Part 24

This narrative furnishes a curious glimpse into the condition of society in Greece during the latter part of the ninth century, which is the period when the Greek race began to recover a numerical superiority and prepare for the consolidation of its political ascendency over the Slavonian colonists in the Peloponnesus.

It seems almost incredible that such wealth and power could be concentrated in the hands of one woman; and only when we consider the grinding poverty of the masses of the population through the extortions of the rich and the oppressions of the governing classes can we account for the resources which permitted the lavish luxuries of the aristocrats.

The fourscore years succeeding the death of Basil the Macedonian were taken up by the two long reigns of Leo VI.--reputed to be the son of Basil, but in all probability the son of Michael,--and Leo's son, Constantine Porphyrogenitus. These years were important for literature, as both son and grandson of the founder of the dynasty were authors of renown; but in historical interest and especially as regards the story of Byzantine womanhood they were the most uneventful and monotonous in the many centuries of the Empire's existence.

Constantine Porphyrogenitus was the child (by his fourth wife) of Leo's old age, and was only seven years old when he fell heir to the Empire. He was brought up under the tutelage of guardians; and so devoted was he to the composing of books and the painting of pictures, that he was forty years of age before he assumed entire control of the reins of government; yet, twenty years of supreme power fell to his lot.

In his works, we have a beautiful picture of his domestic life. We do not know much of his wife, Helena, but he was devoted to his son Roman us, a gay, pleasure-loving prince, and to his daughters, of whom the youngest, Agatha, was his favorite secretary and the constant companion of his studies. "Seated by his side, she read to him all the official reports of the ministers; and when his health began to fail it was through her intermediation that he consented to transact public business. That such a proceeding created no alarming abuses and produced neither serious complaints nor family quarrels is more honorable to the heart of the princess than is her successful performance of her task to her good sense and ability."

The most interesting figure about him, however, was his daughter-in-law Theophano, who was destined to play a fatal part in the story of the Basilian house. Theophano was lowly born, and her beauty and grace could never win the court circle and the public to pardon a low alliance which disgraced the majesty of the purple. Hence, the vilest scandals were circulated about her, which must be taken with some degree of allowance.

According to the chroniclers, she was wildly ambitious and utterly lacking in natural affection, charming in manner, but cruel in heart. She and Romanus made a most striking couple as they appeared together in the court or took part in the public processions. Romanus was conspicuous for his beauty and strength, tall and erect, fair and florid in complexion, with aquiline nose and sparkling eyes. Theophano was of the pure Greek type in features, yet small of stature and of infinite ease of manner and movement. According to the Byzantine writers, she craved eagerly for supreme power, and poisoned her father-in-law to hasten her husband's elevation to the throne. Constantine did not take enough of the beverage administered by her hand to end his life, but his constitution was weakened, and after a short period of time he passed away. Romanus's name was also embraced in the story, he having been induced, through the wiles of his wife, to enter into a conspiracy against their father and benefactor. But Constantine's picture of his own family life is so amiable, that it is as difficult to give credence to the accusation brought against Romanus and Theophano as it is to Procopius's tales regarding Theodora Justinian.

Romanus II. had held the throne but five years when he too sickened and died, and it was rumored that Theophano had mingled for him the same deadly draught which she had prepared for her father-in-law. The young empress was left as regent of her two little sons, Basil, aged seven, and Constantine, who was only two. She aspired first to reign alone; but soon realizing the Byzantine dislike for feminine rule, she found a protector and a guardian for her sons in Nicephorus, the most valiant soldier of the Empire. He was given the hand of the beautiful empress-dowager, and was crowned as the colleague of the two young Cæsars. His personal ugliness and deformity rendered it impossible for Theophano to love him, and the match was one of interest rather than of affection. But Nicephorus proved himself a most affectionate co-regent, and paid scrupulous regard to the rights of the young princes. Much of his time was spent in the field, and many were the victories which he won for the Byzantine arms. But even his great achievements could not enchain the heart of the capricious empress.

Theophano, during the absence of her grim and ugly husband, had become enamored of his favorite nephew, John Zimisces, who was also a warrior of note. John listened to the voice of the tempter, not so much for lust as for ambition, and conspired with the empress against his uncle and benefactor. The treacherous murder was accomplished one December night in the year 969, in the imperial apartments of the palace.

Some of the conspirators had been concealed in the chamber of Theophano. John Zimisces and his principal companions crossed the Bosporus in a small boat, landed under the palace walls, and in the darkness of night silently ascended a ladder of ropes which was cast down by the handmaidens of the empress. Nicephorus, as was his custom, was sleeping on a bearskin on the floor of his chamber, when he was awakened by the noisy entrance of the conspirators. Their daggers were drawn, and, at the word from John, were plunged into the body of the valiant general, who exclaimed in his death agony: "Oh, God! grant me thy mercy." Though by this base deed John came to the throne, he showed deep contrition for the slaughter of his uncle; and through the connivance of the patriarch and treachery toward his friends, he avoided marriage with the partner of his guilt.

"On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on the threshold of Saint Sophia by the intrepid patriarch, who charged his conscience with the deed of treason and blood, and required as a sign of repentance that he should separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of apostolic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman who had violated the most sacred obligation; and Theophano, instead of sharing his imperial throne, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and palace." Deprived of her place as regent, and repudiated by her sons on whom she had brought shame, Theophano passed the remaining years of her life in a monastery.

Of the two sons of Theophano, Basil II., after a long reign of over half a century,--963-1025,--distinguished by his many victories over the Bulgarians, died childless, and was succeeded by his brother, Constantine IX., who was destined to be the last male of the Macedonian house. After his short reign of three years, the story of the remaining twenty-nine years of the Basilian dynasty gathers itself about the names of his two elderly daughters, Zoe and Theodora, and the series of princes who owed their position on the throne solely to them. It is a period of decadence, and the reader cannot help but pity the two sisters who were endeavoring to uphold a decaying dynasty in the midst of corruption and folly. Zoe constitutes the central figure of the period; but Theodora was vastly her superior, and casts a sort of glamour about the closing years of the house of Basil the Macedonian.

Zoe, however, was notable not so much for her ability to govern as for her extraordinary vanity and love of adulation. Yet, for some reason, she had reached the age of forty-eight before she found a husband. Upon his deathbed, Constantine summoned Romanus Argyrus, an aged nobleman, to the palace and informed him that he had been selected to mount the throne, but that he must divorce his wife and marry one of the imperial princesses. Romanus hesitated, not that he cared not for the throne, but because the conditions were too severe; he loved his wife, and he did not fancy joining his lot with one of the elderly maidens. But he was told that he must either obey or lose his eyesight. To relieve the situation, his wife, with self-sacrificing devotion, took the veil and entered a monastery. Constantine destined Theodora, the younger and more capable of his daughters, for the throne as spouse to Romanus, but through religious compunctions she refused to marry the husband of another woman, and consequently Zoe was chosen as bride and empress at the tender age of forty-eight. Romanus was sixty when he ascended the throne.

Zoe never forgave her sister Theodora the fact that because of her more stable character their father had offered his younger daughter the throne; Romanus had no love for her because she had refused him. Consequently, spies were set over her movements, and every effort was made to connect her with the various plots of courtiers who had designs upon the throne. Finally, accused of being privy to the plans of one of the most hostile of the courtiers, Theodora was driven from her palace and imprisoned in the monastery of Petrion; sometime after, Zoe, upon a visit to the monastery, compelled her sister to assume the monastic habit.

Romanus and Zoe were never an affectionate couple. He devoted himself strictly to affairs of state and looked with indifference upon the many intrigues of his amorous spouse, who, like Queen Elizabeth, believed herself to be the mistress of all hearts. But one of these amours, perhaps, cost him his life.

The royal consorts had turned the management of the palace largely over to eunuchs. One of these, John the Paphlagonian, became very powerful, and, as he was precluded from the imperial title himself, sought to raise a brother to that high honor. This brother, Michael, had begun life as a goldsmith and money changer, but his brother appointed him to a place in the imperial household. Owing to his personal beauty and graceful and dignified manners, he soon became the favorite chamberlain to his royal mistress. Unfortunately, however, he was subject to sudden and violent attacks of epilepsy. This, instead of repelling Zoe, merely aroused her pity, and she fell in love with her handsome servant and carried on an amorous intrigue with him. Romanus was duly informed of his wife's conduct, but remained indifferent to it and probably deemed the accusation untenable because of the epilepsy of Michael. Zonaras, an ancient chronicler, tells the story that in the night the emperor frequently called Michael to rub his feet when he was in bed with Zoe. And he naively adds: "Who can refrain from supposing that the hands of the young valet-de-chambre did not find an opportunity of touching also the feet of the empress?" During the last two years of his life, Romanus was afflicted with a wasting disease and rumor had it that it was due to a slow poison administered either by Zoe, or by the eunuch John, who wished to bring about his brother's elevation. At any rate, in his dying moments, before the breath had left his body, the empress quitted his bedside to take measures with John the Paphlagonian for placing her epileptic paramour on the throne.

The moment Romanus III. ceased to live, Zoe called an assembly of the officers of state in the palace and invested Michael IV. with the diadem and the purple robe. He was straightway proclaimed Emperor of the Romans, and was formally seated beside Zoe on the vacant throne. The patriarch Alexius was filled with disgust at this flagrant display of contempt for decency, but for reasons of state and to avoid greater scandal, he celebrated the marriage between the empress and her paramour. "Thus a single night saw the aged Zoe the wife of two emperors, a widow and a bride, and Michael a menial and a sovereign."

Michael was twenty-eight when he wedded Zoe at the age of fifty-four and ascended the throne. In spite of his humble origin, he showed himself a capable ruler, and succeeded in repelling some of the enemies of the Empire. But his usefulness was hindered by his epileptic fits and by the unfriendly attitude of his subjects who regarded his disease as evidence of the divine wrath because of his ingratitude toward his benefactor, Romanus. He became a hopeless invalid before the age of thirty-six, and, when he felt his end approaching, he renounced the world and all the vanities of imperial station, and retired to the monastery of Saint Anarghyras where he became a monk. He died on December 10, 1041, after a reign of seven years and eight months.

After the death of her second husband, the irrepressible Zoe at first attempted to carry on the Empire alone, with the assistance of the eunuchs of her household, but the prevailing aversion to female sovereignty and her own disinclination to be without companionship of the male sex led her to a realization of the necessity of giving the Empire a male sovereign. The alternative which presented itself was whether she should adopt a son or marry a husband. Having twice experienced matrimonial bliss, but never having tasted the joys of filial devotion, for the sake of a new sensation Zoe adopted the former expedient.

She selected for the honor another Michael, the nephew of her late husband, but, as she was aware of his volatile character, she made him take a solemn oath, before conferring on him the crown, that he would ever regard her as his benefactress and treat her as his mother. Michael was ready enough to promise everything, and the diadem was placed on his head.

But as soon as he was established in power, Michael V. revealed his meanness of soul, and showed both insolence and ingratitude toward the woman through whom he had attained his elevation. He finally carried his insolence so far that he banished the empress Zoe to Prince's Island and compelled her to adopt the monastic habit. But this base act was more than the people could stand. Their fury burst through every restraint. The mob paraded the streets and proclaimed the reign of Michael at an end. They threatened to seize him and scatter his bones abroad like dust. An assembly was held in the church of Saint Sophia, to which the aged Theodora was brought from the monastery of Petrion, and she was proclaimed joint empress with her sister Zoe. In the meantime, Michael, alarmed at the rapid and overwhelming spread of the sedition, had Zoe brought back to the palace, and endeavored to pacify the people by persuading her to appear on a balcony overlooking the Hippodrome. But it was impossible for him to stem the current of the popular fury. The palace was stormed, and three thousand people were killed in the conflict which followed. Michael saved his life by escaping to the monastery of Studion; his eyes were finally put out, and he passed the rest of his days in the garb of a monk.

Zoe immediately entered upon the duties and responsibilities of power, of which for a time she had been deprived, and she endeavored to force her sister back into religious retirement; but the Senate and people insisted upon the joint reign of the two sisters. But this singular union lasted less than two months. In temperament and in interests the two sisters were antipodal. Different factions were their support, the clerical party favoring the devout Theodora, and the worldlings the volatile Zoe. For a time, the twain appeared always side by side at the meetings of the Senate and at the courts of justice. Unlike Zoe, Theodora showed great aptitude for public business, and took pleasure in performing her administrative duties.

Zoe's plots against her sister being frustrated, and recognizing that Theodora was rapidly gaining the ascendency, she bethought herself of taking a third husband, to whom she might resign the throne and thus deprive her sister of the influence she was rapidly acquiring.

Hence, at the advanced age of sixty-two, Zoe began to cast about for a third husband, in spite of the canons of the Church, which forbade a third marriage. Her thoughts first turned to a powerful nobleman, Constantine Dalasennus, whom her father had once chosen for her in her earlier years, and about whom her recollections cast a halo of romance. But in place of the gallant hero of her imagination she found she had summoned to the palace for an interview a stern old gentleman, who strongly expressed his disapprobation of the existing imperial system; who censured in unmeasured terms the vices of the court, and who took no pains to conceal his contempt for her own questionable conduct. Such a spouse would have been a most excellent antidote for the prevailing corruption of the Empire, but Zoe had no desire to submit to the control of so severe a master, and she quickly made up her mind to look elsewhere.

A former lover, Constantine Artoclinas, then became the object of her matrimonial designs. But he already had a wife, who was not of the self-sacrificing disposition of the wife of Romanus. As soon as she heard of the honor to which Zoe destined her husband, Constantine Artoclinas fell ill and did not long survive. It was the general opinion that his wife had poisoned him, either through jealousy of Zoe, or because she felt an aversion to passing the rest of her days in a convent. Zoe, however, was readily consoled.

She again selected an old admirer, Constantine Monomachus, whom Michael IV. had banished to Mitylene because of his attentions to the empress, but who had been recalled on the accession of Zoe and Theodora and appointed to a high official position in Greece. An imperial galley was despatched with a royal courier to notify him of the new dignity that awaited him, and to bring him back to Constantinople. Upon his arrival he was invested with the imperial robes. His marriage with Zoe was performed by one of the clergy, for the patriarch Alexius declined to officiate at the third marriage of the empress, which in this case was doubly uncanonical, as both Zoe and Constantine had been twice married.

The choice made by Zoe is a sad commentary on the immorality of the age. The life and character of Constantine X. show the utter lack of moral principle which prevailed in the court circles. After he had buried two wives, Constantine Monomachus had won the affections of a beautiful and wealthy young widow called Sclerena, who openly became his mistress and accompanied him in his exile to Mitylene. Yet, in the eyes of the orthodox, her position as mistress was more respectable, as being less uncanonical than if she had become his third wife. As Sclerena had stood by him in the days of his adversity, Constantine insisted upon her sharing with him his prosperity, and when he assumed the purple he bargained with Zoe that he should retain his mistress, a condition to which Zoe in her shamelessness agreed. Hence, "the people of Constantinople were treated to the singular spectacle of an Emperor of the Romans making his public appearance with two female companions dignified with the title of Empress, one as his wife, the other as his mistress."

Sclerena was officially saluted with the title of Augusta, and possessed a rank equal to that of Theodora, whose relative importance had been reduced by the advent of the Emperor Constantine X. She held a court of her own and was installed in apartments of the imperial palace.

Owing to her beauty and her elegant manners she gathered about her a brilliant court circle, which in its sumptuousness and ostentation contrasted greatly with the dull ceremony and sombre atmosphere of the apartments of the elderly sisters, Zoe and Theodora. Sclerena's disposition, too, was amiable and winning, and she was admired for the constancy with which she had clung to her lover in the days of his misfortune. Constantine, in return for her self-sacrificing devotion when he was an impoverished exile, sought to repay her by the most lavish expenditure of the public funds. Her apartments were made the most elegant and luxurious in the city, and her toilettes were the envy of all the aristocratic ladies of Constantinople.

Though Constantine showed in every way his partiality for his mistress, it did not disturb the domestic tranquillity of the imperial household. Zoe and Sclerena lived on the best of terms, and the utter absence of jealousy in the aged wife is less remarkable than her utter shamelessness.

The moral feelings of the people, however, were not so completely corrupted as those of their superiors. They resented the lavish expenditures of the public moneys upon the concubine of the emperor, and they also resented the insult thus put upon their empress. They felt that the lives of the aged sisters, the only survivors of the Macedonian house, could not be safe in a palace where vice reigned supreme, and where secret murders had so often occurred.

The incensed populace raised a sedition on the feast of the Forty Martyrs, when it became the duty of the emperor to walk in solemn procession to the church of Our Saviour in Chalke, whence he proceeded on horseback to the church of the Martyrs. As the procession was about to move from the palace, a cry was raised: "Down with Sclerena; we will not have her for empress! Zoe and Theodora are our mothers--we will not allow them to be murdered!" The mob then sought to lay hands on the emperor to tear him in pieces, but the tumult was quieted by the sudden appearance of Zoe and Theodora on the balcony and the people were dispersed without serious damage being done.

The Empress Zoe died in 1050, at the age of seventy. Constantine X. survived to the year 1055. He, before the end came, was anxious to name his successor, but as soon as Theodora heard of the attempt of her brother-in-law to deprive her of the throne, she hastened to the palace, where the Senate was quickly convened, and presented herself as the lawful empress. With universal acclamation, Theodora was proclaimed sole sovereign of the Empire.

Though seventy-five years of age when she became sole ruler of the destinies of the Eastern Empire, Theodora exhibited great vigor of character and her short reign was a fortunate period for the Byzantines, owing to her attention to public business and the freedom from external conflicts. To preserve power in her own hands, Theodora presided in person at the meetings of the Cabinet and the Senate, and heard appeals as supreme judge in civil cases. Her long monastic life had developed in her the narrow views and acrimonious passions of a recluse, but an ascetic spirit was a relief after the sensual performances of the court of Constantinople. Even at the advanced age of seventy-six, Theodora felt so robust that she looked forward to a long life. The monks flattered her with prophecies that she was to reign for many years. But in the midst of her plans, she was suddenly attacked by an intestinal disorder that speedily brought her to the grave. Theodora was the last scion of a family which had upheld with glory the institutions of the Empire for nearly two centuries, and had secured to its subjects a degree of internal tranquillity and commercial prosperity far greater than that enjoyed during the same period by any other portion of the human race. "And with her, expired the race of Basil, the Slavonian groom, and the administrative glory of the Byzantine Empire, on the 30th of August, 1057."