Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/246

 224 THE DECLINE AND FALL Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman sceptre ; and his surname of Paropinaces denotes the reproach which he shared with an avaricious favourite who enhanced the price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric ; but his character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt ot their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals at the head of the European and Asiatic legions assumed the purple at Hadria- nople and Nice. Their revolt was in the same month ; they bore the same name of Nicephorus ; but the two candidates were distinguished by the surnames of Bryennius and Botani- ates : the former in the maturity of wisdom and coui'age, the latter conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constanti- nople. The name of Bryennius was illustrious ; his cause was popular ; but his licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and pillaging a suburb ; and the people, who would have hailed the rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This change of the public opinion was favourable to Botaniates, who at length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of Chalcedon. A formal invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the synod, and the senate, was circulated through the streets of Constantinople ; and the general assembly, in the dome of St. Sophia, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this unarmed multitude ; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was rewarded with the monastic habit and the title of archbishop of Ephesus. He left a son, a Con- stantine, born and educated in the purple ; and a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty. Nicephorus John Comncuus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived ates. AD. in Dcace and diffnitv his generous refusal of the sceptre."*^ By 1078 March o */ ~ ^ 25 ' his wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and policy, he left eight children : the three daughters multiplied the Comnenian alliances with the noblest of the Greeks ; of the five sons, Manuel was stopped by a premature death ■ Isaac and Alexius ■"O [See above, n. 65.]