Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/437

Rh and disciple of Cratinus. She painted a child, which was hung up in the temple of Ceres. Abec. Pitt.

banished by her husband, because she hid images beneath her pillow, the worship or honorary homage of which the Greek church disapproved, and the emperor was particularly zealous against. But coming afterwards to the government, during the minority of her son Constantine, with whom she was associated in the empire, this ambitious princess re-established that worship, which she is said to have loved from policy no less than choice. Both artful and cruel, towards the close of the century, she deposed and murdered her son, by putting out his eyes, and reigned alone. She made Charlemagne, the new emperor of the west, a proposal of marriage. This proposal was made with a view to her Italian dominions, which she was informed he intended to seize; and the marriage treaty was actually concluded, when Nicephorus, the patrician, conspired against Irene, seized her in her bed, and banished her to a nunnery in the island of Lesbos.

After her fall, she requested to be allowed a decent competence, but was denied by those she had raised to splendour. She was forced to earn a scanty subsistence by her distaff, and died in penury the same year, 802.

During her reign, she had submitted to be tributary to