Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/128

Rh forces, Samuel transferred his seat of government to Aclirida, on the confines of Macedonia and Albania, and thence he extended his kingdom from the Adriatic to the yEgean, so that the country he ruled was as extensive as the European portion of the Byzantine empire. But these events coincided with the culminating period of Byzantine greatness, and Samuel found a worthy rival in Basil II., who from his subsequent victories obtained the title of &quot; Slayer of the Bulgarians.&quot; By him the Bulgarian power was brought to an end ; and the whole people submitted to the dominion of the Greeks (1018).

The third people with whom the empire had to contend at this time was the Russians. In the reign of Michael III., the last of the Amorian dynasty (865), the inhabi tants of Constantinople were astonished by the appearance in the neighbourhood of the city of a fleet of 200 small vessels, which passed down the Bosphorus from the Black Sea. The enemy contained in these was the Russians, who not long before had established themselves at Kieff on the Dnieper, and whose restless spirit and love of plunder prompted them to attack the strongest city in the world. Their ignorance of the art of war rendered them no for midable foe to the Byzantine forces, but their daring and cruelty produced a profound impression on the civilized and peaceful citizens. Similar attacks were made in 907 by Oleg and in 941 by Igor, but the influence of trade and the introduction of Christianity into Russia gradually promoted more peaceful relations, and the Byzantines em ployed the powerful tribe of the Patzinaks, who occupied the northern shores of the Black Sea, to counterbalance their opponents. But the campaign of John Zimisces on the Danube in 971, which followed on the negotiations of his predecessor for the subjugation of the Bulgarians, showed how important a military power the Russians had become, for he found in their chief, Swatoslav, an enter prising and powerful adversary, whom it required all his skill to overcome. Once more, in the time of Constantino IX. (1043), the Scandinavian Varangians, by whom the Russians were mostly represented in their marauding ex peditions, appeared before Constantinople, but with no better success than before ; and from this period the alliance of that people with the Byzantines was long uninterrupted, and the two nations were bound together more and more by religious sympathy. In the days of the Comneni the Varangians regularly formed the bodyguard of the emperor.

Constitutional changes were usually of slow growth in the Byzantine empire, yet at the end of this period we find con- siderable alterations to have been effected. Under the early iconoclastic emperors there was a tendency towards the greater concentration of power in the hands of the sovereign, but Basil I. converted the government into a pure despotism. This he effected by abolishing the legislative functions of the senate, which body, though now a shadow of its former self, had existed in one form or another all along, and exercised a certain influence in controlling the absolute power of the emperor. When this restraint was removed, and the senate reduced to an administrative council, no further check remained except the fear of revolu tion. Basil also tacitly introduced what, strange to say, had never existed in the Roman empire, and even now was only partially recognized the principle of legitimacy in succession. With a view to this he established the custom that his descendants should be born in the &quot; porphyry chamber,&quot; so that the name Porphyrogenitus might become a title of legitimacy. In this way a partial antidote was created to that inveterate disease of the Byzantine empire which a French writer has called la maladie du trone the ambition to be emperor at all hazards, notwithstanding the risks involved both in the attempt and the possession of the office. The growth of the idea is proved by the loyalty shown a century and a half later to the empress Zoe, an aged, profligate, and incapable woman, on account of the legitimacy of her descent. But the greatest change of all, and one that contributed greatly to the subsequent decline of the empire, was effected at the end of this period. This was the abolition of the system of training officials to con duct the various departments of the state, and the entrust ing those offices to eunuchs of the imperial household. The object of this was to lessen the power of the territorial aristocracy, and to diminish the chance of rebellion, by placing the government in the hands of men who could not found a dynasty ; but from this time onward the efficiency of the administration began to wane. It was the disregard of the aristocracy involved in this change that caused the conspiracy of the nobles in Asia Minor which set Isaac Comnenus on the throne. It should also be noticed that few of the emperors throughout this period were Greeks, most of them being either Armenian or Slavonian by extrac tion. This circumstance accounts for a certain freedom from prejudice and independence of view which may be traced in their actions, but at the same time it caused them to be wanting in sympathy with their subjects.

During a considerable part of this period, notwithstand- Condi- ing the desolating wars which we have described, the pros- tion of perity of the inhabitants of the empire was very great. , ie pe&amp;lt; Finlay, who is excellently qualified to judge in a matter of * this kind, gives it as his opinion that under the iconoclast emperors their moral condition was superior, not only to that of all contemporary kingdoms, but to that of any equal number of the human race in any preceding period. The society of this time has been too much judged of by the murders and mutilations which were rife in consequence of the struggles for the throne ; but it should be remembered that these were confined almost entirely to the court and its surroundings, and did not affect the mass of the people. And their material prosperity was equally great. The emperor Theophilus, notwithstanding his lavish expendi ture, is recorded to have left at his death a sum equal to five million sovereigns an amount of money which could hardly have been extorted from a people otherwise than wealthy. This was the result of the commerce of their immense mercantile marine, which had in its hands the whole of the carrying trade between Asia and western Europe. To this it should be added that, under Basil the Macedonian and his successors, care was taken to moderate the burden of taxation, a policy that accounts in great measure for the duration of his dynasty, which occupied the throne of Constantinople longer than any other. Unfortu nately the riches thus obtained tended alter a time to accu mulate in the hands of the few, and from the reign of Basil II. the middle class, that element which society can least of all afford to dispense with, began rapidly to diminish. As a consequence of this, in the llth century manufactures declined in the cities, while in the country the immense estates of the aristocracy were cultivated by Mahometan slaves or Slavonian serfs ; and this higher class itself began to feel the lethargy of wealth, and though still unconscious of coming change, was on the eve of impending decline.

In the year 747, during the reign of Constantine Copronymus, the empire was visited by a fearful pestilence, which, both in the mortality and the demoralization of society it produced, must have rivalled, to judge by the accounts left us by the Byzantine historians, those of Florence and London, of which Boccaccio and Defoe have drawn such vivid pictures. As this calamity was the primary cause of the immigration of foreign settlers into Greece, it is intimately connected with the question of modern Greek nationality ; and consequently the present appears a fitting place briefly to discuss this subject, on which great differences of opinion, turning mainly on tho 