Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/224

 202 THE DECLINE AND FALL Arsacides^ the rivals of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four hundred years : a younger branch of these Parthian kings continued to reign in Armenia ; and their royal descend- ants survived the partition and servitude of that ancient monarchy."^-* Two of these, Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or retired to the court of Leo the First ; his bounty seated them in a safe and hospitable exile, in the province of Macedonia : Hadrianople was their final settlement. During several genera- tions they maintained the dignity of their birth ; and their Roman patriotism rejected the tempting offers of the Persian and Ai-abian powers, who recalled them to their native country. But their splendour was insensibly clouded by time and poverty ; and the father of Basil was reduced to a small farm, which he cultivated with his own hands. Yet he scorned to disgrace the blood of the Arsacides by a plebeian alliance : his wife, a widow of Hadrianople, was pleased to count among her ancestors the great Constantine ; and their royal infant was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country with the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born than the cradle of Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an inundation of the Bulgarians ; he was educated a slave in a foreign land ; and in this severe discipline he acquired the hardiness of body and flexibility of mind which promoted his future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood he shared the deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke their fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine, defeated two armies of barbarians, embarked in the ships which had been stationed for their reception, and returned to Constantinople, from whence they were distributed to their respective homes. But the freedom of Basil was naked and destitute ; his farm was ruined by the calamities of war ; after his father's death, his manual labour or service could no longer support a family of orphans ; and he resolved to seek a more conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may lead to the paths of greatness. The first night of his arrival at Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgi'im slept on the steps of the church of St. Diomede ; he was fed by the casual hospi- ^s [The Armenian descent of Basil (on the father's side) is set beyond doubt by the notice in the Vita Euthymii (ed. de Boor, p. 2, cp. de Boor's remarks, p. 130-1), combined with the circumstance that a brother of Basil was named Symbatios. The settlement of Armenian families in Thrace by Constantine V. is attested by Theophanes, A.M. 6247; Nicephorus, p. 66. Cp. Rambaud, L'empire grec au dixieme siecle, p. 147. Hamza of Ispahan states that Basil was a Slav, but there is no evidence to bear this out.]