53. Liutprand Legatio ad Imp. Nicephorum, p. 153. The modern
Greeks have strangely disfigured the antiquities of
Constantinople. We might excuse the errors of the Turkish or
Arabian writers-but it is somewhat astonishing that the
Greeks, who had access to the authentic materials preserved
in their own language, should prefer fiction to truth, and
loose tradition to genuine history. In a single page of
Codinus we may detect twelve unpardonable mistakes: the
reconciliation of Severus and Niger, the marriage of their
son and daughter, the siege of Byzantium by the Macedonians,
the invasion of the Gauls which recalled Severus to Rome,
the sixty years which elapsed from his death to the
foundation of Constantinople, etc.