al or affected contempt of laws and
lawyers, of artists and arts. Of such a character, in such an age,
superstition took a firm and lasting possession; after the first license
of his youth, Basil the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the
camp, to the penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his
robes and armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on
his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the
sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in
person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented
by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was
dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curse
of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about
three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his
only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six
years the title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the
longest, and most obscure, of the Byzantine history.

[Footnote 1017: Once by the caliph, once by his rival Phocas. Compare De
Beau l. p. 176.--M.]

A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred and
sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the Macedonian
dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the usurpers of their power.
After the death of Constantine the Ninth, the last male of the royal
race, a new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years
of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign. His elder
brother had preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and
Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took the
veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature age in a
state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage was discussed in
the council of their dying father, the cold or pious Theodora refused
to give an heir to the empire, but her sister Zoe presented herself a
willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful
person and fair reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his
declining that honor, was informed, that blindness or death was the
second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection
but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety and
greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed the only bar to
the Imperial nuptials. After the decease of