Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/479

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 457 the Italian looms. " The demands of nature and necessity/' was he accustomed to say, " are indispensable ; but the influence of passion may rise and sink at the breath of a monarch " ; and both his precept and example recommended simplicity of man- ners and the use of domestic industry. The education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects of his care ; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced with truth that a prince and a philosopher * are the two most eminent characters of human society. His first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by the blood of the Angeli and Comneni, that flowed in her veins and transmitted the inheritance of the empire. After her death, he was contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural [a.d. 1244] daughter of the emperor Frederic the Second ; ^ but, as the bride had not attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train ; '^ and his amor- ous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honours, though not the title, of lawful empress. His fi-ailty was censured as a flagitious and damnable sin by the monks ; and their rude invectives exercised and displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may excuse a single vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues ; and, in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate passions of Lascaris, the judg- ment of their contemporaries was softened by gratitude to tlie second founders of the empire." The slaves of the Latins, with- out law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national freedom ; and Vataces employed ^ Moroi yap aTTavTuiv at'Opunroiv ouofiacTToraTOi Pa(Ti.ev^ Kai </)iAdiro'4o5 (Georg. AcrO- pol. c. 32). The emperor, in a familiar conversation, examined and encouraged the studies of his future logothete. ^ [Her mother was Bianca Lancia of Piedmont. Frederick seems to have married her ultimately (towards the close of his life) and legitimised her children (Matthew Paris, ed. Lond., vol. 7, p. 216). The lady's true name was Constance (as western writers called her) ; only Greek writers name her Anna, so that she was probably baptized under this name into the Greek church.] ^[The Greek writers call her the Mop«^t>'a — Marchioness. Her liaison with the Emperor caused an incident which produced a quarrel between him and Nicephorus Blemmydes. She entered the Monastery of St. Gregory in grand costume. Blemmydes, when he observed her presence, ordered the communion service to be discontinued. Vatatzes refused to punish a just man, as the Marchioness de- manded, but showed his resentment by breaking off all relations with him. Be- sides Nicephorus Gregoras, i. p. 45, 46, we have a description of the incident from the pen of Blemmydes himself in his autobiography, c. 41 (ed. Heisenberg).] ^ Compare Acropolita (c. 18, 52) and the two first books of Nicephorus Gregoras.