Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/250

 228 THE DECLINE AND FALL burnt alive in the square of St. Sophia. Even the sincerity of his moral and religious virtues was suspected by the persons who had passed their lives in his familiar confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant reply of the empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb, " You die, as you have lived — an hypocrite ! " John, orcaio- It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviv- A D. U18, ing; sons in favour of her dauehter the princess Anna, whose AusHfit 15 O I^ ' philosophy would not have refused the weight of a diadem, But the order of male succession was asserted by the friends of their country ; the lawful heir drew the royal signet from the finger of his insensible or conscious father ; and the empire obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimu- lated by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and, when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons of Alexius, John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the hereditary virtue of their race ; and the younger brother was content with the title of Sebaslocrator, which approached the dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same person, the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately united ; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive stature had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes, or John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her treason, the life and fortune of Anna were justly forfeited to the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor, but he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That respectable friend, Axuch, a slave of Turkish extraction, pre- sumed to decline the gift and to intercede for the criminal ; his generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his favourite ; and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by conspiracy or rebellion : feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his government of twenty-five years, the