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THE
EMPRESSES OF CONSTANTINOPLE
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
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
BOSTON
v
PREFACE
In concluding an earlier volume on the mistresses ofthe western Roman Empire I observed that, as thegallery of fair and frail ladies closed, we stood atthe door of “the long, quaint gallery of the ByzantineEmpresses.” It seemed natural and desirable to pass onto this more interesting and less familiar series of themistresses of the eastern Roman Empire, and the presentvolume will therefore tell the story of the Empresses, orQueens, as they preferred to be called, who occupied thethrone set up by Constantine in New Rome, or ancientByzantium, until the victorious Turk thrust it disdainfullyaside to make way for his more spacious harem.
The eastern or Byzantine Empire has long beenregarded in Europe as a world of far less interest thanthat which centred on the banks of the Tiber: a worldof monotonous piety and little adventure or spirit, almostChinese in its placid and unchanging adherence to traditionaland very conventional forms. One is tempted toattribute this error, not merely to the longer concealmentof Byzantine antiquities from our fathers and the superiorattractiveness of Italy, but, in some measure, to thedisproportion of Gibbon’s work. By the time the greathistorian has advanced only one or two centuries in thelife of the East he finds that the superb generosity of hisplan has committed him to an unachievable task, and hebegins to compress whole chapters of the most vividand 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 generavitionwith fresh wonder to the volumes