as dangerous to
provoke a neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of
St. Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious
journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him
in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to
confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp,
or at least the pride, of the Byzantine palace. [122] The Greeks were
successively led through four halls of audience: in the first they were
ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state,
till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or
master of the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same
answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the
steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually
heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open,
and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with
the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled with the love and
reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was
concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the East and West
were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks [123]
soon forgot this humiliating equality, or remembered it only to hate the
Barbarians by whom it was extorted. During the short union of virtue
and power, they respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne, with the
acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these
qualities were separated in the person of his pious son, the Byzantine
letters were inscribed, "To the king, or, as he styles himself, the
emperor of the Franks and Lombards." When both power and virtue were
extinct, they despoiled Lewis the Second of his hereditary title, and
with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the
crowd of Latin princes. His reply [124] is expressive of his weakness:
he proves, with some learning, that, both in sacred and profane history,
the name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at
Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial sense,
he claims from his ancestors, and from the popes, a just participation
of the honors of the Roman purple. The same controversy was revived
in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassador describes, in lively
colors, the insolence of the Byzantine court. [125] The Greeks affected