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212 THE DECLINE AND FALL tlonians, and perhaps of the Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line. After the death of her husband, the empress aspired to rei^n in the name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger only two, years of age ; but she soon felt the instability of a throne, which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed, and two infants who could not be feared. Theophano looked around for a protector, and threw herself into the arms of the bravest soldier ; her heart was capricious ; but the deformity of the new favourite rendered it more than probable that interest was the motive and excuse of her love. Nicephorus Phocas ^^ united, in the popular opinion, the double merit of an hero and a saint. In the former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid : the descendant of a race, illustrious by their military exploits, he had displayed, in every station and in every province, the courage of a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus [AD. 961] •v.is crowned with recent laurels from the important conquest of the isle of Crete. '^ His religion was of a more ambiguous cast ; and his hair-cloth, his fasts, his pious idiom, and his wish to retire from the business of the world, were a con- venient mask for his dark and dangerous ambition. ^2 Yet he imposed on an holy patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the senate, he was entrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with the absolute and independent com- mand of the Oriental armies. As soon as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched to Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with the empress, and, without degrading her sons, assumed, with the title of Augustus, the pre-eminence of rank and the plenitude of pov/er. But his marriage with Theophano was refused by ■"'"[The chief work on Nicephorus is M. G. Schlumberger's Un empereur byzan- tine au di.xieme siecle ; Nicephore Phocas, 1890 ; a fine svork, which he has con- tinued in his L'epop^e byzantine a la fin du dixieme siecle, 1897, which covers the reign of Tzimisces and the first thirteen years of Basil II.] ^1 [For the Saracen wars of Nicephorus, see chap. lii. ad. fin. He had also won triumphs in Cilicia and Syria (A.v. 962) before his accession.] 5- [Though Nicephorus, as has been said, lived only for his army, yet throughout all his life he had a hankering after the cloister. His intimacy with Athanasius, the founder of the Great Laura on Mount Athos, is an interesting episode in his life ; it is attractively told by M. .Schlumberger, op. cif., chap. vi. But for Nicephorus, the Laura would never have been founded. It is at this period that the monastic settlements of Mount ."Vthos come into prominence. The earliest mention of monks (anchorites ; not in monasteries) on the Holy Mount is found in Genesius, referring to the time of Basil I. (p. 82, ed. Bonn). The first clear picture of the monastic constitution of Athos is found in the Typikon of John Tzimisces, A.D. 972 (P. Meyer, Die Haupturkunden fiir die Geschichte der .thoskl6ster, p. 141 sqq.).'