The Empresses of Constantinople

A hundred years of life still awaited the Eastern Empire from the time when John IV. returned to the throne, and half-a-dozen Empresses were yet to play their varied parts on th...

The long and prosperous reign of Basil II. (976–1025) has no further interest for us, since we find in the chronicles no reference to a wife of that hardy and brilliant soldier....

It may not be inexpedient to pause for a moment to consider the general character of the period through which the romantic story of the Empresses is hurrying us. The reader may...

The distinguished family of the Comneni has already made its appearance in our narrative. It may be recalled that the last chapter opened with a march of the great provincial no...

The Empress’s apartments in the sacred palace remained empty for four years after the virtuous Pulcheria had been laid in her marble sarcophagus. The Emperor Marcian was aged an...

Our last chapter introduced the chivalry of the West into the East, and, as numbers of the princes of the West remained and set up principalities in the East, and mingled with i...

The first wife of Andronicus III., Irene of Brunswick, had died prematurely five years after her marriage. Andronicus had quickly recovered from his grief, and plunged again int...

For fifty-seven years the metropolis of the East remained in the power of the Western knights, but our Empresses have already come so frequently from the West that we shall not...

The revolution which drove Martina from the palace set upon the throne a boy of eleven, Constans II. The wife whom he afterwards brought to share his splendour, and by whom he h...

From the most pious Irene we proceed, after a passing glance at the half-dozen Empresses of less fame who come between them, to a notable Empress whose memory has actually been...

Basil the Macedonian, or Basil the groom, son of a Macedonian peasant of Armenian extraction, enjoyed his imperial wealth, and made excellent use of his imperial power, during n...

The struggle which Theodora had foreseen was not long deferred after her death, and Michael Stratioticus was compelled, after a few months of feeble imperial experiment, to reti...

The Emperor Justinian continued for seventeen years after the death of Theodora to occupy the golden throne and keep the throne of his consort vacant. As he approached the term...

Over the eight years’ reign of Phocas and his consort we have little disposition, and not much occasion, to linger. The Empress Leontia is characterized for us only by the one c...

The next Empress to occupy the superb apartments in the palace, with their couches of ivory and silver and their regiments of fawning eunuchs and silk-clad ladies, was assuredly...

Some such sentiments, we may believe, were urged by Theodora, and affected the decision. The populace was penned in the Hippodrome, and Justinian’s officers and troops stealthil...

a falcon resting on her gold-embroidered glove, or a kennel of dogs rushing at her virile call. It is even said that she believed in, and practised, the incantations and divinat...

In the year 1295 Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus II. and Anna, received the imperial title, and there ensued a remarkable competition of monarchs, great and little, for th...

The story of the unfortunate Theodora has led us to make a somewhat premature excursion into the fourteenth century. We have now to return a few decades, in order to begin the s...

The new Emperor, whom so extraordinary a chance had raised to the throne, was a worthless and entirely incompetent man of thirty summers, with the courage of a mouse, the vanity...

We have seen how Theodora rewarded the friends, and must now see how she punished the enemies, of her earlier career. It will be remembered that her father had been a servant of...

Michael Stratioticus, to don the purple, but one is rather disposed to see in the choice of Stratioticus the action of the Court party, whose influence was threatened by the pro...