Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/209

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 187 the life of princes, the lie is more easy as the detection is more difficult. Without adopting the pernicious maxim that, where much is alleged, something must be true, I can however discern that Constantine the Fifth was dissolute and cruel. Calumny- is more prone to exaggerate than to invent ; and her licentious tongue is checked in some measure by the experience of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks, the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under his reign, the numbers are recox'ded, the names were conspicuous, the execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. The Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus ; but even their hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissemble the provocations which might excuse or justify his rigour, but even these provocations must gradually inflame his resentment and harden his temper in the use or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the curses or the contempt of the Greeks. -0 From the confession of his enemies, I am informed of the I'estoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the redemption of two thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his activity and courage ; he was on horseback in the field at the head of his legions ; and, although the fortune of his arms was various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the Danube, in civil and barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast into the scale, to counterbalance the weight of orthodox invective. The Iconoclasts revered the virtues of the prince : forty years after his death, they still prayed before the tomb of the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by fanaticism or fraud ; and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white steed, brandishing his lance against 2" [Constantine was an uncommonly able and vigorous ruler, unceasingly active in endeavours to improve the internal administration, and successful in his military operations. He won back Melitene, Germanicia, and Theodosiopolis from the .Saracens, and destroyed an armada which the caliph sent to besiege Cyprus (a.d. 746). He weakened the Bulgarian kingdom b}' a series of campaigns of various fortune. His persecution of the monks was cruel and rigorous, though perhaps more excusable than most persecutions ; it was a warfare against gross super- stition. Gibbon has not mentioned the great pestilence which devastated the empire in this reign. Theophanes has given a vivid description of it. At Con- stantinople it raged for a year (a.d. 749), and the depopulation which it caused led to an influ. of new inhabitants, to which reference is made in the te.xt. Cp. Finlay, Hist of Greece, ii., 66-7.]