or blood: a plate of noses was accepted as a
grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or mutilated
by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his pollution of his
baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but the manly pleasures of
Copronymus degraded him below the level of a brute; his lust confounded
the eternal distinctions of sex and species, and he seemed to extract
some unnatural delight from the objects most offensive to human sense.
In his religion the Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a
Pagan, and an Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could
be discovered only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal
sacrifices to Venus and the daemons of antiquity. His life was stained
with the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of these
accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is refuted by its
own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the life of the princes,
the lie is more easy as the detection is more difficult. Without
adopting the pernicious maxim, that where much is alleged, something
must be true, I can however discern, that Constantine the Fifth was
dissolute and cruel. Calumny is more prone to exaggerate than to invent;
and her licentious tongue is checked in some measure by the experience
of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks,
the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under
his reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. The
Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but even their
hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled the provocations
which might excuse or justify his rigor, but even these provocations
must gradually inflame his resentment and harden his temper in the use
or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine
was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the
curses or the contempt of the Greeks. From the confession of his
enemies, I am informed of the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the
redemption of two thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon
plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his
activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the