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Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
      Volume 4

Author: Edward Gibbon

Commentator: H. H. Milman

Release Date: November, 1996 [eBook #734]
[Most recently updated: February 1, 2022]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: David Reed and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ***




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.




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