ies. On his death-bed, the late emperor had despatched
a trusty servant to arm the troops and provinces of the East in the
defence of his helpless children: the eloquence and liberality of
Valentin had been successful, and from his camp of Chalcedon, he boldly
demanded the punishment of the assassins, and the restoration of the
lawful heir. The license of the soldiers, who devoured the grapes and
drank the wine of their Asiatic vineyards, provoked the citizens of
Constantinople against the domestic authors of their calamities, and the
dome of St. Sophia reechoed, not with prayers and hymns, but with the
clamors and imprecations of an enraged multitude. At their imperious
command, Heracleonas appeared in the pulpit with the eldest of the royal
orphans; Constans alone was saluted as emperor of the Romans, and a
crown of gold, which had been taken from the tomb of Heraclius, was
placed on his head, with the solemn benediction of the patriarch.

But in the tumult of joy and indignation, the church was pillaged, the
sanctuary was polluted by a promiscuous crowd of Jews and Barbarians;
and the Monothelite Pyrrhus, a creature of the empress, after dropping a
protestation on the altar, escaped by a prudent flight from the zeal
of the Catholics. A more serious and bloody task was reserved for
the senate, who derived a temporary strength from the consent of the
soldiers and people.

The spirit of Roman freedom revived the ancient and awful examples of
the judgment of tyrants, and the Imperial culprits were deposed and
condemned as the authors of the death of Constantine. But the severity
of the conscript fathers was stained by the indiscriminate punishment of
the innocent and the guilty: Martina and Heracleonas were sentenced to
the amputation, the former of her tongue, the latter of his nose; and
after this cruel execution, they consumed the remainder of their days in
exile and oblivion. The Greeks who were capable of reflection might find
some consolation for their servitude, by observing the abuse of power
when it was lodged for a moment in the hands of an aristocracy.

We shall imagine ourselves transported five hundred years backwards to
the age of the Antonines, if we listen to the oration which Constans II.
pronounced in the twelfth year of his age before the Byzantine senate.
After returning his thanks for the just punishment of the assassins, who
had intercepted the fairest hopes of his father's reign, "By the divine
P