Читать книгу Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor - Robert Walsh - Страница 17

Flavius Basilius I., (Cephalos,) was born in Macedonia, crowned in 866, and died in 886. He was called Cephalos from the size of his head. He was a zealous promoter of image worship. In his reign, Alfred king of England died.

Flavius Leo VI., the Philosopher, was crowned by his father at the age of five years in 870; and died in 911. He devoted a long reign of twenty-five years, after his father’s death, to literary pursuits, and composed works which have come down to us: amongst others, a “Treatise on Tactics.”

Flavius Constantinus VII., (Porphyrogenitus,) the son of Leo VI. by his fourth wife, was born in 905; crowned in 913; and died in the year 959, of poison, administered by his own son. He was called Porphyrogenitus, or born in the purple, because an apartment in the palace was lined with that colour, in which his birth took place. It was a title generally given to those whose fathers were on the throne when they were born, a rare distinction in the Lower Empire. He was the first to whom the distinction was applied. His birth was accompanied by the appearance of a comet. He was distinguished for his devotion to literature, and left behind him “the Geography of the Empire,” and other works. In his reign Arabic numerals were first used for the clumsy prolixity of alphabetic letters.

Romanus I., (Lecapenus,) was born in Armenia, crowned in 919; and died in 946. His reign was remarkable by the siege of Constantinople by the Bulgarians.

Romanus II. junior, was born in 937; and crowned in 959. He died of poison in 963; after a reign of four years.

Basilius II., (Bulgarotoctonos,) was born in 955; crowned in 960; and died in 1025. He obtained the name “Bulgarian-killer,” from the cruelty he exercised over them. He took 15,000 prisoners, and ordered the eyes to be scooped out from the heads of every ninety-nine out of one hundred.

Nicephorus II. (Phocas,) was born at Constantinople, and crowned, 963, on the death of Romanus. He was assassinated by Zemisces, and other conspirators, in 969.

Flavius Constantinus VIII. son of Lecapenus, was associated with his brother, and in 1026, became sole emperor at the age of sixty-nine, and died in 1028. It was in his reign the practice of duelling was introduced: one, fought in 1026, is the first on record in the annals of the empire.

Johannes Zemisces was a domestic in the palace while Nicephorus Phocas enjoyed the crown. After his assassination, he assumed himself the purple, but was poisoned in 975, after a reign of six years.

Constantinus IX., brother of Basilius II., was born in 961, and reigned singly, after the death of Basilius, three years. He died in 1028, having enjoyed the title of Augustus sixty-six years. The reign of the two brothers, with the intervening usurpations, is the longest and most obscure in Byzantine history.

Romanus III., (Argyrus,) succeeded to the empire in 1028, and was put to death by his wife Zoe in 1034. She had administered slow poison, but, impatient of its operation, caused him to be suffocated in a bath by an eunuch, who held his head under water.

Michael IV., (Paphlagonicus,) was born in Paphlagonia, crowned in 1034, and afterwards retired to a monastery in 1041. He married Zoe after the assassination of her former husband, and his death was hastened by never-ceasing remorse. The first schism commenced in this reign between the Greek and Latin churches.

Michael V., (Calaphates,) was crowned in 1041, and was put to death the same year, after a reign of four months. He was called Calaphates because his trade had been careening boats.

Zoe & Theodora, (the Matrons,) were crowned in 1042. They were taken at an advanced age, one from a prison, and the other from a monastery. Zoe, at the age of sixty, took a third husband, and died in 1050.

Flavius Constantinus X., (Monomachus,) was crowned in 1042. He was called Monomachus from his bravery in single combat. He died in 1055, having survived his atrocious wife Zoe two years. In his reign the Turks first entered the territories of the Greek empire in Asia.

Theodora was crowned sole empress in 1055, at the age of seventy-six, and reigned one year and ten months. She took an associate, and thus for twenty years two feeble sisters, and one an abandoned profligate, nominated whom they pleased to the empire.

Michael VI., (Stratioticus,) was crowned in 1056, and resigned the year after. He obtained the name of Stratioticus from his supposed skill in war. His aged and feeble associate died just before, the last of the Basilian dynasty.