s only because they are too illiterate to remember a
metaphysical creed. [29]

[Footnote 25: For these wars of the Turks and Romans, see in general the
Byzantine histories of Zonaras and Cedrenus, Scylitzes the continuator
of Cedrenus, and Nicephorus Bryennius Caesar. The two first of these
were monks, the two latter statesmen; yet such were the Greeks, that
the difference of style and character is scarcely discernible. For the
Orientals, I draw as usuul on the wealth of D'Herbelot (see titles of
the first Seljukides) and the accuracy of De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns,
tom. iii. l. x.)]

[Footnote 26: Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 791. The credulity of the vulgar is
always probable; and the Turks had learned from the Arabs the history or
legend of Escander Dulcarnein, (D'Herbelot, p. 213 &c.)]

[Footnote 27: (Scylitzes, ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 834, whose
ambiguous construction shall not tempt me to suspect that he confounded
the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies,) He familiarly talks of the
qualities, as I should apprehend, very foreign to the perfect Being;
but his bigotry is forced to confess that they were soon afterwards
discharged on the orthodox Romans.]

[Footnote 28: Had the name of Georgians been known to the Greeks,
(Stritter, Memoriae Byzant. tom. iv. Iberica,) I should derive it from
their agriculture, (l. iv. c. 18, p. 289, edit. Wesseling.) But it
appears only since the crusades, among the Latins (Jac. a Vitriaco,
Hist. Hierosol. c. 79, p. 1095) and Orientals, (D'Herbelot, p. 407,) and
was devoutly borrowed from St. George of Cappadocia.]

[Footnote 29: Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 632. See, in Chardin's
Travels, (tom. i. p. 171-174,) the manners and religion of this
handsome but worthless nation. See the pedigree of their princes from
Adam to the present century, in the tables of M. De Guignes, (tom. i. p.
433-438.)]

The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Gaznevide was not
imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the Greek
empress Eudocia and her children. His alarming progress compelled her
to give herself and her sceptre to the hand of a soldier; and Romanus
Diogenes was invested with the Imperial purple. His patriotism, and
perhaps his pride, urged him from Constantinople within two months after
his accession; and the next campaign he most scandalously took the field
during the holy festival of Easter. In the palace, Diogenes was no more
than the husband of Eudocia: i