sdiction extended over the stables, the cavalry,
and the royal train of hunting and hawking. The _Stratopedarch_ was the
great judge of the camp: the _Protospathaire_ commanded the guards; the
_Constable_, the _great AEteriarch_, and the _Acolyth_, were the separate
chiefs of the Franks, the Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the
mercenary strangers, who, a the decay of the national spirit, formed
the nerve of the Byzantine armies. 4. The naval powers were under the
command of the _great Duke_; in his absence they obeyed the _great
Drungaire_ of the fleet; and, in _his_ place, the _Emir_, or _Admiral_,
a name of Saracen extraction, but which has been naturalized in all the
modern languages of Europe. Of these officers, and of many more whom
it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military hierarchy
was framed. Their honors and emoluments, their dress and titles, their
mutual salutations and respective preeminence, were balanced with more
exquisite labor than would have fixed the constitution of a free people;
and the code was almost perfect when this baseless fabric, the monument
of pride and servitude, was forever buried in the ruins of the empire.

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.--Part III.

The most lofty titles, and the most humble postures, which devotion has
applied to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted by flattery and fear
to creatures of the same nature with ourselves. The mode of _adoration_,
of falling prostrate on the ground, and kissing the feet of the emperor,
was borrowed by Diocletian from Persian servitude; but it was continued
and aggravated till the last age of the Greek monarchy. Excepting only
on Sundays, when it was waived, from a motive of religious pride,
this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who entered the royal
presence, from the princes invested with the diadem and purple, and
from the ambassadors who represented their independent sovereigns, the
caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the kings of France and Italy, and
the Latin emperors of ancient Rome. In his transactions of business,
Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, asserted the free spirit of a Frank and
the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the
abasement of his first audience. When he approached the throne, the
birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which were
accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With his two
companions Liutprand was compelle