CHAP. about three years the power, or rather the pleasures, XLII. of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of Constantine the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the 1025, Dec. title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the longest and most obscure of the Byzantine IX. A. D. Romanus III. Argy 1028, Nov. 12. history. A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of rus, A. D. one hundred and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine the Ninth, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage was discussed in the council of their dying father, Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person, and fair reputation, was chosen for her husband; and on his declining that honour, was informed that blindness or death was the second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection, but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety and greatness, and her entrance into a monastery removed the only bar to the imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine the sceptre devolved to Romanus the Third; but the mature age, the forty-eight years of Zoe, were less favourable to the hopes of pregnancy than to criminal indulgence. Her favourite chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian, of the name of Michael, whose first trade had been that of a money-changer; and XLII. the Paphla Romanus either connived at their criminal inter- CHAP. course, or accepted a slight assurance of their innocence. But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress is capable of poisoning her husband; and the death of Romanus was instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of Michael the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, Michael IV. however, disappointed: instead of a grateful lover, she had placed in her bed a miserable wretch, whose A. D. 1034, April 11. health and reason were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of the mind and body were summoned to his aid, and his hopes were amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and except restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?) Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a crime, of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His administration was only the art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in the hands of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline of his brother's health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who derived his surname of Calaphates from his father's occupation in the careening of vessels: at the command of the eunuch, Zoe adopted for her son the son of a mechanic; and this fictitious heir was invested with the title and purple of the Cæsars, in the presence of the senate and clergy. So feeble was the character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power which she had recovered by the death of the Paphlagonian; and at the end of four days she placed the crown on the head of Michael the Fifth, who had CHAP. protested that he should ever reign the first and XLII. most obedient of her subjects. The only act of his Michael V. short reign was his base ingratitude to his benefactors, A.D. 1041, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the Calaphates, Dec. 14. Zoe and former was pleasing to the public; but the murmurs, and at length the clamours, of Constantinople, deplored the exile of Zoe, the daughter of so many emperors: her vices were forgotten, and Michael was taught that there is a period in which the patience of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of every degree assembled in a formidable tumult, which lasted three days; they besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their mother Zoe A.D. 1042, from her prison, Theodora from her monastery, and April 21. condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes, or of his life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate, and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But this singular union subsisted no more than two months; the two sovereigns, their tempers, interests, and adherents, were secretly hostile to each other; and as Theodora was still adverse to marriage, Zoe, at the age of sixty, consented for the public good to sustain the embraces of a third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and number were Constantine Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of Monomamachus, chus, the single combatant, must have been expresA. D. 1042, sive of his valour and victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was broken by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the isle of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in the appellation of his mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with the title and pomp of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous apart X. Mono June 11. CHAP. XLII. A. D. 1054, ment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between his wife and his concubine. He survived them both; but the last measures of Constantine, to change the order of succession, were prevented by the more vigilant friends of Theodora; and after his decease she resumed, with Theodora, the general consent, the possession of her inheritance. Nov. 30. In her name, and by the influence of four eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael the Sixth. The Michael VI. surname of Stratioticus declares his military profes- A. D. 1056, sion; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only Aug. 22. see with the eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers. Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sank into the grave; the last of the Macedonian, or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females. Stratioticus, A. D.1057, Aug. 31. From this night of slavery a ray of freedom, or at Isaac I. least of spirit, begins to emerge: the Greeks either Commenus, preserved or revived the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue; and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliance of the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni, who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honour of a Roman origin; but the family had been long since transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighbourhood of the Euxine; and one of their chiefs, XLII. CHAP. who had already entered the paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret, the modest though honourable dwelling of his fathers. The first of their line was the illustrious Manuel, who, in the reign of the second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the troubles of the East: he left in a tender age two sons, Isaac and John, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed to the gratitude and favour of his sovereign. The noble youths were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts of the palace, and the exercises of the camp and from the domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers, with a captive princess of Bulgaria and the daughter of a patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon, from the number of enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters, the elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more deserving generals, and their discontent was inflamed by the parsimony of the emperor, and the insolence of the eunuchs. They secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes of the military synod would have been unanimous in favour of the old and valiant Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the veteran had not suggested the importance of birth as well as merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnenus was approved by general consent; and the associates separated, without delay to meet in the plains of Phrygia, at the head of their respective squadrons and detachments. The cause of Michael was defended in a single battle by the mercenaries of the imperial guard, who were aliens to the public in |