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Flavius Leo III., called Conon, died of a dropsy in 741; after a reign of twenty-four years and eleven months. He was called the Isaurian, from the country whence his family came to Constantinople. He began the first reformation in the Greek church, by causing all images to be pulled down, and excluded from places of worship as idolatrous.

Flavius Constantinus V., (Copronimus,) was born, 719; and died, 775; after a reign of thirty-five years and eleven months. He was in derision called Copronimus, because he defiled the font at his baptism. During his long reign he followed up the reformation of his father, and was seconded by the people, who formed themselves into associations, called Iconoclasts or “image breakers,” and destroyed every such idolatrous representation. He also suppressed monasteries. The writers of the Latin church represented Copronimus as “chained with demons in the infernal abyss;” while the Greeks venerated his tomb, and prayed before it as that of a heaven-directed saint. In his reign, historians first dated from, the birth of Christ.

Flavius Leo IV., (Chazarus,) was born at Constantinople in 750; and died of a fever in 780, after a reign of five years. He followed up the reformation, and the Latin writers affirm that he sacrilegiously took a crown with precious stones, from the church of Santa Sophia, and when he placed it on his head, his face burst out into carbuncles, similar to those in the crown, as a punishment for his impiety, and this caused the fever of which he died.

Flavius Leo Constantinus VI. was born at Constantinople in 771; and died in 797; after his eyes had been put out, he reigned seven years. In concert with his mother, Irené, he restored the worship of images, for which he is highly praised by Latin writers.

Flavius Nicephorus I. was born in Seleucia; he was drawn into an ambush by the Bulgarians, and killed in battle in 811; having reigned nine years and nine months.

Flavius Stauricius was presented with the diadem by his father Nicephorus in 803. He was grievously wounded in battle, and, after lingering in hopeless pain, he became a monk, and retired to a monastery, where he died in 812.

Michael I., (Rhangabe Curopalata,) married the daughter of Nicephorus; was proclaimed emperor in 811, on the death of his father-in-law; but was deposed, and died in a monastery, after a reign of one year and ten months.