ABSTRACT
From Eusebius, contemporary of the first Emperor of Constantinople, to Phrantzes, friend and chronicler of the last, the long sequence of Greek historians, the torch of Thucydides, has not failed. For 1123 years the Empire in the East is portrayed unchanging, as a national and political organism. Its 88 effective rulers, who, with the exception of the four following the Latin Conquest, were resident in Constantinople, succeeded one another without intermission: 39 dynamically; 20 by the regular process of delegation; 7 by civil or military election; and 22 by usurpation. Of the latter a few were justified by success; while the remainder ousted one another in spasmodic groups. Thus, from the foundation of the city to its first capture by the crusaders nearly 900 years later, those periods of disturbed succession which are popularly supposed to have rendered Byzantine government no more than a farce, numbered exactly five, lasting respectively 8, 22, 23, 10, and 19 years (a.d. 602–610, 695–717, 797–820, 1071–1081, 1185–1204). 1 Isolated revolts were more frequent; but successful or not, with the exception of the Nika they exercised little effect on the administrative machinery of the Empire, disturbing still less the avocations of the ordinary citizen.
