that periods in which empresses figure prominently in the affairs of
state alternate with periods in which the Augustæ are mere ciphers.
Eudoxia, the wife of Arcadius, marks the early limit of feminine
predominance in the independent history of the eastern section of the
Roman Empire. The Empress Irene, who reigned at first with her son
Constantine and afterward alone, marks the later limit of the Roman, as
distinguished from the strictly Byzantine Empire, since during her
reign, at the beginning of the ninth century, the Empire of the West was
completely dissevered from all connection with Constantinople through
the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West by Pope Leo. Thus a
masterful woman was the predominating influence at the beginning and at
the end of the existence of the Eastern Roman Empire as a separate
entity.
In the interval between these two limits the most important reign was
that of Justinian and the most remarkable woman was, of course, the
Empress Theodora. Following Eudoxia were the rival Empresses Pulcheria
and Eudocia, celebrated for their beauty, their culture, and their
piety.
When the house of Theodosius ceased to exist with Pulcheria and Marcian,
the Roman Empire in the East was safely guided through the stormy times
which saw its extinction in the West by a series of three men of
ability, Leo I. (457-474), Zeno (474-491), and Anastasius (491-518).
During this period two Augustæ--Verina and Ariadne--took a part in
imperial politics, and made up in wickedness and intrigue what they
lacked in culture and piety. Next followed the house of Justin, which
produced two remarkable women in Theodora and her niece Sophia, the
latter, though not the equal of her aunt in strength of character, yet
leaving her mark on the history of her times.
Following the death of Sophia there was for nearly forty years a break
in the predominance of self-asserting Augustæ. Of the wives of Tiberius,
Maurice, and Phocas, we know merely the names--respectively, Anastasia,
Constantina, and Leontia Augusta. Heraclius's memorable reign was shared
with two empresses, the first of whom, Eudocia, did nothing to win
publicity, while the career of the second--Martina--recalls the
wickedness and the intrigue of Verina and Sophia. But the spouses of the
successors of Heraclius did not follow Martina's ignoble example, but
were women of whom nothing was recorded either of praise or blame. We do
not even know the name of the wife of Constans II., who entered upon a
long reign after the exile of Heracleonas, son of Martina. Anastasia,
the spouse of Constantine IV., Theodora, queen of the second Justinian,
Maria, spouse of Leo III., the Isaurian, and Irene, Maria, and Eudocia,
the three wives of Constantine V., played so little part in political
affairs that they are hardly better known than the nameless wives of the
emperors who filled up the interval between the second Justinian and Leo
the Isaurian (695-716).
This brief resume brings us to the reign of the Empress Irene, who in
energy, in wickedness, and in ambition made up for all the deficiencies
of her predecessors. Having devoted separate chapters to the most
celebrated Augustæ of the Eastern Empire--Eudoxia, Pulcheria and
Eudocia, and Theodora--we shall group into one chapter our brief
consideration of the lives and characters of the less renowned but no
less pronounced Augustæ of the intervening periods--Verina, Ariadne,
Sophia, Martina, and Irene.
Verina and her daughter Ariadne, through their wickedness and ambition,
cast dark shadows over the otherwise bright history of the house of Leo
the Great. Verina, the imperial consort of Leo, was a woman of little
cultivation but of great natural gifts, fond of intrigue, ambitious of
power, and implacable in hatred and revenge. Of her two daughters,
Ariadne had married Zeno the Isaurian, one of the most illustrious and
able officials of the Empire. Leo, the offspring of this union, was
selected as the heir and successor of Leo I., but upon the death of the
lad, shortly after his accession, Zeno was raised to the throne, much to
the disgust of the empress-mother Verina. She fostered'a conspiracy for
the downfall of Zeno and the elevation of Patricius, her paramour, and
as a result of her intrigues Zeno had to forsake his throne and flee to
the mountain fastnesses of Isauria, his native country, together with
his wife Ariadne and his mother Lallis. Verina's brother, Basiliscus,
aspired to the throne, but she opposed his claims in order to win the
purple for Patricius. After Zeno's flight, however, the ministers and
senators elected Basiliscus as his successor, and the new emperor
entered upon a most unpopular and checkered reign of only twenty months.
His queen was named Zenonis, a young and beautiful woman, who soon
gained an unenviable reputation because of her manifest fondness for her
husband's nephew Harmatius, a young fop, noted for his good looks and
his effeminate manners. An ancient chronicler tells the story of this
intrigue:
"Basiliscus permitted Harmatius, inasmuch as he was a kinsman, to
associate freely with the empress Zenonis. Their intercourse became
intimate, and, as they were both persons of no ordinary beauty, they
became extravagantly enamored of each other. They used to exchange
glances of the eyes, they used constantly to turn their faces and smile
at each other, and the passion which they were obliged to conceal was
the cause of grief and vexation. They confided their trouble to Daniel,
a eunuch, and to Maria, a midwife, who hardly healed their malady by the
remedy of bringing them together. Then Zenonis coaxed Basiliscus to
grant her lover the highest office in the city."
This palace intrigue was soon brought to an end, however, by the fall of
Basiliscus and the restoration of Zeno in 477, in spite of the intrigues
of Verina. After Zeno's return, his most powerful minister, the Isaurian
Illus, became the object of Verina's enmity and machinations. She even
formed a plot to assassinate him, which he was fortunate enough to
discover and frustrate. Recognizing that his power would not be secure
so long as Verina was at large, he begged Zeno to consign to him the
dangerous woman; and the emperor, doubtless glad to be rid of his
redoubtable mother-in-law, gave her over into his hands. Illus first
compelled her to take the vows of a nun at Tarsus, and then placed her
in confinement in Dalisandon, an Isaurian castle.
But Illus had only got rid of one female foe to find a more bitter
antagonist in the latter's daughter, the empress Ariadne. She made the
second attempt on his life in 483, and used all her arts of intrigue to
estrange from him the Emperor Zeno. Finally, realizing that his life was
not safe in Constantinople, Illus withdrew from the court, and later
attached himself to the cause of the rebel Leontius, who sought to
overthrow Zeno. In support of the rebel's cause, Illus turned to his
quondam enemy Verina, the empress-mother, who from her prison castle was
glad to seize the opportunity to deal a blow to her ungrateful
son-in-law. To give the semblance of legitimacy to the cause of
Leontius, Verina was induced to crown him at Tarsus, and she also issued
a letter in his interest, which was sent to various cities and exerted a
marked influence on the disaffected. Leontius established an imperial
court at Antioch, but was speedily overthrown by Theodoric the
Ostrogoth. The two leaders of the conspiracy, with Verina, took refuge
in the Isaurian stronghold of Papirius, where they stood a siege for
four years, during which time Verina died. The fortress was finally
taken through the treachery of Illus's sister-in-law, and Illus and
Leontius were slain.
After the death of Zeno, Anastasius was in 491 proclaimed emperor
through the influence of the widowed empress Ariadne, who married him
about six weeks later and continued to be an influence in politics
during Anastasius's long and successful reign.
In Verina and Ariadne we see a mother and a daughter exceedingly alike
in character, but frequently at cross purposes with each other because
of their similar traits. Both were ambitious, both fond of intrigue, and
both ready to commit any crime when it answered their purpose. Verina,
pleased at the accession of her grandson Leo, whom she could control,
was chagrined and disappointed when upon the lad's death his masterful
father was elevated to the throne; and, continuing her intrigues, she
lost first her royal station and then her freedom and her life in her
endeavor to do an injury to her son-in-law. Ariadne quickly grasped the
power which her mother had lost, and has the unusual record of choosing
her husband's successor on the throne and of being the imperial consort
of two rulers in succession.
We pass now to the dynasty of Justin and to a consideration of the niece
of the great Theodora, Sophia, empress of Justin the Younger, nephew and
successor of Justinian.
The poet Corippus gives a dramatic account of the elevation of Justin
and Sophia. During Justinian's long illness the two were faithful
attendants at his bedside and ministered to his every want. Finally, one
morning, before the break of day, Justin was awakened by a patrician and
informed that the emperor was dead. Soon after, the members of the
Senate entered the palace and assembled in a beautiful room overlooking
the sea, where they found Justin conversing with his wife Sophia. They
greeted the royal pair as Augustus and Augusta; and the twain, with
apparent reluctance, submitted to the will of the Senate. They then
repaired to the imperial chamber, and gazed, with tearful eyes, upon the
corpse of their beloved uncle. Sophia at once ordered to be brought an
embroidered cloth, on which was wrought in gold and brilliant colors the
whole series of Justinian's labors, the emperor himself being
represented in the midst with his foot resting upon the neck of the
Vandal giant. The next morning, Justin and his imperial consort
proceeded to the church of Saint Sophia, where they made a public
declaration of the orthodox faith.
In taking this step, Sophia showed that she had the ambition but not the
political acumen of her aunt Theodora. Like the latter, she had been
originally a Monophysite; but a wily bishop had suggested that her
heretical opinions stood in the way of her husband's promotion to the
rank of Cæsar, and in consequence she found it advisable to join the
ranks of the orthodox. Unfortunately, by this step the balance of the
religious parties, which Theodora had so successfully maintained, was
broken, and the later years of Justin's reign were disgraced by the
persecution of the Monophysites, so that great disaffection toward the
throne was created throughout the East.
The religious ceremony was soon followed by the acclamations of the
populace in the Hippodrome, which were made all the more hearty through
the act of Justin in discharging the vast debts of his uncle Justinian;
and, before three years had elapsed, his example was imitated and
surpassed by the empress, who delivered many indigent citizens from the
weight of debt and usury--an act of benevolence which won for her the
gratitude and adoration of the populace.
Thus auspiciously began the reign of Justin and Sophia, which the royal
pair had proclaimed was to be an new era of happiness and glory for
mankind; but, though the sentiments of the emperor were pure and
benevolent and it was the ambition of the empress to surpass her aunt
Theodora, neither had the intellectual gifts equal to the task, and
during their reign the Empire was subjected to disgrace abroad and to
wretchedness at home.
Much the same ingratitude which Belisarius had experienced at the hand
of his imperial mistress was visited upon his eminent successor, Narses,
by the new empress. She sent Longinus, as the new exarch, to supersede
the conqueror of Italy, and in most insulting language recalled the
eunuch Narses to Constantinople. "Let him leave to men," she said, "the
exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of
the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hands of the
eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily
unravel!" is said to have been the indignant reply of the hero, who
alone had saved Italy to the Empire. Instead of returning to the
Byzantine palace, he returned to Naples and later dwelt at Rome, where
he passed away and with him the only military genius great enough to
ward off the invasion of the Lombards.
After a reign of a few years the faculties of Justin, which were
impaired by disease, began to fail, and in 574 he became a hopeless
lunatic. The only son of the imperial pair had died in infancy, and the
question of a successor now became a serious one. The daughter, Arabia,
was the wife of Baduarius, superintendent of the palace, who vainly
aspired to the honor of adoption as the Cæsar. Domestic animosities
turned the empress elsewhere.
The artful empress found a suitable successor in Tiberius, the young and
handsome captain of the guards, and, in one of his sane intervals,
Justin, at her instance, created him a Cæsar. During the few remaining
years of Justin's life, Tiberius showed himself to both his adopted
parents a filial and grateful son, and meekly submitted to all the
exactions of his empress-mother. Though relying on Tiberius for the
sterner duties of the imperial office, Sophia retained all her authority
and sovereignty as Augusta and would not submit to the presence of
another queen in the palace. Tiberius was already a husband and father.
In a sane moment, Justin, with masculine good nature and blindness to
feminine foibles, blandly suggested that Ino, the wife of the Cæsar,
should dwell with Tiberius in the palace, for, he added, "he is a young
man and the flesh is hard to rule." But Sophia immediately put her foot
down. "As long as I live," said she, "I will never give my kingdom to
another"--words that were possibly a reminiscence of the celebrated
saying of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, "I am a queen; and as long as I
live I will reign." Consequently, during the lifetime of Justin, Ino and
her two daughters lived in complete retirement in a modest house not far
from the palace. Her social status aroused considerable interest among
the ladies of the court circle, who found it difficult to decide whether
or not they should call on the wife of the Cæsar. At tables and
firesides this question was gravely discussed, but no one would take the
initiative of visiting Ino without first consulting the wishes of
Sophia. Finally, when one of the ladies, with considerable trepidation,
ventured to ask the empress, she was scolded for her pains; "Go away and
be quiet," responded the imperious Sophia, "it is no business of yours."
When, however, a few days before the death of Justin, Tiberius was
inaugurated emperor, he at once installed his wife in the palace, to the
chagrin of the empress-mother, and had her recognized by the factions of
the Hippodrome. A conflict arose as to what should be her Christian name
as empress: the Blues wished to change her pagan name to "Anastasia,"
while the Greens urged stoutly the adoption of the name of the sainted
"Helena." Tiberius decided with the Blues, and as Anastasia Ino was
crowned Empress of the East.
During the long apprenticeship of Tiberius, Sophia had held the purse
strings and had kept the young Cæsar on an allowance which seemed too
small to comport with his imperial prospects. Upon becoming emperor,
however, Tiberius quickly rid himself of the dictation of his patroness.
He gave her a stately palace in which to live, and surrounded her with a
numerous train of eunuchs and courtiers; he paid her ceremonious visits
on formal occasions and always saluted the widow of his benefactor with
the title of mother. But it was impossible for Sophia to overcome her
disappointment at being deprived of power, and she set on foot numerous
conspiracies to dethrone Tiberius and to bring about the elevation of
some one whom she could control. The chief of these plots centred about
the young Justinian, the son of Germanus of the house of Anastasius.
Upon the death of Justin a faction had asserted the claims of Justinian;
but Tiberius had freely pardoned the youth for aspiring to the purple
and had given him the command of the Eastern army. Sophia seized upon
the acclamation which the renown of his victories inspired to start a
conspiracy in his interests, but Tiberius heard in time of the intended
uprising and by his personal exertions and firmness suppressed the
conspiracy. He once more forgave Justinian, but he realized the
necessity of restraining the activity of the rapidly aging, but still
clever and intriguing, ex-empress. Sophia was deprived of all imperial
honors and reduced to a modest station, and the care of her person was
committed to a faithful guard who should frustrate any further attempts
on her part to play a part in the game of imperial politics. Thus the
ambitious niece of Theodora passed off the stage of action after a
career which, beginning with every promise of brilliant success and high
renown, had, after many vicissitudes, ended in humiliation and disgrace.
Heraclius's long and memorable reign, from 610 to 641, was characterized
by much domestic infelicity. Upon the day of his coronation he
celebrated his marriage with the delicate Eudocia, who bore him two
children, a daughter, Epiphania, and a son, Heraclius Constantine, the
natural successor to the throne. Heraclius's second wife was his own
niece Martina, the marriage being considered incestuous by the orthodox
and becoming the cause of much scandal. The curses of Heaven too seemed
to be upon the union; of the children, Flavius had a wry neck and
Theodosius was deaf and dumb; the third, Heracleonas, had no pronounced
physical deformity, but was lacking in intellectual power and in moral
force. The physical sufferings of Heraclius in his last years were also
looked upon as retribution for his sin.
Martina's influence upon her aged husband in his declining years was
unbounded. Full of ambition and intrigue, she induced him upon his
deathbed to declare her son Heracleonas joint heir with Constantine,
hoping thus herself to wield imperial power. "When Martina first
appeared on the throne with the name and attributes of royalty, she was
checked by a firm, though respectful opposition; and the dying embers of
freedom were kindled by the breath of superstitious prejudice. 'We
reverence,' exclaimed the voice of a citizen, 'we reverence the mother
of our princes; but to those princes alone our obedience is due; and
Constantine, the elder emperor, is of an age to sustain in his own hand
the weight of the sceptre. Your sex is excluded by nature from the toils
of government. How could you combat, how could you answer, the
barbarians who, with hostile or friendly intentions, may approach the
royal city? May Heaven avert from the Roman Republic this national
disgrace which would provoke the patience of the slaves of Persia!'
Martina descended from the throne with indignation and sought a refuge
in the female apartment of the palace."
But, though deprived of the outward prerogatives of supreme power, she
determined all the more to wield the sceptre through the power of her
son. The reign of Constantine III. lasted only one hundred and three
days, and at the early age of thirty he expired. The belief was
prevalent that poison was the means used by his inhuman stepmother to
bring him to his untimely end. Martina at once caused her son to
proclaim himself sole emperor. But the public abhorrence of the
incestuous widow of Heraclius was only increased by this deed, for
Constantine had left a son, Constans, the natural heir. Both Senate and
populace rose in indignation, and compelled Heracleonas to comply with
their demand that Constans be made his colleague. His submission saved
him for only a year. In 642 he was deposed by the Senate, and he and his
mother Martina were sent into exile. So violent was the popular rage
that the tongue of the mother and the nose of the son were slit--the
first instance of the barbarous Oriental custom being applied to members
of the royal house.
Martina was always looked upon by the devout of her age as "the accursed
thing." She had by intrigue won the hand of her widowed uncle, by
intrigue exerted a dominating influence over the emperor even up to his
dying moments, and by intrigue tried to determine the destiny of her son
and her stepson. But the intriguing widow reaped in public abhorrence
the natural results of her offences. For a time the people endured the
abomination of her unnatural crimes, but at last they visited upon her a
well-merited punishment.
The reign of the empress Irene is noteworthy because of her restoration
of the images banished by Leo the Isaurian and his successors, and
because it marks the end of all union between the Eastern and Western
Empires and the beginning of the Byzantine Empire strictly so called.
Hence, it deserves more minute attention than the other reigns we have
briefly sketched, and some mention must be made of the history of the
religious movement with which Irene's name is so intimately connected.
Leo III., the Isaurian, the most remarkable of the Byzantine emperors
since the days of the great Justinian, made his long reign from 717 to
740 memorable by his victories over the Saracens and his long and bitter
conflict against the image worship and relic worship which had developed
rapidly throughout the Empire and had assumed the aspect of fetichism.
The early Christians, owing to their Jewish proclivities, had felt an
unconquerable repugnance to the use of images, and their religious
worship was uniformly simple and spiritual. As the Greek influence
spread throughout the Church, however, there developed a veneration of
the Cross and of the relics of the saints. Then it was thought that if
the relics were esteemed, so much the more should be the faithful copies
of the persons of the saints, as delineated by the arts of painting and
sculpture. In course of time, by a natural development, the honors of
the original were transferred to the copy, and the Christian's prayer
before the image of the saint ceased to distinguish between the
counterfeit presentment and the saint it was designed to portray. As
healing power was attributed to many of the images and pictures, the
popular adoration of them grew. Thus, by the end of the sixth century
the worship of images was firmly established, especially among the
Greeks and Asiatics. Many pious souls began to see that this idolatry of
the Christians hardly differed from the idolatry of the Greeks, and that
they had no potent arguments against the assertions of Jews and
Mohammedans that Greek Christianity was but a continuation of Greek
paganism. Consequently, a reaction began, which reached its culmination
in the reign of Leo the Isaurian, who, because of his active hostility
to images, was surnamed Leo the Iconoclast. His measures were severe,
and he introduced a movement which involved the East in a tremendous
conflict of one hundred and twenty years.
Leo's son, Constantine V.,--Copronymus,--was a more cruel and determined
iconoclast than his father; but into his own family circle he was
destined to introduce a member who was to set at naught the efforts of
father and son and restore the worship of images to its former
flourishing estate. Copronymus himself had had three wives, the most
prominent of whom was a barbarian, the daughter of a khan of the
Chazars; but for the wife of his son and heir, Leo IV., he selected an
Athenian virgin, an orphan of seventeen summers, whose sole endowment
consisted in her beauty and her personal charms. As in the case of
Athenais, nothing is known of the antecedents of Irene. Who her parents
were, what was her education, how many years she lived in her native
city--these are questions of idle speculation.--Her imperial career
shows that she was a woman of remarkable beauty and fascination, of
highly trained intellectual gifts and Hellenic temperament, and from
this we are led to infer that she had in her youth the best instruction
her native city afforded.