bribed Mousikos, a eunuch in the household of Stylianos, to procure an imperial ordinance for transferring the whole of the Bulgarian trade to Thessalonica. These Greeks, having farmed the customs, felt that they could carry on extortions at a distance which could not be attempted as long as the traders could bring their goods to Constantinople, and place themselves under the immediate protection of the central administration. The monopoly, though it inflicted great losses both on the Greek and Bulgarian traders, was supported by the favourite minister of the emperor, who refused to pay any attention to the reclamations of the Bulgarian government in favour of its subjects. Simeon, who was not of a disposition to submit to contemptuous treatment, finding that he had no hope of obtaining redress by peaceable means, invaded the empire. The Byzantine army was completely defeated, and the two generals who commanded were slain in the first battle. But Simeon tarnished his glory by his cruelty: he ordered the noses of all the prisoners to be cut off, and sent the Byzantine soldiers, thus mutilated, to Constantinople. Leo, eager to revenge this barbarity, sent a patrician, Niketas Skleros, to urge the Hungarians, a Turkish tribe which had recently quitted the banks of the Don to occupy the country still possessed by its descendants, to attack the Bulgarians. They did so, and defeated them. They sold their prisoners to the Emperor Leo, who was compelled, shortly after, to deliver them to Simeon, King of Bulgaria, without ransom, in order to purchase peace; for the Magyars were defeated in a second battle, and retired from the contest. Leo, like many absolute sovereigns, had conceived too high an idea of his power and prerogatives to pay any respect to his engagements, when he thought it for his advantage to forget his promises. He took the earliest opportunity of seeking for revenge, and having assembled what he supposed was an invincible army, he sent Leo Katakalon, his best general, to invade Bulgaria. This army was completely destroyed at a place called Bulgarophygos, and after this lesson Leo was glad to conclude peace, A.D.893.

About the same time the oppressive conduct of the imperial governor at Cherson caused an insurrection of the inhabitants, in which he was murdered.

Leo, in spite of his title of ‘the Philosopher’, was not a man in whose personal history mankind can feel much interest. Though his reign was undisturbed by rebellion or civil war, his life was exposed to frequent dangers. His concubine Zoe discovered a conspiracy against him, and another was revealed by the renegade Samonas, and became the origin of his great favour at court. The prime conspirator was scourged and exiled to Athens. In 902, an attempt was made to murder Leo in the church of St Mokios by a mad­man, who was armed only with a stick. The blow was broken by the branch of a chandelier, yet the emperor received a severe wound.

Leo died in the year 912, after a reign of twenty-five years and eight months.

 

Sect. III

ALEXANDER (912-913), MINORITY OF CONSTANTINE VII PORPHYROGENITUS (913-920), ROMANUS I LECAPENUS, (912-944)

 

Alexander, who succeeded to the throne, or rather to the government of the empire, on the death of his brother Leo, (for he had long borne the title of Emperor), was more degraded in his tastes, and more unfit for his station, than Michael the Drunkard. Fortunately for his subjects, he reigned only a year; yet he found time to inflict on the empire a serious wound, by rejecting the offer of Simeon, king of Bulgaria, to renew the treaty concluded with Leo. Alexander, like his predecessor, had a taste for astrology; and among his other follies he was persuaded that an ancient bronze statue of a boar in the Agora was his own genius. This work of art was consequently treated with the greatest reverence; it was adorned with new tusks and other ornaments, and its reintegration in the hippodrome was celebrated as a public festival, not only with profane games, but even with religious ceremonies, to the scandal of the orthodox.

Leo VI had undermined the Byzantine system of administration, which Leo III had modelled on the traditions of imperial Rome. He had used his absolute, power to confer offices of the highest trust on court favourites notoriously incapable of performing the duties entrusted to them. The systematic rules of promotion in the service of the government; the administrative usages which were consecrated into laws; the professional education which had preserved the science of government from degenerating with the literature and language of the empire, were for the first time habitually neglected and violated. The administration and the court were confounded in the same mass, and an emperor, called the Philosopher, is characterized in history for having reduced the Eastern Empire to the degraded rule of an Oriental and arbitrary despotism. Alexander carried this abuse to a great extent, by conferring high commands on the companions of his debaucheries, and by elevating men of Slavonian and Saracen origin to the highest dignities.

The only act of Alexander’s reign that it is necessary to particularize is the nomination of a regency to act during the minority of his nephew Constantine. The Patriarch Nikolaos, who had been reinstated in office, was made one of its members; but Zoe Carbopsina, the young emperor’s mother, was excluded from it.

Constantine VII was only seven years old when he became sole emperor. The regency named by Alexander consisted of six members exclusive of the Patriarch, two of whom, named Basilitzes and Gabrilopulos, were Slavonians, who had attained the highest employments and accumulated great wealth by the favour of Alexander. The facility with which all foreigners obtained the highest offices at Constantinople, and the rare occurrence of any man of pure Hellenic race in power, is a feature of the Byzantine government that requires to be constantly borne in mind, as it is a proof of the tenacity with which the empire clung to Roman traditions, and repudiated any identification with Greek nationality.

It is difficult, in the period now before us, to select facts that convey a correct impression of the condition, both of the government and the people. The calamities and crimes we are compelled to mention tend to create an opinion that the government was worse, and the condition of the inhabitants of the empire more miserable than was really the case. The ravages of war and the incursions of pirates wasted only a small portion of the Byzantine territory, and ample time was afforded by the long intervals of tranquillity to repair the depopulation and desolation caused by foreign enemies. The central government still retained institutions that enabled it to encounter many political storms that ruined neighbouring nations; yet the weakness of the administration, the vices of the court, and the corruption of the people during the reigns of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his father-in-law Romanus I, seemed to indicate a rapid decay in the strength of the empire, and they form a heterogeneous combination with the institutions which still guaranteed security for life and property to an extent unknown in every other portion of the world, whether under Christian or Mohammedan sway. The merits and defects of the Byzantine government are not found in combination in any other portion of history, until we approach modern times.

Hereditary succession was never firmly established in the Byzantine Empire. The system of centralization rendered the prime-minister, who carried on the administration for a minor or a weak sovereign, virtually master of the empire. Against this danger Alexander had endeavoured to protect his nephew, by creating a regency of six members, no one of whom could aspire at becoming the colleague of young Constantine. But the arbitrary nature of the imperial power created a feeling of insecurity in the minds of all officials, as long as that power was not vested in a single individual. This feeling inspired every man of influence with the hope of being able to render himself sole regent, and with the desire of assuming the title of Emperor, as the only method of permanently maintaining the post of guardian to the young prince. The most popular man of the time was Constantine Dukas, who had fled to the Saracens with his father Andronikos, in order to escape the anger of Leo VI. His father had embraced Mohammedanism, but Dukas had thrown himself on the mercy of Leo rather than forsake his religion, and had been rewarded by a command on the south-eastern frontier. For three years he served with distinction, and his valour and liberality rendered him popular among the soldiers. The death of Alexander found him commanding a division of the Byzantine army in Asia Minor, with the rank of general of the imperial guard: and a party of the officers of state, knowing his boundless ambition, fixed their eyes on him as the man most likely to overthrow the regency. Even the Patriarch Nikolaos was privy to the schemes of those who urged Dukas to repair secretly to Constantinople, for this ambitious ecclesiastic expected more authority over a young man possessing absolute power, than over six wary statesmen experienced in every department of public business.

As soon as Dukas reached the capital, he was proclaimed emperor by his partisans, who had already prepared the troops and the people for a change; and he marched immediately to the palace of Chalke, where the young emperor resided, and of which he expected to gain possession without difficulty. His attack was so sudden that he rendered himself master of the outer court; but the alarm was soon given, and all the entries into the palace were instantly closed. John Eladas, one of the members of the regency, assumed the command of the guards on duty, and a furious battle was fought in the court. The rebels were repulsed, and the horse of Dukas slipping on the flags of the pavement he was slain. Three thousand men are said to have fallen in this short tumult, in which both parties displayed the most daring courage. The conspirators who fell were more fortunate than those who were taken by the regency, for these latter were put to death with inhuman cruelty; and the Patriarch was justly censured for the apathy he showed when men were tortured, of whose plots he had been cognisant. Several persons of high rank were beheaded, and some were hung on the Asiatic shore opposite the imperial palace. The wife of Constantine Dukas was compelled to take the veil, and banished to her property in Paphlagonia, where she founded a monastery. Stephen, her only surviving son, was made a eunuch, and every other male of the noble house of Dukas perished on this occasion. The family that afterwards bore the name, and ascended the throne of Constantinople, was of more modern origin.

The affection of the young emperor for his mother, and the intrigues of the different members of the regency, who expected to increase their influence by her favour, reinstated Zoe Carbopsina in the palace, from which she had been expelled by Alexander. As she had received the imperial crown, she shared the sovereign authority with the regents as a matter of right, and through the influence of John Eladas, she soon became the absolute mistress of the public administration. Zoe thought of little but luxury and amusement. Her administration was unfortunate, and a complete defeat of the Byzantine army by the Bulgarians created a general feeling that the direction of public affairs ought no longer to be entrusted to a woman of her thoughtless disposition.

The evils inflicted on the inhabitants of Thrace by Simeon, king of Bulgaria, after his rupture with Alexander, equalled the sufferings of the empire during the earlier incursions of the Huns and Avars. In the year 913, shortly after Alexander’s death, Simeon marched up to the walls of Constantinople almost without opposition; but he found the city too well garrisoned to admit of his remaining long in its vicinity: he retired after an ineffectual attempt to settle the terms of a treaty in a conference with the Patriarch. In 914 he again invaded the empire, and in this campaign Adrianople was betrayed into his hands by its governor, an Armenian named Pankratakas, who, however, as soon as the Bulgarians retired, restored it to the Byzantine government.

A Turkish tribe, called by the Byzantine writers Patzinaks, who had contributed to destroy the flourishing monarchy of the Khazars, had driven the Magyars or Hungarians before them into Europe, and at this period had extended their settlements from the shores of the Sea of Azof and the falls of the Dnieper to the banks of the Danube. They were thus neighbours of the Russians and the Bulgarians, as well as of the Byzantine province of Cherson. They were nomads, and inferior in civilization to the nations in their vicinity, by whom they were dreaded as active and insatiable plunderers, always ready for war and eager for rapine. The regency of the Empress Zoe, in order to give the people of Thrace some respite from the ravages of the Bulgarians, concluded an alliance with the Patzinaks, who engaged, on receiving a sum of money, to act in cooperation with the imperial forces. They were to attack the Bulgarians in the rear, the means of crossing the Danube being furnished by the Byzantine government. Zoe, in the meantime, trusting to negotiations she was carrying on at Bagdad for securing tranquillity in Asia Minor, transferred the greater part of the Asiatic army to Europe, and prepared to carry the war into the heart of Bulgaria, and compel Simeon to fight a battle, in order to prevent his country being laid waste by the Patzinaks. A splendid army was reviewed at Constantinople, and placed under the command of Leo Phokas, a man possessing great influence with the aristocracy, and a high military reputation. Before the troops marched northward they received new arms and equipments; liberal advances of pay were made to the soldiers, and numerous promotions were made among the officers. The second in command was Constantine the Libyan, one of the conspirators in the plot of Dukas, who had escaped the search of the regency until he obtained the pardon obtained Zoe’s government. The fleet appointed to enter the mouth of the Danube, in order to transport the Patzinaks over the river, was placed under the command of Romanus the grand admiral.

Leo Phokas pressed forward, confident of success; but Romanus felt no inclination to assist the operation of one whom a successful campaign would render the master of the empire. He is accused of throwing impediments in the way of the Patzinaks, and delaying to transport them over the Danube at the time and place most likely to derange the operations of the Bulgarians. The conduct of Leo was rash, that of Romanus treacherous. Simeon was enabled to concentrate all his forces and fight a battle at a place called Achelous, in which the Byzantine army was defeated, with an immense loss both in officers and men, (20th August 917). Leo escaped to Mesembria, where he attempted to rally the fugitives; but Romanus, as soon as he heard of the disaster, sailed directly to Constantinople without attempting to make any diversion for the relief of his countrymen, or endeavouring to succour the defeated troops as he passed Mesembria. He was accused of treason on his return, and condemned to lose his sight; but he retained possession of the fleet by the support of the sailors; and the empress, who began to perceive her unpopularity, countenanced his disobedience, as she expected to make use of his support.

The partisans of Leo openly urged his claims to be placed at the head of the administration, as the only man capable by his talents of preventing a revolution; and the chamberlain Constantine urged Zoe to appoint him a member of the regency, and invest him with the conduct of public affairs. The empress began to distrust Romanus, from the preponderating power he possessed as long as the fleet remained in the vicinity of the capital. The fleet was therefore ordered into the Black Sea; but Romanus had already received secret encouragement to oppose the designs of Leo from Theodore, the governor of the young emperor, and he delayed sailing, under the pretext that the sailors would not put to sea until their arrears were paid. The crisis was important; so the chamberlain Constantine visited the fleet with the money necessary for paying the sailors, determined to hasten its departure, and perhaps to arrest the grand admiral. This step brought matters to an issue. Romanus seized the money and paid the sailors himself, keeping the chamberlain under arrest. This daring conduct on the part of a man hitherto considered as deficient in ambition as well as capacity, spread alarm in the palace, for it revealed to the empress that there was another pretender to supreme power. Zoe immediately despatched the Patriarch Nikolaos, and some of the principal officers of state, to visit the fleet in order to induce the sailors to return to their allegiance; but the populace, eager for change, and delighted to see the government in a state of embarrassment, attacked the envoys with stones, and drove them back into the palace. The empress, at a loss what measures to adopt, vainly sought for information concerning the causes of this sudden revolution. At last Theodore, the young emperor’s governor, declared that the conduct of Leo Phokas and the chamberlain Constantine had caused the popular dissatisfaction, for Leo had ruined the army and Constantine had corrupted the administration. He suggested that the easiest mode of putting an end to the existing embarrassments would be for the young Emperor Constantine to assume the supreme power into his own hands. This was done, and the young prince, or rather his tutor Theodore in his name, invited the Patriarch and one of the regents named Stephen to consult on the measures to be adopted, though both were known to be hostile to his mother's administration. This produced an immediate revolution at court. The principal officers of state attached to the party of Phokas were dismissed from their employments, which were conferred on men pledged to support the new advisers of the young emperor. Leo, not perceiving that Romanus was directly connected with the new administration, proposed a coalition, but received from that wary intriguer only assurances of friendship and support, while he openly obeyed the orders of the new ministers. Romanus, however, was soon informed by his friend Theodore that the Patriarch and Stephen had resolved to remove him from his command, that they might render him as harmless as Leo : bold measures were therefore rendered necessary, and without hesitation the admiral ranged his fleet in hostile array under the walls of the palace Bukoleon. His friends within, under the direction of the patrician Niketas, invited him to enter and protect the young emperor, and at the same time forced the Patriarch and Stephen to retire. The Emperor Constantine had been already predisposed in favour of Romanus by his tutor, so that he received the insurgent admiral in a friendly manner. The young prince, accompanied by the court, repaired to the chapel in Pharo, where Romanus took an oath of fidelity on the wood of the true cross, and was invested with the offices of and master and grand heteriarch, or general of the foreign guards, on the 25th of March 919.

Before a month elapsed, the fortunes of Romanus were further advanced by the charms of his daughter Helena. Constantine VII became deeply smitten with her beauty, and the ambition of the father precipitated the marriage in order to secure the title of Basileopater, which gave him precedence over every other officer of state, 27th April 919. He was now even more than prime-minister, and his position excited deeper envy. Leo Phokas took up arms in Bithynia and marched to Chrysopolis, (Scutari), declaring that his object was to deliver the young emperor from restraint; but his movement was so evidently the result of disappointed ambition that he found few to support him, and he was soon taken prisoner and deprived of sight. Another conspiracy, having for its object the assassination of the Basileopater, also failed. The Empress Zoe was accused of attempting to poison him, and immured in a monastery. The governor Theodore, perceiving that he no longer enjoyed the confidence of the friend he had contributed to elevate, began to thwart the ambitious projects of Romanus, and was banished to his property in Opsikion. Romanus, finding that there was now nothing to prevent his indulging his ambition, persuaded his son-in-law to confer on him the title of Caesar, and shortly after to elevate him to the rank of emperor. He was crowned as the colleague of Constantine Porphyrogenitus by the Patriarch Nikolaos in the Church of St Sophia, on the 17th December 919.

Few men ever possessed the absolute direction of public affairs in the Byzantine Empire without assuming the imperial title, even though they had no intention of setting aside the sovereign whose throne they shared. It was well understood that there was no other means of securing their position, for as long as they remained only with the rank of prime-minister or Caesar, they were exposed to lose their sight, or be put to death by a secret order of the sovereign, obtained through the intrigues of a eunuch or a slave. But as soon as they assumed the rank of emperor of the Romans, their person was sacred, being protected both by the law of high treason and the force of public opinion, which regarded the emperor as the Lord's anointed. Two of the greatest sovereigns who ever sat on the throne of Constantinople, Nicephorus II (Phokas), and John I (Zimiskes), shared the throne with Basil II and Constantine VIII as Romanus I did with Constantine VII.

Romanus was a man whose character was too weak to admit of enlarged views. His vanity was hurt by the fact that he occupied only the second place in the empire, and to gratify his passion for pageantry, and secure the place of honour in the numerous ceremonies of the Byzantine court, he usurped the place of his son-in-law and conferred the imperial crown on his own wife Theodora, and on his eldest son Christophoros, giving both precedence over the hereditary emperor. Romanus had served in his youth as a marine, and he had risen to the highest rank without rendering himself remarkable either for his valour or ability; the successful career of his family, therefore, naturally excited the dissatisfaction of the aristocracy and the ambition of every enterprising officer. His reign was disturbed by a series of conspiracies, all having for their avowed object the restoration of Constantine Porphyrogenitus to his legitimate rights, though, probably, the real object of the conspirators was to gain possession of the power and position occupied by Romanus. In the year 921, the great officers of the empire—the grandmaster of the palace, the minister of fortifications, and the director-general of charitable institutions—were discovered plotting. Shortly after, a patrician, with the aid of the captain of the guard of Maglabites or mace-bearers, undismayed by the preceding failure, again attempted to dethrone Romanus; and a third conspiracy, planned by the treasurer and keeper of the imperial plate, one of the chamberlains, and the captain of the imperial galley, was organized. All were discovered, and the conspirators were punished. In 924, Boilas, a patrician, rebelled on the frontiers of Armenia, but his troops were defeated by the celebrated general John Kurkuas, and he was confined in a monastery. Again, in 926, one of the ministers of state and the postmaster-general formed a plot, which proved equally abortive.

As years advanced, the feeble character of Constantine Porphyrogenitus became more apparent. His want of talent, and his devotion to literature and art, warned the ablest statesmen to avoid compromising their fortunes by supporting the cause of one so little qualified to defend his own rights. Romanus, too, having assumed his three sons, Christophoros, Stephanos, and Constantinos, as his colleagues, and placed his son Theophylaktos on the patriarchal throne, considered his power perfectly secure. The spirit of discontent was, nevertheless, very prevalent; the people in the capital and the provinces were as little inclined to favour the usurping family as the nobility. An impostor, born in Macedonia, made his appearance in the theme Opsikion, where he announced himself to be Constantine Dukas; and though taken, and condemned to lose his hand like a common forger, he was enabled to raise a second rebellion after his release. He procured an artificial hand of brass, with which he wielded his sword; the common people flocked round him, and resisted the government with so much determination that he was captured with difficulty, and, to revenge the display he had made of the weakness of Romanus’s power, he was burned alive in the Amastrianon at Constantinople.

In early life Romanus had been a votary of pleasure, but when the possession of every wish for three-and-twenty years had tamed his passions, he became a votary of superstition. Feelings of religion began to affect his mind, and at last he allowed it to be discovered that he felt some remorse for having robbed his son-in-law of his birth-right, in order to bestow the gift on his own children, who treated him with less respect than their brother-in-law. Christophoros was dead, and Stephanos, impelled either by fear that his father would restore Constantine Porphyrogenitus to the first place in the government, or excited by the usual unprincipled ambition that pervaded the Byzantine court, resolved to secure the possession of supreme authority by deposing his father. Romanus was seized by the agents of his son and carried off to the island of Prote, where he was compelled to embrace the monastic life. Constantinos, his younger son, though he had not been privy to the plot, readily joined in profiting by his father’s ill-treatment. Such crimes, however, always excite indignation in the breasts of the people; and in this case the inhabitants of Constantinople, hearing vague rumours of scenes of dethronement, banishment, and murder, in the imperial palace, became alarmed for the life of their lawful sovereign, Constantine Porphyrogenitus. They felt an attachment to the injured prince, whom they saw constantly at all the church ceremonies, degraded from his hereditary place; his habits were known, many spoke in his praise, nobody could tell any evil of him. A mob rushed to the palace, and, filling the courts, insisted on seeing the lawful emperor. His appearance immediately tranquillized the populace, but hopes were awakened in the breasts of many intriguers by this sudden display of his influence. A new vista of intrigue was laid open, and the most sagacious statesmen saw that his establishment on the throne as sole emperor was the only means of maintaining order. Every man in power became a partisan of his long-neglected rights, and a restoration was effected without opposition. The Emperors Stephanos and Constantinos were seized by the order of Constantine VII, while they were sitting at a supper-party, and compelled to adopt the monastic habit, 27th January 945.

 

Sect. IV

CONSTANTINE VII (PORPHYROGENITUS), ROMANUS II. A.D. 945-963.

 

We are principally indebted to the writings of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, or to works compiled by his order, for our knowledge of Byzantine history during the latter half of the ninth and earlier half of the tenth centuries. His own writings give us a picture of his mind, for he generally communicates his information as it occurs to himself, without hunting for classic and ecclesiastical phrases, and seeking for learned allusions and antiquated words to confuse and astonish his readers, as was the fashion with most of the Byzantine nobles who affected the literary character. Of his person we have a correct description in the writings of his dependants. He was tall and well made, with broad shoulders, a long neck, and a long face. This last feature is represented in caricature on some of the coins of his rein. His skin was extremely fair, his complexion ruddy, his eyes soft and expressive, his nose aquiline, and his carriage straight as a cypress. He was a lover of good cheer, and kept the best of cooks, and a cellar of excellent wine of all the choicest kinds; but he indulged in no excesses, and his morals were pure. He was reserved and mild in his intercourse with his familiars, eloquent and liberal to his dependants, so that we must not wonder that his panegyrists forgot his defects. In a despotic sovereign, such a character could not fail to be popular.

Constantine’s long seclusion from public business had been devoted to the cultivation of his taste in art, as well as to serious study. He was a proficient in mathematics, astronomy, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. The works of his pencil were of course lauded as equal to the pictures by Apelles; his voice was often heard in the solemn festivals of the church. An encyclopaedia of historical knowledge—of which a part only has reached our time, but even this part has preserved many valuable fragments of ancient historians—and treatises on agriculture and the veterinary art, were compiled under his inspection.

The historical works written by his order were a chronicle in continuation of the Chronography of Theophanes, embracing the period from the reign of Leo V (the Armenian) to the death of Michael III. The name of the writer is said to be Leontios. A second work on the same period, but including the reign of Basil I, was also written by Genesius; and a third work, by an anonymous continuator, carried Byzantine history down to the commencement of the reign of his son Romanus II.

The writings ascribed to Constantine himself are peculiarly valuable, for several relate to subjects treated by no other author. The life of his grandfather, Basil I, tells some truths, from vanity, that an experienced flatterer would have concealed for fear of wounding family pride. A short geographical notice of the themes or administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire gives us the means of connecting medieval with ancient geography. But the emperor's most valuable work is a treatise on the government of the empire, written for the use of his son Romanus, which abounds with contemporary information concerning the geographical limits and political relations of the people on the northern frontier of the empire and of the Black Sea, with notices of the Byzantine power in Italy, and of the condition of the Greeks and Slavonians in the Peloponnesus, of which we should otherwise know almost nothing. Two essays on military tactics—one relating to naval and military operations with the regular troops of the empire, and the other to the usages of foreigners—contain also much information. The longest work, however, that Constantine wrote, and that on which he prided himself most, was an account of the ceremonies and usages of the Byzantine court. It is probably now the least read of his writings, yet it has been edited with care, though it is published without an index which merited more than a translation.

The government of Constantine was on the whole mild and equitable, and the empire during his reign was rich and flourishing. When he became despotic master of the East, he continued to think and act very much as he had done in his forced seclusion. He displayed the same simplicity of manner and goodness of heart. His weakness prevented him from being a good sovereign, but his humanity and love of justice preserved him from being a bad one, and he continued all his life to be popular with the mass of his subjects. His kind disposition induced him to allow his son, Romanus II, to marry Theophano, a girl of singular beauty, and of the most graceful and fascinating manners, but the daughter of a man in meat circumstances. The Byzantine historians, who are more frequently the chroniclers of aristocratic scandal than of political history, and whose appetite for popular calumny swallows the greatest improbabilities, have recorded that Theophano repaid the goodness of the emperor by inducing Romanus to poison his father. They pretend that the chief butler was gained, and that Constantine partook of a beverage, in which poison was mingled with medicine prescribed by his physician. Accident prevented him from swallowing enough to terminate his life, but the draught injured a constitution already weak. To recover from the languor into which he fell, he made a tour in Bithynia in order to enjoy the bracing air of Mount Olympus, and visit the principal monasteries and cells of anchorites, with which the mountain was covered. But his malady increased, and he returned to Constantinople to die, 9th Nov. 959.

The picture which we possess of the conduct of Constantine in his own family is so amiable, that we are compelled to reject the accusations brought against Romanus and Theophano;—we can no more believe that they poisoned Constantine, than we can credit all the calumnies against Justinian recounted by Procopius. To perpetrate such a crime, Romanus would have been one of the worst monsters of whose acts history has preserved a record; and a character so diabolical would have revealed its inherent wickedness during the four years he governed the empire with absolute power. Yet he appears only as a gay, pleasure-loving, pleasure-hunting prince. His father and his sisters always regarded him with the tenderest affection. Agatha, the youngest, was her father's constant companion in his study, and acted as his favourite secretary. Seated by his side, she read to him all the official reports of the ministers; and when his health began to fail, it was through her intermediation that he consented to trans­act public business. That such a proceeding created no alarming abuses, and produced neither serious complaints nor family quarrels, is more honourable to the heart of the princess than her successful performance of her task to her good sense and ability. It proves that affection, and not ambition, prompted her conduct. Historians and novelists may recount that Romanus, who lived in affectionate intercourse with such a father and sister, became a parricide, but the tenor of actual life rejects the possibility of any man acting suddenly, and for once, as a monster of iniquity.

The necessity of a safety-valve for political dissatisfaction, such as is afforded by a free press or a representative assembly, to prevent sedition, is evident, when we find a popular prince like Constantine exposed to numerous conspiracies. Men will not respect laws which appear to their minds to be individual privileges, and not national institutions. Conspiracies then form an ordinary method of gambling for improving a man’s fortune, and though few could aspire at the imperial throne, every man could hope for promotion in a change. Hence, we find a plot concocted to place the old Romanus I again on the throne. Partisans were even found who laboured for the worthless Stephanos, who was successively removed to Proconessus, Rhodes, and Mitylene. Constantinos also, who was transported to Tenedos and then to Samothrace, made several attempts to escape. In the last he killed the captain of his guards, and was slain by the soldiers. The conspirators in all these plots were treated with comparative mildness, for the punishment of death was rarely inflicted either by Romanus I or Constantine VII.

In spite of the wealth of the empire, and though the government maintained a powerful standing army and regular navy, there were many signs of an inherent weakness in the state. The emperors attempted to make pride serve as a veil for all defects. The court assumed an inordinate degree of pomp in its intercourse with foreigners. This pretension exposed it to envy; and the affectation of contempt assumed by the barbarians, who were galled by Byzantine pride, has been reflected through all succeeding history, so that we find even the philosophic Gibbon sharing the prejudices of Luitprand. Constantine Porphyrogenitus has fortunately left us an unvarnished picture of this senseless presumption, written with the foolish simplicity of an emperor who talks of what a statesman would feel inclined to conceal. He tells of the diplomatic arts and falsehoods to be used in order to prevent foreign princes obtaining a dress or a crown similar to that worn by the emperor of Constantinople; and he seems to consider this not less important than preventing them from obtaining the secret of Greek fire. Foreign ambassadors are to be told that such crowns were not manufactured on earth, but had been brought by an angel to the great Constantine, the first Christian emperor; that they have always been deposited in the sacristy of St Sophia’s, under the care of the Patriarch, and are only to be used on certain fixed ceremonies. The angel pronounced a malediction on any one who ventured to use them, except on the occasions fixed by immemorial usage; and the Emperor Leo IV, who had neglected this divine order, and placed one on his head, had quickly died of a brain fever. Similar tales and excuses were to be invented, in order to refuse the demands of princes who wished to intermarry with the imperial family; and the bestowal of Greek fire was to be eluded in the same way.

The attachment of the people had once rendered the Patriarch almost equal to the emperor in dignity, but the clergy of the capital were now more closely connected with the court than the people. The power of the emperor to depose as well as to appoint the Patriarch was hardly questioned, and of course the head of the Eastern Church occupied a very inferior position to the Pope of Rome. The church of Constantinople, filled with courtly priests, lost its political influence, and both religion and civilization suffered by this additional centralization of power in the imperial cabinet. From this period we may date the decline of the Greek Church.

The Patriarch Nikolaos, the mystic who had been deposed by Leo VI for opposing his fourth marriage, (A.D. 908,) was reinstated by Alexander, who acted in opposition to most of his brother's measures, A.D. 912. After Romanus I was established on the throne, Nikolaos yielded so far to the pre-eminence of the civil power as to consent to a union with the party of his successor, Euthymios, and to own that the marriage of Leo had been sanctified by the act of the Patriarch de facto. This was done to avoid what Nikolaos called scandal in the church, but the political experience of the bigoted ecclesiastic having shown him that he must look for support and power to the emperor, and not to the people, he became at last as subservient to the court as the mild Euthymios had ever been. On the death of Nikolaos, (925,) Stephen the eunuch, who was archbishop of Amasia, was appointed his successor, who, after a patriarchate of three years, was succeeded by Tryphon (A.D. 928). Tryphon held the office provisionally until Theophylaktos, the son of the Emperor Romanus I, should have attained the full age for ordination; but in order to avoid too great scandal in the church, Tryphon was deposed a year before Theophylaktos was appointed. The imperial youth was then only sixteen years of age, but his father obtained a papal confirmation of his election by means of Alberic, consul and patrician of Rome, who kept his own brother, Pope John XI, a prisoner at the time. Legates were sent to Constantinople, who installed Theophylaktos in the patriarchal chair on the 2d February 933. The highest order of priests in the corporation then called the Church, both in the East and West, insulted Christianity. The crimes and debauchery of the papal court were, however, more offensive than the servility and avarice of the Greek hierarchy. John XI was appointed Pope at the age of twenty-five, through the influence of his mother Marosia (AD 931). Marosia and her second husband, Guy of Tuscany, had dethroned, and it is supposed murdered, John X, of the family of Cenci. John XI as we have mentioned, was imprisoned by his brother Alberic, and died in confinement, a victim to the political intrigues of his brother and his mother. Alberic ruled Rome for about thirty years, and during that time the popes were only the patriarchs of the Latin church. On Alberic’s death, his son Octavian succeeded him as patrician, and became Pope at the age of eighteen, under the name of John XII (AD 956). He is generally considered the greatest criminal that ever occupied the papal throne.

The conduct of the Patriarch Theophylaktos was not much worse than might have been expected from a young man whose father had provided him with a bishopric, merely that he might enjoy a suitable rank and revenue. As long as his father could keep persons about the young man capable of controlling his conduct, outward decency was preserved; but age soon rendered him independent of advice, and he openly indulged tastes extremely unsuitable to his ecclesiastical dignity. He lived like a debauched young prince, and sold ecclesiastical preferments to raise money for his pleasures. He converted the celebration of divine service at St. Sophia's into a musical festival, adorned with rich pageantry. His passion for horses and for hunting exceeded that of the Emperor Basil I, and it caused his death, as it had done that of the imperial groom. The patriarchal stables are said to have contained two thousand horses. The magnificence of the building, and the manner in which his favourite steeds were fed, bathed, and perfumed, was one of the wonders of Constantinople. On one occasion, as Theophylaktos was officiating at the high altar of St. Sophia’s, a slave crept up to him and whispered that his favourite mare had foaled. The congregation was alarmed by the precipitation with which the “most holy” pontiff finished the service. The young Patriarch threw aside his ecclesiastical vestments as quickly as possible, and ran to the stable. After satisfying himself that everything was done for the comfort of the mare and foal, he returned to his cathedral to occupy his place in the procession. The people of Constantinople submitted to receive religious instruction from this festival and hunting loving Patriarch for twenty years; but strange must have been the reports that circulated through the provinces of the empire concerning the impious proceedings, profane songs, indecent dances, and diabolical ceremonies, with which he defiled the Church of the Divine Wisdom, could we look into the secret history of some provincial Procopius. The death of Theophylaktos was in keeping with his life. One of his horses, as self-willed as the Patriarch, and as unfit for its duty, dashed him against a wall. The accident brought on a dropsy, and he died in 956, after having too long disgraced the Greek church, and made St. Sophia’s an opera-house. He was succeeded by Polyeuktos, an ecclesiastic whose parents had marked him out for an ecclesiastical life.

It has been said that the general condition of the inhabitants of the Byzantine empire was prosperous; but in a despotic government, any negligence on the part of the central administration is infallibly followed by cruelty and extortion on the part of some of its distant agents, who exercise a power too great to be left uncontrolled without the certainty of abuse. The weakness both of Romanus I and Constantine VII allowed considerable disorder to prevail at Constantinople, and the grossest acts of tyranny to be committed in the provinces. Chases, a man of Saracen extraction, was raised to high office by the companions of the debauchery of Alexander, and was governor of the theme of Hellas during the minority of Constantine. His insatiable avarice and infamous profligacy at last drove the inhabitants of Athens to despair, and as he was attending divine service in the great temple of the Acropolis—once dedicated to the Divine Wisdom of the pagans—they rose in tumult, and stoned their oppressor to death at the altar. A governor of Cherson had been murdered for oppression at the end of the reign of Leo the Philosopher. John Muzalon, the governor of Calabria, now shared the same fate. As no attention was paid by such officers to protecting the commercial lines of trade either by sea or land, the navigation of the Archipelago and the Adriatic was infested by pirates, and the great roads of Asia and Europe were dangerous from the bands of brigands, who remained unmolested in their vicinity. Urso Participatio, the seventh doge of Venice, sent his son Petro to Constantinople to announce his election, and concert measures to protect the commerce of the Adriatic against the Saracen and Slavonian pirates. Petro was honoured with the title of protospatharios, and received many valuable presents from the emperor. But no measures were adopted for protecting trade; and as the son of the doge of Venice returned home, he was seized by Michael, duke of Slavonia, and delivered to Simeon, king of Bulgaria. The Slavonian kept the presents he had received, and the Bulgarian compelled his father to pay a large ransom for his release.

Hugh of Provence, king of Italy, sent an embassy to Romanus I. The Slavonians in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica attacked the ambassadors, but the Italians of their suite defeated the brigands, and captured several, whom they carried to Constantinople and delivered to the emperor for punishment.

Weak, however, as the Byzantine Empire may appear to us, it presented a very different aspect to all contemporary governments; for in every other country the administration was worse, and property and life were much more insecure. Its alliance was consequently eagerly sought by every independent state, and the court of Constantinople was visited by ambassadors from distant parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. The Greeks were then the greatest merchants and capitalists in the world, and their influence was felt not only by all the nations professing Christianity, but by the rival caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova, and the hostile Mohammedan princes of Egypt and Mauritania; it extended even to the Saxon monarchs of England.

The Slavonians of the Peloponnesus, who had gained a temporary independence during the latter part of the reign of Theophilus, remained tranquil from the time of their subjection by Theodora’s regency, until the careless administration of Romanus I again invited them to rebel. Two tribes, the Melings and Ezerites, who dwelt round Mount Taygetus in a state of partial independence, conceived the hope of delivering themselves from the Byzantine yoke, and boldly refused to pay the usual tribute. Krinites Arotras, the general of the Peloponnesian theme, was ordered to reduce them to obedience, but he was unable to make them lay down their arms until he had laid waste their country from March to November, without allowing them either to reap or sow. On their submission, their tribute was increased, and each tribe was obliged to pay six hundred byzants annually. But disturbances occurring not long afterwards among the Byzantine officers, and a new tribe called the Slavesians entering the peninsula, the Melings and Ezerites sent deputies to the Emperor Romanus to solicit a reduction of their tribute. The peaceable inhabitants saw their property threatened with plunder and devastation if the Melings and Ezerites should unite with the Sclavesians; the central government was threatened with the loss of the revenues of the province; so the emperor consented to issue a golden bull, or imperial charter with a golden seal, fixing the tribute of the Melings at sixty gold byzants, and that of the Ezerites at three hundred, as it had been before their rebellion.

The Slavonian population of the Peloponnesus was not confined to the tributary districts; nor, indeed, were these the only Sclavonians who retained their own local administration. The whole country, from the northern bank of the Alpheus to the sources of the Ladon and Erymanthus, was in their possession and they governed it according to their national usages until the Crusaders conquered Greece. A considerable body of the Sclavonians had also begun to adopt Byzantine civilization, and some of the wealthiest contended for the highest places in the administration of the empire. The patrician Niketas took an active share in the intrigues which placed the imperial crown on the head of Romanus. His pride and presumption, as well as his Slavonian descent, are ridiculed by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, though the patrician had formed an alliance with the imperial family.

From this time we hear nothing more of the Sclavonians settled in the Peloponnesus, until the peninsula was invaded by the Crusaders, after they had taken Constantinople, and established the Frank empire of Romania (A.D. 1204).

The condition of the town of Maina and the district about Cape Taenarus presents us with a picture of the vicissitudes the Greeks had suffered during the decline of the Roman Empire. The population of this rugged promontory consisted of the poorer class of agricultural Laconians, and it kept possession of this arid district when the Sclavonians seized the rich plain of the Eurotas, and drove the Greeks out of Sparta. The strangers occupied all the rich pastures on Mount Taygetus, but want of water prevented their advance along the promontory of Taenarus, and the fortified town of Maina enabled the inhabitants to defend their liberty, and support themselves by exporting oil. This secluded country long remained in a state of barbarism, and the rural population soon relapsed into idolatry, from which they were not converted to Christianity until the reign of Basil I. In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the town of Maina was a place of some commercial importance, and was governed by an officer appointed by the general of the Peloponnesian theme; but the district continued to pay only four hundred pieces of gold to the imperial treasury, which was the amount levied on it in the days of the Roman empire.

It was fortunate for the Byzantine empire that the caliphate of Bagdad had lost its former military power, for if an active enemy on the southern frontier had taken advantage of the embarrassments caused by an enterprising warrior like Simeon, king of Bulgaria, in the north, the empire might have been reduced to the deplorable condition from which it had been raised by the vigour of the Iconoclasts. But repeated rebellions had separated many of the richest provinces from the caliphate, and the tyranny of a religious sway, that enforced unity of faith by persecution, compelled heresy to appeal to the sword on every difference of opinion. This additional cause of ruin and depopulation, added to the administrative anarchy that was constantly on the increase in the caliph’s dominions, had greatly weakened the Saracen power. The innumerable discussions which a formal orthodoxy created in the Greek Church were trifling in comparison with those which the contemplative tendencies of the Asiatic mind raised in the bosom of Islam.

Several independent dynasties were already founded within the dominions of the caliph of Bagdad, which were disturbed by several sects besides the Karmathians. Yet, amidst all their civil wars, the Mohammedans made continual incursions into Asia Minor, and the Byzantine troops avenged the losses of the Christians by ravaging Syria and Mesopotamia. Slaves and cattle were carried off by both parties, whether victors or vanquished, so that the country became gradually depopulated; and in succeeding generations we find the richest provinces between the Halys, the Euphrates, and the Mediterranean in a state of desolation. The suburbs of the towns were reduced to ashes; valleys, once swarming with inhabitants, and cultivated with the spade, so that they could support millions, were reduced to sheep-walks. During the regency of Zoe, Damian, emir of Tyre, with a powerful fleet under his command, attacked Strobelos in Carla, but he was repulsed; and in the following year the Byzantine army made an irruption into the territories of Germanicia and Samosata, and carried off fifty thousand prisoners, according to the accounts of the Arabian historians. The empress-regent would have willingly concluded peace with the Saracens at this time, for she was compelled to transport the greater part of the Asiatic army into Europe to resist Simeon, king of Bulgaria, and it appears that a truce and exchange of prisoners took place. The Byzantine arms had been so much more successful than the Saracen during the preceding campaigns, that when all the Christians had been exchanged, the number of Mohammedans still unredeemed was so great that the caliph had to pay a hundred and twenty thousand pieces of gold for their release, according to the stipulated price fixed by the convention.

Romanus I, who had obtained the throne by means of the support of the navy, appears to have paid more attention to keep it in good order than his predecessors. In the year 926, Leo of Tripolis, who visited the Archipelago, seeking to repeat his exploits at Thessalonica, was encountered in the waters of Lemnos by the imperial squadron under John Radenos, and so completely defeated that it was with difficulty he saved his own ship.

The wars of the Karmathians brought the caliphate into such a disturbed state that the Christians of Armenia again raised their banner, and, uniting their forces with the Byzantine generals, obtained great successes over the Saracens. John, the son of that Kurkuas, who had been deprived of sight for conspiring against Basil I, was appointed commander-in-chief by Romanus, and commenced a career of conquest ably followed up a few years later by the Emperors Nicephorus II and John I (Zimiskes.) The military skill of John Kurkuas, the high discipline of his army, and the tide of conquest which flowed with his presence, revived aspirations of military renown long dormant at Constantinople. The learned were pleased to compare him with Trajan and Belisarius, the heroes of the Western and Eastern Empires.

As early as the reign of Leo VI, the Armenians under Melias had made considerable progress. The territory they delivered from the yoke of the Mohammedans was formed into a small theme, called Lykandos, and Melias was named its general, with the rank of patrician. From the year 92o to 942, John Kurkuas was almost uninterruptedly engaged against the Saracens. In 927 he ravaged the province of Melitene, and took the capital, of which, however, he only retained possession for a month. Two years after, the Saracen emir of Melitene, finding himself unable to resist the Byzantine armies, engaged to pay tribute to the emperor. In the meantime, the Armenians, with the assistance of a division of Byzantine troops, had pushed their conquests to the lake of Van, and forced the Saracens of Aklat and Betlis not only to pay tribute, but to allow the cross to be elevated in their cities higher than the domes of their mosques. The long series of annual incursions recorded by the Byzantine and Arabian writers may be described in the words plunder, slavery, depopulation. In the campaign of 941, the Byzantine troops are said to have reduced fifteen thousand Saracens to slavery. But the exploit which raised the reputation of John Kurkuas to the highest pitch of glory, was the acquisition of the miraculous handkerchief with a likeness of our Saviour visibly impressed on its texture; a relic which the superstition of the age believed had been sent by Christ himself to Abgarus, prince of Edessa. In the year 942, John Kurkuas crossed the Euphrates, plundered Mesopotamia as far as the banks of the Tigris, took Nisibis, and laid siege to Edessa. The inhabitants of the city purchased their safety by surrendering the miraculous handkerchief. The victorious general was removed from his command shortly after, and the relic was transported to Constantinople by others.

The parallel drawn by the people of Constantinople between John Kurkuas and Belisarius, seems imperfectly borne out by the conquests of the later general; but the acquisition of a relic weighed, in those days, more than that of a kingdom. Yet, perhaps, even the miraculous portrait of Edessa would not have been compared with the conquest of the Vandal and Gothic monarchies, had the two-and-twenty years of John Kurkuas’s honourable service not been repaid by courtly ingratitude. In the plenitude of his fame, the veteran was accused of aspiring at the empire, and removed from all his employments. Romanus I, like Justinian, when he examined the accusation, was convinced of its falsity, but he was jealous and mean-spirited.

During the government of Constantine VII, the war was continued with vigour on both sides. Seif Addawalah, the Hamdanite, called by the Greeks Chabdan, who was emir of Aleppo, invaded the empire with powerful armies. Bardas Phokas, the Byzantine general, displayed more avarice than energy; and even when replaced by his son Nicephorus, the future emperor, victory was not immediately restored to the imperial standards. But towards the end of Constantine’s reign, Nicephorus, having removed various abuses both in the military and civil service, which had grown out of the gains arising from the traffic in plunder, and slaves captured in the anneal forays of the troops, at last prepared an army calculated to prosecute the war with glory. The result of this labour became visible in the reign of Romanus II.

After the conquest of Crete, the whole disposable force of the empire in Asia was placed under the command of Nicephorus, who, according to the Arabians, opened the campaign of 962 at the head of one hundred thousand men. The Saracens were unable to oppose this army in the field; Doliche, Hierapolis, and Anazarba were captured, and Nicephorus advanced to Aleppo, where Seif Addawalah had collected an army to protect his capital. The position of the Hamdanite was turned by the superior tactics of the Byzantine general, his communications with his capital cut off, his army at last defeated, and his palace and the suburbs of Aleppo occupied. A sedition of the Arab troops, and a quarrel between the inhabitants and the garrison, enabled Nicephorus to enter the city, but the citadel defied his attacks. On the approach of a Saracen army from Damascus, Nicephorus abandoned his conquest, carrying away immense booty from the city of Aleppo, and retaining possession of sixty forts along the range of Mount Taurus as the result of his campaign.

The disastrous defeat of the Byzantine army by the Bulgarians at Achelous was the primary cause of the elevation of Romanus I to the throne; and as emperor, he conducted the war quite as ill as he had directed the operations of the fleet when admiral, though he could now derive no personal advantage from the disasters of his country. In 921, the warlike monarch of the Bulgarians advanced to the walls of Constantinople, after defeating a Byzantine army under John Rector. The imperial palace of the fountains, and many villas about the city, were burned, and Simeon retired unmolested with immense booty. The city of Adrianople was taken in one campaign by treachery, lost and reconquered in another by famine. In the month of September 923, Simeon again encamped before the walls of Constantinople, after having ravaged the greater part of Thrace and Macedonia with extreme barbarity, destroying the fruit-trees and burning the houses of the peasantry. He offered, however, to treat of peace, and proposed a personal interview with Romanus I, who was compelled to meet his proud enemy without the walls, in such a way that the meeting had the appearance of a Roman emperor suing for peace from a victorious barbarian. Romanus, when he approached the ground marked out for the interview, saw the Bulgarian army salute Simeon as an emperor with loud shouts and music, while the bodyguard of the Bulgarian king, resplendent with silver armour, astonished the people of Constantinople by its splendour, and the veteran soldiers of the empire by its steady discipline. It seems that the rebellion of the Slavonians in the Peloponnesus filled Romanus with anxiety; but he affected to solicit peace from motives of religion and humanity, that he might alleviate the sufferings of his subjects. The basis of peace was settled at this conference, and Simeon retired to his own kingdom laden with the plunder of the provinces and the gold of the emperor. The Byzantine writers omit to mention any of the stipulations of this treaty, so that there can be no doubt that it was far from honourable to the empire. It must be remarked, however, that they are always extremely negligent in their notice of treaties, and have not transmitted to us the stipulations of any of those concluded with the Khazars, or other nations through whose territory a great part of the commercial intercourse of the Byzantine empire with India and China was carried on, and from which the wealth of Constantinople was in a great measure derived.

Simeon then turned his arms against the Servians and Croatians. His cruelty in these hostilities is said to have surpassed anything ever witnessed. The inhabitants were everywhere deliberately murdered, and all Servia was so depopulated that its richest plains remained uncultivated for many years. Every inhabitant not slain was carried into Bulgaria to be sold as a slave; and the capital was so completely destroyed, that, seven years after the retreat of the invaders, only fifty men were found in its vicinity, living as hunters. At last the Bulgarian army was completely defeated by the Croatians, whom the cruelty of Simeon had driven to despair. Simeon died shortly after, and Servia placed itself under the protection of the Byzantine government.

Bulgaria bad been formidable at this time by the talents of Simeon rather than its own power. It was now threatened with invasion by the Magyars, who were carrying on plundering incursions into Germany, Italy, and even into France. Peter, who had succeeded his father Simeon, was anxious to secure his southern frontier by forming a closer union with the empire: he married Maria, the daughter of the Emperor Christophoros, and a long peace followed this alliance. But the ties of allegiance were not very powerful among the Bulgarian people, and a rebellion was headed by Michael the brother of Peter. The rebels maintained themselves in a state of independence after Michael's death, and when they were at last compelled to emigrate, they entered the territory of the empire, and, passing through the themes of Strymon, Thessalonica, and Hellas, seized on Nicopolis, and retained possession of that city and the surrounding country for some time, It seems that the incursion of Sclavesians into the Peloponnesus was connected with this inroad of the Bulgarians.

Thrace had not enjoyed sufficient respite from the ravages of the Bulgarians to recover its losses, before it was plundered by the Hungarians, who advanced to the walls of Constantinople in 934. The retreat of these barbarians was purchased by a large sum of money, paid in the Byzantine gold coinage, which was then the most esteemed currency throughout the known world. In 943, the Hungarians again ravaged Thrace, and their retreat was again purchased with gold. The last year of the reign of Constantine VII was again marked by an invasion of the Hungarians, who approached Constantinople; but on this occasion they were defeated by the imperial troops, who attacked their camp during the night.

The Byzantine wars in Italy present a series of vicissitudes connected with political intrigues, based on no national object, and leading to no general result. The imperial generals at times united with the Saracens to plunder the Italians, and at times aided the Italians to oppose the Saracens; sometimes occupied to accumulate treasures for themselves, and at others to extend the influence of the emperor. One of the Byzantine governors, named Krinitas, carried his avarice so far as to compel the people of Calabria (Apulia) to sell their grain at a low price, and then, having created a monopoly of the export trade in his own favour, sold it at an exorbitant profit to the Saracens of Africa. Constantine VII, hearing of this extortion, dismissed him from all employment, and confiscated his wealth; but the people who were governed by deputies possessing such powers were sure to be the victims of oppression.

During the regency of Zoe (AD 915), Eustathios, the governor of Calabria, concluded a treaty with the caliph of Africa, by which the Byzantine authorities in Italy were bound to pay a yearly tribute of 22,000 gold byzants, and the caliph engaged to restrain the hostilities of the Saracens of Sicily. This tribute was subsequently reduced to 11,000 byzants, but the treaty remained in force until the reign of the Emperor Nicephorus II. Even this distant province in the south of Italy was not safe from the plundering incursions of the Hungarians, who in the year 948 embarked on the Adriatic, and ravaged Apulia under the walls of Otranto. The general interests of Christianity, as well as the extent of Byzantine commerce, induced the Byzantine government to aid Hugh of Provence and the Genoese in destroying the nest of Saracen pirates established at Fraxinet, in the Alps, to the eastward of Nice.

Romanus II was only twenty-one years of age when he ascended the throne. He bore a strong resemblance to his father in person, and possessed much of his good-nature and mildness of disposition, but he was of a more active and determined character. Unfortunately, he indulged in every species of pleasure with an eagerness that ruined his health and reputation, though his judicious selection of ministers prevented its injuring the empire. He was blamed for inhumanity, in compelling his sisters to enter a monastery; but as his object was a political one, in order to prevent their marriage, he was satisfied with their taking the veil, though they refused to wear the monastic dress; and be allowed them to live as they thought fit, and dispose of their own private fortunes at will. His own object was obtained if he prevented any of the ambitious nobles from forming an alliance with them, which would have endangered the hereditary right of his own children. His good-nature is avouched by the fact that when Basilios called the Bird, a favourite minister of his father, engaged a number of patricians in a conspiracy to seize the throne, he allowed none of the conspirators to be put to death. Though he spent too much of his time surrounded by actors and dancers, both the administration of civil and military affairs was well conducted during his reign. His greatest delight was in hunting, and he spent much of his time in the country surrounded by his gay companions, his horses, and his dogs. His excesses in pleasure and fatigue soon ruined his constitution; but when he died at the age of twenty-four, the people, who remembered his tall well-made figure and smiling countenance, attributed his death to poison. His wife, whose beauty and graceful manner never won the public to pardon a low alliance, which appeared to their prejudices to disgrace the majesty of the purple, was accused of this crime, as well as of having instigated the death of her father-in-law. Romanus on his death-bed did not neglect his duty to the empire. He had observed that his able prime-minister, Joseph Bringas, had begun to manifest too great jealousy of Nicephorus Phokas; he therefore left it as his dying injunction that Nicephorus should not be removed from the command of the army employed against the Saracens.

Joseph Bringas, who conducted the administration during the reign of Romanus II, was a man of talent and integrity. His worst act, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was, that he withdrew a eunuch, named John Cherinas, from a monastery into which he had been exiled by Constantine VII, and conferred on him the dignity of patrician, with the command of the foreign guards. The Patriarch protested in vain against this act of sacrilege; Bringas wanted a man to command the guard, over whom he knew the leading nobles could exercise no influence; so the monk quitted his frock, put on armour, and became a leading man at court. Sisinios, one of the ablest and most upright men in the public service, was made prefect of Constantinople, and rendered the administration of justice prompt and equitable. A general scarcity tried the talents and firmness of Bringas, and he met the difficulty by his great exertions, though it occurred at the very time it was necessary to make extraordinary preparations to provision the expedition against Crete. Every measure to alleviate the public distress was taken in a disinterested spirit. Everything required for the army was immediately paid for; to prevent speculation in corn, the exportation of provisions from the capital was prohibited—a law which may often be rendered necessary as a temporary measure of police, though it is a direct violation of the permanent principles of sound commercial policy.

The great event of the reign of Romanus II was the conquest of Crete. The injury inflicted on Byzantine commerce by the Saracen corsairs, fitted out in the numerous ports on the north side of that island, compelled many of the Greek islands of the Archipelago to purchase protection from the rulers of Crete by the payment of a regular tribute. The trade of Constantinople and its supplies of provisions were constantly interrupted, yet several expeditions against Crete, fitted out on the largest scale, had been defeated. The overthrow of that undertaken in the reign of Leo VI has been noticed. Romanus I was unwilling to revive the memory of his share in that disaster, and left the Cretans undisturbed during his reign; but Constantine VII, towards the end of his reign, prepared an expedition on a very grand scale, the command of which he entrusted to a eunuch named Gongyles. This expedition was completely defeated; the Byzantine camp was taken, and the greater part of the force destroyed. Gongyles himself escaped with difficulty.

Romanus was hardly seated on the throne before he resolved to wipe off the disgrace the empire had suffered. The only mode of protecting the commerce of the capital and the coasts of Greece was to conquer the island of Crete, and expel all the Saracen population. Romanus determined to fit out an expedition on a scale suitable for this undertaking, and he knew that in Nicephorus Phokas he possessed a general equal to the enterprise. Bringas aided the emperor with zeal and energy, and gave no countenance to the endeavours that some courtiers made to awaken the jealousy of Romanus, that too much glory might accrue to Nicephorus from the successful termination of so great an undertaking.

The expedition was strong in numbers and complete in its equipments. The fleet consisted of dromons and chelands. The dromon was the war-galley, which had taken the place of the triremes of the ancient Greeks and the quinqueremes of the Romans; it had only two tiers of rowers, and the largest carried three hundred men, of whom seventy were marine soldiers. The chelands were smaller and lighter vessels, adapted for rapid movements, and fitted with tubes for launching Greek fire, and their crews seem to have varied from 120 to 16o men. More than three hundred large transports attended the ships of war, freighted with military machines and stores. We are not to suppose that the dromons and chelands were all fitted for war; a few only were required for that purpose, and the rest served as transports for the army, and the provisions necessary for a winter campaign. The land forces consisted of chosen troops from the legions of Asia and Europe, with Armenian, Slavonian, and Russian auxiliaries. The port of Phygela, near Ephesus, served as the place of rendezvous for the ships collected from the coasts of Greece and the islands of the Aegean. Everything was ready in the month of July 96o, and Nicephorus disembarked his troops in Crete without sustaining any loss, though the Saracens attempted to oppose the operation. The city of Chandax was prepared to defend itself to the last extremity, and the Mohammedans in the rest of the island took active measures for resisting the progress of the Byzantine troops, and preventing their deriving any supplies from the interior. Chandax was too strongly fortified to be taken without a regular siege, so that the first operation of Nicephorus was to invest it in form. To insure the fall of the place, even at the risk of prolonging the siege, he began his operations by forming a complete circumvallation round his camp and naval station, which he connected with the sea on both sides of the city, and thus cut the enemy off from all communication with the Saracens in the country. The pirates of Chandax had often been at war with all the world, and they had fortified their stronghold in such a way that it could be defended with a small garrison, while the bulk of their forces were cruising in search of plunder. The repeated attacks of the Byzantine emperors had also warned them of the dangers to which they were exposed. Towards the land, a high wall protected the city; it was composed of sun-dried bricks, but the mortar of which they were formed had been kneaded with the hair of goats and swine into a mass almost as hard as stone, and it was so broad that two chariots could drive abreast on its summit. A double ditch of great depth and breadth strengthened the work, and rendered approach difficult.

One of the parties sent out by Nicephorus to complete the conquest of the island having been cut off, he was compelled to take the field in person as soon as he had completed his arrangements for blockading the fortress during the winter. The Saracens, encouraged by their success, had assembled an army, and proposed attempting to relieve the besieged city, when they were attacked in their position, and routed with great loss. The Byzantine general, in order to intimidate the defenders of Chandax, ordered the heads of those slain in the country to be brought to the camp, stimulating the activity of his soldiers in this barbarous service by paying a piece of silver for every head. They were then ranged on spears along the whole line of the circumvallation towards the fortifications of the city; and the number of slain was so great, that many more were cast into the place by means of catapults, in order to let the besieged see the full extent of the loss of their countrymen.

A strict blockade was maintained during the whole winter. When the weather permitted, light galleys cruised before the port, and at all times several of the swiftest dromons and chelands were kept ready to pursue any vessel that might either attempt to enter or quit the port. But though the Saracens were reduced to suffer great privations, they showed no disposition to surrender, and Nicephorus pressed on the siege as spring advanced with mines and battering-rams. At last a practicable breach was effected, and the place was taken by storm on the 7th of May, 961. The accumulated wealth of many years of successful piracy was abandoned to the troops, but a rich booty and numerous slaves were carried to Constantinople, and shown in triumph to the people.

To complete the conquest of the island, it was necessary to exterminate the whole of the Saracen population. To effect this, the fortifications of Chandax were levelled with the ground, and a new fortress called Temenos, situated on a high and rugged hill, about twelve miles inland, was constructed and garrisoned by a body of Byzantine and Armenian troops. Many Saracens, however, remained in the island, but they were reduced to a state approaching servitude. The greater part of the Greek population in some parts of the island had embraced Mohammedanism during the 135 years of Saracen domination. When the island was reconquered, an Armenian monk named Nikon became a missionary to these infidels, and he had the honour of converting numbers of the Cretans back to Christianity. As soon as the conquest of the island was completed, the greater part of the army was ordered to Asia Minor; but Nicephorus was invited by the emperor to visit Constantinople, where he was allowed the honour of a triumph. He brought Kurup, the Saracen emir of Crete, a prisoner in his train.

We may here pause to take a cursory view of the state of Greece during the ninth and tenth centuries. The preceding pages have noticed the few facts concerning the fortunes of this once glorious land that are preserved in the Byzantine annals, but these facts are of themselves insufficient to explain how a people, whose language and literature occupied a predominant position in society, enjoyed neither political power nor moral pre-eminence as a nation. The literary instruction of every child in the empire who received any intellectual culture was thoroughly Greek: its first prayers were uttered in that language: its feelings were refined by the perusal of the choicest passages of the Greek poets and tragedians, and its opening mind was enlarged by the writings of the Greek historians and philosophers; but here the influence ended, for the moral education of the citizen was purely Roman. The slightest glance into history proves that the educated classes in the Byzantine Empire were generally destitute of all sympathy with Greece, and looked down on the Greeks as a provincial and alien race. The fathers of the church and the ecclesi­astical historians, whose works were carefully studied, to complete the education of the Byzantine youth, and to prepare them for public life, quickly banished all Hellenic fancies from their minds as mere schoolboy dreams, and turned their attention to the atmosphere of practical existence in church and state. Byzantine society was a development of Roman civilization, and hence the Byzantine mind was practical and positive : administration and law were to it what liberty and philosophy had been to the Hellenes of old. The imagination and the taste of Hellas had something in their natural superi­ority that was repulsive to Byzantine pedantry, while their paganism excited the contempt of ecclesiastical bigots. A strong mental difference was therefore the permanent cause of the aversion to Greece and the Greeks that is apparent in Byzantine society, and which only begins to disappear after the commencement of the eleventh century. Its operation is equally visible in the Hellenic race, in whom the spirit of local patriotism has always been powerful, and it kept them aloof from the Byzantine service, so that the native Greeks really occupy a less prominent figure in the social and political history of the empire than they were entitled to claim.

The great social feature of the Hellenic race, during the ninth and tenth centuries, is the stationary condition of society, for the apathy resulting from the secret protestation of the Greek mind against Roman influence was confined to the higher classes. The eighth century was unquestionably a period of great activity, increase, and improvement among the Greeks, as among every other portion of the population of the Eastern Empire. But after the subjection of the Slavonian colonists in the first years of the ninth century, and the re­establishment of extensive commercial relations over the whole Mediterranean, Greek society again relapsed into a stationary condition. There is no doubt that the general aspect of the country had undergone a total change ; and its condition in the tenth century was as different from its condition in the seventh, as the state of the southern provinces of Russia, in the present century, is from their state in the thirteenth, after the devastations of the Tartars. Numerous new cities had been built.

The legendary history of the Greek monasteries tells us that the country was once utterly deserted, that the rugged limestone mountains were overgrown with forests and thick brushwood, and that into these deserted spots holy hermits retired to avoid the presence of pagan Sclavonians, who occupied the rich plains and pastoral slopes of the lower hills. In these retreats the holy anchorites dreamed that they were dwelling in cells once occupied by saints of an earlier day—men who were supposed to have fled from imaginary persecutions of Roman emperors, who had de­populated whole provinces by their hatred to Christianity, instead of by administrative oppression; and the hermits saw visions revealing where these predecessors had concealed portraits painted by St. Luke himself, or miraculous pictures, the work of no human band. Such is perhaps a not unapt representation of a large part of the rural districts of Greece during the seventh century. The immense extent of the private estates of a few rich individuals, from the time of Augustus to that of Leo the Philosopher, left whole provinces depopulated, and fit only to be used as pasture. Landlords, robbers, pirates, and slavery had all conspired to reduce Greece to a state of degradation and depopulation before the Sclavonians colonized her soil.

The vigorous administration of the Iconoclasts restored order, reduced the aristocracy to obedience, subdued the Sclavonians, and revived industry and commerce. The state of Greece was again changed, the Greek population increased as if they had been new colonists settled on a virgin soil, and from the end of the ninth century to the invasion of the Crusaders, Greece was a rich and flourishing province. The material causes of this wealth are as evident as the moral causes of its political insignificance. The great part of the commerce of the Mediterranean was in the hands of the Greeks; the wealth and laws of the Byzantine empire placed ample capital at their command; the silk manufacture was to Thebes and Athens what the cotton manufacture now is to Manchester and Glasgow; Monemvasia was then what Venice became at a later period; the slave-trade, though it filled the world with misery, and Christian society with demoralization, brought wealth to the shores of Greece. The mass of the agricultural population, too, enjoyed as much prosperity as the commercial. The produce of the country was abundant, and labor bore a far higher price than has ever been the case in Western Europe. This was a natural result of the state of things in the vicinity of every town and village in Greece. The nature of all the most valuable produce of the land rendered the demand for labour at particular seasons very great; and this labour yielded immense profits, for it fructified olive groves, vineyards, and orchards of the choicest kinds, formed by the accumulated capital of ages. The labour of a few days created an amount of produce which bore no comparison with its cost, and Greece at this time possessed a monopoly of the finer kinds of oil, wine, and fruit. Moreover, the pastoral habits of the Sclavonians, who still occupied large provinces at a distance from the principal towns, prevented the cultivation of corn over a great extent of country; and the ruin of the excellent roads, which in ancient times had admitted of the transport of huge blocks of marble, and the march of armies accompanied by elephants over the roughest mountains, rendered the transport of grain to any considerable distance impossible. All these circumstances rendered labour valuable. The cultivation of grain by spade husbandry was often a matter of necessity, so that the agricultural labourer could easily maintain a position of comparative ease and abundance.

In this state of society, the only chance of improvement lay in the moral advancement of the citizen, which required the union of free local institutions with a well-organized central administration of the state, and a system for distributing justice over which the highest political power could exert no influence. Unfortunately no central government on the continent of Europe, which has possessed strength sufficient to repress local selfishness, and the undue power of privileged classes, has ever yet avoided fiscal oppression; and this was the case in the Byzantine empire. The social condition of the Greeks nourished intense local selfishness; the central operation of the Byzantine government led to severe fiscal exactions. The result of the political and financial, as well as of the moral state of the country, was to produce a stationary condition of society. Taxation absorbed all the annual profits of industry; society offered no invitation to form new plantations, or extend existing manufactures, and the age afforded no openings for new enterprises; each generation moved exactly in the limits of that which had preceded it, so that Greece, though in a state of material prosperity, was standing on the brink of decline. That decline commenced the moment the Italians were enabled to avail themselves of the natural resources of their country. Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, freed from the fiscal oppres­sion of a central government, became first the rivals and then the superiors of the Greeks in commerce, industry, and wealth.

 

 

CHAPTER VI

PERIOD OF CONQUEST AND MILITARY GLORY

A.D. 963- 1025