separated only by the Balkans. Bulgaria was recovered. Nicephorus was murdered. Swiatoslaff returned to Bulgaria with 60,000 men: he concluded an alliance with Hungarians and Patzinaks, crossed the Balkans, and dreamed of the conquest of Constantinople. That was, however, a dream destined to be left for the Russian imagination for many centuries to come. The Russians advanced as far as Arcadiopolis, where they were defeated by the general Bardas Skleros, and retired behind the mountains. Early in the following spring John Zimiskes, sending a great fleet to hold the Danube and cut off communications, crossed the Balkans, long before the enemy expected him, and falling upon the Russians unexpectedly, defeated them in a series of hard fought battles. Swiatoslaff escaped with the remains of his army, but fell into the hands of the Patzinaks, whose prince made a drinking cup of his skull, writing upon it a moral reflection, "He who covets the property of others, often loses his own." Few subsequent Russians appear to have laid this moral to heart.
There is little or nothing else of metropolitan interest in the reign of John Zimiskes. He died—he is said to have been poisoned—in his fifty-first year, and was succeeded by the two young princes, Basil II. and Constantine VIII.
Basil seems to have inherited part of the character of the founder of his dynasty. But he possessed a greater share of military genius. Like the first Basil, he was severe, rapacious, and cruel: unlike him, he was a man of pure and high morality. His reign—for his brother
