One of these emperors, of whom we have already heard so much, was stoned by the populace on his return, and only with difficulty regained his palace by the Sea of Marmora—the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas. This gate contributed again to the history of the Byzantine Empire when Alexius Strategopoulos, general of Michael Palæologus, entered here in 1261, drove out the Latin Emperor and reinstated his Imperial master. Andronicus, that rebel, entered the city by this gate to usurp his father’s throne.
Amurath II camped here, in the grounds of the Church of the Holy Spring, during the first half of the fifteenth century, and less than fifty years later, in the last scene of the Eastern Empire’s romantic history, a battery of three guns attacked this point.
A few hundred yards to northward of the historic portals of Silivria is the third military gate, and at the northern tower that flanks it the inner wall recedes for a short space and then comes out again to continue in a straight line. This recess is called the Sigma, and in the quarter that lies behind this section of the wall, dramatic events in the life of Constantinople took place.
Our travellers must again return to those dim ages of turbulent history. Constantine IX had died in 1028, the last of the Macedonian dynasty founded by that Basil whom we watched as he entered by the side entrance of the Golden Gate weary and travel-stained,
but later to rise to the Imperial Purple. Of Constantine’s three daughters, Eudoxia took the veil and Theodora declined to marry. There remained Zoe, who professed herself a willing sacrifice at the hymeneal altar. A bridegroom was found for her in one Romanus Orgyrus, a patrician, but he declined the honour on the sufficient ground of being already married. Romanus was informed that blindness or death were the alternatives to a royal match, and his devoted wife sacrificed her happiness to her husband’s safety and greatness by retiring into a convent and thus removing the only bar to the Imperial nuptials. So Romanus reigned as third emperor of that name, though not for long, for Zoe found in her chamberlain, Michael the Paphlagonian, attractions superior to those of her lawful spouse. Romanus died suddenly and Zoe married Michael immediately, and raised him to the throne as fourth emperor of that name. But he, too, proved disappointing, so yet another Michael, a nephew, was introduced into the story by John the Eunuch, brother of the Emperor.
Michael IV died and Michael V reigned in his stead, but only for a year. His first act was to disgrace his uncle John, his second was the exile of his adopted mother, the daughter of so many emperors. This roused the populace to fury. The Emperor Michael Calaphates, as he was called after his father’s trade, was dragged from the monastery of Studius, where he had taken refuge, to the statue of Theodosius III in the quarter of the Sigma. Here he and his uncle Constantine were deprived of their eyesight.