The eighty years which followed the death of Basil the Macedonian were the
 most uneventful and monotonous in the whole history of the empire. They
 are entirely taken up by the two long reigns of Leo the Wise and
 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the son and grandson of the founder of
 the dynasty. Basil had been a mere adventurer, an ignorant and uneducated
 but capable upstart. His successors--strange issue from such a stock--were a
 pair of mild, easy-going, and inoffensive men of literature. They wrote no
 annals with their sword, though the times were not unpropitious for
 military enterprise, but devoted themselves to the pen, and have left
 behind them some of the most useful and interesting works in Byzantine
 literature.
 
 If the times had been harder it is doubtful whether Leo VI. and
 Constantine VII. would have been strong enough to protect their throne.
 But the period 880-960 was less troubled by foreign wars than any other
 corresponding period in the history of the East-Roman state. The empire of
 the Caliphs was breaking up in the East--the empire of Charles the Great
 had already broken up in the West--the Bulgarians and other neighbours of
 the realm on the north were being converted to Christianity, and settling
 down into quiet. The only troubles to which the East-Roman realm was
 exposed were piratical raids of the Russians on the north and the Saracens
 of Africa on the south. These were vexatious, but not dangerous. An active
 and warlike emperor would probably have found the time propitious for
 conquest from his neighbours, but Leo and Constantine were quiet,
 unenterprising men, who dwelt contentedly in the palace, and seldom or
 never took the field.
 
 Leo's reign of twenty-six years was only diversified by an unfortunate
 invasion of Bulgaria, which failed through the mismanagement of the
 generals, and for a great raid of Saracen pirates on Thessalonica in 904.
 The capture of the second city of the empire by a fleet of African
 adventurers was an incident disgraceful to the administration of Leo, and
 caused much outcry and sensation. But it is fair to say that it was taken
 almost by surprise, and stormed from the side of the sea where no attack
 had been expected. The armies and fleet of the empire would have availed
 to rescue the town if only its fall had been delayed a few weeks. When
 they had taken it the Saracens fled with their booty, and made no attempt
 to hold its walls.
 
 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the offspring of the fourth wife of Leo the
 Wise, and the child of his old age, was only seven when his heritage fell
 to him. For many years he was under the tutelage of guardians; first his
 father's brother Alexander ruled as his colleague, and became
 emperor-regent. Some years after Alexander had died an ambitious admiral
 named Romanus Lecapenus usurped the same position, declared himself
 emperor, and administered the realm. The life of Romanus was protracted
 into extreme old age, long after Constantine had reached his majority; but
 the ambitious veteran held tight to the sceptre, and kept the rightful
 heir in the background. Constantine consoled himself by writing books and
 painting pictures; it was not till he was nearly forty that he came to his
 own. Even then his success was not owing to his own energy; the sons of
 the aged Romanus had resolved to succeed their parent on the throne, in
 despite of the rights of Constantine. But when they declared themselves
 emperors and made their old father abdicate, an outburst of popular wrath
 was provoked. The mob and the guards joined to sweep away the presumptuous
 Stephen Lecapenus and his brother. They were immured in monasteries, and
 Constantine emerged from his seclusion to administer the empire for twenty
 years. He was somewhat weak and ineffective, but neither obstinate nor
 tyrannical; many abler men made worse rulers.
 
 The chief achievements of both Leo and Constantine were their books. Those
 of Leo consist of a manual on the Art of War, some theological treatises,
 and a book of prophecies, a collection of political enigmas, which were
 long the puzzle and admiration of the East. The first-named work is
 most valuable and interesting, bringing down the history of military
 organization, tactics, and strategy to Leo's own time, and giving us a
 perfect picture of the Byzantine army and its tactics, as well as
 incidental sketches of all the enemies with which it had to contend. The
 backbone of the force was still the "themes" or "turmae" of heavy cavalry,
 of which every province had one. The number of the provinces had been much
 increased since the days of the emperors of the house of Heraclius, and
 this implied a corresponding increase in the troops. They were raised from
 subjects of the empire and officered by the Byzantine nobility, for as Leo
 observed, "There was no difficulty in obtaining officers of good birth and
 private means, whose origin made them respected by the soldiery, while
 their money enabled them to win the good graces of their men by many gifts
 of small creature comforts, over and above their pay." The names of some
 of the great noble houses are found for generation after generation in the
 imperial muster rolls, such as those of Ducas, Phocas, Comnenus,
 Bryennius, Kerkuas, Diogenes, and many more. The pages of Leo's work
 breathe an entire confidence in the power of the army to deal with any
 foe; against Saracen, Turk, Hungarian, and Slav, instant and decisive
 action is advised; when caught, they should be fought and beaten. It is
 only when dealing with the men of the West, the Franks and Lombards, that
 Leo recommends caution and deprecates any rash engagement in a general
 action, preferring to wear the enemy down by cutting off his supplies and
 harassing his marches. We gather a very favourable impression of the
 Byzantine army from Leo's book; it was organized, armed, and supplied in a
 manner that has no parallel till modern times. Each regiment possessed its
 special uniform, and was equipped with regularity. There was none of that
 variety in arms and organizations which was the bane of mediaeval armies.
 The regiments had each attached to them an elaborate military train, a
 small body of engineers, and a provision of surgeons and ambulances. To
 encourage the saving of wounded men, Leo tells us that the bearer company
 was given a gold piece for every disabled soldier whom it brought off the
 field after a lost battle. It would be hard to find any similar care shown
 for the wounded till the days of our own century.
 
 The Byzantine fleet, as Leo describes it, had for its chief object the
 maintenance of the police of the seas in the Aegean, Levant, and South
 Italian waters. Its enemies were the Saracens of the Syrian and African
 coasts, and more especially the troublesome Corsairs of Crete, who were
 often beaten but never subdued till Nicephorus Phocas exterminated them in
 961. The empire maintained three fleets, small ones in the Black Sea and
 in Western waters; but the largest in the Aegean. This was composed of
 sixty "dromonds," or war-vessels of the largest rating; their great depot
 was in the arsenal at Constantinople, but they could also be refitted at
 Samos, Thessalonica, and several other ports. Owing to their superior
 size, and still more to their employment of the celebrated Greek fire, the
 imperial fleets generally had the better of the Saracen, but though they
 checked his larger squadrons, they could never suppress the petty piracy
 by isolated sea-robbers, which rendered all mediaeval commerce so
 dangerous.
 
 The works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus are even more interesting than
 those of his father. His treatise called "On the Themes" is invaluable to
 the historian, as it gives a complete list of the Themes, their
 boundaries, inhabitants, characteristics, and resources, with some other
 incidental notices of value. Still more important is the book, "On the
 Administration of the Empire," which contains directions for the foreign
 policy of the realm, and sketches the condition and resources of the
 various nations with whom the Constantinopolitan government had dealings.
 Constantine also wrote a biography of his grandfather, Basil the
 Macedonian, couched in terms of respect which that hardy usurper was far
 from deserving. But his longest and most ambitious work was on Court
 Ceremonies, a manual of etiquette and precedence, describing the official
 hierarchy of the empire, its duties and privileges, and containing
 elaborate directions for the conduct of state ceremonials and the interior
 economy of the royal household. On this comparatively trifling topic
 Constantine spent far more pains than on the works of larger interest
 which he composed. His books show him to have been a man of no great
 originative faculty, but gifted with the powers of a careful and
 methodical compiler, who loved details and never shirked trouble. His care
 for court pageants was very characteristic of the peaceful emperor, who
 had long been kept at home by his guardian, and forced to compensate
 himself by ceremonial for the want of real power.
 
 The fact that two successive emperors devoted themselves to literary work
 is a sufficient sign that by the end of the ninth century the times of
 intellectual dearth and destitution which had so long prevailed were now
 at an end. From the death of Justinian to the end of the Heraclian dynasty
 matters grew gradually worse; from the rise of Leo the Isaurian onward
 they began slowly to improve. The darkest age in Byzantine literary
 history was from about 600 to 750, a period in which we have hardly any
 contemporary annalists, no poetry save the lost Heracliad of George of
 Pisidia, and very little even of theology. Literature seemed absolutely
 dead at the accession of the Isaurians, but the quickening influence of
 the reforms of the great Leo seems to have been felt in that province as
 in every other. By the end of the eighth century writers were far more
 numerous, though many of them were only anti-Iconoclastic
 controversialists, like Theodore Studita. By the ninth century we can
 trace the existence of a much larger literary class, and find a few really
 first-rate authors, such as the patriarch Photius (857-69), whose learning
 and width of culture was astonishing, and whose library-catalogue is the
 envy of modern scholars.
 
 Perhaps the most interesting development of Byzantine literature were the
 epics, or Romances of Chivalry as we feel more inclined to call them,
 which were written toward the end of the times of the Macedonian dynasty.
 The epic of Digenes Akritas, a work of the end of the tenth century,
 celebrating the praises of a hero who lived in the reigns of Nicephorus
 Phocas and John Zimisces [963-80], may serve as a type of the class. It
 tells of the adventures in love and war of Basil Digenes Akritas, warden
 of the Cilician Marches, or "Clissurarch of Taurus," as his official title
 would have run. He was a mighty hunter, both of bears and of Saracens, put
 down the Apelates (or moss-troopers, to use a modern analogy) who infested
 the border, and led many a foray into Syria. He is even credited with the
 slaying of an occasional dragon by his admiring bard. But perhaps the most
 interesting episode is the story of his elopement with the fair Eudocia
 Ducas, daughter of the general of the Cappadocian theme, whom he carried
 off in despite of her father and seven brethren. Pursued by the irate
 family, he rode them down one by one at vantage points in the passes, but
 spared their lives, and was reconciled to them at the intercession of his
 bride. "Digenes Akritas" is the best as well as the earliest of the class
 which it represents.
 
                               
 
 A Warrior-Saint (St. Leontius). (_From a Byzantine Fresco._) (_From "L'Art
           Byzantin."  Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin. 1883._)
 
 
 Art followed much the same course as literature in the period 600-900. It
 was in a state of decay for the first century and a half, and the
 surviving works of that time are often grotesquely rude. For sheer bad
 drawing and bad execution nothing can be worse than a coin of Constans II.
 or Constantine V.; a Frankish or Visigoth piece could not be much more
 unsightly. The few manuscripts which survive from that period display a
 corresponding, though not an equally great, decline in art. Mosaic work
 perhaps showed less decline than other branches of the decoration, but
 even here seventh and eighth century work is very rare.
 
 In the ninth century everything improves wonderfully. It is most
 astonishing to see how the old classical tradition of painting revive in
 the best manuscript illumination of the period; many of them might have
 been executed in the fifth or even the fourth century, so closely do they
 reproduce the old Roman style. It seems that the Iconoclastic controversy
 stimulated painting; persecuted by the emperors, the art of sacred
 portraiture became respected above all others by the multitude. Several of
 the most prominent "Iconodule" martyrs were painters, of whom it is
 recorded that their works were no less beautiful than edifying: those of
 Lazarus, whom the Emperor Theophilus tortured, are especially cited as
 triumphs of art as well as sanctity.
 
 Though a persecutor of painters, Theophilus deserves a word of mention as
 the first great builder since Justinian, and as a patron of the minor arts
 of jewellery, silver work, and mosaic. There is good evidence that these
 were all in a very flourishing condition in his time. [829-42.]
 
 There is one more point in the history of the empire in the ninth century
 to which attention must be called. This is the unique commercial
 importance of Constantinople during this and the two succeeding centuries.
 All other commerce than that of the empire had been swept off the seas by
 the Saracen pirates in the preceding hundred years, and the only touch
 between Eastern and Western Christendom was kept up under the protection
 of the imperial navy. The Eastern products which found their way to Italy
 or France were all passed through the warehouses of the Bosphorus. It was
 East-Roman ships that carried all the trade; save a few Italian ports,
 such as Amalphi and the new city of Venice, no place seems even to have
 possessed merchant ships. This monopoly of the commerce of Europe was one
 of the greatest elements in the strength of the empire. So much money and
 goods passed through it that a rather harsh and unwise system of taxation
 did no permanent harm.