Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 60938-h.htm or 60938-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/60938/pg60938-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60938/60938-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/empressesofconst00mcca
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
[Illustration: ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE, SHOWING THE HIPPODROME, THE
IMPERIAL PALACE, AND THE MOSQUE OF S. SOPHIA
FROM THE RECONSTRUCTION BY DJELAL ESSAD AFTER THE PLAN BY LABARTE]
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
by
JOSEPH McCABE
Author of “The Empresses of Rome,” etc.
With Eight Illustrations
[Illustration: ARTI _et_ VERITATI]
Richard G. Badger
The Gorham Press
Boston
PREFACE
In concluding an earlier volume on the mistresses of the western Roman
Empire I observed that, as the gallery of fair and frail ladies closed,
we stood at the door of “the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine
Empresses.” It seemed natural and desirable to pass on to this more
interesting and less familiar series of the mistresses of the eastern
Roman Empire, and the present volume will therefore tell the story of
the Empresses, or Queens, as they preferred to be called, who occupied
the throne set up by Constantine in New Rome, or ancient Byzantium,
until the victorious Turk thrust it disdainfully aside to make way for
his more spacious harem.
The eastern or Byzantine Empire has long been regarded in Europe as
a world of far less interest than that which centred on the banks of
the Tiber: a world of monotonous piety and little adventure or spirit,
almost Chinese in its placid and unchanging adherence to traditional
and very conventional forms. One is tempted to attribute this error,
not merely to the longer concealment of Byzantine antiquities from our
fathers and the superior attractiveness of Italy, but, in some measure,
to the disproportion of Gibbon’s work. By the time the great historian
has advanced only one or two centuries in the life of the East he
finds that the superb generosity of his plan has committed him to an
unachievable task, and he begins to compress whole chapters of the
most vivid and adventurous history into a few disdainful pages; and as
Finlay, the proper historian of the Greek civilization, not only lacks
the charm which draws each generation with fresh wonder to the volumes
of Gibbon, but shares and expresses the same disdain for his subject,
his work has not tended to redeem the Byzantine Empire from neglect.
Of late years there has been some quickening of interest in the
eastern Empire. Professor Bury in this country,[1] M. Diehl in France,
Schlumberger in Germany, and other historians, have done much to draw
attention to the extraordinary interest and the very lively character
of Byzantine life.
When we confine our attention, as we do in this volume, to the Court
life and the personality of the imperial women, the interest rises to
the pitch of romance, and is often sustained at that height for many
chapters. Few Courts in the world have, in their thousand years of
history, witnessed so much adventure, intrigue, comedy and tragedy,
as that of the Byzantine Empresses. From all quarters of the Empire,
in the most varied ways, all sorts of women, from princesses to
village girls, tavern girls or circus girls, make their way to the
bronze-roofed palace and wear for a season the prodigious jewels and
the glittering robes of an Empress of Constantinople; and, as there
is no law or method of succession to the throne, the rise and fall
of Emperors and Empresses gives a dramatic movement to the story.
The notion that the eastern Empresses are enwrapped in a rigid piety
and formalism, as they are in their stiff tunics of gold-cloth, is a
ludicrous mistake. Their piety is usually external and superficial,
and often they make not the least pretence of it; while, even when
it is obviously sincere, it is associated with a skill in casuistry
which allows a free play of their ambitions, their passions, and even
their criminal impulses. Indeed, it is only fair to say at the outset
that if a reader passes from the gallery of the “pagan” Empresses into
that of the Empresses of Constantinople in the hope of encountering
more restful, more virtuous and more domestic types of womanhood, he
will be grievously disappointed. We may not find a Messalina among
them, but irregularity of life is more evenly distributed than among
the Roman Empresses, ambition and intrigue are far more cultivated,
and there is a strain of barbaric cruelty running through the greater
part of the story which it would have been more pleasant, had it been
consistent with truthfulness, to omit. But the biographer should not be
a moralist. My simple purpose is to depict, as far as it is possible,
the very varied types of womanhood which come into “the fierce light
that beats about a throne” in that strange world where Greek and Roman
and Syrian blood blend to produce a new character.
The difficulties of the task have been considerable, and may be urged
in extenuation of some of the apparent defects of the story. Apart
from sketches of the lives of five or six of the Byzantine Empresses,
especially those in M. Diehl’s fine “Figures Byzantines,” the study
is entirely new, and the material has had to be laboriously collected
from the endless pages of the Greek chroniclers. These chroniclers are
largely monks, and in nearly all cases they are little disposed to
speak of the imperial women until they either misbehave themselves or
come to wield a mastery over men. Their references to the Empresses
are usually brief and scattered sentences which have to be gleaned
with care, and in hardly any single case do even contemporary
writers condescend to give us a portrait of an Empress. Seeing that,
in addition, we have not (as in the case of Rome) any statues or
portrait-busts of the Empresses, and the few representations of them
which have survived (in miniatures, ivories, etc.) are lifeless and
conventionalized pictures, it is not possible to bring them before
the eye in as satisfactory a way as one could wish. In this, as in
the preceding volume, I have utterly refused to follow the genial
example of Roergas de Serviez, and allow imagination to come to the
aid of fact. But I have carefully gathered and included all that is
known about the eastern Empresses, and, lest it be thought that the
less-known Empresses might alter the balance of vice or virtue, I have
inserted even the scanty references to these.
It remains only to explain the starting-point of the volume. In my
“Empresses of Rome,” which includes all Empresses down to the fall of
Rome, I necessarily included the early Empresses of the eastern series,
when east and west were branches of one dominion. It is therefore not
necessary to repeat the story of the beautiful and languid Eudoxia,
the daughter of a Frankish chief whom a palace intrigue raised to the
purple, and who is one of the butts of St Chrysostom’s fiery sermons;
nor of Eudocia, the Athenian girl who set out to find her father’s
money and obtained a kingdom, who wrote poems in her native tongue
and at last passed from the Court under a cloud of suspicion; nor of
Pulcheria, the virgin-sister of Theodosius and rival of Eudocia, who
ruled the Empire for her brother and, after his death, took to herself
a nominal husband and, with Marcian, was governing the Eastern world at
the time of the fall of Rome. I have adequately described her in the
preceding volume, and the present story opens at her death in the year
453.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. VERINA AND HER DAUGHTERS 1
II. THE EARLY LIFE OF THEODORA 21
III. THE EMPRESS THEODORA 36
IV. SOPHIA 52
V. MARTINA 67
VI. THE MOST PIOUS IRENE 81
VII. SAINT THEODORA 101
VIII. THE WIVES OF LEO THE PHILOSOPHER 120
IX. THE TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER 136
X. TWO IMPERIAL SISTERS 158
XI. EUDOCIA 181
XII. IRENE AND ANNA COMNENA 197
XIII. A BREATH OF CHIVALRY 218
XIV. EUPHROSYNE DUCÆENA 238
XV. THE NEW CONSTANTINOPLE 257
XVI. IRENE OF MONTFERRAT 276
XVII. MARIA OF ARMENIA 287
XVIII. ANNA OF SAVOY 298
XIX. THE LAST BYZANTINE EMPRESSES 317
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE, SHOWING THE HIPPODROME, THE IMPERIAL
PALACE, AND THE MOSQUE OF ST SOPHIA _Frontispiece_
From the reconstruction by Djelal Essad after the Plan by
Labarte
From “Les Imperatrices Byzantines de Constantinople.” By
permission of H. Laurens, Paris
FACING PAGE
THE EMPRESS THEODORA AND HER ATTENDANTS 40
Mosaic of the sixth century in St Vitale, Ravenna
From a photograph by Alinari
THE EMPRESS IRENE 88
From an Ivory Plaque in the National Museum, Florence
From a photograph by Alinari
EUDOCIA INGERINA, WIFE OF BASIL I 116
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESS HELENA 138
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESS ZOE 166
From “Constantinople,” by E. A. Grosvenor
By permission of Little, Brown & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
EUDOCIA AND ROMANUS IV 186
From an Ivory in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
From a photograph by A. Giraudon, Paris
THEODORA, WIFE OF MICHAEL VIII 268
From Du Cange’s “Historia Byzantina”
THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
CHAPTER I
VERINA AND HER DAUGHTERS
The Empress’s apartments in the sacred palace remained empty for
four years after the virtuous Pulcheria had been laid in her marble
sarcophagus. The Emperor Marcian was aged and feeble, and, as Pulcheria
had guarded even in marriage the sanctity of her vow of chastity,
there was none who might plausibly be regarded as heir to the throne.
It was such a situation as Constantinople loved; and the thousands of
soldiers, eunuchs, nobles and ladies who dwelt in the vast palace, and
the tens of thousands of idlers who lounged under the arcades of the
great square or chattered on the benches of the Hippodrome, had a large
field for speculation.
Their fate, they knew, was in the hands of one man, the commander of
the imperial guards, Asper. He was an Arian (or Unitarian), and could
not hope to occupy the throne which would soon be at his disposal. The
citizens of Constantinople were at least as wanton and passionate as
those of Rome had been, but they were fiercely devoted to the sound
doctrine of the Trinity, and they would have flung themselves against
the bronze gates and marble walls of the palace if an Arian had
ventured to don the purple. So Senators and Senators’ wives indulged
their conflicting hopes and paid their servile reverence to the dying
monarch and the vigorous barbarian commander.
Marcian died in the year 457, not without a superfluous rumour of
poison, and expectation rose to the height of fever when the worn
frame was entombed with all the rich ceremony of the Eastern Court.
Then there came the first of the long series of surprises and dramatic
successions which were to enliven Byzantine history for many a century.
Asper announced that his steward Leo, a tribune, or subordinate
officer, of the troops, was to receive the imperial crown. A barbaric
soldier and his wife were to occupy the golden throne, and all the
nobility of Constantinople hastened to kiss their purple slippers.
Leo the Isaurian is one of those quite unromantic figures which the
restless waves of Roman life often washed into the world of romance:
one of the many raw highlanders who had set out from Asia Minor to make
their fortune in the glittering metropolis of the East. A few years of
useful military service had won for him the rank of tribune and the
confidence of the commander, and Asper thought that he could rely on
the docility and gratitude of the big simple-featured soldier. Wholly
illiterate, with no larger experience than the control of Asper’s
servants, a man of rough, hairy face, powerful frame and blunt ways,
he suddenly found himself transferred to a throne that gleamed, as few
thrones did, with “the sands of Indus and the adamant of Golconda.”
His wife, the Empress Verina, shares alike the earlier obscurity and
the sudden elevation to the extraordinary splendour of the Byzantine
Court. We know nothing of her nationality or extraction; and, as the
only relatives who gather about her when her hand dispenses the gold
and the favours of a great empire are just as obscure as herself, we
may be sure that her origin was humble enough. A soldier like Leo would
select his mate in a lowly world, and we shall see later that Verina
permitted no scruple to restrain either her passion or her ambition.
But there was personality in the new Empress: an able and vigorous
intelligence, a masterful ambition, a virile tenacity of purpose, and
an equally virile disdain of scruples and of priests in the pursuit of
her ambition. She must have been much younger than her husband, who
was nearly sixty years old. She not only survived him for more than a
decade, but she filled that decade with the most spirited adventures,
and she admitted, or attracted, a lover after the death of her husband
in his seventy-fourth year.
It is one of the most singular features of Verina’s story that she
remains almost as obscure and insignificant during the seventeen years
in which she reigned with her husband as she had been before her
elevation, yet in her later years reveals a character of remarkable
vigour and great interest. We have, therefore, little concern with
the reign of Leo, and will rather make ourselves acquainted with the
imperial world in which the Byzantine Empresses will move.
New Rome, or Constantinople, had been founded by Constantine on the
site of the more ancient city of Byzantium, and is so faithfully
replaced by the modern city that its situation needs little
description. It spread over the triangular point of Europe which runs
to a tongue between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmora, and was
protected by a double wall from invasion on the land side; in fact, it
was in time enclosed entirely within thirteen miles of stout wall.
The lower portion of this triangular area, a vast domain of more than
half-a-million square yards, sloping gradually to the silver shores
of the Sea of Marmora, was reserved for the imperial palaces and
gardens. Running parallel with the imperial palace, to the north, was
the Hippodrome, into which the story of the Empresses will repeatedly
take us. Like the Great Circus at Rome, on the model of which it was
built, it was the most commanding and venerated institution of the
frivolous people. Its spacious long-drawn arena was flanked by tiers
of seats which could accommodate tens of thousands of people--some
authorities say a hundred thousand people. A lofty imperial gallery,
the _kathisma_, surveyed the races and the spectators from the
north-eastern end, and a great purple awning gave protection from the
burning sun. Beyond the Hippodrome and the palace was the chief square
of the city, the Augusteum, which corresponded to the old Forum at Rome
or the Agora at Athens. Under the shelter of the double colonnade which
surrounded it the idlers of Constantinople held their endless fiery
discussions of the last chariot race, the last heresy, or the last
revolution: the studious bargained for books: the amorous made traffic
in love. It was the heart of the city. On the south side of it was the
great gate of the palace: on the north side the church, or cathedral,
of St Sophia: the Senate House faced it on the east: and from its
western side ran the main street of Constantinople, the Mese (or Middle
Street), lined with colonnades, which passed more or less continuously
along the central ridge of the triangular area which the city occupied.
A city was, in those days, and for many a century afterwards, a palace
and a cathedral: we can only say of the million citizens that they were
packed into the spaces not occupied by Church or State, especially
in the region between the Mese and the Golden Horn, where fire and
pestilence periodically fed on their crowded tenements.
With the palace we need a closer acquaintance. Verina would be familiar
with the massive iron gate on the south side of the square through
which, as the Emperor rode in, one might catch a glimpse of the great
bronze door of the palace. Through this gate the obscure woman of the
people was now borne on her litter, to be crowned mistress of the
world. The front part of the palace was burned by the people in 532,
but we may assume that it had the general plan of the later structure
which experts have reconstructed for us.[2] The door led into a
spacious hall--known as the Chalke on account of its bronze roof--which
was richly adorned with statues, marbles and mosaics. Constantine had
despoiled the world to enrich his palace and city, and this entrance
hall had a great store of treasures. Crossing the hall one entered the
apartments of the troops who guarded the palace and whose spacious
quarters formed an immense and formidable approach to the imperial
palace. More than three thousand selected troops, divided into three
classes, formed this imperial bodyguard, and we shall more than once
find their halls swimming with blood as some frantic mob or adventurous
usurper seeks to penetrate to the palace. The palace grounds were, of
course, surrounded by lofty and unscaleable walls.
Verina would pass first through the lines of the Scholarians, whose
golden shields and lances, and gold helmets surmounted with red
aigrettes, would form a glittering corridor. Ascending the marble steps
at the far end of their hall, the purple curtains being drawn aside,
she would pass between the Excubitors, a regiment of powerful warriors
with two-edged axes, and the Candidates, or white-robed troops,
gleaming with gold; the second and third lines of defence. At the end
of these palatial barracks three ivory-plated doors, hung with curtains
of purple silk, opened into the Consistorium, a large hall lined with
marble and mosaic, in the floor of which were set porphyry slabs to
indicate the successive spots where even kings must thrice prostrate
themselves before approaching to kiss the feet of--Leo the Isaurian. A
throne, covered with purple and heavily laden with gold and jewels, was
raised under a golden dome at the upper end of the room.
Three pairs of steps and three bronze doors--for this wondrously
elevated peasant and his obscure wife must not pass through the same
door as ordinary mortals--then led to an unroofed terrace, lined with
columns and precious statues, on one side of which was the chapel of
the Saviour, and on the other the ancient gold-roofed banquet-room.
Then at length Verina would find herself, probably for the first time,
before the door of the palace proper, or the main palace, Daphne.
Passing between the crowds of stewards, secretaries, domestic officers
and great ladies, with masses of subordinate servants behind, all
bent in profound reverence, she would enter by the bronze doors into
the Augusteus, or vestibule of the palace: a hall crowded with choice
bronze and marble statues and mosaics. Fresh legions of servants--the
population of the palace must have been more than five thousand even at
this early date--and groups of pale eunuchs now crowded to do homage,
and the fortunate woman surrendered herself to her tire-women, to don
the gold-cloth tunic, the purple mantle and the heavy jewellery of an
empress.
The coronation would probably take place in the church of St Stephen,
within the palace, and it seems that Verina and Leo then crossed the
gardens and terraces to receive the homage of the Senators and nobles
in the outlying palace of Magnaura. We know it at a later date as a
vast hall lined with coloured marbles from the most famous quarries
of the world, its floors strewn thick with roses, its wonders lit by
fourteen massive silver lamps which hung from heavy chains of silvered
bronze between its marble columns. But the wonderful golden sparrows
which piped their mechanical notes on golden trees, and the golden
lions which lashed their tails and roared before the throne, and the
organs of silver and gold, belong to a later date in Byzantine history.
From Magnaura the royal procession returned to Daphne, and mounted the
spiral stair which led to the royal lodge, with a small palace in its
rear, overlooking the Hippodrome. There the men of Constantinople rang
out their Greek cry of “Many years!” to the rustic tribune and his
wife who had so suddenly been lifted to this giddy height, and were,
no doubt, rewarded with chariot races. The coronation day would end,
as was usual, with a banquet in the Triclinon, a dining-hall in the
space between the apartments of the guards and the palace proper. Its
lofty roof was of gold, and on its nineteen purple-draped tables only
golden vessels were set; some of them--at least, at a later date--were
so heavy that they had to be lifted from their purple chariots to the
table by machinery. And after such a banquet as only the palace could
command, amidst some two hundred of the highest nobles of the greatest
empire in the world, Verina would retire to her ivory or silver couch
to brood over this prodigious turn of the wheel of her fortune. We
shall find numbers of equally romantic elevations, and just as many
tragic falls from splendour to obscurity, in the long story of the
Byzantine Empresses.
Unfortunately, the coronation does not yet bring Verina plainly before
us, and we must pass the seventeen years of her husband’s reign almost
in silence. To explain this obscurity it is not enough to say that it
was the custom of the Byzantine Court to keep its women in seclusion.
As long as the stream of imperial life flowed evenly they were,
generally, content to idle the sunny hours behind the thick hedge of
eunuchs and maids, in some sequestered palace or other in the vast
gardens, where many fountains and the soft breath of the sea and leafy
groves cooled the air. They did not even feel the exclusion of women
from the tense sensations of the Hippodrome, for one could witness the
thrilling races from the windows in the upper gallery of the church
of St Stephen. But we shall see speedily enough that this ceremonious
seclusion no more intimidated the imperial women, when they _were_
imperial, from playing their part in public life than the pomp and
display of the palace intimidated the people of Constantinople from
talking to their monarch, when occasion arose, as if he were a village
chief. Verina remained quiet and obscure because life flowed evenly
and she had no cause to interfere with its course. The promptness with
which she sought, or accepted, consolation after the death of her
husband does not suggest that she was very deeply devoted to Leo. He
was, however, a shrewd and strong man, though rough and uncultivated,
and he seems to have left little room for his wife’s interference.
The Empress’s quarters in the palace, or assemblage of palaces, are
very imperfectly known to us. Daphne itself, the original palace, to
which later Emperors would raise stupendous rivals, cannot have had
very numerous apartments. It would assuredly not be possible to hide
a bishop there for years, as the Empress Theodora afterwards hid a
bishop in her apartments; to say nothing of the subterraneous dungeons
which Theodora is said to have filled with her prisoners. But there
were several detached palaces in the grounds, and no doubt the Empress
had the use of one of these, standing in its own gardens and groves,
and protected by its army of eunuchs. Verina had had one daughter,
Ariadne, before her elevation to the throne. A few years afterwards she
again gave promise of motherhood, and adjourned for delivery, as custom
demanded, to the Porphyra Palace by the sea, a small square mansion
whose walls were lined with red, white-spotted porphyry. But it was
another girl, Leontia, that she brought into the world, and who lay
beside her under the sheets of gold-cloth to receive the homage of the
notabilities.[3]
Many years of this placid existence pass before we catch another
glimpse of Verina. The legendary life of St Daniel Stylites, the
emulator or successor of the famous Simeon of the Pillar, says that
the prayers of the holy dweller on a column procured for the Empress
a boy in 462, but the effectiveness of his prayers seems to have been
limited, as no such child has found its way into serious history. Leo
was now ageing, and the question of the succession must have been
keenly discussed. It is at this point that Verina, who seemed doomed to
pass again into obscurity, begins to reveal her personality. Asper and
his son still seemed to dominate Constantinople, but their power was
being silently undermined. Leo was filling the palace and the army with
his own compatriots, and a conflict impended between the Isaurians and
Goths, between Leo and Asper.
Amongst these Isaurians a young man named Trascallisseus--or
something approaching it, for the Greeks make sad work of the Asiatic
names--won the favour of Leo, and approached nearer to the throne.
The orthodox chroniclers are severe on Trascallisseus, and depict him
as “a veritable Pan”--dark, ugly, hairy, ungainly, heavy-footed and
ignorant. The Isaurians were not a handsome race, nor had they the
least ambition to adopt the culture of the Greeks, yet the portrait is
probably overdrawn. Trascallisseus seems to have been a robust, sullen,
illiterate, intriguing young man, with no apparent grace of body or
character, but Leo was minded to marry him to Ariadne, and thus mark
him for the throne.
Verina apparently desired the succession of her brother Basiliscus,
and, as a vast fleet of more than a thousand vessels was about to be
sent to wrest Roman Africa from the Vandals, she obtained the command
of it for him. Verina could watch from the palace gardens the sailing
of the great armada which was to win the purple for her brother. And
in a few weeks a fugitive vessel returned with the terrible news that
the expedition had failed, the navy had been burned, and the great army
of a hundred thousand men sunk or scattered by Genseric. Basiliscus
had fled shamefully at the first shock, and had retired to hide his
disgrace in private life at Heraclea in Thrace.
It was the turn of Trascallisseus. His name was changed to Zeno, and
he was married to Ariadne and promoted to the highest honours.[4]
Verina had now to resign herself to a hope that she would share the
power with Zeno and her daughter, but the struggle of Isaurians and
Goths had first to be settled, and the settlement interests us. In less
than two years the struggle ended with a victory of the Isaurians--a
victory that has inscribed the name of the Emperor in the chronicles
as “Leo the Butcher.” We do not know the course of the quarrel, but
one day in the year 471 the marble and bronze palace rang with the
clash of swords. Asper and his elder son were cut to pieces by the
eunuchs within the palace. No doubt Verina and her family had their
boats moored at the foot of the garden, as we shall find others doing,
but the terrible axes of the Excubitors and the long swords of the
Candidates held back the tide of Goths and covered the marble floors
with their corpses. The Isaurians were masters of the Roman Empire.
Leo died three years afterwards. It is said that he wished to crown
Zeno before he died, but that the people were bitterly opposed to it.
He had, therefore, in order to secure the succession, associated his
infant (or boyish) grandson Leo with his imperial power, and had died
shortly afterwards. The mother and grandmother now came to an agreement
with Zeno, and, when the father came to do humble homage to his
imperial child, the boy, prompted by Ariadne and Verina, put the crown
on the father’s head, and the Court applauded the succession of the
Emperor Zeno. The sickly child died nine months afterwards (November
474), leaving Zeno in sole possession of the throne.
Here begin the adventures of Verina, and at length her virile character
is revealed to us. Her second daughter Leontia was married to a son of
the Western Emperor Anthemius--it was the period of ephemeral Emperors
that preceded the extinction of the Western Empire--and a niece of
hers was wedded to the Western Emperor Julius Nepos; though the
latter connexion soon proved its tragic futility, the Emperor fleeing
from Ravenna and falling by the hand of a bishop a few months after
coronation. While promoting this apparent scheme for the reunion of the
Roman Empire, Verina began to assert her personality more vigorously
at Constantinople. She still lived in the palace, and seems gradually
to have won its officers: as venal and corrupt a body as ever adorned
a court. The works of contemporary Greek historians survive only in
tantalizing fragments, or summaries, or they would undoubtedly furnish
a remarkable picture of Byzantine life in the next ten years, when
three Empresses occupied the stage. We can but piece together with
caution the fragments we find in the chronicles, and endeavour to
deduce the character of the Empresses from their actions.
Verina now had a notorious lover named Patricius, and was eager to set
him on the throne instead of Zeno. Her daughter Ariadne, a commonplace,
docile woman, clung to her husband, and the palace divided into two
hostile parties and awaited the result. It is piquant to remember
that Constantinople was at the time an intensely religious city. Its
patriarch overshadowed those of Alexandria and Rome; its populace
divided its interest almost equally between chariot-racing, vice and
the suppression of heresy; and to its great church of St Sophia, or to
the numerous chapels within the area of the palace, were conducted with
splendour the important relics which were constantly being “found” in
Palestine. But the frivolous citizens ignored the practical enjoinments
of their religion until the periodical fire, or plague, or earthquake
threw them into a spasm of repentance, and the population of the palace
seemed to hold themselves entirely dispensed from such common laws.
Verina, at least, knew neither weakness nor scruple in the pursuit of
her ambition.
In November 475 Zeno fled across the water to Chalcedon. Ships were
kept for such emergencies at the foot of the gardens, so that an
imperial family might be well on the way to the Asiatic shore before an
enemy could break through the hedge of guards. Zeno, protesting that
his life was threatened by Verina’s servants, fled precipitately, since
he left Ariadne under the power of her mother. It seems that Verina
virtually imprisoned her daughter, but Ariadne escaped and joined
her husband. From the coast they travelled, in a common cart, to the
wild fastnesses of Isauria, from which another turn of the wheel will
presently recall them to the glittering palace.
Zeno had been morose and unpopular, and it had not been difficult for
Verina to detach the Senators and troops from him. They had, however,
no mind to accept the virtual rule of Verina herself by putting her
paramour on the throne, and, to her great mortification, they summoned
her discredited brother Basiliscus from his exile in Thrace, and
clothed him with the purple. The change brings on the scene a third
Empress, Zenonis, who was made “Augusta” by her husband as soon as he
was crowned.
We have hardly time to make much acquaintance with Zenonis during the
brief splendour of her husband’s reign, but her momentary appearance
is not without romance. Passionately devoted to the more philosophical
religious sect, which maintained that there was but one nature in
Christ, she pressed her husband to espouse its cause and restore its
persecuted members. Constantinople was soon aflame with religious
controversy. Zenonis secured the return from exile, and appointment
as patriarch of Alexandria, of Timotheus Ælurus. Timotheus gathered
“all the scum of Alexandria”--the orthodox historian says--that could
be found in Constantinople, and conducted them in procession to the
church of St Sophia. But how Timotheus fell off his ass, to the delight
of Constantinople, and how Peter the Fuller was summoned to fill the
see of Antioch, and how Basiliscus wrung money out of the wealthy
orthodox churches, must be read in the pages of ecclesiastical history.
Zenonis was impelling her husband to his doom.
A much less serious defect in Zenonis, from the Constantinopolitan
point of view, was that she united with her zeal for the Monophysite
faith a genial disregard of its moral implications. A nephew of her
husband named Harmatius rapidly became one of the most luxurious fops
of the city. His lavishly spent wealth, his lovely hair and pink cheeks
and handsome person, and his reputation for gallantry, made him the
idol of the frequenters of the Hippodrome. Basiliscus made him prefect
of the city, and he delighted its lower populace by moving amongst them
in the shining armour of Achilles. Duty frequently called him to Court,
and his charms conquered the susceptible Empress. For some time they
sighed and crossed fiery glances as they met in the open chambers or
corridors, but at length the eunuch Daniel and the midwife Maria were
bribed to facilitate their desire. Such, at least, was the belief of
Constantinople, and the power of Basiliscus was further shaken.
His next fatal mishap was to quarrel with Verina. He had her lover
Patricius assassinated, and the enraged Empress began at once to pay
further gold to buy back the allegiance of Senators and officers
to Zeno. The zeal of Basiliscus for his heresy had now completely
alienated the people and embittered the clergy. He had ventured to send
officers into the churches to proscribe the great Council of Chalcedon,
which had condemned the heresy, and the city was profoundly agitated.
Vast crowds of men, women and children shouted their orthodox hymns
in the streets and filled the black-draped churches. When Basiliscus
angrily left the city for a distant palace, the saintly Daniel
descended from his pillar, followed him, and spoke to him in very
plain language.
In these circumstances Verina was encouraged to further her plan, and
the news soon reached Constantinople that Zeno had left the mountains
of Isauria and was in command of an army. Two generals, Illus and
Trocundus, were sent against him, and were bought by him. The very
meagre chronicles now indicate a desperate struggle between Basiliscus
and his sister. The Emperor began to trace the plot and execute the
plotters, and Verina fled for her life to the sanctuary of St Sophia.
We shall see often enough how frail a protection the law of sanctuary
afforded against the anger of an Emperor, but Harmatius, who seems
to have despised his lover’s husband, helped her to escape, and she
seems either to have crossed to Asia or concealed herself. Harmatius
himself was now sent against the rebels. Swearing the most solemn oath
of fidelity to Basiliscus that the clergy could devise, he straightway
sold his services to Zeno for the promise of a cæsarship for his son
and the perpetual command of the armies for himself.
The career of the romantic Zenonis then came to a rapid and tragic
close. As the troops of Zeno marched into the city Basiliscus and
his Empress fled to the church of St Sophia, and endeavoured, by
promises of undoing their heretical work, to induce the clergy to make
Zeno respect the sanctuary. After a time an imperial officer came to
the trembling wretches by the altar, and stripped them of all their
imperial ensigns, to be taken to Zeno and Ariadne. Zeno scrupled to
drag them from the altar, and they were at last induced to come forth
on the solemn assurance that their lives would be spared. It was now
their turn to sail for Asia. They were sent to an obscure village in
Cappadocia, and imprisoned in a tower. One tradition reports that they
were killed on the journey, but the more persistent and convincing
report is that the door of the tower was sealed with masonry, and the
brother of Verina and his Empress were doomed to a slow and horrible
death by starvation. It was the second revolution in three years, and
Verina had been an active element in both.
Exile had not improved the temper of Zeno, and the restoration of his
rule was at once stained with murder. He reflected gloomily on the
prestige of the handsome Harmatius, and easily persuaded himself that
he who had been faithless to one master might be faithless to another.
Soon afterwards the luxurious officer was cut to pieces as he ascended
the spiral stair from the palace to the Hippodrome; his son was
stripped of the robes and ensigns of Cæsar and was sent to take a minor
order of the Church at Blachernæ. But for the intervention of the more
humane Ariadne the youth would, like his father, have exchanged his
high dignity for death.
Constantinople seems to have regarded the murder with indifference,
but an avenger arose in the provinces and the two Empresses had soon
grave cause for anxiety. For a time Constantinople trembled under the
menace of the formidable barbarians, but they at length returned to
Italy without having penetrated into the city. A more serious danger
fell upon the palace in the following year, however, when the younger
daughter of Verina joined for a moment in the conflict of ambitions.
Leontia, it will be remembered, had married Marcian, son of the
Western Emperor Anthemius. On the ground that she had been “born in
the Porphyry,” while her elder sister Ariadne had been born before
the crowning of Leo, her husband demanded that the Empire should be
assigned to him, and marched on Constantinople at the head of an army.
He broke through the defences of the city, and some of the chroniclers
actually assure us that he surprised the guard of the palace in their
midday siesta. It is at least certain that Zeno and the Empresses
fled in alarm, and a vigorous action would have put Verina’s younger
daughter on the throne. Marcian seems, however, to have postponed the
occupation of the palace until the following day, and the commander
Illus, secretly transporting fresh troops from Asia, restored the
balance in favour of Zeno and Verina. Marcian was visited with the more
refined punishment of the Byzantine world--he was forced to enter the
priesthood--and Leontia retired into obscurity.
But the romance of Verina and her daughters had already entered upon
a fresh chapter. Verina had welcomed her returning son-in-law at the
palace, and her earlier expulsion of him and Ariadne was overlooked in
view of the important share she had had in securing their return. We
can, however, well understand that Zeno regarded her with suspicion
and distrust, and would welcome the first opportunity to remove her
from the palace. The argument which he had applied so remorselessly to
Harmatius plainly extended to his imperial mother-in-law. The writers
of the time represent him as not taking a prominent part in the events
that followed, but it is difficult to doubt that his secret commands
directed the whole intrigue.
In the year 478 a soldier attempted to assassinate the commander Illus,
and he confessed--under torture or bribery--that he had been instructed
by Verina’s steward Epinicius. The steward was given into the custody
of Illus by the Emperor, and was sent under guard to a castle in
Isauria. Illus followed, and easily induced the steward to impeach his
mistress. Illus then returned to the city, and arranged with Zeno a
plot for the capture of Verina. It is clear that the Empress-Mother
had great power in Constantinople, and that they dare not openly touch
her. Illus was to go to Isauria, and pretend that he feared danger from
Zeno. The Emperor was then to ask Verina to take to Illus with her own
hand a letter of indemnity, and, when she reached Isauria, she was to
be imprisoned there. We should find it difficult to believe that so
naïve a plot could entrap the virile and experienced Empress were we
not expressly assured of it by the highest authorities. In a few weeks
Verina was enraged to find herself imprisoned in a Papirian fortress,
one of the strongly fortified castles of remote Isauria. One authority
observes that they first compelled her to take the vows of a nun, but
we may decline to believe that they troubled to place so frail and so
superfluous a chain on such a woman.
From the lonely hills of Isauria Verina at length found a means of
communicating with Ariadne and securing her interest. Zeno, to whom
Ariadne appealed, referred her to Illus, and, when that general was
summoned to the Empress’s apartments, and implored with tears to
release her mother, he bluntly asked: “Do you want to be rid of your
husband and wed another?” Ariadne returned stormily to her husband,
and declared that either Illus or she must leave the palace. “If you
can do anything, I’m with you,” said the distracted Emperor, who
was overshadowed by the vigorous commander. Presently, as Illus was
mounting the spiral stair to the Hippodrome, a soldier in the pay
of Ariadne’s chamberlain fell upon him. Illus was saved, except for
the loss of an ear, by his guards, but he prudently decided that
Constantinople was injurious to his health and requested the Emperor
for a change of air. He was appointed commander of the eastern troops,
took with him the patrician Leontius and a distinguished company, and
reached Antioch only to declare himself in rebellion and Leontius
Emperor.
In the extraordinary confusion of events which the meagre chronicles
transmit to us Verina had obtained her wish in an unexpected manner.
A messenger came to her in her solitary prison to say that she was
to crown Leontius at the city of Tarsus and join forces with him and
Illus against Zeno. Verina was not the woman to hesitate. She crowned
Leontius, a cultivated Syrian noble and excellent soldier, at Tarsus,
and issued a characteristic letter to the officials and commanders of
the Empire:
“Verina Augusta, greeting to our prefects and Christian
peoples. You know that the Empire is ours, and that after the
death of our husband Leo we, trusting to improve the condition
of the commonwealth, raised to the throne Trascallisseus, who
was afterwards called Zeno; now, however, since we perceive
that he is deteriorating, and on account of his insatiable
avarice, we have thought it needful to give you a Christian
Emperor, adorned with piety and justice, that he may save the
commonwealth and administer war with moderation and prudence.
We have therefore bestowed the imperial crown on Leontius, most
pious of Romans, who will guard us all with care and prudence.”
The throne of Leontius was set up at Antioch, and the aged Empress
turned with her confederates to face Zeno’s troops. It was to be
the last act of the stirring drama of her life. Zeno acted with
unaccustomed vigour, and in a few days Verina and her companions were
flying to Isauria. They shut themselves in the Papirian fortress and
prepared to sustain a long siege. In the middle of the siege Verina
died, and was spared the humiliation of the final defeat. Four years
afterwards the heads of Illus and Leontius were exhibited on poles at
Constantinople, but the body of Verina was decently interred there by
her daughter.
The loss of contemporary historians prevents us from obtaining the
closer acquaintance with Verina which her romantic story leads us to
desire. Of her personal appearance and nationality we know nothing. One
is tempted to conceive her as a Syrian woman of the type of Zenobia
or Julia Domna: a virile and masterful personality, ambitious and
unscrupulous, subtle and astute rather than cultivated, paying no more
than a merely external and superficial regard to the teaching of the
new religion of the Roman world. It remains to say a few words about
the Empress Ariadne before we consider the next great Empress of the
Byzantine world.
In the few peaceful years which followed the death of Verina life at
the palace became sombre and painful. Zeno was morose, suspicious and
unpopular, and increased the gloom by the usual device of executing,
or murdering, suspects. Their only son came to a lamentable end.
The officials in charge of his education felt that it would be more
profitable to themselves to teach him vice and luxury rather than
the manly arts which his parents required, and he was profoundly
corrupted. His ostentatious vanity invited ridicule, and his indulgence
in unnatural vice and intemperance ruined his constitution. He fell
an early victim to dysentery, and his father plunged into deeper
bitterness amid the splendours and pleasures of his palace. Ariadne
must have awaited the end with impatience, and it is not improbable
that she already chose a partner to share her throne. Popular rumour
afterwards said that she buried Zeno alive. It was said that he used to
fall into a kind of trance after his gluttonous meals, and that Ariadne
in disgust bade the servants seal him in a tomb; the legend even
represents him as recovering and crying in vain to be relieved, and
one version pretends that, when the tomb was eventually opened, he was
found to have eaten his boots and belt. The truth seems to be that he
was subject to epileptic fits, one of which ended his life in April 491.
Ariadne at once nominated for the Empire a peasant of northern Greece
who had a very subordinate position in the military service of the
palace. A tall, handsome man--though one of his eyes was grey and
the other almost black--of strong, quiet character, he seems to have
been chosen by Ariadne as her future husband before Zeno died. He was
unmarried, though past middle age. One of Ariadne’s eunuchs secured
the consent of the Senators to the strange nomination, and Anastasius
obtained the applause of the people by remitting their debts to the
treasury. The only opposition came from the patriarch, or archbishop,
who had in earlier years been compelled to prevent Anastasius from
setting up an unofficial pulpit in the streets of the city and
teaching his favourite heresy. Anastasius genially forswore his heresy
for so high a price, was at once crowned Emperor, and married Ariadne
on the fortieth day after the burial of Zeno. Docile and clinging as
Ariadne had been in her earlier years, she fully reveals herself as
the daughter of Verina in her middle life. But the twenty-five years
of life which remained for her are years of obscurity, as far as the
Empress is concerned, and we will not linger over them. Storm after
storm broke over the palace, where she lived, but she seems to have
taken no part in public events. The Isaurians marched on the city to
demand the throne for the brother of Zeno, and a long struggle ended in
the complete destruction of the power of the Isaurians. Then Anastasius
returned to his Monophysite heresy, and the streets of the city and
towns of the Empire rang with defiance and anathema. On one occasion,
in 512, the mob burned the monasteries which Anastasius favoured, and
so angrily assailed the palace that the ships were made ready at the
quays to conduct Ariadne and her husband to Asia. Anastasius had been
guilty of the additional indiscretion of attempting to reform the
morals of Constantinople and forbidding contests with wild beasts in
the arena.[5] Ariadne lived until the year 515 or 516, when she must
have been about seventy years old. So completely was she overshadowed
by her second husband that the only reference we find to her in the
chronicles is that on one occasion she begged Anastasius to make a
certain appointment, and he refused.