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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4

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

Author: Edward Gibbon

Commentator: Henry Hart Milman


        
Release date: June 7, 2008 [eBook #893]
                Most recently updated: June 22, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/893

Credits: Produced by David Reed, Dale R. Fredrickson and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE — VOLUME 4 ***




Produced by David Reed, Dale R. Fredrickson and David Widger





HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 4

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)




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, was born in the neighborhood of Vienna two
years after the death of Attila. 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. 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; 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.

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 life, 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. 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, 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. By the conspiracy of the
malecontents, 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. 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, 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!"

Whatever fear of 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.
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. 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 MÊsia, on the solemn
assurance that before he reached Adrianople, he should meet a plentiful
convoy of provisions, and a reÎnforcement 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.

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 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. 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; 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.

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, GepidÊ, 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.

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_
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, reÎnforced 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 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.

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. 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, 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; 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.
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. 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.

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. 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.
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,
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; but the lands of every freeman
were exempt from taxes, and he enjoyed the inestimable privilege
of being subject only to the laws of his country. 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. Distress might sometimes provoke the indigent Roman
to assume the ferocious manners which were insensibly relinquished by
the rich and luxurious Barbarian; 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.




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. The ambassadors who resorted to Ravenna from the most distant
countries of Europe, admired his wisdom, magnificence, 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, 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. 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. 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. From the shores
of the Baltic, the ∆stians or Livonians laid their offerings of native
amber 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 from whence the Gothic nation derived their origin, he
maintained a frequent and friendly correspondence: the Italians were
clothed in the rich sables 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.
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.

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 RhÊtia, Noricum, Dalmatia,
and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the
Bavarians, to the petty kingdom erected by the GepidÊ 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. 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. Their retreat was possibly hastened
by the activity of Theodoric; Italy was covered by a fleet of a thousand
light vessels, 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 this narrative of military events, the least interesting of the
reign of Theodoric; and shall be content to add, that the Alemanni were
protected, 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 prÊtorian
prÊfecture 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. 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.

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; 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. 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. The Gothic
palace of Ravenna reflected the image of the court of Theodosius or
Valentinian. The PrÊtorian prÊfect, the prÊfect of Rome, the quÊstor,
the master of the offices, with the public and patrimonial treasurers,
* 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. 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. 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. 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 PrÊtorian prÊfect for his
unshaken fidelity to the unfortunate cause of Odoacer. The ministers of
Theodoric, Cassiodorus, 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.

As the patron of the republic, it was the interest and duty of the
Gothic king to cultivate the affections of the senate 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; 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
CÊsars: 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. 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, 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.
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. 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. The Gothic kings, so injuriously accused of the ruin of antiquity,
were anxious to preserve the monuments of the nation whom they had
subdued. 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; the brazen elephants of
the _Via sacra_ were diligently restored; the famous heifer of Myron
deceived the cattle, as they were driven through the forum of peace; and
an officer was created to protect those works of rat, which Theodoric
considered as the noblest ornament of his kingdom.




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.
As often as the peace of his kingdom was threatened (for it was never
invaded) by the Barbarians, he removed his court to Verona 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. 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 PrÊneste, the Roman
senators still retired in the winter season to the warm sun, and
salubrious springs of BaiÊ; 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. Agriculture revived under the
shadow of peace, and the number of husbandmen was multiplied by the
redemption of captives. 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. 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. 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.

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 CÊsarius
and Epiphanius, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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; 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: 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

The senator Boethius 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 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, 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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, 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. 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.

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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, whose soul was plunged, by
the ministers of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of
the flaming mouths of the infernal world.




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 near the ruins of Sardica, (the modern
Sophia,) of an obscure race of Barbarians, 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. 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. 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 quÊstor
Proclus; 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.

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 ManichÊan heresy. 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; 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. 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, 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. 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.

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
prÊfect of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of courage or
servitude, of favor or disgrace, Procopius successively composed the
_history_, the _panegyric_, and the _satire_ of his own times. The eight
books of the Persian, Vandalic, and Gothic wars, 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 were read and
applauded by his contemporaries: 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. Disappointment might urge the
flatterer to secret revenge; and the first glance of favor might again
tempt him to suspend and suppress a libel, 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
dÊmons, who had assumed a human form for the destruction of mankind.
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. 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.

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, 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, 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 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 to describe the
naked scenes which Theodora was not ashamed to exhibit in the theatre.
After exhausting the arts of sensual pleasure, she most ungratefully
murmured against the parsimony of Nature; 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.

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. 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. 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.
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.




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 person ages 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, 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. 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."

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. 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. 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. 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. 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 PrÊtorian
prÊfect, 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. At length, in the twenty-fourth year of
her marriage, and the twenty-second of her reign, she was consumed by
a cancer; 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.

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. 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 cÊrulean _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. 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.

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. 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. 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, 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. 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 prÊfect 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. 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!"

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 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 ManichÊans!" 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 prÊfect, 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. 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 prÊfect,
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.

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 quÊstor, and the prÊfect, 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 CÊsar! 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.

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 ∆thiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces,
and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; 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 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; and the capital of Justinian was
supplied with the manufactures of Sidon, fifteen centuries after
they had been celebrated in the poems of Homer. 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 which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of
taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple which the Phnicians
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.




Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.--Part III.

I need not explain that _silk_ 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; 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. 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
Phnician women, and the precious materials were multiplied by a looser
texture, and the intermixture of linen threads. 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. 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.

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, 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, 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. 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 Êra 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 Phnicians, 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. 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 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 ∆thiopian ship,
as a simple passenger.

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 ∆thiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of
navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, 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. 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. 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, 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.

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.
Their gratitude universally applauded the abolition of the _gold of
affliction_, a personal tribute on the industry of the poor, 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.
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. 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:
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, and bequeathed to his successor the
payment of his debts. 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 dÊmons, who had mischievously assumed the form of
Justinian.

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. 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 prÊtor 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. 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 PrÊtorian prÊfect; 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, 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, 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 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. 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.




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. The merits of Tribonian the quÊstor
will hereafter be weighed in the reformation of the Roman law; but
the economy of the East was subordinate to the PrÊtorian prÊfect, and
Procopius has justified his anecdotes by the portrait which he exposes
in his public history, of the notorious vices of John of Cappadocia.
* His knowledge was not borrowed from the schools, 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, 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 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 Cappadocia the accomplice
of his own destruction. 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 prÊfect; 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 prÊfect 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 prÊfect 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 prÊfect
was diligently copied by the quÊstor, the public and private treasurer,
the governors of provinces, and the principal magistrates of the Eastern
empire.

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; 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. 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. 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. Yet the admirable experiments of a French philosopher 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; 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. 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.

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. 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!" 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 mosch, 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 and
_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, 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!

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. 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. 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 HerÊum 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, 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.

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. 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, 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 prÊfect, whose jurisdiction extended over
seven warlike provinces of Illyricum; and the corrupt apellation of
_Giustendil_ still indicates, about twenty miles to the south of
Sophia, the residence of a Turkish sanjak. 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. 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; and no unfortified spot,
however distant or solitary, could securely enjoy the blessings of
peace. The Straits of ThermopylÊ, 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 PlatÊa, 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. 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.

Asia Minor, after the submission of the Isaurians, 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. 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;
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. 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 TarcalissÊus 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. 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 prÊtors of Lycaonia and Pisidia, were invested
with military power to restrain the licentious practice of rapes and
assassinations.




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 ∆thiopia, and on the other, the long walls which he constructed
in CrimÊa for the protection of his friendly Goths, a colony of three
thousand shepherds and warriors. 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. 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, 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_ 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 ChadÊans 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. 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, 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. 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.

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, in his expedition against the Nepthalites, or white Huns,
whose conquests had been stretched from the Caspian to the heart of
India, whose throne was enriched with emeralds, and whose cavalry was
supported by a line of two thousand elephants. The Persians 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. 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. The death of
Perozes abandoned Persia to her foreign and domestic enemies; 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; 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 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, 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.

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, 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 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 and a Russian conqueror. 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.

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 was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he
assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first
representation of the dipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides;
and that his pupils ∆schines 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.
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; 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 musÊum 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 _lycum_ 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 minÊ or two hundred and fifty
pounds, with a fund sufficient for their frugal subsistence and monthly
festivals; and the patrimony of Plato afforded an annual rent, which,
in eight centuries, was gradually increased from three to one thousand
pieces of gold. 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 drachmÊ, or more than three hundred pounds
sterling. 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. 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.

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, Proclus 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, ∆sculapius, 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, 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, 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. 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.

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; 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. 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. 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. The imperfect mode of distinguishing each year by the
name of a magistrate, was usefully supplied by the date of a permanent
Êra: the creation of the world, according to the Septuagint version,
was adopted by the Greeks; and the Latins, since the age of Charlemagne,
have computed their time from the birth of Christ.




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
CÊsars; 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.

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.
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, 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.

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 prÊfect,
"to besiege Carthage: by land, the distance is not less than one hundred
and forty days' journey; on the sea, a whole year 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 doubt

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