Note 195 — Chapter III

Zosimus. His profession of Christianity provoked the scorn of the apostate Julian.—Ibid.

Scott compares him to a prodigal who strips an aged parent of the ornaments of her youth in order to decorate a flaunting paramour. But New Rome shared the decline of the mother city, as a graft taken from an old tree partakes of the decay of the parent stem. As the ancient liberties died out, the gorgeous but degrading despotisms of the East usurped their place. The emperors assumed the style and titles of gods. The most unmanly adulation was at length lavished on the slave or herdsman elevated by capricious fortune to the throne of the world. At the time of the princess Anna Comnena this degradation seems to have reached its nadir. “Your Eternity” was the blasphemous epithet of the ephemeral puppet flaunting for a moment in the livery of infamy. “If I may speak and live,” whispered with bated breath the titled slave—Prospathaire, or Acolyte—who stood nearest the throne, shading his eyes with his hands, as if overpowered by the effulgence of the imperial countenance. The rude Latin Crusaders made short work of these lofty titles and this solemn etiquette.