Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/199

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 177 orders, the grandson of Heraclius was disqualified for the purple ; but this ceremony, which seemed to profane the sac- raments of the church, was insufficient to appease the suspicions of the tyrant, and the death of the deacon Theodosius could [^ d- ^so] alone expiate the crime of his royal birth. His murder was avenged by the imprecations of the people, and the assassin, in the fulness of power, was driven from his capital into voluntary and perpetual exile. Constans embarked for Greece ; and, as if he meant to retort the abhorrence which he deserved, he is said, from the Imperial galley, to have spit against the walls of his native city. After passing the winter at Athens, he sailed to Tarentum in Italy, visited Rome, and concluded a long [a.d. 662] pilgrimage of disgrace and sacrilegious rapine, by fixing his residence at Syracuse.* But, if Constans could fly from his people, he could not fly from himself. The remorse of his conscience created a phantom who pursued him by land and sea, by day and by night ; and the visionary Theodosius, pre- senting to his lips a cup of blood, said, or seemed to say, " Drink, brother, drink : " a sure emblem of the aggravation of his guilt, since he had received from the hands of the deacon the mystic cup of the blood of Christ.^ Odious to himself and to mankind, Constans perished by domestic, perhaps by episcopal treason in the capital of Sicily. A servant who waited in the bath, after pouring warm water on his head, struck him violently with the vase. He fell, stunned by the blow and suffocated by the water ; and his attendants, who wondered at the tedious delay, beheld with indifference the corpse of their lifeless emperor. The troops of Sicily invested with the purple an obscure youth, whose inimitable beauty eluded, and it mifflit [Mizizios, an •' J ' S> Armenian] ■* [This description of the flight of Constans from Constantinople is certainly a misrepresentation. Of the causes of the execution of Theodosius we know nothing ; and, though Constans was certainly unpopular in his capital and this unpopularity doubtless confirmed him in his resolve to proceed to the West, this resolve was in the first instance evidently dictated by statesmanlike motives. He had vigorously and effectively checked the advance of Saracen arms in the East ; it seemed now all-important to protect Africa and Sicily, threatened and attacked by the same enemy, and at the same time recover the south of Italy (duchy of Beneventum) from the Lombards. In this last task Constans failed ; and his idea of moving back the centre of the empire to Old Rome was an unpractical dreami He seems to have reorganized the administration of the Imperial territory in South Italy, by forming one province Calabria, including both the heel and toe. When the heel was wrested from the empire, the name became appropriated exclusively to the toe. The unpopularity of Constans had probably its gravest cause in the heavy burdens which he imposed for the military reorganization of the empire.] ■' [See Cedrenus, i. p. 762, ed. Bonn.] VOL. V. 12