Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/212

 190 THE DECLINE AND FALL herself alone, was pronounced with reluctant murmurs ; and the bold refusal of the Armenian guards encouraged a free and general [AD. 790] declaration that Constantine the Sixth was the laAvful emperor of the Romans. In this character he ascended his hereditary throne, and dismissed Irene to a life of solitude and repose. But her haughty spirit condescended to the arts of dissimula- tion : she flattered the bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial [A.D, 792] tenderness of the prince, regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit ; but his education had been studiously neg- lected ; and his ambitious mother exposed to the public censure the vices which she had nourished and the actions which she [A.D. 795] had secretly advised. His divorce and second marriage offended the prejudices of the clergy, ^-^ and, by his imprudent rigour, he forfeited the attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy was formed for the restoration of Irene ; and the secret, though widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople, with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice ; yet, before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his person, with a menace that, unless they accomplished, she would reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid ; they seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported to the porphyry apart- ment of the palace, where he had first seen the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every sentiment of humanity and nature ; and it was deci'eed in her bloody council that Con- stantine should be rendered incapable of the throne. Her [AD. 797, emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and stabbed their daggers with such violence and precipitation into his eyes, as 22 [Constantine had been betrothed to Rotrud, daughter of Charles the Great, but Irene had broken off the match and compelled him to marry a lady who was distasteful to him. In 795 he fell in love with one of his mother's maids of honour, Theodote ; and, with the insidious purpose of making him odious to the clergy who regarded second marriages as impious, Irene encouraged him to divorce his wife Maria and marry Theodote. The patriarch Tarasius was a courtier and ac- quiesced in the emperor's wishes, though he would not perform the marriage ceremony himself. The affair created grave scandal among the monks, the most prominent of whom were Plato and his nephew Theodore of the abbey of Studion. They broke oH communion with the patriarch and the emperor. Schlosser (Gesch. der bilderstiirmenden Kaiser, p. 311) makes merry over the embarrassment of historians in view of the fact that both Tarasius who approved of the marriage and Theodore who condemned it are canonized saints.] Aug. 15]