THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. CHAPTER XLII. Series of Greek Emperors, from Leo the Philosopher to CHAP. XLII. Constantine tus. A. D. 11. IN the Greek language purple and porphyry are the same word; and as the colours of nature are invariable, we may learn that a dark deep red was the Alexander Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients. VII. PorAn apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined phyrogeniwith porphyry: it was reserved for the use of the 911, May pregnant empresses; and the royal birth of their children was expressed by the appellation of porphyrogenite, or born in the purple. Several of the Roman princes had been blessed with an heir; but this peculiar surname was first applied to Constantine the Seventh. His life and titular reign were of equal duration; but of fifty-four years, six had XLII. CHAP. elapsed before his father's death; and the son of Leo was ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who oppressed his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander, who had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first colleague and governor of the young prince: but in a rapid career of vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the reputation of Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely death, he entertained a project of mutilating his nephew, and leaving the empire to a worthless favourite. The succeeding years of the minority of Constantine were occupied by his mother Zoe, and a succession of council of seven regents, who pursued their interest. gratified their passions, abandoned the republic, supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the presence of a soldier. From an obscure origin Romanus Lecapenus had raised himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national esteem. With a victorious and affectionate fleet he sailed from the mouth of the Danube into the harbour of Constantinople, and was hailed as the deliverer of Romanus I. the people, and the guardian of the prince. His A. D. 919, supreme office was at first defined by the new apDec. 24. pellation of father of the emperor; but Romanus Lecapenus. soon disdained the subordinate powers of a minister, and assumed, with the titles of Cæsar and Augustus, the full independence of royalty, which he held near Christopher, five-and-twenty years. His three sons, Christopher, Constantine Stephen, and Constantine, were successively adorned Stephen, VIII. with the same honours, and the lawful emperor was degraded from the first to the fifth rank in this college of princes; yet in the preservation of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own fortune and the clemency of the usurper. The examples of ancient and modern history would have excused XLII. the ambition of Romanus: the powers and the laws CHAP. of the empire were in his hands; the spurious birth of Constantine would have justified his exclusion, and the grave or the monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine; but Lecapenus does not appear to have possessed either the virtues or the vices of a tyrant. The spirit and activity of his private life dissolved away in the sunshine of the throne, and in his licentious pleasures he forgot the safety both of the republic and of his family. Of a mild and religious character, he respected the sanctity of oaths, the innocence of the youth, the memory of his parents, and the attachment of the people. The studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil, were a constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a personal talent, which few princes could employ in the hour of adversity. The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own Constantine vices and those of his children. After the decease 945, Jan. VII. A. D. of Christopher, his eldest son, the two surviving 27. brothers quarrelled with each other, and conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered his apartment with an armed force, and conveyed him, in the habit of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled by a religious community. The rumour of this domestic revolution excited a tumult in the city; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care; and the sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the benefit of their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife XLII. CHAP. of Constantine, revealed or supposed their treacherous design of assassinating her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were alarmed; and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his imperial colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet. In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine the Seventh obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled, or seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and glory; and the studies which had amused and dignified his leisure were incompatible with the serious duties of a sovereign. The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits of intemperance and sloth, he dropt the reins of the administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and in the shifting scene' of her favour and caprice each minister was regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the Greeks: they excused his failings; they respected his learning, his innocence and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his subjects. The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in the vestibule of the palace; and the civil and military officers, the patricians, the senate and the clergy, approached in due order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign. Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre, a herald proclaimed this awful admonition, "Arise, |