CHAPTER VI

PERIOD OF CONQUEST AND MILITARY GLORY

A.D. 963- 1025

 

Sect. I

REIGN OF NICEPHORUS II, PHOKAS, AND JOHN I (ZIMISKES)

A.D. 963-1025

 

 

The Empress Theophano was left by Romanus II regent for her sons, but as she was brought to bed of a daughter only two days before her husband’s death, the whole direction of public business remained in the hands of Joseph Bringas, whose ability was universally acknowledged, but whose severity and suspicious character rendered him generally unpopular. His jealousy soon involved him in a contest for power with Nicephorus Phokas, who, however, did not venture to visit Constantinople until his personal safety was guaranteed by the Empress Theophano and the Patriarch Polyeuktes. Nicephorus was allowed to celebrate his victories in Syria by a triumph, in which he displayed to a superstitious crowd the relics he had obtained by his victories over the Mohammedans; and the piety of the age attached as much importance to these as his troops did to the booty and slaves with which they were enriched. Bringas saw that the popularity of Nicephorus and the powerful influence of his family connections must soon gain him the title of Emperor, and his jealousy appears to have precipitated the event he feared. He formed a plot to have the victorious general seized, in order that his eyes might be put out. Nicephorus being informed of his danger, and having secured the support of the Patriarch by his devout conduct, persuaded Polyeuktes to take prompt measures to protect him from the designs of Bringas. The senate was convoked, and the Patriarch proposed that Nicephorus should be entrusted with the command of the army in Asia, according to the last will of Romanus II. Bringas did not venture to oppose this proposal of the Patriarch, which was eagerly adopted; and Nicephorus, after taking an oath never to injure the children of Romanus, his lawful sovereigns, proceeded to take the command of all the Byzantine forces in Asia.

Bringas still pursued his schemes; he wrote to John Zimiskes, the ablest and most popular of the generals under the orders of Nicephorus, offering him the supreme command if he would seize the general-in-chief, and send him to Constantinople as a prisoner. Zimiskes was the nephew of Nicephorus; but his subsequent conduct shows that conscience would not have arrested him in the execution of any project for his own aggrandizement. On the present occasion, he may have thought that the power of Bringas was not likely to be permanent, and he may have known that he would show little gratitude for any service; while the popularity of Nicephorus with the troops made fidelity to his general the soundest policy. Zimiskes carried the letter of the prime-minister to Nicephorus, and invited him to assume the imperial title, as the only means of securing his own life and protecting his friends. It is said that John Zimiskes and Romanus Kurkuas were compelled to draw their swords, and threaten to kill their uncle, before he would allow himself to be proclaimed emperor. The same thing had been said of Leo V (the Armenian), that he was compelled to mount the throne by his murderer and successor, Michael II. Nicephorus at last yielded, and marched immediately from Caesarea to Chrysopolis, where he encamped. Bringas found little support in the capital. Basilios, the natural son of the Emperor Romanus I, armed his household, in which he had three thousand slaves, and, exciting a sedition of the populace, sallied into the streets of Constantinople, and attacked the houses of the ministers, most of whom were compelled to seek an asylum in the churches. Nicephorus was invited to enter the capital, where he was crowned by the Patriarch Polyeuktes, in St. Sophia’s, on the 16th of August, 963.

The family of Phocas was of Cappadocian origin, and had now for three generations supplied the empire with distinguished generals. Nicephorus proved an able emperor, and a faithful guardian of the young emperors; but his personal bearing was tinged with military severity, and his cold phlegmatic temper prevented his using the arts necessary to gain popularity either with the courtiers or the citizens. His conduct was moral, and he was sincerely religious; but he was too enlightened to confound the pretensions of the church with the truth of Christianity, and, consequently, in spite of his real piety, he was calumniated by the clergy as a hypocrite. Indeed, there was little probability that a strict military disciplinarian, who ascended the throne at the age of fifty-one, should prove a popular prince, when he succeeded a young and gay monarch like Romanus II.

The coronation of Nicephorus was soon followed by his marriage with Theophano, a match which must have been dictated to the beautiful widow by ambition and policy rather than love; though the Byzantine writers accuse her of a previous intrigue with the veteran general, and record that she exerted great authority over him by her persuasive manners. The marriage ceremony was performed by the Patriarch, but shortly after its celebration he forbade the emperor to enter the chancel of St. Sophia's, where the imperial throne was placed, declaring that even the emperor must submit to the penance imposed by the orthodox church on second marriages, which excluded the contracting party from the body of the church for a year. The hostile feeling, on the part of Polyeuktes, that produced this insolence, also encouraged a report that Nicephorus had acted as godfather to one of the children of Romanus and Theophano—a connection which, according to the Greek church, forms an impediment to marriage. The Patriarch appears to have adopted this report without consideration, and threatened to declare the marriage he had celebrated null; he had even the boldness to order the emperor to separate from Theophano immediately. But this difficulty was removed by the chaplain who had officiated at the baptism. He came forward, and declared on oath that Nicephorus had not been present, nor had he, the priest, ever said so. The Patriarch found himself compelled to withdraw his opposition, and, to cover his defeat, he allowed Nicephorus to enter the church without remark. This dispute left a feeling of irritation on the mind of the emperor, and was probably the cause of some of his severities to the clergy, while it certainly assisted in rendering him unpopular among his bigoted subjects.

Nicephorus had devoted great attention to improving the discipline of the Byzantine army, and, as it consisted in great part of mercenaries, this could only be done by a liberal expenditure. His chief object was to obtain troops of the best quality, and all the measures of his civil administration were directed to fill the treasury. An efficient army was the chief support of the empire; and it seemed, therefore, to Nicephorus that the first duty of an emperor was to secure the means of maintaining a numerous and well-appointed military force. Perhaps the people of Constantinople would have applauded his maxims and his conduct, had he been more liberal in lavishing the wealth he extorted from the provinces on festivals and shows in the capital. A severe famine, at the commencement of his reign, increased his unpopularity. This scarcity commenced in the reign of Romanus II, and, among the reports circulated against Joseph Bringas, it was related that he had threatened to raise the price of wheat so high, that, for a piece of gold, a man should only purchase as much as he could carry away in his pockets. It is very probable that the measures adopted by Nicephorus tended to increase the evil, though Zonaras, in saying that he allowed each merchant to use his own interest as a law, would lead us to infer that he abolished monopolies and maximums, and left the trade in grain free. The fiscal measures of his reign, however, increased the burden of taxation. He retrenched the annual largesses of the court, and curtailed the pensions granted to courtiers. The worst act of his reign, and one for which the Byzantine historians have justly branded him with merited odium, was his violation of the public faith, and the honour of the Eastern Empire, by adulterating the coin, and issuing a debased coin, called the tetarteron. This debased money he employed to pay the debts of the state, while the taxes continued to be exacted in the old and pure coin of the empire. The standard of the coinage of the Eastern Empire, it must always be borne in mind, remained always the same until the taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders. The gold coins of Leo III and of Isaac II are of the same weight and purity; and the few emperors who disgraced their reigns by tampering with the currency have been branded with infamy. Perhaps there is no better proof of the high state of political civilization in Byzantine society. But the strong grounds of dissatisfaction against Nicephorus were ripened into personal animosity by an accidental tumult in the hippodrome, in which many persons lost their lives. It happened that, while the troops were going through the evolutions of a sham-fight, a report arose that the emperor intended to punish the people, who had thrown stones at him, and insulted him as he passed through the streets. This caused a rush out of the enclosures, and many persons, men, women, and children, perished. The citizens, of course, insisted that the massacre was premeditated.

The whole reign of Nicephorus was disturbed by the ill-will of the clergy, and one of his wisest measures met with the most determined opposition. In order to render the military service more popular among his native subjects, and prevent the veterans from quitting the army under the influence of religious feelings distorted by superstition, he wished the clergy to declare that all Christians who perished in war against the Saracens were martyrs in the cause of religion. But the Patriarch, who was more of a churchman than a patriot, considered it greater gain to the clergy to retain the power of granting absolutions, than to bestow the most liberal donation of martyrs on the church; and he appealed to the canons of St. Basil to prove that all war was contrary to Christian discipline, and that a Christian who killed an enemy, even in war with the Infidels, ought to be excluded from participating in the holy sacrament for three years. With a priesthood supporting such religious opinions, the Byzantine Empire had need of an admirable system of administration, and a series of brave and warlike emperors, to perpetuate its long existence. In the first year of his reign, Nicephorus endeavoured to restrain the passion for founding monasteries that then reigned almost universally. Many converted their family residences into monastic buildings, in order to terminate their lives as monks, without changing their habits of life. The emperor prohibited the foundation of any new monasteries and hospitals, enacting that only those already in existence should be maintained; and he declared all testamentary donations of land property in favour of the church void. He also excited the anger of the clergy, by forbidding any ecclesiastical erection to be made until the candidate had received the imperial approbation. He was in the habit of leaving the wealthiest sees vacant, and either retained the revenues or compelled the new bishop to pay a large portion of his receipts annually into the imperial treasury.

Nicephorus was so well aware of his unpopularity, that he converted the great palace into a citadel, which he made capable of defence with a small garrison. As the army was devoted to him, he knew that beyond the walls of Constantinople he was in no danger. In estimating the character and conduct of Nicephorus II, we must not forget that his enemies have drawn his portrait, and that, unfortunately for his reputation, modern historians have generally attached more credit to the splenetic account of the Byzantine court by Luitprand, the bishop of Cremona, than diplomatic despatches of that age are entitled to receive. Luitprand visited Constantinople as ambassador from the German emperor, Otho the Great, to negotiate a marriage between young Otho and Theophano, the stepdaughter of Nicephorus. Otho expected that the Byzantine emperor would cede his possessions in southern Italy as the dowry of the princess; Nicephorus expected the German emperor would yield up the suzerainty over Beneventum and Capua for the honour of the alliance. As might be expected, from the pride and rapacity of both parties, the ambassador failed in his mission; but he revenged himself by libelling Nicephorus; and his picture of the pride and suspicious policy of the Byzantine court in its intercourse with foreigners gives his libel some value, and serves as an apology for his virulence.

The darling object of Nicephorus was to break the power of the Saracens, and extend the frontiers of the empire in Syria and Mesopotamia. In the spring of 964, he assembled an army against Tarsus, which was the fortress that covered the Syrian frontier. The river Cydnus flowed through the city, dividing it into two portions, which were united by three bridges. The place was populous, well fortified, and amply supplied with every means of defence, so that the emperor was compelled to raise the siege, and lead his army against Adana, which he took. He then formed the siege of Mopsuestia, and, employing his men to run a subterraneous gallery under the walls, he prevented the besieged from observing the operation by throwing the earth taken from the excavation into the Pyramus during the night. When his mine was completed, the beams which supported the walls were burned, and as soon as the rampart fell, the Byzantine army carried the place by storm. Next year (965), Nicephorus again formed the siege of Tarsus with an army of forty thousand men. The place was inadequately supplied with provisions; and though the inhabitants were a warlike race, who had long carried on incursions into the Byzantine territory, they were compelled to abandon their native city, and retire into Syria, carrying with them only their personal clothing. A rich cross, which the Saracens had taken when they destroyed the Byzantine army under Stypiotes in the year 877, was recovered, and placed in the church of St. Sophia at Constantinople. The bronze gates of Tarsus and Mopsuestia, which were of rich workmanship, were also removed, and placed by Nicephorus in the new citadel he had constructed to defend the palace. In the same year Cyprus was reconquered by an expedition under the command of the patrician Niketas.

For two years the emperor was occupied at Constantinople by the civil administration of the empire, by a threatened invasion of the Hungarians, and by disputes with the king of Bulgaria; but in 968 he again resumed the command of the army in the East. Early in spring he marched past Antioch at the head of eighty thousand men, and, without stopping to besiege that city, he rendered himself master of the fortified places in its neighbourhoods, in order to cut it off from all relief from the caliph of Bagdad. He then pushed forward his conquests; Laodicea, Hierapolis, Aleppo, Arca, and Emesa were taken, and Tripolis and Damascus paid tribute to save their territory from being laid waste. In this campaign many relics were surrendered by the Mohammedans. In consequence of the approach of winter, the emperor led his army into winter quarters, and deferred forming the siege of Antioch until the ensuing spring. He left the patrician Burtzes in a fort on the Black Mountain, with orders to watch the city, and prevent the inhabitants from collecting provisions and military stores. The remainder of the army, under the command of Peter, was stationed in Cilicia. As he was anxious to reserve to himself the glory of restoring Antioch to the empire, he ordered his Lieutenants not to attack the city during his absence. But one of the spies employed by Burtzes brought him the measure of the height of a tower which it was easy to approach, and the temptation to take the place by surprise was not to be resisted. Accordingly, on a dark winter night, while there was a heavy fall of snow, Burtzes placed himself at the head of three hundred chosen men, and gained possession of two of the towers of Antioch. He immediately sent off a courier to Peter, requesting him to advance and take possession of the city; but Peter, from fear of the emperor's jealousy, delayed moving to the assistance of Burtzes for three days. During this interval, however, Burtzes defended himself against the repeated attacks of the whole population with great difficulty. The Byzantine army at length arrived, and Antioch was annexed to the empire after having remained 328 years in the power of the Saracens. The Emperor Nicephorus, instead of rewarding Burtzes for his energy, dismissed both him and Peter from their commands.

The Fatimite caliph Moez reigned at Cairowan, and was already contemplating the conquest of Egypt. Nicephorus not only refused to pay him the tribute of eleven thousand gold byzants, stipulated by Romanus I, but even sent an expedition to wrest Sicily from the Saracens. The chief command was entrusted to Niketas, who had conquered Cyprus; and the army, consisting chiefly of cavalry, was more particularly placed under the orders of Manuel Phokas, the emperor's cousin, a daring officer. The troops were landed on the eastern coast, and Manuel rashly advanced, until he was surrounded by the enemy and slain. Niketas also had made so little preparation to defend his position, that his camp was stormed, and he himself taken prisoner and sent to Africa. Nicephorus, who had a great esteem for Niketas in spite of this defeat, obtained his release by sending to Moez the sword of Mahomet, which had fallen into his hands in Syria. Niketas consoled himself during his captivity by transcribing the works of St. Basil, and a MS. of his penmanship still exists in the National Library at Paris.

The affairs of Italy were, as usual, embroiled by local causes. Otho, the emperor of the West, appeared at the head of an army in Apulia, and having secured the assistance of Pandulf, prince of Beneventum, called Ironhead, carried on the war with frequent vicissitudes of fortune. Ironhead was taken prisoner by the Byzantine general, and sent captive to Constantinople. But the tyrannical conduct of the Byzantine officials lost all that was gained by the superior discipline of the troops, and favoured the progress of the German arms. Society had fallen into such a state of isolation, that men were more eager to obtain immunity from all taxation than protection for industry and property, and the advantages of the Byzantine administration ceased to be appreciated.

The European provinces of the empire were threatened with invasion both by the Hungarians and Bulgarians. In 966, Nicephorus was apprised of the intention of the Hungarians, and he solicited the assistance of Peter, king of Bulgaria, to prevent their passing the Danube. Peter refused, for he had been compelled to conclude a treaty of peace with the Hungarians, who had invaded Bulgaria a short time before. It is even said that Peter took advantage of the difficulty in which Nicephorus appeared to be placed, by the numerous wars that occupied his troops, to demand payment of the tribute Romanus I had promised to Simeon. Nicephorus, in order to punish the insolence of one whom he regarded as his inferior, sent Kalokyres, the son of the governor of Cherson, as ambassador to Russia, to invite Swiatoslaff, the Varangian prince of Kieff, to invade Bulgaria, and entrusted him with a sum of fifteen hundred pounds’ weight of gold, to pay the expenses of the expedition. Kalokyres proved a traitor : he formed an alliance with Swiatoslaff, proclaimed himself emperor, and involved the empire in a bloody war with the Russians.

Unpopular as Nicephorus II was in the capital, his reign was unusually free from rebellions of the troops or insurrections in the provinces. His life was terminated in his own palace by domestic treachery. His beautiful wife Theophano, and his valiant nephew John Zimiskes, were his murderers. Theophano was said to have been induced to take part in the conspiracy from love for Zimiskes, whom she expected to marry after he mounted the throne. Zimiskes murdered his friend and relation from motives of ambition. A band of conspirators, selected from the personal enemies of the emperor, among whom was Burtzes, accompanied John Zimiskes at midnight to the palace wall overlooking the pont of Bukoleon, and the female attendants of the empress hoisted them up from their boat in baskets. Other assassins had been concealed in the palace during the day, and all marched to the apartment of the emperor. Nicephorus was sleeping tranquilly on the floor—for he retained the habits of his military life amidst the luxury of the imperial palace. Zimiskes awoke him with a kick, and one of the conspirators gave him a desperate wound on the head, while Zimiskes insulted his uncle with words and blows: the others stabbed him in the most barbarous manner. The veteran, during his sufferings, only exclaimed, “O God! grant me thy mercy”. John I was immediately proclaimed emperor by the murderers. The body of Nicephorus was thrown into the court, and left all day on the snow exposed to public view, that everybody might be convinced he was dead. In the evening it was privately interred.

Thus perished Nicephorus Phokas on the 10th December 969—a brave soldier, an able general, and, with all his defects, one of the most virtuous men and conscientious sovereigns that ever occupied the throne of Constantinople. Though born of one of the noblest and wealthiest families of the Eastern Empire, and sure of obtaining the highest offices at a proud and luxurious court, he chose a life of hardship in pursuit of military glory; and a contemporary historian, who wrote after his family had been ruined by proscription, and his name had become odious, observes, that no one had ever seen him indulge in revelry or debauchery even in his youth.

 

REIGN OF JOHN I ZIMISKES

 

John I was a daring warrior and an able general. He was thoughtless, generous, and addicted to the pleasures of the table, so that, though he was by no means a better emperor than Nicephorus, he was far more popular at Constantinople: hence we find that his base assassination of his sovereign and relative was easily pardoned and forgotten, while the fiscal severity of his predecessor was never forgiven. The court of Constantinople was so utterly corrupt, that it was relieved from all sense of responsibility; the aristocracy knew no law but fear and private interest, and no crime was so venial as successful ambition. The throne was a stake for which every courtier held it lawful to gamble, who was inclined to risk his eyes or his life to gain an empire. Yet we must observe that both Nicephorus and John were men of nobler minds than the nobles around them, for both respected the rights and persons of their wards and legitimate princes, Basil and Constantine, and contented themselves with the post of prime-minister and the rank of emperor.

The chamberlain Basilios had been rewarded by Nicephorus, for his services in aiding him to mount the throne, with the rank of President of the Council, a dignity created on purpose. He was now entrusted by John with the complete direction of the civil administration. The partisans of Nicephorus were removed from all offices of trust, and their places filled by men devoted to Zimiskes, or hostile to the family of Phokas. All political exiles were recalled, and a parade of placing the young emperors, Basil and Constantine, on an equality with their senior colleague was made, as an insinuation that they had hitherto been retained in an unworthy state of inferiority. At the same time, measures were adopted to prevent the rabble of the capital from plundering the houses of the wealthy nobles who had been dismissed from their appointments, which was a usual proceeding at every great political revolution in Constantinople.

The coronation of John I was delayed by the Patriarch for a few days, for Polyeuktes lost no opportunity of showing his authority. He therefore refused to perform the ceremony until Zimiskes declared that he hart not imbued his hands in the blood of his sovereign. He pointed out his fellow-conspirators, Leo Valantes and Atzypotheodoros, as the murderers, and excused himself by throwing the whole blame of the murder on the Empress Theophano. The officers thus sacrificed were exiled, and the empress was removed from the imperial palace. John was then admitted to the favour of the Patriarch, on consenting to abrogate the law of Nicephorus, providing that the candidates for ecclesiastical dignities should receive the emperor's approbation before their election, and promising to bestow all his private fortune in charity. After his coronation, he accordingly distributed one-half of his fortune among the poor peasants round Constantinople, and employed the other in founding an hospital for lepers, in consequence of that disease having greatly increased about this time. He also increased his popularity by remitting the tribute of the Armeniac theme, which was his native province, and by Priding to the largesses which it was customary for the emperor to distribute.

The Patriarch Polyeuktes died about three months after the coronation, and Zimiskes selected Basilios, a monk of Mount Olympus, as his successor; and without paying any respect to the canons which forbid the interference of the laity in the election of bishops, he ordered him to be installed in his dignity. The monk proved less compliant than the emperor expected. After occupying the patriarchal chair about five years, he was deposed for refusing to appear before the emperor to answer an accusation of treason. The Patriarch declared the emperor incompetent to sit as his judge, asserting that he could only be judged or deposed by a synod or general council of the church. He was nevertheless banished to a monastery he had built on the Scamander, and from which he is called Scamandrinos. Antonios, the abbot of Studio; was appointed Patriarch in his place.

The family of Phokas had so long occupied the highest military commands, and disposed of the patronage of the empire, that it possessed a party too powerful to be immediately reduced to submission. The reign of John was disturbed by more than one rebellion excited by its members. Leo, the brother of Nicephorus, had distinguished himself by gaining a great victory over the Saracens in the defiles of Kylindros, near Andrassos, while his brother was occupied with the conquest of Crete. During the reign of Nicephorus he held the office of curopalates, but had rendered himself hated on account of his rapacity. His second son, Bardas Phokas, held the office of governor of Koloneia and Chaldia when Nicephorus was murdered, and was banished to Amasia. Bardas was one of the best soldiers and boldest champions in the Byzantine army. In the year 97o he escaped from confinement, and rendered himself master of Caesarea, where he assumed the title of Emperor. In the meantime his father, escaping from Lesbos, and his elder brother Nicephorus from Imbros, attempted to raise a rebellion in Europe. These two were soon captured, and John, satisfied that he had ruined the family when he murdered the Emperor Nicephorus, spared their lives, and allowed the sentence which condemned them to lose their eyes to be executed in such a way that they retained their eyesight. Bardas, however, gave the emperor some trouble, and it was necessary to recall Bardas Skleros from the Russian war to take the command against him. Phokas, when deserted by his army, escaped to a castle he had fortified as a place of refuge, where he defended himself until Skleros persuaded him to surrender, on a promise that he should receive no personal injury. Zimiskes, who admired his daring courage, condemned him to reside in the island of Chios, and adopt the monastic robe. His father Leo, who escaped a second time from confinement, and visited Constantinople in the hope of rendering himself master of the palace during the absence of the emperor, was discovered, and dragged from St. Sophia’s, in which he sought an asylum. His eyes were then put out, and his immense estates confiscated.

John, in order to connect himself with the Basilian dynasty, married Theodora, one of the daughters of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Another more important marriage is passed unnoticed by the Byzantine writers. Zimiskes, finding that he could ill spare troops to defend the Byzantine possessions in Italy against the attacks of the Western emperor, released Pandulf of Beneventum, after he had remained three years a prisoner at Constantinople, and by his means opened amicable communications with Otho the Great. A treaty of marriage was concluded between young Otho and Theophano, the sister of the Emperors Basil and Constantine. The nuptials were celebrated at Rome on the 14th of April 972; and the talents and beauty of the Byzantine princess enabled her to act a prominent and noble part in the history of her time.

A curious event in the history of the Eastern Empire, which ought not to pass unnoticed, is the transportation of a number of heretics, called by historians Manicheans, from the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, to increase the colonies of Paulicians and other heretics already established round Philippopolis. This is said to have been done by the Emperor John, by advice of a hermit named Theodoros, whom he elevated to the dignity of Patriarch of Antioch. The continual mention of numerous communities of heretics in Byzantine history proves that there is no greater delusion than to speak of the unity of the Christian church. Dissent appears to have been quite as prevalent, both in the Eastern and Western churches, before the time of Luther, as it has been since. Because the Greeks and Italians have been deficient in religious feeling, and their superior knowledge enabled them to affect contempt for other races, the history of dissent has been neglected, and religious investigation decried under the appellation of heresy.

The Russian war was the great event of the reign of John Zimiskes. The military fame of the Byzantine emperor, who was unquestionably the ablest general of his time, the greatness of the Russian nation, whose power now overshadows Europe, the scene of the contest, destined in our day to be again the battlefield of Russian armies in a more successful campaign, and the political interest which attaches to the first attempt of a Russian prince to march by land to Constantinople, all combine to give a practical as well as a romantic interest to this war.

The first Russian naval expedition against Constantinople in 865 would probably have been followed by a series of plundering excursions, like those carried on by the Danes and Normans on the coasts of England and France, had not the Turkish tribe called the Patzinaks rendered themselves masters of the lower course of the Dnieper, and become instruments in the hands of the emperors to arrest the activity of the bold Varangians. The northern rulers of Fief were the same rude warriors that infested England and France, but the Russian people was then in a more advanced state of society than the mass of the population in Britain and Gaul. The majority of the Russians were freemen; the majority of the inhabitants of Britain and Gaul were serfs. The commerce of the Russians was already so extensive as to influence the conduct of their government, and to modify the military ardour of their Varangian masters. But this commerce, after the fall of the Khazar Empire, and the invasion of Europe by the Magyars and Patzinaks, was carried on under obstacles which tended to reduce its extent and diminish its profits, and which it required no common degree of skill and perseverance to overcome. The wealth revealed to the rapacious Varangian chiefs of Kiev by the existence of this trade invited them to attack Constantinople, which appeared to be the centre of immeasurable riches.

After the defeat in 865, the Russians induced their rulers to send envoys to Constantinople to renew commercial intercourse, and invite Christian missionaries to visit their country; and no inconsiderable portion of the people embraced Christianity, though it continued long after better known to the Russian merchants than to the Varangian warriors. The commercial relations of the Russians with Cherson and Constantinople were now carried on directly, and numbers of Russian traders took up their residence in these cities. The first commercial treaty between the Russians of Kiev and the Byzantine Empire was concluded in the reign of Basil I. The intercourse increased from that time. In the year 902, seven hundred Russians are mentioned as serving on board the Byzantine fleet with high pay; in 935, seven Russian vessels, with 415 men, formed part of a Byzantine expedition to Italy; and in 949, six Russian vessels, with 629 men, were engaged in the unsuccessful expedition of Gongyles against Crete. In 966, a corps of Russians accompanied the unfortunate expedition of Niketas to Sicily. There can be no doubt that these were all Varangians, familiar, like the Danes and Normans in the West, with the dangers of the sea, and not native Russians, whose services on board the fleet could have been of little value to the masters of Greece.

But to return to the history of the Byzantine wars with the Russians. In the year 907, Oleg, who was regent of Kiev during the minority of Igor the son of Rurik, assembled an army of Varangians, Slavonians, and Croatians, and, collecting two thousand vessels or boats of the kind then used on the northern shore of the Euxine, advanced to attack Constantinople. The exploits of this army, which pretended to aspire at the conquest of Tzaragrad, or the City of the Caesars, were confined to plundering the country round Constantinople; and it is not improbable that the expedition was undertaken to obtain indemnity for some commercial losses sustained by imperial negligence, monopoly, or oppression. The subjects of the emperor were murdered, and the Russians amused themselves with torturing their captives in the most barbarous manner. At length Leo purchased their retreat by the payment of a large sum of money. Such is the account transmitted to us by the Russian monk Nestor, for no Byzantine writer notices the expedition, which was doubtless nothing more than a plundering incursion, in which the city of Constantinople was not exposed to any danger. These hostilities were terminated by a commercial treaty in 912, and its conditions are recorded in detail by Nestor.

In the year 941, Igor made an attack on Constantinople, impelled either by the spirit of adventure, which was the charm of existence among all the tribes of Northmen, or else roused to revenge by some violation of the treaty of 912. The Russian flotilla, consisting of innumerable small vessels, made its appearance in the Bosphorus while the Byzantine fleet was absent in the Archipelago. Igor landed at different places on the coast of Thrace and Bithynia, ravaging and plundering the country; the inhabitants were treated with incredible cruelty; some were crucified, others were burned alive, the Greek priests were killed by driving nails into their heads, and the churches were destroyed. Only fifteen ships remained at Constantinople, but these were soon fitted up with additional tubes for shooting Greek fire. This force, trifling as it was in number, gave the Byzantines an immediate superiority at sea, and the patrician Theophanes sailed out of the port to attack the Russians. Igor, seeing the small number of the enemy's ships, surrounded them on all sides, and endeavoured to carry them by boarding; but the Greek fire became only so much more available against boats and men crowded together, and the attack was repulsed with fearful loss. In the meantime, some of the Russians who landed in Bithynia were defeated by Bardas Phokas and John Kurkuas, and those who escaped from the naval defeat were pursued and slaughtered on the coast of Thrace without mercy. The Emperor Romanus ordered all the prisoners brought to Constantinople to be beheaded. Theophanes overtook the fugitive ships in the month of September, and the relics of the expedition were destroyed, Igor effecting his escape with only a few boats. The Russian Chronicle of Nestor says that, in the year 944, Igor, assisted by other Varangians, and by the Patzirt, prepared a second expedition, but that the inhabitants of Cherson so alarmed the Emperor Romanus by their reports of its magnitude, that he sent ambassadors, who met Igor at the mouth of the Danube, and sued for peace on terms to which Igor and his boyards consented. This is probably merely a salve applied to the vanity of the people of Kiev by their chronicler; but it is certain that a treaty of peace was concluded between the emperors of Constantinople and the princes of Kiev in the year 945. The stipulations of this treaty prove the importance attached to the commerce carried on by the Russians with Cherson and Constantinople. The two Russo-Byzantine treaties preserved by Nestor are documents of great importance in tracing the history of civilization in the east of Europe. The attention paid to the commercial interests of the Russian traders visiting Cherson and Constantinople, and the prominence given to questions of practical utility instead of to points of dynastic ambition, may serve as a contrast to many modern treaties in the west of Europe. The trading classes would not have been powerful enough to command this attention to their interests on the part of the warlike Varangians, had a numerous body of free citizens not been closely connected with the commercial prosperity of Russia. Unfortunately for the people, the municipal independence of their cities, which had enabled each separate community to acquire wealth and civilization, was not joined to any central institutions that insured order and a strict administration of justice, consequently each city fell separately a prey to the superior military force of the comparatively barbarian Varangians of Scandinavia. The Varangian conquest of Russia had very much the same effect as the Danish and Norman conquests in the West. Politically, the nation appeared more powerful, but the condition of all ranks of the people socially was much deteriorated. It was, however, the Tartar invasion which separates the modem and the medieval history of Russia, and which plunged the country into the state of barbarism and slavery from which Peter the Great first raised it.

The cruelty of the Varangian prince Igor, after his return to Russia, caused him to be murdered by his rebellious subjects. Olga, his widow, became regent for their son Swiatoslaff. She embraced the Christian religion, and visited Constantinople in 957, where she was baptized. The Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has left us an account of the ceremony of her reception at the Byzantine court. A monk has preserved the commercial treaties of the empire, an emperor records the pageantry that amused a Russian princess. The high position occupied by the court of Kiev in the tenth century is also attested by the style with which it was addressed by the court of Constantinople. The golden bulls of the Roman emperor of the East, addressed to the prince of Russia, were ornamented with a pendent seal equal in size to a double solidus, like those addressed to the kings of France.

We have seen that the Emperor Nicephorus II sent the patrician Kalokyres to excite Swiatoslaff to invade Bulgaria, and that the Byzantine ambassador proved a traitor and assumed the purple. Swiatoslaff soon invaded Bulgaria at the head of a powerful army, which the gold brought by Kalokyres assisted him to equip, and defeated the Bulgarian army in a great battle, AD 968. Peter, king of Bulgaria, died shortly after, and the country was involved in civil broils; taking advantage of which, Swiatoslaff took Presthlava the capital, and rendered himself master of the whole kingdom. Nicephorus now formed an alliance with the Bulgarians, and was preparing to defend them against the Russians, when Swiatoslaff was compelled to return home, in order to defend his capital against the Patzinaks. Nicephorus assisted Boris and Romanus, the sons of Peter, to recover Bulgaria, and concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Boris, who occupied the throne. After the assassination of Nicephorus, Swiatoslaff returned to invade Bulgaria with an army of 6o,000 men, and his enterprise assumed the character of one of those great invasions which had torn whole provinces from the Western Empire. His army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with the Hungarians, so that he began to dream of the conquest of Constantinople, and hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the Romans of Byzantium to the Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine empire that it was ruled by a soldier who knew how to profit by its superiority in tactics and discipline. The Russian was not ignorant of strategy, and having secured his flank by his alliance with the Hungarians, he entered Thrace by the western passes of Mount Haemus, then the most frequented road between Germany and Constantinople, and that by which the Hungarians were in the habit of making their plundering incursions into the empire.

John Zimiskes was occupied in the East when Swiatoslaff completed the second conquest of Bulgaria and passed Mount Haemus, expecting to subdue Thrace during the emperor's absence with equal ease, AD 97o. The empire was still suffering from famine. Swiatoslaff took Philippopolis, and murdered twenty thousand of the inhabitants. An embassy sent by Zimiskes was dismissed with a demand of tribute, and the Russian army advanced to Arcadiopolis, where one division was defeated by Bardas Skleros, and the remainder retired again behind Mount Haemus.

In the following spring, 971, the Emperor John took the field at the head of an army of fifteen thousand infantry and thirteen thousand cavalry, besides a bodyguard of chosen troops called the Immortals, and a powerful battery of field and siege engines. A fleet of three hundred galleys, attended by many smaller vessels, was despatched to enter the Danube and cut off the communications of the Russians with their own country.

Military operations for the defence and attack of Constantinople are dependent on some marked physical features of the country between the Danube and Mount Haemus. The Danube, with its broad and rapid stream, and line of fortresses on its southern bank, would be an impregnable barrier to a military power possessing an active ally in Hungary and Servia; for it is easy to descend the river and concentrate the largest force on any desired point of attack, to cut off the communications or disturb the flanks of the invaders. Even after the line of the Danube is lost, that of Mount Haemus covers Thrace; and it formed a rampart to Constantinople in many periods of danger under the Byzantine emperors. It was then traversed by three great military roads passable for chariots. The first, which has a double gorge, led from Philippopolis to Sardica by the pass called the Gates of Trajan (now Kapou Dervend), throwing out three branches from the principal trunk to Naissos and Belgrade. The great pass forms the point of communication likewise with the upper valley of the Strymon, from Skupi to Ulpiana, and the northern parts of Macedonia. Two secondary passes communicate with this road to the north-east, affording passage for an army—that of Kezanlik, and that of Isladi; and these form the shortest lines of communication between Philippopolis and the Danube about Nicopolis, through Bulgaria. The second great pass is towards the centre of the range of Haemus, and has preserved among the Turks its Byzantine name of the Iron Gate. It is situated on the direct line of communication between Adrianople and Roustchouk. Through this pass a good road might easily be constructed. The third great pass is that to the east, forming the great line of communication between Adrianople and the Lower Danube near Silistria (Dorystolon). It is called by the Turks Nadir Dervend. The range of Haemus has several other passes independent of these, and its parallel ridges present numerous defiles. The celebrated Turkish position at Shoumla is adapted to cover several of these passes, converging on the great eastern road to Adrianople.

The Emperor John marched from Adrianople just before Easter, when it was not expected that a Byzantine emperor would take the field. He knew that the passes on the great eastern road had been left unguarded by the Russians, and he led his army through all the defiles of Mount Haemus without encountering any difficulty. The Russian troops stationed at Presthlava, who ought to have guarded the passes, marched out to meet the emperor when they heard he had entered Bulgaria. Their whole army consisted of infantry; but the soldiers were covered with chain armour, and accustomed to resist the light cavalry of the Patzinaks and other Turkish tribes. They proved, however, no match for the heavy-armed lancers of the imperial army; and, after a vigorous resistance, were completely routed by John Zimiskes, leaving eight thousand five hundred men on the field of battle. On the following day Presthlava was taken by escalade, and a body of seven thousand Russians and Bulgarians, who attempted to defend the royal palace, which was fortified as a citadel, were put to the sword after a gallant defence. Sphengelos, who commanded this division of the Russian force, and the traitor Kalokyres, succeeded in escaping to Dorystolon, where Swiatoslaff had concentrated the rest of the army; but Boris, king of Bulgaria, with all his family, was taken prisoner in his capital.

The emperor, after celebrating Easter in Presthlava, advanced by Pliscova and Dinea to Dorystolon, where Swiatoslaff still hoped for victory, though his position was becoming daily more dangerous. The Byzantine fleet entered the Danube and took up its station opposite the city, cutting off all the communications of the Russians by water, at the same time that the emperor encamped before the walls and blockaded them by land. Zimiskes, knowing he had to deal with a desperate enemy, fortified his camp with a ditch and rampart according to the old Roman model, which was traditionally preserved by the Byzantine engineers. The Russians enclosed within the walls of Dorystolon were more numerous than their besiegers, and Swaitoslaff hoped to be able to open his communications with the surrounding country, by bringing on a general engagement in the plain before all the defenses of the camp were completed. He hoped to defeat the attacks of the Byzantine cavalry by forming his men in squares, and, as the Russian soldiers were covered by long shields that reached to their feet, he expected to be able, by advancing his squares like moving towers, to clear the plain of the enemy. But while the Byzantine legions met the Russians in front, the heavy-armed cavalry assailed them with their long spears in flank, and the archers and slingers under cover watched coolly to transfix every man where an opening allowed their missiles to penetrate. The battle nevertheless lasted all day, but in the evening the Russians were compelled, in spite of their desperate velour, to retire into Dorystolon without having effected anything. The infantry of the north now began to feel its inferiority to the veteran cavalry of Asia sheathed in plate armour, and disciplined by long campaigns against the Saracens. Swiatoslaff, however, continued to defend himself by a series of battles rather than sorties, in which he made desperate efforts to break through the ranks of his besiegers in vain, until at length it became evident that he must either conclude peace, die on the field of battle, or be starved to death in Dorystolon. Before resigning himself to his fate, he made a last effort to cut his way through the Byzantine army; and on this occasion the Russians fought with such desperation, that contemporaries ascribed the victory of the Byzantine troops, not to the superior tactics of the emperor, nor to the discipline of a veteran army, but to the personal assistance of St. Theodore, who found it necessary to lead the charge of the Roman lancers, and shiver a spear with the Russians himself, before their phalanx could be broken. The victory was complete, and Swiatoslaff sent ambassadors to the emperor to offer terms of peace.

The siege of Dorystolon had now lasted more than two months, and the Russian army, though reduced by repeated losses, still amounted to twenty-two thousand men. The valour and contempt of death which the Varangians had displayed in the contest, convinced the emperor that it would cause the loss of many brave veterans to insist on their laying down their arms; he was therefore willing to come to terms, and peace was concluded on condition that Swiatoslaff should yield up Dorystolon, with all the plunder, slaves, and prisoners in possession of the Russians, and engage to swear perpetual amity with the empire, and never to invade either the territory of Cherson or the kingdom of Bulgaria; while, on the other hand, the Emperor John engaged to allow the Russians to descend the Danube in their boats, to supply them with two medimni of wheat for each surviving soldier, to enable them to return home without dispersing to plunder for their subsistence, and to renew the old commercial treaties between Kiev and Constantinople, July, 971.

After the treaty was concluded, Swiatoslaff desired to have a personal interview with his conqueror. John rode down to the bank of the Danube clad in splendid armour, and accompanied by a brilliant suite of guards on horseback. The short figure of the emperor was no disadvantage where he was distinguished by the beauty of his charger and the splendour of his arms, while his fair countenance, light hair, and piercing blue eyes fixed the attention of all on his bold and good-humoured face, which contrasted well with the dark and sombre visages of his attendants. Swiatoslaff arrived by water in a boat, which he steered himself with an oar. His dress was white, differing in no way from that of those under him, except in being cleaner. Sitting in the stern of his boat, he conversed for a short time with the emperor, who remained on horseback close to the beach. The appearance of the bold Varangian excited much curiosity, and is thus described by a historian who was intimate with many of those who were present at the interview: the Russian was of the middle stature, well formed, with strong neck and broad chest. His eyes were blue, his eyebrows thick, his nose flat, and his beard shaved, but his upper lip was shaded with long and thick mustaches. The hair of his head was cropped close, except two long locks which hung down on each side of his face and were thus worn as a mark of his Scandinavian race. In his ears he wore golden earrings ornamented with a ruby between two pearls, and his expression was stern and fierce.

Swiatoslaff immediately quitted Dorystolon, but he was obliged to winter on the shores of the Euxine, and famine thinned his ranks. In spring he attempted to force his way through the territory of the Patzinaks with his diminished army. He was defeated, and perished near the cataracts of the Dnieper. Kour, prince of the Patzinaks, became the possessor of his skull, which he shaped into a drinking-cup, and adorned with the moral maxim, doubtless not less suitable to his own skull, had it fallen into the hands of others, “He who covets the property of others, oft loses his own”. We have already had occasion to record that the skull of the Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus I, had ornamented the festivals of a Bulgarian king; that of a Russian sovereign now figured in the tents of a Turkish tribe.

The results of the campaign were as advantageous to the Byzantine empire as they were glorious to the Emperor John. Bulgaria was conquered, a strong garrison established in Dorystolon, and the Danube once more became the frontier of the Roman empire. The peace with the Russians was uninterrupted until about the year 988, when, from some unknown cause of quarrel, Vladimir the son of Swiatoslaff attacked and gained possession of Cherson by cutting off the water.

The Greek city of Cherson, situated on the extreme verge of ancient civilization, escaped for ages from the impoverishment and demoralization into which the Hellenic race was precipitated by the Roman system of concentrating all power in the capital of the empire. Cherson was governed for centuries by its own elective magistrates, and it was not until towards the middle of the ninth century that the Emperor Theophilus destroyed its independence. The people, however, still retained in their own hands some control over their local administration, though the Byzantine government lost no time in undermining the moral foundation of the free institutions which had defended a single city against many barbarous nations that had made the Roman emperors tremble. The inhabitants of Cherson long looked with indifference on the favour of the Byzantine emperor, cherished the institutions of Hellas, and boasted of their self-government.

A thousand years after the rest of the Greek nation was sunk in irremediable slavery, Cherson remained free. Such a phenomenon as the existence of manly feeling in one city, when mankind everywhere else slept contented in a state of political degradation, deserved attentive consideration. Indeed, we may be better able to appreciate correctly the political causes that corrupted the Greeks in the Eastern Empire, if we can ascertain those which enabled Cherson, though surrounded by powerful enemies and barbarous nations, to preserve

A Homer’s language murmuring in her streets,

And in her haven many a mast from Tyre.

In the reign of Diocletian, while Themistos was president of Cherson, Sauromates, king of Bosporos, passing along the eastern shores of the Euxine, invaded the Roman Empire. He overran Lazia and Pontus without difficulty, but on the banks of the Halys he found the Roman army assembled under the command of Constantius Chlorus. On hearing of this invasion, Diocletian sent ambassadors to invite the people of Cherson to attack the territories of the king of Bosporus, in order to compel him to return home. Cherson, holding the rank of an allied city, could not avoid conceding that degree of supremacy to the Roman emperor which a small state is compelled to yield to a powerful protector, and the invitation was received as a command. Chrestos had succeeded Themistos in the presidency; he sent an army against Bosporos, and took the city. But the Chersonites, though brave warriors, sought peace, not conquest, and they treated the royal family and all the inhabitants of the places that had fallen into their hands, in a way to conciliate the goodwill of their enemies. Their successes forced Sauromates to conclude peace and evacuate the Roman territory, in order to regain possession of his capital and family. As a reward for their services, Diocletian granted the Chersonites additional security for their trade, and extensive commercial privileges throughout the Roman Empire.

In the year 332, when Constantine the Great, in his declining age, had laid aside the warlike energy of his earlier years, the Goths and Sarmatians invaded the Roman Empire. The emperor called on the inhabitants of Cherson, who were then presided over by Diogenes, to take up arms. They sent a force well furnished with field-machines to attack the Goths, who had already crossed the Danube, and defeated the barbarians with great slaughter. Constantine, to reward their promptitude in the service of the empire, sent them a golden statue of himself in imperial robes, to be placed in the hall of the senate, accompanied with a charter ratifying every privilege and commercial immunity granted to their city by preceding emperors. He bestowed on them also an annual supply of the materials necessary for constructing the warlike machines of which they had made such good use, and pay for a thousand artillerymen to work these engines. This subsidy continued to be paid in the middle of the tenth century, in the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

Years passed on, and Sauromates, the grandson of him who invaded the empire in the time of Diocletian, determining to efface the memory of his grandfather's disgrace, declared war with Cherson. He was defeated by Vyskos, the president of Cherson, at Kapha, and compelled to conclude a treaty of peace, by which Kapha was declared the frontier of the territory of Cherson. Another Sauromates, having succeeded to the throne of Bosporos, determined to regain possession of Kapha, when Pharnakes was president of Cherson. A single combat between the gigantic king and the patriotic president, in which Sauromates was slain, terminated this war. The dynasty of the Sauromatan family ended, and Bosporos, becoming a free city in alliance with Cherson, raised a statue to Phamakes as a testimony of his moderation and philanthropy.

Again, after an interval of years, Lamachos was president of Cherson, but the people of Bosporos, corrupted by the memory of a court, and loving pageantry better than liberty, had elected a king named Asandros. The Bosporians proposed that the son of Asandros should marry the only daughter of Lamachos, in order to draw closer the alliance between the two states; and to this the Chersonites consented, but only on condition that the young Asander should take up his residence in Cherson, and engage never to return to Bosporos—not even to pay the shortest visit to the king his father, or any of his relations—under pain of death. The marriage was celebrated, and Asander dwelt with the young Gycia in the palace of Lamachos, which was a building of regal splendour, covering four of the quadrangles marked out by the intersec­tion of the streets in the quarter of Cherson called Sousa, and having its own private gate in the city walls. Two years after the celebration of this marriage, Lamachos died; his daughter inherited the whole of his princely fortune, and Zetho was elected president of Cherson. At the end of a year, Gycia went out to decorate her father's tomb, and wishing to honour his memory with the greatest solemnity, she received permission from the president and senate to entertain the whole body of the citizens of Cherson, with their wives and children, at a funeral banquet on the anniversary of her father's death as long as she lived. The celebration of this festival suggested to her husband a plan of rendering himself tyrant of Cherson, and for two years he collected men and warlike stores secretly from Bosporos, by means of the ships employed in his commercial affairs. These he concealed in the immense ware­houses enclosed within the walls of his wife's palace. Three of his own followers from Bosporos were alone entrusted with the secret of his plot. After a lapse of two years, Asander had collected two hundred Bosporians, with their armour, in the palace of Gycia, and was waiting for the approaching anniversary of the death of Lamachos to destroy the liberty of Cherson.

It happened at this time that a favourite maid of Gycia, offending her mistress, was ordered to be banished from her presence, and confined in a room over the warehouse in which the Bosporians were concealed. As the girl was sitting alone, singing and spinning, her spindle dropped, and rolled along the floor till it fell into a hole near the wall, from which she could only recover it by raising up one of the tiles of the pavement. Leaning down, she saw through the ceiling a crowd of men in the warehouse below, whom she knew by their dress to be Bosporians, and soldiers. She immediately called a servant, and sent him to her mistress, conjuring her to come to see her in her prison. Gycia, curious to see the effect of the punishment on her favorite, visited her immediately, and was shown the strange spectacle of a crowd of foreign soldiers and a magazine of arms concealed in her own palace. The truth flashed on her mind; she saw her husband was plotting to become the tyrant of her native city, and every feeling of her heart was wounded.

She assembled her relations, and by their means communicated secretly with the senate, revealing the plot to a chosen committee, on obtaining a solemn promise that when she died she should be buried within the walls of the city, though such a thing was at variance with the Hellenic usages of Cherson. Whether from the danger of attacking two hundred heavy-armed men, or to avoid war with Bosporos, the president and senate of Cherson determined to destroy the conspiracy by burning the enemy in their place of concealment, and Gycia willingly gave her ancestral palace to the flames to save her country.

When the day of the anniversary of her father’s funeral arrived, Gycia ordered the preparations for the annual feast to be made with more than ordinary liberality, and Asander was lavish in his distribution of wine; but due precautions had been taken that the gates of the city should be closed at the usual hour, and all the citizens in their dwellings. At the banquet in her own palace Gycia drank water out of a purple goblet, while the servant who waited on Asander served him with the richest wines. To the delight of her husband, Gycia proposed that all should retire to rest at an early hour, and she took a last melancholy leave of her husband, who hastened to give his three confidants their instructions, and then lay down to rest until the midnight should call him to complete his treachery. The gates, doors, and windows of the palace were shut up, and the keys, as usual, laid beside Gycia. Her maids had packed up all her jewels, and when Asander was plunged in a sound sleep from the wine he had drank, Gycia rose, locked every door of the palace as she passed, and hastened out, accompanied by her slaves. Order was immediately given to set fire to the building on every side, and thus the liberty of Cherson was saved by the patriotism of Gycia.

The spot where the palace had stood remained a vacant square in the time of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and Gycia during her lifetime would never allow even the ruins to be cleared away. Her countrymen erected two statues of bronze to honour her patriotism—one in the public agora, showing her in the flower of youth, dressed in her native costume, as when she saved her country; the other clad as a heroine armed to defend the city. On both inscriptions were placed commemorating her services and no better deed could be done at Cherson than to keep the bases of these statues bright and the inscriptions legible, that the memory of the treachery of the king's son, and the gratitude due to the patriotism of Gycia, might be ever fresh in the hearts of the citizens.

Some years after this, when Stratophilos was president, Gycia, suspecting that the gratitude of her countrymen was so weakened that they would no longer be inclined to fulfil their promise of burying her within the walls, pretended to be dead. The event was as she feared; but when the pro­cession had passed the gates, she rose up from the bier and exclaimed, “Is this the way the people of Cherson keep their promise to the preserver of their liberty?” Shame proved more powerful than gratitude. The Chersonites now swore again to bury her in the city, if she would pardon their falsehood. A tomb was accordingly built during her lifetime, and a gilded statue of bronze was erected over it, as an assurance that the faith of Cherson should not be again violated. In that tomb Gycia was buried, and it stood uninjured in the tenth century, when an emperor of Constantinople, impressed with admiration of her patriotism, so unlike anything he had seen among the Greek inhabitants of his own wide extended empire, transmitted a record of her deeds to posterity.

Cherson retained its position as an independent state until the reign of Theophilus, who compelled it to receive a governor from Constantinople; but, even under the Byzantine government, it continued to defend its municipal institutions, and, instead of slavishly soliciting the imperial favour, and adopting Byzantine manners, it boasted of its constitution and self-government. But it lost gradually its former wealth and extensive trade; and when Vladimir, the sovereign of Russia, attacked it in 988, it yielded almost without a struggle. The great object of ambition of all the princes of the East, from the time of Heraclius to that of the last Comnenos of Trebizond, was to form matrimonial alliances with the imperial family. Vladimir obtained the hand of Anne, the sister of the Emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII, and was baptised and married in the Church of the Panaghia at Cherson. To soothe the vanity of the empire, he pretended to retain possession of his conquest as the dowry of his wife. Many of the priests who converted the Russians to Christianity, and many of the artists who adorned the earliest Russian churches with paintings and mosaics, were natives of Cherson. The church raised Vladimir to the rank of a saint; the Russians conferred on him the title of the Great.

John Zimiskes, having terminated the Russian war, compelled Boris to resign the crown of Bulgaria, and accept the title of Magister, as a pensioner of the Byzantine court. The frontier of the Eastern Empire was once more extended to the Danube.

The Saracen war had been carried on vigorously on the frontiers of Syria, while the Emperor John was occupied with the Russian campaign. The continued successes of the Byzantine arms had so alarmed the Mohammedan princes, that an extensive confederacy was formed to recover Antioch, and the command of the army of the caliph was intrusted to Zoher, the lieutenant of the Fatimites in Egypt. The imperial army was led by the patrician Nikolaos, a man of great military skill, who had been a eunuch in the household of John Zimiskes; and he defeated the Saracens in a pitched battle, and saved Antioch for a time. But in the following year (973) the conquest of Nisibis filled the city of Bagdad with such consternation, that a levy of all Mussulmans was ordered to march against the Christians. The Byzantine troops in Mesopotamia were commanded by an Armenian named Temelek Melchi, who was completely routed near Amida. He was himself taken prisoner, and died after a year’s confinement.

With all his talents as a general, John does not appear to have possessed the same control over the general administration as Nicephorus; and many of the cities conquered by his predecessor, in which the majority of the inhabitants were Mohammedans, succeeded in throwing off the Byzantine yoke. Even Antioch declared itself independent. A great effort became necessary to regain the ground that had been lost; and, to make this, John Zimiskes took the command of the Byzantine army in person in the year 974. He marched in one campaign from Mount Taurus to the banks of the Tigris, and from the banks of the Tigris back into Syria, as far as Mount Libanon, carrying his victorious arms, according to the vaunting inaccuracy of the Byzantine geographical nomenclature, into Palestine. His last campaign, in the following year, was the most brilliant of his exploits. In Mesopotamia he regained possession of Amida and Martyropolis; but these cities contained so few Christian inhabitants that he was obliged to leave the administration in the hands of Saracen emirs, who were charged with the collection of the tribute and taxes. Nisibis he found deserted, and from it he marched by Edessa to Hierapolis or Membig, where he captured many valuable relics, among which the shoes of our Savior, and the hair of John the Baptist, are especially enumerated. From Hierapolis John marched to Apamea, Emesa, and Baalbec, without meeting any serious opposition. The emir of Damascus sent valuable presents, and agreed to pay an annual tribute to escape a visit. The emperor then crossed Mount Libanon, storming the fortress of Borzo, which commanded the pass, and, descending to the seacoast, laid siege to Berytus, which soon surrendered, and in which he found an image of the crucifixion that he deemed worthy of being sent to Constantinople. From Berytus he marched northward to Tripolis, which he besieged in vain for forty days. The valor of the garrison and the strength of the fortifications compelled him to raise the siege; but his retreat was ascribed to fear of a comet, which illuminated the sky with a strange brilliancy. As it was now September, he wished to place his worn-out troops in winter-quarters in Antioch; but the inhabitants shut the gates against him. To punish them for their revolt, he had the folly to ravage their territory, and cut down their fruit-trees; forgetting, in his barbarous and impolitic revenge, that he was ruining his own empire. Burtzes was left to reconquer Antioch for the second time; which, however, he did not effect until after the death of the Emperor John.

The army was then placed in winter-quarters on the frontiers of Cilicia, and the emperor hastened to return to Constantinople. On the journey, as he passed the fertile plains of Longias and Dryze, in the vicinity of Anazarba and Podandus, he saw them covered with flocks and herds, with well-fortified farmyards, but no smiling villages. He inquired with wonder to whom the country belonged, in which pasturage was conducted on so grand a scale; and he learned that the greater part of the province had been acquired by the president Basilios in donations from himself and his predecessor, Nicephorus. Amazed at the enormous accumulation of property in the hands of one individual, he exclaimed, “Alas! the wealth of the empire is wasted, the strength of the armies is exhausted, and the Roman emperors toil like mercenaries, to add to the riches of an insatiable eunuch!” This speech was reported to the president. He considered that he had raised both Nicephorus and John to the throne; his interest now required that it should return to its rightful master, and that the young Basil should enjoy his heritage. The Emperor John stopped on his way to Constantinople at the palace of Romanos, a grandson of Romanus I; and it is said he there drank of a poisoned cup presented to him by a servant gained by the president. Certain it is that John Zimiskes reached the capital in a dying state, and expired on the 10th of January 976, at the age of fifty-one.

 

Sect. II

REIGN OF BASIL II BULGAROKTONOS,

A.D. 976-1025.

 

Basil II was only twenty years of age when he assumed the direction of public affairs, and for some time he continued to indulge in the pursuit of pleasure, allowing the president Basilios to exercise the imperial power to its fullest extent. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the prime-minister would have attempted to occupy the place of Nicephorus and Zimiskes, had his condition not effectually excluded him from the throne. For some time, however, he ventured to exclude Basil from any active share in the details of administration, and endeavoured to divert his attention to the pomp of the imperial court, and to the indulgence of his passions, to which it was thought the young man was naturally inclined. This conduct probably awakened suspicions in the mind of Basil, who possessed a firm and energetic character, and he watched the proceedings of his powerful minister with attention. His brother, Constantine VIII, who was seventeen when John Zimiskes died, enjoyed the rank of his colleague, but was allowed no share in the public administration, and appeared well satisfied to be relieved from the duties of his station, as he was allowed to enjoy all its luxuries. Basil soon gave up all idle amusements, and devoted his whole time and energy to military studies and exercises, and to public business. Indefatigable, brave, and stern, his courage degenerated into ferocity, and his severity into cruelty. Yet, as he reigned the absolute master of an unprincipled court, and of a people careless of honour and truth, and as the greater part of his life was spent in war with barbarous enemies, we may attribute many of his faults as much to the state of society in his age as to his own individual character. He believed that he was prudent, just, and devout; others considered him severe, rapacious, cruel and bigoted. For Greek learning he cared little, and he was a type of the higher Byzantine moral character, which retained far more of its Roman than its Greek origin, both in its vices and its virtues. In activity, courage, and military skill he had few equals.

Several of the great nobles of the empire considered that their power entitled them to occupy the place left vacant by the death of Zimiskes; and as the great qualities of Basil II were still unknown, they envied the influence of the president Basilios. Among the leading members of the aristocracy, Bardas Skleros, who commanded the army in Asia, gave the president most umbrage, from his military reputation and great popularity. Skleros was accordingly removed from the command of the army, and appointed duke or governor of Mesopotamia. This step precipitated his rebellion. The two ablest generals in the empire were Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas: both were men of illustrious families, and both had filled high offices in the state. As early as the reign of Michael I, a Skleros had been governor of the Peloponnesus; and for four generations the family of Phokas had supplied the empire with a succession of military leaders. Skleros and Phokas had already been opponents in the reign of John I. These two men may be taken as types of the military nobles of the Byzantine empire in the tenth century; and no tale of daring deeds or romantic vicissitudes among the chivalrous adventurers of the West, who had no patrimony but their swords, was more strange than many an episode in the lives of these two nobles, nursed in silken raiment, whose youth was passed in marble palaces on the soft shores of the Bosphorus, who were educated by pedantic grammarians, and trained by Greek theologians, who deemed the shedding even of Saracen blood a sin. Yet these nobles valued themselves as much on their personal skill in arms and headlong daring as any Danish adventurer or Norman knight

Bardas Skleros no sooner reached Mesopotamia than he assumed the title of Emperor, and invaded Asia Minor. He had made no preparations for his rebellion; he trusted to his military reputation for collecting a small army, and to his own skill to make the best use of the troops that joined his standard: nor was he wanting to his fame. Some pecuniary assistance from the emirs of Amida and Martyropolis recruited his finances, and a body of three hundred well-armed Saracen horse was considered a valuable addition to his little army. Undismayed by partial defeats and immense difficulties, he at last gained a complete victory over the Byzantine army at Lapara, on the frontiers of Armenia, and a second at Rageas, over a generalissimo of the empire, who had been sent to repair the preceding disaster. Skleros then marched to Abydos, took Nicaea, and sent his son Romanes into Thrace to make preparations for the siege of Constantinople.

The rebellion of Bardas Phokas, and his exile to Chios, have been already mentioned. He was now called from his retreat, and laid aside the monastic dress, which he had worn for six years, to resume his armour. The old rivals again met in arms, and at first fortune continued to favour Skleros, who was a better tactician than Phokas. The imperial army was defeated at Amorium, but the personal valour of Phokas covered the retreat of his soldiers, and preserved their confidence; for when Constantine Gabras pressed too closely on the rear, Phokas, who was watching his movements, suddenly turned his horse, and, galloping up to the gallant chief, struck him lifeless with his mace-at-arms, and rejoined his own rearguard unhurt. A second battle was fought near Basilika Therma, in the theme Charsiana, and Skleros was again victorious. Phokas retired into Georgia (Iberia), where he received assistance from David, the king of that country, which enabled him to assemble a third army on the banks of the Halys. He found Skleros encamped in the plain of Pankalia. An engagement took place, in which the superior generalship of the rebel emperor was again evident, and Phokas, reduced to despair, sought to terminate the contest by a personal encounter with his rival. They soon met, and their companions suspended the conflict in their immediate vicinity to view the combat between two champions, both equally celebrated for their personal prowess. Skleros was armed with the sword, Phokas with the mace-at-arms; the sword glanced from the well-tempered armour, the mace crushed the helmet, and Skleros fell senseless on his horse's neck. The guards rushing to the rescue, Phokas gained an eminence, from which he could already see a portion of his army in full retreat. But the fortune of the day was changed by an accident. As the officers of Skleros were carrying their wounded leader to a neighbouring fountain, his horse escaped and galloped through the ranks of the army, showing the troops the imperial trappings stained with blood. The cry arose that Skleros was slain. The tie that united the rebels was broken, and the soldiers fled in every direction, or laid down their arms. On recovering, Skleros found that nothing was left for him but to escape with his personal attendants into the Saracen territory, where he was thrown into prison by order of the caliph. Several of his partisans prolonged their resistance through the winter.

Bardas Phokas continued to command the imperial army in Asia for eight years, carrying on war with the Saracens, and compelling the emir of Aleppo to pay tribute to Constantinople. But as the Emperor Basil II advanced in years, his firm character began to excite general dissatisfaction among the Byzantine nobles, who saw that their personal influence, and power of enriching themselves at the public expense, were likely to be greatly curtailed. The attention the emperor paid to public business, and his strict control over the conduct of all officials, began to alarm the president Basilios; while his determination to command the army in person, and to regulate promotions, excited the dissatisfaction of Phokas, who allowed his government to become the refuge of every discontented courtier. The only campaign in which the emperor had yet commanded was one against Samuel, king of Bulgaria, which had proved signally disastrous, so that his interference in military matters did not appear to be authorized by his experience in tactics and strategy. It seems probable that the president excited Phokas to take up arms, as a means of rendering the emperor more dependent on his influence and the support of the aristocracy; but Phokas doubtless required very little prompting to make an attempt to seize the throne. Assembling the leading men in his government, and the principal officers of the army under his command, at the palace of Eustathios Maleinos, in the theme Charsiana, he was proclaimed emperor on the 1sth of August 987.

Nearly about the same time, Bardas Skleros succeeded in escaping from the Saracens and entering the empire. He had been released from his prison at Bagdad, and intrusted with the command of a legion of Christian refugees, with which he had distinguished himself in the civil wars of the Mohammedans. His adventures in this service were not unlike those recorded of Manuel in the reign of Theophilus. His sudden appearance in the empire, and his resumption of his claim to the imperial throne, brought the two ancient rivals again into the field, both as rebel emperors, and it seemed that they must decide by a new war which was to march as victor against Basil at Constantinople. Phokas gained the advantage by treachery. He concluded a treaty with his rival, by which a division of Asia Minor was agreed on; and when Skleros visited his camp to hold a conference, Phokas detained him a prisoner. Phokas then devoted all his energy to dethrone his sovereign; and during the summer of 988, he subdued the greater part of Asia Minor; but at the commencement of the following year, a division of his army which he sent to the Bosphorus was defeated by the Emperor Basil, who had just obtained an auxiliary corps of Varangians from his brother-in-law Vladimir, the sovereign of Kiev. Phokas was at this time besieging Abydos, which defended itself with obstinacy until the Emperors Basil and Constantine arrived with the imperial army to relieve it. The imperial troops arrived by sea, and, debarking near Abydos, formed their camp in the plain. Phokas, leaving part of his force to continue the siege, drew out his army to give battle to the emperors. When the two armies were taking up their ground, Phokas rode along the field, seeking for an opportunity to decide the fate of the war by one of those feats of arms in which his personal prowess was so distinguished. His eye caught a sight of the Emperor Basil engaged in ordering the movements of his army, and, dashing forward with his mace-at-arms, he prepared to close in single combat with his sovereign. At the very moment when the object of his sudden movement flashed on the minds of all, Phokas wheeled round his horse, galloped to a little eminence, where he dismounted in sight of both armies and lay down on the ground. A long interval of suspense occurred. Then a rumour ran along the ranks of the rebels that their leader was dead, and the troops dispersed without striking a blow. Phokas had drank a glass of cold water as he mounted his horse, according to his usual custom, and whether he perished by poison or by a stroke of apoplexy was naturally a question not easily settled by the suspicious and vicious Constantinopolitans. Thus ended the career of Bardas Phokas, by a death as strange as the events of his romantic life. He died in the month of April 989.

Bardas Skleros regained his liberty on the death of his rival, but resigned his pretensions to the imperial dignity on receiving the pardon of Basil. The meeting of the emperor and the veteran warrior was remarkable. The eyesight of Skleros had begun to fail, and he had grown extremely corpulent. He had laid aside the imperial costume, but continued to wear purple boots, which were part of the insignia of an emperor. As he advanced to the tent of Basil, leaning on two of his equerries, Basil, surprised at his infirmity, exclaimed to his attendants, “Is this the man we all trembled at yesterday?” But as soon as he perceived the purple boots, he refused to receive the infirm old general until they were changed. Skleros had then a gracious audience, and was requested to sit down. He did not long survive.

The same attention to public business on the part of the emperor which caused the rebellion of Phokas, produced the fall of the president Basilios, whom Basil deprived of all his offices about the same time. His estates were confiscated, his acts annulled, the populace of Constantinople were allowed to plunder his palace, the sacred offerings and dedications he had made were destroyed, and even the monastery he had founded was dissolved. The celebrated minister died in exile, after having attained a degree of wealth and power which marks an unhealthy condition of the body politic in the Byzantine Empire. No such accumulation of fortune as Basilios is reported to have possessed, could ever have been obtained by a public servant without the exertion of the grossest oppression, either on the part of the individual or the government. The riches of Basilios must almost have rivalled the wealth of Crassus; at least, he came under the definition of a rich man, according to that wealthy Roman, for he was able to maintain an army. At an early part of his political career, he armed a household of three thousand slaves to aid in placing the imperial crown on the head of Nicephorus II. The aristocracy of Constantinople at this period bore some resemblance, in its social position, to that of Rome at the fall of the Republic, both in wealth and political corruption. The estates of Eustathios Maleïnos, in whose house Phokas raised the standard of revolt, were not less extensive than those of the ambitious president. Maleïnos was fortunate enough to escape punishment for his share in the rebellion, but some years after, as Basil was returning from a campaign in Syria (AD 995), he stopped at the palace of Maleïnos in Cappadocia, and was amazed at the strength of the building, and the wealth, power, and splendour of the household. The emperor saw that a man of courage, in possession of so much influence, and commanding such a number of armed servants, could at any moment commence a rebellion as dangerous as that of Skleros or Phokas. Maleïnos received an invitation to accompany the court to the capital, and was never again allowed to visit his estates in Cappadocia. At his death, his immense fortune was confiscated, and most writers ascribed the legislative measures of Basil, to protect the landed property of small proprietors from the encroachments of the wealthy, to the impression produced on his mind by witnessing the power of Maleïnos in Cappadocia; but we must bear in mind that, from the time of Romanus I, the Byzantine emperors had been vainly endeavouring to stem the torrent of aristocratic predominance in the provinces; and both Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and Nicephorus II, though in general extremely dissimilar in character and policy, agreed in passing laws to protect the poor against the rich. Basil II fully appreciated all the evils which resulted from the tendency of society to accumulate wealth in the hands of a few individuals, and he endeavoured to aid the middle classes in defending their possessions; but all the power he could exert was unable to prevent the constant diminution that was going on in the number of the smaller landed proprietors, the middle classes in the towns, and generally of the civilised races of mankind throughout the greater part of his empire. The task was beyond the power of legislation, and required an improvement in the moral as well as the political constitution of society. The attempts of the emperor to arrest the progress of the evil may have been useless, but they were unquestionably not disadvantageous to the people. It is therefore strange to find the Patriarch, the higher clergy, and the monks opposed to these measures, and engaged in endeavouring to turn him from his purpose, particularly when he wished to render the rich responsible for the taxes of the ruined poor of their district. The Greek Church has, however, generally been a servile instrument either of the sovereign power or of the aristocracy, and has contributed little either to enforce equity or civil liberty, when the mass of the lower orders was alone concerned. The evil of increasing wealth in the hands of a few individuals, and of a gradual diminution of the intelligent population in the Byzantine Empire, went on augmenting from the time of Basil II. Asia and Europe both lost their civilized races; the immense landed estates of a few Byzantine aristocrats were cultivated by Mohammedan slaves, or Slavonian, Albanian, and Vallachian serfs; manufactures and trade declined with the population, the towns dwindled into villages, and no class of native inhabitants remained possessing strength and patriotism to fight for their homes when a new race of invaders poured into the empire.

The reign of Basil II is the culminating point of Byzantine greatness. The eagles of Constantinople flew during his life, in a long career of victory, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Euphrates, and from the mountains of Armenia to the shores of Italy. Basil's indomitable courage, terrific cruelty, indifference to art and literature, and religious superstition, all combine to render him a true type of his empire and age. The great object of his policy was to consolidate the unity of the administration in Europe by the complete subjection of the Bulgarians and Sclavonians, whom similarity of language had almost blended into one nation, and had completely united in hostility to the imperial government.

Four sons of a Bulgarian noble of the highest rank had commenced a revolutionary movement in Bulgaria against the royal family, after the death of Peter and the first victories of the Russians. In order to put an end to these troubles, Nicephorus II had, on the retreat of Swiatoslaff, replaced Boris, the son of Peter, on the throne of Bulgaria; and when the Russians returned, Boris submitted to their domination. Shortly after the death of John I (Zimiskes), the Bulgarian leaders again roused the people to a struggle for independence. Boris, who escaped from Constantinople to attempt recovering his paternal throne, was accidentally slain, and the four brothers again became the chiefs of the nation. In a short time three perished, and Samuel alone remained, and assumed the title of King. The forces of the empire were occupied with the rebellion of Skleros, so that the vigour and military talents of Samuel succeeded not only in expelling the Byzantine authorities from Bulgaria, but also in rousing the Sclavonians of Macedonia to throw off the Byzantine yoke. Samuel then invaded Thessaly, and extended his plundering excursions over those parts of Greece and the Peloponnesus still inhabited by the Hellenic race. He carried away the inhabitants of Larissa in order to people the town of Prespa, which he then proposed to make his capital, with intelligent artisans and manufacturers; and, in order to attach them to their new residence by ties of old superstition, he removed to Prespa the body of their protecting martyr, St. Achilles, who some pretended had been a Roman soldier, and others a Greek archbishop. Samuel showed himself, both in ability and courage, a rival worthy of Basil; and the empire of the East seemed for some time in danger of being transferred from the Byzantine Romans to the Sclavonian Bulgarians.

In the year 981, the Emperor Basil made his first campaign against the new Bulgarian monarchy in person. His plan of operations was to secure the great western passes through Mount Haemus, on the road from Philippopolis to Sardica, and by the conquest of the latter city he hoped to cut off the communication between the Bulgarians north of Mount Haemus and the Sclavonians in Macedonia. But his military inexperience, and the relaxed discipline of the army, caused this well-conceived plan to fail. Sardica was besieged in vain for twenty days. The negligence of the officers and the disobedience of the soldiers caused several foraging parties to be cut off; the besieged burned the engines of the besiegers in a victorious sortie, and the emperor felt the necessity of commencing his retreat. As his army was passing the defiles of Haemus, it was assailed by the troops Samuel had collected to watch his operations, and completely routed. The baggage and military chest, the emperor’s plate and tents, all fell into the hands of the Bulgarian king, and Basil himself escaped with some difficulty to Philippopolis, where he collected the relics of the fugitives. Leo Diaconus, who accompanied the expedition as one of the clergy of the imperial chapel, and was fortunate enough to escape the pursuit, has left us a short but authentic notice of this first disastrous campaign of Basil, the slayer of the Bulgarians.

The reorganisation of his army, the regulation of the internal administration of the empire, the rebellion of Phokas, and the wars in Italy and on the Asiatic frontier, prevented Basil from attacking Samuel in person for many years. Still a part of the imperial forces carried on this war, and Samuel soon perceived that he was unable to resist the Byzantine generals in the plains of Bulgaria, where the heavy cavalry, military engines, and superior discipline of the imperial armies could all be employed to advantage. He resolved, therefore, to transfer the seat of the Bulgarian government to a more inaccessible position. He first selected Prespa as his future capital, but he subsequently abandoned that intention, and established the central administration of his dominions at Achrida. The site was well adapted for rapid communications with his Slavonian subjects in Macedonia, who furnished his armies with their best recruits. To Achrida, therefore, he transferred the seat of the Bulgarian patriarchate, and to this day the archbishop of that city, in virtue of the position he received from Samuel, still holds an ecclesiastical jurisdiction over several suffragans independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. As a military position, also, Achrida had many advantages: it commanded an important point in the Via Egnatia, the great commercial road connecting the Adriatic with Bulgaria, as well as with Thessalonica and Constantinople, and afforded many facilities for enabling Samuel to choose his points of attack on the Byzantine themes of Macedonia, Hellas, Dyrrachium, and Nicopolis. Here, therefore, Samuel established the capital of the Bulgaro-Sclavonian kingdom he founded.

The dominions of Samuel soon became as extensive as the European portion of the dominions of Basil. The possessions of the two monarchs ran into one another in a very irregular form, and both were inhabited by a variety of races, in different states of civilization, bound together by few sympathies, and no common attachment to national institutions. Samuel was master of almost the whole of ancient Bulgaria, the emperor retaining possession of little more than the fortress of Dorystolon, the forts at the mouth of the Danube, and the passes of Mount Haemus. But the strength of the Bulgarian king lay in his possessions in the upper part of Macedonia, in Epiras, and the southern part of Illyria, in the chain of Pindus, and in mountains that overlook the northern and western slopes of the great plains of Thessalonica and Thessaly. In all these provinces the greater part of the rural population consisted of Sclavonians, who were hostile to the Byzantine government and to the Greek race; and though an Albanian and Vallachian population was scattered over some parts of the territory, they readily united with Samuel in throwing off the Byzantine yoke, and only opposed his government when he attempted to augment his monarchical power at the expense of their habits of local independence. From the nature of his dominions, his only hope of consolidating a regular system of civil government was by holding out allurements to the local chieftains to submit voluntarily to his authority. It was only by continual plundering expeditions into the Byzantine territory, and especially into Greece, that this object could be attained. He was, therefore, indefatigable in forming a large military force, and employing it constantly in ravaging the plain of Thessaly, and attacking the Greek cities.

In the year 990, Basil visited Thessalonica, to take measures for arresting the progress of Samuel, and left Gregory the Taronite with a strong garrison to resist the Bulgarians, until he himself should be able to turn the whole force of the empire against them. For several years Gregory checked the incursions of Samuel, but at last he was slain in a skirmish, and his son Ashot was taken prisoner. This success secured Samuel from all danger on the side of the garrison of Thessalonica, and he resolved to avail himself of the opportunity to complete the conquest of Greece, or at least to plunder the inhabitants, should he meet with opposition. He marched rapidly through Thessaly, Boeotia, and Attica, into the Peloponnesus; but the towns everywhere shut their gates, and prepared for a long defence, so that he could effect nothing beyond plundering and laying waste the open country. In the meantime, the emperor, hearing of the death of Gregory and the invasion of Greece, sent Nicephorus Ouranos with considerable reinforcements to take the command of the garrison of Thessalonica, and march with all the force he should be able to collect in pursuit of Samuel. Ouranos entered Thessaly, and, leaving the heavy baggage of his army at Larissa, pushed rapidly southward to the banks of the Sperchius, where he found Samuel encamped on the other side, hastening home with the plunder of Greece. Heavy rains on Mounts Oeta and Korax had rendered the Sperchius which at the end of summer is only a brook an impassable torrent at the time Samuel had reached its banks, and Ouranos encamped for the night in the vicinity of the Bulgarian army, without his arrival causing any alarm. But the people of the country had observed that the river was beginning to fall, and as they were anxious that both armies should quit their territory as fast as possible, they were eager to bring on a battle. In the night they showed Ouranos a ford, by which he passed the river and surprised the Bulgarians in their camp. Samuel and his son Gabriel escaped with the greatest difficulty to the counter-forts of Oeta, from whence they gained Tymphrestas and the range of Pindus. The Bulgarian army was completely annihilated, and all the plunder and slaves made during the expedition fell into the hands of Ouranos, A.D. 996.

This great defeat paralyzed the military operations of Samuel for some time, and it was followed by a domestic misfortune which also weakened his resources. He had been induced to allow his daughter to marry Ashot the Taronite, whom he had taken prisoner at Thessalonica, and in order to attach that brave and able young officer to his service, he had intrusted him with the government of Dyrrachium. But Ashot was dissatisfied with his position, and succeeded in persuading the Bulgarian princess to fly with him to Constantinople. Before quitting Dyrrachium, however, he formed a plot with the principal men of the place, by which that valuable fortress was subsequently delivered up to the emperor. This was a serious political, as well as a grievous domestic wound to Samuel; for the loss of Dyrrachium interrupted the commercial relations of his subjects with Italy, and deprived them of the support they might have derived from the enemies of the Byzantine empire beyond the Adriatic.

Basil had at length arranged the external relations of the empire in such a way that he was able to assemble a large army for the military operations against the kingdom of Achrida, which he determined to conduct in person. The Sclavonians now formed the most numerous part of the population of the country between the Danube, the Aegean, and the Adriatic, and they were in possession of the line of mountains that runs from Dyrrachium, in a variety of chains, to the vicinity of Constantinople. Basil saw many signs that the whole Sclavonic race in these countries was united in opposition to the Byzantine government, so that the existence of his empire demanded the conquest of the Bulgaro-Sclavonian kingdom which Samuel had founded. To this arduous task he devoted himself with his usual energy. In the year 1000, his generals were ordered to enter Bulgaria by the eastern passes of Mount Haemus; and in this campaign they took the cities of greater and lesser Presthlava and Pliscova, the ancient capitals of Bulgaria. In the following year, the emperor took upon himself the direction of the army destined to act against Samuel. Fixing his headquarters at Thessalonica, he recovered possession of the fortresses of Vodena, Berrhoea, and Servia. By these conquests he became master of the passes leading out of the plain of Thessalonica into the plains of Pelagonia, and over the Cambunian mountains into Thessaly, thus opening the way for an attack on the flank and rear of the forces of the kingdom of Achrida. Vodena or Edessa, the ancient capital of the Macedonian princes, had become, like all the cities of this mountainous district, Slavonian. Its situation on a rock overhanging the river Lydias, the sublimity of the scenery around, the abundance of water, the command of the fertile valleys below, the salubrity of the spot, and the strength of the position closing up the direct road between Thessalonica and Achrida all rendered the possession of Vodena an important step to the further operations of the Byzantine arms.

In the following campaign (1002), the emperor changed the field of operations, and, marching from Philippopolis through the western passes of Mount Haemus, occupied the whole line of road as far as the Danube, and cut Samuel off from all communication with the plains of Bulgaria. He then formed the siege of Vidin, which he kept closely invested during the spring and summer, until at last he took that important fortress. Samuel formed a bold enterprise, which he hoped would compel Basil to raise the siege of Vidin, or, at all events, enable him to inflict a deep wound on the empire. Assembling an army at Skoupies, on the upper course of the Vardar, he marched into the valley of the Stebrus, and by the celerity of his movements surprised the inhabitants of Adrianople at a great fair which they held annually on the 15th of August, when the Greek Church commemorates the death of the Virgin Mary. By this long march into the heart of the empire, Samuel rendered himself master of great booty. His success rendered it impossible for him to return as rapidly as he had advanced, but he succeeded in passing the garrison of Philoppopolis and crossing the Strymon and the Vardar in safety, when Basil suddenly overtook him at the head of the Byzantine army. Samuel was encamped under the walls of Skoupies; Basil crossed the river and stormed the Bulgarian camp, rendering himself master of the military chest and stores, and recovering the plunder of Adrianople. He had thus the satisfaction of avenging the defeat he had suffered from Samuel, one and twenty years before, in the passes of Mount Haemus. The city of Skoupies surrendered after the victory and its commander Romanus, the younger brother of Boris, the last king of Bulgaria of the ancient line, whose misfortune prevented his becoming a rival to Samuel, was honourably treated by the emperor. Basil then laid siege to Pernikon, a fortress of great strength, from which he was repulsed by the valour of the Bulgarian governor Krakas. He then withdrew to Philippopolis.

The conquest of Vidin having enabled Basil to deprive Bulgaria of relief from Samuel and the Slavonians of Macedonia, the Byzantine generals easily completed the subjection of the whole of the rich country between Mount Haemus and the Danube. The king of Achrida finding himself unable to encounter the troops of Basil in the field, and seeing his territory constantly circumscribed by the capture of his fortresses, determined to fortify all the passes in the mountains that lead into Upper Macedonia. By stationing strong bodies of troops, and forming magazines behind these entrenchments, he hoped to present to his assailants the difficulties of a siege in situations where all their supplies would require to be drawn from a great distance, and exposed to be captured or destroyed on the way by the Bulgarian light troops and the Slavonian inhabitants of the mountains. For several years a bloody and indecisive war was carried on, which gradually weakened the resources of the kingdom of Achrida, without affecting the power of the Byzantine Empire.

In the year 1014, Basil considered everything ready for a final effort to complete the subjection of the Slavonian population of the mountainous districts round the upper valley of the Strymon. On reaching the pass of Demirhissar, or the Kleisura, then called Kimbalongo, or Kleidion, he found it strongly fortified. Samuel had placed himself at the head of the Bulgarian army prepared to oppose his progress. The emperor found the pass too strong to be forced; sitting down, therefore, before it, he sent Nicephorus Xiphias, the governor of Philippopolis, with a strong detachment, to make the circuit of a high mountain called Valathista, which lay to the south, that he might gain the rear of the Bulgarian position. This manoeuvre was completely successful. On the 2gth of July, Nicephorus attacked the enemy's rear, while Basil assailed their front, and the Bulgarians, in spite of all the exertions of Samuel, gave way on every side. It was only in consequence of the gallant resistance of his son Gabriel that the king of Achrida was saved from being taken prisoner, and enabled to gain Prilapos in safety. The emperor is said to have taken fifteen thousand prisoners, and, that he might revenge the sufferings of his subjects from the ravages of the Bulgarians and Sclavonians, he gratified his own cruelty by an act of vengeance, which has most justly entailed infamy on his name. His frightful inhumanity has forced history to turn with disgust from his conduct, and almost buried the records of his military achievements in oblivion. On this occasion he ordered the eyes of all his prisoners to be put out, leaving a single eye to the leader of every hundred, and in this condition he sent the wretched captives forth to seek their king or perish on the way. When they approached Achrida, a rumour that the prisoners had been released induced Samuel to go out to meet them. On learning the full extent of the calamity, he fell senseless to the ground, overpowered with rage and grief, and died two days after. He is said to have murdered his own brother to secure possession of his throne, so that his heart was broken by the first touch of humanity it ever felt.

After his victory, Basil occupied the fort of Matzoukion, and advanced on Strumpitza, where he ordered Theophylaktos Botaniates, the governor of Thessalonica, who had defeated a large body of Bulgarians, to join him by marching northward, and clearing away the entrenchments constructed by Samuel on the road leading from Thessaionlca directly to Strumpitza. In this operation Theophylaktos was surrounded by the Bulgarians and slain, with the greater part of his troops, in the defiles. This check compelled the emperor to retire by the Zagorian mountains to Mosynopolis, having succeeded in gaining possession of the strong fortress of Melenik by negotiation. At Mosynopolis, on the 24th October 1014, he heard of the death of Samuel, and immediately determined to take advantage of an event likely to prove so favourable to the Byzantine arms. Marching with a strong body of troops through Thessalonica and Vodena, he advanced into Pelagonia, carefully protecting that fertile district from ravage, and destroying nothing but a palace of the Bulgarian kings at Boutelion. From thence he sent a division of the army to occupy Prilapos and Stobi, and, crossing the river Tzerna (Erigon) with the main body, he returned by Vodena to Thessalonica, which he reached on the 9th of January 1015.

The cruelty of Basil awakened an energetic resistance on the part of the Sclavonians and Bulgarians, and Gabriel Radomir, the brave son of Samuel, was enabled to offer unexpected obstacles to the progress of the Byzantine armies. (Cruelty similar to that of Basil was perpetrated on a smaller scale by Richard Coeur-de-Lion, though of course it is not necessary to place strict reliance on the numbers reported by the Byzantine historians. Richard, to revenge the loss of a body of men, ordered three hundred French knights to be thrown into the Seine, and put out the eyes of fifteen, who were sent home blind, led by one whose right eye had been spared. Philip Augustus, nothing loath, revenged himself by treating fifteen English knights in the same way. Putting out men's eyes was, for several centuries, a common practice all over Europe, and not regarded with much horror. As late as the reign of Henry IV, A.D. 1403, an Act of Parliament was passed, making it felony for Englishmen to cut out one another's tongues, or put out their neighbour’s eyes). Vodena revolted, and expelled the imperial garrison, so that Basil was compelled to open the campaign of 1015 with the siege of that place, which he reduced. The inhabitants were transported to Beleros, to make way for Greek colonists; and two forts, Kardia and St. Elias, were built to command the pass to the westward. After receiving an embassy from Gabriel, with proposals which he did not consider deserving of attention, Basil joined a division of his army engaged in besieging Moglena under the immediate command of Nicephorus Xiphias and Constantine Diogenes, who had succeeded Theophylaktos as governor of Thessalonica. By turning the course of the river, the besiegers were enabled to run a mine under the wall, which they supported on wooden props. When the mine was completed, it was filled with combustibles, which reduced the props to ashes, and as soon as the wall fell and opened a breach, Moglena was taken by assault. The whole of the Slavonian population capable of bearing arms was by the emperor’s order transported to Vasparoukan in Armenia. The fort of Notia in the vicinity was also taken and destroyed.

Gabriel, the king of Achrida, though brave, alienated the favour of his subjects by his imprudence, and his cousin, John Ladislas, whose life he had saved in youth, was base enough to become his murderer, in order to gain possession of the throne. Ladislas, in order to gain time, both for strengthening himself on the throne and resisting the Byzantine invasion, sent ambassadors to Basil with favourable offers of peace; but the emperor, satisfied that the struggle between the Slavonians and Greeks could only be terminated by the conquest of one, rejected all terms but absolute submission, and pushed on his operations with his usual vigour, laying waste the country about Ostrovos and Soskos, and marching unopposed through the fertile plains of Pelagonia. The defeat of a portion of the Byzantine army by Ibatzes, one of the Bulgarian generals, compelled the emperor to march against him in person; and when Ibatzes retreated into the mountains, Basil returned to Thessalonica, and shortly after established himself at Mosynopolis. The conquest of eastern Macedonia was not yet completed : one division of the Byzantine troops was placed under the command of David the Arianite, which besieged and took the fortress of Thermitza on Mount Strumpitza: another, under Nicephorus Xiphias, crossing Mount Haemus from Philippopolis, took Boion, near Sardica.

The Emperor Basil returned to Constantinople in the month of January 1016, in order to send an expedition to Khazaria, the operations of which had been concerted with Vladimir of Russia, his brother-in-law. He also availed himself of the opportunity to arrange some difficulties relating to the cession of Vasparoukan. When that part of Armenia was annexed to the empire, and the conquest of Khazaria terminated, he again joined the army at Sardica and laid siege to Pernikon, which repulsed his attacks, as it had done fourteen years before. He lost eighty-eight days before the place, but was at last compelled to retire to Mosynopolis.

In the spring of 1017, Basil again turned his arms against Pelagonia. Kasloria, a town situated on a rocky peninsula in a small lake, resisted his attacks, but the booty collected in the open country was considerable; and this he divided into three parts one he bestowed on the Russian auxiliaries who served in his army, another he divided among the native Byzantine legions, and the third he reserved for the imperial treasury. The operations of Basil in the west were for a time arrested by news he received from the governor of Dorystolon, which threatened to render his presence necessary in Bulgaria. Ladislas was concerting measures with the Patzinaks to induce them to invade the empire; but after a slight delay, Basil was informed the alliance had failed, and he resumed his activity. After laying waste all the country round Ostxovos and Moliskos that was peopled by Sclavonians, and repairing the fortifications of Berrhosa which had fallen to decay, he captured Setaina, where Samuel had formed great magazines of wheat. These magazines were kept well filled by Ladislas, so that Basil became master of so great a store that he divided it among his troops. At last the King of Achrida approached the emperor at the head of a considerable army, and a part of the imperial troops were drawn into an ambuscade. The emperor happened to be himself with the advanced division of the army. He instantly mounted his horse and led the troops about him to the scene of action, sending orders for all the other divisions to hasten forward to support him. His sudden appearance at the head of a strong body of the heavy-armed lancers of the Byzantine army, the fury of his charge, the terror his very name inspired, and the cry, “The emperor is upon us!” soon spread confusion through the Bulgarian ranks, and changed the fortune of the day. After this victory, Basil, finding the season too far advanced to follow up his success, returned to Constantinople, where he arrived in the month of January 1018.

Ladislas, whose affairs were becoming desperate, made an attempt to restore his credit by laying siege to Dyrrachium, which he hoped to take before Basil could relieve it. Its possession would have enabled him to open communications with the enemies of Basil in Italy, and even with the Saracens of Sicily and Africa, but he was slain soon after the commencement of the siege. He reigned two years and five months. As soon as the emperor heard of his death, he visited Adrianople to make preparations for a campaign, which he hoped would end in the complete subjugation of the Bulgarian and Slavonian population of the kingdom of Achrida. The Bulgarian leaders gave up all hope of resistance. Krakras, the brave chief of Pernikon, who had twice foiled the emperor, surrendered that impregnable fortress and thirty-five castles in the surrounding district Dragomoutzes delivered up the fortress of Strumpitza, and both he and Krakras were rewarded with the patrician chair. Basil marched by Mosynopolis and Serres to Strumpitza, where he received deputations from most of the cities in Pelagonia, laying their keys at his feet. Even David, the Patriarch of Bulgaria, arrived, bringing letters from the widow of Ladislas, offering to surrender the capital. The emperor continued to advance by Skopia, Stypeia, and Prosakon, and on reaching Achrida he was received rather as the lawful sovereign than as a foreign conqueror. He immediately took possession of all the treasures Samuel had amassed; the gold alone amounted to a hundred centners, and with this he paid all the arrears due to his troops, and rewarded them with a donative for their long and gallant service in this arduous war. Almost the whole of the royal family of Achrida submitted, and received the most generous treatment. Three sons of Ladislas, who escaped to Mount Truoros, and attempted to prolong the contest, were soon captured. The noble Bulgarians hastened to make their submission, and many were honoured with high rank at the imperial court. Nothing, indeed, proves more decidedly the absence of all Greek nationality in the Byzantine administration at this period, than the facility with which all foreigners obtained favour at the court of Constantinople; nor can anything be more conclusive of the fact that the centralization of power in the person of the emperor, as completed by the Basilian dynasty, had now destroyed the administrative centralisation of the old Roman imperial system, for we have proofs that a considerable Greek population still occupied the cities of Thrace and Macedonia, though Greek feelings had little influence on the government.

The arrangement of the civil and financial administration of the conquered territory, which had for so many years been separated from the Byzantine Empire, occupied the emperor’s attention during the remainder of the year. He also ordered two fortresses to be constructed to command the mountain passes leading to Achrida, one in the lake of Prespa, and the other on the road leading to Vodena and Thessalonica. He then visited Diavolis, in order to inspect the passage over the Macedonian mountains that afforded the easiest communication with Northern Epirus. Nicephorus Xiphias was sent at the same time to destroy all the mountain forts still in the possession of Slavonian chieftains about Servia and Soskos. The taxation of the Slavonian cultivators of the soil was arranged on the same footing on which it had been placed by Samuel. Each pair of oxen for the plough paid annually a measure of wheat, and one of millet, barley, or maize, and each strema of vineyard paid a jar or barrel of wine to the fisc.

Basil now resolved to re-establish the Byzantine influence on the coast of Dalmatia. A division of the army was sent northward to complete the subjection of the mountainous districts of the theme of Dyrrachium as far as the Dalmatian and Servian frontiers; and an imperial fleet entered the Adriatic to act in co-operation with the authorities on shore. The princes of Servia agreed to acknowledge the supremacy of the emperor, and Constantine Diogenes, the imperial general on the Danube, gained possession of the city of Sirmium by an act of the basest treachery.

After passing the winter in his new conquests, Basil made a progress through Greece. At Zeitounion he visited the field of battle where the power of Samuel had been first broken by the victory of Nicephorus Ouranos, and found the ground still strewed with the bones of the slain. The wall that defended the pass of Thermopylae retained its antique name, Skelos; and its masonry, which dated from Hellenic days, excited the emperor's admiration. At last Basil arrived within the walls of Athens, and he was the only emperor who for several ages honoured that city with a visit. Many magnificent structures in the town, and the whole of the temples in the Acropolis, had then hardly suffered any rude touches from the hand of time. If the external painting and gilding which had once adorned the Parthenon of Pericles had faded from their original splendour, the Church of the Virgin, into which it was transformed, had gained a new interest from the mural paintings of saints, martyrs, emperors, and empresses that covered the interior of the cella. The mind of Basil, though insensible to Hellenic literature, was deeply sensible of religious impressions, and the glorious combination of the variety of beauty in art and nature that he saw in the Acropolis touched his stern soul. He testified his feelings by splendid gifts to the city, and rich dedications at the shrine of the Virgin in the Parthenon.

From Greece the emperor returned to Constantinople, where he indulged himself in the pomp of a triumph, making his entry into his capital by the Golden Gate, and listening with satisfaction to the cries of the populace, who applauded his cruelty by saluting him with the title of “The Slayer of the Bulgarians”.

I have entered into the history of the destruction of the Bulgarian monarchy of Achrida in some detail, because the struggle was national as well as political; and the persevering resistance offered by the Slavonian population of Macedonia to a warlike sovereign like Basil, proves the density and flourishing condition of that people, and the complete annihilation of all Hellenic influence in extensive provinces, where for ages the civilisation and the language of Greece had been predominant. Against this national energy on the part of the united Bulgarians and Slavonians, the government of Constantinople had nothing to oppose but a well-disciplined army and a well-organised administration. The Byzantine Empire had never less of a national character than at the present period, when its military glory had reached the highest pitch. Its Roman traditions were a mere name, and it had not yet assumed the Medieval Greek characteristics it adopted at a later period when it was ruled by the family of Comnenos. No national population followed in the rear of Basil’s victories, to colonize the lands he systematically depopulated by his ravages and cruelty; and hence it appears that extensive districts, instead of being repeopled by Greek settlers, remained in a deserted condition until a nomadic Vallachian population intruded themselves. These new colonists soon multiplied so rapidly that about a century later they were found occupying the mountains round the great plain of Thessaly. The changes which have taken place in the numbers and places of habitation of the different races of mankind, are really as important a branch of historical inquiry as the geographical limits of political governments; and the social laws that regulate the increase and decrease of the various families of the human race, at the same period, and under the same government, are as deserving of study as the actions of princes and the legislation of parliaments, for they exert no inconsiderable influence on the rise and fall of states.

After the conclusion of the Bulgarian war, the attention of Basil was directed to the affairs of Armenia. Great political changes were beginning to take place in Asia, from the decline of the empire of the caliphs of Bagdad; but these revolutions lie beyond the sphere of Byzantine politics at this time, though they began already to exert an influence on the sovereigns of Armenia. Before Basil had taken the command of his armies in the Bulgarian war, he had made a campaign in Armenia (AD 991), and gained possession of a considerable portion of Iberia or Georgia. The whole kingdom had been left to him by the will of David, its last sovereign; but George, the brother of the deceased monarch, advancing his claim to the succession. Basil, in order to avoid a war, agreed to leave George in possession of the northern part. It is not necessary to enter into any details concerning the relations of the empire with the different dynasties that then reigned in each of the principalities into which Armenia was divided. Basil, in order to keep some check on the population of Iberia and Armenia, transported colonies of Bulgarians and Slavonians into the East, while at the same time he removed numbers of Armenians into Bulgaria.

In the year 995, Basil visited the East, in order to re-establish the Byzantine influence in Syria, where it had fallen into discredit in consequence of the defeat of the imperial army on the banks of the Orontes, in the preceding year. The emperor soon succeeded in re-establishing his authority. He took Aleppo, Hems, and Sheizar, and laid siege to Tripolis; but that city resisted his attacks, as it had done those of John Zimiskes; and after his return to Constantinople, the lieutenants of the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt recovered possession of Aleppo.

In the year 1021, the emperor was compelled to take the field in person, to make head against a powerful combination of enemies on the Armenian frontier. Senekarim, the prince of Vasparoukan, had been so alarmed by the threatening aspect of the Mohammedan population on his frontiers that he had ceded his dominions to Basil, and received in exchange the city of Sebaste and the adjacent country as far as the Euphrates, where he established himself with many Armenian families who quitted their native seats. Basil undertook to defend Vasparoukan against the Turkish tribes that began to attack it, and Senekarim engaged to govern Sebaste as a Byzantine viceroy. After this cession had been made, George, the sovereign of the northern part of Iberia and Abasgia, in conjunction with Joannes Sembat, the King of Ani, attacked the Byzantine territory, and their operations rendered the presence of the emperor necessary. They had formed secret relations with Nicephorus Xiphias, who, while governor of Philippopolis, had distinguished himself in the Bulgarian war, and with Nicephorus, the son of Bardas Phokas; and these two generals broke out into open rebellion in Cappadocia, and endeavoured to incite all the Armenians to take up arms. Basil was obliged to suppress this rebellion before he engaged a foreign enemy, and he availed himself of the spirit of treachery inherent among men in power in most absolute governments to effect his purpose. He sent letters secretly to each of the rebel chiefs, offering pardon to him who would assassinate his colleague. Phokas, who was bold and daring like his father, immediately communicated the emperor's letter to Xiphias, who, concealing that he had received one of similar import, availed himself of his friend’s confidence to assassinate him at a private interview. The rebel army then melted away, and Basil was able to turn all his forces against the sovereign of Iberia. In the first battle the victory remained doubtful, but in a second the Iberian and Abasgian troops were completely defeated (11th September 1022). Liparit, the general of the Abasgians, was slain, and the kings of Iberia and Armenia were obliged to sue for peace. A treaty was concluded on the banks of the lake Balagatsis, by which Joannes the King of Armenia, who began to be alarmed at the progress of the Turks, ceded his capital, Ani, to Basil after his death, on condition of retaining the government in his own hands as long as he lived. During this campaign, Basil displayed all his usual foresight and energy: he took measures for putting the fortresses on the eastern frontier of the empire in a state to resist the Turks, who threatened to invade the west of Asia; and some of the military engines he ordered to be constructed were of such power and solidity, that when the Seljouk Turks invaded the Byzantine territory in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachos, they found them still well suited for service.

The next object of Basil’s ambition was to expel the Saracens from Sicily; and he was engaged in making great preparations for reconquering that island, when he was seized with an illness, which quickly proved fatal. He expired in December 1025, at the age of sixty-eight, after having governed the empire with absolute power for fifty years. He extended the limits of the Byzantine territory on every side by his conquests, and at the end of his reign the Byzantine Empire attained its greatest extent and highest power.

The body of Basil was interred in the Church of the Evangelists, in the Hebdomon. Two centuries and a half had nearly passed away. The Byzantine empire had been destroyed by the Crusaders, the Asiatic Greeks were endeavouring to expel the Franks from their conquest, and Michael Paleologos their emperor was besieging Constantinople, when some Greek officers, wandering through the ruins of the church and monastery of the Evangelists, admired the remains of its ancient magnificence, and lamented to see that so splendid a monument of Byzantine piety had been converted into a stable under the ruinous administration of the Frank Caesars. In a corner of the building, a remarkable tomb that had been recently broken open arrested their attention. A well-embalmed body of an old man lay in the sarcophagus, and in his hand some idle herdsman had placed a shepherd’s pipe. An inscription on the wall showed that the sarcophagus contained the mortal remains of Basil the Slayer of the Bulgarians. The Emperor Michael VIII visited the spot, and when he found it necessary to retire from before Constantinople for a time, he ordered the body to be removed to Selymbria, and interred in the monastery of our Saviour, AD 1260.

 

 

CHAPTER VII

PERIOD OF CONSERVATISM ON THE EVE OF DECLINE, AD 1025-1057