emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and stabbed their daggers
with such violence and precipitation into his eyes as if they meant to
execute a mortal sentence. An ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded
the annalist of the church that death was the immediate consequence of
this barbarous execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by
the authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the patroness of
images. Yet the blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed by
the court and forgotten by the world; the Isaurian dynasty was silently
extinguished; and the memory of Constantine was recalled only by the
nuptials of his daughter Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael the Second.

The most bigoted orthodoxy has justly execrated the unnatural mother,
who may not easily be paralleled in the history of crimes. To her bloody
deed superstition has attributed a subsequent darkness of seventeen
days; during which many vessels in midday were driven from their course,
as if the sun, a globe of fire so vast and so remote, could sympathize
with the atoms of a revolving planet. On earth, the crime of Irene
was left five years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external
splendor; and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither
heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world bowed
to the government of a female; and as she moved through the streets of
Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds were held by as
many patricians, who marched on foot before the golden chariot of their
queen. But these patricians were for the most part eunuchs; and their
black ingratitude justified, on this occasion, the popular hatred and
contempt. Raised, enriched, intrusted with the first dignities of the
empire, they basely conspired against their benefactress; the great
treasurer Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her
successor was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by
the venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with
dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy of
Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her unsuspicious
clemency, and for the throne and treasures which she resigned, solicited
a decent and honorable retreat. His avarice refused this modest
compensation; and, in her exile of the Isle of Lesbos, the empress
earned a scanty subsisten