[28] One or two remarks on the novel may not be without interest. It is far the weakest of Scott’s historical romances. Byzantine antiquities were little known in England at the time when it was written, and the great novelist is reduced to a meagreness or inaccuracy of detail which places the story in unfavourable contrast to his Scottish romances, and he is forced to admit countless anachronisms. Anna Comnena was only thirteen years old at the time, and did not begin to write her “Alexiad” until twenty or thirty years later. The golden birds and lions, also, which Scott puts beside the imperial throne, had been melted down by Michael the Drunkard two hundred years before. I mention these features only because Scott is usually so conscientious, even in romance.
[29] It may be well to repeat that the neater phrase in Gibbon is an artistic paraphrase, not a translation, of the original Greek.
[30] “Typicum, sive Regula, Irenes Augustæ,” published by the Benedictines of St Maur in their “Analecta Græca” (1688).
[31] The marriage of Alexis is placed by Finlay in 1178, but William of Tyre, who was in Constantinople at the time, says that it took place in the year of the death of Louis VII. and of Manuel. Nicetas also says that Anna was “not quite eleven” when she married Andronicus (in 1183) and “not quite eight” when she married Alexis.
[32] Finlay, following Nicephorus Gregoras, wrongly says that Theodore had left “no son” to inherit the purple. George Acropolites, the better authority, says that he left “no mature son.” The son of Philippa was eight years old, and seems to have lived under the cloud of his mother’s disgrace.
[33] This lady is sometimes named Markesina, but the term is merely a Greek attempt to speak of her as “the Marchioness.” Her real name is unknown.
[34] Finlay declines to regard the dominion which was re-established by the Greeks in 1261 as “the Byzantine Empire.” But as there had never been any dynastic continuity, and as “Byzantine Empire” merely means an empire which has its seat in Constantinople, or ancient Byzantium (the name still commonly given to the city by its own writers), I see no reason to discard the phrase.
[35] Manuel’s younger brother, Theodore, was never crowned and had been crushed by the Sultan, so that his beautiful wife, Bartholomæa, daughter of the Duke of Athens, does not enter our list; and as Bartholomæa had no children (though her husband had several) there was no complication of the new arrangement to be feared from that side.
[36] Bertrandon’s interesting narrative may be read in English in T. Wright’s “Early Travels in Palestine.”