Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/103

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 83 separate chiefs of the Franks, the barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary' strangers, who, in the decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the Byzantine armies. 4. The naval powers were under the command of the greed Diikc ; in his absence they obeyed the great Drungaire of the fleet ; and, in his place, the Emir, or admiral, a name of Saracen extraction,^- but which has been naturalised in all the modern languages of Europe. Of these officers, and of many more whom it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military hierarchy was framed. Their honours and emoluments, their dress and titles, their mutual salutations and respective pre-eminence, were balanced with more exquisite labour than would have fixed the constitu- tion of a free people ; and the code was almost perfect when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and servitude, was for ever buried in the ruins of the empire.^" The most loftv titles and the most humble postures, which Adoration of n'l i<- T^-iii- ^^* emperor devotion has applied to the supreme oemg, nave been prosti- tuted by flattery and fear to creatures of the same nature with ourselves. The mode of aduraliun,-'^ of falling prostrate on the ground and kissing the feet of the emperor, was borrowed by Diocletian from Persian servitude ; but it was continued and aggravated till the last age of the Greek monarchy. Excepting only on Sundays, when it was waved, from a motive of religious pride, this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who entered the royal presence, from the princes invested with the diadem and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their independent sovereigns, the caliphs of Asia. Egypt, or Spain, the kings of France and Italy, and the Latin emperoi-s of ancient 52 It was directly borrowed from the Normans. In the xiith century, Giannone reckons the admiral of Sicily among the great officers. 53 This sketch of honours and offices is drawn from George Codinus Curopalata, who survived the taking of Constantinople by the Turks : his elaborate though trifling work (de Officiis Ecclesire et Aulae C. P.) has been illustrated by the notes of Goar, and the three books of Gretser, a learned Jesuit. [For Codinus see Appendix I. — Following " Codinus," Ducange and Gibbon, in the account in the text, have given a description of the ministers and officials of the Byzantine court which con- founds different periods in a single picture. The functions and the importance of these dignitaries were constantly changing ; but the history of each office has still to be written.] ^The respectful salutation of carrying the hand to the mouth, ad os, is the root of the Latin word, adoro adorare. [This is to go too far back. Adoro comes directly from oro.'] See our learned Selden (vol. iii. p. 143-145, 942), in his Titles of Honour. It seems, from the first books of Herodotus, to be of Persian origin. [The adoration of the Basileus is vividly represented in a fine miniature in a Venetian psalter, which shows the Emperor Basil II. in grand costume and men grovelling at his feet. There is a coloured reproduction in Schlumberger's Nic^phore Phocas, P- 304-]