r opinion, the double merit of a hero and a saint.
In the former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid:
the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits, he
had displayed in every station and in every province the courage of
a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus was crowned with
recent laurels, from the important conquest of the Isle of Crete. His
religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and his hair-cloth, his fasts,
his pious idiom, and his wish to retire from the business of the world,
were a convenient mask for his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he
imposed on a holy patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the
senate, he was intrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with
the absolute and independent command of the Oriental armies. As soon
as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched to
Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with
the empress, and without degrading her sons, assumed, with the title of
Augustus, the preeminence of rank and the plenitude of power. But his
marriage with Theophano was refused by the same patriarch who had placed
the crown on his head: by his second nuptials he incurred a year of
canonical penance; a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to their
celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to silence the
scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of the emperor was
lost in the purple: in a reign of six years he provoked the hatred
of strangers and subjects: and the hypocrisy and avarice of the first
Nicephorus were revived in his successor. Hypocrisy I shall never
justify or palliate; but I will dare to observe, that the odious vice of
avarice is of all others most hastily arraigned, and most unmercifully
condemned. In a private citizen, our judgment seldom expects an accurate
scrutiny into his fortune and expense; and in a steward of the public
treasure, frugality is always a virtue, and the increase of taxes too
often an indispensable duty. In the use of his patrimony, the generous
temper of Nicephorus had been proved; and the revenue was strictly
applied to the service of the state: each spring the emperor marched
in person against the Saracens; and every Roman might compute the
employment of his taxes in triumphs, conquests, and the security of the
Eastern barrier.

Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.--Part IV.

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