When Zoe and Constantine IX. were dead, the sole remaining scion of the Macedonian house was saluted as ruler of the empire. This was Theodora, the younger sister of Zoe, an old woman of seventy, who had spent the best part of her days in a nunnery. She was as sour and ascetic as her sister had been vain and amorous; but she does not seem to have been the worst of the rulers of Byzantium, and her two years of power were not troubled by rebellions or vexed by foreign war. Her austere virtues won her some respect from the people, and the fact that she was the last of her house, and that with its extinction the troubles of a disputed succession were doomed to come upon the empire, seems to have sobered her subjects, and led them to let the last days of the Basilian dynasty pass away in peace. Theodora died on the 30th of August, 1057, having on her death-bed declared that she adopted Michael Stratioticus as her successor. Then commenced the reign of trouble, the “third anarchy” in the history of the Byzantine Empire. XX. MANZIKERT. (1057-1081.) The moment that the last of the Macedonian dynasty was gone, the elements of discord seemed unchained, and the double scourge of civil war and foreign invasion began to afflict the empire. In the twenty-four years between 1057 and 1081 were pressed more disasters than had been seen in any other period of East-Roman history, save perhaps the reign of Heraclius. For now came the second cutting-short of the empire, the blow that was destined to shear away half its strength, and leave it maimed beyond any possibility of ultimate recovery. Domestic troubles were the first inevitable consequence of the extinction of the Macedonian dynasty. The aged Theodora had named as her successor on the throne Michael Stratioticus, a contemporary of her own who had been an able soldier twenty-five years back. But Michael VI. was grown aged and incompetent, and the empire was full of ambitious generals, who would not tolerate a dotard on the throne. Before a year had passed a band of great Asiatic nobles entered into a conspiracy to overturn Michael, and replace him by Isaac Comnenus, the chief of one of the ancient Cappadocian houses, and the most popular general of the East.