if she had become his third wife. As Sclerena had stood
by him in the days of his adversity, Constantine insisted upon her
sharing with him his prosperity, and when he assumed the purple he
bargained with Zoe that he should retain his mistress, a condition to
which Zoe in her shamelessness agreed. Hence, "the people of
Constantinople were treated to the singular spectacle of an Emperor of
the Romans making his public appearance with two female companions
dignified with the title of Empress, one as his wife, the other as his
mistress."

Sclerena was officially saluted with the title of Augusta, and possessed
a rank equal to that of Theodora, whose relative importance had been
reduced by the advent of the Emperor Constantine X. She held a court of
her own and was installed in apartments of the imperial palace.

Owing to her beauty and her elegant manners she gathered about her a
brilliant court circle, which in its sumptuousness and ostentation
contrasted greatly with the dull ceremony and sombre atmosphere of the
apartments of the elderly sisters, Zoe and Theodora. Sclerena's
disposition, too, was amiable and winning, and she was admired for the
constancy with which she had clung to her lover in the days of his
misfortune. Constantine, in return for her self-sacrificing devotion
when he was an impoverished exile, sought to repay her by the most
lavish expenditure of the public funds. Her apartments were made the
most elegant and luxurious in the city, and her toilettes were the envy
of all the aristocratic ladies of Constantinople.

Though Constantine showed in every way his partiality for his mistress,
it did not disturb the domestic tranquillity of the imperial household.
Zoe and Sclerena lived on the best of terms, and the utter absence of
jealousy in the aged wife is less remarkable than her utter
shamelessness.

The moral feelings of the people, however, were not so completely
corrupted as those of their superiors. They resented the lavish
expenditures of the public moneys upon the concubine of the emperor, and
they also resented the insult thus put upon their empress. They felt
that the lives of the aged sisters, the only survivors of the Macedonian
house, could not be safe in a palace where vice reigned supreme, and
where secret murders had so often occurred.

The incensed populace raised a sedition on the feast of the Forty
Martyrs, when it became the duty of the emperor to walk in solemn
procession to the