1Readers of Professor Bury’s incomplete “History of the Later Roman Empire” may wonder that I continue to use the phrase “Byzantine Empire” after Bury’s protest against that phrase. But it seems to me that if “Roman Empire” means an Empire centred in Rome, “Byzantine Empire” is the most congruous name for a dominion that centres in ancient Byzantium and has, during the far greater part of its story, no connexion whatever with Rome. Most historians continue to speak of it as Byzantine.

2See, especially, J. Ebersolt, “Le Grand Palais de Constantinople.” 1910.

3There was no hereditary right to the throne in the Roman Empire, though a father generally contrived to secure it for his son. “Born in the purple” is, by the way, an inaccurate description of the imperial children, though not uncommon. They were “born in the Porphyra,” or porphyry-lined palace; but, as the Greek word porphura properly means “purple,” it is mistranslated at times. There are those who maintain that the imperial colour was rather red than what we know as purple.

4The date of the marriage is much disputed. Chroniclers assign it to various years, and, when the son of Ariadne and Zeno mounts the throne, he is variously described as an infant, a boy of seven, and a youth of seventeen. Professor Bury puts the marriage in 458 or 459. I prefer the estimate of Tillemont, that it took place in 468, the year of the disgrace of Basiliscus.

5It is a popular fallacy, as we shall frequently see, that the Romans had abandoned these bloody spectacles in the days of Honorius.

6See, especially, the work of DÉbidour, “L’ImpÉratrice ThÉodora,” and a summary and approval of DÉbidour’s arguments in an article by Mr Mallett in The English Historical Review, January 1887. Mr W.G. Holmes’s learned work, “The Age of Justinian and Theodora” (2 vols., 1907), is much too meagre in its references to Theodora.

7See the Latin translation (“Commentarii de Beatis Orientalibus”) by Douwen and Land of this Syriac work (Amsterdam, 1889). John also speaks of her as “a most astute woman,” and, although his work teems with the immense services done to his Church by Theodora, he never mentions her with more than stiff and formal respect.

8It is necessary to explain to the unfamiliar the “factions” of the Hippodrome. In the chariot contests the rival drivers were distinguished by their colours: white, red, blue and green. The white and red were of little account, but the blue and green divided the populace of Constantinople into bitterly hostile parties or “factions.” These parties were almost in the nature of sporting clubs: they were publicly recognized, and had their own premises, chariots, beasts, officers, etc. We shall find the fate of dynasties almost turning at times on the struggle of the “blues” and “greens.”

9This conversation (preserved in Theophanes) is sometimes described as a free discharge of invectives against Justinian, and surprise is expressed that the character of his wife is not included. The dialogue is not at all a general attack on Justinian. It is, for the most part, a sober and earnest demand of justice, and contains only one insulting line—possibly an isolated cry of some more impetuous member of the party.

10I have passed in silence an earlier charge against Theodora in the “Anecdotes.” The Gothic queen Amalasuntha had appealed to Justinian, and Theodora is said to have sent an officer to cause her to be assassinated, lest her great beauty should seduce the Emperor. Procopius gives a different version of the murder of Amalasuntha in his “Gothic War,” and we have no serious reason to involve Theodora.

11Shorthand (notatio) was, of course, familiar to the Romans and daily practised. It may not be superfluous to add that the dignity of CÆsar was a semi-imperial rank conferred usually on sons or possible successors of the Emperor, or King (basileus), as the eastern Romans came to call their monarch.

12It should be noted that the organized factions were not nearly so large as these incidents suggest. When Maurice had wished to arm them against the usurper, he found that the blues numbered only nine hundred, and the greens fifteen hundred. The entire population was about a million.

13See Pernice’s “L’Imperatore Eraclio,” 1905, p. 25.

14Professor Bury gives his age as twenty-three, and assumes that he was born in 615, but Nicephorus places his birth in the second Persian campaign (623). The first son of Martina had died. His name (or nickname) is spelt either Heraclonas or Heracleonas.

15The readers of Gibbon may often notice that words or speeches quoted here differ materially from corresponding quotations in the great historian. The reason is that Gibbon invariably paraphrases such quotations. They are in this work translated literally from the Greek chroniclers.

16I have not been able to consult this interesting “Life of St Philaretus,” and am quoting Diehl’s admirable work, “Figures Byzantines.”

17A monk of this monastery, Theodore of Studium, has left us a number of letters and works, though they give little satisfaction to the profane historian. One letter, however, is addressed to the ex-Empress Maria, and we learn from it that her daughter, or one of her daughters (Euphrosyne and Irene), pressed her to come and live in her palace. Theodore sternly forbids her to return to that world of sin.

18Finlay rejects the story on the ground that Theodora could not possibly have made her husband believe that sacred images were dolls for her children. But that is not the story; Theodora denied that she had any dolls at all.

19The mystery of the children of Theophilus is yet unsolved. Michael was born, of Theodora, about 828, and we know that another boy, named Constantine, was born. But the five daughters—Thecla, Anna, Anastasia, Pulcheria and Maria—are a puzzle, to which the wretched Byzantine chroniclers give us no clue. They make Thecla, the eldest, a gay and dissolute woman thirty years afterwards, and they marry Maria, the youngest, about 832; while they speak of the whole of them as young girls, playing with their grandmother’s dolls, about the time when the youngest of them marries Alexius. It is frequently suggested that they were the daughters of an earlier wife of Theophilus, but this is hardly consistent with the later gaiety of Thecla (down to 868) or the doll story; nor, although we do not know the exact age of Theophilus, can we easily admit that he had been married for twenty years—which is necessary to make Maria fifteen in 832—before he chose Theodora under the guidance of his stepmother.

20“Zwei Griechische Texte Über die H. Theophano,” edited by E. Kurtz, in the “MÉmoires de l’Academie ImpÉriale de St Petersbourg,” viii. series, vol 3. Unfortunately, the legendary and partisan character of the essays compels us to use them with discretion. I have also taken much from the Greek life of the patriarch Euthymius, and have been much helped by the notes of its editor, de Boor.

21The mixture of palaces and monasteries may cause some perplexity. The explanation is that for a long time it was a pious and very common custom of wealthy Constantinopolitans to ensure prayers for their soul by leaving their palaces to the monks, and even converting them into monasteries before they died, so as to die in the ranks of the monks. We shall find the next Emperor checking this practice, to the great anger of the monks.

22G. Schlumherger. “Un Empereur Byzantin au DixiÈme SiÈcle.” (1890); a very fine and ample study of Byzantine life.

23Basil was a natural son of Romanus I. and a Russian (or else Bulgarian) slave. It is a curious mistake on the part of Gibbon, and even of Schlumberger, to confuse the Basil whom she belaboured with her own son Basil.

24In point of fact, a writer of the time, Michael Atteliates, says that he had no wife. Flach (“Die Kaiserin Eudokia,” 1876) seems to have overlooked this authority.

25Until recent years Eudocia was, as one reads in Gibbon, reputed to have been the authoress of “Ionia,” but later writers have shown that this was an error. She undoubtedly wandered in the fields of letters and philosophy under the guidance of Psellus, and seems to have written a little.

26Sebastos is the Greek equivalent of the Latin Augustus. It must not be forgotten that, while I continue to use the words “Emperor” and “Empress,” they were now more commonly called “King” and “Queen,” “Lord” and “Lady,” or “Master” and “Mistress.”

27Since the princess, or CÆsaress, has her apologists, if not admirers, this may seem a hasty judgment. It is based simply on her narrative, controlled by the accounts of other chroniclers. The last pages of her history are superb in their mendacity, and she commonly suppresses or perverts the facts. For the difficulties of her father’s position, and the great services he rendered to the Empire, which must be put in the scale against his duplicity and fraud, I must send the reader to historians.

28One or two remarks on the novel may not be without interest. It is far the weakest of Scott’s historical romances. Byzantine antiquities were little known in England at the time when it was written, and the great novelist is reduced to a meagreness or inaccuracy of detail which places the story in unfavourable contrast to his Scottish romances, and he is forced to admit countless anachronisms. Anna Comnena was only thirteen years old at the time, and did not begin to write her “Alexiad” until twenty or thirty years later. The golden birds and lions, also, which Scott puts beside the imperial throne, had been melted down by Michael the Drunkard two hundred years before. I mention these features only because Scott is usually so conscientious, even in romance.

29It may be well to repeat that the neater phrase in Gibbon is an artistic paraphrase, not a translation, of the original Greek.

30“Typicum, sive Regula, Irenes AugustÆ,” published by the Benedictines of St Maur in their “Analecta GrÆca” (1688).

31The marriage of Alexis is placed by Finlay in 1178, but William of Tyre, who was in Constantinople at the time, says that it took place in the year of the death of Louis VII. and of Manuel. Nicetas also says that Anna was “not quite eleven” when she married Andronicus (in 1183) and “not quite eight” when she married Alexis.

32Finlay, following Nicephorus Gregoras, wrongly says that Theodore had left “no son” to inherit the purple. George Acropolites, the better authority, says that he left “no mature son.” The son of Philippa was eight years old, and seems to have lived under the cloud of his mother’s disgrace.

33This lady is sometimes named Markesina, but the term is merely a Greek attempt to speak of her as “the Marchioness.” Her real name is unknown.

34Finlay declines to regard the dominion which was re-established by the Greeks in 1261 as “the Byzantine Empire.” But as there had never been any dynastic continuity, and as “Byzantine Empire” merely means an empire which has its seat in Constantinople, or ancient Byzantium (the name still commonly given to the city by its own writers), I see no reason to discard the phrase.

35Manuel’s younger brother, Theodore, was never crowned and had been crushed by the Sultan, so that his beautiful wife, BartholomÆa, daughter of the Duke of Athens, does not enter our list; and as BartholomÆa had no children (though her husband had several) there was no complication of the new arrangement to be feared from that side.

36Bertrandon’s interesting narrative may be read in English in T. Wright’s “Early Travels in Palestine.”