state, and with no claim to the Roman name except that which the favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued to call themselves Romans, and preserved most of the titles and ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian. They were weak, although by no means so weak as modern historians have been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes. Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the name of 'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, _Basileus_ was only the Greek for _rex_, and need not mean 'Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would not call Otto I anything but 'King of the Lombards[218],' Conrad III was addressed by Calo-Johannes as 'amice imperii mei Rex[219];' Isaac Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief prince of Alemannia[220].' The great Emperor, half-resentful, half-contemptuous, told the envoys that he was 'Romanorum imperator,' and bade their master call himself 'Romaniorum' from his Thracian province. Though these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness, the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of the conquering Manuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously declined[221]. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the victims of the French and Venetian crusaders. [Sidenote: Dignities and titles.] [Sidenote: The four crowns.] Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities were happily not yet in being), they did not therefore endeavour to unite their several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct coronations at the four capitals of their Empire[222]. These are concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of Frederick's household[223]:-- 'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post hæc Arelati, Inde Modoetiæ regali sede locari Post solet Italiæ summa corona dari: Cæsar Romano cum vult diademate fungi Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'