strange spectacle delighted the gazers; but it was not viewed
without some feeling of contempt, for it was generally known that the
imperial crowns were bright with false pearls and diamonds; that the
robes were stiffened with tinsel; that the vases were of brass, not
gold; and instead of the rich brocade of Thebes, the hangings were of
gilded leather."

Cantacuzenus deserves to rank with the two Angeli as the third of the
great destroyers of the Eastern Empire. Through civil wars he depleted
its resources; and by introducing the Turk into his dominions, he paved
the way for the final downfall. Fortunately, John V. asserted himself at
the age of twenty-four; Cantacuzenus was tonsured and placed in a
monastery where he passed the rest of his days in literary labors. In
native gifts and force of character, and in her checkered history, the
Empress Anne of Savoy deserves a place by the side of the earlier
self-asserting empresses of Constantinople.

The tale of the last hundred years of the Byzantine Empire is a mere bit
of local history, and no longer forms an important warp in the woof of
the annals of Christendom. Women there were who were deserving of a
better destiny, but they are naturally obscured in the general
demoralization. The Mussulman might have taken Constantinople
seventy-five years earlier. The end came on May 29,1453. The city was
captured by Mohammed II., and Constantine XIII., the last of the Caesars,
the worthy scion of degenerate sires, fell in the breach. Mohammed
proceeded quickly to convert Constantinople from a Christian into a
Turkish capital. The city was sacked. The Byzantine women were sold into
slavery, or became wives or concubines of the conquerors and passed the
rest of their days in a Turkish harem. And, from this date, for
centuries the life of Greek womanhood under Turkish domination was
passed in oppression and obscurity.

The fragment of the Greek Empire known in the history of the Middle Ages
as the Empire of Trebizond was the creation of accident. A young man
descended from the worst tyrant of Constantinople, but of an illustrious
name which retained the glamour inspired by the founder of the Comneni
dynasty, grasped the sovereignty of a most important commercial centre,
and his descendants continued to hold it until overwhelmed by the
all-conquering power of the Turk. The Empire of Trebizond possesses
unique grandeur in the romances of the West: the beauty of its
princesses was