_Leontius_.-------- That power that kindly spreads
The clouds, a signal of impending showers,
To warn the wandering linnet to the shade,
Beheld without concern expiring Greece,
And not one prodigy foretold our fate.
_Demetrius_. A thousand horrid prodigies foretold it:
A feeble government, eluded laws,
A factious populace, luxurious nobles,
And all the maladies of sinking states.
When public villany, too strong for justice,
Shows his bold front, the harbinger of ruin,
Can brave Leontius call for airy wonders,
Which cheats interpret, and which fools regard?
IRENE, _Act I_.
The close observers of vegetable nature have remarked, that when a new
graft is taken from an aged tree, it possesses indeed in exterior form
the appearance of a youthful shoot, but has in fact attained to the
same state of maturity, or even decay, which has been reached by the
parent stem. Hence, it is said, arises the general decline and death
that about the same season is often observed to spread itself through
individual trees of some particular species, all of which, deriving
their vital powers from the parent stock, are therefore incapable of
protracting their existence longer than it does.
In the same manner, efforts have been made by the mighty of the earth
to transplant large cities, states, and communities, by one great and
sudden exertion, expecting to secure to the new capital the wealth, the
dignity, the magnificent decorations and unlimited extent of the
ancient city, which they desire to renovate; while, at the same time,
they hope to begin a new succession of ages from the date of the new
structure, to last, they imagine, as long, and with as much fame, as
its predecessor, which the founder hopes his new metropolis may replace
in all its youthful glories. But nature has her laws, which seem to
apply to the social, as well as the vegetable system. It appears to be
a general rule, that what is to last long should be slowly matured and
gradually improved, while every sudden effort, however gigantic, to
bring about the speedy execution of a plan calculated to endure for
ages, is doomed to exhibit symptoms of premature decay from its very
commencement. Thus, in a beautiful Oriental tale, a dervise explains to
the sultan how he had reared the magnificent trees among which they
walked, by nursing their shoots from the seed; and the prince's pride
is damped when he reflects, that those plantations, so simply raised,
were gathering new vigour from each returning sun, while his own
exhausted cedars, which had been transplanted by one violent effort,
were drooping their majestic heads in the Valley of Orez. [Footnote:
Tale of Mirglip the Persian, in the Tales of the Genii.]
It has been allowed, I believe, by all men of taste, many of whom have
been late visitants of Constantinople, that if it were possible to
survey the whole globe with a view to fixing a seat of universal
empire, all who are capable of making such a choice, would give their
preference to the city of Constantine, as including the great
recommendations of beauty, wealth, security, and eminence. Yet with all
these advantages of situation and climate, and with all the
architectural splendour of its churches and halls, its quarries of
marble, and its treasure-houses of gold, the imperial founder must
himself have learned, that although he could employ all these rich
materials in obedience to his own wish, it was the mind of man itself,
those intellectual faculties refined by the ancients to the highest
degree, which had produced the specimens of talent at which men paused
and wondered, whether as subjects of art or of moral labour. The power
of the Emperor might indeed strip other cities of their statues and
their shrines, in order to decorate that which he had fixed upon as his
new capital; but the men who had performed great actions, and those,
almost equally esteemed, by whom such deeds were celebrated, in poetry,
in painting, and in music, had ceased to exist. The nation, though
still the most civilised in the world, had passed beyond that period of
society, when the desire of fair fame is of itself the sole or chief
motive for the labour of the historian or the poet, the painter or the
statuary. The slavish and despotic constitution introduced into the
empire, had long since entirely destroyed that public spirit which
animated the free history of Rome, leaving nothing but feeble
recollections, which produced no emulation.
To speak as of an animated substance, if Constantine could have
regenerated his new metropolis, by transfusing into it the vital and
vivifying principles of old Rome,--that brilliant spark no longer
remained for Constantinople to borrow, or for Rome to lend.
In one most important circumstance, the state of the capital of
Constantine had been totally changed, and unspeakably to its advantage.
The world was now Christian, and, with the Pagan code, had got rid of
its load of disgraceful superstition. Nor is there the least doubt,
that the better faith produced its natural and desirable fruits in
society, in gradually ameliorating the hearts, and taming the passions,
of the people. But while many of the converts were turning meekly
towards their new creed, some, in the arrogance of their understanding,
were limiting the Scriptures by their own devices, and others failed
not to make religious character or spiritual rank the means of rising
to temporal power. Thus it happened at this critical period, that the
effects of this great change in the religion of the country, although
producing an immediate harvest, as well as sowing much good seed which
was to grow hereafter, did not, in the fourth century, flourish so as
to shed at once that predominating influence which its principles might
have taught men to expect.
Even the borrowed splendour, in which Constantine decked his city, bore
in it something which seemed to mark premature decay. The imperial
founder, in seizing upon the ancient statues, pictures, obelisks, and
works of art, acknowledged his own incapacity to supply their place
with the productions of later genius; and when the world, and
particularly Rome, was plundered to adorn Constantinople, the Emperor,
under whom the work was carried on, might be compared to a prodigal
youth, who strips an aged parent of her youthful ornaments, in order to
decorate a flaunting paramour, on whose brow all must consider them as
misplaced.
Constantinople, therefore, when in 324 it first arose in imperial
majesty out of the humble Byzantium, showed, even in its birth, and
amid its adventitious splendour, as we have already said, some
intimations of that speedy decay to which the whole civilised world,
then limited within the Roman empire, was internally and imperceptibly
tending. Nor was it many ages ere these prognostications of declension
were fully verified.
In the year 1080, Alexius Comnenus [Footnote: See Gibbon, Chap. xlviii,
for the origin and early history of the house of the Comneni.] ascended
the throne of the Empire; that is, he was declared sovereign of
Constantinople, its precincts and dependencies; nor, if he was disposed
to lead a life of relaxation, would the savage incursions of the
Scythians or the Hungarians frequently disturb the imperial slumbers,
if limited to his own capital. It may be supposed that this safety did
not extend much farther; for it is said that the Empress Pulcheria had
built a church to the Virgin Mary, as remote as possible from the gate
of the city, to save her devotions from the risk of being interrupted
by the hostile yell of the barbarians, and the reigning Emperor had
constructed a palace near the same spot, and for the same reason.
Alexius Comnenus was in the condition of a monarch who rather derives
consequence from the wealth and importance of his predecessors, and the
great extent of their original dominions, than from what remnants of
fortune had descended to the present generation. This Emperor, except
nominally, no more ruled over his dismembered provinces, than a
half-dead horse can exercise power over those limbs, on which the
hooded crow and the vulture have already begun to settle and select
their prey.
In different parts of his territory, different enemies arose, who waged
successful or dubious war against the Emperor; and, of the numerous
nations with whom he was engaged in hostilities, whether the Franks
from the west, the Turks advancing from the east, the Cumans and
Scythians pouring their barbarous numbers and unceasing storm of arrows
from the north, and the Saracens, or the tribes into which they were
divided, pressing from the south, there was not one for whom the
Grecian empire did not spread a tempting repast. Each of these various
enemies had their own particular habits of war, and a way of
manoeuvring in battle peculiar to themselves. But the Roman, as the
unfortunate subject of the Greek empire was still called, was by far
the weakest, the most ignorant, and most timid, who could be dragged
into the field; and the Emperor was happy in his own good luck, when he
found it possible to conduct a defensive war on a counterbalancing
principle, making use of the Scythian to repel the Turk, or of both
these savage people to drive back the fiery-footed Frank, whom Peter
the Hermit had, in the time of Alexius, waked to double fury, by the
powerful influence of the crusades.
If, therefore, Alexius Comnenus was, during his anxious seat upon the
throne of the East, reduced to use a base and truckling course of
policy--if he was sometimes reluctant to fight when he had a conscious
doubt of the valour of his troops--if he commonly employed cunning and
dissimulation instead of wisdom, and perfidy instead of courage--his
expedients were the disgrace of the age, rather than his own.
Again, the Emperor Alexius may be blamed for affecting a degree of
state which was closely allied to imbecility. He was proud of assuming
in his own person, and of bestowing upon others, the painted show of
various orders of nobility, even now, when the rank within the prince's
gift was become an additional reason for the free barbarian despising
the imperial noble. That the Greek court was encumbered with unmeaning
ceremonies, in order to make amends for the want of that veneration
which ought to have been called forth by real worth, and the presence
of actual power, was not the particular fault of that prince, but
belonged to the system of the government of Constantinople for ages.
Indeed, in its trumpery etiquette, which provided rules for the most
trivial points of a man's behaviour during the day, the Greek empire
resembled no existing power in its minute follies, except that of
Pekin; both, doubtless, being influenced by the same vain wish, to add
seriousness and an appearance of importance to objects, which, from
their trivial nature, could admit no such distinction.
Yet thus far we must justify Alexius, that humble as were the
expedients he had recourse to, they were more useful to his empire than
the measures of a more proud and high-spirited prince might have proved
in the same circumstances. He was no champion to break a lance against
the breast-plate of his Frankish rival, the famous Bohemond of
Antioch,[Footnote: Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, the Norman
conqueror of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, was, at the time when the
first crusade began, Count of Tarentum. Though far advanced in life, he
eagerly joined the expedition of the Latins, and became Prince of
Antioch. For details of his adventures, death, and extraordinary
character, see Gibbon, chap. lix, and Mills' History of the Crusades,
vol. i.] but there were many occasions on which he hazarded his life
freely; and, so far as we can see, from a minute perusal of his
achievements, the Emperor of Greece was never so dangerous "under
shield," as when any foeman desired to stop him while retreating from a
conflict in which he had been worsted.
But, besides that he did not hesitate, according to the custom of the
time, at least occasionally, to commit his person to the perils of
close combat, Alexius also possessed such knowledge of a general's
profession, as is required in our modern days. He knew how to occupy
military positions to the best advantage, and often covered defeats, or
improved dubious conflicts, in a manner highly to the disappointment of
those who deemed that the work of war was done only on the field of
battle.
If Alexius Comnenus thus understood the evolutions of war, he was still
better skilled in those of politics, where, soaring far above the
express purpose of his immediate negotiation, the Emperor was sure to
gain some important and permanent advantage; though very often he was
ultimately defeated by the unblushing fickleness, or avowed treachery
of the barbarians, as the Greeks generally termed all other nations,
and particularly those tribes, (they can hardly be termed states,) by
which their own empire was surrounded.
We may conclude our brief character of Comnenus, by saying, that, had
he not been called on to fill the station of a monarch who was under
the necessity of making himself dreaded, as one who was exposed to all
manner of conspiracies, both in and out of his own family, he might, in
all probability, have been regarded as an honest and humane prince.
Certainly he showed himself a good-natured man, and dealt less in
cutting off heads and extinguishing eyes, than had been the practice of
his predecessors, who generally took this method of shortening the
ambitious views of competitors.
It remains to be mentioned, that Alexius had his full share of the
superstition of the age, which he covered with a species of hypocrisy.
It is even said, that his wife, Irene, who of course was best
acquainted with the real character of the Emperor, taxed her dying
husband with practising, in his last moments, the dissimulation which
had been his companion during life. [Footnote: See Gibbon, chap. lvi.]
He took also a deep interest in all matters respecting the Church,
where heresy, which the Emperor held, or affected to hold, in great
horror, appeared to him to lurk. Nor do we discover in his treatment of
the Manichaeans, or Paulicians, that pity for their speculative errors,
which modern times might think had been well purchased by the extent of
the temporal services of these unfortunate sectaries. Alexius knew no
indulgence for those who misinterpreted the mysteries of the Church, or
of its doctrines; and the duty of defending religion against
schismatics was, in his opinion, as peremptorily demanded from him, as
that of protecting the empire against the numberless tribes of
barbarians who were encroaching on its boundaries on every side.
Such a mixture of sense and weakness, of meanness and dignity, of
prudent discretion and poverty of spirit, which last, in the European
mode of viewing things, approached to cowardice, formed the leading
traits of the character of Alexius Comnenus, at a period when the fate
of Greece, and all that was left in that country of art and
civilization, was trembling in the balance, and likely to be saved or
lost, according to the abilities of the Emperor for playing the very
difficult game which was put into his hands.
These few leading circumstances will recall, to any one who is
tolerably well read in history, the peculiarities of the period at
which we have found a resting-place for the foundation of our story.