whom had been clothed in his infancy with the purple. When the father
summoned them to attend his person in Sicily, these precious hostages
were detained by the Greeks, and a firm refusal informed him that they
were the children of the state. The news of his murder was conveyed
with almost supernatural speed from Syracuse to Constantinople; and
Constantine, the eldest of his sons, inherited his throne without being
the heir of the public hatred. His subjects contributed, with zeal and
alacrity, to chastise the guilt and presumption of a province which had
usurped the rights of the senate and people; the young emperor sailed
from the Hellespont with a powerful fleet; and the legions of Rome and
Carthage were assembled under his standard in the harbor of Syracuse.
The defeat of the Sicilian tyrant was easy, his punishment just, and his
beauteous head was exposed in the hippodrome: but I cannot applaud the
clemency of a prince, who, among a crowd of victims, condemned the son
of a patrician, for deploring with some bitterness the execution of a
virtuous father. The youth was castrated: he survived the operation,
and the memory of this indecent cruelty is preserved by the elevation of
Germanus to the rank of a patriarch and saint. After pouring this bloody
libation on his father's tomb, Constantine returned to his capital; and
the growth of his young beard during the Sicilian voyage was announced,
by the familiar surname of Pogonatus, to the Grecian world. But his
reign, like that of his predecessor, was stained with fraternal discord.
On his two brothers, Heraclius and Tiberius, he had bestowed the title
of Augustus; an empty title, for they continued to languish, without
trust or power, in the solitude of the palace. At their secret
instigation, the troops of the Anatolian _theme_ or province approached
the city on the Asiatic side, demanded for the royal brothers the
partition or exercise of sovereignty, and supported their seditious
claim by a theological argument. They were Christians, (they cried,)
and orthodox Catholics; the sincere votaries of the holy and undivided
Trinity. Since there are three equal persons in heaven, it is reasonable
there should be three equal persons upon earth. The emperor invited
these learned divines to a friendly conference, in which they might
propose their arguments to the senate: they obeyed the summons, but the
prospect of their bodies hanging on the gibbet in the suburb of Galata
reconciled their companions to the unity of the reign of Constantine.
He pardoned his brothers, and their names were still pronounced in the
public acclamations: but on the repetition or suspicion of a similar
offence, the obnoxious princes were deprived of their titles and
noses, in the presence of the Catholic bishops who were assembled at
Constantinople in the sixth general synod. In the close of his life,
Pogonatus was anxious only to establish the right of primogeniture: the
heir of his two sons, Justinian and Heraclius, was offered on the shrine
of St. Peter, as a symbol of their spiritual adoption by the pope; but
the elder was alone exalted to the rank of Augustus, and the assurance
of the empire.
After the decease of his father, the inheritance of the Roman world
devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant lawgiver was
dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his namesake only in
the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong; his
understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride,
that his birth had given him the command of millions, of whom the
smallest community would not have chosen him for their local magistrate.
His favorite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human
sympathy, a eunuch and a monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to
the other the finances; the former corrected the emperor's mother with
a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their
heads downwards, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days of Commodus
and Caracalla, the cruelty of the Roman princes had most commonly been
the effect of their fear; but Justinian, who possessed some vigor
of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and braved the revenge, of his
subjects, about ten years, till the measure was full, of his crimes and
of their patience. In a dark dungeon, Leontius, a general of reputation,
had groaned above three years, with some of the noblest and most
deserving of the patricians: he was suddenly drawn forth to assume the
government of Greece; and this promotion of an injured man was a mark
of the contempt rather than of the confidence of his prince. As he
was followed to the port by the kind offices of his friends, Leontius
observed, with a sigh, that he was a victim adorned for sacrifice,
and that inevitable death would pursue his footsteps. They ventured
to reply, that glory and empire might be the recompense of a generous
resolution; that every order of men abhorred the reign of a monster; and
that the hands of two hundred thousand patriots expected only the voice
of a leader. The night was chosen for their deliverance; and in the
first effort of the conspirators, the prÊfect was slain, and the prisons
were forced open: the emissaries of Leontius proclaimed in every street,
"Christians, to St. Sophia!" and the seasonable text of the patriarch,
"This is the day of the Lord!" was the prelude of an inflammatory
sermon. From the church the people adjourned to the hippodrome:
Justinian, in whose cause not a sword had been drawn, was dragged before
these tumultuary judges, and their clamors demanded the instant death of
the tyrant. But Leontius, who was already clothed with the purple, cast
an eye of pity on the prostrate son of his own benefactor and of so many
emperors. The life of Justinian was spared; the amputation of his nose,
perhaps of his tongue, was imperfectly performed: the happy flexibility
of the Greek language could impose the name of Rhinotmetus; and the
mutilated tyrant was banished to ChersonÊ in Crim-Tartary, a lonely
settlement, where corn, wine, and oil, were imported as foreign
luxuries.
On the edge of the Scythian wilderness, Justinian still cherished the
pride of his birth, and the hope of his restoration. After three years'
exile, he received the pleasing intelligence that his injury was avenged
by a second revolution, and that Leontius in his turn had been dethroned
and mutilated by the rebel Apsimar, who assumed the more respectable
name of Tiberius. But the claim of lineal succession was still
formidable to a plebeian usurper; and his jealousy was stimulated by the
complaints and charges of the Chersonites, who beheld the vices of the
tyrant in the spirit of the exile. With a band of followers, attached
to his person by common hope or common despair, Justinian fled from the
inhospitable shore to the horde of the Chozars, who pitched their tents
between the Tanais and Borysthenes. The khan entertained with pity and
respect the royal suppliant: Phanagoria, once an opulent city, on the
Asiatic side of the lake Motis, was assigned for his residence; and
every Roman prejudice was stifled in his marriage with the sister of
the Barbarian, who seems, however, from the name of Theodora, to have
received the sacrament of baptism. But the faithless Chozar was soon
tempted by the gold of Constantinople: and had not the design been
revealed by the conjugal love of Theodora, her husband must have
been assassinated or betrayed into the power of his enemies. After
strangling, with his own hands, the two emissaries of the khan,
Justinian sent back his wife to her brother, and embarked on the Euxine
in search of new and more faithful allies. His vessel was assaulted by a
violent tempest; and one of his pious companions advised him to deserve
the mercy of God by a vow of general forgiveness, if he should be
restored to the throne. "Of forgiveness?" replied the intrepid tyrant:
"may I perish this instant--may the Almighty whelm me in the waves--if I
consent to spare a single head of my enemies!" He survived this impious
menace, sailed into the mouth of the Danube, trusted his person in the
royal village of the Bulgarians, and purchased the aid of Terbelis, a
pagan conqueror, by the promise of his daughter and a fair partition
of the treasures of the empire. The Bulgarian kingdom extended to the
confines of Thrace; and the two princes besieged Constantinople at the
head of fifteen thousand horse. Apsimar was dismayed by the sudden and
hostile apparition of his rival whose head had been promised by the
Chozar, and of whose evasion he was yet ignorant. After an absence of
ten years, the crimes of Justinian were faintly remembered, and the
birth and misfortunes of their hereditary sovereign excited the pity
of the multitude, ever discontented with the ruling powers; and by the
active diligence of his adherents, he was introduced into the city and
palace of Constantine.
Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.--Part II.
In rewarding his allies, and recalling his wife, Justinian displayed
some sense of honor and gratitude; and Terbelis retired, after
sweeping away a heap of gold coin, which he measured with his Scythian
whip. But never was vow more religiously performed than the sacred oath
of revenge which he had sworn amidst the storms of the Euxine. The two
usurpers (for I must reserve the name of tyrant for the conqueror) were
dragged into the hippodrome, the one from his prison, the other from his
palace. Before their execution, Leontius and Apsimar were cast prostrate
in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and Justinian, planting
a foot on each of their necks, contemplated above an hour the
chariot-race, while the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the
Psalmist, "Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion
and dragon shalt thou set thy foot!" The universal defection which he
had once experienced might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula,
that the Roman people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe,
that such a wish is unworthy of an ingenious tyrant, since his revenge
and cruelty would have been extinguished by a single blow, instead of
the slow variety of tortures which Justinian inflicted on the victims of
his anger. His pleasures were inexhaustible: neither private virtue
nor public service could expiate the guilt of active, or even passive,
obedience to an established government; and, during the six years of his
new reign, he considered the axe, the cord, and the rack, as the only
instruments of royalty. But his most implacable hatred was pointed
against the Chersonites, who had insulted his exile and violated the
laws of hospitality. Their remote situation afforded some means of
defence, or at least of escape; and a grievous tax was imposed on
Constantinople, to supply the preparations of a fleet and army. "All
are guilty, and all must perish," was the mandate of Justinian; and
the bloody execution was intrusted to his favorite Stephen, who was
recommended by the epithet of the savage. Yet even the savage Stephen
imperfectly accomplished the intentions of his sovereign. The slowness
of his attack allowed the greater part of the inhabitants to withdraw
into the country; and the minister of vengeance contented himself with
reducing the youth of both sexes to a state of servitude, with roasting
alive seven of the principal citizens, with drowning twenty in the sea,
and with reserving forty-two in chains to receive their doom from the
mouth of the emperor. In their return, the fleet was driven on the rocky
shores of Anatolia; and Justinian applauded the obedience of the Euxine,
which had involved so many thousands of his subjects and enemies in a
common shipwreck: but the tyrant was still insatiate of blood; and
a second expedition was commanded to extirpate the remains of the
proscribed colony. In the short interval, the Chersonites had returned
to their city, and were prepared to die in arms; the khan of the Chozars
had renounced the cause of his odious brother; the exiles of every
province were assembled in Tauris; and Bardanes, under the name
of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. The Imperial troops,
unwilling and unable to perpetrate the revenge of Justinian, escaped
his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance: the fleet, under their
new sovereign, steered back a more auspicious course to the harbors of
Sinope and Constantinople; and every tongue was prompt to pronounce,
every hand to execute, the death of the tyrant. Destitute of friends, he
was deserted by his Barbarian guards; and the stroke of the assassin was
praised as an act of patriotism and Roman virtue. His son Tiberius had
taken refuge in a church; his aged grandmother guarded the door; and the
innocent youth, suspending round his neck the most formidable relics,
embraced with one hand the altar, with the other the wood of the true
cross. But the popular fury that dares to trample on superstition,
is deaf to the cries of humanity; and the race of Heraclius was
extinguished after a reign of one hundred years.
Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the Isaurian dynasty,
a short interval of six years is divided into three reigns. Bardanes,
or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as a hero who had delivered
his country from a tyrant; and he might taste some moments of happiness
in the first transports of sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left
behind him an ample treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but
this useful fund was soon and idly dissipated by his successor. On the
festival of his birthday, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the
games of the hippodrome; from thence he paraded through the streets with
a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets; refreshed himself in the
baths of Zeuxippus, and returning to the palace, entertained his nobles
with a sumptuous banquet. At the meridian hour he withdrew to his
chamber, intoxicated with flattery and wine, and forgetful that his
example had made every subject ambitious, and that every ambitious
subject was his secret enemy. Some bold conspirators introduced
themselves in the disorder of the feast; and the slumbering monarch was
surprised, bound, blinded, and deposed, before he was sensible of his
danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward; and the free
voice of the senate and people promoted Artemius from the office of
secretary to that of emperor: he assumed the title of Anastasius the
Second, and displayed in a short and troubled reign the virtues both of
peace and war. But after the extinction of the Imperial line, the rule
of obedience was violated, and every change diffused the seeds of new
revolutions. In a mutiny of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer
of the revenue was forcibly invested with the purple: after some months
of a naval war, Anastasius resigned the sceptre; and the conqueror,
Theodosius the Third, submitted in his turn to the superior ascendant
of Leo, the general and emperor of the Oriental troops. His two
predecessors were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical profession:
the restless impatience of Anastasius tempted him to risk and to lose
his life in a treasonable enterprise; but the last days of Theodosius
were honorable and secure. The single sublime word, "health," which
he inscribed on his tomb, expresses the confidence of philosophy or
religion; and the fame of his miracles was long preserved among the
people of Ephesus. This convenient shelter of the church might sometimes
impose a lesson of clemency; but it may be questioned whether it is for
the public interest to diminish the perils of unsuccessful ambition.
I have dwelt on the fall of a tyrant; I shall briefly represent the
founder of a new dynasty, who is known to posterity by the invectives
of his enemies, and whose public and private life is involved in the
ecclesiastical story of the Iconoclasts. Yet in spite of the clamors
of superstition, a favorable prejudice for the character of Leo the
Isaurian may be reasonably drawn from the obscurity of his birth, and
the duration of his reign.--I. In an age of manly spirit, the prospect
of an Imperial reward would have kindled every energy of the mind, and
produced a crowd of competitors as deserving as they were desirous to
reign. Even in the corruption and debility of the modern Greeks, the
elevation of a plebeian from the last to the first rank of society,
supposes some qualifications above the level of the multitude. He would
probably be ignorant and disdainful of speculative science; and, in the
pursuit of fortune, he might absolve himself from the obligations of
benevolence and justice; but to his character we may ascribe the useful
virtues of prudence and fortitude, the knowledge of mankind, and the
important art of gaining their confidence and directing their passions.
It is agreed that Leo was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his
primitive name. The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe
him as an itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry
merchandise to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on
the road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman
empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols. A more
probable account relates the migration of his father from Asia Minor to
Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a grazier; and he must
have acquired considerable wealth, since the first introduction of his
son was procured by a supply of five hundred sheep to the Imperial
camp. His first service was in the guards of Justinian, where he soon
attracted the notice, and by degrees the jealousy, of the tyrant.
His valor and dexterity were conspicuous in the Colchian war: from
Anastasius he received the command of the Anatolian legions, and by the
suffrage of the soldiers he was raised to the empire with the general
applause of the Roman world.--II. In this dangerous elevation, Leo the
Third supported himself against the envy of his equals, the discontent
of a powerful faction, and the assaults of his foreign and domestic
enemies. The Catholics, who accuse his religious innovations, are
obliged to confess that they were undertaken with temper and conducted
with firmness. Their silence respects the wisdom of his administration
and the purity of his manners. After a reign of twenty-four years, he
peaceably expired in the palace of Constantinople; and the purple which
he had acquired was transmitted by the right of inheritance to the third
generation.
In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of Leo,
Constantine the Fifth, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with less temperate
zeal the images or idols of the church. Their votaries have exhausted
the bitterness of religious gall, in their portrait of this spotted
panther, this antichrist, this flying dragon of the serpent's seed,
who surpassed the vices of Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long
butchery of whatever was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his
empire. In person, the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims,
surveyed their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without
satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted as a
grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or mutilated
by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his pollution of his
baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but the manly pleasures of
Copronymus degraded him below the level of a brute; his lust confounded
the eternal distinctions of sex and species, and he seemed to extract
some unnatural delight from the objects most offensive to human sense.
In his religion the Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a
Pagan, and an Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could
be discovered only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal
sacrifices to Venus and the dÊmons of antiquity. His life was stained
with the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of these
accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is refuted by its
own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the life of the princes,
the lie is more easy as the detection is more difficult. Without
adopting the pernicious maxim, that where much is alleged, something
must be true, I can however discern, that Constantine the Fifth was
dissolute and cruel. Calumny is more prone to exaggerate than to invent;
and her licentious tongue is checked in some measure by the experience
of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks,
the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under
his reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. The
Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but even their
hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled the provocations
which might excuse or justify his rigor, but even these provocations
must gradually inflame his resentment and harden his temper in the use
or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine
was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the
curses or the contempt of the Greeks. From the confession of his
enemies, I am informed of the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the
redemption of two thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon
plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his
activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the head
of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was various, he
triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the Danube, in civil
and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast into the scale to
counterbalance the weight of orthodox invective. The Iconoclasts revered
the virtues of the prince: forty years after his death they still prayed
before the tomb of the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by
fanaticism or fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white
steed, brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: "An absurd
fable," says the Catholic historian, "since Copronymus is chained with
the dÊmons in the abyss of hell."
Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind and body, and
the principal care of his reign was the settlement of the succession.
The association of the young Constantine was urged by the officious
zeal of his subjects; and the emperor, conscious of his decay, complied,
after a prudent hesitation, with their unanimous wishes. The royal
infant, at the age of five years, was crowned with his mother Irene;
and the national consent was ratified by every circumstance of pomp
and solemnity, that could dazzle the eyes or bind the conscience of the
Greeks. An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the church,
and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who adjured the
holy names of the Son, and mother of God. "Be witness, O Christ! that
we will watch over the safety of Constantine the son of Leo, expose
our lives in his service, and bear true allegiance to his person and
posterity." They pledged their faith on the wood of the true cross, and
the act of their engagement was deposited on the altar of St. Sophia.
The first to swear, and the first to violate their oath, were the five
sons of Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these princes
is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them from
the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded them of a
legacy of about two millions sterling; some vain titles were not deemed
a sufficient compensation for wealth and power; and they repeatedly
conspired against their nephew, before and after the death of his
father. Their first attempt was pardoned; for the second offence they
were condemned to the ecclesiastical state; and for the third treason,
Nicephorus, the eldest and most guilty, was deprived of his eyes, and
his four brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and Eudoxas, were
punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their tongues.
After five years' confinement, they escaped to the church of St. Sophia,
and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the people. "Countrymen and
Christians," cried Nicephorus for himself and his mute brethren, "behold
the sons of your emperor, if you can still recognize our features in
this miserable state. A life, an imperfect life, is all that the malice
of our enemies has spared. It is now threatened, and we now throw
ourselves on your compassion." The rising murmur might have produced a
revolution, had it not been checked by the presence of a minister, who
soothed the unhappy princes with flattery and hope, and gently drew
them from the sanctuary to the palace. They were speedily embarked for
Greece, and Athens was allotted for the place of their exile. In this
calm retreat, and in their helpless condition, Nicephorus and his
brothers were tormented by the thirst of power, and tempted by a
Sclavonian chief, who offered to break their prison, and to lead them
in arms, and in the purple, to the gates of Constantinople. But the
Athenian people, ever zealous in the cause of Irene, prevented her
justice or cruelty; and the five sons of Copronymus were plunged in
eternal darkness and oblivion.