But Michael’s joy at entering the capital was marred by the sights that met his eye. Whole streets had been consumed by fire, no signs of trade or industry were to be seen, and even his palace was in a state of desolation, grimy with smoke and dirt and stripped of every ornament.
Standing inside the enclosure we look up at the Golden Gate—the stones and brick that block up the three arches fade away, and in their place stand the gleaming gates that helped to give it its name. A surging mass of people moves excitedly around us pressing forward towards the entrance. A body of troops appears: big men, of fairer skins than those who form the crowd, clear with long-handled spears a roadway, thrusting aside with undisguised contempt the over-curious spectators. Scowls and glances of resentment vanish as sounds of an approaching multitude, accompanied by martial music, are heard proceeding from the plain outside the gate. Here they come! and already in a golden haze the pageant seems to move towards us. Huns and Alani, the light cavalry trained by Theodosius, on wiry horses, shaggy, savage-looking men, they hurry on, followed by sturdy, heavy-treading infantry, stout warriors clad in skins of animals, with here and there a touch of finer stuff, betraying them not all unused to the refinements of the Empire’s capital. They surround him whom they are pleased to call master, the Roman Emperor. And then comes endless misery, unchronicled and long-forgotten—the captives taken in the wars. Red-headed Celts and fair-haired Saxons, swarthy Moors and Saracens with desperate, flashing eyes. Among the captives big-limbed Slavs, and then more troops, some in the primitive costume of their native wilds, others in armour of all periods.
Thus passes this glorious array—Emperors on horseback or in chariots, their guards and soldiery, captives and slaves both men and women, trophies and spoils of war. In these few minutes while we watch, the triumphs of seven centuries of Empire rise up before us and fade away into that general oblivion which so few men survive, and even those often, as it seems, only by some chance or trick of fortune.
Thousands and tens of thousands have passed this way in their brief hour of victory, have made the heavens ring with their deeds, that lived a day or two in memory, and then have silently moved onwards into the place of forgotten things. The vision passes and leaves us but a name or two by which we may remember what greatness and glory have swept by.
The gilded splendour of the gates is dimmed, the stones and bricks resume their place within the arches, and here before us stands that hoary ruin grey with age, lichen-covered and festooned with ivy, while rank weeds spring up round its foundation and flowering bushes form its ramparts—the Triumphal Arch of Theodosius—the Golden Gate.
