Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of _Monomachus_, the single
combatant, must have been expressive of his valor and victory in some
public or private quarrel. But his health was broken by the tortures
of the gout, and his dissolute reign was spent in the alternative
of sickness and pleasure. A fair and noble widow had accompanied
Constantine in his exile to the Isle of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in
the appellation of his mistress. After his marriage and elevation,
she was invested with the title and pomp of _Augusta_, and occupied a
contiguous apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the
delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and scandalous
partition; and the emperor appeared in public between his wife and his
concubine. He survived them both; but the last measures of Constantine
to change the order of succession were prevented by the more vigilant
friends of Theodora; and after his decease, she resumed, with the
general consent, the possession of her inheritance. In her name, and by
the influence of four eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed
about nineteen months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion,
they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor
Michael the Sixth. The surname of _Stratioticus_ declares his military
profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see with the
eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers. Whilst he ascended
the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the last of the Macedonian
or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this
shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the
Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred
like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.

From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit,
begins to emerge: the Greeks either preserved or revived the use of
surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue: and we now
discern the rise, succession, and alliances of the last dynasties of
Constantinople and Trebizond. The _Comneni_, who upheld for a while the
fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honor of a Roman origin: but
the family had been long since transported from Italy to Asia. Their
patrimonial estate was situate in the district of Castamona, in the
neighborhood of the Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already
entered the paths of ambition, revis