Dec. 16] 210 THE DECLINE AND FALL other, and conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered his apartment Avith an armed force, and conveyed [AD. 944, him, in the habit of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled by a religious community. The rumour of this domestic revolution excited a tumult in the city ; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care ; and the sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the Ijenefit of their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of Constantine, revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of assassinating her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were alarmed ; and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his Imperial colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet. In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine the Seventh obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled, or seencied to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and glory ; and the studies which had amused and dignified his leisure were incompatible with the serious duties of a sovereign.^" The emperor neglected the practice, to instruct his son Romanus in the theory, of government ; while he indulged the habits of intemperance and sloth, he dropt the reins of administration into the hands of Helena his wife ; ^ and, in the shifting scene of her favour and caprice, each minister was regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the Greeks ; they excused his failings ; they respected his learning, his innocence and charity, his love of justice ; and the ceremony of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his subjects. The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in the vestibule of the palace ; and the civil and military officers, the patricians, the senate, and the clergy, approached in due order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign. Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre, an ■•' [On Constantine and his literary works, see further chap, liii.]
- - [The military support of Constantine was Bardas Phocas and his three sons,
Nicepnorus, Leo, and Constantine.]
