(ὁ Πορφυρογέννητος), emperor of the East, A. D. 911-959, the only son of the emperor Leo VI. Philosophus, of the Macedonian dynasty, and his fourth wife, Zoe, was born in A. D. 905; the name Πορφυρογέννητος, that is, " born in the purple," was given to him because he was born in an apartment of the imperial palace called πόρφυρα, in which the empresses awaited their confinement. The name Porphyrogenitus is also given to Constantine VI., but it is generally employed to distinguish the subject of this article. Constantine succeeded his father in 911, and reigned under the guardianship of his paternal uncle, Alexander, who was already Augustus, governed the empire as an absolute monarch, and died in the following year, 912. After his death the government was usurped by Romanus Lecapenus, who excluded Constantine from the administration, leaving him nothing but an honorary retreat in the imperial palace, and who ruled as emperor till 944, when he was deposed and exiled by his sons Stephanus and Constantine, both Augusti, and who expected to be recognised as emperors. [ROMANUS LECAPENUS.] They were deceived; the people declared for the son of Leo; Constantine left his solitude, and, supported by an enthusiastic population, seized upon the usurpers, banished them, and ascended the throne.
In the long period of his retirement Constantine had become a model of learning and theoretical wisdom; but the energy of his character was suppressed ; instead of men he knew books, and when he took the reins of government into his hands, he held them without strength, prudence, and resolution. He would have been an excellent artist or professor, but was an incompetent emperor. Yet the good qualities of his heart, his humanity, his love of justice, his sense of order, his passion for the fine arts and literature, won him the affections of his subjects. His good nature often caused him to trust without discernment, and to confer the high offices of the state upon fools or rogues; but he was not always deceived in his choice, and many of his ministers and generals were able men, and equally devoted to their business and their master. The empire was thus governed much better than could have been expected. In a long and bloody war against the Arabs in Syria, the Greek arms were victorious under Leo and Nicephorus, the sons of Bardas Phocas; the Christian princes of Iberia recognised the supremacy of the emperor; alliances of the Greeks with the Petchenegues or Patzinacitae in southern Russia checked both the Russians and the Bulgarians in their hostile designs against the empire; and Constantine had the satisfaction of receiving in his palace ambassadors of the khalifs of Baghdád and Africa, and of the Roman emperor Otho the Great. Luitprand, the emperor's ambassador, has left us a most interesting account of his mission to Constantinople. (Annales Luitpranli.) One of the most praiseworthy acts of Constantine was the restoration to their lawful proprietors of estates confiscated during rebellions, and held by robbers and swindlers without any titles, or under fraudulent ones. Constantine's end was hastened by poison, administered to him by an ungrateful son, Romanus (his successor), in consequence of which he died on the 15th of November, A. D. 959. His wife was Helena, by whom he had the above-mentioned son Romanus, a daughter Theodora, married to Joannes Züniscus, and other children.
[W.P]