chariot should carry the Ikon of the Blessed Virgin which he had taken in Bulgaria and to which he attributed his victories: he would ride behind, clothed as an emperor and a general, and would offer in S. Sophia the crown of the conquered Bulgarian kings. Then in the palace the young Bulgarian chieftain Boris, who had followed his triumph on foot, was despoiled of the insignia of sovereignty, yet ranked among the officers of the imperial court. It was not the last of the victories of John Tzimisces. He returned more than once a conqueror from Armenia and Mesopotamia. He died in 976, in the midst of his victories; and since the young Emperors whom he had guarded were now grown to man's estate, men spoke of his death as mysterious and as probably due to poison. In Basil II. the Empire again had a warrior Emperor, but one who added to the delights of war the devotion of an almost monastic religion. While his brother, Constantine IX., confined himself to the court and its pleasures, Basil in many hard-won fights achieved the title of Bulgaroktonos, the slayer of the Bulgarians. For thirty-four years he fought the great King Samuel, who had built up a power in the Balkans, till at last he utterly broke up the Slavs, captured all their fortresses, and extended the frontier of the Empire to Belgrade, and so down the Danube to the Black Sea. It was, as Gibbon says, "since the time of Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms." Victories also he won in the East, but they served only to break down the kingdom of Armenia, and thus to destroy what might have been a bulwark against the infidel. Basil, who reigned from 963 to 1025, when he died at the age of sixty-eight, and who for more than fifty years was practically the sole ruler of the Empire, was a stern, vigorous man, sharp in speech, often cruel in victory, serious and restrained in life, but fond of mirth in his moments of ease. He was a complete contrast to his idle brother, who lived it seemed only for the Hippodrome and the society of the ladies of his court. Basil was never married. Constantine, who survived him three years, left three daughters.[20] During his long reign Basil had swept away all rivals from his path: the great chamberlain Basil had early been banished, and there was no dynasty to compete with the Macedonians in the last days of their power.