OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 217 rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil ; and in the imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious education, which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his mind ; he was ignorant of every science ; and the remembrance of his learned and feeble grandsire might encourage a real or affected contempt of laws and lawyers, of artists and arts. Of such a character, in such an age, supei'stition took a firm and lasting possession ; after the first licence of his youth, Basil the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the penance of an hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and armour, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and Hesh. In the sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily ; he was prevented by death ; and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was dismissed from the world with the blessing's of the clers;v and the curses of the people. After his constantine decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about three years, A.i). 1025; tiie power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty ; and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed, sixty-six years, the title of Augustus ; and the reign of the two brothers is the longest and most obscure of the Byzantine history. A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hun- Romanus m. dred and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to a.6. 1028, the Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine IX., the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had ])referred his private chastity to the public interest, and Constantine himself had only three daughters: Eudocia, who took the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold or pious Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person and fair reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his declining that honour, was informed that blindness or death was the second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection, but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to
