Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/395

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a.d. 1097.]
Emperors of Constantinople
375

edifice in the world, and where ocular inspection proves it superior to its most pompous descriptions: Justin the Younger; Tiberius, Mauricius, the first Greek; Focas, Heraclius, Heracleonas, Constans, Constantine, the son of Heraclius; who, coming to Rome, and purloining all the remains of ancient decoration, stripped the churches even of their brazen tiles, anxiously wishing for triumphal honours, at Constantinople, even from such spoils as these; his covetousness, however, turned out unfortunately for him, for being shortly after killed at Syracuse, he left all these honourable spoils to be conveyed to Alexandria by the Saracens; Constantine, Leo the Second; Justinian, again Justinian, Tiberius, Anastasius, Philippicus, Theodosius, Leo the Third; all these reigned both at Constantinople and at Rome: the following in Constantinople only; Constantine, Leo, Constantine, Nicephorus, Stauratius, Michael, Theophilus, Michael, Basilius, Leo, Alexander, Constantine, two Romanuses, Nicephorus, Focas, Johannes, Basilius, Romanus, Michael, Constantine, Theodora the empress, Michael, Sachius, Constantine, Romanus, Diogenes, Nicephorus, Buthanus, Michael;[1] who, driven from the empire by Alexius, secretly fled to Guiscard in Apulia, and surrendering to him his power, imagined he had done something prejudicial to Alexius: hence Guiscard's ambition conceived greater designs; falsely persuading himself that he might acquire by industry, what the other had lost by inactivity: how far he succeeded, the preceding book hath explained. In the same city is the cross of our Saviour, brought by Helena from Jerusalem. There too rest the apostles, Andrew, James the brother of our Lord; Matthias: the prophets Elizeus, Daniel, Samuel, and many others: Luke the Evangelist: martyrs innumerable: confessors, Johannes Chrysostom, Basilius, Gregorious Nazianzen, Spiridion: virgins, Agatha, Lucia; and lastly all the saints whose bodies the emperors were able to collect thither out of every country.

The earls, then, of Normandy and Blois, did homage to the Greek. For the earl of Flanders had already passed on,

  1. After all the researches of the last fifty years, the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Gibbon, will be found to contain the best history of these Byzantine emperors.