The triumphant caliph retired, after the_The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes)

campaign, to his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: 76

but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the

season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus

was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of

the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of

Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted;

and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field

of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the

emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on

victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers

received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above

three hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched

under the black standard of the Abbassides. They swept the

surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested

the Pontic Heraclea, 77 once a flourishing state, now a paltry

town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her antique walls, a

month’s siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was

complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been conversant

with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of

Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and

the lion’s hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of

desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of

Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty

defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left

forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was

marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three

sons. 78 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove

the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of their father,

the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the

conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the

restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign

science.

75 (return) [ See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in

the Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title;

and in the relative articles to which M. D’Herbelot refers. That

learned collector has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental

chronicles of their instructive and amusing anecdotes.]

76 (return) [ For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium,

consult D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24-27.) The

Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in

Bagdad. He respected the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the

vices of the inhabitants had driven him from the city, (Abulfed.

Annal. p. 167.)]

77 (return) [ M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from

Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or

Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his reading collected

the antiquities, of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre

xvi. p. 23-35.) We have a separate history of Heraclea in the

fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by Photius.]

78 (return) [ The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman

empire are related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407,

408.) Zonaras, (tom. iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477,

478,) Eutycaius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist.

Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,)

and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166-168.)]

Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV.

Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at

Constantinople, the islands of Crete 79 and Sicily were subdued

by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their

own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos,

but it has not been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who

now begin to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own

times. 80 A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the

climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the

sea; but as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty galleys,

their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the

subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might lawfully

invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction

introduced them into Alexandria; 81 they cut in pieces both

friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold

above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their

station in the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the

forces and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the

Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts both of the

Greeks and Moslems were exposed to their depredations; they saw,

they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete, and soon

returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The

Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but

when they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their

vessels were in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed

himself the author of the mischief. Their clamors accused his

madness or treachery. “Of what do you complain?” replied the

crafty emir. “I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and

honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and

forget the barren place of your nativity.” “And our wives and

children?” “Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your

wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of

a new progeny.” The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch

and rampart, in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to

a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and the name of

Candax, their fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole

island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The

hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and

of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain

the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The

Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the

timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a

hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes

of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with

fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.

79 (return) [ The authors from whom I have learned the most of

the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,

&c., c. 3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.

i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.

iii. p. 343-544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by

Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,

or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]

80 (return) [ The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence

is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of

Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine

Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the

Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1-162, a Francisc.

Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,

l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of

Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,

(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud

Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern

Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a

plurality of names.]

81 (return) [ Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256,

268-270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in

Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of

Crete.]

The loss of Sicily 82 was occasioned by an act of superstitious

rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister,

was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue.

Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of

Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a fleet of

one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse and ten

thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of the

ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse 83

was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her

walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of

feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were

relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of

Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was

gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was

chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the

Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which

she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal

siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which

had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They

stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and

catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the

place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial

fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a

church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop

and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast

into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of

death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may

be read as the epitaph of his country. 84 From the Roman conquest

to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive

Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were

still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand

pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of

pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling,)

and the captives must outnumber the seventeen thousand

Christians, who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium

into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of

the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the

rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised

and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph.

The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of Palermo,

Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and

Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of

Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and apostles. Had the

Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and

glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs

of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and

Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily

aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion

was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. 85

82 (return) [ Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss

of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom.

vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the

Italian chronicles.]

83 (return) [ The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede

would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date

(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently

reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit

of modern knights and ancient republicans.]

84 (return) [ The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is

transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,

&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.

190-192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the

demons.]

85 (return) [ The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily

are given in Abulfeda, (Annal’ Moslem. p. 271-273,) and in the

first volume of Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de

Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some

important facts.]

In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a

solemn and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the

African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber, and to

approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered

as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates and ramparts

were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and temples of

St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the suburbs of the

Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their invisible sanctity had

protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards;

but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the legend; and their

rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the precepts of the

Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly

offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St.

Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their

deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather than the

scruples, of the Saracens. In their course along the Appian way,

they pillaged Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had turned

aside from the walls of Rome, and by their divisions, the Capitol

was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca. The same danger

still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and their

domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir.

They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but the

Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the

Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors;

but the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and

precarious. 86 Their distress appeared to receive some

aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal chief;

but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and intrigues of

an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth 87

was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a

Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in

his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect,

like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads

above the fragments of the Roman forum. The first days of his

reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics,

to prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of

religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and

restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had been

long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the

distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of

his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the

ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen

towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed;

two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron

chain was drawn across the stream to impede the ascent of a

hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite by the

welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that

a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had

perished in the waves.

86 (return) [ One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister

militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,

Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,

sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non advocamus

Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum regem et

gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus? Anastasius in

Leone IV. p. 199.]

87 (return) [ Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)

appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo

IV. I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the

forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]

But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with

redoubled violence. The Aglabite, 88 who reigned in Africa, had

inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a fleet of

Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment in the harbors of

Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the Tyber, sixteen

miles from the city: and their discipline and numbers appeared to

threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious design of

conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had formed an

alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free and

maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of

danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under the

command of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and

valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the

Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was invited to

the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire

their errand, and to accept with joy and surprise their

providential succor. The city bands, in arms, attended their

father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his generous

deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with

martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the

same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of

the sea, would strengthen the hands of his champions against the

adversaries of his holy name. After a similar prayer, and with

equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of the

Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous station

along the coast. The victory inclined to the side of the allies,

when it was less gloriously decided in their favor by a sudden

tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest

mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,

while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the

rocks and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from

shipwreck and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the

hands of their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet

reduced the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder

was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which

they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of the

citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of

the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval victory,

thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended

round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo the

Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman

state. The churches were renewed and embellished: near four

thousand pounds of silver were consecrated to repair the losses

of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of

gold of the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed

with the portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a

string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence reflects less glory

on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which he

rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the

wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new foundation of

Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. 89 By his liberality,

a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was planted

in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling

city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were

divided among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted

by a gift of horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who

breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live and die

under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and

North who visited the threshold of the apostles had gradually

formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and their

various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the

times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards

and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to

sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and

towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity

would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in

every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the

indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly

passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which

he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was

tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was

trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and

ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and

litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the

ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian

care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the

new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and

impregnable. 90

88 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.

363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, sous la

Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot

reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of

the Aglabites.]

89 (return) [ Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,

108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and

the other places of the Roman duchy.]

90 (return) [ The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent

concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin

chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of

Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the

popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman

church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p.

175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of

superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was

much oftener in a church than in a camp.]

The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of

the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at

Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or defensive

war, he marched in person five times against the Saracens,

formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and

defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into

Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual

birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was

attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and

concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that

moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in

favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree

of filial affection. These solicitations determined the emperor

to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled

with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated

with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were

forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of

the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of

Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her

kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under

the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the

youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and

Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military

talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,

91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or

fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal

quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited

from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his cavalry

might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the

hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the

expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling,

or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of

assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high

road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre,

and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of

the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory, or fail

with the least reproach. In the revenge of his injury, the caliph

prepared to retaliate a similar affront. The father of Theophilus

was a native of Amorium 92 in Phrygia: the original seat of the

Imperial house had been adorned with privileges and monuments;

and, whatever might be the indifference of the people,

Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of

the sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium was inscribed on

the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again

united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed

by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the

inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain

resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the more

generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the

country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front of

the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted

with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not

glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were

broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who

had obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The

Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of

the Turkish cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and

relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians could

have escaped with the emperor from the field of battle. They

breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of three days; and

Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common

flight both of the prince and people. After this discovery of his

weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the

inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his prayers and

promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses

of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his

shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered

by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate

people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a

domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall,

a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a

bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting

rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned

to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of Bagdad, while

the unfortunate 93 Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid

of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege

of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had perished: their

loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand

Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives,

who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual

necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of

prisoners: 94 but in the national and religious conflict of the

two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.

Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge

of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite

torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible

satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were

flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil. 95 To a

point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two

hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same

caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve

the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had

tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect

with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of

death? 96

91 (return) [ The same number was applied to the following

circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the

Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;

left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight

millions of gold.]

92 (return) [ Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,

and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith

century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis

of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.

234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read

Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.

236.)]

93 (return) [ In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.

l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his

ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de

victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat

assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]

94 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of

these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in

Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day’s journey

westward of Tarsus, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.

91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred

women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for

an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle

of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,

they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the

prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same

year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two

martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph’s order.]

95 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,

p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity

as pirates and renegadoes.]

96 (return) [ For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see

the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius (l.

iii. p. 24-34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528-532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen,

p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal.

Moslem. p. 191,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.)]

With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his

family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread

themselves over the East, and were mingled with the servile

crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the

freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of the

South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice; the

active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces

of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the North, of

which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turks

97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,

either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the

exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan

faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their

benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace

and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous

example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks:

their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the

quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire

from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his

Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues

above the city of Peace. 98 His son Motawakkel was a jealous and

cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the

fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and

apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution.

At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they

burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph

was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had

recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To

this throne, yet streaming with a father’s blood, Montasser was

triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the

pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old

tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of

Chosroes, if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may

allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness

of death, that he had lost both this world and the world to come.

After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment

and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the

foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and

murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks

were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were

dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten

with iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of

their dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. 99 At length,

however, the fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the

Abbassides returned to the less turbulent residence of Bagdad;

the insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more

skilful hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed in

foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been taught to

trample on the successors of the prophet; and the blessings of

domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength and

discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism,

that I seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome. 100

97 (return) [ M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes

stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks

he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,

or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from

China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,

&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.)]

98 (return) [ He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into

the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at

first sight, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.

D’Anville, l’Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]

99 (return) [ Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:

Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et

spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo

aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis

misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus

avertere studebat..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit, totoque

triduo cibo potuque prohibitus..... Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p.

206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi perpetuis

ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus conculcabant, (p.

208.)]

100 (return) [ See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,

Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the

Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of

Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]

While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the

pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with

concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial

spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or

in the next. How carefully soever the book of prophecy had been

sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may

profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe

that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,

Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time,

would reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two

hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the

neighborhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of

Carmath, assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the

Guide, the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,

the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with him

in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the son of

Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his

mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more

spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and

pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden

food; and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily

repetition of fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the

rustic crowd awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a

timid persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the

name of the prophet became more revered after his person had been

withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles dispersed

themselves among the Bedoweens, “a race of men,” says Abulfeda,

“equally devoid of reason and of religion;” and the success of

their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution.

The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed

the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of

the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since

they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was

called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the

people. Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of

their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more

than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and

concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict, they

prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far

and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,

or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and

these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and

seven thousand fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were

dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor

accepted quarter; and the difference between, them in fortitude

and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries

of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians. Such

troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca and

Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad was

filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the

veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu

Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five

hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had

been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was

expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His

lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of

his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. “Your master,” said

the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, “is at the head of

thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in

his host:” at the same instant, turning to three of his

companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his

breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast

himself headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur.

“Relate,” continued the imam, “what you have seen: before the

evening your general shall be chained among my dogs.” Before the

evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The

rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the

worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty

thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a

death of hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the

pilgrims to proceed without interruption; but, in the festival of

devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the

most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand

citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred

precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead

bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden

spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was

divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the

first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their

capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued

to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital

principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their scruples,

or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca, and

restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to

inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords

they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be

considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of

the empire of the caliphs. 101

101 (return) [ For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,

(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)

Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179-182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.

218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque

Orientale, p. 256-258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of

theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much

importance to reconcile. * Note: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte

der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.—M.]

Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part V.

The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of

the empire itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that

it was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to

manage a chess-board of two feet square: 102 yet I suspect that

in both those games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I

perceive, that in the distant provinces the authority of the

first and most powerful of the Abbassides was already impaired.

The analogy of despotism invests the representative with the full

majesty of the prince; the division and balance of powers might

relax the habits of obedience, might encourage the passive

subject to inquire into the origin and administration of civil

government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to

reign; but the elevation of a private man, of a peasant, perhaps,

or a slave, affords a strong presumption of his courage and

capacity. The viceroy of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the

property and inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations

must rejoice in the presence of their sovereign; and the command

of armies and treasures are at once the object and the instrument

of his ambition. A change was scarcely visible as long as the

lieutenants of the caliph were content with their vicarious

title; while they solicited for themselves or their sons a

renewal of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin

and in the public prayers the name and prerogative of the

commander of the faithful. But in the long and hereditary

exercise of power, they assumed the pride and attributes of

royalty; the alternative of peace or war, of reward or

punishment, depended solely on their will; and the revenues of

their government were reserved for local services or private

magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the

successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious

gift of an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings,

or some pounds of musk and amber. 103

102 (return) [ Hyde, Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 57, in Hist.

Shahiludii.]

103 (return) [ The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied

in the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the

proper years, in the dictionary of D’Herbelot, under the proper

names. The tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.)

exhibit a general chronology of the East, interspersed with some

historical anecdotes; but his attachment to national blood has

sometimes confounded the order of time and place.]

After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual

supremacy of the Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience

broke forth in the province of Africa. Ibrahim, the son of Aglab,

the lieutenant of the vigilant and rigid Harun, bequeathed to the

dynasty of the Aglabites the inheritance of his name and power.

The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the injury and

loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of the Edrisites,

104 who erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the shores of the

Western ocean. 105 In the East, the first dynasty was that of the

Taherites; 106 the posterity of the valiant Taher, who, in the

civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served with too much zeal

and success the cause of Almamon, the younger brother. He was

sent into honorable exile, to command on the banks of the Oxus;

and the independence of his successors, who reigned in Chorasan

till the fourth generation, was palliated by their modest and

respectful demeanor, the happiness of their subjects and the

security of their frontier. They were supplanted by one of those

adventures so frequent in the annals of the East, who left his

trade of a brazier (from whence the name of Soffarides) for the

profession of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the treasure of

the prince of Sistan, Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over a

lump of salt, which he unwarily tasted with his tongue. Salt,

among the Orientals, is the symbol of hospitality, and the pious

robber immediately retired without spoil or damage. The discovery

of this honorable behavior recommended Jacob to pardon and trust;

he led an army at first for his benefactor, at last for himself,

subdued Persia, and threatened the residence of the Abbassides.

On his march towards Bagdad, the conqueror was arrested by a

fever. He gave audience in bed to the ambassador of the caliph;

and beside him on a table were exposed a naked cimeter, a crust

of brown bread, and a bunch of onions. “If I die,” said he, “your

master is delivered from his fears. If I live, this must

determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can return without

reluctance to the homely fare of my youth.” From the height where

he stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a

timely death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who

paid with the most lavish concessions the retreat of his brother

Amrou to the palaces of Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were

too feeble to contend, too proud to forgive: they invited the

powerful dynasty of the Samanides, who passed the Oxus with ten

thousand horse so poor, that their stirrups were of wood: so

brave, that they vanquished the Soffarian army, eight times more

numerous than their own. The captive Amrou was sent in chains, a

grateful offering to the court of Bagdad; and as the victor was

content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the

realms of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the

caliphs. The provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered

by their Turkish slaves of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. 107

These Barbarians, in religion and manners the countrymen of

Mahomet, emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a

provincial command and an independent throne: their names became

famous and formidable in their time; but the founders of these

two potent dynasties confessed, either in words or actions, the

vanity of ambition. The first on his death-bed implored the mercy

of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power: the

second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight

thousand slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where

he attempted to sleep. Their sons were educated in the vices of

kings; and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by

the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years. In the decline

of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities of Mosul

and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the tribe of

Hamadan. The poets of their court could repeat without a blush,

that nature had formed their countenances for beauty, their

tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality and valor:

but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the

Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide.

At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped

by the dynasty of the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers,

who, under various names, were styled the support and columns of

the state, and who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would

suffer no tyrants but themselves. Under their reign, the language

and genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and

four years after the death of Mahomet, were deprived of the

sceptre of the East.

104 (return) [ The Aglabites and Edrisites are the professed

subject of M. de Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne

sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 1-63.)]

105 (return) [ To escape the reproach of error, I must criticize

the inaccuracies of M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 359) concerning the

Edrisites. 1. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be founded in

the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous

child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year

168. 2. This founder, Edris, the son of Edris, instead of living

to the improbable age of 120 years, A. H. 313, died A. H. 214, in

the prime of manhood. 3. The dynasty ended A. H. 307,

twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of

the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. 158, 159, 185,

238.]

106 (return) [ The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides,

with the rise of that of the Samanines, are described in the

original history and Latin version of Mirchond: yet the most

interesting facts had already been drained by the diligence of M.

D’Herbelot.]

107 (return) [ M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p.

124-154) has exhausted the Toulunides and Ikshidites of Egypt,

and thrown some light on the Carmathians and Hamadanites.]

Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of

the successors of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of

commander of the faithful; 108 the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke

to the people, or conversed with the learned; the last who, in

the expense of his household, represented the wealth and

magnificence of the ancient caliphs. After him, the lords of the

Eastern world were reduced to the most abject misery, and exposed

to the blows and insults of a servile condition. The revolt of

the provinces circumscribed their dominions within the walls of

Bagdad: but that capital still contained an innumerable

multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with their

present state, and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which

had formerly been replenished by the spoil and tribute of

nations. Their idleness was exercised by faction and controversy.

Under the mask of piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal 109

invaded the pleasures of domestic life, burst into the houses of

plebeians and princes, the wine, broke the instruments, beat the

musicians, and dishonored, with infamous suspicions, the

associates of every handsome youth. In each profession, which

allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the other an

antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the

clamorous grief of the sectaries, who denied their title, and

cursed their progenitors. A turbulent people could only be

repressed by a military force; but who could satisfy the avarice

or assert the discipline of the mercenaries themselves? The

African and the Turkish guards drew their swords against each

other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra, 110

imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the

sanctuary of the mosch and harem. If the caliphs escaped to the

camp or court of any neighboring prince, their deliverance was a

change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite

the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, who silenced the factions of

Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and military powers

were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers,

and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by

his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the

faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the

ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling

multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon,

by the command of the stranger, and the rude hands of his

Dilamites. His palace was pillaged, his eyes were put out, and

the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station

of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the luxurious

caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the primitive

times. Despoiled of their armor and silken robes, they fasted,

they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of the

Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge, the functions

of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations still

waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law

and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of

their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the

sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been imbittered

by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of

Ali. Arising from the extremity of Africa, these successful

rivals extinguished, in Egypt and Syria, both the spiritual and

temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the monarch of the Nile

insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the Tigris.

108 (return) [ Hic est ultimus chalifah qui multum atque saepius

pro concione peroraret.... Fuit etiam ultimus qui otium cum

eruditis et facetis hominibus fallere hilariterque agere soleret.

Ultimus tandem chalifarum cui sumtus, stipendia, reditus, et

thesauri, culinae, caeteraque omnis aulica pompa priorum

chalifarum ad instar comparata fuerint. Videbimus enim paullo

post quam indignis et servilibius ludibriis exagitati, quam ad

humilem fortunam altimumque contemptum abjecti fuerint hi quondam

potentissimi totius terrarum Orientalium orbis domini. Abulfed.

Annal. Moslem. p. 261. I have given this passage as the manner

and tone of Abulfeda, but the cast of Latin eloquence belongs

more properly to Reiske. The Arabian historian (p. 255, 257,

261-269, 283, &c.) has supplied me with the most interesting

facts of this paragraph.]

109 (return) [ Their master, on a similar occasion, showed

himself of a more indulgent and tolerating spirit. Ahmed Ebn

Hanbal, the head of one of the four orthodox sects, was born at

Bagdad A. H. 164, and died there A. H. 241. He fought and

suffered in the dispute concerning the creation of the Koran.]

110 (return) [ The office of vizier was superseded by the emir al

Omra, Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Radhi,

and which merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukides:

vectigalibus, et tributis, et curiis per omnes regiones

praefecit, jussitque in omnibus suggestis nominis ejus in

concionibus mentionem fieri, (Abulpharagius, Dynart. p 199.) It

is likewise mentioned by Elmacin, (p. 254, 255.)]

In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed

after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile

transactions of the two nations were confined to some inroads by

sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible

hatred. But when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the

Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest

and revenge. The Byzantine empire, since the accession of the

Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and they might

encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty

emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national

foes of the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning

star, and the death of the Saracens, 111 were applied in the

public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in

the camp, as he was unpopular in the city. In the subordinate

station of great domestic, or general of the East, he reduced the

Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so

long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the empire. 112 His

military genius was displayed in the conduct and success of the

enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and dishonor. The

Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on safe and

level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore. Seven

months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the

native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their

brethren of Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double

ditch had been stormed by the Greeks a hopeless conflict was

still maintained in the streets and houses of the city. 1121 The

whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people

accepted, without resistance, the baptism of the conqueror. 113

Constantinople applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph;

but the Imperial diadem was the sole reward that could repay the

services, or satisfy the ambition, of Nicephorus.

111 (return) [ Liutprand, whose choleric temper was imbittered by

his uneasy situation, suggests the names of reproach and contempt

more applicable to Nicephorus than the vain titles of the Greeks,

Ecce venit stella matutina, surgit Eous, reverberat obtutu solis

radios, pallida Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus.]

112 (return) [ Notwithstanding the insinuation of Zonaras, &c.,

(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 197,) it is an undoubted fact, that Crete

was completely and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas, (Pagi,

Critica, tom. iii. p. 873-875. Meursius, Creta, l. iii. c. 7,

tom. iii. p. 464, 465.)]

1121 (return) [ The Acroases of Theodorus, de expugnatione

Cretae, miserable iambics, relate the whole campaign. Whoever

would fairly estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read

the description of the slinging a jackass into the famishing

city. The poet is in a transport at the wit of the general, and

revels in the luxury of antithesis. Theodori Acroases, lib. iii.

172, in Niebuhr’s Byzant. Hist.—M.]

113 (return) [ A Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found

in the Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit

Sirmond, for the use of Cardinal Baronius. This contemporary

legend casts a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th

century. He found the newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae

Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam....

but the victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad

baptismum omnes veraeque fidei disciplinam pepulit. Ecclesiis per

totam insulam aedificatis, &c., (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 961.)]

After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal

descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively

married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two

heroes of the age. They reigned as the guardians and colleagues

of her infant sons; and the twelve years of their military

command form the most splendid period of the Byzantine annals.

The subjects and confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at

least in the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand strong; and

of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses: 114 a

train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their

evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure of iron

spikes. A series of bloody and undecisive combats is nothing more

than an anticipation of what would have been effected in a few

years by the course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute the

conquests of the two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to the

desert of Bagdad. The sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, in

Cilicia, first exercised the skill and perseverance of their

troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not hesitate to bestow

the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia, which is

divided by the River Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were

predestined to death or slavery, 115 a surprising degree of

population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the

dependent districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault;

but Tarsus was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no

sooner had the Saracens yielded on honorable terms than they were

mortified by the distant and unprofitable view of the naval

succors of Egypt. They were dismissed with a safe-conduct to the

confines of Syria: a part of the old Christians had quietly lived

under their dominion; and the vacant habitations were replenished

by a new colony. But the mosch was converted into a stable; the

pulpit was delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and

gems, the spoils of Asiatic churches, were made a grateful

offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he

transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were fixed

in the walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his

victory. After they had forced and secured the narrow passes of

Mount Amanus, the two Roman princes repeatedly carried their arms

into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of

Antioch, the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to

respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he contented himself

with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation; left a

stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without

impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of winter, in

a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three

hundred soldiers, approached the rampart, applied his

scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm against

the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till

he was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his

reluctant chief. The first tumult of slaughter and rapine

subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and the

efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria

and the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the

walls of Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to

Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past

glory by the precipitate retreat which abandoned his kingdom and

capital to the Roman invaders. In his stately palace, that stood

without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a

well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred

mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls

of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and

the besiegers pitched their tents on the neighboring mountain of

Jaushan. Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen

and mercenaries; the guard of the gates and ramparts was

deserted; and while they furiously charged each other in the

market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a

common enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten

thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight of the

precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of the beasts of

burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a

licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from

the naked and bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they

commanded the husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they

themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more

than a hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and eighteen

pulpits of the principal moschs were committed to the flames to

expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of Mahomet. The classic

names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in

the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the

paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive

people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable

fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia. Since the

days of Heraclius, the Euphrates, below the passage of Mount

Taurus, had been impervious, and almost invisible, to the Greeks.

The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and

the historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the

once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, 116

and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood

of the Tigris. His ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping

the virgin treasures of Ecbatana, 117 a well-known name, under

which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the

Abbassides. The consternation of the fugitives had already

diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad

had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of

domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern

demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to

provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied,

that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn

from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which

he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture

of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand

pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the

apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the

Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and

the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils,

returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the

silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and

silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by

this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the

fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects

disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems

again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the

saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a

Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the

Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state.

Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia

and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and

useful accession to the Roman empire. 118

114 (return) [ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279. Liutprand was

disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that

Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]

115 (return) [ Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs

(Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa,

Mampsysta, Mansista, Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more

correctly, styled in the middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p.

580.) Yet I cannot credit this extreme populousness a few years

after the testimony of the emperor Leo, (Tactica, c. xviii. in

Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]

116 (return) [ The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names

of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and

Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers.

Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris;

of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore,

reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]

117 (return) [ Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam

everteret.... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe

existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud

Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only

with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the

true Ecbatana, (D’Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or

Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name

of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a

more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the

royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]

118 (return) [ See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and

Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of

Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras

(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199—l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p.

649-684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the Ms.

history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the

Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version,

(Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.) * Note: The whole

original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and

is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M

Lassen has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some

extracts from Kemaleddin’s account of the treaty for the

surrender of Aleppo.—M.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part I.

Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century.—Extent And

Division.—Wealth And Revenue.—Palace Of Constantinople.— Titles

And Offices.—Pride And Power Of The Emperors.— Tactics Of The

Greeks, Arabs, And Franks.—Loss Of The Latin Tongue.—Studies And

Solitude Of The Greeks.

A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the

tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal

volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 1 which he composed at a

mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to

unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war,

both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely

describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of

Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his

predecessors. 2 In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of

the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of

Europe and Asia. 3 The system of Roman tactics, the discipline

and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and

sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections,

which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. 4 In the

fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the

secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile

intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labors of

the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and history,

might redound to the benefit of the subject and the honor of the

Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics, 5 the code

and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were gradually framed in the

three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty. The art of

agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens, of

the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts

are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics 6 of

Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and

virtue were methodized in fifty-three books, 7 and every citizen

might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the

warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator,

the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a

teacher and a scribe; and if his successors and subjects were

regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the

everlasting legacy.

1 (return) [ The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple,

is elegantly defined by Claudian:— Ardua privatos nescit fortuna

Penates; Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas Excepit Tyrio

venerabile pignus in ostro.

And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many

passages expressive of the same idea.]

2 (return) [ A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae

et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda,

Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid

edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such

lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or

worthless object of their toil.]

3 (return) [ See, in the first volume of Banduri’s Imperium

Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando

Imperio, p. 45-127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of

Meursius is corrected from a Ms. of the royal library of Paris,

which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist. ad Polybium, p.

10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of William

Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance of the

greater D’Anville.]

4 (return) [ The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published

with the aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works

of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531-920,

1211-1417, Florent. 1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and

mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial

library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new

editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)]

5 (return) [ On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.

Graec. tom. xii. p. 425-514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris

Romani, p. 396-399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,

tom. i. p. 450-458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully

consulted: xli. books of this Greek code have been published,

with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris,

1647,) in seven tomes in folio; iv. other books have been since

discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman’s Novus Thesaurus

Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books,

John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or

synopsis. The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found in

the Corpus Juris Civilis.]

6 (return) [ I have used the last and best edition of the

Geoponics, (by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.)

I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the

long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two

books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris,

1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 493-500.)]

7 (return) [ Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been

preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus,

Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and

de Virtutibus et Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris,

1634.)]

A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the

gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these Imperial

treasures we may still deplore our poverty and ignorance; and the

fading glories of their authors will be obliterated by

indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink to a broken

copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek language, of

the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is

often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and the absolute

prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money,

enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life.

In the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the

inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a

pitch of energy and elevation the human character had formerly

aspired. But a contrary effect must have been produced by a new

edition of the lives of the saints, which the great logothete, or

chancellor of the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark

fund of superstition was enriched by the fabulous and florid

legends of Simon the Metaphrast. 8 The merits and miracles of the

whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage, than

the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the

Creator, and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal

authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in

expounding the precepts of the destroying art, which had been

taught since the days of Xenophon, 9 as the art of heroes and

kings. But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine are mingled with

the baser alloy of the age in which they lived. It was destitute

of original genius; they implicitly transcribe the rules and

maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was unskilled in

the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound the most

distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta and

that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and

Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these

military rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory

is dictated by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty,

consists in the application. The discipline of a soldier is

formed by exercise rather than by study: the talents of a

commander are appropriated to those calm, though rapid, minds,

which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations:

the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a

moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered

with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. The book

of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the

despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state

since the gradual decay of the purity of the one and the power of

the other. A review of the themes or provinces might promise such

authentic and useful information, as the curiosity of government

only can obtain, instead of traditionary fables on the origin of

the cities, and malicious epigrams on the vices of their

inhabitants. 10 Such information the historian would have been

pleased to record; nor should his silence be condemned if the

most interesting objects, the population of the capital and

provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the numbers of

subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial standard,

have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son

Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained

with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar

merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or

fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are

delineated with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks

alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe,

the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a

bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about

the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his

narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices

and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character

of freedom and genius. 11 From this scanty fund of foreign and

domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of

the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil

government and military force, the character and literature, of

the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of

Heraclius to his successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.

8 (return) [ The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are

described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460.) This

biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase

of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric

is again paraphrased in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely

a thread can be now visible of the original texture.]

9 (return) [ According to the first book of the Cyropaedia,

professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were

already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood.

A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not

unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new Mss.,

and his learning might illustrate the military history of the

ancients. But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and

alas! Quintus Icilius is no more. * Note: M. Guichardt, author of

Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et sur les Romains. See

Gibbon’s Extraits Raisonnees de mes Lectures, Misc. Works vol. v.

p. 219.—M]

10 (return) [ After observing that the demerit of the

Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he

inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.

The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram against

Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron—Eh bien? Le serpent en

mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the Anthology, I

should be curious to learn, through what channel it was conveyed

for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Themat. c. ii.

Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei Anthologia, l. ii.

p. 244.)]

11 (return) [ The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad

Nicephorum Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum

Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i.]

After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the

swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the

provinces and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The

weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion:

her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the kingdom of

Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and

Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient

and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was

torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were

oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of

Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province

which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The

islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval

powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbors of

Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel

emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The

remaining provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were

cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents,

the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the institution

of the themes, 12 or military governments, which prevailed under

the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the

royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and

seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful

or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but

some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear,

were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that

were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the

respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most

eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the memory of lost

dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of

the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were

transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the

duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the

theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the

successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid

advantages. The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil

the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries, of the

Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of Antioch,

the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the allegiance

of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed to the

throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed;

and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty extended their

sway from the sources of the Tigris to the neighborhood of Rome.

In the eleventh century, the prospect was again clouded by new

enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of Italy were swept away

by the Norman adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches

were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors.

After these losses, the emperors of the Comnenian family

continued to reign from the Danube to Peloponnesus, and from

Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding stream of the

Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece,

were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus, Rhodes,

and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Aegean or

Holy Sea; 13 and the remnant of their empire transcends the

measure of the largest of the European kingdoms.

12 (return) [ See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i.

p. 1-30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a

legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post

or province, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some

etymologies are attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian,

Thracesian, themes.]

13 (return) [ It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the

corrupt names of Archipelago, l’Archipel, and the Arches, have

been transformed by geographers and seamen, (D’Anville,

Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la

Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the

islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos, (Observations de

Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the epithet of

holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the

Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of

goats, to the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph.

Antiq. tom. i. p. 829.)]

The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of

all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city,

14 the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous

state. With the decline and fall of the empire, the cities of the

West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of Rome, or the

mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of Paris and

London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the situation

and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces and churches,

and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her treasures

might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still

promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and

Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less

fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could

be discovered which had not been violated by some fierce

Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless to

possess. From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was sinking

below its former level; the powers of destruction were more

active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war were

imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and

ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the

Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of

his sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer,

and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents

and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal

service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were

still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their country

was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil, climate, and

situation; and, in the support and restoration of the arts, their

patient and peaceful temper was more useful than the warlike

spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces that still

adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by the

misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost. From the yoke

of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa retired

to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their

brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of

oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile, and

Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of

Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled

from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably

entertained: their followers were encouraged to build new cities

and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and

Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of

these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had

seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were

gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as

long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity

supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers. Did we possess

sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of the

Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a

chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the clearest light

should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name

of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.

14 (return) [ According to the Jewish traveller who had visited

Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the

great city of the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par

Baratier, tom. l. c. v. p. 46.)]

As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the

Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus, 15 were overrun by

some Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of

Bulgaria. The strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops,

had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and

learning; but the savages of the north eradicated what yet

remained of their sickly and withered roots. In this irruption,

the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the Grecian

blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus

were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the

diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure

purified from the Barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by

an oath of obedience, tribute, and military service, which they

often renewed and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed

by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and

the Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction

of the approach of the praetor of Corinth revived the courage of

the citizens. Their sally was bold and successful; the strangers

embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was

ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the foremost

ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine

which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of

victory, and the captive race was forever devoted to the service

and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt

of two Sclavonian tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and

Lacedaemon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed. They

sometimes insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the

oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at length the

approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to

define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi,

whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of

gold. From these strangers the Imperial geographer has accurately

distinguished a domestic, and perhaps original, race, who, in

some degree, might derive their blood from the much-injured

Helots. The liberality of the Romans, and especially of Augustus,

had enfranchised the maritime cities from the dominion of Sparta;

and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled them with the

title of Eleuthero, or Free-Laconians. 16 In the time of

Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the name of

Mainotes, under which they dishonor the claim of liberty by the

inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores.

Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended

to the Cape of Malea: they accepted a chief or prince from the

Byzantine praetor, and a light tribute of four hundred pieces of

gold was the badge of their immunity, rather than of their

dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the character of

Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks. By the

zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of

Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by

these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were

proscribed in the Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus, 17

forty cities were still numbered, and the declining state of

Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be suspended in the tenth

century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique

splendor and their present desolation. The duty of military

service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the

lands or benefices of the province; a sum of five pieces of gold

was assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the same

capitation was shared among several heads of inferior value. On

the proclamation of an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused

themselves by a voluntary oblation of one hundred pounds of gold,

(four thousand pounds sterling,) and a thousand horses with their

arms and trappings. The churches and monasteries furnished their

contingent; a sacrilegious profit was extorted from the sale of

ecclesiastical honors; and the indigent bishop of Leucadia 18 was

made responsible for a pension of one hundred pieces of gold. 19

15 (return) [ Says Constantine, (Thematibus, l. ii. c. vi. p.

25,) in a style as barbarous as the idea, which he confirms, as

usual, by a foolish epigram. The epitomizer of Strabo likewise

observes, (l. vii. p. 98, edit. Hudson. edit. Casaub. 1251;) a

passage which leads Dodwell a weary dance (Geograph, Minor. tom.

ii. dissert. vi. p. 170-191) to enumerate the inroads of the

Sclavi, and to fix the date (A.D. 980) of this petty geographer.]

16 (return) [ Strabon. Geograph. l. viii. p. 562. Pausanius,

Graec. Descriptio, l. c 21, p. 264, 265. Pliny, Hist. Natur. l.

iv. c. 8.]

17 (return) [ Constantin. de Administrando Imperio, l. ii. c. 50,

51, 52.]

18 (return) [ The rock of Leucate was the southern promontory of

his island and diocese. Had he been the exclusive guardian of the

Lover’s Leap so well known to the readers of Ovid (Epist. Sappho)

and the Spectator, he might have been the richest prelate of the

Greek church.]

19 (return) [ Leucatensis mihi juravit episcopus, quotannis

ecclesiam suam debere Nicephoro aureos centum persolvere,

similiter et ceteras plus minusve secundum vires suos, (Liutprand

in Legat. p. 489.)]

But the wealth of the province, and the trust of the revenue,

were founded on the fair and plentiful produce of trade and

manufacturers; and some symptoms of liberal policy may be traced

in a law which exempts from all personal taxes the mariners of

Peloponnesus, and the workmen in parchment and purple. This

denomination may be fairly applied or extended to the

manufacturers of linen, woollen, and more especially of silk: the

two former of which had flourished in Greece since the days of

Homer; and the last was introduced perhaps as early as the reign

of Justinian. These arts, which were exercised at Corinth,

Thebes, and Argos, afforded food and occupation to a numerous

people: the men, women, and children were distributed according

to their age and strength; and, if many of these were domestic

slaves, their masters, who directed the work and enjoyed the

profit, were of a free and honorable condition. The gifts which a

rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the emperor

Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian

looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern

which imitated the spots of a peacock’s tail, of a magnitude to

overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple name

of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah.

She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and

denomination: the silk was painted with the Tyrian dye, and

adorned by the labors of the needle; and the linen was so

exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the

hollow of a cane. 20 In his description of the Greek

manufactures, an historian of Sicily discriminates their price,

according to the weight and quality of the silk, the closeness of

the texture, the beauty of the colors, and the taste and

materials of the embroidery. A single, or even a double or treble

thread was thought sufficient for ordinary sale; but the union of

six threads composed a piece of stronger and more costly

workmanship. Among the colors, he celebrates, with affectation of

eloquence, the fiery blaze of the scarlet, and the softer lustre

of the green. The embroidery was raised either in silk or gold:

the more simple ornament of stripes or circles was surpassed by

the nicer imitation of flowers: the vestments that were

fabricated for the palace or the altar often glittered with

precious stones; and the figures were delineated in strings of

Oriental pearls. 21 Till the twelfth century, Greece alone, of

all the countries of Christendom, was possessed of the insect who

is taught by nature, and of the workmen who are instructed by

art, to prepare this elegant luxury. But the secret had been

stolen by the dexterity and diligence of the Arabs: the caliphs

of the East and West scorned to borrow from the unbelievers their

furniture and apparel; and two cities of Spain, Almeria and

Lisbon, were famous for the manufacture, the use, and, perhaps,

the exportation, of silk. It was first introduced into Sicily by

the Normans; and this emigration of trade distinguishes the

victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless hostilities of

every age. After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, his

lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and

artificers of both sexes, a trophy glorious to their master, and

disgraceful to the Greek emperor. 22 The king of Sicily was not

insensible of the value of the present; and, in the restitution

of the prisoners, he excepted only the male and female

manufacturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labor, says the

Byzantine historian, under a barbarous lord, like the old

Eretrians in the service of Darius. 23 A stately edifice, in the

palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this industrious

colony; 24 and the art was propagated by their children and

disciples to satisfy the increasing demand of the western world.

The decay of the looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the troubles

of the island, and the competition of the Italian cities. In the

year thirteen hundred and fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister

republics, enjoyed the lucrative monopoly. 25 A domestic

revolution dispersed the manufacturers to Florence, Bologna,

Venice, Milan, and even the countries beyond the Alps; and

thirteen years after this event the statutes of Modena enjoin the

planting of mulberry-trees, and regulate the duties on raw silk.

26 The northern climates are less propitious to the education of

the silkworm; but the industry of France and England 27 is

supplied and enriched by the productions of Italy and China.

20 (return) [ See Constantine, (in Vit. Basil. c. 74, 75, 76, p.

195, 197, in Script. post Theophanem,) who allows himself to use

many technical or barbarous words: barbarous, says he. Ducange

labors on some: but he was not a weaver.]

21 (return) [ The manufactures of Palermo, as they are described

by Hugo Falcandus, (Hist. Sicula in proem. in Muratori Script.

Rerum Italicarum, tom. v. p. 256,) is a copy of those of Greece.

Without transcribing his declamatory sentences, which I have

softened in the text, I shall observe, that in this passage the

strange word exarentasmata is very properly changed for

exanthemata by Carisius, the first editor Falcandus lived about

the year 1190.]

22 (return) [ Inde ad interiora Graeciae progressi, Corinthum,

Thebas, Athenas, antiqua nobilitate celebres, expugnant; et,

maxima ibidem praeda direpta, opifices etiam, qui sericos pannos

texere solent, ob ignominiam Imperatoris illius, suique principis

gloriam, captivos deducunt. Quos Rogerius, in Palermo Siciliae,

metropoli collocans, artem texendi suos edocere praecepit; et

exhinc praedicta ars illa, prius a Graecis tantum inter

Christianos habita, Romanis patere coepit ingeniis, (Otho

Frisingen. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in Muratori

Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 668.) This exception allows the bishop

to celebrate Lisbon and Almeria in sericorum pannorum opificio

praenobilissimae, (in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom.

ix. p. 415.)]

23 (return) [ Nicetas in Manuel, l. ii. c. 8. p. 65. He describes

these Greeks as skilled.]

24 (return) [ Hugo Falcandus styles them nobiles officinas. The

Arabs had not introduced silk, though they had planted canes and

made sugar in the plain of Palermo.]

25 (return) [ See the Life of Castruccio Casticani, not by

Machiavel, but by his more authentic biographer Nicholas Tegrimi.

Muratori, who has inserted it in the xith volume of his

Scriptores, quotes this curious passage in his Italian

Antiquities, (tom. i. dissert. xxv. p. 378.)]

26 (return) [ From the Ms. statutes, as they are quoted by

Muratori in his Italian Antiquities, (tom. ii. dissert. xxv. p.

46-48.)]

27 (return) [ The broad silk manufacture was established in

England in the year 1620, (Anderson’s Chronological Deduction,

vol. ii. p. 4: ) but it is to the revocation of the edict of

Nantes that we owe the Spitalfields colony.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part II.

I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials

of the times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the

revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire. From every

province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver

discharged into the Imperial reservoir a copious and perennial

stream. The separation of the branches from the trunk increased

the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and the maxims of

despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital to the

palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller,

who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his

admiration of the Byzantine riches. “It is here,” says Benjamin

of Tudela, “in the queen of cities, that the tributes of the

Greek empire are annually deposited and the lofty towers are

filled with precious magazines of silk, purple, and gold. It is

said, that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign twenty

thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the shops, taverns,

and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and

Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and

land.” 28 In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew is

doubtless respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five

days would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions

sterling, I am tempted to retrench at least the numerous

festivals of the Greek calendar. The mass of treasure that was

saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest a splendid,

though indefinite, idea of their supplies and resources. The

mother of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to

check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful son, by a free

and faithful account of the wealth which he inherited; one

hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and three hundred

thousand of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of her

deceased husband. 29 The avarice of Basil is not less renowned

than his valor and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and

rewarded without breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand

pounds of gold, (about eight millions sterling,) which he had

buried in the subterraneous vaults of the palace. 30 Such

accumulation of treasure is rejected by the theory and practice

of modern policy; and we are more apt to compute the national

riches by the use and abuse of the public credit. Yet the maxims

of antiquity are still embraced by a monarch formidable to his

enemies; by a republic respectable to her allies; and both have

attained their respective ends of military power and domestic

tranquillity.

28 (return) [ Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, tom. i. c. 5, p.

44-52. The Hebrew text has been translated into French by that

marvellous child Baratier, who has added a volume of crude

learning. The errors and fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a

sufficient ground to deny the reality of his travels. * Note: I

am inclined, with Buegnot (Les Juifs d’Occident, part iii. p. 101

et seqq.) and Jost (Geschichte der Israeliter, vol. vi. anhang.

p. 376) to consider this work a mere compilation, and to doubt

the reality of the travels.—M.]

29 (return) [ See the continuator of Theophanes, (l. iv. p. 107,)

Cedremis, (p. 544,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 157.)]

30 (return) [ Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 225,) instead of

pounds, uses the more classic appellation of talents, which, in a

literal sense and strict computation, would multiply sixty fold

the treasure of Basil.]

Whatever might be consumed for the present wants, or reserved for

the future use, of the state, the first and most sacred demand

was for the pomp and pleasure of the emperor, and his discretion

only could define the measure of his private expense. The princes

of Constantinople were far removed from the simplicity of nature;

yet, with the revolving seasons, they were led by taste or

fashion to withdraw to a purer air, from the smoke and tumult of

the capital. They enjoyed, or affected to enjoy, the rustic

festival of the vintage: their leisure was amused by the exercise

of the chase and the calmer occupation of fishing, and in the

summer heats, they were shaded from the sun, and refreshed by the

cooling breezes from the sea. The coasts and islands of Asia and

Europe were covered with their magnificent villas; but, instead

of the modest art which secretly strives to hide itself and to

decorate the scenery of nature, the marble structure of their

gardens served only to expose the riches of the lord, and the

labors of the architect. The successive casualties of inheritance

and forfeiture had rendered the sovereign proprietor of many

stately houses in the city and suburbs, of which twelve were

appropriated to the ministers of state; but the great palace, 31

the centre of the Imperial residence, was fixed during eleven

centuries to the same position, between the hippodrome, the

cathedral of St. Sophia, and the gardens, which descended by many

a terrace to the shores of the Propontis. The primitive edifice

of the first Constantine was a copy, or rival, of ancient Rome;

the gradual improvements of his successors aspired to emulate the

wonders of the old world, 32 and in the tenth century, the

Byzantine palace excited the admiration, at least of the Latins,

by an unquestionable preeminence of strength, size, and

magnificence. 33 But the toil and treasure of so many ages had

produced a vast and irregular pile: each separate building was

marked with the character of the times and of the founder; and

the want of space might excuse the reigning monarch, who

demolished, perhaps with secret satisfaction, the works of his

predecessors. The economy of the emperor Theophilus allowed a

more free and ample scope for his domestic luxury and splendor. A

favorite ambassador, who had astonished the Abbassides themselves

by his pride and liberality, presented on his return the model of

a palace, which the caliph of Bagdad had recently constructed on

the banks of the Tigris. The model was instantly copied and

surpassed: the new buildings of Theophilus 34 were accompanied

with gardens, and with five churches, one of which was

conspicuous for size and beauty: it was crowned with three domes,

the roof of gilt brass reposed on columns of Italian marble, and

the walls were incrusted with marbles of various colors. In the

face of the church, a semicircular portico, of the figure and

name of the Greek sigma, was supported by fifteen columns of

Phrygian marble, and the subterraneous vaults were of a similar

construction. The square before the sigma was decorated with a

fountain, and the margin of the basin was lined and encompassed

with plates of silver. In the beginning of each season, the

basin, instead of water, was replenished with the most exquisite

fruits, which were abandoned to the populace for the

entertainment of the prince. He enjoyed this tumultuous spectacle

from a throne resplendent with gold and gems, which was raised by

a marble staircase to the height of a lofty terrace. Below the

throne were seated the officers of his guards, the magistrates,

the chiefs of the factions of the circus; the inferior steps were

occupied by the people, and the place below was covered with

troops of dancers, singers, and pantomimes. The square was

surrounded by the hall of justice, the arsenal, and the various

offices of business and pleasure; and the purple chamber was

named from the annual distribution of robes of scarlet and purple

by the hand of the empress herself. The long series of the

apartments was adapted to the seasons, and decorated with marble

and porphyry, with painting, sculpture, and mosaics, with a

profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones. His fanciful

magnificence employed the skill and patience of such artists as

the times could afford: but the taste of Athens would have

despised their frivolous and costly labors; a golden tree, with

its leaves and branches, which sheltered a multitude of birds

warbling their artificial notes, and two lions of massy gold, and

of natural size, who looked and roared like their brethren of the

forest. The successors of Theophilus, of the Basilian and

Comnenian dynasties, were not less ambitious of leaving some

memorial of their residence; and the portion of the palace most

splendid and august was dignified with the title of the golden

triclinium. 35 With becoming modesty, the rich and noble Greeks

aspired to imitate their sovereign, and when they passed through

the streets on horseback, in their robes of silk and embroidery,

they were mistaken by the children for kings. 36 A matron of

Peloponnesus, 37 who had cherished the infant fortunes of Basil

the Macedonian, was excited by tenderness or vanity to visit the

greatness of her adopted son. In a journey of five hundred miles

from Patras to Constantinople, her age or indolence declined the

fatigue of a horse or carriage: the soft litter or bed of

Danielis was transported on the shoulders of ten robust slaves;

and as they were relieved at easy distances, a band of three

hundred were selected for the performance of this service. She

was entertained in the Byzantine palace with filial reverence,

and the honors of a queen; and whatever might be the origin of

her wealth, her gifts were not unworthy of the regal dignity. I

have already described the fine and curious manufactures of

Peloponnesus, of linen, silk, and woollen; but the most

acceptable of her presents consisted in three hundred beautiful

youths, of whom one hundred were eunuchs; 38 “for she was not

ignorant,” says the historian, “that the air of the palace is

more congenial to such insects, than a shepherd’s dairy to the

flies of the summer.” During her lifetime, she bestowed the

greater part of her estates in Peloponnesus, and her testament

instituted Leo, the son of Basil, her universal heir. After the

payment of the legacies, fourscore villas or farms were added to

the Imperial domain; and three thousand slaves of Danielis were

enfranchised by their new lord, and transplanted as a colony to

the Italian coast. From this example of a private matron, we may

estimate the wealth and magnificence of the emperors. Yet our

enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle; and, whatsoever may

be its value, the luxury of life is possessed with more innocence

and safety by the master of his own, than by the steward of the

public, fortune.

31 (return) [ For a copious and minute description of the

Imperial palace, see the Constantinop. Christiana (l. ii. c. 4,

p. 113-123) of Ducange, the Tillemont of the middle ages. Never

has laborious Germany produced two antiquarians more laborious

and accurate than these two natives of lively France.]

32 (return) [ The Byzantine palace surpasses the Capitol, the

palace of Pergamus, the Rufinian wood, the temple of Adrian at

Cyzicus, the pyramids, the Pharus, &c., according to an epigram

(Antholog. Graec. l. iv. p. 488, 489. Brodaei, apud Wechel)

ascribed to Julian, ex-praefect of Egypt. Seventy-one of his

epigrams, some lively, are collected in Brunck, (Analect. Graec.

tom. ii. p. 493-510; but this is wanting.]

33 (return) [ Constantinopolitanum Palatium non pulchritudine

solum, verum stiam fortitudine, omnibus quas unquam videram

munitionibus praestat, (Liutprand, Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 465.)]

34 (return) [ See the anonymous continuator of Theophanes, (p.

59, 61, 86,) whom I have followed in the neat and concise

abstract of Le Beau, (Hint. du Bas Empire, tom. xiv. p. 436,

438.)]

35 (return) [ In aureo triclinio quae praestantior est pars

potentissimus (the usurper Romanus) degens caeteras partes

(filiis) distribuerat, (Liutprand. Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 469.) For

this last signification of Triclinium see Ducange (Gloss. Graec.

et Observations sur Joinville, p. 240) and Reiske, (ad

Constantinum de Ceremoniis, p. 7.)]

36 (return) [ In equis vecti (says Benjamin of Tudela) regum

filiis videntur persimiles. I prefer the Latin version of

Constantine l’Empereur (p. 46) to the French of Baratier, (tom.

i. p. 49.)]

37 (return) [ See the account of her journey, munificence, and

testament, in the life of Basil, by his grandson Constantine, (p.

74, 75, 76, p. 195-197.)]

38 (return) [ Carsamatium. Graeci vocant, amputatis virilibus et

virga, puerum eunuchum quos Verdunenses mercatores obinmensum

lucrum facere solent et in Hispaniam ducere, (Liutprand, l. vi.

c. 3, p. 470.)—The last abomination of the abominable

slave-trade! Yet I am surprised to find, in the xth century, such

active speculations of commerce in Lorraine.]

In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of noble

and plebeian birth, the sovereign is the sole fountain of honor;

and the rank, both in the palace and the empire, depends on the

titles and offices which are bestowed and resumed by his

arbitrary will. Above a thousand years, from Vespasian to Alexius

Comnenus, 39 the Caesar was the second person, or at least the

second degree, after the supreme title of Augustus was more

freely communicated to the sons and brothers of the reigning

monarch. To elude without violating his promise to a powerful

associate, the husband of his sister, and, without giving himself

an equal, to reward the piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty

Alexius interposed a new and supereminent dignity. The happy

flexibility of the Greek tongue allowed him to compound the names

of Augustus and Emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator,) and the union

produces the sonorous title of Sebastocrator. He was exalted

above the Caesar on the first step of the throne: the public

acclamations repeated his name; and he was only distinguished

from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments of the head and

feet. The emperor alone could assume the purple or red buskins,

and the close diadem or tiara, which imitated the fashion of the

Persian kings. 40 It was a high pyramidal cap of cloth or silk,

almost concealed by a profusion of pearls and jewels: the crown

was formed by a horizontal circle and two arches of gold: at the

summit, the point of their intersection, was placed a globe or

cross, and two strings or lappets of pearl depended on either

cheek. Instead of red, the buskins of the Sebastocrator and

Caesar were green; and on their open coronets or crowns, the

precious gems were more sparingly distributed. Beside and below

the Caesar the fancy of Alexius created the Panhypersebastos and

the Protosebastos, whose sound and signification will satisfy a

Grecian ear. They imply a superiority and a priority above the

simple name of Augustus; and this sacred and primitive title of

the Roman prince was degraded to the kinsmen and servants of the

Byzantine court. The daughter of Alexius applauds, with fond

complacency, this artful gradation of hopes and honors; but the

science of words is accessible to the meanest capacity; and this

vain dictionary was easily enriched by the pride of his

successors. To their favorite sons or brothers, they imparted the

more lofty appellation of Lord or Despot, which was illustrated

with new ornaments, and prerogatives, and placed immediately

after the person of the emperor himself. The five titles of, 1.

Despot; 2. Sebastocrator; 3. Caesar; 4. Panhypersebastos; and, 5.

Protosebastos; were usually confined to the princes of his blood:

they were the emanations of his majesty; but as they exercised no

regular functions, their existence was useless, and their

authority precarious.

39 (return) [ See the Alexiad (l. iii. p. 78, 79) of Anna

Comnena, who, except in filial piety, may be compared to

Mademoiselle de Montpensier. In her awful reverence for titles

and forms, she styles her father, the inventor of this royal

art.]

40 (return) [ See Reiske, and Ceremoniale, p. 14, 15. Ducange has

given a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople,

Rome, France, &c., (sur Joinville, xxv. p. 289-303;) but of his

thirty-four models, none exactly tally with Anne’s description.]

But in every monarchy the substantial powers of government must

be divided and exercised by the ministers of the palace and

treasury, the fleet and army. The titles alone can differ; and in

the revolution of ages, the counts and praefects, the praetor and

quaestor, insensibly descended, while their servants rose above

their heads to the first honors of the state. 1. In a monarchy,

which refers every object to the person of the prince, the care

and ceremonies of the palace form the most respectable

department. The Curopalata, 41 so illustrious in the age of

Justinian, was supplanted by the Protovestiare, whose primitive

functions were limited to the custody of the wardrobe. From

thence his jurisdiction was extended over the numerous menials of

pomp and luxury; and he presided with his silver wand at the

public and private audience. 2. In the ancient system of

Constantine, the name of Logothete, or accountant, was applied to

the receivers of the finances: the principal officers were

distinguished as the Logothetes of the domain, of the posts, the

army, the private and public treasure; and the great Logothete,

the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues, is compared with

the chancellor of the Latin monarchies. 42 His discerning eye

pervaded the civil administration; and he was assisted, in due

subordination, by the eparch or praefect of the city, the first

secretary, and the keepers of the privy seal, the archives, and

the red or purple ink which was reserved for the sacred signature

of the emperor alone. 43 The introductor and interpreter of

foreign ambassadors were the great Chiauss 44 and the Dragoman,

45 two names of Turkish origin, and which are still familiar to

the Sublime Porte. 3. From the humble style and service of

guards, the Domestics insensibly rose to the station of generals;

the military themes of the East and West, the legions of Europe

and Asia, were often divided, till the great Domestic was finally

invested with the universal and absolute command of the land

forces. The Protostrator, in his original functions, was the

assistant of the emperor when he mounted on horseback: he

gradually became the lieutenant of the great Domestic in the

field; and his jurisdiction extended over the stables, the

cavalry, and the royal train of hunting and hawking. The

Stratopedarch was the great judge of the camp: the Protospathaire

commanded the guards; the Constable, 46 the great Aeteriarch, and

the Acolyth, were the separate chiefs of the Franks, the

Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary strangers,

who, at the decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the

Byzantine armies. 4. The naval powers were under the command of

the great Duke; in his absence they obeyed the great Drungaire of

the fleet; and, in his place, the Emir, or Admiral, a name of

Saracen extraction, 47 but which has been naturalized in all the

modern languages of Europe. Of these officers, and of many more

whom it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military

hierarchy was framed. Their honors and emoluments, their dress

and titles, their mutual salutations and respective preeminence,

were balanced with more exquisite labor than would have fixed the

constitution of a free people; and the code was almost perfect

when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and servitude,

was forever buried in the ruins of the empire. 48

41 (return) [ Par exstans curis, solo diademate dispar, Ordine

pro rerum vocitatus Cura-Palati, says the African Corippus, (de

Laudibus Justini, l. i. 136,) and in the same century (the vith)

Cassiodorus represents him, who, virga aurea decoratus, inter

numerosa obsequia primus ante pedes regis incederet (Variar. vii.

5.) But this great officer, (unknown,) exercising no function,

was cast down by the modern Greeks to the xvth rank, (Codin. c.

5, p. 65.)]

42 (return) [ Nicetas (in Manuel, l. vii. c. 1) defines him. Yet

the epithet was added by the elder Andronicus, (Ducange, tom. i.

p. 822, 823.)]

43 (return) [ From Leo I. (A.D. 470) the Imperial ink, which is

still visible on some original acts, was a mixture of vermilion

and cinnabar, or purple. The emperor’s guardians, who shared in

this prerogative, always marked in green ink the indiction and

the month. See the Dictionnaire Diplomatique, (tom. i. p.

511-513) a valuable abridgment.]

44 (return) [ The sultan sent to Alexius, (Anna Comnena, l. vi.

p. 170. Ducange ad loc.;) and Pachymer often speaks, (l. vii. c.

1, l. xii. c. 30, l. xiii. c. 22.) The Chiaoush basha is now at

the head of 700 officers, (Rycaut’s Ottoman Empire, p. 349,

octavo edition.)]

45 (return) [ Tagerman is the Arabic name of an interpreter,

(D’Herbelot, p. 854, 855;), says Codinus, (c. v. No. 70, p. 67.)

See Villehardouin, (No. 96,) Bus, (Epist. iv. p. 338,) and

Ducange, (Observations sur Villehardouin, and Gloss. Graec. et

Latin)]

46 (return) [ A corruption from the Latin Comes stabuli, or the

French Connetable. In a military sense, it was used by the Greeks

in the eleventh century, at least as early as in France.]

47 (return) [ It was directly borrowed from the Normans. In the

xiith century, Giannone reckons the admiral of Sicily among the

great officers.]

48 (return) [ This sketch of honors and offices is drawn from

George Cordinus Curopalata, who survived the taking of

Constantinople by the Turks: his elaborate, though trifling, work

(de Officiis Ecclesiae et Aulae C. P.) has been illustrated by

the notes of Goar, and the three books of Gretser, a learned

Jesuit.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part III.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 62 / 79 章

The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the