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THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.


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THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.Large Crozun ivo. Cloth, Illustrated, 5s.

The Volumes are also kept in thefollowing Special Bindings :Half Persian, cloth sides, gilt top ; FuH calf, half extra,

marbled edges ; Tree calf, gilt edges, gold rollinside, full gilt back.

By Arthur Oilman,Dy Prof. J. K.

S.

nOME.M.A.THE JEWS.HOS.MER.GERMANY. By Rev,Baring-Gould, M.A.CARTHAGE. By Prof. AlfredJ. ClURCH.ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE.By Prof. J. P. Mamakfv.THE MOORS IN SPAIN. ByStam.ev Lane-Poole.ANCIENT EGYPT. By Prof.George Rawlinso.n.HUNGARY. By Prof. Armi-N'lLS VaMBERY.THE SARACENS. By ArthurGlLMAN, M.A.IRELAND. By the Hon. EmilyLawless.CHALDEA. By Z^naIde A.Kagozin.THE GOTHS. By HenryBradley.ASSYRIA. By Z^naide A.Ragozin.TURKEY. By Stanley Lane-Poole.HOLLAND. By Prof. J. E.Thorold Rogers.

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27-28.

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MEDIiEVAL FRANCE. ByGustave Masson.PERSIA. By S. G. W. Ben-jamin.PHOENICIA. By Prof. Geo.Rawlinson.

By Z^NAiDE A,EDIA.Ragozin.THE HANSA TOWNS.Helen Zimmern. By

By Prof.ARLY BRITAIN.Alfred J. Church.THE BARBARY CORSAIRS.By Stanley Lane-Poole.RUSSIA. By W. R. MoR.FILL, >LA.THE JEWS UNDER THEROMANS. By W. DouglasMorrison.SCOTLAND. By John Mac-kintosh, LL.D.SWITZERLAND. By Mrs-LinA Lug and R. Stead.MEXICO. By Susan Hale.PORTUGAL. By H. ]SIorseStephens.THE NORMANS. By SarahOrne Jewett.

London : T. FISHER UNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.G.


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INTERIOR OF ST. SOPHIA.


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HR

THEByzantine Empire

C. W. C. OMAN, M.A., F.S.A.FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORDAuthor of

WARWICK THE KINGMAKER, THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES, ETC.

gonhonT. FISHER UN WIN

PATERNOSTER SQUARENEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

MDCCCXCII


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Entered at Stationers' HallBy T. fisher UNWIN

Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892(For the United States of America)

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PREFACE.

Fifty years ago the word Byzantine was usedas a synonym for all that was corrupt and decadent,and the tale of the East-Roman Empire was dis-missed by modern historians as depressing andmonotonous. The great Gibbon had branded thesuccessors of Justinian and Heraclius as a series ofvicious weaklings, and for several generations no onedared to contradict him.Two books have served to undeceive the Englishreader, the monumental work of Finlay, published in1856, and the more modern volumes of Mr. Bury,which appeared in 1889. Since they have written,the Byzantines no longer need an apologist, and thegreat work of the East-Roman Empire in holdingback the Saracen, and in keeping alive throughoutthe Dark Ages the lamp of learning, is beginning tobe realized.The writer of this book has endeavoured to tell

the story of Byzantium in the spirit of Finlay andBury, not in that of Gibbon. He wishes to acknow-ledge his debts both to the veteran of the war of


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Vlll PREFACE.Greek Independence, and to the young Dublin pro-fessor Without their aid his task would have beenvery heavywith it the difficulty was removed.The author does not claim to have grappled withall the chroniclers of the Eastern realm, but thinksthat some acquaintance with Ammianus, Procopius,Maurice's Strategikon, Leo the Deacon, Leo theWise, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnenaand Nicctas, may justify his having undertaken thetask he has essayed.Oxford,

February, 1892.


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X


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CONTENTS. XI

X. PAGEThe Darkest Hour 128-140

]\Iisfortunes of Phocas, 129Accession of Heraclius, 131The Letter of Chosroes, 133Victories of Heraclius, 135First Siege of Constantinople, 137Triumph of Heraclius, 139.

XI.Social and Religious Life (a.d. 320-620) 141-157

Decay of the Latin tongue, 143Christianity and the State,145Christianity and Slavery, 147Evils of Monasticism,149 Superstitions, 151Weaknesses of Byzantine Society,153Estimate of Byzantine Society, 155-57-

. xn.The Coming of the Saracens . . . 158-172

Rise of Mahomet, 159Arab Invasion of Syria, 161Jerusa-lem taken, 163The Sons of Heraclius, 165The Themescreated, 167Wars of Constans II., 169 Reign of Con-stantine IV., 171.

XIII.

The First Anarchv 173-183Justinian II., i76--Usurpation and Fall of Leontius, 177Restoration of Justinian II., 179Anarchy, 711-17 A.D., 181Accession of Leo the Isaurian, 183.

XIV.The Saracens Turned Back . . . 184-1S8

Constantinople beleaguered, 1S5The Siege raised, 187.


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xii CONTENTS.

XV. PAGEThe Iconoclasts (a.d. 720-802) . . . 189-201

Sviperstitious Van ties, 191Leo's Crusade against Images,193Constantine V. dissolves the Monasteries, 197Ireneblinds her son, 199Coronation of Charles the Great, 201.

XVI.The End of the Iconoclasts (a.d. 802-886) 202-214

Reign of Nicephorus I., 203Reign of Leo V., 205Michaelthe Amorian, 207Persecution by Theophilus, 209Thechoice of Theophilus, 211Michael the Drunkard, 213.

XVII.The Literary Emperors and their Time (a.d.

886-963) 215-225Reigns of Leo VI. and Constantine VII., 217Leo's Tactica,219Art and Letters, 221The Commerce of Constantinople,225.

XVIII.Military Glory 226-239

Decay of the Saracen power, 227Conquests of NicephorusPhocas, 229Capture of Antioch, 231Murder of NicephorusI., 233John Zimisces defeats the Russians, 235Triumphof Zimisces, 237Death of Zimisces, 239.

XIX.The End of the Macedonian Dynasty . 240-248

The Bulgarian Wars, 241Death of King Samuel, 243TlieEmpress Zoc and her Marriages, 245-7.


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CONTENTS. XUlXX.

PAGEManzikert (a.d. 1057-1081) . . . 249-257The coming of the Seljouks, 251Misfortunes of RomanusDiogenes, 255Character of Alexius Comnenus, 257.

XXI.The Comneni and the Crusades . . 258-273

Norman War, 259Battle I. of Durazzo, 261The Crusades,263Conquests of Alexius, 265Second Norman War, 267Reign of John Comnenus 269^Wars of Manuel I., 271Fallof Andronicus I., 273.

XXII.The Latin Conquest of Constantinople . 274-293

Misfortunes of the Angeli, 275Cyprus and Bulgaria lost,277The Fourth Crusade, 279The Leaders of the Crusade,281Rising against the Franks, 285The two Sieges of Con-stantinople, 287The Franks enter Constantinople, 289Plunder of the City, 291The End of Alexius Ducas, 293.

XXIII.The Latin Empire and the Empire of Nicaea

(a.d. 1204-1261) ..... 294-306Baldwin I. slain in Battle, 295The Smaller Latin States, 297Successes of Theodore Lascaris, 299John Vatatzes conquersThrace, 301Usurpation of Michael Paleologus, 303TheFranks driven from Constantinople, 305.

XXIV.Decline and Decay (a.d. i 261-1328) . 307-320

Weakness of the restored Empire, 309Commercial Decay,311Rise of the Ottoman Turks, 313Turkish Wars ofAndronicus II., 315Roger de Flor, 317Asia Minor lost,319-


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XIV CONTENTS.XXV

The Turks in Europe PAGE321-331Orkhan the Turk, 323Revolt of Cantncuzcnus, 325Con-quests of the Servians, 327The Turks cross into Europe, 329Siege of PhiKidelphia, 331.

XXVI.The End of a Long Tale (a.d. 1370-1453) 332-350

Reign of John Paleologus, 333Turkish Civil Wars, 335Murad II. attacks Constantinople, 337Death of Manuel II.,339John VI. at Florence, 341Mahomet II. attacks Con-stantinople, 343Apathy of the Greeks, 345Last Hours ofConstantine XL, 347Fall of Constantinople, 349.

Index ;5i


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.PAGE

INTERIOR OF ST. SOPHIA Frontispiece.EARLY COIN OF BYZANTIUM 4LATE COIN OF BYZANTIUM SHOWING CRESCENT AND

STAR 4CONSTANTINK THE GREAT I4MAP OF THE HEART OF CONSTANTINOPLE . . . 20THE ATMEIDAN [HIPPODROME] AND ST. SOPHIA . 23BUILDING A PALACE (FROM A BYZANTINE MS.) . . 26FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DRAWING OF THE EQUESTRIAN

STATUE OF CONSTANTINE 28GOTHIC IDOLS (FROM THE COLUMN OF ARCADIUS) . 33GOTHIC CAPTIVES (FROM IHE COLUMN OF ARCADIUS) . 43ANGEL OF VICTORY (FROM A FIFTH-CENTURY DIPTVCH).

FROM l'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET.PARIS, QUANTIN, 1883 58

THE EMPRESS THEODORA AND HER COURT (FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883) 68

THEODORA IMPERATRIX (FROM THE PAINTING BY VALPRINSEP. THE COPYRIGHT IS IN THE ARTIST'SHANDS) . , 78


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Xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.PAGE

CAVALRY SCOUTS (FROM A BVZANTINE MS.). FROMl'ART BYZANTIN. par CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883 86

DETAILS OF ST. SOPHIA ...... 96COLUMNS IN ST. SOPHIA 1 08GALLERIES OF ST. SOPHIA HOCROSS OF JUSTINUS II. (FROM THE VATICAN). FROM

l'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883 118

GENERAL VIEW OF ST. SOPHIA (FROM L'ART BYZANTIN.PAR C. BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883) . . . I46

ILLUMINATED INITIALS (FROM BYZANTINE MSS.). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR C. BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN,1883 . . .152CHURCH OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES AT THESSALONICA(FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET.PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883) 1 76

BISHOPS, MONKS, KINGS, L.\YMEN, AND WOMEN, ADOR-ING THE MADONNA ^FROM A BYZANTINE MS.). FROML'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883 191

REPRESENTATION OF THE MADONNA ENTHRONED (FROMA BYZANTINE IVORY). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN.PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QU.ANTIN, 1883. . I95

DETAILS OF ST. SOPHIA 200BYZANTINE METAL WORK (OUR LORD AND THE TWELVE

APOSTLES). FROM l'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLESBAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883 209

A WARRIOR-SAINT (ST. LEONTIUS) (FROM A BYZANTINEFRESCO). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLESBAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883 . . . .223


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XVllI'AGE

RETURN OF A VICTORIOUS EMPEROR (FROM AN EM-BROIDERED robe). from L'ART BYZANTIN. PARCHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 18S3 . . 232

ARABESQUE DESIGN FROM A BYZANTINE MS. (FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883 236

RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE FROM BYZANTINE MODEL(CHURCH AT VLADIMIR). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN.PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1S83 . 238

OUR LORD BLESSING ROMANUS DIOGENES AND EUDOCIA(from an IVORY AT PARIS). FROM L'ART BYZAN-TIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1S83 253

NICEPHORUS BOTANIAT-ES SITTING IN STATE (FR0 \I ACONTEMPORARY MS.). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN.PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1883 . 355

BYZANTINE IVORY-CARVING OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY(FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM). FROM L'ARTBYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN,1883 266

HUNTERS (FROM A BYZANTINE MS.). FROM L'ARTBYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN,1883 270

VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE. (FROM THE SIDE OF THEHARBOUR) . . . . . . . . 283

BYZANTINE RELIQUARY (FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR

CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883) . . 289FINIAL FROM A BYZANTINE MS. (FROM L'ART BYZAN-

TIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883 299FOUNTAIN IN THE COURT OF ST. SOPHIA . . . 302

I*


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XVlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.PAfJE

BYZANTINE CHAPEL AT ANI, THE OLD CAPITAL OVARMENLV (from L'ART UVZANTIN. PAR CHARLESBAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883) . . . -313

ANDRONICUS PALEOLOGUS ADORING OUR LORD (FROMl'ART BYZANTIN. par CHARLES BAYET. PARIS,QUANTIN, 1883) ......... 316

JOHN CANTACUZENUS SITTING IN STATE (FROM A CON-TEMPORARY MS.). FROM L'ART BVZANTIN. PARCHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883 . . 326

MANUEL PALEOLOGUS AND HIS FAMILY (FROM A CON-TEMPORARY MS.). FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PARCHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883 . . 335

ARABESQUE DESIGN FROM A BYZANTINE MS. (FROML'aRT BYZANTIN. PAR CHARLES BAYET. PARLS,QUANTIN, 1883) 338

DETAILS OF ST. SOPHIA 345ANGEL OF THE NIGHT (FROM L'ART BYZANTIN. PAR

CHARLES BAYET. PARIS, QUANTIN, 1 883) . . 350

*^W


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THE STORY OFTHE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

BYZANTIUM.Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years /^

ago a Httle fleet of galleys toiled painfully against thecurrent up the long strait of the Hellespont, rowedacross the broad Propontis, and came to anchor inthe smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into theEuropean shore of the Bosphorus. There a longcrescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to knowas the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles,forming a quiet backwater from the rapid streamwhich runs outside. On the headland, enclosedbetween this inlet and the open sea, a few hundredcolonists disembarked, and hastily secured themselvesfrom the wild tribes of the inland, by running somerough sort of a stockade across the ground from beachto beach. Thus was founded the city of Byzantium.The settlers were Greeks of the Dorian race,natives of the thriving seaport-state of Megara, one of


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2 ByzA^'TIU^I.the most enterprising of all the cities of Hellas in thetime of colonial and commercial expansion which wasthen at its height. Wherever a Greek prow had cutits way into unknown waters, there Megarian seamenwere soon found following in its wake. One band ofthese venturesome traders pushed far to the West toplant colonies in Sicily, but the larger share of theattention of Megara was turned towards the sunrising,towards the mist-enshrouded entrance of the BlackSea and the fabulous lands that lay beyond. There,as legends told, was to be found the realm of theGolden Fleece, the Eldorado of the ancient world,where kings of untold wealth reigned over the tribesof Colchis : there dwelt, by the banks of the riverThermodon, the Amazons, the warlike women whohad once vexed far-off Greece by their inroads : there,too, was to be found, if one could but struggle farenough up its northern shore, the land of the Hyper-boreans, the blessed folk who dwell behind the NorthWind and know nothing of storm and winter. Toseek these fabled wonders the Greeks sailed everNorth and East till they had come to the extremelimits of the sea. The riches of the Golden Fleecethey did not find, nor the country of the Hyper-boreans, nor the tribes of the Amazons ; but they diddiscover many lands well worth the knowing, andgrew rich on the profits which they drew from themetals of Colchis and the forests of Paphlagonia, fromthe rich corn lands by the banks of the Dnieper andBug, and the fisheries of the Bosphorus and theMaeotic Lake. Presently the whole coastland of thesea, which the Greeks, on their first coming, called


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POUNDATION OF BYZANTIUM. 3Axeinos the Inhospitable became fringed withtrading settlements, and its name was changedto Euxeinos the Hospitable in recognition ofits friendly ports. It was in a similar spirit that, twothousand years later, the seamen who led the nextgreat impulse of exploration that rose in Europe,turned the name of the Cape of Storms into thatof the Cape of Good Hope.The Megarians, almost more than any other Greeks,devoted their attention to the Euxine, and thefoundation of Byzantium was but one of their manyachievements. Already, seventeen years beforeByzantium came into being, another band ofMegarian colonists had established themselves atChalcedon, on the opposite Asiatic shore of theBosphorus. The settlers who were destined to foundthe greater city applied to the oracle of Delphi togive them advice as to the site of their new home, andApollo, we are told, bade them build their townover against the city of the blind. They thereforepitched upon the headland by the Golden Horn,reasoning that the Chalcedonians were truly blind tohave neglected the more eligible site on the Thracianshore, in order to found a colony on the far less in-viting Bithynian side of the strait.From the first its situation m.arked out Byzantiumas destined for a great future. Alike from the mili-tary and from the commercial point of view no citycould have been better placed. Looking out from theeasternmost headland of Thrace, with all Europebehind it and all Asia before, it was equally wellsuited to be the frontier fortress to defend the border


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BYZANTiUAf.

of the one, or the basis of operations for an invasionfrom the other. As fortresses went in those early daysit was almost impregnabletwo sides protected bythe water, the third by a strong wall not commandedby any neighbouring heights. In all its early historyByzantium never fell by storm : famine or treacheryaccounted for the few occasions on which it fell intothe hands of an enemy. In its commercial aspect theplace was even more favourably situated. It com-pletely commanded the whole Black Sea trade : every

EARLY COIN OK liYZANTIUM.

LATE COIN OF BYZANTIUM SHOWING CRESCENT AND STAR.vessel that went forth from Greece or Ionia to trafficwith Scythia or Colchis, the lands by the Danubemouth or the shores of the Maeotic Lake, had to passclose under its walls, so that the prosperity of a hun-dred Hellenic towns on the Euxine was always at themercy of the masters of Byzantium. The Greek lovedshort stages and frequent stoppages, and as a half-wayhouse alone Byzantium would have been prosperous :but it had also a flourishing local trade of its ownwith the tribes of the neighbouring Thracian inland,


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AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE. 5and drew much profit from its fisheries : so much sothat the city badgeits coat of arms as we shouldcall itcomprised a tunny-fish as well as the famousox whose form alluded to the legend of the namingof the Bosphorus.iAs an independent state Byzantium had a long andeventful history. For thirty years it was in the handsof the kings of Persia, but with that short exceptionit maintained its freedom during the first three hun-dred years that followed its foundation. Many stirringscenes took place beneath its walls : it was close tothem that the great Darius threw across theBosphorus his bridge of boats, which served as amodel for the more famous structure on which hisson Xerxes crossed the Hellespont. Fifteen yearslater, when Byzantium in common with all its neigh-bours made an ineffectual attempt to throw off thePersian yoke, in the rising called the Ionic Revolt,it was held for a time by the arch-rebel Histiaeus,whoas much to enrich himself as to pay his seameninvented strait dues. He forced every ship passingup or down the Bosphorus to pay a heavy toll, andwon no small unpopularity thereby for the cause offreedom which he professed to champion. Ere longByzantium fell back again into the hands of Persia,but she was finally freed from the Oriental yokeseventeen years later, when the victorious Greeks,fresh from the triumph of Salamis and Mycale, sailedup to her walls and after a long leaguer starved out

' See coin on opposite page. The Bosphorus was supposed tohave drawn its name from being the place where lo, when transformedinto a cow, forded the strait from Europe into Asia [Boi'^-Trnp6i],


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6 BYZANTIUM.the obstinate garrison [B.C. 479]. The fleet winteredthere, and it was at Byzantium that the first founda-tions of the naval empire of Athens were laid, whenall the Greek states of Asia placed their ships atthe disposal of the Athenian admirals Cimon andAristeides.During the fifth century Byzantium twice declared

war on Athens, now the mistress of the seas, and oneach occasion fell into the hands of the enemyonceby voluntary surrender in 439 B.C., once by treacheryfrom within, in 408 B.C. But the Athenians, except inone or two disgraceful cases, did not deal hardly withtheir conquered enemies, and the Byzantines escapedanything harder than the payment of a heavy warindemnity. In a few years their commercial gainsrepaired all the losses of war, and the state was itselfagain.We know comparatively little about the internalhistory of these early centuries of the life of Byzantium.Some odd fragments of information survive here andthere : we know, for example, that they used ironinstead of copper for small money, a peculiarityshared by no other ancient state save Sparta. Theiralphabet rejoiced in an abnormally shajx^d B, whichpuzzled all other Greeks, for it resembled a TT with anextra limb.^ The chief gods of the city were thosethat we might have expectedPoseidon the ruler ofthe sea, whose blessing gave Byzaiitium its chiefwealth ; and Demetcr, the goddess who presided overthe Thracian and Scythian corn lands which formedits second source of prosperity.

' See coin on page 4,


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BYZANTINE LUXURY. 7The Byzantines were, if ancient chroniclers tell usthe truth, a luxurious as well as a busy race : they

spent too much time in their numerous inns, wherethe excellent wines of Maronea and other neighbour-ing places offered great temptations. They weregluttons too as well as tipplers : on one occasion, weare assured, the whole civic militia struck work in theheight of a siege, till their commander consented toallow restaurants to be erected at convenient distancesround the ramparts. One comic writer informs usthat the Byzantines were eating young tunny-fishtheir favourite dishso constantly, that their wholebodies had become well-nigh gelatinous, and it wasthought they might melt if exposed to too great heat Probably these tales are the scandals of neighbourswho envied Byzantine prosperity, for it is at any ratecertain that the city showed all through its historygreat energy and love of independence, and nevershrank from war as we should have expected a nationof epicures to do.

It was not till the rise of Philip of Macedon andhis greater son Alexander that Byzantium fell for thefifth time into the hands of an enemy. The elderking was repulsed from the city's walls after a longsiege,culminating in an attempt at an escalade by night,which was frustrated owing to the sudden appearanceof a light in heaven, which revealed the advancingenemy and was taken by the Byzantines as a tokenof special divine aid [B.C. 339]. In commemorationof it they assumed as one of their civic badges theblazing crescent and star, which has descended to ourown days and is still used as an emblem by the present


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8 BYZANTIUM.owners of the cit\'the Ottoman Sultans. But afterrepulsing Philip the Byzantines had to submit someyears later to Alexander. They formed under himpart of the enormous Macedonian empire, and passedon his decease through the hands of his successorsDemetrius Poliorcetes, and Lysimachus. After thedeath of the latter in battle, however, they recovereda precarious freedom, and were again an independentcommunity for a hundred \'ears, till the power ofRome invaded the regions of Thrace and the Helles-pont.Byzantium was one of the cities which took the

wise course of making an early alliance with theRomans, and obtained good and easy terms in conse-quence. During the wars of Rome with Macedonand Antiochus the Great it proved such a faithfulassistant that the Senate gave it the status of a civitaslibera et foederata, a free and confederate city, andit was not taken under direct Roman government, butallowed complete liberty in everything save the con-trol of its foreign relations and the payment of atribute to Rome. It was not till the Roman Republichad long passed away, that the Emperor Vespasianstripped it of these privileges, and threw it into theprovince of Thrace, to exist for the future as anordinary provincial town [a.D. 'Ji\.Though deprived of a liberty which had for long

years been almost nominal, Byzantium could not bedeprived of its unrivalled position for commerce. Itcontinued to flourisli under the Pax Romana, thelong-continued peace which all the inner countries ofthe empire enjoyed during the first two centuries of


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BYZANTIUM DESTROYED A.D. I96. 9the imperial regime, and is mentioned again and againas one of the most important cities of the middleregions of the Roman world.

But an evil time for Byzantium, as for all the otherparts of the civilized world, began when the goldenage of the Antonines ceased, and the epoch of the mili-tary emperors followed. In 192 A.D., Commodus, theunworthy son of the great and good Marcus Aurelius,was murdered, and ere long three military usurperswere wrangling for his blood-stained diadem. Mostunhappily for itself Byzantium lay on the line ofdivision between the eastern provinces, where Pes-cennius Niger had been proclaimed, and the Illyrianprovinces, where Severus had assumed the imperialstyle. The city was seized by the army of Syria, andstrengthened in haste. Presently Severus appearedfrom the west, after he had made himself master ofRome and Italy, and fell upon the forces of his rivalPescennius. Victory followed the arms of the Illy-rian legions, the east was subdued, and the Syrianemperor put to death. But when all his otheradherents had yielded, the garrison of Byzantiumrefused to submit. For more than two years theymaintained the impregnable city against the lieu-tenants of Severus, and it was not till A.D. 196 thatthey were forced to yield. The emperor appeared inperson to punish the long-protracted resistance of thetown ; not only the garrison, but the civil magistratesof Byzantium were slain before his eyes. The massivewalls so firmly built with great square stones clampedtogether with bolts of iron, that the whole seemed butone block, were laboriously cast down. The property


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lO BYZANTIUM.of the citizens was confiscated, and the town itselfdeprived of all municipal privileges and handed overto be governed like a dependent village by its neigh-bours of Perinthus.

Caracalla, the son of Severus, gave back to theByzantines the right to govern themselves, but thetown had received a hard blow, and would haverequired a long spell of peace to recover its prosperity.Peace however it was not destined to see. All throughthe middle years of the third century it was vexed bythe incursions of the Goths, who harried mercilesslythe countries on the Black Sea whose commerce sus-t^ned its trade. Under Gallienus in A.D. 263 it wasagain~selzed^b^an usurping emperor, and shared thefate of his adherents. The soldiers of Gallienussacked Byzantium from cellar to garret, and madesuch a slaughter of its inhabitants that it is said thatthe old Mcgarian race who had so long possessed itwere absolutely exterminated. But the irresistibleattraction of the site was too great to allow its ruinsto remain desolate. Within ten years after its sackby the army of Gallienus, we find Byzantium againa populous town, and its inhabitants are speciallypraised by the historian Trebellius Pollio for thecourage with which they repelled a Gothic raid in thereign of Claudius II.The strong Illyrian emperors, who staved off fromthe Roman Empire the ruin which appeared about tooverwhelm it in the third quarter of the third century,gave Byzantium time and peace to recover its ancientprosperity. It profited especially from the constantneighbourhood of the imperial court, after Diocletian


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TAKEN BY MAXIMINUS. IIfixed his residence at Nicomedia, only sixty milesaway, on the Bithynian side of the Propontis. Butthe military importance of Byzantium was alwaysinterfering with its commercial greatness. After theabdication of Diocletian the empire was for twentyyears vexed by constant partitions of territory betweenthe colleagues whom he left behind him, Byzantiumafter a while found itself the border fortress of Licinius,the emperor who ruled in the Balkan Peninsula, whileMaximinus Daza was governing the Asiatic provinces.While Licinius was absent in Italy, Maximinustreacherously attacked his rival's dominions withoutdeclaration of war,and took Byzantium by surprise. Butthe lUyrian emperor returned in haste, defeated hisgrasping neighbour not far from the walls of the city,and recovered his great frontier fortress after it hadbeen only a few months out of his hands [a.D. 314].The town must have suffered severely by changingmasters twice in the same year ; it does not, however,seem to have been sacked or burnt, as was so oftenthe case with a captured city in those dismal days.But Licinius when he had recovered the place set towork to render it impregnable. Though it was nothis capital he made it the chief fortress of his realm,which, since the defeat of Maximinus, embraced thewhole eastern half of the Roman world.

It was accordingly at Byzantium that Liciniusmade his last desperate stand, when in A.D. 323 hefound himself engaged in an unsuccessful war withhis brother-in-law Constantine, the Emperor of theWest. For many months the war stood still beneaththe walls of the city ; but Constantine persevered in


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12 BYZANTIUM.the siege, raising great mounds which overlooked thewalls, and sweeping away the defenders by a constantstream of missiles, launched from dozens of militaryengines which he had erected on these artificialheights. At last the city surrendered, and the causeof Licinius was lost, Constantine, the last of hisrivals subdued, became the sole emperor of theRoman world, and stood a victor on the rampartswhich were ever afterwards to bear his name.


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14 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.which we recognize in his great predecessor Augustus,or in Frederic the Great of Prussia.

ThouGfh the strain of old Roman blood in his veinsmust have been but small, Constantine was in manyw^ays a typical Roman ; the hard, cold, steady, un-

i:rTr 5,? ^,,'^J^, ^lf, )iy,^'6y^,

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.wearying energy, which in earlier centuries had wonthe empire of the world, w^as once more incarnate inhim. But if Roman in character, he was anythingbut Roman in his sympathies. Born by the Danube,


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CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. I5reared in the courts and camps of Asia and Gaul, hewas absolutely free from any of that superstitiousreverence for the ancient glories of the city on theTiber which had inspired so many of his predecessors.Italy was to him but a secondary province amongsthis wide realms. When he distributed his dominionsamong his heirs, it was Gaul that he gave as thenoblest share to his eldest and best-loved son : Italywas to him a younger child's portion. There hadbeen emperors before him who had neglected Rome :the barbarian Maximinus I. had dwelt by the Rhineand the Danube ; the politic Diocletian had chosenNicomedia as his favourite residence. But no onehad yet dreamed of raising up a rival to the mistressof the world, and of turning Rome into a provincialtown. If preceding emperors had dwelt far afield,it was to meet the exigencies of war on the frontiersor the government of distant provinces. It wasreserved for Constantine to erect over against Romea rival metropolis for the civilized world, an imperialcity which was to be neither a mere camp nor a merecourt, but the administrative and commercial centreof the Roman world.

For more than a hundred years Rome had been amost inconvenient residence for the emperors. Themain problem which had been before them was therepelling of incessant barbarian inroads on the BalkanPeninsula ; the troubles on the Rhine and the Eu-phrates, though real enough, had been but minor evils.Rome, placed half way down the long projection ofItaly, handicapped by its bad harbours and separatedfrom the rest of the empire by the passes of the Alps,


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l6 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.was too far away from the points where the emperorwas most wantedthe banks of the Danube and thewalls of Sirmium and Singidunum. For the ever-recurrin


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CONSTANTINE S CHOICE. I7sentiment with the emperor's early days. Nicomediaon its long gulf at the east end of the Propontis wasa more eligible situation in every way, and hadalready served as an imperial residence. But allthat could be urged in favour of Nicomedia appliedwith double force to Byzantium, and, in addition,Constantine had no wish to choose a city in whichhis own memory would be eclipsed by that of hispredecessor Diocletian, and whose name was asso-ciated by the Christians, the class of his subjects whomhe had most favoured of late, with the persecutions ofDiocletian and Galerius. For Ilium, the last placeon which Constantine had cast his mind, nothingcould be alleged except its ancient legendary glories,and the fact that the mythologists of Rome hadalways fabled that their city drew its origin from theexiled Trojans of ^Eneas. Though close to the seait had no good harbour, and it was just too far fromthe mouth of the Hellespont to command effectuallythe exit of the Euxine,

Byzantium, on the other hand, was thoroughly wellknown to Constantine. For months his camphad been pitched beneath its walls ; he must haveknown accurately every inch of its environs, and noneof its military advantages can have missed his eye.Nothing, then, could have been more natural than hisselection of the old Megarian city for his new^ capital.Yet the Roman world was startled at the first newsof his choice ; Byzantium had been so long knownmerely as a great port of call for the Euxine trade, andas a first-class provincial fortress, that it was hard toconceive of it as a destined seat of empire.

3


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l8 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.When once Constantine had determined to makeByzantium his capital, in preference to any other

place in the Balkan lands, his measures were takenwith his usual energy and thoroughness. The limitsof the new city were at once marked out by solemnprocessions in the old Roman style. In later ages apicturesque legend was told to account for the mag-nificent scale on which it was planned. The emperor,we read, marched out on foot, followed by all hiscourt, and traced with his spear the line where thenew fortifications were to be drawn. As he pacedon further and further westward along the shore ofthe Golden Horn, till he was more than two milesaway from his starting-point, the gate of old Byzan-tium, his attendants grew more and more surprised atthe vastness of his scheme. At last they ventured toobserve that he had already exceeded the most amplelimits that an imperial city could require. But Con-stantine turned to rebuke them : I shall go on, hesaid, until He, the invisible guide who marchesbefore me, thinks fit to stop. Guided by his myste-rious presentiment of greatness, the emperor advancedtill he was three miles from the eastern angle ofByzantium, and only turned his steps when he hadincluded in his boundary line all the seven hills whichare embraced in the peninsula between the Propontisand the Golden Horn.The rising ground just outside the walls of the old

city, where Constantine's tent had been pitched duringthe siege of B.C. 323, was selected out as the market-place of the new foundation. There he erected theMilion, or golden milestone, from which all the


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THE TOPOGRAPHY OF CONSTANTINOPLE. IQdistances of the eastern world were in future to bemeasured. This central point of the world wasnot a mere single stone, but a small building like atemple, its roof supported by seven pillars ; withinwas placed the statue of the emperor, together withthat of his venerated mother, the Christian EmpressHelena.The south-eastern part of the old town of Byzan-tium was chosen by Constantine for the site of his

imperial palace. The spot was cleared of all privatedwellings for a space of 150 acres, to give spacenot only for a magnificent residence for his wholecourt, but for spacious gardens and pleasure-grounds.A wall, commencing at the Lighthouse, where theBosphorus joins the Propontis, turned inland andswept along parallel to the shore for about a mile,in order to shut off the imperial precinct from thecity.

North-west of the palace lay the central open spacein which the life of Constantinople was to find its centre.This was the Augustaeum, a splendid oblong forum,about a thousand feet long by three hundred broad.It was paved with marble and surrounded on all sidesby stately public buildings. To its east, as we havealready said, lay the imperial palace, but between thepalace and the open space were three detached edi-fices connected by a colonnade. Of these, the mosteasterly was the Great Baths, known, from theirbuilder, as the Baths of Zeuxippus. They werebuilt on the same magnificent scale which the earlieremperors had used in Old Rome, though they couldnot, perhaps, vie in size with the enormous Baths


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THE SENATE HOUSE. 21of Caracalla. Constantine utilized and enlarged theold public bath of Byzantium, which had been re-built after the taking of the city by Severus. Headorned the frontage and courts of the edifice withstatues taken from every prominent town of Greeceand Asia, the old Hellenic masterpieces which hadescaped the rapacious hands of twelve generationsof

plundering proconsuls and Caesars. There wereto be seen the Athene of Lyndus, the Amphithriteof Rhodes, the Pan which had been consecrated bythe Greeks after the defeat of Xerxes, and the Zeusof Dodona.

Adjoining the Baths, to the north, lay the secondgreat building, on the east side of the Augustaeumthe Senate House. Constantine had determined toendow his new city with a senate modelled on thatof Old Rome, and had indeed persuaded many oldsenatorial families to migrate eastward by judiciousgifts of pensions and houses. We know that theassembly was worthily housed, but no details surviveabout Constantine's building, on account of its havingbeen twice destroyed within the century. But, likethe Baths of Zeuxippus, it was adorned with ancientstatuary, among which the Nine Muses of Heliconare specially cited by the historian who describes theburning of the place in B.C. 404.

Linked to the Senate House by a colonnade, lay onthe north the Palace of the Patriarch, as the Bishop ofByzantium was ere long to be called, when raised tothe same status as his brethren of Antioch andAlexandria. A fine building in itself, with a spacioushall of audience and a garden, the patriarchal dwelling


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22 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLt:.was yet completely overshadowed by the imperialpalace which rose behind it. And so it was withthe patriarch himself: he lived too near his royalmaster to be able to gain any independent authority.Physically and morally alike he was too much over-looked by his august neighbour, and never found theleast opportunity of setting up an independent spiritualauthority over against the civil government, or offounding an iuiperuun in imperio like the Bishop ofRome.

All along the western side of the Augustaeum,facing the three buildings which we have alreadydescribed, lay an edifice which played a very pro-minent part in the public life of Constantinople.This was the great Hippodrome, a splendid circus640 cubits long and 160 broad, in which were re-newed the games that Old Rome had known so well.The whole system of the chariot races between theteams that represented the factions of the Circuswas reproduced at Byzantium with an energy thateven surpassed the devotion of the Romans to horseracing. From the first foundation of the city therivalry of the Blues and the Greens was oneof the most striking features of the life of the place.It was carried far beyond the circus, and spread intoall branches of life. We often hear of the Green faction identifying itself with Arianism, or of the Blue supporting a pretender to the throne. Notmerely men of sporting interests, but persons of allranks and professions, chose their colour and backedtheir faction. The system was a positive danger tothe public peace, and constantly led to riots, culmi-


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24 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.nating in the great sedition of a.d. 523, which weshall presently have to describe at length. In theHippodrome the *' Greens always entered by thenorth-eastern gate, and sat on the east side ; the Blues approached by the north-western gate andstretched along the western side. The emperor'sbox, called the Kathisma, occupied the whole of theshort northern side, and contained many hundreds ofseats for the imperial retinue. The great centralthrone of the Kathisma was the place in which themonarch showed himself most frequently to his sub-jects, and around it many strange scenes were enacted.It was on this throne that the rebel Hypatius wascrowned emperor by the mob, with his own wife'snecklace for an impromptu diadem. Here also, twocenturies later, the Emperor Justinian II. sat in stateafter his reconquest of Constantinople, with his rivals,Leontius and Apsimarus, bound beneath his foot-stool, while the populace chanted, in allusion to thenames of the vanquished princes, the verse, Thoushalt trample on the Lion and the Asp.Down the centre of the Hippodrome ran the spina, or division wall, which every circus showed ;it was ornamented with three most curious monu-ments, whose strange juxtaposition seemed almostto typify the heterogeneous materials from which thenew city was built up. The first and oldest was anobelisk brought from Egypt, and covered with theusual hieroglyphic inscriptions ; the second was themost notable, though one of the least beautiful, ofthe antiquities of Constantinople : it was the three-headed brazen serpent which Pausanias and the


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THE HIPPODROME. 25victorious Greeks had dedicated at Delphi in 479B.C., after they had destroyed the Persian army atPlatsea. The golden tripod, which was supportedby the heads of the serpents, had long been wanting :the sacrilegious Phocians had stolen it six centuriesbefore ; but the dedicatory inscriptions engraved onthe coils of the pedestal survived then and survivenow to delight the archaeologist. The third monu-ment on the spina was a square bronze column ofmore modern work, contrasting strangely with thevenerable antiquity of its neighbours. By somefreak of chance all three monuments liave remainedtill our own day : the vast walls of the Hippodromehave crumbled away, but its central decorations stillstand erect in the midst of an open space which theTurks call the Atmeidan, or place of horses, in dimmemory of its ancient use.Along the outer eastern wall of the Hippodrome

on the western edge of the Augustaeum, stood arange of small chapels and statues, the most im-portant landmark among them being the Milionor central milestone of the empire, which we havealready described. The statues, few at first, wereincreased by later emperors, till they extended alongthe whole length of the forum. Constantine's owncontribution to the collection was a tall porphyrycolumn surmounted by a bronze image which hadonce been the tutelary Apollo of the city of Hiera-polis, but was turned into a representation of theemperor by the easy method of knocking off itshead and substituting the imperial features. It wasexactly the reverse of a change which can be seen at


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liUILDlNG A lALACt.{From a Byzantine J/S.)


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ST. SOPHIA, 27Rome, where the popes have removed the head ofthe Emperor AureHus, and turned him into St. Peter,on the column in the Corso.North of the Hippodrome stood the great church

which Constantine erected for his Christian subjects,and dedicated to the Divine Wisdom {Hagia Sophia).It was not the famous domed edifice which nowbears that name, but an earHer and humbler building,probably of the Basilica-shape then usual. Burntdown once in the fifth and once in the sixth centuries,it has left no trace of its original character. Fromthe west door of St. Sophia a wooden gallery,supported on arches, crossed the square, and finallyended at the Royal Gate of the palace. By thisthe emperor would betake himself to divine servicewithout having to cross the street of the Chalcoprateia(brass market), which lay opposite to St. Sophia.The general effect of the gallery must have beensomewhat like that of the curious passage perchedaloft on arches which connects the Pitti and Uffizzipalaces at Florence.The edifices which we have described formed theheart of Constantinople, Between the Palace, theHippodrome, and the Cathedral most of the importantevents in the history of the city took place. But tonorth and west the city extended for miles, and every-where there were buildings of note, though no othercluster could vie with that round the Augustaeum.The Church of the Holy Apostles, which Constan-tine destined as the burying-place of his family, wasthe second among the ecclesiastical edifices of thetown. Of the outlying civil buildings, the public


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28 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.granaries along the quays, the Golden Gate, by whichthe great road from the west entered the walls, andthe palace of the praetorian praefect, who acted asgovernor of the city, must all have been well worthyof notice, A statue of Constantine on horseback,which stood by the last-named edifice, was one of thechief shows of Constantinople down to the end of the

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DRAWING OF THE EQUESTRIANSTATUE OF CONSTANTINE.

Middle Ages, and some curious legends gatheredaround it.

It was in A.D. 328 or 329the exact date is noteasily to be fixedthat Constantine had definitelychosen Byzantium for his capital, and drawn out theplan for its development. As early as May 11, 330,the buildings were so far advanced that he was ableto hold the festival which celebrated its consecration.


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DEDICATION FESTIVAL. 29Christian bishops blessed tlic partially completedpalace, and held the first service in St. Sophia ; forConstantine, though still unbaptized himself, haddetermined that the new city should be Christianfrom the first. Of paganism there was no trace init, save a few of the old temples of the Byzantines,spared when the older streets were levelled to clearthe ground for the palace and adjoining buildings.The statues of the gods which adorned the Baths andSenate House stood there as works of art, not asobjects of worship.To fill the vast limits of his city, Constantineinvited many senators of Old Rome and many richprovincial proprietors of Greece and Asia to take uptheir abode in it, granting them places in his newsenate and sites for the dwellings they would require.The countless officers and functionaries of the im-perial court, with their subordinates and slaves, musthave composed a very considerable element in thenew population. The artizans and handicraftsmenwere enticed in thousands by the offer of specialprivileges. Merchants and seamen had alwaysabounded at Byzantium, and now flocked in num-bers which made the old commercial prosperity ofthe city seem insignificant. Most effectivethoughmost demoralizingof the gifts which Constantinebestowed on the new capital to attract immigrantswas the old Roman privilege of free distribution ofcorn to the populace. The wheat-tribute of Egypt,which had previously formed part of the publicprovision of Rome, was transferred to the use ofConstantinople, only the African corn from Carthage


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30 THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.being for the future assigned for the subsistence ofthe older city.On the completion of the dedication festival in 330A.D. an imperial edict gave the city the title of NewRome, and the record was placed on a marble tabletnear the equestrian statue of the emperor, oppositethe Strategion. But New Rome was a phrasedestined to subsist in poetry and rhetoric alone : theworld from the first very rightly gave the city thefounder's name only, and persisted in calling it Con-stantinople.


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III.

THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.COXSTANTINE lived seven years after he had com-

pleted the dedication of his new city, and died inpeace and prosperity on the 22nd of May, A.D. 337,received on his death-bed into that Christian Churchon whose verge he had lingered during the last halfof his life. By his will he left his realm to be dividedamong his sons and nephews ; but a rapid successionof murders and civil wars thinned out the imperialhouse, and ended in the concentration of the wholeempire from the Forth to the Tigris under the sceptreof Constantius II., the second son of the great emperor.The Roman world was not yet quite ripe for a perma-nent division ; it was still possible to manage it from asingle centre, for by some strange chance the barbarianinvasions which had troubled the third century hadceased for a time, and the Romans were untroubled,save by some minor bickerings on the Rhine and theEuphrates. Constantius II., an administrator of someability, but gloomy, suspicious, and unsympathetic,was able to devote his leisure to ecclesiastical contro-versies, and to dishonour himself by starting the first


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32 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.persecution of Christian by Christian that the worldhad seen. The crisis in the history of the empire wasnot destined to fall in his day, nor in the short reignof his cousin and successor, Julian, the amiable andcultured, but entirely wrongheaded, pagan zealot,who strove to put back the clock of time and restorethe worship of the ancient gods of Greece. BothConstantiusand Julian, if asked whence danger to theempire might be expected, would have pointed east-ward, to the Mesopotamian frontier, where their greatenemy, Sapor King of Persia, strove, with no verygreat success, to break through the line of Romanfortresses that protected Syria and Asia Minor.

But it was not in the east that the impending stormwas really brewing. It was from the north that mis-chief was to come.

For a hundred and fifty years the Romans hadbeen well acquainted with the tribes of the Goths, themost easterly of the Teutonic nations who lay alongthe imperial border. All through the third centurythey

had been molesting the provinces of the BalkanPenin.sula by their incessant raids, as we have alreadyhad occasion to relate. Only after a hard strugglehad they been rolled back across the Danube, andcompelled to limit their settlements to its northernbank, in what had once been the land of the Dacians.The last struggle with them had been in the time ofConstantine, who, in a war that lasted from A.D. 328to A.D. 332, had beaten them in the open field, com-pelled their king to give his sons as hostages, anddictated his own terms of peace. Since then theappetite of the Goths for war and adventure seemed


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34 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.permanently checked : for forty years they had keptcomparatively quiet and seldom indulged in raids acrossthe Danube. They were rapidly settling down intosteady farmers in the fertile lands on the Theiss andthe Pruth ; they traded freely with the Roman townsof Moesia ; many of their young warriors enlistedamong the Roman auxiliary troops, and one consider-able body of Gothic emigrants had been permitted tosettle as subjects of the empire on the northern slopeof the Balkans. By this time many of the Gothswere becoming Christians : priests of their own bloodalready ministered to them, and the Bible, translatedinto their own language, was already in their hands.One of the earliest Gothic converts, the good BishopUlfilasthe first bishop of German blood that wasever consecratedhad rendered into their idiom theNew Testament and most of the Old. A greatportion of his work still survives, incomparably themost precious relic of the old Teutonic tongues thatwe now possess.The Goths were rapidly losing their ancient ferocity.

Compared to the barbarians who dwelt beyond them,they might almost be called a civilized race. TheRomans were beginning to look upon them as aguard set on the frontier to ward off the wilder peoplesthat lay to their north and east. The nation wasnow divided into two tribes : the Visigoths, whosetribal name was the Thervings, lay more to the south,in what are now the countries of Moldavia, Wallachia,and Southern Hungary ; the Ostrogoths, or tribe ofthe Gruthungs, lay more to the north and east, inBessarabia, Transylvania, and the Dniester valley.


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THE HUNS. 35But a totally unexpected series of events were nowto show how prescient Constantine had been, in rear-

ing his great fortress-capital to serve as the centralplace of arms of the Balkan Peninsula.About the year A.D. 372 the Huns, an enormousTartar horde from beyond the Don and Volga, burstinto the lands north of the Euxine, and began towork their way westward. The first tribe that lay intheir way, the nomadic race of the Alans, they almostexterminated. Then they fell upon the Goths, TheOstrogoths made a desperate attempt to defend theline of the Dniester against the oncoming savages men with faces that can hardly be called facesrather shapeless black collops of flesh with little pointsinstead of eyes ; little in stature, but lithe and active,skilful in riding, broad shouldered, good at the bow,stiff-necked and proud, hiding under a barely humanform the ferocity of the wild beast. But the enemywhom the Gothic historian describes in these unin-viting terms was too strong for the Teutons of theEast. The Ostrogoths were crushed and compelledto become vassals of the Huns, save a remnant whofought their way southward to the Wallachian shore,near the marshes of the Delta of the Danube. Thenthe Huns fell on the Visigoths. The wave of invasionpressed on ; the Bug and the Pruth proved no barrierto the swarms of nomad bowmen, and the Visigoths,under their Duke Fritigern, fell back in dismay withtheir wives and children, their waggons and flocksand herds, till they found themselves with their backsto the Danube. Surrender to the enemy was moredreadful to the Visigoths than to their eastern


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36 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.brethren ; they were more civilized, most of them wereChristians, and the prospect of slavery to savagesseems to have appeared intolerable to them.

Pressed against the Danube and the Roman border,the Visigoths sent in despair to ask permission tocross from the Emperor. A contemporary writerdescribes how they stood. All the multitude thathad escaped from the murderous savagery of theHunsno less than 200,000 fighting men, besideswomen and old men and childrenwere there on theriver bank, stretching out their hands with loudlamentations, and earnestly supplicating leave tocross, bewailing their calamity, and promising thatthey would ever faithfully adhere to the imperialalliance if only the boon was granted them.At this moment (A.D. 376) the Roman Empire wasagain divided. The house of Constantine was gone,and the East was ruled by Valens, a stupid, cowardly,and avaricious prince, who had obtained the diademand half the Roman world only because he was thebrother of Valentinian, the greatest general of theday. Valentinian had taken the West for his portion,and dwelt in his camp on the Rhine and UpperDanube, while Valens, slothful and timid, shut him-self up with a court of slaves and flatterers in theimperial palace at Constantinople.The proposal of the Goths filled Valens withdismay. It was difficult to say which was moredangerousto refuse a passage to 200,000 desperatemen with arms in their hands and a savage foe attheir backs, or to admit them within the line of riverand fortress that protected the border, with an implied


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VALENS AND THE GOTHS. 37obligation to find land for them. After much doubt-ing he chose the latter alternative : if the Gothswould give hostages and surrender their arrns^ theyshould be ferried across the Danube and permitted tosettle as subject-allies within the empire.The Goths accepted the terms, gave up the sons oftheir chiefs as hostages, and streamed across the riveras fast as the Roman Danube-flotilla could transportthem. But no sooner had they reached Moesia thantroubles broke out. The Roman officials at first triedto disarm the immigrants, but the Goths were un-willing to surrender their weapons, and offered largebribes to be allowed to retain them ; in strict dis-obedience to the Emperor's orders, the bribes wereaccepted and the Goths retained their arms. Furtherdisputes soon broke out. The provisions of Moesiadid not suffice for so many hundred thousand mouthsas had just entered its border, and Valens hadordered stores of corn from Asia to be collected forthe use of the Goths, till they should have receivedand commenced to cultivate land of their own. Butthe governor, Lupicinus, to fill his own pockets, heldback the food, and doled out what he chose to giveat exorbitant prices. In sheer hunger the Gothswere driven to barter a slave for a single loaf of breadand ten pounds of silver for a sheep. This shamelessextortion continued as long as the stores and thepatience of the Goths lasted. At last the poorerimmigrants were actually beginning to sell their ownchildren for slaves rather than let them starve. Thisdrove the Goths to desperation, and a chance affiayset the whole nation in a blaze. Fritigern, with many


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38 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHSof his nobles, was dining with Count Lupicinus at thetown of MarcianopoHs, when some starving Gothstried to pillage the market by force. A party ofRoman soldiers strove to drive them off, and were atonce mishandled or slain. On hearing the tumultand learning its cause, Lupicinus recklessly bade hisretinue seize and slay Fritigern and the other guestsat his banquet. The Goths drew their swords andcut their way out of the palace. Then riding to thenearest camp of his followers, Fritigern told his tale,and bade them take up arms against Rome.

There followed a year of desperate fighting allalong the Danube, and the northern slope of theBalkans. The Goths half- starved for many months, andsmarting under the extortion and chicanery to whichthey had been subjected, soon showed that the oldbarbarian spirit was but thinly covered by the veneerof Christianity and civilization which they had ac-quired in the last half-century. The struggle resolveditself into a repetition of the great raids of the thirdcentury : towns were sacked and the open countryharried in the old style, nor was the war rendered lessfierce by the fact that many runaway slaves and otheroutcasts among the provincial population joined theinvaders. But the Roman armies still retained theirold reputation ; the ravages of the Goths werechecked at the Balkans, and though joined by theremnants of the Ostrosioths from the Danube mouth,as well as by other tribes flying from the Huns, theVisigoths were at first held at bay by the imperialarmies. A desperate pitched battle at Ad Salices,near the modern Kustendje thinned the ranks of bothsides, but led to no decisive result.


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Outbreak of war. 39Next year, however, the unwarHke Emperor,

driven into the field by the clamours of his subjects,took the field in person, with great reinforcementsbrought from Asia Minor. At the same time hisnephew Gratian, a gallant young prince who had suc-ceeded to the Empire of the West, set forth throughPannonia to bring aid to the lands of the LowerDanube.The personal intervention of Valens in the strugglewas followed by a fearful disaster. In 378 B.C., themain body of the Goths succeeded in forcing the lineof the Balkans ; they were not far from Adrianoplewhen the Emperor started to attack them, with asplendid army of 60,000 men. Every one expected tohear of a victory, for the reputation of invincibilitystill clung to the legions, and after six hundred yearsof war the disciplined infantry of Rome, robur peditiun^whose day had lasted since the Punic wars, were stillreckoned superior, when fairly handled, to any amountpf wild barbarians.

But a new chapter of the history of the art of warwas just commencing ; during their sojourn in theplains of South Russia and Roumania the Goths hadtaken, first of all German races, to fighting on horse-back. Dwelling in the Ukraine they had felt theinfluence of that land, ever the nurse of cavalry fromthe day of the Scythian to that of the Tartar andCossack. They had come to

consider it morehonourable to fight on horse than on foot, and every

chief was followed by his war-band of mounted men.Driven against their will into conflict with the empire,they found themselves face to face into the army that


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40 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.had so long held the world in fear, and had turnc(^back their own ancestors in rout three generationsbefore.

Valens found the main body of the Goths encampedin a great laager, on the plain north of Adrianople.After some abortive negotiations he developed anattack on their front, when suddenly a great body ofhorsemen charged in on the Roman flank. It wasthe main strength of the Gothic cavalry, which hadbeen foraging at a distance ; receiving news of thefight it had ridden straight for the battle field. SomeRoman squadrons which covered the left flank of theEmperor's army were ridden down and trampledunder foot. Then the Goths swept down on theinfantry of the left wing, rolled it up, and drove it inupon the centre. So tremendous was their impactthat legions and cohorts were pushed together inhopeless confusion. Every attempt to stand firmfailed, and in a few minutes left, centre, and reserve,were one undistinguishable mass. Imperial guards,light troops, lancers, auxiliaries, and infantry of theline were wedged together in a press that grew closerevery moment. The Roman cavalry saw that theday was lost, and rode off without another effort.Then the abandoned infantry realized the horror oftheir position : equally unable to deploy or to fly,they had to stand to be cut down. Men could notraise their arms to strike a blow, so closely were theypacked ; spears snapped right and left, their bearersbeing unable to lift them to a vertical position ; manysoldiers were stifled in the press. Into this quiveringmass the Goths rode, pl)'ing lance and sword against


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THE BATTLE OE ADRIANOPLE. 4Ithe helpless enemy. It was not till forty thousand menhad fallen that the thinning of the ranks enabled thesurvivors to break out and follow their cavalry in aheadlong flight. They left behind them, dead on thefield, the Emperor, the Grand Masters of the Infantryand Cavalry, the Count of the Palace, and thirty-fivecommanders of different corps.The battle of Adrianople was the most fearfuldefeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannae, aslaughter to which it is aptly compared by the con-temporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus. Thearmy of the East was almost annihilated, and wasnever reorganized again on the old Roman lines.This awful catastrophe brought down on Constanti-

nople the first attack which it experienced since ithad changed its name from Byzantium. After a vainassault on Adrianople, the victorious Goths pressedrapidly on towards the imperial city. Harrying thewhole country side as they passed by, they presentedthemselves before the Golden Gate, its south-western exit. But the attack was destined to cometo nothing : their courage failed them when theylooked on the vast circuit of walls and the enormousextent of streets ; all that mass of riches withinappeared inaccessible to them. They cast away thesiege machines which they had prepared, and rolledbackward on to Thrace. ^ Beyond skirmishing underthe walls with a body of Saracen cavalry which hadbeen brought up to strengthen the garrison, theymade no hostile attempt on the city. So forty yearsafter his death, Constantine's prescience was for the

' Ammianus Marcellinus.


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42 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHSfirst time justified. He was right in believing that animpregnable city on the Bosphorus would prove thesalvation of the Balkan Peninsula even if all its opencountry were overrun by the invader.The unlucky Valens was succeeded on the throneby Theodosius, a wise and virtuous prince, who sethimself to repair, by caution and courage combined,the disaster that had shaken the Roman power in theDanube lands. With the remnants of the army ofthe East he made head against the barbarians ; with-out venturing to attack their main body, he destroyedmany marauders and scattered bands, and made thecontinuance of the war profitless to them. If theydispersed to plunder they were cut off; if they heldtogether in masses they starved. Presently Fritigerndied, and Theodosius made peace with his successorAthanarich, a king who had lately come over theDanube at the head of a new swarm of Goths fromthe Carpathian country. Theodosius frankly promisedand faithfully observed the terms that Fritigern hadasked of Valens ten years before. He granted theGoths land for their settlement in the Thracianprovince which they had wasted, and enlisted in hisarmies all the chiefs and their war-bands. Withinten years after the fight of Adrianople he had fortythousand Teutonic horsemen in his service ; theyformed the best and most formidable part of his host,and were granted a higher pay than the nativeRoman soldiery. The immediate military results ofthe policy of Theodosius were not unsatisfactory ; itwas his Gothic auxiliaries who won for him his twogreat victories over the legions of the West, when in


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< S

i- 'iio :t^


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44 THE FIGHT WITH THE GOTHS.A.D. 388 he conquered the rebel Magnus Maximus,and in A.D. 394 the rebel Eugenius.

But from the political side the experiment ofTheodosius was fraught with the greatest danger thatthe Roman Empire had yet known. When barbarianauxiliaries had been enlisted before, they had beenplaced under Roman leaders and mixed with equalnumbers of Roman troops. To leave them undertheir own chiefs, and deliberately favour them at theexpense of the native soldiery, was a most unhappyexperiment. It practically put the command of theempire in their hands ; for there was no hold over themsave their personal loyalty to Theodosius, and thespell which the grandeur of the Roman name andRoman culture still exercised over their minds. Thatspell was still strong, as is shown in the story whichthe Gothic historian Jornandes tells about the visitof the old King Athanarich to Constantinople. When he entered the royal city, ' Now,' said he,'do I at last behold what I had often heard anddeemed incredible.' He passed his eyes hither andthither admiring first the site of the city, then thefleets of corn-ships, then the lofty walls, then thecrowds of people of all nations, mingled as the watersfrom divers springs mix in a single pool, then theranks of disciplined soldiery. And at last he criedaloud, ' Doubtless the Emperor is as a god on earth,and he who raises a hand against him is guilty of hisown blood.' But this impression was not to con-tinue for long. In A.D. 395, the good EmperorTheodosius, the lover of peace and of the Goths,as he was called, died, and left the throne to his twoweakly sons Arcadius and Honorius.


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fa

IV.THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.

The Roman Empire, at the end of the fourthcentury, was in a condition which made the experi-ment of Theodosius particularly dangerous. Thegovernment was highly centralized and bureaucratic ;hosts of officials, appointed directly from Constanti-nople, administered every provincial post from thegreatest to the least. There was little local self-government and no local patriotism. The civilpopulation was looked on by the bureaucratic casteas a multitude without rights or capacities, existingsolely for the purpose of paying taxes. So stronglywas this view held, that to prevent the revenue fromsuffering, the land-holding classes, from the curialis,or local magnate, down to the poorest peasant, wereactually forbidden to move from one district toanother without special permission. A landownerwas even prohibited from enlisting in the army, unlesshe could show that he left an heir behind him capableof paying his share in the local rates. An almostentire separation existed between the civil populationand the military caste ; it was hard for a civilian ofany position to enlist ; only the lower classeswho


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46 THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.

were of no account in tax-payingwere suffered tojoin the army. On the other hand, every pressurewas used to make the sons of soldiers continue in theservice. Thus had arisen a purely professional army,which had no sympathy or connection with theunarmed provincials whom it protected.The army had been a source of unending trouble inthe third century ; for a hundred years it had madeand unmade Caesars at its pleasure. That was whileit was still mainly composed of men born within theempire, and officered b)' Romans.

But Theodosius had now swamped the nativeelement in the army by his wholesale enlistment ofGothic war-bands. And he had, moreover, handedmany of the chief military posts to Teutons. Someof them indeed had married Roman wives and takenkindly to Roman modes of life, while nearly all hadprofessed Christianity. But at the best they weremilitary adventurers of alien blood while at theworst they were liable to relapse into barbarism, castall their loyalty and civilization to the winds, andtake to harrying the empire again in the old fearlessfashion of the third century. Clearly nothing couldbe more dangerous than to hand over the protectionof the timid and unarmed civil population to suchguardians. The contempt they must have felt for theunwarlike provincials was so great, and the tempta-tion to plunder the wealthy cities of the empire soconstant and pressing, that it is no wonder if theTeutons yielded. Caesar-making seemed as easyto the leaders as the sack of provincial churches andtreasuries did to the rank and file.


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STILICHO. 47

When the personal ascendency of Theodosius wasremoved, the empire fell at once into the troubleswhich were inevitable. Both at the court of Arcadius,who reigned at Constantinople, and at that ofHonorius, who had received the West as his share, awar of factions commenced between the German andthe Roman party. Theodosius had distributed so manyhigh military posts to Goths and other Teutons, thatthis influence was almost unbounded. StilichoMagister milituni (commander-in-chief) of the armiesof Italy was predominant at the council board ofHonorius ; though he was a pure barbarian byblood, Theodosius had married him to his own nieceSerena, and left him practically supreme in the West,for the young emperor was aged only eleven. In theEast Arcadius, the elder brother, had attained hiseighteenth year, and might have ruled his own realmhad he possessed the energy. But he was a witlessyoung man, short, thin, and sallow, ,so inactive thathe seldom spoke, and always looked as if he wasabout to fall asleep. His prime minister was aWestern Roman named Rufinus, but before the firstyear of his reign was over, a Gothic captain namedGainas slew Rufinus at a review, before the Emperor'svery eyes. The weak Arcadius was then compelledto make the eunuch Eutropius his minister, and toappoint Gainas Magister milituin for the East.

Gainas and Stilicho contented themselves withwire-pulling at Court ; but another Teutonic leaderthought that the time had com.e for bolder work.Alaric was a chief sprung from the family of theBaits, whom the Goths reckoned next to the god-


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48 THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.descended Amals among their princely houses. Hewas young, daring, and untamcable ; several yearsspent at Constantinople had failed to civilize him,but had succeeded in filling him with contempt forRoman effeminacy. Soon after the death of Theo-dosius, he raised the Visigoths in revolt, making it hispretext that the advisers of Arcadius were refusingthe/oederati, or auxiliaries, certain arrears of pay. TheTeutonic sojourners in Moesiaand Thrace joined himalmost to a man, and the Constantinopolitan govern-ment found itself with only a shadow of an army tooppose the rebels. Alaric wandered far and wide,from the Danube to the gates of Constantinople, andfrom Constantinople to Greece, ransoming or sackingevery town in his way till the Goths were gorged withplunder. No one withstood him save Stilicho, who wassummoned from the West to aid his master's brother.By skilful manoeuvres Stilicho blockaded Alaric in amountain position in Arcadia ; but when he had himat his mercy, it was found that dog does not catdog. The Teutonic prime minister let the Teutonicrebel escape him, and the Visigoths rolled north againinto Illyricum. Sated with plunder, Alaric then con-sented to grant Arcadius peace, on condition that hewas ma.dc a. Jlfag-ister 7;n/itum like Stilicho and Gainas,and granted as much land for his tribesmen as hechose to ask. [a.D. 396.]

For the next five years Alaric, now proclaimedKing of the Goths by his victorious soldiery, reignedwith undisputed sway over the eastern parts of theBalkan Peninsula, paying only a shadow of homageto the royal phantom at Constantinople. There


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ALARIC THE GOTH. 49appeared every reason to believe that a Germankingdom was about to be permanently established inthe lands south and west of the Danube, The fatewhich actually befell Gaul, Spain, and Britain, a fewyears later seemed destined for Moesia and Macedonia.How different the history of Europe would havebeen if the Germans had settled down in Servia andBulgaria we need hardly point out.

But another series of events was impending. InA.D. 401, Alaric, instead of resuming his attacks onConstantinople, suddenly declared war on theWestern Emperor Honorius. He marched round thehead of the Adriatic and invaded Northern Italy.The half-Romanized Stilicho, who wished to keepthe rule of the West to himself, fought hard to turnthe Goths out of Italy, and beat back Alaric's firstinvasion. But then the young emperor, who was asweak and more worthless than his brother Arcadius,slew the great minister on a charge of treason. WhenStilicho was gone, Alaric had everything his ownway ; he moved with the whole Visigothic race intoItaly, where he ranged about at his will, ransomingand plundering every town from Rome downwards.The Visigoths are heard of no more in the BalkanPeninsula ; they now pass into the history of Italy andthen into that of Spain,While Alaric's eyes were turned on Italy, butbefore he had actually come into conflict with Sti-licho, the Court of Constantinople had been theseat of grave troubles. Gainas the Gothic Magistermilitiuii of the East, and his creature, the eunuchEutropius, had fallen out, and the man of war had no

5


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50 THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.difficulty in disposing of the wretched harem-bredGrand Chamberlain. Instigated by Gainas, the Ger-man mercenaries in the army of Asia started aninsurrection under a certain Tribigild. Gainas wastold to march against them, and collected troopsostensibly for that purpose. But when he was at thehead of a considerable arm}', he did not attack therebels, but sent a message to Constantinople biddingArcadius give up to him the obnoxious GrandChamberlain. Eutropius, hearing of his danger, threwhimself on the protection of the Church : he fled intothe Cathedral of St. Sophia and clung to the altar.John Chrysostom, the intrepid Patriarch of Constan-tinople, forbade the soldiers to enter the church, andprotected the fugitive for some days. One of themost striking incidents in the history of St. Sophiafollowed : while the cowering Chamberlain lay beforethe altar, John preached to a crowded congregationa sermon on the text, Vanity of vanities, all isvanity, emphasizing every period of his harangueby pointing to the fallen Eutropiusprime minister ofthe empire yesterday, and a hunted criminal to-day.The patriarch extorted a promise that the eunuch'slife should be spared, and Eutropius gave himself up.Arcadius banished him to Cyprus, but the inexorableGainas was not contented with his rival's removal ; hehad Eutropius brought back to Constantinople andbeheaded.The Magister inilituin now brought his army over

to Constantinople, and quartered it there to overawethe emperor. It appeared quite likely that ere longthe Germans would sack the citx- ; but the fate that


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GAINAS SLAIN. 5 1befell Rome ten years later was not destined for Con-stantinople. A mere chance brawl put the domina-tion of Gainas to a sudden end. He himself andmany of his troops were outside the city, when asudden quarrel at one of the gates between a band ofGoths and some riotous citizens brought about ageneral outbreak against the Germans. The Con-stantinopolitan mob showed itself more courageousand not less unruly than the Roman mob of elderdays. The whole population turned out with extem-porized arms and attacked the German soldiery.The gates were closed to prevent Gainas and histroops from outside returning, and a desperate street-fight ranged over the entire city. Isolated bodies of theGermans were cut off one by one, and at last theirbarracks were surrounded and set on fire. The riotershad the upper hand ; seven thousand soldiers fell, andthe remnant thought themselves lucky to escape.Gainas at once declared open war on the empire,but he had not the genius of Alaric, nor the numericalstrength that had followed the younger chief Hewas beaten in the field and forced to fly across theDanube, where he was caught and beheaded byUldes, King of the Huns. Curiously enough theofficer who defeated Gainas was himself not only aGoth but a heathen : he was named Fravitta and hadbeen the sworn guest- friend of Theodosius, whoseson he faithfully defended even against the assault ofhis own countrymen, [a.d. 401.]The departure of Alaric and the death of Gainasfreed the Eastern Romans from the double dangerthat has impended over them. They were neither


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52 THE DEPARTURE OF THE GERMANS.to see an independent German kingdom on theDanube and Morava, nor to remain under the rule of asemi-civilized German Magister militiim, making andunmaking ministers, and perhaps Caesars, at his goodpleasure. The weak Arcadius was enabled to spendthe remaining seven years of his life in comparativepeace and quiet. His court was only troubled byan open war between his spouse, the Empress ^liaEudoxia, and John Chrysostom, the Patriarch ofConstantinople. John was a man of saintly life andapostolic fervour, but rash and inconsiderate alike inspeech and action. His charity and eloquence madehim the idol of the populace of the imperial city, buthis austere manners and autocratic methods of dealingwith his subordinates had made him many foes amongthe clergy. The patriarch's enemies were secretlysupported by the empress, who had taken offence atthe outspoken way in which John habitually denouncedthe luxury and insolence of her court. She favouredthe intrigues of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria,against his brother prelate, backed the Asiatic clergyin their complaints about John's oppression of them,and at last induced the Emperor to allow the saintlypatriarch to be deposed by a hastily-summonedcouncil, the Synod of the Oak held outside thecity. The populace rose at once to defend theirpastor ; riots broke out, Theodosius was chased backto Egypt, and the Emperor, terrified by an earthquakewhich seemed to manifest the wrath of heaven,restored John to his place.Next year, however, the war between the empressand the patriarch broke out again. John took the


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EXILE OF CHRYSOSTOM. 53occasion of the erection of a statue of Eudoxia inthe Augustaeum to recommence his polemics. Someobsolete semi-pagan ceremonies at its dedicationroused his wrath, and he delivered a scathing sermonin whichif his enemies are to be believedhe com-pared the empress to Herodias, and himself to Johnthe Baptist. The Emperor, at his wife's demand,summoned another council, which condemnedChrysostom, and on Easter Day, A.D. 404, seized thepatriarch in his cathedral by armed force, andbanished him to Asia. That night a fire, probablykindled by the angry adherents of Chrysostom,broke out in St. Sophia, which was burnt to theground. From thence it spread to the neighbouringbuildings, and finally to the Senate-house, which wasconsumed with all the treasures of ancient Greek artof which Constantine had made it the repository.Meanwhile the exiled John was banished to adreary mountain fastness in Cappadocia, and after-wards condemned to a still more remote prison atPityus on the Euxine. He died on his way thither,leaving a wonderful reputation for patience and cheer-fulness under affliction. This fifth-century Becketwas well-nigh the only patriarch of Constantinoplewho ever fell out with the imperial Court on a questionof morals as distinguished from dogma. Chrysostom'squarrel was with the luxury, insolence, and frivolity ofthe Empress and her Court ; no real ecclesiasticalquestion was involved in his deposition, for thecharges against him were mere pretexts to cover thehatred of his disloyal clergy and the revenge of theinsulted Aelia Eudoxia. [A.D. 407.]


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V.

the reorganization of the eastern empire(a.d. 408-518.)

The feeble and inert Arcadius died in A.D. 408, atthe early age of thirty-one ; his imperious consort hadpreceded him to the grave, and the empire of theEast was left to Theodosius II., a child of seven years,their only son. There was hardly an instance inRoman history of a minor succeeding quietly to hisfather's throne. An ambitious relative or a dislovalgeneral had habitually supplanted the helpless heir.But the ministers of Arcadius were exceptionallyvirtuous or exceptionally destitute of ambition. Thelittle emperor was duly crowned, and the administra-tion of the East undertaken in his name by the ableAnthemius, who held the office of Praetorian Praefect.History relates nothing but good of this minister ; hemade a wise commercial treaty with the king of Persia ;he repelled with ease a Hunnish invasion of Moesia ;he built a flotilla on the Danube, where Roman war-ships had not been seen since the death of Valcns,forty years before ; he reorganized the corn supply


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YOUTH OF THEODOSIUS II. 55of Constantinople ; and did much to get back intoorder and cultivation the desolated north-westernlands of the Balkan Peninsula, from which Alaricand his Visigothic hordes had now taken their finaldeparture. The empire was still more indebted tohim for bringing up the young Theodosius as anhonest and god-fearing man. The palace underAnthemius' rule was the school of the virtues : thelives of the emperor and his three sisters, Pulcheria,Arcadia, and Marina, were the model and the marvelof their subjects, Theodosius inherited the pietyand honesty of his grandfather and namesake, butwas a youth of slender capacity, though he tooksome interest in literature, and was renowned for hisbeautiful penmanship. His eldest sister, Pulcheria,was the ruling spirit of the family, and possessedunlimited influence over him, though she was but twoyears his senior. When Anthem.ius died in A.D.414, she took the title of Augusta, and assumed theregency of the East. Pulcheria was an extraordinarywoman : on gathering up the reins of power she tooka vow of chastity, and lived as a crowned nun forthirty-six years ; her fear had been that, if she married,her husband might cherish ambitious schemes againsther brother's crown ; she therefore kept single herselfand persuaded her sisters to make a similar vow.Austere, indefatigable, and unselfish, she proved equalto ruling the realms of the East with success, thoughno woman had ever made the attempt before.When Theodosius came of age he refused to re-move his sister from power, and treated her as hiscolleague and equal. By her advice he married in A.D.


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55 REORGANIZATION OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE.421, the year that he came of age, the beautiful andaccomplished Athenais, daughter of the philosopherLeontius. The emperor's chosen spouse had beenbrought up as a pagan, but was converted before hermarriage, and baptized by the name of Eudocia.She displayed her literary tastes in writing religiouspoetry, which had some merit, according to the criticsof the succeeding age. The austere Pulcheriaalwaysimmersed in state business or occupied in religiousobservancesfound herself ere long ill at ease in thecompany of the lively, beautiful, and volatile literarylady whom she had chosen as sister-in-law. IfTheodosius had been less easy-going and good-hearted he must have sent away either his sisteror his wife, but he long contrived to dwell affec-tionately with both, though their bickerings were un-ending. After many years of married life, however,a final quarrel came, and the empress retired to spendthe last years of her life in seclusion at Jerusalem.The cause of her exile is not really known : we haveonly a wild story concerning it, which finds an exactparallel in one of the tales of the Arabian Nights.

The emperor, so runs the tale, was one day met by a peasantwho jircsented him with a Phrygian apple of enormous size, so thatthe whole Court marvelled at it. And he gave the man a hundred andfifty gold pieces in reward, and sent the apple to the Empress Eudocia.But she sent it as a present to Paulinus, the ' Master of the Offices,'because he was a friend of the emperor. But Paulinus, not knowingthe history of the apple, took it and gave it to the em

story of byzantine 00 o manu of t

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