wever, impossible to follow long this
middle course, as the adherents of the images contrived to worship them in
spite of their elevation, while their opponents taxed the emperor with
want of zeal, holding out to him the example of the Jewish monarch, who
had caused the brazen serpent to be broken. Leo therefore ordered all
kinds of images to be destroyed; and though his edict met with some
opposition,(56) it was put into execution throughout the whole empire,
with the exception of the Italian provinces, which, instigated by Pope
Gregory II., a zealous defender of images, revolted against the emperor,
and resisted all his efforts to regain his dominion over them. This
monarch died in 741, after a not inglorious reign of twenty-four years,
and was succeeded on the throne by his son Constantine VIII., surnamed
Copronymus. All the information which we possess about this monarch, as
well as the other iconoclast emperors, is derived from historians
violently opposed to their religious views. These writers represent
Constantine VIII. as one of the greatest monsters that ever disgraced
humanity, stained by every imaginable vice; and having exhausted all the
usual terms of opprobrium, they invent some such ridiculous expressions as
a "_leopard generated by a lion, an aspic born from the seeds of a
serpent, a flying dragon_," &c.; but they do not adduce in confirmation of
these epithets any of those criminal acts which have disgraced the reigns
of many Byzantine emperors, whose piety is extolled by the same writers.
We know, moreover, by the evidence of those very historians who have
bespattered with all those opprobrious terms the memory of Constantine,
that he was a brave and skilful leader, who defeated the Arabs, the most
formidable enemies of the empire, and restored several of its lost
provinces, and that the country was prosperous under his reign of
thirty-four years--741 to 775.

The beginning of Constantine's reign was disturbed by his own
brother-in-law, Artabasdes, who, supported by the adherents of the images,
competed for the imperial throne, but was defeated, and his party crushed.
Constantine, desiring to abolish the abuse, which he regarded as idolatry,
by a solemn decision of the church declared, in 753, his intention to
convoke for this object a general council; and in order that the question
at issue should be thoroughly sifted, he enjoined all the bishops of the
empire to assemble local synods, and to examine