victory over the Bulgarians is tarnished by unusual Summary of brutality in the treatment of captives; they are chief events (740-775). handed over to the factions of the circus to kill. In 766, the Bulgarians retrieve their disgrace, and Constantine vents his wrath on his own subjects, persecuting and deriding the monks, while treating the great officials with a capricious cruelty, which might find a recent parallel in the madman Justinian II., but at no other epoch in Byzantine history. He had been thoroughly aroused by a formidable plot the year previous, in which several chief and responsible ministers were implicated. The emperor in 767 demands Gisela, daughter of Pepin, for his son Leo IV., with the old Exarchate for her dowry; the proposal is rejected. (Had Constantine succeeded in his request the course of history might have been altered by a single marriage; there would have been no Irene, no pretext for the assumption by Charles of the imperial title, perhaps instead a reconciliation of conflicting interest and Church usage.) Asia Minor was divided between three bluff and trusty henchmen of the emperor to persecute the orthodox as they listed and to repulse the Moslem; chief among these was Lachanodracon. After a lull of some years, tidings arrived (772) of another great reverse; the massed troops of those Asiatic generals are shamefully defeated at Sycè, a maritime fortress in Pamphylia. In 774, the Moslem again lead in a contemptuous foray for kidnapping and plunder; they seize 500 captives, but at Mopsuestia are attacked in ambush and lose double that number themselves. Constantine himself in the same year makes a great effort and puts 80,000 men into the field against the Bulgarians, a last enterprise, as events proved. This was in a great degree successful, and atoned in a measure for the northern humiliations and anxieties of his reign He was overtaken by death in 775 while preparing a second expedition.

Indirect evi

result.

§ 5. It is impossible to find here the record of a dence entirely successful reign. Schlosser, Finlay, and to a certain against this disappointing extent the prudent Bury, have appeared as apologists for the character and policy of the Iconoclasts. The rancour of the two Church historians, both born in this reign (758), is quite apparent; but we do not judge by their wealth of epithets, but by facts which cannot be gainsaid. Discord within, loss or disgrace without, one half of the empire abroad, one half of the home population estranged; provinces given over to a brutal and violent soldiery, the factions of the capital encouraged to look on the massacre of captives of war as an afternoon's pastime, insults to religious orders and emblems as the chief duty of anti-clerical officials: the negative side of a secular (not an austere) protestantism could go no further. A historian may ignore the foolish gossip of the palace, which finds poison in every natural death and moral depravity in every innocent relation. But if we are rather to judge by the straightforward chronicle, the estimate can hardly be called satisfactory: the reign of Constantine V. must appear the very nadir of this period, grossly barbarous and violent, yet ineffective, the least Roman of all reigns. Indirect evidence, as we have stated, points to a very different conclusion. A society on the very point of dissolution received new life in every department. Law, commerce, agriculture, finance, military organisation, religious practice,—all are carefully revised and adapted to the new circumstances and the new inmates of the realm. The work of Heraclius, suspended during the thirty years of the madness of Justinian and its consequences, was resumed and completed. The loss of northern Italy was a gain; the attack on idol-worship and celibacy the obvious duty of a spirited and patriotic monarch; the frontier-defence against overwhelming odds a work nobly performed. It is impossible to do otherwise than to suspend, in this most puzzling reign

and character, the historical judgment. Against the Indirect evibarbarity of Constantine's punishments to Scamars, dence entirely against this to monks, to prisoners of war, must be set the disappointing tenderness with which, abating his imperial dignity, result. he treated with pirates and preferred to ransom 2500 Roman subjects rather than imperil their lives; against the stories of his irreligion and dissolute Court we can adduce the piety of his daughter Anthemisia, who, nun though she was, lived on the most affectionate terms with this blasphemous "mangeur des moines." Against the callous brutality of an age (searching fate, for instance, in the entrails of a new-born infant) can be alleged the deep interest of the imperial family, and doubtless of a wider society, in the novel foundling-hospitals which became later a marked feature in this civilised and compassionate world. The plain fact remains that we cannot reconcile the two series of facts. Somewhere, historical evidence is wilfully distorted or entirely at fault. We have to deal with two groups separately, which cannot be brought into harmony. And the most equitable method is this (indeed the sole guide for the ofttimes impertinent criticism of the student)-to give preference to the judgment which comes from indirect proof.

§ 6. In this field we forget personalities and deal Recovery due to resumption only with broad, social, or political tendencies. A of direct survey of a great epoch and its unmistakable features monarchic makes us forget the petty trivialities and bitterness control. of individual human life. We have asserted, and shall find occasion to repeat, that the empire was rapidly changing in this age; it may claim the gentler verdict usually passed on a period of transition. The population shifted; the lower classes became more and more Slavonic; the upper, increasingly Armenian. Whatever the apparent insecurity of these two reigns, confidence was reviving; stability in trade, tillage, and commerce reappeared. Property was more safe; estates and

Recovery due titles

monarchic

control,

were

transmitted without anxiety to de

to resumption scendants. We begin to see notable feudal families of direct of warriors born and bred. The military and official classes show no brilliant meteors out of the void, coming, none know from whence, and while a spectator looks, vanishing to leave no trace; but steady transmission by a fixed routine of training and discipline, such as had in earlier times brought to unparalleled efficiency the twin services of Rome. Once more in the stress of the infidel siege and other perils, the monarchy resumes its direct and

Finance.

especially in emphatic control. Perhaps (as modern historians suggest) the chief domain of "Isaurian" success was neither religion and military reform or frontier defence, but finance; the internal economy centralised and careful, without which a Socialistic commonwealth, like the empire its prototype, could not for a moment endure. I gladly accept Bury's suggestion, or rather inspiration, that Constans III. (after his senatorial tutelage) drew to himself the management of the budget and revenue, and that henceforward a Byzantine sovereign was largely a glorified Chancellor of the Exchequer. Army, Civil Service, ordinary administration-these could go on smoothly on the well-worn grooves of tradition; but financial methods and sources of income require (as we know too well to-day) constant readjustment. The independence of the minister is a thing of the past; the very title disappears; we meet with no more counts of the sacred largesses; before 700 the term is obsolete. A logothete is not a minister, but a secretary, a clerk, like a trusted freedman in those great households of the later republic on which the imperial rule was modelled. Leo III. is said to have suddenly increased the taxes (727); it is certain that, like Charles Martel, he resumed some of the superfluous wealth of the Church, besides seizing the Petrine patrimonies in the East. I believe that as Tiberius III. began with the help of his brother

of direct

Finance.

Heraclius to reorganise the army, so Anastasius II. Recovery due in civil matters attempted to repair, to provide, and to resumption to retrench. The election of Theodosius III. the monarchic revenue-officer was a caricature of a real change control, in the attitude and functions of monarchy. The specially in emperor until the days of spendthrift Michael III. will be once again the business-like head of a household; keeping careful accounts of profit and loss, of income, expenditure, and waste, and not delegating the resources of the empire like an idle landlord to unscrupulous bailiffs.

C. THE EMPEROR, THE CHURCH, AND THE AIM OF GOVERNMENT IN THE PERIOD OF ICONOCLASM (717-802)

after 550:

§ 1. Slight but certain indications point to the Barbarism of increasing influence of the clergy in the State during the empire the Heraclian period. If we are venturesome, we influence of may boldly hazard the conjecture that while the priests. civil administration was almost extinguished, and in the end supplanted by military dictators and majorgenerals, the clergy and bishops found themselves everywhere charged with such duties as the soldier cannot perform. The infallible token of "mediavalism" is the predominance of the priest and the warrior, the rough division of society between those who pray and those who fight. Here we have the two natural extremes of a primitive society. The epicene civilian, neither brave nor devout, but only orderly and methodical, is a late, and perhaps a degenerate product, like the bank-clerk. The Byzantine world, after the Great Plague of Justinian's reign, was fast slipping back into barbarism; and by this I would imply a return to the rudiments, a reaction against an artificial culture, uniform and pacific, and against alien methods of government. Respect for the State and deference to law give place to a dread of the unseen powers and their hierophants, to