



Produced by David Reed





HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 4

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A hero, descended from a race of kings, must have despised the base
Isaurian who was invested with the Roman purple, without any endowment
of mind or body, without any advantages of royal birth, or superior
qualifications. After the failure of the Theodosian 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. [6] As soon as she sounded a revolt in the ears of Zeno, he
fled with precipitation into the mountains of Isauria, and her brother
Basiliscus, already infamous by his African expedition, [7] was
unanimously proclaimed by the servile senate. But the reign of the
usurper was short and turbulent. Basiliscus presumed to assassinate the
lover of his sister; he dared to offend the lover of his wife, the vain
and insolent Harmatius, who, in the midst of Asiatic luxury, affected
the dress, the demeanor, and the surname of Achilles. [8] By the
conspiracy of the 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. [811] The haughty spirit of Verina was still incapable of
submission or repose. She provoked the enmity of a favorite general,
embraced his cause as soon as he was disgraced, created a new emperor
in Syria and Egypt, [812] raised an army of seventy thousand men, and
persisted to the last moment of her life in a fruitless rebellion,
which, according to the fashion of the age, had been predicted by
Christian hermits and Pagan magicians. While the East was afflicted by
the passions of Verina, her daughter Ariadne was distinguished by the
female virtues of mildness and fidelity; she followed her husband in his
exile, and after his restoration, she implored his clemency in favor of
her mother. On the decease of Zeno, Ariadne, the daughter, the mother,
and the widow of an emperor, gave her hand and the Imperial title to
Anastasius, an aged domestic of the palace, who survived his elevation
above twenty-seven years, and whose character is attested by the
acclamation of the people, "Reign as you have lived!" [9] [911]

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

[Footnote 7: Vol. iii. p. 504--508.]

[Footnote 8: Suidas, tom. i. p. 332, 333, edit. Kuster.]

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

[Footnote 812: Named Illus.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 48: Vol. iii. p. 581--585.]

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

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

[Footnote 51: Theophanes, p. 113.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 62: Vit. Fulgentii in Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 500, No. 10.]

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

After the example of the last emperors, Theodoric preferred the
residence of Ravenna, where he cultivated an orchard with his own hands.
[69] As often as the peace of his kingdom was threatened (for it was
never invaded) by the Barbarians, he removed his court to Verona [70]
on the northern frontier, and the image of his palace, still extant on
a coin, represents the oldest and most authentic model of Gothic
architecture. These two capitals, as well as Pavia, Spoleto, Naples, and
the rest of the Italian cities, acquired under his reign the useful
or splendid decorations of churches, aqueducts, baths, porticos,
and palaces. [71] But the happiness of the subject was more truly
conspicuous in the busy scene of labor and luxury, in the rapid increase
and bold enjoyment of national wealth. From the shades of Tibur and
Praeneste, the Roman senators still retired in the winter season to
the warm sun, and salubrious springs of Baiae; and their villas, which
advanced on solid moles into the Bay of Naples, commanded the various
prospect of the sky, the earth, and the water. On the eastern side
of the Adriatic, a new Campania was formed in the fair and fruitful
province of Istria, which communicated with the palace of Ravenna by an
easy navigation of one hundred miles. The rich productions of Lucania
and the adjacent provinces were exchanged at the Marcilian fountain,
in a populous fair annually dedicated to trade, intemperance, and
superstition. In the solitude of Comum, which had once been animated
by the mild genius of Pliny, a transparent basin above sixty miles in
length still reflected the rural seats which encompassed the margin of
the Larian lake; and the gradual ascent of the hills was covered by
a triple plantation of olives, of vines, and of chestnut trees. [72]
Agriculture revived under the shadow of peace, and the number of
husbandmen was multiplied by the redemption of captives. [73] The iron
mines of Dalmatia, a gold mine in Bruttium, were carefully explored,
and the Pomptine marshes, as well as those of Spoleto, were drained and
cultivated by private undertakers, whose distant reward must depend on
the continuance of the public prosperity. [74] Whenever the seasons were
less propitious, the doubtful precautions of forming magazines of corn,
fixing the price, and prohibiting the exportation, attested at least the
benevolence of the state; but such was the extraordinary plenty which an
industrious people produced from a grateful soil, that a gallon of wine
was sometimes sold in Italy for less than three farthings, and a quarter
of wheat at about five shillings and sixpence. [75] A country possessed
of so many valuable objects of exchange soon attracted the merchants of
the world, whose beneficial traffic was encouraged and protected by the
liberal spirit of Theodoric. The free intercourse of the provinces by
land and water was restored and extended; the city gates were never shut
either by day or by night; and the common saying, that a purse of gold
might be safely left in the fields, was expressive of the conscious
security of the inhabitants. [Footnote 69: See an epigram of Ennodius
(ii. 3, p. 1893, 1894) on this garden and the royal gardener.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 8611: See History of the Jews vol. iii. p. 217.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 411: St. Martin questions the fact in both cases. The
ignorance of Justin rests on the secret history of Procopius, vol. viii.
p. 8. St. Martin's notes on Le Beau.--M]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 14: The literary fate of Procopius has been somewhat unlucky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2611: Gibbon should have remembered the axiom which he
quotes in another piece, scelera ostendi oportet dum puniantur abscondi
flagitia.--M.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 30: "Let greatness own her, and she's mean no more," &c.
Without Warburton's critical telescope, I should never have seen,
in this general picture of triumphant vice, any personal allusion to
Theodora.]




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

Those who believe that the female mind is totally depraved by the loss
of chastity, will eagerly listen to all the invectives of private envy,
or popular resentment which have dissembled the virtues of Theodora,
exaggerated her vices, and condemned with rigor the venal or voluntary
sins of the youthful harlot. From a motive of shame, or contempt, she
often declined the servile homage of the multitude, escaped from the
odious light of the capital, and passed the greatest part of the year in
the palaces and gardens which were pleasantly seated on the sea-coast of
the Propontis and the Bosphorus. Her private hours were devoted to the
prudent as well as grateful care of her beauty, the luxury of the bath
and table, and the long slumber of the evening and the morning. Her
secret apartments were occupied by the favorite women and eunuchs, whose
interests and passions she indulged at the expense of justice; the most
illustrious 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, [31] inaccessible to the inquiries of justice; and it was
rumored, that the torture of the rack, or scourge, had been inflicted in
the presence of the female tyrant, insensible to the voice of prayer
or of pity. [32] Some of these unhappy victims perished in deep,
unwholesome dungeons, while others were permitted, after the loss of
their limbs, their reason, or their fortunes, to appear in the world,
the living monuments of her vengeance, which was commonly extended to
the children of those whom she had suspected or injured. The senator or
bishop, whose death or exile Theodora had pronounced, was delivered to
a trusty messenger, and his diligence was quickened by a menace from her
own mouth. "If you fail in the execution of my commands, I swear by Him
who liveth forever, that your skin shall be flayed from your body." [33]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 34: Ludewig, p. 161--166. I give him credit for the charitable
attempt, although he hath not much charity in his temper.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 51: See this church and monastery in Ducange, C. P.
Christiana, l. iv p 182.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 6311: Gibbon must have written transparent draperies and naked
matrons. Through sometimes affected, he is never inaccurate.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 90: John Malala, tom. ii. p. 101, 102, 103.]




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

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

[921] His knowledge was not borrowed from the schools, [93] and his
style was scarcely legible; but he excelled in the powers of native
genius, to suggest the wisest counsels, and to find expedients in the
most desperate situations. The corruption of his heart was equal to the
vigor of his understanding. Although he was suspected of magic and
Pagan superstition, he appeared insensible to the fear of God or the
reproaches of man; and his aspiring fortune was raised on the death
of thousands, the poverty of millions, the ruins of cities, and the
desolation of provinces. From the dawn of light to the moment of dinner,
he assiduously labored to enrich his master and himself at the expense
of the Roman world; the remainder of the day was spent in sensual
and obscene pleasures, [931] and the silent hours of the night were
interrupted by the perpetual dread of the justice of an assassin. His
abilities, perhaps his vices, recommended him to the lasting friendship
of Justinian: the emperor yielded with reluctance to the fury of the
people; his victory was displayed by the immediate restoration of
their enemy; and they felt above ten years, under his oppressive
administration, that he was stimulated by revenge, rather than
instructed by misfortune. Their murmurs served only to fortify the
resolution of Justinian; but the resentment of Theodora, disdained a
power before which every knee was bent, and attempted to sow the seeds
of discord between the emperor and his beloved consort. Even Theodora
herself was constrained to dissemble, to wait a favorable moment, and,
by an artful conspiracy, to render John of Coppadocia the accomplice of
his own destruction. [932] At a time when Belisarius, unless he had been
a hero, must have shown himself a rebel, his wife Antonina, who
enjoyed the secret confidence of the empress, communicated his feigned
discontent to Euphemia, the daughter of the praefect; 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 praefect 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 praefect 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 praefect
was diligently copied by the quaestor, the public and private treasurer,
the governors of provinces, and the principal magistrates of the Eastern
empire. [94]

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

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

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

[Footnote 93: A forcible expression.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The principal church, which was dedicated by the founder of
Constantinople to St. Sophia, or the eternal wisdom, had been twice
destroyed by fire; after the exile of John Chrysostom, and during the
Nika of the blue and green factions. No sooner did the tumult subside,
than the Christian populace deplored their sacrilegious rashness; but
they might have rejoiced in the calamity, had they foreseen the glory
of the new temple, which at the end of forty days was strenuously
undertaken by the piety of Justinian. [103] The ruins were cleared away,
a more spacious plan was described, and as it required the consent of
some proprietors of ground, they obtained the most exorbitant terms
from the eager desires and timorous conscience of the monarch. Anthemius
formed the design, and his genius directed the hands of ten thousand
workmen, whose payment in pieces of fine silver was never delayed beyond
the evening. The emperor himself, clad in a linen tunic, surveyed
each day their rapid progress, and encouraged their diligence by his
familiarity, his zeal, and his rewards. The new Cathedral of St. Sophia
was consecrated by the patriarch, five years, eleven months, and ten
days from the first foundation; and in the midst of the solemn festival
Justinian exclaimed with devout vanity, "Glory be to God, who hath
thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work; I have vanquished thee,
O Solomon!" [104] But the pride of the Roman Solomon, before twenty
years had elapsed, was humbled by an earthquake, which overthrew
the eastern part of the dome. Its splendor was again restored by the
perseverance of the same prince; and in the thirty-sixth year of his
reign, Justinian celebrated the second dedication of a temple which
remains, after twelve centuries, a stately monument of his fame. The
architecture of St. Sophia, which is now converted into the principal
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, [105] who beheld
the primitive lustre of St. Sophia, enumerates the colors, the shades,
and the spots of ten or twelve marbles, jaspers, and porphyries, which
nature had profusely diversified, and which were blended and contrasted
as it were by a skilful painter. The triumph of Christ was adorned with
the last spoils of Paganism, but the greater part of these costly stones
was extracted from the quarries of Asia Minor, the isles and continent
of Greece, Egypt, Africa, and Gaul. Eight columns of porphyry, which
Aurelian had placed in the temple of the sun, were offered by the piety
of a Roman matron; eight others of green marble were presented by the
ambitious zeal of the magistrates of Ephesus: both are admirable by
their size and beauty, but every order of architecture disclaims their
fantastic capital. A variety of ornaments and figures was curiously
expressed in mosaic; and the images of Christ, of the Virgin, of saints,
and of angels, which have been defaced by Turkish fanaticism, were
dangerously exposed to the superstition of the Greeks. According to the
sanctity of each object, the precious metals were distributed in thin
leaves or in solid masses. The balustrade of the choir, the capitals
of the pillars, the ornaments of the doors and galleries, were of
gilt bronze; the spectator was dazzled by the glittering aspect of the
cupola; the sanctuary contained forty thousand pounds weight of silver;
and the holy vases and vestments of the altar were of the purest gold,
enriched with inestimable gems. Before the structure of the church had
arisen two cubits above the ground, forty-five thousand two hundred
pounds were already consumed; and the whole expense amounted to three
hundred and twenty thousand: each reader, according to the measure of
his belief, may estimate their value either in gold or silver; but the
sum of one million sterling is the result of the lowest computation.
A magnificent temple is a laudable monument of national taste and
religion; and the enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia might be
tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the workmanship,
of the Deity. Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the
labor, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that
crawls upon the surface of the temple! [Footnote 103: Among the crowd
of ancients and moderns who have celebrated the edifice of St. Sophia,
I shall distinguish and follow, 1. Four original spectators and
historians: Procopius, (de Edific. l. i. c. 1,) Agathias, (l. v. p. 152,
153,) Paul Silentiarius, (in a poem of 1026 hexameters, and calcem Annae
Commen. Alexiad.,) and Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 31.) 2. Two legendary Greeks
of a later period: George Codinus, (de Origin. C. P. p. 64-74,) and the
anonymous writer of Banduri, (Imp. Orient. tom. i. l. iv. p. 65--80.)3.
The great Byzantine antiquarian. Ducange, (Comment. ad Paul Silentiar.
p. 525--598, and C. P. Christ. l. iii. p. 5--78.) 4. Two French
travellers--the one, Peter Gyllius, (de Topograph. C. P. l. ii. c. 3,
4,) in the xvith; the other, Grelot, (Voyage de C. P. p. 95--164, Paris,
1680, in 4to:) he has given plans, prospects, and inside views of St.
Sophia; and his plans, though on a smaller scale, appear more correct
than those of Ducange. I have adopted and reduced the measures of
Grelot: but as no Christian can now ascend the dome, the height is
borrowed from Evagrius, compared with Gyllius, Greaves, and the Oriental
Geographer.]

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

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

1. The Carystian--pale, with iron veins.

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

3. The Porphyry of Egypt--with small stars.

4. The green marble of Laconia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 130: Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 15. De Edific. l. iii. c. 6.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 1321: Firouz the Conqueror--unfortunately so named. See St.
Martin, vol. vi. p. 439.--M.]

[Footnote 1322: Rather Hepthalites.--M.]

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

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

[Footnote 1341: According to the Persian historians, he was misled
by guides who used he old stratagem of Zopyrus. Malcolm, vol. i. p.
101.--M.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1361: Gibbon should have written "some prostitutes." Proc
Pers. vol. 1 p. 7.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 145: Diogen Laert. de Vit. Philosoph. l. v. segm. 37, p. 289.]

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

[Footnote 147: Damascius, in Vit. Isidor. apud Photium, cod. ccxlii. p.
1054.]

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

[Footnote 149: Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 310, &c.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The preparations for the African war were not unworthy of the last
contest between Rome and Carthage. The pride and flower of the army
consisted of the guards of Belisarius, who, according to the pernicious
indulgence of the times, devoted themselves, by a particular oath of
fidelity, to the service of their patrons. Their strength and stature,
for which they had been curiously selected, the goodness of their horses
and armor, and the assiduous practice of all the exercises of war,
enabled them to act whatever their courage might prompt; and their
courage was exalted by the social honor of their rank, and the personal
ambition of favor and fortune. Four hundred of the bravest of the
Heruli marched under the banner of the faithful and active Pharas; their
untractable valor was more highly prized than the tame submission of the
Greeks and Syrians; and of such importance was it deemed to procure a
reenforcement of six hundred Massagetae, or Huns, that they were allured
by fraud and deceit to engage in a naval expedition. Five thousand horse
and ten thousand foot were embarked at Constantinople, for the conquest
of Africa; but the infantry, for the most part levied in Thrace and
Isauria, yielded to the more prevailing use and reputation of the
cavalry; and the Scythian bow was the weapon on which the armies of Rome
were now reduced to place their principal dependence. From a laudable
desire to assert the dignity of his theme, Procopius defends the
soldiers of his own time against the morose critics, who confined
that respectable name to the heavy-armed warriors of antiquity, and
maliciously observed, that the word archer is introduced by Homer [8]
as a term of contempt. "Such contempt might perhaps be due to the naked
youths who appeared on foot in the fields of Troy, and lurking behind
a tombstone, or the shield of a friend, drew the bow-string to their
breast, [9] and dismissed a feeble and lifeless arrow. But our archers
(pursues the historian) are mounted on horses, which they manage with
admirable skill; their head and shoulders are protected by a casque or
buckler; they wear greaves of iron on their legs, and their bodies are
guarded by a coat of mail. On their right side hangs a quiver, a sword
on their left, and their hand is accustomed to wield a lance or javelin
in closer combat. Their bows are strong and weighty; they shoot in every
possible direction, advancing, retreating, to the front, to the rear,
or to either flank; and as they are taught to draw the bow-string not to
the breast, but to the right ear, firm indeed must be the armor that
can resist the rapid violence of their shaft." Five hundred transports,
navigated by twenty thousand mariners of Egypt, Cilicia, and Ionia, were
collected in the harbor of Constantinople. The smallest of these vessels
may be computed at thirty, the largest at five hundred, tons; and the
fair average will supply an allowance, liberal, but not profuse, of
about one hundred thousand tons, [10] for the reception of thirty-five
thousand soldiers and sailors, of five thousand horses, of arms,
engines, and military stores, and of a sufficient stock of water and
provisions for a voyage, perhaps, of three months. The proud galleys,
which in former ages swept the Mediterranean with so many hundred oars,
had long since disappeared; and the fleet of Justinian was escorted only
by ninety-two light brigantines, covered from the missile weapons of
the enemy, and rowed by two thousand of the brave and robust youth
of Constantinople. Twenty-two generals are named, most of whom were
afterwards distinguished in the wars of Africa and Italy: but the
supreme command, both by land and sea, was delegated to Belisarius
alone, with a boundless power of acting according to his discretion,
as if the emperor himself were present. The separation of the naval and
military professions is at once the effect and the cause of the modern
improvements in the science of navigation and maritime war. [Footnote
8: See the preface of Procopius. The enemies of archery might quote the
reproaches of Diomede (Iliad. Delta. 385, &c.) and the permittere vulnera
ventis of Lucan, (viii. 384:) yet the Romans could not despise the
arrows of the Parthians; and in the siege of Troy, Pandarus, Paris, and
Teucer, pierced those haughty warriors who insulted them as women or
children.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1611: Rather into the present Lake of Tunis. Lord Mahon, p.
92.--M.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 1811: 80,000. Hist. Arc. c. 18. Gibbon has been misled by the
translation. See Lord ov. p. 99.--M.]




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part II.

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

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

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

[Footnote 2011: And a few others. Procopius states in his work De Edi
Sciis. l. vi. vol i. p. 5.--M]

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

[Footnote 2012: Gibbon had forgotten that the bearer of the "victorious
letters of his brother" had sailed into the port of Carthage; and that
the letters had fallen into the hands of the Romans. Proc. Vandal. l. i.
c. 23.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their contempt was soon justified by a new example of a vulgar truth;
that flattery adheres to power, and envy to superior merit. The chiefs
of the Roman army presumed to think themselves the rivals of a hero.
Their private despatches maliciously affirmed, that the conqueror of
Africa, strong in his reputation and the public love, conspired to
seat himself on the throne of the Vandals. Justinian listened with too
patient an ear; and his silence was the result of jealousy rather than
of confidence. An honorable alternative, of remaining in the province,
or of returning to the capital, was indeed submitted to the discretion
of Belisarius; but he wisely concluded, from intercepted letters and
the knowledge of his sovereign's temper, that he must either resign his
head, erect his standard, or confound his enemies by his presence
and submission. Innocence and courage decided his choice; his guards,
captives, and treasures, were diligently embarked; and so prosperous was
the navigation, that his arrival at Constantinople preceded any certain
account of his departure from the port of Carthage. Such unsuspecting
loyalty removed the apprehensions of Justinian; envy was silenced and
inflamed by the public gratitude; and the third Africanus obtained the
honors of a triumph, a ceremony which the city of Constantine had never
seen, and which ancient Rome, since the reign of Tiberius, had reserved
for the auspicious arms of the Caesars. [32] From the palace of
Belisarius, the procession was conducted through the principal streets
to the hippodrome; and this memorable day seemed to avenge the injuries
of Genseric, and to expiate the shame of the Romans. The wealth of
nations was displayed, the trophies of martial or effeminate luxury;
rich armor, golden thrones, and the chariots of state which had been
used by the Vandal queen; the massy furniture of the royal banquet, the
splendor of precious stones, the elegant forms of statues and vases, the
more substantial treasure of gold, and the holy vessels of the Jewish
temple, which after their long peregrination were respectfully deposited
in the Christian church of Jerusalem. A long train of the noblest
Vandals reluctantly exposed their lofty stature and manly countenance.
Gelimer slowly advanced: he was clad in a purple robe, and still
maintained the majesty of a king. Not a tear escaped from his eyes, not
a sigh was heard; but his pride or piety derived some secret consolation
from the words of Solomon, [33] which he repeatedly pronounced, Vanity!
vanity! all is vanity! Instead of ascending a triumphal car drawn by
four horses or elephants, the modest conqueror marched on foot at the
head of his brave companions; his prudence might decline an honor too
conspicuous for a subject; and his magnanimity might justly disdain
what had been so often sullied by the vilest of tyrants. The glorious
procession entered the gate of the hippodrome; was saluted by the
acclamations of the senate and people; and halted before the throne
where Justinian and Theodora were seated to receive homage of the
captive monarch and the victorious hero. They both performed the
customary adoration; and falling prostrate on the ground, respectfully
touched the footstool of a prince who had not unsheathed his sword, and
of a prostitute who had danced on the theatre; some gentle violence
was used to bend the stubborn spirit of the grandson of Genseric;
and however trained to servitude, the genius of Belisarius must have
secretly rebelled. He was immediately declared consul for the ensuing
year, and the day of his inauguration resembled the pomp of a second
triumph: his curule chair was borne aloft on the shoulders of captive
Vandals; and the spoils of war, gold cups, and rich girdles, were
profusely scattered among the populace. [Footnote 32: After the title of
imperator had lost the old military sense, and the Roman auspices were
abolished by Christianity, (see La Bleterie, Mem. de l'Academie, tom.
xxi. p. 302--332,) a triumph might be given with less inconsistency to a
private general.]

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




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 84: Procopius has given the best description of the temple of
Janus a national deity of Latium, (Heyne, Excurs. v. ad l. vii. Aeneid.)
It was once a gate in the primitive city of Romulus and Numa, (Nardini,
p. 13, 256, 329.) Virgil has described the ancient rite like a poet
and an antiquarian.] Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers, to
provide all the instruments of attack which antiquity had invented.
Fascines were prepared to fill the ditches, scaling-ladders to ascend
the walls. The largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of four
battering-rams: their heads were armed with iron; they were suspended by
ropes, and each of them was worked by the labor of fifty men. The
lofty wooden turrets moved on wheels or rollers, and formed a spacious
platform of the level of the rampart. On the morning of the nineteenth
day, a general attack was made from the Praenestine gate to the Vatican:
seven Gothic columns, with their military engines, advanced to the
assault; and the Romans, who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and
anxiety to the cheerful assurances of their commander. As soon as the
enemy approached the ditch, Belisarius himself drew the first arrow; and
such was his strength and dexterity, that he transfixed the foremost of
the Barbarian leaders.

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

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

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




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part IV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Justinian first meditated the conquest of Italy, he sent
ambassadors to the kings of the Franks, and adjured them, by the common
ties of alliance and religion, to join in the holy enterprise against
the Arians. The Goths, as their want were more urgent, employed a more
effectual mode of persuasion, and vainly strove, by the gift of lands
and money, to purchase the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of
a light and perfidious nation. [97] But the arms of Belisarius, and the
revolt of the Italians, had no sooner shaken the Gothic monarchy,
than Theodebert of Austrasia, the most powerful and warlike of the
Merovingian kings, was persuaded to succor their distress by an indirect
and seasonable aid. Without expecting the consent of their sovereign,
the thousand Burgundians, his recent subjects, descended from the Alps,
and joined the troops which Vitiges had sent to chastise the revolt of
Milan. After an obstinate siege, the capital of Liguria was reduced
by famine; but no capitulation could be obtained, except for the safe
retreat of the Roman garrison. Datius, the orthodox bishop, who had
seduced his countrymen to rebellion [98] and ruin, escaped to the luxury
and honors of the Byzantine court; [99] but the clergy, perhaps the
Arian clergy, were slaughtered at the foot of their own altars by the
defenders of the Catholic faith. Three hundred thousand males were
reported to be slain; [100] the female sex, and the more precious spoil,
was resigned to the Burgundians; and the houses, or at least the walls,
of Milan, were levelled with the ground. The Goths, in their last
moments, were revenged by the destruction of a city, second only to Rome
in size and opulence, in the splendor of its buildings, or the number
of its inhabitants; and Belisarius sympathized alone in the fate of
his deserted and devoted friends. Encouraged by this successful inroad,
Theodebert himself, in the ensuing spring, invaded the plains of Italy
with an army of one hundred thousand Barbarians. [101] The king, and
some chosen followers, were mounted on horseback, and armed with lances;
the infantry, without bows or spears, were satisfied with a shield, a
sword, and a double-edged battle-axe, which, in their hands, became a
deadly and unerring weapon. Italy trembled at the march of the Franks;
and both the Gothic prince and the Roman general, alike ignorant of
their designs, solicited, with hope and terror, the friendship of these
dangerous allies. Till he had secured the passage of the Po on the
bridge of Pavia, the grandson of Clovis dissembled his intentions, which
he at length declared, by assaulting, almost at the same instant, the
hostile camps of the Romans and Goths. Instead of uniting their arms,
they fled with equal precipitation; and the fertile, though desolate
provinces of Liguria and Aemilia, were abandoned to a licentious host of
Barbarians, whose rage was not mitigated by any thoughts of settlement
or conquest. Among the cities which they ruined, Genoa, not yet
constructed of marble, is particularly enumerated; and the deaths of
thousands, according to the regular practice of war, appear to have
excited less horror than some idolatrous sacrifices of women and
children, which were performed with impunity in the camp of the most
Christian king. If it were not a melancholy truth, that the first and
most cruel sufferings must be the lot of the innocent and helpless,
history might exult in the misery of the conquerors, who, in the midst
of riches, were left destitute of bread or wine, reduced to drink the
waters of the Po, and to feed on the flesh of distempered cattle. The
dysentery swept away one third of their army; and the clamors of his
subjects, who were impatient to pass the Alps, disposed Theodebert to
listen with respect to the mild exhortations of Belisarius. The memory
of this inglorious and destructive warfare was perpetuated on the medals
of Gaul; and Justinian, without unsheathing his sword, assumed the title
of conqueror of the Franks. The Merovingian prince was offended by the
vanity of the emperor; he affected to pity the fallen fortunes of the
Goths; and his insidious offer of a federal union was fortified by
the promise or menace of descending from the Alps at the head of five
hundred thousand men. His plans of conquest were boundless, and perhaps
chimerical. The king of Austrasia threatened to chastise Justinian, and
to march to the gates of Constantinople: [102] he was overthrown and
slain [103] by a wild bull, [104] as he hunted in the Belgic or German
forests. [Footnote 97: This national reproach of perfidy (Procop. Goth.
l. ii. c. 25) offends the ear of La Mothe le Vayer, (tom. viii. p.
163--165,) who criticizes, as if he had not read, the Greek historian.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part V.

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

[Footnote 1041: Auximum, p. 175.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

After the second victory of Belisarius, envy again whispered, Justinian
listened, and the hero was recalled. "The remnant of the Gothic war was
no longer worthy of his presence: a gracious sovereign was impatient to
reward his services, and to consult his wisdom; and he alone was
capable of defending the East against the innumerable armies of Persia."
Belisarius understood the suspicion, accepted the excuse, embarked at
Ravenna his spoils and trophies; and proved, by his ready obedience,
that such an abrupt removal from the government of Italy was not less
unjust than it might have been indiscreet. The emperor received with
honorable courtesy both Vitiges and his more noble consort; and as the
king of the Goths conformed to the Athanasian faith, he obtained, with
a rich inheritance of land in Asia, the rank of senator and patrician.
[110] Every spectator admired, without peril, the strength and stature
of the young Barbarians: they adored the majesty of the throne, and
promised to shed their blood in the service of their benefactor.
Justinian deposited in the Byzantine palace the treasures of the Gothic
monarchy. A flattering senate was sometime admitted to gaze on the
magnificent spectacle; but it was enviously secluded from the public
view: and the conqueror of Italy renounced, without a murmur, perhaps
without a sigh, the well-earned honors of a second triumph. His glory
was indeed exalted above all external pomp; and the faint and hollow
praises of the court were supplied, even in a servile age, by the
respect and admiration of his country. Whenever he appeared in the
streets and public places of Constantinople, Belisarius attracted
and satisfied the eyes of the people. His lofty stature and majestic
countenance fulfilled their expectations of a hero; the meanest of his
fellow-citizens were emboldened by his gentle and gracious demeanor;
and the martial train which attended his footsteps left his person more
accessible than in a day of battle. Seven thousand horsemen, matchless
for beauty and valor, were maintained in the service, and at the private
expense, of the general. [111] Their prowess was always conspicuous in
single combats, or in the foremost ranks; and both parties confessed
that in the siege of Rome, the guards of Belisarius had alone vanquished
the Barbarian host. Their numbers were continually augmented by the
bravest and most faithful of the enemy; and his fortunate captives,
the Vandals, the Moors, and the Goths, emulated the attachment of his
domestic followers. By the union of liberality and justice, he acquired
the love of the soldiers, without alienating the affections of the
people. The sick and wounded were relieved with medicines and money;
and still more efficaciously, by the healing visits and smiles of their
commander. The loss of a weapon or a horse was instantly repaired, and
each deed of valor was rewarded by the rich and honorable gifts of a
bracelet or a collar, which were rendered more precious by the judgment
of Belisarius. He was endeared to the husbandmen by the peace and plenty
which they enjoyed under the shadow of his standard. Instead of being
injured, the country was enriched by the march of the Roman armies;
and such was the rigid discipline of their camp, that not an apple was
gathered from the tree, not a path could be traced in the fields of
corn. Belisarius was chaste and sober. In the license of a military
life, none could boast that they had seen him intoxicated with wine:
the most beautiful captives of Gothic or Vandal race were offered to
his embraces; but he turned aside from their charms, and the husband of
Antonina was never suspected of violating the laws of conjugal fidelity.
The spectator and historian of his exploits has observed, that amidst
the perils of war, he was daring without rashness, prudent without fear,
slow or rapid according to the exigencies of the moment; that in the
deepest distress he was animated by real or apparent hope, but that he
was modest and humble in the most prosperous fortune. By these virtues,
he equalled or excelled the ancient masters of the military art.
Victory, by sea and land, attended his arms. He subdued Africa, Italy,
and the adjacent islands; led away captives the successors of Genseric
and Theodoric; filled Constantinople with the spoils of their palaces;
and in the space of six years recovered half the provinces of the
Western empire. In his fame and merit, in wealth and power, he remained
without a rival, the first of the Roman subjects; the voice of envy
could only magnify his dangerous importance; and the emperor might
applaud his own discerning spirit, which had discovered and raised
the genius of Belisarius. [Footnote 110: Vitiges lived two years at
Constantinople, and imperatoris in affectu convictus (or conjunctus)
rebus excessit humanis. His widow Mathasuenta, the wife and mother of
the patricians, the elder and younger Germanus, united the streams of
Anician and Amali blood, (Jornandes, c. 60, p. 221, in Muratori, tom.
i.)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1161: This and much of the private scandal in the
"Anecdota" is liable to serious doubt. Who reported all these private
conversations, and how did they reach the ears of Procopius?--M.]

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

[Footnote 1163: The expression of Procopius does not appear to me to
mean this kind of torture. Ibid.--M.]

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 18: Procopius, Goth. l. iv. c. 25.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2212: Assena (the wolf) was the name of this chief. Klaproth,
Tabl. Hist. de l'Asie p. 114.--M.]

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

[Footnote 2311: Altai, i. e. Altun Tagh, the Golden Mountain. Von Hammer
Osman Geschichte, vol. i. p. 2.--M.]

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

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

[Footnote 2511: The Mongol Temugin is also, though erroneously,
explained by Rubruquis, a smith. Schmidt, p 876.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 48: Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. DCCXLV. vi. vii.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

The son of Kobad found his kingdom involved in a war with the successor
of Constantine; and the anxiety of his domestic situation inclined
him to grant the suspension of arms, which Justinian was impatient to
purchase. Chosroes saw the Roman ambassadors at his feet. He accepted
eleven thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an endless or indefinite
peace: [57] some mutual exchanges were regulated; the Persian assumed
the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and the demolition of Dara was
suspended, on condition that it should never be made the residence of
the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited,
and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African
conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice
of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage,
which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the
color of friendship. [58] But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the
slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, and
fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself, had been reduced, in three
rapid campaigns, to the obedience of Justinian. Unpractised in the art
of violating treaties, he secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal
Almondar. That prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, [59] had
not been included in the general peace, and still waged an obscure
war against his rival Arethas, the chief of the tribe of Gassan, and
confederate of the empire. The subject of their dispute was an extensive
sheep-walk in the desert to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute
for the license of pasture appeared to attest the rights of Almondar,
while the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of strata, a paved road,
as an unquestionable evidence of the sovereignty and labors of the
Romans. [60] The two monarchs supported the cause of their respective
vassals; and the Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow
and doubtful arbitration, enriched his flying camp with the spoil and
captives of Syria. Instead of repelling the arms, Justinian attempted to
seduce the fidelity of Almondar, while he called from the extremities of
the earth the nations of Aethiopia and Scythia to invade the dominions
of his rival. But the aid of such allies was distant and precarious, and
the discovery of this hostile correspondence justified the complaints
of the Goths and Armenians, who implored, almost at the same time,
the protection of Chosroes. The descendants of Arsaces, who were still
numerous in Armenia, had been provoked to assert the last relics of
national freedom and hereditary rank; and the ambassadors of Vitiges
had secretly traversed the empire to expose the instant, and almost
inevitable, danger of the kingdom of Italy. Their representations were
uniform, weighty, and effectual. "We stand before your throne, the
advocates of your interest as well as of our own. The ambitious and
faithless Justinian aspires to be the sole master of the world. Since
the endless peace, which betrayed the common freedom of mankind, that
prince, your ally in words, your enemy in actions, has alike insulted
his friends and foes, and has filled the earth with blood and confusion.
Has he not violated the privileges of Armenia, the independence of
Colchos, and the wild liberty of the Tzanian mountains? Has he not
usurped, with equal avidity, the city of Bosphorus on the frozen
Maeotis, and the vale of palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea? The
Moors, the Vandals, the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and
each nation has calmly remained the spectator of their neighbor's ruin.
Embrace, O king! the favorable moment; the East is left without defence,
while the armies of Justinian and his renowned general are detained in
the distant regions of the West. If you hesitate or delay, Belisarius
and his victorious troops will soon return from the Tyber to the
Tigris, and Persia may enjoy the wretched consolation of being the last
devoured." [61] By such arguments, Chosroes was easily persuaded to
imitate the example which he condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of
military fame, disdained the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued
his sanguinary commands from the secure station of the Byzantine palace.
[Footnote 57: The endless peace (Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 21)
was concluded or ratified in the vith year, and iiid consulship, of
Justinian, (A.D. 533, between January 1 and April 1. Pagi, tom. ii.
p. 550.) Marcellinus, in his Chronicle, uses the style of Medes and
Persians.]

[Footnote 58: Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 26.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 6211: It is Sura in Procopius. Is it a misprint in
Gibbon?--M.]

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

[Footnote 6213: Lydus asserts that he carried away all the statues,
pictures, and marbles which adorned the city, l. iii. c. 54, p.
246.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 70: Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxi. c. 6. L'Isthme...
couvero de villes et nations qui ne sont plus.]

[Footnote 71: Bougainville, Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions,
tom. xxvi. p. 33, on the African voyage of Hanno and the commerce of
antiquity.]

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

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

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

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

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





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

It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had checked
the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the Egyptian is less
incredible than his successful progress as far as the foot of Mount
Caucasus. They sunk without any memorable effort, under the arms of
Cyrus; followed in distant wars the standard of the great king, and
presented him every fifth year with one hundred boys, and as many
virgins, the fairest produce of the land. [76] Yet he accepted this gift
like the gold and ebony of India, the frankincense of the Arabs, or the
<DW64>s and ivory of Aethiopia: the Colchians were not subject to the
dominion of a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as
substance of national independence. [77] After the fall of the Persian
empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added Colchos to the wide circle
of his dominions on the Euxine; and when the natives presumed to request
that his son might reign over them, he bound the ambitious youth in
chains of gold, and delegated a servant in his place. In pursuit of
Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the banks of the Phasis, and their
galleys ascended the river till they reached the camp of Pompey and his
legions. [78] But the senate, and afterwards the emperors, disdained to
reduce that distant and useless conquest into the form of a province.
The family of a Greek rhetorician was permitted to reign in Colchos and
the adjacent kingdoms from the time of Mark Antony to that of Nero; and
after the race of Polemo [79] was extinct, the eastern Pontus, which
preserved his name, extended no farther than the neighborhood of
Trebizond. Beyond these limits the fortifications of Hyssus, of Apsarus,
of the Phasis, of Dioscurias or Sebastopolis, and of Pityus, were
guarded by sufficient detachments of horse and foot; and six princes of
Colchos received their diadems from the lieutenants of Caesar. One of
these lieutenants, the eloquent and philosophic Arrian, surveyed,
and has described, the Euxine coast, under the reign of Hadrian. The
garrison which he reviewed at the mouth of the Phasis consisted of
four hundred chosen legionaries; the brick walls and towers, the double
ditch, and the military engines on the rampart, rendered this place
inaccessible to the Barbarians: but the new suburbs which had been built
by the merchants and veterans, required, in the opinion of Arrian,
some external defence. [80] As the strength of the empire was gradually
impaired, the Romans stationed on the Phasis were neither withdrawn
nor expelled; and the tribe of the Lazi, [81] whose posterity speak a
foreign dialect, and inhabit the sea coast of Trebizond, imposed their
name and dominion on the ancient kingdom of Colchos. Their independence
was soon invaded by a formidable neighbor, who had acquired, by arms
and treaties, the sovereignty of Iberia. The dependent king of Lazica
received his sceptre at the hands of the Persian monarch, and the
successors of Constantine acquiesced in this injurious claim, which was
proudly urged as a right of immemorial prescription. In the beginning of
the sixth century, their influence was restored by the introduction of
Christianity, which the Mingrelians still profess with becoming zeal,
without understanding the doctrines, or observing the precepts, of their
religion. After the decease of his father, Zathus was exalted to the
regal dignity by the favor of the great king; but the pious youth
abhorred the ceremonies of the Magi, and sought, in the palace of
Constantinople, an orthodox baptism, a noble wife, and the alliance of
the emperor Justin. The king of Lazica was solemnly invested with the
diadem, and his cloak and tunic of white silk, with a gold border,
displayed, in rich embroidery, the figure of his new patron; who soothed
the jealousy of the Persian court, and excused the revolt of Colchos, by
the venerable names of hospitality and religion. The common interest of
both empires imposed on the Colchians the duty of guarding the passes
of Mount Caucasus, where a wall of sixty miles is now defended by the
monthly service of the musketeers of Mingrelia. [82]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 8511: These seem the same people called Suanians, p. 328.--M.]

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

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

[Footnote 8611: According to Agathias, the death of Gubazos preceded the
defeat of Nacoragan. The trial took place after the battle.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 91: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, 681, 294, 295.]

Justinian had been reproached for his alliance with the Aethiopians, as
if he attempted to introduce a people of savage <DW64>s into the system
of civilized society. But the friends of the Roman empire, the Axumites,
or Abyssinians, may be always distinguished from the original natives of
Africa. [92] The hand of nature has flattened the noses of the <DW64>s,
covered their heads with shaggy wool, and tinged their skin with
inherent and indelible blackness. But the olive complexion of the
Abyssinians, their hair, shape, and features, distinctly mark them as
a colony of Arabs; and this descent is confirmed by the resemblance of
language and manners the report of an ancient emigration, and the narrow
interval between the shores of the Red Sea. Christianity had raised that
nation above the level of African barbarism: [93] their intercourse
with Egypt, and the successors of Constantine, [94] had communicated the
rudiments of the arts and sciences; their vessels traded to the Isle of
Ceylon, [95] and seven kingdoms obeyed the Negus or supreme prince of
Abyssinia. The independence of the Homerites, [9511] who reigned in the
rich and happy Arabia, was first violated by an Aethiopian conqueror: he
drew his hereditary claim from the queen of Sheba, [96] and his ambition
was sanctified by religious zeal. The Jews, powerful and active in
exile, had seduced the mind of Dunaan, prince of the Homerites. They
urged him to retaliate the persecution inflicted by the Imperial laws
on their unfortunate brethren: some Roman merchants were injuriously
treated; and several Christians of Negra [97] were honored with the
crown of martyrdom. [98] The churches of Arabia implored the protection
of the Abyssinian monarch. The Negus passed the Red Sea with a fleet
and army, deprived the Jewish proselyte of his kingdom and life, and
extinguished a race of princes, who had ruled above two thousand
years the sequestered region of myrrh and frankincense. The conqueror
immediately announced the victory of the gospel, requested an orthodox
patriarch, and so warmly professed his friendship to the Roman empire,
that Justinian was flattered by the hope of diverting the silk trade
through the channel of Abyssinia, and of exciting the forces of
Arabia against the Persian king. Nonnosus, descended from a family
of ambassadors, was named by the emperor to execute this important
commission. He wisely declined the shorter, but more dangerous, road,
through the sandy deserts of Nubia; ascended the Nile, embarked on the
Red Sea, and safely landed at the African port of Adulis. From Adulis to
the royal city of Axume is no more than fifty leagues, in a direct line;
but the winding passes of the mountains detained the ambassador fifteen
days; and as he traversed the forests, he saw, and vaguely computed,
about five thousand wild elephants. The capital, according to his
report, was large and populous; and the village of Axume is still
conspicuous by the regal coronations, by the ruins of a Christian
temple, and by sixteen or seventeen obelisks inscribed with Grecian
characters. [99] But the Negus [9911] gave audience in the open field,
seated on a lofty chariot, which was drawn by four elephants, superbly
caparisoned, and surrounded by his nobles and musicians. He was clad in
a linen garment and cap, holding in his hand two javelins and a
light shield; and, although his nakedness was imperfectly covered, he
displayed the Barbaric pomp of gold chains, collars, and bracelets,
richly adorned with pearls and precious stones. The ambassador of
Justinian knelt; the Negus raised him from the ground, embraced
Nonnosus, kissed the seal, perused the letter, accepted the Roman
alliance, and, brandishing his weapons, denounced implacable war against
the worshipers of fire. But the proposal of the silk trade was eluded;
and notwithstanding the assurances, and perhaps the wishes, of the
Abyssinians, these hostile menaces evaporated without effect. The
Homerites were unwilling to abandon their aromatic groves, to explore a
sandy desert, and to encounter, after all their fatigues, a formidable
nation from whom they had never received any personal injuries. Instead
of enlarging his conquests, the king of Aethiopia was incapable of
defending his possessions. Abrahah, [9912] the slave of a Roman merchant
of Adulis, assumed the sceptre of the Homerites,; the troops of Africa
were seduced by the luxury of the climate; and Justinian solicited
the friendship of the usurper, who honored with a slight tribute the
supremacy of his prince. After a long series of prosperity, the power of
Abrahah was overthrown before the gates of Mecca; and his children were
despoiled by the Persian conqueror; and the Aethiopians were finally
expelled from the continent of Asia. This narrative of obscure and
remote events is not foreign to the decline and fall of the Roman
empire. If a Christian power had been maintained in Arabia, Mahomet must
have been crushed in his cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a
revolution which has changed the civil and religious state of the world.
[100] [1001]

[Footnote 92: See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 449. This
Arab cast of features and complexion, which has continued 3400 years
(Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Aethiopic. l. i. c. 4) in the colony of
Abyssinia, will justify the suspicion, that race, as well as climate,
must have contributed to form the <DW64>s of the adjacent and similar
regions. * Note: Mr. Salt (Travels, vol. ii. p. 458) considers them
to be distinct from the Arabs--"in feature, color, habit, and
manners."--M.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 96: Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Aethiop. l. ii. c. 3.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

From his new acquisitions, Justinian expected that his avarice, as
well as pride, should be richly gratified. A rapacious minister of the
finances closely pursued the footsteps of Belisarius; and as the old
registers of tribute had been burnt by the Vandals, he indulged his
fancy in a liberal calculation and arbitrary assessment of the wealth
of Africa. [1] The increase of taxes, which were drawn away by a distant
sovereign, and a general resumption of the patrimony or crown lands,
soon dispelled the intoxication of the public joy: but the emperor was
insensible to the modest complaints of the people, till he was awakened
and alarmed by the clamors of military discontent. Many of the Roman
soldiers had married the widows and daughters of the Vandals. As their
own, by the double right of conquest and inheritance, they claimed the
estates which Genseric had assigned to his victorious troops. They heard
with disdain the cold and selfish representations of their officers,
that the liberality of Justinian had raised them from a savage or
servile condition; that they were already enriched by the spoils of
Africa, the treasure, the slaves, and the movables of the vanquished
Barbarians; and that the ancient and lawful patrimony of the emperors
would be applied only to the support of that government on which their
own safety and reward must ultimately depend. The mutiny was secretly
inflamed by a thousand soldiers, for the most part Heruli, who had
imbibed the doctrines, and were instigated by the clergy, of the Arian
sect; and the cause of perjury and rebellion was sanctified by the
dispensing powers of fanaticism. The Arians deplored the ruin of their
church, triumphant above a century in Africa; and they were justly
provoked by the laws of the conqueror, which interdicted the baptism
of their children, and the exercise of all religious worship. Of the
Vandals chosen by Belisarius, the far greater part, in the honors of the
Eastern service, forgot their country and religion. But a generous band
of four hundred obliged the mariners, when they were in sight of the
Isle of <DW26>s, to alter their course: they touched on Peloponnesus,
ran ashore on a desert coast of Africa, and boldly erected, on Mount
Aurasius, the standard of independence and revolt. While the troops of
the provinces disclaimed the commands of their superiors, a conspiracy
was formed at Carthage against the life of Solomon, who filled with
honor the place of Belisarius; and the Arians had piously resolved
to sacrifice the tyrant at the foot of the altar, during the awful
mysteries of the festival of Easter. Fear or remorse restrained the
daggers of the assassins, but the patience of Solomon emboldened their
discontent; and, at the end of ten days, a furious sedition was kindled
in the Circus, which desolated Africa above ten years. The pillage of
the city, and the indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants, were
suspended only by darkness, sleep, and intoxication: the governor, with
seven companions, among whom was the historian Procopius, escaped to
Sicily: two thirds of the army were involved in the guilt of treason;
and eight thousand insurgents, assembling in the field of Bulla, elected
Stoza for their chief, a private soldier, who possessed in a superior
degree the virtues of a rebel. Under the mask of freedom, his eloquence
could lead, or at least impel, the passions of his equals. He raised
himself to a level with Belisarius, and the nephew of the emperor, by
daring to encounter them in the field; and the victorious generals were
compelled to acknowledge that Stoza deserved a purer cause, and a more
legitimate command. Vanquished in battle, he dexterously employed the
arts of negotiation; a Roman army was seduced from their allegiance, and
the chiefs who had trusted to his faithless promise were murdered by his
order in a church of Numidia. When every resource, either of force or
perfidy, was exhausted, Stoza, with some desperate Vandals, retired to
the wilds of Mauritania, obtained the daughter of a Barbarian prince,
and eluded the pursuit of his enemies, by the report of his death. The
personal weight of Belisarius, the rank, the spirit, and the temper, of
Germanus, the emperor's nephew, and the vigor and success of the second
administration of the eunuch Solomon, restored the modesty of the camp,
and maintained for a while the tranquillity of Africa. But the vices
of the Byzantine court were felt in that distant province; the troops
complained that they were neither paid nor relieved, and as soon as the
public disorders were sufficiently mature, Stoza was again alive, in
arms, and at the gates of Carthage. He fell in a single combat, but
he smiled in the agonies of death, when he was informed that his own
javelin had reached the heart of his antagonist. [1001] The example of
Stoza, and the assurance that a fortunate soldier had been the first
king, encouraged the ambition of Gontharis, and he promised, by
a private treaty, to divide Africa with the Moors, if, with their
dangerous aid, he should ascend the throne of Carthage. The feeble
Areobindus, unskilled in the affairs of peace and war, was raised, by
his marriage with the niece of Justinian, to the office of exarch.
He was suddenly oppressed by a sedition of the guards, and his abject
supplications, which provoked the contempt, could not move the pity, of
the inexorable tyrant. After a reign of thirty days, Gontharis himself
was stabbed at a banquet by the hand of Artaban; [1002] and it is
singular enough, that an Armenian prince, of the royal family of
Arsaces, should reestablish at Carthage the authority of the Roman
empire. In the conspiracy which unsheathed the dagger of Brutus against
the life of Caesar, every circumstance is curious and important to the
eyes of posterity; but the guilt or merit of these loyal or rebellious
assassins could interest only the contemporaries of Procopius, who, by
their hopes and fears, their friendship or resentment, were personally
engaged in the revolutions of Africa. [2]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 5: Procopius, Anecdot. c. 18. The series of the African
history at tests this melancholy truth.]

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 6112: This is not quite correct: he had crossed the Po before
the battle of Faenza.--M.]

The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the revolution
which three years' experience had produced in the sentiments of the
Italians. At the command, or at least in the name, of a Catholic
emperor, the pope, [7] their spiritual father, had been torn from the
Roman church, and either starved or murdered on a desolate island. [8]
The virtues of Belisarius were replaced by the various or uniform vices
of eleven chiefs, at Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, &c.,
who abused their authority for the indulgence of lust or avarice. The
improvement of the revenue was committed to Alexander, a subtle scribe,
long practised in the fraud and oppression of the Byzantine schools,
and whose name of Psalliction, the scissors, [9] was drawn from the
dexterous artifice with which he reduced the size without defacing the
figure, of the gold coin. Instead of expecting the restoration of peace
and industry, he imposed a heavy assessment on the fortunes of the
Italians. Yet his present or future demands were less odious than a
prosecution of arbitrary rigor against the persons and property of all
those who, under the Gothic kings, had been concerned in the receipt and
expenditure of the public money. The subjects of Justinian, who escaped
these partial vexations, were oppressed by the irregular maintenance
of the soldiers, whom Alexander defrauded and despised; and their hasty
sallies in quest of wealth, or subsistence, provoked the inhabitants of
the country to await or implore their deliverance from the virtues of a
Barbarian. Totila [10] was chaste and temperate; and none were deceived,
either friends or enemies, who depended on his faith or his clemency. To
the husbandmen of Italy the Gothic king issued a welcome proclamation,
enjoining them to pursue their important labors, and to rest assured,
that, on the payment of the ordinary taxes, they should be defended by
his valor and discipline from the injuries of war. The strong towns he
successively attacked; and as soon as they had yielded to his arms, he
demolished the fortifications, to save the people from the calamities
of a future siege, to deprive the Romans of the arts of defence, and to
decide the tedious quarrel of the two nations, by an equal and honorable
conflict in the field of battle. The Roman captives and deserters were
tempted to enlist in the service of a liberal and courteous adversary;
the slaves were attracted by the firm and faithful promise, that they
should never be delivered to their masters; and from the thousand
warriors of Pavia, a new people, under the same appellation of Goths,
was insensibly formed in the camp of Totila. He sincerely accomplished
the articles of capitulation, without seeking or accepting any sinister
advantage from ambiguous expressions or unforeseen events: the garrison
of Naples had stipulated that they should be transported by sea; the
obstinacy of the winds prevented their voyage, but they were generously
supplied with horses, provisions, and a safe-conduct to the gates of
Rome. The wives of the senators, who had been surprised in the villas
of Campania, were restored, without a ransom, to their husbands; the
violation of female chastity was inexorably chastised with death; and
in the salutary regulation of the edict of the famished Neapolitans, the
conqueror assumed the office of a humane and attentive physician. The
virtues of Totila are equally laudable, whether they proceeded from
true policy, religious principle, or the instinct of humanity: he often
harangued his troops; and it was his constant theme, that national vice
and ruin are inseparably connected; that victory is the fruit of moral
as well as military virtue; and that the prince, and even the people,
are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish. [Footnote
7: Sylverius, bishop of Rome, was first transported to Patara, in Lycia,
and at length starved (sub eorum custodia inedia confectus) in the Isle
of Palmaria, A.D. 538, June 20, (Liberat. in Breviar. c. 22. Anastasius,
in Sylverio. Baronius, A.D. 540, No. 2, 3. Pagi, in Vit. Pont. tom. i.
p. 285, 286.) Procopius (Anecdot. c. 1) accuses only the empress and
Antonina.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 2711: See note 31, p. 268.--M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

[Footnote 34: The Flaminian way, as it is corrected from the
Itineraries, and the best modern maps, by D'Anville, (Analyse de
l'Italie, p. 147--162,) may be thus stated: Rome to Narni, 51 Roman
miles; Terni, 57; Spoleto, 75; Foligno, 88; Nocera, 103; Cagli, 142;
Intercisa, 157; Fossombrone, 160; Fano, 176; Pesaro, 184; Rimini,
208--about 189 English miles. He takes no notice of the death of Totila;
but West selling (Itinerar. p. 614) exchanges, for the field of Taginas,
the unknown appellation of Ptanias, eight miles from Nocera.]

[Footnote 35: Taginae, or rather Tadinae, is mentioned by Pliny; but the
bishopric of that obscure town, a mile from Gualdo, in the plain, was
united, in the year 1007, with that of Nocera. The signs of antiquity
are preserved in the local appellations, Fossato, the camp; Capraia,
Caprea; Bastia, Busta Gallorum. See Cluverius, (Italia Antiqua, l. ii.
c. 6, p. 615, 616, 617,) Lucas Holstenius, (Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 85,
86,) Guazzesi, (Dissertat. p. 177--217, a professed inquiry,) and the
maps of the ecclesiastical state and the march of Ancona, by Le Maire
and Magini.]

[Footnote 36: The battle was fought in the year of Rome 458; and the
consul Decius, by devoting his own life, assured the triumph of his
country and his colleague Fabius, (T. Liv. x. 28, 29.) Procopius
ascribes to Camillus the victory of the Busta Gallorum; and his error is
branded by Cluverius with the national reproach of Graecorum nugamenta.]

[Footnote 3611: "Dog, wilt thou strike thy Lord?" was the more
characteristic exclamation of the Gothic youth. Procop. lib. iv. p.
32.--M.]

[Footnote 37: Theophanes, Chron. p. 193. Hist. Miscell. l. xvi. p. 108.]

As soon as Narses had paid his devotions to the Author of victory, and
the blessed Virgin, his peculiar patroness, [38] he praised, rewarded,
and dismissed the Lombards. The villages had been reduced to ashes by
these valiant savages; they ravished matrons and virgins on the altar;
their retreat was diligently watched by a strong detachment of regular
forces, who prevented a repetition of the like disorders. The victorious
eunuch pursued his march through Tuscany, accepted the submission of
the Goths, heard the acclamations, and often the complaints, of the
Italians, and encompassed the walls of Rome with the remainder of
his formidable host. Round the wide circumference, Narses assigned to
himself, and to each of his lieutenants, a real or a feigned attack,
while he silently marked the place of easy and unguarded entrance.
Neither the fortifications of Hadrian's mole, nor of the port, could
long delay the progress of the conqueror; and Justinian once more
received the keys of Rome, which, under his reign, had been five times
taken and recovered. [39] But the deliverance of Rome was the last
calamity of the Roman people. The Barbarian allies of Narses too
frequently confounded the privileges of peace and war. The despair of
the flying Goths found some consolation in sanguinary revenge; and three
hundred youths of the noblest families, who had been sent as hostages
beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the successor of Totila. The
fate of the senate suggests an awful lesson of the vicissitude of human
affairs. Of the senators whom Totila had banished from their country,
some were rescued by an officer of Belisarius, and transported from
Campania to Sicily; while others were too guilty to confide in the
clemency of Justinian, or too poor to provide horses for their escape
to the sea-shore. Their brethren languished five years in a state of
indigence and exile: the victory of Narses revived their hopes; but
their premature return to the metropolis was prevented by the furious
Goths; and all the fortresses of Campania were stained with patrician
[40] blood. After a period of thirteen centuries, the institution of
Romulus expired; and if the nobles of Rome still assumed the title of
senators, few subsequent traces can be discovered of a public council,
or constitutional order. Ascend six hundred years, and contemplate the
kings of the earth soliciting an audience, as the slaves or freedmen of
the Roman senate! [41]

[Footnote 38: Evagrius, l. iv. c. 24. The inspiration of the Virgin
revealed to Narses the day, and the word, of battle, (Paul Diacon. l.
ii. c. 3, p. 776)]

[Footnote 39: (Procop. Goth. lib. iv. p. 33.)
In the year 536 by Belisarius, in 546 by Totila, in 547 by Belisarius,
in 549 by Totila, and in 552 by Narses. Maltretus had inadvertently
translated sextum; a mistake which he afterwards retracts; out the
mischief was done; and Cousin, with a train of French and Latin readers,
have fallen into the snare.]

[Footnote 40: Compare two passages of Procopius, (l. iii. c. 26, l.
iv. c. 24,) which, with some collateral hints from Marcellinus and
Jornandes, illustrate the state of the expiring senate.]

[Footnote 41: See, in the example of Prusias, as it is delivered in the
fragments of Polybius, (Excerpt. Legat. xcvii. p. 927, 928,) a curious
picture of a royal slave.]

The Gothic war was yet alive. The bravest of the nation retired beyond
the Po; and Teias was unanimously chosen to succeed and revenge their
departed hero. The new king immediately sent ambassadors to implore, or
rather to purchase, the aid of the Franks, and nobly lavished, for the
public safety, the riches which had been deposited in the palace of
Pavia. The residue of the royal treasure was guarded by his brother
Aligern, at Cumaea, in Campania; but the strong castle which Totila had
fortified was closely besieged by the arms of Narses. From the Alps
to the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the Gothic king, by rapid and secret
marches, advanced to the relief of his brother, eluded the vigilance
of the Roman chiefs, and pitched his camp on the banks of the Sarnus or
Draco, [42] which flows from Nuceria into the Bay of Naples. The river
separated the two armies: sixty days were consumed in distant and
fruitless combats, and Teias maintained this important post till he was
deserted by his fleet and the hope of subsistence. With reluctant steps
he ascended the Lactarian mount, where the physicians of Rome, since the
time of Galen, had sent their patients for the benefit of the air and
the milk. [43] But the Goths soon embraced a more generous resolution:
to descend the hill, to dismiss their horses, and to die in arms, and
in the possession of freedom. The king marched at their head, bearing in
his right hand a lance, and an ample buckler in his left: with the
one he struck dead the foremost of the assailants; with the other he
received the weapons which every hand was ambitious to aim against his
life. After a combat of many hours, his left arm was fatigued by the
weight of twelve javelins which hung from his shield. Without moving
from his ground, or suspending his blows, the hero called aloud on his
attendants for a fresh buckler; but in the moment while his side was
uncovered, it was pierced by a mortal dart. He fell; and his head,
exalted on a spear, proclaimed to the nations that the Gothic kingdom
was no more. But the example of his death served only to animate the
companions who had sworn to perish with their leader. They fought till
darkness descended on the earth. They reposed on their arms. The combat
was renewed with the return of light, and maintained with unabated vigor
till the evening of the second day. The repose of a second night, the
want of water, and the loss of their bravest champions, determined the
surviving Goths to accept the fair capitulation which the prudence
of Narses was inclined to propose. They embraced the alternative
of residing in Italy, as the subjects and soldiers of Justinian, or
departing with a portion of their private wealth, in search of some
independent country. [44] Yet the oath of fidelity or exile was alike
rejected by one thousand Goths, who broke away before the treaty was
signed, and boldly effected their retreat to the walls of Pavia. The
spirit, as well as the situation, of Aligern prompted him to imitate
rather than to bewail his brother: a strong and dexterous archer, he
transpierced with a single arrow the armor and breast of his antagonist;
and his military conduct defended Cumae [45] above a year against the
forces of the Romans.

Their industry had scooped the Sibyl's cave [46] into a prodigious mine;
combustible materials were introduced to consume the temporary props:
the wall and the gate of Cumae sunk into the cavern, but the ruins
formed a deep and inaccessible precipice. On the fragment of a rock
Aligern stood alone and unshaken, till he calmly surveyed the hopeless
condition of his country, and judged it more honorable to be the friend
of Narses, than the slave of the Franks. After the death of Teias, the
Roman general separated his troops to reduce the cities of Italy; Lucca
sustained a long and vigorous siege: and such was the humanity or the
prudence of Narses, that the repeated perfidy of the inhabitants could
not provoke him to exact the forfeit lives of their hostages. These
hostages were dismissed in safety; and their grateful zeal at length
subdued the obstinacy of their countrymen. [47]

[Footnote 42: The item of Procopius (Goth. l. iv. c. 35) is evidently
the Sarnus. The text is accused or altered by the rash violence of
Cluverius (l. iv. c. 3. p. 1156:) but Camillo Pellegrini of Naples
(Discorsi sopra la Campania Felice, p. 330, 331) has proved from
old records, that as early as the year 822 that river was called the
Dracontio, or Draconcello.]

[Footnote 43: Galen (de Method. Medendi, l. v. apud Cluver. l. iv. c.
3, p. 1159, 1160) describes the lofty site, pure air, and rich milk, of
Mount Lactarius, whose medicinal benefits were equally known and sought
in the time of Symmachus (l. vi. epist. 18) and Cassiodorus, (Var. xi.
10.) Nothing is now left except the name of the town of Lettere.]

[Footnote 44: Buat (tom. xi. p. 2, &c.) conveys to his favorite Bavaria
this remnant of Goths, who by others are buried in the mountains of Uri,
or restored to their native isle of Gothland, (Mascou, Annot. xxi.)]

[Footnote 45: I leave Scaliger (Animadvers. in Euseb. p. 59) and
Salmasius (Exercitat. Plinian. p. 51, 52) to quarrel about the origin of
Cumae, the oldest of the Greek colonies in Italy, (Strab. l. v. p. 372,
Velleius Paterculus, l. i. c. 4,) already vacant in Juvenal's time,
(Satir. iii.,) and now in ruins.]

[Footnote 46: Agathias (l. i. c. 21) settles the Sibyl's cave under the
wall of Cumae: he agrees with Servius, (ad. l. vi. Aeneid.;) nor can I
perceive why their opinion should be rejected by Heyne, the excellent
editor of Virgil, (tom. ii. p. 650, 651.) In urbe media secreta religio!
But Cumae was not yet built; and the lines (l. vi. 96, 97) would become
ridiculous, if Aeneas were actually in a Greek city.]

[Footnote 47: There is some difficulty in connecting the 35th chapter
of the fourth book of the Gothic war of Procopius with the first book
of the history of Agathias. We must now relinquish the statesman and
soldier, to attend the footsteps of a poet and rhetorician, (l. i. p.
11, l. ii. p. 51, edit. Lonvre.)]

Before Lucca had surrendered, Italy was overwhelmed by a new deluge of
Barbarians. A feeble youth, the grandson of Clovis, reigned over the
Austrasians or oriental Franks. The guardians of Theodebald entertained
with coldness and reluctance the magnificent promises of the Gothic
ambassadors. But the spirit of a martial people outstripped the timid
counsels of the court: two brothers, Lothaire and Buccelin, [48] the
dukes of the Alemanni, stood forth as the leaders of the Italian war;
and seventy-five thousand Germans descended in the autumn from the
Rhaetian Alps into the plain of Milan. The vanguard of the Roman
army was stationed near the Po, under the conduct of Fulcaris, a bold
Herulian, who rashly conceived that personal bravery was the sole duty
and merit of a commander. As he marched without order or precaution
along the Aemilian way, an ambuscade of Franks suddenly rose from the
amphitheatre of Parma; his troops were surprised and routed; but their
leader refused to fly; declaring to the last moment, that death was
less terrible than the angry countenance of Narses. [4811] The death
of Fulcaris, and the retreat of the surviving chiefs, decided the
fluctuating and rebellious temper of the Goths; they flew to the
standard of their deliverers, and admitted them into the cities which
still resisted the arms of the Roman general. The conqueror of Italy
opened a free passage to the irresistible torrent of Barbarians. They
passed under the walls of Cesena, and answered by threats and reproaches
the advice of Aligern, [4812] that the Gothic treasures could no longer
repay the labor of an invasion. Two thousand Franks were destroyed by
the skill and valor of Narses himself, who sailed from Rimini at the
head of three hundred horse, to chastise the licentious rapine of their
march. On the confines of Samnium the two brothers divided their forces.
With the right wing, Buccelin assumed the spoil of Campania, Lucania,
and Bruttium; with the left, Lothaire accepted the plunder of Apulia and
Calabria. They followed the coast of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic,
as far as Rhegium and Otranto, and the extreme lands of Italy were the
term of their destructive progress. The Franks, who were Christians
and Catholics, contented themselves with simple pillage and occasional
murder. But the churches which their piety had spared, were stripped by
the sacrilegious hands of the Alamanni, who sacrificed horses' heads
to their native deities of the woods and rivers; [49] they melted or
profaned the consecrated vessels, and the ruins of shrines and altars
were stained with the blood of the faithful. Buccelin was actuated by
ambition, and Lothaire by avarice. The former aspired to restore the
Gothic kingdom; the latter, after a promise to his brother of speedy
succors, returned by the same road to deposit his treasure beyond the
Alps. The strength of their armies was already wasted by the change of
climate and contagion of disease: the Germans revelled in the vintage of
Italy; and their own intemperance avenged, in some degree, the miseries
of a defenceless people. [4911]

[Footnote 48: Among the fabulous exploits of Buccelin, he discomfited
and slew Belisarius, subdued Italy and Sicily, &c. See in the Historians
of France, Gregory of Tours, (tom. ii. l. iii. c. 32, p. 203,) and
Aimoin, (tom. iii. l. ii. de Gestis Francorum, c. 23, p. 59.)]

[Footnote 4811:.... Agathius.]

[Footnote 4812: Aligern, after the surrender of Cumae, had been sent to
Cesent by Narses. Agathias.--M.]

[Footnote 49: Agathias notices their superstition in a philosophic tone,
(l. i. p. 18.) At Zug, in Switzerland, idolatry still prevailed in
the year 613: St. Columban and St. Gaul were the apostles of that rude
country; and the latter founded a hermitage, which has swelled into an
ecclesiastical principality and a populous city, the seat of freedom and
commerce.]

[Footnote 4911: A body of Lothaire's troops was defeated near Fano, some
were driven down precipices into the sea, others fled to the camp;
many prisoners seized the opportunity of making their escape; and
the Barbarians lost most of their booty in their precipitate retreat.
Agathias.--M.]

At the entrance of the spring, the Imperial troops, who had guarded
the cities, assembled, to the number of eighteen thousand men, in
the neighborhood of Rome. Their winter hours had not been consumed
in idleness. By the command, and after the example, of Narses, they
repeated each day their military exercise on foot and on horseback,
accustomed their ear to obey the sound of the trumpet, and practised the
steps and evolutions of the Pyrrhic dance. From the Straits of Sicily,
Buccelin, with thirty thousand Franks and Alamanni, slowly moved towards
Capua, occupied with a wooden tower the bridge of Casilinum, covered
his right by the stream of the Vulturnus, and secured the rest of his
encampment by a rampart of sharp stakes, and a circle of wagons, whose
wheels were buried in the earth. He impatiently expected the return of
Lothaire; ignorant, alas! that his brother could never return, and that
the chief and his army had been swept away by a strange disease [50] on
the banks of the Lake Benacus, between Trent and Verona. The banners
of Narses soon approached the Vulturnus, and the eyes of Italy were
anxiously fixed on the event of this final contest. Perhaps the talents
of the Roman general were most conspicuous in the calm operations which
precede the tumult of a battle. His skilful movements intercepted the
subsistence of the Barbarian deprived him of the advantage of the bridge
and river, and in the choice of the ground and moment of action reduced
him to comply with the inclination of his enemy. On the morning of the
important day, when the ranks were already formed, a servant, for some
trivial fault, was killed by his master, one of the leaders of the
Heruli. The justice or passion of Narses was awakened: he summoned the
offender to his presence, and without listening to his excuses, gave the
signal to the minister of death. If the cruel master had not infringed
the laws of his nation, this arbitrary execution was not less unjust
than it appears to have been imprudent. The Heruli felt the indignity;
they halted: but the Roman general, without soothing their rage, or
expecting their resolution, called aloud, as the trumpets sounded, that
unless they hastened to occupy their place, they would lose the honor of
the victory. His troops were disposed [51] in a long front, the cavalry
on the wings; in the centre, the heavy-armed foot; the archers and
slingers in the rear. The Germans advanced in a sharp-pointed column, of
the form of a triangle or solid wedge. They pierced the feeble centre
of Narses, who received them with a smile into the fatal snare, and
directed his wings of cavalry insensibly to wheel on their flanks and
encompass their rear. The host of the Franks and Alamanni consisted
of infantry: a sword and buckler hung by their side; and they used, as
their weapons of offence, a weighty hatchet and a hooked javelin, which
were only formidable in close combat, or at a short distance. The flower
of the Roman archers, on horseback, and in complete armor, skirmished
without peril round this immovable phalanx; supplied by active speed
the deficiency of number; and aimed their arrows against a crowd of
Barbarians, who, instead of a cuirass and helmet, were covered by a
loose garment of fur or linen. They paused, they trembled, their ranks
were confounded, and in the decisive moment the Heruli, preferring glory
to revenge, charged with rapid violence the head of the column. Their
leader, Sinbal, and Aligern, the Gothic prince, deserved the prize
of superior valor; and their example excited the victorious troops to
achieve with swords and spears the destruction of the enemy. Buccelin,
and the greatest part of his army, perished on the field of battle, in
the waters of the Vulturnus, or by the hands of the enraged peasants:
but it may seem incredible, that a victory, [52] which no more than five
of the Alamanni survived, could be purchased with the loss of fourscore
Romans. Seven thousand Goths, the relics of the war, defended the
fortress of Campsa till the ensuing spring; and every messenger of
Narses announced the reduction of the Italian cities, whose names were
corrupted by the ignorance or vanity of the Greeks. [53] After the
battle of Casilinum, Narses entered the capital; the arms and treasures
of the Goths, the Franks, and the Alamanni, were displayed; his
soldiers, with garlands in their hands, chanted the praises of the
conqueror; and Rome, for the last time, beheld the semblance of a
triumph.

[Footnote 50: See the death of Lothaire in Agathias (l. ii. p. 38) and
Paul Warnefrid, surnamed Diaconus, (l. ii. c. 3, 775.) The Greek makes
him rave and tear his flesh. He had plundered churches.]

[Footnote 51: Pere Daniel (Hist. de la Milice Francoise, tom. i. p.
17--21) has exhibited a fanciful representation of this battle, somewhat
in the manner of the Chevalier Folard, the once famous editor of
Polybius, who fashioned to his own habits and opinions all the military
operations of antiquity.]

[Footnote 52: Agathias (l. ii. p. 47) has produced a Greek epigram of
six lines on this victory of Narses, which a favorably compared to the
battles of Marathon and Plataea. The chief difference is indeed in
their consequences--so trivial in the former instance--so permanent and
glorious in the latter. Note: Not in the epigram, but in the previous
observations--M.]

[Footnote 53: The Beroia and Brincas of Theophanes or his transcriber
(p. 201) must be read or understood Verona and Brixia.]

After a reign of sixty years, the throne of the Gothic kings was filled
by the exarchs of Ravenna, the representatives in peace and war of the
emperor of the Romans. Their jurisdiction was soon reduced to the limits
of a narrow province: but Narses himself, the first and most powerful
of the exarchs, administered above fifteen years the entire kingdom of
Italy. Like Belisarius, he had deserved the honors of envy, calumny,
and disgrace: but the favorite eunuch still enjoyed the confidence of
Justinian; or the leader of a victorious army awed and repressed the
ingratitude of a timid court. Yet it was not by weak and mischievous
indulgence that Narses secured the attachment of his troops. Forgetful
of the past, and regardless of the future, they abused the present hour
of prosperity and peace. The cities of Italy resounded with the noise
of drinking and dancing; the spoils of victory were wasted in sensual
pleasures; and nothing (says Agathias) remained unless to exchange their
shields and helmets for the soft lute and the capacious hogshead. [54]
In a manly oration, not unworthy of a Roman censor, the eunuch reproved
these disorderly vices, which sullied their fame, and endangered their
safety. The soldiers blushed and obeyed; discipline was confirmed; the
fortifications were restored; a duke was stationed for the defence and
military command of each of the principal cities; [55] and the eye
of Narses pervaded the ample prospect from Calabria to the Alps. The
remains of the Gothic nation evacuated the country, or mingled with
the people; the Franks, instead of revenging the death of Buccelin,
abandoned, without a struggle, their Italian conquests; and the
rebellious Sinbal, chief of the Heruli, was subdued, taken and hung on
a lofty gallows by the inflexible justice of the exarch. [56] The civil
state of Italy, after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed by a
pragmatic sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of the
pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools
and tribunals of the West; he ratified the acts of Theodoric and his
immediate successors, but every deed was rescinded and abolished which
force had extorted, or fear had subscribed, under the usurpation of
Totila. A moderate theory was framed to reconcile the rights of property
with the safety of prescription, the claims of the state with the
poverty of the people, and the pardon of offences with the interest
of virtue and order of society. Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was
degraded to the second rank. Yet the senators were gratified by the
permission of visiting their estates in Italy, and of approaching,
without obstacle, the throne of Constantinople: the regulation of
weights and measures was delegated to the pope and senate; and the
salaries of lawyers and physicians, of orators and grammarians, were
destined to preserve, or rekindle, the light of science in the ancient
capital. Justinian might dictate benevolent edicts, [57] and Narses
might second his wishes by the restoration of cities, and more
especially of churches. But the power of kings is most effectual to
destroy; and the twenty years of the Gothic war had consummated the
distress and depopulation of Italy. As early as the fourth campaign,
under the discipline of Belisarius himself, fifty thousand laborers
died of hunger [58] in the narrow region of Picenum; [59] and a strict
interpretation of the evidence of Procopius would swell the loss of
Italy above the total sum of her present inhabitants. [60]

[Footnote 54: (Agathias, l. ii. p. 48.) In the first scene of Richard
III. our English poet has beautifully enlarged on this idea, for which,
however, he was not indebted to the Byzantine historian.]

[Footnote 55: Maffei has proved, (Verona Illustrata. P. i. l. x. p.
257, 289,) against the common opinion, that the dukes of Italy were
instituted before the conquest of the Lombards, by Narses himself.
In the Pragmatic Sanction, (No. 23,) Justinian restrains the judices
militares.]

[Footnote 56: See Paulus Diaconus, liii. c. 2, p. 776. Menander in
(Excerp Legat. p. 133) mentions some risings in Italy by the Franks, and
Theophanes (p. 201) hints at some Gothic rebellions.]

[Footnote 57: The Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian, which restores and
regulates the civil state of Italy, consists of xxvii. articles: it is
dated August 15, A.D. 554; is addressed to Narses, V. J. Praepositus
Sacri Cubiculi, and to Antiochus, Praefectus Praetorio Italiae; and has
been preserved by Julian Antecessor, and in the Corpus Juris Civilis,
after the novels and edicts of Justinian, Justin, and Tiberius.]

[Footnote 58: A still greater number was consumed by famine in the
southern provinces, without the Ionian Gulf. Acorns were used in the
place of bread. Procopius had seen a deserted orphan suckled by a
she-goat. Seventeen passengers were lodged, murdered, and eaten, by two
women, who were detected and slain by the eighteenth, &c. * Note: Denina
considers that greater evil was inflicted upon Italy by the Urocian
conquest than by any other invasion. Reveluz. d' Italia, t. i. l. v. p.
247.--M.]

[Footnote 59: Quinta regio Piceni est; quondam uberrimae multitudinis,
ccclx. millia Picentium in fidem P. R. venere, (Plin. Hist. Natur.
iii. 18.) In the time of Vespasian, this ancient population was already
diminished.]

[Footnote 60: Perhaps fifteen or sixteen millions. Procopius (Anecdot.
c. 18) computes that Africa lost five millions, that Italy was thrice as
extensive, and that the depopulation was in a larger proportion. But his
reckoning is inflamed by passion, and clouded with uncertainty.]

I desire to believe, but I dare not affirm, that Belisarius sincerely
rejoiced in the triumph of Narses. Yet the consciousness of his own
exploits might teach him to esteem without jealousy the merit of a
rival; and the repose of the aged warrior was crowned by a last victory,
which saved the emperor and the capital. The Barbarians, who annually
visited the provinces of Europe, were less discouraged by some
accidental defeats, than they were excited by the double hope of spoil
and of subsidy. In the thirty-second winter of Justinian's reign, the
Danube was deeply frozen: Zabergan led the cavalry of the Bulgarians,
and his standard was followed by a promiscuous multitude of Sclavonians.
[6011] The savage chief passed, without opposition, the river and the
mountains, spread his troops over Macedonia and Thrace, and advanced
with no more than seven thousand horse to the long wall, which should
have defended the territory of Constantinople. But the works of man are
impotent against the assaults of nature: a recent earthquake had shaken
the foundations of the wall; and the forces of the empire were employed
on the distant frontiers of Italy, Africa, and Persia. The seven
schools, [61] or companies of the guards or domestic troops, had
been augmented to the number of five thousand five hundred men, whose
ordinary station was in the peaceful cities of Asia. But the places
of the brave Armenians were insensibly supplied by lazy citizens, who
purchased an exemption from the duties of civil life, without being
exposed to the dangers of military service. Of such soldiers, few could
be tempted to sally from the gates; and none could be persuaded to
remain in the field, unless they wanted strength and speed to escape
from the Bulgarians. The report of the fugitives exaggerated the numbers
and fierceness of an enemy, who had polluted holy virgins, and abandoned
new-born infants to the dogs and vultures; a crowd of rustics, imploring
food and protection, increased the consternation of the city, and the
tents of Zabergan were pitched at the distance of twenty miles, [62] on
the banks of a small river, which encircles Melanthias, and afterwards
falls into the Propontis. [63] Justinian trembled: and those who had
only seen the emperor in his old age, were pleased to suppose, that he
had lost the alacrity and vigor of his youth. By his command the vessels
of gold and silver were removed from the churches in the neighborhood,
and even the suburbs, of Constantinople; the ramparts were lined with
trembling spectators; the golden gate was crowded with useless generals
and tribunes, and the senate shared the fatigues and the apprehensions
of the populace.

[Footnote 6011: Zabergan was king of the Cutrigours, a tribe of Huns,
who were neither Bulgarians nor Sclavonians. St. Martin, vol. ix. p.
408--420.--M]

[Footnote 61: In the decay of these military schools, the satire
of Procopius (Anecdot. c. 24, Aleman. p. 102, 103) is confirmed and
illustrated by Agathias, (l. v. p. 159,) who cannot be rejected as a
hostile witness.]

[Footnote 62: The distance from Constantinople to Melanthias, Villa
Caesariana, (Ammian. Marcellin. xxx. 11,) is variously fixed at 102 or
140 stadia, (Suidas, tom. ii. p. 522, 523. Agathias, l. v. p. 158,)
or xviii. or xix. miles, (Itineraria, p. 138, 230, 323, 332, and
Wesseling's Observations.) The first xii. miles, as far as Rhegium, were
paved by Justinian, who built a bridge over a morass or gullet between a
lake and the sea, (Procop. de Edif. l. iv. c. 8.)]

[Footnote 63: The Atyras, (Pompon. Mela, l. ii. c. 2, p. 169, edit.
Voss.) At the river's mouth, a town or castle of the same name was
fortified by Justinian, (Procop. de Edif. l. iv. c. 2. Itinerar. p. 570,
and Wesseling.)]

But the eyes of the prince and people were directed to a feeble veteran,
who was compelled by the public danger to resume the armor in which he
had entered Carthage and defended Rome. The horses of the royal stables,
of private citizens, and even of the circus, were hastily collected; the
emulation of the old and young was roused by the name of Belisarius,
and his first encampment was in the presence of a victorious enemy. His
prudence, and the labor of the friendly peasants, secured, with a ditch
and rampart, the repose of the night; innumerable fires, and clouds of
dust, were artfully contrived to magnify the opinion of his strength;
his soldiers suddenly passed from despondency to presumption; and,
while ten thousand voices demanded the battle, Belisarius dissembled his
knowledge, that in the hour of trial he must depend on the firmness of
three hundred veterans. The next morning the Bulgarian cavalry advanced
to the charge. But they heard the shouts of multitudes, they beheld the
arms and discipline of the front; they were assaulted on the flanks by
two ambuscades which rose from the woods; their foremost warriors fell
by the hand of the aged hero and his guards; and the swiftness of their
evolutions was rendered useless by the close attack and rapid pursuit of
the Romans. In this action (so speedy was their flight) the Bulgarians
lost only four hundred horse; but Constantinople was saved; and
Zabergan, who felt the hand of a master, withdrew to a respectful
distance. But his friends were numerous in the councils of the
emperor, and Belisarius obeyed with reluctance the commands of envy and
Justinian, which forbade him to achieve the deliverance of his country.
On his return to the city, the people, still conscious of their danger,
accompanied his triumph with acclamations of joy and gratitude, which
were imputed as a crime to the victorious general. But when he entered
the palace, the courtiers were silent, and the emperor, after a cold and
thankless embrace, dismissed him to mingle with the train of slaves.
Yet so deep was the impression of his glory on the minds of men, that
Justinian, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, was encouraged to
advance near forty miles from the capital, and to inspect in person the
restoration of the long wall. The Bulgarians wasted the summer in the
plains of Thrace; but they were inclined to peace by the failure of
their rash attempts on Greece and the Chersonesus. A menace of killing
their prisoners quickened the payment of heavy ransoms; and the
departure of Zabergan was hastened by the report, that double-prowed
vessels were built on the Danube to intercept his passage. The danger
was soon forgotten; and a vain question, whether their sovereign had
shown more wisdom or weakness, amused the idleness of the city. [64]

[Footnote 64: The Bulgarian war, and the last victory of Belisarius, are
imperfectly represented in the prolix declamation of Agathias. (l. 5, p.
154-174,) and the dry Chronicle of Theophanes, (p. 197 198.)]




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

About two years after the last victory of Belisarius, the emperor
returned from a Thracian journey of health, or business, or devotion.
Justinian was afflicted by a pain in his head; and his private entry
countenanced the rumor of his death. Before the third hour of the day,
the bakers' shops were plundered of their bread, the houses were shut,
and every citizen, with hope or terror, prepared for the impending
tumult. The senators themselves, fearful and suspicious, were convened
at the ninth hour; and the praefect received their commands to visit
every quarter of the city, and proclaim a general illumination for
the recovery of the emperor's health. The ferment subsided; but every
accident betrayed the impotence of the government, and the factious
temper of the people: the guards were disposed to mutiny as often as
their quarters were changed, or their pay was withheld: the frequent
calamities of fires and earthquakes afforded the opportunities of
disorder; the disputes of the blues and greens, of the orthodox and
heretics, degenerated into bloody battles; and, in the presence of the
Persian ambassador, Justinian blushed for himself and for his subjects.
Capricious pardon and arbitrary punishment imbittered the irksomeness
and discontent of a long reign: a conspiracy was formed in the palace;
and, unless we are deceived by the names of Marcellus and Sergius, the
most virtuous and the most profligate of the courtiers were associated
in the same designs. They had fixed the time of the execution; their
rank gave them access to the royal banquet; and their black slaves [65]
were stationed in the vestibule and porticos, to announce the death
of the tyrant, and to excite a sedition in the capital. But the
indiscretion of an accomplice saved the poor remnant of the days of
Justinian. The conspirators were detected and seized, with daggers
hidden under their garments: Marcellus died by his own hand, and Sergius
was dragged from the sanctuary. [66] Pressed by remorse, or tempted
by the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of
Belisarius; and torture forced them to declare that they had acted
according to the secret instructions of their patron. [67] Posterity
will not hastily believe that a hero who, in the vigor of life, had
disdained the fairest offers of ambition and revenge, should stoop to
the murder of his prince, whom he could not long expect to survive. His
followers were impatient to fly; but flight must have been supported by
rebellion, and he had lived enough for nature and for glory. Belisarius
appeared before the council with less fear than indignation: after forty
years' service, the emperor had prejudged his guilt; and injustice was
sanctified by the presence and authority of the patriarch. The life of
Belisarius was graciously spared; but his fortunes were sequestered,
and, from December to July, he was guarded as a prisoner in his own
palace. At length his innocence was acknowledged; his freedom and honor
were restored; and death, which might be hastened by resentment and
grief, removed him from the world in about eight months after his
deliverance. The name of Belisarius can never die but instead of the
funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I
only read, that his treasures, the spoil of the Goths and Vandals,
were immediately confiscated by the emperor. Some decent portion was
reserved, however for the use of his widow: and as Antonina had much
to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the
foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the
fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. [68] That he was
deprived of his eyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread, [6811] "Give
a penny to Belisarius the general!" is a fiction of later times, [69]
which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the
vicissitudes of fortune. [70]

[Footnote 65: They could scarcely be real Indians; and the Aethiopians,
sometimes known by that name, were never used by the ancients as guards
or followers: they were the trifling, though costly objects of female
and royal luxury, (Terent. Eunuch. act. i. scene ii Sueton. in August.
c. 83, with a good note of Casaubon, in Caligula, c. 57.)]

[Footnote 66: The Sergius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 21, 22, Anecdot. c. 5)
and Marcellus (Goth. l. iii. c. 32) are mentioned by Procopius. See
Theophanes, p. 197, 201. * Note: Some words, "the acts of," or "the
crimes cf," appear to have false from the text. The omission is in all
the editions I have consulted.--M.]

[Footnote 67: Alemannus, (p. quotes an old Byzantian Ms., which has been
printed in the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)]

[Footnote 68: Of the disgrace and restoration of Belisarius, the genuine
original record is preserved in the Fragment of John Malala (tom. ii. p.
234--243) and the exact Chronicle of Theophanes, (p. 194--204.) Cedrenus
(Compend. p. 387, 388) and Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 69) seem to
hesitate between the obsolete truth and the growing falsehood.]

[Footnote 6811: Le Beau, following Allemannus, conceives that Belisarius
was confounded with John of Cappadocia, who was thus reduced to beggary,
(vol. ix. p. 58, 449.) Lord Mahon has, with considerable learning,
and on the authority of a yet unquoted writer of the eleventh century,
endeavored to reestablish the old tradition. I cannot acknowledge that
I have been convinced, and am inclined to subscribe to the theory of Le
Beau.--M.]

[Footnote 69: The source of this idle fable may be derived from a
miscellaneous work of the xiith century, the Chiliads of John Tzetzes,
a monk, (Basil. 1546, ad calcem Lycophront. Colon. Allobrog. 1614, in
Corp. Poet. Graec.) He relates the blindness and beggary of Belisarius
in ten vulgar or political verses, (Chiliad iii. No. 88, 339--348, in
Corp. Poet. Graec. tom. ii. p. 311.) This moral or romantic tale
was imported into Italy with the language and manuscripts of Greece;
repeated before the end of the xvth century by Crinitus, Pontanus, and
Volaterranus, attacked by Alciat, for the honor of the law; and defended
by Baronius, (A.D. 561, No. 2, &c.,) for the honor of the church. Yet
Tzetzes himself had read in other chronicles, that Belisarius did not
lose his sight, and that he recovered his fame and fortunes. * Note:
I know not where Gibbon found Tzetzes to be a monk; I suppose he
considered his bad verses a proof of his monachism. Compare to Gerbelius
in Kiesling's edition of Tzetzes.--M.]

[Footnote 70: The statue in the villa Borghese at Rome, in a sitting
posture, with an open hand, which is vulgarly given to Belisarius, may
be ascribed with more dignity to Augustus in the act of propitiating
Nemesis, (Winckelman, Hist. de l'Art, tom. iii. p. 266.) Ex nocturno
visu etiam stipem, quotannis, die certo, emendicabat a populo, cavana
manum asses porrigentibus praebens, (Sueton. in August. c. 91, with an
excellent note of Casaubon.) * Note: Lord Mahon abandons the statue, as
altogether irreconcilable with the state of the arts at this period, (p.
472.)--M.]

If the emperor could rejoice in the death of Belisarius, he enjoyed
the base satisfaction only eight months, the last period of a reign
of thirty-eight years, and a life of eighty-three years. It would
be difficult to trace the character of a prince who is not the most
conspicuous object of his own times: but the confessions of an enemy may
be received as the safest evidence of his virtues. The resemblance of
Justinian to the bust of Domitian, is maliciously urged; [71] with
the acknowledgment, however, of a well-proportioned figure, a ruddy
complexion, and a pleasing countenance. The emperor was easy of access,
patient of hearing, courteous and affable in discourse, and a master
of the angry passions which rage with such destructive violence in the
breast of a despot. Procopius praises his temper, to reproach him with
calm and deliberate cruelty: but in the conspiracies which attacked his
authority and person, a more candid judge will approve the justice, or
admire the clemency, of Justinian. He excelled in the private virtues
of chastity and temperance: but the impartial love of beauty would have
been less mischievous than his conjugal tenderness for Theodora; and his
abstemious diet was regulated, not by the prudence of a philosopher, but
the superstition of a monk. His repasts were short and frugal: on solemn
fasts, he contented himself with water and vegetables; and such was his
strength, as well as fervor, that he frequently passed two days, and as
many nights, without tasting any food. The measure of his sleep was not
less rigorous: after the repose of a single hour, the body was awakened
by the soul, and, to the astonishment of his chamberlain, Justinian
walked or studied till the morning light. Such restless application
prolonged his time for the acquisition of knowledge [72] and the
despatch of business; and he might seriously deserve the reproach of
confounding, by minute and preposterous diligence, the general order
of his administration. The emperor professed himself a musician and
architect, a poet and philosopher, a lawyer and theologian; and if he
failed in the enterprise of reconciling the Christian sects, the
review of the Roman jurisprudence is a noble monument of his spirit and
industry. In the government of the empire, he was less wise, or less
successful: the age was unfortunate; the people was oppressed and
discontented; Theodora abused her power; a succession of bad ministers
disgraced his judgment; and Justinian was neither beloved in his life,
nor regretted at his death. The love of fame was deeply implanted in his
breast, but he condescended to the poor ambition of titles, honors,
and contemporary praise; and while he labored to fix the admiration, he
forfeited the esteem and affection, of the Romans.

The design of the African and Italian wars was boldly conceived and
executed; and his penetration discovered the talents of Belisarius
in the camp, of Narses in the palace. But the name of the emperor is
eclipsed by the names of his victorious generals; and Belisarius still
lives, to upbraid the envy and ingratitude of his sovereign. The partial
favor of mankind applauds the genius of a conqueror, who leads and
directs his subjects in the exercise of arms. The characters of Philip
the Second and of Justinian are distinguished by the cold ambition which
delights in war, and declines the dangers of the field. Yet a colossal
statue of bronze represented the emperor on horseback, preparing to
march against the Persians in the habit and armor of Achilles. In the
great square before the church of St. Sophia, this monument was raised
on a brass column and a stone pedestal of seven steps; and the pillar of
Theodosius, which weighed seven thousand four hundred pounds of silver,
was removed from the same place by the avarice and vanity of Justinian.
Future princes were more just or indulgent to his memory; the elder
Andronicus, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, repaired and
beautified his equestrian statue: since the fall of the empire it has
been melted into cannon by the victorious Turks. [73]

[Footnote 71: The rubor of Domitian is stigmatized, quaintly enough,
by the pen of Tacitus, (in Vit. Agricol. c. 45;) and has been likewise
noticed by the younger Pliny, (Panegyr. c. 48,) and Suetonius, (in
Domitian, c. 18, and Casaubon ad locum.) Procopius (Anecdot. c. 8)
foolishly believes that only one bust of Domitian had reached the vith
century.]

[Footnote 72: The studies and science of Justinian are attested by the
confession (Anecdot. c. 8, 13) still more than by the praises (Gothic.
l. iii. c. 31, de Edific. l. i. Proem. c. 7) of Procopius. Consult the
copious index of Alemannus, and read the life of Justinian by Ludewig,
(p. 135--142.)]

[Footnote 73: See in the C. P. Christiana of Ducange (l. i. c. 24,
No. 1) a chain of original testimonies, from Procopius in the vith, to
Gyllius in the xvith century.]

I shall conclude this chapter with the comets, the earthquakes, and the
plague, which astonished or afflicted the age of Justinian. I. In the
fifth year of his reign, and in the month of September, a comet [74] was
seen during twenty days in the western quarter of the heavens, and which
shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was
in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary; the
size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the
west, and it remained visible above forty days. The nations, who gazed
with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful
influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The
astronomers dissembled their ignorance of the nature of these blazing
stars, which they affected to represent as the floating meteors of the
air; and few among them embraced the simple notion of Seneca and the
Chaldeans, that they are only planets of a longer period and more
eccentric motion. [75] Time and science have justified the conjectures
and predictions of the Roman sage: the telescope has opened new worlds
to the eyes of astronomers; [76] and, in the narrow space of history
and fable, one and the same comet is already found to have revisited the
earth in seven equal revolutions of five hundred and seventy-five years.
The first, [77] which ascends beyond the Christian aera one thousand
seven hundred and sixty-seven years, is coeval with Ogyges, the father
of Grecian antiquity. And this appearance explains the tradition which
Varro has preserved, that under his reign the planet Venus changed her
color, size, figure, and course; a prodigy without example either in
past or succeeding ages. [78] The second visit, in the year eleven
hundred and ninety-three, is darkly implied in the fable of Electra, the
seventh of the Pleiads, who have been reduced to six since the time of
the Trojan war. That nymph, the wife of Dardanus, was unable to support
the ruin of her country: she abandoned the dances of her sister
orbs, fled from the zodiac to the north pole, and obtained, from her
dishevelled locks, the name of the comet. The third period expires in
the year six hundred and eighteen, a date that exactly agrees with the
tremendous comet of the Sibyl, and perhaps of Pliny, which arose in the
West two generations before the reign of Cyrus. The fourth apparition,
forty-four years before the birth of Christ, is of all others the most
splendid and important. After the death of Caesar, a long-haired star
was conspicuous to Rome and to the nations, during the games which were
exhibited by young Octavian in honor of Venus and his uncle. The vulgar
opinion, that it conveyed to heaven the divine soul of the dictator, was
cherished and consecrated by the piety of a statesman; while his secret
superstition referred the comet to the glory of his own times. [79] The
fifth visit has been already ascribed to the fifth year of Justinian,
which coincides with the five hundred and thirty-first of the Christian
aera. And it may deserve notice, that in this, as in the preceding
instance, the comet was followed, though at a longer interval, by a
remarkable paleness of the sun. The sixth return, in the year eleven
hundred and six, is recorded by the chronicles of Europe and China: and
in the first fervor of the crusades, the Christians and the Mahometans
might surmise, with equal reason, that it portended the destruction of
the Infidels. The seventh phenomenon, of one thousand six hundred
and eighty, was presented to the eyes of an enlightened age. [80] The
philosophy of Bayle dispelled a prejudice which Milton's muse had
so recently adorned, that the comet, "from its horrid hair shakes
pestilence and war." [81] Its road in the heavens was observed with
exquisite skill by Flamstead and Cassini: and the mathematical science
of Bernoulli, Newton [8111], and Halley, investigated the laws of
its revolutions. At the eighth period, in the year two thousand three
hundred and fifty-five, their calculations may perhaps be verified
by the astronomers of some future capital in the Siberian or American
wilderness.

[Footnote 74: The first comet is mentioned by John Malala (tom. ii. p.
190, 219) and Theophanes, (p. 154;) the second by Procopius, (Persic. l.
ii. 4.) Yet I strongly suspect their identity. The paleness of the
sun sum Vandal. (l. ii. c. 14) is applied by Theophanes (p. 158) to a
different year. Note: See Lydus de Ostentis, particularly c 15, in which
the author begins to show the signification of comets according to
the part of the heavens in which they appear, and what fortunes they
prognosticate to the Roman empire and their Persian enemies. The
chapter, however, is imperfect. (Edit. Neibuhr, p. 290.)--M.]

[Footnote 75: Seneca's viith book of Natural Questions displays, in the
theory of comets, a philosophic mind. Yet should we not too candidly
confound a vague prediction, a venient tempus, &c., with the merit of
real discoveries.]

[Footnote 76: Astronomers may study Newton and Halley. I draw my humble
science from the article Comete, in the French Encyclopedie, by M.
d'Alembert.]

[Footnote 77: Whiston, the honest, pious, visionary Whiston, had
fancied for the aera of Noah's flood (2242 years before Christ) a prior
apparition of the same comet which drowned the earth with its tail.]

[Footnote 78: A Dissertation of Freret (Memoires de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 357-377) affords a happy union of philosophy
and erudition. The phenomenon in the time of Ogyges was preserved by
Varro, (Apud Augustin. de Civitate Dei, xxi. 8,) who quotes Castor,
Dion of Naples, and Adastrus of Cyzicus--nobiles mathematici. The two
subsequent periods are preserved by the Greek mythologists and the
spurious books of Sibylline verses.]

[Footnote 79: Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 23) has transcribed the original
memorial of Augustus. Mairan, in his most ingenious letters to the
P. Parennin, missionary in China, removes the games and the comet of
September, from the year 44 to the year 43, before the Christian
aera; but I am not totally subdued by the criticism of the astronomer,
(Opuscules, p. 275 )]

[Footnote 80: This last comet was visible in the month of December,
1680. Bayle, who began his Pensees sur la Comete in January, 1681,
(Oeuvres, tom. iii.,) was forced to argue that a supernatural comet
would have confirmed the ancients in their idolatry. Bernoulli (see his
Eloge, in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 99) was forced to allow that the tail
though not the head, was a sign of the wrath of God.]

[Footnote 81: Paradise Lost was published in the year 1667; and the
famous lines (l. ii. 708, &c.) which startled the licenser, may allude
to the recent comet of 1664, observed by Cassini at Rome in the presence
of Queen Christina, (Fontenelle, in his Eloge, tom. v. p. 338.) Had
Charles II. betrayed any symptoms of curiosity or fear?]

[Footnote 8111: Compare Pingre, Histoire des Cometes.--M.]

II. The near approach of a comet may injure or destroy the globe which
we inhabit; but the changes on its surface have been hitherto produced
by the action of volcanoes and earthquakes. [82] The nature of the soil
may indicate the countries most exposed to these formidable concussions,
since they are caused by subterraneous fires, and such fires are kindled
by the union and fermentation of iron and sulphur. But their times
and effects appear to lie beyond the reach of human curiosity; and the
philosopher will discreetly abstain from the prediction of earthquakes,
till he has counted the drops of water that silently filtrate on
the inflammable mineral, and measured the caverns which increase by
resistance the explosion of the imprisoned air. Without assigning the
cause, history will distinguish the periods in which these calamitous
events have been rare or frequent, and will observe, that this fever of
the earth raged with uncommon violence during the reign of Justinian.
[83] Each year is marked by the repetition of earthquakes, of such
duration, that Constantinople has been shaken above forty days; of such
extent, that the shock has been communicated to the whole surface of the
globe, or at least of the Roman empire. An impulsive or vibratory
motion was felt: enormous chasms were opened, huge and heavy bodies
were discharged into the air, the sea alternately advanced and retreated
beyond its ordinary bounds, and a mountain was torn from Libanus, [84]
and cast into the waves, where it protected, as a mole, the new harbor
of Botrys [85] in Phoenicia. The stroke that agitates an ant-hill may
crush the insect-myriads in the dust; yet truth must extort confession
that man has industriously labored for his own destruction. The
institution of great cities, which include a nation within the limits of
a wall, almost realizes the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had
but one neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have
perished in the earthquake of Antioch, whose domestic multitudes were
swelled by the conflux of strangers to the festival of the Ascension.
The loss of Berytus [86] was of smaller account, but of much greater
value. That city, on the coast of Phoenicia, was illustrated by the
study of the civil law, which opened the surest road to wealth and
dignity: the schools of Berytus were filled with the rising spirits of
the age, and many a youth was lost in the earthquake, who might have
lived to be the scourge or the guardian of his country. In these
disasters, the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a
savage, or the tent of an Arab, may be thrown down without injury to the
inhabitant; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their
Spanish conquerors, who with so much cost and labor erected their own
sepulchres. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own head:
a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edifices,
and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by the innumerable fires
which are necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great
city. Instead of the mutual sympathy which might comfort and assist the
distressed, they dreadfully experience the vices and passions which are
released from the fear of punishment: the tottering houses are pillaged
by intrepid avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the
victim; and the earth often swallows the assassin, or the ravisher,
in the consummation of their crimes. Superstition involves the present
danger with invisible terrors; and if the image of death may sometimes
be subservient to the virtue or repentance of individuals, an affrighted
people is more forcibly moved to expect the end of the world, or to
deprecate with servile homage the wrath of an avenging Deity.

[Footnote 82: For the cause of earthquakes, see Buffon, (tom. i. p. 502--536
Supplement a l'Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 382-390, edition in 4to.,
Valmont de Bomare, Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, Tremblemen de
Terre, Pyrites,) Watson, (Chemical Essays, tom. i. p. 181--209.)]

[Footnote 83: The earthquakes that shook the Roman world in the reign of
Justinian are described or mentioned by Procopius, (Goth. l. iv. c. 25
Anecdot. c. 18,) Agathias, (l. ii. p. 52, 53, 54, l. v. p. 145-152,)
John Malala, (Chron. tom. ii. p. 140-146, 176, 177, 183, 193, 220, 229,
231, 233, 234,) and Theophanes, (p. 151, 183, 189, 191-196.) * Note *:
Compare Daubeny on Earthquakes, and Lyell's Geology, vol. ii. p. 161 et
seq.--M]

[Footnote 84: An abrupt height, a perpendicular cape, between Aradus
and Botrys (Polyb. l. v. p. 411. Pompon. Mela, l. i. c. 12, p. 87,
cum Isaac. Voss. Observat. Maundrell, Journey, p. 32, 33. Pocock's
Description, vol. ii. p. 99.)]

[Footnote 85: Botrys was founded (ann. ante Christ. 935--903) by
Ithobal, king of Tyre, (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 387, 388.) Its poor
representative, the village of Patrone, is now destitute of a harbor.]

[Footnote 86: The university, splendor, and ruin of Berytus are
celebrated by Heineccius (p. 351--356) as an essential part of the
history of the Roman law. It was overthrown in the xxvth year of
Justinian, A. D 551, July 9, (Theophanes, p. 192;) but Agathias (l.
ii. p. 51, 52) suspends the earthquake till he has achieved the Italian
war.]

III. Aethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized, in every age, as
the original source and seminary of the plague. [87] In a damp, hot,
stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of
animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less
destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal
disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his
successors, [88] first appeared in the neighborhood of Pelusium, between
the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence,
tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria,
Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of
Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second
year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the
pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with
the eyes of a physician, [89] has emulated the skill and diligence
of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. [90] The
infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy,
and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the
stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds,
in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight
fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the color of the
patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next,
or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands,
particularly those of the groin, of the armpits, and under the ear; and
when these buboes or tumors were opened, they were found to contain a
coal, or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a
just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and
natural discharge of the morbid humor. But if they continued hard and
dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly
the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or
delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or
carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and in the constitutions
too feeble to produce an irruption, the vomiting of blood was followed
by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was
generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother,
and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was
the most perilous season; and the female sex was less susceptible than
the male: but every rank and profession was attacked with indiscriminate
rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their
speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. [91] The
physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful; but their art
was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the
disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the
event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery.
The order of funerals, and the right of sepulchres, were confounded:
those who were left without friends or servants, lay unburied in the
streets, or in their desolate houses; and a magistrate was authorized to
collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land
or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the
city. Their own danger, and the prospect of public distress, awakened
some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of mankind: the confidence
of health again revived their passions and habits; but philosophy must
disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were
guarded by the peculiar favor of fortune or Providence. He forgot, or
perhaps he secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the
person of Justinian himself; but the abstemious diet of the emperor may
suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and honorable cause
for his recovery. [92] During his sickness, the public consternation
was expressed in the habits of the citizens; and their idleness and
despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East.
[Footnote 87: I have read with pleasure Mead's short, but elegant,
treatise concerning Pestilential Disorders, the viiith edition, London,
1722.]

[Footnote 88: The great plague which raged in 542 and the following
years (Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p. 518) must be traced in Procopius,
(Persic. l. ii. c. 22, 23,) Agathias, (l. v. p. 153, 154,) Evagrius,
(l. iv. c. 29,) Paul Diaconus, (l. ii. c. iv. p. 776, 777,) Gregory of
Tours, (tom. ii. l. iv. c. 5, p 205,) who styles it Lues Inguinaria, and
the Chronicles of Victor Tunnunensis, (p. 9, in Thesaur. Temporum,) of
Marcellinus, (p. 54,) and of Theophanes, (p. 153.)]

[Footnote 89: Dr. Friend (Hist. Medicin. in Opp. p. 416--420, Lond.
1733) is satisfied that Procopius must have studied physic, from his
knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words that are now
scientific were common and popular in the Greek idiom.]

[Footnote 90: See Thucydides, l. ii. c. 47--54, p. 127--133, edit.
Duker, and the poetical description of the same plague by Lucretius.
(l. vi. 1136--1284.) I was indebted to Dr. Hunter for an elaborate
commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of 600 pages, (Venet.
1603, apud Juntas,) which was pronounced in St. Mark's Library by Fabius
Paullinus Utinensis, a physician and philosopher.]

[Footnote 91: Thucydides (c. 51) affirms, that the infection could only
be once taken; but Evagrius, who had family experience of the plague,
observes, that some persons, who had escaped the first, sunk under the
second attack; and this repetition is confirmed by Fabius Paullinus,
(p. 588.) I observe, that on this head physicians are divided; and the
nature and operation of the disease may not always be similar.]

[Footnote 92: It was thus that Socrates had been saved by his
temperance, in the plague of Athens, (Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic. ii. l.)
Dr. Mead accounts for the peculiar salubrity of religious houses, by the
two advantages of seclusion and abstinence, (p. 18, 19.)]

Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague; which, by mutual
respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and
stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and
tremble, it is singular, that the existence of a real danger should have
been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. [93]
Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short
and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by
the closest conversation: [94] and this persuasion might support the
assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman
prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal
security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the
progress of the contagion; and those salutary precautions to which
Europe is indebted for her safety, were unknown to the government
of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent
intercourse of the Roman provinces: from Persia to France, the nations
were mingled and infected by wars and emigrations; and the pestilential
odor which lurks for years in a bale of cotton was imported, by
the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. The mode of its
propagation is explained by the remark of Procopius himself, that
it always spread from the sea-coast to the inland country: the most
sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the places
which had escaped the fury of its first passage were alone exposed to
the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might diffuse that
subtile venom; but unless the atmosphere be previously disposed for
its reception, the plague would soon expire in the cold or temperate
climates of the earth. Such was the universal corruption of the air,
that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian
was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time,
its first malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately
languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous
period of fifty-two years, that mankind recovered their health, or the
air resumed its pure and salubrious quality.

No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a
conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary
mortality. I only find, that during three months, five, and at length
ten, thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; that many cities
of the East were left vacant, and that in several districts of Italy the
harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of
war, pestilence, and famine, afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and
his reign is disgraced by the visible decrease of the human species,
which has never been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the
globe. [95]

[Footnote 93: Mead proves that the plague is contagious from Thucydides,
Lacretius, Aristotle, Galen, and common experience, (p. 10--20;) and
he refutes (Preface, p. 2--13) the contrary opinion of the French
physicians who visited Marseilles in the year 1720. Yet these were the
recent and enlightened spectators of a plague which, in a few months,
swept away 50,000 inhabitants (sur le Peste de Marseille, Paris, 1786)
of a city that, in the present hour of prosperity and trade contains no
more then 90,000 souls, (Necker, sur les Finances, tom. i. p. 231.)]

[Footnote 94: The strong assertions of Procopius are overthrown by the
subsequent experience of Evagrius.]

[Footnote 95: After some figures of rhetoric, the sands of the sea, &c.,
Procopius (Anecdot. c. 18) attempts a more definite account; that it had
been exterminated under the reign of the Imperial demon. The expression
is obscure in grammar and arithmetic and a literal interpretation would
produce several millions of millions Alemannus (p. 80) and Cousin (tom.
iii. p. 178) translate this passage, "two hundred millions:" but I
am ignorant of their motives. The remaining myriad of myriads, would
furnish one hundred millions, a number not wholly inadmissible.]





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

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

Note: In the notes to this important chapter, which is received as
the text-book on Civil Law in some of the foreign universities, I have
consulted,

I. the newly-discovered Institutes of Gaius, (Gaii Institutiones, ed.
Goeschen, Berlin, 1824,) with some other fragments of the Roman law,
(Codicis Theodosiani Fragmenta inedita, ab Amadeo Peyron. Turin, 1824.)

II. The History of the Roman Law, by Professor Hugo, in the French
translation of M. Jourdan. Paris, 1825.

III. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 6 bande,
Heidelberg, 1815.

IV. Walther, Romische Rechts-Geschichte, Bonn. 1834. But I am
particularly indebted to an edition of the French translation of this
chapter, with additional notes, by one of the most learned civilians of
Europe, Professor Warnkonig, published at Liege, 1821. I have inserted
almost the whole of these notes, which are distinguished by the letter
W.--M. The vain titles of the victories of Justinian are crumbled
into dust; but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair and
everlasting monument. Under his reign, and by his care, the civil
jurisprudence was digested in the immortal works of the Code, the
Pandects, and the Institutes: [1] the public reason of the Romans has
been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions
of Europe, [2], and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or
obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince who
connects his own reputation with the honor or interest of a perpetual
order of men. The defence of their founder is the first cause, which
in every age has exercised the zeal and industry of the civilians. They
piously commemorate his virtues; dissemble or deny his failings; and
fiercely chastise the guilt or folly of the rebels, who presume to sully
the majesty of the purple. The idolatry of love has provoked, as it
usually happens, the rancor of opposition; the character of Justinian
has been exposed to the blind vehemence of flattery and invective; and
the injustice of a sect (the Anti-Tribonians,) has refused all praise
and merit to the prince, his ministers, and his laws. [3] Attached to no
party, interested only for the truth and candor of history, and
directed by the most temperate and skilful guides, [4] I enter with
just diffidence on the subject of civil law, which has exhausted so many
learned lives, and clothed the walls of such spacious libraries. In
a single, if possible in a short, chapter, I shall trace the Roman
jurisprudence from Romulus to Justinian, [5] appreciate the labors of
that emperor, and pause to contemplate the principles of a science so
important to the peace and happiness of society. The laws of a nation
form the most instructive portion of its history; and although I have
devoted myself to write the annals of a declining monarchy, I shall
embrace the occasion to breathe the pure and invigorating air of the
republic.

[Footnote 1: The civilians of the darker ages have established an absurd
and incomprehensible mode of quotation, which is supported by authority
and custom. In their references to the Code, the Pandects, and the
Institutes, they mention the number, not of the book, but only of the
law; and content themselves with reciting the first words of the title
to which it belongs; and of these titles there are more than a thousand.
Ludewig (Vit. Justiniani, p. 268) wishes to shake off this pendantic
yoke; and I have dared to adopt the simple and rational method of
numbering the book, the title, and the law. Note: The example of Gibbon
has been followed by M Hugo and other civilians.--M]

[Footnote 2: Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland, have
received them as common law or reason; in France, Italy, &c., they
possess a direct or indirect influence; and they were respected in
England, from Stephen to Edward I. our national Justinian, (Duck. de
Usu et Auctoritate Juris Civilis, l. ii. c. 1, 8--15. Heineccius, Hist.
Juris Germanici, c. 3, 4, No. 55-124, and the legal historians of each
country.) * Note: Although the restoration of the Roman law, introduced
by the revival of this study in Italy, is one of the most important
branches of history, it had been treated but imperfectly when Gibbon
wrote his work. That of Arthur Duck is but an insignificant performance.
But the researches of the learned have thrown much light upon the
matter. The Sarti, the Tiraboschi, the Fantuzzi, the Savioli, had made
some very interesting inquiries; but it was reserved for M. de Savigny,
in a work entitled "The History of the Roman Law during the Middle
Ages," to cast the strongest right on this part of history. He
demonstrates incontestably the preservation of the Roman law from
Justinian to the time of the Glossators, who by their indefatigable
zeal, propagated the study of the Roman jurisprudence in all the
countries of Europe. It is much to be desired that the author should
continue this interesting work, and that the learned should engage in
the inquiry in what manner the Roman law introduced itself into their
respective countries, and the authority which it progressively acquired.
For Belgium, there exists, on this subject, (proposed by the Academy of
Brussels in 1781,) a Collection of Memoirs, printed at Brussels in
4to., 1783, among which should be distinguished those of M. de Berg. M.
Berriat Saint Prix has given us hopes of the speedy appearance of a
work in which he will discuss this question, especially in relation to
France. M. Spangenberg, in his Introduction to the Study of the Corpus
Juris Civilis Hanover, 1817, 1 vol. 8vo. p. 86, 116, gives us a general
sketch of the history of the Roman law in different parts of Europe.
We cannot avoid mentioning an elementary work by M. Hugo, in which he
treats of the History of the Roman Law from Justinian to the present
Time, 2d edit. Berlin 1818 W.]

[Footnote 3: Francis Hottoman, a learned and acute lawyer of the xvith
century, wished to mortify Cujacius, and to please the Chancellor
de l'Hopital. His Anti-Tribonianus (which I have never been able to
procure) was published in French in 1609; and his sect was propagated in
Germany, (Heineccius, Op. tom. iii. sylloge iii. p. 171--183.) * Note:
Though there have always been many detractors of the Roman law, no sect
of Anti-Tribonians has ever existed under that name, as Gibbon seems to
suppose.--W.]

[Footnote 4: At the head of these guides I shall respectfully place
the learned and perspicuous Heineccius, a German professor, who died
at Halle in the year 1741, (see his Eloge in the Nouvelle Bibliotheque
Germanique, tom. ii. p. 51--64.) His ample works have been collected
in eight volumes in 4to. Geneva, 1743-1748. The treatises which I have
separately used are, 1. Historia Juris Romani et Germanici, Lugd.
Batav. 1740, in 8 vo. 2. Syntagma Antiquitatum Romanam Jurisprudentiam
illustrantium, 2 vols. in 8 vo. Traject. ad Rhenum. 3. Elementa Juris
Civilis secundum Ordinem Institutionum, Lugd. Bat. 1751, in 8 vo. 4.
Elementa J. C. secundum Ordinem Pandectarum Traject. 1772, in 8vo. 2
vols. * Note: Our author, who was not a lawyer, was necessarily obliged
to content himself with following the opinions of those writers who were
then of the greatest authority; but as Heineccius, notwithstanding his
high reputation for the study of the Roman law, knew nothing of
the subject on which he treated, but what he had learned from the
compilations of various authors, it happened that, in following the
sometimes rash opinions of these guides, Gibbon has fallen into many
errors, which we shall endeavor in succession to correct. The work of
Bach on the History of the Roman Jurisprudence, with which Gibbon was
not acquainted, is far superior to that of Heineccius and since that
time we have new obligations to the modern historic civilians, whose
indefatigable researches have greatly enlarged the sphere of our
knowledge in this important branch of history. We want a pen like that
of Gibbon to give to the more accurate notions which we have acquired
since his time, the brilliancy, the vigor, and the animation
which Gibbon has bestowed on the opinions of Heineccius and his
contemporaries.--W]

[Footnote 5: Our original text is a fragment de Origine Juris (Pandect.
l. i. tit. ii.) of Pomponius, a Roman lawyer, who lived under the
Antonines, (Heinecc. tom. iii. syl. iii. p. 66--126.) It has been
abridged, and probably corrupted, by Tribonian, and since restored by
Bynkershoek (Opp. tom. i. p. 279--304.)]

The primitive government of Rome [6] was composed, with some political
skill, of an elective king, a council of nobles, and a general assembly
of the people. War and religion were administered by the supreme
magistrate; and he alone proposed the laws, which were debated in the
senate, and finally ratified or rejected by a majority of votes in
the thirty curiae or parishes of the city. Romulus, Numa, and Servius
Tullius, are celebrated as the most ancient legislators; and each
of them claims his peculiar part in the threefold division of
jurisprudence. [7] The laws of marriage, the education of children,
and the authority of parents, which may seem to draw their origin from
nature itself, are ascribed to the untutored wisdom of Romulus. The law
of nations and of religious worship, which Numa introduced, was derived
from his nocturnal converse with the nymph Egeria. The civil law is
attributed to the experience of Servius: he balanced the rights and
fortunes of the seven classes of citizens; and guarded, by fifty new
regulations, the observance of contracts and the punishment of crimes.
The state, which he had inclined towards a democracy, was changed by the
last Tarquin into a lawless despotism; and when the kingly office was
abolished, the patricians engrossed the benefits of freedom. The royal
laws became odious or obsolete; the mysterious deposit was silently
preserved by the priests and nobles; and at the end of sixty years, the
citizens of Rome still complained that they were ruled by the arbitrary
sentence of the magistrates. Yet the positive institutions of the kings
had blended themselves with the public and private manners of the city,
some fragments of that venerable jurisprudence [8] were compiled by the
diligence of antiquarians, [9] and above twenty texts still speak the
rudeness of the Pelasgic idiom of the Latins. [10]

[Footnote 6: The constitutional history of the kings of Rome may be
studied in the first book of Livy, and more copiously in Dionysius
Halicarnassensis, (l. li. p. 80--96, 119--130, l. iv. p. 198--220,) who
sometimes betrays the character of a rhetorician and a Greek. * Note: M.
Warnkonig refers to the work of Beaufort, on the Uncertainty of the
Five First Ages of the Roman History, with which Gibbon was probably
acquainted, to Niebuhr, and to the less known volume of Wachsmuth,
"Aeltere Geschichte des Rom. Staats." To these I would add A. W.
Schlegel's Review of Niebuhr, and my friend Dr. Arnold's recently
published volume, of which the chapter on the Law of the XII. Tables
appears to me one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable,
chapter.--M.]

[Footnote 7: This threefold division of the law was applied to the three
Roman kings by Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom. iv. p. 279;) is adopted by
Gravina, (Origines Juris Civilis, p. 28, edit. Lips. 1737:) and is
reluctantly admitted by Mascou, his German editor. * Note: Whoever is
acquainted with the real notions of the Romans on the jus naturale,
gentium et civile, cannot but disapprove of this explanation which
has no relation to them, and might be taken for a pleasantry. It is
certainly unnecessary to increase the confusion which already prevails
among modern writers on the true sense of these ideas. Hugo.--W]

[Footnote 8: The most ancient Code or Digest was styled Jus Papirianum,
from the first compiler, Papirius, who flourished somewhat before
or after the Regifugium, (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) The best judicial
critics, even Bynkershoek (tom. i. p. 284, 285) and Heineccius, (Hist.
J. C. R. l. i. c. 16, 17, and Opp. tom. iii. sylloge iv. p. 1--8,) give
credit to this tale of Pomponius, without sufficiently adverting to
the value and rarity of such a monument of the third century, of the
illiterate city. I much suspect that the Caius Papirius, the Pontifex
Maximus, who revived the laws of Numa (Dionys. Hal. l. iii. p. 171) left
only an oral tradition; and that the Jus Papirianum of Granius Flaccus
(Pandect. l. L. tit. xvi. leg. 144) was not a commentary, but an
original work, compiled in the time of Caesar, (Censorin. de Die
Natali, l. iii. p. 13, Duker de Latinitate J. C. p. 154.) Note: Niebuhr
considers the Jus Papirianum, adduced by Verrius Fiaccus, to be of
undoubted authenticity. Rom. Geschichte, l. 257.--M. Compare this with
the work of M. Hugo.--W.]

[Footnote 9: A pompous, though feeble attempt to restore the original,
is made in the Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine of Terasson, p.
22--72, Paris, 1750, in folio; a work of more promise than performance.]

[Footnote 10: In the year 1444, seven or eight tables of brass were dug
up between Cortona and Gubio. A part of these (for the rest is Etruscan)
represents the primitive state of the Pelasgic letters and language,
which are ascribed by Herodotus to that district of Italy, (l. i. c. 56,
57, 58;) though this difficult passage may be explained of a Crestona in
Thrace, (Notes de Larcher, tom. i. p. 256--261.) The savage dialect
of the Eugubine tables  has exercised, and may still elude, the
divination of criticism; but the root is undoubtedly Latin, of the same
age and character as the Saliare Carmen, which, in the time of Horace,
none could understand. The Roman idiom, by an infusion of Doric and
Aeolic Greek, was gradually ripened into the style of the xii. tables,
of the Duillian column, of Ennius, of Terence, and of Cicero, (Gruter.
Inscript. tom. i. p. cxlii. Scipion Maffei, Istoria Diplomatica, p.
241--258. Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iii. p. 30--41, 174--205. tom.
xiv. p. 1--52.) * Note: The Eugubine Tables have exercised the ingenuity
of the Italian and German critics; it seems admitted (O. Muller,
die Etrusker, ii. 313) that they are Tuscan. See the works of Lanzi,
Passeri, Dempster, and O. Muller.--M]

I shall not repeat the well-known story of the Decemvirs, [11] who
sullied by their actions the honor of inscribing on brass, or wood, or
ivory, the Twelve Tables of the Roman laws. [12] They were dictated by
the rigid and jealous spirit of an aristocracy, which had yielded with
reluctance to the just demands of the people. But the substance of the
Twelve Tables was adapted to the state of the city; and the Romans
had emerged from Barbarism, since they were capable of studying and
embracing the institutions of their more enlightened neighbors. [1211]
A wise Ephesian was driven by envy from his native country: before he
could reach the shores of Latium, he had observed the various forms
of human nature and civil society: he imparted his knowledge to the
legislators of Rome, and a statue was erected in the forum to the
perpetual memory of Hermodorus. [13] The names and divisions of the
copper money, the sole coin of the infant state, were of Dorian origin:
[14] the harvests of Campania and Sicily relieved the wants of a people
whose agriculture was often interrupted by war and faction; and since
the trade was established, [15] the deputies who sailed from the
Tyber might return from the same harbors with a more precious cargo
of political wisdom. The colonies of Great Greece had transported and
improved the arts of their mother country. Cumae and Rhegium, Crotona
and Tarentum, Agrigentum and Syracuse, were in the rank of the most
flourishing cities. The disciples of Pythagoras applied philosophy to
the use of government; the unwritten laws of Charondas accepted the
aid of poetry and music, [16] and Zaleucus framed the republic of the
Locrians, which stood without alteration above two hundred years. [17]
From a similar motive of national pride, both Livy and Dionysius are
willing to believe, that the deputies of Rome visited Athens under the
wise and splendid administration of Pericles; and the laws of Solon were
transfused into the twelve tables. If such an embassy had indeed been
received from the Barbarians of Hesperia, the Roman name would have
been familiar to the Greeks before the reign of Alexander; [18] and
the faintest evidence would have been explored and celebrated by the
curiosity of succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are silent;
nor will it seem credible that the patricians should undertake a long
and perilous navigation to copy the purest model of democracy. In the
comparison of the tables of Solon with those of the Decemvirs, some
casual resemblance may be found; some rules which nature and reason have
revealed to every society; some proofs of a common descent from Egypt
or Phoenicia. [19] But in all the great lines of public and private
jurisprudence, the legislators of Rome and Athens appear to be strangers
or adverse at each other.

[Footnote 11: Compare Livy (l. iii. c. 31--59) with Dionysius
Halicarnassensis, (l. x. p. 644--xi. p. 691.) How concise and animated
is the Roman--how prolix and lifeless the Greek! Yet he has admirably
judged the masters, and defined the rules, of historical composition.]

[Footnote 12: From the historians, Heineccius (Hist. J. R. l. i. No. 26)
maintains that the twelve tables were of brass--aereas; in the text of
Pomponius we read eboreas; for which Scaliger has substituted roboreas,
(Bynkershoek, p. 286.) Wood, brass, and ivory, might be successively
employed. Note: Compare Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 349, &c.--M.]

[Footnote 1211: Compare Niebuhr, 355, note 720.--M. It is a most
important question whether the twelve tables in fact include laws
imported from Greece. The negative opinion maintained by our author, is
now almost universally adopted, particularly by Mm. Niebuhr, Hugo, and
others. See my Institutiones Juris Romani privati Leodii, 1819, p. 311,
312.--W. Dr. Arnold, p. 255, seems to incline to the opposite opinion.
Compare some just and sensible observations in the Appendix to Mr.
Travers Twiss's Epitome of Niebuhr, p. 347, Oxford, 1836.--M.]

[Footnote 13: His exile is mentioned by Cicero, (Tusculan. Quaestion. v.
36; his statue by Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 11.) The letter, dream, and
prophecy of Heraclitus, are alike spurious, (Epistolae Graec. Divers. p.
337.) * Note: Compare Niebuhr, ii. 209.--M. See the Mem de l'Academ. des
Inscript. xxii. p. 48. It would be difficult to disprove, that a certain
Hermodorus had some share in framing the Laws of the Twelve Tables.
Pomponius even says that this Hermodorus was the author of the last two
tables. Pliny calls him the Interpreter of the Decemvirs, which may lead
us to suppose that he labored with them in drawing up that law. But
it is astonishing that in his Dissertation, (De Hermodoro vero XII.
Tabularum Auctore, Annales Academiae Groninganae anni 1817, 1818,) M.
Gratama has ventured to advance two propositions entirely devoid of
proof: "Decem priores tabulas ab ipsis Romanis non esse profectas, tota
confirma Decemviratus Historia," et "Hermodorum legum decemviralium ceri
nominis auctorem esse, qui eas composuerit suis ordinibus, disposuerit,
suaque fecerit auctoritate, ut a decemviris reciperentur." This truly
was an age in which the Roman Patricians would allow their laws to be
dictated by a foreign Exile! Mr. Gratama does not attempt to prove the
authenticity of the supposititious letter of Heraclitus. He contents
himself with expressing his astonishment that M. Bonamy (as well as
Gibbon) will be receive it as genuine.--W.]

[Footnote 14: This intricate subject of the Sicilian and Roman money,
is ably discussed by Dr. Bentley, (Dissertation on the Epistles of
Phalaris, p. 427--479,) whose powers in this controversy were called
forth by honor and resentment.]

[Footnote 15: The Romans, or their allies, sailed as far as the fair
promontory of Africa, (Polyb. l. iii. p. 177, edit. Casaubon, in folio.)
Their voyages to Cumae, &c., are noticed by Livy and Dionysius.]

[Footnote 16: This circumstance would alone prove the antiquity of
Charondas, the legislator of Rhegium and Catana, who, by a strange error
of Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. xii. p. 485--492) is celebrated long
afterwards as the author of the policy of Thurium.]

[Footnote 17: Zaleucus, whose existence has been rashly attacked, had
the merit and glory of converting a band of outlaws (the Locrians) into
the most virtuous and orderly of the Greek republics. (See two Memoirs
of the Baron de St. Croix, sur la Legislation de la Grande Grece Mem.
de l'Academie, tom. xlii. p. 276--333.) But the laws of Zaleucus and
Charondas, which imposed on Diodorus and Stobaeus, are the spurious
composition of a Pythagorean sophist, whose fraud has been detected by
the critical sagacity of Bentley, p. 335--377.]

[Footnote 18: I seize the opportunity of tracing the progress of this
national intercourse 1. Herodotus and Thucydides (A. U. C. 300--350)
appear ignorant of the name and existence of Rome, (Joseph. contra
Appion tom. ii. l. i. c. 12, p. 444, edit. Havercamp.) 2. Theopompus (A.
U. C. 400, Plin. iii. 9) mentions the invasion of the Gauls, which is
noticed in looser terms by Heraclides Ponticus, (Plutarch in Camillo, p.
292, edit. H. Stephan.) 3. The real or fabulous embassy of the Romans to
Alexander (A. U. C. 430) is attested by Clitarchus, (Plin. iii. 9,) by
Aristus and Asclepiades, (Arrian. l. vii. p. 294, 295,) and by Memnon of
Heraclea, (apud Photium, cod. ccxxiv. p. 725,) though tacitly denied by
Livy. 4. Theophrastus (A. U. C. 440) primus externorum aliqua de Romanis
diligentius scripsit, (Plin. iii. 9.) 5. Lycophron (A. U. C. 480--500)
scattered the first seed of a Trojan colony and the fable of the Aeneid,
(Cassandra, 1226--1280.) A bold prediction before the end of the first
Punic war! * Note: Compare Niebuhr throughout. Niebuhr has written
a dissertation (Kleine Schriften, i. p. 438,) arguing from this
prediction, and on the other conclusive grounds, that the Lycophron,
the author of the Cassandra, is not the Alexandrian poet. He had been
anticipated in this sagacious criticism, as he afterwards discovered,
by a writer of no less distinction than Charles James Fox.--Letters to
Wakefield. And likewise by the author of the extraordinary translation
of this poem, that most promising scholar, Lord Royston. See the Remains
of Lord Royston, by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.]

[Footnote 19: The tenth table, de modo sepulturae, was borrowed from
Solon, (Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23--26:) the furtem per lancem et
licium conceptum, is derived by Heineccius from the manners of Athens,
(Antiquitat. Rom. tom. ii. p. 167--175.) The right of killing a
nocturnal thief was declared by Moses, Solon, and the Decemvirs, (Exodus
xxii. 3. Demosthenes contra Timocratem, tom. i. p. 736, edit. Reiske.
Macrob. Saturnalia, l. i. c. 4. Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanatum,
tit, vii. No. i. p. 218, edit. Cannegieter.) *Note: Are not the same
points of similarity discovered in the legislation of all actions in the
infancy of their civilization?--W.]





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

Whatever might be the origin or the merit of the twelve tables, [20]
they obtained among the Romans that blind and partial reverence which
the lawyers of every country delight to bestow on their municipal
institutions. The study is recommended by Cicero [21] as equally
pleasant and instructive. "They amuse the mind by the remembrance of old
words and the portrait of ancient manners; they inculcate the soundest
principles of government and morals; and I am not afraid to affirm, that
the brief composition of the Decemvirs surpasses in genuine value the
libraries of Grecian philosophy. How admirable," says Tully, with honest
or affected prejudice, "is the wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are the
masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more conspicuous,
if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ridiculous
jurisprudence of Draco, of Solon, and of Lycurgus." The twelve tables
were committed to the memory of the young and the meditation of the old;
they were transcribed and illustrated with learned diligence; they had
escaped the flames of the Gauls, they subsisted in the age of Justinian,
and their subsequent loss has been imperfectly restored by the labors
of modern critics. [22] But although these venerable monuments were
considered as the rule of right and the fountain of justice, [23] they
were overwhelmed by the weight and variety of new laws, which, at the
end of five centuries, became a grievance more intolerable than the
vices of the city. [24] Three thousand brass plates, the acts of the
senate of the people, were deposited in the Capitol: [25] and some of
the acts, as the Julian law against extortion, surpassed the number of
a hundred chapters. [26] The Decemvirs had neglected to import the
sanction of Zaleucus, which so long maintained the integrity of his
republic. A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the
assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was
rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

[Footnote 20: It is the praise of Diodorus, (tom. i. l. xii. p. 494,)
which may be fairly translated by the eleganti atque absoluta brevitate
verborum of Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xxi. 1.)]

[Footnote 21: Listen to Cicero (de Legibus, ii. 23) and his
representative Crassus, (de Oratore, i. 43, 44.)]

[Footnote 22: See Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 29--33.) I have followed
the restoration of the xii. tables by Gravina (Origines J. C. p.
280--307) and Terrasson, (Hist. de la Jurisprudence Romaine, p.
94--205.) Note: The wish expressed by Warnkonig, that the text and the
conjectural emendations on the fragments of the xii. tables should be
submitted to rigid criticism, has been fulfilled by Dirksen, Uebersicht
der bisherigen Versuche Leipzig Kritik und Herstellung des Textes der
Zwolf-Tafel-Fragmente, Leipzug, 1824.--M.]

[Footnote 23: Finis aequi juris, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 27.) Fons omnis
publici et privati juris, (T. Liv. iii. 34.) * Note: From the context of
the phrase in Tacitus, "Nam secutae leges etsi alquando in maleficos
ex delicto; saepius tamen dissensione ordinum * * * latae sunt," it is
clear that Gibbon has rendered this sentence incorrectly. Hugo, Hist. p.
62.--M.]

[Footnote 24: De principiis juris, et quibus modis ad hanc multitudinem
infinitam ac varietatem legum perventum sit altius disseram, (Tacit.
Annal. iii. 25.) This deep disquisition fills only two pages, but they
are the pages of Tacitus. With equal sense, but with less energy, Livy
(iii. 34) had complained, in hoc immenso aliarum super alias acervatarum
legum cumulo, &c.]

[Footnote 25: Suetonius in Vespasiano, c. 8.]

[Footnote 26: Cicero ad Familiares, viii. 8.]

The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by
an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against
numbers. To the first class of Romans, the proprietors of one hundred
thousand pounds of copper, [27] ninety-eight votes were assigned, and
only ninety-five were left for the six inferior classes, distributed
according to their substance by the artful policy of Servius. But the
tribunes soon established a more specious and popular maxim, that every
citizen has an equal right to enact the laws which he is bound to obey.
Instead of the centuries, they convened the tribes; and the patricians,
after an impotent struggle, submitted to the decrees of an assembly, in
which their votes were confounded with those of the meanest plebeians.
Yet as long as the tribes successively passed over narrow bridges [28]
and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of each citizen was exposed to
the eyes and ears of his friends and countrymen. The insolvent debtor
consulted the wishes of his creditor; the client would have blushed
to oppose the views of his patron; the general was followed by his
veterans, and the aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to
the multitude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence
of fear and shame, of honor and interest, and the abuse of freedom
accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. [29] The Romans had
aspired to be equal; they were levelled by the equality of servitude;
and the dictates of Augustus were patiently ratified by the formal
consent of the tribes or centuries. Once, and once only, he experienced
a sincere and strenuous opposition. His subjects had resigned all
political liberty; they defended the freedom of domestic life. A law
which enforced the obligation, and strengthened the bonds of marriage,
was clamorously rejected; Propertius, in the arms of Delia, applauded
the victory of licentious love; and the project of reform was suspended
till a new and more tractable generation had arisen in the world. [30]
Such an example was not necessary to instruct a prudent usurper of the
mischief of popular assemblies; and their abolition, which Augustus
had silently prepared, was accomplished without resistance, and almost
without notice, on the accession of his successor. [31] Sixty thousand
plebeian legislators, whom numbers made formidable, and poverty secure,
were supplanted by six hundred senators, who held their honors, their
fortunes, and their lives, by the clemency of the emperor. The loss of
executive power was alleviated by the gift of legislative authority; and
Ulpian might assert, after the practice of two hundred years, that the
decrees of the senate obtained the force and validity of laws. In the
times of freedom, the resolves of the people had often been dictated by
the passion or error of the moment: the Cornelian, Pompeian, and Julian
laws were adapted by a single hand to the prevailing disorders; but the
senate, under the reign of the Caesars, was composed of magistrates and
lawyers, and in questions of private jurisprudence, the integrity of
their judgment was seldom perverted by fear or interest. [32]

[Footnote 27: Dionysius, with Arbuthnot, and most of the moderns,
(except Eisenschmidt de Ponderibus, &c., p. 137--140,) represent the
100,000 asses by 10,000 Attic drachmae, or somewhat more than 300 pounds
sterling. But their calculation can apply only to the latter times, when
the as was diminished to 1-24th of its ancient weight: nor can I believe
that in the first ages, however destitute of the precious metals, a
single ounce of silver could have been exchanged for seventy pounds
of copper or brass. A more simple and rational method is to value the
copper itself according to the present rate, and, after comparing
the mint and the market price, the Roman and avoirdupois weight, the
primitive as or Roman pound of copper may be appreciated at one English
shilling, and the 100,000 asses of the first class amounted to 5000
pounds sterling. It will appear from the same reckoning, that an ox was
sold at Rome for five pounds, a sheep for ten shillings, and a quarter
of wheat for one pound ten shillings, (Festus, p. 330, edit. Dacier.
Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 4:) nor do I see any reason to reject these
consequences, which moderate our ideas of the poverty of the first
Romans. * Note: Compare Niebuhr, English translation, vol. i. p. 448,
&c.--M.]

[Footnote 28: Consult the common writers on the Roman Comitia,
especially Sigonius and Beaufort. Spanheim (de Praestantia et Usu
Numismatum, tom. ii. dissert. x. p. 192, 193) shows, on a curious medal,
the Cista, Pontes, Septa, Diribitor, &c.]

[Footnote 29: Cicero (de Legibus, iii. 16, 17, 18) debates this
constitutional question, and assigns to his brother Quintus the most
unpopular side.]

[Footnote 30: Prae tumultu recusantium perferre non potuit, (Sueton.
in August. c. 34.) See Propertius, l. ii. eleg. 6. Heineccius, in a
separate history, has exhausted the whole subject of the Julian and
Papian Poppaean laws, (Opp. tom. vii. P. i. p. 1--479.)]

[Footnote 31: Tacit. Annal. i. 15. Lipsius, Excursus E. in Tacitum.
Note: This error of Gibbon has been long detected. The senate, under
Tiberius did indeed elect the magistrates, who before that emperor were
elected in the comitia. But we find laws enacted by the people during
his reign, and that of Claudius. For example; the Julia-Norbana, Vellea,
and Claudia de tutela foeminarum. Compare the Hist. du Droit Romain,
by M. Hugo, vol. ii. p. 55, 57. The comitia ceased imperceptibly as the
republic gradually expired.--W.]

[Footnote 32: Non ambigitur senatum jus facere posse, is the decision
of Ulpian, (l. xvi. ad Edict. in Pandect. l. i. tit. iii. leg. 9.)
Pomponius taxes the comitia of the people as a turba hominum, (Pandect.
l. i. tit. ii. leg 9.) * Note: The author adopts the opinion, that under
the emperors alone the senate had a share in the legislative power.
They had nevertheless participated in it under the Republic, since
senatus-consulta relating to civil rights have been preserved, which are
much earlier than the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius. It is true that,
under the emperors, the senate exercised this right more frequently, and
that the assemblies of the people had become much more rare, though in
law they were still permitted, in the time of Ulpian. (See the fragments
of Ulpian.) Bach has clearly demonstrated that the senate had the
same power in the time of the Republic. It is natural that the
senatus-consulta should have been more frequent under the emperors,
because they employed those means of flattering the pride of the
senators, by granting them the right of deliberating on all affairs
which did not intrench on the Imperial power. Compare the discussions of
M. Hugo, vol. i. p. 284, et seq.--W.]

The silence or ambiguity of the laws was supplied by the occasional
edicts [3211] of those magistrates who were invested with the honors
of the state. [33] This ancient prerogative of the Roman kings was
transferred, in their respective offices, to the consuls and dictators,
the censors and praetors; and a similar right was assumed by the
tribunes of the people, the ediles, and the proconsuls. At Rome, and
in the provinces, the duties of the subject, and the intentions of the
governor, were proclaimed; and the civil jurisprudence was reformed by
the annual edicts of the supreme judge, the praetor of the city. [3311]
As soon as he ascended his tribunal, he announced by the voice of the
crier, and afterwards inscribed on a white wall, the rules which he
proposed to follow in the decision of doubtful cases, and the relief
which his equity would afford from the precise rigor of ancient
statutes. A principle of discretion more congenial to monarchy was
introduced into the republic: the art of respecting the name, and
eluding the efficacy, of the laws, was improved by successive praetors;
subtleties and fictions were invented to defeat the plainest meaning of
the Decemvirs, and where the end was salutary, the means were frequently
absurd. The secret or probable wish of the dead was suffered to prevail
over the order of succession and the forms of testaments; and the
claimant, who was excluded from the character of heir, accepted with
equal pleasure from an indulgent praetor the possession of the goods
of his late kinsman or benefactor. In the redress of private wrongs,
compensations and fines were substituted to the obsolete rigor of the
Twelve Tables; time and space were annihilated by fanciful suppositions;
and the plea of youth, or fraud, or violence, annulled the obligation,
or excused the performance, of an inconvenient contract. A jurisdiction
thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the
substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the
prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser
seductions of interest or resentment. But the errors or vices of each
praetor expired with his annual office; such maxims alone as had been
approved by reason and practice were copied by succeeding judges; the
rule of proceeding was defined by the solution of new cases; and the
temptations of injustice were removed by the Cornelian law, which
compelled the praetor of the year to adhere to the spirit and letter
of his first proclamation. [34] It was reserved for the curiosity and
learning of Adrian, to accomplish the design which had been conceived by
the genius of Caesar; and the praetorship of Salvius Julian, an eminent
lawyer, was immortalized by the composition of the Perpetual Edict. This
well-digested code was ratified by the emperor and the senate; the long
divorce of law and equity was at length reconciled; and, instead of the
Twelve Tables, the perpetual edict was fixed as the invariable standard
of civil jurisprudence. [35]

[Footnote 3211: There is a curious passage from Aurelius, a writer on
Law, on the Praetorian Praefect, quoted in Lydus de Magistratibus, p.
32, edit. Hase. The Praetorian praefect was to the emperor what the
master of the horse was to the dictator under the Republic. He was the
delegate, therefore, of the full Imperial authority; and no appeal could
be made or exception taken against his edicts. I had not observed
this passage, when the third volume, where it would have been more
appropriately placed, passed through the press.--M]

[Footnote 33: The jus honorarium of the praetors and other magistrates
is strictly defined in the Latin text to the Institutes, (l. i. tit.
ii. No. 7,) and more loosely explained in the Greek paraphrase of
Theophilus, (p. 33--38, edit. Reitz,) who drops the important word
honorarium. * Note: The author here follows the opinion of Heineccius,
who, according to the idea of his master Thomasius, was unwilling
to suppose that magistrates exercising a judicial could share in the
legislative power. For this reason he represents the edicts of the
praetors as absurd. (See his work, Historia Juris Romani, 69, 74.) But
Heineccius had altogether a false notion of this important institution
of the Romans, to which we owe in a great degree the perfection of their
jurisprudence. Heineccius, therefore, in his own days had many opponents
of his system, among others the celebrated Ritter, professor at
Wittemberg, who contested it in notes appended to the work of
Heineccius, and retained in all subsequent editions of that book.
After Ritter, the learned Bach undertook to vindicate the edicts of the
praetors in his Historia Jurisprud. Rom. edit. 6, p. 218, 224. But it
remained for a civilian of our own days to throw light on the spirit and
true character of this institution. M. Hugo has completely demonstrated
that the praetorian edicts furnished the salutary means of perpetually
harmonizing the legislation with the spirit of the times. The praetors
were the true organs of public opinion. It was not according to their
caprice that they framed their regulations, but according to the manners
and to the opinions of the great civil lawyers of their day. We know
from Cicero himself, that it was esteemed a great honor among the
Romans to publish an edict, well conceived and well drawn. The most
distinguished lawyers of Rome were invited by the praetor to assist in
framing this annual law, which, according to its principle, was only a
declaration which the praetor made to the public, to announce the
manner in which he would judge, and to guard against every charge of
partiality. Those who had reason to fear his opinions might delay their
cause till the following year. The praetor was responsible for all
the faults which he committed. The tribunes could lodge an accusation
against the praetor who issued a partial edict. He was bound strictly
to follow and to observe the regulations published by him at the
commencement of his year of office, according to the Cornelian law, by
which these edicts were called perpetual, and he could make no change
in a regulation once published. The praetor was obliged to submit to
his own edict, and to judge his own affairs according to its provisions.
These magistrates had no power of departing from the fundamental
laws, or the laws of the Twelve Tables. The people held them in
such consideration, that they rarely enacted laws contrary to their
provisions; but as some provisions were found inefficient, others
opposed to the manners of the people, and to the spirit of subsequent
ages, the praetors, still maintaining respect for the laws, endeavored
to bring them into accordance with the necessities of the existing
time, by such fictions as best suited the nature of the case. In what
legislation do we not find these fictions, which even yet exist, absurd
and ridiculous as they are, among the ancient laws of modern nations?
These always variable edicts at length comprehended the whole of the
Roman legislature, and became the subject of the commentaries of the
most celebrated lawyers. They must therefore be considered as the basis
of all the Roman jurisprudence comprehended in the Digest of Justinian.
----It is in this sense that M. Schrader has written on this important
institution, proposing it for imitation as far as may be consistent with
our manners, and agreeable to our political institutions, in order to
avoid immature legislation becoming a permanent evil. See the History of
the Roman Law by M. Hugo, vol. i. p. 296, &c., vol. ii. p. 30, et seq.,
78. et seq., and the note in my elementary book on the Industries, p.
313. With regard to the works best suited to give information on
the framing and the form of these edicts, see Haubold, Institutiones
Literariae, tom. i. p. 321, 368. All that Heineccius says about the
usurpation of the right of making these edicts by the praetors is false,
and contrary to all historical testimony. A multitude of authorities
proves that the magistrates were under an obligation to publish these
edicts.--W. ----With the utmost deference for these excellent civilians,
I cannot but consider this confusion of the judicial and legislative
authority as a very perilous constitutional precedent. It might answer
among a people so singularly trained as the Romans were by habit and
national character in reverence for legal institutions, so as to be an
aristocracy, if not a people, of legislators; but in most nations the
investiture of a magistrate in such authority, leaving to his sole
judgment the lawyers he might consult, and the view of public opinion
which he might take, would be a very insufficient guaranty for right
legislation.--M.]

[Footnote 3311: Compare throughout the brief but admirable sketch of the
progress and growth of the Roman jurisprudence, the necessary operation
of the jusgentium, when Rome became the sovereign of nations, upon the
jus civile of the citizens of Rome, in the first chapter of Savigny.
Geschichte des Romischen Rechts im Mittelalter.--M.]

[Footnote 34: Dion Cassius (tom. i. l. xxxvi. p. 100) fixes the
perpetual edicts in the year of Rome, 686. Their institution, however,
is ascribed to the year 585 in the Acta Diurna, which have been
published from the papers of Ludovicus Vives. Their authenticity is
supported or allowed by Pighius, (Annal. Rom. tom. ii. p. 377, 378,)
Graevius, (ad Sueton. p. 778,) Dodwell, (Praelection. Cambden, p.
665,) and Heineccius: but a single word, Scutum Cimbricum, detects the
forgery, (Moyle's Works, vol. i. p. 303.)]

[Footnote 35: The history of edicts is composed, and the text of the
perpetual edict is restored, by the master-hand of Heineccius, (Opp.
tom. vii. P. ii. p. 1--564;) in whose researches I might safely
acquiesce. In the Academy of Inscriptions, M. Bouchaud has given a
series of memoirs to this interesting subject of law and literature. *
Note: This restoration was only the commencement of a work found among
the papers of Heineccius, and published after his death.--G. ----Note:
Gibbon has here fallen into an error, with Heineccius, and almost the
whole literary world, concerning the real meaning of what is called the
perpetual edict of Hadrian. Since the Cornelian law, the edicts were
perpetual, but only in this sense, that the praetor could not change
them during the year of his magistracy. And although it appears that
under Hadrian, the civilian Julianus made, or assisted in making,
a complete collection of the edicts, (which certainly had been done
likewise before Hadrian, for example, by Ofilius, qui diligenter edictum
composuit,) we have no sufficient proof to admit the common opinion,
that the Praetorian edict was declared perpetually unalterable by
Hadrian. The writers on law subsequent to Hadrian (and among the rest
Pomponius, in his Summary of the Roman Jurisprudence) speak of the
edict as it existed in the time of Cicero. They would not certainly
have passed over in silence so remarkable a change in the most important
source of the civil law. M. Hugo has conclusively shown that the various
passages in authors, like Eutropius, are not sufficient to establish the
opinion introduced by Heineccius. Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 78. A new
proof of this is found in the Institutes of Gaius, who, in the first
books of his work, expresses himself in the same manner, without
mentioning any change made by Hadrian. Nevertheless, if it had taken
place, he must have noticed it, as he does l. i. 8, the responsa
prudentum, on the occasion of a rescript of Hadrian. There is no lacuna
in the text. Why then should Gaius maintain silence concerning an
innovation so much more important than that of which he speaks? After
all, this question becomes of slight interest, since, in fact, we find
no change in the perpetual edict inserted in the Digest, from the
time of Hadrian to the end of that epoch, except that made by Julian,
(compare Hugo, l. c.) The latter lawyers appear to follow, in their
commentaries, the same texts as their predecessors. It is natural
to suppose, that, after the labors of so many men distinguished
in jurisprudence, the framing of the edict must have attained
such perfection that it would have been difficult to have made any
innovation. We nowhere find that the jurists of the Pandects disputed
concerning the words, or the drawing up of the edict. What difference
would, in fact, result from this with regard to our codes, and our
modern legislation? Compare the learned Dissertation of M. Biener, De
Salvii Juliani meritis in Edictum Praetorium recte aestimandis. Lipsae,
1809, 4to.--W.]

From Augustus to Trajan, the modest Caesars were content to promulgate
their edicts in the various characters of a Roman magistrate; [3511]
and, in the decrees of the senate, the epistles and orations of the
prince were respectfully inserted. Adrian [36] appears to have been the
first who assumed, without disguise, the plenitude of legislative power.
And this innovation, so agreeable to his active mind, was countenanced
by the patience of the times, and his long absence from the seat of
government. The same policy was embraced by succeeding monarchs, and,
according to the harsh metaphor of Tertullian, "the gloomy and intricate
forest of ancient laws was cleared away by the axe of royal mandates and
constitutions." [37] During four centuries, from Adrian to Justinian
the public and private jurisprudence was moulded by the will of the
sovereign; and few institutions, either human or divine, were permitted
to stand on their former basis. The origin of Imperial legislation was
concealed by the darkness of ages and the terrors of armed despotism;
and a double tiction was propagated by the servility, or perhaps the
ignorance, of the civilians, who basked in the sunshine of the Roman and
Byzantine courts. 1. To the prayer of the ancient Caesars, the people
or the senate had sometimes granted a personal exemption from the
obligation and penalty of particular statutes; and each indulgence was
an act of jurisdiction exercised by the republic over the first of
her citizens. His humble privilege was at length transformed into the
prerogative of a tyrant; and the Latin expression of "released from the
laws" [38] was supposed to exalt the emperor above all human restraints,
and to leave his conscience and reason as the sacred measure of his
conduct. 2. A similar dependence was implied in the decrees of the
senate, which, in every reign, defined the titles and powers of an
elective magistrate. But it was not before the ideas, and even the
language, of the Romans had been corrupted, that a royal law, [39] and
an irrevocable gift of the people, were created by the fancy of Ulpian,
or more probably of Tribonian himself; [40] and the origin of Imperial
power, though false in fact, and slavish in its consequence, was
supported on a principle of freedom and justice. "The pleasure of the
emperor has the vigor and effect of law, since the Roman people, by the
royal law, have transferred to their prince the full extent of their
own power and sovereignty." [41] The will of a single man, of a
child perhaps, was allowed to prevail over the wisdom of ages and
the inclinations of millions; and the degenerate Greeks were proud to
declare, that in his hands alone the arbitrary exercise of legislation
could be safely deposited. "What interest or passion," exclaims
Theophilus in the court of Justinian, "can reach the calm and sublime
elevation of the monarch? He is already master of the lives and fortunes
of his subjects; and those who have incurred his displeasure are already
numbered with the dead." [42] Disdaining the language of flattery, the
historian may confess, that in questions of private jurisprudence, the
absolute sovereign of a great empire can seldom be influenced by any
personal considerations. Virtue, or even reason, will suggest to his
impartial mind, that he is the guardian of peace and equity, and that
the interest of society is inseparably connected with his own. Under the
weakest and most vicious reign, the seat of justice was filled by
the wisdom and integrity of Papinian and Ulpian; [43] and the purest
materials of the Code and Pandects are inscribed with the names of
Caracalla and his ministers. [44] The tyrant of Rome was sometimes the
benefactor of the provinces. A dagger terminated the crimes of Domitian;
but the prudence of Nerva confirmed his acts, which, in the joy of their
deliverance, had been rescinded by an indignant senate. [45] Yet in the
rescripts, [46] replies to the consultations of the magistrates, the
wisest of princes might be deceived by a partial exposition of the case.
And this abuse, which placed their hasty decisions on the same level
with mature and deliberate acts of legislation, was ineffectually
condemned by the sense and example of Trajan. The rescripts of the
emperor, his grants and decrees, his edicts and pragmatic sanctions,
were subscribed in purple ink, [47] and transmitted to the provinces as
general or special laws, which the magistrates were bound to execute,
and the people to obey. But as their number continually multiplied, the
rule of obedience became each day more doubtful and obscure, till the
will of the sovereign was fixed and ascertained in the Gregorian, the
Hermogenian, and the Theodosian codes. [4711] The two first, of which
some fragments have escaped, were framed by two private lawyers,
to preserve the constitutions of the Pagan emperors from Adrian to
Constantine. The third, which is still extant, was digested in sixteen
books by the order of the younger Theodosius to consecrate the laws of
the Christian princes from Constantine to his own reign. But the three
codes obtained an equal authority in the tribunals; and any act which
was not included in the sacred deposit might be disregarded by the judge
as epurious or obsolete. [48]

[Footnote 3511: It is an important question in what manner the emperors
were invested with this legislative power. The newly discovered Gaius
distinctly states that it was in virtue of a law--Nec unquam dubitatum
est, quin id legis vicem obtineat, cum ipse imperator per legem imperium
accipiat. But it is still uncertain whether this was a general law,
passed on the transition of the government from a republican to a
monarchical form, or a law passed on the accession of each emperor.
Compare Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain, (French translation,) vol. ii. p.
8.--M.]

[Footnote 36: His laws are the first in the code. See Dodwell,
(Praelect. Cambden, p. 319--340,) who wanders from the subject in
confused reading and feeble paradox. * Note: This is again an error
which Gibbon shares with Heineccius, and the generality of authors. It
arises from having mistaken the insignificant edict of Hadrian, inserted
in the Code of Justinian, (lib. vi, tit. xxiii. c. 11,) for the first
constitutio principis, without attending to the fact, that the Pandects
contain so many constitutions of the emperors, from Julius Caesar, (see
l. i. Digest 29, l) M. Hugo justly observes, that the acta of Sylla,
approved by the senate, were the same thing with the constitutions of
those who after him usurped the sovereign power. Moreover, we find that
Pliny, and other ancient authors, report a multitude of rescripts of
the emperors from the time of Augustus. See Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain,
vol. ii. p. 24-27.--W.]

[Footnote 37: Totam illam veterem et squalentem sylvam legum novis
principalium rescriptorum et edictorum securibus truncatis et caeditis;
(Apologet. c. 4, p. 50, edit. Havercamp.) He proceeds to praise the
recent firmness of Severus, who repealed the useless or pernicious laws,
without any regard to their age or authority.]

[Footnote 38: The constitutional style of Legibus Solutus is
misinterpreted by the art or ignorance of Dion Cassius, (tom. i. l.
liii. p. 713.) On this occasion, his editor, Reimer, joins the universal
censure which freedom and criticism have pronounced against that slavish
historian.]

[Footnote 39: The word (Lex Regia) was still more recent than the thing.
The slaves of Commodus or Caracalla would have started at the name of
royalty. Note: Yet a century before, Domitian was called not only by
Martial but even in public documents, Dominus et Deus Noster. Sueton.
Domit. cap. 13. Hugo.--W.]

[Footnote 40: See Gravina (Opp. p. 501--512) and Beaufort, (Republique
Romaine, tom. i. p. 255--274.) He has made a proper use of two
dissertations by John Frederic Gronovius and Noodt, both translated,
with valuable notes, by Barbeyrac, 2 vols. in 12mo. 1731.]

[Footnote 41: Institut. l. i. tit. ii. No. 6. Pandect. l. i. tit.
iv. leg. 1. Cod. Justinian, l. i. tit. xvii. leg. 1, No. 7. In
his Antiquities and Elements, Heineccius has amply treated de
constitutionibus principum, which are illustrated by Godefroy (Comment.
ad Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. i. ii. iii.) and Gravina, (p. 87--90.)
----Note: Gaius asserts that the Imperial edict or rescript has and
always had, the force of law, because the Imperial authority rests upon
law. Constitutio principis est, quod imperator decreto vel edicto,
vel epistola constituit, nee unquam dubitatum, quin id legis, vicem
obtineat, cum ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat. Gaius, 6
Instit. i. 2.--M.]

[Footnote 42: Theophilus, in Paraphras. Graec. Institut. p. 33, 34,
edit. Reitz For his person, time, writings, see the Theophilus of J. H.
Mylius, Excurs. iii. p. 1034--1073.]

[Footnote 43: There is more envy than reason in the complaint of
Macrinus (Jul. Capitolin. c. 13:) Nefas esse leges videri Commodi et
Caracalla at hominum imperitorum voluntates. Commodus was made a Divus
by Severus, (Dodwell, Praelect. viii. p. 324, 325.) Yet he occurs only
twice in the Pandects.]

[Footnote 44: Of Antoninus Caracalla alone 200 constitutions are extant
in the Code, and with his father 160. These two princes are quoted fifty
times in the Pandects, and eight in the Institutes, (Terasson, p. 265.)]

[Footnote 45: Plin. Secund. Epistol. x. 66. Sueton. in Domitian. c. 23.]

[Footnote 46: It was a maxim of Constantine, contra jus rescripta non
valeant, (Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 1.) The emperors reluctantly
allow some scrutiny into the law and the fact, some delay, petition,
&c.; but these insufficient remedies are too much in the discretion and
at the peril of the judge.]

[Footnote 47: A compound of vermilion and cinnabar, which marks the
Imperial diplomas from Leo I. (A.D. 470) to the fall of the Greek
empire, (Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 504--515
Lami, de Eruditione Apostolorum, tom. ii. p. 720-726.)]

[Footnote 4711: Savigny states the following as the authorities for the
Roman law at the commencement of the fifth century:-- 1. The writings
of the jurists, according to the regulations of the Constitution of
Valentinian III., first promulgated in the West, but by its admission
into the Theodosian Code established likewise in the East. (This
Constitution established the authority of the five great jurists,
Papinian, Paulus, Caius, Ulpian, and Modestinus as interpreters of the
ancient law. * * * In case of difference of opinion among these five,
a majority decided the case; where they were equal, the opinion of
Papinian, where he was silent, the judge; but see p. 40, and Hugo, vol.
ii. p. 89.) 2. The Gregorian and Hermogenian Collection of the Imperial
Rescripts. 3. The Code of Theodosius II. 4. The particular Novellae, as
additions and Supplements to this Code Savigny. vol. i. p 10.--M.]

[Footnote 48: Schulting, Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p. 681-718.
Cujacius assigned to Gregory the reigns from Hadrian to Gallienus. and
the continuation to his fellow-laborer Hermogenes. This general division
may be just, but they often trespassed on each other's ground]


===

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

Among savage nations, the want of letters is imperfectly supplied by
the use of visible signs, which awaken attention, and perpetuate the
remembrance of any public or private transaction. The jurisprudence of
the first Romans exhibited the scenes of a pantomime; the words were
adapted to the gestures, and the slightest error or neglect in the
forms of proceeding was sufficient to annul the substance of the fairest
claim. The communion of the marriage-life was denoted by the necessary
elements of fire and water; [49] and the divorced wife resigned the
bunch of keys, by the delivery of which she had been invested with the
government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a slave, was
performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on the cheek; a work
was prohibited by the casting of a stone; prescription was interrupted
by the breaking of a branch; the clinched fist was the symbol of a
pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence.
The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were
introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was
sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to
leap or dance with real or affected transport. [50] If a citizen pursued
any stolen goods into a neighbor's house, he concealed his nakedness
with a linen towel, and hid his face with a mask or basin, lest he
should encounter the eyes of a virgin or a matron. [51] In a civil
action the plaintiff touched the ear of his witness, seized his
reluctant adversary by the neck, and implored, in solemn lamentation,
the aid of his fellow-citizens. The two competitors grasped each other's
hand as if they stood prepared for combat before the tribunal of the
praetor; he commanded them to produce the object of the dispute; they
went, they returned with measured steps, and a clod of earth was cast
at his feet to represent the field for which they contended. This occult
science of the words and actions of law was the inheritance of the
pontiffs and patricians. Like the Chaldean astrologers, they announced
to their clients the days of business and repose; these important
trifles were interwoven with the religion of Numa; and after the
publication of the Twelve Tables, the Roman people was still enslaved
by the ignorance of judicial proceedings. The treachery of some
plebeian officers at length revealed the profitable mystery: in a more
enlightened age, the legal actions were derided and observed; and the
same antiquity which sanctified the practice, obliterated the use and
meaning of this primitive language. [52]

[Footnote 49: Scaevola, most probably Q. Cervidius Scaevola; the master
of Papinian considers this acceptance of fire and water as the essence
of marriage, (Pandect. l. xxiv. tit. 1, leg. 66. See Heineccius, Hist.
J. R. No. 317.)]

[Footnote 50: Cicero (de Officiis, iii. 19) may state an ideal case, but
St. Am brose (de Officiis, iii. 2,) appeals to the practice of his own
times, which he understood as a lawyer and a magistrate, (Schulting
ad Ulpian, Fragment. tit. xxii. No. 28, p. 643, 644.) * Note: In
this passage the author has endeavored to collect all the examples of
judicial formularies which he could find. That which he adduces as the
form of cretio haereditatis is absolutely false. It is sufficient to
glance at the passage in Cicero which he cites, to see that it has no
relation to it. The author appeals to the opinion of Schulting, who, in
the passage quoted, himself protests against the ridiculous and absurd
interpretation of the passage in Cicero, and observes that Graevius had
already well explained the real sense. See in Gaius the form of cretio
haereditatis Inst. l. ii. p. 166.--W.]

[Footnote 51: The furtum lance licioque conceptum was no longer
understood in the time of the Antonines, (Aulus Gellius, xvi. 10.) The
Attic derivation of Heineccius, (Antiquitat. Rom. l. iv. tit. i. No.
13--21) is supported by the evidence of Aristophanes, his scholiast, and
Pollux. * Note: Nothing more is known of this ceremony; nevertheless
we find that already in his own days Gaius turned it into ridicule. He
says, (lib. iii. et p. 192, Sections 293,) prohibiti actio quadrupli
ex edicto praetoris introducta est; lex autem eo nomine nullam poenam
constituit. Hoc solum praecepit, ut qui quaerere velit, nudus quaerat,
linteo cinctus, lancem habens; qui si quid invenerit. jubet id lex
furtum manifestum esse. Quid sit autem linteum? quaesitum est. Sed
verius est consuti genus esse, quo necessariae partes tegerentur. Quare
lex tota ridicula est. Nam qui vestitum quaerere prohibet, is et nudum
quaerere prohibiturus est; eo magis, quod invenerit ibi imponat, neutrum
eorum procedit, si id quod quaeratur, ejus magnitudinis aut naturae
sit ut neque subjici, neque ibi imponi possit. Certe non dubitatur,
cujuscunque materiae sit ea lanx, satis legi fieri. We see moreover,
from this passage, that the basin, as most authors, resting on
the authority of Festus, have supposed, was not used to cover the
figure.--W. Gibbon says the face, though equally inaccurately. This
passage of Gaius, I must observe, as well as others in M. Warnkonig's
work, is very inaccurately printed.--M.]

[Footnote 52: In his Oration for Murena, (c. 9--13,) Cicero turns into
ridicule the forms and mysteries of the civilians, which are represented
with more candor by Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xx. 10,) Gravina, (Opp
p. 265, 266, 267,) and Heineccius, (Antiquitat. l. iv. tit. vi.) * Note:
Gibbon had conceived opinions too decided against the forms of procedure
in use among the Romans. Yet it is on these solemn forms that the
certainty of laws has been founded among all nations. Those of the
Romans were very intimately allied with the ancient religion, and
must of necessity have disappeared as Rome attained a higher degree
of civilization. Have not modern nations, even the most civilized,
overloaded their laws with a thousand forms, often absurd, almost always
trivial? How many examples are afforded by the English law! See, on the
nature of these forms, the work of M. de Savigny on the Vocation of our
Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, Heidelberg, 1814, p. 9, 10.--W.
This work of M. Savigny has been translated into English by Mr.
Hayward.--M.]

A more liberal art was cultivated, however, by the sage of Rome, who, in
a stricter sense, may be considered as the authors of the civil law. The
alteration of the idiom and manners of the Romans rendered the style
of the Twelve Tables less familiar to each rising generation, and the
doubtful passages were imperfectly explained by the study of legal
antiquarians. To define the ambiguities, to circumscribe the latitude,
to apply the principles, to extend the consequences, to reconcile the
real or apparent contradictions, was a much nobler and more important
task; and the province of legislation was silently invaded by the
expounders of ancient statutes. Their subtle interpretations concurred
with the equity of the praetor, to reform the tyranny of the darker
ages: however strange or intricate the means, it was the aim of
artificial jurisprudence to restore the simple dictates of nature and
reason, and the skill of private citizens was usefully employed to
undermine the public institutions of their country. [521] The revolution
of almost one thousand years, from the Twelve Tables to the reign of
Justinian, may be divided into three periods, almost equal in duration,
and distinguished from each other by the mode of instruction and the
character of the civilians. [53] Pride and ignorance contributed, during
the first period, to confine within narrow limits the science of the
Roman law. On the public days of market or assembly, the masters of the
art were seen walking in the forum ready to impart the needful advice
to the meanest of their fellow-citizens, from whose votes, on a future
occasion, they might solicit a grateful return. As their years and
honors increased, they seated themselves at home on a chair or throne,
to expect with patient gravity the visits of their clients, who at the
dawn of day, from the town and country, began to thunder at their door.
The duties of social life, and the incidents of judicial proceeding,
were the ordinary subject of these consultations, and the verbal or
written opinion of the juris-consults was framed according to the rules
of prudence and law. The youths of their own order and family were
permitted to listen; their children enjoyed the benefit of more private
lessons, and the Mucian race was long renowned for the hereditary
knowledge of the civil law. The second period, the learned and splendid
age of jurisprudence, may be extended from the birth of Cicero to
the reign of Severus Alexander. A system was formed, schools were
instituted, books were composed, and both the living and the dead became
subservient to the instruction of the student. The tripartite of Aelius
Paetus, surnamed Catus, or the Cunning, was preserved as the oldest work
of Jurisprudence. Cato the censor derived some additional fame from his
legal studies, and those of his son: the kindred appellation of Mucius
Scaevola was illustrated by three sages of the law; but the perfection
of the science was ascribed to Servius Sulpicius, their disciple, and
the friend of Tully; and the long succession, which shone with equal
lustre under the republic and under the Caesars, is finally closed by
the respectable characters of Papinian, of Paul, and of Ulpian. Their
names, and the various titles of their productions, have been minutely
preserved, and the example of Labeo may suggest some idea of their
diligence and fecundity. That eminent lawyer of the Augustan age divided
the year between the city and country, between business and composition;
and four hundred books are enumerated as the fruit of his retirement. Of
the collection of his rival Capito, the two hundred and fifty-ninth book
is expressly quoted; and few teachers could deliver their opinions in
less than a century of volumes. In the third period, between the reigns
of Alexander and Justinian, the oracles of jurisprudence were almost
mute. The measure of curiosity had been filled: the throne was occupied
by tyrants and Barbarians, the active spirits were diverted by religious
disputes, and the professors of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus,
were humbly content to repeat the lessons of their more enlightened
predecessors. From the slow advances and rapid decay of these legal
studies, it may be inferred, that they require a state of peace and
refinement. From the multitude of voluminous civilians who fill the
intermediate space, it is evident that such studies may be pursued,
and such works may be performed, with a common share of judgment,
experience, and industry. The genius of Cicero and Virgil was more
sensibly felt, as each revolving age had been found incapable of
producing a similar or a second: but the most eminent teachers of the
law were assured of leaving disciples equal or superior to themselves in
merit and reputation.

[Footnote 521: Compare, on the Responsa Prudentum, Warnkonig, Histoire
Externe du Droit Romain Bruxelles, 1836, p. 122.--M.]

[Footnote 53: The series of the civil lawyers is deduced by Pomponius,
(de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) The moderns have discussed,
with learning and criticism, this branch of literary history; and among
these I have chiefly been guided by Gravina (p. 41--79) and Hei neccius,
(Hist. J. R. No. 113-351.) Cicero, more especially in his books de
Oratore, de Claris Oratoribus, de Legibus, and the Clavie Ciceroniana
of Ernesti (under the names of Mucius, &c.) afford much genuine and
pleasing information. Horace often alludes to the morning labors of the
civilians, (Serm. I. i. 10, Epist. II. i. 103, &c)

     Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus Sub galli cantum,
     consultor ubi ostia pulsat.
     ------------
     Romae dulce diu fuit et solemne, reclusa Mane domo vigilare,
     clienti promere jura.

* Note: It is particularly in this division of the history of
the Roman jurisprudence into epochs, that Gibbon displays his profound
knowledge of the laws of this people. M. Hugo, adopting this division,
prefaced these three periods with the history of the times anterior to
the Law of the Twelve Tables, which are, as it were, the infancy of the
Roman law.--W]

The jurisprudence which had been grossly adapted to the wants of the
first Romans, was polished and improved in the seventh century of the
city, by the alliance of Grecian philosophy. The Scaevolas had been
taught by use and experience; but Servius Sulpicius [5311] was the first
civilian who established his art on a certain and general theory. [54]
For the discernment of truth and falsehood he applied, as an infallible
rule, the logic of Aristotle and the stoics, reduced particular cases
to general principles, and diffused over the shapeless mass the light of
order and eloquence. Cicero, his contemporary and friend, declined the
reputation of a professed lawyer; but the jurisprudence of his country
was adorned by his incomparable genius, which converts into gold every
object that it touches. After the example of Plato, he composed a
republic; and, for the use of his republic, a treatise of laws; in which
he labors to deduce from a celestial origin the wisdom and justice of
the Roman constitution. The whole universe, according to his sublime
hypothesis, forms one immense commonwealth: gods and men, who
participate of the same essence, are members of the same community;
reason prescribes the law of nature and nations; and all positive
institutions, however modified by accident or custom, are drawn from
the rule of right, which the Deity has inscribed on every virtuous mind.
From these philosophical mysteries, he mildly excludes the sceptics
who refuse to believe, and the epicureans who are unwilling to act. The
latter disdain the care of the republic: he advises them to slumber in
their shady gardens. But he humbly entreats that the new academy would
be silent, since her bold objections would too soon destroy the fair and
well ordered structure of his lofty system. [55] Plato, Aristotle, and
Zeno, he represents as the only teachers who arm and instruct a citizen
for the duties of social life. Of these, the armor of the stoics [56]
was found to be of the firmest temper; and it was chiefly worn, both for
use and ornament, in the schools of jurisprudence. From the portico, the
Roman civilians learned to live, to reason, and to die: but they imbibed
in some degree the prejudices of the sect; the love of paradox, the
pertinacious habits of dispute, and a minute attachment to words and
verbal distinctions. The superiority of form to matter was introduced
to ascertain the right of property: and the equality of crimes is
countenanced by an opinion of Trebatius, [57] that he who touches the
ear, touches the whole body; and that he who steals from a heap of corn,
or a hogshead of wine, is guilty of the entire theft. [58]

[Footnote 5311: M. Hugo thinks that the ingenious system of the
Institutes adopted by a great number of the ancient lawyers, and by
Justinian himself, dates from Severus Sulpicius. Hist du Droit Romain,
vol.iii.p. 119.--W.]

[Footnote 54: Crassus, or rather Cicero himself, proposes (de Oratore,
i. 41, 42) an idea of the art or science of jurisprudence, which the
eloquent, but illiterate, Antonius (i. 58) affects to deride. It was
partly executed by Servius Sulpicius, (in Bruto, c. 41,) whose praises
are elegantly varied in the classic Latinity of the Roman Gravina, (p.
60.)]

[Footnote 55: Perturbatricem autem omnium harum rerum academiam, hanc ab
Arcesila et Carneade recentem, exoremus ut sileat, nam si invaserit
in haec, quae satis scite instructa et composita videantur, nimis edet
ruinas, quam quidem ego placare cupio, submovere non audeo. (de Legibus,
i. 13.) From this passage alone, Bentley (Remarks on Free-thinking,
p. 250) might have learned how firmly Cicero believed in the specious
doctrines which he has adorned.]

[Footnote 56: The stoic philosophy was first taught at Rome by
Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio, (see his life in the Mem.
de l'Academis des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 75--89.)]

[Footnote 57: As he is quoted by Ulpian, (leg.40, 40, ad Sabinum in
Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 21.) Yet Trebatius, after he was a
leading civilian, que qui familiam duxit, became an epicurean, (Cicero
ad Fam. vii. 5.) Perhaps he was not constant or sincere in his new sect.
* Note: Gibbon had entirely misunderstood this phrase of Cicero. It was
only since his time that the real meaning of the author was apprehended.
Cicero, in enumerating the qualifications of Trebatius, says, Accedit
etiam, quod familiam ducit in jure civili, singularis memoria, summa
scientia, which means that Trebatius possessed a still further most
important qualification for a student of civil law, a remarkable memory,
&c. This explanation, already conjectured by G. Menage, Amaenit. Juris
Civilis, c. 14, is found in the dictionary of Scheller, v. Familia, and
in the History of the Roman Law by M. Hugo. Many authors have asserted,
without any proof sufficient to warrant the conjecture, that Trebatius
was of the school of Epicurus--W.]

[Footnote 58: See Gravina (p. 45--51) and the ineffectual cavils
of Mascou. Heineccius (Hist. J. R. No. 125) quotes and approves a
dissertation of Everard Otto, de Stoica Jurisconsultorum Philosophia.]

Arms, eloquence, and the study of the civil law, promoted a citizen to
the honors of the Roman state; and the three professions were
sometimes more conspicuous by their union in the same character. In
the composition of the edict, a learned praetor gave a sanction and
preference to his private sentiments; the opinion of a censor, or a
counsel, was entertained with respect; and a doubtful interpretation of
the laws might be supported by the virtues or triumphs of the civilian.
The patrician arts were long protected by the veil of mystery; and in
more enlightened times, the freedom of inquiry established the general
principles of jurisprudence. Subtile and intricate cases were elucidated
by the disputes of the forum: rules, axioms, and definitions, [59] were
admitted as the genuine dictates of reason; and the consent of the legal
professors was interwoven into the practice of the tribunals. But these
interpreters could neither enact nor execute the laws of the republic;
and the judges might disregard the authority of the Scaevolas
themselves, which was often overthrown by the eloquence or sophistry
of an ingenious pleader. [60] Augustus and Tiberius were the first
to adopt, as a useful engine, the science of the civilians; and their
servile labors accommodated the old system to the spirit and views of
despotism. Under the fair pretence of securing the dignity of the art,
the privilege of subscribing legal and valid opinions was confined to
the sages of senatorian or equestrian rank, who had been previously
approved by the judgment of the prince; and this monopoly prevailed,
till Adrian restored the freedom of the profession to every citizen
conscious of his abilities and knowledge. The discretion of the praetor
was now governed by the lessons of his teachers; the judges were
enjoined to obey the comment as well as the text of the law; and the use
of codicils was a memorable innovation, which Augustus ratified by the
advice of the civilians. [61] [6111]

[Footnote 59: We have heard of the Catonian rule, the Aquilian
stipulation, and the Manilian forms, of 211 maxims, and of 247
definitions, (Pandect. l. i. tit. xvi. xvii.)]

[Footnote 60: Read Cicero, l. i. de Oratore, Topica, pro Murena.]

[Footnote 61: See Pomponius, (de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.
leg. 2, No 47,) Heineccius, (ad Institut. l. i. tit. ii. No. 8, l. ii.
tit. xxv. in Element et Antiquitat.,) and Gravina, (p. 41--45.) Yet the
monopoly of Augustus, a harsh measure, would appear with some softening
in contemporary evidence; and it was probably veiled by a decree of the
senate]

[Footnote 6111: The author here follows the then generally received
opinion of Heineccius. The proofs which appear to confirm it are l. 2
47, D. I. 2, and 8. Instit. I. 2. The first of these passages speaks
expressly of a privilege granted to certain lawyers, until the time of
Adrian, publice respondendi jus ante Augusti tempora non dabatur. Primus
Divus ut major juris auctoritas haberetur, constituit, ut ex auctoritate
ejus responderent. The passage of the Institutes speaks of the different
opinions of those, quibus est permissum jura condere. It is true that
the first of these passages does not say that the opinion of these
privileged lawyers had the force of a law for the judges. For this
reason M. Hugo altogether rejects the opinion adopted by Heineccius, by
Bach, and in general by all the writers who preceded him. He conceives
that the 8 of the Institutes referred to the constitution of Valentinian
III., which regulated the respective authority to be ascribed to the
different writings of the great civilians. But we have now the following
passage in the Institutes of Gaius: Responsa prudentum sunt sententiae
et opiniones eorum, quibus permissum est jura condere; quorum omnium
si in unum sententiae concorrupt, id quod ita sentiunt, legis vicem
obtinet, si vero dissentiunt, judici licet, quam velit sententiam
sequi, idque rescripto Divi Hadrian signiticatur. I do not know, how in
opposition to this passage, the opinion of M. Hugo can be maintained. We
must add to this the passage quoted from Pomponius and from such strong
proofs, it seems incontestable that the emperors had granted some kind
of privilege to certain civilians, quibus permissum erat jura condere.
Their opinion had sometimes the force of law, legis vicem. M. Hugo,
endeavoring to reconcile this phrase with his system, gives it a forced
interpretation, which quite alters the sense; he supposes that the
passage contains no more than what is evident of itself, that the
authority of the civilians was to be respected, thus making a privilege
of that which was free to all the world. It appears to me almost
indisputable, that the emperors had sanctioned certain provisions
relative to the authority of these civilians, consulted by the judges.
But how far was their advice to be respected? This is a question
which it is impossible to answer precisely, from the want of historic
evidence. Is it not possible that the emperors established an authority
to be consulted by the judges? and in this case this authority must have
emanated from certain civilians named for this purpose by the emperors.
See Hugo, l. c. Moreover, may not the passage of Suetonius, in the Life
of Caligula, where he says that the emperor would no longer permit
the civilians to give their advice, mean that Caligula entertained the
design of suppressing this institution? See on this passage the Themis,
vol. xi. p. 17, 36. Our author not being acquainted with the opinions
opposed to Heineccius has not gone to the bottom of the subject.--W.]

The most absolute mandate could only require that the judges should
agree with the civilians, if the civilians agreed among themselves. But
positive institutions are often the result of custom and prejudice; laws
and language are ambiguous and arbitrary; where reason is incapable of
pronouncing, the love of argument is inflamed by the envy of rivals,
the vanity of masters, the blind attachment of their disciples; and
the Roman jurisprudence was divided by the once famous sects of the
Proculians and Sabinians. [62] Two sages of the law, Ateius Capito and
Antistius Labeo, [63] adorned the peace of the Augustan age; the former
distinguished by the favor of his sovereign; the latter more illustrious
by his contempt of that favor, and his stern though harmless opposition
to the tyrant of Rome. Their legal studies were influenced by the
various colors of their temper and principles. Labeo was attached to
the form of the old republic; his rival embraced the more profitable
substance of the rising monarchy. But the disposition of a courtier
is tame and submissive; and Capito seldom presumed to deviate from the
sentiments, or at least from the words, of his predecessors; while the
bold republican pursued his independent ideas without fear of paradox or
innovations. The freedom of Labeo was enslaved, however, by the rigor of
his own conclusions, and he decided, according to the letter of the
law, the same questions which his indulgent competitor resolved with
a latitude of equity more suitable to the common sense and feelings
of mankind. If a fair exchange had been substituted to the payment of
money, Capito still considered the transaction as a legal sale; [64]
and he consulted nature for the age of puberty, without confining his
definition to the precise period of twelve or fourteen years. [65] This
opposition of sentiments was propagated in the writings and lessons
of the two founders; the schools of Capito and Labeo maintained their
inveterate conflict from the age of Augustus to that of Adrian; [66]
and the two sects derived their appellations from Sabinus and Proculus,
their most celebrated teachers. The names of Cassians and Pegasians were
likewise applied to the same parties; but, by a strange reverse,
the popular cause was in the hands of Pegasus, [67] a timid slave of
Domitian, while the favorite of the Caesars was represented by Cassius,
[68] who gloried in his descent from the patriot assassin. By the
perpetual edict, the controversies of the sects were in a great measure
determined. For that important work, the emperor Adrian preferred the
chief of the Sabinians: the friends of monarchy prevailed; but the
moderation of Salvius Julian insensibly reconciled the victors and the
vanquished. Like the contemporary philosophers, the lawyers of the age
of the Antonines disclaimed the authority of a master, and adopted from
every system the most probable doctrines. [69] But their writings would
have been less voluminous, had their choice been more unanimous. The
conscience of the judge was perplexed by the number and weight of
discordant testimonies, and every sentence that his passion or interest
might pronounce was justified by the sanction of some venerable name. An
indulgent edict of the younger Theodosius excused him from the labor of
comparing and weighing their arguments. Five civilians, Caius, Papinian,
Paul, Ulpian, and Modestinus, were established as the oracles of
jurisprudence: a majority was decisive: but if their opinions were
equally divided, a casting vote was ascribed to the superior wisdom of
Papinian. [70]

[Footnote 62: I have perused the Diatribe of Gotfridus Mascovius, the
learned Mascou, de Sectis Jurisconsultorum, (Lipsiae, 1728, in 12mo., p.
276,) a learned treatise on a narrow and barren ground.]

[Footnote 63: See the character of Antistius Labeo in Tacitus, (Annal.
iii. 75,) and in an epistle of Ateius Capito, (Aul. Gellius, xiii. 12,)
who accuses his rival of libertas nimia et vecors. Yet Horace would not
have lashed a virtuous and respectable senator; and I must adopt the
emendation of Bentley, who reads Labieno insanior, (Serm. I. iii. 82.)
See Mascou, de Sectis, (c. i. p. 1--24.)]

[Footnote 64: Justinian (Institut. l. iii. tit. 23, and Theophil. Vers.
Graec. p. 677, 680) has commemorated this weighty dispute, and the
verses of Homer that were alleged on either side as legal authorities.
It was decided by Paul, (leg. 33, ad Edict. in Pandect. l. xviii.
tit. i. leg. 1,) since, in a simple exchange, the buyer could not be
discriminated from the seller.]

[Footnote 65: This controversy was likewise given for the Proculians, to
supersede the indecency of a search, and to comply with the aphorism of
Hippocrates, who was attached to the septenary number of two weeks of
years, or 700 of days, (Institut. l. i. tit. xxii.) Plutarch and the
Stoics (de Placit. Philosoph. l. v. c. 24) assign a more natural reason.
Fourteen years is the age. See the vestigia of the sects in Mascou, c.
ix. p. 145--276.]

[Footnote 66: The series and conclusion of the sects are described by
Mascou, (c. ii.--vii. p. 24--120;) and it would be almost ridiculous to
praise his equal justice to these obsolete sects. * Note: The work
of Gaius, subsequent to the time of Adrian, furnishes us with some
information on this subject. The disputes which rose between these two
sects appear to have been very numerous. Gaius avows himself a disciple
of Sabinus and of Caius. Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 106.--W.]

[Footnote 67: At the first summons he flies to the turbot-council;
yet Juvenal (Satir. iv. 75--81) styles the praefect or bailiff of Rome
sanctissimus legum interpres. From his science, says the old scholiast,
he was called, not a man, but a book. He derived the singular name of
Pegasus from the galley which his father commanded.]

[Footnote 68: Tacit. Annal. xvii. 7. Sueton. in Nerone, c. xxxvii.]

[Footnote 69: Mascou, de Sectis, c. viii. p. 120--144 de Herciscundis,
a legal term which was applied to these eclectic lawyers: herciscere is
synonymous to dividere. * Note: This word has never existed. Cujacius
is the author of it, who read me words terris condi in Servius ad Virg.
herciscundi, to which he gave an erroneous interpretation.--W.]

[Footnote 70: See the Theodosian Code, l. i. tit. iv. with Godefroy's
Commentary, tom. i. p. 30--35. [! This decree might give occasion to
Jesuitical disputes like those in the Lettres Provinciales, whether a
Judge was obliged to follow the opinion of Papinian, or of a majority,
against his judgment, against his conscience, &c. Yet a legislator might
give that opinion, however false, the validity, not of truth, but of
law. Note: We possess (since 1824) some interesting information as to
the framing of the Theodosian Code, and its ratification at Rome, in the
year 438. M. Closius, now professor at Dorpat in Russia, and M. Peyron,
member of the Academy of Turin, have discovered, the one at Milan, the
other at Turin, a great part of the five first books of the Code which
were wanting, and besides this, the reports (gesta) of the sitting of
the senate at Rome, in which the Code was published, in the year
after the marriage of Valentinian III. Among these pieces are the
constitutions which nominate commissioners for the formation of the
Code; and though there are many points of considerable obscurity
in these documents, they communicate many facts relative to this
legislation. 1. That Theodosius designed a great reform in the
legislation; to add to the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes all the new
constitutions from Constantine to his own day; and to frame a second
code for common use with extracts from the three codes, and from the
works of the civil lawyers. All laws either abrogated or fallen into
disuse were to be noted under their proper heads. 2. An Ordinance was
issued in 429 to form a commission for this purpose of nine persons,
of which Antiochus, as quaestor and praefectus, was president. A
second commission of sixteen members was issued in 435 under the
same president. 3. A code, which we possess under the name of Codex
Theodosianus, was finished in 438, published in the East, in an
ordinance addressed to the Praetorian praefect, Florentinus, and
intended to be published in the West. 4. Before it was published in the
West, Valentinian submitted it to the senate. There is a report of
the proceedings of the senate, which closed with loud acclamations and
gratulations.--From Warnkonig, Histoire du Droit Romain, p. 169-Wenck
has published this work, Codicis Theodosiani libri priores. Leipzig,
1825.--M.] * Note *: Closius of Tubingen communicated to M.Warnkonig
the two following constitutions of the emperor Constantine, which he
discovered in the Ambrosian library at Milan:-- 1. Imper. Constantinus
Aug. ad Maximium Praef. Praetorio. Perpetuas prudentum contentiones
eruere cupientes, Ulpiani ac Pauli, in Papinianum notas, qui dum ingenii
laudem sectantur, non tam corrigere eum quam depravere maluerunt,
aboleri praecepimus. Dat. III. Kalend. Octob. Const. Cons. et Crispi,
(321.) Idem. Aug. ad Maximium Praef Praet. Universa, quae scriptura
Pauli continentur, recepta auctoritate firmanda runt, et omni
veneratione celebranda. Ideoque sententiarum libros plepissima luce
et perfectissima elocutione et justissima juris ratione succinctos in
judiciis prolatos valere minimie dubitatur. Dat. V. Kalend. Oct. Trovia
Coust. et Max. Coss. (327.)--W]




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

When Justinian ascended the throne, the reformation of the Roman
jurisprudence was an arduous but indispensable task. In the space of ten
centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled
many thousand volumes, which no fortune could purchase and no capacity
could digest. Books could not easily be found; and the judges, poor in
the midst of riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate
discretion. The subjects of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the
language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the barbarous
dialect of the Latins was imperfectly studied in the academies of
Berytus and Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that idiom was
familiar to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been instructed by
the lessons of jurisprudence, and his Imperial choice selected the most
learned civilians of the East, to labor with their sovereign in the
work of reformation. [71] The theory of professors was assisted by the
practice of advocates, and the experience of magistrates; and the
whole undertaking was animated by the spirit of Tribonian. [72] This
extraordinary man, the object of so much praise and censure, was
a native of Side in Pamphylia; and his genius, like that of Bacon,
embraced, as his own, all the business and knowledge of the age.
Tribonian composed, both in prose and verse, on a strange diversity of
curious and abstruse subjects: [73] a double panegyric of Justinian and
the life of the philosopher Theodotus; the nature of happiness and the
duties of government; Homer's catalogue and the four-and-twenty sorts of
metre; the astronomical canon of Ptolemy; the changes of the months;
the houses of the planets; and the harmonic system of the world. To the
literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin tonque; the Roman
civilians were deposited in his library and in his mind; and he most
assiduously cultivated those arts which opened the road of wealth and
preferment. From the bar of the Praetorian praefects, he raised himself
to the honors of quaestor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the
council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy
was mitigated by the gentleness and affability of his manners. The
reproaches of impiety and avarice have stained the virtue or the
reputation of Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court, the
principal minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian
faith, and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an Atheist and
a Pagan, which have been imputed, inconsistently enough, to the last
philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved and more
sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the administration of
justice, the example of Bacon will again occur; nor can the merit of
Tribonian atone for his baseness, if he degraded the sanctity of his
profession; and if laws were every day enacted, modified, or repealed,
for the base consideration of his private emolument. In the sedition of
Constantinople, his removal was granted to the clamors, perhaps to the
just indignation, of the people: but the quaestor was speedily restored,
and, till the hour of his death, he possessed, above twenty years, the
favor and confidence of the emperor. His passive and dutiful submission
had been honored with the praise of Justinian himself, whose vanity was
incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the
grossest adulation. Tribonian adored the virtues of his gracious of
his gracious master; the earth was unworthy of such a prince; and he
affected a pious fear, that Justinian, like Elijah or Romulus, would be
snatched into the air, and translated alive to the mansions of celestial
glory. [74]

[Footnote 71: For the legal labors of Justinian, I have studied the
Preface to the Institutes; the 1st, 2d, and 3d Prefaces to the Pandects;
the 1st and 2d Preface to the Code; and the Code itself, (l. i. tit.
xvii. de Veteri Jure enucleando.) After these original testimonies,
I have consulted, among the moderns, Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No.
383--404,) Terasson. (Hist. de la Jurisprudence Romaine, p. 295--356,)
Gravina, (Opp. p. 93-100,) and Ludewig, in his Life of Justinian,
(p.19--123, 318-321; for the Code and Novels, p. 209--261; for the
Digest or Pandects, p. 262--317.)]

[Footnote 72: For the character of Tribonian, see the testimonies of
Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 23, 24. Anecdot. c. 13, 20,) and Suidas,
(tom. iii. p. 501, edit. Kuster.) Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian, p.
175--209) works hard, very hard, to whitewash--the blackamoor.]

[Footnote 73: I apply the two passages of Suidas to the same man; every
circumstance so exactly tallies. Yet the lawyers appear ignorant; and
Fabricius is inclined to separate the two characters, (Bibliot. Grae.
tom. i. p. 341, ii. p. 518, iii. p. 418, xii. p. 346, 353, 474.)]

[Footnote 74: This story is related by Hesychius, (de Viris
Illustribus,) Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 13,) and Suidas, (tom. iii. p.
501.) Such flattery is incredible! --Nihil est quod credere de se Non
possit, cum laudatur Diis aequa potestas. Fontenelle (tom. i. p.
32--39) has ridiculed the impudence of the modest Virgil. But the same
Fontenelle places his king above the divine Augustus; and the sage
Boileau has not blushed to say, "Le destin a ses yeux n'oseroit
balancer" Yet neither Augustus nor Louis XIV. were fools.]

If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his creative
genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the
world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery
might suggest, the emperor of the East was afraid to establish his
private judgment as the standard of equity: in the possession of
legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his
laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislature of past
times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an
artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of
antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first
year of his reign, he directed the faithful Tribonian, and nine learned
associates, to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as they were
contained, since the time of Adrian, in the Gregorian Hermogenian, and
Theodosian codes; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench
whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and
salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use
of his subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and
the twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might be
designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors. The new
Code of Justinian was honored with his name, and confirmed by his royal
signature: authentic transcripts were multiplied by the pens of notaries
and scribes; they were transmitted to the magistrates of the European,
the Asiatic, and afterwards the African provinces; and the law of the
empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches.
A more arduous operation was still behind--to extract the spirit of
jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the questions and
disputes, of the Roman civilians. Seventeen lawyers, with Tribonian
at their head, were appointed by the emperor to exercise an absolute
jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors. If they had obeyed
his commands in ten years, Justinian would have been satisfied with
their diligence; and the rapid composition of the Digest of Pandects,
[75] in three years, will deserve praise or censure, according to the
merit of the execution. From the library of Tribonian, they chose forty,
the most eminent civilians of former times: [76] two thousand treatises
were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been
carefully recorded, that three millions of lines or sentences, [77] were
reduced, in this abstract, to the moderate number of one hundred and
fifty thousand. The edition of this great work was delayed a month
after that of the Institutes; and it seemed reasonable that the elements
should precede the digest of the Roman law. As soon as the emperor
had approved their labors, he ratified, by his legislative power, the
speculations of these private citizens: their commentaries, on the
twelve tables, the perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the
decrees of the senate, succeeded to the authority of the text; and the
text was abandoned, as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity.
The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be the
legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were admitted into
the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome,
Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian addressed to the senate and
provinces his eternal oracles; and his pride, under the mask of piety,
ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and
inspiration of the Deity.

[Footnote 75: General receivers was a common title of the Greek
miscellanies, (Plin. Praefat. ad Hist. Natur.) The Digesta of Scaevola,
Marcellinus, Celsus, were already familiar to the civilians: but
Justinian was in the wrong when he used the two appellations as
synonymous. Is the word Pandects Greek or Latin--masculine or feminine?
The diligent Brenckman will not presume to decide these momentous
controversies, (Hist. Pandect. Florentine. p. 200--304.) Note: The word
was formerly in common use. See the preface is Aulus Gellius--W]

[Footnote 76: Angelus Politianus (l. v. Epist. ult.) reckons
thirty-seven (p. 192--200) civilians quoted in the Pandects--a learned,
and for his times, an extraordinary list. The Greek index to the
Pandects enumerates thirty-nine, and forty are produced by the
indefatigable Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom. iii. p. 488--502.)
Antoninus Augustus (de Nominibus Propriis Pandect. apud Ludewig, p.
283) is said to have added fifty-four names; but they must be vague or
second-hand references.]

[Footnote 77: The item of the ancient Mss. may be strictly defined as
sentences or periods of a complete sense, which, on the breadth of the
parchment rolls or volumes, composed as many lines of unequal length.
The number in each book served as a check on the errors of the scribes,
(Ludewig, p. 211--215; and his original author Suicer. Thesaur.
Ecclesiast. tom. i. p 1021-1036).]

Since the emperor declined the fame and envy of original composition, we
can only require, at his hands, method choice, and fidelity, the
humble, though indispensable, virtues of a compiler. Among the various
combinations of ideas, it is difficult to assign any reasonable
preference; but as the order of Justinian is different in his three
works, it is possible that all may be wrong; and it is certain that
two cannot be right. In the selection of ancient laws, he seems to have
viewed his predecessors without jealousy, and with equal regard: the
series could not ascend above the reign of Adrian, and the narrow
distinction of Paganism and Christianity, introduced by the superstition
of Theodosius, had been abolished by the consent of mankind. But the
jurisprudence of the Pandects is circumscribed within a period of
a hundred years, from the perpetual edict to the death of Severus
Alexander: the civilians who lived under the first Caesars are seldom
permitted to speak, and only three names can be attributed to the age of
the republic. The favorite of Justinian (it has been fiercely urged) was
fearful of encountering the light of freedom and the gravity of Roman
sages.

Tribonian condemned to oblivion the genuine and native wisdom of Cato,
the Scaevolas, and Sulpicius; while he invoked spirits more congenial to
his own, the Syrians, Greeks, and Africans, who flocked to the Imperial
court to study Latin as a foreign tongue, and jurisprudence as a
lucrative profession. But the ministers of Justinian, [78] were
instructed to labor, not for the curiosity of antiquarians, but for
the immediate benefit of his subjects. It was their duty to select the
useful and practical parts of the Roman law; and the writings of the old
republicans, however curious on excellent, were no longer suited to
the new system of manners, religion, and government. Perhaps, if the
preceptors and friends of Cicero were still alive, our candor would
acknowledge, that, except in purity of language, [79] their intrinsic
merit was excelled by the school of Papinian and Ulpian. The science of
the laws is the slow growth of time and experience, and the advantage
both of method and materials, is naturally assumed by the most recent
authors. The civilians of the reign of the Antonines had studied the
works of their predecessors: their philosophic spirit had mitigated the
rigor of antiquity, simplified the forms of proceeding, and emerged
from the jealousy and prejudice of the rival sects. The choice of
the authorities that compose the Pandects depended on the judgment of
Tribonian: but the power of his sovereign could not absolve him from
the sacred obligations of truth and fidelity. As the legislator of the
empire, Justinian might repeal the acts of the Antonines, or condemn, as
seditious, the free principles, which were maintained by the last of the
Roman lawyers. [80] But the existence of past facts is placed beyond
the reach of despotism; and the emperor was guilty of fraud and forgery,
when he corrupted the integrity of their text, inscribed with their
venerable names the words and ideas of his servile reign, [81] and
suppressed, by the hand of power, the pure and authentic copies of
their sentiments. The changes and interpolations of Tribonian and his
colleagues are excused by the pretence of uniformity: but their cares
have been insufficient, and the antinomies, or contradictions of the
Code and Pandects, still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern
civilians. [82]

[Footnote 78: An ingenious and learned oration of Schultingius
(Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p. 883--907) justifies the choice of
Tribonian, against the passionate charges of Francis Hottoman and his
sectaries.]

[Footnote 79: Strip away the crust of Tribonian, and allow for the use
of technical words, and the Latin of the Pandects will be found
not unworthy of the silver age. It has been vehemently attacked by
Laurentius Valla, a fastidious grammarian of the xvth century, and by
his apologist Floridus Sabinus. It has been defended by Alciat, and
a name less advocate, (most probably James Capellus.) Their various
treatises are collected by Duker, (Opuscula de Latinitate veterum
Jurisconsultorum, Lugd. Bat. 1721, in 12mo.) Note: Gibbon is mistaken
with regard to Valla, who, though he inveighs against the barbarous
style of the civilians of his own day, lavishes the highest praise on
the admirable purity of the language of the ancient writers on civil
law. (M. Warnkonig quotes a long passage of Valla in justification of
this observation.) Since his time, this truth has been recognized by
men of the highest eminence, such as Erasmus, David Hume and
Runkhenius.--W.]

[Footnote 80: Nomina quidem veteribus servavimus, legum autem veritatem
nostram fecimus. Itaque siquid erat in illis seditiosum, multa autem
talia erant ibi reposita, hoc decisum est et definitum, et in perspicuum
finem deducta est quaeque lex, (Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xvii. leg.
3, No 10.) A frank confession! * Note: Seditiosum, in the language of
Justinian, means not seditious, but discounted.--W.]

[Footnote 81: The number of these emblemata (a polite name for
forgeries) is much reduced by Bynkershoek, (in the four last books of
his Observations,) who poorly maintains the right of Justinian and the
duty of Tribonian.]

[Footnote 82: The antinomies, or opposite laws of the Code and
Pandects, are sometimes the cause, and often the excuse, of the glorious
uncertainty of the civil law, which so often affords what Montaigne
calls "Questions pour l'Ami." See a fine passage of Franciscus Balduinus
in Justinian, (l. ii. p. 259, &c., apud Ludewig, p. 305, 306.)]

A rumor devoid of evidence has been propagated by the enemies of
Justinian; that the jurisprudence of ancient Rome was reduced to ashes
by the author of the Pandects, from the vain persuasion, that it was now
either false or superfluous. Without usurping an office so
invidious, the emperor might safely commit to ignorance and time the
accomplishments of this destructive wish. Before the invention of
printing and paper, the labor and the materials of writing could be
purchased only by the rich; and it may reasonably be computed, that the
price of books was a hundred fold their present value. [83] Copies were
slowly multiplied and cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted
the sacrilegious scribes to erase the characters of antiquity, [8311]
and Sophocles or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to
missals, homilies, and the golden legend. [84] If such was the fate
of the most beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be
expected for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science? The books
of jurisprudence were interesting to few, and entertaining to none:
their value was connected with present use, and they sunk forever as
soon as that use was superseded by the innovations of fashion, superior
merit, or public authority. In the age of peace and learning, between
Cicero and the last of the Antonines, many losses had been already
sustained, and some luminaries of the school, or forum, were known only
to the curious by tradition and report. Three hundred and sixty years
of disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it may
fairly be presumed, that of the writings, which Justinian is accused
of neglecting, many were no longer to be found in the libraries of the
East. [85] The copies of Papinian, or Ulpian, which the reformer had
proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future notice: the Twelve Tables and
praetorian edicts insensibly vanished, and the monuments of ancient Rome
were neglected or destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks.
Even the Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger
from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the
editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one original. [86]
It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh
century, [87] was successively transported by the accidents of war
and commerce to Amalphi, [88] Pisa, [89] and Florence, [90] and is now
deposited as a sacred relic [91] in the ancient palace of the republic.
[92]

[Footnote 83: When Faust, or Faustus, sold at Paris his first printed
Bibles as manuscripts, the price of a parchment copy was reduced from
four or five hundred to sixty, fifty, and forty crowns. The public
was at first pleased with the cheapness, and at length provoked by the
discovery of the fraud, (Mattaire, Annal. Typograph. tom. i. p. 12;
first edit.)]

[Footnote 8311: Among the works which have been recovered, by the
persevering and successful endeavors of M. Mai and his followers to
trace the imperfectly erased characters of the ancient writers on these
Palimpsests, Gibbon at this period of his labors would have hailed with
delight the recovery of the Institutes of Gaius, and the fragments of
the Theodosian Code, published by M Keyron of Turin.--M.]

[Footnote 84: This execrable practice prevailed from the viiith, and
more especially from the xiith, century, when it became almost universal
(Montfaucon, in the Memoires de l'Academie, tom. vi. p. 606, &c.
Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 176.)]

[Footnote 85: Pomponius (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 2) observes, that
of the three founders of the civil law, Mucius, Brutus, and Manilius,
extant volumina, scripta Manilii monumenta; that of some old republican
lawyers, haec versantur eorum scripta inter manus hominum. Eight of the
Augustan sages were reduced to a compendium: of Cascellius, scripta non
extant sed unus liber, &c.; of Trebatius, minus frequentatur; of Tubero,
libri parum grati sunt. Many quotations in the Pandects are derived from
books which Tribonian never saw; and in the long period from the viith
to the xiiith century of Rome, the apparent reading of the moderns
successively depends on the knowledge and veracity of their
predecessors.]

[Footnote 86: All, in several instances, repeat the errors of the scribe
and the transpositions of some leaves in the Florentine Pandects. This
fact, if it be true, is decisive. Yet the Pandects are quoted by Ivo of
Chartres, (who died in 1117,) by Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and
by Vacarius, our first professor, in the year 1140, (Selden ad Fletam,
c. 7, tom. ii. p. 1080--1085.) Have our British Mss. of the Pandects
been collated?]

[Footnote 87: See the description of this original in Brenckman, (Hist.
Pandect. Florent. l. i. c. 2, 3, p. 4--17, and l. ii.) Politian, an
enthusiast, revered it as the authentic standard of Justinian himself,
(p. 407, 408;) but this paradox is refuted by the abbreviations of the
Florentine Ms. (l. ii. c. 3, p. 117-130.) It is composed of two
quarto volumes, with large margins, on a thin parchment, and the Latin
characters betray the band of a Greek scribe.]

[Footnote 88: Brenckman, at the end of his history, has inserted two
dissertations on the republic of Amalphi, and the Pisan war in the year
1135, &c.]

[Footnote 89: The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi (A. D 1137) is
first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus, (Brenckman, l. i.
c. 11, p. 73, 74, l. iv. c. 2, p. 417--425,) on the faith of a Pisan
chronicle, (p. 409, 410,) without a name or a date. The whole story,
though unknown to the xiith century, embellished by ignorant ages,
and suspected by rigid criticism, is not, however, destitute of much
internal probability, (l. i. c. 4--8, p. 17--50.) The Liber Pandectarum
of Pisa was undoubtedly consulted in the xivth century by the great
Bartolus, (p. 406, 407. See l. i. c. 9, p. 50--62.) Note: Savigny (vol.
iii. p. 83, 89) examines and rejects the whole story. See likewise
Hallam vol. iii. p. 514.--M.]

[Footnote 90: Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406; and
in 1411 the Pandects were transported to the capital. These events are
authentic and famous.]

[Footnote 91: They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich casket,
and shown to curious travellers by the monks and magistrates bareheaded,
and with lighted tapers, (Brenckman, l. i. c. 10, 11, 12, p. 62--93.)]

[Footnote 92: After the collations of Politian, Bologninus, and
Antoninus Augustinus, and the splendid edition of the Pandects
by Taurellus, (in 1551,) Henry Brenckman, a Dutchman, undertook a
pilgrimage to Florence, where he employed several years in the study of
a single manuscript. His Historia Pandectarum Florentinorum, (Utrecht,
1722, in 4to.,) though a monument of industry, is a small portion of his
original design.]

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation. To
maintain the text of the Pandects, the Institutes, and the Code, the use
of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian
recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under the weight
of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash
civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their
sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius, should
blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to dispute his right
of binding the authority of his successors, and the native freedom of
the mind. But the emperor was unable to fix his own inconstancy; and,
while he boasted of renewing the exchange of Diomede, of transmuting
brass into gold, [93] discovered the necessity of purifying his gold
from the mixture of baser alloy. Six years had not elapsed from the
publication of the Code, before he condemned the imperfect attempt, by
a new and more accurate edition of the same work; which he enriched with
two hundred of his own laws, and fifty decisions of the darkest and
most intricate points of jurisprudence. Every year, or, according
to Procopius, each day, of his long reign, was marked by some legal
innovation. Many of his acts were rescinded by himself; many were
rejected by his successors; many have been obliterated by time; but the
number of sixteen Edicts, and one hundred and sixty-eight Novels, [94]
has been admitted into the authentic body of the civil jurisprudence.
In the opinion of a philosopher superior to the prejudices of
his profession, these incessant, and, for the most part, trifling
alterations, can be only explained by the venal spirit of a prince, who
sold without shame his judgments and his laws. [95] The charge of the
secret historian is indeed explicit and vehement; but the sole instance,
which he produces, may be ascribed to the devotion as well as to the
avarice of Justinian. A wealthy bigot had bequeathed his inheritance to
the church of Emesa; and its value was enhanced by the dexterity of an
artist, who subscribed confessions of debt and promises of payment
with the names of the richest Syrians. They pleaded the established
prescription of thirty or forty years; but their defence was overruled
by a retrospective edict, which extended the claims of the church to
the term of a century; an edict so pregnant with injustice and disorder,
that, after serving this occasional purpose, it was prudently abolished
in the same reign. [96] If candor will acquit the emperor himself, and
transfer the corruption to his wife and favorites, the suspicion of
so foul a vice must still degrade the majesty of his laws; and the
advocates of Justinian may acknowledge, that such levity, whatsoever be
the motive, is unworthy of a legislator and a man.

[Footnote 93: Apud Homerum patrem omnis virtutis, (1st Praefat. ad
Pandect.) A line of Milton or Tasso would surprise us in an act of
parliament. Quae omnia obtinere sancimus in omne aevum. Of the first
Code, he says, (2d Praefat.,) in aeternum valiturum. Man and forever!]

[Footnote 94: Novellae is a classic adjective, but a barbarous
substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them himself;
the nine collations, the legal standard of modern tribunals, consist of
ninety-eight Novels; but the number was increased by the diligence of
Julian, Haloander, and Contius, (Ludewig, p. 249, 258 Aleman. Not in
Anecdot. p. 98.)]

[Footnote 95: Montesquieu, Considerations sur la Grandeur et la
Decadence des Romains, c. 20, tom. iii. p. 501, in 4to. On this occasion
he throws aside the gown and cap of a President a Mortier.]

[Footnote 96: Procopius, Anecdot. c. 28. A similar privilege was granted
to the church of Rome, (Novel. ix.) For the general repeal of these
mischievous indulgences, see Novel. cxi. and Edict. v.]

Monarchs seldom condescend to become the preceptors of their subjects;
and some praise is due to Justinian, by whose command an ample system
was reduced to a short and elementary treatise. Among the various
institutes of the Roman law, [97] those of Caius [98] were the most
popular in the East and West; and their use may be considered as an
evidence of their merit. They were selected by the Imperial delegates,
Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus; and the freedom and purity of the
Antonines was incrusted with the coarser materials of a degenerate age.
The same volume which introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople,
and Berytus, to the gradual study of the Code and Pandects, is still
precious to the historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate. The
Institutes of Justinian are divided into four books: they proceed,
with no contemptible method, from, I. Persons, to, II. Things, and from
things, to, III. Actions; and the article IV., of Private Wrongs, is
terminated by the principles of Criminal Law. [9811]

[Footnote 97: Lactantius, in his Institutes of Christianity, an elegant
and specious work, proposes to imitate the title and method of the
civilians. Quidam prudentes et arbitri aequitatis Institutiones Civilis
Juris compositas ediderunt, (Institut. Divin. l. i. c. 1.) Such as
Ulpian, Paul, Florentinus, Marcian.]

[Footnote 98: The emperor Justinian calls him suum, though he died
before the end of the second century. His Institutes are quoted by
Servius, Boethius, Priscian, &c.; and the Epitome by Arrian is still
extant. (See the Prolegomena and notes to the edition of Schulting, in
the Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, Lugd. Bat. 1717. Heineccius, Hist.
J R No. 313. Ludewig, in Vit. Just. p. 199.)]

[Footnote 9811: Gibbon, dividing the Institutes into four parts,
considers the appendix of the criminal law in the last title as a fourth
part.--W.]




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

The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and
limited government. In France, the remains of liberty are kept alive
by the spirit, the honors, and even the prejudices, of fifty thousand
nobles. [99] Two hundred families [9911] supply, in lineal descent, the
second branch of English legislature, which maintains, between the king
and commons, the balance of the constitution. A gradation of patricians
and plebeians, of strangers and subjects, has supported the aristocracy
of Genoa, Venice, and ancient Rome. The perfect equality of men is the
point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded;
since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if
any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or
fellow-citizens. In the decline of the Roman empire, the proud
distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished, and the reason or
instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy.
The emperor could not eradicate the popular reverence which always
waits on the possession of hereditary wealth, or the memory of famous
ancestors. He delighted to honor, with titles and emoluments, his
generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious indulgence
communicated some rays of their glory to the persons of their wives and
children. But in the eye of the law, all Roman citizens were equal,
and all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome. That inestimable
character was degraded to an obsolete and empty name. The voice of a
Roman could no longer enact his laws, or create the annual ministers of
his power: his constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary
will of a master: and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was
admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command, which the
citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the conquests of his
fathers. The first Caesars had scrupulously guarded the distinction of
ingenuous and servile birth, which was decided by the condition of the
mother; and the candor of the laws was satisfied, if her freedom could
be ascertained, during a single moment, between the conception and
the delivery. The slaves, who were liberated by a generous master,
immediately entered into the middle class of libertines or freedmen;
but they could never be enfranchised from the duties of obedience and
gratitude; whatever were the fruits of their industry, their patron and
his family inherited the third part; or even the whole of their fortune,
if they died without children and without a testament. Justinian
respected the rights of patrons; but his indulgence removed the badge of
disgrace from the two inferior orders of freedmen; whoever ceased to be
a slave, obtained, without reserve or delay, the station of a citizen;
and at length the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had
refused, was created, or supposed, by the omnipotence of the emperor.
Whatever restraints of age, or forms, or numbers, had been formerly
introduced to check the abuse of manumissions, and the too rapid
increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and the
spirit of his laws promoted the extinction of domestic servitude.
Yet the eastern provinces were filled, in the time of Justinian, with
multitudes of slaves, either born or purchased for the use of their
masters; and the price, from ten to seventy pieces of gold, was
determined by their age, their strength, and their education. [100] But
the hardships of this dependent state were continually diminished by the
influence of government and religion: and the pride of a subject was no
longer elated by his absolute dominion over the life and happiness of
his bondsman. [101]

[Footnote 99: See the Annales Politiques de l'Abbe de St. Pierre, tom.
i. p. 25 who dates in the year 1735. The most ancient families claim the
immemorial possession of arms and fiefs. Since the Crusades, some, the
most truly respectable, have been created by the king, for merit and
services. The recent and vulgar crowd is derived from the multitude of
venal offices without trust or dignity, which continually ennoble the
wealthy plebeians.]

[Footnote 9911: Since the time of Gibbon, the House of Peers has been
more than doubled: it is above 400, exclusive of the spiritual peers--a
wise policy to increase the patrician order in proportion to the general
increase of the nation.--M.]

[Footnote 100: If the option of a slave was bequeathed to several
legatees, they drew lots, and the losers were entitled to their share
of his value; ten pieces of gold for a common servant or maid under ten
years: if above that age, twenty; if they knew a trade, thirty; notaries
or writers, fifty; midwives or physicians, sixty; eunuchs under ten
years, thirty pieces; above, fifty; if tradesmen, seventy, (Cod. l. vi.
tit. xliii. leg. 3.) These legal prices are generally below those of the
market.]

[Footnote 101: For the state of slaves and freedmen, see Institutes, l.
i. tit. iii.--viii. l. ii. tit. ix. l. iii. tit. viii. ix. Pandects or
Digest, l. i. tit. v. vi. l. xxxviii. tit. i.--iv., and the whole of
the xlth book. Code, l. vi. tit. iv. v. l. vii. tit. i.--xxiii. Be it
henceforward understood that, with the original text of the Institutes
and Pandects, the correspondent articles in the Antiquities and Elements
of Heineccius are implicitly quoted; and with the xxvii. first books
of the Pandects, the learned and rational Commentaries of Gerard Noodt,
(Opera, tom. ii. p. 1--590, the end. Lugd. Bat. 1724.)]

The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their
infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the
returns of filial piety. But the exclusive, absolute, and perpetual
dominion of the father over his children, is peculiar to the Roman
jurisprudence, [102] and seems to be coeval with the foundation of the
city. [103] The paternal power was instituted or confirmed by Romulus
himself; and, after the practice of three centuries, it was inscribed
on the fourth table of the Decemvirs. In the forum, the senate, or the
camp, the adult son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the public and private
rights of a person: in his father's house he was a mere thing; [1031]
confounded by the laws with the movables, the cattle, and the slaves,
whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy, without being
responsible to any earthly tribunal. The hand which bestowed the daily
sustenance might resume the voluntary gift, and whatever was acquired by
the labor or fortune of the son was immediately lost in the property
of the father. His stolen goods (his oxen or his children) might be
recovered by the same action of theft; [104] and if either had been
guilty of a trespass, it was in his own option to compensate the damage,
or resign to the injured party the obnoxious animal. At the call of
indigence or avarice, the master of a family could dispose of his
children or his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far more
advantageous, since he regained, by the first manumission, his alienated
freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural father; he might
be condemned to servitude a second and a third time, and it was not till
after the third sale and deliverance, [105] that he was enfranchised
from the domestic power which had been so repeatedly abused. According
to his discretion, a father might chastise the real or imaginary faults
of his children, by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them
to the country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The
majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death; [106]
and the examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised
and never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome beyond the times
of Pompey and Augustus. Neither age, nor rank, nor the consular office,
nor the honors of a triumph, could exempt the most illustrious citizen
from the bonds of filial subjection: [107] his own descendants were
included in the family of their common ancestor; and the claims of
adoption were not less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature.
Without fear, though not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators
had reposed an unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal love;
and the oppression was tempered by the assurance that each generation
must succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of parent and master.
[Footnote 102: See the patria potestas in the Institutes, (l. i. tit.
ix.,) the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vi. vii.,) and the Code, (l. viii. tit.
xlvii. xlviii. xlix.) Jus potestatis quod in liberos habemus proprium
est civium Romanorum. Nulli enim alii sunt homines, qui talem in liberos
habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus. * Note: The newly-discovered
Institutes of Gaius name one nation in which the same power was vested
in the parent. Nec me praeterit Galatarum gentem credere, in potestate
parentum liberos esse. Gaii Instit. edit. 1824, p. 257.--M.]

[Footnote 103: Dionysius Hal. l. ii. p. 94, 95. Gravina (Opp. p. 286)
produces the words of the xii. tables. Papinian (in Collatione Legum
Roman et Mosaicarum, tit. iv. p. 204) styles this patria potestas, lex
regia: Ulpian (ad Sabin. l. xxvi. in Pandect. l. i. tit. vi. leg. 8)
says, jus potestatis moribus receptum; and furiosus filium in potestate
habebit How sacred--or rather, how absurd! * Note: All this is in strict
accordance with the Roman character.--W.]

[Footnote 1031: This parental power was strictly confined to the Roman
citizen. The foreigner, or he who had only jus Latii, did not possess
it. If a Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or a foreign wife, he
did not possess this power over his son, because the son, following the
legal condition of the mother, was not a Roman citizen. A man, however,
alleging sufficient cause for his ignorance, might raise both mother and
child to the rights of citizenship. Gaius. p. 30.--M.]

[Footnote 104: Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 14, No. 13, leg. 38, No.
1. Such was the decision of Ulpian and Paul.]

[Footnote 105: The trina mancipatio is most clearly defined by Ulpian,
(Fragment. x. p. 591, 592, edit. Schulting;) and best illustrated in
the Antiquities of Heineccius. * Note: The son of a family sold by his
father did not become in every respect a slave, he was statu liber; that
is to say, on paying the price for which he was sold, he became entirely
free. See Hugo, Hist. Section 61--W.]

[Footnote 106: By Justinian, the old law, the jus necis of the Roman
father (Institut. l. iv. tit. ix. No. 7) is reported and reprobated.
Some legal vestiges are left in the Pandects (l. xliii. tit. xxix. leg.
3, No. 4) and the Collatio Legum Romanarum et Mosaicarum, (tit. ii. No.
3, p. 189.)]

[Footnote 107: Except on public occasions, and in the actual exercise of
his office. In publicis locis atque muneribus, atque actionibus
patrum, jura cum filiorum qui in magistratu sunt potestatibus collata
interquiescere paullulum et connivere, &c., (Aul. Gellius, Noctes
Atticae, ii. 2.) The Lessons of the philosopher Taurus were justified by
the old and memorable example of Fabius; and we may contemplate the same
story in the style of Livy (xxiv. 44) and the homely idiom of Claudius
Quadri garius the annalist.]

The first limitation of paternal power is ascribed to the justice and
humanity of Numa; and the maid who, with his father's consent, had
espoused a freeman, was protected from the disgrace of becoming the
wife of a slave. In the first ages, when the city was pressed, and often
famished, by her Latin and Tuscan neighbors, the sale of children might
be a frequent practice; but as a Roman could not legally purchase the
liberty of his fellow-citizen, the market must gradually fail, and the
trade would be destroyed by the conquests of the republic. An imperfect
right of property was at length communicated to sons; and the threefold
distinction of profectitious, adventitious, and professional was
ascertained by the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. [108] Of all
that proceeded from the father, he imparted only the use, and reserved
the absolute dominion; yet if his goods were sold, the filial portion
was excepted, by a favorable interpretation, from the demands of
the creditors. In whatever accrued by marriage, gift, or collateral
succession, the property was secured to the son; but the father, unless
he had been specially excluded, enjoyed the usufruct during his life.
As a just and prudent reward of military virtue, the spoils of the enemy
were acquired, possessed, and bequeathed by the soldier alone; and the
fair analogy was extended to the emoluments of any liberal profession,
the salary of public service, and the sacred liberality of the emperor
or empress. The life of a citizen was less exposed than his fortune
to the abuse of paternal power. Yet his life might be adverse to the
interest or passions of an unworthy father: the same crimes that flowed
from the corruption, were more sensibly felt by the humanity, of the
Augustan age; and the cruel Erixo, who whipped his son till he expired,
was saved by the emperor from the just fury of the multitude. [109] The
Roman father, from the license of servile dominion, was reduced to the
gravity and moderation of a judge. The presence and opinion of Augustus
confirmed the sentence of exile pronounced against an intentional
parricide by the domestic tribunal of Arius. Adrian transported to
an island the jealous parent, who, like a robber, had seized the
opportunity of hunting, to assassinate a youth, the incestuous lover of
his step-mother. [110] A private jurisdiction is repugnant to the spirit
of monarchy; the parent was again reduced from a judge to an accuser;
and the magistrates were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his
complaints and execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life
of a son without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the
pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the Pompeian law,
were finally inflicted by the justice of Constantine. [111] The same
protection was due to every period of existence; and reason must applaud
the humanity of Paulus, for imputing the crime of murder to the father
who strangles, or starves, or abandons his new-born infant; or exposes
him in a public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied.
But the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice of
antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always
practised with impunity, by the nations who never entertained the Roman
ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human
heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated
by the motives of economy and compassion. [112] If the father could
subdue his own feelings, he might escape, though not the censure, at
least the chastisement, of the laws; and the Roman empire was stained
with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by
Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the
Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence [113] and Christianity had
been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle
influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment. [114]

[Footnote 108: See the gradual enlargement and security of the filial
peculium in the Institutes, (l. ii. tit. ix.,) the Pandects, (l. xv.
tit. i. l. xli. tit. i.,) and the Code, (l. iv. tit. xxvi. xxvii.)]

[Footnote 109: The examples of Erixo and Arius are related by Seneca,
(de Clementia, i. 14, 15,) the former with horror, the latter with
applause.]

[Footnote 110: Quod latronis magis quam patris jure eum interfecit, nam
patria potestas in pietate debet non in atrocitate consistere, (Marcian.
Institut. l. xix. in Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. ix. leg.5.)]

[Footnote 111: The Pompeian and Cornelian laws de sicariis and
parricidis are repeated, or rather abridged, with the last supplements
of Alexander Severus, Constantine, and Valentinian, in the Pandects (l.
xlviii. tit. viii ix,) and Code, (l. ix. tit. xvi. xvii.) See likewise
the Theodosian Code, (l. ix. tit. xiv. xv.,) with Godefroy's Commentary,
(tom. iii. p. 84--113) who pours a flood of ancient and modern learning
over these penal laws.]

[Footnote 112: When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not
obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father
and a master, and silences the scruples of a foolish woman. See
Apuleius, (Metamorph. l. x. p. 337, edit. Delphin.)]

[Footnote 113: The opinion of the lawyers, and the discretion of
the magistrates, had introduced, in the time of Tacitus, some legal
restraints, which might support his contrast of the boni mores of the
Germans to the bonae leges alibi--that is to say, at Rome, (de Moribus
Germanorum, c. 19.) Tertullian (ad Nationes, l. i. c. 15) refutes
his own charges, and those of his brethren, against the heathen
jurisprudence.]

[Footnote 114: The wise and humane sentence of the civilian Paul (l. ii.
Sententiarum in Pandect, 1. xxv. tit. iii. leg. 4) is represented as a
mere moral precept by Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom. i. in Julius Paulus, p.
567--558, and Amica Responsio, p. 591-606,) who maintains the opinion of
Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom. ii. p. 409, ad Belgas. cent. i. epist.
85,) and as a positive binding law by Bynkershoek, (de Jure occidendi
Liberos, Opp. tom. i. p. 318--340. Curae Secundae, p. 391--427.) In
a learned out angry controversy, the two friends deviated into the
opposite extremes.]

Experience has proved, that savages are the tyrants of the female sex,
and that the condition of women is usually softened by the refinements
of social life. In the hope of a robust progeny, Lycurgus had delayed
the season of marriage: it was fixed by Numa at the tender age of twelve
years, that the Roman husband might educate to his will a pure and
obedient virgin. [115] According to the custom of antiquity, he bought
his bride of her parents, and she fulfilled the coemption by purchasing,
with three pieces of copper, a just introduction to his house and
household deities. A sacrifice of fruits was offered by the pontiffs in
the presence of ten witnesses; the contracting parties were seated on
the same sheep-skin; they tasted a salt cake of far or rice; and this
confarreation, [116] which denoted the ancient food of Italy, served as
an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body. But this union on the
side of the woman was rigorous and unequal; and she renounced the name
and worship of her father's house, to embrace a new servitude, decorated
only by the title of adoption, a fiction of the law, neither rational
nor elegant, bestowed on the mother of a family [117] (her proper
appellation) the strange characters of sister to her own children,
and of daughter to her husband or master, who was invested with the
plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was
approved, or censured, or chastised; he exercised the jurisdiction of
life and death; and it was allowed, that in the cases of adultery
or drunkenness, [118] the sentence might be properly inflicted. She
acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly
was woman defined, not as a person, but as a thing, that, if the
original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other
movables, by the use and possession of an entire year. The inclination
of the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so
scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws: [119] but as
polygamy was unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or a more
favored partner.

[Footnote 115: Dionys. Hal. l. ii. p. 92, 93. Plutarch, in Numa, p.
140-141.]

[Footnote 116: Among the winter frunenta, the triticum, or bearded
wheat; the siligo, or the unbearded; the far, adorea, oryza, whose
description perfectly tallies with the rice of Spain and Italy. I adopt
this identity on the credit of M. Paucton in his useful and laborious
Metrologie, (p. 517--529.)]

[Footnote 117: Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, xviii. 6) gives
a ridiculous definition of Aelius Melissus, Matrona, quae semel
materfamilias quae saepius peperit, as porcetra and scropha in the sow
kind. He then adds the genuine meaning, quae in matrimonium vel in manum
convenerat.]

[Footnote 118: It was enough to have tasted wine, or to have stolen the
key of the cellar, (Plin. Hist. Nat. xiv. 14.)]

[Footnote 119: Solon requires three payments per month. By the Misna, a
daily debt was imposed on an idle, vigorous, young husband; twice a week
on a citizen; once on a peasant; once in thirty days on a camel-driver;
once in six months on a seaman. But the student or doctor was free from
tribute; and no wife, if she received a weekly sustenance, could sue
for a divorce; for one week a vow of abstinence was allowed. Polygamy
divided, without multiplying, the duties of the husband, (Selden, Uxor
Ebraica, l. iii. c 6, in his works, vol ii. p. 717--720.)]

After the Punic triumphs, the matrons of Rome aspired to the common
benefits of a free and opulent republic: their wishes were gratified
by the indulgence of fathers and lovers, and their ambition was
unsuccessfully resisted by the gravity of Cato the Censor. [120] They
declined the solemnities of the old nuptiais; defeated the annual
prescription by an absence of three days; and, without losing their name
or independence, subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage
contract. Of their private fortunes, they communicated the use, and
secured the property: the estates of a wife could neither be alienated
nor mortgaged by a prodigal husband; their mutual gifts were prohibited
by the jealousy of the laws; and the misconduct of either party might
afford, under another name, a future subject for an action of theft.
To this loose and voluntary compact, religious and civil rights were no
longer essential; and, between persons of a similar rank, the apparent
community of life was allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials.
The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians, who derived all
spiritual grace from the prayers of the faithful and the benediction
of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, and duties of the holy
institution were regulated by the tradition of the synagogue, the
precepts of the gospel, and the canons of general or provincial synods;
[121] and the conscience of the Christians was awed by the decrees
and censures of their ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of
Justinian were not subject to the authority of the church: the emperor
consulted the unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and the choice of
matrimonial laws in the Code and Pandects, is directed by the earthly
motives of justice, policy, and the natural freedom of both sexes. [122]

[Footnote 120: On the Oppian law we may hear the mitigating speech of
Vaerius Flaccus, and the severe censorial oration of the elder Cato,
(Liv. xxxiv. l--8.) But we shall rather hear the polished historian of
the eighth, than the rough orators of the sixth, century of Rome. The
principles, and even the style, of Cato are more accurately preserved by
Aulus Gellius, (x. 23.)]

[Footnote 121: For the system of Jewish and Catholic matrimony, see
Selden, (Uxor Ebraica, Opp. vol. ii. p. 529--860,) Bingham, (Christian
Antiquities, l. xxii.,) and Chardon, (Hist. des Sacremens, tom. vi.)]

[Footnote 122: The civil laws of marriage are exposed in the Institutes,
(l. i. tit. x.,) the Pandects, (l. xxiii. xxiv. xxv.,) and the Code, (l.
v.;) but as the title de ritu nuptiarum is yet imperfect, we are obliged
to explore the fragments of Ulpian (tit. ix. p. 590, 591,) and the
Collatio Legum Mosaicarum, (tit. xvi. p. 790, 791,) with the notes of
Pithaeus and Schulting. They find in the Commentary of Servius (on the
1st Georgia and the 4th Aeneid) two curious passages.]

Besides the agreement of the parties, the essence of every rational
contract, the Roman marriage required the previous approbation of the
parents. A father might be forced by some recent laws to supply the
wants of a mature daughter; but even his insanity was not gradually
allowed to supersede the necessity of his consent. The causes of the
dissolution of matrimony have varied among the Romans; [123] but the
most solemn sacrament, the confarreation itself, might always be done
away by rites of a contrary tendency. In the first ages, the father of a
family might sell his children, and his wife was reckoned in the number
of his children: the domestic judge might pronounce the death of the
offender, or his mercy might expel her from his bed and house; but the
slavery of the wretched female was hopeless and perpetual, unless he
asserted for his own convenience the manly prerogative of divorce.
[1231] The warmest applause has been lavished on the virtue of the
Romans, who abstained from the exercise of this tempting privilege above
five hundred years: [124] but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of
a connection in which the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and
the tyrant was unwilling to relinquish his slave. When the Roman
matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new
jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships,
might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. In three
centuries of prosperity and corruption, this principle was enlarged to
frequent practice and pernicious abuse.

Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives for the
dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the
mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender of human
connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure.
According to the various conditions of life, both sexes alternately felt
the disgrace and injury: an inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to
a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious, progeny to
the paternal authority and care of her late husband; a beautiful virgin
might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and friendless; but
the reluctance of the Romans, when they were pressed to marriage by
Augustus, sufficiently marks, that the prevailing institutions were
least favorable to the males. A specious theory is confuted by this free
and perfect experiment, which demonstrates, that the liberty of divorce
does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation
would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute:
the minute difference between a husband and a stranger, which might so
easily be removed, might still more easily be forgotten; and the matron,
who in five years can submit to the embraces of eight husbands, must
cease to reverence the chastity of her own person. [125]

[Footnote 123: According to Plutarch, (p. 57,) Romulus allowed only
three grounds of a divorce--drunkenness, adultery, and false keys.
Otherwise, the husband who abused his supremacy forfeited half his goods
to the wife, and half to the goddess Ceres, and offered a sacrifice
(with the remainder?) to the terrestrial deities. This strange law was
either imaginary or transient.]

[Footnote 1231: Montesquieu relates and explains this fact in a
different marnes Esprit des Loix, l. xvi. c. 16.--G.]

[Footnote 124: In the year of Rome 523, Spurius Carvilius Ruga
repudiated a fair, a good, but a barren, wife, (Dionysius Hal. l. ii.
p. 93. Plutarch, in Numa, p. 141; Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 1; Aulus
Gellius, iv. 3.) He was questioned by the censors, and hated by the
people; but his divorce stood unimpeached in law.]

[Footnote 125:--Sic fiunt octo mariti Quinque per autumnos. Juvenal,
Satir. vi. 20.--A rapid succession, which may yet be credible, as well
as the non consulum numero, sed maritorum annos suos computant, of
Seneca, (de Beneficiis, iii. 16.) Jerom saw at Rome a triumphant husband
bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty-two of his less
sturdy predecessors, (Opp. tom. i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam.) But the ten
husbands in a month of the poet Martial, is an extravagant hyperbole,
(l. 71. epigram 7.)]

Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid
progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans afforded a
peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints of a married
life; but her epithet of Viriplaca, [126] the appeaser of husbands, too
clearly indicates on which side submission and repentance were always
expected. Every act of a citizen was subject to the judgment of the
censors; the first who used the privilege of divorce assigned, at their
command, the motives of his conduct; [127] and a senator was expelled
for dismissing his virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of
his friends. Whenever an action was instituted for the recovery of a
marriage portion, the proetor, as the guardian of equity, examined the
cause and the characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor of the
guiltless and injured party. Augustus, who united the powers of both
magistrates, adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising
the license of divorce. [128] The presence of seven Roman witnesses
was required for the validity of this solemn and deliberate act: if any
adequate provocation had been given by the husband, instead of the delay
of two years, he was compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of
six months; but if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt
or levity was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of her
marriage portion. The Christian princes were the first who specified the
just causes of a private divorce; their institutions, from Constantine
to Justinian, appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire
and the wishes of the church, [129] and the author of the Novels too
frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In
the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a
drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or
sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have
been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the sacred right of
the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver his name and family
from the disgrace of adultery: the list of mortal sins, either male or
female, was curtailed and enlarged by successive regulations, and the
obstacles of incurable impotence, long absence, and monastic profession,
were allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed
the permission of the law, was subject to various and heavy penalties.
The woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting
the bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed,
her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his exiled
wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the fine was
sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island, or imprisonment in
a monastery; the injured party was released from the bonds of marriage;
but the offender, during life, or a term of years, was disabled from
the repetition of nuptials. The successor of Justinian yielded to the
prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by
mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, [130] the theologians were
divided, [131] and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept
of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a
legislator can demand.

[Footnote 126: Sacellum Viriplacae, (Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 1,)
in the Palatine region, appears in the time of Theodosius, in the
description of Rome by Publius Victor.]

[Footnote 127: Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 9. With some propriety he
judges divorce more criminal than celibacy: illo namque conjugalia sacre
spreta tantum, hoc etiam injuriose tractata.]

[Footnote 128: See the laws of Augustus and his successors, in
Heineccius, ad Legem Papiam-Poppaeam, c. 19, in Opp. tom. vi. P. i. p.
323--333.]

[Footnote 129: Aliae sunt leges Caesarum, aliae Christi; aliud
Papinianus, aliud Paulus nocter praecipit, (Jerom. tom. i. p. 198.
Selden, Uxor Ebraica l. iii. c. 31 p. 847--853.)]

[Footnote 130: The Institutes are silent; but we may consult the Codes
of Theodosius (l. iii. tit. xvi., with Godefroy's Commentary, tom. i. p.
310--315) and Justinian, (l. v. tit. xvii.,) the Pandects (l. xxiv.
tit. ii.) and the Novels, (xxii. cxvii. cxxvii. cxxxiv. cxl.) Justinian
fluctuated to the last between civil and ecclesiastical law.]

[Footnote 131: In pure Greek, it is not a common word; nor can the
proper meaning, fornication, be strictly applied to matrimonial sin. In
a figurative sense, how far, and to what offences, may it be extended?
Did Christ speak the Rabbinical or Syriac tongue? Of what original word
is the translation? How variously is that Greek word translated in the
versions ancient and modern! There are two (Mark, x. 11, Luke, xvi. 18)
to one (Matthew, xix. 9) that such ground of divorce was not excepted
by Jesus. Some critics have presumed to think, by an evasive answer, he
avoided the giving offence either to the school of Sammai or to that of
Hillel, (Selden, Uxor Ebraica, l. iii. c. 18--22, 28, 31.) * Note: But
these had nothing to do with the question of a divorce made by judicial
authority.--Hugo.]

The freedom of love and marriage was restrained among the Romans by
natural and civil impediments. An instinct, almost innate and universal,
appears to prohibit the incestuous commerce [132] of parents and
children in the infinite series of ascending and descending generations.
Concerning the oblique and collateral branches, nature is indifferent,
reason mute, and custom various and arbitrary. In Egypt, the marriage
of brothers and sisters was admitted without scruple or exception: a
Spartan might espouse the daughter of his father, an Athenian, that of
his mother; and the nuptials of an uncle with his niece were applauded
at Athens as a happy union of the dearest relations. The profane
lawgivers of Rome were never tempted by interest or superstition to
multiply the forbidden degrees: but they inflexibly condemned the
marriage of sisters and brothers, hesitated whether first cousins should
be touched by the same interdict; revered the parental character of
aunts and uncles, [1321] and treated affinity and adoption as a just
imitation of the ties of blood. According to the proud maxims of the
republic, a legal marriage could only be contracted by free citizens; an
honorable, at least an ingenuous birth, was required for the spouse of
a senator: but the blood of kings could never mingle in legitimate
nuptials with the blood of a Roman; and the name of Stranger degraded
Cleopatra and Berenice, [133] to live the concubines of Mark Antony
and Titus. [134] This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty,
cannot without indulgence be applied to the manners, of these Oriental
queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilians, was a woman
of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a
Roman citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station,
below the honors of a wife, above the infamy of a prostitute, was
acknowledged and approved by the laws: from the age of Augustus to the
tenth century, the use of this secondary marriage prevailed both in
the West and East; and the humble virtues of a concubine were often
preferred to the pomp and insolence of a noble matron. In this
connection, the two Antonines, the best of princes and of men, enjoyed
the comforts of domestic love: the example was imitated by many citizens
impatient of celibacy, but regardful of their families. If at any time
they desired to legitimate their natural children, the conversion was
instantly performed by the celebration of their nuptials with a partner
whose faithfulness and fidelity they had already tried. [1341] By this
epithet of natural, the offspring of the concubine were distinguished
from the spurious brood of adultery, prostitution, and incest, to whom
Justinian reluctantly grants the necessary aliments of life; and these
natural children alone were capable of succeeding to a sixth part of
the inheritance of their reputed father. According to the rigor of law,
bastards were entitled only to the name and condition of their mother,
from whom they might derive the character of a slave, a stranger, or a
citizen. The outcasts of every family were adopted without reproach as
the children of the state. [135] [1351]

[Footnote 132: The principles of the Roman jurisprudence are exposed by
Justinian, (Institut. t. i. tit. x.;) and the laws and manners of the
different nations of antiquity concerning forbidden degrees, &c., are
copiously explained by Dr. Taylor in his Elements of Civil Law, (p. 108,
314--339,) a work of amusing, though various reading; but which cannot
be praised for philosophical precision.]

[Footnote 1321: According to the earlier law, (Gaii Instit. p. 27,) a
man might marry his niece on the brother's, not on the sister's, side.
The emperor Claudius set the example of the former. In the Institutes,
this distinction was abolished and both declared illegal.--M.]

[Footnote 133: When her father Agrippa died, (A.D. 44,) Berenice was
sixteen years of age, (Joseph. tom. i. Antiquit. Judaic. l. xix. c. 9,
p. 952, edit. Havercamp.) She was therefore above fifty years old
when Titus (A.D. 79) invitus invitam invisit. This date would not have
adorned the tragedy or pastoral of the tender Racine.]

[Footnote 134: The Aegyptia conjux of Virgil (Aeneid, viii. 688) seems
to be numbered among the monsters who warred with Mark Antony against
Augustus, the senate, and the gods of Italy.]

[Footnote 1341: The Edict of Constantine first conferred this right; for
Augustus had prohibited the taking as a concubine a woman who might be
taken as a wife; and if marriage took place afterwards, this marriage
made no change in the rights of the children born before it; recourse
was then had to adoption, properly called arrogation.--G.]

[Footnote 135: The humble but legal rights of concubines and natural
children are stated in the Institutes, (l. i. tit. x.,) the Pandects,
(l. i. tit. vii.,) the Code, (l. v. tit. xxv.,) and the Novels, (lxxiv.
lxxxix.) The researches of Heineccius and Giannone, (ad Legem Juliam
et Papiam-Poppaeam, c. iv. p. 164-175. Opere Posthume, p. 108--158)
illustrate this interesting and domestic subject.]

[Footnote 1351: See, however, the two fragments of laws in the newly
discovered extracts from the Theodosian Code, published by M. A. Peyron,
at Turin. By the first law of Constantine, the legitimate offspring
could alone inherit; where there were no near legitimate relatives, the
inheritance went to the fiscus. The son of a certain Licinianus, who
had inherited his father's property under the supposition that he was
legitimate, and had been promoted to a place of dignity, was to be
degraded, his property confiscated, himself punished with stripes and
imprisonment. By the second, all persons, even of the highest rank,
senators, perfectissimi, decemvirs, were to be declared infamous, and
out of the protection of the Roman law, if born ex ancilla, vel ancillae
filia, vel liberta, vel libertae filia, sive Romana facta, seu Latina,
vel scaenicae filia, vel ex tabernaria, vel ex tabernariae filia,
vel humili vel abjecta, vel lenonis, aut arenarii filia, vel quae
mercimoniis publicis praefuit. Whatever a fond father had conferred
on such children was revoked, and either restored to the legitimate
children, or confiscated to the state; the mothers, who were guilty of
thus poisoning the minds of the fathers, were to be put to the torture
(tormentis subici jubemus.) The unfortunate son of Licinianus, it
appears from this second law, having fled, had been taken, and was
ordered to be kept in chains to work in the Gynaeceum at Carthage. Cod.
Theodor ab. A. Person, 87--90.--M.]





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

The relation of guardian and ward, or in Roman words of tutor and pupil,
which covers so many titles of the Institutes and Pandects, [136] is of
a very simple and uniform nature. The person and property of an orphan
must always be trusted to the custody of some discreet friend. If the
deceased father had not signified his choice, the agnats, or paternal
kindred of the nearest degree, were compelled to act as the natural
guardians: the Athenians were apprehensive of exposing the infant to
the power of those most interested in his death; but an axiom of
Roman jurisprudence has pronounced, that the charge of tutelage should
constantly attend the emolument of succession. If the choice of the
father, and the line of consanguinity, afforded no efficient guardian,
the failure was supplied by the nomination of the praetor of the city,
or the president of the province. But the person whom they named to
this public office might be legally excused by insanity or blindness, by
ignorance or inability, by previous enmity or adverse interest, by the
number of children or guardianships with which he was already burdened,
and by the immunities which were granted to the useful labors of
magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and professors. Till the infant could
speak, and think, he was represented by the tutor, whose authority was
finally determined by the age of puberty. Without his consent, no act
of the pupil could bind himself to his own prejudice, though it might
oblige others for his personal benefit. It is needless to observe, that
the tutor often gave security, and always rendered an account, and that
the want of diligence or integrity exposed him to a civil and almost
criminal action for the violation of his sacred trust. The age of
puberty had been rashly fixed by the civilians at fourteen; [1361] but
as the faculties of the mind ripen more slowly than those of the body,
a curator was interposed to guard the fortunes of a Roman youth from his
own inexperience and headstrong passions. Such a trustee had been first
instituted by the praetor, to save a family from the blind havoc of a
prodigal or madman; and the minor was compelled, by the laws, to solicit
the same protection, to give validity to his acts till he accomplished
the full period of twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the
perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to
please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason
and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of
the ancient law, which had been insensibly mollified before the time of
Justinian.

[Footnote 136: See the article of guardians and wards in the Institutes,
(l. i. tit. xiii.--xxvi.,) the Pandects, (l. xxvi. xxvii.,) and the
Code, (l. v. tit. xxviii.--lxx.)]

[Footnote 1361: Gibbon accuses the civilians of having "rashly fixed
the age of puberty at twelve or fourteen years." It was not so;
before Justinian, no law existed on this subject. Ulpian relates the
discussions which took place on this point among the different sects
of civilians. See the Institutes, l. i. tit. 22, and the fragments of
Ulpian. Nor was the curatorship obligatory for all minors.--W.]

II. The original right of property can only be justified by the accident
or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it is wisely
established by the philosophy of the civilians. [137] The savage who
hollows a tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden handle, or applies
a string to an elastic branch, becomes in a state of nature the just
proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the hatchet. The materials
were common to all, the new form, the produce of his time and simple
industry, belongs solely to himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without
a sense of their own injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the
forest overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his
provident care preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose nature
is tractable to the arts of education, he acquires a perpetual title
to the use and service of their numerous progeny, which derives its
existence from him alone. If he encloses and cultivates a field for
their sustenance and his own, a barren waste is converted into a fertile
soil; the seed, the manure, the labor, create a new value, and the
rewards of harvest are painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving
year. In the successive states of society, the hunter, the shepherd, the
husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which forcibly
appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is
the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who envies their
felicity, may purchase similar acquisitions by the exercise of similar
diligence. Such, in truth, may be the freedom and plenty of a small
colony cast on a fruitful island. But the colony multiplies, while the
space still continues the same; the common rights, the equal inheritance
of mankind. are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest
is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the
peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence, that i asserts the claim of
the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air, and the
waters. In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the
steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute
monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active,
insatiate principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and
the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive
property have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence
of the human race. Except in the singular institutions of Sparta, the
wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and
dangerous innovation. Among the Romans, the enormous disproportion of
wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition, and an
obsolete statute; a tradition that the poorest follower of Romulus
had been endowed with the perpetual inheritance of two jugera; [138]
a statute which confined the richest citizen to the measure of five
hundred jugera, or three hundred and twelve acres of land. The original
territory of Rome consisted only of some miles of wood and meadow along
the banks of the Tyber; and domestic exchange could add nothing to the
national stock. But the goods of an alien or enemy were lawfully exposed
to the first hostile occupier; the city was enriched by the profitable
trade of war; and the blood of her sons was the only price that was paid
for the Volscian sheep, the slaves of Briton, or the gems and gold of
Asiatic kingdoms. In the language of ancient jurisprudence, which was
corrupted and forgotten before the age of Justinian, these spoils were
distinguished by the name of manceps or manicipium, taken with the hand;
and whenever they were sold or emancipated, the purchaser required some
assurance that they had been the property of an enemy, and not of
a fellow-citizen. [139] A citizen could only forfeit his rights by
apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a valuable interest
could not easily be presumed. Yet, according to the Twelve Tables, a
prescription of one year for movables, and of two years for immovables,
abolished the claim of the ancient master, if the actual possessor had
acquired them by a fair transaction from the person whom he believed to
be the lawful proprietor. [140] Such conscientious injustice, without
any mixture of fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small
republic; but the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty years,
determined by Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude of a great
empire. It is only in the term of prescription that the distinction of
real and personal fortune has been remarked by the civilians; and
their general idea of property is that of simple, uniform, and absolute
dominion. The subordinate exceptions of use, of usufruct, [141] of
servitude, [142] imposed for the benefit of a neighbor on lands and
houses, are abundantly explained by the professors of jurisprudence.
The claims of property, as far as they are altered by the mixture, the
division, or the transformation of substances, are investigated with
metaphysical subtilty by the same civilians.

[Footnote 137: Institut. l. ii. tit i. ii. Compare the pure and precise
reasoning of Caius and Heineccius (l. ii. tit. i. p. 69-91) with the
loose prolixity of Theophilus, (p. 207--265.) The opinions of Ulpian are
preserved in the Pandects, (l. i. tit. viii. leg. 41, No. 1.)]

[Footnote 138: The heredium of the first Romans is defined by Varro, (de
Re Rustica, l. i. c. ii. p. 141, c. x. p. 160, 161, edit. Gesner,) and
clouded by Pliny's declamation, (Hist. Natur. xviii. 2.) A just and
learned comment is given in the Administration des Terres chez les
Romains, (p. 12--66.) Note: On the duo jugera, compare Niebuhr, vol. i.
p. 337.--M.]

[Footnote 139: The res mancipi is explained from faint and remote lights
by Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xviii. p. 618, 619) and Bynkershoek, (Opp
tom. i. p. 306--315.) The definition is somewhat arbitrary; and as none
except myself have assigned a reason, I am diffident of my own.]

[Footnote 140: From this short prescription, Hume (Essays, vol. i. p.
423) infers that there could not then be more order and settlement in
Italy than now amongst the Tartars. By the civilian of his adversary
Wallace, he is reproached, and not without reason, for overlooking the
conditions, (Institut. l. ii. tit. vi.) * Note: Gibbon acknowledges,
in the former note, the obscurity of his views with regard to the res
mancipi. The interpreters, who preceded him, are not agreed on
this point, one of the most difficult in the ancient Roman law. The
conclusions of Hume, of which the author here speaks, are grounded
on false assumptions. Gibbon had conceived very inaccurate notions of
Property among the Romans, and those of many authors in the present day
are not less erroneous. We think it right, in this place, to develop the
system of property among the Romans, as the result of the study of
the extant original authorities on the ancient law, and as it has been
demonstrated, recognized, and adopted by the most learned expositors
of the Roman law. Besides the authorities formerly known, such as the
Fragments of Ulpian, t. xix. and t. i. 16. Theoph. Paraph. i. 5, 4, may
be consulted the Institutes of Gaius, i. 54, and ii. 40, et seq.
The Roman laws protected all property acquired in a lawful manner.
They imposed on those who had invaded it, the obligation of making
restitution and reparation of all damage caused by that invasion; they
punished it moreover, in many cases, by a pecuniary fine. But they did
not always grant a recovery against the third person, who had become
bona fide possessed of the property. He who had obtained possession of a
thing belonging to another, knowing nothing of the prior rights of that
person, maintained the possession. The law had expressly determined
those cases, in which it permitted property to be reclaimed from an
innocent possessor. In these cases possession had the characters of
absolute proprietorship, called mancipium, jus Quiritium. To possess
this right, it was not sufficient to have entered into possession of the
thing in any manner; the acquisition was bound to have that character
of publicity, which was given by the observation of solemn forms,
prescribed by the laws, or the uninterrupted exercise of proprietorship
during a certain time: the Roman citizen alone could acquire this
proprietorship. Every other kind of possession, which might be named
imperfect proprietorship, was called "in bonis habere." It was not till
after the time of Cicero that the general name of Dominium was given to
all proprietorship.
It was then the publicity which constituted the distinctive character
of absolute dominion. This publicity was grounded on the mode of
acquisition, which the moderns have called Civil, (Modi adquirendi
Civiles.) These modes of acquisition were,
1. Mancipium or mancipatio, which was nothing but the solemn delivering
over of the thing in the presence of a determinate number of witnesses
and a public officer; it was from this probably that proprietorship was
named, 2. In jure cessio, which was a solemn delivering over before the
praetor. 3. Adjudicatio, made by a judge, in a case of partition.
4. Lex, which comprehended modes of acquiring in particular cases
determined by law; probably the law of the xii. tables; for instance,
the sub corona emptio and the legatum.
5. Usna, called afterwards usacapio, and by the moderns prescription.
This was only a year for movables; two years for things not movable. Its
primary object was altogether different from that of prescription in
the present day. It was originally introduced in order to transform
the simple possession of a thing (in bonis habere) into Roman
proprietorship. The public and uninterrupted possession of a thing,
enjoyed for the space of one or two years, was sufficient to make known
to the inhabitants of the city of Rome to whom the thing belonged. This
last mode of acquisition completed the system of civil acquisitions. by
legalizing. as it were, every other kind of acquisition which was not
conferred, from the commencement, by the Jus Quiritium. V. Ulpian.
Fragm. i. 16. Gaius, ii. 14. We believe, according to Gaius, 43, that
this usucaption was extended to the case where a thing had been acquired
from a person not the real proprietor; and that according to the time
prescribed, it gave to the possessor the Roman proprietorship. But this
does not appear to have been the original design of this Institution.
Caeterum etiam earum rerum usucapio nobis competit, quae non a domino
nobis tradita fuerint, si modo eas bona fide acceperimus Gaius, l ii.
43. As to things of smaller value, or those which it was difficult to
distinguish from each other, the solemnities of which we speak were not
requisite to obtain legal proprietorship.
In this case simple delivery was sufficient.
In proportion to the aggrandizement of the Republic, this latter
principle became more important from the increase of the commerce and
wealth of the state. It was necessary to know what were those things of
which absolute property might be acquired by simple delivery, and what,
on the contrary, those, the acquisition of which must be sanctioned
by these solemnities. This question was necessarily to be decided by
a general rule; and it is this rule which establishes the distinction
between res mancipi and nec mancipi, a distinction about which the
opinions of modern civilians differ so much that there are above ten
conflicting systems on the subject. The system which accords best with a
sound interpretation of the Roman laws, is that proposed by M. Trekel of
Hamburg, and still further developed by M. Hugo, who has extracted it in
the Magazine of Civil Law, vol. ii. p. 7.
This is the system now almost universally adopted. Res mancipi (by
contraction for mancipii) were things of which the absolute property
(Jus Quiritium) might be acquired only by the solemnities mentioned
above, at least by that of mancipation, which was, without doubt, the
most easy and the most usual. Gaius, ii. 25. As for other things, the
acquisition of which was not subject to these forms, in order to confer
absolute right, they were called res nec mancipi. See Ulpian, Fragm.
xix. 1. 3, 7.
Ulpian and Varro enumerate the different kinds of res mancipi. Their
enumerations do not quite agree; and various methods of reconciling them
have been attempted. The authority of Ulpian, however, who wrote as a
civilian, ought to have the greater weight on this subject.
But why are these things alone res mancipi? This is one of the questions
which have been most frequently agitated, and on which the opinions of
civilians are most divided. M. Hugo has resolved it in the most
natural and satisfactory manner. "All things which were easily known
individually, which were of great value, with which the Romans were
acquainted, and which they highly appreciated, were res mancipi. Of old
mancipation or some other solemn form was required for the acquisition
of these things, an account of their importance. Mancipation served to
prove their acquisition, because they were easily distinguished one from
the other." On this great historical discussion consult the Magazine of
Civil Law by M. Hugo, vol. ii. p. 37, 38; the dissertation of M. J. M.
Zachariae, de Rebus Mancipi et nec Mancipi Conjecturae, p. 11. Lipsiae,
1807; the History of Civil Law by M. Hugo; and my Institutiones Juris
Romani Privati p. 108, 110.
As a general rule, it may be said that all things are res nec mancipi;
the res mancipi are the exception to this principle.
The praetors changed the system of property by allowing a person, who
had a thing in bonis, the right to recover before the prescribed term
of usucaption had conferred absolute proprietorship. (Pauliana in rem
actio.) Justinian went still further, in times when there was no longer
any distinction between a Roman citizen and a stranger. He granted the
right of recovering all things which had been acquired, whether by what
were called civil or natural modes of acquisition, Cod. l. vii. t. 25,
31. And he so altered the theory of Gaius in his Institutes, ii. 1, that
no trace remains of the doctrine taught by that civilian.--W.]

[Footnote 141: See the Institutes (l. i. tit. iv. v.) and the Pandects,
(l. vii.) Noodt has composed a learned and distinct treatise de
Usufructu, (Opp. tom. i. p. 387--478.)]

[Footnote 142: The questions de Servitutibus are discussed in the
Institutes (l. ii. tit. iii.) and Pandects, (l. viii.) Cicero (pro
Murena, c. 9) and Lactantius (Institut. Divin. l. i. c. i.) affect to
laugh at the insignificant doctrine, de aqua de pluvia arcenda, &c. Yet
it might be of frequent use among litigious neighbors, both in town and
country.]

The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by
his death: but the possession, without any appearance of change, is
peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his toil, and the
partners of his wealth. This natural inheritance has been protected by
the legislators of every climate and age, and the father is encouraged
to persevere in slow and distant improvements, by the tender hope, that
a long posterity will enjoy the fruits of his labor. The principle of
hereditary succession is universal; but the order has been variously
established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national
institutions, or by some partial example which was originally decided
by fraud or violence. The jurisprudence of the Romans appear to have
deviated from the inequality of nature much less than the Jewish, [143]
the Athenian, [144] or the English institutions. [145] On the death of
a citizen, all his descendants, unless they were already freed from his
paternal power, were called to the inheritance of his possessions. The
insolent prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were
placed on a just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled to an
equal portion of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the sons had been
intercepted by a premature death, his person was represented, and his
share was divided, by his surviving children. On the failure of the
direct line, the right of succession must diverge to the collateral
branches. The degrees of kindred [146] are numbered by the civilians,
ascending from the last possessor to a common parent, and descending
from the common parent to the next heir: my father stands in the first
degree, my brother in the second, his children in the third, and the
remainder of the series may be conceived by a fancy, or pictured in
a genealogical table. In this computation, a distinction was made,
essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome; the agnats, or
persons connected by a line of males, were called, as they stood in the
nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a female was incapable of
transmitting any legal claims; and the cognats of every rank, without
excepting the dear relation of a mother and a son, were disinherited by
the Twelve Tables, as strangers and aliens. Among the Romans agens or
lineage was united by a common name and domestic rites; the various
cognomens or surnames of Scipio, or Marcellus, distinguished from each
other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or Claudian
race: the default of the agnats, of the same surname, was supplied
by the larger denomination of gentiles; and the vigilance of the laws
maintained, in the same name, the perpetual descent of religion and
property. A similar principle dictated the Voconian law, [147] which
abolished the right of female inheritance. As long as virgins were given
or sold in marriage, the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of
the daughter. But the equal succession of independent matrons supported
their pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the
riches of their fathers.

While the maxims of Cato [148] were revered, they tended to perpetuate
in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till female blandishments
insensibly triumphed; and every salutary restraint was lost in the
dissolute greatness of the republic. The rigor of the decemvirs was
tempered by the equity of the praetors. Their edicts restored and
emancipated posthumous children to the rights of nature; and upon the
failure of the agnats, they preferred the blood of the cognats to the
name of the gentiles whose title and character were insensibly covered
with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers and sons was
established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the humanity of
the senate. A new and more impartial order was introduced by the Novels
of Justinian, who affected to revive the jurisprudence of the Twelve
Tables. The lines of masculine and female kindred were confounded: the
descending, ascending, and collateral series was accurately defined;
and each degree, according tot he proximity of blood and affection,
succeeded to the vacant possessions of a Roman citizen. [149]

[Footnote 143: Among the patriarchs, the first-born enjoyed a mystic and
spiritual primogeniture, (Genesis, xxv. 31.) In the land of Canaan, he
was entitled to a double portion of inheritance, (Deuteronomy, xxi. 17,
with Le Clerc's judicious Commentary.)]

[Footnote 144: At Athens, the sons were equal; but the poor daughters
were endowed at the discretion of their brothers. See the pleadings of
Isaeus, (in the viith volume of the Greek Orators,) illustrated by the
version and comment of Sir William Jones, a scholar, a lawyer, and a man
of genius.]

[Footnote 145: In England, the eldest son also inherits all the land;
a law, says the orthodox Judge Blackstone, (Commentaries on the Laws
of England, vol. ii. p. 215,) unjust only in the opinion of younger
brothers. It may be of some political use in sharpening their industry.]

[Footnote 146: Blackstone's Tables (vol. ii. p. 202) represent and
compare the decrees of the civil with those of the canon and common law.
A separate tract of Julius Paulus, de gradibus et affinibus, is inserted
or abridged in the Pandects, (l. xxxviii. tit. x.) In the viith degrees
he computes (No. 18) 1024 persons.]

[Footnote 147: The Voconian law was enacted in the year of Rome 584. The
younger Scipio, who was then 17 years of age, (Frenshemius, Supplement.
Livian. xlvi. 40,) found an occasion of exercising his generosity to his
mother, sisters, &c. (Polybius, tom. ii. l. xxxi. p. 1453--1464, edit
Gronov., a domestic witness.)]

[Footnote 148: Legem Voconiam (Ernesti, Clavis Ciceroniana) magna voce
bonis lateribus (at lxv. years of age) suasissem, says old Cato, (de
Senectute, c. 5,) Aulus Gellius (vii. 13, xvii. 6) has saved some
passages.]

[Footnote 149: See the law of succession in the Institutes of Caius, (l.
ii. tit. viii. p. 130--144,) and Justinian, (l. iii. tit. i.--vi., with
the Greek version of Theophilus, p. 515-575, 588--600,) the Pandects,
(l. xxxviii. tit. vi.--xvii.,) the Code, (l. vi. tit. lv.--lx.,) and the
Novels, (cxviii.)]

The order of succession is regulated by nature, or at least by the
general and permanent reason of the lawgiver: but this order is
frequently violated by the arbitrary and partial wills, which prolong
the dominion of the testator beyond the grave. [150] In the simple state
of society, this last use or abuse of the right of property is seldom
indulged: it was introduced at Athens by the laws of Solon; and the
private testaments of the father of a family are authorized by the
Twelve Tables. Before the time of the decemvirs, [151] a Roman citizen
exposed his wishes and motives to the assembly of the thirty curiae
or parishes, and the general law of inheritance was suspended by
an occasional act of the legislature. After the permission of the
decemvirs, each private lawgiver promulgated his verbal or written
testament in the presence of five citizens, who represented the five
classes of the Roman people; a sixth witness attested their concurrence;
a seventh weighed the copper money, which was paid by an imaginary
purchaser; and the estate was emancipated by a fictitious sale and
immediate release. This singular ceremony, [152] which excited the
wonder of the Greeks, was still practised in the age of Severus; but the
praetors had already approved a more simple testament, for which they
required the seals and signatures of seven witnesses, free from all
legal exception, and purposely summoned for the execution of that
important act. A domestic monarch, who reigned over the lives and
fortunes of his children, might distribute their respective shares
according to the degrees of their merit or his affection; his arbitrary
displeasure chastised an unworthy son by the loss of his inheritance,
and the mortifying preference of a stranger. But the experience of
unnatural parents recommended some limitations of their testamentary
powers. A son, or, by the laws of Justinian, even a daughter, could no
longer be disinherited by their silence: they were compelled to name
the criminal, and to specify the offence; and the justice of the emperor
enumerated the sole causes that could justify such a violation of
the first principles of nature and society. [153] Unless a legitimate
portion, a fourth part, had been reserved for the children, they were
entitled to institute an action or complaint of inofficious testament;
to suppose that their father's understanding was impaired by sickness
or age; and respectfully to appeal from his rigorous sentence to the
deliberate wisdom of the magistrate. In the Roman jurisprudence, an
essential distinction was admitted between the inheritance and the
legacies. The heirs who succeeded to the entire unity, or to any of the
twelve fractions of the substance of the testator, represented his civil
and religious character, asserted his rights, fulfilled his obligations,
and discharged the gifts of friendship or liberality, which his last
will had bequeathed under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or
prodigality of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance, and leave
only risk and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the
Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies, a
clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was allowed to
examine the proportion between the debts and the estate, to decide
whether he should accept or refuse the testament; and if he used the
benefit of an inventory, the demands of the creditors could not exceed
the valuation of the effects. The last will of a citizen might be
altered during his life, or rescinded after his death: the persons whom
he named might die before him, or reject the inheritance, or be exposed
to some legal disqualification. In the contemplation of these events,
he was permitted to substitute second and third heirs, to replace each
other according to the order of the testament; and the incapacity of
a madman or an infant to bequeath his property might be supplied by a
similar substitution. [154] But the power of the testator expired with
the acceptance of the testament: each Roman of mature age and discretion
acquired the absolute dominion of his inheritance, and the simplicity of
the civil law was never clouded by the long and intricate entails which
confine the happiness and freedom of unborn generations.

[Footnote 150: That succession was the rule, testament the exception,
is proved by Taylor, (Elements of Civil Law, p. 519-527,) a learned,
rambling, spirited writer. In the iid and iiid books, the method of
the Institutes is doubtless preposterous; and the Chancellor Daguesseau
(Oeuvres, tom. i. p. 275) wishes his countryman Domat in the place of
Tribonian. Yet covenants before successions is not surely the natural
order of civil laws.]

[Footnote 151: Prior examples of testaments are perhaps fabulous. At
Athens a childless father only could make a will, (Plutarch, in Solone,
tom. i. p. 164. See Isaeus and Jones.)]

[Footnote 152: The testament of Augustus is specified by Suetonius, (in
August, c. 101, in Neron. c. 4,) who may be studied as a code of Roman
antiquities. Plutarch (Opuscul. tom. ii. p. 976) is surprised. The
language of Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xx. p. 627, edit. Schulting) is
almost too exclusive--solum in usu est.]

[Footnote 153: Justinian (Novell. cxv. No. 3, 4) enumerates only the
public and private crimes, for which a son might likewise disinherit his
father. Note: Gibbon has singular notions on the provisions of Novell.
cxv. 3, 4, which probably he did not clearly understand.--W]

[Footnote 154: The substitutions of fidei-commissaires of the modern
civil law is a feudal idea grafted on the Roman jurisprudence, and bears
scarcely any resemblance to the ancient fidei-commissa, (Institutions
du Droit Francois, tom. i. p. 347-383. Denissart, Decisions de
Jurisprudence, tom. iv. p. 577-604.) They were stretched to the
fourth degree by an abuse of the clixth Novel; a partial, perplexed,
declamatory law.]

Conquest and the formalities of law established the use of codicils. If
a Roman was surprised by death in a remote province of the empire, he
addressed a short epistle to his legitimate or testamentary heir; who
fulfilled with honor, or neglected with impunity, this last request,
which the judges before the age of Augustus were not authorized to
enforce. A codicil might be expressed in any mode, or in any language;
but the subscription of five witnesses must declare that it was the
genuine composition of the author. His intention, however laudable, was
sometimes illegal; and the invention of fidei-commissa, or trusts, arose
form the struggle between natural justice and positive jurisprudence.
A stranger of Greece or Africa might be the friend or benefactor of a
childless Roman, but none, except a fellow-citizen, could act as his
heir. The Voconian law, which abolished female succession, restrained
the legacy or inheritance of a woman to the sum of one hundred thousand
sesterces; [155] and an only daughter was condemned almost as an alien
in her father's house. The zeal of friendship, and parental affection,
suggested a liberal artifice: a qualified citizen was named in the
testament, with a prayer or injunction that he would restore the
inheritance to the person for whom it was truly intended. Various was
the conduct of the trustees in this painful situation: they had sworn
to observe the laws of their country, but honor prompted them to violate
their oath; and if they preferred their interest under the mask of
patriotism, they forfeited the esteem of every virtuous mind. The
declaration of Augustus relieved their doubts, gave a legal sanction to
confidential testaments and codicils, and gently unravelled the forms
and restraints of the republican jurisprudence. [156] But as the new
practice of trusts degenerated into some abuse, the trustee was enabled,
by the Trebellian and Pegasian decrees, to reserve one fourth of the
estate, or to transfer on the head of the real heir all the debts and
actions of the succession. The interpretation of testaments was strict
and literal; but the language of trusts and codicils was delivered from
the minute and technical accuracy of the civilians. [157]

[Footnote 155: Dion Cassius (tom. ii. l. lvi. p. 814, with Reimar's
Notes) specifies in Greek money the sum of 25,000 drachms.]

[Footnote 156: The revolutions of the Roman laws of inheritance are
finely, though sometimes fancifully, deduced by Montesquieu, (Esprit des
Loix, l. xxvii.)]

[Footnote 157: Of the civil jurisprudence of successions, testaments,
codicils, legacies, and trusts, the principles are ascertained in the
Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ii.--ix. p. 91--144,) Justinian,
(l. ii. tit. x.--xxv.,) and Theophilus, (p. 328--514;) and the immense
detail occupies twelve books (xxviii.--xxxix.) of the Pandects.] III.
The general duties of mankind are imposed by their public and private
relations: but their specific obligations to each other can only be the
effect of, 1. a promise, 2. a benefit, or 3. an injury: and when these
obligations are ratified by law, the interested party may compel the
performance by a judicial action. On this principle, the civilians of
every country have erected a similar jurisprudence, the fair conclusion
of universal reason and justice. [158]

[Footnote 158: The Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ix. x. p.
144--214,) of Justinian, (l. iii. tit. xiv.--xxx. l. iv. tit.
i.--vi.,) and of Theophilus, (p. 616--837,) distinguish four sorts of
obligations--aut re, aut verbis, aut literis aut consensu: but I confess
myself partial to my own division. Note: It is not at all applicable to
the Roman system of contracts, even if I were allowed to be good.--M.]





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

1. The goddess of faith (of human and social faith) was worshipped, not
only in her temples, but in the lives of the Romans; and if that
nation was deficient in the more amiable qualities of benevolence and
generosity, they astonished the Greeks by their sincere and simple
performance of the most burdensome engagements. [159] Yet among the same
people, according to the rigid maxims of the patricians and decemvirs,
a naked pact, a promise, or even an oath, did not create any civil
obligation, unless it was confirmed by the legal form of a stipulation.
Whatever might be the etymology of the Latin word, it conveyed the idea
of a firm and irrevocable contract, which was always expressed in the
mode of a question and answer. Do you promise to pay me one hundred
pieces of gold? was the solemn interrogation of Seius. I do promise, was
the reply of Sempronius. The friends of Sempronius, who answered for
his ability and inclination, might be separately sued at the option of
Seius; and the benefit of partition, or order of reciprocal actions,
insensibly deviated from the strict theory of stipulation. The most
cautious and deliberate consent was justly required to sustain the
validity of a gratuitous promise; and the citizen who might have
obtained a legal security, incurred the suspicion of fraud, and paid the
forfeit of his neglect. But the ingenuity of the civilians successfully
labored to convert simple engagements into the form of solemn
stipulations. The praetors, as the guardians of social faith, admitted
every rational evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act, which in
their tribunal produced an equitable obligation, and for which they gave
an action and a remedy. [160]

[Footnote 159: How much is the cool, rational evidence of Polybius (l.
vi. p. 693, l. xxxi. p. 1459, 1460) superior to vague, indiscriminate
applause--omnium maxime et praecipue fidem coluit, (A. Gellius, xx. l.)]

[Footnote 160: The Jus Praetorium de Pactis et Transactionibus is a
separate and satisfactory treatise of Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom. i. p.
483--564.) And I will here observe, that the universities of Holland
and Brandenburg, in the beginning of the present century, appear to have
studied the civil law on the most just and liberal principles. * Note:
Simple agreements (pacta) formed as valid an obligation as a solemn
contract. Only an action, or the right to a direct judicial prosecution,
was not permitted in every case of compact. In all other respects, the
judge was bound to maintain an agreement made by pactum. The stipulation
was a form common to every kind of agreement, by which the right of
action was given to this.--W.]

2. The obligations of the second class, as they were contracted by the
delivery of a thing, are marked by the civilians with the epithet of
real. [161] A grateful return is due to the author of a benefit; and
whoever is intrusted with the property of another, has bound himself
to the sacred duty of restitution. In the case of a friendly loan, the
merit of generosity is on the side of the lender only; in a deposit, on
the side of the receiver; but in a pledge, and the rest of the selfish
commerce of ordinary life, the benefit is compensated by an equivalent,
and the obligation to restore is variously modified by the nature of the
transaction. The Latin language very happily expresses the fundamental
difference between the commodatum and the mutuum, which our poverty is
reduced to confound under the vague and common appellation of a loan.
In the former, the borrower was obliged to restore the same individual
thing with which he had been accommodated for the temporary supply of
his wants; in the latter, it was destined for his use and consumption,
and he discharged this mutual engagement, by substituting the same
specific value according to a just estimation of number, of weight,
and of measure. In the contract of sale, the absolute dominion is
transferred to the purchaser, and he repays the benefit with an adequate
sum of gold or silver, the price and universal standard of all earthly
possessions. The obligation of another contract, that of location, is of
a more complicated kind. Lands or houses, labor or talents, may be hired
for a definite term; at the expiration of the time, the thing itself
must be restored to the owner, with an additional reward for the
beneficial occupation and employment. In these lucrative contracts, to
which may be added those of partnership and commissions, the civilians
sometimes imagine the delivery of the object, and sometimes presume the
consent of the parties. The substantial pledge has been refined into the
invisible rights of a mortgage or hypotheca; and the agreement of sale,
for a certain price, imputes, from that moment, the chances of gain or
loss to the account of the purchaser. It may be fairly supposed, that
every man will obey the dictates of his interest; and if he accepts the
benefit, he is obliged to sustain the expense, of the transaction. In
this boundless subject, the historian will observe the location of land
and money, the rent of the one and the interest of the other, as they
materially affect the prosperity of agriculture and commerce. The
landlord was often obliged to advance the stock and instruments of
husbandry, and to content himself with a partition of the fruits. If the
feeble tenant was oppressed by accident, contagion, or hostile violence,
he claimed a proportionable relief from the equity of the laws: five
years were the customary term, and no solid or costly improvements could
be expected from a farmer, who, at each moment might be ejected by the
sale of the estate. [162] Usury, [163] the inveterate grievance of the
city, had been discouraged by the Twelve Tables, [164] and abolished by
the clamors of the people. It was revived by their wants and idleness,
tolerated by the discretion of the praetors, and finally determined by
the Code of Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the
moderate profit of four per cent.; six was pronounced to be the ordinary
and legal standard of interest; eight was allowed for the convenience
of manufactures and merchants; twelve was granted to nautical insurance,
which the wiser ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in
this perilous adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely
restrained. [165] The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy
of the East and West; [166] but the sense of mutual benefit, which had
triumphed over the law of the republic, has resisted with equal firmness
the decrees of the church, and even the prejudices of mankind. [167]

[Footnote 161: The nice and various subject of contracts by consent is
spread over four books (xvii.--xx.) of the Pandects, and is one of the
parts best deserving of the attention of an English student. * Note:
This is erroneously called "benefits." Gibbon enumerates various kinds
of contracts, of which some alone are properly called benefits.--W.]

[Footnote 162: The covenants of rent are defined in the Pandects (l.
xix.) and the Code, (l. iv. tit. lxv.) The quinquennium, or term of five
years, appears to have been a custom rather than a law; but in France
all leases of land were determined in nine years. This limitation was
removed only in the year 1775, (Encyclopedie Methodique, tom. i. de
la Jurisprudence, p. 668, 669;) and I am sorry to observe that it yet
prevails in the beauteous and happy country where I am permitted to
reside.]

[Footnote 163: I might implicitly acquiesce in the sense and learning
of the three books of G. Noodt, de foenore et usuris. (Opp. tom. i.
p. 175--268.) The interpretation of the asses or centesimoe usuroe
at twelve, the unciarioe at one per cent., is maintained by the best
critics and civilians: Noodt, (l. ii. c. 2, p. 207,) Gravina, (Opp. p.
205, &c., 210,) Heineccius, (Antiquitat. ad Institut. l. iii. tit. xv.,)
Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxii. c. 22, tom. ii. p. 36). Defense
de l'Esprit des Loix, (tom. iii. p. 478, &c.,) and above all, John
Frederic Gronovius (de Pecunia Veteri, l. iii. c. 13, p. 213--227,)
and his three Antexegeses, (p. 455--655), the founder, or at least the
champion, of this probable opinion; which is, however, perplexed with
some difficulties.]

[Footnote 164: Primo xii. Tabulis sancitum est ne quis unciario foenore
amplius exerceret, (Tacit. Annal. vi. 16.) Pour peu (says Montesquieu,
Esprit des Loix, l. xxii. 22) qu'on soit verse dans l'histoire de Rome,
on verra qu'une pareille loi ne devoit pas etre l'ouvrage des decemvirs.
Was Tacitus ignorant--or stupid? But the wiser and more virtuous
patricians might sacrifice their avarice to their ambition, and might
attempt to check the odious practice by such interest as no lender would
accept, and such penalties as no debtor would incur. * Note: The real
nature of the foenus unciarium has been proved; it amounted in a year of
twelve months to ten per cent. See, in the Magazine for Civil Law, by M.
Hugo, vol. v. p. 180, 184, an article of M. Schrader, following up the
conjectures of Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. tom. ii. p. 431.--W. Compare a very
clear account of this question in the appendix to Mr. Travers Twiss's
Epitome of Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 257.--M.]

[Footnote 165: Justinian has not condescended to give usury a place in
his Institutes; but the necessary rules and restrictions are inserted
in the Pandects (l. xxii. tit. i. ii.) and the Code, (l. iv. tit. xxxii.
xxxiii.)]

[Footnote 166: The Fathers are unanimous, (Barbeyrac, Morale des Peres,
p. 144. &c.:) Cyprian, Lactantius, Basil, Chrysostom, (see his frivolous
arguments in Noodt, l. i. c. 7, p. 188,) Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose,
Jerom, Augustin, and a host of councils and casuists.]

[Footnote 167: Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the
practice or abuse of usury. According to the etymology of foenus, the
principal is supposed to generate the interest: a breed of barren metal,
exclaims Shakespeare--and the stage is the echo of the public voice.]

3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing an
injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right
and a legitimate action. If the property of another be intrusted to our
care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the
benefit which we derive from such temporary possession; we are seldom
made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a
voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. [168] A Roman
pursued and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they
might pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing
less than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original
claim. They were restored by the sentence of the praetor, and the injury
was compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as
the deed had been perpetrated by secret fraud or open rapine, as the
robber had been surprised in the fact, or detected by a subsequent
research. The Aquilian law [169] defended the living property of a
citizen, his slaves and cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence:
the highest price was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic
animal at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude
of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other valuable
effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the
times and the sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of
a word or blow cannot easily be appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent.
The rude jurisprudence of the decemvirs had confounded all hasty
insults, which did not amount to the fracture of a limb, by condemning
the aggressor to the common penalty of twenty-five asses. But the same
denomination of money was reduced, in three centuries, from a pound
to the weight of half an ounce: and the insolence of a wealthy Roman
indulged himself in the cheap amusement of breaking and satisfying the
law of the twelve tables. Veratius ran through the streets striking
on the face the inoffensive passengers, and his attendant purse-bearer
immediately silenced their clamors by the legal tender of twenty-five
pieces of copper, about the value of one shilling. [170] The equity
of the praetors examined and estimated the distinct merits of each
particular complaint. In the adjudication of civil damages, the
magistrate assumed a right to consider the various circumstances of
time and place, of age and dignity, which may aggravate the shame and
sufferings of the injured person; but if he admitted the idea of a fine,
a punishment, an example, he invaded the province, though, perhaps, he
supplied the defects, of the criminal law. [Footnote 168: Sir William
Jones has given an ingenious and rational Essay on the law of Bailment,
(London, 1781, p. 127, in 8vo.) He is perhaps the only lawyer equally
conversant with the year-books of Westminster, the Commentaries of
Ulpian, the Attic pleadings of Isaeus, and the sentences of Arabian and
Persian cadhis.]

[Footnote 169: Noodt (Opp. tom. i. p. 137--172) has composed a separate
treatise, ad Legem Aquilian, (Pandect. l. ix. tit. ii.)]

[Footnote 170: Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic. xx. i.) borrowed this story
from the Commentaries of Q. Labeo on the xii. tables.]

The execution of the Alban dictator, who was dismembered by eight
horses, is represented by Livy as the first and the fast instance of
Roman cruelty in the punishment of the most atrocious crimes. [171] But
this act of justice, or revenge, was inflicted on a foreign enemy in the
heat of victory, and at the command of a single man. The twelve tables
afford a more decisive proof of the national spirit, since they were
framed by the wisest of the senate, and accepted by the free voices
of the people; yet these laws, like the statutes of Draco, [172] are
written in characters of blood. [173] They approve the inhuman and
unequal principle of retaliation; and the forfeit of an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, is rigorously exacted, unless
the offender can redeem his pardon by a fine of three hundred pounds
of copper. The decemvirs distributed with much liberality the slighter
chastisements of flagellation and servitude; and nine crimes of a very
different complexion are adjudged worthy of death.

1. Any act of treason against the state, or of correspondence with the
public enemy. The mode of execution was painful and ignominious: the
head of the degenerate Roman was shrouded in a veil, his hands were tied
behind his back, and after he had been scourged by the lictor, he was
suspended in the midst of the forum on a cross, or inauspicious tree.

2. Nocturnal meetings in the city; whatever might be the pretence, of
pleasure, or religion, or the public good.

3. The murder of a citizen; for which the common feelings of mankind
demand the blood of the murderer. Poison is still more odious than the
sword or dagger; and we are surprised to discover, in two flagitious
events, how early such subtle wickedness had infected the simplicity
of the republic, and the chaste virtues of the Roman matrons. [174] The
parricide, who violated the duties of nature and gratitude, was cast
into the river or the sea, enclosed in a sack; and a cock, a viper,
a dog, and a monkey, were successively added, as the most suitable
companions. [175] Italy produces no monkeys; but the want could never be
felt, till the middle of the sixth century first revealed the guilt of a
parricide. [176]

4. The malice of an incendiary. After the previous ceremony of whipping,
he himself was delivered to the flames; and in this example alone our
reason is tempted to applaud the justice of retaliation.

5. Judicial perjury. The corrupt or malicious witness was thrown
headlong from the Tarpeian rock, to expiate his falsehood, which was
rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws, and the
deficiency of written evidence.

6. The corruption of a judge, who accepted bribes to pronounce an
iniquitous sentence.

7. Libels and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the
peace of an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a worthy
chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to expire under the
blows of the executioner. [177]

8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor's corn.
The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres. But the sylvan
deities were less implacable, and the extirpation of a more valuable
tree was compensated by the moderate fine of twenty-five pounds of
copper.

9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the Latin
shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to extinguish his life,
and to remove from their seats his deep-rooted plantations.

The cruelty of the twelve tables against insolvent debtors still remains
to be told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense of antiquity
to the specious refinements of modern criticism. [178] [1781] After
the judicial proof or confession of the debt, thirty days of grace
were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the power of his
fellow-citizen. In this private prison, twelve ounces of rice were his
daily food; he might be bound with a chain of fifteen pounds weight;
and his misery was thrice exposed in the market place, to solicit the
compassion of his friends and countrymen. At the expiration of sixty
days, the debt was discharged by the loss of liberty or life; the
insolvent debtor was either put to death, or sold in foreign slavery
beyond the Tyber: but, if several creditors were alike obstinate and
unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body, and satiate their
revenge by this horrid partition. The advocates for this savage law have
insisted, that it must strongly operate in deterring idleness and
fraud from contracting debts which they were unable to discharge; but
experience would dissipate this salutary terror, by proving that no
creditor could be found to exact this unprofitable penalty of life or
limb. As the manners of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code
of the decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses,
and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate rigor. The
Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates from inflicting
on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal, punishment; and the
obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to
the spirit, not of patrician, but of regal, tyranny.

[Footnote 171: The narrative of Livy (i. 28) is weighty and solemn.
At tu, Albane, maneres, is a harsh reflection, unworthy of Virgil's
humanity, (Aeneid, viii. 643.) Heyne, with his usual good taste,
observes that the subject was too horrid for the shield of Aencas, (tom.
iii. p. 229.)]

[Footnote 172: The age of Draco (Olympiad xxxix. l) is fixed by Sir John
Marsham (Canon Chronicus, p. 593--596) and Corsini, (Fasti Attici, tom.
iii. p. 62.) For his laws, see the writers on the government of Athens,
Sigonius, Meursius, Potter, &c.]

[Footnote 173: The viith, de delictis, of the xii. tables is delineated
by Gravina, (Opp. p. 292, 293, with a commentary, p. 214--230.) Aulus
Gellius (xx. 1) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum afford
much original information.]

[Footnote 174: Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious aeras, of
3000 persons accused, and of 190 noble matrons convicted, of the crime
of poisoning, (xl. 43, viii. 18.) Mr. Hume discriminates the ages of
private and public virtue, (Essays, vol. i. p. 22, 23.) I would rather
say that such ebullitions of mischief (as in France in the year 1680)
are accidents and prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a
nation.]

[Footnote 175: The xii. tables and Cicero (pro Roscio Amerino, c. 25,
26) are content with the sack; Seneca (Excerpt. Controvers. v 4)
adorns it with serpents; Juvenal pities the guiltless monkey (innoxia
simia--156.) Adrian (apud Dositheum Magistrum, l. iii. c. p. 874--876,
with Schulting's Note,) Modestinus, (Pandect. xlviii. tit. ix. leg. 9,)
Constantine, (Cod. l. ix. tit. xvii.,) and Justinian, (Institut. l. iv.
tit. xviii.,) enumerate all the companions of the parricide. But this
fanciful execution was simplified in practice. Hodie tamen viv exuruntur
vel ad bestias dantur, (Paul. Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xxiv p. 512,
edit. Schulting.)]

[Footnote 176: The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after the
second Punic war, (Plutarch, in Romulo, tom. i. p. 54.) During the
Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first matricide, (Liv. Epitom.
l. lxviii.)]

[Footnote 177: Horace talks of the formidine fustis, (l. ii. epist. ii.
154,) but Cicero (de Republica, l. iv. apud Augustin. de Civitat. Dei,
ix. 6, in Fragment. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 393, edit. Olivet) affirms
that the decemvirs made libels a capital offence: cum perpaucas res
capite sanxisent--perpaucus!]

[Footnote 178: Bynkershoek (Observat. Juris Rom. l. i. c. 1, in Opp.
tom. i. p. 9, 10, 11) labors to prove that the creditors divided not the
body, but the price, of the insolvent debtor. Yet his interpretation is
one perpetual harsh metaphor; nor can he surmount the Roman authorities
of Quintilian, Caecilius, Favonius, and Tertullian. See Aulus Gellius,
Noct. Attic. xxi.]

[Footnote 1781: Hugo (Histoire du Droit Romain, tom. i. p. 234) concurs
with Gibbon See Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 313.--M.]

In the absence of penal laws, and the insufficiency of civil actions,
the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the
private jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our
jails are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer
may be commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For
the perpetration of similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim
and abuse the sacred character of a member of the republic: but, on the
proof or suspicion of guilt, the slave, or the stranger, was nailed to
a cross; and this strict and summary justice might be exercised without
restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome.

Each family contained a domestic tribunal, which was not confined, like
that of the praetor, to the cognizance of external actions: virtuous
principles and habits were inculcated by the discipline of education;
and the Roman father was accountable to the state for the manners of
his children, since he disposed, without appeal, of their life, their
liberty, and their inheritance. In some pressing emergencies, the
citizen was authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The
consent of the Jewish, the Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the
slaughter of the nocturnal thief; though in open daylight a robber could
not be slain without some previous evidence of danger and complaint.
Whoever surprised an adulterer in his nuptial bed might freely exercise
his revenge; [179] the most bloody and wanton outrage was excused by
the provocation; [180] nor was it before the reign of Augustus that
the husband was reduced to weigh the rank of the offender, or that the
parent was condemned to sacrifice his daughter with her guilty seducer.
After the expulsion of the kings, the ambitious Roman, who should dare
to assume their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted to the
infernal gods: each of his fellow-citizens was armed with the sword
of justice; and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to gratitude or
prudence, had been already sanctified by the judgment of his country.
[181] The barbarous practice of wearing arms in the midst of peace,
[182] and the bloody maxims of honor, were unknown to the Romans; and,
during the two purest ages, from the establishment of equal freedom to
the end of the Punic wars, the city was never disturbed by sedition,
and rarely polluted with atrocious crimes. The failure of penal laws was
more sensibly felt, when every vice was inflamed by faction at home and
dominion abroad. In the time of Cicero, each private citizen enjoyed the
privilege of anarchy; each minister of the republic was exalted to
the temptations of regal power, and their virtues are entitled to the
warmest praise, as the spontaneous fruits of nature or philosophy. After
a triennial indulgence of lust, rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant
of Sicily, could only be sued for the pecuniary restitution of three
hundred thousand pounds sterling; and such was the temper of the laws,
the judges, and perhaps the accuser himself, [183] that, on refunding
a thirteenth part of his plunder, Verres could retire to an easy and
luxurious exile. [184]

[Footnote 179: The first speech of Lysias (Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom.
v. p. 2--48) is in defence of a husband who had killed the adulterer.
The rights of husbands and fathers at Rome and Athens are discussed with
much learning by Dr. Taylor, (Lectiones Lysiacae, c. xi. in Reiske, tom.
vi. p. 301--308.)]

[Footnote 180: See Casaubon ad Athenaeum, l. i. c. 5, p. 19. Percurrent
raphanique mugilesque, (Catull. p. 41, 42, edit. Vossian.) Hunc mugilis
intrat, (Juvenal. Satir. x. 317.) Hunc perminxere calones, (Horat l.
i. Satir. ii. 44.) Familiae stuprandum dedit.. fraudi non fuit, (Val.
Maxim. l. vi. c. l, No. 13.)]

[Footnote 181: This law is noticed by Livy (ii. 8) and Plutarch, (in
Publiccla, tom. i. p. 187,) and it fully justifies the public opinion
on the death of Caesar which Suetonius could publish under the Imperial
government. Jure caesus existimatur, (in Julio, c. 76.) Read the letters
that passed between Cicero and Matius a few months after the ides of
March (ad Fam. xi. 27, 28.)]

[Footnote 182: Thucydid. l. i. c. 6 The historian who considers this
circumstance as the test of civilization, would disdain the barbarism of
a European court]

[Footnote 183: He first rated at millies (800,000 L.) the damages of
Sicily, (Divinatio in Caecilium, c. 5,) which he afterwards reduced to
quadringenties, (320,000 L.--1 Actio in Verrem, c. 18,) and was finally
content with tricies, (24,000l L.) Plutarch (in Ciceron. tom. iii. p.
1584) has not dissembled the popular suspicion and report.]

[Footnote 184: Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the
second triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony
for the sake of his Corinthian plate, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 3.)]

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and
punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his
sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license, rather than
to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary
proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. [185] But, in the
character of a legislator, he respected the prejudices of the times;
and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or
assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined
a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by
the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the
interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards
the Pompeian and Julian, laws introduced a new system of criminal
jurisprudence; [186] and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian,
disguised their increasing rigor under the names of the original
authors. But the invention and frequent use of extraordinary pains
proceeded from the desire to extend and conceal the progress of
despotism. In the condemnation of illustrious Romans, the senate was
always prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial
and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the
peace of their province, by the arbitrary and rigid administration of
justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire,
and the Spanish malefactor, who claimed the privilege of a Roman, was
elevated by the command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. [187]
Occasional rescripts issued from the throne to decide the questions
which, by their novelty or importance, appeared to surpass the authority
and discernment of a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were
reserved for honorable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged,
or burnt, or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the
amphitheatre. Armed robbers were pursued and extirpated as the enemies
of society; the driving away horses or cattle was made a capital
offence; [188] but simple theft was uniformly considered as a mere civil
and private injury. The degrees of guilt, and the modes of punishment,
were too often determined by the discretion of the rulers, and the
subject was left in ignorance of the legal danger which he might incur
by every action of his life.

[Footnote 185: Such is the number assigned by Valer'us Maximus, (l. ix.
c. 2, No. 1,) Florus (iv. 21) distinguishes 2000 senators and
knights. Appian (de Bell. Civil. l. i. c. 95, tom. ii. p. 133, edit.
Schweighauser) more accurately computes forty victims of the senatorian
rank, and 1600 of the equestrian census or order.]

[Footnote 186: For the penal laws (Leges Corneliae, Pompeiae, Julae,
of Sylla, Pompey, and the Caesars) see the sentences of Paulus, (l. iv.
tit. xviii.--xxx. p. 497--528, edit. Schulting,) the Gregorian Code,
(Fragment. l. xix. p. 705, 706, in Schulting,) the Collatio Legum
Mosaicarum et Romanarum, (tit. i.--xv.,) the Theodosian Code, (l.
ix.,) the Code of Justinian, (l. ix.,) the Pandects, (xlviii.,) the
Institutes, (l. iv. tit. xviii.,) and the Greek version of Theophilus,
(p. 917--926.)]

[Footnote 187: It was a guardian who had poisoned his ward. The crime
was atrocious: yet the punishment is reckoned by Suetonius (c. 9) among
the acts in which Galba showed himself acer, vehemens, et in delictis
coercendis immodicus.]

[Footnote 188: The abactores or abigeatores, who drove one horse, or
two mares or oxen, or five hogs, or ten goats, were subject to capital
punishment, (Paul, Sentent. Recept. l. iv. tit. xviii. p. 497, 498.)
Hadrian, (ad Concil. Baeticae,) most severe where the offence was most
frequent, condemns the criminals, ad gladium, ludi damnationem, (Ulpian,
de Officio Proconsulis, l. viii. in Collatione Legum Mosaic. et Rom.
tit. xi p. 235.)]

A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate each
other; but, as often as they differ, a prudent legislator appreciates
the guilt and punishment according to the measure of social injury. On
this principle, the most daring attack on the life and property of a
private citizen is judged less atrocious than the crime of treason or
rebellion, which invades the majesty of the republic: the obsequious
civilians unanimously pronounced, that the republic is contained in the
person of its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by
the incessant diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the
sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source
of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of
the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The
wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of revenge, applied to
this domestic offence the animadversion of the laws: and the guilty
parties, after the payment of heavy forfeitures and fines, were
condemned to long or perpetual exile in two separate islands. [189]
Religion pronounces an equal censure against the infidelity of the
husband; but, as it is not accompanied by the same civil effects,
the wife was never permitted to vindicate her wrongs; [190] and the
distinction of simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important
in the canon law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the Code and the
Pandects. I touch with reluctance, and despatch with impatience, a more
odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates
the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the example of the
Etruscans [191] and Greeks: [192] and in the mad abuse of prosperity
and power, every pleasure that is innocent was deemed insipid; and the
Scatinian law, [193] which had been extorted by an act of violence,
was insensibly abolished by the lapse of time and the multitude of
criminals. By this law, the rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous
youth, was compensated, as a personal injury, by the poor damages of ten
thousand sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be slain by
the resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to believe, that at
Rome, as in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate deserter of his sex
was degraded from the honors and the rights of a citizen. [194] But the
practice of vice was not discouraged by the severity of opinion:
the indelible stain of manhood was confounded with the more venial
transgressions of fornication and adultery, nor was the licentious lover
exposed to the same dishonor which he impressed on the male or female
partner of his guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal, [195] the poets accuse
and celebrate the degeneracy of the times; and the reformation of
manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the
civilians till the most virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the sin
against nature as a crime against society. [196]

[Footnote 189: Till the publication of the Julius Paulus of Schulting,
(l. ii. tit. xxvi. p. 317--323,) it was affirmed and believed that the
Julian laws punished adultery with death; and the mistake arose from the
fraud or error of Tribonian. Yet Lipsius had suspected the truth from
the narratives of Tacitus, (Annal. ii. 50, iii. 24, iv. 42,) and
even from the practice of Augustus, who distinguished the treasonable
frailties of his female kindred.]

[Footnote 190: In cases of adultery, Severus confined to the husband the
right of public accusation, (Cod. Justinian, l. ix. tit. ix. leg. 1.)
Nor is this privilege unjust--so different are the effects of male or
female infidelity.]

[Footnote 191: Timon (l. i.) and Theopompus (l. xliii. apud Athenaeum,
l. xii. p. 517) describe the luxury and lust of the Etruscans. About the
same period (A. U. C. 445) the Roman youth studied in Etruria, (liv. ix.
36.)]

[Footnote 192: The Persians had been corrupted in the same school,
(Herodot. l. i. c. 135.) A curious dissertation might be formed on the
introduction of paederasty after the time of Homer, its progress among
the Greeks of Asia and Europe, the vehemence of their passions, and the
thin device of virtue and friendship which amused the philosophers of
Athens. But scelera ostendi oportet dum puniuntur, abscondi flagitia.]

[Footnote 193: The name, the date, and the provisions of this law are
equally doubtful, (Gravina, Opp. p. 432, 433. Heineccius, Hist. Jur.
Rom. No. 108. Ernesti, Clav. Ciceron. in Indice Legum.) But I will
observe that the nefanda Venus of the honest German is styled aversa by
the more polite Italian.]

[Footnote 194: See the oration of Aeschines against the catamite
Timarchus, (in Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom. iii. p. 21--184.)]

[Footnote 195: A crowd of disgraceful passages will force themselves
on the memory of the classic reader: I will only remind him of the cool
declaration of Ovid:-- Odi concubitus qui non utrumque resolvant. Hoc
est quod puerum tangar amore minus.]

[Footnote 196: Aelius Lampridius, in Vit. Heliogabal. in Hist. August p.
112 Aurelius Victor, in Philippo, Codex Theodos. l. ix. tit. vii. leg.
7, and Godefroy's Commentary, tom. iii. p. 63. Theodosius abolished the
subterraneous brothels of Rome, in which the prostitution of both sexes
was acted with impunity.]





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

A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose in the
empire with the religion of Constantine. [197] The laws of Moses were
received as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes
adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious
turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the
frailty of the sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to
sorcery or parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive
and active guilt of paederasty; and all criminals of free or servile
condition were either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the
avenging flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of
mankind; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general and
pious indignation: the impure manners of Greece still prevailed in the
cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the
monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female
infidelity: the guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and
penance, and at the end of two years she might be recalled to the
arms of a forgiving husband. But the same emperor declared himself the
implacable enemy of unmanly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can
scarcely be excused by the purity of his motives. [198] In defiance
of every principle of justice, he stretched to past as well as future
offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous allowance of a
short respite for confession and pardon. A painful death was inflicted
by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp
reeds into the pores and tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and
Justinian defended the propriety of the execution, since the criminals
would have lost their hands, had they been convicted of sacrilege. In
this state of disgrace and agony, two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes
and Alexander of Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of
Constantinople, while their brethren were admonished, by the voice of a
crier, to observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity
of their character. Perhaps these prelates were innocent. A sentence of
death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence
of a child or a servant: the guilt of the green faction, of the
rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was presumed by the judges, and
paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.
A French philosopher [199] has dared to remark that whatever is secret
must be doubtful, and that our natural horror of vice may be abused as
an engine of tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same writer,
that a legislator may confide in the taste and reason of mankind, is
impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and extent of the
disease. [200]

[Footnote 197: See the laws of Constantine and his successors against
adultery, sodomy &c., in the Theodosian, (l. ix. tit. vii. leg. 7, l.
xi. tit. xxxvi leg. 1, 4) and Justinian Codes, (l. ix. tit. ix. leg. 30,
31.) These princes speak the language of passion as well as of justice,
and fraudulently ascribe their own severity to the first Caesars.]

[Footnote 198: Justinian, Novel. lxxvii. cxxxiv. cxli. Procopius in
Anecdot. c. 11, 16, with the notes of Alemannus. Theophanes, p. 151.
Cedrenus. p. 688. Zonaras, l. xiv. p. 64.]

[Footnote 199: Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 6. That eloquent
philosopher conciliates the rights of liberty and of nature, which
should never be placed in opposition to each other.]

[Footnote 200: For the corruption of Palestine, 2000 years before the
Christian aera, see the history and laws of Moses. Ancient Gaul is
stigmatized by Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. v. p. 356,) China by the
Mahometar and Christian travellers, (Ancient Relations of India and
China, p. 34 translated by Renaudot, and his bitter critic the Pere
Premare, Lettres Edifiantes, tom. xix. p. 435,) and native America by
the Spanish historians, (Garcilasso de la Vega, l. iii. c. 13, Rycaut's
translation; and Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. iii. p. 88.) I believe,
and hope, that the <DW64>s, in their own country, were exempt from this
moral pestilence.]

The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed, in all criminal cases,
the invaluable privilege of being tried by their country. [201] 1. The
administration of justice is the most ancient office of a prince: it was
exercised by the Roman kings, and abused by Tarquin; who alone, without
law or council, pronounced his arbitrary judgments. The first consuls
succeeded to this regal prerogative; but the sacred right of appeal soon
abolished the jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all public causes
were decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a wild
democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the essential
principles, of justice: the pride of despotism was envenomed by plebeian
envy, and the heroes of Athens might sometimes applaud the happiness of
the Persian, whose fate depended on the caprice of a single tyrant. Some
salutary restraints, imposed by the people or their own passions,
were at once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the
Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates.

A vote of the thirty five tribes could inflict a fine; but the
cognizance of all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental law to
the assembly of the centuries, in which the weight of influence
and property was sure to preponderate. Repeated proclamations and
adjournments were interposed, to allow time for prejudice and resentment
to subside: the whole proceeding might be annulled by a seasonable omen,
or the opposition of a tribune; and such popular trials were commonly
less formidable to innocence than they were favorable to guilt. But this
union of the judicial and legislative powers left it doubtful whether
the accused party was pardoned or acquitted; and, in the defence of
an illustrious client, the orators of Rome and Athens address their
arguments to the policy and benevolence, as well as to the justice, of
their sovereign. 2. The task of convening the citizens for the trial of
each offender became more difficult, as the citizens and the offenders
continually multiplied; and the ready expedient was adopted of
delegating the jurisdiction of the people to the ordinary magistrates,
or to extraordinary inquisitors. In the first ages these questions were
rare and occasional. In the beginning of the seventh century of Rome
they were made perpetual: four praetors were annually empowered to sit
in judgment on the state offences of treason, extortion, peculation, and
bribery; and Sylla added new praetors and new questions for those
crimes which more directly injure the safety of individuals. By these
inquisitors the trial was prepared and directed; but they could only
pronounce the sentence of the majority of judges, who with some truth,
and more prejudice, have been compared to the English juries. [202] To
discharge this important, though burdensome office, an annual list of
ancient and respectable citizens was formed by the praetor. After many
constitutional struggles, they were chosen in equal numbers from the
senate, the equestrian order, and the people; four hundred and fifty
were appointed for single questions; and the various rolls or decuries
of judges must have contained the names of some thousand Romans, who
represented the judicial authority of the state. In each particular
cause, a sufficient number was drawn from the urn; their integrity was
guarded by an oath; the mode of ballot secured their independence; the
suspicion of partiality was removed by the mutual challenges of the
accuser and defendant; and the judges of Milo, by the retrenchment of
fifteen on each side, were reduced to fifty-one voices or tablets, of
acquittal, of condemnation, or of favorable doubt. [203] 3. In his civil
jurisdiction, the praetor of the city was truly a judge, and almost
a legislator; but, as soon as he had prescribed the action of law, he
often referred to a delegate the determination of the fact. With the
increase of legal proceedings, the tribunal of the centumvirs, in which
he presided, acquired more weight and reputation. But whether he acted
alone, or with the advice of his council, the most absolute powers might
be trusted to a magistrate who was annually chosen by the votes of
the people. The rules and precautions of freedom have required some
explanation; the order of despotism is simple and inanimate. Before the
age of Justinian, or perhaps of Diocletian, the decuries of Roman judges
had sunk to an empty title: the humble advice of the assessors might
be accepted or despised; and in each tribunal the civil and criminal
jurisdiction was administered by a single magistrate, who was raised
and disgraced by the will of the emperor. [Footnote 201: The important
subject of the public questions and judgments at Rome, is explained with
much learning, and in a classic style, by Charles Sigonius, (l. iii. de
Judiciis, in Opp. tom. iii. p. 679--864;) and a good abridgment may be
found in the Republique Romaine of Beaufort, (tom. ii. l. v. p. 1--121.)
Those who wish for more abstruse law may study Noodt, (de Jurisdictione
et Imperio Libri duo, tom. i. p. 93--134,) Heineccius, (ad Pandect. l.
i. et ii. ad Institut. l. iv. tit. xvii Element. ad Antiquitat.) and
Gravina (Opp. 230--251.)]

[Footnote 202: The office, both at Rome and in England, must be
considered as an occasional duty, and not a magistracy, or profession.
But the obligation of a unanimous verdict is peculiar to our laws,
which condemn the jurymen to undergo the torture from whence they have
exempted the criminal.]

[Footnote 203: We are indebted for this interesting fact to a fragment
of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of Tiberius. The
loss of his Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero has deprived us of a
valuable fund of historical and legal knowledge.]

A Roman accused of any capital crime might prevent the sentence of
the law by voluntary exile, or death. Till his guilt had been legally
proved, his innocence was presumed, and his person was free: till
the votes of the last century had been counted and declared, he might
peaceably secede to any of the allied cities of Italy, or Greece,
or Asia. [204] His fame and fortunes were preserved, at least to his
children, by this civil death; and he might still be happy in every
rational and sensual enjoyment, if a mind accustomed to the ambitious
tumult of Rome could support the uniformity and silence of Rhodes or
Athens. A bolder effort was required to escape from the tyranny of the
Caesars; but this effort was rendered familiar by the maxims of the
stoics, the example of the bravest Romans, and the legal encouragements
of suicide. The bodies of condemned criminals were exposed to public
ignominy, and their children, a more serious evil, were reduced to
poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But, if the victims of
Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince or senate, their
courage and despatch were recompensed by the applause of the public, the
decent honors of burial, and the validity of their testaments. [205] The
exquisite avarice and cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the
unfortunate of this last consolation, and it was still denied even by
the clemency of the Antonines. A voluntary death, which, in the case of
a capital offence, intervened between the accusation and the sentence,
was admitted as a confession of guilt, and the spoils of the deceased
were seized by the inhuman claims of the treasury. [206] Yet the
civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to
dispose of his life; and the posthumous disgrace invented by Tarquin,
[207] to check the despair of his subjects, was never revived or
imitated by succeeding tyrants. The powers of this world have indeed
lost their dominion over him who is resolved on death; and his arm can
only be restrained by the religious apprehension of a future state.
Suicides are enumerated by Virgil among the unfortunate, rather than the
guilty; [208] and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could not
seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the precepts
of the gospel, or the church, have at length imposed a pious servitude
on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to expect, without a
murmur, the last stroke of disease or the executioner. [Footnote 204:
Polyb. l. vi. p. 643. The extension of the empire and city of Rome
obliged the exile to seek a more distant place of retirement.]

[Footnote 205: Qui de se statuebant, humabanta corpora, manebant
testamenta; pretium festinandi. Tacit. Annal. vi. 25, with the Notes of
Lipsius.]

[Footnote 206: Julius Paulus, (Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xii. p.
476,) the Pandects, (xlviii. tit. xxi.,) the Code, (l. ix. tit. l.,)
Bynkershoek, (tom. i. p. 59, Observat. J. C. R. iv. 4,) and Montesquieu,
(Esprit des Loix, l. xxix. c. ix.,) define the civil limitations of
the liberty and privileges of suicide. The criminal penalties are the
production of a later and darker age.]

[Footnote 207: Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxvi. 24. When he fatigued his
subjects in building the Capitol, many of the laborers were provoked to
despatch themselves: he nailed their dead bodies to crosses.]

[Footnote 208: The sole resemblance of a violent and premature death has
engaged Virgil (Aeneid, vi. 434--439) to confound suicides with infants,
lovers, and persons unjustly condemned. Heyne, the best of his editors,
is at a loss to deduce the idea, or ascertain the jurisprudence, of the
Roman poet.]

The penal statutes form a very small proportion of the sixty-two books
of the Code and Pandects; and in all judicial proceedings, the life or
death of a citizen is determined with less caution or delay than
the most ordinary question of covenant or inheritance. This singular
distinction, though something may be allowed for the urgent necessity of
defending the peace of society, is derived from the nature of criminal
and civil jurisprudence. Our duties to the state are simple and uniform:
the law by which he is condemned is inscribed not only on brass or
marble, but on the conscience of the offender, and his guilt is commonly
proved by the testimony of a single fact. But our relations to each
other are various and infinite; our obligations are created,
annulled, and modified, by injuries, benefits, and promises; and the
interpretation of voluntary contracts and testaments, which are often
dictated by fraud or ignorance, affords a long and laborious exercise
to the sagacity of the judge. The business of life is multiplied by the
extent of commerce and dominion, and the residence of the parties in
the distant provinces of an empire is productive of doubt, delay, and
inevitable appeals from the local to the supreme magistrate. Justinian,
the Greek emperor of Constantinople and the East, was the legal
successor of the Latin shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks
of the Tyber. In a period of thirteen hundred years, the laws had
reluctantly followed the changes of government and manners; and the
laudable desire of conciliating ancient names with recent institutions
destroyed the harmony, and swelled the magnitude, of the obscure and
irregular system. The laws which excuse, on any occasions, the
ignorance of their subjects, confess their own imperfections: the
civil jurisprudence, as it was abridged by Justinian, still continued a
mysterious science, and a profitable trade, and the innate perplexity
of the study was involved in tenfold darkness by the private industry
of the practitioners. The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the
value of the prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty
or prudence of the claimants. Such costly justice might tend to abate
the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves only to
increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the misery of the
poor. By these dilatory and expensive proceedings, the wealthy pleader
obtains a more certain advantage than he could hope from the accidental
corruption of his judge. The experience of an abuse, from which our
own age and country are not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke
a generous indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our
elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a Turkish
cadhi. Our calmer reflection will suggest, that such forms and delays
are necessary to guard the person and property of the citizen; that the
discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny; and that the
laws of a free people should foresee and determine every question that
may probably arise in the exercise of power and the transactions of
industry. But the government of Justinian united the evils of liberty
and servitude; and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the
multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their master.





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

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

During the last years of Justinian, his infirm mind was devoted to
heavenly contemplation, and he neglected the business of the lower
world. His subjects were impatient of the long continuance of his life
and reign: yet all who were capable of reflection apprehended the moment
of his death, which might involve the capital in tumult, and the empire
in civil war. Seven nephews [1] of the childless monarch, the sons or
grandsons of his brother and sister, had been educated in the splendor
of a princely fortune; they had been shown in high commands to the
provinces and armies; their characters were known, their followers were
zealous, and, as the jealousy of age postponed the declaration of a
successor, they might expect with equal hopes the inheritance of their
uncle. He expired in his palace, after a reign of thirty-eight years;
and the decisive opportunity was embraced by the friends of Justin,
the son of Vigilantia. [2] At the hour of midnight, his domestics
were awakened by an importunate crowd, who thundered at his door, and
obtained admittance by revealing themselves to be the principal members
of the senate. These welcome deputies announced the recent and momentous
secret of the emperor's decease; reported, or perhaps invented, his
dying choice of the best beloved and most deserving of his nephews,
and conjured Justin to prevent the disorders of the multitude, if they
should perceive, with the return of light, that they were left without a
master. After composing his countenance to surprise, sorrow, and decent
modesty, Justin, by the advice of his wife Sophia, submitted to the
authority of the senate. He was conducted with speed and silence to
the palace; the guards saluted their new sovereign; and the martial and
religious rites of his coronation were diligently accomplished. By the
hands of the proper officers he was invested with the Imperial garments,
the red buskins, white tunic, and purple robe.

A fortunate soldier, whom he instantly promoted to the rank of tribune,
encircled his neck with a military collar; four robust youths exalted
him on a shield; he stood firm and erect to receive the adoration of
his subjects; and their choice was sanctified by the benediction of the
patriarch, who imposed the diadem on the head of an orthodox prince. The
hippodrome was already filled with innumerable multitudes; and no sooner
did the emperor appear on his throne, than the voices of the blue and
the green factions were confounded in the same loyal acclamations.
In the speeches which Justin addressed to the senate and people, he
promised to correct the abuses which had disgraced the age of his
predecessor, displayed the maxims of a just and beneficent government,
and declared that, on the approaching calends of January, [3] he would
revive in his own person the name and liberty of a Roman consul. The
immediate discharge of his uncle's debts exhibited a solid pledge of
his faith and generosity: a train of porters, laden with bags of gold,
advanced into the midst of the hippodrome, and the hopeless creditors
of Justinian accepted this equitable payment as a voluntary gift. Before
the end of three years, his example was imitated and surpassed by the
empress Sophia, who delivered many indigent citizens from the weight of
debt and usury: an act of benevolence the best entitled to gratitude,
since it relieves the most intolerable distress; but in which the bounty
of a prince is the most liable to be abused by the claims of prodigality
and fraud. [4]

[Footnote 1: See the family of Justin and Justinian in the Familiae
Byzantine of Ducange, p. 89--101. The devout civilians, Ludewig (in
Vit. Justinian. p. 131) and Heineccius (Hist. Juris. Roman. p. 374) have
since illustrated the genealogy of their favorite prince.]

[Footnote 2: In the story of Justin's elevation I have translated into
simple and concise prose the eight hundred verses of the two first books
of Corippus, de Laudibus Justini Appendix Hist. Byzant. p. 401--416 Rome
1777.]

[Footnote 3: It is surprising how Pagi (Critica. in Annal. Baron. tom.
ii. p 639) could be tempted by any chronicles to contradict the plain
and decisive text of Corippus, (vicina dona, l. ii. 354, vicina dies, l.
iv. 1,) and to postpone, till A.D. 567, the consulship of Justin.]

[Footnote 4: Theophan. Chronograph. p. 205. Whenever Cedrenus or Zonaras
are mere transcribers, it is superfluous to allege their testimony.]

On the seventh day of his reign, Justin gave audience to the ambassadors
of the Avars, and the scene was decorated to impress the Barbarians with
astonishment, veneration, and terror. From the palace gate, the spacious
courts and long porticos were lined with the lofty crests and gilt
bucklers of the guards, who presented their spears and axes with more
confidence than they would have shown in a field of battle. The officers
who exercised the power, or attended the person, of the prince, were
attired in their richest habits, and arranged according to the military
and civil order of the hierarchy. When the veil of the sanctuary was
withdrawn, the ambassadors beheld the emperor of the East on his throne,
beneath a canopy, or dome, which was supported by four columns, and
crowned with a winged figure of Victory. In the first emotions of
surprise, they submitted to the servile adoration of the Byzantine
court; but as soon as they rose from the ground, Targetius, the chief
of the embassy, expressed the freedom and pride of a Barbarian. He
extolled, by the tongue of his interpreter, the greatness of the chagan,
by whose clemency the kingdoms of the South were permitted to exist,
whose victorious subjects had traversed the frozen rivers of Scythia,
and who now covered the banks of the Danube with innumerable tents.
The late emperor had cultivated, with annual and costly gifts, the
friendship of a grateful monarch, and the enemies of Rome had respected
the allies of the Avars. The same prudence would instruct the nephew of
Justinian to imitate the liberality of his uncle, and to purchase the
blessings of peace from an invincible people, who delighted and excelled
in the exercise of war. The reply of the emperor was delivered in the
same strain of haughty defiance, and he derived his confidence from
the God of the Christians, the ancient glory of Rome, and the recent
triumphs of Justinian. "The empire," said he, "abounds with men and
horses, and arms sufficient to defend our frontiers, and to chastise
the Barbarians. You offer aid, you threaten hostilities: we despise your
enmity and your aid. The conquerors of the Avars solicit our alliance;
shall we dread their fugitives and exiles? [5] The bounty of our uncle
was granted to your misery, to your humble prayers. From us you shall
receive a more important obligation, the knowledge of your own weakness.
Retire from our presence; the lives of ambassadors are safe; and, if
you return to implore our pardon, perhaps you will taste of our
benevolence." [6] On the report of his ambassadors, the chagan was
awed by the apparent firmness of a Roman emperor of whose character and
resources he was ignorant. Instead of executing his threats against
the Eastern empire, he marched into the poor and savage countries of
Germany, which were subject to the dominion of the Franks. After two
doubtful battles, he consented to retire, and the Austrasian king
relieve the distress of his camp with an immediate supply of corn and
cattle. [7] Such repeated disappointments had chilled the spirit of
the Avars, and their power would have dissolved away in the Sarmatian
desert, if the alliance of Alboin, king of the Lombards, had not given
a new object to their arms, and a lasting settlement to their wearied
fortunes.

[Footnote 5: Corippus, l. iii. 390. The unquestionable sense relates
to the Turks, the conquerors of the Avars; but the word scultor has no
apparent meaning, and the sole Ms. of Corippus, from whence the first
edition (1581, apud Plantin) was printed, is no longer visible. The
last editor, Foggini of Rome, has inserted the conjectural emendation
of soldan: but the proofs of Ducange, (Joinville, Dissert. xvi. p.
238--240,) for the early use of this title among the Turks and
Persians, are weak or ambiguous. And I must incline to the authority of
D'Herbelot, (Bibliotheque Orient. p. 825,) who ascribes the word to the
Arabic and Chaldaean tongues, and the date to the beginning of the xith
century, when it was bestowed by the khalif of Bagdad on Mahmud, prince
of Gazna, and conqueror of India.]

[Footnote 6: For these characteristic speeches, compare the verse
of Corippus (l. iii. 251--401) with the prose of Menander, (Excerpt.
Legation. p 102, 103.) Their diversity proves that they did not copy
each other their resemblance, that they drew from a common original.]

[Footnote 7: For the Austrasian war, see Menander (Excerpt. Legat. p.
110,) Gregory of Tours, (Hist. Franc. l. iv. c 29,) and Paul the deacon,
(de Gest. Langobard. l. ii. c. 10.)]

While Alboin served under his father's standard, he encountered in
battle, and transpierced with his lance, the rival prince of the
Gepidae. The Lombards, who applauded such early prowess, requested his
father, with unanimous acclamations, that the heroic youth, who had
shared the dangers of the field, might be admitted to the feast of
victory. "You are not unmindful," replied the inflexible Audoin, "of the
wise customs of our ancestors. Whatever may be his merit, a prince is
incapable of sitting at table with his father till he has received his
arms from a foreign and royal hand." Alboin bowed with reverence to
the institutions of his country, selected forty companions, and boldly
visited the court of Turisund, king of the Gepidae, who embraced and
entertained, according to the laws of hospitality, the murderer of his
son. At the banquet, whilst Alboin occupied the seat of the youth whom
he had slain, a tender remembrance arose in the mind of Turisund. "How
dear is that place! how hateful is that person!" were the words that
escaped, with a sigh, from the indignant father. His grief exasperated
the national resentment of the Gepidae; and Cunimund, his surviving
son, was provoked by wine, or fraternal affection, to the desire of
vengeance. "The Lombards," said the rude Barbarian, "resemble, in figure
and in smell, the mares of our Sarmatian plains." And this insult was
a coarse allusion to the white bands which enveloped their legs. "Add
another resemblance," replied an audacious Lombard; "you have felt how
strongly they kick. Visit the plain of Asfield, and seek for the bones
of thy brother: they are mingled with those of the vilest animals."
The Gepidae, a nation of warriors, started from their seats, and the
fearless Alboin, with his forty companions, laid their hands on their
swords. The tumult was appeased by the venerable interposition of
Turisund. He saved his own honor, and the life of his guest; and, after
the solemn rites of investiture, dismissed the stranger in the bloody
arms of his son; the gift of a weeping parent. Alboin returned in
triumph; and the Lombards, who celebrated his matchless intrepidity,
were compelled to praise the virtues of an enemy. [8] In this
extraordinary visit he had probably seen the daughter of Cunimund, who
soon after ascended the throne of the Gepidae. Her name was Rosamond,
an appellation expressive of female beauty, and which our own history or
romance has consecrated to amorous tales. The king of the Lombards (the
father of Alboin no longer lived) was contracted to the granddaughter of
Clovis; but the restraints of faith and policy soon yielded to the hope
of possessing the fair Rosamond, and of insulting her family and nation.
The arts of persuasion were tried without success; and the impatient
lover, by force and stratagem, obtained the object of his desires. War
was the consequence which he foresaw and solicited; but the Lombards
could not long withstand the furious assault of the Gepidae, who were
sustained by a Roman army. And, as the offer of marriage was rejected
with contempt, Alboin was compelled to relinquish his prey, and to
partake of the disgrace which he had inflicted on the house of Cunimund.
[9]

[Footnote 8: Paul Warnefrid, the deacon of Friuli, de Gest. Langobard.
l. i. c. 23, 24. His pictures of national manners, though rudely
sketched are more lively and faithful than those of Bede, or Gregory of
Tours]

[Footnote 9: The story is told by an impostor, (Theophylact. Simocat.
l. vi. c. 10;) but he had art enough to build his fictions on public and
notorious facts.]

When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is
not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce,
which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a
new encounter. The strength of Alboin had been found unequal to the
gratification of his love, ambition, and revenge: he condescended to
implore the formidable aid of the chagan; and the arguments that he
employed are expressive of the art and policy of the Barbarians. In
the attack of the Gepidae, he had been prompted by the just desire
of extirpating a people whom their alliance with the Roman empire had
rendered the common enemies of the nations, and the personal adversaries
of the chagan. If the forces of the Avars and the Lombards should
unite in this glorious quarrel, the victory was secure, and the reward
inestimable: the Danube, the Hebrus, Italy, and Constantinople, would
be exposed, without a barrier, to their invincible arms. But, if they
hesitated or delayed to prevent the malice of the Romans, the same
spirit which had insulted would pursue the Avars to the extremity of the
earth. These specious reasons were heard by the chagan with coldness and
disdain: he detained the Lombard ambassadors in his camp, protracted the
negotiation, and by turns alleged his want of inclination, or his
want of ability, to undertake this important enterprise. At length he
signified the ultimate price of his alliance, that the Lombards should
immediately present him with a tithe of their cattle; that the spoils
and captives should be equally divided; but that the lands of the
Gepidae should become the sole patrimony of the Avars. Such hard
conditions were eagerly accepted by the passions of Alboin; and, as
the Romans were dissatisfied with the ingratitude and perfidy of the
Gepidae, Justin abandoned that incorrigible people to their fate, and
remained the tranquil spectator of this unequal conflict. The despair
of Cunimund was active and dangerous. He was informed that the Avars
had entered his confines; but, on the strong assurance that, after the
defeat of the Lombards, these foreign invaders would easily be repelled,
he rushed forwards to encounter the implacable enemy of his name and
family. But the courage of the Gepidae could secure them no more than an
honorable death. The bravest of the nation fell in the field of battle;
the king of the Lombards contemplated with delight the head of Cunimund;
and his skull was fashioned into a cup to satiate the hatred of the
conqueror, or, perhaps, to comply with the savage custom of his country.
[10] After this victory, no further obstacle could impede the progress
of the confederates, and they faithfully executed the terms of their
agreement. [11] The fair countries of Walachia, Moldavia, Transylvania,
and the other parts of Hungary beyond the Danube, were occupied, without
resistance, by a new colony of Scythians; and the Dacian empire of the
chagans subsisted with splendor above two hundred and thirty years. The
nation of the Gepidae was dissolved; but, in the distribution of
the captives, the slaves of the Avars were less fortunate than the
companions of the Lombards, whose generosity adopted a valiant foe, and
whose freedom was incompatible with cool and deliberate tyranny. One
moiety of the spoil introduced into the camp of Alboin more wealth than
a Barbarian could readily compute. The fair Rosamond was persuaded, or
compelled, to acknowledge the rights of her victorious lover; and the
daughter of Cunimund appeared to forgive those crimes which might be
imputed to her own irresistible charms.

[Footnote 10: It appears from Strabo, Pliny, and Ammianus Marcellinus,
that the same practice was common among the Scythian tribes, (Muratori,
Scriptores Rer. Italic. tom. i. p. 424.) The scalps of North America are
likewise trophies of valor. The skull of Cunimund was preserved above
two hundred years among the Lombards; and Paul himself was one of the
guests to whom Duke Ratchis exhibited this cup on a high festival, (l.
ii. c. 28.)]

[Footnote 11: Paul, l. i. c. 27. Menander, in Excerpt Legat. p. 110,
111.]

The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of Alboin. In
the days of Charlemagne, the Bavarians, the Saxons, and the other tribes
of the Teutonic language, still repeated the songs which described the
heroic virtues, the valor, liberality, and fortune of the king of the
Lombards. [12] But his ambition was yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror
of the Gepidae turned his eyes from the Danube to the richer banks
of the Po, and the Tyber. Fifteen years had not elapsed, since his
subjects, the confederates of Narses, had visited the pleasant climate
of Italy: the mountains, the rivers, the highways, were familiar to
their memory: the report of their success, perhaps the view of their
spoils, had kindled in the rising generation the flame of emulation and
enterprise. Their hopes were encouraged by the spirit and eloquence of
Alboin: and it is affirmed, that he spoke to their senses, by producing
at the royal feast, the fairest and most exquisite fruits that grew
spontaneously in the garden of the world. No sooner had he erected his
standard, than the native strength of the Lombard was multiplied by
the adventurous youth of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of
Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of Barbarians; and the
names of the Gepidae, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Bavarians, may be
distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. [13] Of the Saxons, the old
allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with their wives and
children, accepted the invitation of Alboin. Their bravery contributed
to his success; but the accession or the absence of their numbers was
not sensibly felt in the magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion
was freely practised by its respective votaries. The king of the
Lombards had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in
their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion; while the
more stubborn Barbarians sacrificed a she-goat, or perhaps a captive,
to the gods of their fathers. [14] The Lombards, and their confederates,
were united by their common attachment to a chief, who excelled in all
the virtues and vices of a savage hero; and the vigilance of Alboin
provided an ample magazine of offensive and defensive arms for the use
of the expedition. The portable wealth of the Lombards attended the
march: their lands they cheerfully relinquished to the Avars, on the
solemn promise, which was made and accepted without a smile, that if
they failed in the conquest of Italy, these voluntary exiles should be
reinstated in their former possessions.

[Footnote 12: Ut hactenus etiam tam apud Bajoarior um gentem, quam et
Saxmum, sed et alios ejusdem linguae homines..... in eorum carmini bus
celebretur. Paul, l. i. c. 27. He died A.D. 799, (Muratori, in Praefat.
tom. i. p. 397.) These German songs, some of which might be as old
as Tacitus, (de Moribus Germ. c. 2,) were compiled and transcribed by
Charlemagne. Barbara et antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus
et bella canebantur scripsit memoriaeque mandavit, (Eginard, in Vit.
Carol. Magn. c. 29, p. 130, 131.) The poems, which Goldast commends,
(Animadvers. ad Eginard. p. 207,) appear to be recent and contemptible
romances.]

[Footnote 13: The other nations are rehearsed by Paul, (l. ii. c.
6, 26,) Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. i. dissert. i. p. 4) has
discovered the village of the Bavarians, three miles from Modena.]

[Footnote 14: Gregory the Roman (Dialog. l. i. iii. c. 27, 28, apud
Baron. Annal Eccles. A.D. 579, No. 10) supposes that they likewise
adored this she-goat. I know but of one religion in which the god and
the victim are the same.]

They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the
Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic
victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom they
dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine court was
subservient to the Barbarian cause; and it was for the ruin of Italy,
that the emperor once listened to the complaints of his subjects. The
virtues of Narses were stained with avarice; and, in his provincial
reign of fifteen years, he accumulated a treasure of gold and silver
which surpassed the modesty of a private fortune. His government was
oppressive or unpopular, and the general discontent was expressed with
freedom by the deputies of Rome. Before the throne of Justinian they
boldly declared, that their Gothic servitude had been more tolerable
than the despotism of a Greek eunuch; and that, unless their tyrant were
instantly removed, they would consult their own happiness in the choice
of a master. The apprehension of a revolt was urged by the voice of
envy and detraction, which had so recently triumphed over the merit
of Belisarius. A new exarch, Longinus, was appointed to supersede the
conqueror of Italy, and the base motives of his recall were revealed in
the insulting mandate of the empress Sophia, "that he should leave to
men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the
maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the
hand of the eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not
easily unravel!" is said to have been the reply which indignation and
conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave
and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples,
from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses
invited the Lombards to chastise the ingratitude of the prince and
people. [15] But the passions of the people are furious and changeable,
and the Romans soon recollected the merits, or dreaded the resentment,
of their victorious general. By the mediation of the pope, who undertook
a special pilgrimage to Naples, their repentance was accepted; and
Narses, assuming a milder aspect and a more dutiful language, consented
to fix his residence in the Capitol. His death, [16] though in the
extreme period of old age, was unseasonable and premature, since his
genius alone could have repaired the last and fatal error of his life.
The reality, or the suspicion, of a conspiracy disarmed and disunited
the Italians. The soldiers resented the disgrace, and bewailed the loss,
of their general. They were ignorant of their new exarch; and Longinus
was himself ignorant of the state of the army and the province. In the
preceding years Italy had been desolated by pestilence and famine, and
a disaffected people ascribed the calamities of nature to the guilt or
folly of their rulers. [17]

[Footnote 15: The charge of the deacon against Narses (l. ii. c. 5)
may be groundless; but the weak apology of the Cardinal (Baron. Annal
Eccles. A.D. 567, No. 8--12) is rejected by the best critics--Pagi (tom.
ii. p. 639, 640,) Muratori, (Annali d' Italia, tom. v. p. 160--163,) and
the last editors, Horatius Blancus, (Script. Rerum Italic. tom. i. p.
427, 428,) and Philip Argelatus, (Sigon. Opera, tom. ii. p. 11, 12.) The
Narses who assisted at the coronation of Justin (Corippus, l. iii. 221)
is clearly understood to be a different person.]

[Footnote 16: The death of Narses is mentioned by Paul, l. ii. c. 11.
Anastas. in Vit. Johan. iii. p. 43. Agnellus, Liber Pontifical. Raven.
in Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. ii. part i. p. 114, 124. Yet I cannot
believe with Agnellus that Narses was ninety-five years of age. Is it
probable that all his exploits were performed at fourscore?]

[Footnote 17: The designs of Narses and of the Lombards for the invasion
of Italy are exposed in the last chapter of the first book, and the
seven last chapters of the second book, of Paul the deacon.]

Whatever might be the grounds of his security, Alboin neither expected
nor encountered a Roman army in the field. He ascended the Julian Alps,
and looked down with contempt and desire on the fruitful plains to
which his victory communicated the perpetual appellation of Lombardy.
A faithful chieftain, and a select band, were stationed at Forum Julii,
the modern Friuli, to guard the passes of the mountains. The Lombards
respected the strength of Pavia, and listened to the prayers of the
Trevisans: their slow and heavy multitudes proceeded to occupy the
palace and city of Verona; and Milan, now rising from her ashes, was
invested by the powers of Alboin five months after his departure from
Pannonia. Terror preceded his march: he found every where, or he left,
a dreary solitude; and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without a
trial, that the stranger was invincible. Escaping to lakes, or rocks,
or morasses, the affrighted crowds concealed some fragments of their
wealth, and delayed the moment of their servitude. Paulinus, the
patriarch of Aquileia, removed his treasures, sacred and profane, to
the Isle of Grado, [18] and his successors were adopted by the infant
republic of Venice, which was continually enriched by the public
calamities. Honoratus, who filled the chair of St. Ambrose, had
credulously accepted the faithless offers of a capitulation; and the
archbishop, with the clergy and nobles of Milan, were driven by the
perfidy of Alboin to seek a refuge in the less accessible ramparts of
Genoa. Along the maritime coast, the courage of the inhabitants was
supported by the facility of supply, the hopes of relief, and the power
of escape; but from the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome
the inland regions of Italy became, without a battle or a siege, the
lasting patrimony of the Lombards. The submission of the people invited
the Barbarian to assume the character of a lawful sovereign, and the
helpless exarch was confined to the office of announcing to the emperor
Justin the rapid and irretrievable loss of his provinces and cities.
[19] One city, which had been diligently fortified by the Goths,
resisted the arms of a new invader; and while Italy was subdued by the
flying detachments of the Lombards, the royal camp was fixed above three
years before the western gate of Ticinum, or Pavia. The same courage
which obtains the esteem of a civilized enemy provokes the fury of a
savage, and the impatient besieger had bound himself by a tremendous
oath, that age, and sex, and dignity, should be confounded in a general
massacre. The aid of famine at length enabled him to execute his bloody
vow; but, as Alboin entered the gate, his horse stumbled, fell, and
could not be raised from the ground. One of his attendants was prompted
by compassion, or piety, to interpret this miraculous sign of the wrath
of Heaven: the conqueror paused and relented; he sheathed his sword, and
peacefully reposing himself in the palace of Theodoric, proclaimed to
the trembling multitude that they should live and obey. Delighted
with the situation of a city which was endeared to his pride by the
difficulty of the purchase, the prince of the Lombards disdained the
ancient glories of Milan; and Pavia, during some ages, was respected as
the capital of the kingdom of Italy. [20]

[Footnote 18: Which from this translation was called New Aquileia,
(Chron. Venet. p. 3.) The patriarch of Grado soon became the first
citizen of the republic, (p. 9, &c.,) but his seat was not removed to
Venice till the year 1450. He is now decorated with titles and honors;
but the genius of the church has bowed to that of the state, and the
government of a Catholic city is strictly Presbyterian. Thomassin,
Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 156, 157, 161--165. Amelot de la
Houssaye, Gouvernement de Venise, tom. i. p. 256--261.]

[Footnote 19: Paul has given a description of Italy, as it was then
divided into eighteen regions, (l. ii. c. 14--24.) The Dissertatio
Chorographica de Italia Medii Aevi, by Father Beretti, a Benedictine
monk, and regius professor at Pavia, has been usefully consulted.]

[Footnote 20: For the conquest of Italy, see the original materials
of Paul, (l. p. 7--10, 12, 14, 25, 26, 27,) the eloquent narrative of
Sigonius, (tom. il. de Regno Italiae, l. i. p. 13--19,) and the
correct and critical review el Muratori, (Annali d' Italia, tom. v. p.
164--180.)]

The reign of the founder was splendid and transient; and, before he
could regulate his new conquests, Alboin fell a sacrifice to domestic
treason and female revenge. In a palace near Verona, which had not
been erected for the Barbarians, he feasted the companions of his arms;
intoxication was the reward of valor, and the king himself was
tempted by appetite, or vanity, to exceed the ordinary measure of
his intemperance. After draining many capacious bowls of Rhaetian or
Falernian wine, he called for the skull of Cunimund, the noblest and
most precious ornament of his sideboard. The cup of victory was accepted
with horrid applause by the circle of the Lombard chiefs. "Fill it again
with wine," exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, "fill it to the brim: carry
this goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would rejoice
with her father." In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamond had strength
to utter, "Let the will of my lord be obeyed!" and, touching it with her
lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that the insult should be
washed away in the blood of Alboin. Some indulgence might be due to the
resentment of a daughter, if she had not already violated the duties of
a wife. Implacable in her enmity, or inconstant in her love, the queen
of Italy had stooped from the throne to the arms of a subject, and
Helmichis, the king's armor-bearer, was the secret minister of her
pleasure and revenge. Against the proposal of the murder, he could
no longer urge the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis
trembled when he revolved the danger as well as the guilt, when he
recollected the matchless strength and intrepidity of a warrior whom he
had so often attended in the field of battle. He pressed and obtained,
that one of the bravest champions of the Lombards should be associated
to the enterprise; but no more than a promise of secrecy could be
drawn from the gallant Peredeus, and the mode of seduction employed by
Rosamond betrays her shameless insensibility both to honor and love. She
supplied the place of one of her female attendants who was beloved by
Peredeus, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence, till
she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen of the
Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin, must be the
consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this alternative he chose
rather to be the accomplice than the victim of Rosamond, [21] whose
undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or remorse. She expected and
soon found a favorable moment, when the king, oppressed with wine, had
retired from the table to his afternoon slumbers. His faithless spouse
was anxious for his health and repose: the gates of the palace were
shut, the arms removed, the attendants dismissed, and Rosamond, after
lulling him to rest by her tender caresses, unbolted the chamber door,
and urged the reluctant conspirators to the instant execution of the
deed. On the first alarm, the warrior started from his couch: his sword,
which he attempted to draw, had been fastened to the scabbard by the
hand of Rosamond; and a small stool, his only weapon, could not long
protect him from the spears of the assassins. The daughter of Cunimund
smiled in his fall: his body was buried under the staircase of the
palace; and the grateful posterity of the Lombards revered the tomb and
the memory of their victorious leader.

[Footnote 21: The classical reader will recollect the wife and murder of
Candaules, so agreeably told in the first book of Herodotus. The choice
of Gyges, may serve as the excuse of Peredeus; and this soft insinuation
of an odious idea has been imitated by the best writers of antiquity,
(Graevius, ad Ciceron. Orat. pro Miloue c. 10)]





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

The ambitious Rosamond aspired to reign in the name of her lover; the
city and palace of Verona were awed by her power; and a faithful band
of her native Gepidae was prepared to applaud the revenge, and to second
the wishes, of their sovereign. But the Lombard chiefs, who fled in the
first moments of consternation and disorder, had resumed their courage
and collected their powers; and the nation, instead of submitting to her
reign, demanded, with unanimous cries, that justice should be executed
on the guilty spouse and the murderers of their king. She sought a
refuge among the enemies of her country; and a criminal who deserved the
abhorrence of mankind was protected by the selfish policy of the exarch.
With her daughter, the heiress of the Lombard throne, her two lovers,
her trusty Gepidae, and the spoils of the palace of Verona, Rosamond
descended the Adige and the Po, and was transported by a Greek vessel to
the safe harbor of Ravenna. Longinus beheld with delight the charms and
the treasures of the widow of Alboin: her situation and her past conduct
might justify the most licentious proposals; and she readily listened to
the passion of a minister, who, even in the decline of the empire, was
respected as the equal of kings. The death of a jealous lover was an
easy and grateful sacrifice; and, as Helmichis issued from the bath, he
received the deadly potion from the hand of his mistress. The taste of
the liquor, its speedy operation, and his experience of the character of
Rosamond, convinced him that he was poisoned: he pointed his dagger to
her breast, compelled her to drain the remainder of the cup, and expired
in a few minutes, with the consolation that she could not survive to
enjoy the fruits of her wickedness. The daughter of Alboin and
Rosamond, with the richest spoils of the Lombards, was embarked for
Constantinople: the surprising strength of Peredeus amused and terrified
the Imperial court: [2111] his blindness and revenge exhibited an
imperfect copy of the adventures of Samson. By the free suffrage of the
nation, in the assembly of Pavia, Clepho, one of their noblest chiefs,
was elected as the successor of Alboin. Before the end of eighteen
months, the throne was polluted by a second murder: Clepho was stabbed
by the hand of a domestic; the regal office was suspended above ten
years during the minority of his son Autharis; and Italy was divided and
oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty tyrants. [22]

[Footnote 2111: He killed a lion. His eyes were put out by the timid
Justin. Peredeus requesting an interview, Justin substituted two
patricians, whom the blinded Barbarian stabbed to the heart with two
concealed daggers. See Le Beau, vol. x. p. 99.--M.]

[Footnote 22: See the history of Paul, l. ii. c. 28--32. I have borrowed
some interesting circumstances from the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus,
in Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. 124. Of all chronological guides,
Muratori is the safest.]

When the nephew of Justinian ascended the throne, he proclaimed a new
aera of happiness and glory. The annals of the second Justin [23] are
marked with disgrace abroad and misery at home. In the West, the Roman
empire was afflicted by the loss of Italy, the desolation of Africa, and
the conquests of the Persians. Injustice prevailed both in the capital
and the provinces: the rich trembled for their property, the poor for
their safety, the ordinary magistrates were ignorant or venal, the
occasional remedies appear to have been arbitrary and violent, and the
complaints of the people could no longer be silenced by the splendid
names of a legislator and a conqueror. The opinion which imputes to
the prince all the calamities of his times may be countenanced by the
historian as a serious truth or a salutary prejudice. Yet a candid
suspicion will arise, that the sentiments of Justin were pure and
benevolent, and that he might have filled his station without reproach,
if the faculties of his mind had not been impaired by disease, which
deprived the emperor of the use of his feet, and confined him to the
palace, a stranger to the complaints of the people and the vices of the
government. The tardy knowledge of his own impotence determined him
to lay down the weight of the diadem; and, in the choice of a worthy
substitute, he showed some symptoms of a discerning and even magnanimous
spirit. The only son of Justin and Sophia died in his infancy; their
daughter Arabia was the wife of Baduarius, [24] superintendent of the
palace, and afterwards commander of the Italian armies, who vainly
aspired to confirm the rights of marriage by those of adoption. While
the empire appeared an object of desire, Justin was accustomed to behold
with jealousy and hatred his brothers and cousins, the rivals of his
hopes; nor could he depend on the gratitude of those who would accept
the purple as a restitution, rather than a gift. Of these competitors,
one had been removed by exile, and afterwards by death; and the emperor
himself had inflicted such cruel insults on another, that he must either
dread his resentment or despise his patience. This domestic animosity
was refined into a generous resolution of seeking a successor, not
in his family, but in the republic; and the artful Sophia recommended
Tiberius, [25] his faithful captain of the guards, whose virtues and
fortune the emperor might cherish as the fruit of his judicious choice.
The ceremony of his elevation to the rank of Caesar, or Augustus, was
performed in the portico of the palace, in the presence of the patriarch
and the senate. Justin collected the remaining strength of his mind and
body; but the popular belief that his speech was inspired by the Deity
betrays a very humble opinion both of the man and of the times. [26]
"You behold," said the emperor, "the ensigns of supreme power. You are
about to receive them, not from my hand, but from the hand of God. Honor
them, and from them you will derive honor. Respect the empress your
mother: you are now her son; before, you were her servant. Delight not
in blood; abstain from revenge; avoid those actions by which I have
incurred the public hatred; and consult the experience, rather than the
example, of your predecessor. As a man, I have sinned; as a sinner, even
in this life, I have been severely punished: but these servants, (and we
pointed to his ministers,) who have abused my confidence, and inflamed
my passions, will appear with me before the tribunal of Christ. I have
been dazzled by the splendor of the diadem: be thou wise and modest;
remember what you have been, remember what you are. You see around
us your slaves, and your children: with the authority, assume the
tenderness, of a parent. Love your people like yourself; cultivate the
affections, maintain the discipline, of the army; protect the fortunes
of the rich, relieve the necessities of the poor." [27] The assembly, in
silence and in tears, applauded the counsels, and sympathized with the
repentance, of their prince the patriarch rehearsed the prayers of the
church; Tiberius received the diadem on his knees; and Justin, who in
his abdication appeared most worthy to reign, addressed the new monarch
in the following words: "If you consent, I live; if you command, I die:
may the God of heaven and earth infuse into your heart whatever I have
neglected or forgotten." The four last years of the emperor Justin were
passed in tranquil obscurity: his conscience was no longer tormented by
the remembrance of those duties which he was incapable of discharging;
and his choice was justified by the filial reverence and gratitude of
Tiberius.

[Footnote 23: The original authors for the reign of Justin the younger
are Evagrius, Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 1--12; Theophanes, in Chonograph.
p. 204--210; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 70-72; Cedrenus, in Compend.
p. 388--392.]

[Footnote 24: Dispositorque novus sacrae Baduarius aulae. Successor
soceri mox factus Cura-palati.--Cerippus. Baduarius is enumerated among
the descendants and allies of the house of Justinian. A family of noble
Venetians (Casa Badoero) built churches and gave dukes to the republic
as early as the ninth century; and, if their descent be admitted, no
kings in Europe can produce a pedigree so ancient and illustrious.
Ducange, Fam. Byzantin, p. 99 Amelot de la Houssaye, Gouvernement de
Venise, tom. ii. p. 555.]

[Footnote 25: The praise bestowed on princes before their elevation is
the purest and most weighty. Corippus has celebrated Tiberius at the
time of the accession of Justin, (l. i. 212--222.) Yet even a captain of
the guards might attract the flattery of an African exile.]

[Footnote 26: Evagrius (l. v. c. 13) has added the reproach to his
ministers He applies this speech to the ceremony when Tiberius was
invested with the rank of Caesar. The loose expression, rather than
the positive error, of Theophanes, &c., has delayed it to his Augustan
investitura immediately before the death of Justin.]

[Footnote 27: Theophylact Simocatta (l. iii. c. 11) declares that he
shall give to posterity the speech of Justin as it was pronounced,
without attempting to correct the imperfections of language or rhetoric.
Perhaps the vain sophist would have been incapable of producing such
sentiments.]

Among the virtues of Tiberius, [28] his beauty (he was one of the
tallest and most comely of the Romans) might introduce him to the
favor of Sophia; and the widow of Justin was persuaded, that she should
preserve her station and influence under the reign of a second and more
youthful husband. But, if the ambitious candidate had been tempted
to flatter and dissemble, it was no longer in his power to fulfil
her expectations, or his own promise. The factions of the hippodrome
demanded, with some impatience, the name of their new empress: both the
people and Sophia were astonished by the proclamation of Anastasia,
the secret, though lawful, wife of the emperor Tiberius. Whatever could
alleviate the disappointment of Sophia, Imperial honors, a stately
palace, a numerous household, was liberally bestowed by the piety of her
adopted son; on solemn occasions he attended and consulted the widow
of his benefactor; but her ambition disdained the vain semblance of
royalty, and the respectful appellation of mother served to exasperate,
rather than appease, the rage of an injured woman. While she accepted,
and repaid with a courtly smile, the fair expressions of regard and
confidence, a secret alliance was concluded between the dowager empress
and her ancient enemies; and Justinian, the son of Germanus, was
employed as the instrument of her revenge. The pride of the reigning
house supported, with reluctance, the dominion of a stranger: the youth
was deservedly popular; his name, after the death of Justin, had been
mentioned by a tumultuous faction; and his own submissive offer of his
head with a treasure of sixty thousand pounds, might be interpreted as
an evidence of guilt, or at least of fear. Justinian received a free
pardon, and the command of the eastern army. The Persian monarch fled
before his arms; and the acclamations which accompanied his triumph
declared him worthy of the purple. His artful patroness had chosen
the month of the vintage, while the emperor, in a rural solitude, was
permitted to enjoy the pleasures of a subject. On the first intelligence
of her designs, he returned to Constantinople, and the conspiracy was
suppressed by his presence and firmness. From the pomp and honors which
she had abused, Sophia was reduced to a modest allowance: Tiberius
dismissed her train, intercepted her correspondence, and committed to a
faithful guard the custody of her person. But the services of Justinian
were not considered by that excellent prince as an aggravation of
his offences: after a mild reproof, his treason and ingratitude were
forgiven; and it was commonly believed, that the emperor entertained
some thoughts of contracting a double alliance with the rival of his
throne. The voice of an angel (such a fable was propagated) might reveal
to the emperor, that he should always triumph over his domestic
foes; but Tiberius derived a firmer assurance from the innocence and
generosity of his own mind.

[Footnote 28: For the character and reign of Tiberius, see Evagrius,
l v. c. 13. Theophylact, l. iii. c. 12, &c. Theophanes, in Chron. p.
2 0--213. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 72. Cedrenus, p. 392. Paul
Warnefrid, de Gestis Langobard. l. iii. c. 11, 12. The deacon of Forum
Juli appears to have possessed some curious and authentic facts.]

With the odious name of Tiberius, he assumed the more popular
appellation of Constantine, and imitated the purer virtues of the
Antonines. After recording the vice or folly of so many Roman princes,
it is pleasing to repose, for a moment, on a character conspicuous
by the qualities of humanity, justice, temperance, and fortitude; to
contemplate a sovereign affable in his palace, pious in the church,
impartial on the seat of judgment, and victorious, at least by his
generals, in the Persian war. The most glorious trophy of his victory
consisted in a multitude of captives, whom Tiberius entertained,
redeemed, and dismissed to their native homes with the charitable spirit
of a Christian hero. The merit or misfortunes of his own subjects had a
dearer claim to his beneficence, and he measured his bounty not so
much by their expectations as by his own dignity. This maxim, however
dangerous in a trustee of the public wealth, was balanced by a principle
of humanity and justice, which taught him to abhor, as of the basest
alloy, the gold that was extracted from the tears of the people. For
their relief, as often as they had suffered by natural or hostile
calamities, he was impatient to remit the arrears of the past, or the
demands of future taxes: he sternly rejected the servile offerings of
his ministers, which were compensated by tenfold oppression; and the
wise and equitable laws of Tiberius excited the praise and regret
of succeeding times. Constantinople believed that the emperor had
discovered a treasure: but his genuine treasure consisted in the
practice of liberal economy, and the contempt of all vain and
superfluous expense. The Romans of the East would have been happy, if
the best gift of Heaven, a patriot king, had been confirmed as a proper
and permanent blessing. But in less than four years after the death of
Justin, his worthy successor sunk into a mortal disease, which left him
only sufficient time to restore the diadem, according to the tenure
by which he held it, to the most deserving of his fellow-citizens.
He selected Maurice from the crowd, a judgment more precious than the
purple itself: the patriarch and senate were summoned to the bed of
the dying prince: he bestowed his daughter and the empire; and his last
advice was solemnly delivered by the voice of the quaestor. Tiberius
expressed his hope that the virtues of his son and successor would erect
the noblest mausoleum to his memory. His memory was embalmed by the
public affliction; but the most sincere grief evaporates in the tumult
of a new reign, and the eyes and acclamations of mankind were speedily
directed to the rising sun. The emperor Maurice derived his origin from
ancient Rome; [29] but his immediate parents were settled at Arabissus
in Cappadocia, and their singular felicity preserved them alive to
behold and partake the fortune of their august son. The youth of Maurice
was spent in the profession of arms: Tiberius promoted him to the
command of a new and favorite legion of twelve thousand confederates;
his valor and conduct were signalized in the Persian war; and
he returned to Constantinople to accept, as his just reward, the
inheritance of the empire. Maurice ascended the throne at the mature age
of forty-three years; and he reigned above twenty years over the East
and over himself; [30] expelling from his mind the wild democracy
of passions, and establishing (according to the quaint expression of
Evagrius) a perfect aristocracy of reason and virtue. Some suspicion
will degrade the testimony of a subject, though he protests that his
secret praise should never reach the ear of his sovereign, [31] and some
failings seem to place the character of Maurice below the purer merit
of his predecessor. His cold and reserved demeanor might be imputed
to arrogance; his justice was not always exempt from cruelty, nor his
clemency from weakness; and his rigid economy too often exposed him to
the reproach of avarice. But the rational wishes of an absolute monarch
must tend to the happiness of his people. Maurice was endowed with
sense and courage to promote that happiness, and his administration was
directed by the principles and example of Tiberius. The pusillanimity of
the Greeks had introduced so complete a separation between the offices
of king and of general, that a private soldier, who had deserved and
obtained the purple, seldom or never appeared at the head of his armies.
Yet the emperor Maurice enjoyed the glory of restoring the Persian
monarch to his throne; his lieutenants waged a doubtful war against the
Avars of the Danube; and he cast an eye of pity, of ineffectual pity, on
the abject and distressful state of his Italian provinces.

[Footnote 29: It is therefore singular enough that Paul (l. iii. c. 15)
should distinguish him as the first Greek emperor--primus ex Graecorum
genere in Imperio constitutus. His immediate predecessors had in deed
been born in the Latin provinces of Europe: and a various reading, in
Graecorum Imperio, would apply the expression to the empire rather than
the prince.]

[Footnote 30: Consult, for the character and reign of Maurice, the fifth
and sixth books of Evagrius, particularly l. vi. c. l; the eight books
of his prolix and florid history by Theophylact Simocatta; Theophanes,
p. 213, &c.; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 73; Cedrenus, p. 394.]

[Footnote 31: Evagrius composed his history in the twelfth year of
Maurice; and he had been so wisely indiscreet that the emperor know and
rewarded his favorable opinion, (l. vi. c. 24.)]

From Italy the emperors were incessantly tormented by tales of misery
and demands of succor, which extorted the humiliating confession of
their own weakness. The expiring dignity of Rome was only marked by the
freedom and energy of her complaints: "If you are incapable," she said,
"of delivering us from the sword of the Lombards, save us at least from
the calamity of famine." Tiberius forgave the reproach, and relieved the
distress: a supply of corn was transported from Egypt to the Tyber; and
the Roman people, invoking the name, not of Camillus, but of St. Peter
repulsed the Barbarians from their walls. But the relief was accidental,
the danger was perpetual and pressing; and the clergy and senate,
collecting the remains of their ancient opulence, a sum of three
thousand pounds of gold, despatched the patrician Pamphronius to lay
their gifts and their complaints at the foot of the Byzantine throne.
The attention of the court, and the forces of the East, were diverted by
the Persian war: but the justice of Tiberius applied the subsidy to
the defence of the city; and he dismissed the patrician with his best
advice, either to bribe the Lombard chiefs, or to purchase the aid of
the kings of France. Notwithstanding this weak invention, Italy was
still afflicted, Rome was again besieged, and the suburb of Classe, only
three miles from Ravenna, was pillaged and occupied by the troops of a
simple duke of Spoleto. Maurice gave audience to a second deputation
of priests and senators: the duties and the menaces of religion were
forcibly urged in the letters of the Roman pontiff; and his nuncio,
the deacon Gregory, was alike qualified to solicit the powers either of
heaven or of the earth.

The emperor adopted, with stronger effect, the measures of his
predecessor: some formidable chiefs were persuaded to embrace the
friendship of the Romans; and one of them, a mild and faithful
Barbarian, lived and died in the service of the exarchs: the passes of
the Alps were delivered to the Franks; and the pope encouraged them
to violate, without scruple, their oaths and engagements to the
misbelievers. Childebert, the great-grandson of Clovis, was persuaded
to invade Italy by the payment of fifty thousand pieces; but, as he had
viewed with delight some Byzantine coin of the weight of one pound of
gold, the king of Austrasia might stipulate, that the gift should be
rendered more worthy of his acceptance, by a proper mixture of these
respectable medals. The dukes of the Lombards had provoked by frequent
inroads their powerful neighbors of Gaul. As soon as they were
apprehensive of a just retaliation, they renounced their feeble and
disorderly independence: the advantages of real government, union,
secrecy, and vigor, were unanimously confessed; and Autharis, the son of
Clepho, had already attained the strength and reputation of a warrior.
Under the standard of their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood
three successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself,
the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The first
expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the Franks and
Alemanni. In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with
more loss and dishonor than they had sustained since the foundation of
their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with
accumulated force, and Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent.
The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled
towns between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of
danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly of
their twenty commanders; and the hot vapors of an Italian sun infected
with disease those tramontane bodies which had already suffered the
vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers that were inadequate
to the conquest, were more than sufficient for the desolation, of the
country; nor could the trembling natives distinguish between their
enemies and their deliverers. If the junction of the Merovingian and
Imperial forces had been effected in the neighborhood of Milan, perhaps
they might have subverted the throne of the Lombards; but the Franks
expected six days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the
Greeks were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which
were torn from them after the retreat of their transalpine allies. The
victorious Autharis asserted his claim to the dominion of Italy. At the
foot of the Rhaetian Alps, he subdued the resistance, and rifled the
hidden treasures, of a sequestered island in the Lake of Comum. At the
extreme point of the Calabria, he touched with his spear a column on the
sea-shore of Rhegium, [32] proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand
the immovable boundary of his kingdom. [33]

[Footnote 32: The Columna Rhegina, in the narrowest part of the Faro of
Messina, one hundred stadia from Rhegium itself, is frequently mentioned
in ancient geography. Cluver. Ital. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 1295. Lucas
Holsten. Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 301. Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 106.]

[Footnote 33: The Greek historians afford some faint hints of the wars
of Italy (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 124, 126. Theophylact, l. iii.
c. 4.) The Latins are more satisfactory; and especially Paul Warnefrid,
(l iii. c. 13--34,) who had read the more ancient histories of Secundus
and Gregory of Tours. Baronius produces some letters of the popes, &c.;
and the times are measured by the accurate scale of Pagi and Muratori.]

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided
between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna.
The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine had
separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and eighteen
successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the empire, with the
full remains of civil, of military, and even of ecclesiastical, power.
Their immediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards consecrated as the
patrimony of St. Peter, extended over the modern Romagna, the marshes or
valleys of Ferrara and Commachio, [34] five maritime cities from Rimini
to Ancona, and a second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast
and the hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome,
of Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from the
palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy
of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan,
Sabine, and Latin conquests, of the first four hundred years of the
city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast, from
Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and with the course of the Tyber from
Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia. The numerous islands from
Grado to Chiozza composed the infant dominion of Venice: but the more
accessible towns on the Continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who
beheld with impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power
of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent
isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony
of Amalphi, [35] whose industrious citizens, by the invention of the
mariner's compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The three
islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to the empire;
and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed the landmark of
Autharis from the shore of Rhegium to the Isthmus of Consentia. In
Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the liberty and religion of
their ancestors; and the husbandmen of Sicily were chained to their
rich and cultivated soil. Rome was oppressed by the iron sceptre of the
exarchs, and a Greek, perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins
of the Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her
own dukes: [36] the independence of Amalphi was the fruit of commerce;
and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally ennobled by an equal
alliance with the Eastern empire. On the map of Italy, the measure of
the exarchate occupies a very inadequate space, but it included an ample
proportion of wealth, industry, and population. The most faithful and
valuable subjects escaped from the Barbarian yoke; and the banners of
Pavia and Verona, of Milan and Padua, were displayed in their respective
quarters by the new inhabitants of Ravenna. The remainder of Italy was
possessed by the Lombards; and from Pavia, the royal seat, their
kingdom was extended to the east, the north, and the west, as far as the
confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and
Burgundy. In the language of modern geography, it is now represented by
the Terra Firma of the Venetian republic, Tyrol, the Milanese, Piedmont,
the coast of Genoa, Mantua, Parma, and Modena, the grand duchy of
Tuscany, and a large portion of the ecclesiastical state from Perugia
to the Adriatic. The dukes, and at length the princes, of Beneventum,
survived the monarchy, and propagated the name of the Lombards. From
Capua to Tarentum, they reigned near five hundred years over the
greatest part of the present kingdom of Naples. [37]

[Footnote 34: The papal advocates, Zacagni and Fontanini, might justly
claim the valley or morass of Commachio as a part of the exarchate.
But the ambition of including Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Placentia,
has darkened a geographical question somewhat doubtful and obscure
Even Muratori, as the servant of the house of Este, is not free from
partiality and prejudice.]

[Footnote 35: See Brenckman, Dissert. Ima de Republica Amalphitana, p.
1--42, ad calcem Hist. Pandect. Florent.]

[Footnote 36: Gregor. Magn. l. iii. epist. 23, 25.]

[Footnote 37: I have described the state of Italy from the excellent
Dissertation of Beretti. Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. i. p. 374--387)
has followed the learned Camillo Pellegrini in the geography of the
kingdom of Naples. After the loss of the true Calabria, the vanity of
the Greeks substituted that name instead of the more ignoble appellation
of Bruttium; and the change appears to have taken place before the time
of Charlemagne, (Eginard, p. 75.)]

In comparing the proportion of the victorious and the vanquished
people, the change of language will afford the most probably inference.
According to this standard, it will appear, that the Lombards of Italy,
and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous than the Franks or
Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must yield, in their turn, to
the multitude of Saxons and Angles who almost eradicated the idioms of
Britain. The modern Italian has been insensibly formed by the mixture
of nations: the awkwardness of the Barbarians in the nice management
of declensions and conjugations reduced them to the use of articles
and auxiliary verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic
appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar words
is found to be of Latin derivation; [38] and, if we were sufficiently
conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects
of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might,
perhaps, be rejected by the classic purity of Rome. A numerous army
constitutes but a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were
soon diminished by the retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned
a dependent situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous
adventures, to their native country. [39] The camp of Alboin was
of formidable extent, but the extent of a camp would be easily
circumscribed within the limits of a city; and its martial in habitants
must be thinly scattered over the face of a large country. When Alboin
descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke of
Friuli, with the command of the province and the people: but the prudent
Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office, unless he had been
permitted to choose, among the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient
number of families [40] to form a perpetual colony of soldiers and
subjects. In the progress of conquest, the same option could not be
granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo, or Pavia or Turin, of
Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of these, and each of their colleagues,
settled in his appointed district with a band of followers who resorted
to his standard in war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was
free and honorable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had
accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the jurisdiction
of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom was punished with
death, as a crime of military desertion. [41] The posterity of the first
conquerors struck a deeper root into the soil, which, by every motive
of interest and honor, they were bound to defend. A Lombard was born the
soldier of his king and his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation
displayed the banners, and assumed the appellation, of a regular army.
Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered
provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till after the
death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine.
Many of the most wealthy Italians were slain or banished; the remainder
were divided among the strangers, and a tributary obligation was imposed
(under the name of hospitality) of paying to the Lombards a third
part of the fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this
artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure. [42]
Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong and insolent guest,
or the annual payment, a third of the produce, was exchanged by a more
equitable transaction for an adequate proportion of landed property.
Under these foreign masters, the business of agriculture, in the
cultivation of corn, wines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate
skill and industry by the labor of the slaves and natives. But the
occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness of the
Barbarian. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored and improved
the breed of horses, for which that province had once been illustrious;
[43] and the Italians beheld with astonishment a foreign race of oxen
or buffaloes. [44] The depopulation of Lombardy, and the increase of
forests, afforded an ample range for the pleasures of the chase. [45]
That marvellous art which teaches the birds of the air to acknowledge
the voice, and execute the commands, of their master, had been unknown
to the ingenuity of the Greeks and Romans. [46] Scandinavia and Scythia
produce the boldest and most tractable falcons: [47] they were tamed
and educated by the roving inhabitants, always on horseback and in the
field. This favorite amusement of our ancestors was introduced by the
Barbarians into the Roman provinces; and the laws of Italy esteemed the
sword and the hawk as of equal dignity and importance in the hands of a
noble Lombard. [48]

[Footnote 38: Maffei (Verona Illustrata, part i. p. 310--321) and
Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. ii. Dissertazione xxxii. xxxiii.
p. 71--365) have asserted the native claims of the Italian idiom; the
former with enthusiasm, the latter with discretion; both with learning,
ingenuity, and truth. Note: Compare the admirable sketch of the
degeneracy of the Latin language and the formation of the Italian in
Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 317 329.--M.]

[Footnote 39: Paul, de Gest. Langobard. l. iii. c. 5, 6, 7.]

[Footnote 40: Paul, l. ii. c. 9. He calls these families or generations
by the Teutonic name of Faras, which is likewise used in the Lombard
laws. The humble deacon was not insensible of the nobility of his own
race. See l. iv. c. 39.]

[Footnote 41: Compare No. 3 and 177 of the Laws of Rotharis.]

[Footnote 42: Paul, l. ii. c. 31, 32, l. iii. c. 16. The Laws of
Rotharis, promulgated A.D. 643, do not contain the smallest vestige of
this payment of thirds; but they preserve many curious circumstances of
the state of Italy and the manners of the Lombards.]

[Footnote 43: The studs of Dionysius of Syracuse, and his frequent
victories in the Olympic games, had diffused among the Greeks the fame
of the Venetian horses; but the breed was extinct in the time of Strabo,
(l. v. p. 325.) Gisulf obtained from his uncle generosarum equarum
greges. Paul, l. ii. c. 9. The Lombards afterwards introduced caballi
sylvatici--wild horses. Paul, l. iv. c. 11.]

[Footnote 44: Tunc (A.D. 596) primum, bubali in Italiam delati Italiae
populis miracula fuere, (Paul Warnefrid, l. iv. c. 11.) The buffaloes,
whose native climate appears to be Africa and India, are unknown
to Europe, except in Italy, where they are numerous and useful. The
ancients were ignorant of these animals, unless Aristotle (Hist. Anim.
l. ii. c. 1, p. 58, Paris, 1783) has described them as the wild oxen of
Arachosia. See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. and Supplement, tom.
vi. Hist. Generale des Voyages, tom. i. p. 7, 481, ii. 105, iii. 291,
iv. 234, 461, v. 193, vi. 491, viii. 400, x. 666. Pennant's Quadrupedes,
p. 24. Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, tom.
ii. p. 74. Yet I must not conceal the suspicion that Paul, by a vulgar
error, may have applied the name of bubalus to the aurochs, or wild
bull, of ancient Germany.]

[Footnote 45: Consult the xxist Dissertation of Muratori.]

[Footnote 46: Their ignorance is proved by the silence even of those
who professedly treat of the arts of hunting and the history of animals.
Aristotle, (Hist. Animal. l. ix. c. 36, tom. i. p. 586, and the Notes of
his last editor, M. Camus, tom. ii. p. 314,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. l.
x. c. 10,) Aelian (de Natur. Animal. l. ii. c. 42,) and perhaps Homer,
(Odyss. xxii. 302-306,) describe with astonishment a tacit league and
common chase between the hawks and the Thracian fowlers.]

[Footnote 47: Particularly the gerfaut, or gyrfalcon, of the size of
a small eagle. See the animated description of M. de Buffon, Hist.
Naturelle, tom. xvi. p. 239, &c.]

[Footnote 48: Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii. p. 129. This is
the xvith law of the emperor Lewis the Pious. His father Charlemagne had
falconers in his household as well as huntsmen, (Memoires sur l'ancienne
Chevalerie, par M. de St. Palaye, tom. iii. p. 175.) I observe in the
laws of Rotharis a more early mention of the art of hawking, (No.
322;) and in Gaul, in the fifth century, it is celebrated by Sidonius
Apollinaris among the talents of Avitus, (202--207.) * Note: See
Beckman, Hist. of Inventions, vol. i. p. 319--M.]






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

So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the Lombards of
the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and affright the portraits
of their savage forefathers. [49] Their heads were shaven behind,
but the shaggy locks hung over their eyes and mouth, and a long beard
represented the name and character of the nation. Their dress consisted
of loose linen garments, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons, which
were decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes or variegated
colors. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open sandals;
and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was constantly girt to
their side. Yet this strange apparel, and horrid aspect, often concealed
a gentle and generous disposition; and as soon as the rage of battle
had subsided, the captives and subjects were sometimes surprised by the
humanity of the victor. The vices of the Lombards were the effect of
passion, of ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the more
laudable, as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners,
nor imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. I should not
be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in my power
to delineate the private life of the conquerors of Italy; and I shall
relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry of Autharis, which
breathes the true spirit of chivalry and romance. [50] After the loss
of his promised bride, a Merovingian princess, he sought in marriage the
daughter of the king of Bavaria; and Garribald accepted the alliance of
the Italian monarch. Impatient of the slow progress of negotiation, the
ardent lover escaped from his palace, and visited the court of Bavaria
in the train of his own embassy. At the public audience, the unknown
stranger advanced to the throne, and informed Garribald that the
ambassador was indeed the minister of state, but that he alone was the
friend of Autharis, who had trusted him with the delicate commission of
making a faithful report of the charms of his spouse. Theudelinda was
summoned to undergo this important examination; and, after a pause
of silent rapture, he hailed her as the queen of Italy, and humbly
requested that, according to the custom of the nation, she would present
a cup of wine to the first of her new subjects. By the command of
her father she obeyed: Autharis received the cup in his turn, and, in
restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and drew his
own finger over his face and lips. In the evening, Theudelinda imparted
to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of the stranger, and was
comforted by the assurance, that such boldness could proceed only from
the king her husband, who, by his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of
her love. The ambassadors were dismissed: no sooner did they reach the
confines of Italy than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted
his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity.
"Such," said he to the astonished Bavarians, "such are the strokes of
the king of the Lombards." On the approach of a French army, Garribald
and his daughter took refuge in the dominions of their ally; and the
marriage was consummated in the palace of Verona. At the end of one
year, it was dissolved by the death of Autharis: but the virtues of
Theudelinda [51] had endeared her to the nation, and she was permitted
to bestow, with her hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.

[Footnote 49: The epitaph of Droctulf (Paul, l. iii. c. 19) may be
applied to many of his countrymen:-- Terribilis visu facies, sed corda
benignus Longaque robusto pectore barba fuit. The portraits of the old
Lombards might still be seen in the palace of Monza, twelve miles from
Milan, which had been founded or restored by Queen Theudelinda, (l. iv.
22, 23.) See Muratori, tom. i. disserta, xxiii. p. 300.]

[Footnote 50: The story of Autharis and Theudelinda is related by Paul,
l. iii. 29, 34; and any fragment of Bavarian antiquity excites the
indefatigable diligence of the count de Buat, Hist. des Peuples de
l'Europe, ton. xi. p. 595--635, tom. xii. p. 1-53.]

[Footnote 51: Giannone (Istoria Civile de Napoli, tom. i. p. 263) has
justly censured the impertinence of Boccaccio, (Gio. iii. Novel. 2,)
who, without right, or truth, or pretence, has given the pious queen
Theudelinda to the arms of a muleteer.]

From this fact, as well as from similar events, [52] it is certain that
the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and sense to
decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege. The public revenue
arose from the produce of land and the profits of justice. When the
independent dukes agreed that Autharis should ascend the throne of
his father, they endowed the regal office with a fair moiety of their
respective domains. The proudest nobles aspired to the honors of
servitude near the person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity of
his vassals by the precarious gift of pensions and benefices; and
atoned for the injuries of war by the rich foundation of monasteries and
churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the
powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy convened the
national assemblies in the palace, or more probably in the fields, of
Pavia: his great council was composed of the persons most eminent by
their birth and dignities; but the validity, as well as the execution,
of their decrees depended on the approbation of the faithful people, the
fortunate army of the Lombards. About fourscore years after the conquest
of Italy, their traditional customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin,
[53] and ratified by the consent of the prince and people: some new
regulations were introduced, more suitable to their present condition;
the example of Rotharis was imitated by the wisest of his successors;
and the laws of the Lombards have been esteemed the least imperfect of
the Barbaric codes. [54] Secure by their courage in the possession of
liberty, these rude and hasty legislators were incapable of balancing
the powers of the constitution, or of discussing the nice theory
of political government. Such crimes as threatened the life of the
sovereign, or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of death;
but their attention was principally confined to the defence of
the person and property of the subject. According to the strange
jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed by a
fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold declares a
just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less atrocious injuries,
a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word, were measured with
scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the prudence of the
legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honor and
revenge for a pecuniary compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in
the state of Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice
and mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century
might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rotharis, who
derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims
of popular or judicial cruelty. [55] The same spirit of a legislator,
superior to his age and country, may be ascribed to Luitprand, who
condemns, while he tolerates, the impious and inveterate abuse of duels,
[56] observing, from his own experience, that the juster cause had often
been oppressed by successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered
in the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason
of the Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in
their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is marked
with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their annals is adorned
with fair intervals of peace, order, and domestic happiness; and the
Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government, than any of
the other kingdoms which had been founded on the ruins of the Western
empire. [57]

[Footnote 52: Paul, l. iii. c. 16. The first dissertations of Muratori,
and the first volume of Giannone's history, may be consulted for the
state of the kingdom of Italy.]

[Footnote 53: The most accurate edition of the Laws of the Lombards
is to be found in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii.
p. 1--181, collated from the most ancient Mss. and illustrated by the
critical notes of Muratori.]

[Footnote 54: Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 1. Les loix
des Bourguignons sont assez judicieuses; celles de Rotharis et des
autres princes Lombards le sont encore plus.]

[Footnote 55: See Leges Rotharis, No. 379, p. 47. Striga is used as the
name of a witch. It is of the purest classic origin, (Horat. epod. v.
20. Petron. c. 134;) and from the words of Petronius, (quae striges
comederunt nervos tuos?) it may be inferred that the prejudice was of
Italian rather than Barbaric extraction.]

[Footnote 56: Quia incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et multos audivimus per
pugnam sine justa causa suam causam perdere. Sed propter consuetudinom
gentem nostram Langobardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus. See p.
74, No. 65, of the Laws of Luitprand, promulgated A.D. 724.]

[Footnote 57: Read the history of Paul Warnefrid; particularly l. iii.
c. 16. Baronius rejects the praise, which appears to contradict the
invectives of Pope Gregory the Great; but Muratori (Annali d' Italia,
tom. v. p. 217) presumes to insinuate that the saint may have magnified
the faults of Arians and enemies.]

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks,
we again inquire into the fate of Rome, [58] which had reached, about
the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression.
By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the
provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted:
the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed,
was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left
to wither on the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of
victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the hostile
approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually feared. The
inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit without an
anxious thought the garden of the adjacent country, will faintly picture
in their fancy the distress of the Romans: they shut or opened their
gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the flames of their
houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled
together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea
and the mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the pleasures
and interrupt the labors of a rural life; and the Campagna of Rome was
speedily reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land
is barren, the waters are impure, and the air is infectious. Curiosity
and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of the
world: but, if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering
stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the
city, and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are
the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tyber swelled above its
banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the
seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the
deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that fourscore persons expired
in an hour in the midst of a solemn procession, which implored the mercy
of Heaven. [59] A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry
prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war:
but, as the far greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless
indigence and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and
the gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human
race. [60] Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of
subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of
Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the
inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome
were exposed to the same ruin and decay: the mouldering fabrics were
easily overthrown by inundations, tempests, and earthquakes: and the
monks, who had occupied the most advantageous stations, exulted in their
base triumph over the ruins of antiquity. [61] It is commonly believed,
that Pope Gregory the First attacked the temples and mutilated the
statues of the city; that, by the command of the Barbarian, the Palatine
library was reduced to ashes, and that the history of Livy was the
peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous fanaticism. The writings
of Gregory himself reveal his implacable aversion to the monuments of
classic genius; and he points his severest censure against the profane
learning of a bishop, who taught the art of grammar, studied the Latin
poets, and pronounced with the same voice the praises of Jupiter and
those of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful
and recent: the Temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus, have been
demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal proscription
would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy in the countries
which were not subject to the ecclesiastical dictator. [62]

[Footnote 58: The passages of the homilies of Gregory, which represent
the miserable state of the city and country, are transcribed in the
Annals of Baronius, A.D. 590, No. 16, A.D. 595, No. 2, &c., &c.]

[Footnote 59: The inundation and plague were reported by a deacon, whom
his bishop, Gregory of Tours, had despatched to Rome for some relics
The ingenious messenger embellished his tale and the river with a great
dragon and a train of little serpents, (Greg. Turon. l. x. c. 1.)]

[Footnote 60: Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15) relates a memorable
prediction of St. Benedict. Roma a Gentilibus non exterminabitur sed
tempestatibus, coruscis turbinibus ac terrae motu in semetipsa marces
cet. Such a prophecy melts into true history, and becomes the evidence
of the fact after which it was invented.]

[Footnote 61: Quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus, Christi laudes non
capiunt, et quam grave nefandumque sit episcopis canere quod nec laico
religioso conveniat, ipse considera, (l. ix. ep. 4.) The writings of
Gregory himself attest his innocence of any classic taste or literature]

[Footnote 62: Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, tom. ii. 598, 569,) in
a very good article of Gregoire I., has quoted, for the buildings and
statues, Platina in Gregorio I.; for the Palatine library, John of
Salisbury, (de Nugis Curialium, l. ii. c. 26;) and for Livy, Antoninus
of Florence: the oldest of the three lived in the xiith century.]

Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the names of Rome might have been
erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital
principle, which again restored her to honor and dominion. A vague
tradition was embraced, that two Jewish teachers, a tent-maker and a
fisherman, had formerly been executed in the circus of Nero, and at
the end of five hundred years, their genuine or fictitious relics were
adored as the Palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and
West resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles
were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not without
fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship.
It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the
saints; and those who, from the purest motives, presumed to disturb the
repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted by visions, or punished with
sudden death. The unreasonable request of an empress, who wished to
deprive the Romans of their sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul,
was rejected with the deepest abhorrence; and the pope asserted, most
probably with truth, that a linen which had been sanctified in the
neighborhood of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was
sometimes easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an equal
degree of miraculous virtue. [63] But the power as well as virtue of the
apostles resided with living energy in the breast of their successors;
and the chair of St. Peter was filled under the reign of Maurice by the
first and greatest of the name of Gregory. [64] His grandfather Felix
had himself been pope, and as the bishops were already bound by the laws
of celibacy, his consecration must have been preceded by the death of
his wife. The parents of Gregory, Sylvia, and Gordian, were the noblest
of the senate, and the most pious of the church of Rome; his female
relations were numbered among the saints and virgins; and his own
figure, with those of his father and mother, were represented near
three hundred years in a family portrait, [65] which he offered to the
monastery of St. Andrew. The design and coloring of this picture afford
an honorable testimony that the art of painting was cultivated by
the Italians of the sixth century; but the most abject ideas must be
entertained of their taste and learning, since the epistles of Gregory,
his sermons, and his dialogues, are the work of a man who was second in
erudition to none of his contemporaries: [66] his birth and abilities
had raised him to the office of praefect of the city, and he enjoyed
the merit of renouncing the pomps and vanities of this world. His ample
patrimony was dedicated to the foundation of seven monasteries, [67] one
in Rome, [68] and six in Sicily; and it was the wish of Gregory that he
might be unknown in this life, and glorious only in the next. Yet his
devotion (and it might be sincere) pursued the path which would have
been chosen by a crafty and ambitious statesman. The talents of Gregory,
and the splendor which accompanied his retreat, rendered him dear and
useful to the church; and implicit obedience has always been inculcated
as the first duty of a monk. As soon as he had received the character of
deacon, Gregory was sent to reside at the Byzantine court, the nuncio or
minister of the apostolic see; and he boldly assumed, in the name of St.
Peter, a tone of independent dignity, which would have been criminal and
dangerous in the most illustrious layman of the empire. He returned to
Rome with a just increase of reputation, and, after a short exercise
of the monastic virtues, he was dragged from the cloister to the papal
throne, by the unanimous voice of the clergy, the senate, and the
people. He alone resisted, or seemed to resist, his own elevation; and
his humble petition, that Maurice would be pleased to reject the choice
of the Romans, could only serve to exalt his character in the eyes
of the emperor and the public. When the fatal mandate was proclaimed,
Gregory solicited the aid of some friendly merchants to convey him in
a basket beyond the gates of Rome, and modestly concealed himself some
days among the woods and mountains, till his retreat was discovered, as
it is said, by a celestial light. [Footnote 63: Gregor. l. iii. epist.
24, edict. 12, &c. From the epistles of Gregory, and the viiith volume
of the Annals of Baronius, the pious reader may collect the particles
of holy iron which were inserted in keys or crosses of gold, and
distributed in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Constantinople, and Egypt.
The pontifical smith who handled the file must have understood the
miracles which it was in his own power to operate or withhold; a
circumstance which abates the superstition of Gregory at the expense of
his veracity.]

[Footnote 64: Besides the epistles of Gregory himself, which are
methodized by Dupin, (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. v. p. 103--126,) we have
three lives of the pope; the two first written in the viiith and ixth
centuries, (de Triplici Vita St. Greg. Preface to the ivth volume of
the Benedictine edition,) by the deacons Paul (p. 1--18) and John, (p.
19--188,) and containing much original, though doubtful, evidence; the
third, a long and labored compilation by the Benedictine editors, (p.
199--305.) The annals of Baronius are a copious but partial history.
His papal prejudices are tempered by the good sense of Fleury, (Hist.
Eccles. tom. viii.,) and his chronology has been rectified by the
criticism of Pagi and Muratori.]

[Footnote 65: John the deacon has described them like an eye-witness,
(l. iv. c. 83, 84;) and his description is illustrated by Angelo Rocca,
a Roman antiquary, (St. Greg. Opera, tom. iv. p. 312--326;) who observes
that some mosaics of the popes of the viith century are still preserved
in the old churches of Rome, (p. 321--323) The same walls which
represented Gregory's family are now decorated with the martyrdom of St.
Andrew, the noble contest of Dominichino and Guido.]

[Footnote 66: Disciplinis vero liberalibus, hoc est grammatica,
rhetorica, dialectica ita apuero est institutus, ut quamvis eo tempore
florerent adhuc Romae studia literarum, tamen nulli in urbe ipsa
secundus putaretur. Paul. Diacon. in Vit. St. Gregor. c. 2.]

[Footnote 67: The Benedictines (Vit. Greg. l. i. p. 205--208) labor to
reduce the monasteries of Gregory within the rule of their own order;
but, as the question is confessed to be doubtful, it is clear that these
powerful monks are in the wrong. See Butler's Lives of the Saints,
vol. iii. p. 145; a work of merit: the sense and learning belong to the
author--his prejudices are those of his profession.]

[Footnote 68: Monasterium Gregorianum in ejusdem Beati Gregorii aedibus
ad clivum Scauri prope ecclesiam SS. Johannis et Pauli in honorem St.
Andreae, (John, in Vit. Greg. l. i. c. 6. Greg. l. vii. epist. 13.) This
house and monastery were situate on the side of the Caelian hill
which fronts the Palatine; they are now occupied by the Camaldoli: San
Gregorio triumphs, and St. Andrew has retired to a small chapel Nardini,
Roma Antica, l. iii. c. 6, p. 100. Descrizzione di Roma, tom. i. p.
442--446.]

The pontificate of Gregory the Great, which lasted thirteen years, six
months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying periods of the history
of the church. His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mixture
of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and
superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the temper of
the times. In his rival, the patriarch of Constantinople, he condemned
the anti-Christian title of universal bishop, which the successor of
St. Peter was too haughty to concede, and too feeble to assume; and
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Gregory was confined to the triple
character of Bishop of Rome, Primate of Italy, and Apostle of the West.
He frequently ascended the pulpit, and kindled, by his rude, though
pathetic, eloquence, the congenial passions of his audience: the
language of the Jewish prophets was interpreted and applied; and the
minds of a people, depressed by their present calamities, were directed
to the hopes and fears of the invisible world. His precepts and example
defined the model of the Roman liturgy; [69] the distribution of the
parishes, the calendar of the festivals, the order of processions, the
service of the priests and deacons, the variety and change of sacerdotal
garments. Till the last days of his life, he officiated in the canon of
the mass, which continued above three hours: the Gregorian chant [70]
has preserved the vocal and instrumental music of the theatre, and the
rough voices of the Barbarians attempted to imitate the melody of the
Roman school. [71] Experience had shown him the efficacy of these solemn
and pompous rites, to soothe the distress, to confirm the faith, to
mitigate the fierceness, and to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the
vulgar, and he readily forgave their tendency to promote the reign
of priesthood and superstition. The bishops of Italy and the adjacent
islands acknowledged the Roman pontiff as their special metropolitan.
Even the existence, the union, or the translation of episcopal seats was
decided by his absolute discretion: and his successful inroads into the
provinces of Greece, of Spain, and of Gaul, might countenance the more
lofty pretensions of succeeding popes. He interposed to prevent the
abuses of popular elections; his jealous care maintained the purity of
faith and discipline; and the apostolic shepherd assiduously watched
over the faith and discipline of the subordinate pastors. Under his
reign, the Arians of Italy and Spain were reconciled to the Catholic
church, and the conquest of Britain reflects less glory on the name of
Caesar, than on that of Gregory the First. Instead of six legions, forty
monks were embarked for that distant island, and the pontiff lamented
the austere duties which forbade him to partake the perils of their
spiritual warfare. In less than two years, he could announce to the
archbishop of Alexandria, that they had baptized the king of Kent with
ten thousand of his Anglo-Saxons, and that the Roman missionaries,
like those of the primitive church, were armed only with spiritual and
supernatural powers. The credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always
disposed to confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of ghosts,
miracles, and resurrections; [72] and posterity has paid to his memory
the same tribute which he freely granted to the virtue of his own or the
preceding generation. The celestial honors have been liberally bestowed
by the authority of the popes, but Gregory is the last of their own
order whom they have presumed to inscribe in the calendar of saints.

[Footnote 69: The Lord's Prayer consists of half a dozen lines; the
Sacramentarius and Antiphonarius of Gregory fill 880 folio pages, (tom.
iii. p. i. p. 1--880;) yet these only constitute a part of the Ordo
Romanus, which Mabillon has illustrated and Fleury has abridged, (Hist.
Eccles. tom. viii. p. 139--152.)]

[Footnote 70: I learn from the Abbe Dobos, (Reflexions sur la Poesie
et la Peinture, tom. iii. p. 174, 175,) that the simplicity of the
Ambrosian chant was confined to four modes, while the more perfect
harmony of the Gregorian comprised the eight modes or fifteen chords of
the ancient music. He observes (p. 332) that the connoisseurs admire the
preface and many passages of the Gregorian office.]

[Footnote 71: John the deacon (in Vit. Greg. l. ii. c. 7) expresses the
early contempt of the Italians for tramontane singing. Alpina scilicet
corpora vocum suarum tonitruis altisone perstrepentia, susceptae
modulationis dulcedinem proprie non resultant: quia bibuli gutturis
barbara feritas dum inflexionibus et repercussionibus mitem nititur
edere cantilenam, naturali quodam fragore, quasi plaustra per gradus
confuse sonantia, rigidas voces jactat, &c. In the time of Charlemagne,
the Franks, though with some reluctance, admitted the justice of the
reproach. Muratori, Dissert. xxv.]

[Footnote 72: A French critic (Petrus Gussanvillus, Opera, tom. ii. p.
105--112) has vindicated the right of Gregory to the entire nonsense of
the Dialogues. Dupin (tom. v. p. 138) does not think that any one will
vouch for the truth of all these miracles: I should like to know how
many of them he believed himself.]

Their temporal power insensibly arose from the calamities of the times:
and the Roman bishops, who have deluged Europe and Asia with blood, were
compelled to reign as the ministers of charity and peace. I. The church
of Rome, as it has been formerly observed, was endowed with ample
possessions in Italy, Sicily, and the more distant provinces; and her
agents, who were commonly sub-deacons, had acquired a civil, and even
criminal, jurisdiction over their tenants and husbandmen. The successor
of St. Peter administered his patrimony with the temper of a vigilant
and moderate landlord; [73] and the epistles of Gregory are filled with
salutary instructions to abstain from doubtful or vexatious lawsuits;
to preserve the integrity of weights and measures; to grant every
reasonable delay; and to reduce the capitation of the slaves of
the glebe, who purchased the right of marriage by the payment of an
arbitrary fine. [74] The rent or the produce of these estates was
transported to the mouth of the Tyber, at the risk and expense of the
pope: in the use of wealth he acted like a faithful steward of
the church and the poor, and liberally applied to their wants the
inexhaustible resources of abstinence and order. The voluminous account
of his receipts and disbursements was kept above three hundred years
in the Lateran, as the model of Christian economy. On the four great
festivals, he divided their quarterly allowance to the clergy, to his
domestics, to the monasteries, the churches, the places of burial, the
almshouses, and the hospitals of Rome, and the rest of the diocese. On
the first day of every month, he distributed to the poor, according to
the season, their stated portion of corn, wine, cheese, vegetables,
oil, fish, fresh provisions, clothes, and money; and his treasurers were
continually summoned to satisfy, in his name, the extraordinary demands
of indigence and merit. The instant distress of the sick and helpless,
of strangers and pilgrims, was relieved by the bounty of each day, and
of every hour; nor would the pontiff indulge himself in a frugal repast,
till he had sent the dishes from his own table to some objects deserving
of his compassion. The misery of the times had reduced the nobles and
matrons of Rome to accept, without a blush, the benevolence of the
church: three thousand virgins received their food and raiment from the
hand of their benefactor; and many bishops of Italy escaped from the
Barbarians to the hospitable threshold of the Vatican. Gregory might
justly be styled the Father of his Country; and such was the extreme
sensibility of his conscience, that, for the death of a beggar who had
perished in the streets, he interdicted himself during several days
from the exercise of sacerdotal functions. II. The misfortunes of Rome
involved the apostolical pastor in the business of peace and war; and it
might be doubtful to himself, whether piety or ambition prompted him to
supply the place of his absent sovereign. Gregory awakened the emperor
from a long slumber; exposed the guilt or incapacity of the exarch and
his inferior ministers; complained that the veterans were withdrawn from
Rome for the defence of Spoleto; encouraged the Italians to guard their
cities and altars; and condescended, in the crisis of danger, to name
the tribunes, and to direct the operations, of the provincial troops.
But the martial spirit of the pope was checked by the scruples of
humanity and religion: the imposition of tribute, though it was employed
in the Italian war, he freely condemned as odious and oppressive; whilst
he protected, against the Imperial edicts, the pious cowardice of the
soldiers who deserted a military for a monastic life If we may credit
his own declarations, it would have been easy for Gregory to exterminate
the Lombards by their domestic factions, without leaving a king, a duke,
or a count, to save that unfortunate nation from the vengeance of their
foes As a Christian bishop, he preferred the salutary offices of peace;
his mediation appeased the tumult of arms: but he was too conscious of
the arts of the Greeks, and the passions of the Lombards, to engage his
sacred promise for the observance of the truce. Disappointed in the hope
of a general and lasting treaty, he presumed to save his country without
the consent of the emperor or the exarch. The sword of the enemy was
suspended over Rome; it was averted by the mild eloquence and seasonable
gifts of the pontiff, who commanded the respect of heretics and
Barbarians. The merits of Gregory were treated by the Byzantine court
with reproach and insult; but in the attachment of a grateful people, he
found the purest reward of a citizen, and the best right of a sovereign.
[75]

[Footnote 73: Baronius is unwilling to expatiate on the care of the
patrimonies, lest he should betray that they consisted not of kingdoms,
but farms. The French writers, the Benedictine editors, (tom. iv. l.
iii. p. 272, &c.,) and Fleury, (tom. viii. p. 29, &c.,) are not afraid
of entering into these humble, though useful, details; and the humanity
of Fleury dwells on the social virtues of Gregory.]

[Footnote 74: I much suspect that this pecuniary fine on the marriages
of villains produced the famous, and often fabulous right, de cuissage,
de marquette, &c. With the consent of her husband, a handsome bride
might commute the payment in the arms of a young landlord, and the
mutual favor might afford a precedent of local rather than legal
tyranny]

[Footnote 75: The temporal reign of Gregory I. is ably exposed by
Sigonius in the first book, de Regno Italiae. See his works, tom. ii. p.
44--75]





Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.--Part I.

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

The conflict of Rome and Persia was prolonged from the death of Craesus
to the reign of Heraclius. An experience of seven hundred years might
convince the rival nations of the impossibility of maintaining their
conquests beyond the fatal limits of the Tigris and Euphrates. Yet
the emulation of Trajan and Julian was awakened by the trophies of
Alexander, and the sovereigns of Persia indulged the ambitious hope of
restoring the empire of Cyrus. [1] Such extraordinary efforts of power
and courage will always command the attention of posterity; but the
events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a
faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader
would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities, undertaken
without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.
The arts of negotiation, unknown to the simple greatness of the senate
and the Caesars, were assiduously cultivated by the Byzantine princes;
and the memorials of their perpetual embassies [2] repeat, with the
same uniform prolixity, the language of falsehood and declamation, the
insolence of the Barbarians, and the servile temper of the tributary
Greeks. Lamenting the barren superfluity of materials, I have studied to
compress the narrative of these uninteresting transactions: but the just
Nushirvan is still applauded as the model of Oriental kings, and the
ambition of his grandson Chosroes prepared the revolution of the East,
which was speedily accomplished by the arms and the religion of the
successors of Mahomet.

[Footnote 1: Missis qui... reposcerent... veteres Persarum ac Macedonum
terminos, seque invasurum possessa Cyro et post Alexandro, per
vaniloquentiam ac minas jaciebat. Tacit. Annal. vi. 31. Such was the
language of the Arsacides. I have repeatedly marked the lofty claims of
the Sassanians.]

[Footnote 2: See the embassies of Menander, extracted and preserved in
the tenth century by the order of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.]

In the useless altercations, that precede and justify the quarrels of
princes, the Greeks and the Barbarians accused each other of violating
the peace which had been concluded between the two empires about four
years before the death of Justinian. The sovereign of Persia and India
aspired to reduce under his obedience the province of Yemen or Arabia
[3] Felix; the distant land of myrrh and frankincense, which had
escaped, rather than opposed, the conquerors of the East. After the
defeat of Abrahah under the walls of Mecca, the discord of his sons
and brothers gave an easy entrance to the Persians: they chased the
strangers of Abyssinia beyond the Red Sea; and a native prince of the
ancient Homerites was restored to the throne as the vassal or viceroy
of the great Nushirvan. [4] But the nephew of Justinian declared his
resolution to avenge the injuries of his Christian ally the prince of
Abyssinia, as they suggested a decent pretence to discontinue the annual
tribute, which was poorly disguised by the name of pension. The churches
of Persarmenia were oppressed by the intolerant spirit of the Magi;
[411] they secretly invoked the protector of the Christians, and, after
the pious murder of their satraps, the rebels were avowed and supported
as the brethren and subjects of the Roman emperor. The complaints of
Nushirvan were disregarded by the Byzantine court; Justin yielded to the
importunities of the Turks, who offered an alliance against the common
enemy; and the Persian monarchy was threatened at the same instant by
the united forces of Europe, of Aethiopia, and of Scythia. At the age
of fourscore the sovereign of the East would perhaps have chosen the
peaceful enjoyment of his glory and greatness; but as soon as war became
inevitable, he took the field with the alacrity of youth, whilst the
aggressor trembled in the palace of Constantinople. Nushirvan, or
Chosroes, conducted in person the siege of Dara; and although that
important fortress had been left destitute of troops and magazines, the
valor of the inhabitants resisted above five months the archers, the
elephants, and the military engines of the Great King. In the mean while
his general Adarman advanced from Babylon, traversed the desert, passed
the Euphrates, insulted the suburbs of Antioch, reduced to ashes the
city of Apamea, and laid the spoils of Syria at the feet of his master,
whose perseverance in the midst of winter at length subverted the
bulwark of the East. But these losses, which astonished the provinces
and the court, produced a salutary effect in the repentance and
abdication of the emperor Justin: a new spirit arose in the Byzantine
councils; and a truce of three years was obtained by the prudence of
Tiberius. That seasonable interval was employed in the preparations
of war; and the voice of rumor proclaimed to the world, that from the
distant countries of the Alps and the Rhine, from Scythia, Maesia,
Pannonia, Illyricum, and Isauria, the strength of the Imperial cavalry
was reenforced with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. Yet the
king of Persia, without fear, or without faith, resolved to prevent
the attack of the enemy; again passed the Euphrates, and dismissing the
ambassadors of Tiberius, arrogantly commanded them to await his arrival
at Caesarea, the metropolis of the Cappadocian provinces. The two armies
encountered each other in the battle of Melitene: [412] the Barbarians,
who darkened the air with a cloud of arrows, prolonged their line, and
extended their wings across the plain; while the Romans, in deep and
solid bodies, expected to prevail in closer action, by the weight of
their swords and lances. A Scythian chief, who commanded their right
wing, suddenly turned the flank of the enemy, attacked their rear-guard
in the presence of Chosroes, penetrated to the midst of the camp,
pillaged the royal tent, profaned the eternal fire, loaded a train of
camels with the spoils of Asia, cut his way through the Persian host,
and returned with songs of victory to his friends, who had consumed the
day in single combats, or ineffectual skirmishes. The darkness of the
night, and the separation of the Romans, afforded the Persian monarch an
opportunity of revenge; and one of their camps was swept away by a rapid
and impetuous assault. But the review of his loss, and the consciousness
of his danger, determined Chosroes to a speedy retreat: he burnt, in his
passage, the vacant town of Melitene; and, without consulting the safety
of his troops, boldly swam the Euphrates on the back of an elephant.
After this unsuccessful campaign, the want of magazines, and perhaps
some inroad of the Turks, obliged him to disband or divide his forces;
the Romans were left masters of the field, and their general Justinian,
advancing to the relief of the Persarmenian rebels, erected his standard
on the banks of the Araxes. The great Pompey had formerly halted within
three days' march of the Caspian: [5] that inland sea was explored, for
the first time, by a hostile fleet, [6] and seventy thousand captives
were transplanted from Hyrcania to the Isle of Cyprus. On the return
of spring, Justinian descended into the fertile plains of Assyria;
the flames of war approached the residence of Nushirvan; the indignant
monarch sunk into the grave; and his last edict restrained his
successors from exposing their person in battle against the Romans.
[611] Yet the memory of this transient affront was lost in the glories
of a long reign; and his formidable enemies, after indulging their dream
of conquest, again solicited a short respite from the calamities of war.
[7]

[Footnote 3: The general independence of the Arabs, which cannot be
admitted without many limitations, is blindly asserted in a separate
dissertation of the authors of the Universal History, vol. xx. p.
196--250. A perpetual miracle is supposed to have guarded the prophecy
in favor of the posterity of Ishmael; and these learned bigots are not
afraid to risk the truth of Christianity on this frail and slippery
foundation. * Note: It certainly appears difficult to extract a
prediction of the perpetual independence of the Arabs from the text in
Genesis, which would have received an ample fulfilment during
centuries of uninvaded freedom. But the disputants appear to forget the
inseparable connection in the prediction between the wild, the Bedoween
habits of the Ismaelites, with their national independence. The
stationary and civilized descendant of Ismael forfeited, as it were, his
birthright, and ceased to be a genuine son of the "wild man" The
phrase, "dwelling in the presence of his brethren," is interpreted by
Rosenmuller (in loc.) and others, according to the Hebrew geography, "to
the East" of his brethren, the legitimate race of Abraham--M.]

[Footnote 4: D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 477. Pocock, Specimen
Hist. Arabum, p. 64, 65. Father Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 646) has
proved that, after ten years' peace, the Persian war, which continued
twenty years, was renewed A.D. 571. Mahomet was born A.D. 569, in
the year of the elephant, or the defeat of Abrahah, (Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. i. p. 89, 90, 98;) and this account allows two years for
the conquest of Yemen. * Note: Abrahah, according to some accounts, was
succeeded by his son Taksoum, who reigned seventeen years; his brother
Mascouh, who was slain in battle against the Persians, twelve. But this
chronology is irreconcilable with the Arabian conquests of Nushirvan the
Great. Either Seif, or his son Maadi Karb, was the native prince placed
on the throne by the Persians. St. Martin, vol. x. p. 78. See likewise
Johannsen, Hist. Yemanae.--M.]

[Footnote 411: Persarmenia was long maintained in peace by the tolerant
administration of Mejej, prince of the Gnounians. On his death he was
succeeded by a persecutor, a Persian, named Ten-Schahpour, who attempted
to propagate Zoroastrianism by violence. Nushirvan, on an appeal to
the throne by the Armenian clergy, replaced Ten-Schahpour, in 552, by
Veschnas-Vahram. The new marzban, or governor, was instructed to repress
the bigoted Magi in their persecutions of the Armenians, but the Persian
converts to Christianity were still exposed to cruel sufferings. The
most distinguished of them, Izdbouzid, was crucified at Dovin in the
presence of a vast multitude. The fame of this martyr spread to the
West. Menander, the historian, not only, as appears by a fragment
published by Mai, related this event in his history, but, according
to M. St. Martin, wrote a tragedy on the subject. This, however, is
an unwarrantable inference from the phrase which merely means that he
related the tragic event in his history. An epigram on the same subject,
preserved in the Anthology, Jacob's Anth. Palat. i. 27, belongs to
the historian. Yet Armenia remained in peace under the government of
Veschnas-Vahram and his successor Varazdat. The tyranny of his successor
Surena led to the insurrection under Vartan, the Mamigonian, who
revenged the death of his brother on the marzban Surena, surprised
Dovin, and put to the sword the governor, the soldiers, and the Magians.
From St. Martin, vol x. p. 79--89.--M.]

[Footnote 412: Malathiah. It was in the lesser Armenia.--M.]

[Footnote 5: He had vanquished the Albanians, who brought into the field
12,000 horse and 60,000 foot; but he dreaded the multitude of venomous
reptiles, whose existence may admit of some doubt, as well as that of
the neighboring Amazons. Plutarch, in Pompeio, tom. ii. p. 1165, 1166.]

[Footnote 6: In the history of the world I can only perceive two navies
on the Caspian: 1. Of the Macedonians, when Patrocles, the admiral of
the kings of Syria, Seleucus and Antiochus, descended most probably the
River Oxus, from the confines of India, (Plin. Hist. Natur. vi. 21.) 2.
Of the Russians, when Peter the First conducted a fleet and army from
the neighborhood of Moscow to the coast of Persia, (Bell's Travels, vol.
ii. p. 325--352.) He justly observes, that such martial pomp had never
been displayed on the Volga.]

[Footnote 611: This circumstance rests on the statements of Evagrius and
Theophylaci Simocatta. They are not of sufficient authority to establish
a fact so improbable. St. Martin, vol. x. p. 140.--M.]

[Footnote 7: For these Persian wars and treaties, see Menander, in
Excerpt. Legat. p. 113--125. Theophanes Byzant. apud Photium, cod. lxiv
p. 77, 80, 81. Evagrius, l. v. c. 7--15. Theophylact, l. iii. c. 9--16
Agathias, l. iv. p. 140.]

The throne of Chosroes Nushirvan was filled by Hormouz, or Hormisdas,
the eldest or the most favored of his sons. With the kingdoms of Persia
and India, he inherited the reputation and example of his father, the
service, in every rank, of his wise and valiant officers, and a general
system of administration, harmonized by time and political wisdom to
promote the happiness of the prince and people. But the royal youth
enjoyed a still more valuable blessing, the friendship of a sage who had
presided over his education, and who always preferred the honor to the
interest of his pupil, his interest to his inclination. In a dispute
with the Greek and Indian philosophers, Buzurg [8] had once maintained,
that the most grievous misfortune of life is old age without the
remembrance of virtue; and our candor will presume that the same
principle compelled him, during three years, to direct the councils of
the Persian empire. His zeal was rewarded by the gratitude and docility
of Hormouz, who acknowledged himself more indebted to his preceptor than
to his parent: but when age and labor had impaired the strength, and
perhaps the faculties, of this prudent counsellor, he retired from
court, and abandoned the youthful monarch to his own passions and those
of his favorites. By the fatal vicissitude of human affairs, the same
scenes were renewed at Ctesiphon, which had been exhibited at Rome after
the death of Marcus Antoninus. The ministers of flattery and corruption,
who had been banished by his father, were recalled and cherished by
the son; the disgrace and exile of the friends of Nushirvan established
their tyranny; and virtue was driven by degrees from the mind of
Hormouz, from his palace, and from the government of the state. The
faithful agents, the eyes and ears of the king, informed him of the
progress of disorder, that the provincial governors flew to their prey
with the fierceness of lions and eagles, and that their rapine and
injustice would teach the most loyal of his subjects to abhor the name
and authority of their sovereign. The sincerity of this advice was
punished with death; the murmurs of the cities were despised, their
tumults were quelled by military execution: the intermediate powers
between the throne and the people were abolished; and the childish
vanity of Hormouz, who affected the daily use of the tiara, was fond of
declaring, that he alone would be the judge as well as the master of his
kingdom.

In every word, and in every action, the son of Nushirvan degenerated
from the virtues of his father. His avarice defrauded the troops; his
jealous caprice degraded the satraps; the palace, the tribunals, the
waters of the Tigris, were stained with the blood of the innocent, and
the tyrant exulted in the sufferings and execution of thirteen thousand
victims. As the excuse of his cruelty, he sometimes condescended to
observe, that the fears of the Persians would be productive of hatred,
and that their hatred must terminate in rebellion but he forgot that his
own guilt and folly had inspired the sentiments which he deplored, and
prepared the event which he so justly apprehended. Exasperated by long
and hopeless oppression, the provinces of Babylon, Susa, and Carmania,
erected the standard of revolt; and the princes of Arabia, India, and
Scythia, refused the customary tribute to the unworthy successor of
Nushirvan. The arms of the Romans, in slow sieges and frequent inroads,
afflicted the frontiers of Mesopotamia and Assyria: one of their
generals professed himself the disciple of Scipio; and the soldiers were
animated by a miraculous image of Christ, whose mild aspect should never
have been displayed in the front of battle. [9] At the same time, the
eastern provinces of Persia were invaded by the great khan, who passed
the Oxus at the head of three or four hundred thousand Turks. The
imprudent Hormouz accepted their perfidious and formidable aid; the
cities of Khorassan or Bactriana were commanded to open their gates the
march of the Barbarians towards the mountains of Hyrcania revealed the
correspondence of the Turkish and Roman arms; and their union must have
subverted the throne of the house of Sassan.

[Footnote 8: Buzurg Mihir may be considered, in his character and
station, as the Seneca of the East; but his virtues, and perhaps his
faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears to have been
much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the person who imported from
India the game of chess and the fables of Pilpay. Such has been the fame
of his wisdom and virtues, that the Christians claim him as a believer
in the gospel; and the Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature
Mussulman. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 218.]

[Footnote 9: See the imitation of Scipio in Theophylact, l. i. c. 14;
the image of Christ, l. ii. c. 3. Hereafter I shall speak more amply
of the Christian images--I had almost said idols. This, if I am not
mistaken, is the oldest of divine manufacture; but in the next thousand
years, many others issued from the same workshop.]

Persia had been lost by a king; it was saved by a hero. After his
revolt, Varanes or Bahram is stigmatized by the son of Hormouz as an
ungrateful slave; the proud and ambiguous reproach of despotism, since
he was truly descended from the ancient princes of Rei, [10] one of
the seven families whose splendid, as well as substantial, prerogatives
exalted them above the heads of the Persian nobility. [11] At the siege
of Dara, the valor of Bahram was signalized under the eyes of Nushirvan,
and both the father and son successively promoted him to the command of
armies, the government of Media, and the superintendence of the palace.
The popular prediction which marked him as the deliverer of Persia,
might be inspired by his past victories and extraordinary figure: the
epithet Giubin [1111] is expressive of the quality of dry wood: he had
the strength and stature of a giant; and his savage countenance was
fancifully compared to that of a wild cat. While the nation trembled,
while Hormouz disguised his terror by the name of suspicion, and his
servants concealed their disloyalty under the mask of fear, Bahram alone
displayed his undaunted courage and apparent fidelity: and as soon as
he found that no more than twelve thousand soldiers would follow him
against the enemy; he prudently declared, that to this fatal number
Heaven had reserved the honors of the triumph. [1112] The steep and
narrow descent of the Pule Rudbar, [12] or Hyrcanian rock, is the only
pass through which an army can penetrate into the territory of Rei and
the plains of Media. From the commanding heights, a band of resolute men
might overwhelm with stones and darts the myriads of the Turkish
host: their emperor and his son were transpierced with arrows; and the
fugitives were left, without counsel or provisions, to the revenge of an
injured people. The patriotism of the Persian general was stimulated by
his affection for the city of his forefathers: in the hour of victory,
every peasant became a soldier, and every soldier a hero; and their
ardor was kindled by the gorgeous spectacle of beds, and thrones, and
tables of massy gold, the spoils of Asia, and the luxury of the hostile
camp. A prince of a less malignant temper could not easily have forgiven
his benefactor; and the secret hatred of Hormouz was envenomed by a
malicious report, that Bahram had privately retained the most precious
fruits of his Turkish victory. But the approach of a Roman army on
the side of the Araxes compelled the implacable tyrant to smile and to
applaud; and the toils of Bahram were rewarded with the permission of
encountering a new enemy, by their skill and discipline more formidable
than a Scythian multitude. Elated by his recent success, he despatched
a herald with a bold defiance to the camp of the Romans, requesting them
to fix a day of battle, and to choose whether they would pass the river
themselves, or allow a free passage to the arms of the great king. The
lieutenant of the emperor Maurice preferred the safer alternative; and
this local circumstance, which would have enhanced the victory of
the Persians, rendered their defeat more bloody and their escape more
difficult. But the loss of his subjects, and the danger of his kingdom,
were overbalanced in the mind of Hormouz by the disgrace of his personal
enemy; and no sooner had Bahram collected and reviewed his forces, than
he received from a royal messenger the insulting gift of a distaff, a
spinning-wheel, and a complete suit of female apparel. Obedient to the
will of his sovereign he showed himself to the soldiers in this unworthy
disguise they resented his ignominy and their own; a shout of rebellion
ran through the ranks; and the general accepted their oath of fidelity
and vows of revenge. A second messenger, who had been commanded to bring
the rebel in chains, was trampled under the feet of an elephant, and
manifestos were diligently circulated, exhorting the Persians to assert
their freedom against an odious and contemptible tyrant. The defection
was rapid and universal; his loyal slaves were sacrificed to the public
fury; the troops deserted to the standard of Bahram; and the provinces
again saluted the deliverer of his country.

[Footnote 10: Ragae, or Rei, is mentioned in the Apocryphal book
of Tobit as already flourishing, 700 years before Christ, under the
Assyrian empire. Under the foreign names of Europus and Arsacia, this
city, 500 stadia to the south of the Caspian gates, was successively
embellished by the Macedonians and Parthians, (Strabo, l. xi. p. 796.)
Its grandeur and populousness in the ixth century are exaggerated beyond
the bounds of credibility; but Rei has been since ruined by wars and the
unwholesomeness of the air. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, tom. i. p. 279,
280. D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Oriental. p. 714.]

[Footnote 11: Theophylact. l. iii. c. 18. The story of the seven
Persians is told in the third book of Herodotus; and their noble
descendants are often mentioned, especially in the fragments of Ctesias.
Yet the independence of Otanes (Herodot. l. iii. c. 83, 84) is hostile
to the spirit of despotism, and it may not seem probable that the seven
families could survive the revolutions of eleven hundred years. They
might, however, be represented by the seven ministers, (Brisson, de
Regno Persico, l. i. p. 190;) and some Persian nobles, like the kings
of Pontus (Polyb l. v. p. 540) and Cappadocia, (Diodor. Sicul. l. xxxi.
tom. ii. p. 517,) might claim their descent from the bold companions of
Darius.]

[Footnote 1111: He is generally called Baharam Choubeen, Baharam, the
stick-like, probably from his appearance. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 120.--M.]

[Footnote 1112: The Persian historians say, that Hormouz entreated his
general to increase his numbers; but Baharam replied, that experience
had taught him that it was the quality, not the number of soldiers,
which gave success. * * * No man in his army was under forty years, and
none above fifty. Malcolm, vol. i. p. 121--M.]

[Footnote 12: See an accurate description of this mountain by Olearius,
(Voyage en Perse, p. 997, 998,) who ascended it with much difficulty and
danger in his return from Ispahan to the Caspian Sea.]

As the passes were faithfully guarded, Hormouz could only compute the
number of his enemies by the testimony of a guilty conscience, and the
daily defection of those who, in the hour of his distress, avenged their
wrongs, or forgot their obligations. He proudly displayed the ensigns of
royalty; but the city and palace of Modain had already escaped from
the hand of the tyrant. Among the victims of his cruelty, Bindoes, a
Sassanian prince, had been cast into a dungeon; his fetters were broken
by the zeal and courage of a brother; and he stood before the king at
the head of those trusty guards, who had been chosen as the ministers
of his confinement, and perhaps of his death. Alarmed by the hasty
intrusion and bold reproaches of the captive, Hormouz looked round,
but in vain, for advice or assistance; discovered that his strength
consisted in the obedience of others; and patiently yielded to the
single arm of Bindoes, who dragged him from the throne to the same
dungeon in which he himself had been so lately confined. At the first
tumult, Chosroes, the eldest of the sons of Hormouz, escaped from the
city; he was persuaded to return by the pressing and friendly invitation
of Bindoes, who promised to seat him on his father's throne, and who
expected to reign under the name of an inexperienced youth. In the just
assurance, that his accomplices could neither forgive nor hope to be
forgiven, and that every Persian might be trusted as the judge and enemy
of the tyrant, he instituted a public trial without a precedent and
without a copy in the annals of the East. The son of Nushirvan, who had
requested to plead in his own defence, was introduced as a criminal
into the full assembly of the nobles and satraps. [13] He was heard with
decent attention as long as he expatiated on the advantages of order and
obedience, the danger of innovation, and the inevitable discord of those
who had encouraged each other to trample on their lawful and hereditary
sovereign. By a pathetic appeal to their humanity, he extorted that pity
which is seldom refused to the fallen fortunes of a king; and while they
beheld the abject posture and squalid appearance of the prisoner,
his tears, his chains, and the marks of ignominious stripes, it was
impossible to forget how recently they had adored the divine splendor of
his diadem and purple. But an angry murmur arose in the assembly as soon
as he presumed to vindicate his conduct, and to applaud the victories
of his reign. He defined the duties of a king, and the Persian nobles
listened with a smile of contempt; they were fired with indignation
when he dared to vilify the character of Chosroes; and by the indiscreet
offer of resigning the sceptre to the second of his sons, he subscribed
his own condemnation, and sacrificed the life of his own innocent
favorite. The mangled bodies of the boy and his mother were exposed to
the people; the eyes of Hormouz were pierced with a hot needle; and the
punishment of the father was succeeded by the coronation of his eldest
son. Chosroes had ascended the throne without guilt, and his piety
strove to alleviate the misery of the abdicated monarch; from the
dungeon he removed Hormouz to an apartment of the palace, supplied with
liberality the consolations of sensual enjoyment, and patiently endured
the furious sallies of his resentment and despair. He might despise the
resentment of a blind and unpopular tyrant, but the tiara was trembling
on his head, till he could subvert the power, or acquire the friendship,
of the great Bahram, who sternly denied the justice of a revolution, in
which himself and his soldiers, the true representatives of Persia, had
never been consulted. The offer of a general amnesty, and of the second
rank in his kingdom, was answered by an epistle from Bahram, friend of
the gods, conqueror of men, and enemy of tyrants, the satrap of satraps,
general of the Persian armies, and a prince adorned with the title of
eleven virtues. [14] He commands Chosroes, the son of Hormouz, to shun
the example and fate of his father, to confine the traitors who had been
released from their chains, to deposit in some holy place the diadem
which he had usurped, and to accept from his gracious benefactor the
pardon of his faults and the government of a province. The rebel might
not be proud, and the king most assuredly was not humble; but the one
was conscious of his strength, the other was sensible of his weakness;
and even the modest language of his reply still left room for treaty and
reconciliation. Chosroes led into the field the slaves of the palace and
the populace of the capital: they beheld with terror the banners of a
veteran army; they were encompassed and surprised by the evolutions
of the general; and the satraps who had deposed Hormouz, received the
punishment of their revolt, or expiated their first treason by a second
and more criminal act of disloyalty. The life and liberty of Chosroes
were saved, but he was reduced to the necessity of imploring aid or
refuge in some foreign land; and the implacable Bindoes, anxious to
secure an unquestionable title, hastily returned to the palace, and
ended, with a bowstring, the wretched existence of the son of Nushirvan.
[15]

[Footnote 13: The Orientals suppose that Bahram convened this assembly
and proclaimed Chosroes; but Theophylact is, in this instance, more
distinct and credible. * Note: Yet Theophylact seems to have seized
the opportunity to indulge his propensity for writing orations; and the
orations read rather like those of a Grecian sophist than of an Eastern
assembly.--M.]

[Footnote 14: See the words of Theophylact, l. iv. c. 7., &c. In answer,
Chosroes styles himself in genuine Oriental bombast.]

[Footnote 15: Theophylact (l. iv. c. 7) imputes the death of Hormouz
to his son, by whose command he was beaten to death with clubs. I have
followed the milder account of Khondemir and Eutychius, and shall
always be content with the slightest evidence to extenuate the crime
of parricide. Note: Malcolm concurs in ascribing his death to Bundawee,
(Bindoes,) vol. i. p. 123. The Eastern writers generally impute the
crime to the uncle St. Martin, vol. x. p. 300.--M.]

While Chosroes despatched the preparations of his retreat, he
deliberated with his remaining friends, [16] whether he should lurk
in the valleys of Mount Caucasus, or fly to the tents of the Turks,
or solicit the protection of the emperor. The long emulation of the
successors of Artaxerxes and Constantine increased his reluctance to
appear as a suppliant in a rival court; but he weighed the forces of the
Romans, and prudently considered that the neighborhood of Syria would
render his escape more easy and their succors more effectual. Attended
only by his concubines, and a troop of thirty guards, he secretly
departed from the capital, followed the banks of the Euphrates,
traversed the desert, and halted at the distance of ten miles from
Circesium. About the third watch of the night, the Roman praefect was
informed of his approach, and he introduced the royal stranger to
the fortress at the dawn of day. From thence the king of Persia was
conducted to the more honorable residence of Hierapolis; and Maurice
dissembled his pride, and displayed his benevolence, at the reception
of the letters and ambassadors of the grandson of Nushirvan. They humbly
represented the vicissitudes of fortune and the common interest of
princes, exaggerated the ingratitude of Bahram, the agent of the evil
principle, and urged, with specious argument, that it was for the
advantage of the Romans themselves to support the two monarchies which
balance the world, the two great luminaries by whose salutary influence
it is vivified and adorned. The anxiety of Chosroes was soon relieved
by the assurance, that the emperor had espoused the cause of justice
and royalty; but Maurice prudently declined the expense and delay of his
useless visit to Constantinople. In the name of his generous benefactor,
a rich diadem was presented to the fugitive prince, with an inestimable
gift of jewels and gold; a powerful army was assembled on the frontiers
of Syria and Armenia, under the command of the valiant and faithful
Narses, [17] and this general, of his own nation, and his own choice,
was directed to pass the Tigris, and never to sheathe his sword till
he had restored Chosroes to the throne of his ancestors. [1711] The
enterprise, however splendid, was less arduous than it might appear.
Persia had already repented of her fatal rashness, which betrayed the
heir of the house of Sassan to the ambition of a rebellious subject:
and the bold refusal of the Magi to consecrate his usurpation, compelled
Bahram to assume the sceptre, regardless of the laws and prejudices of
the nation. The palace was soon distracted with conspiracy, the city
with tumult, the provinces with insurrection; and the cruel execution of
the guilty and the suspected served to irritate rather than subdue the
public discontent. No sooner did the grandson of Nushirvan display his
own and the Roman banners beyond the Tigris, than he was joined, each
day, by the increasing multitudes of the nobility and people; and as he
advanced, he received from every side the grateful offerings of the keys
of his cities and the heads of his enemies. As soon as Modain was freed
from the presence of the usurper, the loyal inhabitants obeyed the first
summons of Mebodes at the head of only two thousand horse, and Chosroes
accepted the sacred and precious ornaments of the palace as the pledge
of their truth and the presage of his approaching success. After the
junction of the Imperial troops, which Bahram vainly struggled to
prevent, the contest was decided by two battles on the banks of the Zab,
and the confines of Media. The Romans, with the faithful subjects of
Persia, amounted to sixty thousand, while the whole force of the usurper
did not exceed forty thousand men: the two generals signalized their
valor and ability; but the victory was finally determined by the
prevalence of numbers and discipline. With the remnant of a broken army,
Bahram fled towards the eastern provinces of the Oxus: the enmity of
Persia reconciled him to the Turks; but his days were shortened by
poison, perhaps the most incurable of poisons; the stings of remorse
and despair, and the bitter remembrance of lost glory. Yet the modern
Persians still commemorate the exploits of Bahram; and some excellent
laws have prolonged the duration of his troubled and transitory reign.

[Footnote 16: After the battle of Pharsalia, the Pompey of Lucan (l.
viii. 256--455) holds a similar debate. He was himself desirous of
seeking the Parthians: but his companions abhorred the unnatural
alliance and the adverse prejudices might operate as forcibly on
Chosroes and his companions, who could describe, with the same
vehemence, the contrast of laws, religion, and manners, between the East
and West.]

[Footnote 17: In this age there were three warriors of the name of
Narses, who have been often confounded, (Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p.
640:) 1. A Persarmenian, the brother of Isaac and Armatius, who, after
a successful action against Belisarius, deserted from his Persian
sovereign, and afterwards served in the Italian war.--2. The eunuch who
conquered Italy.--3. The restorer of Chosroes, who is celebrated in
the poem of Corippus (l. iii. 220--327) as excelsus super omnia
vertico agmina.... habitu modestus.... morum probitate placens, virtute
verendus; fulmineus, cautus, vigilans, &c.]

[Footnote 1711: The Armenians adhered to Chosroes. St. Martin, vol. x.
p. 312.--M.]

[Footnote 1712: According to Mivkhond and the Oriental writers, Bahram
received the daughter of the Khakan in marriage, and commanded a body
of Turks in an invasion of Persia. Some say that he was assassinated;
Malcolm adopts the opinion that he was poisoned. His sister Gourdieh,
the companion of his flight, is celebrated in the Shah Nameh. She
was afterwards one of the wives of Chosroes. St. Martin. vol. x. p.
331.--M.]

The restoration of Chosroes was celebrated with feasts and executions;
and the music of the royal banquet was often disturbed by the groans
of dying or mutilated criminals. A general pardon might have diffused
comfort and tranquillity through a country which had been shaken by
the late revolutions; yet, before the sanguinary temper of Chosroes is
blamed, we should learn whether the Persians had not been accustomed
either to dread the rigor, or to despise the weakness, of their
sovereign. The revolt of Bahram, and the conspiracy of the satraps, were
impartially punished by the revenge or justice of the conqueror; the
merits of Bindoes himself could not purify his hand from the guilt
of royal blood: and the son of Hormouz was desirous to assert his own
innocence, and to vindicate the sanctity of kings. During the vigor of
the Roman power, several princes were seated on the throne of Persia by
the arms and the authority of the first Caesars. But their new subjects
were soon disgusted with the vices or virtues which they had imbibed in
a foreign land; the instability of their dominion gave birth to a vulgar
observation, that the choice of Rome was solicited and rejected with
equal ardor by the capricious levity of Oriental slaves. But the glory
of Maurice was conspicuous in the long and fortunate reign of his son
and his ally. A band of a thousand Romans, who continued to guard the
person of Chosroes, proclaimed his confidence in the fidelity of the
strangers; his growing strength enabled him to dismiss this unpopular
aid, but he steadily professed the same gratitude and reverence to his
adopted father; and till the death of Maurice, the peace and alliance
of the two empires were faithfully maintained. [18] Yet the mercenary
friendship of the Roman prince had been purchased with costly and
important gifts; the strong cities of Martyropolis and Dara [1811]
were restored, and the Persarmenians became the willing subjects of an
empire, whose eastern limit was extended, beyond the example of former
times, as far as the banks of the Araxes, and the neighborhood of the
Caspian. A pious hope was indulged, that the church as well as the state
might triumph in this revolution: but if Chosroes had sincerely listened
to the Christian bishops, the impression was erased by the zeal and
eloquence of the Magi: if he was armed with philosophic indifference,
he accommodated his belief, or rather his professions, to the various
circumstances of an exile and a sovereign. The imaginary conversion of
the king of Persia was reduced to a local and superstitious veneration
for Sergius, [19] one of the saints of Antioch, who heard his prayers
and appeared to him in dreams; he enriched the shrine with offerings of
gold and silver, and ascribed to this invisible patron the success of
his arms, and the pregnancy of Sira, a devout Christian and the best
beloved of his wives. [20] The beauty of Sira, or Schirin, [21] her wit,
her musical talents, are still famous in the history, or rather in
the romances, of the East: her own name is expressive, in the Persian
tongue, of sweetness and grace; and the epithet of Parviz alludes to the
charms of her royal lover. Yet Sira never shared the passions which she
inspired, and the bliss of Chosroes was tortured by a jealous doubt,
that while he possessed her person, she had bestowed her affections on a
meaner favorite. [22]

[Footnote 18: Experimentis cognitum est Barbaros malle Roma petere
reges quam habere. These experiments are admirably represented in the
invitation and expulsion of Vonones, (Annal. ii. 1--3,) Tiridates,
(Annal. vi. 32-44,) and Meherdates, (Annal. xi. 10, xii. 10-14.) The eye
of Tacitus seems to have transpierced the camp of the Parthians and the
walls of the harem.]

[Footnote 1811: Concerning Nisibis, see St. Martin and his Armenian
authorities, vol. x p. 332, and Memoires sur l'Armenie, tom. i. p.
25.--M.]

[Footnote 19: Sergius and his companion Bacchus, who are said to have
suffered in the persecution of Maximian, obtained divine honor in
France, Italy, Constantinople, and the East. Their tomb at Rasaphe was
famous for miracles, and that Syrian town acquired the more honorable
name of Sergiopolis. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. v. p. 481--496.
Butler's Saints, vol. x. p. 155.]

[Footnote 20: Evagrius (l. vi. c. 21) and Theophylact (l. v. c. 13,
14) have preserved the original letters of Chosroes, written in Greek,
signed with his own hand, and afterwards inscribed on crosses and tables
of gold, which were deposited in the church of Sergiopolis. They had
been sent to the bishop of Antioch, as primate of Syria. * Note:
St. Martin thinks that they were first written in Syriac, and then
translated into the bad Greek in which they appear, vol. x. p. 334.--M.]

[Footnote 21: The Greeks only describe her as a Roman by birth, a
Christian by religion: but she is represented as the daughter of the
emperor Maurice in the Persian and Turkish romances which celebrate the
love of Khosrou for Schirin, of Schirin for Ferhad, the most beautiful
youth of the East, D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 789, 997, 998. *
Note: Compare M. von Hammer's preface to, and poem of, Schirin in
which he gives an account of the various Persian poems, of which he has
endeavored to extract the essence in his own work.--M.]

[Footnote 22: The whole series of the tyranny of Hormouz, the revolt of
Bahram, and the flight and restoration of Chosroes, is related by two
contemporary Greeks--more concisely by Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 16, 17, 18,
19,) and most diffusely by Theophylact Simocatta, (l. iii. c. 6--18,
l. iv. c. 1--16, l. v. c. 1-15:) succeeding compilers, Zonaras and
Cedrenus, can only transcribe and abridge. The Christian Arabs,
Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 200--208) and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p.
96--98) appear to have consulted some particular memoirs. The great
Persian historians of the xvth century, Mirkhond and Khondemir, are
only known to me by the imperfect extracts of Schikard, (Tarikh, p.
150--155,) Texeira, or rather Stevens, (Hist. of Persia, p. 182--186,)
a Turkish Ms. translated by the Abbe Fourmount, (Hist. de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. vii. p. 325--334,) and D'Herbelot, (aux mots Hormouz,
p. 457--459. Bahram, p. 174. Khosrou Parviz, p. 996.) Were I perfectly
satisfied of their authority, I could wish these Oriental materials had
been more copious.]





Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.--Part II.

While the majesty of the Roman name was revived in the East, the
prospect of Europe is less pleasing and less glorious. By the departure
of the Lombards, and the ruin of the Gepidae, the balance of power was
destroyed on the Danube; and the Avars spread their permanent dominion
from the foot of the Alps to the sea-coast of the Euxine. The reign
of Baian is the brightest aera of their monarchy; their chagan, who
occupied the rustic palace of Attila, appears to have imitated his
character and policy; [23] but as the same scenes were repeated in a
smaller circle, a minute representation of the copy would be devoid
of the greatness and novelty of the original. The pride of the second
Justin, of Tiberius, and Maurice, was humbled by a proud Barbarian, more
prompt to inflict, than exposed to suffer, the injuries of war; and as
often as Asia was threatened by the Persian arms, Europe was oppressed
by the dangerous inroads, or costly friendship, of the Avars. When the
Roman envoys approached the presence of the chagan, they were commanded
to wait at the door of his tent, till, at the end perhaps of ten or
twelve days, he condescended to admit them. If the substance or the
style of their message was offensive to his ear, he insulted, with real
or affected fury, their own dignity, and that of their prince; their
baggage was plundered, and their lives were only saved by the promise
of a richer present and a more respectful address. But his sacred
ambassadors enjoyed and abused an unbounded license in the midst of
Constantinople: they urged, with importunate clamors, the increase of
tribute, or the restitution of captives and deserters: and the majesty
of the empire was almost equally degraded by a base compliance, or
by the false and fearful excuses with which they eluded such insolent
demands. The chagan had never seen an elephant; and his curiosity was
excited by the strange, and perhaps fabulous, portrait of that wonderful
animal. At his command, one of the largest elephants of the Imperial
stables was equipped with stately caparisons, and conducted by a
numerous train to the royal village in the plains of Hungary. He
surveyed the enormous beast with surprise, with disgust, and possibly
with terror; and smiled at the vain industry of the Romans, who, in
search of such useless rarities, could explore the limits of the land
and sea. He wished, at the expense of the emperor, to repose in a golden
bed. The wealth of Constantinople, and the skilful diligence of her
artists, were instantly devoted to the gratification of his caprice; but
when the work was finished, he rejected with scorn a present so unworthy
the majesty of a great king. [24] These were the casual sallies of his
pride; but the avarice of the chagan was a more steady and tractable
passion: a rich and regular supply of silk apparel, furniture, and
plate, introduced the rudiments of art and luxury among the tents of the
Scythians; their appetite was stimulated by the pepper and cinnamon of
India; [25] the annual subsidy or tribute was raised from fourscore to
one hundred and twenty thousand pieces of gold; and after each hostile
interruption, the payment of the arrears, with exorbitant interest, was
always made the first condition of the new treaty. In the language of a
Barbarian, without guile, the prince of the Avars affected to complain
of the insincerity of the Greeks; [26] yet he was not inferior to the
most civilized nations in the refinement of dissimulation and perfidy.
As the successor of the Lombards, the chagan asserted his claim to
the important city of Sirmium, the ancient bulwark of the Illyrian
provinces. [27] The plains of the Lower Hungary were covered with the
Avar horse and a fleet of large boats was built in the Hercynian wood,
to descend the Danube, and to transport into the Save the materials of
a bridge. But as the strong garrison of Singidunum, which commanded the
conflux of the two rivers, might have stopped their passage and baffled
his designs, he dispelled their apprehensions by a solemn oath that his
views were not hostile to the empire. He swore by his sword, the symbol
of the god of war, that he did not, as the enemy of Rome, construct
a bridge upon the Save. "If I violate my oath," pursued the intrepid
Baian, "may I myself, and the last of my nation, perish by the sword!
May the heavens, and fire, the deity of the heavens, fall upon our
heads! May the forests and mountains bury us in their ruins! and the
Save returning, against the laws of nature, to his source, overwhelm
us in his angry waters!" After this barbarous imprecation, he calmly
inquired, what oath was most sacred and venerable among the Christians,
what guilt or perjury it was most dangerous to incur. The bishop of
Singidunum presented the gospel, which the chagan received with devout
reverence. "I swear," said he, "by the God who has spoken in this holy
book, that I have neither falsehood on my tongue, nor treachery in my
heart." As soon as he rose from his knees, he accelerated the labor of
the bridge, and despatched an envoy to proclaim what he no longer wished
to conceal. "Inform the emperor," said the perfidious Baian, "that
Sirmium is invested on every side. Advise his prudence to withdraw
the citizens and their effects, and to resign a city which it is now
impossible to relieve or defend." Without the hope of relief, the
defence of Sirmium was prolonged above three years: the walls were still
untouched; but famine was enclosed within the walls, till a merciful
capitulation allowed the escape of the naked and hungry inhabitants.
Singidunum, at the distance of fifty miles, experienced a more cruel
fate: the buildings were razed, and the vanquished people was condemned
to servitude and exile. Yet the ruins of Sirmium are no longer visible;
the advantageous situation of Singidunum soon attracted a new colony of
Sclavonians, and the conflux of the Save and Danube is still guarded
by the fortifications of Belgrade, or the White City, so often and
so obstinately disputed by the Christian and Turkish arms. [28] From
Belgrade to the walls of Constantinople a line may be measured of six
hundred miles: that line was marked with flames and with blood; the
horses of the Avars were alternately bathed in the Euxine and the
Adriatic; and the Roman pontiff, alarmed by the approach of a more
savage enemy, [29] was reduced to cherish the Lombards, as the
protectors of Italy. The despair of a captive, whom his country refused
to ransom, disclosed to the Avars the invention and practice of military
engines. [30] But in the first attempts they were rudely framed, and
awkwardly managed; and the resistance of Diocletianopolis and Beraea, of
Philippopolis and Adrianople, soon exhausted the skill and patience of
the besiegers. The warfare of Baian was that of a Tartar; yet his mind
was susceptible of a humane and generous sentiment: he spared Anchialus,
whose salutary waters had restored the health of the best beloved of his
wives; and the Romans confessed, that their starving army was fed and
dismissed by the liberality of a foe. His empire extended over Hungary,
Poland, and Prussia, from the mouth of the Danube to that of the Oder;
[31] and his new subjects were divided and transplanted by the jealous
policy of the conqueror. [32] The eastern regions of Germany, which had
been left vacant by the emigration of the Vandals, were replenished with
Sclavonian colonists; the same tribes are discovered in the neighborhood
of the Adriatic and of the Baltic, and with the name of Baian himself,
the Illyrian cities of Neyss and Lissa are again found in the heart of
Silesia. In the disposition both of his troops and provinces the chagan
exposed the vassals, whose lives he disregarded, [33] to the first
assault; and the swords of the enemy were blunted before they
encountered the native valor of the Avars.

[Footnote 23: A general idea of the pride and power of the chagan may be
taken from Menander (Excerpt. Legat. p. 118, &c.) and Theophylact, (l.
i. c. 3, l. vii. c. 15,) whose eight books are much more honorable to
the Avar than to the Roman prince. The predecessors of Baian had tasted
the liberality of Rome, and he survived the reign of Maurice, (Buat,
Hist. des Peuples Barbares, tom. xi. p. 545.) The chagan who invaded
Italy, A.D. 611, (Muratori, Annali, tom. v. p. 305,) was then invenili
aetate florentem, (Paul Warnefrid, de Gest. Langobard. l v c 38,) the
son, perhaps, or the grandson, of Baian.]

[Footnote 24: Theophylact, l. i. c. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 25: Even in the field, the chagan delighted in the use of
these aromatics. He solicited, as a gift, and received. Theophylact,
l. vii. c. 13. The Europeans of the ruder ages consumed more spices in
their meat and drink than is compatible with the delicacy of a modern
palate. Vie Privee des Francois, tom. ii. p. 162, 163.]

[Footnote 26: Theophylact, l. vi. c. 6, l. vii. c. 15. The Greek
historian confesses the truth and justice of his reproach]

[Footnote 27: Menander (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 126--132, 174, 175)
describes the perjury of Baian and the surrender of Sirmium. We have
lost his account of the siege, which is commended by Theophylact, l.
i. c. 3. * Note: Compare throughout Schlozer Nordische Geschichte, p.
362--373--M.]

[Footnote 28: See D'Anville, in the Memoires de l'Acad. des
Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 412--443. The Sclavonic name of Belgrade
is mentioned in the xth century by Constantine Porphyrogenitus: the
Latin appellation of Alba Croeca is used by the Franks in the beginning
of the ixth, (p. 414.)]

[Footnote 29: Baron. Annal. Eccles. A. B. 600, No. 1. Paul Warnefrid
(l. iv. c. 38) relates their irruption into Friuli, and (c. 39) the
captivity of his ancestors, about A.D. 632. The Sclavi traversed the
Adriatic cum multitudine navium, and made a descent in the territory of
Sipontum, (c. 47.)]

[Footnote 30: Even the helepolis, or movable turret. Theophylact, l. ii.
16, 17.]

[Footnote 31: The arms and alliances of the chagan reached to
the neighborhood of a western sea, fifteen months' journey from
Constantinople. The emperor Maurice conversed with some itinerant
harpers from that remote country, and only seems to have mistaken a
trade for a nation Theophylact, l. vi. c. 2.]

[Footnote 32: This is one of the most probable and luminous conjectures
of the learned count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples Barbares, tom. xi. p.
546--568.) The Tzechi and Serbi are found together near Mount Caucasus,
in Illyricum, and on the lower Elbe. Even the wildest traditions of the
Bohemians, &c., afford some color to his hypothesis.]

[Footnote 33: See Fredegarius, in the Historians of France, tom. ii. p.
432. Baian did not conceal his proud insensibility.]

The Persian alliance restored the troops of the East to the defence of
Europe: and Maurice, who had supported ten years the insolence of
the chagan, declared his resolution to march in person against the
Barbarians. In the space of two centuries, none of the successors of
Theodosius had appeared in the field: their lives were supinely spent in
the palace of Constantinople; and the Greeks could no longer understand,
that the name of emperor, in its primitive sense, denoted the chief of
the armies of the republic. The martial ardor of Maurice was opposed
by the grave flattery of the senate, the timid superstition of the
patriarch, and the tears of the empress Constantina; and they all
conjured him to devolve on some meaner general the fatigues and perils
of a Scythian campaign. Deaf to their advice and entreaty, the emperor
boldly advanced [34] seven miles from the capital; the sacred ensign
of the cross was displayed in the front; and Maurice reviewed, with
conscious pride, the arms and numbers of the veterans who had fought and
conquered beyond the Tigris. Anchialus was the last term of his progress
by sea and land; he solicited, without success, a miraculous answer
to his nocturnal prayers; his mind was confounded by the death of a
favorite horse, the encounter of a wild boar, a storm of wind and rain,
and the birth of a monstrous child; and he forgot that the best of omens
is to unsheathe our sword in the defence of our country. [35] Under the
pretence of receiving the ambassadors of Persia, the emperor returned to
Constantinople, exchanged the thoughts of war for those of devotion,
and disappointed the public hope by his absence and the choice of his
lieutenants. The blind partiality of fraternal love might excuse the
promotion of his brother Peter, who fled with equal disgrace from the
Barbarians, from his own soldiers and from the inhabitants of a Roman
city. That city, if we may credit the resemblance of name and character,
was the famous Azimuntium, [36] which had alone repelled the tempest of
Attila. The example of her warlike youth was propagated to succeeding
generations; and they obtained, from the first or the second Justin, an
honorable privilege, that their valor should be always reserved for the
defence of their native country. The brother of Maurice attempted
to violate this privilege, and to mingle a patriot band with the
mercenaries of his camp; they retired to the church, he was not awed
by the sanctity of the place; the people rose in their cause, the gates
were shut, the ramparts were manned; and the cowardice of Peter was
found equal to his arrogance and injustice. The military fame of
Commentiolus [37] is the object of satire or comedy rather than of
serious history, since he was even deficient in the vile and vulgar
qualification of personal courage. His solemn councils, strange
evolutions, and secret orders, always supplied an apology for flight or
delay. If he marched against the enemy, the pleasant valleys of Mount
Haemus opposed an insuperable barrier; but in his retreat, he explored,
with fearless curiosity, the most difficult and obsolete paths, which
had almost escaped the memory of the oldest native. The only blood which
he lost was drawn, in a real or affected malady, by the lancet of a
surgeon; and his health, which felt with exquisite sensibility the
approach of the Barbarians, was uniformly restored by the repose and
safety of the winter season. A prince who could promote and support this
unworthy favorite must derive no glory from the accidental merit of his
colleague Priscus. [38] In five successive battles, which seem to have
been conducted with skill and resolution, seventeen thousand two hundred
Barbarians were made prisoners: near sixty thousand, with four sons of
the chagan, were slain: the Roman general surprised a peaceful district
of the Gepidae, who slept under the protection of the Avars; and his
last trophies were erected on the banks of the Danube and the Teyss.
Since the death of Trajan the arms of the empire had not penetrated so
deeply into the old Dacia: yet the success of Priscus was transient and
barren; and he was soon recalled by the apprehension that Baian, with
dauntless spirit and recruited forces, was preparing to avenge his
defeat under the walls of Constantinople. [39]

[Footnote 34: See the march and return of Maurice, in Theophylact, l.
v. c. 16 l. vi. c. 1, 2, 3. If he were a writer of taste or genius,
we might suspect him of an elegant irony: but Theophylact is surely
harmless.]

[Footnote 35: Iliad, xii. 243. This noble verse, which unites the spirit
of a hero with the reason of a sage, may prove that Homer was in every
light superior to his age and country.]

[Footnote 36: Theophylact, l. vii. c. 3. On the evidence of this fact,
which had not occurred to my memory, the candid reader will correct and
excuse a note in Chapter XXXIV., note 86 of this History, which hastens
the decay of Asimus, or Azimuntium; another century of patriotism and
valor is cheaply purchased by such a confession.]

[Footnote 37: See the shameful conduct of Commentiolus, in Theophylact,
l. ii. c. 10--15, l. vii. c. 13, 14, l. viii. c. 2, 4.]

[Footnote 38: See the exploits of Priscus, l. viii. c. 23.]

[Footnote 39: The general detail of the war against the Avars may be
traced in the first, second, sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the
history of the emperor Maurice, by Theophylact Simocatta. As he wrote in
the reign of Heraclius, he had no temptation to flatter; but his want
of judgment renders him diffuse in trifles, and concise in the most
interesting facts.]

The theory of war was not more familiar to the camps of Caesar and
Trajan, than to those of Justinian and Maurice. [40] The iron of Tuscany
or Pontus still received the keenest temper from the skill of the
Byzantine workmen. The magazines were plentifully stored with every
species of offensive and defensive arms. In the construction and use of
ships, engines, and fortifications, the Barbarians admired the superior
ingenuity of a people whom they had so often vanquished in the field.
The science of tactics, the order, evolutions, and stratagems of
antiquity, was transcribed and studied in the books of the Greeks and
Romans. But the solitude or degeneracy of the provinces could no longer
supply a race of men to handle those weapons, to guard those walls,
to navigate those ships, and to reduce the theory of war into bold and
successful practice. The genius of Belisarius and Narses had been formed
without a master, and expired without a disciple Neither honor, nor
patriotism, nor generous superstition, could animate the lifeless bodies
of slaves and strangers, who had succeeded to the honors of the legions:
it was in the camp alone that the emperor should have exercised a
despotic command; it was only in the camps that his authority was
disobeyed and insulted: he appeased and inflamed with gold the
licentiousness of the troops; but their vices were inherent, their
victories were accidental, and their costly maintenance exhausted the
substance of a state which they were unable to defend. After a long and
pernicious indulgence, the cure of this inveterate evil was undertaken
by Maurice; but the rash attempt, which drew destruction on his own
head, tended only to aggravate the disease. A reformer should be exempt
from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and
esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim. The troops of Maurice
might listen to the voice of a victorious leader; they disdained the
admonitions of statesmen and sophists; and, when they received an edict
which deducted from their pay the price of their arms and clothing, they
execrated the avarice of a prince insensible of the dangers and fatigues
from which he had escaped.

The camps both of Asia and Europe were agitated with frequent and
furious seditions; [41] the enraged soldiers of Edessa pursued with
reproaches, with threats, with wounds, their trembling generals;
they overturned the statues of the emperor, cast stones against the
miraculous image of Christ, and either rejected the yoke of all
civil and military laws, or instituted a dangerous model of voluntary
subordination. The monarch, always distant and often deceived, was
incapable of yielding or persisting, according to the exigence of the
moment. But the fear of a general revolt induced him too readily to
accept any act of valor, or any expression of loyalty, as an atonement
for the popular offence; the new reform was abolished as hastily as it
had been announced, and the troops, instead of punishment and restraint,
were agreeably surprised by a gracious proclamation of immunities and
rewards. But the soldiers accepted without gratitude the tardy and
reluctant gifts of the emperor: their insolence was elated by the
discovery of his weakness and their own strength; and their mutual
hatred was inflamed beyond the desire of forgiveness or the hope of
reconciliation. The historians of the times adopt the vulgar suspicion,
that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops whom he had labored to
reform; the misconduct and favor of Commentiolus are imputed to this
malevolent design; and every age must condemn the inhumanity of avarice
[42] of a prince, who, by the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of
gold, might have prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in
the hands of the chagan. In the just fervor of indignation, an order
was signified to the army of the Danube, that they should spare the
magazines of the province, and establish their winter quarters in the
hostile country of the Avars. The measure of their grievances was full:
they pronounced Maurice unworthy to reign, expelled or slaughtered
his faithful adherents, and, under the command of Phocas, a
simple centurion, returned by hasty marches to the neighborhood of
Constantinople. After a long series of legal succession, the military
disorders of the third century were again revived; yet such was the
novelty of the enterprise, that the insurgents were awed by their
own rashness. They hesitated to invest their favorite with the vacant
purple; and, while they rejected all treaty with Maurice himself,
they held a friendly correspondence with his son Theodosius, and with
Germanus, the father-in-law of the royal youth. So obscure had been the
former condition of Phocas, that the emperor was ignorant of the
name and character of his rival; but as soon as he learned, that the
centurion, though bold in sedition, was timid in the face of danger,
"Alas!" cried the desponding prince, "if he is a coward, he will surely
be a murderer."

[Footnote 40: Maurice himself composed xii books on the military art,
which are still extant, and have been published (Upsal, 1664) by John
Schaeffer, at the end of the Tactics of Arrian, (Fabricius, Bibliot
Graeca, l. iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) who promises to speak more fully
of his work in its proper place.]

[Footnote 41: See the mutinies under the reign of Maurice, in
Theophylact l iii c. 1--4,.vi. c. 7, 8, 10, l. vii. c. 1 l. viii. c. 6,
&c.]

[Footnote 42: Theophylact and Theophanes seem ignorant of the conspiracy
and avarice of Maurice. These charges, so unfavorable to the memory
of that emperor, are first mentioned by the author of the Paschal
Chronicle, (p. 379, 280;) from whence Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p.
77, 78) has transcribed them. Cedrenus (p. 399) has followed another
computation of the ransom.]

Yet if Constantinople had been firm and faithful, the murderer might
have spent his fury against the walls; and the rebel army would have
been gradually consumed or reconciled by the prudence of the emperor.
In the games of the Circus, which he repeated with unusual pomp,
Maurice disguised, with smiles of confidence, the anxiety of his heart,
condescended to solicit the applause of the factions, and flattered
their pride by accepting from their respective tribunes a list of nine
hundred blues and fifteen hundred greens, whom he affected to esteem
as the solid pillars of his throne Their treacherous or languid support
betrayed his weakness and hastened his fall: the green faction were the
secret accomplices of the rebels, and the blues recommended lenity
and moderation in a contest with their Roman brethren The rigid and
parsimonious virtues of Maurice had long since alienated the hearts of
his subjects: as he walked barefoot in a religious procession, he was
rudely assaulted with stones, and his guards were compelled to present
their iron maces in the defence of his person. A fanatic monk ran
through the streets with a drawn sword, denouncing against him the
wrath and the sentence of God; and a vile plebeian, who represented
his countenance and apparel, was seated on an ass, and pursued by the
imprecations of the multitude. [43] The emperor suspected the popularity
of Germanus with the soldiers and citizens: he feared, he threatened,
but he delayed to strike; the patrician fled to the sanctuary of the
church; the people rose in his defence, the walls were deserted by the
guards, and the lawless city was abandoned to the flames and rapine of
a nocturnal tumult. In a small bark, the unfortunate Maurice, with his
wife and nine children, escaped to the Asiatic shore; but the violence
of the wind compelled him to land at the church of St. Autonomus, [44]
near Chalcedon, from whence he despatched Theodosius, he eldest son,
to implore the gratitude and friendship of the Persian monarch. For
himself, he refused to fly: his body was tortured with sciatic pains,
[45] his mind was enfeebled by superstition; he patiently awaited the
event of the revolution, and addressed a fervent and public prayer to
the Almighty, that the punishment of his sins might be inflicted in this
world rather than in a future life. After the abdication of Maurice, the
two factions disputed the choice of an emperor; but the favorite of the
blues was rejected by the jealousy of their antagonists, and Germanus
himself was hurried along by the crowds who rushed to the palace of
Hebdomon, seven miles from the city, to adore the majesty of Phocas the
centurion. A modest wish of resigning the purple to the rank and merit
of Germanus was opposed by his resolution, more obstinate and equally
sincere; the senate and clergy obeyed his summons; and, as soon as
the patriarch was assured of his orthodox belief, he consecrated the
successful usurper in the church of St. John the Baptist. On the third
day, amidst the acclamations of a thoughtless people, Phocas made his
public entry in a chariot drawn by four white horses: the revolt of the
troops was rewarded by a lavish donative; and the new sovereign, after
visiting the palace, beheld from his throne the games of the hippodrome.
In a dispute of precedency between the two factions, his partial
judgment inclined in favor of the greens. "Remember that Maurice is
still alive," resounded from the opposite side; and the indiscreet
clamor of the blues admonished and stimulated the cruelty of the tyrant.
The ministers of death were despatched to Chalcedon: they dragged
the emperor from his sanctuary; and the five sons of Maurice were
successively murdered before the eyes of their agonizing parent. At
each stroke, which he felt in his heart, he found strength to rehearse
a pious ejaculation: "Thou art just, O Lord! and thy judgments are
righteous." And such, in the last moments, was his rigid attachment to
truth and justice, that he revealed to the soldiers the pious falsehood
of a nurse who presented her own child in the place of a royal infant.
[46] The tragic scene was finally closed by the execution of the emperor
himself, in the twentieth year of his reign, and the sixty-third of his
age. The bodies of the father and his five sons were cast into the sea;
their heads were exposed at Constantinople to the insults or pity of the
multitude; and it was not till some signs of putrefaction had appeared,
that Phocas connived at the private burial of these venerable remains.
In that grave, the faults and errors of Maurice were kindly interred.
His fate alone was remembered; and at the end of twenty years, in the
recital of the history of Theophylact, the mournful tale was interrupted
by the tears of the audience. [47]

[Footnote 43: In their clamors against Maurice, the people of
Constantinople branded him with the name of Marcionite or Marcionist; a
heresy (says Theophylact, l. viii. c. 9). Did they only cast out a vague
reproach--or had the emperor really listened to some obscure teacher of
those ancient Gnostics?]

[Footnote 44: The church of St. Autonomous (whom I have not the honor to
know) was 150 stadia from Constantinople, (Theophylact, l. viii. c. 9.)
The port of Eutropius, where Maurice and his children were murdered, is
described by Gyllius (de Bosphoro Thracio, l. iii. c. xi.) as one of the
two harbors of Chalcedon.]

[Footnote 45: The inhabitants of Constantinople were generally subject;
and Theophylact insinuates, (l. viii. c. 9,) that if it were consistent
with the rules of history, he could assign the medical cause. Yet such
a digression would not have been more impertinent than his inquiry (l.
vii. c. 16, 17) into the annual inundations of the Nile, and all the
opinions of the Greek philosophers on that subject.]

[Footnote 46: From this generous attempt, Corneille has deduced the
intricate web of his tragedy of Heraclius, which requires more than one
representation to be clearly understood, (Corneille de Voltaire, tom.
v. p. 300;) and which, after an interval of some years, is said to have
puzzled the author himself, (Anecdotes Dramatiques, tom. i. p. 422.)]

[Footnote 47: The revolt of Phocas and death of Maurice are told by
Theophylact Simocatta, (l. viii. c. 7--12,) the Paschal Chronicle, (p.
379, 380,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 238-244,) Zonaras, (tom. ii. l.
xiv. p. 77--80,) and Cedrenus, (p. 399--404.)]

Such tears must have flowed in secret, and such compassion would have
been criminal, under the reign of Phocas, who was peaceably acknowledged
in the provinces of the East and West. The images of the emperor and his
wife Leontia were exposed in the Lateran to the veneration of the
clergy and senate of Rome, and afterwards deposited in the palace of the
Caesars, between those of Constantine and Theodosius. As a subject and
a Christian, it was the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the established
government; but the joyful applause with which he salutes the fortune of
the assassin, has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of the
saint. The successor of the apostles might have inculcated with decent
firmness the guilt of blood, and the necessity of repentance; he is
content to celebrate the deliverance of the people and the fall of the
oppressor; to rejoice that the piety and benignity of Phocas have been
raised by Providence to the Imperial throne; to pray that his hands may
be strengthened against all his enemies; and to express a wish,
perhaps a prophecy, that, after a long and triumphant reign, he may
be transferred from a temporal to an everlasting kingdom. [48] I have
already traced the steps of a revolution so pleasing, in Gregory's
opinion, both to heaven and earth; and Phocas does not appear less
hateful in the exercise than in the acquisition of power The pencil of
an impartial historian has delineated the portrait of a monster:
[49] his diminutive and deformed person, the closeness of his shaggy
eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, and his cheek disfigured and
discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even
of arms, he indulged in the supreme rank a more ample privilege of lust
and drunkenness; and his brutal pleasures were either injurious to his
subjects or disgraceful to himself. Without assuming the office of
a prince, he renounced the profession of a soldier; and the reign of
Phocas afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and Asia with desolating
war. His savage temper was inflamed by passion, hardened by fear, and
exasperated by resistance of reproach. The flight of Theodosius to the
Persian court had been intercepted by a rapid pursuit, or a deceitful
message: he was beheaded at Nice, and the last hours of the young
prince were soothed by the comforts of religion and the consciousness
of innocence. Yet his phantom disturbed the repose of the usurper: a
whisper was circulated through the East, that the son of Maurice was
still alive: the people expected their avenger, and the widow and
daughters of the late emperor would have adopted as their son and
brother the vilest of mankind. In the massacre of the Imperial family,
[50] the mercy, or rather the discretion, of Phocas had spared these
unhappy females, and they were decently confined to a private house. But
the spirit of the empress Constantina, still mindful of her father, her
husband, and her sons, aspired to freedom and revenge. At the dead of
night, she escaped to the sanctuary of St. Sophia; but her tears, and
the gold of her associate Germanus, were insufficient to provoke an
insurrection. Her life was forfeited to revenge, and even to justice:
but the patriarch obtained and pledged an oath for her safety: a
monastery was allotted for her prison, and the widow of Maurice accepted
and abused the lenity of his assassin. The discovery or the suspicion of
a second conspiracy, dissolved the engagements, and rekindled the fury,
of Phocas. A matron who commanded the respect and pity of mankind, the
daughter, wife, and mother of emperors, was tortured like the vilest
malefactor, to force a confession of her designs and associates; and the
empress Constantina, with her three innocent daughters, was beheaded at
Chalcedon, on the same ground which had been stained with the blood
of her husband and five sons. After such an example, it would be
superfluous to enumerate the names and sufferings of meaner victims.
Their condemnation was seldom preceded by the forms of trial, and their
punishment was embittered by the refinements of cruelty: their eyes were
pierced, their tongues were torn from the root, the hands and feet were
amputated; some expired under the lash, others in the flames; others
again were transfixed with arrows; and a simple speedy death was mercy
which they could rarely obtain. The hippodrome, the sacred asylum of
the pleasures and the liberty of the Romans, was polluted with heads and
limbs, and mangled bodies; and the companions of Phocas were the most
sensible, that neither his favor, nor their services, could protect them
from a tyrant, the worthy rival of the Caligulas and Domitians of the
first age of the empire. [51]

[Footnote 48: Gregor. l. xi. epist. 38, indict. vi. Benignitatem vestrae
pietatis ad Imperiale fastigium pervenisse gaudemus. Laetentur coeli
et exultet terra, et de vestris benignis actibus universae republicae
populus nunc usque vehementer afflictus hilarescat, &c. This base
flattery, the topic of Protestant invective, is justly censured by the
philosopher Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, Gregoire I. Not. H. tom. ii.
p. 597 598.) Cardinal Baronius justifies the pope at the expense of the
fallen emperor.]

[Footnote 49: The images of Phocas were destroyed; but even the malice
of his enemies would suffer one copy of such a portrait or caricature
(Cedrenus, p. 404) to escape the flames.]

[Footnote 50: The family of Maurice is represented by Ducange, (Familiae
By zantinae, p. 106, 107, 108;) his eldest son Theodosius had been
crowned emperor, when he was no more than four years and a half old, and
he is always joined with his father in the salutations of Gregory. With
the Christian daughters, Anastasia and Theocteste, I am surprised to
find the Pagan name of Cleopatra.]

[Footnote 51: Some of the cruelties of Phocas are marked by Theophylact,
l. viii. c. 13, 14, 15. George of Pisidia, the poet of Heraclius, styles
him (Bell. Avaricum, p. 46, Rome, 1777). The latter epithet is just--but
the corrupter of life was easily vanquished.]





Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.--Part III.

A daughter of Phocas, his only child, was given in marriage to the
patrician Crispus, [52] and the royal images of the bride and bridegroom
were indiscreetly placed in the circus, by the side of the emperor. The
father must desire that his posterity should inherit the fruit of his
crimes, but the monarch was offended by this premature and popular
association: the tribunes of the green faction, who accused the
officious error of their sculptors, were condemned to instant death:
their lives were granted to the prayers of the people; but Crispus might
reasonably doubt, whether a jealous usurper could forget and pardon
his involuntary competition. The green faction was alienated by the
ingratitude of Phocas and the loss of their privileges; every province
of the empire was ripe for rebellion; and Heraclius, exarch of Africa,
persisted above two years in refusing all tribute and obedience to the
centurion who disgraced the throne of Constantinople. By the secret
emissaries of Crispus and the senate, the independent exarch was
solicited to save and to govern his country; but his ambition was
chilled by age, and he resigned the dangerous enterprise to his
son Heraclius, and to Nicetas, the son of Gregory, his friend and
lieutenant. The powers of Africa were armed by the two adventurous
youths; they agreed that the one should navigate the fleet from Carthage
to Constantinople, that the other should lead an army through Egypt and
Asia, and that the Imperial purple should be the reward of diligence and
success. A faint rumor of their undertaking was conveyed to the ears of
Phocas, and the wife and mother of the younger Heraclius were secured
as the hostages of his faith: but the treacherous heart of Crispus
extenuated the distant peril, the means of defence were neglected or
delayed, and the tyrant supinely slept till the African navy cast anchor
in the Hellespont. Their standard was joined at Abidus by the fugitives
and exiles who thirsted for revenge; the ships of Heraclius, whose lofty
masts were adorned with the holy symbols of religion, [53] steered their
triumphant course through the Propontis; and Phocas beheld from the
windows of the palace his approaching and inevitable fate. The green
faction was tempted, by gifts and promises, to oppose a feeble and
fruitless resistance to the landing of the Africans: but the people, and
even the guards, were determined by the well-timed defection of Crispus;
and they tyrant was seized by a private enemy, who boldly invaded the
solitude of the palace. Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a
vile habit, and loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat
to the Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes
of his abominable reign. "Wilt thou govern better?" were the last words
of the despair of Phocas. After suffering each variety of insult and
torture, his head was severed from his body, the mangled trunk was cast
into the flames, and the same treatment was inflicted on the statues
of the vain usurper, and the seditious banner of the green faction. The
voice of the clergy, the senate, and the people, invited Heraclius to
ascend the throne which he had purified from guilt and ignominy; after
some graceful hesitation, he yielded to their entreaties. His coronation
was accompanied by that of his wife Eudoxia; and their posterity, till
the fourth generation, continued to reign over the empire of the East.
The voyage of Heraclius had been easy and prosperous; the tedious march
of Nicetas was not accomplished before the decision of the contest:
but he submitted without a murmur to the fortune of his friend, and
his laudable intentions were rewarded with an equestrian statue, and a
daughter of the emperor. It was more difficult to trust the fidelity of
Crispus, whose recent services were recompensed by the command of the
Cappadocian army. His arrogance soon provoked, and seemed to excuse,
the ingratitude of his new sovereign. In the presence of the senate, the
son-in-law of Phocas was condemned to embrace the monastic life; and the
sentence was justified by the weighty observation of Heraclius, that the
man who had betrayed his father could never be faithful to his friend.
[54]

[Footnote 52: In the writers, and in the copies of those writers, there
is such hesitation between the names of Priscus and Crispus, (Ducange,
Fam Byzant. p. 111,) that I have been tempted to identify the son-in-law
of Phocas with the hero five times victorious over the Avars.]

[Footnote 53: According to Theophanes. Cedrenus adds, which Heraclius
bore as a banner in the first Persian expedition. See George Pisid.
Acroas L 140. The manufacture seems to have flourished; but Foggini, the
Roman editor, (p. 26,) is at a loss to determine whether this picture
was an original or a copy.]

[Footnote 54: See the tyranny of Phocas and the elevation of Heraclius,
in Chron. Paschal. p. 380--383. Theophanes, p. 242-250. Nicephorus, p.
3--7. Cedrenus, p. 404--407. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 80--82.]

Even after his death the republic was afflicted by the crimes of Phocas,
which armed with a pious cause the most formidable of her enemies.
According to the friendly and equal forms of the Byzantine and Persian
courts, he announced his exaltation to the throne; and his ambassador
Lilius, who had presented him with the heads of Maurice and his sons,
was the best qualified to describe the circumstances of the tragic
scene. [55] However it might be varnished by fiction or sophistry,
Chosroes turned with horror from the assassin, imprisoned the pretended
envoy, disclaimed the usurper, and declared himself the avenger of his
father and benefactor. The sentiments of grief and resentment, which
humanity would feel, and honor would dictate, promoted on this occasion
the interest of the Persian king; and his interest was powerfully
magnified by the national and religious prejudices of the Magi and
satraps. In a strain of artful adulation, which assumed the language
of freedom, they presumed to censure the excess of his gratitude and
friendship for the Greeks; a nation with whom it was dangerous to
conclude either peace or alliance; whose superstition was devoid of
truth and justice, and who must be incapable of any virtue, since they
could perpetrate the most atrocious of crimes, the impious murder of
their sovereign. [56] For the crime of an ambitious centurion, the
nation which he oppressed was chastised with the calamities of war; and
the same calamities, at the end of twenty years, were retaliated
and redoubled on the heads of the Persians. [57] The general who had
restored Chosroes to the throne still commanded in the East; and the
name of Narses was the formidable sound with which the Assyrian mothers
were accustomed to terrify their infants. It is not improbable, that a
native subject of Persia should encourage his master and his friend to
deliver and possess the provinces of Asia. It is still more probable,
that Chosroes should animate his troops by the assurance that the sword
which they dreaded the most would remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in
their favor. The hero could not depend on the faith of a tyrant; and
the tyrant was conscious how little he deserved the obedience of a hero.
Narses was removed from his military command; he reared an independent
standard at Hierapolis, in Syria: he was betrayed by fallacious
promises, and burnt alive in the market-place of Constantinople.
Deprived of the only chief whom they could fear or esteem, the bands
which he had led to victory were twice broken by the cavalry, trampled
by the elephants, and pierced by the arrows of the Barbarians; and a
great number of the captives were beheaded on the field of battle by
the sentence of the victor, who might justly condemn these seditious
mercenaries as the authors or accomplices of the death of Maurice. Under
the reign of Phocas, the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and
Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by the
Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian cities,
Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhaea or Aleppo, and soon encompassed the
walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The rapid tide of success
discloses the decay of the empire, the incapacity of Phocas, and the
disaffection of his subjects; and Chosroes provided a decent apology for
their submission or revolt, by an impostor, who attended his camp as the
son of Maurice [58] and the lawful heir of the monarchy.

[Footnote 55: Theophylact, l. viii. c. 15. The life of Maurice was
composed about the year 628 (l. viii. c. 13) by Theophylact Simocatta,
ex-praefect, a native of Egypt. Photius, who gives an ample extract of
the work, (cod. lxv. p. 81--100,) gently reproves the affectation and
allegory of the style. His preface is a dialogue between Philosophy and
History; they seat themselves under a plane-tree, and the latter touches
her lyre.]

[Footnote 56: Christianis nec pactum esse, nec fidem nec foedus .....
quod si ulla illis fides fuisset, regem suum non occidissent. Eutych.
Annales tom. ii. p. 211, vers. Pocock.]

[Footnote 57: We must now, for some ages, take our leave of contemporary
historians, and descend, if it be a descent, from the affectation of
rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles and abridgments. Those of
Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 244--279) and Nicephorus (p. 3--16) supply
a regular, but imperfect, series of the Persian war; and for any
additional facts I quote my special authorities. Theophanes, a
courtier who became a monk, was born A.D. 748; Nicephorus patriarch
of Constantinople, who died A.D. 829, was somewhat younger: they both
suffered in the cause of images Hankius, de Scriptoribus Byzantinis, p.
200-246.]

[Footnote 58: The Persian historians have been themselves deceived: but
Theophanes (p. 244) accuses Chosroes of the fraud and falsehood; and
Eutychius believes (Annal. tom. ii. p. 212) that the son of Maurice, who
was saved from the assassins, lived and died a monk on Mount Sinai.]

The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received, [59]
was that of the loss of Antioch; but the aged metropolis, so often
overturned by earthquakes, and pillaged by the enemy, could supply but
a small and languid stream of treasure and blood. The Persians were
equally successful, and more fortunate, in the sack of Caesarea, the
capital of Cappadocia; and as they advanced beyond the ramparts of
the frontier, the boundary of ancient war, they found a less obstinate
resistance and a more plentiful harvest. The pleasant vale of Damascus
has been adorned in every age with a royal city: her obscure felicity
has hitherto escaped the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes
reposed his troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the
hills of Libanus, or invaded the cities of the Phoenician coast. The
conquest of Jerusalem, [60] which had been meditated by Nushirvan,
was achieved by the zeal and avarice of his grandson; the ruin of the
proudest monument of Christianity was vehemently urged by the intolerant
spirit of the Magi; and he could enlist for this holy warfare with
an army of six-and-twenty thousand Jews, whose furious bigotry might
compensate, in some degree, for the want of valor and discipline. [6011]
After the reduction of Galilee, and the region beyond the Jordan, whose
resistance appears to have delayed the fate of the capital, Jerusalem
itself was taken by assault. The sepulchre of Christ, and the stately
churches of Helena and Constantine, were consumed, or at least damaged,
by the flames; the devout offerings of three hundred years were rifled
in one sacrilegious day; the Patriarch Zachariah, and the true cross,
were transported into Persia; and the massacre of ninety thousand
Christians is imputed to the Jews and Arabs, who swelled the disorder
of the Persian march. The fugitives of Palestine were entertained at
Alexandria by the charity of John the Archbishop, who is distinguished
among a crowd of saints by the epithet of almsgiver: [61] and the
revenues of the church, with a treasure of three hundred thousand
pounds, were restored to the true proprietors, the poor of every country
and every denomination. But Egypt itself, the only province which had
been exempt, since the time of Diocletian, from foreign and domestic
war, was again subdued by the successors of Cyrus. Pelusium, the key of
that impervious country, was surprised by the cavalry of the Persians:
they passed, with impunity, the innumerable channels of the Delta, and
explored the long valley of the Nile, from the pyramids of Memphis to
the confines of Aethiopia. Alexandria might have been relieved by a
naval force, but the archbishop and the praefect embarked for Cyprus;
and Chosroes entered the second city of the empire, which still
preserved a wealthy remnant of industry and commerce. His western trophy
was erected, not on the walls of Carthage, [62] but in the neighborhood
of Tripoli; the Greek colonies of Cyrene were finally extirpated; and
the conqueror, treading in the footsteps of Alexander, returned in
triumph through the sands of the Libyan desert. In the same campaign,
another army advanced from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosphorus;
Chalcedon surrendered after a long siege, and a Persian camp was
maintained above ten years in the presence of Constantinople. The
sea-coast of Pontus, the city of Ancyra, and the Isle of Rhodes, are
enumerated among the last conquests of the great king; and if Chosroes
had possessed any maritime power, his boundless ambition would have
spread slavery and desolation over the provinces of Europe.

[Footnote 59: Eutychius dates all the losses of the empire under the
reign of Phocas; an error which saves the honor of Heraclius, whom
he brings not from Carthage, but Salonica, with a fleet laden with
vegetables for the relief of Constantinople, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 223,
224.) The other Christians of the East, Barhebraeus, (apud Asseman,
Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 412, 413,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen.
p. 13--16,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 98, 99,) are more sincere and
accurate. The years of the Persian war are disposed in the chronology of
Pagi.]

[Footnote 60: On the conquest of Jerusalem, an event so interesting to
the church, see the Annals of Eutychius, (tom. ii. p. 212--223,) and the
lamentations of the monk Antiochus, (apud Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A.D.
614, No. 16--26,) whose one hundred and twenty-nine homilies are still
extant, if what no one reads may be said to be extant.]

[Footnote 6011: See Hist. of Jews, vol. iii. p. 240.--M.]

[Footnote 61: The life of this worthy saint is composed by Leontius, a
contemporary bishop; and I find in Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 610,
No. 10, &c.) and Fleury (tom. viii. p. 235-242) sufficient extracts of
this edifying work.]

[Footnote 62: The error of Baronius, and many others who have carried
the arms of Chosroes to Carthage instead of Chalcedon, is founded on
the near resemblance of the Greek words, in the text of Theophanes, &c.,
which have been sometimes confounded by transcribers, and sometimes by
critics.]

From the long-disputed banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the reign of
the grandson of Nushirvan was suddenly extended to the Hellespont and
the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian monarchy. But the provinces,
which had been fashioned by the habits of six hundred years to the
virtues and vices of the Roman government, supported with reluctance
the yoke of the Barbarians. The idea of a republic was kept alive by the
institutions, or at least by the writings, of the Greeks and Romans, and
the subjects of Heraclius had been educated to pronounce the words of
liberty and law. But it has always been the pride and policy of Oriental
princes to display the titles and attributes of their omnipotence; to
upbraid a nation of slaves with their true name and abject condition,
and to enforce, by cruel and insolent threats, the rigor of their
absolute commands. The Christians of the East were scandalized by the
worship of fire, and the impious doctrine of the two principles: the
Magi were not less intolerant than the bishops; and the martyrdom of
some native Persians, who had deserted the religion of Zoroaster, [63]
was conceived to be the prelude of a fierce and general persecution.
By the oppressive laws of Justinian, the adversaries of the church were
made the enemies of the state; the alliance of the Jews, Nestorians, and
Jacobites, had contributed to the success of Chosroes, and his partial
favor to the sectaries provoked the hatred and fears of the Catholic
clergy. Conscious of their fear and hatred, the Persian conqueror
governed his new subjects with an iron sceptre; and, as if he suspected
the stability of his dominion, he exhausted their wealth by exorbitant
tributes and licentious rapine despoiled or demolished the temples of
the East; and transported to his hereditary realms the gold, the silver,
the precious marbles, the arts, and the artists of the Asiatic cities.
In the obscure picture of the calamities of the empire, [64] it is not
easy to discern the figure of Chosroes himself, to separate his actions
from those of his lieutenants, or to ascertain his personal merit in the
general blaze of glory and magnificence. He enjoyed with ostentation the
fruits of victory, and frequently retired from the hardships of war to
the luxury of the palace. But in the space of twenty-four years, he was
deterred by superstition or resentment from approaching the gates of
Ctesiphon: and his favorite residence of Artemita, or Dastagerd,
was situate beyond the Tigris, about sixty miles to the north of the
capital. [65] The adjacent pastures were covered with flocks and
herds: the paradise or park was replenished with pheasants, peacocks,
ostriches, roebucks, and wild boars, and the noble game of lions and
tigers was sometimes turned loose for the bolder pleasures of the chase.
Nine hundred and sixty elephants were maintained for the use or splendor
of the great king: his tents and baggage were carried into the field by
twelve thousand great camels and eight thousand of a smaller size; [66]
and the royal stables were filled with six thousand mules and horses,
among whom the names of Shebdiz and Barid are renowned for their speed
or beauty. [6611] Six thousand guards successively mounted before the
palace gate; the service of the interior apartments was performed by
twelve thousand slaves, and in the number of three thousand virgins, the
fairest of Asia, some happy concubine might console her master for the
age or the indifference of Sira.

The various treasures of gold, silver, gems, silks, and aromatics, were
deposited in a hundred subterraneous vaults and the chamber Badaverd
denoted the accidental gift of the winds which had wafted the spoils
of Heraclius into one of the Syrian harbors of his rival. The vice of
flattery, and perhaps of fiction, is not ashamed to compute the thirty
thousand rich hangings that adorned the walls; the forty thousand
columns of silver, or more probably of marble, and plated wood, that
supported the roof; and the thousand globes of gold suspended in the
dome, to imitate the motions of the planets and the constellations of
the zodiac. [67] While the Persian monarch contemplated the wonders of
his art and power, he received an epistle from an obscure citizen of
Mecca, inviting him to acknowledge Mahomet as the apostle of God. He
rejected the invitation, and tore the epistle. "It is thus," exclaimed
the Arabian prophet, "that God will tear the kingdom, and reject the
supplications of Chosroes." [68] [] Placed on the verge of the two great
empires of the East, Mahomet observed with secret joy the progress of
their mutual destruction; and in the midst of the Persian triumphs,
he ventured to foretell, that before many years should elapse, victory
should again return to the banners of the Romans. [69]

[Footnote 63: The genuine acts of St. Anastasius are published in those
of the with general council, from whence Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D.
614, 626, 627) and Butler (Lives of the Saints, vol. i. p. 242--248)
have taken their accounts. The holy martyr deserted from the Persian to
the Roman army, became a monk at Jerusalem, and insulted the worship of
the Magi, which was then established at Caesarea in Palestine.]

[Footnote 64: Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 99. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p.
14.]

[Footnote 65: D'Anville, Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.
xxxii. p. 568--571.]

[Footnote 66: The difference between the two races consists in one or
two humps; the dromedary has only one; the size of the proper camel is
larger; the country he comes from, Turkistan or Bactriana; the dromedary
is confined to Arabia and Africa. Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. p.
211, &c. Aristot. Hist. Animal. tom. i. l. ii. c. 1, tom. ii. p. 185.]

[Footnote 6611: The ruins of these scenes of Khoosroo's magnificence
have been visited by Sir R. K. Porter. At the ruins of Tokht i Bostan,
he saw a gorgeous picture of a hunt, singularly illustrative of this
passage. Travels, vol. ii. p. 204. Kisra Shirene, which he afterwards
examined, appears to have been the palace of Dastagerd. Vol. ii. p.
173--175.--M.]

[Footnote 67: Theophanes, Chronograph. p. 268. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque
Orientale, p. 997. The Greeks describe the decay, the Persians the
splendor, of Dastagerd; but the former speak from the modest witness of
the eye, the latter from the vague report of the ear.]

[Footnote 68: The historians of Mahomet, Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed,
p. 92, 93) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 247,) date this
embassy in the viith year of the Hegira, which commences A.D. 628, May
11. Their chronology is erroneous, since Chosroes died in the month of
February of the same year, (Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p. 779.) The count
de Boulainvilliers (Vie de Mahomed, p. 327, 328) places this embassy
about A.D. 615, soon after the conquest of Palestine. Yet Mahomet would
scarcely have ventured so soon on so bold a step.]

[Footnote 6811: Khoosroo Purveez was encamped on the banks of the
Karasoo River when he received the letter of Mahomed. He tore the letter
and threw it into the Karasoo. For this action, the moderate author
of the Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh calls him a wretch, and rejoices in all his
subsequent misfortunes. These impressions still exist. I remarked to a
Persian, when encamped near the Karasoo, in 1800, that the banks
were very high, which must make it difficult to apply its waters to
irrigation. "It once fertilized the whole country," said the zealous
Mahomedan, "but its channel sunk with honor from its banks, when that
madman, Khoosroo, threw our holy Prophet's letter into its stream; which
has ever since been accursed and useless." Malcolm's Persia, vol. i. p.
126--M.]

[Footnote 69: See the xxxth chapter of the Koran, entitled the Greeks.
Our honest and learned translator, Sale, (p. 330, 331,) fairly states
this conjecture, guess, wager, of Mahomet; but Boulainvilliers, (p.
329--344,) with wicked intentions, labors to establish this evident
prophecy of a future event, which must, in his opinion, embarrass the
Christian polemics.]

At the time when this prediction is said to have been delivered, no
prophecy could be more distant from its accomplishment, since the first
twelve years of Heraclius announced the approaching dissolution of the
empire. If the motives of Chosroes had been pure and honorable, he
must have ended the quarrel with the death of Phocas, and he would have
embraced, as his best ally, the fortunate African who had so generously
avenged the injuries of his benefactor Maurice. The prosecution of the
war revealed the true character of the Barbarian; and the suppliant
embassies of Heraclius to beseech his clemency, that he would spare the
innocent, accept a tribute, and give peace to the world, were rejected
with contemptuous silence or insolent menace. Syria, Egypt, and the
provinces of Asia, were subdued by the Persian arms, while Europe, from
the confines of Istria to the long wall of Thrace, was oppressed by the
Avars, unsatiated with the blood and rapine of the Italian war. They had
coolly massacred their male captives in the sacred field of Pannonia;
the women and children were reduced to servitude, and the noblest
virgins were abandoned to the promiscuous lust of the Barbarians. The
amorous matron who opened the gates of Friuli passed a short night in
the arms of her royal lover; the next evening, Romilda was condemned to
the embraces of twelve Avars, and the third day the Lombard princess was
impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan observed with a cruel
smile, that such a husband was the fit recompense of her lewdness and
perfidy. [70] By these implacable enemies, Heraclius, on either side,
was insulted and besieged: and the Roman empire was reduced to the walls
of Constantinople, with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and
some maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast.
After the loss of Egypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and
pestilence; and the emperor, incapable of resistance, and hopeless of
relief, had resolved to transfer his person and government to the more
secure residence of Carthage. His ships were already laden with the
treasures of the palace; but his flight was arrested by the patriarch,
who armed the powers of religion in the defence of his country; led
Heraclius to the altar of St. Sophia, and extorted a solemn oath, that
he would live and die with the people whom God had intrusted to his
care. The chagan was encamped in the plains of Thrace; but he dissembled
his perfidious designs, and solicited an interview with the emperor
near the town of Heraclea. Their reconciliation was celebrated with
equestrian games; the senate and people, in their gayest apparel,
resorted to the festival of peace; and the Avars beheld, with envy and
desire, the spectacle of Roman luxury. On a sudden the hippodrome was
encompassed by the Scythian cavalry, who had pressed their secret and
nocturnal march: the tremendous sound of the chagan's whip gave the
signal of the assault, and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm,
was saved with extreme hazard, by the fleetness of his horse. So rapid
was the pursuit, that the Avars almost entered the golden gate of
Constantinople with the flying crowds: [71] but the plunder of the
suburbs rewarded their treason, and they transported beyond the Danube
two hundred and seventy thousand captives. On the shore of Chalcedon,
the emperor held a safer conference with a more honorable foe, who,
before Heraclius descended from his galley, saluted with reverence and
pity the majesty of the purple. The friendly offer of Sain, the Persian
general, to conduct an embassy to the presence of the great king, was
accepted with the warmest gratitude, and the prayer for pardon and peace
was humbly presented by the Praetorian praefect, the praefect of the
city, and one of the first ecclesiastics of the patriarchal church. [72]
But the lieutenant of Chosroes had fatally mistaken the intentions of
his master. "It was not an embassy," said the tyrant of Asia, "it was
the person of Heraclius, bound in chains, that he should have brought to
the foot of my throne. I will never give peace to the emperor of Rome,
till he had abjured his crucified God, and embraced the worship of the
sun." Sain was flayed alive, according to the inhuman practice of his
country; and the separate and rigorous confinement of the ambassadors
violated the law of nations, and the faith of an express stipulation.
Yet the experience of six years at length persuaded the Persian monarch
to renounce the conquest of Constantinople, and to specify the annual
tribute or ransom of the Roman empire; a thousand talents of gold, a
thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk robes, a thousand horses,
and a thousand virgins. Heraclius subscribed these ignominious terms;
but the time and space which he obtained to collect such treasures from
the poverty of the East, was industriously employed in the preparations
of a bold and desperate attack. [Footnote 70: Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis
Langobardorum, l. iv. c. 38, 42. Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. v. p.
305, &c.]

[Footnote 71: The Paschal Chronicle, which sometimes introduces
fragments of history into a barren list of names and dates, gives the
best account of the treason of the Avars, p. 389, 390. The number of
captives is added by Nicephorus.]

[Footnote 72: Some original pieces, such as the speech or letter of the
Roman ambassadors, (p. 386--388,) likewise constitute the merit of the
Paschal Chronicle, which was composed, perhaps at Alexandria, under the
reign of Heraclius.]

Of the characters conspicuous in history, that of Heraclius is one of
the most extraordinary and inconsistent. In the first and last years of
a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave of sloth, of pleasure,
or of superstition, the careless and impotent spectator of the public
calamities. But the languid mists of the morning and evening are
separated by the brightness of the meridian sun; the Arcadius of the
palace arose the Caesar of the camp; and the honor of Rome and Heraclius
was gloriously retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous
campaigns. It was the duty of the Byzantine historians to have revealed
the causes of his slumber and vigilance. At this distance we can
only conjecture, that he was endowed with more personal courage than
political resolution; that he was detained by the charms, and perhaps
the arts, of his niece Martina, with whom, after the death of Eudocia,
he contracted an incestuous marriage; [73] and that he yielded to the
base advice of the counsellors, who urged, as a fundamental law, that
the life of the emperor should never be exposed in the field. [74]
Perhaps he was awakened by the last insolent demand of the Persian
conqueror; but at the moment when Heraclius assumed the spirit of a
hero, the only hopes of the Romans were drawn from the vicissitudes of
fortune, which might threaten the proud prosperity of Chosroes, and must
be favorable to those who had attained the lowest period of depression.
[75] To provide for the expenses of war, was the first care of the
emperor; and for the purpose of collecting the tribute, he was allowed
to solicit the benevolence of the eastern provinces. But the revenue no
longer flowed in the usual channels; the credit of an arbitrary prince
is annihilated by his power; and the courage of Heraclius was first
displayed in daring to borrow the consecrated wealth of churches, under
the solemn vow of restoring, with usury, whatever he had been compelled
to employ in the service of religion and the empire. The clergy
themselves appear to have sympathized with the public distress; and the
discreet patriarch of Alexandria, without admitting the precedent
of sacrilege, assisted his sovereign by the miraculous or seasonable
revelation of a secret treasure. [76] Of the soldiers who had conspired
with Phocas, only two were found to have survived the stroke of time and
of the Barbarians; [77] the loss, even of these seditious veterans, was
imperfectly supplied by the new levies of Heraclius, and the gold of the
sanctuary united, in the same camp, the names, and arms, and languages
of the East and West. He would have been content with the neutrality of
the Avars; and his friendly entreaty, that the chagan would act, not as
the enemy, but as the guardian, of the empire, was accompanied with a
more persuasive donative of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. Two
days after the festival of Easter, the emperor, exchanging his purple
for the simple garb of a penitent and warrior, [78] gave the signal
of his departure. To the faith of the people Heraclius recommended
his children; the civil and military powers were vested in the most
deserving hands, and the discretion of the patriarch and senate was
authorized to save or surrender the city, if they should be oppressed
in his absence by the superior forces of the enemy. [Footnote 73:
Nicephorus, (p. 10, 11,) is happy to observe, that of two sons, its
incestuous fruit, the elder was marked by Providence with a stiff neck,
the younger with the loss of hearing.]

[Footnote 74: George of Pisidia, (Acroas. i. 112--125, p. 5,) who states
the opinions, acquits the pusillanimous counsellors of any sinister
views. Would he have excused the proud and contemptuous admonition of
Crispus?]

[Footnote 75: George Pisid. Acroas. i. 51, &c. p: 4. The Orientals are
not less fond of remarking this strange vicissitude; and I remember
some story of Khosrou Parviz, not very unlike the ring of Polycrates of
Samos.]

[Footnote 76: Baronius gravely relates this discovery, or rather
transmutation, of barrels, not of honey, but of gold, (Annal. Eccles.
A.D. 620, No. 3, &c.) Yet the loan was arbitrary, since it was collected
by soldiers, who were ordered to leave the patriarch of Alexandria no
more than one hundred pounds of gold. Nicephorus, (p. 11,) two hundred
years afterwards, speaks with ill humor of this contribution, which the
church of Constantinople might still feel.]

[Footnote 77: Theophylact Symocatta, l. viii. c. 12. This circumstance
need not excite our surprise. The muster-roll of a regiment, even in
time of peace, is renewed in less than twenty or twenty-five years.]

[Footnote 78: He changed his purple for black, buckskins, and dyed them
red in the blood of the Persians, (Georg. Pisid. Acroas. iii. 118, 121,
122 See the notes of Foggini, p. 35.)]

The neighboring heights of Chalcedon were covered with tents and arms:
but if the new levies of Heraclius had been rashly led to the attack,
the victory of the Persians in the sight of Constantinople might have
been the last day of the Roman empire. As imprudent would it have been
to advance into the provinces of Asia, leaving their innumerable cavalry
to intercept his convoys, and continually to hang on the lassitude and
disorder of his rear. But the Greeks were still masters of the sea;
a fleet of galleys, transports, and store-ships, was assembled in the
harbor; the Barbarians consented to embark; a steady wind carried them
through the Hellespont the western and southern coast of Asia Minor lay
on their left hand; the spirit of their chief was first displayed in a
storm, and even the eunuchs of his train were excited to suffer and
to work by the example of their master. He landed his troops on the
confines of Syria and Cilicia, in the Gulf of Scanderoon, where
the coast suddenly turns to the south; [79] and his discernment was
expressed in the choice of this important post. [80] From all sides,
the scattered garrisons of the maritime cities and the mountains might
repair with speed and safety to his Imperial standard. The natural
fortifications of Cilicia protected, and even concealed, the camp
of Heraclius, which was pitched near Issus, on the same ground where
Alexander had vanquished the host of Darius. The angle which the emperor
occupied was deeply indented into a vast semicircle of the Asiatic,
Armenian, and Syrian provinces; and to whatsoever point of the
circumference he should direct his attack, it was easy for him to
dissemble his own motions, and to prevent those of the enemy. In the
camp of Issus, the Roman general reformed the sloth and disorder of the
veterans, and educated the new recruits in the knowledge and practice of
military virtue. Unfolding the miraculous image of Christ, he urged them
to revenge the holy altars which had been profaned by the worshippers
of fire; addressing them by the endearing appellations of sons and
brethren, he deplored the public and private wrongs of the republic. The
subjects of a monarch were persuaded that they fought in the cause
of freedom; and a similar enthusiasm was communicated to the foreign
mercenaries, who must have viewed with equal indifference the interest
of Rome and of Persia. Heraclius himself, with the skill and patience
of a centurion, inculcated the lessons of the school of tactics, and the
soldiers were assiduously trained in the use of their weapons, and the
exercises and evolutions of the field. The cavalry and infantry in light
or heavy armor were divided into two parties; the trumpets were fixed
in the centre, and their signals directed the march, the charge, the
retreat or pursuit; the direct or oblique order, the deep or extended
phalanx; to represent in fictitious combat the operations of genuine
war. Whatever hardships the emperor imposed on the troops, he inflicted
with equal severity on himself; their labor, their diet, their sleep,
were measured by the inflexible rules of discipline; and, without
despising the enemy, they were taught to repose an implicit confidence
in their own valor and the wisdom of their leader. Cilicia was soon
encompassed with the Persian arms; but their cavalry hesitated to
enter the defiles of Mount Taurus, till they were circumvented by the
evolutions of Heraclius, who insensibly gained their rear, whilst he
appeared to present his front in order of battle. By a false motion,
which seemed to threaten Armenia, he drew them, against their wishes, to
a general action. They were tempted by the artful disorder of his
camp; but when they advanced to combat, the ground, the sun, and the
expectation of both armies, were unpropitious to the Barbarians; the
Romans successfully repeated their tactics in a field of battle, [81]
and the event of the day declared to the world, that the Persians were
not invincible, and that a hero was invested with the purple. Strong in
victory and fame, Heraclius boldly ascended the heights of Mount Taurus,
directed his march through the plains of Cappadocia, and established
his troops, for the winter season, in safe and plentiful quarters on the
banks of the River Halys. [82] His soul was superior to the vanity of
entertaining Constantinople with an imperfect triumph; but the presence
of the emperor was indispensably required to soothe the restless and
rapacious spirit of the Avars.

[Footnote 79: George of Pisidia, (Acroas. ii. 10, p. 8) has fixed this
important point of the Syrian and Cilician gates. They are elegantly
described by Xenophon, who marched through them a thousand years
before. A narrow pass of three stadia between steep, high rocks, and the
Mediterranean, was closed at each end by strong gates, impregnable
to the land, accessible by sea, (Anabasis, l. i. p. 35, 36, with
Hutchinson's Geographical Dissertation, p. vi.) The gates were
thirty-five parasangs, or leagues, from Tarsus, (Anabasis, l. i. p. 33,
34,) and eight or ten from Antioch. Compare Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 580,
581. Schultens, Index Geograph. ad calcem Vit. Saladin. p. 9. Voyage en
Turquie et en Perse, par M. Otter, tom. i. p. 78, 79.]

[Footnote 80: Heraclius might write to a friend in the modest words of
Cicero: "Castra habuimus ea ipsa quae contra Darium habuerat apud Issum
Alexander, imperator haud paulo melior quam aut tu aut ego." Ad Atticum,
v. 20. Issus, a rich and flourishing city in the time of Xenophon, was
ruined by the prosperity of Alexandria or Scanderoon, on the other side
of the bay.]

[Footnote 81: Foggini (Annotat. p. 31) suspects that the Persians were
deceived by the of Aelian, (Tactic. c. 48,) an intricate spiral motion
of the army. He observes (p. 28) that the military descriptions of
George of Pisidia are transcribed in the Tactics of the emperor Leo.]

[Footnote 82: George of Pisidia, an eye-witness, (Acroas. ii. 122,
&c.,) described in three acroaseis, or cantos, the first expedition of
Heraclius. The poem has been lately (1777) published at Rome; but such
vague and declamatory praise is far from corresponding with the sanguine
hopes of Pagi, D'Anville, &c.]

Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has been
attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of
the empire [83] He permitted the Persians to oppress for a while the
provinces, and to insult with impunity the capital of the East; while
the Roman emperor explored his perilous way through the Black Sea, [84]
and the mountains of Armenia, penetrated into the heart of Persia,
[85] and recalled the armies of the great king to the defence of
their bleeding country. With a select band of five thousand soldiers,
Heraclius sailed from Constantinople to Trebizond; assembled his forces
which had wintered in the Pontic regions; and, from the mouth of the
Phasis to the Caspian Sea, encouraged his subjects and allies to march
with the successor of Constantine under the faithful and victorious
banner of the cross. When the legions of Lucullus and Pompey first
passed the Euphrates, they blushed at their easy victory over the
natives of Armenia. But the long experience of war had hardened the
minds and bodies of that effeminate peeple; their zeal and bravery were
approved in the service of a declining empire; they abhorred and feared
the usurpation of the house of Sassan, and the memory of persecution
envenomed their pious hatred of the enemies of Christ. The limits of
Armenia, as it had been ceded to the emperor Maurice, extended as far as
the Araxes: the river submitted to the indignity of a bridge, [86] and
Heraclius, in the footsteps of Mark Antony, advanced towards the city
of Tauris or Gandzaca, [87] the ancient and modern capital of one of the
provinces of Media. At the head of forty thousand men, Chosroes himself
had returned from some distant expedition to oppose the progress of the
Roman arms; but he retreated on the approach of Heraclius, declining the
generous alternative of peace or of battle. Instead of half a million of
inhabitants, which have been ascribed to Tauris under the reign of the
Sophys, the city contained no more than three thousand houses; but the
value of the royal treasures was enhanced by a tradition, that they
were the spoils of Croesus, which had been transported by Cyrus from the
citadel of Sardes. The rapid conquests of Heraclius were suspended
only by the winter season; a motive of prudence, or superstition, [88]
determined his retreat into the province of Albania, along the shores of
the Caspian; and his tents were most probably pitched in the plains of
Mogan, [89] the favorite encampment of Oriental princes. In the course
of this successful inroad, he signalized the zeal and revenge of a
Christian emperor: at his command, the soldiers extinguished the fire,
and destroyed the temples, of the Magi; the statues of Chosroes, who
aspired to divine honors, were abandoned to the flames; and the ruins of
Thebarma or Ormia, [90] which had given birth to Zoroaster himself, made
some atonement for the injuries of the holy sepulchre. A purer spirit
of religion was shown in the relief and deliverance of fifty
thousand captives. Heraclius was rewarded by their tears and grateful
acclamations; but this wise measure, which spread the fame of his
benevolence, diffused the murmurs of the Persians against the pride
and obstinacy of their own sovereign. [Footnote 83: Theophanes (p. 256)
carries Heraclius swiftly into Armenia. Nicephorus, (p. 11,) though he
confounds the two expeditions, defines the province of Lazica. Eutychius
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 231) has given the 5000 men, with the more probable
station of Trebizond.]

[Footnote 84: From Constantinople to Trebizond, with a fair wind,
four or five days; from thence to Erzerom, five; to Erivan, twelve; to
Taurus, ten; in all, thirty-two. Such is the Itinerary of Tavernier,
(Voyages, tom. i. p. 12--56,) who was perfectly conversant with the
roads of Asia. Tournefort, who travelled with a pacha, spent ten or
twelve days between Trebizond and Erzerom, (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii.
lettre xviii.;) and Chardin (Voyages, tom. i. p. 249--254) gives the
more correct distance of fifty-three parasangs, each of 5000 paces,
(what paces?) between Erivan and Tauris.]

[Footnote 85: The expedition of Heraclius into Persia is finely
illustrated by M. D'Anville, (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions,
tom. xxviii. p. 559--573.) He discovers the situation of Gandzaca,
Thebarma, Dastagerd, &c., with admirable skill and learning; but the
obscure campaign of 624 he passes over in silence.]

[Footnote 86: Et pontem indignatus Araxes.--Virgil, Aeneid, viii. 728.
The River Araxes is noisy, rapid, vehement, and, with the melting of the
snows, irresistible: the strongest and most massy bridges are swept away
by the current; and its indignation is attested by the ruins of many
arches near the old town of Zulfa. Voyages de Chardin, tom. i. p. 252.]

[Footnote 87: Chardin, tom. i. p. 255--259. With the Orientals,
(D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 834,) he ascribes the foundation of
Tauris, or Tebris, to Zobeide, the wife of the famous Khalif Haroun
Alrashid; but it appears to have been more ancient; and the names of
Gandzaca, Gazaca, Gaza, are expressive of the royal treasure. The number
of 550,000 inhabitants is reduced by Chardin from 1,100,000, the popular
estimate.]

[Footnote 88: He opened the gospel, and applied or interpreted the first
casual passage to the name and situation of Albania. Theophanes, p.
258.]

[Footnote 89: The heath of Mogan, between the Cyrus and the Araxes, is
sixty parasangs in length and twenty in breadth, (Olearius, p. 1023,
1024,) abounding in waters and fruitful pastures, (Hist. de Nadir Shah,
translated by Mr. Jones from a Persian Ms., part ii. p. 2, 3.) See the
encampments of Timur, (Hist. par Sherefeddin Ali, l. v. c. 37, l. vi. c.
13,) and the coronation of Nadir Shah, (Hist. Persanne, p. 3--13 and the
English Life by Mr. Jones, p. 64, 65.)]

[Footnote 90: Thebarma and Ormia, near the Lake Spauta, are proved to
be the same city by D'Anville, (Memoires de l'Academie, tom. xxviii. p.
564, 565.) It is honored as the birthplace of Zoroaster, according to
the Persians, (Schultens, Index Geograph. p. 48;) and their tradition is
fortified by M. Perron d'Anquetil, (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. tom.
xxxi. p. 375,) with some texts from his, or their, Zendavesta. * Note:
D'Anville (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. tom. xxxii. p. 560) labored to
prove the identity of these two cities; but according to M. St. Martin,
vol. xi. p. 97, not with perfect success. Ourmiah. called Ariema in the
ancient Pehlvi books, is considered, both by the followers of Zoroaster
and by the Mahometans, as his birthplace. It is situated in the southern
part of Aderbidjan.--M.]





Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.--Part IV.

Amidst the glories of the succeeding campaign, Heraclius is almost lost
to our eyes, and to those of the Byzantine historians. [91] From the
spacious and fruitful plains of Albania, the emperor appears to follow
the chain of Hyrcanian Mountains, to descend into the province of Media
or Irak, and to carry his victorious arms as far as the royal cities
of Casbin and Ispahan, which had never been approached by a Roman
conqueror. Alarmed by the danger of his kingdom, the powers of Chosroes
were already recalled from the Nile and the Bosphorus, and three
formidable armies surrounded, in a distant and hostile land, the camp
of the emperor. The Colchian allies prepared to desert his standard; and
the fears of the bravest veterans were expressed, rather than concealed,
by their desponding silence. "Be not terrified," said the intrepid
Heraclius, "by the multitude of your foes. With the aid of Heaven, one
Roman may triumph over a thousand Barbarians. But if we devote our
lives for the salvation of our brethren, we shall obtain the crown of
martyrdom, and our immortal reward will be liberally paid by God and
posterity." These magnanimous sentiments were supported by the vigor of
his actions. He repelled the threefold attack of the Persians, improved
the divisions of their chiefs, and, by a well-concerted train of
marches, retreats, and successful actions, finally chased them from the
field into the fortified cities of Media and Assyria. In the severity
of the winter season, Sarbaraza deemed himself secure in the walls of
Salban: he was surprised by the activity of Heraclius, who divided his
troops, and performed a laborious march in the silence of the night. The
flat roofs of the houses were defended with useless valor against the
darts and torches of the Romans: the satraps and nobles of Persia, with
their wives and children, and the flower of their martial youth, were
either slain or made prisoners. The general escaped by a precipitate
flight, but his golden armor was the prize of the conqueror; and the
soldiers of Heraclius enjoyed the wealth and repose which they had so
nobly deserved. On the return of spring, the emperor traversed in seven
days the mountains of Curdistan, and passed without resistance the
rapid stream of the Tigris. Oppressed by the weight of their spoils and
captives, the Roman army halted under the walls of Amida; and Heraclius
informed the senate of Constantinople of his safety and success, which
they had already felt by the retreat of the besiegers. The bridges of
the Euphrates were destroyed by the Persians; but as soon as the emperor
had discovered a ford, they hastily retired to defend the banks of the
Sarus, [92] in Cilicia. That river, an impetuous torrent, was about
three hundred feet broad; the bridge was fortified with strong turrets;
and the banks were lined with Barbarian archers. After a bloody
conflict, which continued till the evening, the Romans prevailed in the
assault; and a Persian of gigantic size was slain and thrown into the
Sarus by the hand of the emperor himself. The enemies were dispersed and
dismayed; Heraclius pursued his march to Sebaste in Cappadocia; and at
the expiration of three years, the same coast of the Euxine applauded
his return from a long and victorious expedition. [93]

[Footnote 91: I cannot find, and (what is much more,) M. D'Anville does
not attempt to seek, the Salban, Tarantum, territory of the Huns, &c.,
mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 260-262.) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
231, 232,) an insufficient author, names Asphahan; and Casbin is most
probably the city of Sapor. Ispahan is twenty-four days' journey from
Tauris, and Casbin half way between, them (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i.
p. 63--82.)]

[Footnote 92: At ten parasangs from Tarsus, the army of the younger
Cyrus passed the Sarus, three plethra in breadth: the Pyramus, a stadium
in breadth, ran five parasangs farther to the east, (Xenophon, Anabas.
l. i. p 33, 34.) Note: Now the Sihan.--M.]

[Footnote 93: George of Pisidia (Bell. Abaricum, 246--265, p. 49)
celebrates with truth the persevering courage of the three campaigns
against the Persians.]

Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who disputed
the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at the heart of
their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted by the marches and
combats of twenty years, and many of the veterans, who had survived
the perils of the sword and the climate, were still detained in the
fortresses of Egypt and Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes
exhausted his kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and
slaves, were divided into three formidable bodies. [94] The first army
of fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the
golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the second
was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of his brother
Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege Constantinople, and
to second the operations of the chagan, with whom the Persian king had
ratified a treaty of alliance and partition. Sarbar, the general of the
third army, penetrated through the provinces of Asia to the well-known
camp of Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred
and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he impatiently
waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the opposite side of the
Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June, thirty thousand Barbarians, the
vanguard of the Avars, forced the long wall, and drove into the capital
a promiscuous crowd of peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore
thousand [95] of his native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of
Gepidae, Russians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the
standard of the chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations,
but the whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the
suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers; and the
inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of the European
and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the magistrates of Constantinople
repeatedly strove to purchase the retreat of the chagan; but their
deputies were rejected and insulted; and he suffered the patricians to
stand before his throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were
seated by his side. "You see," said the haughty Barbarian, "the proofs
of my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready to
send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors. Presume no
longer to tempt your master with a partial and inadequate ransom your
wealth and your city are the only presents worthy of my acceptance. For
yourselves, I shall permit you to depart, each with an under-garment and
a shirt; and, at my entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage
through his lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive,
has left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of
the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like birds,
unless like fishes you could dive into the waves." [96] During ten
successive days, the capital was assaulted by the Avars, who had made
some progress in the science of attack; they advanced to sap or batter
the wall, under the cover of the impenetrable tortoise; their engines
discharged a perpetual volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty
towers of wood exalted the combatants to the height of the neighboring
ramparts.

But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of Heraclius, who
had detached to their relief a body of twelve thousand cuirassiers; the
powers of fire and mechanics were used with superior art and success in
the defence of Constantinople; and the galleys, with two and three ranks
of oars, commanded the Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle
spectators of the defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a
fleet of Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbor; the vassals
of the chagan threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and
after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and formidable
retreat. The devotion of the Romans ascribed this signal deliverance to
the Virgin Mary; but the mother of Christ would surely have condemned
their inhuman murder of the Persian envoys, who were entitled to the
rights of humanity, if they were not protected by the laws of nations.
[97]

[Footnote 94: Petavius (Annotationes ad Nicephorum, p. 62, 63, 64)
discriminates the names and actions of five Persian generals who were
successively sent against Heraclius.]

[Footnote 95: This number of eight myriads is specified by George of
Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 219.) The poet (50--88) clearly indicates that
the old chagan lived till the reign of Heraclius, and that his son and
successor was born of a foreign mother. Yet Foggini (Annotat. p. 57) has
given another interpretation to this passage.]

[Footnote 96: A bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, had been the
present of the Scythian king to Darius, (Herodot. l. iv. c. 131, 132.)
Substituez une lettre a ces signes (says Rousseau, with much good
taste) plus elle sera menacante moins elle effrayera; ce ne sera qu'une
fanfarronade dont Darius n'eut fait que rire, (Emile, tom. iii. p. 146.)
Yet I much question whether the senate and people of Constantinople
laughed at this message of the chagan.]

[Footnote 97: The Paschal Chronicle (p. 392--397) gives a minute and
authentic narrative of the siege and deliverance of Constantinople
Theophanes (p. 264) adds some circumstances; and a faint light may be
obtained from the smoke of George of Pisidia, who has composed a poem
(de Bello Abarico, p. 45--54) to commemorate this auspicious event.]

After the division of his army, Heraclius prudently retired to the banks
of the Phasis, from whence he maintained a defensive war against the
fifty thousand gold spears of Persia. His anxiety was relieved by the
deliverance of Constantinople; his hopes were confirmed by a victory of
his brother Theodorus; and to the hostile league of Chosroes with the
Avars, the Roman emperor opposed the useful and honorable alliance
of the Turks. At his liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars [98]
transported their tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of
Georgia; Heraclius received them in the neighborhood of Teflis, and the
khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may credit the
Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the purple of the
Caesars. Such voluntary homage and important aid were entitled to the
warmest acknowledgments; and the emperor, taking off his own diadem,
placed it on the head of the Turkish prince, whom he saluted with a
tender embrace and the appellation of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he
presented Ziebel with the plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and
the silk, which had been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own
hand, distributed rich jewels and ear-rings to his new allies. In a
secret interview, he produced the portrait of his daughter Eudocia, [99]
condescended to flatter the Barbarian with the promise of a fair and
august bride; obtained an immediate succor of forty thousand horse, and
negotiated a strong diversion of the Turkish arms on the side of the
Oxus. [100] The Persians, in their turn, retreated with precipitation;
in the camp of Edessa, Heraclius reviewed an army of seventy thousand
Romans and strangers; and some months were successfully employed in
the recovery of the cities of Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, whose
fortifications had been imperfectly restored. Sarbar still maintained
the important station of Chalcedon; but the jealousy of Chosroes, or the
artifice of Heraclius, soon alienated the mind of that powerful satrap
from the service of his king and country. A messenger was intercepted
with a real or fictitious mandate to the cadarigan, or second in
command, directing him to send, without delay, to the throne, the head
of a guilty or unfortunate general. The despatches were transmitted to
Sarbar himself; and as soon as he read the sentence of his own death,
he dexterously inserted the names of four hundred officers, assembled
a military council, and asked the cadarigan whether he was prepared to
execute the commands of their tyrant. The Persians unanimously declared,
that Chosroes had forfeited the sceptre; a separate treaty was concluded
with the government of Constantinople; and if some considerations
of honor or policy restrained Sarbar from joining the standard of
Heraclius, the emperor was assured that he might prosecute, without
interruption, his designs of victory and peace.

[Footnote 98: The power of the Chozars prevailed in the viith, viiith,
and ixth centuries. They were known to the Greeks, the Arabs, and under
the name of Kosa, to the Chinese themselves. De Guignes, Hist. des Huns,
tom. ii. part ii. p. 507--509. * Note: Moses of Chorene speaks of an
invasion of Armenia by the Khazars in the second century, l. ii. c. 62.
M. St. Martin suspects them to be the same with the Hunnish nation
of the Acatires or Agazzires. They are called by the Greek historians
Eastern Turks; like the Madjars and other Hunnish or Finnish tribes,
they had probably received some admixture from the genuine Turkish
races. Ibn. Hankal (Oriental Geography) says that their language was
like the Bulgarian, and considers them a people of Finnish or Hunnish
race. Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 268-273. Abel Remusat, Rech. sur les
Langues Tartares, tom. i. p. 315, 316. St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 115.--M]

[Footnote 99: Epiphania, or Eudocia, the only daughter of Heraclius and
his first wife Eudocia, was born at Constantinople on the 7th of July,
A.D. 611, baptized the 15th of August, and crowned (in the oratory of
St. Stephen in the palace) the 4th of October of the same year. At this
time she was about fifteen. Eudocia was afterwards sent to her Turkish
husband, but the news of his death stopped her journey, and prevented
the consummation, (Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 118.)]

[Footnote 100: Elmcain (Hist. Saracen. p. 13--16) gives some curious
and probable facts; but his numbers are rather too high--300,000 Romans
assembled at Edessa--500,000 Persians killed at Nineveh. The abatement
of a cipher is scarcely enough to restore his sanity]

Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of his
subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in its ruins.
The number of five hundred thousand may be interpreted as an Oriental
metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses and elephants, that
covered Media and Assyria against the invasion of Heraclius. Yet the
Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid
prudence of Rhazates was content to follow them by forced marches
through a desolate country, till he received a peremptory mandate to
risk the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris,
at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been
erected: [101] the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since
disappeared; [102] the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the
operations of the two armies. But these operations are neglected by the
Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of epic poetry and romance,
they ascribe the victory, not to the military conduct, but to the
personal valor, of their favorite hero. On this memorable day,
Heraclius, on his horse Phallas, surpassed the bravest of his warriors:
his lip was pierced with a spear; the steed was wounded in the thigh;
but he carried his master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx
of the Barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were
successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor: among these
was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight of his head
scattered grief and despair through the fainting ranks of the Persians.
His armor of pure and massy gold, the shield of one hundred and twenty
plates, the sword and belt, the saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph
of Heraclius; and if he had not been faithful to Christ and his mother,
the champion of Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to
the Jupiter of the Capitol. [103] In the battle of Nineveh, which
was fiercely fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight
standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were taken from
the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut in pieces, and the
victors, concealing their own loss, passed the night on the field. They
acknowledged, that on this occasion it was less difficult to kill
than to discomfit the soldiers of Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their
friends, no more than two bow-shot from the enemy the remnant of the
Persian cavalry stood firm till the seventh hour of the night; about
the eighth hour they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their
baggage, and dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than
of resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in
the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in four-and-twenty
hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the great and the lesser
Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria were open for the first
time to the Romans. By a just gradation of magnificent scenes, they
penetrated to the royal seat of Dastagerd, [1031] and, though much of
the treasure had been removed, and much had been expended, the remaining
wealth appears to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated
their avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed
with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds which he
had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire: and justice might
allow the excuse, if the desolation had been confined to the works of
regal luxury, if national hatred, military license, and religious zeal,
had not wasted with equal rage the habitations and the temples of the
guiltless subject. The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and
the deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria,
reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace
of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain or
Ctesiphon, till he was stopped, on the banks of the Arba, by the
difficulty of the passage, the rigor of the season, and perhaps the fame
of an impregnable capital. The return of the emperor is marked by the
modern name of the city of Sherhzour: he fortunately passed Mount
Zara, before the snow, which fell incessantly thirty-four days; and the
citizens of Gandzca, or Tauris, were compelled to entertain the soldiers
and their horses with a hospitable reception. [104]

[Footnote 101: Ctesias (apud Didor. Sicul. tom. i. l. ii. p. 115,
edit. Wesseling) assigns 480 stadia (perhaps only 32 miles) for the
circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days' journey: the
120,000 persons described by the prophet as incapable of discerning
their right hand from their left, may afford about 700,000 persons of
all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient capital, (Goguet, Origines
des Loix, &c., tom. iii. part i. p. 92, 93,) which ceased to exist
600 years before Christ. The western suburb still subsisted, and is
mentioned under the name of Mosul in the first age of the Arabian
khalifs.]

[Footnote 102: Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 286) passed
over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge of hills the
old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have been 100 feet high,
flanked with 1500 towers, each of the height of 200 feet.]

[Footnote 103: Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first
consecration).... bina postea (continues Livy, i. 10) inter tot bella,
opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris. If Varro (apud
Pomp Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify his liberality in
granting the opime spoils even to a common soldier who had slain the
king or general of the enemy, the honor would have been much more cheap
and common]

[Footnote 1031: Macdonald Kinneir places Dastagerd at Kasr e Shirin,
the palace of Sira on the banks of the Diala between Holwan and Kanabee.
Kinnets Geograph. Mem. p. 306.--M.]

[Footnote 104: In describing this last expedition of Heraclius, the
facts, the places, and the dates of Theophanes (p. 265--271) are so
accurate and authentic, that he must have followed the original letters
of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle has preserved (p.
398--402) a very curious specimen.]

When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his
hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of shame,
should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In the battle of
Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians to vanquish, or
he might have fallen with honor by the lance of a Roman emperor. The
successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure distance, to expect the
event, to assemble the relics of the defeat, and to retire, by measured
steps, before the march of Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the
once loved mansions of Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were
persuaded, that it was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under
the ruins of the city and palace: and as both might have been equally
adverse to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, [1041] and three
concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before the
arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in which he
showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a rapid and secret
journey; and the first evening he lodged in the cottage of a peasant,
whose humble door would scarcely give admittance to the great king.
[105] His superstition was subdued by fear: on the third day, he entered
with joy the fortifications of Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of
his safety till he had opposed the River Tigris to the pursuit of the
Romans. The discovery of his flight agitated with terror and tumult
the palace, the city, and the camp of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated
whether they had most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and
the females of the harem were astonished and pleased by the sight of
mankind, till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined
them to a more distant castle. At his command, the army of Dastagerd
retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the Arba, and a line
of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more distant provinces
successively arrived, and the vilest domestics of the king and satraps
were enrolled for the last defence of the throne. It was still in the
power of Chosroes to obtain a reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly
pressed by the messengers of Heraclius to spare the blood of his
subjects, and to relieve a humane conqueror from the painful duty of
carrying fire and sword through the fairest countries of Asia. But the
pride of the Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he
derived a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he
wept with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and
disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who complained
that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the obstinacy of an old
man. That unhappy old man was himself tortured with the sharpest pains
both of mind and body; and, in the consciousness of his approaching end,
he resolved to fix the tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favored
of his sons. But the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and
Siroes, [1051] who gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had
conspired with the malecontents to assert and anticipate the rights
of primogeniture. [106] Twenty-two satraps (they styled themselves
patriots) were tempted by the wealth and honors of a new reign: to
the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of pay; to
the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to the captives,
liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant peace and the reduction
of taxes. It was determined by the conspirators, that Siroes, with the
ensigns of royalty, should appear in the camp; and if the enterprise
should fail, his escape was contrived to the Imperial court. But the new
monarch was saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes
(yet where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons were
massacred [1061] before his face, and he was thrown into a dungeon,
where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern Persians
minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and famished, and tortured,
by the command of an inhuman son, who so far surpassed the example of
his father: but at the time of his death, what tongue would relate
the story of the parricide? what eye could penetrate into the tower of
darkness? According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he
sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss; [107] and it will not be
denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such
infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the life of
Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the fruit of his
crimes: and in the space of four years, the regal title was assumed by
nine candidates, who disputed, with the sword or dagger, the fragments
of an exhausted monarchy. Every province, and each city of Persia, was
the scene of independence, of discord, and of blood; and the state of
anarchy prevailed about eight years longer, [1071] till the factions
were silenced and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs.
[108]

[Footnote 1041: The Schirin of Persian poetry. The love of Chosru and
Schirin rivals in Persian romance that of Joseph with Zuleika the wife
of Potiphar, of Solomon with the queen of Sheba, and that of Mejnoun and
Leila. The number of Persian poems on the subject may be seen in M. von
Hammer's preface to his poem of Schirin.--M]

[Footnote 105: The words of Theophanes are remarkable. Young princes who
discover a propensity to war should repeatedly transcribe and translate
such salutary texts.]

[Footnote 1051: His name was Kabad (as appears from an official letter
in the Paschal Chronicle, p. 402.) St. Martin considers the name Siroes,
Schirquieh of Schirwey, derived from the word schir, royal. St. Martin,
xi. 153.--M.]

[Footnote 106: The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is
contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398) and the
history of Theophanes, (p. 271.)]

[Footnote 1061: According to Le Beau, this massacre was perpetrated
at Mahuza in Babylonia, not in the presence of Chosroes. The Syrian
historian, Thomas of Maraga, gives Chosroes twenty-four sons; Mirkhond,
(translated by De Sacy,) fifteen; the inedited Modjmel-alte-warikh,
agreeing with Gibbon, eighteen, with their names. Le Beau and St.
Martin, xi. 146.--M.]

[Footnote 107: On the first rumor of the death of Chosroes, an Heracliad
in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople by George of
Pisidia, (p. 97--105.) A priest and a poet might very properly exult in
the damnation of the public enemy but such mean revenge is unworthy of a
king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to find so much black superstition
in the letter of Heraclius: he almost applauds the parricide of Siroes
as an act of piety and justice. * Note: The Mahometans show no more
charity towards the memory of Chosroes or Khoosroo Purveez. All his
reverses are ascribed to the just indignation of God, upon a monarch who
had dared, with impious and accursed hands, to tear the letter of the
Holy Prophet Mahomed. Compare note, p. 231.--M.]

[Footnote 1071: Yet Gibbon himself places the flight and death of
Yesdegird Ill., the last king of Persia, in 651. The famous era of
Yesdegird dates from his accession, June 16 632.--M.]

[Footnote 108: The best Oriental accounts of this last period of the
Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 251--256,)
who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D'Herbelot (Bibliotheque
Orientale, p. 789,) and Assemanni, (Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p.
415--420.)]

As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received the
welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of Chosroes,
and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of Persia. The authors
of the revolution, eager to display their merits in the court or camp of
Tauris, preceded the ambassadors of Siroes, who delivered the letters
of their master to his brother the emperor of the Romans. [109] In the
language of the usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the
Deity, and, without degrading his equal majesty, he offers to reconcile
the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and alliance
more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the treaty were
easily defined and faithfully executed. In the recovery of the standards
and prisoners which had fallen into the hands of the Persians, the
emperor imitated the example of Augustus: their care of the national
dignity was celebrated by the poets of the times, but the decay of
genius may be measured by the distance between Horace and George of
Pisidia: the subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from
persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman eagles, the
true wood of the holy cross was restored to the importunate demands of
the successor of Constantine. The victor was not ambitious of enlarging
the weakness of the empire; the son of Chosroes abandoned without regret
the conquests of his father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of
Syria and Egypt were honorably conducted to the frontier, and a war
which had wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change
in their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius from
Tauris to Constantinople was a perpetual triumph; and after the exploits
of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the Sabbath of his
toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the clergy, and the people,
went forth to meet their hero, with tears and acclamations, with olive
branches and innumerable lamps; he entered the capital in a chariot
drawn by four elephants; and as soon as the emperor could disengage
himself from the tumult of public joy, he tasted more genuine
satisfaction in the embraces of his mother and his son. [110]

[Footnote 109: The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p. 402)
unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The treaty appears in
its execution in the histories of Theophanes and Nicephorus. * Note: M.
Mai. Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, vol. i. P. 2, p. 223, has added some
lines, but no clear sense can be made out of the fragment.--M.]

[Footnote 110: The burden of Corneille's song, "Montrez Heraclius au
peuple qui l'attend," is much better suited to the present occasion. See
his triumph in Theophanes (p. 272, 273) and Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The
life of the mother and tenderness of the son are attested by George of
Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 255, &c., p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is
used somewhat profanely by these Byzantine Christians.]

The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very different
kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy sepulchre. Heraclius
performed in person the pilgrimage of Jerusalem, the identity of the
relic was verified by the discreet patriarch, [111] and this august
ceremony has been commemorated by the annual festival of the exaltation
of the cross. Before the emperor presumed to tread the consecrated
ground, he was instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple,
the pomp and vanity of the world: but in the judgment of his clergy, the
persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the precepts
of the gospel. [1111] He again ascended his throne to receive the
congratulations of the ambassadors of France and India: and the fame
of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, [112] was eclipsed in the popular
estimation, by the superior merit and glory of the great Heraclius.
Yet the deliverer of the East was indigent and feeble. Of the Persian
spoils, the most valuable portion had been expended in the war,
distributed to the soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the
waves of the Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the
obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had borrowed
for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to satisfy these
inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted by the arms and
avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a second payment of the same
taxes; and the arrears of a simple citizen, the treasurer of Damascus,
were commuted to a fine of one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss
of two hundred thousand soldiers [113] who had fallen by the sword,
was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and
population, in this long and destructive war: and although a victorious
army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural
effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength.
While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure
town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they
cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and
trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution.
These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor had
emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his reign,
Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from
the Persians.

[Footnote 111: See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1-4,)
Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240--248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 15.) The
seals of the case had never been broken; and this preservation of the
cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion of Queen Sira.]

[Footnote 1111: If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and penitent
emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be acknowledge that
provocation was not wanting; for how many of them had been eye-witnesses
of, perhaps sufferers in, the horrible atrocities committed on
the capture of the city! Yet we have no authentic account of great
severities exercised by Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted,
which prohibited the Jews from approaching within three miles of the
city--a law, which, in the present exasperated state of the Christians,
might be a measure of security of mercy, rather than of oppression.
Milman, Hist. of the Jews, iii. 242.--M.]

[Footnote 112: George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra
Persas, 415, &c., and Heracleid. Acroas. i. 65--138. I neglect the
meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the chagan were
of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old serpent, &c.]

[Footnote 13: Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives this
number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian war, or
this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.]





Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part I.

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

After the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace and piety
might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But the principle of discord
was alive in their bosom, and they were more solicitous to explore the
nature, than to practice the laws, of their founder. I have already
observed, that the disputes of the Trinity were succeeded by those of
the Incarnation; alike scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the
state, still more minute in their origin, still more durable in their
effects.

It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious war
of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the ecclesiastical and
political schism of the Oriental sects, and to introduce their clamorous
or sanguinary contests, by a modest inquiry into the doctrines of the
primitive church. [1]

[Footnote 1: By what means shall I authenticate this previous inquiry,
which I have studied to circumscribe and compress?--If I persist in
supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and special evidence,
every line would demand a string of testimonies, and every note would
swell to a critical dissertation. But the numberless passages of
antiquity which I have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested and
illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I shall
be content to fortify my narrative by the names and characters of these
respectable guides; and in the contemplation of a minute or remote
object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid of the strongest glasses: 1.
The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labor and
compass; the volumes which relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios,
vth and vith, of 837 pages) are divided into xvi. books--the first
of history, the remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit's
learning is copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear,
his argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the
fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and candor,
as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause. 2. The Arminian
Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume (Amsterdam, 1716) the
ecclesiastical history of the two first centuries, was free both in his
temper and situation; his sense is clear, but his thoughts are narrow;
he reduces the reason or folly of ages to the standard of his private
judgment, and his impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes
tainted by his opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians,
lxxx. Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentiniins, cxxi.
Basilidians, cxxiii. Marcionites, cxli., &c.) under their proper dates.
3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734, 1739, in
two vols. in 4to., with a posthumous dissertation sur les Nazarenes,
Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure of ancient philosophy
and theology. The learned historian spins with incomparable art the
systematic thread of opinion, and transforms himself by turns into the
person of a saint, a sage, or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes
excessive; he betrays an amiable partiality in favor of the weaker side,
and, while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient scope
for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of contents will direct
the reader to any point that he wishes to examine. 4. Less profound than
Petavius, less independent than Le Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre,
the historian Mosheim is full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his
learned work, De Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum (Helmstadt 1753,
in 4to.,) see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172--179, 328--332. The
Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196--202. Basilides, p.
352--361. Carpocrates, p. 363--367. Valentinus, p. 371--389 Marcion, p.
404--410. The Manichaeans, p. 829-837, &c.]

I. A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte has
countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites, or
at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished only by their obstinate
perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites.

Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated: their
obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the softness of
their infant creed would be variously moulded by the zeal or prudence of
three hundred years. Yet the most charitable criticism must refuse
these sectaries any knowledge of the pure and proper divinity of Christ.
Educated in the school of Jewish prophecy and prejudice, they had never
been taught to elevate their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah.
[2] If they had courage to hail their king when he appeared in a
plebeian garb, their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning
their God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under
the name and person of a mortal. [3] The familiar companions of Jesus
of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman, who, in all the
actions of rational and animal life, appeared of the same species with
themselves. His progress from infancy to youth and manhood was marked by
a regular increase in stature and wisdom; and after a painful agony
of mind and body, he expired on the cross. He lived and died for the
service of mankind: but the life and death of Socrates had likewise been
devoted to the cause of religion and justice; and although the stoic
or the hero may disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears which he
shed over his friend and country may be esteemed the purest evidence of
his humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people who
held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the Mosaic
law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases, raised the dead,
divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended to heaven in a fiery
chariot. And the metaphorical style of the Hebrews might ascribe to a
saint and martyr the adoptive title of Son of God.

[Footnote 2: Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207) in the name of his
countrymen, and the modern Jews, the few who divert their thoughts from
money to religion, still hold the same language, and allege the literal
sense of the prophets. * Note: See on this passage Bp. Kaye, Justin
Martyr, p. 25.--M. Note: Most of the modern writers, who have closely
examined this subject, and who will not be suspected of any theological
bias, Rosenmuller on Isaiah ix. 5, and on Psalm xlv. 7, and Bertholdt,
Christologia Judaeorum, c. xx., rightly ascribe much higher notions
of the Messiah to the Jews. In fact, the dispute seems to rest on the
notion that there was a definite and authorized notion of the Messiah,
among the Jews, whereas it was probably so vague, as to admit every
shade of difference, from the vulgar expectation of a mere temporal
king, to the philosophic notion of an emanation from the Deity.--M.]

[Footnote 3: Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9, p. 183)
and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c. 2, p. 3) are
obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is rarely mentioned by
himself or his apostles.]

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, a
distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who confounded the
generation of Christ in the common order of nature, and the less guilty
schismatics, who revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the
aid of an earthly father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced
by the visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the kingdom of
David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and authentic history
has been recorded in several copies of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, [4] which these sectaries long preserved in the original
Hebrew, [5] as the sole evidence of their faith. The natural suspicions
of the husband, conscious of his own chastity, were dispelled by the
assurance (in a dream) that his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and
as this distant and domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal
observation of the historian, he must have listened to the same voice
which dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of
a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy Spirit, was a
creature without example or resemblance, superior in every attribute
of mind and body to the children of Adam. Since the introduction of the
Greek or Chaldean philosophy, [6] the Jews [7] were persuaded of the
preexistence, transmigration, and immortality of souls; and providence
was justified by a supposition, that they were confined in their earthly
prisons to expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former
state. [8] But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost
immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and
virtuous of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and
the Holy Ghost; [9] that his abasement was the result of his voluntary
choice; and that the object of his mission was, to purify, not his
own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native skies, he
received the immense reward of his obedience; the everlasting kingdom of
the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by the prophets, under the
carnal images of peace, of conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could
enlarge the human faculties of Christ to the extend of is celestial
office. In the language of antiquity, the title of God has not been
severely confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister,
his only-begotten son, might claim, without presumption, the religious,
though secondary, worship of a subject of a subject world.

[Footnote 4: The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist in
the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the miraculous
conception is one of the last articles which Dr. Priestley has curtailed
from his scanty creed. * Note: The distinct allusion to the facts
related in the two first chapters of the Gospel, in a work evidently
written about the end of the reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited
by Archbishop Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral
parts of the authentic Christian history.--M.]

[Footnote 5: It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels for the
use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or Syriac idiom:
the fact is attested by a chain of fathers--Papias, Irenaeus, Origen,
Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the Catholics, and admitted by
Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius, among the Protestant critics. But
this Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we
may accuse the diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have
preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek. Erasmus
and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the original Gospel,
deprive themselves of the evidence which declares it to be the work
of an apostle. See Simon, Hist. Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5--9, p.
47--101, and the Prolegomena of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament.
* Note: Surely the extinction of the Judaeo-Christian community related
from Mosheim by Gibbon himself (c. xv.) accounts both simply and
naturally for the loss of a composition, which had become of no
use--nor does it follow that the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew is
unauthorized.--M.]

[Footnote 6: The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero
(Tusculan. l. i.) and Maximus of Tyre (Dissertat. xvi.) from the
intricacies of dialogue, which sometimes amuse, and often perplex, the
readers of the Phoedrus, the Phoedon, and the Laws of Plato.]

[Footnote 7: The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man might have
sinned before he was born, (John, ix. 2,) and the Pharisees held the
transmigration of virtuous souls, (Joseph. de Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c.
7;) and a modern Rabbi is modestly assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras,
Plato, &c., derived their metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.]

[Footnote 8: Four different opinions have been entertained concerning
the origin of human souls: 1. That they are eternal and divine. 2. That
they were created in a separate state of existence, before their union
with the body. 3. That they have been propagated from the original stock
of Adam, who contained in himself the mental as well as the corporeal
seed of his posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and
embodied in the moment of conception.--The last of these sentiments
appears to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history
is grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.]

[Footnote 9: It was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to Origen, and
denied by his apologist, (Photius, Bibliothec. cod. cxvii. p. 296.) Some
of the Rabbis attribute one and the same soul to the persons of Adam,
David, and the Messiah.]

II. The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky and
ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full maturity, to the
happier climes of the Gentiles; and the strangers of Rome or Asia, who
never beheld the manhood, were the more readily disposed to embrace the
divinity, of Christ. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and
the Barbarian, were alike accustomed to conceive a long succession,
an infinite chain of angels or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or
emanations, issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange
or incredible, that the first of these aeons, the Logos, or Word of God,
of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon earth, to
deliver the human race from vice and error, and to conduct them in
the paths of life and immortality. But the prevailing doctrine of the
eternity and inherent pravity of matter infected the primitive churches
of the East. Many among the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that
a celestial spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh; and,
in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the humanity, of
Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount Calvary, [10]
the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics, invented the
phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated by the Marcionites,
the Manichaeans, and the various names of the Gnostic heresy. [11] They
denied the truth and authenticity of the Gospels, as far as they relate
the conception of Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that
preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on the banks of
the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and
not a substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to
imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual
illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds
vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed
on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and
they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of
God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom;
and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and
ascension, of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for
the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry,
such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the Docetes
agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the justification of
pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics, the Jehovah of Israel,
the Creator of this lower world, was a rebellious, or at least an
ignorant, spirit. The Son of God descended upon earth to abolish his
temple and his law; and, for the accomplishment of this salutary end, he
dexterously transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
temporal Messiah.

[Footnote 10: Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud Judaeam
Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus asserebatur. Hieronym,
advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, and
even the Gospel according to St. John, are levelled against the growing
error of the Docetes, who had obtained too much credit in the world,
(1 John, iv. 1--5.)]

[Footnote 11: About the year 200 of the Christian aera, Irenaeus
and Hippolytus efuted the thirty-two sects, which had multiplied to
fourscore in the time of Epiphanius, (Phot. Biblioth. cod. cxx. cxxi.
cxxii.) The five books of Irenaeus exist only in barbarous Latin; but
the original might perhaps be found in some monastery of Greece.]

One of the most subtile disputants of the Manichaean school has pressed
the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of the Christians,
in the state of a human foetus, emerged at the end of nine months from
a female womb. The pious horror of his antagonists provoked them to
disclaim all sensual circumstances of conception and delivery; to
maintain that the divinity passed through Mary like a sunbeam through a
plate of glass; and to assert, that the seal of her virginity remained
unbroken even at the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But
the rashness of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of
those of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but
that he was clothed with an impassible and incorruptible body.
Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has acquired since his
resurrection, and such he must have always possessed, if it were capable
of pervading, without resistance or injury, the density of intermediate
matter. Devoid of its most essential properties, it might be exempt
from the attributes and infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could
increase from an invisible point to its full maturity; a child that
could attain the stature of perfect manhood without deriving any
nourishment from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without
repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter. Jesus
might share the repasts of his disciples without being subject to the
calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity was never sullied
by the involuntary stains of sensual concupiscence. Of a body thus
singularly constituted, a question would arise, by what means, and of
what materials, it was originally framed; and our sounder theology is
startled by an answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both
the form and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea
of pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy: the
incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls, celestial
beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude the notion of
extended space; and their imagination was satisfied with a subtile
nature of air, or fire, or aether, incomparably more perfect than
the grossness of the material world. If we define the place, we must
describe the figure, of the Deity. Our experience, perhaps our vanity,
represents the powers of reason and virtue under a human form. The
Anthropomorphites, who swarmed among the monks of Egypt and the
Catholics of Africa, could produce the express declaration of Scripture,
that man was made after the image of his Creator. [12] The venerable
Serapion, one of the saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with
many a tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his
unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his mind
without any visible object of faith or devotion. [13]

[Footnote 12: The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the beginning
of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of anthropomorphism
among the monks, who were not conscious that they embraced the system
of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i. 18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum
genere monachorum, qui per totam provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro
simplicitatis errore susceptum est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem
(Theophilus) velut haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum
ab universo fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,
Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean, he was
scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar Catholics.]

[Footnote 13: Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod illam
imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione consueverat, aboleri
de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos fletus, crebrosque singultus
repente prorumpens, in terram prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo
proclamaret; "Heu me miserum! tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc
teneam non habeo, vel quem adorem, aut interpallam am nescio." Cassian,
Collat. x. 2.]

III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more substantial,
though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by Cerinthus of Asia, [14]
who dared to oppose the last of the apostles. Placed on the confines of
the Jewish and Gentile world, he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with
the Ebionite, by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union
of a man and a God; and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many
fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine, [15] the
heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, Jesus of Nazareth was a
mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary: but he was the
best and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy instrument to
restore upon earth the worship of the true and supreme Deity. When he
was baptized in the Jordan, the Christ, the first of the aeons, the Son
of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his
mind, and direct his actions during the allotted period of his ministry.
When the Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ,
an immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle, flew
back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the solitary Jesus to
suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the justice and generosity of
such a desertion are strongly questionable; and the fate of an innocent
martyr, at first impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine
companion, might provoke the pity and indignation of the profane.
Their murmurs were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and
modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that when Jesus
was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a miraculous apathy of mind
and body, which rendered him insensible of his apparent sufferings.
It was affirmed, that these momentary, though real, pangs would be
abundantly repaid by the temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for
the Messiah in his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated,
that if he suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never
absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to
expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before his
mysterious union with the Son of God. [16]

[Footnote 14: St. John and Cerinthus (A.D. 80. Cleric. Hist. Eccles.
p. 493) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus; but the apostle
fled from the heretic, lest the building should tumble on their heads.
This foolish story, reprobated by Dr. Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works,
vol. ii.,) is related, however, by Irenaeus, (iii. 3,) on the evidence
of Polycarp, and was probably suited to the time and residence of
Cerinthus. The obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John, iv.
3 alludes to the double nature of that primitive heretic. * Note:
Griesbach asserts that all the Greek Mss., all the translators, and all
the Greek fathers, support the common reading.--Nov. Test. in loc.--M]

[Footnote 15: The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost
incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though of
different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the other as the
divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the passion, they both
retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a human body. 3. Even
that body was aethereal, and perhaps apparent.--Such are the laborious
conclusions of Mosheim. But I much doubt whether the Latin translator
understood Irenaeus, and whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood
themselves.]

[Footnote 16: The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of "My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Rousseau, who has drawn an eloquent,
but indecent, parallel between Christ and Socrates, forgets that not
a word of impatience or despair escaped from the mouth of the dying
philosopher. In the Messiah, such sentiments could be only apparent; and
such ill-sounding words were properly explained as the application of a
psalm and prophecy.]

IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a specious
and noble tenet, must confess, from their present experience, the
incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A similar union is not
inconsistent with a much higher, or even with the highest, degree of
mental faculties; and the incarnation of an aeon or archangel, the most
perfect of created spirits, does not involve any positive contradiction
or absurdity. In the age of religious freedom, which was determined
by the council of Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private
judgment according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established on
the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the edge
of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to stand,
dreadful to fall and the manifold inconveniences of their creed were
aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They hesitated
to pronounce; that God himself, the second person of an equal and
consubstantial trinity, was manifested in the flesh; [17] that a being
who pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary; that
his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years
of human existence; that the Almighty had been scourged and crucified;
that his impassible essence had felt pain and anguish; that his
omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life
and immortality expired on Mount Calvary. These alarming consequences
were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, [18] bishop of
Laodicea, and one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned
grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece; eloquence,
erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes of Apollinaris,
were humbly devoted to the service of religion. The worthy friend of
Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled
with the Arians and Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of
geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and
allegorical sense of the Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated
in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse
diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable
words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still reechoed with
hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He taught
that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man; and
that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and
office of a human soul. Yet as the profound doctor had been terrified at
his own rashness, Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents
of excuse and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of the
Greek philosophers between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that
he might reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the
subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life.

With the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual, rather than
as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either came from heaven,
impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed, and as it were
transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The system of Apollinaris
was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic and Syrian divines whose
schools are honored by the names of Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and
tainted by those of Diodorus, Theodore, and Nestorius. But the person
of the aged bishop of Laedicea, his character and dignity, remained
inviolate; and his rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness
of toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the novelty of the argument,
and diffident of the final sentence of the Catholic church. Her judgment
at length inclined in their favor; the heresy of Apollinaris was
condemned, and the separate congregations of his disciples were
proscribed by the Imperial laws. But his principles were secretly
entertained in the monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the
hatred of Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria.
[Footnote 17: This strong expression might be justified by the language
of St. Paul, (1 Tim. iii. 16;) but we are deceived by our modern Bibles.
The word which was altered to God at Constantinople in the beginning of
the vith century: the true reading, which is visible in the Latin and
Syriac versions, still exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as
of the Latin fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses
of St. John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two
letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique, tom. xv.
p. 148--190, 351--390.) I have weighed the arguments, and may yield to
the authority of the first of philosophers, who was deeply skilled in
critical and theological studies. Note: It should be Griesbach in loc.
The weight of authority is so much against the common reading in
both these points, that they are no longer urged by prudent
controversialists. Would Gibbon's deference for the first of
philosophers have extended to all his theological conclusions?--M.]

[Footnote 18: For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii. c. 46,
l. iii. c. 16 Sazomen, l. v. c. 18, 1. vi. c. 25, 27. Theodoret, l. v.
3, 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom. vii. p. 602--638.
Not. p. 789--794, in 4to. Venise, 1732. The contemporary saint always
mentions the bishop of Laodicea as a friend and brother. The style
of the more recent historians is harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius
compares him (l. viii. c. 11-15) to Basil and Gregory.]

V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were rejected and
forgotten: the recent zeal against the errors of Apollinaris reduced the
Catholics to a seeming agreement with the double nature of Cerinthus.
But instead of a temporary and occasional alliance, they established,
and we still embrace, the substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting
union of a perfect God with a perfect man, of the second person of the
trinity with a reasonable soul and human flesh. In the beginning of the
fifth century, the unity of the two natures was the prevailing doctrine
of the church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode of their
coexistence could neither be represented by our ideas, nor expressed by
our language. Yet a secret and incurable discord was cherished, between
those who were most apprehensive of confounding, and those who were
most fearful of separating, the divinity, and the humanity, of Christ.
Impelled by religious frenzy, they fled with adverse haste from
the error which they mutually deemed most destructive of truth and
salvation. On either hand they were anxious to guard, they were jealous
to defend, the union and the distinction of the two natures, and to
invent such forms of speech, such symbols of doctrine, as were least
susceptible of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas and language
tempted them to ransack art and nature for every possible comparison,
and each comparison mislead their fancy in the explanation of an
incomparable mystery. In the polemic microscope, an atom is enlarged
to a monster, and each party was skilful to exaggerate the absurd or
impious conclusions that might be extorted from the principles of their
adversaries. To escape from each other, they wandered through many
a dark and devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid
phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues
of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of
sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and were
again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To purge
themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error, they
disavowed their consequences, explained their principles, excused their
indiscretions, and unanimously pronounced the sounds of concord and
faith. Yet a latent and almost invisible spark still lurked among the
embers of controversy: by the breath of prejudice and passion, it was
quickly kindled to a mighty flame, and the verbal disputes [19] of the
Oriental sects have shaken the pillars of the church and state.

[Footnote 19: I appeal to the confession of two Oriental prelates,
Gregory Abulpharagius the Jacobite primate of the East, and Elias the
Nestorian metropolitan of Damascus, (see Asseman, Bibliothec. Oriental.
tom. ii. p. 291, tom. iii. p. 514, &c.,) that the Melchites, Jacobites,
Nestorians, &c., agree in the doctrine, and differ only in the
expression. Our most learned and rational divines--Basnage, Le Clerc,
Beausobre, La Croze, Mosheim, Jablonski--are inclined to favor this
charitable judgment; but the zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the
moderation of Dupin is conveyed in a whisper.]

The name of Cyril of Alexandria is famous in controversial story,
and the title of saint is a mark that his opinions and his party have
finally prevailed. In the house of his uncle, the archbishop Theophilus,
he imbibed the orthodox lessons of zeal and dominion, and five years of
his youth were profitably spent in the adjacent monasteries of
Nitria. Under the tuition of the abbot Serapion, he applied himself
to ecclesiastical studies, with such indefatigable ardor, that in the
course of one sleepless night, he has perused the four Gospels, the
Catholic Epistles, and the Epistle to the Romans. Origen he detested;
but the writings of Clemens and Dionysius, of Athanasius and Basil, were
continually in his hands: by the theory and practice of dispute, his
faith was confirmed and his wit was sharpened; he extended round his
cell the cobwebs of scholastic theology, and meditated the works of
allegory and metaphysics, whose remains, in seven verbose folios, now
peaceably slumber by the side of their rivals. [20] Cyril prayed and
fasted in the desert, but his thoughts (it is the reproach of a friend)
[21] were still fixed on the world; and the call of Theophilus, who
summoned him to the tumult of cities and synods, was too readily obeyed
by the aspiring hermit. With the approbation of his uncle, he assumed
the office, and acquired the fame, of a popular preacher. His comely
person adorned the pulpit; the harmony of his voice resounded in the
cathedral; his friends were stationed to lead or second the applause of
the congregation; [22] and the hasty notes of the scribes preserved
his discourses, which in their effect, though not in their composition,
might be compared with those of the Athenian orators. The death of
Theophilus expanded and realized the hopes of his nephew. The clergy
of Alexandria was divided; the soldiers and their general supported the
claims of the archdeacon; but a resistless multitude, with voices and
with hands, asserted the cause of their favorite; and after a period of
thirty-nine years, Cyril was seated on the throne of Athanasius. [23]

[Footnote 20: La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 24)
avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril. De tous les on
vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu'on lise avec moins d'utilite: and
Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. iv. p. 42--52,) in words of
respect, teaches us to despise them.]

[Footnote 21: Of Isidore of Pelusium, (l. i. epist. 25, p. 8.) As the
letter is not of the most creditable sort, Tillemont, less sincere than
the Bollandists, affects a doubt whether this Cyril is the nephew of
Theophilus, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 268.)]

[Footnote 22: A grammarian is named by Socrates (l. vii. c. 13).]

[Footnote 23: See the youth and promotion of Cyril, in Socrates, (l.
vii. c. 7) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarchs. Alexandrin. p. 106, 108.)
The Abbe Renaudot drew his materials from the Arabic history of Severus,
bishop of Hermopolis Magma, or Ashmunein, in the xth century, who can
never be trusted, unless our assent is extorted by the internal evidence
of facts.]




Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part II.

The prize was not unworthy of his ambition. At a distance from the
court, and at the head of an immense capital, the patriarch, as he was
now styled, of Alexandria had gradually usurped the state and authority
of a civil magistrate. The public and private charities of the city were
blindly obeyed by his numerous and fanatic parabolani, [24] familiarized
in their daily office with scenes of death; and the praefects of Egypt
were awed or provoked by the temporal power of these Christian pontiffs.
Ardent in the prosecution of heresy, Cyril auspiciously opened his
reign by oppressing the Novatians, the most innocent and harmless of the
sectaries. The interdiction of their religious worship appeared in his
eyes a just and meritorious act; and he confiscated their holy vessels,
without apprehending the guilt of sacrilege. The toleration, and even
the privileges of the Jews, who had multiplied to the number of forty
thousand, were secured by the laws of the Caesars and Ptolemies, and
a long prescription of seven hundred years since the foundation of
Alexandria. Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, the
patriarch, at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack
of the synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of
resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and
the episcopal warrior, after-rewarding his troops with the plunder
of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the unbelieving
nation. Perhaps he might plead the insolence of their prosperity, and
their deadly hatred of the Christians, whose blood they had recently
shed in a malicious or accidental tumult.

Such crimes would have deserved the animadversion of the magistrate;
but in this promiscuous outrage, the innocent were confounded with the
guilty, and Alexandria was impoverished by the loss of a wealthy and
industrious colony. The zeal of Cyril exposed him to the penalties of
the Julian law; but in a feeble government and a superstitious age, he
was secure of impunity, and even of praise. Orestes complained; but
his just complaints were too quickly forgotten by the ministers of
Theodosius, and too deeply remembered by a priest who affected to
pardon, and continued to hate, the praefect of Egypt. As he passed
through the streets, his chariot was assaulted by a band of five hundred
of the Nitrian monks his guards fled from the wild beasts of the desert;
his protestations that he was a Christian and a Catholic were answered
by a volley of stones, and the face of Orestes was covered with blood.
The loyal citizens of Alexandria hastened to his rescue; he instantly
satisfied his justice and revenge against the monk by whose hand he had
been wounded, and Ammonius expired under the rod of the lictor. At the
command of Cyril his body was raised from the ground, and transported,
in solemn procession, to the cathedral; the name of Ammonius was changed
to that of Thaumasius the wonderful; his tomb was decorated with
the trophies of martyrdom, and the patriarch ascended the pulpit to
celebrate the magnanimity of an assassin and a rebel. Such honors might
incite the faithful to combat and die under the banners of the saint;
and he soon prompted, or accepted, the sacrifice of a virgin, who
professed the religion of the Greeks, and cultivated the friendship
of Orestes. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, [25] was
initiated in her father's studies; her learned comments have elucidated
the geometry of Apollonius and Diophantus, and she publicly taught, both
at Athens and Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In the
bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused
her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious
for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher;
and Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the gorgeous train of horses and
slaves who crowded the door of her academy. A rumor was spread among
the Christians, that the daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the
reconciliation of the praefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was
speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia
was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and
inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop of
savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with
sharp cyster shells, [26] and her quivering limbs were delivered to
the flames. The just progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by
seasonable gifts; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted an indelible
stain on the character and religion of Cyril of Alexandria. [27]

[Footnote 24: The Parabolani of Alexandria were a charitable
corporation, instituted during the plague of Gallienus, to visit the
sick and to bury the dead. They gradually enlarged, abused, and sold the
privileges of their order. Their outrageous conduct during the reign of
Cyril provoked the emperor to deprive the patriarch of their nomination,
and to restrain their number to five or six hundred. But these
restraints were transient and ineffectual. See the Theodosian Code, l.
xvi. tit. ii. and Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 276--278.]

[Footnote 25: For Theon and his daughter Hypatia. see Fabricius,
Bibliothec. tom. viii. p. 210, 211. Her article in the Lexicon of Suidas
is curious and original. Hesychius (Meursii Opera, tom. vii. p. 295,
296) observes, that he was persecuted; and an epigram in the Greek
Anthology (l. i. c. 76, p. 159, edit. Brodaei) celebrates her knowledge
and eloquence. She is honorably mentioned (Epist. 10, 15 16, 33--80,
124, 135, 153) by her friend and disciple the philosophic bishop
Synesius.]

[Footnote 26: Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the sea-beach
before the Caesareum. I may therefore prefer the literal sense, without
rejecting the metaphorical version of tegulae, tiles, which is used
by M. de Valois ignorant, and the assassins were probably regardless,
whether their victim was yet alive.]

[Footnote 27: These exploits of St. Cyril are recorded by Socrates, (l.
vii. c. 13, 14, 15;) and the most reluctant bigotry is compelled to copy
an historian who coolly styles the murderers of Hypatia. At the mention
of that injured name, I am pleased to observe a blush even on the cheek
of Baronius, (A.D. 415, No. 48.)]

Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the blood of a virgin,
than the banishment of a saint; and Cyril had accompanied his uncle
to the iniquitous synod of the Oak. When the memory of Chrysostom was
restored and consecrated, the nephew of Theophilus, at the head of a
dying faction, still maintained the justice of his sentence; nor was it
till after a tedious delay and an obstinate resistance, that he yielded
to the consent of the Catholic world. [28] His enmity to the Byzantine
pontiffs [29] was a sense of interest, not a sally of passion: he envied
their fortunate station in the sunshine of the Imperial court; and he
dreaded their upstart ambition. which oppressed the metropolitans of
Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of Antioch and Alexandria, and
measured their diocese by the limits of the empire. The long moderation
of Atticus, the mild usurper of the throne of Chrysostom, suspended the
animosities of the Eastern patriarchs; but Cyril was at length awakened
by the exaltation of a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After
the short and troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople,
the factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of the
emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame, and invited
the merit of a stranger.

Nestorius, [30] native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was
recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of his
sermons; but the first homily which he preached before the devout
Theodosius betrayed the acrimony and impatience of his zeal. "Give me, O
Caesar!" he exclaimed, "give me the earth purged of heretics, and I
will give you in exchange the kingdom of heaven. Exterminate with me the
heretics; and with you I will exterminate the Persians." On the
fifth day as if the treaty had been already signed, the patriarch of
Constantinople discovered, surprised, and attacked a secret conventicle
of the Arians: they preferred death to submission; the flames that were
kindled by their despair, soon spread to the neighboring houses, and the
triumph of Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On either
side of the Hellespont his episcopal vigor imposed a rigid formulary of
faith and discipline; a chronological error concerning the festival of
Easter was punished as an offence against the church and state. Lydia
and Caria, Sardes and Miletus, were purified with the blood of the
obstinate Quartodecimans; and the edict of the emperor, or rather of the
patriarch, enumerates three-and-twenty degrees and denominations in the
guilt and punishment of heresy. [31] But the sword of persecution which
Nestorius so furiously wielded was soon turned against his own breast.
Religion was the pretence; but, in the judgment of a contemporary saint,
ambition was the genuine motive of episcopal warfare. [32]

[Footnote 28: He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of
Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if we may
believe Nicephorus, l. xiv. c. 18) to the personal intercession of the
Virgin. Yet in his last years he still muttered that John Chrysostom had
been justly condemned, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 278--282.
Baronius Annal. Eccles. A.D. 412, No. 46--64.)]

[Footnote 29: See their characters in the history of Socrates, (l. vii.
c. 25--28;) their power and pretensions, in the huge compilation of
Thomassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 80-91.)]

[Footnote 30: His elevation and conduct are described by Socrates, (l.
vii. c. 29 31;) and Marcellinus seems to have applied the eloquentiae
satis, sapi entiae parum, of Sallust.]

[Footnote 31: Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 65, with the
illustrations of Baronius, (A.D. 428, No. 25, &c.,) Godefroy, (ad
locum,) and Pagi, Critica, (tom. ii. p. 208.)]

[Footnote 32: Isidore of Pelusium, (l. iv. Epist. 57.) His words are
strong and scandalous. Isidore is a saint, but he never became a bishop;
and I half suspect that the pride of Diogenes trampled on the pride of
Plato.]

In the Syrian school, Nestorius had been taught to abhor the confusion
of the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the humanity of his
master Christ from the divinity of the Lord Jesus. [33] The Blessed
Virgin he revered as the mother of Christ, but his ears were offended
with the rash and recent title of mother of God, [34] which had been
insensibly adopted since the origin of the Arian controversy. From the
pulpit of Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and afterwards the
patriarch himself, repeatedly preached against the use, or the abuse,
of a word [35] unknown to the apostles, unauthorized by the church, and
which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to mislead the simple, to
amuse the profane, and to justify, by a seeming resemblance, the old
genealogy of Olympus. [36] In his calmer moments Nestorius confessed,
that it might be tolerated or excused by the union of the two natures,
and the communication of their idioms: [37] but he was exasperated, by
contradiction, to disclaim the worship of a new-born, an infant Deity,
to draw his inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil partnerships
of life, and to describe the manhood of Christ as the robe, the
instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead. At these blasphemous sounds,
the pillars of the sanctuary were shaken. The unsuccessful competitors
of Nestorius indulged their pious or personal resentment, the Byzantine
clergy was secretly displeased with the intrusion of a stranger:
whatever is superstitious or absurd, might claim the protection of
the monks; and the people were interested in the glory of their virgin
patroness. [38] The sermons of the archbishop, and the service of the
altar, were disturbed by seditious clamor; his authority and doctrine
were renounced by separate congregations; every wind scattered round the
empire the leaves of controversy; and the voice of the combatants on a
sonorous theatre reechoed in the cells of Palestine and Egypt. It was
the duty of Cyril to enlighten the zeal and ignorance of his innumerable
monks: in the school of Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the
incarnation of one nature; and the successor of Athanasius consulted
his pride and ambition, when he rose in arms against another Arius, more
formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the hierarchy. After
a short correspondence, in which the rival prelates disguised their
hatred in the hollow language of respect and charity, the patriarch of
Alexandria denounced to the prince and people, to the East and to the
West, the damnable errors of the Byzantine pontiff. From the East,
more especially from Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of
toleration and silence, which were addressed to both parties while they
favored the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms
the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by the
appeal; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith of the pope,
who with his Latin clergy was ignorant of the language, the arts, and
the theology of the Greeks. At the head of an Italian synod, Celestine
weighed the merits of the cause, approved the creed of Cyril, condemned
the sentiments and person of Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his
episcopal dignity, allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and
penance, and delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and
illegal sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, while he darted the
thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal; and his
twelve anathemas [39] still torture the orthodox slaves, who adore the
memory of a saint, without forfeiting their allegiance to the synod of
Chalcedon. These bold assertions are indelibly tinged with the colors
of the Apollinarian heresy; but the serious, and perhaps the sincere
professions of Nestorius have satisfied the wiser and less partial
theologians of the present times. [40]

[Footnote 33: La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 44-53.
Thesaurus Epistolicus, La Crozianus, tom. iii. p. 276--280) has detected
the use, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith centuries, discriminates the
school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his Nestorian disciples.]

[Footnote 34: Deipara; as in zoology we familiarly speak of oviparous
and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the invention of this
word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16) ascribes
to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arians. The orthodox testimonies are
produced by Cyril and Petavius, (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 15,
p. 254, &c.;) but the veracity of the saint is questionable, and the
epithet so easily slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic Ms]

[Footnote 35: Basnage, in his Histoire de l'Eglise, a work of
controversy, (tom l. p. 505,) justifies the mother, by the blood, of
God, (Acts, xx. 28, with Mill's various readings.) But the Greek Mss.
are far from unanimous; and the primitive style of the blood of Christ
is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those copies which were
used by the Christians of St. Thomas on the coast of Malabar, (La Croze,
Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 347.) The jealousy of the Nestorians
and Monophysites has guarded the purity of their text.]

[Footnote 36: The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new Cybele of
the Christians, (Isidor. l. i. epist. 54;) a letter was forged in the
name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her assassin, (Synodicon,
c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484.) In the article of Nestorius, Bayle
has scattered some loose philosophy on the worship of the Virgin Mary.]

[Footnote 37: The item of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer of the
idioms or properties of each nature to the other--of infinity to man,
passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this nicest of subjects compose
the Theological Grammar of Petavius, (Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. l. iv. c.
14, 15, p 209, &c.)]

[Footnote 38: See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, l. i. p. 30, &c.]

[Footnote 39: Concil. tom. iii. p. 943. They have never been directly
approved by the church, (Tillemont. Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 368--372.)
I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry with which Petavius seems
to be agitated in the vith book of his Dogmata Theologica]

[Footnote 40: Such as the rational Basnage (ad tom. i. Variar. Lection.
Canisine in Praefat. c. 2, p. 11--23) and La Croze, the universal
scholar, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16--20. De l'Ethiopie, p.
26, 27. The saur. Epist. p. 176, &c., 283, 285.) His free sentence is
confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski (Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p.
193--201) and Mosheim, (idem. p. 304, Nestorium crimine caruisse est
et mea sententia;) and three more respectable judges will not easily
be found. Asseman, a learned and modest slave, can hardly discern
(Bibliothec. Orient. tom. iv. p. 190--224) the guilt and error of the
Nestorians.]

Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were disposed to
obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a synod of the Catholic, or
rather of the Greek church, was unanimously demanded as the sole remedy
that could appease or decide this ecclesiastical quarrel. [41] Ephesus,
on all sides accessible by sea and land, was chosen for the place, the
festival of Pentecost for the day, of the meeting; a writ of summons was
despatched to each metropolitan, and a guard was stationed to protect
and confine the fathers till they should settle the mysteries of heaven,
and the faith of the earth. Nestorius appeared not as a criminal, but
as a judge; he depended on the weight rather than the number of his
prelates, and his sturdy slaves from the baths of Zeuxippus were armed
for every service of injury or defence. But his adversary Cyril was more
powerful in the weapons both of the flesh and of the spirit. Disobedient
to the letter, or at least to the meaning, of the royal summons, he was
attended by fifty Egyptian bishops, who expected from their patriarch's
nod the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He had contracted an intimate
alliance with Memnon, bishop of Ephesus. The despotic primate of Asia
disposed of the ready succors of thirty or forty episcopal votes: a
crowd of peasants, the slaves of the church, was poured into the city to
support with blows and clamors a metaphysical argument; and the people
zealously asserted the honor of the Virgin, whose body reposed within
the walls of Ephesus. [42] The fleet which had transported Cyril from
Alexandria was laden with the riches of Egypt; and he disembarked a
numerous body of mariners, slaves, and fanatics, enlisted with blind
obedience under the banner of St. Mark and the mother of God. The
fathers, and even the guards, of the council were awed by this martial
array; the adversaries of Cyril and Mary were insulted in the streets,
or threatened in their houses; his eloquence and liberality made a daily
increase in the number of his adherents; and the Egyptian soon computed
that he might command the attendance and the voices of two hundred
bishops. [43] But the author of the twelve anathemas foresaw and dreaded
the opposition of John of Antioch, who, with a small, but respectable,
train of metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys
from the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay, which he
stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, [44] Cyril announced the opening
of the synod sixteen days after the festival of Pentecost. Nestorius,
who depended on the near approach of his Eastern friends, persisted,
like his predecessor Chrysostom, to disclaim the jurisdiction, and to
disobey the summons, of his enemies: they hastened his trial, and
his accuser presided in the seat of judgment. Sixty-eight bishops,
twenty-two of metropolitan rank, defended his cause by a modest and
temperate protest: they were excluded from the councils of their
brethren. Candidian, in the emperor's name, requested a delay of four
days; the profane magistrate was driven with outrage and insult from
the assembly of the saints. The whole of this momentous transaction was
crowded into the compass of a summer's day: the bishops delivered their
separate opinions; but the uniformity of style reveals the influence
or the hand of a master, who has been accused of corrupting the public
evidence of their acts and subscriptions. [45] Without a dissenting
voice, they recognized in the epistles of Cyril the Nicene creed and the
doctrine of the fathers: but the partial extracts from the letters and
homilies of Nestorius were interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the
heretic was degraded from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity.
The sentence, maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was affixed and
proclaimed in the streets of Ephesus: the weary prelates, as they issued
from the church of the mother of God, were saluted as her champions;
and her victory was celebrated by the illuminations, the songs, and the
tumult of the night.

[Footnote 41: The origin and progress of the Nestorian controversy,
till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates, (l. vii. c. 32,)
Evagrius, (l. i. c. 1, 2,) Liberatus, (Brev. c. 1--4,) the original
Acts, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 551--991, edit. Venice, 1728,) the Annals
of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful collections of Tillemont, (Mem.
Eccles. tom. xiv p. 283--377.)]

[Footnote 42: The Christians of the four first centuries were ignorant
of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of Ephesus is affirmed
by the synod, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1102;) yet it has been superseded by
the claim of Jerusalem; and her empty sepulchre, as it was shown to
the pilgrims, produced the fable of her resurrection and assumption, in
which the Greek and Latin churches have piously acquiesced. See Baronius
(Annal. Eccles. A.D. 48, No. 6, &c.) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom.
i. p. 467--477.)]

[Footnote 43: The Acts of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1405, 1408)
exhibit a lively picture of the blind, obstinate servitude of the
bishops of Egypt to their patriarch.]

[Footnote 44: Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the bishops
at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the distance of thirty
days' journey; and ten days more may be fairly allowed for accidents and
repose. The march of Xenophon over the same ground enumerates above 260
parasangs or leagues; and this measure might be illustrated from ancient
and modern itineraries, if I knew how to compare the speed of an army,
a synod, and a caravan. John of Antioch is reluctantly acquitted by
Tillemont himself, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 386--389.)]

[Footnote 45: Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The same imputation was urged by
Count Irenaeus, (tom. iii. p. 1249;) and the orthodox critics do not
find it an easy task to defend the purity of the Greek or Latin copies
of the Acts.]

On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival and indignation
of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the inn, before he had wiped
the dust from his shoes, John of Antioch gave audience to Candidian, the
Imperial minister; who related his ineffectual efforts to prevent or to
annul the hasty violence of the Egyptian. With equal haste and violence,
the Oriental synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their
episcopal honors, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom
of the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a
monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church. [46] His
throne was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly resolved to
bestow on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a faithful shepherd.
By the vigilance of Memnon, the churches were shut against them, and
a strong garrison was thrown into the cathedral. The troops, under the
command of Candidian, advanced to the assault; the outguards were routed
and put to the sword, but the place was impregnable: the besiegers
retired; their retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their
horses, and many of their soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs
and stones. Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with rage and
clamor, with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted anathemas
and excommunications from their spiritual engines; and the court of
Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and contradictory narratives of
the Syrian and Egyptian factions. During a busy period of three months,
the emperor tried every method, except the most effectual means of
indifference and contempt, to reconcile this theological quarrel. He
attempted to remove or intimidate the leaders by a common sentence, of
acquittal or condemnation; he invested his representatives at Ephesus
with ample power and military force; he summoned from either party eight
chosen deputies to a free and candid conference in the neighborhood of
the capital, far from the contagion of popular frenzy. But the Orientals
refused to yield, and the Catholics, proud of their numbers and of their
Latin allies, rejected all terms of union or toleration. The patience
of the meek Theodosius was provoked; and he dissolved in anger this
episcopal tumult, which at the distance of thirteen centuries assumes
the venerable aspect of the third oecumenical council. [47] "God is
my witness," said the pious prince, "that I am not the author of this
confusion. His providence will discern and punish the guilty. Return
to your provinces, and may your private virtues repair the mischief and
scandal of your meeting." They returned to their provinces; but the same
passions which had distracted the synod of Ephesus were diffused over
the Eastern world. After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of
Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace: but
their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence than to reason,
to the mutual lassitude rather than to the Christian charity of the
patriarchs.

[Footnote 46: After the coalition of John and Cyril these invectives
were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must never be
confounded with the genuine sense which respectable enemies entertain of
each other's merit, (Concil tom. iii. p. 1244.)]

[Footnote 47: See the acts of the synod of Ephesus in the original
Greek, and a Latin version almost contemporary, (Concil. tom. iii. p.
991--1339, with the Synodicon adversus Tragoediam Irenaei, tom. iv. p.
235--497,) the Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates (l. vii. c. 34) and
Evagrius, (l i. c. 3, 4, 5,) and the Breviary of Liberatus, (in Concil.
tom. vi. p. 419--459, c. 5, 6,) and the Memoires Eccles. of Tillemont,
(tom. xiv p. 377-487.)]

The Byzantine pontiff had instilled into the royal ear a baleful
prejudice against the character and conduct of his Egyptian rival. An
epistle of menace and invective, [48] which accompanied the summons,
accused him as a busy, insolent, and envious priest, who perplexed the
simplicity of the faith, violated the peace of the church and state,
and, by his artful and separate addresses to the wife and sister of
Theodosius, presumed to suppose, or to scatter, the seeds of discord in
the Imperial family. At the stern command of his sovereign. Cyril had
repaired to Ephesus, where he was resisted, threatened, and confined,
by the magistrates in the interest of Nestorius and the Orientals; who
assembled the troops of Lydia and Ionia to suppress the fanatic and
disorderly train of the patriarch. Without expecting the royal license,
he escaped from his guards, precipitately embarked, deserted the
imperfect synod, and retired to his episcopal fortress of safety and
independence. But his artful emissaries, both in the court and city,
successfully labored to appease the resentment, and to conciliate the
favor, of the emperor. The feeble son of Arcadius was alternately
swayed by his wife and sister, by the eunuchs and women of the palace:
superstition and avarice were their ruling passions; and the orthodox
chiefs were assiduous in their endeavors to alarm the former, and to
gratify the latter. Constantinople and the suburbs were sanctified with
frequent monasteries, and the holy abbots, Dalmatius and Eutyches, [49]
had devoted their zeal and fidelity to the cause of Cyril, the worship
of Mary, and the unity of Christ. From the first moment of their
monastic life, they had never mingled with the world, or trod the
profane ground of the city. But in this awful moment of the danger of
the church, their vow was superseded by a more sublime and indispensable
duty. At the head of a long order of monks and hermits, who carried
burning tapers in their hands, and chanted litanies to the mother of
God, they proceeded from their monasteries to the palace. The people was
edified and inflamed by this extraordinary spectacle, and the trembling
monarch listened to the prayers and adjurations of the saints, who
boldly pronounced, that none could hope for salvation, unless they
embraced the person and the creed of the orthodox successor of
Athanasius. At the same time, every avenue of the throne was assaulted
with gold. Under the decent names of eulogies and benedictions, the
courtiers of both sexes were bribed according to the measure of their
power and rapaciousness. But their incessant demands despoiled the
sanctuaries of Constantinople and Alexandria; and the authority of the
patriarch was unable to silence the just murmur of his clergy, that a
debt of sixty thousand pounds had already been contracted to support the
expense of this scandalous corruption. [50] Pulcheria, who relieved
her brother from the weight of an empire, was the firmest pillar of
orthodoxy; and so intimate was the alliance between the thunders of the
synod and the whispers of the court, that Cyril was assured of success
if he could displace one eunuch, and substitute another in the favor of
Theodosius. Yet the Egyptian could not boast of a glorious or decisive
victory. The emperor, with unaccustomed firmness, adhered to his promise
of protecting the innocence of the Oriental bishops; and Cyril softened
his anathemas, and confessed, with ambiguity and reluctance, a twofold
nature of Christ, before he was permitted to satiate his revenge against
the unfortunate Nestorius. [51]

[Footnote 48: I should be curious to know how much Nestorius paid for
these expressions, so mortifying to his rival.]

[Footnote 49: Eutyches, the heresiarch Eutyches, is honorably named by
Cyril as a friend, a saint, and the strenuous defender of the faith. His
brother, the abbot Dalmatus, is likewise employed to bind the emperor
and all his chamberlains terribili conjuratione. Synodicon. c. 203, in
Concil. tom. iv p. 467.]

[Footnote 50: Clerici qui hic sunt contristantur, quod ecclesia
Alexandrina nudata sit hujus causa turbelae: et debet praeter illa quae
hinc transmissa sint auri libras mille quingentas. Et nunc ei scriptum
est ut praestet; sed de tua ecclesia praesta avaritiae quorum nosti,
&c. This curious and original letter, from Cyril's archdeacon to his
creature the new bishop of Constantinople, has been unaccountably
preserved in an old Latin version, (Synodicon, c. 203, Concil. tom.
iv. p. 465--468.) The mask is almost dropped, and the saints speak the
honest language of interest and confederacy.]

[Footnote 51: The tedious negotiations that succeeded the synod of
Ephesus are diffusely related in the original acts, (Concil. tom. iii.
p. 1339--1771, ad fin. vol. and the Synodicon, in tom. iv.,) Socrates,
(l. vii. c. 28, 35, 40, 41,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 6, 7, 8, 12,)
Liberatus, (c. 7--10, 7-10,) Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p.
487--676.) The most patient reader will thank me for compressing so much
nonsense and falsehood in a few lines.]

The rash and obstinate Nestorius, before the end of the synod, was
oppressed by Cyril, betrayed by the court, and faintly supported by his
Eastern friends. A sentiment or fear or indignation prompted him, while
it was yet time, to affect the glory of a voluntary abdication: [52]
his wish, or at least his request, was readily granted; he was conducted
with honor from Ephesus to his old monastery of Antioch; and, after a
short pause, his successors, Maximian and Proclus, were acknowledged as
the lawful bishops of Constantinople. But in the silence of his cell,
the degraded patriarch could no longer resume the innocence and security
of a private monk. The past he regretted, he was discontented with the
present, and the future he had reason to dread: the Oriental bishops
successively disengaged their cause from his unpopular name, and each
day decreased the number of the schismatics who revered Nestorius as the
confessor of the faith. After a residence at Antioch of four years, the
hand of Theodosius subscribed an edict, [53] which ranked him with
Simon the magician, proscribed his opinions and followers, condemned
his writings to the flames, and banished his person first to Petra, in
Arabia, and at length to Oasis, one of the islands of the Libyan desert.
[54] Secluded from the church and from the world, the exile was still
pursued by the rage of bigotry and war. A wandering tribe of the
Blemmyes or Nubians invaded his solitary prison: in their retreat they
dismissed a crowd of useless captives: but no sooner had Nestorius
reached the banks of the Nile, than he would gladly have escaped from
a Roman and orthodox city, to the milder servitude of the savages. His
flight was punished as a new crime: the soul of the patriarch inspired
the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Egypt; the magistrates, the
soldiers, the monks, devoutly tortured the enemy of Christ and St.
Cyril; and, as far as the confines of Aethiopia, the heretic was
alternately dragged and recalled, till his aged body was broken by the
hardships and accidents of these reiterated journeys. Yet his mind was
still independent and erect; the president of Thebais was awed by his
pastoral letters; he survived the Catholic tyrant of Alexandria, and,
after sixteen years' banishment, the synod of Chalcedon would perhaps
have restored him to the honors, or at least to the communion, of the
church. The death of Nestorius prevented his obedience to their welcome
summons; [55] and his disease might afford some color to the scandalous
report, that his tongue, the organ of blasphemy, had been eaten by the
worms. He was buried in a city of Upper Egypt, known by the names of
Chemnis, or Panopolis, or Akmim; [56] but the immortal malice of the
Jacobites has persevered for ages to cast stones against his sepulchre,
and to propagate the foolish tradition, that it was never watered by the
rain of heaven, which equally descends on the righteous and the ungodly.
[57] Humanity may drop a tear on the fate of Nestorius; yet justice
must observe, that he suffered the persecution which he had approved and
inflicted. [58]

[Footnote 52: Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The original letters in the
Synodicon (c. 15, 24, 25, 26) justify the appearance of a voluntary
resignation, which is asserted by Ebed-Jesu, a Nestorian writer, apud
Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 299, 302.]

[Footnote 53: See the Imperial letters in the Acts of the Synod
of Ephesus, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1730--1735.) The odious name of
Simonians, which was affixed to the disciples of this. Yet these were
Christians! who differed only in names and in shadows.]

[Footnote 54: The metaphor of islands is applied by the grave civilians
(Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. 22, leg. 7) to those happy spots which are
discriminated by water and verdure from the Libyan sands. Three of these
under the common name of Oasis, or Alvahat: 1. The temple of Jupiter
Ammon. 2. The middle Oasis, three days' journey to the west of
Lycopolis. 3. The southern, where Nestorius was banished in the first
climate, and only three days' journey from the confines of Nubia. See a
learned note of Michaelis, (ad Descript. Aegypt. Abulfedae, p. 21-34.)
* Note: 1. The Oasis of Sivah has been visited by Mons. Drovetti and
Mr. Browne. 2. The little Oasis, that of El Kassar, was visited and
described by Belzoni. 3. The great Oasis, and its splendid ruins, have
been well described in the travels of Sir A. Edmonstone. To these must
be added another Western Oasis also visited by Sir A. Edmonstone.--M.]

[Footnote 55: The invitation of Nestorius to the synod of Chalcedon,
is related by Zacharias, bishop of Melitene (Evagrius, l. ii. c. 2.
Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 55,) and the famous Xenaias or
Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p.
40, &c.,) denied by Evagrius and Asseman, and stoutly maintained by
La Croze, (Thesaur. Epistol. tom. iii. p. 181, &c.) The fact is not
improbable; yet it was the interest of the Monophysites to spread the
invidious report, and Eutychius (tom. ii. p. 12) affirms, that Nestorius
died after an exile of seven years, and consequently ten years before
the synod of Chalcedon.]

[Footnote 56: Consult D'Anville, (Memoire sur l'Egypte, p. 191,) Pocock.
(Description of the East, vol. i. p. 76,) Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt,
p. 14,) and his commentator Michaelis, (Not. p. 78--83,) and the Nubian
Geographer, (p. 42,) who mentions, in the xiith century, the ruins and
the sugar-canes of Akmim.]

[Footnote 57: Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 12) and Gregory
Bar-Hebraeus, of Abulpharagius, (Asseman, tom. ii. p. 316,) represent
the credulity of the xth and xiith centuries.]

[Footnote 58: We are obliged to Evagrius (l. i. c. 7) for some extracts
from the letters of Nestorius; but the lively picture of his sufferings
is treated with insult by the hard and stupid fanatic.]





Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part III.

The death of the Alexandrian primate, after a reign of thirty-two years,
abandoned the Catholics to the intemperance of zeal and the abuse
of victory. [59] The monophysite doctrine (one incarnate nature) was
rigorously preached in the churches of Egypt and the monasteries of the
East; the primitive creed of Apollinarius was protected by the sanctity
of Cyril; and the name of Eutyches, his venerable friend, has been
applied to the sect most adverse to the Syrian heresy of Nestorius. His
rival Eutyches was the abbot, or archimandrite, or superior of three
hundred monks, but the opinions of a simple and illiterate recluse might
have expired in the cell, where he had slept above seventy years, if the
resentment or indiscretion of Flavian, the Byzantine pontiff, had not
exposed the scandal to the eyes of the Christian world. His domestic
synod was instantly convened, their proceedings were sullied with
clamor and artifice, and the aged heretic was surprised into a seeming
confession, that Christ had not derived his body from the substance
of the Virgin Mary. From their partial decree, Eutyches appealed to a
general council; and his cause was vigorously asserted by his godson
Chrysaphius, the reigning eunuch of the palace, and his accomplice
Dioscorus, who had succeeded to the throne, the creed, the talents,
and the vices, of the nephew of Theophilus. By the special summons of
Theodosius, the second synod of Ephesus was judiciously composed of
ten metropolitans and ten bishops from each of the six dioceses of the
Eastern empire: some exceptions of favor or merit enlarged the number to
one hundred and thirty-five; and the Syrian Barsumas, as the chief
and representative of the monks, was invited to sit and vote with
the successors of the apostles. But the despotism of the Alexandrian
patriarch again oppressed the freedom of debate: the same spiritual and
carnal weapons were again drawn from the arsenals of Egypt: the Asiatic
veterans, a band of archers, served under the orders of Dioscorus; and
the more formidable monks, whose minds were inaccessible to reason or
mercy, besieged the doors of the cathedral. The general, and, as it
should seem, the unconstrained voice of the fathers, accepted the faith
and even the anathemas of Cyril; and the heresy of the two natures
was formally condemned in the persons and writings of the most learned
Orientals. "May those who divide Christ be divided with the sword, may
they be hewn in pieces, may they be burned alive!" were the charitable
wishes of a Christian synod. [60] The innocence and sanctity of Eutyches
were acknowledged without hesitation; but the prelates, more especially
those of Thrace and Asia, were unwilling to depose their patriarch for
the use or even the abuse of his lawful jurisdiction. They embraced
the knees of Dioscorus, as he stood with a threatening aspect on the
footstool of his throne, and conjured him to forgive the offences,
and to respect the dignity, of his brother. "Do you mean to raise a
sedition?" exclaimed the relentless tyrant. "Where are the officers?" At
these words a furious multitude of monks and soldiers, with staves, and
swords, and chains, burst into the church; the trembling bishops hid
themselves behind the altar, or under the benches, and as they were
not inspired with the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed
a blank paper, which was afterwards filled with the condemnation of the
Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was instantly delivered to the wild beasts of
this spiritual amphitheatre: the monks were stimulated by the voice and
example of Barsumas to avenge the injuries of Christ: it is said that
the patriarch of Alexandria reviled, and buffeted, and kicked, and
trampled his brother of Constantinople: [61] it is certain, that the
victim, before he could reach the place of his exile, expired on the
third day of the wounds and bruises which he had received at Ephesus.
This second synod has been justly branded as a gang of robbers and
assassins; yet the accusers of Dioscorus would magnify his violence, to
alleviate the cowardice and inconstancy of their own behavior.

[Footnote 59: Dixi Cyrillum dum viveret, auctoritate sua effecisse, ne
Eutychianismus et Monophysitarum error in nervum erumperet: idque verum
puto...aliquo... honesto modo cecinerat. The learned but cautious
Jablonski did not always speak the whole truth. Cum Cyrillo lenius
omnino egi, quam si tecum aut cum aliis rei hujus probe gnaris et aequis
rerum aestimatoribus sermones privatos conferrem, (Thesaur. Epistol. La
Crozian. tom. i. p. 197, 198) an excellent key to his dissertations on
the Nestorian controversy!]

[Footnote 60: At the request of Dioscorus, those who were not able to
roar, stretched out their hands. At Chalcedon, the Orientals disclaimed
these exclamations: but the Egyptians more consistently declared.
(Concil. tom. iv. p. 1012.)]

[Footnote 61: (Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum): and this testimony of
Evagrius (l. ii. c. 2) is amplified by the historian Zonaras, (tom. ii.
l. xiii. p. 44,) who affirms that Dioscorus kicked like a wild ass. But
the language of Liberatus (Brev. c. 12, in Concil. tom. vi. p. 438)
is more cautious; and the Acts of Chalcedon, which lavish the names
of homicide, Cain, &c., do not justify so pointed a charge. The monk
Barsumas is more particularly accused, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1418.)]

The faith of Egypt had prevailed: but the vanquished party was supported
by the same pope who encountered without fear the hostile rage of Attila
and Genseric. The theology of Leo, his famous tome or epistle on
the mystery of the incarnation, had been disregarded by the synod of
Ephesus: his authority, and that of the Latin church, was insulted in
his legates, who escaped from slavery and death to relate the melancholy
tale of the tyranny of Dioscorus and the martyrdom of Flavian. His
provincial synod annulled the irregular proceedings of Ephesus; but
as this step was itself irregular, he solicited the convocation of a
general council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From his
independent throne, the Roman bishop spoke and acted without danger
as the head of the Christians, and his dictates were obsequiously
transcribed by Placidia and her son Valentinian; who addressed their
Eastern colleague to restore the peace and unity of the church. But the
pageant of Oriental royalty was moved with equal dexterity by the hand
of the eunuch; and Theodosius could pronounce, without hesitation, that
the church was already peaceful and triumphant, and that the recent
flame had been extinguished by the just punishment of the Nestorians.
Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the
Monophysites, if the emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled;
Theodosius expired; his orthodox sister Pulcheria, with a nominal
husband, succeeded to the throne; Chrysaphius was burnt, Dioscorus was
disgraced, the exiles were recalled, and the tome of Leo was subscribed
by the Oriental bishops. Yet the pope was disappointed in his favorite
project of a Latin council: he disdained to preside in the Greek synod,
which was speedily assembled at Nice in Bithynia; his legates required
in a peremptory tone the presence of the emperor; and the weary fathers
were transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of Marcian and
the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile from the Thracian
Bosphorus, the church of St. Euphemia was built on the summit of a
gentle though lofty ascent: the triple structure was celebrated as a
prodigy of art, and the boundless prospect of the land and sea might
have raised the mind of a sectary to the contemplation of the God of
the universe. Six hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in order in the
nave of the church; but the patriarchs of the East were preceded by the
legates, of whom the third was a simple priest; and the place of honor
was reserved for twenty laymen of consular or senatorian rank. The
gospel was ostentatiously displayed in the centre, but the rule of
faith was defined by the Papal and Imperial ministers, who moderated
the thirteen sessions of the council of Chalcedon. [62] Their partial
interposition silenced the intemperate shouts and execrations, which
degraded the episcopal gravity; but, on the formal accusation of the
legates, Dioscorus was compelled to descend from his throne to the
rank of a criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his judges. The
Orientals, less adverse to Nestorius than to Cyril, accepted the Romans
as their deliverers: Thrace, and Pontus, and Asia, were exasperated
against the murderer of Flavian, and the new patriarchs of
Constantinople and Antioch secured their places by the sacrifice of
their benefactor. The bishops of Palestine, Macedonia, and Greece, were
attached to the faith of Cyril; but in the face of the synod, in the
heat of the battle, the leaders, with their obsequious train, passed
from the right to the left wing, and decided the victory by this
seasonable desertion. Of the seventeen suffragans who sailed from
Alexandria, four were tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen,
falling prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the council, with
sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration, that, if they yielded, they
should be massacred, on their return to Egypt, by the indignant people.
A tardy repentance was allowed to expiate the guilt or error of the
accomplices of Dioscorus: but their sins were accumulated on his head;
he neither asked nor hoped for pardon, and the moderation of those
who pleaded for a general amnesty was drowned in the prevailing cry of
victory and revenge.

To save the reputation of his late adherents, some personal offences
were skilfully detected; his rash and illegal excommunication of the
pope, and his contumacious refusal (while he was detained a prisoner) to
attend to the summons of the synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove
the special facts of his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers
heard with abhorrence, that the alms of the church were lavished on
the female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to the
prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia, or Irene,
was publicly entertained as the concubine of the patriarch. [63]

[Footnote 62: The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv.
p. 761--2071) comprehend those of Ephesus, (p. 890--1189,) which again
comprise the synod of Constantinople under Flavian, (p. 930--1072;)
and at requires some attention to disengage this double involution.
The whole business of Eutyches, Flavian, and Dioscorus, is related by
Evagrius (l. i. c. 9--12, and l. ii. c. 1, 2, 3, 4,) and Liberatus,
(Brev. c. 11, 12, 13, 14.) Once more, and almost for the last time,
I appeal to the diligence of Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p.
479-719.) The annals of Baronius and Pagi will accompany me much further
on my long and laborious journey.]

[Footnote 63: (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276.) A specimen of the wit and
malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l. ii. c.
5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was unknown to the
editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises a tolerable pun,
by confounding the episcopal salutation of "Peace be to all!" with
the genuine or corrupted name of the bishop's concubine: I am ignorant
whether the patriarch, who seems to have been a jealous lover, is the
Cimon of a preceding epigram, was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus
himself.]

For these scandalous offences, Dioscorus was deposed by the synod, and
banished by the emperor; but the purity of his faith was declared in the
presence, and with the tacit approbation, of the fathers. Their prudence
supposed rather than pronounced the heresy of Eutyches, who was never
summoned before their tribunal; and they sat silent and abashed, when
a bold Monophysite casting at their feet a volume of Cyril, challenged
them to anathematize in his person the doctrine of the saint. If we
fairly peruse the acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox
party, [64] we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced
the simple unity of Christ; and the ambiguous concession that he
was formed Of or From two natures, might imply either their previous
existence, or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous interval
between the conception of the man and the assumption of the God.
The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted the term most
offensive to the ears of the Egyptians, that Christ existed In two
natures; and this momentous particle [65] (which the memory, rather than
the understanding, must retain) had almost produced a schism among
the Catholic bishops. The tome of Leo had been respectfully, perhaps
sincerely, subscribed; but they protested, in two successive debates,
that it was neither expedient nor lawful to transgress the sacred
landmarks which had been fixed at Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus,
according to the rule of Scripture and tradition. At length they yielded
to the importunities of their masters; but their infallible decree,
after it had been ratified with deliberate votes and vehement
acclamations, was overturned in the next session by the opposition of
the legates and their Oriental friends. It was in vain that a multitude
of episcopal voices repeated in chorus, "The definition of the fathers
is orthodox and immutable! The heretics are now discovered! Anathema
to the Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair to
Rome." [66] The legates threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a
committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed
on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the fourth general council,
the Christ in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the
Catholic world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of
Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise,
a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the
master-hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of blindness
and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the oracle of
the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the rust of
antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the reformers,
who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of
Chalcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of
controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present
day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning the
mystery of the incarnation.

[Footnote 64: Those who reverence the infallibility of synods, may try
to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were attended by partial
or careless scribes, who dispersed their copies round the world. Our
Greek Mss. are sullied with the false and prescribed reading of (Concil.
tom. iii. p. 1460:) the authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not
seem to have been executed, and the old Latin versions materially differ
from the present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus,
a Roman priest, from the best Mss. at Constantinople, (Ducange, C. P.
Christiana, l. iv. p. 151,) a famous monastery of Latins, Greeks, and
Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959--2049, and Pagi, Critica, tom. ii.
p. 326, &c.]

[Footnote 65: It is darkly represented in the microscope of Petavius,
(tom. v. l. iii. c. 5;) yet the subtle theologian is himself afraid--ne
quis fortasse supervacaneam, et nimis anxiam putet hujusmodi vocularum
inquisitionem, et ab instituti theologici gravitate alienam, (p. 124.)]

[Footnote 66: (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1449.) Evagrius and Liberatus present
only the placid face of the synod, and discreetly slide over these
embers, suppositos cineri doloso.]

Far different was the temper of the Greeks and Egyptians under the
orthodox reigns of Leo and Marcian. Those pious emperors enforced with
arms and edicts the symbol of their faith; [67] and it was declared by
the conscience or honor of five hundred bishops, that the decrees of
the synod of Chalcedon might be lawfully supported, even with blood.
The Catholics observed with satisfaction, that the same synod was odious
both to the Nestorians and the Monophysites; [68] but the Nestorians
were less angry, or less powerful, and the East was distracted by
the obstinate and sanguinary zeal of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was
occupied by an army of monks; in the name of the one incarnate nature,
they pillaged, they burnt, they murdered; the sepulchre of Christ was
defiled with blood; and the gates of the city were guarded in tumultuous
rebellion against the troops of the emperor. After the disgrace and
exile of Dioscorus, the Egyptians still regretted their spiritual
father; and detested the usurpation of his successor, who was introduced
by the fathers of Chalcedon. The throne of Proterius was supported by a
guard of two thousand soldiers: he waged a five years' war against the
people of Alexandria; and on the first intelligence of the death of
Marcian, he became the victim of their zeal. On the third day before
the festival of Easter, the patriarch was besieged in the cathedral,
and murdered in the baptistery. The remains of his mangled corpse were
delivered to the flames, and his ashes to the wind; and the deed was
inspired by the vision of a pretended angel: an ambitious monk, who,
under the name of Timothy the Cat, [69] succeeded to the place and
opinions of Dioscorus. This deadly superstition was inflamed, on either
side, by the principle and the practice of retaliation: in the pursuit
of a metaphysical quarrel, many thousands [70] were slain, and the
Christians of every degree were deprived of the substantial enjoyments
of social life, and of the invisible gifts of baptism and the holy
communion. Perhaps an extravagant fable of the times may conceal an
allegorical picture of these fanatics, who tortured each other and
themselves. "Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer," says a grave
bishop, "the people of Alexandria, and all Egypt, were seized with a
strange and diabolical frenzy: great and small, slaves and freedmen,
monks and clergy, the natives of the land, who opposed the synod of
Chalcedon, lost their speech and reason, barked like dogs, and tore,
with their own teeth the flesh from their hands and arms." [71]

[Footnote 67: See, in the Appendix to the Acts of Chalcedon, the
confirmation of the Synod by Marcian, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1781, 1783;)
his letters to the monks of Alexandria, (p. 1791,) of Mount Sinai,
(p. 1793,) of Jerusalem and Palestine, (p. 1798;) his laws against the
Eutychians, (p. 1809, 1811, 1831;) the correspondence of Leo with the
provincial synods on the revolution of Alexandria, (p. 1835--1930.)]

[Footnote 68: Photius (or rather Eulogius of Alexandria) confesses, in a
fine passage, the specious color of this double charge against Pope Leo
and his synod of Chalcedon, (Bibliot. cod. ccxxv. p. 768.) He waged a
double war against the enemies of the church, and wounded either
foe with the darts of his adversary. Against Nestorius he seemed to
introduce Monophysites; against Eutyches he appeared to countenance the
Nestorians. The apologist claims a charitable interpretation for the
saints: if the same had been extended to the heretics, the sound of the
controversy would have been lost in the air]

[Footnote 69: From his nocturnal expeditions. In darkness and disguise
he crept round the cells of the monastery, and whispered the revelation
to his slumbering brethren, (Theodor. Lector. l. i.)]

[Footnote 70: Such is the hyperbolic language of the Henoticon.]

[Footnote 71: See the Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis, in the Lectiones
Antiquae of Canisius, republished by Basnage, tom. 326.]

The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous Henoticon
[72] of the emperor Zeno, which in his reign, and in that of Anastasius,
was signed by all the bishops of the East, under the penalty of
degradation and exile, if they rejected or infringed this salutary and
fundamental law. The clergy may smile or groan at the presumption of
a layman who defines the articles of faith; yet if he stoops to the
humiliating task, his mind is less infected by prejudice or interest,
and the authority of the magistrate can only be maintained by the
concord of the people. It is in ecclesiastical story, that Zeno appears
least contemptible; and I am not able to discern any Manichaean or
Eutychian guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius. That it was
unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshippers of Christ and the
citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was most pleasing to the Egyptians; yet
the smallest blemish has not been described by the jealous, and even
jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolmen, and it accurately represents
the Catholic faith of the incarnation, without adopting or disclaiming
the peculiar terms of tenets of the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is
pronounced against Nestorius and Eutyches; against all heretics by
whom Christ is divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without
defining the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system
of St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, is
respectfully confirmed; but, instead of bowing at the name of the
fourth council, the subject is dismissed by the censure of all
contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere or at
Chalcedon. Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and the enemies
of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace. The most reasonable
Christians acquiesced in this mode of toleration; but their reason was
feeble and inconstant, and their obedience was despised as timid and
servile by the vehement spirit of their brethren. On a subject which
engrossed the thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to
preserve an exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled the
flame of controversy; and the bonds of communion were alternately broken
and renewed by the private animosity of the bishops. The space between
Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand shades of language and
opinion; the acephali [73] of Egypt, and the Roman pontiffs, of equal
valor, though of unequal strength, may be found at the two extremities
of the theological scale. The acephali, without a king or a bishop, were
separated above three hundred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria,
who had accepted the communion of Constantinople, without exacting
a formal condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the
communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the same synod,
the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematized by the popes. Their
inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of the Greek churches
in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted the validity of their
sacraments, [74] and fomented, thirty-five years, the schism of the
East and West, till they finally abolished the memory of four Byzantine
pontiffs, who had dared to oppose the supremacy of St. Peter. [75]
Before that period, the precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt
had been violated by the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was
suspected of the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in disgrace and exile, the
synod of Chalcedon, while the successor of Cyril would have purchased
its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold. [Footnote
72: The Henoticon is transcribed by Evagrius, (l. iii. c. 13,) and
translated by Liberatus, (Brev. c. 18.) Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 411)
and (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 343) are satisfied that it is free from
heresy; but Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c. 13, p. 40) most
unaccountably affirms Chalcedonensem ascivit. An adversary would prove
that he had never read the Henoticon.]

[Footnote 73: See Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 123, 131, 145,
195, 247.) They were reconciled by the care of Mark I. (A.D. 799--819;)
he promoted their chiefs to the bishoprics of Athribis and Talba,
(perhaps Tava. See D'Anville, p. 82,) and supplied the sacraments, which
had failed for want of an episcopal ordination.]

[Footnote 74: De his quos baptizavit, quos ordinavit Acacius, majorum
traditione confectam et veram, praecipue religiosae solicitudini
congruam praebemus sine difficultate medicinam, (Galacius, in epist. i.
ad Euphemium, Concil. tom. v. 286.) The offer of a medicine proves the
disease, and numbers must have perished before the arrival of the Roman
physician. Tillemont himself (Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 372, 642, &c.)
is shocked at the proud, uncharitable temper of the popes; they are now
glad, says he, to invoke St. Flavian of Antioch, St. Elias of Jerusalem,
&c., to whom they refused communion whilst upon earth. But Cardinal
Baronius is firm and hard as the rock of St. Peter.]

[Footnote 75: Their names were erased from the diptych of the church: ex
venerabili diptycho, in quo piae memoriae transitum ad coelum habentium
episcoporum vocabula continentur, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1846.) This
ecclesiastical record was therefore equivalent to the book of life.]

In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of a syllable,
was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The Trisagion [76]
(thrice holy,) "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!" is supposed,
by the Greeks, to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim
eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle
of the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the church of
Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, "who was crucified
for us!" and this grateful address, either to Christ alone, or to the
whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been
gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it had been
imagined by a Monophysite bishop; [77] the gift of an enemy was at first
rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had
nearly cost the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life. [78] The
people of Constantinople was devoid of any rational principles of
freedom; but they held, as a lawful cause of rebellion, the color of
a livery in the races, or the color of a mystery in the schools. The
Trisagion, with and without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the
cathedral by two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were exhausted,
they had recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones; the
aggressors were punished by the emperor, and defended by the patriarch;
and the crown and mitre were staked on the event of this momentous
quarrel. The streets were instantly crowded with innumerable swarms
of men, women, and children; the legions of monks, in regular array,
marched, and shouted, and fought at their head, "Christians! this is the
day of martyrdom: let us not desert our spiritual father; anathema to
the Manichaean tyrant! he is unworthy to reign." Such was the Catholic
cry; and the galleys of Anastasius lay upon their oars before the
palace, till the patriarch had pardoned his penitent, and hushed the
waves of the troubled multitude. The triumph of Macedonius was checked
by a speedy exile; but the zeal of his flock was again exasperated by
the same question, "Whether one of the Trinity had been crucified?" On
this momentous occasion, the blue and green factions of Constantinople
suspended their discord, and the civil and military powers were
annihilated in their presence. The keys of the city, and the standards
of the guards, were deposited in the forum of Constantine, the principal
station and camp of the faithful. Day and night they were incessantly
busied either in singing hymns to the honor of their God, or in
pillaging and murdering the servants of their prince. The head of his
favorite monk, the friend, as they styled him, of the enemy of the Holy
Trinity, was borne aloft on a spear; and the firebrands, which had
been darted against heretical structures, diffused the undistinguishing
flames over the most orthodox buildings. The statues of the emperor were
broken, and his person was concealed in a suburb, till, at the end of
three days, he dared to implore the mercy of his subjects. Without his
diadem, and in the posture of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the
throne of the circus. The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their
genuine Trisagion; they exulted in the offer, which he proclaimed by
the voice of a herald, of abdicating the purple; they listened to the
admonition, that, since all could not reign, they should previously
agree in the choice of a sovereign; and they accepted the blood of two
unpopular ministers, whom their master, without hesitation, condemned to
the lions. These furious but transient seditions were encouraged by the
success of Vitalian, who, with an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for
the most part idolaters, declared himself the champion of the Catholic
faith. In this pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged
Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thousand of his
fellow-Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the
satisfaction of the pope, and the establishment of the council
of Chalcedon, an orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying
Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And
such was the event of the first of the religious wars which have been
waged in the name and by the disciples, of the God of peace. [79]

[Footnote 76: Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 2, 3, 4,
p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 713, &c., 799)
represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the twelve
centuries between Isaiah and St. Proculs's boy, who was taken up into
heaven before the bishop and people of Constantinople, the song was
considerably improved. The boy heard the angels sing, "Holy God! Holy
strong! Holy immortal!"]

[Footnote 77: Peter Gnapheus, the fuller, (a trade which he had
exercised in his monastery,) patriarch of Antioch. His tedious story is
discussed in the Annals of Pagi (A.D. 477--490) and a dissertation of M.
de Valois at the end of his Evagrius.]

[Footnote 78: The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be
gathered from the Chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and Theophanes. As
the last was not published in the time of Baronius, his critic Pagi is
more copious, as well as more correct.]

[Footnote 79: The general history, from the council of Chalcedon to
the death of Anastasius, may be found in the Breviary of Liberatus, (c.
14--19,) the iid and iiid books of Evagrius, the abstract of the two
books of Theodore the Reader, the Acts of the Synods, and the Epistles
of the Pope, (Concil. tom. v.) The series is continued with some
disorder in the xvth and xvith tomes of the Memoires Ecclesiastiques
of Tillemont. And here I must take leave forever of that incomparable
guide--whose bigotry is overbalanced by the merits of erudition,
diligence, veracity, and scrupulous minuteness. He was prevented by
death from completing, as he designed, the vith century of the church
and empire.]





Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part IV.

Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a prince, a
conqueror, and a lawgiver: the theologian [80] still remains, and it
affords an unfavorable prejudice, that his theology should form a very
prominent feature of his portrait. The sovereign sympathized with
his subjects in their superstitious reverence for living and departed
saints: his Code, and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge
the privileges of the clergy; and in every dispute between a monk and
a layman, the partial judge was inclined to pronounce, that truth, and
innocence, and justice, were always on the side of the church. In his
public and private devotions, the emperor was assiduous and exemplary;
his prayers, vigils, and fasts, displayed the austere penance of a monk;
his fancy was amused by the hope, or belief, of personal inspiration; he
had secured the patronage of the Virgin and St. Michael the archangel;
and his recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the miraculous
succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian. The capital and the
provinces of the East were decorated with the monuments of his religion;
[81] and though the far greater part of these costly structures may be
attributed to his taste or ostentation, the zeal of the royal architect
was probably quickened by a genuine sense of love and gratitude towards
his invisible benefactors. Among the titles of Imperial greatness, the
name of Pious was most pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and
spiritual interest of the church was the serious business of his life;
and the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of
defender of the faith. The controversies of the times were congenial
to his temper and understanding and the theological professors must
inwardly deride the diligence of a stranger, who cultivated their art
and neglected his own. "What can ye fear," said a bold conspirator to
his associates, "from your bigoted tyrant? Sleepless and unarmed, he
sits whole nights in his closet, debating with reverend graybeards, and
turning over the pages of ecclesiastical volumes." [82] The fruits of
these lucubrations were displayed in many a conference, where Justinian
might shine as the loudest and most subtile of the disputants; in many a
sermon, which, under the name of edicts and epistles, proclaimed to the
empire the theology of their master. While the Barbarians invaded the
provinces, while the victorious legion marched under the banners of
Belisarius and Narses, the successor of Trajan, unknown to the camp,
was content to vanquish at the head of a synod. Had he invited to these
synods a disinterested and rational spectator, Justinian might have
learned, "that religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance
and folly; that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and
submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not presume to
scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it is sufficient for us
to know, that power and benevolence are the perfect attributes of the
Deity." [83]

[Footnote 80: The strain of the Anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 11, 13, 18,
27, 28,) with the learned remarks of Alemannus, is confirmed, rather
than contradicted, by the Acts of the Councils, the fourth book of
Evagrius, and the complaints of the African Facundus, in his
xiith book--de tribus capitulis, "cum videri doctus appetit
importune...spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam turbat." See Procop. de
Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 35.]

[Footnote 81: Procop. de Edificiis, l. i. c. 6, 7, &c., passim.]

[Footnote 82: Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 32. In the life of St.
Eutychius (apud Aleman. ad Procop. Arcan. c. 18) the same character is
given with a design to praise Justinian.]

[Footnote 83: For these wise and moderate sentiments, Procopius (de
Bell. Goth. l. i. c. 3) is scourged in the preface of Alemannus, who
ranks him among the political Christians--sed longe verius haeresium
omnium sentinas, prorsusque Atheos--abominable Atheists, who preached
the imitation of God's mercy to man, (ad Hist. Arcan. c. 13.)]

Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to rebels has
seldom been the virtue of princes. But when the prince descends to the
narrow and peevish character of a disputant, he is easily provoked to
supply the defect of argument by the plenitude of power, and to chastise
without mercy the perverse blindness of those who wilfully shut their
eyes against the light of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was
a uniform yet various scene of persecution; and he appears to have
surpassed his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws
and the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three months
was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics; [84] and if he
still connived at their precarious stay, they were deprived, under
his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of society, but of the common
birth-right of men and Christians. At the end of four hundred years,
the Montanists of Phrygia [85] still breathed the wild enthusiasm of
perfection and prophecy which they had imbibed from their male and
female apostles, the special organs of the Paraclete. On the approach of
the Catholic priests and soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the
crown of martyrdom the conventicle and the congregation perished in the
flames, but these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred
years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of their
Gothic confederates, the church of the Arians at Constantinople had
braved the severity of the laws: their clergy equalled the wealth and
magnificence of the senate; and the gold and silver which were seized by
the rapacious hand of Justinian might perhaps be claimed as the spoils
of the provinces, and the trophies of the Barbarians. A secret remnant
of Pagans, who still lurked in the most refined and most rustic
conditions of mankind, excited the indignation of the Christians, who
were perhaps unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of
their intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the
faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court and city, the
magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still cherished the
superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly informed that they must
choose without delay between the displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian,
and that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be distinguished
under the scandalous mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician
Photius, perhaps, alone was resolved to live and to die like his
ancestors: he enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left
his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the lifeless
corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to their earthly
monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and labored, by their
extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or to expiate the guilt,
of idolatry. The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan
war, still retained the last sparks of his mythology: by the care of
the same bishop, seventy thousand Pagans were detected and converted in
Asia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria; ninety-six churches were built for the
new proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases
of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian.
[86] The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their immunities,
were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled them to observe
the festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the
Christians. [87] And they might complain with the more reason, since the
Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of
their sovereign: the people of Constantinople delayed the beginning of
their Lent a whole week after it had been ordained by authority; and
they had the pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for
sale by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine [88]
were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the Pagans,
by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The
abomination of the cross had already been planted on their holy mount
of Garizim, [89] but the persecution of Justinian offered only the
alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter: under the
standard of a desperate leader, they rose in arms, and retaliated their
wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples, of a defenceless
people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the
East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs
to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of that unhappy
nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has
been computed that one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated
in the Samaritan war, [90] which converted the once fruitful province
into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian,
the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of
unbelievers; and he piously labored to establish with fire and sword the
unity of the Christian faith. [91]

[Footnote 84: This alternative, a precious circumstance, is preserved
by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 63, edit. Venet. 1733,) who deserves
more credit as he draws towards his end. After numbering the heretics,
Nestorians, Eutychians, &c., ne expectent, says Justinian, ut digni
venia judicen tur: jubemus, enim ut...convicti et aperti haeretici
justae et idoneae animadversioni subjiciantur. Baronius copies and
applauds this edict of the Code, (A.D. 527, No. 39, 40.)]

[Footnote 85: See the character and principles of the Montanists, in
Mosheim, Rebus Christ. ante Constantinum, p. 410--424.]

[Footnote 86: Theophan. Chron. p. 153. John, the Monophysite bishop of
Asia, is a more authentic witness of this transaction, in which he was
himself employed by the emperor, (Asseman. Bib. Orient. tom. ii. p.
85.)]

[Footnote 87: Compare Procopius (Hist. Arcan. c. 28, and Aleman's Notes)
with Theophanes, (Chron. p. 190.) The council of Nice has intrusted the
patriarch, or rather the astronomers, of Alexandria, with the annual
proclamation of Easter; and we still read, or rather we do not
read, many of the Paschal epistles of St. Cyril. Since the reign of
Monophytism in Egypt, the Catholics were perplexed by such a foolish
prejudice as that which so long opposed, among the Protestants, the
reception of the Gregorian style.]

[Footnote 88: For the religion and history of the Samaritans, consult
Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, a learned and impartial work.]

[Footnote 89: Sichem, Neapolis, Naplous, the ancient and modern seat
of the Samaritans, is situate in a valley between the barren Ebal, the
mountain of cursing to the north, and the fruitful Garizim, or mountain
of cursing to the south, ten or eleven hours' travel from Jerusalem. See
Maundrel, Journey from Aleppo &c.]

[Footnote 90: Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122.
John Malala Chron. tom. ii. p. 62. I remember an observation, half
philosophical. half superstitious, that the province which had been
ruined by the bigotry of Justinian, was the same through which the
Mahometans penetrated into the empire.]

[Footnote 91: The expression of Procopius is remarkable. Anecdot. c.
13.]

With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to be always
in the right. In the first years of his administration, he signalized
his zeal as the disciple and patron of orthodoxy: the reconciliation of
the Greeks and Latins established the tome of St. Leo as the creed of
the emperor and the empire; the Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed.
on either side, to the double edge of persecution; and the four synods
of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were ratified by the
code of a Catholic lawgiver. [92] But while Justinian strove to maintain
the uniformity of faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose vices
were not incompatible with devotion, had listened to the Monophysite
teachers; and the open or clandestine enemies of the church revived and
multiplied at the smile of their gracious patroness. The capital, the
palace, the nuptial bed, were torn by spiritual discord; yet so doubtful
was the sincerity of the royal consorts, that their seeming disagreement
was imputed by many to a secret and mischievous confederacy against the
religion and happiness of their people. [93] The famous dispute of the
Three Chapters, [94] which has filled more volumes than it deserves
lines, is deeply marked with this subtile and disingenuous spirit. It
was now three hundred years since the body of Origen [95] had been eaten
by the worms: his soul, of which he held the preexistence, was in the
hands of its Creator; but his writings were eagerly perused by the monks
of Palestine. In these writings, the piercing eye of Justinian descried
more than ten metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the
company of Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the
eternity of hell-fire, which he had presumed to deny. Under the cover
of this precedent, a treacherous blow was aimed at the council of
Chalcedon. The fathers had listened without impatience to the praise
of Theodore of Mopsuestia; [96] and their justice or indulgence had
restored both Theodore of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa, to the communion
of the church. But the characters of these Oriental bishops were tainted
with the reproach of heresy; the first had been the master, the two
others were the friends, of Nestorius; their most suspicious passages
were accused under the title of the three chapters; and the condemnation
of their memory must involve the honor of a synod, whose name was
pronounced with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic world. If
these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were annihilated in the sleep
of death, they would not probably be awakened by the clamor which, after
the a hundred years, was raised over their grave. If they were already
in the fangs of the daemon, their torments could neither be aggravated
nor assuaged by human industry. If in the company of saints and angels
they enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle
fury of the theological insects who still crawled on the surface of the
earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the Romans, darted
his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps without discerning the true
motives of Theodora and her ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no
longer subject to his power, and the vehement style of his edicts could
only proclaim their damnation, and invite the clergy of the East to
join in a full chorus of curses and anathemas. The East, with some
hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign: the fifth general
council, of three patriarchs and one hundred and sixty-five bishops, was
held at Constantinople; and the authors, as well as the defenders, of
the three chapters were separated from the communion of the saints, and
solemnly delivered to the prince of darkness. But the Latin churches
were more jealous of the honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and
if they had fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they
might have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their
chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; the throne of St. Peter,
which had been disgraced by the simony, was betrayed by the cowardice,
of Vigilius, who yielded, after a long and inconsistent struggle, to
the despotism of Justinian and the sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy
provoked the indignation of the Latins, and no more than two bishops
could be found who would impose their hands on his deacon and successor
Pelagius. Yet the perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to
their adversaries the appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian, African,
and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and ecclesiastical
powers, not without some effort of military force; [97] the distant
Barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican, and, in the period of a
century, the schism of the three chapters expired in an obscure angle of
the Venetian province. [98] But the religious discontent of the Italians
had already promoted the conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans
themselves were accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the
government of their Byzantine tyrant.

[Footnote 92: See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the original
evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first years of his reign,
Baronius himself is in extreme good humor with the emperor, who courted
the popes, till he got them into his power.]

[Footnote 93: Procopius, Anecdot. c. 13. Evagrius, l. iv. c. 10. If the
ecclesiastical never read the secret historian, their common suspicion
proves at least the general hatred.]

[Footnote 94: On the subject of the three chapters, the original acts
of the vth general council of Constantinople supply much useless, though
authentic, knowledge, (Concil. tom. vi. p. 1-419.) The Greek Evagrius is
less copious and correct (l. iv. c. 38) than the three zealous Africans,
Facundus, (in his twelve books, de tribus capitulis, which are most
correctly published by Sirmond,) Liberatus, (in his Breviarium, c. 22,
23, 24,) and Victor Tunnunensis in his Chronicle, (in tom. i. Antiq.
Lect. Canisii, 330--334.) The Liber Pontificalis, or Anastasius, (in
Vigilio, Pelagio, &c.,) is original Italian evidence. The modern reader
will derive some information from Dupin (Bibliot. Eccles. tom. v. p.
189--207) and Basnage, (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 519--541;) yet the
latter is too firmly resolved to depreciate the authority and character
of the popes.]

[Footnote 95: Origen had indeed too great a propensity to imitate the
old philosophers, (Justinian, ad Mennam, in Concil. tom. vi. p. 356.)
His moderate opinions were too repugnant to the zeal of the church, and
he was found guilty of the heresy of reason.]

[Footnote 96: Basnage (Praefat. p. 11--14, ad tom. i. Antiq. Lect.
Canis.) has fairly weighed the guilt and innocence of Theodore of
Mopsuestia. If he composed 10,000 volumes, as many errors would be a
charitable allowance. In all the subsequent catalogues of heresiarchs,
he alone, without his two brethren, is included; and it is the duty
of Asseman (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 203--207) to justify the
sentence.]

[Footnote 97: See the complaints of Liberatus and Victor, and the
exhortations of Pope Pelagius to the conqueror and exarch of Italy.
Schisma.. per potestates publicas opprimatur, &c., (Concil. tom. vi. p.
467, &c.) An army was detained to suppress the sedition of an Illyrian
city. See Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv. c. 25:). He seems to promise
an ecclesiastical history. It would have been curious and impartial.]

[Footnote 98: The bishops of the patriarchate of Aquileia were
reconciled by Pope Honorius, A.D. 638, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia,
tom. v. p. 376;) but they again relapsed, and the schism was not finally
extinguished till 698. Fourteen years before, the church of Spain had
overlooked the vth general council with contemptuous silence, (xiii.
Concil. Toretan. in Concil. tom. vii. p. 487--494.)]

Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice process of
fixing his volatile opinions and those of his subjects. In his youth he
was, offended by the slightest deviation from the orthodox line; in
his old age he transgressed the measure of temperate heresy, and
the Jacobites, not less than the Catholics, were scandalized by his
declaration, that the body of Christ was incorruptible, and that his
manhood was never subject to any wants and infirmities, the inheritance
of our mortal flesh. This fantastic opinion was announced in the last
edicts of Justinian; and at the moment of his seasonable departure, the
clergy had refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute,
and the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Treves,
secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of the East
in the language of authority and affection. "Most gracious Justinian,
remember your baptism and your creed. Let not your gray hairs be defiled
with heresy. Recall your fathers from exile, and your followers from
perdition. You cannot be ignorant, that Italy and Gaul, Spain and
Africa, already deplore your fall, and anathematize your name. Unless,
without delay, you destroy what you have taught; unless you exclaim
with a loud voice, I have erred, I have sinned, anathema to Nestorius,
anathema to Eutyches, you deliver your soul to the same flames in which
they will eternally burn." He died and made no sign. [99] His death
restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns of his
four successors, Justin Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are distinguished
by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the ecclesiastical history of
the East. [100]

[Footnote 99: Nicetus, bishop of Treves, (Concil. tom. vi. p. 511-513:)
he himself, like most of the Gallican prelates, (Gregor. Epist. l. vii.
5 in Concil. tom. vi. p. 1007,) was separated from the communion of the
four patriarchs by his refusal to condemn the three chapters. Baronius
almost pronounces the damnation of Justinian, (A.D. 565, No. 6.)]

[Footnote 100: After relating the last heresy of Justinian, (l. iv. c.
39, 40, 41,) and the edict of his successor, (l. v. c. 3,) the
remainder of the history of Evagrius is filled with civil, instead of
ecclesiastical events.]

The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of acting on
themselves; the eye is most inaccessible to the sight, the soul to the
thought; yet we think, and even feel, that one will, a sole principle of
action, is essential to a rational and conscious being. When Heraclius
returned from the Persian war, the orthodox hero consulted his bishops,
whether the Christ whom he adored, of one person, but of two natures,
was actuated by a single or a double will. They replied in the singular,
and the emperor was encouraged to hope that the Jacobites of Egypt
and Syria might be reconciled by the profession of a doctrine, most
certainly harmless, and most probably true, since it was taught even
by the Nestorians themselves. [101] The experiment was tried without
effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics condemned even the semblance
of a retreat in the presence of a subtle and audacious enemy. The
orthodox (the prevailing) party devised new modes of speech, and
argument, and interpretation: to either nature of Christ they speciously
applied a proper and distinct energy; but the difference was no longer
visible when they allowed that the human and the divine will were
invariably the same. [102] The disease was attended with the customary
symptoms: but the Greek clergy, as if satiated with the endless
controversy of the incarnation, instilled a healing counsel into the
ear of the prince and people. They declared themselves Monothelites,
(asserters of the unity of will,) but they treated the words as new,
the questions as superfluous; and recommended a religious silence as the
most agreeable to the prudence and charity of the gospel. This law
of silence was successively imposed by the ecthesis or exposition of
Heraclius, the type or model of his grandson Constans; [103] and the
Imperial edicts were subscribed with alacrity or reluctance by the four
patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. But the
bishop and monks of Jerusalem sounded the alarm: in the language, or
even in the silence, of the Greeks, the Latin churches detected a
latent heresy: and the obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of
his sovereign was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of his
successors. They condemned the execrable and abominable heresy of the
Monothelites, who revived the errors of Manes, Apollinaris, Eutyches,
&c.; they signed the sentence of excommunication on the tomb of St.
Peter; the ink was mingled with the sacramental wine, the blood of
Christ; and no ceremony was omitted that could fill the superstitious
mind with horror and affright. As the representative of the Western
church, Pope Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious
and guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of Italy,
for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate
his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his grandfather; and to
confound the authors and their adherents with the twenty-one notorious
heretics, the apostates from the church, and the organs of the devil.
Such an insult under the tamest reign could not pass with impunity.
Pope Martin ended his days on the inhospitable shore of the Tauric
Chersonesus, and his oracle, the abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised
by the amputation of his tongue and his right hand. [104] But the same
invincible spirit survived in their successors; and the triumph of the
Latins avenged their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the
three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the sixth general
council of Constantinople, in the palace and the presence of a new
Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal convert converted the
Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the bishops; [105] the dissenters,
with their chief, Macarius of Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual
and temporal pains of heresy; the East condescended to accept the
lessons of the West; and the creed was finally settled, which teaches
the Catholics of every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized
in the person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman synod
was represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops; but these
obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to bribe,
nor language to persuade; and I am ignorant by what arts they could
determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure the catechism of his
infancy, and to persecute the religion of his fathers. Perhaps the monks
and people of Constantinople [106] were favorable to the Lateran creed,
which is indeed the least reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is
countenanced by the unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear
in this quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the synod
debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision, by raising a dead
man to life: the prelates assisted at the trial; but the acknowledged
failure may serve to indicate, that the passions and prejudices of the
multitude were not enlisted on the side of the Monothelites. In the next
generation, when the son of Constantine was deposed and slain by the
disciple of Macarius, they tasted the feast of revenge and dominion:
the image or monument of the sixth council was defaced, and the original
acts were committed to the flames. But in the second year, their patron
was cast headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were released
from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly
replanted by the orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine problems
of the incarnation were forgotten in the more popular and visible
quarrel of the worship of images. [107]

[Footnote 101: This extraordinary, and perhaps inconsistent, doctrine of
the Nestorians, had been observed by La Croze, (Christianisme des
Indes, tom. i. p. 19, 20,) and is more fully exposed by Abulpharagius,
(Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292. Hist. Dynast. p. 91, vers. Latin.
Pocock.) and Asseman himself, (tom. iv. p. 218.) They seem ignorant that
they might allege the positive authority of the ecthesis. (the common
reproach of the Monophysites) (Concil. tom. vii. p. 205.)]

[Footnote 102: See the Orthodox faith in Petavius, (Dogmata Theolog.
tom. v. l. ix. c. 6--10, p. 433--447:) all the depths of this
controversy in the Greek dialogue between Maximus and Pyrrhus, (acalcem
tom. viii. Annal. Baron. p. 755--794,) which relates a real conference,
and produced as short-lived a conversion.]

[Footnote 103: Impiissimam ecthesim.... scelerosum typum (Concil. tom.
vii p. 366) diabolicae operationis genimina, (fors. germina, or else the
Greek in the original. Concil. p. 363, 364,) are the expressions of
the xviiith anathema. The epistle of Pope Martin to Amandus, Gallican
bishop, stigmatizes the Monothelites and their heresy with equal
virulence, (p. 392.)]

[Footnote 104: The sufferings of Martin and Maximus are described with
simplicity in their original letters and acts, (Concil. tom. vii. p.
63--78. Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 656, No. 2, et annos subsequent.) Yet
the chastisement of their disobedience had been previously announced in
the Type of Constans, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 240.)]

[Footnote 105: Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 368) most erroneously
supposes that the 124 bishops of the Roman synod transported themselves
to Constantinople; and by adding them to the 168 Greeks, thus composes
the sixth council of 292 fathers.]

[Footnote 106: The Monothelite Constans was hated by all, (says
Theophanes, Chron. p. 292). When the Monothelite monk failed in his
miracle, the people shouted, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1032.) But this was
a natural and transient emotion; and I much fear that the latter is an
anticipation of the good people of Constantinople.]

[Footnote 107: The history of Monothelitism may be found in the Acts of
the Synods of Rome (tom. vii. p. 77--395, 601--608) and Constantinople,
(p. 609--1429.) Baronius extracted some original documents from the
Vatican library; and his chronology is rectified by the diligence of
Pagi. Even Dupin (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. vi. p. 57--71) and Basnage
(Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 451--555) afford a tolerable abridgment.]

Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the incarnation,
which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople, was uniformly
preached in the remote islands of Britain and Ireland; [108] the same
ideas were entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all
the Christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or the Latin
tongue. Their numbers, and visible splendor, bestowed an imperfect claim
to the appellation of Catholics: but in the East, they were marked with
the less honorable name of Melchites, or Royalists; [109] of men,
whose faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason,
or tradition, had been established, and was still maintained, by the
arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might allege
the words of the fathers of Constantinople, who profess themselves the
slaves of the king; and they might relate, with malicious joy, how
the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and reformed by the emperor
Marcian and his virgin bride. The prevailing faction will naturally
inculcate the duty of submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters
should feel and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of
persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and
fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome were taught
to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as the enemy of the
Christians. Language, the leading principle which unites or separates
the tribes of mankind, soon discriminated the sectaries of the East, by
a peculiar and perpetual badge, which abolished the means of intercourse
and the hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their
colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had propagated a language
doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man.
Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered
in the use of their national idioms; with this difference, however, that
the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile,
while the Syriac, [110] from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea,
was adapted to the higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and
Abyssinia were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and
their Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the studies of modern
Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The
Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the Aethiopic, are consecrated
in the service of their respective churches: and their theology is
enriched by domestic versions [111] both of the Scriptures and of the
most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen hundred and sixty
years, the spark of controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius,
still burns in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still
maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most
abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians and
Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and cherish the
toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows them to anathematize,
on the one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of Ephesus: on the other, Pope
Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the
downfall of the Eastern empire demands our notice, and the reader may
be amused with the various prospect of, I. The Nestorians; II. The
Jacobites; [112] III. The Maronites; IV. The Armenians; V. The Copts;
and, VI. The Abyssinians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but
of the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom.

Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable of
conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians of Egypt and Syria,
who reject the religion, have adopted the language of the Arabians. The
lapse of time has seconded the sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well
as in the West, the Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to
the majority of the congregation.

[Footnote 108: In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfred, an Anglo-Saxon
bishop, subscribed pro omni Aquilonari parte Britanniae et Hiberniae,
quae ab Anglorum et Britonum, necnon Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus
colebantur, (Eddius, in Vit. St. Wilfrid. c. 31, apud Pagi, Critica,
tom. iii. p. 88.) Theodore (magnae insulae Britanniae archiepiscopus et
philosophus) was long expected at Rome, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 714,) but
he contented himself with holding (A.D. 680) his provincial synod of
Hatfield, in which he received the decrees of Pope Martin and the first
Lateran council against the Monothelites, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 597,
&c.) Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, had been named to the
primacy of Britain by Pope Vitalian, (A.D. 688; see Baronius and Pagi,)
whose esteem for his learning and piety was tainted by some distrust
of his national character--ne quid contrarium veritati fidei, Graecorum
more, in ecclesiam cui praeesset introduceret. The Cilician was sent
from Rome to Canterbury under the tuition of an African guide, (Bedae
Hist. Eccles. Anglorum. l. iv. c. 1.) He adhered to the Roman doctrine;
and the same creed of the incarnation has been uniformly transmitted
from Theodore to the modern primates, whose sound understanding is
perhaps seldom engaged with that abstruse mystery.]

[Footnote 109: This name, unknown till the xth century, appears to be of
Syriac origin. It was invented by the Jacobites, and eagerly adopted by
the Nestorians and Mahometans; but it was accepted without shame by the
Catholics, and is frequently used in the Annals of Eutychius, (Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 507, &c., tom. iii. p. 355. Renaudot, Hist.
Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 119.), was the acclamation of the fathers of
Constantinople, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 765.)]

[Footnote 110: The Syriac, which the natives revere as the primitive
language, was divided into three dialects. 1. The Aramoean, as it was
refined at Edessa and the cities of Mesopotamia. 2. The Palestine,
which was used in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the rest of Syria. 3.
The Nabathoean, the rustic idiom of the mountains of Assyria and the
villages of Irak, (Gregor, Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 11.) On the
Syriac, sea Ebed-Jesu, (Asseman. tom. iii. p. 326, &c.,) whose prejudice
alone could prefer it to the Arabic.]

[Footnote 111: I shall not enrich my ignorance with the spoils of Simon,
Walton, Mill, Wetstein, Assemannus, Ludolphus, La Croze, whom I have
consulted with some care. It appears, 1. That, of all the versions which
are celebrated by the fathers, it is doubtful whether any are now extant
in their pristine integrity. 2. That the Syriac has the best claim,
and that the consent of the Oriental sects is a proof that it is more
ancient than their schism.]

[Footnote 112: In the account of the Monophysites and Nestorians, I am
deeply indebted to the Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana of
Joseph Simon Assemannus. That learned Maronite was despatched, in the
year 1715, by Pope Clement XI. to visit the monasteries of Egypt and
Syria, in search of Mss. His four folio volumes, published at Rome
1719--1728, contain a part only, though perhaps the most valuable, of
his extensive project. As a native and as a scholar, he possessed the
Syriac literature; and though a dependent of Rome, he wishes to be
moderate and candid.]





Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part V.

I. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the heresy of the
unfortunate Nestorius was speedily obliterated. The Oriental bishops,
who at Ephesus had resisted to his face the arrogance of Cyril,
were mollified by his tardy concessions. The same prelates, or their
successors, subscribed, not without a murmur, the decrees of Chalcedon;
the power of the Monophysites reconciled them with the Catholics in
the conformity of passion, of interest, and, insensibly, of belief;
and their last reluctant sigh was breathed in the defence of the three
chapters. Their dissenting brethren, less moderate, or more sincere,
were crushed by the penal laws; and, as early as the reign of Justinian,
it became difficult to find a church of Nestorians within the limits of
the Roman empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a new world,
in which they might hope for liberty, and aspire to conquest. In Persia,
notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi, Christianity had struck a
deep root, and the nations of the East reposed under its salutary shade.
The catholic, or primate, resided in the capital: in his synods, and in
their dioceses, his metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, represented the
pomp and order of a regular hierarchy: they rejoiced in the increase of
proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the gospel, from
the secular to the monastic life; and their zeal was stimulated by the
presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The Persian church had been
founded by the missionaries of Syria; and their language, discipline,
and doctrine, were closely interwoven with its original frame. The
catholics were elected and ordained by their own suffragans; but their
filial dependence on the patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons
of the Oriental church. [113] In the Persian school of Edessa, [114] the
rising generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom: they
studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of Theodore of
Mopsuestia; and they revered the apostolic faith and holy martyrdom of
his disciple Nestorius, whose person and language were equally unknown
to the nations beyond the Tigris. The first indelible lesson of Ibas,
bishop of Edessa, taught them to execrate the Egyptians, who, in the
synod of Ephesus, had impiously confounded the two natures of Christ.
The flight of the masters and scholars, who were twice expelled from
the Athens of Syria, dispersed a crowd of missionaries inflamed by
the double zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the
Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, had invaded
the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists, in a land of
freedom, to avow a moral, rather than a physical, union of the two
persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the gospel, the
Sassanian kings beheld with an eye of suspicion a race of aliens and
apostates, who had embraced the religion, and who might favor the cause,
of the hereditary foes of their country. The royal edicts had often
prohibited their dangerous correspondence with the Syrian clergy: the
progress of the schism was grateful to the jealous pride of Perozes, and
he listened to the eloquence of an artful prelate, who painted Nestorius
as the friend of Persia, and urged him to secure the fidelity of his
Christian subjects, by granting a just preference to the victims and
enemies of the Roman tyrant. The Nestorians composed a large majority of
the clergy and people: they were encouraged by the smile, and armed with
the sword, of despotism; yet many of their weaker brethren were startled
at the thought of breaking loose from the communion of the Christian
world, and the blood of seven thousand seven hundred Monophysites,
or Catholics, confirmed the uniformity of faith and discipline in
the churches of Persia. [115] Their ecclesiastical institutions are
distinguished by a liberal principle of reason, or at least of policy:
the austerity of the cloister was relaxed and gradually forgotten;
houses of charity were endowed for the education of orphans and
foundlings; the law of celibacy, so forcibly recommended to the Greeks
and Latins, was disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the number of
the elect was multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials of the
priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this standard
of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugitives resorted from all
the provinces of the Eastern empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian
was punished by the emigration of his most industrious subjects; they
transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war: and those
who deserved the favor, were promoted in the service, of a discerning
monarch. The arms of Nushirvan, and his fiercer grandson, were assisted
with advice, and money, and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still
lurked in their native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with
the gift of the Catholic churches; but when those cities and churches
were recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and heresy
compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their foreign ally. But
the seeming tranquillity of the Nestorians was often endangered, and
sometimes overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of Oriental
despotism: their enmity to Rome could not always atone for their
attachment to the gospel: and a colony of three hundred thousand
Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect
a hostile altar in the face of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the
court. In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which
tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia.
The emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of pity
or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods:
but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the temporal
benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and if
he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the
jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age the Lutherans have been
burnt at Paris, and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy
of the most Christian king.

[Footnote 113: See the Arabic canons of Nice in the translation of
Abraham Ecchelensis, No. 37, 38, 39, 40. Concil. tom. ii. p. 335,
336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic, are both
apocryphal. The council of Nice enacted no more than twenty canons,
(Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 8;) and the remainder, seventy or
eighty, were collected from the synods of the Greek church. The Syriac
edition of Maruthas is no longer extant, (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental.
tom. i. p. 195, tom. iii. p. 74,) and the Arabic version is marked with
many recent interpolations. Yet this Code contains many curious relics
of ecclesiastical discipline; and since it is equally revered by all the
Eastern communions, it was probably finished before the schism of
the Nestorians and Jacobites, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xi. p.
363--367.)]

[Footnote 114: Theodore the Reader (l. ii. c. 5, 49, ad calcem Hist.
Eccles.) has noticed this Persian school of Edessa. Its ancient
splendor, and the two aeras of its downfall, (A.D. 431 and 489) are
clearly discussed by Assemanni, (Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 402, iii.
p. 376, 378, iv. p. 70, 924.)]

[Footnote 115: A dissertation on the state of the Nestorians has swelled
in the bands of Assemanni to a folio volume of 950 pages, and his
learned researches are digested in the most lucid order. Besides this
ivth volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis, the extracts in the three
preceding tomes (tom. i. p. 203, ii. p. 321-463, iii. 64--70, 378--395,
&c., 405--408, 580--589) may be usefully consulted.]

The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church, has
excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests. From the
conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the
east, and the south; and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and
painted with the colors of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century,
according to the report of a Nestorian traveller, [116] Christianity
was successfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the
Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the Barbaric
churches, from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea, were almost
infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and
sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar,
and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an
increasing multitude of Christians; and the bishops and clergy of
those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the Catholic of
Babylon. In a subsequent age the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the
limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks
and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without
fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into
the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga. They
exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds: to those
sanguinary warriors, they recommended humanity and repose. Yet a khan,
whose power they vainly magnified, is said to have received at their
hands the rites of baptism, and even of ordination; and the fame of
Prester or Presbyter John [117] has long amused the credulity of Europe.
The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he
despatched an embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of
Lent, he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate
the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their
progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by the port of
Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. Unlike the senators of
Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of priests and augurs, the
mandarins, who affect in public the reason of philosophers, are devoted
in private to every mode of popular superstition. They cherished and
they confounded the gods of Palestine and of India; but the propagation
of Christianity awakened the jealousy of the state, and, after a short
vicissitude of favor and persecution, the foreign sect expired in
ignorance and oblivion. [118] Under the reign of the caliphs, the
Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyrus; and
their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass
the Greek and Latin communions. [119] Twenty-five metropolitans
or archbishops composed their hierarchy; but several of these were
dispensed, by the distance and danger of the way, from the duty of
personal attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they
should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of
Babylon, a vague appellation which has been successively applied to the
royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches
are long since withered; and the old patriarchal trunk [120] is now
divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives almost on lineal
descent of the genuine and primitive succession; the Josephs of Amida,
who are reconciled to the church of Rome: [121] and the Simeons of Van
or Ormia, whose revolt, at the head of forty thousand families, was
promoted in the sixteenth century by the Sophis of Persia. The number of
three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians,
who, under the name of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the
most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity.

[Footnote 116: See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed
Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, l. iii. p. 178, 179, l. xi.
p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may be found in
Photius, (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10, edit. Hoeschel,) Thevenot, (in the 1st
part of his Relation des Voyages, &c.,) and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec.
l. iii. c. 25, tom. ii. p. 603-617,) has been published by Father
Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the Nova Collectio Patrum, (tom. ii. p.
113--346.) It was the design of the author to confute the impious heresy
of those who maintained that the earth is a globe, and not a flat,
oblong table, as it is represented in the Scriptures, (l. ii. p. 138.)
But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical knowledge of
the traveller, who performed his voyage A.D. 522, and published his book
at Alexandria, A.D. 547, (l. ii. p. 140, 141. Montfaucon, Praefat.
c. 2.) The Nestorianism of Cosmas, unknown to his learned editor, was
detected by La Croze, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40--55,) and
is confirmed by Assemanni, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606.)]

[Footnote 117: In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c., the
story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable, of which some
features have been borrowed from the Lama of Thibet, (Hist. Genealogique
des Tartares, P. ii. p. 42. Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 31, &c.,) and were
ignorantly transferred by the Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia,
(Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop. Comment. l. ii. c. 1.) Yet it is probable that
in the xith and xiith centuries, Nestorian Christianity was professed
in the horde of the Keraites, (D'Herbelot, p. 256, 915, 959. Assemanni,
tom. iv. p. 468--504.) Note: The extent to which Nestorian Christianity
prevailed among the Tartar tribes is one of the most curious questions
in Oriental history. M. Schmidt (Geschichte der Ost Mongolen, notes,
p. 383) appears to question the Christianity of Ong Chaghan, and his
Keraite subjects.--M.]

[Footnote 118: The Christianity of China, between the seventh and the
thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese,
Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence, (Assemanni, Biblioth. Orient.
tom. iv. p. 502--552. Mem. de l'Academie des Inscript. tom. xxx. p.
802--819.) The inscription of Siganfu which describes the fortunes of
the Nestorian church, from the first mission, A.D. 636, to the current
year 781, is accused of forgery by La Croze, Voltaire, &c., who become
the dupes of their own cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical
fraud. * Note: This famous monument, the authenticity of which many have
attempted to impeach, rather from hatred to the Jesuits, by whom it
was made known, than by a candid examination of its contents, is now
generally considered above all suspicion. The Chinese text and the facts
which it relates are equally strong proofs of its authenticity. This
monument was raised as a memorial of the establishment of Christianity
in China. It is dated the year 1092 of the era of the Greeks, or the
Seleucidae, A.D. 781, in the time of the Nestorian patriarch Anan-jesu.
It was raised by Iezdbouzid, priest and chorepiscopus of Chumdan, that
is, of the capital of the Chinese empire, and the son of a priest who
came from Balkh in Tokharistan. Among the various arguments which may be
urged in favor of the authenticity of this monument, and which has not
yet been advanced, may be reckoned the name of the priest by whom it
was raised. The name is Persian, and at the time the monument was
discovered, it would have been impossible to have imagined it; for there
was no work extant from whence the knowledge of it could be derived. I
do not believe that ever since this period, any book has been published
in which it can be found a second time. It is very celebrated amongst
the Armenians, and is derived from a martyr, a Persian by birth, of the
royal race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and
rendered his name celebrated among the Christian nations of the East.
St. Martin, vol. i. p. 69. M. Remusat has also strongly expressed his
conviction of the authenticity of this monument. Melanges Asiatiques,
P. i. p. 33. Yet M. Schmidt (Geschichte der Ost Mongolen, p. 384) denies
that there is any satisfactory proof that much a monument was ever found
in China, or that it was not manufactured in Europe. But if the Jesuits
had attempted such a forgery, would it not have been more adapted to
further their peculiar views?--M.]

[Footnote 119: Jacobitae et Nestorianae plures quam Graeci et Latini
Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. l. ii. c. 76, p. 1093, in the Gesta
Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomassin, Discipline de
l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 172.]

[Footnote 120: The division of the patriarchate may be traced in the
Bibliotheca Orient. of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523--549, tom. ii. p. 457,
&c., tom. iii. p. 603, p. 621--623, tom. iv. p. 164-169, p. 423, p.
622--629, &c.]

[Footnote 121: The pompous language of Rome on the submission of a
Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the viith book of Fra
Paola, Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of Alexander, Tauris,
and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus.]

According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India
by St. Thomas. [122] At the end of the ninth century, his shrine,
perhaps in the neighborhood of Madras, was devoutly visited by the
ambassadors of Alfred; and their return with a cargo of pearls and
spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the
largest projects of trade and discovery. [123] When the Portuguese first
opened the navigation of India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been
seated for ages on the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their
character and color attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in
arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan;
the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by
the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or nobles of Malabar,
and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the
fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a
Gentoo of sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal concerns,
by the bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of
metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in
fourteen hundred churches, and he was intrusted with the care of two
hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them the
firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese; but the inquisitors
soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt
of heresy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the
Roman pontiff, the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they
adhered, like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian
patriarch; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul, traversed the
dangers of the sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of
Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy the names of Theodore and Nestorius
were piously commemorated: they united their adoration of the two
persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their
ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honors of the Virgin
Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank
of a goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St.
Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, "We are Christians, not idolaters!"
and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross.
Their separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance
of the improvements, or corruptions, of a thousand years; and their
conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would
equally disappoint the prejudices of a <DW7> or a Protestant. It was
the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all correspondence
with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his bishops expired in the
prisons of the holy office.

The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the
Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de Menezes,
archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar.
The synod of Diamper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work
of the reunion; and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of
the Roman church, without forgetting auricular confession, the strongest
engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius
was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the pope,
of the primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of Angamala
or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy were patiently
endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage
and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted, with vigor and
effect, the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of
defending the power which they had abused; the arms of forty thousand
Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian
archdeacon assumed the character of bishop till a fresh supply of
episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the
patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the
Nestorian creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading
companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration; but
if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St.
Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and silent indifference of
their brethren of Europe. [124]

[Footnote 122: The Indian missionary, St. Thomas, an apostle, a
Manichaean, or an Armenian merchant, (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes,
tom. i. p. 57--70,) was famous, however, as early as the time of Jerom,
(ad Marcellam, epist. 148.) Marco-Polo was informed on the spot that he
suffered martyrdom in the city of Malabar, or Meliapour, a league only
from Madras, (D'Anville, Eclaircissemens sur l'Inde, p. 125,) where the
Portuguese founded an episcopal church under the name of St. Thome, and
where the saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the
profane neighborhood of the English, (La Croze, tom. ii. p. 7-16.)]

[Footnote 123: Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A.D. 833) not
William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Angliae, l. ii. c. 4, p. 44) were
capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing this extraordinary fact;
they are incapable of explaining the motives and measures of Alfred;
and their hasty notice serves only to provoke our curiosity. William of
Malmesbury feels the difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc
saeculo miretur; and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors
collected their cargo and legend in Egypt. The royal author has not
enriched his Orosius (see Barrington's Miscellanies) with an Indian, as
well as a Scandinavian, voyage.]

[Footnote 124: Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see Assemann.
Bibliot Orient. tom. iv. p. 391--407, 435--451; Geddes's Church History
of Malabar; and, above all, La Croze, Histoire du Christianisme des
Indes, in 2 vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1758, a learned and agreeable work.
They have drawn from the same source, the Portuguese and Italian
narratives; and the prejudices of the Jesuits are sufficiently corrected
by those of the Protestants. Note: The St. Thome Christians had excited
great interest in the ancient mind of the admirable Bishop Heber. See
his curious and, to his friends, highly characteristic letter to
Mar Athanasius, Appendix to Journal. The arguments of his friend and
coadjutor, Mr. Robinson, (Last Days of Bishop Heber,) have not
convinced me that the Christianity of India is older than the Nestorian
dispersion.--M]

II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and interesting than
that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, their
artful leaders surprised the ear of the prince, usurped the thrones of
the East, and crushed on its native soil the school of the Syrians. The
rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion
by Severus, patriarch of Antioch: he condemned, in the style of the
Henoticon, the adverse heresies of Nestorius; and Eutyches maintained
against the latter the reality of the body of Christ, and constrained
the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke truth. [125] But the
approximation of ideas could not abate the vehemence of passion; each
party was the more astonished that their blind antagonist could dispute
on so trifling a difference; the tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of
his creed, and his reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred
and fifty monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or
resistance, under the walls of Apamea. [126] The successor of Anastasius
replanted the orthodox standard in the East; Severus fled into Egypt;
and his friend, the eloquent Xenaias, [127] who had escaped from the
Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of
Paphlagonia. Fifty-four bishops were swept from their thrones, eight
hundred ecclesiastics were cast into prison, [128] and notwithstanding
the ambiguous favor of Theodora, the Oriental flocks, deprived of their
shepherds, must insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In
this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united,
and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James
Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a
familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From
the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the
powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination
of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from
the same inexhaustible source. The speed of the zealous missionary was
promoted by the fleetest dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the
doctrine and discipline of the Jacobites were secretly established in
the dominions of Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to violate
the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The successors of Severus,
while they lurked in convents or villages, while they sheltered
their proscribed heads in the caverns of hermits, or the tents of the
Saracens, still asserted, as they now assert, their indefeasible right
to the title, the rank, and the prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch:
under the milder yoke of the infidels, they reside about a league
from Merdin, in the pleasant monastery of Zapharan, which they have
embellished with cells, aqueducts, and plantations. The secondary,
though honorable, place is filled by the maphrian, who, in his station
at Mosul itself, defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he contests the
primacy of the East. Under the patriarch and the maphrian, one hundred
and fifty archbishops and bishops have been counted in the different
ages of the Jacobite church; but the order of the hierarchy is relaxed
or dissolved, and the greater part of their dioceses is confined to the
neighborhood of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and
Amida, which are often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy
merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive their
scanty sustenance from their daily labor: and poverty, as well as
superstition, may impose their excessive fasts: five annual lents,
during which both the clergy and laity abstain not only from flesh
or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil, and of fish. Their
present numbers are esteemed from fifty to fourscore thousand souls, the
remnant of a populous church, which was gradually decreased under the
impression of twelve centuries. Yet in that long period, some strangers
of merit have been converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was
the father of Abulpharagius, [130] primate of the East, so truly eminent
both in his life and death. In his life he was an elegant writer of the
Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, physician, and historian, a subtile
philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death, his funeral was
attended by his rival the Nestorian patriarch, with a train of Greeks
and Armenians, who forgot their disputes, and mingled their tears over
the grave of an enemy. The sect which was honored by the virtues
of Abulpharagius appears, however, to sink below the level of their
Nestorian brethren. The superstition of the Jacobites is more abject,
their fasts more rigid, [131] their intestine divisions are more
numerous, and their doctors (as far as I can measure the degrees of
nonsense) are more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may
possibly be allowed for the rigor of the Monophysite theology; much more
for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in Egypt,
in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been distinguished by the
austerity of their penance and the absurdity of their legends. Alive or
dead, they are worshipped as the favorites of the Deity; the crosier
of bishop and patriarch is reserved for their venerable hands; and they
assume the government of men, while they are yet reeking with the habits
and prejudices of the cloister. [132]

[Footnote 125: Is the expression of Theodore, in his Treatise of
the Incarnation, p. 245, 247, as he is quoted by La Croze, (Hist. du
Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie, p. 35,) who exclaims, perhaps
too hastily, "Quel pitoyable raisonnement!" Renaudot has touched (Hist.
Patriarch. Alex. p. 127--138) the Oriental accounts of Severus; and
his authentic creed may be found in the epistle of John the Jacobite
patriarch of Antioch, in the xth century, to his brother Mannas of
Alexandria, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 132--141.)]

[Footnote 126: Epist. Archimandritarum et Monachorum Syriae Secundae ad
Papam Hormisdam, Concil. tom. v. p. 598--602. The courage of St. Sabas,
ut leo animosus, will justify the suspicion that the arms of these monks
were not always spiritual or defensive, (Baronius, A.D. 513, No. 7,
&c.)]

[Footnote 127: Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 10--46) and La
Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 36--40) will supply the history of
Xenaias, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, or Hierapolis, in Syria. He was
a perfect master of the Syriac language, and the author or editor of a
version of the New Testament.]

[Footnote 128: The names and titles of fifty-four bishops who were
exiled by Justin, are preserved in the Chronicle of Dionysius,
(apud Asseman. tom. ii. p. 54.) Severus was personally summoned to
Constantinople--for his trial, says Liberatus (Brev. c. 19)--that his
tongue might be cut out, says Evagrius, (l. iv. c. iv.) The prudent
patriarch did not stay to examine the difference. This ecclesiastical
revolution is fixed by Pagi to the month of September of the year 518,
(Critica, tom. ii. p. 506.)]

[Footnote 129: The obscure history of James or Jacobus Baradaeus, or
Zanzalust may be gathered from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 144, 147,)
Renau dot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 133,) and Assemannus, (Bibliot.
Orient. tom. i. p. 424, tom. ii. p. 62-69, 324--332, 414, tom. iii.
p. 385--388.) He seems to be unknown to the Greeks. The Jacobites
themselves had rather deduce their name and pedigree from St. James the
apostle.]

[Footnote 130: The account of his person and writings is perhaps the
most curious article in the Bibliotheca of Assemannus, (tom. ii.
p. 244--321, under the name of Gregorius Bar-Hebroeus.) La Croze
(Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 53--63) ridicules the prejudice of the
Spaniards against the Jewish blood which secretly defiles their church
and state.]

[Footnote 131: This excessive abstinence is censured by La Croze, (p.
352,) and even by the Syrian Assemannus, (tom. i. p. 226, tom. ii. p.
304, 305.)]

[Footnote 132: The state of the Monophysites is excellently illustrated
in a dissertation at the beginning of the iid volume of Assemannus,
which contains 142 pages. The Syriac Chronicle of Gregory Bar-Hebraeus,
or Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 321--463,) pursues
the double series of the Nestorian Catholics and the Maphrians of the
Jacobites.]

III. In the style of the Oriental Christians, the Monothelites of every
age are described under the appellation of Maronites, [133] a name which
has been insensibly transferred from a hermit to a monastery, from a
monastery to a nation. Maron, a saint or savage of the fifth century,
displayed his religious madness in Syria; the rival cities of Apamea and
Emesa disputed his relics, a stately church was erected on his tomb, and
six hundred of his disciples united their solitary cells on the banks
of the Orontes. In the controversies of the incarnation they nicely
threaded the orthodox line between the sects of Nestorians and Eutyches;
but the unfortunate question of one will or operation in the two natures
of Christ, was generated by their curious leisure. Their proselyte, the
emperor Heraclius, was rejected as a Maronite from the walls of
Emesa, he found a refuge in the monastery of his brethren; and their
theological lessons were repaid with the gift a spacious and wealthy
domain. The name and doctrine of this venerable school were propagated
among the Greeks and Syrians, and their zeal is expressed by Macarius,
patriarch of Antioch, who declared before the synod of Constantinople,
that sooner than subscribe the two wills of Christ, he would submit to
be hewn piecemeal and cast into the sea. [134] A similar or a less
cruel mode of persecution soon converted the unresisting subjects of
the plain, while the glorious title of Mardaites, [135] or rebels, was
bravely maintained by the hardy natives of Mount Libanus. John Maron,
one of the most learned and popular of the monks, assumed the character
of patriarch of Antioch; his nephew, Abraham, at the head of the
Maronites, defended their civil and religious freedom against the
tyrants of the East. The son of the orthodox Constantine pursued with
pious hatred a people of soldiers, who might have stood the bulwark of
his empire against the common foes of Christ and of Rome. An army of
Greeks invaded Syria; the monastery of St. Maron was destroyed with
fire; the bravest chieftains were betrayed and murdered, and twelve
thousand of their followers were transplanted to the distant frontiers
of Armenia and Thrace. Yet the humble nation of the Maronites had
survived the empire of Constantinople, and they still enjoy, under
their Turkish masters, a free religion and a mitigated servitude. Their
domestic governors are chosen among the ancient nobility: the patriarch,
in his monastery of Canobin, still fancies himself on the throne of
Antioch: nine bishops compose his synod, and one hundred and fifty
priests, who retain the liberty of marriage, are intrusted with the care
of one hundred thousand souls. Their country extends from the ridge of
Mount Libanus to the shores of Tripoli; and the gradual descent affords,
in a narrow space, each variety of soil and climate, from the Holy
Cedars, erect under the weight of snow, [136] to the vine, the mulberry,
and the olive-trees of the fruitful valley. In the twelfth century, the
Maronites, abjuring the Monothelite error were reconciled to the Latin
churches of Antioch and Rome, [137] and the same alliance has been
frequently renewed by the ambition of the popes and the distress of the
Syrians. But it may reasonably be questioned, whether their union has
ever been perfect or sincere; and the learned Maronites of the college
of Rome have vainly labored to absolve their ancestors from the guilt of
heresy and schism. [138]

[Footnote 133: The synonymous use of the two words may be proved from
Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 191, 267, 332,) and many similar passages
which may be found in the methodical table of Pocock. He was not
actuated by any prejudice against the Maronites of the xth century; and
we may believe a Melchite, whose testimony is confirmed by the Jacobites
and Latins.]

[Footnote 134: Concil. tom. vii. p. 780. The Monothelite cause was
supported with firmness and subtilty by Constantine, a Syrian priest of
Apamea, (p. 1040, &c.)]

[Footnote 135: Theophanes (Chron. p. 295, 296, 300, 302, 306) and
Cedrenus (p. 437, 440) relates the exploits of the Mardaites: the name
(Mard, in Syriac, rebellavit) is explained by La Roque, (Voyage de la
Syrie, tom. ii. p. 53;) and dates are fixed by Pagi, (A.D. 676, No.
4--14, A.D. 685, No. 3, 4;) and even the obscure story of the patriarch
John Maron (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 496--520) illustrates
from the year 686 to 707, the troubles of Mount Libanus. * Note: Compare
on the Mardaites Anquetil du Perron, in the fiftieth volume of the Mem.
de l'Acad. des Inscriptions; and Schlosser, Bildersturmendes Kaiser, p.
100.--M]

[Footnote 136: In the last century twenty large cedars still remained,
(Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68--76;) at present they are reduced
to four or five, (Volney, tom. i. p. 264.) These trees, so famous in
Scripture, were guarded by excommunication: the wood was sparingly
borrowed for small crosses, &c.; an annual mass was chanted under their
shade; and they were endowed by the Syrians with a sensitive power of
erecting their branches to repel the snow, to which Mount Libanus
is less faithful than it is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum
fidumque nivibus--a daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.) Note: Of the oldest
and best looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve twenty-five very
large ones; and about fifty of middling size; and more than three
hundred smaller and young ones. Burckhardt's Travels in Syria p. 19.--M]

[Footnote 137: The evidence of William of Tyre (Hist. in Gestis Dei per
Francos, l. xxii. c. 8, p. 1022) is copied or confirmed by Jacques
de Vitra, (Hist. Hierosolym. l. ii. c. 77, p. 1093, 1094.) But this
unnatural league expired with the power of the Franks; and Abulpharagius
(who died in 1286) considers the Maronites as a sect of Monothelites,
(Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292.)]

[Footnote 138: I find a description and history of the Maronites in the
Voyage de la Syrie et du Mont Liban par la Roque, (2 vols. in 12mo.,
Amsterdam, 1723; particularly tom. i. p. 42--47, p. 174--184, tom. ii.
p. 10--120.) In the ancient part, he copies the prejudices of Nairon and
the other Maronites of Rome, which Assemannus is afraid to renounce and
ashamed to support. Jablonski, (Institut. Hist. Christ. tom. iii. p.
186.) Niebuhr, (Voyage de l'Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 346, 370--381,)
and, above all, the judicious Volney, (Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie,
tom. ii. p. 8--31, Paris, 1787,) may be consulted.]

IV. Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians [139] had signalized
their attachment to the religion and empire of the Christians. [1391]
The disorders of their country, and their ignorance of the Greek tongue,
prevented their clergy from assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and
they floated eighty-four years [140] in a state of indifference
or suspense, till their vacant faith was finally occupied by the
missionaries of Julian of Halicarnassus, [141] who in Egypt, their
common exile, had been vanquished by the arguments or the influence of
his rival Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians
alone are the pure disciples of Eutyches, an unfortunate parent, who has
been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual progeny. They alone
persevere in the opinion, that the manhood of Christ was created, or
existed without creation, of a divine and incorruptible substance. Their
adversaries reproach them with the adoration of a phantom; and they
retort the accusation, by deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the
Jacobites, who impute to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh,
even the natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of
Armenia could not derive much glory from the learning or the power of
its inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of their schism;
and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in the thirteenth century
on the confines of Cilicia, were the clients of the Latins and the
vassals of the Turkish sultan of Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom
been permitted to enjoy the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest
period to the present hour, Armenia has been the theatre of perpetual
war: the lands between Tauris and Erivan were dispeopled by the
cruel policy of the Sophis; and myriads of Christian families were
transplanted, to perish or to propagate in the distant provinces of
Persia. Under the rod of oppression, the zeal of the Armenians is
fervent and intrepid; they have often preferred the crown of martyrdom
to the white turban of Mahomet; they devoutly hate the error and
idolatry of the Greeks; and their transient union with the Latins is not
less devoid of truth, than the thousand bishops, whom their patriarch
offered at the feet of the Roman pontiff. [142] The catholic, or
patriarch, of the Armenians resides in the monastery of Ekmiasin, three
leagues from Erivan. Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom may claim the
obedience of four or five suffragans, are consecrated by his hand; but
the far greater part are only titular prelates, who dignify with their
presence and service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they have
performed the liturgy, they cultivate the garden; and our bishops will
hear with surprise, that the austerity of their life increases in just
proportion to the elevation of their rank.

In the fourscore thousand towns or villages of his spiritual empire, the
patriarch receives a small and voluntary tax from each person above the
age of fifteen; but the annual amount of six hundred thousand crowns
is insufficient to supply the incessant demands of charity and tribute.
Since the beginning of the last century, the Armenians have obtained a
large and lucrative share of the commerce of the East: in their return
from Europe, the caravan usually halts in the neighborhood of Erivan,
the altars are enriched with the fruits of their patient industry;
and the faith of Eutyches is preached in their recent congregations of
Barbary and Poland. [143]

[Footnote 139: The religion of the Armenians is briefly described by La
Croze, (Hist. du Christ. de l'Ethiopie et de l'Armenie, p. 269--402.) He
refers to the great Armenian History of Galanus, (3 vols. in fol. Rome,
1650--1661,) and commends the state of Armenia in the iiid volume of the
Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du Levant. The work of a Jesuit must have
sterling merit when it is praised by La Croze.]

[Footnote 1391: See vol. iii. ch. xx. p. 271.--M.]

[Footnote 140: The schism of the Armenians is placed 84 years after the
council of Chalcedon, (Pagi, Critica, ad A.D. 535.) It was consummated
at the end of seventeen years; and it is from the year of Christ 552
that we date the aera of the Armenians, (L'Art de verifier les Dates, p.
xxxv.)]

[Footnote 141: The sentiments and success of Julian of Halicarnassus may
be seen in Liberatus, (Brev. c. 19,) Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex.
p. 132, 303,) and Assemannus, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. Dissertat.
Monophysitis, l. viii. p. 286.)]

[Footnote 142: See a remarkable fact of the xiith century in the History
of Nicetas Choniates, (p. 258.) Yet three hundred years before, Photius
(Epistol. ii. p. 49, edit. Montacut.) had gloried in the conversion of
the Armenians.]

[Footnote 143: The travelling Armenians are in the way of every
traveller, and their mother church is on the high road between
Constantinople and Ispahan; for their present state, see Fabricius,
(Lux Evangelii, &c., c. xxxviii. p. 40--51,) Olearius, (l. iv. c. 40,)
Chardin, (vol. ii. p. 232,) Teurnefort, (lettre xx.,) and, above all,
Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 28--37, 510-518,) that rambling jeweller, who had
read nothing, but had seen so much and so well]

V. In the rest of the Roman empire, the despotism of the prince might
eradicate or silence the sectaries of an obnoxious creed. But the
stubborn temper of the Egyptians maintained their opposition to the
synod of Chalcedon, and the policy of Justinian condescended to expect
and to seize the opportunity of discord. The Monophysite church of
Alexandria [144] was torn by the disputes of the corruptibles and
incorruptibles, and on the death of the patriarch, the two factions
upheld their respective candidates. [145] Gaian was the disciple of
Julian, Theodosius had been the pupil of Severus: the claims of the
former were supported by the consent of the monks and senators, the city
and the province; the latter depended on the priority of his ordination,
the favor of the empress Theodora, and the arms of the eunuch Narses,
which might have been used in more honorable warfare. The exile of
the popular candidate to Carthage and Sardinia inflamed the ferment of
Alexandria; and after a schism of one hundred and seventy years, the
Gaianites still revered the memory and doctrine of their founder. The
strength of numbers and of discipline was tried in a desperate and
bloody conflict; the streets were filled with the dead bodies of
citizens and soldiers; the pious women, ascending the roofs of their
houses, showered down every sharp or ponderous utensil on the heads of
the enemy; and the final victory of Narses was owing to the flames, with
which he wasted the third capital of the Roman world. But the lieutenant
of Justinian had not conquered in the cause of a heretic; Theodosius
himself was speedily, though gently, removed; and Paul of Tanis, an
orthodox monk, was raised to the throne of Athanasius. The powers of
government were strained in his support; he might appoint or displace
the dukes and tribunes of Egypt; the allowance of bread, which
Diocletian had granted, was suppressed, the churches were shut, and a
nation of schismatics was deprived at once of their spiritual and carnal
food. In his turn, the tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge
of the people: and none except his servile Melchites would salute him as
a man, a Christian, or a bishop. Yet such is the blindness of ambition,
that, when Paul was expelled on a charge of murder, he solicited, with
a bribe of seven hundred pounds of gold, his restoration to the same
station of hatred and ignominy. His successor Apollinaris entered
the hostile city in military array, alike qualified for prayer or for
battle. His troops, under arms, were distributed through the streets;
the gates of the cathedral were guarded, and a chosen band was stationed
in the choir, to defend the person of their chief. He stood erect on
his throne, and, throwing aside the upper garment of a warrior, suddenly
appeared before the eyes of the multitude in the robes of patriarch of
Alexandria. Astonishment held them mute; but no sooner had Apollinaris
begun to read the tome of St. Leo, than a volley of curses, and
invectives, and stones, assaulted the odious minister of the emperor
and the synod. A charge was instantly sounded by the successor of the
apostles; the soldiers waded to their knees in blood; and two hundred
thousand Christians are said to have fallen by the sword: an incredible
account, even if it be extended from the slaughter of a day to the
eighteen years of the reign of Apollinaris. Two succeeding patriarchs,
Eulogius [146] and John, [147] labored in the conversion of heretics,
with arms and arguments more worthy of their evangelical profession. The
theological knowledge of Eulogius was displayed in many a volume, which
magnified the errors of Eutyches and Severus, and attempted to reconcile
the ambiguous language of St. Cyril with the orthodox creed of Pope
Leo and the fathers of Chalcedon. The bounteous alms of John the
eleemosynary were dictated by superstition, or benevolence, or policy.
Seven thousand five hundred poor were maintained at his expense; on his
accession he found eight thousand pounds of gold in the treasury of the
church; he collected ten thousand from the liberality of the faithful;
yet the primate could boast in his testament, that he left behind him
no more than the third part of the smallest of the silver coins. The
churches of Alexandria were delivered to the Catholics, the religion of
the Monophysites was proscribed in Egypt, and a law was revived which
excluded the natives from the honors and emoluments of the state.

[Footnote 144: The history of the Alexandrian patriarchs, from Dioscorus
to Benjamin, is taken from Renaudot, (p. 114--164,) and the second tome
of the Annals of Eutychius.]

[Footnote 145: Liberat. Brev. c. 20, 23. Victor. Chron. p. 329 330.
Procop. Anecdot. c. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 146: Eulogius, who had been a monk of Antioch, was more
conspicuous for subtilty than eloquence. He proves that the enemies of
the faith, the Gaianites and Theodosians, ought not to be reconciled;
that the same proposition may be orthodox in the mouth of St. Cyril,
heretical in that of Severus; that the opposite assertions of St. Leo
are equally true, &c. His writings are no longer extant except in the
Extracts of Photius, who had perused them with care and satisfaction,
ccviii. ccxxv. ccxxvi. ccxxvii. ccxxx. cclxxx.]

[Footnote 147: See the Life of John the eleemosynary by his contemporary
Leontius, bishop of Neapolis in Cyrus, whose Greek text, either lost or
hidden, is reflected in the Latin version of Baronius, (A.D. 610, No.9,
A.D. 620, No. 8.) Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 763) and Fabricius (l. v c.
11, tom. vii. p. 454) have made some critical observations]





Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.--Part VI.

A more important conquest still remained, of the patriarch, the oracle
and leader of the Egyptian church. Theodosius had resisted the
threats and promises of Justinian with the spirit of an apostle or
an enthusiast. "Such," replied the patriarch, "were the offers of the
tempter when he showed the kingdoms of the earth. But my soul is far
dearer to me than life or dominion. The churches are in the hands of a
prince who can kill the body; but my conscience is my own; and in exile,
poverty, or chains, I will steadfastly adhere to the faith of my holy
predecessors, Athanasius, Cyril, and Dioscorus. Anathema to the tome of
Leo and the synod of Chalcedon! Anathema to all who embrace their creed!
Anathema to them now and forevermore! Naked came I out of my mother's
womb, naked shall I descend into the grave. Let those who love God
follow me and seek their salvation." After comforting his brethren,
he embarked for Constantinople, and sustained, in six successive
interviews, the almost irresistible weight of the royal presence. His
opinions were favorably entertained in the palace and the city;
the influence of Theodora assured him a safe conduct and honorable
dismission; and he ended his days, though not on the throne, yet in
the bosom, of his native country. On the news of his death, Apollinaris
indecently feasted the nobles and the clergy; but his joy was checked by
the intelligence of a new election; and while he enjoyed the wealth of
Alexandria, his rivals reigned in the monasteries of Thebais, and
were maintained by the voluntary oblations of the people. A perpetual
succession of patriarchs arose from the ashes of Theodosius; and the
Monophysite churches of Syria and Egypt were united by the name of
Jacobites and the communion of the faith. But the same faith, which has
been confined to a narrow sect of the Syrians, was diffused over the
mass of the Egyptian or Coptic nation; who, almost unanimously, rejected
the decrees of the synod of Chalcedon. A thousand years were now elapsed
since Egypt had ceased to be a kingdom, since the conquerors of Asia and
Europe had trampled on the ready necks of a people, whose ancient wisdom
and power ascend beyond the records of history. The conflict of zeal
and persecution rekindled some sparks of their national spirit. They
abjured, with a foreign heresy, the manners and language of the Greeks:
every Melchite, in their eyes, was a stranger, every Jacobite a citizen;
the alliance of marriage, the offices of humanity, were condemned as a
deadly sin the natives renounced all allegiance to the emperor; and
his orders, at a distance from Alexandria, were obeyed only under the
pressure of military force. A generous effort might have edeemed the
religion and liberty of Egypt, and her six hundred monasteries might
have poured forth their myriads of holy warriors, for whom death should
have no terrors, since life had no comfort or delight. But experience
has proved the distinction of active and passive courage; the fanatic
who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the stake, would
tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. The pusillanimous
temper of the Egyptians could only hope for a change of masters; the
arms of Chosroes depopulated the land, yet under his reign the Jacobites
enjoyed a short and precarious respite. The victory of Heraclius renewed
and aggravated the persecution, and the patriarch again escaped from
Alexandria to the desert. In his flight, Benjamin was encouraged by
a voice, which bade him expect, at the end of ten years, the aid of a
foreign nation, marked, like the Egyptians themselves, with the ancient
rite of circumcision. The character of these deliverers, and the nature
of the deliverance, will be hereafter explained; and I shall step over
the interval of eleven centuries to observe the present misery of the
Jacobites of Egypt. The populous city of Cairo affords a residence, or
rather a shelter, for their indigent patriarch, and a remnant of ten
bishops; forty monasteries have survived the inroads of the Arabs; and
the progress of servitude and apostasy has reduced the Coptic nation to
the despicable number of twenty-five or thirty thousand families; [148]
a race of illiterate beggars, whose only consolation is derived from
the superior wretchedness of the Greek patriarch and his diminutive
congregation. [149]

[Footnote 148: This number is taken from the curious Recherches sur
les Egyptiens et les Chinois, (tom. ii. p. 192, 193,) and appears more
probable than the 600,000 ancient, or 15,000 modern, Copts of Gemelli
Carreri Cyril Lucar, the Protestant patriarch of Constantinople, laments
that those heretics were ten times more numerous than his orthodox
Greeks, ingeniously applying Homer, (Iliad, ii. 128,) the most perfect
expression of contempt, (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, 740.)]

[Footnote 149: The history of the Copts, their religion, manners, &c.,
may be found in the Abbe Renaudot's motley work, neither a translation
nor an original; the Chronicon Orientale of Peter, a Jacobite; in
the two versions of Abraham Ecchellensis, Paris, 1651; and John Simon
Asseman, Venet. 1729. These annals descend no lower than the xiiith
century. The more recent accounts must be searched for in the travellers
into Egypt and the Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du Levant. In the last
century, Joseph Abudacnus, a native of Cairo, published at Oxford, in
thirty pages, a slight Historia Jacobitarum, 147, post p.150]

VI. The Coptic patriarch, a rebel to the Caesars, or a slave to the
khalifs, still gloried in the filial obedience of the kings of Nubia and
Aethiopia. He repaid their homage by magnifying their greatness; and
it was boldly asserted that they could bring into the field a hundred
thousand horse, with an equal number of camels; [150] that their hand
could pour out or restrain the waters of the Nile; [151] and the
peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained, even in this world, by the
intercession of the patriarch. In exile at Constantinople, Theodosius
recommended to his patroness the conversion of the black nations of
Nubia, from the tropic of Cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. [152]
Her design was suspected and emulated by the more orthodox emperor.
The rival missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the
same time; but the empress, from a motive of love or fear, was more
effectually obeyed; and the Catholic priest was detained by the
president of Thebais, while the king of Nubia and his court were hastily
baptized in the faith of Dioscorus. The tardy envoy of Justinian was
received and dismissed with honor: but when he accused the heresy and
treason of the Egyptians, the <DW64> convert was instructed to reply
that he would never abandon his brethren, the true believers, to the
persecuting ministers of the synod of Chalcedon. [153] During several
ages, the bishops of Nubia were named and consecrated by the Jacobite
patriarch of Alexandria: as late as the twelfth century, Christianity
prevailed; and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in the savage
towns of Sennaar and Dongola. [154] But the Nubians at length executed
their threats of returning to the worship of idols; the climate required
the indulgence of polygamy, and they have finally preferred the triumph
of the Koran to the abasement of the Cross. A metaphysical religion may
appear too refined for the capacity of the <DW64> race: yet a black or
a parrot might be taught to repeat the words of the Chalcedonian or
Monophysite creed.

[Footnote 150: About the year 737. See Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex
p. 221, 222. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 99.]

[Footnote 151: Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l. i. c. 8.
Renaudot Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 480, &c. This opinion, introduced
into Egypt and Europe by the artifice of the Copts, the pride of the
Abyssinians, the fear and ignorance of the Turks and Arabs, has not even
the semblance of truth. The rains of Aethiopia do not, in the increase
of the Nile, consult the will of the monarch. If the river approaches at
Napata within three days' journey of the Red Sea (see D'Anville's Maps,)
a canal that should divert its course would demand, and most probably
surpass, the power of the Caesars.]

[Footnote 152: The Abyssinians, who still preserve the features and
olive complexion of the Arabs, afford a proof that two thousand years
are not sufficient to change the color of the human race. The Nubians,
an African race, are pure <DW64>s, as black as those of Senegal or
Congo, with flat noses, thick lips, and woolly hair, (Buffon, Hist.
Naturelle, tom. v. p. 117, 143, 144, 166, 219, edit. in 12mo., Paris,
1769.) The ancients beheld, without much attention, the extraordinary
phenomenon which has exercised the philosophers and theologians of
modern times]

[Footnote 153: Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 329.]

[Footnote 154: The Christianity of the Nubians (A.D. 1153) is attested
by the sheriff al Edrisi, falsely described under the name of the Nubian
geographer, (p. 18,) who represents them as a nation of Jacobites. The
rays of historical light that twinkle in the history of Ranaudot (p.
178, 220--224, 281--286, 405, 434, 451, 464) are all previous to this
aera. See the modern state in the Lettres Edifiantes (Recueil, iv.) and
Busching, (tom. ix. p. 152--139, par Berenger.)]

Christianity was more deeply rooted in the Abyssinian empire; and,
although the correspondence has been sometimes interrupted above seventy
or a hundred years, the mother-church of Alexandria retains her colony
in a state of perpetual pupilage. Seven bishops once composed the
Aethiopic synod: had their number amounted to ten, they might have
elected an independent primate; and one of their kings was ambitious of
promoting his brother to the ecclesiastical throne. But the event
was foreseen, the increase was denied: the episcopal office has been
gradually confined to the abuna, [155] the head and author of the
Abyssinian priesthood; the patriarch supplies each vacancy with an
Egyptian monk; and the character of a stranger appears more venerable in
the eyes of the people, less dangerous in those of the monarch. In the
sixth century, when the schism of Egypt was confirmed, the rival chiefs,
with their patrons, Justinian and Theodora, strove to outstrip each
other in the conquest of a remote and independent province. The
industry of the empress was again victorious, and the pious Theodora has
established in that sequestered church the faith and discipline of
the Jacobites. [156] Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their
religion, the Aethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of
the world, by whom they were forgotten. They were awakened by the
Portuguese, who, turning the southern promontory of Africa, appeared in
India and the Red Sea, as if they had descended through the air from a
distant planet. In the first moments of their interview, the subjects
of Rome and Alexandria observed the resemblance, rather than the
difference, of their faith; and each nation expected the most important
benefits from an alliance with their Christian brethren. In their lonely
situation, the Aethiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life.
Their vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to navigate
the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were deserted, the nation was
scattered in villages, and the emperor, a pompous name, was content,
both in peace and war, with the immovable residence of a camp. Conscious
of their own indigence, the Abyssinians had formed the rational
project of importing the arts and ingenuity of Europe; [157] and their
ambassadors at Rome and Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of
smiths, carpenters, tilers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians,
for the use of their country. But the public danger soon called for the
instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers, to defend an unwarlike
people from the Barbarians who ravaged the inland country and the Turks
and Arabs who advanced from the sea-coast in more formidable array.
Aethiopia was saved by four hundred and fifty Portuguese, who displayed
in the field the native valor of Europeans, and the artificial power of
the musket and cannon. In a moment of terror, the emperor had promised
to reconcile himself and his subjects to the Catholic faith; a Latin
patriarch represented the supremacy of the pope: [158] the empire,
enlarged in a tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than
the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal were
built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa.

[Footnote 155: The abuna is improperly dignified by the Latins with
the title of patriarch. The Abyssinians acknowledge only the four
patriarchs, and their chief is no more than a metropolitan or national
primate, (Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l. iii. c. 7.) The seven
bishops of Renaudot, (p. 511,) who existed A.D. 1131, are unknown to the
historian.]

[Footnote 156: I know not why Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p.
384) should call in question these probable missions of Theodora into
Nubia and Aethiopia. The slight notices of Abyssinia till the year 1500
are supplied by Renaudot (p. 336-341, 381, 382, 405, 443, &c., 452, 456,
463, 475, 480, 511, 525, 559--564) from the Coptic writers. The mind of
Ludolphus was a perfect blank.]

[Footnote 157: Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop. l. iv. c. 5. The most necessary
arts are now exercised by the Jews, and the foreign trade is in the
hands of the Armenians. What Gregory principally admired and envied was
the industry of Europe--artes et opificia.]

[Footnote 158: John Bermudez, whose relation, printed at Lisbon, 1569,
was translated into English by Purchas, (Pilgrims, l. vii. c. 7, p.
1149, &c.,) and from thence into French by La Croze, (Christianisme
d'Ethiopie, p. 92--265.) The piece is curious; but the author may be
suspected of deceiving Abyssinia, Rome, and Portugal. His title to the
rank of patriarch is dark and doubtful, (Ludolph. Comment. No. 101, p.
473.)]

But the vows which pain had extorted were forsworn on the return of
health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy to the
Monophysite faith; their languid belief was inflamed by the exercise
of dispute; they branded the Latins with the names of Arians and
Nestorians, and imputed the adoration of four gods to those who
separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a place of worship, or
rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit missionaries. Their skill
in the liberal and mechanic arts, their theological learning, and the
decency of their manners, inspired a barren esteem; but they were not
endowed with the gift of miracles, [159] and they vainly solicited a
reenforcement of European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty
years at length obtained a more favorable audience, and two emperors
of Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could insure the temporal and
everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal converts
lost his crown and his life; and the rebel army was sanctified by the
abuna, who hurled an anathema at the apostate, and absolved his subjects
from their oath of fidelity. The fate of Zadenghel was revenged by the
courage and fortune of Susneus, who ascended the throne under the name
of Segued, and more vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his
kinsman. After the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits
and his illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte
to the synod of Chalcedon, presuming that his clergy and people would
embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The liberty of
choice was succeeded by a law, which imposed, under pain of death, the
belief of the two natures of Christ: the Abyssinians were enjoined to
work and to play on the Sabbath; and Segued, in the face of Europe and
Africa, renounced his connection with the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit,
Alphonso Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Aethiopia, accepted, in
the name of Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of the penitent. "I
confess," said the emperor on his knees, "I confess that the pope is the
vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the sovereign of the
world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his feet I offer my person
and kingdom." A similar oath was repeated by his son, his brother,
the clergy, the nobles, and even the ladies of the court: the Latin
patriarch was invested with honors and wealth; and his missionaries
erected their churches or citadels in the most convenient stations of
the empire. The Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of
their chief, who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of
his order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and
the inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of
circumcision, which health, rather than superstition, had first invented
in the climate of Aethiopia. [160] A new baptism, a new ordination, was
inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with horror when the most
holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious
of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defense of
their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with desperate
but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood
of the insurgents: two abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were
slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns; and neither
merit, nor rank, nor sex, could save from an ignominious death the
enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the
constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most
faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason,
perhaps of fear: and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly
revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his
father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch, and restored to
the wishes of the nation the faith and the discipline of Egypt. The
Monophysite churches resounded with a song of triumph, "that the sheep
of Aethiopia were now delivered from the hyaenas of the West;" and the
gates of that solitary realm were forever shut against the arts, the
science, and the fanaticism of Europe. [161]

[Footnote 159: Religio Romana...nec precibus patrum nec miraculis ab
ipsis editis suffulciebatur, is the uncontradicted assurance of the
devout emperor Susneus to his patriarch Mendez, (Ludolph. Comment.
No. 126, p. 529;) and such assurances should be preciously kept, as an
antidote against any marvellous legends.]

[Footnote 160: I am aware how tender is the question of circumcision.
Yet I will affirm, 1. That the Aethiopians have a physical reason
for the circumcision of males, and even of females, (Recherches
Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. ii.) 2. That it was practised
in Aethiopia long before the introduction of Judaism or Christianity,
(Herodot. l. ii. c. 104. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73.) "Infantes
circumcidunt ob consuetudinemn, non ob Judaismum," says Gregory the
Abyssinian priest, (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana, p. 720.) Yet in the
heat of dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of
uncircumcised, (La Croze, p. 90. Ludolph. Hist. and Comment. l. iii. c.
l.)]

[Footnote 161: The three Protestant historians, Ludolphus, (Hist.
Aethiopica, Francofurt. 1681; Commentarius, 1691; Relatio Nova, &c.,
1693, in folio,) Geddes, (Church History of Aethiopia, London, 1696, in
8vo..) and La Croze, (Hist. du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie,
La Haye, 1739, in 12mo.,) have drawn their principal materials from the
Jesuits, especially from the General History of Tellez, published in
Portuguese at Coimbra, 1660. We might be surprised at their frankness;
but their most flagitious vice, the spirit of persecution, was in their
eyes the most meritorious virtue. Ludolphus possessed some, though
a slight, advantage from the Aethiopic language, and the personal
conversation of Gregory, a free-spirited Abyssinian priest, whom
he invited from Rome to the court of Saxe-Gotha. See the Theologia
Aethiopica of Gregory, in (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, p. 716--734.) *
Note: The travels of Bruce, illustrated by those of Mr. Salt, and the
narrative of Nathaniel Pearce, have brought us again acquainted with
this remote region. Whatever may be their speculative opinions the
barbarous manners of the Ethiopians seem to be gaining more and more the
ascendency over the practice of Christianity.--M.]





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

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

I have now deduced from Trajan to Constantine, from Constantine to
Heraclius, the regular series of the Roman emperors; and faithfully
exposed the prosperous and adverse fortunes of their reigns. Five
centuries of the decline and fall of the empire have already elapsed;
but a period of more than eight hundred years still separates me from
the term of my labors, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Should
I persevere in the same course, should I observe the same measure, a
prolix and slender thread would be spun through many a volume, nor would
the patient reader find an adequate reward of instruction or amusement.
At every step, as we sink deeper in the decline and fall of the
Eastern empire, the annals of each succeeding reign would impose a more
ungrateful and melancholy task. These annals must continue to repeat a
tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery; the natural connection
of causes and events would be broken by frequent and hasty transitions,
and a minute accumulation of circumstances must destroy the light and
effect of those general pictures which compose the use and ornament of
a remote history. From the time of Heraclius, the Byzantine theatre is
contracted and darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by
the laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius, recedes on all sides
from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of our inquiries,
is reduced to a narrow corner of Europe, to the lonely suburbs of
Constantinople; and the fate of the Greek empire has been compared to
that of the Rhine, which loses itself in the sands, before its waters
can mingle with the ocean. The scale of dominion is diminished to our
view by the distance of time and place; nor is the loss of external
splendor compensated by the nobler gifts of virtue and genius. In the
last moments of her decay, Constantinople was doubtless more opulent and
populous than Athens at her most flourishing aera, when a scanty sum
of six thousand talents, or twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling was
possessed by twenty-one thousand male citizens of an adult age. But each
of these citizens was a freeman, who dared to assert the liberty of his
thoughts, words, and actions, whose person and property were guarded by
equal law; and who exercised his independent vote in the government
of the republic. Their numbers seem to be multiplied by the strong and
various discriminations of character; under the shield of freedom, on
the wings of emulation and vanity, each Athenian aspired to the level of
the national dignity; from this commanding eminence, some chosen spirits
soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the chances of superior
merit in a great and populous kingdom, as they are proved by experience,
would excuse the computation of imaginary millions. The territories of
Athens, Sparta, and their allies, do not exceed a moderate province of
France or England; but after the trophies of Salamis and Platea,
they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been
trampled under the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects of
the Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of Greeks
and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither
softened by the weakness of humanity, nor animated by the vigor of
memorable crimes. The freemen of antiquity might repeat with generous
enthusiasm the sentence of Homer, "that on the first day of his
servitude, the captive is deprived of one half of his manly virtue."
But the poet had only seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor
could he foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated
by the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but even
the thoughts, of the prostrate votary. By this double yoke, the Greeks
were oppressed under the successors of Heraclius; the tyrant, a law of
eternal justice, was degraded by the vices of his subjects; and on the
throne, in the camp, in the schools, we search, perhaps with fruitless
diligence, the names and characters that may deserve to be rescued from
oblivion. Nor are the defects of the subject compensated by the skill
and variety of the painters. Of a space of eight hundred years, the four
first centuries are overspread with a cloud interrupted by some faint
and broken rays of historic light: in the lives of the emperors, from
Maurice to Alexius, Basil the Macedonian has alone been the theme of a
separate work; and the absence, or loss, or imperfection of contemporary
evidence, must be poorly supplied by the doubtful authority of more
recent compilers. The four last centuries are exempt from the reproach
of penury; and with the Comnenian family, the historic muse of
Constantinople again revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are
without elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers,
treads in each other's footsteps in the same path of servitude and
superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or
corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still ignorant
of the causes of events, the characters of the actors, and the manners
of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The observation which
has been applied to a man, may be extended to a whole people, that the
energy of the sword is communicated to the pen; and it will be found by
experience, that the tone of history will rise or fall with the spirit
of the age.

From these considerations, I should have abandoned without regret the
Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not reflected that
the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively connected with the most
splendid and important revolutions which have changed the state of the
world. The space of the lost provinces was immediately replenished with
new colonies and rising kingdoms: the active virtues of peace and war
deserted from the vanquished to the victorious nations; and it is in
their origin and conquests, in their religion and government, that
we must explore the causes and effects of the decline and fall of the
Eastern empire. Nor will this scope of narrative, the riches and
variety of these materials, be incompatible with the unity of design
and composition. As, in his daily prayers, the Mussulman of Fez or Delhi
still turns his face towards the temple of Mecca, the historian's eye
shall be always fixed on the city of Constantinople. The excursive line
may embrace the wilds of Arabia and Tartary, but the circle will be
ultimately reduced to the decreasing limit of the Roman monarchy.

On this principle I shall now establish the plan of the last two volumes
of the present work. The first chapter will contain, in a regular
series, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople during a period of
six hundred years, from the days of Heraclius to the Latin conquest; a
rapid abstract, which may be supported by a general appeal to the order
and text of the original historians. In this introduction, I shall
confine myself to the revolutions of the throne, the succession of
families, the personal characters of the Greek princes, the mode
of their life and death, the maxims and influence of their domestic
government, and the tendency of their reign to accelerate or suspend the
downfall of the Eastern empire. Such a chronological review will serve
to illustrate the various argument of the subsequent chapters; and each
circumstance of the eventful story of the Barbarians will adapt itself
in a proper place to the Byzantine annals. The internal state of the
empire, and the dangerous heresy of the Paulicians, which shook the East
and enlightened the West, will be the subject of two separate chapters;
but these inquiries must be postponed till our further progress shall
have opened the view of the world in the ninth and tenth centuries of
the Christian area. After this foundation of Byzantine history, the
following nations will pass before our eyes, and each will occupy the
space to which it may be entitled by greatness or merit, or the degree
of connection with the Roman world and the present age. I. The Franks; a
general appellation which includes all the Barbarians of France, Italy,
and Germany, who were united by the sword and sceptre of Charlemagne.
The persecution of images and their votaries separated Rome and Italy
from the Byzantine throne, and prepared the restoration of the Roman
empire in the West. II. The Arabs or Saracens. Three ample chapters will
be devoted to this curious and interesting object. In the first, after
a picture of the country and its inhabitants, I shall investigate
the character of Mahomet; the character, religion, and success of the
prophet. In the second, I shall lead the Arabs to the conquest of Syria,
Egypt, and Africa, the provinces of the Roman empire; nor can I check
their victorious career till they have overthrown the monarchies of
Persia and Spain. In the third, I shall inquire how Constantinople and
Europe were saved by the luxury and arts, the division and decay, of
the empire of the caliphs. A single chapter will include, III. The
Bulgarians, IV. Hungarians, and, V. Russians, who assaulted by sea or by
land the provinces and the capital; but the last of these, so important
in their present greatness, will excite some curiosity in their origin
and infancy. VI. The Normans; or rather the private adventurers of that
warlike people, who founded a powerful kingdom in Apulia and Sicily,
shook the throne of Constantinople, displayed the trophies of chivalry,
and almost realized the wonders of romance.

VII. The Latins; the subjects of the pope, the nations of the West, who
enlisted under the banner of the cross for the recovery or relief of the
holy sepulchre. The Greek emperors were terrified and preserved by the
myriads of pilgrims who marched to Jerusalem with Godfrey of Bouillon
and the peers of Christendom. The second and third crusades trod in the
footsteps of the first: Asia and Europe were mingled in a sacred war of
two hundred years; and the Christian powers were bravely resisted,
and finally expelled by Saladin and the Mamelukes of Egypt. In these
memorable crusades, a fleet and army of French and Venetians were
diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus: they assaulted the
capital, they subverted the Greek monarchy: and a dynasty of Latin
princes was seated near threescore years on the throne of Constantine.
VII. The Greeks themselves, during this period of captivity and exile,
must be considered as a foreign nation; the enemies, and again the
sovereigns of Constantinople. Misfortune had rekindled a spark of
national virtue; and the Imperial series may be continued with some
dignity from their restoration to the Turkish conquest. IX. The Moguls
and Tartars. By the arms of Zingis and his descendants, the globe was
shaken from China to Poland and Greece: the sultans were overthrown: the
caliphs fell, and the Caesars trembled on their throne. The victories
of Timour suspended above fifty years the final ruin of the Byzantine
empire. X. I have already noticed the first appearance of the Turks;
and the names of the fathers, of Seljuk and Othman, discriminate the
two successive dynasties of the nation, which emerged in the eleventh
century from the Scythian wilderness. The former established a splendid
and potent kingdom from the banks of the Oxus to Antioch and Nice; and
the first crusade was provoked by the violation of Jerusalem and the
danger of Constantinople. From an humble origin, the Ottomans arose, the
scourge and terror of Christendom. Constantinople was besieged and taken
by Mahomet II., and his triumph annihilates the remnant, the image, the
title, of the Roman empire in the East. The schism of the Greeks will be
connected with their last calamities, and the restoration of learning in
the Western world.

I shall return from the captivity of the new, to the ruins of ancient
Rome; and the venerable name, the interesting theme, will shed a ray of
glory on the conclusion of my labors.

The emperor Heraclius had punished a tyrant and ascended his throne; and
the memory of his reign is perpetuated by the transient conquest, and
irreparable loss, of the Eastern provinces. After the death of Eudocia,
his first wife, he disobeyed the patriarch, and violated the laws, by
his second marriage with his niece Martina; and the superstition of the
Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the father and
the deformity of his offspring. But the opinion of an illegitimate birth
is sufficient to distract the choice, and loosen the obedience, of the
people: the ambition of Martina was quickened by maternal love, and
perhaps by the envy of a step-mother; and the aged husband was too
feeble to withstand the arts of conjugal allurements. Constantine,
his eldest son, enjoyed in a mature age the title of Augustus; but the
weakness of his constitution required a colleague and a guardian, and
he yielded with secret reluctance to the partition of the empire. The
senate was summoned to the palace to ratify or attest the association
of Heracleonas, the son of Martina: the imposition of the diadem was
consecrated by the prayer and blessing of the patriarch; the senators
and patricians adored the majesty of the great emperor and the partners
of his reign; and as soon as the doors were thrown open, they were
hailed by the tumultuary but important voice of the soldiers. After an
interval of five months, the pompous ceremonies which formed the
essence of the Byzantine state were celebrated in the cathedral and the
hippodrome; the concord of the royal brothers was affectedly displayed
by the younger leaning on the arm of the elder; and the name of Martina
was mingled in the reluctant or venal acclamations of the people.
Heraclius survived this association about two years: his last testimony
declared his two sons the equal heirs of the Eastern empire, and
commanded them to honor his widow Martina as their mother and their
sovereign.

When Martina first appeared on the throne with the name and attributes
of royalty, she was checked by a firm, though respectful, opposition;
and the dying embers of freedom were kindled by the breath of
superstitious prejudice. "We reverence," exclaimed the voice of a
citizen, "we reverence the mother of our princes; but to those princes
alone our obedience is due; and Constantine, the elder emperor, is of an
age to sustain, in his own hands, the weight of the sceptre. Your sex is
excluded by nature from the toils of government. How could you combat,
how could you answer, the Barbarians, who, with hostile or friendly
intentions, may approach the royal city? May Heaven avert from the Roman
republic this national disgrace, which would provoke the patience of the
slaves of Persia!" Martina descended from the throne with indignation,
and sought a refuge in the female apartment of the palace. The reign of
Constantine the Third lasted only one hundred and three days: he expired
in the thirtieth year of his age, and, although his life had been a long
malady, a belief was entertained that poison had been the means, and
his cruel step-mother the author, of his untimely fate. Martina reaped
indeed the harvest of his death, and assumed the government in the name
of the surviving emperor; but the incestuous widow of Heraclius was
universally abhorred; the jealousy of the people was awakened, and the
two orphans whom Constantine had left became the objects of the public
care. It was in vain that the son of Martina, who was no more than
fifteen years of age, was taught to declare himself the guardian of his
nephews, one of whom he had presented at the baptismal font: it was in
vain that he swore on the wood of the true cross, to defend them against
all their enemies. On his death-bed, the late emperor had despatched
a trusty servant to arm the troops and provinces of the East in the
defence of his helpless children: the eloquence and liberality of
Valentin had been successful, and from his camp of Chalcedon, he boldly
demanded the punishment of the assassins, and the restoration of the
lawful heir. The license of the soldiers, who devoured the grapes and
drank the wine of their Asiatic vineyards, provoked the citizens of
Constantinople against the domestic authors of their calamities, and the
dome of St. Sophia reechoed, not with prayers and hymns, but with the
clamors and imprecations of an enraged multitude. At their imperious
command, Heracleonas appeared in the pulpit with the eldest of the royal
orphans; Constans alone was saluted as emperor of the Romans, and a
crown of gold, which had been taken from the tomb of Heraclius, was
placed on his head, with the solemn benediction of the patriarch.

But in the tumult of joy and indignation, the church was pillaged, the
sanctuary was polluted by a promiscuous crowd of Jews and Barbarians;
and the Monothelite Pyrrhus, a creature of the empress, after dropping a
protestation on the altar, escaped by a prudent flight from the zeal
of the Catholics. A more serious and bloody task was reserved for
the senate, who derived a temporary strength from the consent of the
soldiers and people.

The spirit of Roman freedom revived the ancient and awful examples of
the judgment of tyrants, and the Imperial culprits were deposed and
condemned as the authors of the death of Constantine. But the severity
of the conscript fathers was stained by the indiscriminate punishment of
the innocent and the guilty: Martina and Heracleonas were sentenced to
the amputation, the former of her tongue, the latter of his nose; and
after this cruel execution, they consumed the remainder of their days in
exile and oblivion. The Greeks who were capable of reflection might find
some consolation for their servitude, by observing the abuse of power
when it was lodged for a moment in the hands of an aristocracy.

We shall imagine ourselves transported five hundred years backwards to
the age of the Antonines, if we listen to the oration which Constans II.
pronounced in the twelfth year of his age before the Byzantine senate.
After returning his thanks for the just punishment of the assassins, who
had intercepted the fairest hopes of his father's reign, "By the divine
Providence," said the young emperor, "and by your righteous decree,
Martina and her incestuous progeny have been cast headlong from the
throne. Your majesty and wisdom have prevented the Roman state from
degenerating into lawless tyranny. I therefore exhort and beseech you
to stand forth as the counsellors and judges of the common safety." The
senators were gratified by the respectful address and liberal donative
of their sovereign; but these servile Greeks were unworthy and
regardless of freedom; and in his mind, the lesson of an hour was
quickly erased by the prejudices of the age and the habits of despotism.
He retained only a jealous fear lest the senate or people should one day
invade the right of primogeniture, and seat his brother Theodosius on
an equal throne. By the imposition of holy orders, the grandson of
Heraclius was disqualified for the purple; but this ceremony, which
seemed to profane the sacraments of the church, was insufficient to
appease the suspicions of the tyrant, and the death of the deacon
Theodosius could alone expiate the crime of his royal birth. [1111] His
murder was avenged by the imprecations of the people, and the assassin,
in the fullness of power, was driven from his capital into voluntary
and perpetual exile. Constans embarked for Greece and, as if he meant
to retort the abhorrence which he deserved he is said, from the Imperial
galley, to have spit against the walls of his native city. After passing
the winter at Athens, he sailed to Tarentum in Italy, visited Rome,
[1112] and concluded a long pilgrimage of disgrace and sacrilegious
rapine, by fixing his residence at Syracuse. But if Constans could
fly from his people, he could not fly from himself. The remorse of his
conscience created a phantom who pursued him by land and sea, by day and
by night; and the visionary Theodosius, presenting to his lips a cup of
blood, said, or seemed to say, "Drink, brother, drink;" a sure emblem
of the aggravation of his guilt, since he had received from the hands of
the deacon the mystic cup of the blood of Christ. Odious to himself
and to mankind, Constans perished by domestic, perhaps by episcopal,
treason, in the capital of Sicily. A servant who waited in the bath,
after pouring warm water on his head, struck him violently with the
vase. He fell, stunned by the blow, and suffocated by the water; and his
attendants, who wondered at the tedious delay, beheld with indifference
the corpse of their lifeless emperor. The troops of Sicily invested
with the purple an obscure youth, whose inimitable beauty eluded, and it
might easily elude, the declining art of the painters and sculptors of
the age.

[Footnote 1111: His soldiers (according to Abulfaradji. Chron. Syr. p.
112) called him another Cain. St. Martin, t. xi. p. 379.--M.]

[Footnote 1112: He was received in Rome, and pillaged the churches. He
carried off the brass roof of the Pantheon to Syracuse, or, as Schlosser
conceives, to Constantinople Schlosser Geschichte der bilder-sturmenden
Kaiser p. 80--M.]

Constans had left in the Byzantine palace three sons, the eldest of
whom had been clothed in his infancy with the purple. When the father
summoned them to attend his person in Sicily, these precious hostages
were detained by the Greeks, and a firm refusal informed him that they
were the children of the state. The news of his murder was conveyed
with almost supernatural speed from Syracuse to Constantinople; and
Constantine, the eldest of his sons, inherited his throne without being
the heir of the public hatred. His subjects contributed, with zeal and
alacrity, to chastise the guilt and presumption of a province which had
usurped the rights of the senate and people; the young emperor sailed
from the Hellespont with a powerful fleet; and the legions of Rome and
Carthage were assembled under his standard in the harbor of Syracuse.
The defeat of the Sicilian tyrant was easy, his punishment just, and his
beauteous head was exposed in the hippodrome: but I cannot applaud the
clemency of a prince, who, among a crowd of victims, condemned the son
of a patrician, for deploring with some bitterness the execution of a
virtuous father. The youth was castrated: he survived the operation,
and the memory of this indecent cruelty is preserved by the elevation of
Germanus to the rank of a patriarch and saint. After pouring this bloody
libation on his father's tomb, Constantine returned to his capital; and
the growth of his young beard during the Sicilian voyage was announced,
by the familiar surname of Pogonatus, to the Grecian world. But his
reign, like that of his predecessor, was stained with fraternal discord.
On his two brothers, Heraclius and Tiberius, he had bestowed the title
of Augustus; an empty title, for they continued to languish, without
trust or power, in the solitude of the palace. At their secret
instigation, the troops of the Anatolian theme or province approached
the city on the Asiatic side, demanded for the royal brothers the
partition or exercise of sovereignty, and supported their seditious
claim by a theological argument. They were Christians, (they cried,)
and orthodox Catholics; the sincere votaries of the holy and undivided
Trinity. Since there are three equal persons in heaven, it is reasonable
there should be three equal persons upon earth. The emperor invited
these learned divines to a friendly conference, in which they might
propose their arguments to the senate: they obeyed the summons, but the
prospect of their bodies hanging on the gibbet in the suburb of Galata
reconciled their companions to the unity of the reign of Constantine.
He pardoned his brothers, and their names were still pronounced in the
public acclamations: but on the repetition or suspicion of a similar
offence, the obnoxious princes were deprived of their titles and noses,
[1113] in the presence of the Catholic bishops who were assembled at
Constantinople in the sixth general synod. In the close of his life,
Pogonatus was anxious only to establish the right of primogeniture: the
heir of his two sons, Justinian and Heraclius, was offered on the shrine
of St. Peter, as a symbol of their spiritual adoption by the pope; but
the elder was alone exalted to the rank of Augustus, and the assurance
of the empire.

[Footnote 1113: Schlosser (Geschichte der bilder sturmenden Kaiser,
p. 90) supposed that the young princes were mutilated after the first
insurrection; that after this the acts were still inscribed with
their names, the princes being closely secluded in the palace. The
improbability of this circumstance may be weighed against Gibbon's want
of authority for his statement.--M.]

After the decease of his father, the inheritance of the Roman world
devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant lawgiver was
dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his namesake only in
the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong; his
understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride,
that his birth had given him the command of millions, of whom the
smallest community would not have chosen him for their local magistrate.
His favorite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human
sympathy, a eunuch and a monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to
the other the finances; the former corrected the emperor's mother with
a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their
heads downwards, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days of Commodus
and Caracalla, the cruelty of the Roman princes had most commonly been
the effect of their fear; but Justinian, who possessed some vigor
of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and braved the revenge, of his
subjects, about ten years, till the measure was full, of his crimes and
of their patience. In a dark dungeon, Leontius, a general of reputation,
had groaned above three years, with some of the noblest and most
deserving of the patricians: he was suddenly drawn forth to assume the
government of Greece; and this promotion of an injured man was a mark
of the contempt rather than of the confidence of his prince. As he
was followed to the port by the kind offices of his friends, Leontius
observed, with a sigh, that he was a victim adorned for sacrifice,
and that inevitable death would pursue his footsteps. They ventured
to reply, that glory and empire might be the recompense of a generous
resolution; that every order of men abhorred the reign of a monster; and
that the hands of two hundred thousand patriots expected only the voice
of a leader. The night was chosen for their deliverance; and in the
first effort of the conspirators, the praefect was slain, and the
prisons were forced open: the emissaries of Leontius proclaimed in every
street, "Christians, to St. Sophia!" and the seasonable text of
the patriarch, "This is the day of the Lord!" was the prelude of
an inflammatory sermon. From the church the people adjourned to the
hippodrome: Justinian, in whose cause not a sword had been drawn, was
dragged before these tumultuary judges, and their clamors demanded the
instant death of the tyrant. But Leontius, who was already clothed
with the purple, cast an eye of pity on the prostrate son of his own
benefactor and of so many emperors. The life of Justinian was spared;
the amputation of his nose, perhaps of his tongue, was imperfectly
performed: the happy flexibility of the Greek language could impose the
name of Rhinotmetus; and the mutilated tyrant was banished to Chersonae
in Crim-Tartary, a lonely settlement, where corn, wine, and oil, were
imported as foreign luxuries.

On the edge of the Scythian wilderness, Justinian still cherished the
pride of his birth, and the hope of his restoration. After three years'
exile, he received the pleasing intelligence that his injury was avenged
by a second revolution, and that Leontius in his turn had been dethroned
and mutilated by the rebel Apsimar, who assumed the more respectable
name of Tiberius. But the claim of lineal succession was still
formidable to a plebeian usurper; and his jealousy was stimulated by the
complaints and charges of the Chersonites, who beheld the vices of the
tyrant in the spirit of the exile. With a band of followers, attached
to his person by common hope or common despair, Justinian fled from the
inhospitable shore to the horde of the Chozars, who pitched their tents
between the Tanais and Borysthenes. The khan entertained with pity and
respect the royal suppliant: Phanagoria, once an opulent city, on the
Asiatic side of the lake Moeotis, was assigned for his residence; and
every Roman prejudice was stifled in his marriage with the sister of
the Barbarian, who seems, however, from the name of Theodora, to have
received the sacrament of baptism. But the faithless Chozar was soon
tempted by the gold of Constantinople: and had not the design been
revealed by the conjugal love of Theodora, her husband must have
been assassinated or betrayed into the power of his enemies. After
strangling, with his own hands, the two emissaries of the khan,
Justinian sent back his wife to her brother, and embarked on the Euxine
in search of new and more faithful allies. His vessel was assaulted by a
violent tempest; and one of his pious companions advised him to deserve
the mercy of God by a vow of general forgiveness, if he should be
restored to the throne. "Of forgiveness?" replied the intrepid tyrant:
"may I perish this instant--may the Almighty whelm me in the waves--if I
consent to spare a single head of my enemies!" He survived this impious
menace, sailed into the mouth of the Danube, trusted his person in the
royal village of the Bulgarians, and purchased the aid of Terbelis, a
pagan conqueror, by the promise of his daughter and a fair partition
of the treasures of the empire. The Bulgarian kingdom extended to the
confines of Thrace; and the two princes besieged Constantinople at the
head of fifteen thousand horse. Apsimar was dismayed by the sudden and
hostile apparition of his rival whose head had been promised by the
Chozar, and of whose evasion he was yet ignorant. After an absence of
ten years, the crimes of Justinian were faintly remembered, and the
birth and misfortunes of their hereditary sovereign excited the pity
of the multitude, ever discontented with the ruling powers; and by the
active diligence of his adherents, he was introduced into the city and
palace of Constantine.





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

In rewarding his allies, and recalling his wife, Justinian displayed
some sense of honor and gratitude; [1114] and Terbelis retired, after
sweeping away a heap of gold coin, which he measured with his Scythian
whip. But never was vow more religiously performed than the sacred oath
of revenge which he had sworn amidst the storms of the Euxine. The two
usurpers (for I must reserve the name of tyrant for the conqueror) were
dragged into the hippodrome, the one from his prison, the other from his
palace. Before their execution, Leontius and Apsimar were cast prostrate
in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and Justinian, planting
a foot on each of their necks, contemplated above an hour the
chariot-race, while the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the
Psalmist, "Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion
and dragon shalt thou set thy foot!" The universal defection which he
had once experienced might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula,
that the Roman people had but one head. Yet I shall presume to observe,
that such a wish is unworthy of an ingenious tyrant, since his revenge
and cruelty would have been extinguished by a single blow, instead of
the slow variety of tortures which Justinian inflicted on the victims of
his anger. His pleasures were inexhaustible: neither private virtue
nor public service could expiate the guilt of active, or even passive,
obedience to an established government; and, during the six years of his
new reign, he considered the axe, the cord, and the rack, as the only
instruments of royalty. But his most implacable hatred was pointed
against the Chersonites, who had insulted his exile and violated the
laws of hospitality. Their remote situation afforded some means of
defence, or at least of escape; and a grievous tax was imposed on
Constantinople, to supply the preparations of a fleet and army. "All
are guilty, and all must perish," was the mandate of Justinian; and
the bloody execution was intrusted to his favorite Stephen, who was
recommended by the epithet of the savage. Yet even the savage Stephen
imperfectly accomplished the intentions of his sovereign. The slowness
of his attack allowed the greater part of the inhabitants to withdraw
into the country; and the minister of vengeance contented himself with
reducing the youth of both sexes to a state of servitude, with roasting
alive seven of the principal citizens, with drowning twenty in the sea,
and with reserving forty-two in chains to receive their doom from the
mouth of the emperor. In their return, the fleet was driven on the rocky
shores of Anatolia; and Justinian applauded the obedience of the Euxine,
which had involved so many thousands of his subjects and enemies in a
common shipwreck: but the tyrant was still insatiate of blood; and
a second expedition was commanded to extirpate the remains of the
proscribed colony. In the short interval, the Chersonites had returned
to their city, and were prepared to die in arms; the khan of the Chozars
had renounced the cause of his odious brother; the exiles of every
province were assembled in Tauris; and Bardanes, under the name
of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. The Imperial troops,
unwilling and unable to perpetrate the revenge of Justinian, escaped
his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance: the fleet, under their
new sovereign, steered back a more auspicious course to the harbors of
Sinope and Constantinople; and every tongue was prompt to pronounce,
every hand to execute, the death of the tyrant. Destitute of friends, he
was deserted by his Barbarian guards; and the stroke of the assassin was
praised as an act of patriotism and Roman virtue. His son Tiberius had
taken refuge in a church; his aged grandmother guarded the door; and the
innocent youth, suspending round his neck the most formidable relics,
embraced with one hand the altar, with the other the wood of the true
cross. But the popular fury that dares to trample on superstition,
is deaf to the cries of humanity; and the race of Heraclius was
extinguished after a reign of one hundred years

[Footnote 1114: Of fear rather than of more generous motives. Compare Le
Beau vol. xii. p. 64.--M.]

Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the Isaurian dynasty,
a short interval of six years is divided into three reigns. Bardanes,
or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as a hero who had delivered
his country from a tyrant; and he might taste some moments of happiness
in the first transports of sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left
behind him an ample treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but
this useful fund was soon and idly dissipated by his successor. On the
festival of his birthday, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the
games of the hippodrome; from thence he paraded through the streets with
a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets; refreshed himself in the
baths of Zeuxippus, and returning to the palace, entertained his nobles
with a sumptuous banquet. At the meridian hour he withdrew to his
chamber, intoxicated with flattery and wine, and forgetful that his
example had made every subject ambitious, and that every ambitious
subject was his secret enemy. Some bold conspirators introduced
themselves in the disorder of the feast; and the slumbering monarch was
surprised, bound, blinded, and deposed, before he was sensible of his
danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward; and the free
voice of the senate and people promoted Artemius from the office of
secretary to that of emperor: he assumed the title of Anastasius the
Second, and displayed in a short and troubled reign the virtues both of
peace and war. But after the extinction of the Imperial line, the rule
of obedience was violated, and every change diffused the seeds of new
revolutions. In a mutiny of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer
of the revenue was forcibly invested with the purple: after some months
of a naval war, Anastasius resigned the sceptre; and the conqueror,
Theodosius the Third, submitted in his turn to the superior ascendant
of Leo, the general and emperor of the Oriental troops. His two
predecessors were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical profession:
the restless impatience of Anastasius tempted him to risk and to lose
his life in a treasonable enterprise; but the last days of Theodosius
were honorable and secure. The single sublime word, "Health," which
he inscribed on his tomb, expresses the confidence of philosophy or
religion; and the fame of his miracles was long preserved among the
people of Ephesus. This convenient shelter of the church might sometimes
impose a lesson of clemency; but it may be questioned whether it is for
the public interest to diminish the perils of unsuccessful ambition.

I have dwelt on the fall of a tyrant; I shall briefly represent the
founder of a new dynasty, who is known to posterity by the invectives
of his enemies, and whose public and private life is involved in the
ecclesiastical story of the Iconoclasts. Yet in spite of the clamors
of superstition, a favorable prejudice for the character of Leo the
Isaurian may be reasonably drawn from the obscurity of his birth, and
the duration of his reign.--I. In an age of manly spirit, the prospect
of an Imperial reward would have kindled every energy of the mind, and
produced a crowd of competitors as deserving as they were desirous to
reign. Even in the corruption and debility of the modern Greeks, the
elevation of a plebeian from the last to the first rank of society,
supposes some qualifications above the level of the multitude. He would
probably be ignorant and disdainful of speculative science; and, in the
pursuit of fortune, he might absolve himself from the obligations of
benevolence and justice; but to his character we may ascribe the useful
virtues of prudence and fortitude, the knowledge of mankind, and the
important art of gaining their confidence and directing their passions.
It is agreed that Leo was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his
primitive name. The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe
him as an itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry
merchandise to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on
the road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman
empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols. A more
probable account relates the migration of his father from Asia Minor to
Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a grazier; and he must
have acquired considerable wealth, since the first introduction of his
son was procured by a supply of five hundred sheep to the Imperial
camp. His first service was in the guards of Justinian, where he soon
attracted the notice, and by degrees the jealousy, of the tyrant.
His valor and dexterity were conspicuous in the Colchian war: from
Anastasius he received the command of the Anatolian legions, and by the
suffrage of the soldiers he was raised to the empire with the general
applause of the Roman world.--II. In this dangerous elevation, Leo the
Third supported himself against the envy of his equals, the discontent
of a powerful faction, and the assaults of his foreign and domestic
enemies. The Catholics, who accuse his religious innovations, are
obliged to confess that they were undertaken with temper and conducted
with firmness. Their silence respects the wisdom of his administration
and the purity of his manners. After a reign of twenty-four years, he
peaceably expired in the palace of Constantinople; and the purple which
he had acquired was transmitted by the right of inheritance to the third
generation. [1115]

[Footnote 1115: During the latter part of his reign, the hostilities
of the Saracens, who invested a Pergamenian, named Tiberius, with the
purple, and proclaimed him as the son of Justinian, and an earthquake,
which destroyed the walls of Constantinople, compelled Leo greatly
to increase the burdens of taxation upon his subjects. A twelfth was
exacted in addition to every aurena as a wall tax. Theophanes p. 275
Schlosser, Bilder eturmeud Kaiser, p. 197.--M.]

In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of Leo,
Constantine the Fifth, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with less temperate
zeal the images or idols of the church. Their votaries have exhausted
the bitterness of religious gall, in their portrait of this spotted
panther, this antichrist, this flying dragon of the serpent's seed,
who surpassed the vices of Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long
butchery of whatever was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his
empire. In person, the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims,
surveyed their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without
satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted as a
grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or mutilated
by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his pollution of his
baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but the manly pleasures of
Copronymus degraded him below the level of a brute; his lust confounded
the eternal distinctions of sex and species, and he seemed to extract
some unnatural delight from the objects most offensive to human sense.
In his religion the Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a
Pagan, and an Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could
be discovered only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal
sacrifices to Venus and the daemons of antiquity. His life was stained
with the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of these
accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is refuted by its
own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the life of the princes,
the lie is more easy as the detection is more difficult. Without
adopting the pernicious maxim, that where much is alleged, something
must be true, I can however discern, that Constantine the Fifth was
dissolute and cruel. Calumny is more prone to exaggerate than to invent;
and her licentious tongue is checked in some measure by the experience
of the age and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks,
the generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under
his reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. [1116] The
Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but even their
hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled the provocations
which might excuse or justify his rigor, but even these provocations
must gradually inflame his resentment and harden his temper in the use
or the abuse of despotism. Yet the character of the fifth Constantine
was not devoid of merit, nor did his government always deserve the
curses or the contempt of the Greeks. From the confession of his
enemies, I am informed of the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the
redemption of two thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon
plenty of the times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise his
activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the head
of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was various, he
triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the Danube, in civil
and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast into the scale to
counterbalance the weight of orthodox invective. The Iconoclasts revered
the virtues of the prince: forty years after his death they still prayed
before the tomb of the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by
fanaticism or fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white
steed, brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: "An absurd
fable," says the Catholic historian, "since Copronymus is chained with
the daemons in the abyss of hell."

[Footnote 1116: He is accused of burning the library of Constantinople,
founded by Julian, with its president and twelve professors. This
eastern Sorbonne had discomfited the Imperial theologians on the great
question of image worship. Schlosser observes that this accidental
fire took place six years after the emperor had laid the question of
image-worship before the professors. Bilder sturmand Kaiser, p. 294.
Compare Le Heau. vol. xl. p. 156.--M.]

Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind [1117] and
body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of the
succession. The association of the young Constantine was urged by the
officious zeal of his subjects; and the emperor, conscious of his decay,
complied, after a prudent hesitation, with their unanimous wishes. The
royal infant, at the age of five years, was crowned with his mother
Irene; and the national consent was ratified by every circumstance of
pomp and solemnity, that could dazzle the eyes or bind the conscience
of the Greeks. An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the
church, and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who
adjured the holy names of the Son, and mother of God. "Be witness, O
Christ! that we will watch over the safety of Constantine the son of
Leo, expose our lives in his service, and bear true allegiance to his
person and posterity." They pledged their faith on the wood of the true
cross, and the act of their engagement was deposited on the altar of St.
Sophia. The first to swear, and the first to violate their oath, were
the five sons of Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these
princes is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them
from the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded them
of a legacy of about two millions sterling; some vain titles were
not deemed a sufficient compensation for wealth and power; and they
repeatedly conspired against their nephew, before and after the death
of his father. Their first attempt was pardoned; for the second offence
[1118] they were condemned to the ecclesiastical state; and for the
third treason, Nicephorus, the eldest and most guilty, was deprived of
his eyes, and his four brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and
Eudoxas, were punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their
tongues. After five years' confinement, they escaped to the church
of St. Sophia, and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the people.
"Countrymen and Christians," cried Nicephorus for himself and his mute
brethren, "behold the sons of your emperor, if you can still recognize
our features in this miserable state. A life, an imperfect life, is all
that the malice of our enemies has spared. It is now threatened, and we
now throw ourselves on your compassion." The rising murmur might have
produced a revolution, had it not been checked by the presence of a
minister, who soothed the unhappy princes with flattery and hope, and
gently drew them from the sanctuary to the palace. They were speedily
embarked for Greece, and Athens was allotted for the place of their
exile. In this calm retreat, and in their helpless condition, Nicephorus
and his brothers were tormented by the thirst of power, and tempted by a
Sclavonian chief, who offered to break their prison, and to lead them
in arms, and in the purple, to the gates of Constantinople. But the
Athenian people, ever zealous in the cause of Irene, prevented her
justice or cruelty; and the five sons of Copronymus were plunged in
eternal darkness and oblivion.

[Footnote 1117: Schlosser thinks more highly of Leo's mind; but his only
proof of his superiority is the successes of his generals against the
Saracens, Schlosser, p. 256.--M.]

[Footnote 1118: The second offence was on the accession of the young
Constantine--M.]

For himself, that emperor had chosen a Barbarian wife, the daughter of
the khan of the Chozars; but in the marriage of his heir, he preferred
an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years old, whose sole fortune
must have consisted in her personal accomplishments. The nuptials of Leo
and Irene were celebrated with royal pomp; she soon acquired the love
and confidence of a feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the
empress guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine the
Sixth, who was no more than ten years of age. During his childhood,
Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her public
administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her zeal in the
restoration of images has deserved the name and honors of a saint, which
she still occupies in the Greek calendar. But the emperor attained
the maturity of youth; the maternal yoke became more grievous; and he
listened to the favorites of his own age, who shared his pleasures, and
were ambitious of sharing his power. Their reasons convinced him of
his right, their praises of his ability, to reign; and he consented to
reward the services of Irene by a perpetual banishment to the Isle of
Sicily. But her vigilance and penetration easily disconcerted their
rash projects: a similar, or more severe, punishment was retaliated on
themselves and their advisers; and Irene inflicted on the ungrateful
prince the chastisement of a boy. After this contest, the mother and
the son were at the head of two domestic factions; and instead of mild
influence and voluntary obedience, she held in chains a captive and an
enemy. The empress was overthrown by the abuse of victory; the oath
of fidelity, which she exacted to herself alone, was pronounced
with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the Armenian guards
encouraged a free and general declaration, that Constantine the Sixth
was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In this character he ascended his
hereditary throne, and dismissed Irene to a life of solitude and repose.
But her haughty spirit condescended to the arts of dissimulation: she
flattered the bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial tenderness of
the prince, regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The
character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit; but
his education had been studiously neglected; and the ambitious mother
exposed to the public censure the vices which she had nourished, and the
actions which she had secretly advised: his divorce and second marriage
offended the prejudices of the clergy, and by his imprudent rigor he
forfeited the attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy
was formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though widely
diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the emperor,
suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople, with the design
of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this hasty flight, the
empress was left on the brink of the precipice; yet before she implored
the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a private epistle to the friends
whom she had placed about his person, with a menace, that unless they
accomplished, she would reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered
them intrepid; they seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was
transported to the porphyry apartment of the palace, where he had
first seen the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every
sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her bloody
council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of the throne:
her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and stabbed their daggers
with such violence and precipitation into his eyes as if they meant to
execute a mortal sentence. An ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded
the annalist of the church that death was the immediate consequence of
this barbarous execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by
the authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the patroness of
images. [1119] Yet the blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed
by the court and forgotten by the world; the Isaurian dynasty was
silently extinguished; and the memory of Constantine was recalled only
by the nuptials of his daughter Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael the
Second.

[Footnote 1119: Gibbon has been attacked on account of this statement,
but is successfully defended by Schlosser. B S. Kaiser p. 327. Compare
Le Beau, c. xii p. 372.--M.]

The most bigoted orthodoxy has justly execrated the unnatural mother,
who may not easily be paralleled in the history of crimes. To her bloody
deed superstition has attributed a subsequent darkness of seventeen
days; during which many vessels in midday were driven from their course,
as if the sun, a globe of fire so vast and so remote, could sympathize
with the atoms of a revolving planet. On earth, the crime of Irene
was left five years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external
splendor; and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither
heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world bowed
to the government of a female; and as she moved through the streets of
Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds were held by as
many patricians, who marched on foot before the golden chariot of their
queen. But these patricians were for the most part eunuchs; and their
black ingratitude justified, on this occasion, the popular hatred and
contempt. Raised, enriched, intrusted with the first dignities of the
empire, they basely conspired against their benefactress; the great
treasurer Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her
successor was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by
the venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with
dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy of
Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her unsuspicious
clemency, and for the throne and treasures which she resigned, solicited
a decent and honorable retreat. His avarice refused this modest
compensation; and, in her exile of the Isle of <DW26>s, the empress
earned a scanty subsistence by the labors of her distaff.

Many tyrants have reigned undoubtedly more criminal than Nicephorus, but
none perhaps have more deeply incurred the universal abhorrence of
their people. His character was stained with the three odious vices of
hypocrisy, ingratitude, and avarice: his want of virtue was not redeemed
by any superior talents, nor his want of talents by any pleasing
qualifications. Unskilful and unfortunate in war, Nicephorus was
vanquished by the Saracens, and slain by the Bulgarians; and the
advantage of his death overbalanced, in the public opinion, the
destruction of a Roman army. [1011] His son and heir Stauracius escaped
from the field with a mortal wound; yet six months of an expiring life
were sufficient to refute his indecent, though popular declaration,
that he would in all things avoid the example of his father. On the near
prospect of his decease, Michael, the great master of the palace, and
the husband of his sister Procopia, was named by every person of the
palace and city, except by his envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre
now falling from his hand, he conspired against the life of his
successor, and cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman
empire. But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the
people and to remove the scruples of the candidate: Michael the First
accepted the purple, and before he sunk into the grave the son of
Nicephorus implored the clemency of his new sovereign. Had Michael in
an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he might have reigned and
died the father of his people: but his mild virtues were adapted to the
shade of private life, nor was he capable of controlling the ambition of
his equals, or of resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians.
While his want of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of
the soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened their
indignation. Even the Greeks of the ninth century were provoked by the
insolence of a female, who, in the front of the standards, presumed to
direct their discipline and animate their valor; and their licentious
clamors advised the new Semiramis to reverence the majesty of a Roman
camp. After an unsuccessful campaign, the emperor left, in their
winter-quarters of Thrace, a disaffected army under the command of his
enemies; and their artful eloquence persuaded the soldiers to break
the dominion of the eunuchs, to degrade the husband of Procopia, and
to assert the right of a military election. They marched towards the
capital: yet the clergy, the senate, and the people of Constantinople,
adhered to the cause of Michael; and the troops and treasures of Asia
might have protracted the mischiefs of civil war. But his humanity (by
the ambitious it will be termed his weakness) protested that not a drop
of Christian blood should be shed in his quarrel, and his messengers
presented the conquerors with the keys of the city and the palace. They
were disarmed by his innocence and submission; his life and his eyes
were spared; and the Imperial monk enjoyed the comforts of solitude and
religion above thirty-two years after he had been stripped of the purple
and separated from his wife.

[Footnote 1011: The Syrian historian Aboulfaradj. Chron. Syr. p. 133,
139, speaks of him as a brave, prudent, and pious prince, formidable to
the Arabs. St. Martin, c. xii. p. 402. Compare Schlosser, p. 350.--M.]

A rebel, in the time of Nicephorus, the famous and unfortunate Bardanes,
had once the curiosity to consult an Asiatic prophet, who, after
prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of his three principal
officers, Leo the Armenian, Michael the Phrygian, and Thomas the
Cappadocian, the successive reigns of the two former, the fruitless and
fatal enterprise of the third. This prediction was verified, or rather
was produced, by the event. Ten years afterwards, when the Thracian camp
rejected the husband of Procopia, the crown was presented to the same
Leo, the first in military rank and the secret author of the mutiny. As
he affected to hesitate, "With this sword," said his companion Michael,
"I will open the gates of Constantinople to your Imperial sway; or
instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you obstinately resist the just
desires of your fellow-soldiers." The compliance of the Armenian was
rewarded with the empire, and he reigned seven years and a half under
the name of Leo the Fifth. Educated in a camp, and ignorant both of laws
and letters, he introduced into his civil government the rigor and
even cruelty of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes
dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the guilty. His
religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of Chameleon, but the
Catholics have acknowledged by the voice of a saint and confessors, that
the life of the Iconoclast was useful to the republic. The zeal of his
companion Michael was repaid with riches, honors, and military command;
and his subordinate talents were beneficially employed in the public
service. Yet the Phrygian was dissatisfied at receiving as a favor a
scanty portion of the Imperial prize which he had bestowed on his equal;
and his discontent, which sometimes evaporated in hasty discourse, at
length assumed a more threatening and hostile aspect against a prince
whom he represented as a cruel tyrant. That tyrant, however, repeatedly
detected, warned, and dismissed the old companion of his arms, till fear
and resentment prevailed over gratitude; and Michael, after a scrutiny
into his actions and designs, was convicted of treason, and sentenced to
be burnt alive in the furnace of the private baths. The devout humanity
of the empress Theophano was fatal to her husband and family. A solemn
day, the twenty-fifth of December, had been fixed for the execution: she
urged, that the anniversary of the Savior's birth would be profaned by
this inhuman spectacle, and Leo consented with reluctance to a decent
respite. But on the vigil of the feast his sleepless anxiety prompted
him to visit at the dead of night the chamber in which his enemy was
confined: he beheld him released from his chain, and stretched on his
jailer's bed in a profound slumber. Leo was alarmed at these signs of
security and intelligence; but though he retired with silent steps, his
entrance and departure were noticed by a slave who lay concealed in a
corner of the prison. Under the pretence of requesting the spiritual
aid of a confessor, Michael informed the conspirators, that their lives
depended on his discretion, and that a few hours were left to assure
their own safety, by the deliverance of their friend and country. On the
great festivals, a chosen band of priests and chanters was admitted into
the palace by a private gate to sing matins in the chapel; and Leo, who
regulated with the same strictness the discipline of the choir and
of the camp, was seldom absent from these early devotions. In the
ecclesiastical habit, but with their swords under their robes, the
conspirators mingled with the procession, lurked in the angles of the
chapel, and expected, as the signal of murder, the intonation of
the first psalm by the emperor himself. The imperfect light, and the
uniformity of dress, might have favored his escape, whilst their assault
was pointed against a harmless priest; but they soon discovered their
mistake, and encompassed on all sides the royal victim. Without a weapon
and without a friend, he grasped a weighty cross, and stood at bay
against the hunters of his life; but as he asked for mercy, "This is
the hour, not of mercy, but of vengeance," was the inexorable reply. The
stroke of a well-aimed sword separated from his body the right arm and
the cross, and Leo the Armenian was slain at the foot of the altar. A
memorable reverse of fortune was displayed in Michael the Second, who
from a defect in his speech was surnamed the Stammerer. He was snatched
from the fiery furnace to the sovereignty of an empire; and as in the
tumult a smith could not readily be found, the fetters remained on his
legs several hours after he was seated on the throne of the Caesars. The
royal blood which had been the price of his elevation, was unprofitably
spent: in the purple he retained the ignoble vices of his origin; and
Michael lost his provinces with as supine indifference as if they had
been the inheritance of his fathers. His title was disputed by Thomas,
the last of the military triumvirate, who transported into Europe
fourscore thousand Barbarians from the banks of the Tigris and the
shores of the Caspian. He formed the siege of Constantinople; but the
capital was defended with spiritual and carnal weapons; a Bulgarian king
assaulted the camp of the Orientals, and Thomas had the misfortune, or
the weakness, to fall alive into the power of the conqueror. The hands
and feet of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and,
amidst the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he
sprinkled with his blood. The depravation of manners, as savage as they
were corrupt, is marked by the presence of the emperor himself. Deaf
to the lamentation of a fellow-soldier, he incessantly pressed the
discovery of more accomplices, till his curiosity was checked by the
question of an honest or guilty minister: "Would you give credit to an
enemy against the most faithful of your friends?" After the death of
his first wife, the emperor, at the request of the senate, drew from her
monastery Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine the Sixth. Her august
birth might justify a stipulation in the marriage-contract, that her
children should equally share the empire with their elder brother. But
the nuptials of Michael and Euphrosyne were barren; and she was content
with the title of mother of Theophilus, his son and successor.

The character of Theophilus is a rare example in which religious zeal
has allowed, and perhaps magnified, the virtues of a heretic and a
persecutor. His valor was often felt by the enemies, and his justice by
the subjects, of the monarchy; but the valor of Theophilus was rash and
fruitless, and his justice arbitrary and cruel. He displayed the
banner of the cross against the Saracens; but his five expeditions
were concluded by a signal overthrow: Amorium, the native city of his
ancestors, was levelled with the ground and from his military toils he
derived only the surname of the Unfortunate. The wisdom of a sovereign
is comprised in the institution of laws and the choice of magistrates,
and while he seems without action, his civil government revolves round
his centre with the silence and order of the planetary system. But
the justice of Theophilus was fashioned on the model of the Oriental
despots, who, in personal and irregular acts of authority, consult the
reason or passion of the moment, without measuring the sentence by the
law, or the penalty by the offense. A poor woman threw herself at the
emperor's feet to complain of a powerful neighbor, the brother of the
empress, who had raised his palace-wall to such an inconvenient height,
that her humble dwelling was excluded from light and air! On the proof
of the fact, instead of granting, like an ordinary judge, sufficient or
ample damages to the plaintiff, the sovereign adjudged to her use and
benefit the palace and the ground. Nor was Theophilus content with this
extravagant satisfaction: his zeal converted a civil trespass into a
criminal act; and the unfortunate patrician was stripped and scourged
in the public place of Constantinople. For some venial offenses, some
defect of equity or vigilance, the principal ministers, a praefect,
a quaestor, a captain of the guards, were banished or mutilated, or
scalded with boiling pitch, or burnt alive in the hippodrome; and as
these dreadful examples might be the effects of error or caprice,
they must have alienated from his service the best and wisest of the
citizens. But the pride of the monarch was flattered in the exercise
of power, or, as he thought, of virtue; and the people, safe in their
obscurity, applauded the danger and debasement of their superiors. This
extraordinary rigor was justified, in some measure, by its salutary
consequences; since, after a scrutiny of seventeen days, not a complaint
or abuse could be found in the court or city; and it might be alleged
that the Greeks could be ruled only with a rod of iron, and that the
public interest is the motive and law of the supreme judge. Yet in the
crime, or the suspicion, of treason, that judge is of all others the
most credulous and partial. Theophilus might inflict a tardy vengeance
on the assassins of Leo and the saviors of his father; but he enjoyed
the fruits of their crime; and his jealous tyranny sacrificed a brother
and a prince to the future safety of his life. A Persian of the race of
the Sassanides died in poverty and exile at Constantinople, leaving an
only son, the issue of a plebeian marriage. At the age of twelve years,
the royal birth of Theophobus was revealed, and his merit was not
unworthy of his birth. He was educated in the Byzantine palace, a
Christian and a soldier; advanced with rapid steps in the career of
fortune and glory; received the hand of the emperor's sister; and was
promoted to the command of thirty thousand Persians, who, like his
father, had fled from the Mahometan conquerors. These troops, doubly
infected with mercenary and fanatic vices, were desirous of revolting
against their benefactor, and erecting the standard of their native
king but the loyal Theophobus rejected their offers, disconcerted their
schemes, and escaped from their hands to the camp or palace of his royal
brother. A generous confidence might have secured a faithful and able
guardian for his wife and his infant son, to whom Theophilus, in the
flower of his age, was compelled to leave the inheritance of the empire.
But his jealousy was exasperated by envy and disease; he feared the
dangerous virtues which might either support or oppress their infancy
and weakness; and the dying emperor demanded the head of the Persian
prince. With savage delight he recognized the familiar features of his
brother: "Thou art no longer Theophobus," he said; and, sinking on his
couch, he added, with a faltering voice, "Soon, too soon, I shall be no
more Theophilus!"





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

The Russians, who have borrowed from the Greeks the greatest part of
their civil and ecclesiastical policy, preserved, till the last century,
a singular institution in the marriage of the Czar. They collected, not
the virgins of every rank and of every province, a vain and romantic
idea, but the daughters of the principal nobles, who awaited in the
palace the choice of their sovereign. It is affirmed, that a similar
method was adopted in the nuptials of Theophilus. With a golden apple in
his hand, he slowly walked between two lines of contending beauties: his
eye was detained by the charms of Icasia, and in the awkwardness of a
first declaration, the prince could only observe, that, in this world,
women had been the cause of much evil; "And surely, sir," she pertly
replied, "they have likewise been the occasion of much good." This
affectation of unseasonable wit displeased the Imperial lover: he turned
aside in disgust; Icasia concealed her mortification in a convent; and
the modest silence of Theodora was rewarded with the golden apple. She
deserved the love, but did not escape the severity, of her lord. From
the palace garden he beheld a vessel deeply laden, and steering into the
port: on the discovery that the precious cargo of Syrian luxury was the
property of his wife, he condemned the ship to the flames, with a sharp
reproach, that her avarice had degraded the character of an empress
into that of a merchant. Yet his last choice intrusted her with the
guardianship of the empire and her son Michael, who was left an orphan
in the fifth year of his age. The restoration of images, and the final
extirpation of the Iconoclasts, has endeared her name to the devotion of
the Greeks; but in the fervor of religious zeal, Theodora entertained
a grateful regard for the memory and salvation of her husband. After
thirteen years of a prudent and frugal administration, she perceived the
decline of her influence; but the second Irene imitated only the virtues
of her predecessor. Instead of conspiring against the life or government
of her son, she retired, without a struggle, though not without a
murmur, to the solitude of private life, deploring the ingratitude,
the vices, and the inevitable ruin, of the worthless youth. Among
the successors of Nero and Elagabalus, we have not hitherto found the
imitation of their vices, the character of a Roman prince who considered
pleasure as the object of life, and virtue as the enemy of pleasure.
Whatever might have been the maternal care of Theodora in the education
of Michael the Third, her unfortunate son was a king before he was a
man. If the ambitious mother labored to check the progress of reason,
she could not cool the ebullition of passion; and her selfish policy was
justly repaid by the contempt and ingratitude of the headstrong youth.
At the age of eighteen, he rejected her authority, without feeling his
own incapacity to govern the empire and himself. With Theodora, all
gravity and wisdom retired from the court; their place was supplied by
the alternate dominion of vice and folly; and it was impossible, without
forfeiting the public esteem, to acquire or preserve the favor of the
emperor. The millions of gold and silver which had been accumulated
for the service of the state, were lavished on the vilest of men, who
flattered his passions and shared his pleasures; and in a reign of
thirteen years, the richest of sovereigns was compelled to strip the
palace and the churches of their precious furniture. Like Nero, he
delighted in the amusements of the theatre, and sighed to be surpassed
in the accomplishments in which he should have blushed to excel. Yet the
studies of Nero in music and poetry betrayed some symptoms of a liberal
taste; the more ignoble arts of the son of Theophilus were confined to
the chariot-race of the hippodrome. The four factions which had agitated
the peace, still amused the idleness, of the capital: for himself, the
emperor assumed the blue livery; the three rival colors were distributed
to his favorites, and in the vile though eager contention he forgot the
dignity of his person and the safety of his dominions. He silenced the
messenger of an invasion, who presumed to divert his attention in the
most critical moment of the race; and by his command, the importunate
beacons were extinguished, that too frequently spread the alarm from
Tarsus to Constantinople. The most skilful charioteers obtained the
first place in his confidence and esteem; their merit was profusely
rewarded the emperor feasted in their houses, and presented their
children at the baptismal font; and while he applauded his own
popularity, he affected to blame the cold and stately reserve of his
predecessors. The unnatural lusts which had degraded even the manhood
of Nero, were banished from the world; yet the strength of Michael
was consumed by the indulgence of love and intemperance. [1012] In
his midnight revels, when his passions were inflamed by wine, he was
provoked to issue the most sanguinary commands; and if any feelings of
humanity were left, he was reduced, with the return of sense, to approve
the salutary disobedience of his servants. But the most extraordinary
feature in the character of Michael, is the profane mockery of the
religion of his country. The superstition of the Greeks might indeed
excite the smile of a philosopher; but his smile would have been
rational and temperate, and he must have condemned the ignorant folly of
a youth who insulted the objects of public veneration. A buffoon of
the court was invested in the robes of the patriarch: his twelve
metropolitans, among whom the emperor was ranked, assumed their
ecclesiastical garments: they used or abused the sacred vessels of
the altar; and in their bacchanalian feasts, the holy communion was
administered in a nauseous compound of vinegar and mustard. Nor were
these impious spectacles concealed from the eyes of the city. On the day
of a solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode on
asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at the head
of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and obscene gestures,
disordered the gravity of the Christian procession. The devotion of
Michael appeared only in some offence to reason or piety: he received
his theatrical crowns from the statue of the Virgin; and an Imperial
tomb was violated for the sake of burning the bones of Constantine the
Iconoclast. By this extravagant conduct, the son of Theophilus became
as contemptible as he was odious: every citizen was impatient for the
deliverance of his country; and even the favorites of the moment
were apprehensive that a caprice might snatch away what a caprice
had bestowed. In the thirtieth year of his age, and in the hour of
intoxication and sleep, Michael the Third was murdered in his chamber by
the founder of a new dynasty, whom the emperor had raised to an equality
of rank and power.

[Footnote 1012: In a campaign against the Saracens, he betrayed both
imbecility and cowardice. Genesius, c. iv. p. 94.--M.]

The genealogy of Basil the Macedonian (if it be not the spurious
offspring of pride and flattery) exhibits a genuine picture of the
revolution of the most illustrious families. The Arsacides, the rivals
of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four hundred years: a
younger branch of these Parthian kings continued to reign in Armenia;
and their royal descendants survived the partition and servitude of
that ancient monarchy. Two of these, Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or
retired to the court of Leo the First: his bounty seated them in a safe
and hospitable exile, in the province of Macedonia: Adrianople was their
final settlement. During several generations they maintained the dignity
of their birth; and their Roman patriotism rejected the tempting offers
of the Persian and Arabian powers, who recalled them to their native
country. But their splendor was insensibly clouded by time and poverty;
and the father of Basil was reduced to a small farm, which he cultivated
with his own hands: yet he scorned to disgrace the blood of the
Arsacides by a plebeian alliance: his wife, a widow of Adrianople, was
pleased to count among her ancestors the great Constantine; and their
royal infant was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country
with the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born, than the cradle of
Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an inundation of
the Bulgarians: he was educated a slave in a foreign land; and in this
severe discipline, he acquired the hardiness of body and flexibility of
mind which promoted his future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood
he shared the deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke
their fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine,
defeated two armies of Barbarians, embarked in the ships which had been
stationed for their reception, and returned to Constantinople, from
whence they were distributed to their respective homes. But the freedom
of Basil was naked and destitute: his farm was ruined by the calamities
of war: after his father's death, his manual labor, or service, could
no longer support a family of orphans and he resolved to seek a more
conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may lead
to the paths of greatness. The first night of his arrival at
Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgrim slept on the
steps of the church of St. Diomede: he was fed by the casual hospitality
of a monk; and was introduced to the service of a cousin and namesake of
the emperor Theophilus; who, though himself of a diminutive person,
was always followed by a train of tall and handsome domestics. Basil
attended his patron to the government of Peloponnesus; eclipsed, by his
personal merit the birth and dignity of Theophilus, and formed a useful
connection with a wealthy and charitable matron of Patras. Her spiritual
or carnal love embraced the young adventurer, whom she adopted as her
son. Danielis presented him with thirty slaves; and the produce of her
bounty was expended in the support of his brothers, and the purchase
of some large estates in Macedonia. His gratitude or ambition still
attached him to the service of Theophilus; and a lucky accident
recommended him to the notice of the court. A famous wrestler, in the
train of the Bulgarian ambassadors, had defied, at the royal banquet,
the boldest and most robust of the Greeks. The strength of Basil was
praised; he accepted the challenge; and the Barbarian champion was
overthrown at the first onset. A beautiful but vicious horse was
condemned to be hamstrung: it was subdued by the dexterity and courage
of the servant of Theophilus; and his conqueror was promoted to an
honorable rank in the Imperial stables. But it was impossible to obtain
the confidence of Michael, without complying with his vices; and his new
favorite, the great chamberlain of the palace, was raised and supported
by a disgraceful marriage with a royal concubine, and the dishonor of
his sister, who succeeded to her place. The public administration had
been abandoned to the Caesar Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora;
but the arts of female influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear
his uncle: he was drawn from Constantinople, under the pretence of a
Cretan expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of
the chamberlain, and in the presence of the emperor. About a month after
this execution, Basil was invested with the title of Augustus and the
government of the empire. He supported this unequal association till his
influence was fortified by popular esteem. His life was endangered by
the caprice of the emperor; and his dignity was profaned by a second
colleague, who had rowed in the galleys. Yet the murder of his
benefactor must be condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason; and
the churches which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor
and puerile expiation of his guilt. The different ages of Basil the
First may be compared with those of Augustus. The situation of the Greek
did not allow him in his earliest youth to lead an army against his
country; or to proscribe the nobles of her sons; but his aspiring genius
stooped to the arts of a slave; he dissembled his ambition and even his
virtues, and grasped, with the bloody hand of an assassin, the empire
which he ruled with the wisdom and tenderness of a parent.

A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his duty; but it
must be from a deficiency of sense or courage, that an absolute monarch
can separate his happiness from his glory, or his glory from the public
welfare. The life or panegyric of Basil has indeed been composed and
published under the long reign of his descendants; but even their
stability on the throne may be justly ascribed to the superior merit of
their ancestor. In his character, his grandson Constantine has attempted
to delineate a perfect image of royalty: but that feeble prince, unless
he had copied a real model, could not easily have soared so high above
the level of his own conduct or conceptions. But the most solid praise
of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a flourishing
monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute Michael, and that
which he bequeathed to the Mecedonian dynasty. The evils which had been
sanctified by time and example, were corrected by his master-hand; and
he revived, if not the national spirit, at least the order and majesty
of the Roman empire. His application was indefatigable, his temper cool,
his understanding vigorous and decisive; and in his practice he observed
that rare and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue, at an
equal distance between the opposite vices. His military service had been
confined to the palace: nor was the emperor endowed with the spirit or
the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman arms were again
formidable to the Barbarians. As soon as he had formed a new army by
discipline and exercise, he appeared in person on the banks of the
Euphrates, curbed the pride of the Saracens, and suppressed the
dangerous though just revolt of the Manichaeans. His indignation against
a rebel who had long eluded his pursuit, provoked him to wish and to
pray, that, by the grace of God, he might drive three arrows into the
head of Chrysochir. That odious head, which had been obtained by treason
rather than by valor, was suspended from a tree, and thrice exposed to
the dexterity of the Imperial archer; a base revenge against the
dead, more worthy of the times than of the character of Basil. But his
principal merit was in the civil administration of the finances and of
the laws. To replenish and exhausted treasury, it was proposed to resume
the lavish and ill-placed gifts of his predecessor: his prudence abated
one moiety of the restitution; and a sum of twelve hundred thousand
pounds was instantly procured to answer the most pressing demands, and
to allow some space for the mature operations of economy. Among the
various schemes for the improvement of the revenue, a new mode was
suggested of capitation, or tribute, which would have too much depended
on the arbitrary discretion of the assessors. A sufficient list of
honest and able agents was instantly produced by the minister; but on
the more careful scrutiny of Basil himself, only two could be found, who
might be safely intrusted with such dangerous powers; but they justified
his esteem by declining his confidence. But the serious and successful
diligence of the emperor established by degrees the equitable balance
of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a peculiar fund was
appropriated to each service; and a public method secured the interest
of the prince and the property of the people. After reforming the
luxury, he assigned two patrimonial estates to supply the decent plenty,
of the Imperial table: the contributions of the subject were reserved
for his defence; and the residue was employed in the embellishment of
the capital and provinces. A taste for building, however costly, may
deserve some praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is
encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or pleasure:
the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is obvious and solid; and
the hundred churches that arose by the command of Basil were consecrated
to the devotion of the age. In the character of a judge he was
assiduous and impartial; desirous to save, but not afraid to strike: the
oppressors of the people were severely chastised; but his personal foes,
whom it might be unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of
their eyes, to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language
and manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of
Justinian: the voluminous body of his Institutes, Pandects, Code, and
Novels, was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom; and the
Basilics, which were improved and completed by his son and grandson,
must be referred to the original genius of the founder of their race.
This glorious reign was terminated by an accident in the chase. A
furious stag entangled his horns in the belt of Basil, and raised him
from his horse: he was rescued by an attendant, who cut the belt and
slew the animal; but the fall, or the fever, exhausted the strength of
the aged monarch, and he expired in the palace amidst the tears of his
family and people. If he struck off the head of the faithful servant
for presuming to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of
despotism, which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last
moments of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of
mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his father,
whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering impostor and a
vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was content with the honors of
a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and Alexander were alike invested with
the purple, but the powers of government were solely exercised by the
elder brother. The name of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the
title of philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the
active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection
of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short of this ideal
excellence. Did he reduce his passions and appetites under the dominion
of reason? His life was spent in the pomp of the palace, in the society
of his wives and concubines; and even the clemency which he showed, and
the peace which he strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness
and indolence of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those
of his subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition;
the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were
consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in
prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts of
astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of his sage
appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of Basil was less
ignorant than the greater part of his contemporaries in church and
state; that his education had been directed by the learned Photius; and
that several books of profane and ecclesiastical science were composed
by the pen, or in the name, of the Imperial philosopher. But the
reputation of his philosophy and religion was overthrown by a domestic
vice, the repetition of his nuptials. The primitive ideas of the merit
and holiness of celibacy were preached by the monks and entertained
by the Greeks. Marriage was allowed as a necessary means for the
propagation of mankind; after the death of either party, the survivor
might satisfy, by a second union, the weakness or the strength of
the flesh: but a third marriage was censured as a state of legal
fornication; and a fourth was a sin or scandal as yet unknown to the
Christians of the East. In the beginning of his reign, Leo himself had
abolished the state of concubines, and condemned, without annulling,
third marriages: but his patriotism and love soon compelled him to
violate his own laws, and to incur the penance, which in a similar
case he had imposed on his subjects. In his three first alliances, his
nuptial bed was unfruitful; the emperor required a female companion, and
the empire a legitimate heir. The beautiful Zoe was introduced into the
palace as a concubine; and after a trial of her fecundity, and the birth
of Constantine, her lover declared his intention of legitimating the
mother and the child, by the celebration of his fourth nuptials. But
the patriarch Nicholas refused his blessing: the Imperial baptism of
the young prince was obtained by a promise of separation; and the
contumacious husband of Zoe was excluded from the communion of the
faithful. Neither the fear of exile, nor the desertion of his brethren,
nor the authority of the Latin church, nor the danger of failure or
doubt in the succession to the empire, could bend the spirit of the
inflexible monk. After the death of Leo, he was recalled from exile
to the civil and ecclesiastical administration; and the edict of union
which was promulgated in the name of Constantine, condemned the future
scandal of fourth marriages, and left a tacit imputation on his own
birth. In the Greek language, purple and porphyry are the same word: and
as the colors of nature are invariable, we may learn, that a dark deep
red was the Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients. An
apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with porphyry: it was
reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses; and the royal birth of
their children was expressed by the appellation of porphyrogenite, or
born in the purple. Several of the Roman princes had been blessed with
an heir; but this peculiar surname was first applied to Constantine
the Seventh. His life and titular reign were of equal duration; but of
fifty-four years, six had elapsed before his father's death; and the
son of Leo was ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who
oppressed his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander,
who had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first
colleague and governor of the young prince: but in a rapid career of
vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the reputation of
Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely death, he entertained
a project of castrating his nephew, and leaving the empire to a
worthless favorite. The succeeding years of the minority of Constantine
were occupied by his mother Zoe, and a succession or council of seven
regents, who pursued their interest, gratified their passions, abandoned
the republic, supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the
presence of a soldier. From an obscure origin, Romanus Lecapenus had
raised himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of
the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national esteem.
With a victorious and affectionate fleet, he sailed from the mouth of
the Danube into the harbor of Constantinople, and was hailed as the
deliverer of the people, and the guardian of the prince. His supreme
office was at first defined by the new appellation of father of
the emperor; but Romanus soon disdained the subordinate powers of a
minister, and assumed with the titles of Caesar and Augustus, the full
independence of royalty, which he held near five-and-twenty years. His
three sons, Christopher, Stephen, and Constantine were successively
adorned with the same honors, and the lawful emperor was degraded from
the first to the fifth rank in this college of princes. Yet, in the
preservation of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own
fortune and the clemency of the usurper. The examples of ancient and
modern history would have excused the ambition of Romanus: the powers
and the laws of the empire were in his hand; the spurious birth of
Constantine would have justified his exclusion; and the grave or the
monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine. But Lecapenus
does not appear to have possessed either the virtues or the vices of a
tyrant. The spirit and activity of his private life dissolved away in
the sunshine of the throne; and in his licentious pleasures, he forgot
the safety both of the republic and of his family. Of a mild and
religious character, he respected the sanctity of oaths, the innocence
of the youth, the memory of his parents, and the attachment of the
people. The studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the
jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil, were a
constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a scanty allowance
by the sale of his pictures, if their price was not enhanced by the name
of the artist, he was endowed with a personal talent, which few princes
could employ in the hour of adversity.

The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own vices and those of his
children. After the decease of Christopher, his eldest son, the two
surviving brothers quarrelled with each other, and conspired against
their father. At the hour of noon, when all strangers were regularly
excluded from the palace, they entered his apartment with an armed
force, and conveyed him, in the habit of a monk, to a small island in
the Propontis, which was peopled by a religious community. The rumor
of this domestic revolution excited a tumult in the city; but
Porphyrogenitus alone, the true and lawful emperor, was the object
of the public care; and the sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy
experience, that they had achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise
for the benefit of their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of
Constantine, revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of
assassinating her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were
alarmed, and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded from
the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery where their
father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met them on the beach
with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just reproach of their folly and
ingratitude, presented his Imperial colleagues with an equal share
of his water and vegetable diet. In the fortieth year of his reign,
Constantine the Seventh obtained the possession of the Eastern world,
which he ruled or seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid
of that energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and
glory; and the studies, which had amused and dignified his leisure,
were incompatible with the serious duties of a sovereign. The emperor
neglected the practice to instruct his son Romanus in the theory of
government; while he indulged the habits of intemperance and sloth, he
dropped the reins of the administration into the hands of Helena his
wife; and, in the shifting scene of her favor and caprice, each minister
was regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the
birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the Greeks;
they excused his failings; they respected his learning, his innocence,
and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony of his funeral was
mourned with the unfeigned tears of his subjects. The body, according
to ancient custom, lay in state in the vestibule of the palace; and the
civil and military officers, the patricians, the senate, and the clergy
approached in due order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their
sovereign. Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre,
a herald proclaimed this awful admonition: "Arise, O king of the world,
and obey the summons of the King of kings!"

The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son Romanus, who
derived that name from his maternal grandfather, ascended the throne of
Constantinople. A prince who, at the age of twenty, could be suspected
of anticipating his inheritance, must have been already lost in the
public esteem; yet Romanus was rather weak than wicked; and the largest
share of the guilt was transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman
of base origin masculine spirit, and flagitious manners. The sense of
personal glory and public happiness, the true pleasures of royalty,
were unknown to the son of Constantine; and, while the two brothers,
Nicephorus and Leo, triumphed over the Saracens, the hours which the
emperor owed to his people were consumed in strenuous idleness. In the
morning he visited the circus; at noon he feasted the senators; the
greater part of the afternoon he spent in the sphoeristerium, or
tennis-court, the only theatre of his victories; from thence he passed
over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, hunted and killed four wild
boars of the largest size, and returned to the palace, proudly content
with the labors of the day. In strength and beauty he was conspicuous
above his equals: tall and straight as a young cypress, his complexion
was fair and florid, his eyes sparkling, his shoulders broad, his nose
long and aquiline. Yet even these perfections were insufficient to fix
the love of Theophano; and, after a reign of four [1013] years, she
mingled for her husband the same deadly draught which she had composed
for his father.

[Footnote 1013: Three years and five months. Leo Diaconus in Niebuhr.
Byz p. 50--M.]

By his marriage with this impious woman, Romanus the younger left two
sons, Basil the Second and Constantine the Ninth, and two daughters,
Theophano and Anne. The eldest sister was given to Otho the Second,
emperor of the West; the younger became the wife of Wolodomir, great
duke and apostle of russia, and by the marriage of her granddaughter
with Henry the First, king of France, the blood of the Macedonians, and
perhaps of the Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line.
After the death of her husband, the empress aspired to reign in the name
of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger only two,
years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a throne which was
supported by a female who could not be esteemed, and two infants who
could not be feared. Theophano looked around for a protector, and threw
herself into the arms of the bravest soldier; her heart was capacious;
but the deformity of the new favorite rendered it more than probable
that interest was the motive and excuse of her love. Nicephorus Phocus
united, in the popular opinion, the double merit of a hero and a saint.
In the former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid:
the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits, he
had displayed in every station and in every province the courage of
a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus was crowned with
recent laurels, from the important conquest of the Isle of Crete. His
religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and his hair-cloth, his fasts,
his pious idiom, and his wish to retire from the business of the world,
were a convenient mask for his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he
imposed on a holy patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the
senate, he was intrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with
the absolute and independent command of the Oriental armies. As soon
as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched to
Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence with
the empress, and without degrading her sons, assumed, with the title of
Augustus, the preeminence of rank and the plenitude of power. But his
marriage with Theophano was refused by the same patriarch who had placed
the crown on his head: by his second nuptials he incurred a year of
canonical penance; [1014] a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to
their celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to silence
the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of the emperor was
lost in the purple: in a reign of six years he provoked the hatred
of strangers and subjects: and the hypocrisy and avarice of the first
Nicephorus were revived in his successor. Hypocrisy I shall never
justify or palliate; but I will dare to observe, that the odious vice of
avarice is of all others most hastily arraigned, and most unmercifully
condemned. In a private citizen, our judgment seldom expects an accurate
scrutiny into his fortune and expense; and in a steward of the public
treasure, frugality is always a virtue, and the increase of taxes too
often an indispensable duty. In the use of his patrimony, the generous
temper of Nicephorus had been proved; and the revenue was strictly
applied to the service of the state: each spring the emperor marched
in person against the Saracens; and every Roman might compute the
employment of his taxes in triumphs, conquests, and the security of the
Eastern barrier. [1015]

[Footnote 1014: The canonical objection to the marriage was his relation
of Godfather sons. Leo Diac. p. 50.--M.]

[Footnote 1015: He retook Antioch, and brought home as a trophy the
sword of "the most unholy and impious Mahomet." Leo Diac. p. 76.--M.]





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

Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under his
standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and obtained
the most eminent rewards. The stature of John Zimisces was below the
ordinary standard: but this diminutive body was endowed with strength,
beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the jealousy of the emperor's
brother, he was degraded from the office of general of the East, to that
of director of the posts, and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace
and exile. But Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the
empress: on her intercession, he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon,
in the neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his
clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano consented,
with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious husband. Some bold
and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers: in
the darkness of a winter night, Zimisces, with his principal companions,
embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace
stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by
the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings
of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress
which he had erected in the palace, could protect Nicephorus from a
domestic foe, at whose voice every door was open to the assassins. As
he slept on a bear-skin on the ground, he was roused by their noisy
intrusion, and thirty daggers glittered before his eyes. It is doubtful
whether Zimisces imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign; but
he enjoyed the inhuman spectacle of revenge. [1016] The murder was
protracted by insult and cruelty: and as soon as the head of Nicephorus
was shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and the Armenian was
emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he was stopped on
the threshold of St. Sophia, by the intrepid patriarch; who charged his
conscience with the deed of treason and blood; and required, as a sign
of repentance, that he should separate himself from his more criminal
associate. This sally of apostolic zeal was not offensive to the
prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly
violated the most sacred obligations; and Theophano, instead of sharing
his imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and
palace. In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and impotent
rage; accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted, with words and
blows, her son Basil, as he stood silent and submissive in the presence
of a superior colleague; and avowed her own prostitution in proclaiming
the illegitimacy of his birth. The public indignation was appeased by
her exile, and the punishment of the meaner accomplices: the death of an
unpopular prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten
in the splendor of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less useful
to the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his gentle and generous
behavior delighted all who approached his person; and it was only in the
paths of victory that he trod in the footsteps of his predecessor. The
greatest part of his reign was employed in the camp and the field:
his personal valor and activity were signalized on the Danube and the
Tigris, the ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double
triumph over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of
savior of the empire, and conqueror of the East. In his last return from
Syria, he observed that the most fruitful lands of his new provinces
were possessed by the eunuchs. "And is it for them," he exclaimed, with
honest indignation, "that we have fought and conquered? Is it for them
that we shed our blood, and exhaust the treasures of our people?" The
complaint was reechoed to the palace, and the death of Zimisces is
strongly marked with the suspicion of poison.

[Footnote 1016: According to Leo Diaconus, Zimisces, after ordering the
wounded emperor to be dragged to his feet, and heaping him with insult,
to which the miserable man only replied by invoking the name of
the "mother of God," with his own hand plucked his beard, while his
accomplices beat out his teeth with the hilts of their swords, and then
trampling him to the ground, drove his sword into his skull. Leo Diac,
in Niebuhr Byz. Hist. l vii. c. 8. p. 88.--M.]

Under this usurpation, or regency, of twelve years, the two lawful
emperors, Basil and Constantine, had silently grown to the age of
manhood. Their tender years had been incapable of dominion: the
respectful modesty of their attendance and salutation was due to the age
and merit of their guardians; the childless ambition of those guardians
had no temptation to violate their right of succession: their patrimony
was ably and faithfully administered; and the premature death of
Zimisces was a loss, rather than a benefit, to the sons of Romanus.
Their want of experience detained them twelve years longer the obscure
and voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by persuading
them to indulge the pleasures of youth, and to disdain the labors of
government. In this silken web, the weakness of Constantine was forever
entangled; but his elder brother felt the impulse of genius and the
desire of action; he frowned, and the minister was no more. Basil
was the acknowledged sovereign of Constantinople and the provinces
of Europe; but Asia was oppressed by two veteran generals, Phocas and
Sclerus, who, alternately friends and enemies, subjects and rebels,
maintained their independence, and labored to emulate the example of
successful usurpation. Against these domestic enemies the son of Romanus
first drew his sword, and they trembled in the presence of a lawful and
high-spirited prince. The first, in the front of battle, was thrown from
his horse, by the stroke of poison, or an arrow; the second, who had
been twice loaded with chains, [1017] and twice invested with the
purple, was desirous of ending in peace the small remainder of his days.
As the aged suppliant approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering
steps, leaning on his two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the
insolence of youth and power, "And is this the man who has so long been
the object of our terror?" After he had confirmed his own authority, and
the peace of the empire, the trophies of Nicephorus and Zimisces would
not suffer their royal pupil to sleep in the palace. His long and
frequent expeditions against the Saracens were rather glorious than
useful to the empire; but the final destruction of the kingdom of
Bulgaria appears, since the time of Belisarius, the most important
triumph of the Roman arms. Yet, instead of applauding their victorious
prince, his subjects detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil;
and in the imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the
courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious education,
which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his mind; he was
ignorant of every science; and the remembrance of his learned and feeble
grandsire might encourage his real or affected contempt of laws and
lawyers, of artists and arts. Of such a character, in such an age,
superstition took a firm and lasting possession; after the first license
of his youth, Basil the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the
camp, to the penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his
robes and armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on
his appetites a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the
sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in
person for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented
by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was
dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the curse
of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about
three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his
only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six
years the title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the
longest, and most obscure, of the Byzantine history.

[Footnote 1017: Once by the caliph, once by his rival Phocas. Compare De
Beau l. p. 176.--M.]

A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred and
sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the Macedonian
dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the usurpers of their power.
After the death of Constantine the Ninth, the last male of the royal
race, a new and broken scene presents itself, and the accumulated years
of twelve emperors do not equal the space of his single reign. His elder
brother had preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and
Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took the
veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature age in a
state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage was discussed in
the council of their dying father, the cold or pious Theodora refused
to give an heir to the empire, but her sister Zoe presented herself a
willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful
person and fair reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his
declining that honor, was informed, that blindness or death was the
second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection
but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety and
greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed the only bar to
the Imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine, the sceptre
devolved to Romanus the Third; but his labors at home and abroad were
equally feeble and fruitless; and the mature age, the forty-eight
years of Zoe, were less favorable to the hopes of pregnancy than to
the indulgence of pleasure. Her favorite chamberlain was a handsome
Paphlagonian of the name of Michael, whose first trade had been that of
a money-changer; and Romanus, either from gratitude or equity, connived
at their criminal intercourse, or accepted a slight assurance of their
innocence. But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress
is capable of poisoning her husband; and the death of Romanus was
instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of Michael
the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, however, disappointed: instead
of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had placed in her bed a miserable
wretch, whose health and reason were impaired by epileptic fits, and
whose conscience was tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful
physicians of the mind and body were summoned to his aid; and his hopes
were amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of
the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and, except
restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?) Michael sought every
method of expiating his guilt. While he groaned and prayed in sackcloth
and ashes, his brother, the eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and
enjoyed the harvest of a crime of which himself was the secret and most
guilty author. His administration was only the art of satiating his
avarice, and Zoe became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in
the hands of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline
of his brother's health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who
derived his surname of Calaphates from his father's occupation in the
careening of vessels: at the command of the eunuch, Zoe adopted for her
son the son of a mechanic; and this fictitious heir was invested with
the title and purple of the Caesars, in the presence of the senate and
clergy. So feeble was the character of Zoe, that she was oppressed
by the liberty and power which she recovered by the death of the
Paphlagonian; and at the end of four days, she placed the crown on the
head of Michael the Fifth, who had protested, with tears and oaths, that
he should ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects.

The only act of his short reign was his base ingratitude to his
benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the former was
pleasing to the public: but the murmurs, and at length the clamors,
of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the daughter of so many
emperors; her vices were forgotten, and Michael was taught, that there
is a period in which the patience of the tamest slaves rises into fury
and revenge. The citizens of every degree assembled in a formidable
tumult which lasted three days; they besieged the palace, forced the
gates, recalled their mothers, Zoe from her prison, Theodora from her
monastery, and condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes
or of his life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the
two royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate,
and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But the singular
union subsisted no more than two months; the two sovereigns, their
tempers, interests, and adherents, were secretly hostile to each other;
and as Theodora was still averse to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe,
at the age of sixty, consented, for the public good, to sustain the
embraces of a third husband, and the censures of the Greek church.
His name and number were Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of
Monomachus, the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valor
and victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was broken
by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was spent in
the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and noble widow had
accompanied Constantine in his exile to the Isle of <DW26>s, and Sclerena
gloried in the appellation of his mistress. After his marriage and
elevation, she was invested with the title and pomp of Augusta, and
occupied a contiguous apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such
was the delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and
scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between his
wife and his concubine. He survived them both; but the last measures of
Constantine to change the order of succession were prevented by the more
vigilant friends of Theodora; and after his decease, she resumed, with
the general consent, the possession of her inheritance. In her name,
and by the influence of four eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably
governed about nineteen months; and as they wished to prolong their
dominion, they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor
Michael the Sixth. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military
profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see with the
eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers. Whilst he ascended
the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the last of the Macedonian
or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this
shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the
Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred
like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.

From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit,
begins to emerge: the Greeks either preserved or revived the use of
surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue: and we now
discern the rise, succession, and alliances of the last dynasties of
Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni, who upheld for a while the
fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honor of a Roman origin: but
the family had been long since transported from Italy to Asia. Their
patrimonial estate was situate in the district of Castamona, in the
neighborhood of the Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already
entered the paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with
regret, the modest though honorable dwelling of his fathers. The first
of their line was the illustrious Manuel, who in the reign of the second
Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the troubles of the
East: he left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac and John, whom, with the
consciousness of desert, he bequeathed to the gratitude and favor of his
sovereign. The noble youths were carefully trained in the learning of
the monastery, the arts of the palace, and the exercises of the camp:
and from the domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted
to the command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled
the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient nobility was
illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers, with a captive princess
of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a patrician, who had obtained the name
of Charon from the number of enemies whom he had sent to the infernal
shades. The soldiers had served with reluctant loyalty a series of
effeminate masters; the elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal
insult to the more deserving generals; and their discontent was inflamed
by the parsimony of the emperor and the insolence of the eunuchs. They
secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes of the
military synod would have been unanimous in favor of the old and valiant
Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the veteran had not suggested
the importance of birth as well as merit in the choice of a sovereign.
Isaac Comnenus was approved by general consent, and the associates
separated without delay to meet in the plains of Phrygia at the head
of their respective squadrons and detachments. The cause of Michael was
defended in a single battle by the mercenaries of the Imperial guard,
who were aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle
of honor and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the emperor
solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the moderation of
the Comnenian. But the former was betrayed by his ambassadors, and the
latter was prevented by his friends. The solitary Michael submitted
to the voice of the people; the patriarch annulled their oath of
allegiance; and as he shaved the head of the royal monk, congratulated
his beneficial exchange of temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven;
an exchange, however, which the priest, on his own account, would
probably have declined. By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac
Comnenus was solemnly crowned; the sword which he inscribed on his coins
might be an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquest;
but this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic
enemies of the state. The decline of his health and vigor suspended
the operation of active virtue; and the prospect of approaching death
determined him to interpose some moments between life and eternity. But
instead of leaving the empire as the marriage portion of his daughter,
his reason and inclination concurred in the preference of his brother
John, a soldier, a patriot, and the father of five sons, the future
pillars of an hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might
be the natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate
and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show of
virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty, and a rare
offence against his family and country. The purple which he had refused
was accepted by Constantine Ducas, a friend of the Comnenian house,
and whose noble birth was adorned with the experience and reputation
of civil policy. In the monastic habit, Isaac recovered his health,
and survived two years his voluntary abdication. At the command of his
abbot, he observed the rule of St. Basil, and executed the most servile
offices of the convent: but his latent vanity was gratified by the
frequent and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in
his person the character of a benefactor and a saint. If Constantine the
Eleventh were indeed the subject most worthy of empire, we must pity the
debasement of the age and nation in which he was chosen. In the labor
of puerile declamations he sought, without obtaining, the crown of
eloquence, more precious, in his opinion, than that of Rome; and in the
subordinate functions of a judge, he forgot the duties of a sovereign
and a warrior. Far from imitating the patriotic indifference of the
authors of his greatness, Ducas was anxious only to secure, at the
expense of the republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His
three sons, Michael the Seventh, Andronicus the First, and Constantine
the Twelfth, were invested, in a tender age, with the equal title of
Augustus; and the succession was speedily opened by their father's
death. His widow, Eudocia, was intrusted with the administration; but
experience had taught the jealousy of the dying monarch to protect his
sons from the danger of her second nuptials; and her solemn engagement,
attested by the principal senators, was deposited in the hands of the
patriarch. Before the end of seven months, the wants of Eudocia, or
those of the state, called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier; and
her heart had already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from
the scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a treasonable attempt had
exposed him to the severity of the laws: his beauty and valor absolved
him in the eyes of the empress; and Romanus, from a mild exile, was
recalled on the second day to the command of the Oriental armies.

Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public; and the promise which
would have betrayed her falsehood and levity, was stolen by a dexterous
emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Xiphilin at first alleged
the sanctity of oaths, and the sacred nature of a trust; but a whisper,
that his brother was the future emperor, relaxed his scruples, and
forced him to confess that the public safety was the supreme law. He
resigned the important paper; and when his hopes were confounded by the
nomination of Romanus, he could no longer regain his security, retract
his declarations, nor oppose the second nuptials of the empress. Yet
a murmur was heard in the palace; and the Barbarian guards had raised
their battle-axes in the cause of the house of Lucas, till the young
princes were soothed by the tears of their mother and the solemn
assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the Imperial
station with dignity and honor. Hereafter I shall relate his valiant,
but unsuccessful, efforts to resist the progress of the Turks. His
defeat and captivity inflicted a deadly wound on the Byzantine monarchy
of the East; and after he was released from the chains of the sultan, he
vainly sought his wife and his subjects. His wife had been thrust into
a monastery, and the subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of
the civil law, that a prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived,
as by the stroke of death, of all the public and private rights of a
citizen. In the general consternation, the Caesar John asserted the
indefeasible right of his three nephews: Constantinople listened to
his voice: and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in the capital, and
received on the frontier, as an enemy of the republic. Romanus was not
more fortunate in domestic than in foreign war: the loss of two
battles compelled him to yield, on the assurance of fair and honorable
treatment; but his enemies were devoid of faith or humanity; and, after
the cruel extinction of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and
corrupt, till in a few days he was relieved from a state of misery.
Under the triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers
were reduced to the vain honors of the purple; but the eldest, the
pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman sceptre;
and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach which he shared
with an avaricious favorite, who enhanced the price, and diminished the
measure, of wheat. In the school of Psellus, and after the example of
his mother, the son of Eudocia made some proficiency in philosophy and
rhetoric; but his character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the
virtues of a monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt
of their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head of
the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at Adrianople and
Nice. Their revolt was in the same months; they bore the same name of
Nicephorus; but the two candidates were distinguished by the surnames
of Bryennius and Botaniates; the former in the maturity of wisdom and
courage, the latter conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits.
While Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active
competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The name
of Bryennius was illustrious; his cause was popular; but his licentious
troops could not be restrained from burning and pillaging a suburb; and
the people, who would have hailed the rebel, rejected and repulsed
the incendiary of his country. This change of the public opinion
was favorable to Botaniates, who at length, with an army of Turks,
approached the shores of Chalcedon. A formal invitation, in the name
of the patriarch, the synod, and the senate, was circulated through the
streets of Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the dome of
St. Sophia, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their
sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this unarmed
multitude; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own moderation and
clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was rewarded with the
monastic habit, and the title of Archbishop of Ephesus. He left a son,
a Constantine, born and educated in the purple; and a daughter of the
house of Ducas illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession, of
the Comnenian dynasty.

John Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in peace and
dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his wife Anne, a woman
of masculine spirit and a policy, he left eight children: the three
daughters multiplied the Comnenian alliance with the noblest of the
Greeks: of the five sons, Manuel was stopped by a premature death; Isaac
and Alexius restored the Imperial greatness of their house, which was
enjoyed without toil or danger by the two younger brethren, Adrian and
Nicephorus. Alexius, the third and most illustrious of the brothers was
endowed by nature with the choicest gifts both of mind and body: they
were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the school of
obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from the perils of the
Turkish war, by the paternal care of the emperor Romanus: but the mother
of the Comneni, with her aspiring face, was accused of treason, and
banished, by the sons of Ducas, to an island in the Propontis. The two
brothers soon emerged into favor and action, fought by each other's side
against the rebels and Barbarians, and adhered to the emperor Michael,
till he was deserted by the world and by himself. In his first interview
with Botaniates, "Prince," said Alexius with a noble frankness, "my duty
rendered me your enemy; the decrees of God and of the people have made
me your subject. Judge of my future loyalty by my past opposition." The
successor of Michael entertained him with esteem and confidence: his
valor was employed against three rebels, who disturbed the peace of the
empire, or at least of the emperors. Ursel, Bryennius, and Basilacius,
were formidable by their numerous forces and military fame: they were
successively vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of
the throne; and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid and
cruel court, they applauded the clemency, as well as the courage, of
their conqueror. But the loyalty of the Comneni was soon tainted by fear
and suspicion; nor is it easy to settle between a subject and a despot,
the debt of gratitude, which the former is tempted to claim by a revolt,
and the latter to discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexius to
march against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed
the merit or memory of his past services: the favorites of Botaniates
provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused; and the
retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of their
life and liberty. The women of the family were deposited in a sanctuary,
respected by tyrants: the men, mounted on horseback, sallied from the
city, and erected the standard of civil war. The soldiers who had been
gradually assembled in the capital and the neighborhood, were devoted
to the cause of a victorious and injured leader: the ties of common
interest and domestic alliance secured the attachment of the house of
Ducas; and the generous dispute of the Comneni was terminated by the
decisive resolution of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger
brother with the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to
Constantinople, to threaten rather than besiege that impregnable
fortress; but the fidelity of the guards was corrupted; a gate was
surprised, and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George
Palaeologus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing that he
labored for his posterity. Alexius ascended the throne; and his aged
competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of various nations was
gratified with the pillage of the city; but the public disorders were
expiated by the tears and fasts of the Comneni, who submitted to every
penance compatible with the possession of the empire. The life of the
emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favorite daughter, who was
inspired by a tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to
perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers,
the princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests, that, besides her
personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings of
the most respectable veterans: and after an interval of thirty years,
forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was
inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked perfect truth,
was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet, instead
of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an
elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays in every page the
vanity of a female author. The genuine character of Alexius is lost in
a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric
and apology awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the
historian and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her
judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times were the
misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every calamity which can
afflict a declining empire was accumulated on his reign by the justice
of Heaven and the vices of his predecessors. In the East, the victorious
Turks had spread, from Persia to the Hellespont, the reign of the Koran
and the Crescent: the West was invaded by the adventurous valor of
the Normans; and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth new
swarms, who had gained, in the science of war, what they had lost in the
ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less hostile than the land;
and while the frontiers were assaulted by an open enemy, the palace was
distracted with secret treason and conspiracy. On a sudden, the banner
of the Cross was displayed by the Latins; Europe was precipitated on
Asia; and Constantinople had almost been swept away by this impetuous
deluge. In the tempest, Alexius steered the Imperial vessel with
dexterity and courage. At the head of his armies, he was bold in
action, skilful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his
advantages, and rising from his defeats with inexhaustible vigor. The
discipline of the camp was revived, and a new generation of men and
soldiers was created by the example and precepts of their leader. In
his intercourse with the Latins, Alexius was patient and artful: his
discerning eye pervaded the new system of an unknown world and I shall
hereafter describe the superior policy with which he balanced the
interests and passions of the champions of the first crusade. In a long
reign of thirty-seven years, he subdued and pardoned the envy of his
equals: the laws of public and private order were restored: the arts
of wealth and science were cultivated: the limits of the empire were
enlarged in Europe and Asia; and the Comnenian sceptre was transmitted
to his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the difficulties
of the times betrayed some defects in his character; and have exposed
his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach. The reader may possibly
smile at the lavish praise which his daughter so often bestows on a
flying hero: the weakness or prudence of his situation might be mistaken
for a want of personal courage; and his political arts are branded by
the Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation. The increase
of the male and female branches of his family adorned the throne, and
secured the succession; but their princely luxury and pride offended
the patricians, exhausted the revenue, and insulted the misery of the
people. Anna is a faithful witness that his happiness was destroyed, and
his health was broken, by the cares of a public life; the patience of
Constantinople was fatigued by the length and severity of his reign;
and before Alexius expired, he had lost the love and reverence of his
subjects. The clergy could not forgive his application of the sacred
riches to the defence of the state; but they applauded his theological
learning and ardent zeal for the orthodox faith, which he defended with
his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by the
superstition of the Greeks; and the same inconsistent principle of human
nature enjoined the emperor to found a hospital for the poor and infirm,
and to direct the execution of a heretic, who was burned alive in the
square of St. Sophia. Even the sincerity of his moral and religious
virtues was suspected by the persons who had passed their lives in his
familiar confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife
Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a pious
ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant reply of the
empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb, "You die, as you
have lived--A Hypocrite!"

It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving sons,
in favor of her daughter the princess Anne whose philosophy would not
have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of male succession
was asserted by the friends of their country; the lawful heir drew the
royal signet from the finger of his insensible or conscious father and
the empire obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated
by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and
when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband,
she passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes, and
had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons of Alexius,
John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the hereditary virtue
of their race, and the younger brother was content with the title of
Sebastocrator, which approached the dignity, without sharing the power,
of the emperor. In the same person the claims of primogeniture and merit
were fortunately united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and
diminutive stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes,
or John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously applied
to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her treason, the
life and fortune of Anne were justly forfeited to the laws. Her life
was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but he visited the pomp and
treasures of her palace, and bestowed the rich confiscation on the most
deserving of his friends. That respectable friend Axuch, a slave of
Turkish extraction, presumed to decline the gift, and to intercede for
the criminal: his generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of
his favorite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was
the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example of
clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by conspiracy
or rebellion: feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, John
was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of
pardoning, his personal enemies. During his government of twenty-five
years, the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire, a law of
mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice,
in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the
public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal,
abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the artless
virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not borrowed from
the schools. He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the
Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye
of reason. Under such a prince, innocence had nothing to fear, and merit
had every thing to hope; and, without assuming the tyrannic office of a
censor, he introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the
public and private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this
accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds, the love of arms
and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John the Handsome
may be justified, at least in their principle, by the necessity of
repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The sultan of
Iconium was confined to his capital, the Barbarians were driven to the
mountains, and the maritime provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient
blessings of their deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and
Aleppo, he repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and
in the sieges and battles of this holy war, his Latin allies were
astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek. As he began
to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient limits of the
empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates and Tigris, the
dominion of Syria, and the conquest of Jerusalem, the thread of his life
and of the public felicity was broken by a singular accident. He hunted
the wild boar in the valley of Anazarbus, and had fixed his javelin in
the body of the furious animal; but in the struggle a poisoned arrow
dropped from his quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced
a mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the Comnenian
princes.





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

A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the
Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or
affection preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying prince
was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valor of his
favorite in the Turkish war The faithful Axuch hastened to the capital,
secured the person of Isaac in honorable confinement, and purchased,
with a gift of two hundred pounds of silver, the leading ecclesiastics
of St. Sophia, who possessed a decisive voice in the consecration of an
emperor. With his veteran and affectionate troops, Manuel soon visited
Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the title of Sebastocrator;
his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial graces of their new
sovereign, and listened with credulity to the flattering promise, that
he blended the wisdom of age with the activity and vigor of youth. By
the experience of his government, they were taught, that he emulated the
spirit, and shared the talents, of his father whose social virtues
were buried in the grave. A reign of thirty seven years is filled by a
perpetual though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and
the hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Manuel were
exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the coast of
Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece: the influence
of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome and Russia; and the
Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an object of respect or terror
to the powers of Asia and Europe. Educated in the silk and purple of the
East, Manuel possessed the iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily
be paralleled, except in the lives of Richard the First of England, and
of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise in
arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was incapable
of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor. In a famous
tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser, and overturned in
his first career two of the stoutest of the Italian knights. The first
in the charge, the last in the retreat, his friends and his enemies
alike trembled, the former for his safety, and the latter for their own.
After posting an ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some
perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful
Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen, after a
short combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the enemy increased;
the march of the reenforcement was tardy and fearful, and Manuel,
without receiving a wound, cut his way through a squadron of five
hundred Turks. In a battle against the Hungarians, impatient of the
slowness of his troops, he snatched a standard from the head of the
column, and was the first, almost alone, who passed a bridge that
separated him from the enemy. In the same country, after transporting
his army beyond the Save, he sent back the boats, with an order under
pain of death, to their commander, that he should leave him to conquer
or die on that hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a
captive galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against
the volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian admiral
enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In one day, he is
said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians with his own hand; he
returned to the camp, dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had
tied to the rings of his saddle: he was ever the foremost to provoke or
to accept a single combat; and the gigantic champions, who encountered
his arm, were transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword,
of the invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as
a model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a reasonable
suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not, to vindicate their
credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe, that, in the long series
of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the subject of
similar exaggeration. With the valor of a soldier, he did no unite the
skill or prudence of a general; his victories were not productive of any
permanent or useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted
in his last unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the
mountains of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the
sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel, is
the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness and
effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he appeared
incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in the snow, tired
in the longest marches the strength of his men and horses, and shared
with a smile the abstinence or diet of the camp. No sooner did he return
to Constantinople, than he resigned himself to the arts and pleasures of
a life of luxury: the expense of his dress, his table, and his palace,
surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were
idly wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous
love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and dissolute
prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes; and Manuel, in
the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured a bitter reproach
from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he quenched his thirst, he
complained that the water of a fountain was mingled with Christian
blood. "It is not the first time," exclaimed a voice from the crowd,
"that you have drank, O emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects."
Manuel Comnenus was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha or Irene
of Germany, and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of
Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for Bela, a
Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople under the name of
Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials might have transferred
the Roman sceptre to a race of free and warlike Barbarians. But as
soon as Maria of Antioch had given a son and heir to the empire, the
presumptive rights of Bela were abolished, and he was deprived of
his promised bride; but the Hungarian prince resumed his name and the
kingdom of his fathers, and displayed such virtues as might excite the
regret and envy of the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and
at the age of ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his
father's decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.

The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had been
sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion. By ambition,
Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and rebellion, from whence
he was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome. The
errors of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and
venial; but John, the elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion.
Provoked by a real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the
Roman to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan's
daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of a
princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the Second
boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family. Andronicus,
the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and grandson of Alexius
Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the age; and his
genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular romance. To
justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me
to observe, that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions
of strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and
the air and deportment of a soldier. The preservation, in his old age,
of health and vigor, was the reward of temperance and exercise. A piece
of bread and a draught of water was often his sole and evening repast;
and if he tasted of a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his
own hands, it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous
in arms, he was ignorant of fear; his persuasive eloquence could bend
to every situation and character of life, his style, though not his
practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and, in every deed
of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a
hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of the emperor John, he
followed the retreat of the Roman army; but, in the march through Asia
Minor, design or accident tempted him to wander in the mountains: the
hunter was encompassed by the Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some
time a reluctant or willing captive in the power of the sultan. His
virtues and vices recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared
the perils and the pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived
in public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her sister
Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the decencies of
her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his concubine; and both
the palace and the camp could witness that she slept, or watched, in
the arms of her lover. She accompanied him to his military command of
Cilicia, the first scene of his valor and imprudence. He pressed, with
active ardor, the siege of Mopsuestia: the day was employed in the
boldest attacks; but the night was wasted in song and dance; and a band
of Greek comedians formed the choicest part of his retinue. Andronicus
was surprised by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled
in disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of
the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia, he was
received by Manuel with public smiles and a private reproof; but
the duchies of Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria, were the reward or
consolation of the unsuccessful general. Eudocia still attended his
motions: at midnight, their tent was suddenly attacked by her angry
brothers, impatient to expiate her infamy in his blood: his daring
spirit refused her advice, and the disguise of a female habit; and,
boldly starting from his couch, he drew his sword, and cut his way
through the numerous assassins. It was here that he first betrayed his
ingratitude and treachery: he engaged in a treasonable correspondence
with the king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the royal
tent at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal foe;
and imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an instrument of
flight and safety. The monarch dissembled his suspicions; but, after the
close of the campaign, Andronicus was arrested and strictly confined in
a tower of the palace of Constantinople.

In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful restraint,
from which the thirst of action and pleasure perpetually urged him to
escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived some broken bricks in a corner
of the chamber, and gradually widened the passage, till he had explored
a dark and forgotten recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself, and
the remains of his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former
position, and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the
hour of the customary visit, his guards were amazed by the silence
and solitude of the prison, and reported, with shame and fear, his
incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were instantly
shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the provinces, for the
recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the suspicion of a pious act,
was basely imprisoned in the same tower. At the dead of night she beheld
a spectre; she recognized her husband: they shared their provisions;
and a son was the fruit of these stolen interviews, which alleviated
the tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the
vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive had
accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought back to
Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length he found the
moment, and the means, of his deliverance. A boy, his domestic servant,
intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax the impression of the keys.
By the diligence of his friends, a similar key, with a bundle of ropes,
was introduced into the prison, in the bottom of a hogshead. Andronicus
employed, with industry and courage, the instruments of his safety,
unlocked the doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself all day
among the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden-wall of the palace.
A boat was stationed for his reception: he visited his own house,
embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a fleet horse, and
directed his rapid course towards the banks of the Danube. At Anchialus
in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied him with horses and money: he
passed the river, traversed with speed the desert of Moldavia and the
Carpathian hills, and had almost reached the town of Halicz, in the
Polish Russia, when he was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who
resolved to convey their important captive to Constantinople. His
presence of mind again extricated him from danger. Under the pretence of
sickness, he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from
the troop: he planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it with his
cap and upper garment; and, stealing into the wood, left a phantom to
amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Walachians. From Halicz he was
honorably conducted to Kiow, the residence of the great duke: the
subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and confidence of Ieroslaus; his
character could assume the manners of every climate; and the Barbarians
applauded his strength and courage in the chase of the elks and bears
of the forest. In this northern region he deserved the forgiveness
of Manuel, who solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in the
invasion of Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity on one
side, and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the head of the
Russian cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube. In his resentment
Manuel had ever sympathized with the martial and dissolute character of
his cousin; and his free pardon was sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in
which he was second, and second only, to the valor of the emperor.

No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than his
ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the public,
misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the succession of
the more deserving males of the Comnenian blood; her future marriage
with the prince of Hungary was repugnant to the hopes or prejudices of
the princes and nobles. But when an oath of allegiance was required to
the presumptive heir, Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman
name, declined the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the
adoption of a stranger. His patriotism was offensive to the emperor, but
he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was removed from the royal
presence by an honorable banishment, a second command of the Cilician
frontier, with the absolute disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In
this station the Armenians again exercised his courage and exposed his
negligence; and the same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was
unhorsed, and almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus
soon discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of
Poitou, the Latin prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his
station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments: to his love
she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer of an
advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for this domestic
affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left the indiscreet
princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band of desperate
adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem. His birth, his
martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced him as the champion
of the Cross: he soon captivated both the clergy and the king; and the
Greek prince was invested with the lordship of Berytus, on the coast of
Phoenicia.

In his neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his own
nation and family, great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis, and widow
of Baldwin the Third, king of Jerusalem. She visited and loved her
kinsman. Theodora was the third victim of his amorous seduction; and her
shame was more public and scandalous than that of her predecessors. The
emperor still thirsted for revenge; and his subjects and allies of the
Syrian frontier were repeatedly pressed to seize the person, and put out
the eyes, of the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe; but the
tender Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied his flight. The
queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious concubine;
and two illegitimate children were the living monuments of her weakness.
Damascus was his first refuge; and, in the characters of the great
Noureddin and his servant Saladin, the superstitious Greek might learn
to revere the virtues of the Mussulmans. As the friend of Noureddin he
visited, most probably, Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after
a long circuit round the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he
finally settled among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies
of his country. The sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to
Andronicus, his mistress, and his band of outlaws: the debt of gratitude
was paid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of Trebizond; and
he seldom returned without an ample harvest of spoil and of Christian
captives. In the story of his adventures, he was fond of comparing
himself to David, who escaped, by a long exile, the snares of the
wicked. But the royal prophet (he presumed to add) was content to lurk
on the borders of Judaea, to slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his
miserable state, the life of the avaricious Nabal. The excursions of the
Comnenian prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern
world the glory of his name and religion.

By a sentence of the Greek church, the licentious rover had been
separated from the faithful; but even this excommunication may prove,
that he never abjured the profession of Chistianity.

His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret persecution
of the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the captivity of his
female companion. The governor of Trebizond succeeded in his attempt
to surprise the person of Theodora: the queen of Jerusalem and her two
children were sent to Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the
tedious solitude of banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a
final pardon, with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign,
who was satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate
on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his past
rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some faithful subject
would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an iron chain with which he
had secretly encircled his neck. This extraordinary penance excited the
wonder and pity of the assembly; his sins were forgiven by the church
and state; but the just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a
distance from the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with
rich vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine. The death of
Manuel, and the disorders of the minority, soon opened the fairest field
to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or fourteen years of
age, without vigor, or wisdom, or experience: his mother, the empress
Mary, abandoned her person and government to a favorite of the Comnenian
name; and his sister, another Mary, whose husband, an Italian, was
decorated with the title of Caesar, excited a conspiracy, and at length
an insurrection, against her odious step-mother. The provinces were
forgotten, the capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order
was overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months. A civil war was
kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody battle in
the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a regular siege in
the cathedral of St. Sophia. The patriarch labored with honest zeal to
heal the wounds of the republic, the most respectable patriots called
aloud for a guardian and avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise
of the talents and even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement,
he affected to revolve the solemn duties of his oath: "If the safety or
honor of the Imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose
the mischief to the utmost of my power." His correspondence with the
patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from the
Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and he patiently waited
till he was called to her deliverance by the voice of his country. In
his march from Oenoe to Constantinople, his slender train insensibly
swelled to a crowd and an army: his professions of religion and loyalty
were mistaken for the language of his heart; and the simplicity of a
foreign dress, which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed
a lively image of his poverty and exile. All opposition sunk before him;
he reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the Byzantine navy
sailed from the harbor to receive and transport the savior of the
empire: the torrent was loud and irresistible, and the insects who had
basked in the sunshine of royal favor disappeared at the blast of the
storm. It was the first care of Andronicus to occupy the palace, to
salute the emperor, to confine his mother, to punish her minister,
and to restore the public order and tranquillity. He then visited the
sepulchre of Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as
he bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they heard, a
murmur of triumph or revenge: "I no longer fear thee, my old enemy, who
hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the earth. Thou art safety
deposited under a seven-fold dome, from whence thou canst never arise
till the signal of the last trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily
will I trample on thy ashes and thy posterity." From his subsequent
tyranny we may impute such feelings to the man and the moment; but it
is not extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret
thoughts. In the first months of his administration, his designs were
veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude only the
eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius was performed with due
solemnity, and his perfidious guardian, holding in his hands the body
and blood of Christ, most fervently declared that he lived, and was
ready to die, for the service of his beloved pupil. But his numerous
adherents were instructed to maintain, that the sinking empire must
perish in the hands of a child, that the Romans could only be saved by a
veteran prince, bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by
the long experience of fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of
every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to undertake
the burden of the public care. The young emperor was himself constrained
to join his voice to the general acclamation, and to solicit the
association of a colleague, who instantly degraded him from the supreme
rank, secluded his person, and verified the rash declaration of the
patriarch, that Alexius might be considered as dead, so soon as he was
committed to the custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded
by the imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her
reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the multitude, the
tyrant accused and tried the empress for a treasonable correspondence
with the king of Hungary. His own son, a youth of honor and humanity,
avowed his abhorrence of this flagitious act, and three of the judges
had the merit of preferring their conscience to their safety: but the
obsequious tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any
defence, condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son
subscribed the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse
was buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of her
beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was
strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or
remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it
rudely with his foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a knave, thy mother a
whore, and thyself a fool!"

The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus
about three years and a half as the guardian or sovereign of the empire.
His government exhibited a singular contrast of vice and virtue. When
he listened to his passions, he was the scourge; when he consulted his
reason, the father, of his people. In the exercise of private justice,
he was equitable and rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality
was abolished, and the offices were filled with the most deserving
candidates, by a prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish.
He prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and persons of
shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the objects of oppression
or neglect, revived in prosperity and plenty; and millions applauded the
distant blessings of his reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of
his daily cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man
who returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
truth, to 'Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third time
in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a black list
of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his
greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only comfort of
his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge. The necessary
extinction of the young emperor and his mother imposed the fatal
obligation of extirpating the friends, who hated, and might punish, the
assassin; and the repetition of murder rendered him less willing, and
less able, to forgive. [1018] A horrid narrative of the victims whom he
sacrificed by poison or the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be
less expressive of his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days,
which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant
strove to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake
the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the Greeks,
more especially those who, by descent or alliance, might dispute the
Comnenian inheritance, escaped from the monster's den: Nice and Prusa,
Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of refuge; and as their flight was
already criminal, they aggravated their offence by an open revolt, and
the Imperial title. Yet Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of
his most formidable enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised:
the Sicilians were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the
distance of Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the
tyrant. His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people
without arms. Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from the
great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or superstition
of the emperor. [1019] In a moment of despair, Angelus defended his life
and liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to the church of St. Sophia.
The sanctuary was insensibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd,
who, in his fate, prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were
soon turned to curses, and their curses to threats: they dared to
ask, "Why do we fear? why do we obey? We are many, and he is one: our
patience is the only bond of our slavery." With the dawn of day the city
burst into a general sedition, the prisons were thrown open, the coldest
and most servile were roused to the defence of their country, and Isaac,
the second of the name, was raised from the sanctuary to the throne.
Unconscious of his danger, the tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the
toils of state, in the delicious islands of the Propontis. He had
contracted an indecent marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis
the Seventh, of France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his
society, more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of
a young wife and a favorite concubine. On the first alarm, he rushed
to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty; but he was
astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of the city, and the
general desertion of mankind. Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his
subjects; they neither desired, nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered
to resign the crown to his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could
not expiate his father's crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat;
but the news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had
ceased, obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued and taken
by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to the presence of
Isaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long chain round his neck. His
eloquence, and the tears of his female companions, pleaded in vain for
his life; but, instead of the decencies of a legal execution, the new
monarch abandoned the criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had
deprived of a father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye
and a hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss:
and a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the bitterness
of death. Astride on a camel, without any danger of a rescue, he was
carried through the city, and the basest of the populace rejoiced to
trample on the fallen majesty of their prince. After a thousand blows
and outrages, Andronicus was hung by the feet, between two pillars, that
supported the statues of a wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could
reach the public enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or
brutal cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their
swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In this
long and painful agony, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" and "Why will you
bruise a broken reed?" were the only words that escaped from his mouth.
Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the man; nor can we blame
his pusillanimous resignation, since a Greek Christian was no longer
master of his life.

[Footnote 1018: Fallmerayer (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt,
p. 29, 33) has highly drawn the character of Andronicus. In his view the
extermination of the Byzantine factions and dissolute nobility was part
of a deep-laid and splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire. It
was necessary for the wise and benevolent schemes of the father of his
people to lop off those limbs which were infected with irremediable
pestilence-- "and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his
devilish deeds!!"--Still the fall of Andronicus was a fatal blow to the
Byzantine empire.--M.]

[Footnote 1019: According to Nicetas, (p. 444,) Andronicus despised the
imbecile Isaac too much to fear him; he was arrested by the officious
zeal of Stephen, the instrument of the Emperor's cruelties.--M.]

I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character and
adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the series of the
Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The branches that sprang
from the Comnenian trunk had insensibly withered; and the male line
was continued only in the posterity of Andronicus himself, who, in the
public confusion, usurped the sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in
history, and so famous in romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia,
Constantine Angelus, had emerged to wealth and honors, by his
marriage with a daughter of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus
is conspicuous only by his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and
succeeded the tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the
ambition of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of the
Eastern empire.

If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be
found, that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty emperors,
including in the Augustan list some female sovereigns; and deducting
some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the capital, and some
princes who did not live to possess their inheritance. The average
proportion will allow ten years for each emperor, far below the
chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from the experience of
more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about eighteen or twenty
years as the term of an ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was
most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary
succession; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian,
and Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four
generations; several princes number the years of their reign with those
of their infancy; and Constantine the Seventh and his two grandsons
occupy the space of an entire century. But in the intervals of the
Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and broken, and the name
of a successful candidate is speedily erased by a more fortunate
competitor. Many were the paths that led to the summit of royalty:
the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of conspiracy, or
undermined by the silent arts of intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers
or people, of the senate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were
alternately clothed with the purple: the means of their elevation were
base, and their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the
nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer
measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on
the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span,
to grasp at a precarious and shortlived enjoyment. It is thus that
the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our
intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some
hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or
reign is contracted to a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the
throne: the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the
loss of his prize and our immortal reason survives and disdains the
sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly
dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and
climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy, may
abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he condemns the vanity,
he may search the motive, of this universal desire to obtain and hold
the sceptre of dominion. To the greater part of the Byzantine series,
we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of fame and of mankind. The virtue
alone of John Comnenus was beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of
the princes, who procede or follow that respectable name, have trod
with some dexterity and vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish
policy: in scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the Isaurian,
Basil the First, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus, the second Basil,
and Manuel Comnenus, our esteem and censure are almost equally balanced;
and the remainder of the Imperial crowd could only desire and expect to
be forgotten by posterity. Was personal happiness the aim and object of
their ambition? I shall not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery
of kings; but I may surely observe, that their condition, of all others,
is the most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope. For
these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed in the revolutions
of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of the modern world,
which cannot easily repeat either the triumph of Alexander or the fall
of Darius. But the peculiar infelicity of the Byzantine princes exposed
them to domestic perils, without affording any lively promise of foreign
conquest. From the pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated
by a death more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but
the most glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from
their subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious
without spirit, the nation turbulent without freedom: the Barbarians of
the East and West pressed on the monarchy, and the loss of the provinces
was terminated by the final servitude of the capital.

The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the Caesars to
the last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen hundred years:
and the term of dominion, unbroken by foreign conquest, surpasses
the measure of the ancient monarchies; the Assyrians or Medes, the
successors of Cyrus, or those of Alexander.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

*** 