f Italy were swept away by the Norman
adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the
Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the
emperors of the Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube
to Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding
stream of the Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia,
and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus,
Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Aegean or
Holy Sea; [13] and the remnant of their empire transcends the measure of
the largest of the European kingdoms.

[Footnote 12: See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i. p.
1-30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a legion,
from whence the name was easily transferred to its post or province,
(Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some etymologies are
attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian, Thracesian, themes.]

[Footnote 13: It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the corrupt
names of Archipelago, l'Archipel, and the Arches, have been transformed
by geographers and seamen, (D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p.
281. Analyse de la Carte de la Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks
or caloyers in all the islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos,
(Observations de Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the
epithet of holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the
Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of goats, to
the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph. Antiq. tom. i.
p. 829.)]

The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of all the
monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city, [14] the most
ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous state. With the decline
and fall of the empire, the cities of the West had decayed and fallen;
nor could the ruins of Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow
precincts of Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate
the situation and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces
and churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her
treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still
promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and Bulgarian,
the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less fortunate and
impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could be discovered which
ha