CHAPTER VII.
THE COMNENANS.
HE events which closed with the fall of the last emperor nominated by a princess of the Macedonian dynasty were due to a remarkable change in the social relations of the empire. There had gradually arisen a rich territorial aristocracy—we have seen how rich was a single heiress of the Peloponnese—who lived much on their own estates, which they personally superintended, and where they were themselves seigneurs, like the great barons of Western Europe. And these nobles drifted perpetually more and more away from the crown. They saw how this prize fell not to any of their own equals, but to soldiers of fortune, servants, and favourites; and they saw the highest military commands entrusted to eunuchs of the imperial household. Of late the corruption of the court, the lamentable and ridiculous spectacle of Zoe marrying one husband after another, and the weakening of the central government, disgusted these lords to the point of forcing them into a conspiracy for an overthrow not only of the actual emperor but for the establishment of a new government, with a more definite
