fifteen hundred greens, whom he affected to esteem as the solid pillars of his throne. Their treacherous or languid support betrayed his weakness and hastened his fall; the green faction were the secret accomplices of the rebels, and the blues recommended lenity and moderation in a contest with their Roman brethren. The rigid and parsimonious virtues of Maurice had long since alienated the hearts of his subjects : as he walked barefoot in a religious procession, he was rudely assaulted with stones, and his guards were compelled to present their iron maces in the defence of his person. A fanatic monk ran through the streets with a drawn sword, denouncing against him the wrath and the sentence of God, and a vile plebeian, who represented his countenance and apparel, was seated on an ass and pursued by the imprecations of the multitude.[1] The emperor suspected the popularity of Germanus with the soldiers and citizens; he feared, he threatened, but he delayed to strike; the patrician fled to the sanctuary of the church; the people rose in his defence, the walls were deserted by the guards, and the lawless city was abandoned to the flames and rapine of a nocturnal tumult. In a small bark, the unfortunate Maurice, [November 22] with his wife and nine children, escaped to the Asiatic shore, but the violence of the wind compelled him to land at the church of St. Autonomus[2] near Chalcedon, from whence he dispatched Theodosius, his eldest son, to implore the gratitude and friendship of the Persian monarch. For himself, he refused to fly: his body was tortured with sciatic pains,[3] his mind was enfeebled by superstition; he patiently awaited the event of the revolution, and addressed a fervent and public prayer to the Almiglity, that the punishment of his sins might be inflicted in this world rather than in a future lift;. After the abdication of
- ↑ In their clamours against Maurice, the people of Constantinople branded him with the name of Marcionite or Marcionist : a heresy (says Theophylact, 1. viii. c.
9) (
Greek characters) Did they only cast out a vague reproach—or had the emperor really listened to some obscure teacher of those ancient Gnostics?
- ↑ The church of St. Autonomus (whom 1 have not the honour to know) was 150 stadia from Constantinople (Theophylact, 1. viii. c. 9). [It was on the gulf of Xicomedia ; Nic. Callist. 18, 40. The life of Autonomus (4th cent.) will be found in Acta .Sanct. , 12 Sept. iv. 16. sqq.] The port of Eutropius, where Maurice and his children were murdered, is described by Gyllius (de Bosphoro Thracio, 1. iii c. xi.) as one of the two harbours of Chalcedon.
- ↑ The inhabitants of Constantinople were generally subject to the (Greek characters); and Theophylact insinuates (1. viii. c. 9) that, if it were consistent with the rules of history, he could assign the medical cause. Yet such a digression would not have been more impertinent than his inquiry (I. vii. c. 16, 17) into the annual inundations of the Nile, and all the opinions of the Greek philosophers on that subject.
