Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 60938-h.htm or 60938-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60938/60938-h/60938-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60938/60938-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/empressesofconst00mcca THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE [Illustration: ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE, SHOWING THE HIPPODROME, THE IMPERIAL PALACE, AND THE MOSQUE OF S. SOPHIA FROM THE RECONSTRUCTION BY DJELAL ESSAD AFTER THE PLAN BY LABARTE] THE EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE by JOSEPH McCABE Author of “The Empresses of Rome,” etc. With Eight Illustrations [Illustration: ARTI _et_ VERITATI] Richard G. Badger The Gorham Press Boston PREFACE In concluding an earlier volume on the mistresses of the western Roman Empire I observed that, as the gallery of fair and frail ladies closed, we stood at the door of “the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine Empresses.” It seemed natural and desirable to pass on to this more interesting and less familiar series of the mistresses of the eastern Roman Empire, and the present volume will therefore tell the story of the Empresses, or Queens, as they preferred to be called, who occupied the throne set up by Constantine in New Rome, or ancient Byzantium, until the victorious Turk thrust it disdainfully aside to make way for his more spacious harem. The eastern or Byzantine Empire has long been regarded in Europe as a world of far less interest than that which centred on the banks of the Tiber: a world of monotonous piety and little adventure or spirit, almost Chinese in its placid and unchanging adherence to traditional and very conventional forms. One is tempted to attribute this error, not merely to the longer concealment of Byzantine antiquities from our fathers and the superior attractiveness of Italy, but, in some measure, to the disproportion of Gibbon’s work. By the time the great historian has advanced only one or two centuries in the life of the East he finds that the superb generosity of his plan has committed him to an unachievable task, and he begins to compress whole chapters of the most vivid and adventurous history into a few disdainful pages; and as Finlay, the proper historian of the Greek civilization, not only lacks the charm which draws each generation with fresh wonder to the volumes of Gibbon, but shares and expresses the same disdain for his subject, his work has not tended to redeem the Byzantine Empire from neglect. Of late years there has been some quickening of interest in the eastern Empire. Professor Bury in this country,[1] M. Diehl in France, Schlumberger in Germany, and other historians, have done much to draw attention to the extraordinary interest and the very lively character of Byzantine life.