deposed him and sent him to a monastery. They were themselves immediately afterwards deposed and sent to join their father. A pleasing picture is sketched by Gibbon of the old emperor greeting his sons with unbounded satisfaction, congratulating them on their exchange of a temporal for a heavenly kingdom, and cheerfully inviting them to share in his bread of repentance and water of affliction.
Then Constantine VII., who would much rather have remained quietly at work among his books, his music, and his paintings, had to reign alone. He was the most popular of Byzantine sovereigns. It is from his writings that most of our knowledge of his time is derived. He died at the age of fifty-eight.
His son, Romanus II., who succeeded him, inherited the strength and beauty which distinguished the Macedonian line, but possessed a more active and determined character than his father. He might have done great things for the empire, but unfortunately he reigned for eight years only, and died at the age of twenty-four. The one event of his reign was the recovery of Crete from the Saracens.
He left two boys, Basil and Constantine, both infants. The same ambitions were aroused which disturbed the early years of Constantine VII., fortunately without the same loss of life and with a happier result. Nicephorus Phocas, who was crowned emperor very shortly after the death of Romanus II., was a soldier of cold disposition and military discipline. Already of a mature age, he seems to have been of irreproachable morals. Personally
