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

III.

The Russians, who have borrowed from the Greeks the greatest part
of their civil and ecclesiastical policy, preserved, till the
last century, a singular institution in the marriage of the Czar.
They collected, not the virgins of every rank and of every
province, a vain and romantic idea, but the daughters of the
principal nobles, who awaited in the palace the choice of their
sovereign. It is affirmed, that a similar method was adopted in
the nuptials of Theophilus. With a golden apple in his hand, he
slowly walked between two lines of contending beauties: his eye
was detained by the charms of Icasia, and in the awkwardness of a
first declaration, the prince could only observe, that, in this
world, women had been the cause of much evil; “And surely, sir,”
she pertly replied, “they have likewise been the occasion of much
good.” This affectation of unseasonable wit displeased the
Imperial lover: he turned aside in disgust; Icasia concealed her
mortification in a convent; and the modest silence of Theodora
was rewarded with the golden apple. She deserved the love, but
did not escape the severity, of her lord. From the palace garden
he beheld a vessel deeply laden, and steering into the port: on
the discovery that the precious cargo of Syrian luxury was the
property of his wife, he condemned the ship to the flames, with a
sharp reproach, that her avarice had degraded the character of an
empress into that of a merchant. Yet his last choice intrusted
her with the guardianship of the empire and her son Michael, who
was left an orphan in the fifth year of his age. The restoration
of images, and the final extirpation of the Iconoclasts, has
endeared her name to the devotion of the Greeks; but in the
fervor of religious zeal, Theodora entertained a grateful regard
for the memory and salvation of her husband. After thirteen years
of a prudent and frugal administration, she perceived the decline
of her influence; but the second Irene imitated only the virtues
of her predecessor. Instead of conspiring against the life or
government of her son, she retired, without a struggle, though
not without a murmur, to the solitude of private life, deploring
the ingratitude, the vices, and the inevitable ruin, of the
worthless youth. Among the successors of Nero and Elagabalus, we
have not hitherto found the imitation of their vices, the
character of a Roman prince who considered pleasure as the object
of life, and virtue as the enemy of pleasure. Whatever might have
been the maternal care of Theodora in the education of Michael
the Third, her unfortunate son was a king before he was a man. If
the ambitious mother labored to check the progress of reason, she
could not cool the ebullition of passion; and her selfish policy
was justly repaid by the contempt and ingratitude of the
headstrong youth. At the age of eighteen, he rejected her
authority, without feeling his own incapacity to govern the
empire and himself. With Theodora, all gravity and wisdom retired
from the court; their place was supplied by the alternate
dominion of vice and folly; and it was impossible, without
forfeiting the public esteem, to acquire or preserve the favor of
the emperor. The millions of gold and silver which had been
accumulated for the service of the state, were lavished on the
vilest of men, who flattered his passions and shared his
pleasures; and in a reign of thirteen years, the richest of
sovereigns was compelled to strip the palace and the churches of
their precious furniture. Like Nero, he delighted in the
amusements of the theatre, and sighed to be surpassed in the
accomplishments in which he should have blushed to excel. Yet the
studies of Nero in music and poetry betrayed some symptoms of a
liberal taste; the more ignoble arts of the son of Theophilus
were confined to the chariot-race of the hippodrome. The four
factions which had agitated the peace, still amused the idleness,
of the capital: for himself, the emperor assumed the blue livery;
the three rival colors were distributed to his favorites, and in
the vile though eager contention he forgot the dignity of his
person and the safety of his dominions. He silenced the messenger
of an invasion, who presumed to divert his attention in the most
critical moment of the race; and by his command, the importunate
beacons were extinguished, that too frequently spread the alarm
from Tarsus to Constantinople. The most skilful charioteers
obtained the first place in his confidence and esteem; their
merit was profusely rewarded; the emperor feasted in their
houses, and presented their children at the baptismal font; and
while he applauded his own popularity, he affected to blame the
cold and stately reserve of his predecessors. The unnatural lusts
which had degraded even the manhood of Nero, were banished from
the world; yet the strength of Michael was consumed by the
indulgence of love and intemperance. 1012 In his midnight revels,
when his passions were inflamed by wine, he was provoked to issue
the most sanguinary commands; and if any feelings of humanity
were left, he was reduced, with the return of sense, to approve
the salutary disobedience of his servants. But the most
extraordinary feature in the character of Michael, is the profane
mockery of the religion of his country. The superstition of the
Greeks might indeed excite the smile of a philosopher; but his
smile would have been rational and temperate, and he must have
condemned the ignorant folly of a youth who insulted the objects
of public veneration. A buffoon of the court was invested in the
robes of the patriarch: his twelve metropolitans, among whom the
emperor was ranked, assumed their ecclesiastical garments: they
used or abused the sacred vessels of the altar; and in their
bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was administered in a
nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard. Nor were these impious
spectacles concealed from the eyes of the city. On the day of a
solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode
on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at
the head of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and
obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian
procession. The devotion of Michael appeared only in some offence
to reason or piety: he received his theatrical crowns from the
statue of the Virgin; and an Imperial tomb was violated for the
sake of burning the bones of Constantine the Iconoclast. By this
extravagant conduct, the son of Theophilus became as contemptible
as he was odious: every citizen was impatient for the deliverance
of his country; and even the favorites of the moment were
apprehensive that a caprice might snatch away what a caprice had
bestowed. In the thirtieth year of his age, and in the hour of
intoxication and sleep, Michael the Third was murdered in his
chamber by the founder of a new dynasty, whom the emperor had
raised to an equality of rank and power.

1012 (return) [ In a campaign against the Saracens, he betrayed
both imbecility and cowardice. Genesius, c. iv. p. 94.—M.]

The genealogy of Basil the Macedonian (if it be not the spurious
offspring of pride and flattery) exhibits a genuine picture of
the revolution of the most illustrious families. The Arsacides,
the rivals of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four
hundred years: a younger branch of these Parthian kings continued
to reign in Armenia; and their royal descendants survived the
partition and servitude of that ancient monarchy. Two of these,
Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or retired to the court of Leo
the First: his bounty seated them in a safe and hospitable exile,
in the province of Macedonia: Adrianople was their final
settlement. During several generations they maintained the
dignity of their birth; and their Roman patriotism rejected the
tempting offers of the Persian and Arabian powers, who recalled
them to their native country. But their splendor was insensibly
clouded by time and poverty; and the father of Basil was reduced
to a small farm, which he cultivated with his own hands: yet he
scorned to disgrace the blood of the Arsacides by a plebeian
alliance: his wife, a widow of Adrianople, was pleased to count
among her ancestors the great Constantine; and their royal infant
was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country with
the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born, than the cradle
of Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an
inundation of the Bulgarians: he was educated a slave in a
foreign land; and in this severe discipline, he acquired the
hardiness of body and flexibility of mind which promoted his
future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood he shared the
deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke their
fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine,
defeated two armies of Barbarians, embarked in the ships which
had been stationed for their reception, and returned to
Constantinople, from whence they were distributed to their
respective homes. But the freedom of Basil was naked and
destitute: his farm was ruined by the calamities of war: after
his father’s death, his manual labor, or service, could no longer
support a family of orphans and he resolved to seek a more
conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may
lead to the paths of greatness. The first night of his arrival at
Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgrim slept
on the steps of the church of St. Diomede: he was fed by the
casual hospitality of a monk; and was introduced to the service
of a cousin and namesake of the emperor Theophilus; who, though
himself of a diminutive person, was always followed by a train of
tall and handsome domestics. Basil attended his patron to the
government of Peloponnesus; eclipsed, by his personal merit the
birth and dignity of Theophilus, and formed a useful connection
with a wealthy and charitable matron of Patras. Her spiritual or
carnal love embraced the young adventurer, whom she adopted as
her son. Danielis presented him with thirty slaves; and the
produce of her bounty was expended in the support of his
brothers, and the purchase of some large estates in Macedonia.
His gratitude or ambition still attached him to the service of
Theophilus; and a lucky accident recommended him to the notice of
the court. A famous wrestler, in the train of the Bulgarian
ambassadors, had defied, at the royal banquet, the boldest and
most robust of the Greeks. The strength of Basil was praised; he
accepted the challenge; and the Barbarian champion was overthrown
at the first onset. A beautiful but vicious horse was condemned
to be hamstrung: it was subdued by the dexterity and courage of
the servant of Theophilus; and his conqueror was promoted to an
honorable rank in the Imperial stables. But it was impossible to
obtain the confidence of Michael, without complying with his
vices; and his new favorite, the great chamberlain of the palace,
was raised and supported by a disgraceful marriage with a royal
concubine, and the dishonor of his sister, who succeeded to her
place. The public administration had been abandoned to the Caesar
Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora; but the arts of female
influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear his uncle: he was
drawn from Constantinople, under the pretence of a Cretan
expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of
the chamberlain, and in the presence of the emperor. About a
month after this execution, Basil was invested with the title of
Augustus and the government of the empire. He supported this
unequal association till his influence was fortified by popular
esteem. His life was endangered by the caprice of the emperor;
and his dignity was profaned by a second colleague, who had rowed
in the galleys. Yet the murder of his benefactor must be
condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason; and the churches
which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor and
puerile expiation of his guilt. The different ages of Basil the
First may be compared with those of Augustus. The situation of
the Greek did not allow him in his earliest youth to lead an army
against his country; or to proscribe the nobles of her sons; but
his aspiring genius stooped to the arts of a slave; he dissembled
his ambition and even his virtues, and grasped, with the bloody
hand of an assassin, the empire which he ruled with the wisdom
and tenderness of a parent.

A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his duty;
but it must be from a deficiency of sense or courage, that an
absolute monarch can separate his happiness from his glory, or
his glory from the public welfare. The life or panegyric of Basil
has indeed been composed and published under the long reign of
his descendants; but even their stability on the throne may be
justly ascribed to the superior merit of their ancestor. In his
character, his grandson Constantine has attempted to delineate a
perfect image of royalty: but that feeble prince, unless he had
copied a real model, could not easily have soared so high above
the level of his own conduct or conceptions. But the most solid
praise of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a
flourishing monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute
Michael, and that which he bequeathed to the Mecedonian dynasty.
The evils which had been sanctified by time and example, were
corrected by his master-hand; and he revived, if not the national
spirit, at least the order and majesty of the Roman empire. His
application was indefatigable, his temper cool, his understanding
vigorous and decisive; and in his practice he observed that rare
and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue, at an equal
distance between the opposite vices. His military service had
been confined to the palace: nor was the emperor endowed with the
spirit or the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman
arms were again formidable to the Barbarians. As soon as he had
formed a new army by discipline and exercise, he appeared in
person on the banks of the Euphrates, curbed the pride of the
Saracens, and suppressed the dangerous though just revolt of the
Manichaeans. His indignation against a rebel who had long eluded
his pursuit, provoked him to wish and to pray, that, by the grace
of God, he might drive three arrows into the head of Chrysochir.
That odious head, which had been obtained by treason rather than
by valor, was suspended from a tree, and thrice exposed to the
dexterity of the Imperial archer; a base revenge against the
dead, more worthy of the times than of the character of Basil.
But his principal merit was in the civil administration of the
finances and of the laws. To replenish an exhausted treasury, it
was proposed to resume the lavish and ill-placed gifts of his
predecessor: his prudence abated one moiety of the restitution;
and a sum of twelve hundred thousand pounds was instantly
procured to answer the most pressing demands, and to allow some
space for the mature operations of economy. Among the various
schemes for the improvement of the revenue, a new mode was
suggested of capitation, or tribute, which would have too much
depended on the arbitrary discretion of the assessors. A
sufficient list of honest and able agents was instantly produced
by the minister; but on the more careful scrutiny of Basil
himself, only two could be found, who might be safely intrusted
with such dangerous powers; but they justified his esteem by
declining his confidence. But the serious and successful
diligence of the emperor established by degrees the equitable
balance of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a
peculiar fund was appropriated to each service; and a public
method secured the interest of the prince and the property of the
people. After reforming the luxury, he assigned two patrimonial
estates to supply the decent plenty, of the Imperial table: the
contributions of the subject were reserved for his defence; and
the residue was employed in the embellishment of the capital and
provinces. A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some
praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is
encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or
pleasure: the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is
obvious and solid; and the hundred churches that arose by the
command of Basil were consecrated to the devotion of the age. In
the character of a judge he was assiduous and impartial; desirous
to save, but not afraid to strike: the oppressors of the people
were severely chastised; but his personal foes, whom it might be
unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of their eyes,
to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language and
manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of
Justinian: the voluminous body of his Institutes, Pandects, Code,
and Novels, was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom;
and the Basilics, which were improved and completed by his son
and grandson, must be referred to the original genius of the
founder of their race. This glorious reign was terminated by an
accident in the chase. A furious stag entangled his horns in the
belt of Basil, and raised him from his horse: he was rescued by
an attendant, who cut the belt and slew the animal; but the fall,
or the fever, exhausted the strength of the aged monarch, and he
expired in the palace amidst the tears of his family and people.
If he struck off the head of the faithful servant for presuming
to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of despotism,
which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last moments
of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of
mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his
father, whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering
impostor and a vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was
content with the honors of a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and
Alexander were alike invested with the purple, but the powers of
government were solely exercised by the elder brother. The name
of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the title of
philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the
active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the
perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short
of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and
appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the
pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines;
and even the clemency which he showed, and the peace which he
strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indolence
of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his
subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition;
the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were
consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in
prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts
of astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of
his sage appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of
Basil was less ignorant than the greater part of his
contemporaries in church and state; that his education had been
directed by the learned Photius; and that several books of
profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or
in the name, of the Imperial philosopher. But the reputation of
his philosophy and religion was overthrown by a domestic vice,
the repetition of his nuptials. The primitive ideas of the merit
and holiness of celibacy were preached by the monks and
entertained by the Greeks. Marriage was allowed as a necessary
means for the propagation of mankind; after the death of either
party, the survivor might satisfy, by a second union, the
weakness or the strength of the flesh: but a third marriage was
censured as a state of legal fornication; and a fourth was a sin
or scandal as yet unknown to the Christians of the East. In the
beginning of his reign, Leo himself had abolished the state of
concubines, and condemned, without annulling, third marriages:
but his patriotism and love soon compelled him to violate his own
laws, and to incur the penance, which in a similar case he had
imposed on his subjects. In his three first alliances, his
nuptial bed was unfruitful; the emperor required a female
companion, and the empire a legitimate heir. The beautiful Zoe
was introduced into the palace as a concubine; and after a trial
of her fecundity, and the birth of Constantine, her lover
declared his intention of legitimating the mother and the child,
by the celebration of his fourth nuptials. But the patriarch
Nicholas refused his blessing: the Imperial baptism of the young
prince was obtained by a promise of separation; and the
contumacious husband of Zoe was excluded from the communion of
the faithful. Neither the fear of exile, nor the desertion of his
brethren, nor the authority of the Latin church, nor the danger
of failure or doubt in the succession to the empire, could bend
the spirit of the inflexible monk. After the death of Leo, he was
recalled from exile to the civil and ecclesiastical
administration; and the edict of union which was promulgated in
the name of Constantine, condemned the future scandal of fourth
marriages, and left a tacit imputation on his own birth. In the
Greek language, purple and porphyry are the same word: and as the
colors of nature are invariable, we may learn, that a dark deep
red was the Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients.
An apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with porphyry: it
was reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses; and the royal
birth of their children was expressed by the appellation of
porphyrogenite, or born in the purple. Several of the Roman
princes had been blessed with an heir; but this peculiar surname
was first applied to Constantine the Seventh. His life and
titular reign were of equal duration; but of fifty-four years,
six had elapsed before his father’s death; and the son of Leo was
ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who oppressed
his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander, who
had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first
colleague and governor of the young prince: but in a rapid career
of vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the
reputation of Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely
death, he entertained a project of castrating his nephew, and
leaving the empire to a worthless favorite. The succeeding years
of the minority of Constantine were occupied by his mother Zoe,
and a succession or council of seven regents, who pursued their
interest, gratified their passions, abandoned the republic,
supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the presence of a
soldier. From an obscure origin, Romanus Lecapenus had raised
himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of
the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national
esteem. With a victorious and affectionate fleet, he sailed from
the mouth of the Danube into the harbor of Constantinople, and
was hailed as the deliverer of the people, and the guardian of
the prince. His supreme office was at first defined by the new
appellation of father of the emperor; but Romanus soon disdained
the subordinate powers of a minister, and assumed with the titles
of Caesar and Augustus, the full independence of royalty, which
he held near five-and-twenty years. His three sons, Christopher,
Stephen, and Constantine were successively adorned with the same
honors, and the lawful emperor was degraded from the first to the
fifth rank in this college of princes. Yet, in the preservation
of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own fortune and
the clemency of the usurper. The examples of ancient and modern
history would have excused the ambition of Romanus: the powers
and the laws of the empire were in his hand; the spurious birth
of Constantine would have justified his exclusion; and the grave
or the monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine.
But Lecapenus does not appear to have possessed either the
virtues or the vices of a tyrant. The spirit and activity of his
private life dissolved away in the sunshine of the throne; and in
his licentious pleasures, he forgot the safety both of the
republic and of his family. Of a mild and religious character, he
respected the sanctity of oaths, the innocence of the youth, the
memory of his parents, and the attachment of the people. The
studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the
jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil,
were a constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a
scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was
not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a
personal talent, which few princes could employ in the hour of
adversity.

The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own vices and those of
his children. After the decease of Christopher, his eldest son,
the two surviving brothers quarrelled with each other, and
conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all
strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered
his apartment with an armed force, and conveyed him, in the habit
of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled
by a religious community. The rumor of this domestic revolution
excited a tumult in the city; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true
and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care; and the
sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had
achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the benefit of
their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of Constantine,
revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of assassinating
her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were
alarmed, and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded
from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery
where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met
them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just
reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his Imperial
colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet.
In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine the Seventh
obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled or
seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that
energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and
glory; and the studies, which had amused and dignified his
leisure, were incompatible with the serious duties of a
sovereign. The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son
Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits
of intemperance and sloth, he dropped the reins of the
administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and, in the
shifting scene of her favor and caprice, each minister was
regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the
birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the
Greeks; they excused his failings; they respected his learning,
his innocence, and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony
of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his
subjects. The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in
the vestibule of the palace; and the civil and military officers,
the patricians, the senate, and the clergy approached in due
order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign.
Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre, a
herald proclaimed this awful admonition: “Arise, O king of the
world, and obey the summons of the King of kings!”

The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son
Romanus, who derived that name from his maternal grandfather,
ascended the throne of Constantinople. A prince who, at the age
of twenty, could be suspected of anticipating his inheritance,
must have been already lost in the public esteem; yet Romanus was
rather weak than wicked; and the largest share of the guilt was
transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman of base origin
masculine spirit, and flagitious manners. The sense of personal
glory and public happiness, the true pleasures of royalty, were
unknown to the son of Constantine; and, while the two brothers,
Nicephorus and Leo, triumphed over the Saracens, the hours which
the emperor owed to his people were consumed in strenuous
idleness. In the morning he visited the circus; at noon he
feasted the senators; the greater part of the afternoon he spent
in the sphoeristerium, or tennis-court, the only theatre of his
victories; from thence he passed over to the Asiatic side of the
Bosphorus, hunted and killed four wild boars of the largest size,
and returned to the palace, proudly content with the labors of
the day. In strength and beauty he was conspicuous above his
equals: tall and straight as a young cypress, his complexion was
fair and florid, his eyes sparkling, his shoulders broad, his
nose long and aquiline. Yet even these perfections were
insufficient to fix the love of Theophano; and, after a reign of
four 1013 years, she mingled for her husband the same deadly
draught which she had composed for his father.

1013 (return) [ Three years and five months. Leo Diaconus in
Niebuhr. Byz p. 50—M.]

By his marriage with this impious woman, Romanus the younger left
two sons, Basil the Second and Constantine the Ninth, and two
daughters, Theophano and Anne. The eldest sister was given to
Otho the Second, emperor of the West; the younger became the wife
of Wolodomir, great duke and apostle of russia, and by the
marriage of her granddaughter with Henry the First, king of
France, the blood of the Macedonians, and perhaps of the
Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line. After
the death of her husband, the empress aspired to reign in the
name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger
only two, years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a
throne which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed,
and two infants who could not be feared. Theophano looked around
for a protector, and threw herself into the arms of the bravest
soldier; her heart was capacious; but the deformity of the new
favorite rendered it more than probable that interest was the
motive and excuse of her love. Nicephorus Phocus united, in the
popular opinion, the double merit of a hero and a saint. In the
former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid:
the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits,
he had displayed in every station and in every province the
courage of a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus
was crowned with recent laurels, from the important conquest of
the Isle of Crete. His religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and
his hair-cloth, his fasts, his pious idiom, and his wish to
retire from the business of the world, were a convenient mask for
his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he imposed on a holy
patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the senate, he
was intrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with the
absolute and independent command of the Oriental armies. As soon
as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched
to Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his
correspondence with the empress, and without degrading her sons,
assumed, with the title of Augustus, the preeminence of rank and
the plenitude of power. But his marriage with Theophano was
refused by the same patriarch who had placed the crown on his
head: by his second nuptials he incurred a year of canonical
penance; 1014 a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to their
celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to
silence the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of
the emperor was lost in the purple: in a reign of six years he
provoked the hatred of strangers and subjects: and the hypocrisy
and avarice of the first Nicephorus were revived in his
successor. Hypocrisy I shall never justify or palliate; but I
will dare to observe, that the odious vice of avarice is of all
others most hastily arraigned, and most unmercifully condemned.
In a private citizen, our judgment seldom expects an accurate
scrutiny into his fortune and expense; and in a steward of the
public treasure, frugality is always a virtue, and the increase
of taxes too often an indispensable duty. In the use of his
patrimony, the generous temper of Nicephorus had been proved; and
the revenue was strictly applied to the service of the state:
each spring the emperor marched in person against the Saracens;
and every Roman might compute the employment of his taxes in
triumphs, conquests, and the security of the Eastern barrier.
1015

1014 (return) [ The canonical objection to the marriage was his
relation of Godfather sons. Leo Diac. p. 50.—M.]

1015 (return) [ He retook Antioch, and brought home as a trophy
the sword of “the most unholy and impious Mahomet.” Leo Diac. p.
76.—M.]