204 THE DECLINE AND FALL be condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason ; and the churches which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor and puerile expiation of his guilt. The different ages of Basil the First may be compared with those of Augustus. The situation of the Greek did not allow him in his earliest youth to lead an army against his country or to proscribe the noblest of her sons ; but his aspiring genius stooped to the arts of a slave ; he dissembled his ambition and even his virtues, and grasped with the bloody hand of an assassin the empire which he ruled with the wisdom and tenderness of a parent. A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his duty ; but it must be from a deficiency of sense or courage that an absolute monarch can separate his happiness from his glory or his glory from the public welfare. The life or panegyric of Basil has, indeed, been composed and published under the long reign of his descendants ; but even their stability on the throne may be justly ascribed to the superior merit of their ancestor. In his character, his grandson Constantine has attempted to delineate a perfect image of royalty ; but that feeble prince, unless he had copied a real model, could not easily have soared so high above the level of his own conduct or conceptions. But the most solid praise of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a flourish- ing monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute Michael, and that which he bequeathed to the Macedonian dynasty. The evils which had been sanctified by time and example were corrected by his master-hand ; and he revived, if not the national spirit, at least the order and majesty of the Roman empire. His application was indefatigable, his temper cool, his under- standing vigorous and decisive ; and in his practice he observed that rare and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue at an equal distance between the opposite vices. His military service had been confined to the palace ; nor was the emperor endowed with the spirit or the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman arms were again formidable to the bar- barians. As soon as he had formed a new arm}'^ by discipline and exercise, he appeared in person on the banks of the Eu))hrates, curbed the pride of the Saracens, and suppressed the dangerous though just revolt of the Manichaeans.*'^ His indignation against a rebel who had long eluded his pursuit provoked him to wish and to pray that, by the grace of God, "** [For the rebellion of the Paulicians under Carbeasand Chrysochir, see below, chap, liv.]
