Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/99

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 79 ignorant," says the historian, "that the air of the palace is more congenial to such insects than a shepherd's daily to the flies of the summer ". During her lifetime, she bestoAved the greater part of her estates in Peloponnesus, and her testament instituted Leo, the son of Basil, her universal heir. After the payment of the legacies, fourscore villas or farms were added to the Imperial domain ; and three thousand slaves of Danielis were enfranchised by their new lord, and transplanted as a colony to the Italian coast. From this example of a private matron, we may estimate the wealth and magnificence of the emperors. Yet our enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle ; and, whatsoever may be its value, the luxury of life is possessed with more innocence and safety by the master of his own, than by the stewai'd of the public, fortune. In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of Honours and noble and plebeian biith, the sovereign is the sole fountain of imperial honour ; and the rank, both in the palace and the empire, de- pends on the titles and offices which are bestowed and resumed by his arbitrary will. Above a thousand years, from Vespasian to Alexius Comnenus,^'^ the Ccesar was the second person, or at least the second degree, after the supreme title of Aiigiisius was more freely communicated to the sons and brothers of the reign ing monarch. To elude without violating his promise to a power- ful associate, the husband of his sistei", and, without giving himself an equal, to reward the piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty Alexius interposed a new and supereminent dignity. The happy flexibility of the Greek tongue allov»ed him to compound the names of Augustus and emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator), and the union produced the sonorous title of Sehastocrcdor. He was exalted above the Caesar on the first step of the throne ; the public acclamations repeated his name ; and he was only dis- tinguished from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments of the head and feet. The empei'or alone could assume the purple or red buskins, and the close diadem or tiara, which imitated the fasjiion of the Persian kings. '^ It was an high pyramidal cap of ''"See the Alexiad (1. iii. p. 78, 79 [c. 4]) of Anna Comnena, who, except in filial piety, may be compared to Mademoiselle de Montpensier. In her awful reverence for titles and forms, she styles her father ETrio-nj/noi'dpxr)?, the inventor of this royal art, the rixurj Texvoji-, and e-taTTjfjtTj eirtO"TT)pLa»»'. ■*' 2T£MMa. cTTC'/.ai'os, 5irt5r)|oia ; See Reiskc, ad Ceremoniale, p, 14, 15. Ducange has given a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople, Rome, France, &c. (sur Joinville, xxv. p. 289-303), but of his thirty-four models none exactly tally with Anna's description. [The Imperial costume may be best studied in Byzantine miniatures. It does not seem correct to describe the crown as a "high pyramidal