nice in 1526, 8vo.; and his Introductio ad Astronomiam in 1489. JOHN SERAPION, an Arabian physician, who flourished about 890. He is by some confounded with the Alexandrian, though he lived six hundred years later. His extracts from Trallian have been published in Latin, under the titles of "Practica, Dicta Breviarum;" and "Therapeutics." HONAIN, an Arabian physician. He was a Christian, and a native of Hira. After travelling into Greece and Persia, he settled at Bagdad, where he translated into Arabic the Elements of Euclid, the Almagest of Ptolemy, and works of Hippocrates. At the desire of the caliph, he also completed a version of the works of Aristotle, for every book of which he had its weight in gold. PERIOD XXV. FROM CONSTANTINE VIII. TO MICHAEL V. [CENT. X.] REMARKABLE FACTS, EVENTS, AND DISCOVERIES. A.D. 903 Rome taken by the Normans. 912 The Normans establish themselves in Normandy. 915 The University of Cambridge founded. 923 Fiefs established in France. 925 Sigefroi elected first Marquis of Brandenburgh. 928 The marquisate of Misnia established. 937 The Saracen empire is divided into seven kingdoms. 941 Arithmetic brought into Europe. 961 Candia recovered from the Saracens. 967 Antioch recovered from them. 969 The race of Abbas extinguished in Egypt. 973 Pope Boniface VII. deposed and banished for his crimes. 977 Greece, Macedon, and Thrace, ravaged by the Bulgarians for ten years. The Bohemians subdued by Otho I. 985 The Danes under Sueno invade England and Scotland. 987 The Carlovingian race in France ended, and the Capetian began by Hugh Capet. 991 The figures now used in arithmetic brought into Europe by the Saracens from Arabia. 995 England invaded by the Danes and Norwegians. 996 Otho III. makes the German empire elective. 999 Boleslaus, the first king of Polaud. On the death of Lewis, the son of Charlemagne, the western empire was divided among his three children. Endless contests ensued, of which the final issue was, that Hugh Capet obtained the sovereign power in 987. GOVERNMENT. ROME. CONSTANTINE VIII., surnamed PORPHYROGENITUS, or born in the purple, was the son of Leo VI., by Zoe, first his concubine, and afterwards his wife. Constantine was born in 905, and was declared emperor in 912. Romanus, a general, whose life was given in the last period, assumed the government, and Constantine had no power while he lived. Constantine in 945 recovered his rights as sole emperor, and reigned till 960, when it is said he died by poison given to him by his son Romanus, who was impatient to reign. Constantine had a taste for the Belles Lettres, and left the care of the empire to his wife Helena, and his favourite Basil, who loaded the people with taxes, and sold all the offices in church and state to the highest bidders; while the emperor employed himself in reading, writing, and the fine arts, till he became an excellent architect and painter. Though he could not be called a good governor, yet his people were much attached to him. He wrote several biographical and geographical works, which would have done honour to his name, if he had not neglected his duty to compose them. ROMANUS II., emperor of the East, called the Young, succeeded his father Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 952. He had married Theophano, a woman of mean origin, who was charged with having been chiefly instrumental in the alleged crime of poisoning his father. Romanus was supposed to possess considerable talents, but he was habitually attached to frivolous amusements and dissolute pleasures, and resigned all care of the state to his chief chamberlain. In the morning, this luxurious emperor visited the circus; at noon he feasted the senators; the greatest part of the afternoon he spent in the tennis-court, the only theatre of his victories; from thence he passed over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, hunted and killed four wild boars of the largest size, and returned to the palace, proudly contented with the labours of the day. He banished from court his mother Helena, and his two sisters, who were reduced to a state of great indigence. During the short reign of this emperor, the two brothers, Nicephorus Phocas, and Leo, obtained great successes against the Saracens in Crete and the East, while the emperor was wasting his time in indolence. According to some historians, debauchery, but according to others, the evil practices of Theophano brought his life to a close in the year 903, at the age of twenty-four, and in the fourth year of his reign. NICEPHORUS II., PHOCAS, emperor of the East, was the son of Bardas Phocas, commander of the imperial army in Asia. Nicephorus was brought up to a military life, and succeeded his father in the chief command in Asia. He defeated the Saracens on various occasions in the reign of Constantine Porphyrogenitus: and in that of Romanus he recovered the island of Crete. He was sent against the Saracen caliph of Syria, whom he defeated, and he afterwards took the important city of Beræa. On the death of Romanus he returned to Constantinople, where, through the favour of the empress dowager Theophano, he obtained the honour of a triumph. Finding himself suspected of ambitious designs by Joseph, the prime minister, he requested a private audience of him, at which he pretended an absolute aversion to worldly dignities, and a resolution to retire to a monastic life, showing him at the same time a hair cloth which he wore next his skin. The minister, duped by this hypocrisy, suffered him to return to the army in the east, where his fellow commanders, Ziruisces, and Curacas compelled him to assume the title of emperor, which was conferred upon him in the year 963. He returned to Constantinople, where he was crowned by the patriarch. In the next year he married the empress dowager, though not without being strongly opposed by the patriarch. A due penance, however, appeased the anger of the church, and the union was confirmed. He manifested his warlike disposition in his continued assaults upon the Saracens. Having sent Manuel, the second son of his uncle Leo, to expel the Saracens from Sicily; the unskilfulness of the leader caused his total destruction. Having sent his lieutenant and former comrade, John Ziruisces, he succeeded better against the same enemy in Cilicia and Cyprus. In his fourth year the emperor himself proceeded to Cilicia, and took the cities of Mopsuesta and Tarsus. He next proceeded to Syria, and took several towns, investing even Antioch itself, but winter approaching, he quitted it, and returned to Constantinople. Antioch was taken soon after by one of his generals. However he became unpopular at home, on account of the new taxes which he imposed, and at length he offended his generals by the suspicions with which he requited their services. The empress joined the insurgents, and took part in a conspiracy against the emperor's life. Through her contrivance, Ziruisces, with a band of ruffians, was admitted by night into the palace, and put Nicephorus to death A.D. 969, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and seventh of his reign. JOHN I., emperor of the East, sirnamed ZIRUISCES, was an Armenian of a noble family, who served with distinction in the armies of Romanus the Younger. After that emperor's death, he assisted Nicephorus Phocas, in his elevation to the empire, and his marriage of the imperial widow Theophano. After this service, John became suspected by Nicephorus, who deprived him of the post of general of the East, in which he had several times defeated the Saracens, and banished him from the court. The empress Theophano visited him in his retreat, and they planned a conspiracy against her husband's life. He with his companions were admitted by night into the VOL. II. 2 R palace, and Nicephorus fell beneath their daggers. John was immediately declared emperor, A.D. 969. On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on the threshold of the church of St. Sophia by the patriarch Polyeuctus, who refused to admit him into the holy place till he should expiate himself of the crime of embruing his hands in the blood of his sovereign, by doing public penance. John threw all the blame upon a companion, and the empress, and readily consented to be separated from them both. John strengthened his throne by the nominal association of her two sons, Basil and Constantine, the lawful heirs, and by marrying their sister Theodora. The reign of John was chiefly spent in military transactions, in which his valour and good fortune were equally conspicuous. The Russians were defeated by Bardas Selerus. The emperor himself then marched against them; and after reducing the town of Perithlaba, in which he set free the friends of the Bulgarian king, he drove the Russians to the banks of the Danube, and there obtained a complete victory over them. He made a treaty with them, by which he allowed the remainder of that nation to march back unmolested. After this war was concluded, John entered Constantinople in triumph, but, with the piety of his age, ascribed his success to the Virgin Mary, whose image, drawn in a splendid car, he followed on horseback. He afterwards marched into his eastern provinces, where several places which his predecessor had taken, had revolted. He proceeded as far as Damascus in a career of success, and resided for some time in that city, in order to restore the public tranquillity. Observing in his journey that the wealth of these provinces had been chiefly engrossed by the eunuchs about the court, he incautiously expressed his indignation on the subject. The report is supposed to have shortened his life by the administration of poison, from the effects of which he is said to have died on his journey to Constantinople in December 975, after reigning six years. John Ziruisces, though arriving at the crown by an act of treason, wore it with glory, and seemed to merit it by his public and private virtues. His piety is particularly extolled by the writers of his time, and he is recorded as the first emperor who caused the effigy of Christ to be stamped upon the coin, with the legend, Jesus Christ, the King of kings. He died without issue. BASIL II., emperor of Constantinople, the son of Romanus II., succeeded to the empire with his younger brother Constantine, at the death of John Ziruisces in 976, at nineteen years of age. During several years the administration was left by the young emperors in the hands of a minister, and the empire was distracted by the alternate enmity of two generals, Phocas and Selerus, who aimed at the sovereignty. Basil, as he grew 1 |