HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 4

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)


Contents


Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part I.

Zeno And Anastasius, Emperors Of The East.—Birth, Education, And First
Exploits Of Theodoric The Ostrogoth.—His Invasion And Conquest Of
Italy.—The Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—State Of The West.—Military And
Civil Government.—The Senator Boethius.—Last Acts And Death Of
Theodoric.


Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part II.

Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part III.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part I.

Elevation Of Justin The Elder.—Reign Of Justinian.—I. The Empress
Theodora.—II.  Factions Of The Circus, And Sedition Of
Constantinople.—III.  Trade And Manufacture Of Silk.—IV. Finances And
Taxes.—V. Edifices Of Justinian.—Church Of St. Sophia.—Fortifications
And Frontiers Of The Eastern Empire.—Abolition Of The Schools Of
Athens, And The Consulship Of Rome.


Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part II.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part III.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part IV.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part V.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part I.

Conquests Of Justinian In The West.—Character And First Campaigns Of
Belisarius—He Invades And Subdues The Vandal Kingdom Of Africa—His
Triumph.—The Gothic War.—He Recovers Sicily, Naples, And Rome.—Siege Of
Rome By The Goths.—Their Retreat And Losses.—Surrender Of
Ravenna.—Glory Of Belisarius.—His Domestic Shame And Misfortunes.


Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part II.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part III.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part IV.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part V.

Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part I.

State Of The Barbaric World.—Establishment Of The Lombards On the
Danube.—Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians.—Origin, Empire, And
Embassies Of The Turks.—The Flight Of The Avars.—Chosroes I, Or
Nushirvan, King Of Persia.—His Prosperous Reign And Wars With The
Romans.—The Colchian Or Lazic War.—The Æthiopians.


Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part II.

Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part III.

Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part IV.

Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part I.

Rebellions Of Africa.—Restoration Of The Gothic Kingdom By Totila.—Loss
And Recovery Of Rome.—Final Conquest Of Italy By Narses.—Extinction Of
The Ostrogoths.—Defeat Of The Franks And Alemanni.—Last Victory,
Disgrace, And Death Of Belisarius.—Death And Character Of
Justinian.—Comet, Earthquakes, And Plague.


Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death OF
Justinian.—Part II.

Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part III.

Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part IV.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part I.

Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—The Laws Of The Kings—The Twelve Of
The Decemvirs.—The Laws Of The People.—The Decrees Of The Senate.—The
Edicts Of The Magistrates And Emperors—Authority Of The
Civilians.—Code, Pandects, Novels, And Institutes Of Justinian:—I.
Rights Of Persons.—II. Rights Of Things.—III. Private Injuries And
Actions.—IV. Crimes And Punishments.


Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part II.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part III.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part IV.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part V.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VI.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VII.

Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VIII.

Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part I.

Reign Of The Younger Justin.—Embassy Of The Avars.—Their Settlement On
The Danube.—Conquest Of Italy By The Lombards.—Adoption And Reign Of
Tiberius.—Of Maurice.—State Of Italy Under The Lombards And The
Exarchs.—Of Ravenna.—Distress Of Rome.—Character And Pontificate Of
Gregory The First.


Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part II.

Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part III.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.

Revolutions On Persia After The Death Of Chosroes On Nushirvan.—His Son
Hormouz, A Tyrant, Is Deposed.—Usurpation Of Baharam.—Flight And
Restoration Of Chosroes II.—His Gratitude To The Romans.—The Chagan Of
The Avars.—Revolt Of The Army Against Maurice.—His Death.—Tyranny Of
Phocas.—Elevation Of Heraclius.—The Persian War.—Chosroes Subdues
Syria, Egypt, And Asia Minor.—Siege Of Constantinople By The Persians
And Avars.—Persian Expeditions.—Victories And Triumph Of Heraclius.


Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part II.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part III.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part IV.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I.

Theological History Of The Doctrine Of The Incarnation.—The Human And
Divine Nature Of Christ.—Enmity Of The Patriarchs Of Alexandria And
Constantinople.—St. Cyril And Nestorius. —Third General Council Of
Ephesus.—Heresy Of Eutyches.—Fourth General Council Of Chalcedon.—Civil
And Ecclesiastical Discord.—Intolerance Of Justinian.—The Three
Chapters.—The Monothelite Controversy.—State Of The Oriental Sects:—I.
The Nestorians.—II. The Jacobites.—III. The Maronites.—IV. The
Armenians.—V. The Copts And Abyssinians.


Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part II.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part III.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part IV.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part V.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part VI.

Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
I.

Plan Of The Two Last Volumes.—Succession And Characters Of The Greek
Emperors Of Constantinople, From The Time Of Heraclius To The Latin
Conquest.


Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
II.

Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
III.

Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
IV.

Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
V.


Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part I.


Zeno And Anastasius, Emperors Of The East.—Birth, Education, And First
Exploits Of Theodoric The Ostrogoth.—His Invasion And Conquest Of
Italy.—The Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—State Of The West.—Military And
Civil Government.—The Senator Boethius.—Last Acts And Death Of
Theodoric.


      After the fall of the Roman empire in the West, an interval of
      fifty years, till the memorable reign of Justinian, is faintly
      marked by the obscure names and imperfect annals of Zeno,
      Anastasius, and Justin, who successively ascended to the throne
      of Constantinople. During the same period, Italy revived and
      flourished under the government of a Gothic king, who might have
      deserved a statue among the best and bravest of the ancient
      Romans.


      Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of the
      royal line of the Amali, 1 was born in the neighborhood of Vienna
      2 two years after the death of Attila. 2111 A recent victory had
      restored the independence of the Ostrogoths; and the three
      brothers, Walamir, Theodemir, and Widimir, who ruled that warlike
      nation with united counsels, had separately pitched their
      habitations in the fertile though desolate province of Pannonia.
      The Huns still threatened their revolted subjects, but their
      hasty attack was repelled by the single forces of Walamir, and
      the news of his victory reached the distant camp of his brother
      in the same auspicious moment that the favorite concubine of
      Theodemir was delivered of a son and heir. In the eighth year of
      his age, Theodoric was reluctantly yielded by his father to the
      public interest, as the pledge of an alliance which Leo, emperor
      of the East, had consented to purchase by an annual subsidy of
      three hundred pounds of gold. The royal hostage was educated at
      Constantinople with care and tenderness. His body was formed to
      all the exercises of war, his mind was expanded by the habits of
      liberal conversation; he frequented the schools of the most
      skilful masters; but he disdained or neglected the arts of
      Greece, and so ignorant did he always remain of the first
      elements of science, that a rude mark was contrived to represent
      the signature of the illiterate king of Italy. 3 As soon as he
      had attained the age of eighteen, he was restored to the wishes
      of the Ostrogoths, whom the emperor aspired to gain by liberality
      and confidence. Walamir had fallen in battle; the youngest of the
      brothers, Widimir, had led away into Italy and Gaul an army of
      Barbarians, and the whole nation acknowledged for their king the
      father of Theodoric. His ferocious subjects admired the strength
      and stature of their young prince; 4 and he soon convinced them
      that he had not degenerated from the valor of his ancestors. At
      the head of six thousand volunteers, he secretly left the camp in
      quest of adventures, descended the Danube as far as Singidunum,
      or Belgrade, and soon returned to his father with the spoils of a
      Sarmatian king whom he had vanquished and slain. Such triumphs,
      however, were productive only of fame, and the invincible
      Ostrogoths were reduced to extreme distress by the want of
      clothing and food. They unanimously resolved to desert their
      Pannonian encampments, and boldly to advance into the warm and
      wealthy neighborhood of the Byzantine court, which already
      maintained in pride and luxury so many bands of confederate
      Goths. After proving, by some acts of hostility, that they could
      be dangerous, or at least troublesome, enemies, the Ostrogoths
      sold at a high price their reconciliation and fidelity, accepted
      a donative of lands and money, and were intrusted with the
      defence of the Lower Danube, under the command of Theodoric, who
      succeeded after his father’s death to the hereditary throne of
      the Amali. 5

      1 (return) [ Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 13, 14, p. 629, 630,
      edit. Grot.) has drawn the pedigree of Theodoric from Gapt, one
      of the Anses or Demigods, who lived about the time of Domitian.
      Cassiodorus, the first who celebrates the royal race of the
      Amali, (Viriar. viii. 5, ix. 25, x. 2, xi. 1,) reckons the
      grandson of Theodoric as the xviith in descent. Peringsciold (the
      Swedish commentator of Cochloeus, Vit. Theodoric. p. 271, &c.,
      Stockholm, 1699) labors to connect this genealogy with the
      legends or traditions of his native country. * Note: Amala was a
      name of hereditary sanctity and honor among the Visigoths. It
      enters into the names of Amalaberga, Amala suintha, (swinther
      means strength,) Amalafred, Amalarich. In the poem of the
      Nibelungen written three hundred years later, the Ostrogoths are
      called the Amilungen. According to Wachter it means, unstained,
      from the privative a, and malo a stain. It is pure Sanscrit,
      Amala, immaculatus. Schlegel. Indische Bibliothek, 1. p. 233.—M.]

      2 (return) [ More correctly on the banks of the Lake Pelso,
      (Nieusiedler-see,) near Carnuntum, almost on the same spot where
      Marcus Antoninus composed his meditations, Jornandes, c. 52, p.
      659. Severin. Pannonia Illustrata, p. 22. Cellarius, Geograph.
      Antiq. (tom. i. p. 350.)]

      2111 (return) [ The date of Theodoric’s birth is not accurately
      determined. We can hardly err, observes Manso, in placing it
      between the years 453 and 455, Manso, Geschichte des Ost
      Gothischen Reichs, p. 14.—M.]

      3 (return) [ The four first letters of his name were inscribed on
      a gold plate, and when it was fixed on the paper, the king drew
      his pen through the intervals (Anonym. Valesian. ad calcem Amm.
      Marcellin p. 722.) This authentic fact, with the testimony of
      Procopius, or at least of the contemporary Goths, (Gothic. 1. i.
      c. 2, p. 311,) far outweighs the vague praises of Ennodius
      (Sirmond Opera, tom. i. p. 1596) and Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.
      112.) * Note: Le Beau and his Commentator, M. St. Martin,
      support, though with no very satisfactory evidence, the opposite
      opinion. But Lord Mahon (Life of Belisarius, p. 19) urges the
      much stronger argument, the Byzantine education of Theodroic.—M.]

      4 (return) [ Statura est quae resignet proceritate regnantem,
      (Ennodius, p. 1614.) The bishop of Pavia (I mean the ecclesiastic
      who wished to be a bishop) then proceeds to celebrate the
      complexion, eyes, hands, &c, of his sovereign.]

      5 (return) [ The state of the Ostrogoths, and the first years of
      Theodoric, are found in Jornandes, (c. 52—56, p. 689—696) and
      Malchus, (Excerpt. Legat. p. 78—80,) who erroneously styles him
      the son of Walamir.]


      A hero, descended from a race of kings, must have despised the
      base Isaurian who was invested with the Roman purple, without any
      endowment of mind or body, without any advantages of royal birth,
      or superior qualifications. After the failure of the Theodosian
      line, the choice of Pulcheria and of the senate might be
      justified in some measure by the characters of Martin and Leo,
      but the latter of these princes confirmed and dishonored his
      reign by the perfidious murder of Aspar and his sons, who too
      rigorously exacted the debt of gratitude and obedience. The
      inheritance of Leo and of the East was peaceably devolved on his
      infant grandson, the son of his daughter Ariadne; and her
      Isaurian husband, the fortunate Trascalisseus, exchanged that
      barbarous sound for the Grecian appellation of Zeno. After the
      decease of the elder Leo, he approached with unnatural respect
      the throne of his son, humbly received, as a gift, the second
      rank in the empire, and soon excited the public suspicion on the
      sudden and premature death of his young colleague, whose life
      could no longer promote the success of his ambition. But the
      palace of Constantinople was ruled by female influence, and
      agitated by female passions: and Verina, the widow of Leo,
      claiming his empire as her own, pronounced a sentence of
      deposition against the worthless and ungrateful servant on whom
      she alone had bestowed the sceptre of the East. 6 As soon as she
      sounded a revolt in the ears of Zeno, he fled with precipitation
      into the mountains of Isauria, and her brother Basiliscus,
      already infamous by his African expedition, 7 was unanimously
      proclaimed by the servile senate. But the reign of the usurper
      was short and turbulent. Basiliscus presumed to assassinate the
      lover of his sister; he dared to offend the lover of his wife,
      the vain and insolent Harmatius, who, in the midst of Asiatic
      luxury, affected the dress, the demeanor, and the surname of
      Achilles. 8 By the conspiracy of the malcontents, Zeno was
      recalled from exile; the armies, the capital, the person, of
      Basiliscus, were betrayed; and his whole family was condemned to
      the long agony of cold and hunger by the inhuman conqueror, who
      wanted courage to encounter or to forgive his enemies. 811 The
      haughty spirit of Verina was still incapable of submission or
      repose. She provoked the enmity of a favorite general, embraced
      his cause as soon as he was disgraced, created a new emperor in
      Syria and Egypt, 812 raised an army of seventy thousand men, and
      persisted to the last moment of her life in a fruitless
      rebellion, which, according to the fashion of the age, had been
      predicted by Christian hermits and Pagan magicians. While the
      East was afflicted by the passions of Verina, her daughter
      Ariadne was distinguished by the female virtues of mildness and
      fidelity; she followed her husband in his exile, and after his
      restoration, she implored his clemency in favor of her mother. On
      the decease of Zeno, Ariadne, the daughter, the mother, and the
      widow of an emperor, gave her hand and the Imperial title to
      Anastasius, an aged domestic of the palace, who survived his
      elevation above twenty-seven years, and whose character is
      attested by the acclamation of the people, “Reign as you have
      lived!” 9 912

      6 (return) [ Theophanes (p. 111) inserts a copy of her sacred
      letters to the provinces. Such female pretensions would have
      astonished the slaves of the first Caesars.]

      7 (return) [ Vol. iii. p. 504—508.]

      8 (return) [ Suidas, tom. i. p. 332, 333, edit. Kuster.]

      811 (return) [ Joannes Lydus accuses Zeno of timidity, or,
      rather, of cowardice; he purchased an ignominious peace from the
      enemies of the empire, whom he dared not meet in battle; and
      employed his whole time at home in confiscations and executions.
      Lydus, de Magist. iii. 45, p. 230.—M.]

      812 (return) [ Named Illus.—M.]

      9 (return) [ The contemporary histories of Malchus and Candidus
      are lost; but some extracts or fragments have been saved by
      Photius, (lxxviii. lxxix. p. 100—102,) Constantine
      Porphyrogenitus, (Excerpt. Leg. p. 78—97,) and in various
      articles of the Lexicon of Suidas. The Chronicles of Marcellinus
      (Imago Historiae) are originals for the reigns of Zeno and
      Anastasius; and I must acknowledge, almost for the last time, my
      obligations to the large and accurate collections of Tillemont,
      (Hist. des Emp. tom. vi. p. 472—652).]

      912 (return) [ The Panegyric of Procopius of Gaza, (edited by
      Villoison in his Anecdota Graeca, and reprinted in the new
      edition of the Byzantine historians by Niebuhr, in the same vol.
      with Dexippus and Eunapius, viii. p. 488 516,) was unknown to
      Gibbon. It is vague and pedantic, and contains few facts. The
      same criticism will apply to the poetical panegyric of Priscian
      edited from the Ms. of Bobbio by Ang. Mai. Priscian, the gram
      marian, Niebuhr argues from this work, must have been born in the
      African, not in either of the Asiatic Caesareas. Pref. p. xi.—M.]


      Whatever fear or affection could bestow, was profusely lavished
      by Zeno on the king of the Ostrogoths; the rank of patrician and
      consul, the command of the Palatine troops, an equestrian statue,
      a treasure in gold and silver of many thousand pounds, the name
      of son, and the promise of a rich and honorable wife. As long as
      Theodoric condescended to serve, he supported with courage and
      fidelity the cause of his benefactor; his rapid march contributed
      to the restoration of Zeno; and in the second revolt, the
      Walamirs, as they were called, pursued and pressed the Asiatic
      rebels, till they left an easy victory to the Imperial troops. 10
      But the faithful servant was suddenly converted into a formidable
      enemy, who spread the flames of war from Constantinople to the
      Adriatic; many flourishing cities were reduced to ashes, and the
      agriculture of Thrace was almost extirpated by the wanton cruelty
      of the Goths, who deprived their captive peasants of the right
      hand that guided the plough. 11 On such occasions, Theodoric
      sustained the loud and specious reproach of disloyalty, of
      ingratitude, and of insatiate avarice, which could be only
      excused by the hard necessity of his situation. He reigned, not
      as the monarch, but as the minister of a ferocious people, whose
      spirit was unbroken by slavery, and impatient of real or
      imaginary insults. Their poverty was incurable; since the most
      liberal donatives were soon dissipated in wasteful luxury, and
      the most fertile estates became barren in their hands; they
      despised, but they envied, the laborious provincials; and when
      their subsistence had failed, the Ostrogoths embraced the
      familiar resources of war and rapine. It had been the wish of
      Theodoric (such at least was his declaration) to lead a peaceful,
      obscure, obedient life on the confines of Scythia, till the
      Byzantine court, by splendid and fallacious promises, seduced him
      to attack a confederate tribe of Goths, who had been engaged in
      the party of Basiliscus. He marched from his station in Maesia,
      on the solemn assurance that before he reached Adrianople, he
      should meet a plentiful convoy of provisions, and a reenforcement
      of eight thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, while the
      legions of Asia were encamped at Heraclea to second his
      operations. These measures were disappointed by mutual jealousy.
      As he advanced into Thrace, the son of Theodemir found an
      inhospitable solitude, and his Gothic followers, with a heavy
      train of horses, of mules, and of wagons, were betrayed by their
      guides among the rocks and precipices of Mount Sondis, where he
      was assaulted by the arms and invectives of Theodoric the son of
      Triarius. From a neighboring height, his artful rival harangued
      the camp of the Walamirs, and branded their leader with the
      opprobrious names of child, of madman, of perjured traitor, the
      enemy of his blood and nation. “Are you ignorant,” exclaimed the
      son of Triarius, “that it is the constant policy of the Romans to
      destroy the Goths by each other’s swords? Are you insensible that
      the victor in this unnatural contest will be exposed, and justly
      exposed, to their implacable revenge? Where are those warriors,
      my kinsmen and thy own, whose widows now lament that their lives
      were sacrificed to thy rash ambition? Where is the wealth which
      thy soldiers possessed when they were first allured from their
      native homes to enlist under thy standard? Each of them was then
      master of three or four horses; they now follow thee on foot,
      like slaves, through the deserts of Thrace; those men who were
      tempted by the hope of measuring gold with a bushel, those brave
      men who are as free and as noble as thyself.” A language so well
      suited to the temper of the Goths excited clamor and discontent;
      and the son of Theodemir, apprehensive of being left alone, was
      compelled to embrace his brethren, and to imitate the example of
      Roman perfidy. 12 1211

      10 (return) [ In ipsis congressionis tuae foribus cessit invasor,
      cum profugo per te sceptra redderentur de salute dubitanti.
      Ennodius then proceeds (p. 1596, 1597, tom. i. Sirmond.) to
      transport his hero (on a flying dragon?) into Aethiopia, beyond
      the tropic of Cancer. The evidence of the Valesian Fragment, (p.
      717,) Liberatus, (Brev. Eutych. c. 25 p. 118,) and Theophanes,
      (p. 112,) is more sober and rational.]

      11 (return) [ This cruel practice is specially imputed to the
      Triarian Goths, less barbarous, as it should seem, than the
      Walamirs; but the son of Theodemir is charged with the ruin of
      many Roman cities, (Malchus, Excerpt. Leg. p. 95.)]

      12 (return) [ Jornandes (c. 56, 57, p. 696) displays the services
      of Theodoric, confesses his rewards, but dissembles his revolt,
      of which such curious details have been preserved by Malchus,
      (Excerpt. Legat. p. 78—97.) Marcellinus, a domestic of Justinian,
      under whose ivth consulship (A.D. 534) he composed his Chronicle,
      (Scaliger, Thesaurus Temporum, P. ii, p. 34—57,) betrays his
      prejudice and passion: in Graeciam debacchantem ...Zenonis
      munificentia pene pacatus...beneficiis nunquam satiatus, &c.]

      1211 (return) [ Gibbon has omitted much of the complicated
      intrigues of the Byzantine court with the two Theodorics. The
      weak emperor attempted to play them one against the other, and
      was himself in turn insulted, and the empire ravaged, by both.
      The details of the successive alliance and revolt, of hostility
      and of union, between the two Gothic chieftains, to dictate terms
      to the emperor, may be found in Malchus.—M.]


      In every state of his fortune, the prudence and firmness of
      Theodoric were equally conspicuous; whether he threatened
      Constantinople at the head of the confederate Goths, or retreated
      with a faithful band to the mountains and sea-coast of Epirus. At
      length the accidental death of the son of Triarius 13 destroyed
      the balance which the Romans had been so anxious to preserve, the
      whole nation acknowledged the supremacy of the Amali, and the
      Byzantine court subscribed an ignominious and oppressive treaty.
      14 The senate had already declared, that it was necessary to
      choose a party among the Goths, since the public was unequal to
      the support of their united forces; a subsidy of two thousand
      pounds of gold, with the ample pay of thirteen thousand men, were
      required for the least considerable of their armies; 15 and the
      Isaurians, who guarded not the empire but the emperor, enjoyed,
      besides the privilege of rapine, an annual pension of five
      thousand pounds. The sagacious mind of Theodoric soon perceived
      that he was odious to the Romans, and suspected by the
      Barbarians: he understood the popular murmur, that his subjects
      were exposed in their frozen huts to intolerable hardships, while
      their king was dissolved in the luxury of Greece, and he
      prevented the painful alternative of encountering the Goths, as
      the champion, or of leading them to the field, as the enemy, of
      Zeno. Embracing an enterprise worthy of his courage and ambition,
      Theodoric addressed the emperor in the following words: “Although
      your servant is maintained in affluence by your liberality,
      graciously listen to the wishes of my heart! Italy, the
      inheritance of your predecessors, and Rome itself, the head and
      mistress of the world, now fluctuate under the violence and
      oppression of Odoacer the mercenary. Direct me, with my national
      troops, to march against the tyrant. If I fall, you will be
      relieved from an expensive and troublesome friend: if, with the
      divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern in your name, and to
      your glory, the Roman senate, and the part of the republic
      delivered from slavery by my victorious arms.” The proposal of
      Theodoric was accepted, and perhaps had been suggested, by the
      Byzantine court. But the forms of the commission, or grant,
      appear to have been expressed with a prudent ambiguity, which
      might be explained by the event; and it was left doubtful,
      whether the conqueror of Italy should reign as the lieutenant,
      the vassal, or the ally, of the emperor of the East.16

      13 (return) [ As he was riding in his own camp, an unruly horse
      threw him against the point of a spear which hung before a tent,
      or was fixed on a wagon, (Marcellin. in Chron. Evagrius, l. iii.
      c. 25.)]

      14 (return) [ See Malchus (p. 91) and Evagrius, (l. iii. c. 35.)]

      15 (return) [ Malchus, p. 85. In a single action, which was
      decided by the skill and discipline of Sabinian, Theodoric could
      lose 5000 men.] [Footnote 16: Jornandes (c. 57, p. 696, 697) has
      abridged the great history of Cassiodorus. See, compare, and
      reconcile Procopius, (Gothic. l. i. c. i.,) the Valesian
      Fragment, (p. 718,) Theophanes, (p. 113,) and Marcellinus, (in
      Chron.)]

      16 (return) [ Jordanes (c. 57, p. 696, 697) has abridged the
      great history of Cassiodorus. See, compare, and reconcile,
      Procopius (Gothic. 1. i. c. i.), the Valesian Fragment (p.718),
      Theophanes (p. 113), and Marcellinus (in Chron.).]


      The reputation both of the leader and of the war diffused a
      universal ardor; the Walamirs were multiplied by the Gothic
      swarms already engaged in the service, or seated in the
      provinces, of the empire; and each bold Barbarian, who had heard
      of the wealth and beauty of Italy, was impatient to seek, through
      the most perilous adventures, the possession of such enchanting
      objects. The march of Theodoric must be considered as the
      emigration of an entire people; the wives and children of the
      Goths, their aged parents, and most precious effects, were
      carefully transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy
      baggage that now followed the camp, by the loss of two thousand
      wagons, which had been sustained in a single action in the war of
      Epirus. For their subsistence, the Goths depended on the
      magazines of corn which was ground in portable mills by the hands
      of their women; on the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds;
      on the casual produce of the chase, and upon the contributions
      which they might impose on all who should presume to dispute the
      passage, or to refuse their friendly assistance. Notwithstanding
      these precautions, they were exposed to the danger, and almost to
      the distress, of famine, in a march of seven hundred miles, which
      had been undertaken in the depth of a rigorous winter. Since the
      fall of the Roman power, Dacia and Pannonia no longer exhibited
      the rich prospect of populous cities, well-cultivated fields, and
      convenient highways: the reign of barbarism and desolation was
      restored, and the tribes of Bulgarians, Gepidae, and Sarmatians,
      who had occupied the vacant province, were prompted by their
      native fierceness, or the solicitations of Odoacer, to resist the
      progress of his enemy. In many obscure though bloody battles,
      Theodoric fought and vanquished; till at length, surmounting
      every obstacle by skilful conduct and persevering courage, he
      descended from the Julian Alps, and displayed his invincible
      banners on the confines of Italy. 17

      17 (return) [ Theodoric’s march is supplied and illustrated by
      Ennodius, (p. 1598—1602,) when the bombast of the oration is
      translated into the language of common sense.]


      Odoacer, a rival not unworthy of his arms, had already occupied
      the advantageous and well-known post of the River Sontius, near
      the ruins of Aquileia, at the head of a powerful host, whose
      independent kings 18 or leaders disdained the duties of
      subordination and the prudence of delays. No sooner had Theodoric
      gained a short repose and refreshment to his wearied cavalry,
      than he boldly attacked the fortifications of the enemy; the
      Ostrogoths showed more ardor to acquire, than the mercenaries to
      defend, the lands of Italy; and the reward of the first victory
      was the possession of the Venetian province as far as the walls
      of Verona. In the neighborhood of that city, on the steep banks
      of the rapid Adige, he was opposed by a new army, reenforced in
      its numbers, and not impaired in its courage: the contest was
      more obstinate, but the event was still more decisive; Odoacer
      fled to Ravenna, Theodoric advanced to Milan, and the vanquished
      troops saluted their conqueror with loud acclamations of respect
      and fidelity. But their want either of constancy or of faith soon
      exposed him to the most imminent danger; his vanguard, with
      several Gothic counts, which had been rashly intrusted to a
      deserter, was betrayed and destroyed near Faenza by his double
      treachery; Odoacer again appeared master of the field, and the
      invader, strongly intrenched in his camp of Pavia, was reduced to
      solicit the aid of a kindred nation, the Visigoths of Gaul. In
      the course of this History, the most voracious appetite for war
      will be abundantly satiated; nor can I much lament that our dark
      and imperfect materials do not afford a more ample narrative of
      the distress of Italy, and of the fierce conflict, which was
      finally decided by the abilities, experience, and valor of the
      Gothic king. Immediately before the battle of Verona, he visited
      the tent of his mother 19 and sister, and requested, that on a
      day, the most illustrious festival of his life, they would adorn
      him with the rich garments which they had worked with their own
      hands. “Our glory,” said he, “is mutual and inseparable. You are
      known to the world as the mother of Theodoric; and it becomes me
      to prove, that I am the genuine offspring of those heroes from
      whom I claim my descent.” The wife or concubine of Theodemir was
      inspired with the spirit of the German matrons, who esteemed
      their sons’ honor far above their safety; and it is reported,
      that in a desperate action, when Theodoric himself was hurried
      along by the torrent of a flying crowd, she boldly met them at
      the entrance of the camp, and, by her generous reproaches, drove
      them back on the swords of the enemy. 20

      18 (return) [ Tot reges, &c., (Ennodius, p. 1602.) We must
      recollect how much the royal title was multiplied and degraded,
      and that the mercenaries of Italy were the fragments of many
      tribes and nations.]

      19 (return) [ See Ennodius, p. 1603, 1604. Since the orator, in
      the king’s presence, could mention and praise his mother, we may
      conclude that the magnanimity of Theodoric was not hurt by the
      vulgar reproaches of concubine and bastard. * Note: Gibbon here
      assumes that the mother of Theodoric was the concubine of
      Theodemir, which he leaves doubtful in the text.—M.]

      20 (return) [ This anecdote is related on the modern but
      respectable authority of Sigonius, (Op. tom. i. p. 580. De
      Occident. Impl. l. xv.:) his words are curious: “Would you
      return?” &c. She presented and almost displayed the original
      recess. * Note: The authority of Sigonius would scarcely have
      weighed with Gibbon except for an indecent anecdote. I have a
      recollection of a similar story in some of the Italian wars.—M.]


      From the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, Theodoric reigned by
      the right of conquest; the Vandal ambassadors surrendered the
      Island of Sicily, as a lawful appendage of his kingdom; and he
      was accepted as the deliverer of Rome by the senate and people,
      who had shut their gates against the flying usurper. 21 Ravenna
      alone, secure in the fortifications of art and nature, still
      sustained a siege of almost three years; and the daring sallies
      of Odoacer carried slaughter and dismay into the Gothic camp. At
      length, destitute of provisions and hopeless of relief, that
      unfortunate monarch yielded to the groans of his subjects and the
      clamors of his soldiers. A treaty of peace was negotiated by the
      bishop of Ravenna; the Ostrogoths were admitted into the city,
      and the hostile kings consented, under the sanction of an oath,
      to rule with equal and undivided authority the provinces of
      Italy. The event of such an agreement may be easily foreseen.
      After some days had been devoted to the semblance of joy and
      friendship, Odoacer, in the midst of a solemn banquet, was
      stabbed by the hand, or at least by the command, of his rival.
      Secret and effectual orders had been previously despatched; the
      faithless and rapacious mercenaries, at the same moment, and
      without resistance, were universally massacred; and the royalty
      of Theodoric was proclaimed by the Goths, with the tardy,
      reluctant, ambiguous consent of the emperor of the East. The
      design of a conspiracy was imputed, according to the usual forms,
      to the prostrate tyrant; but his innocence, and the guilt of his
      conqueror, 22 are sufficiently proved by the advantageous treaty
      which force would not sincerely have granted, nor weakness have
      rashly infringed. The jealousy of power, and the mischiefs of
      discord, may suggest a more decent apology, and a sentence less
      rigorous may be pronounced against a crime which was necessary to
      introduce into Italy a generation of public felicity. The living
      author of this felicity was audaciously praised in his own
      presence by sacred and profane orators; 23 but history (in his
      time she was mute and inglorious) has not left any just
      representation of the events which displayed, or of the defects
      which clouded, the virtues of Theodoric. 24 One record of his
      fame, the volume of public epistles composed by Cassiodorus in
      the royal name, is still extant, and has obtained more implicit
      credit than it seems to deserve. 25 They exhibit the forms,
      rather than the substance, of his government; and we should
      vainly search for the pure and spontaneous sentiments of the
      Barbarian amidst the declamation and learning of a sophist, the
      wishes of a Roman senator, the precedents of office, and the
      vague professions, which, in every court, and on every occasion,
      compose the language of discreet ministers. The reputation of
      Theodoric may repose with more confidence on the visible peace
      and prosperity of a reign of thirty-three years; the unanimous
      esteem of his own times, and the memory of his wisdom and
      courage, his justice and humanity, which was deeply impressed on
      the minds of the Goths and Italians.

      21 (return) [ Hist. Miscell. l. xv., a Roman history from Janus
      to the ixth century, an Epitome of Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus,
      and Theophanes which Muratori has published from a Ms. in the
      Ambrosian library, (Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 100.)]

      22 (return) [ Procopius (Gothic. l. i. c. i.) approves himself an
      impartial sceptic. Cassiodorus (in Chron.) and Ennodius (p. 1604)
      are loyal and credulous, and the testimony of the Valesian
      Fragment (p. 718) may justify their belief. Marcellinus spits the
      venom of a Greek subject—perjuriis illectus, interfectusque est,
      (in Chron.)]

      23 (return) [ The sonorous and servile oration of Ennodius was
      pronounced at Milan or Ravenna in the years 507 or 508, (Sirmond,
      tom. i. p. 615.) Two or three years afterwards, the orator was
      rewarded with the bishopric of Pavia, which he held till his
      death in the year 521. (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. v. p. 11-14.
      See Saxii Onomasticon, tom. ii. p. 12.)]

      24 (return) [ Our best materials are occasional hints from
      Procopius and the Valesian Fragment, which was discovered by
      Sirmond, and is published at the end of Ammianus Marcellinus. The
      author’s name is unknown, and his style is barbarous; but in his
      various facts he exhibits the knowledge, without the passions, of
      a contemporary. The president Montesquieu had formed the plan of
      a history of Theodoric, which at a distance might appear a rich
      and interesting subject.]

      25 (return) [ The best edition of the Variarum Libri xii. is that
      of Joh. Garretius, (Rotomagi, 1679, in Opp. Cassiodor. 2 vols. in
      fol.;) but they deserved and required such an editor as the
      Marquis Scipio Maffei, who thought of publishing them at Verona.
      The Barbara Eleganza (as it is ingeniously named by Tiraboschi)
      is never simple, and seldom perspicuous]


      The partition of the lands of Italy, of which Theodoric assigned
      the third part to his soldiers, is honorably arraigned as the
      sole injustice of his life. 2511 And even this act may be fairly
      justified by the example of Odoacer, the rights of conquest, the
      true interest of the Italians, and the sacred duty of subsisting
      a whole people, who, on the faith of his promises, had
      transported themselves into a distant land. 26 Under the reign of
      Theodoric, and in the happy climate of Italy, the Goths soon
      multiplied to a formidable host of two hundred thousand men, 27
      and the whole amount of their families may be computed by the
      ordinary addition of women and children. Their invasion of
      property, a part of which must have been already vacant, was
      disguised by the generous but improper name of hospitality; these
      unwelcome guests were irregularly dispersed over the face of
      Italy, and the lot of each Barbarian was adequate to his birth
      and office, the number of his followers, and the rustic wealth
      which he possessed in slaves and cattle. The distinction of noble
      and plebeian were acknowledged; 28 but the lands of every freeman
      were exempt from taxes, 2811 and he enjoyed the inestimable
      privilege of being subject only to the laws of his country. 29
      Fashion, and even convenience, soon persuaded the conquerors to
      assume the more elegant dress of the natives, but they still
      persisted in the use of their mother-tongue; and their contempt
      for the Latin schools was applauded by Theodoric himself, who
      gratified their prejudices, or his own, by declaring, that the
      child who had trembled at a rod, would never dare to look upon a
      sword. 30 Distress might sometimes provoke the indigent Roman to
      assume the ferocious manners which were insensibly relinquished
      by the rich and luxurious Barbarian; 31 but these mutual
      conversions were not encouraged by the policy of a monarch who
      perpetuated the separation of the Italians and Goths; reserving
      the former for the arts of peace, and the latter for the service
      of war. To accomplish this design, he studied to protect his
      industrious subjects, and to moderate the violence, without
      enervating the valor, of his soldiers, who were maintained for
      the public defence. They held their lands and benefices as a
      military stipend: at the sound of the trumpet, they were prepared
      to march under the conduct of their provincial officers; and the
      whole extent of Italy was distributed into the several quarters
      of a well-regulated camp. The service of the palace and of the
      frontiers was performed by choice or by rotation; and each
      extraordinary fatigue was recompensed by an increase of pay and
      occasional donatives. Theodoric had convinced his brave
      companions, that empire must be acquired and defended by the same
      arts. After his example, they strove to excel in the use, not
      only of the lance and sword, the instruments of their victories,
      but of the missile weapons, which they were too much inclined to
      neglect; and the lively image of war was displayed in the daily
      exercise and annual reviews of the Gothic cavalry. A firm though
      gentle discipline imposed the habits of modesty, obedience, and
      temperance; and the Goths were instructed to spare the people, to
      reverence the laws, to understand the duties of civil society,
      and to disclaim the barbarous license of judicial combat and
      private revenge. 32

      2511 (return) [ Compare Gibbon, ch. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 459,
      &c.—Manso observes that this division was conducted not in a
      violent and irregular, but in a legal and orderly, manner. The
      Barbarian, who could not show a title of grant from the officers
      of Theodoric appointed for the purpose, or a prescriptive right
      of thirty years, in case he had obtained the property before the
      Ostrogothic conquest, was ejected from the estate. He conceives
      that estates too small to bear division paid a third of their
      produce.—Geschichte des Os Gothischen Reiches, p. 82.—M.]

      26 (return) [ Procopius, Gothic, l. i. c. i. Variarum, ii. Maffei
      (Verona Illustrata, P. i. p. 228) exaggerates the injustice of
      the Goths, whom he hated as an Italian noble. The plebeian
      Muratori crouches under their oppression.]

      27 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 421. Ennodius describes
      (p. 1612, 1613) the military arts and increasing numbers of the
      Goths.]

      28 (return) [ When Theodoric gave his sister to the king of the
      Vandals she sailed for Africa with a guard of 1000 noble Goths,
      each of whom was attended by five armed followers, (Procop.
      Vandal. l. i. c. 8.) The Gothic nobility must have been as
      numerous as brave.]

      2811 (return) [ Manso (p. 100) quotes two passages from
      Cassiodorus to show that the Goths were not exempt from the
      fiscal claims.—Cassiodor, i. 19, iv. 14—M.]

      29 (return) [ See the acknowledgment of Gothic liberty, (Var. v.
      30.)]

      30 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 2. The Roman boys learnt
      the language (Var. viii. 21) of the Goths. Their general
      ignorance is not destroyed by the exceptions of Amalasuntha, a
      female, who might study without shame, or of Theodatus, whose
      learning provoked the indignation and contempt of his
      countrymen.]

      31 (return) [ A saying of Theodoric was founded on experience:
      “Romanus miser imitatur Gothum; ut utilis (dives) Gothus imitatur
      Romanum.” (See the Fragment and Notes of Valesius, p. 719.)]

      32 (return) [ The view of the military establishment of the Goths
      in Italy is collected from the Epistles of Cassiodorus (Var. i.
      24, 40; iii. 3, 24, 48; iv. 13, 14; v. 26, 27; viii. 3, 4, 25.)
      They are illustrated by the learned Mascou, (Hist. of the
      Germans, l. xi. 40—44, Annotation xiv.) Note: Compare Manso,
      Geschichte des Ost Gothischen Reiches, p. 114.—M.]




Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part II.


      Among the Barbarians of the West, the victory of Theodoric had
      spread a general alarm. But as soon as it appeared that he was
      satisfied with conquest and desirous of peace, terror was changed
      into respect, and they submitted to a powerful mediation, which
      was uniformly employed for the best purposes of reconciling their
      quarrels and civilizing their manners. 33 The ambassadors who
      resorted to Ravenna from the most distant countries of Europe,
      admired his wisdom, magnificence, 34 and courtesy; and if he
      sometimes accepted either slaves or arms, white horses or strange
      animals, the gift of a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a musician,
      admonished even the princes of Gaul of the superior art and
      industry of his Italian subjects. His domestic alliances, 35 a
      wife, two daughters, a sister, and a niece, united the family of
      Theodoric with the kings of the Franks, the Burgundians, the
      Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Thuringians, and contributed to
      maintain the harmony, or at least the balance, of the great
      republic of the West. 36 It is difficult in the dark forests of
      Germany and Poland to pursue the emigrations of the Heruli, a
      fierce people who disdained the use of armor, and who condemned
      their widows and aged parents not to survive the loss of their
      husbands, or the decay of their strength. 37 The king of these
      savage warriors solicited the friendship of Theodoric, and was
      elevated to the rank of his son, according to the barbaric rites
      of a military adoption. 38 From the shores of the Baltic, the
      Aestians or Livonians laid their offerings of native amber 39 at
      the feet of a prince, whose fame had excited them to undertake an
      unknown and dangerous journey of fifteen hundred miles. With the
      country 40 from whence the Gothic nation derived their origin, he
      maintained a frequent and friendly correspondence: the Italians
      were clothed in the rich sables 41 of Sweden; and one of its
      sovereigns, after a voluntary or reluctant abdication, found a
      hospitable retreat in the palace of Ravenna. He had reigned over
      one of the thirteen populous tribes who cultivated a small
      portion of the great island or peninsula of Scandinavia, to which
      the vague appellation of Thule has been sometimes applied. That
      northern region was peopled, or had been explored, as high as the
      sixty-eighth degree of latitude, where the natives of the polar
      circle enjoy and lose the presence of the sun at each summer and
      winter solstice during an equal period of forty days. 42 The long
      night of his absence or death was the mournful season of distress
      and anxiety, till the messengers, who had been sent to the
      mountain tops, descried the first rays of returning light, and
      proclaimed to the plain below the festival of his resurrection.
      43

      33 (return) [ See the clearness and vigor of his negotiations in
      Ennodius, (p. 1607,) and Cassiodorus, (Var. iii. 1, 2, 3, 4; iv.
      13; v. 43, 44,) who gives the different styles of friendship,
      counsel expostulation, &c.]

      34 (return) [ Even of his table (Var. vi. 9) and palace, (vii.
      5.) The admiration of strangers is represented as the most
      rational motive to justify these vain expenses, and to stimulate
      the diligence of the officers to whom these provinces were
      intrusted.]

      35 (return) [ See the public and private alliances of the Gothic
      monarch, with the Burgundians, (Var. i. 45, 46,) with the Franks,
      (ii. 40,) with the Thuringians, (iv. 1,) and with the Vandals,
      (v. 1;) each of these epistles affords some curious knowledge of
      the policy and manners of the Barbarians.]

      36 (return) [ His political system may be observed in
      Cassiodorus, (Var. iv. l ix. l,) Jornandes, (c. 58, p. 698, 699,)
      and the Valesian Fragment, (p. 720, 721.) Peace, honorable peace,
      was the constant aim of Theodoric.]

      37 (return) [ The curious reader may contemplate the Heruli of
      Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 14,) and the patient reader may
      plunge into the dark and minute researches of M. de Buat, (Hist.
      des Peuples Anciens, tom. ix. p. 348—396. * Note: Compare Manso,
      Ost Gothische Reich. Beylage, vi. Malte-Brun brings them from
      Scandinavia: their names, the only remains of their language, are
      Gothic. “They fought almost naked, like the Icelandic Berserkirs
      their bravery was like madness: few in number, they were mostly
      of royal blood. What ferocity, what unrestrained license, sullied
      their victories! The Goth respects the church, the priests, the
      senate; the Heruli mangle all in a general massacre: there is no
      pity for age, no refuge for chastity. Among themselves there is
      the same ferocity: the sick and the aged are put to death. at
      their own request, during a solemn festival; the widow ends her
      days by hanging herself upon the tree which shadows her husband’s
      tomb. All these circumstances, so striking to a mind familiar
      with Scandinavian history, lead us to discover among the Heruli
      not so much a nation as a confederacy of princes and nobles,
      bound by an oath to live and die together with their arms in
      their hands. Their name, sometimes written Heruli or Eruli.
      sometimes Aeruli, signified, according to an ancient author,
      (Isid. Hispal. in gloss. p. 24, ad calc. Lex. Philolog. Martini,
      ll,) nobles, and appears to correspond better with the
      Scandinavian word iarl or earl, than with any of those numerous
      derivations proposed by etymologists.” Malte-Brun, vol. i. p.
      400, (edit. 1831.) Of all the Barbarians who threw themselves on
      the ruins of the Roman empire, it is most difficult to trace the
      origin of the Heruli. They seem never to have been very powerful
      as a nation, and branches of them are found in countries very
      remote from each other. In my opinion they belong to the Gothic
      race, and have a close affinity with the Scyrri or Hirri. They
      were, possibly, a division of that nation. They are often mingled
      and confounded with the Alani. Though brave and formidable. they
      were never numerous. nor did they found any state.—St. Martin,
      vol. vi. p. 375.—M. Schafarck considers them descendants of the
      Hirri. of which Heruli is a diminutive,—Slawische Alter
      thinner—M. 1845.]

      38 (return) [ Variarum, iv. 2. The spirit and forms of this
      martial institution are noticed by Cassiodorus; but he seems to
      have only translated the sentiments of the Gothic king into the
      language of Roman eloquence.]

      39 (return) [ Cassiodorus, who quotes Tacitus to the Aestians,
      the unlettered savages of the Baltic, (Var. v. 2,) describes the
      amber for which their shores have ever been famous, as the gum of
      a tree, hardened by the sun, and purified and wafted by the
      waves. When that singular substance is analyzed by the chemists,
      it yields a vegetable oil and a mineral acid.]

      40 (return) [ Scanzia, or Thule, is described by Jornandes (c. 3,
      p. 610—613) and Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 15.) Neither the Goth
      nor the Greek had visited the country: both had conversed with
      the natives in their exile at Ravenna or Constantinople.]

      41 (return) [ Sapherinas pelles. In the time of Jornandes they
      inhabited Suethans, the proper Sweden; but that beautiful race of
      animals has gradually been driven into the eastern parts of
      Siberia. See Buffon, (Hist. Nat. tom. xiii. p. 309—313, quarto
      edition;) Pennant, (System of Quadrupeds, vol. i. p. 322—328;)
      Gmelin, (Hist. Gen des. Voyages, tom. xviii. p. 257, 258;) and
      Levesque, (Hist. de Russie, tom. v. p. 165, 166, 514, 515.)]

      42 (return) [ In the system or romance of Mr. Bailly, (Lettres
      sur les Sciences et sur l’Atlantide, tom. i. p. 249—256, tom. ii.
      p. 114—139,) the phoenix of the Edda, and the annual death and
      revival of Adonis and Osiris, are the allegorical symbols of the
      absence and return of the sun in the Arctic regions. This
      ingenious writer is a worthy disciple of the great Buffon; nor is
      it easy for the coldest reason to withstand the magic of their
      philosophy.]

      43 (return) [ Says Procopius. At present a rude Manicheism
      (generous enough) prevails among the Samoyedes in Greenland and
      in Lapland, (Hist. des Voyages, tom. xviii. p. 508, 509, tom.
      xix. p. 105, 106, 527, 528;) yet, according to Orotius Samojutae
      coelum atque astra adorant, numina haud aliis iniquiora, (de
      Rebus Belgicis, l. iv. p. 338, folio edition) a sentence which
      Tacitus would not have disowned.]


      The life of Theodoric represents the rare and meritorious example
      of a Barbarian, who sheathed his sword in the pride of victory
      and the vigor of his age. A reign of three and thirty years was
      consecrated to the duties of civil government, and the
      hostilities, in which he was sometimes involved, were speedily
      terminated by the conduct of his lieutenants, the discipline of
      his troops, the arms of his allies, and even by the terror of his
      name. He reduced, under a strong and regular government, the
      unprofitable countries of Rhaetia, Noricum, Dalmatia, and
      Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the
      Bavarians, 44 to the petty kingdom erected by the Gepidae on the
      ruins of Sirmium. His prudence could not safely intrust the
      bulwark of Italy to such feeble and turbulent neighbors; and his
      justice might claim the lands which they oppressed, either as a
      part of his kingdom, or as the inheritance of his father. The
      greatness of a servant, who was named perfidious because he was
      successful, awakened the jealousy of the emperor Anastasius; and
      a war was kindled on the Dacian frontier, by the protection which
      the Gothic king, in the vicissitude of human affairs, had granted
      to one of the descendants of Attila. Sabinian, a general
      illustrious by his own and father’s merit, advanced at the head
      of ten thousand Romans; and the provisions and arms, which filled
      a long train of wagons, were distributed to the fiercest of the
      Bulgarian tribes. But in the fields of Margus, the eastern powers
      were defeated by the inferior forces of the Goths and Huns; the
      flower and even the hope of the Roman armies was irretrievably
      destroyed; and such was the temperance with which Theodoric had
      inspired his victorious troops, that, as their leader had not
      given the signal of pillage, the rich spoils of the enemy lay
      untouched at their feet. 45 Exasperated by this disgrace, the
      Byzantine court despatched two hundred ships and eight thousand
      men to plunder the sea-coast of Calabria and Apulia: they
      assaulted the ancient city of Tarentum, interrupted the trade and
      agriculture of a happy country, and sailed back to the
      Hellespont, proud of their piratical victory over a people whom
      they still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren. 46 Their
      retreat was possibly hastened by the activity of Theodoric; Italy
      was covered by a fleet of a thousand light vessels, 47 which he
      constructed with incredible despatch; and his firm moderation was
      soon rewarded by a solid and honorable peace. He maintained, with
      a powerful hand, the balance of the West, till it was at length
      overthrown by the ambition of Clovis; and although unable to
      assist his rash and unfortunate kinsman, the king of the
      Visigoths, he saved the remains of his family and people, and
      checked the Franks in the midst of their victorious career. I am
      not desirous to prolong or repeat 48 this narrative of military
      events, the least interesting of the reign of Theodoric; and
      shall be content to add, that the Alemanni were protected, 49
      that an inroad of the Burgundians was severely chastised, and
      that the conquest of Arles and Marseilles opened a free
      communication with the Visigoths, who revered him as their
      national protector, and as the guardian of his grandchild, the
      infant son of Alaric. Under this respectable character, the king
      of Italy restored the praetorian præfecture of the Gauls,
      reformed some abuses in the civil government of Spain, and
      accepted the annual tribute and apparent submission of its
      military governor, who wisely refused to trust his person in the
      palace of Ravenna. 50 The Gothic sovereignty was established from
      Sicily to the Danube, from Sirmium or Belgrade to the Atlantic
      Ocean; and the Greeks themselves have acknowledged that Theodoric
      reigned over the fairest portion of the Western empire. 51

      44 (return) [ See the Hist. des Peuples Anciens, &c., tom. ix. p.
      255—273, 396—501. The count de Buat was French minister at the
      court of Bavaria: a liberal curiosity prompted his inquiries into
      the antiquities of the country, and that curiosity was the germ
      of twelve respectable volumes.]

      45 (return) [ See the Gothic transactions on the Danube and the
      Illyricum, in Jornandes, (c. 58, p. 699;) Ennodius, (p.
      1607-1610;) Marcellmus (in Chron. p. 44, 47, 48;) and
      Cassiodorus, in (in Chron and Var. iii. 29 50, iv. 13, vii. 4 24,
      viii. 9, 10, 11, 21, ix. 8, 9.)]

      46 (return) [ I cannot forbear transcribing the liberal and
      classic style of Count Marcellinus: Romanus comes domesticorum,
      et Rusticus comes scholariorum cum centum armatis navibus,
      totidemque dromonibus, octo millia militum armatorum secum
      ferentibus, ad devastanda Italiae littora processerunt, ut usque
      ad Tarentum antiquissimam civitatem aggressi sunt; remensoque
      mari in honestam victoriam quam piratico ausu Romani ex Romanis
      rapuerunt, Anastasio Caesari reportarunt, (in Chron. p. 48.) See
      Variar. i. 16, ii. 38.]

      47 (return) [ See the royal orders and instructions, (Var. iv.
      15, v. 16—20.) These armed boats should be still smaller than the
      thousand vessels of Agamemnon at the siege of Troy. (Manso, p.
      121.)]

      48 (return) [ Vol. iii. p. 581—585.]

      49 (return) [ Ennodius (p. 1610) and Cassiodorus, in the royal
      name, (Var. ii 41,) record his salutary protection of the
      Alemanni.]

      50 (return) [ The Gothic transactions in Gaul and Spain are
      represented with some perplexity in Cassiodorus, (Var. iii. 32,
      38, 41, 43, 44, v. 39.) Jornandes, (c. 58, p. 698, 699,) and
      Procopius, (Goth. l. i. c. 12.) I will neither hear nor reconcile
      the long and contradictory arguments of the Abbe Dubos and the
      Count de Buat, about the wars of Burgundy.]

      51 (return) [ Theophanes, p. 113.]


      The union of the Goths and Romans might have fixed for ages the
      transient happiness of Italy; and the first of nations, a new
      people of free subjects and enlightened soldiers, might have
      gradually arisen from the mutual emulation of their respective
      virtues. But the sublime merit of guiding or seconding such a
      revolution was not reserved for the reign of Theodoric: he wanted
      either the genius or the opportunities of a legislator; 52 and
      while he indulged the Goths in the enjoyment of rude liberty, he
      servilely copied the institutions, and even the abuses, of the
      political system which had been framed by Constantine and his
      successors. From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of
      Rome, the Barbarian declined the name, the purple, and the
      diadem, of the emperors; but he assumed, under the hereditary
      title of king, the whole substance and plenitude of Imperial
      prerogative. 53 His addresses to the eastern throne were
      respectful and ambiguous: he celebrated, in pompous style, the
      harmony of the two republics, applauded his own government as the
      perfect similitude of a sole and undivided empire, and claimed
      above the kings of the earth the same preeminence which he
      modestly allowed to the person or rank of Anastasius. The
      alliance of the East and West was annually declared by the
      unanimous choice of two consuls; but it should seem that the
      Italian candidate who was named by Theodoric accepted a formal
      confirmation from the sovereign of Constantinople. 54 The Gothic
      palace of Ravenna reflected the image of the court of Theodosius
      or Valentinian. The Praetorian præfect, the præfect of Rome, the
      quaestor, the master of the offices, with the public and
      patrimonial treasurers, 5411 whose functions are painted in gaudy
      colors by the rhetoric of Cassiodorus, still continued to act as
      the ministers of state. And the subordinate care of justice and
      the revenue was delegated to seven consulars, three correctors,
      and five presidents, who governed the fifteen regions of Italy
      according to the principles, and even the forms, of Roman
      jurisprudence. 55 The violence of the conquerors was abated or
      eluded by the slow artifice of judicial proceedings; the civil
      administration, with its honors and emoluments, was confined to
      the Italians; and the people still preserved their dress and
      language, their laws and customs, their personal freedom, and two
      thirds of their landed property. 5511 It had been the object of
      Augustus to conceal the introduction of monarchy; it was the
      policy of Theodoric to disguise the reign of a Barbarian. 56 If
      his subjects were sometimes awakened from this pleasing vision of
      a Roman government, they derived more substantial comfort from
      the character of a Gothic prince, who had penetration to discern,
      and firmness to pursue, his own and the public interest.
      Theodoric loved the virtues which he possessed, and the talents
      of which he was destitute. Liberius was promoted to the office of
      Praetorian præfect for his unshaken fidelity to the unfortunate
      cause of Odoacer. The ministers of Theodoric, Cassiodorus, 57 and
      Boethius, have reflected on his reign the lustre of their genius
      and learning. More prudent or more fortunate than his colleague,
      Cassiodorus preserved his own esteem without forfeiting the royal
      favor; and after passing thirty years in the honors of the world,
      he was blessed with an equal term of repose in the devout and
      studious solitude of Squillace. 5711

      52 (return) [ Procopius affirms that no laws whatsoever were
      promulgated by Theodoric and the succeeding kings of Italy,
      (Goth. l. ii. c. 6.) He must mean in the Gothic language. A Latin
      edict of Theodoric is still extant, in one hundred and fifty-four
      articles. * Note: See Manso, 92. Savigny, vol. ii. p. 164, et
      seq.—M.]

      53 (return) [ The image of Theodoric is engraved on his coins:
      his modest successors were satisfied with adding their own name
      to the head of the reigning emperor, (Muratori, Antiquitat.
      Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. ii. dissert. xxvii. p. 577—579.
      Giannone, Istoria Civile di Napoli tom. i. p. 166.)]

      54 (return) [ The alliance of the emperor and the king of Italy
      are represented by Cassiodorus (Var. i. l, ii. 1, 2, 3, vi. l)
      and Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 6, l. iii. c. 21,) who celebrate
      the friendship of Anastasius and Theodoric; but the figurative
      style of compliment was interpreted in a very different sense at
      Constantinople and Ravenna.]

      5411 (return) [ All causes between Roman and Roman were judged by
      the old Roman courts. The comes Gothorum judged between Goth and
      Goth; between Goths and Romans, (without considering which was
      the plaintiff.) the comes Gothorum, with a Roman jurist as his
      assessor, making a kind of mixed jurisdiction, but with a natural
      predominance to the side of the Goth Savigny, vol. i. p. 290.—M.]

      55 (return) [ To the xvii. provinces of the Notitia, Paul
      Warnefrid the deacon (De Reb. Longobard. l. ii. c. 14—22) has
      subjoined an xviiith, the Apennine, (Muratori, Script. Rerum
      Italicarum, tom. i. p. 431—443.) But of these Sardinia and
      Corsica were possessed by the Vandals, and the two Rhaetias, as
      well as the Cottian Alps, seem to have been abandoned to a
      military government. The state of the four provinces that now
      form the kingdom of Naples is labored by Giannone (tom. i. p.
      172, 178) with patriotic diligence.]

      5511 (return) [ Manso enumerates and develops at some length the
      following sources of the royal revenue of Theodoric: 1. A domain,
      either by succession to that of Odoacer, or a part of the third
      of the lands was reserved for the royal patrimony. 1. Regalia,
      including mines, unclaimed estates, treasure-trove, and
      confiscations. 3. Land tax. 4. Aurarium, like the Chrysargyrum, a
      tax on certain branches of trade. 5. Grant of Monopolies. 6.
      Siliquaticum, a small tax on the sale of all kinds of
      commodities. 7. Portoria, customs Manso, 96, 111. Savigny (i.
      285) supposes that in many cases the property remained in the
      original owner, who paid his tertia, a third of the produce to
      the crown, vol. i. p. 285.—M.]

      56 (return) [ See the Gothic history of Procopius, (l. i. c. 1,
      l. ii. c. 6,) the Epistles of Cassiodorus, passim, but especially
      the vth and vith books, which contain the formulae, or patents of
      offices,) and the Civil History of Giannone, (tom. i. l. ii.
      iii.) The Gothic counts, which he places in every Italian city,
      are annihilated, however, by Maffei, (Verona Illustrata, P. i. l.
      viii. p. 227; for those of Syracuse and Naples (Var vi. 22, 23)
      were special and temporary commissions.]

      57 (return) [ Two Italians of the name of Cassiodorus, the father
      (Var. i. 24, 40) and the son, (ix. 24, 25,) were successively
      employed in the administration of Theodoric. The son was born in
      the year 479: his various epistles as quaestor, master of the
      offices, and Praetorian præfect, extend from 509 to 539, and he
      lived as a monk about thirty years, (Tiraboschi Storia della
      Letteratura Italiana, tom. iii. p. 7—24. Fabricius, Bibliot. Lat.
      Med. Aevi, tom. i. p. 357, 358, edit. Mansi.)]

      5711 (return) [ Cassiodorus was of an ancient and honorable
      family; his grandfather had distinguished himself in the defence
      of Sicily against the ravages of Genseric; his father held a high
      rank at the court of Valentinian III., enjoyed the friendship of
      Aetius, and was one of the ambassadors sent to arrest the
      progress of Attila. Cassiodorus himself was first the treasurer
      of the private expenditure to Odoacer, afterwards “count of the
      sacred largesses.” Yielding with the rest of the Romans to the
      dominion of Theodoric, he was instrumental in the peaceable
      submission of Sicily; was successively governor of his native
      provinces of Bruttium and Lucania, quaestor, magister, palatii,
      Praetorian præfect, patrician, consul, and private secretary,
      and, in fact, first minister of the king. He was five times
      Praetorian præfect under different sovereigns, the last time in
      the reign of Vitiges. This is the theory of Manso, which is not
      unencumbered with difficulties. M. Buat had supposed that it was
      the father of Cassiodorus who held the office first named.
      Compare Manso, p. 85, &c., and Beylage, vii. It certainly appears
      improbable that Cassiodorus should have been count of the sacred
      largesses at twenty years old.—M.]


      As the patron of the republic, it was the interest and duty of
      the Gothic king to cultivate the affections of the senate 58 and
      people. The nobles of Rome were flattered by sonorous epithets
      and formal professions of respect, which had been more justly
      applied to the merit and authority of their ancestors. The people
      enjoyed, without fear or danger, the three blessings of a
      capital, order, plenty, and public amusements. A visible
      diminution of their numbers may be found even in the measure of
      liberality; 59 yet Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, poured their
      tribute of corn into the granaries of Rome; an allowance of bread
      and meat was distributed to the indigent citizens; and every
      office was deemed honorable which was consecrated to the care of
      their health and happiness. The public games, such as the Greek
      ambassador might politely applaud, exhibited a faint and feeble
      copy of the magnificence of the Caesars: yet the musical, the
      gymnastic, and the pantomime arts, had not totally sunk in
      oblivion; the wild beasts of Africa still exercised in the
      amphitheatre the courage and dexterity of the hunters; and the
      indulgent Goth either patiently tolerated or gently restrained
      the blue and green factions, whose contests so often filled the
      circus with clamor and even with blood. 60 In the seventh year of
      his peaceful reign, Theodoric visited the old capital of the
      world; the senate and people advanced in solemn procession to
      salute a second Trajan, a new Valentinian; and he nobly supported
      that character by the assurance of a just and legal government,
      61 in a discourse which he was not afraid to pronounce in public,
      and to inscribe on a tablet of brass. Rome, in this august
      ceremony, shot a last ray of declining glory; and a saint, the
      spectator of this pompous scene, could only hope, in his pious
      fancy, that it was excelled by the celestial splendor of the new
      Jerusalem. 62 During a residence of six months, the fame, the
      person, and the courteous demeanor of the Gothic king, excited
      the admiration of the Romans, and he contemplated, with equal
      curiosity and surprise, the monuments that remained of their
      ancient greatness. He imprinted the footsteps of a conqueror on
      the Capitoline hill, and frankly confessed that each day he
      viewed with fresh wonder the forum of Trajan and his lofty
      column. The theatre of Pompey appeared, even in its decay, as a
      huge mountain artificially hollowed, and polished, and adorned by
      human industry; and he vaguely computed, that a river of gold
      must have been drained to erect the colossal amphitheatre of
      Titus. 63 From the mouths of fourteen aqueducts, a pure and
      copious stream was diffused into every part of the city; among
      these the Claudian water, which arose at the distance of
      thirty-eight miles in the Sabine mountains, was conveyed along a
      gentle though constant declivity of solid arches, till it
      descended on the summit of the Aventine hill. The long and
      spacious vaults which had been constructed for the purpose of
      common sewers, subsisted, after twelve centuries, in their
      pristine strength; and these subterraneous channels have been
      preferred to all the visible wonders of Rome. 64 The Gothic
      kings, so injuriously accused of the ruin of antiquity, were
      anxious to preserve the monuments of the nation whom they had
      subdued. 65 The royal edicts were framed to prevent the abuses,
      the neglect, or the depredations of the citizens themselves; and
      a professed architect, the annual sum of two hundred pounds of
      gold, twenty-five thousand tiles, and the receipt of customs from
      the Lucrine port, were assigned for the ordinary repairs of the
      walls and public edifices. A similar care was extended to the
      statues of metal or marble of men or animals. The spirit of the
      horses, which have given a modern name to the Quirinal, was
      applauded by the Barbarians; 66 the brazen elephants of the Via
      sacra were diligently restored; 67 the famous heifer of Myron
      deceived the cattle, as they were driven through the forum of
      peace; 68 and an officer was created to protect those works of
      art, which Theodoric considered as the noblest ornament of his
      kingdom.

      58 (return) [ See his regard for the senate in Cochlaeus, (Vit.
      Theod. viii. p. 72—80.)]

      59 (return) [ No more than 120,000 modii, or four thousand
      quarters, (Anonym. Valesian. p. 721, and Var. i. 35, vi. 18, xi.
      5, 39.)]

      60 (return) [ See his regard and indulgence for the spectacles of
      the circus, the amphitheatre, and the theatre, in the Chronicle
      and Epistles of Cassiodorus, (Var. i. 20, 27, 30, 31, 32, iii.
      51, iv. 51, illustrated by the xivth Annotation of Mascou’s
      History), who has contrived to sprinkle the subject with
      ostentatious, though agreeable, learning.]

      61 (return) [ Anonym. Vales. p. 721. Marius Aventicensis in
      Chron. In the scale of public and personal merit, the Gothic
      conqueror is at least as much above Valentinian, as he may seem
      inferior to Trajan.]

      62 (return) [ Vit. Fulgentii in Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 500,
      No. 10.]

      63 (return) [ Cassiodorus describes in his pompous style the
      Forum of Trajan (Var. vii. 6,) the theatre of Marcellus, (iv.
      51,) and the amphitheatre of Titus, (v. 42;) and his descriptions
      are not unworthy of the reader’s perusal. According to the modern
      prices, the Abbe Barthelemy computes that the brick work and
      masonry of the Coliseum would now cost twenty millions of French
      livres, (Mem. de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p.
      585, 586.) How small a part of that stupendous fabric!]

      64 (return) [ For the aqueducts and cloacae, see Strabo, (l. v.
      p. 360;) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. xxxvi. 24; Cassiodorus, Var. iii.
      30, 31, vi. 6;) Procopius, (Goth. l. i. c. 19;) and Nardini,
      (Roma Antica, p. 514—522.) How such works could be executed by a
      king of Rome, is yet a problem. Note: See Niebuhr, vol. i. p.
      402. These stupendous works are among the most striking
      confirmations of Niebuhr’s views of the early Roman history; at
      least they appear to justify his strong sentence—“These works and
      the building of the Capitol attest with unquestionable evidence
      that this Rome of the later kings was the chief city of a great
      state.”—Page 110—M.]

      65 (return) [ For the Gothic care of the buildings and statues,
      see Cassiodorus (Var. i. 21, 25, ii. 34, iv. 30, vii. 6, 13, 15)
      and the Valesian Fragment, (p. 721.)]

      66 (return) [ Var. vii. 15. These horses of Monte Cavallo had
      been transported from Alexandria to the baths of Constantine,
      (Nardini, p. 188.) Their sculpture is disdained by the Abbe
      Dubos, (Reflexions sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, tom. i.
      section 39,) and admired by Winkelman, (Hist. de l’Art, tom. ii.
      p. 159.)]

      67 (return) [ Var. x. 10. They were probably a fragment of some
      triumphal car, (Cuper de Elephantis, ii. 10.)]

      68 (return) [ Procopius (Goth. l. iv. c. 21) relates a foolish
      story of Myron’s cow, which is celebrated by the false wit of
      thirty-six Greek epigrams, (Antholog. l. iv. p. 302—306, edit.
      Hen. Steph.; Auson. Epigram. xiii.—lxviii.)]




Chapter XXXIX: Gothic Kingdom Of Italy.—Part III.


      After the example of the last emperors, Theodoric preferred the
      residence of Ravenna, where he cultivated an orchard with his own
      hands. 69 As often as the peace of his kingdom was threatened
      (for it was never invaded) by the Barbarians, he removed his
      court to Verona 70 on the northern frontier, and the image of his
      palace, still extant on a coin, represents the oldest and most
      authentic model of Gothic architecture. These two capitals, as
      well as Pavia, Spoleto, Naples, and the rest of the Italian
      cities, acquired under his reign the useful or splendid
      decorations of churches, aqueducts, baths, porticos, and palaces.
      71 But the happiness of the subject was more truly conspicuous in
      the busy scene of labor and luxury, in the rapid increase and
      bold enjoyment of national wealth. From the shades of Tibur and
      Praeneste, the Roman senators still retired in the winter season
      to the warm sun, and salubrious springs of Baiae; and their
      villas, which advanced on solid moles into the Bay of Naples,
      commanded the various prospect of the sky, the earth, and the
      water. On the eastern side of the Adriatic, a new Campania was
      formed in the fair and fruitful province of Istria, which
      communicated with the palace of Ravenna by an easy navigation of
      one hundred miles. The rich productions of Lucania and the
      adjacent provinces were exchanged at the Marcilian fountain, in a
      populous fair annually dedicated to trade, intemperance, and
      superstition. In the solitude of Comum, which had once been
      animated by the mild genius of Pliny, a transparent basin above
      sixty miles in length still reflected the rural seats which
      encompassed the margin of the Larian lake; and the gradual ascent
      of the hills was covered by a triple plantation of olives, of
      vines, and of chestnut trees. 72 Agriculture revived under the
      shadow of peace, and the number of husbandmen was multiplied by
      the redemption of captives. 73 The iron mines of Dalmatia, a gold
      mine in Bruttium, were carefully explored, and the Pomptine
      marshes, as well as those of Spoleto, were drained and cultivated
      by private undertakers, whose distant reward must depend on the
      continuance of the public prosperity. 74 Whenever the seasons
      were less propitious, the doubtful precautions of forming
      magazines of corn, fixing the price, and prohibiting the
      exportation, attested at least the benevolence of the state; but
      such was the extraordinary plenty which an industrious people
      produced from a grateful soil, that a gallon of wine was
      sometimes sold in Italy for less than three farthings, and a
      quarter of wheat at about five shillings and sixpence. 75 A
      country possessed of so many valuable objects of exchange soon
      attracted the merchants of the world, whose beneficial traffic
      was encouraged and protected by the liberal spirit of Theodoric.
      The free intercourse of the provinces by land and water was
      restored and extended; the city gates were never shut either by
      day or by night; and the common saying, that a purse of gold
      might be safely left in the fields, was expressive of the
      conscious security of the inhabitants.


      69 (return) [See an epigram of Ennodius (ii. 3, p. 1893, 1894) on
      this garden and the royal gardener.]

      70 (return) [ His affection for that city is proved by the
      epithet of “Verona tua,” and the legend of the hero; under the
      barbarous name of Dietrich of Bern, (Peringsciold and Cochloeum,
      p. 240,) Maffei traces him with knowledge and pleasure in his
      native country, (l. ix. p. 230—236.)]

      71 (return) [ See Maffei, (Verona Illustrata, Part i. p. 231,
      232, 308, &c.) His amputes Gothic architecture, like the
      corruption of language, writing &c., not to the Barbarians, but
      to the Italians themselves. Compare his sentiments with those of
      Tiraboschi, (tom. iii. p. 61.) * Note: Mr. Hallam (vol. iii. p.
      432) observes that “the image of Theodoric’s palace” is
      represented in Maffei, not from a coin, but from a seal. Compare
      D’Agincourt (Storia dell’arte, Italian Transl., Arcitecttura,
      Plate xvii. No. 2, and Pittura, Plate xvi. No. 15,) where there
      is likewise an engraving from a mosaic in the church of St.
      Apollinaris in Ravenna, representing a building ascribed to
      Theodoric in that city. Neither of these, as Mr. Hallam justly
      observes, in the least approximates to what is called the Gothic
      style. They are evidently the degenerate Roman architecture, and
      more resemble the early attempts of our architects to get back
      from our national Gothic into a classical Greek style. One of
      them calls to mind Inigo Jones inner quadrangle in St. John’s
      College Oxford. Compare Hallam and D’Agincon vol. i. p.
      140—145.—M]

      72 (return) [ The villas, climate, and landscape of Baiae, (Var.
      ix. 6; see Cluver Italia Antiq. l. iv. c. 2, p. 1119, &c.,)
      Istria, (Var. xii. 22, 26,) and Comum, (Var. xi. 14; compare with
      Pliny’s two villas, ix. 7,) are agreeably painted in the Epistles
      of Cassiodorus.]

      73 (return) [ In Liguria numerosa agricolarum progenies,
      (Ennodius, p. 1678, 1679, 1680.) St. Epiphanius of Pavia redeemed
      by prayer or ransom 6000 captives from the Burgundians of Lyons
      and Savoy. Such deeds are the best of miracles.]

      74 (return) [ The political economy of Theodoric (see Anonym.
      Vales. p. 721, and Cassiodorus, in Chron.) may be distinctly
      traced under the following heads: iron mine, (Var. iii. 23;) gold
      mine, (ix. 3;) Pomptine marshes, (ii. 32, 33;) Spoleto, (ii. 21;)
      corn, (i. 34, x. 27, 28, xi. 11, 12;) trade, (vi. 7, vii. 9, 23;)
      fair of Leucothoe or St. Cyprian in Lucania, (viii. 33;) plenty,
      (xii. 4;) the cursus, or public post, (i. 29, ii. 31, iv. 47, v.
      5, vi 6, vii. 33;) the Flaminian way, (xii. 18.) * Note: The
      inscription commemorative of the draining of the Pomptine marshes
      may be found in many works; in Gruter, Inscript. Ant. Heidelberg,
      p. 152, No. 8. With variations, in Nicolai De’ bonificamenti
      delle terre Pontine, p. 103. In Sartorius, in his prize essay on
      the reign of Theodoric, and Manse Beylage, xi.—M.]

      75 (return) [ LX modii tritici in solidum ipsius tempore fuerunt,
      et vinum xxx amphoras in solidum, (Fragment. Vales.) Corn was
      distributed from the granaries at xv or xxv modii for a piece of
      gold, and the price was still moderate.]


      A difference of religion is always pernicious, and often fatal,
      to the harmony of the prince and people: the Gothic conqueror had
      been educated in the profession of Arianism, and Italy was
      devoutly attached to the Nicene faith. But the persuasion of
      Theodoric was not infected by zeal; and he piously adhered to the
      heresy of his fathers, without condescending to balance the
      subtile arguments of theological metaphysics. Satisfied with the
      private toleration of his Arian sectaries, he justly conceived
      himself to be the guardian of the public worship, and his
      external reverence for a superstition which he despised, may have
      nourished in his mind the salutary indifference of a statesman or
      philosopher. The Catholics of his dominions acknowledged, perhaps
      with reluctance, the peace of the church; their clergy, according
      to the degrees of rank or merit, were honorably entertained in
      the palace of Theodoric; he esteemed the living sanctity of
      Caesarius 76 and Epiphanius, 77 the orthodox bishops of Arles and
      Pavia; and presented a decent offering on the tomb of St. Peter,
      without any scrupulous inquiry into the creed of the apostle. 78
      His favorite Goths, and even his mother, were permitted to retain
      or embrace the Athanasian faith, and his long reign could not
      afford the example of an Italian Catholic, who, either from
      choice or compulsion, had deviated into the religion of the
      conqueror. 79 The people, and the Barbarians themselves, were
      edified by the pomp and order of religious worship; the
      magistrates were instructed to defend the just immunities of
      ecclesiastical persons and possessions; the bishops held their
      synods, the metropolitans exercised their jurisdiction, and the
      privileges of sanctuary were maintained or moderated according to
      the spirit of the Roman jurisprudence. 80 With the protection,
      Theodoric assumed the legal supremacy, of the church; and his
      firm administration restored or extended some useful prerogatives
      which had been neglected by the feeble emperors of the West. He
      was not ignorant of the dignity and importance of the Roman
      pontiff, to whom the venerable name of Pope was now appropriated.
      The peace or the revolt of Italy might depend on the character of
      a wealthy and popular bishop, who claimed such ample dominion
      both in heaven and earth; who had been declared in a numerous
      synod to be pure from all sin, and exempt from all judgment. 81
      When the chair of St. Peter was disputed by Symmachus and
      Laurence, they appeared at his summons before the tribunal of an
      Arian monarch, and he confirmed the election of the most worthy
      or the most obsequious candidate. At the end of his life, in a
      moment of jealousy and resentment, he prevented the choice of the
      Romans, by nominating a pope in the palace of Ravenna. The danger
      and furious contests of a schism were mildly restrained, and the
      last decree of the senate was enacted to extinguish, if it were
      possible, the scandalous venality of the papal elections. 82

      76 (return) [ See the life of St. Caesarius in Baronius, (A.D.
      508, No. 12, 13, 14.) The king presented him with 300 gold
      solidi, and a discus of silver of the weight of sixty pounds.]

      77 (return) [ Ennodius in Vit. St. Epiphanii, in Sirmond, Op.
      tom. i. p. 1672—1690. Theodoric bestowed some important favors on
      this bishop, whom he used as a counsellor in peace and war.]

      78 (return) [ Devotissimus ac si Catholicus, (Anonym. Vales. p.
      720;) yet his offering was no more than two silver candlesticks
      (cerostrata) of the weight of seventy pounds, far inferior to the
      gold and gems of Constantinople and France, (Anastasius in Vit.
      Pont. in Hormisda, p. 34, edit. Paris.)]

      79 (return) [ The tolerating system of his reign (Ennodius, p.
      1612. Anonym. Vales. p. 719. Procop. Goth. l. i. c. 1, l. ii. c.
      6) may be studied in the Epistles of Cassiodorous, under the
      following heads: bishops, (Var. i. 9, vii. 15, 24, xi. 23;)
      immunities, (i. 26, ii. 29, 30;) church lands (iv. 17, 20;)
      sanctuaries, (ii. 11, iii. 47;) church plate, (xii. 20;)
      discipline, (iv. 44;) which prove, at the same time, that he was
      the head of the church as well as of the state. * Note: He
      recommended the same toleration to the emperor Justin.—M.]

      80 (return) [ We may reject a foolish tale of his beheading a
      Catholic deacon who turned Arian, (Theodor. Lector. No. 17.) Why
      is Theodoric surnamed After? From Vafer? (Vales. ad loc.) A light
      conjecture.]

      81 (return) [ Ennodius, p. 1621, 1622, 1636, 1638. His libel was
      approved and registered (synodaliter) by a Roman council,
      (Baronius, A.D. 503, No. 6, Franciscus Pagi in Breviar. Pont.
      Rom. tom. i. p. 242.)]

      82 (return) [ See Cassiodorus, (Var. viii. 15, ix. 15, 16,)
      Anastasius, (in Symmacho, p. 31,) and the xviith Annotation of
      Mascou. Baronius, Pagi, and most of the Catholic doctors,
      confess, with an angry growl, this Gothic usurpation.]


      I have descanted with pleasure on the fortunate condition of
      Italy; but our fancy must not hastily conceive that the golden
      age of the poets, a race of men without vice or misery, was
      realized under the Gothic conquest. The fair prospect was
      sometimes overcast with clouds; the wisdom of Theodoric might be
      deceived, his power might be resisted and the declining age of
      the monarch was sullied with popular hatred and patrician blood.
      In the first insolence of victory, he had been tempted to deprive
      the whole party of Odoacer of the civil and even the natural
      rights of society; 83 a tax unseasonably imposed after the
      calamities of war, would have crushed the rising agriculture of
      Liguria; a rigid preemption of corn, which was intended for the
      public relief, must have aggravated the distress of Campania.
      These dangerous projects were defeated by the virtue and
      eloquence of Epiphanius and Boethius, who, in the presence of
      Theodoric himself, successfully pleaded the cause of the people:
      84 but if the royal ear was open to the voice of truth, a saint
      and a philosopher are not always to be found at the ear of kings.


      The privileges of rank, or office, or favor, were too frequently
      abused by Italian fraud and Gothic violence, and the avarice of
      the king’s nephew was publicly exposed, at first by the
      usurpation, and afterwards by the restitution of the estates
      which he had unjustly extorted from his Tuscan neighbors. Two
      hundred thousand Barbarians, formidable even to their master,
      were seated in the heart of Italy; they indignantly supported the
      restraints of peace and discipline; the disorders of their march
      were always felt and sometimes compensated; and where it was
      dangerous to punish, it might be prudent to dissemble, the
      sallies of their native fierceness. When the indulgence of
      Theodoric had remitted two thirds of the Ligurian tribute, he
      condescended to explain the difficulties of his situation, and to
      lament the heavy though inevitable burdens which he imposed on
      his subjects for their own defence. 85 These ungrateful subjects
      could never be cordially reconciled to the origin, the religion,
      or even the virtues of the Gothic conqueror; past calamities were
      forgotten, and the sense or suspicion of injuries was rendered
      still more exquisite by the present felicity of the times.

      83 (return) [ He disabled them—alicentia testandi; and all Italy
      mourned—lamentabili justitio. I wish to believe, that these
      penalties were enacted against the rebels who had violated their
      oath of allegiance; but the testimony of Ennodius (p. 1675-1678)
      is the more weighty, as he lived and died under the reign of
      Theodoric.]

      84 (return) [ Ennodius, in Vit. Epiphan. p. 1589, 1690. Boethius
      de Consolatione Philosphiae, l. i. pros. iv. p. 45, 46, 47.
      Respect, but weigh the passions of the saint and the senator; and
      fortify and alleviate their complaints by the various hints of
      Cassiodorus, (ii. 8, iv. 36, viii. 5.)]

      85 (return) [ Immanium expensarum pondus...pro ipsorum salute,
      &c.; yet these are no more than words.]


      Even the religious toleration which Theodoric had the glory of
      introducing into the Christian world, was painful and offensive
      to the orthodox zeal of the Italians. They respected the armed
      heresy of the Goths; but their pious rage was safely pointed
      against the rich and defenceless Jews, who had formed their
      establishments at Naples, Rome, Ravenna, Milan, and Genoa, for
      the benefit of trade, and under the sanction of the laws. 86
      Their persons were insulted, their effects were pillaged, and
      their synagogues were burned by the mad populace of Ravenna and
      Rome, inflamed, as it should seem, by the most frivolous or
      extravagant pretences. The government which could neglect, would
      have deserved such an outrage. A legal inquiry was instantly
      directed; and as the authors of the tumult had escaped in the
      crowd, the whole community was condemned to repair the damage;
      and the obstinate bigots, who refused their contributions, were
      whipped through the streets by the hand of the executioner. 8611
      This simple act of justice exasperated the discontent of the
      Catholics, who applauded the merit and patience of these holy
      confessors. Three hundred pulpits deplored the persecution of the
      church; and if the chapel of St. Stephen at Verona was demolished
      by the command of Theodoric, it is probable that some miracle
      hostile to his name and dignity had been performed on that sacred
      theatre. At the close of a glorious life, the king of Italy
      discovered that he had excited the hatred of a people whose
      happiness he had so assiduously labored to promote; and his mind
      was soured by indignation, jealousy, and the bitterness of
      unrequited love. The Gothic conqueror condescended to disarm the
      unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons of offence,
      and excepting only a small knife for domestic use. The deliverer
      of Rome was accused of conspiring with the vilest informers
      against the lives of senators whom he suspected of a secret and
      treasonable correspondence with the Byzantine court. 87 After the
      death of Anastasius, the diadem had been placed on the head of a
      feeble old man; but the powers of government were assumed by his
      nephew Justinian, who already meditated the extirpation of
      heresy, and the conquest of Italy and Africa. A rigorous law,
      which was published at Constantinople, to reduce the Arians by
      the dread of punishment within the pale of the church, awakened
      the just resentment of Theodoric, who claimed for his distressed
      brethren of the East the same indulgence which he had so long
      granted to the Catholics of his dominions. 8711 At his stern
      command, the Roman pontiff, with four illustrious senators,
      embarked on an embassy, of which he must have alike dreaded the
      failure or the success. The singular veneration shown to the
      first pope who had visited Constantinople was punished as a crime
      by his jealous monarch; the artful or peremptory refusal of the
      Byzantine court might excuse an equal, and would provoke a
      larger, measure of retaliation; and a mandate was prepared in
      Italy, to prohibit, after a stated day, the exercise of the
      Catholic worship. By the bigotry of his subjects and enemies, the
      most tolerant of princes was driven to the brink of persecution;
      and the life of Theodoric was too long, since he lived to condemn
      the virtue of Boethius and Symmachus. 88

      86 (return) [ The Jews were settled at Naples, (Procopius, Goth.
      l. i. c. 8,) at Genoa, (Var. ii. 28, iv. 33,) Milan, (v. 37,)
      Rome, (iv. 43.) See likewise Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. viii.
      c. 7, p. 254.]

      8611 (return) [ See History of the Jews vol. iii. p. 217.—M.]

      87 (return) [ Rex avidus communis exitii, &c., (Boethius, l. i.
      p. 59:) rex colum Romanis tendebat, (Anonym. Vales. p. 723.)
      These are hard words: they speak the passions of the Italians and
      those (I fear) of Theodoric himself.]

      8711 (return) [ Gibbon should not have omitted the golden words
      of Theodoric in a letter which he addressed to Justin: That to
      pretend to a dominion over the conscience is to usurp the
      prerogative of God; that by the nature of things the power of
      sovereigns is confined to external government; that they have no
      right of punishment but over those who disturb the public peace,
      of which they are the guardians; that the most dangerous heresy
      is that of a sovereign who separates from himself a part of his
      subjects because they believe not according to his belief.
      Compare Le Beau, vol viii. p. 68.—M]

      88 (return) [ I have labored to extract a rational narrative from
      the dark, concise, and various hints of the Valesian Fragment,
      (p. 722, 723, 724,) Theophanes, (p. 145,) Anastasius, (in
      Johanne, p. 35,) and the Hist Miscella, (p. 103, edit. Muratori.)
      A gentle pressure and paraphrase of their words is no violence.
      Consult likewise Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom. iv. p.
      471-478,) with the Annals and Breviary (tom. i. p. 259—263) of
      the two Pagis, the uncle and the nephew.]


      The senator Boethius 89 is the last of the Romans whom Cato or
      Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman. As a wealthy
      orphan, he inherited the patrimony and honors of the Anician
      family, a name ambitiously assumed by the kings and emperors of
      the age; and the appellation of Manlius asserted his genuine or
      fabulous descent from a race of consuls and dictators, who had
      repulsed the Gauls from the Capitol, and sacrificed their sons to
      the discipline of the republic. In the youth of Boethius the
      studies of Rome were not totally abandoned; a Virgil 90 is now
      extant, corrected by the hand of a consul; and the professors of
      grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence, were maintained in their
      privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths. But the
      erudition of the Latin language was insufficient to satiate his
      ardent curiosity: and Boethius is said to have employed eighteen
      laborious years in the schools of Athens, 91 which were supported
      by the zeal, the learning, and the diligence of Proclus and his
      disciples. The reason and piety of their Roman pupil were
      fortunately saved from the contagion of mystery and magic, which
      polluted the groves of the academy; but he imbibed the spirit,
      and imitated the method, of his dead and living masters, who
      attempted to reconcile the strong and subtile sense of Aristotle
      with the devout contemplation and sublime fancy of Plato. After
      his return to Rome, and his marriage with the daughter of his
      friend, the patrician Symmachus, Boethius still continued, in a
      palace of ivory and marble, to prosecute the same studies. 92 The
      church was edified by his profound defence of the orthodox creed
      against the Arian, the Eutychian, and the Nestorian heresies; and
      the Catholic unity was explained or exposed in a formal treatise
      by the indifference of three distinct though consubstantial
      persons. For the benefit of his Latin readers, his genius
      submitted to teach the first elements of the arts and sciences of
      Greece. The geometry of Euclid, the music of Pythagoras, the
      arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics of Archimedes, the
      astronomy of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato, and the logic of
      Aristotle, with the commentary of Porphyry, were translated and
      illustrated by the indefatigable pen of the Roman senator. And he
      alone was esteemed capable of describing the wonders of art, a
      sun-dial, a water-clock, or a sphere which represented the
      motions of the planets. From these abstruse speculations,
      Boethius stooped, or, to speak more truly, he rose to the social
      duties of public and private life: the indigent were relieved by
      his liberality; and his eloquence, which flattery might compare
      to the voice of Demosthenes or Cicero, was uniformly exerted in
      the cause of innocence and humanity. Such conspicuous merit was
      felt and rewarded by a discerning prince: the dignity of Boethius
      was adorned with the titles of consul and patrician, and his
      talents were usefully employed in the important station of master
      of the offices. Notwithstanding the equal claims of the East and
      West, his two sons were created, in their tender youth, the
      consuls of the same year. 93 On the memorable day of their
      inauguration, they proceeded in solemn pomp from their palace to
      the forum amidst the applause of the senate and people; and their
      joyful father, the true consul of Rome, after pronouncing an
      oration in the praise of his royal benefactor, distributed a
      triumphal largess in the games of the circus. Prosperous in his
      fame and fortunes, in his public honors and private alliances, in
      the cultivation of science and the consciousness of virtue,
      Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet
      could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.

      89 (return) [ Le Clerc has composed a critical and philosophical
      life of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius, (Bibliot. Choisie,
      tom. xvi. p. 168—275;) and both Tiraboschi (tom. iii.) and
      Fabricius (Bibliot Latin.) may be usefully consulted. The date of
      his birth may be placed about the year 470, and his death in 524,
      in a premature old age, (Consol. Phil. Metrica. i. p. 5.)]

      90 (return) [ For the age and value of this Ms., now in the
      Medicean library at Florence, see the Cenotaphia Pisana (p.
      430-447) of Cardinal Noris.]

      91 (return) [ The Athenian studies of Boethius are doubtful,
      (Baronius, A.D. 510, No. 3, from a spurious tract, De Disciplina
      Scholarum,) and the term of eighteen years is doubtless too long:
      but the simple fact of a visit to Athens is justified by much
      internal evidence, (Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. iii. p.
      524—527,) and by an expression (though vague and ambiguous) of
      his friend Cassiodorus, (Var. i. 45,) “longe positas Athenas
      intrioisti.”]

      92 (return) [ Bibliothecae comptos ebore ac vitro * parietes,
      &c., (Consol. Phil. l. i. pros. v. p. 74.) The Epistles of
      Ennodius (vi. 6, vii. 13, viii. 1 31, 37, 40) and Cassiodorus
      (Var. i. 39, iv. 6, ix. 21) afford many proofs of the high
      reputation which he enjoyed in his own times. It is true, that
      the bishop of Pavia wanted to purchase of him an old house at
      Milan, and praise might be tendered and accepted in part of
      payment. * Note: Gibbon translated vitro, marble; under the
      impression, no doubt that glass was unknown.—M.]

      93 (return) [ Pagi, Muratori, &c., are agreed that Boethius
      himself was consul in the year 510, his two sons in 522, and in
      487, perhaps, his father. A desire of ascribing the last of these
      consulships to the philosopher had perplexed the chronology of
      his life. In his honors, alliances, children, he celebrates his
      own felicity—his past felicity, (p. 109 110)]


      A philosopher, liberal of his wealth and parsimonious of his
      time, might be insensible to the common allurements of ambition,
      the thirst of gold and employment. And some credit may be due to
      the asseveration of Boethius, that he had reluctantly obeyed the
      divine Plato, who enjoins every virtuous citizen to rescue the
      state from the usurpation of vice and ignorance. For the
      integrity of his public conduct he appeals to the memory of his
      country. His authority had restrained the pride and oppression of
      the royal officers, and his eloquence had delivered Paulianus
      from the dogs of the palace. He had always pitied, and often
      relieved, the distress of the provincials, whose fortunes were
      exhausted by public and private rapine; and Boethius alone had
      courage to oppose the tyranny of the Barbarians, elated by
      conquest, excited by avarice, and, as he complains, encouraged by
      impunity. In these honorable contests his spirit soared above the
      consideration of danger, and perhaps of prudence; and we may
      learn from the example of Cato, that a character of pure and
      inflexible virtue is the most apt to be misled by prejudice, to
      be heated by enthusiasm, and to confound private enmities with
      public justice. The disciple of Plato might exaggerate the
      infirmities of nature, and the imperfections of society; and the
      mildest form of a Gothic kingdom, even the weight of allegiance
      and gratitude, must be insupportable to the free spirit of a
      Roman patriot. But the favor and fidelity of Boethius declined in
      just proportion with the public happiness; and an unworthy
      colleague was imposed to divide and control the power of the
      master of the offices. In the last gloomy season of Theodoric, he
      indignantly felt that he was a slave; but as his master had only
      power over his life, he stood without arms and without fear
      against the face of an angry Barbarian, who had been provoked to
      believe that the safety of the senate was incompatible with his
      own. The senator Albinus was accused and already convicted on the
      presumption of hoping, as it was said, the liberty of Rome. “If
      Albinus be criminal,” exclaimed the orator, “the senate and
      myself are all guilty of the same crime. If we are innocent,
      Albinus is equally entitled to the protection of the laws.” These
      laws might not have punished the simple and barren wish of an
      unattainable blessing; but they would have shown less indulgence
      to the rash confession of Boethius, that, had he known of a
      conspiracy, the tyrant never should. 94 The advocate of Albinus
      was soon involved in the danger and perhaps the guilt of his
      client; their signature (which they denied as a forgery) was
      affixed to the original address, inviting the emperor to deliver
      Italy from the Goths; and three witnesses of honorable rank,
      perhaps of infamous reputation, attested the treasonable designs
      of the Roman patrician. 95 Yet his innocence must be presumed,
      since he was deprived by Theodoric of the means of justification,
      and rigorously confined in the tower of Pavia, while the senate,
      at the distance of five hundred miles, pronounced a sentence of
      confiscation and death against the most illustrious of its
      members. At the command of the Barbarians, the occult science of
      a philosopher was stigmatized with the names of sacrilege and
      magic. 96 A devout and dutiful attachment to the senate was
      condemned as criminal by the trembling voices of the senators
      themselves; and their ingratitude deserved the wish or prediction
      of Boethius, that, after him, none should be found guilty of the
      same offence. 97

      94 (return) [ Si ego scissem tu nescisses. Beothius adopts this
      answer (l. i. pros. 4, p. 53) of Julius Canus, whose philosophic
      death is described by Seneca, (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 14.)]

      95 (return) [ The characters of his two delators, Basilius (Var.
      ii. 10, 11, iv. 22) and Opilio, (v. 41, viii. 16,) are
      illustrated, not much to their honor, in the Epistles of
      Cassiodorus, which likewise mention Decoratus, (v. 31,) the
      worthless colleague of Beothius, (l. iii. pros. 4, p. 193.)]

      96 (return) [ A severe inquiry was instituted into the crime of
      magic, (Var. iv 22, 23, ix. 18;) and it was believed that many
      necromancers had escaped by making their jailers mad: for mad I
      should read drunk.]

      97 (return) [ Boethius had composed his own Apology, (p. 53,)
      perhaps more interesting than his Consolation. We must be content
      with the general view of his honors, principles, persecution,
      &c., (l. i. pros. 4, p. 42—62,) which may be compared with the
      short and weighty words of the Valesian Fragment, (p. 723.) An
      anonymous writer (Sinner, Catalog. Mss. Bibliot. Bern. tom. i. p.
      287) charges him home with honorable and patriotic treason.]


      While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected each moment the
      sentence or the stroke of death, he composed, in the tower of
      Pavia, the Consolation of Philosophy; a golden volume not
      unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims
      incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the
      situation of the author. The celestial guide, whom he had so long
      invoked at Rome and Athens, now condescended to illumine his
      dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her
      salutary balm. She taught him to compare his long prosperity and
      his recent distress, and to conceive new hopes from the
      inconstancy of fortune. Reason had informed him of the precarious
      condition of her gifts; experience had satisfied him of their
      real value; he had enjoyed them without guilt; he might resign
      them without a sigh, and calmly disdain the impotent malice of
      his enemies, who had left him happiness, since they had left him
      virtue. From the earth, Boethius ascended to heaven in search of
      the Supreme Good; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance
      and destiny, of prescience and free will, of time and eternity;
      and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of
      the Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical
      government. Such topics of consolation so obvious, so vague, or
      so abstruse, are ineffectual to subdue the feelings of human
      nature. Yet the sense of misfortune may be diverted by the labor
      of thought; and the sage who could artfully combine in the same
      work the various riches of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence,
      must already have possessed the intrepid calmness which he
      affected to seek. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length
      determined by the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps
      exceeded, the inhuman mandate of Theodoric. A strong cord was
      fastened round the head of Boethius, and forcibly tightened, till
      his eyes almost started from their sockets; and some mercy may be
      discovered in the milder torture of beating him with clubs till
      he expired. 98 But his genius survived to diffuse a ray of
      knowledge over the darkest ages of the Latin world; the writings
      of the philosopher were translated by the most glorious of the
      English kings, 99 and the third emperor of the name of Otho
      removed to a more honorable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint,
      who, from his Arian persecutors, had acquired the honors of
      martyrdom, and the fame of miracles. 100 In the last hours of
      Boethius, he derived some comfort from the safety of his two
      sons, of his wife, and of his father-in-law, the venerable
      Symmachus. But the grief of Symmachus was indiscreet, and perhaps
      disrespectful: he had presumed to lament, he might dare to
      revenge, the death of an injured friend. He was dragged in chains
      from Rome to the palace of Ravenna; and the suspicions of
      Theodoric could only be appeased by the blood of an innocent and
      aged senator. 101

      98 (return) [ He was executed in Agro Calventiano, (Calvenzano,
      between Marignano and Pavia,) Anonym. Vales. p. 723, by order of
      Eusebius, count of Ticinum or Pavia. This place of confinement is
      styled the baptistery, an edifice and name peculiar to
      cathedrals. It is claimed by the perpetual tradition of the
      church of Pavia. The tower of Boethius subsisted till the year
      1584, and the draught is yet preserved, (Tiraboschi, tom. iii. p.
      47, 48.)]

      99 (return) [ See the Biographia Britannica, Alfred, tom. i. p.
      80, 2d edition. The work is still more honorable if performed
      under the learned eye of Alfred by his foreign and domestic
      doctors. For the reputation of Boethius in the middle ages,
      consult Brucker, (Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 565, 566.)]

      100 (return) [ The inscription on his new tomb was composed by
      the preceptor of Otho III., the learned Pope Silvester II., who,
      like Boethius himself, was styled a magician by the ignorance of
      the times. The Catholic martyr had carried his head in his hands
      a considerable way, (Baronius, A.D. 526, No. 17, 18;) and yet on
      a similar tale, a lady of my acquaintance once observed, “La
      distance n’y fait rien; il n’y a que lo remier pas qui coute.”
      Note: Madame du Deffand. This witticism referred to the miracle
      of St. Denis.—G.]

      101 (return) [ Boethius applauds the virtues of his
      father-in-law, (l. i. pros. 4, p. 59, l. ii. pros. 4, p. 118.)
      Procopius, (Goth. l. i. c. i.,) the Valesian Fragment, (p. 724,)
      and the Historia Miscella, (l. xv. p. 105,) agree in praising the
      superior innocence or sanctity of Symmachus; and in the
      estimation of the legend, the guilt of his murder is equal to the
      imprisonment of a pope.]


      Humanity will be disposed to encourage any report which testifies
      the jurisdiction of conscience and the remorse of kings; and
      philosophy is not ignorant that the most horrid spectres are
      sometimes created by the powers of a disordered fancy, and the
      weakness of a distempered body. After a life of virtue and glory,
      Theodoric was now descending with shame and guilt into the grave;
      his mind was humbled by the contrast of the past, and justly
      alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity. One evening, as it
      is related, when the head of a large fish was served on the royal
      table, 102 he suddenly exclaimed, that he beheld the angry
      countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and
      his mouth armed with long sharp teeth, which threatened to devour
      him. The monarch instantly retired to his chamber, and, as he
      lay, trembling with aguish cold, under a weight of bed-clothes,
      he expressed, in broken murmurs to his physician Elpidius, his
      deep repentance for the murders of Boethius and Symmachus. 103
      His malady increased, and after a dysentery which continued three
      days, he expired in the palace of Ravenna, in the thirty-third,
      or, if we compute from the invasion of Italy, in the
      thirty-seventh year of his reign. Conscious of his approaching
      end, he divided his treasures and provinces between his two
      grandsons, and fixed the Rhone as their common boundary. 104
      Amalaric was restored to the throne of Spain. Italy, with all the
      conquests of the Ostrogoths, was bequeathed to Athalaric; whose
      age did not exceed ten years, but who was cherished as the last
      male offspring of the line of Amali, by the short-lived marriage
      of his mother Amalasuntha with a royal fugitive of the same
      blood. 105 In the presence of the dying monarch, the Gothic
      chiefs and Italian magistrates mutually engaged their faith and
      loyalty to the young prince, and to his guardian mother; and
      received, in the same awful moment, his last salutary advice, to
      maintain the laws, to love the senate and people of Rome, and to
      cultivate with decent reverence the friendship of the emperor.
      106 The monument of Theodoric was erected by his daughter
      Amalasuntha, in a conspicuous situation, which commanded the city
      of Ravenna, the harbor, and the adjacent coast. A chapel of a
      circular form, thirty feet in diameter, is crowned by a dome of
      one entire piece of granite: from the centre of the dome four
      columns arose, which supported, in a vase of porphyry, the
      remains of the Gothic king, surrounded by the brazen statues of
      the twelve apostles. 107 His spirit, after some previous
      expiation, might have been permitted to mingle with the
      benefactors of mankind, if an Italian hermit had not been
      witness, in a vision, to the damnation of Theodoric, 108 whose
      soul was plunged, by the ministers of divine vengeance, into the
      volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal
      world. 109

      102 (return) [ In the fanciful eloquence of Cassiodorus, the
      variety of sea and river fish are an evidence of extensive
      dominion; and those of the Rhine, of Sicily, and of the Danube,
      were served on the table of Theodoric, (Var. xii. 14.) The
      monstrous turbot of Domitian (Juvenal Satir. iii. 39) had been
      caught on the shores of the Adriatic.]

      103 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 1. But he might have
      informed us, whether he had received this curious anecdote from
      common report or from the mouth of the royal physician.]

      104 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 1, 2, 12, 13. This
      partition had been directed by Theodoric, though it was not
      executed till after his death, Regni hereditatem superstes
      reliquit, (Isidor. Chron. p. 721, edit. Grot.)]

      105 (return) [ Berimund, the third in descent from Hermanric,
      king of the Ostrogoths, had retired into Spain, where he lived
      and died in obscurity, (Jornandes, c. 33, p. 202, edit.
      Muratori.) See the discovery, nuptials, and death of his grandson
      Eutharic, (c. 58, p. 220.) His Roman games might render him
      popular, (Cassiodor. in Chron.,) but Eutharic was asper in
      religione, (Anonym. Vales. p. 723.)]

      106 (return) [ See the counsels of Theodoric, and the professions
      of his successor, in Procopius, (Goth. l. i. c. 1, 2,) Jornandes,
      (c. 59, p. 220, 221,) and Cassiodorus, (Var. viii. 1—7.) These
      epistles are the triumph of his ministerial eloquence.]

      107 (return) [ Anonym. Vales. p. 724. Agnellus de Vitis. Pont.
      Raven. in Muratori Script. Rerum Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 67.
      Alberti Descrittione d’ Italia, p. 311. * Note: The Mausoleum of
      Theodoric, now Sante Maria della Rotonda, is engraved in
      D’Agincourt, Histoire de l’Art, p xviii. of the Architectural
      Prints.—M]

      108 (return) [ This legend is related by Gregory I., (Dialog. iv.
      36,) and approved by Baronius, (A.D. 526, No. 28;) and both the
      pope and cardinal are grave doctors, sufficient to establish a
      probable opinion.]

      109 (return) [ Theodoric himself, or rather Cassiodorus, had
      described in tragic strains the volcanos of Lipari (Cluver.
      Sicilia, p. 406—410) and Vesuvius, (v 50.)]




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part I.


Elevation Of Justin The Elder.—Reign Of Justinian.—I. The Empress
Theodora.—II.  Factions Of The Circus, And Sedition Of
Constantinople.—III.  Trade And Manufacture Of Silk.—IV. Finances And
Taxes.—V. Edifices Of Justinian.—Church Of St. Sophia.—Fortifications
And Frontiers Of The Eastern Empire.—Abolition Of The Schools Of
Athens, And The Consulship Of Rome.


      The emperor Justinian was born 1 near the ruins of Sardica, (the
      modern Sophia,) of an obscure race 2 of Barbarians, 3 the
      inhabitants of a wild and desolate country, to which the names of
      Dardania, of Dacia, and of Bulgaria, have been successively
      applied. His elevation was prepared by the adventurous spirit of
      his uncle Justin, who, with two other peasants of the same
      village, deserted, for the profession of arms, the more useful
      employment of husbandmen or shepherds. 4 On foot, with a scanty
      provision of biscuit in their knapsacks, the three youths
      followed the high road of Constantinople, and were soon enrolled,
      for their strength and stature, among the guards of the emperor
      Leo. Under the two succeeding reigns, the fortunate peasant
      emerged to wealth and honors; and his escape from some dangers
      which threatened his life was afterwards ascribed to the guardian
      angel who watches over the fate of kings. His long and laudable
      service in the Isaurian and Persian wars would not have preserved
      from oblivion the name of Justin; yet they might warrant the
      military promotion, which in the course of fifty years he
      gradually obtained; the rank of tribune, of count, and of
      general; the dignity of senator, and the command of the guards,
      who obeyed him as their chief, at the important crisis when the
      emperor Anastasius was removed from the world. The powerful
      kinsmen whom he had raised and enriched were excluded from the
      throne; and the eunuch Amantius, who reigned in the palace, had
      secretly resolved to fix the diadem on the head of the most
      obsequious of his creatures. A liberal donative, to conciliate
      the suffrage of the guards, was intrusted for that purpose in the
      hands of their commander. But these weighty arguments were
      treacherously employed by Justin in his own favor; and as no
      competitor presumed to appear, the Dacian peasant was invested
      with the purple by the unanimous consent of the soldiers, who
      knew him to be brave and gentle, of the clergy and people, who
      believed him to be orthodox, and of the provincials, who yielded
      a blind and implicit submission to the will of the capital. The
      elder Justin, as he is distinguished from another emperor of the
      same family and name, ascended the Byzantine throne at the age of
      sixty-eight years; and, had he been left to his own guidance,
      every moment of a nine years’ reign must have exposed to his
      subjects the impropriety of their choice. His ignorance was
      similar to that of Theodoric; and it is remarkable that in an age
      not destitute of learning, two contemporary monarchs had never
      been instructed in the knowledge of the alphabet. 411 But the
      genius of Justin was far inferior to that of the Gothic king: the
      experience of a soldier had not qualified him for the government
      of an empire; and though personally brave, the consciousness of
      his own weakness was naturally attended with doubt, distrust, and
      political apprehension. But the official business of the state
      was diligently and faithfully transacted by the quaestor Proclus;
      5 and the aged emperor adopted the talents and ambition of his
      nephew Justinian, an aspiring youth, whom his uncle had drawn
      from the rustic solitude of Dacia, and educated at
      Constantinople, as the heir of his private fortune, and at length
      of the Eastern empire.

      1 (return) [ There is some difficulty in the date of his birth
      (Ludewig in Vit. Justiniani, p. 125;) none in the place—the
      district Bederiana—the village Tauresium, which he afterwards
      decorated with his name and splendor, (D’Anville, Hist. de
      l’Acad. &c., tom. xxxi. p. 287—292.)]

      2 (return) [ The names of these Dardanian peasants are Gothic,
      and almost English: Justinian is a translation of uprauda,
      (upright;) his father Sabatius (in Graeco-barbarous language
      stipes) was styled in his village Istock, (Stock;) his mother
      Bigleniza was softened into Vigilantia.]

      3 (return) [ Ludewig (p. 127—135) attempts to justify the Anician
      name of Justinian and Theodora, and to connect them with a family
      from which the house of Austria has been derived.]

      4 (return) [ See the anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 6,) with the
      notes of N. Alemannus. The satirist would not have sunk, in the
      vague and decent appellation of Zonaras. Yet why are those names
      disgraceful?—and what German baron would not be proud to descend
      from the Eumaeus of the Odyssey! Note: It is whimsical enough
      that, in our own days, we should have, even in jest, a claimant
      to lineal descent from the godlike swineherd not in the person of
      a German baron, but in that of a professor of the Ionian
      University. Constantine Koliades, or some malicious wit under
      this name, has written a tall folio to prove Ulysses to be Homer,
      and himself the descendant, the heir (?), of the Eumaeus of the
      Odyssey.—M]

      411 (return) [ St. Martin questions the fact in both cases. The
      ignorance of Justin rests on the secret history of Procopius,
      vol. viii. p. 8. St. Martin’s notes on Le Beau.—M]

      5 (return) [ His virtues are praised by Procopius, (Persic. l. i.
      c. 11.) The quaestor Proclus was the friend of Justinian, and the
      enemy of every other adoption.]


      Since the eunuch Amantius had been defrauded of his money, it
      became necessary to deprive him of his life. The task was easily
      accomplished by the charge of a real or fictitious conspiracy;
      and the judges were informed, as an accumulation of guilt, that
      he was secretly addicted to the Manichaean heresy. 6 Amantius
      lost his head; three of his companions, the first domestics of
      the palace, were punished either with death or exile; and their
      unfortunate candidate for the purple was cast into a deep
      dungeon, overwhelmed with stones, and ignominiously thrown,
      without burial, into the sea. The ruin of Vitalian was a work of
      more difficulty and danger. That Gothic chief had rendered
      himself popular by the civil war which he boldly waged against
      Anastasius for the defence of the orthodox faith, and after the
      conclusion of an advantageous treaty, he still remained in the
      neighborhood of Constantinople at the head of a formidable and
      victorious army of Barbarians. By the frail security of oaths, he
      was tempted to relinquish this advantageous situation, and to
      trust his person within the walls of a city, whose inhabitants,
      particularly the blue faction, were artfully incensed against him
      by the remembrance even of his pious hostilities. The emperor and
      his nephew embraced him as the faithful and worthy champion of
      the church and state; and gratefully adorned their favorite with
      the titles of consul and general; but in the seventh month of his
      consulship, Vitalian was stabbed with seventeen wounds at the
      royal banquet; 7 and Justinian, who inherited the spoil, was
      accused as the assassin of a spiritual brother, to whom he had
      recently pledged his faith in the participation of the Christian
      mysteries. 8 After the fall of his rival, he was promoted,
      without any claim of military service, to the office of
      master-general of the Eastern armies, whom it was his duty to
      lead into the field against the public enemy. But, in the pursuit
      of fame, Justinian might have lost his present dominion over the
      age and weakness of his uncle; and instead of acquiring by
      Scythian or Persian trophies the applause of his countrymen, 9
      the prudent warrior solicited their favor in the churches, the
      circus, and the senate, of Constantinople. The Catholics were
      attached to the nephew of Justin, who, between the Nestorian and
      Eutychian heresies, trod the narrow path of inflexible and
      intolerant orthodoxy. 10 In the first days of the new reign, he
      prompted and gratified the popular enthusiasm against the memory
      of the deceased emperor. After a schism of thirty-four years, he
      reconciled the proud and angry spirit of the Roman pontiff, and
      spread among the Latins a favorable report of his pious respect
      for the apostolic see. The thrones of the East were filled with
      Catholic bishops, devoted to his interest, the clergy and the
      monks were gained by his liberality, and the people were taught
      to pray for their future sovereign, the hope and pillar of the
      true religion. The magnificence of Justinian was displayed in the
      superior pomp of his public spectacles, an object not less sacred
      and important in the eyes of the multitude than the creed of Nice
      or Chalcedon: the expense of his consulship was esteemed at two
      hundred and twenty-eight thousand pieces of gold; twenty lions,
      and thirty leopards, were produced at the same time in the
      amphitheatre, and a numerous train of horses, with their rich
      trappings, was bestowed as an extraordinary gift on the
      victorious charioteers of the circus. While he indulged the
      people of Constantinople, and received the addresses of foreign
      kings, the nephew of Justin assiduously cultivated the friendship
      of the senate. That venerable name seemed to qualify its members
      to declare the sense of the nation, and to regulate the
      succession of the Imperial throne: the feeble Anastasius had
      permitted the vigor of government to degenerate into the form or
      substance of an aristocracy; and the military officers who had
      obtained the senatorial rank were followed by their domestic
      guards, a band of veterans, whose arms or acclamations might fix
      in a tumultuous moment the diadem of the East. The treasures of
      the state were lavished to procure the voices of the senators,
      and their unanimous wish, that he would be pleased to adopt
      Justinian for his colleague, was communicated to the emperor. But
      this request, which too clearly admonished him of his approaching
      end, was unwelcome to the jealous temper of an aged monarch,
      desirous to retain the power which he was incapable of
      exercising; and Justin, holding his purple with both his hands,
      advised them to prefer, since an election was so profitable, some
      older candidate. Not withstanding this reproach, the senate
      proceeded to decorate Justinian with the royal epithet of
      nobilissimus; and their decree was ratified by the affection or
      the fears of his uncle. After some time the languor of mind and
      body, to which he was reduced by an incurable wound in his thigh,
      indispensably required the aid of a guardian. He summoned the
      patriarch and senators; and in their presence solemnly placed the
      diadem on the head of his nephew, who was conducted from the
      palace to the circus, and saluted by the loud and joyful applause
      of the people. The life of Justin was prolonged about four
      months; but from the instant of this ceremony, he was considered
      as dead to the empire, which acknowledged Justinian, in the
      forty-fifth year of his age, for the lawful sovereign of the
      East. 11

      6 (return) [ Manichaean signifies Eutychian. Hear the furious
      acclamations of Constantinople and Tyre, the former no more than
      six days after the decease of Anastasius. They produced, the
      latter applauded, the eunuch’s death, (Baronius, A.D. 518, P. ii.
      No. 15. Fleury, Hist Eccles. tom. vii. p. 200, 205, from the
      Councils, tom. v. p. 182, 207.)]

      7 (return) [ His power, character, and intentions, are perfectly
      explained by the court de Buat, (tom. ix. p. 54—81.) He was
      great-grandson of Aspar, hereditary prince in the Lesser Scythia,
      and count of the Gothic foederati of Thrace. The Bessi, whom he
      could influence, are the minor Goths of Jornandes, (c. 51.)]

      8 (return) [ Justiniani patricii factione dicitur interfectus
      fuisse, (Victor Tu nunensis, Chron. in Thesaur. Temp. Scaliger,
      P. ii. p. 7.) Procopius (Anecdot. c. 7) styles him a tyrant, but
      acknowledges something which is well explained by Alemannus.]

      9 (return) [ In his earliest youth (plane adolescens) he had
      passed some time as a hostage with Theodoric. For this curious
      fact, Alemannus (ad Procop. Anecdot. c. 9, p. 34, of the first
      edition) quotes a Ms. history of Justinian, by his preceptor
      Theophilus. Ludewig (p. 143) wishes to make him a soldier.]

      10 (return) [ The ecclesiastical history of Justinian will be
      shown hereafter. See Baronius, A.D. 518—521, and the copious
      article Justinianas in the index to the viith volume of his
      Annals.]

      11 (return) [ The reign of the elder Justin may be found in the
      three Chronicles of Marcellinus, Victor, and John Malala, (tom.
      ii. p. 130—150,) the last of whom (in spite of Hody, Prolegom.
      No. 14, 39, edit. Oxon.) lived soon after Justinian, (Jortin’s
      Remarks, &c., vol. iv p. 383:) in the Ecclesiastical History of
      Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 1, 2, 3, 9,) and the Excerpta of Theodorus
      Lector, (No. 37,) and in Cedrenus, (p. 362—366,) and Zonaras, (l.
      xiv. p. 58—61,) who may pass for an original. * Note: Dindorf, in
      his preface to the new edition of Malala, p. vi., concurs with
      this opinion of Gibbon, which was also that of Reiske, as to the
      age of the chronicler.—M.]


      From his elevation to his death, Justinian governed the Roman
      empire thirty-eight years, seven months, and thirteen days.


      The events of his reign, which excite our curious attention by
      their number, variety, and importance, are diligently related by
      the secretary of Belisarius, a rhetorician, whom eloquence had
      promoted to the rank of senator and præfect of Constantinople.
      According to the vicissitudes of courage or servitude, of favor
      or disgrace, Procopius 12 successively composed the history, the
      panegyric, and the satire of his own times. The eight books of
      the Persian, Vandalic, and Gothic wars, 13 which are continued in
      the five books of Agathias, deserve our esteem as a laborious and
      successful imitation of the Attic, or at least of the Asiatic,
      writers of ancient Greece. His facts are collected from the
      personal experience and free conversation of a soldier, a
      statesman, and a traveller; his style continually aspires, and
      often attains, to the merit of strength and elegance; his
      reflections, more especially in the speeches, which he too
      frequently inserts, contain a rich fund of political knowledge;
      and the historian, excited by the generous ambition of pleasing
      and instructing posterity, appears to disdain the prejudices of
      the people, and the flattery of courts. The writings of Procopius
      14 were read and applauded by his contemporaries: 15 but,
      although he respectfully laid them at the foot of the throne, the
      pride of Justinian must have been wounded by the praise of a
      hero, who perpetually eclipses the glory of his inactive
      sovereign. The conscious dignity of independence was subdued by
      the hopes and fears of a slave; and the secretary of Belisarius
      labored for pardon and reward in the six books of the Imperial
      edifices. He had dexterously chosen a subject of apparent
      splendor, in which he could loudly celebrate the genius, the
      magnificence, and the piety of a prince, who, both as a conqueror
      and legislator, had surpassed the puerile virtues of Themistocles
      and Cyrus. 16 Disappointment might urge the flatterer to secret
      revenge; and the first glance of favor might again tempt him to
      suspend and suppress a libel, 17 in which the Roman Cyrus is
      degraded into an odious and contemptible tyrant, in which both
      the emperor and his consort Theodora are seriously represented as
      two daemons, who had assumed a human form for the destruction of
      mankind. 18 Such base inconsistency must doubtless sully the
      reputation, and detract from the credit, of Procopius: yet, after
      the venom of his malignity has been suffered to exhale, the
      residue of the anecdotes, even the most disgraceful facts, some
      of which had been tenderly hinted in his public history, are
      established by their internal evidence, or the authentic
      monuments of the times. 19 1911 From these various materials, I
      shall now proceed to describe the reign of Justinian, which will
      deserve and occupy an ample space. The present chapter will
      explain the elevation and character of Theodora, the factions of
      the circus, and the peaceful administration of the sovereign of
      the East. In the three succeeding chapters, I shall relate the
      wars of Justinian, which achieved the conquest of Africa and
      Italy; and I shall follow the victories of Belisarius and Narses,
      without disguising the vanity of their triumphs, or the hostile
      virtue of the Persian and Gothic heroes. The series of this and
      the following volume will embrace the jurisprudence and theology
      of the emperor; the controversies and sects which still divide
      the Oriental church; the reformation of the Roman law which is
      obeyed or respected by the nations of modern Europe.

      12 (return) [ See the characters of Procopius and Agathias in La
      Mothe le Vayer, (tom. viii. p. 144—174,) Vossius, (de Historicis
      Graecis, l. ii. c. 22,) and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. l. v. c.
      5, tom. vi. p. 248—278.) Their religion, an honorable problem,
      betrays occasional conformity, with a secret attachment to
      Paganism and Philosophy.]

      13 (return) [ In the seven first books, two Persic, two Vandalic,
      and three Gothic, Procopius has borrowed from Appian the division
      of provinces and wars: the viiith book, though it bears the name
      of Gothic, is a miscellaneous and general supplement down to the
      spring of the year 553, from whence it is continued by Agathias
      till 559, (Pagi, Critica, A.D. 579, No. 5.)]

      14 (return) [ The literary fate of Procopius has been somewhat
      unlucky.


      1. His book de Bello Gothico were stolen by Leonard Aretin, and
      published (Fulginii, 1470, Venet. 1471, apud Janson. Mattaire,
      Annal Typograph. tom. i. edit. posterior, p. 290, 304, 279, 299,)
      in his own name, (see Vossius de Hist. Lat. l. iii. c. 5, and the
      feeble defence of the Venice Giornale de Letterati, tom. xix. p.
      207.)


      2. His works were mutilated by the first Latin translators,
      Christopher Persona, (Giornale, tom. xix. p. 340—348,) and
      Raphael de Volaterra, (Huet, de Claris Interpretibus, p. 166,)
      who did not even consult the Ms. of the Vatican library, of which
      they were præfects, (Aleman. in Praefat Anecdot.) 3. The Greek
      text was not printed till 1607, by Hoeschelius of Augsburg,
      (Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. ii. p. 782.)


      4. The Paris edition was imperfectly executed by Claude Maltret,
      a Jesuit of Toulouse, (in 1663,) far distant from the Louvre
      press and the Vatican Ms., from which, however, he obtained some
      supplements. His promised commentaries, &c., have never appeared.
      The Agathias of Leyden (1594) has been wisely reprinted by the
      Paris editor, with the Latin version of Bonaventura Vulcanius, a
      learned interpreter, (Huet, p. 176.)


      * Note: Procopius forms a part of the new Byzantine collection
      under the superintendence of Dindorf.—M.]

      15 (return) [ Agathias in Praefat. p. 7, 8, l. iv. p. 137.
      Evagrius, l. iv. c. 12. See likewise Photius, cod. lxiii. p. 65.]

      16 (return) [ Says, he, Praefat. ad l. de Edificiis is no more
      than a pun! In these five books, Procopius affects a Christian as
      well as a courtly style.]

      17 (return) [ Procopius discloses himself, (Praefat. ad Anecdot.
      c. 1, 2, 5,) and the anecdotes are reckoned as the ninth book by
      Suidas, (tom. iii. p. 186, edit. Kuster.) The silence of Evagrius
      is a poor objection. Baronius (A.D. 548, No. 24) regrets the loss
      of this secret history: it was then in the Vatican library, in
      his own custody, and was first published sixteen years after his
      death, with the learned, but partial notes of Nicholas Alemannus,
      (Lugd. 1623.)]

      18 (return) [ Justinian an ass—the perfect likeness of
      Domitian—Anecdot. c. 8.—Theodora’s lovers driven from her bed by
      rival daemons—her marriage foretold with a great daemon—a monk
      saw the prince of the daemons, instead of Justinian, on the
      throne—the servants who watched beheld a face without features, a
      body walking without a head, &c., &c. Procopius declares his own
      and his friends’ belief in these diabolical stories, (c. 12.)]

      19 (return) [ Montesquieu (Considerations sur la Grandeur et la
      Decadence des Romains, c. xx.) gives credit to these anecdotes,
      as connected, 1. with the weakness of the empire, and, 2. with
      the instability of Justinian’s laws.]

      1911 (return) [ The Anecdota of Procopius, compared with the
      former works of the same author, appear to me the basest and most
      disgraceful work in literature. The wars, which he has described
      in the former volumes as glorious or necessary, are become
      unprofitable and wanton massacres; the buildings which he
      celebrated, as raised to the immortal honor of the great emperor,
      and his admirable queen, either as magnificent embellishments of
      the city, or useful fortifications for the defence of the
      frontier, are become works of vain prodigality and useless
      ostentation. I doubt whether Gibbon has made sufficient allowance
      for the “malignity” of the Anecdota; at all events, the extreme
      and disgusting profligacy of Theodora’s early life rests entirely
      on this viratent libel—M.]


      I. In the exercise of supreme power, the first act of Justinian
      was to divide it with the woman whom he loved, the famous
      Theodora, 20 whose strange elevation cannot be applauded as the
      triumph of female virtue. Under the reign of Anastasius, the care
      of the wild beasts maintained by the green faction at
      Constantinople was intrusted to Acacius, a native of the Isle of
      Cyprus, who, from his employment, was surnamed the master of the
      bears. This honorable office was given after his death to another
      candidate, notwithstanding the diligence of his widow, who had
      already provided a husband and a successor. Acacius had left
      three daughters, Comito, 21 Theodora, and Anastasia, the eldest
      of whom did not then exceed the age of seven years. On a solemn
      festival, these helpless orphans were sent by their distressed
      and indignant mother, in the garb of suppliants, into the midst
      of the theatre: the green faction received them with contempt,
      the blues with compassion; and this difference, which sunk deep
      into the mind of Theodora, was felt long afterwards in the
      administration of the empire. As they improved in age and beauty,
      the three sisters were successively devoted to the public and
      private pleasures of the Byzantine people: and Theodora, after
      following Comito on the stage, in the dress of a slave, with a
      stool on her head, was at length permitted to exercise her
      independent talents. She neither danced, nor sung, nor played on
      the flute; her skill was confined to the pantomime arts; she
      excelled in buffoon characters, and as often as the comedian
      swelled her cheeks, and complained with a ridiculous tone and
      gesture of the blows that were inflicted, the whole theatre of
      Constantinople resounded with laughter and applause. The beauty
      of Theodora 22 was the subject of more flattering praise, and the
      source of more exquisite delight. Her features were delicate and
      regular; her complexion, though somewhat pale, was tinged with a
      natural color; every sensation was instantly expressed by the
      vivacity of her eyes; her easy motions displayed the graces of a
      small but elegant figure; and either love or adulation might
      proclaim, that painting and poetry were incapable of delineating
      the matchless excellence of her form. But this form was degraded
      by the facility with which it was exposed to the public eye, and
      prostituted to licentious desire. Her venal charms were abandoned
      to a promiscuous crowd of citizens and strangers of every rank,
      and of every profession: the fortunate lover who had been
      promised a night of enjoyment, was often driven from her bed by a
      stronger or more wealthy favorite; and when she passed through
      the streets, her presence was avoided by all who wished to escape
      either the scandal or the temptation. The satirical historian has
      not blushed 23 to describe the naked scenes which Theodora was
      not ashamed to exhibit in the theatre. 24 After exhausting the
      arts of sensual pleasure, 25 she most ungratefully murmured
      against the parsimony of Nature; 26 but her murmurs, her
      pleasures, and her arts, must be veiled in the obscurity of a
      learned language. After reigning for some time, the delight and
      contempt of the capital, she condescended to accompany Ecebolus,
      a native of Tyre, who had obtained the government of the African
      Pentapolis. But this union was frail and transient; Ecebolus soon
      rejected an expensive or faithless concubine; she was reduced at
      Alexandria to extreme distress; and in her laborious return to
      Constantinople, every city of the East admired and enjoyed the
      fair Cyprian, whose merit appeared to justify her descent from
      the peculiar island of Venus. The vague commerce of Theodora, and
      the most detestable precautions, preserved her from the danger
      which she feared; yet once, and once only, she became a mother.
      The infant was saved and educated in Arabia, by his father, who
      imparted to him on his death-bed, that he was the son of an
      empress. Filled with ambitious hopes, the unsuspecting youth
      immediately hastened to the palace of Constantinople, and was
      admitted to the presence of his mother. As he was never more
      seen, even after the decease of Theodora, she deserves the foul
      imputation of extinguishing with his life a secret so offensive
      to her Imperial virtue. 2611

      20 (return) [ For the life and manners of the empress Theodora
      see the Anecdotes; more especially c. 1—5, 9, 10—15, 16, 17, with
      the learned notes of Alemannus—a reference which is always
      implied.]

      21 (return) [ Comito was afterwards married to Sittas, duke of
      Armenia, the father, perhaps, at least she might be the mother,
      of the empress Sophia. Two nephews of Theodora may be the sons of
      Anastasia, (Aleman. p. 30, 31.)]

      22 (return) [ Her statute was raised at Constantinople, on a
      porphyry column. See Procopius, (de Edif. l. i. c. 11,) who gives
      her portrait in the Anecdotes, (c. 10.) Aleman. (p. 47) produces
      one from a Mosaic at Ravenna, loaded with pearls and jewels, and
      yet handsome.]

      23 (return) [ A fragment of the Anecdotes, (c. 9,) somewhat too
      naked, was suppressed by Alemannus, though extant in the Vatican
      Ms.; nor has the defect been supplied in the Paris or Venice
      editions. La Mothe le Vayer (tom. viii. p. 155) gave the first
      hint of this curious and genuine passage, (Jortin’s Remarks, vol.
      iv. p. 366,) which he had received from Rome, and it has been
      since published in the Menagiana (tom. iii. p. 254—259) with a
      Latin version.]

      24 (return) [ After the mention of a narrow girdle, (as none
      could appear stark naked in the theatre,) Procopius thus
      proceeds. I have heard that a learned prelate, now deceased, was
      fond of quoting this passage in conversation.]

      25 (return) [ Theodora surpassed the Crispa of Ausonius, (Epigram
      lxxi.,) who imitated the capitalis luxus of the females of Nola.
      See Quintilian Institut. viii. 6, and Torrentius ad Horat.
      Sermon. l. i. sat. 2, v. 101. At a memorable supper, thirty
      slaves waited round the table ten young men feasted with
      Theodora. Her charity was universal. Et lassata viris, necdum
      satiata, recessit.]

      26 (return) [ She wished for a fourth altar, on which she might
      pour libations to the god of love.]

      2611 (return) [ Gibbon should have remembered the axiom which he
      quotes in another piece, scelera ostendi oportet dum puniantur
      abscondi flagitia.—M.]


      In the most abject state of her fortune, and reputation, some
      vision, either of sleep or of fancy, had whispered to Theodora
      the pleasing assurance that she was destined to become the spouse
      of a potent monarch. Conscious of her approaching greatness, she
      returned from Paphlagonia to Constantinople; assumed, like a
      skilful actress, a more decent character; relieved her poverty by
      the laudable industry of spinning wool; and affected a life of
      chastity and solitude in a small house, which she afterwards
      changed into a magnificent temple. 27 Her beauty, assisted by art
      or accident, soon attracted, captivated, and fixed, the patrician
      Justinian, who already reigned with absolute sway under the name
      of his uncle. Perhaps she contrived to enhance the value of a
      gift which she had so often lavished on the meanest of mankind;
      perhaps she inflamed, at first by modest delays, and at last by
      sensual allurements, the desires of a lover, who, from nature or
      devotion, was addicted to long vigils and abstemious diet. When
      his first transports had subsided, she still maintained the same
      ascendant over his mind, by the more solid merit of temper and
      understanding. Justinian delighted to ennoble and enrich the
      object of his affection; the treasures of the East were poured at
      her feet, and the nephew of Justin was determined, perhaps by
      religious scruples, to bestow on his concubine the sacred and
      legal character of a wife. But the laws of Rome expressly
      prohibited the marriage of a senator with any female who had been
      dishonored by a servile origin or theatrical profession: the
      empress Lupicina, or Euphemia, a Barbarian of rustic manners, but
      of irreproachable virtue, refused to accept a prostitute for her
      niece; and even Vigilantia, the superstitious mother of
      Justinian, though she acknowledged the wit and beauty of
      Theodora, was seriously apprehensive, lest the levity and
      arrogance of that artful paramour might corrupt the piety and
      happiness of her son. These obstacles were removed by the
      inflexible constancy of Justinian. He patiently expected the
      death of the empress; he despised the tears of his mother, who
      soon sunk under the weight of her affliction; and a law was
      promulgated in the name of the emperor Justin, which abolished
      the rigid jurisprudence of antiquity. A glorious repentance (the
      words of the edict) was left open for the unhappy females who had
      prostituted their persons on the theatre, and they were permitted
      to contract a legal union with the most illustrious of the
      Romans. 28 This indulgence was speedily followed by the solemn
      nuptials of Justinian and Theodora; her dignity was gradually
      exalted with that of her lover, and, as soon as Justin had
      invested his nephew with the purple, the patriarch of
      Constantinople placed the diadem on the heads of the emperor and
      empress of the East. But the usual honors which the severity of
      Roman manners had allowed to the wives of princes, could not
      satisfy either the ambition of Theodora or the fondness of
      Justinian. He seated her on the throne as an equal and
      independent colleague in the sovereignty of the empire, and an
      oath of allegiance was imposed on the governors of the provinces
      in the joint names of Justinian and Theodora. 29 The Eastern
      world fell prostrate before the genius and fortune of the
      daughter of Acacius. The prostitute who, in the presence of
      innumerable spectators, had polluted the theatre of
      Constantinople, was adored as a queen in the same city, by grave
      magistrates, orthodox bishops, victorious generals, and captive
      monarchs. 30

      27 (return) [ Anonym. de Antiquitat. C. P. l. iii. 132, in
      Banduri Imperium Orient. tom. i. p. 48. Ludewig (p. 154) argues
      sensibly that Theodora would not have immortalized a brothel: but
      I apply this fact to her second and chaster residence at
      Constantinople.]

      28 (return) [ See the old law in Justinian’s Code, (l. v. tit. v.
      leg. 7, tit. xxvii. leg. 1,) under the years 336 and 454. The new
      edict (about the year 521 or 522, Aleman. p. 38, 96) very
      awkwardly repeals no more than the clause of mulieres scenicoe,
      libertinae, tabernariae. See the novels 89 and 117, and a Greek
      rescript from Justinian to the bishops, (Aleman. p. 41.)]

      29 (return) [ I swear by the Father, &c., by the Virgin Mary, by
      the four Gospels, quae in manibus teneo, and by the Holy
      Archangels Michael and Gabriel, puram conscientiam germanumque
      servitium me servaturum, sacratissimis DDNN. Justiniano et
      Theodorae conjugi ejus, (Novell. viii. tit. 3.) Would the oath
      have been binding in favor of the widow? Communes tituli et
      triumphi, &c., (Aleman. p. 47, 48.)]

      30 (return) [ “Let greatness own her, and she’s mean no more,”
      &c. Without Warburton’s critical telescope, I should never have
      seen, in this general picture of triumphant vice, any personal
      allusion to Theodora.]




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part II.


      Those who believe that the female mind is totally depraved by the
      loss of chastity, will eagerly listen to all the invectives of
      private envy, or popular resentment which have dissembled the
      virtues of Theodora, exaggerated her vices, and condemned with
      rigor the venal or voluntary sins of the youthful harlot. From a
      motive of shame, or contempt, she often declined the servile
      homage of the multitude, escaped from the odious light of the
      capital, and passed the greatest part of the year in the palaces
      and gardens which were pleasantly seated on the sea-coast of the
      Propontis and the Bosphorus. Her private hours were devoted to
      the prudent as well as grateful care of her beauty, the luxury of
      the bath and table, and the long slumber of the evening and the
      morning. Her secret apartments were occupied by the favorite
      women and eunuchs, whose interests and passions she indulged at
      the expense of justice; the most illustrious personages of the
      state were crowded into a dark and sultry antechamber, and when
      at last, after tedious attendance, they were admitted to kiss the
      feet of Theodora, they experienced, as her humor might suggest,
      the silent arrogance of an empress, or the capricious levity of a
      comedian. Her rapacious avarice to accumulate an immense
      treasure, may be excused by the apprehension of her husband’s
      death, which could leave no alternative between ruin and the
      throne; and fear as well as ambition might exasperate Theodora
      against two generals, who, during the malady of the emperor, had
      rashly declared that they were not disposed to acquiesce in the
      choice of the capital. But the reproach of cruelty, so repugnant
      even to her softer vices, has left an indelible stain on the
      memory of Theodora. Her numerous spies observed, and zealously
      reported, every action, or word, or look, injurious to their
      royal mistress. Whomsoever they accused were cast into her
      peculiar prisons, 31 inaccessible to the inquiries of justice;
      and it was rumored, that the torture of the rack, or scourge, had
      been inflicted in the presence of the female tyrant, insensible
      to the voice of prayer or of pity. 32 Some of these unhappy
      victims perished in deep, unwholesome dungeons, while others were
      permitted, after the loss of their limbs, their reason, or their
      fortunes, to appear in the world, the living monuments of her
      vengeance, which was commonly extended to the children of those
      whom she had suspected or injured. The senator or bishop, whose
      death or exile Theodora had pronounced, was delivered to a trusty
      messenger, and his diligence was quickened by a menace from her
      own mouth. “If you fail in the execution of my commands, I swear
      by Him who liveth forever, that your skin shall be flayed from
      your body.” 33

      31 (return) [ Her prisons, a labyrinth, a Tartarus, (Anecdot. c.
      4,) were under the palace. Darkness is propitious to cruelty, but
      it is likewise favorable to calumny and fiction.]

      32 (return) [ A more jocular whipping was inflicted on
      Saturninus, for presuming to say that his wife, a favorite of the
      empress, had not been found. (Anecdot. c. 17.)]

      33 (return) [ Per viventem in saecula excoriari te faciam.
      Anastasius de Vitis Pont. Roman. in Vigilio, p. 40.]


      If the creed of Theodora had not been tainted with heresy, her
      exemplary devotion might have atoned, in the opinion of her
      contemporaries, for pride, avarice, and cruelty. But, if she
      employed her influence to assuage the intolerant fury of the
      emperor, the present age will allow some merit to her religion,
      and much indulgence to her speculative errors. 34 The name of
      Theodora was introduced, with equal honor, in all the pious and
      charitable foundations of Justinian; and the most benevolent
      institution of his reign may be ascribed to the sympathy of the
      empress for her less fortunate sisters, who had been seduced or
      compelled to embrace the trade of prostitution. A palace, on the
      Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, was converted into a stately and
      spacious monastery, and a liberal maintenance was assigned to
      five hundred women, who had been collected from the streets and
      brothels of Constantinople. In this safe and holy retreat, they
      were devoted to perpetual confinement; and the despair of some,
      who threw themselves headlong into the sea, was lost in the
      gratitude of the penitents, who had been delivered from sin and
      misery by their generous benefactress. 35 The prudence of
      Theodora is celebrated by Justinian himself; and his laws are
      attributed to the sage counsels of his most reverend wife whom he
      had received as the gift of the Deity. 36 Her courage was
      displayed amidst the tumult of the people and the terrors of the
      court. Her chastity, from the moment of her union with Justinian,
      is founded on the silence of her implacable enemies; and although
      the daughter of Acacius might be satiated with love, yet some
      applause is due to the firmness of a mind which could sacrifice
      pleasure and habit to the stronger sense either of duty or
      interest. The wishes and prayers of Theodora could never obtain
      the blessing of a lawful son, and she buried an infant daughter,
      the sole offspring of her marriage. 37 Notwithstanding this
      disappointment, her dominion was permanent and absolute; she
      preserved, by art or merit, the affections of Justinian; and
      their seeming dissensions were always fatal to the courtiers who
      believed them to be sincere. Perhaps her health had been impaired
      by the licentiousness of her youth; but it was always delicate,
      and she was directed by her physicians to use the Pythian warm
      baths. In this journey, the empress was followed by the
      Praetorian præfect, the great treasurer, several counts and
      patricians, and a splendid train of four thousand attendants: the
      highways were repaired at her approach; a palace was erected for
      her reception; and as she passed through Bithynia, she
      distributed liberal alms to the churches, the monasteries, and
      the hospitals, that they might implore Heaven for the restoration
      of her health. 38 At length, in the twenty-fourth year of her
      marriage, and the twenty-second of her reign, she was consumed by
      a cancer; 39 and the irreparable loss was deplored by her
      husband, who, in the room of a theatrical prostitute, might have
      selected the purest and most noble virgin of the East. 40

      34 (return) [ Ludewig, p. 161—166. I give him credit for the
      charitable attempt, although he hath not much charity in his
      temper.]

      35 (return) [ Compare the anecdotes (c. 17) with the Edifices (l.
      i. c. 9)—how differently may the same fact be stated! John Malala
      (tom. ii. p. 174, 175) observes, that on this, or a similar
      occasion, she released and clothed the girls whom she had
      purchased from the stews at five aurei apiece.]

      36 (return) [ Novel. viii. 1. An allusion to Theodora. Her
      enemies read the name Daemonodora, (Aleman. p. 66.)]

      37 (return) [ St. Sabas refused to pray for a son of Theodora,
      lest he should prove a heretic worse than Anastasius himself,
      (Cyril in Vit. St. Sabae, apud Aleman. p. 70, 109.)]

      38 (return) [ See John Malala, tom. ii. p. 174. Theophanes, p.
      158. Procopius de Edific. l. v. c. 3.]

      39 (return) [ Theodora Chalcedonensis synodi inimica canceris
      plaga toto corpore perfusa vitam prodigiose finivit, (Victor
      Tununensis in Chron.) On such occasions, an orthodox mind is
      steeled against pity. Alemannus (p. 12, 13) understands of
      Theophanes as civil language, which does not imply either piety
      or repentance; yet two years after her death, St. Theodora is
      celebrated by Paul Silentiarius, (in proem. v. 58—62.)]

      40 (return) [ As she persecuted the popes, and rejected a
      council, Baronius exhausts the names of Eve, Dalila, Herodias,
      &c.; after which he has recourse to his infernal dictionary:
      civis inferni—alumna daemonum—satanico agitata spiritu-oestro
      percita diabolico, &c., &c., (A.D. 548, No. 24.)]


      II. A material difference may be observed in the games of
      antiquity: the most eminent of the Greeks were actors, the Romans
      were merely spectators. The Olympic stadium was open to wealth,
      merit, and ambition; and if the candidates could depend on their
      personal skill and activity, they might pursue the footsteps of
      Diomede and Menelaus, and conduct their own horses in the rapid
      career. 41 Ten, twenty, forty chariots were allowed to start at
      the same instant; a crown of leaves was the reward of the victor;
      and his fame, with that of his family and country, was chanted in
      lyric strains more durable than monuments of brass and marble.
      But a senator, or even a citizen, conscious of his dignity, would
      have blushed to expose his person, or his horses, in the circus
      of Rome. The games were exhibited at the expense of the republic,
      the magistrates, or the emperors: but the reins were abandoned to
      servile hands; and if the profits of a favorite charioteer
      sometimes exceeded those of an advocate, they must be considered
      as the effects of popular extravagance, and the high wages of a
      disgraceful profession. The race, in its first institution, was a
      simple contest of two chariots, whose drivers were distinguished
      by white and red liveries: two additional colors, a light green,
      and a caerulean blue, were afterwards introduced; and as the
      races were repeated twenty-five times, one hundred chariots
      contributed in the same day to the pomp of the circus. The four
      factions soon acquired a legal establishment, and a mysterious
      origin, and their fanciful colors were derived from the various
      appearances of nature in the four seasons of the year; the red
      dogstar of summer, the snows of winter, the deep shades of
      autumn, and the cheerful verdure of the spring. 42 Another
      interpretation preferred the elements to the seasons, and the
      struggle of the green and blue was supposed to represent the
      conflict of the earth and sea. Their respective victories
      announced either a plentiful harvest or a prosperous navigation,
      and the hostility of the husbandmen and mariners was somewhat
      less absurd than the blind ardor of the Roman people, who devoted
      their lives and fortunes to the color which they had espoused.
      Such folly was disdained and indulged by the wisest princes; but
      the names of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, Verus, Commodus,
      Caracalla, and Elagabalus, were enrolled in the blue or green
      factions of the circus; they frequented their stables, applauded
      their favorites, chastised their antagonists, and deserved the
      esteem of the populace, by the natural or affected imitation of
      their manners. The bloody and tumultuous contest continued to
      disturb the public festivity, till the last age of the spectacles
      of Rome; and Theodoric, from a motive of justice or affection,
      interposed his authority to protect the greens against the
      violence of a consul and a patrician, who were passionately
      addicted to the blue faction of the circus. 43

      41 (return) [ Read and feel the xxiid book of the Iliad, a living
      picture of manners, passions, and the whole form and spirit of
      the chariot race West’s Dissertation on the Olympic Games (sect.
      xii.—xvii.) affords much curious and authentic information.]

      42 (return) [ The four colors, albati, russati, prasini, veneti,
      represent the four seasons, according to Cassiodorus, (Var. iii.
      51,) who lavishes much wit and eloquence on this theatrical
      mystery. Of these colors, the three first may be fairly
      translated white, red, and green. Venetus is explained by
      coeruleus, a word various and vague: it is properly the sky
      reflected in the sea; but custom and convenience may allow blue
      as an equivalent, (Robert. Stephan. sub voce. Spence’s Polymetis,
      p. 228.)]

      43 (return) [ See Onuphrius Panvinius de Ludis Circensibus, l. i.
      c. 10, 11; the xviith Annotation on Mascou’s History of the
      Germans; and Aleman ad c. vii.]


      Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of
      ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the
      circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the
      reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by
      religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed
      stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn
      festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. 44 From this
      capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and
      cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors
      produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the
      foundations of a feeble government. 45 The popular dissensions,
      founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have
      scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which
      invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and
      tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to
      espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or to contradict the
      wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was
      trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its
      deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public
      calamity. The license, without the freedom, of democracy, was
      revived at Antioch and Constantinople, and the support of a
      faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or
      ecclesiastical honors. A secret attachment to the family or sect
      of Anastasius was imputed to the greens; the blues were zealously
      devoted to the cause of orthodoxy and Justinian, 46 and their
      grateful patron protected, above five years, the disorders of a
      faction, whose seasonable tumults overawed the palace, the
      senate, and the capitals of the East. Insolent with royal favor,
      the blues affected to strike terror by a peculiar and Barbaric
      dress, the long hair of the Huns, their close sleeves and ample
      garments, a lofty step, and a sonorous voice. In the day they
      concealed their two-edged poniards, but in the night they boldly
      assembled in arms, and in numerous bands, prepared for every act
      of violence and rapine. Their adversaries of the green faction,
      or even inoffensive citizens, were stripped and often murdered by
      these nocturnal robbers, and it became dangerous to wear any gold
      buttons or girdles, or to appear at a late hour in the streets of
      a peaceful capital. A daring spirit, rising with impunity,
      proceeded to violate the safeguard of private houses; and fire
      was employed to facilitate the attack, or to conceal the crimes
      of these factious rioters. No place was safe or sacred from their
      depredations; to gratify either avarice or revenge, they
      profusely spilt the blood of the innocent; churches and altars
      were polluted by atrocious murders; and it was the boast of the
      assassins, that their dexterity could always inflict a mortal
      wound with a single stroke of their dagger. The dissolute youth
      of Constantinople adopted the blue livery of disorder; the laws
      were silent, and the bonds of society were relaxed: creditors
      were compelled to resign their obligations; judges to reverse
      their sentence; masters to enfranchise their slaves; fathers to
      supply the extravagance of their children; noble matrons were
      prostituted to the lust of their servants; beautiful boys were
      torn from the arms of their parents; and wives, unless they
      preferred a voluntary death, were ravished in the presence of
      their husbands. 47 The despair of the greens, who were persecuted
      by their enemies, and deserted by the magistrates, assumed the
      privilege of defence, perhaps of retaliation; but those who
      survived the combat were dragged to execution, and the unhappy
      fugitives, escaping to woods and caverns, preyed without mercy on
      the society from whence they were expelled. Those ministers of
      justice who had courage to punish the crimes, and to brave the
      resentment, of the blues, became the victims of their indiscreet
      zeal; a præfect of Constantinople fled for refuge to the holy
      sepulchre, a count of the East was ignominiously whipped, and a
      governor of Cilicia was hanged, by the order of Theodora, on the
      tomb of two assassins whom he had condemned for the murder of his
      groom, and a daring attack upon his own life. 48 An aspiring
      candidate may be tempted to build his greatness on the public
      confusion, but it is the interest as well as duty of a sovereign
      to maintain the authority of the laws. The first edict of
      Justinian, which was often repeated, and sometimes executed,
      announced his firm resolution to support the innocent, and to
      chastise the guilty, of every denomination and color. Yet the
      balance of justice was still inclined in favor of the blue
      faction, by the secret affection, the habits, and the fears of
      the emperor; his equity, after an apparent struggle, submitted,
      without reluctance, to the implacable passions of Theodora, and
      the empress never forgot, or forgave, the injuries of the
      comedian. At the accession of the younger Justin, the
      proclamation of equal and rigorous justice indirectly condemned
      the partiality of the former reign. “Ye blues, Justinian is no
      more! ye greens, he is still alive!” 49

      44 (return) [ Marcellin. in Chron. p. 47. Instead of the vulgar
      word venata he uses the more exquisite terms of coerulea and
      coerealis. Baronius (A.D. 501, No. 4, 5, 6) is satisfied that the
      blues were orthodox; but Tillemont is angry at the supposition,
      and will not allow any martyrs in a playhouse, (Hist. des Emp.
      tom. vi. p. 554.)]

      45 (return) [ See Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 24.) In describing
      the vices of the factions and of the government, the public, is
      not more favorable than the secret, historian. Aleman. (p. 26)
      has quoted a fine passage from Gregory Nazianzen, which proves
      the inveteracy of the evil.]

      46 (return) [ The partiality of Justinian for the blues (Anecdot.
      c. 7) is attested by Evagrius, (Hist. Eccles. l. iv. c. 32,) John
      Malala, (tom ii p. 138, 139,) especially for Antioch; and
      Theophanes, (p. 142.)]

      47 (return) [ A wife, (says Procopius,) who was seized and almost
      ravished by a blue-coat, threw herself into the Bosphorus. The
      bishops of the second Syria (Aleman. p. 26) deplore a similar
      suicide, the guilt or glory of female chastity, and name the
      heroine.]

      48 (return) [ The doubtful credit of Procopius (Anecdot. c. 17)
      is supported by the less partial Evagrius, who confirms the fact,
      and specifies the names. The tragic fate of the præfect of
      Constantinople is related by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 139.)]

      49 (return) [ See John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 147;) yet he owns
      that Justinian was attached to the blues. The seeming discord of
      the emperor and Theodora is, perhaps, viewed with too much
      jealousy and refinement by Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 10.) See
      Aleman. Praefat. p. 6.]


      A sedition, which almost laid Constantinople in ashes, was
      excited by the mutual hatred and momentary reconciliation of the
      two factions. In the fifth year of his reign, Justinian
      celebrated the festival of the ides of January; the games were
      incessantly disturbed by the clamorous discontent of the greens:
      till the twenty-second race, the emperor maintained his silent
      gravity; at length, yielding to his impatience, he condescended
      to hold, in abrupt sentences, and by the voice of a crier, the
      most singular dialogue 50 that ever passed between a prince and
      his subjects. Their first complaints were respectful and modest;
      they accused the subordinate ministers of oppression, and
      proclaimed their wishes for the long life and victory of the
      emperor. “Be patient and attentive, ye insolent railers!”
      exclaimed Justinian; “be mute, ye Jews, Samaritans, and
      Manichaeans!” The greens still attempted to awaken his
      compassion. “We are poor, we are innocent, we are injured, we
      dare not pass through the streets: a general persecution is
      exercised against our name and color. Let us die, O emperor! but
      let us die by your command, and for your service!” But the
      repetition of partial and passionate invectives degraded, in
      their eyes, the majesty of the purple; they renounced allegiance
      to the prince who refused justice to his people; lamented that
      the father of Justinian had been born; and branded his son with
      the opprobrious names of a homicide, an ass, and a perjured
      tyrant. “Do you despise your lives?” cried the indignant monarch:
      the blues rose with fury from their seats; their hostile clamors
      thundered in the hippodrome; and their adversaries, deserting the
      unequal contest spread terror and despair through the streets of
      Constantinople. At this dangerous moment, seven notorious
      assassins of both factions, who had been condemned by the
      præfect, were carried round the city, and afterwards transported
      to the place of execution in the suburb of Pera. Four were
      immediately beheaded; a fifth was hanged: but when the same
      punishment was inflicted on the remaining two, the rope broke,
      they fell alive to the ground, the populace applauded their
      escape, and the monks of St. Conon, issuing from the neighboring
      convent, conveyed them in a boat to the sanctuary of the church.
      51 As one of these criminals was of the blue, and the other of
      the green livery, the two factions were equally provoked by the
      cruelty of their oppressor, or the ingratitude of their patron;
      and a short truce was concluded till they had delivered their
      prisoners and satisfied their revenge. The palace of the præfect,
      who withstood the seditious torrent, was instantly burnt, his
      officers and guards were massacred, the prisons were forced open,
      and freedom was restored to those who could only use it for the
      public destruction. A military force, which had been despatched
      to the aid of the civil magistrate, was fiercely encountered by
      an armed multitude, whose numbers and boldness continually
      increased; and the Heruli, the wildest Barbarians in the service
      of the empire, overturned the priests and their relics, which,
      from a pious motive, had been rashly interposed to separate the
      bloody conflict. The tumult was exasperated by this sacrilege,
      the people fought with enthusiasm in the cause of God; the women,
      from the roofs and windows, showered stones on the heads of the
      soldiers, who darted fire brands against the houses; and the
      various flames, which had been kindled by the hands of citizens
      and strangers, spread without control over the face of the city.
      The conflagration involved the cathedral of St. Sophia, the baths
      of Zeuxippus, a part of the palace, from the first entrance to
      the altar of Mars, and the long portico from the palace to the
      forum of Constantine: a large hospital, with the sick patients,
      was consumed; many churches and stately edifices were destroyed
      and an immense treasure of gold and silver was either melted or
      lost. From such scenes of horror and distress, the wise and
      wealthy citizens escaped over the Bosphorus to the Asiatic side;
      and during five days Constantinople was abandoned to the
      factions, whose watchword, Nika, vanquish! has given a name to
      this memorable sedition. 52

      50 (return) [ This dialogue, which Theophanes has preserved,
      exhibits the popular language, as well as the manners, of
      Constantinople, in the vith century. Their Greek is mingled with
      many strange and barbarous words, for which Ducange cannot always
      find a meaning or etymology.]

      51 (return) [ See this church and monastery in Ducange, C. P.
      Christiana, l. iv p 182.]

      52 (return) [ The history of the Nika sedition is extracted from
      Marcellinus, (in Chron.,) Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 26,) John
      Malala, (tom. ii. p. 213—218,) Chron. Paschal., (p. 336—340,)
      Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 154—158) and Zonaras, (l. xiv. p.
      61—63.)]


      As long as the factions were divided, the triumphant blues, and
      desponding greens, appeared to behold with the same indifference
      the disorders of the state. They agreed to censure the corrupt
      management of justice and the finance; and the two responsible
      ministers, the artful Tribonian, and the rapacious John of
      Cappadocia, were loudly arraigned as the authors of the public
      misery. The peaceful murmurs of the people would have been
      disregarded: they were heard with respect when the city was in
      flames; the quaestor, and the præfect, were instantly removed,
      and their offices were filled by two senators of blameless
      integrity. After this popular concession, Justinian proceeded to
      the hippodrome to confess his own errors, and to accept the
      repentance of his grateful subjects; but they distrusted his
      assurances, though solemnly pronounced in the presence of the
      holy Gospels; and the emperor, alarmed by their distrust,
      retreated with precipitation to the strong fortress of the
      palace. The obstinacy of the tumult was now imputed to a secret
      and ambitious conspiracy, and a suspicion was entertained, that
      the insurgents, more especially the green faction, had been
      supplied with arms and money by Hypatius and Pompey, two
      patricians, who could neither forget with honor, nor remember
      with safety, that they were the nephews of the emperor
      Anastasius. Capriciously trusted, disgraced, and pardoned, by the
      jealous levity of the monarch, they had appeared as loyal
      servants before the throne; and, during five days of the tumult,
      they were detained as important hostages; till at length, the
      fears of Justinian prevailing over his prudence, he viewed the
      two brothers in the light of spies, perhaps of assassins, and
      sternly commanded them to depart from the palace. After a
      fruitless representation, that obedience might lead to
      involuntary treason, they retired to their houses, and in the
      morning of the sixth day, Hypatius was surrounded and seized by
      the people, who, regardless of his virtuous resistance, and the
      tears of his wife, transported their favorite to the forum of
      Constantine, and instead of a diadem, placed a rich collar on his
      head. If the usurper, who afterwards pleaded the merit of his
      delay, had complied with the advice of his senate, and urged the
      fury of the multitude, their first irresistible effort might have
      oppressed or expelled his trembling competitor. The Byzantine
      palace enjoyed a free communication with the sea; vessels lay
      ready at the garden stairs; and a secret resolution was already
      formed, to convey the emperor with his family and treasures to a
      safe retreat, at some distance from the capital.


      Justinian was lost, if the prostitute whom he raised from the
      theatre had not renounced the timidity, as well as the virtues,
      of her sex. In the midst of a council, where Belisarius was
      present, Theodora alone displayed the spirit of a hero; and she
      alone, without apprehending his future hatred, could save the
      emperor from the imminent danger, and his unworthy fears. “If
      flight,” said the consort of Justinian, “were the only means of
      safety, yet I should disdain to fly. Death is the condition of
      our birth; but they who have reigned should never survive the
      loss of dignity and dominion. I implore Heaven, that I may never
      be seen, not a day, without my diadem and purple; that I may no
      longer behold the light, when I cease to be saluted with the name
      of queen. If you resolve, O Caesar! to fly, you have treasures;
      behold the sea, you have ships; but tremble lest the desire of
      life should expose you to wretched exile and ignominious death.
      For my own part, I adhere to the maxim of antiquity, that the
      throne is a glorious sepulchre.” The firmness of a woman restored
      the courage to deliberate and act, and courage soon discovers the
      resources of the most desperate situation. It was an easy and a
      decisive measure to revive the animosity of the factions; the
      blues were astonished at their own guilt and folly, that a
      trifling injury should provoke them to conspire with their
      implacable enemies against a gracious and liberal benefactor;
      they again proclaimed the majesty of Justinian; and the greens,
      with their upstart emperor, were left alone in the hippodrome.
      The fidelity of the guards was doubtful; but the military force
      of Justinian consisted in three thousand veterans, who had been
      trained to valor and discipline in the Persian and Illyrian wars.


      Under the command of Belisarius and Mundus, they silently marched
      in two divisions from the palace, forced their obscure way
      through narrow passages, expiring flames, and falling edifices,
      and burst open at the same moment the two opposite gates of the
      hippodrome. In this narrow space, the disorderly and affrighted
      crowd was incapable of resisting on either side a firm and
      regular attack; the blues signalized the fury of their
      repentance; and it is computed, that above thirty thousand
      persons were slain in the merciless and promiscuous carnage of
      the day. Hypatius was dragged from his throne, and conducted,
      with his brother Pompey, to the feet of the emperor: they
      implored his clemency; but their crime was manifest, their
      innocence uncertain, and Justinian had been too much terrified to
      forgive. The next morning the two nephews of Anastasius, with
      eighteen illustrious accomplices, of patrician or consular rank,
      were privately executed by the soldiers; their bodies were thrown
      into the sea, their palaces razed, and their fortunes
      confiscated. The hippodrome itself was condemned, during several
      years, to a mournful silence: with the restoration of the games,
      the same disorders revived; and the blue and green factions
      continued to afflict the reign of Justinian, and to disturb the
      tranquility of the Eastern empire. 53

      53 (return) [ Marcellinus says in general terms, innumeris
      populis in circotrucidatis. Procopius numbers 30,000 victims: and
      the 35,000 of Theophanes are swelled to 40,000 by the more recent
      Zonaras. Such is the usual progress of exaggeration.]


      III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the
      nations whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as
      the frontiers of Aethiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over
      sixty-four provinces, and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; 54
      his dominions were blessed by nature with the advantages of soil,
      situation, and climate: and the improvements of human art had
      been perpetually diffused along the coast of the Mediterranean
      and the banks of the Nile from ancient Troy to the Egyptian
      Thebes. Abraham 55 had been relieved by the well-known plenty of
      Egypt; the same country, a small and populous tract, was still
      capable of exporting, each year, two hundred and sixty thousand
      quarters of wheat for the use of Constantinople; 56 and the
      capital of Justinian was supplied with the manufactures of Sidon,
      fifteen centuries after they had been celebrated in the poems of
      Homer. 57 The annual powers of vegetation, instead of being
      exhausted by two thousand harvests, were renewed and invigorated
      by skilful husbandry, rich manure, and seasonable repose. The
      breed of domestic animals was infinitely multiplied. Plantations,
      buildings, and the instruments of labor and luxury, which are
      more durable than the term of human life, were accumulated by the
      care of successive generations. Tradition preserved, and
      experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts: society
      was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of
      exchange; and every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by
      the industry of a thousand hands. The invention of the loom and
      distaff has been piously ascribed to the gods. In every age, a
      variety of animal and vegetable productions, hair, skins, wool,
      flax, cotton, and at length silk, have been skilfully
      manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they were stained
      with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was
      successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom. In the
      choice of those colors 58 which imitate the beauties of nature,
      the freedom of taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep
      purple 59 which the Phœnicians extracted from a shell-fish, was
      restrained to the sacred person and palace of the emperor; and
      the penalties of treason were denounced against the ambitious
      subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the throne. 60

      54 (return) [ Hierocles, a contemporary of Justinian, composed
      his (Itineraria, p. 631,) review of the eastern provinces and
      cities, before the year 535, (Wesseling, in Praefat. and Not. ad
      p. 623, &c.)]

      55 (return) [ See the Book of Genesis (xii. 10) and the
      administration of Joseph. The annals of the Greeks and Hebrews
      agree in the early arts and plenty of Egypt: but this antiquity
      supposes a long series of improvement; and Warburton, who is
      almost stifled by the Hebrew calls aloud for the Samaritan,
      Chronology, (Divine Legation, vol. iii. p. 29, &c.) * Note: The
      recent extraordinary discoveries in Egyptian antiquities strongly
      confirm the high notion of the early Egyptian civilization, and
      imperatively demand a longer period for their development. As to
      the common Hebrew chronology, as far as such a subject is capable
      of demonstration, it appears to me to have been framed, with a
      particular view, by the Jews of Tiberias. It was not the
      chronology of the Samaritans, not that of the LXX., not that of
      Josephus, not that of St. Paul.—M.]

      56 (return) [ Eight millions of Roman modii, besides a
      contribution of 80,000 aurei for the expenses of water-carriage,
      from which the subject was graciously excused. See the 13th Edict
      of Justinian: the numbers are checked and verified by the
      agreement of the Greek and Latin texts.]

      57 (return) [ Homer’s Iliad, vi. 289. These veils, were the work
      of the Sidonian women. But this passage is more honorable to the
      manufactures than to the navigation of Phoenicia, from whence
      they had been imported to Troy in Phrygian bottoms.]

      58 (return) [ See in Ovid (de Arte Amandi, iii. 269, &c.) a
      poetical list of twelve colors borrowed from flowers, the
      elements, &c. But it is almost impossible to discriminate by
      words all the nice and various shades both of art and nature.]

      59 (return) [ By the discovery of cochineal, &c., we far surpass
      the colors of antiquity. Their royal purple had a strong smell,
      and a dark cast as deep as bull’s blood—obscuritas rubens, (says
      Cassiodorus, Var. 1, 2,) nigredo saguinea. The president Goguet
      (Origine des Loix et des Arts, part ii. l. ii. c. 2, p. 184—215)
      will amuse and satisfy the reader. I doubt whether his book,
      especially in England, is as well known as it deserves to be.]

      60 (return) [ Historical proofs of this jealousy have been
      occasionally introduced, and many more might have been added; but
      the arbitrary acts of despotism were justified by the sober and
      general declarations of law, (Codex Theodosian. l. x. tit. 21,
      leg. 3. Codex Justinian. l. xi. tit. 8, leg. 5.) An inglorious
      permission, and necessary restriction, was applied to the mince,
      the female dancers, (Cod. Theodos. l. xv. tit. 7, leg. 11.)]




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part III.


      I need not explain that silk 61 is originally spun from the
      bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb,
      from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the
      reign of Justinian, the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the
      white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine,
      the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and
      Europe; but as their education is more difficult, and their
      produce more uncertain, they were generally neglected, except in
      the little island of Ceos, near the coast of Attica. A thin gauze
      was procured from their webs, and this Cean manufacture, the
      invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired both in
      the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the
      garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient
      writer, who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed
      from the trees of the Seres or Chinese; 62 and this natural
      error, less marvellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by
      the knowledge of a valuable insect, the first artificer of the
      luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury was censured, in
      the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans; and Pliny,
      in affected though forcible language, has condemned the thirst of
      gain, which explores the last confines of the earth, for the
      pernicious purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies
      and transparent matrons. 63 6311 A dress which showed the turn of
      the limbs, and color of the skin, might gratify vanity, or
      provoke desire; the silks which had been closely woven in China
      were sometimes unravelled by the Phœnician women, and the
      precious materials were multiplied by a looser texture, and the
      intermixture of linen threads. 64 Two hundred years after the age
      of Pliny, the use of pure, or even of mixed silks, was confined
      to the female sex, till the opulent citizens of Rome and the
      provinces were insensibly familiarized with the example of
      Elagabalus, the first who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied
      the dignity of an emperor and a man. Aurelian complained, that a
      pound of silk was sold at Rome for twelve ounces of gold; but the
      supply increased with the demand, and the price diminished with
      the supply. If accident or monopoly sometimes raised the value
      even above the standard of Aurelian, the manufacturers of Tyre
      and Berytus were sometimes compelled, by the operation of the
      same causes, to content themselves with a ninth part of that
      extravagant rate. 65 A law was thought necessary to discriminate
      the dress of comedians from that of senators; and of the silk
      exported from its native country the far greater part was
      consumed by the subjects of Justinian. They were still more
      intimately acquainted with a shell-fish of the Mediterranean,
      surnamed the silk-worm of the sea: the fine wool or hair by which
      the mother-of-pearl affixes itself to the rock is now
      manufactured for curiosity rather than use; and a robe obtained
      from the same singular materials was the gift of the Roman
      emperor to the satraps of Armenia. 66

      61 (return) [ In the history of insects (far more wonderful than
      Ovid’s Metamorphoses) the silk-worm holds a conspicuous place.
      The bombyx of the Isle of Ceos, as described by Pliny, (Hist.
      Natur. xi. 26, 27, with the notes of the two learned Jesuits,
      Hardouin and Brotier,) may be illustrated by a similar species in
      China, (Memoires sur les Chinois, tom. ii. p. 575—598;) but our
      silk-worm, as well as the white mulberry-tree, were unknown to
      Theophrastus and Pliny.]

      62 (return) [ Georgic. ii. 121. Serica quando venerint in usum
      planissime non acio: suspicor tamen in Julii Caesaris aevo, nam
      ante non invenio, says Justus Lipsius, (Excursus i. ad Tacit.
      Annal. ii. 32.) See Dion Cassius, (l. xliii. p. 358, edit.
      Reimar,) and Pausanius, (l. vi. p. 519,) the first who describes,
      however strangely, the Seric insect.]

      63 (return) [ Tam longinquo orbe petitur, ut in publico matrona
      transluceat...ut denudet foeminas vestis, (Plin. vi. 20, xi. 21.)
      Varro and Publius Syrus had already played on the Toga vitrea,
      ventus texilis, and nebula linen, (Horat. Sermon. i. 2, 101, with
      the notes of Torrentius and Dacier.)]

      6311 (return) [ Gibbon must have written transparent draperies
      and naked matrons. Through sometimes affected, he is never
      inaccurate.—M.]

      64 (return) [ On the texture, colors, names, and use of the silk,
      half silk, and liuen garments of antiquity, see the profound,
      diffuse, and obscure researches of the great Salmasius, (in Hist.
      August. p. 127, 309, 310, 339, 341, 342, 344, 388—391, 395, 513,)
      who was ignorant of the most common trades of Dijon or Leyden.]

      65 (return) [ Flavius Vopiscus in Aurelian. c. 45, in Hist.
      August. p. 224. See Salmasius ad Hist. Aug. p. 392, and Plinian.
      Exercitat. in Solinum, p. 694, 695. The Anecdotes of Procopius
      (c. 25) state a partial and imperfect rate of the price of silk
      in the time of Justinian.]

      66 (return) [ Procopius de Edit. l. iii. c. 1. These pinnes de
      mer are found near Smyrna, Sicily, Corsica, and Minorca; and a
      pair of gloves of their silk was presented to Pope Benedict XIV.]


      A valuable merchandise of small bulk is capable of defraying the
      expense of land-carriage; and the caravans traversed the whole
      latitude of Asia in two hundred and forty-three days from the
      Chinese Ocean to the sea-coast of Syria. Silk was immediately
      delivered to the Romans by the Persian merchants, 67 who
      frequented the fairs of Armenia and Nisibis; but this trade,
      which in the intervals of truce was oppressed by avarice and
      jealousy, was totally interrupted by the long wars of the rival
      monarchies. The great king might proudly number Sogdiana, and
      even Serica, among the provinces of his empire; but his real
      dominion was bounded by the Oxus and his useful intercourse with
      the Sogdoites, beyond the river, depended on the pleasure of
      their conquerors, the white Huns, and the Turks, who successively
      reigned over that industrious people. Yet the most savage
      dominion has not extirpated the seeds of agriculture and
      commerce, in a region which is celebrated as one of the four
      gardens of Asia; the cities of Samarcand and Bochara are
      advantageously seated for the exchange of its various
      productions; and their merchants purchased from the Chinese, 68
      the raw or manufactured silk which they transported into Persia
      for the use of the Roman empire. In the vain capital of China,
      the Sogdian caravans were entertained as the suppliant embassies
      of tributary kingdoms, and if they returned in safety, the bold
      adventure was rewarded with exorbitant gain. But the difficult
      and perilous march from Samarcand to the first town of Shensi,
      could not be performed in less than sixty, eighty, or one hundred
      days: as soon as they had passed the Jaxartes they entered the
      desert; and the wandering hordes, unless they are restrained by
      armies and garrisons, have always considered the citizen and the
      traveller as the objects of lawful rapine. To escape the Tartar
      robbers, and the tyrants of Persia, the silk caravans explored a
      more southern road; they traversed the mountains of Thibet,
      descended the streams of the Ganges or the Indus, and patiently
      expected, in the ports of Guzerat and Malabar, the annual fleets
      of the West. 69 But the dangers of the desert were found less
      intolerable than toil, hunger, and the loss of time; the attempt
      was seldom renewed, and the only European who has passed that
      unfrequented way, applauds his own diligence, that, in nine
      months after his departure from Pekin, he reached the mouth of
      the Indus. The ocean, however, was open to the free communication
      of mankind. From the great river to the tropic of Cancer, the
      provinces of China were subdued and civilized by the emperors of
      the North; they were filled about the time of the Christian aera
      with cities and men, mulberry-trees and their precious
      inhabitants; and if the Chinese, with the knowledge of the
      compass, had possessed the genius of the Greeks or Phœnicians,
      they might have spread their discoveries over the southern
      hemisphere. I am not qualified to examine, and I am not disposed
      to believe, their distant voyages to the Persian Gulf, or the
      Cape of Good Hope; but their ancestors might equal the labors and
      success of the present race, and the sphere of their navigation
      might extend from the Isles of Japan to the Straits of Malacca,
      the pillars, if we may apply that name, of an Oriental Hercules.
      70 Without losing sight of land, they might sail along the coast
      to the extreme promontory of Achin, which is annually visited by
      ten or twelve ships laden with the productions, the manufactures,
      and even the artificers of China; the Island of Sumatra and the
      opposite peninsula are faintly delineated 71 as the regions of
      gold and silver; and the trading cities named in the geography of
      Ptolemy may indicate, that this wealth was not solely derived
      from the mines. The direct interval between Sumatra and Ceylon is
      about three hundred leagues: the Chinese and Indian navigators
      were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds; and
      the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships,
      which, instead of iron, were sewed together with the strong
      thread of the cocoanut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was
      divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the
      mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle, and the
      other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, foreign
      trade, and the capacious harbor of Trinquemale, which received
      and dismissed the fleets of the East and West. In this hospitable
      isle, at an equal distance (as it was computed) from their
      respective countries, the silk merchants of China, who had
      collected in their voyages aloes, cloves, nutmeg, and sandal
      wood, maintained a free and beneficial commerce with the
      inhabitants of the Persian Gulf. The subjects of the great king
      exalted, without a rival, his power and magnificence: and the
      Roman, who confounded their vanity by comparing his paltry coin
      with a gold medal of the emperor Anastasius, had sailed to
      Ceylon, in an Aethiopian ship, as a simple passenger. 72

      67 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 20, l. ii. c. 25;
      Gothic. l. iv. c. 17. Menander in Excerpt. Legat. p. 107. Of the
      Parthian or Persian empire, Isidore of Charax (in Stathmis
      Parthicis, p. 7, 8, in Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. ii.) has
      marked the roads, and Ammianus Marcellinus (l. xxiii. c. 6, p.
      400) has enumerated the provinces. * Note: See St. Martin, Mem.
      sur l’Armenie, vol. ii. p. 41.—M.]

      68 (return) [ The blind admiration of the Jesuits confounds the
      different periods of the Chinese history. They are more
      critically distinguished by M. de Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom.
      i. part i. in the Tables, part ii. in the Geography. Memoires de
      l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxii. xxxvi. xlii. xliii.,)
      who discovers the gradual progress of the truth of the annals and
      the extent of the monarchy, till the Christian aera. He has
      searched, with a curious eye, the connections of the Chinese with
      the nations of the West; but these connections are slight,
      casual, and obscure; nor did the Romans entertain a suspicion
      that the Seres or Sinae possessed an empire not inferior to their
      own. * Note: An abstract of the various opinions of the learned
      modern writers, Gosselin, Mannert, Lelewel, Malte-Brun, Heeren,
      and La Treille, on the Serica and the Thinae of the ancients, may
      be found in the new edition of Malte-Brun, vol. vi. p. 368,
      382.—M.]

      69 (return) [ The roads from China to Persia and Hindostan may be
      investigated in the relations of Hackluyt and Thevenot, the
      ambassadors of Sharokh, Anthony Jenkinson, the Pere Greuber, &c.
      See likewise Hanway’s Travels, vol. i. p. 345—357. A
      communication through Thibet has been lately explored by the
      English sovereigns of Bengal.]

      70 (return) [ For the Chinese navigation to Malacca and Achin,
      perhaps to Ceylon, see Renaudot, (on the two Mahometan
      Travellers, p. 8—11, 13—17, 141—157;) Dampier, (vol. ii. p. 136;)
      the Hist. Philosophique des deux Indes, (tom. i. p. 98,) and
      Hist. Generale des Voyages, (tom. vi. p. 201.)]

      71 (return) [ The knowledge, or rather ignorance, of Strabo,
      Pliny, Ptolemy, Arrian, Marcian, &c., of the countries eastward
      of Cape Comorin, is finely illustrated by D’Anville, (Antiquite
      Geographique de l’Inde, especially p. 161—198.) Our geography of
      India is improved by commerce and conquest; and has been
      illustrated by the excellent maps and memoirs of Major Rennel. If
      he extends the sphere of his inquiries with the same critical
      knowledge and sagacity, he will succeed, and may surpass, the
      first of modern geographers.]

      72 (return) [ The Taprobane of Pliny, (vi. 24,) Solinus, (c. 53,)
      and Salmas. Plinianae Exercitat., (p. 781, 782,) and most of the
      ancients, who often confound the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra,
      is more clearly described by Cosmas Indicopleustes; yet even the
      Christian topographer has exaggerated its dimensions. His
      information on the Indian and Chinese trade is rare and curious,
      (l. ii. p. 138, l. xi. p. 337, 338, edit. Montfaucon.)]


      As silk became of indispensable use, the emperor Justinian saw
      with concern that the Persians had occupied by land and sea the
      monopoly of this important supply, and that the wealth of his
      subjects was continually drained by a nation of enemies and
      idolaters. An active government would have restored the trade of
      Egypt and the navigation of the Red Sea, which had decayed with
      the prosperity of the empire; and the Roman vessels might have
      sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the ports of Ceylon, of
      Malacca, or even of China. Justinian embraced a more humble
      expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies, the
      Aethiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of
      navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, 73
      7311 still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror.
      Along the African coast, they penetrated to the equator in search
      of gold, emeralds, and aromatics; but they wisely declined an
      unequal competition, in which they must be always prevented by
      the vicinity of the Persians to the markets of India; and the
      emperor submitted to the disappointment, till his wishes were
      gratified by an unexpected event. The gospel had been preached to
      the Indians: a bishop already governed the Christians of St.
      Thomas on the pepper-coast of Malabar; a church was planted in
      Ceylon, and the missionaries pursued the footsteps of commerce to
      the extremities of Asia. 74 Two Persian monks had long resided in
      China, perhaps in the royal city of Nankin, the seat of a monarch
      addicted to foreign superstitions, and who actually received an
      embassy from the Isle of Ceylon. Amidst their pious occupations,
      they viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese,
      the manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silk-worms, whose
      education (either on trees or in houses) had once been considered
      as the labor of queens. 75 They soon discovered that it was
      impracticable to transport the short-lived insect, but that in
      the eggs a numerous progeny might be preserved and multiplied in
      a distant climate. Religion or interest had more power over the
      Persian monks than the love of their country: after a long
      journey, they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project
      to the emperor, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and
      promises of Justinian. To the historians of that prince, a
      campaign at the foot of Mount Caucasus has seemed more deserving
      of a minute relation than the labors of these missionaries of
      commerce, who again entered China, deceived a jealous people by
      concealing the eggs of the silk-worm in a hollow cane, and
      returned in triumph with the spoils of the East. Under their
      direction, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the
      artificial heat of dung; the worms were fed with mulberry leaves;
      they lived and labored in a foreign climate; a sufficient number
      of butterflies was saved to propagate the race, and trees were
      planted to supply the nourishment of the rising generations.
      Experience and reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt,
      and the Sogdoite ambassadors acknowledged, in the succeeding
      reign, that the Romans were not inferior to the natives of China
      in the education of the insects, and the manufactures of silk, 76
      in which both China and Constantinople have been surpassed by the
      industry of modern Europe. I am not insensible of the benefits of
      elegant luxury; yet I reflect with some pain, that if the
      importers of silk had introduced the art of printing, already
      practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and the entire
      decads of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of the
      sixth century.


      A larger view of the globe might at least have promoted the
      improvement of speculative science, but the Christian geography
      was forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture, and the study of
      nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The
      orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate
      zone, and represented the earth as an oblong surface, four
      hundred days’ journey in length, two hundred in breadth,
      encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal of the
      firmament. 77

      73 (return) [ See Procopius, Persic. (l. ii. c. 20.) Cosmas
      affords some interesting knowledge of the port and inscription of
      Adulis, (Topograph. Christ. l. ii. p. 138, 140—143,) and of the
      trade of the Axumites along the African coast of Barbaria or
      Zingi, (p. 138, 139,) and as far as Taprobane, (l. xi. p. 339.)]

      7311 (return) [ Mr. Salt obtained information of considerable
      ruins of an ancient town near Zulla, called Azoole, which answers
      to the position of Adulis. Mr. Salt was prevented by illness, Mr.
      Stuart, whom he sent, by the jealousy of the natives, from
      investigating these ruins: of their existence there seems no
      doubt. Salt’s 2d Journey, p. 452.—M.]

      74 (return) [ See the Christian missions in India, in Cosmas, (l.
      iii. p. 178, 179, l. xi. p. 337,) and consult Asseman. Bibliot.
      Orient. (tom. iv. p. 413—548.)]

      75 (return) [ The invention, manufacture, and general use of silk
      in China, may be seen in Duhalde, (Description Generale de la
      Chine, tom. ii. p. 165, 205—223.) The province of Chekian is the
      most renowned both for quantity and quality.]

      76 (return) [ Procopius, (l. viii. Gothic. iv. c. 17. Theophanes
      Byzant. apud Phot. Cod. lxxxiv. p. 38. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv.
      p. 69. Pagi tom. ii. p. 602) assigns to the year 552 this
      memorable importation. Menander (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 107)
      mentions the admiration of the Sogdoites; and Theophylact
      Simocatta (l. vii. c. 9) darkly represents the two rival kingdoms
      in (China) the country of silk.]

      77 (return) [ Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian
      navigator, performed his voyage about the year 522, and composed
      at Alexandria, between 535, and 547, Christian Topography,
      (Montfaucon, Praefat. c. i.,) in which he refutes the impious
      opinion, that the earth is a globe; and Photius had read this
      work, (Cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10,) which displays the prejudices of a
      monk, with the knowledge of a merchant; the most valuable part
      has been given in French and in Greek by Melchisedec Thevenot,
      (Relations Curieuses, part i.,) and the whole is since published
      in a splendid edition by Pere Montfaucon, (Nova Collectio Patrum,
      Paris, 1707, 2 vols. in fol., tom. ii. p. 113—346.) But the
      editor, a theologian, might blush at not discovering the
      Nestorian heresy of Cosmas, which has been detected by La Croz
      (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40—56.)]


      IV. The subjects of Justinian were dissatisfied with the times,
      and with the government. Europe was overrun by the Barbarians,
      and Asia by the monks: the poverty of the West discouraged the
      trade and manufactures of the East: the produce of labor was
      consumed by the unprofitable servants of the church, the state,
      and the army; and a rapid decrease was felt in the fixed and
      circulating capitals which constitute the national wealth. The
      public distress had been alleviated by the economy of Anastasius,
      and that prudent emperor accumulated an immense treasure, while
      he delivered his people from the most odious or oppressive taxes.
      7711 Their gratitude universally applauded the abolition of the
      gold of affliction, a personal tribute on the industry of the
      poor, 78 but more intolerable, as it should seem, in the form
      than in the substance, since the flourishing city of Edessa paid
      only one hundred and forty pounds of gold, which was collected in
      four years from ten thousand artificers. 79 Yet such was the
      parsimony which supported this liberal disposition, that, in a
      reign of twenty-seven years, Anastasius saved, from his annual
      revenue, the enormous sum of thirteen millions sterling, or three
      hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold. 80 His example was
      neglected, and his treasure was abused, by the nephew of Justin.
      The riches of Justinian were speedily exhausted by alms and
      buildings, by ambitious wars, and ignominious treaties. His
      revenues were found inadequate to his expenses. Every art was
      tried to extort from the people the gold and silver which he
      scattered with a lavish hand from Persia to France: 81 his reign
      was marked by the vicissitudes or rather by the combat, of
      rapaciousness and avarice, of splendor and poverty; he lived with
      the reputation of hidden treasures, 82 and bequeathed to his
      successor the payment of his debts. 83 Such a character has been
      justly accused by the voice of the people and of posterity: but
      public discontent is credulous; private malice is bold; and a
      lover of truth will peruse with a suspicious eye the instructive
      anecdotes of Procopius. The secret historian represents only the
      vices of Justinian, and those vices are darkened by his
      malevolent pencil. Ambiguous actions are imputed to the worst
      motives; error is confounded with guilt, accident with design,
      and laws with abuses; the partial injustice of a moment is
      dexterously applied as the general maxim of a reign of thirty-two
      years; the emperor alone is made responsible for the faults of
      his officers, the disorders of the times, and the corruption of
      his subjects; and even the calamities of nature, plagues,
      earthquakes, and inundations, are imputed to the prince of the
      daemons, who had mischievously assumed the form of Justinian. 84

      7711 (return) [ See the character of Anastasius in Joannes Lydus
      de Magistratibus, iii. c. 45, 46, p. 230—232. His economy is
      there said to have degenerated into parsimony. He is accused of
      having taken away the levying of taxes and payment of the troops
      from the municipal authorities, (the decurionate) in the Eastern
      cities, and intrusted it to an extortionate officer named Mannus.
      But he admits that the imperial revenue was enormously increased
      by this measure. A statue of iron had been erected to Anastasius
      in the Hippodrome, on which appeared one morning this pasquinade.
      This epigram is also found in the Anthology. Jacobs, vol. iv. p.
      114 with some better readings. This iron statue meetly do we
      place To thee, world-wasting king, than brass more base; For all
      the death, the penury, famine, woe, That from thy wide-destroying
      avarice flow, This fell Charybdis, Scylla, near to thee, This
      fierce devouring Anastasius, see; And tremble, Scylla! on thee,
      too, his greed, Coining thy brazen deity, may feed. But Lydus,
      with no uncommon inconsistency in such writers, proceeds to paint
      the character of Anastasius as endowed with almost every virtue,
      not excepting the utmost liberality. He was only prevented by
      death from relieving his subjects altogether from the capitation
      tax, which he greatly diminished.—M.]

      78 (return) [ Evagrius (l. ii. c. 39, 40) is minute and grateful,
      but angry with Zosimus for calumniating the great Constantine. In
      collecting all the bonds and records of the tax, the humanity of
      Anastasius was diligent and artful: fathers were sometimes
      compelled to prostitute their daughters, (Zosim. Hist. l. ii. c.
      38, p. 165, 166, Lipsiae, 1784.) Timotheus of Gaza chose such an
      event for the subject of a tragedy, (Suidas, tom. iii. p. 475,)
      which contributed to the abolition of the tax, (Cedrenus, p.
      35,)—a happy instance (if it be true) of the use of the theatre.]

      79 (return) [ See Josua Stylites, in the Bibliotheca Orientalis
      of Asseman, (tom. p. 268.) This capitation tax is slightly
      mentioned in the Chronicle of Edessa.]

      80 (return) [ Procopius (Anecdot. c. 19) fixes this sum from the
      report of the treasurers themselves. Tiberias had vicies ter
      millies; but far different was his empire from that of
      Anastasius.]

      81 (return) [ Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 30,) in the next generation,
      was moderate and well informed; and Zonaras, (l. xiv. c. 61,) in
      the xiith century, had read with care, and thought without
      prejudice; yet their colors are almost as black as those of the
      anecdotes.]

      82 (return) [ Procopius (Anecdot. c. 30) relates the idle
      conjectures of the times. The death of Justinian, says the secret
      historian, will expose his wealth or poverty.]

      83 (return) [ See Corippus de Laudibus Justini Aug. l. ii. 260,
      &c., 384, &c “Plurima sunt vivo nimium neglecta parenti, Unde tot
      exhaustus contraxit debita fiscus.” Centenaries of gold were
      brought by strong men into the Hippodrome, “Debita persolvit,
      genitoris cauta recepit.”]

      84 (return) [ The Anecdotes (c. 11—14, 18, 20—30) supply many
      facts and more complaints. * Note: The work of Lydus de
      Magistratibus (published by Hase at Paris, 1812, and reprinted in
      the new edition of the Byzantine Historians,) was written during
      the reign of Justinian. This work of Lydus throws no great light
      on the earlier history of the Roman magistracy, but gives some
      curious details of the changes and retrenchments in the offices
      of state, which took place at this time. The personal history of
      the author, with the account of his early and rapid advancement,
      and the emoluments of the posts which he successively held, with
      the bitter disappointment which he expresses, at finding himself,
      at the height of his ambition, in an unpaid place, is an
      excellent illustration of this statement. Gibbon has before, c.
      iv. n. 45, and c. xvii. n. 112, traced the progress of a Roman
      citizen to the highest honors of the state under the empire; the
      steps by which Lydus reached his humbler eminence may likewise
      throw light on the civil service at this period. He was first
      received into the office of the Praetorian præfect; became a
      notary in that office, and made in one year 1000 golden solidi,
      and that without extortion. His place and the influence of his
      relatives obtained him a wife with 400 pounds of gold for her
      dowry. He became chief chartularius, with an annual stipend of
      twenty-four solidi, and considerable emoluments for all the
      various services which he performed. He rose to an Augustalis,
      and finally to the dignity of Corniculus, the highest, and at one
      time the most lucrative office in the department. But the
      Praetorian præfect had gradually been deprived of his powers and
      his honors. He lost the superintendence of the supply and
      manufacture of arms; the uncontrolled charge of the public posts;
      the levying of the troops; the command of the army in war when
      the emperors ceased nominally to command in person, but really
      through the Praetorian præfect; that of the household troops,
      which fell to the magister aulae. At length the office was so
      completely stripped of its power, as to be virtually abolished,
      (see de Magist. l. iii. c. 40, p. 220, &c.) This diminution of
      the office of the præfect destroyed the emoluments of his
      subordinate officers, and Lydus not only drew no revenue from his
      dignity, but expended upon it all the gains of his former
      services. Lydus gravely refers this calamitous, and, as he
      considers it, fatal degradation of the Praetorian office to the
      alteration in the style of the official documents from Latin to
      Greek; and refers to a prophecy of a certain Fonteius, which
      connected the ruin of the Roman empire with its abandonment of
      its language. Lydus chiefly owed his promotion to his knowledge
      of Latin!—M.]


      After this precaution, I shall briefly relate the anecdotes of
      avarice and rapine under the following heads: I. Justinian was so
      profuse that he could not be liberal. The civil and military
      officers, when they were admitted into the service of the palace,
      obtained an humble rank and a moderate stipend; they ascended by
      seniority to a station of affluence and repose; the annual
      pensions, of which the most honorable class was abolished by
      Justinian, amounted to four hundred thousand pounds; and this
      domestic economy was deplored by the venal or indigent courtiers
      as the last outrage on the majesty of the empire. The posts, the
      salaries of physicians, and the nocturnal illuminations, were
      objects of more general concern; and the cities might justly
      complain, that he usurped the municipal revenues which had been
      appropriated to these useful institutions. Even the soldiers were
      injured; and such was the decay of military spirit, that they
      were injured with impunity. The emperor refused, at the return of
      each fifth year, the customary donative of five pieces of gold,
      reduced his veterans to beg their bread, and suffered unpaid
      armies to melt away in the wars of Italy and Persia. II. The
      humanity of his predecessors had always remitted, in some
      auspicious circumstance of their reign, the arrears of the public
      tribute, and they dexterously assumed the merit of resigning
      those claims which it was impracticable to enforce. “Justinian,
      in the space of thirty-two years, has never granted a similar
      indulgence; and many of his subjects have renounced the
      possession of those lands whose value is insufficient to satisfy
      the demands of the treasury. To the cities which had suffered by
      hostile inroads Anastasius promised a general exemption of seven
      years: the provinces of Justinian have been ravaged by the
      Persians and Arabs, the Huns and Sclavonians; but his vain and
      ridiculous dispensation of a single year has been confined to
      those places which were actually taken by the enemy.” Such is the
      language of the secret historian, who expressly denies that any
      indulgence was granted to Palestine after the revolt of the
      Samaritans; a false and odious charge, confuted by the authentic
      record which attests a relief of thirteen centenaries of gold
      (fifty-two thousand pounds) obtained for that desolate province
      by the intercession of St. Sabas. 85 III. Procopius has not
      condescended to explain the system of taxation, which fell like a
      hail-storm upon the land, like a devouring pestilence on its
      inhabitants: but we should become the accomplices of his
      malignity, if we imputed to Justinian alone the ancient though
      rigorous principle, that a whole district should be condemned to
      sustain the partial loss of the persons or property of
      individuals. The Annona, or supply of corn for the use of the
      army and capital, was a grievous and arbitrary exaction, which
      exceeded, perhaps in a tenfold proportion, the ability of the
      farmer; and his distress was aggravated by the partial injustice
      of weights and measures, and the expense and labor of distant
      carriage. In a time of scarcity, an extraordinary requisition was
      made to the adjacent provinces of Thrace, Bithynia, and Phrygia:
      but the proprietors, after a wearisome journey and perilous
      navigation, received so inadequate a compensation, that they
      would have chosen the alternative of delivering both the corn and
      price at the doors of their granaries. These precautions might
      indicate a tender solicitude for the welfare of the capital; yet
      Constantinople did not escape the rapacious despotism of
      Justinian. Till his reign, the Straits of the Bosphorus and
      Hellespont were open to the freedom of trade, and nothing was
      prohibited except the exportation of arms for the service of the
      Barbarians. At each of these gates of the city, a praetor was
      stationed, the minister of Imperial avarice; heavy customs were
      imposed on the vessels and their merchandise; the oppression was
      retaliated on the helpless consumer; the poor were afflicted by
      the artificial scarcity, and exorbitant price of the market; and
      a people, accustomed to depend on the liberality of their prince,
      might sometimes complain of the deficiency of water and bread. 86
      The aerial tribute, without a name, a law, or a definite object,
      was an annual gift of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds,
      which the emperor accepted from his Praetorian præfect; and the
      means of payment were abandoned to the discretion of that
      powerful magistrate.


      IV. Even such a tax was less intolerable than the privilege of
      monopolies, 8611 which checked the fair competition of industry,
      and, for the sake of a small and dishonest gain, imposed an
      arbitrary burden on the wants and luxury of the subject. “As
      soon” (I transcribe the Anecdotes) “as the exclusive sale of silk
      was usurped by the Imperial treasurer, a whole people, the
      manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus, was reduced to extreme misery,
      and either perished with hunger, or fled to the hostile dominions
      of Persia.” A province might suffer by the decay of its
      manufactures, but in this example of silk, Procopius has
      partially overlooked the inestimable and lasting benefit which
      the empire received from the curiosity of Justinian. His addition
      of one seventh to the ordinary price of copper money may be
      interpreted with the same candor; and the alteration, which might
      be wise, appears to have been innocent; since he neither alloyed
      the purity, nor enhanced the value, of the gold coin, 87 the
      legal measure of public and private payments. V. The ample
      jurisdiction required by the farmers of the revenue to accomplish
      their engagements might be placed in an odious light, as if they
      had purchased from the emperor the lives and fortunes of their
      fellow-citizens. And a more direct sale of honors and offices was
      transacted in the palace, with the permission, or at least with
      the connivance, of Justinian and Theodora. The claims of merit,
      even those of favor, were disregarded, and it was almost
      reasonable to expect, that the bold adventurer, who had
      undertaken the trade of a magistrate, should find a rich
      compensation for infamy, labor, danger, the debts which he had
      contracted, and the heavy interest which he paid. A sense of the
      disgrace and mischief of this venal practice, at length awakened
      the slumbering virtue of Justinian; and he attempted, by the
      sanction of oaths 88 and penalties, to guard the integrity of his
      government: but at the end of a year of perjury, his rigorous
      edict was suspended, and corruption licentiously abused her
      triumph over the impotence of the laws. VI. The testament of
      Eulalius, count of the domestics, declared the emperor his sole
      heir, on condition, however, that he should discharge his debts
      and legacies, allow to his three daughters a decent maintenance,
      and bestow each of them in marriage, with a portion of ten pounds
      of gold. But the splendid fortune of Eulalius had been consumed
      by fire, and the inventory of his goods did not exceed the
      trifling sum of five hundred and sixty-four pieces of gold. A
      similar instance, in Grecian history, admonished the emperor of
      the honorable part prescribed for his imitation. He checked the
      selfish murmurs of the treasury, applauded the confidence of his
      friend, discharged the legacies and debts, educated the three
      virgins under the eye of the empress Theodora, and doubled the
      marriage portion which had satisfied the tenderness of their
      father. 89 The humanity of a prince (for princes cannot be
      generous) is entitled to some praise; yet even in this act of
      virtue we may discover the inveterate custom of supplanting the
      legal or natural heirs, which Procopius imputes to the reign of
      Justinian. His charge is supported by eminent names and
      scandalous examples; neither widows nor orphans were spared; and
      the art of soliciting, or extorting, or supposing testaments, was
      beneficially practised by the agents of the palace. This base and
      mischievous tyranny invades the security of private life; and the
      monarch who has indulged an appetite for gain, will soon be
      tempted to anticipate the moment of succession, to interpret
      wealth as an evidence of guilt, and to proceed, from the claim of
      inheritance, to the power of confiscation. VII. Among the forms
      of rapine, a philosopher may be permitted to name the conversion
      of Pagan or heretical riches to the use of the faithful; but in
      the time of Justinian this holy plunder was condemned by the
      sectaries alone, who became the victims of his orthodox avarice.
      90

      85 (return) [ One to Scythopolis, capital of the second
      Palestine, and twelve for the rest of the province. Aleman. (p.
      59) honestly produces this fact from a Ms. life of St. Sabas, by
      his disciple Cyril, in the Vatican Library, and since published
      by Cotelerius.]

      86 (return) [ John Malala (tom. ii. p. 232) mentions the want of
      bread, and Zonaras (l. xiv. p. 63) the leaden pipes, which
      Justinian, or his servants, stole from the aqueducts.]

      8611 (return) [ Hullman (Geschichte des Byzantinischen Handels.
      p. 15) shows that the despotism of the government was aggravated
      by the unchecked rapenity of the officers. This state monopoly,
      even of corn, wine, and oil, was to force at the time of the
      first crusade.—M.]

      87 (return) [ For an aureus, one sixth of an ounce of gold,
      instead of 210, he gave no more than 180 folles, or ounces of
      copper. A disproportion of the mint, below the market price, must
      have soon produced a scarcity of small money. In England twelve
      pence in copper would sell for no more than seven pence, (Smith’s
      Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 49.) For
      Justinian’s gold coin, see Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 30.)]

      88 (return) [ The oath is conceived in the most formidable words,
      (Novell. viii. tit. 3.) The defaulters imprecate on themselves,
      quicquid haben: telorum armamentaria coeli: the part of Judas,
      the leprosy of Gieza, the tremor of Cain, &c., besides all
      temporal pains.]

      89 (return) [ A similar or more generous act of friendship is
      related by Lucian of Eudamidas of Corinth, (in Toxare, c. 22, 23,
      tom. ii. p. 530,) and the story has produced an ingenious, though
      feeble, comedy of Fontenelle.]

      90 (return) [ John Malala, tom. ii. p. 101, 102, 103.]




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part IV.


      Dishonor might be ultimately reflected on the character of
      Justinian; but much of the guilt, and still more of the profit,
      was intercepted by the ministers, who were seldom promoted for
      their virtues, and not always selected for their talents. 91 The
      merits of Tribonian the quaestor will hereafter be weighed in the
      reformation of the Roman law; but the economy of the East was
      subordinate to the Praetorian præfect, and Procopius has
      justified his anecdotes by the portrait which he exposes in his
      public history, of the notorious vices of John of Cappadocia. 92


      921 His knowledge was not borrowed from the schools, 93 and his
      style was scarcely legible; but he excelled in the powers of
      native genius, to suggest the wisest counsels, and to find
      expedients in the most desperate situations. The corruption of
      his heart was equal to the vigor of his understanding. Although
      he was suspected of magic and Pagan superstition, he appeared
      insensible to the fear of God or the reproaches of man; and his
      aspiring fortune was raised on the death of thousands, the
      poverty of millions, the ruins of cities, and the desolation of
      provinces. From the dawn of light to the moment of dinner, he
      assiduously labored to enrich his master and himself at the
      expense of the Roman world; the remainder of the day was spent in
      sensual and obscene pleasures, 931 and the silent hours of the
      night were interrupted by the perpetual dread of the justice of
      an assassin. His abilities, perhaps his vices, recommended him to
      the lasting friendship of Justinian: the emperor yielded with
      reluctance to the fury of the people; his victory was displayed
      by the immediate restoration of their enemy; and they felt above
      ten years, under his oppressive administration, that he was
      stimulated by revenge, rather than instructed by misfortune.
      Their murmurs served only to fortify the resolution of Justinian;
      but the præfect, in the insolence of favor, provoked the
      resentment of Theodora, disdained a power before which every knee
      was bent, and attempted to sow the seeds of discord between the
      emperor and his beloved consort. Even Theodora herself was
      constrained to dissemble, to wait a favorable moment, and, by an
      artful conspiracy, to render John of Coppadocia the accomplice of
      his own destruction. 932 At a time when Belisarius, unless he had
      been a hero, must have shown himself a rebel, his wife Antonina,
      who enjoyed the secret confidence of the empress, communicated
      his feigned discontent to Euphemia, the daughter of the præfect;
      the credulous virgin imparted to her father the dangerous
      project, and John, who might have known the value of oaths and
      promises, was tempted to accept a nocturnal, and almost
      treasonable, interview with the wife of Belisarius. An ambuscade
      of guards and eunuchs had been posted by the command of Theodora;
      they rushed with drawn swords to seize or to punish the guilty
      minister: he was saved by the fidelity of his attendants; but
      instead of appealing to a gracious sovereign, who had privately
      warned him of his danger, he pusillanimously fled to the
      sanctuary of the church. The favorite of Justinian was sacrificed
      to conjugal tenderness or domestic tranquility; the conversion of
      a præfect into a priest extinguished his ambitious hopes: but the
      friendship of the emperor alleviated his disgrace, and he
      retained in the mild exile of Cyzicus an ample portion of his
      riches. Such imperfect revenge could not satisfy the unrelenting
      hatred of Theodora; the murder of his old enemy, the bishop of
      Cyzicus, afforded a decent pretence; and John of Cappadocia,
      whose actions had deserved a thousand deaths, was at last
      condemned for a crime of which he was innocent. A great minister,
      who had been invested with the honors of consul and patrician,
      was ignominiously scourged like the vilest of malefactors; a
      tattered cloak was the sole remnant of his fortunes; he was
      transported in a bark to the place of his banishment at
      Antinopolis in Upper Egypt, and the præfect of the East begged
      his bread through the cities which had trembled at his name.
      During an exile of seven years, his life was protracted and
      threatened by the ingenious cruelty of Theodora; and when her
      death permitted the emperor to recall a servant whom he had
      abandoned with regret, the ambition of John of Cappadocia was
      reduced to the humble duties of the sacerdotal profession. His
      successors convinced the subjects of Justinian, that the arts of
      oppression might still be improved by experience and industry;
      the frauds of a Syrian banker were introduced into the
      administration of the finances; and the example of the præfect
      was diligently copied by the quaestor, the public and private
      treasurer, the governors of provinces, and the principal
      magistrates of the Eastern empire. 94

      91 (return) [ One of these, Anatolius, perished in an
      earthquake—doubtless a judgment! The complaints and clamors of
      the people in Agathias (l. v. p. 146, 147) are almost an echo of
      the anecdote. The aliena pecunia reddenda of Corippus (l. ii.
      381, &c.,) is not very honorable to Justinian’s memory.]

      92 (return) [ See the history and character of John of Cappadocia
      in Procopius. (Persic, l. i. c. 35, 25, l. ii. c. 30. Vandal. l.
      i. c. 13. Anecdot. c. 2, 17, 22.) The agreement of the history
      and anecdotes is a mortal wound to the reputation of the
      praefct.]

      921 (return) [ This view, particularly of the cruelty of John of
      Cappadocia, is confirmed by the testimony of Joannes Lydus, who
      was in the office of the præfect, and eye-witness of the tortures
      inflicted by his command on the miserable debtors, or supposed
      debtors, of the state. He mentions one horrible instance of a
      respectable old man, with whom he was personally acquainted, who,
      being suspected of possessing money, was hung up by the hands
      till he was dead. Lydus de Magist. lib. iii. c. 57, p. 254.—M.]

      93 (return) [ A forcible expression.]

      931 (return) [ Joannes Lydus is diffuse on this subject, lib.
      iii. c. 65, p. 268. But the indignant virtue of Lydus seems
      greatly stimulated by the loss of his official fees, which he
      ascribes to the innovations of the minister.—M.]

      932 (return) [ According to Lydus, Theodora disclosed the crimes
      and unpopularity of the minister to Justinian, but the emperor
      had not the courage to remove, and was unable to replace, a
      servant, under whom his finances seemed to prosper. He attributes
      the sedition and conflagration to the popular resentment against
      the tyranny of John, lib. iii. c 70, p. 278. Unfortunately there
      is a large gap in his work just at this period.—M.]

      94 (return) [ The chronology of Procopius is loose and obscure;
      but with the aid of Pagi I can discern that John was appointed
      Praetorian præfect of the East in the year 530—that he was
      removed in January, 532—restored before June, 533—banished in
      541—and recalled between June, 548, and April 1, 549. Aleman. (p.
      96, 97) gives the list of his ten successors—a rapid series in a
      part of a single reign. * Note: Lydus gives a high character of
      Phocas, his successor tom. iii. c. 78 p. 288.—M.]


      V. The edifices of Justinian were cemented with the blood and
      treasure of his people; but those stately structures appeared to
      announce the prosperity of the empire, and actually displayed the
      skill of their architects. Both the theory and practice of the
      arts which depend on mathematical science and mechanical power,
      were cultivated under the patronage of the emperors; the fame of
      Archimedes was rivalled by Proclus and Anthemius; and if their
      miracles had been related by intelligent spectators, they might
      now enlarge the speculations, instead of exciting the distrust,
      of philosophers. A tradition has prevailed, that the Roman fleet
      was reduced to ashes in the port of Syracuse, by the
      burning-glasses of Archimedes; 95 and it is asserted, that a
      similar expedient was employed by Proclus to destroy the Gothic
      vessels in the harbor of Constantinople, and to protect his
      benefactor Anastasius against the bold enterprise of Vitalian. 96
      A machine was fixed on the walls of the city, consisting of a
      hexagon mirror of polished brass, with many smaller and movable
      polygons to receive and reflect the rays of the meridian sun; and
      a consuming flame was darted, to the distance, perhaps of two
      hundred feet. 97 The truth of these two extraordinary facts is
      invalidated by the silence of the most authentic historians; and
      the use of burning-glasses was never adopted in the attack or
      defence of places. 98 Yet the admirable experiments of a French
      philosopher 99 have demonstrated the possibility of such a
      mirror; and, since it is possible, I am more disposed to
      attribute the art to the greatest mathematicians of antiquity,
      than to give the merit of the fiction to the idle fancy of a monk
      or a sophist. According to another story, Proclus applied sulphur
      to the destruction of the Gothic fleet; 100 in a modern
      imagination, the name of sulphur is instantly connected with the
      suspicion of gunpowder, and that suspicion is propagated by the
      secret arts of his disciple Anthemius. 101 A citizen of Tralles
      in Asia had five sons, who were all distinguished in their
      respective professions by merit and success. Olympius excelled in
      the knowledge and practice of the Roman jurisprudence. Dioscorus
      and Alexander became learned physicians; but the skill of the
      former was exercised for the benefit of his fellow-citizens,
      while his more ambitious brother acquired wealth and reputation
      at Rome. The fame of Metrodorus the grammarian, and of Anthemius
      the mathematician and architect, reached the ears of the emperor
      Justinian, who invited them to Constantinople; and while the one
      instructed the rising generation in the schools of eloquence, the
      other filled the capital and provinces with more lasting
      monuments of his art. In a trifling dispute relative to the walls
      or windows of their contiguous houses, he had been vanquished by
      the eloquence of his neighbor Zeno; but the orator was defeated
      in his turn by the master of mechanics, whose malicious, though
      harmless, stratagems are darkly represented by the ignorance of
      Agathias. In a lower room, Anthemius arranged several vessels or
      caldrons of water, each of them covered by the wide bottom of a
      leathern tube, which rose to a narrow top, and was artificially
      conveyed among the joists and rafters of the adjacent building. A
      fire was kindled beneath the caldron; the steam of the boiling
      water ascended through the tubes; the house was shaken by the
      efforts of imprisoned air, and its trembling inhabitants might
      wonder that the city was unconscious of the earthquake which they
      had felt. At another time, the friends of Zeno, as they sat at
      table, were dazzled by the intolerable light which flashed in
      their eyes from the reflecting mirrors of Anthemius; they were
      astonished by the noise which he produced from the collision of
      certain minute and sonorous particles; and the orator declared in
      tragic style to the senate, that a mere mortal must yield to the
      power of an antagonist, who shook the earth with the trident of
      Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of Jove himself.
      The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore the Milesian,
      was excited and employed by a prince, whose taste for
      architecture had degenerated into a mischievous and costly
      passion. His favorite architects submitted their designs and
      difficulties to Justinian, and discreetly confessed how much
      their laborious meditations were surpassed by the intuitive
      knowledge of celestial inspiration of an emperor, whose views
      were always directed to the benefit of his people, the glory of
      his reign, and the salvation of his soul. 102

      95 (return) [ This conflagration is hinted by Lucian (in Hippia,
      c. 2) and Galen, (l. iii. de Temperamentis, tom. i. p. 81, edit.
      Basil.) in the second century. A thousand years afterwards, it is
      positively affirmed by Zonaras, (l. ix. p. 424,) on the faith of
      Dion Cassius, Tzetzes, (Chiliad ii. 119, &c.,) Eustathius, (ad
      Iliad. E. p. 338,) and the scholiast of Lucian. See Fabricius,
      (Bibliot. Graec. l. iii. c. 22, tom. ii. p. 551, 552,) to whom I
      am more or less indebted for several of these quotations.]

      96 (return) [ Zonaras (l. xi. c. p. 55) affirms the fact, without
      quoting any evidence.]

      97 (return) [ Tzetzes describes the artifice of these
      burning-glasses, which he had read, perhaps, with no learned
      eyes, in a mathematical treatise of Anthemius. That treatise has
      been lately published, translated, and illustrated, by M. Dupuys,
      a scholar and a mathematician, (Memoires de l’Academie des
      Inscriptions, tom xlii p. 392—451.)]

      98 (return) [ In the siege of Syracuse, by the silence of
      Polybius, Plutarch, Livy; in the siege of Constantinople, by that
      of Marcellinus and all the contemporaries of the vith century.]

      99 (return) [ Without any previous knowledge of Tzetzes or
      Anthemius, the immortal Buffon imagined and executed a set of
      burning-glasses, with which he could inflame planks at the
      distance of 200 feet, (Supplement a l’Hist. Naturelle, tom. i.
      399—483, quarto edition.) What miracles would not his genius have
      performed for the public service, with royal expense, and in the
      strong sun of Constantinople or Syracuse?]

      100 (return) [ John Malala (tom. ii. p. 120—124) relates the
      fact; but he seems to confound the names or persons of Proclus
      and Marinus.]

      101 (return) [ Agathias, l. v. p. 149—152. The merit of Anthemius
      as an architect is loudly praised by Procopius (de Edif. l. i. c.
      1) and Paulus Silentiarius, (part i. 134, &c.)]

      102 (return) [ See Procopius, (de Edificiis, l. i. c. 1, 2, l.
      ii. c. 3.) He relates a coincidence of dreams, which supposes
      some fraud in Justinian or his architect. They both saw, in a
      vision, the same plan for stopping an inundation at Dara. A stone
      quarry near Jerusalem was revealed to the emperor, (l. v. c. 6:)
      an angel was tricked into the perpetual custody of St. Sophia,
      (Anonym. de Antiq. C. P. l. iv. p. 70.)]


      The principal church, which was dedicated by the founder of
      Constantinople to St. Sophia, or the eternal wisdom, had been
      twice destroyed by fire; after the exile of John Chrysostom, and
      during the Nika of the blue and green factions. No sooner did the
      tumult subside, than the Christian populace deplored their
      sacrilegious rashness; but they might have rejoiced in the
      calamity, had they foreseen the glory of the new temple, which at
      the end of forty days was strenuously undertaken by the piety of
      Justinian. 103 The ruins were cleared away, a more spacious plan
      was described, and as it required the consent of some proprietors
      of ground, they obtained the most exorbitant terms from the eager
      desires and timorous conscience of the monarch. Anthemius formed
      the design, and his genius directed the hands of ten thousand
      workmen, whose payment in pieces of fine silver was never delayed
      beyond the evening. The emperor himself, clad in a linen tunic,
      surveyed each day their rapid progress, and encouraged their
      diligence by his familiarity, his zeal, and his rewards. The new
      Cathedral of St. Sophia was consecrated by the patriarch, five
      years, eleven months, and ten days from the first foundation; and
      in the midst of the solemn festival Justinian exclaimed with
      devout vanity, “Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to
      accomplish so great a work; I have vanquished thee, O Solomon!”
      104 But the pride of the Roman Solomon, before twenty years had
      elapsed, was humbled by an earthquake, which overthrew the
      eastern part of the dome. Its splendor was again restored by the
      perseverance of the same prince; and in the thirty-sixth year of
      his reign, Justinian celebrated the second dedication of a temple
      which remains, after twelve centuries, a stately monument of his
      fame. The architecture of St. Sophia, which is now converted into
      the principal mosque, has been imitated by the Turkish sultans,
      and that venerable pile continues to excite the fond admiration
      of the Greeks, and the more rational curiosity of European
      travellers. The eye of the spectator is disappointed by an
      irregular prospect of half-domes and shelving roofs: the western
      front, the principal approach, is destitute of simplicity and
      magnificence; and the scale of dimensions has been much surpassed
      by several of the Latin cathedrals. But the architect who first
      erected an _aerial_ cupola, is entitled to the praise of bold
      design and skilful execution. The dome of St. Sophia, illuminated
      by four-and-twenty windows, is formed with so small a curve, that
      the depth is equal only to one sixth of its diameter; the measure
      of that diameter is one hundred and fifteen feet, and the lofty
      centre, where a crescent has supplanted the cross, rises to the
      perpendicular height of one hundred and eighty feet above the
      pavement. The circle which encompasses the dome, lightly reposes
      on four strong arches, and their weight is firmly supported by
      four massy piles, whose strength is assisted, on the northern and
      southern sides, by four columns of Egyptian granite.


      A Greek cross, inscribed in a quadrangle, represents the form of
      the edifice; the exact breadth is two hundred and forty-three
      feet, and two hundred and sixty-nine may be assigned for the
      extreme length from the sanctuary in the east, to the nine
      western doors, which open into the vestibule, and from thence
      into the narthex or exterior portico. That portico was the humble
      station of the penitents. The nave or body of the church was
      filled by the congregation of the faithful; but the two sexes
      were prudently distinguished, and the upper and lower galleries
      were allotted for the more private devotion of the women. Beyond
      the northern and southern piles, a balustrade, terminated on
      either side by the thrones of the emperor and the patriarch,
      divided the nave from the choir; and the space, as far as the
      steps of the altar, was occupied by the clergy and singers. The
      altar itself, a name which insensibly became familiar to
      Christian ears, was placed in the eastern recess, artificially
      built in the form of a demi-cylinder; and this sanctuary
      communicated by several doors with the sacristy, the vestry, the
      baptistery, and the contiguous buildings, subservient either to
      the pomp of worship, or the private use of the ecclesiastical
      ministers. The memory of past calamities inspired Justinian with
      a wise resolution, that no wood, except for the doors, should be
      admitted into the new edifice; and the choice of the materials
      was applied to the strength, the lightness, or the splendor of
      the respective parts. The solid piles which contained the cupola
      were composed of huge blocks of freestone, hewn into squares and
      triangles, fortified by circles of iron, and firmly cemented by
      the infusion of lead and quicklime: but the weight of the cupola
      was diminished by the levity of its substance, which consists
      either of pumice-stone that floats in the water, or of bricks
      from the Isle of Rhodes, five times less ponderous than the
      ordinary sort. The whole frame of the edifice was constructed of
      brick; but those base materials were concealed by a crust of
      marble; and the inside of St. Sophia, the cupola, the two larger,
      and the six smaller, semi-domes, the walls, the hundred columns,
      and the pavement, delight even the eyes of Barbarians, with a
      rich and variegated picture. A poet, 105 who beheld the primitive
      lustre of St. Sophia, enumerates the colors, the shades, and the
      spots of ten or twelve marbles, jaspers, and porphyries, which
      nature had profusely diversified, and which were blended and
      contrasted as it were by a skilful painter. The triumph of Christ
      was adorned with the last spoils of Paganism, but the greater
      part of these costly stones was extracted from the quarries of
      Asia Minor, the isles and continent of Greece, Egypt, Africa, and
      Gaul. Eight columns of porphyry, which Aurelian had placed in the
      temple of the sun, were offered by the piety of a Roman matron;
      eight others of green marble were presented by the ambitious zeal
      of the magistrates of Ephesus: both are admirable by their size
      and beauty, but every order of architecture disclaims their
      fantastic capital. A variety of ornaments and figures was
      curiously expressed in mosaic; and the images of Christ, of the
      Virgin, of saints, and of angels, which have been defaced by
      Turkish fanaticism, were dangerously exposed to the superstition
      of the Greeks. According to the sanctity of each object, the
      precious metals were distributed in thin leaves or in solid
      masses. The balustrade of the choir, the capitals of the pillars,
      the ornaments of the doors and galleries, were of gilt bronze;
      the spectator was dazzled by the glittering aspect of the cupola;
      the sanctuary contained forty thousand pounds weight of silver;
      and the holy vases and vestments of the altar were of the purest
      gold, enriched with inestimable gems. Before the structure of the
      church had arisen two cubits above the ground, forty-five
      thousand two hundred pounds were already consumed; and the whole
      expense amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand: each
      reader, according to the measure of his belief, may estimate
      their value either in gold or silver; but the sum of one million
      sterling is the result of the lowest computation. A magnificent
      temple is a laudable monument of national taste and religion; and
      the enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia might be
      tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the
      workmanship, of the Deity. Yet how dull is the artifice, how
      insignificant is the labor, if it be compared with the formation
      of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple!



      103 (return) [Among the crowd of ancients and moderns who have
      celebrated the edifice of St. Sophia, I shall distinguish and
      follow, 1. Four original spectators and historians: Procopius,
      (de Edific. l. i. c. 1,) Agathias, (l. v. p. 152, 153,) Paul
      Silentiarius, (in a poem of 1026 hexameters, and calcem Annae
      Commen. Alexiad.,) and Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 31.) 2. Two legendary
      Greeks of a later period: George Codinus, (de Origin. C. P. p.
      64-74,) and the anonymous writer of Banduri, (Imp. Orient. tom.
      i. l. iv. p. 65—80.)3. The great Byzantine antiquarian. Ducange,
      (Comment. ad Paul Silentiar. p. 525—598, and C. P. Christ. l.
      iii. p. 5—78.) 4. Two French travellers—the one, Peter Gyllius,
      (de Topograph. C. P. l. ii. c. 3, 4,) in the xvith; the other,
      Grelot, (Voyage de C. P. p. 95—164, Paris, 1680, in 4to:) he has
      given plans, prospects, and inside views of St. Sophia; and his
      plans, though on a smaller scale, appear more correct than those
      of Ducange. I have adopted and reduced the measures of Grelot:
      but as no Christian can now ascend the dome, the height is
      borrowed from Evagrius, compared with Gyllius, Greaves, and the
      Oriental Geographer.]

      104 (return) [ Solomon’s temple was surrounded with courts,
      porticos, &c.; but the proper structure of the house of God was
      no more (if we take the Egyptian or Hebrew cubic at 22 inches)
      than 55 feet in height, 36 2/3 in breadth, and 110 in length—a
      small parish church, says Prideaux, (Connection, vol. i. p. 144,
      folio;) but few sanctuaries could be valued at four or five
      millions sterling! * Note *: Hist of Jews, vol i p 257.—M]

      105 (return) [ Paul Silentiarius, in dark and poetic language,
      describes the various stones and marbles that were employed in
      the edifice of St. Sophia, (P. ii. p. 129, 133, &c., &c.:)


      1. The Carystian—pale, with iron veins.


      2. The Phrygian—of two sorts, both of a rosy hue; the one with a
      white shade, the other purple, with silver flowers.


      3. The Porphyry of Egypt—with small stars.


      4. The green marble of Laconia.


      5. The Carian—from Mount Iassis, with oblique veins, white and
      red. 6. The Lydian—pale, with a red flower.


      7. The African, or Mauritanian—of a gold or saffron hue. 8. The
      Celtic—black, with white veins.


      9. The Bosphoric—white, with black edges. Besides the
      Proconnesian which formed the pavement; the Thessalian,
      Molossian, &c., which are less distinctly painted.]


      So minute a description of an edifice which time has respected,
      may attest the truth, and excuse the relation, of the innumerable
      works, both in the capital and provinces, which Justinian
      constructed on a smaller scale and less durable foundations. 106
      In Constantinople alone and the adjacent suburbs, he dedicated
      twenty-five churches to the honor of Christ, the Virgin, and the
      saints: most of these churches were decorated with marble and
      gold; and their various situation was skilfully chosen in a
      populous square, or a pleasant grove; on the margin of the
      sea-shore, or on some lofty eminence which overlooked the
      continents of Europe and Asia. The church of the Holy Apostles at
      Constantinople, and that of St. John at Ephesus, appear to have
      been framed on the same model: their domes aspired to imitate the
      cupolas of St. Sophia; but the altar was more judiciously placed
      under the centre of the dome, at the junction of four stately
      porticos, which more accurately expressed the figure of the Greek
      cross. The Virgin of Jerusalem might exult in the temple erected
      by her Imperial votary on a most ungrateful spot, which afforded
      neither ground nor materials to the architect. A level was formed
      by raising part of a deep valley to the height of the mountain.
      The stones of a neighboring quarry were hewn into regular forms;
      each block was fixed on a peculiar carriage, drawn by forty of
      the strongest oxen, and the roads were widened for the passage of
      such enormous weights. Lebanon furnished her loftiest cedars for
      the timbers of the church; and the seasonable discovery of a vein
      of red marble supplied its beautiful columns, two of which, the
      supporters of the exterior portico, were esteemed the largest in
      the world. The pious munificence of the emperor was diffused over
      the Holy Land; and if reason should condemn the monasteries of
      both sexes which were built or restored by Justinian, yet charity
      must applaud the wells which he sunk, and the hospitals which he
      founded, for the relief of the weary pilgrims. The schismatical
      temper of Egypt was ill entitled to the royal bounty; but in
      Syria and Africa, some remedies were applied to the disasters of
      wars and earthquakes, and both Carthage and Antioch, emerging
      from their ruins, might revere the name of their gracious
      benefactor. 107 Almost every saint in the calendar acquired the
      honors of a temple; almost every city of the empire obtained the
      solid advantages of bridges, hospitals, and aqueducts; but the
      severe liberality of the monarch disdained to indulge his
      subjects in the popular luxury of baths and theatres. While
      Justinian labored for the public service, he was not unmindful of
      his own dignity and ease. The Byzantine palace, which had been
      damaged by the conflagration, was restored with new magnificence;
      and some notion may be conceived of the whole edifice, by the
      vestibule or hall, which, from the doors perhaps, or the roof,
      was surnamed chalce, or the brazen. The dome of a spacious
      quadrangle was supported by massy pillars; the pavement and walls
      were incrusted with many-colored marbles—the emerald green of
      Laconia, the fiery red, and the white Phrygian stone, intersected
      with veins of a sea-green hue: the mosaic paintings of the dome
      and sides represented the glories of the African and Italian
      triumphs. On the Asiatic shore of the Propontis, at a small
      distance to the east of Chalcedon, the costly palace and gardens
      of Heraeum 108 were prepared for the summer residence of
      Justinian, and more especially of Theodora. The poets of the age
      have celebrated the rare alliance of nature and art, the harmony
      of the nymphs of the groves, the fountains, and the waves: yet
      the crowd of attendants who followed the court complained of
      their inconvenient lodgings, 109 and the nymphs were too often
      alarmed by the famous Porphyrio, a whale of ten cubits in
      breadth, and thirty in length, who was stranded at the mouth of
      the River Sangaris, after he had infested more than half a
      century the seas of Constantinople. 110

      106 (return) [ The six books of the Edifices of Procopius are
      thus distributed the first is confined to Constantinople: the
      second includes Mesopotamia and Syria the third, Armenia and the
      Euxine; the fourth, Europe; the fifth, Asia Minor and Palestine;
      the sixth, Egypt and Africa. Italy is forgot by the emperor or
      the historian, who published this work of adulation before the
      date (A.D. 555) of its final conquest.]

      107 (return) [ Justinian once gave forty-five centenaries of gold
      (180,000 L.) for the repairs of Antioch after the earthquake,
      (John Malala, tom. ii p 146—149.)]

      108 (return) [ For the Heraeum, the palace of Theodora, see
      Gyllius, (de Bosphoro Thracio, l. iii. c. xi.,) Aleman. (Not. ad.
      Anec. p. 80, 81, who quotes several epigrams of the Anthology,)
      and Ducange, (C. P. Christ. l. iv. c. 13, p. 175, 176.)]

      109 (return) [ Compare, in the Edifices, (l. i. c. 11,) and in
      the Anecdotes, (c. 8, 15.) the different styles of adulation and
      malevolence: stripped of the paint, or cleansed from the dirt,
      the object appears to be the same.]

      110 (return) [ Procopius, l. viii. 29; most probably a stranger
      and wanderer, as the Mediterranean does not breed whales.
      Balaenae quoque in nostra maria penetrant, (Plin. Hist. Natur.
      ix. 2.) Between the polar circle and the tropic, the cetaceous
      animals of the ocean grow to the length of 50, 80, or 100 feet,
      (Hist. des Voyages, tom. xv. p. 289. Pennant’s British Zoology,
      vol. iii. p. 35.)]


      The fortifications of Europe and Asia were multiplied by
      Justinian; but the repetition of those timid and fruitless
      precautions exposes, to a philosophic eye, the debility of the
      empire. 111 From Belgrade to the Euxine, from the conflux of the
      Save to the mouth of the Danube, a chain of above fourscore
      fortified places was extended along the banks of the great river.
      Single watch-towers were changed into spacious citadels; vacant
      walls, which the engineers contracted or enlarged according to
      the nature of the ground, were filled with colonies or garrisons;
      a strong fortress defended the ruins of Trajan’s bridge, 112 and
      several military stations affected to spread beyond the Danube
      the pride of the Roman name. But that name was divested of its
      terrors; the Barbarians, in their annual inroads, passed, and
      contemptuously repassed, before these useless bulwarks; and the
      inhabitants of the frontier, instead of reposing under the shadow
      of the general defence, were compelled to guard, with incessant
      vigilance, their separate habitations. The solitude of ancient
      cities, was replenished; the new foundations of Justinian
      acquired, perhaps too hastily, the epithets of impregnable and
      populous; and the auspicious place of his own nativity attracted
      the grateful reverence of the vainest of princes. Under the name
      of Justiniana prima, the obscure village of Tauresium became the
      seat of an archbishop and a præfect, whose jurisdiction extended
      over seven warlike provinces of Illyricum; 113 and the corrupt
      appellation of Giustendil still indicates, about twenty miles to
      the south of Sophia, the residence of a Turkish sanjak. 114 For
      the use of the emperor’s countryman, a cathedral, a place, and an
      aqueduct, were speedily constructed; the public and private
      edifices were adapted to the greatness of a royal city; and the
      strength of the walls resisted, during the lifetime of Justinian,
      the unskilful assaults of the Huns and Sclavonians. Their
      progress was sometimes retarded, and their hopes of rapine were
      disappointed, by the innumerable castles which, in the provinces
      of Dacia, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, appeared to
      cover the whole face of the country. Six hundred of these forts
      were built or repaired by the emperor; but it seems reasonable to
      believe, that the far greater part consisted only of a stone or
      brick tower, in the midst of a square or circular area, which was
      surrounded by a wall and ditch, and afforded in a moment of
      danger some protection to the peasants and cattle of the
      neighboring villages. 115 Yet these military works, which
      exhausted the public treasure, could not remove the just
      apprehensions of Justinian and his European subjects. The warm
      baths of Anchialus in Thrace were rendered as safe as they were
      salutary; but the rich pastures of Thessalonica were foraged by
      the Scythian cavalry; the delicious vale of Tempe, three hundred
      miles from the Danube, was continually alarmed by the sound of
      war; 116 and no unfortified spot, however distant or solitary,
      could securely enjoy the blessings of peace. The Straits of
      Thermopylae, which seemed to protect, but which had so often
      betrayed, the safety of Greece, were diligently strengthened by
      the labors of Justinian. From the edge of the sea-shore, through
      the forests and valleys, and as far as the summit of the
      Thessalian mountains, a strong wall was continued, which occupied
      every practicable entrance. Instead of a hasty crowd of peasants,
      a garrison of two thousand soldiers was stationed along the
      rampart; granaries of corn and reservoirs of water were provided
      for their use; and by a precaution that inspired the cowardice
      which it foresaw, convenient fortresses were erected for their
      retreat. The walls of Corinth, overthrown by an earthquake, and
      the mouldering bulwarks of Athens and Plataea, were carefully
      restored; the Barbarians were discouraged by the prospect of
      successive and painful sieges: and the naked cities of
      Peloponnesus were covered by the fortifications of the Isthmus of
      Corinth. At the extremity of Europe, another peninsula, the
      Thracian Chersonesus, runs three days’ journey into the sea, to
      form, with the adjacent shores of Asia, the Straits of the
      Hellespont. The intervals between eleven populous towns were
      filled by lofty woods, fair pastures, and arable lands; and the
      isthmus, of thirty seven stadia or furlongs, had been fortified
      by a Spartan general nine hundred years before the reign of
      Justinian. 117 In an age of freedom and valor, the slightest
      rampart may prevent a surprise; and Procopius appears insensible
      of the superiority of ancient times, while he praises the solid
      construction and double parapet of a wall, whose long arms
      stretched on either side into the sea; but whose strength was
      deemed insufficient to guard the Chersonesus, if each city, and
      particularly Gallipoli and Sestus, had not been secured by their
      peculiar fortifications. The long wall, as it was emphatically
      styled, was a work as disgraceful in the object, as it was
      respectable in the execution. The riches of a capital diffuse
      themselves over the neighboring country, and the territory of
      Constantinople a paradise of nature, was adorned with the
      luxurious gardens and villas of the senators and opulent
      citizens. But their wealth served only to attract the bold and
      rapacious Barbarians; the noblest of the Romans, in the bosom of
      peaceful indolence, were led away into Scythian captivity, and
      their sovereign might view from his palace the hostile flames
      which were insolently spread to the gates of the Imperial city.
      At the distance only of forty miles, Anastasius was constrained
      to establish a last frontier; his long wall, of sixty miles from
      the Propontis to the Euxine, proclaimed the impotence of his
      arms; and as the danger became more imminent, new fortifications
      were added by the indefatigable prudence of Justinian. 118

      111 (return) [ Montesquieu observes, (tom. iii. p. 503,
      Considerations sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains, c.
      xx.,) that Justinian’s empire was like France in the time of the
      Norman inroads—never so weak as when every village was
      fortified.]

      112 (return) [ Procopius affirms (l. iv. c. 6) that the Danube
      was stopped by the ruins of the bridge. Had Apollodorus, the
      architect, left a description of his own work, the fabulous
      wonders of Dion Cassius (l lxviii. p. 1129) would have been
      corrected by the genuine picture Trajan’s bridge consisted of
      twenty or twenty-two stone piles with wooden arches; the river is
      shallow, the current gentle, and the whole interval no more than
      443 (Reimer ad Dion. from Marsigli) or 5l7 toises, (D’Anville,
      Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 305.)]

      113 (return) [ Of the two Dacias, Mediterranea and Ripensis,
      Dardania, Pravalitana, the second Maesia, and the second
      Macedonia. See Justinian (Novell. xi.,) who speaks of his castles
      beyond the Danube, and on omines semper bellicis sudoribus
      inhaerentes.]

      114 (return) [ See D’Anville, (Memoires de l’Academie, &c., tom.
      xxxi p. 280, 299,) Rycaut, (Present State of the Turkish Empire,
      p. 97, 316,) Max sigli, (Stato Militare del Imperio Ottomano, p.
      130.) The sanjak of Giustendil is one of the twenty under the
      beglerbeg of Rurselis, and his district maintains 48 zaims and
      588 timariots.]

      115 (return) [ These fortifications may be compared to the
      castles in Mingrelia (Chardin, Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p. 60,
      131)—a natural picture.]

      116 (return) [ The valley of Tempe is situate along the River
      Peneus, between the hills of Ossa and Olympus: it is only five
      miles long, and in some places no more than 120 feet in breadth.
      Its verdant beauties are elegantly described by Pliny, (Hist.
      Natur. l. iv. 15,) and more diffusely by Aelian, (Hist. Var. l.
      iii. c. i.)]

      117 (return) [ Xenophon Hellenic. l. iii. c. 2. After a long and
      tedious conversation with the Byzantine declaimers, how
      refreshing is the truth, the simplicity, the elegance of an Attic
      writer!]

      118 (return) [ See the long wall in Evagarius, (l. iv. c. 38.)
      This whole article is drawn from the fourth book of the Edifices,
      except Anchialus, (l. iii. c. 7.)]


      Asia Minor, after the submission of the Isaurians, 119 remained
      without enemies and without fortifications. Those bold savages,
      who had disdained to be the subjects of Gallienus, persisted two
      hundred and thirty years in a life of independence and rapine.
      The most successful princes respected the strength of the
      mountains and the despair of the natives; their fierce spirit was
      sometimes soothed with gifts, and sometimes restrained by terror;
      and a military count, with three legions, fixed his permanent and
      ignominious station in the heart of the Roman provinces. 120 But
      no sooner was the vigilance of power relaxed or diverted, than
      the light-armed squadrons descended from the hills, and invaded
      the peaceful plenty of Asia. Although the Isaurians were not
      remarkable for stature or bravery, want rendered them bold, and
      experience made them skilful in the exercise of predatory war.
      They advanced with secrecy and speed to the attack of villages
      and defenceless towns; their flying parties have sometimes
      touched the Hellespont, the Euxine, and the gates of Tarsus,
      Antioch, or Damascus; 121 and the spoil was lodged in their
      inaccessible mountains, before the Roman troops had received
      their orders, or the distant province had computed its loss. The
      guilt of rebellion and robbery excluded them from the rights of
      national enemies; and the magistrates were instructed, by an
      edict, that the trial or punishment of an Isaurian, even on the
      festival of Easter, was a meritorious act of justice and piety.
      122 If the captives were condemned to domestic slavery, they
      maintained, with their sword or dagger, the private quarrel of
      their masters; and it was found expedient for the public
      tranquillity to prohibit the service of such dangerous retainers.
      When their countryman Tarcalissaeus or Zeno ascended the throne,
      he invited a faithful and formidable band of Isaurians, who
      insulted the court and city, and were rewarded by an annual
      tribute of five thousand pounds of gold. But the hopes of fortune
      depopulated the mountains, luxury enervated the hardiness of
      their minds and bodies, and in proportion as they mixed with
      mankind, they became less qualified for the enjoyment of poor and
      solitary freedom. After the death of Zeno, his successor
      Anastasius suppressed their pensions, exposed their persons to
      the revenge of the people, banished them from Constantinople, and
      prepared to sustain a war, which left only the alternative of
      victory or servitude. A brother of the last emperor usurped the
      title of Augustus; his cause was powerfully supported by the
      arms, the treasures, and the magazines, collected by Zeno; and
      the native Isaurians must have formed the smallest portion of the
      hundred and fifty thousand Barbarians under his standard, which
      was sanctified, for the first time, by the presence of a fighting
      bishop. Their disorderly numbers were vanquished in the plains of
      Phrygia by the valor and discipline of the Goths; but a war of
      six years almost exhausted the courage of the emperor. 123 The
      Isaurians retired to their mountains; their fortresses were
      successively besieged and ruined; their communication with the
      sea was intercepted; the bravest of their leaders died in arms;
      the surviving chiefs, before their execution, were dragged in
      chains through the hippodrome; a colony of their youth was
      transplanted into Thrace, and the remnant of the people submitted
      to the Roman government. Yet some generations elapsed before
      their minds were reduced to the level of slavery. The populous
      villages of Mount Taurus were filled with horsemen and archers:
      they resisted the imposition of tributes, but they recruited the
      armies of Justinian; and his civil magistrates, the proconsul of
      Cappadocia, the count of Isauria, and the praetors of Lycaonia
      and Pisidia, were invested with military power to restrain the
      licentious practice of rapes and assassinations. 124

      119 (return) [ Turn back to vol. i. p. 328. In the course of this
      History, I have sometimes mentioned, and much oftener slighted,
      the hasty inroads of the Isaurians, which were not attended with
      any consequences.]

      120 (return) [ Trebellius Pollio in Hist. August. p. 107, who
      lived under Diocletian, or Constantine. See likewise Pancirolus
      ad Notit. Imp. Orient c. 115, 141. See Cod. Theodos. l. ix. tit.
      35, leg. 37, with a copious collective Annotation of Godefroy,
      tom. iii. p. 256, 257.]

      121 (return) [ See the full and wide extent of their inroads in
      Philostorgius (Hist. Eccles. l. xi. c. 8,) with Godefroy’s
      learned Dissertations.]

      122 (return) [ Cod. Justinian. l. ix. tit. 12, leg. 10. The
      punishments are severs—a fine of a hundred pounds of gold,
      degradation, and even death. The public peace might afford a
      pretence, but Zeno was desirous of monopolizing the valor and
      service of the Isaurians.]

      123 (return) [ The Isaurian war and the triumph of Anastasius are
      briefly and darkly represented by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 106,
      107,) Evagrius, (l. iii. c. 35,) Theophanes, (p. 118—120,) and
      the Chronicle of Marcellinus.]

      124 (return) [ Fortes ea regio (says Justinian) viros habet, nec
      in ullo differt ab Isauria, though Procopius (Persic. l. i. c.
      18) marks an essential difference between their military
      character; yet in former times the Lycaonians and Pisidians had
      defended their liberty against the great king, Xenophon.
      (Anabasis, l. iii. c. 2.) Justinian introduces some false and
      ridiculous erudition of the ancient empire of the Pisidians, and
      of Lycaon, who, after visiting Rome, (long before Aeenas,) gave a
      name and people to Lycaoni, (Novell. 24, 25, 27, 30.)]




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part V.


      If we extend our view from the tropic to the mouth of the Tanais,
      we may observe, on one hand, the precautions of Justinian to curb
      the savages of Aethiopia, 125 and on the other, the long walls
      which he constructed in Crimaea for the protection of his
      friendly Goths, a colony of three thousand shepherds and
      warriors. 126 From that peninsula to Trebizond, the eastern curve
      of the Euxine was secured by forts, by alliance, or by religion;
      and the possession of Lazica, the Colchos of ancient, the
      Mingrelia of modern, geography, soon became the object of an
      important war. Trebizond, in after-times the seat of a romantic
      empire, was indebted to the liberality of Justinian for a church,
      an aqueduct, and a castle, whose ditches are hewn in the solid
      rock. From that maritime city, frontier line of five hundred
      miles may be drawn to the fortress of Circesium, the last Roman
      station on the Euphrates. 127 Above Trebizond immediately, and
      five days’ journey to the south, the country rises into dark
      forests and craggy mountains, as savage though not so lofty as
      the Alps and the Pyrenees. In this rigorous climate, 128 where
      the snows seldom melt, the fruits are tardy and tasteless, even
      honey is poisonous: the most industrious tillage would be
      confined to some pleasant valleys; and the pastoral tribes
      obtained a scanty sustenance from the flesh and milk of their
      cattle. The Chalybians 129 derived their name and temper from the
      iron quality of the soil; and, since the days of Cyrus, they
      might produce, under the various appellations of Chaldæans and
      Zanians, an uninterrupted prescription of war and rapine. Under
      the reign of Justinian, they acknowledged the god and the emperor
      of the Romans, and seven fortresses were built in the most
      accessible passages, to exclude the ambition of the Persian
      monarch. 130 The principal source of the Euphrates descends from
      the Chalybian mountains, and seems to flow towards the west and
      the Euxine: bending to the south-west, the river passes under the
      walls of Satala and Melitene (which were restored by Justinian as
      the bulwarks of the Lesser Armenia,) and gradually approaches the
      Mediterranean Sea; till at length, repelled by Mount Taurus, 131
      the Euphrates inclines its long and flexible course to the
      south-east and the Gulf of Persia. Among the Roman cities beyond
      the Euphrates, we distinguish two recent foundations, which were
      named from Theodosius, and the relics of the martyrs; and two
      capitals, Amida and Edessa, which are celebrated in the history
      of every age. Their strength was proportioned by Justinian to the
      danger of their situation. A ditch and palisade might be
      sufficient to resist the artless force of the cavalry of Scythia;
      but more elaborate works were required to sustain a regular siege
      against the arms and treasures of the great king. His skilful
      engineers understood the methods of conducting deep mines, and of
      raising platforms to the level of the rampart: he shook the
      strongest battlements with his military engines, and sometimes
      advanced to the assault with a line of movable turrets on the
      backs of elephants. In the great cities of the East, the
      disadvantage of space, perhaps of position, was compensated by
      the zeal of the people, who seconded the garrison in the defence
      of their country and religion; and the fabulous promise of the
      Son of God, that Edessa should never be taken, filled the
      citizens with valiant confidence, and chilled the besiegers with
      doubt and dismay. 132 The subordinate towns of Armenia and
      Mesopotamia were diligently strengthened, and the posts which
      appeared to have any command of ground or water were occupied by
      numerous forts, substantially built of stone, or more hastily
      erected with the obvious materials of earth and brick. The eye of
      Justinian investigated every spot; and his cruel precautions
      might attract the war into some lonely vale, whose peaceful
      natives, connected by trade and marriage, were ignorant of
      national discord and the quarrels of princes. Westward of the
      Euphrates, a sandy desert extends above six hundred miles to the
      Red Sea. Nature had interposed a vacant solitude between the
      ambition of two rival empires; the Arabians, till Mahomet arose,
      were formidable only as robbers; and in the proud security of
      peace the fortifications of Syria were neglected on the most
      vulnerable side.

      125 (return) [ See Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 19. The altar of
      national concern, of annual sacrifice and oaths, which Diocletian
      had created in the Isla of Elephantine, was demolished by
      Justinian with less policy than]

      126 (return) [ Procopius de Edificiis, l. iii. c. 7. Hist. l.
      viii. c. 3, 4. These unambitious Goths had refused to follow the
      standard of Theodoric. As late as the xvth and xvith century, the
      name and nation might be discovered between Caffa and the Straits
      of Azoph, (D’Anville, Memoires de l’academie, tom. xxx. p. 240.)
      They well deserved the curiosity of Busbequius, (p. 321-326;) but
      seem to have vanished in the more recent account of the Missions
      du Levant, (tom. i.,) Tott, Peysonnnel, &c.]

      127 (return) [ For the geography and architecture of this
      Armenian border, see the Persian Wars and Edifices (l. ii. c.
      4-7, l. iii. c. 2—7) of Procopius.]

      128 (return) [ The country is described by Tournefort, (Voyage au
      Levant, tom. iii. lettre xvii. xviii.) That skilful botanist soon
      discovered the plant that infects the honey, (Plin. xxi. 44, 45:)
      he observes, that the soldiers of Lucullus might indeed be
      astonished at the cold, since, even in the plain of Erzerum, snow
      sometimes falls in June, and the harvest is seldom finished
      before September. The hills of Armenia are below the fortieth
      degree of latitude; but in the mountainous country which I
      inhabit, it is well known that an ascent of some hours carries
      the traveller from the climate of Languedoc to that of Norway;
      and a general theory has been introduced, that, under the line,
      an elevation of 2400 toises is equivalent to the cold of the
      polar circle, (Remond, Observations sur les Voyages de Coxe dans
      la Suisse, tom. ii. p. 104.)]

      129 (return) [ The identity or proximity of the Chalybians, or
      Chaldaeana may be investigated in Strabo, (l. xii. p. 825, 826,)
      Cellarius, (Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 202—204,) and Freret,
      (Mem. de Academie, tom. iv. p. 594) Xenophon supposes, in his
      romance, (Cyropaed l. iii.,) the same Barbarians, against whom he
      had fought in his retreat, (Anabasis, l. iv.)]

      130 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 15. De Edific. l. iii.
      c. 6.]

      131 (return) [ Ni Taurus obstet in nostra maria venturus,
      (Pomponius Mela, iii. 8.) Pliny, a poet as well as a naturalist,
      (v. 20,) personifies the river and mountain, and describes their
      combat. See the course of the Tigris and Euphrates in the
      excellent treatise of D’Anville.]

      132 (return) [ Procopius (Persic. l. ii. c. 12) tells the story
      with the tone, half sceptical, half superstitious, of Herodotus.
      The promise was not in the primitive lie of Eusebius, but dates
      at least from the year 400; and a third lie, the Veronica, was
      soon raised on the two former, (Evagrius, l. iv. c. 27.) As
      Edessa has been taken, Tillemont must disclaim the promise, (Mem.
      Eccles. tom. i. p. 362, 383, 617.)]


      But the national enmity, at least the effects of that enmity, had
      been suspended by a truce, which continued above fourscore years.
      An ambassador from the emperor Zeno accompanied the rash and
      unfortunate Perozes, 1321 in his expedition against the
      Nepthalites, 1322 or white Huns, whose conquests had been
      stretched from the Caspian to the heart of India, whose throne
      was enriched with emeralds, 133 and whose cavalry was supported
      by a line of two thousand elephants. 134 The Persians 1341 were
      twice circumvented, in a situation which made valor useless and
      flight impossible; and the double victory of the Huns was
      achieved by military stratagem. They dismissed their royal
      captive after he had submitted to adore the majesty of a
      Barbarian; and the humiliation was poorly evaded by the
      casuistical subtlety of the Magi, who instructed Perozes to
      direct his attention to the rising sun. 1342 The indignant
      successor of Cyrus forgot his danger and his gratitude; he
      renewed the attack with headstrong fury, and lost both his army
      and his life. 135 The death of Perozes abandoned Persia to her
      foreign and domestic enemies; 1351 and twelve years of confusion
      elapsed before his son Cabades, or Kobad, could embrace any
      designs of ambition or revenge. The unkind parsimony of
      Anastasius was the motive or pretence of a Roman war; 136 the
      Huns and Arabs marched under the Persian standard, and the
      fortifications of Armenia and Mesopotamia were, at that time, in
      a ruinous or imperfect condition. The emperor returned his thanks
      to the governor and people of Martyropolis for the prompt
      surrender of a city which could not be successfully defended, and
      the conflagration of Theodosiopolis might justify the conduct of
      their prudent neighbors. Amida sustained a long and destructive
      siege: at the end of three months the loss of fifty thousand of
      the soldiers of Cabades was not balanced by any prospect of
      success, and it was in vain that the Magi deduced a flattering
      prediction from the indecency of the women 1361 on the ramparts,
      who had revealed their most secret charms to the eyes of the
      assailants. At length, in a silent night, they ascended the most
      accessible tower, which was guarded only by some monks,
      oppressed, after the duties of a festival, with sleep and wine.
      Scaling-ladders were applied at the dawn of day; the presence of
      Cabades, his stern command, and his drawn sword, compelled the
      Persians to vanquish; and before it was sheathed, fourscore
      thousand of the inhabitants had expiated the blood of their
      companions. After the siege of Amida, the war continued three
      years, and the unhappy frontier tasted the full measure of its
      calamities. The gold of Anastasius was offered too late, the
      number of his troops was defeated by the number of their
      generals; the country was stripped of its inhabitants, and both
      the living and the dead were abandoned to the wild beasts of the
      desert. The resistance of Edessa, and the deficiency of spoil,
      inclined the mind of Cabades to peace: he sold his conquests for
      an exorbitant price; and the same line, though marked with
      slaughter and devastation, still separated the two empires. To
      avert the repetition of the same evils, Anastasius resolved to
      found a new colony, so strong, that it should defy the power of
      the Persian, so far advanced towards Assyria, that its stationary
      troops might defend the province by the menace or operation of
      offensive war. For this purpose, the town of Dara, 137 fourteen
      miles from Nisibis, and four days’ journey from the Tigris, was
      peopled and adorned; the hasty works of Anastasius were improved
      by the perseverance of Justinian; and, without insisting on
      places less important, the fortifications of Dara may represent
      the military architecture of the age. The city was surrounded
      with two walls, and the interval between them, of fifty paces,
      afforded a retreat to the cattle of the besieged. The inner wall
      was a monument of strength and beauty: it measured sixty feet
      from the ground, and the height of the towers was one hundred
      feet; the loopholes, from whence an enemy might be annoyed with
      missile weapons, were small, but numerous; the soldiers were
      planted along the rampart, under the shelter of double galleries,
      and a third platform, spacious and secure, was raised on the
      summit of the towers. The exterior wall appears to have been less
      lofty, but more solid; and each tower was protected by a
      quadrangular bulwark. A hard, rocky soil resisted the tools of
      the miners, and on the south-east, where the ground was more
      tractable, their approach was retarded by a new work, which
      advanced in the shape of a half-moon. The double and treble
      ditches were filled with a stream of water; and in the management
      of the river, the most skilful labor was employed to supply the
      inhabitants, to distress the besiegers, and to prevent the
      mischiefs of a natural or artificial inundation. Dara continued
      more than sixty years to fulfil the wishes of its founders, and
      to provoke the jealousy of the Persians, who incessantly
      complained, that this impregnable fortress had been constructed
      in manifest violation of the treaty of peace between the two
      empires. 1371

      1321 (return) [ Firouz the Conqueror—unfortunately so named. See
      St. Martin, vol. vi. p. 439.—M.]

      1322 (return) [ Rather Hepthalites.—M.]

      133 (return) [ They were purchased from the merchants of Adulis
      who traded to India, (Cosmas, Topograph. Christ. l. xi. p. 339;)
      yet, in the estimate of precious stones, the Scythian emerald was
      the first, the Bactrian the second, the Aethiopian only the
      third, (Hill’s Theophrastus, p. 61, &c., 92.) The production,
      mines, &c., of emeralds, are involved in darkness; and it is
      doubtful whether we possess any of the twelve sorts known to the
      ancients, (Goguet, Origine des Loix, &c., part ii. l. ii. c. 2,
      art. 3.) In this war the Huns got, or at least Perozes lost, the
      finest pearl in the world, of which Procopius relates a
      ridiculous fable.]

      134 (return) [ The Indo-Scythae continued to reign from the time
      of Augustus (Dionys. Perieget. 1088, with the Commentary of
      Eustathius, in Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. iv.) to that of the
      elder Justin, (Cosmas, Topograph. Christ. l. xi. p. 338, 339.) On
      their origin and conquests, see D’Anville, (sur l’Inde, p. 18,
      45, &c., 69, 85, 89.) In the second century they were masters of
      Larice or Guzerat.]

      1341 (return) [ According to the Persian historians, he was
      misled by guides who used he old stratagem of Zopyrus. Malcolm,
      vol. i. p. 101.—M.]

      1342 (return) [ In the Ms. Chronicle of Tabary, it is said that
      the Moubedan Mobed, or Grand Pontiff, opposed with all his
      influence the violation of the treaty. St. Martin, vol. vii. p.
      254.—M.]

      135 (return) [ See the fate of Phirouz, or Perozes, and its
      consequences, in Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 3—6,) who may be
      compared with the fragments of Oriental history, (D’Herbelot,
      Bibliot. Orient. p. 351, and Texeira, History of Persia,
      translated or abridged by Stephens, l. i. c. 32, p. 132—138.) The
      chronology is ably ascertained by Asseman. (Bibliot. Orient. tom.
      iii. p. 396—427.)]

      1351 (return) [ When Firoze advanced, Khoosh-Nuaz (the king of
      the Huns) presented on the point of a lance the treaty to which
      he had sworn, and exhorted him yet to desist before he destroyed
      his fame forever. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 103.—M.]

      136 (return) [ The Persian war, under the reigns of Anastasius
      and Justin, may be collected from Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 7,
      8, 9,) Theophanes, (in Chronograph. p. 124—127,) Evagrius, (l.
      iii. c. 37,) Marcellinus, (in Chron. p. 47,) and Josue Stylites,
      (apud Asseman. tom. i. p. 272—281.)]

      1361 (return) [ Gibbon should have written “some prostitutes.”
      Proc Pers. vol. 1 p. 7.—M.]

      137 (return) [ The description of Dara is amply and correctly
      given by Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 10, l. ii. c. 13. De
      Edific. l. ii. c. 1, 2, 3, l. iii. c. 5.) See the situation in
      D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 53, 54, 55,) though he
      seems to double the interval between Dara and Nisibis.]

      1371 (return) [ The situation (of Dara) does not appear to give
      it strength, as it must have been commanded on three sides by the
      mountains, but opening on the south towards the plains of
      Mesopotamia. The foundation of the walls and towers, built of
      large hewn stone, may be traced across the valley, and over a
      number of low rocky hills which branch out from the foot of Mount
      Masius. The circumference I conceive to be nearly two miles and a
      half; and a small stream, which flows through the middle of the
      place, has induced several Koordish and Armenian families to fix
      their residence within the ruins. Besides the walls and towers,
      the remains of many other buildings attest the former grandeur of
      Dara; a considerable part of the space within the walls is arched
      and vaulted underneath, and in one place we perceived a large
      cavern, supported by four ponderous columns, somewhat resembling
      the great cistern of Constantinople. In the centre of the village
      are the ruins of a palace (probably that mentioned by Procopius)
      or church, one hundred paces in length, and sixty in breadth. The
      foundations, which are quite entire, consist of a prodigious
      number of subterraneous vaulted chambers, entered by a narrow
      passage forty paces in length. The gate is still standing; a
      considerable part of the wall has bid defiance to time, &c. M
      Donald Kinneir’s Journey, p. 438.—M]


      Between the Euxine and the Caspian, the countries of Colchos,
      Iberia, and Albania, are intersected in every direction by the
      branches of Mount Caucasus; and the two principal gates, or
      passes, from north to south, have been frequently confounded in
      the geography both of the ancients and moderns. The name of
      Caspian or Albanian gates is properly applied to Derbend, 138
      which occupies a short declivity between the mountains and the
      sea: the city, if we give credit to local tradition, had been
      founded by the Greeks; and this dangerous entrance was fortified
      by the kings of Persia with a mole, double walls, and doors of
      iron. The Iberian gates 139 1391 are formed by a narrow passage
      of six miles in Mount Caucasus, which opens from the northern
      side of Iberia, or Georgia, into the plain that reaches to the
      Tanais and the Volga. A fortress, designed by Alexander perhaps,
      or one of his successors, to command that important pass, had
      descended by right of conquest or inheritance to a prince of the
      Huns, who offered it for a moderate price to the emperor; but
      while Anastasius paused, while he timorously computed the cost
      and the distance, a more vigilant rival interposed, and Cabades
      forcibly occupied the Straits of Caucasus. The Albanian and
      Iberian gates excluded the horsemen of Scythia from the shortest
      and most practicable roads, and the whole front of the mountains
      was covered by the rampart of Gog and Magog, the long wall which
      has excited the curiosity of an Arabian caliph 140 and a Russian
      conqueror. 141 According to a recent description, huge stones,
      seven feet thick, and twenty-one feet in length or height, are
      artificially joined without iron or cement, to compose a wall,
      which runs above three hundred miles from the shores of Derbend,
      over the hills, and through the valleys of Daghestan and Georgia.


      Without a vision, such a work might be undertaken by the policy
      of Cabades; without a miracle, it might be accomplished by his
      son, so formidable to the Romans, under the name of Chosroes; so
      dear to the Orientals, under the appellation of Nushirwan. The
      Persian monarch held in his hand the keys both of peace and war;
      but he stipulated, in every treaty, that Justinian should
      contribute to the expense of a common barrier, which equally
      protected the two empires from the inroads of the Scythians. 142

      138 (return) [ For the city and pass of Derbend, see D’Herbelot,
      (Bibliot. Orient. p. 157, 291, 807,) Petit de la Croix. (Hist. de
      Gengiscan, l. iv. c. 9,) Histoire Genealogique des Tatars, (tom.
      i. p. 120,) Olearius, (Voyage en Perse, p. 1039—1041,) and
      Corneille le Bruyn, (Voyages, tom. i. p. 146, 147:) his view may
      be compared with the plan of Olearius, who judges the wall to be
      of shells and gravel hardened by time.]

      139 (return) [ Procopius, though with some confusion, always
      denominates them Caspian, (Persic. l. i. c. 10.) The pass is now
      styled Tatar-topa, the Tartar-gates, (D’Anville, Geographie
      Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 119, 120.)]

      1391 (return) [ Malte-Brun. tom. viii. p. 12, makes three passes:
      1. The central, which leads from Mosdok to Teflis. 2. The
      Albanian, more inland than the Derbend Pass. 3. The Derbend—the
      Caspian Gates. But the narrative of Col. Monteith, in the Journal
      of the Geographical Society of London. vol. iii. p. i. p. 39,
      clearly shows that there are but two passes between the Black Sea
      and the Caspian; the central, the Caucasian, or, as Col. Monteith
      calls it, the Caspian Gates, and the pass of Derbend, though it
      is practicable to turn this position (of Derbend) by a road a few
      miles distant through the mountains, p. 40.—M.]

      140 (return) [ The imaginary rampart of Gog and Magog, which was
      seriously explored and believed by a caliph of the ninth century,
      appears to be derived from the gates of Mount Caucasus, and a
      vague report of the wall of China, (Geograph. Nubiensis, p.
      267-270. Memoires de l’Academie, tom. xxxi. p. 210—219.)]

      141 (return) [ See a learned dissertation of Baier, de muro
      Caucaseo, in Comment. Acad. Petropol. ann. 1726, tom. i. p.
      425-463; but it is destitute of a map or plan. When the czar
      Peter I. became master of Derbend in the year 1722, the measure
      of the wall was found to be 3285 Russian orgyioe, or fathom, each
      of seven feet English; in the whole somewhat more than four miles
      in length.]

      142 (return) [ See the fortifications and treaties of Chosroes,
      or Nushirwan, in Procopius (Persic. l. i. c. 16, 22, l. ii.) and
      D’Herbelot, (p. 682.)] VII. Justinian suppressed the schools of
      Athens and the consulship of Rome, which had given so many sages
      and heroes to mankind. Both these institutions had long since
      degenerated from their primitive glory; yet some reproach may be
      justly inflicted on the avarice and jealousy of a prince, by
      whose hand such venerable ruins were destroyed.


      Athens, after her Persian triumphs, adopted the philosophy of
      Ionia and the rhetoric of Sicily; and these studies became the
      patrimony of a city, whose inhabitants, about thirty thousand
      males, condensed, within the period of a single life, the genius
      of ages and millions. Our sense of the dignity of human nature is
      exalted by the simple recollection, that Isocrates 143 was the
      companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with
      the historian Thucydides, at the first representation of the
      Oedipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his
      pupils Aeschines and Demosthenes contended for the crown of
      patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of
      Theophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the Stoic
      and Epicurean sects. 144 The ingenuous youth of Attica enjoyed
      the benefits of their domestic education, which was communicated
      without envy to the rival cities. Two thousand disciples heard
      the lessons of Theophrastus; 145 the schools of rhetoric must
      have been still more populous than those of philosophy; and a
      rapid succession of students diffused the fame of their teachers
      as far as the utmost limits of the Grecian language and name.
      Those limits were enlarged by the victories of Alexander; the
      arts of Athens survived her freedom and dominion; and the Greek
      colonies which the Macedonians planted in Egypt, and scattered
      over Asia, undertook long and frequent pilgrimages to worship the
      Muses in their favorite temple on the banks of the Ilissus. The
      Latin conquerors respectfully listened to the instructions of
      their subjects and captives; the names of Cicero and Horace were
      enrolled in the schools of Athens; and after the perfect
      settlement of the Roman empire, the natives of Italy, of Africa,
      and of Britain, conversed in the groves of the academy with their
      fellow-students of the East. The studies of philosophy and
      eloquence are congenial to a popular state, which encourages the
      freedom of inquiry, and submits only to the force of persuasion.
      In the republics of Greece and Rome, the art of speaking was the
      powerful engine of patriotism or ambition; and the schools of
      rhetoric poured forth a colony of statesmen and legislators. When
      the liberty of public debate was suppressed, the orator, in the
      honorable profession of an advocate, might plead the cause of
      innocence and justice; he might abuse his talents in the more
      profitable trade of panegyric; and the same precepts continued to
      dictate the fanciful declamations of the sophist, and the chaster
      beauties of historical composition. The systems which professed
      to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe,
      entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and
      according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the
      Sceptics, or decide with the Stoics, sublimely speculate with
      Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse
      sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and
      perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples
      of Zeno, and even those of Epicurus, were taught both to act and
      to suffer; and the death of Petronius was not less effectual than
      that of Seneca, to humble a tyrant by the discovery of his
      impotence. The light of science could not indeed be confined
      within the walls of Athens. Her incomparable writers address
      themselves to the human race; the living masters emigrated to
      Italy and Asia; Berytus, in later times, was devoted to the study
      of the law; astronomy and physic were cultivated in the musaeum
      of Alexandria; but the Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy
      maintained their superior reputation from the Peloponnesian war
      to the reign of Justinian. Athens, though situate in a barren
      soil, possessed a pure air, a free navigation, and the monuments
      of ancient art. That sacred retirement was seldom disturbed by
      the business of trade or government; and the last of the
      Athenians were distinguished by their lively wit, the purity of
      their taste and language, their social manners, and some traces,
      at least in discourse, of the magnanimity of their fathers. In
      the suburbs of the city, the academy of the Platonists, the
      lycaeum of the Peripatetics, the portico of the Stoics, and the
      garden of the Epicureans, were planted with trees and decorated
      with statues; and the philosophers, instead of being immured in a
      cloister, delivered their instructions in spacious and pleasant
      walks, which, at different hours, were consecrated to the
      exercises of the mind and body. The genius of the founders still
      lived in those venerable seats; the ambition of succeeding to the
      masters of human reason excited a generous emulation; and the
      merit of the candidates was determined, on each vacancy, by the
      free voices of an enlightened people. The Athenian professors
      were paid by their disciples: according to their mutual wants and
      abilities, the price appears to have varied; and Isocrates
      himself, who derides the avarice of the sophists, required, in
      his school of rhetoric, about thirty pounds from each of his
      hundred pupils. The wages of industry are just and honorable, yet
      the same Isocrates shed tears at the first receipt of a stipend:
      the Stoic might blush when he was hired to preach the contempt of
      money; and I should be sorry to discover that Aristotle or Plato
      so far degenerated from the example of Socrates, as to exchange
      knowledge for gold. But some property of lands and houses was
      settled by the permission of the laws, and the legacies of
      deceased friends, on the philosophic chairs of Athens. Epicurus
      bequeathed to his disciples the gardens which he had purchased
      for eighty minae or two hundred and fifty pounds, with a fund
      sufficient for their frugal subsistence and monthly festivals;
      146 and the patrimony of Plato afforded an annual rent, which, in
      eight centuries, was gradually increased from three to one
      thousand pieces of gold. 147 The schools of Athens were protected
      by the wisest and most virtuous of the Roman princes. The
      library, which Hadrian founded, was placed in a portico adorned
      with pictures, statues, and a roof of alabaster, and supported by
      one hundred columns of Phrygian marble. The public salaries were
      assigned by the generous spirit of the Antonines; and each
      professor of politics, of rhetoric, of the Platonic, the
      Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean philosophy, received an
      annual stipend of ten thousand drachmae, or more than three
      hundred pounds sterling. 148 After the death of Marcus, these
      liberal donations, and the privileges attached to the thrones of
      science, were abolished and revived, diminished and enlarged; but
      some vestige of royal bounty may be found under the successors of
      Constantine; and their arbitrary choice of an unworthy candidate
      might tempt the philosophers of Athens to regret the days of
      independence and poverty. 149 It is remarkable, that the
      impartial favor of the Antonines was bestowed on the four adverse
      sects of philosophy, which they considered as equally useful, or
      at least, as equally innocent. Socrates had formerly been the
      glory and the reproach of his country; and the first lessons of
      Epicurus so strangely scandalized the pious ears of the
      Athenians, that by his exile, and that of his antagonists, they
      silenced all vain disputes concerning the nature of the gods. But
      in the ensuing year they recalled the hasty decree, restored the
      liberty of the schools, and were convinced by the experience of
      ages, that the moral character of philosophers is not affected by
      the diversity of their theological speculations. 150

      143 (return) [ The life of Isocrates extends from Olymp. lxxxvi.
      1. to cx. 3, (ante Christ. 436—438.) See Dionys. Halicarn. tom.
      ii. p. 149, 150, edit. Hudson. Plutarch (sive anonymus) in Vit.
      X. Oratorum, p. 1538—1543, edit. H. Steph. Phot. cod. cclix. p.
      1453.]

      144 (return) [ The schools of Athens are copiously though
      concisely represented in the Fortuna Attica of Meursius, (c.
      viii. p. 59—73, in tom. i. Opp.) For the state and arts of the
      city, see the first book of Pausanias, and a small tract of
      Dicaearchus, in the second volume of Hudson’s Geographers, who
      wrote about Olymp. cxvii. (Dodwell’s Dissertia sect. 4.)]

      145 (return) [ Diogen Laert. de Vit. Philosoph. l. v. segm. 37,
      p. 289.]

      146 (return) [ See the Testament of Epicurus in Diogen. Laert. l.
      x. segm. 16—20, p. 611, 612. A single epistle (ad Familiares,
      xiii. l.) displays the injustice of the Areopagus, the fidelity
      of the Epicureans, the dexterous politeness of Cicero, and the
      mixture of contempt and esteem with which the Roman senators
      considered the philosophy and philosophers of Greece.]

      147 (return) [ Damascius, in Vit. Isidor. apud Photium, cod.
      ccxlii. p. 1054.]

      148 (return) [ See Lucian (in Eunuch. tom. ii. p. 350—359, edit.
      Reitz,) Philostratus (in Vit. Sophist. l. ii. c. 2,) and Dion
      Cassius, or Xiphilin, (lxxi. p. 1195,) with their editors Du
      Soul, Olearius, and Reimar, and, above all, Salmasius, (ad Hist.
      August. p. 72.) A judicious philosopher (Smith’s Wealth of
      Nations, vol. ii. p. 340—374) prefers the free contributions of
      the students to a fixed stipend for the professor.]

      149 (return) [ Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 310,
      &c.]

      150 (return) [ The birth of Epicurus is fixed to the year 342
      before Christ, (Bayle,) Olympiad cix. 3; and he opened his school
      at Athens, Olmp. cxviii. 3, 306 years before the same aera. This
      intolerant law (Athenaeus, l. xiii. p. 610. Diogen. Laertius, l.
      v. s. 38. p. 290. Julius Pollux, ix. 5) was enacted in the same
      or the succeeding year, (Sigonius, Opp. tom. v. p. 62. Menagius
      ad Diogen. Laert. p. 204. Corsini, Fasti Attici, tom. iv. p. 67,
      68.) Theophrastus chief of the Peripatetics, and disciple of
      Aristotle, was involved in the same exile.]


      The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the
      establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the
      exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of
      faith, and condemned the infidel or sceptic to eternal flames. In
      many a volume of laborious controversy, they exposed the weakness
      of the understanding and the corruption of the heart, insulted
      human nature in the sages of antiquity, and proscribed the spirit
      of philosophical inquiry, so repugnant to the doctrine, or at
      least to the temper, of an humble believer. The surviving sects
      of the Platonists, whom Plato would have blushed to acknowledge,
      extravagantly mingled a sublime theory with the practice of
      superstition and magic; and as they remained alone in the midst
      of a Christian world, they indulged a secret rancor against the
      government of the church and state, whose severity was still
      suspended over their heads. About a century after the reign of
      Julian, 151 Proclus 152 was permitted to teach in the philosophic
      chair of the academy; and such was his industry, that he
      frequently, in the same day, pronounced five lessons, and
      composed seven hundred lines. His sagacious mind explored the
      deepest questions of morals and metaphysics, and he ventured to
      urge eighteen arguments against the Christian doctrine of the
      creation of the world. But in the intervals of study, he
      personally conversed with Pan, Aesculapius, and Minerva, in whose
      mysteries he was secretly initiated, and whose prostrate statues
      he adored; in the devout persuasion that the philosopher, who is
      a citizen of the universe, should be the priest of its various
      deities. An eclipse of the sun announced his approaching end; and
      his life, with that of his scholar Isidore, 153 compiled by two
      of their most learned disciples, exhibits a deplorable picture of
      the second childhood of human reason. Yet the golden chain, as it
      was fondly styled, of the Platonic succession, continued
      forty-four years from the death of Proclus to the edict of
      Justinian, 154 which imposed a perpetual silence on the schools
      of Athens, and excited the grief and indignation of the few
      remaining votaries of Grecian science and superstition. Seven
      friends and philosophers, Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and
      Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, who dissented from
      the religion of their sovereign, embraced the resolution of
      seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied in their
      native country. They had heard, and they credulously believed,
      that the republic of Plato was realized in the despotic
      government of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned ever the
      happiest and most virtuous of nations. They were soon astonished
      by the natural discovery, that Persia resembled the other
      countries of the globe; that Chosroes, who affected the name of a
      philosopher, was vain, cruel, and ambitious; that bigotry, and a
      spirit of intolerance, prevailed among the Magi; that the nobles
      were haughty, the courtiers servile, and the magistrates unjust;
      that the guilty sometimes escaped, and that the innocent were
      often oppressed. The disappointment of the philosophers provoked
      them to overlook the real virtues of the Persians; and they were
      scandalized, more deeply perhaps than became their profession,
      with the plurality of wives and concubines, the incestuous
      marriages, and the custom of exposing dead bodies to the dogs and
      vultures, instead of hiding them in the earth, or consuming them
      with fire. Their repentance was expressed by a precipitate
      return, and they loudly declared that they had rather die on the
      borders of the empire, than enjoy the wealth and favor of the
      Barbarian. From this journey, however, they derived a benefit
      which reflects the purest lustre on the character of Chosroes. He
      required, that the seven sages who had visited the court of
      Persia should be exempted from the penal laws which Justinian
      enacted against his Pagan subjects; and this privilege, expressly
      stipulated in a treaty of peace, was guarded by the vigilance of
      a powerful mediator. 155 Simplicius and his companions ended
      their lives in peace and obscurity; and as they left no
      disciples, they terminate the long list of Grecian philosophers,
      who may be justly praised, notwithstanding their defects, as the
      wisest and most virtuous of their contemporaries. The writings of
      Simplicius are now extant. His physical and metaphysical
      commentaries on Aristotle have passed away with the fashion of
      the times; but his moral interpretation of Epictetus is preserved
      in the library of nations, as a classic book, most excellently
      adapted to direct the will, to purify the heart, and to confirm
      the understanding, by a just confidence in the nature both of God
      and man.

      151 (return) [ This is no fanciful aera: the Pagans reckoned
      their calamities from the reign of their hero. Proclus, whose
      nativity is marked by his horoscope, (A.D. 412, February 8, at C.
      P.,) died 124 years, A.D. 485, (Marin. in Vita Procli, c. 36.)]

      152 (return) [ The life of Proclus, by Marinus, was published by
      Fabricius (Hamburg, 1700, et ad calcem Bibliot. Latin. Lond.
      1703.) See Saidas, (tom. iii. p. 185, 186,) Fabricius, (Bibliot.
      Graec. l. v. c. 26 p. 449—552,) and Brucker, (Hist. Crit.
      Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 319—326)]

      153 (return) [ The life of Isidore was composed by Damascius,
      (apud Photium, sod. ccxlii. p. 1028—1076.) See the last age of
      the Pagan philosophers, in Brucker, (tom. ii. p. 341—351.)]

      154 (return) [ The suppression of the schools of Athens is
      recorded by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 187, sub Decio Cos. Sol.,)
      and an anonymous Chronicle in the Vatican library, (apud Aleman.
      p. 106.)]

      155 (return) [ Agathias (l. ii. p. 69, 70, 71) relates this
      curious story Chosroes ascended the throne in the year 531, and
      made his first peace with the Romans in the beginning of 533—a
      date most compatible with his young fame and the old age of
      Isidore, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 404. Pagi, tom.
      ii. p. 543, 550.)]


      About the same time that Pythagoras first invented the
      appellation of philosopher, liberty and the consulship were
      founded at Rome by the elder Brutus. The revolutions of the
      consular office, which may be viewed in the successive lights of
      a substance, a shadow, and a name, have been occasionally
      mentioned in the present History. The first magistrates of the
      republic had been chosen by the people, to exercise, in the
      senate and in the camp, the powers of peace and war, which were
      afterwards translated to the emperors. But the tradition of
      ancient dignity was long revered by the Romans and Barbarians. A
      Gothic historian applauds the consulship of Theodoric as the
      height of all temporal glory and greatness; 156 the king of Italy
      himself congratulated those annual favorites of fortune who,
      without the cares, enjoyed the splendor of the throne; and at the
      end of a thousand years, two consuls were created by the
      sovereigns of Rome and Constantinople, for the sole purpose of
      giving a date to the year, and a festival to the people. But the
      expenses of this festival, in which the wealthy and the vain
      aspired to surpass their predecessors, insensibly arose to the
      enormous sum of fourscore thousand pounds; the wisest senators
      declined a useless honor, which involved the certain ruin of
      their families, and to this reluctance I should impute the
      frequent chasms in the last age of the consular Fasti. The
      predecessors of Justinian had assisted from the public treasures
      the dignity of the less opulent candidates; the avarice of that
      prince preferred the cheaper and more convenient method of advice
      and regulation. 157 Seven processions or spectacles were the
      number to which his edict confined the horse and chariot races,
      the athletic sports, the music, and pantomimes of the theatre,
      and the hunting of wild beasts; and small pieces of silver were
      discreetly substituted to the gold medals, which had always
      excited tumult and drunkenness, when they were scattered with a
      profuse hand among the populace. Notwithstanding these
      precautions, and his own example, the succession of consuls
      finally ceased in the thirteenth year of Justinian, whose
      despotic temper might be gratified by the silent extinction of a
      title which admonished the Romans of their ancient freedom. 158
      Yet the annual consulship still lived in the minds of the people;
      they fondly expected its speedy restoration; they applauded the
      gracious condescension of successive princes, by whom it was
      assumed in the first year of their reign; and three centuries
      elapsed, after the death of Justinian, before that obsolete
      dignity, which had been suppressed by custom, could be abolished
      by law. 159 The imperfect mode of distinguishing each year by the
      name of a magistrate, was usefully supplied by the date of a
      permanent aera: the creation of the world, according to the
      Septuagint version, was adopted by the Greeks; 160 and the
      Latins, since the age of Charlemagne, have computed their time
      from the birth of Christ. 161

      156 (return) [ Cassiodor. Variarum Epist. vi. 1. Jornandes, c.
      57, p. 696, dit. Grot. Quod summum bonum primumque in mundo decus
      dicitur.]

      157 (return) [ See the regulations of Justinian, (Novell. cv.,)
      dated at Constantinople, July 5, and addressed to Strategius,
      treasurer of the empire.]

      158 (return) [ Procopius, in Anecdot. c. 26. Aleman. p. 106. In
      the xviiith year after the consulship of Basilius, according to
      the reckoning of Marcellinus, Victor, Marius, &c., the secret
      history was composed, and, in the eyes of Procopius, the
      consulship was finally abolished.]

      159 (return) [ By Leo, the philosopher, (Novell. xciv. A.D.
      886-911.) See Pagi (Dissertat. Hypatica, p. 325—362) and Ducange,
      (Gloss, Graec p. 1635, 1636.) Even the title was vilified:
      consulatus codicilli.. vilescunt, says the emperor himself.]

      160 (return) [ According to Julius Africanus, &c., the world was
      created the first of September, 5508 years, three months, and
      twenty-five days before the birth of Christ. (See Pezron,
      Antiquite des Tems defendue, p. 20—28.) And this aera has been
      used by the Greeks, the Oriental Christians, and even by the
      Russians, till the reign of Peter I The period, however
      arbitrary, is clear and convenient. Of the 7296 years which are
      supposed to elapse since the creation, we shall find 3000 of
      ignorance and darkness; 2000 either fabulous or doubtful; 1000 of
      ancient history, commencing with the Persian empire, and the
      Republics of Rome and Athens; 1000 from the fall of the Roman
      empire in the West to the discovery of America; and the remaining
      296 will almost complete three centuries of the modern state of
      Europe and mankind. I regret this chronology, so far preferable
      to our double and perplexed method of counting backwards and
      forwards the years before and after the Christian era.]

      161 (return) [ The aera of the world has prevailed in the East
      since the vith general council, (A.D. 681.) In the West, the
      Christian aera was first invented in the vith century: it was
      propagated in the viiith by the authority and writings of
      venerable Bede; but it was not till the xth that the use became
      legal and popular. See l’Art de Veriner les Dates, Dissert.
      Preliminaire, p. iii. xii. Dictionnaire Diplomatique, tom. i. p.
      329—337; the works of a laborious society of Benedictine monks.]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part I.


Conquests Of Justinian In The West.—Character And First Campaigns Of
Belisarius—He Invades And Subdues The Vandal Kingdom Of Africa—His
Triumph.—The Gothic War.—He Recovers Sicily, Naples, And Rome.—Siege Of
Rome By The Goths.—Their Retreat And Losses.—Surrender Of
Ravenna.—Glory Of Belisarius.—His Domestic Shame And Misfortunes.


      When Justinian ascended the throne, about fifty years after the
      fall of the Western empire, the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals
      had obtained a solid, and, as it might seem, a legal
      establishment both in Europe and Africa. The titles, which Roman
      victory had inscribed, were erased with equal justice by the
      sword of the Barbarians; and their successful rapine derived a
      more venerable sanction from time, from treaties, and from the
      oaths of fidelity, already repeated by a second or third
      generation of obedient subjects. Experience and Christianity had
      refuted the superstitious hope, that Rome was founded by the gods
      to reign forever over the nations of the earth. But the proud
      claim of perpetual and indefeasible dominion, which her soldiers
      could no longer maintain, was firmly asserted by her statesmen
      and lawyers, whose opinions have been sometimes revived and
      propagated in the modern schools of jurisprudence. After Rome
      herself had been stripped of the Imperial purple, the princes of
      Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred sceptre of the
      monarchy; demanded, as their rightful inheritance, the provinces
      which had been subdued by the consuls, or possessed by the
      Caesars; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of
      the West from the usurpation of heretics and Barbarians. The
      execution of this splendid design was in some degree reserved for
      Justinian. During the five first years of his reign, he
      reluctantly waged a costly and unprofitable war against the
      Persians; till his pride submitted to his ambition, and he
      purchased at the price of four hundred and forty thousand pounds
      sterling, the benefit of a precarious truce, which, in the
      language of both nations, was dignified with the appellation of
      the endless peace. The safety of the East enabled the emperor to
      employ his forces against the Vandals; and the internal state of
      Africa afforded an honorable motive, and promised a powerful
      support, to the Roman arms. 1

      1 (return) [ The complete series of the Vandal war is related by
      Procopius in a regular and elegant narrative, (l. i. c. 9—25, l.
      ii. c. 1—13,) and happy would be my lot, could I always tread in
      the footsteps of such a guide. From the entire and diligent
      perusal of the Greek text, I have a right to pronounce that the
      Latin and French versions of Grotius and Cousin may not be
      implicitly trusted; yet the president Cousin has been often
      praised, and Hugo Grotius was the first scholar of a learned
      age.]


      According to the testament of the founder, the African kingdom
      had lineally descended to Hilderic, the eldest of the Vandal
      princes. A mild disposition inclined the son of a tyrant, the
      grandson of a conqueror, to prefer the counsels of clemency and
      peace; and his accession was marked by the salutary edict, which
      restored two hundred bishops to their churches, and allowed the
      free profession of the Athanasian creed. 2 But the Catholics
      accepted, with cold and transient gratitude, a favor so
      inadequate to their pretensions, and the virtues of Hilderic
      offended the prejudices of his countrymen. The Arian clergy
      presumed to insinuate that he had renounced the faith, and the
      soldiers more loudly complained that he had degenerated from the
      courage, of his ancestors. His ambassadors were suspected of a
      secret and disgraceful negotiation in the Byzantine court; and
      his general, the Achilles, 3 as he was named, of the Vandals,
      lost a battle against the naked and disorderly Moors. The public
      discontent was exasperated by Gelimer, whose age, descent, and
      military fame, gave him an apparent title to the succession: he
      assumed, with the consent of the nation, the reins of government;
      and his unfortunate sovereign sunk without a struggle from the
      throne to a dungeon, where he was strictly guarded with a
      faithful counsellor, and his unpopular nephew the Achilles of the
      Vandals. But the indulgence which Hilderic had shown to his
      Catholic subjects had powerfully recommended him to the favor of
      Justinian, who, for the benefit of his own sect, could
      acknowledge the use and justice of religious toleration: their
      alliance, while the nephew of Justin remained in a private
      station, was cemented by the mutual exchange of gifts and
      letters; and the emperor Justinian asserted the cause of royalty
      and friendship. In two successive embassies, he admonished the
      usurper to repent of his treason, or to abstain, at least, from
      any further violence which might provoke the displeasure of God
      and of the Romans; to reverence the laws of kindred and
      succession, and to suffer an infirm old man peaceably to end his
      days, either on the throne of Carthage or in the palace of
      Constantinople. The passions, or even the prudence, of Gelimer
      compelled him to reject these requests, which were urged in the
      haughty tone of menace and command; and he justified his ambition
      in a language rarely spoken in the Byzantine court, by alleging
      the right of a free people to remove or punish their chief
      magistrate, who had failed in the execution of the kingly office.


      After this fruitless expostulation, the captive monarch was more
      rigorously treated, his nephew was deprived of his eyes, and the
      cruel Vandal, confident in his strength and distance, derided the
      vain threats and slow preparations of the emperor of the East.
      Justinian resolved to deliver or revenge his friend, Gelimer to
      maintain his usurpation; and the war was preceded, according to
      the practice of civilized nations, by the most solemn
      protestations, that each party was sincerely desirous of peace.

      2 (return) [ See Ruinart, Hist. Persecut. Vandal. c. xii. p. 589.
      His best evidence is drawn from the life of St. Fulgentius,
      composed by one of his disciples, transcribed in a great measure
      in the annals of Baronius, and printed in several great
      collections, (Catalog. Bibliot. Bunavianae, tom. i. vol. ii. p.
      1258.)]

      3 (return) [ For what quality of the mind or body? For speed, or
      beauty, or valor?—In what language did the Vandals read
      Homer?—Did he speak German?—The Latins had four versions,
      (Fabric. tom. i. l. ii. c. 8, p. 297:) yet, in spite of the
      praises of Seneca, (Consol. c. 26,) they appear to have been more
      successful in imitating than in translating the Greek poets. But
      the name of Achilles might be famous and popular even among the
      illiterate Barbarians.]


      The report of an African war was grateful only to the vain and
      idle populace of Constantinople, whose poverty exempted them from
      tribute, and whose cowardice was seldom exposed to military
      service. But the wiser citizens, who judged of the future by the
      past, revolved in their memory the immense loss, both of men and
      money, which the empire had sustained in the expedition of
      Basiliscus. The troops, which, after five laborious campaigns,
      had been recalled from the Persian frontier, dreaded the sea, the
      climate, and the arms of an unknown enemy. The ministers of the
      finances computed, as far as they might compute, the demands of
      an African war; the taxes which must be found and levied to
      supply those insatiate demands; and the danger, lest their own
      lives, or at least their lucrative employments, should be made
      responsible for the deficiency of the supply. Inspired by such
      selfish motives, (for we may not suspect him of any zeal for the
      public good,) John of Cappadocia ventured to oppose in full
      council the inclinations of his master. He confessed, that a
      victory of such importance could not be too dearly purchased; but
      he represented in a grave discourse the certain difficulties and
      the uncertain event. “You undertake,” said the præfect, “to
      besiege Carthage: by land, the distance is not less than one
      hundred and forty days’ journey; on the sea, a whole year 4 must
      elapse before you can receive any intelligence from your fleet.
      If Africa should be reduced, it cannot be preserved without the
      additional conquest of Sicily and Italy. Success will impose the
      obligations of new labors; a single misfortune will attract the
      Barbarians into the heart of your exhausted empire.” Justinian
      felt the weight of this salutary advice; he was confounded by the
      unwonted freedom of an obsequious servant; and the design of the
      war would perhaps have been relinquished, if his courage had not
      been revived by a voice which silenced the doubts of profane
      reason. “I have seen a vision,” cried an artful or fanatic bishop
      of the East. “It is the will of Heaven, O emperor! that you
      should not abandon your holy enterprise for the deliverance of
      the African church. The God of battles will march before your
      standard, and disperse your enemies, who are the enemies of his
      Son.” The emperor, might be tempted, and his counsellors were
      constrained, to give credit to this seasonable revelation: but
      they derived more rational hope from the revolt, which the
      adherents of Hilderic or Athanasius had already excited on the
      borders of the Vandal monarchy. Pudentius, an African subject,
      had privately signified his loyal intentions, and a small
      military aid restored the province of Tripoli to the obedience of
      the Romans. The government of Sardinia had been intrusted to
      Godas, a valiant Barbarian: he suspended the payment of tribute,
      disclaimed his allegiance to the usurper, and gave audience to
      the emissaries of Justinian, who found him master of that
      fruitful island, at the head of his guards, and proudly invested
      with the ensigns of royalty. The forces of the Vandals were
      diminished by discord and suspicion; the Roman armies were
      animated by the spirit of Belisarius; one of those heroic names
      which are familiar to every age and to every nation.

      4 (return) [ A year—absurd exaggeration! The conquest of Africa
      may be dated A. D 533, September 14. It is celebrated by
      Justinian in the preface to his Institutes, which were published
      November 21 of the same year. Including the voyage and return,
      such a computation might be truly applied to our Indian empire.]


      The Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps educated, among
      the Thracian peasants, 5 without any of those advantages which
      had formed the virtues of the elder and younger Scipio; a noble
      origin, liberal studies, and the emulation of a free state.


      The silence of a loquacious secretary may be admitted, to prove
      that the youth of Belisarius could not afford any subject of
      praise: he served, most assuredly with valor and reputation,
      among the private guards of Justinian; and when his patron became
      emperor, the domestic was promoted to military command. After a
      bold inroad into Persarmenia, in which his glory was shared by a
      colleague, and his progress was checked by an enemy, Belisarius
      repaired to the important station of Dara, where he first
      accepted the service of Procopius, the faithful companion, and
      diligent historian, of his exploits. 6 The Mirranes of Persia
      advanced, with forty thousand of her best troops, to raze the
      fortifications of Dara; and signified the day and the hour on
      which the citizens should prepare a bath for his refreshment,
      after the toils of victory. He encountered an adversary equal to
      himself, by the new title of General of the East; his superior in
      the science of war, but much inferior in the number and quality
      of his troops, which amounted only to twenty-five thousand Romans
      and strangers, relaxed in their discipline, and humbled by recent
      disasters. As the level plain of Dara refused all shelter to
      stratagem and ambush, Belisarius protected his front with a deep
      trench, which was prolonged at first in perpendicular, and
      afterwards in parallel, lines, to cover the wings of cavalry
      advantageously posted to command the flanks and rear of the
      enemy. When the Roman centre was shaken, their well-timed and
      rapid charge decided the conflict: the standard of Persia fell;
      the immortals fled; the infantry threw away their bucklers, and
      eight thousand of the vanquished were left on the field of
      battle. In the next campaign, Syria was invaded on the side of
      the desert; and Belisarius, with twenty thousand men, hastened
      from Dara to the relief of the province. During the whole summer,
      the designs of the enemy were baffled by his skilful
      dispositions: he pressed their retreat, occupied each night their
      camp of the preceding day, and would have secured a bloodless
      victory, if he could have resisted the impatience of his own
      troops. Their valiant promise was faintly supported in the hour
      of battle; the right wing was exposed by the treacherous or
      cowardly desertion of the Christian Arabs; the Huns, a veteran
      band of eight hundred warriors, were oppressed by superior
      numbers; the flight of the Isaurians was intercepted; but the
      Roman infantry stood firm on the left; for Belisarius himself,
      dismounting from his horse, showed them that intrepid despair was
      their only safety. 611 They turned their backs to the Euphrates,
      and their faces to the enemy: innumerable arrows glanced without
      effect from the compact and shelving order of their bucklers; an
      impenetrable line of pikes was opposed to the repeated assaults
      of the Persian cavalry; and after a resistance of many hours, the
      remaining troops were skilfully embarked under the shadow of the
      night. The Persian commander retired with disorder and disgrace,
      to answer a strict account of the lives of so many soldiers,
      which he had consumed in a barren victory. But the fame of
      Belisarius was not sullied by a defeat, in which he alone had
      saved his army from the consequences of their own rashness: the
      approach of peace relieved him from the guard of the eastern
      frontier, and his conduct in the sedition of Constantinople amply
      discharged his obligations to the emperor. When the African war
      became the topic of popular discourse and secret deliberation,
      each of the Roman generals was apprehensive, rather than
      ambitious, of the dangerous honor; but as soon as Justinian had
      declared his preference of superior merit, their envy was
      rekindled by the unanimous applause which was given to the choice
      of Belisarius. The temper of the Byzantine court may encourage a
      suspicion, that the hero was darkly assisted by the intrigues of
      his wife, the fair and subtle Antonina, who alternately enjoyed
      the confidence, and incurred the hatred, of the empress Theodora.


      The birth of Antonina was ignoble; she descended from a family of
      charioteers; and her chastity has been stained with the foulest
      reproach. Yet she reigned with long and absolute power over the
      mind of her illustrious husband; and if Antonina disdained the
      merit of conjugal fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to
      Belisarius, whom she accompanied with undaunted resolution in all
      the hardships and dangers of a military life. 7

      5 (return) [ (Procop. Vandal. l. i. c. 11.) Aleman, (Not. ad
      Anecdot. p. 5,) an Italian, could easily reject the German vanity
      of Giphanius and Velserus, who wished to claim the hero; but his
      Germania, a metropolis of Thrace, I cannot find in any civil or
      ecclesiastical lists of the provinces and cities. Note *: M. von
      Hammer (in a review of Lord Mahon’s Life of Belisarius in the
      Vienna Jahrbucher) shows that the name of Belisarius is a
      Sclavonic word, Beli-tzar, the White Prince, and that the place
      of his birth was a village of Illvria, which still bears the name
      of Germany.—M.]

      6 (return) [ The two first Persian campaigns of Belisarius are
      fairly and copiously related by his secretary, (Persic. l. i. c.
      12—18.)]

      611 (return) [ The battle was fought on Easter Sunday, April 19,
      not at the end of the summer. The date is supplied from John
      Malala by Lord Mabon p. 47.—M.]

      7 (return) [ See the birth and character of Antonina, in the
      Anecdotes, c. l. and the notes of Alemannus, p. 3.]


      The preparations for the African war were not unworthy of the
      last contest between Rome and Carthage. The pride and flower of
      the army consisted of the guards of Belisarius, who, according to
      the pernicious indulgence of the times, devoted themselves, by a
      particular oath of fidelity, to the service of their patrons.
      Their strength and stature, for which they had been curiously
      selected, the goodness of their horses and armor, and the
      assiduous practice of all the exercises of war, enabled them to
      act whatever their courage might prompt; and their courage was
      exalted by the social honor of their rank, and the personal
      ambition of favor and fortune. Four hundred of the bravest of the
      Heruli marched under the banner of the faithful and active
      Pharas; their untractable valor was more highly prized than the
      tame submission of the Greeks and Syrians; and of such importance
      was it deemed to procure a reenforcement of six hundred
      Massagetae, or Huns, that they were allured by fraud and deceit
      to engage in a naval expedition. Five thousand horse and ten
      thousand foot were embarked at Constantinople, for the conquest
      of Africa; but the infantry, for the most part levied in Thrace
      and Isauria, yielded to the more prevailing use and reputation of
      the cavalry; and the Scythian bow was the weapon on which the
      armies of Rome were now reduced to place their principal
      dependence. From a laudable desire to assert the dignity of his
      theme, Procopius defends the soldiers of his own time against the
      morose critics, who confined that respectable name to the
      heavy-armed warriors of antiquity, and maliciously observed, that
      the word archer is introduced by Homer8 as a term of contempt.
      “Such contempt might perhaps be due to the naked youths who
      appeared on foot in the fields of Troy, and lurking behind a
      tombstone, or the shield of a friend, drew the bow-string to
      their breast, 9 and dismissed a feeble and lifeless arrow. But
      our archers (pursues the historian) are mounted on horses, which
      they manage with admirable skill; their head and shoulders are
      protected by a casque or buckler; they wear greaves of iron on
      their legs, and their bodies are guarded by a coat of mail. On
      their right side hangs a quiver, a sword on their left, and their
      hand is accustomed to wield a lance or javelin in closer combat.
      Their bows are strong and weighty; they shoot in every possible
      direction, advancing, retreating, to the front, to the rear, or
      to either flank; and as they are taught to draw the bow-string
      not to the breast, but to the right ear, firm indeed must be the
      armor that can resist the rapid violence of their shaft.” Five
      hundred transports, navigated by twenty thousand mariners of
      Egypt, Cilicia, and Ionia, were collected in the harbor of
      Constantinople. The smallest of these vessels may be computed at
      thirty, the largest at five hundred, tons; and the fair average
      will supply an allowance, liberal, but not profuse, of about one
      hundred thousand tons, 10 for the reception of thirty-five
      thousand soldiers and sailors, of five thousand horses, of arms,
      engines, and military stores, and of a sufficient stock of water
      and provisions for a voyage, perhaps, of three months. The proud
      galleys, which in former ages swept the Mediterranean with so
      many hundred oars, had long since disappeared; and the fleet of
      Justinian was escorted only by ninety-two light brigantines,
      covered from the missile weapons of the enemy, and rowed by two
      thousand of the brave and robust youth of Constantinople.
      Twenty-two generals are named, most of whom were afterwards
      distinguished in the wars of Africa and Italy: but the supreme
      command, both by land and sea, was delegated to Belisarius alone,
      with a boundless power of acting according to his discretion, as
      if the emperor himself were present. The separation of the naval
      and military professions is at once the effect and the cause of
      the modern improvements in the science of navigation and maritime
      war.

      8 (return) [ See the preface of Procopius. The enemies of archery
      might quote the reproaches of Diomede (Iliad. Delta. 385, &c.)
      and the permittere vulnera ventis of Lucan, (viii. 384:) yet the
      Romans could not despise the arrows of the Parthians; and in the
      siege of Troy, Pandarus, Paris, and Teucer, pierced those haughty
      warriors who insulted them as women or children.]

      9 (return) [ (Iliad. Delta. 123.) How concise—how just—how
      beautiful is the whole picture! I see the attitudes of the
      archer—I hear the twanging of the bow.]

      10 (return) [ The text appears to allow for the largest vessels
      50,000 medimni, or 3000 tons, (since the medimnus weighed 160
      Roman, or 120 avoirdupois, pounds.) I have given a more rational
      interpretation, by supposing that the Attic style of Procopius
      conceals the legal and popular modius, a sixth part of the
      medimnus, (Hooper’s Ancient Measures, p. 152, &c.) A contrary and
      indeed a stranger mistake has crept into an oration of Dinarchus,
      (contra Demosthenem, in Reiske Orator. Graec tom iv. P. ii. p.
      34.) By reducing the number of ships from 500 to 50, and
      translating by mines, or pounds, Cousin has generously allowed
      500 tons for the whole of the Imperial fleet! Did he never
      think?]


      In the seventh year of the reign of Justinian, and about the time
      of the summer solstice, the whole fleet of six hundred ships was
      ranged in martial pomp before the gardens of the palace. The
      patriarch pronounced his benediction, the emperor signified his
      last commands, the general’s trumpet gave the signal of
      departure, and every heart, according to its fears or wishes,
      explored, with anxious curiosity, the omens of misfortune and
      success. The first halt was made at Perinthus or Heraclea, where
      Belisarius waited five days to receive some Thracian horses, a
      military gift of his sovereign. From thence the fleet pursued
      their course through the midst of the Propontis; but as they
      struggled to pass the Straits of the Hellespont, an unfavorable
      wind detained them four days at Abydus, where the general
      exhibited a memorable lesson of firmness and severity. Two of the
      Huns, who in a drunken quarrel had slain one of their
      fellow-soldiers, were instantly shown to the army suspended on a
      lofty gibbet. The national indignity was resented by their
      countrymen, who disclaimed the servile laws of the empire, and
      asserted the free privilege of Scythia, where a small fine was
      allowed to expiate the hasty sallies of intemperance and anger.
      Their complaints were specious, their clamors were loud, and the
      Romans were not averse to the example of disorder and impunity.
      But the rising sedition was appeased by the authority and
      eloquence of the general: and he represented to the assembled
      troops the obligation of justice, the importance of discipline,
      the rewards of piety and virtue, and the unpardonable guilt of
      murder, which, in his apprehension, was aggravated rather than
      excused by the vice of intoxication. 11 In the navigation from
      the Hellespont to Peloponnesus, which the Greeks, after the siege
      of Troy, had performed in four days, 12 the fleet of Belisarius
      was guided in their course by his master-galley, conspicuous in
      the day by the redness of the sails, and in the night by the
      torches blazing from the mast head. It was the duty of the
      pilots, as they steered between the islands, and turned the Capes
      of Malea and Taenarium, to preserve the just order and regular
      intervals of such a multitude of ships: as the wind was fair and
      moderate, their labors were not unsuccessful, and the troops were
      safely disembarked at Methone on the Messenian coast, to repose
      themselves for a while after the fatigues of the sea. In this
      place they experienced how avarice, invested with authority, may
      sport with the lives of thousands which are bravely exposed for
      the public service. According to military practice, the bread or
      biscuit of the Romans was twice prepared in the oven, and the
      diminution of one fourth was cheerfully allowed for the loss of
      weight. To gain this miserable profit, and to save the expense of
      wood, the præfect John of Cappadocia had given orders that the
      flour should be slightly baked by the same fire which warmed the
      baths of Constantinople; and when the sacks were opened, a soft
      and mouldy paste was distributed to the army. Such unwholesome
      food, assisted by the heat of the climate and season, soon
      produced an epidemical disease, which swept away five hundred
      soldiers. Their health was restored by the diligence of
      Belisarius, who provided fresh bread at Methone, and boldly
      expressed his just and humane indignation; the emperor heard his
      complaint; the general was praised but the minister was not
      punished. From the port of Methone, the pilots steered along the
      western coast of Peloponnesus, as far as the Isle of Zacynthus,
      or Zante, before they undertook the voyage (in their eyes a most
      arduous voyage) of one hundred leagues over the Ionian Sea. As
      the fleet was surprised by a calm, sixteen days were consumed in
      the slow navigation; and even the general would have suffered the
      intolerable hardship of thirst, if the ingenuity of Antonina had
      not preserved the water in glass bottles, which she buried deep
      in the sand in a part of the ship impervious to the rays of the
      sun. At length the harbor of Caucana, 13 on the southern side of
      Sicily, afforded a secure and hospitable shelter. The Gothic
      officers who governed the island in the name of the daughter and
      grandson of Theodoric, obeyed their imprudent orders, to receive
      the troops of Justinian like friends and allies: provisions were
      liberally supplied, the cavalry was remounted, 14 and Procopius
      soon returned from Syracuse with correct information of the state
      and designs of the Vandals. His intelligence determined
      Belisarius to hasten his operations, and his wise impatience was
      seconded by the winds. The fleet lost sight of Sicily, passed
      before the Isle of Malta, discovered the capes of Africa, ran
      along the coast with a strong gale from the north-east, and
      finally cast anchor at the promontory of Caput Vada, about five
      days’ journey to the south of Carthage. 15

      11 (return) [ I have read of a Greek legislator, who inflicted a
      double penalty on the crimes committed in a state of
      intoxication; but it seems agreed that this was rather a
      political than a moral law.]

      12 (return) [ Or even in three days, since they anchored the
      first evening in the neighboring isle of Tenedos: the second day
      they sailed to Lesbon the third to the promontory of Euboea, and
      on the fourth they reached Argos, (Homer, Odyss. P. 130—183.
      Wood’s Essay on Homer, p. 40—46.) A pirate sailed from the
      Hellespont to the seaport of Sparta in three days, (Xenophon.
      Hellen. l. ii. c. l.)]

      13 (return) [ Caucana, near Camarina, is at least 50 miles (350
      or 400 stadia) from Syracuse, (Cluver. Sicilia Antiqua, p. 191.)
      * Note *: Lord Mahon. (Life of Belisarius, p.88) suggests some
      valid reasons for reading Catana, the ancient name of
      Catania.—M.]

      14 (return) [ Procopius, Gothic. l. i. c. 3. Tibi tollit hinnitum
      apta quadrigis equa, in the Sicilian pastures of Grosphus,
      (Horat. Carm. ii. 16.) Acragas.... magnanimum quondam generator
      equorum, (Virg. Aeneid. iii. 704.) Thero’s horses, whose
      victories are immortalized by Pindar, were bred in this country.]

      15 (return) [ The Caput Vada of Procopius (where Justinian
      afterwards founded a city—De Edific.l. vi. c. 6) is the
      promontory of Ammon in Strabo, the Brachodes of Ptolemy, the
      Capaudia of the moderns, a long narrow slip that runs into the
      sea, (Shaw’s Travels, p. 111.)]


      If Gelimer had been informed of the approach of the enemy, he
      must have delayed the conquest of Sardinia for the immediate
      defence of his person and kingdom. A detachment of five thousand
      soldiers, and one hundred and twenty galleys, would have joined
      the remaining forces of the Vandals; and the descendant of
      Genseric might have surprised and oppressed a fleet of deep laden
      transports, incapable of action, and of light brigantines that
      seemed only qualified for flight. Belisarius had secretly
      trembled when he overheard his soldiers, in the passage,
      emboldening each other to confess their apprehensions: if they
      were once on shore, they hoped to maintain the honor of their
      arms; but if they should be attacked at sea, they did not blush
      to acknowledge that they wanted courage to contend at the same
      time with the winds, the waves, and the Barbarians. 16 The
      knowledge of their sentiments decided Belisarius to seize the
      first opportunity of landing them on the coast of Africa; and he
      prudently rejected, in a council of war, the proposal of sailing
      with the fleet and army into the port of Carthage. 1611 Three
      months after their departure from Constantinople, the men and
      horses, the arms and military stores, were safely disembarked,
      and five soldiers were left as a guard on board each of the
      ships, which were disposed in the form of a semicircle. The
      remainder of the troops occupied a camp on the sea-shore, which
      they fortified, according to ancient discipline, with a ditch and
      rampart; and the discovery of a source of fresh water, while it
      allayed the thirst, excited the superstitious confidence, of the
      Romans. The next morning, some of the neighboring gardens were
      pillaged; and Belisarius, after chastising the offenders,
      embraced the slight occasion, but the decisive moment, of
      inculcating the maxims of justice, moderation, and genuine
      policy. “When I first accepted the commission of subduing Africa,
      I depended much less,” said the general, “on the numbers, or even
      the bravery of my troops, than on the friendly disposition of the
      natives, and their immortal hatred to the Vandals. You alone can
      deprive me of this hope; if you continue to extort by rapine what
      might be purchased for a little money, such acts of violence will
      reconcile these implacable enemies, and unite them in a just and
      holy league against the invaders of their country.” These
      exhortations were enforced by a rigid discipline, of which the
      soldiers themselves soon felt and praised the salutary effects.
      The inhabitants, instead of deserting their houses, or hiding
      their corn, supplied the Romans with a fair and liberal market:
      the civil officers of the province continued to exercise their
      functions in the name of Justinian: and the clergy, from motives
      of conscience and interest, assiduously labored to promote the
      cause of a Catholic emperor. The small town of Sullecte, 17 one
      day’s journey from the camp, had the honor of being foremost to
      open her gates, and to resume her ancient allegiance: the larger
      cities of Leptis and Adrumetum imitated the example of loyalty as
      soon as Belisarius appeared; and he advanced without opposition
      as far as Grasse, a palace of the Vandal kings, at the distance
      of fifty miles from Carthage. The weary Romans indulged
      themselves in the refreshment of shady groves, cool fountains,
      and delicious fruits; and the preference which Procopius allows
      to these gardens over any that he had seen, either in the East or
      West, may be ascribed either to the taste, or the fatigue, of the
      historian. In three generations, prosperity and a warm climate
      had dissolved the hardy virtue of the Vandals, who insensibly
      became the most luxurious of mankind. In their villas and
      gardens, which might deserve the Persian name of Paradise, 18
      they enjoyed a cool and elegant repose; and, after the daily use
      of the bath, the Barbarians were seated at a table profusely
      spread with the delicacies of the land and sea. Their silken
      robes loosely flowing, after the fashion of the Medes, were
      embroidered with gold; love and hunting were the labors of their
      life, and their vacant hours were amused by pantomimes,
      chariot-races, and the music and dances of the theatre.

      16 (return) [ A centurion of Mark Antony expressed, though in a
      more manly train, the same dislike to the sea and to naval
      combats, (Plutarch in Antonio, p. 1730, edit. Hen. Steph.)]

      1611 (return) [ Rather into the present Lake of Tunis. Lord
      Mahon, p. 92.—M.]

      17 (return) [ Sullecte is perhaps the Turris Hannibalis, an old
      building, now as large as the Tower of London. The march of
      Belisarius to Leptis. Adrumetum, &c., is illustrated by the
      campaign of Caesar, (Hirtius, de Bello Africano, with the Analyse
      of Guichardt,) and Shaw’s Travels (p. 105—113) in the same
      country.]

      18 (return) [ The paradises, a name and fashion adopted from
      Persia, may be represented by the royal garden of Ispahan,
      (Voyage d’Olearius, p. 774.) See, in the Greek romances, their
      most perfect model, (Longus. Pastoral. l. iv. p. 99—101 Achilles
      Tatius. l. i. p. 22, 23.)]


      In a march of ten or twelve days, the vigilance of Belisarius was
      constantly awake and active against his unseen enemies, by whom,
      in every place, and at every hour, he might be suddenly attacked.
      An officer of confidence and merit, John the Armenian, led the
      vanguard of three hundred horse; six hundred Massagetae covered
      at a certain distance the left flank; and the whole fleet,
      steering along the coast, seldom lost sight of the army, which
      moved each day about twelve miles, and lodged in the evening in
      strong camps, or in friendly towns. The near approach of the
      Romans to Carthage filled the mind of Gelimer with anxiety and
      terror. He prudently wished to protract the war till his brother,
      with his veteran troops, should return from the conquest of
      Sardinia; and he now lamented the rash policy of his ancestors,
      who, by destroying the fortifications of Africa, had left him
      only the dangerous resource of risking a battle in the
      neighborhood of his capital. The Vandal conquerors, from their
      original number of fifty thousand, were multiplied, without
      including their women and children, to one hundred and sixty
      thousand fighting men: 1811 and such forces, animated with valor
      and union, might have crushed, at their first landing, the feeble
      and exhausted bands of the Roman general. But the friends of the
      captive king were more inclined to accept the invitations, than
      to resist the progress, of Belisarius; and many a proud Barbarian
      disguised his aversion to war under the more specious name of his
      hatred to the usurper. Yet the authority and promises of Gelimer
      collected a formidable army, and his plans were concerted with
      some degree of military skill. An order was despatched to his
      brother Ammatas, to collect all the forces of Carthage, and to
      encounter the van of the Roman army at the distance of ten miles
      from the city: his nephew Gibamund, with two thousand horse, was
      destined to attack their left, when the monarch himself, who
      silently followed, should charge their rear, in a situation which
      excluded them from the aid or even the view of their fleet. But
      the rashness of Ammatas was fatal to himself and his country. He
      anticipated the hour of the attack, outstripped his tardy
      followers, and was pierced with a mortal wound, after he had
      slain with his own hand twelve of his boldest antagonists. His
      Vandals fled to Carthage; the highway, almost ten miles, was
      strewed with dead bodies; and it seemed incredible that such
      multitudes could be slaughtered by the swords of three hundred
      Romans. The nephew of Gelimer was defeated, after a slight
      combat, by the six hundred Massagetae: they did not equal the
      third part of his numbers; but each Scythian was fired by the
      example of his chief, who gloriously exercised the privilege of
      his family, by riding, foremost and alone, to shoot the first
      arrow against the enemy. In the mean while, Gelimer himself,
      ignorant of the event, and misguided by the windings of the
      hills, inadvertently passed the Roman army, and reached the scene
      of action where Ammatas had fallen. He wept the fate of his
      brother and of Carthage, charged with irresistible fury the
      advancing squadrons, and might have pursued, and perhaps decided,
      the victory, if he had not wasted those inestimable moments in
      the discharge of a vain, though pious, duty to the dead. While
      his spirit was broken by this mournful office, he heard the
      trumpet of Belisarius, who, leaving Antonina and his infantry in
      the camp, pressed forwards with his guards and the remainder of
      the cavalry to rally his flying troops, and to restore the
      fortune of the day. Much room could not be found, in this
      disorderly battle, for the talents of a general; but the king
      fled before the hero; and the Vandals, accustomed only to a
      Moorish enemy, were incapable of withstanding the arms and
      discipline of the Romans. Gelimer retired with hasty steps
      towards the desert of Numidia: but he had soon the consolation of
      learning that his private orders for the execution of Hilderic
      and his captive friends had been faithfully obeyed. The tyrant’s
      revenge was useful only to his enemies. The death of a lawful
      prince excited the compassion of his people; his life might have
      perplexed the victorious Romans; and the lieutenant of Justinian,
      by a crime of which he was innocent, was relieved from the
      painful alternative of forfeiting his honor or relinquishing his
      conquests.

      1811 (return) [ 80,000. Hist. Arc. c. 18. Gibbon has been misled
      by the translation. See Lord ov. p. 99.—M.]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part II.


      As soon as the tumult had subsided, the several parts of the army
      informed each other of the accidents of the day; and Belisarius
      pitched his camp on the field of victory, to which the tenth
      mile-stone from Carthage had applied the Latin appellation of
      Decimus. From a wise suspicion of the stratagems and resources of
      the Vandals, he marched the next day in order of battle, halted
      in the evening before the gates of Carthage, and allowed a night
      of repose, that he might not, in darkness and disorder, expose
      the city to the license of the soldiers, or the soldiers
      themselves to the secret ambush of the city. But as the fears of
      Belisarius were the result of calm and intrepid reason, he was
      soon satisfied that he might confide, without danger, in the
      peaceful and friendly aspect of the capital. Carthage blazed with
      innumerable torches, the signals of the public joy; the chain was
      removed that guarded the entrance of the port; the gates were
      thrown open, and the people, with acclamations of gratitude,
      hailed and invited their Roman deliverers. The defeat of the
      Vandals, and the freedom of Africa, were announced to the city on
      the eve of St. Cyprian, when the churches were already adorned
      and illuminated for the festival of the martyr whom three
      centuries of superstition had almost raised to a local deity. The
      Arians, conscious that their reign had expired, resigned the
      temple to the Catholics, who rescued their saint from profane
      hands, performed the holy rites, and loudly proclaimed the creed
      of Athanasius and Justinian. One awful hour reversed the fortunes
      of the contending parties. The suppliant Vandals, who had so
      lately indulged the vices of conquerors, sought an humble refuge
      in the sanctuary of the church; while the merchants of the East
      were delivered from the deepest dungeon of the palace by their
      affrighted keeper, who implored the protection of his captives,
      and showed them, through an aperture in the wall, the sails of
      the Roman fleet. After their separation from the army, the naval
      commanders had proceeded with slow caution along the coast till
      they reached the Hermaean promontory, and obtained the first
      intelligence of the victory of Belisarius. Faithful to his
      instructions, they would have cast anchor about twenty miles from
      Carthage, if the more skilful seamen had not represented the
      perils of the shore, and the signs of an impending tempest. Still
      ignorant of the revolution, they declined, however, the rash
      attempt of forcing the chain of the port; and the adjacent harbor
      and suburb of Mandracium were insulted only by the rapine of a
      private officer, who disobeyed and deserted his leaders. But the
      Imperial fleet, advancing with a fair wind, steered through the
      narrow entrance of the Goletta, and occupied, in the deep and
      capacious lake of Tunis, a secure station about five miles from
      the capital. 19 No sooner was Belisarius informed of their
      arrival, than he despatched orders that the greatest part of the
      mariners should be immediately landed to join the triumph, and to
      swell the apparent numbers, of the Romans. Before he allowed them
      to enter the gates of Carthage, he exhorted them, in a discourse
      worthy of himself and the occasion, not to disgrace the glory of
      their arms; and to remember that the Vandals had been the
      tyrants, but that they were the deliverers, of the Africans, who
      must now be respected as the voluntary and affectionate subjects
      of their common sovereign. The Romans marched through the streets
      in close ranks prepared for battle if an enemy had appeared: the
      strict order maintained by the general imprinted on their minds
      the duty of obedience; and in an age in which custom and impunity
      almost sanctified the abuse of conquest, the genius of one man
      repressed the passions of a victorious army. The voice of menace
      and complaint was silent; the trade of Carthage was not
      interrupted; while Africa changed her master and her government,
      the shops continued open and busy; and the soldiers, after
      sufficient guards had been posted, modestly departed to the
      houses which were allotted for their reception. Belisarius fixed
      his residence in the palace; seated himself on the throne of
      Genseric; accepted and distributed the Barbaric spoil; granted
      their lives to the suppliant Vandals; and labored to repair the
      damage which the suburb of Mandracium had sustained in the
      preceding night. At supper he entertained his principal officers
      with the form and magnificence of a royal banquet. 20 The victor
      was respectfully served by the captive officers of the household;
      and in the moments of festivity, when the impartial spectators
      applauded the fortune and merit of Belisarius, his envious
      flatterers secretly shed their venom on every word and gesture
      which might alarm the suspicions of a jealous monarch. One day
      was given to these pompous scenes, which may not be despised as
      useless, if they attracted the popular veneration; but the active
      mind of Belisarius, which in the pride of victory could suppose a
      defeat, had already resolved that the Roman empire in Africa
      should not depend on the chance of arms, or the favor of the
      people. The fortifications of Carthage 2011 had alone been
      exempted from the general proscription; but in the reign of
      ninety-five years they were suffered to decay by the thoughtless
      and indolent Vandals. A wiser conqueror restored, with incredible
      despatch, the walls and ditches of the city. His liberality
      encouraged the workmen; the soldiers, the mariners, and the
      citizens, vied with each other in the salutary labor; and
      Gelimer, who had feared to trust his person in an open town,
      beheld with astonishment and despair, the rising strength of an
      impregnable fortress.

      19 (return) [ The neighborhood of Carthage, the sea, the land,
      and the rivers, are changed almost as much as the works of man.
      The isthmus, or neck of the city, is now confounded with the
      continent; the harbor is a dry plain; and the lake, or stagnum,
      no more than a morass, with six or seven feet water in the
      mid-channel. See D’Anville, (Geographie Ancienne, tom. iii. p.
      82,) Shaw, (Travels, p. 77—84,) Marmol, (Description de
      l’Afrique, tom. ii. p. 465,) and Thuanus, (lviii. 12, tom. iii.
      p. 334.)]

      20 (return) [ From Delphi, the name of Delphicum was given, both
      in Greek and Latin, to a tripod; and by an easy analogy, the same
      appellation was extended at Rome, Constantinople, and Carthage,
      to the royal banquetting room, (Procopius, Vandal. l. i. c. 21.
      Ducange, Gloss, Graec. p. 277., ad Alexiad. p. 412.)]

      2011 (return) [ And a few others. Procopius states in his work De
      Edi Sciis. l. vi. vol i. p. 5.—M]


      That unfortunate monarch, after the loss of his capital, applied
      himself to collect the remains of an army scattered, rather than
      destroyed, by the preceding battle; and the hopes of pillage
      attracted some Moorish bands to the standard of Gelimer. He
      encamped in the fields of Bulla, four days’ journey from
      Carthage; insulted the capital, which he deprived of the use of
      an aqueduct; proposed a high reward for the head of every Roman;
      affected to spare the persons and property of his African
      subjects, and secretly negotiated with the Arian sectaries and
      the confederate Huns. Under these circumstances, the conquest of
      Sardinia served only to aggravate his distress: he reflected,
      with the deepest anguish, that he had wasted, in that useless
      enterprise, five thousand of his bravest troops; and he read,
      with grief and shame, the victorious letters of his brother Zano,
      2012 who expressed a sanguine confidence that the king, after the
      example of their ancestors, had already chastised the rashness of
      the Roman invader. “Alas! my brother,” replied Gelimer, “Heaven
      has declared against our unhappy nation. While you have subdued
      Sardinia, we have lost Africa. No sooner did Belisarius appear
      with a handful of soldiers, than courage and prosperity deserted
      the cause of the Vandals. Your nephew Gibamund, your brother
      Ammatas, have been betrayed to death by the cowardice of their
      followers. Our horses, our ships, Carthage itself, and all
      Africa, are in the power of the enemy. Yet the Vandals still
      prefer an ignominious repose, at the expense of their wives and
      children, their wealth and liberty. Nothing now remains, except
      the fields of Bulla, and the hope of your valor. Abandon
      Sardinia; fly to our relief; restore our empire, or perish by our
      side.” On the receipt of this epistle, Zano imparted his grief to
      the principal Vandals; but the intelligence was prudently
      concealed from the natives of the island. The troops embarked in
      one hundred and twenty galleys at the port of Caghari, cast
      anchor the third day on the confines of Mauritania, and hastily
      pursued their march to join the royal standard in the camp of
      Bulla. Mournful was the interview: the two brothers embraced;
      they wept in silence; no questions were asked of the Sardinian
      victory; no inquiries were made of the African misfortunes: they
      saw before their eyes the whole extent of their calamities; and
      the absence of their wives and children afforded a melancholy
      proof that either death or captivity had been their lot. The
      languid spirit of the Vandals was at length awakened and united
      by the entreaties of their king, the example of Zano, and the
      instant danger which threatened their monarchy and religion. The
      military strength of the nation advanced to battle; and such was
      the rapid increase, that before their army reached Tricameron,
      about twenty miles from Carthage, they might boast, perhaps with
      some exaggeration, that they surpassed, in a tenfold proportion,
      the diminutive powers of the Romans. But these powers were under
      the command of Belisarius; and, as he was conscious of their
      superior merit, he permitted the Barbarians to surprise him at an
      unseasonable hour. The Romans were instantly under arms; a
      rivulet covered their front; the cavalry formed the first line,
      which Belisarius supported in the centre, at the head of five
      hundred guards; the infantry, at some distance, was posted in the
      second line; and the vigilance of the general watched the
      separate station and ambiguous faith of the Massagetae, who
      secretly reserved their aid for the conquerors. The historian has
      inserted, and the reader may easily supply, the speeches 21 of
      the commanders, who, by arguments the most apposite to their
      situation, inculcated the importance of victory, and the contempt
      of life. Zano, with the troops which had followed him to the
      conquest of Sardinia, was placed in the centre; and the throne of
      Genseric might have stood, if the multitude of Vandals had
      imitated their intrepid resolution. Casting away their lances and
      missile weapons, they drew their swords, and expected the charge:
      the Roman cavalry thrice passed the rivulet; they were thrice
      repulsed; and the conflict was firmly maintained, till Zano fell,
      and the standard of Belisarius was displayed. Gelimer retreated
      to his camp; the Huns joined the pursuit; and the victors
      despoiled the bodies of the slain. Yet no more than fifty Romans,
      and eight hundred Vandals were found on the field of battle; so
      inconsiderable was the carnage of a day, which extinguished a
      nation, and transferred the empire of Africa. In the evening
      Belisarius led his infantry to the attack of the camp; and the
      pusillanimous flight of Gelimer exposed the vanity of his recent
      declarations, that to the vanquished, death was a relief, life a
      burden, and infamy the only object of terror. His departure was
      secret; but as soon as the Vandals discovered that their king had
      deserted them, they hastily dispersed, anxious only for their
      personal safety, and careless of every object that is dear or
      valuable to mankind. The Romans entered the camp without
      resistance; and the wildest scenes of disorder were veiled in the
      darkness and confusion of the night. Every Barbarian who met
      their swords was inhumanly massacred; their widows and daughters,
      as rich heirs, or beautiful concubines, were embraced by the
      licentious soldiers; and avarice itself was almost satiated with
      the treasures of gold and silver, the accumulated fruits of
      conquest or economy in a long period of prosperity and peace. In
      this frantic search, the troops, even of Belisarius, forgot their
      caution and respect. Intoxicated with lust and rapine, they
      explored, in small parties, or alone, the adjacent fields, the
      woods, the rocks, and the caverns, that might possibly conceal
      any desirable prize: laden with booty, they deserted their ranks,
      and wandered without a guide, on the high road to Carthage; and
      if the flying enemies had dared to return, very few of the
      conquerors would have escaped. Deeply sensible of the disgrace
      and danger, Belisarius passed an apprehensive night on the field
      of victory: at the dawn of day, he planted his standard on a
      hill, recalled his guardians and veterans, and gradually restored
      the modesty and obedience of the camp. It was equally the concern
      of the Roman general to subdue the hostile, and to save the
      prostrate, Barbarian; and the suppliant Vandals, who could be
      found only in churches, were protected by his authority,
      disarmed, and separately confined, that they might neither
      disturb the public peace, nor become the victims of popular
      revenge. After despatching a light detachment to tread the
      footsteps of Gelimer, he advanced, with his whole army, about ten
      days’ march, as far as Hippo Regius, which no longer possessed
      the relics of St. Augustin. 22 The season, and the certain
      intelligence that the Vandal had fled to an inaccessible country
      of the Moors, determined Belisarius to relinquish the vain
      pursuit, and to fix his winter quarters at Carthage. From thence
      he despatched his principal lieutenant, to inform the emperor,
      that in the space of three months he had achieved the conquest of
      Africa.

      2012 (return) [ Gibbon had forgotten that the bearer of the
      “victorious letters of his brother” had sailed into the port of
      Carthage; and that the letters had fallen into the hands of the
      Romans. Proc. Vandal. l. i. c. 23.—M.]

      21 (return) [ These orations always express the sense of the
      times, and sometimes of the actors. I have condensed that sense,
      and thrown away declamation.]

      22 (return) [ The relics of St. Augustin were carried by the
      African bishops to their Sardinian exile, (A.D. 500;) and it was
      believed, in the viiith century, that Liutprand, king of the
      Lombards, transported them (A.D. 721) from Sardinia to Pavia. In
      the year 1695, the Augustan friars of that city found a brick
      arch, marble coffin, silver case, silk wrapper, bones, blood,
      &c., and perhaps an inscription of Agostino in Gothic letters.
      But this useful discovery has been disputed by reason and
      jealousy, (Baronius, Annal. A.D. 725, No. 2-9. Tillemont, Mem.
      Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 944. Montfaucon, Diarium Ital. p. 26-30.
      Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. v. dissert. lviii. p. 9,
      who had composed a separate treatise before the decree of the
      bishop of Pavia, and Pope Benedict XIII.)]


      Belisarius spoke the language of truth. The surviving Vandals
      yielded, without resistance, their arms and their freedom; the
      neighborhood of Carthage submitted to his presence; and the more
      distant provinces were successively subdued by the report of his
      victory. Tripoli was confirmed in her voluntary allegiance;
      Sardinia and Corsica surrendered to an officer, who carried,
      instead of a sword, the head of the valiant Zano; and the Isles
      of Majorca, Minorca, and Yvica consented to remain an humble
      appendage of the African kingdom. Caesarea, a royal city, which
      in looser geography may be confounded with the modern Algiers,
      was situate thirty days’ march to the westward of Carthage: by
      land, the road was infested by the Moors; but the sea was open,
      and the Romans were now masters of the sea. An active and
      discreet tribune sailed as far as the Straits, where he occupied
      Septem or Ceuta, 23 which rises opposite to Gibraltar on the
      African coast; that remote place was afterwards adorned and
      fortified by Justinian; and he seems to have indulged the vain
      ambition of extending his empire to the columns of Hercules. He
      received the messengers of victory at the time when he was
      preparing to publish the Pandects of the Roman laws; and the
      devout or jealous emperor celebrated the divine goodness, and
      confessed, in silence, the merit of his successful general. 24
      Impatient to abolish the temporal and spiritual tyranny of the
      Vandals, he proceeded, without delay, to the full establishment
      of the Catholic church. Her jurisdiction, wealth, and immunites,
      perhaps the most essential part of episcopal religion, were
      restored and amplified with a liberal hand; the Arian worship was
      suppressed; the Donatist meetings were proscribed; 25 and the
      synod of Carthage, by the voice of two hundred and seventeen
      bishops, 26 applauded the just measure of pious retaliation. On
      such an occasion, it may not be presumed, that many orthodox
      prelates were absent; but the comparative smallness of their
      number, which in ancient councils had been twice or even thrice
      multiplied, most clearly indicates the decay both of the church
      and state. While Justinian approved himself the defender of the
      faith, he entertained an ambitious hope, that his victorious
      lieutenant would speedily enlarge the narrow limits of his
      dominion to the space which they occupied before the invasion of
      the Moors and Vandals; and Belisarius was instructed to establish
      five dukes or commanders in the convenient stations of Tripoli,
      Leptis, Cirta, Caesarea, and Sardinia, and to compute the
      military force of palatines or borderers that might be sufficient
      for the defence of Africa. The kingdom of the Vandals was not
      unworthy of the presence of a Praetorian præfect; and four
      consulars, three presidents, were appointed to administer the
      seven provinces under his civil jurisdiction. The number of their
      subordinate officers, clerks, messengers, or assistants, was
      minutely expressed; three hundred and ninety-six for the præfect
      himself, fifty for each of his vicegerents; and the rigid
      definition of their fees and salaries was more effectual to
      confirm the right than to prevent the abuse. These magistrates
      might be oppressive, but they were not idle; and the subtile
      questions of justice and revenue were infinitely propagated under
      the new government, which professed to revive the freedom and
      equity of the Roman republic. The conqueror was solicitous to
      extract a prompt and plentiful supply from his African subjects;
      and he allowed them to claim, even in the third degree, and from
      the collateral line, the houses and lands of which their families
      had been unjustly despoiled by the Vandals. After the departure
      of Belisarius, who acted by a high and special commission, no
      ordinary provision was made for a master-general of the forces;
      but the office of Praetorian præfect was intrusted to a soldier;
      the civil and military powers were united, according to the
      practice of Justinian, in the chief governor; and the
      representative of the emperor in Africa, as well as in Italy, was
      soon distinguished by the appellation of Exarch. 27

      23 (return) [ The expression of Procopius (de Edific. l. vi. c.
      7.) Ceuta, which has been defaced by the Portuguese, flourished
      in nobles and palaces, in agriculture and manufactures, under the
      more prosperous reign of the Arabs, (l’Afrique de Marmai, tom.
      ii. p. 236.)]

      24 (return) [ See the second and third preambles to the Digest,
      or Pandects, promulgated A.D. 533, December 16. To the titles of
      Vandalicus and Africanus, Justinian, or rather Belisarius, had
      acquired a just claim; Gothicus was premature, and Francicus
      false, and offensive to a great nation.]

      25 (return) [ See the original acts in Baronius, (A.D. 535, No.
      21—54.) The emperor applauds his own clemency to the heretics,
      cum sufficiat eis vivere.]

      26 (return) [ Dupin (Geograph. Sacra Africana, p. lix. ad Optat.
      Milav.) observes and bewails this episcopal decay. In the more
      prosperous age of the church, he had noticed 690 bishoprics; but
      however minute were the dioceses, it is not probable that they
      all existed at the same time.]

      27 (return) [ The African laws of Justinian are illustrated by
      his German biographer, (Cod. l. i. tit. 27. Novell. 36, 37, 131.
      Vit. Justinian, p. 349—377.)]


      Yet the conquest of Africa was imperfect till her former
      sovereign was delivered, either alive or dead, into the hands of
      the Romans. Doubtful of the event, Gelimer had given secret
      orders that a part of his treasure should be transported to
      Spain, where he hoped to find a secure refuge at the court of the
      king of the Visigoths. But these intentions were disappointed by
      accident, treachery, and the indefatigable pursuit of his
      enemies, who intercepted his flight from the sea-shore, and
      chased the unfortunate monarch, with some faithful followers, to
      the inaccessible mountain of Papua, 28 in the inland country of
      Numidia. He was immediately besieged by Pharas, an officer whose
      truth and sobriety were the more applauded, as such qualities
      could seldom be found among the Heruli, the most corrupt of the
      Barbarian tribes. To his vigilance Belisarius had intrusted this
      important charge and, after a bold attempt to scale the mountain,
      in which he lost a hundred and ten soldiers, Pharas expected,
      during a winter siege, the operation of distress and famine on
      the mind of the Vandal king. From the softest habits of pleasure,
      from the unbounded command of industry and wealth, he was reduced
      to share the poverty of the Moors, 29 supportable only to
      themselves by their ignorance of a happier condition. In their
      rude hovels, of mud and hurdles, which confined the smoke and
      excluded the light, they promiscuously slept on the ground,
      perhaps on a sheep-skin, with their wives, their children, and
      their cattle. Sordid and scanty were their garments; the use of
      bread and wine was unknown; and their oaten or barley cakes,
      imperfectly baked in the ashes, were devoured almost in a crude
      state, by the hungry savages. The health of Gelimer must have
      sunk under these strange and unwonted hardships, from whatsoever
      cause they had been endured; but his actual misery was imbittered
      by the recollection of past greatness, the daily insolence of his
      protectors, and the just apprehension, that the light and venal
      Moors might be tempted to betray the rights of hospitality. The
      knowledge of his situation dictated the humane and friendly
      epistle of Pharas. “Like yourself,” said the chief of the Heruli,
      “I am an illiterate Barbarian, but I speak the language of plain
      sense and an honest heart. Why will you persist in hopeless
      obstinacy? Why will you ruin yourself, your family, and nation?
      The love of freedom and abhorrence of slavery? Alas! my dearest
      Gelimer, are you not already the worst of slaves, the slave of
      the vile nation of the Moors? Would it not be preferable to
      sustain at Constantinople a life of poverty and servitude, rather
      than to reign the undoubted monarch of the mountain of Papua? Do
      you think it a disgrace to be the subject of Justinian?
      Belisarius is his subject; and we ourselves, whose birth is not
      inferior to your own, are not ashamed of our obedience to the
      Roman emperor. That generous prince will grant you a rich
      inheritance of lands, a place in the senate, and the dignity of
      patrician: such are his gracious intentions, and you may depend
      with full assurance on the word of Belisarius. So long as Heaven
      has condemned us to suffer, patience is a virtue; but if we
      reject the proffered deliverance, it degenerates into blind and
      stupid despair.” “I am not insensible” replied the king of the
      Vandals, “how kind and rational is your advice. But I cannot
      persuade myself to become the slave of an unjust enemy, who has
      deserved my implacable hatred. Him I had never injured either by
      word or deed: yet he has sent against me, I know not from whence,
      a certain Belisarius, who has cast me headlong from the throne
      into his abyss of misery. Justinian is a man; he is a prince;
      does he not dread for himself a similar reverse of fortune? I can
      write no more: my grief oppresses me. Send me, I beseech you, my
      dear Pharas, send me, a lyre, 30 a sponge, and a loaf of bread.”
      From the Vandal messenger, Pharas was informed of the motives of
      this singular request. It was long since the king of Africa had
      tasted bread; a defluxion had fallen on his eyes, the effect of
      fatigue or incessant weeping; and he wished to solace the
      melancholy hours, by singing to the lyre the sad story of his own
      misfortunes. The humanity of Pharas was moved; he sent the three
      extraordinary gifts; but even his humanity prompted him to
      redouble the vigilance of his guard, that he might sooner compel
      his prisoner to embrace a resolution advantageous to the Romans,
      but salutary to himself. The obstinacy of Gelimer at length
      yielded to reason and necessity; the solemn assurances of safety
      and honorable treatment were ratified in the emperor’s name, by
      the ambassador of Belisarius; and the king of the Vandals
      descended from the mountain. The first public interview was in
      one of the suburbs of Carthage; and when the royal captive
      accosted his conqueror, he burst into a fit of laughter. The
      crowd might naturally believe, that extreme grief had deprived
      Gelimer of his senses: but in this mournful state, unseasonable
      mirth insinuated to more intelligent observers, that the vain and
      transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious
      thought. 31

      28 (return) [ Mount Papua is placed by D’Anville (tom. iii. p.
      92, and Tabul. Imp. Rom. Occident.) near Hippo Regius and the
      sea; yet this situation ill agrees with the long pursuit beyond
      Hippo, and the words of Procopius, (l. ii.c.4,). * Note: Compare
      Lord Mahon, 120. conceive Gibbon to be right—M.]

      29 (return) [ Shaw (Travels, p. 220) most accurately represents
      the manners of the Bedoweens and Kabyles, the last of whom, by
      their language, are the remnant of the Moors; yet how changed—how
      civilized are these modern savages!—provisions are plenty among
      them and bread is common.]

      30 (return) [ By Procopius it is styled a lyre; perhaps harp
      would have been more national. The instruments of music are thus
      distinguished by Venantius Fortunatus:— Romanusque lyra tibi
      plaudat, Barbarus harpa.]

      31 (return) [ Herodotus elegantly describes the strange effects
      of grief in another royal captive, Psammetichus of Egypt, who
      wept at the lesser and was silent at the greatest of his
      calamities, (l. iii. c. 14.) In the interview of Paulus Aemilius
      and Perses, Belisarius might study his part; but it is probable
      that he never read either Livy or Plutarch; and it is certain
      that his generosity did not need a tutor.]


      Their contempt was soon justified by a new example of a vulgar
      truth; that flattery adheres to power, and envy to superior
      merit. The chiefs of the Roman army presumed to think themselves
      the rivals of a hero. Their private despatches maliciously
      affirmed, that the conqueror of Africa, strong in his reputation
      and the public love, conspired to seat himself on the throne of
      the Vandals. Justinian listened with too patient an ear; and his
      silence was the result of jealousy rather than of confidence. An
      honorable alternative, of remaining in the province, or of
      returning to the capital, was indeed submitted to the discretion
      of Belisarius; but he wisely concluded, from intercepted letters
      and the knowledge of his sovereign’s temper, that he must either
      resign his head, erect his standard, or confound his enemies by
      his presence and submission. Innocence and courage decided his
      choice; his guards, captives, and treasures, were diligently
      embarked; and so prosperous was the navigation, that his arrival
      at Constantinople preceded any certain account of his departure
      from the port of Carthage. Such unsuspecting loyalty removed the
      apprehensions of Justinian; envy was silenced and inflamed by the
      public gratitude; and the third Africanus obtained the honors of
      a triumph, a ceremony which the city of Constantine had never
      seen, and which ancient Rome, since the reign of Tiberius, had
      reserved for the auspicious arms of the Caesars.32 From the
      palace of Belisarius, the procession was conducted through the
      principal streets to the hippodrome; and this memorable day
      seemed to avenge the injuries of Genseric, and to expiate the
      shame of the Romans. The wealth of nations was displayed, the
      trophies of martial or effeminate luxury; rich armor, golden
      thrones, and the chariots of state which had been used by the
      Vandal queen; the massy furniture of the royal banquet, the
      splendor of precious stones, the elegant forms of statues and
      vases, the more substantial treasure of gold, and the holy
      vessels of the Jewish temple, which after their long
      peregrination were respectfully deposited in the Christian church
      of Jerusalem. A long train of the noblest Vandals reluctantly
      exposed their lofty stature and manly countenance. Gelimer slowly
      advanced: he was clad in a purple robe, and still maintained the
      majesty of a king. Not a tear escaped from his eyes, not a sigh
      was heard; but his pride or piety derived some secret consolation
      from the words of Solomon, 33 which he repeatedly pronounced,
      Vanity! vanity! all is vanity! Instead of ascending a triumphal
      car drawn by four horses or elephants, the modest conqueror
      marched on foot at the head of his brave companions; his prudence
      might decline an honor too conspicuous for a subject; and his
      magnanimity might justly disdain what had been so often sullied
      by the vilest of tyrants. The glorious procession entered the
      gate of the hippodrome; was saluted by the acclamations of the
      senate and people; and halted before the throne where Justinian
      and Theodora were seated to receive homage of the captive monarch
      and the victorious hero. They both performed the customary
      adoration; and falling prostrate on the ground, respectfully
      touched the footstool of a prince who had not unsheathed his
      sword, and of a prostitute who had danced on the theatre; some
      gentle violence was used to bend the stubborn spirit of the
      grandson of Genseric; and however trained to servitude, the
      genius of Belisarius must have secretly rebelled. He was
      immediately declared consul for the ensuing year, and the day of
      his inauguration resembled the pomp of a second triumph: his
      curule chair was borne aloft on the shoulders of captive Vandals;
      and the spoils of war, gold cups, and rich girdles, were
      profusely scattered among the populace.

      32 (return) [ After the title of imperator had lost the old
      military sense, and the Roman auspices were abolished by
      Christianity, (see La Bleterie, Mem. de l’Academie, tom. xxi. p.
      302—332,) a triumph might be given with less inconsistency to a
      private general.]

      33 (return) [ If the Ecclesiastes be truly a work of Solomon, and
      not, like Prior’s poem, a pious and moral composition of more
      recent times, in his name, and on the subject of his repentance.
      The latter is the opinion of the learned and free-spirited
      Grotius, (Opp. Theolog. tom. i. p. 258;) and indeed the
      Ecclesiastes and Proverbs display a larger compass of thought and
      experience than seem to belong either to a Jew or a king. * Note:
      Rosenmüller, arguing from the difference of style from that of
      the greater part of the book of Proverbs, and from its nearer
      approximation to the Aramaic dialect than any book of the Old
      Testament, assigns the Ecclesiastes to some period between
      Nehemiah and Alexander the Great. Schol. in Vet. Test. ix.
      Proemium ad Eccles. p. 19.—M.]


      But the purest reward of Belisarius was in the faithful execution
      of a treaty for which his honor had been pledged to the king of
      the Vandals. The religious scruples of Gelimer, who adhered to
      the Arian heresy, were incompatible with the dignity of senator
      or patrician: but he received from the emperor an ample estate in
      the province of Galatia, where the abdicated monarch retired,
      with his family and friends, to a life of peace, of affluence,
      and perhaps of content.34 The daughters of Hilderic were
      entertained with the respectful tenderness due to their age and
      misfortune; and Justinian and Theodora accepted the honor of
      educating and enriching the female descendants of the great
      Theodosius. The bravest of the Vandal youth were distributed into
      five squadrons of cavalry, which adopted the name of their
      benefactor, and supported in the Persian wars the glory of their
      ancestors. But these rare exceptions, the reward of birth or
      valor, are insufficient to explain the fate of a nation, whose
      numbers before a short and bloodless war, amounted to more than
      six hundred thousand persons. After the exile of their king and
      nobles, the servile crowd might purchase their safety by abjuring
      their character, religion, and language; and their degenerate
      posterity would be insensibly mingled with the common herd of
      African subjects. Yet even in the present age, and in the heart
      of the Moorish tribes, a curious traveller has discovered the
      white complexion and long flaxen hair of a northern race;35 and
      it was formerly believed, that the boldest of the Vandals fled
      beyond the power, or even the knowledge, of the Romans, to enjoy
      their solitary freedom on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.36
      Africa had been their empire, it became their prison; nor could
      they entertain a hope, or even a wish, of returning to the banks
      of the Elbe, where their brethren, of a spirit less adventurous,
      still wandered in their native forests. It was impossible for
      cowards to surmount the barriers of unknown seas and hostile
      Barbarians; it was impossible for brave men to expose their
      nakedness and defeat before the eyes of their countrymen, to
      describe the kingdoms which they had lost, and to claim a share
      of the humble inheritance, which, in a happier hour, they had
      almost unanimously renounced.37 In the country between the Elbe
      and the Oder, several populous villages of Lusatia are inhabited
      by the Vandals: they still preserve their language, their
      customs, and the purity of their blood; support, with some
      impatience, the Saxon or Prussian yoke; and serve, with secret
      and voluntary allegiance, the descendant of their ancient kings,
      who in his garb and present fortune is confounded with the
      meanest of his vassals.38 The name and situation of this unhappy
      people might indicate their descent from one common stock with
      the conquerors of Africa. But the use of a Sclavonian dialect
      more clearly represent them as the last remnant of the new
      colonies, who succeeded to the genuine Vandals, already scattered
      or destroyed in the age of Procopius.39

      34 (return) [ In the Bélisaire of Marmontel, the king and the
      conqueror of Africa meet, sup, and converse, without recollecting
      each other. It is surely a fault of that romance, that not only
      the hero, but all to whom he had been so conspicuously known,
      appear to have lost their eyes or their memory.]

      35 (return) [ Shaw, p. 59. Yet since Procopius (l. ii. c. 13)
      speaks of a people of Mount Atlas, as already distinguished by
      white bodies and yellow hair, the phenomenon (which is likewise
      visible in the Andes of Peru, Buffon, tom. iii p. 504), may
      naturally be ascribed to the elevation of the ground and the
      temperature of the air.]

      36 (return) [ The geographer of Ravenna (l. iii. c. xi. pp. 129,
      130, 131, Paris, 1688) describes the Mauritania _Gaditana_
      (opposite to Cadiz) ubi gens Vandalorum, a Belisario devicta in
      Africâ, fugit, et nunquam comparuit.]

      37 (return) [ A single voice had protested, and Genseric
      dismissed, without a formal answer, the Vandals of Germany: but
      those of Africa derided his prudence, and affected to despise the
      poverty of their forests (Procopius, Vandal. l. i. c. 22)]

      38 (return) [ From the mouth of the great elector (in 1687)
      Tollius describes the secret royalty and rebellious spirit of the
      Vandals of Brandenburgh. who could muster five or six thousand
      soldiers who had procured some cannon, &c. (Itinerar. Hungar. p.
      42, apud Dubos. Hist, de la Monarchie Françoise, tom. i. pp. 182,
      183.) The veracity, not of the elector, but of Tollius himself,
      may justly be suspected. * Note: The Wendish population of
      Brandenburgh are now better known, but the Wends are clearly of
      the Sclavonian race; the Vandals most probably Teutonic, and
      nearly allied to the Goths.—M.]

      39 (return) [ Procopius (l i. c. 22) was in total darkness— οὒτε
      μνήμη τις οὒτε ὂνομα ἐς ἐμε σωζέται. Under the reign of Dagobert
      (A.D. 630) the Sclavonian tribes of the Sorbi and Venedi already
      bordered on Thuringia (Mascou Hist. of the Germans, xv. 3, 4,
      5).]


      If Belisarius had been tempted to hesitate in his allegiance, he
      might have urged, even against the emperor himself, the
      indispensable duty of saving Africa from an enemy more barbarous
      than the Vandals. The origin of the Moors is involved in
      darkness; they were ignorant of the use of letters.40 Their
      limits cannot be precisely defined; a boundless continent was
      open to the Libyan shepherds; the change of seasons and pastures
      regulated their motions; and their rude huts and slender
      furniture were transported with the same case as their arms,
      their families, and their cattle, which consisted of sheep, oxen,
      and camels.41 During the vigor of the Roman power, they observed
      a respectful distance from Carthage and the sea-shore: under the
      feeble reign of the Vandals, they invaded the cities of Numidia,
      occupied the sea-coast from Tangier to Cæsarea, and pitched their
      camps, with impunity, in the fertile province of Byzacium. The
      formidable strength and artful conduct of Belisarius secured the
      neutrality of the Moorish princes, whose vanity aspired to
      receive, in the emperor's name, the ensigns of their regal
      dignity.42 They were astonished by the rapid event, and trembled
      in the presence of their conqueror. But his approaching departure
      soon relieved the apprehensions of a savage and superstitious
      people; the number of their wives allowed them to disregard the
      safety of their infant hostages; and when the Roman general
      hoisted sail in the port of Carthage, he heard the cries, and
      almost beheld the flames, of the desolated province. Yet he
      persisted in his resolution, and leaving only a part of his
      guards to reënforce the feeble garrisons, he intrusted the
      command of Africa to the eunuch Solomon,43 who proved himself not
      unworthy to be the successor of Belisarius. In the first
      invasion, some detachments, with two officers of merit, were
      surprised and intercepted; but Solomon speedily assembled his
      troops, marched from Carthage into the heart of the country, and
      in two great battles destroyed sixty thousand of the Barbarians.
      The Moors depended on their multitude, their swiftness, and their
      inaccessible mountains; and the aspect and smell of their camels
      are said to have produced some confusion in the Roman cavalry.44
      But as soon as they were commanded to dismount, they derided this
      contemptible obstacle: as soon as the columns ascended the hills,
      the naked and disorderly crowd was dazzled by glittering arms and
      regular evolutions; and the menace of their female prophets was
      repeatedly fulfilled, that the Moors should be discomfited by a
      _beardless_ antagonist. The victorious eunuch advanced thirteen
      days journey from Carthage, to besiege Mount Aurasius,45 the
      citadel, and at the same time the garden, of Numidia. That range
      of hills, a branch of the great Atlas, contains, within a
      circumference of one hundred and twenty miles, a rare variety of
      soil and climate; the intermediate valleys and elevated plains
      abound with rich pastures, perpetual streams, and fruits of a
      delicious taste and uncommon magnitude. This fair solitude is
      decorated with the ruins of Lambesa, a Roman city, once the seat
      of a legion, and the residence of forty thousand inhabitants. The
      Ionic temple of Æsculapius is encompassed with Moorish huts; and
      the cattle now graze in the midst of an amphitheatre, under the
      shade of Corinthian columns. A sharp perpendicular rock rises
      above the level of the mountain, where the African princes
      deposited their wives and treasure; and a proverb is familiar to
      the Arabs, that the man may eat fire who dares to attack the
      craggy cliffs and inhospitable natives of Mount Aurasius. This
      hardy enterprise was twice attempted by the eunuch Solomon: from
      the first, he retreated with some disgrace; and in the second,
      his patience and provisions were almost exhausted; and he must
      again have retired, if he had not yielded to the impetuous
      courage of his troops, who audaciously scaled, to the
      astonishment of the Moors, the mountain, the hostile camp, and
      the summit of the Geminian rock. A citadel was erected to secure
      this important conquest, and to remind the Barbarians of their
      defeat; and as Solomon pursued his march to the west, the
      long-lost province of Mauritanian Sitifi was again annexed to the
      Roman empire. The Moorish war continued several years after the
      departure of Belisarius; but the laurels which he resigned to a
      faithful lieutenant may be justly ascribed to his own triumph.

      40 (return) [ Sallust represents the Moors as a remnant of the
      army of Heracles (de Bell. Jugurth. c. 21), and Procopius
      (Vandal. l. ii. c. 10), as the posterity of the Cananæans who
      fled from the robber Joshua, (ληστὴς) He quotes two columns, with
      a Phœnician inscription. I believe in the columns—I doubt the
      inscription—and I reject the pedigree. * Note: It has been
      supposed that Procopius is the only, or at least the most ancient
      author who has spoken of this strange inscription, of which one
      may be tempted to attribute the invention to Procopius himself.
      Yet it is mentioned in the Armenian history of Moses of Chorene,
      (l. i. c. 18,) who lived and wrote more than a century before
      Procopius. This is sufficient to show that an earlier date must
      be assigned to this tradition. The same inscription is mentioned
      by Suidas, (sub voc. Χανάαν), no doubt from Procopius. According
      to most of the Arabian writers, who adopted a nearly similar
      tradition, the indigenes of Northern Africa were the people of
      Palestine expelled by David, who passed into Africa, under the
      guidance of Goliath, whom they call Djalout. It is impossible to
      admit traditions which bear a character so fabulous. St. Martin,
      t. xi. p. 324.—Unless my memory greatly deceives me, I have read
      in the works of Lightfoot a similar Jewish tradition; but I have
      mislaid the reference, and cannot recover the passage.—M.]

      41 (return) [ Virgil (Georgic. iii. 339) and Pomponius Mela (i.
      8) describe the wandering life of the African shepherds, similar
      to that of the Arabs and Tartars; and Shaw (p. 222) is the best
      commentator on the poet and the geographer.]

      42 (return) [ The customary gifts were a sceptre, a crown or cap,
      a white cloak, a figured tunic and shoes, all adorned with gold
      and silver; nor were these precious metals less acceptable in the
      shape of coin, (Procop. Vandal. l. i. c. 25).]

      43 (return) [ See the African government and warfare of Solomon,
      in Procopius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20). He was
      recalled, and again restored; and his last victory dates in the
      xiiith year of Justinian (A.D. 539). An accident in his childhood
      had rendered him a eunuch (l. l. c. 11): the other Roman generals
      were amply furnished with beards πώγωνος ἐμπιπλάμενοι (l. ii. c.
      8).]

      44 (return) [ This natural antipathy of the horse for the camel
      is affirmed by the ancients (Xenophon. Cyropæd. l. vi. p. 488, l.
      vii. pp. 483, 492, edit. Hutchinson. Polyæn. Stratagem, vii. 6,
      Plin. Hist. Nat. viii. 26, Ælian, de Natur. Annal. l. iii. c. 7);
      but it is disproved by daily experience, and derided by the best
      judges, the Orientals (Voyage d’Olearius, p. 553).]

      45 (return) [ Procopius is the first who describes Mount Aurasius
      (Vandal. l. ii. c. 13. De Edific. l. vi. c. 7). He may be
      compared with Leo Africanus (dell’ Africa, parte v., in Ramusio,
      tom. i. fol. 77, recto). Marmol (tom. ii. p. 430), and Shaw (pp.
      56-59).]


      The experience of past faults, which may sometimes correct the
      mature age of an individual, is seldom profitable to the
      successive generations of mankind. The nations of antiquity,
      careless of each other's safety, were separately vanquished and
      enslaved by the Romans. This awful lesson might have instructed
      the Barbarians of the West to oppose, with timely counsels and
      confederate arms, the unbounded ambition of Justinian. Yet the
      same error was repeated, the same consequences were felt, and the
      Goths, both of Italy and Spain, insensible of their approaching
      danger, beheld with indifference, and even with joy, the rapid
      downfall of the Vandals. After the failure of the royal line,
      Theudes, a valiant and powerful chief, ascended the throne of
      Spain, which he had formerly administered in the name of
      Theodoric and his infant grandson. Under his command, the
      Visigoths besieged the fortress of Ceuta on the African coast:
      but, while they spent the Sabbath day in peace and devotion, the
      pious security of their camp was invaded by a sally from the
      town; and the king himself, with some difficulty and danger,
      escaped from the hands of a sacrilegious enemy.46 It was not long
      before his pride and resentment were gratified by a suppliant
      embassy from the unfortunate Gelimer, who implored, in his
      distress, the aid of the Spanish monarch. But instead of
      sacrificing these unworthy passions to the dictates of generosity
      and prudence, Theudes amused the ambassadors till he was secretly
      informed of the loss of Carthage, and then dismissed them with
      obscure and contemptuous advice, to seek in their native country
      a true knowledge of the state of the Vandals.47 The long
      continuance of the Italian war delayed the punishment of the
      Visigoths; and the eyes of Theudes were closed before they tasted
      the fruits of his mistaken policy. After his death, the sceptre
      of Spain was disputed by a civil war. The weaker candidate
      solicited the protection of Justinian, and ambitiously subscribed
      a treaty of alliance, which deeply wounded the independence and
      happiness of his country. Several cities, both on the ocean and
      the Mediterranean, were ceded to the Roman troops, who afterwards
      refused to evacuate those pledges, as it should seem, either of
      safety or payment; and as they were fortified by perpetual
      supplies from Africa, they maintained their impregnable stations,
      for the mischievous purpose of inflaming the civil and religious
      factions of the Barbarians. Seventy years elapsed before this
      painful thorn could be extirpated from the bosom of the monarchy;
      and as long as the emperors retained any share of these remote
      and useless possessions, their vanity might number Spain in the
      list of their provinces, and the successors of Alaric in the rank
      of their vassals.48

      46 (return) [ Isidor. Chron. p. 722, edit. Grot. Mariana, Hist.
      Hispan. l. v. c. 8, p. 173. Yet, according to Isidore, the siege
      of Ceuta, and the death of Theudes, happened, A. Æ. H. 586—A.D.
      548; and the place was defended, not by the Vandals, but by the
      Romans.]

      47 (return) [ Procopius. Vandal. l. i, c. 24.]

      48 (return) [ See the original Chronicle of Isidore, and the vth
      and vith books of the History of Spain by Mariana. The Romans
      were finally expelled by Suintila, king of the Visigoths (A.D.
      621–620), after their reunion to the Catholic church.]


      The error of the Goths who reigned in Italy was less excusable
      than that of their Spanish brethren, and their punishment was
      still more immediate and terrible. From a motive of private
      revenge, they enabled their most dangerous enemy to destroy their
      most valuable ally. A sister of the great Theodoric had been
      given in marriage to Thrasimond, the African king:49 on this
      occasion, the fortress of Lilybæum50 in Sicily was resigned to
      the Vandals; and the princess Amalafrida was attended by a
      martial train of one thousand nobles, and five thousand Gothic
      soldiers, who signalized their valor in the Moorish wars. Their
      merit was overrated by themselves, and perhaps neglected by the
      Vandals; they viewed the country with envy, and the conquerors
      with disdain; but their real or fictitious conspiracy was
      prevented by a massacre; the Goths were oppressed, and the
      captivity of Amalafrida was soon followed by her secret and
      suspicious death. The eloquent pen of Cassiodorus was employed to
      reproach the Vandal court with the cruel violation of every
      social and public duty; but the vengeance which he threatened in
      the name of his sovereign might be derided with impunity, as long
      as Africa was protected by the sea, and the Goths were destitute
      of a navy. In the blind impotence of grief and indignation, they
      joyfully saluted the approach of the Romans, entertained the
      fleet of Belisarius in the ports of Sicily, and were speedily
      delighted or alarmed by the surprising intelligence, that their
      revenge was executed beyond the measure of their hopes, or
      perhaps of their wishes. To their friendship the emperor was
      indebted for the kingdom of Africa, and the Goths might
      reasonably think, that they were entitled to resume the
      possession of a barren rock, so recently separated as a nuptial
      gift from the island of Sicily. They were soon undeceived by the
      haughty mandate of Belisarius, which excited their tardy and
      unavailing repentance. “The city and promontory of Lilybæum,”
      said the Roman general, “belonged to the Vandals, and I claim
      them by the right of conquest. Your submission may deserve the
      favor of the emperor; your obstinacy will provoke his
      displeasure, and must kindle a war, that can terminate only in
      your utter ruin. If you compel us to take up arms, we shall
      contend, not to regain the possession of a single city, but to
      deprive you of all the provinces which you unjustly withhold from
      their lawful sovereign.” A nation of two hundred thousand
      soldiers might have smiled at the vain menace of Justinian and
      his lieutenant: but a spirit of discord and disaffection
      prevailed in Italy, and the Goths supported, with reluctance, the
      indignity of a female reign.51

      49 (return) [ See the marriage and fate of Amalafrida in
      Procopius (Vandal. l. i. c. 8, 9), and in Cassiodorus (Var. ix.
      1) the expostulation of her royal brother. Compare likewise the
      Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis.]

      50 (return) [ Lilybæum was built by the Carthaginians, Olymp.
      xcv. 4; and in the first Punic war, a strong situation, and
      excellent harbor, rendered that place an important object to both
      nations.]

      51 (return) [ Compare the different passages of Procopius
      (Vandal. l. ii. c. 5, Gothic, l. i c. 3).]


      The birth of Amalasontha, the regent and queen of Italy,52 united
      the two most illustrious families of the Barbarians. Her mother,
      the sister of Clovis, was descended from the long-haired kings of
      the _Merovingian_ race;53 and the regal succession of the _Amali_
      was illustrated in the eleventh generation, by her father, the
      great Theodoric, whose merit might have ennobled a plebeian
      origin. The sex of his daughter excluded her from the Gothic
      throne; but his vigilant tenderness for his family and his people
      discovered the last heir of the royal line, whose ancestors had
      taken refuge in Spain; and the fortunate Eutharic was suddenly
      exalted to the rank of a consul and a prince. He enjoyed only a
      short time the charms of Amalasontha, and the hopes of the
      succession; and his widow, after the death of her husband and
      father, was left the guardian of her son Athalaric, and the
      kingdom of Italy. At the age of about twenty-eight years, the
      endowments of her mind and person had attained their perfect
      maturity. Her beauty, which, in the apprehension of Theodora
      herself, might have disputed the conquest of an emperor, was
      animated by manly sense, activity, and resolution. Education and
      experience had cultivated her talents; her philosophic studies
      were exempt from vanity; and, though she expressed herself with
      equal elegance and ease in the Greek, the Latin, and the Gothic
      tongue, the daughter of Theodoric maintained in her counsels a
      discreet and impenetrable silence. By a faithful imitation of the
      virtues, she revived the prosperity, of his reign; while she
      strove, with pious care, to expiate the faults, and to obliterate
      the darker memory of his declining age. The children of Boethius
      and Symmachus were restored to their paternal inheritance; her
      extreme lenity never consented to inflict any corporal or
      pecuniary penalties on her Roman subjects; and she generously
      despised the clamors of the Goths, who, at the end of forty
      years, still considered the people of Italy as their slaves or
      their enemies. Her salutary measures were directed by the wisdom,
      and celebrated by the eloquence, of Cassiodorus; she solicited
      and deserved the friendship of the emperor; and the kingdoms of
      Europe respected, both in peace and war, the majesty of the
      Gothic throne. But the future happiness of the queen and of Italy
      depended on the education of her son; who was destined, by his
      birth, to support the different and almost incompatible
      characters of the chief of a Barbarian camp, and the first
      magistrate of a civilized nation. From the age of ten years,54
      Athalaric was diligently instructed in the arts and sciences,
      either useful or ornamental for a Roman prince; and three
      venerable Goths were chosen to instil the principles of honor and
      virtue into the mind of their young king. But the pupil who is
      insensible of the benefits, must abhor the restraints, of
      education; and the solicitude of the queen, which affection
      rendered anxious and severe, offended the untractable nature of
      her son and his subjects. On a solemn festival, when the Goths
      were assembled in the palace of Ravenna, the royal youth escaped
      from his mother's apartment, and, with tears of pride and anger,
      complained of a blow which his stubborn disobedience had provoked
      her to inflict. The Barbarians resented the indignity which had
      been offered to their king; accused the regent of conspiring
      against his life and crown; and imperiously demanded, that the
      grandson of Theodoric should be rescued from the dastardly
      discipline of women and pedants, and educated, like a valiant
      Goth, in the society of his equals and the glorious ignorance of
      his ancestors. To this rude clamor, importunately urged as the
      voice of the nation, Amalasontha was compelled to yield her
      reason, and the dearest wishes of her heart. The king of Italy
      was abandoned to wine, to women, and to rustic sports; and the
      indiscreet contempt of the ungrateful youth betrayed the
      mischievous designs of his favorites and her enemies. Encompassed
      with domestic foes, she entered into a secret negotiation with
      the emperor Justinian; obtained the assurance of a friendly
      reception, and had actually deposited at Dyrachium, in Epirus, a
      treasure of forty thousand pounds of gold. Happy would it have
      been for her fame and safety, if she had calmly retired from
      barbarous faction to the peace and splendor of Constantinople.
      But the mind of Amalasontha was inflamed by ambition and revenge;
      and while her ships lay at anchor in the port, she waited for the
      success of a crime which her passions excused or applauded as an
      act of justice. Three of the most dangerous malcontents had been
      separately removed under the pretence of trust and command, to
      the frontiers of Italy: they were assassinated by her private
      emissaries; and the blood of these noble Goths rendered the
      queen-mother absolute in the court of Ravenna, and justly odious
      to a free people. But if she had lamented the disorders of her
      son she soon wept his irreparable loss; and the death of
      Athalaric, who, at the age of sixteen, was consumed by premature
      intemperance, left her destitute of any firm support or legal
      authority. Instead of submitting to the laws of her country which
      held as a fundamental maxim, that the succession could never pass
      from the lance to the distaff, the daughter of Theodoric
      conceived the impracticable design of sharing, with one of her
      cousins, the regal title, and of reserving in her own hands the
      substance of supreme power. He received the proposal with
      profound respect and affected gratitude; and the eloquent
      Cassiodorus announced to the senate and the emperor, that
      Amalasontha and Theodatus had ascended the throne of Italy. His
      birth (for his mother was the sister of Theodoric) might be
      considered as an imperfect title; and the choice of Amalasontha
      was more strongly directed by her contempt of his avarice and
      pusillanimity which had deprived him of the love of the Italians,
      and the esteem of the Barbarians. But Theodatus was exasperated
      by the contempt which he deserved: her justice had repressed and
      reproached the oppression which he exercised against his Tuscan
      neighbors; and the principal Goths, united by common guilt and
      resentment, conspired to instigate his slow and timid
      disposition. The letters of congratulation were scarcely
      despatched before the queen of Italy was imprisoned in a small
      island of the Lake of Bolsena,55 where, after a short
      confinement, she was strangled in the bath, by the order, or with
      the connivance of the new king, who instructed his turbulent
      subjects to shed the blood of their sovereigns.

      52 (return) [ For the reign and character of Amalasontha, see
      Procopius (Gothic, l. i. c. 2, 3, 4, and Anecdot. c. 16, with the
      Notes of Alemannus), Cassiodorus (Var. viii. ix. x. and xi, 1),
      and Jornandes (De Rebus Geticis, c. 59, and De Successione
      Regnorum. in Muratori, tom. i, p. 24).]

      53 (return) [ The marriage of Theodoric with Audefleda, the
      sister of Clovis, may be placed in the year 495, soon after the
      conquest of Italy (De Buat, Hist, des Peuples, tom. ix. p. 213).
      The nuptials of Eutharic and Amalasontha were celebrated in 515
      (Cassiodor. in Chron. p. 453).]

      54 (return) [ At the death of Theodoric, his grandson Athalaric
      is described by Procopius as a boy about eight years old—ὀκτὼ
      γεγονὼς ἔτη. Cassiodorus, with authority and reason, adds two
      years to his age—infantulum adhuc vix decennem.]

      55 (return) [ The lake, from the neighboring towns of Etruria,
      was styled either Vulsiniensis (now of Bolsena) or Tarquiniensis.
      It is surrounded with white rocks, and stored with fish and
      wild-fowl. The younger Pliny (Epist. ii. 96) celebrates two woody
      islands that floated on its waters: if a fable, how credulous the
      ancients! if a fact, how careless the moderns! Yet, since Pliny,
      the island may have been fixed by new and gradual accessions.]


      Justinian beheld with joy the dissensions of the Goths; and the
      mediation of an ally concealed and promoted the ambitious views
      of the conqueror. His ambassadors, in their public audience,
      demanded the fortress of Lilybæum, ten Barbarian fugitives, and a
      just compensation for the pillage of a small town on the Illyrian
      borders; but they secretly negotiated with Theodatus to betray
      the province of Tuscany, and tempted Amalasontha to extricate
      herself from danger and perplexity, by a free surrender of the
      kingdom of Italy. A false and servile epistle was subscribed, by
      the reluctant hand of the captive queen: but the confession of
      the Roman senators, who were sent to Constantinople, revealed the
      truth of her deplorable situation; and Justinian, by the voice of
      a new ambassador, most powerfully interceded for her life and
      liberty.55a Yet the secret instructions of the same minister were
      adapted to serve the cruel jealousy of Theodora, who dreaded the
      presence and superior charms of a rival: he prompted, with artful
      and ambiguous hints, the execution of a crime so useful to the
      Romans;56 received the intelligence of her death with grief and
      indignation, and denounced, in his master's name, immortal war
      against the perfidious assassin. In Italy, as well as in Africa,
      the guilt of a usurper appeared to justify the arms of Justinian;
      but the forces which he prepared, were insufficient for the
      subversion of a mighty kingdom, if their feeble numbers had not
      been multiplied by the name, the spirit, and the conduct, of a
      hero. A chosen troop of guards, who served on horseback, and were
      armed with lances and bucklers, attended the person of
      Belisarius; his cavalry was composed of two hundred Huns, three
      hundred Moors, and four thousand _confederates_, and the infantry
      consisted of only three thousand Isaurians. Steering the same
      course as in his former expedition, the Roman consul cast anchor
      before Catana in Sicily, to survey the strength of the island,
      and to decide whether he should attempt the conquest, or
      peaceably pursue his voyage for the African coast. He found a
      fruitful land and a friendly people. Notwithstanding the decay of
      agriculture, Sicily still supplied the granaries of Rome: the
      farmers were graciously exempted from the oppression of military
      quarters; and the Goths, who trusted the defence of the island to
      the inhabitants, had some reason to complain, that their
      confidence was ungratefully betrayed. Instead of soliciting and
      expecting the aid of the king of Italy, they yielded to the first
      summons a cheerful obedience; and this province, the first fruits
      of the Punic war, was again, after a long separation, united to
      the Roman empire.57 The Gothic garrison of Palermo, which alone
      attempted to resist, was reduced, after a short siege, by a
      singular stratagem. Belisarius introduced his ships into the
      deepest recess of the harbor; their boats were laboriously
      hoisted with ropes and pulleys to the top-mast head, and he
      filled them with archers, who, from that superior station,
      commanded the ramparts of the city. After this easy, though
      successful campaign, the conqueror entered Syracuse in triumph,
      at the head of his victorious bands, distributing gold medals to
      the people, on the day which so gloriously terminated the year of
      the consulship. He passed the winter season in the palace of
      ancient kings, amidst the ruins of a Grecian colony, which once
      extended to a circumference of two-and-twenty miles:58 but in the
      spring, about the festival of Easter, the prosecution of his
      designs was interrupted by a dangerous revolt of the African
      forces. Carthage was saved by the presence of Belisarius, who
      suddenly landed with a thousand guards.58a Two thousand soldiers
      of doubtful faith returned to the standard of their old
      commander: and he marched, without hesitation, above fifty miles,
      to seek an enemy whom he affected to pity and despise. Eight
      thousand rebels trembled at his approach; they were routed at the
      first onset, by the dexterity of their master: and this ignoble
      victory would have restored the peace of Africa, if the conqueror
      had not been hastily recalled to Sicily, to appease a sedition
      which was kindled during his absence in his own camp.59 Disorder
      and disobedience were the common malady of the times; the genius
      to command, and the virtue to obey, resided only in the mind of
      Belisarius.

      55a (return) [ Amalasontha was not alive when this new
      ambassador, Peter of Thessalonica, arrived in Italy: he could not
      then secretly contribute to her death. “But (says M. de Sainte
      Croix) it is not beyond probability that Theodora had entered
      into some criminal intrigue with Gundelina: for that wife of
      Theodatus wrote to implore her protection, reminding her of the
      confidence which she and her husband had always placed in her
      former promises.” See on Amalasontha and the authors of her death
      an excellent dissertation of M. de Sainte Croix in the Archives
      Littéraires published by M. Vaudenbourg, No. 50, t. xvii. p.
      216.—G.]

      56 (return) [ Yet Procopius discredits his own evidence (Anecdot.
      c. 16) by confessing that in his public history he had not spoken
      the truth. See the epistles from Queen Gundelina to the Empress
      Theodora (Var. x. 20, 21, 23, and observe a suspicious word, de
      illâ personà, &c.), with the elaborate Commentary of Buat (tom.
      x. pp. 177–185).]

      57 (return) [ For the conquest of Sicily, compare the narrative
      of Procopius with the complaints of Totila (Gothic. l. i. c. 5.
      l. iii. c. 16). The Gothic queen had lately relieved that
      thankless island (Var. ix. 10, 11).]

      58 (return) [ The ancient magnitude and splendor of the five
      quarters of Syracuse are delineated by Cicero (in Verrem. actio
      ii. l. iv. c. 52, 53), Strabo (l. vi. p. 415), and D’Orville
      Sicula (tom. ii. pp. 174–202). The new city, restored by
      Augustus, shrunk towards the island.]

      58a (return) [ A hundred (there was no room on board for more).
      Gibbon has again been misled by Cousin’s translation. Lord Mahon,
      p. 157—M.]

      59 (return) [ Procopius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 14, 15) so clearly
      relates the return of Belirarius into Sicily (p. 146, edit.
      Hoeschelii), that I am astonished at the strange misapprehension
      and reproaches of a learned critic (Œuvres de la Mothe le Vayer,
      tom, viii. pp. 162, 163).]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part III.


      Although Theodatus descended from a race of heroes, he was
      ignorant of the art, and averse to the dangers, of war. Although
      he had studied the writings of Plato and Tully, philosophy was
      incapable of purifying his mind from the basest passions, avarice
      and fear. He had purchased a sceptre by ingratitude and murder:
      at the first menace of an enemy, he degraded his own majesty and
      that of a nation, which already disdained their unworthy
      sovereign. Astonished by the recent example of Gelimer, he saw
      himself dragged in chains through the streets of Constantinople:
      the terrors which Belisarius inspired were heightened by the
      eloquence of Peter, the Byzantine ambassador; and that bold and
      subtle advocate persuaded him to sign a treaty, too ignominious
      to become the foundation of a lasting peace. It was stipulated,
      that in the acclamations of the Roman people, the name of the
      emperor should be always proclaimed before that of the Gothic
      king; and that as often as the statue of Theodatus was erected in
      brass on marble, the divine image of Justinian should be placed
      on its right hand. Instead of conferring, the king of Italy was
      reduced to solicit, the honors of the senate; and the consent of
      the emperor was made indispensable before he could execute,
      against a priest or senator, the sentence either of death or
      confiscation. The feeble monarch resigned the possession of
      Sicily; offered, as the annual mark of his dependence, a crown of
      gold of the weight of three hundred pounds; and promised to
      supply, at the requisition of his sovereign, three thousand
      Gothic auxiliaries, for the service of the empire. Satisfied with
      these extraordinary concessions, the successful agent of
      Justinian hastened his journey to Constantinople; but no sooner
      had he reached the Alban villa, 60 than he was recalled by the
      anxiety of Theodatus; and the dialogue which passed between the
      king and the ambassador deserves to be represented in its
      original simplicity. “Are you of opinion that the emperor will
      ratify this treaty? Perhaps. If he refuses, what consequence will
      ensue? War. Will such a war, be just or reasonable? Most
      assuredly: every to his character. What is your meaning? You are
      a philosopher—Justinian is emperor of the Romans: it would all
      become the disciple of Plato to shed the blood of thousands in
      his private quarrel: the successor of Augustus should vindicate
      his rights, and recover by arms the ancient provinces of his
      empire.” This reasoning might not convince, but it was sufficient
      to alarm and subdue the weakness of Theodatus; and he soon
      descended to his last offer, that for the poor equivalent of a
      pension of forty-eight thousand pounds sterling, he would resign
      the kingdom of the Goths and Italians, and spend the remainder of
      his days in the innocent pleasures of philosophy and agriculture.


      Both treaties were intrusted to the hands of the ambassador, on
      the frail security of an oath not to produce the second till the
      first had been positively rejected. The event may be easily
      foreseen: Justinian required and accepted the abdication of the
      Gothic king. His indefatigable agent returned from Constantinople
      to Ravenna, with ample instructions; and a fair epistle, which
      praised the wisdom and generosity of the royal philosopher,
      granted his pension, with the assurance of such honors as a
      subject and a Catholic might enjoy; and wisely referred the final
      execution of the treaty to the presence and authority of
      Belisarius. But in the interval of suspense, two Roman generals,
      who had entered the province of Dalmatia, were defeated and slain
      by the Gothic troops. From blind and abject despair, Theodatus
      capriciously rose to groundless and fatal presumption, 61 and
      dared to receive, with menace and contempt, the ambassador of
      Justinian; who claimed his promise, solicited the allegiance of
      his subjects, and boldly asserted the inviolable privilege of his
      own character. The march of Belisarius dispelled this visionary
      pride; and as the first campaign 62 was employed in the reduction
      of Sicily, the invasion of Italy is applied by Procopius to the
      second year of the Gothic war. 63

      60 (return) [ The ancient Alba was ruined in the first age of
      Rome. On the same spot, or at least in the neighborhood,
      successively arose. 1. The villa of Pompey, &c.; 2. A camp of the
      Praetorian cohorts; 3. The modern episcopal city of Albanum or
      Albano. (Procop. Goth. l. ii. c. 4 Oluver. Ital. Antiq tom. ii.
      p. 914.)]

      61 (return) [ A Sibylline oracle was ready to pronounce—Africa
      capta munitus cum nato peribit; a sentence of portentous
      ambiguity, (Gothic. l. i. c. 7,) which has been published in
      unknown characters by Opsopaeus, an editor of the oracles. The
      Pere Maltret has promised a commentary; but all his promises have
      been vain and fruitless.]

      62 (return) [ In his chronology, imitated, in some degree, from
      Thucydides, Procopius begins each spring the years of Justinian
      and of the Gothic war; and his first aera coincides with the
      first of April, 535, and not 536, according to the Annals of
      Baronius, (Pagi, Crit. tom. ii. p. 555, who is followed by
      Muratori and the editors of Sigonius.) Yet, in some passages, we
      are at a loss to reconcile the dates of Procopius with himself,
      and with the Chronicle of Marcellinus.]

      63 (return) [ The series of the first Gothic war is represented
      by Procopius (l. i. c. 5—29, l. ii. c. l—30, l. iii. c. l) till
      the captivity of Vitigas. With the aid of Sigonius (Opp. tom. i.
      de Imp. Occident. l. xvii. xviii.) and Muratori, (Annali d’Itaia,
      tom. v.,) I have gleaned some few additional facts.]


      After Belisarius had left sufficient garrisons in Palermo and
      Syracuse, he embarked his troops at Messina, and landed them,
      without resistance, on the opposite shores of Rhegium. A Gothic
      prince, who had married the daughter of Theodatus, was stationed
      with an army to guard the entrance of Italy; but he imitated,
      without scruple, the example of a sovereign faithless to his
      public and private duties. The perfidious Ebermor deserted with
      his followers to the Roman camp, and was dismissed to enjoy the
      servile honors of the Byzantine court. 64 From Rhegium to Naples,
      the fleet and army of Belisarius, almost always in view of each
      other, advanced near three hundred miles along the sea-coast. The
      people of Bruttium, Lucania, and Campania, who abhorred the name
      and religion of the Goths, embraced the specious excuse, that
      their ruined walls were incapable of defence: the soldiers paid a
      just equivalent for a plentiful market; and curiosity alone
      interrupted the peaceful occupations of the husbandman or
      artificer. Naples, which has swelled to a great and populous
      capital, long cherished the language and manners of a Grecian
      colony; 65 and the choice of Virgil had ennobled this elegant
      retreat, which attracted the lovers of repose and study, from the
      noise, the smoke, and the laborious opulence of Rome.66 As soon
      as the place was invested by sea and land, Belisarius gave
      audience to the deputies of the people, who exhorted him to
      disregard a conquest unworthy of his arms, to seek the Gothic
      king in a field of battle, and, after his victory, to claim, as
      the sovereign of Rome, the allegiance of the dependent cities.
      “When I treat with my enemies,” replied the Roman chief, with a
      haughty smile, “I am more accustomed to give than to receive
      counsel; but I hold in one hand inevitable ruin, and in the other
      peace and freedom, such as Sicily now enjoys.” The impatience of
      delay urged him to grant the most liberal terms; his honor
      secured their performance: but Naples was divided into two
      factions; and the Greek democracy was inflamed by their orators,
      who, with much spirit and some truth, represented to the
      multitude that the Goths would punish their defection, and that
      Belisarius himself must esteem their loyalty and valor. Their
      deliberations, however, were not perfectly free: the city was
      commanded by eight hundred Barbarians, whose wives and children
      were detained at Ravenna as the pledge of their fidelity; and
      even the Jews, who were rich and numerous, resisted, with
      desperate enthusiasm, the intolerant laws of Justinian. In a much
      later period, the circumference of Naples 67 measured only two
      thousand three hundred and sixty three paces: 68 the
      fortifications were defended by precipices or the sea; when the
      aqueducts were intercepted, a supply of water might be drawn from
      wells and fountains; and the stock of provisions was sufficient
      to consume the patience of the besiegers. At the end of twenty
      days, that of Belisarius was almost exhausted, and he had
      reconciled himself to the disgrace of abandoning the siege, that
      he might march, before the winter season, against Rome and the
      Gothic king. But his anxiety was relieved by the bold curiosity
      of an Isaurian, who explored the dry channel of an aqueduct, and
      secretly reported, that a passage might be perforated to
      introduce a file of armed soldiers into the heart of the city.
      When the work had been silently executed, the humane general
      risked the discovery of his secret by a last and fruitless
      admonition of the impending danger. In the darkness of the night,
      four hundred Romans entered the aqueduct, raised themselves by a
      rope, which they fastened to an olive-tree, into the house or
      garden of a solitary matron, sounded their trumpets, surprised
      the sentinels, and gave admittance to their companions, who on
      all sides scaled the walls, and burst open the gates of the city.
      Every crime which is punished by social justice was practised as
      the rights of war; the Huns were distinguished by cruelty and
      sacrilege, and Belisarius alone appeared in the streets and
      churches of Naples to moderate the calamities which he predicted.
      “The gold and silver,” he repeatedly exclaimed, “are the just
      rewards of your valor. But spare the inhabitants; they are
      Christians, they are suppliants, they are now your
      fellow-subjects. Restore the children to their parents, the wives
      to their husbands; and show them by your generosity of what
      friends they have obstinately deprived themselves.” The city was
      saved by the virtue and authority of its conqueror; 69 and when
      the Neapolitans returned to their houses, they found some
      consolation in the secret enjoyment of their hidden treasures.
      The Barbarian garrison enlisted in the service of the emperor;
      Apulia and Calabria, delivered from the odious presence of the
      Goths, acknowledged his dominion; and the tusks of the Calydonian
      boar, which were still shown at Beneventum, are curiously
      described by the historian of Belisarius. 70

      64 (return) [ Jornandes, de Rebus Geticis, c. 60, p. 702, edit.
      Grot., and tom. i. p. 221. Muratori, de Success, Regn. p. 241.]

      65 (return) [ Nero (says Tacitus, Annal. xv. 35) Neapolim quasi
      Graecam urbem delegit. One hundred and fifty years afterwards, in
      the time of Septimius Severus, the Hellenism of the Neapolitans
      is praised by Philostratus. (Icon. l. i. p. 763, edit. Olear.)]

      66 (return) [ The otium of Naples is praised by the Roman poets,
      by Virgil, Horace, Silius Italicus, and Statius, (Cluver. Ital.
      Ant. l. iv. p. 1149, 1150.) In an elegant epistles, (Sylv. l.
      iii. 5, p. 94—98, edit. Markland,) Statius undertakes the
      difficult task of drawing his wife from the pleasures of Rome to
      that calm retreat.]

      67 (return) [ This measure was taken by Roger l., after the
      conquest of Naples, (A.D. 1139,) which he made the capital of his
      new kingdom, (Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. p. 169.) That
      city, the third in Christian Europe, is now at least twelve miles
      in circumference, (Jul. Caesar. Capaccii Hist. Neapol. l. i. p.
      47,) and contains more inhabitants (350,000) in a given space,
      than any other spot in the known world.]

      68 (return) [ Not geometrical, but common, paces or steps, of 22
      French inches, (D’ Anville, Mesures Itineraires, p. 7, 8.) The
      2363 do not take an English mile.]

      69 (return) [ Belisarius was reproved by Pope Silverius for the
      massacre. He repeopled Naples, and imported colonies of African
      captives into Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia, (Hist. Miscell. l.
      xvi. in Muratori, tom. i. p. 106, 107.)]

      70 (return) [ Beneventum was built by Diomede, the nephew of
      Meleager (Cluver. tom. ii. p. 1195, 1196.) The Calydonian hunt is
      a picture of savage life, (Ovid, Metamorph. l. viii.) Thirty or
      forty heroes were leagued against a hog: the brutes (not the hog)
      quarrelled with lady for the head.]


      The faithful soldiers and citizens of Naples had expected their
      deliverance from a prince, who remained the inactive and almost
      indifferent spectator of their ruin. Theodatus secured his person
      within the walls of Rome, whilst his cavalry advanced forty miles
      on the Appian way, and encamped in the Pomptine marshes; which,
      by a canal of nineteen miles in length, had been recently drained
      and converted into excellent pastures. 71 But the principal
      forces of the Goths were dispersed in Dalmatia, Venetia, and
      Gaul; and the feeble mind of their king was confounded by the
      unsuccessful event of a divination, which seemed to presage the
      downfall of his empire. 72 The most abject slaves have arraigned
      the guilt or weakness of an unfortunate master. The character of
      Theodatus was rigorously scrutinized by a free and idle camp of
      Barbarians, conscious of their privilege and power: he was
      declared unworthy of his race, his nation, and his throne; and
      their general Vitiges, whose valor had been signalized in the
      Illyrian war, was raised with unanimous applause on the bucklers
      of his companions. On the first rumor, the abdicated monarch fled
      from the justice of his country; but he was pursued by private
      revenge. A Goth, whom he had injured in his love, overtook
      Theodatus on the Flaminian way, and, regardless of his unmanly
      cries, slaughtered him, as he lay, prostrate on the ground, like
      a victim (says the historian) at the foot of the altar. The
      choice of the people is the best and purest title to reign over
      them; yet such is the prejudice of every age, that Vitiges
      impatiently wished to return to Ravenna, where he might seize,
      with the reluctant hand of the daughter of Amalasontha, some
      faint shadow of hereditary right. A national council was
      immediately held, and the new monarch reconciled the impatient
      spirit of the Barbarians to a measure of disgrace, which the
      misconduct of his predecessor rendered wise and indispensable.
      The Goths consented to retreat in the presence of a victorious
      enemy; to delay till the next spring the operations of offensive
      war; to summon their scattered forces; to relinquish their
      distant possessions, and to trust even Rome itself to the faith
      of its inhabitants. Leuderis, an ancient warrior, was left in the
      capital with four thousand soldiers; a feeble garrison, which
      might have seconded the zeal, though it was incapable of opposing
      the wishes, of the Romans. But a momentary enthusiasm of religion
      and patriotism was kindled in their minds. They furiously
      exclaimed, that the apostolic throne should no longer be profaned
      by the triumph or toleration of Arianism; that the tombs of the
      Caesars should no longer be trampled by the savages of the North;
      and, without reflecting, that Italy must sink into a province of
      Constantinople, they fondly hailed the restoration of a Roman
      emperor as a new aera of freedom and prosperity. The deputies of
      the pope and clergy, of the senate and people, invited the
      lieutenant of Justinian to accept their voluntary allegiance, and
      to enter the city, whose gates would be thrown open for his
      reception. As soon as Belisarius had fortified his new conquests,
      Naples and Cumae, he advanced about twenty miles to the banks of
      the Vulturnus, contemplated the decayed grandeur of Capua, and
      halted at the separation of the Latin and Appian ways. The work
      of the censor, after the incessant use of nine centuries, still
      preserved its primaeval beauty, and not a flaw could be
      discovered in the large polished stones, of which that solid,
      though narrow road, was so firmly compacted. 73 Belisarius,
      however, preferred the Latin way, which, at a distance from the
      sea and the marshes, skirted in a space of one hundred and twenty
      miles along the foot of the mountains. His enemies had
      disappeared: when he made his entrance through the Asinarian
      gate, the garrison departed without molestation along the
      Flaminian way; and the city, after sixty years’ servitude, was
      delivered from the yoke of the Barbarians. Leuderis alone, from a
      motive of pride or discontent, refused to accompany the
      fugitives; and the Gothic chief, himself a trophy of the victory,
      was sent with the keys of Rome to the throne of the emperor
      Justinian. 74

      71 (return) [ The Decennovium is strangely confounded by
      Cluverius (tom. ii. p. 1007) with the River Ufens. It was in
      truth a canal of nineteen miles, from Forum Appii to Terracina,
      on which Horace embarked in the night. The Decennovium, which is
      mentioned by Lucan, Dion Cassius, and Cassiodorus, has been
      sufficiently ruined, restored, and obliterated, (D’Anville,
      Anayse de l’Italie, p. 185, &c.)]

      72 (return) [ A Jew, gratified his contempt and hatred for all
      the Christians, by enclosing three bands, each of ten hogs, and
      discriminated by the names of Goths, Greeks, and Romans. Of the
      first, almost all were found dead; almost all the second were
      alive: of the third, half died, and the rest lost their bristles.
      No unsuitable emblem of the event]

      73 (return) [ Bergier (Hist. des Grands Chemins des Romains, tom.
      i. p. 221-228, 440-444) examines the structure and materials,
      while D’Anville (Analyse d’Italie, p. 200—123) defines the
      geographical line.]

      74 (return) [ Of the first recovery of Rome, the year (536) is
      certain, from the series of events, rather than from the corrupt,
      or interpolated, text of Procopius. The month (December) is
      ascertained by Evagrius, (l. iv. v. 19;) and the day (the tenth)
      may be admitted on the slight evidence of Nicephorus Callistus,
      (l. xvii. c. 13.) For this accurate chronology, we are indebted
      to the diligence and judgment of Pagi, (tom, ii. p. 659, 560.)
      Note: Compare Maltret’s note, in the edition of Dindorf the ninth
      is the day, according to his reading,—M.]


      The first days, which coincided with the old Saturnalia, were
      devoted to mutual congratulation and the public joy; and the
      Catholics prepared to celebrate, without a rival, the approaching
      festival of the nativity of Christ. In the familiar conversation
      of a hero, the Romans acquired some notion of the virtues which
      history ascribed to their ancestors; they were edified by the
      apparent respect of Belisarius for the successor of St. Peter,
      and his rigid discipline secured in the midst of war the
      blessings of tranquillity and justice. They applauded the rapid
      success of his arms, which overran the adjacent country, as far
      as Narni, Perusia, and Spoleto; but they trembled, the senate,
      the clergy, and the unwarlike people, as soon as they understood
      that he had resolved, and would speedily be reduced, to sustain a
      siege against the powers of the Gothic monarchy. The designs of
      Vitiges were executed, during the winter season, with diligence
      and effect. From their rustic habitations, from their distant
      garrisons, the Goths assembled at Ravenna for the defence of
      their country; and such were their numbers, that, after an army
      had been detached for the relief of Dalmatia, one hundred and
      fifty thousand fighting men marched under the royal standard.
      According to the degrees of rank or merit, the Gothic king
      distributed arms and horses, rich gifts, and liberal promises; he
      moved along the Flaminian way, declined the useless sieges of
      Perusia and Spoleto, respected he impregnable rock of Narni, and
      arrived within two miles of Rome at the foot of the Milvian
      bridge. The narrow passage was fortified with a tower, and
      Belisarius had computed the value of the twenty days which must
      be lost in the construction of another bridge. But the
      consternation of the soldiers of the tower, who either fled or
      deserted, disappointed his hopes, and betrayed his person into
      the most imminent danger. At the head of one thousand horse, the
      Roman general sallied from the Flaminian gate to mark the ground
      of an advantageous position, and to survey the camp of the
      Barbarians; but while he still believed them on the other side of
      the Tyber, he was suddenly encompassed and assaulted by their
      numerous squadrons. The fate of Italy depended on his life; and
      the deserters pointed to the conspicuous horse a bay, 75 with a
      white face, which he rode on that memorable day. “Aim at the bay
      horse,” was the universal cry. Every bow was bent, every javelin
      was directed, against that fatal object, and the command was
      repeated and obeyed by thousands who were ignorant of its real
      motive. The bolder Barbarians advanced to the more honorable
      combat of swords and spears; and the praise of an enemy has
      graced the fall of Visandus, the standard-bearer, 76 who
      maintained his foremost station, till he was pierced with
      thirteen wounds, perhaps by the hand of Belisarius himself. The
      Roman general was strong, active, and dexterous; on every side he
      discharged his weighty and mortal strokes: his faithful guards
      imitated his valor, and defended his person; and the Goths, after
      the loss of a thousand men, fled before the arms of a hero. They
      were rashly pursued to their camp; and the Romans, oppressed by
      multitudes, made a gradual, and at length a precipitate retreat
      to the gates of the city: the gates were shut against the
      fugitives; and the public terror was increased, by the report
      that Belisarius was slain. His countenance was indeed disfigured
      by sweat, dust, and blood; his voice was hoarse, his strength was
      almost exhausted; but his unconquerable spirit still remained; he
      imparted that spirit to his desponding companions; and their last
      desperate charge was felt by the flying Barbarians, as if a new
      army, vigorous and entire, had been poured from the city. The
      Flaminian gate was thrown open to a real triumph; but it was not
      before Belisarius had visited every post, and provided for the
      public safety, that he could be persuaded, by his wife and
      friends, to taste the needful refreshments of food and sleep. In
      the more improved state of the art of war, a general is seldom
      required, or even permitted to display the personal prowess of a
      soldier; and the example of Belisarius may be added to the rare
      examples of Henry IV., of Pyrrhus, and of Alexander.

      75 (return) [ A horse of a bay or red color was styled by the
      Greeks, balan by the Barbarians, and spadix by the Romans.
      Honesti spadices, says Virgil, (Georgic. l. iii. 72, with the
      Observations of Martin and Heyne.) It signifies a branch of the
      palm-tree, whose name is synonymous to red, (Aulus Gellius, ii.
      26.)]

      76 (return) [ I interpret it, not as a proper, name, but an
      office, standard-bearer, from bandum, (vexillum,) a Barbaric word
      adopted by the Greeks and Romans, (Paul Diacon. l. i. c. 20, p.
      760. Grot. Nomina Hethica, p. 575. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i.
      p. 539, 540.)]


      After this first and unsuccessful trial of their enemies, the
      whole army of the Goths passed the Tyber, and formed the siege of
      the city, which continued above a year, till their final
      departure. Whatever fancy may conceive, the severe compass of the
      geographer defines the circumference of Rome within a line of
      twelve miles and three hundred and forty-five paces; and that
      circumference, except in the Vatican, has invariably been the
      same from the triumph of Aurelian to the peaceful but obscure
      reign of the modern popes. 77 But in the day of her greatness,
      the space within her walls was crowded with habitations and
      inhabitants; and the populous suburbs, that stretched along the
      public roads, were darted like so many rays from one common
      centre. Adversity swept away these extraneous ornaments, and left
      naked and desolate a considerable part even of the seven hills.
      Yet Rome in its present state could send into the field about
      thirty thousand males of a military age; 78 and, notwithstanding
      the want of discipline and exercise, the far greater part, inured
      to the hardships of poverty, might be capable of bearing arms for
      the defence of their country and religion. The prudence of
      Belisarius did not neglect this important resource. His soldiers
      were relieved by the zeal and diligence of the people, who
      watched while they slept, and labored while they reposed: he
      accepted the voluntary service of the bravest and most indigent
      of the Roman youth; and the companies of townsmen sometimes
      represented, in a vacant post, the presence of the troops which
      had been drawn away to more essential duties. But his just
      confidence was placed in the veterans who had fought under his
      banner in the Persian and African wars; and although that gallant
      band was reduced to five thousand men, he undertook, with such
      contemptible numbers, to defend a circle of twelve miles, against
      an army of one hundred and fifty thousand Barbarians. In the
      walls of Rome, which Belisarius constructed or restored, the
      materials of ancient architecture may be discerned; 79 and the
      whole fortification was completed, except in a chasm still extant
      between the Pincian and Flaminian gates, which the prejudices of
      the Goths and Romans left under the effectual guard of St. Peter
      the apostle. 80

      77 (return) [ M. D’Anville has given, in the Memoirs of the
      Academy for the year 1756, (tom. xxx. p. 198—236,) a plan of Rome
      on a smaller scale, but far more accurate than that which he had
      delineated in 1738 for Rollin’s history. Experience had improved
      his knowledge and instead of Rossi’s topography, he used the new
      and excellent map of Nolli. Pliny’s old measure of thirteen must
      be reduced to eight miles. It is easier to alter a text, than to
      remove hills or buildings. * Note: Compare Gibbon, ch. xi. note
      43, and xxxi. 67, and ch. lxxi. “It is quite clear,” observes Sir
      J. Hobhouse, “that all these measurements differ, (in the first
      and second it is 21, in the text 12 and 345 paces, in the last
      10,) yet it is equally clear that the historian avers that they
      are all the same.” The present extent, 12 3/4 nearly agrees with
      the second statement of Gibbon. Sir. J. Hobhouse also observes
      that the walls were enlarged by Constantine; but there can be no
      doubt that the circuit has been much changed. Illust. of Ch.
      Harold, p. 180.—M.]

      78 (return) [ In the year 1709, Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom.
      iii. p. 218) reckoned 138,568 Christian souls, besides 8000 or
      10,000 Jews—without souls? In the year 1763, the numbers exceeded
      160,000.]

      79 (return) [ The accurate eye of Nardini (Roma Antica, l. i. c.
      viii. p. 31) could distinguish the tumultuarie opere di
      Belisario.]

      80 (return) [ The fissure and leaning in the upper part of the
      wall, which Procopius observed, (Goth. l. i. c. 13,) is visible
      to the present hour, (Douat. Roma Vetus, l. i. c. 17, p. 53,
      54.)]


      The battlements or bastions were shaped in sharp angles; a ditch,
      broad and deep, protected the foot of the rampart; and the
      archers on the rampart were assisted by military engines; the
      balistri, a powerful cross-bow, which darted short but massy
      arrows; the onagri, or wild asses, which, on the principle of a
      sling, threw stones and bullets of an enormous size. 81 A chain
      was drawn across the Tyber; the arches of the aqueducts were made
      impervious, and the mole or sepulchre of Hadrian 82 was
      converted, for the first time, to the uses of a citadel. That
      venerable structure, which contained the ashes of the Antonines,
      was a circular turret rising from a quadrangular basis; it was
      covered with the white marble of Paros, and decorated by the
      statues of gods and heroes; and the lover of the arts must read
      with a sigh, that the works of Praxiteles or Lysippus were torn
      from their lofty pedestals, and hurled into the ditch on the
      heads of the besiegers. 83 To each of his lieutenants Belisarius
      assigned the defence of a gate, with the wise and peremptory
      instruction, that, whatever might be the alarm, they should
      steadily adhere to their respective posts, and trust their
      general for the safety of Rome. The formidable host of the Goths
      was insufficient to embrace the ample measure of the city, of the
      fourteen gates, seven only were invested from the Proenestine to
      the Flaminian way; and Vitiges divided his troops into six camps,
      each of which was fortified with a ditch and rampart. On the
      Tuscan side of the river, a seventh encampment was formed in the
      field or circus of the Vatican, for the important purpose of
      commanding the Milvian bridge and the course of the Tyber; but
      they approached with devotion the adjacent church of St. Peter;
      and the threshold of the holy apostles was respected during the
      siege by a Christian enemy. In the ages of victory, as often as
      the senate decreed some distant conquest, the consul denounced
      hostilities, by unbarring, in solemn pomp, the gates of the
      temple of Janus. 84 Domestic war now rendered the admonition
      superfluous, and the ceremony was superseded by the establishment
      of a new religion. But the brazen temple of Janus was left
      standing in the forum; of a size sufficient only to contain the
      statue of the god, five cubits in height, of a human form, but
      with two faces directed to the east and west. The double gates
      were likewise of brass; and a fruitless effort to turn them on
      their rusty hinges revealed the scandalous secret that some
      Romans were still attached to the superstition of their
      ancestors.

      81 (return) [ Lipsius (Opp. tom. iii. Poliorcet, l. iii.) was
      ignorant of this clear and conspicuous passage of Procopius,
      (Goth. l. i. c. 21.) The engine was named the wild ass, a
      calcitrando, (Hen. Steph. Thesaur. Linguae Graec. tom. ii. p.
      1340, 1341, tom. iii. p. 877.) I have seen an ingenious model,
      contrived and executed by General Melville, which imitates or
      surpasses the art of antiquity.]

      82 (return) [ The description of this mausoleum, or mole, in
      Procopius, (l. i. c. 25.) is the first and best. The height above
      the walls. On Nolli’s great plan, the sides measure 260 English
      feet. * Note: Donatus and Nardini suppose that Hadrian’s tomb was
      fortified by Honorius; it was united to the wall by men of old,
      (Procop in loc.) Gibbon has mistaken the breadth for the height
      above the walls Hobhouse, Illust. of Childe Harold, p. 302.—M.]

      83 (return) [ Praxiteles excelled in Fauns, and that of Athens
      was his own masterpiece. Rome now contains about thirty of the
      same character. When the ditch of St. Angelo was cleansed under
      Urban VIII., the workmen found the sleeping Faun of the Barberini
      palace; but a leg, a thigh, and the right arm, had been broken
      from that beautiful statue, (Winkelman, Hist. de l’Art, tom. ii.
      p. 52, 53, tom iii. p. 265.)]

      84 (return) [ Procopius has given the best description of the
      temple of Janus a national deity of Latium, (Heyne, Excurs. v. ad
      l. vii. Aeneid.) It was once a gate in the primitive city of
      Romulus and Numa, (Nardini, p. 13, 256, 329.) Virgil has
      described the ancient rite like a poet and an antiquarian.]


      Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers, to provide all the
      instruments of attack which antiquity had invented. Fascines were
      prepared to fill the ditches, scaling-ladders to ascend the
      walls. The largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of
      four battering-rams: their heads were armed with iron; they were
      suspended by ropes, and each of them was worked by the labor of
      fifty men. The lofty wooden turrets moved on wheels or rollers,
      and formed a spacious platform of the level of the rampart. On
      the morning of the nineteenth day, a general attack was made from
      the Praenestine gate to the Vatican: seven Gothic columns, with
      their military engines, advanced to the assault; and the Romans,
      who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and anxiety to the
      cheerful assurances of their commander. As soon as the enemy
      approached the ditch, Belisarius himself drew the first arrow;
      and such was his strength and dexterity, that he transfixed the
      foremost of the Barbarian leaders.


      A shout of applause and victory was reechoed along the wall. He
      drew a second arrow, and the stroke was followed with the same
      success and the same acclamation. The Roman general then gave the
      word, that the archers should aim at the teams of oxen; they were
      instantly covered with mortal wounds; the towers which they drew
      remained useless and immovable, and a single moment disconcerted
      the laborious projects of the king of the Goths. After this
      disappointment, Vitiges still continued, or feigned to continue,
      the assault of the Salarian gate, that he might divert the
      attention of his adversary, while his principal forces more
      strenuously attacked the Praenestine gate and the sepulchre of
      Hadrian, at the distance of three miles from each other. Near the
      former, the double walls of the Vivarium 85 were low or broken;
      the fortifications of the latter were feebly guarded: the vigor
      of the Goths was excited by the hope of victory and spoil; and if
      a single post had given way, the Romans, and Rome itself, were
      irrecoverably lost. This perilous day was the most glorious in
      the life of Belisarius. Amidst tumult and dismay, the whole plan
      of the attack and defence was distinctly present to his mind; he
      observed the changes of each instant, weighed every possible
      advantage, transported his person to the scenes of danger, and
      communicated his spirit in calm and decisive orders. The contest
      was fiercely maintained from the morning to the evening; the
      Goths were repulsed on all sides; and each Roman might boast that
      he had vanquished thirty Barbarians, if the strange disproportion
      of numbers were not counterbalanced by the merit of one man.
      Thirty thousand Goths, according to the confession of their own
      chiefs, perished in this bloody action; and the multitude of the
      wounded was equal to that of the slain. When they advanced to the
      assault, their close disorder suffered not a javelin to fall
      without effect; and as they retired, the populace of the city
      joined the pursuit, and slaughtered, with impunity, the backs of
      their flying enemies. Belisarius instantly sallied from the
      gates; and while the soldiers chanted his name and victory, the
      hostile engines of war were reduced to ashes. Such was the loss
      and consternation of the Goths, that, from this day, the siege of
      Rome degenerated into a tedious and indolent blockade; and they
      were incessantly harassed by the Roman general, who, in frequent
      skirmishes, destroyed above five thousand of their bravest
      troops. Their cavalry was unpractised in the use of the bow;
      their archers served on foot; and this divided force was
      incapable of contending with their adversaries, whose lances and
      arrows, at a distance, or at hand, were alike formidable. The
      consummate skill of Belisarius embraced the favorable
      opportunities; and as he chose the ground and the moment, as he
      pressed the charge or sounded the retreat, 86 the squadrons which
      he detached were seldom unsuccessful. These partial advantages
      diffused an impatient ardor among the soldiers and people, who
      began to feel the hardships of a siege, and to disregard the
      dangers of a general engagement. Each plebeian conceived himself
      to be a hero, and the infantry, who, since the decay of
      discipline, were rejected from the line of battle, aspired to the
      ancient honors of the Roman legion. Belisarius praised the spirit
      of his troops, condemned their presumption, yielded to their
      clamors, and prepared the remedies of a defeat, the possibility
      of which he alone had courage to suspect. In the quarter of the
      Vatican, the Romans prevailed; and if the irreparable moments had
      not been wasted in the pillage of the camp, they might have
      occupied the Milvian bridge, and charged in the rear of the
      Gothic host. On the other side of the Tyber, Belisarius advanced
      from the Pincian and Salarian gates. But his army, four thousand
      soldiers perhaps, was lost in a spacious plain; they were
      encompassed and oppressed by fresh multitudes, who continually
      relieved the broken ranks of the Barbarians. The valiant leaders
      of the infantry were unskilled to conquer; they died: the retreat
      (a hasty retreat) was covered by the prudence of the general, and
      the victors started back with affright from the formidable aspect
      of an armed rampart. The reputation of Belisarius was unsullied
      by a defeat; and the vain confidence of the Goths was not less
      serviceable to his designs than the repentance and modesty of the
      Roman troops.

      85 (return) [ Vivarium was an angle in the new wall enclosed for
      wild beasts, (Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 23.) The spot is still
      visible in Nardini (l iv. c. 2, p. 159, 160,) and Nolli’s great
      plan of Rome.]

      86 (return) [ For the Roman trumpet, and its various notes,
      consult Lipsius de Militia Romana, (Opp. tom. iii. l. iv. Dialog.
      x. p. 125-129.) A mode of distinguishing the charge by the
      horse-trumpet of solid brass, and the retreat by the foot-trumpet
      of leather and light wood, was recommended by Procopius, and
      adopted by Belisarius.]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part IV.


      From the moment that Belisarius had determined to sustain a
      siege, his assiduous care provided Rome against the danger of
      famine, more dreadful than the Gothic arms. An extraordinary
      supply of corn was imported from Sicily: the harvests of Campania
      and Tuscany were forcibly swept for the use of the city; and the
      rights of private property were infringed by the strong plea of
      the public safety. It might easily be foreseen that the enemy
      would intercept the aqueducts; and the cessation of the
      water-mills was the first inconvenience, which was speedily
      removed by mooring large vessels, and fixing mill-stones in the
      current of the river. The stream was soon embarrassed by the
      trunks of trees, and polluted with dead bodies; yet so effectual
      were the precautions of the Roman general, that the waters of the
      Tyber still continued to give motion to the mills and drink to
      the inhabitants: the more distant quarters were supplied from
      domestic wells; and a besieged city might support, without
      impatience, the privation of her public baths. A large portion of
      Rome, from the Praenestine gate to the church of St. Paul, was
      never invested by the Goths; their excursions were restrained by
      the activity of the Moorish troops: the navigation of the Tyber,
      and the Latin, Appian, and Ostian ways, were left free and
      unmolested for the introduction of corn and cattle, or the
      retreat of the inhabitants, who sought refuge in Campania or
      Sicily. Anxious to relieve himself from a useless and devouring
      multitude, Belisarius issued his peremptory orders for the
      instant departure of the women, the children, and slaves;
      required his soldiers to dismiss their male and female
      attendants, and regulated their allowance that one moiety should
      be given in provisions, and the other in money. His foresight was
      justified by the increase of the public distress, as soon as the
      Goths had occupied two important posts in the neighborhood of
      Rome. By the loss of the port, or, as it is now called, the city
      of Porto, he was deprived of the country on the right of the
      Tyber, and the best communication with the sea; and he reflected,
      with grief and anger, that three hundred men, could he have
      spared such a feeble band, might have defended its impregnable
      works. Seven miles from the capital, between the Appian and the
      Latin ways, two principal aqueducts crossing, and again crossing
      each other: enclosed within their solid and lofty arches a
      fortified space, 87 where Vitiges established a camp of seven
      thousand Goths to intercept the convoy of Sicily and Campania.
      The granaries of Rome were insensibly exhausted, the adjacent
      country had been wasted with fire and sword; such scanty supplies
      as might yet be obtained by hasty excursions were the reward of
      valor, and the purchase of wealth: the forage of the horses, and
      the bread of the soldiers, never failed: but in the last months
      of the siege, the people were exposed to the miseries of
      scarcity, unwholesome food, 88 and contagious disorders.
      Belisarius saw and pitied their sufferings; but he had foreseen,
      and he watched the decay of their loyalty, and the progress of
      their discontent. Adversity had awakened the Romans from the
      dreams of grandeur and freedom, and taught them the humiliating
      lesson, that it was of small moment to their real happiness,
      whether the name of their master was derived from the Gothic or
      the Latin language. The lieutenant of Justinian listened to their
      just complaints, but he rejected with disdain the idea of flight
      or capitulation; repressed their clamorous impatience for battle;
      amused them with the prospect of a sure and speedy relief; and
      secured himself and the city from the effects of their despair or
      treachery. Twice in each month he changed the station of the
      officers to whom the custody of the gates was committed: the
      various precautions of patroles, watch words, lights, and music,
      were repeatedly employed to discover whatever passed on the
      ramparts; out-guards were posted beyond the ditch, and the trusty
      vigilance of dogs supplied the more doubtful fidelity of mankind.
      A letter was intercepted, which assured the king of the Goths
      that the Asinarian gate, adjoining to the Lateran church, should
      be secretly opened to his troops. On the proof or suspicion of
      treason, several senators were banished, and the pope Sylverius
      was summoned to attend the representative of his sovereign, at
      his head-quarters in the Pincian palace. 89 The ecclesiastics,
      who followed their bishop, were detained in the first or second
      apartment, 90 and he alone was admitted to the presence of
      Belisarius. The conqueror of Rome and Carthage was modestly
      seated at the feet of Antonina, who reclined on a stately couch:
      the general was silent, but the voice of reproach and menace
      issued from the mouth of his imperious wife. Accused by credible
      witnesses, and the evidence of his own subscription, the
      successor of St. Peter was despoiled of his pontifical ornaments,
      clad in the mean habit of a monk, and embarked, without delay,
      for a distant exile in the East. 9011 At the emperor’s command,
      the clergy of Rome proceeded to the choice of a new bishop; and
      after a solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost, elected the deacon
      Vigilius, who had purchased the papal throne by a bribe of two
      hundred pounds of gold. The profit, and consequently the guilt,
      of this simony, was imputed to Belisarius: but the hero obeyed
      the orders of his wife; Antonina served the passions of the
      empress; and Theodora lavished her treasures, in the vain hope of
      obtaining a pontiff hostile or indifferent to the council of
      Chalcedon. 91

      87 (return) [ Procopius (Goth. l. ii. c. 3) has forgot to name
      these aqueducts nor can such a double intersection, at such a
      distance from Rome, be clearly ascertained from the writings of
      Frontinus, Fabretti, and Eschinard, de Aquis and de Agro Romano,
      or from the local maps of Lameti and Cingolani. Seven or eight
      miles from the city, (50 stadia,) on the road to Albano, between
      the Latin and Appian ways, I discern the remains of an aqueduct,
      (probably the Septimian,) a series (630 paces) of arches
      twenty-five feet high.]

      88 (return) [ They made sausages of mule’s flesh; unwholesome, if
      the animals had died of the plague. Otherwise, the famous Bologna
      sausages are said to be made of ass flesh, (Voyages de Labat,
      tom. ii. p. 218.)]

      89 (return) [ The name of the palace, the hill, and the adjoining
      gate, were all derived from the senator Pincius. Some recent
      vestiges of temples and churches are now smoothed in the garden
      of the Minims of the Trinita del Monte, (Nardini, l. iv. c. 7, p.
      196. Eschinard, p. 209, 210, the old plan of Buffalino, and the
      great plan of Nolli.) Belisarius had fixed his station between
      the Pincian and Salarian gates, (Procop. Goth. l. i. c. 15.)]

      90 (return) [ From the mention of the primum et secundum velum,
      it should seem that Belisarius, even in a siege, represented the
      emperor, and maintained the proud ceremonial of the Byzantine
      palace.]

      9011 (return) [ De Beau, as a good Catholic, makes the Pope the
      victim of a dark intrigue. Lord Mahon, (p. 225.) with whom I
      concur, summed up against him.—M.]

      91 (return) [ Of this act of sacrilege, Procopius (Goth. l. i. c.
      25) is a dry and reluctant witness. The narratives of Liberatus
      (Breviarium, c. 22) and Anastasius (de Vit. Pont. p. 39) are
      characteristic, but passionate. Hear the execrations of Cardinal
      Baronius, (A.D. 536, No. 123 A.D. 538, No. 4—20:) portentum,
      facinus omni execratione dignum.]


      The epistle of Belisarius to the emperor announced his victory,
      his danger, and his resolution. “According to your commands, we
      have entered the dominions of the Goths, and reduced to your
      obedience Sicily, Campania, and the city of Rome; but the loss of
      these conquests will be more disgraceful than their acquisition
      was glorious. Hitherto we have successfully fought against the
      multitudes of the Barbarians, but their multitudes may finally
      prevail. Victory is the gift of Providence, but the reputation of
      kings and generals depends on the success or the failure of their
      designs. Permit me to speak with freedom: if you wish that we
      should live, send us subsistence; if you desire that we should
      conquer, send us arms, horses, and men. The Romans have received
      us as friends and deliverers: but in our present distress, they
      will be either betrayed by their confidence, or we shall be
      oppressed by their treachery and hatred. For myself, my life is
      consecrated to your service: it is yours to reflect, whether my
      death in this situation will contribute to the glory and
      prosperity of your reign.” Perhaps that reign would have been
      equally prosperous if the peaceful master of the East had
      abstained from the conquest of Africa and Italy: but as Justinian
      was ambitious of fame, he made some efforts (they were feeble and
      languid) to support and rescue his victorious general. A
      reenforcement of sixteen hundred Sclavonians and Huns was led by
      Martin and Valerian; and as they reposed during the winter season
      in the harbors of Greece, the strength of the men and horses was
      not impaired by the fatigues of a sea-voyage; and they
      distinguished their valor in the first sally against the
      besiegers. About the time of the summer solstice, Euthalius
      landed at Terracina with large sums of money for the payment of
      the troops: he cautiously proceeded along the Appian way, and
      this convoy entered Rome through the gate Capena, 92 while
      Belisarius, on the other side, diverted the attention of the
      Goths by a vigorous and successful skirmish. These seasonable
      aids, the use and reputation of which were dexterously managed by
      the Roman general, revived the courage, or at least the hopes, of
      the soldiers and people. The historian Procopius was despatched
      with an important commission to collect the troops and provisions
      which Campania could furnish, or Constantinople had sent; and the
      secretary of Belisarius was soon followed by Antonina herself, 93
      who boldly traversed the posts of the enemy, and returned with
      the Oriental succors to the relief of her husband and the
      besieged city. A fleet of three thousand Isaurians cast anchor in
      the Bay of Naples and afterwards at Ostia. Above two thousand
      horse, of whom a part were Thracians, landed at Tarentum; and,
      after the junction of five hundred soldiers of Campania, and a
      train of wagons laden with wine and flour, they directed their
      march on the Appian way, from Capua to the neighborhood of Rome.
      The forces that arrived by land and sea were united at the mouth
      of the Tyber. Antonina convened a council of war: it was resolved
      to surmount, with sails and oars, the adverse stream of the
      river; and the Goths were apprehensive of disturbing, by any rash
      hostilities, the negotiation to which Belisarius had craftily
      listened. They credulously believed that they saw no more than
      the vanguard of a fleet and army, which already covered the
      Ionian Sea and the plains of Campania; and the illusion was
      supported by the haughty language of the Roman general, when he
      gave audience to the ambassadors of Vitiges. After a specious
      discourse to vindicate the justice of his cause, they declared,
      that, for the sake of peace, they were disposed to renounce the
      possession of Sicily. “The emperor is not less generous,” replied
      his lieutenant, with a disdainful smile, “in return for a gift
      which you no longer possess: he presents you with an ancient
      province of the empire; he resigns to the Goths the sovereignty
      of the British island.” Belisarius rejected with equal firmness
      and contempt the offer of a tribute; but he allowed the Gothic
      ambassadors to seek their fate from the mouth of Justinian
      himself; and consented, with seeming reluctance, to a truce of
      three months, from the winter solstice to the equinox of spring.
      Prudence might not safely trust either the oaths or hostages of
      the Barbarians, and the conscious superiority of the Roman chief
      was expressed in the distribution of his troops. As soon as fear
      or hunger compelled the Goths to evacuate Alba, Porto, and
      Centumcellae, their place was instantly supplied; the garrisons
      of Narni, Spoleto, and Perusia, were reenforced, and the seven
      camps of the besiegers were gradually encompassed with the
      calamities of a siege. The prayers and pilgrimage of Datius,
      bishop of Milan, were not without effect; and he obtained one
      thousand Thracians and Isaurians, to assist the revolt of Liguria
      against her Arian tyrant. At the same time, John the Sanguinary,
      94 the nephew of Vitalian, was detached with two thousand chosen
      horse, first to Alba, on the Fucine Lake, and afterwards to the
      frontiers of Picenum, on the Hadriatic Sea. “In the province,”
      said Belisarius, “the Goths have deposited their families and
      treasures, without a guard or the suspicion of danger. Doubtless
      they will violate the truce: let them feel your presence, before
      they hear of your motions. Spare the Italians; suffer not any
      fortified places to remain hostile in your rear; and faithfully
      reserve the spoil for an equal and common partition. It would not
      be reasonable,” he added with a laugh, “that whilst we are
      toiling to the destruction of the drones, our more fortunate
      brethren should rifle and enjoy the honey.”

      92 (return) [ The old Capena was removed by Aurelian to, or near,
      the modern gate of St. Sebastian, (see Nolli’s plan.) That
      memorable spot has been consecrated by the Egerian grove, the
      memory of Numa two umphal arches, the sepulchres of the Scipios,
      Metelli, &c.]

      93 (return) [ The expression of Procopius has an invidious cast,
      (Goth. l. ii. c. 4.) Yet he is speaking of a woman.]

      94 (return) [ Anastasius (p. 40) has preserved this epithet of
      Sanguinarius which might do honor to a tiger.]


      The whole nation of the Ostrogoths had been assembled for the
      attack, and was almost entirely consumed in the siege of Rome. If
      any credit be due to an intelligent spectator, one third at least
      of their enormous host was destroyed, in frequent and bloody
      combats under the walls of the city. The bad fame and pernicious
      qualities of the summer air might already be imputed to the decay
      of agriculture and population; and the evils of famine and
      pestilence were aggravated by their own licentiousness, and the
      unfriendly disposition of the country. While Vitiges struggled
      with his fortune, while he hesitated between shame and ruin, his
      retreat was hastened by domestic alarms. The king of the Goths
      was informed by trembling messengers, that John the Sanguinary
      spread the devastations of war from the Apennine to the
      Hadriatic; that the rich spoils and innumerable captives of
      Picenum were lodged in the fortifications of Rimini; and that
      this formidable chief had defeated his uncle, insulted his
      capital, and seduced, by secret correspondence, the fidelity of
      his wife, the imperious daughter of Amalasontha. Yet, before he
      retired, Vitiges made a last effort, either to storm or to
      surprise the city. A secret passage was discovered in one of the
      aqueducts; two citizens of the Vatican were tempted by bribes to
      intoxicate the guards of the Aurelian gate; an attack was
      meditated on the walls beyond the Tyber, in a place which was not
      fortified with towers; and the Barbarians advanced, with torches
      and scaling-ladders, to the assault of the Pincian gate. But
      every attempt was defeated by the intrepid vigilance of
      Belisarius and his band of veterans, who, in the most perilous
      moments, did not regret the absence of their companions; and the
      Goths, alike destitute of hope and subsistence, clamorously urged
      their departure before the truce should expire, and the Roman
      cavalry should again be united. One year and nine days after the
      commencement of the siege, an army, so lately strong and
      triumphant, burnt their tents, and tumultuously repassed the
      Milvian bridge. They repassed not with impunity: their thronging
      multitudes, oppressed in a narrow passage, were driven headlong
      into the Tyber, by their own fears and the pursuit of the enemy;
      and the Roman general, sallying from the Pincian gate, inflicted
      a severe and disgraceful wound on their retreat. The slow length
      of a sickly and desponding host was heavily dragged along the
      Flaminian way; from whence the Barbarians were sometimes
      compelled to deviate, lest they should encounter the hostile
      garrisons that guarded the high road to Rimini and Ravenna. Yet
      so powerful was this flying army, that Vitiges spared ten
      thousand men for the defence of the cities which he was most
      solicitous to preserve, and detached his nephew Uraias, with an
      adequate force, for the chastisement of rebellious Milan. At the
      head of his principal army, he besieged Rimini, only thirty-three
      miles distant from the Gothic capital. A feeble rampart, and a
      shallow ditch, were maintained by the skill and valor of John the
      Sanguinary, who shared the danger and fatigue of the meanest
      soldier, and emulated, on a theatre less illustrious, the
      military virtues of his great commander. The towers and
      battering-engines of the Barbarians were rendered useless; their
      attacks were repulsed; and the tedious blockade, which reduced
      the garrison to the last extremity of hunger, afforded time for
      the union and march of the Roman forces. A fleet, which had
      surprised Ancona, sailed along the coast of the Hadriatic, to the
      relief of the besieged city. The eunuch Narses landed in Picenum
      with two thousand Heruli and five thousand of the bravest troops
      of the East. The rock of the Apennine was forced; ten thousand
      veterans moved round the foot of the mountains, under the command
      of Belisarius himself; and a new army, whose encampment blazed
      with innumerable lights, appeared to advance along the Flaminian
      way. Overwhelmed with astonishment and despair, the Goths
      abandoned the siege of Rimini, their tents, their standards, and
      their leaders; and Vitiges, who gave or followed the example of
      flight, never halted till he found a shelter within the walls and
      morasses of Ravenna. To these walls, and to some fortresses
      destitute of any mutual support, the Gothic monarchy was now
      reduced. The provinces of Italy had embraced the party of the
      emperor and his army, gradually recruited to the number of twenty
      thousand men, must have achieved an easy and rapid conquest, if
      their invincible powers had not been weakened by the discord of
      the Roman chiefs. Before the end of the siege, an act of blood,
      ambiguous and indiscreet, sullied the fair fame of Belisarius.
      Presidius, a loyal Italian, as he fled from Ravenna to Rome, was
      rudely stopped by Constantine, the military governor of Spoleto,
      and despoiled, even in a church, of two daggers richly inlaid
      with gold and precious stones. As soon as the public danger had
      subsided, Presidius complained of the loss and injury: his
      complaint was heard, but the order of restitution was disobeyed
      by the pride and avarice of the offender. Exasperated by the
      delay, Presidius boldly arrested the general’s horse as he passed
      through the forum; and, with the spirit of a citizen, demanded
      the common benefit of the Roman laws. The honor of Belisarius was
      engaged; he summoned a council; claimed the obedience of his
      subordinate officer; and was provoked, by an insolent reply, to
      call hastily for the presence of his guards. Constantine, viewing
      their entrance as the signal of death, drew his sword, and rushed
      on the general, who nimbly eluded the stroke, and was protected
      by his friends; while the desperate assassin was disarmed,
      dragged into a neighboring chamber, and executed, or rather
      murdered, by the guards, at the arbitrary command of Belisarius.
      95 In this hasty act of violence, the guilt of Constantine was no
      longer remembered; the despair and death of that valiant officer
      were secretly imputed to the revenge of Antonina; and each of his
      colleagues, conscious of the same rapine, was apprehensive of the
      same fate. The fear of a common enemy suspended the effects of
      their envy and discontent; but in the confidence of approaching
      victory, they instigated a powerful rival to oppose the conqueror
      of Rome and Africa. From the domestic service of the palace, and
      the administration of the private revenue, Narses the eunuch was
      suddenly exalted to the head of an army; and the spirit of a
      hero, who afterwards equalled the merit and glory of Belisarius,
      served only to perplex the operations of the Gothic war. To his
      prudent counsels, the relief of Rimini was ascribed by the
      leaders of the discontented faction, who exhorted Narses to
      assume an independent and separate command. The epistle of
      Justinian had indeed enjoined his obedience to the general; but
      the dangerous exception, “as far as may be advantageous to the
      public service,” reserved some freedom of judgment to the
      discreet favorite, who had so lately departed from the sacred and
      familiar conversation of his sovereign. In the exercise of this
      doubtful right, the eunuch perpetually dissented from the
      opinions of Belisarius; and, after yielding with reluctance to
      the siege of Urbino, he deserted his colleague in the night, and
      marched away to the conquest of the Aemilian province. The fierce
      and formidable bands of the Heruli were attached to the person of
      Narses; 96 ten thousand Romans and confederates were persuaded to
      march under his banners; every malcontent  embraced the fair
      opportunity of revenging his private or imaginary wrongs; and the
      remaining troops of Belisarius were divided and dispersed from
      the garrisons of Sicily to the shores of the Hadriatic. His skill
      and perseverance overcame every obstacle: Urbino was taken, the
      sieges of Faesulae Orvieto, and Auximum, were undertaken and
      vigorously prosecuted; and the eunuch Narses was at length
      recalled to the domestic cares of the palace. All dissensions
      were healed, and all opposition was subdued, by the temperate
      authority of the Roman general, to whom his enemies could not
      refuse their esteem; and Belisarius inculcated the salutary
      lesson that the forces of the state should compose one body, and
      be animated by one soul. But in the interval of discord, the
      Goths were permitted to breathe; an important season was lost,
      Milan was destroyed, and the northern provinces of Italy were
      afflicted by an inundation of the Franks.

      95 (return) [ This transaction is related in the public history
      (Goth. l. ii. c. 8) with candor or caution; in the Anecdotes (c.
      7) with malevolence or freedom; but Marcellinus, or rather his
      continuator, (in Chron.,) casts a shade of premeditated
      assassination over the death of Constantine. He had performed
      good service at Rome and Spoleto, (Procop. Goth l. i. c. 7, 14;)
      but Alemannus confounds him with a Constantianus comes stabuli.]

      96 (return) [ They refused to serve after his departure; sold
      their captives and cattle to the Goths; and swore never to fight
      against them. Procopius introduces a curious digression on the
      manners and adventures of this wandering nation, a part of whom
      finally emigrated to Thule or Scandinavia. (Goth. l. ii. c. 14,
      15.)]


      When Justinian first meditated the conquest of Italy, he sent
      ambassadors to the kings of the Franks, and adjured them, by the
      common ties of alliance and religion, to join in the holy
      enterprise against the Arians. The Goths, as their wants were
      more urgent, employed a more effectual mode of persuasion, and
      vainly strove, by the gift of lands and money, to purchase the
      friendship, or at least the neutrality, of a light and perfidious
      nation.97 But the arms of Belisarius, and the revolt of the
      Italians, had no sooner shaken the Gothic monarchy, than
      Theodebert of Austrasia, the most powerful and warlike of the
      Merovingian kings, was persuaded to succor their distress by an
      indirect and seasonable aid. Without expecting the consent of
      their sovereign, ten thousand Burgundians, his recent subjects,
      descended from the Alps, and joined the troops which Vitiges had
      sent to chastise the revolt of Milan. After an obstinate siege,
      the capital of Liguria was reduced by famine; but no capitulation
      could be obtained, except for the safe retreat of the Roman
      garrison. Datius, the orthodox bishop, who had seduced his
      countrymen to rebellion 98 and ruin, escaped to the luxury and
      honors of the Byzantine court; 99 but the clergy, perhaps the
      Arian clergy, were slaughtered at the foot of their own altars by
      the defenders of the Catholic faith. Three hundred thousand males
      were reported to be slain; 100 the female sex, and the more
      precious spoil, was resigned to the Burgundians; and the houses,
      or at least the walls, of Milan, were levelled with the ground.
      The Goths, in their last moments, were revenged by the
      destruction of a city, second only to Rome in size and opulence,
      in the splendor of its buildings, or the number of its
      inhabitants; and Belisarius sympathized alone in the fate of his
      deserted and devoted friends. Encouraged by this successful
      inroad, Theodebert himself, in the ensuing spring, invaded the
      plains of Italy with an army of one hundred thousand Barbarians.
      101 The king, and some chosen followers, were mounted on
      horseback, and armed with lances; the infantry, without bows or
      spears, were satisfied with a shield, a sword, and a double-edged
      battle-axe, which, in their hands, became a deadly and unerring
      weapon. Italy trembled at the march of the Franks; and both the
      Gothic prince and the Roman general, alike ignorant of their
      designs, solicited, with hope and terror, the friendship of these
      dangerous allies. Till he had secured the passage of the Po on
      the bridge of Pavia, the grandson of Clovis dissembled his
      intentions, which he at length declared, by assaulting, almost at
      the same instant, the hostile camps of the Romans and Goths.
      Instead of uniting their arms, they fled with equal
      precipitation; and the fertile, though desolate provinces of
      Liguria and Aemilia, were abandoned to a licentious host of
      Barbarians, whose rage was not mitigated by any thoughts of
      settlement or conquest. Among the cities which they ruined,
      Genoa, not yet constructed of marble, is particularly enumerated;
      and the deaths of thousands, according to the regular practice of
      war, appear to have excited less horror than some idolatrous
      sacrifices of women and children, which were performed with
      impunity in the camp of the most Christian king. If it were not a
      melancholy truth, that the first and most cruel sufferings must
      be the lot of the innocent and helpless, history might exult in
      the misery of the conquerors, who, in the midst of riches, were
      left destitute of bread or wine, reduced to drink the waters of
      the Po, and to feed on the flesh of distempered cattle. The
      dysentery swept away one third of their army; and the clamors of
      his subjects, who were impatient to pass the Alps, disposed
      Theodebert to listen with respect to the mild exhortations of
      Belisarius. The memory of this inglorious and destructive warfare
      was perpetuated on the medals of Gaul; and Justinian, without
      unsheathing his sword, assumed the title of conqueror of the
      Franks. The Merovingian prince was offended by the vanity of the
      emperor; he affected to pity the fallen fortunes of the Goths;
      and his insidious offer of a federal union was fortified by the
      promise or menace of descending from the Alps at the head of five
      hundred thousand men. His plans of conquest were boundless, and
      perhaps chimerical. The king of Austrasia threatened to chastise
      Justinian, and to march to the gates of Constantinople: 102 he
      was overthrown and slain 103 by a wild bull, 104 as he hunted in
      the Belgic or German forests.

      97 (return) [ This national reproach of perfidy (Procop. Goth. l.
      ii. c. 25) offends the ear of La Mothe le Vayer, (tom. viii. p.
      163—165,) who criticizes, as if he had not read, the Greek
      historian.]

      98 (return) [ Baronius applauds his treason, and justifies the
      Catholic bishops—qui ne sub heretico principe degant omnem
      lapidem movent—a useful caution. The more rational Muratori
      (Annali d’Italia, tom. v. p. 54) hints at the guilt of perjury,
      and blames at least the imprudence of Datius.]

      99 (return) [ St. Datius was more successful against devils than
      against Barbarians. He travelled with a numerons retinue, and
      occupied at Corinth a large house. (Baronius, A.D. 538, No. 89,
      A.D. 539, No. 20.)]

      100 (return) [ (Compare Procopius, Goth. l. ii. c. 7, 21.) Yet
      such population is incredible; and the second or third city of
      Italy need not repine if we only decimate the numbers of the
      present text Both Milan and Genoa revived in less than thirty
      years, (Paul Diacon de Gestis Langobard. l. ii. c. 38.) Note:
      Procopius says distinctly that Milan was the second city of the
      West. Which did Gibbon suppose could compete with it, Ravenna or
      Naples; the next page he calls it the second.—M.]

      101 (return) [ Besides Procopius, perhaps too Roman, see the
      Chronicles of Marius and Marcellinus, Jornandes, (in Success.
      Regn. in Muratori, tom. i. p. 241,) and Gregory of Tours, (l.
      iii. c. 32, in tom. ii. of the Historians of France.) Gregory
      supposes a defeat of Belisarius, who, in Aimoin, (de Gestis
      Franc. l. ii. c. 23, in tom. iii. p. 59,) is slain by the
      Franks.]

      102 (return) [ Agathias, l. i. p. 14, 15. Could he have seduced
      or subdued the Gepidae or Lombards of Pannonia, the Greek
      historian is confident that he must have been destroyed in
      Thrace.]

      103 (return) [ The king pointed his spear—the bull overturned a
      tree on his head—he expired the same day. Such is the story of
      Agathias; but the original historians of France (tom. ii. p. 202,
      403, 558, 667) impute his death to a fever.]

      104 (return) [ Without losing myself in a labyrinth of species
      and names—the aurochs, urus, bisons, bubalus, bonasus, buffalo,
      &c., (Buffon. Hist. Nat. tom. xi., and Supplement, tom. iii.
      vi.,) it is certain, that in the sixth century a large wild
      species of horned cattle was hunted in the great forests of the
      Vosges in Lorraine, and the Ardennes, (Greg. Turon. tom. ii. l.
      x. c. 10, p. 369.)]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Character Of Balisarius.—Part V.


      As soon as Belisarius was delivered from his foreign and domestic
      enemies, he seriously applied his forces to the final reduction
      of Italy. In the siege of Osimo, the general was nearly
      transpierced with an arrow, if the mortal stroke had not been
      intercepted by one of his guards, who lost, in that pious office,
      the use of his hand. The Goths of Osimo, 1041 four thousand
      warriors, with those of Faesulae and the Cottian Alps, were among
      the last who maintained their independence; and their gallant
      resistance, which almost tired the patience, deserved the esteem,
      of the conqueror. His prudence refused to subscribe the safe
      conduct which they asked, to join their brethren of Ravenna; but
      they saved, by an honorable capitulation, one moiety at least of
      their wealth, with the free alternative of retiring peaceably to
      their estates, or enlisting to serve the emperor in his Persian
      wars. The multitudes which yet adhered to the standard of Vitiges
      far surpassed the number of the Roman troops; but neither prayers
      nor defiance, nor the extreme danger of his most faithful
      subjects, could tempt the Gothic king beyond the fortifications
      of Ravenna. These fortifications were, indeed, impregnable to the
      assaults of art or violence; and when Belisarius invested the
      capital, he was soon convinced that famine only could tame the
      stubborn spirit of the Barbarians. The sea, the land, and the
      channels of the Po, were guarded by the vigilance of the Roman
      general; and his morality extended the rights of war to the
      practice of poisoning the waters, 105 and secretly firing the
      granaries 106 of a besieged city. 107 While he pressed the
      blockade of Ravenna, he was surprised by the arrival of two
      ambassadors from Constantinople, with a treaty of peace, which
      Justinian had imprudently signed, without deigning to consult the
      author of his victory. By this disgraceful and precarious
      agreement, Italy and the Gothic treasure were divided, and the
      provinces beyond the Po were left with the regal title to the
      successor of Theodoric. The ambassadors were eager to accomplish
      their salutary commission; the captive Vitiges accepted, with
      transport, the unexpected offer of a crown; honor was less
      prevalent among the Goths, than the want and appetite of food;
      and the Roman chiefs, who murmured at the continuance of the war,
      professed implicit submission to the commands of the emperor. If
      Belisarius had possessed only the courage of a soldier, the
      laurel would have been snatched from his hand by timid and
      envious counsels; but in this decisive moment, he resolved, with
      the magnanimity of a statesman, to sustain alone the danger and
      merit of generous disobedience. Each of his officers gave a
      written opinion that the siege of Ravenna was impracticable and
      hopeless: the general then rejected the treaty of partition, and
      declared his own resolution of leading Vitiges in chains to the
      feet of Justinian. The Goths retired with doubt and dismay: this
      peremptory refusal deprived them of the only signature which they
      could trust, and filled their minds with a just apprehension,
      that a sagacious enemy had discovered the full extent of their
      deplorable state. They compared the fame and fortune of
      Belisarius with the weakness of their ill-fated king; and the
      comparison suggested an extraordinary project, to which Vitiges,
      with apparent resignation, was compelled to acquiesce. Partition
      would ruin the strength, exile would disgrace the honor, of the
      nation; but they offered their arms, their treasures, and the
      fortifications of Ravenna, if Belisarius would disclaim the
      authority of a master, accept the choice of the Goths, and
      assume, as he had deserved, the kingdom of Italy. If the false
      lustre of a diadem could have tempted the loyalty of a faithful
      subject, his prudence must have foreseen the inconstancy of the
      Barbarians, and his rational ambition would prefer the safe and
      honorable station of a Roman general. Even the patience and
      seeming satisfaction with which he entertained a proposal of
      treason, might be susceptible of a malignant interpretation. But
      the lieutenant of Justinian was conscious of his own rectitude;
      he entered into a dark and crooked path, as it might lead to the
      voluntary submission of the Goths; and his dexterous policy
      persuaded them that he was disposed to comply with their wishes,
      without engaging an oath or a promise for the performance of a
      treaty which he secretly abhorred. The day of the surrender of
      Ravenna was stipulated by the Gothic ambassadors: a fleet, laden
      with provisions, sailed as a welcome guest into the deepest
      recess of the harbor: the gates were opened to the fancied king
      of Italy; and Belisarius, without meeting an enemy, triumphantly
      marched through the streets of an impregnable city. 108 The
      Romans were astonished by their success; the multitudes of tall
      and robust Barbarians were confounded by the image of their own
      patience and the masculine females, spitting in the faces of
      their sons and husbands, most bitterly reproached them for
      betraying their dominion and freedom to these pygmies of the
      south, contemptible in their numbers, diminutive in their
      stature. Before the Goths could recover from the first surprise,
      and claim the accomplishment of their doubtful hopes, the victor
      established his power in Ravenna, beyond the danger of repentance
      and revolt.

      1041 (return) [ Auximum, p. 175.—M.]

      105 (return) [ In the siege of Auximum, he first labored to
      demolish an old aqueduct, and then cast into the stream, 1. dead
      bodies; 2. mischievous herbs; and 3. quicklime. (says Procopius,
      l. ii. c. 27) Yet both words are used as synonymous in Galen,
      Dioscorides, and Lucian, (Hen. Steph. Thesaur. Ling. Graec. tom.
      iii. p. 748.)]

      106 (return) [ The Goths suspected Mathasuintha as an accomplice
      in the mischief, which perhaps was occasioned by accidental
      lightning.]

      107 (return) [ In strict philosophy, a limitation of the rights
      of war seems to imply nonsense and contradiction. Grotius himself
      is lost in an idle distinction between the jus naturae and the
      jus gentium, between poison and infection. He balances in one
      scale the passages of Homer (Odyss. A 259, &c.) and Florus, (l.
      ii. c. 20, No. 7, ult.;) and in the other, the examples of Solon
      (Pausanias, l. x. c. 37) and Belisarius. See his great work De
      Jure Belli et Pacis, (l. iii. c. 4, s. 15, 16, 17, and in
      Barbeyrac’s version, tom. ii. p. 257, &c.) Yet I can understand
      the benefit and validity of an agreement, tacit or express,
      mutually to abstain from certain modes of hostility. See the
      Amphictyonic oath in Aeschines, de falsa Legatione.]

      108 (return) [ Ravenna was taken, not in the year 540, but in the
      latter end of 539; and Pagi (tom. ii. p. 569) is rectified by
      Muratori. (Annali d’Italia, tom. v. p. 62,) who proves from an
      original act on papyrus, (Antiquit. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. ii.
      dissert. xxxii. p. 999—1007,) Maffei, (Istoria Diplomat. p.
      155-160,) that before the third of January, 540, peace and free
      correspondence were restored between Ravenna and Faenza.]
      Vitiges, who perhaps had attempted to escape, was honorably
      guarded in his palace; 109 the flower of the Gothic youth was
      selected for the service of the emperor; the remainder of the
      people was dismissed to their peaceful habitations in the
      southern provinces; and a colony of Italians was invited to
      replenish the depopulated city. The submission of the capital was
      imitated in the towns and villages of Italy, which had not been
      subdued, or even visited, by the Romans; and the independent
      Goths, who remained in arms at Pavia and Verona, were ambitious
      only to become the subjects of Belisarius. But his inflexible
      loyalty rejected, except as the substitute of Justinian, their
      oaths of allegiance; and he was not offended by the reproach of
      their deputies, that he rather chose to be a slave than a king.

      109 (return) [ He was seized by John the Sanguinary, but an oath
      or sacrament was pledged for his safety in the Basilica Julii,
      (Hist. Miscell. l. xvii. in Muratori, tom. i. p. 107.) Anastasius
      (in Vit. Pont. p. 40) gives a dark but probable account.
      Montfaucon is quoted by Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, xii. 21)
      for a votive shield representing the captivity of Vitiges and now
      in the collection of Signor Landi at Rome.]


      After the second victory of Belisarius, envy again whispered,
      Justinian listened, and the hero was recalled. “The remnant of
      the Gothic war was no longer worthy of his presence: a gracious
      sovereign was impatient to reward his services, and to consult
      his wisdom; and he alone was capable of defending the East
      against the innumerable armies of Persia.” Belisarius understood
      the suspicion, accepted the excuse, embarked at Ravenna his
      spoils and trophies; and proved, by his ready obedience, that
      such an abrupt removal from the government of Italy was not less
      unjust than it might have been indiscreet. The emperor received
      with honorable courtesy both Vitiges and his more noble consort;
      and as the king of the Goths conformed to the Athanasian faith,
      he obtained, with a rich inheritance of land in Asia, the rank of
      senator and patrician.110 Every spectator admired, without peril,
      the strength and stature of the young Barbarians: they adored the
      majesty of the throne, and promised to shed their blood in the
      service of their benefactor. Justinian deposited in the Byzantine
      palace the treasures of the Gothic monarchy. A flattering senate
      was sometime admitted to gaze on the magnificent spectacle; but
      it was enviously secluded from the public view: and the conqueror
      of Italy renounced, without a murmur, perhaps without a sigh, the
      well-earned honors of a second triumph. His glory was indeed
      exalted above all external pomp; and the faint and hollow praises
      of the court were supplied, even in a servile age, by the respect
      and admiration of his country. Whenever he appeared in the
      streets and public places of Constantinople, Belisarius attracted
      and satisfied the eyes of the people. His lofty stature and
      majestic countenance fulfilled their expectations of a hero; the
      meanest of his fellow-citizens were emboldened by his gentle and
      gracious demeanor; and the martial train which attended his
      footsteps left his person more accessible than in a day of
      battle. Seven thousand horsemen, matchless for beauty and valor,
      were maintained in the service, and at the private expense, of
      the general. 111 Their prowess was always conspicuous in single
      combats, or in the foremost ranks; and both parties confessed
      that in the siege of Rome, the guards of Belisarius had alone
      vanquished the Barbarian host. Their numbers were continually
      augmented by the bravest and most faithful of the enemy; and his
      fortunate captives, the Vandals, the Moors, and the Goths,
      emulated the attachment of his domestic followers. By the union
      of liberality and justice, he acquired the love of the soldiers,
      without alienating the affections of the people. The sick and
      wounded were relieved with medicines and money; and still more
      efficaciously, by the healing visits and smiles of their
      commander. The loss of a weapon or a horse was instantly
      repaired, and each deed of valor was rewarded by the rich and
      honorable gifts of a bracelet or a collar, which were rendered
      more precious by the judgment of Belisarius. He was endeared to
      the husbandmen by the peace and plenty which they enjoyed under
      the shadow of his standard. Instead of being injured, the country
      was enriched by the march of the Roman armies; and such was the
      rigid discipline of their camp, that not an apple was gathered
      from the tree, not a path could be traced in the fields of corn.
      Belisarius was chaste and sober. In the license of a military
      life, none could boast that they had seen him intoxicated with
      wine: the most beautiful captives of Gothic or Vandal race were
      offered to his embraces; but he turned aside from their charms,
      and the husband of Antonina was never suspected of violating the
      laws of conjugal fidelity. The spectator and historian of his
      exploits has observed, that amidst the perils of war, he was
      daring without rashness, prudent without fear, slow or rapid
      according to the exigencies of the moment; that in the deepest
      distress he was animated by real or apparent hope, but that he
      was modest and humble in the most prosperous fortune. By these
      virtues, he equalled or excelled the ancient masters of the
      military art. Victory, by sea and land, attended his arms. He
      subdued Africa, Italy, and the adjacent islands; led away
      captives the successors of Genseric and Theodoric; filled
      Constantinople with the spoils of their palaces; and in the space
      of six years recovered half the provinces of the Western empire.
      In his fame and merit, in wealth and power, he remained without a
      rival, the first of the Roman subjects; the voice of envy could
      only magnify his dangerous importance; and the emperor might
      applaud his own discerning spirit, which had discovered and
      raised the genius of Belisarius.

      110 (return) [ Vitiges lived two years at Constantinople, and
      imperatoris in affectû _convictus_ (or conjunctus) rebus excessit
      humanis. His widow _Mathasuenta_, the wife and mother of the
      patricians, the elder and younger Germanus, united the streams of
      Anician and Amali blood, (Jornandes, c. 60, p. 221, in Muratori,
      tom. i.)]

      111 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 1. Aimoin, a French
      monk of the xith century, who had obtained, and has disfigured,
      some authentic information of Belisarius, mentions, in his name,
      12,000, _pueri_ or slaves—quos propriis alimus stipendiis—besides
      18,000 soldiers, (Historians of France, tom. iii. De Gestis
      Franc. l. ii. c. 6, p. 48.)]


      It was the custom of the Roman triumphs, that a slave should be
      placed behind the chariot to remind the conqueror of the
      instability of fortune, and the infirmities of human nature.
      Procopius, in his Anecdotes, has assumed that servile and
      ungrateful office. The generous reader may cast away the libel,
      but the evidence of facts will adhere to his memory; and he will
      reluctantly confess, that the fame, and even the virtue, of
      Belisarius, were polluted by the lust and cruelty of his wife;
      and that hero deserved an appellation which may not drop from the
      pen of the decent historian. The mother of Antonina 112 was a
      theatrical prostitute, and both her father and grandfather
      exercised, at Thessalonica and Constantinople, the vile, though
      lucrative, profession of charioteers. In the various situations
      of their fortune she became the companion, the enemy, the
      servant, and the favorite of the empress Theodora: these loose
      and ambitious females had been connected by similar pleasures;
      they were separated by the jealousy of vice, and at length
      reconciled by the partnership of guilt. Before her marriage with
      Belisarius, Antonina had one husband and many lovers: Photius,
      the son of her former nuptials, was of an age to distinguish
      himself at the siege of Naples; and it was not till the autumn of
      her age and beauty 113 that she indulged a scandalous attachment
      to a Thracian youth. Theodosius had been educated in the Eunomian
      heresy; the African voyage was consecrated by the baptism and
      auspicious name of the first soldier who embarked; and the
      proselyte was adopted into the family of his spiritual parents,
      114 Belisarius and Antonina. Before they touched the shores of
      Africa, this holy kindred degenerated into sensual love: and as
      Antonina soon overleaped the bounds of modesty and caution, the
      Roman general was alone ignorant of his own dishonor. During
      their residence at Carthage, he surprised the two lovers in a
      subterraneous chamber, solitary, warm, and almost naked. Anger
      flashed from his eyes. “With the help of this young man,” said
      the unblushing Antonina, “I was secreting our most precious
      effects from the knowledge of Justinian.” The youth resumed his
      garments, and the pious husband consented to disbelieve the
      evidence of his own senses. From this pleasing and perhaps
      voluntary delusion, Belisarius was awakened at Syracuse, by the
      officious information of Macedonia; and that female attendant,
      after requiring an oath for her security, produced two
      chamberlains, who, like herself, had often beheld the adulteries
      of Antonina. A hasty flight into Asia saved Theodosius from the
      justice of an injured husband, who had signified to one of his
      guards the order of his death; but the tears of Antonina, and her
      artful seductions, assured the credulous hero of her innocence:
      and he stooped, against his faith and judgment, to abandon those
      imprudent friends, who had presumed to accuse or doubt the
      chastity of his wife. The revenge of a guilty woman is implacable
      and bloody: the unfortunate Macedonia, with the two witnesses,
      were secretly arrested by the minister of her cruelty; their
      tongues were cut out, their bodies were hacked into small pieces,
      and their remains were cast into the Sea of Syracuse. A rash
      though judicious saying of Constantine, “I would sooner have
      punished the adulteress than the boy,” was deeply remembered by
      Antonina; and two years afterwards, when despair had armed that
      officer against his general, her sanguinary advice decided and
      hastened his execution. Even the indignation of Photius was not
      forgiven by his mother; the exile of her son prepared the recall
      of her lover; and Theodosius condescended to accept the pressing
      and humble invitation of the conqueror of Italy. In the absolute
      direction of his household, and in the important commissions of
      peace and war, 115 the favorite youth most rapidly acquired a
      fortune of four hundred thousand pounds sterling; and after their
      return to Constantinople, the passion of Antonina, at least,
      continued ardent and unabated. But fear, devotion, and lassitude
      perhaps, inspired Theodosius with more serious thoughts. He
      dreaded the busy scandal of the capital, and the indiscreet
      fondness of the wife of Belisarius; escaped from her embraces,
      and retiring to Ephesus, shaved his head, and took refuge in the
      sanctuary of a monastic life. The despair of the new Ariadne
      could scarcely have been excused by the death of her husband. She
      wept, she tore her hair, she filled the palace with her cries;
      “she had lost the dearest of friends, a tender, a faithful, a
      laborious friend!” But her warm entreaties, fortified by the
      prayers of Belisarius, were insufficient to draw the holy monk
      from the solitude of Ephesus. It was not till the general moved
      forward for the Persian war, that Theodosius could be tempted to
      return to Constantinople; and the short interval before the
      departure of Antonina herself was boldly devoted to love and
      pleasure.


      112 (return) [The diligence of Alemannus could add but little to
      the four first and most curious chapters of the Anecdotes. Of
      these strange Anecdotes, a part may be true, because probable—and
      a part true, because improbable. Procopius must have known the
      former, and the latter he could scarcely invent. Note: The malice
      of court scandal is proverbially inventive; and of such scandal
      the “Anecdota” may be an embellished record.—M.]

      113 (return) [ Procopius intimates (Anecdot. c. 4) that when
      Belisarius returned to Italy, (A.D. 543,) Antonina was sixty
      years of age. A forced, but more polite construction, which
      refers that date to the moment when he was writing, (A.D. 559,)
      would be compatible with the manhood of Photius, (Gothic. l. i.
      c. 10) in 536.]

      114 (return) [ Gompare the Vandalic War (l. i. c. 12) with the
      Anecdotes (c. i.) and Alemannus, (p. 2, 3.) This mode of
      baptismal adoption was revived by Leo the philosopher.]

      115 (return) [ In November, 537, Photius arrested the pope,
      (Liberat. Brev. c. 22. Pagi, tom. ii. p. 562) About the end of
      539, Belisarius sent Theodosius on an important and lucrative
      commission to Ravenna, (Goth. l. ii. c. 18.)]


      A philosopher may pity and forgive the infirmities of female
      nature, from which he receives no real injury: but contemptible
      is the husband who feels, and yet endures, his own infamy in that
      of his wife. Antonina pursued her son with implacable hatred; and
      the gallant Photius 116 was exposed to her secret persecutions in
      the camp beyond the Tigris. Enraged by his own wrongs, and by the
      dishonor of his blood, he cast away in his turn the sentiments of
      nature, and revealed to Belisarius the turpitude of a woman who
      had violated all the duties of a mother and a wife. From the
      surprise and indignation of the Roman general, his former
      credulity appears to have been sincere: he embraced the knees of
      the son of Antonina, adjured him to remember his obligations
      rather than his birth, and confirmed at the altar their holy vows
      of revenge and mutual defence. The dominion of Antonina was
      impaired by absence; and when she met her husband, on his return
      from the Persian confines, Belisarius, in his first and transient
      emotions, confined her person, and threatened her life. Photius
      was more resolved to punish, and less prompt to pardon: he flew
      to Ephesus; extorted from a trusty eunuch of his mother the full
      confession of her guilt; arrested Theodosius and his treasures in
      the church of St. John the Apostle, and concealed his captives,
      whose execution was only delayed, in a secure and sequestered
      fortress of Cilicia. Such a daring outrage against public justice
      could not pass with impunity; and the cause of Antonina was
      espoused by the empress, whose favor she had deserved by the
      recent services of the disgrace of a præfect, and the exile and
      murder of a pope. At the end of the campaign, Belisarius was
      recalled; he complied, as usual, with the Imperial mandate. His
      mind was not prepared for rebellion: his obedience, however
      adverse to the dictates of honor, was consonant to the wishes of
      his heart; and when he embraced his wife, at the command, and
      perhaps in the presence, of the empress, the tender husband was
      disposed to forgive or to be forgiven. The bounty of Theodora
      reserved for her companion a more precious favor. “I have found,”
      she said, “my dearest patrician, a pearl of inestimable value; it
      has not yet been viewed by any mortal eye; but the sight and the
      possession of this jewel are destined for my friend.” 1161 As
      soon as the curiosity and impatience of Antonina were kindled,
      the door of a bed-chamber was thrown open, and she beheld her
      lover, whom the diligence of the eunuchs had discovered in his
      secret prison. Her silent wonder burst into passionate
      exclamations of gratitude and joy, and she named Theodora her
      queen, her benefactress, and her savior. The monk of Ephesus was
      nourished in the palace with luxury and ambition; but instead of
      assuming, as he was promised, the command of the Roman armies,
      Theodosius expired in the first fatigues of an amorous interview.
      1162 The grief of Antonina could only be assuaged by the
      sufferings of her son. A youth of consular rank, and a sickly
      constitution, was punished, without a trial, like a malefactor
      and a slave: yet such was the constancy of his mind, that Photius
      sustained the tortures of the scourge and the rack, 1163 without
      violating the faith which he had sworn to Belisarius. After this
      fruitless cruelty, the son of Antonina, while his mother feasted
      with the empress, was buried in her subterraneous prisons, which
      admitted not the distinction of night and day. He twice escaped
      to the most venerable sanctuaries of Constantinople, the churches
      of St. Sophia, and of the Virgin: but his tyrants were insensible
      of religion as of pity; and the helpless youth, amidst the
      clamors of the clergy and people, was twice dragged from the
      altar to the dungeon. His third attempt was more successful. At
      the end of three years, the prophet Zachariah, or some mortal
      friend, indicated the means of an escape: he eluded the spies and
      guards of the empress, reached the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem,
      embraced the profession of a monk; and the abbot Photius was
      employed, after the death of Justinian, to reconcile and regulate
      the churches of Egypt. The son of Antonina suffered all that an
      enemy can inflict: her patient husband imposed on himself the
      more exquisite misery of violating his promise and deserting his
      friend.

      116 (return) [ Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 204) styles him
      Photinus, the son-in-law of Belisarius; and he is copied by the
      Historia Miscella and Anastasius.]

      1161 (return) [ This and much of the private scandal in the
      “Anecdota” is liable to serious doubt. Who reported all these
      private conversations, and how did they reach the ears of
      Procopius?—M.]

      1162 (return) [ This is a strange misrepresentation—he died of a
      dysentery; nor does it appear that it was immediately after this
      scene. Antonina proposed to raise him to the generalship of the
      army. Procop. Anecd. p. 14. The sudden change from the abstemious
      diet of a monk to the luxury of the court is a much more probable
      cause of his death.—M.]

      1163 (return) [ The expression of Procopius does not appear to me
      to mean this kind of torture. Ibid.—M.]


      In the succeeding campaign, Belisarius was again sent against the
      Persians: he saved the East, but he offended Theodora, and
      perhaps the emperor himself. The malady of Justinian had
      countenanced the rumor of his death; and the Roman general, on
      the supposition of that probable event spoke the free language of
      a citizen and a soldier. His colleague Buzes, who concurred in
      the same sentiments, lost his rank, his liberty, and his health,
      by the persecution of the empress: but the disgrace of Belisarius
      was alleviated by the dignity of his own character, and the
      influence of his wife, who might wish to humble, but could not
      desire to ruin, the partner of her fortunes. Even his removal was
      colored by the assurance, that the sinking state of Italy would
      be retrieved by the single presence of its conqueror.


      But no sooner had he returned, alone and defenceless, than a
      hostile commission was sent to the East, to seize his treasures
      and criminate his actions; the guards and veterans, who followed
      his private banner, were distributed among the chiefs of the
      army, and even the eunuchs presumed to cast lots for the
      partition of his martial domestics. When he passed with a small
      and sordid retinue through the streets of Constantinople, his
      forlorn appearance excited the amazement and compassion of the
      people. Justinian and Theodora received him with cold
      ingratitude; the servile crowd, with insolence and contempt; and
      in the evening he retired with trembling steps to his deserted
      palace. An indisposition, feigned or real, had confined Antonina
      to her apartment; and she walked disdainfully silent in the
      adjacent portico, while Belisarius threw himself on his bed, and
      expected, in an agony of grief and terror, the death which he had
      so often braved under the walls of Rome. Long after sunset a
      messenger was announced from the empress: he opened, with anxious
      curiosity, the letter which contained the sentence of his fate.
      “You cannot be ignorant how much you have deserved my
      displeasure. I am not insensible of the services of Antonina. To
      her merits and intercession I have granted your life, and permit
      you to retain a part of your treasures, which might be justly
      forfeited to the state. Let your gratitude, where it is due, be
      displayed, not in words, but in your future behavior.” I know not
      how to believe or to relate the transports with which the hero is
      said to have received this ignominious pardon. He fell prostrate
      before his wife, he kissed the feet of his savior, and he
      devoutly promised to live the grateful and submissive slave of
      Antonina. A fine of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds
      sterling was levied on the fortunes of Belisarius; and with the
      office of count, or master of the royal stables, he accepted the
      conduct of the Italian war. At his departure from Constantinople,
      his friends, and even the public, were persuaded that as soon as
      he regained his freedom, he would renounce his dissimulation, and
      that his wife, Theodora, and perhaps the emperor himself, would
      be sacrificed to the just revenge of a virtuous rebel. Their
      hopes were deceived; and the unconquerable patience and loyalty
      of Belisarius appear either below or above the character of a
      man. 117

      117 (return) [ The continuator of the Chronicle of Marcellinus
      gives, in a few decent words, the substance of the Anecdotes:
      Belisarius de Oriente evocatus, in offensam periculumque
      incurrens grave, et invidiae subeacens rursus remittitur in
      Italiam, (p. 54.)]




Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part I.


State Of The Barbaric World.—Establishment Of The Lombards On the
Danube.—Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians.—Origin, Empire, And
Embassies Of The Turks.—The Flight Of The Avars.—Chosroes I, Or
Nushirvan, King Of Persia.—His Prosperous Reign And Wars With The
Romans.—The Colchian Or Lazic War.—The Æthiopians.


      Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common
      faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue,
      either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much
      by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend
      above the level of their age and country; and the same stature,
      which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear
      conspicuous in a race of pygmies. Leonidas, and his three hundred
      companions, devoted their lives at Thermopylae; but the education
      of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost
      insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would
      approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and
      eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. 1 The
      great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had defeated
      in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred
      cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea: 2 but the fortune of
      Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were oppressed by their
      own fears, and the invincible legions which he commanded, had
      been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages.
      In this view, the character of Belisarius may be deservedly
      placed above the heroes of the ancient republics. His
      imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues
      were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection; he raised
      himself without a master or a rival; and so inadequate were the
      arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived
      from the pride and presumption of his adversaries. Under his
      command, the subjects of Justinian often deserved to be called
      Romans: but the unwarlike appellation of Greeks was imposed as a
      term of reproach by the haughty Goths; who affected to blush,
      that they must dispute the kingdom of Italy with a nation of
      tragedians, pantomimes, and pirates. 3 The climate of Asia has
      indeed been found less congenial than that of Europe to military
      spirit: those populous countries were enervated by luxury,
      despotism, and superstition; and the monks were more expensive
      and more numerous than the soldiers of the East. The regular
      force of the empire had once amounted to six hundred and
      forty-five thousand men: it was reduced, in the time of
      Justinian, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and this number,
      large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over the sea and land;
      in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt, on the banks of the
      Danube, the coast of the Euxine, and the frontiers of Persia. The
      citizen was exhausted, yet the soldier was unpaid; his poverty
      was mischievously soothed by the privilege of rapine and
      indolence; and the tardy payments were detained and intercepted
      by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without courage or
      danger, the emoluments of war. Public and private distress
      recruited the armies of the state; but in the field, and still
      more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always
      defective. The want of national spirit was supplied by the
      precarious faith and disorderly service of Barbarian mercenaries.


      Even military honor, which has often survived the loss of virtue
      and freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were
      multiplied beyond the example of former times, labored only to
      prevent the success, or to sully the reputation of their
      colleagues; and they had been taught by experience, that if merit
      sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or even guilt, would
      obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. 4 In such an age,
      the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine with
      incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest
      shades of disgrace and calamity. While the lieutenant of
      Justinian subdued the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the
      emperor, 5 timid, though ambitious, balanced the forces of the
      Barbarians, fomented their divisions by flattery and falsehood,
      and invited by his patience and liberality the repetition of
      injuries. 6 The keys of Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna, were
      presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was destroyed by the
      Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of
      Constantinople.

      1 (return) [ It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read
      Herodotus, (l. vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615.) The conversation
      of Xerxes and Demaratus at Thermopylae is one of the most
      interesting and moral scenes in history. It was the torture of
      the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish and remorse, the virtue
      of his country.]

      2 (return) [ See this proud inscription in Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
      vii. 27.) Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and
      disgrace; nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking
      example of the vicissitudes of fortune, and the vanity of human
      wishes.]

      3 (return) [ This last epithet of Procopius is too nobly
      translated by pirates; naval thieves is the proper word;
      strippers of garments, either for injury or insult, (Demosthenes
      contra Conon Reiske, Orator, Graec. tom. ii. p. 1264.)]

      4 (return) [ See the third and fourth books of the Gothic War:
      the writer of the Anecdotes cannot aggravate these abuses.]

      5 (return) [ Agathias, l. v. p. 157, 158. He confines this
      weakness of the emperor and the empire to the old age of
      Justinian; but alas! he was never young.]

      6 (return) [ This mischievous policy, which Procopius (Anecdot.
      c. 19) imputes to the emperor, is revealed in his epistle to a
      Scythian prince, who was capable of understanding it.]


      Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to the
      state, since they abolished the important barrier of the Upper
      Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric and his
      daughter. For the defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated Pannonia
      and Noricum, which they left in a peaceful and flourishing
      condition: the sovereignty was claimed by the emperor of the
      Romans; the actual possession was abandoned to the boldness of
      the first invader. On the opposite banks of the Danube, the
      plains of Upper Hungary and the Transylvanian hills were
      possessed, since the death of Attila, by the tribes of the
      Gepidae, who respected the Gothic arms, and despised, not indeed
      the gold of the Romans, but the secret motive of their annual
      subsidies. The vacant fortifications of the river were instantly
      occupied by these Barbarians; their standards were planted on the
      walls of Sirmium and Belgrade; and the ironical tone of their
      apology aggravated this insult on the majesty of the empire. “So
      extensive, O Caesar, are your dominions, so numerous are your
      cities, that you are continually seeking for nations to whom,
      either in peace or in war, you may relinquish these useless
      possessions. The Gepidae are your brave and faithful allies; and
      if they have anticipated your gifts, they have shown a just
      confidence in your bounty.” Their presumption was excused by the
      mode of revenge which Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting
      the rights of a sovereign for the protection of his subjects, the
      emperor invited a strange people to invade and possess the Roman
      provinces between the Danube and the Alps and the ambition of the
      Gepidae was checked by the rising power and fame of the Lombards.
      7 This corrupt appellation has been diffused in the thirteenth
      century by the merchants and bankers, the Italian posterity of
      these savage warriors: but the original name of Langobards is
      expressive only of the peculiar length and fashion of their
      beards. I am not disposed either to question or to justify their
      Scandinavian origin; 8 nor to pursue the migrations of the
      Lombards through unknown regions and marvellous adventures. About
      the time of Augustus and Trajan, a ray of historic light breaks
      on the darkness of their antiquities, and they are discovered,
      for the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder. Fierce, beyond
      the example of the Germans, they delighted to propagate the
      tremendous belief, that their heads were formed like the heads of
      dogs, and that they drank the blood of their enemies, whom they
      vanquished in battle. The smallness of their numbers was
      recruited by the adoption of their bravest slaves; and alone,
      amidst their powerful neighbors, they defended by arms their
      high-spirited independence. In the tempests of the north, which
      overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of the
      Lombards still floated on the surface: they gradually descended
      towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end of four hundred
      years, they again appear with their ancient valor and renown.
      Their manners were not less ferocious. The assassination of a
      royal guest was executed in the presence, and by the command, of
      the king’s daughter, who had been provoked by some words of
      insult, and disappointed by his diminutive stature; and a
      tribute, the price of blood, was imposed on the Lombards, by his
      brother the king of the Heruli. Adversity revived a sense of
      moderation and justice, and the insolence of conquest was
      chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the
      Heruli, who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. 9
      The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship
      of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they
      passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the
      cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit
      of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample limits; they
      wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium,
      and presumed, with familiar rudeness to enter the towns and
      houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had
      escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the
      sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers,
      were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor; but the
      arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of
      thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the
      Gepidae. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the
      throne of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the
      Barbarians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and
      ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by slow
      and ineffectual succors. Their strength was formidable, since the
      Lombards, who sent into the field several myriads of soldiers,
      still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the Romans.
      Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of
      courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic;
      they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with
      their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was
      obtained; but their mutual resentment again kindled; and the
      remembrance of their shame rendered the next encounter more
      desperate and bloody. Forty thousand of the Barbarians perished
      in the decisive battle, which broke the power of the Gepidae,
      transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first
      displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince of the
      Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy. 10

      7 (return) [ Gens Germana feritate ferocior, says Velleius
      Paterculus of the Lombards, (ii. 106.) Langobardos paucitas
      nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per
      obsequium, sed praeliis et perilitando, tuti sunt, (Tacit. de
      Moribus German. c. 40.) See likewise Strabo, (l. viii. p. 446.)
      The best geographers place them beyond the Elbe, in the bishopric
      of Magdeburgh and the middle march of Brandenburgh; and their
      situation will agree with the patriotic remark of the count de
      Hertzberg, that most of the Barbarian conquerors issued from the
      same countries which still produce the armies of Prussia. * Note:
      See Malte Brun, vol. i. p 402.—M]

      8 (return) [ The Scandinavian origin of the Goths and Lombards,
      as stated by Paul Warnefrid, surnamed the deacon, is attacked by
      Cluverius, (Germania, Antiq. l. iii. c. 26, p. 102, &c.,) a
      native of Prussia, and defended by Grotius, (Prolegom. ad Hist.
      Goth. p. 28, &c.,) the Swedish Ambassador.]

      9 (return) [ Two facts in the narrative of Paul Diaconus (l. i.
      c. 20) are expressive of national manners: 1. Dum ad tabulam
      luderet—while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia lina.
      The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce, agriculture,
      and manufactures]

      10 (return) [ I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the
      facts in Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 14, l. iii. c. 33, 34, l.
      iv. c. 18, 25,) Paul Diaconus, (de Gestis Langobard, l. i. c.
      1-23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 405-419,)
      and Jornandes, (de Success. Regnorum, p. 242.) The patient reader
      may draw some light from Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, and
      Annotat. xxiii.) and De Buat, (Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. ix.
      x. xi.)]


      The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia,
      Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian,
      under the two great families of the Bulgarians 11 and the
      Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who
      touched the Euxine and the Lake Maeotis, derived from the Huns
      their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and
      well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and
      dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh,
      of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
      followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to
      whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were
      practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was
      divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each
      other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the
      friendship, or rather the gifts, of the emperor; and the
      distinctions which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and
      the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only
      verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. 12
      The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by
      Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian
      name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic
      Sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same
      race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the
      possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however
      distant or adverse, used one common language (it was harsh and
      irregular), and were known by the resemblance of their form,
      which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and approached without
      attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German.
      Four thousand six hundred villages 13 were scattered over the
      provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built
      of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron.
      Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the
      banks of rivers, or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps,
      without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver;
      which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water,
      for the escape of the savage inhabitant, an animal less cleanly,
      less diligent, and less social, than that marvellous quadruped.
      The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor of the natives,
      supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their sheep and
      horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they
      sowed with millet or panic 14 afforded, in place of bread, a
      coarse and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their
      neighbors compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but
      on the appearance of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a
      people, whose unfavorable character is qualified by the epithets
      of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their supreme god, they
      adored an invisible master of the thunder. The rivers and the
      nymphs obtained their subordinate honors, and the popular worship
      was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The Sclavonians disdained to
      obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate; but their
      experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to
      compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary
      respect was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or village
      existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where
      none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and
      except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor; their
      weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows,
      and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance,
      and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field, the
      Sclavonian infantry was dangerous by their speed, agility, and
      hardiness: they swam, they dived, they remained under water,
      drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and a river or lake
      was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these
      were the achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art
      was unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their
      conquests were inglorious. 15

      11 (return) [ I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from
      Ennodius, (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1598,
      1599,) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn.
      Successione, p. 242,) Theophanes, (p. 185,) and the Chronicles of
      Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. The name of Huns is too vague; the
      tribes of the Cutturgurians and Utturgurians are too minute and
      too harsh. * Note: The Bulgarians are first mentioned among the
      writers of the West in the Panegyric on Theodoric by Ennodius,
      Bishop of Pavia. Though they perhaps took part in the conquests
      of the Huns, they did not advance to the Danube till after the
      dismemberment of that monarchy on the death of Attila. But the
      Bulgarians are mentioned much earlier by the Armenian writers.
      Above 600 years before Christ, a tribe of Bulgarians, driven from
      their native possessions beyond the Caspian, occupied a part of
      Armenia, north of the Araxes. They were of the Finnish race; part
      of the nation, in the fifth century, moved westward, and reached
      the modern Bulgaria; part remained along the Volga, which is
      called Etel, Etil, or Athil, in all the Tartar languages, but
      from the Bulgarians, the Volga. The power of the eastern
      Bulgarians was broken by Batou, son of Tchingiz Khan; that of the
      western will appear in the course of the history. From St.
      Martin, vol. vii p. 141. Malte-Brun, on the contrary, conceives
      that the Bulgarians took their name from the river. According to
      the Byzantine historians they were a branch of the Ougres,
      (Thunmann, Hist. of the People to the East of Europe,) but they
      have more resemblance to the Turks. Their first country, Great
      Bulgaria, was washed by the Volga. Some remains of their capital
      are still shown near Kasan. They afterwards dwelt in Kuban, and
      finally on the Danube, where they subdued (about the year 500)
      the Slavo-Servians established on the Lower Danube. Conquered in
      their turn by the Avars, they freed themselves from that yoke in
      635; their empire then comprised the Cutturgurians, the remains
      of the Huns established on the Palus Maeotis. The Danubian
      Bulgaria, a dismemberment of this vast state, was long formidable
      to the Byzantine empire. Malte-Brun, Prec. de Geog Univ. vol. i.
      p. 419.—M. ——According to Shafarik, the Danubian Bulgaria was
      peopled by a Slavo Bulgarian race. The Slavish population was
      conquered by the Bulgarian (of Uralian and Finnish descent,) and
      incorporated with them. This mingled race are the Bulgarians
      bordering on the Byzantine empire. Shafarik, ii 152, et seq.—M.
      1845]

      12 (return) [ Procopius, (Goth. l. iv. c. 19.) His verbal message
      (he owns him self an illiterate Barbarian) is delivered as an
      epistle. The style is savage, figurative, and original.]

      13 (return) [ This sum is the result of a particular list, in a
      curious Ms. fragment of the year 550, found in the library of
      Milan. The obscure geography of the times provokes and exercises
      the patience of the count de Buat, (tom. xi. p. 69—189.) The
      French minister often loses himself in a wilderness which
      requires a Saxon and Polish guide.]

      14 (return) [ Panicum, milium. See Columella, l. ii. c. 9, p.
      430, edit. Gesner. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 24, 25. The
      Samaritans made a pap of millet, mingled with mare’s milk or
      blood. In the wealth of modern husbandry, our millet feeds
      poultry, and not heroes. See the dictionaries of Bomare and
      Miller.]

      15 (return) [ For the name and nation, the situation and manners,
      of the Sclavonians, see the original evidence of the vith
      century, in Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 26, l. iii. c. 14,) and
      the emperor Mauritius or Maurice (Stratagemat. l. ii. c. 5, apud
      Mascon Annotat. xxxi.) The stratagems of Maurice have been
      printed only, as I understand, at the end of Scheffer’s edition
      of Arrian’s Tactics, at Upsal, 1664, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l.
      iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) a scarce, and hitherto, to me, an
      inaccessible book.]


      I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians
      and Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate
      boundaries, which were not accurately known or respected by the
      Barbarians themselves. Their importance was measured by their
      vicinity to the empire; and the level country of Moldavia and
      Wallachia was occupied by the Antes, 16 a Sclavonian tribe, which
      swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest. 17
      Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the Lower
      Danube; and labored to secure the alliance of a people seated in
      the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two
      hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the
      Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem
      the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Sclavonians, from a
      hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of
      the Bulgarian horse. The payment of one piece of gold for each
      soldier procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of
      the Gepidae, who commanded the passage of the Upper Danube. 18
      The hopes or fears of the Barbarians; their intense union or
      discord; the accident of a frozen or shallow stream; the prospect
      of harvest or vintage; the prosperity or distress of the Romans;
      were the causes which produced the uniform repetition of annual
      visits, 19 tedious in the narrative, and destructive in the
      event. The same year, and possibly the same month, in which
      Ravenna surrendered, was marked by an invasion of the Huns or
      Bulgarians, so dreadful, that it almost effaced the memory of
      their past inroads. They spread from the suburbs of
      Constantinople to the Ionian Gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or
      castles, erased Potidaea, which Athens had built, and Philip had
      besieged, and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses’
      heels one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of
      Justinian. In a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the
      Thracian Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the
      inhabitants, boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to
      their companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party,
      which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans, penetrated,
      without opposition, from the Straits of Thermopylae to the
      Isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of Greece has appeared an
      object too minute for the attention of history. The works which
      the emperor raised for the protection, but at the expense of his
      subjects, served only to disclose the weakness of some neglected
      part; and the walls, which by flattery had been deemed
      impregnable, were either deserted by the garrison, or scaled by
      the Barbarians. Three thousand Sclavonians, who insolently
      divided themselves into two bands, discovered the weakness and
      misery of a triumphant reign. They passed the Danube and the
      Hebrus, vanquished the Roman generals who dared to oppose their
      progress, and plundered, with impunity, the cities of Illyricum
      and Thrace, each of which had arms and numbers to overwhelm their
      contemptible assailants. Whatever praise the boldness of the
      Sclavonians may deserve, it is sullied by the wanton and
      deliberate cruelty which they are accused of exercising on their
      prisoners. Without distinction of rank, or age, or sex, the
      captives were impaled or flayed alive, or suspended between four
      posts, and beaten with clubs till they expired, or enclosed in
      some spacious building, and left to perish in the flames with the
      spoil and cattle which might impede the march of these savage
      victors. 20 Perhaps a more impartial narrative would reduce the
      number, and qualify the nature, of these horrid acts; and they
      might sometimes be excused by the cruel laws of retaliation. In
      the siege of Topirus, 21 whose obstinate defence had enraged the
      Sclavonians, they massacred fifteen thousand males; but they
      spared the women and children; the most valuable captives were
      always reserved for labor or ransom; the servitude was not
      rigorous, and the terms of their deliverance were speedy and
      moderate. But the subject, or the historian of Justinian, exhaled
      his just indignation in the language of complaint and reproach;
      and Procopius has confidently affirmed, that in a reign of
      thirty-two years, each annual inroad of the Barbarians consumed
      two hundred thousand of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The
      entire population of Turkish Europe, which nearly corresponds
      with the provinces of Justinian, would perhaps be incapable of
      supplying six millions of persons, the result of this incredible
      estimate. 22

      16 (return) [ Antes corum fortissimi.... Taysis qui rapidus et
      vorticosus in Histri fluenta furens devolvitur, (Jornandes, c. 5,
      p. 194, edit. Murator. Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 14, et de
      Edific. l iv. c. 7.) Yet the same Procopius mentions the Goths
      and Huns as neighbors to the Danube, (de Edific. l. v. c. 1.)]

      17 (return) [ The national title of Anticus, in the laws and
      inscriptions of Justinian, was adopted by his successors, and is
      justified by the pious Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian. p. 515.) It
      had strangely puzzled the civilians of the middle age.]

      18 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. iv. c. 25.]

      19 (return) [ An inroad of the Huns is connected, by Procopius,
      with a comet perhaps that of 531, (Persic. l. ii. c. 4.) Agathias
      (l. v. p. 154, 155) borrows from his predecessors some early
      facts.]

      20 (return) [ The cruelties of the Sclavonians are related or
      magnified by Procopius, (Goth. l. iii. c. 29, 38.) For their mild
      and liberal behavior to their prisoners, we may appeal to the
      authority, somewhat more recent of the emperor Maurice,
      (Stratagem. l. ii. c. 5.)]

      21 (return) [ Topirus was situate near Philippi in Thrace, or
      Macedonia, opposite to the Isle of Thasos, twelve days’ journey
      from Constantinople (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 676, 846.)]

      22 (return) [ According to the malevolent testimony of the
      Anecdotes, (c. 18,) these inroads had reduced the provinces south
      of the Danube to the state of a Scythian wilderness.]


      In the midst of these obscure calamities, Europe felt the shock
      of revolution, which first revealed to the world the name and
      nation of the Turks. 2211 Like Romulus, the founder 2212 of that
      martial people was suckled by a she-wolf, who afterwards made him
      the father of a numerous progeny; and the representation of that
      animal in the banners of the Turks preserved the memory, or
      rather suggested the idea, of a fable, which was invented,
      without any mutual intercourse, by the shepherds of Latium and
      those of Scythia. At the equal distance of two thousand miles
      from the Caspian, the Icy, the Chinese, and the Bengal Seas, a
      ridge of mountains is conspicuous, the centre, and perhaps the
      summit, of Asia; which, in the language of different nations, has
      been styled Imaus, and Caf, 23 and Altai, and the Golden
      Mountains, 2311 and the Girdle of the Earth. The sides of the
      hills were productive of minerals; and the iron forges, 24 for
      the purpose of war, were exercised by the Turks, the most
      despised portion of the slaves of the great khan of the Geougen.
      But their servitude could only last till a leader, bold and
      eloquent, should arise to persuade his countrymen that the same
      arms which they forged for their masters, might become, in their
      own hands, the instruments of freedom and victory. They sallied
      from the mountains; 25 a sceptre was the reward of his advice;
      and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in
      the fire, and a smith’s hammer 2511 was successively handled by
      the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble
      profession and rational pride of the Turkish nation. Bertezena,
      2512 their first leader, signalized their valor and his own in
      successful combats against the neighboring tribes; but when he
      presumed to ask in marriage the daughter of the great khan, the
      insolent demand of a slave and a mechanic was contemptuously
      rejected. The disgrace was expiated by a more noble alliance with
      a princess of China; and the decisive battle which almost
      extirpated the nation of the Geougen, established in Tartary the
      new and more powerful empire of the Turks. 2513 They reigned over
      the north; but they confessed the vanity of conquest, by their
      faithful attachment to the mountain of their fathers. The royal
      encampment seldom lost sight of Mount Altai, from whence the
      River Irtish descends to water the rich pastures of the Calmucks,
      26 which nourish the largest sheep and oxen in the world. The
      soil is fruitful, and the climate mild and temperate: the happy
      region was ignorant of earthquake and pestilence; the emperor’s
      throne was turned towards the East, and a golden wolf on the top
      of a spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. One of the
      successors of Bertezena was tempted by the luxury and
      superstition of China; but his design of building cities and
      temples was defeated by the simple wisdom of a Barbarian
      counsellor. “The Turks,” he said, “are not equal in number to one
      hundredth part of the inhabitants of China. If we balance their
      power, and elude their armies, it is because we wander without
      any fixed habitations in the exercise of war and hunting. Are we
      strong? we advance and conquer: are we feeble? we retire and are
      concealed. Should the Turks confine themselves within the walls
      of cities, the loss of a battle would be the destruction of their
      empire. The bonzes preach only patience, humility, and the
      renunciation of the world. Such, O king! is not the religion of
      heroes.” They entertained, with less reluctance, the doctrines of
      Zoroaster; but the greatest part of the nation acquiesced,
      without inquiry, in the opinions, or rather in the practice, of
      their ancestors. The honors of sacrifice were reserved for the
      supreme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their
      obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the earth; and
      their priests derived some profit from the art of divination.
      Their unwritten laws were rigorous and impartial: theft was
      punished with a tenfold restitution; adultery, treason, and
      murder, with death; and no chastisement could be inflicted too
      severe for the rare and inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the
      subject nations marched under the standard of the Turks, their
      cavalry, both men and horses, were proudly computed by millions;
      one of their effective armies consisted of four hundred thousand
      soldiers, and in less than fifty years they were connected in
      peace and war with the Romans, the Persians, and the Chinese. In
      their northern limits, some vestige may be discovered of the form
      and situation of Kamptchatka, of a people of hunters and
      fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by dogs, and whose
      habitations were buried in the earth. The Turks were ignorant of
      astronomy; but the observation taken by some learned Chinese,
      with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal camp in the latitude
      of forty-nine degrees, and marks their extreme progress within
      three, or at least ten degrees, of the polar circle. 27 Among
      their southern conquests the most splendid was that of the
      Nephthalites, or white Huns, a polite and warlike people, who
      possessed the commercial cities of Bochara and Samarcand, who had
      vanquished the Persian monarch, and carried their victorious arms
      along the banks, and perhaps to the mouth, of the Indus. On the
      side of the West, the Turkish cavalry advanced to the Lake
      Maeotis. They passed that lake on the ice. The khan who dwelt at
      the foot of Mount Altai issued his commands for the siege of
      Bosphorus, 28 a city the voluntary subject of Rome, and whose
      princes had formerly been the friends of Athens. 29 To the east,
      the Turks invaded China, as often as the vigor of the government
      was relaxed: and I am taught to read in the history of the times,
      that they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp or grass;
      and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor who
      repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of
      savage empire compelled the Turkish monarch to establish three
      subordinate princes of his own blood, who soon forgot their
      gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors were enervated by
      luxury, which is always fatal except to an industrious people;
      the policy of China solicited the vanquished nations to resume
      their independence and the power of the Turks was limited to a
      period of two hundred years. The revival of their name and
      dominion in the southern countries of Asia are the events of a
      later age; and the dynasties, which succeeded to their native
      realms, may sleep in oblivion; since their history bears no
      relation to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. 30

      2211 (return) [ It must be remembered that the name of Turks is
      extended to a whole family of the Asiatic races, and not confined
      to the Assena, or Turks of the Altai.—M.]

      2212 (return) [ Assena (the wolf) was the name of this chief.
      Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. de l’Asie p. 114.—M.]

      23 (return) [ From Caf to Caf; which a more rational geography
      would interpret, from Imaus, perhaps, to Mount Atlas. According
      to the religious philosophy of the Mahometans, the basis of Mount
      Caf is an emerald, whose reflection produces the azure of the
      sky. The mountain is endowed with a sensitive action in its roots
      or nerves; and their vibration, at the command of God, is the
      cause of earthquakes. (D’Herbelot, p. 230, 231.)]

      2311 (return) [ Altai, i. e. Altun Tagh, the Golden Mountain. Von
      Hammer Osman Geschichte, vol. i. p. 2.—M.]

      24 (return) [ The Siberian iron is the best and most plentiful in
      the world; and in the southern parts, above sixty mines are now
      worked by the industry of the Russians, (Strahlenberg, Hist. of
      Siberia, p. 342, 387. Voyage en Siberie, par l’Abbe Chappe
      d’Auteroche, p. 603—608, edit in 12mo. Amsterdam. 1770.) The
      Turks offered iron for sale; yet the Roman ambassadors, with
      strange obstinacy, persisted in believing that it was all a
      trick, and that their country produced none, (Menander in
      Excerpt. Leg. p. 152.)]

      25 (return) [ Of Irgana-kon, (Abulghazi Khan, Hist. Genealogique
      des Tatars, P ii. c. 5, p. 71—77, c. 15, p. 155.) The tradition
      of the Moguls, of the 450 years which they passed in the
      mountains, agrees with the Chinese periods of the history of the
      Huns and Turks, (De Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 376,) and the
      twenty generations, from their restoration to Zingis.]

      2511 (return) [ The Mongol Temugin is also, though erroneously,
      explained by Rubruquis, a smith. Schmidt, p 876.—M.]

      2512 (return) [ There appears the same confusion here. Bertezena
      (Berte-Scheno) is claimed as the founder of the Mongol race. The
      name means the gray (blauliche) wolf. In fact, the same tradition
      of the origin from a wolf seems common to the Mongols and the
      Turks. The Mongol Berte-Scheno, of the very curious Mongol
      History, published and translated by M. Schmidt of Petersburg, is
      brought from Thibet. M. Schmidt considers this tradition of the
      Thibetane descent of the royal race of the Mongols to be much
      earlier than their conversion to Lamaism, yet it seems very
      suspicious. See Klaproth, Tabl. de l’Asie, p. 159. The Turkish
      Bertezena is called Thou-men by Klaproth, p. 115. In 552,
      Thou-men took the title of Kha-Khan, and was called Il Khan.—M.]

      2513 (return) [ Great Bucharia is called Turkistan: see Hammer,
      2. It includes all the last steppes at the foot of the Altai. The
      name is the same with that of the Turan of Persian poetic
      legend.—M.]

      26 (return) [ The country of the Turks, now of the Calmucks, is
      well described in the Genealogical History, p. 521—562. The
      curious notes of the French translator are enlarged and digested
      in the second volume of the English version.]

      27 (return) [ Visdelou, p. 141, 151. The fact, though it strictly
      belongs to a subordinate and successive tribe, may be introduced
      here.]

      28 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 12, l. ii. c. 3.
      Peyssonel, Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, p. 99, 100,
      defines the distance between Caffa and the old Bosphorus at xvi.
      long Tartar leagues.]

      29 (return) [ See, in a Memoire of M. de Boze, (Mem. de
      l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. vi. p. 549—565,) the ancient
      kings and medals of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and the gratitude of
      Athens, in the Oration of Demosthenes against Leptines, (in
      Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom. i. p. 466, 187.)]

      30 (return) [ For the origin and revolutions of the first Turkish
      empire, the Chinese details are borrowed from De Guignes (Hist.
      des Huns, tom. P. ii. p. 367—462) and Visdelou, (Supplement a la
      Bibliotheque Orient. d’Herbelot, p. 82—114.) The Greek or Roman
      hints are gathered in Menander (p. 108—164) and Theophylact
      Simocatta, (l. vii. c. 7, 8.)]




Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part II.


      In the rapid career of conquest, the Turks attacked and subdued
      the nation of the Ogors or Varchonites 3011 on the banks of the
      River Til, which derived the epithet of Black from its dark water
      or gloomy forests. 31 The khan of the Ogors was slain with three
      hundred thousand of his subjects, and their bodies were scattered
      over the space of four days’ journey: their surviving countrymen
      acknowledged the strength and mercy of the Turks; and a small
      portion, about twenty thousand warriors, preferred exile to
      servitude. They followed the well-known road of the Volga,
      cherished the error of the nations who confounded them with the
      Avars, and spread the terror of that false though famous
      appellation, which had not, however, saved its lawful proprietors
      from the yoke of the Turks. 32 After a long and victorious march,
      the new Avars arrived at the foot of Mount Caucasus, in the
      country of the Alani 33 and Circassians, where they first heard
      of the splendor and weakness of the Roman empire. They humbly
      requested their confederate, the prince of the Alani, to lead
      them to this source of riches; and their ambassador, with the
      permission of the governor of Lazica, was transported by the
      Euxine Sea to Constantinople. The whole city was poured forth to
      behold with curiosity and terror the aspect of a strange people:
      their long hair, which hung in tresses down their backs, was
      gracefully bound with ribbons, but the rest of their habit
      appeared to imitate the fashion of the Huns. When they were
      admitted to the audience of Justinian, Candish, the first of the
      ambassadors, addressed the Roman emperor in these terms: “You see
      before you, O mighty prince, the representatives of the strongest
      and most populous of nations, the invincible, the irresistible
      Avars. We are willing to devote ourselves to your service: we are
      able to vanquish and destroy all the enemies who now disturb your
      repose. But we expect, as the price of our alliance, as the
      reward of our valor, precious gifts, annual subsidies, and
      fruitful possessions.” At the time of this embassy, Justinian had
      reigned above thirty, he had lived above seventy-five years: his
      mind, as well as his body, was feeble and languid; and the
      conqueror of Africa and Italy, careless of the permanent interest
      of his people, aspired only to end his days in the bosom even of
      inglorious peace. In a studied oration, he imparted to the senate
      his resolution to dissemble the insult, and to purchase the
      friendship of the Avars; and the whole senate, like the mandarins
      of China, applauded the incomparable wisdom and foresight of
      their sovereign. The instruments of luxury were immediately
      prepared to captivate the Barbarians; silken garments, soft and
      splendid beds, and chains and collars incrusted with gold. The
      ambassadors, content with such liberal reception, departed from
      Constantinople, and Valentin, one of the emperor’s guards, was
      sent with a similar character to their camp at the foot of Mount
      Caucasus. As their destruction or their success must be alike
      advantageous to the empire, he persuaded them to invade the
      enemies of Rome; and they were easily tempted, by gifts and
      promises, to gratify their ruling inclinations. These fugitives,
      who fled before the Turkish arms, passed the Tanais and
      Borysthenes, and boldly advanced into the heart of Poland and
      Germany, violating the law of nations, and abusing the rights of
      victory. Before ten years had elapsed, their camps were seated on
      the Danube and the Elbe, many Bulgarian and Sclavonian names were
      obliterated from the earth, and the remainder of their tribes are
      found, as tributaries and vassals, under the standard of the
      Avars. The chagan, the peculiar title of their king, still
      affected to cultivate the friendship of the emperor; and
      Justinian entertained some thoughts of fixing them in Pannonia,
      to balance the prevailing power of the Lombards. But the virtue
      or treachery of an Avar betrayed the secret enmity and ambitious
      designs of their countrymen; and they loudly complained of the
      timid, though jealous policy, of detaining their ambassadors, and
      denying the arms which they had been allowed to purchase in the
      capital of the empire. 34

      3011 (return) [ The Ogors or Varchonites, from Var. a river,
      (obviously connected with the name Avar,) must not be confounded
      with the Uigours, the eastern Turks, (v. Hammer, Osmanische
      Geschichte, vol. i. p. 3,) who speak a language the parent of the
      more modern Turkish dialects. Compare Klaproth, page 121. They
      are the ancestors of the Usbeck Turks. These Ogors were of the
      same Finnish race with the Huns; and the 20,000 families which
      fled towards the west, after the Turkish invasion, were of the
      same race with those which remained to the east of the Volga, the
      true Avars of Theophy fact.—M.]

      31 (return) [ The River Til, or Tula, according to the geography
      of De Guignes, (tom. i. part ii. p. lviii. and 352,) is a small,
      though grateful, stream of the desert, that falls into the Orhon,
      Selinga, &c. See Bell, Journey from Petersburg to Pekin, (vol.
      ii. p. 124;) yet his own description of the Keat, down which he
      sailed into the Oby, represents the name and attributes of the
      black river, (p. 139.) * Note: M. Klaproth, (Tableaux Historiques
      de l’Asie, p. 274) supposes this river to be an eastern affluent
      of the Volga, the Kama, which, from the color of its waters,
      might be called black. M. Abel Remusat (Recherchea sur les
      Langues Tartares, vol. i. p. 320) and M. St. Martin (vol. ix. p.
      373) consider it the Volga, which is called Atel or Etel by all
      the Turkish tribes. It is called Attilas by Menander, and Ettilia
      by the monk Ruysbreek (1253.) See Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 247.
      This geography is much more clear and simple than that adopted by
      Gibbon from De Guignes, or suggested from Bell.—M.]

      32 (return) [ Theophylact, l. vii. c. 7, 8. And yet his true
      Avars are invisible even to the eyes of M. de Guignes; and what
      can be more illustrious than the false? The right of the fugitive
      Ogors to that national appellation is confessed by the Turks
      themselves, (Menander, p. 108.)]

      33 (return) [ The Alani are still found in the Genealogical
      History of the Tartars, (p. 617,) and in D’Anville’s maps. They
      opposed the march of the generals of Zingis round the Caspian
      Sea, and were overthrown in a great battle, (Hist. de Gengiscan,
      l. iv. c. 9, p. 447.)]

      34 (return) [ The embassies and first conquests of the Avars may
      be read in Menander, (Excerpt. Legat. p. 99, 100, 101, 154, 155,)
      Theophanes, (p. 196,) the Historia Miscella, (l. xvi. p. 109,)
      and Gregory of Tours, (L iv. c. 23, 29, in the Historians of
      France, tom. ii. p. 214, 217.)]


      Perhaps the apparent change in the dispositions of the emperors
      may be ascribed to the embassy which was received from the
      conquerors of the Avars. 35 The immense distance which eluded
      their arms could not extinguish their resentment: the Turkish
      ambassadors pursued the footsteps of the vanquished to the Jaik,
      the Volga, Mount Caucasus, the Euxine and Constantinople, and at
      length appeared before the successor of Constantine, to request
      that he would not espouse the cause of rebels and fugitives. Even
      commerce had some share in this remarkable negotiation: and the
      Sogdoites, who were now the tributaries of the Turks, embraced
      the fair occasion of opening, by the north of the Caspian, a new
      road for the importation of Chinese silk into the Roman empire.
      The Persian, who preferred the navigation of Ceylon, had stopped
      the caravans of Bochara and Samarcand: their silk was
      contemptuously burnt: some Turkish ambassadors died in Persia,
      with a suspicion of poison; and the great khan permitted his
      faithful vassal Maniach, the prince of the Sogdoites, to propose,
      at the Byzantine court, a treaty of alliance against their common
      enemies. Their splendid apparel and rich presents, the fruit of
      Oriental luxury, distinguished Maniach and his colleagues from
      the rude savages of the North: their letters, in the Scythian
      character and language, announced a people who had attained the
      rudiments of science: 36 they enumerated the conquests, they
      offered the friendship and military aid of the Turks; and their
      sincerity was attested by direful imprecations (if they were
      guilty of falsehood) against their own head, and the head of
      Disabul their master. The Greek prince entertained with
      hospitable regard the ambassadors of a remote and powerful
      monarch: the sight of silk-worms and looms disappointed the hopes
      of the Sogdoites; the emperor renounced, or seemed to renounce,
      the fugitive Avars, but he accepted the alliance of the Turks;
      and the ratification of the treaty was carried by a Roman
      minister to the foot of Mount Altai. Under the successors of
      Justinian, the friendship of the two nations was cultivated by
      frequent and cordial intercourse; the most favored vassals were
      permitted to imitate the example of the great khan, and one
      hundred and six Turks, who, on various occasions, had visited
      Constantinople, departed at the same time for their native
      country. The duration and length of the journey from the
      Byzantine court to Mount Altai are not specified: it might have
      been difficult to mark a road through the nameless deserts, the
      mountains, rivers, and morasses of Tartary; but a curious account
      has been preserved of the reception of the Roman ambassadors at
      the royal camp. After they had been purified with fire and
      incense, according to a rite still practised under the sons of
      Zingis, 3611 they were introduced to the presence of Disabul. In
      a valley of the Golden Mountain, they found the great khan in his
      tent, seated in a chair with wheels, to which a horse might be
      occasionally harnessed. As soon as they had delivered their
      presents, which were received by the proper officers, they
      exposed, in a florid oration, the wishes of the Roman emperor,
      that victory might attend the arms of the Turks, that their reign
      might be long and prosperous, and that a strict alliance, without
      envy or deceit, might forever be maintained between the two most
      powerful nations of the earth. The answer of Disabul corresponded
      with these friendly professions, and the ambassadors were seated
      by his side, at a banquet which lasted the greatest part of the
      day: the tent was surrounded with silk hangings, and a Tartar
      liquor was served on the table, which possessed at least the
      intoxicating qualities of wine. The entertainment of the
      succeeding day was more sumptuous; the silk hangings of the
      second tent were embroidered in various figures; and the royal
      seat, the cups, and the vases, were of gold. A third pavilion was
      supported by columns of gilt wood; a bed of pure and massy gold
      was raised on four peacocks of the same metal: and before the
      entrance of the tent, dishes, basins, and statues of solid
      silver, and admirable art, were ostentatiously piled in wagons,
      the monuments of valor rather than of industry. When Disabul led
      his armies against the frontiers of Persia, his Roman allies
      followed many days the march of the Turkish camp, nor were they
      dismissed till they had enjoyed their precedency over the envoy
      of the great king, whose loud and intemperate clamors interrupted
      the silence of the royal banquet. The power and ambition of
      Chosroes cemented the union of the Turks and Romans, who touched
      his dominions on either side: but those distant nations,
      regardless of each other, consulted the dictates of interest,
      without recollecting the obligations of oaths and treaties. While
      the successor of Disabul celebrated his father’s obsequies, he
      was saluted by the ambassadors of the emperor Tiberius, who
      proposed an invasion of Persia, and sustained, with firmness, the
      angry and perhaps the just reproaches of that haughty Barbarian.
      “You see my ten fingers,” said the great khan, and he applied
      them to his mouth. “You Romans speak with as many tongues, but
      they are tongues of deceit and perjury. To me you hold one
      language, to my subjects another; and the nations are
      successively deluded by your perfidious eloquence. You
      precipitate your allies into war and danger, you enjoy their
      labors, and you neglect your benefactors. Hasten your return,
      inform your master that a Turk is incapable of uttering or
      forgiving falsehood, and that he shall speedily meet the
      punishment which he deserves. While he solicits my friendship
      with flattering and hollow words, he is sunk to a confederate of
      my fugitive Varchonites. If I condescend to march against those
      contemptible slaves, they will tremble at the sound of our whips;
      they will be trampled, like a nest of ants, under the feet of my
      innumerable cavalry. I am not ignorant of the road which they
      have followed to invade your empire; nor can I be deceived by the
      vain pretence, that Mount Caucasus is the impregnable barrier of
      the Romans. I know the course of the Niester, the Danube, and the
      Hebrus; the most warlike nations have yielded to the arms of the
      Turks; and from the rising to the setting sun, the earth is my
      inheritance.” Notwithstanding this menace, a sense of mutual
      advantage soon renewed the alliance of the Turks and Romans: but
      the pride of the great khan survived his resentment; and when he
      announced an important conquest to his friend the emperor
      Maurice, he styled himself the master of the seven races, and the
      lord of the seven climates of the world. 37

      35 (return) [ Theophanes, (Chron. p. 204,) and the Hist.
      Miscella, (l. xvi. p. 110,) as understood by De Guignes, (tom. i.
      part ii. p. 354,) appear to speak of a Turkish embassy to
      Justinian himself; but that of Maniach, in the fourth year of his
      successor Justin, is positively the first that reached
      Constantinople, (Menander p. 108.)]

      36 (return) [ The Russians have found characters, rude
      hieroglyphics, on the Irtish and Yenisei, on medals, tombs,
      idols, rocks, obelisks, &c., (Strahlenberg, Hist. of Siberia, p.
      324, 346, 406, 429.) Dr. Hyde (de Religione Veterum Persarum, p.
      521, &c.) has given two alphabets of Thibet and of the Eygours. I
      have long harbored a suspicion, that all the Scythian, and some,
      perhaps much, of the Indian science, was derived from the Greeks
      of Bactriana. * Note: Modern discoveries give no confirmation to
      this suspicion. The character of Indian science, as well as of
      their literature and mythology, indicates an original source.
      Grecian art may have occasionally found its way into India. One
      or two of the sculptures in Col. Tod’s account of the Jain
      temples, if correct, show a finer outline, and purer sense of
      beauty, than appears native to India, where the monstrous always
      predominated over simple nature.—M.]

      3611 (return) [ This rite is so curious, that I have subjoined
      the description of it:— When these (the exorcisers, the Shamans)
      approached Zemarchus, they took all our baggage and placed it in
      the centre. Then, kindling a fire with branches of frankincense,
      lowly murmuring certain barbarous words in the Scythian language,
      beating on a kind of bell (a gong) and a drum, they passed over
      the baggage the leaves of the frankincense, crackling with the
      fire, and at the same time themselves becoming frantic, and
      violently leaping about, seemed to exorcise the evil spirits.
      Having thus as they thought, averted all evil, they led Zemarchus
      himself through the fire. Menander, in Niebuhr’s Bryant. Hist. p.
      381. Compare Carpini’s Travels. The princes of the race of Zingis
      Khan condescended to receive the ambassadors of the king of
      France, at the end of the 13th century without their submitting
      to this humiliating rite. See Correspondence published by Abel
      Remusat, Nouv. Mem. de l’Acad des Inscrip. vol. vii. On the
      embassy of Zemarchus, compare Klaproth, Tableaux de l’Asie p.
      116.—M.]

      37 (return) [ All the details of these Turkish and Roman
      embassies, so curious in the history of human manners, are drawn
      from the extracts of Menander, (p. 106—110, 151—154, 161-164,) in
      which we often regret the want of order and connection.]


      Disputes have often arisen between the sovereigns of Asia for the
      title of king of the world; while the contest has proved that it
      could not belong to either of the competitors. The kingdom of the
      Turks was bounded by the Oxus or Gihon; and Touran was separated
      by that great river from the rival monarchy of Iran, or Persia,
      which in a smaller compass contained perhaps a larger measure of
      power and population. The Persians, who alternately invaded and
      repulsed the Turks and the Romans, were still ruled by the house
      of Sassan, which ascended the throne three hundred years before
      the accession of Justinian. His contemporary, Cabades, or Kobad,
      had been successful in war against the emperor Anastasius; but
      the reign of that prince was distracted by civil and religious
      troubles. A prisoner in the hands of his subjects, an exile among
      the enemies of Persia, he recovered his liberty by prostituting
      the honor of his wife, and regained his kingdom with the
      dangerous and mercenary aid of the Barbarians, who had slain his
      father. His nobles were suspicious that Kobad never forgave the
      authors of his expulsion, or even those of his restoration. The
      people was deluded and inflamed by the fanaticism of Mazdak, 38
      who asserted the community of women, 39 and the equality of
      mankind, whilst he appropriated the richest lands and most
      beautiful females to the use of his sectaries. The view of these
      disorders, which had been fomented by his laws and example, 40
      imbittered the declining age of the Persian monarch; and his
      fears were increased by the consciousness of his design to
      reverse the natural and customary order of succession, in favor
      of his third and most favored son, so famous under the names of
      Chosroes and Nushirvan. To render the youth more illustrious in
      the eyes of the nations, Kobad was desirous that he should be
      adopted by the emperor Justin: 4011 the hope of peace inclined
      the Byzantine court to accept this singular proposal; and
      Chosroes might have acquired a specious claim to the inheritance
      of his Roman parent. But the future mischief was diverted by the
      advice of the quaestor Proclus: a difficulty was started, whether
      the adoption should be performed as a civil or military rite; 41
      the treaty was abruptly dissolved; and the sense of this
      indignity sunk deep into the mind of Chosroes, who had already
      advanced to the Tigris on his road to Constantinople. His father
      did not long survive the disappointment of his wishes: the
      testament of their deceased sovereign was read in the assembly of
      the nobles; and a powerful faction, prepared for the event, and
      regardless of the priority of age, exalted Chosroes to the throne
      of Persia. He filled that throne during a prosperous period of
      forty-eight years; 42 and the Justice of Nushirvan is celebrated
      as the theme of immortal praise by the nations of the East.

      38 (return) [ See D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 568, 929;)
      Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, c. 21, p. 290, 291;) Pocock,
      (Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 70, 71;) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
      176;) Texeira, (in Stevens, Hist. of Persia, l. i. c. 34.) *
      Note: Mazdak was an Archimagus, born, according to Mirkhond,
      (translated by De Sacy, p. 353, and Malcolm, vol. i. p. 104,) at
      Istakhar or Persepolis, according to an inedited and anonymous
      history, (the Modjmal-alte-warikh in the Royal Library at Paris,
      quoted by St. Martin, vol. vii. p. 322) at Wischapour in
      Chorasan: his father’s name was Bamdadam. He announces himself as
      a reformer of Zoroastrianism, and carried the doctrine of the two
      principles to a much greater height. He preached the absolute
      indifference of human action, perfect equality of rank, community
      of property and of women, marriages between the nearest kindred;
      he interdicted the use of animal food, proscribed the killing of
      animals for food, enforced a vegetable diet. See St. Martin, vol.
      vii. p. 322. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 104. Mirkhond translated by De
      Sacy. It is remarkable that the doctrine of Mazdak spread into
      the West. Two inscriptions found in Cyrene, in 1823, and
      explained by M. Gesenius, and by M. Hamaker of Leyden, prove
      clearly that his doctrines had been eagerly embraced by the
      remains of the ancient Gnostics; and Mazdak was enrolled with
      Thoth, Saturn, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicurus, John, and Christ,
      as the teachers of true Gnostic wisdom. See St. Martin, vol. vii.
      p. 338. Gesenius de Inscriptione Phoenicio-Graeca in Cyrenaica
      nuper reperta, Halle, 1825. Hamaker, Lettre a M. Raoul Rochette,
      Leyden, 1825.—M.]

      39 (return) [ The fame of the new law for the community of women
      was soon propagated in Syria (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii.
      p. 402) and Greece, (Procop. Persic. l. i. c. 5.)]

      40 (return) [ He offered his own wife and sister to the prophet;
      but the prayers of Nushirvan saved his mother, and the indignant
      monarch never forgave the humiliation to which his filial piety
      had stooped: pedes tuos deosculatus (said he to Mazdak,) cujus
      foetor adhuc nares occupat, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arab. p.
      71.)]

      4011 (return) [ St. Martin questions this adoption: he urges its
      improbability; and supposes that Procopius, perverting some
      popular traditions, or the remembrance of some fruitless
      negotiations which took place at that time, has mistaken, for a
      treaty of adoption some treaty of guaranty or protection for the
      purpose of insuring the crown, after the death of Kobad, to his
      favorite son Chosroes, vol. viii. p. 32. Yet the Greek historians
      seem unanimous as to the proposal: the Persians might be expected
      to maintain silence on such a subject.—M.]

      41 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 11. Was not Proclus
      over-wise? Was not the danger imaginary?—The excuse, at least,
      was injurious to a nation not ignorant of letters. Whether any
      mode of adoption was practised in Persia, I much doubt.]

      42 (return) [ From Procopius and Agathias, Pagi (tom. ii. p. 543,
      626) has proved that Chosroes Nushirvan ascended the throne in
      the fifth year of Justinian, (A.D. 531, April 1.—A.D. 532, April
      1.) But the true chronology, which harmonizes with the Greeks and
      Orientals, is ascertained by John Malala, (tom. ii. 211.)
      Cabades, or Kobad, after a reign of forty-three years and two
      months, sickened the 8th, and died the 13th of September, A.D.
      531, aged eighty-two years. According to the annals of Eutychius,
      Nushirvan reigned forty seven years and six months; and his death
      must consequently be placed in March, A.D. 579.]


      But the justice of kings is understood by themselves, and even by
      their subjects, with an ample indulgence for the gratification of
      passion and interest. The virtue of Chosroes was that of a
      conqueror, who, in the measures of peace and war, is excited by
      ambition, and restrained by prudence; who confounds the greatness
      with the happiness of a nation, and calmly devotes the lives of
      thousands to the fame, or even the amusement, of a single man. In
      his domestic administration, the just Nushirvan would merit in
      our feelings the appellation of a tyrant. His two elder brothers
      had been deprived of their fair expectations of the diadem: their
      future life, between the supreme rank and the condition of
      subjects, was anxious to themselves and formidable to their
      master: fear as well as revenge might tempt them to rebel: the
      slightest evidence of a conspiracy satisfied the author of their
      wrongs; and the repose of Chosroes was secured by the death of
      these unhappy princes, with their families and adherents. One
      guiltless youth was saved and dismissed by the compassion of a
      veteran general; and this act of humanity, which was revealed by
      his son, overbalanced the merit of reducing twelve nations to the
      obedience of Persia. The zeal and prudence of Mebodes had fixed
      the diadem on the head of Chosroes himself; but he delayed to
      attend the royal summons, till he had performed the duties of a
      military review: he was instantly commanded to repair to the iron
      tripod, which stood before the gate of the palace, 43 where it
      was death to relieve or approach the victim; and Mebodes
      languished several days before his sentence was pronounced, by
      the inflexible pride and calm ingratitude of the son of Kobad.
      But the people, more especially in the East, is disposed to
      forgive, and even to applaud, the cruelty which strikes at the
      loftiest heads; at the slaves of ambition, whose voluntary choice
      has exposed them to live in the smiles, and to perish by the
      frown, of a capricious monarch. In the execution of the laws
      which he had no temptation to violate; in the punishment of
      crimes which attacked his own dignity, as well as the happiness
      of individuals; Nushirvan, or Chosroes, deserved the appellation
      of just. His government was firm, rigorous, and impartial. It was
      the first labor of his reign to abolish the dangerous theory of
      common or equal possessions: the lands and women which the
      sectaries of Mazdak has usurped were restored to their lawful
      owners; and the temperate 4311 chastisement of the fanatics or
      impostors confirmed the domestic rights of society. Instead of
      listening with blind confidence to a favorite minister, he
      established four viziers over the four great provinces of his
      empire, Assyria, Media, Persia, and Bactriana. In the choice of
      judges, præfects, and counsellors, he strove to remove the mask
      which is always worn in the presence of kings: he wished to
      substitute the natural order of talents for the accidental
      distinctions of birth and fortune; he professed, in specious
      language, his intention to prefer those men who carried the poor
      in their bosoms, and to banish corruption from the seat of
      justice, as dogs were excluded from the temples of the Magi. The
      code of laws of the first Artaxerxes was revived and published as
      the rule of the magistrates; but the assurance of speedy
      punishment was the best security of their virtue. Their behavior
      was inspected by a thousand eyes, their words were overheard by a
      thousand ears, the secret or public agents of the throne; and the
      provinces, from the Indian to the Arabian confines, were
      enlightened by the frequent visits of a sovereign, who affected
      to emulate his celestial brother in his rapid and salutary
      career. Education and agriculture he viewed as the two objects
      most deserving of his care. In every city of Persia orphans, and
      the children of the poor, were maintained and instructed at the
      public expense; the daughters were given in marriage to the
      richest citizens of their own rank, and the sons, according to
      their different talents, were employed in mechanic trades, or
      promoted to more honorable service. The deserted villages were
      relieved by his bounty; to the peasants and farmers who were
      found incapable of cultivating their lands, he distributed
      cattle, seed, and the instruments of husbandry; and the rare and
      inestimable treasure of fresh water was parsimoniously managed,
      and skilfully dispersed over the arid territory of Persia. 44 The
      prosperity of that kingdom was the effect and evidence of his
      virtues; his vices are those of Oriental despotism; but in the
      long competition between Chosroes and Justinian, the advantage
      both of merit and fortune is almost always on the side of the
      Barbarian. 45

      43 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 23. Brisson, de Regn.
      Pers. p. 494. The gate of the palace of Ispahan is, or was, the
      fatal scene of disgrace or death, (Chardin, Voyage en Perse, tom.
      iv. p. 312, 313.)]

      4311 (return) [ This is a strange term. Nushirvan employed a
      stratagem similar to that of Jehu, 2 Kings, x. 18—28, to separate
      the followers of Mazdak from the rest of his subjects, and with a
      body of his troops cut them all in pieces. The Greek writers
      concur with the Persian in this representation of Nushirvan’s
      temperate conduct. Theophanes, p. 146. Mirkhond. p. 362.
      Eutychius, Ann. vol. ii. p. 179. Abulfeda, in an unedited part,
      consulted by St. Martin as well as in a passage formerly cited.
      Le Beau vol. viii. p. 38. Malcolm vol l p. 109.—M.]

      44 (return) [ In Persia, the prince of the waters is an officer
      of state. The number of wells and subterraneous channels is much
      diminished, and with it the fertility of the soil: 400 wells have
      been recently lost near Tauris, and 42,000 were once reckoned in
      the province of Khorasan (Chardin, tom. iii. p. 99, 100.
      Tavernier, tom. i. p. 416.)]

      45 (return) [ The character and government of Nushirvan is
      represented some times in the words of D’Herbelot, (Bibliot.
      Orient. p. 680, &c., from Khondemir,) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii.
      p. 179, 180,—very rich,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. vii. p. 94,
      95,—very poor,) Tarikh Schikard, (p. 144—150,) Texeira, (in
      Stevens, l. i. c. 35,) Asseman, (Bibliot Orient. tom. iii. p.
      404-410,) and the Abbe Fourmont, (Hist. de l’Acad. des
      Inscriptions, tom. vii. p. 325—334,) who has translated a
      spurious or genuine testament of Nushirvan.]


      To the praise of justice Nushirvan united the reputation of
      knowledge; and the seven Greek philosophers, who visited his
      court, were invited and deceived by the strange assurance, that a
      disciple of Plato was seated on the Persian throne. Did they
      expect, that a prince, strenuously exercised in the toils of war
      and government, should agitate, with dexterity like their own,
      the abstruse and profound questions which amused the leisure of
      the schools of Athens? Could they hope that the precepts of
      philosophy should direct the life, and control the passions, of a
      despot, whose infancy had been taught to consider his absolute
      and fluctuating will as the only rule of moral obligation? 46 The
      studies of Chosroes were ostentatious and superficial: but his
      example awakened the curiosity of an ingenious people, and the
      light of science was diffused over the dominions of Persia. 47 At
      Gondi Sapor, in the neighborhood of the royal city of Susa, an
      academy of physic was founded, which insensibly became a liberal
      school of poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric. 48 The annals of the
      monarchy 49 were composed; and while recent and authentic history
      might afford some useful lessons both to the prince and people,
      the darkness of the first ages was embellished by the giants, the
      dragons, and the fabulous heroes of Oriental romance. 50 Every
      learned or confident stranger was enriched by the bounty, and
      flattered by the conversation, of the monarch: he nobly rewarded
      a Greek physician, 51 by the deliverance of three thousand
      captives; and the sophists, who contended for his favor, were
      exasperated by the wealth and insolence of Uranius, their more
      successful rival. Nushirvan believed, or at least respected, the
      religion of the Magi; and some traces of persecution may be
      discovered in his reign. 52 Yet he allowed himself freely to
      compare the tenets of the various sects; and the theological
      disputes, in which he frequently presided, diminished the
      authority of the priest, and enlightened the minds of the people.
      At his command, the most celebrated writers of Greece and India
      were translated into the Persian language; a smooth and elegant
      idiom, recommended by Mahomet to the use of paradise; though it
      is branded with the epithets of savage and unmusical, by the
      ignorance and presumption of Agathias. 53 Yet the Greek historian
      might reasonably wonder that it should be found possible to
      execute an entire version of Plato and Aristotle in a foreign
      dialect, which had not been framed to express the spirit of
      freedom and the subtilties of philosophic disquisition. And, if
      the reason of the Stagyrite might be equally dark, or equally
      intelligible in every tongue, the dramatic art and verbal
      argumentation of the disciple of Socrates, 54 appear to be
      indissolubly mingled with the grace and perfection of his Attic
      style. In the search of universal knowledge, Nushirvan was
      informed, that the moral and political fables of Pilpay, an
      ancient Brachman, were preserved with jealous reverence among the
      treasures of the kings of India. The physician Perozes was
      secretly despatched to the banks of the Ganges, with instructions
      to procure, at any price, the communication of this valuable
      work. His dexterity obtained a transcript, his learned diligence
      accomplished the translation; and the fables of Pilpay 55 were
      read and admired in the assembly of Nushirvan and his nobles. The
      Indian original, and the Persian copy, have long since
      disappeared; but this venerable monument has been saved by the
      curiosity of the Arabian caliphs, revived in the modern Persic,
      the Turkish, the Syriac, the Hebrew, and the Greek idioms, and
      transfused through successive versions into the modern languages
      of Europe. In their present form, the peculiar character, the
      manners and religion of the Hindoos, are completely obliterated;
      and the intrinsic merit of the fables of Pilpay is far inferior
      to the concise elegance of Phaedrus, and the native graces of La
      Fontaine. Fifteen moral and political sentences are illustrated
      in a series of apologues: but the composition is intricate, the
      narrative prolix, and the precept obvious and barren. Yet the
      Brachman may assume the merit of inventing a pleasing fiction,
      which adorns the nakedness of truth, and alleviates, perhaps, to
      a royal ear, the harshness of instruction. With a similar design,
      to admonish kings that they are strong only in the strength of
      their subjects, the same Indians invented the game of chess,
      which was likewise introduced into Persia under the reign of
      Nushirvan. 56

      46 (return) [ A thousand years before his birth, the judges of
      Persia had given a solemn opinion, (Herodot. l. iii. c. 31, p.
      210, edit. Wesseling.) Nor had this constitutional maxim been
      neglected as a useless and barren theory.]

      47 (return) [ On the literary state of Persia, the Greek
      versions, philosophers, sophists, the learning or ignorance of
      Chosroes, Agathias (l. ii. c. 66—71) displays much information
      and strong prejudices.]

      48 (return) [ Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. DCCXLV. vi.
      vii.]

      49 (return) [ The Shah Nameh, or Book of Kings, is perhaps the
      original record of history which was translated into Greek by the
      interpreter Sergius, (Agathias, l. v. p. 141,) preserved after
      the Mahometan conquest, and versified in the year 994, by the
      national poet Ferdoussi. See D’Anquetil (Mem. de l’Academie, tom.
      xxxi. p. 379) and Sir William Jones, (Hist. of Nadir Shah, p.
      161.)]

      50 (return) [ In the fifth century, the name of Restom, or
      Rostam, a hero who equalled the strength of twelve elephants, was
      familiar to the Armenians, (Moses Chorenensis, Hist. Armen. l.
      ii. c. 7, p. 96, edit. Whiston.) In the beginning of the seventh,
      the Persian Romance of Rostam and Isfendiar was applauded at
      Mecca, (Sale’s Koran, c. xxxi. p. 335.) Yet this exposition of
      ludicrum novae historiae is not given by Maracci, (Refutat.
      Alcoran. p. 544—548.)]

      51 (return) [ Procop. (Goth. l. iv. c. 10.) Kobad had a favorite
      Greek physician, Stephen of Edessa, (Persic. l. ii. c. 26.) The
      practice was ancient; and Herodotus relates the adventures of
      Democedes of Crotona, (l. iii p. 125—137.)]

      52 (return) [ See Pagi, tom. ii. p. 626. In one of the treaties
      an honorable article was inserted for the toleration and burial
      of the Catholics, (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 142.)
      Nushizad, a son of Nushirvan, was a Christian, a rebel, and—a
      martyr? (D’Herbelot, p. 681.)]

      53 (return) [ On the Persian language, and its three dialects,
      consult D’Anquetil (p. 339—343) and Jones, (p. 153—185:) is the
      character which Agathias (l. ii. p. 66) ascribes to an idiom
      renowned in the East for poetical softness.]

      54 (return) [ Agathias specifies the Gorgias, Phaedon,
      Parmenides, and Timaeus. Renaudot (Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec.
      tom. xii. p. 246—261) does not mention this Barbaric version of
      Aristotle.]

      55 (return) [ Of these fables, I have seen three copies in three
      different languages: 1. In Greek, translated by Simeon Seth (A.D.
      1100) from the Arabic, and published by Starck at Berlin in 1697,
      in 12mo. 2. In Latin, a version from the Greek Sapientia Indorum,
      inserted by Pere Poussin at the end of his edition of Pachymer,
      (p. 547—620, edit. Roman.) 3. In French, from the Turkish,
      dedicated, in 1540, to Sultan Soliman Contes et Fables Indiennes
      de Bidpai et de Lokman, par Mm. Galland et Cardonne, Paris, 1778,
      3 vols. in 12mo. Mr. Warton (History of English Poetry, vol. i.
      p. 129—131) takes a larger scope. * Note: The oldest Indian
      collection extant is the Pancha-tantra, (the five collections,)
      analyzed by Mr. Wilson in the Transactions of the Royal Asiat.
      Soc. It was translated into Persian by Barsuyah, the physician of
      Nushirvan, under the name of the Fables of Bidpai, (Vidyapriya,
      the Friend of Knowledge, or, as the Oriental writers understand
      it, the Friend of Medicine.) It was translated into Arabic by
      Abdolla Ibn Mokaffa, under the name of Kalila and Dimnah. From
      the Arabic it passed into the European languages. Compare Wilson,
      in Trans. As. Soc. i. 52. dohlen, das alte Indien, ii. p. 386.
      Silvestre de Sacy, Memoire sur Kalila vs Dimnah.—M.]

      56 (return) [ See the Historia Shahiludii of Dr. Hyde, (Syntagm.
      Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 61—69.)]




Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part III.


      The son of Kobad found his kingdom involved in a war with the
      successor of Constantine; and the anxiety of his domestic
      situation inclined him to grant the suspension of arms, which
      Justinian was impatient to purchase. Chosroes saw the Roman
      ambassadors at his feet. He accepted eleven thousand pounds of
      gold, as the price of an endless or indefinite peace: 57 some
      mutual exchanges were regulated; the Persian assumed the guard of
      the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara was suspended,
      on condition that it should never be made the residence of the
      general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited,
      and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his
      African conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty;
      and the avarice of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the
      spoils of Carthage, which his ambassadors required in a tone of
      pleasantry and under the color of friendship. 58 But the trophies
      of Belisarius disturbed the slumbers of the great king; and he
      heard with astonishment, envy, and fear, that Sicily, Italy, and
      Rome itself, had been reduced, in three rapid campaigns, to the
      obedience of Justinian. Unpractised in the art of violating
      treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal
      Almondar. That prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, 59
      had not been included in the general peace, and still waged an
      obscure war against his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of
      Gassan, and confederate of the empire. The subject of their
      dispute was an extensive sheep-walk in the desert to the south of
      Palmyra. An immemorial tribute for the license of pasture
      appeared to attest the rights of Almondar, while the Gassanite
      appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road, as an
      unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labors of the
      Romans. 60 The two monarchs supported the cause of their
      respective vassals; and the Persian Arab, without expecting the
      event of a slow and doubtful arbitration, enriched his flying
      camp with the spoil and captives of Syria. Instead of repelling
      the arms, Justinian attempted to seduce the fidelity of Almondar,
      while he called from the extremities of the earth the nations of
      Aethiopia and Scythia to invade the dominions of his rival. But
      the aid of such allies was distant and precarious, and the
      discovery of this hostile correspondence justified the complaints
      of the Goths and Armenians, who implored, almost at the same
      time, the protection of Chosroes. The descendants of Arsaces, who
      were still numerous in Armenia, had been provoked to assert the
      last relics of national freedom and hereditary rank; and the
      ambassadors of Vitiges had secretly traversed the empire to
      expose the instant, and almost inevitable, danger of the kingdom
      of Italy. Their representations were uniform, weighty, and
      effectual. “We stand before your throne, the advocates of your
      interest as well as of our own. The ambitious and faithless
      Justinian aspires to be the sole master of the world. Since the
      endless peace, which betrayed the common freedom of mankind, that
      prince, your ally in words, your enemy in actions, has alike
      insulted his friends and foes, and has filled the earth with
      blood and confusion. Has he not violated the privileges of
      Armenia, the independence of Colchos, and the wild liberty of the
      Tzanian mountains? Has he not usurped, with equal avidity, the
      city of Bosphorus on the frozen Maeotis, and the vale of
      palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea? The Moors, the Vandals,
      the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and each nation has
      calmly remained the spectator of their neighbor’s ruin. Embrace,
      O king! the favorable moment; the East is left without defence,
      while the armies of Justinian and his renowned general are
      detained in the distant regions of the West. If you hesitate or
      delay, Belisarius and his victorious troops will soon return from
      the Tyber to the Tigris, and Persia may enjoy the wretched
      consolation of being the last devoured.” 61 By such arguments,
      Chosroes was easily persuaded to imitate the example which he
      condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of military fame, disdained
      the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued his sanguinary
      commands from the secure station of the Byzantine palace.

      57 (return) [ The endless peace (Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 21)
      was concluded or ratified in the vith year, and iiid consulship,
      of Justinian, (A.D. 533, between January 1 and April 1. Pagi,
      tom. ii. p. 550.) Marcellinus, in his Chronicle, uses the style
      of Medes and Persians.]

      58 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 26.]

      59 (return) [ Almondar, king of Hira, was deposed by Kobad, and
      restored by Nushirvan. His mother, from her beauty, was surnamed
      Celestial Water, an appellation which became hereditary, and was
      extended for a more noble cause (liberality in famine) to the
      Arab princes of Syria, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 69, 70.)]

      60 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. ii. c. 1. We are ignorant of
      the origin and object of this strata, a paved road of ten days’
      journey from Auranitis to Babylonia. (See a Latin note in
      Delisle’s Map Imp. Orient.) Wesseling and D’Anville are silent.]

      61 (return) [ I have blended, in a short speech, the two orations
      of the Arsacides of Armenia and the Gothic ambassadors.
      Procopius, in his public history, feels, and makes us feel, that
      Justinian was the true author of the war, (Persic. l. ii. c. 2,
      3.)]


      Whatever might be the provocations of Chosroes, he abused the
      confidence of treaties; and the just reproaches of dissimulation
      and falsehood could only be concealed by the lustre of his
      victories. 62 The Persian army, which had been assembled in the
      plains of Babylon, prudently declined the strong cities of
      Mesopotamia, and followed the western bank of the Euphrates, till
      the small, though populous, town of Dura 6211 presumed to arrest
      the progress of the great king. The gates of Dura, by treachery
      and surprise, were burst open; and as soon as Chosroes had
      stained his cimeter with the blood of the inhabitants, he
      dismissed the ambassador of Justinian to inform his master in
      what place he had left the enemy of the Romans. The conqueror
      still affected the praise of humanity and justice; and as he
      beheld a noble matron with her infant rudely dragged along the
      ground, he sighed, he wept, and implored the divine justice to
      punish the author of these calamities. Yet the herd of twelve
      thousand captives was ransomed for two hundred pounds of gold;
      the neighboring bishop of Sergiopolis pledged his faith for the
      payment: and in the subsequent year the unfeeling avarice of
      Chosroes exacted the penalty of an obligation which it was
      generous to contract and impossible to discharge. He advanced
      into the heart of Syria: but a feeble enemy, who vanished at his
      approach, disappointed him of the honor of victory; and as he
      could not hope to establish his dominion, the Persian king
      displayed in this inroad the mean and rapacious vices of a
      robber. Hierapolis, Berrhaea or Aleppo, Apamea and Chalcis, were
      successively besieged: they redeemed their safety by a ransom of
      gold or silver, proportioned to their respective strength and
      opulence; and their new master enforced, without observing, the
      terms of capitulation. Educated in the religion of the Magi, he
      exercised, without remorse, the lucrative trade of sacrilege;
      and, after stripping of its gold and gems a piece of the true
      cross, he generously restored the naked relic to the devotion of
      the Christians of Apamea. No more than fourteen years had elapsed
      since Antioch was ruined by an earthquake; 6212 but the queen of
      the East, the new Theopolis, had been raised from the ground by
      the liberality of Justinian; and the increasing greatness of the
      buildings and the people already erased the memory of this recent
      disaster. On one side, the city was defended by the mountain, on
      the other by the River Orontes; but the most accessible part was
      commanded by a superior eminence: the proper remedies were
      rejected, from the despicable fear of discovering its weakness to
      the enemy; and Germanus, the emperor’s nephew, refused to trust
      his person and dignity within the walls of a besieged city. The
      people of Antioch had inherited the vain and satirical genius of
      their ancestors: they were elated by a sudden reenforcement of
      six thousand soldiers; they disdained the offers of an easy
      capitulation and their intemperate clamors insulted from the
      ramparts the majesty of the great king. Under his eye the Persian
      myriads mounted with scaling-ladders to the assault; the Roman
      mercenaries fled through the opposite gate of Daphne; and the
      generous assistance of the youth of Antioch served only to
      aggravate the miseries of their country. As Chosroes, attended by
      the ambassadors of Justinian, was descending from the mountain,
      he affected, in a plaintive voice, to deplore the obstinacy and
      ruin of that unhappy people; but the slaughter still raged with
      unrelenting fury; and the city, at the command of a Barbarian,
      was delivered to the flames. The cathedral of Antioch was indeed
      preserved by the avarice, not the piety, of the conqueror: a more
      honorable exemption was granted to the church of St. Julian, and
      the quarter of the town where the ambassadors resided; some
      distant streets were saved by the shifting of the wind, and the
      walls still subsisted to protect, and soon to betray, their new
      inhabitants. Fanaticism had defaced the ornaments of Daphne, but
      Chosroes breathed a purer air amidst her groves and fountains;
      and some idolaters in his train might sacrifice with impunity to
      the nymphs of that elegant retreat. Eighteen miles below Antioch,
      the River Orontes falls into the Mediterranean. The haughty
      Persian visited the term of his conquests; and, after bathing
      alone in the sea, he offered a solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving
      to the sun, or rather to the Creator of the sun, whom the Magi
      adored. If this act of superstition offended the prejudices of
      the Syrians, they were pleased by the courteous and even eager
      attention with which he assisted at the games of the circus; and
      as Chosroes had heard that the blue faction was espoused by the
      emperor, his peremptory command secured the victory of the green
      charioteer. From the discipline of his camp the people derived
      more solid consolation; and they interceded in vain for the life
      of a soldier who had too faithfully copied the rapine of the just
      Nushirvan. At length, fatigued, though unsatiated, with the spoil
      of Syria, 6213 he slowly moved to the Euphrates, formed a
      temporary bridge in the neighborhood of Barbalissus, and defined
      the space of three days for the entire passage of his numerous
      host. After his return, he founded, at the distance of one day’s
      journey from the palace of Ctesiphon, a new city, which
      perpetuated the joint names of Chosroes and of Antioch. The
      Syrian captives recognized the form and situation of their native
      abodes: baths and a stately circus were constructed for their
      use; and a colony of musicians and charioteers revived in Assyria
      the pleasures of a Greek capital. By the munificence of the royal
      founder, a liberal allowance was assigned to these fortunate
      exiles; and they enjoyed the singular privilege of bestowing
      freedom on the slaves whom they acknowledged as their kinsmen.
      Palestine, and the holy wealth of Jerusalem, were the next
      objects that attracted the ambition, or rather the avarice, of
      Chosroes. Constantinople, and the palace of the Caesars, no
      longer appeared impregnable or remote; and his aspiring fancy
      already covered Asia Minor with the troops, and the Black Sea
      with the navies, of Persia.

      62 (return) [ The invasion of Syria, the ruin of Antioch, &c.,
      are related in a full and regular series by Procopius, (Persic.
      l. ii. c. 5—14.) Small collateral aid can be drawn from the
      Orientals: yet not they, but D’Herbelot himself, (p. 680,) should
      blush when he blames them for making Justinian and Nushirvan
      contemporaries. On the geography of the seat of war, D’Anville
      (l’Euphrate et le Tigre) is sufficient and satisfactory.]

      6211 (return) [ It is Sura in Procopius. Is it a misprint in
      Gibbon?—M.]

      6212 (return) [ Joannes Lydus attributes the easy capture of
      Antioch to the want of fortifications which had not been restored
      since the earthquake, l. iii. c. 54. p. 246.—M.]

      6213 (return) [ Lydus asserts that he carried away all the
      statues, pictures, and marbles which adorned the city, l. iii. c.
      54, p. 246.—M.]


      These hopes might have been realized, if the conqueror of Italy
      had not been seasonably recalled to the defence of the East. 63
      While Chosroes pursued his ambitious designs on the coast of the
      Euxine, Belisarius, at the head of an army without pay or
      discipline, encamped beyond the Euphrates, within six miles of
      Nisibis. He meditated, by a skilful operation, to draw the
      Persians from their impregnable citadel, and improving his
      advantage in the field, either to intercept their retreat, or
      perhaps to enter the gates with the flying Barbarians. He
      advanced one day’s journey on the territories of Persia, reduced
      the fortress of Sisaurane, and sent the governor, with eight
      hundred chosen horsemen, to serve the emperor in his Italian
      wars. He detached Arethas and his Arabs, supported by twelve
      hundred Romans, to pass the Tigris, and to ravage the harvests of
      Assyria, a fruitful province, long exempt from the calamities of
      war. But the plans of Belisarius were disconcerted by the
      untractable spirit of Arethas, who neither returned to the camp,
      nor sent any intelligence of his motions. The Roman general was
      fixed in anxious expectation to the same spot; the time of action
      elapsed, the ardent sun of Mesopotamia inflamed with fevors the
      blood of his European soldiers; and the stationary troops and
      officers of Syria affected to tremble for the safety of their
      defenceless cities. Yet this diversion had already succeeded in
      forcing Chosroes to return with loss and precipitation; and if
      the skill of Belisarius had been seconded by discipline and
      valor, his success might have satisfied the sanguine wishes of
      the public, who required at his hands the conquest of Ctesiphon,
      and the deliverance of the captives of Antioch. At the end of the
      campaign, he was recalled to Constantinople by an ungrateful
      court, but the dangers of the ensuing spring restored his
      confidence and command; and the hero, almost alone, was
      despatched, with the speed of post-horses, to repel, by his name
      and presence, the invasion of Syria. He found the Roman generals,
      among whom was a nephew of Justinian, imprisoned by their fears
      in the fortifications of Hierapolis. But instead of listening to
      their timid counsels, Belisarius commanded them to follow him to
      Europus, where he had resolved to collect his forces, and to
      execute whatever God should inspire him to achieve against the
      enemy. His firm attitude on the banks of the Euphrates restrained
      Chosroes from advancing towards Palestine; and he received with
      art and dignity the ambassadors, or rather spies, of the Persian
      monarch. The plain between Hierapolis and the river was covered
      with the squadrons of cavalry, six thousand hunters, tall and
      robust, who pursued their game without the apprehension of an
      enemy. On the opposite bank the ambassadors descried a thousand
      Armenian horse, who appeared to guard the passage of the
      Euphrates. The tent of Belisarius was of the coarsest linen, the
      simple equipage of a warrior who disdained the luxury of the
      East. Around his tent, the nations who marched under his standard
      were arranged with skilful confusion. The Thracians and Illyrians
      were posted in the front, the Heruli and Goths in the centre; the
      prospect was closed by the Moors and Vandals, and their loose
      array seemed to multiply their numbers. Their dress was light and
      active; one soldier carried a whip, another a sword, a third a
      bow, a fourth, perhaps, a battle axe, and the whole picture
      exhibited the intrepidity of the troops and the vigilance of the
      general. Chosroes was deluded by the address, and awed by the
      genius, of the lieutenant of Justinian. Conscious of the merit,
      and ignorant of the force, of his antagonist, he dreaded a
      decisive battle in a distant country, from whence not a Persian
      might return to relate the melancholy tale. The great king
      hastened to repass the Euphrates; and Belisarius pressed his
      retreat, by affecting to oppose a measure so salutary to the
      empire, and which could scarcely have been prevented by an army
      of a hundred thousand men. Envy might suggest to ignorance and
      pride, that the public enemy had been suffered to escape: but the
      African and Gothic triumphs are less glorious than this safe and
      bloodless victory, in which neither fortune, nor the valor of the
      soldiers, can subtract any part of the general’s renown. The
      second removal of Belisarius from the Persian to the Italian war
      revealed the extent of his personal merit, which had corrected or
      supplied the want of discipline and courage. Fifteen generals,
      without concert or skill, led through the mountains of Armenia an
      army of thirty thousand Romans, inattentive to their signals,
      their ranks, and their ensigns. Four thousand Persians,
      intrenched in the camp of Dubis, vanquished, almost without a
      combat, this disorderly multitude; their useless arms were
      scattered along the road, and their horses sunk under the fatigue
      of their rapid flight. But the Arabs of the Roman party prevailed
      over their brethren; the Armenians returned to their allegiance;
      the cities of Dara and Edessa resisted a sudden assault and a
      regular siege, and the calamities of war were suspended by those
      of pestilence. A tacit or formal agreement between the two
      sovereigns protected the tranquillity of the Eastern frontier;
      and the arms of Chosroes were confined to the Colchian or Lazic
      war, which has been too minutely described by the historians of
      the times. 64

      63 (return) [ In the public history of Procopius, (Persic. l. ii.
      c. 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28;) and, with some slight
      exceptions, we may reasonably shut our ears against the
      malevolent whisper of the Anecdotes, (c. 2, 3, with the Notes, as
      usual, of Alemannus.)]

      64 (return) [ The Lazic war, the contest of Rome and Persia on
      the Phasis, is tediously spun through many a page of Procopius
      (Persic. l. ii. c. 15, 17, 28, 29, 30.) Gothic. (l. iv. c. 7—16)
      and Agathias, (l. ii. iii. and iv. p. 55—132, 141.)]


      The extreme length of the Euxine Sea 65 from Constantinople to
      the mouth of the Phasis, may be computed as a voyage of nine
      days, and a measure of seven hundred miles. From the Iberian
      Caucasus, the most lofty and craggy mountains of Asia, that river
      descends with such oblique vehemence, that in a short space it is
      traversed by one hundred and twenty bridges. Nor does the stream
      become placid and navigable, till it reaches the town of
      Sarapana, five days’ journey from the Cyrus, which flows from the
      same hills, but in a contrary direction to the Caspian Lake. The
      proximity of these rivers has suggested the practice, or at least
      the idea, of wafting the precious merchandise of India down the
      Oxus, over the Caspian, up the Cyrus, and with the current of the
      Phasis into the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas. As it successively
      collects the streams of the plain of Colchos, the Phasis moves
      with diminished speed, though accumulated weight. At the mouth it
      is sixty fathom deep, and half a league broad, but a small woody
      island is interposed in the midst of the channel; the water, so
      soon as it has deposited an earthy or metallic sediment, floats
      on the surface of the waves, and is no longer susceptible of
      corruption. In a course of one hundred miles, forty of which are
      navigable for large vessels, the Phasis divides the celebrated
      region of Colchos, 66 or Mingrelia, 67 which, on three sides, is
      fortified by the Iberian and Armenian mountains, and whose
      maritime coast extends about two hundred miles from the
      neighborhood of Trebizond to Dioscurias and the confines of
      Circassia. Both the soil and climate are relaxed by excessive
      moisture: twenty-eight rivers, besides the Phasis and his
      dependent streams, convey their waters to the sea; and the
      hollowness of the ground appears to indicate the subterraneous
      channels between the Euxine and the Caspian. In the fields where
      wheat or barley is sown, the earth is too soft to sustain the
      action of the plough; but the gom, a small grain, not unlike the
      millet or coriander seed, supplies the ordinary food of the
      people; and the use of bread is confined to the prince and his
      nobles. Yet the vintage is more plentiful than the harvest; and
      the bulk of the stems, as well as the quality of the wine,
      display the unassisted powers of nature. The same powers
      continually tend to overshadow the face of the country with thick
      forests; the timber of the hills, and the flax of the plains,
      contribute to the abundance of naval stores; the wild and tame
      animals, the horse, the ox, and the hog, are remarkably prolific,
      and the name of the pheasant is expressive of his native
      habitation on the banks of the Phasis. The gold mines to the
      south of Trebizond, which are still worked with sufficient
      profit, were a subject of national dispute between Justinian and
      Chosroes; and it is not unreasonable to believe, that a vein of
      precious metal may be equally diffused through the circle of the
      hills, although these secret treasures are neglected by the
      laziness, or concealed by the prudence, of the Mingrelians. The
      waters, impregnated with particles of gold, are carefully
      strained through sheep-skins or fleeces; but this expedient, the
      groundwork perhaps of a marvellous fable, affords a faint image
      of the wealth extracted from a virgin earth by the power and
      industry of ancient kings. Their silver palaces and golden
      chambers surpass our belief; but the fame of their riches is said
      to have excited the enterprising avarice of the Argonauts. 68
      Tradition has affirmed, with some color of reason, that Egypt
      planted on the Phasis a learned and polite colony, 69 which
      manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical maps.
      The ingenuity of the moderns has peopled, with flourishing cities
      and nations, the isthmus between the Euxine and the Caspian; 70
      and a lively writer, observing the resemblance of climate, and,
      in his apprehension, of trade, has not hesitated to pronounce
      Colchos the Holland of antiquity. 71

      65 (return) [ The Periplus, or circumnavigation of the Euxine
      Sea, was described in Latin by Sallust, and in Greek by Arrian:
      I. The former work, which no longer exists, has been restored by
      the singular diligence of M. de Brosses, first president of the
      parliament of Dijon, (Hist. de la Republique Romaine, tom. ii. l.
      iii. p. 199—298,) who ventures to assume the character of the
      Roman historian. His description of the Euxine is ingeniously
      formed of all the fragments of the original, and of all the
      Greeks and Latins whom Sallust might copy, or by whom he might be
      copied; and the merit of the execution atones for the whimsical
      design. 2. The Periplus of Arrian is addressed to the emperor
      Hadrian, (in Geograph. Minor. Hudson, tom. i.,) and contains
      whatever the governor of Pontus had seen from Trebizond to
      Dioscurias; whatever he had heard from Dioscurias to the Danube;
      and whatever he knew from the Danube to Trebizond.]

      66 (return) [ Besides the many occasional hints from the poets,
      historians &c., of antiquity, we may consult the geographical
      descriptions of Colchos, by Strabo (l. xi. p. 760—765) and Pliny,
      (Hist. Natur. vi. 5, 19, &c.)]

      67 (return) [ I shall quote, and have used, three modern
      descriptions of Mingrelia and the adjacent countries. 1. Of the
      Pere Archangeli Lamberti, (Relations de Thevenot, part i. p.
      31-52, with a map,) who has all the knowledge and prejudices of a
      missionary. 2. Of Chardia, (Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p. 54,
      68-168.) His observations are judicious and his own adventures in
      the country are still more instructive than his observations. 3.
      Of Peyssonel, (Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, p. 49, 50,
      51, 58 62, 64, 65, 71, &c., and a more recent treatise, Sur le
      Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 1—53.) He had long resided
      at Caffa, as consul of France; and his erudition is less valuable
      than his experience.]

      68 (return) [ Pliny, Hist. Natur. l. xxxiii. 15. The gold and
      silver mines of Colchos attracted the Argonauts, (Strab. l. i. p.
      77.) The sagacious Chardin could find no gold in mines, rivers,
      or elsewhere. Yet a Mingrelian lost his hand and foot for showing
      some specimens at Constantinople of native gold]

      69 (return) [ Herodot. l. ii. c. 104, 105, p. 150, 151. Diodor.
      Sicul. l. i. p. 33, edit. Wesseling. Dionys. Perieget. 689, and
      Eustath. ad loc. Schohast ad Apollonium Argonaut. l. iv.
      282-291.]

      70 (return) [ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxi. c. 6.
      L’Isthme... couvero de villes et nations qui ne sont plus.]

      71 (return) [ Bougainville, Memoires de l’Academie des
      Inscriptions, tom. xxvi. p. 33, on the African voyage of Hanno
      and the commerce of antiquity.]


      But the riches of Colchos shine only through the darkness of
      conjecture or tradition; and its genuine history presents a
      uniform scene of rudeness and poverty. If one hundred and thirty
      languages were spoken in the market of Dioscurias, 72 they were
      the imperfect idioms of so many savage tribes or families,
      sequestered from each other in the valleys of Mount Caucasus; and
      their separation, which diminished the importance, must have
      multiplied the number, of their rustic capitals. In the present
      state of Mingrelia, a village is an assemblage of huts within a
      wooden fence; the fortresses are seated in the depths of forests;
      the princely town of Cyta, or Cotatis, consists of two hundred
      houses, and a stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence
      of kings. Twelve ships from Constantinople, and about sixty
      barks, laden with the fruits of industry, annually cast anchor on
      the coast; and the list of Colchian exports is much increased,
      since the natives had only slaves and hides to offer in exchange
      for the corn and salt which they purchased from the subjects of
      Justinian. Not a vestige can be found of the art, the knowledge,
      or the navigation, of the ancient Colchians: few Greeks desired
      or dared to pursue the footsteps of the Argonauts; and even the
      marks of an Egyptian colony are lost on a nearer approach. The
      rite of circumcision is practised only by the Mahometans of the
      Euxine; and the curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa no
      longer disfigure the most perfect of the human race. It is in the
      adjacent climates of Georgia, Mingrelia, and Circassia, that
      nature has placed, at least to our eyes, the model of beauty in
      the shape of the limbs, the color of the skin, the symmetry of
      the features, and the expression of the countenance. 73 According
      to the destination of the two sexes, the men seemed formed for
      action, the women for love; and the perpetual supply of females
      from Mount Caucasus has purified the blood, and improved the
      breed, of the southern nations of Asia. The proper district of
      Mingrelia, a portion only of the ancient Colchos, has long
      sustained an exportation of twelve thousand slaves. The number of
      prisoners or criminals would be inadequate to the annual demand;
      but the common people are in a state of servitude to their lords;
      the exercise of fraud or rapine is unpunished in a lawless
      community; and the market is continually replenished by the abuse
      of civil and paternal authority. Such a trade, 74 which reduces
      the human species to the level of cattle, may tend to encourage
      marriage and population, since the multitude of children enriches
      their sordid and inhuman parent. But this source of impure wealth
      must inevitably poison the national manners, obliterate the sense
      of honor and virtue, and almost extinguish the instincts of
      nature: the Christians of Georgia and Mingrelia are the most
      dissolute of mankind; and their children, who, in a tender age,
      are sold into foreign slavery, have already learned to imitate
      the rapine of the father and the prostitution of the mother. Yet,
      amidst the rudest ignorance, the untaught natives discover a
      singular dexterity both of mind and hand; and although the want
      of union and discipline exposes them to their more powerful
      neighbors, a bold and intrepid spirit has animated the Colchians
      of every age. In the host of Xerxes, they served on foot; and
      their arms were a dagger or a javelin, a wooden casque, and a
      buckler of raw hides. But in their own country the use of cavalry
      has more generally prevailed: the meanest of the peasants
      disdained to walk; the martial nobles are possessed, perhaps, of
      two hundred horses; and above five thousand are numbered in the
      train of the prince of Mingrelia. The Colchian government has
      been always a pure and hereditary kingdom; and the authority of
      the sovereign is only restrained by the turbulence of his
      subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead a numerous
      army into the field; but some faith is requisite to believe, that
      the single tribe of the Suanians as composed of two hundred
      thousand soldiers, or that the population of Mingrelia now
      amounts to four millions of inhabitants. 75

      72 (return) [ A Greek historian, Timosthenes, had affirmed, in
      eam ccc. nationes dissimilibus linguis descendere; and the modest
      Pliny is content to add, et postea a nostris cxxx. interpretibus
      negotia ibi gesta, (vi. 5) But the words nunc deserta cover a
      multitude of past fictions.]

      73 (return) [ Buffon (Hist. Nat. tom. iii. p. 433—437) collects
      the unanimous suffrage of naturalists and travellers. If, in the
      time of Herodotus, they were, (and he had observed them with
      care,) this precious fact is an example of the influence of
      climate on a foreign colony.]

      74 (return) [ The Mingrelian ambassador arrived at Constantinople
      with two hundred persons; but he ate (sold) them day by day, till
      his retinue was diminished to a secretary and two valets,
      (Tavernier, tom. i. p. 365.) To purchase his mistress, a
      Mingrelian gentleman sold twelve priests and his wife to the
      Turks, (Chardin, tom. i. p. 66.)]

      75 (return) [ Strabo, l. xi. p. 765. Lamberti, Relation de la
      Mingrelie. Yet we must avoid the contrary extreme of Chardin, who
      allows no more than 20,000 inhabitants to supply an annual
      exportation of 12,000 slaves; an absurdity unworthy of that
      judicious traveller.]




Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part IV.


      It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had
      checked the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the
      Egyptian is less incredible than his successful progress as far
      as the foot of Mount Caucasus. They sunk without any memorable
      effort, under the arms of Cyrus; followed in distant wars the
      standard of the great king, and presented him every fifth year
      with one hundred boys, and as many virgins, the fairest produce
      of the land. 76 Yet he accepted this gift like the gold and ebony
      of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the negroes and ivory
      of Aethiopia: the Colchians were not subject to the dominion of a
      satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as substance
      of national independence. 77 After the fall of the Persian
      empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchos to the wide
      circle of his dominions on the Euxine; and when the natives
      presumed to request that his son might reign over them, he bound
      the ambitious youth in chains of gold, and delegated a servant in
      his place. In pursuit of Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the
      banks of the Phasis, and their galleys ascended the river till
      they reached the camp of Pompey and his legions. 78 But the
      senate, and afterwards the emperors, disdained to reduce that
      distant and useless conquest into the form of a province. The
      family of a Greek rhetorician was permitted to reign in Colchos
      and the adjacent kingdoms from the time of Mark Antony to that of
      Nero; and after the race of Polemo 79 was extinct, the eastern
      Pontus, which preserved his name, extended no farther than the
      neighborhood of Trebizond. Beyond these limits the fortifications
      of Hyssus, of Apsarus, of the Phasis, of Dioscurias or
      Sebastopolis, and of Pityus, were guarded by sufficient
      detachments of horse and foot; and six princes of Colchos
      received their diadems from the lieutenants of Caesar. One of
      these lieutenants, the eloquent and philosophic Arrian, surveyed,
      and has described, the Euxine coast, under the reign of Hadrian.
      The garrison which he reviewed at the mouth of the Phasis
      consisted of four hundred chosen legionaries; the brick walls and
      towers, the double ditch, and the military engines on the
      rampart, rendered this place inaccessible to the Barbarians: but
      the new suburbs which had been built by the merchants and
      veterans, required, in the opinion of Arrian, some external
      defence. 80 As the strength of the empire was gradually impaired,
      the Romans stationed on the Phasis were neither withdrawn nor
      expelled; and the tribe of the Lazi, 81 whose posterity speak a
      foreign dialect, and inhabit the sea coast of Trebizond, imposed
      their name and dominion on the ancient kingdom of Colchos. Their
      independence was soon invaded by a formidable neighbor, who had
      acquired, by arms and treaties, the sovereignty of Iberia. The
      dependent king of Lazica received his sceptre at the hands of the
      Persian monarch, and the successors of Constantine acquiesced in
      this injurious claim, which was proudly urged as a right of
      immemorial prescription. In the beginning of the sixth century,
      their influence was restored by the introduction of Christianity,
      which the Mingrelians still profess with becoming zeal, without
      understanding the doctrines, or observing the precepts, of their
      religion. After the decease of his father, Zathus was exalted to
      the regal dignity by the favor of the great king; but the pious
      youth abhorred the ceremonies of the Magi, and sought, in the
      palace of Constantinople, an orthodox baptism, a noble wife, and
      the alliance of the emperor Justin. The king of Lazica was
      solemnly invested with the diadem, and his cloak and tunic of
      white silk, with a gold border, displayed, in rich embroidery,
      the figure of his new patron; who soothed the jealousy of the
      Persian court, and excused the revolt of Colchos, by the
      venerable names of hospitality and religion. The common interest
      of both empires imposed on the Colchians the duty of guarding the
      passes of Mount Caucasus, where a wall of sixty miles is now
      defended by the monthly service of the musketeers of Mingrelia.
      82

      76 (return) [ Herodot. l. iii. c. 97. See, in l. vii. c. 79,
      their arms and service in the expedition of Xerxes against
      Greece.]

      77 (return) [ Xenophon, who had encountered the Colchians in his
      retreat, (Anabasis, l. iv. p. 320, 343, 348, edit. Hutchinson;
      and Foster’s Dissertation, p. liii.—lviii., in Spelman’s English
      version, vol. ii.,) styled them. Before the conquest of
      Mithridates, they are named by Appian, (de Bell. Mithridatico, c.
      15, tom. i. p. 661, of the last and best edition, by John
      Schweighaeuser. Lipsae, 1785 8 vols. largo octavo.)]

      78 (return) [ The conquest of Colchos by Mithridates and Pompey
      is marked by Appian (de Bell. Mithridat.) and Plutarch, (in Vit.
      Pomp.)]

      79 (return) [ We may trace the rise and fall of the family of
      Polemo, in Strabo, (l. xi. p. 755, l. xii. p. 867,) Dion Cassius,
      or Xiphilin, (p. 588, 593, 601, 719, 754, 915, 946, edit.
      Reimar,) Suetonius, (in Neron. c. 18, in Vespasian, c. 8,)
      Eutropius, (vii. 14,) Josephus, (Antiq. Judaic. l. xx. c. 7, p.
      970, edit. Havercamp,) and Eusebius, (Chron. with Scaliger,
      Animadvers. p. 196.)]

      80 (return) [ In the time of Procopius, there were no Roman forts
      on the Phasis. Pityus and Sebastopolis were evacuated on the
      rumor of the Persians, (Goth. l. iv. c. 4;) but the latter was
      afterwards restored by Justinian, (de Edif. l. iv. c. 7.)]

      81 (return) [ In the time of Pliny, Arrian, and Ptolemy, the Lazi
      were a particular tribe on the northern skirts of Colchos,
      (Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 222.) In the age of
      Justinian, they spread, or at least reigned, over the whole
      country. At present, they have migrated along the coast towards
      Trebizond, and compose a rude sea-faring people, with a peculiar
      language, (Chardin, p. 149. Peyssonel p. 64.)]

      82 (return) [ John Malala, Chron. tom. ii. p. 134—137 Theophanes,
      p. 144. Hist. Miscell. l. xv. p. 103. The fact is authentic, but
      the date seems too recent. In speaking of their Persian alliance,
      the Lazi contemporaries of Justinian employ the most obsolete
      words, &c. Could they belong to a connection which had not been
      dissolved above twenty years?]


      But this honorable connection was soon corrupted by the avarice
      and ambition of the Romans. Degraded from the rank of allies, the
      Lazi were incessantly reminded, by words and actions, of their
      dependent state. At the distance of a day’s journey beyond the
      Apsarus, they beheld the rising fortress of Petra, 83 which
      commanded the maritime country to the south of the Phasis.
      Instead of being protected by the valor, Colchos was insulted by
      the licentiousness, of foreign mercenaries; the benefits of
      commerce were converted into base and vexatious monopoly; and
      Gubazes, the native prince, was reduced to a pageant of royalty,
      by the superior influence of the officers of Justinian.
      Disappointed in their expectations of Christian virtue, the
      indignant Lazi reposed some confidence in the justice of an
      unbeliever. After a private assurance that their ambassadors
      should not be delivered to the Romans, they publicly solicited
      the friendship and aid of Chosroes. The sagacious monarch
      instantly discerned the use and importance of Colchos; and
      meditated a plan of conquest, which was renewed at the end of a
      thousand years by Shah Abbas, the wisest and most powerful of his
      successors. 84 His ambition was fired by the hope of launching a
      Persian navy from the Phasis, of commanding the trade and
      navigation of the Euxine Sea, of desolating the coast of Pontus
      and Bithynia, of distressing, perhaps of attacking,
      Constantinople, and of persuading the Barbarians of Europe to
      second his arms and counsels against the common enemy of mankind.


      Under the pretence of a Scythian war, he silently led his troops
      to the frontiers of Iberia; the Colchian guides were prepared to
      conduct them through the woods and along the precipices of Mount
      Caucasus; and a narrow path was laboriously formed into a safe
      and spacious highway, for the march of cavalry, and even of
      elephants. Gubazes laid his person and diadem at the feet of the
      king of Persia; his Colchians imitated the submission of their
      prince; and after the walls of Petra had been shaken, the Roman
      garrison prevented, by a capitulation, the impending fury of the
      last assault. But the Lazi soon discovered, that their impatience
      had urged them to choose an evil more intolerable than the
      calamities which they strove to escape. The monopoly of salt and
      corn was effectually removed by the loss of those valuable
      commodities. The authority of a Roman legislator, was succeeded
      by the pride of an Oriental despot, who beheld, with equal
      disdain, the slaves whom he had exalted, and the kings whom he
      had humbled before the footstool of his throne. The adoration of
      fire was introduced into Colchos by the zeal of the Magi: their
      intolerant spirit provoked the fervor of a Christian people; and
      the prejudice of nature or education was wounded by the impious
      practice of exposing the dead bodies of their parents, on the
      summit of a lofty tower, to the crows and vultures of the air. 85
      Conscious of the increasing hatred, which retarded the execution
      of his great designs, the just Nashirvan had secretly given
      orders to assassinate the king of the Lazi, to transplant the
      people into some distant land, and to fix a faithful and warlike
      colony on the banks of the Phasis. The watchful jealousy of the
      Colchians foresaw and averted the approaching ruin. Their
      repentance was accepted at Constantinople by the prudence, rather
      than clemency, of Justinian; and he commanded Dagisteus, with
      seven thousand Romans, and one thousand of the Zani, 8511 to
      expel the Persians from the coast of the Euxine.

      83 (return) [ The sole vestige of Petra subsists in the writings
      of Procopius and Agathias. Most of the towns and castles of
      Lazica may be found by comparing their names and position with
      the map of Mingrelia, in Lamberti.]

      84 (return) [ See the amusing letters of Pietro della Valle, the
      Roman traveler, (Viaggi, tom. ii. 207, 209, 213, 215, 266, 286,
      300, tom. iii. p. 54, 127.) In the years 1618, 1619, and 1620, he
      conversed with Shah Abbas, and strongly encouraged a design which
      might have united Persia and Europe against their common enemy
      the Turk.]

      85 (return) [ See Herodotus, (l. i. c. 140, p. 69,) who speaks
      with diffidence, Larcher, (tom. i. p. 399—401, Notes sur
      Herodote,) Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 11,) and Agathias, (l.
      ii. p. 61, 62.) This practice, agreeable to the Zendavesta,
      (Hyde, de Relig. Pers. c. 34, p. 414—421,) demonstrates that the
      burial of the Persian kings, (Xenophon, Cyropaed. l. viii. p.
      658,) is a Greek fiction, and that their tombs could be no more
      than cenotaphs.]

      8511 (return) [ These seem the same people called Suanians, p.
      328.—M.]


      The siege of Petra, which the Roman general, with the aid of the
      Lazi, immediately undertook, is one of the most remarkable
      actions of the age. The city was seated on a craggy rock, which
      hung over the sea, and communicated by a steep and narrow path
      with the land. Since the approach was difficult, the attack might
      be deemed impossible: the Persian conqueror had strengthened the
      fortifications of Justinian; and the places least inaccessible
      were covered by additional bulwarks. In this important fortress,
      the vigilance of Chosroes had deposited a magazine of offensive
      and defensive arms, sufficient for five times the number, not
      only of the garrison, but of the besiegers themselves. The stock
      of flour and salt provisions was adequate to the consumption of
      five years; the want of wine was supplied by vinegar; and of
      grain from whence a strong liquor was extracted, and a triple
      aqueduct eluded the diligence, and even the suspicions, of the
      enemy. But the firmest defence of Petra was placed in the valor
      of fifteen hundred Persians, who resisted the assaults of the
      Romans, whilst, in a softer vein of earth, a mine was secretly
      perforated. The wall, supported by slender and temporary props,
      hung tottering in the air; but Dagisteus delayed the attack till
      he had secured a specific recompense; and the town was relieved
      before the return of his messenger from Constantinople. The
      Persian garrison was reduced to four hundred men, of whom no more
      than fifty were exempt from sickness or wounds; yet such had been
      their inflexible perseverance, that they concealed their losses
      from the enemy, by enduring, without a murmur, the sight and
      putrefying stench of the dead bodies of their eleven hundred
      companions. After their deliverance, the breaches were hastily
      stopped with sand-bags; the mine was replenished with earth; a
      new wall was erected on a frame of substantial timber; and a
      fresh garrison of three thousand men was stationed at Petra to
      sustain the labors of a second siege. The operations, both of the
      attack and defence, were conducted with skilful obstinacy; and
      each party derived useful lessons from the experience of their
      past faults. A battering-ram was invented, of light construction
      and powerful effect: it was transported and worked by the hands
      of forty soldiers; and as the stones were loosened by its
      repeated strokes, they were torn with long iron hooks from the
      wall. From those walls, a shower of darts was incessantly poured
      on the heads of the assailants; but they were most dangerously
      annoyed by a fiery composition of sulphur and bitumen, which in
      Colchos might with some propriety be named the oil of Medea. Of
      six thousand Romans who mounted the scaling-ladders, their
      general Bessas was the first, a gallant veteran of seventy years
      of age: the courage of their leader, his fall, and extreme
      danger, animated the irresistible effort of his troops; and their
      prevailing numbers oppressed the strength, without subduing the
      spirit, of the Persian garrison. The fate of these valiant men
      deserves to be more distinctly noticed. Seven hundred had
      perished in the siege, two thousand three hundred survived to
      defend the breach. One thousand and seventy were destroyed with
      fire and sword in the last assault; and if seven hundred and
      thirty were made prisoners, only eighteen among them were found
      without the marks of honorable wounds. The remaining five hundred
      escaped into the citadel, which they maintained without any hopes
      of relief, rejecting the fairest terms of capitulation and
      service, till they were lost in the flames. They died in
      obedience to the commands of their prince; and such examples of
      loyalty and valor might excite their countrymen to deeds of equal
      despair and more prosperous event. The instant demolition of the
      works of Petra confessed the astonishment and apprehension of the
      conqueror. A Spartan would have praised and pitied the virtue of
      these heroic slaves; but the tedious warfare and alternate
      success of the Roman and Persian arms cannot detain the attention
      of posterity at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The advantages
      obtained by the troops of Justinian were more frequent and
      splendid; but the forces of the great king were continually
      supplied, till they amounted to eight elephants and seventy
      thousand men, including twelve thousand Scythian allies, and
      above three thousand Dilemites, who descended by their free
      choice from the hills of Hyrcania, and were equally formidable in
      close or in distant combat. The siege of Archaeopolis, a name
      imposed or corrupted by the Greeks, was raised with some loss and
      precipitation; but the Persians occupied the passes of Iberia:
      Colchos was enslaved by their forts and garrisons; they devoured
      the scanty sustenance of the people; and the prince of the Lazi
      fled into the mountains. In the Roman camp, faith and discipline
      were unknown; and the independent leaders, who were invested with
      equal power, disputed with each other the preeminence of vice and
      corruption. The Persians followed, without a murmur, the commands
      of a single chief, who implicitly obeyed the instructions of
      their supreme lord. Their general was distinguished among the
      heroes of the East by his wisdom in council, and his valor in the
      field. The advanced age of Mermeroes, and the lameness of both
      his feet, could not diminish the activity of his mind, or even of
      his body; and, whilst he was carried in a litter in the front of
      battle, he inspired terror to the enemy, and a just confidence to
      the troops, who, under his banners, were always successful. After
      his death, the command devolved to Nacoragan, a proud satrap,
      who, in a conference with the Imperial chiefs, had presumed to
      declare that he disposed of victory as absolutely as of the ring
      on his finger. Such presumption was the natural cause and
      forerunner of a shameful defeat. The Romans had been gradually
      repulsed to the edge of the sea-shore; and their last camp, on
      the ruins of the Grecian colony of Phasis, was defended on all
      sides by strong intrenchments, the river, the Euxine, and a fleet
      of galleys. Despair united their counsels and invigorated their
      arms: they withstood the assault of the Persians and the flight
      of Nacoragan preceded or followed the slaughter of ten thousand
      of his bravest soldiers. He escaped from the Romans to fall into
      the hands of an unforgiving master who severely chastised the
      error of his own choice: the unfortunate general was flayed
      alive, and his skin, stuffed into the human form, was exposed on
      a mountain; a dreadful warning to those who might hereafter be
      intrusted with the fame and fortune of Persia. 86 Yet the
      prudence of Chosroes insensibly relinquished the prosecution of
      the Colchian war, in the just persuasion, that it is impossible
      to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the
      wishes and efforts of its inhabitants. The fidelity of Gubazes
      sustained the most rigorous trials. He patiently endured the
      hardships of a savage life, and rejected with disdain, the
      specious temptations of the Persian court. 8611 The king of the
      Lazi had been educated in the Christian religion; his mother was
      the daughter of a senator; during his youth he had served ten
      years a silentiary of the Byzantine palace, 87 and the arrears of
      an unpaid salary were a motive of attachment as well as of
      complaint. But the long continuance of his sufferings extorted
      from him a naked representation of the truth; and truth was an
      unpardonable libel on the lieutenants of Justinian, who, amidst
      the delays of a ruinous war, had spared his enemies and trampled
      on his allies. Their malicious information persuaded the emperor
      that his faithless vassal already meditated a second defection:
      an order was surprised to send him prisoner to Constantinople; a
      treacherous clause was inserted, that he might be lawfully killed
      in case of resistance; and Gubazes, without arms, or suspicion of
      danger, was stabbed in the security of a friendly interview. In
      the first moments of rage and despair, the Colchians would have
      sacrificed their country and religion to the gratification of
      revenge. But the authority and eloquence of the wiser few
      obtained a salutary pause: the victory of the Phasis restored the
      terror of the Roman arms, and the emperor was solicitous to
      absolve his own name from the imputation of so foul a murder. A
      judge of senatorial rank was commissioned to inquire into the
      conduct and death of the king of the Lazi. He ascended a stately
      tribunal, encompassed by the ministers of justice and punishment:
      in the presence of both nations, this extraordinary cause was
      pleaded, according to the forms of civil jurisprudence, and some
      satisfaction was granted to an injured people, by the sentence
      and execution of the meaner criminals. 88

      86 (return) [ The punishment of flaying alive could not be
      introduced into Persia by Sapor, (Brisson, de Regn. Pers. l. ii.
      p. 578,) nor could it be copied from the foolish tale of Marsyas,
      the Phrygian piper, most foolishly quoted as a precedent by
      Agathias, (l. iv. p. 132, 133.)]

      8611 (return) [ According to Agathias, the death of Gubazos
      preceded the defeat of Nacoragan. The trial took place after the
      battle.—M.]

      87 (return) [ In the palace of Constantinople there were thirty
      silentiaries, who were styled hastati, ante fores cubiculi, an
      honorable title which conferred the rank, without imposing the
      duties, of a senator, (Cod. Theodos. l. vi. tit. 23. Gothofred.
      Comment. tom. ii. p. 129.)]

      88 (return) [ On these judicial orations, Agathias (l. iii. p.
      81-89, l. iv. p. 108—119) lavishes eighteen or twenty pages of
      false and florid rhetoric. His ignorance or carelessness
      overlooks the strongest argument against the king of Lazica—his
      former revolt. * Note: The Orations in the third book of Agathias
      are not judicial, nor delivered before the Roman tribunal: it is
      a deliberative debate among the Colchians on the expediency of
      adhering to the Roman, or embracing the Persian alliance.—M.]


      In peace, the king of Persia continually sought the pretences of
      a rupture: but no sooner had he taken up arms, than he expressed
      his desire of a safe and honorable treaty. During the fiercest
      hostilities, the two monarchs entertained a deceitful
      negotiation; and such was the superiority of Chosroes, that
      whilst he treated the Roman ministers with insolence and
      contempt, he obtained the most unprecedented honors for his own
      ambassadors at the Imperial court. The successor of Cyrus assumed
      the majesty of the Eastern sun, and graciously permitted his
      younger brother Justinian to reign over the West, with the pale
      and reflected splendor of the moon. This gigantic style was
      supported by the pomp and eloquence of Isdigune, one of the royal
      chamberlains. His wife and daughters, with a train of eunuchs and
      camels, attended the march of the ambassador: two satraps with
      golden diadems were numbered among his followers: he was guarded
      by five hundred horse, the most valiant of the Persians; and the
      Roman governor of Dara wisely refused to admit more than twenty
      of this martial and hostile caravan. When Isdigune had saluted
      the emperor, and delivered his presents, he passed ten months at
      Constantinople without discussing any serious affairs. Instead of
      being confined to his palace, and receiving food and water from
      the hands of his keepers, the Persian ambassador, without spies
      or guards, was allowed to visit the capital; and the freedom of
      conversation and trade enjoyed by his domestics, offended the
      prejudices of an age which rigorously practised the law of
      nations, without confidence or courtesy. 89 By an unexampled
      indulgence, his interpreter, a servant below the notice of a
      Roman magistrate, was seated, at the table of Justinian, by the
      side of his master: and one thousand pounds of gold might be
      assigned for the expense of his journey and entertainment. Yet
      the repeated labors of Isdigune could procure only a partial and
      imperfect truce, which was always purchased with the treasures,
      and renewed at the solicitation, of the Byzantine court. Many
      years of fruitless desolation elapsed before Justinian and
      Chosroes were compelled, by mutual lassitude, to consult the
      repose of their declining age. At a conference held on the
      frontier, each party, without expecting to gain credit, displayed
      the power, the justice, and the pacific intentions, of their
      respective sovereigns; but necessity and interest dictated the
      treaty of peace, which was concluded for a term of fifty years,
      diligently composed in the Greek and Persian languages, and
      attested by the seals of twelve interpreters. The liberty of
      commerce and religion was fixed and defined; the allies of the
      emperor and the great king were included in the same benefits and
      obligations; and the most scrupulous precautions were provided to
      prevent or determine the accidental disputes that might arise on
      the confines of two hostile nations. After twenty years of
      destructive though feeble war, the limits still remained without
      alteration; and Chosroes was persuaded to renounce his dangerous
      claim to the possession or sovereignty of Colchos and its
      dependent states. Rich in the accumulated treasures of the East,
      he extorted from the Romans an annual payment of thirty thousand
      pieces of gold; and the smallness of the sum revealed the
      disgrace of a tribute in its naked deformity. In a previous
      debate, the chariot of Sesostris, and the wheel of fortune, were
      applied by one of the ministers of Justinian, who observed that
      the reduction of Antioch, and some Syrian cities, had elevated
      beyond measure the vain and ambitious spirit of the Barbarian.
      “You are mistaken,” replied the modest Persian: “the king of
      kings, the lord of mankind, looks down with contempt on such
      petty acquisitions; and of the ten nations, vanquished by his
      invincible arms, he esteems the Romans as the least formidable.”
      90 According to the Orientals, the empire of Nushirvan extended
      from Ferganah, in Transoxiana, to Yemen or Arabia Faelix. He
      subdued the rebels of Hyrcania, reduced the provinces of Cabul
      and Zablestan on the banks of the Indus, broke the power of the
      Euthalites, terminated by an honorable treaty the Turkish war,
      and admitted the daughter of the great khan into the number of
      his lawful wives. Victorious and respected among the princes of
      Asia, he gave audience, in his palace of Madain, or Ctesiphon, to
      the ambassadors of the world. Their gifts or tributes, arms, rich
      garments, gems, slaves or aromatics, were humbly presented at the
      foot of his throne; and he condescended to accept from the king
      of India ten quintals of the wood of aloes, a maid seven cubits
      in height, and a carpet softer than silk, the skin, as it was
      reported, of an extraordinary serpent. 91

      89 (return) [ Procopius represents the practice of the Gothic
      court of Ravenna (Goth. l. i. c. 7;) and foreign ambassadors have
      been treated with the same jealousy and rigor in Turkey,
      (Busbequius, epist. iii. p. 149, 242, &c.,) Russia, (Voyage
      D’Olearius,) and China, (Narrative of A. de Lange, in Bell’s
      Travels, vol. ii. p. 189—311.)]

      90 (return) [ The negotiations and treaties between Justinian and
      Chosroes are copiously explained by Procopius, (Persie, l. ii. c.
      10, 13, 26, 27, 28. Gothic. l. ii. c. 11, 15,) Agathias, (l. iv.
      p. 141, 142,) and Menander, (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 132—147.)
      Consult Barbeyrac, Hist. des Anciens Traites, tom. ii. p. 154,
      181—184, 193—200.]

      91 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, 681, 294,
      295.]


      Justinian had been reproached for his alliance with the
      Aethiopians, as if he attempted to introduce a people of savage
      negroes into the system of civilized society. But the friends of
      the Roman empire, the Axumites, or Abyssinians, may be always
      distinguished from the original natives of Africa. 92 The hand of
      nature has flattened the noses of the negroes, covered their
      heads with shaggy wool, and tinged their skin with inherent and
      indelible blackness. But the olive complexion of the Abyssinians,
      their hair, shape, and features, distinctly mark them as a colony
      of Arabs; and this descent is confirmed by the resemblance of
      language and manners the report of an ancient emigration, and the
      narrow interval between the shores of the Red Sea. Christianity
      had raised that nation above the level of African barbarism: 93
      their intercourse with Egypt, and the successors of Constantine,
      94 had communicated the rudiments of the arts and sciences; their
      vessels traded to the Isle of Ceylon, 95 and seven kingdoms
      obeyed the Negus or supreme prince of Abyssinia. The independence
      of the Homerites, 9511 who reigned in the rich and happy Arabia,
      was first violated by an Aethiopian conqueror: he drew his
      hereditary claim from the queen of Sheba, 96 and his ambition was
      sanctified by religious zeal. The Jews, powerful and active in
      exile, had seduced the mind of Dunaan, prince of the Homerites.
      They urged him to retaliate the persecution inflicted by the
      Imperial laws on their unfortunate brethren: some Roman merchants
      were injuriously treated; and several Christians of Negra 97 were
      honored with the crown of martyrdom. 98 The churches of Arabia
      implored the protection of the Abyssinian monarch. The Negus
      passed the Red Sea with a fleet and army, deprived the Jewish
      proselyte of his kingdom and life, and extinguished a race of
      princes, who had ruled above two thousand years the sequestered
      region of myrrh and frankincense. The conqueror immediately
      announced the victory of the gospel, requested an orthodox
      patriarch, and so warmly professed his friendship to the Roman
      empire, that Justinian was flattered by the hope of diverting the
      silk trade through the channel of Abyssinia, and of exciting the
      forces of Arabia against the Persian king. Nonnosus, descended
      from a family of ambassadors, was named by the emperor to execute
      this important commission. He wisely declined the shorter, but
      more dangerous, road, through the sandy deserts of Nubia;
      ascended the Nile, embarked on the Red Sea, and safely landed at
      the African port of Adulis. From Adulis to the royal city of
      Axume is no more than fifty leagues, in a direct line; but the
      winding passes of the mountains detained the ambassador fifteen
      days; and as he traversed the forests, he saw, and vaguely
      computed, about five thousand wild elephants. The capital,
      according to his report, was large and populous; and the village
      of Axume is still conspicuous by the regal coronations, by the
      ruins of a Christian temple, and by sixteen or seventeen obelisks
      inscribed with Grecian characters. 99 But the Negus 9911 gave
      audience in the open field, seated on a lofty chariot, which was
      drawn by four elephants, superbly caparisoned, and surrounded by
      his nobles and musicians. He was clad in a linen garment and cap,
      holding in his hand two javelins and a light shield; and,
      although his nakedness was imperfectly covered, he displayed the
      Barbaric pomp of gold chains, collars, and bracelets, richly
      adorned with pearls and precious stones. The ambassador of
      Justinian knelt; the Negus raised him from the ground, embraced
      Nonnosus, kissed the seal, perused the letter, accepted the Roman
      alliance, and, brandishing his weapons, denounced implacable war
      against the worshipers of fire. But the proposal of the silk
      trade was eluded; and notwithstanding the assurances, and perhaps
      the wishes, of the Abyssinians, these hostile menaces evaporated
      without effect. The Homerites were unwilling to abandon their
      aromatic groves, to explore a sandy desert, and to encounter,
      after all their fatigues, a formidable nation from whom they had
      never received any personal injuries. Instead of enlarging his
      conquests, the king of Aethiopia was incapable of defending his
      possessions. Abrahah, 9912 the slave of a Roman merchant of
      Adulis, assumed the sceptre of the Homerites,; the troops of
      Africa were seduced by the luxury of the climate; and Justinian
      solicited the friendship of the usurper, who honored with a
      slight tribute the supremacy of his prince. After a long series
      of prosperity, the power of Abrahah was overthrown before the
      gates of Mecca; and his children were despoiled by the Persian
      conqueror; and the Aethiopians were finally expelled from the
      continent of Asia. This narrative of obscure and remote events is
      not foreign to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. If a
      Christian power had been maintained in Arabia, Mahomet must have
      been crushed in his cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a
      revolution which has changed the civil and religious state of the
      world. 100 1001

      92 (return) [ See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 449. This
      Arab cast of features and complexion, which has continued 3400
      years (Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Aethiopic. l. i. c. 4) in the
      colony of Abyssinia, will justify the suspicion, that race, as
      well as climate, must have contributed to form the negroes of the
      adjacent and similar regions. * Note: Mr. Salt (Travels, vol. ii.
      p. 458) considers them to be distinct from the Arabs—“in feature,
      color, habit, and manners.”—M.]

      93 (return) [ The Portuguese missionaries, Alvarez, (Ramusio,
      tom. i. fol. 204, rect. 274, vers.) Bermudez, (Purchas’s
      Pilgrims, vol. ii. l. v. c. 7, p. 1149—1188,) Lobo, (Relation,
      &c., par M. le Grand, with xv. Dissertations, Paris, 1728,) and
      Tellez (Relations de Thevenot, part iv.) could only relate of
      modern Abyssinia what they had seen or invented. The erudition of
      Ludolphus, (Hist. Aethiopica, Francofurt, 1681. Commentarius,
      1691. Appendix, 1694,) in twenty-five languages, could add little
      concerning its ancient history. Yet the fame of Caled, or
      Ellisthaeus, the conqueror of Yemen, is celebrated in national
      songs and legends.]

      94 (return) [ The negotiations of Justinian with the Axumites, or
      Aethiopians, are recorded by Procopius (Persic. l. i. c. 19, 20)
      and John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 163—165, 193—196.) The historian of
      Antioch quotes the original narrative of the ambassador Nonnosus,
      of which Photius (Bibliot. Cod. iii.) has preserved a curious
      extract.]

      95 (return) [ The trade of the Axumites to the coast of India and
      Africa, and the Isle of Ceylon, is curiously represented by
      Cosmas Indicopleustes, (Topograph. Christian. l. ii. p. 132, 138,
      139, 140, l. xi. p. 338, 339.)]

      9511 (return) [ It appears by the important inscription
      discovered by Mr. Salt at Axoum, and from a law of Constantius,
      (16th Jan. 356, inserted in the Theodosian Code, l. 12, c. 12,)
      that in the middle of the fourth century of our era the princes
      of the Axumites joined to their titles that of king of the
      Homerites. The conquests which they made over the Arabs in the
      sixth century were only a restoration of the ancient order of
      things. St. Martin vol. viii. p. 46—M.]

      96 (return) [ Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Aethiop. l. ii. c. 3.]

      97 (return) [ The city of Negra, or Nag’ran, in Yemen, is
      surrounded with palm-trees, and stands in the high road between
      Saana, the capital, and Mecca; from the former ten, from the
      latter twenty days’ journey of a caravan of camels, (Abulfeda,
      Descript. Arabiae, p. 52.)]

      98 (return) [ The martyrdom of St. Arethas, prince of Negra, and
      his three hundred and forty companions, is embellished in the
      legends of Metaphrastes and Nicephorus Callistus, copied by
      Baronius, (A. D 522, No. 22—66, A.D. 523, No. 16—29,) and refuted
      with obscure diligence, by Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom. viii.
      l. xii. c. ii. p. 333—348,) who investigates the state of the
      Jews in Arabia and Aethiopia. * Note: According to Johannsen,
      (Hist. Yemanae, Praef. p. 89,) Dunaan (Ds Nowas) massacred 20,000
      Christians, and threw them into a pit, where they were burned.
      They are called in the Koran the companions of the pit (socii
      foveae.)—M.]

      99 (return) [ Alvarez (in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 219, vers. 221,
      vers.) saw the flourishing state of Axume in the year
      1520—luogomolto buono e grande. It was ruined in the same century
      by the Turkish invasion. No more than 100 houses remain; but the
      memory of its past greatness is preserved by the regal
      coronation, (Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. l. ii. c. 11.) * Note:
      Lord Valentia’s and Mr. Salt’s Travels give a high notion of the
      ruins of Axum.—M.]

      9911 (return) [ The Negus is differently called Elesbaan,
      Elesboas, Elisthaeus, probably the same name, or rather
      appellation. See St. Martin, vol. viii. p. 49.—M.]

      9912 (return) [ According to the Arabian authorities, (Johannsen,
      Hist. Yemanae, p. 94, Bonn, 1828,) Abrahah was an Abyssinian, the
      rival of Ariathus, the brother of the Abyssinian king: he
      surprised and slew Ariathus, and by his craft appeased the
      resentment of Nadjash, the Abyssinian king. Abrahah was a
      Christian; he built a magnificent church at Sana, and dissuaded
      his subjects from their accustomed pilgrimages to Mecca. The
      church was defiled, it was supposed, by the Koreishites, and
      Abrahah took up arms to revenge himself on the temple at Mecca.
      He was repelled by miracle: his elephant would not advance, but
      knelt down before the sacred place; Abrahah fled, discomfited and
      mortally wounded, to Sana—M.]

      100 (return) [ The revolutions of Yemen in the sixth century must
      be collected from Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 19, 20,)
      Theophanes Byzant., (apud Phot. cod. lxiii. p. 80,) St.
      Theophanes, (in Chronograph. p. 144, 145, 188, 189, 206, 207, who
      is full of strange blunders,) Pocock, (Specimen Hist. Arab. p.
      62, 65,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 12, 477,) and Sale’s
      Preliminary Discourse and Koran, (c. 105.) The revolt of Abrahah
      is mentioned by Procopius; and his fall, though clouded with
      miracles, is an historical fact. Note: To the authors who have
      illustrated the obscure history of the Jewish and Abyssinian
      kingdoms in Homeritis may be added Schultens, Hist. Joctanidarum;
      Walch, Historia rerum in Homerite gestarum, in the 4th vol. of
      the Gottingen Transactions; Salt’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 446, &c.:
      Sylvestre de Sacy, vol. i. Acad. des Inscrip. Jost, Geschichte
      der Israeliter; Johannsen, Hist. Yemanae; St. Martin’s notes to
      Le Beau, t. vii p. 42.—M.]

      1001 (return) [ A period of sixty-seven years is assigned by most
      of the Arabian authorities to the Abyssinian kingdoms in
      Homeritis.—M.]




Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part I.


Rebellions Of Africa.—Restoration Of The Gothic Kingdom By Totila.—Loss
And Recovery Of Rome.—Final Conquest Of Italy By Narses.—Extinction Of
The Ostrogoths.—Defeat Of The Franks And Alemanni.—Last Victory,
Disgrace, And Death Of Belisarius.—Death And Character Of
Justinian.—Comet, Earthquakes, And Plague.


      The review of the nations from the Danube to the Nile has
      exposed, on every side, the weakness of the Romans; and our
      wonder is reasonably excited that they should presume to enlarge
      an empire whose ancient limits they were incapable of defending.
      But the wars, the conquests, and the triumphs of Justinian, are
      the feeble and pernicious efforts of old age, which exhaust the
      remains of strength, and accelerate the decay of the powers of
      life. He exulted in the glorious act of restoring Africa and
      Italy to the republic; but the calamities which followed the
      departure of Belisarius betrayed the impotence of the conqueror,
      and accomplished the ruin of those unfortunate countries.


      From his new acquisitions, Justinian expected that his avarice,
      as well as pride, should be richly gratified. A rapacious
      minister of the finances closely pursued the footsteps of
      Belisarius; and as the old registers of tribute had been burnt by
      the Vandals, he indulged his fancy in a liberal calculation and
      arbitrary assessment of the wealth of Africa. 1 The increase of
      taxes, which were drawn away by a distant sovereign, and a
      general resumption of the patrimony or crown lands, soon
      dispelled the intoxication of the public joy: but the emperor was
      insensible to the modest complaints of the people, till he was
      awakened and alarmed by the clamors of military discontent. Many
      of the Roman soldiers had married the widows and daughters of the
      Vandals. As their own, by the double right of conquest and
      inheritance, they claimed the estates which Genseric had assigned
      to his victorious troops. They heard with disdain the cold and
      selfish representations of their officers, that the liberality of
      Justinian had raised them from a savage or servile condition;
      that they were already enriched by the spoils of Africa, the
      treasure, the slaves, and the movables of the vanquished
      Barbarians; and that the ancient and lawful patrimony of the
      emperors would be applied only to the support of that government
      on which their own safety and reward must ultimately depend. The
      mutiny was secretly inflamed by a thousand soldiers, for the most
      part Heruli, who had imbibed the doctrines, and were instigated
      by the clergy, of the Arian sect; and the cause of perjury and
      rebellion was sanctified by the dispensing powers of fanaticism.
      The Arians deplored the ruin of their church, triumphant above a
      century in Africa; and they were justly provoked by the laws of
      the conqueror, which interdicted the baptism of their children,
      and the exercise of all religious worship. Of the Vandals chosen
      by Belisarius, the far greater part, in the honors of the Eastern
      service, forgot their country and religion. But a generous band
      of four hundred obliged the mariners, when they were in sight of
      the Isle of Lesbos, to alter their course: they touched on
      Peloponnesus, ran ashore on a desert coast of Africa, and boldly
      erected, on Mount Aurasius, the standard of independence and
      revolt. While the troops of the provinces disclaimed the commands
      of their superiors, a conspiracy was formed at Carthage against
      the life of Solomon, who filled with honor the place of
      Belisarius; and the Arians had piously resolved to sacrifice the
      tyrant at the foot of the altar, during the awful mysteries of
      the festival of Easter. Fear or remorse restrained the daggers of
      the assassins, but the patience of Solomon emboldened their
      discontent; and, at the end of ten days, a furious sedition was
      kindled in the Circus, which desolated Africa above ten years.
      The pillage of the city, and the indiscriminate slaughter of its
      inhabitants, were suspended only by darkness, sleep, and
      intoxication: the governor, with seven companions, among whom was
      the historian Procopius, escaped to Sicily: two thirds of the
      army were involved in the guilt of treason; and eight thousand
      insurgents, assembling in the field of Bulla, elected Stoza for
      their chief, a private soldier, who possessed in a superior
      degree the virtues of a rebel. Under the mask of freedom, his
      eloquence could lead, or at least impel, the passions of his
      equals. He raised himself to a level with Belisarius, and the
      nephew of the emperor, by daring to encounter them in the field;
      and the victorious generals were compelled to acknowledge that
      Stoza deserved a purer cause, and a more legitimate command.
      Vanquished in battle, he dexterously employed the arts of
      negotiation; a Roman army was seduced from their allegiance, and
      the chiefs who had trusted to his faithless promise were murdered
      by his order in a church of Numidia. When every resource, either
      of force or perfidy, was exhausted, Stoza, with some desperate
      Vandals, retired to the wilds of Mauritania, obtained the
      daughter of a Barbarian prince, and eluded the pursuit of his
      enemies, by the report of his death. The personal weight of
      Belisarius, the rank, the spirit, and the temper, of Germanus,
      the emperor’s nephew, and the vigor and success of the second
      administration of the eunuch Solomon, restored the modesty of the
      camp, and maintained for a while the tranquillity of Africa. But
      the vices of the Byzantine court were felt in that distant
      province; the troops complained that they were neither paid nor
      relieved, and as soon as the public disorders were sufficiently
      mature, Stoza was again alive, in arms, and at the gates of
      Carthage. He fell in a single combat, but he smiled in the
      agonies of death, when he was informed that his own javelin had
      reached the heart of his antagonist. 1001 The example of Stoza,
      and the assurance that a fortunate soldier had been the first
      king, encouraged the ambition of Gontharis, and he promised, by a
      private treaty, to divide Africa with the Moors, if, with their
      dangerous aid, he should ascend the throne of Carthage. The
      feeble Areobindus, unskilled in the affairs of peace and war, was
      raised, by his marriage with the niece of Justinian, to the
      office of exarch. He was suddenly oppressed by a sedition of the
      guards, and his abject supplications, which provoked the
      contempt, could not move the pity, of the inexorable tyrant.
      After a reign of thirty days, Gontharis himself was stabbed at a
      banquet by the hand of Artaban; 1002 and it is singular enough,
      that an Armenian prince, of the royal family of Arsaces, should
      reestablish at Carthage the authority of the Roman empire. In the
      conspiracy which unsheathed the dagger of Brutus against the life
      of Caesar, every circumstance is curious and important to the
      eyes of posterity; but the guilt or merit of these loyal or
      rebellious assassins could interest only the contemporaries of
      Procopius, who, by their hopes and fears, their friendship or
      resentment, were personally engaged in the revolutions of Africa.
      2

      1 (return) [ For the troubles of Africa, I neither have nor
      desire another guide than Procopius, whose eye contemplated the
      image, and whose ear collected the reports, of the memorable
      events of his own times. In the second book of the Vandalic war
      he relates the revolt of Stoza, (c. 14—24,) the return of
      Belisarius, (c. 15,) the victory of Germanus, (c. 16, 17, 18,)
      the second administration of Solomon, (c. 19, 20, 21,) the
      government of Sergius, (c. 22, 23,) of Areobindus, (c. 24,) the
      tyranny and death of Gontharis, (c. 25, 26, 27, 28;) nor can I
      discern any symptoms of flattery or malevolence in his various
      portraits.]

      1001 (return) [ Corippus gives a different account of the death
      of Stoza; he was transfixed by an arrow from the hand of John,
      (not the hero of his poem) who broke desperately through the
      victorious troops of the enemy. Stoza repented, says the poet, of
      his treasonous rebellion, and anticipated—another
      Cataline—eternal torments as his punishment.


Reddam, improba, pœnas Quas merui. Furiis socius Catilina cruentis
Exagitatus adest. Video jam Tartara, fundo Flammarumque globos, et
clara incendia volvi.
—Johannidos, book iv. line 211.


      All the other authorities confirm Gibbon’s account of the death
      of John by the hand of Stoza. This poem of Corippus, unknown to
      Gibbon, was first published by Mazzuchelli during the present
      century, and is reprinted in the new edition of the Byzantine
      writers.—M]

      1002 (return) [ This murder was prompted to the Armenian
      (according to Corippus) by Athanasius, (then præfect of Africa.)


Hunc placidus canâ gravitate coegit
Inumitera mactare virum.—Corripus, vol. iv. p. 237—M.]




      2 (return) [ Yet I must not refuse him the merit of painting, in
      lively colors, the murder of Gontharis. One of the assassins
      uttered a sentiment not unworthy of a Roman patriot: “If I fail,”
      said Artasires, “in the first stroke, kill me on the spot, lest
      the rack should extort a discovery of my accomplices.”]


      That country was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from
      whence it had been raised by the Phœnician colonies and Roman
      laws; and every step of intestine discord was marked by some
      deplorable victory of savage man over civilized society. The
      Moors, 3 though ignorant of justice, were impatient of
      oppression: their vagrant life and boundless wilderness
      disappointed the arms, and eluded the chains, of a conqueror; and
      experience had shown, that neither oaths nor obligations could
      secure the fidelity of their attachment. The victory of Mount
      Auras had awed them into momentary submission; but if they
      respected the character of Solomon, they hated and despised the
      pride and luxury of his two nephews, Cyrus and Sergius, on whom
      their uncle had imprudently bestowed the provincial governments
      of Tripoli and Pentapolis. A Moorish tribe encamped under the
      walls of Leptis, to renew their alliance, and receive from the
      governor the customary gifts. Fourscore of their deputies were
      introduced as friends into the city; but on the dark suspicion of
      a conspiracy, they were massacred at the table of Sergius, and
      the clamor of arms and revenge was reechoed through the valleys
      of Mount Atlas from both the Syrtes to the Atlantic Ocean. A
      personal injury, the unjust execution or murder of his brother,
      rendered Antalas the enemy of the Romans. The defeat of the
      Vandals had formerly signalized his valor; the rudiments of
      justice and prudence were still more conspicuous in a Moor; and
      while he laid Adrumetum in ashes, he calmly admonished the
      emperor that the peace of Africa might be secured by the recall
      of Solomon and his unworthy nephews. The exarch led forth his
      troops from Carthage: but, at the distance of six days’ journey,
      in the neighborhood of Tebeste, 4 he was astonished by the
      superior numbers and fierce aspect of the Barbarians. He proposed
      a treaty; solicited a reconciliation; and offered to bind himself
      by the most solemn oaths. “By what oaths can he bind himself?”
      interrupted the indignant Moors. “Will he swear by the Gospels,
      the divine books of the Christians? It was on those books that
      the faith of his nephew Sergius was pledged to eighty of our
      innocent and unfortunate brethren. Before we trust them a second
      time, let us try their efficacy in the chastisement of perjury
      and the vindication of their own honor.” Their honor was
      vindicated in the field of Tebeste, by the death of Solomon, and
      the total loss of his army. 411 The arrival of fresh troops and
      more skilful commanders soon checked the insolence of the Moors:
      seventeen of their princes were slain in the same battle; and the
      doubtful and transient submission of their tribes was celebrated
      with lavish applause by the people of Constantinople. Successive
      inroads had reduced the province of Africa to one third of the
      measure of Italy; yet the Roman emperors continued to reign above
      a century over Carthage and the fruitful coast of the
      Mediterranean. But the victories and the losses of Justinian were
      alike pernicious to mankind; and such was the desolation of
      Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days
      without meeting the face either of a friend or an enemy. The
      nation of the Vandals had disappeared: they once amounted to a
      hundred and sixty thousand warriors, without including the
      children, the women, or the slaves. Their numbers were infinitely
      surpassed by the number of the Moorish families extirpated in a
      relentless war; and the same destruction was retaliated on the
      Romans and their allies, who perished by the climate, their
      mutual quarrels, and the rage of the Barbarians. When Procopius
      first landed, he admired the populousness of the cities and
      country, strenuously exercised in the labors of commerce and
      agriculture. In less than twenty years, that busy scene was
      converted into a silent solitude; the wealthy citizens escaped to
      Sicily and Constantinople; and the secret historian has
      confidently affirmed, that five millions of Africans were
      consumed by the wars and government of the emperor Justinian. 5

      3 (return) [ The Moorish wars are occasionally introduced into
      the narrative of Procopius, (Vandal. l. ii. c. 19—23, 25, 27, 28.
      Gothic. l. iv. c. 17;) and Theophanes adds some prosperous and
      adverse events in the last years of Justinian.]

      4 (return) [ Now Tibesh, in the kingdom of Algiers. It is watered
      by a river, the Sujerass, which falls into the Mejerda,
      (Bagradas.) Tibesh is still remarkable for its walls of large
      stones, (like the Coliseum of Rome,) a fountain, and a grove of
      walnut-trees: the country is fruitful, and the neighboring
      Bereberes are warlike. It appears from an inscription, that,
      under the reign of Adrian, the road from Carthage to Tebeste was
      constructed by the third legion, (Marmol, Description de
      l’Afrique, tom. ii. p. 442, 443. Shaw’s Travels, p. 64, 65, 66.)]

      411 (return) [ Corripus (Johannidos lib. iii. 417—441) describes
      the defeat and death of Solomon.—M.]

      5 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 18. The series of the African
      history attests this melancholy truth.]


      The jealousy of the Byzantine court had not permitted Belisarius
      to achieve the conquest of Italy; and his abrupt departure
      revived the courage of the Goths, 6 who respected his genius, his
      virtue, and even the laudable motive which had urged the servant
      of Justinian to deceive and reject them. They had lost their king
      (an inconsiderable loss,) their capital, their treasures, the
      provinces from Sicily to the Alps, and the military force of two
      hundred thousand Barbarians, magnificently equipped with horses
      and arms. Yet all was not lost, as long as Pavia was defended by
      one thousand Goths, inspired by a sense of honor, the love of
      freedom, and the memory of their past greatness. The supreme
      command was unanimously offered to the brave Uraias; and it was
      in his eyes alone that the disgrace of his uncle Vitiges could
      appear as a reason of exclusion. His voice inclined the election
      in favor of Hildibald, whose personal merit was recommended by
      the vain hope that his kinsman Theudes, the Spanish monarch,
      would support the common interest of the Gothic nation. The
      success of his arms in Liguria and Venetia seemed to justify
      their choice; but he soon declared to the world that he was
      incapable of forgiving or commanding his benefactor. The consort
      of Hildibald was deeply wounded by the beauty, the riches, and
      the pride, of the wife of Uraias; and the death of that virtuous
      patriot excited the indignation of a free people. A bold assassin
      executed their sentence by striking off the head of Hildibald in
      the midst of a banquet; the Rugians, a foreign tribe, assumed the
      privilege of election: and Totila, 611 the nephew of the late
      king, was tempted, by revenge, to deliver himself and the
      garrison of Trevigo into the hands of the Romans.


      But the gallant and accomplished youth was easily persuaded to
      prefer the Gothic throne before the service of Justinian; and as
      soon as the palace of Pavia had been purified from the Rugian
      usurper, he reviewed the national force of five thousand
      soldiers, and generously undertook the restoration of the kingdom
      of Italy.

      6 (return) [ In the second (c. 30) and third books, (c. 1—40,)
      Procopius continues the history of the Gothic war from the fifth
      to the fifteenth year of Justinian. As the events are less
      interesting than in the former period, he allots only half the
      space to double the time. Jornandes, and the Chronicle of
      Marcellinus, afford some collateral hints Sigonius, Pagi,
      Muratori, Mascou, and De Buat, are useful, and have been used.]

      611 (return) [ His real name, as appears by medals, was Baduilla,
      or Badiula. Totila signifies immortal: tod (in German) is death.
      Todilas, deathless. Compare St Martin, vol. ix. p. 37.—M.]


      The successors of Belisarius, eleven generals of equal rank,
      neglected to crush the feeble and disunited Goths, till they were
      roused to action by the progress of Totila and the reproaches of
      Justinian. The gates of Verona were secretly opened to Artabazus,
      at the head of one hundred Persians in the service of the empire.
      The Goths fled from the city. At the distance of sixty furlongs
      the Roman generals halted to regulate the division of the spoil.
      While they disputed, the enemy discovered the real number of the
      victors: the Persians were instantly overpowered, and it was by
      leaping from the wall that Artabazus preserved a life which he
      lost in a few days by the lance of a Barbarian, who had defied
      him to single combat. Twenty thousand Romans encountered the
      forces of Totila, near Faenza, and on the hills of Mugello, of
      the Florentine territory. The ardor of freedmen, who fought to
      regain their country, was opposed to the languid temper of
      mercenary troops, who were even destitute of the merits of strong
      and well-disciplined servitude. On the first attack, they
      abandoned their ensigns, threw down their arms, and dispersed on
      all sides with an active speed, which abated the loss, whilst it
      aggravated the shame, of their defeat. The king of the Goths, who
      blushed for the baseness of his enemies, pursued with rapid steps
      the path of honor and victory. Totila passed the Po, 6112
      traversed the Apennine, suspended the important conquest of
      Ravenna, Florence, and Rome, and marched through the heart of
      Italy, to form the siege or rather the blockade, of Naples. The
      Roman chiefs, imprisoned in their respective cities, and accusing
      each other of the common disgrace, did not presume to disturb his
      enterprise. But the emperor, alarmed by the distress and danger
      of his Italian conquests, despatched to the relief of Naples a
      fleet of galleys and a body of Thracian and Armenian soldiers.
      They landed in Sicily, which yielded its copious stores of
      provisions; but the delays of the new commander, an unwarlike
      magistrate, protracted the sufferings of the besieged; and the
      succors, which he dropped with a timid and tardy hand, were
      successively intercepted by the armed vessels stationed by Totila
      in the Bay of Naples. The principal officer of the Romans was
      dragged, with a rope round his neck, to the foot of the wall,
      from whence, with a trembling voice, he exhorted the citizens to
      implore, like himself, the mercy of the conqueror. They requested
      a truce, with a promise of surrendering the city, if no effectual
      relief should appear at the end of thirty days. Instead of one
      month, the audacious Barbarian granted them three, in the just
      confidence that famine would anticipate the term of their
      capitulation. After the reduction of Naples and Cumae, the
      provinces of Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, submitted to the king
      of the Goths. Totila led his army to the gates of Rome, pitched
      his camp at Tibur, or Tivoli, within twenty miles of the capital,
      and calmly exhorted the senate and people to compare the tyranny
      of the Greeks with the blessings of the Gothic reign.

      6112 (return) [ This is not quite correct: he had crossed the Po
      before the battle of Faenza.—M.]


      The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the
      revolution which three years’ experience had produced in the
      sentiments of the Italians. At the command, or at least in the
      name, of a Catholic emperor, the pope, 7 their spiritual father,
      had been torn from the Roman church, and either starved or
      murdered on a desolate island. 8 The virtues of Belisarius were
      replaced by the various or uniform vices of eleven chiefs, at
      Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, &c., who abused their
      authority for the indulgence of lust or avarice. The improvement
      of the revenue was committed to Alexander, a subtle scribe, long
      practised in the fraud and oppression of the Byzantine schools,
      and whose name of Psalliction, the scissors, 9 was drawn from the
      dexterous artifice with which he reduced the size without
      defacing the figure, of the gold coin. Instead of expecting the
      restoration of peace and industry, he imposed a heavy assessment
      on the fortunes of the Italians. Yet his present or future
      demands were less odious than a prosecution of arbitrary rigor
      against the persons and property of all those who, under the
      Gothic kings, had been concerned in the receipt and expenditure
      of the public money. The subjects of Justinian, who escaped these
      partial vexations, were oppressed by the irregular maintenance of
      the soldiers, whom Alexander defrauded and despised; and their
      hasty sallies in quest of wealth, or subsistence, provoked the
      inhabitants of the country to await or implore their deliverance
      from the virtues of a Barbarian. Totila 10 was chaste and
      temperate; and none were deceived, either friends or enemies, who
      depended on his faith or his clemency. To the husbandmen of Italy
      the Gothic king issued a welcome proclamation, enjoining them to
      pursue their important labors, and to rest assured, that, on the
      payment of the ordinary taxes, they should be defended by his
      valor and discipline from the injuries of war. The strong towns
      he successively attacked; and as soon as they had yielded to his
      arms, he demolished the fortifications, to save the people from
      the calamities of a future siege, to deprive the Romans of the
      arts of defence, and to decide the tedious quarrel of the two
      nations, by an equal and honorable conflict in the field of
      battle. The Roman captives and deserters were tempted to enlist
      in the service of a liberal and courteous adversary; the slaves
      were attracted by the firm and faithful promise, that they should
      never be delivered to their masters; and from the thousand
      warriors of Pavia, a new people, under the same appellation of
      Goths, was insensibly formed in the camp of Totila. He sincerely
      accomplished the articles of capitulation, without seeking or
      accepting any sinister advantage from ambiguous expressions or
      unforeseen events: the garrison of Naples had stipulated that
      they should be transported by sea; the obstinacy of the winds
      prevented their voyage, but they were generously supplied with
      horses, provisions, and a safe-conduct to the gates of Rome. The
      wives of the senators, who had been surprised in the villas of
      Campania, were restored, without a ransom, to their husbands; the
      violation of female chastity was inexorably chastised with death;
      and in the salutary regulation of the edict of the famished
      Neapolitans, the conqueror assumed the office of a humane and
      attentive physician. The virtues of Totila are equally laudable,
      whether they proceeded from true policy, religious principle, or
      the instinct of humanity: he often harangued his troops; and it
      was his constant theme, that national vice and ruin are
      inseparably connected; that victory is the fruit of moral as well
      as military virtue; and that the prince, and even the people, are
      responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.



      7 (return) [Sylverius, bishop of Rome, was first transported to
      Patara, in Lycia, and at length starved (sub eorum custodia
      inedia confectus) in the Isle of Palmaria, A.D. 538, June 20,
      (Liberat. in Breviar. c. 22. Anastasius, in Sylverio. Baronius,
      A.D. 540, No. 2, 3. Pagi, in Vit. Pont. tom. i. p. 285, 286.)
      Procopius (Anecdot. c. 1) accuses only the empress and Antonina.]

      8 (return) [ Palmaria, a small island, opposite to Terracina and
      the coast of the Volsci, (Cluver. Ital. Antiq. l. iii. c. 7, p.
      1014.)]

      9 (return) [ As the Logothete Alexander, and most of his civil
      and military colleagues, were either disgraced or despised, the
      ink of the Anecdotes (c. 4, 5, 18) is scarcely blacker than that
      of the Gothic History (l. iii. c. 1, 3, 4, 9, 20, 21, &c.)]

      10 (return) [ Procopius (l. iii. c. 2, 8, &c.,) does ample and
      willing justice to the merit of Totila. The Roman historians,
      from Sallust and Tacitus were happy to forget the vices of their
      countrymen in the contemplation of Barbaric virtue.]


      The return of Belisarius to save the country which he had
      subdued, was pressed with equal vehemence by his friends and
      enemies; and the Gothic war was imposed as a trust or an exile on
      the veteran commander. A hero on the banks of the Euphrates, a
      slave in the palace of Constantinople, he accepted with
      reluctance the painful task of supporting his own reputation, and
      retrieving the faults of his successors. The sea was open to the
      Romans: the ships and soldiers were assembled at Salona, near the
      palace of Diocletian: he refreshed and reviewed his troops at
      Pola in Istria, coasted round the head of the Adriatic, entered
      the port of Ravenna, and despatched orders rather than supplies
      to the subordinate cities. His first public oration was addressed
      to the Goths and Romans, in the name of the emperor, who had
      suspended for a while the conquest of Persia, and listened to the
      prayers of his Italian subjects. He gently touched on the causes
      and the authors of the recent disasters; striving to remove the
      fear of punishment for the past, and the hope of impunity for the
      future, and laboring, with more zeal than success, to unite all
      the members of his government in a firm league of affection and
      obedience. Justinian, his gracious master, was inclined to pardon
      and reward; and it was their interest, as well as duty, to
      reclaim their deluded brethren, who had been seduced by the arts
      of the usurper. Not a man was tempted to desert the standard of
      the Gothic king. Belisarius soon discovered, that he was sent to
      remain the idle and impotent spectator of the glory of a young
      Barbarian; and his own epistle exhibits a genuine and lively
      picture of the distress of a noble mind. “Most excellent prince,
      we are arrived in Italy, destitute of all the necessary
      implements of war, men, horses, arms, and money. In our late
      circuit through the villages of Thrace and Illyricum, we have
      collected, with extreme difficulty, about four thousand recruits,
      naked, and unskilled in the use of weapons and the exercises of
      the camp. The soldiers already stationed in the province are
      discontented, fearful, and dismayed; at the sound of an enemy,
      they dismiss their horses, and cast their arms on the ground. No
      taxes can be raised, since Italy is in the hands of the
      Barbarians; the failure of payment has deprived us of the right
      of command, or even of admonition. Be assured, dread Sir, that
      the greater part of your troops have already deserted to the
      Goths. If the war could be achieved by the presence of Belisarius
      alone, your wishes are satisfied; Belisarius is in the midst of
      Italy. But if you desire to conquer, far other preparations are
      requisite: without a military force, the title of general is an
      empty name. It would be expedient to restore to my service my own
      veteran and domestic guards. Before I can take the field, I must
      receive an adequate supply of light and heavy armed troops; and
      it is only with ready money that you can procure the
      indispensable aid of a powerful body of the cavalry of the Huns.”
      11 An officer in whom Belisarius confided was sent from Ravenna
      to hasten and conduct the succors; but the message was neglected,
      and the messenger was detained at Constantinople by an
      advantageous marriage. After his patience had been exhausted by
      delay and disappointment, the Roman general repassed the
      Adriatic, and expected at Dyrrachium the arrival of the troops,
      which were slowly assembled among the subjects and allies of the
      empire. His powers were still inadequate to the deliverance of
      Rome, which was closely besieged by the Gothic king. The Appian
      way, a march of forty days, was covered by the Barbarians; and as
      the prudence of Belisarius declined a battle, he preferred the
      safe and speedy navigation of five days from the coast of Epirus
      to the mouth of the Tyber.

      11 (return) [ Procopius, l. iii. c. 12. The soul of a hero is
      deeply impressed on the letter; nor can we confound such genuine
      and original acts with the elaborate and often empty speeches of
      the Byzantine historians]


      After reducing, by force, or treaty, the towns of inferior note
      in the midland provinces of Italy, Totila proceeded, not to
      assault, but to encompass and starve, the ancient capital. Rome
      was afflicted by the avarice, and guarded by the valor, of
      Bessas, a veteran chief of Gothic extraction, who filled, with a
      garrison of three thousand soldiers, the spacious circle of her
      venerable walls. From the distress of the people he extracted a
      profitable trade, and secretly rejoiced in the continuance of the
      siege. It was for his use that the granaries had been
      replenished: the charity of Pope Vigilius had purchased and
      embarked an ample supply of Sicilian corn; but the vessels which
      escaped the Barbarians were seized by a rapacious governor, who
      imparted a scanty sustenance to the soldiers, and sold the
      remainder to the wealthy Romans. The medimnus, or fifth part of
      the quarter of wheat, was exchanged for seven pieces of gold;
      fifty pieces were given for an ox, a rare and accidental prize;
      the progress of famine enhanced this exorbitant value, and the
      mercenaries were tempted to deprive themselves of the allowance
      which was scarcely sufficient for the support of life. A
      tasteless and unwholesome mixture, in which the bran thrice
      exceeded the quantity of flour, appeased the hunger of the poor;
      they were gradually reduced to feed on dead horses, dogs, cats,
      and mice, and eagerly to snatch the grass, and even the nettles,
      which grew among the ruins of the city. A crowd of spectres, pale
      and emaciated, their bodies oppressed with disease, and their
      minds with despair, surrounded the palace of the governor, urged,
      with unavailing truth, that it was the duty of a master to
      maintain his slaves, and humbly requested that he would provide
      for their subsistence, to permit their flight, or command their
      immediate execution. Bessas replied, with unfeeling tranquillity,
      that it was impossible to feed, unsafe to dismiss, and unlawful
      to kill, the subjects of the emperor. Yet the example of a
      private citizen might have shown his countrymen that a tyrant
      cannot withhold the privilege of death. Pierced by the cries of
      five children, who vainly called on their father for bread, he
      ordered them to follow his steps, advanced with calm and silent
      despair to one of the bridges of the Tyber, and, covering his
      face, threw himself headlong into the stream, in the presence of
      his family and the Roman people. To the rich and pusillammous,
      Bessas 12 sold the permission of departure; but the greatest part
      of the fugitives expired on the public highways, or were
      intercepted by the flying parties of Barbarians. In the mean
      while, the artful governor soothed the discontent, and revived
      the hopes of the Romans, by the vague reports of the fleets and
      armies which were hastening to their relief from the extremities
      of the East. They derived more rational comfort from the
      assurance that Belisarius had landed at the port; and, without
      numbering his forces, they firmly relied on the humanity, the
      courage, and the skill of their great deliverer.

      12 (return) [ The avarice of Bessas is not dissembled by
      Procopius, (l. iii. c. 17, 20.) He expiated the loss of Rome by
      the glorious conquest of Petraea, (Goth. l. iv. c. 12;) but the
      same vices followed him from the Tyber to the Phasis, (c. 13;)
      and the historian is equally true to the merits and defects of
      his character. The chastisement which the author of the romance
      of Belisaire has inflicted on the oppressor of Rome is more
      agreeable to justice than to history.]




Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death OF
Justinian.—Part II.


      The foresight of Totila had raised obstacles worthy of such an
      antagonist. Ninety furlongs below the city, in the narrowest part
      of the river, he joined the two banks by strong and solid timbers
      in the form of a bridge, on which he erected two lofty towers,
      manned by the bravest of his Goths, and profusely stored with
      missile weapons and engines of offence. The approach of the
      bridge and towers was covered by a strong and massy chain of
      iron; and the chain, at either end, on the opposite sides of the
      Tyber, was defended by a numerous and chosen detachment of
      archers. But the enterprise of forcing these barriers, and
      relieving the capital, displays a shining example of the boldness
      and conduct of Belisarius. His cavalry advanced from the port
      along the public road, to awe the motions, and distract the
      attention of the enemy. His infantry and provisions were
      distributed in two hundred large boats; and each boat was
      shielded by a high rampart of thick planks, pierced with many
      small holes for the discharge of missile weapons. In the front,
      two large vessels were linked together to sustain a floating
      castle, which commanded the towers of the bridge, and contained a
      magazine of fire, sulphur, and bitumen. The whole fleet, which
      the general led in person, was laboriously moved against the
      current of the river. The chain yielded to their weight, and the
      enemies who guarded the banks were either slain or scattered. As
      soon as they touched the principal barrier, the fire-ship was
      instantly grappled to the bridge; one of the towers, with two
      hundred Goths, was consumed by the flames; the assailants shouted
      victory; and Rome was saved, if the wisdom of Belisarius had not
      been defeated by the misconduct of his officers. He had
      previously sent orders to Bessas to second his operations by a
      timely sally from the town; and he had fixed his lieutenant,
      Isaac, by a peremptory command, to the station of the port. But
      avarice rendered Bessas immovable; while the youthful ardor of
      Isaac delivered him into the hands of a superior enemy. The
      exaggerated rumor of his defeat was hastily carried to the ears
      of Belisarius: he paused; betrayed in that single moment of his
      life some emotions of surprise and perplexity; and reluctantly
      sounded a retreat to save his wife Antonina, his treasures, and
      the only harbor which he possessed on the Tuscan coast. The
      vexation of his mind produced an ardent and almost mortal fever;
      and Rome was left without protection to the mercy or indignation
      of Totila. The continuance of hostilities had imbittered the
      national hatred: the Arian clergy was ignominiously driven from
      Rome; Pelagius, the archdeacon, returned without success from an
      embassy to the Gothic camp; and a Sicilian bishop, the envoy or
      nuncio of the pope, was deprived of both his hands, for daring to
      utter falsehoods in the service of the church and state.


      Famine had relaxed the strength and discipline of the garrison of
      Rome. They could derive no effectual service from a dying people;
      and the inhuman avarice of the merchant at length absorbed the
      vigilance of the governor. Four Isaurian sentinels, while their
      companions slept, and their officers were absent, descended by a
      rope from the wall, and secretly proposed to the Gothic king to
      introduce his troops into the city. The offer was entertained
      with coldness and suspicion; they returned in safety; they twice
      repeated their visit; the place was twice examined; the
      conspiracy was known and disregarded; and no sooner had Totila
      consented to the attempt, than they unbarred the Asinarian gate,
      and gave admittance to the Goths. Till the dawn of day, they
      halted in order of battle, apprehensive of treachery or ambush;
      but the troops of Bessas, with their leader, had already escaped;
      and when the king was pressed to disturb their retreat, he
      prudently replied, that no sight could be more grateful than that
      of a flying enemy. The patricians, who were still possessed of
      horses, Decius, Basilius, &c. accompanied the governor; their
      brethren, among whom Olybrius, Orestes, and Maximus, are named by
      the historian, took refuge in the church of St. Peter: but the
      assertion, that only five hundred persons remained in the
      capital, inspires some doubt of the fidelity either of his
      narrative or of his text. As soon as daylight had displayed the
      entire victory of the Goths, their monarch devoutly visited the
      tomb of the prince of the apostles; but while he prayed at the
      altar, twenty-five soldiers, and sixty citizens, were put to the
      sword in the vestibule of the temple. The archdeacon Pelagius 13
      stood before him, with the Gospels in his hand. “O Lord, be
      merciful to your servant.” “Pelagius,” said Totila, with an
      insulting smile, “your pride now condescends to become a
      suppliant.” “I am a suppliant,” replied the prudent archdeacon;
      “God has now made us your subjects, and as your subjects, we are
      entitled to your clemency.” At his humble prayer, the lives of
      the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and matrons
      was preserved inviolate from the passions of the hungry soldiers.


      But they were rewarded by the freedom of pillage, after the most
      precious spoils had been reserved for the royal treasury. The
      houses of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and
      silver; and the avarice of Bessas had labored with so much guilt
      and shame for the benefit of the conqueror. In this revolution,
      the sons and daughters of Roman consuls tasted the misery which
      they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments
      through the streets of the city and begged their bread, perhaps
      without success, before the gates of their hereditary mansions.
      The riches of Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and widow of
      Boethius, had been generously devoted to alleviate the calamities
      of famine. But the Barbarians were exasperated by the report,
      that she had prompted the people to overthrow the statues of the
      great Theodoric; and the life of that venerable matron would have
      been sacrificed to his memory, if Totila had not respected her
      birth, her virtues, and even the pious motive of her revenge. The
      next day he pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish
      his victorious Goths, and to reproach the senate, as the vilest
      of slaves, with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude; sternly
      declaring, that their estates and honors were justly forfeited to
      the companions of his arms. Yet he consented to forgive their
      revolt; and the senators repaid his clemency by despatching
      circular letters to their tenants and vassals in the provinces of
      Italy, strictly to enjoin them to desert the standard of the
      Greeks, to cultivate their lands in peace, and to learn from
      their masters the duty of obedience to a Gothic sovereign.
      Against the city which had so long delayed the course of his
      victories, he appeared inexorable: one third of the walls, in
      different parts, were demolished by his command; fire and engines
      prepared to consume or subvert the most stately works of
      antiquity; and the world was astonished by the fatal decree, that
      Rome should be changed into a pasture for cattle. The firm and
      temperate remonstrance of Belisarius suspended the execution; he
      warned the Barbarian not to sully his fame by the destruction of
      those monuments which were the glory of the dead, and the delight
      of the living; and Totila was persuaded, by the advice of an
      enemy, to preserve Rome as the ornament of his kingdom, or the
      fairest pledge of peace and reconciliation. When he had signified
      to the ambassadors of Belisarius his intention of sparing the
      city, he stationed an army at the distance of one hundred and
      twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general.
      With the remainder of his forces he marched into Lucania and
      Apulia, and occupied on the summit of Mount Garganus 14 one of
      the camps of Hannibal. 15 The senators were dragged in his train,
      and afterwards confined in the fortresses of Campania: the
      citizens, with their wives and children, were dispersed in exile;
      and during forty days Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary
      solitude. 16

      13 (return) [ During the long exile, and after the death of
      Vigilius, the Roman church was governed, at first by the
      archdeacon, and at length (A. D 655) by the pope Pelagius, who
      was not thought guiltless of the sufferings of his predecessor.
      See the original lives of the popes under the name of Anastasius,
      (Muratori, Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. iii. P. i. p. 130, 131,)
      who relates several curious incidents of the sieges of Rome and
      the wars of Italy.]

      14 (return) [ Mount Garganus, now Monte St. Angelo, in the
      kingdom of Naples, runs three hundred stadia into the Adriatic
      Sea, (Strab.—vi. p. 436,) and in the darker ages was illustrated
      by the apparition, miracles, and church, of St. Michael the
      archangel. Horace, a native of Apulia or Lucania, had seen the
      elms and oaks of Garganus laboring and bellowing with the north
      wind that blew on that lofty coast, (Carm. ii. 9, Epist. ii. i.
      201.)]

      15 (return) [ I cannot ascertain this particular camp of
      Hannibal; but the Punic quarters were long and often in the
      neighborhood of Arpi, (T. Liv. xxii. 9, 12, xxiv. 3, &c.)]

      16 (return) [ Totila.... Romam ingreditur.... ac evertit muros,
      domos aliquantas igni comburens, ac omnes Romanorum res in
      praedam ac cepit, hos ipsos Romanos in Campaniam captivos
      abduxit. Post quam devastationem, xl. autamp lius dies, Roma fuit
      ita desolata, ut nemo ibi hominum, nisi (nulloe?) bestiae
      morarentur, (Marcellin. in Chron. p. 54.)]


      The loss of Rome was speedily retrieved by an action, to which,
      according to the event, the public opinion would apply the names
      of rashness or heroism. After the departure of Totila, the Roman
      general sallied from the port at the head of a thousand horse,
      cut in pieces the enemy who opposed his progress, and visited
      with pity and reverence the vacant space of the eternal city.
      Resolved to maintain a station so conspicuous in the eyes of
      mankind, he summoned the greatest part of his troops to the
      standard which he erected on the Capitol: the old inhabitants
      were recalled by the love of their country and the hopes of food;
      and the keys of Rome were sent a second time to the emperor
      Justinian. The walls, as far as they had been demolished by the
      Goths, were repaired with rude and dissimilar materials; the
      ditch was restored; iron spikes 17 were profusely scattered in
      the highways to annoy the feet of the horses; and as new gates
      could not suddenly be procured, the entrance was guarded by a
      Spartan rampart of his bravest soldiers. At the expiration of
      twenty-five days, Totila returned by hasty marches from Apulia to
      avenge the injury and disgrace. Belisarius expected his approach.
      The Goths were thrice repulsed in three general assaults; they
      lost the flower of their troops; the royal standard had almost
      fallen into the hands of the enemy, and the fame of Totila sunk,
      as it had risen, with the fortune of his arms. Whatever skill and
      courage could achieve, had been performed by the Roman general:
      it remained only that Justinian should terminate, by a strong and
      seasonable effort, the war which he had ambitiously undertaken.
      The indolence, perhaps the impotence, of a prince who despised
      his enemies, and envied his servants, protracted the calamities
      of Italy. After a long silence, Belisarius was commanded to leave
      a sufficient garrison at Rome, and to transport himself into the
      province of Lucania, whose inhabitants, inflamed by Catholic
      zeal, had cast away the yoke of their Arian conquerors. In this
      ignoble warfare, the hero, invincible against the power of the
      Barbarians, was basely vanquished by the delay, the disobedience,
      and the cowardice of his own officers. He reposed in his winter
      quarters of Crotona, in the full assurance, that the two passes
      of the Lucanian hills were guarded by his cavalry. They were
      betrayed by treachery or weakness; and the rapid march of the
      Goths scarcely allowed time for the escape of Belisarius to the
      coast of Sicily. At length a fleet and army were assembled for
      the relief of Ruscianum, or Rossano, 18 a fortress sixty furlongs
      from the ruins of Sybaris, where the nobles of Lucania had taken
      refuge. In the first attempt, the Roman forces were dissipated by
      a storm. In the second, they approached the shore; but they saw
      the hills covered with archers, the landing-place defended by a
      line of spears, and the king of the Goths impatient for battle.
      The conqueror of Italy retired with a sigh, and continued to
      languish, inglorious and inactive, till Antonina, who had been
      sent to Constantinople to solicit succors, obtained, after the
      death of the empress, the permission of his return.

      17 (return) [ The tribuli are small engines with four spikes, one
      fixed in the ground, the three others erect or adverse,
      (Procopius, Gothic. l. iii. c. 24. Just. Lipsius, Poliorcetwv, l.
      v. c. 3.) The metaphor was borrowed from the tribuli,
      (land-caltrops,) an herb with a prickly fruit, commex in Italy.
      (Martin, ad Virgil. Georgic. i. 153 vol. ii. p. 33.)]

      18 (return) [ Ruscia, the navale Thuriorum, was transferred to
      the distance of sixty stadia to Ruscianum, Rossano, an
      archbishopric without suffragans. The republic of Sybaris is now
      the estate of the duke of Corigliano. (Riedesel, Travels into
      Magna Graecia and Sicily, p. 166—171.)]


      The five last campaigns of Belisarius might abate the envy of his
      competitors, whose eyes had been dazzled and wounded by the blaze
      of his former glory. Instead of delivering Italy from the Goths,
      he had wandered like a fugitive along the coast, without daring
      to march into the country, or to accept the bold and repeated
      challenge of Totila. Yet, in the judgment of the few who could
      discriminate counsels from events, and compare the instruments
      with the execution, he appeared a more consummate master of the
      art of war, than in the season of his prosperity, when he
      presented two captive kings before the throne of Justinian. The
      valor of Belisarius was not chilled by age: his prudence was
      matured by experience; but the moral virtues of humanity and
      justice seem to have yielded to the hard necessity of the times.
      The parsimony or poverty of the emperor compelled him to deviate
      from the rule of conduct which had deserved the love and
      confidence of the Italians. The war was maintained by the
      oppression of Ravenna, Sicily, and all the faithful subjects of
      the empire; and the rigorous prosecution of Herodian provoked
      that injured or guilty officer to deliver Spoleto into the hands
      of the enemy. The avarice of Antonina, which had been some times
      diverted by love, now reigned without a rival in her breast.
      Belisarius himself had always understood, that riches, in a
      corrupt age, are the support and ornament of personal merit. And
      it cannot be presumed that he should stain his honor for the
      public service, without applying a part of the spoil to his
      private emolument. The hero had escaped the sword of the
      Barbarians. But the dagger of conspiracy 19 awaited his return.
      In the midst of wealth and honors, Artaban, who had chastised the
      African tyrant, complained of the ingratitude of courts. He
      aspired to Praejecta, the emperor’s niece, who wished to reward
      her deliverer; but the impediment of his previous marriage was
      asserted by the piety of Theodora. The pride of royal descent was
      irritated by flattery; and the service in which he gloried had
      proved him capable of bold and sanguinary deeds. The death of
      Justinian was resolved, but the conspirators delayed the
      execution till they could surprise Belisarius disarmed, and
      naked, in the palace of Constantinople. Not a hope could be
      entertained of shaking his long-tried fidelity; and they justly
      dreaded the revenge, or rather the justice, of the veteran
      general, who might speedily assemble an army in Thrace to punish
      the assassins, and perhaps to enjoy the fruits of their crime.
      Delay afforded time for rash communications and honest
      confessions: Artaban and his accomplices were condemned by the
      senate, but the extreme clemency of Justinian detained them in
      the gentle confinement of the palace, till he pardoned their
      flagitious attempt against his throne and life. If the emperor
      forgave his enemies, he must cordially embrace a friend whose
      victories were alone remembered, and who was endeared to his
      prince by the recent circumstances of their common danger.
      Belisarius reposed from his toils, in the high station of general
      of the East and count of the domestics; and the older consuls and
      patricians respectfully yielded the precedency of rank to the
      peerless merit of the first of the Romans. 20 The first of the
      Romans still submitted to be the slave of his wife; but the
      servitude of habit and affection became less disgraceful when the
      death of Theodora had removed the baser influence of fear.
      Joannina, their daughter, and the sole heiress of their fortunes,
      was betrothed to Anastasius, the grandson, or rather the nephew,
      of the empress, 21 whose kind interposition forwarded the
      consummation of their youthful loves. But the power of Theodora
      expired, the parents of Joannina returned, and her honor, perhaps
      her happiness, were sacrificed to the revenge of an unfeeling
      mother, who dissolved the imperfect nuptials before they had been
      ratified by the ceremonies of the church. 22

      19 (return) [ This conspiracy is related by Procopius (Gothic. l.
      iii. c. 31, 32) with such freedom and candor, that the liberty of
      the Anecdotes gives him nothing to add.]

      20 (return) [ The honors of Belisarius are gladly commemorated by
      his secretary, (Procop. Goth. l. iii. c. 35, l. iv. c. 21.) This
      title is ill translated, at least in this instance, by præfectus
      praetorio; and to a military character, magister militum is more
      proper and applicable, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. p. 1458, 1459.)]

      21 (return) [ Alemannus, (ad Hist. Arcanum, p. 68,) Ducange,
      (Familiae Byzant. p. 98,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris Civilis,
      p. 434,) all three represent Anastasius as the son of the
      daughter of Theodora; and their opinion firmly reposes on the
      unambiguous testimony of Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 4, 5,—twice
      repeated.) And yet I will remark, 1. That in the year 547,
      Theodora could sarcely have a grandson of the age of puberty; 2.
      That we are totally ignorant of this daughter and her husband;
      and, 3. That Theodora concealed her bastards, and that her
      grandson by Justinian would have been heir apparent of the
      empire.]

      22 (return) [ The sins of the hero in Italy and after his return,
      are manifested, and most probably swelled, by the author of the
      Anecdotes, (c. 4, 5.) The designs of Antonina were favored by the
      fluctuating jurisprudence of Justinian. On the law of marriage
      and divorce, that emperor was trocho versatilior, (Heineccius,
      Element Juris Civil. ad Ordinem Pandect. P. iv. No. 233.)]


      Before the departure of Belisarius, Perusia was besieged, and few
      cities were impregnable to the Gothic arms. Ravenna, Ancona, and
      Crotona, still resisted the Barbarians; and when Totila asked in
      marriage one of the daughters of France, he was stung by the just
      reproach that the king of Italy was unworthy of his title till it
      was acknowledged by the Roman people. Three thousand of the
      bravest soldiers had been left to defend the capital. On the
      suspicion of a monopoly, they massacred the governor, and
      announced to Justinian, by a deputation of the clergy, that
      unless their offence was pardoned, and their arrears were
      satisfied, they should instantly accept the tempting offers of
      Totila. But the officer who succeeded to the command (his name
      was Diogenes) deserved their esteem and confidence; and the
      Goths, instead of finding an easy conquest, encountered a
      vigorous resistance from the soldiers and people, who patiently
      endured the loss of the port and of all maritime supplies. The
      siege of Rome would perhaps have been raised, if the liberality
      of Totila to the Isaurians had not encouraged some of their venal
      countrymen to copy the example of treason. In a dark night, while
      the Gothic trumpets sounded on another side, they silently opened
      the gate of St. Paul: the Barbarians rushed into the city; and
      the flying garrison was intercepted before they could reach the
      harbor of Centumcellae. A soldier trained in the school of
      Belisarius, Paul of Cilicia, retired with four hundred men to the
      mole of Hadrian. They repelled the Goths; but they felt the
      approach of famine; and their aversion to the taste of
      horse-flesh confirmed their resolution to risk the event of a
      desperate and decisive sally. But their spirit insensibly stooped
      to the offers of capitulation; they retrieved their arrears of
      pay, and preserved their arms and horses, by enlisting in the
      service of Totila; their chiefs, who pleaded a laudable
      attachment to their wives and children in the East, were
      dismissed with honor; and above four hundred enemies, who had
      taken refuge in the sanctuaries, were saved by the clemency of
      the victor. He no longer entertained a wish of destroying the
      edifices of Rome, 23 which he now respected as the seat of the
      Gothic kingdom: the senate and people were restored to their
      country; the means of subsistence were liberally provided; and
      Totila, in the robe of peace, exhibited the equestrian games of
      the circus. Whilst he amused the eyes of the multitude, four
      hundred vessels were prepared for the embarkation of his troops.
      The cities of Rhegium and Tarentum were reduced: he passed into
      Sicily, the object of his implacable resentment; and the island
      was stripped of its gold and silver, of the fruits of the earth,
      and of an infinite number of horses, sheep, and oxen. Sardinia
      and Corsica obeyed the fortune of Italy; and the sea-coast of
      Greece was visited by a fleet of three hundred galleys. 24 The
      Goths were landed in Corcyra and the ancient continent of Epirus;
      they advanced as far as Nicopolis, the trophy of Augustus, and
      Dodona, 25 once famous by the oracle of Jove. In every step of
      his victories, the wise Barbarian repeated to Justinian the
      desire of peace, applauded the concord of their predecessors, and
      offered to employ the Gothic arms in the service of the empire.

      23 (return) [ The Romans were still attached to the monuments of
      their ancestors; and according to Procopius, (Goth. l. iv. c.
      22,) the gallery of Aeneas, of a single rank of oars, 25 feet in
      breadth, 120 in length, was preserved entire in the navalia, near
      Monte Testaceo, at the foot of the Aventine, (Nardini, Roma
      Antica, l. vii. c. 9, p. 466. Donatus, Rom Antiqua, l. iv. c. 13,
      p. 334) But all antiquity is ignorant of relic.]

      24 (return) [ In these seas Procopius searched without success
      for the Isle of Calypso. He was shown, at Phaeacia, or Cocyra,
      the petrified ship of Ulysses, (Odyss. xiii. 163;) but he found
      it a recent fabric of many stones, dedicated by a merchant to
      Jupiter Cassius, (l. iv. c. 22.) Eustathius had supposed it to be
      the fanciful likeness of a rock.]

      25 (return) [ M. D’Anville (Memoires de l’Acad. tom. xxxii. p.
      513—528) illustrates the Gulf of Ambracia; but he cannot
      ascertain the situation of Dodona. A country in sight of Italy is
      less known than the wilds of America. Note: On the site of Dodona
      compare Walpole’s Travels in the East, vol. ii. p. 473; Col.
      Leake’s Northern Greece, vol. iv. p. 163; and a dissertation by
      the present bishop of Lichfield (Dr. Butler) in the appendix to
      Hughes’s Travels, vol. i. p. 511.—M.]


      Justinian was deaf to the voice of peace: but he neglected the
      prosecution of war; and the indolence of his temper disappointed,
      in some degree, the obstinacy of his passions. From this salutary
      slumber the emperor was awakened by the pope Vigilius and the
      patrician Cethegus, who appeared before his throne, and adjured
      him, in the name of God and the people, to resume the conquest
      and deliverance of Italy. In the choice of the generals, caprice,
      as well as judgment, was shown. A fleet and army sailed for the
      relief of Sicily, under the conduct of Liberius; but his youth
      2511 and want of experience were afterwards discovered, and
      before he touched the shores of the island he was overtaken by
      his successor. In the place of Liberius, the conspirator Artaban
      was raised from a prison to military honors; in the pious
      presumption, that gratitude would animate his valor and fortify
      his allegiance. Belisarius reposed in the shade of his laurels,
      but the command of the principal army was reserved for Germanus,
      26 the emperor’s nephew, whose rank and merit had been long
      depressed by the jealousy of the court. Theodora had injured him
      in the rights of a private citizen, the marriage of his children,
      and the testament of his brother; and although his conduct was
      pure and blameless, Justinian was displeased that he should be
      thought worthy of the confidence of the malcontents. The life of
      Germanus was a lesson of implicit obedience: he nobly refused to
      prostitute his name and character in the factions of the circus:
      the gravity of his manners was tempered by innocent cheerfulness;
      and his riches were lent without interest to indigent or
      deserving friends. His valor had formerly triumphed over the
      Sclavonians of the Danube and the rebels of Africa: the first
      report of his promotion revived the hopes of the Italians; and he
      was privately assured, that a crowd of Roman deserters would
      abandon, on his approach, the standard of Totila. His second
      marriage with Malasontha, the granddaughter of Theodoric endeared
      Germanus to the Goths themselves; and they marched with
      reluctance against the father of a royal infant the last
      offspring of the line of Amali. 27 A splendid allowance was
      assigned by the emperor: the general contributed his private
      fortune: his two sons were popular and active and he surpassed,
      in the promptitude and success of his levies the expectation of
      mankind. He was permitted to select some squadrons of Thracian
      cavalry: the veterans, as well as the youth of Constantinople and
      Europe, engaged their voluntary service; and as far as the heart
      of Germany, his fame and liberality attracted the aid of the
      Barbarians. 2711 The Romans advanced to Sardica; an army of
      Sclavonians fled before their march; but within two days of their
      final departure, the designs of Germanus were terminated by his
      malady and death. Yet the impulse which he had given to the
      Italian war still continued to act with energy and effect. The
      maritime towns Ancona, Crotona, Centumcellae, resisted the
      assaults of Totila. Sicily was reduced by the zeal of Artaban,
      and the Gothic navy was defeated near the coast of the Adriatic.
      The two fleets were almost equal, forty-seven to fifty galleys:
      the victory was decided by the knowledge and dexterity of the
      Greeks; but the ships were so closely grappled, that only twelve
      of the Goths escaped from this unfortunate conflict. They
      affected to depreciate an element in which they were unskilled;
      but their own experience confirmed the truth of a maxim, that the
      master of the sea will always acquire the dominion of the land.
      28

      2511 (return) [ This is a singular mistake. Gibbon must have
      hastily caught at his inexperience, and concluded that it must
      have been from youth. Lord Mahon has pointed out this error, p.
      401. I should add that in the last 4to. edition, corrected by
      Gibbon, it stands “want of youth and experience;”—but Gibbon can
      scarcely have intended such a phrase.—M.]

      26 (return) [ See the acts of Germanus in the public (Vandal. l.
      ii, c. 16, 17, 18 Goth. l. iii. c. 31, 32) and private history,
      (Anecdot. c. 5,) and those of his son Justin, in Agathias, (l.
      iv. p. 130, 131.) Notwithstanding an ambiguous expression of
      Jornandes, fratri suo, Alemannus has proved that he was the son
      of the emperor’s brother.]

      27 (return) [ Conjuncta Aniciorum gens cum Amala stirpe spem
      adhuc utii usque generis promittit, (Jornandes, c. 60, p. 703.)
      He wrote at Ravenna before the death of Totila]

      2711 (return) [ See note 31, p. 268.—M.]

      28 (return) [ The third book of Procopius is terminated by the
      death of Germanus, (Add. l. iv. c. 23, 24, 25, 26.)]


      After the loss of Germanus, the nations were provoked to smile,
      by the strange intelligence, that the command of the Roman armies
      was given to a eunuch. But the eunuch Narses 29 is ranked among
      the few who have rescued that unhappy name from the contempt and
      hatred of mankind. A feeble, diminutive body concealed the soul
      of a statesman and a warrior. His youth had been employed in the
      management of the loom and distaff, in the cares of the
      household, and the service of female luxury; but while his hands
      were busy, he secretly exercised the faculties of a vigorous and
      discerning mind. A stranger to the schools and the camp, he
      studied in the palace to dissemble, to flatter, and to persuade;
      and as soon as he approached the person of the emperor, Justinian
      listened with surprise and pleasure to the manly counsels of his
      chamberlain and private treasurer. 30 The talents of Narses were
      tried and improved in frequent embassies: he led an army into
      Italy, acquired a practical knowledge of the war and the country,
      and presumed to strive with the genius of Belisarius. Twelve
      years after his return, the eunuch was chosen to achieve the
      conquest which had been left imperfect by the first of the Roman
      generals. Instead of being dazzled by vanity or emulation, he
      seriously declared that, unless he were armed with an adequate
      force, he would never consent to risk his own glory and that of
      his sovereign. Justinian granted to the favorite what he might
      have denied to the hero: the Gothic war was rekindled from its
      ashes, and the preparations were not unworthy of the ancient
      majesty of the empire. The key of the public treasure was put
      into his hand, to collect magazines, to levy soldiers, to
      purchase arms and horses, to discharge the arrears of pay, and to
      tempt the fidelity of the fugitives and deserters. The troops of
      Germanus were still in arms; they halted at Salona in the
      expectation of a new leader; and legions of subjects and allies
      were created by the well-known liberality of the eunuch Narses.
      The king of the Lombards 31 satisfied or surpassed the
      obligations of a treaty, by lending two thousand two hundred of
      his bravest warriors, 3111 who were followed by three thousand of
      their martial attendants. Three thousand Heruli fought on
      horseback under Philemuth, their native chief; and the noble
      Aratus, who adopted the manners and discipline of Rome, conducted
      a band of veterans of the same nation. Dagistheus was released
      from prison to command the Huns; and Kobad, the grandson and
      nephew of the great king, was conspicuous by the regal tiara at
      the head of his faithful Persians, who had devoted themselves to
      the fortunes of their prince. 32 Absolute in the exercise of his
      authority, more absolute in the affection of his troops, Narses
      led a numerous and gallant army from Philippopolis to Salona,
      from whence he coasted the eastern side of the Adriatic as far as
      the confines of Italy. His progress was checked. The East could
      not supply vessels capable of transporting such multitudes of men
      and horses. The Franks, who, in the general confusion, had
      usurped the greater part of the Venetian province, refused a free
      passage to the friends of the Lombards. The station of Verona was
      occupied by Teias, with the flower of the Gothic forces; and that
      skilful commander had overspread the adjacent country with the
      fall of woods and the inundation of waters. 33 In this
      perplexity, an officer of experience proposed a measure, secure
      by the appearance of rashness; that the Roman army should
      cautiously advance along the seashore, while the fleet preceded
      their march, and successively cast a bridge of boats over the
      mouths of the rivers, the Timavus, the Brenta, the Adige, and the
      Po, that fall into the Adriatic to the north of Ravenna. Nine
      days he reposed in the city, collected the fragments of the
      Italian army, and marching towards Rimini to meet the defiance of
      an insulting enemy.

      29 (return) [ Procopius relates the whole series of this second
      Gothic war and the victory of Narses, (l. iv. c. 21, 26—35.) A
      splendid scene. Among the six subjects of epic poetry which Tasso
      revolved in his mind, he hesitated between the conquests of Italy
      by Belisarius and by Narses, (Hayley’s Works, vol. iv. p. 70.)]

      30 (return) [ The country of Narses is unknown, since he must not
      be confounded with the Persarmenian. Procopius styles him (see
      Goth. l. ii. c. 13); Paul Warnefrid, (l. ii. c. 3, p. 776,)
      Chartularius: Marcellinus adds the name of Cubicularius. In an
      inscription on the Salarian bridge he is entitled Ex-consul,
      Ex-praepositus, Cubiculi Patricius, (Mascou, Hist. of the
      Germans, (l. xiii. c. 25.) The law of Theodosius against ennuchs
      was obsolete or abolished, Annotation xx.,) but the foolish
      prophecy of the Romans subsisted in full vigor, (Procop. l. iv.
      c. 21.) * Note: Lord Mahon supposes them both to have been
      Persarmenians. Note, p. 256.—M.]

      31 (return) [ Paul Warnefrid, the Lombard, records with
      complacency the succor, service, and honorable dismission of his
      countrymen—reipublicae Romanae adversus aemulos adjutores
      fuerant, (l. ii. c. i. p. 774, edit. Grot.) I am surprised that
      Alboin, their martial king, did not lead his subjects in person.
      * Note: The Lombards were still at war with the Gepidae. See
      Procop. Goth. lib. iv. p. 25.—M.]

      3111 (return) [ Gibbon has blindly followed the translation of
      Maltretus: Bis mille ducentos—while the original Greek says
      expressly something else, (Goth. lib. iv. c. 26.) In like manner,
      (p. 266,) he draws volunteers from Germany, on the authority of
      Cousin, who, in one place, has mistaken Germanus for Germania.
      Yet only a few pages further we find Gibbon loudly condemning the
      French and Latin readers of Procopius. Lord Mahon, p. 403. The
      first of these errors remains uncorrected in the new edition of
      the Byzantines.—M.]

      32 (return) [ He was, if not an impostor, the son of the blind
      Zames, saved by compassion, and educated in the Byzantine court
      by the various motives of policy, pride, and generosity, (Procop.
      Persic. l. i. c. 23.)]

      33 (return) [ In the time of Augustus, and in the middle ages,
      the whole waste from Aquileia to Ravenna was covered with woods,
      lakes, and morasses. Man has subdued nature, and the land has
      been cultivated since the waters are confined and embanked. See
      the learned researches of Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii
      Aevi. tom. i. dissert xxi. p. 253, 254,) from Vitruvius, Strabo,
      Herodian, old charters, and local knowledge.]




Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part III.


      The prudence of Narses impelled him to speedy and decisive
      action. His powers were the last effort of the state; the cost of
      each day accumulated the enormous account; and the nations,
      untrained to discipline or fatigue, might be rashly provoked to
      turn their arms against each other, or against their benefactor.
      The same considerations might have tempered the ardor of Totila.
      But he was conscious that the clergy and people of Italy aspired
      to a second revolution: he felt or suspected the rapid progress
      of treason; and he resolved to risk the Gothic kingdom on the
      chance of a day, in which the valiant would be animated by
      instant danger and the disaffected might be awed by mutual
      ignorance. In his march from Ravenna, the Roman general chastised
      the garrison of Rimini, traversed in a direct line the hills of
      Urbino, and reentered the Flaminian way, nine miles beyond the
      perforated rock, an obstacle of art and nature which might have
      stopped or retarded his progress. 34 The Goths were assembled in
      the neighborhood of Rome, they advanced without delay to seek a
      superior enemy, and the two armies approached each other at the
      distance of one hundred furlongs, between Tagina 35 and the
      sepulchres of the Gauls. 36 The haughty message of Narses was an
      offer, not of peace, but of pardon. The answer of the Gothic king
      declared his resolution to die or conquer. “What day,” said the
      messenger, “will you fix for the combat?” “The eighth day,”
      replied Totila; but early the next morning he attempted to
      surprise a foe, suspicious of deceit, and prepared for battle.
      Ten thousand Heruli and Lombards, of approved valor and doubtful
      faith, were placed in the centre. Each of the wings was composed
      of eight thousand Romans; the right was guarded by the cavalry of
      the Huns, the left was covered by fifteen hundred chosen horse,
      destined, according to the emergencies of action, to sustain the
      retreat of their friends, or to encompass the flank of the enemy.
      From his proper station at the head of the right wing, the eunuch
      rode along the line, expressing by his voice and countenance the
      assurance of victory; exciting the soldiers of the emperor to
      punish the guilt and madness of a band of robbers; and exposing
      to their view gold chains, collars, and bracelets, the rewards of
      military virtue. From the event of a single combat they drew an
      omen of success; and they beheld with pleasure the courage of
      fifty archers, who maintained a small eminence against three
      successive attacks of the Gothic cavalry. At the distance only of
      two bow-shots, the armies spent the morning in dreadful suspense,
      and the Romans tasted some necessary food, without unloosing the
      cuirass from their breast, or the bridle from their horses.
      Narses awaited the charge; and it was delayed by Totila till he
      had received his last succors of two thousand Goths. While he
      consumed the hours in fruitless treaty, the king exhibited in a
      narrow space the strength and agility of a warrior. His armor was
      enchased with gold; his purple banner floated with the wind: he
      cast his lance into the air; caught it with the right hand;
      shifted it to the left; threw himself backwards; recovered his
      seat; and managed a fiery steed in all the paces and evolutions
      of the equestrian school. As soon as the succors had arrived, he
      retired to his tent, assumed the dress and arms of a private
      soldier, and gave the signal of a battle. The first line of
      cavalry advanced with more courage than discretion, and left
      behind them the infantry of the second line. They were soon
      engaged between the horns of a crescent, into which the adverse
      wings had been insensibly curved, and were saluted from either
      side by the volleys of four thousand archers. Their ardor, and
      even their distress, drove them forwards to a close and unequal
      conflict, in which they could only use their lances against an
      enemy equally skilled in all the instruments of war. A generous
      emulation inspired the Romans and their Barbarian allies; and
      Narses, who calmly viewed and directed their efforts, doubted to
      whom he should adjudge the prize of superior bravery. The Gothic
      cavalry was astonished and disordered, pressed and broken; and
      the line of infantry, instead of presenting their spears, or
      opening their intervals, were trampled under the feet of the
      flying horse. Six thousand of the Goths were slaughtered without
      mercy in the field of Tagina. Their prince, with five attendants,
      was overtaken by Asbad, of the race of the Gepidae. “Spare the
      king of Italy,” 3611 cried a loyal voice, and Asbad struck his
      lance through the body of Totila. The blow was instantly revenged
      by the faithful Goths: they transported their dying monarch seven
      miles beyond the scene of his disgrace; and his last moments were
      not imbittered by the presence of an enemy. Compassion afforded
      him the shelter of an obscure tomb; but the Romans were not
      satisfied of their victory, till they beheld the corpse of the
      Gothic king. His hat, enriched with gems, and his bloody robe,
      were presented to Justinian by the messengers of triumph. 37

      34 (return) [ The Flaminian way, as it is corrected from the
      Itineraries, and the best modern maps, by D’Anville, (Analyse de
      l’Italie, p. 147—162,) may be thus stated: Rome to Narni, 51
      Roman miles; Terni, 57; Spoleto, 75; Foligno, 88; Nocera, 103;
      Cagli, 142; Intercisa, 157; Fossombrone, 160; Fano, 176; Pesaro,
      184; Rimini, 208—about 189 English miles. He takes no notice of
      the death of Totila; but West selling (Itinerar. p. 614)
      exchanges, for the field of Taginas, the unknown appellation of
      Ptanias, eight miles from Nocera.]

      35 (return) [ Taginae, or rather Tadinae, is mentioned by Pliny;
      but the bishopric of that obscure town, a mile from Gualdo, in
      the plain, was united, in the year 1007, with that of Nocera. The
      signs of antiquity are preserved in the local appellations,
      Fossato, the camp; Capraia, Caprea; Bastia, Busta Gallorum. See
      Cluverius, (Italia Antiqua, l. ii. c. 6, p. 615, 616, 617,) Lucas
      Holstenius, (Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 85, 86,) Guazzesi,
      (Dissertat. p. 177—217, a professed inquiry,) and the maps of the
      ecclesiastical state and the march of Ancona, by Le Maire and
      Magini.]

      36 (return) [ The battle was fought in the year of Rome 458; and
      the consul Decius, by devoting his own life, assured the triumph
      of his country and his colleague Fabius, (T. Liv. x. 28, 29.)
      Procopius ascribes to Camillus the victory of the Busta Gallorum;
      and his error is branded by Cluverius with the national reproach
      of Graecorum nugamenta.]

      3611 (return) [ “Dog, wilt thou strike thy Lord?” was the more
      characteristic exclamation of the Gothic youth. Procop. lib. iv.
      p. 32.—M.]

      37 (return) [ Theophanes, Chron. p. 193. Hist. Miscell. l. xvi.
      p. 108.]


      As soon as Narses had paid his devotions to the Author of
      victory, and the blessed Virgin, his peculiar patroness, 38 he
      praised, rewarded, and dismissed the Lombards. The villages had
      been reduced to ashes by these valiant savages; they ravished
      matrons and virgins on the altar; their retreat was diligently
      watched by a strong detachment of regular forces, who prevented a
      repetition of the like disorders. The victorious eunuch pursued
      his march through Tuscany, accepted the submission of the Goths,
      heard the acclamations, and often the complaints, of the
      Italians, and encompassed the walls of Rome with the remainder of
      his formidable host. Round the wide circumference, Narses
      assigned to himself, and to each of his lieutenants, a real or a
      feigned attack, while he silently marked the place of easy and
      unguarded entrance. Neither the fortifications of Hadrian’s mole,
      nor of the port, could long delay the progress of the conqueror;
      and Justinian once more received the keys of Rome, which, under
      his reign, had been five times taken and recovered. 39 But the
      deliverance of Rome was the last calamity of the Roman people.
      The Barbarian allies of Narses too frequently confounded the
      privileges of peace and war. The despair of the flying Goths
      found some consolation in sanguinary revenge; and three hundred
      youths of the noblest families, who had been sent as hostages
      beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the successor of Totila.
      The fate of the senate suggests an awful lesson of the
      vicissitude of human affairs. Of the senators whom Totila had
      banished from their country, some were rescued by an officer of
      Belisarius, and transported from Campania to Sicily; while others
      were too guilty to confide in the clemency of Justinian, or too
      poor to provide horses for their escape to the sea-shore. Their
      brethren languished five years in a state of indigence and exile:
      the victory of Narses revived their hopes; but their premature
      return to the metropolis was prevented by the furious Goths; and
      all the fortresses of Campania were stained with patrician 40
      blood. After a period of thirteen centuries, the institution of
      Romulus expired; and if the nobles of Rome still assumed the
      title of senators, few subsequent traces can be discovered of a
      public council, or constitutional order. Ascend six hundred
      years, and contemplate the kings of the earth soliciting an
      audience, as the slaves or freedmen of the Roman senate! 41

      38 (return) [ Evagrius, l. iv. c. 24. The inspiration of the
      Virgin revealed to Narses the day, and the word, of battle, (Paul
      Diacon. l. ii. c. 3, p. 776)]

      39 (return) [ (Procop. Goth. lib. iv. p. 33.) In the year 536 by
      Belisarius, in 546 by Totila, in 547 by Belisarius, in 549 by
      Totila, and in 552 by Narses. Maltretus had inadvertently
      translated sextum; a mistake which he afterwards retracts; out
      the mischief was done; and Cousin, with a train of French and
      Latin readers, have fallen into the snare.]

      40 (return) [ Compare two passages of Procopius, (l. iii. c. 26,
      l. iv. c. 24,) which, with some collateral hints from Marcellinus
      and Jornandes, illustrate the state of the expiring senate.]

      41 (return) [ See, in the example of Prusias, as it is delivered
      in the fragments of Polybius, (Excerpt. Legat. xcvii. p. 927,
      928,) a curious picture of a royal slave.]


      The Gothic war was yet alive. The bravest of the nation retired
      beyond the Po; and Teias was unanimously chosen to succeed and
      revenge their departed hero. The new king immediately sent
      ambassadors to implore, or rather to purchase, the aid of the
      Franks, and nobly lavished, for the public safety, the riches
      which had been deposited in the palace of Pavia. The residue of
      the royal treasure was guarded by his brother Aligern, at Cumaea,
      in Campania; but the strong castle which Totila had fortified was
      closely besieged by the arms of Narses. From the Alps to the foot
      of Mount Vesuvius, the Gothic king, by rapid and secret marches,
      advanced to the relief of his brother, eluded the vigilance of
      the Roman chiefs, and pitched his camp on the banks of the Sarnus
      or Draco, 42 which flows from Nuceria into the Bay of Naples. The
      river separated the two armies: sixty days were consumed in
      distant and fruitless combats, and Teias maintained this
      important post till he was deserted by his fleet and the hope of
      subsistence. With reluctant steps he ascended the Lactarian
      mount, where the physicians of Rome, since the time of Galen, had
      sent their patients for the benefit of the air and the milk. 43
      But the Goths soon embraced a more generous resolution: to
      descend the hill, to dismiss their horses, and to die in arms,
      and in the possession of freedom. The king marched at their head,
      bearing in his right hand a lance, and an ample buckler in his
      left: with the one he struck dead the foremost of the assailants;
      with the other he received the weapons which every hand was
      ambitious to aim against his life. After a combat of many hours,
      his left arm was fatigued by the weight of twelve javelins which
      hung from his shield. Without moving from his ground, or
      suspending his blows, the hero called aloud on his attendants for
      a fresh buckler; but in the moment while his side was uncovered,
      it was pierced by a mortal dart. He fell; and his head, exalted
      on a spear, proclaimed to the nations that the Gothic kingdom was
      no more. But the example of his death served only to animate the
      companions who had sworn to perish with their leader. They fought
      till darkness descended on the earth. They reposed on their arms.
      The combat was renewed with the return of light, and maintained
      with unabated vigor till the evening of the second day. The
      repose of a second night, the want of water, and the loss of
      their bravest champions, determined the surviving Goths to accept
      the fair capitulation which the prudence of Narses was inclined
      to propose. They embraced the alternative of residing in Italy,
      as the subjects and soldiers of Justinian, or departing with a
      portion of their private wealth, in search of some independent
      country. 44 Yet the oath of fidelity or exile was alike rejected
      by one thousand Goths, who broke away before the treaty was
      signed, and boldly effected their retreat to the walls of Pavia.
      The spirit, as well as the situation, of Aligern prompted him to
      imitate rather than to bewail his brother: a strong and dexterous
      archer, he transpierced with a single arrow the armor and breast
      of his antagonist; and his military conduct defended Cumae 45
      above a year against the forces of the Romans.


      Their industry had scooped the Sibyl’s cave 46 into a prodigious
      mine; combustible materials were introduced to consume the
      temporary props: the wall and the gate of Cumae sunk into the
      cavern, but the ruins formed a deep and inaccessible precipice.
      On the fragment of a rock Aligern stood alone and unshaken, till
      he calmly surveyed the hopeless condition of his country, and
      judged it more honorable to be the friend of Narses, than the
      slave of the Franks. After the death of Teias, the Roman general
      separated his troops to reduce the cities of Italy; Lucca
      sustained a long and vigorous siege: and such was the humanity or
      the prudence of Narses, that the repeated perfidy of the
      inhabitants could not provoke him to exact the forfeit lives of
      their hostages. These hostages were dismissed in safety; and
      their grateful zeal at length subdued the obstinacy of their
      countrymen. 47

      42 (return) [ The item of Procopius (Goth. l. iv. c. 35) is
      evidently the Sarnus. The text is accused or altered by the rash
      violence of Cluverius (l. iv. c. 3. p. 1156:) but Camillo
      Pellegrini of Naples (Discorsi sopra la Campania Felice, p. 330,
      331) has proved from old records, that as early as the year 822
      that river was called the Dracontio, or Draconcello.]

      43 (return) [ Galen (de Method. Medendi, l. v. apud Cluver. l.
      iv. c. 3, p. 1159, 1160) describes the lofty site, pure air, and
      rich milk, of Mount Lactarius, whose medicinal benefits were
      equally known and sought in the time of Symmachus (l. vi. epist.
      18) and Cassiodorus, (Var. xi. 10.) Nothing is now left except
      the name of the town of Lettere.]

      44 (return) [ Buat (tom. xi. p. 2, &c.) conveys to his favorite
      Bavaria this remnant of Goths, who by others are buried in the
      mountains of Uri, or restored to their native isle of Gothland,
      (Mascou, Annot. xxi.)]

      45 (return) [ I leave Scaliger (Animadvers. in Euseb. p. 59) and
      Salmasius (Exercitat. Plinian. p. 51, 52) to quarrel about the
      origin of Cumae, the oldest of the Greek colonies in Italy,
      (Strab. l. v. p. 372, Velleius Paterculus, l. i. c. 4,) already
      vacant in Juvenal’s time, (Satir. iii.,) and now in ruins.]

      46 (return) [ Agathias (l. i. c. 21) settles the Sibyl’s cave
      under the wall of Cumae: he agrees with Servius, (ad. l. vi.
      Aeneid.;) nor can I perceive why their opinion should be rejected
      by Heyne, the excellent editor of Virgil, (tom. ii. p. 650, 651.)
      In urbe media secreta religio! But Cumae was not yet built; and
      the lines (l. vi. 96, 97) would become ridiculous, if Aeneas were
      actually in a Greek city.]

      47 (return) [ There is some difficulty in connecting the 35th
      chapter of the fourth book of the Gothic war of Procopius with
      the first book of the history of Agathias. We must now relinquish
      the statesman and soldier, to attend the footsteps of a poet and
      rhetorician, (l. i. p. 11, l. ii. p. 51, edit. Lonvre.)]


      Before Lucca had surrendered, Italy was overwhelmed by a new
      deluge of Barbarians. A feeble youth, the grandson of Clovis,
      reigned over the Austrasians or oriental Franks. The guardians of
      Theodebald entertained with coldness and reluctance the
      magnificent promises of the Gothic ambassadors. But the spirit of
      a martial people outstripped the timid counsels of the court: two
      brothers, Lothaire and Buccelin, 48 the dukes of the Alemanni,
      stood forth as the leaders of the Italian war; and seventy-five
      thousand Germans descended in the autumn from the Rhaetian Alps
      into the plain of Milan. The vanguard of the Roman army was
      stationed near the Po, under the conduct of Fulcaris, a bold
      Herulian, who rashly conceived that personal bravery was the sole
      duty and merit of a commander. As he marched without order or
      precaution along the Aemilian way, an ambuscade of Franks
      suddenly rose from the amphitheatre of Parma; his troops were
      surprised and routed; but their leader refused to fly; declaring
      to the last moment, that death was less terrible than the angry
      countenance of Narses. 4811 The death of Fulcaris, and the
      retreat of the surviving chiefs, decided the fluctuating and
      rebellious temper of the Goths; they flew to the standard of
      their deliverers, and admitted them into the cities which still
      resisted the arms of the Roman general. The conqueror of Italy
      opened a free passage to the irresistible torrent of Barbarians.
      They passed under the walls of Cesena, and answered by threats
      and reproaches the advice of Aligern, 4812 that the Gothic
      treasures could no longer repay the labor of an invasion. Two
      thousand Franks were destroyed by the skill and valor of Narses
      himself, who sailed from Rimini at the head of three hundred
      horse, to chastise the licentious rapine of their march. On the
      confines of Samnium the two brothers divided their forces. With
      the right wing, Buccelin assumed the spoil of Campania, Lucania,
      and Bruttium; with the left, Lothaire accepted the plunder of
      Apulia and Calabria. They followed the coast of the Mediterranean
      and the Adriatic, as far as Rhegium and Otranto, and the extreme
      lands of Italy were the term of their destructive progress. The
      Franks, who were Christians and Catholics, contented themselves
      with simple pillage and occasional murder. But the churches which
      their piety had spared, were stripped by the sacrilegious hands
      of the Alamanni, who sacrificed horses’ heads to their native
      deities of the woods and rivers; 49 they melted or profaned the
      consecrated vessels, and the ruins of shrines and altars were
      stained with the blood of the faithful. Buccelin was actuated by
      ambition, and Lothaire by avarice. The former aspired to restore
      the Gothic kingdom; the latter, after a promise to his brother of
      speedy succors, returned by the same road to deposit his treasure
      beyond the Alps. The strength of their armies was already wasted
      by the change of climate and contagion of disease: the Germans
      revelled in the vintage of Italy; and their own intemperance
      avenged, in some degree, the miseries of a defenceless people.
      4911

      48 (return) [ Among the fabulous exploits of Buccelin, he
      discomfited and slew Belisarius, subdued Italy and Sicily, &c.
      See in the Historians of France, Gregory of Tours, (tom. ii. l.
      iii. c. 32, p. 203,) and Aimoin, (tom. iii. l. ii. de Gestis
      Francorum, c. 23, p. 59.)]

      4811 (return) [.... Agathius.]

      4812 (return) [ Aligern, after the surrender of Cumae, had been
      sent to Cesent by Narses. Agathias.—M.]

      49 (return) [ Agathias notices their superstition in a
      philosophic tone, (l. i. p. 18.) At Zug, in Switzerland, idolatry
      still prevailed in the year 613: St. Columban and St. Gaul were
      the apostles of that rude country; and the latter founded a
      hermitage, which has swelled into an ecclesiastical principality
      and a populous city, the seat of freedom and commerce.]

      4911 (return) [ A body of Lothaire’s troops was defeated near
      Fano, some were driven down precipices into the sea, others fled
      to the camp; many prisoners seized the opportunity of making
      their escape; and the Barbarians lost most of their booty in
      their precipitate retreat. Agathias.—M.]


      At the entrance of the spring, the Imperial troops, who had
      guarded the cities, assembled, to the number of eighteen thousand
      men, in the neighborhood of Rome. Their winter hours had not been
      consumed in idleness. By the command, and after the example, of
      Narses, they repeated each day their military exercise on foot
      and on horseback, accustomed their ear to obey the sound of the
      trumpet, and practised the steps and evolutions of the Pyrrhic
      dance. From the Straits of Sicily, Buccelin, with thirty thousand
      Franks and Alamanni, slowly moved towards Capua, occupied with a
      wooden tower the bridge of Casilinum, covered his right by the
      stream of the Vulturnus, and secured the rest of his encampment
      by a rampart of sharp stakes, and a circle of wagons, whose
      wheels were buried in the earth. He impatiently expected the
      return of Lothaire; ignorant, alas! that his brother could never
      return, and that the chief and his army had been swept away by a
      strange disease 50 on the banks of the Lake Benacus, between
      Trent and Verona. The banners of Narses soon approached the
      Vulturnus, and the eyes of Italy were anxiously fixed on the
      event of this final contest. Perhaps the talents of the Roman
      general were most conspicuous in the calm operations which
      precede the tumult of a battle. His skilful movements intercepted
      the subsistence of the Barbarian, deprived him of the advantage
      of the bridge and river, and in the choice of the ground and
      moment of action reduced him to comply with the inclination of
      his enemy. On the morning of the important day, when the ranks
      were already formed, a servant, for some trivial fault, was
      killed by his master, one of the leaders of the Heruli. The
      justice or passion of Narses was awakened: he summoned the
      offender to his presence, and without listening to his excuses,
      gave the signal to the minister of death. If the cruel master had
      not infringed the laws of his nation, this arbitrary execution
      was not less unjust than it appears to have been imprudent. The
      Heruli felt the indignity; they halted: but the Roman general,
      without soothing their rage, or expecting their resolution,
      called aloud, as the trumpets sounded, that unless they hastened
      to occupy their place, they would lose the honor of the victory.
      His troops were disposed 51 in a long front, the cavalry on the
      wings; in the centre, the heavy-armed foot; the archers and
      slingers in the rear. The Germans advanced in a sharp-pointed
      column, of the form of a triangle or solid wedge. They pierced
      the feeble centre of Narses, who received them with a smile into
      the fatal snare, and directed his wings of cavalry insensibly to
      wheel on their flanks and encompass their rear. The host of the
      Franks and Alamanni consisted of infantry: a sword and buckler
      hung by their side; and they used, as their weapons of offence, a
      weighty hatchet and a hooked javelin, which were only formidable
      in close combat, or at a short distance. The flower of the Roman
      archers, on horseback, and in complete armor, skirmished without
      peril round this immovable phalanx; supplied by active speed the
      deficiency of number; and aimed their arrows against a crowd of
      Barbarians, who, instead of a cuirass and helmet, were covered by
      a loose garment of fur or linen. They paused, they trembled,
      their ranks were confounded, and in the decisive moment the
      Heruli, preferring glory to revenge, charged with rapid violence
      the head of the column. Their leader, Sinbal, and Aligern, the
      Gothic prince, deserved the prize of superior valor; and their
      example excited the victorious troops to achieve with swords and
      spears the destruction of the enemy. Buccelin, and the greatest
      part of his army, perished on the field of battle, in the waters
      of the Vulturnus, or by the hands of the enraged peasants: but it
      may seem incredible, that a victory, 52 which no more than five
      of the Alamanni survived, could be purchased with the loss of
      fourscore Romans. Seven thousand Goths, the relics of the war,
      defended the fortress of Campsa till the ensuing spring; and
      every messenger of Narses announced the reduction of the Italian
      cities, whose names were corrupted by the ignorance or vanity of
      the Greeks. 53 After the battle of Casilinum, Narses entered the
      capital; the arms and treasures of the Goths, the Franks, and the
      Alamanni, were displayed; his soldiers, with garlands in their
      hands, chanted the praises of the conqueror; and Rome, for the
      last time, beheld the semblance of a triumph.

      50 (return) [ See the death of Lothaire in Agathias (l. ii. p.
      38) and Paul Warnefrid, surnamed Diaconus, (l. ii. c. 3, 775.)
      The Greek makes him rave and tear his flesh. He had plundered
      churches.]

      51 (return) [ Pere Daniel (Hist. de la Milice Francoise, tom. i.
      p. 17—21) has exhibited a fanciful representation of this battle,
      somewhat in the manner of the Chevalier Folard, the once famous
      editor of Polybius, who fashioned to his own habits and opinions
      all the military operations of antiquity.]

      52 (return) [ Agathias (l. ii. p. 47) has produced a Greek
      epigram of six lines on this victory of Narses, which a favorably
      compared to the battles of Marathon and Plataea. The chief
      difference is indeed in their consequences—so trivial in the
      former instance—so permanent and glorious in the latter. Note:
      Not in the epigram, but in the previous observations—M.]

      53 (return) [ The Beroia and Brincas of Theophanes or his
      transcriber (p. 201) must be read or understood Verona and
      Brixia.]


      After a reign of sixty years, the throne of the Gothic kings was
      filled by the exarchs of Ravenna, the representatives in peace
      and war of the emperor of the Romans. Their jurisdiction was soon
      reduced to the limits of a narrow province: but Narses himself,
      the first and most powerful of the exarchs, administered above
      fifteen years the entire kingdom of Italy. Like Belisarius, he
      had deserved the honors of envy, calumny, and disgrace: but the
      favorite eunuch still enjoyed the confidence of Justinian; or the
      leader of a victorious army awed and repressed the ingratitude of
      a timid court. Yet it was not by weak and mischievous indulgence
      that Narses secured the attachment of his troops. Forgetful of
      the past, and regardless of the future, they abused the present
      hour of prosperity and peace. The cities of Italy resounded with
      the noise of drinking and dancing; the spoils of victory were
      wasted in sensual pleasures; and nothing (says Agathias) remained
      unless to exchange their shields and helmets for the soft lute
      and the capacious hogshead. 54 In a manly oration, not unworthy
      of a Roman censor, the eunuch reproved these disorderly vices,
      which sullied their fame, and endangered their safety. The
      soldiers blushed and obeyed; discipline was confirmed; the
      fortifications were restored; a duke was stationed for the
      defence and military command of each of the principal cities; 55
      and the eye of Narses pervaded the ample prospect from Calabria
      to the Alps. The remains of the Gothic nation evacuated the
      country, or mingled with the people; the Franks, instead of
      revenging the death of Buccelin, abandoned, without a struggle,
      their Italian conquests; and the rebellious Sinbal, chief of the
      Heruli, was subdued, taken and hung on a lofty gallows by the
      inflexible justice of the exarch. 56 The civil state of Italy,
      after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed by a pragmatic
      sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of the
      pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools
      and tribunals of the West; he ratified the acts of Theodoric and
      his immediate successors, but every deed was rescinded and
      abolished which force had extorted, or fear had subscribed, under
      the usurpation of Totila. A moderate theory was framed to
      reconcile the rights of property with the safety of prescription,
      the claims of the state with the poverty of the people, and the
      pardon of offences with the interest of virtue and order of
      society. Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was degraded to the
      second rank. Yet the senators were gratified by the permission of
      visiting their estates in Italy, and of approaching, without
      obstacle, the throne of Constantinople: the regulation of weights
      and measures was delegated to the pope and senate; and the
      salaries of lawyers and physicians, of orators and grammarians,
      were destined to preserve, or rekindle, the light of science in
      the ancient capital. Justinian might dictate benevolent edicts,
      57 and Narses might second his wishes by the restoration of
      cities, and more especially of churches. But the power of kings
      is most effectual to destroy; and the twenty years of the Gothic
      war had consummated the distress and depopulation of Italy. As
      early as the fourth campaign, under the discipline of Belisarius
      himself, fifty thousand laborers died of hunger 58 in the narrow
      region of Picenum; 59 and a strict interpretation of the evidence
      of Procopius would swell the loss of Italy above the total sum of
      her present inhabitants. 60

      54 (return) [ (Agathias, l. ii. p. 48.) In the first scene of
      Richard III. our English poet has beautifully enlarged on this
      idea, for which, however, he was not indebted to the Byzantine
      historian.]

      55 (return) [ Maffei has proved, (Verona Illustrata. P. i. l. x.
      p. 257, 289,) against the common opinion, that the dukes of Italy
      were instituted before the conquest of the Lombards, by Narses
      himself. In the Pragmatic Sanction, (No. 23,) Justinian restrains
      the judices militares.]

      56 (return) [ See Paulus Diaconus, liii. c. 2, p. 776. Menander
      in (Excerp Legat. p. 133) mentions some risings in Italy by the
      Franks, and Theophanes (p. 201) hints at some Gothic rebellions.]

      57 (return) [ The Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian, which restores
      and regulates the civil state of Italy, consists of xxvii.
      articles: it is dated August 15, A.D. 554; is addressed to
      Narses, V. J. Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi, and to Antiochus,
      Præfectus Praetorio Italiae; and has been preserved by Julian
      Antecessor, and in the Corpus Juris Civilis, after the novels and
      edicts of Justinian, Justin, and Tiberius.]

      58 (return) [ A still greater number was consumed by famine in
      the southern provinces, without the Ionian Gulf. Acorns were used
      in the place of bread. Procopius had seen a deserted orphan
      suckled by a she-goat. Seventeen passengers were lodged,
      murdered, and eaten, by two women, who were detected and slain by
      the eighteenth, &c. * Note: Denina considers that greater evil
      was inflicted upon Italy by the Urocian conquest than by any
      other invasion. Reveluz. d’ Italia, t. i. l. v. p. 247.—M.]

      59 (return) [ Quinta regio Piceni est; quondam uberrimae
      multitudinis, ccclx. millia Picentium in fidem P. R. venere,
      (Plin. Hist. Natur. iii. 18.) In the time of Vespasian, this
      ancient population was already diminished.]

      60 (return) [ Perhaps fifteen or sixteen millions. Procopius
      (Anecdot. c. 18) computes that Africa lost five millions, that
      Italy was thrice as extensive, and that the depopulation was in a
      larger proportion. But his reckoning is inflamed by passion, and
      clouded with uncertainty.]


      I desire to believe, but I dare not affirm, that Belisarius
      sincerely rejoiced in the triumph of Narses. Yet the
      consciousness of his own exploits might teach him to esteem
      without jealousy the merit of a rival; and the repose of the aged
      warrior was crowned by a last victory, which saved the emperor
      and the capital. The Barbarians, who annually visited the
      provinces of Europe, were less discouraged by some accidental
      defeats, than they were excited by the double hope of spoil and
      of subsidy. In the thirty-second winter of Justinian’s reign, the
      Danube was deeply frozen: Zabergan led the cavalry of the
      Bulgarians, and his standard was followed by a promiscuous
      multitude of Sclavonians. 6011 The savage chief passed, without
      opposition, the river and the mountains, spread his troops over
      Macedonia and Thrace, and advanced with no more than seven
      thousand horse to the long wall, which should have defended the
      territory of Constantinople. But the works of man are impotent
      against the assaults of nature: a recent earthquake had shaken
      the foundations of the wall; and the forces of the empire were
      employed on the distant frontiers of Italy, Africa, and Persia.
      The seven schools, 61 or companies of the guards or domestic
      troops, had been augmented to the number of five thousand five
      hundred men, whose ordinary station was in the peaceful cities of
      Asia. But the places of the brave Armenians were insensibly
      supplied by lazy citizens, who purchased an exemption from the
      duties of civil life, without being exposed to the dangers of
      military service. Of such soldiers, few could be tempted to sally
      from the gates; and none could be persuaded to remain in the
      field, unless they wanted strength and speed to escape from the
      Bulgarians. The report of the fugitives exaggerated the numbers
      and fierceness of an enemy, who had polluted holy virgins, and
      abandoned new-born infants to the dogs and vultures; a crowd of
      rustics, imploring food and protection, increased the
      consternation of the city, and the tents of Zabergan were pitched
      at the distance of twenty miles, 62 on the banks of a small
      river, which encircles Melanthias, and afterwards falls into the
      Propontis. 63 Justinian trembled: and those who had only seen the
      emperor in his old age, were pleased to suppose, that he had lost
      the alacrity and vigor of his youth. By his command the vessels
      of gold and silver were removed from the churches in the
      neighborhood, and even the suburbs, of Constantinople; the
      ramparts were lined with trembling spectators; the golden gate
      was crowded with useless generals and tribunes, and the senate
      shared the fatigues and the apprehensions of the populace.

      6011 (return) [ Zabergan was king of the Cutrigours, a tribe of
      Huns, who were neither Bulgarians nor Sclavonians. St. Martin,
      vol. ix. p. 408—420.—M]

      61 (return) [ In the decay of these military schools, the satire
      of Procopius (Anecdot. c. 24, Aleman. p. 102, 103) is confirmed
      and illustrated by Agathias, (l. v. p. 159,) who cannot be
      rejected as a hostile witness.]

      62 (return) [ The distance from Constantinople to Melanthias,
      Villa Caesariana, (Ammian. Marcellin. xxx. 11,) is variously
      fixed at 102 or 140 stadia, (Suidas, tom. ii. p. 522, 523.
      Agathias, l. v. p. 158,) or xviii. or xix. miles, (Itineraria, p.
      138, 230, 323, 332, and Wesseling’s Observations.) The first xii.
      miles, as far as Rhegium, were paved by Justinian, who built a
      bridge over a morass or gullet between a lake and the sea,
      (Procop. de Edif. l. iv. c. 8.)]

      63 (return) [ The Atyras, (Pompon. Mela, l. ii. c. 2, p. 169,
      edit. Voss.) At the river’s mouth, a town or castle of the same
      name was fortified by Justinian, (Procop. de Edif. l. iv. c. 2.
      Itinerar. p. 570, and Wesseling.)]


      But the eyes of the prince and people were directed to a feeble
      veteran, who was compelled by the public danger to resume the
      armor in which he had entered Carthage and defended Rome. The
      horses of the royal stables, of private citizens, and even of the
      circus, were hastily collected; the emulation of the old and
      young was roused by the name of Belisarius, and his first
      encampment was in the presence of a victorious enemy. His
      prudence, and the labor of the friendly peasants, secured, with a
      ditch and rampart, the repose of the night; innumerable fires,
      and clouds of dust, were artfully contrived to magnify the
      opinion of his strength; his soldiers suddenly passed from
      despondency to presumption; and, while ten thousand voices
      demanded the battle, Belisarius dissembled his knowledge, that in
      the hour of trial he must depend on the firmness of three hundred
      veterans. The next morning the Bulgarian cavalry advanced to the
      charge. But they heard the shouts of multitudes, they beheld the
      arms and discipline of the front; they were assaulted on the
      flanks by two ambuscades which rose from the woods; their
      foremost warriors fell by the hand of the aged hero and his
      guards; and the swiftness of their evolutions was rendered
      useless by the close attack and rapid pursuit of the Romans. In
      this action (so speedy was their flight) the Bulgarians lost only
      four hundred horse; but Constantinople was saved; and Zabergan,
      who felt the hand of a master, withdrew to a respectful distance.
      But his friends were numerous in the councils of the emperor, and
      Belisarius obeyed with reluctance the commands of envy and
      Justinian, which forbade him to achieve the deliverance of his
      country. On his return to the city, the people, still conscious
      of their danger, accompanied his triumph with acclamations of joy
      and gratitude, which were imputed as a crime to the victorious
      general. But when he entered the palace, the courtiers were
      silent, and the emperor, after a cold and thankless embrace,
      dismissed him to mingle with the train of slaves. Yet so deep was
      the impression of his glory on the minds of men, that Justinian,
      in the seventy-seventh year of his age, was encouraged to advance
      near forty miles from the capital, and to inspect in person the
      restoration of the long wall. The Bulgarians wasted the summer in
      the plains of Thrace; but they were inclined to peace by the
      failure of their rash attempts on Greece and the Chersonesus. A
      menace of killing their prisoners quickened the payment of heavy
      ransoms; and the departure of Zabergan was hastened by the
      report, that double-prowed vessels were built on the Danube to
      intercept his passage. The danger was soon forgotten; and a vain
      question, whether their sovereign had shown more wisdom or
      weakness, amused the idleness of the city. 64

      64 (return) [ The Bulgarian war, and the last victory of
      Belisarius, are imperfectly represented in the prolix declamation
      of Agathias. (l. 5, p. 154-174,) and the dry Chronicle of
      Theophanes, (p. 197 198.)]




Chapter XLIII: Last Victory And Death Of Belisarius, Death Of
Justinian.—Part IV.


      About two years after the last victory of Belisarius, the emperor
      returned from a Thracian journey of health, or business, or
      devotion. Justinian was afflicted by a pain in his head; and his
      private entry countenanced the rumor of his death. Before the
      third hour of the day, the bakers’ shops were plundered of their
      bread, the houses were shut, and every citizen, with hope or
      terror, prepared for the impending tumult. The senators
      themselves, fearful and suspicious, were convened at the ninth
      hour; and the præfect received their commands to visit every
      quarter of the city, and proclaim a general illumination for the
      recovery of the emperor’s health. The ferment subsided; but every
      accident betrayed the impotence of the government, and the
      factious temper of the people: the guards were disposed to mutiny
      as often as their quarters were changed, or their pay was
      withheld: the frequent calamities of fires and earthquakes
      afforded the opportunities of disorder; the disputes of the blues
      and greens, of the orthodox and heretics, degenerated into bloody
      battles; and, in the presence of the Persian ambassador,
      Justinian blushed for himself and for his subjects. Capricious
      pardon and arbitrary punishment imbittered the irksomeness and
      discontent of a long reign: a conspiracy was formed in the
      palace; and, unless we are deceived by the names of Marcellus and
      Sergius, the most virtuous and the most profligate of the
      courtiers were associated in the same designs. They had fixed the
      time of the execution; their rank gave them access to the royal
      banquet; and their black slaves 65 were stationed in the
      vestibule and porticos, to announce the death of the tyrant, and
      to excite a sedition in the capital. But the indiscretion of an
      accomplice saved the poor remnant of the days of Justinian. The
      conspirators were detected and seized, with daggers hidden under
      their garments: Marcellus died by his own hand, and Sergius was
      dragged from the sanctuary. 66 Pressed by remorse, or tempted by
      the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of
      Belisarius; and torture forced them to declare that they had
      acted according to the secret instructions of their patron. 67
      Posterity will not hastily believe that a hero who, in the vigor
      of life, had disdained the fairest offers of ambition and
      revenge, should stoop to the murder of his prince, whom he could
      not long expect to survive. His followers were impatient to fly;
      but flight must have been supported by rebellion, and he had
      lived enough for nature and for glory. Belisarius appeared before
      the council with less fear than indignation: after forty years’
      service, the emperor had prejudged his guilt; and injustice was
      sanctified by the presence and authority of the patriarch. The
      life of Belisarius was graciously spared; but his fortunes were
      sequestered, and, from December to July, he was guarded as a
      prisoner in his own palace. At length his innocence was
      acknowledged; his freedom and honor were restored; and death,
      which might be hastened by resentment and grief, removed him from
      the world in about eight months after his deliverance. The name
      of Belisarius can never die but instead of the funeral, the
      monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read,
      that his treasures, the spoil of the Goths and Vandals, were
      immediately confiscated by the emperor. Some decent portion was
      reserved, however for the use of his widow: and as Antonina had
      much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and
      fortune to the foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and
      genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude
      of Justinian. 68 That he was deprived of his eyes, and reduced by
      envy to beg his bread, 6811 “Give a penny to Belisarius the
      general!” is a fiction of later times, 69 which has obtained
      credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the vicissitudes
      of fortune. 70

      65 (return) [ They could scarcely be real Indians; and the
      Aethiopians, sometimes known by that name, were never used by the
      ancients as guards or followers: they were the trifling, though
      costly objects of female and royal luxury, (Terent. Eunuch. act.
      i. scene ii Sueton. in August. c. 83, with a good note of
      Casaubon, in Caligula, c. 57.)]

      66 (return) [ The Sergius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 21, 22, Anecdot. c.
      5) and Marcellus (Goth. l. iii. c. 32) are mentioned by
      Procopius. See Theophanes, p. 197, 201. * Note: Some words, “the
      acts of,” or “the crimes cf,” appear to have false from the text.
      The omission is in all the editions I have consulted.—M.]

      67 (return) [ Alemannus, (p. quotes an old Byzantian Ms., which
      has been printed in the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)]

      68 (return) [ Of the disgrace and restoration of Belisarius, the
      genuine original record is preserved in the Fragment of John
      Malala (tom. ii. p. 234—243) and the exact Chronicle of
      Theophanes, (p. 194—204.) Cedrenus (Compend. p. 387, 388) and
      Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 69) seem to hesitate between the
      obsolete truth and the growing falsehood.]

      6811 (return) [ Le Beau, following Allemannus, conceives that
      Belisarius was confounded with John of Cappadocia, who was thus
      reduced to beggary, (vol. ix. p. 58, 449.) Lord Mahon has, with
      considerable learning, and on the authority of a yet unquoted
      writer of the eleventh century, endeavored to reestablish the old
      tradition. I cannot acknowledge that I have been convinced, and
      am inclined to subscribe to the theory of Le Beau.—M.]

      69 (return) [ The source of this idle fable may be derived from a
      miscellaneous work of the xiith century, the Chiliads of John
      Tzetzes, a monk, (Basil. 1546, ad calcem Lycophront. Colon.
      Allobrog. 1614, in Corp. Poet. Graec.) He relates the blindness
      and beggary of Belisarius in ten vulgar or political verses,
      (Chiliad iii. No. 88, 339—348, in Corp. Poet. Graec. tom. ii. p.
      311.) This moral or romantic tale was imported into Italy with
      the language and manuscripts of Greece; repeated before the end
      of the xvth century by Crinitus, Pontanus, and Volaterranus,
      attacked by Alciat, for the honor of the law; and defended by
      Baronius, (A.D. 561, No. 2, &c.,) for the honor of the church.
      Yet Tzetzes himself had read in other chronicles, that Belisarius
      did not lose his sight, and that he recovered his fame and
      fortunes. * Note: I know not where Gibbon found Tzetzes to be a
      monk; I suppose he considered his bad verses a proof of his
      monachism. Compare to Gerbelius in Kiesling’s edition of
      Tzetzes.—M.]

      70 (return) [ The statue in the villa Borghese at Rome, in a
      sitting posture, with an open hand, which is vulgarly given to
      Belisarius, may be ascribed with more dignity to Augustus in the
      act of propitiating Nemesis, (Winckelman, Hist. de l’Art, tom.
      iii. p. 266.) Ex nocturno visu etiam stipem, quotannis, die
      certo, emendicabat a populo, cavana manum asses porrigentibus
      praebens, (Sueton. in August. c. 91, with an excellent note of
      Casaubon.) * Note: Lord Mahon abandons the statue, as altogether
      irreconcilable with the state of the arts at this period, (p.
      472.)—M.]


      If the emperor could rejoice in the death of Belisarius, he
      enjoyed the base satisfaction only eight months, the last period
      of a reign of thirty-eight years, and a life of eighty-three
      years. It would be difficult to trace the character of a prince
      who is not the most conspicuous object of his own times: but the
      confessions of an enemy may be received as the safest evidence of
      his virtues. The resemblance of Justinian to the bust of
      Domitian, is maliciously urged; 71 with the acknowledgment,
      however, of a well-proportioned figure, a ruddy complexion, and a
      pleasing countenance. The emperor was easy of access, patient of
      hearing, courteous and affable in discourse, and a master of the
      angry passions which rage with such destructive violence in the
      breast of a despot. Procopius praises his temper, to reproach him
      with calm and deliberate cruelty: but in the conspiracies which
      attacked his authority and person, a more candid judge will
      approve the justice, or admire the clemency, of Justinian. He
      excelled in the private virtues of chastity and temperance: but
      the impartial love of beauty would have been less mischievous
      than his conjugal tenderness for Theodora; and his abstemious
      diet was regulated, not by the prudence of a philosopher, but the
      superstition of a monk. His repasts were short and frugal: on
      solemn fasts, he contented himself with water and vegetables; and
      such was his strength, as well as fervor, that he frequently
      passed two days, and as many nights, without tasting any food.
      The measure of his sleep was not less rigorous: after the repose
      of a single hour, the body was awakened by the soul, and, to the
      astonishment of his chamberlain, Justinian walked or studied till
      the morning light. Such restless application prolonged his time
      for the acquisition of knowledge 72 and the despatch of business;
      and he might seriously deserve the reproach of confounding, by
      minute and preposterous diligence, the general order of his
      administration. The emperor professed himself a musician and
      architect, a poet and philosopher, a lawyer and theologian; and
      if he failed in the enterprise of reconciling the Christian
      sects, the review of the Roman jurisprudence is a noble monument
      of his spirit and industry. In the government of the empire, he
      was less wise, or less successful: the age was unfortunate; the
      people was oppressed and discontented; Theodora abused her power;
      a succession of bad ministers disgraced his judgment; and
      Justinian was neither beloved in his life, nor regretted at his
      death. The love of fame was deeply implanted in his breast, but
      he condescended to the poor ambition of titles, honors, and
      contemporary praise; and while he labored to fix the admiration,
      he forfeited the esteem and affection, of the Romans.


      The design of the African and Italian wars was boldly conceived
      and executed; and his penetration discovered the talents of
      Belisarius in the camp, of Narses in the palace. But the name of
      the emperor is eclipsed by the names of his victorious generals;
      and Belisarius still lives, to upbraid the envy and ingratitude
      of his sovereign. The partial favor of mankind applauds the
      genius of a conqueror, who leads and directs his subjects in the
      exercise of arms. The characters of Philip the Second and of
      Justinian are distinguished by the cold ambition which delights
      in war, and declines the dangers of the field. Yet a colossal
      statue of bronze represented the emperor on horseback, preparing
      to march against the Persians in the habit and armor of Achilles.
      In the great square before the church of St. Sophia, this
      monument was raised on a brass column and a stone pedestal of
      seven steps; and the pillar of Theodosius, which weighed seven
      thousand four hundred pounds of silver, was removed from the same
      place by the avarice and vanity of Justinian. Future princes were
      more just or indulgent to his memory; the elder Andronicus, in
      the beginning of the fourteenth century, repaired and beautified
      his equestrian statue: since the fall of the empire it has been
      melted into cannon by the victorious Turks. 73

      71 (return) [ The rubor of Domitian is stigmatized, quaintly
      enough, by the pen of Tacitus, (in Vit. Agricol. c. 45;) and has
      been likewise noticed by the younger Pliny, (Panegyr. c. 48,) and
      Suetonius, (in Domitian, c. 18, and Casaubon ad locum.) Procopius
      (Anecdot. c. 8) foolishly believes that only one bust of Domitian
      had reached the vith century.]

      72 (return) [ The studies and science of Justinian are attested
      by the confession (Anecdot. c. 8, 13) still more than by the
      praises (Gothic. l. iii. c. 31, de Edific. l. i. Proem. c. 7) of
      Procopius. Consult the copious index of Alemannus, and read the
      life of Justinian by Ludewig, (p. 135—142.)]

      73 (return) [ See in the C. P. Christiana of Ducange (l. i. c.
      24, No. 1) a chain of original testimonies, from Procopius in the
      vith, to Gyllius in the xvith century.]


      I shall conclude this chapter with the comets, the earthquakes,
      and the plague, which astonished or afflicted the age of
      Justinian. I. In the fifth year of his reign, and in the month of
      September, a comet 74 was seen during twenty days in the western
      quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north.
      Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another
      comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary; the size was gradually
      increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and
      it remained visible above forty days. The nations, who gazed with
      astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful
      influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The
      astronomers dissembled their ignorance of the nature of these
      blazing stars, which they affected to represent as the floating
      meteors of the air; and few among them embraced the simple notion
      of Seneca and the Chaldeans, that they are only planets of a
      longer period and more eccentric motion. 75 Time and science have
      justified the conjectures and predictions of the Roman sage: the
      telescope has opened new worlds to the eyes of astronomers; 76
      and, in the narrow space of history and fable, one and the same
      comet is already found to have revisited the earth in seven equal
      revolutions of five hundred and seventy-five years. The first, 77
      which ascends beyond the Christian aera one thousand seven
      hundred and sixty-seven years, is coeval with Ogyges, the father
      of Grecian antiquity. And this appearance explains the tradition
      which Varro has preserved, that under his reign the planet Venus
      changed her color, size, figure, and course; a prodigy without
      example either in past or succeeding ages. 78 The second visit,
      in the year eleven hundred and ninety-three, is darkly implied in
      the fable of Electra, the seventh of the Pleiads, who have been
      reduced to six since the time of the Trojan war. That nymph, the
      wife of Dardanus, was unable to support the ruin of her country:
      she abandoned the dances of her sister orbs, fled from the zodiac
      to the north pole, and obtained, from her dishevelled locks, the
      name of the comet. The third period expires in the year six
      hundred and eighteen, a date that exactly agrees with the
      tremendous comet of the Sibyl, and perhaps of Pliny, which arose
      in the West two generations before the reign of Cyrus. The fourth
      apparition, forty-four years before the birth of Christ, is of
      all others the most splendid and important. After the death of
      Caesar, a long-haired star was conspicuous to Rome and to the
      nations, during the games which were exhibited by young Octavian
      in honor of Venus and his uncle. The vulgar opinion, that it
      conveyed to heaven the divine soul of the dictator, was cherished
      and consecrated by the piety of a statesman; while his secret
      superstition referred the comet to the glory of his own times. 79
      The fifth visit has been already ascribed to the fifth year of
      Justinian, which coincides with the five hundred and thirty-first
      of the Christian aera. And it may deserve notice, that in this,
      as in the preceding instance, the comet was followed, though at a
      longer interval, by a remarkable paleness of the sun. The sixth
      return, in the year eleven hundred and six, is recorded by the
      chronicles of Europe and China: and in the first fervor of the
      crusades, the Christians and the Mahometans might surmise, with
      equal reason, that it portended the destruction of the Infidels.
      The seventh phenomenon, of one thousand six hundred and eighty,
      was presented to the eyes of an enlightened age. 80 The
      philosophy of Bayle dispelled a prejudice which Milton’s muse had
      so recently adorned, that the comet, “from its horrid hair shakes
      pestilence and war.” 81 Its road in the heavens was observed with
      exquisite skill by Flamstead and Cassini: and the mathematical
      science of Bernoulli, Newton 8111, and Halley, investigated the
      laws of its revolutions. At the eighth period, in the year two
      thousand three hundred and fifty-five, their calculations may
      perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future capital in
      the Siberian or American wilderness.

      74 (return) [ The first comet is mentioned by John Malala (tom.
      ii. p. 190, 219) and Theophanes, (p. 154;) the second by
      Procopius, (Persic. l. ii. 4.) Yet I strongly suspect their
      identity. The paleness of the sun sum Vandal. (l. ii. c. 14) is
      applied by Theophanes (p. 158) to a different year. Note: See
      Lydus de Ostentis, particularly c 15, in which the author begins
      to show the signification of comets according to the part of the
      heavens in which they appear, and what fortunes they
      prognosticate to the Roman empire and their Persian enemies. The
      chapter, however, is imperfect. (Edit. Neibuhr, p. 290.)—M.]

      75 (return) [ Seneca’s viith book of Natural Questions displays,
      in the theory of comets, a philosophic mind. Yet should we not
      too candidly confound a vague prediction, a venient tempus, &c.,
      with the merit of real discoveries.]

      76 (return) [ Astronomers may study Newton and Halley. I draw my
      humble science from the article Comete, in the French
      Encyclopedie, by M. d’Alembert.]

      77 (return) [ Whiston, the honest, pious, visionary Whiston, had
      fancied for the aera of Noah’s flood (2242 years before Christ) a
      prior apparition of the same comet which drowned the earth with
      its tail.]

      78 (return) [ A Dissertation of Freret (Memoires de l’Academie
      des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 357-377) affords a happy union of
      philosophy and erudition. The phenomenon in the time of Ogyges
      was preserved by Varro, (Apud Augustin. de Civitate Dei, xxi. 8,)
      who quotes Castor, Dion of Naples, and Adastrus of
      Cyzicus—nobiles mathematici. The two subsequent periods are
      preserved by the Greek mythologists and the spurious books of
      Sibylline verses.]

      79 (return) [ Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 23) has transcribed the
      original memorial of Augustus. Mairan, in his most ingenious
      letters to the P. Parennin, missionary in China, removes the
      games and the comet of September, from the year 44 to the year
      43, before the Christian aera; but I am not totally subdued by
      the criticism of the astronomer, (Opuscules, p. 275 )]

      80 (return) [ This last comet was visible in the month of
      December, 1680. Bayle, who began his Pensees sur la Comete in
      January, 1681, (Oeuvres, tom. iii.,) was forced to argue that a
      supernatural comet would have confirmed the ancients in their
      idolatry. Bernoulli (see his Eloge, in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 99)
      was forced to allow that the tail though not the head, was a sign
      of the wrath of God.]

      81 (return) [ Paradise Lost was published in the year 1667; and
      the famous lines (l. ii. 708, &c.) which startled the licenser,
      may allude to the recent comet of 1664, observed by Cassini at
      Rome in the presence of Queen Christina, (Fontenelle, in his
      Eloge, tom. v. p. 338.) Had Charles II. betrayed any symptoms of
      curiosity or fear?]

      8111 (return) [ Compare Pingre, Histoire des Cometes.—M.]


      II. The near approach of a comet may injure or destroy the globe
      which we inhabit; but the changes on its surface have been
      hitherto produced by the action of volcanoes and earthquakes. 82
      The nature of the soil may indicate the countries most exposed to
      these formidable concussions, since they are caused by
      subterraneous fires, and such fires are kindled by the union and
      fermentation of iron and sulphur. But their times and effects
      appear to lie beyond the reach of human curiosity; and the
      philosopher will discreetly abstain from the prediction of
      earthquakes, till he has counted the drops of water that silently
      filtrate on the inflammable mineral, and measured the caverns
      which increase by resistance the explosion of the imprisoned air.
      Without assigning the cause, history will distinguish the periods
      in which these calamitous events have been rare or frequent, and
      will observe, that this fever of the earth raged with uncommon
      violence during the reign of Justinian. 83 Each year is marked by
      the repetition of earthquakes, of such duration, that
      Constantinople has been shaken above forty days; of such extent,
      that the shock has been communicated to the whole surface of the
      globe, or at least of the Roman empire. An impulsive or vibratory
      motion was felt: enormous chasms were opened, huge and heavy
      bodies were discharged into the air, the sea alternately advanced
      and retreated beyond its ordinary bounds, and a mountain was torn
      from Libanus, 84 and cast into the waves, where it protected, as
      a mole, the new harbor of Botrys 85 in Phoenicia. The stroke that
      agitates an ant-hill may crush the insect-myriads in the dust;
      yet truth must extort confession that man has industriously
      labored for his own destruction. The institution of great cities,
      which include a nation within the limits of a wall, almost
      realizes the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one
      neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have
      perished in the earthquake of Antioch, whose domestic multitudes
      were swelled by the conflux of strangers to the festival of the
      Ascension. The loss of Berytus 86 was of smaller account, but of
      much greater value. That city, on the coast of Phoenicia, was
      illustrated by the study of the civil law, which opened the
      surest road to wealth and dignity: the schools of Berytus were
      filled with the rising spirits of the age, and many a youth was
      lost in the earthquake, who might have lived to be the scourge or
      the guardian of his country. In these disasters, the architect
      becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage, or the tent of
      an Arab, may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and
      the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their Spanish
      conquerors, who with so much cost and labor erected their own
      sepulchres. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own
      head: a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and
      private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled and propagated
      by the innumerable fires which are necessary for the subsistence
      and manufactures of a great city. Instead of the mutual sympathy
      which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully
      experience the vices and passions which are released from the
      fear of punishment: the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid
      avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and
      the earth often swallows the assassin, or the ravisher, in the
      consummation of their crimes. Superstition involves the present
      danger with invisible terrors; and if the image of death may
      sometimes be subservient to the virtue or repentance of
      individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved to
      expect the end of the world, or to deprecate with servile homage
      the wrath of an avenging Deity.

      82 (return) [ For the cause of earthquakes, see Buffon, (tom. i.
      p. 502—536 Supplement a l’Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 382-390,
      edition in 4to., Valmont de Bomare, Dictionnaire d’Histoire
      Naturelle, Tremblemen de Terre, Pyrites,) Watson, (Chemical
      Essays, tom. i. p. 181—209.)]

      83 (return) [ The earthquakes that shook the Roman world in the
      reign of Justinian are described or mentioned by Procopius,
      (Goth. l. iv. c. 25 Anecdot. c. 18,) Agathias, (l. ii. p. 52, 53,
      54, l. v. p. 145-152,) John Malala, (Chron. tom. ii. p. 140-146,
      176, 177, 183, 193, 220, 229, 231, 233, 234,) and Theophanes, (p.
      151, 183, 189, 191-196.) * Note *: Compare Daubeny on
      Earthquakes, and Lyell’s Geology, vol. ii. p. 161 et seq.—M]

      84 (return) [ An abrupt height, a perpendicular cape, between
      Aradus and Botrys (Polyb. l. v. p. 411. Pompon. Mela, l. i. c.
      12, p. 87, cum Isaac. Voss. Observat. Maundrell, Journey, p. 32,
      33. Pocock’s Description, vol. ii. p. 99.)]

      85 (return) [ Botrys was founded (ann. ante Christ. 935—903) by
      Ithobal, king of Tyre, (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 387, 388.) Its
      poor representative, the village of Patrone, is now destitute of
      a harbor.]

      86 (return) [ The university, splendor, and ruin of Berytus are
      celebrated by Heineccius (p. 351—356) as an essential part of the
      history of the Roman law. It was overthrown in the xxvth year of
      Justinian, A. D 551, July 9, (Theophanes, p. 192;) but Agathias
      (l. ii. p. 51, 52) suspends the earthquake till he has achieved
      the Italian war.]


      III. Aethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized, in every age, as
      the original source and seminary of the plague. 87 In a damp,
      hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the
      putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms
      of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than
      in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in
      the time of Justinian and his successors, 88 first appeared in
      the neighborhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the
      eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a
      double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the
      Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa,
      and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second
      year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by
      the pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and
      symptoms with the eyes of a physician, 89 has emulated the skill
      and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of
      Athens. 90 The infection was sometimes announced by the visions
      of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he
      had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre.
      But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their
      usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight,
      indeed, that neither the pulse nor the color of the patient gave
      any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the
      succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands,
      particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the
      ear; and when these buboes or tumors were opened, they were found
      to contain a coal, or black substance, of the size of a lentil.
      If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was
      saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humor. But
      if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued,
      and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever
      was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of
      the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the
      symptoms of immediate death; and in the constitutions too feeble
      to produce an irruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a
      mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was
      generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead
      mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected
      foetus. Youth was the most perilous season; and the female sex
      was less susceptible than the male: but every rank and profession
      was attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who
      escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being
      secure from a return of the disorder. 91 The physicians of
      Constantinople were zealous and skilful; but their art was
      baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the
      disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects,
      and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of
      death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of
      sepulchres, were confounded: those who were left without friends
      or servants, lay unburied in the streets, or in their desolate
      houses; and a magistrate was authorized to collect the
      promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or
      water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the
      city. Their own danger, and the prospect of public distress,
      awakened some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of
      mankind: the confidence of health again revived their passions
      and habits; but philosophy must disdain the observation of
      Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded by the
      peculiar favor of fortune or Providence. He forgot, or perhaps he
      secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the person of
      Justinian himself; but the abstemious diet of the emperor may
      suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and
      honorable cause for his recovery. 92 During his sickness, the
      public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens;
      and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity
      in the capital of the East.

      87 (return) [ I have read with pleasure Mead’s short, but
      elegant, treatise concerning Pestilential Disorders, the viiith
      edition, London, 1722.]

      88 (return) [ The great plague which raged in 542 and the
      following years (Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p. 518) must be traced
      in Procopius, (Persic. l. ii. c. 22, 23,) Agathias, (l. v. p.
      153, 154,) Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 29,) Paul Diaconus, (l. ii. c.
      iv. p. 776, 777,) Gregory of Tours, (tom. ii. l. iv. c. 5, p
      205,) who styles it Lues Inguinaria, and the Chronicles of Victor
      Tunnunensis, (p. 9, in Thesaur. Temporum,) of Marcellinus, (p.
      54,) and of Theophanes, (p. 153.)]

      89 (return) [ Dr. Friend (Hist. Medicin. in Opp. p. 416—420,
      Lond. 1733) is satisfied that Procopius must have studied physic,
      from his knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words
      that are now scientific were common and popular in the Greek
      idiom.]

      90 (return) [ See Thucydides, l. ii. c. 47—54, p. 127—133, edit.
      Duker, and the poetical description of the same plague by
      Lucretius. (l. vi. 1136—1284.) I was indebted to Dr. Hunter for
      an elaborate commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of
      600 pages, (Venet. 1603, apud Juntas,) which was pronounced in
      St. Mark’s Library by Fabius Paullinus Utinensis, a physician and
      philosopher.]

      91 (return) [ Thucydides (c. 51) affirms, that the infection
      could only be once taken; but Evagrius, who had family experience
      of the plague, observes, that some persons, who had escaped the
      first, sunk under the second attack; and this repetition is
      confirmed by Fabius Paullinus, (p. 588.) I observe, that on this
      head physicians are divided; and the nature and operation of the
      disease may not always be similar.]

      92 (return) [ It was thus that Socrates had been saved by his
      temperance, in the plague of Athens, (Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic.
      ii. l.) Dr. Mead accounts for the peculiar salubrity of religious
      houses, by the two advantages of seclusion and abstinence, (p.
      18, 19.)]


      Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague; which, by
      mutual respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to
      the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While
      philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular, that the
      existence of a real danger should have been denied by a people
      most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. 93 Yet the
      fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and
      partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the
      closest conversation: 94 and this persuasion might support the
      assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom
      inhuman prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair.
      But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks,
      must have aided the progress of the contagion; and those salutary
      precautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were
      unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were
      imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman
      provinces: from Persia to France, the nations were mingled and
      infected by wars and emigrations; and the pestilential odor which
      lurks for years in a bale of cotton was imported, by the abuse of
      trade, into the most distant regions. The mode of its propagation
      is explained by the remark of Procopius himself, that it always
      spread from the sea-coast to the inland country: the most
      sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the
      places which had escaped the fury of its first passage were alone
      exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might
      diffuse that subtile venom; but unless the atmosphere be
      previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon
      expire in the cold or temperate climates of the earth. Such was
      the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence which
      burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian was not checked or
      alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time, its first
      malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately
      languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a
      calamitous period of fifty-two years, that mankind recovered
      their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality.


      No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a
      conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary
      mortality. I only find, that during three months, five, and at
      length ten, thousand persons died each day at Constantinople;
      that many cities of the East were left vacant, and that in
      several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered
      on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine,
      afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced
      by the visible decrease of the human species, which has never
      been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe. 95

      93 (return) [ Mead proves that the plague is contagious from
      Thucydides, Lacretius, Aristotle, Galen, and common experience,
      (p. 10—20;) and he refutes (Preface, p. 2—13) the contrary
      opinion of the French physicians who visited Marseilles in the
      year 1720. Yet these were the recent and enlightened spectators
      of a plague which, in a few months, swept away 50,000 inhabitants
      (sur le Peste de Marseille, Paris, 1786) of a city that, in the
      present hour of prosperity and trade contains no more then 90,000
      souls, (Necker, sur les Finances, tom. i. p. 231.)]

      94 (return) [ The strong assertions of Procopius are overthrown
      by the subsequent experience of Evagrius.]

      95 (return) [ After some figures of rhetoric, the sands of the
      sea, &c., Procopius (Anecdot. c. 18) attempts a more definite
      account; that it had been exterminated under the reign of the
      Imperial demon. The expression is obscure in grammar and
      arithmetic and a literal interpretation would produce several
      millions of millions Alemannus (p. 80) and Cousin (tom. iii. p.
      178) translate this passage, “two hundred millions:” but I am
      ignorant of their motives. The remaining myriad of myriads, would
      furnish one hundred millions, a number not wholly inadmissible.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part I.


Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—The Laws Of The Kings—The Twelve Of
The Decemvirs.—The Laws Of The People.—The Decrees Of The Senate.—The
Edicts Of The Magistrates And Emperors—Authority Of The
Civilians.—Code, Pandects, Novels, And Institutes Of Justinian:—I.
Rights Of Persons.—II. Rights Of Things.—III. Private Injuries And
Actions.—IV. Crimes And Punishments.


      Note: In the notes to this important chapter, which is received
      as the text-book on Civil Law in some of the foreign
      universities, I have consulted,


      I. the newly-discovered Institutes of Gaius, (Gaii Institutiones,
      ed. Goeschen, Berlin, 1824,) with some other fragments of the
      Roman law, (Codicis Theodosiani Fragmenta inedita, ab Amadeo
      Peyron. Turin, 1824.)


      II. The History of the Roman Law, by Professor Hugo, in the
      French translation of M. Jourdan. Paris, 1825.


      III. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 6
      bande, Heidelberg, 1815.


      IV. Walther, Romische Rechts-Geschichte, Bonn. 1834. But I am
      particularly indebted to an edition of the French translation of
      this chapter, with additional notes, by one of the most learned
      civilians of Europe, Professor Warnkonig, published at Liege,
      1821. I have inserted almost the whole of these notes, which are
      distinguished by the letter W.—M. The vain titles of the
      victories of Justinian are crumbled into dust; but the name of
      the legislator is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument.
      Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence was
      digested in the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects, and the
      Institutes: 1 the public reason of the Romans has been silently
      or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of
      Europe, 2, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or
      obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince
      who connects his own reputation with the honor or interest of a
      perpetual order of men. The defence of their founder is the first
      cause, which in every age has exercised the zeal and industry of
      the civilians. They piously commemorate his virtues; dissemble or
      deny his failings; and fiercely chastise the guilt or folly of
      the rebels, who presume to sully the majesty of the purple. The
      idolatry of love has provoked, as it usually happens, the rancor
      of opposition; the character of Justinian has been exposed to the
      blind vehemence of flattery and invective; and the injustice of a
      sect (the Anti-Tribonians,) has refused all praise and merit to
      the prince, his ministers, and his laws. 3 Attached to no party,
      interested only for the truth and candor of history, and directed
      by the most temperate and skilful guides, 4 I enter with just
      diffidence on the subject of civil law, which has exhausted so
      many learned lives, and clothed the walls of such spacious
      libraries. In a single, if possible in a short, chapter, I shall
      trace the Roman jurisprudence from Romulus to Justinian, 5
      appreciate the labors of that emperor, and pause to contemplate
      the principles of a science so important to the peace and
      happiness of society. The laws of a nation form the most
      instructive portion of its history; and although I have devoted
      myself to write the annals of a declining monarchy, I shall
      embrace the occasion to breathe the pure and invigorating air of
      the republic.

      1 (return) [ The civilians of the darker ages have established an
      absurd and incomprehensible mode of quotation, which is supported
      by authority and custom. In their references to the Code, the
      Pandects, and the Institutes, they mention the number, not of the
      book, but only of the law; and content themselves with reciting
      the first words of the title to which it belongs; and of these
      titles there are more than a thousand. Ludewig (Vit. Justiniani,
      p. 268) wishes to shake off this pendantic yoke; and I have dared
      to adopt the simple and rational method of numbering the book,
      the title, and the law. Note: The example of Gibbon has been
      followed by M Hugo and other civilians.—M]

      2 (return) [ Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland,
      have received them as common law or reason; in France, Italy,
      &c., they possess a direct or indirect influence; and they were
      respected in England, from Stephen to Edward I. our national
      Justinian, (Duck. de Usu et Auctoritate Juris Civilis, l. ii. c.
      1, 8—15. Heineccius, Hist. Juris Germanici, c. 3, 4, No. 55-124,
      and the legal historians of each country.) * Note: Although the
      restoration of the Roman law, introduced by the revival of this
      study in Italy, is one of the most important branches of history,
      it had been treated but imperfectly when Gibbon wrote his work.
      That of Arthur Duck is but an insignificant performance. But the
      researches of the learned have thrown much light upon the matter.
      The Sarti, the Tiraboschi, the Fantuzzi, the Savioli, had made
      some very interesting inquiries; but it was reserved for M. de
      Savigny, in a work entitled “The History of the Roman Law during
      the Middle Ages,” to cast the strongest right on this part of
      history. He demonstrates incontestably the preservation of the
      Roman law from Justinian to the time of the Glossators, who by
      their indefatigable zeal, propagated the study of the Roman
      jurisprudence in all the countries of Europe. It is much to be
      desired that the author should continue this interesting work,
      and that the learned should engage in the inquiry in what manner
      the Roman law introduced itself into their respective countries,
      and the authority which it progressively acquired. For Belgium,
      there exists, on this subject, (proposed by the Academy of
      Brussels in 1781,) a Collection of Memoirs, printed at Brussels
      in 4to., 1783, among which should be distinguished those of M. de
      Berg. M. Berriat Saint Prix has given us hopes of the speedy
      appearance of a work in which he will discuss this question,
      especially in relation to France. M. Spangenberg, in his
      Introduction to the Study of the Corpus Juris Civilis Hanover,
      1817, 1 vol. 8vo. p. 86, 116, gives us a general sketch of the
      history of the Roman law in different parts of Europe. We cannot
      avoid mentioning an elementary work by M. Hugo, in which he
      treats of the History of the Roman Law from Justinian to the
      present Time, 2d edit. Berlin 1818 W.]

      3 (return) [ Francis Hottoman, a learned and acute lawyer of the
      xvith century, wished to mortify Cujacius, and to please the
      Chancellor de l’Hopital. His Anti-Tribonianus (which I have never
      been able to procure) was published in French in 1609; and his
      sect was propagated in Germany, (Heineccius, Op. tom. iii.
      sylloge iii. p. 171—183.) * Note: Though there have always been
      many detractors of the Roman law, no sect of Anti-Tribonians has
      ever existed under that name, as Gibbon seems to suppose.—W.]

      4 (return) [ At the head of these guides I shall respectfully
      place the learned and perspicuous Heineccius, a German professor,
      who died at Halle in the year 1741, (see his Eloge in the
      Nouvelle Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. ii. p. 51—64.) His ample
      works have been collected in eight volumes in 4to. Geneva,
      1743-1748. The treatises which I have separately used are, 1.
      Historia Juris Romani et Germanici, Lugd. Batav. 1740, in 8 vo.
      2. Syntagma Antiquitatum Romanam Jurisprudentiam illustrantium, 2
      vols. in 8 vo. Traject. ad Rhenum. 3. Elementa Juris Civilis
      secundum Ordinem Institutionum, Lugd. Bat. 1751, in 8 vo. 4.
      Elementa J. C. secundum Ordinem Pandectarum Traject. 1772, in
      8vo. 2 vols. * Note: Our author, who was not a lawyer, was
      necessarily obliged to content himself with following the
      opinions of those writers who were then of the greatest
      authority; but as Heineccius, notwithstanding his high reputation
      for the study of the Roman law, knew nothing of the subject on
      which he treated, but what he had learned from the compilations
      of various authors, it happened that, in following the sometimes
      rash opinions of these guides, Gibbon has fallen into many
      errors, which we shall endeavor in succession to correct. The
      work of Bach on the History of the Roman Jurisprudence, with
      which Gibbon was not acquainted, is far superior to that of
      Heineccius and since that time we have new obligations to the
      modern historic civilians, whose indefatigable researches have
      greatly enlarged the sphere of our knowledge in this important
      branch of history. We want a pen like that of Gibbon to give to
      the more accurate notions which we have acquired since his time,
      the brilliancy, the vigor, and the animation which Gibbon has
      bestowed on the opinions of Heineccius and his contemporaries.—W]

      5 (return) [ Our original text is a fragment de Origine Juris
      (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) of Pomponius, a Roman lawyer, who lived
      under the Antonines, (Heinecc. tom. iii. syl. iii. p. 66—126.) It
      has been abridged, and probably corrupted, by Tribonian, and
      since restored by Bynkershoek (Opp. tom. i. p. 279—304.)]


      The primitive government of Rome 6 was composed, with some
      political skill, of an elective king, a council of nobles, and a
      general assembly of the people. War and religion were
      administered by the supreme magistrate; and he alone proposed the
      laws, which were debated in the senate, and finally ratified or
      rejected by a majority of votes in the thirty curiae or parishes
      of the city. Romulus, Numa, and Servius Tullius, are celebrated
      as the most ancient legislators; and each of them claims his
      peculiar part in the threefold division of jurisprudence. 7 The
      laws of marriage, the education of children, and the authority of
      parents, which may seem to draw their origin from nature itself,
      are ascribed to the untutored wisdom of Romulus. The law of
      nations and of religious worship, which Numa introduced, was
      derived from his nocturnal converse with the nymph Egeria. The
      civil law is attributed to the experience of Servius: he balanced
      the rights and fortunes of the seven classes of citizens; and
      guarded, by fifty new regulations, the observance of contracts
      and the punishment of crimes. The state, which he had inclined
      towards a democracy, was changed by the last Tarquin into a
      lawless despotism; and when the kingly office was abolished, the
      patricians engrossed the benefits of freedom. The royal laws
      became odious or obsolete; the mysterious deposit was silently
      preserved by the priests and nobles; and at the end of sixty
      years, the citizens of Rome still complained that they were ruled
      by the arbitrary sentence of the magistrates. Yet the positive
      institutions of the kings had blended themselves with the public
      and private manners of the city, some fragments of that venerable
      jurisprudence 8 were compiled by the diligence of antiquarians, 9
      and above twenty texts still speak the rudeness of the Pelasgic
      idiom of the Latins. 10

      6 (return) [ The constitutional history of the kings of Rome may
      be studied in the first book of Livy, and more copiously in
      Dionysius Halicarnassensis, (l. li. p. 80—96, 119—130, l. iv. p.
      198—220,) who sometimes betrays the character of a rhetorician
      and a Greek. * Note: M. Warnkonig refers to the work of Beaufort,
      on the Uncertainty of the Five First Ages of the Roman History,
      with which Gibbon was probably acquainted, to Niebuhr, and to the
      less known volume of Wachsmuth, “Aeltere Geschichte des Rom.
      Staats.” To these I would add A. W. Schlegel’s Review of Niebuhr,
      and my friend Dr. Arnold’s recently published volume, of which
      the chapter on the Law of the XII. Tables appears to me one of
      the most valuable, if not the most valuable, chapter.—M.]

      7 (return) [ This threefold division of the law was applied to
      the three Roman kings by Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom. iv. p. 279;)
      is adopted by Gravina, (Origines Juris Civilis, p. 28, edit.
      Lips. 1737:) and is reluctantly admitted by Mascou, his German
      editor. * Note: Whoever is acquainted with the real notions of
      the Romans on the jus naturale, gentium et civile, cannot but
      disapprove of this explanation which has no relation to them, and
      might be taken for a pleasantry. It is certainly unnecessary to
      increase the confusion which already prevails among modern
      writers on the true sense of these ideas. Hugo.—W]

      8 (return) [ The most ancient Code or Digest was styled Jus
      Papirianum, from the first compiler, Papirius, who flourished
      somewhat before or after the Regifugium, (Pandect. l. i. tit.
      ii.) The best judicial critics, even Bynkershoek (tom. i. p. 284,
      285) and Heineccius, (Hist. J. C. R. l. i. c. 16, 17, and Opp.
      tom. iii. sylloge iv. p. 1—8,) give credit to this tale of
      Pomponius, without sufficiently adverting to the value and rarity
      of such a monument of the third century, of the illiterate city.
      I much suspect that the Caius Papirius, the Pontifex Maximus, who
      revived the laws of Numa (Dionys. Hal. l. iii. p. 171) left only
      an oral tradition; and that the Jus Papirianum of Granius Flaccus
      (Pandect. l. L. tit. xvi. leg. 144) was not a commentary, but an
      original work, compiled in the time of Caesar, (Censorin. de Die
      Natali, l. iii. p. 13, Duker de Latinitate J. C. p. 154.) Note:
      Niebuhr considers the Jus Papirianum, adduced by Verrius Fiaccus,
      to be of undoubted authenticity. Rom. Geschichte, l. 257.—M.
      Compare this with the work of M. Hugo.—W.]

      9 (return) [ A pompous, though feeble attempt to restore the
      original, is made in the Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine of
      Terasson, p. 22—72, Paris, 1750, in folio; a work of more promise
      than performance.]

      10 (return) [ In the year 1444, seven or eight tables of brass
      were dug up between Cortona and Gubio. A part of these (for the
      rest is Etruscan) represents the primitive state of the Pelasgic
      letters and language, which are ascribed by Herodotus to that
      district of Italy, (l. i. c. 56, 57, 58;) though this difficult
      passage may be explained of a Crestona in Thrace, (Notes de
      Larcher, tom. i. p. 256—261.) The savage dialect of the Eugubine
      tables has exercised, and may still elude, the divination of
      criticism; but the root is undoubtedly Latin, of the same age and
      character as the Saliare Carmen, which, in the time of Horace,
      none could understand. The Roman idiom, by an infusion of Doric
      and Aeolic Greek, was gradually ripened into the style of the
      xii. tables, of the Duillian column, of Ennius, of Terence, and
      of Cicero, (Gruter. Inscript. tom. i. p. cxlii. Scipion Maffei,
      Istoria Diplomatica, p. 241—258. Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iii.
      p. 30—41, 174—205. tom. xiv. p. 1—52.) * Note: The Eugubine
      Tables have exercised the ingenuity of the Italian and German
      critics; it seems admitted (O. Muller, die Etrusker, ii. 313)
      that they are Tuscan. See the works of Lanzi, Passeri, Dempster,
      and O. Muller.—M]


      I shall not repeat the well-known story of the Decemvirs, 11 who
      sullied by their actions the honor of inscribing on brass, or
      wood, or ivory, the Twelve Tables of the Roman laws. 12 They were
      dictated by the rigid and jealous spirit of an aristocracy, which
      had yielded with reluctance to the just demands of the people.
      But the substance of the Twelve Tables was adapted to the state
      of the city; and the Romans had emerged from Barbarism, since
      they were capable of studying and embracing the institutions of
      their more enlightened neighbors. 1211 A wise Ephesian was driven
      by envy from his native country: before he could reach the shores
      of Latium, he had observed the various forms of human nature and
      civil society: he imparted his knowledge to the legislators of
      Rome, and a statue was erected in the forum to the perpetual
      memory of Hermodorus. 13 The names and divisions of the copper
      money, the sole coin of the infant state, were of Dorian origin:
      14 the harvests of Campania and Sicily relieved the wants of a
      people whose agriculture was often interrupted by war and
      faction; and since the trade was established, 15 the deputies who
      sailed from the Tyber might return from the same harbors with a
      more precious cargo of political wisdom. The colonies of Great
      Greece had transported and improved the arts of their mother
      country. Cumae and Rhegium, Crotona and Tarentum, Agrigentum and
      Syracuse, were in the rank of the most flourishing cities. The
      disciples of Pythagoras applied philosophy to the use of
      government; the unwritten laws of Charondas accepted the aid of
      poetry and music, 16 and Zaleucus framed the republic of the
      Locrians, which stood without alteration above two hundred years.
      17 From a similar motive of national pride, both Livy and
      Dionysius are willing to believe, that the deputies of Rome
      visited Athens under the wise and splendid administration of
      Pericles; and the laws of Solon were transfused into the twelve
      tables. If such an embassy had indeed been received from the
      Barbarians of Hesperia, the Roman name would have been familiar
      to the Greeks before the reign of Alexander; 18 and the faintest
      evidence would have been explored and celebrated by the curiosity
      of succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are silent; nor
      will it seem credible that the patricians should undertake a long
      and perilous navigation to copy the purest model of democracy. In
      the comparison of the tables of Solon with those of the
      Decemvirs, some casual resemblance may be found; some rules which
      nature and reason have revealed to every society; some proofs of
      a common descent from Egypt or Phoenicia. 19 But in all the great
      lines of public and private jurisprudence, the legislators of
      Rome and Athens appear to be strangers or adverse at each other.

      11 (return) [ Compare Livy (l. iii. c. 31—59) with Dionysius
      Halicarnassensis, (l. x. p. 644—xi. p. 691.) How concise and
      animated is the Roman—how prolix and lifeless the Greek! Yet he
      has admirably judged the masters, and defined the rules, of
      historical composition.]

      12 (return) [ From the historians, Heineccius (Hist. J. R. l. i.
      No. 26) maintains that the twelve tables were of brass—aereas; in
      the text of Pomponius we read eboreas; for which Scaliger has
      substituted roboreas, (Bynkershoek, p. 286.) Wood, brass, and
      ivory, might be successively employed. Note: Compare Niebuhr,
      vol. ii. p. 349, &c.—M.]

      1211 (return) [ Compare Niebuhr, 355, note 720.—M. It is a most
      important question whether the twelve tables in fact include laws
      imported from Greece. The negative opinion maintained by our
      author, is now almost universally adopted, particularly by Mm.
      Niebuhr, Hugo, and others. See my Institutiones Juris Romani
      privati Leodii, 1819, p. 311, 312.—W. Dr. Arnold, p. 255, seems
      to incline to the opposite opinion. Compare some just and
      sensible observations in the Appendix to Mr. Travers Twiss’s
      Epitome of Niebuhr, p. 347, Oxford, 1836.—M.]

      13 (return) [ His exile is mentioned by Cicero, (Tusculan.
      Quaestion. v. 36; his statue by Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 11.)
      The letter, dream, and prophecy of Heraclitus, are alike
      spurious, (Epistolae Graec. Divers. p. 337.) * Note: Compare
      Niebuhr, ii. 209.—M. See the Mem de l’Academ. des Inscript. xxii.
      p. 48. It would be difficult to disprove, that a certain
      Hermodorus had some share in framing the Laws of the Twelve
      Tables. Pomponius even says that this Hermodorus was the author
      of the last two tables. Pliny calls him the Interpreter of the
      Decemvirs, which may lead us to suppose that he labored with them
      in drawing up that law. But it is astonishing that in his
      Dissertation, (De Hermodoro vero XII. Tabularum Auctore, Annales
      Academiae Groninganae anni 1817, 1818,) M. Gratama has ventured
      to advance two propositions entirely devoid of proof: “Decem
      priores tabulas ab ipsis Romanis non esse profectas, tota
      confirma Decemviratus Historia,” et “Hermodorum legum
      decemviralium ceri nominis auctorem esse, qui eas composuerit
      suis ordinibus, disposuerit, suaque fecerit auctoritate, ut a
      decemviris reciperentur.” This truly was an age in which the
      Roman Patricians would allow their laws to be dictated by a
      foreign Exile! Mr. Gratama does not attempt to prove the
      authenticity of the supposititious letter of Heraclitus. He
      contents himself with expressing his astonishment that M. Bonamy
      (as well as Gibbon) will be receive it as genuine.—W.]

      14 (return) [ This intricate subject of the Sicilian and Roman
      money, is ably discussed by Dr. Bentley, (Dissertation on the
      Epistles of Phalaris, p. 427—479,) whose powers in this
      controversy were called forth by honor and resentment.]

      15 (return) [ The Romans, or their allies, sailed as far as the
      fair promontory of Africa, (Polyb. l. iii. p. 177, edit.
      Casaubon, in folio.) Their voyages to Cumae, &c., are noticed by
      Livy and Dionysius.]

      16 (return) [ This circumstance would alone prove the antiquity
      of Charondas, the legislator of Rhegium and Catana, who, by a
      strange error of Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. xii. p. 485—492) is
      celebrated long afterwards as the author of the policy of
      Thurium.]

      17 (return) [ Zaleucus, whose existence has been rashly attacked,
      had the merit and glory of converting a band of outlaws (the
      Locrians) into the most virtuous and orderly of the Greek
      republics. (See two Memoirs of the Baron de St. Croix, sur la
      Legislation de la Grande Grece Mem. de l’Academie, tom. xlii. p.
      276—333.) But the laws of Zaleucus and Charondas, which imposed
      on Diodorus and Stobaeus, are the spurious composition of a
      Pythagorean sophist, whose fraud has been detected by the
      critical sagacity of Bentley, p. 335—377.]

      18 (return) [ I seize the opportunity of tracing the progress of
      this national intercourse 1. Herodotus and Thucydides (A. U. C.
      300—350) appear ignorant of the name and existence of Rome,
      (Joseph. contra Appion tom. ii. l. i. c. 12, p. 444, edit.
      Havercamp.) 2. Theopompus (A. U. C. 400, Plin. iii. 9) mentions
      the invasion of the Gauls, which is noticed in looser terms by
      Heraclides Ponticus, (Plutarch in Camillo, p. 292, edit. H.
      Stephan.) 3. The real or fabulous embassy of the Romans to
      Alexander (A. U. C. 430) is attested by Clitarchus, (Plin. iii.
      9,) by Aristus and Asclepiades, (Arrian. l. vii. p. 294, 295,)
      and by Memnon of Heraclea, (apud Photium, cod. ccxxiv. p. 725,)
      though tacitly denied by Livy. 4. Theophrastus (A. U. C. 440)
      primus externorum aliqua de Romanis diligentius scripsit, (Plin.
      iii. 9.) 5. Lycophron (A. U. C. 480—500) scattered the first seed
      of a Trojan colony and the fable of the Aeneid, (Cassandra,
      1226—1280.) A bold prediction before the end of the first Punic
      war! * Note: Compare Niebuhr throughout. Niebuhr has written a
      dissertation (Kleine Schriften, i. p. 438,) arguing from this
      prediction, and on the other conclusive grounds, that the
      Lycophron, the author of the Cassandra, is not the Alexandrian
      poet. He had been anticipated in this sagacious criticism, as he
      afterwards discovered, by a writer of no less distinction than
      Charles James Fox.—Letters to Wakefield. And likewise by the
      author of the extraordinary translation of this poem, that most
      promising scholar, Lord Royston. See the Remains of Lord Royston,
      by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.]

      19 (return) [ The tenth table, de modo sepulturae, was borrowed
      from Solon, (Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23—26:) the furtem per lancem
      et licium conceptum, is derived by Heineccius from the manners of
      Athens, (Antiquitat. Rom. tom. ii. p. 167—175.) The right of
      killing a nocturnal thief was declared by Moses, Solon, and the
      Decemvirs, (Exodus xxii. 3. Demosthenes contra Timocratem, tom.
      i. p. 736, edit. Reiske. Macrob. Saturnalia, l. i. c. 4. Collatio
      Legum Mosaicarum et Romanatum, tit, vii. No. i. p. 218, edit.
      Cannegieter.) *Note: Are not the same points of similarity
      discovered in the legislation of all actions in the infancy of
      their civilization?—W.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part II.


      Whatever might be the origin or the merit of the twelve tables,
      20 they obtained among the Romans that blind and partial
      reverence which the lawyers of every country delight to bestow on
      their municipal institutions. The study is recommended by Cicero
      21 as equally pleasant and instructive. “They amuse the mind by
      the remembrance of old words and the portrait of ancient manners;
      they inculcate the soundest principles of government and morals;
      and I am not afraid to affirm, that the brief composition of the
      Decemvirs surpasses in genuine value the libraries of Grecian
      philosophy. How admirable,” says Tully, with honest or affected
      prejudice, “is the wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are the
      masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more
      conspicuous, if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost
      ridiculous jurisprudence of Draco, of Solon, and of Lycurgus.”
      The twelve tables were committed to the memory of the young and
      the meditation of the old; they were transcribed and illustrated
      with learned diligence; they had escaped the flames of the Gauls,
      they subsisted in the age of Justinian, and their subsequent loss
      has been imperfectly restored by the labors of modern critics. 22
      But although these venerable monuments were considered as the
      rule of right and the fountain of justice, 23 they were
      overwhelmed by the weight and variety of new laws, which, at the
      end of five centuries, became a grievance more intolerable than
      the vices of the city. 24 Three thousand brass plates, the acts
      of the senate of the people, were deposited in the Capitol: 25
      and some of the acts, as the Julian law against extortion,
      surpassed the number of a hundred chapters. 26 The Decemvirs had
      neglected to import the sanction of Zaleucus, which so long
      maintained the integrity of his republic. A Locrian, who proposed
      any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a
      cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator
      was instantly strangled.

      20 (return) [ It is the praise of Diodorus, (tom. i. l. xii. p.
      494,) which may be fairly translated by the eleganti atque
      absoluta brevitate verborum of Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xxi.
      1.)]

      21 (return) [ Listen to Cicero (de Legibus, ii. 23) and his
      representative Crassus, (de Oratore, i. 43, 44.)]

      22 (return) [ See Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 29—33.) I have
      followed the restoration of the xii. tables by Gravina (Origines
      J. C. p. 280—307) and Terrasson, (Hist. de la Jurisprudence
      Romaine, p. 94—205.) Note: The wish expressed by Warnkonig, that
      the text and the conjectural emendations on the fragments of the
      xii. tables should be submitted to rigid criticism, has been
      fulfilled by Dirksen, Uebersicht der bisherigen Versuche Leipzig
      Kritik und Herstellung des Textes der Zwolf-Tafel-Fragmente,
      Leipzug, 1824.—M.]

      23 (return) [ Finis aequi juris, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 27.) Fons
      omnis publici et privati juris, (T. Liv. iii. 34.) * Note: From
      the context of the phrase in Tacitus, “Nam secutae leges etsi
      alquando in maleficos ex delicto; saepius tamen dissensione
      ordinum * * * latae sunt,” it is clear that Gibbon has rendered
      this sentence incorrectly. Hugo, Hist. p. 62.—M.]

      24 (return) [ De principiis juris, et quibus modis ad hanc
      multitudinem infinitam ac varietatem legum perventum sit altius
      disseram, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 25.) This deep disquisition fills
      only two pages, but they are the pages of Tacitus. With equal
      sense, but with less energy, Livy (iii. 34) had complained, in
      hoc immenso aliarum super alias acervatarum legum cumulo, &c.]

      25 (return) [ Suetonius in Vespasiano, c. 8.]

      26 (return) [ Cicero ad Familiares, viii. 8.]


      The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by
      an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated
      against numbers. To the first class of Romans, the proprietors of
      one hundred thousand pounds of copper, 27 ninety-eight votes were
      assigned, and only ninety-five were left for the six inferior
      classes, distributed according to their substance by the artful
      policy of Servius. But the tribunes soon established a more
      specious and popular maxim, that every citizen has an equal right
      to enact the laws which he is bound to obey. Instead of the
      centuries, they convened the tribes; and the patricians, after an
      impotent struggle, submitted to the decrees of an assembly, in
      which their votes were confounded with those of the meanest
      plebeians. Yet as long as the tribes successively passed over
      narrow bridges 28 and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of
      each citizen was exposed to the eyes and ears of his friends and
      countrymen. The insolvent debtor consulted the wishes of his
      creditor; the client would have blushed to oppose the views of
      his patron; the general was followed by his veterans, and the
      aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to the
      multitude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence
      of fear and shame, of honor and interest, and the abuse of
      freedom accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. 29 The
      Romans had aspired to be equal; they were levelled by the
      equality of servitude; and the dictates of Augustus were
      patiently ratified by the formal consent of the tribes or
      centuries. Once, and once only, he experienced a sincere and
      strenuous opposition. His subjects had resigned all political
      liberty; they defended the freedom of domestic life. A law which
      enforced the obligation, and strengthened the bonds of marriage,
      was clamorously rejected; Propertius, in the arms of Delia,
      applauded the victory of licentious love; and the project of
      reform was suspended till a new and more tractable generation had
      arisen in the world. 30 Such an example was not necessary to
      instruct a prudent usurper of the mischief of popular assemblies;
      and their abolition, which Augustus had silently prepared, was
      accomplished without resistance, and almost without notice, on
      the accession of his successor. 31 Sixty thousand plebeian
      legislators, whom numbers made formidable, and poverty secure,
      were supplanted by six hundred senators, who held their honors,
      their fortunes, and their lives, by the clemency of the emperor.
      The loss of executive power was alleviated by the gift of
      legislative authority; and Ulpian might assert, after the
      practice of two hundred years, that the decrees of the senate
      obtained the force and validity of laws. In the times of freedom,
      the resolves of the people had often been dictated by the passion
      or error of the moment: the Cornelian, Pompeian, and Julian laws
      were adapted by a single hand to the prevailing disorders; but
      the senate, under the reign of the Caesars, was composed of
      magistrates and lawyers, and in questions of private
      jurisprudence, the integrity of their judgment was seldom
      perverted by fear or interest. 32

      27 (return) [ Dionysius, with Arbuthnot, and most of the moderns,
      (except Eisenschmidt de Ponderibus, &c., p. 137—140,) represent
      the 100,000 asses by 10,000 Attic drachmae, or somewhat more than
      300 pounds sterling. But their calculation can apply only to the
      latter times, when the as was diminished to 1-24th of its ancient
      weight: nor can I believe that in the first ages, however
      destitute of the precious metals, a single ounce of silver could
      have been exchanged for seventy pounds of copper or brass. A more
      simple and rational method is to value the copper itself
      according to the present rate, and, after comparing the mint and
      the market price, the Roman and avoirdupois weight, the primitive
      as or Roman pound of copper may be appreciated at one English
      shilling, and the 100,000 asses of the first class amounted to
      5000 pounds sterling. It will appear from the same reckoning,
      that an ox was sold at Rome for five pounds, a sheep for ten
      shillings, and a quarter of wheat for one pound ten shillings,
      (Festus, p. 330, edit. Dacier. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 4:) nor
      do I see any reason to reject these consequences, which moderate
      our ideas of the poverty of the first Romans. * Note: Compare
      Niebuhr, English translation, vol. i. p. 448, &c.—M.]

      28 (return) [ Consult the common writers on the Roman Comitia,
      especially Sigonius and Beaufort. Spanheim (de Praestantia et Usu
      Numismatum, tom. ii. dissert. x. p. 192, 193) shows, on a curious
      medal, the Cista, Pontes, Septa, Diribitor, &c.]

      29 (return) [ Cicero (de Legibus, iii. 16, 17, 18) debates this
      constitutional question, and assigns to his brother Quintus the
      most unpopular side.]

      30 (return) [ Prae tumultu recusantium perferre non potuit,
      (Sueton. in August. c. 34.) See Propertius, l. ii. eleg. 6.
      Heineccius, in a separate history, has exhausted the whole
      subject of the Julian and Papian Poppaean laws, (Opp. tom. vii.
      P. i. p. 1—479.)]

      31 (return) [ Tacit. Annal. i. 15. Lipsius, Excursus E. in
      Tacitum. Note: This error of Gibbon has been long detected. The
      senate, under Tiberius did indeed elect the magistrates, who
      before that emperor were elected in the comitia. But we find laws
      enacted by the people during his reign, and that of Claudius. For
      example; the Julia-Norbana, Vellea, and Claudia de tutela
      foeminarum. Compare the Hist. du Droit Romain, by M. Hugo, vol.
      ii. p. 55, 57. The comitia ceased imperceptibly as the republic
      gradually expired.—W.]

      32 (return) [ Non ambigitur senatum jus facere posse, is the
      decision of Ulpian, (l. xvi. ad Edict. in Pandect. l. i. tit.
      iii. leg. 9.) Pomponius taxes the comitia of the people as a
      turba hominum, (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii. leg 9.) * Note: The
      author adopts the opinion, that under the emperors alone the
      senate had a share in the legislative power. They had
      nevertheless participated in it under the Republic, since
      senatus-consulta relating to civil rights have been preserved,
      which are much earlier than the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius.
      It is true that, under the emperors, the senate exercised this
      right more frequently, and that the assemblies of the people had
      become much more rare, though in law they were still permitted,
      in the time of Ulpian. (See the fragments of Ulpian.) Bach has
      clearly demonstrated that the senate had the same power in the
      time of the Republic. It is natural that the senatus-consulta
      should have been more frequent under the emperors, because they
      employed those means of flattering the pride of the senators, by
      granting them the right of deliberating on all affairs which did
      not intrench on the Imperial power. Compare the discussions of M.
      Hugo, vol. i. p. 284, et seq.—W.]


      The silence or ambiguity of the laws was supplied by the
      occasional edicts 3211 of those magistrates who were invested
      with the honors of the state. 33 This ancient prerogative of the
      Roman kings was transferred, in their respective offices, to the
      consuls and dictators, the censors and praetors; and a similar
      right was assumed by the tribunes of the people, the ediles, and
      the proconsuls. At Rome, and in the provinces, the duties of the
      subject, and the intentions of the governor, were proclaimed; and
      the civil jurisprudence was reformed by the annual edicts of the
      supreme judge, the praetor of the city. 3311 As soon as he
      ascended his tribunal, he announced by the voice of the crier,
      and afterwards inscribed on a white wall, the rules which he
      proposed to follow in the decision of doubtful cases, and the
      relief which his equity would afford from the precise rigor of
      ancient statutes. A principle of discretion more congenial to
      monarchy was introduced into the republic: the art of respecting
      the name, and eluding the efficacy, of the laws, was improved by
      successive praetors; subtleties and fictions were invented to
      defeat the plainest meaning of the Decemvirs, and where the end
      was salutary, the means were frequently absurd. The secret or
      probable wish of the dead was suffered to prevail over the order
      of succession and the forms of testaments; and the claimant, who
      was excluded from the character of heir, accepted with equal
      pleasure from an indulgent praetor the possession of the goods of
      his late kinsman or benefactor. In the redress of private wrongs,
      compensations and fines were substituted to the obsolete rigor of
      the Twelve Tables; time and space were annihilated by fanciful
      suppositions; and the plea of youth, or fraud, or violence,
      annulled the obligation, or excused the performance, of an
      inconvenient contract. A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary
      was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well
      as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices
      of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser
      seductions of interest or resentment. But the errors or vices of
      each praetor expired with his annual office; such maxims alone as
      had been approved by reason and practice were copied by
      succeeding judges; the rule of proceeding was defined by the
      solution of new cases; and the temptations of injustice were
      removed by the Cornelian law, which compelled the praetor of the
      year to adhere to the spirit and letter of his first
      proclamation. 34 It was reserved for the curiosity and learning
      of Adrian, to accomplish the design which had been conceived by
      the genius of Caesar; and the praetorship of Salvius Julian, an
      eminent lawyer, was immortalized by the composition of the
      Perpetual Edict. This well-digested code was ratified by the
      emperor and the senate; the long divorce of law and equity was at
      length reconciled; and, instead of the Twelve Tables, the
      perpetual edict was fixed as the invariable standard of civil
      jurisprudence. 35

      3211 (return) [ There is a curious passage from Aurelius, a
      writer on Law, on the Praetorian Præfect, quoted in Lydus de
      Magistratibus, p. 32, edit. Hase. The Praetorian præfect was to
      the emperor what the master of the horse was to the dictator
      under the Republic. He was the delegate, therefore, of the full
      Imperial authority; and no appeal could be made or exception
      taken against his edicts. I had not observed this passage, when
      the third volume, where it would have been more appropriately
      placed, passed through the press.—M]

      33 (return) [ The jus honorarium of the praetors and other
      magistrates is strictly defined in the Latin text to the
      Institutes, (l. i. tit. ii. No. 7,) and more loosely explained in
      the Greek paraphrase of Theophilus, (p. 33—38, edit. Reitz,) who
      drops the important word honorarium. * Note: The author here
      follows the opinion of Heineccius, who, according to the idea of
      his master Thomasius, was unwilling to suppose that magistrates
      exercising a judicial could share in the legislative power. For
      this reason he represents the edicts of the praetors as absurd.
      (See his work, Historia Juris Romani, 69, 74.) But Heineccius had
      altogether a false notion of this important institution of the
      Romans, to which we owe in a great degree the perfection of their
      jurisprudence. Heineccius, therefore, in his own days had many
      opponents of his system, among others the celebrated Ritter,
      professor at Wittemberg, who contested it in notes appended to
      the work of Heineccius, and retained in all subsequent editions
      of that book. After Ritter, the learned Bach undertook to
      vindicate the edicts of the praetors in his Historia Jurisprud.
      Rom. edit. 6, p. 218, 224. But it remained for a civilian of our
      own days to throw light on the spirit and true character of this
      institution. M. Hugo has completely demonstrated that the
      praetorian edicts furnished the salutary means of perpetually
      harmonizing the legislation with the spirit of the times. The
      praetors were the true organs of public opinion. It was not
      according to their caprice that they framed their regulations,
      but according to the manners and to the opinions of the great
      civil lawyers of their day. We know from Cicero himself, that it
      was esteemed a great honor among the Romans to publish an edict,
      well conceived and well drawn. The most distinguished lawyers of
      Rome were invited by the praetor to assist in framing this annual
      law, which, according to its principle, was only a declaration
      which the praetor made to the public, to announce the manner in
      which he would judge, and to guard against every charge of
      partiality. Those who had reason to fear his opinions might delay
      their cause till the following year. The praetor was responsible
      for all the faults which he committed. The tribunes could lodge
      an accusation against the praetor who issued a partial edict. He
      was bound strictly to follow and to observe the regulations
      published by him at the commencement of his year of office,
      according to the Cornelian law, by which these edicts were called
      perpetual, and he could make no change in a regulation once
      published. The praetor was obliged to submit to his own edict,
      and to judge his own affairs according to its provisions. These
      magistrates had no power of departing from the fundamental laws,
      or the laws of the Twelve Tables. The people held them in such
      consideration, that they rarely enacted laws contrary to their
      provisions; but as some provisions were found inefficient, others
      opposed to the manners of the people, and to the spirit of
      subsequent ages, the praetors, still maintaining respect for the
      laws, endeavored to bring them into accordance with the
      necessities of the existing time, by such fictions as best suited
      the nature of the case. In what legislation do we not find these
      fictions, which even yet exist, absurd and ridiculous as they
      are, among the ancient laws of modern nations? These always
      variable edicts at length comprehended the whole of the Roman
      legislature, and became the subject of the commentaries of the
      most celebrated lawyers. They must therefore be considered as the
      basis of all the Roman jurisprudence comprehended in the Digest
      of Justinian. ——It is in this sense that M. Schrader has written
      on this important institution, proposing it for imitation as far
      as may be consistent with our manners, and agreeable to our
      political institutions, in order to avoid immature legislation
      becoming a permanent evil. See the History of the Roman Law by M.
      Hugo, vol. i. p. 296, &c., vol. ii. p. 30, et seq., 78. et seq.,
      and the note in my elementary book on the Industries, p. 313.
      With regard to the works best suited to give information on the
      framing and the form of these edicts, see Haubold, Institutiones
      Literariae, tom. i. p. 321, 368. All that Heineccius says about
      the usurpation of the right of making these edicts by the
      praetors is false, and contrary to all historical testimony. A
      multitude of authorities proves that the magistrates were under
      an obligation to publish these edicts.—W. ——With the utmost
      deference for these excellent civilians, I cannot but consider
      this confusion of the judicial and legislative authority as a
      very perilous constitutional precedent. It might answer among a
      people so singularly trained as the Romans were by habit and
      national character in reverence for legal institutions, so as to
      be an aristocracy, if not a people, of legislators; but in most
      nations the investiture of a magistrate in such authority,
      leaving to his sole judgment the lawyers he might consult, and
      the view of public opinion which he might take, would be a very
      insufficient guaranty for right legislation.—M.]

      3311 (return) [ Compare throughout the brief but admirable sketch
      of the progress and growth of the Roman jurisprudence, the
      necessary operation of the jusgentium, when Rome became the
      sovereign of nations, upon the jus civile of the citizens of
      Rome, in the first chapter of Savigny. Geschichte des Romischen
      Rechts im Mittelalter.—M.]

      34 (return) [ Dion Cassius (tom. i. l. xxxvi. p. 100) fixes the
      perpetual edicts in the year of Rome, 686. Their institution,
      however, is ascribed to the year 585 in the Acta Diurna, which
      have been published from the papers of Ludovicus Vives. Their
      authenticity is supported or allowed by Pighius, (Annal. Rom.
      tom. ii. p. 377, 378,) Graevius, (ad Sueton. p. 778,) Dodwell,
      (Praelection. Cambden, p. 665,) and Heineccius: but a single
      word, Scutum Cimbricum, detects the forgery, (Moyle’s Works, vol.
      i. p. 303.)]

      35 (return) [ The history of edicts is composed, and the text of
      the perpetual edict is restored, by the master-hand of
      Heineccius, (Opp. tom. vii. P. ii. p. 1—564;) in whose researches
      I might safely acquiesce. In the Academy of Inscriptions, M.
      Bouchaud has given a series of memoirs to this interesting
      subject of law and literature. * Note: This restoration was only
      the commencement of a work found among the papers of Heineccius,
      and published after his death.—G. ——Note: Gibbon has here fallen
      into an error, with Heineccius, and almost the whole literary
      world, concerning the real meaning of what is called the
      perpetual edict of Hadrian. Since the Cornelian law, the edicts
      were perpetual, but only in this sense, that the praetor could
      not change them during the year of his magistracy. And although
      it appears that under Hadrian, the civilian Julianus made, or
      assisted in making, a complete collection of the edicts, (which
      certainly had been done likewise before Hadrian, for example, by
      Ofilius, qui diligenter edictum composuit,) we have no sufficient
      proof to admit the common opinion, that the Praetorian edict was
      declared perpetually unalterable by Hadrian. The writers on law
      subsequent to Hadrian (and among the rest Pomponius, in his
      Summary of the Roman Jurisprudence) speak of the edict as it
      existed in the time of Cicero. They would not certainly have
      passed over in silence so remarkable a change in the most
      important source of the civil law. M. Hugo has conclusively shown
      that the various passages in authors, like Eutropius, are not
      sufficient to establish the opinion introduced by Heineccius.
      Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 78. A new proof of this is found in the
      Institutes of Gaius, who, in the first books of his work,
      expresses himself in the same manner, without mentioning any
      change made by Hadrian. Nevertheless, if it had taken place, he
      must have noticed it, as he does l. i. 8, the responsa prudentum,
      on the occasion of a rescript of Hadrian. There is no lacuna in
      the text. Why then should Gaius maintain silence concerning an
      innovation so much more important than that of which he speaks?
      After all, this question becomes of slight interest, since, in
      fact, we find no change in the perpetual edict inserted in the
      Digest, from the time of Hadrian to the end of that epoch, except
      that made by Julian, (compare Hugo, l. c.) The latter lawyers
      appear to follow, in their commentaries, the same texts as their
      predecessors. It is natural to suppose, that, after the labors of
      so many men distinguished in jurisprudence, the framing of the
      edict must have attained such perfection that it would have been
      difficult to have made any innovation. We nowhere find that the
      jurists of the Pandects disputed concerning the words, or the
      drawing up of the edict. What difference would, in fact, result
      from this with regard to our codes, and our modern legislation?
      Compare the learned Dissertation of M. Biener, De Salvii Juliani
      meritis in Edictum Praetorium recte aestimandis. Lipsae, 1809,
      4to.—W.]


      From Augustus to Trajan, the modest Caesars were content to
      promulgate their edicts in the various characters of a Roman
      magistrate; 3511 and, in the decrees of the senate, the epistles
      and orations of the prince were respectfully inserted. Adrian 36
      appears to have been the first who assumed, without disguise, the
      plenitude of legislative power. And this innovation, so agreeable
      to his active mind, was countenanced by the patience of the
      times, and his long absence from the seat of government. The same
      policy was embraced by succeeding monarchs, and, according to the
      harsh metaphor of Tertullian, “the gloomy and intricate forest of
      ancient laws was cleared away by the axe of royal mandates and
      constitutions.” 37 During four centuries, from Adrian to
      Justinian the public and private jurisprudence was moulded by the
      will of the sovereign; and few institutions, either human or
      divine, were permitted to stand on their former basis. The origin
      of Imperial legislation was concealed by the darkness of ages and
      the terrors of armed despotism; and a double tiction was
      propagated by the servility, or perhaps the ignorance, of the
      civilians, who basked in the sunshine of the Roman and Byzantine
      courts. 1. To the prayer of the ancient Caesars, the people or
      the senate had sometimes granted a personal exemption from the
      obligation and penalty of particular statutes; and each
      indulgence was an act of jurisdiction exercised by the republic
      over the first of her citizens. His humble privilege was at
      length transformed into the prerogative of a tyrant; and the
      Latin expression of “released from the laws” 38 was supposed to
      exalt the emperor above all human restraints, and to leave his
      conscience and reason as the sacred measure of his conduct. 2. A
      similar dependence was implied in the decrees of the senate,
      which, in every reign, defined the titles and powers of an
      elective magistrate. But it was not before the ideas, and even
      the language, of the Romans had been corrupted, that a royal law,
      39 and an irrevocable gift of the people, were created by the
      fancy of Ulpian, or more probably of Tribonian himself; 40 and
      the origin of Imperial power, though false in fact, and slavish
      in its consequence, was supported on a principle of freedom and
      justice. “The pleasure of the emperor has the vigor and effect of
      law, since the Roman people, by the royal law, have transferred
      to their prince the full extent of their own power and
      sovereignty.” 41 The will of a single man, of a child perhaps,
      was allowed to prevail over the wisdom of ages and the
      inclinations of millions; and the degenerate Greeks were proud to
      declare, that in his hands alone the arbitrary exercise of
      legislation could be safely deposited. “What interest or
      passion,” exclaims Theophilus in the court of Justinian, “can
      reach the calm and sublime elevation of the monarch? He is
      already master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects; and
      those who have incurred his displeasure are already numbered with
      the dead.” 42 Disdaining the language of flattery, the historian
      may confess, that in questions of private jurisprudence, the
      absolute sovereign of a great empire can seldom be influenced by
      any personal considerations. Virtue, or even reason, will suggest
      to his impartial mind, that he is the guardian of peace and
      equity, and that the interest of society is inseparably connected
      with his own. Under the weakest and most vicious reign, the seat
      of justice was filled by the wisdom and integrity of Papinian and
      Ulpian; 43 and the purest materials of the Code and Pandects are
      inscribed with the names of Caracalla and his ministers. 44 The
      tyrant of Rome was sometimes the benefactor of the provinces. A
      dagger terminated the crimes of Domitian; but the prudence of
      Nerva confirmed his acts, which, in the joy of their deliverance,
      had been rescinded by an indignant senate. 45 Yet in the
      rescripts, 46 replies to the consultations of the magistrates,
      the wisest of princes might be deceived by a partial exposition
      of the case. And this abuse, which placed their hasty decisions
      on the same level with mature and deliberate acts of legislation,
      was ineffectually condemned by the sense and example of Trajan.
      The rescripts of the emperor, his grants and decrees, his edicts
      and pragmatic sanctions, were subscribed in purple ink, 47 and
      transmitted to the provinces as general or special laws, which
      the magistrates were bound to execute, and the people to obey.
      But as their number continually multiplied, the rule of obedience
      became each day more doubtful and obscure, till the will of the
      sovereign was fixed and ascertained in the Gregorian, the
      Hermogenian, and the Theodosian codes. 4711 The two first, of
      which some fragments have escaped, were framed by two private
      lawyers, to preserve the constitutions of the Pagan emperors from
      Adrian to Constantine. The third, which is still extant, was
      digested in sixteen books by the order of the younger Theodosius
      to consecrate the laws of the Christian princes from Constantine
      to his own reign. But the three codes obtained an equal authority
      in the tribunals; and any act which was not included in the
      sacred deposit might be disregarded by the judge as epurious or
      obsolete. 48

      3511 (return) [ It is an important question in what manner the
      emperors were invested with this legislative power. The newly
      discovered Gaius distinctly states that it was in virtue of a
      law—Nec unquam dubitatum est, quin id legis vicem obtineat, cum
      ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat. But it is still
      uncertain whether this was a general law, passed on the
      transition of the government from a republican to a monarchical
      form, or a law passed on the accession of each emperor. Compare
      Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain, (French translation,) vol. ii. p.
      8.—M.]

      36 (return) [ His laws are the first in the code. See Dodwell,
      (Praelect. Cambden, p. 319—340,) who wanders from the subject in
      confused reading and feeble paradox. * Note: This is again an
      error which Gibbon shares with Heineccius, and the generality of
      authors. It arises from having mistaken the insignificant edict
      of Hadrian, inserted in the Code of Justinian, (lib. vi, tit.
      xxiii. c. 11,) for the first constitutio principis, without
      attending to the fact, that the Pandects contain so many
      constitutions of the emperors, from Julius Caesar, (see l. i.
      Digest 29, l) M. Hugo justly observes, that the acta of Sylla,
      approved by the senate, were the same thing with the
      constitutions of those who after him usurped the sovereign power.
      Moreover, we find that Pliny, and other ancient authors, report a
      multitude of rescripts of the emperors from the time of Augustus.
      See Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain, vol. ii. p. 24-27.—W.]

      37 (return) [ Totam illam veterem et squalentem sylvam legum
      novis principalium rescriptorum et edictorum securibus truncatis
      et caeditis; (Apologet. c. 4, p. 50, edit. Havercamp.) He
      proceeds to praise the recent firmness of Severus, who repealed
      the useless or pernicious laws, without any regard to their age
      or authority.]

      38 (return) [ The constitutional style of Legibus Solutus is
      misinterpreted by the art or ignorance of Dion Cassius, (tom. i.
      l. liii. p. 713.) On this occasion, his editor, Reimer, joins the
      universal censure which freedom and criticism have pronounced
      against that slavish historian.]

      39 (return) [ The word (Lex Regia) was still more recent than the
      thing. The slaves of Commodus or Caracalla would have started at
      the name of royalty. Note: Yet a century before, Domitian was
      called not only by Martial but even in public documents, Dominus
      et Deus Noster. Sueton. Domit. cap. 13. Hugo.—W.]

      40 (return) [ See Gravina (Opp. p. 501—512) and Beaufort,
      (Republique Romaine, tom. i. p. 255—274.) He has made a proper
      use of two dissertations by John Frederic Gronovius and Noodt,
      both translated, with valuable notes, by Barbeyrac, 2 vols. in
      12mo. 1731.]

      41 (return) [ Institut. l. i. tit. ii. No. 6. Pandect. l. i. tit.
      iv. leg. 1. Cod. Justinian, l. i. tit. xvii. leg. 1, No. 7. In
      his Antiquities and Elements, Heineccius has amply treated de
      constitutionibus principum, which are illustrated by Godefroy
      (Comment. ad Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. i. ii. iii.) and Gravina,
      (p. 87—90.) ——Note: Gaius asserts that the Imperial edict or
      rescript has and always had, the force of law, because the
      Imperial authority rests upon law. Constitutio principis est,
      quod imperator decreto vel edicto, vel epistola constituit, nee
      unquam dubitatum, quin id legis, vicem obtineat, cum ipse
      imperator per legem imperium accipiat. Gaius, 6 Instit. i. 2.—M.]

      42 (return) [ Theophilus, in Paraphras. Graec. Institut. p. 33,
      34, edit. Reitz For his person, time, writings, see the
      Theophilus of J. H. Mylius, Excurs. iii. p. 1034—1073.]

      43 (return) [ There is more envy than reason in the complaint of
      Macrinus (Jul. Capitolin. c. 13:) Nefas esse leges videri Commodi
      et Caracalla at hominum imperitorum voluntates. Commodus was made
      a Divus by Severus, (Dodwell, Praelect. viii. p. 324, 325.) Yet
      he occurs only twice in the Pandects.]

      44 (return) [ Of Antoninus Caracalla alone 200 constitutions are
      extant in the Code, and with his father 160. These two princes
      are quoted fifty times in the Pandects, and eight in the
      Institutes, (Terasson, p. 265.)]

      45 (return) [ Plin. Secund. Epistol. x. 66. Sueton. in Domitian.
      c. 23.]

      46 (return) [ It was a maxim of Constantine, contra jus rescripta
      non valeant, (Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 1.) The emperors
      reluctantly allow some scrutiny into the law and the fact, some
      delay, petition, &c.; but these insufficient remedies are too
      much in the discretion and at the peril of the judge.]

      47 (return) [ A compound of vermilion and cinnabar, which marks
      the Imperial diplomas from Leo I. (A.D. 470) to the fall of the
      Greek empire, (Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom. i.
      p. 504—515 Lami, de Eruditione Apostolorum, tom. ii. p.
      720-726.)]

      4711 (return) [ Savigny states the following as the authorities
      for the Roman law at the commencement of the fifth century:— 1.
      The writings of the jurists, according to the regulations of the
      Constitution of Valentinian III., first promulgated in the West,
      but by its admission into the Theodosian Code established
      likewise in the East. (This Constitution established the
      authority of the five great jurists, Papinian, Paulus, Caius,
      Ulpian, and Modestinus as interpreters of the ancient law. * * *
      In case of difference of opinion among these five, a majority
      decided the case; where they were equal, the opinion of Papinian,
      where he was silent, the judge; but see p. 40, and Hugo, vol. ii.
      p. 89.) 2. The Gregorian and Hermogenian Collection of the
      Imperial Rescripts. 3. The Code of Theodosius II. 4. The
      particular Novellae, as additions and Supplements to this Code
      Savigny. vol. i. p 10.—M.]

      48 (return) [ Schulting, Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p.
      681-718. Cujacius assigned to Gregory the reigns from Hadrian to
      Gallienus. and the continuation to his fellow-laborer Hermogenes.
      This general division may be just, but they often trespassed on
      each other’s ground]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part III.


      Among savage nations, the want of letters is imperfectly supplied
      by the use of visible signs, which awaken attention, and
      perpetuate the remembrance of any public or private transaction.
      The jurisprudence of the first Romans exhibited the scenes of a
      pantomime; the words were adapted to the gestures, and the
      slightest error or neglect in the forms of proceeding was
      sufficient to annul the substance of the fairest claim. The
      communion of the marriage-life was denoted by the necessary
      elements of fire and water; 49 and the divorced wife resigned the
      bunch of keys, by the delivery of which she had been invested
      with the government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a
      slave, was performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on
      the cheek; a work was prohibited by the casting of a stone;
      prescription was interrupted by the breaking of a branch; the
      clinched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right
      hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of
      covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced
      into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was
      sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments,
      and to leap or dance with real or affected transport. 50 If a
      citizen pursued any stolen goods into a neighbor’s house, he
      concealed his nakedness with a linen towel, and hid his face with
      a mask or basin, lest he should encounter the eyes of a virgin or
      a matron. 51 In a civil action the plaintiff touched the ear of
      his witness, seized his reluctant adversary by the neck, and
      implored, in solemn lamentation, the aid of his fellow-citizens.
      The two competitors grasped each other’s hand as if they stood
      prepared for combat before the tribunal of the praetor; he
      commanded them to produce the object of the dispute; they went,
      they returned with measured steps, and a clod of earth was cast
      at his feet to represent the field for which they contended. This
      occult science of the words and actions of law was the
      inheritance of the pontiffs and patricians. Like the Chaldean
      astrologers, they announced to their clients the days of business
      and repose; these important trifles were interwoven with the
      religion of Numa; and after the publication of the Twelve Tables,
      the Roman people was still enslaved by the ignorance of judicial
      proceedings. The treachery of some plebeian officers at length
      revealed the profitable mystery: in a more enlightened age, the
      legal actions were derided and observed; and the same antiquity
      which sanctified the practice, obliterated the use and meaning of
      this primitive language. 52

      49 (return) [ Scaevola, most probably Q. Cervidius Scaevola; the
      master of Papinian considers this acceptance of fire and water as
      the essence of marriage, (Pandect. l. xxiv. tit. 1, leg. 66. See
      Heineccius, Hist. J. R. No. 317.)]

      50 (return) [ Cicero (de Officiis, iii. 19) may state an ideal
      case, but St. Am brose (de Officiis, iii. 2,) appeals to the
      practice of his own times, which he understood as a lawyer and a
      magistrate, (Schulting ad Ulpian, Fragment. tit. xxii. No. 28, p.
      643, 644.) * Note: In this passage the author has endeavored to
      collect all the examples of judicial formularies which he could
      find. That which he adduces as the form of cretio haereditatis is
      absolutely false. It is sufficient to glance at the passage in
      Cicero which he cites, to see that it has no relation to it. The
      author appeals to the opinion of Schulting, who, in the passage
      quoted, himself protests against the ridiculous and absurd
      interpretation of the passage in Cicero, and observes that
      Graevius had already well explained the real sense. See in Gaius
      the form of cretio haereditatis Inst. l. ii. p. 166.—W.]

      51 (return) [ The furtum lance licioque conceptum was no longer
      understood in the time of the Antonines, (Aulus Gellius, xvi.
      10.) The Attic derivation of Heineccius, (Antiquitat. Rom. l. iv.
      tit. i. No. 13—21) is supported by the evidence of Aristophanes,
      his scholiast, and Pollux. * Note: Nothing more is known of this
      ceremony; nevertheless we find that already in his own days Gaius
      turned it into ridicule. He says, (lib. iii. et p. 192, Sections
      293,) prohibiti actio quadrupli ex edicto praetoris introducta
      est; lex autem eo nomine nullam poenam constituit. Hoc solum
      praecepit, ut qui quaerere velit, nudus quaerat, linteo cinctus,
      lancem habens; qui si quid invenerit. jubet id lex furtum
      manifestum esse. Quid sit autem linteum? quaesitum est. Sed
      verius est consuti genus esse, quo necessariae partes tegerentur.
      Quare lex tota ridicula est. Nam qui vestitum quaerere prohibet,
      is et nudum quaerere prohibiturus est; eo magis, quod invenerit
      ibi imponat, neutrum eorum procedit, si id quod quaeratur, ejus
      magnitudinis aut naturae sit ut neque subjici, neque ibi imponi
      possit. Certe non dubitatur, cujuscunque materiae sit ea lanx,
      satis legi fieri. We see moreover, from this passage, that the
      basin, as most authors, resting on the authority of Festus, have
      supposed, was not used to cover the figure.—W. Gibbon says the
      face, though equally inaccurately. This passage of Gaius, I must
      observe, as well as others in M. Warnkonig’s work, is very
      inaccurately printed.—M.]

      52 (return) [ In his Oration for Murena, (c. 9—13,) Cicero turns
      into ridicule the forms and mysteries of the civilians, which are
      represented with more candor by Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xx.
      10,) Gravina, (Opp p. 265, 266, 267,) and Heineccius,
      (Antiquitat. l. iv. tit. vi.) * Note: Gibbon had conceived
      opinions too decided against the forms of procedure in use among
      the Romans. Yet it is on these solemn forms that the certainty of
      laws has been founded among all nations. Those of the Romans were
      very intimately allied with the ancient religion, and must of
      necessity have disappeared as Rome attained a higher degree of
      civilization. Have not modern nations, even the most civilized,
      overloaded their laws with a thousand forms, often absurd, almost
      always trivial? How many examples are afforded by the English
      law! See, on the nature of these forms, the work of M. de Savigny
      on the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence,
      Heidelberg, 1814, p. 9, 10.—W. This work of M. Savigny has been
      translated into English by Mr. Hayward.—M.]


      A more liberal art was cultivated, however, by the sages of Rome,
      who, in a stricter sense, may be considered as the authors of the
      civil law. The alteration of the idiom and manners of the Romans
      rendered the style of the Twelve Tables less familiar to each
      rising generation, and the doubtful passages were imperfectly
      explained by the study of legal antiquarians. To define the
      ambiguities, to circumscribe the latitude, to apply the
      principles, to extend the consequences, to reconcile the real or
      apparent contradictions, was a much nobler and more important
      task; and the province of legislation was silently invaded by the
      expounders of ancient statutes. Their subtle interpretations
      concurred with the equity of the praetor, to reform the tyranny
      of the darker ages: however strange or intricate the means, it
      was the aim of artificial jurisprudence to restore the simple
      dictates of nature and reason, and the skill of private citizens
      was usefully employed to undermine the public institutions of
      their country. 521 The revolution of almost one thousand years,
      from the Twelve Tables to the reign of Justinian, may be divided
      into three periods, almost equal in duration, and distinguished
      from each other by the mode of instruction and the character of
      the civilians. 53 Pride and ignorance contributed, during the
      first period, to confine within narrow limits the science of the
      Roman law. On the public days of market or assembly, the masters
      of the art were seen walking in the forum ready to impart the
      needful advice to the meanest of their fellow-citizens, from
      whose votes, on a future occasion, they might solicit a grateful
      return. As their years and honors increased, they seated
      themselves at home on a chair or throne, to expect with patient
      gravity the visits of their clients, who at the dawn of day, from
      the town and country, began to thunder at their door. The duties
      of social life, and the incidents of judicial proceeding, were
      the ordinary subject of these consultations, and the verbal or
      written opinion of the juris-consults was framed according to the
      rules of prudence and law. The youths of their own order and
      family were permitted to listen; their children enjoyed the
      benefit of more private lessons, and the Mucian race was long
      renowned for the hereditary knowledge of the civil law. The
      second period, the learned and splendid age of jurisprudence, may
      be extended from the birth of Cicero to the reign of Severus
      Alexander. A system was formed, schools were instituted, books
      were composed, and both the living and the dead became
      subservient to the instruction of the student. The tripartite of
      Aelius Paetus, surnamed Catus, or the Cunning, was preserved as
      the oldest work of Jurisprudence. Cato the censor derived some
      additional fame from his legal studies, and those of his son: the
      kindred appellation of Mucius Scaevola was illustrated by three
      sages of the law; but the perfection of the science was ascribed
      to Servius Sulpicius, their disciple, and the friend of Tully;
      and the long succession, which shone with equal lustre under the
      republic and under the Caesars, is finally closed by the
      respectable characters of Papinian, of Paul, and of Ulpian. Their
      names, and the various titles of their productions, have been
      minutely preserved, and the example of Labeo may suggest some
      idea of their diligence and fecundity. That eminent lawyer of the
      Augustan age divided the year between the city and country,
      between business and composition; and four hundred books are
      enumerated as the fruit of his retirement. Of the collection of
      his rival Capito, the two hundred and fifty-ninth book is
      expressly quoted; and few teachers could deliver their opinions
      in less than a century of volumes. In the third period, between
      the reigns of Alexander and Justinian, the oracles of
      jurisprudence were almost mute. The measure of curiosity had been
      filled: the throne was occupied by tyrants and Barbarians, the
      active spirits were diverted by religious disputes, and the
      professors of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, were humbly
      content to repeat the lessons of their more enlightened
      predecessors. From the slow advances and rapid decay of these
      legal studies, it may be inferred, that they require a state of
      peace and refinement. From the multitude of voluminous civilians
      who fill the intermediate space, it is evident that such studies
      may be pursued, and such works may be performed, with a common
      share of judgment, experience, and industry. The genius of Cicero
      and Virgil was more sensibly felt, as each revolving age had been
      found incapable of producing a similar or a second: but the most
      eminent teachers of the law were assured of leaving disciples
      equal or superior to themselves in merit and reputation.

      521 (return) [ Compare, on the Responsa Prudentum, Warnkonig,
      Histoire Externe du Droit Romain Bruxelles, 1836, p. 122.—M.]

      53 (return) [ The series of the civil lawyers is deduced by
      Pomponius, (de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) The moderns
      have discussed, with learning and criticism, this branch of
      literary history; and among these I have chiefly been guided by
      Gravina (p. 41—79) and Hei neccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 113-351.)
      Cicero, more especially in his books de Oratore, de Claris
      Oratoribus, de Legibus, and the Clavie Ciceroniana of Ernesti
      (under the names of Mucius, &c.) afford much genuine and pleasing
      information. Horace often alludes to the morning labors of the
      civilians, (Serm. I. i. 10, Epist. II. i. 103, &c)


Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus
Sub galli cantum, consultor ubi ostia pulsat.
     ——————
     Romæ dulce diu fuit et solemne, reclusâ
     Mane domo vigilare, clienti promere jura.


      * Note: It is particularly in this division of the history of the
      Roman jurisprudence into epochs, that Gibbon displays his
      profound knowledge of the laws of this people. M. Hugo, adopting
      this division, prefaced these three periods with the history of
      the times anterior to the Law of the Twelve Tables, which are, as
      it were, the infancy of the Roman law.—W]


      The jurisprudence which had been grossly adapted to the wants of
      the first Romans, was polished and improved in the seventh
      century of the city, by the alliance of Grecian philosophy. The
      Scaevolas had been taught by use and experience; but Servius
      Sulpicius 5311 was the first civilian who established his art on
      a certain and general theory. 54 For the discernment of truth and
      falsehood he applied, as an infallible rule, the logic of
      Aristotle and the stoics, reduced particular cases to general
      principles, and diffused over the shapeless mass the light of
      order and eloquence. Cicero, his contemporary and friend,
      declined the reputation of a professed lawyer; but the
      jurisprudence of his country was adorned by his incomparable
      genius, which converts into gold every object that it touches.
      After the example of Plato, he composed a republic; and, for the
      use of his republic, a treatise of laws; in which he labors to
      deduce from a celestial origin the wisdom and justice of the
      Roman constitution. The whole universe, according to his sublime
      hypothesis, forms one immense commonwealth: gods and men, who
      participate of the same essence, are members of the same
      community; reason prescribes the law of nature and nations; and
      all positive institutions, however modified by accident or
      custom, are drawn from the rule of right, which the Deity has
      inscribed on every virtuous mind. From these philosophical
      mysteries, he mildly excludes the sceptics who refuse to believe,
      and the epicureans who are unwilling to act. The latter disdain
      the care of the republic: he advises them to slumber in their
      shady gardens. But he humbly entreats that the new academy would
      be silent, since her bold objections would too soon destroy the
      fair and well ordered structure of his lofty system. 55 Plato,
      Aristotle, and Zeno, he represents as the only teachers who arm
      and instruct a citizen for the duties of social life. Of these,
      the armor of the stoics 56 was found to be of the firmest temper;
      and it was chiefly worn, both for use and ornament, in the
      schools of jurisprudence. From the portico, the Roman civilians
      learned to live, to reason, and to die: but they imbibed in some
      degree the prejudices of the sect; the love of paradox, the
      pertinacious habits of dispute, and a minute attachment to words
      and verbal distinctions. The superiority of form to matter was
      introduced to ascertain the right of property: and the equality
      of crimes is countenanced by an opinion of Trebatius, 57 that he
      who touches the ear, touches the whole body; and that he who
      steals from a heap of corn, or a hogshead of wine, is guilty of
      the entire theft. 58

      5311 (return) [ M. Hugo thinks that the ingenious system of the
      Institutes adopted by a great number of the ancient lawyers, and
      by Justinian himself, dates from Severus Sulpicius. Hist du Droit
      Romain, vol.iii.p. 119.—W.]

      54 (return) [ Crassus, or rather Cicero himself, proposes (de
      Oratore, i. 41, 42) an idea of the art or science of
      jurisprudence, which the eloquent, but illiterate, Antonius (i.
      58) affects to deride. It was partly executed by Servius
      Sulpicius, (in Bruto, c. 41,) whose praises are elegantly varied
      in the classic Latinity of the Roman Gravina, (p. 60.)]

      55 (return) [ Perturbatricem autem omnium harum rerum academiam,
      hanc ab Arcesila et Carneade recentem, exoremus ut sileat, nam si
      invaserit in haec, quae satis scite instructa et composita
      videantur, nimis edet ruinas, quam quidem ego placare cupio,
      submovere non audeo. (de Legibus, i. 13.) From this passage
      alone, Bentley (Remarks on Free-thinking, p. 250) might have
      learned how firmly Cicero believed in the specious doctrines
      which he has adorned.]

      56 (return) [ The stoic philosophy was first taught at Rome by
      Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio, (see his life in the
      Mem. de l’Academis des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 75—89.)]

      57 (return) [ As he is quoted by Ulpian, (leg.40, 40, ad Sabinum
      in Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 21.) Yet Trebatius, after he
      was a leading civilian, que qui familiam duxit, became an
      epicurean, (Cicero ad Fam. vii. 5.) Perhaps he was not constant
      or sincere in his new sect. * Note: Gibbon had entirely
      misunderstood this phrase of Cicero. It was only since his time
      that the real meaning of the author was apprehended. Cicero, in
      enumerating the qualifications of Trebatius, says, Accedit etiam,
      quod familiam ducit in jure civili, singularis memoria, summa
      scientia, which means that Trebatius possessed a still further
      most important qualification for a student of civil law, a
      remarkable memory, &c. This explanation, already conjectured by
      G. Menage, Amaenit. Juris Civilis, c. 14, is found in the
      dictionary of Scheller, v. Familia, and in the History of the
      Roman Law by M. Hugo. Many authors have asserted, without any
      proof sufficient to warrant the conjecture, that Trebatius was of
      the school of Epicurus—W.]

      58 (return) [ See Gravina (p. 45—51) and the ineffectual cavils
      of Mascou. Heineccius (Hist. J. R. No. 125) quotes and approves a
      dissertation of Everard Otto, de Stoica Jurisconsultorum
      Philosophia.]


      Arms, eloquence, and the study of the civil law, promoted a
      citizen to the honors of the Roman state; and the three
      professions were sometimes more conspicuous by their union in the
      same character. In the composition of the edict, a learned
      praetor gave a sanction and preference to his private sentiments;
      the opinion of a censor, or a counsel, was entertained with
      respect; and a doubtful interpretation of the laws might be
      supported by the virtues or triumphs of the civilian. The
      patrician arts were long protected by the veil of mystery; and in
      more enlightened times, the freedom of inquiry established the
      general principles of jurisprudence. Subtile and intricate cases
      were elucidated by the disputes of the forum: rules, axioms, and
      definitions, 59 were admitted as the genuine dictates of reason;
      and the consent of the legal professors was interwoven into the
      practice of the tribunals. But these interpreters could neither
      enact nor execute the laws of the republic; and the judges might
      disregard the authority of the Scaevolas themselves, which was
      often overthrown by the eloquence or sophistry of an ingenious
      pleader. 60 Augustus and Tiberius were the first to adopt, as a
      useful engine, the science of the civilians; and their servile
      labors accommodated the old system to the spirit and views of
      despotism. Under the fair pretence of securing the dignity of the
      art, the privilege of subscribing legal and valid opinions was
      confined to the sages of senatorian or equestrian rank, who had
      been previously approved by the judgment of the prince; and this
      monopoly prevailed, till Adrian restored the freedom of the
      profession to every citizen conscious of his abilities and
      knowledge. The discretion of the praetor was now governed by the
      lessons of his teachers; the judges were enjoined to obey the
      comment as well as the text of the law; and the use of codicils
      was a memorable innovation, which Augustus ratified by the advice
      of the civilians. 61 6111

      59 (return) [ We have heard of the Catonian rule, the Aquilian
      stipulation, and the Manilian forms, of 211 maxims, and of 247
      definitions, (Pandect. l. i. tit. xvi. xvii.)]

      60 (return) [ Read Cicero, l. i. de Oratore, Topica, pro Murena.]

      61 (return) [ See Pomponius, (de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i.
      tit. ii. leg. 2, No 47,) Heineccius, (ad Institut. l. i. tit. ii.
      No. 8, l. ii. tit. xxv. in Element et Antiquitat.,) and Gravina,
      (p. 41—45.) Yet the monopoly of Augustus, a harsh measure, would
      appear with some softening in contemporary evidence; and it was
      probably veiled by a decree of the senate]

      6111 (return) [ The author here follows the then generally
      received opinion of Heineccius. The proofs which appear to
      confirm it are l. 2 47, D. I. 2, and 8. Instit. I. 2. The first
      of these passages speaks expressly of a privilege granted to
      certain lawyers, until the time of Adrian, publice respondendi
      jus ante Augusti tempora non dabatur. Primus Divus ut major juris
      auctoritas haberetur, constituit, ut ex auctoritate ejus
      responderent. The passage of the Institutes speaks of the
      different opinions of those, quibus est permissum jura condere.
      It is true that the first of these passages does not say that the
      opinion of these privileged lawyers had the force of a law for
      the judges. For this reason M. Hugo altogether rejects the
      opinion adopted by Heineccius, by Bach, and in general by all the
      writers who preceded him. He conceives that the 8 of the
      Institutes referred to the constitution of Valentinian III.,
      which regulated the respective authority to be ascribed to the
      different writings of the great civilians. But we have now the
      following passage in the Institutes of Gaius: Responsa prudentum
      sunt sententiae et opiniones eorum, quibus permissum est jura
      condere; quorum omnium si in unum sententiae concorrupt, id quod
      ita sentiunt, legis vicem obtinet, si vero dissentiunt, judici
      licet, quam velit sententiam sequi, idque rescripto Divi Hadrian
      signiticatur. I do not know, how in opposition to this passage,
      the opinion of M. Hugo can be maintained. We must add to this the
      passage quoted from Pomponius and from such strong proofs, it
      seems incontestable that the emperors had granted some kind of
      privilege to certain civilians, quibus permissum erat jura
      condere. Their opinion had sometimes the force of law, legis
      vicem. M. Hugo, endeavoring to reconcile this phrase with his
      system, gives it a forced interpretation, which quite alters the
      sense; he supposes that the passage contains no more than what is
      evident of itself, that the authority of the civilians was to be
      respected, thus making a privilege of that which was free to all
      the world. It appears to me almost indisputable, that the
      emperors had sanctioned certain provisions relative to the
      authority of these civilians, consulted by the judges. But how
      far was their advice to be respected? This is a question which it
      is impossible to answer precisely, from the want of historic
      evidence. Is it not possible that the emperors established an
      authority to be consulted by the judges? and in this case this
      authority must have emanated from certain civilians named for
      this purpose by the emperors. See Hugo, l. c. Moreover, may not
      the passage of Suetonius, in the Life of Caligula, where he says
      that the emperor would no longer permit the civilians to give
      their advice, mean that Caligula entertained the design of
      suppressing this institution? See on this passage the Themis,
      vol. xi. p. 17, 36. Our author not being acquainted with the
      opinions opposed to Heineccius has not gone to the bottom of the
      subject.—W.]


      The most absolute mandate could only require that the judges
      should agree with the civilians, if the civilians agreed among
      themselves. But positive institutions are often the result of
      custom and prejudice; laws and language are ambiguous and
      arbitrary; where reason is incapable of pronouncing, the love of
      argument is inflamed by the envy of rivals, the vanity of
      masters, the blind attachment of their disciples; and the Roman
      jurisprudence was divided by the once famous sects of the
      Proculians and Sabinians. 62 Two sages of the law, Ateius Capito
      and Antistius Labeo, 63 adorned the peace of the Augustan age;
      the former distinguished by the favor of his sovereign; the
      latter more illustrious by his contempt of that favor, and his
      stern though harmless opposition to the tyrant of Rome. Their
      legal studies were influenced by the various colors of their
      temper and principles. Labeo was attached to the form of the old
      republic; his rival embraced the more profitable substance of the
      rising monarchy. But the disposition of a courtier is tame and
      submissive; and Capito seldom presumed to deviate from the
      sentiments, or at least from the words, of his predecessors;
      while the bold republican pursued his independent ideas without
      fear of paradox or innovations. The freedom of Labeo was
      enslaved, however, by the rigor of his own conclusions, and he
      decided, according to the letter of the law, the same questions
      which his indulgent competitor resolved with a latitude of equity
      more suitable to the common sense and feelings of mankind. If a
      fair exchange had been substituted to the payment of money,
      Capito still considered the transaction as a legal sale; 64 and
      he consulted nature for the age of puberty, without confining his
      definition to the precise period of twelve or fourteen years. 65
      This opposition of sentiments was propagated in the writings and
      lessons of the two founders; the schools of Capito and Labeo
      maintained their inveterate conflict from the age of Augustus to
      that of Adrian; 66 and the two sects derived their appellations
      from Sabinus and Proculus, their most celebrated teachers. The
      names of Cassians and Pegasians were likewise applied to the same
      parties; but, by a strange reverse, the popular cause was in the
      hands of Pegasus, 67 a timid slave of Domitian, while the
      favorite of the Caesars was represented by Cassius, 68 who
      gloried in his descent from the patriot assassin. By the
      perpetual edict, the controversies of the sects were in a great
      measure determined. For that important work, the emperor Adrian
      preferred the chief of the Sabinians: the friends of monarchy
      prevailed; but the moderation of Salvius Julian insensibly
      reconciled the victors and the vanquished. Like the contemporary
      philosophers, the lawyers of the age of the Antonines disclaimed
      the authority of a master, and adopted from every system the most
      probable doctrines. 69 But their writings would have been less
      voluminous, had their choice been more unanimous. The conscience
      of the judge was perplexed by the number and weight of discordant
      testimonies, and every sentence that his passion or interest
      might pronounce was justified by the sanction of some venerable
      name. An indulgent edict of the younger Theodosius excused him
      from the labor of comparing and weighing their arguments. Five
      civilians, Caius, Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, and Modestinus, were
      established as the oracles of jurisprudence: a majority was
      decisive: but if their opinions were equally divided, a casting
      vote was ascribed to the superior wisdom of Papinian. 70

      62 (return) [ I have perused the Diatribe of Gotfridus Mascovius,
      the learned Mascou, de Sectis Jurisconsultorum, (Lipsiae, 1728,
      in 12mo., p. 276,) a learned treatise on a narrow and barren
      ground.]

      63 (return) [ See the character of Antistius Labeo in Tacitus,
      (Annal. iii. 75,) and in an epistle of Ateius Capito, (Aul.
      Gellius, xiii. 12,) who accuses his rival of libertas nimia et
      vecors. Yet Horace would not have lashed a virtuous and
      respectable senator; and I must adopt the emendation of Bentley,
      who reads Labieno insanior, (Serm. I. iii. 82.) See Mascou, de
      Sectis, (c. i. p. 1—24.)]

      64 (return) [ Justinian (Institut. l. iii. tit. 23, and Theophil.
      Vers. Graec. p. 677, 680) has commemorated this weighty dispute,
      and the verses of Homer that were alleged on either side as legal
      authorities. It was decided by Paul, (leg. 33, ad Edict. in
      Pandect. l. xviii. tit. i. leg. 1,) since, in a simple exchange,
      the buyer could not be discriminated from the seller.]

      65 (return) [ This controversy was likewise given for the
      Proculians, to supersede the indecency of a search, and to comply
      with the aphorism of Hippocrates, who was attached to the
      septenary number of two weeks of years, or 700 of days,
      (Institut. l. i. tit. xxii.) Plutarch and the Stoics (de Placit.
      Philosoph. l. v. c. 24) assign a more natural reason. Fourteen
      years is the age. See the vestigia of the sects in Mascou, c. ix.
      p. 145—276.]

      66 (return) [ The series and conclusion of the sects are
      described by Mascou, (c. ii.—vii. p. 24—120;) and it would be
      almost ridiculous to praise his equal justice to these obsolete
      sects. * Note: The work of Gaius, subsequent to the time of
      Adrian, furnishes us with some information on this subject. The
      disputes which rose between these two sects appear to have been
      very numerous. Gaius avows himself a disciple of Sabinus and of
      Caius. Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 106.—W.]

      67 (return) [ At the first summons he flies to the
      turbot-council; yet Juvenal (Satir. iv. 75—81) styles the præfect
      or bailiff of Rome sanctissimus legum interpres. From his
      science, says the old scholiast, he was called, not a man, but a
      book. He derived the singular name of Pegasus from the galley
      which his father commanded.]

      68 (return) [ Tacit. Annal. xvii. 7. Sueton. in Nerone, c.
      xxxvii.]

      69 (return) [ Mascou, de Sectis, c. viii. p. 120—144 de
      Herciscundis, a legal term which was applied to these eclectic
      lawyers: herciscere is synonymous to dividere. * Note: This word
      has never existed. Cujacius is the author of it, who read me
      words terris condi in Servius ad Virg. herciscundi, to which he
      gave an erroneous interpretation.—W.]

      70 (return) [ See the Theodosian Code, l. i. tit. iv. with
      Godefroy’s Commentary, tom. i. p. 30—35. [! This decree might
      give occasion to Jesuitical disputes like those in the Lettres
      Provinciales, whether a Judge was obliged to follow the opinion
      of Papinian, or of a majority, against his judgment, against his
      conscience, &c. Yet a legislator might give that opinion, however
      false, the validity, not of truth, but of law. Note: We possess
      (since 1824) some interesting information as to the framing of
      the Theodosian Code, and its ratification at Rome, in the year
      438. M. Closius, now professor at Dorpat in Russia, and M.
      Peyron, member of the Academy of Turin, have discovered, the one
      at Milan, the other at Turin, a great part of the five first
      books of the Code which were wanting, and besides this, the
      reports (gesta) of the sitting of the senate at Rome, in which
      the Code was published, in the year after the marriage of
      Valentinian III. Among these pieces are the constitutions which
      nominate commissioners for the formation of the Code; and though
      there are many points of considerable obscurity in these
      documents, they communicate many facts relative to this
      legislation. 1. That Theodosius designed a great reform in the
      legislation; to add to the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes all
      the new constitutions from Constantine to his own day; and to
      frame a second code for common use with extracts from the three
      codes, and from the works of the civil lawyers. All laws either
      abrogated or fallen into disuse were to be noted under their
      proper heads. 2. An Ordinance was issued in 429 to form a
      commission for this purpose of nine persons, of which Antiochus,
      as quaestor and præfectus, was president. A second commission of
      sixteen members was issued in 435 under the same president. 3. A
      code, which we possess under the name of Codex Theodosianus, was
      finished in 438, published in the East, in an ordinance addressed
      to the Praetorian præfect, Florentinus, and intended to be
      published in the West. 4. Before it was published in the West,
      Valentinian submitted it to the senate. There is a report of the
      proceedings of the senate, which closed with loud acclamations
      and gratulations.—From Warnkonig, Histoire du Droit Romain, p.
      169-Wenck has published this work, Codicis Theodosiani libri
      priores. Leipzig, 1825.—M.] * Note *: Closius of Tubingen
      communicated to M.Warnkonig the two following constitutions of
      the emperor Constantine, which he discovered in the Ambrosian
      library at Milan:— 1. Imper. Constantinus Aug. ad Maximium Praef.
      Praetorio. Perpetuas prudentum contentiones eruere cupientes,
      Ulpiani ac Pauli, in Papinianum notas, qui dum ingenii laudem
      sectantur, non tam corrigere eum quam depravere maluerunt,
      aboleri praecepimus. Dat. III. Kalend. Octob. Const. Cons. et
      Crispi, (321.) Idem. Aug. ad Maximium Praef Praet. Universa, quae
      scriptura Pauli continentur, recepta auctoritate firmanda runt,
      et omni veneratione celebranda. Ideoque sententiarum libros
      plepissima luce et perfectissima elocutione et justissima juris
      ratione succinctos in judiciis prolatos valere minimie dubitatur.
      Dat. V. Kalend. Oct. Trovia Coust. et Max. Coss. (327.)—W]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part IV.


      When Justinian ascended the throne, the reformation of the Roman
      jurisprudence was an arduous but indispensable task. In the space
      of ten centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions
      had filled many thousand volumes, which no fortune could purchase
      and no capacity could digest. Books could not easily be found;
      and the judges, poor in the midst of riches, were reduced to the
      exercise of their illiterate discretion. The subjects of the
      Greek provinces were ignorant of the language that disposed of
      their lives and properties; and the barbarous dialect of the
      Latins was imperfectly studied in the academies of Berytus and
      Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that idiom was familiar
      to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been instructed by the
      lessons of jurisprudence, and his Imperial choice selected the
      most learned civilians of the East, to labor with their sovereign
      in the work of reformation. 71 The theory of professors was
      assisted by the practice of advocates, and the experience of
      magistrates; and the whole undertaking was animated by the spirit
      of Tribonian. 72 This extraordinary man, the object of so much
      praise and censure, was a native of Side in Pamphylia; and his
      genius, like that of Bacon, embraced, as his own, all the
      business and knowledge of the age. Tribonian composed, both in
      prose and verse, on a strange diversity of curious and abstruse
      subjects: 73 a double panegyric of Justinian and the life of the
      philosopher Theodotus; the nature of happiness and the duties of
      government; Homer’s catalogue and the four-and-twenty sorts of
      metre; the astronomical canon of Ptolemy; the changes of the
      months; the houses of the planets; and the harmonic system of the
      world. To the literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin
      tongue; the Roman civilians were deposited in his library and in
      his mind; and he most assiduously cultivated those arts which
      opened the road of wealth and preferment. From the bar of the
      Praetorian præfects, he raised himself to the honors of quaestor,
      of consul, and of master of the offices: the council of Justinian
      listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy was mitigated by
      the gentleness and affability of his manners. The reproaches of
      impiety and avarice have stained the virtue or the reputation of
      Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court, the principal
      minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian faith,
      and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an Atheist and a
      Pagan, which have been imputed, inconsistently enough, to the
      last philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved
      and more sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the
      administration of justice, the example of Bacon will again occur;
      nor can the merit of Tribonian atone for his baseness, if he
      degraded the sanctity of his profession; and if laws were every
      day enacted, modified, or repealed, for the base consideration of
      his private emolument. In the sedition of Constantinople, his
      removal was granted to the clamors, perhaps to the just
      indignation, of the people: but the quaestor was speedily
      restored, and, till the hour of his death, he possessed, above
      twenty years, the favor and confidence of the emperor. His
      passive and dutiful submission had been honored with the praise
      of Justinian himself, whose vanity was incapable of discerning
      how often that submission degenerated into the grossest
      adulation. Tribonian adored the virtues of his gracious master:
      the earth was unworthy of such a prince; and he affected a pious
      fear, that Justinian, like Elijah or Romulus, would be snatched
      into the air, and translated alive to the mansions of celestial
      glory. 74

      71 (return) [ For the legal labors of Justinian, I have studied
      the Preface to the Institutes; the 1st, 2d, and 3d Prefaces to
      the Pandects; the 1st and 2d Preface to the Code; and the Code
      itself, (l. i. tit. xvii. de Veteri Jure enucleando.) After these
      original testimonies, I have consulted, among the moderns,
      Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 383—404,) Terasson. (Hist. de la
      Jurisprudence Romaine, p. 295—356,) Gravina, (Opp. p. 93-100,)
      and Ludewig, in his Life of Justinian, (p.19—123, 318-321; for
      the Code and Novels, p. 209—261; for the Digest or Pandects, p.
      262—317.)]

      72 (return) [ For the character of Tribonian, see the testimonies
      of Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 23, 24. Anecdot. c. 13, 20,) and
      Suidas, (tom. iii. p. 501, edit. Kuster.) Ludewig (in Vit.
      Justinian, p. 175—209) works hard, very hard, to whitewash—the
      blackamoor.]

      73 (return) [ I apply the two passages of Suidas to the same man;
      every circumstance so exactly tallies. Yet the lawyers appear
      ignorant; and Fabricius is inclined to separate the two
      characters, (Bibliot. Grae. tom. i. p. 341, ii. p. 518, iii. p.
      418, xii. p. 346, 353, 474.)]

      74 (return) [ This story is related by Hesychius, (de Viris
      Illustribus,) Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 13,) and Suidas, (tom. iii.
      p. 501.) Such flattery is incredible! —Nihil est quod credere de
      se Non possit, cum laudatur Diis aequa potestas. Fontenelle (tom.
      i. p. 32—39) has ridiculed the impudence of the modest Virgil.
      But the same Fontenelle places his king above the divine
      Augustus; and the sage Boileau has not blushed to say, “Le destin
      a ses yeux n’oseroit balancer” Yet neither Augustus nor Louis
      XIV. were fools.]


      If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his
      creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have
      given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence.
      Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of the East was
      afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of
      equity: in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the
      aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are
      guarded by the sages and legislature of past times. Instead of a
      statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works
      of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of antique and
      costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year
      of his reign, he directed the faithful Tribonian, and nine
      learned associates, to revise the ordinances of his predecessors,
      as they were contained, since the time of Adrian, in the
      Gregorian Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes; to purge the errors
      and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or
      superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best
      adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his
      subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the
      twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might
      be designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors.
      The new Code of Justinian was honored with his name, and
      confirmed by his royal signature: authentic transcripts were
      multiplied by the pens of notaries and scribes; they were
      transmitted to the magistrates of the European, the Asiatic, and
      afterwards the African provinces; and the law of the empire was
      proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches. A more
      arduous operation was still behind—to extract the spirit of
      jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the questions
      and disputes, of the Roman civilians. Seventeen lawyers, with
      Tribonian at their head, were appointed by the emperor to
      exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their
      predecessors. If they had obeyed his commands in ten years,
      Justinian would have been satisfied with their diligence; and the
      rapid composition of the Digest of Pandects, 75 in three years,
      will deserve praise or censure, according to the merit of the
      execution. From the library of Tribonian, they chose forty, the
      most eminent civilians of former times: 76 two thousand treatises
      were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been
      carefully recorded, that three millions of lines or sentences, 77
      were reduced, in this abstract, to the moderate number of one
      hundred and fifty thousand. The edition of this great work was
      delayed a month after that of the Institutes; and it seemed
      reasonable that the elements should precede the digest of the
      Roman law. As soon as the emperor had approved their labors, he
      ratified, by his legislative power, the speculations of these
      private citizens: their commentaries, on the twelve tables, the
      perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the
      senate, succeeded to the authority of the text; and the text was
      abandoned, as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity.
      The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be
      the legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were
      admitted into the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the
      academies of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian
      addressed to the senate and provinces his eternal oracles; and
      his pride, under the mask of piety, ascribed the consummation of
      this great design to the support and inspiration of the Deity.

      75 (return) [ General receivers was a common title of the Greek
      miscellanies, (Plin. Praefat. ad Hist. Natur.) The Digesta of
      Scaevola, Marcellinus, Celsus, were already familiar to the
      civilians: but Justinian was in the wrong when he used the two
      appellations as synonymous. Is the word Pandects Greek or
      Latin—masculine or feminine? The diligent Brenckman will not
      presume to decide these momentous controversies, (Hist. Pandect.
      Florentine. p. 200—304.) Note: The word was formerly in common
      use. See the preface is Aulus Gellius—W]

      76 (return) [ Angelus Politianus (l. v. Epist. ult.) reckons
      thirty-seven (p. 192—200) civilians quoted in the Pandects—a
      learned, and for his times, an extraordinary list. The Greek
      index to the Pandects enumerates thirty-nine, and forty are
      produced by the indefatigable Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom.
      iii. p. 488—502.) Antoninus Augustus (de Nominibus Propriis
      Pandect. apud Ludewig, p. 283) is said to have added fifty-four
      names; but they must be vague or second-hand references.]

      77 (return) [ The item of the ancient Mss. may be strictly
      defined as sentences or periods of a complete sense, which, on
      the breadth of the parchment rolls or volumes, composed as many
      lines of unequal length. The number in each book served as a
      check on the errors of the scribes, (Ludewig, p. 211—215; and his
      original author Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. i. p
      1021-1036).]


      Since the emperor declined the fame and envy of original
      composition, we can only require, at his hands, method, choice,
      and fidelity, the humble, though indispensable, virtues of a
      compiler. Among the various combinations of ideas, it is
      difficult to assign any reasonable preference; but as the order
      of Justinian is different in his three works, it is possible that
      all may be wrong; and it is certain that two cannot be right. In
      the selection of ancient laws, he seems to have viewed his
      predecessors without jealousy, and with equal regard: the series
      could not ascend above the reign of Adrian, and the narrow
      distinction of Paganism and Christianity, introduced by the
      superstition of Theodosius, had been abolished by the consent of
      mankind. But the jurisprudence of the Pandects is circumscribed
      within a period of a hundred years, from the perpetual edict to
      the death of Severus Alexander: the civilians who lived under the
      first Caesars are seldom permitted to speak, and only three names
      can be attributed to the age of the republic. The favorite of
      Justinian (it has been fiercely urged) was fearful of
      encountering the light of freedom and the gravity of Roman sages.


      Tribonian condemned to oblivion the genuine and native wisdom of
      Cato, the Scaevolas, and Sulpicius; while he invoked spirits more
      congenial to his own, the Syrians, Greeks, and Africans, who
      flocked to the Imperial court to study Latin as a foreign tongue,
      and jurisprudence as a lucrative profession. But the ministers of
      Justinian, 78 were instructed to labor, not for the curiosity of
      antiquarians, but for the immediate benefit of his subjects. It
      was their duty to select the useful and practical parts of the
      Roman law; and the writings of the old republicans, however
      curious or excellent, were no longer suited to the new system of
      manners, religion, and government. Perhaps, if the preceptors and
      friends of Cicero were still alive, our candor would acknowledge,
      that, except in purity of language, 79 their intrinsic merit was
      excelled by the school of Papinian and Ulpian. The science of the
      laws is the slow growth of time and experience, and the advantage
      both of method and materials, is naturally assumed by the most
      recent authors. The civilians of the reign of the Antonines had
      studied the works of their predecessors: their philosophic spirit
      had mitigated the rigor of antiquity, simplified the forms of
      proceeding, and emerged from the jealousy and prejudice of the
      rival sects. The choice of the authorities that compose the
      Pandects depended on the judgment of Tribonian: but the power of
      his sovereign could not absolve him from the sacred obligations
      of truth and fidelity. As the legislator of the empire, Justinian
      might repeal the acts of the Antonines, or condemn, as seditious,
      the free principles, which were maintained by the last of the
      Roman lawyers. 80 But the existence of past facts is placed
      beyond the reach of despotism; and the emperor was guilty of
      fraud and forgery, when he corrupted the integrity of their text,
      inscribed with their venerable names the words and ideas of his
      servile reign, 81 and suppressed, by the hand of power, the pure
      and authentic copies of their sentiments. The changes and
      interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the
      pretence of uniformity: but their cares have been insufficient,
      and the antinomies, or contradictions of the Code and Pandects,
      still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern civilians. 82

      78 (return) [ An ingenious and learned oration of Schultingius
      (Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p. 883—907) justifies the
      choice of Tribonian, against the passionate charges of Francis
      Hottoman and his sectaries.]

      79 (return) [ Strip away the crust of Tribonian, and allow for
      the use of technical words, and the Latin of the Pandects will be
      found not unworthy of the silver age. It has been vehemently
      attacked by Laurentius Valla, a fastidious grammarian of the xvth
      century, and by his apologist Floridus Sabinus. It has been
      defended by Alciat, and a name less advocate, (most probably
      James Capellus.) Their various treatises are collected by Duker,
      (Opuscula de Latinitate veterum Jurisconsultorum, Lugd. Bat.
      1721, in 12mo.) Note: Gibbon is mistaken with regard to Valla,
      who, though he inveighs against the barbarous style of the
      civilians of his own day, lavishes the highest praise on the
      admirable purity of the language of the ancient writers on civil
      law. (M. Warnkonig quotes a long passage of Valla in
      justification of this observation.) Since his time, this truth
      has been recognized by men of the highest eminence, such as
      Erasmus, David Hume and Runkhenius.—W.]

      80 (return) [ Nomina quidem veteribus servavimus, legum autem
      veritatem nostram fecimus. Itaque siquid erat in illis
      seditiosum, multa autem talia erant ibi reposita, hoc decisum est
      et definitum, et in perspicuum finem deducta est quaeque lex,
      (Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xvii. leg. 3, No 10.) A frank
      confession! * Note: Seditiosum, in the language of Justinian,
      means not seditious, but discounted.—W.]

      81 (return) [ The number of these emblemata (a polite name for
      forgeries) is much reduced by Bynkershoek, (in the four last
      books of his Observations,) who poorly maintains the right of
      Justinian and the duty of Tribonian.]

      82 (return) [ The antinomies, or opposite laws of the Code and
      Pandects, are sometimes the cause, and often the excuse, of the
      glorious uncertainty of the civil law, which so often affords
      what Montaigne calls “Questions pour l’Ami.” See a fine passage
      of Franciscus Balduinus in Justinian, (l. ii. p. 259, &c., apud
      Ludewig, p. 305, 306.)]


      A rumor devoid of evidence has been propagated by the enemies of
      Justinian; that the jurisprudence of ancient Rome was reduced to
      ashes by the author of the Pandects, from the vain persuasion,
      that it was now either false or superfluous. Without usurping an
      office so invidious, the emperor might safely commit to ignorance
      and time the accomplishments of this destructive wish. Before the
      invention of printing and paper, the labor and the materials of
      writing could be purchased only by the rich; and it may
      reasonably be computed, that the price of books was a hundred
      fold their present value. 83 Copies were slowly multiplied and
      cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted the sacrilegious
      scribes to erase the characters of antiquity, 8311 and Sophocles
      or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals,
      homilies, and the golden legend. 84 If such was the fate of the
      most beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be
      expected for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science?
      The books of jurisprudence were interesting to few, and
      entertaining to none: their value was connected with present use,
      and they sunk forever as soon as that use was superseded by the
      innovations of fashion, superior merit, or public authority. In
      the age of peace and learning, between Cicero and the last of the
      Antonines, many losses had been already sustained, and some
      luminaries of the school, or forum, were known only to the
      curious by tradition and report. Three hundred and sixty years of
      disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it
      may fairly be presumed, that of the writings, which Justinian is
      accused of neglecting, many were no longer to be found in the
      libraries of the East. 85 The copies of Papinian, or Ulpian,
      which the reformer had proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future
      notice: the Twelve Tables and praetorian edicts insensibly
      vanished, and the monuments of ancient Rome were neglected or
      destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks. Even the
      Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from
      the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the
      editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one
      original. 86 It was transcribed at Constantinople in the
      beginning of the seventh century, 87 was successively transported
      by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi, 88 Pisa, 89 and
      Florence, 90 and is now deposited as a sacred relic 91 in the
      ancient palace of the republic. 92

      83 (return) [ When Faust, or Faustus, sold at Paris his first
      printed Bibles as manuscripts, the price of a parchment copy was
      reduced from four or five hundred to sixty, fifty, and forty
      crowns. The public was at first pleased with the cheapness, and
      at length provoked by the discovery of the fraud, (Mattaire,
      Annal. Typograph. tom. i. p. 12; first edit.)]

      8311 (return) [ Among the works which have been recovered, by the
      persevering and successful endeavors of M. Mai and his followers
      to trace the imperfectly erased characters of the ancient writers
      on these Palimpsests, Gibbon at this period of his labors would
      have hailed with delight the recovery of the Institutes of Gaius,
      and the fragments of the Theodosian Code, published by M Keyron
      of Turin.—M.]

      84 (return) [ This execrable practice prevailed from the viiith,
      and more especially from the xiith, century, when it became
      almost universal (Montfaucon, in the Memoires de l’Academie, tom.
      vi. p. 606, &c. Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom.
      i. p. 176.)]

      85 (return) [ Pomponius (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 2)
      observes, that of the three founders of the civil law, Mucius,
      Brutus, and Manilius, extant volumina, scripta Manilii monumenta;
      that of some old republican lawyers, haec versantur eorum scripta
      inter manus hominum. Eight of the Augustan sages were reduced to
      a compendium: of Cascellius, scripta non extant sed unus liber,
      &c.; of Trebatius, minus frequentatur; of Tubero, libri parum
      grati sunt. Many quotations in the Pandects are derived from
      books which Tribonian never saw; and in the long period from the
      viith to the xiiith century of Rome, the apparent reading of the
      moderns successively depends on the knowledge and veracity of
      their predecessors.]

      86 (return) [ All, in several instances, repeat the errors of the
      scribe and the transpositions of some leaves in the Florentine
      Pandects. This fact, if it be true, is decisive. Yet the Pandects
      are quoted by Ivo of Chartres, (who died in 1117,) by Theobald,
      archbishop of Canterbury, and by Vacarius, our first professor,
      in the year 1140, (Selden ad Fletam, c. 7, tom. ii. p.
      1080—1085.) Have our British Mss. of the Pandects been collated?]

      87 (return) [ See the description of this original in Brenckman,
      (Hist. Pandect. Florent. l. i. c. 2, 3, p. 4—17, and l. ii.)
      Politian, an enthusiast, revered it as the authentic standard of
      Justinian himself, (p. 407, 408;) but this paradox is refuted by
      the abbreviations of the Florentine Ms. (l. ii. c. 3, p.
      117-130.) It is composed of two quarto volumes, with large
      margins, on a thin parchment, and the Latin characters betray the
      band of a Greek scribe.]

      88 (return) [ Brenckman, at the end of his history, has inserted
      two dissertations on the republic of Amalphi, and the Pisan war
      in the year 1135, &c.]

      89 (return) [ The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi (A. D
      1137) is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus,
      (Brenckman, l. i. c. 11, p. 73, 74, l. iv. c. 2, p. 417—425,) on
      the faith of a Pisan chronicle, (p. 409, 410,) without a name or
      a date. The whole story, though unknown to the xiith century,
      embellished by ignorant ages, and suspected by rigid criticism,
      is not, however, destitute of much internal probability, (l. i.
      c. 4—8, p. 17—50.) The Liber Pandectarum of Pisa was undoubtedly
      consulted in the xivth century by the great Bartolus, (p. 406,
      407. See l. i. c. 9, p. 50—62.) Note: Savigny (vol. iii. p. 83,
      89) examines and rejects the whole story. See likewise Hallam
      vol. iii. p. 514.—M.]

      90 (return) [ Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406;
      and in 1411 the Pandects were transported to the capital. These
      events are authentic and famous.]

      91 (return) [ They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich
      casket, and shown to curious travellers by the monks and
      magistrates bareheaded, and with lighted tapers, (Brenckman, l.
      i. c. 10, 11, 12, p. 62—93.)]

      92 (return) [ After the collations of Politian, Bologninus, and
      Antoninus Augustinus, and the splendid edition of the Pandects by
      Taurellus, (in 1551,) Henry Brenckman, a Dutchman, undertook a
      pilgrimage to Florence, where he employed several years in the
      study of a single manuscript. His Historia Pandectarum
      Florentinorum, (Utrecht, 1722, in 4to.,) though a monument of
      industry, is a small portion of his original design.]


      It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future
      reformation. To maintain the text of the Pandects, the
      Institutes, and the Code, the use of ciphers and abbreviations
      was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian recollected, that the
      perpetual edict had been buried under the weight of commentators,
      he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash civilians
      who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their
      sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius,
      should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to
      dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors, and
      the native freedom of the mind. But the emperor was unable to fix
      his own inconstancy; and, while he boasted of renewing the
      exchange of Diomede, of transmuting brass into gold, 93
      discovered the necessity of purifying his gold from the mixture
      of baser alloy. Six years had not elapsed from the publication of
      the Code, before he condemned the imperfect attempt, by a new and
      more accurate edition of the same work; which he enriched with
      two hundred of his own laws, and fifty decisions of the darkest
      and most intricate points of jurisprudence. Every year, or,
      according to Procopius, each day, of his long reign, was marked
      by some legal innovation. Many of his acts were rescinded by
      himself; many were rejected by his successors; many have been
      obliterated by time; but the number of sixteen Edicts, and one
      hundred and sixty-eight Novels, 94 has been admitted into the
      authentic body of the civil jurisprudence. In the opinion of a
      philosopher superior to the prejudices of his profession, these
      incessant, and, for the most part, trifling alterations, can be
      only explained by the venal spirit of a prince, who sold without
      shame his judgments and his laws. 95 The charge of the secret
      historian is indeed explicit and vehement; but the sole instance,
      which he produces, may be ascribed to the devotion as well as to
      the avarice of Justinian. A wealthy bigot had bequeathed his
      inheritance to the church of Emesa; and its value was enhanced by
      the dexterity of an artist, who subscribed confessions of debt
      and promises of payment with the names of the richest Syrians.
      They pleaded the established prescription of thirty or forty
      years; but their defence was overruled by a retrospective edict,
      which extended the claims of the church to the term of a century;
      an edict so pregnant with injustice and disorder, that, after
      serving this occasional purpose, it was prudently abolished in
      the same reign. 96 If candor will acquit the emperor himself, and
      transfer the corruption to his wife and favorites, the suspicion
      of so foul a vice must still degrade the majesty of his laws; and
      the advocates of Justinian may acknowledge, that such levity,
      whatsoever be the motive, is unworthy of a legislator and a man.

      93 (return) [ Apud Homerum patrem omnis virtutis, (1st Praefat.
      ad Pandect.) A line of Milton or Tasso would surprise us in an
      act of parliament. Quae omnia obtinere sancimus in omne aevum. Of
      the first Code, he says, (2d Praefat.,) in aeternum valiturum.
      Man and forever!]

      94 (return) [ Novellae is a classic adjective, but a barbarous
      substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them
      himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern
      tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was
      increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius,
      (Ludewig, p. 249, 258 Aleman. Not in Anecdot. p. 98.)]

      95 (return) [ Montesquieu, Considerations sur la Grandeur et la
      Decadence des Romains, c. 20, tom. iii. p. 501, in 4to. On this
      occasion he throws aside the gown and cap of a President a
      Mortier.]

      96 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 28. A similar privilege was
      granted to the church of Rome, (Novel. ix.) For the general
      repeal of these mischievous indulgences, see Novel. cxi. and
      Edict. v.]


      Monarchs seldom condescend to become the preceptors of their
      subjects; and some praise is due to Justinian, by whose command
      an ample system was reduced to a short and elementary treatise.
      Among the various institutes of the Roman law, 97 those of Caius
      98 were the most popular in the East and West; and their use may
      be considered as an evidence of their merit. They were selected
      by the Imperial delegates, Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus;
      and the freedom and purity of the Antonines was incrusted with
      the coarser materials of a degenerate age. The same volume which
      introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, to the
      gradual study of the Code and Pandects, is still precious to the
      historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate. The Institutes of
      Justinian are divided into four books: they proceed, with no
      contemptible method, from, I. Persons, to, II. Things, and from
      things, to, III. Actions; and the article IV., of Private Wrongs,
      is terminated by the principles of Criminal Law. 9811

      97 (return) [ Lactantius, in his Institutes of Christianity, an
      elegant and specious work, proposes to imitate the title and
      method of the civilians. Quidam prudentes et arbitri aequitatis
      Institutiones Civilis Juris compositas ediderunt, (Institut.
      Divin. l. i. c. 1.) Such as Ulpian, Paul, Florentinus, Marcian.]

      98 (return) [ The emperor Justinian calls him suum, though he
      died before the end of the second century. His Institutes are
      quoted by Servius, Boethius, Priscian, &c.; and the Epitome by
      Arrian is still extant. (See the Prolegomena and notes to the
      edition of Schulting, in the Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea,
      Lugd. Bat. 1717. Heineccius, Hist. J R No. 313. Ludewig, in Vit.
      Just. p. 199.)]

      9811 (return) [ Gibbon, dividing the Institutes into four parts,
      considers the appendix of the criminal law in the last title as a
      fourth part.—W.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part V.


      The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a
      mixed and limited government. In France, the remains of liberty
      are kept alive by the spirit, the honors, and even the
      prejudices, of fifty thousand nobles. 99 Two hundred families
      9911 supply, in lineal descent, the second branch of English
      legislature, which maintains, between the king and commons, the
      balance of the constitution. A gradation of patricians and
      plebeians, of strangers and subjects, has supported the
      aristocracy of Genoa, Venice, and ancient Rome. The perfect
      equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy
      and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or
      people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the
      level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline
      of the Roman empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were
      gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian
      completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The emperor
      could not eradicate the popular reverence which always waits on
      the possession of hereditary wealth, or the memory of famous
      ancestors. He delighted to honor, with titles and emoluments, his
      generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious
      indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons
      of their wives and children. But in the eye of the law, all Roman
      citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens
      of Rome. That inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete
      and empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact his
      laws, or create the annual ministers of his power: his
      constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary will of a
      master: and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was
      admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command,
      which the citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the
      conquests of his fathers. The first Caesars had scrupulously
      guarded the distinction of ingenuous and servile birth, which was
      decided by the condition of the mother; and the candor of the
      laws was satisfied, if her freedom could be ascertained, during a
      single moment, between the conception and the delivery. The
      slaves, who were liberated by a generous master, immediately
      entered into the middle class of libertines or freedmen; but they
      could never be enfranchised from the duties of obedience and
      gratitude; whatever were the fruits of their industry, their
      patron and his family inherited the third part; or even the whole
      of their fortune, if they died without children and without a
      testament. Justinian respected the rights of patrons; but his
      indulgence removed the badge of disgrace from the two inferior
      orders of freedmen; whoever ceased to be a slave, obtained,
      without reserve or delay, the station of a citizen; and at length
      the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had refused, was
      created, or supposed, by the omnipotence of the emperor. Whatever
      restraints of age, or forms, or numbers, had been formerly
      introduced to check the abuse of manumissions, and the too rapid
      increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and
      the spirit of his laws promoted the extinction of domestic
      servitude. Yet the eastern provinces were filled, in the time of
      Justinian, with multitudes of slaves, either born or purchased
      for the use of their masters; and the price, from ten to seventy
      pieces of gold, was determined by their age, their strength, and
      their education. 100 But the hardships of this dependent state
      were continually diminished by the influence of government and
      religion: and the pride of a subject was no longer elated by his
      absolute dominion over the life and happiness of his bondsman.
      101

      99 (return) [ See the Annales Politiques de l’Abbe de St. Pierre,
      tom. i. p. 25 who dates in the year 1735. The most ancient
      families claim the immemorial possession of arms and fiefs. Since
      the Crusades, some, the most truly respectable, have been created
      by the king, for merit and services. The recent and vulgar crowd
      is derived from the multitude of venal offices without trust or
      dignity, which continually ennoble the wealthy plebeians.]

      9911 (return) [ Since the time of Gibbon, the House of Peers has
      been more than doubled: it is above 400, exclusive of the
      spiritual peers—a wise policy to increase the patrician order in
      proportion to the general increase of the nation.—M.]

      100 (return) [ If the option of a slave was bequeathed to several
      legatees, they drew lots, and the losers were entitled to their
      share of his value; ten pieces of gold for a common servant or
      maid under ten years: if above that age, twenty; if they knew a
      trade, thirty; notaries or writers, fifty; midwives or
      physicians, sixty; eunuchs under ten years, thirty pieces; above,
      fifty; if tradesmen, seventy, (Cod. l. vi. tit. xliii. leg. 3.)
      These legal prices are generally below those of the market.]

      101 (return) [ For the state of slaves and freedmen, see
      Institutes, l. i. tit. iii.—viii. l. ii. tit. ix. l. iii. tit.
      viii. ix. Pandects or Digest, l. i. tit. v. vi. l. xxxviii. tit.
      i.—iv., and the whole of the xlth book. Code, l. vi. tit. iv. v.
      l. vii. tit. i.—xxiii. Be it henceforward understood that, with
      the original text of the Institutes and Pandects, the
      correspondent articles in the Antiquities and Elements of
      Heineccius are implicitly quoted; and with the xxvii. first books
      of the Pandects, the learned and rational Commentaries of Gerard
      Noodt, (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1—590, the end. Lugd. Bat. 1724.)]


      The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate
      their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human
      species the returns of filial piety. But the exclusive, absolute,
      and perpetual dominion of the father over his children, is
      peculiar to the Roman jurisprudence, 102 and seems to be coeval
      with the foundation of the city. 103 The paternal power was
      instituted or confirmed by Romulus himself; and, after the
      practice of three centuries, it was inscribed on the fourth table
      of the Decemvirs. In the forum, the senate, or the camp, the
      adult son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the public and private
      rights of a person: in his father’s house he was a mere thing;
      1031 confounded by the laws with the movables, the cattle, and
      the slaves, whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy,
      without being responsible to any earthly tribunal. The hand which
      bestowed the daily sustenance might resume the voluntary gift,
      and whatever was acquired by the labor or fortune of the son was
      immediately lost in the property of the father. His stolen goods
      (his oxen or his children) might be recovered by the same action
      of theft; 104 and if either had been guilty of a trespass, it was
      in his own option to compensate the damage, or resign to the
      injured party the obnoxious animal. At the call of indigence or
      avarice, the master of a family could dispose of his children or
      his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far more
      advantageous, since he regained, by the first manumission, his
      alienated freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural
      father; he might be condemned to servitude a second and a third
      time, and it was not till after the third sale and deliverance,
      105 that he was enfranchised from the domestic power which had
      been so repeatedly abused. According to his discretion, a father
      might chastise the real or imaginary faults of his children, by
      stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them to the
      country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The
      majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death;
      106 and the examples of such bloody executions, which were
      sometimes praised and never punished, may be traced in the annals
      of Rome beyond the times of Pompey and Augustus. Neither age, nor
      rank, nor the consular office, nor the honors of a triumph, could
      exempt the most illustrious citizen from the bonds of filial
      subjection: 107 his own descendants were included in the family
      of their common ancestor; and the claims of adoption were not
      less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature. Without fear,
      though not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators had
      reposed an unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal
      love; and the oppression was tempered by the assurance that each
      generation must succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of
      parent and master.

      102 (return) [ See the patria potestas in the Institutes, (l. i.
      tit. ix.,) the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vi. vii.,) and the Code, (l.
      viii. tit. xlvii. xlviii. xlix.) Jus potestatis quod in liberos
      habemus proprium est civium Romanorum. Nulli enim alii sunt
      homines, qui talem in liberos habeant potestatem qualem nos
      habemus. * Note: The newly-discovered Institutes of Gaius name
      one nation in which the same power was vested in the parent. Nec
      me praeterit Galatarum gentem credere, in potestate parentum
      liberos esse. Gaii Instit. edit. 1824, p. 257.—M.]

      103 (return) [ Dionysius Hal. l. ii. p. 94, 95. Gravina (Opp. p.
      286) produces the words of the xii. tables. Papinian (in
      Collatione Legum Roman et Mosaicarum, tit. iv. p. 204) styles
      this patria potestas, lex regia: Ulpian (ad Sabin. l. xxvi. in
      Pandect. l. i. tit. vi. leg. 8) says, jus potestatis moribus
      receptum; and furiosus filium in potestate habebit How sacred—or
      rather, how absurd! * Note: All this is in strict accordance with
      the Roman character.—W.]

      1031 (return) [ This parental power was strictly confined to the
      Roman citizen. The foreigner, or he who had only jus Latii, did
      not possess it. If a Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or
      a foreign wife, he did not possess this power over his son,
      because the son, following the legal condition of the mother, was
      not a Roman citizen. A man, however, alleging sufficient cause
      for his ignorance, might raise both mother and child to the
      rights of citizenship. Gaius. p. 30.—M.]

      104 (return) [ Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 14, No. 13, leg.
      38, No. 1. Such was the decision of Ulpian and Paul.]

      105 (return) [ The trina mancipatio is most clearly defined by
      Ulpian, (Fragment. x. p. 591, 592, edit. Schulting;) and best
      illustrated in the Antiquities of Heineccius. * Note: The son of
      a family sold by his father did not become in every respect a
      slave, he was statu liber; that is to say, on paying the price
      for which he was sold, he became entirely free. See Hugo, Hist.
      Section 61—W.]

      106 (return) [ By Justinian, the old law, the jus necis of the
      Roman father (Institut. l. iv. tit. ix. No. 7) is reported and
      reprobated. Some legal vestiges are left in the Pandects (l.
      xliii. tit. xxix. leg. 3, No. 4) and the Collatio Legum Romanarum
      et Mosaicarum, (tit. ii. No. 3, p. 189.)]

      107 (return) [ Except on public occasions, and in the actual
      exercise of his office. In publicis locis atque muneribus, atque
      actionibus patrum, jura cum filiorum qui in magistratu sunt
      potestatibus collata interquiescere paullulum et connivere, &c.,
      (Aul. Gellius, Noctes Atticae, ii. 2.) The Lessons of the
      philosopher Taurus were justified by the old and memorable
      example of Fabius; and we may contemplate the same story in the
      style of Livy (xxiv. 44) and the homely idiom of Claudius Quadri
      garius the annalist.]


      The first limitation of paternal power is ascribed to the justice
      and humanity of Numa; and the maid who, with his father’s
      consent, had espoused a freeman, was protected from the disgrace
      of becoming the wife of a slave. In the first ages, when the city
      was pressed, and often famished, by her Latin and Tuscan
      neighbors, the sale of children might be a frequent practice; but
      as a Roman could not legally purchase the liberty of his
      fellow-citizen, the market must gradually fail, and the trade
      would be destroyed by the conquests of the republic. An imperfect
      right of property was at length communicated to sons; and the
      threefold distinction of profectitious, adventitious, and
      professional was ascertained by the jurisprudence of the Code and
      Pandects. 108 Of all that proceeded from the father, he imparted
      only the use, and reserved the absolute dominion; yet if his
      goods were sold, the filial portion was excepted, by a favorable
      interpretation, from the demands of the creditors. In whatever
      accrued by marriage, gift, or collateral succession, the property
      was secured to the son; but the father, unless he had been
      specially excluded, enjoyed the usufruct during his life. As a
      just and prudent reward of military virtue, the spoils of the
      enemy were acquired, possessed, and bequeathed by the soldier
      alone; and the fair analogy was extended to the emoluments of any
      liberal profession, the salary of public service, and the sacred
      liberality of the emperor or empress. The life of a citizen was
      less exposed than his fortune to the abuse of paternal power. Yet
      his life might be adverse to the interest or passions of an
      unworthy father: the same crimes that flowed from the corruption,
      were more sensibly felt by the humanity, of the Augustan age; and
      the cruel Erixo, who whipped his son till he expired, was saved
      by the emperor from the just fury of the multitude. 109 The Roman
      father, from the license of servile dominion, was reduced to the
      gravity and moderation of a judge. The presence and opinion of
      Augustus confirmed the sentence of exile pronounced against an
      intentional parricide by the domestic tribunal of Arius. Adrian
      transported to an island the jealous parent, who, like a robber,
      had seized the opportunity of hunting, to assassinate a youth,
      the incestuous lover of his step-mother. 110 A private
      jurisdiction is repugnant to the spirit of monarchy; the parent
      was again reduced from a judge to an accuser; and the magistrates
      were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his complaints and
      execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life of a son
      without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the
      pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the
      Pompeian law, were finally inflicted by the justice of
      Constantine. 111 The same protection was due to every period of
      existence; and reason must applaud the humanity of Paulus, for
      imputing the crime of murder to the father who strangles, or
      starves, or abandons his new-born infant; or exposes him in a
      public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied. But
      the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice
      of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted,
      almost always practised with impunity, by the nations who never
      entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic
      poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference
      a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy
      and compassion. 112 If the father could subdue his own feelings,
      he might escape, though not the censure, at least the
      chastisement, of the laws; and the Roman empire was stained with
      the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by
      Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the
      Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence 113 and Christianity
      had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till
      their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital
      punishment. 114

      108 (return) [ See the gradual enlargement and security of the
      filial peculium in the Institutes, (l. ii. tit. ix.,) the
      Pandects, (l. xv. tit. i. l. xli. tit. i.,) and the Code, (l. iv.
      tit. xxvi. xxvii.)]

      109 (return) [ The examples of Erixo and Arius are related by
      Seneca, (de Clementia, i. 14, 15,) the former with horror, the
      latter with applause.]

      110 (return) [ Quod latronis magis quam patris jure eum
      interfecit, nam patria potestas in pietate debet non in
      atrocitate consistere, (Marcian. Institut. l. xix. in Pandect. l.
      xlviii. tit. ix. leg.5.)]

      111 (return) [ The Pompeian and Cornelian laws de sicariis and
      parricidis are repeated, or rather abridged, with the last
      supplements of Alexander Severus, Constantine, and Valentinian,
      in the Pandects (l. xlviii. tit. viii ix,) and Code, (l. ix. tit.
      xvi. xvii.) See likewise the Theodosian Code, (l. ix. tit. xiv.
      xv.,) with Godefroy’s Commentary, (tom. iii. p. 84—113) who pours
      a flood of ancient and modern learning over these penal laws.]

      112 (return) [ When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife
      for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks
      like a father and a master, and silences the scruples of a
      foolish woman. See Apuleius, (Metamorph. l. x. p. 337, edit.
      Delphin.)]

      113 (return) [ The opinion of the lawyers, and the discretion of
      the magistrates, had introduced, in the time of Tacitus, some
      legal restraints, which might support his contrast of the boni
      mores of the Germans to the bonae leges alibi—that is to say, at
      Rome, (de Moribus Germanorum, c. 19.) Tertullian (ad Nationes, l.
      i. c. 15) refutes his own charges, and those of his brethren,
      against the heathen jurisprudence.]

      114 (return) [ The wise and humane sentence of the civilian Paul
      (l. ii. Sententiarum in Pandect, 1. xxv. tit. iii. leg. 4) is
      represented as a mere moral precept by Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom.
      i. in Julius Paulus, p. 567—558, and Amica Responsio, p.
      591-606,) who maintains the opinion of Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom.
      ii. p. 409, ad Belgas. cent. i. epist. 85,) and as a positive
      binding law by Bynkershoek, (de Jure occidendi Liberos, Opp. tom.
      i. p. 318—340. Curae Secundae, p. 391—427.) In a learned out
      angry controversy, the two friends deviated into the opposite
      extremes.]


      Experience has proved, that savages are the tyrants of the female
      sex, and that the condition of women is usually softened by the
      refinements of social life. In the hope of a robust progeny,
      Lycurgus had delayed the season of marriage: it was fixed by Numa
      at the tender age of twelve years, that the Roman husband might
      educate to his will a pure and obedient virgin. 115 According to
      the custom of antiquity, he bought his bride of her parents, and
      she fulfilled the coemption by purchasing, with three pieces of
      copper, a just introduction to his house and household deities. A
      sacrifice of fruits was offered by the pontiffs in the presence
      of ten witnesses; the contracting parties were seated on the same
      sheep-skin; they tasted a salt cake of far or rice; and this
      confarreation, 116 which denoted the ancient food of Italy,
      served as an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body. But
      this union on the side of the woman was rigorous and unequal; and
      she renounced the name and worship of her father’s house, to
      embrace a new servitude, decorated only by the title of adoption,
      a fiction of the law, neither rational nor elegant, bestowed on
      the mother of a family 117 (her proper appellation) the strange
      characters of sister to her own children, and of daughter to her
      husband or master, who was invested with the plenitude of
      paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was
      approved, or censured, or chastised; he exercised the
      jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed, that in the
      cases of adultery or drunkenness, 118 the sentence might be
      properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole
      profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a
      person, but as a thing, that, if the original title were
      deficient, she might be claimed, like other movables, by the use
      and possession of an entire year. The inclination of the Roman
      husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so scrupulously
      exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws: 119 but as polygamy was
      unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or a more
      favored partner.

      115 (return) [ Dionys. Hal. l. ii. p. 92, 93. Plutarch, in Numa,
      p. 140-141.]

      116 (return) [ Among the winter frunenta, the triticum, or
      bearded wheat; the siligo, or the unbearded; the far, adorea,
      oryza, whose description perfectly tallies with the rice of Spain
      and Italy. I adopt this identity on the credit of M. Paucton in
      his useful and laborious Metrologie, (p. 517—529.)]

      117 (return) [ Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, xviii. 6) gives a
      ridiculous definition of Aelius Melissus, Matrona, quae semel
      materfamilias quae saepius peperit, as porcetra and scropha in
      the sow kind. He then adds the genuine meaning, quae in
      matrimonium vel in manum convenerat.]

      118 (return) [ It was enough to have tasted wine, or to have
      stolen the key of the cellar, (Plin. Hist. Nat. xiv. 14.)]

      119 (return) [ Solon requires three payments per month. By the
      Misna, a daily debt was imposed on an idle, vigorous, young
      husband; twice a week on a citizen; once on a peasant; once in
      thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman.
      But the student or doctor was free from tribute; and no wife, if
      she received a weekly sustenance, could sue for a divorce; for
      one week a vow of abstinence was allowed. Polygamy divided,
      without multiplying, the duties of the husband, (Selden, Uxor
      Ebraica, l. iii. c 6, in his works, vol ii. p. 717—720.)]


      After the Punic triumphs, the matrons of Rome aspired to the
      common benefits of a free and opulent republic: their wishes were
      gratified by the indulgence of fathers and lovers, and their
      ambition was unsuccessfully resisted by the gravity of Cato the
      Censor. 120 They declined the solemnities of the old nuptiais;
      defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days;
      and, without losing their name or independence, subscribed the
      liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their
      private fortunes, they communicated the use, and secured the
      property: the estates of a wife could neither be alienated nor
      mortgaged by a prodigal husband; their mutual gifts were
      prohibited by the jealousy of the laws; and the misconduct of
      either party might afford, under another name, a future subject
      for an action of theft. To this loose and voluntary compact,
      religious and civil rights were no longer essential; and, between
      persons of a similar rank, the apparent community of life was
      allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials. The dignity of
      marriage was restored by the Christians, who derived all
      spiritual grace from the prayers of the faithful and the
      benediction of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, and
      duties of the holy institution were regulated by the tradition of
      the synagogue, the precepts of the gospel, and the canons of
      general or provincial synods; 121 and the conscience of the
      Christians was awed by the decrees and censures of their
      ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of Justinian were not
      subject to the authority of the church: the emperor consulted the
      unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and the choice of matrimonial
      laws in the Code and Pandects, is directed by the earthly motives
      of justice, policy, and the natural freedom of both sexes. 122

      120 (return) [ On the Oppian law we may hear the mitigating
      speech of Vaerius Flaccus, and the severe censorial oration of
      the elder Cato, (Liv. xxxiv. l—8.) But we shall rather hear the
      polished historian of the eighth, than the rough orators of the
      sixth, century of Rome. The principles, and even the style, of
      Cato are more accurately preserved by Aulus Gellius, (x. 23.)]

      121 (return) [ For the system of Jewish and Catholic matrimony,
      see Selden, (Uxor Ebraica, Opp. vol. ii. p. 529—860,) Bingham,
      (Christian Antiquities, l. xxii.,) and Chardon, (Hist. des
      Sacremens, tom. vi.)]

      122 (return) [ The civil laws of marriage are exposed in the
      Institutes, (l. i. tit. x.,) the Pandects, (l. xxiii. xxiv.
      xxv.,) and the Code, (l. v.;) but as the title de ritu nuptiarum
      is yet imperfect, we are obliged to explore the fragments of
      Ulpian (tit. ix. p. 590, 591,) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum,
      (tit. xvi. p. 790, 791,) with the notes of Pithaeus and
      Schulting. They find in the Commentary of Servius (on the 1st
      Georgia and the 4th Aeneid) two curious passages.]


      Besides the agreement of the parties, the essence of every
      rational contract, the Roman marriage required the previous
      approbation of the parents. A father might be forced by some
      recent laws to supply the wants of a mature daughter; but even
      his insanity was not gradually allowed to supersede the necessity
      of his consent. The causes of the dissolution of matrimony have
      varied among the Romans; 123 but the most solemn sacrament, the
      confarreation itself, might always be done away by rites of a
      contrary tendency. In the first ages, the father of a family
      might sell his children, and his wife was reckoned in the number
      of his children: the domestic judge might pronounce the death of
      the offender, or his mercy might expel her from his bed and
      house; but the slavery of the wretched female was hopeless and
      perpetual, unless he asserted for his own convenience the manly
      prerogative of divorce. 1231 The warmest applause has been
      lavished on the virtue of the Romans, who abstained from the
      exercise of this tempting privilege above five hundred years: 124
      but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connection in
      which the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant
      was unwilling to relinquish his slave. When the Roman matrons
      became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new
      jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other
      partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the
      associates. In three centuries of prosperity and corruption, this
      principle was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse.


      Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives for the
      dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the
      mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender
      of human connections was degraded to a transient society of
      profit or pleasure. According to the various conditions of life,
      both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury: an
      inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to a new family,
      abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious, progeny to the
      paternal authority and care of her late husband; a beautiful
      virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and
      friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they were
      pressed to marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks, that the
      prevailing institutions were least favorable to the males. A
      specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment,
      which demonstrates, that the liberty of divorce does not
      contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation
      would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling
      dispute: the minute difference between a husband and a stranger,
      which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be
      forgotten; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the
      embraces of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity
      of her own person. 125

      123 (return) [ According to Plutarch, (p. 57,) Romulus allowed
      only three grounds of a divorce—drunkenness, adultery, and false
      keys. Otherwise, the husband who abused his supremacy forfeited
      half his goods to the wife, and half to the goddess Ceres, and
      offered a sacrifice (with the remainder?) to the terrestrial
      deities. This strange law was either imaginary or transient.]

      1231 (return) [ Montesquieu relates and explains this fact in a
      different marnes Esprit des Loix, l. xvi. c. 16.—G.]

      124 (return) [ In the year of Rome 523, Spurius Carvilius Ruga
      repudiated a fair, a good, but a barren, wife, (Dionysius Hal. l.
      ii. p. 93. Plutarch, in Numa, p. 141; Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c.
      1; Aulus Gellius, iv. 3.) He was questioned by the censors, and
      hated by the people; but his divorce stood unimpeached in law.]

      125 (return) [—Sic fiunt octo mariti Quinque per autumnos.
      Juvenal, Satir. vi. 20.—A rapid succession, which may yet be
      credible, as well as the non consulum numero, sed maritorum annos
      suos computant, of Seneca, (de Beneficiis, iii. 16.) Jerom saw at
      Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had
      interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors, (Opp. tom.
      i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam.) But the ten husbands in a month of the
      poet Martial, is an extravagant hyperbole, (l. 71. epigram 7.)]


      Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the
      rapid progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans
      afforded a peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints
      of a married life; but her epithet of Viriplaca, 126 the appeaser
      of husbands, too clearly indicates on which side submission and
      repentance were always expected. Every act of a citizen was
      subject to the judgment of the censors; the first who used the
      privilege of divorce assigned, at their command, the motives of
      his conduct; 127 and a senator was expelled for dismissing his
      virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of his friends.
      Whenever an action was instituted for the recovery of a marriage
      portion, the proetor, as the guardian of equity, examined the
      cause and the characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor
      of the guiltless and injured party. Augustus, who united the
      powers of both magistrates, adopted their different modes of
      repressing or chastising the license of divorce. 128 The presence
      of seven Roman witnesses was required for the validity of this
      solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation had been
      given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was
      compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of six months;
      but if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or
      levity was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of
      her marriage portion. The Christian princes were the first who
      specified the just causes of a private divorce; their
      institutions, from Constantine to Justinian, appear to fluctuate
      between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the church,
      129 and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the
      jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous
      laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or
      a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or
      sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might
      have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the
      sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver
      his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list of
      mortal sins, either male or female, was curtailed and enlarged by
      successive regulations, and the obstacles of incurable impotence,
      long absence, and monastic profession, were allowed to rescind
      the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission
      of the law, was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman
      was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the
      bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his
      bed, her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his
      exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the
      fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island, or
      imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party was released from
      the bonds of marriage; but the offender, during life, or a term
      of years, was disabled from the repetition of nuptials. The
      successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy
      subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent:
      the civilians were unanimous, 130 the theologians were divided,
      131 and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ,
      is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator
      can demand.

      126 (return) [ Sacellum Viriplacae, (Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c.
      1,) in the Palatine region, appears in the time of Theodosius, in
      the description of Rome by Publius Victor.]

      127 (return) [ Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 9. With some propriety
      he judges divorce more criminal than celibacy: illo namque
      conjugalia sacre spreta tantum, hoc etiam injuriose tractata.]

      128 (return) [ See the laws of Augustus and his successors, in
      Heineccius, ad Legem Papiam-Poppaeam, c. 19, in Opp. tom. vi. P.
      i. p. 323—333.]

      129 (return) [ Aliae sunt leges Caesarum, aliae Christi; aliud
      Papinianus, aliud Paulus nocter praecipit, (Jerom. tom. i. p.
      198. Selden, Uxor Ebraica l. iii. c. 31 p. 847—853.)]

      130 (return) [ The Institutes are silent; but we may consult the
      Codes of Theodosius (l. iii. tit. xvi., with Godefroy’s
      Commentary, tom. i. p. 310—315) and Justinian, (l. v. tit.
      xvii.,) the Pandects (l. xxiv. tit. ii.) and the Novels, (xxii.
      cxvii. cxxvii. cxxxiv. cxl.) Justinian fluctuated to the last
      between civil and ecclesiastical law.]

      131 (return) [ In pure Greek, it is not a common word; nor can
      the proper meaning, fornication, be strictly applied to
      matrimonial sin. In a figurative sense, how far, and to what
      offences, may it be extended? Did Christ speak the Rabbinical or
      Syriac tongue? Of what original word is the translation? How
      variously is that Greek word translated in the versions ancient
      and modern! There are two (Mark, x. 11, Luke, xvi. 18) to one
      (Matthew, xix. 9) that such ground of divorce was not excepted by
      Jesus. Some critics have presumed to think, by an evasive answer,
      he avoided the giving offence either to the school of Sammai or
      to that of Hillel, (Selden, Uxor Ebraica, l. iii. c. 18—22, 28,
      31.) * Note: But these had nothing to do with the question of a
      divorce made by judicial authority.—Hugo.]


      The freedom of love and marriage was restrained among the Romans
      by natural and civil impediments. An instinct, almost innate and
      universal, appears to prohibit the incestuous commerce 132 of
      parents and children in the infinite series of ascending and
      descending generations. Concerning the oblique and collateral
      branches, nature is indifferent, reason mute, and custom various
      and arbitrary. In Egypt, the marriage of brothers and sisters was
      admitted without scruple or exception: a Spartan might espouse
      the daughter of his father, an Athenian, that of his mother; and
      the nuptials of an uncle with his niece were applauded at Athens
      as a happy union of the dearest relations. The profane lawgivers
      of Rome were never tempted by interest or superstition to
      multiply the forbidden degrees: but they inflexibly condemned the
      marriage of sisters and brothers, hesitated whether first cousins
      should be touched by the same interdict; revered the parental
      character of aunts and uncles, 1321 and treated affinity and
      adoption as a just imitation of the ties of blood. According to
      the proud maxims of the republic, a legal marriage could only be
      contracted by free citizens; an honorable, at least an ingenuous
      birth, was required for the spouse of a senator: but the blood of
      kings could never mingle in legitimate nuptials with the blood of
      a Roman; and the name of Stranger degraded Cleopatra and
      Berenice, 133 to live the concubines of Mark Antony and Titus.
      134 This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty, cannot
      without indulgence be applied to the manners, of these Oriental
      queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilians, was a
      woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful
      companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of
      celibacy. Her modest station, below the honors of a wife, above
      the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged and approved by the
      laws: from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, the use of
      this secondary marriage prevailed both in the West and East; and
      the humble virtues of a concubine were often preferred to the
      pomp and insolence of a noble matron. In this connection, the two
      Antonines, the best of princes and of men, enjoyed the comforts
      of domestic love: the example was imitated by many citizens
      impatient of celibacy, but regardful of their families. If at any
      time they desired to legitimate their natural children, the
      conversion was instantly performed by the celebration of their
      nuptials with a partner whose faithfulness and fidelity they had
      already tried. 1341 By this epithet of natural, the offspring of
      the concubine were distinguished from the spurious brood of
      adultery, prostitution, and incest, to whom Justinian reluctantly
      grants the necessary aliments of life; and these natural children
      alone were capable of succeeding to a sixth part of the
      inheritance of their reputed father. According to the rigor of
      law, bastards were entitled only to the name and condition of
      their mother, from whom they might derive the character of a
      slave, a stranger, or a citizen. The outcasts of every family
      were adopted without reproach as the children of the state. 135
      1351

      132 (return) [ The principles of the Roman jurisprudence are
      exposed by Justinian, (Institut. t. i. tit. x.;) and the laws and
      manners of the different nations of antiquity concerning
      forbidden degrees, &c., are copiously explained by Dr. Taylor in
      his Elements of Civil Law, (p. 108, 314—339,) a work of amusing,
      though various reading; but which cannot be praised for
      philosophical precision.]

      1321 (return) [ According to the earlier law, (Gaii Instit. p.
      27,) a man might marry his niece on the brother’s, not on the
      sister’s, side. The emperor Claudius set the example of the
      former. In the Institutes, this distinction was abolished and
      both declared illegal.—M.]

      133 (return) [ When her father Agrippa died, (A.D. 44,) Berenice
      was sixteen years of age, (Joseph. tom. i. Antiquit. Judaic. l.
      xix. c. 9, p. 952, edit. Havercamp.) She was therefore above
      fifty years old when Titus (A.D. 79) invitus invitam invisit.
      This date would not have adorned the tragedy or pastoral of the
      tender Racine.]

      134 (return) [ The Aegyptia conjux of Virgil (Aeneid, viii. 688)
      seems to be numbered among the monsters who warred with Mark
      Antony against Augustus, the senate, and the gods of Italy.]

      1341 (return) [ The Edict of Constantine first conferred this
      right; for Augustus had prohibited the taking as a concubine a
      woman who might be taken as a wife; and if marriage took place
      afterwards, this marriage made no change in the rights of the
      children born before it; recourse was then had to adoption,
      properly called arrogation.—G.]

      135 (return) [ The humble but legal rights of concubines and
      natural children are stated in the Institutes, (l. i. tit. x.,)
      the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vii.,) the Code, (l. v. tit. xxv.,) and
      the Novels, (lxxiv. lxxxix.) The researches of Heineccius and
      Giannone, (ad Legem Juliam et Papiam-Poppaeam, c. iv. p. 164-175.
      Opere Posthume, p. 108—158) illustrate this interesting and
      domestic subject.]

      1351 (return) [ See, however, the two fragments of laws in the
      newly discovered extracts from the Theodosian Code, published by
      M. A. Peyron, at Turin. By the first law of Constantine, the
      legitimate offspring could alone inherit; where there were no
      near legitimate relatives, the inheritance went to the fiscus.
      The son of a certain Licinianus, who had inherited his father’s
      property under the supposition that he was legitimate, and had
      been promoted to a place of dignity, was to be degraded, his
      property confiscated, himself punished with stripes and
      imprisonment. By the second, all persons, even of the highest
      rank, senators, perfectissimi, decemvirs, were to be declared
      infamous, and out of the protection of the Roman law, if born ex
      ancilla, vel ancillae filia, vel liberta, vel libertae filia,
      sive Romana facta, seu Latina, vel scaenicae filia, vel ex
      tabernaria, vel ex tabernariae filia, vel humili vel abjecta, vel
      lenonis, aut arenarii filia, vel quae mercimoniis publicis
      praefuit. Whatever a fond father had conferred on such children
      was revoked, and either restored to the legitimate children, or
      confiscated to the state; the mothers, who were guilty of thus
      poisoning the minds of the fathers, were to be put to the torture
      (tormentis subici jubemus.) The unfortunate son of Licinianus, it
      appears from this second law, having fled, had been taken, and
      was ordered to be kept in chains to work in the Gynaeceum at
      Carthage. Cod. Theodor ab. A. Person, 87—90.—M.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VI.


      The relation of guardian and ward, or in Roman words of tutor and
      pupil, which covers so many titles of the Institutes and
      Pandects, 136 is of a very simple and uniform nature. The person
      and property of an orphan must always be trusted to the custody
      of some discreet friend. If the deceased father had not signified
      his choice, the agnats, or paternal kindred of the nearest
      degree, were compelled to act as the natural guardians: the
      Athenians were apprehensive of exposing the infant to the power
      of those most interested in his death; but an axiom of Roman
      jurisprudence has pronounced, that the charge of tutelage should
      constantly attend the emolument of succession. If the choice of
      the father, and the line of consanguinity, afforded no efficient
      guardian, the failure was supplied by the nomination of the
      praetor of the city, or the president of the province. But the
      person whom they named to this public office might be legally
      excused by insanity or blindness, by ignorance or inability, by
      previous enmity or adverse interest, by the number of children or
      guardianships with which he was already burdened, and by the
      immunities which were granted to the useful labors of
      magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and professors. Till the infant
      could speak, and think, he was represented by the tutor, whose
      authority was finally determined by the age of puberty. Without
      his consent, no act of the pupil could bind himself to his own
      prejudice, though it might oblige others for his personal
      benefit. It is needless to observe, that the tutor often gave
      security, and always rendered an account, and that the want of
      diligence or integrity exposed him to a civil and almost criminal
      action for the violation of his sacred trust. The age of puberty
      had been rashly fixed by the civilians at fourteen; 1361 but as
      the faculties of the mind ripen more slowly than those of the
      body, a curator was interposed to guard the fortunes of a Roman
      youth from his own inexperience and headstrong passions. Such a
      trustee had been first instituted by the praetor, to save a
      family from the blind havoc of a prodigal or madman; and the
      minor was compelled, by the laws, to solicit the same protection,
      to give validity to his acts till he accomplished the full period
      of twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the perpetual
      tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to
      please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of
      reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty
      spirit of the ancient law, which had been insensibly mollified
      before the time of Justinian.

      136 (return) [ See the article of guardians and wards in the
      Institutes, (l. i. tit. xiii.—xxvi.,) the Pandects, (l. xxvi.
      xxvii.,) and the Code, (l. v. tit. xxviii.—lxx.)]

      1361 (return) [ Gibbon accuses the civilians of having “rashly
      fixed the age of puberty at twelve or fourteen years.” It was not
      so; before Justinian, no law existed on this subject. Ulpian
      relates the discussions which took place on this point among the
      different sects of civilians. See the Institutes, l. i. tit. 22,
      and the fragments of Ulpian. Nor was the curatorship obligatory
      for all minors.—W.]


      II. The original right of property can only be justified by the
      accident or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it
      is wisely established by the philosophy of the civilians. 137 The
      savage who hollows a tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden
      handle, or applies a string to an elastic branch, becomes in a
      state of nature the just proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the
      hatchet. The materials were common to all, the new form, the
      produce of his time and simple industry, belongs solely to
      himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own
      injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest
      overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his
      provident care preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose
      nature is tractable to the arts of education, he acquires a
      perpetual title to the use and service of their numerous progeny,
      which derives its existence from him alone. If he encloses and
      cultivates a field for their sustenance and his own, a barren
      waste is converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the manure, the
      labor, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest are
      painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year. In the
      successive states of society, the hunter, the shepherd, the
      husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which
      forcibly appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever
      they enjoy is the fruit of their own industry; and that every man
      who envies their felicity, may purchase similar acquisitions by
      the exercise of similar diligence. Such, in truth, may be the
      freedom and plenty of a small colony cast on a fruitful island.
      But the colony multiplies, while the space still continues the
      same; the common rights, the equal inheritance of mankind, are
      engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest is
      circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the
      peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence, that it asserts the
      claim of the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the
      air, and the waters. In the progress from primitive equity to
      final injustice, the steps are silent, the shades are almost
      imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive
      laws and artificial reason. The active, insatiate principle of
      self-love can alone supply the arts of life and the wages of
      industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive property
      have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence of
      the human race. Except in the singular institutions of Sparta,
      the wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a
      false and dangerous innovation. Among the Romans, the enormous
      disproportion of wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a
      doubtful tradition, and an obsolete statute; a tradition that the
      poorest follower of Romulus had been endowed with the perpetual
      inheritance of two jugera; 138 a statute which confined the
      richest citizen to the measure of five hundred jugera, or three
      hundred and twelve acres of land. The original territory of Rome
      consisted only of some miles of wood and meadow along the banks
      of the Tyber; and domestic exchange could add nothing to the
      national stock. But the goods of an alien or enemy were lawfully
      exposed to the first hostile occupier; the city was enriched by
      the profitable trade of war; and the blood of her sons was the
      only price that was paid for the Volscian sheep, the slaves of
      Briton, or the gems and gold of Asiatic kingdoms. In the language
      of ancient jurisprudence, which was corrupted and forgotten
      before the age of Justinian, these spoils were distinguished by
      the name of manceps or manicipium, taken with the hand; and
      whenever they were sold or emancipated, the purchaser required
      some assurance that they had been the property of an enemy, and
      not of a fellow-citizen. 139 A citizen could only forfeit his
      rights by apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a
      valuable interest could not easily be presumed. Yet, according to
      the Twelve Tables, a prescription of one year for movables, and
      of two years for immovables, abolished the claim of the ancient
      master, if the actual possessor had acquired them by a fair
      transaction from the person whom he believed to be the lawful
      proprietor. 140 Such conscientious injustice, without any mixture
      of fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small
      republic; but the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty
      years, determined by Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude
      of a great empire. It is only in the term of prescription that
      the distinction of real and personal fortune has been remarked by
      the civilians; and their general idea of property is that of
      simple, uniform, and absolute dominion. The subordinate
      exceptions of use, of usufruct, 141 of servitude, 142 imposed for
      the benefit of a neighbor on lands and houses, are abundantly
      explained by the professors of jurisprudence. The claims of
      property, as far as they are altered by the mixture, the
      division, or the transformation of substances, are investigated
      with metaphysical subtilty by the same civilians.

      137 (return) [ Institut. l. ii. tit i. ii. Compare the pure and
      precise reasoning of Caius and Heineccius (l. ii. tit. i. p.
      69-91) with the loose prolixity of Theophilus, (p. 207—265.) The
      opinions of Ulpian are preserved in the Pandects, (l. i. tit.
      viii. leg. 41, No. 1.)]

      138 (return) [ The heredium of the first Romans is defined by
      Varro, (de Re Rustica, l. i. c. ii. p. 141, c. x. p. 160, 161,
      edit. Gesner,) and clouded by Pliny’s declamation, (Hist. Natur.
      xviii. 2.) A just and learned comment is given in the
      Administration des Terres chez les Romains, (p. 12—66.) Note: On
      the duo jugera, compare Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 337.—M.]

      139 (return) [ The res mancipi is explained from faint and remote
      lights by Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xviii. p. 618, 619) and
      Bynkershoek, (Opp tom. i. p. 306—315.) The definition is somewhat
      arbitrary; and as none except myself have assigned a reason, I am
      diffident of my own.]

      140 (return) [ From this short prescription, Hume (Essays, vol.
      i. p. 423) infers that there could not then be more order and
      settlement in Italy than now amongst the Tartars. By the civilian
      of his adversary Wallace, he is reproached, and not without
      reason, for overlooking the conditions, (Institut. l. ii. tit.
      vi.) * Note: Gibbon acknowledges, in the former note, the
      obscurity of his views with regard to the res mancipi. The
      interpreters, who preceded him, are not agreed on this point, one
      of the most difficult in the ancient Roman law. The conclusions
      of Hume, of which the author here speaks, are grounded on false
      assumptions. Gibbon had conceived very inaccurate notions of
      Property among the Romans, and those of many authors in the
      present day are not less erroneous. We think it right, in this
      place, to develop the system of property among the Romans, as the
      result of the study of the extant original authorities on the
      ancient law, and as it has been demonstrated, recognized, and
      adopted by the most learned expositors of the Roman law. Besides
      the authorities formerly known, such as the Fragments of Ulpian,
      t. xix. and t. i. 16. Theoph. Paraph. i. 5, 4, may be consulted
      the Institutes of Gaius, i. 54, and ii. 40, et seq. The Roman
      laws protected all property acquired in a lawful manner. They
      imposed on those who had invaded it, the obligation of making
      restitution and reparation of all damage caused by that invasion;
      they punished it moreover, in many cases, by a pecuniary fine.
      But they did not always grant a recovery against the third
      person, who had become bona fide possessed of the property. He
      who had obtained possession of a thing belonging to another,
      knowing nothing of the prior rights of that person, maintained
      the possession. The law had expressly determined those cases, in
      which it permitted property to be reclaimed from an innocent
      possessor. In these cases possession had the characters of
      absolute proprietorship, called mancipium, jus Quiritium. To
      possess this right, it was not sufficient to have entered into
      possession of the thing in any manner; the acquisition was bound
      to have that character of publicity, which was given by the
      observation of solemn forms, prescribed by the laws, or the
      uninterrupted exercise of proprietorship during a certain time:
      the Roman citizen alone could acquire this proprietorship. Every
      other kind of possession, which might be named imperfect
      proprietorship, was called “in bonis habere.” It was not till
      after the time of Cicero that the general name of Dominium was
      given to all proprietorship. It was then the publicity which
      constituted the distinctive character of absolute dominion. This
      publicity was grounded on the mode of acquisition, which the
      moderns have called Civil, (Modi adquirendi Civiles.) These modes
      of acquisition were, 1. Mancipium or mancipatio, which was
      nothing but the solemn delivering over of the thing in the
      presence of a determinate number of witnesses and a public
      officer; it was from this probably that proprietorship was named,
      2. In jure cessio, which was a solemn delivering over before the
      praetor. 3. Adjudicatio, made by a judge, in a case of partition.
      4. Lex, which comprehended modes of acquiring in particular cases
      determined by law; probably the law of the xii. tables; for
      instance, the sub corona emptio and the legatum. 5. Usna, called
      afterwards usacapio, and by the moderns prescription. This was
      only a year for movables; two years for things not movable. Its
      primary object was altogether different from that of prescription
      in the present day. It was originally introduced in order to
      transform the simple possession of a thing (in bonis habere) into
      Roman proprietorship. The public and uninterrupted possession of
      a thing, enjoyed for the space of one or two years, was
      sufficient to make known to the inhabitants of the city of Rome
      to whom the thing belonged. This last mode of acquisition
      completed the system of civil acquisitions. by legalizing. as it
      were, every other kind of acquisition which was not conferred,
      from the commencement, by the Jus Quiritium. V. Ulpian. Fragm. i.
      16. Gaius, ii. 14. We believe, according to Gaius, 43, that this
      usucaption was extended to the case where a thing had been
      acquired from a person not the real proprietor; and that
      according to the time prescribed, it gave to the possessor the
      Roman proprietorship. But this does not appear to have been the
      original design of this Institution. Caeterum etiam earum rerum
      usucapio nobis competit, quae non a domino nobis tradita fuerint,
      si modo eas bona fide acceperimus Gaius, l ii. 43. As to things
      of smaller value, or those which it was difficult to distinguish
      from each other, the solemnities of which we speak were not
      requisite to obtain legal proprietorship. In this case simple
      delivery was sufficient. In proportion to the aggrandizement of
      the Republic, this latter principle became more important from
      the increase of the commerce and wealth of the state. It was
      necessary to know what were those things of which absolute
      property might be acquired by simple delivery, and what, on the
      contrary, those, the acquisition of which must be sanctioned by
      these solemnities. This question was necessarily to be decided by
      a general rule; and it is this rule which establishes the
      distinction between res mancipi and nec mancipi, a distinction
      about which the opinions of modern civilians differ so much that
      there are above ten conflicting systems on the subject. The
      system which accords best with a sound interpretation of the
      Roman laws, is that proposed by M. Trekel of Hamburg, and still
      further developed by M. Hugo, who has extracted it in the
      Magazine of Civil Law, vol. ii. p. 7. This is the system now
      almost universally adopted. Res mancipi (by contraction for
      mancipii) were things of which the absolute property (Jus
      Quiritium) might be acquired only by the solemnities mentioned
      above, at least by that of mancipation, which was, without doubt,
      the most easy and the most usual. Gaius, ii. 25. As for other
      things, the acquisition of which was not subject to these forms,
      in order to confer absolute right, they were called res nec
      mancipi. See Ulpian, Fragm. xix. 1. 3, 7. Ulpian and Varro
      enumerate the different kinds of res mancipi. Their enumerations
      do not quite agree; and various methods of reconciling them have
      been attempted. The authority of Ulpian, however, who wrote as a
      civilian, ought to have the greater weight on this subject. But
      why are these things alone res mancipi? This is one of the
      questions which have been most frequently agitated, and on which
      the opinions of civilians are most divided. M. Hugo has resolved
      it in the most natural and satisfactory manner. “All things which
      were easily known individually, which were of great value, with
      which the Romans were acquainted, and which they highly
      appreciated, were res mancipi. Of old mancipation or some other
      solemn form was required for the acquisition of these things, an
      account of their importance. Mancipation served to prove their
      acquisition, because they were easily distinguished one from the
      other.” On this great historical discussion consult the Magazine
      of Civil Law by M. Hugo, vol. ii. p. 37, 38; the dissertation of
      M. J. M. Zachariae, de Rebus Mancipi et nec Mancipi Conjecturae,
      p. 11. Lipsiae, 1807; the History of Civil Law by M. Hugo; and my
      Institutiones Juris Romani Privati p. 108, 110. As a general
      rule, it may be said that all things are res nec mancipi; the res
      mancipi are the exception to this principle. The praetors changed
      the system of property by allowing a person, who had a thing in
      bonis, the right to recover before the prescribed term of
      usucaption had conferred absolute proprietorship. (Pauliana in
      rem actio.) Justinian went still further, in times when there was
      no longer any distinction between a Roman citizen and a stranger.
      He granted the right of recovering all things which had been
      acquired, whether by what were called civil or natural modes of
      acquisition, Cod. l. vii. t. 25, 31. And he so altered the theory
      of Gaius in his Institutes, ii. 1, that no trace remains of the
      doctrine taught by that civilian.—W.]

      141 (return) [ See the Institutes (l. i. tit. iv. v.) and the
      Pandects, (l. vii.) Noodt has composed a learned and distinct
      treatise de Usufructu, (Opp. tom. i. p. 387—478.)]

      142 (return) [ The questions de Servitutibus are discussed in the
      Institutes (l. ii. tit. iii.) and Pandects, (l. viii.) Cicero
      (pro Murena, c. 9) and Lactantius (Institut. Divin. l. i. c. i.)
      affect to laugh at the insignificant doctrine, de aqua de pluvia
      arcenda, &c. Yet it might be of frequent use among litigious
      neighbors, both in town and country.]


      The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by
      his death: but the possession, without any appearance of change,
      is peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his
      toil, and the partners of his wealth. This natural inheritance
      has been protected by the legislators of every climate and age,
      and the father is encouraged to persevere in slow and distant
      improvements, by the tender hope, that a long posterity will
      enjoy the fruits of his labor. The principle of hereditary
      succession is universal; but the order has been variously
      established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national
      institutions, or by some partial example which was originally
      decided by fraud or violence. The jurisprudence of the Romans
      appear to have deviated from the inequality of nature much less
      than the Jewish, 143 the Athenian, 144 or the English
      institutions. 145 On the death of a citizen, all his descendants,
      unless they were already freed from his paternal power, were
      called to the inheritance of his possessions. The insolent
      prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were
      placed on a just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled
      to an equal portion of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the
      sons had been intercepted by a premature death, his person was
      represented, and his share was divided, by his surviving
      children. On the failure of the direct line, the right of
      succession must diverge to the collateral branches. The degrees
      of kindred 146 are numbered by the civilians, ascending from the
      last possessor to a common parent, and descending from the common
      parent to the next heir: my father stands in the first degree, my
      brother in the second, his children in the third, and the
      remainder of the series may be conceived by a fancy, or pictured
      in a genealogical table. In this computation, a distinction was
      made, essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome;
      the agnats, or persons connected by a line of males, were called,
      as they stood in the nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a
      female was incapable of transmitting any legal claims; and the
      cognats of every rank, without excepting the dear relation of a
      mother and a son, were disinherited by the Twelve Tables, as
      strangers and aliens. Among the Romans agens or lineage was
      united by a common name and domestic rites; the various cognomens
      or surnames of Scipio, or Marcellus, distinguished from each
      other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or
      Claudian race: the default of the agnats, of the same surname,
      was supplied by the larger denomination of gentiles; and the
      vigilance of the laws maintained, in the same name, the perpetual
      descent of religion and property. A similar principle dictated
      the Voconian law, 147 which abolished the right of female
      inheritance. As long as virgins were given or sold in marriage,
      the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of the daughter.
      But the equal succession of independent matrons supported their
      pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the
      riches of their fathers.


      While the maxims of Cato 148 were revered, they tended to
      perpetuate in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till
      female blandishments insensibly triumphed; and every salutary
      restraint was lost in the dissolute greatness of the republic.
      The rigor of the decemvirs was tempered by the equity of the
      praetors. Their edicts restored and emancipated posthumous
      children to the rights of nature; and upon the failure of the
      agnats, they preferred the blood of the cognats to the name of
      the gentiles whose title and character were insensibly covered
      with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers and sons was
      established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the
      humanity of the senate. A new and more impartial order was
      introduced by the Novels of Justinian, who affected to revive the
      jurisprudence of the Twelve Tables. The lines of masculine and
      female kindred were confounded: the descending, ascending, and
      collateral series was accurately defined; and each degree,
      according to the proximity of blood and affection, succeeded to
      the vacant possessions of a Roman citizen. 149

      143 (return) [ Among the patriarchs, the first-born enjoyed a
      mystic and spiritual primogeniture, (Genesis, xxv. 31.) In the
      land of Canaan, he was entitled to a double portion of
      inheritance, (Deuteronomy, xxi. 17, with Le Clerc’s judicious
      Commentary.)]

      144 (return) [ At Athens, the sons were equal; but the poor
      daughters were endowed at the discretion of their brothers. See
      the pleadings of Isaeus, (in the viith volume of the Greek
      Orators,) illustrated by the version and comment of Sir William
      Jones, a scholar, a lawyer, and a man of genius.]

      145 (return) [ In England, the eldest son also inherits all the
      land; a law, says the orthodox Judge Blackstone, (Commentaries on
      the Laws of England, vol. ii. p. 215,) unjust only in the opinion
      of younger brothers. It may be of some political use in
      sharpening their industry.]

      146 (return) [ Blackstone’s Tables (vol. ii. p. 202) represent
      and compare the decrees of the civil with those of the canon and
      common law. A separate tract of Julius Paulus, de gradibus et
      affinibus, is inserted or abridged in the Pandects, (l. xxxviii.
      tit. x.) In the viith degrees he computes (No. 18) 1024 persons.]

      147 (return) [ The Voconian law was enacted in the year of Rome
      584. The younger Scipio, who was then 17 years of age,
      (Frenshemius, Supplement. Livian. xlvi. 40,) found an occasion of
      exercising his generosity to his mother, sisters, &c. (Polybius,
      tom. ii. l. xxxi. p. 1453—1464, edit Gronov., a domestic
      witness.)]

      148 (return) [ Legem Voconiam (Ernesti, Clavis Ciceroniana) magna
      voce bonis lateribus (at lxv. years of age) suasissem, says old
      Cato, (de Senectute, c. 5,) Aulus Gellius (vii. 13, xvii. 6) has
      saved some passages.]

      149 (return) [ See the law of succession in the Institutes of
      Caius, (l. ii. tit. viii. p. 130—144,) and Justinian, (l. iii.
      tit. i.—vi., with the Greek version of Theophilus, p. 515-575,
      588—600,) the Pandects, (l. xxxviii. tit. vi.—xvii.,) the Code,
      (l. vi. tit. lv.—lx.,) and the Novels, (cxviii.)]


      The order of succession is regulated by nature, or at least by
      the general and permanent reason of the lawgiver: but this order
      is frequently violated by the arbitrary and partial wills, which
      prolong the dominion of the testator beyond the grave. 150 In the
      simple state of society, this last use or abuse of the right of
      property is seldom indulged: it was introduced at Athens by the
      laws of Solon; and the private testaments of the father of a
      family are authorized by the Twelve Tables. Before the time of
      the decemvirs, 151 a Roman citizen exposed his wishes and motives
      to the assembly of the thirty curiae or parishes, and the general
      law of inheritance was suspended by an occasional act of the
      legislature. After the permission of the decemvirs, each private
      lawgiver promulgated his verbal or written testament in the
      presence of five citizens, who represented the five classes of
      the Roman people; a sixth witness attested their concurrence; a
      seventh weighed the copper money, which was paid by an imaginary
      purchaser; and the estate was emancipated by a fictitious sale
      and immediate release. This singular ceremony, 152 which excited
      the wonder of the Greeks, was still practised in the age of
      Severus; but the praetors had already approved a more simple
      testament, for which they required the seals and signatures of
      seven witnesses, free from all legal exception, and purposely
      summoned for the execution of that important act. A domestic
      monarch, who reigned over the lives and fortunes of his children,
      might distribute their respective shares according to the degrees
      of their merit or his affection; his arbitrary displeasure
      chastised an unworthy son by the loss of his inheritance, and the
      mortifying preference of a stranger. But the experience of
      unnatural parents recommended some limitations of their
      testamentary powers. A son, or, by the laws of Justinian, even a
      daughter, could no longer be disinherited by their silence: they
      were compelled to name the criminal, and to specify the offence;
      and the justice of the emperor enumerated the sole causes that
      could justify such a violation of the first principles of nature
      and society. 153 Unless a legitimate portion, a fourth part, had
      been reserved for the children, they were entitled to institute
      an action or complaint of inofficious testament; to suppose that
      their father’s understanding was impaired by sickness or age; and
      respectfully to appeal from his rigorous sentence to the
      deliberate wisdom of the magistrate. In the Roman jurisprudence,
      an essential distinction was admitted between the inheritance and
      the legacies. The heirs who succeeded to the entire unity, or to
      any of the twelve fractions of the substance of the testator,
      represented his civil and religious character, asserted his
      rights, fulfilled his obligations, and discharged the gifts of
      friendship or liberality, which his last will had bequeathed
      under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or prodigality
      of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance, and leave only risk
      and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the
      Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies,
      a clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was
      allowed to examine the proportion between the debts and the
      estate, to decide whether he should accept or refuse the
      testament; and if he used the benefit of an inventory, the
      demands of the creditors could not exceed the valuation of the
      effects. The last will of a citizen might be altered during his
      life, or rescinded after his death: the persons whom he named
      might die before him, or reject the inheritance, or be exposed to
      some legal disqualification. In the contemplation of these
      events, he was permitted to substitute second and third heirs, to
      replace each other according to the order of the testament; and
      the incapacity of a madman or an infant to bequeath his property
      might be supplied by a similar substitution. 154 But the power of
      the testator expired with the acceptance of the testament: each
      Roman of mature age and discretion acquired the absolute dominion
      of his inheritance, and the simplicity of the civil law was never
      clouded by the long and intricate entails which confine the
      happiness and freedom of unborn generations.

      150 (return) [ That succession was the rule, testament the
      exception, is proved by Taylor, (Elements of Civil Law, p.
      519-527,) a learned, rambling, spirited writer. In the iid and
      iiid books, the method of the Institutes is doubtless
      preposterous; and the Chancellor Daguesseau (Oeuvres, tom. i. p.
      275) wishes his countryman Domat in the place of Tribonian. Yet
      covenants before successions is not surely the natural order of
      civil laws.]

      151 (return) [ Prior examples of testaments are perhaps fabulous.
      At Athens a childless father only could make a will, (Plutarch,
      in Solone, tom. i. p. 164. See Isaeus and Jones.)]

      152 (return) [ The testament of Augustus is specified by
      Suetonius, (in August, c. 101, in Neron. c. 4,) who may be
      studied as a code of Roman antiquities. Plutarch (Opuscul. tom.
      ii. p. 976) is surprised. The language of Ulpian (Fragment. tit.
      xx. p. 627, edit. Schulting) is almost too exclusive—solum in usu
      est.]

      153 (return) [ Justinian (Novell. cxv. No. 3, 4) enumerates only
      the public and private crimes, for which a son might likewise
      disinherit his father. Note: Gibbon has singular notions on the
      provisions of Novell. cxv. 3, 4, which probably he did not
      clearly understand.—W]

      154 (return) [ The substitutions of fidei-commissaires of the
      modern civil law is a feudal idea grafted on the Roman
      jurisprudence, and bears scarcely any resemblance to the ancient
      fidei-commissa, (Institutions du Droit Francois, tom. i. p.
      347-383. Denissart, Decisions de Jurisprudence, tom. iv. p.
      577-604.) They were stretched to the fourth degree by an abuse of
      the clixth Novel; a partial, perplexed, declamatory law.]


      Conquest and the formalities of law established the use of
      codicils. If a Roman was surprised by death in a remote province
      of the empire, he addressed a short epistle to his legitimate or
      testamentary heir; who fulfilled with honor, or neglected with
      impunity, this last request, which the judges before the age of
      Augustus were not authorized to enforce. A codicil might be
      expressed in any mode, or in any language; but the subscription
      of five witnesses must declare that it was the genuine
      composition of the author. His intention, however laudable, was
      sometimes illegal; and the invention of fidei-commissa, or
      trusts, arose from the struggle between natural justice and
      positive jurisprudence. A stranger of Greece or Africa might be
      the friend or benefactor of a childless Roman, but none, except a
      fellow-citizen, could act as his heir. The Voconian law, which
      abolished female succession, restrained the legacy or inheritance
      of a woman to the sum of one hundred thousand sesterces; 155 and
      an only daughter was condemned almost as an alien in her father’s
      house. The zeal of friendship, and parental affection, suggested
      a liberal artifice: a qualified citizen was named in the
      testament, with a prayer or injunction that he would restore the
      inheritance to the person for whom it was truly intended. Various
      was the conduct of the trustees in this painful situation: they
      had sworn to observe the laws of their country, but honor
      prompted them to violate their oath; and if they preferred their
      interest under the mask of patriotism, they forfeited the esteem
      of every virtuous mind. The declaration of Augustus relieved
      their doubts, gave a legal sanction to confidential testaments
      and codicils, and gently unravelled the forms and restraints of
      the republican jurisprudence. 156 But as the new practice of
      trusts degenerated into some abuse, the trustee was enabled, by
      the Trebellian and Pegasian decrees, to reserve one fourth of the
      estate, or to transfer on the head of the real heir all the debts
      and actions of the succession. The interpretation of testaments
      was strict and literal; but the language of trusts and codicils
      was delivered from the minute and technical accuracy of the
      civilians. 157

      155 (return) [ Dion Cassius (tom. ii. l. lvi. p. 814, with
      Reimar’s Notes) specifies in Greek money the sum of 25,000
      drachms.]

      156 (return) [ The revolutions of the Roman laws of inheritance
      are finely, though sometimes fancifully, deduced by Montesquieu,
      (Esprit des Loix, l. xxvii.)]

      157 (return) [ Of the civil jurisprudence of successions,
      testaments, codicils, legacies, and trusts, the principles are
      ascertained in the Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ii.—ix. p.
      91—144,) Justinian, (l. ii. tit. x.—xxv.,) and Theophilus, (p.
      328—514;) and the immense detail occupies twelve books
      (xxviii.—xxxix.) of the Pandects.] III. The general duties of
      mankind are imposed by their public and private relations: but
      their specific obligations to each other can only be the effect
      of, 1. a promise, 2. a benefit, or 3. an injury: and when these
      obligations are ratified by law, the interested party may compel
      the performance by a judicial action. On this principle, the
      civilians of every country have erected a similar jurisprudence,
      the fair conclusion of universal reason and justice. 158

      158 (return) [ The Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ix. x. p.
      144—214,) of Justinian, (l. iii. tit. xiv.—xxx. l. iv. tit.
      i.—vi.,) and of Theophilus, (p. 616—837,) distinguish four sorts
      of obligations—aut re, aut verbis, aut literis aut consensu: but
      I confess myself partial to my own division. Note: It is not at
      all applicable to the Roman system of contracts, even if I were
      allowed to be good.—M.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VII.


      1. The goddess of faith (of human and social faith) was
      worshipped, not only in her temples, but in the lives of the
      Romans; and if that nation was deficient in the more amiable
      qualities of benevolence and generosity, they astonished the
      Greeks by their sincere and simple performance of the most
      burdensome engagements. 159 Yet among the same people, according
      to the rigid maxims of the patricians and decemvirs, a naked
      pact, a promise, or even an oath, did not create any civil
      obligation, unless it was confirmed by the legal form of a
      stipulation. Whatever might be the etymology of the Latin word,
      it conveyed the idea of a firm and irrevocable contract, which
      was always expressed in the mode of a question and answer. Do you
      promise to pay me one hundred pieces of gold? was the solemn
      interrogation of Seius. I do promise, was the reply of
      Sempronius. The friends of Sempronius, who answered for his
      ability and inclination, might be separately sued at the option
      of Seius; and the benefit of partition, or order of reciprocal
      actions, insensibly deviated from the strict theory of
      stipulation. The most cautious and deliberate consent was justly
      required to sustain the validity of a gratuitous promise; and the
      citizen who might have obtained a legal security, incurred the
      suspicion of fraud, and paid the forfeit of his neglect. But the
      ingenuity of the civilians successfully labored to convert simple
      engagements into the form of solemn stipulations. The praetors,
      as the guardians of social faith, admitted every rational
      evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act, which in their
      tribunal produced an equitable obligation, and for which they
      gave an action and a remedy. 160

      159 (return) [ How much is the cool, rational evidence of
      Polybius (l. vi. p. 693, l. xxxi. p. 1459, 1460) superior to
      vague, indiscriminate applause—omnium maxime et praecipue fidem
      coluit, (A. Gellius, xx. l.)]

      160 (return) [ The Jus Praetorium de Pactis et Transactionibus is
      a separate and satisfactory treatise of Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom.
      i. p. 483—564.) And I will here observe, that the universities of
      Holland and Brandenburg, in the beginning of the present century,
      appear to have studied the civil law on the most just and liberal
      principles. * Note: Simple agreements (pacta) formed as valid an
      obligation as a solemn contract. Only an action, or the right to
      a direct judicial prosecution, was not permitted in every case of
      compact. In all other respects, the judge was bound to maintain
      an agreement made by pactum. The stipulation was a form common to
      every kind of agreement, by which the right of action was given
      to this.—W.]


      2. The obligations of the second class, as they were contracted
      by the delivery of a thing, are marked by the civilians with the
      epithet of real. 161 A grateful return is due to the author of a
      benefit; and whoever is intrusted with the property of another,
      has bound himself to the sacred duty of restitution. In the case
      of a friendly loan, the merit of generosity is on the side of the
      lender only; in a deposit, on the side of the receiver; but in a
      pledge, and the rest of the selfish commerce of ordinary life,
      the benefit is compensated by an equivalent, and the obligation
      to restore is variously modified by the nature of the
      transaction. The Latin language very happily expresses the
      fundamental difference between the commodatum and the mutuum,
      which our poverty is reduced to confound under the vague and
      common appellation of a loan. In the former, the borrower was
      obliged to restore the same individual thing with which he had
      been accommodated for the temporary supply of his wants; in the
      latter, it was destined for his use and consumption, and he
      discharged this mutual engagement, by substituting the same
      specific value according to a just estimation of number, of
      weight, and of measure. In the contract of sale, the absolute
      dominion is transferred to the purchaser, and he repays the
      benefit with an adequate sum of gold or silver, the price and
      universal standard of all earthly possessions. The obligation of
      another contract, that of location, is of a more complicated
      kind. Lands or houses, labor or talents, may be hired for a
      definite term; at the expiration of the time, the thing itself
      must be restored to the owner, with an additional reward for the
      beneficial occupation and employment. In these lucrative
      contracts, to which may be added those of partnership and
      commissions, the civilians sometimes imagine the delivery of the
      object, and sometimes presume the consent of the parties. The
      substantial pledge has been refined into the invisible rights of
      a mortgage or hypotheca; and the agreement of sale, for a certain
      price, imputes, from that moment, the chances of gain or loss to
      the account of the purchaser. It may be fairly supposed, that
      every man will obey the dictates of his interest; and if he
      accepts the benefit, he is obliged to sustain the expense, of the
      transaction. In this boundless subject, the historian will
      observe the location of land and money, the rent of the one and
      the interest of the other, as they materially affect the
      prosperity of agriculture and commerce. The landlord was often
      obliged to advance the stock and instruments of husbandry, and to
      content himself with a partition of the fruits. If the feeble
      tenant was oppressed by accident, contagion, or hostile violence,
      he claimed a proportionable relief from the equity of the laws:
      five years were the customary term, and no solid or costly
      improvements could be expected from a farmer, who, at each moment
      might be ejected by the sale of the estate. 162 Usury, 163 the
      inveterate grievance of the city, had been discouraged by the
      Twelve Tables, 164 and abolished by the clamors of the people. It
      was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the
      discretion of the praetors, and finally determined by the Code of
      Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the
      moderate profit of four per cent.; six was pronounced to be the
      ordinary and legal standard of interest; eight was allowed for
      the convenience of manufactures and merchants; twelve was granted
      to nautical insurance, which the wiser ancients had not attempted
      to define; but, except in this perilous adventure, the practice
      of exorbitant usury was severely restrained. 165 The most simple
      interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and West; 166
      but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the law
      of the republic, has resisted with equal firmness the decrees of
      the church, and even the prejudices of mankind. 167

      161 (return) [ The nice and various subject of contracts by
      consent is spread over four books (xvii.—xx.) of the Pandects,
      and is one of the parts best deserving of the attention of an
      English student. * Note: This is erroneously called “benefits.”
      Gibbon enumerates various kinds of contracts, of which some alone
      are properly called benefits.—W.]

      162 (return) [ The covenants of rent are defined in the Pandects
      (l. xix.) and the Code, (l. iv. tit. lxv.) The quinquennium, or
      term of five years, appears to have been a custom rather than a
      law; but in France all leases of land were determined in nine
      years. This limitation was removed only in the year 1775,
      (Encyclopedie Methodique, tom. i. de la Jurisprudence, p. 668,
      669;) and I am sorry to observe that it yet prevails in the
      beauteous and happy country where I am permitted to reside.]

      163 (return) [ I might implicitly acquiesce in the sense and
      learning of the three books of G. Noodt, de foenore et usuris.
      (Opp. tom. i. p. 175—268.) The interpretation of the asses or
      centesimoe usuroe at twelve, the unciarioe at one per cent., is
      maintained by the best critics and civilians: Noodt, (l. ii. c.
      2, p. 207,) Gravina, (Opp. p. 205, &c., 210,) Heineccius,
      (Antiquitat. ad Institut. l. iii. tit. xv.,) Montesquieu, (Esprit
      des Loix, l. xxii. c. 22, tom. ii. p. 36). Defense de l’Esprit
      des Loix, (tom. iii. p. 478, &c.,) and above all, John Frederic
      Gronovius (de Pecunia Veteri, l. iii. c. 13, p. 213—227,) and his
      three Antexegeses, (p. 455—655), the founder, or at least the
      champion, of this probable opinion; which is, however, perplexed
      with some difficulties.]

      164 (return) [ Primo xii. Tabulis sancitum est ne quis unciario
      foenore amplius exerceret, (Tacit. Annal. vi. 16.) Pour peu (says
      Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxii. 22) qu’on soit verse dans
      l’histoire de Rome, on verra qu’une pareille loi ne devoit pas
      etre l’ouvrage des decemvirs. Was Tacitus ignorant—or stupid? But
      the wiser and more virtuous patricians might sacrifice their
      avarice to their ambition, and might attempt to check the odious
      practice by such interest as no lender would accept, and such
      penalties as no debtor would incur. * Note: The real nature of
      the foenus unciarium has been proved; it amounted in a year of
      twelve months to ten per cent. See, in the Magazine for Civil
      Law, by M. Hugo, vol. v. p. 180, 184, an article of M. Schrader,
      following up the conjectures of Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. tom. ii. p.
      431.—W. Compare a very clear account of this question in the
      appendix to Mr. Travers Twiss’s Epitome of Niebuhr, vol. ii. p.
      257.—M.]

      165 (return) [ Justinian has not condescended to give usury a
      place in his Institutes; but the necessary rules and restrictions
      are inserted in the Pandects (l. xxii. tit. i. ii.) and the Code,
      (l. iv. tit. xxxii. xxxiii.)]

      166 (return) [ The Fathers are unanimous, (Barbeyrac, Morale des
      Peres, p. 144. &c.:) Cyprian, Lactantius, Basil, Chrysostom, (see
      his frivolous arguments in Noodt, l. i. c. 7, p. 188,) Gregory of
      Nyssa, Ambrose, Jerom, Augustin, and a host of councils and
      casuists.]

      167 (return) [ Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the
      practice or abuse of usury. According to the etymology of foenus,
      the principal is supposed to generate the interest: a breed of
      barren metal, exclaims Shakespeare—and the stage is the echo of
      the public voice.]


      3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing
      an injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a
      personal right and a legitimate action. If the property of
      another be intrusted to our care, the requisite degree of care
      may rise and fall according to the benefit which we derive from
      such temporary possession; we are seldom made responsible for
      inevitable accident, but the consequences of a voluntary fault
      must always be imputed to the author. 168 A Roman pursued and
      recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might
      pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing
      less than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his
      original claim. They were restored by the sentence of the
      praetor, and the injury was compensated by double, or threefold,
      or even quadruple damages, as the deed had been perpetrated by
      secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber had been surprised in
      the fact, or detected by a subsequent research. The Aquilian law
      169 defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves and
      cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest
      price was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal
      at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude
      of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other
      valuable effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by
      the manners of the times and the sensibility of the individual:
      the pain or the disgrace of a word or blow cannot easily be
      appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent. The rude jurisprudence of
      the decemvirs had confounded all hasty insults, which did not
      amount to the fracture of a limb, by condemning the aggressor to
      the common penalty of twenty-five asses. But the same
      denomination of money was reduced, in three centuries, from a
      pound to the weight of half an ounce: and the insolence of a
      wealthy Roman indulged himself in the cheap amusement of breaking
      and satisfying the law of the twelve tables. Veratius ran through
      the streets striking on the face the inoffensive passengers, and
      his attendant purse-bearer immediately silenced their clamors by
      the legal tender of twenty-five pieces of copper, about the value
      of one shilling. 170 The equity of the praetors examined and
      estimated the distinct merits of each particular complaint. In
      the adjudication of civil damages, the magistrate assumed a right
      to consider the various circumstances of time and place, of age
      and dignity, which may aggravate the shame and sufferings of the
      injured person; but if he admitted the idea of a fine, a
      punishment, an example, he invaded the province, though, perhaps,
      he supplied the defects, of the criminal law.



      168 (return) Sir William Jones has given an ingenious and
      rational Essay on the law of Bailment, (London, 1781, p. 127, in
      8vo.) He is perhaps the only lawyer equally conversant with the
      year-books of Westminster, the Commentaries of Ulpian, the Attic
      pleadings of Isaeus, and the sentences of Arabian and Persian
      cadhis.]

      169 (return) [ Noodt (Opp. tom. i. p. 137—172) has composed a
      separate treatise, ad Legem Aquilian, (Pandect. l. ix. tit. ii.)]

      170 (return) [ Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic. xx. i.) borrowed this
      story from the Commentaries of Q. Labeo on the xii. tables.]


      The execution of the Alban dictator, who was dismembered by eight
      horses, is represented by Livy as the first and the fast instance
      of Roman cruelty in the punishment of the most atrocious crimes.
      171 But this act of justice, or revenge, was inflicted on a
      foreign enemy in the heat of victory, and at the command of a
      single man. The twelve tables afford a more decisive proof of the
      national spirit, since they were framed by the wisest of the
      senate, and accepted by the free voices of the people; yet these
      laws, like the statutes of Draco, 172 are written in characters
      of blood. 173 They approve the inhuman and unequal principle of
      retaliation; and the forfeit of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
      tooth, a limb for a limb, is rigorously exacted, unless the
      offender can redeem his pardon by a fine of three hundred pounds
      of copper. The decemvirs distributed with much liberality the
      slighter chastisements of flagellation and servitude; and nine
      crimes of a very different complexion are adjudged worthy of
      death.


      1. Any act of treason against the state, or of correspondence
      with the public enemy. The mode of execution was painful and
      ignominious: the head of the degenerate Roman was shrouded in a
      veil, his hands were tied behind his back, and after he had been
      scourged by the lictor, he was suspended in the midst of the
      forum on a cross, or inauspicious tree.


      2. Nocturnal meetings in the city; whatever might be the
      pretence, of pleasure, or religion, or the public good.


      3. The murder of a citizen; for which the common feelings of
      mankind demand the blood of the murderer. Poison is still more
      odious than the sword or dagger; and we are surprised to
      discover, in two flagitious events, how early such subtle
      wickedness had infected the simplicity of the republic, and the
      chaste virtues of the Roman matrons. 174 The parricide, who
      violated the duties of nature and gratitude, was cast into the
      river or the sea, enclosed in a sack; and a cock, a viper, a dog,
      and a monkey, were successively added, as the most suitable
      companions. 175 Italy produces no monkeys; but the want could
      never be felt, till the middle of the sixth century first
      revealed the guilt of a parricide. 176


      4. The malice of an incendiary. After the previous ceremony of
      whipping, he himself was delivered to the flames; and in this
      example alone our reason is tempted to applaud the justice of
      retaliation.


      5. Judicial perjury. The corrupt or malicious witness was thrown
      headlong from the Tarpeian rock, to expiate his falsehood, which
      was rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws,
      and the deficiency of written evidence.


      6. The corruption of a judge, who accepted bribes to pronounce an
      iniquitous sentence.


      7. Libels and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the
      peace of an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a
      worthy chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to
      expire under the blows of the executioner. 177


      8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor’s
      corn. The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres.
      But the sylvan deities were less implacable, and the extirpation
      of a more valuable tree was compensated by the moderate fine of
      twenty-five pounds of copper.


      9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the
      Latin shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to
      extinguish his life, and to remove from their seats his
      deep-rooted plantations.


      The cruelty of the twelve tables against insolvent debtors still
      remains to be told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense
      of antiquity to the specious refinements of modern criticism. 178
      1781 After the judicial proof or confession of the debt, thirty
      days of grace were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the
      power of his fellow-citizen. In this private prison, twelve
      ounces of rice were his daily food; he might be bound with a
      chain of fifteen pounds weight; and his misery was thrice exposed
      in the market place, to solicit the compassion of his friends and
      countrymen. At the expiration of sixty days, the debt was
      discharged by the loss of liberty or life; the insolvent debtor
      was either put to death, or sold in foreign slavery beyond the
      Tyber: but, if several creditors were alike obstinate and
      unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body, and satiate
      their revenge by this horrid partition. The advocates for this
      savage law have insisted, that it must strongly operate in
      deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which they
      were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this
      salutary terror, by proving that no creditor could be found to
      exact this unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners
      of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code of the
      decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses,
      and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate
      rigor. The Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates
      from inflicting on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal,
      punishment; and the obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and
      perhaps truly, ascribed to the spirit, not of patrician, but of
      regal, tyranny.

      171 (return) [ The narrative of Livy (i. 28) is weighty and
      solemn. At tu, Albane, maneres, is a harsh reflection, unworthy
      of Virgil’s humanity, (Aeneid, viii. 643.) Heyne, with his usual
      good taste, observes that the subject was too horrid for the
      shield of Aencas, (tom. iii. p. 229.)]

      172 (return) [ The age of Draco (Olympiad xxxix. l) is fixed by
      Sir John Marsham (Canon Chronicus, p. 593—596) and Corsini,
      (Fasti Attici, tom. iii. p. 62.) For his laws, see the writers on
      the government of Athens, Sigonius, Meursius, Potter, &c.]

      173 (return) [ The viith, de delictis, of the xii. tables is
      delineated by Gravina, (Opp. p. 292, 293, with a commentary, p.
      214—230.) Aulus Gellius (xx. 1) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum
      et Romanarum afford much original information.]

      174 (return) [ Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious aeras,
      of 3000 persons accused, and of 190 noble matrons convicted, of
      the crime of poisoning, (xl. 43, viii. 18.) Mr. Hume
      discriminates the ages of private and public virtue, (Essays,
      vol. i. p. 22, 23.) I would rather say that such ebullitions of
      mischief (as in France in the year 1680) are accidents and
      prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a nation.]

      175 (return) [ The xii. tables and Cicero (pro Roscio Amerino, c.
      25, 26) are content with the sack; Seneca (Excerpt. Controvers. v
      4) adorns it with serpents; Juvenal pities the guiltless monkey
      (innoxia simia—156.) Adrian (apud Dositheum Magistrum, l. iii. c.
      p. 874—876, with Schulting’s Note,) Modestinus, (Pandect. xlviii.
      tit. ix. leg. 9,) Constantine, (Cod. l. ix. tit. xvii.,) and
      Justinian, (Institut. l. iv. tit. xviii.,) enumerate all the
      companions of the parricide. But this fanciful execution was
      simplified in practice. Hodie tamen viv exuruntur vel ad bestias
      dantur, (Paul. Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xxiv p. 512, edit.
      Schulting.)]

      176 (return) [ The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after
      the second Punic war, (Plutarch, in Romulo, tom. i. p. 54.)
      During the Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first
      matricide, (Liv. Epitom. l. lxviii.)]

      177 (return) [ Horace talks of the formidine fustis, (l. ii.
      epist. ii. 154,) but Cicero (de Republica, l. iv. apud Augustin.
      de Civitat. Dei, ix. 6, in Fragment. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 393,
      edit. Olivet) affirms that the decemvirs made libels a capital
      offence: cum perpaucas res capite sanxisent—perpaucus!]

      178 (return) [ Bynkershoek (Observat. Juris Rom. l. i. c. 1, in
      Opp. tom. i. p. 9, 10, 11) labors to prove that the creditors
      divided not the body, but the price, of the insolvent debtor. Yet
      his interpretation is one perpetual harsh metaphor; nor can he
      surmount the Roman authorities of Quintilian, Caecilius,
      Favonius, and Tertullian. See Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic. xxi.]

      1781 (return) [ Hugo (Histoire du Droit Romain, tom. i. p. 234)
      concurs with Gibbon See Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 313.—M.]


      In the absence of penal laws, and the insufficiency of civil
      actions, the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly
      maintained by the private jurisdiction of the citizens. The
      malefactors who replenish our jails are the outcasts of society,
      and the crimes for which they suffer may be commonly ascribed to
      ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For the perpetration of
      similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim and abuse the
      sacred character of a member of the republic: but, on the proof
      or suspicion of guilt, the slave, or the stranger, was nailed to
      a cross; and this strict and summary justice might be exercised
      without restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome.


      Each family contained a domestic tribunal, which was not
      confined, like that of the praetor, to the cognizance of external
      actions: virtuous principles and habits were inculcated by the
      discipline of education; and the Roman father was accountable to
      the state for the manners of his children, since he disposed,
      without appeal, of their life, their liberty, and their
      inheritance. In some pressing emergencies, the citizen was
      authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The consent of
      the Jewish, the Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the
      slaughter of the nocturnal thief; though in open daylight a
      robber could not be slain without some previous evidence of
      danger and complaint. Whoever surprised an adulterer in his
      nuptial bed might freely exercise his revenge; 179 the most
      bloody and wanton outrage was excused by the provocation; 180 nor
      was it before the reign of Augustus that the husband was reduced
      to weigh the rank of the offender, or that the parent was
      condemned to sacrifice his daughter with her guilty seducer.
      After the expulsion of the kings, the ambitious Roman, who should
      dare to assume their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted
      to the infernal gods: each of his fellow-citizens was armed with
      the sword of justice; and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to
      gratitude or prudence, had been already sanctified by the
      judgment of his country. 181 The barbarous practice of wearing
      arms in the midst of peace, 182 and the bloody maxims of honor,
      were unknown to the Romans; and, during the two purest ages, from
      the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars,
      the city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted
      with atrocious crimes. The failure of penal laws was more
      sensibly felt, when every vice was inflamed by faction at home
      and dominion abroad. In the time of Cicero, each private citizen
      enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each minister of the republic
      was exalted to the temptations of regal power, and their virtues
      are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous fruits of
      nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust,
      rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be
      sued for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand
      pounds sterling; and such was the temper of the laws, the judges,
      and perhaps the accuser himself, 183 that, on refunding a
      thirteenth part of his plunder, Verres could retire to an easy
      and luxurious exile. 184

      179 (return) [ The first speech of Lysias (Reiske, Orator. Graec.
      tom. v. p. 2—48) is in defence of a husband who had killed the
      adulterer. The rights of husbands and fathers at Rome and Athens
      are discussed with much learning by Dr. Taylor, (Lectiones
      Lysiacae, c. xi. in Reiske, tom. vi. p. 301—308.)]

      180 (return) [ See Casaubon ad Athenaeum, l. i. c. 5, p. 19.
      Percurrent raphanique mugilesque, (Catull. p. 41, 42, edit.
      Vossian.) Hunc mugilis intrat, (Juvenal. Satir. x. 317.) Hunc
      perminxere calones, (Horat l. i. Satir. ii. 44.) Familiae
      stuprandum dedit.. fraudi non fuit, (Val. Maxim. l. vi. c. l, No.
      13.)]

      181 (return) [ This law is noticed by Livy (ii. 8) and Plutarch,
      (in Publiccla, tom. i. p. 187,) and it fully justifies the public
      opinion on the death of Caesar which Suetonius could publish
      under the Imperial government. Jure caesus existimatur, (in
      Julio, c. 76.) Read the letters that passed between Cicero and
      Matius a few months after the ides of March (ad Fam. xi. 27,
      28.)]

      182 (return) [ Thucydid. l. i. c. 6 The historian who considers
      this circumstance as the test of civilization, would disdain the
      barbarism of a European court]

      183 (return) [ He first rated at millies (800,000 L.) the damages
      of Sicily, (Divinatio in Caecilium, c. 5,) which he afterwards
      reduced to quadringenties, (320,000 L.—1 Actio in Verrem, c. 18,)
      and was finally content with tricies, (24,000l L.) Plutarch (in
      Ciceron. tom. iii. p. 1584) has not dissembled the popular
      suspicion and report.]

      184 (return) [ Verres lived near thirty years after his trial,
      till the second triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste
      of Mark Antony for the sake of his Corinthian plate, (Plin. Hist.
      Natur. xxxiv. 3.)]


      The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes
      and punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst
      of his sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license,
      rather than to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in
      the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred
      citizens. 185 But, in the character of a legislator, he respected
      the prejudices of the times; and, instead of pronouncing a
      sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who
      betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla
      was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of
      exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction
      of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards the Pompeian and
      Julian, laws introduced a new system of criminal jurisprudence;
      186 and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised their
      increasing rigor under the names of the original authors. But the
      invention and frequent use of extraordinary pains proceeded from
      the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In
      the condemnation of illustrious Romans, the senate was always
      prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial
      and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to
      maintain the peace of their province, by the arbitrary and rigid
      administration of justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in
      the extent of empire, and the Spanish malefactor, who claimed the
      privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the command of Galba on a
      fairer and more lofty cross. 187 Occasional rescripts issued from
      the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or
      importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of
      a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for
      honorable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burnt,
      or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the
      amphitheatre. Armed robbers were pursued and extirpated as the
      enemies of society; the driving away horses or cattle was made a
      capital offence; 188 but simple theft was uniformly considered as
      a mere civil and private injury. The degrees of guilt, and the
      modes of punishment, were too often determined by the discretion
      of the rulers, and the subject was left in ignorance of the legal
      danger which he might incur by every action of his life.

      185 (return) [ Such is the number assigned by Valer’us Maximus,
      (l. ix. c. 2, No. 1,) Florus (iv. 21) distinguishes 2000 senators
      and knights. Appian (de Bell. Civil. l. i. c. 95, tom. ii. p.
      133, edit. Schweighauser) more accurately computes forty victims
      of the senatorian rank, and 1600 of the equestrian census or
      order.]

      186 (return) [ For the penal laws (Leges Corneliae, Pompeiae,
      Julae, of Sylla, Pompey, and the Caesars) see the sentences of
      Paulus, (l. iv. tit. xviii.—xxx. p. 497—528, edit. Schulting,)
      the Gregorian Code, (Fragment. l. xix. p. 705, 706, in
      Schulting,) the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, (tit.
      i.—xv.,) the Theodosian Code, (l. ix.,) the Code of Justinian,
      (l. ix.,) the Pandects, (xlviii.,) the Institutes, (l. iv. tit.
      xviii.,) and the Greek version of Theophilus, (p. 917—926.)]

      187 (return) [ It was a guardian who had poisoned his ward. The
      crime was atrocious: yet the punishment is reckoned by Suetonius
      (c. 9) among the acts in which Galba showed himself acer,
      vehemens, et in delictis coercendis immodicus.]

      188 (return) [ The abactores or abigeatores, who drove one horse,
      or two mares or oxen, or five hogs, or ten goats, were subject to
      capital punishment, (Paul, Sentent. Recept. l. iv. tit. xviii. p.
      497, 498.) Hadrian, (ad Concil. Baeticae,) most severe where the
      offence was most frequent, condemns the criminals, ad gladium,
      ludi damnationem, (Ulpian, de Officio Proconsulis, l. viii. in
      Collatione Legum Mosaic. et Rom. tit. xi p. 235.)]


      A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
      jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate
      each other; but, as often as they differ, a prudent legislator
      appreciates the guilt and punishment according to the measure of
      social injury. On this principle, the most daring attack on the
      life and property of a private citizen is judged less atrocious
      than the crime of treason or rebellion, which invades the majesty
      of the republic: the obsequious civilians unanimously pronounced,
      that the republic is contained in the person of its chief; and
      the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by the incessant
      diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the sexes
      may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a
      source of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes,
      the family of the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery
      of the wife. The wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of
      revenge, applied to this domestic offence the animadversion of
      the laws: and the guilty parties, after the payment of heavy
      forfeitures and fines, were condemned to long or perpetual exile
      in two separate islands. 189 Religion pronounces an equal censure
      against the infidelity of the husband; but, as it is not
      accompanied by the same civil effects, the wife was never
      permitted to vindicate her wrongs; 190 and the distinction of
      simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important in the
      canon law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the Code and the
      Pandects. I touch with reluctance, and despatch with impatience,
      a more odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature
      abominates the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the
      example of the Etruscans 191 and Greeks: 192 and in the mad abuse
      of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is innocent was
      deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, 193 which had been
      extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished by the
      lapse of time and the multitude of criminals. By this law, the
      rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous youth, was
      compensated, as a personal injury, by the poor damages of ten
      thousand sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be
      slain by the resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to
      believe, that at Rome, as in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate
      deserter of his sex was degraded from the honors and the rights
      of a citizen. 194 But the practice of vice was not discouraged by
      the severity of opinion: the indelible stain of manhood was
      confounded with the more venial transgressions of fornication and
      adultery, nor was the licentious lover exposed to the same
      dishonor which he impressed on the male or female partner of his
      guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal, 195 the poets accuse and
      celebrate the degeneracy of the times; and the reformation of
      manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the
      civilians till the most virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the
      sin against nature as a crime against society. 196

      189 (return) [ Till the publication of the Julius Paulus of
      Schulting, (l. ii. tit. xxvi. p. 317—323,) it was affirmed and
      believed that the Julian laws punished adultery with death; and
      the mistake arose from the fraud or error of Tribonian. Yet
      Lipsius had suspected the truth from the narratives of Tacitus,
      (Annal. ii. 50, iii. 24, iv. 42,) and even from the practice of
      Augustus, who distinguished the treasonable frailties of his
      female kindred.]

      190 (return) [ In cases of adultery, Severus confined to the
      husband the right of public accusation, (Cod. Justinian, l. ix.
      tit. ix. leg. 1.) Nor is this privilege unjust—so different are
      the effects of male or female infidelity.]

      191 (return) [ Timon (l. i.) and Theopompus (l. xliii. apud
      Athenaeum, l. xii. p. 517) describe the luxury and lust of the
      Etruscans. About the same period (A. U. C. 445) the Roman youth
      studied in Etruria, (liv. ix. 36.)]

      192 (return) [ The Persians had been corrupted in the same
      school, (Herodot. l. i. c. 135.) A curious dissertation might be
      formed on the introduction of paederasty after the time of Homer,
      its progress among the Greeks of Asia and Europe, the vehemence
      of their passions, and the thin device of virtue and friendship
      which amused the philosophers of Athens. But scelera ostendi
      oportet dum puniuntur, abscondi flagitia.]

      193 (return) [ The name, the date, and the provisions of this law
      are equally doubtful, (Gravina, Opp. p. 432, 433. Heineccius,
      Hist. Jur. Rom. No. 108. Ernesti, Clav. Ciceron. in Indice
      Legum.) But I will observe that the nefanda Venus of the honest
      German is styled aversa by the more polite Italian.]

      194 (return) [ See the oration of Aeschines against the catamite
      Timarchus, (in Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom. iii. p. 21—184.)]

      195 (return) [ A crowd of disgraceful passages will force
      themselves on the memory of the classic reader: I will only
      remind him of the cool declaration of Ovid:— Odi concubitus qui
      non utrumque resolvant. Hoc est quod puerum tangar amore minus.]

      196 (return) [ Aelius Lampridius, in Vit. Heliogabal. in Hist.
      August p. 112 Aurelius Victor, in Philippo, Codex Theodos. l. ix.
      tit. vii. leg. 7, and Godefroy’s Commentary, tom. iii. p. 63.
      Theodosius abolished the subterraneous brothels of Rome, in which
      the prostitution of both sexes was acted with impunity.]




Chapter XLIV: Idea Of The Roman Jurisprudence.—Part VIII.


      A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose
      in the empire with the religion of Constantine. 197 The laws of
      Moses were received as the divine original of justice, and the
      Christian princes adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of
      moral and religious turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be
      a capital offence: the frailty of the sexes was assimilated to
      poison or assassination, to sorcery or parricide; the same
      penalties were inflicted on the passive and active guilt of
      paederasty; and all criminals of free or servile condition were
      either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging
      flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of
      mankind; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general
      and pious indignation: the impure manners of Greece still
      prevailed in the cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by
      the celibacy of the monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the
      punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse was
      only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two
      years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband.
      But the same emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of
      unmanly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be
      excused by the purity of his motives. 198 In defiance of every
      principle of justice, he stretched to past as well as future
      offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous
      allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A painful
      death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument,
      or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most
      exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the propriety of
      the execution, since the criminals would have lost their hands,
      had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace
      and agony, two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of
      Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of Constantinople,
      while their brethren were admonished, by the voice of a crier, to
      observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity of
      their character. Perhaps these prelates were innocent. A sentence
      of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and
      suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt of the
      green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was
      presumed by the judges, and paederasty became the crime of those
      to whom no crime could be imputed. A French philosopher 199 has
      dared to remark that whatever is secret must be doubtful, and
      that our natural horror of vice may be abused as an engine of
      tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same writer, that a
      legislator may confide in the taste and reason of mankind, is
      impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and extent
      of the disease. 200

      197 (return) [ See the laws of Constantine and his successors
      against adultery, sodomy &c., in the Theodosian, (l. ix. tit.
      vii. leg. 7, l. xi. tit. xxxvi leg. 1, 4) and Justinian Codes,
      (l. ix. tit. ix. leg. 30, 31.) These princes speak the language
      of passion as well as of justice, and fraudulently ascribe their
      own severity to the first Caesars.]

      198 (return) [ Justinian, Novel. lxxvii. cxxxiv. cxli. Procopius
      in Anecdot. c. 11, 16, with the notes of Alemannus. Theophanes,
      p. 151. Cedrenus. p. 688. Zonaras, l. xiv. p. 64.]

      199 (return) [ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 6. That
      eloquent philosopher conciliates the rights of liberty and of
      nature, which should never be placed in opposition to each
      other.]

      200 (return) [ For the corruption of Palestine, 2000 years before
      the Christian aera, see the history and laws of Moses. Ancient
      Gaul is stigmatized by Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. v. p. 356,)
      China by the Mahometar and Christian travellers, (Ancient
      Relations of India and China, p. 34 translated by Renaudot, and
      his bitter critic the Pere Premare, Lettres Edifiantes, tom. xix.
      p. 435,) and native America by the Spanish historians,
      (Garcilasso de la Vega, l. iii. c. 13, Rycaut’s translation; and
      Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. iii. p. 88.) I believe, and hope,
      that the negroes, in their own country, were exempt from this
      moral pestilence.]


      The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed, in all criminal
      cases, the invaluable privilege of being tried by their country.
      201 1. The administration of justice is the most ancient office
      of a prince: it was exercised by the Roman kings, and abused by
      Tarquin; who alone, without law or council, pronounced his
      arbitrary judgments. The first consuls succeeded to this regal
      prerogative; but the sacred right of appeal soon abolished the
      jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all public causes were
      decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a wild
      democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the
      essential principles, of justice: the pride of despotism was
      envenomed by plebeian envy, and the heroes of Athens might
      sometimes applaud the happiness of the Persian, whose fate
      depended on the caprice of a single tyrant. Some salutary
      restraints, imposed by the people or their own passions, were at
      once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the
      Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates.


      A vote of the thirty five tribes could inflict a fine; but the
      cognizance of all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental
      law to the assembly of the centuries, in which the weight of
      influence and property was sure to preponderate. Repeated
      proclamations and adjournments were interposed, to allow time for
      prejudice and resentment to subside: the whole proceeding might
      be annulled by a seasonable omen, or the opposition of a tribune;
      and such popular trials were commonly less formidable to
      innocence than they were favorable to guilt. But this union of
      the judicial and legislative powers left it doubtful whether the
      accused party was pardoned or acquitted; and, in the defence of
      an illustrious client, the orators of Rome and Athens address
      their arguments to the policy and benevolence, as well as to the
      justice, of their sovereign. 2. The task of convening the
      citizens for the trial of each offender became more difficult, as
      the citizens and the offenders continually multiplied; and the
      ready expedient was adopted of delegating the jurisdiction of the
      people to the ordinary magistrates, or to extraordinary
      inquisitors. In the first ages these questions were rare and
      occasional. In the beginning of the seventh century of Rome they
      were made perpetual: four praetors were annually empowered to sit
      in judgment on the state offences of treason, extortion,
      peculation, and bribery; and Sylla added new praetors and new
      questions for those crimes which more directly injure the safety
      of individuals. By these inquisitors the trial was prepared and
      directed; but they could only pronounce the sentence of the
      majority of judges, who with some truth, and more prejudice, have
      been compared to the English juries. 202 To discharge this
      important, though burdensome office, an annual list of ancient
      and respectable citizens was formed by the praetor. After many
      constitutional struggles, they were chosen in equal numbers from
      the senate, the equestrian order, and the people; four hundred
      and fifty were appointed for single questions; and the various
      rolls or decuries of judges must have contained the names of some
      thousand Romans, who represented the judicial authority of the
      state. In each particular cause, a sufficient number was drawn
      from the urn; their integrity was guarded by an oath; the mode of
      ballot secured their independence; the suspicion of partiality
      was removed by the mutual challenges of the accuser and
      defendant; and the judges of Milo, by the retrenchment of fifteen
      on each side, were reduced to fifty-one voices or tablets, of
      acquittal, of condemnation, or of favorable doubt. 203 3. In his
      civil jurisdiction, the praetor of the city was truly a judge,
      and almost a legislator; but, as soon as he had prescribed the
      action of law, he often referred to a delegate the determination
      of the fact. With the increase of legal proceedings, the tribunal
      of the centumvirs, in which he presided, acquired more weight and
      reputation. But whether he acted alone, or with the advice of his
      council, the most absolute powers might be trusted to a
      magistrate who was annually chosen by the votes of the people.
      The rules and precautions of freedom have required some
      explanation; the order of despotism is simple and inanimate.
      Before the age of Justinian, or perhaps of Diocletian, the
      decuries of Roman judges had sunk to an empty title: the humble
      advice of the assessors might be accepted or despised; and in
      each tribunal the civil and criminal jurisdiction was
      administered by a single magistrate, who was raised and disgraced
      by the will of the emperor.


      201 (return) [The important subject of the public questions and
      judgments at Rome, is explained with much learning, and in a
      classic style, by Charles Sigonius, (l. iii. de Judiciis, in Opp.
      tom. iii. p. 679—864;) and a good abridgment may be found in the
      Republique Romaine of Beaufort, (tom. ii. l. v. p. 1—121.) Those
      who wish for more abstruse law may study Noodt, (de Jurisdictione
      et Imperio Libri duo, tom. i. p. 93—134,) Heineccius, (ad
      Pandect. l. i. et ii. ad Institut. l. iv. tit. xvii Element. ad
      Antiquitat.) and Gravina (Opp. 230—251.)]

      202 (return) [ The office, both at Rome and in England, must be
      considered as an occasional duty, and not a magistracy, or
      profession. But the obligation of a unanimous verdict is peculiar
      to our laws, which condemn the jurymen to undergo the torture
      from whence they have exempted the criminal.]

      203 (return) [ We are indebted for this interesting fact to a
      fragment of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of
      Tiberius. The loss of his Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero
      has deprived us of a valuable fund of historical and legal
      knowledge.]


      A Roman accused of any capital crime might prevent the sentence
      of the law by voluntary exile, or death. Till his guilt had been
      legally proved, his innocence was presumed, and his person was
      free: till the votes of the last century had been counted and
      declared, he might peaceably secede to any of the allied cities
      of Italy, or Greece, or Asia. 204 His fame and fortunes were
      preserved, at least to his children, by this civil death; and he
      might still be happy in every rational and sensual enjoyment, if
      a mind accustomed to the ambitious tumult of Rome could support
      the uniformity and silence of Rhodes or Athens. A bolder effort
      was required to escape from the tyranny of the Caesars; but this
      effort was rendered familiar by the maxims of the stoics, the
      example of the bravest Romans, and the legal encouragements of
      suicide. The bodies of condemned criminals were exposed to public
      ignominy, and their children, a more serious evil, were reduced
      to poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But, if the
      victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince
      or senate, their courage and despatch were recompensed by the
      applause of the public, the decent honors of burial, and the
      validity of their testaments. 205 The exquisite avarice and
      cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of
      this last consolation, and it was still denied even by the
      clemency of the Antonines. A voluntary death, which, in the case
      of a capital offence, intervened between the accusation and the
      sentence, was admitted as a confession of guilt, and the spoils
      of the deceased were seized by the inhuman claims of the
      treasury. 206 Yet the civilians have always respected the natural
      right of a citizen to dispose of his life; and the posthumous
      disgrace invented by Tarquin, 207 to check the despair of his
      subjects, was never revived or imitated by succeeding tyrants.
      The powers of this world have indeed lost their dominion over him
      who is resolved on death; and his arm can only be restrained by
      the religious apprehension of a future state. Suicides are
      enumerated by Virgil among the unfortunate, rather than the
      guilty; 208 and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could
      not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the
      precepts of the gospel, or the church, have at length imposed a
      pious servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to
      expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the
      executioner.


      204 (return) [Footnote 204: Polyb. l. vi. p. 643. The extension
      of the empire and city of Rome obliged the exile to seek a more
      distant place of retirement.]

      205 (return) [ Qui de se statuebant, humabanta corpora, manebant
      testamenta; pretium festinandi. Tacit. Annal. vi. 25, with the
      Notes of Lipsius.]

      206 (return) [ Julius Paulus, (Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xii.
      p. 476,) the Pandects, (xlviii. tit. xxi.,) the Code, (l. ix.
      tit. l.,) Bynkershoek, (tom. i. p. 59, Observat. J. C. R. iv. 4,)
      and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxix. c. ix.,) define the
      civil limitations of the liberty and privileges of suicide. The
      criminal penalties are the production of a later and darker age.]

      207 (return) [ Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxvi. 24. When he fatigued his
      subjects in building the Capitol, many of the laborers were
      provoked to despatch themselves: he nailed their dead bodies to
      crosses.]

      208 (return) [ The sole resemblance of a violent and premature
      death has engaged Virgil (Aeneid, vi. 434—439) to confound
      suicides with infants, lovers, and persons unjustly condemned.
      Heyne, the best of his editors, is at a loss to deduce the idea,
      or ascertain the jurisprudence, of the Roman poet.]


      The penal statutes form a very small proportion of the sixty-two
      books of the Code and Pandects; and in all judicial proceedings,
      the life or death of a citizen is determined with less caution or
      delay than the most ordinary question of covenant or inheritance.
      This singular distinction, though something may be allowed for
      the urgent necessity of defending the peace of society, is
      derived from the nature of criminal and civil jurisprudence. Our
      duties to the state are simple and uniform: the law by which he
      is condemned is inscribed not only on brass or marble, but on the
      conscience of the offender, and his guilt is commonly proved by
      the testimony of a single fact. But our relations to each other
      are various and infinite; our obligations are created, annulled,
      and modified, by injuries, benefits, and promises; and the
      interpretation of voluntary contracts and testaments, which are
      often dictated by fraud or ignorance, affords a long and
      laborious exercise to the sagacity of the judge. The business of
      life is multiplied by the extent of commerce and dominion, and
      the residence of the parties in the distant provinces of an
      empire is productive of doubt, delay, and inevitable appeals from
      the local to the supreme magistrate. Justinian, the Greek emperor
      of Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the
      Latin shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the
      Tyber. In a period of thirteen hundred years, the laws had
      reluctantly followed the changes of government and manners; and
      the laudable desire of conciliating ancient names with recent
      institutions destroyed the harmony, and swelled the magnitude, of
      the obscure and irregular system. The laws which excuse, on any
      occasions, the ignorance of their subjects, confess their own
      imperfections: the civil jurisprudence, as it was abridged by
      Justinian, still continued a mysterious science, and a profitable
      trade, and the innate perplexity of the study was involved in
      tenfold darkness by the private industry of the practitioners.
      The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the
      prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or
      prudence of the claimants. Such costly justice might tend to
      abate the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves
      only to increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the
      misery of the poor. By these dilatory and expensive proceedings,
      the wealthy pleader obtains a more certain advantage than he
      could hope from the accidental corruption of his judge. The
      experience of an abuse, from which our own age and country are
      not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke a generous
      indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our
      elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a
      Turkish cadhi. Our calmer reflection will suggest, that such
      forms and delays are necessary to guard the person and property
      of the citizen; that the discretion of the judge is the first
      engine of tyranny; and that the laws of a free people should
      foresee and determine every question that may probably arise in
      the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the
      government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and
      servitude; and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the
      multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their
      master.




Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part I.


Reign Of The Younger Justin.—Embassy Of The Avars.—Their Settlement On
The Danube.—Conquest Of Italy By The Lombards.—Adoption And Reign Of
Tiberius.—Of Maurice.—State Of Italy Under The Lombards And The
Exarchs.—Of Ravenna.—Distress Of Rome.—Character And Pontificate Of
Gregory The First.


      During the last years of Justinian, his infirm mind was devoted
      to heavenly contemplation, and he neglected the business of the
      lower world. His subjects were impatient of the long continuance
      of his life and reign: yet all who were capable of reflection
      apprehended the moment of his death, which might involve the
      capital in tumult, and the empire in civil war. Seven nephews 1
      of the childless monarch, the sons or grandsons of his brother
      and sister, had been educated in the splendor of a princely
      fortune; they had been shown in high commands to the provinces
      and armies; their characters were known, their followers were
      zealous, and, as the jealousy of age postponed the declaration of
      a successor, they might expect with equal hopes the inheritance
      of their uncle. He expired in his palace, after a reign of
      thirty-eight years; and the decisive opportunity was embraced by
      the friends of Justin, the son of Vigilantia. 2 At the hour of
      midnight, his domestics were awakened by an importunate crowd,
      who thundered at his door, and obtained admittance by revealing
      themselves to be the principal members of the senate. These
      welcome deputies announced the recent and momentous secret of the
      emperor’s decease; reported, or perhaps invented, his dying
      choice of the best beloved and most deserving of his nephews, and
      conjured Justin to prevent the disorders of the multitude, if
      they should perceive, with the return of light, that they were
      left without a master. After composing his countenance to
      surprise, sorrow, and decent modesty, Justin, by the advice of
      his wife Sophia, submitted to the authority of the senate. He was
      conducted with speed and silence to the palace; the guards
      saluted their new sovereign; and the martial and religious rites
      of his coronation were diligently accomplished. By the hands of
      the proper officers he was invested with the Imperial garments,
      the red buskins, white tunic, and purple robe.


      A fortunate soldier, whom he instantly promoted to the rank of
      tribune, encircled his neck with a military collar; four robust
      youths exalted him on a shield; he stood firm and erect to
      receive the adoration of his subjects; and their choice was
      sanctified by the benediction of the patriarch, who imposed the
      diadem on the head of an orthodox prince. The hippodrome was
      already filled with innumerable multitudes; and no sooner did the
      emperor appear on his throne, than the voices of the blue and the
      green factions were confounded in the same loyal acclamations. In
      the speeches which Justin addressed to the senate and people, he
      promised to correct the abuses which had disgraced the age of his
      predecessor, displayed the maxims of a just and beneficent
      government, and declared that, on the approaching calends of
      January, 3 he would revive in his own person the name and liberty
      of a Roman consul. The immediate discharge of his uncle’s debts
      exhibited a solid pledge of his faith and generosity: a train of
      porters, laden with bags of gold, advanced into the midst of the
      hippodrome, and the hopeless creditors of Justinian accepted this
      equitable payment as a voluntary gift. Before the end of three
      years, his example was imitated and surpassed by the empress
      Sophia, who delivered many indigent citizens from the weight of
      debt and usury: an act of benevolence the best entitled to
      gratitude, since it relieves the most intolerable distress; but
      in which the bounty of a prince is the most liable to be abused
      by the claims of prodigality and fraud. 4

      1 (return) [ See the family of Justin and Justinian in the
      Familiae Byzantine of Ducange, p. 89—101. The devout civilians,
      Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian. p. 131) and Heineccius (Hist. Juris.
      Roman. p. 374) have since illustrated the genealogy of their
      favorite prince.]

      2 (return) [ In the story of Justin’s elevation I have translated
      into simple and concise prose the eight hundred verses of the two
      first books of Corippus, de Laudibus Justini Appendix Hist.
      Byzant. p. 401—416 Rome 1777.]

      3 (return) [ It is surprising how Pagi (Critica. in Annal. Baron.
      tom. ii. p 639) could be tempted by any chronicles to contradict
      the plain and decisive text of Corippus, (vicina dona, l. ii.
      354, vicina dies, l. iv. 1,) and to postpone, till A.D. 567, the
      consulship of Justin.]

      4 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 205. Whenever Cedrenus or
      Zonaras are mere transcribers, it is superfluous to allege their
      testimony.]


      On the seventh day of his reign, Justin gave audience to the
      ambassadors of the Avars, and the scene was decorated to impress
      the Barbarians with astonishment, veneration, and terror. From
      the palace gate, the spacious courts and long porticos were lined
      with the lofty crests and gilt bucklers of the guards, who
      presented their spears and axes with more confidence than they
      would have shown in a field of battle. The officers who exercised
      the power, or attended the person, of the prince, were attired in
      their richest habits, and arranged according to the military and
      civil order of the hierarchy. When the veil of the sanctuary was
      withdrawn, the ambassadors beheld the emperor of the East on his
      throne, beneath a canopy, or dome, which was supported by four
      columns, and crowned with a winged figure of Victory. In the
      first emotions of surprise, they submitted to the servile
      adoration of the Byzantine court; but as soon as they rose from
      the ground, Targetius, the chief of the embassy, expressed the
      freedom and pride of a Barbarian. He extolled, by the tongue of
      his interpreter, the greatness of the chagan, by whose clemency
      the kingdoms of the South were permitted to exist, whose
      victorious subjects had traversed the frozen rivers of Scythia,
      and who now covered the banks of the Danube with innumerable
      tents. The late emperor had cultivated, with annual and costly
      gifts, the friendship of a grateful monarch, and the enemies of
      Rome had respected the allies of the Avars. The same prudence
      would instruct the nephew of Justinian to imitate the liberality
      of his uncle, and to purchase the blessings of peace from an
      invincible people, who delighted and excelled in the exercise of
      war. The reply of the emperor was delivered in the same strain of
      haughty defiance, and he derived his confidence from the God of
      the Christians, the ancient glory of Rome, and the recent
      triumphs of Justinian. “The empire,” said he, “abounds with men
      and horses, and arms sufficient to defend our frontiers, and to
      chastise the Barbarians. You offer aid, you threaten hostilities:
      we despise your enmity and your aid. The conquerors of the Avars
      solicit our alliance; shall we dread their fugitives and exiles?
      5 The bounty of our uncle was granted to your misery, to your
      humble prayers. From us you shall receive a more important
      obligation, the knowledge of your own weakness. Retire from our
      presence; the lives of ambassadors are safe; and, if you return
      to implore our pardon, perhaps you will taste of our
      benevolence.” 6 On the report of his ambassadors, the chagan was
      awed by the apparent firmness of a Roman emperor of whose
      character and resources he was ignorant. Instead of executing his
      threats against the Eastern empire, he marched into the poor and
      savage countries of Germany, which were subject to the dominion
      of the Franks. After two doubtful battles, he consented to
      retire, and the Austrasian king relieved the distress of his camp
      with an immediate supply of corn and cattle. 7 Such repeated
      disappointments had chilled the spirit of the Avars, and their
      power would have dissolved away in the Sarmatian desert, if the
      alliance of Alboin, king of the Lombards, had not given a new
      object to their arms, and a lasting settlement to their wearied
      fortunes.

      5 (return) [ Corippus, l. iii. 390. The unquestionable sense
      relates to the Turks, the conquerors of the Avars; but the word
      scultor has no apparent meaning, and the sole Ms. of Corippus,
      from whence the first edition (1581, apud Plantin) was printed,
      is no longer visible. The last editor, Foggini of Rome, has
      inserted the conjectural emendation of soldan: but the proofs of
      Ducange, (Joinville, Dissert. xvi. p. 238—240,) for the early use
      of this title among the Turks and Persians, are weak or
      ambiguous. And I must incline to the authority of D’Herbelot,
      (Bibliotheque Orient. p. 825,) who ascribes the word to the
      Arabic and Chaldaean tongues, and the date to the beginning of
      the xith century, when it was bestowed by the khalif of Bagdad on
      Mahmud, prince of Gazna, and conqueror of India.]

      6 (return) [ For these characteristic speeches, compare the verse
      of Corippus (l. iii. 251—401) with the prose of Menander,
      (Excerpt. Legation. p 102, 103.) Their diversity proves that they
      did not copy each other their resemblance, that they drew from a
      common original.]

      7 (return) [ For the Austrasian war, see Menander (Excerpt.
      Legat. p. 110,) Gregory of Tours, (Hist. Franc. l. iv. c 29,) and
      Paul the deacon, (de Gest. Langobard. l. ii. c. 10.)]


      While Alboin served under his father’s standard, he encountered
      in battle, and transpierced with his lance, the rival prince of
      the Gepidae. The Lombards, who applauded such early prowess,
      requested his father, with unanimous acclamations, that the
      heroic youth, who had shared the dangers of the field, might be
      admitted to the feast of victory. “You are not unmindful,”
      replied the inflexible Audoin, “of the wise customs of our
      ancestors. Whatever may be his merit, a prince is incapable of
      sitting at table with his father till he has received his arms
      from a foreign and royal hand.” Alboin bowed with reverence to
      the institutions of his country, selected forty companions, and
      boldly visited the court of Turisund, king of the Gepidae, who
      embraced and entertained, according to the laws of hospitality,
      the murderer of his son. At the banquet, whilst Alboin occupied
      the seat of the youth whom he had slain, a tender remembrance
      arose in the mind of Turisund. “How dear is that place! how
      hateful is that person!” were the words that escaped, with a
      sigh, from the indignant father. His grief exasperated the
      national resentment of the Gepidae; and Cunimund, his surviving
      son, was provoked by wine, or fraternal affection, to the desire
      of vengeance. “The Lombards,” said the rude Barbarian, “resemble,
      in figure and in smell, the mares of our Sarmatian plains.” And
      this insult was a coarse allusion to the white bands which
      enveloped their legs. “Add another resemblance,” replied an
      audacious Lombard; “you have felt how strongly they kick. Visit
      the plain of Asfield, and seek for the bones of thy brother: they
      are mingled with those of the vilest animals.” The Gepidae, a
      nation of warriors, started from their seats, and the fearless
      Alboin, with his forty companions, laid their hands on their
      swords. The tumult was appeased by the venerable interposition of
      Turisund. He saved his own honor, and the life of his guest; and,
      after the solemn rites of investiture, dismissed the stranger in
      the bloody arms of his son; the gift of a weeping parent. Alboin
      returned in triumph; and the Lombards, who celebrated his
      matchless intrepidity, were compelled to praise the virtues of an
      enemy. 8 In this extraordinary visit he had probably seen the
      daughter of Cunimund, who soon after ascended the throne of the
      Gepidae. Her name was Rosamond, an appellation expressive of
      female beauty, and which our own history or romance has
      consecrated to amorous tales. The king of the Lombards (the
      father of Alboin no longer lived) was contracted to the
      granddaughter of Clovis; but the restraints of faith and policy
      soon yielded to the hope of possessing the fair Rosamond, and of
      insulting her family and nation. The arts of persuasion were
      tried without success; and the impatient lover, by force and
      stratagem, obtained the object of his desires. War was the
      consequence which he foresaw and solicited; but the Lombards
      could not long withstand the furious assault of the Gepidae, who
      were sustained by a Roman army. And, as the offer of marriage was
      rejected with contempt, Alboin was compelled to relinquish his
      prey, and to partake of the disgrace which he had inflicted on
      the house of Cunimund. 9

      8 (return) [ Paul Warnefrid, the deacon of Friuli, de Gest.
      Langobard. l. i. c. 23, 24. His pictures of national manners,
      though rudely sketched are more lively and faithful than those of
      Bede, or Gregory of Tours]

      9 (return) [ The story is told by an impostor, (Theophylact.
      Simocat. l. vi. c. 10;) but he had art enough to build his
      fictions on public and notorious facts.]


      When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow
      that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short
      truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his
      arms for a new encounter. The strength of Alboin had been found
      unequal to the gratification of his love, ambition, and revenge:
      he condescended to implore the formidable aid of the chagan; and
      the arguments that he employed are expressive of the art and
      policy of the Barbarians. In the attack of the Gepidae, he had
      been prompted by the just desire of extirpating a people whom
      their alliance with the Roman empire had rendered the common
      enemies of the nations, and the personal adversaries of the
      chagan. If the forces of the Avars and the Lombards should unite
      in this glorious quarrel, the victory was secure, and the reward
      inestimable: the Danube, the Hebrus, Italy, and Constantinople,
      would be exposed, without a barrier, to their invincible arms.
      But, if they hesitated or delayed to prevent the malice of the
      Romans, the same spirit which had insulted would pursue the Avars
      to the extremity of the earth. These specious reasons were heard
      by the chagan with coldness and disdain: he detained the Lombard
      ambassadors in his camp, protracted the negotiation, and by turns
      alleged his want of inclination, or his want of ability, to
      undertake this important enterprise. At length he signified the
      ultimate price of his alliance, that the Lombards should
      immediately present him with a tithe of their cattle; that the
      spoils and captives should be equally divided; but that the lands
      of the Gepidae should become the sole patrimony of the Avars.
      Such hard conditions were eagerly accepted by the passions of
      Alboin; and, as the Romans were dissatisfied with the ingratitude
      and perfidy of the Gepidae, Justin abandoned that incorrigible
      people to their fate, and remained the tranquil spectator of this
      unequal conflict. The despair of Cunimund was active and
      dangerous. He was informed that the Avars had entered his
      confines; but, on the strong assurance that, after the defeat of
      the Lombards, these foreign invaders would easily be repelled, he
      rushed forwards to encounter the implacable enemy of his name and
      family. But the courage of the Gepidae could secure them no more
      than an honorable death. The bravest of the nation fell in the
      field of battle; the king of the Lombards contemplated with
      delight the head of Cunimund; and his skull was fashioned into a
      cup to satiate the hatred of the conqueror, or, perhaps, to
      comply with the savage custom of his country. 10 After this
      victory, no further obstacle could impede the progress of the
      confederates, and they faithfully executed the terms of their
      agreement. 11 The fair countries of Walachia, Moldavia,
      Transylvania, and the other parts of Hungary beyond the Danube,
      were occupied, without resistance, by a new colony of Scythians;
      and the Dacian empire of the chagans subsisted with splendor
      above two hundred and thirty years. The nation of the Gepidae was
      dissolved; but, in the distribution of the captives, the slaves
      of the Avars were less fortunate than the companions of the
      Lombards, whose generosity adopted a valiant foe, and whose
      freedom was incompatible with cool and deliberate tyranny. One
      moiety of the spoil introduced into the camp of Alboin more
      wealth than a Barbarian could readily compute. The fair Rosamond
      was persuaded, or compelled, to acknowledge the rights of her
      victorious lover; and the daughter of Cunimund appeared to
      forgive those crimes which might be imputed to her own
      irresistible charms.

      10 (return) [ It appears from Strabo, Pliny, and Ammianus
      Marcellinus, that the same practice was common among the Scythian
      tribes, (Muratori, Scriptores Rer. Italic. tom. i. p. 424.) The
      scalps of North America are likewise trophies of valor. The skull
      of Cunimund was preserved above two hundred years among the
      Lombards; and Paul himself was one of the guests to whom Duke
      Ratchis exhibited this cup on a high festival, (l. ii. c. 28.)]

      11 (return) [ Paul, l. i. c. 27. Menander, in Excerpt Legat. p.
      110, 111.]


      The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of
      Alboin. In the days of Charlemagne, the Bavarians, the Saxons,
      and the other tribes of the Teutonic language, still repeated the
      songs which described the heroic virtues, the valor, liberality,
      and fortune of the king of the Lombards. 12 But his ambition was
      yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror of the Gepidae turned his eyes
      from the Danube to the richer banks of the Po, and the Tyber.
      Fifteen years had not elapsed, since his subjects, the
      confederates of Narses, had visited the pleasant climate of
      Italy: the mountains, the rivers, the highways, were familiar to
      their memory: the report of their success, perhaps the view of
      their spoils, had kindled in the rising generation the flame of
      emulation and enterprise. Their hopes were encouraged by the
      spirit and eloquence of Alboin: and it is affirmed, that he spoke
      to their senses, by producing at the royal feast, the fairest and
      most exquisite fruits that grew spontaneously in the garden of
      the world. No sooner had he erected his standard, than the native
      strength of the Lombard was multiplied by the adventurous youth
      of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and
      Pannonia had resumed the manners of Barbarians; and the names of
      the Gepidae, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Bavarians, may be
      distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. 13 Of the Saxons,
      the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with
      their wives and children, accepted the invitation of Alboin.
      Their bravery contributed to his success; but the accession or
      the absence of their numbers was not sensibly felt in the
      magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion was freely
      practised by its respective votaries. The king of the Lombards
      had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in
      their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion;
      while the more stubborn Barbarians sacrificed a she-goat, or
      perhaps a captive, to the gods of their fathers. 14 The Lombards,
      and their confederates, were united by their common attachment to
      a chief, who excelled in all the virtues and vices of a savage
      hero; and the vigilance of Alboin provided an ample magazine of
      offensive and defensive arms for the use of the expedition. The
      portable wealth of the Lombards attended the march: their lands
      they cheerfully relinquished to the Avars, on the solemn promise,
      which was made and accepted without a smile, that if they failed
      in the conquest of Italy, these voluntary exiles should be
      reinstated in their former possessions.

      12 (return) [ Ut hactenus etiam tam apud Bajoarior um gentem,
      quam et Saxmum, sed et alios ejusdem linguae homines..... in
      eorum carmini bus celebretur. Paul, l. i. c. 27. He died A.D.
      799, (Muratori, in Praefat. tom. i. p. 397.) These German songs,
      some of which might be as old as Tacitus, (de Moribus Germ. c.
      2,) were compiled and transcribed by Charlemagne. Barbara et
      antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella
      canebantur scripsit memoriaeque mandavit, (Eginard, in Vit.
      Carol. Magn. c. 29, p. 130, 131.) The poems, which Goldast
      commends, (Animadvers. ad Eginard. p. 207,) appear to be recent
      and contemptible romances.]

      13 (return) [ The other nations are rehearsed by Paul, (l. ii. c.
      6, 26,) Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. i. dissert. i. p. 4)
      has discovered the village of the Bavarians, three miles from
      Modena.]

      14 (return) [ Gregory the Roman (Dialog. l. i. iii. c. 27, 28,
      apud Baron. Annal Eccles. A.D. 579, No. 10) supposes that they
      likewise adored this she-goat. I know but of one religion in
      which the god and the victim are the same.]


      They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the
      Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic
      victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom
      they dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine
      court was subservient to the Barbarian cause; and it was for the
      ruin of Italy, that the emperor once listened to the complaints
      of his subjects. The virtues of Narses were stained with avarice;
      and, in his provincial reign of fifteen years, he accumulated a
      treasure of gold and silver which surpassed the modesty of a
      private fortune. His government was oppressive or unpopular, and
      the general discontent was expressed with freedom by the deputies
      of Rome. Before the throne of Justinian they boldly declared,
      that their Gothic servitude had been more tolerable than the
      despotism of a Greek eunuch; and that, unless their tyrant were
      instantly removed, they would consult their own happiness in the
      choice of a master. The apprehension of a revolt was urged by the
      voice of envy and detraction, which had so recently triumphed
      over the merit of Belisarius. A new exarch, Longinus, was
      appointed to supersede the conqueror of Italy, and the base
      motives of his recall were revealed in the insulting mandate of
      the empress Sophia, “that he should leave to men the exercise of
      arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the
      palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the
      eunuch.” “I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily
      unravel!” is said to have been the reply which indignation and
      conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a
      slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he
      retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the
      belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards to chastise the
      ingratitude of the prince and people. 15 But the passions of the
      people are furious and changeable, and the Romans soon
      recollected the merits, or dreaded the resentment, of their
      victorious general. By the mediation of the pope, who undertook a
      special pilgrimage to Naples, their repentance was accepted; and
      Narses, assuming a milder aspect and a more dutiful language,
      consented to fix his residence in the Capitol. His death, 16
      though in the extreme period of old age, was unseasonable and
      premature, since his genius alone could have repaired the last
      and fatal error of his life. The reality, or the suspicion, of a
      conspiracy disarmed and disunited the Italians. The soldiers
      resented the disgrace, and bewailed the loss, of their general.
      They were ignorant of their new exarch; and Longinus was himself
      ignorant of the state of the army and the province. In the
      preceding years Italy had been desolated by pestilence and
      famine, and a disaffected people ascribed the calamities of
      nature to the guilt or folly of their rulers. 17

      15 (return) [ The charge of the deacon against Narses (l. ii. c.
      5) may be groundless; but the weak apology of the Cardinal
      (Baron. Annal Eccles. A.D. 567, No. 8—12) is rejected by the best
      critics—Pagi (tom. ii. p. 639, 640,) Muratori, (Annali d’ Italia,
      tom. v. p. 160—163,) and the last editors, Horatius Blancus,
      (Script. Rerum Italic. tom. i. p. 427, 428,) and Philip
      Argelatus, (Sigon. Opera, tom. ii. p. 11, 12.) The Narses who
      assisted at the coronation of Justin (Corippus, l. iii. 221) is
      clearly understood to be a different person.]

      16 (return) [ The death of Narses is mentioned by Paul, l. ii. c.
      11. Anastas. in Vit. Johan. iii. p. 43. Agnellus, Liber
      Pontifical. Raven. in Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. ii. part i.
      p. 114, 124. Yet I cannot believe with Agnellus that Narses was
      ninety-five years of age. Is it probable that all his exploits
      were performed at fourscore?]

      17 (return) [ The designs of Narses and of the Lombards for the
      invasion of Italy are exposed in the last chapter of the first
      book, and the seven last chapters of the second book, of Paul the
      deacon.]


      Whatever might be the grounds of his security, Alboin neither
      expected nor encountered a Roman army in the field. He ascended
      the Julian Alps, and looked down with contempt and desire on the
      fruitful plains to which his victory communicated the perpetual
      appellation of Lombardy. A faithful chieftain, and a select band,
      were stationed at Forum Julii, the modern Friuli, to guard the
      passes of the mountains. The Lombards respected the strength of
      Pavia, and listened to the prayers of the Trevisans: their slow
      and heavy multitudes proceeded to occupy the palace and city of
      Verona; and Milan, now rising from her ashes, was invested by the
      powers of Alboin five months after his departure from Pannonia.
      Terror preceded his march: he found every where, or he left, a
      dreary solitude; and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without
      a trial, that the stranger was invincible. Escaping to lakes, or
      rocks, or morasses, the affrighted crowds concealed some
      fragments of their wealth, and delayed the moment of their
      servitude. Paulinus, the patriarch of Aquileia, removed his
      treasures, sacred and profane, to the Isle of Grado, 18 and his
      successors were adopted by the infant republic of Venice, which
      was continually enriched by the public calamities. Honoratus, who
      filled the chair of St. Ambrose, had credulously accepted the
      faithless offers of a capitulation; and the archbishop, with the
      clergy and nobles of Milan, were driven by the perfidy of Alboin
      to seek a refuge in the less accessible ramparts of Genoa. Along
      the maritime coast, the courage of the inhabitants was supported
      by the facility of supply, the hopes of relief, and the power of
      escape; but from the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and
      Rome the inland regions of Italy became, without a battle or a
      siege, the lasting patrimony of the Lombards. The submission of
      the people invited the Barbarian to assume the character of a
      lawful sovereign, and the helpless exarch was confined to the
      office of announcing to the emperor Justin the rapid and
      irretrievable loss of his provinces and cities. 19 One city,
      which had been diligently fortified by the Goths, resisted the
      arms of a new invader; and while Italy was subdued by the flying
      detachments of the Lombards, the royal camp was fixed above three
      years before the western gate of Ticinum, or Pavia. The same
      courage which obtains the esteem of a civilized enemy provokes
      the fury of a savage, and the impatient besieger had bound
      himself by a tremendous oath, that age, and sex, and dignity,
      should be confounded in a general massacre. The aid of famine at
      length enabled him to execute his bloody vow; but, as Alboin
      entered the gate, his horse stumbled, fell, and could not be
      raised from the ground. One of his attendants was prompted by
      compassion, or piety, to interpret this miraculous sign of the
      wrath of Heaven: the conqueror paused and relented; he sheathed
      his sword, and peacefully reposing himself in the palace of
      Theodoric, proclaimed to the trembling multitude that they should
      live and obey. Delighted with the situation of a city which was
      endeared to his pride by the difficulty of the purchase, the
      prince of the Lombards disdained the ancient glories of Milan;
      and Pavia, during some ages, was respected as the capital of the
      kingdom of Italy. 20

      18 (return) [ Which from this translation was called New
      Aquileia, (Chron. Venet. p. 3.) The patriarch of Grado soon
      became the first citizen of the republic, (p. 9, &c.,) but his
      seat was not removed to Venice till the year 1450. He is now
      decorated with titles and honors; but the genius of the church
      has bowed to that of the state, and the government of a Catholic
      city is strictly Presbyterian. Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise,
      tom. i. p. 156, 157, 161—165. Amelot de la Houssaye, Gouvernement
      de Venise, tom. i. p. 256—261.]

      19 (return) [ Paul has given a description of Italy, as it was
      then divided into eighteen regions, (l. ii. c. 14—24.) The
      Dissertatio Chorographica de Italia Medii Aevi, by Father
      Beretti, a Benedictine monk, and regius professor at Pavia, has
      been usefully consulted.]

      20 (return) [ For the conquest of Italy, see the original
      materials of Paul, (l. p. 7—10, 12, 14, 25, 26, 27,) the eloquent
      narrative of Sigonius, (tom. il. de Regno Italiae, l. i. p.
      13—19,) and the correct and critical review el Muratori, (Annali
      d’ Italia, tom. v. p. 164—180.)]


      The reign of the founder was splendid and transient; and, before
      he could regulate his new conquests, Alboin fell a sacrifice to
      domestic treason and female revenge. In a palace near Verona,
      which had not been erected for the Barbarians, he feasted the
      companions of his arms; intoxication was the reward of valor, and
      the king himself was tempted by appetite, or vanity, to exceed
      the ordinary measure of his intemperance. After draining many
      capacious bowls of Rhaetian or Falernian wine, he called for the
      skull of Cunimund, the noblest and most precious ornament of his
      sideboard. The cup of victory was accepted with horrid applause
      by the circle of the Lombard chiefs. “Fill it again with wine,”
      exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, “fill it to the brim: carry this
      goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would
      rejoice with her father.” In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamond
      had strength to utter, “Let the will of my lord be obeyed!” and,
      touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that
      the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin. Some
      indulgence might be due to the resentment of a daughter, if she
      had not already violated the duties of a wife. Implacable in her
      enmity, or inconstant in her love, the queen of Italy had stooped
      from the throne to the arms of a subject, and Helmichis, the
      king’s armor-bearer, was the secret minister of her pleasure and
      revenge. Against the proposal of the murder, he could no longer
      urge the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis
      trembled when he revolved the danger as well as the guilt, when
      he recollected the matchless strength and intrepidity of a
      warrior whom he had so often attended in the field of battle. He
      pressed and obtained, that one of the bravest champions of the
      Lombards should be associated to the enterprise; but no more than
      a promise of secrecy could be drawn from the gallant Peredeus,
      and the mode of seduction employed by Rosamond betrays her
      shameless insensibility both to honor and love. She supplied the
      place of one of her female attendants who was beloved by
      Peredeus, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence,
      till she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen
      of the Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin,
      must be the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this
      alternative he chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim
      of Rosamond, 21 whose undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or
      remorse. She expected and soon found a favorable moment, when the
      king, oppressed with wine, had retired from the table to his
      afternoon slumbers. His faithless spouse was anxious for his
      health and repose: the gates of the palace were shut, the arms
      removed, the attendants dismissed, and Rosamond, after lulling
      him to rest by her tender caresses, unbolted the chamber door,
      and urged the reluctant conspirators to the instant execution of
      the deed. On the first alarm, the warrior started from his couch:
      his sword, which he attempted to draw, had been fastened to the
      scabbard by the hand of Rosamond; and a small stool, his only
      weapon, could not long protect him from the spears of the
      assassins. The daughter of Cunimund smiled in his fall: his body
      was buried under the staircase of the palace; and the grateful
      posterity of the Lombards revered the tomb and the memory of
      their victorious leader.

      21 (return) [ The classical reader will recollect the wife and
      murder of Candaules, so agreeably told in the first book of
      Herodotus. The choice of Gyges, may serve as the excuse of
      Peredeus; and this soft insinuation of an odious idea has been
      imitated by the best writers of antiquity, (Graevius, ad Ciceron.
      Orat. pro Miloue c. 10)]




Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part II.


      The ambitious Rosamond aspired to reign in the name of her lover;
      the city and palace of Verona were awed by her power; and a
      faithful band of her native Gepidae was prepared to applaud the
      revenge, and to second the wishes, of their sovereign. But the
      Lombard chiefs, who fled in the first moments of consternation
      and disorder, had resumed their courage and collected their
      powers; and the nation, instead of submitting to her reign,
      demanded, with unanimous cries, that justice should be executed
      on the guilty spouse and the murderers of their king. She sought
      a refuge among the enemies of her country; and a criminal who
      deserved the abhorrence of mankind was protected by the selfish
      policy of the exarch. With her daughter, the heiress of the
      Lombard throne, her two lovers, her trusty Gepidae, and the
      spoils of the palace of Verona, Rosamond descended the Adige and
      the Po, and was transported by a Greek vessel to the safe harbor
      of Ravenna. Longinus beheld with delight the charms and the
      treasures of the widow of Alboin: her situation and her past
      conduct might justify the most licentious proposals; and she
      readily listened to the passion of a minister, who, even in the
      decline of the empire, was respected as the equal of kings. The
      death of a jealous lover was an easy and grateful sacrifice; and,
      as Helmichis issued from the bath, he received the deadly potion
      from the hand of his mistress. The taste of the liquor, its
      speedy operation, and his experience of the character of
      Rosamond, convinced him that he was poisoned: he pointed his
      dagger to her breast, compelled her to drain the remainder of the
      cup, and expired in a few minutes, with the consolation that she
      could not survive to enjoy the fruits of her wickedness. The
      daughter of Alboin and Rosamond, with the richest spoils of the
      Lombards, was embarked for Constantinople: the surprising
      strength of Peredeus amused and terrified the Imperial court:
      2111 his blindness and revenge exhibited an imperfect copy of the
      adventures of Samson. By the free suffrage of the nation, in the
      assembly of Pavia, Clepho, one of their noblest chiefs, was
      elected as the successor of Alboin. Before the end of eighteen
      months, the throne was polluted by a second murder: Clepho was
      stabbed by the hand of a domestic; the regal office was suspended
      above ten years during the minority of his son Autharis; and
      Italy was divided and oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty
      tyrants. 22

      2111 (return) [ He killed a lion. His eyes were put out by the
      timid Justin. Peredeus requesting an interview, Justin
      substituted two patricians, whom the blinded Barbarian stabbed to
      the heart with two concealed daggers. See Le Beau, vol. x. p.
      99.—M.]

      22 (return) [ See the history of Paul, l. ii. c. 28—32. I have
      borrowed some interesting circumstances from the Liber
      Pontificalis of Agnellus, in Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. 124.
      Of all chronological guides, Muratori is the safest.]


      When the nephew of Justinian ascended the throne, he proclaimed a
      new aera of happiness and glory. The annals of the second Justin
      23 are marked with disgrace abroad and misery at home. In the
      West, the Roman empire was afflicted by the loss of Italy, the
      desolation of Africa, and the conquests of the Persians.
      Injustice prevailed both in the capital and the provinces: the
      rich trembled for their property, the poor for their safety, the
      ordinary magistrates were ignorant or venal, the occasional
      remedies appear to have been arbitrary and violent, and the
      complaints of the people could no longer be silenced by the
      splendid names of a legislator and a conqueror. The opinion which
      imputes to the prince all the calamities of his times may be
      countenanced by the historian as a serious truth or a salutary
      prejudice. Yet a candid suspicion will arise, that the sentiments
      of Justin were pure and benevolent, and that he might have filled
      his station without reproach, if the faculties of his mind had
      not been impaired by disease, which deprived the emperor of the
      use of his feet, and confined him to the palace, a stranger to
      the complaints of the people and the vices of the government. The
      tardy knowledge of his own impotence determined him to lay down
      the weight of the diadem; and, in the choice of a worthy
      substitute, he showed some symptoms of a discerning and even
      magnanimous spirit. The only son of Justin and Sophia died in his
      infancy; their daughter Arabia was the wife of Baduarius, 24
      superintendent of the palace, and afterwards commander of the
      Italian armies, who vainly aspired to confirm the rights of
      marriage by those of adoption. While the empire appeared an
      object of desire, Justin was accustomed to behold with jealousy
      and hatred his brothers and cousins, the rivals of his hopes; nor
      could he depend on the gratitude of those who would accept the
      purple as a restitution, rather than a gift. Of these
      competitors, one had been removed by exile, and afterwards by
      death; and the emperor himself had inflicted such cruel insults
      on another, that he must either dread his resentment or despise
      his patience. This domestic animosity was refined into a generous
      resolution of seeking a successor, not in his family, but in the
      republic; and the artful Sophia recommended Tiberius, 25 his
      faithful captain of the guards, whose virtues and fortune the
      emperor might cherish as the fruit of his judicious choice. The
      ceremony of his elevation to the rank of Caesar, or Augustus, was
      performed in the portico of the palace, in the presence of the
      patriarch and the senate. Justin collected the remaining strength
      of his mind and body; but the popular belief that his speech was
      inspired by the Deity betrays a very humble opinion both of the
      man and of the times. 26 “You behold,” said the emperor, “the
      ensigns of supreme power. You are about to receive them, not from
      my hand, but from the hand of God. Honor them, and from them you
      will derive honor. Respect the empress your mother: you are now
      her son; before, you were her servant. Delight not in blood;
      abstain from revenge; avoid those actions by which I have
      incurred the public hatred; and consult the experience, rather
      than the example, of your predecessor. As a man, I have sinned;
      as a sinner, even in this life, I have been severely punished:
      but these servants, (and he pointed to his ministers,) who have
      abused my confidence, and inflamed my passions, will appear with
      me before the tribunal of Christ. I have been dazzled by the
      splendor of the diadem: be thou wise and modest; remember what
      you have been, remember what you are. You see around us your
      slaves, and your children: with the authority, assume the
      tenderness, of a parent. Love your people like yourself;
      cultivate the affections, maintain the discipline, of the army;
      protect the fortunes of the rich, relieve the necessities of the
      poor.” 27 The assembly, in silence and in tears, applauded the
      counsels, and sympathized with the repentance, of their prince
      the patriarch rehearsed the prayers of the church; Tiberius
      received the diadem on his knees; and Justin, who in his
      abdication appeared most worthy to reign, addressed the new
      monarch in the following words: “If you consent, I live; if you
      command, I die: may the God of heaven and earth infuse into your
      heart whatever I have neglected or forgotten.” The four last
      years of the emperor Justin were passed in tranquil obscurity:
      his conscience was no longer tormented by the remembrance of
      those duties which he was incapable of discharging; and his
      choice was justified by the filial reverence and gratitude of
      Tiberius.

      23 (return) [ The original authors for the reign of Justin the
      younger are Evagrius, Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 1—12; Theophanes, in
      Chonograph. p. 204—210; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 70-72;
      Cedrenus, in Compend. p. 388—392.]

      24 (return) [ Dispositorque novus sacrae Baduarius aulae.
      Successor soceri mox factus Cura-palati.—Cerippus. Baduarius is
      enumerated among the descendants and allies of the house of
      Justinian. A family of noble Venetians (Casa Badoero) built
      churches and gave dukes to the republic as early as the ninth
      century; and, if their descent be admitted, no kings in Europe
      can produce a pedigree so ancient and illustrious. Ducange, Fam.
      Byzantin, p. 99 Amelot de la Houssaye, Gouvernement de Venise,
      tom. ii. p. 555.]

      25 (return) [ The praise bestowed on princes before their
      elevation is the purest and most weighty. Corippus has celebrated
      Tiberius at the time of the accession of Justin, (l. i. 212—222.)
      Yet even a captain of the guards might attract the flattery of an
      African exile.]

      26 (return) [ Evagrius (l. v. c. 13) has added the reproach to
      his ministers He applies this speech to the ceremony when
      Tiberius was invested with the rank of Caesar. The loose
      expression, rather than the positive error, of Theophanes, &c.,
      has delayed it to his Augustan investitura immediately before the
      death of Justin.]

      27 (return) [ Theophylact Simocatta (l. iii. c. 11) declares that
      he shall give to posterity the speech of Justin as it was
      pronounced, without attempting to correct the imperfections of
      language or rhetoric. Perhaps the vain sophist would have been
      incapable of producing such sentiments.]


      Among the virtues of Tiberius, 28 his beauty (he was one of the
      tallest and most comely of the Romans) might introduce him to the
      favor of Sophia; and the widow of Justin was persuaded, that she
      should preserve her station and influence under the reign of a
      second and more youthful husband. But, if the ambitious candidate
      had been tempted to flatter and dissemble, it was no longer in
      his power to fulfil her expectations, or his own promise. The
      factions of the hippodrome demanded, with some impatience, the
      name of their new empress: both the people and Sophia were
      astonished by the proclamation of Anastasia, the secret, though
      lawful, wife of the emperor Tiberius. Whatever could alleviate
      the disappointment of Sophia, Imperial honors, a stately palace,
      a numerous household, was liberally bestowed by the piety of her
      adopted son; on solemn occasions he attended and consulted the
      widow of his benefactor; but her ambition disdained the vain
      semblance of royalty, and the respectful appellation of mother
      served to exasperate, rather than appease, the rage of an injured
      woman. While she accepted, and repaid with a courtly smile, the
      fair expressions of regard and confidence, a secret alliance was
      concluded between the dowager empress and her ancient enemies;
      and Justinian, the son of Germanus, was employed as the
      instrument of her revenge. The pride of the reigning house
      supported, with reluctance, the dominion of a stranger: the youth
      was deservedly popular; his name, after the death of Justin, had
      been mentioned by a tumultuous faction; and his own submissive
      offer of his head with a treasure of sixty thousand pounds, might
      be interpreted as an evidence of guilt, or at least of fear.
      Justinian received a free pardon, and the command of the eastern
      army. The Persian monarch fled before his arms; and the
      acclamations which accompanied his triumph declared him worthy of
      the purple. His artful patroness had chosen the month of the
      vintage, while the emperor, in a rural solitude, was permitted to
      enjoy the pleasures of a subject. On the first intelligence of
      her designs, he returned to Constantinople, and the conspiracy
      was suppressed by his presence and firmness. From the pomp and
      honors which she had abused, Sophia was reduced to a modest
      allowance: Tiberius dismissed her train, intercepted her
      correspondence, and committed to a faithful guard the custody of
      her person. But the services of Justinian were not considered by
      that excellent prince as an aggravation of his offences: after a
      mild reproof, his treason and ingratitude were forgiven; and it
      was commonly believed, that the emperor entertained some thoughts
      of contracting a double alliance with the rival of his throne.
      The voice of an angel (such a fable was propagated) might reveal
      to the emperor, that he should always triumph over his domestic
      foes; but Tiberius derived a firmer assurance from the innocence
      and generosity of his own mind.

      28 (return) [ For the character and reign of Tiberius, see
      Evagrius, l v. c. 13. Theophylact, l. iii. c. 12, &c. Theophanes,
      in Chron. p. 2 0—213. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 72. Cedrenus,
      p. 392. Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis Langobard. l. iii. c. 11, 12.
      The deacon of Forum Juli appears to have possessed some curious
      and authentic facts.]


      With the odious name of Tiberius, he assumed the more popular
      appellation of Constantine, and imitated the purer virtues of the
      Antonines. After recording the vice or folly of so many Roman
      princes, it is pleasing to repose, for a moment, on a character
      conspicuous by the qualities of humanity, justice, temperance,
      and fortitude; to contemplate a sovereign affable in his palace,
      pious in the church, impartial on the seat of judgment, and
      victorious, at least by his generals, in the Persian war. The
      most glorious trophy of his victory consisted in a multitude of
      captives, whom Tiberius entertained, redeemed, and dismissed to
      their native homes with the charitable spirit of a Christian
      hero. The merit or misfortunes of his own subjects had a dearer
      claim to his beneficence, and he measured his bounty not so much
      by their expectations as by his own dignity. This maxim, however
      dangerous in a trustee of the public wealth, was balanced by a
      principle of humanity and justice, which taught him to abhor, as
      of the basest alloy, the gold that was extracted from the tears
      of the people. For their relief, as often as they had suffered by
      natural or hostile calamities, he was impatient to remit the
      arrears of the past, or the demands of future taxes: he sternly
      rejected the servile offerings of his ministers, which were
      compensated by tenfold oppression; and the wise and equitable
      laws of Tiberius excited the praise and regret of succeeding
      times. Constantinople believed that the emperor had discovered a
      treasure: but his genuine treasure consisted in the practice of
      liberal economy, and the contempt of all vain and superfluous
      expense. The Romans of the East would have been happy, if the
      best gift of Heaven, a patriot king, had been confirmed as a
      proper and permanent blessing. But in less than four years after
      the death of Justin, his worthy successor sunk into a mortal
      disease, which left him only sufficient time to restore the
      diadem, according to the tenure by which he held it, to the most
      deserving of his fellow-citizens. He selected Maurice from the
      crowd, a judgment more precious than the purple itself: the
      patriarch and senate were summoned to the bed of the dying
      prince: he bestowed his daughter and the empire; and his last
      advice was solemnly delivered by the voice of the quaestor.
      Tiberius expressed his hope that the virtues of his son and
      successor would erect the noblest mausoleum to his memory. His
      memory was embalmed by the public affliction; but the most
      sincere grief evaporates in the tumult of a new reign, and the
      eyes and acclamations of mankind were speedily directed to the
      rising sun. The emperor Maurice derived his origin from ancient
      Rome; 29 but his immediate parents were settled at Arabissus in
      Cappadocia, and their singular felicity preserved them alive to
      behold and partake the fortune of their august son. The youth of
      Maurice was spent in the profession of arms: Tiberius promoted
      him to the command of a new and favorite legion of twelve
      thousand confederates; his valor and conduct were signalized in
      the Persian war; and he returned to Constantinople to accept, as
      his just reward, the inheritance of the empire. Maurice ascended
      the throne at the mature age of forty-three years; and he reigned
      above twenty years over the East and over himself; 30 expelling
      from his mind the wild democracy of passions, and establishing
      (according to the quaint expression of Evagrius) a perfect
      aristocracy of reason and virtue. Some suspicion will degrade the
      testimony of a subject, though he protests that his secret praise
      should never reach the ear of his sovereign, 31 and some failings
      seem to place the character of Maurice below the purer merit of
      his predecessor. His cold and reserved demeanor might be imputed
      to arrogance; his justice was not always exempt from cruelty, nor
      his clemency from weakness; and his rigid economy too often
      exposed him to the reproach of avarice. But the rational wishes
      of an absolute monarch must tend to the happiness of his people.
      Maurice was endowed with sense and courage to promote that
      happiness, and his administration was directed by the principles
      and example of Tiberius. The pusillanimity of the Greeks had
      introduced so complete a separation between the offices of king
      and of general, that a private soldier, who had deserved and
      obtained the purple, seldom or never appeared at the head of his
      armies. Yet the emperor Maurice enjoyed the glory of restoring
      the Persian monarch to his throne; his lieutenants waged a
      doubtful war against the Avars of the Danube; and he cast an eye
      of pity, of ineffectual pity, on the abject and distressful state
      of his Italian provinces.

      29 (return) [ It is therefore singular enough that Paul (l. iii.
      c. 15) should distinguish him as the first Greek emperor—primus
      ex Graecorum genere in Imperio constitutus. His immediate
      predecessors had in deed been born in the Latin provinces of
      Europe: and a various reading, in Graecorum Imperio, would apply
      the expression to the empire rather than the prince.]

      30 (return) [ Consult, for the character and reign of Maurice,
      the fifth and sixth books of Evagrius, particularly l. vi. c. l;
      the eight books of his prolix and florid history by Theophylact
      Simocatta; Theophanes, p. 213, &c.; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p.
      73; Cedrenus, p. 394.]

      31 (return) [ Evagrius composed his history in the twelfth year
      of Maurice; and he had been so wisely indiscreet that the emperor
      know and rewarded his favorable opinion, (l. vi. c. 24.)]


      From Italy the emperors were incessantly tormented by tales of
      misery and demands of succor, which extorted the humiliating
      confession of their own weakness. The expiring dignity of Rome
      was only marked by the freedom and energy of her complaints: “If
      you are incapable,” she said, “of delivering us from the sword of
      the Lombards, save us at least from the calamity of famine.”
      Tiberius forgave the reproach, and relieved the distress: a
      supply of corn was transported from Egypt to the Tyber; and the
      Roman people, invoking the name, not of Camillus, but of St.
      Peter repulsed the Barbarians from their walls. But the relief
      was accidental, the danger was perpetual and pressing; and the
      clergy and senate, collecting the remains of their ancient
      opulence, a sum of three thousand pounds of gold, despatched the
      patrician Pamphronius to lay their gifts and their complaints at
      the foot of the Byzantine throne. The attention of the court, and
      the forces of the East, were diverted by the Persian war: but the
      justice of Tiberius applied the subsidy to the defence of the
      city; and he dismissed the patrician with his best advice, either
      to bribe the Lombard chiefs, or to purchase the aid of the kings
      of France. Notwithstanding this weak invention, Italy was still
      afflicted, Rome was again besieged, and the suburb of Classe,
      only three miles from Ravenna, was pillaged and occupied by the
      troops of a simple duke of Spoleto. Maurice gave audience to a
      second deputation of priests and senators: the duties and the
      menaces of religion were forcibly urged in the letters of the
      Roman pontiff; and his nuncio, the deacon Gregory, was alike
      qualified to solicit the powers either of heaven or of the earth.


      The emperor adopted, with stronger effect, the measures of his
      predecessor: some formidable chiefs were persuaded to embrace the
      friendship of the Romans; and one of them, a mild and faithful
      Barbarian, lived and died in the service of the exarchs: the
      passes of the Alps were delivered to the Franks; and the pope
      encouraged them to violate, without scruple, their oaths and
      engagements to the misbelievers. Childebert, the great-grandson
      of Clovis, was persuaded to invade Italy by the payment of fifty
      thousand pieces; but, as he had viewed with delight some
      Byzantine coin of the weight of one pound of gold, the king of
      Austrasia might stipulate, that the gift should be rendered more
      worthy of his acceptance, by a proper mixture of these
      respectable medals. The dukes of the Lombards had provoked by
      frequent inroads their powerful neighbors of Gaul. As soon as
      they were apprehensive of a just retaliation, they renounced
      their feeble and disorderly independence: the advantages of real
      government, union, secrecy, and vigor, were unanimously
      confessed; and Autharis, the son of Clepho, had already attained
      the strength and reputation of a warrior. Under the standard of
      their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood three
      successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself,
      the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The
      first expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the
      Franks and Alemanni. In the second they were vanquished in a
      bloody battle, with more loss and dishonor than they had
      sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for
      revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and
      Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and
      treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns
      between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of
      danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly
      of their twenty commanders; and the hot vapors of an Italian sun
      infected with disease those tramontane bodies which had already
      suffered the vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers
      that were inadequate to the conquest, were more than sufficient
      for the desolation, of the country; nor could the trembling
      natives distinguish between their enemies and their deliverers.
      If the junction of the Merovingian and Imperial forces had been
      effected in the neighborhood of Milan, perhaps they might have
      subverted the throne of the Lombards; but the Franks expected six
      days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the Greeks
      were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which
      were torn from them after the retreat of their transalpine
      allies. The victorious Autharis asserted his claim to the
      dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rhaetian Alps, he subdued
      the resistance, and rifled the hidden treasures, of a sequestered
      island in the Lake of Comum. At the extreme point of the
      Calabria, he touched with his spear a column on the sea-shore of
      Rhegium, 32 proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand the
      immovable boundary of his kingdom. 33

      32 (return) [ The Columna Rhegina, in the narrowest part of the
      Faro of Messina, one hundred stadia from Rhegium itself, is
      frequently mentioned in ancient geography. Cluver. Ital. Antiq.
      tom. ii. p. 1295. Lucas Holsten. Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 301.
      Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 106.]

      33 (return) [ The Greek historians afford some faint hints of the
      wars of Italy (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 124, 126.
      Theophylact, l. iii. c. 4.) The Latins are more satisfactory; and
      especially Paul Warnefrid, (l iii. c. 13—34,) who had read the
      more ancient histories of Secundus and Gregory of Tours. Baronius
      produces some letters of the popes, &c.; and the times are
      measured by the accurate scale of Pagi and Muratori.]


      During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided
      between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna.
      The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine
      had separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and
      eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the
      empire, with the full remains of civil, of military, and even of
      ecclesiastical, power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was
      afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of St. Peter, extended
      over the modern Romagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and
      Commachio, 34 five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a
      second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the
      hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome, of
      Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from
      the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the
      supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have
      included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latin conquests, of the first
      four hundred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly
      traced along the coast, from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and
      with the course of the Tyber from Ameria and Narni to the port of
      Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Chiozza composed the
      infant dominion of Venice: but the more accessible towns on the
      Continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with
      impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of
      the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent
      isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony
      of Amalphi, 35 whose industrious citizens, by the invention of
      the mariner’s compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The
      three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to
      the empire; and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed
      the landmark of Autharis from the shore of Rhegium to the Isthmus
      of Consentia. In Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the
      liberty and religion of their ancestors; and the husbandmen of
      Sicily were chained to their rich and cultivated soil. Rome was
      oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek,
      perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the
      Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her
      own dukes: 36 the independence of Amalphi was the fruit of
      commerce; and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally
      ennobled by an equal alliance with the Eastern empire. On the map
      of Italy, the measure of the exarchate occupies a very inadequate
      space, but it included an ample proportion of wealth, industry,
      and population. The most faithful and valuable subjects escaped
      from the Barbarian yoke; and the banners of Pavia and Verona, of
      Milan and Padua, were displayed in their respective quarters by
      the new inhabitants of Ravenna. The remainder of Italy was
      possessed by the Lombards; and from Pavia, the royal seat, their
      kingdom was extended to the east, the north, and the west, as far
      as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of
      Austrasia and Burgundy. In the language of modern geography, it
      is now represented by the Terra Firma of the Venetian republic,
      Tyrol, the Milanese, Piedmont, the coast of Genoa, Mantua, Parma,
      and Modena, the grand duchy of Tuscany, and a large portion of
      the ecclesiastical state from Perugia to the Adriatic. The dukes,
      and at length the princes, of Beneventum, survived the monarchy,
      and propagated the name of the Lombards. From Capua to Tarentum,
      they reigned near five hundred years over the greatest part of
      the present kingdom of Naples. 37

      34 (return) [ The papal advocates, Zacagni and Fontanini, might
      justly claim the valley or morass of Commachio as a part of the
      exarchate. But the ambition of including Modena, Reggio, Parma,
      and Placentia, has darkened a geographical question somewhat
      doubtful and obscure Even Muratori, as the servant of the house
      of Este, is not free from partiality and prejudice.]

      35 (return) [ See Brenckman, Dissert. Ima de Republica
      Amalphitana, p. 1—42, ad calcem Hist. Pandect. Florent.]

      36 (return) [ Gregor. Magn. l. iii. epist. 23, 25.]

      37 (return) [ I have described the state of Italy from the
      excellent Dissertation of Beretti. Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom.
      i. p. 374—387) has followed the learned Camillo Pellegrini in the
      geography of the kingdom of Naples. After the loss of the true
      Calabria, the vanity of the Greeks substituted that name instead
      of the more ignoble appellation of Bruttium; and the change
      appears to have taken place before the time of Charlemagne,
      (Eginard, p. 75.)]


      In comparing the proportion of the victorious and the vanquished
      people, the change of language will afford the most probably
      inference. According to this standard, it will appear, that the
      Lombards of Italy, and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous
      than the Franks or Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must
      yield, in their turn, to the multitude of Saxons and Angles who
      almost eradicated the idioms of Britain. The modern Italian has
      been insensibly formed by the mixture of nations: the awkwardness
      of the Barbarians in the nice management of declensions and
      conjugations reduced them to the use of articles and auxiliary
      verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic
      appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar
      words is found to be of Latin derivation; 38 and, if we were
      sufficiently conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the
      municipal dialects of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin
      of many terms which might, perhaps, be rejected by the classic
      purity of Rome. A numerous army constitutes but a small nation,
      and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished by the
      retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned a dependent
      situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous adventures,
      to their native country. 39 The camp of Alboin was of formidable
      extent, but the extent of a camp would be easily circumscribed
      within the limits of a city; and its martial inhabitants must be
      thinly scattered over the face of a large country. When Alboin
      descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke
      of Friuli, with the command of the province and the people: but
      the prudent Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office,
      unless he had been permitted to choose, among the nobles of the
      Lombards, a sufficient number of families 40 to form a perpetual
      colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest, the
      same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or
      Bergamo, or Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of
      these, and each of their colleagues, settled in his appointed
      district with a band of followers who resorted to his standard in
      war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was free and
      honorable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had
      accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the
      jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom
      was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion. 41 The
      posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the
      soil, which, by every motive of interest and honor, they were
      bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soldier of his king and
      his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation displayed the
      banners, and assumed the appellation, of a regular army. Of this
      army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered
      provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till
      after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of
      injustice and rapine. Many of the most wealthy Italians were
      slain or banished; the remainder were divided among the
      strangers, and a tributary obligation was imposed (under the name
      of hospitality) of paying to the Lombards a third part of the
      fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this
      artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid
      tenure. 42 Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong
      and insolent guest, or the annual payment, a third of the
      produce, was exchanged by a more equitable transaction for an
      adequate proportion of landed property. Under these foreign
      masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn,
      wines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and
      industry by the labor of the slaves and natives. But the
      occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness
      of the Barbarian. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored
      and improved the breed of horses, for which that province had
      once been illustrious; 43 and the Italians beheld with
      astonishment a foreign race of oxen or buffaloes. 44 The
      depopulation of Lombardy, and the increase of forests, afforded
      an ample range for the pleasures of the chase. 45 That marvellous
      art which teaches the birds of the air to acknowledge the voice,
      and execute the commands, of their master, had been unknown to
      the ingenuity of the Greeks and Romans. 46 Scandinavia and
      Scythia produce the boldest and most tractable falcons: 47 they
      were tamed and educated by the roving inhabitants, always on
      horseback and in the field. This favorite amusement of our
      ancestors was introduced by the Barbarians into the Roman
      provinces; and the laws of Italy esteemed the sword and the hawk
      as of equal dignity and importance in the hands of a noble
      Lombard. 48

      38 (return) [ Maffei (Verona Illustrata, part i. p. 310—321) and
      Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. ii. Dissertazione xxxii.
      xxxiii. p. 71—365) have asserted the native claims of the Italian
      idiom; the former with enthusiasm, the latter with discretion;
      both with learning, ingenuity, and truth. Note: Compare the
      admirable sketch of the degeneracy of the Latin language and the
      formation of the Italian in Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 317
      329.—M.]

      39 (return) [ Paul, de Gest. Langobard. l. iii. c. 5, 6, 7.]

      40 (return) [ Paul, l. ii. c. 9. He calls these families or
      generations by the Teutonic name of Faras, which is likewise used
      in the Lombard laws. The humble deacon was not insensible of the
      nobility of his own race. See l. iv. c. 39.]

      41 (return) [ Compare No. 3 and 177 of the Laws of Rotharis.]

      42 (return) [ Paul, l. ii. c. 31, 32, l. iii. c. 16. The Laws of
      Rotharis, promulgated A.D. 643, do not contain the smallest
      vestige of this payment of thirds; but they preserve many curious
      circumstances of the state of Italy and the manners of the
      Lombards.]

      43 (return) [ The studs of Dionysius of Syracuse, and his
      frequent victories in the Olympic games, had diffused among the
      Greeks the fame of the Venetian horses; but the breed was extinct
      in the time of Strabo, (l. v. p. 325.) Gisulf obtained from his
      uncle generosarum equarum greges. Paul, l. ii. c. 9. The Lombards
      afterwards introduced caballi sylvatici—wild horses. Paul, l. iv.
      c. 11.]

      44 (return) [ Tunc (A.D. 596) primum, bubali in Italiam delati
      Italiae populis miracula fuere, (Paul Warnefrid, l. iv. c. 11.)
      The buffaloes, whose native climate appears to be Africa and
      India, are unknown to Europe, except in Italy, where they are
      numerous and useful. The ancients were ignorant of these animals,
      unless Aristotle (Hist. Anim. l. ii. c. 1, p. 58, Paris, 1783)
      has described them as the wild oxen of Arachosia. See Buffon,
      Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. and Supplement, tom. vi. Hist. Generale
      des Voyages, tom. i. p. 7, 481, ii. 105, iii. 291, iv. 234, 461,
      v. 193, vi. 491, viii. 400, x. 666. Pennant’s Quadrupedes, p. 24.
      Dictionnaire d’Hist. Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, tom. ii.
      p. 74. Yet I must not conceal the suspicion that Paul, by a
      vulgar error, may have applied the name of bubalus to the
      aurochs, or wild bull, of ancient Germany.]

      45 (return) [ Consult the xxist Dissertation of Muratori.]

      46 (return) [ Their ignorance is proved by the silence even of
      those who professedly treat of the arts of hunting and the
      history of animals. Aristotle, (Hist. Animal. l. ix. c. 36, tom.
      i. p. 586, and the Notes of his last editor, M. Camus, tom. ii.
      p. 314,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. l. x. c. 10,) Aelian (de Natur.
      Animal. l. ii. c. 42,) and perhaps Homer, (Odyss. xxii. 302-306,)
      describe with astonishment a tacit league and common chase
      between the hawks and the Thracian fowlers.]

      47 (return) [ Particularly the gerfaut, or gyrfalcon, of the size
      of a small eagle. See the animated description of M. de Buffon,
      Hist. Naturelle, tom. xvi. p. 239, &c.]

      48 (return) [ Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii. p. 129.
      This is the xvith law of the emperor Lewis the Pious. His father
      Charlemagne had falconers in his household as well as huntsmen,
      (Memoires sur l’ancienne Chevalerie, par M. de St. Palaye, tom.
      iii. p. 175.) I observe in the laws of Rotharis a more early
      mention of the art of hawking, (No. 322;) and in Gaul, in the
      fifth century, it is celebrated by Sidonius Apollinaris among the
      talents of Avitus, (202—207.) * Note: See Beckman, Hist. of
      Inventions, vol. i. p. 319—M.]




Chapter XLV: State Of Italy Under The Lombards.—Part III.


      So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the
      Lombards of the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and
      affright the portraits of their savage forefathers. 49 Their
      heads were shaven behind, but the shaggy locks hung over their
      eyes and mouth, and a long beard represented the name and
      character of the nation. Their dress consisted of loose linen
      garments, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons, which were
      decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes or variegated
      colors. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open
      sandals; and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was
      constantly girt to their side. Yet this strange apparel, and
      horrid aspect, often concealed a gentle and generous disposition;
      and as soon as the rage of battle had subsided, the captives and
      subjects were sometimes surprised by the humanity of the victor.
      The vices of the Lombards were the effect of passion, of
      ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the more laudable,
      as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners, nor
      imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. I should
      not be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in
      my power to delineate the private life of the conquerors of
      Italy; and I shall relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry
      of Autharis, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry and
      romance. 50 After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian
      princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of the king of
      Bavaria; and Garribald accepted the alliance of the Italian
      monarch. Impatient of the slow progress of negotiation, the
      ardent lover escaped from his palace, and visited the court of
      Bavaria in the train of his own embassy. At the public audience,
      the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and informed
      Garribald that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state,
      but that he alone was the friend of Autharis, who had trusted him
      with the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the
      charms of his spouse. Theudelinda was summoned to undergo this
      important examination; and, after a pause of silent rapture, he
      hailed her as the queen of Italy, and humbly requested that,
      according to the custom of the nation, she would present a cup of
      wine to the first of her new subjects. By the command of her
      father she obeyed: Autharis received the cup in his turn, and, in
      restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and
      drew his own finger over his face and lips. In the evening,
      Theudelinda imparted to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of
      the stranger, and was comforted by the assurance, that such
      boldness could proceed only from the king her husband, who, by
      his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of her love. The
      ambassadors were dismissed: no sooner did they reach the confines
      of Italy than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his
      battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and
      dexterity. “Such,” said he to the astonished Bavarians, “such are
      the strokes of the king of the Lombards.” On the approach of a
      French army, Garribald and his daughter took refuge in the
      dominions of their ally; and the marriage was consummated in the
      palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was dissolved by the
      death of Autharis: but the virtues of Theudelinda 51 had endeared
      her to the nation, and she was permitted to bestow, with her
      hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.

      49 (return) [ The epitaph of Droctulf (Paul, l. iii. c. 19) may
      be applied to many of his countrymen:— Terribilis visu facies,
      sed corda benignus Longaque robusto pectore barba fuit. The
      portraits of the old Lombards might still be seen in the palace
      of Monza, twelve miles from Milan, which had been founded or
      restored by Queen Theudelinda, (l. iv. 22, 23.) See Muratori,
      tom. i. disserta, xxiii. p. 300.]

      50 (return) [ The story of Autharis and Theudelinda is related by
      Paul, l. iii. 29, 34; and any fragment of Bavarian antiquity
      excites the indefatigable diligence of the count de Buat, Hist.
      des Peuples de l’Europe, ton. xi. p. 595—635, tom. xii. p. 1-53.]

      51 (return) [ Giannone (Istoria Civile de Napoli, tom. i. p. 263)
      has justly censured the impertinence of Boccaccio, (Gio. iii.
      Novel. 2,) who, without right, or truth, or pretence, has given
      the pious queen Theudelinda to the arms of a muleteer.]


      From this fact, as well as from similar events, 52 it is certain
      that the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and
      sense to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege.
      The public revenue arose from the produce of land and the profits
      of justice. When the independent dukes agreed that Autharis
      should ascend the throne of his father, they endowed the regal
      office with a fair moiety of their respective domains. The
      proudest nobles aspired to the honors of servitude near the
      person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity of his vassals
      by the precarious gift of pensions and benefices; and atoned for
      the injuries of war by the rich foundation of monasteries and
      churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the
      powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy
      convened the national assemblies in the palace, or more probably
      in the fields, of Pavia: his great council was composed of the
      persons most eminent by their birth and dignities; but the
      validity, as well as the execution, of their decrees depended on
      the approbation of the faithful people, the fortunate army of the
      Lombards. About fourscore years after the conquest of Italy,
      their traditional customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin, 53
      and ratified by the consent of the prince and people: some new
      regulations were introduced, more suitable to their present
      condition; the example of Rotharis was imitated by the wisest of
      his successors; and the laws of the Lombards have been esteemed
      the least imperfect of the Barbaric codes. 54 Secure by their
      courage in the possession of liberty, these rude and hasty
      legislators were incapable of balancing the powers of the
      constitution, or of discussing the nice theory of political
      government. Such crimes as threatened the life of the sovereign,
      or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of death; but
      their attention was principally confined to the defence of the
      person and property of the subject. According to the strange
      jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed
      by a fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold
      declares a just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less
      atrocious injuries, a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious
      word, were measured with scrupulous and almost ridiculous
      diligence; and the prudence of the legislator encouraged the
      ignoble practice of bartering honor and revenge for a pecuniary
      compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in the state of
      Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice and
      mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century
      might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of
      Rotharis, who derides the absurd superstition, and protects the
      wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty. 55 The same
      spirit of a legislator, superior to his age and country, may be
      ascribed to Luitprand, who condemns, while he tolerates, the
      impious and inveterate abuse of duels, 56 observing, from his own
      experience, that the juster cause had often been oppressed by
      successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered in the laws
      of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of the
      Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in
      their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is
      marked with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their
      annals is adorned with fair intervals of peace, order, and
      domestic happiness; and the Italians enjoyed a milder and more
      equitable government, than any of the other kingdoms which had
      been founded on the ruins of the Western empire. 57

      52 (return) [ Paul, l. iii. c. 16. The first dissertations of
      Muratori, and the first volume of Giannone’s history, may be
      consulted for the state of the kingdom of Italy.]

      53 (return) [ The most accurate edition of the Laws of the
      Lombards is to be found in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom.
      i. part ii. p. 1—181, collated from the most ancient Mss. and
      illustrated by the critical notes of Muratori.]

      54 (return) [ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 1. Les
      loix des Bourguignons sont assez judicieuses; celles de Rotharis
      et des autres princes Lombards le sont encore plus.]

      55 (return) [ See Leges Rotharis, No. 379, p. 47. Striga is used
      as the name of a witch. It is of the purest classic origin,
      (Horat. epod. v. 20. Petron. c. 134;) and from the words of
      Petronius, (quae striges comederunt nervos tuos?) it may be
      inferred that the prejudice was of Italian rather than Barbaric
      extraction.]

      56 (return) [ Quia incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et multos
      audivimus per pugnam sine justa causa suam causam perdere. Sed
      propter consuetudinom gentem nostram Langobardorum legem impiam
      vetare non possumus. See p. 74, No. 65, of the Laws of Luitprand,
      promulgated A.D. 724.]

      57 (return) [ Read the history of Paul Warnefrid; particularly l.
      iii. c. 16. Baronius rejects the praise, which appears to
      contradict the invectives of Pope Gregory the Great; but Muratori
      (Annali d’ Italia, tom. v. p. 217) presumes to insinuate that the
      saint may have magnified the faults of Arians and enemies.]


      Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the
      Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, 58 which had
      reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period
      of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the
      successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and
      private opulence were exhausted: the lofty tree, under whose
      shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its
      leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on
      the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of
      victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the
      hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually
      feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who
      visit without an anxious thought the garden of the adjacent
      country, will faintly picture in their fancy the distress of the
      Romans: they shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand,
      beheld from the walls the flames of their houses, and heard the
      lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled together like
      dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea and
      the mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the
      pleasures and interrupt the labors of a rural life; and the
      Campagna of Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary
      wilderness, in which the land is barren, the waters are impure,
      and the air is infectious. Curiosity and ambition no longer
      attracted the nations to the capital of the world: but, if chance
      or necessity directed the steps of a wandering stranger, he
      contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city,
      and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are
      the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tyber swelled
      above its banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the
      valleys of the seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the
      stagnation of the deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that
      fourscore persons expired in an hour in the midst of a solemn
      procession, which implored the mercy of Heaven. 59 A society in
      which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs
      the accidental losses of pestilence and war: but, as the far
      greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence
      and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the
      gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the
      human race. 60 Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the
      measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from
      the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of
      famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant
      province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and
      decay: the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by
      inundations, tempests, and earthquakes: and the monks, who had
      occupied the most advantageous stations, exulted in their base
      triumph over the ruins of antiquity. 61 It is commonly believed,
      that Pope Gregory the First attacked the temples and mutilated
      the statues of the city; that, by the command of the Barbarian,
      the Palatine library was reduced to ashes, and that the history
      of Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous
      fanaticism. The writings of Gregory himself reveal his implacable
      aversion to the monuments of classic genius; and he points his
      severest censure against the profane learning of a bishop, who
      taught the art of grammar, studied the Latin poets, and
      pronounced with the same voice the praises of Jupiter and those
      of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful
      and recent: the Temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus,
      have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal
      proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy
      in the countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical
      dictator. 62

      58 (return) [ The passages of the homilies of Gregory, which
      represent the miserable state of the city and country, are
      transcribed in the Annals of Baronius, A.D. 590, No. 16, A.D.
      595, No. 2, &c., &c.]

      59 (return) [ The inundation and plague were reported by a
      deacon, whom his bishop, Gregory of Tours, had despatched to Rome
      for some relics The ingenious messenger embellished his tale and
      the river with a great dragon and a train of little serpents,
      (Greg. Turon. l. x. c. 1.)]

      60 (return) [ Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15) relates a
      memorable prediction of St. Benedict. Roma a Gentilibus non
      exterminabitur sed tempestatibus, coruscis turbinibus ac terrae
      motu in semetipsa marces cet. Such a prophecy melts into true
      history, and becomes the evidence of the fact after which it was
      invented.]

      61 (return) [ Quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus, Christi
      laudes non capiunt, et quam grave nefandumque sit episcopis
      canere quod nec laico religioso conveniat, ipse considera, (l.
      ix. ep. 4.) The writings of Gregory himself attest his innocence
      of any classic taste or literature]

      62 (return) [ Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, tom. ii. 598, 569,)
      in a very good article of Gregoire I., has quoted, for the
      buildings and statues, Platina in Gregorio I.; for the Palatine
      library, John of Salisbury, (de Nugis Curialium, l. ii. c. 26;)
      and for Livy, Antoninus of Florence: the oldest of the three
      lived in the xiith century.]


      Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the names of Rome might
      have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been
      animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honor
      and dominion. A vague tradition was embraced, that two Jewish
      teachers, a tent-maker and a fisherman, had formerly been
      executed in the circus of Nero, and at the end of five hundred
      years, their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the
      Palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and West
      resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles
      were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not
      without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his
      worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the
      bodies of the saints; and those who, from the purest motives,
      presumed to disturb the repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted
      by visions, or punished with sudden death. The unreasonable
      request of an empress, who wished to deprive the Romans of their
      sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul, was rejected with the
      deepest abhorrence; and the pope asserted, most probably with
      truth, that a linen which had been sanctified in the neighborhood
      of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was sometimes
      easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an equal
      degree of miraculous virtue. 63 But the power as well as virtue
      of the apostles resided with living energy in the breast of their
      successors; and the chair of St. Peter was filled under the reign
      of Maurice by the first and greatest of the name of Gregory. 64
      His grandfather Felix had himself been pope, and as the bishops
      were already bound by the laws of celibacy, his consecration must
      have been preceded by the death of his wife. The parents of
      Gregory, Sylvia, and Gordian, were the noblest of the senate, and
      the most pious of the church of Rome; his female relations were
      numbered among the saints and virgins; and his own figure, with
      those of his father and mother, were represented near three
      hundred years in a family portrait, 65 which he offered to the
      monastery of St. Andrew. The design and coloring of this picture
      afford an honorable testimony that the art of painting was
      cultivated by the Italians of the sixth century; but the most
      abject ideas must be entertained of their taste and learning,
      since the epistles of Gregory, his sermons, and his dialogues,
      are the work of a man who was second in erudition to none of his
      contemporaries: 66 his birth and abilities had raised him to the
      office of præfect of the city, and he enjoyed the merit of
      renouncing the pomps and vanities of this world. His ample
      patrimony was dedicated to the foundation of seven monasteries,
      67 one in Rome, 68 and six in Sicily; and it was the wish of
      Gregory that he might be unknown in this life, and glorious only
      in the next. Yet his devotion (and it might be sincere) pursued
      the path which would have been chosen by a crafty and ambitious
      statesman. The talents of Gregory, and the splendor which
      accompanied his retreat, rendered him dear and useful to the
      church; and implicit obedience has always been inculcated as the
      first duty of a monk. As soon as he had received the character of
      deacon, Gregory was sent to reside at the Byzantine court, the
      nuncio or minister of the apostolic see; and he boldly assumed,
      in the name of St. Peter, a tone of independent dignity, which
      would have been criminal and dangerous in the most illustrious
      layman of the empire. He returned to Rome with a just increase of
      reputation, and, after a short exercise of the monastic virtues,
      he was dragged from the cloister to the papal throne, by the
      unanimous voice of the clergy, the senate, and the people. He
      alone resisted, or seemed to resist, his own elevation; and his
      humble petition, that Maurice would be pleased to reject the
      choice of the Romans, could only serve to exalt his character in
      the eyes of the emperor and the public. When the fatal mandate
      was proclaimed, Gregory solicited the aid of some friendly
      merchants to convey him in a basket beyond the gates of Rome, and
      modestly concealed himself some days among the woods and
      mountains, till his retreat was discovered, as it is said, by a
      celestial light.


      63 (return) [Gregor. l. iii. epist. 24, edict. 12, &c. From the
      epistles of Gregory, and the viiith volume of the Annals of
      Baronius, the pious reader may collect the particles of holy iron
      which were inserted in keys or crosses of gold, and distributed
      in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Constantinople, and Egypt. The
      pontifical smith who handled the file must have understood the
      miracles which it was in his own power to operate or withhold; a
      circumstance which abates the superstition of Gregory at the
      expense of his veracity.]

      64 (return) [ Besides the epistles of Gregory himself, which are
      methodized by Dupin, (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. v. p. 103—126,)
      we have three lives of the pope; the two first written in the
      viiith and ixth centuries, (de Triplici Vita St. Greg. Preface to
      the ivth volume of the Benedictine edition,) by the deacons Paul
      (p. 1—18) and John, (p. 19—188,) and containing much original,
      though doubtful, evidence; the third, a long and labored
      compilation by the Benedictine editors, (p. 199—305.) The annals
      of Baronius are a copious but partial history. His papal
      prejudices are tempered by the good sense of Fleury, (Hist.
      Eccles. tom. viii.,) and his chronology has been rectified by the
      criticism of Pagi and Muratori.]

      65 (return) [ John the deacon has described them like an
      eye-witness, (l. iv. c. 83, 84;) and his description is
      illustrated by Angelo Rocca, a Roman antiquary, (St. Greg. Opera,
      tom. iv. p. 312—326;) who observes that some mosaics of the popes
      of the viith century are still preserved in the old churches of
      Rome, (p. 321—323) The same walls which represented Gregory’s
      family are now decorated with the martyrdom of St. Andrew, the
      noble contest of Dominichino and Guido.]

      66 (return) [ Disciplinis vero liberalibus, hoc est grammatica,
      rhetorica, dialectica ita apuero est institutus, ut quamvis eo
      tempore florerent adhuc Romæ studia literarum, tamen nulli in
      urbe ipsa secundus putaretur. Paul. Diacon. in Vit. St. Gregor.
      c. 2.]

      67 (return) [ The Benedictines (Vit. Greg. l. i. p. 205—208)
      labor to reduce the monasteries of Gregory within the rule of
      their own order; but, as the question is confessed to be
      doubtful, it is clear that these powerful monks are in the wrong.
      See Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. iii. p. 145; a work of
      merit: the sense and learning belong to the author—his prejudices
      are those of his profession.]

      68 (return) [ Monasterium Gregorianum in ejusdem Beati Gregorii
      aedibus ad clivum Scauri prope ecclesiam SS. Johannis et Pauli in
      honorem St. Andreae, (John, in Vit. Greg. l. i. c. 6. Greg. l.
      vii. epist. 13.) This house and monastery were situate on the
      side of the Caelian hill which fronts the Palatine; they are now
      occupied by the Camaldoli: San Gregorio triumphs, and St. Andrew
      has retired to a small chapel Nardini, Roma Antica, l. iii. c. 6,
      p. 100. Descrizzione di Roma, tom. i. p. 442—446.]


      The pontificate of Gregory the Great, which lasted thirteen
      years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying
      periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his
      faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride
      and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to
      his station and to the temper of the times. In his rival, the
      patriarch of Constantinople, he condemned the anti-Christian
      title of universal bishop, which the successor of St. Peter was
      too haughty to concede, and too feeble to assume; and the
      ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Gregory was confined to the triple
      character of Bishop of Rome, Primate of Italy, and Apostle of the
      West. He frequently ascended the pulpit, and kindled, by his
      rude, though pathetic, eloquence, the congenial passions of his
      audience: the language of the Jewish prophets was interpreted and
      applied; and the minds of a people, depressed by their present
      calamities, were directed to the hopes and fears of the invisible
      world. His precepts and example defined the model of the Roman
      liturgy; 69 the distribution of the parishes, the calendar of the
      festivals, the order of processions, the service of the priests
      and deacons, the variety and change of sacerdotal garments. Till
      the last days of his life, he officiated in the canon of the
      mass, which continued above three hours: the Gregorian chant 70
      has preserved the vocal and instrumental music of the theatre,
      and the rough voices of the Barbarians attempted to imitate the
      melody of the Roman school. 71 Experience had shown him the
      efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, to soothe the
      distress, to confirm the faith, to mitigate the fierceness, and
      to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the vulgar, and he readily
      forgave their tendency to promote the reign of priesthood and
      superstition. The bishops of Italy and the adjacent islands
      acknowledged the Roman pontiff as their special metropolitan.
      Even the existence, the union, or the translation of episcopal
      seats was decided by his absolute discretion: and his successful
      inroads into the provinces of Greece, of Spain, and of Gaul,
      might countenance the more lofty pretensions of succeeding popes.
      He interposed to prevent the abuses of popular elections; his
      jealous care maintained the purity of faith and discipline; and
      the apostolic shepherd assiduously watched over the faith and
      discipline of the subordinate pastors. Under his reign, the
      Arians of Italy and Spain were reconciled to the Catholic church,
      and the conquest of Britain reflects less glory on the name of
      Caesar, than on that of Gregory the First. Instead of six
      legions, forty monks were embarked for that distant island, and
      the pontiff lamented the austere duties which forbade him to
      partake the perils of their spiritual warfare. In less than two
      years, he could announce to the archbishop of Alexandria, that
      they had baptized the king of Kent with ten thousand of his
      Anglo-Saxons, and that the Roman missionaries, like those of the
      primitive church, were armed only with spiritual and supernatural
      powers. The credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always
      disposed to confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of
      ghosts, miracles, and resurrections; 72 and posterity has paid to
      his memory the same tribute which he freely granted to the virtue
      of his own or the preceding generation. The celestial honors have
      been liberally bestowed by the authority of the popes, but
      Gregory is the last of their own order whom they have presumed to
      inscribe in the calendar of saints.

      69 (return) [ The Lord’s Prayer consists of half a dozen lines;
      the Sacramentarius and Antiphonarius of Gregory fill 880 folio
      pages, (tom. iii. p. i. p. 1—880;) yet these only constitute a
      part of the Ordo Romanus, which Mabillon has illustrated and
      Fleury has abridged, (Hist. Eccles. tom. viii. p. 139—152.)]

      70 (return) [ I learn from the Abbe Dobos, (Reflexions sur la
      Poesie et la Peinture, tom. iii. p. 174, 175,) that the
      simplicity of the Ambrosian chant was confined to four modes,
      while the more perfect harmony of the Gregorian comprised the
      eight modes or fifteen chords of the ancient music. He observes
      (p. 332) that the connoisseurs admire the preface and many
      passages of the Gregorian office.]

      71 (return) [ John the deacon (in Vit. Greg. l. ii. c. 7)
      expresses the early contempt of the Italians for tramontane
      singing. Alpina scilicet corpora vocum suarum tonitruis altisone
      perstrepentia, susceptae modulationis dulcedinem proprie non
      resultant: quia bibuli gutturis barbara feritas dum inflexionibus
      et repercussionibus mitem nititur edere cantilenam, naturali
      quodam fragore, quasi plaustra per gradus confuse sonantia,
      rigidas voces jactat, &c. In the time of Charlemagne, the Franks,
      though with some reluctance, admitted the justice of the
      reproach. Muratori, Dissert. xxv.]

      72 (return) [ A French critic (Petrus Gussanvillus, Opera, tom.
      ii. p. 105—112) has vindicated the right of Gregory to the entire
      nonsense of the Dialogues. Dupin (tom. v. p. 138) does not think
      that any one will vouch for the truth of all these miracles: I
      should like to know how many of them he believed himself.]


      Their temporal power insensibly arose from the calamities of the
      times: and the Roman bishops, who have deluged Europe and Asia
      with blood, were compelled to reign as the ministers of charity
      and peace. I. The church of Rome, as it has been formerly
      observed, was endowed with ample possessions in Italy, Sicily,
      and the more distant provinces; and her agents, who were commonly
      sub-deacons, had acquired a civil, and even criminal,
      jurisdiction over their tenants and husbandmen. The successor of
      St. Peter administered his patrimony with the temper of a
      vigilant and moderate landlord; 73 and the epistles of Gregory
      are filled with salutary instructions to abstain from doubtful or
      vexatious lawsuits; to preserve the integrity of weights and
      measures; to grant every reasonable delay; and to reduce the
      capitation of the slaves of the glebe, who purchased the right of
      marriage by the payment of an arbitrary fine. 74 The rent or the
      produce of these estates was transported to the mouth of the
      Tyber, at the risk and expense of the pope: in the use of wealth
      he acted like a faithful steward of the church and the poor, and
      liberally applied to their wants the inexhaustible resources of
      abstinence and order. The voluminous account of his receipts and
      disbursements was kept above three hundred years in the Lateran,
      as the model of Christian economy. On the four great festivals,
      he divided their quarterly allowance to the clergy, to his
      domestics, to the monasteries, the churches, the places of
      burial, the almshouses, and the hospitals of Rome, and the rest
      of the diocese. On the first day of every month, he distributed
      to the poor, according to the season, their stated portion of
      corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, fresh provisions,
      clothes, and money; and his treasurers were continually summoned
      to satisfy, in his name, the extraordinary demands of indigence
      and merit. The instant distress of the sick and helpless, of
      strangers and pilgrims, was relieved by the bounty of each day,
      and of every hour; nor would the pontiff indulge himself in a
      frugal repast, till he had sent the dishes from his own table to
      some objects deserving of his compassion. The misery of the times
      had reduced the nobles and matrons of Rome to accept, without a
      blush, the benevolence of the church: three thousand virgins
      received their food and raiment from the hand of their
      benefactor; and many bishops of Italy escaped from the Barbarians
      to the hospitable threshold of the Vatican. Gregory might justly
      be styled the Father of his Country; and such was the extreme
      sensibility of his conscience, that, for the death of a beggar
      who had perished in the streets, he interdicted himself during
      several days from the exercise of sacerdotal functions. II. The
      misfortunes of Rome involved the apostolical pastor in the
      business of peace and war; and it might be doubtful to himself,
      whether piety or ambition prompted him to supply the place of his
      absent sovereign. Gregory awakened the emperor from a long
      slumber; exposed the guilt or incapacity of the exarch and his
      inferior ministers; complained that the veterans were withdrawn
      from Rome for the defence of Spoleto; encouraged the Italians to
      guard their cities and altars; and condescended, in the crisis of
      danger, to name the tribunes, and to direct the operations, of
      the provincial troops. But the martial spirit of the pope was
      checked by the scruples of humanity and religion: the imposition
      of tribute, though it was employed in the Italian war, he freely
      condemned as odious and oppressive; whilst he protected, against
      the Imperial edicts, the pious cowardice of the soldiers who
      deserted a military for a monastic life. If we may credit his own
      declarations, it would have been easy for Gregory to exterminate
      the Lombards by their domestic factions, without leaving a king,
      a duke, or a count, to save that unfortunate nation from the
      vengeance of their foes. As a Christian bishop, he preferred the
      salutary offices of peace; his mediation appeased the tumult of
      arms: but he was too conscious of the arts of the Greeks, and the
      passions of the Lombards, to engage his sacred promise for the
      observance of the truce. Disappointed in the hope of a general
      and lasting treaty, he presumed to save his country without the
      consent of the emperor or the exarch. The sword of the enemy was
      suspended over Rome; it was averted by the mild eloquence and
      seasonable gifts of the pontiff, who commanded the respect of
      heretics and Barbarians. The merits of Gregory were treated by
      the Byzantine court with reproach and insult; but in the
      attachment of a grateful people, he found the purest reward of a
      citizen, and the best right of a sovereign. 75

      73 (return) [ Baronius is unwilling to expatiate on the care of
      the patrimonies, lest he should betray that they consisted not of
      kingdoms, but farms. The French writers, the Benedictine editors,
      (tom. iv. l. iii. p. 272, &c.,) and Fleury, (tom. viii. p. 29,
      &c.,) are not afraid of entering into these humble, though
      useful, details; and the humanity of Fleury dwells on the social
      virtues of Gregory.]

      74 (return) [ I much suspect that this pecuniary fine on the
      marriages of villains produced the famous, and often fabulous
      right, de cuissage, de marquette, &c. With the consent of her
      husband, a handsome bride might commute the payment in the arms
      of a young landlord, and the mutual favor might afford a
      precedent of local rather than legal tyranny]

      75 (return) [ The temporal reign of Gregory I. is ably exposed by
      Sigonius in the first book, de Regno Italiae. See his works, tom.
      ii. p. 44—75]




Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.


Revolutions On Persia After The Death Of Chosroes On Nushirvan.—His Son
Hormouz, A Tyrant, Is Deposed.—Usurpation Of Baharam.—Flight And
Restoration Of Chosroes II.—His Gratitude To The Romans.—The Chagan Of
The Avars.—Revolt Of The Army Against Maurice.—His Death.—Tyranny Of
Phocas.—Elevation Of Heraclius.—The Persian War.—Chosroes Subdues
Syria, Egypt, And Asia Minor.—Siege Of Constantinople By The Persians
And Avars.—Persian Expeditions.—Victories And Triumph Of Heraclius.


      The conflict of Rome and Persia was prolonged from the death of
      Craesus to the reign of Heraclius. An experience of seven hundred
      years might convince the rival nations of the impossibility of
      maintaining their conquests beyond the fatal limits of the Tigris
      and Euphrates. Yet the emulation of Trajan and Julian was
      awakened by the trophies of Alexander, and the sovereigns of
      Persia indulged the ambitious hope of restoring the empire of
      Cyrus. 1 Such extraordinary efforts of power and courage will
      always command the attention of posterity; but the events by
      which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a
      faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the
      reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same
      hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory,
      and terminated without effect. The arts of negotiation, unknown
      to the simple greatness of the senate and the Caesars, were
      assiduously cultivated by the Byzantine princes; and the
      memorials of their perpetual embassies 2 repeat, with the same
      uniform prolixity, the language of falsehood and declamation, the
      insolence of the Barbarians, and the servile temper of the
      tributary Greeks. Lamenting the barren superfluity of materials,
      I have studied to compress the narrative of these uninteresting
      transactions: but the just Nushirvan is still applauded as the
      model of Oriental kings, and the ambition of his grandson
      Chosroes prepared the revolution of the East, which was speedily
      accomplished by the arms and the religion of the successors of
      Mahomet.

      1 (return) [ Missis qui... reposcerent... veteres Persarum ac
      Macedonum terminos, seque invasurum possessa Cyro et post
      Alexandro, per vaniloquentiam ac minas jaciebat. Tacit. Annal.
      vi. 31. Such was the language of the Arsacides. I have repeatedly
      marked the lofty claims of the Sassanians.]

      2 (return) [ See the embassies of Menander, extracted and
      preserved in the tenth century by the order of Constantine
      Porphyrogenitus.]


      In the useless altercations, that precede and justify the
      quarrels of princes, the Greeks and the Barbarians accused each
      other of violating the peace which had been concluded between the
      two empires about four years before the death of Justinian. The
      sovereign of Persia and India aspired to reduce under his
      obedience the province of Yemen or Arabia 3 Felix; the distant
      land of myrrh and frankincense, which had escaped, rather than
      opposed, the conquerors of the East. After the defeat of Abrahah
      under the walls of Mecca, the discord of his sons and brothers
      gave an easy entrance to the Persians: they chased the strangers
      of Abyssinia beyond the Red Sea; and a native prince of the
      ancient Homerites was restored to the throne as the vassal or
      viceroy of the great Nushirvan. 4 But the nephew of Justinian
      declared his resolution to avenge the injuries of his Christian
      ally the prince of Abyssinia, as they suggested a decent pretence
      to discontinue the annual tribute, which was poorly disguised by
      the name of pension. The churches of Persarmenia were oppressed
      by the intolerant spirit of the Magi; 411 they secretly invoked
      the protector of the Christians, and, after the pious murder of
      their satraps, the rebels were avowed and supported as the
      brethren and subjects of the Roman emperor. The complaints of
      Nushirvan were disregarded by the Byzantine court; Justin yielded
      to the importunities of the Turks, who offered an alliance
      against the common enemy; and the Persian monarchy was threatened
      at the same instant by the united forces of Europe, of Aethiopia,
      and of Scythia. At the age of fourscore the sovereign of the East
      would perhaps have chosen the peaceful enjoyment of his glory and
      greatness; but as soon as war became inevitable, he took the
      field with the alacrity of youth, whilst the aggressor trembled
      in the palace of Constantinople. Nushirvan, or Chosroes,
      conducted in person the siege of Dara; and although that
      important fortress had been left destitute of troops and
      magazines, the valor of the inhabitants resisted above five
      months the archers, the elephants, and the military engines of
      the Great King. In the mean while his general Adarman advanced
      from Babylon, traversed the desert, passed the Euphrates,
      insulted the suburbs of Antioch, reduced to ashes the city of
      Apamea, and laid the spoils of Syria at the feet of his master,
      whose perseverance in the midst of winter at length subverted the
      bulwark of the East. But these losses, which astonished the
      provinces and the court, produced a salutary effect in the
      repentance and abdication of the emperor Justin: a new spirit
      arose in the Byzantine councils; and a truce of three years was
      obtained by the prudence of Tiberius. That seasonable interval
      was employed in the preparations of war; and the voice of rumor
      proclaimed to the world, that from the distant countries of the
      Alps and the Rhine, from Scythia, Maesia, Pannonia, Illyricum,
      and Isauria, the strength of the Imperial cavalry was reenforced
      with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. Yet the king of
      Persia, without fear, or without faith, resolved to prevent the
      attack of the enemy; again passed the Euphrates, and dismissing
      the ambassadors of Tiberius, arrogantly commanded them to await
      his arrival at Caesarea, the metropolis of the Cappadocian
      provinces. The two armies encountered each other in the battle of
      Melitene: 412 the Barbarians, who darkened the air with a cloud
      of arrows, prolonged their line, and extended their wings across
      the plain; while the Romans, in deep and solid bodies, expected
      to prevail in closer action, by the weight of their swords and
      lances. A Scythian chief, who commanded their right wing,
      suddenly turned the flank of the enemy, attacked their rear-guard
      in the presence of Chosroes, penetrated to the midst of the camp,
      pillaged the royal tent, profaned the eternal fire, loaded a
      train of camels with the spoils of Asia, cut his way through the
      Persian host, and returned with songs of victory to his friends,
      who had consumed the day in single combats, or ineffectual
      skirmishes. The darkness of the night, and the separation of the
      Romans, afforded the Persian monarch an opportunity of revenge;
      and one of their camps was swept away by a rapid and impetuous
      assault. But the review of his loss, and the consciousness of his
      danger, determined Chosroes to a speedy retreat: he burnt, in his
      passage, the vacant town of Melitene; and, without consulting the
      safety of his troops, boldly swam the Euphrates on the back of an
      elephant. After this unsuccessful campaign, the want of
      magazines, and perhaps some inroad of the Turks, obliged him to
      disband or divide his forces; the Romans were left masters of the
      field, and their general Justinian, advancing to the relief of
      the Persarmenian rebels, erected his standard on the banks of the
      Araxes. The great Pompey had formerly halted within three days’
      march of the Caspian: 5 that inland sea was explored, for the
      first time, by a hostile fleet, 6 and seventy thousand captives
      were transplanted from Hyrcania to the Isle of Cyprus. On the
      return of spring, Justinian descended into the fertile plains of
      Assyria; the flames of war approached the residence of Nushirvan;
      the indignant monarch sunk into the grave; and his last edict
      restrained his successors from exposing their person in battle
      against the Romans. 611 Yet the memory of this transient affront
      was lost in the glories of a long reign; and his formidable
      enemies, after indulging their dream of conquest, again solicited
      a short respite from the calamities of war. 7

      3 (return) [ The general independence of the Arabs, which cannot
      be admitted without many limitations, is blindly asserted in a
      separate dissertation of the authors of the Universal History,
      vol. xx. p. 196—250. A perpetual miracle is supposed to have
      guarded the prophecy in favor of the posterity of Ishmael; and
      these learned bigots are not afraid to risk the truth of
      Christianity on this frail and slippery foundation. * Note: It
      certainly appears difficult to extract a prediction of the
      perpetual independence of the Arabs from the text in Genesis,
      which would have received an ample fulfilment during centuries of
      uninvaded freedom. But the disputants appear to forget the
      inseparable connection in the prediction between the wild, the
      Bedoween habits of the Ismaelites, with their national
      independence. The stationary and civilized descendant of Ismael
      forfeited, as it were, his birthright, and ceased to be a genuine
      son of the “wild man” The phrase, “dwelling in the presence of
      his brethren,” is interpreted by Rosenmüller (in loc.) and
      others, according to the Hebrew geography, “to the East” of his
      brethren, the legitimate race of Abraham—M.]

      4 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 477. Pocock,
      Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 64, 65. Father Pagi (Critica, tom. ii.
      p. 646) has proved that, after ten years’ peace, the Persian war,
      which continued twenty years, was renewed A.D. 571. Mahomet was
      born A.D. 569, in the year of the elephant, or the defeat of
      Abrahah, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 89, 90, 98;) and
      this account allows two years for the conquest of Yemen. * Note:
      Abrahah, according to some accounts, was succeeded by his son
      Taksoum, who reigned seventeen years; his brother Mascouh, who
      was slain in battle against the Persians, twelve. But this
      chronology is irreconcilable with the Arabian conquests of
      Nushirvan the Great. Either Seif, or his son Maadi Karb, was the
      native prince placed on the throne by the Persians. St. Martin,
      vol. x. p. 78. See likewise Johannsen, Hist. Yemanae.—M.]

      411 (return) [ Persarmenia was long maintained in peace by the
      tolerant administration of Mejej, prince of the Gnounians. On his
      death he was succeeded by a persecutor, a Persian, named
      Ten-Schahpour, who attempted to propagate Zoroastrianism by
      violence. Nushirvan, on an appeal to the throne by the Armenian
      clergy, replaced Ten-Schahpour, in 552, by Veschnas-Vahram. The
      new marzban, or governor, was instructed to repress the bigoted
      Magi in their persecutions of the Armenians, but the Persian
      converts to Christianity were still exposed to cruel sufferings.
      The most distinguished of them, Izdbouzid, was crucified at Dovin
      in the presence of a vast multitude. The fame of this martyr
      spread to the West. Menander, the historian, not only, as appears
      by a fragment published by Mai, related this event in his
      history, but, according to M. St. Martin, wrote a tragedy on the
      subject. This, however, is an unwarrantable inference from the
      phrase which merely means that he related the tragic event in his
      history. An epigram on the same subject, preserved in the
      Anthology, Jacob’s Anth. Palat. i. 27, belongs to the historian.
      Yet Armenia remained in peace under the government of
      Veschnas-Vahram and his successor Varazdat. The tyranny of his
      successor Surena led to the insurrection under Vartan, the
      Mamigonian, who revenged the death of his brother on the marzban
      Surena, surprised Dovin, and put to the sword the governor, the
      soldiers, and the Magians. From St. Martin, vol x. p. 79—89.—M.]

      412 (return) [ Malathiah. It was in the lesser Armenia.—M.]

      5 (return) [ He had vanquished the Albanians, who brought into
      the field 12,000 horse and 60,000 foot; but he dreaded the
      multitude of venomous reptiles, whose existence may admit of some
      doubt, as well as that of the neighboring Amazons. Plutarch, in
      Pompeio, tom. ii. p. 1165, 1166.]

      6 (return) [ In the history of the world I can only perceive two
      navies on the Caspian: 1. Of the Macedonians, when Patrocles, the
      admiral of the kings of Syria, Seleucus and Antiochus, descended
      most probably the River Oxus, from the confines of India, (Plin.
      Hist. Natur. vi. 21.) 2. Of the Russians, when Peter the First
      conducted a fleet and army from the neighborhood of Moscow to the
      coast of Persia, (Bell’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 325—352.) He justly
      observes, that such martial pomp had never been displayed on the
      Volga.]

      611 (return) [ This circumstance rests on the statements of
      Evagrius and Theophylaci Simocatta. They are not of sufficient
      authority to establish a fact so improbable. St. Martin, vol. x.
      p. 140.—M.]

      7 (return) [ For these Persian wars and treaties, see Menander,
      in Excerpt. Legat. p. 113—125. Theophanes Byzant. apud Photium,
      cod. lxiv p. 77, 80, 81. Evagrius, l. v. c. 7—15. Theophylact, l.
      iii. c. 9—16 Agathias, l. iv. p. 140.]


      The throne of Chosroes Nushirvan was filled by Hormouz, or
      Hormisdas, the eldest or the most favored of his sons. With the
      kingdoms of Persia and India, he inherited the reputation and
      example of his father, the service, in every rank, of his wise
      and valiant officers, and a general system of administration,
      harmonized by time and political wisdom to promote the happiness
      of the prince and people. But the royal youth enjoyed a still
      more valuable blessing, the friendship of a sage who had presided
      over his education, and who always preferred the honor to the
      interest of his pupil, his interest to his inclination. In a
      dispute with the Greek and Indian philosophers, Buzurg 8 had once
      maintained, that the most grievous misfortune of life is old age
      without the remembrance of virtue; and our candor will presume
      that the same principle compelled him, during three years, to
      direct the councils of the Persian empire. His zeal was rewarded
      by the gratitude and docility of Hormouz, who acknowledged
      himself more indebted to his preceptor than to his parent: but
      when age and labor had impaired the strength, and perhaps the
      faculties, of this prudent counsellor, he retired from court, and
      abandoned the youthful monarch to his own passions and those of
      his favorites. By the fatal vicissitude of human affairs, the
      same scenes were renewed at Ctesiphon, which had been exhibited
      at Rome after the death of Marcus Antoninus. The ministers of
      flattery and corruption, who had been banished by his father,
      were recalled and cherished by the son; the disgrace and exile of
      the friends of Nushirvan established their tyranny; and virtue
      was driven by degrees from the mind of Hormouz, from his palace,
      and from the government of the state. The faithful agents, the
      eyes and ears of the king, informed him of the progress of
      disorder, that the provincial governors flew to their prey with
      the fierceness of lions and eagles, and that their rapine and
      injustice would teach the most loyal of his subjects to abhor the
      name and authority of their sovereign. The sincerity of this
      advice was punished with death; the murmurs of the cities were
      despised, their tumults were quelled by military execution: the
      intermediate powers between the throne and the people were
      abolished; and the childish vanity of Hormouz, who affected the
      daily use of the tiara, was fond of declaring, that he alone
      would be the judge as well as the master of his kingdom.


      In every word, and in every action, the son of Nushirvan
      degenerated from the virtues of his father. His avarice defrauded
      the troops; his jealous caprice degraded the satraps; the palace,
      the tribunals, the waters of the Tigris, were stained with the
      blood of the innocent, and the tyrant exulted in the sufferings
      and execution of thirteen thousand victims. As the excuse of his
      cruelty, he sometimes condescended to observe, that the fears of
      the Persians would be productive of hatred, and that their hatred
      must terminate in rebellion but he forgot that his own guilt and
      folly had inspired the sentiments which he deplored, and prepared
      the event which he so justly apprehended. Exasperated by long and
      hopeless oppression, the provinces of Babylon, Susa, and
      Carmania, erected the standard of revolt; and the princes of
      Arabia, India, and Scythia, refused the customary tribute to the
      unworthy successor of Nushirvan. The arms of the Romans, in slow
      sieges and frequent inroads, afflicted the frontiers of
      Mesopotamia and Assyria: one of their generals professed himself
      the disciple of Scipio; and the soldiers were animated by a
      miraculous image of Christ, whose mild aspect should never have
      been displayed in the front of battle. 9 At the same time, the
      eastern provinces of Persia were invaded by the great khan, who
      passed the Oxus at the head of three or four hundred thousand
      Turks. The imprudent Hormouz accepted their perfidious and
      formidable aid; the cities of Khorassan or Bactriana were
      commanded to open their gates; the march of the Barbarians
      towards the mountains of Hyrcania revealed the correspondence of
      the Turkish and Roman arms; and their union must have subverted
      the throne of the house of Sassan.

      8 (return) [ Buzurg Mihir may be considered, in his character and
      station, as the Seneca of the East; but his virtues, and perhaps
      his faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears
      to have been much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the
      person who imported from India the game of chess and the fables
      of Pilpay. Such has been the fame of his wisdom and virtues, that
      the Christians claim him as a believer in the gospel; and the
      Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature Mussulman. D’Herbelot,
      Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 218.]

      9 (return) [ See the imitation of Scipio in Theophylact, l. i. c.
      14; the image of Christ, l. ii. c. 3. Hereafter I shall speak
      more amply of the Christian images—I had almost said idols. This,
      if I am not mistaken, is the oldest of divine manufacture; but in
      the next thousand years, many others issued from the same
      workshop.]


      Persia had been lost by a king; it was saved by a hero. After his
      revolt, Varanes or Bahram is stigmatized by the son of Hormouz as
      an ungrateful slave; the proud and ambiguous reproach of
      despotism, since he was truly descended from the ancient princes
      of Rei, 10 one of the seven families whose splendid, as well as
      substantial, prerogatives exalted them above the heads of the
      Persian nobility. 11 At the siege of Dara, the valor of Bahram
      was signalized under the eyes of Nushirvan, and both the father
      and son successively promoted him to the command of armies, the
      government of Media, and the superintendence of the palace. The
      popular prediction which marked him as the deliverer of Persia,
      might be inspired by his past victories and extraordinary figure:
      the epithet Giubin 1111 is expressive of the quality of dry wood:
      he had the strength and stature of a giant; and his savage
      countenance was fancifully compared to that of a wild cat. While
      the nation trembled, while Hormouz disguised his terror by the
      name of suspicion, and his servants concealed their disloyalty
      under the mask of fear, Bahram alone displayed his undaunted
      courage and apparent fidelity: and as soon as he found that no
      more than twelve thousand soldiers would follow him against the
      enemy; he prudently declared, that to this fatal number Heaven
      had reserved the honors of the triumph. 1112 The steep and narrow
      descent of the Pule Rudbar, 12 or Hyrcanian rock, is the only
      pass through which an army can penetrate into the territory of
      Rei and the plains of Media. From the commanding heights, a band
      of resolute men might overwhelm with stones and darts the myriads
      of the Turkish host: their emperor and his son were transpierced
      with arrows; and the fugitives were left, without counsel or
      provisions, to the revenge of an injured people. The patriotism
      of the Persian general was stimulated by his affection for the
      city of his forefathers: in the hour of victory, every peasant
      became a soldier, and every soldier a hero; and their ardor was
      kindled by the gorgeous spectacle of beds, and thrones, and
      tables of massy gold, the spoils of Asia, and the luxury of the
      hostile camp. A prince of a less malignant temper could not
      easily have forgiven his benefactor; and the secret hatred of
      Hormouz was envenomed by a malicious report, that Bahram had
      privately retained the most precious fruits of his Turkish
      victory. But the approach of a Roman army on the side of the
      Araxes compelled the implacable tyrant to smile and to applaud;
      and the toils of Bahram were rewarded with the permission of
      encountering a new enemy, by their skill and discipline more
      formidable than a Scythian multitude. Elated by his recent
      success, he despatched a herald with a bold defiance to the camp
      of the Romans, requesting them to fix a day of battle, and to
      choose whether they would pass the river themselves, or allow a
      free passage to the arms of the great king. The lieutenant of the
      emperor Maurice preferred the safer alternative; and this local
      circumstance, which would have enhanced the victory of the
      Persians, rendered their defeat more bloody and their escape more
      difficult. But the loss of his subjects, and the danger of his
      kingdom, were overbalanced in the mind of Hormouz by the disgrace
      of his personal enemy; and no sooner had Bahram collected and
      reviewed his forces, than he received from a royal messenger the
      insulting gift of a distaff, a spinning-wheel, and a complete
      suit of female apparel. Obedient to the will of his sovereign he
      showed himself to the soldiers in this unworthy disguise: they
      resented his ignominy and their own; a shout of rebellion ran
      through the ranks; and the general accepted their oath of
      fidelity and vows of revenge. A second messenger, who had been
      commanded to bring the rebel in chains, was trampled under the
      feet of an elephant, and manifestos were diligently circulated,
      exhorting the Persians to assert their freedom against an odious
      and contemptible tyrant. The defection was rapid and universal;
      his loyal slaves were sacrificed to the public fury; the troops
      deserted to the standard of Bahram; and the provinces again
      saluted the deliverer of his country.

      10 (return) [ Ragae, or Rei, is mentioned in the Apocryphal book
      of Tobit as already flourishing, 700 years before Christ, under
      the Assyrian empire. Under the foreign names of Europus and
      Arsacia, this city, 500 stadia to the south of the Caspian gates,
      was successively embellished by the Macedonians and Parthians,
      (Strabo, l. xi. p. 796.) Its grandeur and populousness in the
      ixth century are exaggerated beyond the bounds of credibility;
      but Rei has been since ruined by wars and the unwholesomeness of
      the air. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, tom. i. p. 279, 280.
      D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Oriental. p. 714.]

      11 (return) [ Theophylact. l. iii. c. 18. The story of the seven
      Persians is told in the third book of Herodotus; and their noble
      descendants are often mentioned, especially in the fragments of
      Ctesias. Yet the independence of Otanes (Herodot. l. iii. c. 83,
      84) is hostile to the spirit of despotism, and it may not seem
      probable that the seven families could survive the revolutions of
      eleven hundred years. They might, however, be represented by the
      seven ministers, (Brisson, de Regno Persico, l. i. p. 190;) and
      some Persian nobles, like the kings of Pontus (Polyb l. v. p.
      540) and Cappadocia, (Diodor. Sicul. l. xxxi. tom. ii. p. 517,)
      might claim their descent from the bold companions of Darius.]

      1111 (return) [ He is generally called Baharam Choubeen, Baharam,
      the stick-like, probably from his appearance. Malcolm, vol. i. p.
      120.—M.]

      1112 (return) [ The Persian historians say, that Hormouz
      entreated his general to increase his numbers; but Baharam
      replied, that experience had taught him that it was the quality,
      not the number of soldiers, which gave success. * * * No man in
      his army was under forty years, and none above fifty. Malcolm,
      vol. i. p. 121—M.]

      12 (return) [ See an accurate description of this mountain by
      Olearius, (Voyage en Perse, p. 997, 998,) who ascended it with
      much difficulty and danger in his return from Ispahan to the
      Caspian Sea.]


      As the passes were faithfully guarded, Hormouz could only compute
      the number of his enemies by the testimony of a guilty
      conscience, and the daily defection of those who, in the hour of
      his distress, avenged their wrongs, or forgot their obligations.
      He proudly displayed the ensigns of royalty; but the city and
      palace of Modain had already escaped from the hand of the tyrant.
      Among the victims of his cruelty, Bindoes, a Sassanian prince,
      had been cast into a dungeon; his fetters were broken by the zeal
      and courage of a brother; and he stood before the king at the
      head of those trusty guards, who had been chosen as the ministers
      of his confinement, and perhaps of his death. Alarmed by the
      hasty intrusion and bold reproaches of the captive, Hormouz
      looked round, but in vain, for advice or assistance; discovered
      that his strength consisted in the obedience of others; and
      patiently yielded to the single arm of Bindoes, who dragged him
      from the throne to the same dungeon in which he himself had been
      so lately confined. At the first tumult, Chosroes, the eldest of
      the sons of Hormouz, escaped from the city; he was persuaded to
      return by the pressing and friendly invitation of Bindoes, who
      promised to seat him on his father’s throne, and who expected to
      reign under the name of an inexperienced youth. In the just
      assurance, that his accomplices could neither forgive nor hope to
      be forgiven, and that every Persian might be trusted as the judge
      and enemy of the tyrant, he instituted a public trial without a
      precedent and without a copy in the annals of the East. The son
      of Nushirvan, who had requested to plead in his own defence, was
      introduced as a criminal into the full assembly of the nobles and
      satraps. 13 He was heard with decent attention as long as he
      expatiated on the advantages of order and obedience, the danger
      of innovation, and the inevitable discord of those who had
      encouraged each other to trample on their lawful and hereditary
      sovereign. By a pathetic appeal to their humanity, he extorted
      that pity which is seldom refused to the fallen fortunes of a
      king; and while they beheld the abject posture and squalid
      appearance of the prisoner, his tears, his chains, and the marks
      of ignominious stripes, it was impossible to forget how recently
      they had adored the divine splendor of his diadem and purple. But
      an angry murmur arose in the assembly as soon as he presumed to
      vindicate his conduct, and to applaud the victories of his reign.
      He defined the duties of a king, and the Persian nobles listened
      with a smile of contempt; they were fired with indignation when
      he dared to vilify the character of Chosroes; and by the
      indiscreet offer of resigning the sceptre to the second of his
      sons, he subscribed his own condemnation, and sacrificed the life
      of his own innocent favorite. The mangled bodies of the boy and
      his mother were exposed to the people; the eyes of Hormouz were
      pierced with a hot needle; and the punishment of the father was
      succeeded by the coronation of his eldest son. Chosroes had
      ascended the throne without guilt, and his piety strove to
      alleviate the misery of the abdicated monarch; from the dungeon
      he removed Hormouz to an apartment of the palace, supplied with
      liberality the consolations of sensual enjoyment, and patiently
      endured the furious sallies of his resentment and despair. He
      might despise the resentment of a blind and unpopular tyrant, but
      the tiara was trembling on his head, till he could subvert the
      power, or acquire the friendship, of the great Bahram, who
      sternly denied the justice of a revolution, in which himself and
      his soldiers, the true representatives of Persia, had never been
      consulted. The offer of a general amnesty, and of the second rank
      in his kingdom, was answered by an epistle from Bahram, friend of
      the gods, conqueror of men, and enemy of tyrants, the satrap of
      satraps, general of the Persian armies, and a prince adorned with
      the title of eleven virtues. 14 He commands Chosroes, the son of
      Hormouz, to shun the example and fate of his father, to confine
      the traitors who had been released from their chains, to deposit
      in some holy place the diadem which he had usurped, and to accept
      from his gracious benefactor the pardon of his faults and the
      government of a province. The rebel might not be proud, and the
      king most assuredly was not humble; but the one was conscious of
      his strength, the other was sensible of his weakness; and even
      the modest language of his reply still left room for treaty and
      reconciliation. Chosroes led into the field the slaves of the
      palace and the populace of the capital: they beheld with terror
      the banners of a veteran army; they were encompassed and
      surprised by the evolutions of the general; and the satraps who
      had deposed Hormouz, received the punishment of their revolt, or
      expiated their first treason by a second and more criminal act of
      disloyalty. The life and liberty of Chosroes were saved, but he
      was reduced to the necessity of imploring aid or refuge in some
      foreign land; and the implacable Bindoes, anxious to secure an
      unquestionable title, hastily returned to the palace, and ended,
      with a bowstring, the wretched existence of the son of Nushirvan.
      15

      13 (return) [ The Orientals suppose that Bahram convened this
      assembly and proclaimed Chosroes; but Theophylact is, in this
      instance, more distinct and credible. * Note: Yet Theophylact
      seems to have seized the opportunity to indulge his propensity
      for writing orations; and the orations read rather like those of
      a Grecian sophist than of an Eastern assembly.—M.]

      14 (return) [ See the words of Theophylact, l. iv. c. 7., &c. In
      answer, Chosroes styles himself in genuine Oriental bombast.]

      15 (return) [ Theophylact (l. iv. c. 7) imputes the death of
      Hormouz to his son, by whose command he was beaten to death with
      clubs. I have followed the milder account of Khondemir and
      Eutychius, and shall always be content with the slightest
      evidence to extenuate the crime of parricide. Note: Malcolm
      concurs in ascribing his death to Bundawee, (Bindoes,) vol. i. p.
      123. The Eastern writers generally impute the crime to the uncle
      St. Martin, vol. x. p. 300.—M.]


      While Chosroes despatched the preparations of his retreat, he
      deliberated with his remaining friends, 16 whether he should lurk
      in the valleys of Mount Caucasus, or fly to the tents of the
      Turks, or solicit the protection of the emperor. The long
      emulation of the successors of Artaxerxes and Constantine
      increased his reluctance to appear as a suppliant in a rival
      court; but he weighed the forces of the Romans, and prudently
      considered that the neighborhood of Syria would render his escape
      more easy and their succors more effectual. Attended only by his
      concubines, and a troop of thirty guards, he secretly departed
      from the capital, followed the banks of the Euphrates, traversed
      the desert, and halted at the distance of ten miles from
      Circesium. About the third watch of the night, the Roman præfect
      was informed of his approach, and he introduced the royal
      stranger to the fortress at the dawn of day. From thence the king
      of Persia was conducted to the more honorable residence of
      Hierapolis; and Maurice dissembled his pride, and displayed his
      benevolence, at the reception of the letters and ambassadors of
      the grandson of Nushirvan. They humbly represented the
      vicissitudes of fortune and the common interest of princes,
      exaggerated the ingratitude of Bahram, the agent of the evil
      principle, and urged, with specious argument, that it was for the
      advantage of the Romans themselves to support the two monarchies
      which balance the world, the two great luminaries by whose
      salutary influence it is vivified and adorned. The anxiety of
      Chosroes was soon relieved by the assurance, that the emperor had
      espoused the cause of justice and royalty; but Maurice prudently
      declined the expense and delay of his useless visit to
      Constantinople. In the name of his generous benefactor, a rich
      diadem was presented to the fugitive prince, with an inestimable
      gift of jewels and gold; a powerful army was assembled on the
      frontiers of Syria and Armenia, under the command of the valiant
      and faithful Narses, 17 and this general, of his own nation, and
      his own choice, was directed to pass the Tigris, and never to
      sheathe his sword till he had restored Chosroes to the throne of
      his ancestors. 1711 The enterprise, however splendid, was less
      arduous than it might appear. Persia had already repented of her
      fatal rashness, which betrayed the heir of the house of Sassan to
      the ambition of a rebellious subject: and the bold refusal of the
      Magi to consecrate his usurpation, compelled Bahram to assume the
      sceptre, regardless of the laws and prejudices of the nation. The
      palace was soon distracted with conspiracy, the city with tumult,
      the provinces with insurrection; and the cruel execution of the
      guilty and the suspected served to irritate rather than subdue
      the public discontent. No sooner did the grandson of Nushirvan
      display his own and the Roman banners beyond the Tigris, than he
      was joined, each day, by the increasing multitudes of the
      nobility and people; and as he advanced, he received from every
      side the grateful offerings of the keys of his cities and the
      heads of his enemies. As soon as Modain was freed from the
      presence of the usurper, the loyal inhabitants obeyed the first
      summons of Mebodes at the head of only two thousand horse, and
      Chosroes accepted the sacred and precious ornaments of the palace
      as the pledge of their truth and the presage of his approaching
      success. After the junction of the Imperial troops, which Bahram
      vainly struggled to prevent, the contest was decided by two
      battles on the banks of the Zab, and the confines of Media. The
      Romans, with the faithful subjects of Persia, amounted to sixty
      thousand, while the whole force of the usurper did not exceed
      forty thousand men: the two generals signalized their valor and
      ability; but the victory was finally determined by the prevalence
      of numbers and discipline. With the remnant of a broken army,
      Bahram fled towards the eastern provinces of the Oxus: the enmity
      of Persia reconciled him to the Turks; but his days were
      shortened by poison, perhaps the most incurable of poisons; the
      stings of remorse and despair, and the bitter remembrance of lost
      glory. Yet the modern Persians still commemorate the exploits of
      Bahram; and some excellent laws have prolonged the duration of
      his troubled and transitory reign.

      16 (return) [ After the battle of Pharsalia, the Pompey of Lucan
      (l. viii. 256—455) holds a similar debate. He was himself
      desirous of seeking the Parthians: but his companions abhorred
      the unnatural alliance and the adverse prejudices might operate
      as forcibly on Chosroes and his companions, who could describe,
      with the same vehemence, the contrast of laws, religion, and
      manners, between the East and West.]

      17 (return) [ In this age there were three warriors of the name
      of Narses, who have been often confounded, (Pagi, Critica, tom.
      ii. p. 640:) 1. A Persarmenian, the brother of Isaac and
      Armatius, who, after a successful action against Belisarius,
      deserted from his Persian sovereign, and afterwards served in the
      Italian war.—2. The eunuch who conquered Italy.—3. The restorer
      of Chosroes, who is celebrated in the poem of Corippus (l. iii.
      220—327) as excelsus super omnia vertico agmina.... habitu
      modestus.... morum probitate placens, virtute verendus;
      fulmineus, cautus, vigilans, &c.]

      1711 (return) [ The Armenians adhered to Chosroes. St. Martin,
      vol. x. p. 312.—M. ——According to Mivkhond and the Oriental
      writers, Bahram received the daughter of the Khakan in marriage,
      and commanded a body of Turks in an invasion of Persia. Some say
      that he was assassinated; Malcolm adopts the opinion that he was
      poisoned. His sister Gourdieh, the companion of his flight, is
      celebrated in the Shah Nameh. She was afterwards one of the wives
      of Chosroes. St. Martin. vol. x. p. 331.—M.]


      The restoration of Chosroes was celebrated with feasts and
      executions; and the music of the royal banquet was often
      disturbed by the groans of dying or mutilated criminals. A
      general pardon might have diffused comfort and tranquillity
      through a country which had been shaken by the late revolutions;
      yet, before the sanguinary temper of Chosroes is blamed, we
      should learn whether the Persians had not been accustomed either
      to dread the rigor, or to despise the weakness, of their
      sovereign. The revolt of Bahram, and the conspiracy of the
      satraps, were impartially punished by the revenge or justice of
      the conqueror; the merits of Bindoes himself could not purify his
      hand from the guilt of royal blood: and the son of Hormouz was
      desirous to assert his own innocence, and to vindicate the
      sanctity of kings. During the vigor of the Roman power, several
      princes were seated on the throne of Persia by the arms and the
      authority of the first Caesars. But their new subjects were soon
      disgusted with the vices or virtues which they had imbibed in a
      foreign land; the instability of their dominion gave birth to a
      vulgar observation, that the choice of Rome was solicited and
      rejected with equal ardor by the capricious levity of Oriental
      slaves. But the glory of Maurice was conspicuous in the long and
      fortunate reign of his son and his ally. A band of a thousand
      Romans, who continued to guard the person of Chosroes, proclaimed
      his confidence in the fidelity of the strangers; his growing
      strength enabled him to dismiss this unpopular aid, but he
      steadily professed the same gratitude and reverence to his
      adopted father; and till the death of Maurice, the peace and
      alliance of the two empires were faithfully maintained. 18 Yet
      the mercenary friendship of the Roman prince had been purchased
      with costly and important gifts; the strong cities of
      Martyropolis and Dara 1811 were restored, and the Persarmenians
      became the willing subjects of an empire, whose eastern limit was
      extended, beyond the example of former times, as far as the banks
      of the Araxes, and the neighborhood of the Caspian. A pious hope
      was indulged, that the church as well as the state might triumph
      in this revolution: but if Chosroes had sincerely listened to the
      Christian bishops, the impression was erased by the zeal and
      eloquence of the Magi: if he was armed with philosophic
      indifference, he accommodated his belief, or rather his
      professions, to the various circumstances of an exile and a
      sovereign. The imaginary conversion of the king of Persia was
      reduced to a local and superstitious veneration for Sergius, 19
      one of the saints of Antioch, who heard his prayers and appeared
      to him in dreams; he enriched the shrine with offerings of gold
      and silver, and ascribed to this invisible patron the success of
      his arms, and the pregnancy of Sira, a devout Christian and the
      best beloved of his wives. 20 The beauty of Sira, or Schirin, 21
      her wit, her musical talents, are still famous in the history, or
      rather in the romances, of the East: her own name is expressive,
      in the Persian tongue, of sweetness and grace; and the epithet of
      Parviz alludes to the charms of her royal lover. Yet Sira never
      shared the passions which she inspired, and the bliss of Chosroes
      was tortured by a jealous doubt, that while he possessed her
      person, she had bestowed her affections on a meaner favorite. 22

      18 (return) [ Experimentis cognitum est Barbaros malle Roma
      petere reges quam habere. These experiments are admirably
      represented in the invitation and expulsion of Vonones, (Annal.
      ii. 1—3,) Tiridates, (Annal. vi. 32-44,) and Meherdates, (Annal.
      xi. 10, xii. 10-14.) The eye of Tacitus seems to have
      transpierced the camp of the Parthians and the walls of the
      harem.]

      1811 (return) [ Concerning Nisibis, see St. Martin and his
      Armenian authorities, vol. x p. 332, and Memoires sur l’Armenie,
      tom. i. p. 25.—M.]

      19 (return) [ Sergius and his companion Bacchus, who are said to
      have suffered in the persecution of Maximian, obtained divine
      honor in France, Italy, Constantinople, and the East. Their tomb
      at Rasaphe was famous for miracles, and that Syrian town acquired
      the more honorable name of Sergiopolis. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles.
      tom. v. p. 481—496. Butler’s Saints, vol. x. p. 155.]

      20 (return) [ Evagrius (l. vi. c. 21) and Theophylact (l. v. c.
      13, 14) have preserved the original letters of Chosroes, written
      in Greek, signed with his own hand, and afterwards inscribed on
      crosses and tables of gold, which were deposited in the church of
      Sergiopolis. They had been sent to the bishop of Antioch, as
      primate of Syria. * Note: St. Martin thinks that they were first
      written in Syriac, and then translated into the bad Greek in
      which they appear, vol. x. p. 334.—M.]

      21 (return) [ The Greeks only describe her as a Roman by birth, a
      Christian by religion: but she is represented as the daughter of
      the emperor Maurice in the Persian and Turkish romances which
      celebrate the love of Khosrou for Schirin, of Schirin for Ferhad,
      the most beautiful youth of the East, D’Herbelot, Biblioth.
      Orient. p. 789, 997, 998. * Note: Compare M. von Hammer’s preface
      to, and poem of, Schirin in which he gives an account of the
      various Persian poems, of which he has endeavored to extract the
      essence in his own work.—M.]

      22 (return) [ The whole series of the tyranny of Hormouz, the
      revolt of Bahram, and the flight and restoration of Chosroes, is
      related by two contemporary Greeks—more concisely by Evagrius,
      (l. vi. c. 16, 17, 18, 19,) and most diffusely by Theophylact
      Simocatta, (l. iii. c. 6—18, l. iv. c. 1—16, l. v. c. 1-15:)
      succeeding compilers, Zonaras and Cedrenus, can only transcribe
      and abridge. The Christian Arabs, Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p.
      200—208) and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 96—98) appear to have
      consulted some particular memoirs. The great Persian historians
      of the xvth century, Mirkhond and Khondemir, are only known to me
      by the imperfect extracts of Schikard, (Tarikh, p. 150—155,)
      Texeira, or rather Stevens, (Hist. of Persia, p. 182—186,) a
      Turkish Ms. translated by the Abbe Fourmount, (Hist. de
      l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. vii. p. 325—334,) and
      D’Herbelot, (aux mots Hormouz, p. 457—459. Bahram, p. 174.
      Khosrou Parviz, p. 996.) Were I perfectly satisfied of their
      authority, I could wish these Oriental materials had been more
      copious.]




Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part II.


      While the majesty of the Roman name was revived in the East, the
      prospect of Europe is less pleasing and less glorious. By the
      departure of the Lombards, and the ruin of the Gepidae, the
      balance of power was destroyed on the Danube; and the Avars
      spread their permanent dominion from the foot of the Alps to the
      sea-coast of the Euxine. The reign of Baian is the brightest aera
      of their monarchy; their chagan, who occupied the rustic palace
      of Attila, appears to have imitated his character and policy; 23
      but as the same scenes were repeated in a smaller circle, a
      minute representation of the copy would be devoid of the
      greatness and novelty of the original. The pride of the second
      Justin, of Tiberius, and Maurice, was humbled by a proud
      Barbarian, more prompt to inflict, than exposed to suffer, the
      injuries of war; and as often as Asia was threatened by the
      Persian arms, Europe was oppressed by the dangerous inroads, or
      costly friendship, of the Avars. When the Roman envoys approached
      the presence of the chagan, they were commanded to wait at the
      door of his tent, till, at the end perhaps of ten or twelve days,
      he condescended to admit them. If the substance or the style of
      their message was offensive to his ear, he insulted, with real or
      affected fury, their own dignity, and that of their prince; their
      baggage was plundered, and their lives were only saved by the
      promise of a richer present and a more respectful address. But
      his sacred ambassadors enjoyed and abused an unbounded license in
      the midst of Constantinople: they urged, with importunate
      clamors, the increase of tribute, or the restitution of captives
      and deserters: and the majesty of the empire was almost equally
      degraded by a base compliance, or by the false and fearful
      excuses with which they eluded such insolent demands. The chagan
      had never seen an elephant; and his curiosity was excited by the
      strange, and perhaps fabulous, portrait of that wonderful animal.
      At his command, one of the largest elephants of the Imperial
      stables was equipped with stately caparisons, and conducted by a
      numerous train to the royal village in the plains of Hungary. He
      surveyed the enormous beast with surprise, with disgust, and
      possibly with terror; and smiled at the vain industry of the
      Romans, who, in search of such useless rarities, could explore
      the limits of the land and sea. He wished, at the expense of the
      emperor, to repose in a golden bed. The wealth of Constantinople,
      and the skilful diligence of her artists, were instantly devoted
      to the gratification of his caprice; but when the work was
      finished, he rejected with scorn a present so unworthy the
      majesty of a great king. 24 These were the casual sallies of his
      pride; but the avarice of the chagan was a more steady and
      tractable passion: a rich and regular supply of silk apparel,
      furniture, and plate, introduced the rudiments of art and luxury
      among the tents of the Scythians; their appetite was stimulated
      by the pepper and cinnamon of India; 25 the annual subsidy or
      tribute was raised from fourscore to one hundred and twenty
      thousand pieces of gold; and after each hostile interruption, the
      payment of the arrears, with exorbitant interest, was always made
      the first condition of the new treaty. In the language of a
      Barbarian, without guile, the prince of the Avars affected to
      complain of the insincerity of the Greeks; 26 yet he was not
      inferior to the most civilized nations in the refinement of
      dissimulation and perfidy. As the successor of the Lombards, the
      chagan asserted his claim to the important city of Sirmium, the
      ancient bulwark of the Illyrian provinces. 27 The plains of the
      Lower Hungary were covered with the Avar horse and a fleet of
      large boats was built in the Hercynian wood, to descend the
      Danube, and to transport into the Save the materials of a bridge.
      But as the strong garrison of Singidunum, which commanded the
      conflux of the two rivers, might have stopped their passage and
      baffled his designs, he dispelled their apprehensions by a solemn
      oath that his views were not hostile to the empire. He swore by
      his sword, the symbol of the god of war, that he did not, as the
      enemy of Rome, construct a bridge upon the Save. “If I violate my
      oath,” pursued the intrepid Baian, “may I myself, and the last of
      my nation, perish by the sword! May the heavens, and fire, the
      deity of the heavens, fall upon our heads! May the forests and
      mountains bury us in their ruins! and the Save returning, against
      the laws of nature, to his source, overwhelm us in his angry
      waters!” After this barbarous imprecation, he calmly inquired,
      what oath was most sacred and venerable among the Christians,
      what guilt or perjury it was most dangerous to incur. The bishop
      of Singidunum presented the gospel, which the chagan received
      with devout reverence. “I swear,” said he, “by the God who has
      spoken in this holy book, that I have neither falsehood on my
      tongue, nor treachery in my heart.” As soon as he rose from his
      knees, he accelerated the labor of the bridge, and despatched an
      envoy to proclaim what he no longer wished to conceal. “Inform
      the emperor,” said the perfidious Baian, “that Sirmium is
      invested on every side. Advise his prudence to withdraw the
      citizens and their effects, and to resign a city which it is now
      impossible to relieve or defend.” Without the hope of relief, the
      defence of Sirmium was prolonged above three years: the walls
      were still untouched; but famine was enclosed within the walls,
      till a merciful capitulation allowed the escape of the naked and
      hungry inhabitants. Singidunum, at the distance of fifty miles,
      experienced a more cruel fate: the buildings were razed, and the
      vanquished people was condemned to servitude and exile. Yet the
      ruins of Sirmium are no longer visible; the advantageous
      situation of Singidunum soon attracted a new colony of
      Sclavonians, and the conflux of the Save and Danube is still
      guarded by the fortifications of Belgrade, or the White City, so
      often and so obstinately disputed by the Christian and Turkish
      arms. 28 From Belgrade to the walls of Constantinople a line may
      be measured of six hundred miles: that line was marked with
      flames and with blood; the horses of the Avars were alternately
      bathed in the Euxine and the Adriatic; and the Roman pontiff,
      alarmed by the approach of a more savage enemy, 29 was reduced to
      cherish the Lombards, as the protectors of Italy. The despair of
      a captive, whom his country refused to ransom, disclosed to the
      Avars the invention and practice of military engines. 30 But in
      the first attempts they were rudely framed, and awkwardly
      managed; and the resistance of Diocletianopolis and Beraea, of
      Philippopolis and Adrianople, soon exhausted the skill and
      patience of the besiegers. The warfare of Baian was that of a
      Tartar; yet his mind was susceptible of a humane and generous
      sentiment: he spared Anchialus, whose salutary waters had
      restored the health of the best beloved of his wives; and the
      Romans confessed, that their starving army was fed and dismissed
      by the liberality of a foe. His empire extended over Hungary,
      Poland, and Prussia, from the mouth of the Danube to that of the
      Oder; 31 and his new subjects were divided and transplanted by
      the jealous policy of the conqueror. 32 The eastern regions of
      Germany, which had been left vacant by the emigration of the
      Vandals, were replenished with Sclavonian colonists; the same
      tribes are discovered in the neighborhood of the Adriatic and of
      the Baltic, and with the name of Baian himself, the Illyrian
      cities of Neyss and Lissa are again found in the heart of
      Silesia. In the disposition both of his troops and provinces the
      chagan exposed the vassals, whose lives he disregarded, 33 to the
      first assault; and the swords of the enemy were blunted before
      they encountered the native valor of the Avars.

      23 (return) [ A general idea of the pride and power of the chagan
      may be taken from Menander (Excerpt. Legat. p. 118, &c.) and
      Theophylact, (l. i. c. 3, l. vii. c. 15,) whose eight books are
      much more honorable to the Avar than to the Roman prince. The
      predecessors of Baian had tasted the liberality of Rome, and he
      survived the reign of Maurice, (Buat, Hist. des Peuples Barbares,
      tom. xi. p. 545.) The chagan who invaded Italy, A.D. 611,
      (Muratori, Annali, tom. v. p. 305,) was then invenili aetate
      florentem, (Paul Warnefrid, de Gest. Langobard. l v c 38,) the
      son, perhaps, or the grandson, of Baian.]

      24 (return) [ Theophylact, l. i. c. 5, 6.]

      25 (return) [ Even in the field, the chagan delighted in the use
      of these aromatics. He solicited, as a gift, and received.
      Theophylact, l. vii. c. 13. The Europeans of the ruder ages
      consumed more spices in their meat and drink than is compatible
      with the delicacy of a modern palate. Vie Privee des Francois,
      tom. ii. p. 162, 163.]

      26 (return) [ Theophylact, l. vi. c. 6, l. vii. c. 15. The Greek
      historian confesses the truth and justice of his reproach]

      27 (return) [ Menander (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 126—132, 174, 175)
      describes the perjury of Baian and the surrender of Sirmium. We
      have lost his account of the siege, which is commended by
      Theophylact, l. i. c. 3. * Note: Compare throughout Schlozer
      Nordische Geschichte, p. 362—373—M.]

      28 (return) [ See D’Anville, in the Memoires de l’Acad. des
      Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 412—443. The Sclavonic name of
      Belgrade is mentioned in the xth century by Constantine
      Porphyrogenitus: the Latin appellation of Alba Croeca is used by
      the Franks in the beginning of the ixth, (p. 414.)]

      29 (return) [ Baron. Annal. Eccles. A. B. 600, No. 1. Paul
      Warnefrid (l. iv. c. 38) relates their irruption into Friuli, and
      (c. 39) the captivity of his ancestors, about A.D. 632. The
      Sclavi traversed the Adriatic cum multitudine navium, and made a
      descent in the territory of Sipontum, (c. 47.)]

      30 (return) [ Even the helepolis, or movable turret. Theophylact,
      l. ii. 16, 17.]

      31 (return) [ The arms and alliances of the chagan reached to the
      neighborhood of a western sea, fifteen months’ journey from
      Constantinople. The emperor Maurice conversed with some itinerant
      harpers from that remote country, and only seems to have mistaken
      a trade for a nation Theophylact, l. vi. c. 2.]

      32 (return) [ This is one of the most probable and luminous
      conjectures of the learned count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples
      Barbares, tom. xi. p. 546—568.) The Tzechi and Serbi are found
      together near Mount Caucasus, in Illyricum, and on the lower
      Elbe. Even the wildest traditions of the Bohemians, &c., afford
      some color to his hypothesis.]

      33 (return) [ See Fredegarius, in the Historians of France, tom.
      ii. p. 432. Baian did not conceal his proud insensibility.]


      The Persian alliance restored the troops of the East to the
      defence of Europe: and Maurice, who had supported ten years the
      insolence of the chagan, declared his resolution to march in
      person against the Barbarians. In the space of two centuries,
      none of the successors of Theodosius had appeared in the field:
      their lives were supinely spent in the palace of Constantinople;
      and the Greeks could no longer understand, that the name of
      emperor, in its primitive sense, denoted the chief of the armies
      of the republic. The martial ardor of Maurice was opposed by the
      grave flattery of the senate, the timid superstition of the
      patriarch, and the tears of the empress Constantina; and they all
      conjured him to devolve on some meaner general the fatigues and
      perils of a Scythian campaign. Deaf to their advice and entreaty,
      the emperor boldly advanced 34 seven miles from the capital; the
      sacred ensign of the cross was displayed in the front; and
      Maurice reviewed, with conscious pride, the arms and numbers of
      the veterans who had fought and conquered beyond the Tigris.
      Anchialus was the last term of his progress by sea and land; he
      solicited, without success, a miraculous answer to his nocturnal
      prayers; his mind was confounded by the death of a favorite
      horse, the encounter of a wild boar, a storm of wind and rain,
      and the birth of a monstrous child; and he forgot that the best
      of omens is to unsheathe our sword in the defence of our country.
      35 Under the pretence of receiving the ambassadors of Persia, the
      emperor returned to Constantinople, exchanged the thoughts of war
      for those of devotion, and disappointed the public hope by his
      absence and the choice of his lieutenants. The blind partiality
      of fraternal love might excuse the promotion of his brother
      Peter, who fled with equal disgrace from the Barbarians, from his
      own soldiers and from the inhabitants of a Roman city. That city,
      if we may credit the resemblance of name and character, was the
      famous Azimuntium, 36 which had alone repelled the tempest of
      Attila. The example of her warlike youth was propagated to
      succeeding generations; and they obtained, from the first or the
      second Justin, an honorable privilege, that their valor should be
      always reserved for the defence of their native country. The
      brother of Maurice attempted to violate this privilege, and to
      mingle a patriot band with the mercenaries of his camp; they
      retired to the church, he was not awed by the sanctity of the
      place; the people rose in their cause, the gates were shut, the
      ramparts were manned; and the cowardice of Peter was found equal
      to his arrogance and injustice. The military fame of Commentiolus
      37 is the object of satire or comedy rather than of serious
      history, since he was even deficient in the vile and vulgar
      qualification of personal courage. His solemn councils, strange
      evolutions, and secret orders, always supplied an apology for
      flight or delay. If he marched against the enemy, the pleasant
      valleys of Mount Haemus opposed an insuperable barrier; but in
      his retreat, he explored, with fearless curiosity, the most
      difficult and obsolete paths, which had almost escaped the memory
      of the oldest native. The only blood which he lost was drawn, in
      a real or affected malady, by the lancet of a surgeon; and his
      health, which felt with exquisite sensibility the approach of the
      Barbarians, was uniformly restored by the repose and safety of
      the winter season. A prince who could promote and support this
      unworthy favorite must derive no glory from the accidental merit
      of his colleague Priscus. 38 In five successive battles, which
      seem to have been conducted with skill and resolution, seventeen
      thousand two hundred Barbarians were made prisoners: near sixty
      thousand, with four sons of the chagan, were slain: the Roman
      general surprised a peaceful district of the Gepidae, who slept
      under the protection of the Avars; and his last trophies were
      erected on the banks of the Danube and the Teyss. Since the death
      of Trajan the arms of the empire had not penetrated so deeply
      into the old Dacia: yet the success of Priscus was transient and
      barren; and he was soon recalled by the apprehension that Baian,
      with dauntless spirit and recruited forces, was preparing to
      avenge his defeat under the walls of Constantinople. 39

      34 (return) [ See the march and return of Maurice, in
      Theophylact, l. v. c. 16 l. vi. c. 1, 2, 3. If he were a writer
      of taste or genius, we might suspect him of an elegant irony: but
      Theophylact is surely harmless.]

      35 (return) [ Iliad, xii. 243. This noble verse, which unites the
      spirit of a hero with the reason of a sage, may prove that Homer
      was in every light superior to his age and country.]

      36 (return) [ Theophylact, l. vii. c. 3. On the evidence of this
      fact, which had not occurred to my memory, the candid reader will
      correct and excuse a note in Chapter XXXIV., note 86 of this
      History, which hastens the decay of Asimus, or Azimuntium;
      another century of patriotism and valor is cheaply purchased by
      such a confession.]

      37 (return) [ See the shameful conduct of Commentiolus, in
      Theophylact, l. ii. c. 10—15, l. vii. c. 13, 14, l. viii. c. 2,
      4.]

      38 (return) [ See the exploits of Priscus, l. viii. c. 23.]

      39 (return) [ The general detail of the war against the Avars may
      be traced in the first, second, sixth, seventh, and eighth books
      of the history of the emperor Maurice, by Theophylact Simocatta.
      As he wrote in the reign of Heraclius, he had no temptation to
      flatter; but his want of judgment renders him diffuse in trifles,
      and concise in the most interesting facts.]


      The theory of war was not more familiar to the camps of Caesar
      and Trajan, than to those of Justinian and Maurice. 40 The iron
      of Tuscany or Pontus still received the keenest temper from the
      skill of the Byzantine workmen. The magazines were plentifully
      stored with every species of offensive and defensive arms. In the
      construction and use of ships, engines, and fortifications, the
      Barbarians admired the superior ingenuity of a people whom they
      had so often vanquished in the field. The science of tactics, the
      order, evolutions, and stratagems of antiquity, was transcribed
      and studied in the books of the Greeks and Romans. But the
      solitude or degeneracy of the provinces could no longer supply a
      race of men to handle those weapons, to guard those walls, to
      navigate those ships, and to reduce the theory of war into bold
      and successful practice. The genius of Belisarius and Narses had
      been formed without a master, and expired without a disciple.
      Neither honor, nor patriotism, nor generous superstition, could
      animate the lifeless bodies of slaves and strangers, who had
      succeeded to the honors of the legions: it was in the camp alone
      that the emperor should have exercised a despotic command; it was
      only in the camps that his authority was disobeyed and insulted:
      he appeased and inflamed with gold the licentiousness of the
      troops; but their vices were inherent, their victories were
      accidental, and their costly maintenance exhausted the substance
      of a state which they were unable to defend. After a long and
      pernicious indulgence, the cure of this inveterate evil was
      undertaken by Maurice; but the rash attempt, which drew
      destruction on his own head, tended only to aggravate the
      disease. A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of
      interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those
      whom he proposes to reclaim. The troops of Maurice might listen
      to the voice of a victorious leader; they disdained the
      admonitions of statesmen and sophists; and, when they received an
      edict which deducted from their pay the price of their arms and
      clothing, they execrated the avarice of a prince insensible of
      the dangers and fatigues from which he had escaped.


      The camps both of Asia and Europe were agitated with frequent and
      furious seditions; 41 the enraged soldiers of Edessa pursued with
      reproaches, with threats, with wounds, their trembling generals;
      they overturned the statues of the emperor, cast stones against
      the miraculous image of Christ, and either rejected the yoke of
      all civil and military laws, or instituted a dangerous model of
      voluntary subordination. The monarch, always distant and often
      deceived, was incapable of yielding or persisting, according to
      the exigence of the moment. But the fear of a general revolt
      induced him too readily to accept any act of valor, or any
      expression of loyalty, as an atonement for the popular offence;
      the new reform was abolished as hastily as it had been announced,
      and the troops, instead of punishment and restraint, were
      agreeably surprised by a gracious proclamation of immunities and
      rewards. But the soldiers accepted without gratitude the tardy
      and reluctant gifts of the emperor: their insolence was elated by
      the discovery of his weakness and their own strength; and their
      mutual hatred was inflamed beyond the desire of forgiveness or
      the hope of reconciliation. The historians of the times adopt the
      vulgar suspicion, that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops
      whom he had labored to reform; the misconduct and favor of
      Commentiolus are imputed to this malevolent design; and every age
      must condemn the inhumanity of avarice 42 of a prince, who, by
      the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of gold, might have
      prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands
      of the chagan. In the just fervor of indignation, an order was
      signified to the army of the Danube, that they should spare the
      magazines of the province, and establish their winter quarters in
      the hostile country of the Avars. The measure of their grievances
      was full: they pronounced Maurice unworthy to reign, expelled or
      slaughtered his faithful adherents, and, under the command of
      Phocas, a simple centurion, returned by hasty marches to the
      neighborhood of Constantinople. After a long series of legal
      succession, the military disorders of the third century were
      again revived; yet such was the novelty of the enterprise, that
      the insurgents were awed by their own rashness. They hesitated to
      invest their favorite with the vacant purple; and, while they
      rejected all treaty with Maurice himself, they held a friendly
      correspondence with his son Theodosius, and with Germanus, the
      father-in-law of the royal youth. So obscure had been the former
      condition of Phocas, that the emperor was ignorant of the name
      and character of his rival; but as soon as he learned, that the
      centurion, though bold in sedition, was timid in the face of
      danger, “Alas!” cried the desponding prince, “if he is a coward,
      he will surely be a murderer.”

      40 (return) [ Maurice himself composed xii books on the military
      art, which are still extant, and have been published (Upsal,
      1664) by John Schaeffer, at the end of the Tactics of Arrian,
      (Fabricius, Bibliot Graeca, l. iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) who
      promises to speak more fully of his work in its proper place.]

      41 (return) [ See the mutinies under the reign of Maurice, in
      Theophylact l iii c. 1—4,.vi. c. 7, 8, 10, l. vii. c. 1 l. viii.
      c. 6, &c.]

      42 (return) [ Theophylact and Theophanes seem ignorant of the
      conspiracy and avarice of Maurice. These charges, so unfavorable
      to the memory of that emperor, are first mentioned by the author
      of the Paschal Chronicle, (p. 379, 280;) from whence Zonaras
      (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 77, 78) has transcribed them. Cedrenus (p.
      399) has followed another computation of the ransom.]


      Yet if Constantinople had been firm and faithful, the murderer
      might have spent his fury against the walls; and the rebel army
      would have been gradually consumed or reconciled by the prudence
      of the emperor. In the games of the Circus, which he repeated
      with unusual pomp, Maurice disguised, with smiles of confidence,
      the anxiety of his heart, condescended to solicit the applause of
      the factions, and flattered their pride by accepting from their
      respective tribunes a list of nine hundred blues and fifteen
      hundred greens, whom he affected to esteem as the solid pillars
      of his throne Their treacherous or languid support betrayed his
      weakness and hastened his fall: the green faction were the secret
      accomplices of the rebels, and the blues recommended lenity and
      moderation in a contest with their Roman brethren. The rigid and
      parsimonious virtues of Maurice had long since alienated the
      hearts of his subjects: as he walked barefoot in a religious
      procession, he was rudely assaulted with stones, and his guards
      were compelled to present their iron maces in the defence of his
      person. A fanatic monk ran through the streets with a drawn
      sword, denouncing against him the wrath and the sentence of God;
      and a vile plebeian, who represented his countenance and apparel,
      was seated on an ass, and pursued by the imprecations of the
      multitude. 43 The emperor suspected the popularity of Germanus
      with the soldiers and citizens: he feared, he threatened, but he
      delayed to strike; the patrician fled to the sanctuary of the
      church; the people rose in his defence, the walls were deserted
      by the guards, and the lawless city was abandoned to the flames
      and rapine of a nocturnal tumult. In a small bark, the
      unfortunate Maurice, with his wife and nine children, escaped to
      the Asiatic shore; but the violence of the wind compelled him to
      land at the church of St. Autonomus, 44 near Chalcedon, from
      whence he despatched Theodosius, he eldest son, to implore the
      gratitude and friendship of the Persian monarch. For himself, he
      refused to fly: his body was tortured with sciatic pains, 45 his
      mind was enfeebled by superstition; he patiently awaited the
      event of the revolution, and addressed a fervent and public
      prayer to the Almighty, that the punishment of his sins might be
      inflicted in this world rather than in a future life. After the
      abdication of Maurice, the two factions disputed the choice of an
      emperor; but the favorite of the blues was rejected by the
      jealousy of their antagonists, and Germanus himself was hurried
      along by the crowds who rushed to the palace of Hebdomon, seven
      miles from the city, to adore the majesty of Phocas the
      centurion. A modest wish of resigning the purple to the rank and
      merit of Germanus was opposed by his resolution, more obstinate
      and equally sincere; the senate and clergy obeyed his summons;
      and, as soon as the patriarch was assured of his orthodox belief,
      he consecrated the successful usurper in the church of St. John
      the Baptist. On the third day, amidst the acclamations of a
      thoughtless people, Phocas made his public entry in a chariot
      drawn by four white horses: the revolt of the troops was rewarded
      by a lavish donative; and the new sovereign, after visiting the
      palace, beheld from his throne the games of the hippodrome. In a
      dispute of precedency between the two factions, his partial
      judgment inclined in favor of the greens. “Remember that Maurice
      is still alive,” resounded from the opposite side; and the
      indiscreet clamor of the blues admonished and stimulated the
      cruelty of the tyrant. The ministers of death were despatched to
      Chalcedon: they dragged the emperor from his sanctuary; and the
      five sons of Maurice were successively murdered before the eyes
      of their agonizing parent. At each stroke, which he felt in his
      heart, he found strength to rehearse a pious ejaculation: “Thou
      art just, O Lord! and thy judgments are righteous.” And such, in
      the last moments, was his rigid attachment to truth and justice,
      that he revealed to the soldiers the pious falsehood of a nurse
      who presented her own child in the place of a royal infant. 46
      The tragic scene was finally closed by the execution of the
      emperor himself, in the twentieth year of his reign, and the
      sixty-third of his age. The bodies of the father and his five
      sons were cast into the sea; their heads were exposed at
      Constantinople to the insults or pity of the multitude; and it
      was not till some signs of putrefaction had appeared, that Phocas
      connived at the private burial of these venerable remains. In
      that grave, the faults and errors of Maurice were kindly
      interred. His fate alone was remembered; and at the end of twenty
      years, in the recital of the history of Theophylact, the mournful
      tale was interrupted by the tears of the audience. 47

      43 (return) [ In their clamors against Maurice, the people of
      Constantinople branded him with the name of Marcionite or
      Marcionist; a heresy (says Theophylact, l. viii. c. 9). Did they
      only cast out a vague reproach—or had the emperor really listened
      to some obscure teacher of those ancient Gnostics?]

      44 (return) [ The church of St. Autonomous (whom I have not the
      honor to know) was 150 stadia from Constantinople, (Theophylact,
      l. viii. c. 9.) The port of Eutropius, where Maurice and his
      children were murdered, is described by Gyllius (de Bosphoro
      Thracio, l. iii. c. xi.) as one of the two harbors of Chalcedon.]

      45 (return) [ The inhabitants of Constantinople were generally
      subject; and Theophylact insinuates, (l. viii. c. 9,) that if it
      were consistent with the rules of history, he could assign the
      medical cause. Yet such a digression would not have been more
      impertinent than his inquiry (l. vii. c. 16, 17) into the annual
      inundations of the Nile, and all the opinions of the Greek
      philosophers on that subject.]

      46 (return) [ From this generous attempt, Corneille has deduced
      the intricate web of his tragedy of Heraclius, which requires
      more than one representation to be clearly understood, (Corneille
      de Voltaire, tom. v. p. 300;) and which, after an interval of
      some years, is said to have puzzled the author himself,
      (Anecdotes Dramatiques, tom. i. p. 422.)]

      47 (return) [ The revolt of Phocas and death of Maurice are told
      by Theophylact Simocatta, (l. viii. c. 7—12,) the Paschal
      Chronicle, (p. 379, 380,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 238-244,)
      Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 77—80,) and Cedrenus, (p.
      399—404.)]


      Such tears must have flowed in secret, and such compassion would
      have been criminal, under the reign of Phocas, who was peaceably
      acknowledged in the provinces of the East and West. The images of
      the emperor and his wife Leontia were exposed in the Lateran to
      the veneration of the clergy and senate of Rome, and afterwards
      deposited in the palace of the Caesars, between those of
      Constantine and Theodosius. As a subject and a Christian, it was
      the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the established government;
      but the joyful applause with which he salutes the fortune of the
      assassin, has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of
      the saint. The successor of the apostles might have inculcated
      with decent firmness the guilt of blood, and the necessity of
      repentance; he is content to celebrate the deliverance of the
      people and the fall of the oppressor; to rejoice that the piety
      and benignity of Phocas have been raised by Providence to the
      Imperial throne; to pray that his hands may be strengthened
      against all his enemies; and to express a wish, perhaps a
      prophecy, that, after a long and triumphant reign, he may be
      transferred from a temporal to an everlasting kingdom. 48 I have
      already traced the steps of a revolution so pleasing, in
      Gregory’s opinion, both to heaven and earth; and Phocas does not
      appear less hateful in the exercise than in the acquisition of
      power. The pencil of an impartial historian has delineated the
      portrait of a monster: 49 his diminutive and deformed person, the
      closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless
      chin, and his cheek disfigured and discolored by a formidable
      scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged
      in the supreme rank a more ample privilege of lust and
      drunkenness; and his brutal pleasures were either injurious to
      his subjects or disgraceful to himself. Without assuming the
      office of a prince, he renounced the profession of a soldier; and
      the reign of Phocas afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and
      Asia with desolating war. His savage temper was inflamed by
      passion, hardened by fear, and exasperated by resistance or
      reproach. The flight of Theodosius to the Persian court had been
      intercepted by a rapid pursuit, or a deceitful message: he was
      beheaded at Nice, and the last hours of the young prince were
      soothed by the comforts of religion and the consciousness of
      innocence. Yet his phantom disturbed the repose of the usurper: a
      whisper was circulated through the East, that the son of Maurice
      was still alive: the people expected their avenger, and the widow
      and daughters of the late emperor would have adopted as their son
      and brother the vilest of mankind. In the massacre of the
      Imperial family, 50 the mercy, or rather the discretion, of
      Phocas had spared these unhappy females, and they were decently
      confined to a private house. But the spirit of the empress
      Constantina, still mindful of her father, her husband, and her
      sons, aspired to freedom and revenge. At the dead of night, she
      escaped to the sanctuary of St. Sophia; but her tears, and the
      gold of her associate Germanus, were insufficient to provoke an
      insurrection. Her life was forfeited to revenge, and even to
      justice: but the patriarch obtained and pledged an oath for her
      safety: a monastery was allotted for her prison, and the widow of
      Maurice accepted and abused the lenity of his assassin. The
      discovery or the suspicion of a second conspiracy, dissolved the
      engagements, and rekindled the fury, of Phocas. A matron who
      commanded the respect and pity of mankind, the daughter, wife,
      and mother of emperors, was tortured like the vilest malefactor,
      to force a confession of her designs and associates; and the
      empress Constantina, with her three innocent daughters, was
      beheaded at Chalcedon, on the same ground which had been stained
      with the blood of her husband and five sons. After such an
      example, it would be superfluous to enumerate the names and
      sufferings of meaner victims. Their condemnation was seldom
      preceded by the forms of trial, and their punishment was
      embittered by the refinements of cruelty: their eyes were
      pierced, their tongues were torn from the root, the hands and
      feet were amputated; some expired under the lash, others in the
      flames; others again were transfixed with arrows; and a simple
      speedy death was mercy which they could rarely obtain. The
      hippodrome, the sacred asylum of the pleasures and the liberty of
      the Romans, was polluted with heads and limbs, and mangled
      bodies; and the companions of Phocas were the most sensible, that
      neither his favor, nor their services, could protect them from a
      tyrant, the worthy rival of the Caligulas and Domitians of the
      first age of the empire. 51

      48 (return) [ Gregor. l. xi. epist. 38, indict. vi. Benignitatem
      vestrae pietatis ad Imperiale fastigium pervenisse gaudemus.
      Laetentur coeli et exultet terra, et de vestris benignis actibus
      universae republicae populus nunc usque vehementer afflictus
      hilarescat, &c. This base flattery, the topic of Protestant
      invective, is justly censured by the philosopher Bayle,
      (Dictionnaire Critique, Gregoire I. Not. H. tom. ii. p. 597 598.)
      Cardinal Baronius justifies the pope at the expense of the fallen
      emperor.]

      49 (return) [ The images of Phocas were destroyed; but even the
      malice of his enemies would suffer one copy of such a portrait or
      caricature (Cedrenus, p. 404) to escape the flames.]

      50 (return) [ The family of Maurice is represented by Ducange,
      (Familiae By zantinae, p. 106, 107, 108;) his eldest son
      Theodosius had been crowned emperor, when he was no more than
      four years and a half old, and he is always joined with his
      father in the salutations of Gregory. With the Christian
      daughters, Anastasia and Theocteste, I am surprised to find the
      Pagan name of Cleopatra.]

      51 (return) [ Some of the cruelties of Phocas are marked by
      Theophylact, l. viii. c. 13, 14, 15. George of Pisidia, the poet
      of Heraclius, styles him (Bell. Avaricum, p. 46, Rome, 1777). The
      latter epithet is just—but the corrupter of life was easily
      vanquished.]




Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part III.


      A daughter of Phocas, his only child, was given in marriage to
      the patrician Crispus, 52 and the royal images of the bride and
      bridegroom were indiscreetly placed in the circus, by the side of
      the emperor. The father must desire that his posterity should
      inherit the fruit of his crimes, but the monarch was offended by
      this premature and popular association: the tribunes of the green
      faction, who accused the officious error of their sculptors, were
      condemned to instant death: their lives were granted to the
      prayers of the people; but Crispus might reasonably doubt,
      whether a jealous usurper could forget and pardon his involuntary
      competition. The green faction was alienated by the ingratitude
      of Phocas and the loss of their privileges; every province of the
      empire was ripe for rebellion; and Heraclius, exarch of Africa,
      persisted above two years in refusing all tribute and obedience
      to the centurion who disgraced the throne of Constantinople. By
      the secret emissaries of Crispus and the senate, the independent
      exarch was solicited to save and to govern his country; but his
      ambition was chilled by age, and he resigned the dangerous
      enterprise to his son Heraclius, and to Nicetas, the son of
      Gregory, his friend and lieutenant. The powers of Africa were
      armed by the two adventurous youths; they agreed that the one
      should navigate the fleet from Carthage to Constantinople, that
      the other should lead an army through Egypt and Asia, and that
      the Imperial purple should be the reward of diligence and
      success. A faint rumor of their undertaking was conveyed to the
      ears of Phocas, and the wife and mother of the younger Heraclius
      were secured as the hostages of his faith: but the treacherous
      heart of Crispus extenuated the distant peril, the means of
      defence were neglected or delayed, and the tyrant supinely slept
      till the African navy cast anchor in the Hellespont. Their
      standard was joined at Abidus by the fugitives and exiles who
      thirsted for revenge; the ships of Heraclius, whose lofty masts
      were adorned with the holy symbols of religion, 53 steered their
      triumphant course through the Propontis; and Phocas beheld from
      the windows of the palace his approaching and inevitable fate.
      The green faction was tempted, by gifts and promises, to oppose a
      feeble and fruitless resistance to the landing of the Africans:
      but the people, and even the guards, were determined by the
      well-timed defection of Crispus; and the tyrant was seized by a
      private enemy, who boldly invaded the solitude of the palace.
      Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a vile habit, and
      loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat to the
      Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes
      of his abominable reign. “Wilt thou govern better?” were the last
      words of the despair of Phocas. After suffering each variety of
      insult and torture, his head was severed from his body, the
      mangled trunk was cast into the flames, and the same treatment
      was inflicted on the statues of the vain usurper, and the
      seditious banner of the green faction. The voice of the clergy,
      the senate, and the people, invited Heraclius to ascend the
      throne which he had purified from guilt and ignominy; after some
      graceful hesitation, he yielded to their entreaties. His
      coronation was accompanied by that of his wife Eudoxia; and their
      posterity, till the fourth generation, continued to reign over
      the empire of the East. The voyage of Heraclius had been easy and
      prosperous; the tedious march of Nicetas was not accomplished
      before the decision of the contest: but he submitted without a
      murmur to the fortune of his friend, and his laudable intentions
      were rewarded with an equestrian statue, and a daughter of the
      emperor. It was more difficult to trust the fidelity of Crispus,
      whose recent services were recompensed by the command of the
      Cappadocian army. His arrogance soon provoked, and seemed to
      excuse, the ingratitude of his new sovereign. In the presence of
      the senate, the son-in-law of Phocas was condemned to embrace the
      monastic life; and the sentence was justified by the weighty
      observation of Heraclius, that the man who had betrayed his
      father could never be faithful to his friend. 54

      52 (return) [ In the writers, and in the copies of those writers,
      there is such hesitation between the names of Priscus and
      Crispus, (Ducange, Fam Byzant. p. 111,) that I have been tempted
      to identify the son-in-law of Phocas with the hero five times
      victorious over the Avars.]

      53 (return) [ According to Theophanes. Cedrenus adds, which
      Heraclius bore as a banner in the first Persian expedition. See
      George Pisid. Acroas L 140. The manufacture seems to have
      flourished; but Foggini, the Roman editor, (p. 26,) is at a loss
      to determine whether this picture was an original or a copy.]

      54 (return) [ See the tyranny of Phocas and the elevation of
      Heraclius, in Chron. Paschal. p. 380—383. Theophanes, p. 242-250.
      Nicephorus, p. 3—7. Cedrenus, p. 404—407. Zonaras, tom. ii. l.
      xiv. p. 80—82.]


      Even after his death the republic was afflicted by the crimes of
      Phocas, which armed with a pious cause the most formidable of her
      enemies. According to the friendly and equal forms of the
      Byzantine and Persian courts, he announced his exaltation to the
      throne; and his ambassador Lilius, who had presented him with the
      heads of Maurice and his sons, was the best qualified to describe
      the circumstances of the tragic scene. 55 However it might be
      varnished by fiction or sophistry, Chosroes turned with horror
      from the assassin, imprisoned the pretended envoy, disclaimed the
      usurper, and declared himself the avenger of his father and
      benefactor. The sentiments of grief and resentment, which
      humanity would feel, and honor would dictate, promoted on this
      occasion the interest of the Persian king; and his interest was
      powerfully magnified by the national and religious prejudices of
      the Magi and satraps. In a strain of artful adulation, which
      assumed the language of freedom, they presumed to censure the
      excess of his gratitude and friendship for the Greeks; a nation
      with whom it was dangerous to conclude either peace or alliance;
      whose superstition was devoid of truth and justice, and who must
      be incapable of any virtue, since they could perpetrate the most
      atrocious of crimes, the impious murder of their sovereign. 56
      For the crime of an ambitious centurion, the nation which he
      oppressed was chastised with the calamities of war; and the same
      calamities, at the end of twenty years, were retaliated and
      redoubled on the heads of the Persians. 57 The general who had
      restored Chosroes to the throne still commanded in the East; and
      the name of Narses was the formidable sound with which the
      Assyrian mothers were accustomed to terrify their infants. It is
      not improbable, that a native subject of Persia should encourage
      his master and his friend to deliver and possess the provinces of
      Asia. It is still more probable, that Chosroes should animate his
      troops by the assurance that the sword which they dreaded the
      most would remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in their favor.
      The hero could not depend on the faith of a tyrant; and the
      tyrant was conscious how little he deserved the obedience of a
      hero. Narses was removed from his military command; he reared an
      independent standard at Hierapolis, in Syria: he was betrayed by
      fallacious promises, and burnt alive in the market-place of
      Constantinople. Deprived of the only chief whom they could fear
      or esteem, the bands which he had led to victory were twice
      broken by the cavalry, trampled by the elephants, and pierced by
      the arrows of the Barbarians; and a great number of the captives
      were beheaded on the field of battle by the sentence of the
      victor, who might justly condemn these seditious mercenaries as
      the authors or accomplices of the death of Maurice. Under the
      reign of Phocas, the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and
      Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by
      the Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian
      cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhaea or Aleppo, and soon
      encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The
      rapid tide of success discloses the decay of the empire, the
      incapacity of Phocas, and the disaffection of his subjects; and
      Chosroes provided a decent apology for their submission or
      revolt, by an impostor, who attended his camp as the son of
      Maurice 58 and the lawful heir of the monarchy.

      55 (return) [ Theophylact, l. viii. c. 15. The life of Maurice
      was composed about the year 628 (l. viii. c. 13) by Theophylact
      Simocatta, ex-præfect, a native of Egypt. Photius, who gives an
      ample extract of the work, (cod. lxv. p. 81—100,) gently reproves
      the affectation and allegory of the style. His preface is a
      dialogue between Philosophy and History; they seat themselves
      under a plane-tree, and the latter touches her lyre.]

      56 (return) [ Christianis nec pactum esse, nec fidem nec foedus
      ..... quod si ulla illis fides fuisset, regem suum non
      occidissent. Eutych. Annales tom. ii. p. 211, vers. Pocock.]

      57 (return) [ We must now, for some ages, take our leave of
      contemporary historians, and descend, if it be a descent, from
      the affectation of rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles
      and abridgments. Those of Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 244—279)
      and Nicephorus (p. 3—16) supply a regular, but imperfect, series
      of the Persian war; and for any additional facts I quote my
      special authorities. Theophanes, a courtier who became a monk,
      was born A.D. 748; Nicephorus patriarch of Constantinople, who
      died A.D. 829, was somewhat younger: they both suffered in the
      cause of images Hankius, de Scriptoribus Byzantinis, p. 200-246.]

      58 (return) [ The Persian historians have been themselves
      deceived: but Theophanes (p. 244) accuses Chosroes of the fraud
      and falsehood; and Eutychius believes (Annal. tom. ii. p. 212)
      that the son of Maurice, who was saved from the assassins, lived
      and died a monk on Mount Sinai.]


      The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received, 59
      was that of the loss of Antioch; but the aged metropolis, so
      often overturned by earthquakes, and pillaged by the enemy, could
      supply but a small and languid stream of treasure and blood. The
      Persians were equally successful, and more fortunate, in the sack
      of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia; and as they advanced
      beyond the ramparts of the frontier, the boundary of ancient war,
      they found a less obstinate resistance and a more plentiful
      harvest. The pleasant vale of Damascus has been adorned in every
      age with a royal city: her obscure felicity has hitherto escaped
      the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his
      troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the hills
      of Libanus, or invaded the cities of the Phœnician coast. The
      conquest of Jerusalem, 60 which had been meditated by Nushirvan,
      was achieved by the zeal and avarice of his grandson; the ruin of
      the proudest monument of Christianity was vehemently urged by the
      intolerant spirit of the Magi; and he could enlist for this holy
      warfare with an army of six-and-twenty thousand Jews, whose
      furious bigotry might compensate, in some degree, for the want of
      valor and discipline. 6011 After the reduction of Galilee, and
      the region beyond the Jordan, whose resistance appears to have
      delayed the fate of the capital, Jerusalem itself was taken by
      assault. The sepulchre of Christ, and the stately churches of
      Helena and Constantine, were consumed, or at least damaged, by
      the flames; the devout offerings of three hundred years were
      rifled in one sacrilegious day; the Patriarch Zachariah, and the
      true cross, were transported into Persia; and the massacre of
      ninety thousand Christians is imputed to the Jews and Arabs, who
      swelled the disorder of the Persian march. The fugitives of
      Palestine were entertained at Alexandria by the charity of John
      the Archbishop, who is distinguished among a crowd of saints by
      the epithet of almsgiver: 61 and the revenues of the church, with
      a treasure of three hundred thousand pounds, were restored to the
      true proprietors, the poor of every country and every
      denomination. But Egypt itself, the only province which had been
      exempt, since the time of Diocletian, from foreign and domestic
      war, was again subdued by the successors of Cyrus. Pelusium, the
      key of that impervious country, was surprised by the cavalry of
      the Persians: they passed, with impunity, the innumerable
      channels of the Delta, and explored the long valley of the Nile,
      from the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of Aethiopia.
      Alexandria might have been relieved by a naval force, but the
      archbishop and the præfect embarked for Cyprus; and Chosroes
      entered the second city of the empire, which still preserved a
      wealthy remnant of industry and commerce. His western trophy was
      erected, not on the walls of Carthage, 62 but in the neighborhood
      of Tripoli; the Greek colonies of Cyrene were finally extirpated;
      and the conqueror, treading in the footsteps of Alexander,
      returned in triumph through the sands of the Libyan desert. In
      the same campaign, another army advanced from the Euphrates to
      the Thracian Bosphorus; Chalcedon surrendered after a long siege,
      and a Persian camp was maintained above ten years in the presence
      of Constantinople. The sea-coast of Pontus, the city of Ancyra,
      and the Isle of Rhodes, are enumerated among the last conquests
      of the great king; and if Chosroes had possessed any maritime
      power, his boundless ambition would have spread slavery and
      desolation over the provinces of Europe.

      59 (return) [ Eutychius dates all the losses of the empire under
      the reign of Phocas; an error which saves the honor of Heraclius,
      whom he brings not from Carthage, but Salonica, with a fleet
      laden with vegetables for the relief of Constantinople, (Annal.
      tom. ii. p. 223, 224.) The other Christians of the East,
      Barhebraeus, (apud Asseman, Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p.
      412, 413,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16,) Abulpharagius,
      (Dynast. p. 98, 99,) are more sincere and accurate. The years of
      the Persian war are disposed in the chronology of Pagi.]

      60 (return) [ On the conquest of Jerusalem, an event so
      interesting to the church, see the Annals of Eutychius, (tom. ii.
      p. 212—223,) and the lamentations of the monk Antiochus, (apud
      Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 614, No. 16—26,) whose one hundred
      and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads
      may be said to be extant.]

      6011 (return) [ See Hist. of Jews, vol. iii. p. 240.—M.]

      61 (return) [ The life of this worthy saint is composed by
      Leontius, a contemporary bishop; and I find in Baronius (Annal.
      Eccles. A.D. 610, No. 10, &c.) and Fleury (tom. viii. p. 235-242)
      sufficient extracts of this edifying work.]

      62 (return) [ The error of Baronius, and many others who have
      carried the arms of Chosroes to Carthage instead of Chalcedon, is
      founded on the near resemblance of the Greek words, in the text
      of Theophanes, &c., which have been sometimes confounded by
      transcribers, and sometimes by critics.]


      From the long-disputed banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the
      reign of the grandson of Nushirvan was suddenly extended to the
      Hellespont and the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian
      monarchy. But the provinces, which had been fashioned by the
      habits of six hundred years to the virtues and vices of the Roman
      government, supported with reluctance the yoke of the Barbarians.
      The idea of a republic was kept alive by the institutions, or at
      least by the writings, of the Greeks and Romans, and the subjects
      of Heraclius had been educated to pronounce the words of liberty
      and law. But it has always been the pride and policy of Oriental
      princes to display the titles and attributes of their
      omnipotence; to upbraid a nation of slaves with their true name
      and abject condition, and to enforce, by cruel and insolent
      threats, the rigor of their absolute commands. The Christians of
      the East were scandalized by the worship of fire, and the impious
      doctrine of the two principles: the Magi were not less intolerant
      than the bishops; and the martyrdom of some native Persians, who
      had deserted the religion of Zoroaster, 63 was conceived to be
      the prelude of a fierce and general persecution. By the
      oppressive laws of Justinian, the adversaries of the church were
      made the enemies of the state; the alliance of the Jews,
      Nestorians, and Jacobites, had contributed to the success of
      Chosroes, and his partial favor to the sectaries provoked the
      hatred and fears of the Catholic clergy. Conscious of their fear
      and hatred, the Persian conqueror governed his new subjects with
      an iron sceptre; and, as if he suspected the stability of his
      dominion, he exhausted their wealth by exorbitant tributes and
      licentious rapine despoiled or demolished the temples of the
      East; and transported to his hereditary realms the gold, the
      silver, the precious marbles, the arts, and the artists of the
      Asiatic cities. In the obscure picture of the calamities of the
      empire, 64 it is not easy to discern the figure of Chosroes
      himself, to separate his actions from those of his lieutenants,
      or to ascertain his personal merit in the general blaze of glory
      and magnificence. He enjoyed with ostentation the fruits of
      victory, and frequently retired from the hardships of war to the
      luxury of the palace. But in the space of twenty-four years, he
      was deterred by superstition or resentment from approaching the
      gates of Ctesiphon: and his favorite residence of Artemita, or
      Dastagerd, was situate beyond the Tigris, about sixty miles to
      the north of the capital. 65 The adjacent pastures were covered
      with flocks and herds: the paradise or park was replenished with
      pheasants, peacocks, ostriches, roebucks, and wild boars, and the
      noble game of lions and tigers was sometimes turned loose for the
      bolder pleasures of the chase. Nine hundred and sixty elephants
      were maintained for the use or splendor of the great king: his
      tents and baggage were carried into the field by twelve thousand
      great camels and eight thousand of a smaller size; 66 and the
      royal stables were filled with six thousand mules and horses,
      among whom the names of Shebdiz and Barid are renowned for their
      speed or beauty. 6611 Six thousand guards successively mounted
      before the palace gate; the service of the interior apartments
      was performed by twelve thousand slaves, and in the number of
      three thousand virgins, the fairest of Asia, some happy concubine
      might console her master for the age or the indifference of Sira.


      The various treasures of gold, silver, gems, silks, and
      aromatics, were deposited in a hundred subterraneous vaults and
      the chamber Badaverd denoted the accidental gift of the winds
      which had wafted the spoils of Heraclius into one of the Syrian
      harbors of his rival. The vice of flattery, and perhaps of
      fiction, is not ashamed to compute the thirty thousand rich
      hangings that adorned the walls; the forty thousand columns of
      silver, or more probably of marble, and plated wood, that
      supported the roof; and the thousand globes of gold suspended in
      the dome, to imitate the motions of the planets and the
      constellations of the zodiac. 67 While the Persian monarch
      contemplated the wonders of his art and power, he received an
      epistle from an obscure citizen of Mecca, inviting him to
      acknowledge Mahomet as the apostle of God. He rejected the
      invitation, and tore the epistle. “It is thus,” exclaimed the
      Arabian prophet, “that God will tear the kingdom, and reject the
      supplications of Chosroes.” 68 6811 Placed on the verge of the
      two great empires of the East, Mahomet observed with secret joy
      the progress of their mutual destruction; and in the midst of the
      Persian triumphs, he ventured to foretell, that before many years
      should elapse, victory should again return to the banners of the
      Romans. 69

      63 (return) [ The genuine acts of St. Anastasius are published in
      those of the with general council, from whence Baronius (Annal.
      Eccles. A.D. 614, 626, 627) and Butler (Lives of the Saints, vol.
      i. p. 242—248) have taken their accounts. The holy martyr
      deserted from the Persian to the Roman army, became a monk at
      Jerusalem, and insulted the worship of the Magi, which was then
      established at Caesarea in Palestine.]

      64 (return) [ Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 99. Elmacin, Hist.
      Saracen. p. 14.]

      65 (return) [ D’Anville, Mem. de l’Academie des Inscriptions,
      tom. xxxii. p. 568—571.]

      66 (return) [ The difference between the two races consists in
      one or two humps; the dromedary has only one; the size of the
      proper camel is larger; the country he comes from, Turkistan or
      Bactriana; the dromedary is confined to Arabia and Africa.
      Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. p. 211, &c. Aristot. Hist.
      Animal. tom. i. l. ii. c. 1, tom. ii. p. 185.]

      6611 (return) [ The ruins of these scenes of Khoosroo’s
      magnificence have been visited by Sir R. K. Porter. At the ruins
      of Tokht i Bostan, he saw a gorgeous picture of a hunt,
      singularly illustrative of this passage. Travels, vol. ii. p.
      204. Kisra Shirene, which he afterwards examined, appears to have
      been the palace of Dastagerd. Vol. ii. p. 173—175.—M.]

      67 (return) [ Theophanes, Chronograph. p. 268. D’Herbelot,
      Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 997. The Greeks describe the decay,
      the Persians the splendor, of Dastagerd; but the former speak
      from the modest witness of the eye, the latter from the vague
      report of the ear.]

      68 (return) [ The historians of Mahomet, Abulfeda (in Vit.
      Mohammed, p. 92, 93) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p.
      247,) date this embassy in the viith year of the Hegira, which
      commences A.D. 628, May 11. Their chronology is erroneous, since
      Chosroes died in the month of February of the same year, (Pagi,
      Critica, tom. ii. p. 779.) The count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de
      Mahomed, p. 327, 328) places this embassy about A.D. 615, soon
      after the conquest of Palestine. Yet Mahomet would scarcely have
      ventured so soon on so bold a step.]

      6811 (return) [ Khoosroo Purveez was encamped on the banks of the
      Karasoo River when he received the letter of Mahomed. He tore the
      letter and threw it into the Karasoo. For this action, the
      moderate author of the Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh calls him a wretch, and
      rejoices in all his subsequent misfortunes. These impressions
      still exist. I remarked to a Persian, when encamped near the
      Karasoo, in 1800, that the banks were very high, which must make
      it difficult to apply its waters to irrigation. “It once
      fertilized the whole country,” said the zealous Mahomedan, “but
      its channel sunk with honor from its banks, when that madman,
      Khoosroo, threw our holy Prophet’s letter into its stream; which
      has ever since been accursed and useless.” Malcolm’s Persia, vol.
      i. p. 126—M.]

      69 (return) [ See the xxxth chapter of the Koran, entitled the
      Greeks. Our honest and learned translator, Sale, (p. 330, 331,)
      fairly states this conjecture, guess, wager, of Mahomet; but
      Boulainvilliers, (p. 329—344,) with wicked intentions, labors to
      establish this evident prophecy of a future event, which must, in
      his opinion, embarrass the Christian polemics.]


      At the time when this prediction is said to have been delivered,
      no prophecy could be more distant from its accomplishment, since
      the first twelve years of Heraclius announced the approaching
      dissolution of the empire. If the motives of Chosroes had been
      pure and honorable, he must have ended the quarrel with the death
      of Phocas, and he would have embraced, as his best ally, the
      fortunate African who had so generously avenged the injuries of
      his benefactor Maurice. The prosecution of the war revealed the
      true character of the Barbarian; and the suppliant embassies of
      Heraclius to beseech his clemency, that he would spare the
      innocent, accept a tribute, and give peace to the world, were
      rejected with contemptuous silence or insolent menace. Syria,
      Egypt, and the provinces of Asia, were subdued by the Persian
      arms, while Europe, from the confines of Istria to the long wall
      of Thrace, was oppressed by the Avars, unsatiated with the blood
      and rapine of the Italian war. They had coolly massacred their
      male captives in the sacred field of Pannonia; the women and
      children were reduced to servitude, and the noblest virgins were
      abandoned to the promiscuous lust of the Barbarians. The amorous
      matron who opened the gates of Friuli passed a short night in the
      arms of her royal lover; the next evening, Romilda was condemned
      to the embraces of twelve Avars, and the third day the Lombard
      princess was impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan
      observed with a cruel smile, that such a husband was the fit
      recompense of her lewdness and perfidy. 70 By these implacable
      enemies, Heraclius, on either side, was insulted and besieged:
      and the Roman empire was reduced to the walls of Constantinople,
      with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime
      cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast. After the
      loss of Egypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and
      pestilence; and the emperor, incapable of resistance, and
      hopeless of relief, had resolved to transfer his person and
      government to the more secure residence of Carthage. His ships
      were already laden with the treasures of the palace; but his
      flight was arrested by the patriarch, who armed the powers of
      religion in the defence of his country; led Heraclius to the
      altar of St. Sophia, and extorted a solemn oath, that he would
      live and die with the people whom God had intrusted to his care.
      The chagan was encamped in the plains of Thrace; but he
      dissembled his perfidious designs, and solicited an interview
      with the emperor near the town of Heraclea. Their reconciliation
      was celebrated with equestrian games; the senate and people, in
      their gayest apparel, resorted to the festival of peace; and the
      Avars beheld, with envy and desire, the spectacle of Roman
      luxury. On a sudden the hippodrome was encompassed by the
      Scythian cavalry, who had pressed their secret and nocturnal
      march: the tremendous sound of the chagan’s whip gave the signal
      of the assault, and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm,
      was saved with extreme hazard, by the fleetness of his horse. So
      rapid was the pursuit, that the Avars almost entered the golden
      gate of Constantinople with the flying crowds: 71 but the plunder
      of the suburbs rewarded their treason, and they transported
      beyond the Danube two hundred and seventy thousand captives. On
      the shore of Chalcedon, the emperor held a safer conference with
      a more honorable foe, who, before Heraclius descended from his
      galley, saluted with reverence and pity the majesty of the
      purple. The friendly offer of Sain, the Persian general, to
      conduct an embassy to the presence of the great king, was
      accepted with the warmest gratitude, and the prayer for pardon
      and peace was humbly presented by the Praetorian præfect, the
      præfect of the city, and one of the first ecclesiastics of the
      patriarchal church. 72 But the lieutenant of Chosroes had fatally
      mistaken the intentions of his master. “It was not an embassy,”
      said the tyrant of Asia, “it was the person of Heraclius, bound
      in chains, that he should have brought to the foot of my throne.
      I will never give peace to the emperor of Rome, till he had
      abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the sun.”
      Sain was flayed alive, according to the inhuman practice of his
      country; and the separate and rigorous confinement of the
      ambassadors violated the law of nations, and the faith of an
      express stipulation. Yet the experience of six years at length
      persuaded the Persian monarch to renounce the conquest of
      Constantinople, and to specify the annual tribute or ransom of
      the Roman empire; a thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents
      of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses, and a
      thousand virgins. Heraclius subscribed these ignominious terms;
      but the time and space which he obtained to collect such
      treasures from the poverty of the East, was industriously
      employed in the preparations of a bold and desperate attack.


      70 (return) [Footnote 70: Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis
      Langobardorum, l. iv. c. 38, 42. Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom.
      v. p. 305, &c.]

      71 (return) [ The Paschal Chronicle, which sometimes introduces
      fragments of history into a barren list of names and dates, gives
      the best account of the treason of the Avars, p. 389, 390. The
      number of captives is added by Nicephorus.]

      72 (return) [ Some original pieces, such as the speech or letter
      of the Roman ambassadors, (p. 386—388,) likewise constitute the
      merit of the Paschal Chronicle, which was composed, perhaps at
      Alexandria, under the reign of Heraclius.]


      Of the characters conspicuous in history, that of Heraclius is
      one of the most extraordinary and inconsistent. In the first and
      last years of a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave
      of sloth, of pleasure, or of superstition, the careless and
      impotent spectator of the public calamities. But the languid
      mists of the morning and evening are separated by the brightness
      of the meridian sun; the Arcadius of the palace arose the Caesar
      of the camp; and the honor of Rome and Heraclius was gloriously
      retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous
      campaigns. It was the duty of the Byzantine historians to have
      revealed the causes of his slumber and vigilance. At this
      distance we can only conjecture, that he was endowed with more
      personal courage than political resolution; that he was detained
      by the charms, and perhaps the arts, of his niece Martina, with
      whom, after the death of Eudocia, he contracted an incestuous
      marriage; 73 and that he yielded to the base advice of the
      counsellors, who urged, as a fundamental law, that the life of
      the emperor should never be exposed in the field. 74 Perhaps he
      was awakened by the last insolent demand of the Persian
      conqueror; but at the moment when Heraclius assumed the spirit of
      a hero, the only hopes of the Romans were drawn from the
      vicissitudes of fortune, which might threaten the proud
      prosperity of Chosroes, and must be favorable to those who had
      attained the lowest period of depression. 75 To provide for the
      expenses of war, was the first care of the emperor; and for the
      purpose of collecting the tribute, he was allowed to solicit the
      benevolence of the eastern provinces. But the revenue no longer
      flowed in the usual channels; the credit of an arbitrary prince
      is annihilated by his power; and the courage of Heraclius was
      first displayed in daring to borrow the consecrated wealth of
      churches, under the solemn vow of restoring, with usury, whatever
      he had been compelled to employ in the service of religion and
      the empire. The clergy themselves appear to have sympathized with
      the public distress; and the discreet patriarch of Alexandria,
      without admitting the precedent of sacrilege, assisted his
      sovereign by the miraculous or seasonable revelation of a secret
      treasure. 76 Of the soldiers who had conspired with Phocas, only
      two were found to have survived the stroke of time and of the
      Barbarians; 77 the loss, even of these seditious veterans, was
      imperfectly supplied by the new levies of Heraclius, and the gold
      of the sanctuary united, in the same camp, the names, and arms,
      and languages of the East and West. He would have been content
      with the neutrality of the Avars; and his friendly entreaty, that
      the chagan would act, not as the enemy, but as the guardian, of
      the empire, was accompanied with a more persuasive donative of
      two hundred thousand pieces of gold. Two days after the festival
      of Easter, the emperor, exchanging his purple for the simple garb
      of a penitent and warrior, 78 gave the signal of his departure.
      To the faith of the people Heraclius recommended his children;
      the civil and military powers were vested in the most deserving
      hands, and the discretion of the patriarch and senate was
      authorized to save or surrender the city, if they should be
      oppressed in his absence by the superior forces of the enemy.


      73 (return) [Nicephorus, (p. 10, 11,) is happy to observe, that
      of two sons, its incestuous fruit, the elder was marked by
      Providence with a stiff neck, the younger with the loss of
      hearing.]

      74 (return) [ George of Pisidia, (Acroas. i. 112—125, p. 5,) who
      states the opinions, acquits the pusillanimous counsellors of any
      sinister views. Would he have excused the proud and contemptuous
      admonition of Crispus?]

      75 (return) [ George Pisid. Acroas. i. 51, &c. p: 4. The
      Orientals are not less fond of remarking this strange
      vicissitude; and I remember some story of Khosrou Parviz, not
      very unlike the ring of Polycrates of Samos.]

      76 (return) [ Baronius gravely relates this discovery, or rather
      transmutation, of barrels, not of honey, but of gold, (Annal.
      Eccles. A.D. 620, No. 3, &c.) Yet the loan was arbitrary, since
      it was collected by soldiers, who were ordered to leave the
      patriarch of Alexandria no more than one hundred pounds of gold.
      Nicephorus, (p. 11,) two hundred years afterwards, speaks with
      ill humor of this contribution, which the church of
      Constantinople might still feel.]

      77 (return) [ Theophylact Symocatta, l. viii. c. 12. This
      circumstance need not excite our surprise. The muster-roll of a
      regiment, even in time of peace, is renewed in less than twenty
      or twenty-five years.]

      78 (return) [ He changed his purple for black, buckskins, and
      dyed them red in the blood of the Persians, (Georg. Pisid.
      Acroas. iii. 118, 121, 122 See the notes of Foggini, p. 35.)]


      The neighboring heights of Chalcedon were covered with tents and
      arms: but if the new levies of Heraclius had been rashly led to
      the attack, the victory of the Persians in the sight of
      Constantinople might have been the last day of the Roman empire.
      As imprudent would it have been to advance into the provinces of
      Asia, leaving their innumerable cavalry to intercept his convoys,
      and continually to hang on the lassitude and disorder of his
      rear. But the Greeks were still masters of the sea; a fleet of
      galleys, transports, and store-ships, was assembled in the
      harbor; the Barbarians consented to embark; a steady wind carried
      them through the Hellespont the western and southern coast of
      Asia Minor lay on their left hand; the spirit of their chief was
      first displayed in a storm, and even the eunuchs of his train
      were excited to suffer and to work by the example of their
      master. He landed his troops on the confines of Syria and
      Cilicia, in the Gulf of Scanderoon, where the coast suddenly
      turns to the south; 79 and his discernment was expressed in the
      choice of this important post. 80 From all sides, the scattered
      garrisons of the maritime cities and the mountains might repair
      with speed and safety to his Imperial standard. The natural
      fortifications of Cilicia protected, and even concealed, the camp
      of Heraclius, which was pitched near Issus, on the same ground
      where Alexander had vanquished the host of Darius. The angle
      which the emperor occupied was deeply indented into a vast
      semicircle of the Asiatic, Armenian, and Syrian provinces; and to
      whatsoever point of the circumference he should direct his
      attack, it was easy for him to dissemble his own motions, and to
      prevent those of the enemy. In the camp of Issus, the Roman
      general reformed the sloth and disorder of the veterans, and
      educated the new recruits in the knowledge and practice of
      military virtue. Unfolding the miraculous image of Christ, he
      urged them to revenge the holy altars which had been profaned by
      the worshippers of fire; addressing them by the endearing
      appellations of sons and brethren, he deplored the public and
      private wrongs of the republic. The subjects of a monarch were
      persuaded that they fought in the cause of freedom; and a similar
      enthusiasm was communicated to the foreign mercenaries, who must
      have viewed with equal indifference the interest of Rome and of
      Persia. Heraclius himself, with the skill and patience of a
      centurion, inculcated the lessons of the school of tactics, and
      the soldiers were assiduously trained in the use of their
      weapons, and the exercises and evolutions of the field. The
      cavalry and infantry in light or heavy armor were divided into
      two parties; the trumpets were fixed in the centre, and their
      signals directed the march, the charge, the retreat or pursuit;
      the direct or oblique order, the deep or extended phalanx; to
      represent in fictitious combat the operations of genuine war.
      Whatever hardships the emperor imposed on the troops, he
      inflicted with equal severity on himself; their labor, their
      diet, their sleep, were measured by the inflexible rules of
      discipline; and, without despising the enemy, they were taught to
      repose an implicit confidence in their own valor and the wisdom
      of their leader. Cilicia was soon encompassed with the Persian
      arms; but their cavalry hesitated to enter the defiles of Mount
      Taurus, till they were circumvented by the evolutions of
      Heraclius, who insensibly gained their rear, whilst he appeared
      to present his front in order of battle. By a false motion, which
      seemed to threaten Armenia, he drew them, against their wishes,
      to a general action. They were tempted by the artful disorder of
      his camp; but when they advanced to combat, the ground, the sun,
      and the expectation of both armies, were unpropitious to the
      Barbarians; the Romans successfully repeated their tactics in a
      field of battle, 81 and the event of the day declared to the
      world, that the Persians were not invincible, and that a hero was
      invested with the purple. Strong in victory and fame, Heraclius
      boldly ascended the heights of Mount Taurus, directed his march
      through the plains of Cappadocia, and established his troops, for
      the winter season, in safe and plentiful quarters on the banks of
      the River Halys. 82 His soul was superior to the vanity of
      entertaining Constantinople with an imperfect triumph; but the
      presence of the emperor was indispensably required to soothe the
      restless and rapacious spirit of the Avars.

      79 (return) [ George of Pisidia, (Acroas. ii. 10, p. 8) has fixed
      this important point of the Syrian and Cilician gates. They are
      elegantly described by Xenophon, who marched through them a
      thousand years before. A narrow pass of three stadia between
      steep, high rocks, and the Mediterranean, was closed at each end
      by strong gates, impregnable to the land, accessible by sea,
      (Anabasis, l. i. p. 35, 36, with Hutchinson’s Geographical
      Dissertation, p. vi.) The gates were thirty-five parasangs, or
      leagues, from Tarsus, (Anabasis, l. i. p. 33, 34,) and eight or
      ten from Antioch. Compare Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 580, 581.
      Schultens, Index Geograph. ad calcem Vit. Saladin. p. 9. Voyage
      en Turquie et en Perse, par M. Otter, tom. i. p. 78, 79.]

      80 (return) [ Heraclius might write to a friend in the modest
      words of Cicero: “Castra habuimus ea ipsa quae contra Darium
      habuerat apud Issum Alexander, imperator haud paulo melior quam
      aut tu aut ego.” Ad Atticum, v. 20. Issus, a rich and flourishing
      city in the time of Xenophon, was ruined by the prosperity of
      Alexandria or Scanderoon, on the other side of the bay.]

      81 (return) [ Foggini (Annotat. p. 31) suspects that the Persians
      were deceived by the of Aelian, (Tactic. c. 48,) an intricate
      spiral motion of the army. He observes (p. 28) that the military
      descriptions of George of Pisidia are transcribed in the Tactics
      of the emperor Leo.]

      82 (return) [ George of Pisidia, an eye-witness, (Acroas. ii.
      122, &c.,) described in three acroaseis, or cantos, the first
      expedition of Heraclius. The poem has been lately (1777)
      published at Rome; but such vague and declamatory praise is far
      from corresponding with the sanguine hopes of Pagi, D’Anville,
      &c.]


      Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has
      been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the
      deliverance of the empire. 83 He permitted the Persians to
      oppress for a while the provinces, and to insult with impunity
      the capital of the East; while the Roman emperor explored his
      perilous way through the Black Sea, 84 and the mountains of
      Armenia, penetrated into the heart of Persia, 85 and recalled the
      armies of the great king to the defence of their bleeding
      country. With a select band of five thousand soldiers, Heraclius
      sailed from Constantinople to Trebizond; assembled his forces
      which had wintered in the Pontic regions; and, from the mouth of
      the Phasis to the Caspian Sea, encouraged his subjects and allies
      to march with the successor of Constantine under the faithful and
      victorious banner of the cross. When the legions of Lucullus and
      Pompey first passed the Euphrates, they blushed at their easy
      victory over the natives of Armenia. But the long experience of
      war had hardened the minds and bodies of that effeminate peeple;
      their zeal and bravery were approved in the service of a
      declining empire; they abhorred and feared the usurpation of the
      house of Sassan, and the memory of persecution envenomed their
      pious hatred of the enemies of Christ. The limits of Armenia, as
      it had been ceded to the emperor Maurice, extended as far as the
      Araxes: the river submitted to the indignity of a bridge, 86 and
      Heraclius, in the footsteps of Mark Antony, advanced towards the
      city of Tauris or Gandzaca, 87 the ancient and modern capital of
      one of the provinces of Media. At the head of forty thousand men,
      Chosroes himself had returned from some distant expedition to
      oppose the progress of the Roman arms; but he retreated on the
      approach of Heraclius, declining the generous alternative of
      peace or of battle. Instead of half a million of inhabitants,
      which have been ascribed to Tauris under the reign of the Sophys,
      the city contained no more than three thousand houses; but the
      value of the royal treasures was enhanced by a tradition, that
      they were the spoils of Croesus, which had been transported by
      Cyrus from the citadel of Sardes. The rapid conquests of
      Heraclius were suspended only by the winter season; a motive of
      prudence, or superstition, 88 determined his retreat into the
      province of Albania, along the shores of the Caspian; and his
      tents were most probably pitched in the plains of Mogan, 89 the
      favorite encampment of Oriental princes. In the course of this
      successful inroad, he signalized the zeal and revenge of a
      Christian emperor: at his command, the soldiers extinguished the
      fire, and destroyed the temples, of the Magi; the statues of
      Chosroes, who aspired to divine honors, were abandoned to the
      flames; and the ruins of Thebarma or Ormia, 90 which had given
      birth to Zoroaster himself, made some atonement for the injuries
      of the holy sepulchre. A purer spirit of religion was shown in
      the relief and deliverance of fifty thousand captives. Heraclius
      was rewarded by their tears and grateful acclamations; but this
      wise measure, which spread the fame of his benevolence, diffused
      the murmurs of the Persians against the pride and obstinacy of
      their own sovereign.


      83 (return) [Footnote 83: Theophanes (p. 256) carries Heraclius
      swiftly into Armenia. Nicephorus, (p. 11,) though he confounds
      the two expeditions, defines the province of Lazica. Eutychius
      (Annal. tom. ii. p. 231) has given the 5000 men, with the more
      probable station of Trebizond.]

      84 (return) [ From Constantinople to Trebizond, with a fair wind,
      four or five days; from thence to Erzerom, five; to Erivan,
      twelve; to Taurus, ten; in all, thirty-two. Such is the Itinerary
      of Tavernier, (Voyages, tom. i. p. 12—56,) who was perfectly
      conversant with the roads of Asia. Tournefort, who travelled with
      a pacha, spent ten or twelve days between Trebizond and Erzerom,
      (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xviii.;) and Chardin
      (Voyages, tom. i. p. 249—254) gives the more correct distance of
      fifty-three parasangs, each of 5000 paces, (what paces?) between
      Erivan and Tauris.]

      85 (return) [ The expedition of Heraclius into Persia is finely
      illustrated by M. D’Anville, (Memoires de l’Academie des
      Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 559—573.) He discovers the
      situation of Gandzaca, Thebarma, Dastagerd, &c., with admirable
      skill and learning; but the obscure campaign of 624 he passes
      over in silence.]

      86 (return) [ Et pontem indignatus Araxes.—Virgil, Aeneid, viii.
      728. The River Araxes is noisy, rapid, vehement, and, with the
      melting of the snows, irresistible: the strongest and most massy
      bridges are swept away by the current; and its indignation is
      attested by the ruins of many arches near the old town of Zulfa.
      Voyages de Chardin, tom. i. p. 252.]

      87 (return) [ Chardin, tom. i. p. 255—259. With the Orientals,
      (D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 834,) he ascribes the
      foundation of Tauris, or Tebris, to Zobeide, the wife of the
      famous Khalif Haroun Alrashid; but it appears to have been more
      ancient; and the names of Gandzaca, Gazaca, Gaza, are expressive
      of the royal treasure. The number of 550,000 inhabitants is
      reduced by Chardin from 1,100,000, the popular estimate.]

      88 (return) [ He opened the gospel, and applied or interpreted
      the first casual passage to the name and situation of Albania.
      Theophanes, p. 258.]

      89 (return) [ The heath of Mogan, between the Cyrus and the
      Araxes, is sixty parasangs in length and twenty in breadth,
      (Olearius, p. 1023, 1024,) abounding in waters and fruitful
      pastures, (Hist. de Nadir Shah, translated by Mr. Jones from a
      Persian Ms., part ii. p. 2, 3.) See the encampments of Timur,
      (Hist. par Sherefeddin Ali, l. v. c. 37, l. vi. c. 13,) and the
      coronation of Nadir Shah, (Hist. Persanne, p. 3—13 and the
      English Life by Mr. Jones, p. 64, 65.)]

      90 (return) [ Thebarma and Ormia, near the Lake Spauta, are
      proved to be the same city by D’Anville, (Memoires de l’Academie,
      tom. xxviii. p. 564, 565.) It is honored as the birthplace of
      Zoroaster, according to the Persians, (Schultens, Index Geograph.
      p. 48;) and their tradition is fortified by M. Perron d’Anquetil,
      (Mem. de l’Acad. des Inscript. tom. xxxi. p. 375,) with some
      texts from his, or their, Zendavesta. * Note: D’Anville (Mem. de
      l’Acad. des Inscript. tom. xxxii. p. 560) labored to prove the
      identity of these two cities; but according to M. St. Martin,
      vol. xi. p. 97, not with perfect success. Ourmiah. called Ariema
      in the ancient Pehlvi books, is considered, both by the followers
      of Zoroaster and by the Mahometans, as his birthplace. It is
      situated in the southern part of Aderbidjan.—M.]




Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part IV.


      Amidst the glories of the succeeding campaign, Heraclius is
      almost lost to our eyes, and to those of the Byzantine
      historians. 91 From the spacious and fruitful plains of Albania,
      the emperor appears to follow the chain of Hyrcanian Mountains,
      to descend into the province of Media or Irak, and to carry his
      victorious arms as far as the royal cities of Casbin and Ispahan,
      which had never been approached by a Roman conqueror. Alarmed by
      the danger of his kingdom, the powers of Chosroes were already
      recalled from the Nile and the Bosphorus, and three formidable
      armies surrounded, in a distant and hostile land, the camp of the
      emperor. The Colchian allies prepared to desert his standard; and
      the fears of the bravest veterans were expressed, rather than
      concealed, by their desponding silence. “Be not terrified,” said
      the intrepid Heraclius, “by the multitude of your foes. With the
      aid of Heaven, one Roman may triumph over a thousand Barbarians.
      But if we devote our lives for the salvation of our brethren, we
      shall obtain the crown of martyrdom, and our immortal reward will
      be liberally paid by God and posterity.” These magnanimous
      sentiments were supported by the vigor of his actions. He
      repelled the threefold attack of the Persians, improved the
      divisions of their chiefs, and, by a well-concerted train of
      marches, retreats, and successful actions, finally chased them
      from the field into the fortified cities of Media and Assyria. In
      the severity of the winter season, Sarbaraza deemed himself
      secure in the walls of Salban: he was surprised by the activity
      of Heraclius, who divided his troops, and performed a laborious
      march in the silence of the night. The flat roofs of the houses
      were defended with useless valor against the darts and torches of
      the Romans: the satraps and nobles of Persia, with their wives
      and children, and the flower of their martial youth, were either
      slain or made prisoners. The general escaped by a precipitate
      flight, but his golden armor was the prize of the conqueror; and
      the soldiers of Heraclius enjoyed the wealth and repose which
      they had so nobly deserved. On the return of spring, the emperor
      traversed in seven days the mountains of Curdistan, and passed
      without resistance the rapid stream of the Tigris. Oppressed by
      the weight of their spoils and captives, the Roman army halted
      under the walls of Amida; and Heraclius informed the senate of
      Constantinople of his safety and success, which they had already
      felt by the retreat of the besiegers. The bridges of the
      Euphrates were destroyed by the Persians; but as soon as the
      emperor had discovered a ford, they hastily retired to defend the
      banks of the Sarus, 92 in Cilicia. That river, an impetuous
      torrent, was about three hundred feet broad; the bridge was
      fortified with strong turrets; and the banks were lined with
      Barbarian archers. After a bloody conflict, which continued till
      the evening, the Romans prevailed in the assault; and a Persian
      of gigantic size was slain and thrown into the Sarus by the hand
      of the emperor himself. The enemies were dispersed and dismayed;
      Heraclius pursued his march to Sebaste in Cappadocia; and at the
      expiration of three years, the same coast of the Euxine applauded
      his return from a long and victorious expedition. 93

      91 (return) [ I cannot find, and (what is much more,) M.
      D’Anville does not attempt to seek, the Salban, Tarantum,
      territory of the Huns, &c., mentioned by Theophanes, (p.
      260-262.) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 231, 232,) an
      insufficient author, names Asphahan; and Casbin is most probably
      the city of Sapor. Ispahan is twenty-four days’ journey from
      Tauris, and Casbin half way between, them (Voyages de Tavernier,
      tom. i. p. 63—82.)]

      92 (return) [ At ten parasangs from Tarsus, the army of the
      younger Cyrus passed the Sarus, three plethra in breadth: the
      Pyramus, a stadium in breadth, ran five parasangs farther to the
      east, (Xenophon, Anabas. l. i. p 33, 34.) Note: Now the
      Sihan.—M.]

      93 (return) [ George of Pisidia (Bell. Abaricum, 246—265, p. 49)
      celebrates with truth the persevering courage of the three
      campaigns against the Persians.]


      Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who
      disputed the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at
      the heart of their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted
      by the marches and combats of twenty years, and many of the
      veterans, who had survived the perils of the sword and the
      climate, were still detained in the fortresses of Egypt and
      Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes exhausted his
      kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and slaves,
      were divided into three formidable bodies. 94 The first army of
      fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the
      golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the
      second was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of
      his brother Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege
      Constantinople, and to second the operations of the chagan, with
      whom the Persian king had ratified a treaty of alliance and
      partition. Sarbar, the general of the third army, penetrated
      through the provinces of Asia to the well-known camp of
      Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred
      and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he
      impatiently waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the
      opposite side of the Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June,
      thirty thousand Barbarians, the vanguard of the Avars, forced the
      long wall, and drove into the capital a promiscuous crowd of
      peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore thousand 95 of his
      native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae, Russians,
      Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of the
      chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the
      whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the
      suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers;
      and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of
      the European and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the
      magistrates of Constantinople repeatedly strove to purchase the
      retreat of the chagan; but their deputies were rejected and
      insulted; and he suffered the patricians to stand before his
      throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were seated by
      his side. “You see,” said the haughty Barbarian, “the proofs of
      my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready
      to send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors.
      Presume no longer to tempt your master with a partial and
      inadequate ransom: your wealth and your city are the only
      presents worthy of my acceptance. For yourselves, I shall permit
      you to depart, each with an under-garment and a shirt; and, at my
      entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage through his
      lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive, has
      left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of
      the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like
      birds, unless like fishes you could dive into the waves.” 96
      During ten successive days, the capital was assaulted by the
      Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they
      advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the
      impenetrable tortoise; their engines discharged a perpetual
      volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty towers of wood
      exalted the combatants to the height of the neighboring ramparts.


      But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of
      Heraclius, who had detached to their relief a body of twelve
      thousand cuirassiers; the powers of fire and mechanics were used
      with superior art and success in the defence of Constantinople;
      and the galleys, with two and three ranks of oars, commanded the
      Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle spectators of the
      defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a fleet of
      Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbor; the vassals of the
      chagan threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and
      after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and
      formidable retreat. The devotion of the Romans ascribed this
      signal deliverance to the Virgin Mary; but the mother of Christ
      would surely have condemned their inhuman murder of the Persian
      envoys, who were entitled to the rights of humanity, if they were
      not protected by the laws of nations. 97

      94 (return) [ Petavius (Annotationes ad Nicephorum, p. 62, 63,
      64) discriminates the names and actions of five Persian generals
      who were successively sent against Heraclius.]

      95 (return) [ This number of eight myriads is specified by George
      of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 219.) The poet (50—88) clearly indicates
      that the old chagan lived till the reign of Heraclius, and that
      his son and successor was born of a foreign mother. Yet Foggini
      (Annotat. p. 57) has given another interpretation to this
      passage.]

      96 (return) [ A bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, had been
      the present of the Scythian king to Darius, (Herodot. l. iv. c.
      131, 132.) Substituez une lettre a ces signes (says Rousseau,
      with much good taste) plus elle sera menacante moins elle
      effrayera; ce ne sera qu’une fanfarronade dont Darius n’eut fait
      que rire, (Emile, tom. iii. p. 146.) Yet I much question whether
      the senate and people of Constantinople laughed at this message
      of the chagan.]

      97 (return) [ The Paschal Chronicle (p. 392—397) gives a minute
      and authentic narrative of the siege and deliverance of
      Constantinople Theophanes (p. 264) adds some circumstances; and a
      faint light may be obtained from the smoke of George of Pisidia,
      who has composed a poem (de Bello Abarico, p. 45—54) to
      commemorate this auspicious event.]


      After the division of his army, Heraclius prudently retired to
      the banks of the Phasis, from whence he maintained a defensive
      war against the fifty thousand gold spears of Persia. His anxiety
      was relieved by the deliverance of Constantinople; his hopes were
      confirmed by a victory of his brother Theodorus; and to the
      hostile league of Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor
      opposed the useful and honorable alliance of the Turks. At his
      liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars 98 transported their
      tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of Georgia;
      Heraclius received them in the neighborhood of Teflis, and the
      khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may
      credit the Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the
      purple of the Caesars. Such voluntary homage and important aid
      were entitled to the warmest acknowledgments; and the emperor,
      taking off his own diadem, placed it on the head of the Turkish
      prince, whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the appellation
      of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the
      plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which had
      been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own hand,
      distributed rich jewels and ear-rings to his new allies. In a
      secret interview, he produced the portrait of his daughter
      Eudocia, 99 condescended to flatter the Barbarian with the
      promise of a fair and august bride; obtained an immediate succor
      of forty thousand horse, and negotiated a strong diversion of the
      Turkish arms on the side of the Oxus. 100 The Persians, in their
      turn, retreated with precipitation; in the camp of Edessa,
      Heraclius reviewed an army of seventy thousand Romans and
      strangers; and some months were successfully employed in the
      recovery of the cities of Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, whose
      fortifications had been imperfectly restored. Sarbar still
      maintained the important station of Chalcedon; but the jealousy
      of Chosroes, or the artifice of Heraclius, soon alienated the
      mind of that powerful satrap from the service of his king and
      country. A messenger was intercepted with a real or fictitious
      mandate to the cadarigan, or second in command, directing him to
      send, without delay, to the throne, the head of a guilty or
      unfortunate general. The despatches were transmitted to Sarbar
      himself; and as soon as he read the sentence of his own death, he
      dexterously inserted the names of four hundred officers,
      assembled a military council, and asked the cadarigan whether he
      was prepared to execute the commands of their tyrant. The
      Persians unanimously declared, that Chosroes had forfeited the
      sceptre; a separate treaty was concluded with the government of
      Constantinople; and if some considerations of honor or policy
      restrained Sarbar from joining the standard of Heraclius, the
      emperor was assured that he might prosecute, without
      interruption, his designs of victory and peace.

      98 (return) [ The power of the Chozars prevailed in the viith,
      viiith, and ixth centuries. They were known to the Greeks, the
      Arabs, and under the name of Kosa, to the Chinese themselves. De
      Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 507—509. * Note:
      Moses of Chorene speaks of an invasion of Armenia by the Khazars
      in the second century, l. ii. c. 62. M. St. Martin suspects them
      to be the same with the Hunnish nation of the Acatires or
      Agazzires. They are called by the Greek historians Eastern Turks;
      like the Madjars and other Hunnish or Finnish tribes, they had
      probably received some admixture from the genuine Turkish races.
      Ibn. Hankal (Oriental Geography) says that their language was
      like the Bulgarian, and considers them a people of Finnish or
      Hunnish race. Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 268-273. Abel Remusat,
      Rech. sur les Langues Tartares, tom. i. p. 315, 316. St. Martin,
      vol. xi. p. 115.—M]

      99 (return) [ Epiphania, or Eudocia, the only daughter of
      Heraclius and his first wife Eudocia, was born at Constantinople
      on the 7th of July, A.D. 611, baptized the 15th of August, and
      crowned (in the oratory of St. Stephen in the palace) the 4th of
      October of the same year. At this time she was about fifteen.
      Eudocia was afterwards sent to her Turkish husband, but the news
      of his death stopped her journey, and prevented the consummation,
      (Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 118.)]

      100 (return) [ Elmcain (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16) gives some
      curious and probable facts; but his numbers are rather too
      high—300,000 Romans assembled at Edessa—500,000 Persians killed
      at Nineveh. The abatement of a cipher is scarcely enough to
      restore his sanity]


      Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of
      his subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in
      its ruins. The number of five hundred thousand may be interpreted
      as an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses
      and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the
      invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the
      Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was
      content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate
      country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate
      of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the
      end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been
      erected: 101 the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long
      since disappeared; 102 the vacant space afforded a spacious field
      for the operations of the two armies. But these operations are
      neglected by the Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of
      epic poetry and romance, they ascribe the victory, not to the
      military conduct, but to the personal valor, of their favorite
      hero. On this memorable day, Heraclius, on his horse Phallas,
      surpassed the bravest of his warriors: his lip was pierced with a
      spear; the steed was wounded in the thigh; but he carried his
      master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx of the
      Barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were
      successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor: among
      these was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight
      of his head scattered grief and despair through the fainting
      ranks of the Persians. His armor of pure and massy gold, the
      shield of one hundred and twenty plates, the sword and belt, the
      saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph of Heraclius; and if he
      had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of
      Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of
      the Capitol. 103 In the battle of Nineveh, which was fiercely
      fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight
      standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were
      taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut
      in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed the
      night on the field. They acknowledged, that on this occasion it
      was less difficult to kill than to discomfit the soldiers of
      Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their friends, no more than two
      bow-shot from the enemy the remnant of the Persian cavalry stood
      firm till the seventh hour of the night; about the eighth hour
      they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and
      dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of
      resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in
      the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in
      four-and-twenty hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the
      great and the lesser Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria
      were open for the first time to the Romans. By a just gradation
      of magnificent scenes, they penetrated to the royal seat of
      Dastagerd, 1031 and, though much of the treasure had been
      removed, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth appears
      to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated their
      avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed
      with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds
      which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire:
      and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been
      confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred,
      military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal
      rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject.
      The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and the
      deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria,
      reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace
      of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain
      or Ctesiphon, till he was stopped, on the banks of the Arba, by
      the difficulty of the passage, the rigor of the season, and
      perhaps the fame of an impregnable capital. The return of the
      emperor is marked by the modern name of the city of Sherhzour: he
      fortunately passed Mount Zara, before the snow, which fell
      incessantly thirty-four days; and the citizens of Gandzca, or
      Tauris, were compelled to entertain the soldiers and their horses
      with a hospitable reception. 104

      101 (return) [ Ctesias (apud Didor. Sicul. tom. i. l. ii. p. 115,
      edit. Wesseling) assigns 480 stadia (perhaps only 32 miles) for
      the circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days’ journey:
      the 120,000 persons described by the prophet as incapable of
      discerning their right hand from their left, may afford about
      700,000 persons of all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient
      capital, (Goguet, Origines des Loix, &c., tom. iii. part i. p.
      92, 93,) which ceased to exist 600 years before Christ. The
      western suburb still subsisted, and is mentioned under the name
      of Mosul in the first age of the Arabian khalifs.]

      102 (return) [ Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 286)
      passed over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge
      of hills the old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have
      been 100 feet high, flanked with 1500 towers, each of the height
      of 200 feet.]

      103 (return) [ Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first
      consecration).... bina postea (continues Livy, i. 10) inter tot
      bella, opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris.
      If Varro (apud Pomp Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify
      his liberality in granting the opime spoils even to a common
      soldier who had slain the king or general of the enemy, the honor
      would have been much more cheap and common]

      1031 (return) [ Macdonald Kinneir places Dastagerd at Kasr e
      Shirin, the palace of Sira on the banks of the Diala between
      Holwan and Kanabee. Kinnets Geograph. Mem. p. 306.—M.]

      104 (return) [ In describing this last expedition of Heraclius,
      the facts, the places, and the dates of Theophanes (p. 265—271)
      are so accurate and authentic, that he must have followed the
      original letters of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle
      has preserved (p. 398—402) a very curious specimen.]


      When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his
      hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of
      shame, should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In
      the battle of Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians
      to vanquish, or he might have fallen with honor by the lance of a
      Roman emperor. The successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure
      distance, to expect the event, to assemble the relics of the
      defeat, and to retire, by measured steps, before the march of
      Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the once loved mansions of
      Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were persuaded, that it
      was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under the ruins of
      the city and palace: and as both might have been equally adverse
      to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, 1041 and three
      concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before
      the arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in
      which he showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a
      rapid and secret journey; and the first evening he lodged in the
      cottage of a peasant, whose humble door would scarcely give
      admittance to the great king. 105 His superstition was subdued by
      fear: on the third day, he entered with joy the fortifications of
      Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of his safety till he had opposed
      the River Tigris to the pursuit of the Romans. The discovery of
      his flight agitated with terror and tumult the palace, the city,
      and the camp of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated whether they had
      most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and the females
      of the harem were astonished and pleased by the sight of mankind,
      till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined
      them to a more distant castle. At his command, the army of
      Dastagerd retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the
      Arba, and a line of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more
      distant provinces successively arrived, and the vilest domestics
      of the king and satraps were enrolled for the last defence of the
      throne. It was still in the power of Chosroes to obtain a
      reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly pressed by the messengers
      of Heraclius to spare the blood of his subjects, and to relieve a
      humane conqueror from the painful duty of carrying fire and sword
      through the fairest countries of Asia. But the pride of the
      Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he derived
      a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he wept
      with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and
      disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who
      complained that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the
      obstinacy of an old man. That unhappy old man was himself
      tortured with the sharpest pains both of mind and body; and, in
      the consciousness of his approaching end, he resolved to fix the
      tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favored of his sons. But
      the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and Siroes, 1051 who
      gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had conspired
      with the malcontents to assert and anticipate the rights of
      primogeniture. 106 Twenty-two satraps (they styled themselves
      patriots) were tempted by the wealth and honors of a new reign:
      to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of
      pay; to the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to
      the captives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant
      peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the
      conspirators, that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should
      appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape
      was contrived to the Imperial court. But the new monarch was
      saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet
      where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons
      were massacred 1061 before his face, and he was thrown into a
      dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern
      Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and
      famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so
      far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his
      death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what
      eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the
      faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he sunk without hope
      into a still deeper abyss; 107 and it will not be denied, that
      tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such
      infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the
      life of Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the
      fruit of his crimes: and in the space of four years, the regal
      title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the
      sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every
      province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence,
      of discord, and of blood; and the state of anarchy prevailed
      about eight years longer, 1071 till the factions were silenced
      and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs. 108

      1041 (return) [ The Schirin of Persian poetry. The love of Chosru
      and Schirin rivals in Persian romance that of Joseph with Zuleika
      the wife of Potiphar, of Solomon with the queen of Sheba, and
      that of Mejnoun and Leila. The number of Persian poems on the
      subject may be seen in M. von Hammer’s preface to his poem of
      Schirin.—M]

      105 (return) [ The words of Theophanes are remarkable. Young
      princes who discover a propensity to war should repeatedly
      transcribe and translate such salutary texts.]

      1051 (return) [ His name was Kabad (as appears from an official
      letter in the Paschal Chronicle, p. 402.) St. Martin considers
      the name Siroes, Schirquieh of Schirwey, derived from the word
      schir, royal. St. Martin, xi. 153.—M.]

      106 (return) [ The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is
      contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398) and
      the history of Theophanes, (p. 271.)]

      1061 (return) [ According to Le Beau, this massacre was
      perpetrated at Mahuza in Babylonia, not in the presence of
      Chosroes. The Syrian historian, Thomas of Maraga, gives Chosroes
      twenty-four sons; Mirkhond, (translated by De Sacy,) fifteen; the
      inedited Modjmel-alte-warikh, agreeing with Gibbon, eighteen,
      with their names. Le Beau and St. Martin, xi. 146.—M.]

      107 (return) [ On the first rumor of the death of Chosroes, an
      Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople
      by George of Pisidia, (p. 97—105.) A priest and a poet might very
      properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy but such mean
      revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to
      find so much black superstition in the letter of Heraclius: he
      almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and
      justice. * Note: The Mahometans show no more charity towards the
      memory of Chosroes or Khoosroo Purveez. All his reverses are
      ascribed to the just indignation of God, upon a monarch who had
      dared, with impious and accursed hands, to tear the letter of the
      Holy Prophet Mahomed. Compare note, p. 231.—M.]

      1071 (return) [ Yet Gibbon himself places the flight and death of
      Yesdegird Ill., the last king of Persia, in 651. The famous era
      of Yesdegird dates from his accession, June 16 632.—M.]

      108 (return) [ The best Oriental accounts of this last period of
      the Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
      251—256,) who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D’Herbelot
      (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 789,) and Assemanni, (Bibliothec.
      Oriental. tom. iii. p. 415—420.)]


      As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received
      the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of
      Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of
      Persia. The authors of the revolution, eager to display their
      merits in the court or camp of Tauris, preceded the ambassadors
      of Siroes, who delivered the letters of their master to his
      brother the emperor of the Romans. 109 In the language of the
      usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the Deity,
      and, without degrading his equal majesty, he offers to reconcile
      the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and
      alliance more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the
      treaty were easily defined and faithfully executed. In the
      recovery of the standards and prisoners which had fallen into the
      hands of the Persians, the emperor imitated the example of
      Augustus: their care of the national dignity was celebrated by
      the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be measured
      by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia: the
      subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from
      persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman
      eagles, the true wood of the holy cross was restored to the
      importunate demands of the successor of Constantine. The victor
      was not ambitious of enlarging the weakness of the empire; the
      son of Chosroes abandoned without regret the conquests of his
      father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of Syria and Egypt
      were honorably conducted to the frontier, and a war which had
      wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change in
      their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius
      from Tauris to Constantinople was a perpetual triumph; and after
      the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the
      Sabbath of his toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the
      clergy, and the people, went forth to meet their hero, with tears
      and acclamations, with olive branches and innumerable lamps; he
      entered the capital in a chariot drawn by four elephants; and as
      soon as the emperor could disengage himself from the tumult of
      public joy, he tasted more genuine satisfaction in the embraces
      of his mother and his son. 110

      109 (return) [ The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p.
      402) unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The
      treaty appears in its execution in the histories of Theophanes
      and Nicephorus. * Note: M. Mai. Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, vol.
      i. P. 2, p. 223, has added some lines, but no clear sense can be
      made out of the fragment.—M.]

      110 (return) [ The burden of Corneille’s song, “Montrez Heraclius
      au peuple qui l’attend,” is much better suited to the present
      occasion. See his triumph in Theophanes (p. 272, 273) and
      Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The life of the mother and tenderness of
      the son are attested by George of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 255, &c.,
      p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is used somewhat profanely by
      these Byzantine Christians.]


      The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very
      different kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy
      sepulchre. Heraclius performed in person the pilgrimage of
      Jerusalem, the identity of the relic was verified by the discreet
      patriarch, 111 and this august ceremony has been commemorated by
      the annual festival of the exaltation of the cross. Before the
      emperor presumed to tread the consecrated ground, he was
      instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple, the pomp
      and vanity of the world: but in the judgment of his clergy, the
      persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the
      precepts of the gospel. 1113 He again ascended his throne to
      receive the congratulations of the ambassadors of France and
      India: and the fame of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, 112 was
      eclipsed in the popular estimation, by the superior merit and
      glory of the great Heraclius. Yet the deliverer of the East was
      indigent and feeble. Of the Persian spoils, the most valuable
      portion had been expended in the war, distributed to the
      soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the waves of the
      Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the
      obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had
      borrowed for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to
      satisfy these inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted
      by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a
      second payment of the same taxes; and the arrears of a simple
      citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of
      one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred
      thousand soldiers 113 who had fallen by the sword, was of less
      fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and
      population, in this long and destructive war: and although a
      victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius,
      the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than
      exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at
      Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of
      Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some
      troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and trifling
      occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution.
      These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor
      had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his
      reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he
      had rescued from the Persians.

      111 (return) [ See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1-4,)
      Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240—248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p.
      15.) The seals of the case had never been broken; and this
      preservation of the cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion
      of Queen Sira.]

      1113 (return) [ If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and
      penitent emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be
      acknowledge that provocation was not wanting; for how many of
      them had been eye-witnesses of, perhaps sufferers in, the
      horrible atrocities committed on the capture of the city! Yet we
      have no authentic account of great severities exercised by
      Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted, which prohibited the
      Jews from approaching within three miles of the city—a law,
      which, in the present exasperated state of the Christians, might
      be a measure of security of mercy, rather than of oppression.
      Milman, Hist. of the Jews, iii. 242.—M.]

      112 (return) [ George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra
      Persas, 415, &c., and Heracleid. Acroas. i. 65—138. I neglect the
      meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the
      chagan were of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old
      serpent, &c.]

      113 (return) [ Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives
      this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian
      war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I.


Theological History Of The Doctrine Of The Incarnation.—The Human And
Divine Nature Of Christ.—Enmity Of The Patriarchs Of Alexandria And
Constantinople.—St. Cyril And Nestorius. —Third General Council Of
Ephesus.—Heresy Of Eutyches.—Fourth General Council Of Chalcedon.—Civil
And Ecclesiastical Discord.—Intolerance Of Justinian.—The Three
Chapters.—The Monothelite Controversy.—State Of The Oriental Sects:—I.
The Nestorians.—II. The Jacobites.—III. The Maronites.—IV. The
Armenians.—V. The Copts And Abyssinians.


      After the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace and
      piety might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But the
      principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were more
      solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the laws, of
      their founder. I have already observed, that the disputes of the
      Trinity were succeeded by those of the Incarnation; alike
      scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the state, still
      more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects.


      It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious
      war of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the
      ecclesiastical and political schism of the Oriental sects, and to
      introduce their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest
      inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive church. 1

      1 (return) [ By what means shall I authenticate this previous
      inquiry, which I have studied to circumscribe and compress?—If I
      persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and
      special evidence, every line would demand a string of
      testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical
      dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I
      have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested and
      illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I
      shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and
      characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation
      of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid
      of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius
      are a work of incredible labor and compass; the volumes which
      relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of
      837 pages) are divided into xvi. books—the first of history, the
      remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit’s learning is
      copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his
      argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the
      fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and
      candor, as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause. 2.
      The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume
      (Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first
      centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense
      is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or
      folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his
      impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted by his
      opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians, lxxx.
      Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentiniins, cxxi.
      Basilidians, cxxiii. Marcionites, cxli., &c.) under their proper
      dates. 3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734,
      1739, in two vols. in 4to., with a posthumous dissertation sur
      les Nazarenes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure
      of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins
      with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and
      transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage,
      or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive; he
      betrays an amiable partiality in favor of the weaker side, and,
      while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient
      scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of
      contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to
      examine. 4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le
      Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is
      full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his learned work, De
      Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum (Helmstadt 1753, in 4to.,)
      see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172—179, 328—332. The
      Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196—202.
      Basilides, p. 352—361. Carpocrates, p. 363—367. Valentinus, p.
      371—389 Marcion, p. 404—410. The Manichaeans, p. 829-837, &c.]


      I. A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte has
      countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites,
      or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished only by their
      obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites.


      Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated:
      their obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the
      softness of their infant creed would be variously moulded by the
      zeal or prudence of three hundred years. Yet the most charitable
      criticism must refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure
      and proper divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish
      prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to elevate
      their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. 2 If they had
      courage to hail their king when he appeared in a plebeian garb,
      their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning their
      God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under
      the name and person of a mortal. 3 The familiar companions of
      Jesus of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman,
      who, in all the actions of rational and animal life, appeared of
      the same species with themselves. His progress from infancy to
      youth and manhood was marked by a regular increase in stature and
      wisdom; and after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on
      the cross. He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the
      life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the cause
      of religion and justice; and although the stoic or the hero may
      disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears which he shed over
      his friend and country may be esteemed the purest evidence of his
      humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people
      who held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the
      Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases,
      raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended
      to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the
      Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title of
      Son of God.

      2 (return) [ Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207) in the name of
      his countrymen, and the modern Jews, the few who divert their
      thoughts from money to religion, still hold the same language,
      and allege the literal sense of the prophets. * Note: See on this
      passage Bp. Kaye, Justin Martyr, p. 25.—M. Note: Most of the
      modern writers, who have closely examined this subject, and who
      will not be suspected of any theological bias, Rosenmüller on
      Isaiah ix. 5, and on Psalm xlv. 7, and Bertholdt, Christologia
      Judaeorum, c. xx., rightly ascribe much higher notions of the
      Messiah to the Jews. In fact, the dispute seems to rest on the
      notion that there was a definite and authorized notion of the
      Messiah, among the Jews, whereas it was probably so vague, as to
      admit every shade of difference, from the vulgar expectation of a
      mere temporal king, to the philosophic notion of an emanation
      from the Deity.—M.]

      3 (return) [ Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9,
      p. 183) and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c.
      2, p. 3) are obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is
      rarely mentioned by himself or his apostles.]


      Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites,
      a distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who
      confounded the generation of Christ in the common order of
      nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who revered the
      virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid of an earthly
      father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced by the
      visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
      reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the
      kingdom of David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and
      authentic history has been recorded in several copies of the
      Gospel according to St. Matthew, 4 which these sectaries long
      preserved in the original Hebrew, 5 as the sole evidence of their
      faith. The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his
      own chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that
      his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant and
      domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal observation of
      the historian, he must have listened to the same voice which
      dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of
      a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy
      Spirit, was a creature without example or resemblance, superior
      in every attribute of mind and body to the children of Adam.
      Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean philosophy, 6 the
      Jews 7 were persuaded of the preexistence, transmigration, and
      immortality of souls; and providence was justified by a
      supposition, that they were confined in their earthly prisons to
      expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former state. 8
      But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost immeasurable.
      It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and virtuous
      of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and the
      Holy Ghost; 9 that his abasement was the result of his voluntary
      choice; and that the object of his mission was, to purify, not
      his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native
      skies, he received the immense reward of his obedience; the
      everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly
      foretold by the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of
      conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human
      faculties of Christ to the extend of is celestial office. In the
      language of antiquity, the title of God has not been severely
      confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister, his
      only-begotten son, might claim, without presumption, the
      religious, though secondary, worship of a subject of a subject
      world.

      4 (return) [ The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist
      in the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the
      miraculous conception is one of the last articles which Dr.
      Priestley has curtailed from his scanty creed. * Note: The
      distinct allusion to the facts related in the two first chapters
      of the Gospel, in a work evidently written about the end of the
      reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited by Archbishop
      Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral parts
      of the authentic Christian history.—M.]

      5 (return) [ It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels
      for the use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or
      Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers—Papias,
      Irenaeus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the
      Catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius,
      among the Protestant critics. But this Hebrew Gospel of St.
      Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the
      diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have
      preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek.
      Erasmus and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the
      original Gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which
      declares it to be the work of an apostle. See Simon, Hist.
      Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5—9, p. 47—101, and the Prolegomena
      of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament. * Note: Surely the
      extinction of the Judaeo-Christian community related from Mosheim
      by Gibbon himself (c. xv.) accounts both simply and naturally for
      the loss of a composition, which had become of no use—nor does it
      follow that the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew is unauthorized.—M.]

      6 (return) [ The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero
      (Tusculan. l. i.) and Maximus of Tyre (Dissertat. xvi.) from the
      intricacies of dialogue, which sometimes amuse, and often
      perplex, the readers of the Phoedrus, the Phoedon, and the Laws
      of Plato.]

      7 (return) [ The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man
      might have sinned before he was born, (John, ix. 2,) and the
      Pharisees held the transmigration of virtuous souls, (Joseph. de
      Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c. 7;) and a modern Rabbi is modestly
      assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, &c., derived their
      metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.]

      8 (return) [ Four different opinions have been entertained
      concerning the origin of human souls: 1. That they are eternal
      and divine. 2. That they were created in a separate state of
      existence, before their union with the body. 3. That they have
      been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in
      himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his
      posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and embodied
      in the moment of conception.—The last of these sentiments appears
      to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history is
      grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.]

      9 (return) [ It was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to
      Origen, and denied by his apologist, (Photius, Bibliothec. cod.
      cxvii. p. 296.) Some of the Rabbis attribute one and the same
      soul to the persons of Adam, David, and the Messiah.]


      II. The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky
      and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full
      maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and the
      strangers of Rome or Asia, who never beheld the manhood, were the
      more readily disposed to embrace the divinity, of Christ. The
      polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the Barbarian, were
      alike accustomed to conceive a long succession, an infinite chain
      of angels or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or emanations,
      issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange or
      incredible, that the first of these aeons, the Logos, or Word of
      God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon
      earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error, and to
      conduct them in the paths of life and immortality. But the
      prevailing doctrine of the eternity and inherent pravity of
      matter infected the primitive churches of the East. Many among
      the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that a celestial
      spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
      personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh;
      and, in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the
      humanity, of Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount
      Calvary, 10 the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics,
      invented the phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated
      by the Marcionites, the Manichaeans, and the various names of the
      Gnostic heresy. 11 They denied the truth and authenticity of the
      Gospels, as far as they relate the conception of Mary, the birth
      of Christ, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his
      ministry. He first appeared on the banks of the Jordan in the
      form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and not a
      substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to
      imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a
      perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies.
      Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the
      image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more
      stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual,
      not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the
      Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic
      scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension,
      of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the
      benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry,
      such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the
      Docetes agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the
      justification of pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics,
      the Jehovah of Israel, the Creator of this lower world, was a
      rebellious, or at least an ignorant, spirit. The Son of God
      descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and, for
      the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously
      transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
      temporal Messiah.

      10 (return) [ Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud
      Judaeam Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus
      asserebatur. Hieronym, advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of
      Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, and even the Gospel according to St.
      John, are levelled against the growing error of the Docetes, who
      had obtained too much credit in the world, (1 John, iv. 1—5.)]

      11 (return) [ About the year 200 of the Christian aera, Irenaeus
      and Hippolytus efuted the thirty-two sects, which had multiplied
      to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius, (Phot. Biblioth. cod.
      cxx. cxxi. cxxii.) The five books of Irenaeus exist only in
      barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some
      monastery of Greece.]


      One of the most subtile disputants of the Manichaean school has
      pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of
      the Christians, in the state of a human foetus, emerged at the
      end of nine months from a female womb. The pious horror of his
      antagonists provoked them to disclaim all sensual circumstances
      of conception and delivery; to maintain that the divinity passed
      through Mary like a sunbeam through a plate of glass; and to
      assert, that the seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at
      the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness
      of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those
      of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but
      that he was clothed with an impassible and incorruptible body.
      Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has acquired since
      his resurrection, and such he must have always possessed, if it
      were capable of pervading, without resistance or injury, the
      density of intermediate matter. Devoid of its most essential
      properties, it might be exempt from the attributes and
      infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could increase from an
      invisible point to its full maturity; a child that could attain
      the stature of perfect manhood without deriving any nourishment
      from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without
      repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter.
      Jesus might share the repasts of his disciples without being
      subject to the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity
      was never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual
      concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a question
      would arise, by what means, and of what materials, it was
      originally framed; and our sounder theology is startled by an
      answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both the form
      and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea of
      pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy:
      the incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls,
      celestial beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude
      the notion of extended space; and their imagination was satisfied
      with a subtile nature of air, or fire, or aether, incomparably
      more perfect than the grossness of the material world. If we
      define the place, we must describe the figure, of the Deity. Our
      experience, perhaps our vanity, represents the powers of reason
      and virtue under a human form. The Anthropomorphites, who swarmed
      among the monks of Egypt and the Catholics of Africa, could
      produce the express declaration of Scripture, that man was made
      after the image of his Creator. 12 The venerable Serapion, one of
      the saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with many a
      tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his
      unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his
      mind without any visible object of faith or devotion. 13

      12 (return) [ The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the
      beginning of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of
      anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that
      they embraced the system of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i.
      18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam
      provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum
      est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut
      haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo
      fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,
      Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean,
      he was scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar
      Catholics.]

      13 (return) [ Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod
      illam imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione
      consueverat, aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos
      fletus, crebrosque singultus repente prorumpens, in terram
      prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo proclamaret; “Heu me miserum!
      tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem
      adorem, aut interpallam am nescio.” Cassian, Collat. x. 2.]


      III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more
      substantial, though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by
      Cerinthus of Asia, 14 who dared to oppose the last of the
      apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world,
      he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, by
      confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man
      and a God; and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many
      fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine,
      15 the heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, Jesus of
      Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and
      Mary: but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected
      as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the
      true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, the
      Christ, the first of the aeons, the Son of God himself, descended
      on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind, and direct
      his actions during the allotted period of his ministry. When the
      Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ, an
      immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle,
      flew back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the
      solitary Jesus to suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the
      justice and generosity of such a desertion are strongly
      questionable; and the fate of an innocent martyr, at first
      impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine companion, might
      provoke the pity and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs
      were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and
      modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that
      when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a
      miraculous apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible
      of his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these
      momentary, though real, pangs would be abundantly repaid by the
      temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the Messiah in
      his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated, that if he
      suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never
      absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to
      expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before
      his mysterious union with the Son of God. 16

      14 (return) [ St. John and Cerinthus (A.D. 80. Cleric. Hist.
      Eccles. p. 493) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus;
      but the apostle fled from the heretic, lest the building should
      tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr.
      Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii.,) is related, however,
      by Irenaeus, (iii. 3,) on the evidence of Polycarp, and was
      probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The
      obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John, iv. 3 alludes
      to the double nature of that primitive heretic. * Note: Griesbach
      asserts that all the Greek Mss., all the translators, and all the
      Greek fathers, support the common reading.—Nov. Test. in loc.—M]

      15 (return) [ The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost
      incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though
      of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the
      other as the divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the
      passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a
      human body. 3. Even that body was aethereal, and perhaps
      apparent.—Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I
      much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenaeus, and
      whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood themselves.]

      16 (return) [ The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of
      “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Rousseau, who has
      drawn an eloquent, but indecent, parallel between Christ and
      Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair
      escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah,
      such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding
      words were properly explained as the application of a psalm and
      prophecy.]


      IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a
      specious and noble tenet, must confess, from their present
      experience, the incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A
      similar union is not inconsistent with a much higher, or even
      with the highest, degree of mental faculties; and the incarnation
      of an aeon or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits,
      does not involve any positive contradiction or absurdity. In the
      age of religious freedom, which was determined by the council of
      Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment
      according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
      tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been
      established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics
      trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to
      recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall and the manifold
      inconveniences of their creed were aggravated by the sublime
      character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that
      God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial
      trinity, was manifested in the flesh; 17 that a being who
      pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary;
      that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and
      months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been
      scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain
      and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance;
      and that the source of life and immortality expired on Mount
      Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with
      unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, 18 bishop of Laodicea, and
      one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned
      grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece;
      eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes
      of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion.
      The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian,
      he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though
      he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his
      commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the
      Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of
      popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a
      technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, “One
      incarnate nature of Christ,” which are still reechoed with
      hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He
      taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a
      man; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the
      flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the profound
      doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was
      heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He
      acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers
      between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that he might
      reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the
      subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life.


      With the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual,
      rather than as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either
      came from heaven, impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed,
      and as it were transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The
      system of Apollinaris was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic
      and Syrian divines whose schools are honored by the names of
      Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and tainted by those of Diodorus,
      Theodore, and Nestorius. But the person of the aged bishop of
      Laedicea, his character and dignity, remained inviolate; and his
      rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness of
      toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the novelty of the
      argument, and diffident of the final sentence of the Catholic
      church. Her judgment at length inclined in their favor; the
      heresy of Apollinaris was condemned, and the separate
      congregations of his disciples were proscribed by the Imperial
      laws. But his principles were secretly entertained in the
      monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the hatred of
      Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria.

      17 (return) [ This strong expression might be justified by the
      language of St. Paul, (1 Tim. iii. 16;) but we are deceived by
      our modern Bibles. The word which was altered to God at
      Constantinople in the beginning of the vith century: the true
      reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still
      exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin
      fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St.
      John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two
      letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique,
      tom. xv. p. 148—190, 351—390.) I have weighed the arguments, and
      may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who was
      deeply skilled in critical and theological studies. Note: It
      should be Griesbach in loc. The weight of authority is so much
      against the common reading in both these points, that they are no
      longer urged by prudent controversialists. Would Gibbon’s
      deference for the first of philosophers have extended to all his
      theological conclusions?—M.]

      18 (return) [ For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii.
      c. 46, l. iii. c. 16 Sazomen, l. v. c. 18, 1. vi. c. 25, 27.
      Theodoret, l. v. 3, 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques,
      tom. vii. p. 602—638. Not. p. 789—794, in 4to. Venise, 1732. The
      contemporary saint always mentions the bishop of Laodicea as a
      friend and brother. The style of the more recent historians is
      harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius compares him (l. viii. c.
      11-15) to Basil and Gregory.]


      V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were
      rejected and forgotten: the recent zeal against the errors of
      Apollinaris reduced the Catholics to a seeming agreement with the
      double nature of Cerinthus. But instead of a temporary and
      occasional alliance, they established, and we still embrace, the
      substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting union of a perfect God
      with a perfect man, of the second person of the trinity with a
      reasonable soul and human flesh. In the beginning of the fifth
      century, the unity of the two natures was the prevailing doctrine
      of the church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode of
      their coexistence could neither be represented by our ideas, nor
      expressed by our language. Yet a secret and incurable discord was
      cherished, between those who were most apprehensive of
      confounding, and those who were most fearful of separating, the
      divinity, and the humanity, of Christ. Impelled by religious
      frenzy, they fled with adverse haste from the error which they
      mutually deemed most destructive of truth and salvation. On
      either hand they were anxious to guard, they were jealous to
      defend, the union and the distinction of the two natures, and to
      invent such forms of speech, such symbols of doctrine, as were
      least susceptible of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas and
      language tempted them to ransack art and nature for every
      possible comparison, and each comparison misled their fancy in
      the explanation of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic
      microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster, and each party was
      skilful to exaggerate the absurd or impious conclusions that
      might be extorted from the principles of their adversaries. To
      escape from each other, they wandered through many a dark and
      devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms
      of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of
      the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of
      sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and
      were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To
      purge themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error,
      they disavowed their consequences, explained their principles,
      excused their indiscretions, and unanimously pronounced the
      sounds of concord and faith. Yet a latent and almost invisible
      spark still lurked among the embers of controversy: by the breath
      of prejudice and passion, it was quickly kindled to a mighty
      flame, and the verbal disputes 19 of the Oriental sects have
      shaken the pillars of the church and state.

      19 (return) [ I appeal to the confession of two Oriental
      prelates, Gregory Abulpharagius the Jacobite primate of the East,
      and Elias the Nestorian metropolitan of Damascus, (see Asseman,
      Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. ii. p. 291, tom. iii. p. 514, &c.,)
      that the Melchites, Jacobites, Nestorians, &c., agree in the
      doctrine, and differ only in the expression. Our most learned and
      rational divines—Basnage, Le Clerc, Beausobre, La Croze, Mosheim,
      Jablonski—are inclined to favor this charitable judgment; but the
      zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the moderation of Dupin
      is conveyed in a whisper.]


      The name of Cyril of Alexandria is famous in controversial story,
      and the title of saint is a mark that his opinions and his party
      have finally prevailed. In the house of his uncle, the archbishop
      Theophilus, he imbibed the orthodox lessons of zeal and dominion,
      and five years of his youth were profitably spent in the adjacent
      monasteries of Nitria. Under the tuition of the abbot Serapion,
      he applied himself to ecclesiastical studies, with such
      indefatigable ardor, that in the course of one sleepless night,
      he has perused the four Gospels, the Catholic Epistles, and the
      Epistle to the Romans. Origen he detested; but the writings of
      Clemens and Dionysius, of Athanasius and Basil, were continually
      in his hands: by the theory and practice of dispute, his faith
      was confirmed and his wit was sharpened; he extended round his
      cell the cobwebs of scholastic theology, and meditated the works
      of allegory and metaphysics, whose remains, in seven verbose
      folios, now peaceably slumber by the side of their rivals. 20
      Cyril prayed and fasted in the desert, but his thoughts (it is
      the reproach of a friend) 21 were still fixed on the world; and
      the call of Theophilus, who summoned him to the tumult of cities
      and synods, was too readily obeyed by the aspiring hermit. With
      the approbation of his uncle, he assumed the office, and acquired
      the fame, of a popular preacher. His comely person adorned the
      pulpit; the harmony of his voice resounded in the cathedral; his
      friends were stationed to lead or second the applause of the
      congregation; 22 and the hasty notes of the scribes preserved his
      discourses, which in their effect, though not in their
      composition, might be compared with those of the Athenian
      orators. The death of Theophilus expanded and realized the hopes
      of his nephew. The clergy of Alexandria was divided; the soldiers
      and their general supported the claims of the archdeacon; but a
      resistless multitude, with voices and with hands, asserted the
      cause of their favorite; and after a period of thirty-nine years,
      Cyril was seated on the throne of Athanasius. 23

      20 (return) [ La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i.
      p. 24) avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril.
      De tous les on vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu’on lise avec
      moins d’utilite: and Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom.
      iv. p. 42—52,) in words of respect, teaches us to despise them.]

      21 (return) [ Of Isidore of Pelusium, (l. i. epist. 25, p. 8.) As
      the letter is not of the most creditable sort, Tillemont, less
      sincere than the Bollandists, affects a doubt whether this Cyril
      is the nephew of Theophilus, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 268.)]

      22 (return) [ A grammarian is named by Socrates (l. vii. c. 13).]

      23 (return) [ See the youth and promotion of Cyril, in Socrates,
      (l. vii. c. 7) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarchs. Alexandrin. p.
      106, 108.) The Abbe Renaudot drew his materials from the Arabic
      history of Severus, bishop of Hermopolis Magma, or Ashmunein, in
      the xth century, who can never be trusted, unless our assent is
      extorted by the internal evidence of facts.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part II.


      The prize was not unworthy of his ambition. At a distance from
      the court, and at the head of an immense capital, the patriarch,
      as he was now styled, of Alexandria had gradually usurped the
      state and authority of a civil magistrate. The public and private
      charities of the city were blindly obeyed by his numerous and
      fanatic parabolani, 24 familiarized in their daily office with
      scenes of death; and the præfects of Egypt were awed or provoked
      by the temporal power of these Christian pontiffs. Ardent in the
      prosecution of heresy, Cyril auspiciously opened his reign by
      oppressing the Novatians, the most innocent and harmless of the
      sectaries. The interdiction of their religious worship appeared
      in his eyes a just and meritorious act; and he confiscated their
      holy vessels, without apprehending the guilt of sacrilege. The
      toleration, and even the privileges of the Jews, who had
      multiplied to the number of forty thousand, were secured by the
      laws of the Caesars and Ptolemies, and a long prescription of
      seven hundred years since the foundation of Alexandria. Without
      any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, the patriarch, at
      the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the
      synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of
      resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground,
      and the episcopal warrior, after rewarding his troops with the
      plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the
      unbelieving nation. Perhaps he might plead the insolence of their
      prosperity, and their deadly hatred of the Christians, whose
      blood they had recently shed in a malicious or accidental tumult.


      Such crimes would have deserved the animadversion of the
      magistrate; but in this promiscuous outrage, the innocent were
      confounded with the guilty, and Alexandria was impoverished by
      the loss of a wealthy and industrious colony. The zeal of Cyril
      exposed him to the penalties of the Julian law; but in a feeble
      government and a superstitious age, he was secure of impunity,
      and even of praise. Orestes complained; but his just complaints
      were too quickly forgotten by the ministers of Theodosius, and
      too deeply remembered by a priest who affected to pardon, and
      continued to hate, the præfect of Egypt. As he passed through the
      streets, his chariot was assaulted by a band of five hundred of
      the Nitrian monks; his guards fled from the wild beasts of the
      desert; his protestations that he was a Christian and a Catholic
      were answered by a volley of stones, and the face of Orestes was
      covered with blood. The loyal citizens of Alexandria hastened to
      his rescue; he instantly satisfied his justice and revenge
      against the monk by whose hand he had been wounded, and Ammonius
      expired under the rod of the lictor. At the command of Cyril his
      body was raised from the ground, and transported, in solemn
      procession, to the cathedral; the name of Ammonius was changed to
      that of Thaumasius the wonderful; his tomb was decorated with the
      trophies of martyrdom, and the patriarch ascended the pulpit to
      celebrate the magnanimity of an assassin and a rebel. Such honors
      might incite the faithful to combat and die under the banners of
      the saint; and he soon prompted, or accepted, the sacrifice of a
      virgin, who professed the religion of the Greeks, and cultivated
      the friendship of Orestes. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the
      mathematician, 25 was initiated in her father’s studies; her
      learned comments have elucidated the geometry of Apollonius and
      Diophantus, and she publicly taught, both at Athens and
      Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In the bloom
      of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused
      her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most
      illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the
      female philosopher; and Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the
      gorgeous train of horses and slaves who crowded the door of her
      academy. A rumor was spread among the Christians, that the
      daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation of
      the præfect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was speedily
      removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was
      torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and
      inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop
      of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her
      bones with sharp cyster shells, 26 and her quivering limbs were
      delivered to the flames. The just progress of inquiry and
      punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts; but the murder of
      Hypatia has imprinted an indelible stain on the character and
      religion of Cyril of Alexandria. 27

      24 (return) [ The Parabolani of Alexandria were a charitable
      corporation, instituted during the plague of Gallienus, to visit
      the sick and to bury the dead. They gradually enlarged, abused,
      and sold the privileges of their order. Their outrageous conduct
      during the reign of Cyril provoked the emperor to deprive the
      patriarch of their nomination, and to restrain their number to
      five or six hundred. But these restraints were transient and
      ineffectual. See the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. ii. and
      Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 276—278.]

      25 (return) [ For Theon and his daughter Hypatia. see Fabricius,
      Bibliothec. tom. viii. p. 210, 211. Her article in the Lexicon of
      Suidas is curious and original. Hesychius (Meursii Opera, tom.
      vii. p. 295, 296) observes, that he was persecuted; and an
      epigram in the Greek Anthology (l. i. c. 76, p. 159, edit.
      Brodaei) celebrates her knowledge and eloquence. She is honorably
      mentioned (Epist. 10, 15 16, 33—80, 124, 135, 153) by her friend
      and disciple the philosophic bishop Synesius.]

      26 (return) [ Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the
      sea-beach before the Caesareum. I may therefore prefer the
      literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of
      tegulae, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois ignorant, and the
      assassins were probably regardless, whether their victim was yet
      alive.]

      27 (return) [ These exploits of St. Cyril are recorded by
      Socrates, (l. vii. c. 13, 14, 15;) and the most reluctant bigotry
      is compelled to copy an historian who coolly styles the murderers
      of Hypatia. At the mention of that injured name, I am pleased to
      observe a blush even on the cheek of Baronius, (A.D. 415, No.
      48.)]


      Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the blood of a
      virgin, than the banishment of a saint; and Cyril had accompanied
      his uncle to the iniquitous synod of the Oak. When the memory of
      Chrysostom was restored and consecrated, the nephew of
      Theophilus, at the head of a dying faction, still maintained the
      justice of his sentence; nor was it till after a tedious delay
      and an obstinate resistance, that he yielded to the consent of
      the Catholic world. 28 His enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs 29
      was a sense of interest, not a sally of passion: he envied their
      fortunate station in the sunshine of the Imperial court; and he
      dreaded their upstart ambition. which oppressed the metropolitans
      of Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of Antioch and
      Alexandria, and measured their diocese by the limits of the
      empire. The long moderation of Atticus, the mild usurper of the
      throne of Chrysostom, suspended the animosities of the Eastern
      patriarchs; but Cyril was at length awakened by the exaltation of
      a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After the short and
      troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the
      factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of
      the emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame,
      and invited the merit of a stranger.


      Nestorius, 30 native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was
      recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of
      his sermons; but the first homily which he preached before the
      devout Theodosius betrayed the acrimony and impatience of his
      zeal. “Give me, O Caesar!” he exclaimed, “give me the earth
      purged of heretics, and I will give you in exchange the kingdom
      of heaven. Exterminate with me the heretics; and with you I will
      exterminate the Persians.” On the fifth day as if the treaty had
      been already signed, the patriarch of Constantinople discovered,
      surprised, and attacked a secret conventicle of the Arians: they
      preferred death to submission; the flames that were kindled by
      their despair, soon spread to the neighboring houses, and the
      triumph of Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On
      either side of the Hellespont his episcopal vigor imposed a rigid
      formulary of faith and discipline; a chronological error
      concerning the festival of Easter was punished as an offence
      against the church and state. Lydia and Caria, Sardes and
      Miletus, were purified with the blood of the obstinate
      Quartodecimans; and the edict of the emperor, or rather of the
      patriarch, enumerates three-and-twenty degrees and denominations
      in the guilt and punishment of heresy. 31 But the sword of
      persecution which Nestorius so furiously wielded was soon turned
      against his own breast. Religion was the pretence; but, in the
      judgment of a contemporary saint, ambition was the genuine motive
      of episcopal warfare. 32

      28 (return) [ He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of
      Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if
      we may believe Nicephorus, l. xiv. c. 18) to the personal
      intercession of the Virgin. Yet in his last years he still
      muttered that John Chrysostom had been justly condemned,
      (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 278—282. Baronius Annal.
      Eccles. A.D. 412, No. 46—64.)]

      29 (return) [ See their characters in the history of Socrates,
      (l. vii. c. 25—28;) their power and pretensions, in the huge
      compilation of Thomassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
      80-91.)]

      30 (return) [ His elevation and conduct are described by
      Socrates, (l. vii. c. 29 31;) and Marcellinus seems to have
      applied the eloquentiae satis, sapi entiae parum, of Sallust.]

      31 (return) [ Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 65, with the
      illustrations of Baronius, (A.D. 428, No. 25, &c.,) Godefroy, (ad
      locum,) and Pagi, Critica, (tom. ii. p. 208.)]

      32 (return) [ Isidore of Pelusium, (l. iv. Epist. 57.) His words
      are strong and scandalous. Isidore is a saint, but he never
      became a bishop; and I half suspect that the pride of Diogenes
      trampled on the pride of Plato.]


      In the Syrian school, Nestorius had been taught to abhor the
      confusion of the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the
      humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord
      Jesus. 33 The Blessed Virgin he revered as the mother of Christ,
      but his ears were offended with the rash and recent title of
      mother of God, 34 which had been insensibly adopted since the
      origin of the Arian controversy. From the pulpit of
      Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and afterwards the
      patriarch himself, repeatedly preached against the use, or the
      abuse, of a word 35 unknown to the apostles, unauthorized by the
      church, and which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to
      misled the simple, to amuse the profane, and to justify, by a
      seeming resemblance, the old genealogy of Olympus. 36 In his
      calmer moments Nestorius confessed, that it might be tolerated or
      excused by the union of the two natures, and the communication of
      their idioms: 37 but he was exasperated, by contradiction, to
      disclaim the worship of a new-born, an infant Deity, to draw his
      inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil partnerships of
      life, and to describe the manhood of Christ as the robe, the
      instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead. At these blasphemous
      sounds, the pillars of the sanctuary were shaken. The
      unsuccessful competitors of Nestorius indulged their pious or
      personal resentment, the Byzantine clergy was secretly displeased
      with the intrusion of a stranger: whatever is superstitious or
      absurd, might claim the protection of the monks; and the people
      were interested in the glory of their virgin patroness. 38 The
      sermons of the archbishop, and the service of the altar, were
      disturbed by seditious clamor; his authority and doctrine were
      renounced by separate congregations; every wind scattered round
      the empire the leaves of controversy; and the voice of the
      combatants on a sonorous theatre reechoed in the cells of
      Palestine and Egypt. It was the duty of Cyril to enlighten the
      zeal and ignorance of his innumerable monks: in the school of
      Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the incarnation of one
      nature; and the successor of Athanasius consulted his pride and
      ambition, when he rose in arms against another Arius, more
      formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the
      hierarchy. After a short correspondence, in which the rival
      prelates disguised their hatred in the hollow language of respect
      and charity, the patriarch of Alexandria denounced to the prince
      and people, to the East and to the West, the damnable errors of
      the Byzantine pontiff. From the East, more especially from
      Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of toleration and
      silence, which were addressed to both parties while they favored
      the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms
      the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by
      the appeal; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith
      of the pope, who with his Latin clergy was ignorant of the
      language, the arts, and the theology of the Greeks. At the head
      of an Italian synod, Celestine weighed the merits of the cause,
      approved the creed of Cyril, condemned the sentiments and person
      of Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his episcopal dignity,
      allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and penance, and
      delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and illegal
      sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, while he darted the
      thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal;
      and his twelve anathemas 39 still torture the orthodox slaves,
      who adore the memory of a saint, without forfeiting their
      allegiance to the synod of Chalcedon. These bold assertions are
      indelibly tinged with the colors of the Apollinarian heresy; but
      the serious, and perhaps the sincere professions of Nestorius
      have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the
      present times. 40

      33 (return) [ La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.
      44-53. Thesaurus Epistolicus, La Crozianus, tom. iii. p. 276—280)
      has detected the use, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith
      centuries, discriminates the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his
      Nestorian disciples.]

      34 (return) [ Deipara; as in zoology we familiarly speak of
      oviparous and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the
      invention of this word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes,
      tom. i. p. 16) ascribes to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arians.
      The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius,
      (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 15, p. 254, &c.;) but the
      veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epithet so easily
      slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic Ms]

      35 (return) [ Basnage, in his Histoire de l’Eglise, a work of
      controversy, (tom l. p. 505,) justifies the mother, by the blood,
      of God, (Acts, xx. 28, with Mill’s various readings.) But the
      Greek Mss. are far from unanimous; and the primitive style of the
      blood of Christ is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those
      copies which were used by the Christians of St. Thomas on the
      coast of Malabar, (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.
      347.) The jealousy of the Nestorians and Monophysites has guarded
      the purity of their text.]

      36 (return) [ The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new
      Cybele of the Christians, (Isidor. l. i. epist. 54;) a letter was
      forged in the name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her
      assassin, (Synodicon, c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484.) In the
      article of Nestorius, Bayle has scattered some loose philosophy
      on the worship of the Virgin Mary.]

      37 (return) [ The item of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer
      of the idioms or properties of each nature to the other—of
      infinity to man, passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this
      nicest of subjects compose the Theological Grammar of Petavius,
      (Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. l. iv. c. 14, 15, p 209, &c.)]

      38 (return) [ See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, l. i. p. 30, &c.]

      39 (return) [ Concil. tom. iii. p. 943. They have never been
      directly approved by the church, (Tillemont. Mem. Eccles. tom.
      xiv. p. 368—372.) I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry
      with which Petavius seems to be agitated in the vith book of his
      Dogmata Theologica]

      40 (return) [ Such as the rational Basnage (ad tom. i. Variar.
      Lection. Canisine in Praefat. c. 2, p. 11—23) and La Croze, the
      universal scholar, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16—20. De
      l’Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. The saur. Epist. p. 176, &c., 283, 285.)
      His free sentence is confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski
      (Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p. 193—201) and Mosheim, (idem. p. 304,
      Nestorium crimine caruisse est et mea sententia;) and three more
      respectable judges will not easily be found. Asseman, a learned
      and modest slave, can hardly discern (Bibliothec. Orient. tom.
      iv. p. 190—224) the guilt and error of the Nestorians.]


      Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were disposed
      to obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a synod of the
      Catholic, or rather of the Greek church, was unanimously demanded
      as the sole remedy that could appease or decide this
      ecclesiastical quarrel. 41 Ephesus, on all sides accessible by
      sea and land, was chosen for the place, the festival of Pentecost
      for the day, of the meeting; a writ of summons was despatched to
      each metropolitan, and a guard was stationed to protect and
      confine the fathers till they should settle the mysteries of
      heaven, and the faith of the earth. Nestorius appeared not as a
      criminal, but as a judge; he depended on the weight rather than
      the number of his prelates, and his sturdy slaves from the baths
      of Zeuxippus were armed for every service of injury or defence.
      But his adversary Cyril was more powerful in the weapons both of
      the flesh and of the spirit. Disobedient to the letter, or at
      least to the meaning, of the royal summons, he was attended by
      fifty Egyptian bishops, who expected from their patriarch’s nod
      the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He had contracted an intimate
      alliance with Memnon, bishop of Ephesus. The despotic primate of
      Asia disposed of the ready succors of thirty or forty episcopal
      votes: a crowd of peasants, the slaves of the church, was poured
      into the city to support with blows and clamors a metaphysical
      argument; and the people zealously asserted the honor of the
      Virgin, whose body reposed within the walls of Ephesus. 42 The
      fleet which had transported Cyril from Alexandria was laden with
      the riches of Egypt; and he disembarked a numerous body of
      mariners, slaves, and fanatics, enlisted with blind obedience
      under the banner of St. Mark and the mother of God. The fathers,
      and even the guards, of the council were awed by this martial
      array; the adversaries of Cyril and Mary were insulted in the
      streets, or threatened in their houses; his eloquence and
      liberality made a daily increase in the number of his adherents;
      and the Egyptian soon computed that he might command the
      attendance and the voices of two hundred bishops. 43 But the
      author of the twelve anathemas foresaw and dreaded the opposition
      of John of Antioch, who, with a small, but respectable, train of
      metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys from
      the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay, which he
      stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, 44 Cyril announced the
      opening of the synod sixteen days after the festival of
      Pentecost. Nestorius, who depended on the near approach of his
      Eastern friends, persisted, like his predecessor Chrysostom, to
      disclaim the jurisdiction, and to disobey the summons, of his
      enemies: they hastened his trial, and his accuser presided in the
      seat of judgment. Sixty-eight bishops, twenty-two of metropolitan
      rank, defended his cause by a modest and temperate protest: they
      were excluded from the councils of their brethren. Candidian, in
      the emperor’s name, requested a delay of four days; the profane
      magistrate was driven with outrage and insult from the assembly
      of the saints. The whole of this momentous transaction was
      crowded into the compass of a summer’s day: the bishops delivered
      their separate opinions; but the uniformity of style reveals the
      influence or the hand of a master, who has been accused of
      corrupting the public evidence of their acts and subscriptions.
      45 Without a dissenting voice, they recognized in the epistles of
      Cyril the Nicene creed and the doctrine of the fathers: but the
      partial extracts from the letters and homilies of Nestorius were
      interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the heretic was degraded
      from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity. The sentence,
      maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was affixed and
      proclaimed in the streets of Ephesus: the weary prelates, as they
      issued from the church of the mother of God, were saluted as her
      champions; and her victory was celebrated by the illuminations,
      the songs, and the tumult of the night.

      41 (return) [ The origin and progress of the Nestorian
      controversy, till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates,
      (l. vii. c. 32,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 1, 2,) Liberatus, (Brev. c.
      1—4,) the original Acts, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 551—991, edit.
      Venice, 1728,) the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful
      collections of Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv p. 283—377.)]

      42 (return) [ The Christians of the four first centuries were
      ignorant of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of
      Ephesus is affirmed by the synod, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1102;)
      yet it has been superseded by the claim of Jerusalem; and her
      empty sepulchre, as it was shown to the pilgrims, produced the
      fable of her resurrection and assumption, in which the Greek and
      Latin churches have piously acquiesced. See Baronius (Annal.
      Eccles. A.D. 48, No. 6, &c.) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. i.
      p. 467—477.)]

      43 (return) [ The Acts of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1405,
      1408) exhibit a lively picture of the blind, obstinate servitude
      of the bishops of Egypt to their patriarch.]

      44 (return) [ Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the
      bishops at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the
      distance of thirty days’ journey; and ten days more may be fairly
      allowed for accidents and repose. The march of Xenophon over the
      same ground enumerates above 260 parasangs or leagues; and this
      measure might be illustrated from ancient and modern itineraries,
      if I knew how to compare the speed of an army, a synod, and a
      caravan. John of Antioch is reluctantly acquitted by Tillemont
      himself, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 386—389.)]

      45 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The same imputation was urged
      by Count Irenaeus, (tom. iii. p. 1249;) and the orthodox critics
      do not find it an easy task to defend the purity of the Greek or
      Latin copies of the Acts.]


      On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival and
      indignation of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the inn,
      before he had wiped the dust from his shoes, John of Antioch gave
      audience to Candidian, the Imperial minister; who related his
      ineffectual efforts to prevent or to annul the hasty violence of
      the Egyptian. With equal haste and violence, the Oriental synod
      of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their episcopal
      honors, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom of
      the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as
      a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church.
      46 His throne was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly
      resolved to bestow on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a
      faithful shepherd. By the vigilance of Memnon, the churches were
      shut against them, and a strong garrison was thrown into the
      cathedral. The troops, under the command of Candidian, advanced
      to the assault; the outguards were routed and put to the sword,
      but the place was impregnable: the besiegers retired; their
      retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their horses,
      and many of their soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs
      and stones. Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with
      rage and clamor, with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted
      anathemas and excommunications from their spiritual engines; and
      the court of Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and
      contradictory narratives of the Syrian and Egyptian factions.
      During a busy period of three months, the emperor tried every
      method, except the most effectual means of indifference and
      contempt, to reconcile this theological quarrel. He attempted to
      remove or intimidate the leaders by a common sentence, of
      acquittal or condemnation; he invested his representatives at
      Ephesus with ample power and military force; he summoned from
      either party eight chosen deputies to a free and candid
      conference in the neighborhood of the capital, far from the
      contagion of popular frenzy. But the Orientals refused to yield,
      and the Catholics, proud of their numbers and of their Latin
      allies, rejected all terms of union or toleration. The patience
      of the meek Theodosius was provoked; and he dissolved in anger
      this episcopal tumult, which at the distance of thirteen
      centuries assumes the venerable aspect of the third oecumenical
      council. 47 “God is my witness,” said the pious prince, “that I
      am not the author of this confusion. His providence will discern
      and punish the guilty. Return to your provinces, and may your
      private virtues repair the mischief and scandal of your meeting.”
      They returned to their provinces; but the same passions which had
      distracted the synod of Ephesus were diffused over the Eastern
      world. After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of Antioch
      and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace: but
      their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence than to
      reason, to the mutual lassitude rather than to the Christian
      charity of the patriarchs.

      46 (return) [ After the coalition of John and Cyril these
      invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must
      never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable
      enemies entertain of each other’s merit, (Concil tom. iii. p.
      1244.)]

      47 (return) [ See the acts of the synod of Ephesus in the
      original Greek, and a Latin version almost contemporary, (Concil.
      tom. iii. p. 991—1339, with the Synodicon adversus Tragoediam
      Irenaei, tom. iv. p. 235—497,) the Ecclesiastical Histories of
      Socrates (l. vii. c. 34) and Evagrius, (l i. c. 3, 4, 5,) and the
      Breviary of Liberatus, (in Concil. tom. vi. p. 419—459, c. 5, 6,)
      and the Memoires Eccles. of Tillemont, (tom. xiv p. 377-487.)]


      The Byzantine pontiff had instilled into the royal ear a baleful
      prejudice against the character and conduct of his Egyptian
      rival. An epistle of menace and invective, 48 which accompanied
      the summons, accused him as a busy, insolent, and envious priest,
      who perplexed the simplicity of the faith, violated the peace of
      the church and state, and, by his artful and separate addresses
      to the wife and sister of Theodosius, presumed to suppose, or to
      scatter, the seeds of discord in the Imperial family. At the
      stern command of his sovereign, Cyril had repaired to Ephesus,
      where he was resisted, threatened, and confined, by the
      magistrates in the interest of Nestorius and the Orientals; who
      assembled the troops of Lydia and Ionia to suppress the fanatic
      and disorderly train of the patriarch. Without expecting the
      royal license, he escaped from his guards, precipitately
      embarked, deserted the imperfect synod, and retired to his
      episcopal fortress of safety and independence. But his artful
      emissaries, both in the court and city, successfully labored to
      appease the resentment, and to conciliate the favor, of the
      emperor. The feeble son of Arcadius was alternately swayed by his
      wife and sister, by the eunuchs and women of the palace:
      superstition and avarice were their ruling passions; and the
      orthodox chiefs were assiduous in their endeavors to alarm the
      former, and to gratify the latter. Constantinople and the suburbs
      were sanctified with frequent monasteries, and the holy abbots,
      Dalmatius and Eutyches, 49 had devoted their zeal and fidelity to
      the cause of Cyril, the worship of Mary, and the unity of Christ.
      From the first moment of their monastic life, they had never
      mingled with the world, or trod the profane ground of the city.
      But in this awful moment of the danger of the church, their vow
      was superseded by a more sublime and indispensable duty. At the
      head of a long order of monks and hermits, who carried burning
      tapers in their hands, and chanted litanies to the mother of God,
      they proceeded from their monasteries to the palace. The people
      was edified and inflamed by this extraordinary spectacle, and the
      trembling monarch listened to the prayers and adjurations of the
      saints, who boldly pronounced, that none could hope for
      salvation, unless they embraced the person and the creed of the
      orthodox successor of Athanasius. At the same time, every avenue
      of the throne was assaulted with gold. Under the decent names of
      eulogies and benedictions, the courtiers of both sexes were
      bribed according to the measure of their power and rapaciousness.
      But their incessant demands despoiled the sanctuaries of
      Constantinople and Alexandria; and the authority of the patriarch
      was unable to silence the just murmur of his clergy, that a debt
      of sixty thousand pounds had already been contracted to support
      the expense of this scandalous corruption. 50 Pulcheria, who
      relieved her brother from the weight of an empire, was the
      firmest pillar of orthodoxy; and so intimate was the alliance
      between the thunders of the synod and the whispers of the court,
      that Cyril was assured of success if he could displace one
      eunuch, and substitute another in the favor of Theodosius. Yet
      the Egyptian could not boast of a glorious or decisive victory.
      The emperor, with unaccustomed firmness, adhered to his promise
      of protecting the innocence of the Oriental bishops; and Cyril
      softened his anathemas, and confessed, with ambiguity and
      reluctance, a twofold nature of Christ, before he was permitted
      to satiate his revenge against the unfortunate Nestorius. 51

      48 (return) [ I should be curious to know how much Nestorius paid
      for these expressions, so mortifying to his rival.]

      49 (return) [ Eutyches, the heresiarch Eutyches, is honorably
      named by Cyril as a friend, a saint, and the strenuous defender
      of the faith. His brother, the abbot Dalmatus, is likewise
      employed to bind the emperor and all his chamberlains terribili
      conjuratione. Synodicon. c. 203, in Concil. tom. iv p. 467.]

      50 (return) [ Clerici qui hic sunt contristantur, quod ecclesia
      Alexandrina nudata sit hujus causa turbelae: et debet praeter
      illa quae hinc transmissa sint auri libras mille quingentas. Et
      nunc ei scriptum est ut praestet; sed de tua ecclesia praesta
      avaritiae quorum nosti, &c. This curious and original letter,
      from Cyril’s archdeacon to his creature the new bishop of
      Constantinople, has been unaccountably preserved in an old Latin
      version, (Synodicon, c. 203, Concil. tom. iv. p. 465—468.) The
      mask is almost dropped, and the saints speak the honest language
      of interest and confederacy.]

      51 (return) [ The tedious negotiations that succeeded the synod
      of Ephesus are diffusely related in the original acts, (Concil.
      tom. iii. p. 1339—1771, ad fin. vol. and the Synodicon, in tom.
      iv.,) Socrates, (l. vii. c. 28, 35, 40, 41,) Evagrius, (l. i. c.
      6, 7, 8, 12,) Liberatus, (c. 7—10, 7-10,) Tillemont, (Mem.
      Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 487—676.) The most patient reader will thank
      me for compressing so much nonsense and falsehood in a few
      lines.]


      The rash and obstinate Nestorius, before the end of the synod,
      was oppressed by Cyril, betrayed by the court, and faintly
      supported by his Eastern friends. A sentiment of fear or
      indignation prompted him, while it was yet time, to affect the
      glory of a voluntary abdication: 52 his wish, or at least his
      request, was readily granted; he was conducted with honor from
      Ephesus to his old monastery of Antioch; and, after a short
      pause, his successors, Maximian and Proclus, were acknowledged as
      the lawful bishops of Constantinople. But in the silence of his
      cell, the degraded patriarch could no longer resume the innocence
      and security of a private monk. The past he regretted, he was
      discontented with the present, and the future he had reason to
      dread: the Oriental bishops successively disengaged their cause
      from his unpopular name, and each day decreased the number of the
      schismatics who revered Nestorius as the confessor of the faith.
      After a residence at Antioch of four years, the hand of
      Theodosius subscribed an edict, 53 which ranked him with Simon
      the magician, proscribed his opinions and followers, condemned
      his writings to the flames, and banished his person first to
      Petra, in Arabia, and at length to Oasis, one of the islands of
      the Libyan desert. 54 Secluded from the church and from the
      world, the exile was still pursued by the rage of bigotry and
      war. A wandering tribe of the Blemmyes or Nubians invaded his
      solitary prison: in their retreat they dismissed a crowd of
      useless captives: but no sooner had Nestorius reached the banks
      of the Nile, than he would gladly have escaped from a Roman and
      orthodox city, to the milder servitude of the savages. His flight
      was punished as a new crime: the soul of the patriarch inspired
      the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Egypt; the magistrates,
      the soldiers, the monks, devoutly tortured the enemy of Christ
      and St. Cyril; and, as far as the confines of Aethiopia, the
      heretic was alternately dragged and recalled, till his aged body
      was broken by the hardships and accidents of these reiterated
      journeys. Yet his mind was still independent and erect; the
      president of Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters; he
      survived the Catholic tyrant of Alexandria, and, after sixteen
      years’ banishment, the synod of Chalcedon would perhaps have
      restored him to the honors, or at least to the communion, of the
      church. The death of Nestorius prevented his obedience to their
      welcome summons; 55 and his disease might afford some color to
      the scandalous report, that his tongue, the organ of blasphemy,
      had been eaten by the worms. He was buried in a city of Upper
      Egypt, known by the names of Chemnis, or Panopolis, or Akmim; 56
      but the immortal malice of the Jacobites has persevered for ages
      to cast stones against his sepulchre, and to propagate the
      foolish tradition, that it was never watered by the rain of
      heaven, which equally descends on the righteous and the ungodly.
      57 Humanity may drop a tear on the fate of Nestorius; yet justice
      must observe, that he suffered the persecution which he had
      approved and inflicted. 58

      52 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The original letters in the
      Synodicon (c. 15, 24, 25, 26) justify the appearance of a
      voluntary resignation, which is asserted by Ebed-Jesu, a
      Nestorian writer, apud Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p.
      299, 302.]

      53 (return) [ See the Imperial letters in the Acts of the Synod
      of Ephesus, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1730—1735.) The odious name of
      Simonians, which was affixed to the disciples of this. Yet these
      were Christians! who differed only in names and in shadows.]

      54 (return) [ The metaphor of islands is applied by the grave
      civilians (Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. 22, leg. 7) to those happy
      spots which are discriminated by water and verdure from the
      Libyan sands. Three of these under the common name of Oasis, or
      Alvahat: 1. The temple of Jupiter Ammon. 2. The middle Oasis,
      three days’ journey to the west of Lycopolis. 3. The southern,
      where Nestorius was banished in the first climate, and only three
      days’ journey from the confines of Nubia. See a learned note of
      Michaelis, (ad Descript. Aegypt. Abulfedae, p. 21-34.) * Note: 1.
      The Oasis of Sivah has been visited by Mons. Drovetti and Mr.
      Browne. 2. The little Oasis, that of El Kassar, was visited and
      described by Belzoni. 3. The great Oasis, and its splendid ruins,
      have been well described in the travels of Sir A. Edmonstone. To
      these must be added another Western Oasis also visited by Sir A.
      Edmonstone.—M.]

      55 (return) [ The invitation of Nestorius to the synod of
      Chalcedon, is related by Zacharias, bishop of Melitene (Evagrius,
      l. ii. c. 2. Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 55,) and the
      famous Xenaias or Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, (Asseman.
      Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 40, &c.,) denied by Evagrius and
      Asseman, and stoutly maintained by La Croze, (Thesaur. Epistol.
      tom. iii. p. 181, &c.) The fact is not improbable; yet it was the
      interest of the Monophysites to spread the invidious report, and
      Eutychius (tom. ii. p. 12) affirms, that Nestorius died after an
      exile of seven years, and consequently ten years before the synod
      of Chalcedon.]

      56 (return) [ Consult D’Anville, (Memoire sur l’Egypte, p. 191,)
      Pocock. (Description of the East, vol. i. p. 76,) Abulfeda,
      (Descript. Aegypt, p. 14,) and his commentator Michaelis, (Not.
      p. 78—83,) and the Nubian Geographer, (p. 42,) who mentions, in
      the xiith century, the ruins and the sugar-canes of Akmim.]

      57 (return) [ Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 12) and Gregory
      Bar-Hebraeus, of Abulpharagius, (Asseman, tom. ii. p. 316,)
      represent the credulity of the xth and xiith centuries.]

      58 (return) [ We are obliged to Evagrius (l. i. c. 7) for some
      extracts from the letters of Nestorius; but the lively picture of
      his sufferings is treated with insult by the hard and stupid
      fanatic.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part III.


      The death of the Alexandrian primate, after a reign of thirty-two
      years, abandoned the Catholics to the intemperance of zeal and
      the abuse of victory. 59 The monophysite doctrine (one incarnate
      nature) was rigorously preached in the churches of Egypt and the
      monasteries of the East; the primitive creed of Apollinarius was
      protected by the sanctity of Cyril; and the name of Eutyches, his
      venerable friend, has been applied to the sect most adverse to
      the Syrian heresy of Nestorius. His rival Eutyches was the abbot,
      or archimandrite, or superior of three hundred monks, but the
      opinions of a simple and illiterate recluse might have expired in
      the cell, where he had slept above seventy years, if the
      resentment or indiscretion of Flavian, the Byzantine pontiff, had
      not exposed the scandal to the eyes of the Christian world. His
      domestic synod was instantly convened, their proceedings were
      sullied with clamor and artifice, and the aged heretic was
      surprised into a seeming confession, that Christ had not derived
      his body from the substance of the Virgin Mary. From their
      partial decree, Eutyches appealed to a general council; and his
      cause was vigorously asserted by his godson Chrysaphius, the
      reigning eunuch of the palace, and his accomplice Dioscorus, who
      had succeeded to the throne, the creed, the talents, and the
      vices, of the nephew of Theophilus. By the special summons of
      Theodosius, the second synod of Ephesus was judiciously composed
      of ten metropolitans and ten bishops from each of the six
      dioceses of the Eastern empire: some exceptions of favor or merit
      enlarged the number to one hundred and thirty-five; and the
      Syrian Barsumas, as the chief and representative of the monks,
      was invited to sit and vote with the successors of the apostles.
      But the despotism of the Alexandrian patriarch again oppressed
      the freedom of debate: the same spiritual and carnal weapons were
      again drawn from the arsenals of Egypt: the Asiatic veterans, a
      band of archers, served under the orders of Dioscorus; and the
      more formidable monks, whose minds were inaccessible to reason or
      mercy, besieged the doors of the cathedral. The general, and, as
      it should seem, the unconstrained voice of the fathers, accepted
      the faith and even the anathemas of Cyril; and the heresy of the
      two natures was formally condemned in the persons and writings of
      the most learned Orientals. “May those who divide Christ be
      divided with the sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may they be
      burned alive!” were the charitable wishes of a Christian synod.
      60 The innocence and sanctity of Eutyches were acknowledged
      without hesitation; but the prelates, more especially those of
      Thrace and Asia, were unwilling to depose their patriarch for the
      use or even the abuse of his lawful jurisdiction. They embraced
      the knees of Dioscorus, as he stood with a threatening aspect on
      the footstool of his throne, and conjured him to forgive the
      offences, and to respect the dignity, of his brother. “Do you
      mean to raise a sedition?” exclaimed the relentless tyrant.
      “Where are the officers?” At these words a furious multitude of
      monks and soldiers, with staves, and swords, and chains, burst
      into the church; the trembling bishops hid themselves behind the
      altar, or under the benches, and as they were not inspired with
      the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed a blank
      paper, which was afterwards filled with the condemnation of the
      Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was instantly delivered to the wild
      beasts of this spiritual amphitheatre: the monks were stimulated
      by the voice and example of Barsumas to avenge the injuries of
      Christ: it is said that the patriarch of Alexandria reviled, and
      buffeted, and kicked, and trampled his brother of Constantinople:
      61 it is certain, that the victim, before he could reach the
      place of his exile, expired on the third day of the wounds and
      bruises which he had received at Ephesus. This second synod has
      been justly branded as a gang of robbers and assassins; yet the
      accusers of Dioscorus would magnify his violence, to alleviate
      the cowardice and inconstancy of their own behavior.

      59 (return) [ Dixi Cyrillum dum viveret, auctoritate sua
      effecisse, ne Eutychianismus et Monophysitarum error in nervum
      erumperet: idque verum puto...aliquo... honesto modo cecinerat.
      The learned but cautious Jablonski did not always speak the whole
      truth. Cum Cyrillo lenius omnino egi, quam si tecum aut cum aliis
      rei hujus probe gnaris et aequis rerum aestimatoribus sermones
      privatos conferrem, (Thesaur. Epistol. La Crozian. tom. i. p.
      197, 198) an excellent key to his dissertations on the Nestorian
      controversy!]

      60 (return) [ At the request of Dioscorus, those who were not
      able to roar, stretched out their hands. At Chalcedon, the
      Orientals disclaimed these exclamations: but the Egyptians more
      consistently declared. (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1012.)]

      61 (return) [ (Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum): and this testimony
      of Evagrius (l. ii. c. 2) is amplified by the historian Zonaras,
      (tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 44,) who affirms that Dioscorus kicked like
      a wild ass. But the language of Liberatus (Brev. c. 12, in
      Concil. tom. vi. p. 438) is more cautious; and the Acts of
      Chalcedon, which lavish the names of homicide, Cain, &c., do not
      justify so pointed a charge. The monk Barsumas is more
      particularly accused, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1418.)]


      The faith of Egypt had prevailed: but the vanquished party was
      supported by the same pope who encountered without fear the
      hostile rage of Attila and Genseric. The theology of Leo, his
      famous tome or epistle on the mystery of the incarnation, had
      been disregarded by the synod of Ephesus: his authority, and that
      of the Latin church, was insulted in his legates, who escaped
      from slavery and death to relate the melancholy tale of the
      tyranny of Dioscorus and the martyrdom of Flavian. His provincial
      synod annulled the irregular proceedings of Ephesus; but as this
      step was itself irregular, he solicited the convocation of a
      general council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From
      his independent throne, the Roman bishop spoke and acted without
      danger as the head of the Christians, and his dictates were
      obsequiously transcribed by Placidia and her son Valentinian; who
      addressed their Eastern colleague to restore the peace and unity
      of the church. But the pageant of Oriental royalty was moved with
      equal dexterity by the hand of the eunuch; and Theodosius could
      pronounce, without hesitation, that the church was already
      peaceful and triumphant, and that the recent flame had been
      extinguished by the just punishment of the Nestorians. Perhaps
      the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the
      Monophysites, if the emperor’s horse had not fortunately
      stumbled; Theodosius expired; his orthodox sister Pulcheria, with
      a nominal husband, succeeded to the throne; Chrysaphius was
      burnt, Dioscorus was disgraced, the exiles were recalled, and the
      tome of Leo was subscribed by the Oriental bishops. Yet the pope
      was disappointed in his favorite project of a Latin council: he
      disdained to preside in the Greek synod, which was speedily
      assembled at Nice in Bithynia; his legates required in a
      peremptory tone the presence of the emperor; and the weary
      fathers were transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of
      Marcian and the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile
      from the Thracian Bosphorus, the church of St. Euphemia was built
      on the summit of a gentle though lofty ascent: the triple
      structure was celebrated as a prodigy of art, and the boundless
      prospect of the land and sea might have raised the mind of a
      sectary to the contemplation of the God of the universe. Six
      hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in order in the nave of
      the church; but the patriarchs of the East were preceded by the
      legates, of whom the third was a simple priest; and the place of
      honor was reserved for twenty laymen of consular or senatorian
      rank. The gospel was ostentatiously displayed in the centre, but
      the rule of faith was defined by the Papal and Imperial
      ministers, who moderated the thirteen sessions of the council of
      Chalcedon. 62 Their partial interposition silenced the
      intemperate shouts and execrations, which degraded the episcopal
      gravity; but, on the formal accusation of the legates, Dioscorus
      was compelled to descend from his throne to the rank of a
      criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his judges. The
      Orientals, less adverse to Nestorius than to Cyril, accepted the
      Romans as their deliverers: Thrace, and Pontus, and Asia, were
      exasperated against the murderer of Flavian, and the new
      patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch secured their places by
      the sacrifice of their benefactor. The bishops of Palestine,
      Macedonia, and Greece, were attached to the faith of Cyril; but
      in the face of the synod, in the heat of the battle, the leaders,
      with their obsequious train, passed from the right to the left
      wing, and decided the victory by this seasonable desertion. Of
      the seventeen suffragans who sailed from Alexandria, four were
      tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen, falling
      prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the council, with
      sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration, that, if they
      yielded, they should be massacred, on their return to Egypt, by
      the indignant people. A tardy repentance was allowed to expiate
      the guilt or error of the accomplices of Dioscorus: but their
      sins were accumulated on his head; he neither asked nor hoped for
      pardon, and the moderation of those who pleaded for a general
      amnesty was drowned in the prevailing cry of victory and revenge.


      To save the reputation of his late adherents, some personal
      offences were skilfully detected; his rash and illegal
      excommunication of the pope, and his contumacious refusal (while
      he was detained a prisoner) to attend to the summons of the
      synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the special facts of
      his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers heard with
      abhorrence, that the alms of the church were lavished on the
      female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to
      the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia,
      or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the
      patriarch. 63

      62 (return) [ The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Concil. tom.
      iv. p. 761—2071) comprehend those of Ephesus, (p. 890—1189,)
      which again comprise the synod of Constantinople under Flavian,
      (p. 930—1072;) and at requires some attention to disengage this
      double involution. The whole business of Eutyches, Flavian, and
      Dioscorus, is related by Evagrius (l. i. c. 9—12, and l. ii. c.
      1, 2, 3, 4,) and Liberatus, (Brev. c. 11, 12, 13, 14.) Once more,
      and almost for the last time, I appeal to the diligence of
      Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 479-719.) The annals of
      Baronius and Pagi will accompany me much further on my long and
      laborious journey.]

      63 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276.) A specimen of the wit
      and malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l.
      ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was
      unknown to the editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises
      a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of
      “Peace be to all!” with the genuine or corrupted name of the
      bishop’s concubine: I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who
      seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding
      epigram, was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus himself.]


      For these scandalous offences, Dioscorus was deposed by the
      synod, and banished by the emperor; but the purity of his faith
      was declared in the presence, and with the tacit approbation, of
      the fathers. Their prudence supposed rather than pronounced the
      heresy of Eutyches, who was never summoned before their tribunal;
      and they sat silent and abashed, when a bold Monophysite casting
      at their feet a volume of Cyril, challenged them to anathematize
      in his person the doctrine of the saint. If we fairly peruse the
      acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox party, 64
      we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced the
      simple unity of Christ; and the ambiguous concession that he was
      formed Of or From two natures, might imply either their previous
      existence, or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous
      interval between the conception of the man and the assumption of
      the God. The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted
      the term most offensive to the ears of the Egyptians, that Christ
      existed In two natures; and this momentous particle 65 (which the
      memory, rather than the understanding, must retain) had almost
      produced a schism among the Catholic bishops. The tome of Leo had
      been respectfully, perhaps sincerely, subscribed; but they
      protested, in two successive debates, that it was neither
      expedient nor lawful to transgress the sacred landmarks which had
      been fixed at Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, according to the
      rule of Scripture and tradition. At length they yielded to the
      importunities of their masters; but their infallible decree,
      after it had been ratified with deliberate votes and vehement
      acclamations, was overturned in the next session by the
      opposition of the legates and their Oriental friends. It was in
      vain that a multitude of episcopal voices repeated in chorus,
      “The definition of the fathers is orthodox and immutable! The
      heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them
      depart from the synod! Let them repair to Rome.” 66 The legates
      threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen
      bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed on the reluctant
      assembly. In the name of the fourth general council, the Christ
      in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the Catholic
      world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of
      Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise,
      a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the
      master-hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of
      blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions
      from the oracle of the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already
      varnished with the rust of antiquity, was admitted without
      dispute into the creed of the reformers, who disclaimed the
      supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of Chalcedon still
      triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of
      controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the
      present day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief
      concerning the mystery of the incarnation.

      64 (return) [ Those who reverence the infallibility of synods,
      may try to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were
      attended by partial or careless scribes, who dispersed their
      copies round the world. Our Greek Mss. are sullied with the false
      and prescribed reading of (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1460:) the
      authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not seem to have been
      executed, and the old Latin versions materially differ from the
      present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus, a
      Roman priest, from the best Mss. at Constantinople, (Ducange, C.
      P. Christiana, l. iv. p. 151,) a famous monastery of Latins,
      Greeks, and Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959—2049, and Pagi,
      Critica, tom. ii. p. 326, &c.]

      65 (return) [ It is darkly represented in the microscope of
      Petavius, (tom. v. l. iii. c. 5;) yet the subtle theologian is
      himself afraid—ne quis fortasse supervacaneam, et nimis anxiam
      putet hujusmodi vocularum inquisitionem, et ab instituti
      theologici gravitate alienam, (p. 124.)]

      66 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1449.) Evagrius and Liberatus
      present only the placid face of the synod, and discreetly slide
      over these embers, suppositos cineri doloso.]


      Far different was the temper of the Greeks and Egyptians under
      the orthodox reigns of Leo and Marcian. Those pious emperors
      enforced with arms and edicts the symbol of their faith; 67 and
      it was declared by the conscience or honor of five hundred
      bishops, that the decrees of the synod of Chalcedon might be
      lawfully supported, even with blood. The Catholics observed with
      satisfaction, that the same synod was odious both to the
      Nestorians and the Monophysites; 68 but the Nestorians were less
      angry, or less powerful, and the East was distracted by the
      obstinate and sanguinary zeal of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was
      occupied by an army of monks; in the name of the one incarnate
      nature, they pillaged, they burnt, they murdered; the sepulchre
      of Christ was defiled with blood; and the gates of the city were
      guarded in tumultuous rebellion against the troops of the
      emperor. After the disgrace and exile of Dioscorus, the Egyptians
      still regretted their spiritual father; and detested the
      usurpation of his successor, who was introduced by the fathers of
      Chalcedon. The throne of Proterius was supported by a guard of
      two thousand soldiers: he waged a five years’ war against the
      people of Alexandria; and on the first intelligence of the death
      of Marcian, he became the victim of their zeal. On the third day
      before the festival of Easter, the patriarch was besieged in the
      cathedral, and murdered in the baptistery. The remains of his
      mangled corpse were delivered to the flames, and his ashes to the
      wind; and the deed was inspired by the vision of a pretended
      angel: an ambitious monk, who, under the name of Timothy the Cat,
      69 succeeded to the place and opinions of Dioscorus. This deadly
      superstition was inflamed, on either side, by the principle and
      the practice of retaliation: in the pursuit of a metaphysical
      quarrel, many thousands 70 were slain, and the Christians of
      every degree were deprived of the substantial enjoyments of
      social life, and of the invisible gifts of baptism and the holy
      communion. Perhaps an extravagant fable of the times may conceal
      an allegorical picture of these fanatics, who tortured each other
      and themselves. “Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer,”
      says a grave bishop, “the people of Alexandria, and all Egypt,
      were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy: great and
      small, slaves and freedmen, monks and clergy, the natives of the
      land, who opposed the synod of Chalcedon, lost their speech and
      reason, barked like dogs, and tore, with their own teeth the
      flesh from their hands and arms.” 71

      67 (return) [ See, in the Appendix to the Acts of Chalcedon, the
      confirmation of the Synod by Marcian, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1781,
      1783;) his letters to the monks of Alexandria, (p. 1791,) of
      Mount Sinai, (p. 1793,) of Jerusalem and Palestine, (p. 1798;)
      his laws against the Eutychians, (p. 1809, 1811, 1831;) the
      correspondence of Leo with the provincial synods on the
      revolution of Alexandria, (p. 1835—1930.)]

      68 (return) [ Photius (or rather Eulogius of Alexandria)
      confesses, in a fine passage, the specious color of this double
      charge against Pope Leo and his synod of Chalcedon, (Bibliot.
      cod. ccxxv. p. 768.) He waged a double war against the enemies of
      the church, and wounded either foe with the darts of his
      adversary. Against Nestorius he seemed to introduce Monophysites;
      against Eutyches he appeared to countenance the Nestorians. The
      apologist claims a charitable interpretation for the saints: if
      the same had been extended to the heretics, the sound of the
      controversy would have been lost in the air]

      69 (return) [ From his nocturnal expeditions. In darkness and
      disguise he crept round the cells of the monastery, and whispered
      the revelation to his slumbering brethren, (Theodor. Lector. l.
      i.)]

      70 (return) [ Such is the hyperbolic language of the Henoticon.]

      71 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis, in the
      Lectiones Antiquae of Canisius, republished by Basnage, tom.
      326.]


      The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous
      Henoticon 72 of the emperor Zeno, which in his reign, and in that
      of Anastasius, was signed by all the bishops of the East, under
      the penalty of degradation and exile, if they rejected or
      infringed this salutary and fundamental law. The clergy may smile
      or groan at the presumption of a layman who defines the articles
      of faith; yet if he stoops to the humiliating task, his mind is
      less infected by prejudice or interest, and the authority of the
      magistrate can only be maintained by the concord of the people.
      It is in ecclesiastical story, that Zeno appears least
      contemptible; and I am not able to discern any Manichaean or
      Eutychian guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius. That it was
      unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshippers of Christ and
      the citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was most pleasing to the
      Egyptians; yet the smallest blemish has not been described by the
      jealous, and even jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolmen, and
      it accurately represents the Catholic faith of the incarnation,
      without adopting or disclaiming the peculiar terms of tenets of
      the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is pronounced against
      Nestorius and Eutyches; against all heretics by whom Christ is
      divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without defining
      the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system of
      St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, is
      respectfully confirmed; but, instead of bowing at the name of the
      fourth council, the subject is dismissed by the censure of all
      contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere
      or at Chalcedon. Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and
      the enemies of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace.
      The most reasonable Christians acquiesced in this mode of
      toleration; but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their
      obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement
      spirit of their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the
      thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to preserve an
      exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled the flame
      of controversy; and the bonds of communion were alternately
      broken and renewed by the private animosity of the bishops. The
      space between Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand
      shades of language and opinion; the acephali 73 of Egypt, and the
      Roman pontiffs, of equal valor, though of unequal strength, may
      be found at the two extremities of the theological scale. The
      acephali, without a king or a bishop, were separated above three
      hundred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted
      the communion of Constantinople, without exacting a formal
      condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the
      communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the same
      synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematized by the
      popes. Their inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of
      the Greek churches in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted
      the validity of their sacraments, 74 and fomented, thirty-five
      years, the schism of the East and West, till they finally
      abolished the memory of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to
      oppose the supremacy of St. Peter. 75 Before that period, the
      precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt had been violated by
      the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was suspected of
      the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in disgrace and exile, the synod
      of Chalcedon, while the successor of Cyril would have purchased
      its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold.


      72 (return) [The Henoticon is transcribed by Evagrius, (l. iii.
      c. 13,) and translated by Liberatus, (Brev. c. 18.) Pagi
      (Critica, tom. ii. p. 411) and (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 343)
      are satisfied that it is free from heresy; but Petavius (Dogmat.
      Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c. 13, p. 40) most unaccountably affirms
      Chalcedonensem ascivit. An adversary would prove that he had
      never read the Henoticon.]

      73 (return) [ See Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 123, 131,
      145, 195, 247.) They were reconciled by the care of Mark I. (A.D.
      799—819;) he promoted their chiefs to the bishoprics of Athribis
      and Talba, (perhaps Tava. See D’Anville, p. 82,) and supplied the
      sacraments, which had failed for want of an episcopal
      ordination.]

      74 (return) [ De his quos baptizavit, quos ordinavit Acacius,
      majorum traditione confectam et veram, praecipue religiosae
      solicitudini congruam praebemus sine difficultate medicinam,
      (Galacius, in epist. i. ad Euphemium, Concil. tom. v. 286.) The
      offer of a medicine proves the disease, and numbers must have
      perished before the arrival of the Roman physician. Tillemont
      himself (Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 372, 642, &c.) is shocked at
      the proud, uncharitable temper of the popes; they are now glad,
      says he, to invoke St. Flavian of Antioch, St. Elias of
      Jerusalem, &c., to whom they refused communion whilst upon earth.
      But Cardinal Baronius is firm and hard as the rock of St. Peter.]

      75 (return) [ Their names were erased from the diptych of the
      church: ex venerabili diptycho, in quo piae memoriae transitum ad
      coelum habentium episcoporum vocabula continentur, (Concil. tom.
      iv. p. 1846.) This ecclesiastical record was therefore equivalent
      to the book of life.]


      In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of a
      syllable, was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The
      Trisagion 76 (thrice holy,) “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
      Hosts!” is supposed, by the Greeks, to be the identical hymn
      which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne
      of God, and which, about the middle of the fifth century, was
      miraculously revealed to the church of Constantinople. The
      devotion of Antioch soon added, “who was crucified for us!” and
      this grateful address, either to Christ alone, or to the whole
      Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been
      gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it
      had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop; 77 the gift of an
      enemy was at first rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy,
      and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius
      his throne and his life. 78 The people of Constantinople was
      devoid of any rational principles of freedom; but they held, as a
      lawful cause of rebellion, the color of a livery in the races, or
      the color of a mystery in the schools. The Trisagion, with and
      without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the cathedral by
      two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were exhausted, they had
      recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones; the
      aggressors were punished by the emperor, and defended by the
      patriarch; and the crown and mitre were staked on the event of
      this momentous quarrel. The streets were instantly crowded with
      innumerable swarms of men, women, and children; the legions of
      monks, in regular array, marched, and shouted, and fought at
      their head, “Christians! this is the day of martyrdom: let us not
      desert our spiritual father; anathema to the Manichaean tyrant!
      he is unworthy to reign.” Such was the Catholic cry; and the
      galleys of Anastasius lay upon their oars before the palace, till
      the patriarch had pardoned his penitent, and hushed the waves of
      the troubled multitude. The triumph of Macedonius was checked by
      a speedy exile; but the zeal of his flock was again exasperated
      by the same question, “Whether one of the Trinity had been
      crucified?” On this momentous occasion, the blue and green
      factions of Constantinople suspended their discord, and the civil
      and military powers were annihilated in their presence. The keys
      of the city, and the standards of the guards, were deposited in
      the forum of Constantine, the principal station and camp of the
      faithful. Day and night they were incessantly busied either in
      singing hymns to the honor of their God, or in pillaging and
      murdering the servants of their prince. The head of his favorite
      monk, the friend, as they styled him, of the enemy of the Holy
      Trinity, was borne aloft on a spear; and the firebrands, which
      had been darted against heretical structures, diffused the
      undistinguishing flames over the most orthodox buildings. The
      statues of the emperor were broken, and his person was concealed
      in a suburb, till, at the end of three days, he dared to implore
      the mercy of his subjects. Without his diadem, and in the posture
      of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the throne of the circus.
      The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their genuine
      Trisagion; they exulted in the offer, which he proclaimed by the
      voice of a herald, of abdicating the purple; they listened to the
      admonition, that, since all could not reign, they should
      previously agree in the choice of a sovereign; and they accepted
      the blood of two unpopular ministers, whom their master, without
      hesitation, condemned to the lions. These furious but transient
      seditions were encouraged by the success of Vitalian, who, with
      an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for the most part idolaters,
      declared himself the champion of the Catholic faith. In this
      pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople,
      exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow-Christians, till
      he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction of the
      pope, and the establishment of the council of Chalcedon, an
      orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying Anastasius, and
      more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And such was
      the event of the first of the religious wars which have been
      waged in the name and by the disciples, of the God of peace. 79

      76 (return) [ Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 2, 3,
      4, p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 713, &c.,
      799) represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the
      twelve centuries between Isaiah and St. Proculs’s boy, who was
      taken up into heaven before the bishop and people of
      Constantinople, the song was considerably improved. The boy heard
      the angels sing, “Holy God! Holy strong! Holy immortal!”]

      77 (return) [ Peter Gnapheus, the fuller, (a trade which he had
      exercised in his monastery,) patriarch of Antioch. His tedious
      story is discussed in the Annals of Pagi (A.D. 477—490) and a
      dissertation of M. de Valois at the end of his Evagrius.]

      78 (return) [ The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be
      gathered from the Chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and
      Theophanes. As the last was not published in the time of
      Baronius, his critic Pagi is more copious, as well as more
      correct.]

      79 (return) [ The general history, from the council of Chalcedon
      to the death of Anastasius, may be found in the Breviary of
      Liberatus, (c. 14—19,) the iid and iiid books of Evagrius, the
      abstract of the two books of Theodore the Reader, the Acts of the
      Synods, and the Epistles of the Pope, (Concil. tom. v.) The
      series is continued with some disorder in the xvth and xvith
      tomes of the Memoires Ecclesiastiques of Tillemont. And here I
      must take leave forever of that incomparable guide—whose bigotry
      is overbalanced by the merits of erudition, diligence, veracity,
      and scrupulous minuteness. He was prevented by death from
      completing, as he designed, the vith century of the church and
      empire.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part IV.


      Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a
      prince, a conqueror, and a lawgiver: the theologian 80 still
      remains, and it affords an unfavorable prejudice, that his
      theology should form a very prominent feature of his portrait.
      The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in their
      superstitious reverence for living and departed saints: his Code,
      and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge the
      privileges of the clergy; and in every dispute between a monk and
      a layman, the partial judge was inclined to pronounce, that
      truth, and innocence, and justice, were always on the side of the
      church. In his public and private devotions, the emperor was
      assiduous and exemplary; his prayers, vigils, and fasts,
      displayed the austere penance of a monk; his fancy was amused by
      the hope, or belief, of personal inspiration; he had secured the
      patronage of the Virgin and St. Michael the archangel; and his
      recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the miraculous
      succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian. The capital and the
      provinces of the East were decorated with the monuments of his
      religion; 81 and though the far greater part of these costly
      structures may be attributed to his taste or ostentation, the
      zeal of the royal architect was probably quickened by a genuine
      sense of love and gratitude towards his invisible benefactors.
      Among the titles of Imperial greatness, the name of Pious was
      most pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and spiritual
      interest of the church was the serious business of his life; and
      the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of
      defender of the faith. The controversies of the times were
      congenial to his temper and understanding and the theological
      professors must inwardly deride the diligence of a stranger, who
      cultivated their art and neglected his own. “What can ye fear,”
      said a bold conspirator to his associates, “from your bigoted
      tyrant? Sleepless and unarmed, he sits whole nights in his
      closet, debating with reverend graybeards, and turning over the
      pages of ecclesiastical volumes.” 82 The fruits of these
      lucubrations were displayed in many a conference, where Justinian
      might shine as the loudest and most subtile of the disputants; in
      many a sermon, which, under the name of edicts and epistles,
      proclaimed to the empire the theology of their master. While the
      Barbarians invaded the provinces, while the victorious legion
      marched under the banners of Belisarius and Narses, the successor
      of Trajan, unknown to the camp, was content to vanquish at the
      head of a synod. Had he invited to these synods a disinterested
      and rational spectator, Justinian might have learned, “that
      religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly;
      that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and
      submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not
      presume to scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it is
      sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are the
      perfect attributes of the Deity.” 83

      80 (return) [ The strain of the Anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 11,
      13, 18, 27, 28,) with the learned remarks of Alemannus, is
      confirmed, rather than contradicted, by the Acts of the Councils,
      the fourth book of Evagrius, and the complaints of the African
      Facundus, in his xiith book—de tribus capitulis, “cum videri
      doctus appetit importune...spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam
      turbat.” See Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 35.]

      81 (return) [ Procop. de Edificiis, l. i. c. 6, 7, &c., passim.]

      82 (return) [ Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 32. In the life
      of St. Eutychius (apud Aleman. ad Procop. Arcan. c. 18) the same
      character is given with a design to praise Justinian.]

      83 (return) [ For these wise and moderate sentiments, Procopius
      (de Bell. Goth. l. i. c. 3) is scourged in the preface of
      Alemannus, who ranks him among the political Christians—sed longe
      verius haeresium omnium sentinas, prorsusque Atheos—abominable
      Atheists, who preached the imitation of God’s mercy to man, (ad
      Hist. Arcan. c. 13.)]


      Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to
      rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes. But when the prince
      descends to the narrow and peevish character of a disputant, he
      is easily provoked to supply the defect of argument by the
      plenitude of power, and to chastise without mercy the perverse
      blindness of those who wilfully shut their eyes against the light
      of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was a uniform yet
      various scene of persecution; and he appears to have surpassed
      his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws
      and the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three
      months was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics;
      84 and if he still connived at their precarious stay, they were
      deprived, under his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of
      society, but of the common birth-right of men and Christians. At
      the end of four hundred years, the Montanists of Phrygia 85 still
      breathed the wild enthusiasm of perfection and prophecy which
      they had imbibed from their male and female apostles, the special
      organs of the Paraclete. On the approach of the Catholic priests
      and soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the crown of martyrdom
      the conventicle and the congregation perished in the flames, but
      these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred
      years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of
      their Gothic confederates, the church of the Arians at
      Constantinople had braved the severity of the laws: their clergy
      equalled the wealth and magnificence of the senate; and the gold
      and silver which were seized by the rapacious hand of Justinian
      might perhaps be claimed as the spoils of the provinces, and the
      trophies of the Barbarians. A secret remnant of Pagans, who still
      lurked in the most refined and most rustic conditions of mankind,
      excited the indignation of the Christians, who were perhaps
      unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of their
      intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the
      faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court and city,
      the magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still
      cherished the superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly
      informed that they must choose without delay between the
      displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian, and that their aversion to
      the gospel could no longer be distinguished under the scandalous
      mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician Photius, perhaps,
      alone was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors: he
      enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left his
      tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the
      lifeless corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to
      their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and
      labored, by their extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or
      to expiate the guilt, of idolatry. The native country of Homer,
      and the theatre of the Trojan war, still retained the last sparks
      of his mythology: by the care of the same bishop, seventy
      thousand Pagans were detected and converted in Asia, Phrygia,
      Lydia, and Caria; ninety-six churches were built for the new
      proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases
      of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of
      Justinian. 86 The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their
      immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled
      them to observe the festival of Easter the same day on which it
      was celebrated by the Christians. 87 And they might complain with
      the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree
      with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign: the people
      of Constantinople delayed the beginning of their Lent a whole
      week after it had been ordained by authority; and they had the
      pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for sale
      by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine 88
      were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the
      Pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as
      idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been planted
      on their holy mount of Garizim, 89 but the persecution of
      Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion.
      They chose the latter: under the standard of a desperate leader,
      they rose in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the
      property, and the temples, of a defenceless people. The
      Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the
      East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by
      the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of
      that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of
      hypocrisy. It has been computed that one hundred thousand Roman
      subjects were extirpated in the Samaritan war, 90 which converted
      the once fruitful province into a desolate and smoking
      wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian, the guilt of murder
      could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers; and he
      piously labored to establish with fire and sword the unity of the
      Christian faith. 91

      84 (return) [ This alternative, a precious circumstance, is
      preserved by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 63, edit. Venet. 1733,)
      who deserves more credit as he draws towards his end. After
      numbering the heretics, Nestorians, Eutychians, &c., ne
      expectent, says Justinian, ut digni venia judicen tur: jubemus,
      enim ut...convicti et aperti haeretici justae et idoneae
      animadversioni subjiciantur. Baronius copies and applauds this
      edict of the Code, (A.D. 527, No. 39, 40.)]

      85 (return) [ See the character and principles of the Montanists,
      in Mosheim, Rebus Christ. ante Constantinum, p. 410—424.]

      86 (return) [ Theophan. Chron. p. 153. John, the Monophysite
      bishop of Asia, is a more authentic witness of this transaction,
      in which he was himself employed by the emperor, (Asseman. Bib.
      Orient. tom. ii. p. 85.)]

      87 (return) [ Compare Procopius (Hist. Arcan. c. 28, and Aleman’s
      Notes) with Theophanes, (Chron. p. 190.) The council of Nice has
      intrusted the patriarch, or rather the astronomers, of
      Alexandria, with the annual proclamation of Easter; and we still
      read, or rather we do not read, many of the Paschal epistles of
      St. Cyril. Since the reign of Monophytism in Egypt, the Catholics
      were perplexed by such a foolish prejudice as that which so long
      opposed, among the Protestants, the reception of the Gregorian
      style.]

      88 (return) [ For the religion and history of the Samaritans,
      consult Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, a learned and impartial
      work.]

      89 (return) [ Sichem, Neapolis, Naplous, the ancient and modern
      seat of the Samaritans, is situate in a valley between the barren
      Ebal, the mountain of cursing to the north, and the fruitful
      Garizim, or mountain of cursing to the south, ten or eleven
      hours’ travel from Jerusalem. See Maundrel, Journey from Aleppo
      &c.]

      90 (return) [ Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122.
      John Malala Chron. tom. ii. p. 62. I remember an observation,
      half philosophical. half superstitious, that the province which
      had been ruined by the bigotry of Justinian, was the same through
      which the Mahometans penetrated into the empire.]

      91 (return) [ The expression of Procopius is remarkable. Anecdot.
      c. 13.]


      With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to be
      always in the right. In the first years of his administration, he
      signalized his zeal as the disciple and patron of orthodoxy: the
      reconciliation of the Greeks and Latins established the tome of
      St. Leo as the creed of the emperor and the empire; the
      Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed, on either side, to the
      double edge of persecution; and the four synods of Nice,
      Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were ratified by the code
      of a Catholic lawgiver. 92 But while Justinian strove to maintain
      the uniformity of faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose
      vices were not incompatible with devotion, had listened to the
      Monophysite teachers; and the open or clandestine enemies of the
      church revived and multiplied at the smile of their gracious
      patroness. The capital, the palace, the nuptial bed, were torn by
      spiritual discord; yet so doubtful was the sincerity of the royal
      consorts, that their seeming disagreement was imputed by many to
      a secret and mischievous confederacy against the religion and
      happiness of their people. 93 The famous dispute of the Three
      Chapters, 94 which has filled more volumes than it deserves
      lines, is deeply marked with this subtile and disingenuous
      spirit. It was now three hundred years since the body of Origen
      95 had been eaten by the worms: his soul, of which he held the
      preexistence, was in the hands of its Creator; but his writings
      were eagerly perused by the monks of Palestine. In these
      writings, the piercing eye of Justinian descried more than ten
      metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the company of
      Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the eternity
      of hell-fire, which he had presumed to deny. Under the cover of
      this precedent, a treacherous blow was aimed at the council of
      Chalcedon. The fathers had listened without impatience to the
      praise of Theodore of Mopsuestia; 96 and their justice or
      indulgence had restored both Theodore of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of
      Edessa, to the communion of the church. But the characters of
      these Oriental bishops were tainted with the reproach of heresy;
      the first had been the master, the two others were the friends,
      of Nestorius; their most suspicious passages were accused under
      the title of the three chapters; and the condemnation of their
      memory must involve the honor of a synod, whose name was
      pronounced with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic
      world. If these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were
      annihilated in the sleep of death, they would not probably be
      awakened by the clamor which, after a hundred years, was raised
      over their grave. If they were already in the fangs of the
      daemon, their torments could neither be aggravated nor assuaged
      by human industry. If in the company of saints and angels they
      enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle
      fury of the theological insects who still crawled on the surface
      of the earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the
      Romans, darted his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps
      without discerning the true motives of Theodora and her
      ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no longer subject to his
      power, and the vehement style of his edicts could only proclaim
      their damnation, and invite the clergy of the East to join in a
      full chorus of curses and anathemas. The East, with some
      hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign: the fifth
      general council, of three patriarchs and one hundred and
      sixty-five bishops, was held at Constantinople; and the authors,
      as well as the defenders, of the three chapters were separated
      from the communion of the saints, and solemnly delivered to the
      prince of darkness. But the Latin churches were more jealous of
      the honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and if they had
      fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they might
      have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their
      chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; the throne of St.
      Peter, which had been disgraced by the simony, was betrayed by
      the cowardice, of Vigilius, who yielded, after a long and
      inconsistent struggle, to the despotism of Justinian and the
      sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy provoked the indignation of
      the Latins, and no more than two bishops could be found who would
      impose their hands on his deacon and successor Pelagius. Yet the
      perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to their
      adversaries the appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian,
      African, and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and
      ecclesiastical powers, not without some effort of military force;
      97 the distant Barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican,
      and, in the period of a century, the schism of the three chapters
      expired in an obscure angle of the Venetian province. 98 But the
      religious discontent of the Italians had already promoted the
      conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans themselves were
      accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the government of
      their Byzantine tyrant.

      92 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the
      original evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first
      years of his reign, Baronius himself is in extreme good humor
      with the emperor, who courted the popes, till he got them into
      his power.]

      93 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 13. Evagrius, l. iv. c. 10.
      If the ecclesiastical never read the secret historian, their
      common suspicion proves at least the general hatred.]

      94 (return) [ On the subject of the three chapters, the original
      acts of the vth general council of Constantinople supply much
      useless, though authentic, knowledge, (Concil. tom. vi. p.
      1-419.) The Greek Evagrius is less copious and correct (l. iv. c.
      38) than the three zealous Africans, Facundus, (in his twelve
      books, de tribus capitulis, which are most correctly published by
      Sirmond,) Liberatus, (in his Breviarium, c. 22, 23, 24,) and
      Victor Tunnunensis in his Chronicle, (in tom. i. Antiq. Lect.
      Canisii, 330—334.) The Liber Pontificalis, or Anastasius, (in
      Vigilio, Pelagio, &c.,) is original Italian evidence. The modern
      reader will derive some information from Dupin (Bibliot. Eccles.
      tom. v. p. 189—207) and Basnage, (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
      519—541;) yet the latter is too firmly resolved to depreciate the
      authority and character of the popes.]

      95 (return) [ Origen had indeed too great a propensity to imitate
      the old philosophers, (Justinian, ad Mennam, in Concil. tom. vi.
      p. 356.) His moderate opinions were too repugnant to the zeal of
      the church, and he was found guilty of the heresy of reason.]

      96 (return) [ Basnage (Praefat. p. 11—14, ad tom. i. Antiq. Lect.
      Canis.) has fairly weighed the guilt and innocence of Theodore of
      Mopsuestia. If he composed 10,000 volumes, as many errors would
      be a charitable allowance. In all the subsequent catalogues of
      heresiarchs, he alone, without his two brethren, is included; and
      it is the duty of Asseman (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 203—207)
      to justify the sentence.]

      97 (return) [ See the complaints of Liberatus and Victor, and the
      exhortations of Pope Pelagius to the conqueror and exarch of
      Italy. Schisma.. per potestates publicas opprimatur, &c.,
      (Concil. tom. vi. p. 467, &c.) An army was detained to suppress
      the sedition of an Illyrian city. See Procopius, (de Bell. Goth.
      l. iv. c. 25:). He seems to promise an ecclesiastical history. It
      would have been curious and impartial.]

      98 (return) [ The bishops of the patriarchate of Aquileia were
      reconciled by Pope Honorius, A.D. 638, (Muratori, Annali d’
      Italia, tom. v. p. 376;) but they again relapsed, and the schism
      was not finally extinguished till 698. Fourteen years before, the
      church of Spain had overlooked the vth general council with
      contemptuous silence, (xiii. Concil. Toretan. in Concil. tom.
      vii. p. 487—494.)]


      Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice process
      of fixing his volatile opinions and those of his subjects. In his
      youth he was offended by the slightest deviation from the
      orthodox line; in his old age he transgressed the measure of
      temperate heresy, and the Jacobites, not less than the Catholics,
      were scandalized by his declaration, that the body of Christ was
      incorruptible, and that his manhood was never subject to any
      wants and infirmities, the inheritance of our mortal flesh. This
      fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of Justinian;
      and at the moment of his seasonable departure, the clergy had
      refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute, and
      the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Treves,
      secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of
      the East in the language of authority and affection. “Most
      gracious Justinian, remember your baptism and your creed. Let not
      your gray hairs be defiled with heresy. Recall your fathers from
      exile, and your followers from perdition. You cannot be ignorant,
      that Italy and Gaul, Spain and Africa, already deplore your fall,
      and anathematize your name. Unless, without delay, you destroy
      what you have taught; unless you exclaim with a loud voice, I
      have erred, I have sinned, anathema to Nestorius, anathema to
      Eutyches, you deliver your soul to the same flames in which they
      will eternally burn.” He died and made no sign. 99 His death
      restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns
      of his four successors, Justin Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are
      distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the
      ecclesiastical history of the East. 100

      99 (return) [ Nicetus, bishop of Treves, (Concil. tom. vi. p.
      511-513:) he himself, like most of the Gallican prelates,
      (Gregor. Epist. l. vii. 5 in Concil. tom. vi. p. 1007,) was
      separated from the communion of the four patriarchs by his
      refusal to condemn the three chapters. Baronius almost pronounces
      the damnation of Justinian, (A.D. 565, No. 6.)]

      100 (return) [ After relating the last heresy of Justinian, (l.
      iv. c. 39, 40, 41,) and the edict of his successor, (l. v. c. 3,)
      the remainder of the history of Evagrius is filled with civil,
      instead of ecclesiastical events.]


      The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of acting on
      themselves; the eye is most inaccessible to the sight, the soul
      to the thought; yet we think, and even feel, that one will, a
      sole principle of action, is essential to a rational and
      conscious being. When Heraclius returned from the Persian war,
      the orthodox hero consulted his bishops, whether the Christ whom
      he adored, of one person, but of two natures, was actuated by a
      single or a double will. They replied in the singular, and the
      emperor was encouraged to hope that the Jacobites of Egypt and
      Syria might be reconciled by the profession of a doctrine, most
      certainly harmless, and most probably true, since it was taught
      even by the Nestorians themselves. 101 The experiment was tried
      without effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics condemned
      even the semblance of a retreat in the presence of a subtle and
      audacious enemy. The orthodox (the prevailing) party devised new
      modes of speech, and argument, and interpretation: to either
      nature of Christ they speciously applied a proper and distinct
      energy; but the difference was no longer visible when they
      allowed that the human and the divine will were invariably the
      same. 102 The disease was attended with the customary symptoms:
      but the Greek clergy, as if satiated with the endless controversy
      of the incarnation, instilled a healing counsel into the ear of
      the prince and people. They declared themselves Monothelites
      (asserters of the unity of will), but they treated the words as
      new, the questions as superfluous; and recommended a religious
      silence as the most agreeable to the prudence and charity of the
      gospel. This law of silence was successively imposed by the
      ecthesis or exposition of Heraclius, the type or model of his
      grandson Constans; 103 and the Imperial edicts were subscribed
      with alacrity or reluctance by the four patriarchs of Rome,
      Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. But the bishop and monks
      of Jerusalem sounded the alarm: in the language, or even in the
      silence, of the Greeks, the Latin churches detected a latent
      heresy: and the obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of his
      sovereign was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of
      his successors. They condemned the execrable and abominable
      heresy of the Monothelites, who revived the errors of Manes,
      Apollinaris, Eutyches, &c.; they signed the sentence of
      excommunication on the tomb of St. Peter; the ink was mingled
      with the sacramental wine, the blood of Christ; and no ceremony
      was omitted that could fill the superstitious mind with horror
      and affright. As the representative of the Western church, Pope
      Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious and
      guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of
      Italy, for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to
      reprobate his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his
      grandfather; and to confound the authors and their adherents with
      the twenty-one notorious heretics, the apostates from the church,
      and the organs of the devil. Such an insult under the tamest
      reign could not pass with impunity. Pope Martin ended his days on
      the inhospitable shore of the Tauric Chersonesus, and his oracle,
      the abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised by the amputation of
      his tongue and his right hand. 104 But the same invincible spirit
      survived in their successors; and the triumph of the Latins
      avenged their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the
      three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the sixth
      general council of Constantinople, in the palace and the presence
      of a new Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal
      convert converted the Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the
      bishops; 105 the dissenters, with their chief, Macarius of
      Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual and temporal pains of
      heresy; the East condescended to accept the lessons of the West;
      and the creed was finally settled, which teaches the Catholics of
      every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized in the
      person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman synod was
      represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops; but
      these obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to
      bribe, nor language to persuade; and I am ignorant by what arts
      they could determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure
      the catechism of his infancy, and to persecute the religion of
      his fathers. Perhaps the monks and people of Constantinople 106
      were favorable to the Lateran creed, which is indeed the least
      reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is countenanced by the
      unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear in this
      quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the synod
      debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision, by raising a
      dead man to life: the prelates assisted at the trial; but the
      acknowledged failure may serve to indicate, that the passions and
      prejudices of the multitude were not enlisted on the side of the
      Monothelites. In the next generation, when the son of Constantine
      was deposed and slain by the disciple of Macarius, they tasted
      the feast of revenge and dominion: the image or monument of the
      sixth council was defaced, and the original acts were committed
      to the flames. But in the second year, their patron was cast
      headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were released
      from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly
      replanted by the orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine
      problems of the incarnation were forgotten in the more popular
      and visible quarrel of the worship of images. 107

      101 (return) [ This extraordinary, and perhaps inconsistent,
      doctrine of the Nestorians, had been observed by La Croze,
      (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 19, 20,) and is more fully
      exposed by Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292.
      Hist. Dynast. p. 91, vers. Latin. Pocock.) and Asseman himself,
      (tom. iv. p. 218.) They seem ignorant that they might allege the
      positive authority of the ecthesis. (the common reproach of the
      Monophysites) (Concil. tom. vii. p. 205.)]

      102 (return) [ See the Orthodox faith in Petavius, (Dogmata
      Theolog. tom. v. l. ix. c. 6—10, p. 433—447:) all the depths of
      this controversy in the Greek dialogue between Maximus and
      Pyrrhus, (acalcem tom. viii. Annal. Baron. p. 755—794,) which
      relates a real conference, and produced as short-lived a
      conversion.]

      103 (return) [ Impiissimam ecthesim.... scelerosum typum (Concil.
      tom. vii p. 366) diabolicae operationis genimina, (fors. germina,
      or else the Greek in the original. Concil. p. 363, 364,) are the
      expressions of the xviiith anathema. The epistle of Pope Martin
      to Amandus, Gallican bishop, stigmatizes the Monothelites and
      their heresy with equal virulence, (p. 392.)]

      104 (return) [ The sufferings of Martin and Maximus are described
      with simplicity in their original letters and acts, (Concil. tom.
      vii. p. 63—78. Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 656, No. 2, et annos
      subsequent.) Yet the chastisement of their disobedience had been
      previously announced in the Type of Constans, (Concil. tom. vii.
      p. 240.)]

      105 (return) [ Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 368) most
      erroneously supposes that the 124 bishops of the Roman synod
      transported themselves to Constantinople; and by adding them to
      the 168 Greeks, thus composes the sixth council of 292 fathers.]

      106 (return) [ The Monothelite Constans was hated by all, (says
      Theophanes, Chron. p. 292). When the Monothelite monk failed in
      his miracle, the people shouted, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1032.) But
      this was a natural and transient emotion; and I much fear that
      the latter is an anticipation of the good people of
      Constantinople.]

      107 (return) [ The history of Monothelitism may be found in the
      Acts of the Synods of Rome (tom. vii. p. 77—395, 601—608) and
      Constantinople, (p. 609—1429.) Baronius extracted some original
      documents from the Vatican library; and his chronology is
      rectified by the diligence of Pagi. Even Dupin (Bibliotheque
      Eccles. tom. vi. p. 57—71) and Basnage (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom.
      i. p. 451—555) afford a tolerable abridgment.]


      Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the
      incarnation, which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople,
      was uniformly preached in the remote islands of Britain and
      Ireland; 108 the same ideas were entertained, or rather the same
      words were repeated, by all the Christians whose liturgy was
      performed in the Greek or the Latin tongue. Their numbers, and
      visible splendor, bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation
      of Catholics: but in the East, they were marked with the less
      honorable name of Melchites, or Royalists; 109 of men, whose
      faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or
      tradition, had been established, and was still maintained, by the
      arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might
      allege the words of the fathers of Constantinople, who profess
      themselves the slaves of the king; and they might relate, with
      malicious joy, how the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and
      reformed by the emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The
      prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of
      submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel
      and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of
      persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into
      rebels and fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of
      Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as
      the enemy of the Christians. Language, the leading principle
      which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon
      discriminated the sectaries of the East, by a peculiar and
      perpetual badge, which abolished the means of intercourse and the
      hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their
      colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had propagated a
      language doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by
      the art of man. Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and
      Egypt, still persevered in the use of their national idioms; with
      this difference, however, that the Coptic was confined to the
      rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, 110
      from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the
      higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and Abyssinia were
      infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and their
      Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the studies of
      modern Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the
      Roman empire. The Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the
      Aethiopic, are consecrated in the service of their respective
      churches: and their theology is enriched by domestic versions 111
      both of the Scriptures and of the most popular fathers. After a
      period of thirteen hundred and sixty years, the spark of
      controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius, still burns
      in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still
      maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most
      abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians
      and Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and
      cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows
      them to anathematize, on the one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of
      Ephesus: on the other, Pope Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The
      weight which they cast into the downfall of the Eastern empire
      demands our notice, and the reader may be amused with the various
      prospect of, I. The Nestorians; II. The Jacobites; 112 III. The
      Maronites; IV. The Armenians; V. The Copts; and, VI. The
      Abyssinians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but of
      the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom.


      Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be
      incapable of conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians
      of Egypt and Syria, who reject the religion, have adopted the
      language of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded the
      sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well as in the West, the
      Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to the majority
      of the congregation.

      108 (return) [ In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfred, an
      Anglo-Saxon bishop, subscribed pro omni Aquilonari parte
      Britanniae et Hiberniae, quae ab Anglorum et Britonum, necnon
      Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus colebantur, (Eddius, in Vit. St.
      Wilfrid. c. 31, apud Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 88.) Theodore
      (magnae insulae Britanniae archiepiscopus et philosophus) was
      long expected at Rome, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 714,) but he
      contented himself with holding (A.D. 680) his provincial synod of
      Hatfield, in which he received the decrees of Pope Martin and the
      first Lateran council against the Monothelites, (Concil. tom.
      vii. p. 597, &c.) Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, had been
      named to the primacy of Britain by Pope Vitalian, (A.D. 688; see
      Baronius and Pagi,) whose esteem for his learning and piety was
      tainted by some distrust of his national character—ne quid
      contrarium veritati fidei, Graecorum more, in ecclesiam cui
      praeesset introduceret. The Cilician was sent from Rome to
      Canterbury under the tuition of an African guide, (Bedae Hist.
      Eccles. Anglorum. l. iv. c. 1.) He adhered to the Roman doctrine;
      and the same creed of the incarnation has been uniformly
      transmitted from Theodore to the modern primates, whose sound
      understanding is perhaps seldom engaged with that abstruse
      mystery.]

      109 (return) [ This name, unknown till the xth century, appears
      to be of Syriac origin. It was invented by the Jacobites, and
      eagerly adopted by the Nestorians and Mahometans; but it was
      accepted without shame by the Catholics, and is frequently used
      in the Annals of Eutychius, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.
      p. 507, &c., tom. iii. p. 355. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.
      Alexandrin. p. 119.), was the acclamation of the fathers of
      Constantinople, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 765.)]

      110 (return) [ The Syriac, which the natives revere as the
      primitive language, was divided into three dialects. 1. The
      Aramoean, as it was refined at Edessa and the cities of
      Mesopotamia. 2. The Palestine, which was used in Jerusalem,
      Damascus, and the rest of Syria. 3. The Nabathoean, the rustic
      idiom of the mountains of Assyria and the villages of Irak,
      (Gregor, Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 11.) On the Syriac, sea
      Ebed-Jesu, (Asseman. tom. iii. p. 326, &c.,) whose prejudice
      alone could prefer it to the Arabic.]

      111 (return) [ I shall not enrich my ignorance with the spoils of
      Simon, Walton, Mill, Wetstein, Assemannus, Ludolphus, La Croze,
      whom I have consulted with some care. It appears, 1. That, of all
      the versions which are celebrated by the fathers, it is doubtful
      whether any are now extant in their pristine integrity. 2. That
      the Syriac has the best claim, and that the consent of the
      Oriental sects is a proof that it is more ancient than their
      schism.]

      112 (return) [ In the account of the Monophysites and Nestorians,
      I am deeply indebted to the Bibliotheca Orientalis
      Clementino-Vaticana of Joseph Simon Assemannus. That learned
      Maronite was despatched, in the year 1715, by Pope Clement XI. to
      visit the monasteries of Egypt and Syria, in search of Mss. His
      four folio volumes, published at Rome 1719—1728, contain a part
      only, though perhaps the most valuable, of his extensive project.
      As a native and as a scholar, he possessed the Syriac literature;
      and though a dependent of Rome, he wishes to be moderate and
      candid.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part V.


      I. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the heresy of
      the unfortunate Nestorius was speedily obliterated. The Oriental
      bishops, who at Ephesus had resisted to his face the arrogance of
      Cyril, were mollified by his tardy concessions. The same
      prelates, or their successors, subscribed, not without a murmur,
      the decrees of Chalcedon; the power of the Monophysites
      reconciled them with the Catholics in the conformity of passion,
      of interest, and, insensibly, of belief; and their last reluctant
      sigh was breathed in the defence of the three chapters. Their
      dissenting brethren, less moderate, or more sincere, were crushed
      by the penal laws; and, as early as the reign of Justinian, it
      became difficult to find a church of Nestorians within the limits
      of the Roman empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a
      new world, in which they might hope for liberty, and aspire to
      conquest. In Persia, notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi,
      Christianity had struck a deep root, and the nations of the East
      reposed under its salutary shade. The catholic, or primate,
      resided in the capital: in his synods, and in their dioceses, his
      metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, represented the pomp and
      order of a regular hierarchy: they rejoiced in the increase of
      proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the gospel,
      from the secular to the monastic life; and their zeal was
      stimulated by the presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The
      Persian church had been founded by the missionaries of Syria; and
      their language, discipline, and doctrine, were closely interwoven
      with its original frame. The catholics were elected and ordained
      by their own suffragans; but their filial dependence on the
      patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons of the Oriental
      church. 113 In the Persian school of Edessa, 114 the rising
      generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom: they
      studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of
      Theodore of Mopsuestia; and they revered the apostolic faith and
      holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose person and
      language were equally unknown to the nations beyond the Tigris.
      The first indelible lesson of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, taught them
      to execrate the Egyptians, who, in the synod of Ephesus, had
      impiously confounded the two natures of Christ. The flight of the
      masters and scholars, who were twice expelled from the Athens of
      Syria, dispersed a crowd of missionaries inflamed by the double
      zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the
      Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, had
      invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists, in a
      land of freedom, to avow a moral, rather than a physical, union
      of the two persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the
      gospel, the Sassanian kings beheld with an eye of suspicion a
      race of aliens and apostates, who had embraced the religion, and
      who might favor the cause, of the hereditary foes of their
      country. The royal edicts had often prohibited their dangerous
      correspondence with the Syrian clergy: the progress of the schism
      was grateful to the jealous pride of Perozes, and he listened to
      the eloquence of an artful prelate, who painted Nestorius as the
      friend of Persia, and urged him to secure the fidelity of his
      Christian subjects, by granting a just preference to the victims
      and enemies of the Roman tyrant. The Nestorians composed a large
      majority of the clergy and people: they were encouraged by the
      smile, and armed with the sword, of despotism; yet many of their
      weaker brethren were startled at the thought of breaking loose
      from the communion of the Christian world, and the blood of seven
      thousand seven hundred Monophysites, or Catholics, confirmed the
      uniformity of faith and discipline in the churches of Persia. 115
      Their ecclesiastical institutions are distinguished by a liberal
      principle of reason, or at least of policy: the austerity of the
      cloister was relaxed and gradually forgotten; houses of charity
      were endowed for the education of orphans and foundlings; the law
      of celibacy, so forcibly recommended to the Greeks and Latins,
      was disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the number of the
      elect was multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials of the
      priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this
      standard of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugitives
      resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern empire; the narrow
      bigotry of Justinian was punished by the emigration of his most
      industrious subjects; they transported into Persia the arts both
      of peace and war: and those who deserved the favor, were promoted
      in the service, of a discerning monarch. The arms of Nushirvan,
      and his fiercer grandson, were assisted with advice, and money,
      and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their
      native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with the gift
      of the Catholic churches; but when those cities and churches were
      recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and
      heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their
      foreign ally. But the seeming tranquillity of the Nestorians was
      often endangered, and sometimes overthrown. They were involved in
      the common evils of Oriental despotism: their enmity to Rome
      could not always atone for their attachment to the gospel: and a
      colony of three hundred thousand Jacobites, the captives of
      Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect a hostile altar in the
      face of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the court. In his
      last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which tended to
      enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia. The
      emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of
      pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the
      holy synods: but he flattered himself that they would gradually
      perceive the temporal benefits of union with the empire and the
      church of Rome; and if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he
      might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later
      age the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris, and protected in
      Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most Christian
      king.

      113 (return) [ See the Arabic canons of Nice in the translation
      of Abraham Ecchelensis, No. 37, 38, 39, 40. Concil. tom. ii. p.
      335, 336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic,
      are both apocryphal. The council of Nice enacted no more than
      twenty canons, (Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 8;) and the
      remainder, seventy or eighty, were collected from the synods of
      the Greek church. The Syriac edition of Maruthas is no longer
      extant, (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i. p. 195, tom. iii. p.
      74,) and the Arabic version is marked with many recent
      interpolations. Yet this Code contains many curious relics of
      ecclesiastical discipline; and since it is equally revered by all
      the Eastern communions, it was probably finished before the
      schism of the Nestorians and Jacobites, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec.
      tom. xi. p. 363—367.)]

      114 (return) [ Theodore the Reader (l. ii. c. 5, 49, ad calcem
      Hist. Eccles.) has noticed this Persian school of Edessa. Its
      ancient splendor, and the two aeras of its downfall, (A.D. 431
      and 489) are clearly discussed by Assemanni, (Biblioth. Orient.
      tom. ii. p. 402, iii. p. 376, 378, iv. p. 70, 924.)]

      115 (return) [ A dissertation on the state of the Nestorians has
      swelled in the bands of Assemanni to a folio volume of 950 pages,
      and his learned researches are digested in the most lucid order.
      Besides this ivth volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis, the
      extracts in the three preceding tomes (tom. i. p. 203, ii. p.
      321-463, iii. 64—70, 378—395, &c., 405—408, 580—589) may be
      usefully consulted.]


      The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church,
      has excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests.
      From the conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to
      the north, the east, and the south; and the simplicity of the
      gospel was fashioned and painted with the colors of the Syriac
      theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a
      Nestorian traveller, 116 Christianity was successfully preached
      to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the
      Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the Barbaric
      churches, from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea, were almost
      infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number
      and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of
      Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were
      peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians; and the
      bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their
      ordination from the Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age the
      zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined
      the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The
      missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the
      footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into
      the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga.
      They exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds:
      to those sanguinary warriors, they recommended humanity and
      repose. Yet a khan, whose power they vainly magnified, is said to
      have received at their hands the rites of baptism, and even of
      ordination; and the fame of Prester or Presbyter John 117 has
      long amused the credulity of Europe. The royal convert was
      indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he despatched an
      embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent,
      he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate
      the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In
      their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by
      the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. Unlike
      the senators of Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of
      priests and augurs, the mandarins, who affect in public the
      reason of philosophers, are devoted in private to every mode of
      popular superstition. They cherished and they confounded the gods
      of Palestine and of India; but the propagation of Christianity
      awakened the jealousy of the state, and, after a short
      vicissitude of favor and persecution, the foreign sect expired in
      ignorance and oblivion. 118 Under the reign of the caliphs, the
      Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyrus;
      and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to
      surpass the Greek and Latin communions. 119 Twenty-five
      metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy; but
      several of these were dispensed, by the distance and danger of
      the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy
      condition that every six years they should testify their faith
      and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague
      appellation which has been successively applied to the royal
      seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches
      are long since withered; and the old patriarchal trunk 120 is now
      divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives almost on
      lineal descent of the genuine and primitive succession; the
      Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome: 121
      and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the head of
      forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century by
      the Sophis of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is
      allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name
      of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned
      or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity.

      116 (return) [ See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed
      Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, l. iii. p. 178, 179, l.
      xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may
      be found in Photius, (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10, edit. Hoeschel,)
      Thevenot, (in the 1st part of his Relation des Voyages, &c.,) and
      Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. l. iii. c. 25, tom. ii. p. 603-617,)
      has been published by Father Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the
      Nova Collectio Patrum, (tom. ii. p. 113—346.) It was the design
      of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who
      maintained that the earth is a globe, and not a flat, oblong
      table, as it is represented in the Scriptures, (l. ii. p. 138.)
      But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical
      knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage A.D. 522,
      and published his book at Alexandria, A.D. 547, (l. ii. p. 140,
      141. Montfaucon, Praefat. c. 2.) The Nestorianism of Cosmas,
      unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze,
      (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40—55,) and is confirmed by
      Assemanni, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606.)]

      117 (return) [ In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome,
      &c., the story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable,
      of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of
      Thibet, (Hist. Genealogique des Tartares, P. ii. p. 42. Hist. de
      Gengiscan, p. 31, &c.,) and were ignorantly transferred by the
      Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia, (Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop.
      Comment. l. ii. c. 1.) Yet it is probable that in the xith and
      xiith centuries, Nestorian Christianity was professed in the
      horde of the Keraites, (D’Herbelot, p. 256, 915, 959. Assemanni,
      tom. iv. p. 468—504.) Note: The extent to which Nestorian
      Christianity prevailed among the Tartar tribes is one of the most
      curious questions in Oriental history. M. Schmidt (Geschichte der
      Ost Mongolen, notes, p. 383) appears to question the Christianity
      of Ong Chaghan, and his Keraite subjects.—M.]

      118 (return) [ The Christianity of China, between the seventh and
      the thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of
      Chinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence, (Assemanni,
      Biblioth. Orient. tom. iv. p. 502—552. Mem. de l’Academie des
      Inscript. tom. xxx. p. 802—819.) The inscription of Siganfu which
      describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church, from the first
      mission, A.D. 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery
      by La Croze, Voltaire, &c., who become the dupes of their own
      cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud. * Note:
      This famous monument, the authenticity of which many have
      attempted to impeach, rather from hatred to the Jesuits, by whom
      it was made known, than by a candid examination of its contents,
      is now generally considered above all suspicion. The Chinese text
      and the facts which it relates are equally strong proofs of its
      authenticity. This monument was raised as a memorial of the
      establishment of Christianity in China. It is dated the year 1092
      of the era of the Greeks, or the Seleucidae, A.D. 781, in the
      time of the Nestorian patriarch Anan-jesu. It was raised by
      Iezdbouzid, priest and chorepiscopus of Chumdan, that is, of the
      capital of the Chinese empire, and the son of a priest who came
      from Balkh in Tokharistan. Among the various arguments which may
      be urged in favor of the authenticity of this monument, and which
      has not yet been advanced, may be reckoned the name of the priest
      by whom it was raised. The name is Persian, and at the time the
      monument was discovered, it would have been impossible to have
      imagined it; for there was no work extant from whence the
      knowledge of it could be derived. I do not believe that ever
      since this period, any book has been published in which it can be
      found a second time. It is very celebrated amongst the Armenians,
      and is derived from a martyr, a Persian by birth, of the royal
      race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and
      rendered his name celebrated among the Christian nations of the
      East. St. Martin, vol. i. p. 69. M. Remusat has also strongly
      expressed his conviction of the authenticity of this monument.
      Melanges Asiatiques, P. i. p. 33. Yet M. Schmidt (Geschichte der
      Ost Mongolen, p. 384) denies that there is any satisfactory proof
      that much a monument was ever found in China, or that it was not
      manufactured in Europe. But if the Jesuits had attempted such a
      forgery, would it not have been more adapted to further their
      peculiar views?—M.]

      119 (return) [ Jacobitae et Nestorianae plures quam Graeci et
      Latini Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. l. ii. c. 76, p. 1093,
      in the Gesta Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomassin,
      Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 172.]

      120 (return) [ The division of the patriarchate may be traced in
      the Bibliotheca Orient. of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523—549, tom.
      ii. p. 457, &c., tom. iii. p. 603, p. 621—623, tom. iv. p.
      164-169, p. 423, p. 622—629, &c.]

      121 (return) [ The pompous language of Rome on the submission of
      a Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the viith book
      of Fra Paola, Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of
      Alexander, Tauris, and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus.]


      According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in
      India by St. Thomas. 122 At the end of the ninth century, his
      shrine, perhaps in the neighborhood of Madras, was devoutly
      visited by the ambassadors of Alfred; and their return with a
      cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English
      monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and
      discovery. 123 When the Portuguese first opened the navigation of
      India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on
      the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and
      color attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts,
      and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan;
      the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were
      enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or
      nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected
      by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the
      Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo of sovereign, but
      they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the bishop of
      Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan of
      India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen
      hundred churches, and he was intrusted with the care of two
      hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them
      the firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese; but the
      inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the
      unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning
      themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and
      temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their
      ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch; and the
      bishops whom he ordained at Mosul, traversed the dangers of the
      sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In
      their Syriac liturgy the names of Theodore and Nestorius were
      piously commemorated: they united their adoration of the two
      persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to
      their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honors
      of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had
      almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first
      presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly
      exclaimed, “We are Christians, not idolaters!” and their simple
      devotion was content with the veneration of the cross. Their
      separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance of
      the improvements, or corruptions, of a thousand years; and their
      conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would
      equally disappoint the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant. It
      was the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all
      correspondence with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his
      bishops expired in the prisons of the holy office.


      The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the
      Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de
      Menezes, archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the
      coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he presided,
      consummated the pious work of the reunion; and rigorously imposed
      the doctrine and discipline of the Roman church, without
      forgetting auricular confession, the strongest engine of
      ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was
      condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the
      pope, of the primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of
      Angamala or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy
      were patiently endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was
      shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians
      asserted, with vigor and effect, the religion of their fathers.
      The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power which they had
      abused; the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed
      against their falling tyrants; and the Indian archdeacon assumed
      the character of bishop till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts
      and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the patriarch of
      Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the Nestorian
      creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading
      companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration;
      but if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the
      Christians of St. Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and
      silent indifference of their brethren of Europe. 124

      122 (return) [ The Indian missionary, St. Thomas, an apostle, a
      Manichaean, or an Armenian merchant, (La Croze, Christianisme des
      Indes, tom. i. p. 57—70,) was famous, however, as early as the
      time of Jerom, (ad Marcellam, epist. 148.) Marco-Polo was
      informed on the spot that he suffered martyrdom in the city of
      Malabar, or Meliapour, a league only from Madras, (D’Anville,
      Eclaircissemens sur l’Inde, p. 125,) where the Portuguese founded
      an episcopal church under the name of St. Thome, and where the
      saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the
      profane neighborhood of the English, (La Croze, tom. ii. p.
      7-16.)]

      123 (return) [ Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A.D.
      833) not William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Angliae, l. ii.
      c. 4, p. 44) were capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing
      this extraordinary fact; they are incapable of explaining the
      motives and measures of Alfred; and their hasty notice serves
      only to provoke our curiosity. William of Malmesbury feels the
      difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc saeculo miretur;
      and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors collected their
      cargo and legend in Egypt. The royal author has not enriched his
      Orosius (see Barrington’s Miscellanies) with an Indian, as well
      as a Scandinavian, voyage.]

      124 (return) [ Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see
      Assemann. Bibliot Orient. tom. iv. p. 391—407, 435—451; Geddes’s
      Church History of Malabar; and, above all, La Croze, Histoire du
      Christianisme des Indes, in 2 vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1758, a
      learned and agreeable work. They have drawn from the same source,
      the Portuguese and Italian narratives; and the prejudices of the
      Jesuits are sufficiently corrected by those of the Protestants.
      Note: The St. Thome Christians had excited great interest in the
      ancient mind of the admirable Bishop Heber. See his curious and,
      to his friends, highly characteristic letter to Mar Athanasius,
      Appendix to Journal. The arguments of his friend and coadjutor,
      Mr. Robinson, (Last Days of Bishop Heber,) have not convinced me
      that the Christianity of India is older than the Nestorian
      dispersion.—M]


      II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and
      interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno
      and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the ear of the
      prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and crushed on its
      native soil the school of the Syrians. The rule of the
      Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion by
      Severus, patriarch of Antioch: he condemned, in the style of the
      Henoticon, the adverse heresies of Nestorius; and Eutyches
      maintained against the latter the reality of the body of Christ,
      and constrained the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke
      truth. 125 But the approximation of ideas could not abate the
      vehemence of passion; each party was the more astonished that
      their blind antagonist could dispute on so trifling a difference;
      the tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of his creed, and his
      reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred and fifty
      monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or
      resistance, under the walls of Apamea. 126 The successor of
      Anastasius replanted the orthodox standard in the East; Severus
      fled into Egypt; and his friend, the eloquent Xenaias, 127 who
      had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his
      exile by the Melchites of Paphlagonia. Fifty-four bishops were
      swept from their thrones, eight hundred ecclesiastics were cast
      into prison, 128 and notwithstanding the ambiguous favor of
      Theodora, the Oriental flocks, deprived of their shepherds, must
      insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this
      spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united,
      and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James
      Baradaeus 129 has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites,
      a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader.
      From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he
      received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East,
      and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and
      deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed
      of the zealous missionary was promoted by the fleetest
      dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine and
      discipline of the Jacobites were secretly established in the
      dominions of Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to
      violate the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The successors
      of Severus, while they lurked in convents or villages, while they
      sheltered their proscribed heads in the caverns of hermits, or
      the tents of the Saracens, still asserted, as they now assert,
      their indefeasible right to the title, the rank, and the
      prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch: under the milder yoke of
      the infidels, they reside about a league from Merdin, in the
      pleasant monastery of Zapharan, which they have embellished with
      cells, aqueducts, and plantations. The secondary, though
      honorable, place is filled by the maphrian, who, in his station
      at Mosul itself, defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he
      contests the primacy of the East. Under the patriarch and the
      maphrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops and bishops have been
      counted in the different ages of the Jacobite church; but the
      order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the greater
      part of their dioceses is confined to the neighborhood of the
      Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which
      are often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy
      merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive
      their scanty sustenance from their daily labor: and poverty, as
      well as superstition, may impose their excessive fasts: five
      annual lents, during which both the clergy and laity abstain not
      only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil,
      and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to
      fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church, which
      was gradually decreased under the impression of twelve centuries.
      Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit have been
      converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of
      Abulpharagius, 130 primate of the East, so truly eminent both in
      his life and death. In his life he was an elegant writer of the
      Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, physician, and historian, a
      subtile philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death, his
      funeral was attended by his rival the Nestorian patriarch, with a
      train of Greeks and Armenians, who forgot their disputes, and
      mingled their tears over the grave of an enemy. The sect which
      was honored by the virtues of Abulpharagius appears, however, to
      sink below the level of their Nestorian brethren. The
      superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts more
      rigid, 131 their intestine divisions are more numerous, and their
      doctors (as far as I can measure the degrees of nonsense) are
      more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may possibly
      be allowed for the rigor of the Monophysite theology; much more
      for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in
      Egypt, in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been
      distinguished by the austerity of their penance and the absurdity
      of their legends. Alive or dead, they are worshipped as the
      favorites of the Deity; the crosier of bishop and patriarch is
      reserved for their venerable hands; and they assume the
      government of men, while they are yet reeking with the habits and
      prejudices of the cloister. 132

      125 (return) [ Is the expression of Theodore, in his Treatise of
      the Incarnation, p. 245, 247, as he is quoted by La Croze, (Hist.
      du Christianisme d’Ethiopie et d’Armenie, p. 35,) who exclaims,
      perhaps too hastily, “Quel pitoyable raisonnement!” Renaudot has
      touched (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 127—138) the Oriental accounts
      of Severus; and his authentic creed may be found in the epistle
      of John the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, in the xth century, to
      his brother Mannas of Alexandria, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
      ii. p. 132—141.)]

      126 (return) [ Epist. Archimandritarum et Monachorum Syriae
      Secundae ad Papam Hormisdam, Concil. tom. v. p. 598—602. The
      courage of St. Sabas, ut leo animosus, will justify the suspicion
      that the arms of these monks were not always spiritual or
      defensive, (Baronius, A.D. 513, No. 7, &c.)]

      127 (return) [ Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 10—46) and
      La Croze (Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 36—40) will supply the
      history of Xenaias, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, or
      Hierapolis, in Syria. He was a perfect master of the Syriac
      language, and the author or editor of a version of the New
      Testament.]

      128 (return) [ The names and titles of fifty-four bishops who
      were exiled by Justin, are preserved in the Chronicle of
      Dionysius, (apud Asseman. tom. ii. p. 54.) Severus was personally
      summoned to Constantinople—for his trial, says Liberatus (Brev.
      c. 19)—that his tongue might be cut out, says Evagrius, (l. iv.
      c. iv.) The prudent patriarch did not stay to examine the
      difference. This ecclesiastical revolution is fixed by Pagi to
      the month of September of the year 518, (Critica, tom. ii. p.
      506.)]

      129 (return) [ The obscure history of James or Jacobus Baradaeus,
      or Zanzalust may be gathered from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
      144, 147,) Renau dot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 133,) and
      Assemannus, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 424, tom. ii. p. 62-69,
      324—332, 414, tom. iii. p. 385—388.) He seems to be unknown to
      the Greeks. The Jacobites themselves had rather deduce their name
      and pedigree from St. James the apostle.]

      130 (return) [ The account of his person and writings is perhaps
      the most curious article in the Bibliotheca of Assemannus, (tom.
      ii. p. 244—321, under the name of Gregorius Bar-Hebroeus.) La
      Croze (Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 53—63) ridicules the
      prejudice of the Spaniards against the Jewish blood which
      secretly defiles their church and state.]

      131 (return) [ This excessive abstinence is censured by La Croze,
      (p. 352,) and even by the Syrian Assemannus, (tom. i. p. 226,
      tom. ii. p. 304, 305.)]

      132 (return) [ The state of the Monophysites is excellently
      illustrated in a dissertation at the beginning of the iid volume
      of Assemannus, which contains 142 pages. The Syriac Chronicle of
      Gregory Bar-Hebraeus, or Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom.
      ii. p. 321—463,) pursues the double series of the Nestorian
      Catholics and the Maphrians of the Jacobites.]


      III. In the style of the Oriental Christians, the Monothelites of
      every age are described under the appellation of Maronites, 133 a
      name which has been insensibly transferred from a hermit to a
      monastery, from a monastery to a nation. Maron, a saint or savage
      of the fifth century, displayed his religious madness in Syria;
      the rival cities of Apamea and Emesa disputed his relics, a
      stately church was erected on his tomb, and six hundred of his
      disciples united their solitary cells on the banks of the
      Orontes. In the controversies of the incarnation they nicely
      threaded the orthodox line between the sects of Nestorians and
      Eutyches; but the unfortunate question of one will or operation
      in the two natures of Christ, was generated by their curious
      leisure. Their proselyte, the emperor Heraclius, was rejected as
      a Maronite from the walls of Emesa, he found a refuge in the
      monastery of his brethren; and their theological lessons were
      repaid with the gift a spacious and wealthy domain. The name and
      doctrine of this venerable school were propagated among the
      Greeks and Syrians, and their zeal is expressed by Macarius,
      patriarch of Antioch, who declared before the synod of
      Constantinople, that sooner than subscribe the two wills of
      Christ, he would submit to be hewn piecemeal and cast into the
      sea. 134 A similar or a less cruel mode of persecution soon
      converted the unresisting subjects of the plain, while the
      glorious title of Mardaites, 135 or rebels, was bravely
      maintained by the hardy natives of Mount Libanus. John Maron, one
      of the most learned and popular of the monks, assumed the
      character of patriarch of Antioch; his nephew, Abraham, at the
      head of the Maronites, defended their civil and religious freedom
      against the tyrants of the East. The son of the orthodox
      Constantine pursued with pious hatred a people of soldiers, who
      might have stood the bulwark of his empire against the common
      foes of Christ and of Rome. An army of Greeks invaded Syria; the
      monastery of St. Maron was destroyed with fire; the bravest
      chieftains were betrayed and murdered, and twelve thousand of
      their followers were transplanted to the distant frontiers of
      Armenia and Thrace. Yet the humble nation of the Maronites had
      survived the empire of Constantinople, and they still enjoy,
      under their Turkish masters, a free religion and a mitigated
      servitude. Their domestic governors are chosen among the ancient
      nobility: the patriarch, in his monastery of Canobin, still
      fancies himself on the throne of Antioch: nine bishops compose
      his synod, and one hundred and fifty priests, who retain the
      liberty of marriage, are intrusted with the care of one hundred
      thousand souls. Their country extends from the ridge of Mount
      Libanus to the shores of Tripoli; and the gradual descent
      affords, in a narrow space, each variety of soil and climate,
      from the Holy Cedars, erect under the weight of snow, 136 to the
      vine, the mulberry, and the olive-trees of the fruitful valley.
      In the twelfth century, the Maronites, abjuring the Monothelite
      error were reconciled to the Latin churches of Antioch and Rome,
      137 and the same alliance has been frequently renewed by the
      ambition of the popes and the distress of the Syrians. But it may
      reasonably be questioned, whether their union has ever been
      perfect or sincere; and the learned Maronites of the college of
      Rome have vainly labored to absolve their ancestors from the
      guilt of heresy and schism. 138

      133 (return) [ The synonymous use of the two words may be proved
      from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 191, 267, 332,) and many
      similar passages which may be found in the methodical table of
      Pocock. He was not actuated by any prejudice against the
      Maronites of the xth century; and we may believe a Melchite,
      whose testimony is confirmed by the Jacobites and Latins.]

      134 (return) [ Concil. tom. vii. p. 780. The Monothelite cause
      was supported with firmness and subtilty by Constantine, a Syrian
      priest of Apamea, (p. 1040, &c.)]

      135 (return) [ Theophanes (Chron. p. 295, 296, 300, 302, 306) and
      Cedrenus (p. 437, 440) relates the exploits of the Mardaites: the
      name (Mard, in Syriac, rebellavit) is explained by La Roque,
      (Voyage de la Syrie, tom. ii. p. 53;) and dates are fixed by
      Pagi, (A.D. 676, No. 4—14, A.D. 685, No. 3, 4;) and even the
      obscure story of the patriarch John Maron (Asseman. Bibliot.
      Orient. tom. i. p. 496—520) illustrates from the year 686 to 707,
      the troubles of Mount Libanus. * Note: Compare on the Mardaites
      Anquetil du Perron, in the fiftieth volume of the Mem. de l’Acad.
      des Inscriptions; and Schlosser, Bildersturmendes Kaiser, p.
      100.—M]

      136 (return) [ In the last century twenty large cedars still
      remained, (Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68—76;) at present they
      are reduced to four or five, (Volney, tom. i. p. 264.) These
      trees, so famous in Scripture, were guarded by excommunication:
      the wood was sparingly borrowed for small crosses, &c.; an annual
      mass was chanted under their shade; and they were endowed by the
      Syrians with a sensitive power of erecting their branches to
      repel the snow, to which Mount Libanus is less faithful than it
      is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus—a
      daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.) Note: Of the oldest and best
      looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve twenty-five very large
      ones; and about fifty of middling size; and more than three
      hundred smaller and young ones. Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria p.
      19.—M]

      137 (return) [ The evidence of William of Tyre (Hist. in Gestis
      Dei per Francos, l. xxii. c. 8, p. 1022) is copied or confirmed
      by Jacques de Vitra, (Hist. Hierosolym. l. ii. c. 77, p. 1093,
      1094.) But this unnatural league expired with the power of the
      Franks; and Abulpharagius (who died in 1286) considers the
      Maronites as a sect of Monothelites, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.
      p. 292.)]

      138 (return) [ I find a description and history of the Maronites
      in the Voyage de la Syrie et du Mont Liban par la Roque, (2 vols.
      in 12mo., Amsterdam, 1723; particularly tom. i. p. 42—47, p.
      174—184, tom. ii. p. 10—120.) In the ancient part, he copies the
      prejudices of Nairon and the other Maronites of Rome, which
      Assemannus is afraid to renounce and ashamed to support.
      Jablonski, (Institut. Hist. Christ. tom. iii. p. 186.) Niebuhr,
      (Voyage de l’Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 346, 370—381,) and, above
      all, the judicious Volney, (Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie, tom.
      ii. p. 8—31, Paris, 1787,) may be consulted.]


      IV. Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians 139 had
      signalized their attachment to the religion and empire of the
      Christians. 1391 The disorders of their country, and their
      ignorance of the Greek tongue, prevented their clergy from
      assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and they floated eighty-four
      years 140 in a state of indifference or suspense, till their
      vacant faith was finally occupied by the missionaries of Julian
      of Halicarnassus, 141 who in Egypt, their common exile, had been
      vanquished by the arguments or the influence of his rival
      Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians
      alone are the pure disciples of Eutyches, an unfortunate parent,
      who has been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual
      progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion, that the manhood of
      Christ was created, or existed without creation, of a divine and
      incorruptible substance. Their adversaries reproach them with the
      adoration of a phantom; and they retort the accusation, by
      deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute
      to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh, even the
      natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of
      Armenia could not derive much glory from the learning or the
      power of its inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of
      their schism; and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in
      the thirteenth century on the confines of Cilicia, were the
      clients of the Latins and the vassals of the Turkish sultan of
      Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom been permitted to enjoy
      the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest period to the
      present hour, Armenia has been the theatre of perpetual war: the
      lands between Tauris and Erivan were dispeopled by the cruel
      policy of the Sophis; and myriads of Christian families were
      transplanted, to perish or to propagate in the distant provinces
      of Persia. Under the rod of oppression, the zeal of the Armenians
      is fervent and intrepid; they have often preferred the crown of
      martyrdom to the white turban of Mahomet; they devoutly hate the
      error and idolatry of the Greeks; and their transient union with
      the Latins is not less devoid of truth, than the thousand
      bishops, whom their patriarch offered at the feet of the Roman
      pontiff. 142 The catholic, or patriarch, of the Armenians resides
      in the monastery of Ekmiasin, three leagues from Erivan.
      Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom may claim the obedience of
      four or five suffragans, are consecrated by his hand; but the far
      greater part are only titular prelates, who dignify with their
      presence and service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they
      have performed the liturgy, they cultivate the garden; and our
      bishops will hear with surprise, that the austerity of their life
      increases in just proportion to the elevation of their rank.


      In the fourscore thousand towns or villages of his spiritual
      empire, the patriarch receives a small and voluntary tax from
      each person above the age of fifteen; but the annual amount of
      six hundred thousand crowns is insufficient to supply the
      incessant demands of charity and tribute. Since the beginning of
      the last century, the Armenians have obtained a large and
      lucrative share of the commerce of the East: in their return from
      Europe, the caravan usually halts in the neighborhood of Erivan,
      the altars are enriched with the fruits of their patient
      industry; and the faith of Eutyches is preached in their recent
      congregations of Barbary and Poland. 143

      139 (return) [ The religion of the Armenians is briefly described
      by La Croze, (Hist. du Christ. de l’Ethiopie et de l’Armenie, p.
      269—402.) He refers to the great Armenian History of Galanus, (3
      vols. in fol. Rome, 1650—1661,) and commends the state of Armenia
      in the iiid volume of the Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du
      Levant. The work of a Jesuit must have sterling merit when it is
      praised by La Croze.]

      1391 (return) [ See vol. iii. ch. xx. p. 271.—M.]

      140 (return) [ The schism of the Armenians is placed 84 years
      after the council of Chalcedon, (Pagi, Critica, ad A.D. 535.) It
      was consummated at the end of seventeen years; and it is from the
      year of Christ 552 that we date the aera of the Armenians, (L’Art
      de verifier les Dates, p. xxxv.)]

      141 (return) [ The sentiments and success of Julian of
      Halicarnassus may be seen in Liberatus, (Brev. c. 19,) Renaudot,
      (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 132, 303,) and Assemannus, (Bibliot.
      Orient. tom. ii. Dissertat. Monophysitis, l. viii. p. 286.)]

      142 (return) [ See a remarkable fact of the xiith century in the
      History of Nicetas Choniates, (p. 258.) Yet three hundred years
      before, Photius (Epistol. ii. p. 49, edit. Montacut.) had gloried
      in the conversion of the Armenians.]

      143 (return) [ The travelling Armenians are in the way of every
      traveller, and their mother church is on the high road between
      Constantinople and Ispahan; for their present state, see
      Fabricius, (Lux Evangelii, &c., c. xxxviii. p. 40—51,) Olearius,
      (l. iv. c. 40,) Chardin, (vol. ii. p. 232,) Teurnefort, (lettre
      xx.,) and, above all, Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 28—37, 510-518,)
      that rambling jeweller, who had read nothing, but had seen so
      much and so well]


      V. In the rest of the Roman empire, the despotism of the prince
      might eradicate or silence the sectaries of an obnoxious creed.
      But the stubborn temper of the Egyptians maintained their
      opposition to the synod of Chalcedon, and the policy of Justinian
      condescended to expect and to seize the opportunity of discord.
      The Monophysite church of Alexandria 144 was torn by the disputes
      of the corruptibles and incorruptibles, and on the death of the
      patriarch, the two factions upheld their respective candidates.
      145 Gaian was the disciple of Julian, Theodosius had been the
      pupil of Severus: the claims of the former were supported by the
      consent of the monks and senators, the city and the province; the
      latter depended on the priority of his ordination, the favor of
      the empress Theodora, and the arms of the eunuch Narses, which
      might have been used in more honorable warfare. The exile of the
      popular candidate to Carthage and Sardinia inflamed the ferment
      of Alexandria; and after a schism of one hundred and seventy
      years, the Gaianites still revered the memory and doctrine of
      their founder. The strength of numbers and of discipline was
      tried in a desperate and bloody conflict; the streets were filled
      with the dead bodies of citizens and soldiers; the pious women,
      ascending the roofs of their houses, showered down every sharp or
      ponderous utensil on the heads of the enemy; and the final
      victory of Narses was owing to the flames, with which he wasted
      the third capital of the Roman world. But the lieutenant of
      Justinian had not conquered in the cause of a heretic; Theodosius
      himself was speedily, though gently, removed; and Paul of Tanis,
      an orthodox monk, was raised to the throne of Athanasius. The
      powers of government were strained in his support; he might
      appoint or displace the dukes and tribunes of Egypt; the
      allowance of bread, which Diocletian had granted, was suppressed,
      the churches were shut, and a nation of schismatics was deprived
      at once of their spiritual and carnal food. In his turn, the
      tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge of the people:
      and none except his servile Melchites would salute him as a man,
      a Christian, or a bishop. Yet such is the blindness of ambition,
      that, when Paul was expelled on a charge of murder, he solicited,
      with a bribe of seven hundred pounds of gold, his restoration to
      the same station of hatred and ignominy. His successor
      Apollinaris entered the hostile city in military array, alike
      qualified for prayer or for battle. His troops, under arms, were
      distributed through the streets; the gates of the cathedral were
      guarded, and a chosen band was stationed in the choir, to defend
      the person of their chief. He stood erect on his throne, and,
      throwing aside the upper garment of a warrior, suddenly appeared
      before the eyes of the multitude in the robes of patriarch of
      Alexandria. Astonishment held them mute; but no sooner had
      Apollinaris begun to read the tome of St. Leo, than a volley of
      curses, and invectives, and stones, assaulted the odious minister
      of the emperor and the synod. A charge was instantly sounded by
      the successor of the apostles; the soldiers waded to their knees
      in blood; and two hundred thousand Christians are said to have
      fallen by the sword: an incredible account, even if it be
      extended from the slaughter of a day to the eighteen years of the
      reign of Apollinaris. Two succeeding patriarchs, Eulogius 146 and
      John, 147 labored in the conversion of heretics, with arms and
      arguments more worthy of their evangelical profession. The
      theological knowledge of Eulogius was displayed in many a volume,
      which magnified the errors of Eutyches and Severus, and attempted
      to reconcile the ambiguous language of St. Cyril with the
      orthodox creed of Pope Leo and the fathers of Chalcedon. The
      bounteous alms of John the eleemosynary were dictated by
      superstition, or benevolence, or policy. Seven thousand five
      hundred poor were maintained at his expense; on his accession he
      found eight thousand pounds of gold in the treasury of the
      church; he collected ten thousand from the liberality of the
      faithful; yet the primate could boast in his testament, that he
      left behind him no more than the third part of the smallest of
      the silver coins. The churches of Alexandria were delivered to
      the Catholics, the religion of the Monophysites was proscribed in
      Egypt, and a law was revived which excluded the natives from the
      honors and emoluments of the state.

      144 (return) [ The history of the Alexandrian patriarchs, from
      Dioscorus to Benjamin, is taken from Renaudot, (p. 114—164,) and
      the second tome of the Annals of Eutychius.]

      145 (return) [ Liberat. Brev. c. 20, 23. Victor. Chron. p. 329
      330. Procop. Anecdot. c. 26, 27.]

      146 (return) [ Eulogius, who had been a monk of Antioch, was more
      conspicuous for subtilty than eloquence. He proves that the
      enemies of the faith, the Gaianites and Theodosians, ought not to
      be reconciled; that the same proposition may be orthodox in the
      mouth of St. Cyril, heretical in that of Severus; that the
      opposite assertions of St. Leo are equally true, &c. His writings
      are no longer extant except in the Extracts of Photius, who had
      perused them with care and satisfaction, ccviii. ccxxv. ccxxvi.
      ccxxvii. ccxxx. cclxxx.]

      147 (return) [ See the Life of John the eleemosynary by his
      contemporary Leontius, bishop of Neapolis in Cyrus, whose Greek
      text, either lost or hidden, is reflected in the Latin version of
      Baronius, (A.D. 610, No.9, A.D. 620, No. 8.) Pagi (Critica, tom.
      ii. p. 763) and Fabricius (l. v c. 11, tom. vii. p. 454) have
      made some critical observations]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part VI.


      A more important conquest still remained, of the patriarch, the
      oracle and leader of the Egyptian church. Theodosius had resisted
      the threats and promises of Justinian with the spirit of an
      apostle or an enthusiast. “Such,” replied the patriarch, “were
      the offers of the tempter when he showed the kingdoms of the
      earth. But my soul is far dearer to me than life or dominion. The
      churches are in the hands of a prince who can kill the body; but
      my conscience is my own; and in exile, poverty, or chains, I will
      steadfastly adhere to the faith of my holy predecessors,
      Athanasius, Cyril, and Dioscorus. Anathema to the tome of Leo and
      the synod of Chalcedon! Anathema to all who embrace their creed!
      Anathema to them now and forevermore! Naked came I out of my
      mother’s womb, naked shall I descend into the grave. Let those
      who love God follow me and seek their salvation.” After
      comforting his brethren, he embarked for Constantinople, and
      sustained, in six successive interviews, the almost irresistible
      weight of the royal presence. His opinions were favorably
      entertained in the palace and the city; the influence of Theodora
      assured him a safe conduct and honorable dismission; and he ended
      his days, though not on the throne, yet in the bosom, of his
      native country. On the news of his death, Apollinaris indecently
      feasted the nobles and the clergy; but his joy was checked by the
      intelligence of a new election; and while he enjoyed the wealth
      of Alexandria, his rivals reigned in the monasteries of Thebais,
      and were maintained by the voluntary oblations of the people. A
      perpetual succession of patriarchs arose from the ashes of
      Theodosius; and the Monophysite churches of Syria and Egypt were
      united by the name of Jacobites and the communion of the faith.
      But the same faith, which has been confined to a narrow sect of
      the Syrians, was diffused over the mass of the Egyptian or Coptic
      nation; who, almost unanimously, rejected the decrees of the
      synod of Chalcedon. A thousand years were now elapsed since Egypt
      had ceased to be a kingdom, since the conquerors of Asia and
      Europe had trampled on the ready necks of a people, whose ancient
      wisdom and power ascend beyond the records of history. The
      conflict of zeal and persecution rekindled some sparks of their
      national spirit. They abjured, with a foreign heresy, the manners
      and language of the Greeks: every Melchite, in their eyes, was a
      stranger, every Jacobite a citizen; the alliance of marriage, the
      offices of humanity, were condemned as a deadly sin; the natives
      renounced all allegiance to the emperor; and his orders, at a
      distance from Alexandria, were obeyed only under the pressure of
      military force. A generous effort might have redeemed the
      religion and liberty of Egypt, and her six hundred monasteries
      might have poured forth their myriads of holy warriors, for whom
      death should have no terrors, since life had no comfort or
      delight. But experience has proved the distinction of active and
      passive courage; the fanatic who endures without a groan the
      torture of the rack or the stake, would tremble and fly before
      the face of an armed enemy. The pusillanimous temper of the
      Egyptians could only hope for a change of masters; the arms of
      Chosroes depopulated the land, yet under his reign the Jacobites
      enjoyed a short and precarious respite. The victory of Heraclius
      renewed and aggravated the persecution, and the patriarch again
      escaped from Alexandria to the desert. In his flight, Benjamin
      was encouraged by a voice, which bade him expect, at the end of
      ten years, the aid of a foreign nation, marked, like the
      Egyptians themselves, with the ancient rite of circumcision. The
      character of these deliverers, and the nature of the deliverance,
      will be hereafter explained; and I shall step over the interval
      of eleven centuries to observe the present misery of the
      Jacobites of Egypt. The populous city of Cairo affords a
      residence, or rather a shelter, for their indigent patriarch, and
      a remnant of ten bishops; forty monasteries have survived the
      inroads of the Arabs; and the progress of servitude and apostasy
      has reduced the Coptic nation to the despicable number of
      twenty-five or thirty thousand families; 148 a race of illiterate
      beggars, whose only consolation is derived from the superior
      wretchedness of the Greek patriarch and his diminutive
      congregation. 149

      148 (return) [ This number is taken from the curious Recherches
      sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, (tom. ii. p. 192, 193,) and
      appears more probable than the 600,000 ancient, or 15,000 modern,
      Copts of Gemelli Carreri Cyril Lucar, the Protestant patriarch of
      Constantinople, laments that those heretics were ten times more
      numerous than his orthodox Greeks, ingeniously applying Homer,
      (Iliad, ii. 128,) the most perfect expression of contempt,
      (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, 740.)]

      149 (return) [ The history of the Copts, their religion, manners,
      &c., may be found in the Abbe Renaudot’s motley work, neither a
      translation nor an original; the Chronicon Orientale of Peter, a
      Jacobite; in the two versions of Abraham Ecchellensis, Paris,
      1651; and John Simon Asseman, Venet. 1729. These annals descend
      no lower than the xiiith century. The more recent accounts must
      be searched for in the travellers into Egypt and the Nouveaux
      Memoires des Missions du Levant. In the last century, Joseph
      Abudacnus, a native of Cairo, published at Oxford, in thirty
      pages, a slight Historia Jacobitarum, 147, post p.150]


      VI. The Coptic patriarch, a rebel to the Caesars, or a slave to
      the khalifs, still gloried in the filial obedience of the kings
      of Nubia and Aethiopia. He repaid their homage by magnifying
      their greatness; and it was boldly asserted that they could bring
      into the field a hundred thousand horse, with an equal number of
      camels; 150 that their hand could pour out or restrain the waters
      of the Nile; 151 and the peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained,
      even in this world, by the intercession of the patriarch. In
      exile at Constantinople, Theodosius recommended to his patroness
      the conversion of the black nations of Nubia, from the tropic of
      Cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. 152 Her design was suspected
      and emulated by the more orthodox emperor. The rival
      missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the same
      time; but the empress, from a motive of love or fear, was more
      effectually obeyed; and the Catholic priest was detained by the
      president of Thebais, while the king of Nubia and his court were
      hastily baptized in the faith of Dioscorus. The tardy envoy of
      Justinian was received and dismissed with honor: but when he
      accused the heresy and treason of the Egyptians, the negro
      convert was instructed to reply that he would never abandon his
      brethren, the true believers, to the persecuting ministers of the
      synod of Chalcedon. 153 During several ages, the bishops of Nubia
      were named and consecrated by the Jacobite patriarch of
      Alexandria: as late as the twelfth century, Christianity
      prevailed; and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in the
      savage towns of Sennaar and Dongola. 154 But the Nubians at
      length executed their threats of returning to the worship of
      idols; the climate required the indulgence of polygamy, and they
      have finally preferred the triumph of the Koran to the abasement
      of the Cross. A metaphysical religion may appear too refined for
      the capacity of the negro race: yet a black or a parrot might be
      taught to repeat the words of the Chalcedonian or Monophysite
      creed.

      150 (return) [ About the year 737. See Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.
      Alex p. 221, 222. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 99.]

      151 (return) [ Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l. i. c. 8.
      Renaudot Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 480, &c. This opinion,
      introduced into Egypt and Europe by the artifice of the Copts,
      the pride of the Abyssinians, the fear and ignorance of the Turks
      and Arabs, has not even the semblance of truth. The rains of
      Aethiopia do not, in the increase of the Nile, consult the will
      of the monarch. If the river approaches at Napata within three
      days’ journey of the Red Sea (see D’Anville’s Maps,) a canal that
      should divert its course would demand, and most probably surpass,
      the power of the Caesars.]

      152 (return) [ The Abyssinians, who still preserve the features
      and olive complexion of the Arabs, afford a proof that two
      thousand years are not sufficient to change the color of the
      human race. The Nubians, an African race, are pure negroes, as
      black as those of Senegal or Congo, with flat noses, thick lips,
      and woolly hair, (Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 117, 143,
      144, 166, 219, edit. in 12mo., Paris, 1769.) The ancients beheld,
      without much attention, the extraordinary phenomenon which has
      exercised the philosophers and theologians of modern times]

      153 (return) [ Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 329.]

      154 (return) [ The Christianity of the Nubians (A.D. 1153) is
      attested by the sheriff al Edrisi, falsely described under the
      name of the Nubian geographer, (p. 18,) who represents them as a
      nation of Jacobites. The rays of historical light that twinkle in
      the history of Ranaudot (p. 178, 220—224, 281—286, 405, 434, 451,
      464) are all previous to this aera. See the modern state in the
      Lettres Edifiantes (Recueil, iv.) and Busching, (tom. ix. p.
      152—139, par Berenger.)]


      Christianity was more deeply rooted in the Abyssinian empire;
      and, although the correspondence has been sometimes interrupted
      above seventy or a hundred years, the mother-church of Alexandria
      retains her colony in a state of perpetual pupilage. Seven
      bishops once composed the Aethiopic synod: had their number
      amounted to ten, they might have elected an independent primate;
      and one of their kings was ambitious of promoting his brother to
      the ecclesiastical throne. But the event was foreseen, the
      increase was denied: the episcopal office has been gradually
      confined to the abuna, 155 the head and author of the Abyssinian
      priesthood; the patriarch supplies each vacancy with an Egyptian
      monk; and the character of a stranger appears more venerable in
      the eyes of the people, less dangerous in those of the monarch.
      In the sixth century, when the schism of Egypt was confirmed, the
      rival chiefs, with their patrons, Justinian and Theodora, strove
      to outstrip each other in the conquest of a remote and
      independent province. The industry of the empress was again
      victorious, and the pious Theodora has established in that
      sequestered church the faith and discipline of the Jacobites. 156
      Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the
      Aethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world,
      by whom they were forgotten. They were awakened by the
      Portuguese, who, turning the southern promontory of Africa,
      appeared in India and the Red Sea, as if they had descended
      through the air from a distant planet. In the first moments of
      their interview, the subjects of Rome and Alexandria observed the
      resemblance, rather than the difference, of their faith; and each
      nation expected the most important benefits from an alliance with
      their Christian brethren. In their lonely situation, the
      Aethiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life. Their
      vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to
      navigate the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were deserted,
      the nation was scattered in villages, and the emperor, a pompous
      name, was content, both in peace and war, with the immovable
      residence of a camp. Conscious of their own indigence, the
      Abyssinians had formed the rational project of importing the arts
      and ingenuity of Europe; 157 and their ambassadors at Rome and
      Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters,
      tilers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians, for the use
      of their country. But the public danger soon called for the
      instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers, to defend an
      unwarlike people from the Barbarians who ravaged the inland
      country and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the sea-coast
      in more formidable array. Aethiopia was saved by four hundred and
      fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the field the native valor of
      Europeans, and the artificial power of the musket and cannon. In
      a moment of terror, the emperor had promised to reconcile himself
      and his subjects to the Catholic faith; a Latin patriarch
      represented the supremacy of the pope: 158 the empire, enlarged
      in a tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than
      the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal
      were built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa.

      155 (return) [ The abuna is improperly dignified by the Latins
      with the title of patriarch. The Abyssinians acknowledge only the
      four patriarchs, and their chief is no more than a metropolitan
      or national primate, (Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l.
      iii. c. 7.) The seven bishops of Renaudot, (p. 511,) who existed
      A.D. 1131, are unknown to the historian.]

      156 (return) [ I know not why Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom.
      ii. p. 384) should call in question these probable missions of
      Theodora into Nubia and Aethiopia. The slight notices of
      Abyssinia till the year 1500 are supplied by Renaudot (p.
      336-341, 381, 382, 405, 443, &c., 452, 456, 463, 475, 480, 511,
      525, 559—564) from the Coptic writers. The mind of Ludolphus was
      a perfect blank.]

      157 (return) [ Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop. l. iv. c. 5. The most
      necessary arts are now exercised by the Jews, and the foreign
      trade is in the hands of the Armenians. What Gregory principally
      admired and envied was the industry of Europe—artes et opificia.]

      158 (return) [ John Bermudez, whose relation, printed at Lisbon,
      1569, was translated into English by Purchas, (Pilgrims, l. vii.
      c. 7, p. 1149, &c.,) and from thence into French by La Croze,
      (Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 92—265.) The piece is curious; but
      the author may be suspected of deceiving Abyssinia, Rome, and
      Portugal. His title to the rank of patriarch is dark and
      doubtful, (Ludolph. Comment. No. 101, p. 473.)]


      But the vows which pain had extorted were forsworn on the return
      of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy
      to the Monophysite faith; their languid belief was inflamed by
      the exercise of dispute; they branded the Latins with the names
      of Arians and Nestorians, and imputed the adoration of four gods
      to those who separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a
      place of worship, or rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit
      missionaries. Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their
      theological learning, and the decency of their manners, inspired
      a barren esteem; but they were not endowed with the gift of
      miracles, 159 and they vainly solicited a reenforcement of
      European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty years at
      length obtained a more favorable audience, and two emperors of
      Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could insure the temporal and
      everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal
      converts lost his crown and his life; and the rebel army was
      sanctified by the abuna, who hurled an anathema at the apostate,
      and absolved his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate
      of Zadenghel was revenged by the courage and fortune of Susneus,
      who ascended the throne under the name of Segued, and more
      vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his kinsman. After
      the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits and his
      illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte to
      the synod of Chalcedon, presuming that his clergy and people
      would embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The
      liberty of choice was succeeded by a law, which imposed, under
      pain of death, the belief of the two natures of Christ: the
      Abyssinians were enjoined to work and to play on the Sabbath; and
      Segued, in the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his
      connection with the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit, Alphonso
      Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Aethiopia, accepted, in the
      name of Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of the penitent.
      “I confess,” said the emperor on his knees, “I confess that the
      pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the
      sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his
      feet I offer my person and kingdom.” A similar oath was repeated
      by his son, his brother, the clergy, the nobles, and even the
      ladies of the court: the Latin patriarch was invested with honors
      and wealth; and his missionaries erected their churches or
      citadels in the most convenient stations of the empire. The
      Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief,
      who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his
      order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and
      the inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of
      circumcision, which health, rather than superstition, had first
      invented in the climate of Aethiopia. 160 A new baptism, a new
      ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with
      horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their
      graves, when the most illustrious of the living were
      excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defense of their
      religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with
      desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were
      extinguished in the blood of the insurgents: two abunas were
      slain in battle, whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or
      suffocated in their caverns; and neither merit, nor rank, nor
      sex, could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome.
      But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy
      of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most
      faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of
      reason, perhaps of fear: and his edict of liberty of conscience
      instantly revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On
      the death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch,
      and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the
      discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded with a
      song of triumph, “that the sheep of Aethiopia were now delivered
      from the hyaenas of the West;” and the gates of that solitary
      realm were forever shut against the arts, the science, and the
      fanaticism of Europe. 161

      159 (return) [ Religio Romana...nec precibus patrum nec miraculis
      ab ipsis editis suffulciebatur, is the uncontradicted assurance
      of the devout emperor Susneus to his patriarch Mendez, (Ludolph.
      Comment. No. 126, p. 529;) and such assurances should be
      preciously kept, as an antidote against any marvellous legends.]

      160 (return) [ I am aware how tender is the question of
      circumcision. Yet I will affirm, 1. That the Aethiopians have a
      physical reason for the circumcision of males, and even of
      females, (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. ii.)
      2. That it was practised in Aethiopia long before the
      introduction of Judaism or Christianity, (Herodot. l. ii. c. 104.
      Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73.) “Infantes circumcidunt ob
      consuetudinemn, non ob Judaismum,” says Gregory the Abyssinian
      priest, (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana, p. 720.) Yet in the heat of
      dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of
      uncircumcised, (La Croze, p. 90. Ludolph. Hist. and Comment. l.
      iii. c. l.)]

      161 (return) [ The three Protestant historians, Ludolphus, (Hist.
      Aethiopica, Francofurt. 1681; Commentarius, 1691; Relatio Nova,
      &c., 1693, in folio,) Geddes, (Church History of Aethiopia,
      London, 1696, in 8vo..) and La Croze, (Hist. du Christianisme
      d’Ethiopie et d’Armenie, La Haye, 1739, in 12mo.,) have drawn
      their principal materials from the Jesuits, especially from the
      General History of Tellez, published in Portuguese at Coimbra,
      1660. We might be surprised at their frankness; but their most
      flagitious vice, the spirit of persecution, was in their eyes the
      most meritorious virtue. Ludolphus possessed some, though a
      slight, advantage from the Aethiopic language, and the personal
      conversation of Gregory, a free-spirited Abyssinian priest, whom
      he invited from Rome to the court of Saxe-Gotha. See the
      Theologia Aethiopica of Gregory, in (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, p.
      716—734.) * Note: The travels of Bruce, illustrated by those of
      Mr. Salt, and the narrative of Nathaniel Pearce, have brought us
      again acquainted with this remote region. Whatever may be their
      speculative opinions the barbarous manners of the Ethiopians seem
      to be gaining more and more the ascendency over the practice of
      Christianity.—M.]




Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
I.


Plan Of The Two Last Volumes.—Succession And Characters Of The Greek
Emperors Of Constantinople, From The Time Of Heraclius To The Latin
Conquest.


      I have now deduced from Trajan to Constantine, from Constantine
      to Heraclius, the regular series of the Roman emperors; and
      faithfully exposed the prosperous and adverse fortunes of their
      reigns. Five centuries of the decline and fall of the empire have
      already elapsed; but a period of more than eight hundred years
      still separates me from the term of my labors, the taking of
      Constantinople by the Turks. Should I persevere in the same
      course, should I observe the same measure, a prolix and slender
      thread would be spun through many a volume, nor would the patient
      reader find an adequate reward of instruction or amusement. At
      every step, as we sink deeper in the decline and fall of the
      Eastern empire, the annals of each succeeding reign would impose
      a more ungrateful and melancholy task. These annals must continue
      to repeat a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery; the
      natural connection of causes and events would be broken by
      frequent and hasty transitions, and a minute accumulation of
      circumstances must destroy the light and effect of those general
      pictures which compose the use and ornament of a remote history.
      From the time of Heraclius, the Byzantine theatre is contracted
      and darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by the
      laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius, recedes on all
      sides from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of our
      inquiries, is reduced to a narrow corner of Europe, to the lonely
      suburbs of Constantinople; and the fate of the Greek empire has
      been compared to that of the Rhine, which loses itself in the
      sands, before its waters can mingle with the ocean. The scale of
      dominion is diminished to our view by the distance of time and
      place; nor is the loss of external splendor compensated by the
      nobler gifts of virtue and genius. In the last moments of her
      decay, Constantinople was doubtless more opulent and populous
      than Athens at her most flourishing aera, when a scanty sum of
      six thousand talents, or twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling
      was possessed by twenty-one thousand male citizens of an adult
      age. But each of these citizens was a freeman, who dared to
      assert the liberty of his thoughts, words, and actions, whose
      person and property were guarded by equal law; and who exercised
      his independent vote in the government of the republic. Their
      numbers seem to be multiplied by the strong and various
      discriminations of character; under the shield of freedom, on the
      wings of emulation and vanity, each Athenian aspired to the level
      of the national dignity; from this commanding eminence, some
      chosen spirits soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the
      chances of superior merit in a great and populous kingdom, as
      they are proved by experience, would excuse the computation of
      imaginary millions. The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their
      allies, do not exceed a moderate province of France or England;
      but after the trophies of Salamis and Platea, they expand in our
      fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under
      the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects of the
      Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of
      Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices,
      which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity, nor
      animated by the vigor of memorable crimes. The freemen of
      antiquity might repeat with generous enthusiasm the sentence of
      Homer, “that on the first day of his servitude, the captive is
      deprived of one half of his manly virtue.” But the poet had only
      seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor could he
      foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated by
      the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but
      even the thoughts, of the prostrate votary. By this double yoke,
      the Greeks were oppressed under the successors of Heraclius; the
      tyrant, a law of eternal justice, was degraded by the vices of
      his subjects; and on the throne, in the camp, in the schools, we
      search, perhaps with fruitless diligence, the names and
      characters that may deserve to be rescued from oblivion. Nor are
      the defects of the subject compensated by the skill and variety
      of the painters. Of a space of eight hundred years, the four
      first centuries are overspread with a cloud interrupted by some
      faint and broken rays of historic light: in the lives of the
      emperors, from Maurice to Alexius, Basil the Macedonian has alone
      been the theme of a separate work; and the absence, or loss, or
      imperfection of contemporary evidence, must be poorly supplied by
      the doubtful authority of more recent compilers. The four last
      centuries are exempt from the reproach of penury; and with the
      Comnenian family, the historic muse of Constantinople again
      revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are without
      elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers, treads
      in each other’s footsteps in the same path of servitude and
      superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or
      corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still
      ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the actors,
      and the manners of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The
      observation which has been applied to a man, may be extended to a
      whole people, that the energy of the sword is communicated to the
      pen; and it will be found by experience, that the tone of history
      will rise or fall with the spirit of the age.


      From these considerations, I should have abandoned without regret
      the Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not
      reflected that the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively
      connected with the most splendid and important revolutions which
      have changed the state of the world. The space of the lost
      provinces was immediately replenished with new colonies and
      rising kingdoms: the active virtues of peace and war deserted
      from the vanquished to the victorious nations; and it is in their
      origin and conquests, in their religion and government, that we
      must explore the causes and effects of the decline and fall of
      the Eastern empire. Nor will this scope of narrative, the riches
      and variety of these materials, be incompatible with the unity of
      design and composition. As, in his daily prayers, the Mussulman
      of Fez or Delhi still turns his face towards the temple of Mecca,
      the historian’s eye shall be always fixed on the city of
      Constantinople. The excursive line may embrace the wilds of
      Arabia and Tartary, but the circle will be ultimately reduced to
      the decreasing limit of the Roman monarchy.


      On this principle I shall now establish the plan of the last two
      volumes of the present work. The first chapter will contain, in a
      regular series, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople during
      a period of six hundred years, from the days of Heraclius to the
      Latin conquest; a rapid abstract, which may be supported by a
      general appeal to the order and text of the original historians.
      In this introduction, I shall confine myself to the revolutions
      of the throne, the succession of families, the personal
      characters of the Greek princes, the mode of their life and
      death, the maxims and influence of their domestic government, and
      the tendency of their reign to accelerate or suspend the downfall
      of the Eastern empire. Such a chronological review will serve to
      illustrate the various argument of the subsequent chapters; and
      each circumstance of the eventful story of the Barbarians will
      adapt itself in a proper place to the Byzantine annals. The
      internal state of the empire, and the dangerous heresy of the
      Paulicians, which shook the East and enlightened the West, will
      be the subject of two separate chapters; but these inquiries must
      be postponed till our further progress shall have opened the view
      of the world in the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian
      area. After this foundation of Byzantine history, the following
      nations will pass before our eyes, and each will occupy the space
      to which it may be entitled by greatness or merit, or the degree
      of connection with the Roman world and the present age. I. The
      Franks; a general appellation which includes all the Barbarians
      of France, Italy, and Germany, who were united by the sword and
      sceptre of Charlemagne. The persecution of images and their
      votaries separated Rome and Italy from the Byzantine throne, and
      prepared the restoration of the Roman empire in the West. II. The
      Arabs or Saracens. Three ample chapters will be devoted to this
      curious and interesting object. In the first, after a picture of
      the country and its inhabitants, I shall investigate the
      character of Mahomet; the character, religion, and success of the
      prophet. In the second, I shall lead the Arabs to the conquest of
      Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the provinces of the Roman empire; nor
      can I check their victorious career till they have overthrown the
      monarchies of Persia and Spain. In the third, I shall inquire how
      Constantinople and Europe were saved by the luxury and arts, the
      division and decay, of the empire of the caliphs. A single
      chapter will include, III. The Bulgarians, IV. Hungarians, and,
      V. Russians, who assaulted by sea or by land the provinces and
      the capital; but the last of these, so important in their present
      greatness, will excite some curiosity in their origin and
      infancy. VI. The Normans; or rather the private adventurers of
      that warlike people, who founded a powerful kingdom in Apulia and
      Sicily, shook the throne of Constantinople, displayed the
      trophies of chivalry, and almost realized the wonders of romance.


      VII. The Latins; the subjects of the pope, the nations of the
      West, who enlisted under the banner of the cross for the recovery
      or relief of the holy sepulchre. The Greek emperors were
      terrified and preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to
      Jerusalem with Godfrey of Bouillon and the peers of Christendom.
      The second and third crusades trod in the footsteps of the first:
      Asia and Europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred
      years; and the Christian powers were bravely resisted, and
      finally expelled by Saladin and the Mamelukes of Egypt. In these
      memorable crusades, a fleet and army of French and Venetians were
      diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus: they assaulted the
      capital, they subverted the Greek monarchy: and a dynasty of
      Latin princes was seated near threescore years on the throne of
      Constantine. VII. The Greeks themselves, during this period of
      captivity and exile, must be considered as a foreign nation; the
      enemies, and again the sovereigns of Constantinople. Misfortune
      had rekindled a spark of national virtue; and the Imperial series
      may be continued with some dignity from their restoration to the
      Turkish conquest. IX. The Moguls and Tartars. By the arms of
      Zingis and his descendants, the globe was shaken from China to
      Poland and Greece: the sultans were overthrown: the caliphs fell,
      and the Caesars trembled on their throne. The victories of Timour
      suspended above fifty years the final ruin of the Byzantine
      empire. X. I have already noticed the first appearance of the
      Turks; and the names of the fathers, of Seljuk and Othman,
      discriminate the two successive dynasties of the nation, which
      emerged in the eleventh century from the Scythian wilderness. The
      former established a splendid and potent kingdom from the banks
      of the Oxus to Antioch and Nice; and the first crusade was
      provoked by the violation of Jerusalem and the danger of
      Constantinople. From an humble origin, the Ottomans arose, the
      scourge and terror of Christendom. Constantinople was besieged
      and taken by Mahomet II., and his triumph annihilates the
      remnant, the image, the title, of the Roman empire in the East.
      The schism of the Greeks will be connected with their last
      calamities, and the restoration of learning in the Western world.


      I shall return from the captivity of the new, to the ruins of
      ancient Rome; and the venerable name, the interesting theme, will
      shed a ray of glory on the conclusion of my labors.


      The emperor Heraclius had punished a tyrant and ascended his
      throne; and the memory of his reign is perpetuated by the
      transient conquest, and irreparable loss, of the Eastern
      provinces. After the death of Eudocia, his first wife, he
      disobeyed the patriarch, and violated the laws, by his second
      marriage with his niece Martina; and the superstition of the
      Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the
      father and the deformity of his offspring. But the opinion of an
      illegitimate birth is sufficient to distract the choice, and
      loosen the obedience, of the people: the ambition of Martina was
      quickened by maternal love, and perhaps by the envy of a
      step-mother; and the aged husband was too feeble to withstand the
      arts of conjugal allurements. Constantine, his eldest son,
      enjoyed in a mature age the title of Augustus; but the weakness
      of his constitution required a colleague and a guardian, and he
      yielded with secret reluctance to the partition of the empire.
      The senate was summoned to the palace to ratify or attest the
      association of Heracleonas, the son of Martina: the imposition of
      the diadem was consecrated by the prayer and blessing of the
      patriarch; the senators and patricians adored the majesty of the
      great emperor and the partners of his reign; and as soon as the
      doors were thrown open, they were hailed by the tumultuary but
      important voice of the soldiers. After an interval of five
      months, the pompous ceremonies which formed the essence of the
      Byzantine state were celebrated in the cathedral and the
      hippodrome; the concord of the royal brothers was affectedly
      displayed by the younger leaning on the arm of the elder; and the
      name of Martina was mingled in the reluctant or venal
      acclamations of the people. Heraclius survived this association
      about two years: his last testimony declared his two sons the
      equal heirs of the Eastern empire, and commanded them to honor
      his widow Martina as their mother and their sovereign.


      When Martina first appeared on the throne with the name and
      attributes of royalty, she was checked by a firm, though
      respectful, opposition; and the dying embers of freedom were
      kindled by the breath of superstitious prejudice. “We reverence,”
      exclaimed the voice of a citizen, “we reverence the mother of our
      princes; but to those princes alone our obedience is due; and
      Constantine, the elder emperor, is of an age to sustain, in his
      own hands, the weight of the sceptre. Your sex is excluded by
      nature from the toils of government. How could you combat, how
      could you answer, the Barbarians, who, with hostile or friendly
      intentions, may approach the royal city? May Heaven avert from
      the Roman republic this national disgrace, which would provoke
      the patience of the slaves of Persia!” Martina descended from the
      throne with indignation, and sought a refuge in the female
      apartment of the palace. The reign of Constantine the Third
      lasted only one hundred and three days: he expired in the
      thirtieth year of his age, and, although his life had been a long
      malady, a belief was entertained that poison had been the means,
      and his cruel step-mother the author, of his untimely fate.
      Martina reaped indeed the harvest of his death, and assumed the
      government in the name of the surviving emperor; but the
      incestuous widow of Heraclius was universally abhorred; the
      jealousy of the people was awakened, and the two orphans whom
      Constantine had left became the objects of the public care. It
      was in vain that the son of Martina, who was no more than fifteen
      years of age, was taught to declare himself the guardian of his
      nephews, one of whom he had presented at the baptismal font: it
      was in vain that he swore on the wood of the true cross, to
      defend them against all their enemies. On his death-bed, the late
      emperor had despatched a trusty servant to arm the troops and
      provinces of the East in the defence of his helpless children:
      the eloquence and liberality of Valentin had been successful, and
      from his camp of Chalcedon, he boldly demanded the punishment of
      the assassins, and the restoration of the lawful heir. The
      license of the soldiers, who devoured the grapes and drank the
      wine of their Asiatic vineyards, provoked the citizens of
      Constantinople against the domestic authors of their calamities,
      and the dome of St. Sophia reechoed, not with prayers and hymns,
      but with the clamors and imprecations of an enraged multitude. At
      their imperious command, Heracleonas appeared in the pulpit with
      the eldest of the royal orphans; Constans alone was saluted as
      emperor of the Romans, and a crown of gold, which had been taken
      from the tomb of Heraclius, was placed on his head, with the
      solemn benediction of the patriarch.


      But in the tumult of joy and indignation, the church was
      pillaged, the sanctuary was polluted by a promiscuous crowd of
      Jews and Barbarians; and the Monothelite Pyrrhus, a creature of
      the empress, after dropping a protestation on the altar, escaped
      by a prudent flight from the zeal of the Catholics. A more
      serious and bloody task was reserved for the senate, who derived
      a temporary strength from the consent of the soldiers and people.


      The spirit of Roman freedom revived the ancient and awful
      examples of the judgment of tyrants, and the Imperial culprits
      were deposed and condemned as the authors of the death of
      Constantine. But the severity of the conscript fathers was
      stained by the indiscriminate punishment of the innocent and the
      guilty: Martina and Heracleonas were sentenced to the amputation,
      the former of her tongue, the latter of his nose; and after this
      cruel execution, they consumed the remainder of their days in
      exile and oblivion. The Greeks who were capable of reflection
      might find some consolation for their servitude, by observing the
      abuse of power when it was lodged for a moment in the hands of an
      aristocracy.


      We shall imagine ourselves transported five hundred years
      backwards to the age of the Antonines, if we listen to the
      oration which Constans II. pronounced in the twelfth year of his
      age before the Byzantine senate. After returning his thanks for
      the just punishment of the assassins, who had intercepted the
      fairest hopes of his father’s reign, “By the divine Providence,”
      said the young emperor, “and by your righteous decree, Martina
      and her incestuous progeny have been cast headlong from the
      throne. Your majesty and wisdom have prevented the Roman state
      from degenerating into lawless tyranny. I therefore exhort and
      beseech you to stand forth as the counsellors and judges of the
      common safety.” The senators were gratified by the respectful
      address and liberal donative of their sovereign; but these
      servile Greeks were unworthy and regardless of freedom; and in
      his mind, the lesson of an hour was quickly erased by the
      prejudices of the age and the habits of despotism. He retained
      only a jealous fear lest the senate or people should one day
      invade the right of primogeniture, and seat his brother
      Theodosius on an equal throne. By the imposition of holy orders,
      the grandson of Heraclius was disqualified for the purple; but
      this ceremony, which seemed to profane the sacraments of the
      church, was insufficient to appease the suspicions of the tyrant,
      and the death of the deacon Theodosius could alone expiate the
      crime of his royal birth. 1111 His murder was avenged by the
      imprecations of the people, and the assassin, in the fullness of
      power, was driven from his capital into voluntary and perpetual
      exile. Constans embarked for Greece and, as if he meant to retort
      the abhorrence which he deserved he is said, from the Imperial
      galley, to have spit against the walls of his native city. After
      passing the winter at Athens, he sailed to Tarentum in Italy,
      visited Rome, 1112 and concluded a long pilgrimage of disgrace
      and sacrilegious rapine, by fixing his residence at Syracuse. But
      if Constans could fly from his people, he could not fly from
      himself. The remorse of his conscience created a phantom who
      pursued him by land and sea, by day and by night; and the
      visionary Theodosius, presenting to his lips a cup of blood,
      said, or seemed to say, “Drink, brother, drink;” a sure emblem of
      the aggravation of his guilt, since he had received from the
      hands of the deacon the mystic cup of the blood of Christ. Odious
      to himself and to mankind, Constans perished by domestic, perhaps
      by episcopal, treason, in the capital of Sicily. A servant who
      waited in the bath, after pouring warm water on his head, struck
      him violently with the vase. He fell, stunned by the blow, and
      suffocated by the water; and his attendants, who wondered at the
      tedious delay, beheld with indifference the corpse of their
      lifeless emperor. The troops of Sicily invested with the purple
      an obscure youth, whose inimitable beauty eluded, and it might
      easily elude, the declining art of the painters and sculptors of
      the age.

      1111 (return) [ His soldiers (according to Abulfaradji. Chron.
      Syr. p. 112) called him another Cain. St. Martin, t. xi. p.
      379.—M.]

      1112 (return) [ He was received in Rome, and pillaged the
      churches. He carried off the brass roof of the Pantheon to
      Syracuse, or, as Schlosser conceives, to Constantinople Schlosser
      Geschichte der bilder-sturmenden Kaiser p. 80—M.]


      Constans had left in the Byzantine palace three sons, the eldest
      of whom had been clothed in his infancy with the purple. When the
      father summoned them to attend his person in Sicily, these
      precious hostages were detained by the Greeks, and a firm refusal
      informed him that they were the children of the state. The news
      of his murder was conveyed with almost supernatural speed from
      Syracuse to Constantinople; and Constantine, the eldest of his
      sons, inherited his throne without being the heir of the public
      hatred. His subjects contributed, with zeal and alacrity, to
      chastise the guilt and presumption of a province which had
      usurped the rights of the senate and people; the young emperor
      sailed from the Hellespont with a powerful fleet; and the legions
      of Rome and Carthage were assembled under his standard in the
      harbor of Syracuse. The defeat of the Sicilian tyrant was easy,
      his punishment just, and his beauteous head was exposed in the
      hippodrome: but I cannot applaud the clemency of a prince, who,
      among a crowd of victims, condemned the son of a patrician, for
      deploring with some bitterness the execution of a virtuous
      father. The youth was castrated: he survived the operation, and
      the memory of this indecent cruelty is preserved by the elevation
      of Germanus to the rank of a patriarch and saint. After pouring
      this bloody libation on his father’s tomb, Constantine returned
      to his capital; and the growth of his young beard during the
      Sicilian voyage was announced, by the familiar surname of
      Pogonatus, to the Grecian world. But his reign, like that of his
      predecessor, was stained with fraternal discord. On his two
      brothers, Heraclius and Tiberius, he had bestowed the title of
      Augustus; an empty title, for they continued to languish, without
      trust or power, in the solitude of the palace. At their secret
      instigation, the troops of the Anatolian theme or province
      approached the city on the Asiatic side, demanded for the royal
      brothers the partition or exercise of sovereignty, and supported
      their seditious claim by a theological argument. They were
      Christians, (they cried,) and orthodox Catholics; the sincere
      votaries of the holy and undivided Trinity. Since there are three
      equal persons in heaven, it is reasonable there should be three
      equal persons upon earth. The emperor invited these learned
      divines to a friendly conference, in which they might propose
      their arguments to the senate: they obeyed the summons, but the
      prospect of their bodies hanging on the gibbet in the suburb of
      Galata reconciled their companions to the unity of the reign of
      Constantine. He pardoned his brothers, and their names were still
      pronounced in the public acclamations: but on the repetition or
      suspicion of a similar offence, the obnoxious princes were
      deprived of their titles and noses, 1113 in the presence of the
      Catholic bishops who were assembled at Constantinople in the
      sixth general synod. In the close of his life, Pogonatus was
      anxious only to establish the right of primogeniture: the heir of
      his two sons, Justinian and Heraclius, was offered on the shrine
      of St. Peter, as a symbol of their spiritual adoption by the
      pope; but the elder was alone exalted to the rank of Augustus,
      and the assurance of the empire.

      1113 (return) [ Schlosser (Geschichte der bilder sturmenden
      Kaiser, p. 90) supposed that the young princes were mutilated
      after the first insurrection; that after this the acts were still
      inscribed with their names, the princes being closely secluded in
      the palace. The improbability of this circumstance may be weighed
      against Gibbon’s want of authority for his statement.—M.]


      After the decease of his father, the inheritance of the Roman
      world devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant
      lawgiver was dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his
      namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions
      were strong; his understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated
      with a foolish pride, that his birth had given him the command of
      millions, of whom the smallest community would not have chosen
      him for their local magistrate. His favorite ministers were two
      beings the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a
      monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the
      finances; the former corrected the emperor’s mother with a
      scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with
      their heads downwards, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days
      of Commodus and Caracalla, the cruelty of the Roman princes had
      most commonly been the effect of their fear; but Justinian, who
      possessed some vigor of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and
      braved the revenge, of his subjects, about ten years, till the
      measure was full, of his crimes and of their patience. In a dark
      dungeon, Leontius, a general of reputation, had groaned above
      three years, with some of the noblest and most deserving of the
      patricians: he was suddenly drawn forth to assume the government
      of Greece; and this promotion of an injured man was a mark of the
      contempt rather than of the confidence of his prince. As he was
      followed to the port by the kind offices of his friends, Leontius
      observed, with a sigh, that he was a victim adorned for
      sacrifice, and that inevitable death would pursue his footsteps.
      They ventured to reply, that glory and empire might be the
      recompense of a generous resolution; that every order of men
      abhorred the reign of a monster; and that the hands of two
      hundred thousand patriots expected only the voice of a leader.
      The night was chosen for their deliverance; and in the first
      effort of the conspirators, the præfect was slain, and the
      prisons were forced open: the emissaries of Leontius proclaimed
      in every street, “Christians, to St. Sophia!” and the seasonable
      text of the patriarch, “This is the day of the Lord!” was the
      prelude of an inflammatory sermon. From the church the people
      adjourned to the hippodrome: Justinian, in whose cause not a
      sword had been drawn, was dragged before these tumultuary judges,
      and their clamors demanded the instant death of the tyrant. But
      Leontius, who was already clothed with the purple, cast an eye of
      pity on the prostrate son of his own benefactor and of so many
      emperors. The life of Justinian was spared; the amputation of his
      nose, perhaps of his tongue, was imperfectly performed: the happy
      flexibility of the Greek language could impose the name of
      Rhinotmetus; and the mutilated tyrant was banished to Chersonae
      in Crim-Tartary, a lonely settlement, where corn, wine, and oil,
      were imported as foreign luxuries.


      On the edge of the Scythian wilderness, Justinian still cherished
      the pride of his birth, and the hope of his restoration. After
      three years’ exile, he received the pleasing intelligence that
      his injury was avenged by a second revolution, and that Leontius
      in his turn had been dethroned and mutilated by the rebel
      Apsimar, who assumed the more respectable name of Tiberius. But
      the claim of lineal succession was still formidable to a plebeian
      usurper; and his jealousy was stimulated by the complaints and
      charges of the Chersonites, who beheld the vices of the tyrant in
      the spirit of the exile. With a band of followers, attached to
      his person by common hope or common despair, Justinian fled from
      the inhospitable shore to the horde of the Chozars, who pitched
      their tents between the Tanais and Borysthenes. The khan
      entertained with pity and respect the royal suppliant:
      Phanagoria, once an opulent city, on the Asiatic side of the lake
      Moeotis, was assigned for his residence; and every Roman
      prejudice was stifled in his marriage with the sister of the
      Barbarian, who seems, however, from the name of Theodora, to have
      received the sacrament of baptism. But the faithless Chozar was
      soon tempted by the gold of Constantinople: and had not the
      design been revealed by the conjugal love of Theodora, her
      husband must have been assassinated or betrayed into the power of
      his enemies. After strangling, with his own hands, the two
      emissaries of the khan, Justinian sent back his wife to her
      brother, and embarked on the Euxine in search of new and more
      faithful allies. His vessel was assaulted by a violent tempest;
      and one of his pious companions advised him to deserve the mercy
      of God by a vow of general forgiveness, if he should be restored
      to the throne. “Of forgiveness?” replied the intrepid tyrant:
      “may I perish this instant—may the Almighty whelm me in the
      waves—if I consent to spare a single head of my enemies!” He
      survived this impious menace, sailed into the mouth of the
      Danube, trusted his person in the royal village of the
      Bulgarians, and purchased the aid of Terbelis, a pagan conqueror,
      by the promise of his daughter and a fair partition of the
      treasures of the empire. The Bulgarian kingdom extended to the
      confines of Thrace; and the two princes besieged Constantinople
      at the head of fifteen thousand horse. Apsimar was dismayed by
      the sudden and hostile apparition of his rival whose head had
      been promised by the Chozar, and of whose evasion he was yet
      ignorant. After an absence of ten years, the crimes of Justinian
      were faintly remembered, and the birth and misfortunes of their
      hereditary sovereign excited the pity of the multitude, ever
      discontented with the ruling powers; and by the active diligence
      of his adherents, he was introduced into the city and palace of
      Constantine.




Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
II.


      In rewarding his allies, and recalling his wife, Justinian
      displayed some sense of honor and gratitude; 1114 and Terbelis
      retired, after sweeping away a heap of gold coin, which he
      measured with his Scythian whip. But never was vow more
      religiously performed than the sacred oath of revenge which he
      had sworn amidst the storms of the Euxine. The two usurpers (for
      I must reserve the name of tyrant for the conqueror) were dragged
      into the hippodrome, the one from his prison, the other from his
      palace. Before their execution, Leontius and Apsimar were cast
      prostrate in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and
      Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated
      above an hour the chariot-race, while the inconstant people
      shouted, in the words of the Psalmist, “Thou shalt trample on the
      asp and basilisk, and on the lion and dragon shalt thou set thy
      foot!” The universal defection which he had once experienced
      might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman
      people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe, that
      such a wish is unworthy of an ingenious tyrant, since his revenge
      and cruelty would have been extinguished by a single blow,
      instead of the slow variety of tortures which Justinian inflicted
      on the victims of his anger. His pleasures were inexhaustible:
      neither private virtue nor public service could expiate the guilt
      of active, or even passive, obedience to an established
      government; and, during the six years of his new reign, he
      considered the axe, the cord, and the rack, as the only
      instruments of royalty. But his most implacable hatred was
      pointed against the Chersonites, who had insulted his exile and
      violated the laws of hospitality. Their remote situation afforded
      some means of defence, or at least of escape; and a grievous tax
      was imposed on Constantinople, to supply the preparations of a
      fleet and army. “All are guilty, and all must perish,” was the
      mandate of Justinian; and the bloody execution was intrusted to
      his favorite Stephen, who was recommended by the epithet of the
      savage. Yet even the savage Stephen imperfectly accomplished the
      intentions of his sovereign. The slowness of his attack allowed
      the greater part of the inhabitants to withdraw into the country;
      and the minister of vengeance contented himself with reducing the
      youth of both sexes to a state of servitude, with roasting alive
      seven of the principal citizens, with drowning twenty in the sea,
      and with reserving forty-two in chains to receive their doom from
      the mouth of the emperor. In their return, the fleet was driven
      on the rocky shores of Anatolia; and Justinian applauded the
      obedience of the Euxine, which had involved so many thousands of
      his subjects and enemies in a common shipwreck: but the tyrant
      was still insatiate of blood; and a second expedition was
      commanded to extirpate the remains of the proscribed colony. In
      the short interval, the Chersonites had returned to their city,
      and were prepared to die in arms; the khan of the Chozars had
      renounced the cause of his odious brother; the exiles of every
      province were assembled in Tauris; and Bardanes, under the name
      of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. The Imperial
      troops, unwilling and unable to perpetrate the revenge of
      Justinian, escaped his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance:
      the fleet, under their new sovereign, steered back a more
      auspicious course to the harbors of Sinope and Constantinople;
      and every tongue was prompt to pronounce, every hand to execute,
      the death of the tyrant. Destitute of friends, he was deserted by
      his Barbarian guards; and the stroke of the assassin was praised
      as an act of patriotism and Roman virtue. His son Tiberius had
      taken refuge in a church; his aged grandmother guarded the door;
      and the innocent youth, suspending round his neck the most
      formidable relics, embraced with one hand the altar, with the
      other the wood of the true cross. But the popular fury that dares
      to trample on superstition, is deaf to the cries of humanity; and
      the race of Heraclius was extinguished after a reign of one
      hundred years

      1114 (return) [ Of fear rather than of more generous motives.
      Compare Le Beau vol. xii. p. 64.—M.]


      Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the Isaurian
      dynasty, a short interval of six years is divided into three
      reigns. Bardanes, or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as
      a hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant; and he might
      taste some moments of happiness in the first transports of
      sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left behind him an ample
      treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but this useful fund
      was soon and idly dissipated by his successor. On the festival of
      his birthday, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the
      games of the hippodrome; from thence he paraded through the
      streets with a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets;
      refreshed himself in the baths of Zeuxippus, and returning to the
      palace, entertained his nobles with a sumptuous banquet. At the
      meridian hour he withdrew to his chamber, intoxicated with
      flattery and wine, and forgetful that his example had made every
      subject ambitious, and that every ambitious subject was his
      secret enemy. Some bold conspirators introduced themselves in the
      disorder of the feast; and the slumbering monarch was surprised,
      bound, blinded, and deposed, before he was sensible of his
      danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward; and the
      free voice of the senate and people promoted Artemius from the
      office of secretary to that of emperor: he assumed the title of
      Anastasius the Second, and displayed in a short and troubled
      reign the virtues both of peace and war. But after the extinction
      of the Imperial line, the rule of obedience was violated, and
      every change diffused the seeds of new revolutions. In a mutiny
      of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer of the revenue was
      forcibly invested with the purple: after some months of a naval
      war, Anastasius resigned the sceptre; and the conqueror,
      Theodosius the Third, submitted in his turn to the superior
      ascendant of Leo, the general and emperor of the Oriental troops.
      His two predecessors were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical
      profession: the restless impatience of Anastasius tempted him to
      risk and to lose his life in a treasonable enterprise; but the
      last days of Theodosius were honorable and secure. The single
      sublime word, “Health,” which he inscribed on his tomb, expresses
      the confidence of philosophy or religion; and the fame of his
      miracles was long preserved among the people of Ephesus. This
      convenient shelter of the church might sometimes impose a lesson
      of clemency; but it may be questioned whether it is for the
      public interest to diminish the perils of unsuccessful ambition.


      I have dwelt on the fall of a tyrant; I shall briefly represent
      the founder of a new dynasty, who is known to posterity by the
      invectives of his enemies, and whose public and private life is
      involved in the ecclesiastical story of the Iconoclasts. Yet in
      spite of the clamors of superstition, a favorable prejudice for
      the character of Leo the Isaurian may be reasonably drawn from
      the obscurity of his birth, and the duration of his reign.—I. In
      an age of manly spirit, the prospect of an Imperial reward would
      have kindled every energy of the mind, and produced a crowd of
      competitors as deserving as they were desirous to reign. Even in
      the corruption and debility of the modern Greeks, the elevation
      of a plebeian from the last to the first rank of society,
      supposes some qualifications above the level of the multitude. He
      would probably be ignorant and disdainful of speculative science;
      and, in the pursuit of fortune, he might absolve himself from the
      obligations of benevolence and justice; but to his character we
      may ascribe the useful virtues of prudence and fortitude, the
      knowledge of mankind, and the important art of gaining their
      confidence and directing their passions. It is agreed that Leo
      was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his primitive name.
      The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an
      itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise
      to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the
      road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman
      empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.
      A more probable account relates the migration of his father from
      Asia Minor to Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a
      grazier; and he must have acquired considerable wealth, since the
      first introduction of his son was procured by a supply of five
      hundred sheep to the Imperial camp. His first service was in the
      guards of Justinian, where he soon attracted the notice, and by
      degrees the jealousy, of the tyrant. His valor and dexterity were
      conspicuous in the Colchian war: from Anastasius he received the
      command of the Anatolian legions, and by the suffrage of the
      soldiers he was raised to the empire with the general applause of
      the Roman world.—II. In this dangerous elevation, Leo the Third
      supported himself against the envy of his equals, the discontent
      of a powerful faction, and the assaults of his foreign and
      domestic enemies. The Catholics, who accuse his religious
      innovations, are obliged to confess that they were undertaken
      with temper and conducted with firmness. Their silence respects
      the wisdom of his administration and the purity of his manners.
      After a reign of twenty-four years, he peaceably expired in the
      palace of Constantinople; and the purple which he had acquired
      was transmitted by the right of inheritance to the third
      generation. 1115

      1115 (return) [ During the latter part of his reign, the
      hostilities of the Saracens, who invested a Pergamenian, named
      Tiberius, with the purple, and proclaimed him as the son of
      Justinian, and an earthquake, which destroyed the walls of
      Constantinople, compelled Leo greatly to increase the burdens of
      taxation upon his subjects. A twelfth was exacted in addition to
      every aurena as a wall tax. Theophanes p. 275 Schlosser, Bilder
      eturmeud Kaiser, p. 197.—M.]


      In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of
      Leo, Constantine the Fifth, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with
      less temperate zeal the images or idols of the church. Their
      votaries have exhausted the bitterness of religious gall, in
      their portrait of this spotted panther, this antichrist, this
      flying dragon of the serpent’s seed, who surpassed the vices of
      Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long butchery of whatever
      was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his empire. In person,
      the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims, surveyed
      their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without
      satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted
      as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or
      mutilated by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his
      pollution of his baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but
      the manly pleasures of Copronymus degraded him below the level of
      a brute; his lust confounded the eternal distinctions of sex and
      species, and he seemed to extract some unnatural delight from the
      objects most offensive to human sense. In his religion the
      Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a Pagan, and an
      Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could be discovered
      only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal sacrifices
      to Venus and the daemons of antiquity. His life was stained with
      the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
      anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of
      these accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is
      refuted by its own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the
      life of the princes, the lie is more easy as the detection is
      more difficult. Without adopting the pernicious maxim, that where
      much is alleged, something must be true, I can however discern,
      that Constantine the Fifth was dissolute and cruel. Calumny is
      more prone to exaggerate than to invent; and her licentious
      tongue is checked in some measure by the experience of the age
      and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks, the
      generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under his
      reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
      execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. 1116
      The Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but
      even their hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled
      the provocations which might excuse or justify his rigor, but
      even these provocations must gradually inflame his resentment and
      harden his temper in the use or the abuse of despotism. Yet the
      character of the fifth Constantine was not devoid of merit, nor
      did his government always deserve the curses or the contempt of
      the Greeks. From the confession of his enemies, I am informed of
      the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the redemption of two
      thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon plenty of the
      times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
      Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise
      his activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the
      head of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was
      various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the
      Danube, in civil and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast
      into the scale to counterbalance the weight of orthodox
      invective. The Iconoclasts revered the virtues of the prince:
      forty years after his death they still prayed before the tomb of
      the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by fanaticism or
      fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white steed,
      brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: “An absurd
      fable,” says the Catholic historian, “since Copronymus is chained
      with the daemons in the abyss of hell.”

      1116 (return) [ He is accused of burning the library of
      Constantinople, founded by Julian, with its president and twelve
      professors. This eastern Sorbonne had discomfited the Imperial
      theologians on the great question of image worship. Schlosser
      observes that this accidental fire took place six years after the
      emperor had laid the question of image-worship before the
      professors. Bilder sturmand Kaiser, p. 294. Compare Le Heau. vol.
      xl. p. 156.—M.]


      Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
      Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind 1117 and
      body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of
      the succession. The association of the young Constantine was
      urged by the officious zeal of his subjects; and the emperor,
      conscious of his decay, complied, after a prudent hesitation,
      with their unanimous wishes. The royal infant, at the age of five
      years, was crowned with his mother Irene; and the national
      consent was ratified by every circumstance of pomp and solemnity,
      that could dazzle the eyes or bind the conscience of the Greeks.
      An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the church,
      and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who
      adjured the holy names of the Son, and mother of God. “Be
      witness, O Christ! that we will watch over the safety of
      Constantine the son of Leo, expose our lives in his service, and
      bear true allegiance to his person and posterity.” They pledged
      their faith on the wood of the true cross, and the act of their
      engagement was deposited on the altar of St. Sophia. The first to
      swear, and the first to violate their oath, were the five sons of
      Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these princes
      is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them
      from the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded
      them of a legacy of about two millions sterling; some vain titles
      were not deemed a sufficient compensation for wealth and power;
      and they repeatedly conspired against their nephew, before and
      after the death of his father. Their first attempt was pardoned;
      for the second offence 1118 they were condemned to the
      ecclesiastical state; and for the third treason, Nicephorus, the
      eldest and most guilty, was deprived of his eyes, and his four
      brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and Eudoxas, were
      punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their
      tongues. After five years’ confinement, they escaped to the
      church of St. Sophia, and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the
      people. “Countrymen and Christians,” cried Nicephorus for himself
      and his mute brethren, “behold the sons of your emperor, if you
      can still recognize our features in this miserable state. A life,
      an imperfect life, is all that the malice of our enemies has
      spared. It is now threatened, and we now throw ourselves on your
      compassion.” The rising murmur might have produced a revolution,
      had it not been checked by the presence of a minister, who
      soothed the unhappy princes with flattery and hope, and gently
      drew them from the sanctuary to the palace. They were speedily
      embarked for Greece, and Athens was allotted for the place of
      their exile. In this calm retreat, and in their helpless
      condition, Nicephorus and his brothers were tormented by the
      thirst of power, and tempted by a Sclavonian chief, who offered
      to break their prison, and to lead them in arms, and in the
      purple, to the gates of Constantinople. But the Athenian people,
      ever zealous in the cause of Irene, prevented her justice or
      cruelty; and the five sons of Copronymus were plunged in eternal
      darkness and oblivion.

      1117 (return) [ Schlosser thinks more highly of Leo’s mind; but
      his only proof of his superiority is the successes of his
      generals against the Saracens, Schlosser, p. 256.—M.]

      1118 (return) [ The second offence was on the accession of the
      young Constantine—M.]


      For himself, that emperor had chosen a Barbarian wife, the
      daughter of the khan of the Chozars; but in the marriage of his
      heir, he preferred an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years
      old, whose sole fortune must have consisted in her personal
      accomplishments. The nuptials of Leo and Irene were celebrated
      with royal pomp; she soon acquired the love and confidence of a
      feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the empress
      guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine the
      Sixth, who was no more than ten years of age. During his
      childhood, Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her
      public administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her
      zeal in the restoration of images has deserved the name and
      honors of a saint, which she still occupies in the Greek
      calendar. But the emperor attained the maturity of youth; the
      maternal yoke became more grievous; and he listened to the
      favorites of his own age, who shared his pleasures, and were
      ambitious of sharing his power. Their reasons convinced him of
      his right, their praises of his ability, to reign; and he
      consented to reward the services of Irene by a perpetual
      banishment to the Isle of Sicily. But her vigilance and
      penetration easily disconcerted their rash projects: a similar,
      or more severe, punishment was retaliated on themselves and their
      advisers; and Irene inflicted on the ungrateful prince the
      chastisement of a boy. After this contest, the mother and the son
      were at the head of two domestic factions; and instead of mild
      influence and voluntary obedience, she held in chains a captive
      and an enemy. The empress was overthrown by the abuse of victory;
      the oath of fidelity, which she exacted to herself alone, was
      pronounced with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the
      Armenian guards encouraged a free and general declaration, that
      Constantine the Sixth was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In
      this character he ascended his hereditary throne, and dismissed
      Irene to a life of solitude and repose. But her haughty spirit
      condescended to the arts of dissimulation: she flattered the
      bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial tenderness of the prince,
      regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The
      character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit;
      but his education had been studiously neglected; and the
      ambitious mother exposed to the public censure the vices which
      she had nourished, and the actions which she had secretly
      advised: his divorce and second marriage offended the prejudices
      of the clergy, and by his imprudent rigor he forfeited the
      attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy was
      formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though
      widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the
      emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople,
      with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this
      hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice;
      yet before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a
      private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his
      person, with a menace, that unless they accomplished, she would
      reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid; they
      seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported
      to the porphyry apartment of the palace, where he had first seen
      the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every
      sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her
      bloody council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of
      the throne: her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and
      stabbed their daggers with such violence and precipitation into
      his eyes as if they meant to execute a mortal sentence. An
      ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded the annalist of the
      church that death was the immediate consequence of this barbarous
      execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by the
      authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
      of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the
      patroness of images. 1119 Yet the blind son of Irene survived
      many years, oppressed by the court and forgotten by the world;
      the Isaurian dynasty was silently extinguished; and the memory of
      Constantine was recalled only by the nuptials of his daughter
      Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael the Second.

      1119 (return) [ Gibbon has been attacked on account of this
      statement, but is successfully defended by Schlosser. B S. Kaiser
      p. 327. Compare Le Beau, c. xii p. 372.—M.]


      The most bigoted orthodoxy has justly execrated the unnatural
      mother, who may not easily be paralleled in the history of
      crimes. To her bloody deed superstition has attributed a
      subsequent darkness of seventeen days; during which many vessels
      in midday were driven from their course, as if the sun, a globe
      of fire so vast and so remote, could sympathize with the atoms of
      a revolving planet. On earth, the crime of Irene was left five
      years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external splendor;
      and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither
      heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world
      bowed to the government of a female; and as she moved through the
      streets of Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds
      were held by as many patricians, who marched on foot before the
      golden chariot of their queen. But these patricians were for the
      most part eunuchs; and their black ingratitude justified, on this
      occasion, the popular hatred and contempt. Raised, enriched,
      intrusted with the first dignities of the empire, they basely
      conspired against their benefactress; the great treasurer
      Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her successor
      was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by the
      venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with
      dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy
      of Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her
      unsuspicious clemency, and for the throne and treasures which she
      resigned, solicited a decent and honorable retreat. His avarice
      refused this modest compensation; and, in her exile of the Isle
      of Lesbos, the empress earned a scanty subsistence by the labors
      of her distaff.


      Many tyrants have reigned undoubtedly more criminal than
      Nicephorus, but none perhaps have more deeply incurred the
      universal abhorrence of their people. His character was stained
      with the three odious vices of hypocrisy, ingratitude, and
      avarice: his want of virtue was not redeemed by any superior
      talents, nor his want of talents by any pleasing qualifications.
      Unskilful and unfortunate in war, Nicephorus was vanquished by
      the Saracens, and slain by the Bulgarians; and the advantage of
      his death overbalanced, in the public opinion, the destruction of
      a Roman army. 1011 His son and heir Stauracius escaped from the
      field with a mortal wound; yet six months of an expiring life
      were sufficient to refute his indecent, though popular
      declaration, that he would in all things avoid the example of his
      father. On the near prospect of his decease, Michael, the great
      master of the palace, and the husband of his sister Procopia, was
      named by every person of the palace and city, except by his
      envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre now falling from his
      hand, he conspired against the life of his successor, and
      cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman empire.
      But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the
      people and to remove the scruples of the candidate: Michael the
      First accepted the purple, and before he sunk into the grave the
      son of Nicephorus implored the clemency of his new sovereign. Had
      Michael in an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he
      might have reigned and died the father of his people: but his
      mild virtues were adapted to the shade of private life, nor was
      he capable of controlling the ambition of his equals, or of
      resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians. While his want
      of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of the
      soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened
      their indignation. Even the Greeks of the ninth century were
      provoked by the insolence of a female, who, in the front of the
      standards, presumed to direct their discipline and animate their
      valor; and their licentious clamors advised the new Semiramis to
      reverence the majesty of a Roman camp. After an unsuccessful
      campaign, the emperor left, in their winter-quarters of Thrace, a
      disaffected army under the command of his enemies; and their
      artful eloquence persuaded the soldiers to break the dominion of
      the eunuchs, to degrade the husband of Procopia, and to assert
      the right of a military election. They marched towards the
      capital: yet the clergy, the senate, and the people of
      Constantinople, adhered to the cause of Michael; and the troops
      and treasures of Asia might have protracted the mischiefs of
      civil war. But his humanity (by the ambitious it will be termed
      his weakness) protested that not a drop of Christian blood should
      be shed in his quarrel, and his messengers presented the
      conquerors with the keys of the city and the palace. They were
      disarmed by his innocence and submission; his life and his eyes
      were spared; and the Imperial monk enjoyed the comforts of
      solitude and religion above thirty-two years after he had been
      stripped of the purple and separated from his wife.

      1011 (return) [ The Syrian historian Aboulfaradj. Chron. Syr. p.
      133, 139, speaks of him as a brave, prudent, and pious prince,
      formidable to the Arabs. St. Martin, c. xii. p. 402. Compare
      Schlosser, p. 350.—M.]


      A rebel, in the time of Nicephorus, the famous and unfortunate
      Bardanes, had once the curiosity to consult an Asiatic prophet,
      who, after prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of
      his three principal officers, Leo the Armenian, Michael the
      Phrygian, and Thomas the Cappadocian, the successive reigns of
      the two former, the fruitless and fatal enterprise of the third.
      This prediction was verified, or rather was produced, by the
      event. Ten years afterwards, when the Thracian camp rejected the
      husband of Procopia, the crown was presented to the same Leo, the
      first in military rank and the secret author of the mutiny. As he
      affected to hesitate, “With this sword,” said his companion
      Michael, “I will open the gates of Constantinople to your
      Imperial sway; or instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you
      obstinately resist the just desires of your fellow-soldiers.” The
      compliance of the Armenian was rewarded with the empire, and he
      reigned seven years and a half under the name of Leo the Fifth.
      Educated in a camp, and ignorant both of laws and letters, he
      introduced into his civil government the rigor and even cruelty
      of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes
      dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the
      guilty. His religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of
      Chameleon, but the Catholics have acknowledged by the voice of a
      saint and confessors, that the life of the Iconoclast was useful
      to the republic. The zeal of his companion Michael was repaid
      with riches, honors, and military command; and his subordinate
      talents were beneficially employed in the public service. Yet the
      Phrygian was dissatisfied at receiving as a favor a scanty
      portion of the Imperial prize which he had bestowed on his equal;
      and his discontent, which sometimes evaporated in hasty
      discourse, at length assumed a more threatening and hostile
      aspect against a prince whom he represented as a cruel tyrant.
      That tyrant, however, repeatedly detected, warned, and dismissed
      the old companion of his arms, till fear and resentment prevailed
      over gratitude; and Michael, after a scrutiny into his actions
      and designs, was convicted of treason, and sentenced to be burnt
      alive in the furnace of the private baths. The devout humanity of
      the empress Theophano was fatal to her husband and family. A
      solemn day, the twenty-fifth of December, had been fixed for the
      execution: she urged, that the anniversary of the Savior’s birth
      would be profaned by this inhuman spectacle, and Leo consented
      with reluctance to a decent respite. But on the vigil of the
      feast his sleepless anxiety prompted him to visit at the dead of
      night the chamber in which his enemy was confined: he beheld him
      released from his chain, and stretched on his jailer’s bed in a
      profound slumber. Leo was alarmed at these signs of security and
      intelligence; but though he retired with silent steps, his
      entrance and departure were noticed by a slave who lay concealed
      in a corner of the prison. Under the pretence of requesting the
      spiritual aid of a confessor, Michael informed the conspirators,
      that their lives depended on his discretion, and that a few hours
      were left to assure their own safety, by the deliverance of their
      friend and country. On the great festivals, a chosen band of
      priests and chanters was admitted into the palace by a private
      gate to sing matins in the chapel; and Leo, who regulated with
      the same strictness the discipline of the choir and of the camp,
      was seldom absent from these early devotions. In the
      ecclesiastical habit, but with their swords under their robes,
      the conspirators mingled with the procession, lurked in the
      angles of the chapel, and expected, as the signal of murder, the
      intonation of the first psalm by the emperor himself. The
      imperfect light, and the uniformity of dress, might have favored
      his escape, whilst their assault was pointed against a harmless
      priest; but they soon discovered their mistake, and encompassed
      on all sides the royal victim. Without a weapon and without a
      friend, he grasped a weighty cross, and stood at bay against the
      hunters of his life; but as he asked for mercy, “This is the
      hour, not of mercy, but of vengeance,” was the inexorable reply.
      The stroke of a well-aimed sword separated from his body the
      right arm and the cross, and Leo the Armenian was slain at the
      foot of the altar. A memorable reverse of fortune was displayed
      in Michael the Second, who from a defect in his speech was
      surnamed the Stammerer. He was snatched from the fiery furnace to
      the sovereignty of an empire; and as in the tumult a smith could
      not readily be found, the fetters remained on his legs several
      hours after he was seated on the throne of the Caesars. The royal
      blood which had been the price of his elevation, was unprofitably
      spent: in the purple he retained the ignoble vices of his origin;
      and Michael lost his provinces with as supine indifference as if
      they had been the inheritance of his fathers. His title was
      disputed by Thomas, the last of the military triumvirate, who
      transported into Europe fourscore thousand Barbarians from the
      banks of the Tigris and the shores of the Caspian. He formed the
      siege of Constantinople; but the capital was defended with
      spiritual and carnal weapons; a Bulgarian king assaulted the camp
      of the Orientals, and Thomas had the misfortune, or the weakness,
      to fall alive into the power of the conqueror. The hands and feet
      of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst
      the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he
      sprinkled with his blood. The depravation of manners, as savage
      as they were corrupt, is marked by the presence of the emperor
      himself. Deaf to the lamentation of a fellow-soldier, he
      incessantly pressed the discovery of more accomplices, till his
      curiosity was checked by the question of an honest or guilty
      minister: “Would you give credit to an enemy against the most
      faithful of your friends?” After the death of his first wife, the
      emperor, at the request of the senate, drew from her monastery
      Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine the Sixth. Her august
      birth might justify a stipulation in the marriage-contract, that
      her children should equally share the empire with their elder
      brother. But the nuptials of Michael and Euphrosyne were barren;
      and she was content with the title of mother of Theophilus, his
      son and successor.


      The character of Theophilus is a rare example in which religious
      zeal has allowed, and perhaps magnified, the virtues of a heretic
      and a persecutor. His valor was often felt by the enemies, and
      his justice by the subjects, of the monarchy; but the valor of
      Theophilus was rash and fruitless, and his justice arbitrary and
      cruel. He displayed the banner of the cross against the Saracens;
      but his five expeditions were concluded by a signal overthrow:
      Amorium, the native city of his ancestors, was levelled with the
      ground and from his military toils he derived only the surname of
      the Unfortunate. The wisdom of a sovereign is comprised in the
      institution of laws and the choice of magistrates, and while he
      seems without action, his civil government revolves round his
      centre with the silence and order of the planetary system. But
      the justice of Theophilus was fashioned on the model of the
      Oriental despots, who, in personal and irregular acts of
      authority, consult the reason or passion of the moment, without
      measuring the sentence by the law, or the penalty by the offense.
      A poor woman threw herself at the emperor’s feet to complain of a
      powerful neighbor, the brother of the empress, who had raised his
      palace-wall to such an inconvenient height, that her humble
      dwelling was excluded from light and air! On the proof of the
      fact, instead of granting, like an ordinary judge, sufficient or
      ample damages to the plaintiff, the sovereign adjudged to her use
      and benefit the palace and the ground. Nor was Theophilus content
      with this extravagant satisfaction: his zeal converted a civil
      trespass into a criminal act; and the unfortunate patrician was
      stripped and scourged in the public place of Constantinople. For
      some venial offenses, some defect of equity or vigilance, the
      principal ministers, a præfect, a quaestor, a captain of the
      guards, were banished or mutilated, or scalded with boiling
      pitch, or burnt alive in the hippodrome; and as these dreadful
      examples might be the effects of error or caprice, they must have
      alienated from his service the best and wisest of the citizens.
      But the pride of the monarch was flattered in the exercise of
      power, or, as he thought, of virtue; and the people, safe in
      their obscurity, applauded the danger and debasement of their
      superiors. This extraordinary rigor was justified, in some
      measure, by its salutary consequences; since, after a scrutiny of
      seventeen days, not a complaint or abuse could be found in the
      court or city; and it might be alleged that the Greeks could be
      ruled only with a rod of iron, and that the public interest is
      the motive and law of the supreme judge. Yet in the crime, or the
      suspicion, of treason, that judge is of all others the most
      credulous and partial. Theophilus might inflict a tardy vengeance
      on the assassins of Leo and the saviors of his father; but he
      enjoyed the fruits of their crime; and his jealous tyranny
      sacrificed a brother and a prince to the future safety of his
      life. A Persian of the race of the Sassanides died in poverty and
      exile at Constantinople, leaving an only son, the issue of a
      plebeian marriage. At the age of twelve years, the royal birth of
      Theophobus was revealed, and his merit was not unworthy of his
      birth. He was educated in the Byzantine palace, a Christian and a
      soldier; advanced with rapid steps in the career of fortune and
      glory; received the hand of the emperor’s sister; and was
      promoted to the command of thirty thousand Persians, who, like
      his father, had fled from the Mahometan conquerors. These troops,
      doubly infected with mercenary and fanatic vices, were desirous
      of revolting against their benefactor, and erecting the standard
      of their native king but the loyal Theophobus rejected their
      offers, disconcerted their schemes, and escaped from their hands
      to the camp or palace of his royal brother. A generous confidence
      might have secured a faithful and able guardian for his wife and
      his infant son, to whom Theophilus, in the flower of his age, was
      compelled to leave the inheritance of the empire. But his
      jealousy was exasperated by envy and disease; he feared the
      dangerous virtues which might either support or oppress their
      infancy and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of
      the Persian prince. With savage delight he recognized the
      familiar features of his brother: “Thou art no longer
      Theophobus,” he said; and, sinking on his couch, he added, with a
      faltering voice, “Soon, too soon, I shall be no more Theophilus!”




Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
III.


      The Russians, who have borrowed from the Greeks the greatest part
      of their civil and ecclesiastical policy, preserved, till the
      last century, a singular institution in the marriage of the Czar.
      They collected, not the virgins of every rank and of every
      province, a vain and romantic idea, but the daughters of the
      principal nobles, who awaited in the palace the choice of their
      sovereign. It is affirmed, that a similar method was adopted in
      the nuptials of Theophilus. With a golden apple in his hand, he
      slowly walked between two lines of contending beauties: his eye
      was detained by the charms of Icasia, and in the awkwardness of a
      first declaration, the prince could only observe, that, in this
      world, women had been the cause of much evil; “And surely, sir,”
      she pertly replied, “they have likewise been the occasion of much
      good.” This affectation of unseasonable wit displeased the
      Imperial lover: he turned aside in disgust; Icasia concealed her
      mortification in a convent; and the modest silence of Theodora
      was rewarded with the golden apple. She deserved the love, but
      did not escape the severity, of her lord. From the palace garden
      he beheld a vessel deeply laden, and steering into the port: on
      the discovery that the precious cargo of Syrian luxury was the
      property of his wife, he condemned the ship to the flames, with a
      sharp reproach, that her avarice had degraded the character of an
      empress into that of a merchant. Yet his last choice intrusted
      her with the guardianship of the empire and her son Michael, who
      was left an orphan in the fifth year of his age. The restoration
      of images, and the final extirpation of the Iconoclasts, has
      endeared her name to the devotion of the Greeks; but in the
      fervor of religious zeal, Theodora entertained a grateful regard
      for the memory and salvation of her husband. After thirteen years
      of a prudent and frugal administration, she perceived the decline
      of her influence; but the second Irene imitated only the virtues
      of her predecessor. Instead of conspiring against the life or
      government of her son, she retired, without a struggle, though
      not without a murmur, to the solitude of private life, deploring
      the ingratitude, the vices, and the inevitable ruin, of the
      worthless youth. Among the successors of Nero and Elagabalus, we
      have not hitherto found the imitation of their vices, the
      character of a Roman prince who considered pleasure as the object
      of life, and virtue as the enemy of pleasure. Whatever might have
      been the maternal care of Theodora in the education of Michael
      the Third, her unfortunate son was a king before he was a man. If
      the ambitious mother labored to check the progress of reason, she
      could not cool the ebullition of passion; and her selfish policy
      was justly repaid by the contempt and ingratitude of the
      headstrong youth. At the age of eighteen, he rejected her
      authority, without feeling his own incapacity to govern the
      empire and himself. With Theodora, all gravity and wisdom retired
      from the court; their place was supplied by the alternate
      dominion of vice and folly; and it was impossible, without
      forfeiting the public esteem, to acquire or preserve the favor of
      the emperor. The millions of gold and silver which had been
      accumulated for the service of the state, were lavished on the
      vilest of men, who flattered his passions and shared his
      pleasures; and in a reign of thirteen years, the richest of
      sovereigns was compelled to strip the palace and the churches of
      their precious furniture. Like Nero, he delighted in the
      amusements of the theatre, and sighed to be surpassed in the
      accomplishments in which he should have blushed to excel. Yet the
      studies of Nero in music and poetry betrayed some symptoms of a
      liberal taste; the more ignoble arts of the son of Theophilus
      were confined to the chariot-race of the hippodrome. The four
      factions which had agitated the peace, still amused the idleness,
      of the capital: for himself, the emperor assumed the blue livery;
      the three rival colors were distributed to his favorites, and in
      the vile though eager contention he forgot the dignity of his
      person and the safety of his dominions. He silenced the messenger
      of an invasion, who presumed to divert his attention in the most
      critical moment of the race; and by his command, the importunate
      beacons were extinguished, that too frequently spread the alarm
      from Tarsus to Constantinople. The most skilful charioteers
      obtained the first place in his confidence and esteem; their
      merit was profusely rewarded; the emperor feasted in their
      houses, and presented their children at the baptismal font; and
      while he applauded his own popularity, he affected to blame the
      cold and stately reserve of his predecessors. The unnatural lusts
      which had degraded even the manhood of Nero, were banished from
      the world; yet the strength of Michael was consumed by the
      indulgence of love and intemperance. 1012 In his midnight revels,
      when his passions were inflamed by wine, he was provoked to issue
      the most sanguinary commands; and if any feelings of humanity
      were left, he was reduced, with the return of sense, to approve
      the salutary disobedience of his servants. But the most
      extraordinary feature in the character of Michael, is the profane
      mockery of the religion of his country. The superstition of the
      Greeks might indeed excite the smile of a philosopher; but his
      smile would have been rational and temperate, and he must have
      condemned the ignorant folly of a youth who insulted the objects
      of public veneration. A buffoon of the court was invested in the
      robes of the patriarch: his twelve metropolitans, among whom the
      emperor was ranked, assumed their ecclesiastical garments: they
      used or abused the sacred vessels of the altar; and in their
      bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was administered in a
      nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard. Nor were these impious
      spectacles concealed from the eyes of the city. On the day of a
      solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode
      on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at
      the head of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and
      obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian
      procession. The devotion of Michael appeared only in some offence
      to reason or piety: he received his theatrical crowns from the
      statue of the Virgin; and an Imperial tomb was violated for the
      sake of burning the bones of Constantine the Iconoclast. By this
      extravagant conduct, the son of Theophilus became as contemptible
      as he was odious: every citizen was impatient for the deliverance
      of his country; and even the favorites of the moment were
      apprehensive that a caprice might snatch away what a caprice had
      bestowed. In the thirtieth year of his age, and in the hour of
      intoxication and sleep, Michael the Third was murdered in his
      chamber by the founder of a new dynasty, whom the emperor had
      raised to an equality of rank and power.

      1012 (return) [ In a campaign against the Saracens, he betrayed
      both imbecility and cowardice. Genesius, c. iv. p. 94.—M.]


      The genealogy of Basil the Macedonian (if it be not the spurious
      offspring of pride and flattery) exhibits a genuine picture of
      the revolution of the most illustrious families. The Arsacides,
      the rivals of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four
      hundred years: a younger branch of these Parthian kings continued
      to reign in Armenia; and their royal descendants survived the
      partition and servitude of that ancient monarchy. Two of these,
      Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or retired to the court of Leo
      the First: his bounty seated them in a safe and hospitable exile,
      in the province of Macedonia: Adrianople was their final
      settlement. During several generations they maintained the
      dignity of their birth; and their Roman patriotism rejected the
      tempting offers of the Persian and Arabian powers, who recalled
      them to their native country. But their splendor was insensibly
      clouded by time and poverty; and the father of Basil was reduced
      to a small farm, which he cultivated with his own hands: yet he
      scorned to disgrace the blood of the Arsacides by a plebeian
      alliance: his wife, a widow of Adrianople, was pleased to count
      among her ancestors the great Constantine; and their royal infant
      was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country with
      the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born, than the cradle
      of Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an
      inundation of the Bulgarians: he was educated a slave in a
      foreign land; and in this severe discipline, he acquired the
      hardiness of body and flexibility of mind which promoted his
      future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood he shared the
      deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke their
      fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine,
      defeated two armies of Barbarians, embarked in the ships which
      had been stationed for their reception, and returned to
      Constantinople, from whence they were distributed to their
      respective homes. But the freedom of Basil was naked and
      destitute: his farm was ruined by the calamities of war: after
      his father’s death, his manual labor, or service, could no longer
      support a family of orphans and he resolved to seek a more
      conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may
      lead to the paths of greatness. The first night of his arrival at
      Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgrim slept
      on the steps of the church of St. Diomede: he was fed by the
      casual hospitality of a monk; and was introduced to the service
      of a cousin and namesake of the emperor Theophilus; who, though
      himself of a diminutive person, was always followed by a train of
      tall and handsome domestics. Basil attended his patron to the
      government of Peloponnesus; eclipsed, by his personal merit the
      birth and dignity of Theophilus, and formed a useful connection
      with a wealthy and charitable matron of Patras. Her spiritual or
      carnal love embraced the young adventurer, whom she adopted as
      her son. Danielis presented him with thirty slaves; and the
      produce of her bounty was expended in the support of his
      brothers, and the purchase of some large estates in Macedonia.
      His gratitude or ambition still attached him to the service of
      Theophilus; and a lucky accident recommended him to the notice of
      the court. A famous wrestler, in the train of the Bulgarian
      ambassadors, had defied, at the royal banquet, the boldest and
      most robust of the Greeks. The strength of Basil was praised; he
      accepted the challenge; and the Barbarian champion was overthrown
      at the first onset. A beautiful but vicious horse was condemned
      to be hamstrung: it was subdued by the dexterity and courage of
      the servant of Theophilus; and his conqueror was promoted to an
      honorable rank in the Imperial stables. But it was impossible to
      obtain the confidence of Michael, without complying with his
      vices; and his new favorite, the great chamberlain of the palace,
      was raised and supported by a disgraceful marriage with a royal
      concubine, and the dishonor of his sister, who succeeded to her
      place. The public administration had been abandoned to the Caesar
      Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora; but the arts of female
      influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear his uncle: he was
      drawn from Constantinople, under the pretence of a Cretan
      expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of
      the chamberlain, and in the presence of the emperor. About a
      month after this execution, Basil was invested with the title of
      Augustus and the government of the empire. He supported this
      unequal association till his influence was fortified by popular
      esteem. His life was endangered by the caprice of the emperor;
      and his dignity was profaned by a second colleague, who had rowed
      in the galleys. Yet the murder of his benefactor must be
      condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason; and the churches
      which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor and
      puerile expiation of his guilt. The different ages of Basil the
      First may be compared with those of Augustus. The situation of
      the Greek did not allow him in his earliest youth to lead an army
      against his country; or to proscribe the nobles of her sons; but
      his aspiring genius stooped to the arts of a slave; he dissembled
      his ambition and even his virtues, and grasped, with the bloody
      hand of an assassin, the empire which he ruled with the wisdom
      and tenderness of a parent.


      A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his duty;
      but it must be from a deficiency of sense or courage, that an
      absolute monarch can separate his happiness from his glory, or
      his glory from the public welfare. The life or panegyric of Basil
      has indeed been composed and published under the long reign of
      his descendants; but even their stability on the throne may be
      justly ascribed to the superior merit of their ancestor. In his
      character, his grandson Constantine has attempted to delineate a
      perfect image of royalty: but that feeble prince, unless he had
      copied a real model, could not easily have soared so high above
      the level of his own conduct or conceptions. But the most solid
      praise of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a
      flourishing monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute
      Michael, and that which he bequeathed to the Mecedonian dynasty.
      The evils which had been sanctified by time and example, were
      corrected by his master-hand; and he revived, if not the national
      spirit, at least the order and majesty of the Roman empire. His
      application was indefatigable, his temper cool, his understanding
      vigorous and decisive; and in his practice he observed that rare
      and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue, at an equal
      distance between the opposite vices. His military service had
      been confined to the palace: nor was the emperor endowed with the
      spirit or the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman
      arms were again formidable to the Barbarians. As soon as he had
      formed a new army by discipline and exercise, he appeared in
      person on the banks of the Euphrates, curbed the pride of the
      Saracens, and suppressed the dangerous though just revolt of the
      Manichaeans. His indignation against a rebel who had long eluded
      his pursuit, provoked him to wish and to pray, that, by the grace
      of God, he might drive three arrows into the head of Chrysochir.
      That odious head, which had been obtained by treason rather than
      by valor, was suspended from a tree, and thrice exposed to the
      dexterity of the Imperial archer; a base revenge against the
      dead, more worthy of the times than of the character of Basil.
      But his principal merit was in the civil administration of the
      finances and of the laws. To replenish an exhausted treasury, it
      was proposed to resume the lavish and ill-placed gifts of his
      predecessor: his prudence abated one moiety of the restitution;
      and a sum of twelve hundred thousand pounds was instantly
      procured to answer the most pressing demands, and to allow some
      space for the mature operations of economy. Among the various
      schemes for the improvement of the revenue, a new mode was
      suggested of capitation, or tribute, which would have too much
      depended on the arbitrary discretion of the assessors. A
      sufficient list of honest and able agents was instantly produced
      by the minister; but on the more careful scrutiny of Basil
      himself, only two could be found, who might be safely intrusted
      with such dangerous powers; but they justified his esteem by
      declining his confidence. But the serious and successful
      diligence of the emperor established by degrees the equitable
      balance of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a
      peculiar fund was appropriated to each service; and a public
      method secured the interest of the prince and the property of the
      people. After reforming the luxury, he assigned two patrimonial
      estates to supply the decent plenty, of the Imperial table: the
      contributions of the subject were reserved for his defence; and
      the residue was employed in the embellishment of the capital and
      provinces. A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some
      praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is
      encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or
      pleasure: the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is
      obvious and solid; and the hundred churches that arose by the
      command of Basil were consecrated to the devotion of the age. In
      the character of a judge he was assiduous and impartial; desirous
      to save, but not afraid to strike: the oppressors of the people
      were severely chastised; but his personal foes, whom it might be
      unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of their eyes,
      to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language and
      manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of
      Justinian: the voluminous body of his Institutes, Pandects, Code,
      and Novels, was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom;
      and the Basilics, which were improved and completed by his son
      and grandson, must be referred to the original genius of the
      founder of their race. This glorious reign was terminated by an
      accident in the chase. A furious stag entangled his horns in the
      belt of Basil, and raised him from his horse: he was rescued by
      an attendant, who cut the belt and slew the animal; but the fall,
      or the fever, exhausted the strength of the aged monarch, and he
      expired in the palace amidst the tears of his family and people.
      If he struck off the head of the faithful servant for presuming
      to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of despotism,
      which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last moments
      of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of
      mankind.


      Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his
      father, whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering
      impostor and a vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was
      content with the honors of a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and
      Alexander were alike invested with the purple, but the powers of
      government were solely exercised by the elder brother. The name
      of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the title of
      philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the
      active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the
      perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short
      of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and
      appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the
      pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines;
      and even the clemency which he showed, and the peace which he
      strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indolence
      of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his
      subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition;
      the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were
      consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in
      prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts
      of astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of
      his sage appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of
      Basil was less ignorant than the greater part of his
      contemporaries in church and state; that his education had been
      directed by the learned Photius; and that several books of
      profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or
      in the name, of the Imperial philosopher. But the reputation of
      his philosophy and religion was overthrown by a domestic vice,
      the repetition of his nuptials. The primitive ideas of the merit
      and holiness of celibacy were preached by the monks and
      entertained by the Greeks. Marriage was allowed as a necessary
      means for the propagation of mankind; after the death of either
      party, the survivor might satisfy, by a second union, the
      weakness or the strength of the flesh: but a third marriage was
      censured as a state of legal fornication; and a fourth was a sin
      or scandal as yet unknown to the Christians of the East. In the
      beginning of his reign, Leo himself had abolished the state of
      concubines, and condemned, without annulling, third marriages:
      but his patriotism and love soon compelled him to violate his own
      laws, and to incur the penance, which in a similar case he had
      imposed on his subjects. In his three first alliances, his
      nuptial bed was unfruitful; the emperor required a female
      companion, and the empire a legitimate heir. The beautiful Zoe
      was introduced into the palace as a concubine; and after a trial
      of her fecundity, and the birth of Constantine, her lover
      declared his intention of legitimating the mother and the child,
      by the celebration of his fourth nuptials. But the patriarch
      Nicholas refused his blessing: the Imperial baptism of the young
      prince was obtained by a promise of separation; and the
      contumacious husband of Zoe was excluded from the communion of
      the faithful. Neither the fear of exile, nor the desertion of his
      brethren, nor the authority of the Latin church, nor the danger
      of failure or doubt in the succession to the empire, could bend
      the spirit of the inflexible monk. After the death of Leo, he was
      recalled from exile to the civil and ecclesiastical
      administration; and the edict of union which was promulgated in
      the name of Constantine, condemned the future scandal of fourth
      marriages, and left a tacit imputation on his own birth. In the
      Greek language, purple and porphyry are the same word: and as the
      colors of nature are invariable, we may learn, that a dark deep
      red was the Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients.
      An apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with porphyry: it
      was reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses; and the royal
      birth of their children was expressed by the appellation of
      porphyrogenite, or born in the purple. Several of the Roman
      princes had been blessed with an heir; but this peculiar surname
      was first applied to Constantine the Seventh. His life and
      titular reign were of equal duration; but of fifty-four years,
      six had elapsed before his father’s death; and the son of Leo was
      ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who oppressed
      his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander, who
      had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first
      colleague and governor of the young prince: but in a rapid career
      of vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the
      reputation of Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely
      death, he entertained a project of castrating his nephew, and
      leaving the empire to a worthless favorite. The succeeding years
      of the minority of Constantine were occupied by his mother Zoe,
      and a succession or council of seven regents, who pursued their
      interest, gratified their passions, abandoned the republic,
      supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the presence of a
      soldier. From an obscure origin, Romanus Lecapenus had raised
      himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of
      the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national
      esteem. With a victorious and affectionate fleet, he sailed from
      the mouth of the Danube into the harbor of Constantinople, and
      was hailed as the deliverer of the people, and the guardian of
      the prince. His supreme office was at first defined by the new
      appellation of father of the emperor; but Romanus soon disdained
      the subordinate powers of a minister, and assumed with the titles
      of Caesar and Augustus, the full independence of royalty, which
      he held near five-and-twenty years. His three sons, Christopher,
      Stephen, and Constantine were successively adorned with the same
      honors, and the lawful emperor was degraded from the first to the
      fifth rank in this college of princes. Yet, in the preservation
      of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own fortune and
      the clemency of the usurper. The examples of ancient and modern
      history would have excused the ambition of Romanus: the powers
      and the laws of the empire were in his hand; the spurious birth
      of Constantine would have justified his exclusion; and the grave
      or the monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine.
      But Lecapenus does not appear to have possessed either the
      virtues or the vices of a tyrant. The spirit and activity of his
      private life dissolved away in the sunshine of the throne; and in
      his licentious pleasures, he forgot the safety both of the
      republic and of his family. Of a mild and religious character, he
      respected the sanctity of oaths, the innocence of the youth, the
      memory of his parents, and the attachment of the people. The
      studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the
      jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil,
      were a constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a
      scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was
      not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a
      personal talent, which few princes could employ in the hour of
      adversity.


      The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own vices and those of
      his children. After the decease of Christopher, his eldest son,
      the two surviving brothers quarrelled with each other, and
      conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all
      strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered
      his apartment with an armed force, and conveyed him, in the habit
      of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled
      by a religious community. The rumor of this domestic revolution
      excited a tumult in the city; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true
      and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care; and the
      sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had
      achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the benefit of
      their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of Constantine,
      revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of assassinating
      her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were
      alarmed, and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded
      from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery
      where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met
      them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just
      reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his Imperial
      colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet.
      In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine the Seventh
      obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled or
      seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that
      energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and
      glory; and the studies, which had amused and dignified his
      leisure, were incompatible with the serious duties of a
      sovereign. The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son
      Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits
      of intemperance and sloth, he dropped the reins of the
      administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and, in the
      shifting scene of her favor and caprice, each minister was
      regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the
      birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the
      Greeks; they excused his failings; they respected his learning,
      his innocence, and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony
      of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his
      subjects. The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in
      the vestibule of the palace; and the civil and military officers,
      the patricians, the senate, and the clergy approached in due
      order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign.
      Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre, a
      herald proclaimed this awful admonition: “Arise, O king of the
      world, and obey the summons of the King of kings!”


      The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son
      Romanus, who derived that name from his maternal grandfather,
      ascended the throne of Constantinople. A prince who, at the age
      of twenty, could be suspected of anticipating his inheritance,
      must have been already lost in the public esteem; yet Romanus was
      rather weak than wicked; and the largest share of the guilt was
      transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman of base origin
      masculine spirit, and flagitious manners. The sense of personal
      glory and public happiness, the true pleasures of royalty, were
      unknown to the son of Constantine; and, while the two brothers,
      Nicephorus and Leo, triumphed over the Saracens, the hours which
      the emperor owed to his people were consumed in strenuous
      idleness. In the morning he visited the circus; at noon he
      feasted the senators; the greater part of the afternoon he spent
      in the sphoeristerium, or tennis-court, the only theatre of his
      victories; from thence he passed over to the Asiatic side of the
      Bosphorus, hunted and killed four wild boars of the largest size,
      and returned to the palace, proudly content with the labors of
      the day. In strength and beauty he was conspicuous above his
      equals: tall and straight as a young cypress, his complexion was
      fair and florid, his eyes sparkling, his shoulders broad, his
      nose long and aquiline. Yet even these perfections were
      insufficient to fix the love of Theophano; and, after a reign of
      four 1013 years, she mingled for her husband the same deadly
      draught which she had composed for his father.

      1013 (return) [ Three years and five months. Leo Diaconus in
      Niebuhr. Byz p. 50—M.]


      By his marriage with this impious woman, Romanus the younger left
      two sons, Basil the Second and Constantine the Ninth, and two
      daughters, Theophano and Anne. The eldest sister was given to
      Otho the Second, emperor of the West; the younger became the wife
      of Wolodomir, great duke and apostle of russia, and by the
      marriage of her granddaughter with Henry the First, king of
      France, the blood of the Macedonians, and perhaps of the
      Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line. After
      the death of her husband, the empress aspired to reign in the
      name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger
      only two, years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a
      throne which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed,
      and two infants who could not be feared. Theophano looked around
      for a protector, and threw herself into the arms of the bravest
      soldier; her heart was capacious; but the deformity of the new
      favorite rendered it more than probable that interest was the
      motive and excuse of her love. Nicephorus Phocus united, in the
      popular opinion, the double merit of a hero and a saint. In the
      former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid:
      the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits,
      he had displayed in every station and in every province the
      courage of a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus
      was crowned with recent laurels, from the important conquest of
      the Isle of Crete. His religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and
      his hair-cloth, his fasts, his pious idiom, and his wish to
      retire from the business of the world, were a convenient mask for
      his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he imposed on a holy
      patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the senate, he
      was intrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with the
      absolute and independent command of the Oriental armies. As soon
      as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched
      to Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his
      correspondence with the empress, and without degrading her sons,
      assumed, with the title of Augustus, the preeminence of rank and
      the plenitude of power. But his marriage with Theophano was
      refused by the same patriarch who had placed the crown on his
      head: by his second nuptials he incurred a year of canonical
      penance; 1014 a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to their
      celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to
      silence the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of
      the emperor was lost in the purple: in a reign of six years he
      provoked the hatred of strangers and subjects: and the hypocrisy
      and avarice of the first Nicephorus were revived in his
      successor. Hypocrisy I shall never justify or palliate; but I
      will dare to observe, that the odious vice of avarice is of all
      others most hastily arraigned, and most unmercifully condemned.
      In a private citizen, our judgment seldom expects an accurate
      scrutiny into his fortune and expense; and in a steward of the
      public treasure, frugality is always a virtue, and the increase
      of taxes too often an indispensable duty. In the use of his
      patrimony, the generous temper of Nicephorus had been proved; and
      the revenue was strictly applied to the service of the state:
      each spring the emperor marched in person against the Saracens;
      and every Roman might compute the employment of his taxes in
      triumphs, conquests, and the security of the Eastern barrier.
      1015

      1014 (return) [ The canonical objection to the marriage was his
      relation of Godfather sons. Leo Diac. p. 50.—M.]

      1015 (return) [ He retook Antioch, and brought home as a trophy
      the sword of “the most unholy and impious Mahomet.” Leo Diac. p.
      76.—M.]




Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
IV.


      Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under
      his standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and
      obtained the most eminent rewards. The stature of John Zimisces
      was below the ordinary standard: but this diminutive body was
      endowed with strength, beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the
      jealousy of the emperor’s brother, he was degraded from the
      office of general of the East, to that of director of the posts,
      and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and exile. But
      Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the empress: on
      her intercession, he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon, in the
      neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his
      clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano
      consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious
      husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her
      most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night,
      Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small
      boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and
      silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the
      female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings
      of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the
      fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect
      Nicephorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every door was
      open to the assassins. As he slept on a bear-skin on the ground,
      he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers
      glittered before his eyes. It is doubtful whether Zimisces
      imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign; but he enjoyed
      the inhuman spectacle of revenge. 1016 The murder was protracted
      by insult and cruelty: and as soon as the head of Nicephorus was
      shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and the Armenian
      was emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he was
      stopped on the threshold of St. Sophia, by the intrepid
      patriarch; who charged his conscience with the deed of treason
      and blood; and required, as a sign of repentance, that he should
      separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of
      apostolic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could
      neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly violated the
      most sacred obligations; and Theophano, instead of sharing his
      imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and
      palace. In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and
      impotent rage; accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted,
      with words and blows, her son Basil, as he stood silent and
      submissive in the presence of a superior colleague; and avowed
      her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegitimacy of his
      birth. The public indignation was appeased by her exile, and the
      punishment of the meaner accomplices: the death of an unpopular
      prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten in
      the splendor of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less
      useful to the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his
      gentle and generous behavior delighted all who approached his
      person; and it was only in the paths of victory that he trod in
      the footsteps of his predecessor. The greatest part of his reign
      was employed in the camp and the field: his personal valor and
      activity were signalized on the Danube and the Tigris, the
      ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double triumph
      over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of
      savior of the empire, and conqueror of the East. In his last
      return from Syria, he observed that the most fruitful lands of
      his new provinces were possessed by the eunuchs. “And is it for
      them,” he exclaimed, with honest indignation, “that we have
      fought and conquered? Is it for them that we shed our blood, and
      exhaust the treasures of our people?” The complaint was reechoed
      to the palace, and the death of Zimisces is strongly marked with
      the suspicion of poison.

      1016 (return) [ According to Leo Diaconus, Zimisces, after
      ordering the wounded emperor to be dragged to his feet, and
      heaping him with insult, to which the miserable man only replied
      by invoking the name of the “mother of God,” with his own hand
      plucked his beard, while his accomplices beat out his teeth with
      the hilts of their swords, and then trampling him to the ground,
      drove his sword into his skull. Leo Diac, in Niebuhr Byz. Hist. l
      vii. c. 8. p. 88.—M.]


      Under this usurpation, or regency, of twelve years, the two
      lawful emperors, Basil and Constantine, had silently grown to the
      age of manhood. Their tender years had been incapable of
      dominion: the respectful modesty of their attendance and
      salutation was due to the age and merit of their guardians; the
      childless ambition of those guardians had no temptation to
      violate their right of succession: their patrimony was ably and
      faithfully administered; and the premature death of Zimisces was
      a loss, rather than a benefit, to the sons of Romanus. Their want
      of experience detained them twelve years longer the obscure and
      voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by
      persuading them to indulge the pleasures of youth, and to disdain
      the labors of government. In this silken web, the weakness of
      Constantine was forever entangled; but his elder brother felt the
      impulse of genius and the desire of action; he frowned, and the
      minister was no more. Basil was the acknowledged sovereign of
      Constantinople and the provinces of Europe; but Asia was
      oppressed by two veteran generals, Phocas and Sclerus, who,
      alternately friends and enemies, subjects and rebels, maintained
      their independence, and labored to emulate the example of
      successful usurpation. Against these domestic enemies the son of
      Romanus first drew his sword, and they trembled in the presence
      of a lawful and high-spirited prince. The first, in the front of
      battle, was thrown from his horse, by the stroke of poison, or an
      arrow; the second, who had been twice loaded with chains, 1017
      and twice invested with the purple, was desirous of ending in
      peace the small remainder of his days. As the aged suppliant
      approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering steps, leaning
      on his two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the insolence of
      youth and power, “And is this the man who has so long been the
      object of our terror?” After he had confirmed his own authority,
      and the peace of the empire, the trophies of Nicephorus and
      Zimisces would not suffer their royal pupil to sleep in the
      palace. His long and frequent expeditions against the Saracens
      were rather glorious than useful to the empire; but the final
      destruction of the kingdom of Bulgaria appears, since the time of
      Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms. Yet,
      instead of applauding their victorious prince, his subjects
      detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil; and in the
      imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the
      courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious
      education, which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his
      mind; he was ignorant of every science; and the remembrance of
      his learned and feeble grandsire might encourage his real or
      affected contempt of laws and lawyers, of artists and arts. Of
      such a character, in such an age, superstition took a firm and
      lasting possession; after the first license of his youth, Basil
      the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the
      penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and
      armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites
      a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth
      year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person
      for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented
      by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was
      dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the
      curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine
      enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures,
      of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the
      succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus;
      and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most
      obscure, of the Byzantine history.

      1017 (return) [ Once by the caliph, once by his rival Phocas.
      Compare De Beau l. p. 176.—M.]


      A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred
      and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the
      Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the
      usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine the
      Ninth, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene
      presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do
      not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had
      preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and
      Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took
      the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature
      age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage
      was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold or
      pious Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her
      sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar.
      Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person and fair
      reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his declining
      that honor, was informed, that blindness or death was the second
      alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection
      but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety
      and greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed the only
      bar to the Imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine,
      the sceptre devolved to Romanus the Third; but his labors at home
      and abroad were equally feeble and fruitless; and the mature age,
      the forty-eight years of Zoe, were less favorable to the hopes of
      pregnancy than to the indulgence of pleasure. Her favorite
      chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian of the name of Michael,
      whose first trade had been that of a money-changer; and Romanus,
      either from gratitude or equity, connived at their criminal
      intercourse, or accepted a slight assurance of their innocence.
      But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress is
      capable of poisoning her husband; and the death of Romanus was
      instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of
      Michael the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, however,
      disappointed: instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had
      placed in her bed a miserable wretch, whose health and reason
      were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was
      tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of
      the mind and body were summoned to his aid; and his hopes were
      amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of
      the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and,
      except restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?)
      Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he
      groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the
      eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a
      crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His
      administration was only the art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe
      became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in the hands
      of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline of his
      brother’s health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who
      derived his surname of Calaphates from his father’s occupation in
      the careening of vessels: at the command of the eunuch, Zoe
      adopted for her son the son of a mechanic; and this fictitious
      heir was invested with the title and purple of the Caesars, in
      the presence of the senate and clergy. So feeble was the
      character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power
      which she recovered by the death of the Paphlagonian; and at the
      end of four days, she placed the crown on the head of Michael the
      Fifth, who had protested, with tears and oaths, that he should
      ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects.


      The only act of his short reign was his base ingratitude to his
      benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the
      former was pleasing to the public: but the murmurs, and at length
      the clamors, of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the
      daughter of so many emperors; her vices were forgotten, and
      Michael was taught, that there is a period in which the patience
      of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of
      every degree assembled in a formidable tumult which lasted three
      days; they besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their
      mothers, Zoe from her prison, Theodora from her monastery, and
      condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes or of his
      life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two
      royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate,
      and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But the
      singular union subsisted no more than two months; the two
      sovereigns, their tempers, interests, and adherents, were
      secretly hostile to each other; and as Theodora was still averse
      to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe, at the age of sixty,
      consented, for the public good, to sustain the embraces of a
      third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and
      number were Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of Monomachus,
      the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valor and
      victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was
      broken by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was
      spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and
      noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the Isle
      of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in the appellation of his
      mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with
      the title and pomp of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous
      apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the
      delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and
      scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between
      his wife and his concubine. He survived them both; but the last
      measures of Constantine to change the order of succession were
      prevented by the more vigilant friends of Theodora; and after his
      decease, she resumed, with the general consent, the possession of
      her inheritance. In her name, and by the influence of four
      eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen
      months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they
      persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael
      the Sixth. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military
      profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see
      with the eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers.
      Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the
      last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily
      reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive
      period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below
      the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of
      cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.


      From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of
      spirit, begins to emerge: the Greeks either preserved or revived
      the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary
      virtue: and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliances of
      the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni,
      who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed
      the honor of a Roman origin: but the family had been long since
      transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was
      situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighborhood of the
      Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the
      paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret,
      the modest though honorable dwelling of his fathers. The first of
      their line was the illustrious Manuel, who in the reign of the
      second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the
      troubles of the East: he left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac
      and John, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed
      to the gratitude and favor of his sovereign. The noble youths
      were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts
      of the palace, and the exercises of the camp: and from the
      domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the
      command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled
      the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient
      nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers,
      with a captive princess of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a
      patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon from the number of
      enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had
      served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters; the
      elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more
      deserving generals; and their discontent was inflamed by the
      parsimony of the emperor and the insolence of the eunuchs. They
      secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes
      of the military synod would have been unanimous in favor of the
      old and valiant Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the
      veteran had not suggested the importance of birth as well as
      merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnenus was approved
      by general consent, and the associates separated without delay to
      meet in the plains of Phrygia at the head of their respective
      squadrons and detachments. The cause of Michael was defended in a
      single battle by the mercenaries of the Imperial guard, who were
      aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle
      of honor and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the
      emperor solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the
      moderation of the Comnenian. But the former was betrayed by his
      ambassadors, and the latter was prevented by his friends. The
      solitary Michael submitted to the voice of the people; the
      patriarch annulled their oath of allegiance; and as he shaved the
      head of the royal monk, congratulated his beneficial exchange of
      temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven; an exchange, however,
      which the priest, on his own account, would probably have
      declined. By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac Comnenus was
      solemnly crowned; the sword which he inscribed on his coins might
      be an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquest; but
      this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic
      enemies of the state. The decline of his health and vigor
      suspended the operation of active virtue; and the prospect of
      approaching death determined him to interpose some moments
      between life and eternity. But instead of leaving the empire as
      the marriage portion of his daughter, his reason and inclination
      concurred in the preference of his brother John, a soldier, a
      patriot, and the father of five sons, the future pillars of an
      hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might be the
      natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate
      and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show
      of virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty,
      and a rare offence against his family and country. The purple
      which he had refused was accepted by Constantine Ducas, a friend
      of the Comnenian house, and whose noble birth was adorned with
      the experience and reputation of civil policy. In the monastic
      habit, Isaac recovered his health, and survived two years his
      voluntary abdication. At the command of his abbot, he observed
      the rule of St. Basil, and executed the most servile offices of
      the convent: but his latent vanity was gratified by the frequent
      and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in his
      person the character of a benefactor and a saint. If Constantine
      the Eleventh were indeed the subject most worthy of empire, we
      must pity the debasement of the age and nation in which he was
      chosen. In the labor of puerile declamations he sought, without
      obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious, in his opinion,
      than that of Rome; and in the subordinate functions of a judge,
      he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior. Far from
      imitating the patriotic indifference of the authors of his
      greatness, Ducas was anxious only to secure, at the expense of
      the republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His three
      sons, Michael the Seventh, Andronicus the First, and Constantine
      the Twelfth, were invested, in a tender age, with the equal title
      of Augustus; and the succession was speedily opened by their
      father’s death. His widow, Eudocia, was intrusted with the
      administration; but experience had taught the jealousy of the
      dying monarch to protect his sons from the danger of her second
      nuptials; and her solemn engagement, attested by the principal
      senators, was deposited in the hands of the patriarch. Before the
      end of seven months, the wants of Eudocia, or those of the state,
      called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier; and her heart had
      already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from the
      scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a treasonable attempt
      had exposed him to the severity of the laws: his beauty and valor
      absolved him in the eyes of the empress; and Romanus, from a mild
      exile, was recalled on the second day to the command of the
      Oriental armies.


      Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public; and the promise
      which would have betrayed her falsehood and levity, was stolen by
      a dexterous emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Xiphilin
      at first alleged the sanctity of oaths, and the sacred nature of
      a trust; but a whisper, that his brother was the future emperor,
      relaxed his scruples, and forced him to confess that the public
      safety was the supreme law. He resigned the important paper; and
      when his hopes were confounded by the nomination of Romanus, he
      could no longer regain his security, retract his declarations,
      nor oppose the second nuptials of the empress. Yet a murmur was
      heard in the palace; and the Barbarian guards had raised their
      battle-axes in the cause of the house of Lucas, till the young
      princes were soothed by the tears of their mother and the solemn
      assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the
      Imperial station with dignity and honor. Hereafter I shall relate
      his valiant, but unsuccessful, efforts to resist the progress of
      the Turks. His defeat and captivity inflicted a deadly wound on
      the Byzantine monarchy of the East; and after he was released
      from the chains of the sultan, he vainly sought his wife and his
      subjects. His wife had been thrust into a monastery, and the
      subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of the civil
      law, that a prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived, as by
      the stroke of death, of all the public and private rights of a
      citizen. In the general consternation, the Caesar John asserted
      the indefeasible right of his three nephews: Constantinople
      listened to his voice: and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in
      the capital, and received on the frontier, as an enemy of the
      republic. Romanus was not more fortunate in domestic than in
      foreign war: the loss of two battles compelled him to yield, on
      the assurance of fair and honorable treatment; but his enemies
      were devoid of faith or humanity; and, after the cruel extinction
      of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and corrupt, till in
      a few days he was relieved from a state of misery. Under the
      triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers were
      reduced to the vain honors of the purple; but the eldest, the
      pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman
      sceptre; and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach
      which he shared with an avaricious favorite, who enhanced the
      price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of
      Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia
      made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric; but his
      character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a
      monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt of
      their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head
      of the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at
      Adrianople and Nice. Their revolt was in the same months; they
      bore the same name of Nicephorus; but the two candidates were
      distinguished by the surnames of Bryennius and Botaniates; the
      former in the maturity of wisdom and courage, the latter
      conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While
      Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active
      competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The
      name of Bryennius was illustrious; his cause was popular; but his
      licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and
      pillaging a suburb; and the people, who would have hailed the
      rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This
      change of the public opinion was favorable to Botaniates, who at
      length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of
      Chalcedon. A formal invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the
      synod, and the senate, was circulated through the streets of
      Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the dome of St.
      Sophia, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their
      sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this
      unarmed multitude; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own
      moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was
      rewarded with the monastic habit, and the title of Archbishop of
      Ephesus. He left a son, a Constantine, born and educated in the
      purple; and a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the
      blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.


      John Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in
      peace and dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his
      wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and a policy, he left
      eight children: the three daughters multiplied the Comnenian
      alliance with the noblest of the Greeks: of the five sons, Manuel
      was stopped by a premature death; Isaac and Alexius restored the
      Imperial greatness of their house, which was enjoyed without toil
      or danger by the two younger brethren, Adrian and Nicephorus.
      Alexius, the third and most illustrious of the brothers was
      endowed by nature with the choicest gifts both of mind and body:
      they were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the
      school of obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from
      the perils of the Turkish war, by the paternal care of the
      emperor Romanus: but the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring
      face, was accused of treason, and banished, by the sons of Ducas,
      to an island in the Propontis. The two brothers soon emerged into
      favor and action, fought by each other’s side against the rebels
      and Barbarians, and adhered to the emperor Michael, till he was
      deserted by the world and by himself. In his first interview with
      Botaniates, “Prince,” said Alexius with a noble frankness, “my
      duty rendered me your enemy; the decrees of God and of the people
      have made me your subject. Judge of my future loyalty by my past
      opposition.” The successor of Michael entertained him with esteem
      and confidence: his valor was employed against three rebels, who
      disturbed the peace of the empire, or at least of the emperors.
      Ursel, Bryennius, and Basilacius, were formidable by their
      numerous forces and military fame: they were successively
      vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of the
      throne; and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid
      and cruel court, they applauded the clemency, as well as the
      courage, of their conqueror. But the loyalty of the Comneni was
      soon tainted by fear and suspicion; nor is it easy to settle
      between a subject and a despot, the debt of gratitude, which the
      former is tempted to claim by a revolt, and the latter to
      discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexius to march
      against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed the
      merit or memory of his past services: the favorites of Botaniates
      provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused; and the
      retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of
      their life and liberty. The women of the family were deposited in
      a sanctuary, respected by tyrants: the men, mounted on horseback,
      sallied from the city, and erected the standard of civil war. The
      soldiers who had been gradually assembled in the capital and the
      neighborhood, were devoted to the cause of a victorious and
      injured leader: the ties of common interest and domestic alliance
      secured the attachment of the house of Ducas; and the generous
      dispute of the Comneni was terminated by the decisive resolution
      of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger brother with
      the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to Constantinople,
      to threaten rather than besiege that impregnable fortress; but
      the fidelity of the guards was corrupted; a gate was surprised,
      and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George
      Palaeologus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing
      that he labored for his posterity. Alexius ascended the throne;
      and his aged competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of
      various nations was gratified with the pillage of the city; but
      the public disorders were expiated by the tears and fasts of the
      Comneni, who submitted to every penance compatible with the
      possession of the empire. The life of the emperor Alexius has
      been delineated by a favorite daughter, who was inspired by a
      tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate
      his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers, the
      princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests, that, besides her
      personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings
      of the most respectable veterans: and after an interval of thirty
      years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful
      solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the
      naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of
      her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative
      which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and
      science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The
      genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of
      virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology
      awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the historian
      and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her
      judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times
      were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every
      calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on
      his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his
      predecessors. In the East, the victorious Turks had spread, from
      Persia to the Hellespont, the reign of the Koran and the
      Crescent: the West was invaded by the adventurous valor of the
      Normans; and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth
      new swarms, who had gained, in the science of war, what they had
      lost in the ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less
      hostile than the land; and while the frontiers were assaulted by
      an open enemy, the palace was distracted with secret treason and
      conspiracy. On a sudden, the banner of the Cross was displayed by
      the Latins; Europe was precipitated on Asia; and Constantinople
      had almost been swept away by this impetuous deluge. In the
      tempest, Alexius steered the Imperial vessel with dexterity and
      courage. At the head of his armies, he was bold in action,
      skilful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his
      advantages, and rising from his defeats with inexhaustible vigor.
      The discipline of the camp was revived, and a new generation of
      men and soldiers was created by the example and precepts of their
      leader. In his intercourse with the Latins, Alexius was patient
      and artful: his discerning eye pervaded the new system of an
      unknown world and I shall hereafter describe the superior policy
      with which he balanced the interests and passions of the
      champions of the first crusade. In a long reign of thirty-seven
      years, he subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals: the laws
      of public and private order were restored: the arts of wealth and
      science were cultivated: the limits of the empire were enlarged
      in Europe and Asia; and the Comnenian sceptre was transmitted to
      his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the
      difficulties of the times betrayed some defects in his character;
      and have exposed his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach.
      The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his
      daughter so often bestows on a flying hero: the weakness or
      prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of
      personal courage; and his political arts are branded by the
      Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation. The increase
      of the male and female branches of his family adorned the throne,
      and secured the succession; but their princely luxury and pride
      offended the patricians, exhausted the revenue, and insulted the
      misery of the people. Anna is a faithful witness that his
      happiness was destroyed, and his health was broken, by the cares
      of a public life; the patience of Constantinople was fatigued by
      the length and severity of his reign; and before Alexius expired,
      he had lost the love and reverence of his subjects. The clergy
      could not forgive his application of the sacred riches to the
      defence of the state; but they applauded his theological learning
      and ardent zeal for the orthodox faith, which he defended with
      his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by
      the superstition of the Greeks; and the same inconsistent
      principle of human nature enjoined the emperor to found a
      hospital for the poor and infirm, and to direct the execution of
      a heretic, who was burned alive in the square of St. Sophia. Even
      the sincerity of his moral and religious virtues was suspected by
      the persons who had passed their lives in his familiar
      confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife
      Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a
      pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant
      reply of the empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb,
      “You die, as you have lived—A Hypocrite!”


      It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving
      sons, in favor of her daughter the princess Anne whose philosophy
      would not have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of
      male succession was asserted by the friends of their country; the
      lawful heir drew the royal signet from the finger of his
      insensible or conscious father and the empire obeyed the master
      of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated by ambition and
      revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and when the
      design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she
      passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes,
      and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons
      of Alexius, John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the
      hereditary virtue of their race, and the younger brother was
      content with the title of Sebastocrator, which approached the
      dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same
      person the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately
      united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive
      stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes, or
      John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously
      applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her
      treason, the life and fortune of Anne were justly forfeited to
      the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but
      he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the
      rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That
      respectable friend Axuch, a slave of Turkish extraction, presumed
      to decline the gift, and to intercede for the criminal: his
      generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his
      favorite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was
      the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example
      of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by
      conspiracy or rebellion: feared by his nobles, beloved by his
      people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of
      punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his
      government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was
      abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to
      the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and
      vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety.
      Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal,
      abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the
      artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not
      borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately
      magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people,
      so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince,
      innocence had nothing to fear, and merit had every thing to hope;
      and, without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he
      introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the public and
      private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this
      accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds, the love
      of arms and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John
      the Handsome may be justified, at least in their principle, by
      the necessity of repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the
      Bosphorus. The sultan of Iconium was confined to his capital, the
      Barbarians were driven to the mountains, and the maritime
      provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient blessings of their
      deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and Aleppo, he
      repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and in the
      sieges and battles of this holy war, his Latin allies were
      astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek. As he
      began to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient
      limits of the empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates
      and Tigris, the dominion of Syria, and the conquest of Jerusalem,
      the thread of his life and of the public felicity was broken by a
      singular accident. He hunted the wild boar in the valley of
      Anazarbus, and had fixed his javelin in the body of the furious
      animal; but in the struggle a poisoned arrow dropped from his
      quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced a
      mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the
      Comnenian princes.




Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part
V.


      A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the
      Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or
      affection preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying
      prince was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valor
      of his favorite in the Turkish war. The faithful Axuch hastened
      to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in honorable
      confinement, and purchased, with a gift of two hundred pounds of
      silver, the leading ecclesiastics of St. Sophia, who possessed a
      decisive voice in the consecration of an emperor. With his
      veteran and affectionate troops, Manuel soon visited
      Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the title of
      Sebastocrator; his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial
      graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the
      flattering promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the
      activity and vigor of youth. By the experience of his government,
      they were taught, that he emulated the spirit, and shared the
      talents, of his father whose social virtues were buried in the
      grave. A reign of thirty seven years is filled by a perpetual
      though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the
      hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Manuel
      were exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the
      coast of Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece:
      the influence of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome
      and Russia; and the Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an
      object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe.
      Educated in the silk and purple of the East, Manuel possessed the
      iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled,
      except in the lives of Richard the First of England, and of
      Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise
      in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was
      incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor.
      In a famous tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser,
      and overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the
      Italian knights. The first in the charge, the last in the
      retreat, his friends and his enemies alike trembled, the former
      for his safety, and the latter for their own. After posting an
      ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some perilous
      adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful
      Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen,
      after a short combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the
      enemy increased; the march of the reenforcement was tardy and
      fearful, and Manuel, without receiving a wound, cut his way
      through a squadron of five hundred Turks. In a battle against the
      Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched
      a standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost
      alone, who passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy. In
      the same country, after transporting his army beyond the Save, he
      sent back the boats, with an order under pain of death, to their
      commander, that he should leave him to conquer or die on that
      hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a captive
      galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against the
      volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
      nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian
      admiral enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In
      one day, he is said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians
      with his own hand; he returned to the camp, dragging along four
      Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his saddle:
      he was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat;
      and the gigantic champions, who encountered his arm, were
      transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword, of the
      invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as a
      model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a
      reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not,
      to vindicate their credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe,
      that, in the long series of their annals, Manuel is the only
      prince who has been the subject of similar exaggeration. With the
      valor of a soldier, he did not unite the skill or prudence of a
      general; his victories were not productive of any permanent or
      useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last
      unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains
      of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the
      sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel,
      is the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness
      and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he
      appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in
      the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men
      and horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the
      camp. No sooner did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned
      himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury: the
      expense of his dress, his table, and his palace, surpassed the
      measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were idly
      wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous
      love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and
      dissolute prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes;
      and Manuel, in the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured
      a bitter reproach from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he
      quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of a fountain
      was mingled with Christian blood. “It is not the first time,”
      exclaimed a voice from the crowd, “that you have drank, O
      emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects.” Manuel Comnenus
      was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha or Irene of Germany,
      and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of
      Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for
      Bela, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople
      under the name of Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials
      might have transferred the Roman sceptre to a race of free and
      warlike Barbarians. But as soon as Maria of Antioch had given a
      son and heir to the empire, the presumptive rights of Bela were
      abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride; but the
      Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers,
      and displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of
      the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and at the age of
      ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his father’s
      decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.


      The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had
      been sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion.
      By ambition, Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and
      rebellion, from whence he was reclaimed by the firmness and
      clemency of John the Handsome. The errors of Isaac, the father of
      the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial; but John, the
      elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion. Provoked by a
      real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman
      to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan’s
      daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of
      a princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the
      Second boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family.
      Andronicus, the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and
      grandson of Alexius Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous
      characters of the age; and his genuine adventures might form the
      subject of a very singular romance. To justify the choice of
      three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me to observe,
      that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions of
      strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
      supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic
      muscles, and the air and deportment of a soldier. The
      preservation, in his old age, of health and vigor, was the reward
      of temperance and exercise. A piece of bread and a draught of
      water was often his sole and evening repast; and if he tasted of
      a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands,
      it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous in
      arms, he was ignorant of fear; his persuasive eloquence could
      bend to every situation and character of life, his style, though
      not his practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and,
      in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to
      contrive, and a hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of
      the emperor John, he followed the retreat of the Roman army; but,
      in the march through Asia Minor, design or accident tempted him
      to wander in the mountains: the hunter was encompassed by the
      Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some time a reluctant or
      willing captive in the power of the sultan. His virtues and vices
      recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared the perils
      and the pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived in
      public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her
      sister Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the
      decencies of her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his
      concubine; and both the palace and the camp could witness that
      she slept, or watched, in the arms of her lover. She accompanied
      him to his military command of Cilicia, the first scene of his
      valor and imprudence. He pressed, with active ardor, the siege of
      Mopsuestia: the day was employed in the boldest attacks; but the
      night was wasted in song and dance; and a band of Greek comedians
      formed the choicest part of his retinue. Andronicus was surprised
      by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled in
      disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of
      the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia,
      he was received by Manuel with public smiles and a private
      reproof; but the duchies of Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria,
      were the reward or consolation of the unsuccessful general.
      Eudocia still attended his motions: at midnight, their tent was
      suddenly attacked by her angry brothers, impatient to expiate her
      infamy in his blood: his daring spirit refused her advice, and
      the disguise of a female habit; and, boldly starting from his
      couch, he drew his sword, and cut his way through the numerous
      assassins. It was here that he first betrayed his ingratitude and
      treachery: he engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the
      king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the royal tent
      at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
      Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal
      foe; and imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an
      instrument of flight and safety. The monarch dissembled his
      suspicions; but, after the close of the campaign, Andronicus was
      arrested and strictly confined in a tower of the palace of
      Constantinople.


      In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful
      restraint, from which the thirst of action and pleasure
      perpetually urged him to escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived
      some broken bricks in a corner of the chamber, and gradually
      widened the passage, till he had explored a dark and forgotten
      recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself, and the remains of
      his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former position,
      and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the hour
      of the customary visit, his guards were amazed by the silence and
      solitude of the prison, and reported, with shame and fear, his
      incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were
      instantly shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the
      provinces, for the recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the
      suspicion of a pious act, was basely imprisoned in the same
      tower. At the dead of night she beheld a spectre; she recognized
      her husband: they shared their provisions; and a son was the
      fruit of these stolen interviews, which alleviated the
      tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the
      vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive
      had accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought
      back to Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length
      he found the moment, and the means, of his deliverance. A boy,
      his domestic servant, intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax
      the impression of the keys. By the diligence of his friends, a
      similar key, with a bundle of ropes, was introduced into the
      prison, in the bottom of a hogshead. Andronicus employed, with
      industry and courage, the instruments of his safety, unlocked the
      doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself all day among
      the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden-wall of the
      palace. A boat was stationed for his reception: he visited his
      own house, embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a
      fleet horse, and directed his rapid course towards the banks of
      the Danube. At Anchialus in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied
      him with horses and money: he passed the river, traversed with
      speed the desert of Moldavia and the Carpathian hills, and had
      almost reached the town of Halicz, in the Polish Russia, when he
      was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who resolved to convey
      their important captive to Constantinople. His presence of mind
      again extricated him from danger. Under the pretence of sickness,
      he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from
      the troop: he planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it
      with his cap and upper garment; and, stealing into the wood, left
      a phantom to amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Walachians.
      From Halicz he was honorably conducted to Kiow, the residence of
      the great duke: the subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and
      confidence of Ieroslaus; his character could assume the manners
      of every climate; and the Barbarians applauded his strength and
      courage in the chase of the elks and bears of the forest. In this
      northern region he deserved the forgiveness of Manuel, who
      solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in the invasion of
      Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
      service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity
      on one side, and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the
      head of the Russian cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube.
      In his resentment Manuel had ever sympathized with the martial
      and dissolute character of his cousin; and his free pardon was
      sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in which he was second, and
      second only, to the valor of the emperor.


      No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than
      his ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the
      public, misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the
      succession of the more deserving males of the Comnenian blood;
      her future marriage with the prince of Hungary was repugnant to
      the hopes or prejudices of the princes and nobles. But when an
      oath of allegiance was required to the presumptive heir,
      Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman name, declined
      the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the
      adoption of a stranger. His patriotism was offensive to the
      emperor, but he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was
      removed from the royal presence by an honorable banishment, a
      second command of the Cilician frontier, with the absolute
      disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In this station the Armenians
      again exercised his courage and exposed his negligence; and the
      same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was unhorsed, and
      almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus soon
      discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
      Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of
      Poitou, the Latin prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his
      station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments: to his
      love she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer
      of an advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for
      this domestic affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left
      the indiscreet princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band
      of desperate adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem.
      His birth, his martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced
      him as the champion of the Cross: he soon captivated both the
      clergy and the king; and the Greek prince was invested with the
      lordship of Berytus, on the coast of Phoenicia.


      In his neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his
      own nation and family, great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis,
      and widow of Baldwin the Third, king of Jerusalem. She visited
      and loved her kinsman. Theodora was the third victim of his
      amorous seduction; and her shame was more public and scandalous
      than that of her predecessors. The emperor still thirsted for
      revenge; and his subjects and allies of the Syrian frontier were
      repeatedly pressed to seize the person, and put out the eyes, of
      the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe; but the tender
      Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied his flight. The
      queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious
      concubine; and two illegitimate children were the living
      monuments of her weakness. Damascus was his first refuge; and, in
      the characters of the great Noureddin and his servant Saladin,
      the superstitious Greek might learn to revere the virtues of the
      Mussulmans. As the friend of Noureddin he visited, most probably,
      Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after a long circuit round
      the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he finally settled
      among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies of his
      country. The sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to
      Andronicus, his mistress, and his band of outlaws: the debt of
      gratitude was paid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of
      Trebizond; and he seldom returned without an ample harvest of
      spoil and of Christian captives. In the story of his adventures,
      he was fond of comparing himself to David, who escaped, by a long
      exile, the snares of the wicked. But the royal prophet (he
      presumed to add) was content to lurk on the borders of Judaea, to
      slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his miserable state, the
      life of the avaricious Nabal. The excursions of the Comnenian
      prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern
      world the glory of his name and religion.


      By a sentence of the Greek church, the licentious rover had been
      separated from the faithful; but even this excommunication may
      prove, that he never abjured the profession of Chistianity.


      His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret
      persecution of the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the
      captivity of his female companion. The governor of Trebizond
      succeeded in his attempt to surprise the person of Theodora: the
      queen of Jerusalem and her two children were sent to
      Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the tedious solitude of
      banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a final pardon,
      with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign, who was
      satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate
      on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his
      past rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some
      faithful subject would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an
      iron chain with which he had secretly encircled his neck. This
      extraordinary penance excited the wonder and pity of the
      assembly; his sins were forgiven by the church and state; but the
      just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a distance from
      the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with rich
      vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine. The death of
      Manuel, and the disorders of the minority, soon opened the
      fairest field to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or
      fourteen years of age, without vigor, or wisdom, or experience:
      his mother, the empress Mary, abandoned her person and government
      to a favorite of the Comnenian name; and his sister, another
      Mary, whose husband, an Italian, was decorated with the title of
      Caesar, excited a conspiracy, and at length an insurrection,
      against her odious step-mother. The provinces were forgotten, the
      capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order was
      overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months. A civil war
      was kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody
      battle in the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a
      regular siege in the cathedral of St. Sophia. The patriarch
      labored with honest zeal to heal the wounds of the republic, the
      most respectable patriots called aloud for a guardian and
      avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise of the talents and
      even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement, he affected to
      revolve the solemn duties of his oath: “If the safety or honor of
      the Imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose the
      mischief to the utmost of my power.” His correspondence with the
      patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from
      the Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and he
      patiently waited till he was called to her deliverance by the
      voice of his country. In his march from Oenoe to Constantinople,
      his slender train insensibly swelled to a crowd and an army: his
      professions of religion and loyalty were mistaken for the
      language of his heart; and the simplicity of a foreign dress,
      which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed a
      lively image of his poverty and exile. All opposition sunk before
      him; he reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the
      Byzantine navy sailed from the harbor to receive and transport
      the savior of the empire: the torrent was loud and irresistible,
      and the insects who had basked in the sunshine of royal favor
      disappeared at the blast of the storm. It was the first care of
      Andronicus to occupy the palace, to salute the emperor, to
      confine his mother, to punish her minister, and to restore the
      public order and tranquillity. He then visited the sepulchre of
      Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as he
      bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they
      heard, a murmur of triumph or revenge: “I no longer fear thee, my
      old enemy, who hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the
      earth. Thou art safely deposited under a seven-fold dome, from
      whence thou canst never arise till the signal of the last
      trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily will I trample on thy
      ashes and thy posterity.” From his subsequent tyranny we may
      impute such feelings to the man and the moment; but it is not
      extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret
      thoughts. In the first months of his administration, his designs
      were veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude
      only the eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius was
      performed with due solemnity, and his perfidious guardian,
      holding in his hands the body and blood of Christ, most fervently
      declared that he lived, and was ready to die, for the service of
      his beloved pupil. But his numerous adherents were instructed to
      maintain, that the sinking empire must perish in the hands of a
      child, that the Romans could only be saved by a veteran prince,
      bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by the long
      experience of fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of
      every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to
      undertake the burden of the public care. The young emperor was
      himself constrained to join his voice to the general acclamation,
      and to solicit the association of a colleague, who instantly
      degraded him from the supreme rank, secluded his person, and
      verified the rash declaration of the patriarch, that Alexius
      might be considered as dead, so soon as he was committed to the
      custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded by the
      imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her
      reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the
      multitude, the tyrant accused and tried the empress for a
      treasonable correspondence with the king of Hungary. His own son,
      a youth of honor and humanity, avowed his abhorrence of this
      flagitious act, and three of the judges had the merit of
      preferring their conscience to their safety: but the obsequious
      tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any defence,
      condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son subscribed
      the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse was
      buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
      offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of
      her beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he
      was strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to
      pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth,
      struck it rudely with his foot: “Thy father,” he cried, “was a
      knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool!”


      The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by
      Andronicus about three years and a half as the guardian or
      sovereign of the empire. His government exhibited a singular
      contrast of vice and virtue. When he listened to his passions, he
      was the scourge; when he consulted his reason, the father, of his
      people. In the exercise of private justice, he was equitable and
      rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality was abolished, and
      the offices were filled with the most deserving candidates, by a
      prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish. He
      prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and
      persons of shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the
      objects of oppression or neglect, revived in prosperity and
      plenty; and millions applauded the distant blessings of his
      reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of his daily
      cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man who
      returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
      truth, to Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third
      time in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a
      black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit,
      opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only
      comfort of his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge.
      The necessary extinction of the young emperor and his mother
      imposed the fatal obligation of extirpating the friends, who
      hated, and might punish, the assassin; and the repetition of
      murder rendered him less willing, and less able, to forgive. 1018
      A horrid narrative of the victims whom he sacrificed by poison or
      the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be less expressive of
      his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days, which was
      applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant strove
      to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
      guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer
      mistake the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the
      Greeks, more especially those who, by descent or alliance, might
      dispute the Comnenian inheritance, escaped from the monster’s
      den: Nice and Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of
      refuge; and as their flight was already criminal, they aggravated
      their offence by an open revolt, and the Imperial title. Yet
      Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable
      enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised: the Sicilians
      were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the distance of
      Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the tyrant.
      His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people
      without arms. Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from
      the great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or
      superstition of the emperor. 1019 In a moment of despair, Angelus
      defended his life and liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to
      the church of St. Sophia. The sanctuary was insensibly filled
      with a curious and mournful crowd, who, in his fate,
      prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were soon turned
      to curses, and their curses to threats: they dared to ask, “Why
      do we fear? why do we obey? We are many, and he is one: our
      patience is the only bond of our slavery.” With the dawn of day
      the city burst into a general sedition, the prisons were thrown
      open, the coldest and most servile were roused to the defence of
      their country, and Isaac, the second of the name, was raised from
      the sanctuary to the throne. Unconscious of his danger, the
      tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the toils of state, in the
      delicious islands of the Propontis. He had contracted an indecent
      marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis the Seventh, of
      France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his society,
      more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of a
      young wife and a favorite concubine. On the first alarm, he
      rushed to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty;
      but he was astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of
      the city, and the general desertion of mankind. Andronicus
      proclaimed a free pardon to his subjects; they neither desired,
      nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to resign the crown to
      his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could not expiate his
      father’s crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat; but the
      news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had
      ceased, obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued
      and taken by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to
      the presence of Isaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long
      chain round his neck. His eloquence, and the tears of his female
      companions, pleaded in vain for his life; but, instead of the
      decencies of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned the
      criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had deprived of a
      father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a
      hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss:
      and a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the
      bitterness of death. Astride on a camel, without any danger of a
      rescue, he was carried through the city, and the basest of the
      populace rejoiced to trample on the fallen majesty of their
      prince. After a thousand blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung
      by the feet, between two pillars, that supported the statues of a
      wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could reach the public
      enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or brutal
      cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their
      swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In
      this long and painful agony, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” and “Why
      will you bruise a broken reed?” were the only words that escaped
      from his mouth. Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the
      man; nor can we blame his pusillanimous resignation, since a
      Greek Christian was no longer master of his life.

      1018 (return) [ Fallmerayer (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von
      Trapezunt, p. 29, 33) has highly drawn the character of
      Andronicus. In his view the extermination of the Byzantine
      factions and dissolute nobility was part of a deep-laid and
      splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire. It was
      necessary for the wise and benevolent schemes of the father of
      his people to lop off those limbs which were infected with
      irremediable pestilence— “and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea,
      excused his devilish deeds!!”—Still the fall of Andronicus was a
      fatal blow to the Byzantine empire.—M.]

      1019 (return) [ According to Nicetas, (p. 444,) Andronicus
      despised the imbecile Isaac too much to fear him; he was arrested
      by the officious zeal of Stephen, the instrument of the Emperor’s
      cruelties.—M.]


      I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character
      and adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the
      series of the Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The
      branches that sprang from the Comnenian trunk had insensibly
      withered; and the male line was continued only in the posterity
      of Andronicus himself, who, in the public confusion, usurped the
      sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in history, and so famous in
      romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia, Constantine Angelus,
      had emerged to wealth and honors, by his marriage with a daughter
      of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus is conspicuous only by
      his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and succeeded the
      tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the ambition
      of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
      conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of
      the Eastern empire.


      If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be
      found, that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty
      emperors, including in the Augustan list some female sovereigns;
      and deducting some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the
      capital, and some princes who did not live to possess their
      inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each
      emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton,
      who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies,
      has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an
      ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was most tranquil and
      prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession; five
      dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and
      Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
      during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and
      four generations; several princes number the years of their reign
      with those of their infancy; and Constantine the Seventh and his
      two grandsons occupy the space of an entire century. But in the
      intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and
      broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased
      by a more fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to
      the summit of royalty: the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by
      the stroke of conspiracy, or undermined by the silent arts of
      intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers or people, of the senate
      or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately clothed
      with the purple: the means of their elevation were base, and
      their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature
      of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer
      measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and
      contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager,
      in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and shortlived
      enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and
      enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition
      of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have
      rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to
      a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the throne: the
      success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of
      his prize and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty
      phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly
      dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and
      climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy,
      may abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he condemns
      the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to
      obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion. To the greater part of
      the Byzantine series, we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of
      fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Comnenus was
      beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of the princes, who
      procede or follow that respectable name, have trod with some
      dexterity and vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish
      policy: in scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the
      Isaurian, Basil the First, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus,
      the second Basil, and Manuel Comnenus, our esteem and censure are
      almost equally balanced; and the remainder of the Imperial crowd
      could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity. Was
      personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I shall
      not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I
      may surely observe, that their condition, of all others, is the
      most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope. For
      these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed in the
      revolutions of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of
      the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph
      of Alexander or the fall of Darius. But the peculiar infelicity
      of the Byzantine princes exposed them to domestic perils, without
      affording any lively promise of foreign conquest. From the
      pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated by a death
      more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but the most
      glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their
      subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious
      without spirit, the nation turbulent without freedom: the
      Barbarians of the East and West pressed on the monarchy, and the
      loss of the provinces was terminated by the final servitude of
      the capital.


      The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the
      Caesars to the last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen
      hundred years: and the term of dominion, unbroken by foreign
      conquest, surpasses the measure of the ancient monarchies; the
      Assyrians or Medes, the successors of Cyrus, or those of
      Alexander.