Life
Constantine VIII had been crowned with his brother by their father from 962; he was then only an infant. However, for some 63 out of the 68 years of his life he was eclipsed by other emperors, including Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, and Basil II. Even when his elder brother became senior emperor, Constantine was perfectly content to enjoy all the privileges of Imperial status without concerning himself with state affairs. On occasion Constantine participated in his brother's campaigns against rebel nobles. In 989, he acted as mediator between Basil II and Bardas Skleros. Otherwise he spent his life in the search of pleasure and entertainment, including spectator sports at the Hippodrome of Constantinople, or amusing himself with riding and hunting.
When Basil II died on 15 December 1025, Constantine finally became sole emperor, although he ruled for less than three years before his own death on 11 November 1028.
Physically Constantine was tall and graceful, where Basil had been short and stocky. He was a superb horseman. By the time he became emperor, he had chronic gout and could hardly walk. His reign was a disaster because he lacked courage and political savvy. He reacted to every challenge with impulsive cruelty, persecuting uppity nobles and allegedly ordering the execution or mutilation of hundreds of innocent men. Constantine carried on as he always had: hunting, feasting, and enjoying life – and avoided state business as much as possible. He was poor at appointing officials. Within months, the land laws of Basil II were dropped under pressure from the Anatolian aristocracy (the dynatoi), although Constantine struck at the nobility when threatened by conspiracy.
Like his brother, Constantine died without a male heir. The Empire thus passed to his daughter Zoe, whom he had married to Romanos Argyros.
Read more about this topic: Constantine VIII
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“There is no calm philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s hearth,—how men shall live in these winter, in these summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the literary man, than of anything else.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’ll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.”
—Irving Brecher, U.S. screenwriter, and Edward Buzzell. J. Cheever Loophole (Groucho Marx)
“Parenting is the one area of my life where I can feel incompetent, out of control and like a total failure all of the time.”
—Attorney Father. As quoted in Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher, ch. 4 (1994)