take part in popular riots, and the silent barbarian soldiers, opening wondering eyes on the disputes and the splendours of the imperial city, and prompt at the word of command to dethrone emperors or massacre their foes. In such a city it would have been strange if there were order or peace; and indeed the constant complaint of the chroniclers is of nobles, clerics and artizans, whom it was impossible to restrain. Yet amid this scene of confusion at any moment the imperial power might show itself with arbitrary and brutal abruptness. When a servant maid by mischance spat on the robe of the dead Empress Eudocia as it was carried to the tomb she was executed immediately and without protest. 3. FROM JUSTIN II. TO THE LATIN CONQUEST. In 565 Justinian died, and the glory of his reign set in a dull glow that heralded storms. Justin II., his nephew, was a tyrant and a madman, but it was power which brought out his tyranny and his madness. When he came to the throne he spoke mildly and well. He made profession of orthodoxy in S. Sophia; he was raised on the imperial shield in the palace; he promised in the Hippodrome to pay the debts of the dead Emperor. They were strange scenes, such as the people of Byzantium often saw, and strangest of all to our minds is that which shows the citizens in the place of public games clamouring before the imperial throne for the payment of debts of Justinian. Constantinople is still the same. Even when it looks cowed, it has still its impudence and its determination to criticise. Justin's doings were watched and mocked at, as if he had been the humblest tradesman, by the city jesters. He built a golden chamber in the palace by the sea: he set up a pillar to record his virtues, and then some one affixed a tablet on it: Build, build aloft thy pillar, And raise it vast and high; Then mount and stand upon it, Soar proudly in the sky; East, south and north, and westward, Wherever thou shalt gaze, Nought shalt thou see but ruins, The work of thine own days. Meanwhile the barbarians were coming nearer to the Empire. The Avars demanded tribute, and the Turks, a name that was so soon to be a familiar terror, sent envoys to the Cæsar's court. The enemies, it might seem, were already closing in when Justin became a lunatic, bursting into mad fits of rage, and drawn about the palace in a toy cart, while the "whole senate and city" knew of the sad fate of their Emperor. Sophia, his wife, had all the masterful genius of her aunt Theodora. It was she who gave the rule to Tiberius II., under whom the empire steadily decayed. Maurice, his successor, was a severe ruler, whom the people learned to hate. When at last his reign ended in a revolution and a flight, it was the people of Constantinople, the demes and the factions of the Circus, who gave him to death, and placed the imperial crown on the head of Phocas, his successor.