Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/173

Rh and the strong position of the city; there was the unwarlike character of the citizens, which rendered a civic tumult rare and easily repressed; there was every day present a swarm of courtiers eager to profess loyalty; there were the vast revenues, which enabled a prodigal emperor to purchase the fidelity of thousands; and there was that unbounded magnificence of the court, which because it was so splendid seemed so safe from danger. Perhaps, too, the thoughts of the despot would turn with satisfaction to the vast armies which in Europe and Asia guarded his frontiers. These constituted, it is true, his chief danger. When an emperor failed in war, when the soldiers of Europe or Asia conceived a prejudice against his orthodoxy, his parsimony, or his weakness, there were plenty of precedents for the proclamation of their own general as emperor, and for a march, quite likely to be successful, on the capital.

First, as to the revenue of the empire. So great was it, that Theodora saved for her son the sum of 109,000 pounds weight of gold, and 300,000 pounds weight of silver; while Basil II., who maintained and paid enormous armies, accumulated no less than 200,000 pounds of gold. And Benjamin of Tudela declares that Constantinople alone brought in a revenue derived from custom duties of 20,000 pieces of gold every day. It must be remembered that everything went directly into the imperial treasury, that from every province, every city of the empire, a perennial rivulet of gold and silver flowed into those rapacious coffers; and though this revenue did not increase, as in a prosperous empire it