Chapter VI: Heraclius and His Successors (2)

When residing in Sicily Constans directed his attention to the state of Africa. His measures are not detailed with precision, but were evidently distinguished by the usual energy and caprice which marked his whole conduct. He recovered possession of Carthage, and of several cities which the Arabs had rendered tributary; but he displeased the inhabitants of the province, by compelling them to pay to himself the same amount of tribute as they had agreed by treaty to pay to the Saracens; and as Constans could not expel the Saracen forces from the province, the amount of the public taxes of the Africans was thus often doubled, since both parties were able to levy the contributions which they demanded. Moawyah sent an army from Syria, and Constans one from Sicily, to decide who should become sole master of the country. A battle was fought near Tripolis; and though the army of Constans consisted of thirty thousand men, it was completely defeated. Yet the victorious army of the Saracens was unable to take the small town of Geloula (Usula), until the accidental fall of a portion of the ramparts laid it open to their assault; and this trifling conquest was followed by no farther success. In the East, the empire was exposed to greater danger, yet the enemies of Constans were eventually unsuccessful in their projects. In consequence of the rebellion of the Armenian troops, whose commander, Sapor, assumed the title of emperor, the Saracens made a successful incursion into Asia Minor, captured the city of Amorium, in Phrygia, and placed in it a garrison of five thousand men; but the imperial general appointed by Constans soon drove out this powerful garrison, and recovered the place.

It appears, therefore, that in spite of all the defeats which Constans is reported to have suffered, the empire underwent no very sensible diminution of its territory during his reign, and he certainly left its military forces in a more efficient condition than he found them. He was assassinated in a bath at Syracuse, by an officer of his own household, in the year 668, at the age of thirty-eight, after a reign of twenty-seven years. The fact of his having been murdered by one of his own household, joined to the capricious violence that marked many of his public acts, warrants the supposition that his character was of the unamiable and unsteady nature, which rendered the accusation of fratricide, so readily believed by his contemporaries, by no means impossible. It must, however, be admitted, that the occurrences of his reign afford irrefragable testimony that his heretical opinions have induced orthodox historians to give an erroneous colouring to many circumstances, since the undoubted results do not correspond with their descriptions of the passing events.

REIGN OF CONSTANTINE IV (668-685 A.D.)

Constantine IV, called Pogonatus, or the Bearded, has been regarded by posterity with a high degree of favour. Yet his merit seems to have consisted in his superior orthodoxy, rather than in his superior talents as emperor. The concessions which he made to the see of Rome, and the moderation that he displayed in all ecclesiastical affairs, placed his conduct in strong contrast with the stern energy with which his father had enforced the subjection of the orthodox ecclesiastics to the civil power, and gained for him the praise of the priesthood, whose eulogies have exerted no inconsiderable influence on all historians. Constantine, however, was certainly an intelligent and just prince; he did not possess the stubborn determination and talents of his father, and was destitute also of his violent passions and imprudent character.

[Sidenote: [668-681 A.D.]]

As soon as Constantine was informed of the murder of his father, and that a rebel had assumed the purple in Sicily, he hastened thither in person to avenge his death, and extinguish the rebellion. To satisfy his vengeance, the patrician Justinian, a man of high character, compromised in the rebellion, was treated with great severity, and his son Germanus with a degree of inhumanity that would have been recorded by the clergy against Constans as an instance of the grossest barbarity. The return of the emperor to Constantinople was signalised by a singular sedition of the troops in Asia Minor. They marched towards the capital, and having encamped on the Asiatic shores of the Bosporus, demanded that Constantine should admit his two brothers, on whom he had conferred the rank of augustus, to an equal share in the public administration, in order that the Holy Trinity in heaven, which governs the spiritual world, might be represented by a human trinity, to govern the political empire of the Christians. The very proposal is a proof of the complete supremacy of the civil over the ecclesiastical authority, in the eyes of the people, and the strongest evidence, that in the public opinion of the age the emperor was regarded as the head of the church. Such reasoning as the rebels used could be rebutted by no arguments, and Constantine had energy enough to hang the leaders of the sedition, and sufficient moderation not to molest his brothers. But several years later, either from increased suspicions or from some intrigues on their part, he deprived them of the rank of augustus, and condemned them to have their noses cut off (681 A.D.). Theophanes[d] says that the brothers of Constantine IV lost their noses in 669, but were not deprived of the imperial title until 681.

SARACEN WARS AND SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE (672 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [672-678 A.D.]]

The great object of the imperial policy at this period was to oppose the progress of the Mohammedans. Constans had succeeded in arresting their conquests, but Constantine soon found that they would give the empire no rest unless he could secure it by his victories. He had hardly quitted Sicily to return to Constantinople, before an Arab expedition from Alexandria invaded the island and stormed the city of Syracuse, and, after plundering the treasures accumulated by Constans, immediately abandoned the place. In Africa the war was continued with various success, but the Christians were not long left without any succours from Constantine, while Moawyah supplied the Saracens with strong reinforcements. In spite of the courage and enthusiasm of the Mohammedans, the native Christian population maintained their ground with firmness, and carried on the war with such vigour that in the year 676 a native African leader, who commanded the united forces of the Romans and Berbers, captured the newly founded city of Kairowan, which at a subsequent period became renowned as the capital of the Fatimite caliphs.

The ambition of the caliph Moawyah induced him to aspire at the conquest of the Roman Empire; and the military organisation of the Arabian power, which enabled the caliph to direct the whole resources of his dominions to any single object of conquest, seemed to promise success to the enterprise. A powerful expedition was sent to besiege Constantinople. The time required for the preparation of such an armament did not enable the Saracens to arrive at the Bosporus without passing a winter on the coast of Asia Minor; and on their arrival in the spring of the year 672, they found that the emperor had made every preparation for defence. Their forces, however, were so numerous that they were sufficient to invest Constantinople by sea and land. The troops occupied the whole of the land side of the triangle on which the city is constructed, while the fleet effectually blockaded the port.

The Saracens failed in all their assaults, both by sea and land; but the Romans, instead of celebrating their own valour and discipline, attributed their success principally to the use of the Greek fire, which was invented shortly before this siege, and was first used on this occasion. The military art had declined during the preceding century, as rapidly as every other branch of national culture; and the resources of the mighty empire of the Arabs were so limited by the ignorance and bad administration of its rulers, that the caliph was unable to maintain his forces before Constantinople during the winter. The Saracen army was nevertheless enabled to collect sufficient supplies at Cyzicus to make that place a winter station, while their powerful fleet commanded the Hellespont and secured their communications with Syria. When spring returned, the fleet again transported the army to encamp under the walls of Constantinople. This strange mode of besieging cities, unattempted since the times the Dorians had invaded Peloponnesus, was continued for seven years; but in this warfare the Saracens suffered far more severely than the Romans, and were at last compelled to abandon their enterprise.

The land forces tried to effect their retreat through Asia Minor, but were entirely cut off in the attempt; and a tempest destroyed the greater part of their fleet off the coast of Pamphylia. During the time that this great body of his forces was employed against Constantinople, Moawyah sent a division of his troops to invade Crete, which had been visited by a Saracen army in 651. The island was now compelled to pay tribute, but the inhabitants were treated with great mildness, as it was the policy of the caliph at this time to conciliate the good opinion of the Christians by his liberal government, in order to pave the way for future conquests. Moawyah carried his religious tolerance so far as to rebuild the church of Edessa at the intercession of his Christian subjects.

The destruction of the Saracen expedition against Constantinople, and the advantage which the mountaineers of Lebanon had contrived to take of the absence of the Arab troops, by carrying their incursions into the plains of Syria, convinced Moawyah of the necessity of peace. The hardy mountaineers of Lebanon, called Mardaites, had been increased in numbers, and supplied with wealth, in consequence of the retreat into their country of a mass of native Syrians who had fled before the Arabs. They consisted chiefly of melchites and monothelites, and on that account they had adhered to the cause of the Roman Empire when the monophysites joined the Saracens. Their Syrian origin renders it probable that they were ancestors of the Maronites, though the desire of some Maronite historians to show that their countrymen were always perfectly orthodox has perplexed a question which of itself was by no means of easy solution. The political state of the empire required peace; and the orthodox Constantine did not feel personally inclined to run any risk in order to protect the monothelite mardaites. Peace was concluded between the emperor and the caliph in the year 678, Moawyah consenting to pay the Romans annually three thousand pounds of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty Arabian horses. It appears strange that a prince, possessing the power and resources at the command of Moawyah, should submit to these conditions; but the fact proves that policy, not pride, was the rule of the caliph’s conduct, and that the advancement of his real power, and of the spiritual interests of the Mohammedan religion, were of more consequence in his eyes than any notions of earthly dignity.

[Sidenote: [678-711 A.D.]]

In the same year in which Moawyah had been induced to purchase peace by consenting to pay tribute to the Roman emperor, the foundations of the Bulgarian monarchy were laid, and the emperor Constantine himself was compelled to become tributary to a small horde of Bulgarians. One of the usual emigrations which take place amongst barbarous nations had induced Asparuch, a Bulgarian chief, to seize the low country about the mouth of the Danube; his power and activity obliged the emperor Constantine to take the field against these Bulgarians in person. The expedition was so ill conducted that it ended in the complete defeat of the Roman army, and the Bulgarians subdued all the country between the Danube and Mount Hæmus, compelling a district inhabited by a body of Slavonians, called the seven tribes, to become their tributaries. These Slavonians had once been formidable to the empire, but their power had been broken by the emperor Constans. Asparuch established himself in the town of Varna, near the ancient Odessus, and laid the foundation of the Bulgarian monarchy, a kingdom long engaged in hostilities with the emperors of Constantinople, and whose power tended greatly to accelerate the decline of the Greeks and reduce the numbers of their race in Europe.

The event, however, which exercised the most favourable influence on the internal condition of the empire during the reign of Constantine Pogonatus, was the assembly of the sixth general council of the church at Constantinople. This council was held under circumstances peculiarly favourable to candid discussion. The ecclesiastical power was not yet too strong to set both reason and the civil authorities at defiance. Its decisions were adverse to the monothelites; and the orthodox doctrine of two natures and two wills in Christ was received by the common consent of the Greek and Latin parties as the true rule of faith of the Christian church. Religious discussion had now taken a strong hold on public opinion, and as the majority of the Greek population had never adopted the opinions of the monothelites, the decisions of the sixth general council contributed powerfully to promote the union of the Greeks with the imperial administration.

JUSTINIAN II (685 A.D.)

Justinian II succeeded his father Constantine at the age of sixteen, and though so very young, he immediately assumed the personal direction of the government. He was by no means destitute of talents, but his cruel and presumptuous character rendered him incapable of learning to perform the duties of his situation with justice. He turned his arms against the Saracens though the caliph Abdul-Malik offered to make additional concessions in order to induce the emperor to renew the treaty of peace which had been concluded with his father. Justinian sent a powerful army into Armenia under Leontius. All the provinces which had shown any disposition to favour the Saracens were laid waste, and the army carried off an immense booty, and drove away a great part of the inhabitants as slaves. The caliph being engaged in a struggle for the Caliphate with powerful rivals, and disturbed by rebels even in his own Syrian dominions, arrested the progress of the Roman arms by purchasing peace on terms far more favourable to the empire than those of the treaty between Constantine and Moawyah.

Justinian, at the commencement of his reign, made a successful expedition into the country occupied by the Slavonians in Macedonia, who were now closely allied with the Bulgarian principality beyond Mount Hæmus. This people, emboldened by their increased force, had pushed their plundering excursions as far as the Propontis. The imperial army was completely successful, and both the Slavonians and their Bulgarian allies were defeated. In order to repeople the fertile shores of the Hellespont about Abydos, Justinian transplanted a number of the Slavonian families into the province of Opsicum. This colony was so numerous and powerful that it furnished a considerable contingent to the imperial armies.

[Sidenote: [689-692 A.D.]]

The peace with the Saracens was not of long duration. Justinian refused to receive the first gold pieces coined by Abdul-Malik, which bore the legend, “God is the Lord.” The tribute had previously been paid in money from the municipal mints of Syria; and Justinian imagined that the new Arabian coinage was an attack on the Holy Trinity. He led his army in person against the Saracens, and a battle took place near Sebastopolis, on the coast of Cilicia, in which he was entirely defeated, in consequence of the treason of the leader of his Slavonian troops. Justinian fled from the field of battle, and on his way to the capital he revenged himself on the Slavonians who had remained faithful to his standard for the desertion of their countrymen. The Slavonians in his service were put to death, and he even ordered the wives and children of those who had joined the Saracens to be murdered. The deserters were established by the Saracens on the coast of Syria, and in the island of Cyprus; and under the government of the caliph they were more prosperous than under that of the Roman emperor.

It was during this war that the Saracens inflicted the first great badge of civil degradation on the Christian population of their dominions. Abdul-Malik established the haratch, or Christian capitation tax, in order to raise money to carry on the war with Justinian. This unfortunate mode of taxing the Christian subjects of the caliph, in a different manner from the Mohammedans, completely separated the two classes, and reduced the Christians to the rank of serfs of the state, whose most prominent political relation with the Mussulman community was that of furnishing money to the government. The decline of the Christian population throughout the dominions of the caliphs was the consequence of this ill-judged measure, which has probably tended more to the depopulation of the East than all the tyranny and military violence of the Mohammedan armies.

[Sidenote: [692-695 A.D.]]

The restless spirit of Justinian naturally plunged into the ecclesiastical controversies which divided the church. He assembled a general council called usually _in Trullo_, from the hall of its meeting having been covered with a dome. The proceedings of this council, as might have been expected from those of an assembly controlled by such a spirit as that of the emperor, tended only to increase the growing differences between the Greek and Latin parties in the church. Of 102 canons sanctioned by this council, the pope finally rejected six, as adverse to the usages of the Latins. And thus an additional cause of separation was permanently created between the Greeks and Latins, and the measures of the church, as well as the political arrangements of the times, and the social feelings of the people, all tended to render union impossible.

A taste for building is a common fancy of sovereigns who possess the absolute disposal of large funds without any feeling of their duty as trustees for the benefit of the people whom they govern. Even in the midst of the greatest public distress, the treasury of nations, on the very verge of ruin and bankruptcy, must contain large sums of money drawn from the annual taxation. This treasure, when placed at the irresponsible disposal of princes who affect magnificence, is frequently employed in useless and ornamental building; and this fashion has been so general with despots, that the princes who have been most distinguished for their love of building, have not unfrequently been the worst and most oppressive sovereigns. It is always a delicate and difficult task for a sovereign to estimate the amount which a nation can wisely afford to expend on ornamental architecture; and from his position he is seldom qualified to judge correctly on what buildings ornament ought to be employed in order to make art accord with the taste and feelings of the people. Public opinion affords the only criterion for the formation of a sound judgment on this department of public administration; for, when princes possessing a taste for building are not compelled to consult the wants and wishes of their subjects in the construction of national edifices they are apt, by their wild projects and lavish expenditure, to create evils far greater than any which could result from an exhibition of bad taste alone.

In an evil hour the love of building took possession of Justinian’s mind. His lavish expenditure soon obliged him to make his financial administration more rigorous, and general discontent quickly pervaded the capital. The religious and superstitious feelings of the population were severely wounded by the emperor’s eagerness to destroy a church of the Virgin, in order to embellish the vicinity of his palace with a splendid fountain. Justinian’s own scruples required to be soothed by a religious ceremony, but the patriarch for some time refused to officiate, alleging that the church had no prayers to desecrate holy buildings. The emperor, however, was the head of the church and the master of the bishops, whom he could remove from office, so that the patriarch did not long dare to refuse obedience to his orders. It is said, however, that the patriarch showed very clearly his dissatisfaction by repairing to the spot and authorising the destruction of the church by an ecclesiastical ceremony, to which he added these words, “to God, who suffers all things, be rendered glory, now and forever. Amen.” The ceremony was sufficient to satisfy the conscience of the emperor, who perhaps neither heard nor heeded the words of the patriarch. The public discontent was loudly expressed, and Justinian soon perceived that the fury of the populace threatened a rebellion in Constantinople. To avert the danger, he took every measure which unscrupulous cruelty could suggest; but, as generally happens in periods of general discontent and excitement, the storm burst in an unexpected quarter, and the hatred of Justinian left him suddenly without support. Leontius, one of the ablest generals of the empire, whose exploits have been already mentioned, had been thrown into prison, but was at this time ordered to assume the government of the province of Hellas. He considered the nomination as a mere pretext to remove him from the capital, in order to put him to death at a distance without any trial.

On the eve of his departure, Leontius placed himself at the head of a sedition; Justinian was seized, and his ministers were murdered by the populace with the most savage cruelty. Leontius was proclaimed emperor, but he spared the life of his dethroned predecessor for the sake of the benefits which he had received from Constantine Pogonatus. He ordered Justinian’s nose to be cut off, and exiled him to Cherson. From this mutilation the dethroned emperor received the insulting nickname of Rhinotmetus, or “docknose,” by which he is distinguished in Byzantine history.

THE GOVERNMENT OF LEONTIUS (695-698 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [695-698 A.D.]]

The government of Leontius was characterised by the unsteadiness which not unfrequently marks the administration of the ablest sovereigns who obtain their thrones by accidental circumstances rather than by systematic combinations. The most important event of his reign was the final loss of Africa, which led to his dethronement. The indefatigable caliph Abdul-Malik despatched a powerful expedition into Africa under Hassan; the province was soon conquered, and Carthage was captured after a feeble resistance. An expedition sent by Leontius to relieve the province arrived too late to save Carthage, but the commander-in-chief forced the entrance into the port, recovered possession of the city, and drove the Arabs from most of the fortified towns on the coast. The Arabs constantly received new reinforcements, which the Roman general demanded from Leontius in vain. At last the Arabs assembled a fleet, and the Romans, being defeated in a naval engagement, were compelled to abandon Carthage, which the Arabs utterly destroyed,--having too often experienced the superiority of the Romans, both in naval affairs and in the art of war, to venture on retaining populous and fortified cities on the sea coast. This curious fact affords strong proof of the great superiority of the Roman commerce and naval resources, and equally powerful evidence of the shameful disorder in the civil and military administration of the empire, which rendered these advantages useless, and allowed the imperial fleets to be defeated by the naval forces collected by the Arabs from among their Egyptian and Syrian subjects. At the same time it is evident that the naval victories of the Arabs could never have been gained unless a powerful party of the Christians had been induced, by their feelings of hostility to the Roman Empire, to afford them a willing support; for there were as yet neither shipbuilders nor sailors among the Mussulmans.

The Roman expedition, on its retreat from Carthage, stopped in the Island of Crete, where a sedition broke out among the troops, in which their general was killed. Apsimar, the commander of the Cibyraiot troops, was declared emperor by the name of Tiberius. The fleet proceeded directly to Constantinople, which offered no resistance. Leontius was taken prisoner, his nose cut off, and his person confined in a monastery. Tiberius Apsimar governed the empire with prudence, and his brother Heraclius commanded the Roman armies with success. The imperial troops penetrated into Syria; a victory was gained over the Arabs at Samosata, but the ravages committed by the Romans in this invasion surpassed the greatest cruelties ever inflicted by the Arabs; for two hundred thousand Saracens are said to have perished during the campaign. Armenia was alternately invaded and laid waste by the Romans and the Saracens, as the various turns of war favoured the hostile parties, and as the changing interests of the Armenian population induced them to aid the emperor or the caliph. But while Tiberius was occupied in the duties of government, and living without any fear of a domestic enemy, he was suddenly surprised in his capital by Justinian, who appeared before Constantinople at the head of a Bulgarian army (705).

JUSTINIAN RECOVERS THE THRONE

[Sidenote: [698-711 A.D.]]

Ten years of exile had been spent by the banished emperor in vain attempts to obtain power. His violent proceedings made him everywhere detested, but he possessed the daring enterprise and the ferocious cruelty necessary for a chief of banditti, joined to a singular confidence in the value of his hereditary claim to the imperial throne; so that no undertaking appeared to him hopeless. After quarrelling with the inhabitants of Cherson, and with his brother-in-law, the king of the Khazars, he succeeded, by a desperate exertion of courage, in reaching the country of the Bulgarians. Terbelis, their sovereign, agreed to assist him in recovering his throne, and they marched immediately with a Bulgarian army to the walls of Constantinople. Three days after their arrival, they succeeded in entering the capital during the night. Ten years of adversity had increased the natural ferocity of Justinian’s disposition; and a desire of vengeance seems henceforward to have been the chief motive of his actions.

The population of Constantinople had now sunk to the same degree of barbarism as the nations surrounding them, and in cruelty they were worthy subjects of their emperor. Justinian gratified them by celebrating his restoration with splendid chariot races in the circus. He sat on an elevated throne, with his feet resting on the necks of the dethroned emperors, Leontius and Tiberius, who were stretched on the platform below, while the Greek populace around shouted the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt tread down the asp and the basilisk, thou shalt trample on the lion and the dragon.” The dethroned emperors and Heraclius, who had so well sustained the glory of the Roman arms against the Saracens, were afterwards hung from the battlements of Constantinople. Justinian’s whole soul was occupied with plans of vengeance. Though the conquest of Tyana laid open Asia Minor to the incursions of the Saracens, instead of opposing them, he directed his disposable forces to punish the cities of Ravenna and Cherson, because they had incurred his personal hatred. Both the proscribed cities had rejoiced at his dethronement; they were both taken and treated with savage cruelty. The Greek city of Cherson, though the seat of a flourishing commerce, and inhabited by a numerous population, was condemned to utter destruction. Justinian ordered all the buildings to be razed with the ground, and every soul within its walls to be put to death; but the troops sent to execute these barbarous orders revolted, and proclaimed an Armenian, called Bardanes, emperor, under the name of Philippicus. Seizing the fleet, they sailed directly to Constantinople.

Justinian was encamped with an army in Asia Minor when Philippicus arrived, and took possession of the capital without encountering any resistance. He was immediately deserted by his whole army, for the troops were as little pleased with his conduct since his restoration, as was every other class of his subjects; but his ferocity and courage never failed him, and his rage was unbounded when he found himself abandoned by every one. He was seized and executed, without having it in his power to offer the slightest resistance. His son Tiberius, though only six years of age, was torn from the altar of a church, to which he had been conducted for safety, and cruelly massacred; and thus the race of Heraclius was extinguished, after the family had governed the Roman Empire for exactly a century (610 to 711 A.D.).

ANARCHY

[Sidenote: [711-717 A.D.]]

During the interval of six years which elapsed from the death of Justinian II to the accession of Leo the Isaurian, the imperial throne was occupied by three sovereigns. Their history is only remarkable as proving the inherent strength of the Roman body politic, which could survive such continual revolutions, even in the state of weakness to which it was reduced. Philippicus was a luxurious and extravagant prince, who thought only of enjoying the situation which he had accidentally obtained. He was soon dethroned by a band of conspirators, who carried him off from the palace while in a fit of drunkenness, and after putting out his eyes, left him helpless in the middle of the hippodrome. The reign of Philippicus would hardly deserve notice, had he not increased the confusion into which the empire had fallen, and exposed the total want of character and conscience among the Greek clergy, by re-establishing the monothelite doctrines in a general council of the Eastern bishops.

As the conspirators who had dethroned Philippicus had not formed any plan for choosing his successor, the first secretary of state was elected emperor by a public assembly held in the great church of St. Sophia, under the name of Anastasius II. He immediately re-established the orthodox faith, and his character is consequently the subject of eulogy with the historians of his reign. The Saracens, whose power was continually increasing, were at this time preparing a great expedition at Alexandria, in order to attack Constantinople. Anastasius sent a fleet with the troops of the theme Opsicium, to destroy the magazines of timber collected on the coast of Phœnicia for the purpose of assisting the preparations at Alexandria. The Roman armament was commanded by a deacon of St. Sophia, who also held the office of grand treasurer of the empire. The nomination of a member of the clergy to command the army gave great dissatisfaction to the troops, who were not yet so deeply tinctured with ecclesiastical ideas and manners, as the aristocracy of the empire. A sedition took place while the army lay at Rhodes; Joannes the Deacon was slain, and the expedition quitted the port in order to return to the capital. The soldiers on their way landed at Adramyttium, and finding there a collector of the revenues of a popular character, they declared him emperor, under the name of Theodosius III.

The new emperor was compelled unwillingly to follow the army. For six months, Constantinople was closely besieged, and the emperor Anastasius, who had retired to Nicæa, was defeated in a general engagement. The capital was at last taken by the rebels, who were so deeply sensible of their real interests, that they maintained strict discipline, and Anastasius, whose weakness gave little confidence to his followers, consented to resign the empire to Theodosius, and to retire into a monastery, that he might secure an amnesty to all his friends. Theodosius was distinguished by many good qualities, but on the throne he proved a perfect cipher, and his reign is only remarkable as affording a pretext for the assumption of the imperial dignity by Leo III, called the Isaurian. This able and enterprising officer, perceiving that the critical times rendered the empire the prize of any man who had talents to seize, and power to defend it, placed himself at the head of the troops in Asia Minor, assumed the title of emperor, and soon compelled Theodosius to quit the throne and become a priest.

During the period which elapsed between the death of Heraclius and the accession of Leo, the few remains of Roman principles of administration which had lingered in the imperial court, were gradually extinguished. The long-cherished hope of restoring the ancient power and glory of the Roman Empire expired, and even the aristocracy, which always clings the last to antiquated forms and ideas, no longer dwelt with confidence on the memory of former days. The conviction that the empire had undergone a great moral and political change, which severed the future irrevocably from the past, though it was probably not fully understood, was at least felt and acted on both by the people and the government. The sad fact that the splendid light of civilisation which had illuminated the ancient world had now become as obscure at Constantinople as at Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage was too evident to be longer doubted; the very twilight of antiquity had faded into darkness. It is rather, however, the province of the antiquary than of the historian to collect all the traces of this truth scattered over the records of the seventh century.

The disorganisation of the Roman government at this period, and the want of any influence over the court by the Greek nation, are visible in the choice of the persons who occupied the imperial throne after the extinction of the family of Heraclius. They were selected by accident, and several were of foreign origin, who did not even look upon themselves as either Greeks or Romans. Philippicus was an Armenian, and Leo III, whose reign opens a new era in Eastern history, was an Isaurian. On the throne he proved that he was destitute of any attachment to Roman political institutions, and any respect for the Greek ecclesiastical establishment. It was by the force of his talents, and by his able direction of the state and of the army, that he succeeded in securing his family on the Byzantine throne; for he unquestionably placed himself in direct hostility to the feelings and opinions of his Greek and Roman subjects, and transmitted to his successors a contest between the imperial power and the Greek nation concerning picture worship, in which the very existence of Greek nationality, civilisation, and religion, became at last compromised. From the commencement of the iconoclastic contest, the history of the Greeks assumes a new aspect. Their civilisation, and their connection with the Byzantine Empire, become linked with the policy and fortunes of the Eastern church, and ecclesiastical affairs obtain a supremacy over all social and political considerations in their minds.

The geographical extent of the empire at the time of its transition from the Roman to the Byzantine Empire affords evidence of the influence which the territorial changes produced by the Saracen conquests exercised in conferring political importance on the Greek race. The frontier towards the Saracens of Syria commenced at Mopsuestia in Cilicia, the last fortress of the Arab power. It ran along the chains of mounts Amanus and Taurus to the mountainous district to the north of Edessa and Nisibis, called, after the time of Justinian, the Fourth Armenia, of which Martyropolis was the capital. It then followed nearly the ancient limits of the empire until it reached the Black Sea, a short distance to the east of Trebizond. On the northern shores of the Euxine, Cherson was now the only city that acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, retaining at the same time all its wealth and commerce, with the municipal privileges of a free city. In Europe, Mount Hæmus formed the barrier against the Bulgarians, while the mountainous ranges which bound Macedonia to the northwest, and encircle the territory of Dyrrhachium, were regarded as the limits of the free Slavonian states. It is true that large bodies of Slavonians had penetrated to the south of this line, and lived in Greece and Peloponnesus, but not in the same independent condition with reference to the imperial administration as their northern brethren of the Servian family.

Istria, Venice, and the cities on the Dalmatian coast, still acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, though their distant position, their commercial connections, and their religious feelings, were all tending towards a final separation. In the centre of Italy, the exarchate of Ravenna still held Rome in subjection, but the people of Italy were entirely alienated from the political administration, which was now regarded by them as purely Greek, and the Italians, with Rome before their eyes, could hardly admit the pretensions of the Greeks to be regarded as the legitimate representatives of the Roman Empire. The loss of northern and central Italy was consequently an event in constant danger of occurring; it would have required an able and energetic and just government to have repressed the national feelings of the Italians, and conciliated their allegiance. The condition of the population of the south of Italy and of Sicily was very different. There the majority of the inhabitants were Greeks in language and manners; but at this time the cities of Gæta (Caieta), Naples (Neapolis), Amalfi, and Sorrento (Surrentum), the district of Otranto, and the peninsula to the south of the ancient Sybaris, now called Calabria, were the only parts which remained under the Byzantine government. Sicily, though it had begun to suffer from the incursions of the Saracens, was still populous and wealthy. Sardinia, the last possession of the Greeks to the westward of Italy, was conquered by the Saracens about this time (711 A.D.).[c]

FOOTNOTES

[39] Eutychius, 2, 339. Ockley, i. 325.

[40] [At Constans’ coronation a compact was made with the army under whose terms Heracleonas’ brother David was crowned emperor, and assumed the name of Tiberius. “What became of the emperor Tiberius,” says Bury,[b] “we are not informed.”]

[41] [It is found in Theophanes.[d]]