ousand
captives, depended on this preposterous alliance. Yet no consideration
could dispense from the law of Constantine: the clergy, the senate, and
the people, disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he was reproached,
both in his life and death, as the author of the public disgrace. III.
For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo, king
of Italy, a more honorable defence is contrived by the wise
Porphyrogenitus. Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the fidelity
and valor of the Franks; [61] and his prophetic spirit beheld the vision
of their future greatness. They alone were excepted from the general
prohibition: Hugo, king of France, was the lineal descendant of
Charlemagne; [62] and his daughter Bertha inherited the prerogatives of
her family and nation. The voice of truth and malice insensibly betrayed
the fraud or error of the Imperial court. The patrimonial estate of Hugo
was reduced from the monarchy of France to the simple county of Arles;
though it was not denied, that, in the confusion of the times, he had
usurped the sovereignty of Provence, and invaded the kingdom of Italy.
His father was a private noble; and if Bertha derived her female descent
from the Carlovingian line, every step was polluted with illegitimacy
or vice. The grandmother of Hugo was the famous Valdrada, the concubine,
rather than the wife, of the second Lothair; whose adultery, divorce,
and second nuptials, had provoked against him the thunders of
the Vatican. His mother, as she was styled, the great Bertha, was
successively the wife of the count of Arles and of the marquis of
Tuscany: France and Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till
the age of threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous
servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence was
copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite concubines of Hugo
were decorated with the classic names of Venus, Juno, and Semele. [63]
The daughter of Venus was granted to the solicitations of the Byzantine
court: her name of Bertha was changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was
wedded, or rather betrothed, to young Romanus, the future heir of
the empire of the East. The consummation of this foreign alliance was
suspended by the tender age of the two parties; and, at the end of five
years, the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin spouse. The
second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but of
Roman, birth; and the