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The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Ladislas, whose affairs were becoming desperate, made an attempt to restore his credit by laying siege to Dyrrhachium. Its possession would have enabled him to open communications with the enemies of Basil in Italy, and even with the Saracens of Sicily and Africa, but he was slain soon after the commencement of the siege. The Bulgarian leaders gave up all hope of resistance. The emperor continued to advance by Scupi, Stypeia, and Prosakon, and on reaching Achrida he was received rather as the lawful sovereign than as a foreign conqueror. He immediately took possession of all the treasures Samuel had amassed; the gold alone amounted to one hundred centners (this sum is not quite equal to $480,000 or $2,400,000), and with this he paid all the arrears due to his troops, and rewarded them with a donative for their long and gallant service in this arduous war. Almost the whole of the royal family of Achrida submitted, and received the most generous treatment. Three sons of Ladislas, who escaped to Mount Tmorus, and attempted to prolong the contest, were soon captured. The noble Bulgarians hastened to make their submission, and many were honoured with rank at the imperial court.
Nothing, indeed, proves more decidedly the absence of all Greek nationality in the Byzantine administration at this period, than the facility with which all foreigners obtained favour at the court of Constantinople; nor can anything be more conclusive of the fact that the centralisation of power in the person of the emperor, as completed by the Basilian dynasty, had now destroyed the administrative centralisation of the old Roman imperial system, for we have proofs that a considerable Greek population still occupied the cities of Thrace and Macedonia, though Greek feelings had little influence on the government.
After passing the winter in his new conquests, Basil made a progress through Greece. At Zetunium he visited the field of battle where the power of Samuel had been first broken by the victory of Nicephorus Uranus, and found the ground still strewed with the bones of the slain. The wall that defended the pass of Thermopylæ retained its ancient name, Scelos; and its masonry, which dated from Hellenic days, excited the emperor’s admiration. At last Basil arrived within the walls of Athens, and he was the only emperor who for several ages honoured that city with a visit. Many magnificent structures in the town, and the whole of the temples in the Acropolis, had then hardly suffered any rude touches from the hand of time. If the original splendour of the external painting and gilding which had once adorned the Parthenon of Pericles had faded, the mural paintings of saints, martyrs, emperors, and empresses, that covered the interior of the cella, gave a new interest to the church of the Virgin, into which it had been transformed. The mind of Basil, though insensible to Hellenic literature, was deeply sensible of religious impressions, and the glorious combination of the variety of beauty in art and nature that he saw in the Acropolis touched his stern soul. He testified his feelings by splendid gifts to the city, and rich dedications at the shrine of the Virgin in the Parthenon.
From Greece the emperor returned to Constantinople, where he indulged himself in the pomp of a triumph, making his entry into his capital by the Golden Gate, and listening with satisfaction to the cries of the populace, who applauded his cruelty by saluting him with the title of “The Slayer of the Bulgarians” [Bulgaroctonus].e
[1019-1028 A.D.]
Yet his subjects detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil; and in the imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. After the first license of his youth, Basil II devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and armour, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented by death, and Basil, surnamed “the slayer of the Bulgarians,” was dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curses of the people. After his decease, in 1025, his brother Constantine IX enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most obscure, of the Byzantine history.
[1028-1042 A.D.]
A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of 160 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 IX, 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. Constantine had only three daughters. When their marriage was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold or pious 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 III; but his labours at home and abroad[70] were equally feeble and fruitless; and the mature age, the forty-eight years of Zoe, was less favourable to the hopes of pregnancy than to the indulgence of pleasure. Her favourite chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian of the name of Michael, whose first trade had been that of a money-changer; and Romanus, either from gratitude or equity, connived at their criminal intercourse, 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 IV.
The expectations of Zoe were, however, disappointed; instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had placed in her bed a miserable wretch whose 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 aroused 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 Joannes, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His administration[71] 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 the 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.