Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/264

ApriH2 242 THE DECLINE AND FALL stantine Angelus, had emerged to wealth and honours by his marriage with a daughter of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus is conspicuous only by his cowardice. His grand- son Isaac punished and succeeded the tyrant ; but he was de- throned by his own vices and the ambition of his brother ; and AD. 1204, their discord introduced the Latins to the conquest of Con- stantinople, the first great period in the fall of the Eastern empire. If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be found that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty emperors ; including, in the Augustan list, some female sove- reigns, and deducting some usurpers who were never acknow- ledged in the capital, and some princes who did not live to possess their inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was most tranquil and prosperous, when it could acquiesce in heredi- tary succession ; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basil ian, and Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations ; several princes number the years of their reign with those of their infancy ; and Constantine the Seventh and his two grandsons occupy the space of an entire century. But in the intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased by a more fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to the summit of royalty ; the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of conspiracy or undermined by the silent arts of intrigue ; the favourites of the soldiers or people, of the senate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately clothed with the purple ; the means of their elevation were base, and their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our in- tellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the dura- tion of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment ; the