soothed by the
comforts of religion and the consciousness of innocence. Yet his phantom
disturbed the repose of the usurper: a whisper was circulated through
the East, that the son of Maurice was still alive: the people expected
their avenger, and the widow and daughters of the late emperor would
have adopted as their son and brother the vilest of mankind. In the
massacre of the Imperial family, the mercy, or rather the discretion, of
Phocas had spared these unhappy females, and they were decently confined
to a private house. But the spirit of the empress Constantina, still
mindful of her father, her husband, and her sons, aspired to freedom
and revenge. At the dead of night, she escaped to the sanctuary of St.
Sophia; but her tears, and the gold of her associate Germanus, were
insufficient to provoke an insurrection. Her life was forfeited to
revenge, and even to justice: but the patriarch obtained and pledged an
oath for her safety: a monastery was allotted for her prison, and the
widow of Maurice accepted and abused the lenity of his assassin.
The discovery or the suspicion of a second conspiracy, dissolved the
engagements, and rekindled the fury, of Phocas. A matron who commanded
the respect and pity of mankind, the daughter, wife, and mother of
emperors, was tortured like the vilest malefactor, to force a confession
of her designs and associates; and the empress Constantina, with her
three innocent daughters, was beheaded at Chalcedon, on the same ground
which had been stained with the blood of her husband and five sons.
After such an example, it would be superfluous to enumerate the names
and sufferings of meaner victims. Their condemnation was seldom preceded
by the forms of trial, and their punishment was embittered by the
refinements of cruelty: their eyes were pierced, their tongues were torn
from the root, the hands and feet were amputated; some expired under the
lash, others in the flames; others again were transfixed with arrows;
and a simple speedy death was mercy which they could rarely obtain. The
hippodrome, the sacred asylum of the pleasures and the liberty of the
Romans, was polluted with heads and limbs, and mangled bodies; and the
companions of Phocas were the most sensible, that neither his favor, nor
their services, could protect them from a tyrant, the worthy rival of
the Caligulas and Domitians of the first age of the empire.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.--Part III.

A daughter of P