Читать книгу The Empresses of Constantinople онлайн

73 страница из 85

The entry of Ino, wife of Tiberius, into the roll of the Byzantine Empresses is romantic enough without this discredited story of the concealment of her existence until her husband was on the throne. Tiberius was a simple provincial soldier who had won his way to the captainship of the guards and to the purple by his fascinating appearance. Gibbon represents beauty as one of his many virtues; it was certainly much more conspicuous than any other virtue he may have possessed. He came from Daphnudium, which commentators place in the province of Thrace, and it seems to have been while he was on military service in that town that he met Ino. She was then married to a soldier, and must have been older than Tiberius, since we read that he was betrothed to her daughter. The daughter died, however, and, as the husband also presently died, Tiberius gave his hand to the widow, a rustic and undistinguished matron of a frontier province. When Tiberius was promoted to the captainship of the imperial guards, Ino came to Constantinople, and lived there in obscurity with her surviving daughters, Charito and Constantina. Here the simple provincial family learned that Tiberius had been raised to the dazzling height of the cæsarship.