, son of Leo the Wise, was born at Constantinople in 905, and ascended
, son of Leo
the Wise, was born at Constantinople in 905, and ascended
the throne at the age of seven years, under the tutelage of
his mother Zoe, the 11th of June 911. No sooner had he
taken the reins of government in his hand, than he chastised the tyrants of Italy, took Benevento from the Lombards, and drove off, by means of money, the Turks who
were pillaging the frontiers of* Epire; but he afterwards
allowed himself to be entirely governed by Helena his wife,
daughter of Romanus Lecapenes, grand-admiral of the
empire. She sold the dignities of the church and the state,
burdened the people with taxes, and exercised towards
them every species of oppression, while her husband was
employing his time in reading, and became as able an architect and as great a painter as he was a bad emperor.
Romanus, the son of this indolent prince by his wife Helena, impatient to govern, caused poison to be mingled
with some medicine prescribed to him; but Constantine,
having rejected the greater part of it, survived till a year
afterwards, and died Nov. 9, 959, at the age of 54, after
a reign of 48 years. This prince, the patron of learning,
and the friend of the learned, left behind him several works
which would have done honour to a private person. The
principal of them are 1 The Life of the emperor Basil ins
the Macedonian, his grandfather, inserted in the collection of Allatius. It is sometimes deficient in point of truth,
and savours too much of the panegyrical. 2. Two books
of “Themata,
” or positions of the provinces and the
towns of the empire, published by father Banduri in the
“Imperium Orientale,
” Leipsic, De re llustica,
” Cambridge, Excerpta ex Polybio, Diodoro Siculo,
” &c. Paris,
Excerpta de legatis, Graec. & Lat.
” De
caeremoniis aulae Byzantines,
” Leipsic, A
Body of Tactics
”, 8vo.