History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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Title: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4
Author: Gibbon, Edward
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4" ***

HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 4

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

CONTENTS

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part I.

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part II.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part III.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part IV.

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part V.

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.

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

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part II.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part III.

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part IV.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I.

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

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part II.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part III.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part IV.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part V.

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part VI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 (return) [ Vol. iii. p. 504—508.]

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

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

812 (return) [ Named Illus.—M.]

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

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

Whatever fear 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20 (return) [ This anecdote is related on the modern but
respectable authority of Sigonius, (Op. tom. i. p. 580. De
Occident. Impl. l. xv.:) his words are curious: “Would you
return?” &c. She presented and almost displayed the original
recess. * Note: The authority of Sigonius would scarcely have
weighed with 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

48 (return) [ Vol. iii. p. 581—585.]

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

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

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

The union of the Goths and Romans might have fixed for ages the
transient happiness of Italy; and the first of nations, a new
people of free subjects and enlightened soldiers, might have
gradually arisen from the mutual emulation of their respective
virtues. But the sublime merit of guiding or seconding such a
revolution was not reserved for the reign of Theodoric: he wanted
either the genius or the opportunities of a legislator; 52 and
while he indulged the Goths in the enjoyment of rude liberty, he
servilely copied the institutions, and even the abuses, of the
political system which had been framed by Constantine and his
successors. From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of
Rome, the Barbarian declined the name, the purple, and the
diadem, of the emperors; but he assumed, under the hereditary
title of king, the whole substance and plenitude of Imperial
prerogative. 53 His addresses to the eastern throne were
respectful and ambiguous: he celebrated, in pompous style, the
harmony of the two republics, applauded his own government as the
perfect similitude of a sole and undivided empire, and claimed
above the kings of the earth the same preeminence which he
modestly allowed to the person or rank of Anastasius. The
alliance of the East and West was annually declared by the
unanimous choice of two consuls; but it should seem that the
Italian candidate who was named by Theodoric accepted a formal
confirmation from the sovereign of Constantinople. 54 The Gothic
palace of Ravenna reflected the image of the court of Theodosius
or Valentinian. The Praetorian 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

57 (return) [ Two Italians of the name of Cassiodorus, the father
(Var. i. 24, 40) and the son, (ix. 24, 25,) were successively
employed in the administration of Theodoric. The son was born in
the year 479: his various epistles as quaestor, master of the
offices, and Praetorian 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.)]

5711 (return) [ Cassiodorus was of an ancient and honorable
family; his grandfather had distinguished himself in the defence
of Sicily against the ravages of Genseric; his father held a high
rank at the court of Valentinian III., enjoyed the friendship of
Aetius, and was one of the ambassadors sent to arrest the
progress of Attila. Cassiodorus himself was first the treasurer
of the private expenditure to Odoacer, afterwards “count of the
sacred largesses.” Yielding with the rest of the Romans to the
dominion of Theodoric, he was instrumental in the peaceable
submission of Sicily; was successively governor of his native
provinces of Bruttium and Lucania, quaestor, magister, palatii,
Praetorian 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
art, which Theodoric considered as the noblest ornament of his
kingdom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

68 (return) [ Procopius (Goth. l. iv. c. 21) relates a foolish
story of Myron’s cow, which is celebrated by the false 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The events of his reign, which excite our curious attention by
their number, variety, and importance, are diligently related by
the secretary of Belisarius, a rhetorician, whom eloquence had
promoted to the rank of senator and 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.

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

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

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

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

2. His works were mutilated by the first Latin translators,
Christopher Persona, (Giornale, tom. xix. p. 340—348,) and
Raphael de Volaterra, (Huet, de Claris Interpretibus, p. 166,)
who did not even consult the Ms. of the Vatican library, of which
they were 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.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of
ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the
circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the
reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by
religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed
stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn
festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. 44 From this
capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and
cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors
produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the
foundations of a feeble government. 45 The popular dissensions,
founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have
scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which
invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and
tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to
espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or to contradict the
wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was
trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its
deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public
calamity. The license, without the freedom, of democracy, was
revived at Antioch and Constantinople, and the support of a
faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or
ecclesiastical honors. A secret attachment to the family or sect
of Anastasius was imputed to the greens; the blues were zealously
devoted to the cause of orthodoxy and Justinian, 46 and their
grateful patron protected, above five years, the disorders of a
faction, whose seasonable tumults overawed the palace, the
senate, and the capitals of the East. Insolent with royal favor,
the blues affected to strike terror by a peculiar and Barbaric
dress, the long hair of the Huns, their close sleeves and ample
garments, a lofty step, and a sonorous voice. In the day they
concealed their two-edged poniards, but in the night they boldly
assembled in arms, and in numerous bands, prepared for every act
of violence and rapine. Their adversaries of the green faction,
or even inoffensive citizens, were stripped and often murdered by
these nocturnal robbers, and it became dangerous to wear any gold
buttons or girdles, or to appear at a late hour in the streets of
a peaceful capital. A daring spirit, rising with impunity,
proceeded to violate the safeguard of private houses; and fire
was employed to facilitate the attack, or to conceal the crimes
of these factious rioters. No place was safe or sacred from their
depredations; to gratify either avarice or revenge, they
profusely spilt the blood of the innocent; churches and altars
were polluted by atrocious murders; and it was the boast of the
assassins, that their dexterity could always inflict a mortal
wound with a single stroke of their dagger. The dissolute youth
of Constantinople adopted the blue livery of disorder; the laws
were silent, and the bonds of society were relaxed: creditors
were compelled to resign their obligations; judges to reverse
their sentence; masters to enfranchise their slaves; fathers to
supply the extravagance of their children; noble matrons were
prostituted to the lust of their servants; beautiful boys were
torn from the arms of their parents; and wives, unless they
preferred a voluntary death, were ravished in the presence of
their husbands. 47 The despair of the greens, who were persecuted
by their enemies, and deserted by the magistrates, assumed the
privilege of defence, perhaps of retaliation; but those who
survived the combat were dragged to execution, and the unhappy
fugitives, escaping to woods and caverns, preyed without mercy on
the society from whence they were expelled. Those ministers of
justice who had courage to punish the crimes, and to brave the
resentment, of the blues, became the victims of their indiscreet
zeal; a 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sedition, which almost laid Constantinople in ashes, was
excited by the mutual hatred and momentary reconciliation of the
two factions. In the fifth year of his reign, Justinian
celebrated the festival of the ides of January; the games were
incessantly disturbed by the clamorous discontent of the greens:
till the twenty-second race, the emperor maintained his silent
gravity; at length, yielding to his impatience, he condescended
to hold, in abrupt sentences, and by the voice of a crier, the
most singular dialogue 50 that ever passed between a prince and
his subjects. Their first complaints were respectful and modest;
they accused the subordinate ministers of oppression, and
proclaimed their wishes for the long life and victory of the
emperor. “Be patient and attentive, ye insolent railers!”
exclaimed Justinian; “be mute, ye Jews, Samaritans, and
Manichaeans!” The greens still attempted to awaken his
compassion. “We are poor, we are innocent, we are injured, we
dare not pass through the streets: a general persecution is
exercised against our name and color. Let us die, O emperor! but
let us die by your command, and for your service!” But the
repetition of partial and passionate invectives degraded, in
their eyes, the majesty of the purple; they renounced allegiance
to the prince who refused justice to his people; lamented that
the father of Justinian had been born; and branded his son with
the opprobrious names of a homicide, an ass, and a perjured
tyrant. “Do you despise your lives?” cried the indignant monarch:
the blues rose with fury from their seats; their hostile clamors
thundered in the hippodrome; and their adversaries, deserting the
unequal contest spread terror and despair through the streets of
Constantinople. At this dangerous moment, seven notorious
assassins of both factions, who had been condemned by the
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

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

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

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

As long as the factions were divided, the triumphant blues, and
desponding greens, appeared to behold with the same indifference
the disorders of the state. They agreed to censure the corrupt
management of justice and the finance; and the two responsible
ministers, the artful Tribonian, and the rapacious John of
Cappadocia, were loudly arraigned as the authors of the public
misery. The peaceful murmurs of the people would have been
disregarded: they were heard with respect when the city was in
flames; the quaestor, and the 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part III.

I need not explain that silk 61 is originally spun from the
bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb,
from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the
reign of Justinian, the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the
white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine,
the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and
Europe; but as their education is more difficult, and their
produce more uncertain, they were generally neglected, except in
the little island of Ceos, near the coast of Attica. A thin gauze
was procured from their webs, and this Cean manufacture, the
invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired both in
the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the
garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient
writer, who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed
from the trees of the Seres or Chinese; 62 and this natural
error, less marvellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by
the knowledge of a valuable insect, the first artificer of the
luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury was censured, in
the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans; and Pliny,
in affected though forcible language, has condemned the thirst of
gain, which explores the last confines of the earth, for the
pernicious purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies
and transparent matrons. 63 6311 A dress which showed the turn of
the limbs, and color of the skin, might gratify vanity, or
provoke desire; the silks which had been closely woven in China
were sometimes unravelled by the 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A valuable merchandise of small bulk is capable of defraying the
expense of land-carriage; and the caravans traversed the whole
latitude of Asia in two hundred and forty-three days from the
Chinese Ocean to the sea-coast of Syria. Silk was immediately
delivered to the Romans by the Persian merchants, 67 who
frequented the fairs of Armenia and Nisibis; but this trade,
which in the intervals of truce was oppressed by avarice and
jealousy, was totally interrupted by the long wars of the rival
monarchies. The great king might proudly number Sogdiana, and
even Serica, among the provinces of his empire; but his real
dominion was bounded by the Oxus and his useful intercourse with
the Sogdoites, beyond the river, depended on the pleasure of
their conquerors, the white Huns, and the Turks, who successively
reigned over that industrious people. Yet the most savage
dominion has not extirpated the seeds of agriculture and
commerce, in a region which is celebrated as one of the four
gardens of Asia; the cities of Samarcand and Bochara are
advantageously seated for the exchange of its various
productions; and their merchants purchased from the Chinese, 68
the raw or manufactured silk which they transported into Persia
for the use of the Roman empire. In the vain capital of China,
the Sogdian caravans were entertained as the suppliant embassies
of tributary kingdoms, and if they returned in safety, the bold
adventure was rewarded with exorbitant gain. But the difficult
and perilous march from Samarcand to the first town of Shensi,
could not be performed in less than sixty, eighty, or one hundred
days: as soon as they had passed the Jaxartes they entered the
desert; and the wandering hordes, unless they are restrained by
armies and garrisons, have always considered the citizen and the
traveller as the objects of lawful rapine. To escape the Tartar
robbers, and the tyrants of Persia, the silk caravans explored a
more southern road; they traversed the mountains of Thibet,
descended the streams of the Ganges or the Indus, and patiently
expected, in the ports of Guzerat and Malabar, the annual fleets
of the West. 69 But the dangers of the desert were found less
intolerable than toil, hunger, and the loss of time; the attempt
was seldom renewed, and the only European who has passed that
unfrequented way, applauds his own diligence, that, in nine
months after his departure from Pekin, he reached the mouth of
the Indus. The ocean, however, was open to the free communication
of mankind. From the great river to the tropic of Cancer, the
provinces of China were subdued and civilized by the emperors of
the North; they were filled about the time of the Christian aera
with cities and men, mulberry-trees and their precious
inhabitants; and if the Chinese, with the knowledge of the
compass, had possessed the genius of the Greeks or 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

84 (return) [ The Anecdotes (c. 11—14, 18, 20—30) supply many
facts and more complaints. * Note: The work of Lydus de
Magistratibus (published by Hase at Paris, 1812, and reprinted in
the new edition of the Byzantine Historians,) was written during
the reign of Justinian. This work of Lydus throws no great light
on the earlier history of the Roman magistracy, but gives some
curious details of the changes and retrenchments in the offices
of state, which took place at this time. The personal history of
the author, with the account of his early and rapid advancement,
and the emoluments of the posts which he successively held, with
the bitter disappointment which he expresses, at finding himself,
at the height of his ambition, in an unpaid place, is an
excellent illustration of this statement. Gibbon has before, c.
iv. n. 45, and c. xvii. n. 112, traced the progress of a Roman
citizen to the highest honors of the state under the empire; the
steps by which Lydus reached his humbler eminence may likewise
throw light on the civil service at this period. He was first
received into the office of the Praetorian 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part IV.

Dishonor might be ultimately reflected on the character of
Justinian; but much of the guilt, and still more of the profit,
was intercepted by the ministers, who were seldom promoted for
their virtues, and not always selected for their talents. 91 The
merits of Tribonian the quaestor will hereafter be weighed in the
reformation of the Roman law; but the economy of the East was
subordinate to the Praetorian 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

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

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

921 (return) [ This view, particularly of the cruelty of John of
Cappadocia, is confirmed by the testimony of Joannes Lydus, who
was in the office of the 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.]

93 (return) [ A forcible expression.]

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

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

94 (return) [ The chronology of Procopius is loose and obscure;
but with the aid of Pagi I can discern that John was appointed
Praetorian 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The principal church, which was dedicated by the founder of
Constantinople to St. Sophia, or the eternal wisdom, had been
twice destroyed by fire; after the exile of John Chrysostom, and
during the Nika of the blue and green factions. No sooner did the
tumult subside, than the Christian populace deplored their
sacrilegious rashness; but they might have rejoiced in the
calamity, had they foreseen the glory of the new temple, which at
the end of forty days was strenuously undertaken by the piety of
Justinian. 103 The ruins were cleared away, a more spacious plan
was described, and as it required the consent of some proprietors
of ground, they obtained the most exorbitant terms from the eager
desires and timorous conscience of the monarch. Anthemius formed
the design, and his genius directed the hands of ten thousand
workmen, whose payment in pieces of fine silver was never delayed
beyond the evening. The emperor himself, clad in a linen tunic,
surveyed each day their rapid progress, and encouraged their
diligence by his familiarity, his zeal, and his rewards. The new
Cathedral of St. Sophia was consecrated by the patriarch, five
years, eleven months, and ten days from the first foundation; and
in the midst of the solemn festival Justinian exclaimed with
devout vanity, “Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to
accomplish so great a work; I have vanquished thee, O Solomon!”
104 But the pride of the Roman Solomon, before twenty years had
elapsed, was humbled by an earthquake, which overthrew the
eastern part of the dome. Its splendor was again restored by the
perseverance of the same prince; and in the thirty-sixth year of
his reign, Justinian celebrated the second dedication of a temple
which remains, after twelve centuries, a stately monument of his
fame. The architecture of St. Sophia, which is now converted into
the principal 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!

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

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

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

1. The Carystian—pale, with iron veins.

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

3. The Porphyry of Egypt—with small stars.

4. The green marble of Laconia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fortifications of Europe and Asia were multiplied by
Justinian; but the repetition of those timid and fruitless
precautions exposes, to a philosophic eye, the debility of the
empire. 111 From Belgrade to the Euxine, from the conflux of the
Save to the mouth of the Danube, a chain of above fourscore
fortified places was extended along the banks of the great river.
Single watch-towers were changed into spacious citadels; vacant
walls, which the engineers contracted or enlarged according to
the nature of the ground, were filled with colonies or garrisons;
a strong fortress defended the ruins of Trajan’s bridge, 112 and
several military stations affected to spread beyond the Danube
the pride of the Roman name. But that name was divested of its
terrors; the Barbarians, in their annual inroads, passed, and
contemptuously repassed, before these useless bulwarks; and the
inhabitants of the frontier, instead of reposing under the shadow
of the general defence, were compelled to guard, with incessant
vigilance, their separate habitations. The solitude of ancient
cities, was replenished; the new foundations of Justinian
acquired, perhaps too hastily, the epithets of impregnable and
populous; and the auspicious place of his own nativity attracted
the grateful reverence of the vainest of princes. Under the name
of Justiniana prima, the obscure village of Tauresium became the
seat of an archbishop and a 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.—Part V.

If we extend our view from the tropic to the mouth of the Tanais,
we may observe, on one hand, the precautions of Justinian to curb
the savages of Aethiopia, 125 and on the other, the long walls
which he constructed in Crimaea for the protection of his
friendly Goths, a colony of three thousand shepherds and
warriors. 126 From that peninsula to Trebizond, the eastern curve
of the Euxine was secured by forts, by alliance, or by religion;
and the possession of Lazica, the Colchos of ancient, the
Mingrelia of modern, geography, soon became the object of an
important war. Trebizond, in after-times the seat of a romantic
empire, was indebted to the liberality of Justinian for a church,
an aqueduct, and a castle, whose ditches are hewn in the solid
rock. From that maritime city, frontier line of five hundred
miles may be drawn to the fortress of Circesium, the last Roman
station on the Euphrates. 127 Above Trebizond immediately, and
five days’ journey to the south, the country rises into dark
forests and craggy mountains, as savage though not so lofty as
the Alps and the Pyrenees. In this rigorous climate, 128 where
the snows seldom melt, the fruits are tardy and tasteless, even
honey is poisonous: the most industrious tillage would be
confined to some pleasant valleys; and the pastoral tribes
obtained a scanty sustenance from the flesh and milk of their
cattle. The Chalybians 129 derived their name and temper from the
iron quality of the soil; and, since the days of Cyrus, they
might produce, under the various appellations of 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The report of an African war was grateful only to the vain and
idle populace of Constantinople, whose poverty exempted them from
tribute, and whose cowardice was seldom exposed to military
service. But the wiser citizens, who judged of the future by the
past, revolved in their memory the immense loss, both of men and
money, which the empire had sustained in the expedition of
Basiliscus. The troops, which, after five laborious campaigns,
had been recalled from the Persian frontier, dreaded the sea, the
climate, and the arms of an unknown enemy. The ministers of the
finances computed, as far as they might compute, the demands of
an African war; the taxes which must be found and levied to
supply those insatiate demands; and the danger, lest their own
lives, or at least their lucrative employments, should be made
responsible for the deficiency of the supply. Inspired by such
selfish motives, (for we may not suspect him of any zeal for the
public good,) John of Cappadocia ventured to oppose in full
council the inclinations of his master. He confessed, that a
victory of such importance could not be too dearly purchased; but
he represented in a grave discourse the certain difficulties and
the uncertain event. “You undertake,” said the 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The preparations for the African war were not unworthy of the
last contest between Rome and Carthage. The pride and flower of
the army consisted of the guards of Belisarius, who, according to
the pernicious indulgence of the times, devoted themselves, by a
particular oath of fidelity, to the service of their patrons.
Their strength and stature, for which they had been curiously
selected, the goodness of their horses and armor, and the
assiduous practice of all the exercises of war, enabled them to
act whatever their courage might prompt; and their courage was
exalted by the social honor of their rank, and the personal
ambition of favor and fortune. Four hundred of the bravest of the
Heruli marched under the banner of the faithful and active
Pharas; their untractable valor was more highly prized than the
tame submission of the Greeks and Syrians; and of such importance
was it deemed to procure a reenforcement of six hundred
Massagetae, or Huns, that they were allured by fraud and deceit
to engage in a naval expedition. Five thousand horse and ten
thousand foot were embarked at Constantinople, for the conquest
of Africa; but the infantry, for the most part levied in Thrace
and Isauria, yielded to the more prevailing use and reputation of
the cavalry; and the Scythian bow was the weapon on which the
armies of Rome were now reduced to place their principal
dependence. From a laudable desire to assert the dignity of his
theme, Procopius defends the soldiers of his own time against the
morose critics, who confined that respectable name to the
heavy-armed warriors of antiquity, and maliciously observed, that
the word archer is introduced by Homer 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.]

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

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

In the seventh year of the reign of Justinian, and about the time
of the summer solstice, the whole fleet of six hundred ships was
ranged in martial pomp before the gardens of the palace. The
patriarch pronounced his benediction, the emperor signified his
last commands, the general’s trumpet gave the signal of
departure, and every heart, according to its fears or wishes,
explored, with anxious curiosity, the omens of misfortune and
success. The first halt was made at Perinthus or Heraclea, where
Belisarius waited five days to receive some Thracian horses, a
military gift of his sovereign. From thence the fleet pursued
their course through the midst of the Propontis; but as they
struggled to pass the Straits of the Hellespont, an unfavorable
wind detained them four days at Abydus, where the general
exhibited a memorable lesson of firmness and severity. Two of the
Huns, who in a drunken quarrel had slain one of their
fellow-soldiers, were instantly shown to the army suspended on a
lofty gibbet. The national indignity was resented by their
countrymen, who disclaimed the servile laws of the empire, and
asserted the free privilege of Scythia, where a small fine was
allowed to expiate the hasty sallies of intemperance and anger.
Their complaints were specious, their clamors were loud, and the
Romans were not averse to the example of disorder and impunity.
But the rising sedition was appeased by the authority and
eloquence of the general: and he represented to the assembled
troops the obligation of justice, the importance of discipline,
the rewards of piety and virtue, and the unpardonable guilt of
murder, which, in his apprehension, was aggravated rather than
excused by the vice of intoxication. 11 In the navigation from
the Hellespont to Peloponnesus, which the Greeks, after the siege
of Troy, had performed in four days, 12 the fleet of Belisarius
was guided in their course by his master-galley, conspicuous in
the day by the redness of the sails, and in the night by the
torches blazing from the mast head. It was the duty of the
pilots, as they steered between the islands, and turned the Capes
of Malea and Taenarium, to preserve the just order and regular
intervals of such a multitude of ships: as the wind was fair and
moderate, their labors were not unsuccessful, and the troops were
safely disembarked at Methone on the Messenian coast, to repose
themselves for a while after the fatigues of the sea. In this
place they experienced how avarice, invested with authority, may
sport with the lives of thousands which are bravely exposed for
the public service. According to military practice, the bread or
biscuit of the Romans was twice prepared in the oven, and the
diminution of one fourth was cheerfully allowed for the loss of
weight. To gain this miserable profit, and to save the expense of
wood, the 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belisarius spoke the language of truth. The surviving Vandals
yielded, without resistance, their arms and their freedom; the
neighborhood of Carthage submitted to his presence; and the more
distant provinces were successively subdued by the report of his
victory. Tripoli was confirmed in her voluntary allegiance;
Sardinia and Corsica surrendered to an officer, who carried,
instead of a sword, the head of the valiant Zano; and the Isles
of Majorca, Minorca, and Yvica consented to remain an humble
appendage of the African kingdom. Caesarea, a royal city, which
in looser geography may be confounded with the modern Algiers,
was situate thirty days’ march to the westward of Carthage: by
land, the road was infested by the Moors; but the sea was open,
and the Romans were now masters of the sea. An active and
discreet tribune sailed as far as the Straits, where he occupied
Septem or Ceuta, 23 which rises opposite to Gibraltar on the
African coast; that remote place was afterwards adorned and
fortified by Justinian; and he seems to have indulged the vain
ambition of extending his empire to the columns of Hercules. He
received the messengers of victory at the time when he was
preparing to publish the Pandects of the Roman laws; and the
devout or jealous emperor celebrated the divine goodness, and
confessed, in silence, the merit of his successful general. 24
Impatient to abolish the temporal and spiritual tyranny of the
Vandals, he proceeded, without delay, to the full establishment
of the Catholic church. Her jurisdiction, wealth, and immunites,
perhaps the most essential part of episcopal religion, were
restored and amplified with a liberal hand; the Arian worship was
suppressed; the Donatist meetings were proscribed; 25 and the
synod of Carthage, by the voice of two hundred and seventeen
bishops, 26 applauded the just measure of pious retaliation. On
such an occasion, it may not be presumed, that many orthodox
prelates were absent; but the comparative smallness of their
number, which in ancient councils had been twice or even thrice
multiplied, most clearly indicates the decay both of the church
and state. While Justinian approved himself the defender of the
faith, he entertained an ambitious hope, that his victorious
lieutenant would speedily enlarge the narrow limits of his
dominion to the space which they occupied before the invasion of
the Moors and Vandals; and Belisarius was instructed to establish
five dukes or commanders in the convenient stations of Tripoli,
Leptis, Cirta, Caesarea, and Sardinia, and to compute the
military force of palatines or borderers that might be sufficient
for the defence of Africa. The kingdom of the Vandals was not
unworthy of the presence of a Praetorian 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their contempt was soon justified by a new example of a vulgar
truth; that flattery adheres to power, and envy to superior
merit. The chiefs of the Roman army presumed to think themselves
the rivals of a hero. Their private despatches maliciously
affirmed, that the conqueror of Africa, strong in his reputation
and the public love, conspired to seat himself on the throne of
the Vandals. Justinian listened with too patient an ear; and his
silence was the result of jealousy rather than of confidence. An
honorable alternative, of remaining in the province, or of
returning to the capital, was indeed submitted to the discretion
of Belisarius; but he wisely concluded, from intercepted letters
and the knowledge of his sovereign’s temper, that he must either
resign his head, erect his standard, or confound his enemies by
his presence and submission. Innocence and courage decided his
choice; his guards, captives, and treasures, were diligently
embarked; and so prosperous was the navigation, that his arrival
at Constantinople preceded any certain account of his departure
from the port of Carthage. Such unsuspecting loyalty removed the
apprehensions of Justinian; envy was silenced and inflamed by the
public gratitude; and the third Africanus obtained the honors of
a triumph, a ceremony which the city of Constantine had never
seen, and which ancient Rome, since the reign of Tiberius, had
reserved for the auspicious arms of the Caesars. 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.]

33 (return) [ If the Ecclesiastes be truly a work of Solomon, and
not, like Prior’s poem, a pious and moral composition of more
recent times, in his name, and on the subject of his repentance.
The latter is the opinion of the learned and free-spirited
Grotius, (Opp. Theolog. tom. i. p. 258;) and indeed the
Ecclesiastes and Proverbs display a larger compass of thought and
experience than seem to belong either to a Jew or a king. * Note:
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, 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.

1041 (return) [ Auximum, p. 175.—M.]

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

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

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

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

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

After the second victory of Belisarius, envy again whispered,
Justinian listened, and the hero was recalled. “The remnant of
the Gothic war was no longer worthy of his presence: a gracious
sovereign was impatient to reward his services, and to consult
his wisdom; and he alone was capable of defending the East
against the innumerable armies of Persia.” Belisarius understood
the suspicion, accepted the excuse, embarked at Ravenna his
spoils and trophies; and proved, by his ready obedience, that
such an abrupt removal from the government of Italy was not less
unjust than it might have been indiscreet. The emperor received
with honorable courtesy both Vitiges and his more noble consort;
and as the king of the Goths conformed to the Athanasian faith,
he obtained, with a rich inheritance of land in Asia, the rank of
senator and patrician. 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.)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

A philosopher may pity and forgive the infirmities of female
nature, from which he receives no real injury: but contemptible
is the husband who feels, and yet endures, his own infamy in that
of his wife. Antonina pursued her son with implacable hatred; and
the gallant Photius 116 was exposed to her secret persecutions in
the camp beyond the Tigris. Enraged by his own wrongs, and by the
dishonor of his blood, he cast away in his turn the sentiments of
nature, and revealed to Belisarius the turpitude of a woman who
had violated all the duties of a mother and a wife. From the
surprise and indignation of the Roman general, his former
credulity appears to have been sincere: he embraced the knees of
the son of Antonina, adjured him to remember his obligations
rather than his birth, and confirmed at the altar their holy vows
of revenge and mutual defence. The dominion of Antonina was
impaired by absence; and when she met her husband, on his return
from the Persian confines, Belisarius, in his first and transient
emotions, confined her person, and threatened her life. Photius
was more resolved to punish, and less prompt to pardon: he flew
to Ephesus; extorted from a trusty eunuch of his mother the full
confession of her guilt; arrested Theodosius and his treasures in
the church of St. John the Apostle, and concealed his captives,
whose execution was only delayed, in a secure and sequestered
fortress of Cilicia. Such a daring outrage against public justice
could not pass with impunity; and the cause of Antonina was
espoused by the empress, whose favor she had deserved by the
recent services of the disgrace of a 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia,
Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian,
under the two great families of the Bulgarians 11 and the
Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who
touched the Euxine and the Lake Maeotis, derived from the Huns
their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and
well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and
dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh,
of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to
whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were
practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was
divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each
other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the
friendship, or rather the gifts, of the emperor; and the
distinctions which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and
the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only
verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. 12
The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by
Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian
name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic
Sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same
race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the
possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however
distant or adverse, used one common language, (it was harsh and
irregular,) and 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

38 (return) [ See D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 568, 929;)
Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, c. 21, p. 290, 291;) Pocock,
(Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 70, 71;) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
176;) Texeira, (in Stevens, Hist. of Persia, l. i. c. 34.) *
Note: Mazdak was an Archimagus, born, according to Mirkhond,
(translated by De Sacy, p. 353, and Malcolm, vol. i. p. 104,) at
Istakhar or Persepolis, according to an inedited and anonymous
history, (the Modjmal-alte-warikh in the Royal Library at Paris,
quoted by St. Martin, vol. vii. p. 322) at Wischapour in
Chorasan: his father’s name was Bamdadam. He announces himself as
a reformer of Zoroastrianism, and carried the doctrine of the two
principles to a much 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.]

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

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

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

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

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

But the justice of kings is understood by themselves, and even by
their subjects, with an ample indulgence for the gratification of
passion and interest. The virtue of Chosroes was that of a
conqueror, who, in the measures of peace and war, is excited by
ambition, and restrained by prudence; who confounds the greatness
with the happiness of a nation, and calmly devotes the lives of
thousands to the fame, or even the amusement, of a single man. In
his domestic administration, the just Nushirvan would merit in
our feelings the appellation of a tyrant. His two elder brothers
had been deprived of their fair expectations of the diadem: their
future life, between the supreme rank and the condition of
subjects, was anxious to themselves and formidable to their
master: fear as well as revenge might tempt them to rebel: the
slightest evidence of a conspiracy satisfied the author of their
wrongs; and the repose of Chosroes was secured by the death of
these unhappy princes, with their families and adherents. One
guiltless youth was saved and dismissed by the compassion of a
veteran general; and this act of humanity, which was revealed by
his son, overbalanced the merit of reducing twelve nations to the
obedience of Persia. The zeal and prudence of Mebodes had fixed
the diadem on the head of Chosroes himself; but he delayed to
attend the royal summons, till he had performed the duties of a
military review: he was instantly commanded to repair to the iron
tripod, which stood before the gate of the palace, 43 where it
was death to relieve or approach the victim; and Mebodes
languished several days before his sentence was pronounced, by
the inflexible pride and calm ingratitude of the son of Kobad.
But the people, more especially in the East, is disposed to
forgive, and even to applaud, the cruelty which strikes at the
loftiest heads; at the slaves of ambition, whose voluntary choice
has exposed them to live in the smiles, and to perish by the
frown, of a capricious monarch. In the execution of the laws
which he had no temptation to violate; in the punishment of
crimes which attacked his own dignity, as well as the happiness
of individuals; Nushirvan, or Chosroes, deserved the appellation
of just. His government was firm, rigorous, and impartial. It was
the first labor of his reign to abolish the dangerous theory of
common or equal possessions: the lands and women which the
sectaries of Mazdak has usurped were restored to their lawful
owners; and the temperate 4311 chastisement of the fanatics or
impostors confirmed the domestic rights of society. Instead of
listening with blind confidence to a favorite minister, he
established four viziers over the four great provinces of his
empire, Assyria, Media, Persia, and Bactriana. In the choice of
judges, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reddam, improba, 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]

1002 (return) [ 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.]

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

That country was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from
whence it had been raised by the 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

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

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

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

5 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 18. The series of the African
history 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they were rewarded by the freedom of pillage, after the most
precious spoils had been reserved for the royal treasury. The
houses of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and
silver; and the avarice of Bessas had labored with so much guilt
and shame for the benefit of the conqueror. In this revolution,
the sons and daughters of Roman consuls 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3611 (return) [ “Dog, wilt thou strike thy Lord?” was the more
characteristic exclamation of the Gothic youth. Procop. lib. iv.
p. 32.—M.]

37 (return) [ Theophanes, Chron. p. 193. Hist. Miscell. l. xvi.
p. 108.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4811 (return) [.... Agathius.]

4812 (return) [ Aligern, after the surrender of Cumae, had been
sent to Cesent by Narses. Agathias.—M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

57 (return) [ The Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian, which restores
and regulates the civil state of Italy, consists of xxvii.
articles: it is dated August 15, A.D. 554; is addressed to
Narses, V. J. Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi, and to Antiochus,
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.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About two years after the last victory of Belisarius, the emperor
returned from a Thracian journey of health, or business, or
devotion. Justinian was afflicted by a pain in his head; and his
private entry countenanced the rumor of his death. Before the
third hour of the day, the bakers’ shops were plundered of their
bread, the houses were shut, and every citizen, with hope or
terror, prepared for the impending tumult. The senators
themselves, fearful and suspicious, were convened at the ninth
hour; and the 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

76 (return) [ Astronomers may study Newton and Halley. I draw my
humble science from the article Comete, in the French
Encyclopedie, by M. d’Alembert.]

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

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

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

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

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

8111 (return) [ Compare Pingre, Histoire des Cometes.—M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

87 (return) [ I have read with pleasure Mead’s short, but
elegant, treatise concerning Pestilential Disorders, the viiith
edition, London, 1722.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

93 (return) [ Mead proves that the plague is contagious from
Thucydides, Lacretius, Aristotle, Galen, and common experience,
(p. 10—20;) and he refutes (Preface, p. 2—13) the contrary
opinion of the French physicians who visited Marseilles in the
year 1720. Yet these were the recent and enlightened spectators
of a plague which, in a few months, swept away 50,000 inhabitants
(sur le Peste de Marseille, Paris, 1786) of a city that, in the
present hour of prosperity and trade contains no more then 90,000
souls, (Necker, sur les Finances, tom. i. p. 231.)]

94 (return) [ The strong assertions of Procopius are overthrown
by the subsequent experience of Evagrius.]

95 (return) [ After some figures of rhetoric, the sands of the
sea, &c., Procopius (Anecdot. c. 18) attempts a more definite
account; that it had been exterminated under the reign of the
Imperial demon. The expression is obscure in grammar and
arithmetic and a literal interpretation would produce several
millions of millions Alemannus (p. 80) and Cousin (tom. iii. p.
178) translate this passage, “two hundred millions:” but I am
ignorant of their motives. The remaining myriad of myriads, would
furnish one hundred millions, a number not wholly inadmissible.]

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

Note: In the notes to this important chapter, which is received
as the text-book on Civil Law in some of the foreign
universities, I have consulted,

I. the newly-discovered Institutes of Gaius, (Gaii Institutiones,
ed. Goeschen, Berlin, 1824,) with some other fragments of the
Roman law, (Codicis Theodosiani Fragmenta inedita, ab Amadeo
Peyron. Turin, 1824.)

II. The History of the Roman Law, by Professor Hugo, in the
French translation of M. Jourdan. Paris, 1825.

III. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts im Mittelalter, 6
bande, Heidelberg, 1815.

IV. Walther, Romische Rechts-Geschichte, Bonn. 1834. But I am
particularly indebted to an edition of the French translation of
this chapter, with additional notes, by one of the most learned
civilians of Europe, Professor Warnkonig, published at Liege,
1821. I have inserted almost the whole of these notes, which are
distinguished by the letter W.—M. The vain titles of the
victories of Justinian are crumbled into dust; but the name of
the legislator is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument.
Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence was
digested in the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects, and the
Institutes: 1 the public reason of the Romans has been silently
or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of
Europe, 2, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or
obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince
who connects his own reputation with the honor or interest of a
perpetual order of men. The defence of their founder is the first
cause, which in every age has exercised the zeal and industry of
the civilians. They piously commemorate his virtues; dissemble or
deny his failings; and fiercely chastise the guilt or folly of
the rebels, who presume to sully the majesty of the purple. The
idolatry of love has provoked, as it usually happens, the rancor
of opposition; the character of Justinian has been exposed to the
blind vehemence of flattery and invective; and the injustice of a
sect (the Anti-Tribonians,) has refused all praise and merit to
the prince, his ministers, and his laws. 3 Attached to no party,
interested only for the truth and candor of history, and directed
by the most temperate and skilful guides, 4 I enter with just
diffidence on the subject of civil law, which has exhausted so
many learned lives, and clothed the walls of such spacious
libraries. In a single, if possible in a short, chapter, I shall
trace the Roman jurisprudence from Romulus to Justinian, 5
appreciate the labors of that emperor, and pause to contemplate
the principles of a science so important to the peace and
happiness of society. The laws of a nation form the most
instructive portion of its history; and although I have devoted
myself to write the annals of a declining monarchy, I shall
embrace the occasion to breathe the pure and invigorating air of
the republic.

1 (return) [ The civilians of the darker ages have established an
absurd and incomprehensible mode of quotation, which is supported
by authority and custom. In their references to the Code, the
Pandects, and the Institutes, they mention the number, not of the
book, but only of the law; and content themselves with reciting
the first words of the title to which it belongs; and of these
titles there are more than a thousand. Ludewig (Vit. Justiniani,
p. 268) wishes to shake off this pendantic yoke; and I have dared
to adopt the simple and rational method of numbering the book,
the title, and the law. Note: The example of Gibbon has been
followed by M Hugo and other civilians.—M]

2 (return) [ Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland,
have received them as common law or reason; in France, Italy,
&c., they possess a direct or indirect influence; and they were
respected in England, from Stephen to Edward I. our national
Justinian, (Duck. de Usu et Auctoritate Juris Civilis, l. ii. c.
1, 8—15. Heineccius, Hist. Juris Germanici, c. 3, 4, No. 55-124,
and the legal historians of each country.) * Note: Although the
restoration of the Roman law, introduced by the revival of this
study in Italy, is one of the most important branches of history,
it had been treated but imperfectly when Gibbon wrote his work.
That of Arthur Duck is but an insignificant performance. But the
researches of the learned have thrown much light upon the matter.
The Sarti, the Tiraboschi, the Fantuzzi, the Savioli, had made
some very interesting inquiries; but it was reserved for M. de
Savigny, in a work entitled “The History of the Roman Law during
the Middle Ages,” to cast the strongest right on this part of
history. He demonstrates incontestably the preservation of the
Roman law from Justinian to the time of the Glossators, who by
their indefatigable zeal, propagated the study of the Roman
jurisprudence in all the countries of Europe. It is much to be
desired that the author should continue this interesting work,
and that the learned should engage in the inquiry in what manner
the Roman law introduced itself into their respective countries,
and the authority which it progressively acquired. For Belgium,
there exists, on this subject, (proposed by the Academy of
Brussels in 1781,) a Collection of Memoirs, printed at Brussels
in 4to., 1783, among which should be distinguished those of M. de
Berg. M. Berriat Saint Prix has given us hopes of the speedy
appearance of a work in which he will discuss this question,
especially in relation to France. M. Spangenberg, in his
Introduction to the Study of the Corpus Juris Civilis Hanover,
1817, 1 vol. 8vo. p. 86, 116, gives us a general sketch of the
history of the Roman law in different parts of Europe. We cannot
avoid mentioning an elementary work by M. Hugo, in which he
treats of the History of the Roman Law from Justinian to the
present Time, 2d edit. Berlin 1818 W.]

3 (return) [ Francis Hottoman, a learned and acute lawyer of the
xvith century, wished to mortify Cujacius, and to please the
Chancellor de l’Hopital. His Anti-Tribonianus (which I have never
been able to procure) was published in French in 1609; and his
sect was propagated in Germany, (Heineccius, Op. tom. iii.
sylloge iii. p. 171—183.) * Note: Though there have always been
many detractors of the Roman law, no sect of Anti-Tribonians has
ever existed under that name, as Gibbon seems to suppose.—W.]

4 (return) [ At the head of these guides I shall respectfully
place the learned and perspicuous Heineccius, a German professor,
who died at Halle in the year 1741, (see his Eloge in the
Nouvelle Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. ii. p. 51—64.) His ample
works have been collected in eight volumes in 4to. Geneva,
1743-1748. The treatises which I have separately used are, 1.
Historia Juris Romani et Germanici, Lugd. Batav. 1740, in 8 vo.
2. Syntagma Antiquitatum Romanam Jurisprudentiam illustrantium, 2
vols. in 8 vo. Traject. ad Rhenum. 3. Elementa Juris Civilis
secundum Ordinem Institutionum, Lugd. Bat. 1751, in 8 vo. 4.
Elementa J. C. secundum Ordinem Pandectarum Traject. 1772, in
8vo. 2 vols. * Note: Our author, who was not a lawyer, was
necessarily obliged to content himself with following the
opinions of those writers who were then of the greatest
authority; but as Heineccius, notwithstanding his high reputation
for the study of the Roman law, knew nothing of the subject on
which he treated, but what he had learned from the compilations
of various authors, it happened that, in following the sometimes
rash opinions of these guides, Gibbon has fallen into many
errors, which we shall endeavor in succession to correct. The
work of Bach on the History of the Roman Jurisprudence, with
which Gibbon was not acquainted, is far superior to that of
Heineccius and since that time we have new obligations to the
modern historic civilians, whose indefatigable researches have
greatly enlarged the sphere of our knowledge in this important
branch of history. We want a pen like that of Gibbon to give to
the more accurate notions which we have acquired since his time,
the brilliancy, the vigor, and the animation which Gibbon has
bestowed on the opinions of Heineccius and his contemporaries.—W]

5 (return) [ Our original text is a fragment de Origine Juris
(Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) of Pomponius, a Roman lawyer, who lived
under the Antonines, (Heinecc. tom. iii. syl. iii. p. 66—126.) It
has been abridged, and probably corrupted, by Tribonian, and
since restored by Bynkershoek (Opp. tom. i. p. 279—304.)]

The primitive government of Rome 6 was composed, with some
political skill, of an elective king, a council of nobles, and a
general assembly of the people. War and religion were
administered by the supreme magistrate; and he alone proposed the
laws, which were debated in the senate, and finally ratified or
rejected by a majority of votes in the thirty curiae or parishes
of the city. Romulus, Numa, and Servius Tullius, are celebrated
as the most ancient legislators; and each of them claims his
peculiar part in the threefold division of jurisprudence. 7 The
laws of marriage, the education of children, and the authority of
parents, which may seem to draw their origin from nature itself,
are ascribed to the untutored wisdom of Romulus. The law of
nations and of religious worship, which Numa introduced, was
derived from his nocturnal converse with the nymph Egeria. The
civil law is attributed to the experience of Servius: he balanced
the rights and fortunes of the seven classes of citizens; and
guarded, by fifty new regulations, the observance of contracts
and the punishment of crimes. The state, which he had inclined
towards a democracy, was changed by the last Tarquin into a
lawless despotism; and when the kingly office was abolished, the
patricians engrossed the benefits of freedom. The royal laws
became odious or obsolete; the mysterious deposit was silently
preserved by the priests and nobles; and at the end of sixty
years, the citizens of Rome still complained that they were ruled
by the arbitrary sentence of the magistrates. Yet the positive
institutions of the kings had blended themselves with the public
and private manners of the city, some fragments of that venerable
jurisprudence 8 were compiled by the diligence of antiquarians, 9
and above twenty texts still speak the rudeness of the Pelasgic
idiom of the Latins. 10

6 (return) [ The constitutional history of the kings of Rome may
be studied in the first book of Livy, and more copiously in
Dionysius Halicarnassensis, (l. li. p. 80—96, 119—130, l. iv. p.
198—220,) who sometimes betrays the character of a rhetorician
and a Greek. * Note: M. Warnkonig refers to the work of Beaufort,
on the Uncertainty of the Five First Ages of the Roman History,
with which Gibbon was probably acquainted, to Niebuhr, and to the
less known volume of Wachsmuth, “Aeltere Geschichte des Rom.
Staats.” To these I would add A. W. Schlegel’s Review of Niebuhr,
and my friend Dr. Arnold’s recently published volume, of which
the chapter on the Law of the XII. Tables appears to me one of
the most valuable, if not the most valuable, chapter.—M.]

7 (return) [ This threefold division of the law was applied to
the three Roman kings by Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom. iv. p. 279;)
is adopted by Gravina, (Origines Juris Civilis, p. 28, edit.
Lips. 1737:) and is reluctantly admitted by Mascou, his German
editor. * Note: Whoever is acquainted with the real notions of
the Romans on the jus naturale, gentium et civile, cannot but
disapprove of this explanation which has no relation to them, and
might be taken for a pleasantry. It is certainly unnecessary to
increase the confusion which already prevails among modern
writers on the true sense of these ideas. Hugo.—W]

8 (return) [ The most ancient Code or Digest was styled Jus
Papirianum, from the first compiler, Papirius, who flourished
somewhat before or after the Regifugium, (Pandect. l. i. tit.
ii.) The best judicial critics, even Bynkershoek (tom. i. p. 284,
285) and Heineccius, (Hist. J. C. R. l. i. c. 16, 17, and Opp.
tom. iii. sylloge iv. p. 1—8,) give credit to this tale of
Pomponius, without sufficiently adverting to the value and rarity
of such a monument of the third century, of the illiterate city.
I much suspect that the Caius Papirius, the Pontifex Maximus, who
revived the laws of Numa (Dionys. Hal. l. iii. p. 171) left only
an oral tradition; and that the Jus Papirianum of Granius Flaccus
(Pandect. l. L. tit. xvi. leg. 144) was not a commentary, but an
original work, compiled in the time of Caesar, (Censorin. de Die
Natali, l. iii. p. 13, Duker de Latinitate J. C. p. 154.) Note:
Niebuhr considers the Jus Papirianum, adduced by Verrius Fiaccus,
to be of undoubted authenticity. Rom. Geschichte, l. 257.—M.
Compare this with the work of M. Hugo.—W.]

9 (return) [ A pompous, though feeble attempt to restore the
original, is made in the Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine of
Terasson, p. 22—72, Paris, 1750, in folio; a work of more promise
than performance.]

10 (return) [ In the year 1444, seven or eight tables of brass
were dug up between Cortona and Gubio. A part of these (for the
rest is Etruscan) represents the primitive state of the Pelasgic
letters and language, which are ascribed by Herodotus to that
district of Italy, (l. i. c. 56, 57, 58;) though this difficult
passage may be explained of a Crestona in Thrace, (Notes de
Larcher, tom. i. p. 256—261.) The savage dialect of the Eugubine
tables has exercised, and may still elude, the divination of
criticism; but the root is undoubtedly Latin, of the same age and
character as the Saliare Carmen, which, in the time of Horace,
none could understand. The Roman idiom, by an infusion of Doric
and Aeolic Greek, was gradually ripened into the style of the
xii. tables, of the Duillian column, of Ennius, of Terence, and
of Cicero, (Gruter. Inscript. tom. i. p. cxlii. Scipion Maffei,
Istoria Diplomatica, p. 241—258. Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iii.
p. 30—41, 174—205. tom. xiv. p. 1—52.) * Note: The Eugubine
Tables have exercised the ingenuity of the Italian and German
critics; it seems admitted (O. Muller, die Etrusker, ii. 313)
that they are Tuscan. See the works of Lanzi, Passeri, Dempster,
and O. Muller.—M]

I shall not repeat the well-known story of the Decemvirs, 11 who
sullied by their actions the honor of inscribing on brass, or
wood, or ivory, the Twelve Tables of the Roman laws. 12 They were
dictated by the rigid and jealous spirit of an aristocracy, which
had yielded with reluctance to the just demands of the people.
But the substance of the Twelve Tables was adapted to the state
of the city; and the Romans had emerged from Barbarism, since
they were capable of studying and embracing the institutions of
their more enlightened neighbors. 1211 A wise Ephesian was driven
by envy from his native country: before he could reach the shores
of Latium, he had observed the various forms of human nature and
civil society: he imparted his knowledge to the legislators of
Rome, and a statue was erected in the forum to the perpetual
memory of Hermodorus. 13 The names and divisions of the copper
money, the sole coin of the infant state, were of Dorian origin:
14 the harvests of Campania and Sicily relieved the wants of a
people whose agriculture was often interrupted by war and
faction; and since the trade was established, 15 the deputies who
sailed from the Tyber might return from the same harbors with a
more precious cargo of political wisdom. The colonies of Great
Greece had transported and improved the arts of their mother
country. Cumae and Rhegium, Crotona and Tarentum, Agrigentum and
Syracuse, were in the rank of the most flourishing cities. The
disciples of Pythagoras applied philosophy to the use of
government; the unwritten laws of Charondas accepted the aid of
poetry and music, 16 and Zaleucus framed the republic of the
Locrians, which stood without alteration above two hundred years.
17 From a similar motive of national pride, both Livy and
Dionysius are willing to believe, that the deputies of Rome
visited Athens under the wise and splendid administration of
Pericles; and the laws of Solon were transfused into the twelve
tables. If such an embassy had indeed been received from the
Barbarians of Hesperia, the Roman name would have been familiar
to the Greeks before the reign of Alexander; 18 and the faintest
evidence would have been explored and celebrated by the curiosity
of succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are silent; nor
will it seem credible that the patricians should undertake a long
and perilous navigation to copy the purest model of democracy. In
the comparison of the tables of Solon with those of the
Decemvirs, some casual resemblance may be found; some rules which
nature and reason have revealed to every society; some proofs of
a common descent from Egypt or Phoenicia. 19 But in all the great
lines of public and private jurisprudence, the legislators of
Rome and Athens appear to be strangers or adverse at each other.

11 (return) [ Compare Livy (l. iii. c. 31—59) with Dionysius
Halicarnassensis, (l. x. p. 644—xi. p. 691.) How concise and
animated is the Roman—how prolix and lifeless the Greek! Yet he
has admirably judged the masters, and defined the rules, of
historical composition.]

12 (return) [ From the historians, Heineccius (Hist. J. R. l. i.
No. 26) maintains that the twelve tables were of brass—aereas; in
the text of Pomponius we read eboreas; for which Scaliger has
substituted roboreas, (Bynkershoek, p. 286.) Wood, brass, and
ivory, might be successively employed. Note: Compare Niebuhr,
vol. ii. p. 349, &c.—M.]

1211 (return) [ Compare Niebuhr, 355, note 720.—M. It is a most
important question whether the twelve tables in fact include laws
imported from Greece. The negative opinion maintained by our
author, is now almost universally adopted, particularly by Mm.
Niebuhr, Hugo, and others. See my Institutiones Juris Romani
privati Leodii, 1819, p. 311, 312.—W. Dr. Arnold, p. 255, seems
to incline to the opposite opinion. Compare some just and
sensible observations in the Appendix to Mr. Travers Twiss’s
Epitome of Niebuhr, p. 347, Oxford, 1836.—M.]

13 (return) [ His exile is mentioned by Cicero, (Tusculan.
Quaestion. v. 36; his statue by Pliny, (Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 11.)
The letter, dream, and prophecy of Heraclitus, are alike
spurious, (Epistolae Graec. Divers. p. 337.) * Note: Compare
Niebuhr, ii. 209.—M. See the Mem de l’Academ. des Inscript. xxii.
p. 48. It would be difficult to disprove, that a certain
Hermodorus had some share in framing the Laws of the Twelve
Tables. Pomponius even says that this Hermodorus was the author
of the last two tables. Pliny calls him the Interpreter of the
Decemvirs, which may lead us to suppose that he labored with them
in drawing up that law. But it is astonishing that in his
Dissertation, (De Hermodoro vero XII. Tabularum Auctore, Annales
Academiae Groninganae anni 1817, 1818,) M. Gratama has ventured
to advance two propositions entirely devoid of proof: “Decem
priores tabulas ab ipsis Romanis non esse profectas, tota
confirma Decemviratus Historia,” et “Hermodorum legum
decemviralium ceri nominis auctorem esse, qui eas composuerit
suis ordinibus, disposuerit, suaque fecerit auctoritate, ut a
decemviris reciperentur.” This truly was an age in which the
Roman Patricians would allow their laws to be dictated by a
foreign Exile! Mr. Gratama does not attempt to prove the
authenticity of the supposititious letter of Heraclitus. He
contents himself with expressing his astonishment that M. Bonamy
(as well as Gibbon) will be receive it as genuine.—W.]

14 (return) [ This intricate subject of the Sicilian and Roman
money, is ably discussed by Dr. Bentley, (Dissertation on the
Epistles of Phalaris, p. 427—479,) whose powers in this
controversy were called forth by honor and resentment.]

15 (return) [ The Romans, or their allies, sailed as far as the
fair promontory of Africa, (Polyb. l. iii. p. 177, edit.
Casaubon, in folio.) Their voyages to Cumae, &c., are noticed by
Livy and Dionysius.]

16 (return) [ This circumstance would alone prove the antiquity
of Charondas, the legislator of Rhegium and Catana, who, by a
strange error of Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. xii. p. 485—492) is
celebrated long afterwards as the author of the policy of
Thurium.]

17 (return) [ Zaleucus, whose existence has been rashly attacked,
had the merit and glory of converting a band of outlaws (the
Locrians) into the most virtuous and orderly of the Greek
republics. (See two Memoirs of the Baron de St. Croix, sur la
Legislation de la Grande Grece Mem. de l’Academie, tom. xlii. p.
276—333.) But the laws of Zaleucus and Charondas, which imposed
on Diodorus and Stobaeus, are the spurious composition of a
Pythagorean sophist, whose fraud has been detected by the
critical sagacity of Bentley, p. 335—377.]

18 (return) [ I seize the opportunity of tracing the progress of
this national intercourse 1. Herodotus and Thucydides (A. U. C.
300—350) appear ignorant of the name and existence of Rome,
(Joseph. contra Appion tom. ii. l. i. c. 12, p. 444, edit.
Havercamp.) 2. Theopompus (A. U. C. 400, Plin. iii. 9) mentions
the invasion of the Gauls, which is noticed in looser terms by
Heraclides Ponticus, (Plutarch in Camillo, p. 292, edit. H.
Stephan.) 3. The real or fabulous embassy of the Romans to
Alexander (A. U. C. 430) is attested by Clitarchus, (Plin. iii.
9,) by Aristus and Asclepiades, (Arrian. l. vii. p. 294, 295,)
and by Memnon of Heraclea, (apud Photium, cod. ccxxiv. p. 725,)
though tacitly denied by Livy. 4. Theophrastus (A. U. C. 440)
primus externorum aliqua de Romanis diligentius scripsit, (Plin.
iii. 9.) 5. Lycophron (A. U. C. 480—500) scattered the first seed
of a Trojan colony and the fable of the Aeneid, (Cassandra,
1226—1280.) A bold prediction before the end of the first Punic
war! * Note: Compare Niebuhr throughout. Niebuhr has written a
dissertation (Kleine Schriften, i. p. 438,) arguing from this
prediction, and on the other conclusive grounds, that the
Lycophron, the author of the Cassandra, is not the Alexandrian
poet. He had been anticipated in this sagacious criticism, as he
afterwards discovered, by a writer of no less distinction than
Charles James Fox.—Letters to Wakefield. And likewise by the
author of the extraordinary translation of this poem, that most
promising scholar, Lord Royston. See the Remains of Lord Royston,
by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.]

19 (return) [ The tenth table, de modo sepulturae, was borrowed
from Solon, (Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23—26:) the furtem per lancem
et licium conceptum, is derived by Heineccius from the manners of
Athens, (Antiquitat. Rom. tom. ii. p. 167—175.) The right of
killing a nocturnal thief was declared by Moses, Solon, and the
Decemvirs, (Exodus xxii. 3. Demosthenes contra Timocratem, tom.
i. p. 736, edit. Reiske. Macrob. Saturnalia, l. i. c. 4. Collatio
Legum Mosaicarum et Romanatum, tit, vii. No. i. p. 218, edit.
Cannegieter.) *Note: Are not the same points of similarity
discovered in the legislation of all actions in the infancy of
their civilization?—W.]

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

Whatever might be the origin or the merit of the twelve tables,
20 they obtained among the Romans that blind and partial
reverence which the lawyers of every country delight to bestow on
their municipal institutions. The study is recommended by Cicero
21 as equally pleasant and instructive. “They amuse the mind by
the remembrance of old words and the portrait of ancient manners;
they inculcate the soundest principles of government and morals;
and I am not afraid to affirm, that the brief composition of the
Decemvirs surpasses in genuine value the libraries of Grecian
philosophy. How admirable,” says Tully, with honest or affected
prejudice, “is the wisdom of our ancestors! We alone are the
masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more
conspicuous, if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost
ridiculous jurisprudence of Draco, of Solon, and of Lycurgus.”
The twelve tables were committed to the memory of the young and
the meditation of the old; they were transcribed and illustrated
with learned diligence; they had escaped the flames of the Gauls,
they subsisted in the age of Justinian, and their subsequent loss
has been imperfectly restored by the labors of modern critics. 22
But although these venerable monuments were considered as the
rule of right and the fountain of justice, 23 they were
overwhelmed by the weight and variety of new laws, which, at the
end of five centuries, became a grievance more intolerable than
the vices of the city. 24 Three thousand brass plates, the acts
of the senate of the people, were deposited in the Capitol: 25
and some of the acts, as the Julian law against extortion,
surpassed the number of a hundred chapters. 26 The Decemvirs had
neglected to import the sanction of Zaleucus, which so long
maintained the integrity of his republic. A Locrian, who proposed
any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a
cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator
was instantly strangled.

20 (return) [ It is the praise of Diodorus, (tom. i. l. xii. p.
494,) which may be fairly translated by the eleganti atque
absoluta brevitate verborum of Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xxi.
1.)]

21 (return) [ Listen to Cicero (de Legibus, ii. 23) and his
representative Crassus, (de Oratore, i. 43, 44.)]

22 (return) [ See Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 29—33.) I have
followed the restoration of the xii. tables by Gravina (Origines
J. C. p. 280—307) and Terrasson, (Hist. de la Jurisprudence
Romaine, p. 94—205.) Note: The wish expressed by Warnkonig, that
the text and the conjectural emendations on the fragments of the
xii. tables should be submitted to rigid criticism, has been
fulfilled by Dirksen, Uebersicht der bisherigen Versuche Leipzig
Kritik und Herstellung des Textes der Zwolf-Tafel-Fragmente,
Leipzug, 1824.—M.]

23 (return) [ Finis aequi juris, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 27.) Fons
omnis publici et privati juris, (T. Liv. iii. 34.) * Note: From
the context of the phrase in Tacitus, “Nam secutae leges etsi
alquando in maleficos ex delicto; saepius tamen dissensione
ordinum * * * latae sunt,” it is clear that Gibbon has rendered
this sentence incorrectly. Hugo, Hist. p. 62.—M.]

24 (return) [ De principiis juris, et quibus modis ad hanc
multitudinem infinitam ac varietatem legum perventum sit altius
disseram, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 25.) This deep disquisition fills
only two pages, but they are the pages of Tacitus. With equal
sense, but with less energy, Livy (iii. 34) had complained, in
hoc immenso aliarum super alias acervatarum legum cumulo, &c.]

25 (return) [ Suetonius in Vespasiano, c. 8.]

26 (return) [ Cicero ad Familiares, viii. 8.]

The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by
an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated
against numbers. To the first class of Romans, the proprietors of
one hundred thousand pounds of copper, 27 ninety-eight votes were
assigned, and only ninety-five were left for the six inferior
classes, distributed according to their substance by the artful
policy of Servius. But the tribunes soon established a more
specious and popular maxim, that every citizen has an equal right
to enact the laws which he is bound to obey. Instead of the
centuries, they convened the tribes; and the patricians, after an
impotent struggle, submitted to the decrees of an assembly, in
which their votes were confounded with those of the meanest
plebeians. Yet as long as the tribes successively passed over
narrow bridges 28 and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of
each citizen was exposed to the eyes and ears of his friends and
countrymen. The insolvent debtor consulted the wishes of his
creditor; the client would have blushed to oppose the views of
his patron; the general was followed by his veterans, and the
aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to the
multitude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence
of fear and shame, of honor and interest, and the abuse of
freedom accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. 29 The
Romans had aspired to be equal; they were levelled by the
equality of servitude; and the dictates of Augustus were
patiently ratified by the formal consent of the tribes or
centuries. Once, and once only, he experienced a sincere and
strenuous opposition. His subjects had resigned all political
liberty; they defended the freedom of domestic life. A law which
enforced the obligation, and strengthened the bonds of marriage,
was clamorously rejected; Propertius, in the arms of Delia,
applauded the victory of licentious love; and the project of
reform was suspended till a new and more tractable generation had
arisen in the world. 30 Such an example was not necessary to
instruct a prudent usurper of the mischief of popular assemblies;
and their abolition, which Augustus had silently prepared, was
accomplished without resistance, and almost without notice, on
the accession of his successor. 31 Sixty thousand plebeian
legislators, whom numbers made formidable, and poverty secure,
were supplanted by six hundred senators, who held their honors,
their fortunes, and their lives, by the clemency of the emperor.
The loss of executive power was alleviated by the gift of
legislative authority; and Ulpian might assert, after the
practice of two hundred years, that the decrees of the senate
obtained the force and validity of laws. In the times of freedom,
the resolves of the people had often been dictated by the passion
or error of the moment: the Cornelian, Pompeian, and Julian laws
were adapted by a single hand to the prevailing disorders; but
the senate, under the reign of the Caesars, was composed of
magistrates and lawyers, and in questions of private
jurisprudence, the integrity of their judgment was seldom
perverted by fear or interest. 32

27 (return) [ Dionysius, with Arbuthnot, and most of the moderns,
(except Eisenschmidt de Ponderibus, &c., p. 137—140,) represent
the 100,000 asses by 10,000 Attic drachmae, or somewhat more than
300 pounds sterling. But their calculation can apply only to the
latter times, when the as was diminished to 1-24th of its ancient
weight: nor can I believe that in the first ages, however
destitute of the precious metals, a single ounce of silver could
have been exchanged for seventy pounds of copper or brass. A more
simple and rational method is to value the copper itself
according to the present rate, and, after comparing the mint and
the market price, the Roman and avoirdupois weight, the primitive
as or Roman pound of copper may be appreciated at one English
shilling, and the 100,000 asses of the first class amounted to
5000 pounds sterling. It will appear from the same reckoning,
that an ox was sold at Rome for five pounds, a sheep for ten
shillings, and a quarter of wheat for one pound ten shillings,
(Festus, p. 330, edit. Dacier. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 4:) nor
do I see any reason to reject these consequences, which moderate
our ideas of the poverty of the first Romans. * Note: Compare
Niebuhr, English translation, vol. i. p. 448, &c.—M.]

28 (return) [ Consult the common writers on the Roman Comitia,
especially Sigonius and Beaufort. Spanheim (de Praestantia et Usu
Numismatum, tom. ii. dissert. x. p. 192, 193) shows, on a curious
medal, the Cista, Pontes, Septa, Diribitor, &c.]

29 (return) [ Cicero (de Legibus, iii. 16, 17, 18) debates this
constitutional question, and assigns to his brother Quintus the
most unpopular side.]

30 (return) [ Prae tumultu recusantium perferre non potuit,
(Sueton. in August. c. 34.) See Propertius, l. ii. eleg. 6.
Heineccius, in a separate history, has exhausted the whole
subject of the Julian and Papian Poppaean laws, (Opp. tom. vii.
P. i. p. 1—479.)]

31 (return) [ Tacit. Annal. i. 15. Lipsius, Excursus E. in
Tacitum. Note: This error of Gibbon has been long detected. The
senate, under Tiberius did indeed elect the magistrates, who
before that emperor were elected in the comitia. But we find laws
enacted by the people during his reign, and that of Claudius. For
example; the Julia-Norbana, Vellea, and Claudia de tutela
foeminarum. Compare the Hist. du Droit Romain, by M. Hugo, vol.
ii. p. 55, 57. The comitia ceased imperceptibly as the republic
gradually expired.—W.]

32 (return) [ Non ambigitur senatum jus facere posse, is the
decision of Ulpian, (l. xvi. ad Edict. in Pandect. l. i. tit.
iii. leg. 9.) Pomponius taxes the comitia of the people as a
turba hominum, (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii. leg 9.) * Note: The
author adopts the opinion, that under the emperors alone the
senate had a share in the legislative power. They had
nevertheless participated in it under the Republic, since
senatus-consulta relating to civil rights have been preserved,
which are much earlier than the reigns of Augustus or Tiberius.
It is true that, under the emperors, the senate exercised this
right more frequently, and that the assemblies of the people had
become much more rare, though in law they were still permitted,
in the time of Ulpian. (See the fragments of Ulpian.) Bach has
clearly demonstrated that the senate had the same power in the
time of the Republic. It is natural that the senatus-consulta
should have been more frequent under the emperors, because they
employed those means of flattering the pride of the senators, by
granting them the right of deliberating on all affairs which did
not intrench on the Imperial power. Compare the discussions of M.
Hugo, vol. i. p. 284, et seq.—W.]

The silence or ambiguity of the laws was supplied by the
occasional edicts 3211 of those magistrates who were invested
with the honors of the state. 33 This ancient prerogative of the
Roman kings was transferred, in their respective offices, to the
consuls and dictators, the censors and praetors; and a similar
right was assumed by the tribunes of the people, the ediles, and
the proconsuls. At Rome, and in the provinces, the duties of the
subject, and the intentions of the governor, were proclaimed; and
the civil jurisprudence was reformed by the annual edicts of the
supreme judge, the praetor of the city. 3311 As soon as he
ascended his tribunal, he announced by the voice of the crier,
and afterwards inscribed on a white wall, the rules which he
proposed to follow in the decision of doubtful cases, and the
relief which his equity would afford from the precise rigor of
ancient statutes. A principle of discretion more congenial to
monarchy was introduced into the republic: the art of respecting
the name, and eluding the efficacy, of the laws, was improved by
successive praetors; subtleties and fictions were invented to
defeat the plainest meaning of the Decemvirs, and where the end
was salutary, the means were frequently absurd. The secret or
probable wish of the dead was suffered to prevail over the order
of succession and the forms of testaments; and the claimant, who
was excluded from the character of heir, accepted with equal
pleasure from an indulgent praetor the possession of the goods of
his late kinsman or benefactor. In the redress of private wrongs,
compensations and fines were substituted to the obsolete rigor of
the Twelve Tables; time and space were annihilated by fanciful
suppositions; and the plea of youth, or fraud, or violence,
annulled the obligation, or excused the performance, of an
inconvenient contract. A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary
was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well
as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices
of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser
seductions of interest or resentment. But the errors or vices of
each praetor expired with his annual office; such maxims alone as
had been approved by reason and practice were copied by
succeeding judges; the rule of proceeding was defined by the
solution of new cases; and the temptations of injustice were
removed by the Cornelian law, which compelled the praetor of the
year to adhere to the spirit and letter of his first
proclamation. 34 It was reserved for the curiosity and learning
of Adrian, to accomplish the design which had been conceived by
the genius of Caesar; and the praetorship of Salvius Julian, an
eminent lawyer, was immortalized by the composition of the
Perpetual Edict. This well-digested code was ratified by the
emperor and the senate; the long divorce of law and equity was at
length reconciled; and, instead of the Twelve Tables, the
perpetual edict was fixed as the invariable standard of civil
jurisprudence. 35

3211 (return) [ There is a curious passage from Aurelius, a
writer on Law, on the Praetorian 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]

33 (return) [ The jus honorarium of the praetors and other
magistrates is strictly defined in the Latin text to the
Institutes, (l. i. tit. ii. No. 7,) and more loosely explained in
the Greek paraphrase of Theophilus, (p. 33—38, edit. Reitz,) who
drops the important word honorarium. * Note: The author here
follows the opinion of Heineccius, who, according to the idea of
his master Thomasius, was unwilling to suppose that magistrates
exercising a judicial could share in the legislative power. For
this reason he represents the edicts of the praetors as absurd.
(See his work, Historia Juris Romani, 69, 74.) But Heineccius had
altogether a false notion of this important institution of the
Romans, to which we owe in a great degree the perfection of their
jurisprudence. Heineccius, therefore, in his own days had many
opponents of his system, among others the celebrated Ritter,
professor at Wittemberg, who contested it in notes appended to
the work of Heineccius, and retained in all subsequent editions
of that book. After Ritter, the learned Bach undertook to
vindicate the edicts of the praetors in his Historia Jurisprud.
Rom. edit. 6, p. 218, 224. But it remained for a civilian of our
own days to throw light on the spirit and true character of this
institution. M. Hugo has completely demonstrated that the
praetorian edicts furnished the salutary means of perpetually
harmonizing the legislation with the spirit of the times. The
praetors were the true organs of public opinion. It was not
according to their caprice that they framed their regulations,
but according to the manners and to the opinions of the great
civil lawyers of their day. We know from Cicero himself, that it
was esteemed a great honor among the Romans to publish an edict,
well conceived and well drawn. The most distinguished lawyers of
Rome were invited by the praetor to assist in framing this annual
law, which, according to its principle, was only a declaration
which the praetor made to the public, to announce the manner in
which he would judge, and to guard against every charge of
partiality. Those who had reason to fear his opinions might delay
their cause till the following year. The praetor was responsible
for all the faults which he committed. The tribunes could lodge
an accusation against the praetor who issued a partial edict. He
was bound strictly to follow and to observe the regulations
published by him at the commencement of his year of office,
according to the Cornelian law, by which these edicts were called
perpetual, and he could make no change in a regulation once
published. The praetor was obliged to submit to his own edict,
and to judge his own affairs according to its provisions. These
magistrates had no power of departing from the fundamental laws,
or the laws of the Twelve Tables. The people held them in such
consideration, that they rarely enacted laws contrary to their
provisions; but as some provisions were found inefficient, others
opposed to the manners of the people, and to the spirit of
subsequent ages, the praetors, still maintaining respect for the
laws, endeavored to bring them into accordance with the
necessities of the existing time, by such fictions as best suited
the nature of the case. In what legislation do we not find these
fictions, which even yet exist, absurd and ridiculous as they
are, among the ancient laws of modern nations? These always
variable edicts at length comprehended the whole of the Roman
legislature, and became the subject of the commentaries of the
most celebrated lawyers. They must therefore be considered as the
basis of all the Roman jurisprudence comprehended in the Digest
of Justinian. ——It is in this sense that M. Schrader has written
on this important institution, proposing it for imitation as far
as may be consistent with our manners, and agreeable to our
political institutions, in order to avoid immature legislation
becoming a permanent evil. See the History of the Roman Law by M.
Hugo, vol. i. p. 296, &c., vol. ii. p. 30, et seq., 78. et seq.,
and the note in my elementary book on the Industries, p. 313.
With regard to the works best suited to give information on the
framing and the form of these edicts, see Haubold, Institutiones
Literariae, tom. i. p. 321, 368. All that Heineccius says about
the usurpation of the right of making these edicts by the
praetors is false, and contrary to all historical testimony. A
multitude of authorities proves that the magistrates were under
an obligation to publish these edicts.—W. ——With the utmost
deference for these excellent civilians, I cannot but consider
this confusion of the judicial and legislative authority as a
very perilous constitutional precedent. It might answer among a
people so singularly trained as the Romans were by habit and
national character in reverence for legal institutions, so as to
be an aristocracy, if not a people, of legislators; but in most
nations the investiture of a magistrate in such authority,
leaving to his sole judgment the lawyers he might consult, and
the view of public opinion which he might take, would be a very
insufficient guaranty for right legislation.—M.]

3311 (return) [ Compare throughout the brief but admirable sketch
of the progress and growth of the Roman jurisprudence, the
necessary operation of the jusgentium, when Rome became the
sovereign of nations, upon the jus civile of the citizens of
Rome, in the first chapter of Savigny. Geschichte des Romischen
Rechts im Mittelalter.—M.]

34 (return) [ Dion Cassius (tom. i. l. xxxvi. p. 100) fixes the
perpetual edicts in the year of Rome, 686. Their institution,
however, is ascribed to the year 585 in the Acta Diurna, which
have been published from the papers of Ludovicus Vives. Their
authenticity is supported or allowed by Pighius, (Annal. Rom.
tom. ii. p. 377, 378,) Graevius, (ad Sueton. p. 778,) Dodwell,
(Praelection. Cambden, p. 665,) and Heineccius: but a single
word, Scutum Cimbricum, detects the forgery, (Moyle’s Works, vol.
i. p. 303.)]

35 (return) [ The history of edicts is composed, and the text of
the perpetual edict is restored, by the master-hand of
Heineccius, (Opp. tom. vii. P. ii. p. 1—564;) in whose researches
I might safely acquiesce. In the Academy of Inscriptions, M.
Bouchaud has given a series of memoirs to this interesting
subject of law and literature. * Note: This restoration was only
the commencement of a work found among the papers of Heineccius,
and published after his death.—G. ——Note: Gibbon has here fallen
into an error, with Heineccius, and almost the whole literary
world, concerning the real meaning of what is called the
perpetual edict of Hadrian. Since the Cornelian law, the edicts
were perpetual, but only in this sense, that the praetor could
not change them during the year of his magistracy. And although
it appears that under Hadrian, the civilian Julianus made, or
assisted in making, a complete collection of the edicts, (which
certainly had been done likewise before Hadrian, for example, by
Ofilius, qui diligenter edictum composuit,) we have no sufficient
proof to admit the common opinion, that the Praetorian edict was
declared perpetually unalterable by Hadrian. The writers on law
subsequent to Hadrian (and among the rest Pomponius, in his
Summary of the Roman Jurisprudence) speak of the edict as it
existed in the time of Cicero. They would not certainly have
passed over in silence so remarkable a change in the most
important source of the civil law. M. Hugo has conclusively shown
that the various passages in authors, like Eutropius, are not
sufficient to establish the opinion introduced by Heineccius.
Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 78. A new proof of this is found in the
Institutes of Gaius, who, in the first books of his work,
expresses himself in the same manner, without mentioning any
change made by Hadrian. Nevertheless, if it had taken place, he
must have noticed it, as he does l. i. 8, the responsa prudentum,
on the occasion of a rescript of Hadrian. There is no lacuna in
the text. Why then should Gaius maintain silence concerning an
innovation so much more important than that of which he speaks?
After all, this question becomes of slight interest, since, in
fact, we find no change in the perpetual edict inserted in the
Digest, from the time of Hadrian to the end of that epoch, except
that made by Julian, (compare Hugo, l. c.) The latter lawyers
appear to follow, in their commentaries, the same texts as their
predecessors. It is natural to suppose, that, after the labors of
so many men distinguished in jurisprudence, the framing of the
edict must have attained such perfection that it would have been
difficult to have made any innovation. We nowhere find that the
jurists of the Pandects disputed concerning the words, or the
drawing up of the edict. What difference would, in fact, result
from this with regard to our codes, and our modern legislation?
Compare the learned Dissertation of M. Biener, De Salvii Juliani
meritis in Edictum Praetorium recte aestimandis. Lipsae, 1809,
4to.—W.]

From Augustus to Trajan, the modest Caesars were content to
promulgate their edicts in the various characters of a Roman
magistrate; 3511 and, in the decrees of the senate, the epistles
and orations of the prince were respectfully inserted. Adrian 36
appears to have been the first who assumed, without disguise, the
plenitude of legislative power. And this innovation, so agreeable
to his active mind, was countenanced by the patience of the
times, and his long absence from the seat of government. The same
policy was embraced by succeeding monarchs, and, according to the
harsh metaphor of Tertullian, “the gloomy and intricate forest of
ancient laws was cleared away by the axe of royal mandates and
constitutions.” 37 During four centuries, from Adrian to
Justinian the public and private jurisprudence was moulded by the
will of the sovereign; and few institutions, either human or
divine, were permitted to stand on their former basis. The origin
of Imperial legislation was concealed by the darkness of ages and
the terrors of armed despotism; and a double tiction was
propagated by the servility, or perhaps the ignorance, of the
civilians, who basked in the sunshine of the Roman and Byzantine
courts. 1. To the prayer of the ancient Caesars, the people or
the senate had sometimes granted a personal exemption from the
obligation and penalty of particular statutes; and each
indulgence was an act of jurisdiction exercised by the republic
over the first of her citizens. His humble privilege was at
length transformed into the prerogative of a tyrant; and the
Latin expression of “released from the laws” 38 was supposed to
exalt the emperor above all human restraints, and to leave his
conscience and reason as the sacred measure of his conduct. 2. A
similar dependence was implied in the decrees of the senate,
which, in every reign, defined the titles and powers of an
elective magistrate. But it was not before the ideas, and even
the language, of the Romans had been corrupted, that a royal law,
39 and an irrevocable gift of the people, were created by the
fancy of Ulpian, or more probably of Tribonian himself; 40 and
the origin of Imperial power, though false in fact, and slavish
in its consequence, was supported on a principle of freedom and
justice. “The pleasure of the emperor has the vigor and effect of
law, since the Roman people, by the royal law, have transferred
to their prince the full extent of their own power and
sovereignty.” 41 The will of a single man, of a child perhaps,
was allowed to prevail over the wisdom of ages and the
inclinations of millions; and the degenerate Greeks were proud to
declare, that in his hands alone the arbitrary exercise of
legislation could be safely deposited. “What interest or
passion,” exclaims Theophilus in the court of Justinian, “can
reach the calm and sublime elevation of the monarch? He is
already master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects; and
those who have incurred his displeasure are already numbered with
the dead.” 42 Disdaining the language of flattery, the historian
may confess, that in questions of private jurisprudence, the
absolute sovereign of a great empire can seldom be influenced by
any personal considerations. Virtue, or even reason, will suggest
to his impartial mind, that he is the guardian of peace and
equity, and that the interest of society is inseparably connected
with his own. Under the weakest and most vicious reign, the seat
of justice was filled by the wisdom and integrity of Papinian and
Ulpian; 43 and the purest materials of the Code and Pandects are
inscribed with the names of Caracalla and his ministers. 44 The
tyrant of Rome was sometimes the benefactor of the provinces. A
dagger terminated the crimes of Domitian; but the prudence of
Nerva confirmed his acts, which, in the joy of their deliverance,
had been rescinded by an indignant senate. 45 Yet in the
rescripts, 46 replies to the consultations of the magistrates,
the wisest of princes might be deceived by a partial exposition
of the case. And this abuse, which placed their hasty decisions
on the same level with mature and deliberate acts of legislation,
was ineffectually condemned by the sense and example of Trajan.
The rescripts of the emperor, his grants and decrees, his edicts
and pragmatic sanctions, were subscribed in purple ink, 47 and
transmitted to the provinces as general or special laws, which
the magistrates were bound to execute, and the people to obey.
But as their number continually multiplied, the rule of obedience
became each day more doubtful and obscure, till the will of the
sovereign was fixed and ascertained in the Gregorian, the
Hermogenian, and the Theodosian codes. 4711 The two first, of
which some fragments have escaped, were framed by two private
lawyers, to preserve the constitutions of the Pagan emperors from
Adrian to Constantine. The third, which is still extant, was
digested in sixteen books by the order of the younger Theodosius
to consecrate the laws of the Christian princes from Constantine
to his own reign. But the three codes obtained an equal authority
in the tribunals; and any act which was not included in the
sacred deposit might be disregarded by the judge as epurious or
obsolete. 48

3511 (return) [ It is an important question in what manner the
emperors were invested with this legislative power. The newly
discovered Gaius distinctly states that it was in virtue of a
law—Nec unquam dubitatum est, quin id legis vicem obtineat, cum
ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat. But it is still
uncertain whether this was a general law, passed on the
transition of the government from a republican to a monarchical
form, or a law passed on the accession of each emperor. Compare
Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain, (French translation,) vol. ii. p.
8.—M.]

36 (return) [ His laws are the first in the code. See Dodwell,
(Praelect. Cambden, p. 319—340,) who wanders from the subject in
confused reading and feeble paradox. * Note: This is again an
error which Gibbon shares with Heineccius, and the generality of
authors. It arises from having mistaken the insignificant edict
of Hadrian, inserted in the Code of Justinian, (lib. vi, tit.
xxiii. c. 11,) for the first constitutio principis, without
attending to the fact, that the Pandects contain so many
constitutions of the emperors, from Julius Caesar, (see l. i.
Digest 29, l) M. Hugo justly observes, that the acta of Sylla,
approved by the senate, were the same thing with the
constitutions of those who after him usurped the sovereign power.
Moreover, we find that Pliny, and other ancient authors, report a
multitude of rescripts of the emperors from the time of Augustus.
See Hugo, Hist. du Droit Romain, vol. ii. p. 24-27.—W.]

37 (return) [ Totam illam veterem et squalentem sylvam legum
novis principalium rescriptorum et edictorum securibus truncatis
et caeditis; (Apologet. c. 4, p. 50, edit. Havercamp.) He
proceeds to praise the recent firmness of Severus, who repealed
the useless or pernicious laws, without any regard to their age
or authority.]

38 (return) [ The constitutional style of Legibus Solutus is
misinterpreted by the art or ignorance of Dion Cassius, (tom. i.
l. liii. p. 713.) On this occasion, his editor, Reimer, joins the
universal censure which freedom and criticism have pronounced
against that slavish historian.]

39 (return) [ The word (Lex Regia) was still more recent than the
thing. The slaves of Commodus or Caracalla would have started at
the name of royalty. Note: Yet a century before, Domitian was
called not only by Martial but even in public documents, Dominus
et Deus Noster. Sueton. Domit. cap. 13. Hugo.—W.]

40 (return) [ See Gravina (Opp. p. 501—512) and Beaufort,
(Republique Romaine, tom. i. p. 255—274.) He has made a proper
use of two dissertations by John Frederic Gronovius and Noodt,
both translated, with valuable notes, by Barbeyrac, 2 vols. in
12mo. 1731.]

41 (return) [ Institut. l. i. tit. ii. No. 6. Pandect. l. i. tit.
iv. leg. 1. Cod. Justinian, l. i. tit. xvii. leg. 1, No. 7. In
his Antiquities and Elements, Heineccius has amply treated de
constitutionibus principum, which are illustrated by Godefroy
(Comment. ad Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. i. ii. iii.) and Gravina,
(p. 87—90.) ——Note: Gaius asserts that the Imperial edict or
rescript has and always had, the force of law, because the
Imperial authority rests upon law. Constitutio principis est,
quod imperator decreto vel edicto, vel epistola constituit, nee
unquam dubitatum, quin id legis, vicem obtineat, cum ipse
imperator per legem imperium accipiat. Gaius, 6 Instit. i. 2.—M.]

42 (return) [ Theophilus, in Paraphras. Graec. Institut. p. 33,
34, edit. Reitz For his person, time, writings, see the
Theophilus of J. H. Mylius, Excurs. iii. p. 1034—1073.]

43 (return) [ There is more envy than reason in the complaint of
Macrinus (Jul. Capitolin. c. 13:) Nefas esse leges videri Commodi
et Caracalla at hominum imperitorum voluntates. Commodus was made
a Divus by Severus, (Dodwell, Praelect. viii. p. 324, 325.) Yet
he occurs only twice in the Pandects.]

44 (return) [ Of Antoninus Caracalla alone 200 constitutions are
extant in the Code, and with his father 160. These two princes
are quoted fifty times in the Pandects, and eight in the
Institutes, (Terasson, p. 265.)]

45 (return) [ Plin. Secund. Epistol. x. 66. Sueton. in Domitian.
c. 23.]

46 (return) [ It was a maxim of Constantine, contra jus rescripta
non valeant, (Cod. Theodos. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 1.) The emperors
reluctantly allow some scrutiny into the law and the fact, some
delay, petition, &c.; but these insufficient remedies are too
much in the discretion and at the peril of the judge.]

47 (return) [ A compound of vermilion and cinnabar, which marks
the Imperial diplomas from Leo I. (A.D. 470) to the fall of the
Greek empire, (Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom. i.
p. 504—515 Lami, de Eruditione Apostolorum, tom. ii. p.
720-726.)]

4711 (return) [ Savigny states the following as the authorities
for the Roman law at the commencement of the fifth century:— 1.
The writings of the jurists, according to the regulations of the
Constitution of Valentinian III., first promulgated in the West,
but by its admission into the Theodosian Code established
likewise in the East. (This Constitution established the
authority of the five great jurists, Papinian, Paulus, Caius,
Ulpian, and Modestinus as interpreters of the ancient law. * * *
In case of difference of opinion among these five, a majority
decided the case; where they were equal, the opinion of Papinian,
where he was silent, the judge; but see p. 40, and Hugo, vol. ii.
p. 89.) 2. The Gregorian and Hermogenian Collection of the
Imperial Rescripts. 3. The Code of Theodosius II. 4. The
particular Novellae, as additions and Supplements to this Code
Savigny. vol. i. p 10.—M.]

48 (return) [ Schulting, Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p.
681-718. Cujacius assigned to Gregory the reigns from Hadrian to
Gallienus. and the continuation to his fellow-laborer Hermogenes.
This general division may be just, but they often trespassed on
each other’s ground]

===

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

Among savage nations, the want of letters is imperfectly supplied
by the use of visible signs, which awaken attention, and
perpetuate the remembrance of any public or private transaction.
The jurisprudence of the first Romans exhibited the scenes of a
pantomime; the words were adapted to the gestures, and the
slightest error or neglect in the forms of proceeding was
sufficient to annul the substance of the fairest claim. The
communion of the marriage-life was denoted by the necessary
elements of fire and water; 49 and the divorced wife resigned the
bunch of keys, by the delivery of which she had been invested
with the government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a
slave, was performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on
the cheek; a work was prohibited by the casting of a stone;
prescription was interrupted by the breaking of a branch; the
clinched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right
hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of
covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced
into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was
sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments,
and to leap or dance with real or affected transport. 50 If a
citizen pursued any stolen goods into a neighbor’s house, he
concealed his nakedness with a linen towel, and hid his face with
a mask or basin, lest he should encounter the eyes of a virgin or
a matron. 51 In a civil action the plaintiff touched the ear of
his witness, seized his reluctant adversary by the neck, and
implored, in solemn lamentation, the aid of his fellow-citizens.
The two competitors grasped each other’s hand as if they stood
prepared for combat before the tribunal of the praetor; he
commanded them to produce the object of the dispute; they went,
they returned with measured steps, and a clod of earth was cast
at his feet to represent the field for which they contended. This
occult science of the words and actions of law was the
inheritance of the pontiffs and patricians. Like the Chaldean
astrologers, they announced to their clients the days of business
and repose; these important trifles were interwoven with the
religion of Numa; and after the publication of the Twelve Tables,
the Roman people was still enslaved by the ignorance of judicial
proceedings. The treachery of some plebeian officers at length
revealed the profitable mystery: in a more enlightened age, the
legal actions were derided and observed; and the same antiquity
which sanctified the practice, obliterated the use and meaning of
this primitive language. 52

49 (return) [ Scaevola, most probably Q. Cervidius Scaevola; the
master of Papinian considers this acceptance of fire and water as
the essence of marriage, (Pandect. l. xxiv. tit. 1, leg. 66. See
Heineccius, Hist. J. R. No. 317.)]

50 (return) [ Cicero (de Officiis, iii. 19) may state an ideal
case, but St. Am brose (de Officiis, iii. 2,) appeals to the
practice of his own times, which he understood as a lawyer and a
magistrate, (Schulting ad Ulpian, Fragment. tit. xxii. No. 28, p.
643, 644.) * Note: In this passage the author has endeavored to
collect all the examples of judicial formularies which he could
find. That which he adduces as the form of cretio haereditatis is
absolutely false. It is sufficient to glance at the passage in
Cicero which he cites, to see that it has no relation to it. The
author appeals to the opinion of Schulting, who, in the passage
quoted, himself protests against the ridiculous and absurd
interpretation of the passage in Cicero, and observes that
Graevius had already well explained the real sense. See in Gaius
the form of cretio haereditatis Inst. l. ii. p. 166.—W.]

51 (return) [ The furtum lance licioque conceptum was no longer
understood in the time of the Antonines, (Aulus Gellius, xvi.
10.) The Attic derivation of Heineccius, (Antiquitat. Rom. l. iv.
tit. i. No. 13—21) is supported by the evidence of Aristophanes,
his scholiast, and Pollux. * Note: Nothing more is known of this
ceremony; nevertheless we find that already in his own days Gaius
turned it into ridicule. He says, (lib. iii. et p. 192, Sections
293,) prohibiti actio quadrupli ex edicto praetoris introducta
est; lex autem eo nomine nullam poenam constituit. Hoc solum
praecepit, ut qui quaerere velit, nudus quaerat, linteo cinctus,
lancem habens; qui si quid invenerit. jubet id lex furtum
manifestum esse. Quid sit autem linteum? quaesitum est. Sed
verius est consuti genus esse, quo necessariae partes tegerentur.
Quare lex tota ridicula est. Nam qui vestitum quaerere prohibet,
is et nudum quaerere prohibiturus est; eo magis, quod invenerit
ibi imponat, neutrum eorum procedit, si id quod quaeratur, ejus
magnitudinis aut naturae sit ut neque subjici, neque ibi imponi
possit. Certe non dubitatur, cujuscunque materiae sit ea lanx,
satis legi fieri. We see moreover, from this passage, that the
basin, as most authors, resting on the authority of Festus, have
supposed, was not used to cover the figure.—W. Gibbon says the
face, though equally inaccurately. This passage of Gaius, I must
observe, as well as others in M. Warnkonig’s work, is very
inaccurately printed.—M.]

52 (return) [ In his Oration for Murena, (c. 9—13,) Cicero turns
into ridicule the forms and mysteries of the civilians, which are
represented with more candor by Aulus Gellius, (Noct. Attic. xx.
10,) Gravina, (Opp p. 265, 266, 267,) and Heineccius,
(Antiquitat. l. iv. tit. vi.) * Note: Gibbon had conceived
opinions too decided against the forms of procedure in use among
the Romans. Yet it is on these solemn forms that the certainty of
laws has been founded among all nations. Those of the Romans were
very intimately allied with the ancient religion, and must of
necessity have disappeared as Rome attained a higher degree of
civilization. Have not modern nations, even the most civilized,
overloaded their laws with a thousand forms, often absurd, almost
always trivial? How many examples are afforded by the English
law! See, on the nature of these forms, the work of M. de Savigny
on the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence,
Heidelberg, 1814, p. 9, 10.—W. This work of M. Savigny has been
translated into English by Mr. Hayward.—M.]

A more liberal art was cultivated, however, by the 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.

521 (return) [ Compare, on the Responsa Prudentum, Warnkonig,
Histoire Externe du Droit Romain Bruxelles, 1836, p. 122.—M.]

53 (return) [ The series of the civil lawyers is deduced by
Pomponius, (de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i. tit. ii.) The moderns
have discussed, with learning and criticism, this branch of
literary history; and among these I have chiefly been guided by
Gravina (p. 41—79) and Hei neccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 113-351.)
Cicero, more especially in his books de Oratore, de Claris
Oratoribus, de Legibus, and the Clavie Ciceroniana of Ernesti
(under the names of Mucius, &c.) afford much genuine and pleasing
information. Horace often alludes to the morning labors of the
civilians, (Serm. I. i. 10, Epist. II. i. 103, &c)

Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus Sub galli cantum,
consultor ubi ostia pulsat. —————— 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

5311 (return) [ M. Hugo thinks that the ingenious system of the
Institutes adopted by a great number of the ancient lawyers, and
by Justinian himself, dates from Severus Sulpicius. Hist du Droit
Romain, vol.iii.p. 119.—W.]

54 (return) [ Crassus, or rather Cicero himself, proposes (de
Oratore, i. 41, 42) an idea of the art or science of
jurisprudence, which the eloquent, but illiterate, Antonius (i.
58) affects to deride. It was partly executed by Servius
Sulpicius, (in Bruto, c. 41,) whose praises are elegantly varied
in the classic Latinity of the Roman Gravina, (p. 60.)]

55 (return) [ Perturbatricem autem omnium harum rerum academiam,
hanc ab Arcesila et Carneade recentem, exoremus ut sileat, nam si
invaserit in haec, quae satis scite instructa et composita
videantur, nimis edet ruinas, quam quidem ego placare cupio,
submovere non audeo. (de Legibus, i. 13.) From this passage
alone, Bentley (Remarks on Free-thinking, p. 250) might have
learned how firmly Cicero believed in the specious doctrines
which he has adorned.]

56 (return) [ The stoic philosophy was first taught at Rome by
Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio, (see his life in the
Mem. de l’Academis des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 75—89.)]

57 (return) [ As he is quoted by Ulpian, (leg.40, 40, ad Sabinum
in Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 21.) Yet Trebatius, after he
was a leading civilian, que qui familiam duxit, became an
epicurean, (Cicero ad Fam. vii. 5.) Perhaps he was not constant
or sincere in his new sect. * Note: Gibbon had entirely
misunderstood this phrase of Cicero. It was only since his time
that the real meaning of the author was apprehended. Cicero, in
enumerating the qualifications of Trebatius, says, Accedit etiam,
quod familiam ducit in jure civili, singularis memoria, summa
scientia, which means that Trebatius possessed a still further
most important qualification for a student of civil law, a
remarkable memory, &c. This explanation, already conjectured by
G. Menage, Amaenit. Juris Civilis, c. 14, is found in the
dictionary of Scheller, v. Familia, and in the History of the
Roman Law by M. Hugo. Many authors have asserted, without any
proof sufficient to warrant the conjecture, that Trebatius was of
the school of Epicurus—W.]

58 (return) [ See Gravina (p. 45—51) and the ineffectual cavils
of Mascou. Heineccius (Hist. J. R. No. 125) quotes and approves a
dissertation of Everard Otto, de Stoica Jurisconsultorum
Philosophia.]

Arms, eloquence, and the study of the civil law, promoted a
citizen to the honors of the Roman state; and the three
professions were sometimes more conspicuous by their union in the
same character. In the composition of the edict, a learned
praetor gave a sanction and preference to his private sentiments;
the opinion of a censor, or a counsel, was entertained with
respect; and a doubtful interpretation of the laws might be
supported by the virtues or triumphs of the civilian. The
patrician arts were long protected by the veil of mystery; and in
more enlightened times, the freedom of inquiry established the
general principles of jurisprudence. Subtile and intricate cases
were elucidated by the disputes of the forum: rules, axioms, and
definitions, 59 were admitted as the genuine dictates of reason;
and the consent of the legal professors was interwoven into the
practice of the tribunals. But these interpreters could neither
enact nor execute the laws of the republic; and the judges might
disregard the authority of the Scaevolas themselves, which was
often overthrown by the eloquence or sophistry of an ingenious
pleader. 60 Augustus and Tiberius were the first to adopt, as a
useful engine, the science of the civilians; and their servile
labors accommodated the old system to the spirit and views of
despotism. Under the fair pretence of securing the dignity of the
art, the privilege of subscribing legal and valid opinions was
confined to the sages of senatorian or equestrian rank, who had
been previously approved by the judgment of the prince; and this
monopoly prevailed, till Adrian restored the freedom of the
profession to every citizen conscious of his abilities and
knowledge. The discretion of the praetor was now governed by the
lessons of his teachers; the judges were enjoined to obey the
comment as well as the text of the law; and the use of codicils
was a memorable innovation, which Augustus ratified by the advice
of the civilians. 61 6111

59 (return) [ We have heard of the Catonian rule, the Aquilian
stipulation, and the Manilian forms, of 211 maxims, and of 247
definitions, (Pandect. l. i. tit. xvi. xvii.)]

60 (return) [ Read Cicero, l. i. de Oratore, Topica, pro Murena.]

61 (return) [ See Pomponius, (de Origine Juris Pandect. l. i.
tit. ii. leg. 2, No 47,) Heineccius, (ad Institut. l. i. tit. ii.
No. 8, l. ii. tit. xxv. in Element et Antiquitat.,) and Gravina,
(p. 41—45.) Yet the monopoly of Augustus, a harsh measure, would
appear with some softening in contemporary evidence; and it was
probably veiled by a decree of the senate]

6111 (return) [ The author here follows the then generally
received opinion of Heineccius. The proofs which appear to
confirm it are l. 2 47, D. I. 2, and 8. Instit. I. 2. The first
of these passages speaks expressly of a privilege granted to
certain lawyers, until the time of Adrian, publice respondendi
jus ante Augusti tempora non dabatur. Primus Divus ut major juris
auctoritas haberetur, constituit, ut ex auctoritate ejus
responderent. The passage of the Institutes speaks of the
different opinions of those, quibus est permissum jura condere.
It is true that the first of these passages does not say that the
opinion of these privileged lawyers had the force of a law for
the judges. For this reason M. Hugo altogether rejects the
opinion adopted by Heineccius, by Bach, and in general by all the
writers who preceded him. He conceives that the 8 of the
Institutes referred to the constitution of Valentinian III.,
which regulated the respective authority to be ascribed to the
different writings of the great civilians. But we have now the
following passage in the Institutes of Gaius: Responsa prudentum
sunt sententiae et opiniones eorum, quibus permissum est jura
condere; quorum omnium si in unum sententiae concorrupt, id quod
ita sentiunt, legis vicem obtinet, si vero dissentiunt, judici
licet, quam velit sententiam sequi, idque rescripto Divi Hadrian
signiticatur. I do not know, how in opposition to this passage,
the opinion of M. Hugo can be maintained. We must add to this the
passage quoted from Pomponius and from such strong proofs, it
seems incontestable that the emperors had granted some kind of
privilege to certain civilians, quibus permissum erat jura
condere. Their opinion had sometimes the force of law, legis
vicem. M. Hugo, endeavoring to reconcile this phrase with his
system, gives it a forced interpretation, which quite alters the
sense; he supposes that the passage contains no more than what is
evident of itself, that the authority of the civilians was to be
respected, thus making a privilege of that which was free to all
the world. It appears to me almost indisputable, that the
emperors had sanctioned certain provisions relative to the
authority of these civilians, consulted by the judges. But how
far was their advice to be respected? This is a question which it
is impossible to answer precisely, from the want of historic
evidence. Is it not possible that the emperors established an
authority to be consulted by the judges? and in this case this
authority must have emanated from certain civilians named for
this purpose by the emperors. See Hugo, l. c. Moreover, may not
the passage of Suetonius, in the Life of Caligula, where he says
that the emperor would no longer permit the civilians to give
their advice, mean that Caligula entertained the design of
suppressing this institution? See on this passage the Themis,
vol. xi. p. 17, 36. Our author not being acquainted with the
opinions opposed to Heineccius has not gone to the bottom of the
subject.—W.]

The most absolute mandate could only require that the judges
should agree with the civilians, if the civilians agreed among
themselves. But positive institutions are often the result of
custom and prejudice; laws and language are ambiguous and
arbitrary; where reason is incapable of pronouncing, the love of
argument is inflamed by the envy of rivals, the vanity of
masters, the blind attachment of their disciples; and the Roman
jurisprudence was divided by the once famous sects of the
Proculians and Sabinians. 62 Two sages of the law, Ateius Capito
and Antistius Labeo, 63 adorned the peace of the Augustan age;
the former distinguished by the favor of his sovereign; the
latter more illustrious by his contempt of that favor, and his
stern though harmless opposition to the tyrant of Rome. Their
legal studies were influenced by the various colors of their
temper and principles. Labeo was attached to the form of the old
republic; his rival embraced the more profitable substance of the
rising monarchy. But the disposition of a courtier is tame and
submissive; and Capito seldom presumed to deviate from the
sentiments, or at least from the words, of his predecessors;
while the bold republican pursued his independent ideas without
fear of paradox or innovations. The freedom of Labeo was
enslaved, however, by the rigor of his own conclusions, and he
decided, according to the letter of the law, the same questions
which his indulgent competitor resolved with a latitude of equity
more suitable to the common sense and feelings of mankind. If a
fair exchange had been substituted to the payment of money,
Capito still considered the transaction as a legal sale; 64 and
he consulted nature for the age of puberty, without confining his
definition to the precise period of twelve or fourteen years. 65
This opposition of sentiments was propagated in the writings and
lessons of the two founders; the schools of Capito and Labeo
maintained their inveterate conflict from the age of Augustus to
that of Adrian; 66 and the two sects derived their appellations
from Sabinus and Proculus, their most celebrated teachers. The
names of Cassians and Pegasians were likewise applied to the same
parties; but, by a strange reverse, the popular cause was in the
hands of Pegasus, 67 a timid slave of Domitian, while the
favorite of the Caesars was represented by Cassius, 68 who
gloried in his descent from the patriot assassin. By the
perpetual edict, the controversies of the sects were in a great
measure determined. For that important work, the emperor Adrian
preferred the chief of the Sabinians: the friends of monarchy
prevailed; but the moderation of Salvius Julian insensibly
reconciled the victors and the vanquished. Like the contemporary
philosophers, the lawyers of the age of the Antonines disclaimed
the authority of a master, and adopted from every system the most
probable doctrines. 69 But their writings would have been less
voluminous, had their choice been more unanimous. The conscience
of the judge was perplexed by the number and weight of discordant
testimonies, and every sentence that his passion or interest
might pronounce was justified by the sanction of some venerable
name. An indulgent edict of the younger Theodosius excused him
from the labor of comparing and weighing their arguments. Five
civilians, Caius, Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, and Modestinus, were
established as the oracles of jurisprudence: a majority was
decisive: but if their opinions were equally divided, a casting
vote was ascribed to the superior wisdom of Papinian. 70

62 (return) [ I have perused the Diatribe of Gotfridus Mascovius,
the learned Mascou, de Sectis Jurisconsultorum, (Lipsiae, 1728,
in 12mo., p. 276,) a learned treatise on a narrow and barren
ground.]

63 (return) [ See the character of Antistius Labeo in Tacitus,
(Annal. iii. 75,) and in an epistle of Ateius Capito, (Aul.
Gellius, xiii. 12,) who accuses his rival of libertas nimia et
vecors. Yet Horace would not have lashed a virtuous and
respectable senator; and I must adopt the emendation of Bentley,
who reads Labieno insanior, (Serm. I. iii. 82.) See Mascou, de
Sectis, (c. i. p. 1—24.)]

64 (return) [ Justinian (Institut. l. iii. tit. 23, and Theophil.
Vers. Graec. p. 677, 680) has commemorated this weighty dispute,
and the verses of Homer that were alleged on either side as legal
authorities. It was decided by Paul, (leg. 33, ad Edict. in
Pandect. l. xviii. tit. i. leg. 1,) since, in a simple exchange,
the buyer could not be discriminated from the seller.]

65 (return) [ This controversy was likewise given for the
Proculians, to supersede the indecency of a search, and to comply
with the aphorism of Hippocrates, who was attached to the
septenary number of two weeks of years, or 700 of days,
(Institut. l. i. tit. xxii.) Plutarch and the Stoics (de Placit.
Philosoph. l. v. c. 24) assign a more natural reason. Fourteen
years is the age. See the vestigia of the sects in Mascou, c. ix.
p. 145—276.]

66 (return) [ The series and conclusion of the sects are
described by Mascou, (c. ii.—vii. p. 24—120;) and it would be
almost ridiculous to praise his equal justice to these obsolete
sects. * Note: The work of Gaius, subsequent to the time of
Adrian, furnishes us with some information on this subject. The
disputes which rose between these two sects appear to have been
very numerous. Gaius avows himself a disciple of Sabinus and of
Caius. Compare Hugo, vol. ii. p. 106.—W.]

67 (return) [ At the first summons he flies to the
turbot-council; yet Juvenal (Satir. iv. 75—81) styles the
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.]

68 (return) [ Tacit. Annal. xvii. 7. Sueton. in Nerone, c.
xxxvii.]

69 (return) [ Mascou, de Sectis, c. viii. p. 120—144 de
Herciscundis, a legal term which was applied to these eclectic
lawyers: herciscere is synonymous to dividere. * Note: This word
has never existed. Cujacius is the author of it, who read me
words terris condi in Servius ad Virg. herciscundi, to which he
gave an erroneous interpretation.—W.]

70 (return) [ See the Theodosian Code, l. i. tit. iv. with
Godefroy’s Commentary, tom. i. p. 30—35. [! This decree might
give occasion to Jesuitical disputes like those in the Lettres
Provinciales, whether a Judge was obliged to follow the opinion
of Papinian, or of a majority, against his judgment, against his
conscience, &c. Yet a legislator might give that opinion, however
false, the validity, not of truth, but of law. Note: We possess
(since 1824) some interesting information as to the framing of
the Theodosian Code, and its ratification at Rome, in the year
438. M. Closius, now professor at Dorpat in Russia, and M.
Peyron, member of the Academy of Turin, have discovered, the one
at Milan, the other at Turin, a great part of the five first
books of the Code which were wanting, and besides this, the
reports (gesta) of the sitting of the senate at Rome, in which
the Code was published, in the year after the marriage of
Valentinian III. Among these pieces are the constitutions which
nominate commissioners for the formation of the Code; and though
there are many points of considerable obscurity in these
documents, they communicate many facts relative to this
legislation. 1. That Theodosius designed a great reform in the
legislation; to add to the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes all
the new constitutions from Constantine to his own day; and to
frame a second code for common use with extracts from the three
codes, and from the works of the civil lawyers. All laws either
abrogated or fallen into disuse were to be noted under their
proper heads. 2. An Ordinance was issued in 429 to form a
commission for this purpose of nine persons, of which Antiochus,
as quaestor and 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

71 (return) [ For the legal labors of Justinian, I have studied
the Preface to the Institutes; the 1st, 2d, and 3d Prefaces to
the Pandects; the 1st and 2d Preface to the Code; and the Code
itself, (l. i. tit. xvii. de Veteri Jure enucleando.) After these
original testimonies, I have consulted, among the moderns,
Heineccius, (Hist. J. R. No. 383—404,) Terasson. (Hist. de la
Jurisprudence Romaine, p. 295—356,) Gravina, (Opp. p. 93-100,)
and Ludewig, in his Life of Justinian, (p.19—123, 318-321; for
the Code and Novels, p. 209—261; for the Digest or Pandects, p.
262—317.)]

72 (return) [ For the character of Tribonian, see the testimonies
of Procopius, (Persic. l. i. c. 23, 24. Anecdot. c. 13, 20,) and
Suidas, (tom. iii. p. 501, edit. Kuster.) Ludewig (in Vit.
Justinian, p. 175—209) works hard, very hard, to whitewash—the
blackamoor.]

73 (return) [ I apply the two passages of Suidas to the same man;
every circumstance so exactly tallies. Yet the lawyers appear
ignorant; and Fabricius is inclined to separate the two
characters, (Bibliot. Grae. tom. i. p. 341, ii. p. 518, iii. p.
418, xii. p. 346, 353, 474.)]

74 (return) [ This story is related by Hesychius, (de Viris
Illustribus,) Procopius, (Anecdot. c. 13,) and Suidas, (tom. iii.
p. 501.) Such flattery is incredible! —Nihil est quod credere de
se Non possit, cum laudatur Diis aequa potestas. Fontenelle (tom.
i. p. 32—39) has ridiculed the impudence of the modest Virgil.
But the same Fontenelle places his king above the divine
Augustus; and the sage Boileau has not blushed to say, “Le destin
a ses yeux n’oseroit balancer” Yet neither Augustus nor Louis
XIV. were fools.]

If Caesar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his
creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have
given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence.
Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of the East was
afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of
equity: in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the
aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are
guarded by the sages and legislature of past times. Instead of a
statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works
of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of antique and
costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year
of his reign, he directed the faithful Tribonian, and nine
learned associates, to revise the ordinances of his predecessors,
as they were contained, since the time of Adrian, in the
Gregorian Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes; to purge the errors
and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or
superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best
adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his
subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the
twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might
be designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors.
The new Code of Justinian was honored with his name, and
confirmed by his royal signature: authentic transcripts were
multiplied by the pens of notaries and scribes; they were
transmitted to the magistrates of the European, the Asiatic, and
afterwards the African provinces; and the law of the empire was
proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches. A more
arduous operation was still behind—to extract the spirit of
jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the questions
and disputes, of the Roman civilians. Seventeen lawyers, with
Tribonian at their head, were appointed by the emperor to
exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their
predecessors. If they had obeyed his commands in ten years,
Justinian would have been satisfied with their diligence; and the
rapid composition of the Digest of Pandects, 75 in three years,
will deserve praise or censure, according to the merit of the
execution. From the library of Tribonian, they chose forty, the
most eminent civilians of former times: 76 two thousand treatises
were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been
carefully recorded, that three millions of lines or sentences, 77
were reduced, in this abstract, to the moderate number of one
hundred and fifty thousand. The edition of this great work was
delayed a month after that of the Institutes; and it seemed
reasonable that the elements should precede the digest of the
Roman law. As soon as the emperor had approved their labors, he
ratified, by his legislative power, the speculations of these
private citizens: their commentaries, on the twelve tables, the
perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the
senate, succeeded to the authority of the text; and the text was
abandoned, as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity.
The Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, were declared to be
the legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were
admitted into the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the
academies of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian
addressed to the senate and provinces his eternal oracles; and
his pride, under the mask of piety, ascribed the consummation of
this great design to the support and inspiration of the Deity.

75 (return) [ General receivers was a common title of the Greek
miscellanies, (Plin. Praefat. ad Hist. Natur.) The Digesta of
Scaevola, Marcellinus, Celsus, were already familiar to the
civilians: but Justinian was in the wrong when he used the two
appellations as synonymous. Is the word Pandects Greek or
Latin—masculine or feminine? The diligent Brenckman will not
presume to decide these momentous controversies, (Hist. Pandect.
Florentine. p. 200—304.) Note: The word was formerly in common
use. See the preface is Aulus Gellius—W]

76 (return) [ Angelus Politianus (l. v. Epist. ult.) reckons
thirty-seven (p. 192—200) civilians quoted in the Pandects—a
learned, and for his times, an extraordinary list. The Greek
index to the Pandects enumerates thirty-nine, and forty are
produced by the indefatigable Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom.
iii. p. 488—502.) Antoninus Augustus (de Nominibus Propriis
Pandect. apud Ludewig, p. 283) is said to have added fifty-four
names; but they must be vague or second-hand references.]

77 (return) [ The item of the ancient Mss. may be strictly
defined as sentences or periods of a complete sense, which, on
the breadth of the parchment rolls or volumes, composed as many
lines of unequal length. The number in each book served as a
check on the errors of the scribes, (Ludewig, p. 211—215; and his
original author Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. i. p
1021-1036).]

Since the emperor declined the fame and envy of original
composition, we can only require, at his hands, method choice,
and fidelity, the humble, though indispensable, virtues of a
compiler. Among the various combinations of ideas, it is
difficult to assign any reasonable preference; but as the order
of Justinian is different in his three works, it is possible that
all may be wrong; and it is certain that two cannot be right. In
the selection of ancient laws, he seems to have viewed his
predecessors without jealousy, and with equal regard: the series
could not ascend above the reign of Adrian, and the narrow
distinction of Paganism and Christianity, introduced by the
superstition of Theodosius, had been abolished by the consent of
mankind. But the jurisprudence of the Pandects is circumscribed
within a period of a hundred years, from the perpetual edict to
the death of Severus Alexander: the civilians who lived under the
first Caesars are seldom permitted to speak, and only three names
can be attributed to the age of the republic. The favorite of
Justinian (it has been fiercely urged) was fearful of
encountering the light of freedom and the gravity of Roman sages.

Tribonian condemned to oblivion the genuine and native wisdom of
Cato, the Scaevolas, and Sulpicius; while he invoked spirits more
congenial to his own, the Syrians, Greeks, and Africans, who
flocked to the Imperial court to study Latin as a foreign tongue,
and jurisprudence as a lucrative profession. But the ministers of
Justinian, 78 were instructed to labor, not for the curiosity of
antiquarians, but for the immediate benefit of his subjects. It
was their duty to select the useful and practical parts of the
Roman law; and the writings of the old republicans, however
curious or excellent, were no longer suited to the new system of
manners, religion, and government. Perhaps, if the preceptors and
friends of Cicero were still alive, our candor would acknowledge,
that, except in purity of language, 79 their intrinsic merit was
excelled by the school of Papinian and Ulpian. The science of the
laws is the slow growth of time and experience, and the advantage
both of method and materials, is naturally assumed by the most
recent authors. The civilians of the reign of the Antonines had
studied the works of their predecessors: their philosophic spirit
had mitigated the rigor of antiquity, simplified the forms of
proceeding, and emerged from the jealousy and prejudice of the
rival sects. The choice of the authorities that compose the
Pandects depended on the judgment of Tribonian: but the power of
his sovereign could not absolve him from the sacred obligations
of truth and fidelity. As the legislator of the empire, Justinian
might repeal the acts of the Antonines, or condemn, as seditious,
the free principles, which were maintained by the last of the
Roman lawyers. 80 But the existence of past facts is placed
beyond the reach of despotism; and the emperor was guilty of
fraud and forgery, when he corrupted the integrity of their text,
inscribed with their venerable names the words and ideas of his
servile reign, 81 and suppressed, by the hand of power, the pure
and authentic copies of their sentiments. The changes and
interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the
pretence of uniformity: but their cares have been insufficient,
and the antinomies, or contradictions of the Code and Pandects,
still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern civilians. 82

78 (return) [ An ingenious and learned oration of Schultingius
(Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea, p. 883—907) justifies the
choice of Tribonian, against the passionate charges of Francis
Hottoman and his sectaries.]

79 (return) [ Strip away the crust of Tribonian, and allow for
the use of technical words, and the Latin of the Pandects will be
found not unworthy of the silver age. It has been vehemently
attacked by Laurentius Valla, a fastidious grammarian of the xvth
century, and by his apologist Floridus Sabinus. It has been
defended by Alciat, and a name less advocate, (most probably
James Capellus.) Their various treatises are collected by Duker,
(Opuscula de Latinitate veterum Jurisconsultorum, Lugd. Bat.
1721, in 12mo.) Note: Gibbon is mistaken with regard to Valla,
who, though he inveighs against the barbarous style of the
civilians of his own day, lavishes the highest praise on the
admirable purity of the language of the ancient writers on civil
law. (M. Warnkonig quotes a long passage of Valla in
justification of this observation.) Since his time, this truth
has been recognized by men of the highest eminence, such as
Erasmus, David Hume and Runkhenius.—W.]

80 (return) [ Nomina quidem veteribus servavimus, legum autem
veritatem nostram fecimus. Itaque siquid erat in illis
seditiosum, multa autem talia erant ibi reposita, hoc decisum est
et definitum, et in perspicuum finem deducta est quaeque lex,
(Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xvii. leg. 3, No 10.) A frank
confession! * Note: Seditiosum, in the language of Justinian,
means not seditious, but discounted.—W.]

81 (return) [ The number of these emblemata (a polite name for
forgeries) is much reduced by Bynkershoek, (in the four last
books of his Observations,) who poorly maintains the right of
Justinian and the duty of Tribonian.]

82 (return) [ The antinomies, or opposite laws of the Code and
Pandects, are sometimes the cause, and often the excuse, of the
glorious uncertainty of the civil law, which so often affords
what Montaigne calls “Questions pour l’Ami.” See a fine passage
of Franciscus Balduinus in Justinian, (l. ii. p. 259, &c., apud
Ludewig, p. 305, 306.)]

A rumor devoid of evidence has been propagated by the enemies of
Justinian; that the jurisprudence of ancient Rome was reduced to
ashes by the author of the Pandects, from the vain persuasion,
that it was now either false or superfluous. Without usurping an
office so invidious, the emperor might safely commit to ignorance
and time the accomplishments of this destructive wish. Before the
invention of printing and paper, the labor and the materials of
writing could be purchased only by the rich; and it may
reasonably be computed, that the price of books was a hundred
fold their present value. 83 Copies were slowly multiplied and
cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted the sacrilegious
scribes to erase the characters of antiquity, 8311 and Sophocles
or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals,
homilies, and the golden legend. 84 If such was the fate of the
most beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be
expected for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science?
The books of jurisprudence were interesting to few, and
entertaining to none: their value was connected with present use,
and they sunk forever as soon as that use was superseded by the
innovations of fashion, superior merit, or public authority. In
the age of peace and learning, between Cicero and the last of the
Antonines, many losses had been already sustained, and some
luminaries of the school, or forum, were known only to the
curious by tradition and report. Three hundred and sixty years of
disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it
may fairly be presumed, that of the writings, which Justinian is
accused of neglecting, many were no longer to be found in the
libraries of the East. 85 The copies of Papinian, or Ulpian,
which the reformer had proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future
notice: the Twelve Tables and praetorian edicts insensibly
vanished, and the monuments of ancient Rome were neglected or
destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks. Even the
Pandects themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from
the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that all the
editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from one
original. 86 It was transcribed at Constantinople in the
beginning of the seventh century, 87 was successively transported
by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi, 88 Pisa, 89 and
Florence, 90 and is now deposited as a sacred relic 91 in the
ancient palace of the republic. 92

83 (return) [ When Faust, or Faustus, sold at Paris his first
printed Bibles as manuscripts, the price of a parchment copy was
reduced from four or five hundred to sixty, fifty, and forty
crowns. The public was at first pleased with the cheapness, and
at length provoked by the discovery of the fraud, (Mattaire,
Annal. Typograph. tom. i. p. 12; first edit.)]

8311 (return) [ Among the works which have been recovered, by the
persevering and successful endeavors of M. Mai and his followers
to trace the imperfectly erased characters of the ancient writers
on these Palimpsests, Gibbon at this period of his labors would
have hailed with delight the recovery of the Institutes of Gaius,
and the fragments of the Theodosian Code, published by M Keyron
of Turin.—M.]

84 (return) [ This execrable practice prevailed from the viiith,
and more especially from the xiith, century, when it became
almost universal (Montfaucon, in the Memoires de l’Academie, tom.
vi. p. 606, &c. Bibliotheque Raisonnee de la Diplomatique, tom.
i. p. 176.)]

85 (return) [ Pomponius (Pandect. l. i. tit. ii. leg. 2)
observes, that of the three founders of the civil law, Mucius,
Brutus, and Manilius, extant volumina, scripta Manilii monumenta;
that of some old republican lawyers, haec versantur eorum scripta
inter manus hominum. Eight of the Augustan sages were reduced to
a compendium: of Cascellius, scripta non extant sed unus liber,
&c.; of Trebatius, minus frequentatur; of Tubero, libri parum
grati sunt. Many quotations in the Pandects are derived from
books which Tribonian never saw; and in the long period from the
viith to the xiiith century of Rome, the apparent reading of the
moderns successively depends on the knowledge and veracity of
their predecessors.]

86 (return) [ All, in several instances, repeat the errors of the
scribe and the transpositions of some leaves in the Florentine
Pandects. This fact, if it be true, is decisive. Yet the Pandects
are quoted by Ivo of Chartres, (who died in 1117,) by Theobald,
archbishop of Canterbury, and by Vacarius, our first professor,
in the year 1140, (Selden ad Fletam, c. 7, tom. ii. p.
1080—1085.) Have our British Mss. of the Pandects been collated?]

87 (return) [ See the description of this original in Brenckman,
(Hist. Pandect. Florent. l. i. c. 2, 3, p. 4—17, and l. ii.)
Politian, an enthusiast, revered it as the authentic standard of
Justinian himself, (p. 407, 408;) but this paradox is refuted by
the abbreviations of the Florentine Ms. (l. ii. c. 3, p.
117-130.) It is composed of two quarto volumes, with large
margins, on a thin parchment, and the Latin characters betray the
band of a Greek scribe.]

88 (return) [ Brenckman, at the end of his history, has inserted
two dissertations on the republic of Amalphi, and the Pisan war
in the year 1135, &c.]

89 (return) [ The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi (A. D
1137) is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus,
(Brenckman, l. i. c. 11, p. 73, 74, l. iv. c. 2, p. 417—425,) on
the faith of a Pisan chronicle, (p. 409, 410,) without a name or
a date. The whole story, though unknown to the xiith century,
embellished by ignorant ages, and suspected by rigid criticism,
is not, however, destitute of much internal probability, (l. i.
c. 4—8, p. 17—50.) The Liber Pandectarum of Pisa was undoubtedly
consulted in the xivth century by the great Bartolus, (p. 406,
407. See l. i. c. 9, p. 50—62.) Note: Savigny (vol. iii. p. 83,
89) examines and rejects the whole story. See likewise Hallam
vol. iii. p. 514.—M.]

90 (return) [ Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406;
and in 1411 the Pandects were transported to the capital. These
events are authentic and famous.]

91 (return) [ They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich
casket, and shown to curious travellers by the monks and
magistrates bareheaded, and with lighted tapers, (Brenckman, l.
i. c. 10, 11, 12, p. 62—93.)]

92 (return) [ After the collations of Politian, Bologninus, and
Antoninus Augustinus, and the splendid edition of the Pandects by
Taurellus, (in 1551,) Henry Brenckman, a Dutchman, undertook a
pilgrimage to Florence, where he employed several years in the
study of a single manuscript. His Historia Pandectarum
Florentinorum, (Utrecht, 1722, in 4to.,) though a monument of
industry, is a small portion of his original design.]

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future
reformation. To maintain the text of the Pandects, the
Institutes, and the Code, the use of ciphers and abbreviations
was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian recollected, that the
perpetual edict had been buried under the weight of commentators,
he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash civilians
who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their
sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius,
should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to
dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors, and
the native freedom of the mind. But the emperor was unable to fix
his own inconstancy; and, while he boasted of renewing the
exchange of Diomede, of transmuting brass into gold, 93
discovered the necessity of purifying his gold from the mixture
of baser alloy. Six years had not elapsed from the publication of
the Code, before he condemned the imperfect attempt, by a new and
more accurate edition of the same work; which he enriched with
two hundred of his own laws, and fifty decisions of the darkest
and most intricate points of jurisprudence. Every year, or,
according to Procopius, each day, of his long reign, was marked
by some legal innovation. Many of his acts were rescinded by
himself; many were rejected by his successors; many have been
obliterated by time; but the number of sixteen Edicts, and one
hundred and sixty-eight Novels, 94 has been admitted into the
authentic body of the civil jurisprudence. In the opinion of a
philosopher superior to the prejudices of his profession, these
incessant, and, for the most part, trifling alterations, can be
only explained by the venal spirit of a prince, who sold without
shame his judgments and his laws. 95 The charge of the secret
historian is indeed explicit and vehement; but the sole instance,
which he produces, may be ascribed to the devotion as well as to
the avarice of Justinian. A wealthy bigot had bequeathed his
inheritance to the church of Emesa; and its value was enhanced by
the dexterity of an artist, who subscribed confessions of debt
and promises of payment with the names of the richest Syrians.
They pleaded the established prescription of thirty or forty
years; but their defence was overruled by a retrospective edict,
which extended the claims of the church to the term of a century;
an edict so pregnant with injustice and disorder, that, after
serving this occasional purpose, it was prudently abolished in
the same reign. 96 If candor will acquit the emperor himself, and
transfer the corruption to his wife and favorites, the suspicion
of so foul a vice must still degrade the majesty of his laws; and
the advocates of Justinian may acknowledge, that such levity,
whatsoever be the motive, is unworthy of a legislator and a man.

93 (return) [ Apud Homerum patrem omnis virtutis, (1st Praefat.
ad Pandect.) A line of Milton or Tasso would surprise us in an
act of parliament. Quae omnia obtinere sancimus in omne aevum. Of
the first Code, he says, (2d Praefat.,) in aeternum valiturum.
Man and forever!]

94 (return) [ Novellae is a classic adjective, but a barbarous
substantive, (Ludewig, p. 245.) Justinian never collected them
himself; the nine collations, the legal standard of modern
tribunals, consist of ninety-eight Novels; but the number was
increased by the diligence of Julian, Haloander, and Contius,
(Ludewig, p. 249, 258 Aleman. Not in Anecdot. p. 98.)]

95 (return) [ Montesquieu, Considerations sur la Grandeur et la
Decadence des Romains, c. 20, tom. iii. p. 501, in 4to. On this
occasion he throws aside the gown and cap of a President a
Mortier.]

96 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 28. A similar privilege was
granted to the church of Rome, (Novel. ix.) For the general
repeal of these mischievous indulgences, see Novel. cxi. and
Edict. v.]

Monarchs seldom condescend to become the preceptors of their
subjects; and some praise is due to Justinian, by whose command
an ample system was reduced to a short and elementary treatise.
Among the various institutes of the Roman law, 97 those of Caius
98 were the most popular in the East and West; and their use may
be considered as an evidence of their merit. They were selected
by the Imperial delegates, Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus;
and the freedom and purity of the Antonines was incrusted with
the coarser materials of a degenerate age. The same volume which
introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, to the
gradual study of the Code and Pandects, is still precious to the
historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate. The Institutes of
Justinian are divided into four books: they proceed, with no
contemptible method, from, I. Persons, to, II. Things, and from
things, to, III. Actions; and the article IV., of Private Wrongs,
is terminated by the principles of Criminal Law. 9811

97 (return) [ Lactantius, in his Institutes of Christianity, an
elegant and specious work, proposes to imitate the title and
method of the civilians. Quidam prudentes et arbitri aequitatis
Institutiones Civilis Juris compositas ediderunt, (Institut.
Divin. l. i. c. 1.) Such as Ulpian, Paul, Florentinus, Marcian.]

98 (return) [ The emperor Justinian calls him suum, though he
died before the end of the second century. His Institutes are
quoted by Servius, Boethius, Priscian, &c.; and the Epitome by
Arrian is still extant. (See the Prolegomena and notes to the
edition of Schulting, in the Jurisprudentia Ante-Justinianea,
Lugd. Bat. 1717. Heineccius, Hist. J R No. 313. Ludewig, in Vit.
Just. p. 199.)]

9811 (return) [ Gibbon, dividing the Institutes into four parts,
considers the appendix of the criminal law in the last title as a
fourth part.—W.]

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

The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a
mixed and limited government. In France, the remains of liberty
are kept alive by the spirit, the honors, and even the
prejudices, of fifty thousand nobles. 99 Two hundred families
9911 supply, in lineal descent, the second branch of English
legislature, which maintains, between the king and commons, the
balance of the constitution. A gradation of patricians and
plebeians, of strangers and subjects, has supported the
aristocracy of Genoa, Venice, and ancient Rome. The perfect
equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy
and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or
people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the
level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline
of the Roman empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were
gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian
completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The emperor
could not eradicate the popular reverence which always waits on
the possession of hereditary wealth, or the memory of famous
ancestors. He delighted to honor, with titles and emoluments, his
generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious
indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons
of their wives and children. But in the eye of the law, all Roman
citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens
of Rome. That inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete
and empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact his
laws, or create the annual ministers of his power: his
constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary will of a
master: and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was
admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command,
which the citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the
conquests of his fathers. The first Caesars had scrupulously
guarded the distinction of ingenuous and servile birth, which was
decided by the condition of the mother; and the candor of the
laws was satisfied, if her freedom could be ascertained, during a
single moment, between the conception and the delivery. The
slaves, who were liberated by a generous master, immediately
entered into the middle class of libertines or freedmen; but they
could never be enfranchised from the duties of obedience and
gratitude; whatever were the fruits of their industry, their
patron and his family inherited the third part; or even the whole
of their fortune, if they died without children and without a
testament. Justinian respected the rights of patrons; but his
indulgence removed the badge of disgrace from the two inferior
orders of freedmen; whoever ceased to be a slave, obtained,
without reserve or delay, the station of a citizen; and at length
the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had refused, was
created, or supposed, by the omnipotence of the emperor. Whatever
restraints of age, or forms, or numbers, had been formerly
introduced to check the abuse of manumissions, and the too rapid
increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and
the spirit of his laws promoted the extinction of domestic
servitude. Yet the eastern provinces were filled, in the time of
Justinian, with multitudes of slaves, either born or purchased
for the use of their masters; and the price, from ten to seventy
pieces of gold, was determined by their age, their strength, and
their education. 100 But the hardships of this dependent state
were continually diminished by the influence of government and
religion: and the pride of a subject was no longer elated by his
absolute dominion over the life and happiness of his bondsman.
101

99 (return) [ See the Annales Politiques de l’Abbe de St. Pierre,
tom. i. p. 25 who dates in the year 1735. The most ancient
families claim the immemorial possession of arms and fiefs. Since
the Crusades, some, the most truly respectable, have been created
by the king, for merit and services. The recent and vulgar crowd
is derived from the multitude of venal offices without trust or
dignity, which continually ennoble the wealthy plebeians.]

9911 (return) [ Since the time of Gibbon, the House of Peers has
been more than doubled: it is above 400, exclusive of the
spiritual peers—a wise policy to increase the patrician order in
proportion to the general increase of the nation.—M.]

100 (return) [ If the option of a slave was bequeathed to several
legatees, they drew lots, and the losers were entitled to their
share of his value; ten pieces of gold for a common servant or
maid under ten years: if above that age, twenty; if they knew a
trade, thirty; notaries or writers, fifty; midwives or
physicians, sixty; eunuchs under ten years, thirty pieces; above,
fifty; if tradesmen, seventy, (Cod. l. vi. tit. xliii. leg. 3.)
These legal prices are generally below those of the market.]

101 (return) [ For the state of slaves and freedmen, see
Institutes, l. i. tit. iii.—viii. l. ii. tit. ix. l. iii. tit.
viii. ix. Pandects or Digest, l. i. tit. v. vi. l. xxxviii. tit.
i.—iv., and the whole of the xlth book. Code, l. vi. tit. iv. v.
l. vii. tit. i.—xxiii. Be it henceforward understood that, with
the original text of the Institutes and Pandects, the
correspondent articles in the Antiquities and Elements of
Heineccius are implicitly quoted; and with the xxvii. first books
of the Pandects, the learned and rational Commentaries of Gerard
Noodt, (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1—590, the end. Lugd. Bat. 1724.)]

The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate
their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human
species the returns of filial piety. But the exclusive, absolute,
and perpetual dominion of the father over his children, is
peculiar to the Roman jurisprudence, 102 and seems to be coeval
with the foundation of the city. 103 The paternal power was
instituted or confirmed by Romulus himself; and, after the
practice of three centuries, it was inscribed on the fourth table
of the Decemvirs. In the forum, the senate, or the camp, the
adult son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the public and private
rights of a person: in his father’s house he was a mere thing;
1031 confounded by the laws with the movables, the cattle, and
the slaves, whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy,
without being responsible to any earthly tribunal. The hand which
bestowed the daily sustenance might resume the voluntary gift,
and whatever was acquired by the labor or fortune of the son was
immediately lost in the property of the father. His stolen goods
(his oxen or his children) might be recovered by the same action
of theft; 104 and if either had been guilty of a trespass, it was
in his own option to compensate the damage, or resign to the
injured party the obnoxious animal. At the call of indigence or
avarice, the master of a family could dispose of his children or
his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far more
advantageous, since he regained, by the first manumission, his
alienated freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural
father; he might be condemned to servitude a second and a third
time, and it was not till after the third sale and deliverance,
105 that he was enfranchised from the domestic power which had
been so repeatedly abused. According to his discretion, a father
might chastise the real or imaginary faults of his children, by
stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them to the
country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The
majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death;
106 and the examples of such bloody executions, which were
sometimes praised and never punished, may be traced in the annals
of Rome beyond the times of Pompey and Augustus. Neither age, nor
rank, nor the consular office, nor the honors of a triumph, could
exempt the most illustrious citizen from the bonds of filial
subjection: 107 his own descendants were included in the family
of their common ancestor; and the claims of adoption were not
less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature. Without fear,
though not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators had
reposed an unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal
love; and the oppression was tempered by the assurance that each
generation must succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of
parent and master.

102 (return) [ See the patria potestas in the Institutes, (l. i.
tit. ix.,) the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vi. vii.,) and the Code, (l.
viii. tit. xlvii. xlviii. xlix.) Jus potestatis quod in liberos
habemus proprium est civium Romanorum. Nulli enim alii sunt
homines, qui talem in liberos habeant potestatem qualem nos
habemus. * Note: The newly-discovered Institutes of Gaius name
one nation in which the same power was vested in the parent. Nec
me praeterit Galatarum gentem credere, in potestate parentum
liberos esse. Gaii Instit. edit. 1824, p. 257.—M.]

103 (return) [ Dionysius Hal. l. ii. p. 94, 95. Gravina (Opp. p.
286) produces the words of the xii. tables. Papinian (in
Collatione Legum Roman et Mosaicarum, tit. iv. p. 204) styles
this patria potestas, lex regia: Ulpian (ad Sabin. l. xxvi. in
Pandect. l. i. tit. vi. leg. 8) says, jus potestatis moribus
receptum; and furiosus filium in potestate habebit How sacred—or
rather, how absurd! * Note: All this is in strict accordance with
the Roman character.—W.]

1031 (return) [ This parental power was strictly confined to the
Roman citizen. The foreigner, or he who had only jus Latii, did
not possess it. If a Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or
a foreign wife, he did not possess this power over his son,
because the son, following the legal condition of the mother, was
not a Roman citizen. A man, however, alleging sufficient cause
for his ignorance, might raise both mother and child to the
rights of citizenship. Gaius. p. 30.—M.]

104 (return) [ Pandect. l. xlvii. tit. ii. leg. 14, No. 13, leg.
38, No. 1. Such was the decision of Ulpian and Paul.]

105 (return) [ The trina mancipatio is most clearly defined by
Ulpian, (Fragment. x. p. 591, 592, edit. Schulting;) and best
illustrated in the Antiquities of Heineccius. * Note: The son of
a family sold by his father did not become in every respect a
slave, he was statu liber; that is to say, on paying the price
for which he was sold, he became entirely free. See Hugo, Hist.
Section 61—W.]

106 (return) [ By Justinian, the old law, the jus necis of the
Roman father (Institut. l. iv. tit. ix. No. 7) is reported and
reprobated. Some legal vestiges are left in the Pandects (l.
xliii. tit. xxix. leg. 3, No. 4) and the Collatio Legum Romanarum
et Mosaicarum, (tit. ii. No. 3, p. 189.)]

107 (return) [ Except on public occasions, and in the actual
exercise of his office. In publicis locis atque muneribus, atque
actionibus patrum, jura cum filiorum qui in magistratu sunt
potestatibus collata interquiescere paullulum et connivere, &c.,
(Aul. Gellius, Noctes Atticae, ii. 2.) The Lessons of the
philosopher Taurus were justified by the old and memorable
example of Fabius; and we may contemplate the same story in the
style of Livy (xxiv. 44) and the homely idiom of Claudius Quadri
garius the annalist.]

The first limitation of paternal power is ascribed to the justice
and humanity of Numa; and the maid who, with his father’s
consent, had espoused a freeman, was protected from the disgrace
of becoming the wife of a slave. In the first ages, when the city
was pressed, and often famished, by her Latin and Tuscan
neighbors, the sale of children might be a frequent practice; but
as a Roman could not legally purchase the liberty of his
fellow-citizen, the market must gradually fail, and the trade
would be destroyed by the conquests of the republic. An imperfect
right of property was at length communicated to sons; and the
threefold distinction of profectitious, adventitious, and
professional was ascertained by the jurisprudence of the Code and
Pandects. 108 Of all that proceeded from the father, he imparted
only the use, and reserved the absolute dominion; yet if his
goods were sold, the filial portion was excepted, by a favorable
interpretation, from the demands of the creditors. In whatever
accrued by marriage, gift, or collateral succession, the property
was secured to the son; but the father, unless he had been
specially excluded, enjoyed the usufruct during his life. As a
just and prudent reward of military virtue, the spoils of the
enemy were acquired, possessed, and bequeathed by the soldier
alone; and the fair analogy was extended to the emoluments of any
liberal profession, the salary of public service, and the sacred
liberality of the emperor or empress. The life of a citizen was
less exposed than his fortune to the abuse of paternal power. Yet
his life might be adverse to the interest or passions of an
unworthy father: the same crimes that flowed from the corruption,
were more sensibly felt by the humanity, of the Augustan age; and
the cruel Erixo, who whipped his son till he expired, was saved
by the emperor from the just fury of the multitude. 109 The Roman
father, from the license of servile dominion, was reduced to the
gravity and moderation of a judge. The presence and opinion of
Augustus confirmed the sentence of exile pronounced against an
intentional parricide by the domestic tribunal of Arius. Adrian
transported to an island the jealous parent, who, like a robber,
had seized the opportunity of hunting, to assassinate a youth,
the incestuous lover of his step-mother. 110 A private
jurisdiction is repugnant to the spirit of monarchy; the parent
was again reduced from a judge to an accuser; and the magistrates
were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his complaints and
execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life of a son
without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the
pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the
Pompeian law, were finally inflicted by the justice of
Constantine. 111 The same protection was due to every period of
existence; and reason must applaud the humanity of Paulus, for
imputing the crime of murder to the father who strangles, or
starves, or abandons his new-born infant; or exposes him in a
public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied. But
the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice
of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted,
almost always practised with impunity, by the nations who never
entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic
poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference
a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy
and compassion. 112 If the father could subdue his own feelings,
he might escape, though not the censure, at least the
chastisement, of the laws; and the Roman empire was stained with
the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by
Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the
Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence 113 and Christianity
had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till
their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital
punishment. 114

108 (return) [ See the gradual enlargement and security of the
filial peculium in the Institutes, (l. ii. tit. ix.,) the
Pandects, (l. xv. tit. i. l. xli. tit. i.,) and the Code, (l. iv.
tit. xxvi. xxvii.)]

109 (return) [ The examples of Erixo and Arius are related by
Seneca, (de Clementia, i. 14, 15,) the former with horror, the
latter with applause.]

110 (return) [ Quod latronis magis quam patris jure eum
interfecit, nam patria potestas in pietate debet non in
atrocitate consistere, (Marcian. Institut. l. xix. in Pandect. l.
xlviii. tit. ix. leg.5.)]

111 (return) [ The Pompeian and Cornelian laws de sicariis and
parricidis are repeated, or rather abridged, with the last
supplements of Alexander Severus, Constantine, and Valentinian,
in the Pandects (l. xlviii. tit. viii ix,) and Code, (l. ix. tit.
xvi. xvii.) See likewise the Theodosian Code, (l. ix. tit. xiv.
xv.,) with Godefroy’s Commentary, (tom. iii. p. 84—113) who pours
a flood of ancient and modern learning over these penal laws.]

112 (return) [ When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife
for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks
like a father and a master, and silences the scruples of a
foolish woman. See Apuleius, (Metamorph. l. x. p. 337, edit.
Delphin.)]

113 (return) [ The opinion of the lawyers, and the discretion of
the magistrates, had introduced, in the time of Tacitus, some
legal restraints, which might support his contrast of the boni
mores of the Germans to the bonae leges alibi—that is to say, at
Rome, (de Moribus Germanorum, c. 19.) Tertullian (ad Nationes, l.
i. c. 15) refutes his own charges, and those of his brethren,
against the heathen jurisprudence.]

114 (return) [ The wise and humane sentence of the civilian Paul
(l. ii. Sententiarum in Pandect, 1. xxv. tit. iii. leg. 4) is
represented as a mere moral precept by Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom.
i. in Julius Paulus, p. 567—558, and Amica Responsio, p.
591-606,) who maintains the opinion of Justus Lipsius, (Opp. tom.
ii. p. 409, ad Belgas. cent. i. epist. 85,) and as a positive
binding law by Bynkershoek, (de Jure occidendi Liberos, Opp. tom.
i. p. 318—340. Curae Secundae, p. 391—427.) In a learned out
angry controversy, the two friends deviated into the opposite
extremes.]

Experience has proved, that savages are the tyrants of the female
sex, and that the condition of women is usually softened by the
refinements of social life. In the hope of a robust progeny,
Lycurgus had delayed the season of marriage: it was fixed by Numa
at the tender age of twelve years, that the Roman husband might
educate to his will a pure and obedient virgin. 115 According to
the custom of antiquity, he bought his bride of her parents, and
she fulfilled the coemption by purchasing, with three pieces of
copper, a just introduction to his house and household deities. A
sacrifice of fruits was offered by the pontiffs in the presence
of ten witnesses; the contracting parties were seated on the same
sheep-skin; they tasted a salt cake of far or rice; and this
confarreation, 116 which denoted the ancient food of Italy,
served as an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body. But
this union on the side of the woman was rigorous and unequal; and
she renounced the name and worship of her father’s house, to
embrace a new servitude, decorated only by the title of adoption,
a fiction of the law, neither rational nor elegant, bestowed on
the mother of a family 117 (her proper appellation) the strange
characters of sister to her own children, and of daughter to her
husband or master, who was invested with the plenitude of
paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was
approved, or censured, or chastised; he exercised the
jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed, that in the
cases of adultery or drunkenness, 118 the sentence might be
properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole
profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a
person, but as a thing, that, if the original title were
deficient, she might be claimed, like other movables, by the use
and possession of an entire year. The inclination of the Roman
husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so scrupulously
exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws: 119 but as polygamy was
unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or a more
favored partner.

115 (return) [ Dionys. Hal. l. ii. p. 92, 93. Plutarch, in Numa,
p. 140-141.]

116 (return) [ Among the winter frunenta, the triticum, or
bearded wheat; the siligo, or the unbearded; the far, adorea,
oryza, whose description perfectly tallies with the rice of Spain
and Italy. I adopt this identity on the credit of M. Paucton in
his useful and laborious Metrologie, (p. 517—529.)]

117 (return) [ Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, xviii. 6) gives a
ridiculous definition of Aelius Melissus, Matrona, quae semel
materfamilias quae saepius peperit, as porcetra and scropha in
the sow kind. He then adds the genuine meaning, quae in
matrimonium vel in manum convenerat.]

118 (return) [ It was enough to have tasted wine, or to have
stolen the key of the cellar, (Plin. Hist. Nat. xiv. 14.)]

119 (return) [ Solon requires three payments per month. By the
Misna, a daily debt was imposed on an idle, vigorous, young
husband; twice a week on a citizen; once on a peasant; once in
thirty days on a camel-driver; once in six months on a seaman.
But the student or doctor was free from tribute; and no wife, if
she received a weekly sustenance, could sue for a divorce; for
one week a vow of abstinence was allowed. Polygamy divided,
without multiplying, the duties of the husband, (Selden, Uxor
Ebraica, l. iii. c 6, in his works, vol ii. p. 717—720.)]

After the Punic triumphs, the matrons of Rome aspired to the
common benefits of a free and opulent republic: their wishes were
gratified by the indulgence of fathers and lovers, and their
ambition was unsuccessfully resisted by the gravity of Cato the
Censor. 120 They declined the solemnities of the old nuptiais;
defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days;
and, without losing their name or independence, subscribed the
liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their
private fortunes, they communicated the use, and secured the
property: the estates of a wife could neither be alienated nor
mortgaged by a prodigal husband; their mutual gifts were
prohibited by the jealousy of the laws; and the misconduct of
either party might afford, under another name, a future subject
for an action of theft. To this loose and voluntary compact,
religious and civil rights were no longer essential; and, between
persons of a similar rank, the apparent community of life was
allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials. The dignity of
marriage was restored by the Christians, who derived all
spiritual grace from the prayers of the faithful and the
benediction of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, and
duties of the holy institution were regulated by the tradition of
the synagogue, the precepts of the gospel, and the canons of
general or provincial synods; 121 and the conscience of the
Christians was awed by the decrees and censures of their
ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of Justinian were not
subject to the authority of the church: the emperor consulted the
unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and the choice of matrimonial
laws in the Code and Pandects, is directed by the earthly motives
of justice, policy, and the natural freedom of both sexes. 122

120 (return) [ On the Oppian law we may hear the mitigating
speech of Vaerius Flaccus, and the severe censorial oration of
the elder Cato, (Liv. xxxiv. l—8.) But we shall rather hear the
polished historian of the eighth, than the rough orators of the
sixth, century of Rome. The principles, and even the style, of
Cato are more accurately preserved by Aulus Gellius, (x. 23.)]

121 (return) [ For the system of Jewish and Catholic matrimony,
see Selden, (Uxor Ebraica, Opp. vol. ii. p. 529—860,) Bingham,
(Christian Antiquities, l. xxii.,) and Chardon, (Hist. des
Sacremens, tom. vi.)]

122 (return) [ The civil laws of marriage are exposed in the
Institutes, (l. i. tit. x.,) the Pandects, (l. xxiii. xxiv.
xxv.,) and the Code, (l. v.;) but as the title de ritu nuptiarum
is yet imperfect, we are obliged to explore the fragments of
Ulpian (tit. ix. p. 590, 591,) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum,
(tit. xvi. p. 790, 791,) with the notes of Pithaeus and
Schulting. They find in the Commentary of Servius (on the 1st
Georgia and the 4th Aeneid) two curious passages.]

Besides the agreement of the parties, the essence of every
rational contract, the Roman marriage required the previous
approbation of the parents. A father might be forced by some
recent laws to supply the wants of a mature daughter; but even
his insanity was not gradually allowed to supersede the necessity
of his consent. The causes of the dissolution of matrimony have
varied among the Romans; 123 but the most solemn sacrament, the
confarreation itself, might always be done away by rites of a
contrary tendency. In the first ages, the father of a family
might sell his children, and his wife was reckoned in the number
of his children: the domestic judge might pronounce the death of
the offender, or his mercy might expel her from his bed and
house; but the slavery of the wretched female was hopeless and
perpetual, unless he asserted for his own convenience the manly
prerogative of divorce. 1231 The warmest applause has been
lavished on the virtue of the Romans, who abstained from the
exercise of this tempting privilege above five hundred years: 124
but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connection in
which the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant
was unwilling to relinquish his slave. When the Roman matrons
became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new
jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other
partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the
associates. In three centuries of prosperity and corruption, this
principle was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse.

Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives for the
dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the
mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender
of human connections was degraded to a transient society of
profit or pleasure. According to the various conditions of life,
both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury: an
inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to a new family,
abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious, progeny to the
paternal authority and care of her late husband; a beautiful
virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and
friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they were
pressed to marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks, that the
prevailing institutions were least favorable to the males. A
specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment,
which demonstrates, that the liberty of divorce does not
contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation
would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling
dispute: the minute difference between a husband and a stranger,
which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be
forgotten; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the
embraces of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity
of her own person. 125

123 (return) [ According to Plutarch, (p. 57,) Romulus allowed
only three grounds of a divorce—drunkenness, adultery, and false
keys. Otherwise, the husband who abused his supremacy forfeited
half his goods to the wife, and half to the goddess Ceres, and
offered a sacrifice (with the remainder?) to the terrestrial
deities. This strange law was either imaginary or transient.]

1231 (return) [ Montesquieu relates and explains this fact in a
different marnes Esprit des Loix, l. xvi. c. 16.—G.]

124 (return) [ In the year of Rome 523, Spurius Carvilius Ruga
repudiated a fair, a good, but a barren, wife, (Dionysius Hal. l.
ii. p. 93. Plutarch, in Numa, p. 141; Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c.
1; Aulus Gellius, iv. 3.) He was questioned by the censors, and
hated by the people; but his divorce stood unimpeached in law.]

125 (return) [—Sic fiunt octo mariti Quinque per autumnos.
Juvenal, Satir. vi. 20.—A rapid succession, which may yet be
credible, as well as the non consulum numero, sed maritorum annos
suos computant, of Seneca, (de Beneficiis, iii. 16.) Jerom saw at
Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had
interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors, (Opp. tom.
i. p. 90, ad Gerontiam.) But the ten husbands in a month of the
poet Martial, is an extravagant hyperbole, (l. 71. epigram 7.)]

Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the
rapid progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans
afforded a peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints
of a married life; but her epithet of Viriplaca, 126 the appeaser
of husbands, too clearly indicates on which side submission and
repentance were always expected. Every act of a citizen was
subject to the judgment of the censors; the first who used the
privilege of divorce assigned, at their command, the motives of
his conduct; 127 and a senator was expelled for dismissing his
virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of his friends.
Whenever an action was instituted for the recovery of a marriage
portion, the proetor, as the guardian of equity, examined the
cause and the characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor
of the guiltless and injured party. Augustus, who united the
powers of both magistrates, adopted their different modes of
repressing or chastising the license of divorce. 128 The presence
of seven Roman witnesses was required for the validity of this
solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation had been
given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was
compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of six months;
but if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or
levity was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of
her marriage portion. The Christian princes were the first who
specified the just causes of a private divorce; their
institutions, from Constantine to Justinian, appear to fluctuate
between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the church,
129 and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the
jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous
laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or
a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or
sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might
have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the
sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver
his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list of
mortal sins, either male or female, was curtailed and enlarged by
successive regulations, and the obstacles of incurable impotence,
long absence, and monastic profession, were allowed to rescind
the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission
of the law, was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman
was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the
bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his
bed, her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his
exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the
fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island, or
imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party was released from
the bonds of marriage; but the offender, during life, or a term
of years, was disabled from the repetition of nuptials. The
successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy
subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent:
the civilians were unanimous, 130 the theologians were divided,
131 and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ,
is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator
can demand.

126 (return) [ Sacellum Viriplacae, (Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c.
1,) in the Palatine region, appears in the time of Theodosius, in
the description of Rome by Publius Victor.]

127 (return) [ Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 9. With some propriety
he judges divorce more criminal than celibacy: illo namque
conjugalia sacre spreta tantum, hoc etiam injuriose tractata.]

128 (return) [ See the laws of Augustus and his successors, in
Heineccius, ad Legem Papiam-Poppaeam, c. 19, in Opp. tom. vi. P.
i. p. 323—333.]

129 (return) [ Aliae sunt leges Caesarum, aliae Christi; aliud
Papinianus, aliud Paulus nocter praecipit, (Jerom. tom. i. p.
198. Selden, Uxor Ebraica l. iii. c. 31 p. 847—853.)]

130 (return) [ The Institutes are silent; but we may consult the
Codes of Theodosius (l. iii. tit. xvi., with Godefroy’s
Commentary, tom. i. p. 310—315) and Justinian, (l. v. tit.
xvii.,) the Pandects (l. xxiv. tit. ii.) and the Novels, (xxii.
cxvii. cxxvii. cxxxiv. cxl.) Justinian fluctuated to the last
between civil and ecclesiastical law.]

131 (return) [ In pure Greek, it is not a common word; nor can
the proper meaning, fornication, be strictly applied to
matrimonial sin. In a figurative sense, how far, and to what
offences, may it be extended? Did Christ speak the Rabbinical or
Syriac tongue? Of what original word is the translation? How
variously is that Greek word translated in the versions ancient
and modern! There are two (Mark, x. 11, Luke, xvi. 18) to one
(Matthew, xix. 9) that such ground of divorce was not excepted by
Jesus. Some critics have presumed to think, by an evasive answer,
he avoided the giving offence either to the school of Sammai or
to that of Hillel, (Selden, Uxor Ebraica, l. iii. c. 18—22, 28,
31.) * Note: But these had nothing to do with the question of a
divorce made by judicial authority.—Hugo.]

The freedom of love and marriage was restrained among the Romans
by natural and civil impediments. An instinct, almost innate and
universal, appears to prohibit the incestuous commerce 132 of
parents and children in the infinite series of ascending and
descending generations. Concerning the oblique and collateral
branches, nature is indifferent, reason mute, and custom various
and arbitrary. In Egypt, the marriage of brothers and sisters was
admitted without scruple or exception: a Spartan might espouse
the daughter of his father, an Athenian, that of his mother; and
the nuptials of an uncle with his niece were applauded at Athens
as a happy union of the dearest relations. The profane lawgivers
of Rome were never tempted by interest or superstition to
multiply the forbidden degrees: but they inflexibly condemned the
marriage of sisters and brothers, hesitated whether first cousins
should be touched by the same interdict; revered the parental
character of aunts and uncles, 1321 and treated affinity and
adoption as a just imitation of the ties of blood. According to
the proud maxims of the republic, a legal marriage could only be
contracted by free citizens; an honorable, at least an ingenuous
birth, was required for the spouse of a senator: but the blood of
kings could never mingle in legitimate nuptials with the blood of
a Roman; and the name of Stranger degraded Cleopatra and
Berenice, 133 to live the concubines of Mark Antony and Titus.
134 This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty, cannot
without indulgence be applied to the manners, of these Oriental
queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilians, was a
woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful
companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of
celibacy. Her modest station, below the honors of a wife, above
the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged and approved by the
laws: from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, the use of
this secondary marriage prevailed both in the West and East; and
the humble virtues of a concubine were often preferred to the
pomp and insolence of a noble matron. In this connection, the two
Antonines, the best of princes and of men, enjoyed the comforts
of domestic love: the example was imitated by many citizens
impatient of celibacy, but regardful of their families. If at any
time they desired to legitimate their natural children, the
conversion was instantly performed by the celebration of their
nuptials with a partner whose faithfulness and fidelity they had
already tried. 1341 By this epithet of natural, the offspring of
the concubine were distinguished from the spurious brood of
adultery, prostitution, and incest, to whom Justinian reluctantly
grants the necessary aliments of life; and these natural children
alone were capable of succeeding to a sixth part of the
inheritance of their reputed father. According to the rigor of
law, bastards were entitled only to the name and condition of
their mother, from whom they might derive the character of a
slave, a stranger, or a citizen. The outcasts of every family
were adopted without reproach as the children of the state. 135
1351

132 (return) [ The principles of the Roman jurisprudence are
exposed by Justinian, (Institut. t. i. tit. x.;) and the laws and
manners of the different nations of antiquity concerning
forbidden degrees, &c., are copiously explained by Dr. Taylor in
his Elements of Civil Law, (p. 108, 314—339,) a work of amusing,
though various reading; but which cannot be praised for
philosophical precision.]

1321 (return) [ According to the earlier law, (Gaii Instit. p.
27,) a man might marry his niece on the brother’s, not on the
sister’s, side. The emperor Claudius set the example of the
former. In the Institutes, this distinction was abolished and
both declared illegal.—M.]

133 (return) [ When her father Agrippa died, (A.D. 44,) Berenice
was sixteen years of age, (Joseph. tom. i. Antiquit. Judaic. l.
xix. c. 9, p. 952, edit. Havercamp.) She was therefore above
fifty years old when Titus (A.D. 79) invitus invitam invisit.
This date would not have adorned the tragedy or pastoral of the
tender Racine.]

134 (return) [ The Aegyptia conjux of Virgil (Aeneid, viii. 688)
seems to be numbered among the monsters who warred with Mark
Antony against Augustus, the senate, and the gods of Italy.]

1341 (return) [ The Edict of Constantine first conferred this
right; for Augustus had prohibited the taking as a concubine a
woman who might be taken as a wife; and if marriage took place
afterwards, this marriage made no change in the rights of the
children born before it; recourse was then had to adoption,
properly called arrogation.—G.]

135 (return) [ The humble but legal rights of concubines and
natural children are stated in the Institutes, (l. i. tit. x.,)
the Pandects, (l. i. tit. vii.,) the Code, (l. v. tit. xxv.,) and
the Novels, (lxxiv. lxxxix.) The researches of Heineccius and
Giannone, (ad Legem Juliam et Papiam-Poppaeam, c. iv. p. 164-175.
Opere Posthume, p. 108—158) illustrate this interesting and
domestic subject.]

1351 (return) [ See, however, the two fragments of laws in the
newly discovered extracts from the Theodosian Code, published by
M. A. Peyron, at Turin. By the first law of Constantine, the
legitimate offspring could alone inherit; where there were no
near legitimate relatives, the inheritance went to the fiscus.
The son of a certain Licinianus, who had inherited his father’s
property under the supposition that he was legitimate, and had
been promoted to a place of dignity, was to be degraded, his
property confiscated, himself punished with stripes and
imprisonment. By the second, all persons, even of the highest
rank, senators, perfectissimi, decemvirs, were to be declared
infamous, and out of the protection of the Roman law, if born ex
ancilla, vel ancillae filia, vel liberta, vel libertae filia,
sive Romana facta, seu Latina, vel scaenicae filia, vel ex
tabernaria, vel ex tabernariae filia, vel humili vel abjecta, vel
lenonis, aut arenarii filia, vel quae mercimoniis publicis
praefuit. Whatever a fond father had conferred on such children
was revoked, and either restored to the legitimate children, or
confiscated to the state; the mothers, who were guilty of thus
poisoning the minds of the fathers, were to be put to the torture
(tormentis subici jubemus.) The unfortunate son of Licinianus, it
appears from this second law, having fled, had been taken, and
was ordered to be kept in chains to work in the Gynaeceum at
Carthage. Cod. Theodor ab. A. Person, 87—90.—M.]

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

The relation of guardian and ward, or in Roman words of tutor and
pupil, which covers so many titles of the Institutes and
Pandects, 136 is of a very simple and uniform nature. The person
and property of an orphan must always be trusted to the custody
of some discreet friend. If the deceased father had not signified
his choice, the agnats, or paternal kindred of the nearest
degree, were compelled to act as the natural guardians: the
Athenians were apprehensive of exposing the infant to the power
of those most interested in his death; but an axiom of Roman
jurisprudence has pronounced, that the charge of tutelage should
constantly attend the emolument of succession. If the choice of
the father, and the line of consanguinity, afforded no efficient
guardian, the failure was supplied by the nomination of the
praetor of the city, or the president of the province. But the
person whom they named to this public office might be legally
excused by insanity or blindness, by ignorance or inability, by
previous enmity or adverse interest, by the number of children or
guardianships with which he was already burdened, and by the
immunities which were granted to the useful labors of
magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and professors. Till the infant
could speak, and think, he was represented by the tutor, whose
authority was finally determined by the age of puberty. Without
his consent, no act of the pupil could bind himself to his own
prejudice, though it might oblige others for his personal
benefit. It is needless to observe, that the tutor often gave
security, and always rendered an account, and that the want of
diligence or integrity exposed him to a civil and almost criminal
action for the violation of his sacred trust. The age of puberty
had been rashly fixed by the civilians at fourteen; 1361 but as
the faculties of the mind ripen more slowly than those of the
body, a curator was interposed to guard the fortunes of a Roman
youth from his own inexperience and headstrong passions. Such a
trustee had been first instituted by the praetor, to save a
family from the blind havoc of a prodigal or madman; and the
minor was compelled, by the laws, to solicit the same protection,
to give validity to his acts till he accomplished the full period
of twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the perpetual
tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to
please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of
reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty
spirit of the ancient law, which had been insensibly mollified
before the time of Justinian.

136 (return) [ See the article of guardians and wards in the
Institutes, (l. i. tit. xiii.—xxvi.,) the Pandects, (l. xxvi.
xxvii.,) and the Code, (l. v. tit. xxviii.—lxx.)]

1361 (return) [ Gibbon accuses the civilians of having “rashly
fixed the age of puberty at twelve or fourteen years.” It was not
so; before Justinian, no law existed on this subject. Ulpian
relates the discussions which took place on this point among the
different sects of civilians. See the Institutes, l. i. tit. 22,
and the fragments of Ulpian. Nor was the curatorship obligatory
for all minors.—W.]

II. The original right of property can only be justified by the
accident or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it
is wisely established by the philosophy of the civilians. 137 The
savage who hollows a tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden
handle, or applies a string to an elastic branch, becomes in a
state of nature the just proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the
hatchet. The materials were common to all, the new form, the
produce of his time and simple industry, belongs solely to
himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own
injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest
overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his
provident care preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose
nature is tractable to the arts of education, he acquires a
perpetual title to the use and service of their numerous progeny,
which derives its existence from him alone. If he encloses and
cultivates a field for their sustenance and his own, a barren
waste is converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the manure, the
labor, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest are
painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year. In the
successive states of society, the hunter, the shepherd, the
husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which
forcibly appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever
they enjoy is the fruit of their own industry; and that every man
who envies their felicity, may purchase similar acquisitions by
the exercise of similar diligence. Such, in truth, may be the
freedom and plenty of a small colony cast on a fruitful island.
But the colony multiplies, while the space still continues the
same; the common rights, the equal inheritance of mankind. are
engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest is
circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the
peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence, that 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.

137 (return) [ Institut. l. ii. tit i. ii. Compare the pure and
precise reasoning of Caius and Heineccius (l. ii. tit. i. p.
69-91) with the loose prolixity of Theophilus, (p. 207—265.) The
opinions of Ulpian are preserved in the Pandects, (l. i. tit.
viii. leg. 41, No. 1.)]

138 (return) [ The heredium of the first Romans is defined by
Varro, (de Re Rustica, l. i. c. ii. p. 141, c. x. p. 160, 161,
edit. Gesner,) and clouded by Pliny’s declamation, (Hist. Natur.
xviii. 2.) A just and learned comment is given in the
Administration des Terres chez les Romains, (p. 12—66.) Note: On
the duo jugera, compare Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 337.—M.]

139 (return) [ The res mancipi is explained from faint and remote
lights by Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xviii. p. 618, 619) and
Bynkershoek, (Opp tom. i. p. 306—315.) The definition is somewhat
arbitrary; and as none except myself have assigned a reason, I am
diffident of my own.]

140 (return) [ From this short prescription, Hume (Essays, vol.
i. p. 423) infers that there could not then be more order and
settlement in Italy than now amongst the Tartars. By the civilian
of his adversary Wallace, he is reproached, and not without
reason, for overlooking the conditions, (Institut. l. ii. tit.
vi.) * Note: Gibbon acknowledges, in the former note, the
obscurity of his views with regard to the res mancipi. The
interpreters, who preceded him, are not agreed on this point, one
of the most difficult in the ancient Roman law. The conclusions
of Hume, of which the author here speaks, are grounded on false
assumptions. Gibbon had conceived very inaccurate notions of
Property among the Romans, and those of many authors in the
present day are not less erroneous. We think it right, in this
place, to develop the system of property among the Romans, as the
result of the study of the extant original authorities on the
ancient law, and as it has been demonstrated, recognized, and
adopted by the most learned expositors of the Roman law. Besides
the authorities formerly known, such as the Fragments of Ulpian,
t. xix. and t. i. 16. Theoph. Paraph. i. 5, 4, may be consulted
the Institutes of Gaius, i. 54, and ii. 40, et seq. The Roman
laws protected all property acquired in a lawful manner. They
imposed on those who had invaded it, the obligation of making
restitution and reparation of all damage caused by that invasion;
they punished it moreover, in many cases, by a pecuniary fine.
But they did not always grant a recovery against the third
person, who had become bona fide possessed of the property. He
who had obtained possession of a thing belonging to another,
knowing nothing of the prior rights of that person, maintained
the possession. The law had expressly determined those cases, in
which it permitted property to be reclaimed from an innocent
possessor. In these cases possession had the characters of
absolute proprietorship, called mancipium, jus Quiritium. To
possess this right, it was not sufficient to have entered into
possession of the thing in any manner; the acquisition was bound
to have that character of publicity, which was given by the
observation of solemn forms, prescribed by the laws, or the
uninterrupted exercise of proprietorship during a certain time:
the Roman citizen alone could acquire this proprietorship. Every
other kind of possession, which might be named imperfect
proprietorship, was called “in bonis habere.” It was not till
after the time of Cicero that the general name of Dominium was
given to all proprietorship. It was then the publicity which
constituted the distinctive character of absolute dominion. This
publicity was grounded on the mode of acquisition, which the
moderns have called Civil, (Modi adquirendi Civiles.) These modes
of acquisition were, 1. Mancipium or mancipatio, which was
nothing but the solemn delivering over of the thing in the
presence of a determinate number of witnesses and a public
officer; it was from this probably that proprietorship was named,
2. In jure cessio, which was a solemn delivering over before the
praetor. 3. Adjudicatio, made by a judge, in a case of partition.
4. Lex, which comprehended modes of acquiring in particular cases
determined by law; probably the law of the xii. tables; for
instance, the sub corona emptio and the legatum. 5. Usna, called
afterwards usacapio, and by the moderns prescription. This was
only a year for movables; two years for things not movable. Its
primary object was altogether different from that of prescription
in the present day. It was originally introduced in order to
transform the simple possession of a thing (in bonis habere) into
Roman proprietorship. The public and uninterrupted possession of
a thing, enjoyed for the space of one or two years, was
sufficient to make known to the inhabitants of the city of Rome
to whom the thing belonged. This last mode of acquisition
completed the system of civil acquisitions. by legalizing. as it
were, every other kind of acquisition which was not conferred,
from the commencement, by the Jus Quiritium. V. Ulpian. Fragm. i.
16. Gaius, ii. 14. We believe, according to Gaius, 43, that this
usucaption was extended to the case where a thing had been
acquired from a person not the real proprietor; and that
according to the time prescribed, it gave to the possessor the
Roman proprietorship. But this does not appear to have been the
original design of this Institution. Caeterum etiam earum rerum
usucapio nobis competit, quae non a domino nobis tradita fuerint,
si modo eas bona fide acceperimus Gaius, l ii. 43. As to things
of smaller value, or those which it was difficult to distinguish
from each other, the solemnities of which we speak were not
requisite to obtain legal proprietorship. In this case simple
delivery was sufficient. In proportion to the aggrandizement of
the Republic, this latter principle became more important from
the increase of the commerce and wealth of the state. It was
necessary to know what were those things of which absolute
property might be acquired by simple delivery, and what, on the
contrary, those, the acquisition of which must be sanctioned by
these solemnities. This question was necessarily to be decided by
a general rule; and it is this rule which establishes the
distinction between res mancipi and nec mancipi, a distinction
about which the opinions of modern civilians differ so much that
there are above ten conflicting systems on the subject. The
system which accords best with a sound interpretation of the
Roman laws, is that proposed by M. Trekel of Hamburg, and still
further developed by M. Hugo, who has extracted it in the
Magazine of Civil Law, vol. ii. p. 7. This is the system now
almost universally adopted. Res mancipi (by contraction for
mancipii) were things of which the absolute property (Jus
Quiritium) might be acquired only by the solemnities mentioned
above, at least by that of mancipation, which was, without doubt,
the most easy and the most usual. Gaius, ii. 25. As for other
things, the acquisition of which was not subject to these forms,
in order to confer absolute right, they were called res nec
mancipi. See Ulpian, Fragm. xix. 1. 3, 7. Ulpian and Varro
enumerate the different kinds of res mancipi. Their enumerations
do not quite agree; and various methods of reconciling them have
been attempted. The authority of Ulpian, however, who wrote as a
civilian, ought to have the greater weight on this subject. But
why are these things alone res mancipi? This is one of the
questions which have been most frequently agitated, and on which
the opinions of civilians are most divided. M. Hugo has resolved
it in the most natural and satisfactory manner. “All things which
were easily known individually, which were of great value, with
which the Romans were acquainted, and which they highly
appreciated, were res mancipi. Of old mancipation or some other
solemn form was required for the acquisition of these things, an
account of their importance. Mancipation served to prove their
acquisition, because they were easily distinguished one from the
other.” On this great historical discussion consult the Magazine
of Civil Law by M. Hugo, vol. ii. p. 37, 38; the dissertation of
M. J. M. Zachariae, de Rebus Mancipi et nec Mancipi Conjecturae,
p. 11. Lipsiae, 1807; the History of Civil Law by M. Hugo; and my
Institutiones Juris Romani Privati p. 108, 110. As a general
rule, it may be said that all things are res nec mancipi; the res
mancipi are the exception to this principle. The praetors changed
the system of property by allowing a person, who had a thing in
bonis, the right to recover before the prescribed term of
usucaption had conferred absolute proprietorship. (Pauliana in
rem actio.) Justinian went still further, in times when there was
no longer any distinction between a Roman citizen and a stranger.
He granted the right of recovering all things which had been
acquired, whether by what were called civil or natural modes of
acquisition, Cod. l. vii. t. 25, 31. And he so altered the theory
of Gaius in his Institutes, ii. 1, that no trace remains of the
doctrine taught by that civilian.—W.]

141 (return) [ See the Institutes (l. i. tit. iv. v.) and the
Pandects, (l. vii.) Noodt has composed a learned and distinct
treatise de Usufructu, (Opp. tom. i. p. 387—478.)]

142 (return) [ The questions de Servitutibus are discussed in the
Institutes (l. ii. tit. iii.) and Pandects, (l. viii.) Cicero
(pro Murena, c. 9) and Lactantius (Institut. Divin. l. i. c. i.)
affect to laugh at the insignificant doctrine, de aqua de pluvia
arcenda, &c. Yet it might be of frequent use among litigious
neighbors, both in town and country.]

The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by
his death: but the possession, without any appearance of change,
is peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his
toil, and the partners of his wealth. This natural inheritance
has been protected by the legislators of every climate and age,
and the father is encouraged to persevere in slow and distant
improvements, by the tender hope, that a long posterity will
enjoy the fruits of his labor. The principle of hereditary
succession is universal; but the order has been variously
established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national
institutions, or by some partial example which was originally
decided by fraud or violence. The jurisprudence of the Romans
appear to have deviated from the inequality of nature much less
than the Jewish, 143 the Athenian, 144 or the English
institutions. 145 On the death of a citizen, all his descendants,
unless they were already freed from his paternal power, were
called to the inheritance of his possessions. The insolent
prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were
placed on a just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled
to an equal portion of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the
sons had been intercepted by a premature death, his person was
represented, and his share was divided, by his surviving
children. On the failure of the direct line, the right of
succession must diverge to the collateral branches. The degrees
of kindred 146 are numbered by the civilians, ascending from the
last possessor to a common parent, and descending from the common
parent to the next heir: my father stands in the first degree, my
brother in the second, his children in the third, and the
remainder of the series may be conceived by a fancy, or pictured
in a genealogical table. In this computation, a distinction was
made, essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome;
the agnats, or persons connected by a line of males, were called,
as they stood in the nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a
female was incapable of transmitting any legal claims; and the
cognats of every rank, without excepting the dear relation of a
mother and a son, were disinherited by the Twelve Tables, as
strangers and aliens. Among the Romans agens or lineage was
united by a common name and domestic rites; the various cognomens
or surnames of Scipio, or Marcellus, distinguished from each
other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or
Claudian race: the default of the agnats, of the same surname,
was supplied by the larger denomination of gentiles; and the
vigilance of the laws maintained, in the same name, the perpetual
descent of religion and property. A similar principle dictated
the Voconian law, 147 which abolished the right of female
inheritance. As long as virgins were given or sold in marriage,
the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of the daughter.
But the equal succession of independent matrons supported their
pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the
riches of their fathers.

While the maxims of Cato 148 were revered, they tended to
perpetuate in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till
female blandishments insensibly triumphed; and every salutary
restraint was lost in the dissolute greatness of the republic.
The rigor of the decemvirs was tempered by the equity of the
praetors. Their edicts restored and emancipated posthumous
children to the rights of nature; and upon the failure of the
agnats, they preferred the blood of the cognats to the name of
the gentiles whose title and character were insensibly covered
with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers and sons was
established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the
humanity of the senate. A new and more impartial order was
introduced by the Novels of Justinian, who affected to revive the
jurisprudence of the Twelve Tables. The lines of masculine and
female kindred were confounded: the descending, ascending, and
collateral series was accurately defined; and each degree,
according to the proximity of blood and affection, succeeded to
the vacant possessions of a Roman citizen. 149

143 (return) [ Among the patriarchs, the first-born enjoyed a
mystic and spiritual primogeniture, (Genesis, xxv. 31.) In the
land of Canaan, he was entitled to a double portion of
inheritance, (Deuteronomy, xxi. 17, with Le Clerc’s judicious
Commentary.)]

144 (return) [ At Athens, the sons were equal; but the poor
daughters were endowed at the discretion of their brothers. See
the pleadings of Isaeus, (in the viith volume of the Greek
Orators,) illustrated by the version and comment of Sir William
Jones, a scholar, a lawyer, and a man of genius.]

145 (return) [ In England, the eldest son also inherits all the
land; a law, says the orthodox Judge Blackstone, (Commentaries on
the Laws of England, vol. ii. p. 215,) unjust only in the opinion
of younger brothers. It may be of some political use in
sharpening their industry.]

146 (return) [ Blackstone’s Tables (vol. ii. p. 202) represent
and compare the decrees of the civil with those of the canon and
common law. A separate tract of Julius Paulus, de gradibus et
affinibus, is inserted or abridged in the Pandects, (l. xxxviii.
tit. x.) In the viith degrees he computes (No. 18) 1024 persons.]

147 (return) [ The Voconian law was enacted in the year of Rome
584. The younger Scipio, who was then 17 years of age,
(Frenshemius, Supplement. Livian. xlvi. 40,) found an occasion of
exercising his generosity to his mother, sisters, &c. (Polybius,
tom. ii. l. xxxi. p. 1453—1464, edit Gronov., a domestic
witness.)]

148 (return) [ Legem Voconiam (Ernesti, Clavis Ciceroniana) magna
voce bonis lateribus (at lxv. years of age) suasissem, says old
Cato, (de Senectute, c. 5,) Aulus Gellius (vii. 13, xvii. 6) has
saved some passages.]

149 (return) [ See the law of succession in the Institutes of
Caius, (l. ii. tit. viii. p. 130—144,) and Justinian, (l. iii.
tit. i.—vi., with the Greek version of Theophilus, p. 515-575,
588—600,) the Pandects, (l. xxxviii. tit. vi.—xvii.,) the Code,
(l. vi. tit. lv.—lx.,) and the Novels, (cxviii.)]

The order of succession is regulated by nature, or at least by
the general and permanent reason of the lawgiver: but this order
is frequently violated by the arbitrary and partial wills, which
prolong the dominion of the testator beyond the grave. 150 In the
simple state of society, this last use or abuse of the right of
property is seldom indulged: it was introduced at Athens by the
laws of Solon; and the private testaments of the father of a
family are authorized by the Twelve Tables. Before the time of
the decemvirs, 151 a Roman citizen exposed his wishes and motives
to the assembly of the thirty curiae or parishes, and the general
law of inheritance was suspended by an occasional act of the
legislature. After the permission of the decemvirs, each private
lawgiver promulgated his verbal or written testament in the
presence of five citizens, who represented the five classes of
the Roman people; a sixth witness attested their concurrence; a
seventh weighed the copper money, which was paid by an imaginary
purchaser; and the estate was emancipated by a fictitious sale
and immediate release. This singular ceremony, 152 which excited
the wonder of the Greeks, was still practised in the age of
Severus; but the praetors had already approved a more simple
testament, for which they required the seals and signatures of
seven witnesses, free from all legal exception, and purposely
summoned for the execution of that important act. A domestic
monarch, who reigned over the lives and fortunes of his children,
might distribute their respective shares according to the degrees
of their merit or his affection; his arbitrary displeasure
chastised an unworthy son by the loss of his inheritance, and the
mortifying preference of a stranger. But the experience of
unnatural parents recommended some limitations of their
testamentary powers. A son, or, by the laws of Justinian, even a
daughter, could no longer be disinherited by their silence: they
were compelled to name the criminal, and to specify the offence;
and the justice of the emperor enumerated the sole causes that
could justify such a violation of the first principles of nature
and society. 153 Unless a legitimate portion, a fourth part, had
been reserved for the children, they were entitled to institute
an action or complaint of inofficious testament; to suppose that
their father’s understanding was impaired by sickness or age; and
respectfully to appeal from his rigorous sentence to the
deliberate wisdom of the magistrate. In the Roman jurisprudence,
an essential distinction was admitted between the inheritance and
the legacies. The heirs who succeeded to the entire unity, or to
any of the twelve fractions of the substance of the testator,
represented his civil and religious character, asserted his
rights, fulfilled his obligations, and discharged the gifts of
friendship or liberality, which his last will had bequeathed
under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or prodigality
of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance, and leave only risk
and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the
Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies,
a clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was
allowed to examine the proportion between the debts and the
estate, to decide whether he should accept or refuse the
testament; and if he used the benefit of an inventory, the
demands of the creditors could not exceed the valuation of the
effects. The last will of a citizen might be altered during his
life, or rescinded after his death: the persons whom he named
might die before him, or reject the inheritance, or be exposed to
some legal disqualification. In the contemplation of these
events, he was permitted to substitute second and third heirs, to
replace each other according to the order of the testament; and
the incapacity of a madman or an infant to bequeath his property
might be supplied by a similar substitution. 154 But the power of
the testator expired with the acceptance of the testament: each
Roman of mature age and discretion acquired the absolute dominion
of his inheritance, and the simplicity of the civil law was never
clouded by the long and intricate entails which confine the
happiness and freedom of unborn generations.

150 (return) [ That succession was the rule, testament the
exception, is proved by Taylor, (Elements of Civil Law, p.
519-527,) a learned, rambling, spirited writer. In the iid and
iiid books, the method of the Institutes is doubtless
preposterous; and the Chancellor Daguesseau (Oeuvres, tom. i. p.
275) wishes his countryman Domat in the place of Tribonian. Yet
covenants before successions is not surely the natural order of
civil laws.]

151 (return) [ Prior examples of testaments are perhaps fabulous.
At Athens a childless father only could make a will, (Plutarch,
in Solone, tom. i. p. 164. See Isaeus and Jones.)]

152 (return) [ The testament of Augustus is specified by
Suetonius, (in August, c. 101, in Neron. c. 4,) who may be
studied as a code of Roman antiquities. Plutarch (Opuscul. tom.
ii. p. 976) is surprised. The language of Ulpian (Fragment. tit.
xx. p. 627, edit. Schulting) is almost too exclusive—solum in usu
est.]

153 (return) [ Justinian (Novell. cxv. No. 3, 4) enumerates only
the public and private crimes, for which a son might likewise
disinherit his father. Note: Gibbon has singular notions on the
provisions of Novell. cxv. 3, 4, which probably he did not
clearly understand.—W]

154 (return) [ The substitutions of fidei-commissaires of the
modern civil law is a feudal idea grafted on the Roman
jurisprudence, and bears scarcely any resemblance to the ancient
fidei-commissa, (Institutions du Droit Francois, tom. i. p.
347-383. Denissart, Decisions de Jurisprudence, tom. iv. p.
577-604.) They were stretched to the fourth degree by an abuse of
the clixth Novel; a partial, perplexed, declamatory law.]

Conquest and the formalities of law established the use of
codicils. If a Roman was surprised by death in a remote province
of the empire, he addressed a short epistle to his legitimate or
testamentary heir; who fulfilled with honor, or neglected with
impunity, this last request, which the judges before the age of
Augustus were not authorized to enforce. A codicil might be
expressed in any mode, or in any language; but the subscription
of five witnesses must declare that it was the genuine
composition of the author. His intention, however laudable, was
sometimes illegal; and the invention of fidei-commissa, or
trusts, arose 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

155 (return) [ Dion Cassius (tom. ii. l. lvi. p. 814, with
Reimar’s Notes) specifies in Greek money the sum of 25,000
drachms.]

156 (return) [ The revolutions of the Roman laws of inheritance
are finely, though sometimes fancifully, deduced by Montesquieu,
(Esprit des Loix, l. xxvii.)]

157 (return) [ Of the civil jurisprudence of successions,
testaments, codicils, legacies, and trusts, the principles are
ascertained in the Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ii.—ix. p.
91—144,) Justinian, (l. ii. tit. x.—xxv.,) and Theophilus, (p.
328—514;) and the immense detail occupies twelve books
(xxviii.—xxxix.) of the Pandects.] III. The general duties of
mankind are imposed by their public and private relations: but
their specific obligations to each other can only be the effect
of, 1. a promise, 2. a benefit, or 3. an injury: and when these
obligations are ratified by law, the interested party may compel
the performance by a judicial action. On this principle, the
civilians of every country have erected a similar jurisprudence,
the fair conclusion of universal reason and justice. 158

158 (return) [ The Institutes of Caius, (l. ii. tit. ix. x. p.
144—214,) of Justinian, (l. iii. tit. xiv.—xxx. l. iv. tit.
i.—vi.,) and of Theophilus, (p. 616—837,) distinguish four sorts
of obligations—aut re, aut verbis, aut literis aut consensu: but
I confess myself partial to my own division. Note: It is not at
all applicable to the Roman system of contracts, even if I were
allowed to be good.—M.]

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

1. The goddess of faith (of human and social faith) was
worshipped, not only in her temples, but in the lives of the
Romans; and if that nation was deficient in the more amiable
qualities of benevolence and generosity, they astonished the
Greeks by their sincere and simple performance of the most
burdensome engagements. 159 Yet among the same people, according
to the rigid maxims of the patricians and decemvirs, a naked
pact, a promise, or even an oath, did not create any civil
obligation, unless it was confirmed by the legal form of a
stipulation. Whatever might be the etymology of the Latin word,
it conveyed the idea of a firm and irrevocable contract, which
was always expressed in the mode of a question and answer. Do you
promise to pay me one hundred pieces of gold? was the solemn
interrogation of Seius. I do promise, was the reply of
Sempronius. The friends of Sempronius, who answered for his
ability and inclination, might be separately sued at the option
of Seius; and the benefit of partition, or order of reciprocal
actions, insensibly deviated from the strict theory of
stipulation. The most cautious and deliberate consent was justly
required to sustain the validity of a gratuitous promise; and the
citizen who might have obtained a legal security, incurred the
suspicion of fraud, and paid the forfeit of his neglect. But the
ingenuity of the civilians successfully labored to convert simple
engagements into the form of solemn stipulations. The praetors,
as the guardians of social faith, admitted every rational
evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act, which in their
tribunal produced an equitable obligation, and for which they
gave an action and a remedy. 160

159 (return) [ How much is the cool, rational evidence of
Polybius (l. vi. p. 693, l. xxxi. p. 1459, 1460) superior to
vague, indiscriminate applause—omnium maxime et praecipue fidem
coluit, (A. Gellius, xx. l.)]

160 (return) [ The Jus Praetorium de Pactis et Transactionibus is
a separate and satisfactory treatise of Gerard Noodt, (Opp. tom.
i. p. 483—564.) And I will here observe, that the universities of
Holland and Brandenburg, in the beginning of the present century,
appear to have studied the civil law on the most just and liberal
principles. * Note: Simple agreements (pacta) formed as valid an
obligation as a solemn contract. Only an action, or the right to
a direct judicial prosecution, was not permitted in every case of
compact. In all other respects, the judge was bound to maintain
an agreement made by pactum. The stipulation was a form common to
every kind of agreement, by which the right of action was given
to this.—W.]

2. The obligations of the second class, as they were contracted
by the delivery of a thing, are marked by the civilians with the
epithet of real. 161 A grateful return is due to the author of a
benefit; and whoever is intrusted with the property of another,
has bound himself to the sacred duty of restitution. In the case
of a friendly loan, the merit of generosity is on the side of the
lender only; in a deposit, on the side of the receiver; but in a
pledge, and the rest of the selfish commerce of ordinary life,
the benefit is compensated by an equivalent, and the obligation
to restore is variously modified by the nature of the
transaction. The Latin language very happily expresses the
fundamental difference between the commodatum and the mutuum,
which our poverty is reduced to confound under the vague and
common appellation of a loan. In the former, the borrower was
obliged to restore the same individual thing with which he had
been accommodated for the temporary supply of his wants; in the
latter, it was destined for his use and consumption, and he
discharged this mutual engagement, by substituting the same
specific value according to a just estimation of number, of
weight, and of measure. In the contract of sale, the absolute
dominion is transferred to the purchaser, and he repays the
benefit with an adequate sum of gold or silver, the price and
universal standard of all earthly possessions. The obligation of
another contract, that of location, is of a more complicated
kind. Lands or houses, labor or talents, may be hired for a
definite term; at the expiration of the time, the thing itself
must be restored to the owner, with an additional reward for the
beneficial occupation and employment. In these lucrative
contracts, to which may be added those of partnership and
commissions, the civilians sometimes imagine the delivery of the
object, and sometimes presume the consent of the parties. The
substantial pledge has been refined into the invisible rights of
a mortgage or hypotheca; and the agreement of sale, for a certain
price, imputes, from that moment, the chances of gain or loss to
the account of the purchaser. It may be fairly supposed, that
every man will obey the dictates of his interest; and if he
accepts the benefit, he is obliged to sustain the expense, of the
transaction. In this boundless subject, the historian will
observe the location of land and money, the rent of the one and
the interest of the other, as they materially affect the
prosperity of agriculture and commerce. The landlord was often
obliged to advance the stock and instruments of husbandry, and to
content himself with a partition of the fruits. If the feeble
tenant was oppressed by accident, contagion, or hostile violence,
he claimed a proportionable relief from the equity of the laws:
five years were the customary term, and no solid or costly
improvements could be expected from a farmer, who, at each moment
might be ejected by the sale of the estate. 162 Usury, 163 the
inveterate grievance of the city, had been discouraged by the
Twelve Tables, 164 and abolished by the clamors of the people. It
was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the
discretion of the praetors, and finally determined by the Code of
Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the
moderate profit of four per cent.; six was pronounced to be the
ordinary and legal standard of interest; eight was allowed for
the convenience of manufactures and merchants; twelve was granted
to nautical insurance, which the wiser ancients had not attempted
to define; but, except in this perilous adventure, the practice
of exorbitant usury was severely restrained. 165 The most simple
interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and West; 166
but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the law
of the republic, has resisted with equal firmness the decrees of
the church, and even the prejudices of mankind. 167

161 (return) [ The nice and various subject of contracts by
consent is spread over four books (xvii.—xx.) of the Pandects,
and is one of the parts best deserving of the attention of an
English student. * Note: This is erroneously called “benefits.”
Gibbon enumerates various kinds of contracts, of which some alone
are properly called benefits.—W.]

162 (return) [ The covenants of rent are defined in the Pandects
(l. xix.) and the Code, (l. iv. tit. lxv.) The quinquennium, or
term of five years, appears to have been a custom rather than a
law; but in France all leases of land were determined in nine
years. This limitation was removed only in the year 1775,
(Encyclopedie Methodique, tom. i. de la Jurisprudence, p. 668,
669;) and I am sorry to observe that it yet prevails in the
beauteous and happy country where I am permitted to reside.]

163 (return) [ I might implicitly acquiesce in the sense and
learning of the three books of G. Noodt, de foenore et usuris.
(Opp. tom. i. p. 175—268.) The interpretation of the asses or
centesimoe usuroe at twelve, the unciarioe at one per cent., is
maintained by the best critics and civilians: Noodt, (l. ii. c.
2, p. 207,) Gravina, (Opp. p. 205, &c., 210,) Heineccius,
(Antiquitat. ad Institut. l. iii. tit. xv.,) Montesquieu, (Esprit
des Loix, l. xxii. c. 22, tom. ii. p. 36). Defense de l’Esprit
des Loix, (tom. iii. p. 478, &c.,) and above all, John Frederic
Gronovius (de Pecunia Veteri, l. iii. c. 13, p. 213—227,) and his
three Antexegeses, (p. 455—655), the founder, or at least the
champion, of this probable opinion; which is, however, perplexed
with some difficulties.]

164 (return) [ Primo xii. Tabulis sancitum est ne quis unciario
foenore amplius exerceret, (Tacit. Annal. vi. 16.) Pour peu (says
Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxii. 22) qu’on soit verse dans
l’histoire de Rome, on verra qu’une pareille loi ne devoit pas
etre l’ouvrage des decemvirs. Was Tacitus ignorant—or stupid? But
the wiser and more virtuous patricians might sacrifice their
avarice to their ambition, and might attempt to check the odious
practice by such interest as no lender would accept, and such
penalties as no debtor would incur. * Note: The real nature of
the foenus unciarium has been proved; it amounted in a year of
twelve months to ten per cent. See, in the Magazine for Civil
Law, by M. Hugo, vol. v. p. 180, 184, an article of M. Schrader,
following up the conjectures of Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. tom. ii. p.
431.—W. Compare a very clear account of this question in the
appendix to Mr. Travers Twiss’s Epitome of Niebuhr, vol. ii. p.
257.—M.]

165 (return) [ Justinian has not condescended to give usury a
place in his Institutes; but the necessary rules and restrictions
are inserted in the Pandects (l. xxii. tit. i. ii.) and the Code,
(l. iv. tit. xxxii. xxxiii.)]

166 (return) [ The Fathers are unanimous, (Barbeyrac, Morale des
Peres, p. 144. &c.:) Cyprian, Lactantius, Basil, Chrysostom, (see
his frivolous arguments in Noodt, l. i. c. 7, p. 188,) Gregory of
Nyssa, Ambrose, Jerom, Augustin, and a host of councils and
casuists.]

167 (return) [ Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the
practice or abuse of usury. According to the etymology of foenus,
the principal is supposed to generate the interest: a breed of
barren metal, exclaims Shakespeare—and the stage is the echo of
the public voice.]

3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing
an injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a
personal right and a legitimate action. If the property of
another be intrusted to our care, the requisite degree of care
may rise and fall according to the benefit which we derive from
such temporary possession; we are seldom made responsible for
inevitable accident, but the consequences of a voluntary fault
must always be imputed to the author. 168 A Roman pursued and
recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might
pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing
less than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his
original claim. They were restored by the sentence of the
praetor, and the injury was compensated by double, or threefold,
or even quadruple damages, as the deed had been perpetrated by
secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber had been surprised in
the fact, or detected by a subsequent research. The Aquilian law
169 defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves and
cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest
price was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal
at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude
of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other
valuable effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by
the manners of the times and the sensibility of the individual:
the pain or the disgrace of a word or blow cannot easily be
appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent. The rude jurisprudence of
the decemvirs had confounded all hasty insults, which did not
amount to the fracture of a limb, by condemning the aggressor to
the common penalty of twenty-five asses. But the same
denomination of money was reduced, in three centuries, from a
pound to the weight of half an ounce: and the insolence of a
wealthy Roman indulged himself in the cheap amusement of breaking
and satisfying the law of the twelve tables. Veratius ran through
the streets striking on the face the inoffensive passengers, and
his attendant purse-bearer immediately silenced their clamors by
the legal tender of twenty-five pieces of copper, about the value
of one shilling. 170 The equity of the praetors examined and
estimated the distinct merits of each particular complaint. In
the adjudication of civil damages, the magistrate assumed a right
to consider the various circumstances of time and place, of age
and dignity, which may aggravate the shame and sufferings of the
injured person; but if he admitted the idea of a fine, a
punishment, an example, he invaded the province, though, perhaps,
he supplied the defects, of the criminal law.

168 (return) Sir William Jones has given an ingenious and
rational Essay on the law of Bailment, (London, 1781, p. 127, in
8vo.) He is perhaps the only lawyer equally conversant with the
year-books of Westminster, the Commentaries of Ulpian, the Attic
pleadings of Isaeus, and the sentences of Arabian and Persian
cadhis.]

169 (return) [ Noodt (Opp. tom. i. p. 137—172) has composed a
separate treatise, ad Legem Aquilian, (Pandect. l. ix. tit. ii.)]

170 (return) [ Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic. xx. i.) borrowed this
story from the Commentaries of Q. Labeo on the xii. tables.]

The execution of the Alban dictator, who was dismembered by eight
horses, is represented by Livy as the first and the fast instance
of Roman cruelty in the punishment of the most atrocious crimes.
171 But this act of justice, or revenge, was inflicted on a
foreign enemy in the heat of victory, and at the command of a
single man. The twelve tables afford a more decisive proof of the
national spirit, since they were framed by the wisest of the
senate, and accepted by the free voices of the people; yet these
laws, like the statutes of Draco, 172 are written in characters
of blood. 173 They approve the inhuman and unequal principle of
retaliation; and the forfeit of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth, a limb for a limb, is rigorously exacted, unless the
offender can redeem his pardon by a fine of three hundred pounds
of copper. The decemvirs distributed with much liberality the
slighter chastisements of flagellation and servitude; and nine
crimes of a very different complexion are adjudged worthy of
death.

1. Any act of treason against the state, or of correspondence
with the public enemy. The mode of execution was painful and
ignominious: the head of the degenerate Roman was shrouded in a
veil, his hands were tied behind his back, and after he had been
scourged by the lictor, he was suspended in the midst of the
forum on a cross, or inauspicious tree.

2. Nocturnal meetings in the city; whatever might be the
pretence, of pleasure, or religion, or the public good.

3. The murder of a citizen; for which the common feelings of
mankind demand the blood of the murderer. Poison is still more
odious than the sword or dagger; and we are surprised to
discover, in two flagitious events, how early such subtle
wickedness had infected the simplicity of the republic, and the
chaste virtues of the Roman matrons. 174 The parricide, who
violated the duties of nature and gratitude, was cast into the
river or the sea, enclosed in a sack; and a cock, a viper, a dog,
and a monkey, were successively added, as the most suitable
companions. 175 Italy produces no monkeys; but the want could
never be felt, till the middle of the sixth century first
revealed the guilt of a parricide. 176

4. The malice of an incendiary. After the previous ceremony of
whipping, he himself was delivered to the flames; and in this
example alone our reason is tempted to applaud the justice of
retaliation.

5. Judicial perjury. The corrupt or malicious witness was thrown
headlong from the Tarpeian rock, to expiate his falsehood, which
was rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws,
and the deficiency of written evidence.

6. The corruption of a judge, who accepted bribes to pronounce an
iniquitous sentence.

7. Libels and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the
peace of an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a
worthy chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to
expire under the blows of the executioner. 177

8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor’s
corn. The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres.
But the sylvan deities were less implacable, and the extirpation
of a more valuable tree was compensated by the moderate fine of
twenty-five pounds of copper.

9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the
Latin shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to
extinguish his life, and to remove from their seats his
deep-rooted plantations.

The cruelty of the twelve tables against insolvent debtors still
remains to be told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense
of antiquity to the specious refinements of modern criticism. 178
1781 After the judicial proof or confession of the debt, thirty
days of grace were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the
power of his fellow-citizen. In this private prison, twelve
ounces of rice were his daily food; he might be bound with a
chain of fifteen pounds weight; and his misery was thrice exposed
in the market place, to solicit the compassion of his friends and
countrymen. At the expiration of sixty days, the debt was
discharged by the loss of liberty or life; the insolvent debtor
was either put to death, or sold in foreign slavery beyond the
Tyber: but, if several creditors were alike obstinate and
unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body, and satiate
their revenge by this horrid partition. The advocates for this
savage law have insisted, that it must strongly operate in
deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which they
were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this
salutary terror, by proving that no creditor could be found to
exact this unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners
of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code of the
decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses,
and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate
rigor. The Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates
from inflicting on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal,
punishment; and the obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and
perhaps truly, ascribed to the spirit, not of patrician, but of
regal, tyranny.

171 (return) [ The narrative of Livy (i. 28) is weighty and
solemn. At tu, Albane, maneres, is a harsh reflection, unworthy
of Virgil’s humanity, (Aeneid, viii. 643.) Heyne, with his usual
good taste, observes that the subject was too horrid for the
shield of Aencas, (tom. iii. p. 229.)]

172 (return) [ The age of Draco (Olympiad xxxix. l) is fixed by
Sir John Marsham (Canon Chronicus, p. 593—596) and Corsini,
(Fasti Attici, tom. iii. p. 62.) For his laws, see the writers on
the government of Athens, Sigonius, Meursius, Potter, &c.]

173 (return) [ The viith, de delictis, of the xii. tables is
delineated by Gravina, (Opp. p. 292, 293, with a commentary, p.
214—230.) Aulus Gellius (xx. 1) and the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum
et Romanarum afford much original information.]

174 (return) [ Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious aeras,
of 3000 persons accused, and of 190 noble matrons convicted, of
the crime of poisoning, (xl. 43, viii. 18.) Mr. Hume
discriminates the ages of private and public virtue, (Essays,
vol. i. p. 22, 23.) I would rather say that such ebullitions of
mischief (as in France in the year 1680) are accidents and
prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a nation.]

175 (return) [ The xii. tables and Cicero (pro Roscio Amerino, c.
25, 26) are content with the sack; Seneca (Excerpt. Controvers. v
4) adorns it with serpents; Juvenal pities the guiltless monkey
(innoxia simia—156.) Adrian (apud Dositheum Magistrum, l. iii. c.
p. 874—876, with Schulting’s Note,) Modestinus, (Pandect. xlviii.
tit. ix. leg. 9,) Constantine, (Cod. l. ix. tit. xvii.,) and
Justinian, (Institut. l. iv. tit. xviii.,) enumerate all the
companions of the parricide. But this fanciful execution was
simplified in practice. Hodie tamen viv exuruntur vel ad bestias
dantur, (Paul. Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xxiv p. 512, edit.
Schulting.)]

176 (return) [ The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after
the second Punic war, (Plutarch, in Romulo, tom. i. p. 54.)
During the Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first
matricide, (Liv. Epitom. l. lxviii.)]

177 (return) [ Horace talks of the formidine fustis, (l. ii.
epist. ii. 154,) but Cicero (de Republica, l. iv. apud Augustin.
de Civitat. Dei, ix. 6, in Fragment. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 393,
edit. Olivet) affirms that the decemvirs made libels a capital
offence: cum perpaucas res capite sanxisent—perpaucus!]

178 (return) [ Bynkershoek (Observat. Juris Rom. l. i. c. 1, in
Opp. tom. i. p. 9, 10, 11) labors to prove that the creditors
divided not the body, but the price, of the insolvent debtor. Yet
his interpretation is one perpetual harsh metaphor; nor can he
surmount the Roman authorities of Quintilian, Caecilius,
Favonius, and Tertullian. See Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic. xxi.]

1781 (return) [ Hugo (Histoire du Droit Romain, tom. i. p. 234)
concurs with Gibbon See Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 313.—M.]

In the absence of penal laws, and the insufficiency of civil
actions, the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly
maintained by the private jurisdiction of the citizens. The
malefactors who replenish our jails are the outcasts of society,
and the crimes for which they suffer may be commonly ascribed to
ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For the perpetration of
similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim and abuse the
sacred character of a member of the republic: but, on the proof
or suspicion of guilt, the slave, or the stranger, was nailed to
a cross; and this strict and summary justice might be exercised
without restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome.

Each family contained a domestic tribunal, which was not
confined, like that of the praetor, to the cognizance of external
actions: virtuous principles and habits were inculcated by the
discipline of education; and the Roman father was accountable to
the state for the manners of his children, since he disposed,
without appeal, of their life, their liberty, and their
inheritance. In some pressing emergencies, the citizen was
authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The consent of
the Jewish, the Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the
slaughter of the nocturnal thief; though in open daylight a
robber could not be slain without some previous evidence of
danger and complaint. Whoever surprised an adulterer in his
nuptial bed might freely exercise his revenge; 179 the most
bloody and wanton outrage was excused by the provocation; 180 nor
was it before the reign of Augustus that the husband was reduced
to weigh the rank of the offender, or that the parent was
condemned to sacrifice his daughter with her guilty seducer.
After the expulsion of the kings, the ambitious Roman, who should
dare to assume their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted
to the infernal gods: each of his fellow-citizens was armed with
the sword of justice; and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to
gratitude or prudence, had been already sanctified by the
judgment of his country. 181 The barbarous practice of wearing
arms in the midst of peace, 182 and the bloody maxims of honor,
were unknown to the Romans; and, during the two purest ages, from
the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars,
the city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted
with atrocious crimes. The failure of penal laws was more
sensibly felt, when every vice was inflamed by faction at home
and dominion abroad. In the time of Cicero, each private citizen
enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each minister of the republic
was exalted to the temptations of regal power, and their virtues
are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous fruits of
nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust,
rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be
sued for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand
pounds sterling; and such was the temper of the laws, the judges,
and perhaps the accuser himself, 183 that, on refunding a
thirteenth part of his plunder, Verres could retire to an easy
and luxurious exile. 184

179 (return) [ The first speech of Lysias (Reiske, Orator. Graec.
tom. v. p. 2—48) is in defence of a husband who had killed the
adulterer. The rights of husbands and fathers at Rome and Athens
are discussed with much learning by Dr. Taylor, (Lectiones
Lysiacae, c. xi. in Reiske, tom. vi. p. 301—308.)]

180 (return) [ See Casaubon ad Athenaeum, l. i. c. 5, p. 19.
Percurrent raphanique mugilesque, (Catull. p. 41, 42, edit.
Vossian.) Hunc mugilis intrat, (Juvenal. Satir. x. 317.) Hunc
perminxere calones, (Horat l. i. Satir. ii. 44.) Familiae
stuprandum dedit.. fraudi non fuit, (Val. Maxim. l. vi. c. l, No.
13.)]

181 (return) [ This law is noticed by Livy (ii. 8) and Plutarch,
(in Publiccla, tom. i. p. 187,) and it fully justifies the public
opinion on the death of Caesar which Suetonius could publish
under the Imperial government. Jure caesus existimatur, (in
Julio, c. 76.) Read the letters that passed between Cicero and
Matius a few months after the ides of March (ad Fam. xi. 27,
28.)]

182 (return) [ Thucydid. l. i. c. 6 The historian who considers
this circumstance as the test of civilization, would disdain the
barbarism of a European court]

183 (return) [ He first rated at millies (800,000 L.) the damages
of Sicily, (Divinatio in Caecilium, c. 5,) which he afterwards
reduced to quadringenties, (320,000 L.—1 Actio in Verrem, c. 18,)
and was finally content with tricies, (24,000l L.) Plutarch (in
Ciceron. tom. iii. p. 1584) has not dissembled the popular
suspicion and report.]

184 (return) [ Verres lived near thirty years after his trial,
till the second triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste
of Mark Antony for the sake of his Corinthian plate, (Plin. Hist.
Natur. xxxiv. 3.)]

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes
and punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst
of his sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license,
rather than to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in
the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred
citizens. 185 But, in the character of a legislator, he respected
the prejudices of the times; and, instead of pronouncing a
sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who
betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla
was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of
exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction
of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards the Pompeian and
Julian, laws introduced a new system of criminal jurisprudence;
186 and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised their
increasing rigor under the names of the original authors. But the
invention and frequent use of extraordinary pains proceeded from
the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In
the condemnation of illustrious Romans, the senate was always
prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial
and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to
maintain the peace of their province, by the arbitrary and rigid
administration of justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in
the extent of empire, and the Spanish malefactor, who claimed the
privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the command of Galba on a
fairer and more lofty cross. 187 Occasional rescripts issued from
the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or
importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of
a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for
honorable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burnt,
or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the
amphitheatre. Armed robbers were pursued and extirpated as the
enemies of society; the driving away horses or cattle was made a
capital offence; 188 but simple theft was uniformly considered as
a mere civil and private injury. The degrees of guilt, and the
modes of punishment, were too often determined by the discretion
of the rulers, and the subject was left in ignorance of the legal
danger which he might incur by every action of his life.

185 (return) [ Such is the number assigned by Valer’us Maximus,
(l. ix. c. 2, No. 1,) Florus (iv. 21) distinguishes 2000 senators
and knights. Appian (de Bell. Civil. l. i. c. 95, tom. ii. p.
133, edit. Schweighauser) more accurately computes forty victims
of the senatorian rank, and 1600 of the equestrian census or
order.]

186 (return) [ For the penal laws (Leges Corneliae, Pompeiae,
Julae, of Sylla, Pompey, and the Caesars) see the sentences of
Paulus, (l. iv. tit. xviii.—xxx. p. 497—528, edit. Schulting,)
the Gregorian Code, (Fragment. l. xix. p. 705, 706, in
Schulting,) the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, (tit.
i.—xv.,) the Theodosian Code, (l. ix.,) the Code of Justinian,
(l. ix.,) the Pandects, (xlviii.,) the Institutes, (l. iv. tit.
xviii.,) and the Greek version of Theophilus, (p. 917—926.)]

187 (return) [ It was a guardian who had poisoned his ward. The
crime was atrocious: yet the punishment is reckoned by Suetonius
(c. 9) among the acts in which Galba showed himself acer,
vehemens, et in delictis coercendis immodicus.]

188 (return) [ The abactores or abigeatores, who drove one horse,
or two mares or oxen, or five hogs, or ten goats, were subject to
capital punishment, (Paul, Sentent. Recept. l. iv. tit. xviii. p.
497, 498.) Hadrian, (ad Concil. Baeticae,) most severe where the
offence was most frequent, condemns the criminals, ad gladium,
ludi damnationem, (Ulpian, de Officio Proconsulis, l. viii. in
Collatione Legum Mosaic. et Rom. tit. xi p. 235.)]

A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and
jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate
each other; but, as often as they differ, a prudent legislator
appreciates the guilt and punishment according to the measure of
social injury. On this principle, the most daring attack on the
life and property of a private citizen is judged less atrocious
than the crime of treason or rebellion, which invades the majesty
of the republic: the obsequious civilians unanimously pronounced,
that the republic is contained in the person of its chief; and
the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by the incessant
diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the sexes
may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a
source of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes,
the family of the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery
of the wife. The wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of
revenge, applied to this domestic offence the animadversion of
the laws: and the guilty parties, after the payment of heavy
forfeitures and fines, were condemned to long or perpetual exile
in two separate islands. 189 Religion pronounces an equal censure
against the infidelity of the husband; but, as it is not
accompanied by the same civil effects, the wife was never
permitted to vindicate her wrongs; 190 and the distinction of
simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important in the
canon law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the Code and the
Pandects. I touch with reluctance, and despatch with impatience,
a more odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature
abominates the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the
example of the Etruscans 191 and Greeks: 192 and in the mad abuse
of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is innocent was
deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, 193 which had been
extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished by the
lapse of time and the multitude of criminals. By this law, the
rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous youth, was
compensated, as a personal injury, by the poor damages of ten
thousand sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be
slain by the resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to
believe, that at Rome, as in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate
deserter of his sex was degraded from the honors and the rights
of a citizen. 194 But the practice of vice was not discouraged by
the severity of opinion: the indelible stain of manhood was
confounded with the more venial transgressions of fornication and
adultery, nor was the licentious lover exposed to the same
dishonor which he impressed on the male or female partner of his
guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal, 195 the poets accuse and
celebrate the degeneracy of the times; and the reformation of
manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the
civilians till the most virtuous of the Caesars proscribed the
sin against nature as a crime against society. 196

189 (return) [ Till the publication of the Julius Paulus of
Schulting, (l. ii. tit. xxvi. p. 317—323,) it was affirmed and
believed that the Julian laws punished adultery with death; and
the mistake arose from the fraud or error of Tribonian. Yet
Lipsius had suspected the truth from the narratives of Tacitus,
(Annal. ii. 50, iii. 24, iv. 42,) and even from the practice of
Augustus, who distinguished the treasonable frailties of his
female kindred.]

190 (return) [ In cases of adultery, Severus confined to the
husband the right of public accusation, (Cod. Justinian, l. ix.
tit. ix. leg. 1.) Nor is this privilege unjust—so different are
the effects of male or female infidelity.]

191 (return) [ Timon (l. i.) and Theopompus (l. xliii. apud
Athenaeum, l. xii. p. 517) describe the luxury and lust of the
Etruscans. About the same period (A. U. C. 445) the Roman youth
studied in Etruria, (liv. ix. 36.)]

192 (return) [ The Persians had been corrupted in the same
school, (Herodot. l. i. c. 135.) A curious dissertation might be
formed on the introduction of paederasty after the time of Homer,
its progress among the Greeks of Asia and Europe, the vehemence
of their passions, and the thin device of virtue and friendship
which amused the philosophers of Athens. But scelera ostendi
oportet dum puniuntur, abscondi flagitia.]

193 (return) [ The name, the date, and the provisions of this law
are equally doubtful, (Gravina, Opp. p. 432, 433. Heineccius,
Hist. Jur. Rom. No. 108. Ernesti, Clav. Ciceron. in Indice
Legum.) But I will observe that the nefanda Venus of the honest
German is styled aversa by the more polite Italian.]

194 (return) [ See the oration of Aeschines against the catamite
Timarchus, (in Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom. iii. p. 21—184.)]

195 (return) [ A crowd of disgraceful passages will force
themselves on the memory of the classic reader: I will only
remind him of the cool declaration of Ovid:— Odi concubitus qui
non utrumque resolvant. Hoc est quod puerum tangar amore minus.]

196 (return) [ Aelius Lampridius, in Vit. Heliogabal. in Hist.
August p. 112 Aurelius Victor, in Philippo, Codex Theodos. l. ix.
tit. vii. leg. 7, and Godefroy’s Commentary, tom. iii. p. 63.
Theodosius abolished the subterraneous brothels of Rome, in which
the prostitution of both sexes was acted with impunity.]

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

A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose
in the empire with the religion of Constantine. 197 The laws of
Moses were received as the divine original of justice, and the
Christian princes adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of
moral and religious turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be
a capital offence: the frailty of the sexes was assimilated to
poison or assassination, to sorcery or parricide; the same
penalties were inflicted on the passive and active guilt of
paederasty; and all criminals of free or servile condition were
either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging
flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of
mankind; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general
and pious indignation: the impure manners of Greece still
prevailed in the cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by
the celibacy of the monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the
punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse was
only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two
years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband.
But the same emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of
unmanly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be
excused by the purity of his motives. 198 In defiance of every
principle of justice, he stretched to past as well as future
offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous
allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A painful
death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument,
or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most
exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the propriety of
the execution, since the criminals would have lost their hands,
had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace
and agony, two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of
Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of Constantinople,
while their brethren were admonished, by the voice of a crier, to
observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity of
their character. Perhaps these prelates were innocent. A sentence
of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and
suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt of the
green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was
presumed by the judges, and paederasty became the crime of those
to whom no crime could be imputed. A French philosopher 199 has
dared to remark that whatever is secret must be doubtful, and
that our natural horror of vice may be abused as an engine of
tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same writer, that a
legislator may confide in the taste and reason of mankind, is
impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and extent
of the disease. 200

197 (return) [ See the laws of Constantine and his successors
against adultery, sodomy &c., in the Theodosian, (l. ix. tit.
vii. leg. 7, l. xi. tit. xxxvi leg. 1, 4) and Justinian Codes,
(l. ix. tit. ix. leg. 30, 31.) These princes speak the language
of passion as well as of justice, and fraudulently ascribe their
own severity to the first Caesars.]

198 (return) [ Justinian, Novel. lxxvii. cxxxiv. cxli. Procopius
in Anecdot. c. 11, 16, with the notes of Alemannus. Theophanes,
p. 151. Cedrenus. p. 688. Zonaras, l. xiv. p. 64.]

199 (return) [ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 6. That
eloquent philosopher conciliates the rights of liberty and of
nature, which should never be placed in opposition to each
other.]

200 (return) [ For the corruption of Palestine, 2000 years before
the Christian aera, see the history and laws of Moses. Ancient
Gaul is stigmatized by Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. v. p. 356,)
China by the Mahometar and Christian travellers, (Ancient
Relations of India and China, p. 34 translated by Renaudot, and
his bitter critic the Pere Premare, Lettres Edifiantes, tom. xix.
p. 435,) and native America by the Spanish historians,
(Garcilasso de la Vega, l. iii. c. 13, Rycaut’s translation; and
Dictionnaire de Bayle, tom. iii. p. 88.) I believe, and hope,
that the negroes, in their own country, were exempt from this
moral pestilence.]

The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed, in all criminal
cases, the invaluable privilege of being tried by their country.
201 1. The administration of justice is the most ancient office
of a prince: it was exercised by the Roman kings, and abused by
Tarquin; who alone, without law or council, pronounced his
arbitrary judgments. The first consuls succeeded to this regal
prerogative; but the sacred right of appeal soon abolished the
jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all public causes were
decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a wild
democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the
essential principles, of justice: the pride of despotism was
envenomed by plebeian envy, and the heroes of Athens might
sometimes applaud the happiness of the Persian, whose fate
depended on the caprice of a single tyrant. Some salutary
restraints, imposed by the people or their own passions, were at
once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the
Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates.

A vote of the thirty five tribes could inflict a fine; but the
cognizance of all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental
law to the assembly of the centuries, in which the weight of
influence and property was sure to preponderate. Repeated
proclamations and adjournments were interposed, to allow time for
prejudice and resentment to subside: the whole proceeding might
be annulled by a seasonable omen, or the opposition of a tribune;
and such popular trials were commonly less formidable to
innocence than they were favorable to guilt. But this union of
the judicial and legislative powers left it doubtful whether the
accused party was pardoned or acquitted; and, in the defence of
an illustrious client, the orators of Rome and Athens address
their arguments to the policy and benevolence, as well as to the
justice, of their sovereign. 2. The task of convening the
citizens for the trial of each offender became more difficult, as
the citizens and the offenders continually multiplied; and the
ready expedient was adopted of delegating the jurisdiction of the
people to the ordinary magistrates, or to extraordinary
inquisitors. In the first ages these questions were rare and
occasional. In the beginning of the seventh century of Rome they
were made perpetual: four praetors were annually empowered to sit
in judgment on the state offences of treason, extortion,
peculation, and bribery; and Sylla added new praetors and new
questions for those crimes which more directly injure the safety
of individuals. By these inquisitors the trial was prepared and
directed; but they could only pronounce the sentence of the
majority of judges, who with some truth, and more prejudice, have
been compared to the English juries. 202 To discharge this
important, though burdensome office, an annual list of ancient
and respectable citizens was formed by the praetor. After many
constitutional struggles, they were chosen in equal numbers from
the senate, the equestrian order, and the people; four hundred
and fifty were appointed for single questions; and the various
rolls or decuries of judges must have contained the names of some
thousand Romans, who represented the judicial authority of the
state. In each particular cause, a sufficient number was drawn
from the urn; their integrity was guarded by an oath; the mode of
ballot secured their independence; the suspicion of partiality
was removed by the mutual challenges of the accuser and
defendant; and the judges of Milo, by the retrenchment of fifteen
on each side, were reduced to fifty-one voices or tablets, of
acquittal, of condemnation, or of favorable doubt. 203 3. In his
civil jurisdiction, the praetor of the city was truly a judge,
and almost a legislator; but, as soon as he had prescribed the
action of law, he often referred to a delegate the determination
of the fact. With the increase of legal proceedings, the tribunal
of the centumvirs, in which he presided, acquired more weight and
reputation. But whether he acted alone, or with the advice of his
council, the most absolute powers might be trusted to a
magistrate who was annually chosen by the votes of the people.
The rules and precautions of freedom have required some
explanation; the order of despotism is simple and inanimate.
Before the age of Justinian, or perhaps of Diocletian, the
decuries of Roman judges had sunk to an empty title: the humble
advice of the assessors might be accepted or despised; and in
each tribunal the civil and criminal jurisdiction was
administered by a single magistrate, who was raised and disgraced
by the will of the emperor.

201 (return) [The important subject of the public questions and
judgments at Rome, is explained with much learning, and in a
classic style, by Charles Sigonius, (l. iii. de Judiciis, in Opp.
tom. iii. p. 679—864;) and a good abridgment may be found in the
Republique Romaine of Beaufort, (tom. ii. l. v. p. 1—121.) Those
who wish for more abstruse law may study Noodt, (de Jurisdictione
et Imperio Libri duo, tom. i. p. 93—134,) Heineccius, (ad
Pandect. l. i. et ii. ad Institut. l. iv. tit. xvii Element. ad
Antiquitat.) and Gravina (Opp. 230—251.)]

202 (return) [ The office, both at Rome and in England, must be
considered as an occasional duty, and not a magistracy, or
profession. But the obligation of a unanimous verdict is peculiar
to our laws, which condemn the jurymen to undergo the torture
from whence they have exempted the criminal.]

203 (return) [ We are indebted for this interesting fact to a
fragment of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of
Tiberius. The loss of his Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero
has deprived us of a valuable fund of historical and legal
knowledge.]

A Roman accused of any capital crime might prevent the sentence
of the law by voluntary exile, or death. Till his guilt had been
legally proved, his innocence was presumed, and his person was
free: till the votes of the last century had been counted and
declared, he might peaceably secede to any of the allied cities
of Italy, or Greece, or Asia. 204 His fame and fortunes were
preserved, at least to his children, by this civil death; and he
might still be happy in every rational and sensual enjoyment, if
a mind accustomed to the ambitious tumult of Rome could support
the uniformity and silence of Rhodes or Athens. A bolder effort
was required to escape from the tyranny of the Caesars; but this
effort was rendered familiar by the maxims of the stoics, the
example of the bravest Romans, and the legal encouragements of
suicide. The bodies of condemned criminals were exposed to public
ignominy, and their children, a more serious evil, were reduced
to poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But, if the
victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince
or senate, their courage and despatch were recompensed by the
applause of the public, the decent honors of burial, and the
validity of their testaments. 205 The exquisite avarice and
cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of
this last consolation, and it was still denied even by the
clemency of the Antonines. A voluntary death, which, in the case
of a capital offence, intervened between the accusation and the
sentence, was admitted as a confession of guilt, and the spoils
of the deceased were seized by the inhuman claims of the
treasury. 206 Yet the civilians have always respected the natural
right of a citizen to dispose of his life; and the posthumous
disgrace invented by Tarquin, 207 to check the despair of his
subjects, was never revived or imitated by succeeding tyrants.
The powers of this world have indeed lost their dominion over him
who is resolved on death; and his arm can only be restrained by
the religious apprehension of a future state. Suicides are
enumerated by Virgil among the unfortunate, rather than the
guilty; 208 and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could
not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the
precepts of the gospel, or the church, have at length imposed a
pious servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to
expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the
executioner.

204 (return) [Footnote 204: Polyb. l. vi. p. 643. The extension
of the empire and city of Rome obliged the exile to seek a more
distant place of retirement.]

205 (return) [ Qui de se statuebant, humabanta corpora, manebant
testamenta; pretium festinandi. Tacit. Annal. vi. 25, with the
Notes of Lipsius.]

206 (return) [ Julius Paulus, (Sentent. Recept. l. v. tit. xii.
p. 476,) the Pandects, (xlviii. tit. xxi.,) the Code, (l. ix.
tit. l.,) Bynkershoek, (tom. i. p. 59, Observat. J. C. R. iv. 4,)
and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxix. c. ix.,) define the
civil limitations of the liberty and privileges of suicide. The
criminal penalties are the production of a later and darker age.]

207 (return) [ Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxvi. 24. When he fatigued his
subjects in building the Capitol, many of the laborers were
provoked to despatch themselves: he nailed their dead bodies to
crosses.]

208 (return) [ The sole resemblance of a violent and premature
death has engaged Virgil (Aeneid, vi. 434—439) to confound
suicides with infants, lovers, and persons unjustly condemned.
Heyne, the best of his editors, is at a loss to deduce the idea,
or ascertain the jurisprudence, of the Roman poet.]

The penal statutes form a very small proportion of the sixty-two
books of the Code and Pandects; and in all judicial proceedings,
the life or death of a citizen is determined with less caution or
delay than the most ordinary question of covenant or inheritance.
This singular distinction, though something may be allowed for
the urgent necessity of defending the peace of society, is
derived from the nature of criminal and civil jurisprudence. Our
duties to the state are simple and uniform: the law by which he
is condemned is inscribed not only on brass or marble, but on the
conscience of the offender, and his guilt is commonly proved by
the testimony of a single fact. But our relations to each other
are various and infinite; our obligations are created, annulled,
and modified, by injuries, benefits, and promises; and the
interpretation of voluntary contracts and testaments, which are
often dictated by fraud or ignorance, affords a long and
laborious exercise to the sagacity of the judge. The business of
life is multiplied by the extent of commerce and dominion, and
the residence of the parties in the distant provinces of an
empire is productive of doubt, delay, and inevitable appeals from
the local to the supreme magistrate. Justinian, the Greek emperor
of Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the
Latin shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the
Tyber. In a period of thirteen hundred years, the laws had
reluctantly followed the changes of government and manners; and
the laudable desire of conciliating ancient names with recent
institutions destroyed the harmony, and swelled the magnitude, of
the obscure and irregular system. The laws which excuse, on any
occasions, the ignorance of their subjects, confess their own
imperfections: the civil jurisprudence, as it was abridged by
Justinian, still continued a mysterious science, and a profitable
trade, and the innate perplexity of the study was involved in
tenfold darkness by the private industry of the practitioners.
The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the
prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or
prudence of the claimants. Such costly justice might tend to
abate the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves
only to increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the
misery of the poor. By these dilatory and expensive proceedings,
the wealthy pleader obtains a more certain advantage than he
could hope from the accidental corruption of his judge. The
experience of an abuse, from which our own age and country are
not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke a generous
indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our
elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a
Turkish cadhi. Our calmer reflection will suggest, that such
forms and delays are necessary to guard the person and property
of the citizen; that the discretion of the judge is the first
engine of tyranny; and that the laws of a free people should
foresee and determine every question that may probably arise in
the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the
government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and
servitude; and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the
multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their
master.

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

During the last years of Justinian, his infirm mind was devoted
to heavenly contemplation, and he neglected the business of the
lower world. His subjects were impatient of the long continuance
of his life and reign: yet all who were capable of reflection
apprehended the moment of his death, which might involve the
capital in tumult, and the empire in civil war. Seven nephews 1
of the childless monarch, the sons or grandsons of his brother
and sister, had been educated in the splendor of a princely
fortune; they had been shown in high commands to the provinces
and armies; their characters were known, their followers were
zealous, and, as the jealousy of age postponed the declaration of
a successor, they might expect with equal hopes the inheritance
of their uncle. He expired in his palace, after a reign of
thirty-eight years; and the decisive opportunity was embraced by
the friends of Justin, the son of Vigilantia. 2 At the hour of
midnight, his domestics were awakened by an importunate crowd,
who thundered at his door, and obtained admittance by revealing
themselves to be the principal members of the senate. These
welcome deputies announced the recent and momentous secret of the
emperor’s decease; reported, or perhaps invented, his dying
choice of the best beloved and most deserving of his nephews, and
conjured Justin to prevent the disorders of the multitude, if
they should perceive, with the return of light, that they were
left without a master. After composing his countenance to
surprise, sorrow, and decent modesty, Justin, by the advice of
his wife Sophia, submitted to the authority of the senate. He was
conducted with speed and silence to the palace; the guards
saluted their new sovereign; and the martial and religious rites
of his coronation were diligently accomplished. By the hands of
the proper officers he was invested with the Imperial garments,
the red buskins, white tunic, and purple robe.

A fortunate soldier, whom he instantly promoted to the rank of
tribune, encircled his neck with a military collar; four robust
youths exalted him on a shield; he stood firm and erect to
receive the adoration of his subjects; and their choice was
sanctified by the benediction of the patriarch, who imposed the
diadem on the head of an orthodox prince. The hippodrome was
already filled with innumerable multitudes; and no sooner did the
emperor appear on his throne, than the voices of the blue and the
green factions were confounded in the same loyal acclamations. In
the speeches which Justin addressed to the senate and people, he
promised to correct the abuses which had disgraced the age of his
predecessor, displayed the maxims of a just and beneficent
government, and declared that, on the approaching calends of
January, 3 he would revive in his own person the name and liberty
of a Roman consul. The immediate discharge of his uncle’s debts
exhibited a solid pledge of his faith and generosity: a train of
porters, laden with bags of gold, advanced into the midst of the
hippodrome, and the hopeless creditors of Justinian accepted this
equitable payment as a voluntary gift. Before the end of three
years, his example was imitated and surpassed by the empress
Sophia, who delivered many indigent citizens from the weight of
debt and usury: an act of benevolence the best entitled to
gratitude, since it relieves the most intolerable distress; but
in which the bounty of a prince is the most liable to be abused
by the claims of prodigality and fraud. 4

1 (return) [ See the family of Justin and Justinian in the
Familiae Byzantine of Ducange, p. 89—101. The devout civilians,
Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian. p. 131) and Heineccius (Hist. Juris.
Roman. p. 374) have since illustrated the genealogy of their
favorite prince.]

2 (return) [ In the story of Justin’s elevation I have translated
into simple and concise prose the eight hundred verses of the two
first books of Corippus, de Laudibus Justini Appendix Hist.
Byzant. p. 401—416 Rome 1777.]

3 (return) [ It is surprising how Pagi (Critica. in Annal. Baron.
tom. ii. p 639) could be tempted by any chronicles to contradict
the plain and decisive text of Corippus, (vicina dona, l. ii.
354, vicina dies, l. iv. 1,) and to postpone, till A.D. 567, the
consulship of Justin.]

4 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 205. Whenever Cedrenus or
Zonaras are mere transcribers, it is superfluous to allege their
testimony.]

On the seventh day of his reign, Justin gave audience to the
ambassadors of the Avars, and the scene was decorated to impress
the Barbarians with astonishment, veneration, and terror. From
the palace gate, the spacious courts and long porticos were lined
with the lofty crests and gilt bucklers of the guards, who
presented their spears and axes with more confidence than they
would have shown in a field of battle. The officers who exercised
the power, or attended the person, of the prince, were attired in
their richest habits, and arranged according to the military and
civil order of the hierarchy. When the veil of the sanctuary was
withdrawn, the ambassadors beheld the emperor of the East on his
throne, beneath a canopy, or dome, which was supported by four
columns, and crowned with a winged figure of Victory. In the
first emotions of surprise, they submitted to the servile
adoration of the Byzantine court; but as soon as they rose from
the ground, Targetius, the chief of the embassy, expressed the
freedom and pride of a Barbarian. He extolled, by the tongue of
his interpreter, the greatness of the chagan, by whose clemency
the kingdoms of the South were permitted to exist, whose
victorious subjects had traversed the frozen rivers of Scythia,
and who now covered the banks of the Danube with innumerable
tents. The late emperor had cultivated, with annual and costly
gifts, the friendship of a grateful monarch, and the enemies of
Rome had respected the allies of the Avars. The same prudence
would instruct the nephew of Justinian to imitate the liberality
of his uncle, and to purchase the blessings of peace from an
invincible people, who delighted and excelled in the exercise of
war. The reply of the emperor was delivered in the same strain of
haughty defiance, and he derived his confidence from the God of
the Christians, the ancient glory of Rome, and the recent
triumphs of Justinian. “The empire,” said he, “abounds with men
and horses, and arms sufficient to defend our frontiers, and to
chastise the Barbarians. You offer aid, you threaten hostilities:
we despise your enmity and your aid. The conquerors of the Avars
solicit our alliance; shall we dread their fugitives and exiles?
5 The bounty of our uncle was granted to your misery, to your
humble prayers. From us you shall receive a more important
obligation, the knowledge of your own weakness. Retire from our
presence; the lives of ambassadors are safe; and, if you return
to implore our pardon, perhaps you will taste of our
benevolence.” 6 On the report of his ambassadors, the chagan was
awed by the apparent firmness of a Roman emperor of whose
character and resources he was ignorant. Instead of executing his
threats against the Eastern empire, he marched into the poor and
savage countries of Germany, which were subject to the dominion
of the Franks. After two doubtful battles, he consented to
retire, and the Austrasian king relieved the distress of his camp
with an immediate supply of corn and cattle. 7 Such repeated
disappointments had chilled the spirit of the Avars, and their
power would have dissolved away in the Sarmatian desert, if the
alliance of Alboin, king of the Lombards, had not given a new
object to their arms, and a lasting settlement to their wearied
fortunes.

5 (return) [ Corippus, l. iii. 390. The unquestionable sense
relates to the Turks, the conquerors of the Avars; but the word
scultor has no apparent meaning, and the sole Ms. of Corippus,
from whence the first edition (1581, apud Plantin) was printed,
is no longer visible. The last editor, Foggini of Rome, has
inserted the conjectural emendation of soldan: but the proofs of
Ducange, (Joinville, Dissert. xvi. p. 238—240,) for the early use
of this title among the Turks and Persians, are weak or
ambiguous. And I must incline to the authority of D’Herbelot,
(Bibliotheque Orient. p. 825,) who ascribes the word to the
Arabic and Chaldaean tongues, and the date to the beginning of
the xith century, when it was bestowed by the khalif of Bagdad on
Mahmud, prince of Gazna, and conqueror of India.]

6 (return) [ For these characteristic speeches, compare the verse
of Corippus (l. iii. 251—401) with the prose of Menander,
(Excerpt. Legation. p 102, 103.) Their diversity proves that they
did not copy each other their resemblance, that they drew from a
common original.]

7 (return) [ For the Austrasian war, see Menander (Excerpt.
Legat. p. 110,) Gregory of Tours, (Hist. Franc. l. iv. c 29,) and
Paul the deacon, (de Gest. Langobard. l. ii. c. 10.)]

While Alboin served under his father’s standard, he encountered
in battle, and transpierced with his lance, the rival prince of
the Gepidae. The Lombards, who applauded such early prowess,
requested his father, with unanimous acclamations, that the
heroic youth, who had shared the dangers of the field, might be
admitted to the feast of victory. “You are not unmindful,”
replied the inflexible Audoin, “of the wise customs of our
ancestors. Whatever may be his merit, a prince is incapable of
sitting at table with his father till he has received his arms
from a foreign and royal hand.” Alboin bowed with reverence to
the institutions of his country, selected forty companions, and
boldly visited the court of Turisund, king of the Gepidae, who
embraced and entertained, according to the laws of hospitality,
the murderer of his son. At the banquet, whilst Alboin occupied
the seat of the youth whom he had slain, a tender remembrance
arose in the mind of Turisund. “How dear is that place! how
hateful is that person!” were the words that escaped, with a
sigh, from the indignant father. His grief exasperated the
national resentment of the Gepidae; and Cunimund, his surviving
son, was provoked by wine, or fraternal affection, to the desire
of vengeance. “The Lombards,” said the rude Barbarian, “resemble,
in figure and in smell, the mares of our Sarmatian plains.” And
this insult was a coarse allusion to the white bands which
enveloped their legs. “Add another resemblance,” replied an
audacious Lombard; “you have felt how strongly they kick. Visit
the plain of Asfield, and seek for the bones of thy brother: they
are mingled with those of the vilest animals.” The Gepidae, a
nation of warriors, started from their seats, and the fearless
Alboin, with his forty companions, laid their hands on their
swords. The tumult was appeased by the venerable interposition of
Turisund. He saved his own honor, and the life of his guest; and,
after the solemn rites of investiture, dismissed the stranger in
the bloody arms of his son; the gift of a weeping parent. Alboin
returned in triumph; and the Lombards, who celebrated his
matchless intrepidity, were compelled to praise the virtues of an
enemy. 8 In this extraordinary visit he had probably seen the
daughter of Cunimund, who soon after ascended the throne of the
Gepidae. Her name was Rosamond, an appellation expressive of
female beauty, and which our own history or romance has
consecrated to amorous tales. The king of the Lombards (the
father of Alboin no longer lived) was contracted to the
granddaughter of Clovis; but the restraints of faith and policy
soon yielded to the hope of possessing the fair Rosamond, and of
insulting her family and nation. The arts of persuasion were
tried without success; and the impatient lover, by force and
stratagem, obtained the object of his desires. War was the
consequence which he foresaw and solicited; but the Lombards
could not long withstand the furious assault of the Gepidae, who
were sustained by a Roman army. And, as the offer of marriage was
rejected with contempt, Alboin was compelled to relinquish his
prey, and to partake of the disgrace which he had inflicted on
the house of Cunimund. 9

8 (return) [ Paul Warnefrid, the deacon of Friuli, de Gest.
Langobard. l. i. c. 23, 24. His pictures of national manners,
though rudely sketched are more lively and faithful than those of
Bede, or Gregory of Tours]

9 (return) [ The story is told by an impostor, (Theophylact.
Simocat. l. vi. c. 10;) but he had art enough to build his
fictions on public and notorious facts.]

When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow
that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short
truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his
arms for a new encounter. The strength of Alboin had been found
unequal to the gratification of his love, ambition, and revenge:
he condescended to implore the formidable aid of the chagan; and
the arguments that he employed are expressive of the art and
policy of the Barbarians. In the attack of the Gepidae, he had
been prompted by the just desire of extirpating a people whom
their alliance with the Roman empire had rendered the common
enemies of the nations, and the personal adversaries of the
chagan. If the forces of the Avars and the Lombards should unite
in this glorious quarrel, the victory was secure, and the reward
inestimable: the Danube, the Hebrus, Italy, and Constantinople,
would be exposed, without a barrier, to their invincible arms.
But, if they hesitated or delayed to prevent the malice of the
Romans, the same spirit which had insulted would pursue the Avars
to the extremity of the earth. These specious reasons were heard
by the chagan with coldness and disdain: he detained the Lombard
ambassadors in his camp, protracted the negotiation, and by turns
alleged his want of inclination, or his want of ability, to
undertake this important enterprise. At length he signified the
ultimate price of his alliance, that the Lombards should
immediately present him with a tithe of their cattle; that the
spoils and captives should be equally divided; but that the lands
of the Gepidae should become the sole patrimony of the Avars.
Such hard conditions were eagerly accepted by the passions of
Alboin; and, as the Romans were dissatisfied with the ingratitude
and perfidy of the Gepidae, Justin abandoned that incorrigible
people to their fate, and remained the tranquil spectator of this
unequal conflict. The despair of Cunimund was active and
dangerous. He was informed that the Avars had entered his
confines; but, on the strong assurance that, after the defeat of
the Lombards, these foreign invaders would easily be repelled, he
rushed forwards to encounter the implacable enemy of his name and
family. But the courage of the Gepidae could secure them no more
than an honorable death. The bravest of the nation fell in the
field of battle; the king of the Lombards contemplated with
delight the head of Cunimund; and his skull was fashioned into a
cup to satiate the hatred of the conqueror, or, perhaps, to
comply with the savage custom of his country. 10 After this
victory, no further obstacle could impede the progress of the
confederates, and they faithfully executed the terms of their
agreement. 11 The fair countries of Walachia, Moldavia,
Transylvania, and the other parts of Hungary beyond the Danube,
were occupied, without resistance, by a new colony of Scythians;
and the Dacian empire of the chagans subsisted with splendor
above two hundred and thirty years. The nation of the Gepidae was
dissolved; but, in the distribution of the captives, the slaves
of the Avars were less fortunate than the companions of the
Lombards, whose generosity adopted a valiant foe, and whose
freedom was incompatible with cool and deliberate tyranny. One
moiety of the spoil introduced into the camp of Alboin more
wealth than a Barbarian could readily compute. The fair Rosamond
was persuaded, or compelled, to acknowledge the rights of her
victorious lover; and the daughter of Cunimund appeared to
forgive those crimes which might be imputed to her own
irresistible charms.

10 (return) [ It appears from Strabo, Pliny, and Ammianus
Marcellinus, that the same practice was common among the Scythian
tribes, (Muratori, Scriptores Rer. Italic. tom. i. p. 424.) The
scalps of North America are likewise trophies of valor. The skull
of Cunimund was preserved above two hundred years among the
Lombards; and Paul himself was one of the guests to whom Duke
Ratchis exhibited this cup on a high festival, (l. ii. c. 28.)]

11 (return) [ Paul, l. i. c. 27. Menander, in Excerpt Legat. p.
110, 111.]

The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of
Alboin. In the days of Charlemagne, the Bavarians, the Saxons,
and the other tribes of the Teutonic language, still repeated the
songs which described the heroic virtues, the valor, liberality,
and fortune of the king of the Lombards. 12 But his ambition was
yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror of the Gepidae turned his eyes
from the Danube to the richer banks of the Po, and the Tyber.
Fifteen years had not elapsed, since his subjects, the
confederates of Narses, had visited the pleasant climate of
Italy: the mountains, the rivers, the highways, were familiar to
their memory: the report of their success, perhaps the view of
their spoils, had kindled in the rising generation the flame of
emulation and enterprise. Their hopes were encouraged by the
spirit and eloquence of Alboin: and it is affirmed, that he spoke
to their senses, by producing at the royal feast, the fairest and
most exquisite fruits that grew spontaneously in the garden of
the world. No sooner had he erected his standard, than the native
strength of the Lombard was multiplied by the adventurous youth
of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and
Pannonia had resumed the manners of Barbarians; and the names of
the Gepidae, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Bavarians, may be
distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. 13 Of the Saxons,
the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with
their wives and children, accepted the invitation of Alboin.
Their bravery contributed to his success; but the accession or
the absence of their numbers was not sensibly felt in the
magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion was freely
practised by its respective votaries. The king of the Lombards
had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in
their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion;
while the more stubborn Barbarians sacrificed a she-goat, or
perhaps a captive, to the gods of their fathers. 14 The Lombards,
and their confederates, were united by their common attachment to
a chief, who excelled in all the virtues and vices of a savage
hero; and the vigilance of Alboin provided an ample magazine of
offensive and defensive arms for the use of the expedition. The
portable wealth of the Lombards attended the march: their lands
they cheerfully relinquished to the Avars, on the solemn promise,
which was made and accepted without a smile, that if they failed
in the conquest of Italy, these voluntary exiles should be
reinstated in their former possessions.

12 (return) [ Ut hactenus etiam tam apud Bajoarior um gentem,
quam et Saxmum, sed et alios ejusdem linguae homines..... in
eorum carmini bus celebretur. Paul, l. i. c. 27. He died A.D.
799, (Muratori, in Praefat. tom. i. p. 397.) These German songs,
some of which might be as old as Tacitus, (de Moribus Germ. c.
2,) were compiled and transcribed by Charlemagne. Barbara et
antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella
canebantur scripsit memoriaeque mandavit, (Eginard, in Vit.
Carol. Magn. c. 29, p. 130, 131.) The poems, which Goldast
commends, (Animadvers. ad Eginard. p. 207,) appear to be recent
and contemptible romances.]

13 (return) [ The other nations are rehearsed by Paul, (l. ii. c.
6, 26,) Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. i. dissert. i. p. 4)
has discovered the village of the Bavarians, three miles from
Modena.]

14 (return) [ Gregory the Roman (Dialog. l. i. iii. c. 27, 28,
apud Baron. Annal Eccles. A.D. 579, No. 10) supposes that they
likewise adored this she-goat. I know but of one religion in
which the god and the victim are the same.]

They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the
Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic
victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom
they dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine
court was subservient to the Barbarian cause; and it was for the
ruin of Italy, that the emperor once listened to the complaints
of his subjects. The virtues of Narses were stained with avarice;
and, in his provincial reign of fifteen years, he accumulated a
treasure of gold and silver which surpassed the modesty of a
private fortune. His government was oppressive or unpopular, and
the general discontent was expressed with freedom by the deputies
of Rome. Before the throne of Justinian they boldly declared,
that their Gothic servitude had been more tolerable than the
despotism of a Greek eunuch; and that, unless their tyrant were
instantly removed, they would consult their own happiness in the
choice of a master. The apprehension of a revolt was urged by the
voice of envy and detraction, which had so recently triumphed
over the merit of Belisarius. A new exarch, Longinus, was
appointed to supersede the conqueror of Italy, and the base
motives of his recall were revealed in the insulting mandate of
the empress Sophia, “that he should leave to men the exercise of
arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the
palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the
eunuch.” “I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily
unravel!” is said to have been the reply which indignation and
conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a
slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he
retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the
belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards to chastise the
ingratitude of the prince and people. 15 But the passions of the
people are furious and changeable, and the Romans soon
recollected the merits, or dreaded the resentment, of their
victorious general. By the mediation of the pope, who undertook a
special pilgrimage to Naples, their repentance was accepted; and
Narses, assuming a milder aspect and a more dutiful language,
consented to fix his residence in the Capitol. His death, 16
though in the extreme period of old age, was unseasonable and
premature, since his genius alone could have repaired the last
and fatal error of his life. The reality, or the suspicion, of a
conspiracy disarmed and disunited the Italians. The soldiers
resented the disgrace, and bewailed the loss, of their general.
They were ignorant of their new exarch; and Longinus was himself
ignorant of the state of the army and the province. In the
preceding years Italy had been desolated by pestilence and
famine, and a disaffected people ascribed the calamities of
nature to the guilt or folly of their rulers. 17

15 (return) [ The charge of the deacon against Narses (l. ii. c.
5) may be groundless; but the weak apology of the Cardinal
(Baron. Annal Eccles. A.D. 567, No. 8—12) is rejected by the best
critics—Pagi (tom. ii. p. 639, 640,) Muratori, (Annali d’ Italia,
tom. v. p. 160—163,) and the last editors, Horatius Blancus,
(Script. Rerum Italic. tom. i. p. 427, 428,) and Philip
Argelatus, (Sigon. Opera, tom. ii. p. 11, 12.) The Narses who
assisted at the coronation of Justin (Corippus, l. iii. 221) is
clearly understood to be a different person.]

16 (return) [ The death of Narses is mentioned by Paul, l. ii. c.
11. Anastas. in Vit. Johan. iii. p. 43. Agnellus, Liber
Pontifical. Raven. in Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. ii. part i.
p. 114, 124. Yet I cannot believe with Agnellus that Narses was
ninety-five years of age. Is it probable that all his exploits
were performed at fourscore?]

17 (return) [ The designs of Narses and of the Lombards for the
invasion of Italy are exposed in the last chapter of the first
book, and the seven last chapters of the second book, of Paul the
deacon.]

Whatever might be the grounds of his security, Alboin neither
expected nor encountered a Roman army in the field. He ascended
the Julian Alps, and looked down with contempt and desire on the
fruitful plains to which his victory communicated the perpetual
appellation of Lombardy. A faithful chieftain, and a select band,
were stationed at Forum Julii, the modern Friuli, to guard the
passes of the mountains. The Lombards respected the strength of
Pavia, and listened to the prayers of the Trevisans: their slow
and heavy multitudes proceeded to occupy the palace and city of
Verona; and Milan, now rising from her ashes, was invested by the
powers of Alboin five months after his departure from Pannonia.
Terror preceded his march: he found every where, or he left, a
dreary solitude; and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without
a trial, that the stranger was invincible. Escaping to lakes, or
rocks, or morasses, the affrighted crowds concealed some
fragments of their wealth, and delayed the moment of their
servitude. Paulinus, the patriarch of Aquileia, removed his
treasures, sacred and profane, to the Isle of Grado, 18 and his
successors were adopted by the infant republic of Venice, which
was continually enriched by the public calamities. Honoratus, who
filled the chair of St. Ambrose, had credulously accepted the
faithless offers of a capitulation; and the archbishop, with the
clergy and nobles of Milan, were driven by the perfidy of Alboin
to seek a refuge in the less accessible ramparts of Genoa. Along
the maritime coast, the courage of the inhabitants was supported
by the facility of supply, the hopes of relief, and the power of
escape; but from the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and
Rome the inland regions of Italy became, without a battle or a
siege, the lasting patrimony of the Lombards. The submission of
the people invited the Barbarian to assume the character of a
lawful sovereign, and the helpless exarch was confined to the
office of announcing to the emperor Justin the rapid and
irretrievable loss of his provinces and cities. 19 One city,
which had been diligently fortified by the Goths, resisted the
arms of a new invader; and while Italy was subdued by the flying
detachments of the Lombards, the royal camp was fixed above three
years before the western gate of Ticinum, or Pavia. The same
courage which obtains the esteem of a civilized enemy provokes
the fury of a savage, and the impatient besieger had bound
himself by a tremendous oath, that age, and sex, and dignity,
should be confounded in a general massacre. The aid of famine at
length enabled him to execute his bloody vow; but, as Alboin
entered the gate, his horse stumbled, fell, and could not be
raised from the ground. One of his attendants was prompted by
compassion, or piety, to interpret this miraculous sign of the
wrath of Heaven: the conqueror paused and relented; he sheathed
his sword, and peacefully reposing himself in the palace of
Theodoric, proclaimed to the trembling multitude that they should
live and obey. Delighted with the situation of a city which was
endeared to his pride by the difficulty of the purchase, the
prince of the Lombards disdained the ancient glories of Milan;
and Pavia, during some ages, was respected as the capital of the
kingdom of Italy. 20

18 (return) [ Which from this translation was called New
Aquileia, (Chron. Venet. p. 3.) The patriarch of Grado soon
became the first citizen of the republic, (p. 9, &c.,) but his
seat was not removed to Venice till the year 1450. He is now
decorated with titles and honors; but the genius of the church
has bowed to that of the state, and the government of a Catholic
city is strictly Presbyterian. Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise,
tom. i. p. 156, 157, 161—165. Amelot de la Houssaye, Gouvernement
de Venise, tom. i. p. 256—261.]

19 (return) [ Paul has given a description of Italy, as it was
then divided into eighteen regions, (l. ii. c. 14—24.) The
Dissertatio Chorographica de Italia Medii Aevi, by Father
Beretti, a Benedictine monk, and regius professor at Pavia, has
been usefully consulted.]

20 (return) [ For the conquest of Italy, see the original
materials of Paul, (l. p. 7—10, 12, 14, 25, 26, 27,) the eloquent
narrative of Sigonius, (tom. il. de Regno Italiae, l. i. p.
13—19,) and the correct and critical review el Muratori, (Annali
d’ Italia, tom. v. p. 164—180.)]

The reign of the founder was splendid and transient; and, before
he could regulate his new conquests, Alboin fell a sacrifice to
domestic treason and female revenge. In a palace near Verona,
which had not been erected for the Barbarians, he feasted the
companions of his arms; intoxication was the reward of valor, and
the king himself was tempted by appetite, or vanity, to exceed
the ordinary measure of his intemperance. After draining many
capacious bowls of Rhaetian or Falernian wine, he called for the
skull of Cunimund, the noblest and most precious ornament of his
sideboard. The cup of victory was accepted with horrid applause
by the circle of the Lombard chiefs. “Fill it again with wine,”
exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, “fill it to the brim: carry this
goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would
rejoice with her father.” In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamond
had strength to utter, “Let the will of my lord be obeyed!” and,
touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that
the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin. Some
indulgence might be due to the resentment of a daughter, if she
had not already violated the duties of a wife. Implacable in her
enmity, or inconstant in her love, the queen of Italy had stooped
from the throne to the arms of a subject, and Helmichis, the
king’s armor-bearer, was the secret minister of her pleasure and
revenge. Against the proposal of the murder, he could no longer
urge the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis
trembled when he revolved the danger as well as the guilt, when
he recollected the matchless strength and intrepidity of a
warrior whom he had so often attended in the field of battle. He
pressed and obtained, that one of the bravest champions of the
Lombards should be associated to the enterprise; but no more than
a promise of secrecy could be drawn from the gallant Peredeus,
and the mode of seduction employed by Rosamond betrays her
shameless insensibility both to honor and love. She supplied the
place of one of her female attendants who was beloved by
Peredeus, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence,
till she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen
of the Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin,
must be the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this
alternative he chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim
of Rosamond, 21 whose undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or
remorse. She expected and soon found a favorable moment, when the
king, oppressed with wine, had retired from the table to his
afternoon slumbers. His faithless spouse was anxious for his
health and repose: the gates of the palace were shut, the arms
removed, the attendants dismissed, and Rosamond, after lulling
him to rest by her tender caresses, unbolted the chamber door,
and urged the reluctant conspirators to the instant execution of
the deed. On the first alarm, the warrior started from his couch:
his sword, which he attempted to draw, had been fastened to the
scabbard by the hand of Rosamond; and a small stool, his only
weapon, could not long protect him from the spears of the
assassins. The daughter of Cunimund smiled in his fall: his body
was buried under the staircase of the palace; and the grateful
posterity of the Lombards revered the tomb and the memory of
their victorious leader.

21 (return) [ The classical reader will recollect the wife and
murder of Candaules, so agreeably told in the first book of
Herodotus. The choice of Gyges, may serve as the excuse of
Peredeus; and this soft insinuation of an odious idea has been
imitated by the best writers of antiquity, (Graevius, ad Ciceron.
Orat. pro Miloue c. 10)]

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

The ambitious Rosamond aspired to reign in the name of her lover;
the city and palace of Verona were awed by her power; and a
faithful band of her native Gepidae was prepared to applaud the
revenge, and to second the wishes, of their sovereign. But the
Lombard chiefs, who fled in the first moments of consternation
and disorder, had resumed their courage and collected their
powers; and the nation, instead of submitting to her reign,
demanded, with unanimous cries, that justice should be executed
on the guilty spouse and the murderers of their king. She sought
a refuge among the enemies of her country; and a criminal who
deserved the abhorrence of mankind was protected by the selfish
policy of the exarch. With her daughter, the heiress of the
Lombard throne, her two lovers, her trusty Gepidae, and the
spoils of the palace of Verona, Rosamond descended the Adige and
the Po, and was transported by a Greek vessel to the safe harbor
of Ravenna. Longinus beheld with delight the charms and the
treasures of the widow of Alboin: her situation and her past
conduct might justify the most licentious proposals; and she
readily listened to the passion of a minister, who, even in the
decline of the empire, was respected as the equal of kings. The
death of a jealous lover was an easy and grateful sacrifice; and,
as Helmichis issued from the bath, he received the deadly potion
from the hand of his mistress. The taste of the liquor, its
speedy operation, and his experience of the character of
Rosamond, convinced him that he was poisoned: he pointed his
dagger to her breast, compelled her to drain the remainder of the
cup, and expired in a few minutes, with the consolation that she
could not survive to enjoy the fruits of her wickedness. The
daughter of Alboin and Rosamond, with the richest spoils of the
Lombards, was embarked for Constantinople: the surprising
strength of Peredeus amused and terrified the Imperial court:
2111 his blindness and revenge exhibited an imperfect copy of the
adventures of Samson. By the free suffrage of the nation, in the
assembly of Pavia, Clepho, one of their noblest chiefs, was
elected as the successor of Alboin. Before the end of eighteen
months, the throne was polluted by a second murder: Clepho was
stabbed by the hand of a domestic; the regal office was suspended
above ten years during the minority of his son Autharis; and
Italy was divided and oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty
tyrants. 22

2111 (return) [ He killed a lion. His eyes were put out by the
timid Justin. Peredeus requesting an interview, Justin
substituted two patricians, whom the blinded Barbarian stabbed to
the heart with two concealed daggers. See Le Beau, vol. x. p.
99.—M.]

22 (return) [ See the history of Paul, l. ii. c. 28—32. I have
borrowed some interesting circumstances from the Liber
Pontificalis of Agnellus, in Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. 124.
Of all chronological guides, Muratori is the safest.]

When the nephew of Justinian ascended the throne, he proclaimed a
new aera of happiness and glory. The annals of the second Justin
23 are marked with disgrace abroad and misery at home. In the
West, the Roman empire was afflicted by the loss of Italy, the
desolation of Africa, and the conquests of the Persians.
Injustice prevailed both in the capital and the provinces: the
rich trembled for their property, the poor for their safety, the
ordinary magistrates were ignorant or venal, the occasional
remedies appear to have been arbitrary and violent, and the
complaints of the people could no longer be silenced by the
splendid names of a legislator and a conqueror. The opinion which
imputes to the prince all the calamities of his times may be
countenanced by the historian as a serious truth or a salutary
prejudice. Yet a candid suspicion will arise, that the sentiments
of Justin were pure and benevolent, and that he might have filled
his station without reproach, if the faculties of his mind had
not been impaired by disease, which deprived the emperor of the
use of his feet, and confined him to the palace, a stranger to
the complaints of the people and the vices of the government. The
tardy knowledge of his own impotence determined him to lay down
the weight of the diadem; and, in the choice of a worthy
substitute, he showed some symptoms of a discerning and even
magnanimous spirit. The only son of Justin and Sophia died in his
infancy; their daughter Arabia was the wife of Baduarius, 24
superintendent of the palace, and afterwards commander of the
Italian armies, who vainly aspired to confirm the rights of
marriage by those of adoption. While the empire appeared an
object of desire, Justin was accustomed to behold with jealousy
and hatred his brothers and cousins, the rivals of his hopes; nor
could he depend on the gratitude of those who would accept the
purple as a restitution, rather than a gift. Of these
competitors, one had been removed by exile, and afterwards by
death; and the emperor himself had inflicted such cruel insults
on another, that he must either dread his resentment or despise
his patience. This domestic animosity was refined into a generous
resolution of seeking a successor, not in his family, but in the
republic; and the artful Sophia recommended Tiberius, 25 his
faithful captain of the guards, whose virtues and fortune the
emperor might cherish as the fruit of his judicious choice. The
ceremony of his elevation to the rank of Caesar, or Augustus, was
performed in the portico of the palace, in the presence of the
patriarch and the senate. Justin collected the remaining strength
of his mind and body; but the popular belief that his speech was
inspired by the Deity betrays a very humble opinion both of the
man and of the times. 26 “You behold,” said the emperor, “the
ensigns of supreme power. You are about to receive them, not from
my hand, but from the hand of God. Honor them, and from them you
will derive honor. Respect the empress your mother: you are now
her son; before, you were her servant. Delight not in blood;
abstain from revenge; avoid those actions by which I have
incurred the public hatred; and consult the experience, rather
than the example, of your predecessor. As a man, I have sinned;
as a sinner, even in this life, I have been severely punished:
but these servants, (and he pointed to his ministers,) who have
abused my confidence, and inflamed my passions, will appear with
me before the tribunal of Christ. I have been dazzled by the
splendor of the diadem: be thou wise and modest; remember what
you have been, remember what you are. You see around us your
slaves, and your children: with the authority, assume the
tenderness, of a parent. Love your people like yourself;
cultivate the affections, maintain the discipline, of the army;
protect the fortunes of the rich, relieve the necessities of the
poor.” 27 The assembly, in silence and in tears, applauded the
counsels, and sympathized with the repentance, of their prince
the patriarch rehearsed the prayers of the church; Tiberius
received the diadem on his knees; and Justin, who in his
abdication appeared most worthy to reign, addressed the new
monarch in the following words: “If you consent, I live; if you
command, I die: may the God of heaven and earth infuse into your
heart whatever I have neglected or forgotten.” The four last
years of the emperor Justin were passed in tranquil obscurity:
his conscience was no longer tormented by the remembrance of
those duties which he was incapable of discharging; and his
choice was justified by the filial reverence and gratitude of
Tiberius.

23 (return) [ The original authors for the reign of Justin the
younger are Evagrius, Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 1—12; Theophanes, in
Chonograph. p. 204—210; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 70-72;
Cedrenus, in Compend. p. 388—392.]

24 (return) [ Dispositorque novus sacrae Baduarius aulae.
Successor soceri mox factus Cura-palati.—Cerippus. Baduarius is
enumerated among the descendants and allies of the house of
Justinian. A family of noble Venetians (Casa Badoero) built
churches and gave dukes to the republic as early as the ninth
century; and, if their descent be admitted, no kings in Europe
can produce a pedigree so ancient and illustrious. Ducange, Fam.
Byzantin, p. 99 Amelot de la Houssaye, Gouvernement de Venise,
tom. ii. p. 555.]

25 (return) [ The praise bestowed on princes before their
elevation is the purest and most weighty. Corippus has celebrated
Tiberius at the time of the accession of Justin, (l. i. 212—222.)
Yet even a captain of the guards might attract the flattery of an
African exile.]

26 (return) [ Evagrius (l. v. c. 13) has added the reproach to
his ministers He applies this speech to the ceremony when
Tiberius was invested with the rank of Caesar. The loose
expression, rather than the positive error, of Theophanes, &c.,
has delayed it to his Augustan investitura immediately before the
death of Justin.]

27 (return) [ Theophylact Simocatta (l. iii. c. 11) declares that
he shall give to posterity the speech of Justin as it was
pronounced, without attempting to correct the imperfections of
language or rhetoric. Perhaps the vain sophist would have been
incapable of producing such sentiments.]

Among the virtues of Tiberius, 28 his beauty (he was one of the
tallest and most comely of the Romans) might introduce him to the
favor of Sophia; and the widow of Justin was persuaded, that she
should preserve her station and influence under the reign of a
second and more youthful husband. But, if the ambitious candidate
had been tempted to flatter and dissemble, it was no longer in
his power to fulfil her expectations, or his own promise. The
factions of the hippodrome demanded, with some impatience, the
name of their new empress: both the people and Sophia were
astonished by the proclamation of Anastasia, the secret, though
lawful, wife of the emperor Tiberius. Whatever could alleviate
the disappointment of Sophia, Imperial honors, a stately palace,
a numerous household, was liberally bestowed by the piety of her
adopted son; on solemn occasions he attended and consulted the
widow of his benefactor; but her ambition disdained the vain
semblance of royalty, and the respectful appellation of mother
served to exasperate, rather than appease, the rage of an injured
woman. While she accepted, and repaid with a courtly smile, the
fair expressions of regard and confidence, a secret alliance was
concluded between the dowager empress and her ancient enemies;
and Justinian, the son of Germanus, was employed as the
instrument of her revenge. The pride of the reigning house
supported, with reluctance, the dominion of a stranger: the youth
was deservedly popular; his name, after the death of Justin, had
been mentioned by a tumultuous faction; and his own submissive
offer of his head with a treasure of sixty thousand pounds, might
be interpreted as an evidence of guilt, or at least of fear.
Justinian received a free pardon, and the command of the eastern
army. The Persian monarch fled before his arms; and the
acclamations which accompanied his triumph declared him worthy of
the purple. His artful patroness had chosen the month of the
vintage, while the emperor, in a rural solitude, was permitted to
enjoy the pleasures of a subject. On the first intelligence of
her designs, he returned to Constantinople, and the conspiracy
was suppressed by his presence and firmness. From the pomp and
honors which she had abused, Sophia was reduced to a modest
allowance: Tiberius dismissed her train, intercepted her
correspondence, and committed to a faithful guard the custody of
her person. But the services of Justinian were not considered by
that excellent prince as an aggravation of his offences: after a
mild reproof, his treason and ingratitude were forgiven; and it
was commonly believed, that the emperor entertained some thoughts
of contracting a double alliance with the rival of his throne.
The voice of an angel (such a fable was propagated) might reveal
to the emperor, that he should always triumph over his domestic
foes; but Tiberius derived a firmer assurance from the innocence
and generosity of his own mind.

28 (return) [ For the character and reign of Tiberius, see
Evagrius, l v. c. 13. Theophylact, l. iii. c. 12, &c. Theophanes,
in Chron. p. 2 0—213. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 72. Cedrenus,
p. 392. Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis Langobard. l. iii. c. 11, 12.
The deacon of Forum Juli appears to have possessed some curious
and authentic facts.]

With the odious name of Tiberius, he assumed the more popular
appellation of Constantine, and imitated the purer virtues of the
Antonines. After recording the vice or folly of so many Roman
princes, it is pleasing to repose, for a moment, on a character
conspicuous by the qualities of humanity, justice, temperance,
and fortitude; to contemplate a sovereign affable in his palace,
pious in the church, impartial on the seat of judgment, and
victorious, at least by his generals, in the Persian war. The
most glorious trophy of his victory consisted in a multitude of
captives, whom Tiberius entertained, redeemed, and dismissed to
their native homes with the charitable spirit of a Christian
hero. The merit or misfortunes of his own subjects had a dearer
claim to his beneficence, and he measured his bounty not so much
by their expectations as by his own dignity. This maxim, however
dangerous in a trustee of the public wealth, was balanced by a
principle of humanity and justice, which taught him to abhor, as
of the basest alloy, the gold that was extracted from the tears
of the people. For their relief, as often as they had suffered by
natural or hostile calamities, he was impatient to remit the
arrears of the past, or the demands of future taxes: he sternly
rejected the servile offerings of his ministers, which were
compensated by tenfold oppression; and the wise and equitable
laws of Tiberius excited the praise and regret of succeeding
times. Constantinople believed that the emperor had discovered a
treasure: but his genuine treasure consisted in the practice of
liberal economy, and the contempt of all vain and superfluous
expense. The Romans of the East would have been happy, if the
best gift of Heaven, a patriot king, had been confirmed as a
proper and permanent blessing. But in less than four years after
the death of Justin, his worthy successor sunk into a mortal
disease, which left him only sufficient time to restore the
diadem, according to the tenure by which he held it, to the most
deserving of his fellow-citizens. He selected Maurice from the
crowd, a judgment more precious than the purple itself: the
patriarch and senate were summoned to the bed of the dying
prince: he bestowed his daughter and the empire; and his last
advice was solemnly delivered by the voice of the quaestor.
Tiberius expressed his hope that the virtues of his son and
successor would erect the noblest mausoleum to his memory. His
memory was embalmed by the public affliction; but the most
sincere grief evaporates in the tumult of a new reign, and the
eyes and acclamations of mankind were speedily directed to the
rising sun. The emperor Maurice derived his origin from ancient
Rome; 29 but his immediate parents were settled at Arabissus in
Cappadocia, and their singular felicity preserved them alive to
behold and partake the fortune of their august son. The youth of
Maurice was spent in the profession of arms: Tiberius promoted
him to the command of a new and favorite legion of twelve
thousand confederates; his valor and conduct were signalized in
the Persian war; and he returned to Constantinople to accept, as
his just reward, the inheritance of the empire. Maurice ascended
the throne at the mature age of forty-three years; and he reigned
above twenty years over the East and over himself; 30 expelling
from his mind the wild democracy of passions, and establishing
(according to the quaint expression of Evagrius) a perfect
aristocracy of reason and virtue. Some suspicion will degrade the
testimony of a subject, though he protests that his secret praise
should never reach the ear of his sovereign, 31 and some failings
seem to place the character of Maurice below the purer merit of
his predecessor. His cold and reserved demeanor might be imputed
to arrogance; his justice was not always exempt from cruelty, nor
his clemency from weakness; and his rigid economy too often
exposed him to the reproach of avarice. But the rational wishes
of an absolute monarch must tend to the happiness of his people.
Maurice was endowed with sense and courage to promote that
happiness, and his administration was directed by the principles
and example of Tiberius. The pusillanimity of the Greeks had
introduced so complete a separation between the offices of king
and of general, that a private soldier, who had deserved and
obtained the purple, seldom or never appeared at the head of his
armies. Yet the emperor Maurice enjoyed the glory of restoring
the Persian monarch to his throne; his lieutenants waged a
doubtful war against the Avars of the Danube; and he cast an eye
of pity, of ineffectual pity, on the abject and distressful state
of his Italian provinces.

29 (return) [ It is therefore singular enough that Paul (l. iii.
c. 15) should distinguish him as the first Greek emperor—primus
ex Graecorum genere in Imperio constitutus. His immediate
predecessors had in deed been born in the Latin provinces of
Europe: and a various reading, in Graecorum Imperio, would apply
the expression to the empire rather than the prince.]

30 (return) [ Consult, for the character and reign of Maurice,
the fifth and sixth books of Evagrius, particularly l. vi. c. l;
the eight books of his prolix and florid history by Theophylact
Simocatta; Theophanes, p. 213, &c.; Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p.
73; Cedrenus, p. 394.]

31 (return) [ Evagrius composed his history in the twelfth year
of Maurice; and he had been so wisely indiscreet that the emperor
know and rewarded his favorable opinion, (l. vi. c. 24.)]

From Italy the emperors were incessantly tormented by tales of
misery and demands of succor, which extorted the humiliating
confession of their own weakness. The expiring dignity of Rome
was only marked by the freedom and energy of her complaints: “If
you are incapable,” she said, “of delivering us from the sword of
the Lombards, save us at least from the calamity of famine.”
Tiberius forgave the reproach, and relieved the distress: a
supply of corn was transported from Egypt to the Tyber; and the
Roman people, invoking the name, not of Camillus, but of St.
Peter repulsed the Barbarians from their walls. But the relief
was accidental, the danger was perpetual and pressing; and the
clergy and senate, collecting the remains of their ancient
opulence, a sum of three thousand pounds of gold, despatched the
patrician Pamphronius to lay their gifts and their complaints at
the foot of the Byzantine throne. The attention of the court, and
the forces of the East, were diverted by the Persian war: but the
justice of Tiberius applied the subsidy to the defence of the
city; and he dismissed the patrician with his best advice, either
to bribe the Lombard chiefs, or to purchase the aid of the kings
of France. Notwithstanding this weak invention, Italy was still
afflicted, Rome was again besieged, and the suburb of Classe,
only three miles from Ravenna, was pillaged and occupied by the
troops of a simple duke of Spoleto. Maurice gave audience to a
second deputation of priests and senators: the duties and the
menaces of religion were forcibly urged in the letters of the
Roman pontiff; and his nuncio, the deacon Gregory, was alike
qualified to solicit the powers either of heaven or of the earth.

The emperor adopted, with stronger effect, the measures of his
predecessor: some formidable chiefs were persuaded to embrace the
friendship of the Romans; and one of them, a mild and faithful
Barbarian, lived and died in the service of the exarchs: the
passes of the Alps were delivered to the Franks; and the pope
encouraged them to violate, without scruple, their oaths and
engagements to the misbelievers. Childebert, the great-grandson
of Clovis, was persuaded to invade Italy by the payment of fifty
thousand pieces; but, as he had viewed with delight some
Byzantine coin of the weight of one pound of gold, the king of
Austrasia might stipulate, that the gift should be rendered more
worthy of his acceptance, by a proper mixture of these
respectable medals. The dukes of the Lombards had provoked by
frequent inroads their powerful neighbors of Gaul. As soon as
they were apprehensive of a just retaliation, they renounced
their feeble and disorderly independence: the advantages of real
government, union, secrecy, and vigor, were unanimously
confessed; and Autharis, the son of Clepho, had already attained
the strength and reputation of a warrior. Under the standard of
their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood three
successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself,
the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The
first expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the
Franks and Alemanni. In the second they were vanquished in a
bloody battle, with more loss and dishonor than they had
sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for
revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and
Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and
treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns
between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of
danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly
of their twenty commanders; and the hot vapors of an Italian sun
infected with disease those tramontane bodies which had already
suffered the vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers
that were inadequate to the conquest, were more than sufficient
for the desolation, of the country; nor could the trembling
natives distinguish between their enemies and their deliverers.
If the junction of the Merovingian and Imperial forces had been
effected in the neighborhood of Milan, perhaps they might have
subverted the throne of the Lombards; but the Franks expected six
days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the Greeks
were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which
were torn from them after the retreat of their transalpine
allies. The victorious Autharis asserted his claim to the
dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rhaetian Alps, he subdued
the resistance, and rifled the hidden treasures, of a sequestered
island in the Lake of Comum. At the extreme point of the
Calabria, he touched with his spear a column on the sea-shore of
Rhegium, 32 proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand the
immovable boundary of his kingdom. 33

32 (return) [ The Columna Rhegina, in the narrowest part of the
Faro of Messina, one hundred stadia from Rhegium itself, is
frequently mentioned in ancient geography. Cluver. Ital. Antiq.
tom. ii. p. 1295. Lucas Holsten. Annotat. ad Cluver. p. 301.
Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 106.]

33 (return) [ The Greek historians afford some faint hints of the
wars of Italy (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 124, 126.
Theophylact, l. iii. c. 4.) The Latins are more satisfactory; and
especially Paul Warnefrid, (l iii. c. 13—34,) who had read the
more ancient histories of Secundus and Gregory of Tours. Baronius
produces some letters of the popes, &c.; and the times are
measured by the accurate scale of Pagi and Muratori.]

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided
between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna.
The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine
had separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and
eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the
empire, with the full remains of civil, of military, and even of
ecclesiastical, power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was
afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of St. Peter, extended
over the modern Romagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and
Commachio, 34 five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a
second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the
hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome, of
Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from
the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the
supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have
included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latin conquests, of the first
four hundred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly
traced along the coast, from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and
with the course of the Tyber from Ameria and Narni to the port of
Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Chiozza composed the
infant dominion of Venice: but the more accessible towns on the
Continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with
impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of
the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent
isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony
of Amalphi, 35 whose industrious citizens, by the invention of
the mariner’s compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The
three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to
the empire; and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed
the landmark of Autharis from the shore of Rhegium to the Isthmus
of Consentia. In Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the
liberty and religion of their ancestors; and the husbandmen of
Sicily were chained to their rich and cultivated soil. Rome was
oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek,
perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the
Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her
own dukes: 36 the independence of Amalphi was the fruit of
commerce; and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally
ennobled by an equal alliance with the Eastern empire. On the map
of Italy, the measure of the exarchate occupies a very inadequate
space, but it included an ample proportion of wealth, industry,
and population. The most faithful and valuable subjects escaped
from the Barbarian yoke; and the banners of Pavia and Verona, of
Milan and Padua, were displayed in their respective quarters by
the new inhabitants of Ravenna. The remainder of Italy was
possessed by the Lombards; and from Pavia, the royal seat, their
kingdom was extended to the east, the north, and the west, as far
as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of
Austrasia and Burgundy. In the language of modern geography, it
is now represented by the Terra Firma of the Venetian republic,
Tyrol, the Milanese, Piedmont, the coast of Genoa, Mantua, Parma,
and Modena, the grand duchy of Tuscany, and a large portion of
the ecclesiastical state from Perugia to the Adriatic. The dukes,
and at length the princes, of Beneventum, survived the monarchy,
and propagated the name of the Lombards. From Capua to Tarentum,
they reigned near five hundred years over the greatest part of
the present kingdom of Naples. 37

34 (return) [ The papal advocates, Zacagni and Fontanini, might
justly claim the valley or morass of Commachio as a part of the
exarchate. But the ambition of including Modena, Reggio, Parma,
and Placentia, has darkened a geographical question somewhat
doubtful and obscure Even Muratori, as the servant of the house
of Este, is not free from partiality and prejudice.]

35 (return) [ See Brenckman, Dissert. Ima de Republica
Amalphitana, p. 1—42, ad calcem Hist. Pandect. Florent.]

36 (return) [ Gregor. Magn. l. iii. epist. 23, 25.]

37 (return) [ I have described the state of Italy from the
excellent Dissertation of Beretti. Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom.
i. p. 374—387) has followed the learned Camillo Pellegrini in the
geography of the kingdom of Naples. After the loss of the true
Calabria, the vanity of the Greeks substituted that name instead
of the more ignoble appellation of Bruttium; and the change
appears to have taken place before the time of Charlemagne,
(Eginard, p. 75.)]

In comparing the proportion of the victorious and the vanquished
people, the change of language will afford the most probably
inference. According to this standard, it will appear, that the
Lombards of Italy, and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous
than the Franks or Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must
yield, in their turn, to the multitude of Saxons and Angles who
almost eradicated the idioms of Britain. The modern Italian has
been insensibly formed by the mixture of nations: the awkwardness
of the Barbarians in the nice management of declensions and
conjugations reduced them to the use of articles and auxiliary
verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic
appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar
words is found to be of Latin derivation; 38 and, if we were
sufficiently conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the
municipal dialects of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin
of many terms which might, perhaps, be rejected by the classic
purity of Rome. A numerous army constitutes but a small nation,
and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished by the
retreat of twenty thousand Saxons, who scorned a dependent
situation, and returned, after many bold and perilous adventures,
to their native country. 39 The camp of Alboin was of formidable
extent, but the extent of a camp would be easily circumscribed
within the limits of a city; and its martial inhabitants must be
thinly scattered over the face of a large country. When Alboin
descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke
of Friuli, with the command of the province and the people: but
the prudent Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office,
unless he had been permitted to choose, among the nobles of the
Lombards, a sufficient number of families 40 to form a perpetual
colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest, the
same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or
Bergamo, or Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Beneventum; but each of
these, and each of their colleagues, settled in his appointed
district with a band of followers who resorted to his standard in
war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was free and
honorable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had
accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the
jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom
was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion. 41 The
posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the
soil, which, by every motive of interest and honor, they were
bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soldier of his king and
his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation displayed the
banners, and assumed the appellation, of a regular army. Of this
army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered
provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till
after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of
injustice and rapine. Many of the most wealthy Italians were
slain or banished; the remainder were divided among the
strangers, and a tributary obligation was imposed (under the name
of hospitality) of paying to the Lombards a third part of the
fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this
artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid
tenure. 42 Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong
and insolent guest, or the annual payment, a third of the
produce, was exchanged by a more equitable transaction for an
adequate proportion of landed property. Under these foreign
masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn,
wines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and
industry by the labor of the slaves and natives. But the
occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness
of the Barbarian. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored
and improved the breed of horses, for which that province had
once been illustrious; 43 and the Italians beheld with
astonishment a foreign race of oxen or buffaloes. 44 The
depopulation of Lombardy, and the increase of forests, afforded
an ample range for the pleasures of the chase. 45 That marvellous
art which teaches the birds of the air to acknowledge the voice,
and execute the commands, of their master, had been unknown to
the ingenuity of the Greeks and Romans. 46 Scandinavia and
Scythia produce the boldest and most tractable falcons: 47 they
were tamed and educated by the roving inhabitants, always on
horseback and in the field. This favorite amusement of our
ancestors was introduced by the Barbarians into the Roman
provinces; and the laws of Italy esteemed the sword and the hawk
as of equal dignity and importance in the hands of a noble
Lombard. 48

38 (return) [ Maffei (Verona Illustrata, part i. p. 310—321) and
Muratori (Antichita Italiane, tom. ii. Dissertazione xxxii.
xxxiii. p. 71—365) have asserted the native claims of the Italian
idiom; the former with enthusiasm, the latter with discretion;
both with learning, ingenuity, and truth. Note: Compare the
admirable sketch of the degeneracy of the Latin language and the
formation of the Italian in Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 317
329.—M.]

39 (return) [ Paul, de Gest. Langobard. l. iii. c. 5, 6, 7.]

40 (return) [ Paul, l. ii. c. 9. He calls these families or
generations by the Teutonic name of Faras, which is likewise used
in the Lombard laws. The humble deacon was not insensible of the
nobility of his own race. See l. iv. c. 39.]

41 (return) [ Compare No. 3 and 177 of the Laws of Rotharis.]

42 (return) [ Paul, l. ii. c. 31, 32, l. iii. c. 16. The Laws of
Rotharis, promulgated A.D. 643, do not contain the smallest
vestige of this payment of thirds; but they preserve many curious
circumstances of the state of Italy and the manners of the
Lombards.]

43 (return) [ The studs of Dionysius of Syracuse, and his
frequent victories in the Olympic games, had diffused among the
Greeks the fame of the Venetian horses; but the breed was extinct
in the time of Strabo, (l. v. p. 325.) Gisulf obtained from his
uncle generosarum equarum greges. Paul, l. ii. c. 9. The Lombards
afterwards introduced caballi sylvatici—wild horses. Paul, l. iv.
c. 11.]

44 (return) [ Tunc (A.D. 596) primum, bubali in Italiam delati
Italiae populis miracula fuere, (Paul Warnefrid, l. iv. c. 11.)
The buffaloes, whose native climate appears to be Africa and
India, are unknown to Europe, except in Italy, where they are
numerous and useful. The ancients were ignorant of these animals,
unless Aristotle (Hist. Anim. l. ii. c. 1, p. 58, Paris, 1783)
has described them as the wild oxen of Arachosia. See Buffon,
Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. and Supplement, tom. vi. Hist. Generale
des Voyages, tom. i. p. 7, 481, ii. 105, iii. 291, iv. 234, 461,
v. 193, vi. 491, viii. 400, x. 666. Pennant’s Quadrupedes, p. 24.
Dictionnaire d’Hist. Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, tom. ii.
p. 74. Yet I must not conceal the suspicion that Paul, by a
vulgar error, may have applied the name of bubalus to the
aurochs, or wild bull, of ancient Germany.]

45 (return) [ Consult the xxist Dissertation of Muratori.]

46 (return) [ Their ignorance is proved by the silence even of
those who professedly treat of the arts of hunting and the
history of animals. Aristotle, (Hist. Animal. l. ix. c. 36, tom.
i. p. 586, and the Notes of his last editor, M. Camus, tom. ii.
p. 314,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. l. x. c. 10,) Aelian (de Natur.
Animal. l. ii. c. 42,) and perhaps Homer, (Odyss. xxii. 302-306,)
describe with astonishment a tacit league and common chase
between the hawks and the Thracian fowlers.]

47 (return) [ Particularly the gerfaut, or gyrfalcon, of the size
of a small eagle. See the animated description of M. de Buffon,
Hist. Naturelle, tom. xvi. p. 239, &c.]

48 (return) [ Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii. p. 129.
This is the xvith law of the emperor Lewis the Pious. His father
Charlemagne had falconers in his household as well as huntsmen,
(Memoires sur l’ancienne Chevalerie, par M. de St. Palaye, tom.
iii. p. 175.) I observe in the laws of Rotharis a more early
mention of the art of hawking, (No. 322;) and in Gaul, in the
fifth century, it is celebrated by Sidonius Apollinaris among the
talents of Avitus, (202—207.) * Note: See Beckman, Hist. of
Inventions, vol. i. p. 319—M.]

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

So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the
Lombards of the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and
affright the portraits of their savage forefathers. 49 Their
heads were shaven behind, but the shaggy locks hung over their
eyes and mouth, and a long beard represented the name and
character of the nation. Their dress consisted of loose linen
garments, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons, which were
decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes or variegated
colors. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open
sandals; and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was
constantly girt to their side. Yet this strange apparel, and
horrid aspect, often concealed a gentle and generous disposition;
and as soon as the rage of battle had subsided, the captives and
subjects were sometimes surprised by the humanity of the victor.
The vices of the Lombards were the effect of passion, of
ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the more laudable,
as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners, nor
imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. I should
not be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in
my power to delineate the private life of the conquerors of
Italy; and I shall relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry
of Autharis, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry and
romance. 50 After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian
princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of the king of
Bavaria; and Garribald accepted the alliance of the Italian
monarch. Impatient of the slow progress of negotiation, the
ardent lover escaped from his palace, and visited the court of
Bavaria in the train of his own embassy. At the public audience,
the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and informed
Garribald that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state,
but that he alone was the friend of Autharis, who had trusted him
with the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the
charms of his spouse. Theudelinda was summoned to undergo this
important examination; and, after a pause of silent rapture, he
hailed her as the queen of Italy, and humbly requested that,
according to the custom of the nation, she would present a cup of
wine to the first of her new subjects. By the command of her
father she obeyed: Autharis received the cup in his turn, and, in
restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and
drew his own finger over his face and lips. In the evening,
Theudelinda imparted to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of
the stranger, and was comforted by the assurance, that such
boldness could proceed only from the king her husband, who, by
his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of her love. The
ambassadors were dismissed: no sooner did they reach the confines
of Italy than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his
battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and
dexterity. “Such,” said he to the astonished Bavarians, “such are
the strokes of the king of the Lombards.” On the approach of a
French army, Garribald and his daughter took refuge in the
dominions of their ally; and the marriage was consummated in the
palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was dissolved by the
death of Autharis: but the virtues of Theudelinda 51 had endeared
her to the nation, and she was permitted to bestow, with her
hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.

49 (return) [ The epitaph of Droctulf (Paul, l. iii. c. 19) may
be applied to many of his countrymen:— Terribilis visu facies,
sed corda benignus Longaque robusto pectore barba fuit. The
portraits of the old Lombards might still be seen in the palace
of Monza, twelve miles from Milan, which had been founded or
restored by Queen Theudelinda, (l. iv. 22, 23.) See Muratori,
tom. i. disserta, xxiii. p. 300.]

50 (return) [ The story of Autharis and Theudelinda is related by
Paul, l. iii. 29, 34; and any fragment of Bavarian antiquity
excites the indefatigable diligence of the count de Buat, Hist.
des Peuples de l’Europe, ton. xi. p. 595—635, tom. xii. p. 1-53.]

51 (return) [ Giannone (Istoria Civile de Napoli, tom. i. p. 263)
has justly censured the impertinence of Boccaccio, (Gio. iii.
Novel. 2,) who, without right, or truth, or pretence, has given
the pious queen Theudelinda to the arms of a muleteer.]

From this fact, as well as from similar events, 52 it is certain
that the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and
sense to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege.
The public revenue arose from the produce of land and the profits
of justice. When the independent dukes agreed that Autharis
should ascend the throne of his father, they endowed the regal
office with a fair moiety of their respective domains. The
proudest nobles aspired to the honors of servitude near the
person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity of his vassals
by the precarious gift of pensions and benefices; and atoned for
the injuries of war by the rich foundation of monasteries and
churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the
powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy
convened the national assemblies in the palace, or more probably
in the fields, of Pavia: his great council was composed of the
persons most eminent by their birth and dignities; but the
validity, as well as the execution, of their decrees depended on
the approbation of the faithful people, the fortunate army of the
Lombards. About fourscore years after the conquest of Italy,
their traditional customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin, 53
and ratified by the consent of the prince and people: some new
regulations were introduced, more suitable to their present
condition; the example of Rotharis was imitated by the wisest of
his successors; and the laws of the Lombards have been esteemed
the least imperfect of the Barbaric codes. 54 Secure by their
courage in the possession of liberty, these rude and hasty
legislators were incapable of balancing the powers of the
constitution, or of discussing the nice theory of political
government. Such crimes as threatened the life of the sovereign,
or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of death; but
their attention was principally confined to the defence of the
person and property of the subject. According to the strange
jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed
by a fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold
declares a just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less
atrocious injuries, a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious
word, were measured with scrupulous and almost ridiculous
diligence; and the prudence of the legislator encouraged the
ignoble practice of bartering honor and revenge for a pecuniary
compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards in the state of
Paganism or Christianity gave implicit credit to the malice and
mischief of witchcraft, but the judges of the seventeenth century
might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of
Rotharis, who derides the absurd superstition, and protects the
wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty. 55 The same
spirit of a legislator, superior to his age and country, may be
ascribed to Luitprand, who condemns, while he tolerates, the
impious and inveterate abuse of duels, 56 observing, from his own
experience, that the juster cause had often been oppressed by
successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered in the laws
of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of the
Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in
their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is
marked with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their
annals is adorned with fair intervals of peace, order, and
domestic happiness; and the Italians enjoyed a milder and more
equitable government, than any of the other kingdoms which had
been founded on the ruins of the Western empire. 57

52 (return) [ Paul, l. iii. c. 16. The first dissertations of
Muratori, and the first volume of Giannone’s history, may be
consulted for the state of the kingdom of Italy.]

53 (return) [ The most accurate edition of the Laws of the
Lombards is to be found in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom.
i. part ii. p. 1—181, collated from the most ancient Mss. and
illustrated by the critical notes of Muratori.]

54 (return) [ Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 1. Les
loix des Bourguignons sont assez judicieuses; celles de Rotharis
et des autres princes Lombards le sont encore plus.]

55 (return) [ See Leges Rotharis, No. 379, p. 47. Striga is used
as the name of a witch. It is of the purest classic origin,
(Horat. epod. v. 20. Petron. c. 134;) and from the words of
Petronius, (quae striges comederunt nervos tuos?) it may be
inferred that the prejudice was of Italian rather than Barbaric
extraction.]

56 (return) [ Quia incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et multos
audivimus per pugnam sine justa causa suam causam perdere. Sed
propter consuetudinom gentem nostram Langobardorum legem impiam
vetare non possumus. See p. 74, No. 65, of the Laws of Luitprand,
promulgated A.D. 724.]

57 (return) [ Read the history of Paul Warnefrid; particularly l.
iii. c. 16. Baronius rejects the praise, which appears to
contradict the invectives of Pope Gregory the Great; but Muratori
(Annali d’ Italia, tom. v. p. 217) presumes to insinuate that the
saint may have magnified the faults of Arians and enemies.]

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the
Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, 58 which had
reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period
of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the
successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and
private opulence were exhausted: the lofty tree, under whose
shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its
leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on
the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of
victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the
hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually
feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who
visit without an anxious thought the garden of the adjacent
country, will faintly picture in their fancy the distress of the
Romans: they shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand,
beheld from the walls the flames of their houses, and heard the
lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled together like
dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea and
the mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the
pleasures and interrupt the labors of a rural life; and the
Campagna of Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary
wilderness, in which the land is barren, the waters are impure,
and the air is infectious. Curiosity and ambition no longer
attracted the nations to the capital of the world: but, if chance
or necessity directed the steps of a wandering stranger, he
contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city,
and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are
the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tyber swelled
above its banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the
valleys of the seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the
stagnation of the deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that
fourscore persons expired in an hour in the midst of a solemn
procession, which implored the mercy of Heaven. 59 A society in
which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs
the accidental losses of pestilence and war: but, as the far
greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence
and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the
gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the
human race. 60 Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the
measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from
the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of
famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant
province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and
decay: the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by
inundations, tempests, and earthquakes: and the monks, who had
occupied the most advantageous stations, exulted in their base
triumph over the ruins of antiquity. 61 It is commonly believed,
that Pope Gregory the First attacked the temples and mutilated
the statues of the city; that, by the command of the Barbarian,
the Palatine library was reduced to ashes, and that the history
of Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous
fanaticism. The writings of Gregory himself reveal his implacable
aversion to the monuments of classic genius; and he points his
severest censure against the profane learning of a bishop, who
taught the art of grammar, studied the Latin poets, and
pronounced with the same voice the praises of Jupiter and those
of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful
and recent: the Temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus,
have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal
proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy
in the countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical
dictator. 62

58 (return) [ The passages of the homilies of Gregory, which
represent the miserable state of the city and country, are
transcribed in the Annals of Baronius, A.D. 590, No. 16, A.D.
595, No. 2, &c., &c.]

59 (return) [ The inundation and plague were reported by a
deacon, whom his bishop, Gregory of Tours, had despatched to Rome
for some relics The ingenious messenger embellished his tale and
the river with a great dragon and a train of little serpents,
(Greg. Turon. l. x. c. 1.)]

60 (return) [ Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15) relates a
memorable prediction of St. Benedict. Roma a Gentilibus non
exterminabitur sed tempestatibus, coruscis turbinibus ac terrae
motu in semetipsa marces cet. Such a prophecy melts into true
history, and becomes the evidence of the fact after which it was
invented.]

61 (return) [ Quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus, Christi
laudes non capiunt, et quam grave nefandumque sit episcopis
canere quod nec laico religioso conveniat, ipse considera, (l.
ix. ep. 4.) The writings of Gregory himself attest his innocence
of any classic taste or literature]

62 (return) [ Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique, tom. ii. 598, 569,)
in a very good article of Gregoire I., has quoted, for the
buildings and statues, Platina in Gregorio I.; for the Palatine
library, John of Salisbury, (de Nugis Curialium, l. ii. c. 26;)
and for Livy, Antoninus of Florence: the oldest of the three
lived in the xiith century.]

Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the names of Rome might
have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been
animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honor
and dominion. A vague tradition was embraced, that two Jewish
teachers, a tent-maker and a fisherman, had formerly been
executed in the circus of Nero, and at the end of five hundred
years, their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the
Palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and West
resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles
were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not
without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his
worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the
bodies of the saints; and those who, from the purest motives,
presumed to disturb the repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted
by visions, or punished with sudden death. The unreasonable
request of an empress, who wished to deprive the Romans of their
sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul, was rejected with the
deepest abhorrence; and the pope asserted, most probably with
truth, that a linen which had been sanctified in the neighborhood
of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was sometimes
easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an equal
degree of miraculous virtue. 63 But the power as well as virtue
of the apostles resided with living energy in the breast of their
successors; and the chair of St. Peter was filled under the reign
of Maurice by the first and greatest of the name of Gregory. 64
His grandfather Felix had himself been pope, and as the bishops
were already bound by the laws of celibacy, his consecration must
have been preceded by the death of his wife. The parents of
Gregory, Sylvia, and Gordian, were the noblest of the senate, and
the most pious of the church of Rome; his female relations were
numbered among the saints and virgins; and his own figure, with
those of his father and mother, were represented near three
hundred years in a family portrait, 65 which he offered to the
monastery of St. Andrew. The design and coloring of this picture
afford an honorable testimony that the art of painting was
cultivated by the Italians of the sixth century; but the most
abject ideas must be entertained of their taste and learning,
since the epistles of Gregory, his sermons, and his dialogues,
are the work of a man who was second in erudition to none of his
contemporaries: 66 his birth and abilities had raised him to the
office of 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.

63 (return) [Gregor. l. iii. epist. 24, edict. 12, &c. From the
epistles of Gregory, and the viiith volume of the Annals of
Baronius, the pious reader may collect the particles of holy iron
which were inserted in keys or crosses of gold, and distributed
in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Constantinople, and Egypt. The
pontifical smith who handled the file must have understood the
miracles which it was in his own power to operate or withhold; a
circumstance which abates the superstition of Gregory at the
expense of his veracity.]

64 (return) [ Besides the epistles of Gregory himself, which are
methodized by Dupin, (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. v. p. 103—126,)
we have three lives of the pope; the two first written in the
viiith and ixth centuries, (de Triplici Vita St. Greg. Preface to
the ivth volume of the Benedictine edition,) by the deacons Paul
(p. 1—18) and John, (p. 19—188,) and containing much original,
though doubtful, evidence; the third, a long and labored
compilation by the Benedictine editors, (p. 199—305.) The annals
of Baronius are a copious but partial history. His papal
prejudices are tempered by the good sense of Fleury, (Hist.
Eccles. tom. viii.,) and his chronology has been rectified by the
criticism of Pagi and Muratori.]

65 (return) [ John the deacon has described them like an
eye-witness, (l. iv. c. 83, 84;) and his description is
illustrated by Angelo Rocca, a Roman antiquary, (St. Greg. Opera,
tom. iv. p. 312—326;) who observes that some mosaics of the popes
of the viith century are still preserved in the old churches of
Rome, (p. 321—323) The same walls which represented Gregory’s
family are now decorated with the martyrdom of St. Andrew, the
noble contest of Dominichino and Guido.]

66 (return) [ Disciplinis vero liberalibus, hoc est grammatica,
rhetorica, dialectica ita apuero est institutus, ut quamvis eo
tempore florerent adhuc Romae studia literarum, tamen nulli in
urbe ipsa secundus putaretur. Paul. Diacon. in Vit. St. Gregor.
c. 2.]

67 (return) [ The Benedictines (Vit. Greg. l. i. p. 205—208)
labor to reduce the monasteries of Gregory within the rule of
their own order; but, as the question is confessed to be
doubtful, it is clear that these powerful monks are in the wrong.
See Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. iii. p. 145; a work of
merit: the sense and learning belong to the author—his prejudices
are those of his profession.]

68 (return) [ Monasterium Gregorianum in ejusdem Beati Gregorii
aedibus ad clivum Scauri prope ecclesiam SS. Johannis et Pauli in
honorem St. Andreae, (John, in Vit. Greg. l. i. c. 6. Greg. l.
vii. epist. 13.) This house and monastery were situate on the
side of the Caelian hill which fronts the Palatine; they are now
occupied by the Camaldoli: San Gregorio triumphs, and St. Andrew
has retired to a small chapel Nardini, Roma Antica, l. iii. c. 6,
p. 100. Descrizzione di Roma, tom. i. p. 442—446.]

The pontificate of Gregory the Great, which lasted thirteen
years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying
periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his
faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride
and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to
his station and to the temper of the times. In his rival, the
patriarch of Constantinople, he condemned the anti-Christian
title of universal bishop, which the successor of St. Peter was
too haughty to concede, and too feeble to assume; and the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Gregory was confined to the triple
character of Bishop of Rome, Primate of Italy, and Apostle of the
West. He frequently ascended the pulpit, and kindled, by his
rude, though pathetic, eloquence, the congenial passions of his
audience: the language of the Jewish prophets was interpreted and
applied; and the minds of a people, depressed by their present
calamities, were directed to the hopes and fears of the invisible
world. His precepts and example defined the model of the Roman
liturgy; 69 the distribution of the parishes, the calendar of the
festivals, the order of processions, the service of the priests
and deacons, the variety and change of sacerdotal garments. Till
the last days of his life, he officiated in the canon of the
mass, which continued above three hours: the Gregorian chant 70
has preserved the vocal and instrumental music of the theatre,
and the rough voices of the Barbarians attempted to imitate the
melody of the Roman school. 71 Experience had shown him the
efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, to soothe the
distress, to confirm the faith, to mitigate the fierceness, and
to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the vulgar, and he readily
forgave their tendency to promote the reign of priesthood and
superstition. The bishops of Italy and the adjacent islands
acknowledged the Roman pontiff as their special metropolitan.
Even the existence, the union, or the translation of episcopal
seats was decided by his absolute discretion: and his successful
inroads into the provinces of Greece, of Spain, and of Gaul,
might countenance the more lofty pretensions of succeeding popes.
He interposed to prevent the abuses of popular elections; his
jealous care maintained the purity of faith and discipline; and
the apostolic shepherd assiduously watched over the faith and
discipline of the subordinate pastors. Under his reign, the
Arians of Italy and Spain were reconciled to the Catholic church,
and the conquest of Britain reflects less glory on the name of
Caesar, than on that of Gregory the First. Instead of six
legions, forty monks were embarked for that distant island, and
the pontiff lamented the austere duties which forbade him to
partake the perils of their spiritual warfare. In less than two
years, he could announce to the archbishop of Alexandria, that
they had baptized the king of Kent with ten thousand of his
Anglo-Saxons, and that the Roman missionaries, like those of the
primitive church, were armed only with spiritual and supernatural
powers. The credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always
disposed to confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of
ghosts, miracles, and resurrections; 72 and posterity has paid to
his memory the same tribute which he freely granted to the virtue
of his own or the preceding generation. The celestial honors have
been liberally bestowed by the authority of the popes, but
Gregory is the last of their own order whom they have presumed to
inscribe in the calendar of saints.

69 (return) [ The Lord’s Prayer consists of half a dozen lines;
the Sacramentarius and Antiphonarius of Gregory fill 880 folio
pages, (tom. iii. p. i. p. 1—880;) yet these only constitute a
part of the Ordo Romanus, which Mabillon has illustrated and
Fleury has abridged, (Hist. Eccles. tom. viii. p. 139—152.)]

70 (return) [ I learn from the Abbe Dobos, (Reflexions sur la
Poesie et la Peinture, tom. iii. p. 174, 175,) that the
simplicity of the Ambrosian chant was confined to four modes,
while the more perfect harmony of the Gregorian comprised the
eight modes or fifteen chords of the ancient music. He observes
(p. 332) that the connoisseurs admire the preface and many
passages of the Gregorian office.]

71 (return) [ John the deacon (in Vit. Greg. l. ii. c. 7)
expresses the early contempt of the Italians for tramontane
singing. Alpina scilicet corpora vocum suarum tonitruis altisone
perstrepentia, susceptae modulationis dulcedinem proprie non
resultant: quia bibuli gutturis barbara feritas dum inflexionibus
et repercussionibus mitem nititur edere cantilenam, naturali
quodam fragore, quasi plaustra per gradus confuse sonantia,
rigidas voces jactat, &c. In the time of Charlemagne, the Franks,
though with some reluctance, admitted the justice of the
reproach. Muratori, Dissert. xxv.]

72 (return) [ A French critic (Petrus Gussanvillus, Opera, tom.
ii. p. 105—112) has vindicated the right of Gregory to the entire
nonsense of the Dialogues. Dupin (tom. v. p. 138) does not think
that any one will vouch for the truth of all these miracles: I
should like to know how many of them he believed himself.]

Their temporal power insensibly arose from the calamities of the
times: and the Roman bishops, who have deluged Europe and Asia
with blood, were compelled to reign as the ministers of charity
and peace. I. The church of Rome, as it has been formerly
observed, was endowed with ample possessions in Italy, Sicily,
and the more distant provinces; and her agents, who were commonly
sub-deacons, had acquired a civil, and even criminal,
jurisdiction over their tenants and husbandmen. The successor of
St. Peter administered his patrimony with the temper of a
vigilant and moderate landlord; 73 and the epistles of Gregory
are filled with salutary instructions to abstain from doubtful or
vexatious lawsuits; to preserve the integrity of weights and
measures; to grant every reasonable delay; and to reduce the
capitation of the slaves of the glebe, who purchased the right of
marriage by the payment of an arbitrary fine. 74 The rent or the
produce of these estates was transported to the mouth of the
Tyber, at the risk and expense of the pope: in the use of wealth
he acted like a faithful steward of the church and the poor, and
liberally applied to their wants the inexhaustible resources of
abstinence and order. The voluminous account of his receipts and
disbursements was kept above three hundred years in the Lateran,
as the model of Christian economy. On the four great festivals,
he divided their quarterly allowance to the clergy, to his
domestics, to the monasteries, the churches, the places of
burial, the almshouses, and the hospitals of Rome, and the rest
of the diocese. On the first day of every month, he distributed
to the poor, according to the season, their stated portion of
corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, fresh provisions,
clothes, and money; and his treasurers were continually summoned
to satisfy, in his name, the extraordinary demands of indigence
and merit. The instant distress of the sick and helpless, of
strangers and pilgrims, was relieved by the bounty of each day,
and of every hour; nor would the pontiff indulge himself in a
frugal repast, till he had sent the dishes from his own table to
some objects deserving of his compassion. The misery of the times
had reduced the nobles and matrons of Rome to accept, without a
blush, the benevolence of the church: three thousand virgins
received their food and raiment from the hand of their
benefactor; and many bishops of Italy escaped from the Barbarians
to the hospitable threshold of the Vatican. Gregory might justly
be styled the Father of his Country; and such was the extreme
sensibility of his conscience, that, for the death of a beggar
who had perished in the streets, he interdicted himself during
several days from the exercise of sacerdotal functions. II. The
misfortunes of Rome involved the apostolical pastor in the
business of peace and war; and it might be doubtful to himself,
whether piety or ambition prompted him to supply the place of his
absent sovereign. Gregory awakened the emperor from a long
slumber; exposed the guilt or incapacity of the exarch and his
inferior ministers; complained that the veterans were withdrawn
from Rome for the defence of Spoleto; encouraged the Italians to
guard their cities and altars; and condescended, in the crisis of
danger, to name the tribunes, and to direct the operations, of
the provincial troops. But the martial spirit of the pope was
checked by the scruples of humanity and religion: the imposition
of tribute, though it was employed in the Italian war, he freely
condemned as odious and oppressive; whilst he protected, against
the Imperial edicts, the pious cowardice of the soldiers who
deserted a military for a monastic life. If we may credit his own
declarations, it would have been easy for Gregory to exterminate
the Lombards by their domestic factions, without leaving a king,
a duke, or a count, to save that unfortunate nation from the
vengeance of their foes. As a Christian bishop, he preferred the
salutary offices of peace; his mediation appeased the tumult of
arms: but he was too conscious of the arts of the Greeks, and the
passions of the Lombards, to engage his sacred promise for the
observance of the truce. Disappointed in the hope of a general
and lasting treaty, he presumed to save his country without the
consent of the emperor or the exarch. The sword of the enemy was
suspended over Rome; it was averted by the mild eloquence and
seasonable gifts of the pontiff, who commanded the respect of
heretics and Barbarians. The merits of Gregory were treated by
the Byzantine court with reproach and insult; but in the
attachment of a grateful people, he found the purest reward of a
citizen, and the best right of a sovereign. 75

73 (return) [ Baronius is unwilling to expatiate on the care of
the patrimonies, lest he should betray that they consisted not of
kingdoms, but farms. The French writers, the Benedictine editors,
(tom. iv. l. iii. p. 272, &c.,) and Fleury, (tom. viii. p. 29,
&c.,) are not afraid of entering into these humble, though
useful, details; and the humanity of Fleury dwells on the social
virtues of Gregory.]

74 (return) [ I much suspect that this pecuniary fine on the
marriages of villains produced the famous, and often fabulous
right, de cuissage, de marquette, &c. With the consent of her
husband, a handsome bride might commute the payment in the arms
of a young landlord, and the mutual favor might afford a
precedent of local rather than legal tyranny]

75 (return) [ The temporal reign of Gregory I. is ably exposed by
Sigonius in the first book, de Regno Italiae. See his works, tom.
ii. p. 44—75]

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.

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

The conflict of Rome and Persia was prolonged from the death of
Craesus to the reign of Heraclius. An experience of seven hundred
years might convince the rival nations of the impossibility of
maintaining their conquests beyond the fatal limits of the Tigris
and Euphrates. Yet the emulation of Trajan and Julian was
awakened by the trophies of Alexander, and the sovereigns of
Persia indulged the ambitious hope of restoring the empire of
Cyrus. 1 Such extraordinary efforts of power and courage will
always command the attention of posterity; but the events by
which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a
faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the
reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same
hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory,
and terminated without effect. The arts of negotiation, unknown
to the simple greatness of the senate and the Caesars, were
assiduously cultivated by the Byzantine princes; and the
memorials of their perpetual embassies 2 repeat, with the same
uniform prolixity, the language of falsehood and declamation, the
insolence of the Barbarians, and the servile temper of the
tributary Greeks. Lamenting the barren superfluity of materials,
I have studied to compress the narrative of these uninteresting
transactions: but the just Nushirvan is still applauded as the
model of Oriental kings, and the ambition of his grandson
Chosroes prepared the revolution of the East, which was speedily
accomplished by the arms and the religion of the successors of
Mahomet.

1 (return) [ Missis qui... reposcerent... veteres Persarum ac
Macedonum terminos, seque invasurum possessa Cyro et post
Alexandro, per vaniloquentiam ac minas jaciebat. Tacit. Annal.
vi. 31. Such was the language of the Arsacides. I have repeatedly
marked the lofty claims of the Sassanians.]

2 (return) [ See the embassies of Menander, extracted and
preserved in the tenth century by the order of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus.]

In the useless altercations, that precede and justify the
quarrels of princes, the Greeks and the Barbarians accused each
other of violating the peace which had been concluded between the
two empires about four years before the death of Justinian. The
sovereign of Persia and India aspired to reduce under his
obedience the province of Yemen or Arabia 3 Felix; the distant
land of myrrh and frankincense, which had escaped, rather than
opposed, the conquerors of the East. After the defeat of Abrahah
under the walls of Mecca, the discord of his sons and brothers
gave an easy entrance to the Persians: they chased the strangers
of Abyssinia beyond the Red Sea; and a native prince of the
ancient Homerites was restored to the throne as the vassal or
viceroy of the great Nushirvan. 4 But the nephew of Justinian
declared his resolution to avenge the injuries of his Christian
ally the prince of Abyssinia, as they suggested a decent pretence
to discontinue the annual tribute, which was poorly disguised by
the name of pension. The churches of Persarmenia were oppressed
by the intolerant spirit of the Magi; 411 they secretly invoked
the protector of the Christians, and, after the pious murder of
their satraps, the rebels were avowed and supported as the
brethren and subjects of the Roman emperor. The complaints of
Nushirvan were disregarded by the Byzantine court; Justin yielded
to the importunities of the Turks, who offered an alliance
against the common enemy; and the Persian monarchy was threatened
at the same instant by the united forces of Europe, of Aethiopia,
and of Scythia. At the age of fourscore the sovereign of the East
would perhaps have chosen the peaceful enjoyment of his glory and
greatness; but as soon as war became inevitable, he took the
field with the alacrity of youth, whilst the aggressor trembled
in the palace of Constantinople. Nushirvan, or Chosroes,
conducted in person the siege of Dara; and although that
important fortress had been left destitute of troops and
magazines, the valor of the inhabitants resisted above five
months the archers, the elephants, and the military engines of
the Great King. In the mean while his general Adarman advanced
from Babylon, traversed the desert, passed the Euphrates,
insulted the suburbs of Antioch, reduced to ashes the city of
Apamea, and laid the spoils of Syria at the feet of his master,
whose perseverance in the midst of winter at length subverted the
bulwark of the East. But these losses, which astonished the
provinces and the court, produced a salutary effect in the
repentance and abdication of the emperor Justin: a new spirit
arose in the Byzantine councils; and a truce of three years was
obtained by the prudence of Tiberius. That seasonable interval
was employed in the preparations of war; and the voice of rumor
proclaimed to the world, that from the distant countries of the
Alps and the Rhine, from Scythia, Maesia, Pannonia, Illyricum,
and Isauria, the strength of the Imperial cavalry was reenforced
with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. Yet the king of
Persia, without fear, or without faith, resolved to prevent the
attack of the enemy; again passed the Euphrates, and dismissing
the ambassadors of Tiberius, arrogantly commanded them to await
his arrival at Caesarea, the metropolis of the Cappadocian
provinces. The two armies encountered each other in the battle of
Melitene: 412 the Barbarians, who darkened the air with a cloud
of arrows, prolonged their line, and extended their wings across
the plain; while the Romans, in deep and solid bodies, expected
to prevail in closer action, by the weight of their swords and
lances. A Scythian chief, who commanded their right wing,
suddenly turned the flank of the enemy, attacked their rear-guard
in the presence of Chosroes, penetrated to the midst of the camp,
pillaged the royal tent, profaned the eternal fire, loaded a
train of camels with the spoils of Asia, cut his way through the
Persian host, and returned with songs of victory to his friends,
who had consumed the day in single combats, or ineffectual
skirmishes. The darkness of the night, and the separation of the
Romans, afforded the Persian monarch an opportunity of revenge;
and one of their camps was swept away by a rapid and impetuous
assault. But the review of his loss, and the consciousness of his
danger, determined Chosroes to a speedy retreat: he burnt, in his
passage, the vacant town of Melitene; and, without consulting the
safety of his troops, boldly swam the Euphrates on the back of an
elephant. After this unsuccessful campaign, the want of
magazines, and perhaps some inroad of the Turks, obliged him to
disband or divide his forces; the Romans were left masters of the
field, and their general Justinian, advancing to the relief of
the Persarmenian rebels, erected his standard on the banks of the
Araxes. The great Pompey had formerly halted within three days’
march of the Caspian: 5 that inland sea was explored, for the
first time, by a hostile fleet, 6 and seventy thousand captives
were transplanted from Hyrcania to the Isle of Cyprus. On the
return of spring, Justinian descended into the fertile plains of
Assyria; the flames of war approached the residence of Nushirvan;
the indignant monarch sunk into the grave; and his last edict
restrained his successors from exposing their person in battle
against the Romans. 611 Yet the memory of this transient affront
was lost in the glories of a long reign; and his formidable
enemies, after indulging their dream of conquest, again solicited
a short respite from the calamities of war. 7

3 (return) [ The general independence of the Arabs, which cannot
be admitted without many limitations, is blindly asserted in a
separate dissertation of the authors of the Universal History,
vol. xx. p. 196—250. A perpetual miracle is supposed to have
guarded the prophecy in favor of the posterity of Ishmael; and
these learned bigots are not afraid to risk the truth of
Christianity on this frail and slippery foundation. * Note: It
certainly appears difficult to extract a prediction of the
perpetual independence of the Arabs from the text in Genesis,
which would have received an ample fulfilment during centuries of
uninvaded freedom. But the disputants appear to forget the
inseparable connection in the prediction between the wild, the
Bedoween habits of the Ismaelites, with their national
independence. The stationary and civilized descendant of Ismael
forfeited, as it were, his birthright, and ceased to be a genuine
son of the “wild man” The phrase, “dwelling in the presence of
his brethren,” is interpreted by Rosenmuller (in loc.) and
others, according to the Hebrew geography, “to the East” of his
brethren, the legitimate race of Abraham—M.]

4 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 477. Pocock,
Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 64, 65. Father Pagi (Critica, tom. ii.
p. 646) has proved that, after ten years’ peace, the Persian war,
which continued twenty years, was renewed A.D. 571. Mahomet was
born A.D. 569, in the year of the elephant, or the defeat of
Abrahah, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 89, 90, 98;) and
this account allows two years for the conquest of Yemen. * Note:
Abrahah, according to some accounts, was succeeded by his son
Taksoum, who reigned seventeen years; his brother Mascouh, who
was slain in battle against the Persians, twelve. But this
chronology is irreconcilable with the Arabian conquests of
Nushirvan the Great. Either Seif, or his son Maadi Karb, was the
native prince placed on the throne by the Persians. St. Martin,
vol. x. p. 78. See likewise Johannsen, Hist. Yemanae.—M.]

411 (return) [ Persarmenia was long maintained in peace by the
tolerant administration of Mejej, prince of the Gnounians. On his
death he was succeeded by a persecutor, a Persian, named
Ten-Schahpour, who attempted to propagate Zoroastrianism by
violence. Nushirvan, on an appeal to the throne by the Armenian
clergy, replaced Ten-Schahpour, in 552, by Veschnas-Vahram. The
new marzban, or governor, was instructed to repress the bigoted
Magi in their persecutions of the Armenians, but the Persian
converts to Christianity were still exposed to cruel sufferings.
The most distinguished of them, Izdbouzid, was crucified at Dovin
in the presence of a vast multitude. The fame of this martyr
spread to the West. Menander, the historian, not only, as appears
by a fragment published by Mai, related this event in his
history, but, according to M. St. Martin, wrote a tragedy on the
subject. This, however, is an unwarrantable inference from the
phrase which merely means that he related the tragic event in his
history. An epigram on the same subject, preserved in the
Anthology, Jacob’s Anth. Palat. i. 27, belongs to the historian.
Yet Armenia remained in peace under the government of
Veschnas-Vahram and his successor Varazdat. The tyranny of his
successor Surena led to the insurrection under Vartan, the
Mamigonian, who revenged the death of his brother on the marzban
Surena, surprised Dovin, and put to the sword the governor, the
soldiers, and the Magians. From St. Martin, vol x. p. 79—89.—M.]

412 (return) [ Malathiah. It was in the lesser Armenia.—M.]

5 (return) [ He had vanquished the Albanians, who brought into
the field 12,000 horse and 60,000 foot; but he dreaded the
multitude of venomous reptiles, whose existence may admit of some
doubt, as well as that of the neighboring Amazons. Plutarch, in
Pompeio, tom. ii. p. 1165, 1166.]

6 (return) [ In the history of the world I can only perceive two
navies on the Caspian: 1. Of the Macedonians, when Patrocles, the
admiral of the kings of Syria, Seleucus and Antiochus, descended
most probably the River Oxus, from the confines of India, (Plin.
Hist. Natur. vi. 21.) 2. Of the Russians, when Peter the First
conducted a fleet and army from the neighborhood of Moscow to the
coast of Persia, (Bell’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 325—352.) He justly
observes, that such martial pomp had never been displayed on the
Volga.]

611 (return) [ This circumstance rests on the statements of
Evagrius and Theophylaci Simocatta. They are not of sufficient
authority to establish a fact so improbable. St. Martin, vol. x.
p. 140.—M.]

7 (return) [ For these Persian wars and treaties, see Menander,
in Excerpt. Legat. p. 113—125. Theophanes Byzant. apud Photium,
cod. lxiv p. 77, 80, 81. Evagrius, l. v. c. 7—15. Theophylact, l.
iii. c. 9—16 Agathias, l. iv. p. 140.]

The throne of Chosroes Nushirvan was filled by Hormouz, or
Hormisdas, the eldest or the most favored of his sons. With the
kingdoms of Persia and India, he inherited the reputation and
example of his father, the service, in every rank, of his wise
and valiant officers, and a general system of administration,
harmonized by time and political wisdom to promote the happiness
of the prince and people. But the royal youth enjoyed a still
more valuable blessing, the friendship of a sage who had presided
over his education, and who always preferred the honor to the
interest of his pupil, his interest to his inclination. In a
dispute with the Greek and Indian philosophers, Buzurg 8 had once
maintained, that the most grievous misfortune of life is old age
without the remembrance of virtue; and our candor will presume
that the same principle compelled him, during three years, to
direct the councils of the Persian empire. His zeal was rewarded
by the gratitude and docility of Hormouz, who acknowledged
himself more indebted to his preceptor than to his parent: but
when age and labor had impaired the strength, and perhaps the
faculties, of this prudent counsellor, he retired from court, and
abandoned the youthful monarch to his own passions and those of
his favorites. By the fatal vicissitude of human affairs, the
same scenes were renewed at Ctesiphon, which had been exhibited
at Rome after the death of Marcus Antoninus. The ministers of
flattery and corruption, who had been banished by his father,
were recalled and cherished by the son; the disgrace and exile of
the friends of Nushirvan established their tyranny; and virtue
was driven by degrees from the mind of Hormouz, from his palace,
and from the government of the state. The faithful agents, the
eyes and ears of the king, informed him of the progress of
disorder, that the provincial governors flew to their prey with
the fierceness of lions and eagles, and that their rapine and
injustice would teach the most loyal of his subjects to abhor the
name and authority of their sovereign. The sincerity of this
advice was punished with death; the murmurs of the cities were
despised, their tumults were quelled by military execution: the
intermediate powers between the throne and the people were
abolished; and the childish vanity of Hormouz, who affected the
daily use of the tiara, was fond of declaring, that he alone
would be the judge as well as the master of his kingdom.

In every word, and in every action, the son of Nushirvan
degenerated from the virtues of his father. His avarice defrauded
the troops; his jealous caprice degraded the satraps; the palace,
the tribunals, the waters of the Tigris, were stained with the
blood of the innocent, and the tyrant exulted in the sufferings
and execution of thirteen thousand victims. As the excuse of his
cruelty, he sometimes condescended to observe, that the fears of
the Persians would be productive of hatred, and that their hatred
must terminate in rebellion but he forgot that his own guilt and
folly had inspired the sentiments which he deplored, and prepared
the event which he so justly apprehended. Exasperated by long and
hopeless oppression, the provinces of Babylon, Susa, and
Carmania, erected the standard of revolt; and the princes of
Arabia, India, and Scythia, refused the customary tribute to the
unworthy successor of Nushirvan. The arms of the Romans, in slow
sieges and frequent inroads, afflicted the frontiers of
Mesopotamia and Assyria: one of their generals professed himself
the disciple of Scipio; and the soldiers were animated by a
miraculous image of Christ, whose mild aspect should never have
been displayed in the front of battle. 9 At the same time, the
eastern provinces of Persia were invaded by the great khan, who
passed the Oxus at the head of three or four hundred thousand
Turks. The imprudent Hormouz accepted their perfidious and
formidable aid; the cities of Khorassan or Bactriana were
commanded to open their gates the march of the Barbarians towards
the mountains of Hyrcania revealed the correspondence of the
Turkish and Roman arms; and their union must have subverted the
throne of the house of Sassan.

8 (return) [ Buzurg Mihir may be considered, in his character and
station, as the Seneca of the East; but his virtues, and perhaps
his faults, are less known than those of the Roman, who appears
to have been much more loquacious. The Persian sage was the
person who imported from India the game of chess and the fables
of Pilpay. Such has been the fame of his wisdom and virtues, that
the Christians claim him as a believer in the gospel; and the
Mahometans revere Buzurg as a premature Mussulman. D’Herbelot,
Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 218.]

9 (return) [ See the imitation of Scipio in Theophylact, l. i. c.
14; the image of Christ, l. ii. c. 3. Hereafter I shall speak
more amply of the Christian images—I had almost said idols. This,
if I am not mistaken, is the oldest of divine manufacture; but in
the next thousand years, many others issued from the same
workshop.]

Persia had been lost by a king; it was saved by a hero. After his
revolt, Varanes or Bahram is stigmatized by the son of Hormouz as
an ungrateful slave; the proud and ambiguous reproach of
despotism, since he was truly descended from the ancient princes
of Rei, 10 one of the seven families whose splendid, as well as
substantial, prerogatives exalted them above the heads of the
Persian nobility. 11 At the siege of Dara, the valor of Bahram
was signalized under the eyes of Nushirvan, and both the father
and son successively promoted him to the command of armies, the
government of Media, and the superintendence of the palace. The
popular prediction which marked him as the deliverer of Persia,
might be inspired by his past victories and extraordinary figure:
the epithet Giubin 1111 is expressive of the quality of dry wood:
he had the strength and stature of a giant; and his savage
countenance was fancifully compared to that of a wild cat. While
the nation trembled, while Hormouz disguised his terror by the
name of suspicion, and his servants concealed their disloyalty
under the mask of fear, Bahram alone displayed his undaunted
courage and apparent fidelity: and as soon as he found that no
more than twelve thousand soldiers would follow him against the
enemy; he prudently declared, that to this fatal number Heaven
had reserved the honors of the triumph. 1112 The steep and narrow
descent of the Pule Rudbar, 12 or Hyrcanian rock, is the only
pass through which an army can penetrate into the territory of
Rei and the plains of Media. From the commanding heights, a band
of resolute men might overwhelm with stones and darts the myriads
of the Turkish host: their emperor and his son were transpierced
with arrows; and the fugitives were left, without counsel or
provisions, to the revenge of an injured people. The patriotism
of the Persian general was stimulated by his affection for the
city of his forefathers: in the hour of victory, every peasant
became a soldier, and every soldier a hero; and their ardor was
kindled by the gorgeous spectacle of beds, and thrones, and
tables of massy gold, the spoils of Asia, and the luxury of the
hostile camp. A prince of a less malignant temper could not
easily have forgiven his benefactor; and the secret hatred of
Hormouz was envenomed by a malicious report, that Bahram had
privately retained the most precious fruits of his Turkish
victory. But the approach of a Roman army on the side of the
Araxes compelled the implacable tyrant to smile and to applaud;
and the toils of Bahram were rewarded with the permission of
encountering a new enemy, by their skill and discipline more
formidable than a Scythian multitude. Elated by his recent
success, he despatched a herald with a bold defiance to the camp
of the Romans, requesting them to fix a day of battle, and to
choose whether they would pass the river themselves, or allow a
free passage to the arms of the great king. The lieutenant of the
emperor Maurice preferred the safer alternative; and this local
circumstance, which would have enhanced the victory of the
Persians, rendered their defeat more bloody and their escape more
difficult. But the loss of his subjects, and the danger of his
kingdom, were overbalanced in the mind of Hormouz by the disgrace
of his personal enemy; and no sooner had Bahram collected and
reviewed his forces, than he received from a royal messenger the
insulting gift of a distaff, a spinning-wheel, and a complete
suit of female apparel. Obedient to the will of his sovereign he
showed himself to the soldiers in this unworthy disguise they
resented his ignominy and their own; a shout of rebellion ran
through the ranks; and the general accepted their oath of
fidelity and vows of revenge. A second messenger, who had been
commanded to bring the rebel in chains, was trampled under the
feet of an elephant, and manifestos were diligently circulated,
exhorting the Persians to assert their freedom against an odious
and contemptible tyrant. The defection was rapid and universal;
his loyal slaves were sacrificed to the public fury; the troops
deserted to the standard of Bahram; and the provinces again
saluted the deliverer of his country.

10 (return) [ Ragae, or Rei, is mentioned in the Apocryphal book
of Tobit as already flourishing, 700 years before Christ, under
the Assyrian empire. Under the foreign names of Europus and
Arsacia, this city, 500 stadia to the south of the Caspian gates,
was successively embellished by the Macedonians and Parthians,
(Strabo, l. xi. p. 796.) Its grandeur and populousness in the
ixth century are exaggerated beyond the bounds of credibility;
but Rei has been since ruined by wars and the unwholesomeness of
the air. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, tom. i. p. 279, 280.
D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Oriental. p. 714.]

11 (return) [ Theophylact. l. iii. c. 18. The story of the seven
Persians is told in the third book of Herodotus; and their noble
descendants are often mentioned, especially in the fragments of
Ctesias. Yet the independence of Otanes (Herodot. l. iii. c. 83,
84) is hostile to the spirit of despotism, and it may not seem
probable that the seven families could survive the revolutions of
eleven hundred years. They might, however, be represented by the
seven ministers, (Brisson, de Regno Persico, l. i. p. 190;) and
some Persian nobles, like the kings of Pontus (Polyb l. v. p.
540) and Cappadocia, (Diodor. Sicul. l. xxxi. tom. ii. p. 517,)
might claim their descent from the bold companions of Darius.]

1111 (return) [ He is generally called Baharam Choubeen, Baharam,
the stick-like, probably from his appearance. Malcolm, vol. i. p.
120.—M.]

1112 (return) [ The Persian historians say, that Hormouz
entreated his general to increase his numbers; but Baharam
replied, that experience had taught him that it was the quality,
not the number of soldiers, which gave success. * * * No man in
his army was under forty years, and none above fifty. Malcolm,
vol. i. p. 121—M.]

12 (return) [ See an accurate description of this mountain by
Olearius, (Voyage en Perse, p. 997, 998,) who ascended it with
much difficulty and danger in his return from Ispahan to the
Caspian Sea.]

As the passes were faithfully guarded, Hormouz could only compute
the number of his enemies by the testimony of a guilty
conscience, and the daily defection of those who, in the hour of
his distress, avenged their wrongs, or forgot their obligations.
He proudly displayed the ensigns of royalty; but the city and
palace of Modain had already escaped from the hand of the tyrant.
Among the victims of his cruelty, Bindoes, a Sassanian prince,
had been cast into a dungeon; his fetters were broken by the zeal
and courage of a brother; and he stood before the king at the
head of those trusty guards, who had been chosen as the ministers
of his confinement, and perhaps of his death. Alarmed by the
hasty intrusion and bold reproaches of the captive, Hormouz
looked round, but in vain, for advice or assistance; discovered
that his strength consisted in the obedience of others; and
patiently yielded to the single arm of Bindoes, who dragged him
from the throne to the same dungeon in which he himself had been
so lately confined. At the first tumult, Chosroes, the eldest of
the sons of Hormouz, escaped from the city; he was persuaded to
return by the pressing and friendly invitation of Bindoes, who
promised to seat him on his father’s throne, and who expected to
reign under the name of an inexperienced youth. In the just
assurance, that his accomplices could neither forgive nor hope to
be forgiven, and that every Persian might be trusted as the judge
and enemy of the tyrant, he instituted a public trial without a
precedent and without a copy in the annals of the East. The son
of Nushirvan, who had requested to plead in his own defence, was
introduced as a criminal into the full assembly of the nobles and
satraps. 13 He was heard with decent attention as long as he
expatiated on the advantages of order and obedience, the danger
of innovation, and the inevitable discord of those who had
encouraged each other to trample on their lawful and hereditary
sovereign. By a pathetic appeal to their humanity, he extorted
that pity which is seldom refused to the fallen fortunes of a
king; and while they beheld the abject posture and squalid
appearance of the prisoner, his tears, his chains, and the marks
of ignominious stripes, it was impossible to forget how recently
they had adored the divine splendor of his diadem and purple. But
an angry murmur arose in the assembly as soon as he presumed to
vindicate his conduct, and to applaud the victories of his reign.
He defined the duties of a king, and the Persian nobles listened
with a smile of contempt; they were fired with indignation when
he dared to vilify the character of Chosroes; and by the
indiscreet offer of resigning the sceptre to the second of his
sons, he subscribed his own condemnation, and sacrificed the life
of his own innocent favorite. The mangled bodies of the boy and
his mother were exposed to the people; the eyes of Hormouz were
pierced with a hot needle; and the punishment of the father was
succeeded by the coronation of his eldest son. Chosroes had
ascended the throne without guilt, and his piety strove to
alleviate the misery of the abdicated monarch; from the dungeon
he removed Hormouz to an apartment of the palace, supplied with
liberality the consolations of sensual enjoyment, and patiently
endured the furious sallies of his resentment and despair. He
might despise the resentment of a blind and unpopular tyrant, but
the tiara was trembling on his head, till he could subvert the
power, or acquire the friendship, of the great Bahram, who
sternly denied the justice of a revolution, in which himself and
his soldiers, the true representatives of Persia, had never been
consulted. The offer of a general amnesty, and of the second rank
in his kingdom, was answered by an epistle from Bahram, friend of
the gods, conqueror of men, and enemy of tyrants, the satrap of
satraps, general of the Persian armies, and a prince adorned with
the title of eleven virtues. 14 He commands Chosroes, the son of
Hormouz, to shun the example and fate of his father, to confine
the traitors who had been released from their chains, to deposit
in some holy place the diadem which he had usurped, and to accept
from his gracious benefactor the pardon of his faults and the
government of a province. The rebel might not be proud, and the
king most assuredly was not humble; but the one was conscious of
his strength, the other was sensible of his weakness; and even
the modest language of his reply still left room for treaty and
reconciliation. Chosroes led into the field the slaves of the
palace and the populace of the capital: they beheld with terror
the banners of a veteran army; they were encompassed and
surprised by the evolutions of the general; and the satraps who
had deposed Hormouz, received the punishment of their revolt, or
expiated their first treason by a second and more criminal act of
disloyalty. The life and liberty of Chosroes were saved, but he
was reduced to the necessity of imploring aid or refuge in some
foreign land; and the implacable Bindoes, anxious to secure an
unquestionable title, hastily returned to the palace, and ended,
with a bowstring, the wretched existence of the son of Nushirvan.
15

13 (return) [ The Orientals suppose that Bahram convened this
assembly and proclaimed Chosroes; but Theophylact is, in this
instance, more distinct and credible. * Note: Yet Theophylact
seems to have seized the opportunity to indulge his propensity
for writing orations; and the orations read rather like those of
a Grecian sophist than of an Eastern assembly.—M.]

14 (return) [ See the words of Theophylact, l. iv. c. 7., &c. In
answer, Chosroes styles himself in genuine Oriental bombast.]

15 (return) [ Theophylact (l. iv. c. 7) imputes the death of
Hormouz to his son, by whose command he was beaten to death with
clubs. I have followed the milder account of Khondemir and
Eutychius, and shall always be content with the slightest
evidence to extenuate the crime of parricide. Note: Malcolm
concurs in ascribing his death to Bundawee, (Bindoes,) vol. i. p.
123. The Eastern writers generally impute the crime to the uncle
St. Martin, vol. x. p. 300.—M.]

While Chosroes despatched the preparations of his retreat, he
deliberated with his remaining friends, 16 whether he should lurk
in the valleys of Mount Caucasus, or fly to the tents of the
Turks, or solicit the protection of the emperor. The long
emulation of the successors of Artaxerxes and Constantine
increased his reluctance to appear as a suppliant in a rival
court; but he weighed the forces of the Romans, and prudently
considered that the neighborhood of Syria would render his escape
more easy and their succors more effectual. Attended only by his
concubines, and a troop of thirty guards, he secretly departed
from the capital, followed the banks of the Euphrates, traversed
the desert, and halted at the distance of ten miles from
Circesium. About the third watch of the night, the Roman 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.

16 (return) [ After the battle of Pharsalia, the Pompey of Lucan
(l. viii. 256—455) holds a similar debate. He was himself
desirous of seeking the Parthians: but his companions abhorred
the unnatural alliance and the adverse prejudices might operate
as forcibly on Chosroes and his companions, who could describe,
with the same vehemence, the contrast of laws, religion, and
manners, between the East and West.]

17 (return) [ In this age there were three warriors of the name
of Narses, who have been often confounded, (Pagi, Critica, tom.
ii. p. 640:) 1. A Persarmenian, the brother of Isaac and
Armatius, who, after a successful action against Belisarius,
deserted from his Persian sovereign, and afterwards served in the
Italian war.—2. The eunuch who conquered Italy.—3. The restorer
of Chosroes, who is celebrated in the poem of Corippus (l. iii.
220—327) as excelsus super omnia vertico agmina.... habitu
modestus.... morum probitate placens, virtute verendus;
fulmineus, cautus, vigilans, &c.]

1711 (return) [ The Armenians adhered to Chosroes. St. Martin,
vol. x. p. 312.—M. ——According to Mivkhond and the Oriental
writers, Bahram received the daughter of the Khakan in marriage,
and commanded a body of Turks in an invasion of Persia. Some say
that he was assassinated; Malcolm adopts the opinion that he was
poisoned. His sister Gourdieh, the companion of his flight, is
celebrated in the Shah Nameh. She was afterwards one of the wives
of Chosroes. St. Martin. vol. x. p. 331.—M.]

The restoration of Chosroes was celebrated with feasts and
executions; and the music of the royal banquet was often
disturbed by the groans of dying or mutilated criminals. A
general pardon might have diffused comfort and tranquillity
through a country which had been shaken by the late revolutions;
yet, before the sanguinary temper of Chosroes is blamed, we
should learn whether the Persians had not been accustomed either
to dread the rigor, or to despise the weakness, of their
sovereign. The revolt of Bahram, and the conspiracy of the
satraps, were impartially punished by the revenge or justice of
the conqueror; the merits of Bindoes himself could not purify his
hand from the guilt of royal blood: and the son of Hormouz was
desirous to assert his own innocence, and to vindicate the
sanctity of kings. During the vigor of the Roman power, several
princes were seated on the throne of Persia by the arms and the
authority of the first Caesars. But their new subjects were soon
disgusted with the vices or virtues which they had imbibed in a
foreign land; the instability of their dominion gave birth to a
vulgar observation, that the choice of Rome was solicited and
rejected with equal ardor by the capricious levity of Oriental
slaves. But the glory of Maurice was conspicuous in the long and
fortunate reign of his son and his ally. A band of a thousand
Romans, who continued to guard the person of Chosroes, proclaimed
his confidence in the fidelity of the strangers; his growing
strength enabled him to dismiss this unpopular aid, but he
steadily professed the same gratitude and reverence to his
adopted father; and till the death of Maurice, the peace and
alliance of the two empires were faithfully maintained. 18 Yet
the mercenary friendship of the Roman prince had been purchased
with costly and important gifts; the strong cities of
Martyropolis and Dara 1811 were restored, and the Persarmenians
became the willing subjects of an empire, whose eastern limit was
extended, beyond the example of former times, as far as the banks
of the Araxes, and the neighborhood of the Caspian. A pious hope
was indulged, that the church as well as the state might triumph
in this revolution: but if Chosroes had sincerely listened to the
Christian bishops, the impression was erased by the zeal and
eloquence of the Magi: if he was armed with philosophic
indifference, he accommodated his belief, or rather his
professions, to the various circumstances of an exile and a
sovereign. The imaginary conversion of the king of Persia was
reduced to a local and superstitious veneration for Sergius, 19
one of the saints of Antioch, who heard his prayers and appeared
to him in dreams; he enriched the shrine with offerings of gold
and silver, and ascribed to this invisible patron the success of
his arms, and the pregnancy of Sira, a devout Christian and the
best beloved of his wives. 20 The beauty of Sira, or Schirin, 21
her wit, her musical talents, are still famous in the history, or
rather in the romances, of the East: her own name is expressive,
in the Persian tongue, of sweetness and grace; and the epithet of
Parviz alludes to the charms of her royal lover. Yet Sira never
shared the passions which she inspired, and the bliss of Chosroes
was tortured by a jealous doubt, that while he possessed her
person, she had bestowed her affections on a meaner favorite. 22

18 (return) [ Experimentis cognitum est Barbaros malle Roma
petere reges quam habere. These experiments are admirably
represented in the invitation and expulsion of Vonones, (Annal.
ii. 1—3,) Tiridates, (Annal. vi. 32-44,) and Meherdates, (Annal.
xi. 10, xii. 10-14.) The eye of Tacitus seems to have
transpierced the camp of the Parthians and the walls of the
harem.]

1811 (return) [ Concerning Nisibis, see St. Martin and his
Armenian authorities, vol. x p. 332, and Memoires sur l’Armenie,
tom. i. p. 25.—M.]

19 (return) [ Sergius and his companion Bacchus, who are said to
have suffered in the persecution of Maximian, obtained divine
honor in France, Italy, Constantinople, and the East. Their tomb
at Rasaphe was famous for miracles, and that Syrian town acquired
the more honorable name of Sergiopolis. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles.
tom. v. p. 481—496. Butler’s Saints, vol. x. p. 155.]

20 (return) [ Evagrius (l. vi. c. 21) and Theophylact (l. v. c.
13, 14) have preserved the original letters of Chosroes, written
in Greek, signed with his own hand, and afterwards inscribed on
crosses and tables of gold, which were deposited in the church of
Sergiopolis. They had been sent to the bishop of Antioch, as
primate of Syria. * Note: St. Martin thinks that they were first
written in Syriac, and then translated into the bad Greek in
which they appear, vol. x. p. 334.—M.]

21 (return) [ The Greeks only describe her as a Roman by birth, a
Christian by religion: but she is represented as the daughter of
the emperor Maurice in the Persian and Turkish romances which
celebrate the love of Khosrou for Schirin, of Schirin for Ferhad,
the most beautiful youth of the East, D’Herbelot, Biblioth.
Orient. p. 789, 997, 998. * Note: Compare M. von Hammer’s preface
to, and poem of, Schirin in which he gives an account of the
various Persian poems, of which he has endeavored to extract the
essence in his own work.—M.]

22 (return) [ The whole series of the tyranny of Hormouz, the
revolt of Bahram, and the flight and restoration of Chosroes, is
related by two contemporary Greeks—more concisely by Evagrius,
(l. vi. c. 16, 17, 18, 19,) and most diffusely by Theophylact
Simocatta, (l. iii. c. 6—18, l. iv. c. 1—16, l. v. c. 1-15:)
succeeding compilers, Zonaras and Cedrenus, can only transcribe
and abridge. The Christian Arabs, Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p.
200—208) and Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 96—98) appear to have
consulted some particular memoirs. The great Persian historians
of the xvth century, Mirkhond and Khondemir, are only known to me
by the imperfect extracts of Schikard, (Tarikh, p. 150—155,)
Texeira, or rather Stevens, (Hist. of Persia, p. 182—186,) a
Turkish Ms. translated by the Abbe Fourmount, (Hist. de
l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. vii. p. 325—334,) and
D’Herbelot, (aux mots Hormouz, p. 457—459. Bahram, p. 174.
Khosrou Parviz, p. 996.) Were I perfectly satisfied of their
authority, I could wish these Oriental materials had been more
copious.]

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part II.

While the majesty of the Roman name was revived in the East, the
prospect of Europe is less pleasing and less glorious. By the
departure of the Lombards, and the ruin of the Gepidae, the
balance of power was destroyed on the Danube; and the Avars
spread their permanent dominion from the foot of the Alps to the
sea-coast of the Euxine. The reign of Baian is the brightest aera
of their monarchy; their chagan, who occupied the rustic palace
of Attila, appears to have imitated his character and policy; 23
but as the same scenes were repeated in a smaller circle, a
minute representation of the copy would be devoid of the
greatness and novelty of the original. The pride of the second
Justin, of Tiberius, and Maurice, was humbled by a proud
Barbarian, more prompt to inflict, than exposed to suffer, the
injuries of war; and as often as Asia was threatened by the
Persian arms, Europe was oppressed by the dangerous inroads, or
costly friendship, of the Avars. When the Roman envoys approached
the presence of the chagan, they were commanded to wait at the
door of his tent, till, at the end perhaps of ten or twelve days,
he condescended to admit them. If the substance or the style of
their message was offensive to his ear, he insulted, with real or
affected fury, their own dignity, and that of their prince; their
baggage was plundered, and their lives were only saved by the
promise of a richer present and a more respectful address. But
his sacred ambassadors enjoyed and abused an unbounded license in
the midst of Constantinople: they urged, with importunate
clamors, the increase of tribute, or the restitution of captives
and deserters: and the majesty of the empire was almost equally
degraded by a base compliance, or by the false and fearful
excuses with which they eluded such insolent demands. The chagan
had never seen an elephant; and his curiosity was excited by the
strange, and perhaps fabulous, portrait of that wonderful animal.
At his command, one of the largest elephants of the Imperial
stables was equipped with stately caparisons, and conducted by a
numerous train to the royal village in the plains of Hungary. He
surveyed the enormous beast with surprise, with disgust, and
possibly with terror; and smiled at the vain industry of the
Romans, who, in search of such useless rarities, could explore
the limits of the land and sea. He wished, at the expense of the
emperor, to repose in a golden bed. The wealth of Constantinople,
and the skilful diligence of her artists, were instantly devoted
to the gratification of his caprice; but when the work was
finished, he rejected with scorn a present so unworthy the
majesty of a great king. 24 These were the casual sallies of his
pride; but the avarice of the chagan was a more steady and
tractable passion: a rich and regular supply of silk apparel,
furniture, and plate, introduced the rudiments of art and luxury
among the tents of the Scythians; their appetite was stimulated
by the pepper and cinnamon of India; 25 the annual subsidy or
tribute was raised from fourscore to one hundred and twenty
thousand pieces of gold; and after each hostile interruption, the
payment of the arrears, with exorbitant interest, was always made
the first condition of the new treaty. In the language of a
Barbarian, without guile, the prince of the Avars affected to
complain of the insincerity of the Greeks; 26 yet he was not
inferior to the most civilized nations in the refinement of
dissimulation and perfidy. As the successor of the Lombards, the
chagan asserted his claim to the important city of Sirmium, the
ancient bulwark of the Illyrian provinces. 27 The plains of the
Lower Hungary were covered with the Avar horse and a fleet of
large boats was built in the Hercynian wood, to descend the
Danube, and to transport into the Save the materials of a bridge.
But as the strong garrison of Singidunum, which commanded the
conflux of the two rivers, might have stopped their passage and
baffled his designs, he dispelled their apprehensions by a solemn
oath that his views were not hostile to the empire. He swore by
his sword, the symbol of the god of war, that he did not, as the
enemy of Rome, construct a bridge upon the Save. “If I violate my
oath,” pursued the intrepid Baian, “may I myself, and the last of
my nation, perish by the sword! May the heavens, and fire, the
deity of the heavens, fall upon our heads! May the forests and
mountains bury us in their ruins! and the Save returning, against
the laws of nature, to his source, overwhelm us in his angry
waters!” After this barbarous imprecation, he calmly inquired,
what oath was most sacred and venerable among the Christians,
what guilt or perjury it was most dangerous to incur. The bishop
of Singidunum presented the gospel, which the chagan received
with devout reverence. “I swear,” said he, “by the God who has
spoken in this holy book, that I have neither falsehood on my
tongue, nor treachery in my heart.” As soon as he rose from his
knees, he accelerated the labor of the bridge, and despatched an
envoy to proclaim what he no longer wished to conceal. “Inform
the emperor,” said the perfidious Baian, “that Sirmium is
invested on every side. Advise his prudence to withdraw the
citizens and their effects, and to resign a city which it is now
impossible to relieve or defend.” Without the hope of relief, the
defence of Sirmium was prolonged above three years: the walls
were still untouched; but famine was enclosed within the walls,
till a merciful capitulation allowed the escape of the naked and
hungry inhabitants. Singidunum, at the distance of fifty miles,
experienced a more cruel fate: the buildings were razed, and the
vanquished people was condemned to servitude and exile. Yet the
ruins of Sirmium are no longer visible; the advantageous
situation of Singidunum soon attracted a new colony of
Sclavonians, and the conflux of the Save and Danube is still
guarded by the fortifications of Belgrade, or the White City, so
often and so obstinately disputed by the Christian and Turkish
arms. 28 From Belgrade to the walls of Constantinople a line may
be measured of six hundred miles: that line was marked with
flames and with blood; the horses of the Avars were alternately
bathed in the Euxine and the Adriatic; and the Roman pontiff,
alarmed by the approach of a more savage enemy, 29 was reduced to
cherish the Lombards, as the protectors of Italy. The despair of
a captive, whom his country refused to ransom, disclosed to the
Avars the invention and practice of military engines. 30 But in
the first attempts they were rudely framed, and awkwardly
managed; and the resistance of Diocletianopolis and Beraea, of
Philippopolis and Adrianople, soon exhausted the skill and
patience of the besiegers. The warfare of Baian was that of a
Tartar; yet his mind was susceptible of a humane and generous
sentiment: he spared Anchialus, whose salutary waters had
restored the health of the best beloved of his wives; and the
Romans confessed, that their starving army was fed and dismissed
by the liberality of a foe. His empire extended over Hungary,
Poland, and Prussia, from the mouth of the Danube to that of the
Oder; 31 and his new subjects were divided and transplanted by
the jealous policy of the conqueror. 32 The eastern regions of
Germany, which had been left vacant by the emigration of the
Vandals, were replenished with Sclavonian colonists; the same
tribes are discovered in the neighborhood of the Adriatic and of
the Baltic, and with the name of Baian himself, the Illyrian
cities of Neyss and Lissa are again found in the heart of
Silesia. In the disposition both of his troops and provinces the
chagan exposed the vassals, whose lives he disregarded, 33 to the
first assault; and the swords of the enemy were blunted before
they encountered the native valor of the Avars.

23 (return) [ A general idea of the pride and power of the chagan
may be taken from Menander (Excerpt. Legat. p. 118, &c.) and
Theophylact, (l. i. c. 3, l. vii. c. 15,) whose eight books are
much more honorable to the Avar than to the Roman prince. The
predecessors of Baian had tasted the liberality of Rome, and he
survived the reign of Maurice, (Buat, Hist. des Peuples Barbares,
tom. xi. p. 545.) The chagan who invaded Italy, A.D. 611,
(Muratori, Annali, tom. v. p. 305,) was then invenili aetate
florentem, (Paul Warnefrid, de Gest. Langobard. l v c 38,) the
son, perhaps, or the grandson, of Baian.]

24 (return) [ Theophylact, l. i. c. 5, 6.]

25 (return) [ Even in the field, the chagan delighted in the use
of these aromatics. He solicited, as a gift, and received.
Theophylact, l. vii. c. 13. The Europeans of the ruder ages
consumed more spices in their meat and drink than is compatible
with the delicacy of a modern palate. Vie Privee des Francois,
tom. ii. p. 162, 163.]

26 (return) [ Theophylact, l. vi. c. 6, l. vii. c. 15. The Greek
historian confesses the truth and justice of his reproach]

27 (return) [ Menander (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 126—132, 174, 175)
describes the perjury of Baian and the surrender of Sirmium. We
have lost his account of the siege, which is commended by
Theophylact, l. i. c. 3. * Note: Compare throughout Schlozer
Nordische Geschichte, p. 362—373—M.]

28 (return) [ See D’Anville, in the Memoires de l’Acad. des
Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 412—443. The Sclavonic name of
Belgrade is mentioned in the xth century by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus: the Latin appellation of Alba Croeca is used by
the Franks in the beginning of the ixth, (p. 414.)]

29 (return) [ Baron. Annal. Eccles. A. B. 600, No. 1. Paul
Warnefrid (l. iv. c. 38) relates their irruption into Friuli, and
(c. 39) the captivity of his ancestors, about A.D. 632. The
Sclavi traversed the Adriatic cum multitudine navium, and made a
descent in the territory of Sipontum, (c. 47.)]

30 (return) [ Even the helepolis, or movable turret. Theophylact,
l. ii. 16, 17.]

31 (return) [ The arms and alliances of the chagan reached to the
neighborhood of a western sea, fifteen months’ journey from
Constantinople. The emperor Maurice conversed with some itinerant
harpers from that remote country, and only seems to have mistaken
a trade for a nation Theophylact, l. vi. c. 2.]

32 (return) [ This is one of the most probable and luminous
conjectures of the learned count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples
Barbares, tom. xi. p. 546—568.) The Tzechi and Serbi are found
together near Mount Caucasus, in Illyricum, and on the lower
Elbe. Even the wildest traditions of the Bohemians, &c., afford
some color to his hypothesis.]

33 (return) [ See Fredegarius, in the Historians of France, tom.
ii. p. 432. Baian did not conceal his proud insensibility.]

The Persian alliance restored the troops of the East to the
defence of Europe: and Maurice, who had supported ten years the
insolence of the chagan, declared his resolution to march in
person against the Barbarians. In the space of two centuries,
none of the successors of Theodosius had appeared in the field:
their lives were supinely spent in the palace of Constantinople;
and the Greeks could no longer understand, that the name of
emperor, in its primitive sense, denoted the chief of the armies
of the republic. The martial ardor of Maurice was opposed by the
grave flattery of the senate, the timid superstition of the
patriarch, and the tears of the empress Constantina; and they all
conjured him to devolve on some meaner general the fatigues and
perils of a Scythian campaign. Deaf to their advice and entreaty,
the emperor boldly advanced 34 seven miles from the capital; the
sacred ensign of the cross was displayed in the front; and
Maurice reviewed, with conscious pride, the arms and numbers of
the veterans who had fought and conquered beyond the Tigris.
Anchialus was the last term of his progress by sea and land; he
solicited, without success, a miraculous answer to his nocturnal
prayers; his mind was confounded by the death of a favorite
horse, the encounter of a wild boar, a storm of wind and rain,
and the birth of a monstrous child; and he forgot that the best
of omens is to unsheathe our sword in the defence of our country.
35 Under the pretence of receiving the ambassadors of Persia, the
emperor returned to Constantinople, exchanged the thoughts of war
for those of devotion, and disappointed the public hope by his
absence and the choice of his lieutenants. The blind partiality
of fraternal love might excuse the promotion of his brother
Peter, who fled with equal disgrace from the Barbarians, from his
own soldiers and from the inhabitants of a Roman city. That city,
if we may credit the resemblance of name and character, was the
famous Azimuntium, 36 which had alone repelled the tempest of
Attila. The example of her warlike youth was propagated to
succeeding generations; and they obtained, from the first or the
second Justin, an honorable privilege, that their valor should be
always reserved for the defence of their native country. The
brother of Maurice attempted to violate this privilege, and to
mingle a patriot band with the mercenaries of his camp; they
retired to the church, he was not awed by the sanctity of the
place; the people rose in their cause, the gates were shut, the
ramparts were manned; and the cowardice of Peter was found equal
to his arrogance and injustice. The military fame of Commentiolus
37 is the object of satire or comedy rather than of serious
history, since he was even deficient in the vile and vulgar
qualification of personal courage. His solemn councils, strange
evolutions, and secret orders, always supplied an apology for
flight or delay. If he marched against the enemy, the pleasant
valleys of Mount Haemus opposed an insuperable barrier; but in
his retreat, he explored, with fearless curiosity, the most
difficult and obsolete paths, which had almost escaped the memory
of the oldest native. The only blood which he lost was drawn, in
a real or affected malady, by the lancet of a surgeon; and his
health, which felt with exquisite sensibility the approach of the
Barbarians, was uniformly restored by the repose and safety of
the winter season. A prince who could promote and support this
unworthy favorite must derive no glory from the accidental merit
of his colleague Priscus. 38 In five successive battles, which
seem to have been conducted with skill and resolution, seventeen
thousand two hundred Barbarians were made prisoners: near sixty
thousand, with four sons of the chagan, were slain: the Roman
general surprised a peaceful district of the Gepidae, who slept
under the protection of the Avars; and his last trophies were
erected on the banks of the Danube and the Teyss. Since the death
of Trajan the arms of the empire had not penetrated so deeply
into the old Dacia: yet the success of Priscus was transient and
barren; and he was soon recalled by the apprehension that Baian,
with dauntless spirit and recruited forces, was preparing to
avenge his defeat under the walls of Constantinople. 39

34 (return) [ See the march and return of Maurice, in
Theophylact, l. v. c. 16 l. vi. c. 1, 2, 3. If he were a writer
of taste or genius, we might suspect him of an elegant irony: but
Theophylact is surely harmless.]

35 (return) [ Iliad, xii. 243. This noble verse, which unites the
spirit of a hero with the reason of a sage, may prove that Homer
was in every light superior to his age and country.]

36 (return) [ Theophylact, l. vii. c. 3. On the evidence of this
fact, which had not occurred to my memory, the candid reader will
correct and excuse a note in Chapter XXXIV., note 86 of this
History, which hastens the decay of Asimus, or Azimuntium;
another century of patriotism and valor is cheaply purchased by
such a confession.]

37 (return) [ See the shameful conduct of Commentiolus, in
Theophylact, l. ii. c. 10—15, l. vii. c. 13, 14, l. viii. c. 2,
4.]

38 (return) [ See the exploits of Priscus, l. viii. c. 23.]

39 (return) [ The general detail of the war against the Avars may
be traced in the first, second, sixth, seventh, and eighth books
of the history of the emperor Maurice, by Theophylact Simocatta.
As he wrote in the reign of Heraclius, he had no temptation to
flatter; but his want of judgment renders him diffuse in trifles,
and concise in the most interesting facts.]

The theory of war was not more familiar to the camps of Caesar
and Trajan, than to those of Justinian and Maurice. 40 The iron
of Tuscany or Pontus still received the keenest temper from the
skill of the Byzantine workmen. The magazines were plentifully
stored with every species of offensive and defensive arms. In the
construction and use of ships, engines, and fortifications, the
Barbarians admired the superior ingenuity of a people whom they
had so often vanquished in the field. The science of tactics, the
order, evolutions, and stratagems of antiquity, was transcribed
and studied in the books of the Greeks and Romans. But the
solitude or degeneracy of the provinces could no longer supply a
race of men to handle those weapons, to guard those walls, to
navigate those ships, and to reduce the theory of war into bold
and successful practice. The genius of Belisarius and Narses had
been formed without a master, and expired without a disciple.
Neither honor, nor patriotism, nor generous superstition, could
animate the lifeless bodies of slaves and strangers, who had
succeeded to the honors of the legions: it was in the camp alone
that the emperor should have exercised a despotic command; it was
only in the camps that his authority was disobeyed and insulted:
he appeased and inflamed with gold the licentiousness of the
troops; but their vices were inherent, their victories were
accidental, and their costly maintenance exhausted the substance
of a state which they were unable to defend. After a long and
pernicious indulgence, the cure of this inveterate evil was
undertaken by Maurice; but the rash attempt, which drew
destruction on his own head, tended only to aggravate the
disease. A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of
interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those
whom he proposes to reclaim. The troops of Maurice might listen
to the voice of a victorious leader; they disdained the
admonitions of statesmen and sophists; and, when they received an
edict which deducted from their pay the price of their arms and
clothing, they execrated the avarice of a prince insensible of
the dangers and fatigues from which he had escaped.

The camps both of Asia and Europe were agitated with frequent and
furious seditions; 41 the enraged soldiers of Edessa pursued with
reproaches, with threats, with wounds, their trembling generals;
they overturned the statues of the emperor, cast stones against
the miraculous image of Christ, and either rejected the yoke of
all civil and military laws, or instituted a dangerous model of
voluntary subordination. The monarch, always distant and often
deceived, was incapable of yielding or persisting, according to
the exigence of the moment. But the fear of a general revolt
induced him too readily to accept any act of valor, or any
expression of loyalty, as an atonement for the popular offence;
the new reform was abolished as hastily as it had been announced,
and the troops, instead of punishment and restraint, were
agreeably surprised by a gracious proclamation of immunities and
rewards. But the soldiers accepted without gratitude the tardy
and reluctant gifts of the emperor: their insolence was elated by
the discovery of his weakness and their own strength; and their
mutual hatred was inflamed beyond the desire of forgiveness or
the hope of reconciliation. The historians of the times adopt the
vulgar suspicion, that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops
whom he had labored to reform; the misconduct and favor of
Commentiolus are imputed to this malevolent design; and every age
must condemn the inhumanity of avarice 42 of a prince, who, by
the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of gold, might have
prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands
of the chagan. In the just fervor of indignation, an order was
signified to the army of the Danube, that they should spare the
magazines of the province, and establish their winter quarters in
the hostile country of the Avars. The measure of their grievances
was full: they pronounced Maurice unworthy to reign, expelled or
slaughtered his faithful adherents, and, under the command of
Phocas, a simple centurion, returned by hasty marches to the
neighborhood of Constantinople. After a long series of legal
succession, the military disorders of the third century were
again revived; yet such was the novelty of the enterprise, that
the insurgents were awed by their own rashness. They hesitated to
invest their favorite with the vacant purple; and, while they
rejected all treaty with Maurice himself, they held a friendly
correspondence with his son Theodosius, and with Germanus, the
father-in-law of the royal youth. So obscure had been the former
condition of Phocas, that the emperor was ignorant of the name
and character of his rival; but as soon as he learned, that the
centurion, though bold in sedition, was timid in the face of
danger, “Alas!” cried the desponding prince, “if he is a coward,
he will surely be a murderer.”

40 (return) [ Maurice himself composed xii books on the military
art, which are still extant, and have been published (Upsal,
1664) by John Schaeffer, at the end of the Tactics of Arrian,
(Fabricius, Bibliot Graeca, l. iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) who
promises to speak more fully of his work in its proper place.]

41 (return) [ See the mutinies under the reign of Maurice, in
Theophylact l iii c. 1—4,.vi. c. 7, 8, 10, l. vii. c. 1 l. viii.
c. 6, &c.]

42 (return) [ Theophylact and Theophanes seem ignorant of the
conspiracy and avarice of Maurice. These charges, so unfavorable
to the memory of that emperor, are first mentioned by the author
of the Paschal Chronicle, (p. 379, 280;) from whence Zonaras
(tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 77, 78) has transcribed them. Cedrenus (p.
399) has followed another computation of the ransom.]

Yet if Constantinople had been firm and faithful, the murderer
might have spent his fury against the walls; and the rebel army
would have been gradually consumed or reconciled by the prudence
of the emperor. In the games of the Circus, which he repeated
with unusual pomp, Maurice disguised, with smiles of confidence,
the anxiety of his heart, condescended to solicit the applause of
the factions, and flattered their pride by accepting from their
respective tribunes a list of nine hundred blues and fifteen
hundred greens, whom he affected to esteem as the solid pillars
of his throne Their treacherous or languid support betrayed his
weakness and hastened his fall: the green faction were the secret
accomplices of the rebels, and the blues recommended lenity and
moderation in a contest with their Roman brethren The rigid and
parsimonious virtues of Maurice had long since alienated the
hearts of his subjects: as he walked barefoot in a religious
procession, he was rudely assaulted with stones, and his guards
were compelled to present their iron maces in the defence of his
person. A fanatic monk ran through the streets with a drawn
sword, denouncing against him the wrath and the sentence of God;
and a vile plebeian, who represented his countenance and apparel,
was seated on an ass, and pursued by the imprecations of the
multitude. 43 The emperor suspected the popularity of Germanus
with the soldiers and citizens: he feared, he threatened, but he
delayed to strike; the patrician fled to the sanctuary of the
church; the people rose in his defence, the walls were deserted
by the guards, and the lawless city was abandoned to the flames
and rapine of a nocturnal tumult. In a small bark, the
unfortunate Maurice, with his wife and nine children, escaped to
the Asiatic shore; but the violence of the wind compelled him to
land at the church of St. Autonomus, 44 near Chalcedon, from
whence he despatched Theodosius, he eldest son, to implore the
gratitude and friendship of the Persian monarch. For himself, he
refused to fly: his body was tortured with sciatic pains, 45 his
mind was enfeebled by superstition; he patiently awaited the
event of the revolution, and addressed a fervent and public
prayer to the Almighty, that the punishment of his sins might be
inflicted in this world rather than in a future life. After the
abdication of Maurice, the two factions disputed the choice of an
emperor; but the favorite of the blues was rejected by the
jealousy of their antagonists, and Germanus himself was hurried
along by the crowds who rushed to the palace of Hebdomon, seven
miles from the city, to adore the majesty of Phocas the
centurion. A modest wish of resigning the purple to the rank and
merit of Germanus was opposed by his resolution, more obstinate
and equally sincere; the senate and clergy obeyed his summons;
and, as soon as the patriarch was assured of his orthodox belief,
he consecrated the successful usurper in the church of St. John
the Baptist. On the third day, amidst the acclamations of a
thoughtless people, Phocas made his public entry in a chariot
drawn by four white horses: the revolt of the troops was rewarded
by a lavish donative; and the new sovereign, after visiting the
palace, beheld from his throne the games of the hippodrome. In a
dispute of precedency between the two factions, his partial
judgment inclined in favor of the greens. “Remember that Maurice
is still alive,” resounded from the opposite side; and the
indiscreet clamor of the blues admonished and stimulated the
cruelty of the tyrant. The ministers of death were despatched to
Chalcedon: they dragged the emperor from his sanctuary; and the
five sons of Maurice were successively murdered before the eyes
of their agonizing parent. At each stroke, which he felt in his
heart, he found strength to rehearse a pious ejaculation: “Thou
art just, O Lord! and thy judgments are righteous.” And such, in
the last moments, was his rigid attachment to truth and justice,
that he revealed to the soldiers the pious falsehood of a nurse
who presented her own child in the place of a royal infant. 46
The tragic scene was finally closed by the execution of the
emperor himself, in the twentieth year of his reign, and the
sixty-third of his age. The bodies of the father and his five
sons were cast into the sea; their heads were exposed at
Constantinople to the insults or pity of the multitude; and it
was not till some signs of putrefaction had appeared, that Phocas
connived at the private burial of these venerable remains. In
that grave, the faults and errors of Maurice were kindly
interred. His fate alone was remembered; and at the end of twenty
years, in the recital of the history of Theophylact, the mournful
tale was interrupted by the tears of the audience. 47

43 (return) [ In their clamors against Maurice, the people of
Constantinople branded him with the name of Marcionite or
Marcionist; a heresy (says Theophylact, l. viii. c. 9). Did they
only cast out a vague reproach—or had the emperor really listened
to some obscure teacher of those ancient Gnostics?]

44 (return) [ The church of St. Autonomous (whom I have not the
honor to know) was 150 stadia from Constantinople, (Theophylact,
l. viii. c. 9.) The port of Eutropius, where Maurice and his
children were murdered, is described by Gyllius (de Bosphoro
Thracio, l. iii. c. xi.) as one of the two harbors of Chalcedon.]

45 (return) [ The inhabitants of Constantinople were generally
subject; and Theophylact insinuates, (l. viii. c. 9,) that if it
were consistent with the rules of history, he could assign the
medical cause. Yet such a digression would not have been more
impertinent than his inquiry (l. vii. c. 16, 17) into the annual
inundations of the Nile, and all the opinions of the Greek
philosophers on that subject.]

46 (return) [ From this generous attempt, Corneille has deduced
the intricate web of his tragedy of Heraclius, which requires
more than one representation to be clearly understood, (Corneille
de Voltaire, tom. v. p. 300;) and which, after an interval of
some years, is said to have puzzled the author himself,
(Anecdotes Dramatiques, tom. i. p. 422.)]

47 (return) [ The revolt of Phocas and death of Maurice are told
by Theophylact Simocatta, (l. viii. c. 7—12,) the Paschal
Chronicle, (p. 379, 380,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 238-244,)
Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 77—80,) and Cedrenus, (p.
399—404.)]

Such tears must have flowed in secret, and such compassion would
have been criminal, under the reign of Phocas, who was peaceably
acknowledged in the provinces of the East and West. The images of
the emperor and his wife Leontia were exposed in the Lateran to
the veneration of the clergy and senate of Rome, and afterwards
deposited in the palace of the Caesars, between those of
Constantine and Theodosius. As a subject and a Christian, it was
the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the established government;
but the joyful applause with which he salutes the fortune of the
assassin, has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of
the saint. The successor of the apostles might have inculcated
with decent firmness the guilt of blood, and the necessity of
repentance; he is content to celebrate the deliverance of the
people and the fall of the oppressor; to rejoice that the piety
and benignity of Phocas have been raised by Providence to the
Imperial throne; to pray that his hands may be strengthened
against all his enemies; and to express a wish, perhaps a
prophecy, that, after a long and triumphant reign, he may be
transferred from a temporal to an everlasting kingdom. 48 I have
already traced the steps of a revolution so pleasing, in
Gregory’s opinion, both to heaven and earth; and Phocas does not
appear less hateful in the exercise than in the acquisition of
power. The pencil of an impartial historian has delineated the
portrait of a monster: 49 his diminutive and deformed person, the
closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless
chin, and his cheek disfigured and discolored by a formidable
scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even of arms, he indulged
in the supreme rank a more ample privilege of lust and
drunkenness; and his brutal pleasures were either injurious to
his subjects or disgraceful to himself. Without assuming the
office of a prince, he renounced the profession of a soldier; and
the reign of Phocas afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and
Asia with desolating war. His savage temper was inflamed by
passion, hardened by fear, and exasperated by resistance or
reproach. The flight of Theodosius to the Persian court had been
intercepted by a rapid pursuit, or a deceitful message: he was
beheaded at Nice, and the last hours of the young prince were
soothed by the comforts of religion and the consciousness of
innocence. Yet his phantom disturbed the repose of the usurper: a
whisper was circulated through the East, that the son of Maurice
was still alive: the people expected their avenger, and the widow
and daughters of the late emperor would have adopted as their son
and brother the vilest of mankind. In the massacre of the
Imperial family, 50 the mercy, or rather the discretion, of
Phocas had spared these unhappy females, and they were decently
confined to a private house. But the spirit of the empress
Constantina, still mindful of her father, her husband, and her
sons, aspired to freedom and revenge. At the dead of night, she
escaped to the sanctuary of St. Sophia; but her tears, and the
gold of her associate Germanus, were insufficient to provoke an
insurrection. Her life was forfeited to revenge, and even to
justice: but the patriarch obtained and pledged an oath for her
safety: a monastery was allotted for her prison, and the widow of
Maurice accepted and abused the lenity of his assassin. The
discovery or the suspicion of a second conspiracy, dissolved the
engagements, and rekindled the fury, of Phocas. A matron who
commanded the respect and pity of mankind, the daughter, wife,
and mother of emperors, was tortured like the vilest malefactor,
to force a confession of her designs and associates; and the
empress Constantina, with her three innocent daughters, was
beheaded at Chalcedon, on the same ground which had been stained
with the blood of her husband and five sons. After such an
example, it would be superfluous to enumerate the names and
sufferings of meaner victims. Their condemnation was seldom
preceded by the forms of trial, and their punishment was
embittered by the refinements of cruelty: their eyes were
pierced, their tongues were torn from the root, the hands and
feet were amputated; some expired under the lash, others in the
flames; others again were transfixed with arrows; and a simple
speedy death was mercy which they could rarely obtain. The
hippodrome, the sacred asylum of the pleasures and the liberty of
the Romans, was polluted with heads and limbs, and mangled
bodies; and the companions of Phocas were the most sensible, that
neither his favor, nor their services, could protect them from a
tyrant, the worthy rival of the Caligulas and Domitians of the
first age of the empire. 51

48 (return) [ Gregor. l. xi. epist. 38, indict. vi. Benignitatem
vestrae pietatis ad Imperiale fastigium pervenisse gaudemus.
Laetentur coeli et exultet terra, et de vestris benignis actibus
universae republicae populus nunc usque vehementer afflictus
hilarescat, &c. This base flattery, the topic of Protestant
invective, is justly censured by the philosopher Bayle,
(Dictionnaire Critique, Gregoire I. Not. H. tom. ii. p. 597 598.)
Cardinal Baronius justifies the pope at the expense of the fallen
emperor.]

49 (return) [ The images of Phocas were destroyed; but even the
malice of his enemies would suffer one copy of such a portrait or
caricature (Cedrenus, p. 404) to escape the flames.]

50 (return) [ The family of Maurice is represented by Ducange,
(Familiae By zantinae, p. 106, 107, 108;) his eldest son
Theodosius had been crowned emperor, when he was no more than
four years and a half old, and he is always joined with his
father in the salutations of Gregory. With the Christian
daughters, Anastasia and Theocteste, I am surprised to find the
Pagan name of Cleopatra.]

51 (return) [ Some of the cruelties of Phocas are marked by
Theophylact, l. viii. c. 13, 14, 15. George of Pisidia, the poet
of Heraclius, styles him (Bell. Avaricum, p. 46, Rome, 1777). The
latter epithet is just—but the corrupter of life was easily
vanquished.]

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part III.

A daughter of Phocas, his only child, was given in marriage to
the patrician Crispus, 52 and the royal images of the bride and
bridegroom were indiscreetly placed in the circus, by the side of
the emperor. The father must desire that his posterity should
inherit the fruit of his crimes, but the monarch was offended by
this premature and popular association: the tribunes of the green
faction, who accused the officious error of their sculptors, were
condemned to instant death: their lives were granted to the
prayers of the people; but Crispus might reasonably doubt,
whether a jealous usurper could forget and pardon his involuntary
competition. The green faction was alienated by the ingratitude
of Phocas and the loss of their privileges; every province of the
empire was ripe for rebellion; and Heraclius, exarch of Africa,
persisted above two years in refusing all tribute and obedience
to the centurion who disgraced the throne of Constantinople. By
the secret emissaries of Crispus and the senate, the independent
exarch was solicited to save and to govern his country; but his
ambition was chilled by age, and he resigned the dangerous
enterprise to his son Heraclius, and to Nicetas, the son of
Gregory, his friend and lieutenant. The powers of Africa were
armed by the two adventurous youths; they agreed that the one
should navigate the fleet from Carthage to Constantinople, that
the other should lead an army through Egypt and Asia, and that
the Imperial purple should be the reward of diligence and
success. A faint rumor of their undertaking was conveyed to the
ears of Phocas, and the wife and mother of the younger Heraclius
were secured as the hostages of his faith: but the treacherous
heart of Crispus extenuated the distant peril, the means of
defence were neglected or delayed, and the tyrant supinely slept
till the African navy cast anchor in the Hellespont. Their
standard was joined at Abidus by the fugitives and exiles who
thirsted for revenge; the ships of Heraclius, whose lofty masts
were adorned with the holy symbols of religion, 53 steered their
triumphant course through the Propontis; and Phocas beheld from
the windows of the palace his approaching and inevitable fate.
The green faction was tempted, by gifts and promises, to oppose a
feeble and fruitless resistance to the landing of the Africans:
but the people, and even the guards, were determined by the
well-timed defection of Crispus; and the tyrant was seized by a
private enemy, who boldly invaded the solitude of the palace.
Stripped of the diadem and purple, clothed in a vile habit, and
loaded with chains, he was transported in a small boat to the
Imperial galley of Heraclius, who reproached him with the crimes
of his abominable reign. “Wilt thou govern better?” were the last
words of the despair of Phocas. After suffering each variety of
insult and torture, his head was severed from his body, the
mangled trunk was cast into the flames, and the same treatment
was inflicted on the statues of the vain usurper, and the
seditious banner of the green faction. The voice of the clergy,
the senate, and the people, invited Heraclius to ascend the
throne which he had purified from guilt and ignominy; after some
graceful hesitation, he yielded to their entreaties. His
coronation was accompanied by that of his wife Eudoxia; and their
posterity, till the fourth generation, continued to reign over
the empire of the East. The voyage of Heraclius had been easy and
prosperous; the tedious march of Nicetas was not accomplished
before the decision of the contest: but he submitted without a
murmur to the fortune of his friend, and his laudable intentions
were rewarded with an equestrian statue, and a daughter of the
emperor. It was more difficult to trust the fidelity of Crispus,
whose recent services were recompensed by the command of the
Cappadocian army. His arrogance soon provoked, and seemed to
excuse, the ingratitude of his new sovereign. In the presence of
the senate, the son-in-law of Phocas was condemned to embrace the
monastic life; and the sentence was justified by the weighty
observation of Heraclius, that the man who had betrayed his
father could never be faithful to his friend. 54

52 (return) [ In the writers, and in the copies of those writers,
there is such hesitation between the names of Priscus and
Crispus, (Ducange, Fam Byzant. p. 111,) that I have been tempted
to identify the son-in-law of Phocas with the hero five times
victorious over the Avars.]

53 (return) [ According to Theophanes. Cedrenus adds, which
Heraclius bore as a banner in the first Persian expedition. See
George Pisid. Acroas L 140. The manufacture seems to have
flourished; but Foggini, the Roman editor, (p. 26,) is at a loss
to determine whether this picture was an original or a copy.]

54 (return) [ See the tyranny of Phocas and the elevation of
Heraclius, in Chron. Paschal. p. 380—383. Theophanes, p. 242-250.
Nicephorus, p. 3—7. Cedrenus, p. 404—407. Zonaras, tom. ii. l.
xiv. p. 80—82.]

Even after his death the republic was afflicted by the crimes of
Phocas, which armed with a pious cause the most formidable of her
enemies. According to the friendly and equal forms of the
Byzantine and Persian courts, he announced his exaltation to the
throne; and his ambassador Lilius, who had presented him with the
heads of Maurice and his sons, was the best qualified to describe
the circumstances of the tragic scene. 55 However it might be
varnished by fiction or sophistry, Chosroes turned with horror
from the assassin, imprisoned the pretended envoy, disclaimed the
usurper, and declared himself the avenger of his father and
benefactor. The sentiments of grief and resentment, which
humanity would feel, and honor would dictate, promoted on this
occasion the interest of the Persian king; and his interest was
powerfully magnified by the national and religious prejudices of
the Magi and satraps. In a strain of artful adulation, which
assumed the language of freedom, they presumed to censure the
excess of his gratitude and friendship for the Greeks; a nation
with whom it was dangerous to conclude either peace or alliance;
whose superstition was devoid of truth and justice, and who must
be incapable of any virtue, since they could perpetrate the most
atrocious of crimes, the impious murder of their sovereign. 56
For the crime of an ambitious centurion, the nation which he
oppressed was chastised with the calamities of war; and the same
calamities, at the end of twenty years, were retaliated and
redoubled on the heads of the Persians. 57 The general who had
restored Chosroes to the throne still commanded in the East; and
the name of Narses was the formidable sound with which the
Assyrian mothers were accustomed to terrify their infants. It is
not improbable, that a native subject of Persia should encourage
his master and his friend to deliver and possess the provinces of
Asia. It is still more probable, that Chosroes should animate his
troops by the assurance that the sword which they dreaded the
most would remain in its scabbard, or be drawn in their favor.
The hero could not depend on the faith of a tyrant; and the
tyrant was conscious how little he deserved the obedience of a
hero. Narses was removed from his military command; he reared an
independent standard at Hierapolis, in Syria: he was betrayed by
fallacious promises, and burnt alive in the market-place of
Constantinople. Deprived of the only chief whom they could fear
or esteem, the bands which he had led to victory were twice
broken by the cavalry, trampled by the elephants, and pierced by
the arrows of the Barbarians; and a great number of the captives
were beheaded on the field of battle by the sentence of the
victor, who might justly condemn these seditious mercenaries as
the authors or accomplices of the death of Maurice. Under the
reign of Phocas, the fortifications of Merdin, Dara, Amida, and
Edessa, were successively besieged, reduced, and destroyed, by
the Persian monarch: he passed the Euphrates, occupied the Syrian
cities, Hierapolis, Chalcis, and Berrhaea or Aleppo, and soon
encompassed the walls of Antioch with his irresistible arms. The
rapid tide of success discloses the decay of the empire, the
incapacity of Phocas, and the disaffection of his subjects; and
Chosroes provided a decent apology for their submission or
revolt, by an impostor, who attended his camp as the son of
Maurice 58 and the lawful heir of the monarchy.

55 (return) [ Theophylact, l. viii. c. 15. The life of Maurice
was composed about the year 628 (l. viii. c. 13) by Theophylact
Simocatta, ex-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.]

56 (return) [ Christianis nec pactum esse, nec fidem nec foedus
..... quod si ulla illis fides fuisset, regem suum non
occidissent. Eutych. Annales tom. ii. p. 211, vers. Pocock.]

57 (return) [ We must now, for some ages, take our leave of
contemporary historians, and descend, if it be a descent, from
the affectation of rhetoric to the rude simplicity of chronicles
and abridgments. Those of Theophanes (Chronograph. p. 244—279)
and Nicephorus (p. 3—16) supply a regular, but imperfect, series
of the Persian war; and for any additional facts I quote my
special authorities. Theophanes, a courtier who became a monk,
was born A.D. 748; Nicephorus patriarch of Constantinople, who
died A.D. 829, was somewhat younger: they both suffered in the
cause of images Hankius, de Scriptoribus Byzantinis, p. 200-246.]

58 (return) [ The Persian historians have been themselves
deceived: but Theophanes (p. 244) accuses Chosroes of the fraud
and falsehood; and Eutychius believes (Annal. tom. ii. p. 212)
that the son of Maurice, who was saved from the assassins, lived
and died a monk on Mount Sinai.]

The first intelligence from the East which Heraclius received, 59
was that of the loss of Antioch; but the aged metropolis, so
often overturned by earthquakes, and pillaged by the enemy, could
supply but a small and languid stream of treasure and blood. The
Persians were equally successful, and more fortunate, in the sack
of Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia; and as they advanced
beyond the ramparts of the frontier, the boundary of ancient war,
they found a less obstinate resistance and a more plentiful
harvest. The pleasant vale of Damascus has been adorned in every
age with a royal city: her obscure felicity has hitherto escaped
the historian of the Roman empire: but Chosroes reposed his
troops in the paradise of Damascus before he ascended the hills
of Libanus, or invaded the cities of the 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.

59 (return) [ Eutychius dates all the losses of the empire under
the reign of Phocas; an error which saves the honor of Heraclius,
whom he brings not from Carthage, but Salonica, with a fleet
laden with vegetables for the relief of Constantinople, (Annal.
tom. ii. p. 223, 224.) The other Christians of the East,
Barhebraeus, (apud Asseman, Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p.
412, 413,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16,) Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 98, 99,) are more sincere and accurate. The years of
the Persian war are disposed in the chronology of Pagi.]

60 (return) [ On the conquest of Jerusalem, an event so
interesting to the church, see the Annals of Eutychius, (tom. ii.
p. 212—223,) and the lamentations of the monk Antiochus, (apud
Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 614, No. 16—26,) whose one hundred
and twenty-nine homilies are still extant, if what no one reads
may be said to be extant.]

6011 (return) [ See Hist. of Jews, vol. iii. p. 240.—M.]

61 (return) [ The life of this worthy saint is composed by
Leontius, a contemporary bishop; and I find in Baronius (Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 610, No. 10, &c.) and Fleury (tom. viii. p. 235-242)
sufficient extracts of this edifying work.]

62 (return) [ The error of Baronius, and many others who have
carried the arms of Chosroes to Carthage instead of Chalcedon, is
founded on the near resemblance of the Greek words, in the text
of Theophanes, &c., which have been sometimes confounded by
transcribers, and sometimes by critics.]

From the long-disputed banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the
reign of the grandson of Nushirvan was suddenly extended to the
Hellespont and the Nile, the ancient limits of the Persian
monarchy. But the provinces, which had been fashioned by the
habits of six hundred years to the virtues and vices of the Roman
government, supported with reluctance the yoke of the Barbarians.
The idea of a republic was kept alive by the institutions, or at
least by the writings, of the Greeks and Romans, and the subjects
of Heraclius had been educated to pronounce the words of liberty
and law. But it has always been the pride and policy of Oriental
princes to display the titles and attributes of their
omnipotence; to upbraid a nation of slaves with their true name
and abject condition, and to enforce, by cruel and insolent
threats, the rigor of their absolute commands. The Christians of
the East were scandalized by the worship of fire, and the impious
doctrine of the two principles: the Magi were not less intolerant
than the bishops; and the martyrdom of some native Persians, who
had deserted the religion of Zoroaster, 63 was conceived to be
the prelude of a fierce and general persecution. By the
oppressive laws of Justinian, the adversaries of the church were
made the enemies of the state; the alliance of the Jews,
Nestorians, and Jacobites, had contributed to the success of
Chosroes, and his partial favor to the sectaries provoked the
hatred and fears of the Catholic clergy. Conscious of their fear
and hatred, the Persian conqueror governed his new subjects with
an iron sceptre; and, as if he suspected the stability of his
dominion, he exhausted their wealth by exorbitant tributes and
licentious rapine despoiled or demolished the temples of the
East; and transported to his hereditary realms the gold, the
silver, the precious marbles, the arts, and the artists of the
Asiatic cities. In the obscure picture of the calamities of the
empire, 64 it is not easy to discern the figure of Chosroes
himself, to separate his actions from those of his lieutenants,
or to ascertain his personal merit in the general blaze of glory
and magnificence. He enjoyed with ostentation the fruits of
victory, and frequently retired from the hardships of war to the
luxury of the palace. But in the space of twenty-four years, he
was deterred by superstition or resentment from approaching the
gates of Ctesiphon: and his favorite residence of Artemita, or
Dastagerd, was situate beyond the Tigris, about sixty miles to
the north of the capital. 65 The adjacent pastures were covered
with flocks and herds: the paradise or park was replenished with
pheasants, peacocks, ostriches, roebucks, and wild boars, and the
noble game of lions and tigers was sometimes turned loose for the
bolder pleasures of the chase. Nine hundred and sixty elephants
were maintained for the use or splendor of the great king: his
tents and baggage were carried into the field by twelve thousand
great camels and eight thousand of a smaller size; 66 and the
royal stables were filled with six thousand mules and horses,
among whom the names of Shebdiz and Barid are renowned for their
speed or beauty. 6611 Six thousand guards successively mounted
before the palace gate; the service of the interior apartments
was performed by twelve thousand slaves, and in the number of
three thousand virgins, the fairest of Asia, some happy concubine
might console her master for the age or the indifference of Sira.

The various treasures of gold, silver, gems, silks, and
aromatics, were deposited in a hundred subterraneous vaults and
the chamber Badaverd denoted the accidental gift of the winds
which had wafted the spoils of Heraclius into one of the Syrian
harbors of his rival. The vice of flattery, and perhaps of
fiction, is not ashamed to compute the thirty thousand rich
hangings that adorned the walls; the forty thousand columns of
silver, or more probably of marble, and plated wood, that
supported the roof; and the thousand globes of gold suspended in
the dome, to imitate the motions of the planets and the
constellations of the zodiac. 67 While the Persian monarch
contemplated the wonders of his art and power, he received an
epistle from an obscure citizen of Mecca, inviting him to
acknowledge Mahomet as the apostle of God. He rejected the
invitation, and tore the epistle. “It is thus,” exclaimed the
Arabian prophet, “that God will tear the kingdom, and reject the
supplications of Chosroes.” 68 6811 Placed on the verge of the
two great empires of the East, Mahomet observed with secret joy
the progress of their mutual destruction; and in the midst of the
Persian triumphs, he ventured to foretell, that before many years
should elapse, victory should again return to the banners of the
Romans. 69

63 (return) [ The genuine acts of St. Anastasius are published in
those of the with general council, from whence Baronius (Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 614, 626, 627) and Butler (Lives of the Saints, vol.
i. p. 242—248) have taken their accounts. The holy martyr
deserted from the Persian to the Roman army, became a monk at
Jerusalem, and insulted the worship of the Magi, which was then
established at Caesarea in Palestine.]

64 (return) [ Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 99. Elmacin, Hist.
Saracen. p. 14.]

65 (return) [ D’Anville, Mem. de l’Academie des Inscriptions,
tom. xxxii. p. 568—571.]

66 (return) [ The difference between the two races consists in
one or two humps; the dromedary has only one; the size of the
proper camel is larger; the country he comes from, Turkistan or
Bactriana; the dromedary is confined to Arabia and Africa.
Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. xi. p. 211, &c. Aristot. Hist.
Animal. tom. i. l. ii. c. 1, tom. ii. p. 185.]

6611 (return) [ The ruins of these scenes of Khoosroo’s
magnificence have been visited by Sir R. K. Porter. At the ruins
of Tokht i Bostan, he saw a gorgeous picture of a hunt,
singularly illustrative of this passage. Travels, vol. ii. p.
204. Kisra Shirene, which he afterwards examined, appears to have
been the palace of Dastagerd. Vol. ii. p. 173—175.—M.]

67 (return) [ Theophanes, Chronograph. p. 268. D’Herbelot,
Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 997. The Greeks describe the decay,
the Persians the splendor, of Dastagerd; but the former speak
from the modest witness of the eye, the latter from the vague
report of the ear.]

68 (return) [ The historians of Mahomet, Abulfeda (in Vit.
Mohammed, p. 92, 93) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p.
247,) date this embassy in the viith year of the Hegira, which
commences A.D. 628, May 11. Their chronology is erroneous, since
Chosroes died in the month of February of the same year, (Pagi,
Critica, tom. ii. p. 779.) The count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de
Mahomed, p. 327, 328) places this embassy about A.D. 615, soon
after the conquest of Palestine. Yet Mahomet would scarcely have
ventured so soon on so bold a step.]

6811 (return) [ Khoosroo Purveez was encamped on the banks of the
Karasoo River when he received the letter of Mahomed. He tore the
letter and threw it into the Karasoo. For this action, the
moderate author of the Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh calls him a wretch, and
rejoices in all his subsequent misfortunes. These impressions
still exist. I remarked to a Persian, when encamped near the
Karasoo, in 1800, that the banks were very high, which must make
it difficult to apply its waters to irrigation. “It once
fertilized the whole country,” said the zealous Mahomedan, “but
its channel sunk with honor from its banks, when that madman,
Khoosroo, threw our holy Prophet’s letter into its stream; which
has ever since been accursed and useless.” Malcolm’s Persia, vol.
i. p. 126—M.]

69 (return) [ See the xxxth chapter of the Koran, entitled the
Greeks. Our honest and learned translator, Sale, (p. 330, 331,)
fairly states this conjecture, guess, wager, of Mahomet; but
Boulainvilliers, (p. 329—344,) with wicked intentions, labors to
establish this evident prophecy of a future event, which must, in
his opinion, embarrass the Christian polemics.]

At the time when this prediction is said to have been delivered,
no prophecy could be more distant from its accomplishment, since
the first twelve years of Heraclius announced the approaching
dissolution of the empire. If the motives of Chosroes had been
pure and honorable, he must have ended the quarrel with the death
of Phocas, and he would have embraced, as his best ally, the
fortunate African who had so generously avenged the injuries of
his benefactor Maurice. The prosecution of the war revealed the
true character of the Barbarian; and the suppliant embassies of
Heraclius to beseech his clemency, that he would spare the
innocent, accept a tribute, and give peace to the world, were
rejected with contemptuous silence or insolent menace. Syria,
Egypt, and the provinces of Asia, were subdued by the Persian
arms, while Europe, from the confines of Istria to the long wall
of Thrace, was oppressed by the Avars, unsatiated with the blood
and rapine of the Italian war. They had coolly massacred their
male captives in the sacred field of Pannonia; the women and
children were reduced to servitude, and the noblest virgins were
abandoned to the promiscuous lust of the Barbarians. The amorous
matron who opened the gates of Friuli passed a short night in the
arms of her royal lover; the next evening, Romilda was condemned
to the embraces of twelve Avars, and the third day the Lombard
princess was impaled in the sight of the camp, while the chagan
observed with a cruel smile, that such a husband was the fit
recompense of her lewdness and perfidy. 70 By these implacable
enemies, Heraclius, on either side, was insulted and besieged:
and the Roman empire was reduced to the walls of Constantinople,
with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime
cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast. After the
loss of Egypt, the capital was afflicted by famine and
pestilence; and the emperor, incapable of resistance, and
hopeless of relief, had resolved to transfer his person and
government to the more secure residence of Carthage. His ships
were already laden with the treasures of the palace; but his
flight was arrested by the patriarch, who armed the powers of
religion in the defence of his country; led Heraclius to the
altar of St. Sophia, and extorted a solemn oath, that he would
live and die with the people whom God had intrusted to his care.
The chagan was encamped in the plains of Thrace; but he
dissembled his perfidious designs, and solicited an interview
with the emperor near the town of Heraclea. Their reconciliation
was celebrated with equestrian games; the senate and people, in
their gayest apparel, resorted to the festival of peace; and the
Avars beheld, with envy and desire, the spectacle of Roman
luxury. On a sudden the hippodrome was encompassed by the
Scythian cavalry, who had pressed their secret and nocturnal
march: the tremendous sound of the chagan’s whip gave the signal
of the assault, and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm,
was saved with extreme hazard, by the fleetness of his horse. So
rapid was the pursuit, that the Avars almost entered the golden
gate of Constantinople with the flying crowds: 71 but the plunder
of the suburbs rewarded their treason, and they transported
beyond the Danube two hundred and seventy thousand captives. On
the shore of Chalcedon, the emperor held a safer conference with
a more honorable foe, who, before Heraclius descended from his
galley, saluted with reverence and pity the majesty of the
purple. The friendly offer of Sain, the Persian general, to
conduct an embassy to the presence of the great king, was
accepted with the warmest gratitude, and the prayer for pardon
and peace was humbly presented by the Praetorian 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.

70 (return) [Footnote 70: Paul Warnefrid, de Gestis
Langobardorum, l. iv. c. 38, 42. Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom.
v. p. 305, &c.]

71 (return) [ The Paschal Chronicle, which sometimes introduces
fragments of history into a barren list of names and dates, gives
the best account of the treason of the Avars, p. 389, 390. The
number of captives is added by Nicephorus.]

72 (return) [ Some original pieces, such as the speech or letter
of the Roman ambassadors, (p. 386—388,) likewise constitute the
merit of the Paschal Chronicle, which was composed, perhaps at
Alexandria, under the reign of Heraclius.]

Of the characters conspicuous in history, that of Heraclius is
one of the most extraordinary and inconsistent. In the first and
last years of a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave
of sloth, of pleasure, or of superstition, the careless and
impotent spectator of the public calamities. But the languid
mists of the morning and evening are separated by the brightness
of the meridian sun; the Arcadius of the palace arose the Caesar
of the camp; and the honor of Rome and Heraclius was gloriously
retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous
campaigns. It was the duty of the Byzantine historians to have
revealed the causes of his slumber and vigilance. At this
distance we can only conjecture, that he was endowed with more
personal courage than political resolution; that he was detained
by the charms, and perhaps the arts, of his niece Martina, with
whom, after the death of Eudocia, he contracted an incestuous
marriage; 73 and that he yielded to the base advice of the
counsellors, who urged, as a fundamental law, that the life of
the emperor should never be exposed in the field. 74 Perhaps he
was awakened by the last insolent demand of the Persian
conqueror; but at the moment when Heraclius assumed the spirit of
a hero, the only hopes of the Romans were drawn from the
vicissitudes of fortune, which might threaten the proud
prosperity of Chosroes, and must be favorable to those who had
attained the lowest period of depression. 75 To provide for the
expenses of war, was the first care of the emperor; and for the
purpose of collecting the tribute, he was allowed to solicit the
benevolence of the eastern provinces. But the revenue no longer
flowed in the usual channels; the credit of an arbitrary prince
is annihilated by his power; and the courage of Heraclius was
first displayed in daring to borrow the consecrated wealth of
churches, under the solemn vow of restoring, with usury, whatever
he had been compelled to employ in the service of religion and
the empire. The clergy themselves appear to have sympathized with
the public distress; and the discreet patriarch of Alexandria,
without admitting the precedent of sacrilege, assisted his
sovereign by the miraculous or seasonable revelation of a secret
treasure. 76 Of the soldiers who had conspired with Phocas, only
two were found to have survived the stroke of time and of the
Barbarians; 77 the loss, even of these seditious veterans, was
imperfectly supplied by the new levies of Heraclius, and the gold
of the sanctuary united, in the same camp, the names, and arms,
and languages of the East and West. He would have been content
with the neutrality of the Avars; and his friendly entreaty, that
the chagan would act, not as the enemy, but as the guardian, of
the empire, was accompanied with a more persuasive donative of
two hundred thousand pieces of gold. Two days after the festival
of Easter, the emperor, exchanging his purple for the simple garb
of a penitent and warrior, 78 gave the signal of his departure.
To the faith of the people Heraclius recommended his children;
the civil and military powers were vested in the most deserving
hands, and the discretion of the patriarch and senate was
authorized to save or surrender the city, if they should be
oppressed in his absence by the superior forces of the enemy.

73 (return) [Nicephorus, (p. 10, 11,) is happy to observe, that
of two sons, its incestuous fruit, the elder was marked by
Providence with a stiff neck, the younger with the loss of
hearing.]

74 (return) [ George of Pisidia, (Acroas. i. 112—125, p. 5,) who
states the opinions, acquits the pusillanimous counsellors of any
sinister views. Would he have excused the proud and contemptuous
admonition of Crispus?]

75 (return) [ George Pisid. Acroas. i. 51, &c. p: 4. The
Orientals are not less fond of remarking this strange
vicissitude; and I remember some story of Khosrou Parviz, not
very unlike the ring of Polycrates of Samos.]

76 (return) [ Baronius gravely relates this discovery, or rather
transmutation, of barrels, not of honey, but of gold, (Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 620, No. 3, &c.) Yet the loan was arbitrary, since
it was collected by soldiers, who were ordered to leave the
patriarch of Alexandria no more than one hundred pounds of gold.
Nicephorus, (p. 11,) two hundred years afterwards, speaks with
ill humor of this contribution, which the church of
Constantinople might still feel.]

77 (return) [ Theophylact Symocatta, l. viii. c. 12. This
circumstance need not excite our surprise. The muster-roll of a
regiment, even in time of peace, is renewed in less than twenty
or twenty-five years.]

78 (return) [ He changed his purple for black, buckskins, and
dyed them red in the blood of the Persians, (Georg. Pisid.
Acroas. iii. 118, 121, 122 See the notes of Foggini, p. 35.)]

The neighboring heights of Chalcedon were covered with tents and
arms: but if the new levies of Heraclius had been rashly led to
the attack, the victory of the Persians in the sight of
Constantinople might have been the last day of the Roman empire.
As imprudent would it have been to advance into the provinces of
Asia, leaving their innumerable cavalry to intercept his convoys,
and continually to hang on the lassitude and disorder of his
rear. But the Greeks were still masters of the sea; a fleet of
galleys, transports, and store-ships, was assembled in the
harbor; the Barbarians consented to embark; a steady wind carried
them through the Hellespont the western and southern coast of
Asia Minor lay on their left hand; the spirit of their chief was
first displayed in a storm, and even the eunuchs of his train
were excited to suffer and to work by the example of their
master. He landed his troops on the confines of Syria and
Cilicia, in the Gulf of Scanderoon, where the coast suddenly
turns to the south; 79 and his discernment was expressed in the
choice of this important post. 80 From all sides, the scattered
garrisons of the maritime cities and the mountains might repair
with speed and safety to his Imperial standard. The natural
fortifications of Cilicia protected, and even concealed, the camp
of Heraclius, which was pitched near Issus, on the same ground
where Alexander had vanquished the host of Darius. The angle
which the emperor occupied was deeply indented into a vast
semicircle of the Asiatic, Armenian, and Syrian provinces; and to
whatsoever point of the circumference he should direct his
attack, it was easy for him to dissemble his own motions, and to
prevent those of the enemy. In the camp of Issus, the Roman
general reformed the sloth and disorder of the veterans, and
educated the new recruits in the knowledge and practice of
military virtue. Unfolding the miraculous image of Christ, he
urged them to revenge the holy altars which had been profaned by
the worshippers of fire; addressing them by the endearing
appellations of sons and brethren, he deplored the public and
private wrongs of the republic. The subjects of a monarch were
persuaded that they fought in the cause of freedom; and a similar
enthusiasm was communicated to the foreign mercenaries, who must
have viewed with equal indifference the interest of Rome and of
Persia. Heraclius himself, with the skill and patience of a
centurion, inculcated the lessons of the school of tactics, and
the soldiers were assiduously trained in the use of their
weapons, and the exercises and evolutions of the field. The
cavalry and infantry in light or heavy armor were divided into
two parties; the trumpets were fixed in the centre, and their
signals directed the march, the charge, the retreat or pursuit;
the direct or oblique order, the deep or extended phalanx; to
represent in fictitious combat the operations of genuine war.
Whatever hardships the emperor imposed on the troops, he
inflicted with equal severity on himself; their labor, their
diet, their sleep, were measured by the inflexible rules of
discipline; and, without despising the enemy, they were taught to
repose an implicit confidence in their own valor and the wisdom
of their leader. Cilicia was soon encompassed with the Persian
arms; but their cavalry hesitated to enter the defiles of Mount
Taurus, till they were circumvented by the evolutions of
Heraclius, who insensibly gained their rear, whilst he appeared
to present his front in order of battle. By a false motion, which
seemed to threaten Armenia, he drew them, against their wishes,
to a general action. They were tempted by the artful disorder of
his camp; but when they advanced to combat, the ground, the sun,
and the expectation of both armies, were unpropitious to the
Barbarians; the Romans successfully repeated their tactics in a
field of battle, 81 and the event of the day declared to the
world, that the Persians were not invincible, and that a hero was
invested with the purple. Strong in victory and fame, Heraclius
boldly ascended the heights of Mount Taurus, directed his march
through the plains of Cappadocia, and established his troops, for
the winter season, in safe and plentiful quarters on the banks of
the River Halys. 82 His soul was superior to the vanity of
entertaining Constantinople with an imperfect triumph; but the
presence of the emperor was indispensably required to soothe the
restless and rapacious spirit of the Avars.

79 (return) [ George of Pisidia, (Acroas. ii. 10, p. 8) has fixed
this important point of the Syrian and Cilician gates. They are
elegantly described by Xenophon, who marched through them a
thousand years before. A narrow pass of three stadia between
steep, high rocks, and the Mediterranean, was closed at each end
by strong gates, impregnable to the land, accessible by sea,
(Anabasis, l. i. p. 35, 36, with Hutchinson’s Geographical
Dissertation, p. vi.) The gates were thirty-five parasangs, or
leagues, from Tarsus, (Anabasis, l. i. p. 33, 34,) and eight or
ten from Antioch. Compare Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 580, 581.
Schultens, Index Geograph. ad calcem Vit. Saladin. p. 9. Voyage
en Turquie et en Perse, par M. Otter, tom. i. p. 78, 79.]

80 (return) [ Heraclius might write to a friend in the modest
words of Cicero: “Castra habuimus ea ipsa quae contra Darium
habuerat apud Issum Alexander, imperator haud paulo melior quam
aut tu aut ego.” Ad Atticum, v. 20. Issus, a rich and flourishing
city in the time of Xenophon, was ruined by the prosperity of
Alexandria or Scanderoon, on the other side of the bay.]

81 (return) [ Foggini (Annotat. p. 31) suspects that the Persians
were deceived by the of Aelian, (Tactic. c. 48,) an intricate
spiral motion of the army. He observes (p. 28) that the military
descriptions of George of Pisidia are transcribed in the Tactics
of the emperor Leo.]

82 (return) [ George of Pisidia, an eye-witness, (Acroas. ii.
122, &c.,) described in three acroaseis, or cantos, the first
expedition of Heraclius. The poem has been lately (1777)
published at Rome; but such vague and declamatory praise is far
from corresponding with the sanguine hopes of Pagi, D’Anville,
&c.]

Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has
been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the
deliverance of the empire. 83 He permitted the Persians to
oppress for a while the provinces, and to insult with impunity
the capital of the East; while the Roman emperor explored his
perilous way through the Black Sea, 84 and the mountains of
Armenia, penetrated into the heart of Persia, 85 and recalled the
armies of the great king to the defence of their bleeding
country. With a select band of five thousand soldiers, Heraclius
sailed from Constantinople to Trebizond; assembled his forces
which had wintered in the Pontic regions; and, from the mouth of
the Phasis to the Caspian Sea, encouraged his subjects and allies
to march with the successor of Constantine under the faithful and
victorious banner of the cross. When the legions of Lucullus and
Pompey first passed the Euphrates, they blushed at their easy
victory over the natives of Armenia. But the long experience of
war had hardened the minds and bodies of that effeminate peeple;
their zeal and bravery were approved in the service of a
declining empire; they abhorred and feared the usurpation of the
house of Sassan, and the memory of persecution envenomed their
pious hatred of the enemies of Christ. The limits of Armenia, as
it had been ceded to the emperor Maurice, extended as far as the
Araxes: the river submitted to the indignity of a bridge, 86 and
Heraclius, in the footsteps of Mark Antony, advanced towards the
city of Tauris or Gandzaca, 87 the ancient and modern capital of
one of the provinces of Media. At the head of forty thousand men,
Chosroes himself had returned from some distant expedition to
oppose the progress of the Roman arms; but he retreated on the
approach of Heraclius, declining the generous alternative of
peace or of battle. Instead of half a million of inhabitants,
which have been ascribed to Tauris under the reign of the Sophys,
the city contained no more than three thousand houses; but the
value of the royal treasures was enhanced by a tradition, that
they were the spoils of Croesus, which had been transported by
Cyrus from the citadel of Sardes. The rapid conquests of
Heraclius were suspended only by the winter season; a motive of
prudence, or superstition, 88 determined his retreat into the
province of Albania, along the shores of the Caspian; and his
tents were most probably pitched in the plains of Mogan, 89 the
favorite encampment of Oriental princes. In the course of this
successful inroad, he signalized the zeal and revenge of a
Christian emperor: at his command, the soldiers extinguished the
fire, and destroyed the temples, of the Magi; the statues of
Chosroes, who aspired to divine honors, were abandoned to the
flames; and the ruins of Thebarma or Ormia, 90 which had given
birth to Zoroaster himself, made some atonement for the injuries
of the holy sepulchre. A purer spirit of religion was shown in
the relief and deliverance of fifty thousand captives. Heraclius
was rewarded by their tears and grateful acclamations; but this
wise measure, which spread the fame of his benevolence, diffused
the murmurs of the Persians against the pride and obstinacy of
their own sovereign.

83 (return) [Footnote 83: Theophanes (p. 256) carries Heraclius
swiftly into Armenia. Nicephorus, (p. 11,) though he confounds
the two expeditions, defines the province of Lazica. Eutychius
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 231) has given the 5000 men, with the more
probable station of Trebizond.]

84 (return) [ From Constantinople to Trebizond, with a fair wind,
four or five days; from thence to Erzerom, five; to Erivan,
twelve; to Taurus, ten; in all, thirty-two. Such is the Itinerary
of Tavernier, (Voyages, tom. i. p. 12—56,) who was perfectly
conversant with the roads of Asia. Tournefort, who travelled with
a pacha, spent ten or twelve days between Trebizond and Erzerom,
(Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xviii.;) and Chardin
(Voyages, tom. i. p. 249—254) gives the more correct distance of
fifty-three parasangs, each of 5000 paces, (what paces?) between
Erivan and Tauris.]

85 (return) [ The expedition of Heraclius into Persia is finely
illustrated by M. D’Anville, (Memoires de l’Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 559—573.) He discovers the
situation of Gandzaca, Thebarma, Dastagerd, &c., with admirable
skill and learning; but the obscure campaign of 624 he passes
over in silence.]

86 (return) [ Et pontem indignatus Araxes.—Virgil, Aeneid, viii.
728. The River Araxes is noisy, rapid, vehement, and, with the
melting of the snows, irresistible: the strongest and most massy
bridges are swept away by the current; and its indignation is
attested by the ruins of many arches near the old town of Zulfa.
Voyages de Chardin, tom. i. p. 252.]

87 (return) [ Chardin, tom. i. p. 255—259. With the Orientals,
(D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 834,) he ascribes the
foundation of Tauris, or Tebris, to Zobeide, the wife of the
famous Khalif Haroun Alrashid; but it appears to have been more
ancient; and the names of Gandzaca, Gazaca, Gaza, are expressive
of the royal treasure. The number of 550,000 inhabitants is
reduced by Chardin from 1,100,000, the popular estimate.]

88 (return) [ He opened the gospel, and applied or interpreted
the first casual passage to the name and situation of Albania.
Theophanes, p. 258.]

89 (return) [ The heath of Mogan, between the Cyrus and the
Araxes, is sixty parasangs in length and twenty in breadth,
(Olearius, p. 1023, 1024,) abounding in waters and fruitful
pastures, (Hist. de Nadir Shah, translated by Mr. Jones from a
Persian Ms., part ii. p. 2, 3.) See the encampments of Timur,
(Hist. par Sherefeddin Ali, l. v. c. 37, l. vi. c. 13,) and the
coronation of Nadir Shah, (Hist. Persanne, p. 3—13 and the
English Life by Mr. Jones, p. 64, 65.)]

90 (return) [ Thebarma and Ormia, near the Lake Spauta, are
proved to be the same city by D’Anville, (Memoires de l’Academie,
tom. xxviii. p. 564, 565.) It is honored as the birthplace of
Zoroaster, according to the Persians, (Schultens, Index Geograph.
p. 48;) and their tradition is fortified by M. Perron d’Anquetil,
(Mem. de l’Acad. des Inscript. tom. xxxi. p. 375,) with some
texts from his, or their, Zendavesta. * Note: D’Anville (Mem. de
l’Acad. des Inscript. tom. xxxii. p. 560) labored to prove the
identity of these two cities; but according to M. St. Martin,
vol. xi. p. 97, not with perfect success. Ourmiah. called Ariema
in the ancient Pehlvi books, is considered, both by the followers
of Zoroaster and by the Mahometans, as his birthplace. It is
situated in the southern part of Aderbidjan.—M.]

Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part IV.

Amidst the glories of the succeeding campaign, Heraclius is
almost lost to our eyes, and to those of the Byzantine
historians. 91 From the spacious and fruitful plains of Albania,
the emperor appears to follow the chain of Hyrcanian Mountains,
to descend into the province of Media or Irak, and to carry his
victorious arms as far as the royal cities of Casbin and Ispahan,
which had never been approached by a Roman conqueror. Alarmed by
the danger of his kingdom, the powers of Chosroes were already
recalled from the Nile and the Bosphorus, and three formidable
armies surrounded, in a distant and hostile land, the camp of the
emperor. The Colchian allies prepared to desert his standard; and
the fears of the bravest veterans were expressed, rather than
concealed, by their desponding silence. “Be not terrified,” said
the intrepid Heraclius, “by the multitude of your foes. With the
aid of Heaven, one Roman may triumph over a thousand Barbarians.
But if we devote our lives for the salvation of our brethren, we
shall obtain the crown of martyrdom, and our immortal reward will
be liberally paid by God and posterity.” These magnanimous
sentiments were supported by the vigor of his actions. He
repelled the threefold attack of the Persians, improved the
divisions of their chiefs, and, by a well-concerted train of
marches, retreats, and successful actions, finally chased them
from the field into the fortified cities of Media and Assyria. In
the severity of the winter season, Sarbaraza deemed himself
secure in the walls of Salban: he was surprised by the activity
of Heraclius, who divided his troops, and performed a laborious
march in the silence of the night. The flat roofs of the houses
were defended with useless valor against the darts and torches of
the Romans: the satraps and nobles of Persia, with their wives
and children, and the flower of their martial youth, were either
slain or made prisoners. The general escaped by a precipitate
flight, but his golden armor was the prize of the conqueror; and
the soldiers of Heraclius enjoyed the wealth and repose which
they had so nobly deserved. On the return of spring, the emperor
traversed in seven days the mountains of Curdistan, and passed
without resistance the rapid stream of the Tigris. Oppressed by
the weight of their spoils and captives, the Roman army halted
under the walls of Amida; and Heraclius informed the senate of
Constantinople of his safety and success, which they had already
felt by the retreat of the besiegers. The bridges of the
Euphrates were destroyed by the Persians; but as soon as the
emperor had discovered a ford, they hastily retired to defend the
banks of the Sarus, 92 in Cilicia. That river, an impetuous
torrent, was about three hundred feet broad; the bridge was
fortified with strong turrets; and the banks were lined with
Barbarian archers. After a bloody conflict, which continued till
the evening, the Romans prevailed in the assault; and a Persian
of gigantic size was slain and thrown into the Sarus by the hand
of the emperor himself. The enemies were dispersed and dismayed;
Heraclius pursued his march to Sebaste in Cappadocia; and at the
expiration of three years, the same coast of the Euxine applauded
his return from a long and victorious expedition. 93

91 (return) [ I cannot find, and (what is much more,) M.
D’Anville does not attempt to seek, the Salban, Tarantum,
territory of the Huns, &c., mentioned by Theophanes, (p.
260-262.) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 231, 232,) an
insufficient author, names Asphahan; and Casbin is most probably
the city of Sapor. Ispahan is twenty-four days’ journey from
Tauris, and Casbin half way between, them (Voyages de Tavernier,
tom. i. p. 63—82.)]

92 (return) [ At ten parasangs from Tarsus, the army of the
younger Cyrus passed the Sarus, three plethra in breadth: the
Pyramus, a stadium in breadth, ran five parasangs farther to the
east, (Xenophon, Anabas. l. i. p 33, 34.) Note: Now the
Sihan.—M.]

93 (return) [ George of Pisidia (Bell. Abaricum, 246—265, p. 49)
celebrates with truth the persevering courage of the three
campaigns against the Persians.]

Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who
disputed the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at
the heart of their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted
by the marches and combats of twenty years, and many of the
veterans, who had survived the perils of the sword and the
climate, were still detained in the fortresses of Egypt and
Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes exhausted his
kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and slaves,
were divided into three formidable bodies. 94 The first army of
fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the
golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the
second was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of
his brother Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege
Constantinople, and to second the operations of the chagan, with
whom the Persian king had ratified a treaty of alliance and
partition. Sarbar, the general of the third army, penetrated
through the provinces of Asia to the well-known camp of
Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred
and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he
impatiently waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the
opposite side of the Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June,
thirty thousand Barbarians, the vanguard of the Avars, forced the
long wall, and drove into the capital a promiscuous crowd of
peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore thousand 95 of his
native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae, Russians,
Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of the
chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the
whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the
suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers;
and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of
the European and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the
magistrates of Constantinople repeatedly strove to purchase the
retreat of the chagan; but their deputies were rejected and
insulted; and he suffered the patricians to stand before his
throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were seated by
his side. “You see,” said the haughty Barbarian, “the proofs of
my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready
to send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors.
Presume no longer to tempt your master with a partial and
inadequate ransom your wealth and your city are the only presents
worthy of my acceptance. For yourselves, I shall permit you to
depart, each with an under-garment and a shirt; and, at my
entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage through his
lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive, has
left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of
the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like
birds, unless like fishes you could dive into the waves.” 96
During ten successive days, the capital was assaulted by the
Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they
advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the
impenetrable tortoise; their engines discharged a perpetual
volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty towers of wood
exalted the combatants to the height of the neighboring ramparts.

But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of
Heraclius, who had detached to their relief a body of twelve
thousand cuirassiers; the powers of fire and mechanics were used
with superior art and success in the defence of Constantinople;
and the galleys, with two and three ranks of oars, commanded the
Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle spectators of the
defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a fleet of
Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbor; the vassals of the
chagan threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and
after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and
formidable retreat. The devotion of the Romans ascribed this
signal deliverance to the Virgin Mary; but the mother of Christ
would surely have condemned their inhuman murder of the Persian
envoys, who were entitled to the rights of humanity, if they were
not protected by the laws of nations. 97

94 (return) [ Petavius (Annotationes ad Nicephorum, p. 62, 63,
64) discriminates the names and actions of five Persian generals
who were successively sent against Heraclius.]

95 (return) [ This number of eight myriads is specified by George
of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 219.) The poet (50—88) clearly indicates
that the old chagan lived till the reign of Heraclius, and that
his son and successor was born of a foreign mother. Yet Foggini
(Annotat. p. 57) has given another interpretation to this
passage.]

96 (return) [ A bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, had been
the present of the Scythian king to Darius, (Herodot. l. iv. c.
131, 132.) Substituez une lettre a ces signes (says Rousseau,
with much good taste) plus elle sera menacante moins elle
effrayera; ce ne sera qu’une fanfarronade dont Darius n’eut fait
que rire, (Emile, tom. iii. p. 146.) Yet I much question whether
the senate and people of Constantinople laughed at this message
of the chagan.]

97 (return) [ The Paschal Chronicle (p. 392—397) gives a minute
and authentic narrative of the siege and deliverance of
Constantinople Theophanes (p. 264) adds some circumstances; and a
faint light may be obtained from the smoke of George of Pisidia,
who has composed a poem (de Bello Abarico, p. 45—54) to
commemorate this auspicious event.]

After the division of his army, Heraclius prudently retired to
the banks of the Phasis, from whence he maintained a defensive
war against the fifty thousand gold spears of Persia. His anxiety
was relieved by the deliverance of Constantinople; his hopes were
confirmed by a victory of his brother Theodorus; and to the
hostile league of Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor
opposed the useful and honorable alliance of the Turks. At his
liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars 98 transported their
tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of Georgia;
Heraclius received them in the neighborhood of Teflis, and the
khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may
credit the Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the
purple of the Caesars. Such voluntary homage and important aid
were entitled to the warmest acknowledgments; and the emperor,
taking off his own diadem, placed it on the head of the Turkish
prince, whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the appellation
of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the
plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which had
been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own hand,
distributed rich jewels and ear-rings to his new allies. In a
secret interview, he produced the portrait of his daughter
Eudocia, 99 condescended to flatter the Barbarian with the
promise of a fair and august bride; obtained an immediate succor
of forty thousand horse, and negotiated a strong diversion of the
Turkish arms on the side of the Oxus. 100 The Persians, in their
turn, retreated with precipitation; in the camp of Edessa,
Heraclius reviewed an army of seventy thousand Romans and
strangers; and some months were successfully employed in the
recovery of the cities of Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, whose
fortifications had been imperfectly restored. Sarbar still
maintained the important station of Chalcedon; but the jealousy
of Chosroes, or the artifice of Heraclius, soon alienated the
mind of that powerful satrap from the service of his king and
country. A messenger was intercepted with a real or fictitious
mandate to the cadarigan, or second in command, directing him to
send, without delay, to the throne, the head of a guilty or
unfortunate general. The despatches were transmitted to Sarbar
himself; and as soon as he read the sentence of his own death, he
dexterously inserted the names of four hundred officers,
assembled a military council, and asked the cadarigan whether he
was prepared to execute the commands of their tyrant. The
Persians unanimously declared, that Chosroes had forfeited the
sceptre; a separate treaty was concluded with the government of
Constantinople; and if some considerations of honor or policy
restrained Sarbar from joining the standard of Heraclius, the
emperor was assured that he might prosecute, without
interruption, his designs of victory and peace.

98 (return) [ The power of the Chozars prevailed in the viith,
viiith, and ixth centuries. They were known to the Greeks, the
Arabs, and under the name of Kosa, to the Chinese themselves. De
Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 507—509. * Note:
Moses of Chorene speaks of an invasion of Armenia by the Khazars
in the second century, l. ii. c. 62. M. St. Martin suspects them
to be the same with the Hunnish nation of the Acatires or
Agazzires. They are called by the Greek historians Eastern Turks;
like the Madjars and other Hunnish or Finnish tribes, they had
probably received some admixture from the genuine Turkish races.
Ibn. Hankal (Oriental Geography) says that their language was
like the Bulgarian, and considers them a people of Finnish or
Hunnish race. Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 268-273. Abel Remusat,
Rech. sur les Langues Tartares, tom. i. p. 315, 316. St. Martin,
vol. xi. p. 115.—M]

99 (return) [ Epiphania, or Eudocia, the only daughter of
Heraclius and his first wife Eudocia, was born at Constantinople
on the 7th of July, A.D. 611, baptized the 15th of August, and
crowned (in the oratory of St. Stephen in the palace) the 4th of
October of the same year. At this time she was about fifteen.
Eudocia was afterwards sent to her Turkish husband, but the news
of his death stopped her journey, and prevented the consummation,
(Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 118.)]

100 (return) [ Elmcain (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16) gives some
curious and probable facts; but his numbers are rather too
high—300,000 Romans assembled at Edessa—500,000 Persians killed
at Nineveh. The abatement of a cipher is scarcely enough to
restore his sanity]

Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of
his subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in
its ruins. The number of five hundred thousand may be interpreted
as an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses
and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the
invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the
Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was
content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate
country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate
of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the
end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been
erected: 101 the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long
since disappeared; 102 the vacant space afforded a spacious field
for the operations of the two armies. But these operations are
neglected by the Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of
epic poetry and romance, they ascribe the victory, not to the
military conduct, but to the personal valor, of their favorite
hero. On this memorable day, Heraclius, on his horse Phallas,
surpassed the bravest of his warriors: his lip was pierced with a
spear; the steed was wounded in the thigh; but he carried his
master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx of the
Barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were
successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor: among
these was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight
of his head scattered grief and despair through the fainting
ranks of the Persians. His armor of pure and massy gold, the
shield of one hundred and twenty plates, the sword and belt, the
saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph of Heraclius; and if he
had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of
Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of
the Capitol. 103 In the battle of Nineveh, which was fiercely
fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight
standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were
taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut
in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed the
night on the field. They acknowledged, that on this occasion it
was less difficult to kill than to discomfit the soldiers of
Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their friends, no more than two
bow-shot from the enemy the remnant of the Persian cavalry stood
firm till the seventh hour of the night; about the eighth hour
they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and
dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of
resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in
the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in
four-and-twenty hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the
great and the lesser Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria
were open for the first time to the Romans. By a just gradation
of magnificent scenes, they penetrated to the royal seat of
Dastagerd, 1031 and, though much of the treasure had been
removed, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth appears
to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated their
avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed
with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds
which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire:
and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been
confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred,
military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal
rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject.
The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and the
deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria,
reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace
of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain
or Ctesiphon, till he was stopped, on the banks of the Arba, by
the difficulty of the passage, the rigor of the season, and
perhaps the fame of an impregnable capital. The return of the
emperor is marked by the modern name of the city of Sherhzour: he
fortunately passed Mount Zara, before the snow, which fell
incessantly thirty-four days; and the citizens of Gandzca, or
Tauris, were compelled to entertain the soldiers and their horses
with a hospitable reception. 104

101 (return) [ Ctesias (apud Didor. Sicul. tom. i. l. ii. p. 115,
edit. Wesseling) assigns 480 stadia (perhaps only 32 miles) for
the circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days’ journey:
the 120,000 persons described by the prophet as incapable of
discerning their right hand from their left, may afford about
700,000 persons of all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient
capital, (Goguet, Origines des Loix, &c., tom. iii. part i. p.
92, 93,) which ceased to exist 600 years before Christ. The
western suburb still subsisted, and is mentioned under the name
of Mosul in the first age of the Arabian khalifs.]

102 (return) [ Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 286)
passed over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge
of hills the old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have
been 100 feet high, flanked with 1500 towers, each of the height
of 200 feet.]

103 (return) [ Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first
consecration).... bina postea (continues Livy, i. 10) inter tot
bella, opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris.
If Varro (apud Pomp Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify
his liberality in granting the opime spoils even to a common
soldier who had slain the king or general of the enemy, the honor
would have been much more cheap and common]

1031 (return) [ Macdonald Kinneir places Dastagerd at Kasr e
Shirin, the palace of Sira on the banks of the Diala between
Holwan and Kanabee. Kinnets Geograph. Mem. p. 306.—M.]

104 (return) [ In describing this last expedition of Heraclius,
the facts, the places, and the dates of Theophanes (p. 265—271)
are so accurate and authentic, that he must have followed the
original letters of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle
has preserved (p. 398—402) a very curious specimen.]

When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his
hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of
shame, should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In
the battle of Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians
to vanquish, or he might have fallen with honor by the lance of a
Roman emperor. The successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure
distance, to expect the event, to assemble the relics of the
defeat, and to retire, by measured steps, before the march of
Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the once loved mansions of
Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were persuaded, that it
was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under the ruins of
the city and palace: and as both might have been equally adverse
to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, 1041 and three
concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before
the arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in
which he showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a
rapid and secret journey; and the first evening he lodged in the
cottage of a peasant, whose humble door would scarcely give
admittance to the great king. 105 His superstition was subdued by
fear: on the third day, he entered with joy the fortifications of
Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of his safety till he had opposed
the River Tigris to the pursuit of the Romans. The discovery of
his flight agitated with terror and tumult the palace, the city,
and the camp of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated whether they had
most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and the females
of the harem were astonished and pleased by the sight of mankind,
till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined
them to a more distant castle. At his command, the army of
Dastagerd retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the
Arba, and a line of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more
distant provinces successively arrived, and the vilest domestics
of the king and satraps were enrolled for the last defence of the
throne. It was still in the power of Chosroes to obtain a
reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly pressed by the messengers
of Heraclius to spare the blood of his subjects, and to relieve a
humane conqueror from the painful duty of carrying fire and sword
through the fairest countries of Asia. But the pride of the
Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he derived
a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he wept
with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and
disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who
complained that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the
obstinacy of an old man. That unhappy old man was himself
tortured with the sharpest pains both of mind and body; and, in
the consciousness of his approaching end, he resolved to fix the
tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favored of his sons. But
the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and Siroes, 1051 who
gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had conspired
with the malcontent s to assert and anticipate the rights of
primogeniture. 106 Twenty-two satraps (they styled themselves
patriots) were tempted by the wealth and honors of a new reign:
to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of
pay; to the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to
the captives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant
peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the
conspirators, that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should
appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape
was contrived to the Imperial court. But the new monarch was
saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet
where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons
were massacred 1061 before his face, and he was thrown into a
dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern
Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and
famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so
far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his
death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what
eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the
faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he sunk without hope
into a still deeper abyss; 107 and it will not be denied, that
tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such
infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the
life of Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the
fruit of his crimes: and in the space of four years, the regal
title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the
sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every
province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence,
of discord, and of blood; and the state of anarchy prevailed
about eight years longer, 1071 till the factions were silenced
and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs. 108

1041 (return) [ The Schirin of Persian poetry. The love of Chosru
and Schirin rivals in Persian romance that of Joseph with Zuleika
the wife of Potiphar, of Solomon with the queen of Sheba, and
that of Mejnoun and Leila. The number of Persian poems on the
subject may be seen in M. von Hammer’s preface to his poem of
Schirin.—M]

105 (return) [ The words of Theophanes are remarkable. Young
princes who discover a propensity to war should repeatedly
transcribe and translate such salutary texts.]

1051 (return) [ His name was Kabad (as appears from an official
letter in the Paschal Chronicle, p. 402.) St. Martin considers
the name Siroes, Schirquieh of Schirwey, derived from the word
schir, royal. St. Martin, xi. 153.—M.]

106 (return) [ The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is
contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398) and
the history of Theophanes, (p. 271.)]

1061 (return) [ According to Le Beau, this massacre was
perpetrated at Mahuza in Babylonia, not in the presence of
Chosroes. The Syrian historian, Thomas of Maraga, gives Chosroes
twenty-four sons; Mirkhond, (translated by De Sacy,) fifteen; the
inedited Modjmel-alte-warikh, agreeing with Gibbon, eighteen,
with their names. Le Beau and St. Martin, xi. 146.—M.]

107 (return) [ On the first rumor of the death of Chosroes, an
Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople
by George of Pisidia, (p. 97—105.) A priest and a poet might very
properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy but such mean
revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to
find so much black superstition in the letter of Heraclius: he
almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and
justice. * Note: The Mahometans show no more charity towards the
memory of Chosroes or Khoosroo Purveez. All his reverses are
ascribed to the just indignation of God, upon a monarch who had
dared, with impious and accursed hands, to tear the letter of the
Holy Prophet Mahomed. Compare note, p. 231.—M.]

1071 (return) [ Yet Gibbon himself places the flight and death of
Yesdegird Ill., the last king of Persia, in 651. The famous era
of Yesdegird dates from his accession, June 16 632.—M.]

108 (return) [ The best Oriental accounts of this last period of
the Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
251—256,) who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D’Herbelot
(Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 789,) and Assemanni, (Bibliothec.
Oriental. tom. iii. p. 415—420.)]

As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received
the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of
Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of
Persia. The authors of the revolution, eager to display their
merits in the court or camp of Tauris, preceded the ambassadors
of Siroes, who delivered the letters of their master to his
brother the emperor of the Romans. 109 In the language of the
usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the Deity,
and, without degrading his equal majesty, he offers to reconcile
the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and
alliance more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the
treaty were easily defined and faithfully executed. In the
recovery of the standards and prisoners which had fallen into the
hands of the Persians, the emperor imitated the example of
Augustus: their care of the national dignity was celebrated by
the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be measured
by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia: the
subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from
persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman
eagles, the true wood of the holy cross was restored to the
importunate demands of the successor of Constantine. The victor
was not ambitious of enlarging the weakness of the empire; the
son of Chosroes abandoned without regret the conquests of his
father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of Syria and Egypt
were honorably conducted to the frontier, and a war which had
wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change in
their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius
from Tauris to Constantinople was a perpetual triumph; and after
the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the
Sabbath of his toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the
clergy, and the people, went forth to meet their hero, with tears
and acclamations, with olive branches and innumerable lamps; he
entered the capital in a chariot drawn by four elephants; and as
soon as the emperor could disengage himself from the tumult of
public joy, he tasted more genuine satisfaction in the embraces
of his mother and his son. 110

109 (return) [ The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p.
402) unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The
treaty appears in its execution in the histories of Theophanes
and Nicephorus. * Note: M. Mai. Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, vol.
i. P. 2, p. 223, has added some lines, but no clear sense can be
made out of the fragment.—M.]

110 (return) [ The burden of Corneille’s song, “Montrez Heraclius
au peuple qui l’attend,” is much better suited to the present
occasion. See his triumph in Theophanes (p. 272, 273) and
Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The life of the mother and tenderness of
the son are attested by George of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 255, &c.,
p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is used somewhat profanely by
these Byzantine Christians.]

The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very
different kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy
sepulchre. Heraclius performed in person the pilgrimage of
Jerusalem, the identity of the relic was verified by the discreet
patriarch, 111 and this august ceremony has been commemorated by
the annual festival of the exaltation of the cross. Before the
emperor presumed to tread the consecrated ground, he was
instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple, the pomp
and vanity of the world: but in the judgment of his clergy, the
persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the
precepts of the gospel. 1113 He again ascended his throne to
receive the congratulations of the ambassadors of France and
India: and the fame of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, 112 was
eclipsed in the popular estimation, by the superior merit and
glory of the great Heraclius. Yet the deliverer of the East was
indigent and feeble. Of the Persian spoils, the most valuable
portion had been expended in the war, distributed to the
soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the waves of the
Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the
obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had
borrowed for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to
satisfy these inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted
by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a
second payment of the same taxes; and the arrears of a simple
citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of
one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred
thousand soldiers 113 who had fallen by the sword, was of less
fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and
population, in this long and destructive war: and although a
victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius,
the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than
exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at
Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of
Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some
troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and trifling
occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution.
These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor
had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his
reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he
had rescued from the Persians.

111 (return) [ See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1-4,)
Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240—248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p.
15.) The seals of the case had never been broken; and this
preservation of the cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion
of Queen Sira.]

1113 (return) [ If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and
penitent emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be
acknowledge that provocation was not wanting; for how many of
them had been eye-witnesses of, perhaps sufferers in, the
horrible atrocities committed on the capture of the city! Yet we
have no authentic account of great severities exercised by
Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted, which prohibited the
Jews from approaching within three miles of the city—a law,
which, in the present exasperated state of the Christians, might
be a measure of security of mercy, rather than of oppression.
Milman, Hist. of the Jews, iii. 242.—M.]

112 (return) [ George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra
Persas, 415, &c., and Heracleid. Acroas. i. 65—138. I neglect the
meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the
chagan were of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old
serpent, &c.]

113 (return) [ Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives
this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian
war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I.

After the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace and
piety might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But the
principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were more
solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the laws, of
their founder. I have already observed, that the disputes of the
Trinity were succeeded by those of the Incarnation; alike
scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the state, still
more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects.

It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious
war of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the
ecclesiastical and political schism of the Oriental sects, and to
introduce their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest
inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive church. 1

1 (return) [ By what means shall I authenticate this previous
inquiry, which I have studied to circumscribe and compress?—If I
persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and
special evidence, every line would demand a string of
testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical
dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I
have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested and
illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I
shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and
characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation
of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid
of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius
are a work of incredible labor and compass; the volumes which
relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of
837 pages) are divided into xvi. books—the first of history, the
remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit’s learning is
copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his
argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the
fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and
candor, as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause. 2.
The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume
(Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first
centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense
is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or
folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his
impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted by his
opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians, lxxx.
Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentiniins, cxxi.
Basilidians, cxxiii. Marcionites, cxli., &c.) under their proper
dates. 3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734,
1739, in two vols. in 4to., with a posthumous dissertation sur
les Nazarenes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure
of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins
with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and
transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage,
or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive; he
betrays an amiable partiality in favor of the weaker side, and,
while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient
scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of
contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to
examine. 4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le
Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is
full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his learned work, De
Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum (Helmstadt 1753, in 4to.,)
see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172—179, 328—332. The
Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196—202.
Basilides, p. 352—361. Carpocrates, p. 363—367. Valentinus, p.
371—389 Marcion, p. 404—410. The Manichaeans, p. 829-837, &c.]

I. A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte has
countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites,
or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished only by their
obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites.

Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated:
their obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the
softness of their infant creed would be variously moulded by the
zeal or prudence of three hundred years. Yet the most charitable
criticism must refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure
and proper divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish
prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to elevate
their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. 2 If they had
courage to hail their king when he appeared in a plebeian garb,
their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning their
God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under
the name and person of a mortal. 3 The familiar companions of
Jesus of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman,
who, in all the actions of rational and animal life, appeared of
the same species with themselves. His progress from infancy to
youth and manhood was marked by a regular increase in stature and
wisdom; and after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on
the cross. He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the
life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the cause
of religion and justice; and although the stoic or the hero may
disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears which he shed over
his friend and country may be esteemed the purest evidence of his
humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people
who held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the
Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases,
raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended
to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the
Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title of
Son of God.

2 (return) [ Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207) in the name of
his countrymen, and the modern Jews, the few who divert their
thoughts from money to religion, still hold the same language,
and allege the literal sense of the prophets. * Note: See on this
passage Bp. Kaye, Justin Martyr, p. 25.—M. Note: Most of the
modern writers, who have closely examined this subject, and who
will not be suspected of any theological bias, 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.]

3 (return) [ Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9,
p. 183) and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c.
2, p. 3) are obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is
rarely mentioned by himself or his apostles.]

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites,
a distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who
confounded the generation of Christ in the common order of
nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who revered the
virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid of an earthly
father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced by the
visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the
kingdom of David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and
authentic history has been recorded in several copies of the
Gospel according to St. Matthew, 4 which these sectaries long
preserved in the original Hebrew, 5 as the sole evidence of their
faith. The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his
own chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that
his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant and
domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal observation of
the historian, he must have listened to the same voice which
dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of
a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy
Spirit, was a creature without example or resemblance, superior
in every attribute of mind and body to the children of Adam.
Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean philosophy, 6 the
Jews 7 were persuaded of the preexistence, transmigration, and
immortality of souls; and providence was justified by a
supposition, that they were confined in their earthly prisons to
expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former state. 8
But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost immeasurable.
It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and virtuous
of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and the
Holy Ghost; 9 that his abasement was the result of his voluntary
choice; and that the object of his mission was, to purify, not
his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native
skies, he received the immense reward of his obedience; the
everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly
foretold by the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of
conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human
faculties of Christ to the extend of is celestial office. In the
language of antiquity, the title of God has not been severely
confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister, his
only-begotten son, might claim, without presumption, the
religious, though secondary, worship of a subject of a subject
world.

4 (return) [ The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist
in the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the
miraculous conception is one of the last articles which Dr.
Priestley has curtailed from his scanty creed. * Note: The
distinct allusion to the facts related in the two first chapters
of the Gospel, in a work evidently written about the end of the
reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited by Archbishop
Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral parts
of the authentic Christian history.—M.]

5 (return) [ It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels
for the use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or
Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers—Papias,
Irenaeus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the
Catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius,
among the Protestant critics. But this Hebrew Gospel of St.
Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the
diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have
preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek.
Erasmus and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the
original Gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which
declares it to be the work of an apostle. See Simon, Hist.
Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5—9, p. 47—101, and the Prolegomena
of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament. * Note: Surely the
extinction of the Judaeo-Christian community related from Mosheim
by Gibbon himself (c. xv.) accounts both simply and naturally for
the loss of a composition, which had become of no use—nor does it
follow that the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew is unauthorized.—M.]

6 (return) [ The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero
(Tusculan. l. i.) and Maximus of Tyre (Dissertat. xvi.) from the
intricacies of dialogue, which sometimes amuse, and often
perplex, the readers of the Phoedrus, the Phoedon, and the Laws
of Plato.]

7 (return) [ The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man
might have sinned before he was born, (John, ix. 2,) and the
Pharisees held the transmigration of virtuous souls, (Joseph. de
Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c. 7;) and a modern Rabbi is modestly
assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, &c., derived their
metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.]

8 (return) [ Four different opinions have been entertained
concerning the origin of human souls: 1. That they are eternal
and divine. 2. That they were created in a separate state of
existence, before their union with the body. 3. That they have
been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in
himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his
posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and embodied
in the moment of conception.—The last of these sentiments appears
to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history is
grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.]

9 (return) [ It was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to
Origen, and denied by his apologist, (Photius, Bibliothec. cod.
cxvii. p. 296.) Some of the Rabbis attribute one and the same
soul to the persons of Adam, David, and the Messiah.]

II. The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky
and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full
maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and the
strangers of Rome or Asia, who never beheld the manhood, were the
more readily disposed to embrace the divinity, of Christ. The
polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the Barbarian, were
alike accustomed to conceive a long succession, an infinite chain
of angels or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or emanations,
issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange or
incredible, that the first of these aeons, the Logos, or Word of
God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon
earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error, and to
conduct them in the paths of life and immortality. But the
prevailing doctrine of the eternity and inherent pravity of
matter infected the primitive churches of the East. Many among
the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that a celestial
spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh;
and, in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the
humanity, of Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount
Calvary, 10 the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics,
invented the phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated
by the Marcionites, the Manichaeans, and the various names of the
Gnostic heresy. 11 They denied the truth and authenticity of the
Gospels, as far as they relate the conception of Mary, the birth
of Christ, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his
ministry. He first appeared on the banks of the Jordan in the
form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and not a
substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to
imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a
perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies.
Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the
image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more
stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual,
not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the
Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic
scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension,
of Christ were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the
benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry,
such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the
Docetes agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the
justification of pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics,
the Jehovah of Israel, the Creator of this lower world, was a
rebellious, or at least an ignorant, spirit. The Son of God
descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and, for
the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously
transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
temporal Messiah.

10 (return) [ Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud
Judaeam Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus
asserebatur. Hieronym, advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of
Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, and even the Gospel according to St.
John, are levelled against the growing error of the Docetes, who
had obtained too much credit in the world, (1 John, iv. 1—5.)]

11 (return) [ About the year 200 of the Christian aera, Irenaeus
and Hippolytus efuted the thirty-two sects, which had multiplied
to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius, (Phot. Biblioth. cod.
cxx. cxxi. cxxii.) The five books of Irenaeus exist only in
barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some
monastery of Greece.]

One of the most subtile disputants of the Manichaean school has
pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of
the Christians, in the state of a human foetus, emerged at the
end of nine months from a female womb. The pious horror of his
antagonists provoked them to disclaim all sensual circumstances
of conception and delivery; to maintain that the divinity passed
through Mary like a sunbeam through a plate of glass; and to
assert, that the seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at
the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness
of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those
of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but
that he was clothed with an impassible and incorruptible body.
Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has acquired since
his resurrection, and such he must have always possessed, if it
were capable of pervading, without resistance or injury, the
density of intermediate matter. Devoid of its most essential
properties, it might be exempt from the attributes and
infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could increase from an
invisible point to its full maturity; a child that could attain
the stature of perfect manhood without deriving any nourishment
from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without
repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter.
Jesus might share the repasts of his disciples without being
subject to the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity
was never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual
concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a question
would arise, by what means, and of what materials, it was
originally framed; and our sounder theology is startled by an
answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both the form
and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea of
pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy:
the incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls,
celestial beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude
the notion of extended space; and their imagination was satisfied
with a subtile nature of air, or fire, or aether, incomparably
more perfect than the grossness of the material world. If we
define the place, we must describe the figure, of the Deity. Our
experience, perhaps our vanity, represents the powers of reason
and virtue under a human form. The Anthropomorphites, who swarmed
among the monks of Egypt and the Catholics of Africa, could
produce the express declaration of Scripture, that man was made
after the image of his Creator. 12 The venerable Serapion, one of
the saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with many a
tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant, his
unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his
mind without any visible object of faith or devotion. 13

12 (return) [ The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the
beginning of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of
anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that
they embraced the system of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i.
18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam
provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum
est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut
haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo
fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,
Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean,
he was scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar
Catholics.]

13 (return) [ Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod
illam imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione
consueverat, aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos
fletus, crebrosque singultus repente prorumpens, in terram
prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo proclamaret; “Heu me miserum!
tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem
adorem, aut interpallam am nescio.” Cassian, Collat. x. 2.]

III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more
substantial, though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived by
Cerinthus of Asia, 14 who dared to oppose the last of the
apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world,
he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, by
confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man
and a God; and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many
fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine,
15 the heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, Jesus of
Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and
Mary: but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected
as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the
true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, the
Christ, the first of the aeons, the Son of God himself, descended
on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind, and direct
his actions during the allotted period of his ministry. When the
Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ, an
immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle,
flew back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the
solitary Jesus to suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the
justice and generosity of such a desertion are strongly
questionable; and the fate of an innocent martyr, at first
impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine companion, might
provoke the pity and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs
were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and
modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that
when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a
miraculous apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible
of his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these
momentary, though real, pangs would be abundantly repaid by the
temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the Messiah in
his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated, that if he
suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never
absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to
expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before
his mysterious union with the Son of God. 16

14 (return) [ St. John and Cerinthus (A.D. 80. Cleric. Hist.
Eccles. p. 493) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus;
but the apostle fled from the heretic, lest the building should
tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr.
Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii.,) is related, however,
by Irenaeus, (iii. 3,) on the evidence of Polycarp, and was
probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The
obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John, iv. 3 alludes
to the double nature of that primitive heretic. * Note: Griesbach
asserts that all the Greek Mss., all the translators, and all the
Greek fathers, support the common reading.—Nov. Test. in loc.—M]

15 (return) [ The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost
incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though
of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the
other as the divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the
passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a
human body. 3. Even that body was aethereal, and perhaps
apparent.—Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I
much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenaeus, and
whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood themselves.]

16 (return) [ The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Rousseau, who has
drawn an eloquent, but indecent, parallel between Christ and
Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair
escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah,
such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding
words were properly explained as the application of a psalm and
prophecy.]

IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a
specious and noble tenet, must confess, from their present
experience, the incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A
similar union is not inconsistent with a much higher, or even
with the highest, degree of mental faculties; and the incarnation
of an aeon or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits,
does not involve any positive contradiction or absurdity. In the
age of religious freedom, which was determined by the council of
Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment
according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been
established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics
trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to
recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall and the manifold
inconveniences of their creed were aggravated by the sublime
character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that
God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial
trinity, was manifested in the flesh; 17 that a being who
pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary;
that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and
months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been
scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain
and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance;
and that the source of life and immortality expired on Mount
Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with
unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, 18 bishop of Laodicea, and
one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned
grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece;
eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes
of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion.
The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian,
he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though
he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his
commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the
Scriptures. A mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of
popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a
technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, “One
incarnate nature of Christ,” which are still reechoed with
hostile clamors in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He
taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a
man; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the
flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the profound
doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was
heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He
acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers
between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that he might
reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the
subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life.

With the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual,
rather than as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either
came from heaven, impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed,
and as it were transformed, into the essence of the Deity. The
system of Apollinaris was strenuously encountered by the Asiatic
and Syrian divines whose schools are honored by the names of
Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and tainted by those of Diodorus,
Theodore, and Nestorius. But the person of the aged bishop of
Laedicea, his character and dignity, remained inviolate; and his
rivals, since we may not suspect them of the weakness of
toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the novelty of the
argument, and diffident of the final sentence of the Catholic
church. Her judgment at length inclined in their favor; the
heresy of Apollinaris was condemned, and the separate
congregations of his disciples were proscribed by the Imperial
laws. But his principles were secretly entertained in the
monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies felt the hatred of
Theophilus and Cyril, the successive patriarchs of Alexandria.

17 (return) [ This strong expression might be justified by the
language of St. Paul, (1 Tim. iii. 16;) but we are deceived by
our modern Bibles. The word which was altered to God at
Constantinople in the beginning of the vith century: the true
reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still
exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin
fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St.
John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two
letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique,
tom. xv. p. 148—190, 351—390.) I have weighed the arguments, and
may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who was
deeply skilled in critical and theological studies. Note: It
should be Griesbach in loc. The weight of authority is so much
against the common reading in both these points, that they are no
longer urged by prudent controversialists. Would Gibbon’s
deference for the first of philosophers have extended to all his
theological conclusions?—M.]

18 (return) [ For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii.
c. 46, l. iii. c. 16 Sazomen, l. v. c. 18, 1. vi. c. 25, 27.
Theodoret, l. v. 3, 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques,
tom. vii. p. 602—638. Not. p. 789—794, in 4to. Venise, 1732. The
contemporary saint always mentions the bishop of Laodicea as a
friend and brother. The style of the more recent historians is
harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius compares him (l. viii. c.
11-15) to Basil and Gregory.]

V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were
rejected and forgotten: the recent zeal against the errors of
Apollinaris reduced the Catholics to a seeming agreement with the
double nature of Cerinthus. But instead of a temporary and
occasional alliance, they established, and we still embrace, the
substantial, indissoluble, and everlasting union of a perfect God
with a perfect man, of the second person of the trinity with a
reasonable soul and human flesh. In the beginning of the fifth
century, the unity of the two natures was the prevailing doctrine
of the church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode of
their coexistence could neither be represented by our ideas, nor
expressed by our language. Yet a secret and incurable discord was
cherished, between those who were most apprehensive of
confounding, and those who were most fearful of separating, the
divinity, and the humanity, of Christ. Impelled by religious
frenzy, they fled with adverse haste from the error which they
mutually deemed most destructive of truth and salvation. On
either hand they were anxious to guard, they were jealous to
defend, the union and the distinction of the two natures, and to
invent such forms of speech, such symbols of doctrine, as were
least susceptible of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas and
language tempted them to ransack art and nature for every
possible comparison, and each comparison misled their fancy in
the explanation of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic
microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster, and each party was
skilful to exaggerate the absurd or impious conclusions that
might be extorted from the principles of their adversaries. To
escape from each other, they wandered through many a dark and
devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms
of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of
the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of
sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and
were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To
purge themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error,
they disavowed their consequences, explained their principles,
excused their indiscretions, and unanimously pronounced the
sounds of concord and faith. Yet a latent and almost invisible
spark still lurked among the embers of controversy: by the breath
of prejudice and passion, it was quickly kindled to a mighty
flame, and the verbal disputes 19 of the Oriental sects have
shaken the pillars of the church and state.

19 (return) [ I appeal to the confession of two Oriental
prelates, Gregory Abulpharagius the Jacobite primate of the East,
and Elias the Nestorian metropolitan of Damascus, (see Asseman,
Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. ii. p. 291, tom. iii. p. 514, &c.,)
that the Melchites, Jacobites, Nestorians, &c., agree in the
doctrine, and differ only in the expression. Our most learned and
rational divines—Basnage, Le Clerc, Beausobre, La Croze, Mosheim,
Jablonski—are inclined to favor this charitable judgment; but the
zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the moderation of Dupin
is conveyed in a whisper.]

The name of Cyril of Alexandria is famous in controversial story,
and the title of saint is a mark that his opinions and his party
have finally prevailed. In the house of his uncle, the archbishop
Theophilus, he imbibed the orthodox lessons of zeal and dominion,
and five years of his youth were profitably spent in the adjacent
monasteries of Nitria. Under the tuition of the abbot Serapion,
he applied himself to ecclesiastical studies, with such
indefatigable ardor, that in the course of one sleepless night,
he has perused the four Gospels, the Catholic Epistles, and the
Epistle to the Romans. Origen he detested; but the writings of
Clemens and Dionysius, of Athanasius and Basil, were continually
in his hands: by the theory and practice of dispute, his faith
was confirmed and his wit was sharpened; he extended round his
cell the cobwebs of scholastic theology, and meditated the works
of allegory and metaphysics, whose remains, in seven verbose
folios, now peaceably slumber by the side of their rivals. 20
Cyril prayed and fasted in the desert, but his thoughts (it is
the reproach of a friend) 21 were still fixed on the world; and
the call of Theophilus, who summoned him to the tumult of cities
and synods, was too readily obeyed by the aspiring hermit. With
the approbation of his uncle, he assumed the office, and acquired
the fame, of a popular preacher. His comely person adorned the
pulpit; the harmony of his voice resounded in the cathedral; his
friends were stationed to lead or second the applause of the
congregation; 22 and the hasty notes of the scribes preserved his
discourses, which in their effect, though not in their
composition, might be compared with those of the Athenian
orators. The death of Theophilus expanded and realized the hopes
of his nephew. The clergy of Alexandria was divided; the soldiers
and their general supported the claims of the archdeacon; but a
resistless multitude, with voices and with hands, asserted the
cause of their favorite; and after a period of thirty-nine years,
Cyril was seated on the throne of Athanasius. 23

20 (return) [ La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i.
p. 24) avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril.
De tous les on vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu’on lise avec
moins d’utilite: and Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom.
iv. p. 42—52,) in words of respect, teaches us to despise them.]

21 (return) [ Of Isidore of Pelusium, (l. i. epist. 25, p. 8.) As
the letter is not of the most creditable sort, Tillemont, less
sincere than the Bollandists, affects a doubt whether this Cyril
is the nephew of Theophilus, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 268.)]

22 (return) [ A grammarian is named by Socrates (l. vii. c. 13).]

23 (return) [ See the youth and promotion of Cyril, in Socrates,
(l. vii. c. 7) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarchs. Alexandrin. p.
106, 108.) The Abbe Renaudot drew his materials from the Arabic
history of Severus, bishop of Hermopolis Magma, or Ashmunein, in
the xth century, who can never be trusted, unless our assent is
extorted by the internal evidence of facts.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part II.

The prize was not unworthy of his ambition. At a distance from
the court, and at the head of an immense capital, the patriarch,
as he was now styled, of Alexandria had gradually usurped the
state and authority of a civil magistrate. The public and private
charities of the city were blindly obeyed by his numerous and
fanatic parabolani, 24 familiarized in their daily office with
scenes of death; and the 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

24 (return) [ The Parabolani of Alexandria were a charitable
corporation, instituted during the plague of Gallienus, to visit
the sick and to bury the dead. They gradually enlarged, abused,
and sold the privileges of their order. Their outrageous conduct
during the reign of Cyril provoked the emperor to deprive the
patriarch of their nomination, and to restrain their number to
five or six hundred. But these restraints were transient and
ineffectual. See the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. ii. and
Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 276—278.]

25 (return) [ For Theon and his daughter Hypatia. see Fabricius,
Bibliothec. tom. viii. p. 210, 211. Her article in the Lexicon of
Suidas is curious and original. Hesychius (Meursii Opera, tom.
vii. p. 295, 296) observes, that he was persecuted; and an
epigram in the Greek Anthology (l. i. c. 76, p. 159, edit.
Brodaei) celebrates her knowledge and eloquence. She is honorably
mentioned (Epist. 10, 15 16, 33—80, 124, 135, 153) by her friend
and disciple the philosophic bishop Synesius.]

26 (return) [ Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the
sea-beach before the Caesareum. I may therefore prefer the
literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of
tegulae, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois ignorant, and the
assassins were probably regardless, whether their victim was yet
alive.]

27 (return) [ These exploits of St. Cyril are recorded by
Socrates, (l. vii. c. 13, 14, 15;) and the most reluctant bigotry
is compelled to copy an historian who coolly styles the murderers
of Hypatia. At the mention of that injured name, I am pleased to
observe a blush even on the cheek of Baronius, (A.D. 415, No.
48.)]

Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the blood of a
virgin, than the banishment of a saint; and Cyril had accompanied
his uncle to the iniquitous synod of the Oak. When the memory of
Chrysostom was restored and consecrated, the nephew of
Theophilus, at the head of a dying faction, still maintained the
justice of his sentence; nor was it till after a tedious delay
and an obstinate resistance, that he yielded to the consent of
the Catholic world. 28 His enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs 29
was a sense of interest, not a sally of passion: he envied their
fortunate station in the sunshine of the Imperial court; and he
dreaded their upstart ambition. which oppressed the metropolitans
of Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of Antioch and
Alexandria, and measured their diocese by the limits of the
empire. The long moderation of Atticus, the mild usurper of the
throne of Chrysostom, suspended the animosities of the Eastern
patriarchs; but Cyril was at length awakened by the exaltation of
a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After the short and
troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the
factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of
the emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame,
and invited the merit of a stranger.

Nestorius, 30 native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was
recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of
his sermons; but the first homily which he preached before the
devout Theodosius betrayed the acrimony and impatience of his
zeal. “Give me, O Caesar!” he exclaimed, “give me the earth
purged of heretics, and I will give you in exchange the kingdom
of heaven. Exterminate with me the heretics; and with you I will
exterminate the Persians.” On the fifth day as if the treaty had
been already signed, the patriarch of Constantinople discovered,
surprised, and attacked a secret conventicle of the Arians: they
preferred death to submission; the flames that were kindled by
their despair, soon spread to the neighboring houses, and the
triumph of Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On
either side of the Hellespont his episcopal vigor imposed a rigid
formulary of faith and discipline; a chronological error
concerning the festival of Easter was punished as an offence
against the church and state. Lydia and Caria, Sardes and
Miletus, were purified with the blood of the obstinate
Quartodecimans; and the edict of the emperor, or rather of the
patriarch, enumerates three-and-twenty degrees and denominations
in the guilt and punishment of heresy. 31 But the sword of
persecution which Nestorius so furiously wielded was soon turned
against his own breast. Religion was the pretence; but, in the
judgment of a contemporary saint, ambition was the genuine motive
of episcopal warfare. 32

28 (return) [ He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of
Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if
we may believe Nicephorus, l. xiv. c. 18) to the personal
intercession of the Virgin. Yet in his last years he still
muttered that John Chrysostom had been justly condemned,
(Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 278—282. Baronius Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 412, No. 46—64.)]

29 (return) [ See their characters in the history of Socrates,
(l. vii. c. 25—28;) their power and pretensions, in the huge
compilation of Thomassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
80-91.)]

30 (return) [ His elevation and conduct are described by
Socrates, (l. vii. c. 29 31;) and Marcellinus seems to have
applied the eloquentiae satis, sapi entiae parum, of Sallust.]

31 (return) [ Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 65, with the
illustrations of Baronius, (A.D. 428, No. 25, &c.,) Godefroy, (ad
locum,) and Pagi, Critica, (tom. ii. p. 208.)]

32 (return) [ Isidore of Pelusium, (l. iv. Epist. 57.) His words
are strong and scandalous. Isidore is a saint, but he never
became a bishop; and I half suspect that the pride of Diogenes
trampled on the pride of Plato.]

In the Syrian school, Nestorius had been taught to abhor the
confusion of the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the
humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord
Jesus. 33 The Blessed Virgin he revered as the mother of Christ,
but his ears were offended with the rash and recent title of
mother of God, 34 which had been insensibly adopted since the
origin of the Arian controversy. From the pulpit of
Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and afterwards the
patriarch himself, repeatedly preached against the use, or the
abuse, of a word 35 unknown to the apostles, unauthorized by the
church, and which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to
misled the simple, to amuse the profane, and to justify, by a
seeming resemblance, the old genealogy of Olympus. 36 In his
calmer moments Nestorius confessed, that it might be tolerated or
excused by the union of the two natures, and the communication of
their idioms: 37 but he was exasperated, by contradiction, to
disclaim the worship of a new-born, an infant Deity, to draw his
inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil partnerships of
life, and to describe the manhood of Christ as the robe, the
instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead. At these blasphemous
sounds, the pillars of the sanctuary were shaken. The
unsuccessful competitors of Nestorius indulged their pious or
personal resentment, the Byzantine clergy was secretly displeased
with the intrusion of a stranger: whatever is superstitious or
absurd, might claim the protection of the monks; and the people
were interested in the glory of their virgin patroness. 38 The
sermons of the archbishop, and the service of the altar, were
disturbed by seditious clamor; his authority and doctrine were
renounced by separate congregations; every wind scattered round
the empire the leaves of controversy; and the voice of the
combatants on a sonorous theatre reechoed in the cells of
Palestine and Egypt. It was the duty of Cyril to enlighten the
zeal and ignorance of his innumerable monks: in the school of
Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed the incarnation of one
nature; and the successor of Athanasius consulted his pride and
ambition, when he rose in arms against another Arius, more
formidable and more guilty, on the second throne of the
hierarchy. After a short correspondence, in which the rival
prelates disguised their hatred in the hollow language of respect
and charity, the patriarch of Alexandria denounced to the prince
and people, to the East and to the West, the damnable errors of
the Byzantine pontiff. From the East, more especially from
Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of toleration and
silence, which were addressed to both parties while they favored
the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received with open arms
the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of Celestine was flattered by
the appeal; and the partial version of a monk decided the faith
of the pope, who with his Latin clergy was ignorant of the
language, the arts, and the theology of the Greeks. At the head
of an Italian synod, Celestine weighed the merits of the cause,
approved the creed of Cyril, condemned the sentiments and person
of Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his episcopal dignity,
allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and penance, and
delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and illegal
sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, while he darted the
thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal;
and his twelve anathemas 39 still torture the orthodox slaves,
who adore the memory of a saint, without forfeiting their
allegiance to the synod of Chalcedon. These bold assertions are
indelibly tinged with the colors of the Apollinarian heresy; but
the serious, and perhaps the sincere professions of Nestorius
have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the
present times. 40

33 (return) [ La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.
44-53. Thesaurus Epistolicus, La Crozianus, tom. iii. p. 276—280)
has detected the use, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith
centuries, discriminates the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his
Nestorian disciples.]

34 (return) [ Deipara; as in zoology we familiarly speak of
oviparous and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the
invention of this word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes,
tom. i. p. 16) ascribes to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arians.
The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius,
(Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 15, p. 254, &c.;) but the
veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epithet so easily
slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic Ms]

35 (return) [ Basnage, in his Histoire de l’Eglise, a work of
controversy, (tom l. p. 505,) justifies the mother, by the blood,
of God, (Acts, xx. 28, with Mill’s various readings.) But the
Greek Mss. are far from unanimous; and the primitive style of the
blood of Christ is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those
copies which were used by the Christians of St. Thomas on the
coast of Malabar, (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.
347.) The jealousy of the Nestorians and Monophysites has guarded
the purity of their text.]

36 (return) [ The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new
Cybele of the Christians, (Isidor. l. i. epist. 54;) a letter was
forged in the name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her
assassin, (Synodicon, c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484.) In the
article of Nestorius, Bayle has scattered some loose philosophy
on the worship of the Virgin Mary.]

37 (return) [ The item of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer
of the idioms or properties of each nature to the other—of
infinity to man, passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this
nicest of subjects compose the Theological Grammar of Petavius,
(Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. l. iv. c. 14, 15, p 209, &c.)]

38 (return) [ See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, l. i. p. 30, &c.]

39 (return) [ Concil. tom. iii. p. 943. They have never been
directly approved by the church, (Tillemont. Mem. Eccles. tom.
xiv. p. 368—372.) I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry
with which Petavius seems to be agitated in the vith book of his
Dogmata Theologica]

40 (return) [ Such as the rational Basnage (ad tom. i. Variar.
Lection. Canisine in Praefat. c. 2, p. 11—23) and La Croze, the
universal scholar, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16—20. De
l’Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. The saur. Epist. p. 176, &c., 283, 285.)
His free sentence is confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski
(Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p. 193—201) and Mosheim, (idem. p. 304,
Nestorium crimine caruisse est et mea sententia;) and three more
respectable judges will not easily be found. Asseman, a learned
and modest slave, can hardly discern (Bibliothec. Orient. tom.
iv. p. 190—224) the guilt and error of the Nestorians.]

Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were disposed
to obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a synod of the
Catholic, or rather of the Greek church, was unanimously demanded
as the sole remedy that could appease or decide this
ecclesiastical quarrel. 41 Ephesus, on all sides accessible by
sea and land, was chosen for the place, the festival of Pentecost
for the day, of the meeting; a writ of summons was despatched to
each metropolitan, and a guard was stationed to protect and
confine the fathers till they should settle the mysteries of
heaven, and the faith of the earth. Nestorius appeared not as a
criminal, but as a judge; he depended on the weight rather than
the number of his prelates, and his sturdy slaves from the baths
of Zeuxippus were armed for every service of injury or defence.
But his adversary Cyril was more powerful in the weapons both of
the flesh and of the spirit. Disobedient to the letter, or at
least to the meaning, of the royal summons, he was attended by
fifty Egyptian bishops, who expected from their patriarch’s nod
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He had contracted an intimate
alliance with Memnon, bishop of Ephesus. The despotic primate of
Asia disposed of the ready succors of thirty or forty episcopal
votes: a crowd of peasants, the slaves of the church, was poured
into the city to support with blows and clamors a metaphysical
argument; and the people zealously asserted the honor of the
Virgin, whose body reposed within the walls of Ephesus. 42 The
fleet which had transported Cyril from Alexandria was laden with
the riches of Egypt; and he disembarked a numerous body of
mariners, slaves, and fanatics, enlisted with blind obedience
under the banner of St. Mark and the mother of God. The fathers,
and even the guards, of the council were awed by this martial
array; the adversaries of Cyril and Mary were insulted in the
streets, or threatened in their houses; his eloquence and
liberality made a daily increase in the number of his adherents;
and the Egyptian soon computed that he might command the
attendance and the voices of two hundred bishops. 43 But the
author of the twelve anathemas foresaw and dreaded the opposition
of John of Antioch, who, with a small, but respectable, train of
metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys from
the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay, which he
stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, 44 Cyril announced the
opening of the synod sixteen days after the festival of
Pentecost. Nestorius, who depended on the near approach of his
Eastern friends, persisted, like his predecessor Chrysostom, to
disclaim the jurisdiction, and to disobey the summons, of his
enemies: they hastened his trial, and his accuser presided in the
seat of judgment. Sixty-eight bishops, twenty-two of metropolitan
rank, defended his cause by a modest and temperate protest: they
were excluded from the councils of their brethren. Candidian, in
the emperor’s name, requested a delay of four days; the profane
magistrate was driven with outrage and insult from the assembly
of the saints. The whole of this momentous transaction was
crowded into the compass of a summer’s day: the bishops delivered
their separate opinions; but the uniformity of style reveals the
influence or the hand of a master, who has been accused of
corrupting the public evidence of their acts and subscriptions.
45 Without a dissenting voice, they recognized in the epistles of
Cyril the Nicene creed and the doctrine of the fathers: but the
partial extracts from the letters and homilies of Nestorius were
interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the heretic was degraded
from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity. The sentence,
maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was affixed and
proclaimed in the streets of Ephesus: the weary prelates, as they
issued from the church of the mother of God, were saluted as her
champions; and her victory was celebrated by the illuminations,
the songs, and the tumult of the night.

41 (return) [ The origin and progress of the Nestorian
controversy, till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates,
(l. vii. c. 32,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 1, 2,) Liberatus, (Brev. c.
1—4,) the original Acts, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 551—991, edit.
Venice, 1728,) the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful
collections of Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv p. 283—377.)]

42 (return) [ The Christians of the four first centuries were
ignorant of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of
Ephesus is affirmed by the synod, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1102;)
yet it has been superseded by the claim of Jerusalem; and her
empty sepulchre, as it was shown to the pilgrims, produced the
fable of her resurrection and assumption, in which the Greek and
Latin churches have piously acquiesced. See Baronius (Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 48, No. 6, &c.) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. i.
p. 467—477.)]

43 (return) [ The Acts of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1405,
1408) exhibit a lively picture of the blind, obstinate servitude
of the bishops of Egypt to their patriarch.]

44 (return) [ Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the
bishops at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the
distance of thirty days’ journey; and ten days more may be fairly
allowed for accidents and repose. The march of Xenophon over the
same ground enumerates above 260 parasangs or leagues; and this
measure might be illustrated from ancient and modern itineraries,
if I knew how to compare the speed of an army, a synod, and a
caravan. John of Antioch is reluctantly acquitted by Tillemont
himself, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 386—389.)]

45 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The same imputation was urged
by Count Irenaeus, (tom. iii. p. 1249;) and the orthodox critics
do not find it an easy task to defend the purity of the Greek or
Latin copies of the Acts.]

On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival and
indignation of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the inn,
before he had wiped the dust from his shoes, John of Antioch gave
audience to Candidian, the Imperial minister; who related his
ineffectual efforts to prevent or to annul the hasty violence of
the Egyptian. With equal haste and violence, the Oriental synod
of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their episcopal
honors, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom of
the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as
a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church.
46 His throne was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly
resolved to bestow on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a
faithful shepherd. By the vigilance of Memnon, the churches were
shut against them, and a strong garrison was thrown into the
cathedral. The troops, under the command of Candidian, advanced
to the assault; the outguards were routed and put to the sword,
but the place was impregnable: the besiegers retired; their
retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally; they lost their horses,
and many of their soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs
and stones. Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with
rage and clamor, with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted
anathemas and excommunications from their spiritual engines; and
the court of Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and
contradictory narratives of the Syrian and Egyptian factions.
During a busy period of three months, the emperor tried every
method, except the most effectual means of indifference and
contempt, to reconcile this theological quarrel. He attempted to
remove or intimidate the leaders by a common sentence, of
acquittal or condemnation; he invested his representatives at
Ephesus with ample power and military force; he summoned from
either party eight chosen deputies to a free and candid
conference in the neighborhood of the capital, far from the
contagion of popular frenzy. But the Orientals refused to yield,
and the Catholics, proud of their numbers and of their Latin
allies, rejected all terms of union or toleration. The patience
of the meek Theodosius was provoked; and he dissolved in anger
this episcopal tumult, which at the distance of thirteen
centuries assumes the venerable aspect of the third oecumenical
council. 47 “God is my witness,” said the pious prince, “that I
am not the author of this confusion. His providence will discern
and punish the guilty. Return to your provinces, and may your
private virtues repair the mischief and scandal of your meeting.”
They returned to their provinces; but the same passions which had
distracted the synod of Ephesus were diffused over the Eastern
world. After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of Antioch
and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace: but
their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence than to
reason, to the mutual lassitude rather than to the Christian
charity of the patriarchs.

46 (return) [ After the coalition of John and Cyril these
invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must
never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable
enemies entertain of each other’s merit, (Concil tom. iii. p.
1244.)]

47 (return) [ See the acts of the synod of Ephesus in the
original Greek, and a Latin version almost contemporary, (Concil.
tom. iii. p. 991—1339, with the Synodicon adversus Tragoediam
Irenaei, tom. iv. p. 235—497,) the Ecclesiastical Histories of
Socrates (l. vii. c. 34) and Evagrius, (l i. c. 3, 4, 5,) and the
Breviary of Liberatus, (in Concil. tom. vi. p. 419—459, c. 5, 6,)
and the Memoires Eccles. of Tillemont, (tom. xiv p. 377-487.)]

The Byzantine pontiff had instilled into the royal ear a baleful
prejudice against the character and conduct of his Egyptian
rival. An epistle of menace and invective, 48 which accompanied
the summons, accused him as a busy, insolent, and envious priest,
who perplexed the simplicity of the faith, violated the peace of
the church and state, and, by his artful and separate addresses
to the wife and sister of Theodosius, presumed to suppose, or to
scatter, the seeds of discord in the Imperial family. At the
stern command of his sovereign, Cyril had repaired to Ephesus,
where he was resisted, threatened, and confined, by the
magistrates in the interest of Nestorius and the Orientals; who
assembled the troops of Lydia and Ionia to suppress the fanatic
and disorderly train of the patriarch. Without expecting the
royal license, he escaped from his guards, precipitately
embarked, deserted the imperfect synod, and retired to his
episcopal fortress of safety and independence. But his artful
emissaries, both in the court and city, successfully labored to
appease the resentment, and to conciliate the favor, of the
emperor. The feeble son of Arcadius was alternately swayed by his
wife and sister, by the eunuchs and women of the palace:
superstition and avarice were their ruling passions; and the
orthodox chiefs were assiduous in their endeavors to alarm the
former, and to gratify the latter. Constantinople and the suburbs
were sanctified with frequent monasteries, and the holy abbots,
Dalmatius and Eutyches, 49 had devoted their zeal and fidelity to
the cause of Cyril, the worship of Mary, and the unity of Christ.
From the first moment of their monastic life, they had never
mingled with the world, or trod the profane ground of the city.
But in this awful moment of the danger of the church, their vow
was superseded by a more sublime and indispensable duty. At the
head of a long order of monks and hermits, who carried burning
tapers in their hands, and chanted litanies to the mother of God,
they proceeded from their monasteries to the palace. The people
was edified and inflamed by this extraordinary spectacle, and the
trembling monarch listened to the prayers and adjurations of the
saints, who boldly pronounced, that none could hope for
salvation, unless they embraced the person and the creed of the
orthodox successor of Athanasius. At the same time, every avenue
of the throne was assaulted with gold. Under the decent names of
eulogies and benedictions, the courtiers of both sexes were
bribed according to the measure of their power and rapaciousness.
But their incessant demands despoiled the sanctuaries of
Constantinople and Alexandria; and the authority of the patriarch
was unable to silence the just murmur of his clergy, that a debt
of sixty thousand pounds had already been contracted to support
the expense of this scandalous corruption. 50 Pulcheria, who
relieved her brother from the weight of an empire, was the
firmest pillar of orthodoxy; and so intimate was the alliance
between the thunders of the synod and the whispers of the court,
that Cyril was assured of success if he could displace one
eunuch, and substitute another in the favor of Theodosius. Yet
the Egyptian could not boast of a glorious or decisive victory.
The emperor, with unaccustomed firmness, adhered to his promise
of protecting the innocence of the Oriental bishops; and Cyril
softened his anathemas, and confessed, with ambiguity and
reluctance, a twofold nature of Christ, before he was permitted
to satiate his revenge against the unfortunate Nestorius. 51

48 (return) [ I should be curious to know how much Nestorius paid
for these expressions, so mortifying to his rival.]

49 (return) [ Eutyches, the heresiarch Eutyches, is honorably
named by Cyril as a friend, a saint, and the strenuous defender
of the faith. His brother, the abbot Dalmatus, is likewise
employed to bind the emperor and all his chamberlains terribili
conjuratione. Synodicon. c. 203, in Concil. tom. iv p. 467.]

50 (return) [ Clerici qui hic sunt contristantur, quod ecclesia
Alexandrina nudata sit hujus causa turbelae: et debet praeter
illa quae hinc transmissa sint auri libras mille quingentas. Et
nunc ei scriptum est ut praestet; sed de tua ecclesia praesta
avaritiae quorum nosti, &c. This curious and original letter,
from Cyril’s archdeacon to his creature the new bishop of
Constantinople, has been unaccountably preserved in an old Latin
version, (Synodicon, c. 203, Concil. tom. iv. p. 465—468.) The
mask is almost dropped, and the saints speak the honest language
of interest and confederacy.]

51 (return) [ The tedious negotiations that succeeded the synod
of Ephesus are diffusely related in the original acts, (Concil.
tom. iii. p. 1339—1771, ad fin. vol. and the Synodicon, in tom.
iv.,) Socrates, (l. vii. c. 28, 35, 40, 41,) Evagrius, (l. i. c.
6, 7, 8, 12,) Liberatus, (c. 7—10, 7-10,) Tillemont, (Mem.
Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 487—676.) The most patient reader will thank
me for compressing so much nonsense and falsehood in a few
lines.]

The rash and obstinate Nestorius, before the end of the synod,
was oppressed by Cyril, betrayed by the court, and faintly
supported by his Eastern friends. A sentiment of fear or
indignation prompted him, while it was yet time, to affect the
glory of a voluntary abdication: 52 his wish, or at least his
request, was readily granted; he was conducted with honor from
Ephesus to his old monastery of Antioch; and, after a short
pause, his successors, Maximian and Proclus, were acknowledged as
the lawful bishops of Constantinople. But in the silence of his
cell, the degraded patriarch could no longer resume the innocence
and security of a private monk. The past he regretted, he was
discontented with the present, and the future he had reason to
dread: the Oriental bishops successively disengaged their cause
from his unpopular name, and each day decreased the number of the
schismatics who revered Nestorius as the confessor of the faith.
After a residence at Antioch of four years, the hand of
Theodosius subscribed an edict, 53 which ranked him with Simon
the magician, proscribed his opinions and followers, condemned
his writings to the flames, and banished his person first to
Petra, in Arabia, and at length to Oasis, one of the islands of
the Libyan desert. 54 Secluded from the church and from the
world, the exile was still pursued by the rage of bigotry and
war. A wandering tribe of the Blemmyes or Nubians invaded his
solitary prison: in their retreat they dismissed a crowd of
useless captives: but no sooner had Nestorius reached the banks
of the Nile, than he would gladly have escaped from a Roman and
orthodox city, to the milder servitude of the savages. His flight
was punished as a new crime: the soul of the patriarch inspired
the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Egypt; the magistrates,
the soldiers, the monks, devoutly tortured the enemy of Christ
and St. Cyril; and, as far as the confines of Aethiopia, the
heretic was alternately dragged and recalled, till his aged body
was broken by the hardships and accidents of these reiterated
journeys. Yet his mind was still independent and erect; the
president of Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters; he
survived the Catholic tyrant of Alexandria, and, after sixteen
years’ banishment, the synod of Chalcedon would perhaps have
restored him to the honors, or at least to the communion, of the
church. The death of Nestorius prevented his obedience to their
welcome summons; 55 and his disease might afford some color to
the scandalous report, that his tongue, the organ of blasphemy,
had been eaten by the worms. He was buried in a city of Upper
Egypt, known by the names of Chemnis, or Panopolis, or Akmim; 56
but the immortal malice of the Jacobites has persevered for ages
to cast stones against his sepulchre, and to propagate the
foolish tradition, that it was never watered by the rain of
heaven, which equally descends on the righteous and the ungodly.
57 Humanity may drop a tear on the fate of Nestorius; yet justice
must observe, that he suffered the persecution which he had
approved and inflicted. 58

52 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The original letters in the
Synodicon (c. 15, 24, 25, 26) justify the appearance of a
voluntary resignation, which is asserted by Ebed-Jesu, a
Nestorian writer, apud Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p.
299, 302.]

53 (return) [ See the Imperial letters in the Acts of the Synod
of Ephesus, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1730—1735.) The odious name of
Simonians, which was affixed to the disciples of this. Yet these
were Christians! who differed only in names and in shadows.]

54 (return) [ The metaphor of islands is applied by the grave
civilians (Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. 22, leg. 7) to those happy
spots which are discriminated by water and verdure from the
Libyan sands. Three of these under the common name of Oasis, or
Alvahat: 1. The temple of Jupiter Ammon. 2. The middle Oasis,
three days’ journey to the west of Lycopolis. 3. The southern,
where Nestorius was banished in the first climate, and only three
days’ journey from the confines of Nubia. See a learned note of
Michaelis, (ad Descript. Aegypt. Abulfedae, p. 21-34.) * Note: 1.
The Oasis of Sivah has been visited by Mons. Drovetti and Mr.
Browne. 2. The little Oasis, that of El Kassar, was visited and
described by Belzoni. 3. The great Oasis, and its splendid ruins,
have been well described in the travels of Sir A. Edmonstone. To
these must be added another Western Oasis also visited by Sir A.
Edmonstone.—M.]

55 (return) [ The invitation of Nestorius to the synod of
Chalcedon, is related by Zacharias, bishop of Melitene (Evagrius,
l. ii. c. 2. Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 55,) and the
famous Xenaias or Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, (Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 40, &c.,) denied by Evagrius and
Asseman, and stoutly maintained by La Croze, (Thesaur. Epistol.
tom. iii. p. 181, &c.) The fact is not improbable; yet it was the
interest of the Monophysites to spread the invidious report, and
Eutychius (tom. ii. p. 12) affirms, that Nestorius died after an
exile of seven years, and consequently ten years before the synod
of Chalcedon.]

56 (return) [ Consult D’Anville, (Memoire sur l’Egypte, p. 191,)
Pocock. (Description of the East, vol. i. p. 76,) Abulfeda,
(Descript. Aegypt, p. 14,) and his commentator Michaelis, (Not.
p. 78—83,) and the Nubian Geographer, (p. 42,) who mentions, in
the xiith century, the ruins and the sugar-canes of Akmim.]

57 (return) [ Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 12) and Gregory
Bar-Hebraeus, of Abulpharagius, (Asseman, tom. ii. p. 316,)
represent the credulity of the xth and xiith centuries.]

58 (return) [ We are obliged to Evagrius (l. i. c. 7) for some
extracts from the letters of Nestorius; but the lively picture of
his sufferings is treated with insult by the hard and stupid
fanatic.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part III.

The death of the Alexandrian primate, after a reign of thirty-two
years, abandoned the Catholics to the intemperance of zeal and
the abuse of victory. 59 The monophysite doctrine (one incarnate
nature) was rigorously preached in the churches of Egypt and the
monasteries of the East; the primitive creed of Apollinarius was
protected by the sanctity of Cyril; and the name of Eutyches, his
venerable friend, has been applied to the sect most adverse to
the Syrian heresy of Nestorius. His rival Eutyches was the abbot,
or archimandrite, or superior of three hundred monks, but the
opinions of a simple and illiterate recluse might have expired in
the cell, where he had slept above seventy years, if the
resentment or indiscretion of Flavian, the Byzantine pontiff, had
not exposed the scandal to the eyes of the Christian world. His
domestic synod was instantly convened, their proceedings were
sullied with clamor and artifice, and the aged heretic was
surprised into a seeming confession, that Christ had not derived
his body from the substance of the Virgin Mary. From their
partial decree, Eutyches appealed to a general council; and his
cause was vigorously asserted by his godson Chrysaphius, the
reigning eunuch of the palace, and his accomplice Dioscorus, who
had succeeded to the throne, the creed, the talents, and the
vices, of the nephew of Theophilus. By the special summons of
Theodosius, the second synod of Ephesus was judiciously composed
of ten metropolitans and ten bishops from each of the six
dioceses of the Eastern empire: some exceptions of favor or merit
enlarged the number to one hundred and thirty-five; and the
Syrian Barsumas, as the chief and representative of the monks,
was invited to sit and vote with the successors of the apostles.
But the despotism of the Alexandrian patriarch again oppressed
the freedom of debate: the same spiritual and carnal weapons were
again drawn from the arsenals of Egypt: the Asiatic veterans, a
band of archers, served under the orders of Dioscorus; and the
more formidable monks, whose minds were inaccessible to reason or
mercy, besieged the doors of the cathedral. The general, and, as
it should seem, the unconstrained voice of the fathers, accepted
the faith and even the anathemas of Cyril; and the heresy of the
two natures was formally condemned in the persons and writings of
the most learned Orientals. “May those who divide Christ be
divided with the sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may they be
burned alive!” were the charitable wishes of a Christian synod.
60 The innocence and sanctity of Eutyches were acknowledged
without hesitation; but the prelates, more especially those of
Thrace and Asia, were unwilling to depose their patriarch for the
use or even the abuse of his lawful jurisdiction. They embraced
the knees of Dioscorus, as he stood with a threatening aspect on
the footstool of his throne, and conjured him to forgive the
offences, and to respect the dignity, of his brother. “Do you
mean to raise a sedition?” exclaimed the relentless tyrant.
“Where are the officers?” At these words a furious multitude of
monks and soldiers, with staves, and swords, and chains, burst
into the church; the trembling bishops hid themselves behind the
altar, or under the benches, and as they were not inspired with
the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed a blank
paper, which was afterwards filled with the condemnation of the
Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was instantly delivered to the wild
beasts of this spiritual amphitheatre: the monks were stimulated
by the voice and example of Barsumas to avenge the injuries of
Christ: it is said that the patriarch of Alexandria reviled, and
buffeted, and kicked, and trampled his brother of Constantinople:
61 it is certain, that the victim, before he could reach the
place of his exile, expired on the third day of the wounds and
bruises which he had received at Ephesus. This second synod has
been justly branded as a gang of robbers and assassins; yet the
accusers of Dioscorus would magnify his violence, to alleviate
the cowardice and inconstancy of their own behavior.

59 (return) [ Dixi Cyrillum dum viveret, auctoritate sua
effecisse, ne Eutychianismus et Monophysitarum error in nervum
erumperet: idque verum puto...aliquo... honesto modo cecinerat.
The learned but cautious Jablonski did not always speak the whole
truth. Cum Cyrillo lenius omnino egi, quam si tecum aut cum aliis
rei hujus probe gnaris et aequis rerum aestimatoribus sermones
privatos conferrem, (Thesaur. Epistol. La Crozian. tom. i. p.
197, 198) an excellent key to his dissertations on the Nestorian
controversy!]

60 (return) [ At the request of Dioscorus, those who were not
able to roar, stretched out their hands. At Chalcedon, the
Orientals disclaimed these exclamations: but the Egyptians more
consistently declared. (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1012.)]

61 (return) [ (Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum): and this testimony
of Evagrius (l. ii. c. 2) is amplified by the historian Zonaras,
(tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 44,) who affirms that Dioscorus kicked like
a wild ass. But the language of Liberatus (Brev. c. 12, in
Concil. tom. vi. p. 438) is more cautious; and the Acts of
Chalcedon, which lavish the names of homicide, Cain, &c., do not
justify so pointed a charge. The monk Barsumas is more
particularly accused, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1418.)]

The faith of Egypt had prevailed: but the vanquished party was
supported by the same pope who encountered without fear the
hostile rage of Attila and Genseric. The theology of Leo, his
famous tome or epistle on the mystery of the incarnation, had
been disregarded by the synod of Ephesus: his authority, and that
of the Latin church, was insulted in his legates, who escaped
from slavery and death to relate the melancholy tale of the
tyranny of Dioscorus and the martyrdom of Flavian. His provincial
synod annulled the irregular proceedings of Ephesus; but as this
step was itself irregular, he solicited the convocation of a
general council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From
his independent throne, the Roman bishop spoke and acted without
danger as the head of the Christians, and his dictates were
obsequiously transcribed by Placidia and her son Valentinian; who
addressed their Eastern colleague to restore the peace and unity
of the church. But the pageant of Oriental royalty was moved with
equal dexterity by the hand of the eunuch; and Theodosius could
pronounce, without hesitation, that the church was already
peaceful and triumphant, and that the recent flame had been
extinguished by the just punishment of the Nestorians. Perhaps
the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the
Monophysites, if the emperor’s horse had not fortunately
stumbled; Theodosius expired; his orthodox sister Pulcheria, with
a nominal husband, succeeded to the throne; Chrysaphius was
burnt, Dioscorus was disgraced, the exiles were recalled, and the
tome of Leo was subscribed by the Oriental bishops. Yet the pope
was disappointed in his favorite project of a Latin council: he
disdained to preside in the Greek synod, which was speedily
assembled at Nice in Bithynia; his legates required in a
peremptory tone the presence of the emperor; and the weary
fathers were transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of
Marcian and the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile
from the Thracian Bosphorus, the church of St. Euphemia was built
on the summit of a gentle though lofty ascent: the triple
structure was celebrated as a prodigy of art, and the boundless
prospect of the land and sea might have raised the mind of a
sectary to the contemplation of the God of the universe. Six
hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in order in the nave of
the church; but the patriarchs of the East were preceded by the
legates, of whom the third was a simple priest; and the place of
honor was reserved for twenty laymen of consular or senatorian
rank. The gospel was ostentatiously displayed in the centre, but
the rule of faith was defined by the Papal and Imperial
ministers, who moderated the thirteen sessions of the council of
Chalcedon. 62 Their partial interposition silenced the
intemperate shouts and execrations, which degraded the episcopal
gravity; but, on the formal accusation of the legates, Dioscorus
was compelled to descend from his throne to the rank of a
criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his judges. The
Orientals, less adverse to Nestorius than to Cyril, accepted the
Romans as their deliverers: Thrace, and Pontus, and Asia, were
exasperated against the murderer of Flavian, and the new
patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch secured their places by
the sacrifice of their benefactor. The bishops of Palestine,
Macedonia, and Greece, were attached to the faith of Cyril; but
in the face of the synod, in the heat of the battle, the leaders,
with their obsequious train, passed from the right to the left
wing, and decided the victory by this seasonable desertion. Of
the seventeen suffragans who sailed from Alexandria, four were
tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen, falling
prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the council, with
sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration, that, if they
yielded, they should be massacred, on their return to Egypt, by
the indignant people. A tardy repentance was allowed to expiate
the guilt or error of the accomplices of Dioscorus: but their
sins were accumulated on his head; he neither asked nor hoped for
pardon, and the moderation of those who pleaded for a general
amnesty was drowned in the prevailing cry of victory and revenge.

To save the reputation of his late adherents, some personal
offences were skilfully detected; his rash and illegal
excommunication of the pope, and his contumacious refusal (while
he was detained a prisoner) to attend to the summons of the
synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the special facts of
his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers heard with
abhorrence, that the alms of the church were lavished on the
female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to
the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia,
or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the
patriarch. 63

62 (return) [ The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Concil. tom.
iv. p. 761—2071) comprehend those of Ephesus, (p. 890—1189,)
which again comprise the synod of Constantinople under Flavian,
(p. 930—1072;) and at requires some attention to disengage this
double involution. The whole business of Eutyches, Flavian, and
Dioscorus, is related by Evagrius (l. i. c. 9—12, and l. ii. c.
1, 2, 3, 4,) and Liberatus, (Brev. c. 11, 12, 13, 14.) Once more,
and almost for the last time, I appeal to the diligence of
Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 479-719.) The annals of
Baronius and Pagi will accompany me much further on my long and
laborious journey.]

63 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276.) A specimen of the wit
and malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l.
ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was
unknown to the editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises
a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of
“Peace be to all!” with the genuine or corrupted name of the
bishop’s concubine: I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who
seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding
epigram, was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus himself.]

For these scandalous offences, Dioscorus was deposed by the
synod, and banished by the emperor; but the purity of his faith
was declared in the presence, and with the tacit approbation, of
the fathers. Their prudence supposed rather than pronounced the
heresy of Eutyches, who was never summoned before their tribunal;
and they sat silent and abashed, when a bold Monophysite casting
at their feet a volume of Cyril, challenged them to anathematize
in his person the doctrine of the saint. If we fairly peruse the
acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox party, 64
we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced the
simple unity of Christ; and the ambiguous concession that he was
formed Of or From two natures, might imply either their previous
existence, or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous
interval between the conception of the man and the assumption of
the God. The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted
the term most offensive to the ears of the Egyptians, that Christ
existed In two natures; and this momentous particle 65 (which the
memory, rather than the understanding, must retain) had almost
produced a schism among the Catholic bishops. The tome of Leo had
been respectfully, perhaps sincerely, subscribed; but they
protested, in two successive debates, that it was neither
expedient nor lawful to transgress the sacred landmarks which had
been fixed at Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, according to the
rule of Scripture and tradition. At length they yielded to the
importunities of their masters; but their infallible decree,
after it had been ratified with deliberate votes and vehement
acclamations, was overturned in the next session by the
opposition of the legates and their Oriental friends. It was in
vain that a multitude of episcopal voices repeated in chorus,
“The definition of the fathers is orthodox and immutable! The
heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them
depart from the synod! Let them repair to Rome.” 66 The legates
threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen
bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed on the reluctant
assembly. In the name of the fourth general council, the Christ
in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the Catholic
world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of
Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise,
a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the
master-hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of
blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions
from the oracle of the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already
varnished with the rust of antiquity, was admitted without
dispute into the creed of the reformers, who disclaimed the
supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of Chalcedon still
triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of
controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the
present day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief
concerning the mystery of the incarnation.

64 (return) [ Those who reverence the infallibility of synods,
may try to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were
attended by partial or careless scribes, who dispersed their
copies round the world. Our Greek Mss. are sullied with the false
and prescribed reading of (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1460:) the
authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not seem to have been
executed, and the old Latin versions materially differ from the
present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus, a
Roman priest, from the best Mss. at Constantinople, (Ducange, C.
P. Christiana, l. iv. p. 151,) a famous monastery of Latins,
Greeks, and Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959—2049, and Pagi,
Critica, tom. ii. p. 326, &c.]

65 (return) [ It is darkly represented in the microscope of
Petavius, (tom. v. l. iii. c. 5;) yet the subtle theologian is
himself afraid—ne quis fortasse supervacaneam, et nimis anxiam
putet hujusmodi vocularum inquisitionem, et ab instituti
theologici gravitate alienam, (p. 124.)]

66 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1449.) Evagrius and Liberatus
present only the placid face of the synod, and discreetly slide
over these embers, suppositos cineri doloso.]

Far different was the temper of the Greeks and Egyptians under
the orthodox reigns of Leo and Marcian. Those pious emperors
enforced with arms and edicts the symbol of their faith; 67 and
it was declared by the conscience or honor of five hundred
bishops, that the decrees of the synod of Chalcedon might be
lawfully supported, even with blood. The Catholics observed with
satisfaction, that the same synod was odious both to the
Nestorians and the Monophysites; 68 but the Nestorians were less
angry, or less powerful, and the East was distracted by the
obstinate and sanguinary zeal of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was
occupied by an army of monks; in the name of the one incarnate
nature, they pillaged, they burnt, they murdered; the sepulchre
of Christ was defiled with blood; and the gates of the city were
guarded in tumultuous rebellion against the troops of the
emperor. After the disgrace and exile of Dioscorus, the Egyptians
still regretted their spiritual father; and detested the
usurpation of his successor, who was introduced by the fathers of
Chalcedon. The throne of Proterius was supported by a guard of
two thousand soldiers: he waged a five years’ war against the
people of Alexandria; and on the first intelligence of the death
of Marcian, he became the victim of their zeal. On the third day
before the festival of Easter, the patriarch was besieged in the
cathedral, and murdered in the baptistery. The remains of his
mangled corpse were delivered to the flames, and his ashes to the
wind; and the deed was inspired by the vision of a pretended
angel: an ambitious monk, who, under the name of Timothy the Cat,
69 succeeded to the place and opinions of Dioscorus. This deadly
superstition was inflamed, on either side, by the principle and
the practice of retaliation: in the pursuit of a metaphysical
quarrel, many thousands 70 were slain, and the Christians of
every degree were deprived of the substantial enjoyments of
social life, and of the invisible gifts of baptism and the holy
communion. Perhaps an extravagant fable of the times may conceal
an allegorical picture of these fanatics, who tortured each other
and themselves. “Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer,”
says a grave bishop, “the people of Alexandria, and all Egypt,
were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy: great and
small, slaves and freedmen, monks and clergy, the natives of the
land, who opposed the synod of Chalcedon, lost their speech and
reason, barked like dogs, and tore, with their own teeth the
flesh from their hands and arms.” 71

67 (return) [ See, in the Appendix to the Acts of Chalcedon, the
confirmation of the Synod by Marcian, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1781,
1783;) his letters to the monks of Alexandria, (p. 1791,) of
Mount Sinai, (p. 1793,) of Jerusalem and Palestine, (p. 1798;)
his laws against the Eutychians, (p. 1809, 1811, 1831;) the
correspondence of Leo with the provincial synods on the
revolution of Alexandria, (p. 1835—1930.)]

68 (return) [ Photius (or rather Eulogius of Alexandria)
confesses, in a fine passage, the specious color of this double
charge against Pope Leo and his synod of Chalcedon, (Bibliot.
cod. ccxxv. p. 768.) He waged a double war against the enemies of
the church, and wounded either foe with the darts of his
adversary. Against Nestorius he seemed to introduce Monophysites;
against Eutyches he appeared to countenance the Nestorians. The
apologist claims a charitable interpretation for the saints: if
the same had been extended to the heretics, the sound of the
controversy would have been lost in the air]

69 (return) [ From his nocturnal expeditions. In darkness and
disguise he crept round the cells of the monastery, and whispered
the revelation to his slumbering brethren, (Theodor. Lector. l.
i.)]

70 (return) [ Such is the hyperbolic language of the Henoticon.]

71 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis, in the
Lectiones Antiquae of Canisius, republished by Basnage, tom.
326.]

The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous
Henoticon 72 of the emperor Zeno, which in his reign, and in that
of Anastasius, was signed by all the bishops of the East, under
the penalty of degradation and exile, if they rejected or
infringed this salutary and fundamental law. The clergy may smile
or groan at the presumption of a layman who defines the articles
of faith; yet if he stoops to the humiliating task, his mind is
less infected by prejudice or interest, and the authority of the
magistrate can only be maintained by the concord of the people.
It is in ecclesiastical story, that Zeno appears least
contemptible; and I am not able to discern any Manichaean or
Eutychian guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius. That it was
unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshippers of Christ and
the citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was most pleasing to the
Egyptians; yet the smallest blemish has not been described by the
jealous, and even jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolmen, and
it accurately represents the Catholic faith of the incarnation,
without adopting or disclaiming the peculiar terms of tenets of
the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is pronounced against
Nestorius and Eutyches; against all heretics by whom Christ is
divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without defining
the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system of
St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, is
respectfully confirmed; but, instead of bowing at the name of the
fourth council, the subject is dismissed by the censure of all
contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere
or at Chalcedon. Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and
the enemies of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace.
The most reasonable Christians acquiesced in this mode of
toleration; but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their
obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement
spirit of their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the
thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to preserve an
exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled the flame
of controversy; and the bonds of communion were alternately
broken and renewed by the private animosity of the bishops. The
space between Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand
shades of language and opinion; the acephali 73 of Egypt, and the
Roman pontiffs, of equal valor, though of unequal strength, may
be found at the two extremities of the theological scale. The
acephali, without a king or a bishop, were separated above three
hundred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted
the communion of Constantinople, without exacting a formal
condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the
communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the same
synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematized by the
popes. Their inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of
the Greek churches in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted
the validity of their sacraments, 74 and fomented, thirty-five
years, the schism of the East and West, till they finally
abolished the memory of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to
oppose the supremacy of St. Peter. 75 Before that period, the
precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt had been violated by
the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was suspected of
the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in disgrace and exile, the synod
of Chalcedon, while the successor of Cyril would have purchased
its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold.

72 (return) [The Henoticon is transcribed by Evagrius, (l. iii.
c. 13,) and translated by Liberatus, (Brev. c. 18.) Pagi
(Critica, tom. ii. p. 411) and (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 343)
are satisfied that it is free from heresy; but Petavius (Dogmat.
Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c. 13, p. 40) most unaccountably affirms
Chalcedonensem ascivit. An adversary would prove that he had
never read the Henoticon.]

73 (return) [ See Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 123, 131,
145, 195, 247.) They were reconciled by the care of Mark I. (A.D.
799—819;) he promoted their chiefs to the bishoprics of Athribis
and Talba, (perhaps Tava. See D’Anville, p. 82,) and supplied the
sacraments, which had failed for want of an episcopal
ordination.]

74 (return) [ De his quos baptizavit, quos ordinavit Acacius,
majorum traditione confectam et veram, praecipue religiosae
solicitudini congruam praebemus sine difficultate medicinam,
(Galacius, in epist. i. ad Euphemium, Concil. tom. v. 286.) The
offer of a medicine proves the disease, and numbers must have
perished before the arrival of the Roman physician. Tillemont
himself (Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 372, 642, &c.) is shocked at
the proud, uncharitable temper of the popes; they are now glad,
says he, to invoke St. Flavian of Antioch, St. Elias of
Jerusalem, &c., to whom they refused communion whilst upon earth.
But Cardinal Baronius is firm and hard as the rock of St. Peter.]

75 (return) [ Their names were erased from the diptych of the
church: ex venerabili diptycho, in quo piae memoriae transitum ad
coelum habentium episcoporum vocabula continentur, (Concil. tom.
iv. p. 1846.) This ecclesiastical record was therefore equivalent
to the book of life.]

In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of a
syllable, was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The
Trisagion 76 (thrice holy,) “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of
Hosts!” is supposed, by the Greeks, to be the identical hymn
which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne
of God, and which, about the middle of the fifth century, was
miraculously revealed to the church of Constantinople. The
devotion of Antioch soon added, “who was crucified for us!” and
this grateful address, either to Christ alone, or to the whole
Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been
gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it
had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop; 77 the gift of an
enemy was at first rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy,
and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius
his throne and his life. 78 The people of Constantinople was
devoid of any rational principles of freedom; but they held, as a
lawful cause of rebellion, the color of a livery in the races, or
the color of a mystery in the schools. The Trisagion, with and
without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the cathedral by
two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were exhausted, they had
recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones; the
aggressors were punished by the emperor, and defended by the
patriarch; and the crown and mitre were staked on the event of
this momentous quarrel. The streets were instantly crowded with
innumerable swarms of men, women, and children; the legions of
monks, in regular array, marched, and shouted, and fought at
their head, “Christians! this is the day of martyrdom: let us not
desert our spiritual father; anathema to the Manichaean tyrant!
he is unworthy to reign.” Such was the Catholic cry; and the
galleys of Anastasius lay upon their oars before the palace, till
the patriarch had pardoned his penitent, and hushed the waves of
the troubled multitude. The triumph of Macedonius was checked by
a speedy exile; but the zeal of his flock was again exasperated
by the same question, “Whether one of the Trinity had been
crucified?” On this momentous occasion, the blue and green
factions of Constantinople suspended their discord, and the civil
and military powers were annihilated in their presence. The keys
of the city, and the standards of the guards, were deposited in
the forum of Constantine, the principal station and camp of the
faithful. Day and night they were incessantly busied either in
singing hymns to the honor of their God, or in pillaging and
murdering the servants of their prince. The head of his favorite
monk, the friend, as they styled him, of the enemy of the Holy
Trinity, was borne aloft on a spear; and the firebrands, which
had been darted against heretical structures, diffused the
undistinguishing flames over the most orthodox buildings. The
statues of the emperor were broken, and his person was concealed
in a suburb, till, at the end of three days, he dared to implore
the mercy of his subjects. Without his diadem, and in the posture
of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the throne of the circus.
The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their genuine
Trisagion; they exulted in the offer, which he proclaimed by the
voice of a herald, of abdicating the purple; they listened to the
admonition, that, since all could not reign, they should
previously agree in the choice of a sovereign; and they accepted
the blood of two unpopular ministers, whom their master, without
hesitation, condemned to the lions. These furious but transient
seditions were encouraged by the success of Vitalian, who, with
an army of Huns and Bulgarians, for the most part idolaters,
declared himself the champion of the Catholic faith. In this
pious rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople,
exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow-Christians, till
he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction of the
pope, and the establishment of the council of Chalcedon, an
orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the dying Anastasius, and
more faithfully performed by the uncle of Justinian. And such was
the event of the first of the religious wars which have been
waged in the name and by the disciples, of the God of peace. 79

76 (return) [ Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 2, 3,
4, p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 713, &c.,
799) represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the
twelve centuries between Isaiah and St. Proculs’s boy, who was
taken up into heaven before the bishop and people of
Constantinople, the song was considerably improved. The boy heard
the angels sing, “Holy God! Holy strong! Holy immortal!”]

77 (return) [ Peter Gnapheus, the fuller, (a trade which he had
exercised in his monastery,) patriarch of Antioch. His tedious
story is discussed in the Annals of Pagi (A.D. 477—490) and a
dissertation of M. de Valois at the end of his Evagrius.]

78 (return) [ The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be
gathered from the Chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and
Theophanes. As the last was not published in the time of
Baronius, his critic Pagi is more copious, as well as more
correct.]

79 (return) [ The general history, from the council of Chalcedon
to the death of Anastasius, may be found in the Breviary of
Liberatus, (c. 14—19,) the iid and iiid books of Evagrius, the
abstract of the two books of Theodore the Reader, the Acts of the
Synods, and the Epistles of the Pope, (Concil. tom. v.) The
series is continued with some disorder in the xvth and xvith
tomes of the Memoires Ecclesiastiques of Tillemont. And here I
must take leave forever of that incomparable guide—whose bigotry
is overbalanced by the merits of erudition, diligence, veracity,
and scrupulous minuteness. He was prevented by death from
completing, as he designed, the vith century of the church and
empire.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part IV.

Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a
prince, a conqueror, and a lawgiver: the theologian 80 still
remains, and it affords an unfavorable prejudice, that his
theology should form a very prominent feature of his portrait.
The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in their
superstitious reverence for living and departed saints: his Code,
and more especially his Novels, confirm and enlarge the
privileges of the clergy; and in every dispute between a monk and
a layman, the partial judge was inclined to pronounce, that
truth, and innocence, and justice, were always on the side of the
church. In his public and private devotions, the emperor was
assiduous and exemplary; his prayers, vigils, and fasts,
displayed the austere penance of a monk; his fancy was amused by
the hope, or belief, of personal inspiration; he had secured the
patronage of the Virgin and St. Michael the archangel; and his
recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the miraculous
succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian. The capital and the
provinces of the East were decorated with the monuments of his
religion; 81 and though the far greater part of these costly
structures may be attributed to his taste or ostentation, the
zeal of the royal architect was probably quickened by a genuine
sense of love and gratitude towards his invisible benefactors.
Among the titles of Imperial greatness, the name of Pious was
most pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and spiritual
interest of the church was the serious business of his life; and
the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed to that of
defender of the faith. The controversies of the times were
congenial to his temper and understanding and the theological
professors must inwardly deride the diligence of a stranger, who
cultivated their art and neglected his own. “What can ye fear,”
said a bold conspirator to his associates, “from your bigoted
tyrant? Sleepless and unarmed, he sits whole nights in his
closet, debating with reverend graybeards, and turning over the
pages of ecclesiastical volumes.” 82 The fruits of these
lucubrations were displayed in many a conference, where Justinian
might shine as the loudest and most subtile of the disputants; in
many a sermon, which, under the name of edicts and epistles,
proclaimed to the empire the theology of their master. While the
Barbarians invaded the provinces, while the victorious legion
marched under the banners of Belisarius and Narses, the successor
of Trajan, unknown to the camp, was content to vanquish at the
head of a synod. Had he invited to these synods a disinterested
and rational spectator, Justinian might have learned, “that
religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly;
that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and
submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not
presume to scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it is
sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are the
perfect attributes of the Deity.” 83

80 (return) [ The strain of the Anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 11,
13, 18, 27, 28,) with the learned remarks of Alemannus, is
confirmed, rather than contradicted, by the Acts of the Councils,
the fourth book of Evagrius, and the complaints of the African
Facundus, in his xiith book—de tribus capitulis, “cum videri
doctus appetit importune...spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam
turbat.” See Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 35.]

81 (return) [ Procop. de Edificiis, l. i. c. 6, 7, &c., passim.]

82 (return) [ Procop. de Bell. Goth. l. iii. c. 32. In the life
of St. Eutychius (apud Aleman. ad Procop. Arcan. c. 18) the same
character is given with a design to praise Justinian.]

83 (return) [ For these wise and moderate sentiments, Procopius
(de Bell. Goth. l. i. c. 3) is scourged in the preface of
Alemannus, who ranks him among the political Christians—sed longe
verius haeresium omnium sentinas, prorsusque Atheos—abominable
Atheists, who preached the imitation of God’s mercy to man, (ad
Hist. Arcan. c. 13.)]

Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence to
rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes. But when the prince
descends to the narrow and peevish character of a disputant, he
is easily provoked to supply the defect of argument by the
plenitude of power, and to chastise without mercy the perverse
blindness of those who wilfully shut their eyes against the light
of demonstration. The reign of Justinian was a uniform yet
various scene of persecution; and he appears to have surpassed
his indolent predecessors, both in the contrivance of his laws
and the rigor of their execution. The insufficient term of three
months was assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics;
84 and if he still connived at their precarious stay, they were
deprived, under his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of
society, but of the common birth-right of men and Christians. At
the end of four hundred years, the Montanists of Phrygia 85 still
breathed the wild enthusiasm of perfection and prophecy which
they had imbibed from their male and female apostles, the special
organs of the Paraclete. On the approach of the Catholic priests
and soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the crown of martyrdom
the conventicle and the congregation perished in the flames, but
these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three hundred
years after the death of their tyrant. Under the protection of
their Gothic confederates, the church of the Arians at
Constantinople had braved the severity of the laws: their clergy
equalled the wealth and magnificence of the senate; and the gold
and silver which were seized by the rapacious hand of Justinian
might perhaps be claimed as the spoils of the provinces, and the
trophies of the Barbarians. A secret remnant of Pagans, who still
lurked in the most refined and most rustic conditions of mankind,
excited the indignation of the Christians, who were perhaps
unwilling that any strangers should be the witnesses of their
intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of the
faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court and city,
the magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and sophists, who still
cherished the superstition of the Greeks. They were sternly
informed that they must choose without delay between the
displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian, and that their aversion to
the gospel could no longer be distinguished under the scandalous
mask of indifference or impiety. The patrician Photius, perhaps,
alone was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors: he
enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left his
tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy the
lifeless corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to
their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and
labored, by their extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or
to expiate the guilt, of idolatry. The native country of Homer,
and the theatre of the Trojan war, still retained the last sparks
of his mythology: by the care of the same bishop, seventy
thousand Pagans were detected and converted in Asia, Phrygia,
Lydia, and Caria; ninety-six churches were built for the new
proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases
of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of
Justinian. 86 The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their
immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled
them to observe the festival of Easter the same day on which it
was celebrated by the Christians. 87 And they might complain with
the more reason, since the Catholics themselves did not agree
with the astronomical calculations of their sovereign: the people
of Constantinople delayed the beginning of their Lent a whole
week after it had been ordained by authority; and they had the
pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for sale
by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine 88
were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the
Pagans, by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as
idolaters. The abomination of the cross had already been planted
on their holy mount of Garizim, 89 but the persecution of
Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion.
They chose the latter: under the standard of a desperate leader,
they rose in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the
property, and the temples, of a defenceless people. The
Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the
East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by
the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of
that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of
hypocrisy. It has been computed that one hundred thousand Roman
subjects were extirpated in the Samaritan war, 90 which converted
the once fruitful province into a desolate and smoking
wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian, the guilt of murder
could not be applied to the slaughter of unbelievers; and he
piously labored to establish with fire and sword the unity of the
Christian faith. 91

84 (return) [ This alternative, a precious circumstance, is
preserved by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 63, edit. Venet. 1733,)
who deserves more credit as he draws towards his end. After
numbering the heretics, Nestorians, Eutychians, &c., ne
expectent, says Justinian, ut digni venia judicen tur: jubemus,
enim ut...convicti et aperti haeretici justae et idoneae
animadversioni subjiciantur. Baronius copies and applauds this
edict of the Code, (A.D. 527, No. 39, 40.)]

85 (return) [ See the character and principles of the Montanists,
in Mosheim, Rebus Christ. ante Constantinum, p. 410—424.]

86 (return) [ Theophan. Chron. p. 153. John, the Monophysite
bishop of Asia, is a more authentic witness of this transaction,
in which he was himself employed by the emperor, (Asseman. Bib.
Orient. tom. ii. p. 85.)]

87 (return) [ Compare Procopius (Hist. Arcan. c. 28, and Aleman’s
Notes) with Theophanes, (Chron. p. 190.) The council of Nice has
intrusted the patriarch, or rather the astronomers, of
Alexandria, with the annual proclamation of Easter; and we still
read, or rather we do not read, many of the Paschal epistles of
St. Cyril. Since the reign of Monophytism in Egypt, the Catholics
were perplexed by such a foolish prejudice as that which so long
opposed, among the Protestants, the reception of the Gregorian
style.]

88 (return) [ For the religion and history of the Samaritans,
consult Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, a learned and impartial
work.]

89 (return) [ Sichem, Neapolis, Naplous, the ancient and modern
seat of the Samaritans, is situate in a valley between the barren
Ebal, the mountain of cursing to the north, and the fruitful
Garizim, or mountain of cursing to the south, ten or eleven
hours’ travel from Jerusalem. See Maundrel, Journey from Aleppo
&c.]

90 (return) [ Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122.
John Malala Chron. tom. ii. p. 62. I remember an observation,
half philosophical. half superstitious, that the province which
had been ruined by the bigotry of Justinian, was the same through
which the Mahometans penetrated into the empire.]

91 (return) [ The expression of Procopius is remarkable. Anecdot.
c. 13.]

With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to be
always in the right. In the first years of his administration, he
signalized his zeal as the disciple and patron of orthodoxy: the
reconciliation of the Greeks and Latins established the tome of
St. Leo as the creed of the emperor and the empire; the
Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed. on either side, to the
double edge of persecution; and the four synods of Nice,
Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were ratified by the code
of a Catholic lawgiver. 92 But while Justinian strove to maintain
the uniformity of faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose
vices were not incompatible with devotion, had listened to the
Monophysite teachers; and the open or clandestine enemies of the
church revived and multiplied at the smile of their gracious
patroness. The capital, the palace, the nuptial bed, were torn by
spiritual discord; yet so doubtful was the sincerity of the royal
consorts, that their seeming disagreement was imputed by many to
a secret and mischievous confederacy against the religion and
happiness of their people. 93 The famous dispute of the Three

Chapters, 94 which has filled more volumes than it deserves
lines, is deeply marked with this subtile and disingenuous
spirit. It was now three hundred years since the body of Origen
95 had been eaten by the worms: his soul, of which he held the
preexistence, was in the hands of its Creator; but his writings
were eagerly perused by the monks of Palestine. In these
writings, the piercing eye of Justinian descried more than ten
metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the company of
Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the eternity
of hell-fire, which he had presumed to deny. Under the cover of
this precedent, a treacherous blow was aimed at the council of
Chalcedon. The fathers had listened without impatience to the
praise of Theodore of Mopsuestia; 96 and their justice or
indulgence had restored both Theodore of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of
Edessa, to the communion of the church. But the characters of
these Oriental bishops were tainted with the reproach of heresy;
the first had been the master, the two others were the friends,
of Nestorius; their most suspicious passages were accused under
the title of the three chapters; and the condemnation of their
memory must involve the honor of a synod, whose name was
pronounced with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic
world. If these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were
annihilated in the sleep of death, they would not probably be
awakened by the clamor which, after a hundred years, was raised
over their grave. If they were already in the fangs of the
daemon, their torments could neither be aggravated nor assuaged
by human industry. If in the company of saints and angels they
enjoyed the rewards of piety, they must have smiled at the idle
fury of the theological insects who still crawled on the surface
of the earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the
Romans, darted his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps
without discerning the true motives of Theodora and her
ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no longer subject to his
power, and the vehement style of his edicts could only proclaim
their damnation, and invite the clergy of the East to join in a
full chorus of curses and anathemas. The East, with some
hesitation, consented to the voice of her sovereign: the fifth
general council, of three patriarchs and one hundred and
sixty-five bishops, was held at Constantinople; and the authors,
as well as the defenders, of the three chapters were separated
from the communion of the saints, and solemnly delivered to the
prince of darkness. But the Latin churches were more jealous of
the honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and if they had
fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they might
have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity. But their
chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy; the throne of St.
Peter, which had been disgraced by the simony, was betrayed by
the cowardice, of Vigilius, who yielded, after a long and
inconsistent struggle, to the despotism of Justinian and the
sophistry of the Greeks. His apostasy provoked the indignation of
the Latins, and no more than two bishops could be found who would
impose their hands on his deacon and successor Pelagius. Yet the
perseverance of the popes insensibly transferred to their
adversaries the appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian,
African, and Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and
ecclesiastical powers, not without some effort of military force;
97 the distant Barbarians transcribed the creed of the Vatican,
and, in the period of a century, the schism of the three chapters
expired in an obscure angle of the Venetian province. 98 But the
religious discontent of the Italians had already promoted the
conquests of the Lombards, and the Romans themselves were
accustomed to suspect the faith and to detest the government of
their Byzantine tyrant.

92 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the
original evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first
years of his reign, Baronius himself is in extreme good humor
with the emperor, who courted the popes, till he got them into
his power.]

93 (return) [ Procopius, Anecdot. c. 13. Evagrius, l. iv. c. 10.
If the ecclesiastical never read the secret historian, their
common suspicion proves at least the general hatred.]

94 (return) [ On the subject of the three chapters, the original
acts of the vth general council of Constantinople supply much
useless, though authentic, knowledge, (Concil. tom. vi. p.
1-419.) The Greek Evagrius is less copious and correct (l. iv. c.
38) than the three zealous Africans, Facundus, (in his twelve
books, de tribus capitulis, which are most correctly published by
Sirmond,) Liberatus, (in his Breviarium, c. 22, 23, 24,) and
Victor Tunnunensis in his Chronicle, (in tom. i. Antiq. Lect.
Canisii, 330—334.) The Liber Pontificalis, or Anastasius, (in
Vigilio, Pelagio, &c.,) is original Italian evidence. The modern
reader will derive some information from Dupin (Bibliot. Eccles.
tom. v. p. 189—207) and Basnage, (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
519—541;) yet the latter is too firmly resolved to depreciate the
authority and character of the popes.]

95 (return) [ Origen had indeed too great a propensity to imitate
the old philosophers, (Justinian, ad Mennam, in Concil. tom. vi.
p. 356.) His moderate opinions were too repugnant to the zeal of
the church, and he was found guilty of the heresy of reason.]

96 (return) [ Basnage (Praefat. p. 11—14, ad tom. i. Antiq. Lect.
Canis.) has fairly weighed the guilt and innocence of Theodore of
Mopsuestia. If he composed 10,000 volumes, as many errors would
be a charitable allowance. In all the subsequent catalogues of
heresiarchs, he alone, without his two brethren, is included; and
it is the duty of Asseman (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 203—207)
to justify the sentence.]

97 (return) [ See the complaints of Liberatus and Victor, and the
exhortations of Pope Pelagius to the conqueror and exarch of
Italy. Schisma.. per potestates publicas opprimatur, &c.,
(Concil. tom. vi. p. 467, &c.) An army was detained to suppress
the sedition of an Illyrian city. See Procopius, (de Bell. Goth.
l. iv. c. 25:). He seems to promise an ecclesiastical history. It
would have been curious and impartial.]

98 (return) [ The bishops of the patriarchate of Aquileia were
reconciled by Pope Honorius, A.D. 638, (Muratori, Annali d’
Italia, tom. v. p. 376;) but they again relapsed, and the schism
was not finally extinguished till 698. Fourteen years before, the
church of Spain had overlooked the vth general council with
contemptuous silence, (xiii. Concil. Toretan. in Concil. tom.
vii. p. 487—494.)]

Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice process
of fixing his volatile opinions and those of his subjects. In his
youth he was, offended by the slightest deviation from the
orthodox line; in his old age he transgressed the measure of
temperate heresy, and the Jacobites, not less than the Catholics,
were scandalized by his declaration, that the body of Christ was
incorruptible, and that his manhood was never subject to any
wants and infirmities, the inheritance of our mortal flesh. This
fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of Justinian;
and at the moment of his seasonable departure, the clergy had
refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute, and
the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Treves,
secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of
the East in the language of authority and affection. “Most
gracious Justinian, remember your baptism and your creed. Let not
your gray hairs be defiled with heresy. Recall your fathers from
exile, and your followers from perdition. You cannot be ignorant,
that Italy and Gaul, Spain and Africa, already deplore your fall,
and anathematize your name. Unless, without delay, you destroy
what you have taught; unless you exclaim with a loud voice, I
have erred, I have sinned, anathema to Nestorius, anathema to
Eutyches, you deliver your soul to the same flames in which they
will eternally burn.” He died and made no sign. 99 His death
restored in some degree the peace of the church, and the reigns
of his four successors, Justin Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are
distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the
ecclesiastical history of the East. 100

99 (return) [ Nicetus, bishop of Treves, (Concil. tom. vi. p.
511-513:) he himself, like most of the Gallican prelates,
(Gregor. Epist. l. vii. 5 in Concil. tom. vi. p. 1007,) was
separated from the communion of the four patriarchs by his
refusal to condemn the three chapters. Baronius almost pronounces
the damnation of Justinian, (A.D. 565, No. 6.)]

100 (return) [ After relating the last heresy of Justinian, (l.
iv. c. 39, 40, 41,) and the edict of his successor, (l. v. c. 3,)
the remainder of the history of Evagrius is filled with civil,
instead of ecclesiastical events.]

The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of acting on
themselves; the eye is most inaccessible to the sight, the soul
to the thought; yet we think, and even feel, that one will, a
sole principle of action, is essential to a rational and
conscious being. When Heraclius returned from the Persian war,
the orthodox hero consulted his bishops, whether the Christ whom
he adored, of one person, but of two natures, was actuated by a
single or a double will. They replied in the singular, and the
emperor was encouraged to hope that the Jacobites of Egypt and
Syria might be reconciled by the profession of a doctrine, most
certainly harmless, and most probably true, since it was taught
even by the Nestorians themselves. 101 The experiment was tried
without effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics condemned
even the semblance of a retreat in the presence of a subtle and
audacious enemy. The orthodox (the prevailing) party devised new
modes of speech, and argument, and interpretation: to either
nature of Christ they speciously applied a proper and distinct
energy; but the difference was no longer visible when they
allowed that the human and the divine will were invariably the
same. 102 The disease was attended with the customary symptoms:
but the Greek clergy, as if satiated with the endless controversy
of the incarnation, instilled a healing counsel into the ear of
the prince and people. They declared themselves Monothelites,
(asserters of the unity of will,) but they treated the words as
new, the questions as superfluous; and recommended a religious
silence as the most agreeable to the prudence and charity of the
gospel. This law of silence was successively imposed by the
ecthesis or exposition of Heraclius, the type or model of his
grandson Constans; 103 and the Imperial edicts were subscribed
with alacrity or reluctance by the four patriarchs of Rome,
Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. But the bishop and monks
of Jerusalem sounded the alarm: in the language, or even in the
silence, of the Greeks, the Latin churches detected a latent
heresy: and the obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of his
sovereign was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of
his successors. They condemned the execrable and abominable
heresy of the Monothelites, who revived the errors of Manes,
Apollinaris, Eutyches, &c.; they signed the sentence of
excommunication on the tomb of St. Peter; the ink was mingled
with the sacramental wine, the blood of Christ; and no ceremony
was omitted that could fill the superstitious mind with horror
and affright. As the representative of the Western church, Pope
Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious and
guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of
Italy, for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to
reprobate his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his
grandfather; and to confound the authors and their adherents with
the twenty-one notorious heretics, the apostates from the church,
and the organs of the devil. Such an insult under the tamest
reign could not pass with impunity. Pope Martin ended his days on
the inhospitable shore of the Tauric Chersonesus, and his oracle,
the abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised by the amputation of
his tongue and his right hand. 104 But the same invincible spirit
survived in their successors; and the triumph of the Latins
avenged their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the
three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the sixth
general council of Constantinople, in the palace and the presence
of a new Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal
convert converted the Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the
bishops; 105 the dissenters, with their chief, Macarius of
Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual and temporal pains of
heresy; the East condescended to accept the lessons of the West;
and the creed was finally settled, which teaches the Catholics of
every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized in the
person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman synod was
represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops; but
these obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to
bribe, nor language to persuade; and I am ignorant by what arts
they could determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure
the catechism of his infancy, and to persecute the religion of
his fathers. Perhaps the monks and people of Constantinople 106
were favorable to the Lateran creed, which is indeed the least
reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is countenanced by the
unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear in this
quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the synod
debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision, by raising a
dead man to life: the prelates assisted at the trial; but the
acknowledged failure may serve to indicate, that the passions and
prejudices of the multitude were not enlisted on the side of the
Monothelites. In the next generation, when the son of Constantine
was deposed and slain by the disciple of Macarius, they tasted
the feast of revenge and dominion: the image or monument of the
sixth council was defaced, and the original acts were committed
to the flames. But in the second year, their patron was cast
headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were released
from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly
replanted by the orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine
problems of the incarnation were forgotten in the more popular
and visible quarrel of the worship of images. 107

101 (return) [ This extraordinary, and perhaps inconsistent,
doctrine of the Nestorians, had been observed by La Croze,
(Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 19, 20,) and is more fully
exposed by Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292.
Hist. Dynast. p. 91, vers. Latin. Pocock.) and Asseman himself,
(tom. iv. p. 218.) They seem ignorant that they might allege the
positive authority of the ecthesis. (the common reproach of the
Monophysites) (Concil. tom. vii. p. 205.)]

102 (return) [ See the Orthodox faith in Petavius, (Dogmata
Theolog. tom. v. l. ix. c. 6—10, p. 433—447:) all the depths of
this controversy in the Greek dialogue between Maximus and
Pyrrhus, (acalcem tom. viii. Annal. Baron. p. 755—794,) which
relates a real conference, and produced as short-lived a
conversion.]

103 (return) [ Impiissimam ecthesim.... scelerosum typum (Concil.
tom. vii p. 366) diabolicae operationis genimina, (fors. germina,
or else the Greek in the original. Concil. p. 363, 364,) are the
expressions of the xviiith anathema. The epistle of Pope Martin
to Amandus, Gallican bishop, stigmatizes the Monothelites and
their heresy with equal virulence, (p. 392.)]

104 (return) [ The sufferings of Martin and Maximus are described
with simplicity in their original letters and acts, (Concil. tom.
vii. p. 63—78. Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 656, No. 2, et annos
subsequent.) Yet the chastisement of their disobedience had been
previously announced in the Type of Constans, (Concil. tom. vii.
p. 240.)]

105 (return) [ Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 368) most
erroneously supposes that the 124 bishops of the Roman synod
transported themselves to Constantinople; and by adding them to
the 168 Greeks, thus composes the sixth council of 292 fathers.]

106 (return) [ The Monothelite Constans was hated by all, (says
Theophanes, Chron. p. 292). When the Monothelite monk failed in
his miracle, the people shouted, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 1032.) But
this was a natural and transient emotion; and I much fear that
the latter is an anticipation of the good people of
Constantinople.]

107 (return) [ The history of Monothelitism may be found in the
Acts of the Synods of Rome (tom. vii. p. 77—395, 601—608) and
Constantinople, (p. 609—1429.) Baronius extracted some original
documents from the Vatican library; and his chronology is
rectified by the diligence of Pagi. Even Dupin (Bibliotheque
Eccles. tom. vi. p. 57—71) and Basnage (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom.
i. p. 451—555) afford a tolerable abridgment.]

Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the
incarnation, which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople,
was uniformly preached in the remote islands of Britain and
Ireland; 108 the same ideas were entertained, or rather the same
words were repeated, by all the Christians whose liturgy was
performed in the Greek or the Latin tongue. Their numbers, and
visible splendor, bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation
of Catholics: but in the East, they were marked with the less
honorable name of Melchites, or Royalists; 109 of men, whose
faith, instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or
tradition, had been established, and was still maintained, by the
arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might
allege the words of the fathers of Constantinople, who profess
themselves the slaves of the king; and they might relate, with
malicious joy, how the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and
reformed by the emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The
prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of
submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel
and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of
persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into
rebels and fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of
Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as
the enemy of the Christians. Language, the leading principle
which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon
discriminated the sectaries of the East, by a peculiar and
perpetual badge, which abolished the means of intercourse and the
hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their
colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had propagated a
language doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by
the art of man. Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and
Egypt, still persevered in the use of their national idioms; with
this difference, however, that the Coptic was confined to the
rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, 110
from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the
higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and Abyssinia were
infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and their
Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the studies of
modern Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the
Roman empire. The Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the
Aethiopic, are consecrated in the service of their respective
churches: and their theology is enriched by domestic versions 111
both of the Scriptures and of the most popular fathers. After a
period of thirteen hundred and sixty years, the spark of
controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius, still burns
in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still
maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most
abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians
and Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and
cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows
them to anathematize, on the one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of
Ephesus: on the other, Pope Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The
weight which they cast into the downfall of the Eastern empire
demands our notice, and the reader may be amused with the various
prospect of, I. The Nestorians; II. The Jacobites; 112 III. The
Maronites; IV. The Armenians; V. The Copts; and, VI. The
Abyssinians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but of
the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom.

Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be
incapable of conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians
of Egypt and Syria, who reject the religion, have adopted the
language of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded the
sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well as in the West, the
Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to the majority
of the congregation.

108 (return) [ In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfred, an
Anglo-Saxon bishop, subscribed pro omni Aquilonari parte
Britanniae et Hiberniae, quae ab Anglorum et Britonum, necnon
Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus colebantur, (Eddius, in Vit. St.
Wilfrid. c. 31, apud Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 88.) Theodore
(magnae insulae Britanniae archiepiscopus et philosophus) was
long expected at Rome, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 714,) but he
contented himself with holding (A.D. 680) his provincial synod of
Hatfield, in which he received the decrees of Pope Martin and the
first Lateran council against the Monothelites, (Concil. tom.
vii. p. 597, &c.) Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, had been
named to the primacy of Britain by Pope Vitalian, (A.D. 688; see
Baronius and Pagi,) whose esteem for his learning and piety was
tainted by some distrust of his national character—ne quid
contrarium veritati fidei, Graecorum more, in ecclesiam cui
praeesset introduceret. The Cilician was sent from Rome to
Canterbury under the tuition of an African guide, (Bedae Hist.
Eccles. Anglorum. l. iv. c. 1.) He adhered to the Roman doctrine;
and the same creed of the incarnation has been uniformly
transmitted from Theodore to the modern primates, whose sound
understanding is perhaps seldom engaged with that abstruse
mystery.]

109 (return) [ This name, unknown till the xth century, appears
to be of Syriac origin. It was invented by the Jacobites, and
eagerly adopted by the Nestorians and Mahometans; but it was
accepted without shame by the Catholics, and is frequently used
in the Annals of Eutychius, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.
p. 507, &c., tom. iii. p. 355. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.
Alexandrin. p. 119.), was the acclamation of the fathers of
Constantinople, (Concil. tom. vii. p. 765.)]

110 (return) [ The Syriac, which the natives revere as the
primitive language, was divided into three dialects. 1. The
Aramoean, as it was refined at Edessa and the cities of
Mesopotamia. 2. The Palestine, which was used in Jerusalem,
Damascus, and the rest of Syria. 3. The Nabathoean, the rustic
idiom of the mountains of Assyria and the villages of Irak,
(Gregor, Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 11.) On the Syriac, sea
Ebed-Jesu, (Asseman. tom. iii. p. 326, &c.,) whose prejudice
alone could prefer it to the Arabic.]

111 (return) [ I shall not enrich my ignorance with the spoils of
Simon, Walton, Mill, Wetstein, Assemannus, Ludolphus, La Croze,
whom I have consulted with some care. It appears, 1. That, of all
the versions which are celebrated by the fathers, it is doubtful
whether any are now extant in their pristine integrity. 2. That
the Syriac has the best claim, and that the consent of the
Oriental sects is a proof that it is more ancient than their
schism.]

112 (return) [ In the account of the Monophysites and Nestorians,
I am deeply indebted to the Bibliotheca Orientalis
Clementino-Vaticana of Joseph Simon Assemannus. That learned
Maronite was despatched, in the year 1715, by Pope Clement XI. to
visit the monasteries of Egypt and Syria, in search of Mss. His
four folio volumes, published at Rome 1719—1728, contain a part
only, though perhaps the most valuable, of his extensive project.
As a native and as a scholar, he possessed the Syriac literature;
and though a dependent of Rome, he wishes to be moderate and
candid.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part V.

I. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the heresy of
the unfortunate Nestorius was speedily obliterated. The Oriental
bishops, who at Ephesus had resisted to his face the arrogance of
Cyril, were mollified by his tardy concessions. The same
prelates, or their successors, subscribed, not without a murmur,
the decrees of Chalcedon; the power of the Monophysites
reconciled them with the Catholics in the conformity of passion,
of interest, and, insensibly, of belief; and their last reluctant
sigh was breathed in the defence of the three chapters. Their
dissenting brethren, less moderate, or more sincere, were crushed
by the penal laws; and, as early as the reign of Justinian, it
became difficult to find a church of Nestorians within the limits
of the Roman empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a
new world, in which they might hope for liberty, and aspire to
conquest. In Persia, notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi,
Christianity had struck a deep root, and the nations of the East
reposed under its salutary shade. The catholic, or primate,
resided in the capital: in his synods, and in their dioceses, his
metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, represented the pomp and
order of a regular hierarchy: they rejoiced in the increase of
proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the gospel,
from the secular to the monastic life; and their zeal was
stimulated by the presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The
Persian church had been founded by the missionaries of Syria; and
their language, discipline, and doctrine, were closely interwoven
with its original frame. The catholics were elected and ordained
by their own suffragans; but their filial dependence on the
patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons of the Oriental
church. 113 In the Persian school of Edessa, 114 the rising
generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom: they
studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of
Theodore of Mopsuestia; and they revered the apostolic faith and
holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose person and
language were equally unknown to the nations beyond the Tigris.
The first indelible lesson of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, taught them
to execrate the Egyptians, who, in the synod of Ephesus, had
impiously confounded the two natures of Christ. The flight of the
masters and scholars, who were twice expelled from the Athens of
Syria, dispersed a crowd of missionaries inflamed by the double
zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the
Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, had
invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists, in a
land of freedom, to avow a moral, rather than a physical, union
of the two persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the
gospel, the Sassanian kings beheld with an eye of suspicion a
race of aliens and apostates, who had embraced the religion, and
who might favor the cause, of the hereditary foes of their
country. The royal edicts had often prohibited their dangerous
correspondence with the Syrian clergy: the progress of the schism
was grateful to the jealous pride of Perozes, and he listened to
the eloquence of an artful prelate, who painted Nestorius as the
friend of Persia, and urged him to secure the fidelity of his
Christian subjects, by granting a just preference to the victims
and enemies of the Roman tyrant. The Nestorians composed a large
majority of the clergy and people: they were encouraged by the
smile, and armed with the sword, of despotism; yet many of their
weaker brethren were startled at the thought of breaking loose
from the communion of the Christian world, and the blood of seven
thousand seven hundred Monophysites, or Catholics, confirmed the
uniformity of faith and discipline in the churches of Persia. 115
Their ecclesiastical institutions are distinguished by a liberal
principle of reason, or at least of policy: the austerity of the
cloister was relaxed and gradually forgotten; houses of charity
were endowed for the education of orphans and foundlings; the law
of celibacy, so forcibly recommended to the Greeks and Latins,
was disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the number of the
elect was multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials of the
priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself. To this
standard of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugitives
resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern empire; the narrow
bigotry of Justinian was punished by the emigration of his most
industrious subjects; they transported into Persia the arts both
of peace and war: and those who deserved the favor, were promoted
in the service, of a discerning monarch. The arms of Nushirvan,
and his fiercer grandson, were assisted with advice, and money,
and troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their
native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with the gift
of the Catholic churches; but when those cities and churches were
recovered by Heraclius, their open profession of treason and
heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm of their
foreign ally. But the seeming tranquillity of the Nestorians was
often endangered, and sometimes overthrown. They were involved in
the common evils of Oriental despotism: their enmity to Rome
could not always atone for their attachment to the gospel: and a
colony of three hundred thousand Jacobites, the captives of
Apamea and Antioch, was permitted to erect a hostile altar in the
face of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the court. In his
last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which tended to
enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity in Persia. The
emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of
pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the
holy synods: but he flattered himself that they would gradually
perceive the temporal benefits of union with the empire and the
church of Rome; and if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he
might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later
age the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris, and protected in
Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most Christian
king.

113 (return) [ See the Arabic canons of Nice in the translation
of Abraham Ecchelensis, No. 37, 38, 39, 40. Concil. tom. ii. p.
335, 336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic,
are both apocryphal. The council of Nice enacted no more than
twenty canons, (Theodoret. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 8;) and the
remainder, seventy or eighty, were collected from the synods of
the Greek church. The Syriac edition of Maruthas is no longer
extant, (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i. p. 195, tom. iii. p.
74,) and the Arabic version is marked with many recent
interpolations. Yet this Code contains many curious relics of
ecclesiastical discipline; and since it is equally revered by all
the Eastern communions, it was probably finished before the
schism of the Nestorians and Jacobites, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec.
tom. xi. p. 363—367.)]

114 (return) [ Theodore the Reader (l. ii. c. 5, 49, ad calcem
Hist. Eccles.) has noticed this Persian school of Edessa. Its
ancient splendor, and the two aeras of its downfall, (A.D. 431
and 489) are clearly discussed by Assemanni, (Biblioth. Orient.
tom. ii. p. 402, iii. p. 376, 378, iv. p. 70, 924.)]

115 (return) [ A dissertation on the state of the Nestorians has
swelled in the bands of Assemanni to a folio volume of 950 pages,
and his learned researches are digested in the most lucid order.
Besides this ivth volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis, the
extracts in the three preceding tomes (tom. i. p. 203, ii. p.
321-463, iii. 64—70, 378—395, &c., 405—408, 580—589) may be
usefully consulted.]

The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church,
has excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests.
From the conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to
the north, the east, and the south; and the simplicity of the
gospel was fashioned and painted with the colors of the Syriac
theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a
Nestorian traveller, 116 Christianity was successfully preached
to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the
Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the Barbaric
churches, from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea, were almost
infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number
and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of
Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were
peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians; and the
bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their
ordination from the Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age the
zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined
the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The
missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the
footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into
the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga.
They exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds:
to those sanguinary warriors, they recommended humanity and
repose. Yet a khan, whose power they vainly magnified, is said to
have received at their hands the rites of baptism, and even of
ordination; and the fame of Prester or Presbyter John 117 has
long amused the credulity of Europe. The royal convert was
indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he despatched an
embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent,
he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate
the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In
their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by
the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. Unlike
the senators of Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of
priests and augurs, the mandarins, who affect in public the
reason of philosophers, are devoted in private to every mode of
popular superstition. They cherished and they confounded the gods
of Palestine and of India; but the propagation of Christianity
awakened the jealousy of the state, and, after a short
vicissitude of favor and persecution, the foreign sect expired in
ignorance and oblivion. 118 Under the reign of the caliphs, the
Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyrus;
and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to
surpass the Greek and Latin communions. 119 Twenty-five
metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy; but
several of these were dispensed, by the distance and danger of
the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy
condition that every six years they should testify their faith
and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague
appellation which has been successively applied to the royal
seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches
are long since withered; and the old patriarchal trunk 120 is now
divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives almost on
lineal descent of the genuine and primitive succession; the
Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome: 121
and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the head of
forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century by
the Sophis of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is
allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name
of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned
or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity.

116 (return) [ See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed
Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, l. iii. p. 178, 179, l.
xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may
be found in Photius, (cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10, edit. Hoeschel,)
Thevenot, (in the 1st part of his Relation des Voyages, &c.,) and
Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. l. iii. c. 25, tom. ii. p. 603-617,)
has been published by Father Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the
Nova Collectio Patrum, (tom. ii. p. 113—346.) It was the design
of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who
maintained that the earth is a globe, and not a flat, oblong
table, as it is represented in the Scriptures, (l. ii. p. 138.)
But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical
knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage A.D. 522,
and published his book at Alexandria, A.D. 547, (l. ii. p. 140,
141. Montfaucon, Praefat. c. 2.) The Nestorianism of Cosmas,
unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze,
(Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40—55,) and is confirmed by
Assemanni, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606.)]

117 (return) [ In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome,
&c., the story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable,
of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of
Thibet, (Hist. Genealogique des Tartares, P. ii. p. 42. Hist. de
Gengiscan, p. 31, &c.,) and were ignorantly transferred by the
Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia, (Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop.
Comment. l. ii. c. 1.) Yet it is probable that in the xith and
xiith centuries, Nestorian Christianity was professed in the
horde of the Keraites, (D’Herbelot, p. 256, 915, 959. Assemanni,
tom. iv. p. 468—504.) Note: The extent to which Nestorian
Christianity prevailed among the Tartar tribes is one of the most
curious questions in Oriental history. M. Schmidt (Geschichte der
Ost Mongolen, notes, p. 383) appears to question the Christianity
of Ong Chaghan, and his Keraite subjects.—M.]

118 (return) [ The Christianity of China, between the seventh and
the thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of
Chinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence, (Assemanni,
Biblioth. Orient. tom. iv. p. 502—552. Mem. de l’Academie des
Inscript. tom. xxx. p. 802—819.) The inscription of Siganfu which
describes the fortunes of the Nestorian church, from the first
mission, A.D. 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery
by La Croze, Voltaire, &c., who become the dupes of their own
cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud. * Note:
This famous monument, the authenticity of which many have
attempted to impeach, rather from hatred to the Jesuits, by whom
it was made known, than by a candid examination of its contents,
is now generally considered above all suspicion. The Chinese text
and the facts which it relates are equally strong proofs of its
authenticity. This monument was raised as a memorial of the
establishment of Christianity in China. It is dated the year 1092
of the era of the Greeks, or the Seleucidae, A.D. 781, in the
time of the Nestorian patriarch Anan-jesu. It was raised by
Iezdbouzid, priest and chorepiscopus of Chumdan, that is, of the
capital of the Chinese empire, and the son of a priest who came
from Balkh in Tokharistan. Among the various arguments which may
be urged in favor of the authenticity of this monument, and which
has not yet been advanced, may be reckoned the name of the priest
by whom it was raised. The name is Persian, and at the time the
monument was discovered, it would have been impossible to have
imagined it; for there was no work extant from whence the
knowledge of it could be derived. I do not believe that ever
since this period, any book has been published in which it can be
found a second time. It is very celebrated amongst the Armenians,
and is derived from a martyr, a Persian by birth, of the royal
race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and
rendered his name celebrated among the Christian nations of the
East. St. Martin, vol. i. p. 69. M. Remusat has also strongly
expressed his conviction of the authenticity of this monument.
Melanges Asiatiques, P. i. p. 33. Yet M. Schmidt (Geschichte der
Ost Mongolen, p. 384) denies that there is any satisfactory proof
that much a monument was ever found in China, or that it was not
manufactured in Europe. But if the Jesuits had attempted such a
forgery, would it not have been more adapted to further their
peculiar views?—M.]

119 (return) [ Jacobitae et Nestorianae plures quam Graeci et
Latini Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. l. ii. c. 76, p. 1093,
in the Gesta Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomassin,
Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 172.]

120 (return) [ The division of the patriarchate may be traced in
the Bibliotheca Orient. of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523—549, tom.
ii. p. 457, &c., tom. iii. p. 603, p. 621—623, tom. iv. p.
164-169, p. 423, p. 622—629, &c.]

121 (return) [ The pompous language of Rome on the submission of
a Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the viith book
of Fra Paola, Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of
Alexander, Tauris, and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus.]

According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in
India by St. Thomas. 122 At the end of the ninth century, his
shrine, perhaps in the neighborhood of Madras, was devoutly
visited by the ambassadors of Alfred; and their return with a
cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English
monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and
discovery. 123 When the Portuguese first opened the navigation of
India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on
the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and
color attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts,
and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan;
the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were
enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or
nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected
by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the
Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo of sovereign, but
they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the bishop of
Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan of
India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen
hundred churches, and he was intrusted with the care of two
hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them
the firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese; but the
inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the
unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning
themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and
temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their
ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch; and the
bishops whom he ordained at Mosul, traversed the dangers of the
sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In
their Syriac liturgy the names of Theodore and Nestorius were
piously commemorated: they united their adoration of the two
persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to
their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honors
of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had
almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first
presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly
exclaimed, “We are Christians, not idolaters!” and their simple
devotion was content with the veneration of the cross. Their
separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance of
the improvements, or corruptions, of a thousand years; and their
conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would
equally disappoint the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant. It
was the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all
correspondence with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his
bishops expired in the prisons of the holy office.

The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the
Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de
Menezes, archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the
coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he presided,
consummated the pious work of the reunion; and rigorously imposed
the doctrine and discipline of the Roman church, without
forgetting auricular confession, the strongest engine of
ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was
condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the
pope, of the primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of
Angamala or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy
were patiently endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was
shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians
asserted, with vigor and effect, the religion of their fathers.
The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power which they had
abused; the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed
against their falling tyrants; and the Indian archdeacon assumed
the character of bishop till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts
and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the patriarch of
Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the Nestorian
creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading
companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration;
but if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the
Christians of St. Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and
silent indifference of their brethren of Europe. 124

122 (return) [ The Indian missionary, St. Thomas, an apostle, a
Manichaean, or an Armenian merchant, (La Croze, Christianisme des
Indes, tom. i. p. 57—70,) was famous, however, as early as the
time of Jerom, (ad Marcellam, epist. 148.) Marco-Polo was
informed on the spot that he suffered martyrdom in the city of
Malabar, or Meliapour, a league only from Madras, (D’Anville,
Eclaircissemens sur l’Inde, p. 125,) where the Portuguese founded
an episcopal church under the name of St. Thome, and where the
saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the
profane neighborhood of the English, (La Croze, tom. ii. p.
7-16.)]

123 (return) [ Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A.D.
833) not William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Angliae, l. ii.
c. 4, p. 44) were capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing
this extraordinary fact; they are incapable of explaining the
motives and measures of Alfred; and their hasty notice serves
only to provoke our curiosity. William of Malmesbury feels the
difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc saeculo miretur;
and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors collected their
cargo and legend in Egypt. The royal author has not enriched his
Orosius (see Barrington’s Miscellanies) with an Indian, as well
as a Scandinavian, voyage.]

124 (return) [ Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see
Assemann. Bibliot Orient. tom. iv. p. 391—407, 435—451; Geddes’s
Church History of Malabar; and, above all, La Croze, Histoire du
Christianisme des Indes, in 2 vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1758, a
learned and agreeable work. They have drawn from the same source,
the Portuguese and Italian narratives; and the prejudices of the
Jesuits are sufficiently corrected by those of the Protestants.
Note: The St. Thome Christians had excited great interest in the
ancient mind of the admirable Bishop Heber. See his curious and,
to his friends, highly characteristic letter to Mar Athanasius,
Appendix to Journal. The arguments of his friend and coadjutor,
Mr. Robinson, (Last Days of Bishop Heber,) have not convinced me
that the Christianity of India is older than the Nestorian
dispersion.—M]

II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and
interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno
and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the ear of the
prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and crushed on its
native soil the school of the Syrians. The rule of the
Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion by
Severus, patriarch of Antioch: he condemned, in the style of the
Henoticon, the adverse heresies of Nestorius; and Eutyches
maintained against the latter the reality of the body of Christ,
and constrained the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke
truth. 125 But the approximation of ideas could not abate the
vehemence of passion; each party was the more astonished that
their blind antagonist could dispute on so trifling a difference;
the tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of his creed, and his
reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred and fifty
monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or
resistance, under the walls of Apamea. 126 The successor of
Anastasius replanted the orthodox standard in the East; Severus
fled into Egypt; and his friend, the eloquent Xenaias, 127 who
had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his
exile by the Melchites of Paphlagonia. Fifty-four bishops were
swept from their thrones, eight hundred ecclesiastics were cast
into prison, 128 and notwithstanding the ambiguous favor of
Theodora, the Oriental flocks, deprived of their shepherds, must
insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this
spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united,
and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James
Baradaeus 129 has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites,
a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader.
From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he
received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East,
and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and
deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed
of the zealous missionary was promoted by the fleetest
dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine and
discipline of the Jacobites were secretly established in the
dominions of Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to
violate the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The successors
of Severus, while they lurked in convents or villages, while they
sheltered their proscribed heads in the caverns of hermits, or
the tents of the Saracens, still asserted, as they now assert,
their indefeasible right to the title, the rank, and the
prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch: under the milder yoke of
the infidels, they reside about a league from Merdin, in the
pleasant monastery of Zapharan, which they have embellished with
cells, aqueducts, and plantations. The secondary, though
honorable, place is filled by the maphrian, who, in his station
at Mosul itself, defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he
contests the primacy of the East. Under the patriarch and the
maphrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops and bishops have been
counted in the different ages of the Jacobite church; but the
order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the greater
part of their dioceses is confined to the neighborhood of the
Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which
are often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy
merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive
their scanty sustenance from their daily labor: and poverty, as
well as superstition, may impose their excessive fasts: five
annual lents, during which both the clergy and laity abstain not
only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil,
and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to
fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church, which
was gradually decreased under the impression of twelve centuries.
Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit have been
converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of
Abulpharagius, 130 primate of the East, so truly eminent both in
his life and death. In his life he was an elegant writer of the
Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, physician, and historian, a
subtile philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death, his
funeral was attended by his rival the Nestorian patriarch, with a
train of Greeks and Armenians, who forgot their disputes, and
mingled their tears over the grave of an enemy. The sect which
was honored by the virtues of Abulpharagius appears, however, to
sink below the level of their Nestorian brethren. The
superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts more
rigid, 131 their intestine divisions are more numerous, and their
doctors (as far as I can measure the degrees of nonsense) are
more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may possibly
be allowed for the rigor of the Monophysite theology; much more
for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in
Egypt, in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been
distinguished by the austerity of their penance and the absurdity
of their legends. Alive or dead, they are worshipped as the
favorites of the Deity; the crosier of bishop and patriarch is
reserved for their venerable hands; and they assume the
government of men, while they are yet reeking with the habits and
prejudices of the cloister. 132

125 (return) [ Is the expression of Theodore, in his Treatise of
the Incarnation, p. 245, 247, as he is quoted by La Croze, (Hist.
du Christianisme d’Ethiopie et d’Armenie, p. 35,) who exclaims,
perhaps too hastily, “Quel pitoyable raisonnement!” Renaudot has
touched (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 127—138) the Oriental accounts
of Severus; and his authentic creed may be found in the epistle
of John the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, in the xth century, to
his brother Mannas of Alexandria, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
ii. p. 132—141.)]

126 (return) [ Epist. Archimandritarum et Monachorum Syriae
Secundae ad Papam Hormisdam, Concil. tom. v. p. 598—602. The
courage of St. Sabas, ut leo animosus, will justify the suspicion
that the arms of these monks were not always spiritual or
defensive, (Baronius, A.D. 513, No. 7, &c.)]

127 (return) [ Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 10—46) and
La Croze (Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 36—40) will supply the
history of Xenaias, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, or
Hierapolis, in Syria. He was a perfect master of the Syriac
language, and the author or editor of a version of the New
Testament.]

128 (return) [ The names and titles of fifty-four bishops who
were exiled by Justin, are preserved in the Chronicle of
Dionysius, (apud Asseman. tom. ii. p. 54.) Severus was personally
summoned to Constantinople—for his trial, says Liberatus (Brev.
c. 19)—that his tongue might be cut out, says Evagrius, (l. iv.
c. iv.) The prudent patriarch did not stay to examine the
difference. This ecclesiastical revolution is fixed by Pagi to
the month of September of the year 518, (Critica, tom. ii. p.
506.)]

129 (return) [ The obscure history of James or Jacobus Baradaeus,
or Zanzalust may be gathered from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.
144, 147,) Renau dot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 133,) and
Assemannus, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 424, tom. ii. p. 62-69,
324—332, 414, tom. iii. p. 385—388.) He seems to be unknown to
the Greeks. The Jacobites themselves had rather deduce their name
and pedigree from St. James the apostle.]

130 (return) [ The account of his person and writings is perhaps
the most curious article in the Bibliotheca of Assemannus, (tom.
ii. p. 244—321, under the name of Gregorius Bar-Hebroeus.) La
Croze (Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 53—63) ridicules the
prejudice of the Spaniards against the Jewish blood which
secretly defiles their church and state.]

131 (return) [ This excessive abstinence is censured by La Croze,
(p. 352,) and even by the Syrian Assemannus, (tom. i. p. 226,
tom. ii. p. 304, 305.)]

132 (return) [ The state of the Monophysites is excellently
illustrated in a dissertation at the beginning of the iid volume
of Assemannus, which contains 142 pages. The Syriac Chronicle of
Gregory Bar-Hebraeus, or Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom.
ii. p. 321—463,) pursues the double series of the Nestorian
Catholics and the Maphrians of the Jacobites.]

III. In the style of the Oriental Christians, the Monothelites of
every age are described under the appellation of Maronites, 133 a
name which has been insensibly transferred from a hermit to a
monastery, from a monastery to a nation. Maron, a saint or savage
of the fifth century, displayed his religious madness in Syria;
the rival cities of Apamea and Emesa disputed his relics, a
stately church was erected on his tomb, and six hundred of his
disciples united their solitary cells on the banks of the
Orontes. In the controversies of the incarnation they nicely
threaded the orthodox line between the sects of Nestorians and
Eutyches; but the unfortunate question of one will or operation
in the two natures of Christ, was generated by their curious
leisure. Their proselyte, the emperor Heraclius, was rejected as
a Maronite from the walls of Emesa, he found a refuge in the
monastery of his brethren; and their theological lessons were
repaid with the gift a spacious and wealthy domain. The name and
doctrine of this venerable school were propagated among the
Greeks and Syrians, and their zeal is expressed by Macarius,
patriarch of Antioch, who declared before the synod of
Constantinople, that sooner than subscribe the two wills of
Christ, he would submit to be hewn piecemeal and cast into the
sea. 134 A similar or a less cruel mode of persecution soon
converted the unresisting subjects of the plain, while the
glorious title of Mardaites, 135 or rebels, was bravely
maintained by the hardy natives of Mount Libanus. John Maron, one
of the most learned and popular of the monks, assumed the
character of patriarch of Antioch; his nephew, Abraham, at the
head of the Maronites, defended their civil and religious freedom
against the tyrants of the East. The son of the orthodox
Constantine pursued with pious hatred a people of soldiers, who
might have stood the bulwark of his empire against the common
foes of Christ and of Rome. An army of Greeks invaded Syria; the
monastery of St. Maron was destroyed with fire; the bravest
chieftains were betrayed and murdered, and twelve thousand of
their followers were transplanted to the distant frontiers of
Armenia and Thrace. Yet the humble nation of the Maronites had
survived the empire of Constantinople, and they still enjoy,
under their Turkish masters, a free religion and a mitigated
servitude. Their domestic governors are chosen among the ancient
nobility: the patriarch, in his monastery of Canobin, still
fancies himself on the throne of Antioch: nine bishops compose
his synod, and one hundred and fifty priests, who retain the
liberty of marriage, are intrusted with the care of one hundred
thousand souls. Their country extends from the ridge of Mount
Libanus to the shores of Tripoli; and the gradual descent
affords, in a narrow space, each variety of soil and climate,
from the Holy Cedars, erect under the weight of snow, 136 to the
vine, the mulberry, and the olive-trees of the fruitful valley.
In the twelfth century, the Maronites, abjuring the Monothelite
error were reconciled to the Latin churches of Antioch and Rome,
137 and the same alliance has been frequently renewed by the
ambition of the popes and the distress of the Syrians. But it may
reasonably be questioned, whether their union has ever been
perfect or sincere; and the learned Maronites of the college of
Rome have vainly labored to absolve their ancestors from the
guilt of heresy and schism. 138

133 (return) [ The synonymous use of the two words may be proved
from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 191, 267, 332,) and many
similar passages which may be found in the methodical table of
Pocock. He was not actuated by any prejudice against the
Maronites of the xth century; and we may believe a Melchite,
whose testimony is confirmed by the Jacobites and Latins.]

134 (return) [ Concil. tom. vii. p. 780. The Monothelite cause
was supported with firmness and subtilty by Constantine, a Syrian
priest of Apamea, (p. 1040, &c.)]

135 (return) [ Theophanes (Chron. p. 295, 296, 300, 302, 306) and
Cedrenus (p. 437, 440) relates the exploits of the Mardaites: the
name (Mard, in Syriac, rebellavit) is explained by La Roque,
(Voyage de la Syrie, tom. ii. p. 53;) and dates are fixed by
Pagi, (A.D. 676, No. 4—14, A.D. 685, No. 3, 4;) and even the
obscure story of the patriarch John Maron (Asseman. Bibliot.
Orient. tom. i. p. 496—520) illustrates from the year 686 to 707,
the troubles of Mount Libanus. * Note: Compare on the Mardaites
Anquetil du Perron, in the fiftieth volume of the Mem. de l’Acad.
des Inscriptions; and Schlosser, Bildersturmendes Kaiser, p.
100.—M]

136 (return) [ In the last century twenty large cedars still
remained, (Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68—76;) at present they
are reduced to four or five, (Volney, tom. i. p. 264.) These
trees, so famous in Scripture, were guarded by excommunication:
the wood was sparingly borrowed for small crosses, &c.; an annual
mass was chanted under their shade; and they were endowed by the
Syrians with a sensitive power of erecting their branches to
repel the snow, to which Mount Libanus is less faithful than it
is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus—a
daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.) Note: Of the oldest and best
looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve twenty-five very large
ones; and about fifty of middling size; and more than three
hundred smaller and young ones. Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria p.
19.—M]

137 (return) [ The evidence of William of Tyre (Hist. in Gestis
Dei per Francos, l. xxii. c. 8, p. 1022) is copied or confirmed
by Jacques de Vitra, (Hist. Hierosolym. l. ii. c. 77, p. 1093,
1094.) But this unnatural league expired with the power of the
Franks; and Abulpharagius (who died in 1286) considers the
Maronites as a sect of Monothelites, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.
p. 292.)]

138 (return) [ I find a description and history of the Maronites
in the Voyage de la Syrie et du Mont Liban par la Roque, (2 vols.
in 12mo., Amsterdam, 1723; particularly tom. i. p. 42—47, p.
174—184, tom. ii. p. 10—120.) In the ancient part, he copies the
prejudices of Nairon and the other Maronites of Rome, which
Assemannus is afraid to renounce and ashamed to support.
Jablonski, (Institut. Hist. Christ. tom. iii. p. 186.) Niebuhr,
(Voyage de l’Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 346, 370—381,) and, above
all, the judicious Volney, (Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie, tom.
ii. p. 8—31, Paris, 1787,) may be consulted.]

IV. Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians 139 had
signalized their attachment to the religion and empire of the
Christians. 1391 The disorders of their country, and their
ignorance of the Greek tongue, prevented their clergy from
assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and they floated eighty-four
years 140 in a state of indifference or suspense, till their
vacant faith was finally occupied by the missionaries of Julian
of Halicarnassus, 141 who in Egypt, their common exile, had been
vanquished by the arguments or the influence of his rival
Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians
alone are the pure disciples of Eutyches, an unfortunate parent,
who has been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual
progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion, that the manhood of
Christ was created, or existed without creation, of a divine and
incorruptible substance. Their adversaries reproach them with the
adoration of a phantom; and they retort the accusation, by
deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute
to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh, even the
natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of
Armenia could not derive much glory from the learning or the
power of its inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of
their schism; and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in
the thirteenth century on the confines of Cilicia, were the
clients of the Latins and the vassals of the Turkish sultan of
Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom been permitted to enjoy
the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest period to the
present hour, Armenia has been the theatre of perpetual war: the
lands between Tauris and Erivan were dispeopled by the cruel
policy of the Sophis; and myriads of Christian families were
transplanted, to perish or to propagate in the distant provinces
of Persia. Under the rod of oppression, the zeal of the Armenians
is fervent and intrepid; they have often preferred the crown of
martyrdom to the white turban of Mahomet; they devoutly hate the
error and idolatry of the Greeks; and their transient union with
the Latins is not less devoid of truth, than the thousand
bishops, whom their patriarch offered at the feet of the Roman
pontiff. 142 The catholic, or patriarch, of the Armenians resides
in the monastery of Ekmiasin, three leagues from Erivan.
Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom may claim the obedience of
four or five suffragans, are consecrated by his hand; but the far
greater part are only titular prelates, who dignify with their
presence and service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they
have performed the liturgy, they cultivate the garden; and our
bishops will hear with surprise, that the austerity of their life
increases in just proportion to the elevation of their rank.

In the fourscore thousand towns or villages of his spiritual
empire, the patriarch receives a small and voluntary tax from
each person above the age of fifteen; but the annual amount of
six hundred thousand crowns is insufficient to supply the
incessant demands of charity and tribute. Since the beginning of
the last century, the Armenians have obtained a large and
lucrative share of the commerce of the East: in their return from
Europe, the caravan usually halts in the neighborhood of Erivan,
the altars are enriched with the fruits of their patient
industry; and the faith of Eutyches is preached in their recent
congregations of Barbary and Poland. 143

139 (return) [ The religion of the Armenians is briefly described
by La Croze, (Hist. du Christ. de l’Ethiopie et de l’Armenie, p.
269—402.) He refers to the great Armenian History of Galanus, (3
vols. in fol. Rome, 1650—1661,) and commends the state of Armenia
in the iiid volume of the Nouveaux Memoires des Missions du
Levant. The work of a Jesuit must have sterling merit when it is
praised by La Croze.]

1391 (return) [ See vol. iii. ch. xx. p. 271.—M.]

140 (return) [ The schism of the Armenians is placed 84 years
after the council of Chalcedon, (Pagi, Critica, ad A.D. 535.) It
was consummated at the end of seventeen years; and it is from the
year of Christ 552 that we date the aera of the Armenians, (L’Art
de verifier les Dates, p. xxxv.)]

141 (return) [ The sentiments and success of Julian of
Halicarnassus may be seen in Liberatus, (Brev. c. 19,) Renaudot,
(Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 132, 303,) and Assemannus, (Bibliot.
Orient. tom. ii. Dissertat. Monophysitis, l. viii. p. 286.)]

142 (return) [ See a remarkable fact of the xiith century in the
History of Nicetas Choniates, (p. 258.) Yet three hundred years
before, Photius (Epistol. ii. p. 49, edit. Montacut.) had gloried
in the conversion of the Armenians.]

143 (return) [ The travelling Armenians are in the way of every
traveller, and their mother church is on the high road between
Constantinople and Ispahan; for their present state, see
Fabricius, (Lux Evangelii, &c., c. xxxviii. p. 40—51,) Olearius,
(l. iv. c. 40,) Chardin, (vol. ii. p. 232,) Teurnefort, (lettre
xx.,) and, above all, Tavernier, (tom. i. p. 28—37, 510-518,)
that rambling jeweller, who had read nothing, but had seen so
much and so well]

V. In the rest of the Roman empire, the despotism of the prince
might eradicate or silence the sectaries of an obnoxious creed.
But the stubborn temper of the Egyptians maintained their
opposition to the synod of Chalcedon, and the policy of Justinian
condescended to expect and to seize the opportunity of discord.
The Monophysite church of Alexandria 144 was torn by the disputes
of the corruptibles and incorruptibles, and on the death of the
patriarch, the two factions upheld their respective candidates.
145 Gaian was the disciple of Julian, Theodosius had been the
pupil of Severus: the claims of the former were supported by the
consent of the monks and senators, the city and the province; the
latter depended on the priority of his ordination, the favor of
the empress Theodora, and the arms of the eunuch Narses, which
might have been used in more honorable warfare. The exile of the
popular candidate to Carthage and Sardinia inflamed the ferment
of Alexandria; and after a schism of one hundred and seventy
years, the Gaianites still revered the memory and doctrine of
their founder. The strength of numbers and of discipline was
tried in a desperate and bloody conflict; the streets were filled
with the dead bodies of citizens and soldiers; the pious women,
ascending the roofs of their houses, showered down every sharp or
ponderous utensil on the heads of the enemy; and the final
victory of Narses was owing to the flames, with which he wasted
the third capital of the Roman world. But the lieutenant of
Justinian had not conquered in the cause of a heretic; Theodosius
himself was speedily, though gently, removed; and Paul of Tanis,
an orthodox monk, was raised to the throne of Athanasius. The
powers of government were strained in his support; he might
appoint or displace the dukes and tribunes of Egypt; the
allowance of bread, which Diocletian had granted, was suppressed,
the churches were shut, and a nation of schismatics was deprived
at once of their spiritual and carnal food. In his turn, the
tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge of the people:
and none except his servile Melchites would salute him as a man,
a Christian, or a bishop. Yet such is the blindness of ambition,
that, when Paul was expelled on a charge of murder, he solicited,
with a bribe of seven hundred pounds of gold, his restoration to
the same station of hatred and ignominy. His successor
Apollinaris entered the hostile city in military array, alike
qualified for prayer or for battle. His troops, under arms, were
distributed through the streets; the gates of the cathedral were
guarded, and a chosen band was stationed in the choir, to defend
the person of their chief. He stood erect on his throne, and,
throwing aside the upper garment of a warrior, suddenly appeared
before the eyes of the multitude in the robes of patriarch of
Alexandria. Astonishment held them mute; but no sooner had
Apollinaris begun to read the tome of St. Leo, than a volley of
curses, and invectives, and stones, assaulted the odious minister
of the emperor and the synod. A charge was instantly sounded by
the successor of the apostles; the soldiers waded to their knees
in blood; and two hundred thousand Christians are said to have
fallen by the sword: an incredible account, even if it be
extended from the slaughter of a day to the eighteen years of the
reign of Apollinaris. Two succeeding patriarchs, Eulogius 146 and
John, 147 labored in the conversion of heretics, with arms and
arguments more worthy of their evangelical profession. The
theological knowledge of Eulogius was displayed in many a volume,
which magnified the errors of Eutyches and Severus, and attempted
to reconcile the ambiguous language of St. Cyril with the
orthodox creed of Pope Leo and the fathers of Chalcedon. The
bounteous alms of John the eleemosynary were dictated by
superstition, or benevolence, or policy. Seven thousand five
hundred poor were maintained at his expense; on his accession he
found eight thousand pounds of gold in the treasury of the
church; he collected ten thousand from the liberality of the
faithful; yet the primate could boast in his testament, that he
left behind him no more than the third part of the smallest of
the silver coins. The churches of Alexandria were delivered to
the Catholics, the religion of the Monophysites was proscribed in
Egypt, and a law was revived which excluded the natives from the
honors and emoluments of the state.

144 (return) [ The history of the Alexandrian patriarchs, from
Dioscorus to Benjamin, is taken from Renaudot, (p. 114—164,) and
the second tome of the Annals of Eutychius.]

145 (return) [ Liberat. Brev. c. 20, 23. Victor. Chron. p. 329
330. Procop. Anecdot. c. 26, 27.]

146 (return) [ Eulogius, who had been a monk of Antioch, was more
conspicuous for subtilty than eloquence. He proves that the
enemies of the faith, the Gaianites and Theodosians, ought not to
be reconciled; that the same proposition may be orthodox in the
mouth of St. Cyril, heretical in that of Severus; that the
opposite assertions of St. Leo are equally true, &c. His writings
are no longer extant except in the Extracts of Photius, who had
perused them with care and satisfaction, ccviii. ccxxv. ccxxvi.
ccxxvii. ccxxx. cclxxx.]

147 (return) [ See the Life of John the eleemosynary by his
contemporary Leontius, bishop of Neapolis in Cyrus, whose Greek
text, either lost or hidden, is reflected in the Latin version of
Baronius, (A.D. 610, No.9, A.D. 620, No. 8.) Pagi (Critica, tom.
ii. p. 763) and Fabricius (l. v c. 11, tom. vii. p. 454) have
made some critical observations]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part VI.

A more important conquest still remained, of the patriarch, the
oracle and leader of the Egyptian church. Theodosius had resisted
the threats and promises of Justinian with the spirit of an
apostle or an enthusiast. “Such,” replied the patriarch, “were
the offers of the tempter when he showed the kingdoms of the
earth. But my soul is far dearer to me than life or dominion. The
churches are in the hands of a prince who can kill the body; but
my conscience is my own; and in exile, poverty, or chains, I will
steadfastly adhere to the faith of my holy predecessors,
Athanasius, Cyril, and Dioscorus. Anathema to the tome of Leo and
the synod of Chalcedon! Anathema to all who embrace their creed!
Anathema to them now and forevermore! Naked came I out of my
mother’s womb, naked shall I descend into the grave. Let those
who love God follow me and seek their salvation.” After
comforting his brethren, he embarked for Constantinople, and
sustained, in six successive interviews, the almost irresistible
weight of the royal presence. His opinions were favorably
entertained in the palace and the city; the influence of Theodora
assured him a safe conduct and honorable dismission; and he ended
his days, though not on the throne, yet in the bosom, of his
native country. On the news of his death, Apollinaris indecently
feasted the nobles and the clergy; but his joy was checked by the
intelligence of a new election; and while he enjoyed the wealth
of Alexandria, his rivals reigned in the monasteries of Thebais,
and were maintained by the voluntary oblations of the people. A
perpetual succession of patriarchs arose from the ashes of
Theodosius; and the Monophysite churches of Syria and Egypt were
united by the name of Jacobites and the communion of the faith.
But the same faith, which has been confined to a narrow sect of
the Syrians, was diffused over the mass of the Egyptian or Coptic
nation; who, almost unanimously, rejected the decrees of the
synod of Chalcedon. A thousand years were now elapsed since Egypt
had ceased to be a kingdom, since the conquerors of Asia and
Europe had trampled on the ready necks of a people, whose ancient
wisdom and power ascend beyond the records of history. The
conflict of zeal and persecution rekindled some sparks of their
national spirit. They abjured, with a foreign heresy, the manners
and language of the Greeks: every Melchite, in their eyes, was a
stranger, every Jacobite a citizen; the alliance of marriage, the
offices of humanity, were condemned as a deadly sin; the natives
renounced all allegiance to the emperor; and his orders, at a
distance from Alexandria, were obeyed only under the pressure of
military force. A generous effort might have 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

148 (return) [ This number is taken from the curious Recherches
sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, (tom. ii. p. 192, 193,) and
appears more probable than the 600,000 ancient, or 15,000 modern,
Copts of Gemelli Carreri Cyril Lucar, the Protestant patriarch of
Constantinople, laments that those heretics were ten times more
numerous than his orthodox Greeks, ingeniously applying Homer,
(Iliad, ii. 128,) the most perfect expression of contempt,
(Fabric. Lux Evangelii, 740.)]

149 (return) [ The history of the Copts, their religion, manners,
&c., may be found in the Abbe Renaudot’s motley work, neither a
translation nor an original; the Chronicon Orientale of Peter, a
Jacobite; in the two versions of Abraham Ecchellensis, Paris,
1651; and John Simon Asseman, Venet. 1729. These annals descend
no lower than the xiiith century. The more recent accounts must
be searched for in the travellers into Egypt and the Nouveaux
Memoires des Missions du Levant. In the last century, Joseph
Abudacnus, a native of Cairo, published at Oxford, in thirty
pages, a slight Historia Jacobitarum, 147, post p.150]

VI. The Coptic patriarch, a rebel to the Caesars, or a slave to
the khalifs, still gloried in the filial obedience of the kings
of Nubia and Aethiopia. He repaid their homage by magnifying
their greatness; and it was boldly asserted that they could bring
into the field a hundred thousand horse, with an equal number of
camels; 150 that their hand could pour out or restrain the waters
of the Nile; 151 and the peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained,
even in this world, by the intercession of the patriarch. In
exile at Constantinople, Theodosius recommended to his patroness
the conversion of the black nations of Nubia, from the tropic of
Cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. 152 Her design was suspected
and emulated by the more orthodox emperor. The rival
missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at the same
time; but the empress, from a motive of love or fear, was more
effectually obeyed; and the Catholic priest was detained by the
president of Thebais, while the king of Nubia and his court were
hastily baptized in the faith of Dioscorus. The tardy envoy of
Justinian was received and dismissed with honor: but when he
accused the heresy and treason of the Egyptians, the negro
convert was instructed to reply that he would never abandon his
brethren, the true believers, to the persecuting ministers of the
synod of Chalcedon. 153 During several ages, the bishops of Nubia
were named and consecrated by the Jacobite patriarch of
Alexandria: as late as the twelfth century, Christianity
prevailed; and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in the
savage towns of Sennaar and Dongola. 154 But the Nubians at
length executed their threats of returning to the worship of
idols; the climate required the indulgence of polygamy, and they
have finally preferred the triumph of the Koran to the abasement
of the Cross. A metaphysical religion may appear too refined for
the capacity of the negro race: yet a black or a parrot might be
taught to repeat the words of the Chalcedonian or Monophysite
creed.

150 (return) [ About the year 737. See Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch.
Alex p. 221, 222. Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 99.]

151 (return) [ Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l. i. c. 8.
Renaudot Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 480, &c. This opinion,
introduced into Egypt and Europe by the artifice of the Copts,
the pride of the Abyssinians, the fear and ignorance of the Turks
and Arabs, has not even the semblance of truth. The rains of
Aethiopia do not, in the increase of the Nile, consult the will
of the monarch. If the river approaches at Napata within three
days’ journey of the Red Sea (see D’Anville’s Maps,) a canal that
should divert its course would demand, and most probably surpass,
the power of the Caesars.]

152 (return) [ The Abyssinians, who still preserve the features
and olive complexion of the Arabs, afford a proof that two
thousand years are not sufficient to change the color of the
human race. The Nubians, an African race, are pure negroes, as
black as those of Senegal or Congo, with flat noses, thick lips,
and woolly hair, (Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 117, 143,
144, 166, 219, edit. in 12mo., Paris, 1769.) The ancients beheld,
without much attention, the extraordinary phenomenon which has
exercised the philosophers and theologians of modern times]

153 (return) [ Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 329.]

154 (return) [ The Christianity of the Nubians (A.D. 1153) is
attested by the sheriff al Edrisi, falsely described under the
name of the Nubian geographer, (p. 18,) who represents them as a
nation of Jacobites. The rays of historical light that twinkle in
the history of Ranaudot (p. 178, 220—224, 281—286, 405, 434, 451,
464) are all previous to this aera. See the modern state in the
Lettres Edifiantes (Recueil, iv.) and Busching, (tom. ix. p.
152—139, par Berenger.)]

Christianity was more deeply rooted in the Abyssinian empire;
and, although the correspondence has been sometimes interrupted
above seventy or a hundred years, the mother-church of Alexandria
retains her colony in a state of perpetual pupilage. Seven
bishops once composed the Aethiopic synod: had their number
amounted to ten, they might have elected an independent primate;
and one of their kings was ambitious of promoting his brother to
the ecclesiastical throne. But the event was foreseen, the
increase was denied: the episcopal office has been gradually
confined to the abuna, 155 the head and author of the Abyssinian
priesthood; the patriarch supplies each vacancy with an Egyptian
monk; and the character of a stranger appears more venerable in
the eyes of the people, less dangerous in those of the monarch.
In the sixth century, when the schism of Egypt was confirmed, the
rival chiefs, with their patrons, Justinian and Theodora, strove
to outstrip each other in the conquest of a remote and
independent province. The industry of the empress was again
victorious, and the pious Theodora has established in that
sequestered church the faith and discipline of the Jacobites. 156
Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the
Aethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world,
by whom they were forgotten. They were awakened by the
Portuguese, who, turning the southern promontory of Africa,
appeared in India and the Red Sea, as if they had descended
through the air from a distant planet. In the first moments of
their interview, the subjects of Rome and Alexandria observed the
resemblance, rather than the difference, of their faith; and each
nation expected the most important benefits from an alliance with
their Christian brethren. In their lonely situation, the
Aethiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life. Their
vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to
navigate the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were deserted,
the nation was scattered in villages, and the emperor, a pompous
name, was content, both in peace and war, with the immovable
residence of a camp. Conscious of their own indigence, the
Abyssinians had formed the rational project of importing the arts
and ingenuity of Europe; 157 and their ambassadors at Rome and
Lisbon were instructed to solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters,
tilers, masons, printers, surgeons, and physicians, for the use
of their country. But the public danger soon called for the
instant and effectual aid of arms and soldiers, to defend an
unwarlike people from the Barbarians who ravaged the inland
country and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the sea-coast
in more formidable array. Aethiopia was saved by four hundred and
fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the field the native valor of
Europeans, and the artificial power of the musket and cannon. In
a moment of terror, the emperor had promised to reconcile himself
and his subjects to the Catholic faith; a Latin patriarch
represented the supremacy of the pope: 158 the empire, enlarged
in a tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than
the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and zeal
were built on the willing submission of the Christians of Africa.

155 (return) [ The abuna is improperly dignified by the Latins
with the title of patriarch. The Abyssinians acknowledge only the
four patriarchs, and their chief is no more than a metropolitan
or national primate, (Ludolph. Hist. Aethiopic. et Comment. l.
iii. c. 7.) The seven bishops of Renaudot, (p. 511,) who existed
A.D. 1131, are unknown to the historian.]

156 (return) [ I know not why Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom.
ii. p. 384) should call in question these probable missions of
Theodora into Nubia and Aethiopia. The slight notices of
Abyssinia till the year 1500 are supplied by Renaudot (p.
336-341, 381, 382, 405, 443, &c., 452, 456, 463, 475, 480, 511,
525, 559—564) from the Coptic writers. The mind of Ludolphus was
a perfect blank.]

157 (return) [ Ludolph. Hist. Aethiop. l. iv. c. 5. The most
necessary arts are now exercised by the Jews, and the foreign
trade is in the hands of the Armenians. What Gregory principally
admired and envied was the industry of Europe—artes et opificia.]

158 (return) [ John Bermudez, whose relation, printed at Lisbon,
1569, was translated into English by Purchas, (Pilgrims, l. vii.
c. 7, p. 1149, &c.,) and from thence into French by La Croze,
(Christianisme d’Ethiopie, p. 92—265.) The piece is curious; but
the author may be suspected of deceiving Abyssinia, Rome, and
Portugal. His title to the rank of patriarch is dark and
doubtful, (Ludolph. Comment. No. 101, p. 473.)]

But the vows which pain had extorted were forsworn on the return
of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with unshaken constancy
to the Monophysite faith; their languid belief was inflamed by
the exercise of dispute; they branded the Latins with the names
of Arians and Nestorians, and imputed the adoration of four gods
to those who separated the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a
place of worship, or rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit
missionaries. Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their
theological learning, and the decency of their manners, inspired
a barren esteem; but they were not endowed with the gift of
miracles, 159 and they vainly solicited a reenforcement of
European troops. The patience and dexterity of forty years at
length obtained a more favorable audience, and two emperors of
Abyssinia were persuaded that Rome could insure the temporal and
everlasting happiness of her votaries. The first of these royal
converts lost his crown and his life; and the rebel army was
sanctified by the abuna, who hurled an anathema at the apostate,
and absolved his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate
of Zadenghel was revenged by the courage and fortune of Susneus,
who ascended the throne under the name of Segued, and more
vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his kinsman. After
the amusement of some unequal combats between the Jesuits and his
illiterate priests, the emperor declared himself a proselyte to
the synod of Chalcedon, presuming that his clergy and people
would embrace without delay the religion of their prince. The
liberty of choice was succeeded by a law, which imposed, under
pain of death, the belief of the two natures of Christ: the
Abyssinians were enjoined to work and to play on the Sabbath; and
Segued, in the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his
connection with the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit, Alphonso
Mendez, the Catholic patriarch of Aethiopia, accepted, in the
name of Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of the penitent.
“I confess,” said the emperor on his knees, “I confess that the
pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and the
sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience, and at his
feet I offer my person and kingdom.” A similar oath was repeated
by his son, his brother, the clergy, the nobles, and even the
ladies of the court: the Latin patriarch was invested with honors
and wealth; and his missionaries erected their churches or
citadels in the most convenient stations of the empire. The
Jesuits themselves deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief,
who forgot the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his
order, to introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and
the inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice of
circumcision, which health, rather than superstition, had first
invented in the climate of Aethiopia. 160 A new baptism, a new
ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and they trembled with
horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their
graves, when the most illustrious of the living were
excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defense of their
religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with
desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were
extinguished in the blood of the insurgents: two abunas were
slain in battle, whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or
suffocated in their caverns; and neither merit, nor rank, nor
sex, could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome.
But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy
of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most
faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of
reason, perhaps of fear: and his edict of liberty of conscience
instantly revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On
the death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch,
and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the
discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded with a
song of triumph, “that the sheep of Aethiopia were now delivered
from the hyaenas of the West;” and the gates of that solitary
realm were forever shut against the arts, the science, and the
fanaticism of Europe. 161

159 (return) [ Religio Romana...nec precibus patrum nec miraculis
ab ipsis editis suffulciebatur, is the uncontradicted assurance
of the devout emperor Susneus to his patriarch Mendez, (Ludolph.
Comment. No. 126, p. 529;) and such assurances should be
preciously kept, as an antidote against any marvellous legends.]

160 (return) [ I am aware how tender is the question of
circumcision. Yet I will affirm, 1. That the Aethiopians have a
physical reason for the circumcision of males, and even of
females, (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. ii.)
2. That it was practised in Aethiopia long before the
introduction of Judaism or Christianity, (Herodot. l. ii. c. 104.
Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73.) “Infantes circumcidunt ob
consuetudinemn, non ob Judaismum,” says Gregory the Abyssinian
priest, (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana, p. 720.) Yet in the heat of
dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of
uncircumcised, (La Croze, p. 90. Ludolph. Hist. and Comment. l.
iii. c. l.)]

161 (return) [ The three Protestant historians, Ludolphus, (Hist.
Aethiopica, Francofurt. 1681; Commentarius, 1691; Relatio Nova,
&c., 1693, in folio,) Geddes, (Church History of Aethiopia,
London, 1696, in 8vo..) and La Croze, (Hist. du Christianisme
d’Ethiopie et d’Armenie, La Haye, 1739, in 12mo.,) have drawn
their principal materials from the Jesuits, especially from the
General History of Tellez, published in Portuguese at Coimbra,
1660. We might be surprised at their frankness; but their most
flagitious vice, the spirit of persecution, was in their eyes the
most meritorious virtue. Ludolphus possessed some, though a
slight, advantage from the Aethiopic language, and the personal
conversation of Gregory, a free-spirited Abyssinian priest, whom
he invited from Rome to the court of Saxe-Gotha. See the
Theologia Aethiopica of Gregory, in (Fabric. Lux Evangelii, p.
716—734.) * Note: The travels of Bruce, illustrated by those of
Mr. Salt, and the narrative of Nathaniel Pearce, have brought us
again acquainted with this remote region. Whatever may be their
speculative opinions the barbarous manners of the Ethiopians seem
to be gaining more and more the ascendency over the practice of
Christianity.—M.]

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

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

I have now deduced from Trajan to Constantine, from Constantine
to Heraclius, the regular series of the Roman emperors; and
faithfully exposed the prosperous and adverse fortunes of their
reigns. Five centuries of the decline and fall of the empire have
already elapsed; but a period of more than eight hundred years
still separates me from the term of my labors, the taking of
Constantinople by the Turks. Should I persevere in the same
course, should I observe the same measure, a prolix and slender
thread would be spun through many a volume, nor would the patient
reader find an adequate reward of instruction or amusement. At
every step, as we sink deeper in the decline and fall of the
Eastern empire, the annals of each succeeding reign would impose
a more ungrateful and melancholy task. These annals must continue
to repeat a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery; the
natural connection of causes and events would be broken by
frequent and hasty transitions, and a minute accumulation of
circumstances must destroy the light and effect of those general
pictures which compose the use and ornament of a remote history.
From the time of Heraclius, the Byzantine theatre is contracted
and darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by the
laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius, recedes on all
sides from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of our
inquiries, is reduced to a narrow corner of Europe, to the lonely
suburbs of Constantinople; and the fate of the Greek empire has
been compared to that of the Rhine, which loses itself in the
sands, before its waters can mingle with the ocean. The scale of
dominion is diminished to our view by the distance of time and
place; nor is the loss of external splendor compensated by the
nobler gifts of virtue and genius. In the last moments of her
decay, Constantinople was doubtless more opulent and populous
than Athens at her most flourishing aera, when a scanty sum of
six thousand talents, or twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling
was possessed by twenty-one thousand male citizens of an adult
age. But each of these citizens was a freeman, who dared to
assert the liberty of his thoughts, words, and actions, whose
person and property were guarded by equal law; and who exercised
his independent vote in the government of the republic. Their
numbers seem to be multiplied by the strong and various
discriminations of character; under the shield of freedom, on the
wings of emulation and vanity, each Athenian aspired to the level
of the national dignity; from this commanding eminence, some
chosen spirits soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the
chances of superior merit in a great and populous kingdom, as
they are proved by experience, would excuse the computation of
imaginary millions. The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their
allies, do not exceed a moderate province of France or England;
but after the trophies of Salamis and Platea, they expand in our
fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under
the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects of the
Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of
Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices,
which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity, nor
animated by the vigor of memorable crimes. The freemen of
antiquity might repeat with generous enthusiasm the sentence of
Homer, “that on the first day of his servitude, the captive is
deprived of one half of his manly virtue.” But the poet had only
seen the effects of civil or domestic slavery, nor could he
foretell that the second moiety of manhood must be annihilated by
the spiritual despotism which shackles not only the actions, but
even the thoughts, of the prostrate votary. By this double yoke,
the Greeks were oppressed under the successors of Heraclius; the
tyrant, a law of eternal justice, was degraded by the vices of
his subjects; and on the throne, in the camp, in the schools, we
search, perhaps with fruitless diligence, the names and
characters that may deserve to be rescued from oblivion. Nor are
the defects of the subject compensated by the skill and variety
of the painters. Of a space of eight hundred years, the four
first centuries are overspread with a cloud interrupted by some
faint and broken rays of historic light: in the lives of the
emperors, from Maurice to Alexius, Basil the Macedonian has alone
been the theme of a separate work; and the absence, or loss, or
imperfection of contemporary evidence, must be poorly supplied by
the doubtful authority of more recent compilers. The four last
centuries are exempt from the reproach of penury; and with the
Comnenian family, the historic muse of Constantinople again
revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are without
elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers, treads
in each other’s footsteps in the same path of servitude and
superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or
corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still
ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the actors,
and the manners of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The
observation which has been applied to a man, may be extended to a
whole people, that the energy of the sword is communicated to the
pen; and it will be found by experience, that the tone of history
will rise or fall with the spirit of the age.

From these considerations, I should have abandoned without regret
the Greek slaves and their servile historians, had I not
reflected that the fate of the Byzantine monarchy is passively
connected with the most splendid and important revolutions which
have changed the state of the world. The space of the lost
provinces was immediately replenished with new colonies and
rising kingdoms: the active virtues of peace and war deserted
from the vanquished to the victorious nations; and it is in their
origin and conquests, in their religion and government, that we
must explore the causes and effects of the decline and fall of
the Eastern empire. Nor will this scope of narrative, the riches
and variety of these materials, be incompatible with the unity of
design and composition. As, in his daily prayers, the Mussulman
of Fez or Delhi still turns his face towards the temple of Mecca,
the historian’s eye shall be always fixed on the city of
Constantinople. The excursive line may embrace the wilds of
Arabia and Tartary, but the circle will be ultimately reduced to
the decreasing limit of the Roman monarchy.

On this principle I shall now establish the plan of the last two
volumes of the present work. The first chapter will contain, in a
regular series, the emperors who reigned at Constantinople during
a period of six hundred years, from the days of Heraclius to the
Latin conquest; a rapid abstract, which may be supported by a
general appeal to the order and text of the original historians.
In this introduction, I shall confine myself to the revolutions
of the throne, the succession of families, the personal
characters of the Greek princes, the mode of their life and
death, the maxims and influence of their domestic government, and
the tendency of their reign to accelerate or suspend the downfall
of the Eastern empire. Such a chronological review will serve to
illustrate the various argument of the subsequent chapters; and
each circumstance of the eventful story of the Barbarians will
adapt itself in a proper place to the Byzantine annals. The
internal state of the empire, and the dangerous heresy of the
Paulicians, which shook the East and enlightened the West, will
be the subject of two separate chapters; but these inquiries must
be postponed till our further progress shall have opened the view
of the world in the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian
area. After this foundation of Byzantine history, the following
nations will pass before our eyes, and each will occupy the space
to which it may be entitled by greatness or merit, or the degree
of connection with the Roman world and the present age. I. The
Franks; a general appellation which includes all the Barbarians
of France, Italy, and Germany, who were united by the sword and
sceptre of Charlemagne. The persecution of images and their
votaries separated Rome and Italy from the Byzantine throne, and
prepared the restoration of the Roman empire in the West. II. The
Arabs or Saracens. Three ample chapters will be devoted to this
curious and interesting object. In the first, after a picture of
the country and its inhabitants, I shall investigate the
character of Mahomet; the character, religion, and success of the
prophet. In the second, I shall lead the Arabs to the conquest of
Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the provinces of the Roman empire; nor
can I check their victorious career till they have overthrown the
monarchies of Persia and Spain. In the third, I shall inquire how
Constantinople and Europe were saved by the luxury and arts, the
division and decay, of the empire of the caliphs. A single
chapter will include, III. The Bulgarians, IV. Hungarians, and,
V. Russians, who assaulted by sea or by land the provinces and
the capital; but the last of these, so important in their present
greatness, will excite some curiosity in their origin and
infancy. VI. The Normans; or rather the private adventurers of
that warlike people, who founded a powerful kingdom in Apulia and
Sicily, shook the throne of Constantinople, displayed the
trophies of chivalry, and almost realized the wonders of romance.

VII. The Latins; the subjects of the pope, the nations of the
West, who enlisted under the banner of the cross for the recovery
or relief of the holy sepulchre. The Greek emperors were
terrified and preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to
Jerusalem with Godfrey of Bouillon and the peers of Christendom.
The second and third crusades trod in the footsteps of the first:
Asia and Europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred
years; and the Christian powers were bravely resisted, and
finally expelled by Saladin and the Mamelukes of Egypt. In these
memorable crusades, a fleet and army of French and Venetians were
diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus: they assaulted the
capital, they subverted the Greek monarchy: and a dynasty of
Latin princes was seated near threescore years on the throne of
Constantine. VII. The Greeks themselves, during this period of
captivity and exile, must be considered as a foreign nation; the
enemies, and again the sovereigns of Constantinople. Misfortune
had rekindled a spark of national virtue; and the Imperial series
may be continued with some dignity from their restoration to the
Turkish conquest. IX. The Moguls and Tartars. By the arms of
Zingis and his descendants, the globe was shaken from China to
Poland and Greece: the sultans were overthrown: the caliphs fell,
and the Caesars trembled on their throne. The victories of Timour
suspended above fifty years the final ruin of the Byzantine
empire. X. I have already noticed the first appearance of the
Turks; and the names of the fathers, of Seljuk and Othman,
discriminate the two successive dynasties of the nation, which
emerged in the eleventh century from the Scythian wilderness. The
former established a splendid and potent kingdom from the banks
of the Oxus to Antioch and Nice; and the first crusade was
provoked by the violation of Jerusalem and the danger of
Constantinople. From an humble origin, the Ottomans arose, the
scourge and terror of Christendom. Constantinople was besieged
and taken by Mahomet II., and his triumph annihilates the
remnant, the image, the title, of the Roman empire in the East.
The schism of the Greeks will be connected with their last
calamities, and the restoration of learning in the Western world.

I shall return from the captivity of the new, to the ruins of
ancient Rome; and the venerable name, the interesting theme, will
shed a ray of glory on the conclusion of my labors.

The emperor Heraclius had punished a tyrant and ascended his
throne; and the memory of his reign is perpetuated by the
transient conquest, and irreparable loss, of the Eastern
provinces. After the death of Eudocia, his first wife, he
disobeyed the patriarch, and violated the laws, by his second
marriage with his niece Martina; and the superstition of the
Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the
father and the deformity of his offspring. But the opinion of an
illegitimate birth is sufficient to distract the choice, and
loosen the obedience, of the people: the ambition of Martina was
quickened by maternal love, and perhaps by the envy of a
step-mother; and the aged husband was too feeble to withstand the
arts of conjugal allurements. Constantine, his eldest son,
enjoyed in a mature age the title of Augustus; but the weakness
of his constitution required a colleague and a guardian, and he
yielded with secret reluctance to the partition of the empire.
The senate was summoned to the palace to ratify or attest the
association of Heracleonas, the son of Martina: the imposition of
the diadem was consecrated by the prayer and blessing of the
patriarch; the senators and patricians adored the majesty of the
great emperor and the partners of his reign; and as soon as the
doors were thrown open, they were hailed by the tumultuary but
important voice of the soldiers. After an interval of five
months, the pompous ceremonies which formed the essence of the
Byzantine state were celebrated in the cathedral and the
hippodrome; the concord of the royal brothers was affectedly
displayed by the younger leaning on the arm of the elder; and the
name of Martina was mingled in the reluctant or venal
acclamations of the people. Heraclius survived this association
about two years: his last testimony declared his two sons the
equal heirs of the Eastern empire, and commanded them to honor
his widow Martina as their mother and their sovereign.

When Martina first appeared on the throne with the name and
attributes of royalty, she was checked by a firm, though
respectful, opposition; and the dying embers of freedom were
kindled by the breath of superstitious prejudice. “We reverence,”
exclaimed the voice of a citizen, “we reverence the mother of our
princes; but to those princes alone our obedience is due; and
Constantine, the elder emperor, is of an age to sustain, in his
own hands, the weight of the sceptre. Your sex is excluded by
nature from the toils of government. How could you combat, how
could you answer, the Barbarians, who, with hostile or friendly
intentions, may approach the royal city? May Heaven avert from
the Roman republic this national disgrace, which would provoke
the patience of the slaves of Persia!” Martina descended from the
throne with indignation, and sought a refuge in the female
apartment of the palace. The reign of Constantine the Third
lasted only one hundred and three days: he expired in the
thirtieth year of his age, and, although his life had been a long
malady, a belief was entertained that poison had been the means,
and his cruel step-mother the author, of his untimely fate.
Martina reaped indeed the harvest of his death, and assumed the
government in the name of the surviving emperor; but the
incestuous widow of Heraclius was universally abhorred; the
jealousy of the people was awakened, and the two orphans whom
Constantine had left became the objects of the public care. It
was in vain that the son of Martina, who was no more than fifteen
years of age, was taught to declare himself the guardian of his
nephews, one of whom he had presented at the baptismal font: it
was in vain that he swore on the wood of the true cross, to
defend them against all their enemies. On his death-bed, the late
emperor had despatched a trusty servant to arm the troops and
provinces of the East in the defence of his helpless children:
the eloquence and liberality of Valentin had been successful, and
from his camp of Chalcedon, he boldly demanded the punishment of
the assassins, and the restoration of the lawful heir. The
license of the soldiers, who devoured the grapes and drank the
wine of their Asiatic vineyards, provoked the citizens of
Constantinople against the domestic authors of their calamities,
and the dome of St. Sophia reechoed, not with prayers and hymns,
but with the clamors and imprecations of an enraged multitude. At
their imperious command, Heracleonas appeared in the pulpit with
the eldest of the royal orphans; Constans alone was saluted as
emperor of the Romans, and a crown of gold, which had been taken
from the tomb of Heraclius, was placed on his head, with the
solemn benediction of the patriarch.

But in the tumult of joy and indignation, the church was
pillaged, the sanctuary was polluted by a promiscuous crowd of
Jews and Barbarians; and the Monothelite Pyrrhus, a creature of
the empress, after dropping a protestation on the altar, escaped
by a prudent flight from the zeal of the Catholics. A more
serious and bloody task was reserved for the senate, who derived
a temporary strength from the consent of the soldiers and people.

The spirit of Roman freedom revived the ancient and awful
examples of the judgment of tyrants, and the Imperial culprits
were deposed and condemned as the authors of the death of
Constantine. But the severity of the conscript fathers was
stained by the indiscriminate punishment of the innocent and the
guilty: Martina and Heracleonas were sentenced to the amputation,
the former of her tongue, the latter of his nose; and after this
cruel execution, they consumed the remainder of their days in
exile and oblivion. The Greeks who were capable of reflection
might find some consolation for their servitude, by observing the
abuse of power when it was lodged for a moment in the hands of an
aristocracy.

We shall imagine ourselves transported five hundred years
backwards to the age of the Antonines, if we listen to the
oration which Constans II. pronounced in the twelfth year of his
age before the Byzantine senate. After returning his thanks for
the just punishment of the assassins, who had intercepted the
fairest hopes of his father’s reign, “By the divine Providence,”
said the young emperor, “and by your righteous decree, Martina
and her incestuous progeny have been cast headlong from the
throne. Your majesty and wisdom have prevented the Roman state
from degenerating into lawless tyranny. I therefore exhort and
beseech you to stand forth as the counsellors and judges of the
common safety.” The senators were gratified by the respectful
address and liberal donative of their sovereign; but these
servile Greeks were unworthy and regardless of freedom; and in
his mind, the lesson of an hour was quickly erased by the
prejudices of the age and the habits of despotism. He retained
only a jealous fear lest the senate or people should one day
invade the right of primogeniture, and seat his brother
Theodosius on an equal throne. By the imposition of holy orders,
the grandson of Heraclius was disqualified for the purple; but
this ceremony, which seemed to profane the sacraments of the
church, was insufficient to appease the suspicions of the tyrant,
and the death of the deacon Theodosius could alone expiate the
crime of his royal birth. 1111 His murder was avenged by the
imprecations of the people, and the assassin, in the fullness of
power, was driven from his capital into voluntary and perpetual
exile. Constans embarked for Greece and, as if he meant to retort
the abhorrence which he deserved he is said, from the Imperial
galley, to have spit against the walls of his native city. After
passing the winter at Athens, he sailed to Tarentum in Italy,
visited Rome, 1112 and concluded a long pilgrimage of disgrace
and sacrilegious rapine, by fixing his residence at Syracuse. But
if Constans could fly from his people, he could not fly from
himself. The remorse of his conscience created a phantom who
pursued him by land and sea, by day and by night; and the
visionary Theodosius, presenting to his lips a cup of blood,
said, or seemed to say, “Drink, brother, drink;” a sure emblem of
the aggravation of his guilt, since he had received from the
hands of the deacon the mystic cup of the blood of Christ. Odious
to himself and to mankind, Constans perished by domestic, perhaps
by episcopal, treason, in the capital of Sicily. A servant who
waited in the bath, after pouring warm water on his head, struck
him violently with the vase. He fell, stunned by the blow, and
suffocated by the water; and his attendants, who wondered at the
tedious delay, beheld with indifference the corpse of their
lifeless emperor. The troops of Sicily invested with the purple
an obscure youth, whose inimitable beauty eluded, and it might
easily elude, the declining art of the painters and sculptors of
the age.

1111 (return) [ His soldiers (according to Abulfaradji. Chron.
Syr. p. 112) called him another Cain. St. Martin, t. xi. p.
379.—M.]

1112 (return) [ He was received in Rome, and pillaged the
churches. He carried off the brass roof of the Pantheon to
Syracuse, or, as Schlosser conceives, to Constantinople Schlosser
Geschichte der bilder-sturmenden Kaiser p. 80—M.]

Constans had left in the Byzantine palace three sons, the eldest
of whom had been clothed in his infancy with the purple. When the
father summoned them to attend his person in Sicily, these
precious hostages were detained by the Greeks, and a firm refusal
informed him that they were the children of the state. The news
of his murder was conveyed with almost supernatural speed from
Syracuse to Constantinople; and Constantine, the eldest of his
sons, inherited his throne without being the heir of the public
hatred. His subjects contributed, with zeal and alacrity, to
chastise the guilt and presumption of a province which had
usurped the rights of the senate and people; the young emperor
sailed from the Hellespont with a powerful fleet; and the legions
of Rome and Carthage were assembled under his standard in the
harbor of Syracuse. The defeat of the Sicilian tyrant was easy,
his punishment just, and his beauteous head was exposed in the
hippodrome: but I cannot applaud the clemency of a prince, who,
among a crowd of victims, condemned the son of a patrician, for
deploring with some bitterness the execution of a virtuous
father. The youth was castrated: he survived the operation, and
the memory of this indecent cruelty is preserved by the elevation
of Germanus to the rank of a patriarch and saint. After pouring
this bloody libation on his father’s tomb, Constantine returned
to his capital; and the growth of his young beard during the
Sicilian voyage was announced, by the familiar surname of
Pogonatus, to the Grecian world. But his reign, like that of his
predecessor, was stained with fraternal discord. On his two
brothers, Heraclius and Tiberius, he had bestowed the title of
Augustus; an empty title, for they continued to languish, without
trust or power, in the solitude of the palace. At their secret
instigation, the troops of the Anatolian theme or province
approached the city on the Asiatic side, demanded for the royal
brothers the partition or exercise of sovereignty, and supported
their seditious claim by a theological argument. They were
Christians, (they cried,) and orthodox Catholics; the sincere
votaries of the holy and undivided Trinity. Since there are three
equal persons in heaven, it is reasonable there should be three
equal persons upon earth. The emperor invited these learned
divines to a friendly conference, in which they might propose
their arguments to the senate: they obeyed the summons, but the
prospect of their bodies hanging on the gibbet in the suburb of
Galata reconciled their companions to the unity of the reign of
Constantine. He pardoned his brothers, and their names were still
pronounced in the public acclamations: but on the repetition or
suspicion of a similar offence, the obnoxious princes were
deprived of their titles and noses, 1113 in the presence of the
Catholic bishops who were assembled at Constantinople in the
sixth general synod. In the close of his life, Pogonatus was
anxious only to establish the right of primogeniture: the heir of
his two sons, Justinian and Heraclius, was offered on the shrine
of St. Peter, as a symbol of their spiritual adoption by the
pope; but the elder was alone exalted to the rank of Augustus,
and the assurance of the empire.

1113 (return) [ Schlosser (Geschichte der bilder sturmenden
Kaiser, p. 90) supposed that the young princes were mutilated
after the first insurrection; that after this the acts were still
inscribed with their names, the princes being closely secluded in
the palace. The improbability of this circumstance may be weighed
against Gibbon’s want of authority for his statement.—M.]

After the decease of his father, the inheritance of the Roman
world devolved to Justinian II.; and the name of a triumphant
lawgiver was dishonored by the vices of a boy, who imitated his
namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions
were strong; his understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated
with a foolish pride, that his birth had given him the command of
millions, of whom the smallest community would not have chosen
him for their local magistrate. His favorite ministers were two
beings the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a
monk: to the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the
finances; the former corrected the emperor’s mother with a
scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with
their heads downwards, over a slow and smoky fire. Since the days
of Commodus and Caracalla, the cruelty of the Roman princes had
most commonly been the effect of their fear; but Justinian, who
possessed some vigor of character, enjoyed the sufferings, and
braved the revenge, of his subjects, about ten years, till the
measure was full, of his crimes and of their patience. In a dark
dungeon, Leontius, a general of reputation, had groaned above
three years, with some of the noblest and most deserving of the
patricians: he was suddenly drawn forth to assume the government
of Greece; and this promotion of an injured man was a mark of the
contempt rather than of the confidence of his prince. As he was
followed to the port by the kind offices of his friends, Leontius
observed, with a sigh, that he was a victim adorned for
sacrifice, and that inevitable death would pursue his footsteps.
They ventured to reply, that glory and empire might be the
recompense of a generous resolution; that every order of men
abhorred the reign of a monster; and that the hands of two
hundred thousand patriots expected only the voice of a leader.
The night was chosen for their deliverance; and in the first
effort of the conspirators, the 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

1114 (return) [ Of fear rather than of more generous motives.
Compare Le Beau vol. xii. p. 64.—M.]

Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the Isaurian
dynasty, a short interval of six years is divided into three
reigns. Bardanes, or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as
a hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant; and he might
taste some moments of happiness in the first transports of
sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left behind him an ample
treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but this useful fund
was soon and idly dissipated by his successor. On the festival of
his birthday, Philippicus entertained the multitude with the
games of the hippodrome; from thence he paraded through the
streets with a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets;
refreshed himself in the baths of Zeuxippus, and returning to the
palace, entertained his nobles with a sumptuous banquet. At the
meridian hour he withdrew to his chamber, intoxicated with
flattery and wine, and forgetful that his example had made every
subject ambitious, and that every ambitious subject was his
secret enemy. Some bold conspirators introduced themselves in the
disorder of the feast; and the slumbering monarch was surprised,
bound, blinded, and deposed, before he was sensible of his
danger. Yet the traitors were deprived of their reward; and the
free voice of the senate and people promoted Artemius from the
office of secretary to that of emperor: he assumed the title of
Anastasius the Second, and displayed in a short and troubled
reign the virtues both of peace and war. But after the extinction
of the Imperial line, the rule of obedience was violated, and
every change diffused the seeds of new revolutions. In a mutiny
of the fleet, an obscure and reluctant officer of the revenue was
forcibly invested with the purple: after some months of a naval
war, Anastasius resigned the sceptre; and the conqueror,
Theodosius the Third, submitted in his turn to the superior
ascendant of Leo, the general and emperor of the Oriental troops.
His two predecessors were permitted to embrace the ecclesiastical
profession: the restless impatience of Anastasius tempted him to
risk and to lose his life in a treasonable enterprise; but the
last days of Theodosius were honorable and secure. The single
sublime word, “Health,” which he inscribed on his tomb, expresses
the confidence of philosophy or religion; and the fame of his
miracles was long preserved among the people of Ephesus. This
convenient shelter of the church might sometimes impose a lesson
of clemency; but it may be questioned whether it is for the
public interest to diminish the perils of unsuccessful ambition.

I have dwelt on the fall of a tyrant; I shall briefly represent
the founder of a new dynasty, who is known to posterity by the
invectives of his enemies, and whose public and private life is
involved in the ecclesiastical story of the Iconoclasts. Yet in
spite of the clamors of superstition, a favorable prejudice for
the character of Leo the Isaurian may be reasonably drawn from
the obscurity of his birth, and the duration of his reign.—I. In
an age of manly spirit, the prospect of an Imperial reward would
have kindled every energy of the mind, and produced a crowd of
competitors as deserving as they were desirous to reign. Even in
the corruption and debility of the modern Greeks, the elevation
of a plebeian from the last to the first rank of society,
supposes some qualifications above the level of the multitude. He
would probably be ignorant and disdainful of speculative science;
and, in the pursuit of fortune, he might absolve himself from the
obligations of benevolence and justice; but to his character we
may ascribe the useful virtues of prudence and fortitude, the
knowledge of mankind, and the important art of gaining their
confidence and directing their passions. It is agreed that Leo
was a native of Isauria, and that Conon was his primitive name.
The writers, whose awkward satire is praise, describe him as an
itinerant pedler, who drove an ass with some paltry merchandise
to the country fairs; and foolishly relate that he met on the
road some Jewish fortune-tellers, who promised him the Roman
empire, on condition that he should abolish the worship of idols.
A more probable account relates the migration of his father from
Asia Minor to Thrace, where he exercised the lucrative trade of a
grazier; and he must have acquired considerable wealth, since the
first introduction of his son was procured by a supply of five
hundred sheep to the Imperial camp. His first service was in the
guards of Justinian, where he soon attracted the notice, and by
degrees the jealousy, of the tyrant. His valor and dexterity were
conspicuous in the Colchian war: from Anastasius he received the
command of the Anatolian legions, and by the suffrage of the
soldiers he was raised to the empire with the general applause of
the Roman world.—II. In this dangerous elevation, Leo the Third
supported himself against the envy of his equals, the discontent
of a powerful faction, and the assaults of his foreign and
domestic enemies. The Catholics, who accuse his religious
innovations, are obliged to confess that they were undertaken
with temper and conducted with firmness. Their silence respects
the wisdom of his administration and the purity of his manners.
After a reign of twenty-four years, he peaceably expired in the
palace of Constantinople; and the purple which he had acquired
was transmitted by the right of inheritance to the third
generation. 1115

1115 (return) [ During the latter part of his reign, the
hostilities of the Saracens, who invested a Pergamenian, named
Tiberius, with the purple, and proclaimed him as the son of
Justinian, and an earthquake, which destroyed the walls of
Constantinople, compelled Leo greatly to increase the burdens of
taxation upon his subjects. A twelfth was exacted in addition to
every aurena as a wall tax. Theophanes p. 275 Schlosser, Bilder
eturmeud Kaiser, p. 197.—M.]

In a long reign of thirty-four years, the son and successor of
Leo, Constantine the Fifth, surnamed Copronymus, attacked with
less temperate zeal the images or idols of the church. Their
votaries have exhausted the bitterness of religious gall, in
their portrait of this spotted panther, this antichrist, this
flying dragon of the serpent’s seed, who surpassed the vices of
Elagabalus and Nero. His reign was a long butchery of whatever
was most noble, or holy, or innocent, in his empire. In person,
the emperor assisted at the execution of his victims, surveyed
their agonies, listened to their groans, and indulged, without
satiating, his appetite for blood: a plate of noses was accepted
as a grateful offering, and his domestics were often scourged or
mutilated by the royal hand. His surname was derived from his
pollution of his baptismal font. The infant might be excused; but
the manly pleasures of Copronymus degraded him below the level of
a brute; his lust confounded the eternal distinctions of sex and
species, and he seemed to extract some unnatural delight from the
objects most offensive to human sense. In his religion the
Iconoclast was a Heretic, a Jew, a Mahometan, a Pagan, and an
Atheist; and his belief of an invisible power could be discovered
only in his magic rites, human victims, and nocturnal sacrifices
to Venus and the daemons of antiquity. His life was stained with
the most opposite vices, and the ulcers which covered his body,
anticipated before his death the sentiment of hell-tortures. Of
these accusations, which I have so patiently copied, a part is
refuted by its own absurdity; and in the private anecdotes of the
life of the princes, the lie is more easy as the detection is
more difficult. Without adopting the pernicious maxim, that where
much is alleged, something must be true, I can however discern,
that Constantine the Fifth was dissolute and cruel. Calumny is
more prone to exaggerate than to invent; and her licentious
tongue is checked in some measure by the experience of the age
and country to which she appeals. Of the bishops and monks, the
generals and magistrates, who are said to have suffered under his
reign, the numbers are recorded, the names were conspicuous, the
execution was public, the mutilation visible and permanent. 1116
The Catholics hated the person and government of Copronymus; but
even their hatred is a proof of their oppression. They dissembled
the provocations which might excuse or justify his rigor, but
even these provocations must gradually inflame his resentment and
harden his temper in the use or the abuse of despotism. Yet the
character of the fifth Constantine was not devoid of merit, nor
did his government always deserve the curses or the contempt of
the Greeks. From the confession of his enemies, I am informed of
the restoration of an ancient aqueduct, of the redemption of two
thousand five hundred captives, of the uncommon plenty of the
times, and of the new colonies with which he repeopled
Constantinople and the Thracian cities. They reluctantly praise
his activity and courage; he was on horseback in the field at the
head of his legions; and, although the fortune of his arms was
various, he triumphed by sea and land, on the Euphrates and the
Danube, in civil and Barbarian war. Heretical praise must be cast
into the scale to counterbalance the weight of orthodox
invective. The Iconoclasts revered the virtues of the prince:
forty years after his death they still prayed before the tomb of
the saint. A miraculous vision was propagated by fanaticism or
fraud: and the Christian hero appeared on a milk-white steed,
brandishing his lance against the Pagans of Bulgaria: “An absurd
fable,” says the Catholic historian, “since Copronymus is chained
with the daemons in the abyss of hell.”

1116 (return) [ He is accused of burning the library of
Constantinople, founded by Julian, with its president and twelve
professors. This eastern Sorbonne had discomfited the Imperial
theologians on the great question of image worship. Schlosser
observes that this accidental fire took place six years after the
emperor had laid the question of image-worship before the
professors. Bilder sturmand Kaiser, p. 294. Compare Le Heau. vol.
xl. p. 156.—M.]

Leo the Fourth, the son of the fifth and the father of the sixth
Constantine, was of a feeble constitution both of mind 1117 and
body, and the principal care of his reign was the settlement of
the succession. The association of the young Constantine was
urged by the officious zeal of his subjects; and the emperor,
conscious of his decay, complied, after a prudent hesitation,
with their unanimous wishes. The royal infant, at the age of five
years, was crowned with his mother Irene; and the national
consent was ratified by every circumstance of pomp and solemnity,
that could dazzle the eyes or bind the conscience of the Greeks.
An oath of fidelity was administered in the palace, the church,
and the hippodrome, to the several orders of the state, who
adjured the holy names of the Son, and mother of God. “Be
witness, O Christ! that we will watch over the safety of
Constantine the son of Leo, expose our lives in his service, and
bear true allegiance to his person and posterity.” They pledged
their faith on the wood of the true cross, and the act of their
engagement was deposited on the altar of St. Sophia. The first to
swear, and the first to violate their oath, were the five sons of
Copronymus by a second marriage; and the story of these princes
is singular and tragic. The right of primogeniture excluded them
from the throne; the injustice of their elder brother defrauded
them of a legacy of about two millions sterling; some vain titles
were not deemed a sufficient compensation for wealth and power;
and they repeatedly conspired against their nephew, before and
after the death of his father. Their first attempt was pardoned;
for the second offence 1118 they were condemned to the
ecclesiastical state; and for the third treason, Nicephorus, the
eldest and most guilty, was deprived of his eyes, and his four
brothers, Christopher, Nicetas, Anthemeus, and Eudoxas, were
punished, as a milder sentence, by the amputation of their
tongues. After five years’ confinement, they escaped to the
church of St. Sophia, and displayed a pathetic spectacle to the
people. “Countrymen and Christians,” cried Nicephorus for himself
and his mute brethren, “behold the sons of your emperor, if you
can still recognize our features in this miserable state. A life,
an imperfect life, is all that the malice of our enemies has
spared. It is now threatened, and we now throw ourselves on your
compassion.” The rising murmur might have produced a revolution,
had it not been checked by the presence of a minister, who
soothed the unhappy princes with flattery and hope, and gently
drew them from the sanctuary to the palace. They were speedily
embarked for Greece, and Athens was allotted for the place of
their exile. In this calm retreat, and in their helpless
condition, Nicephorus and his brothers were tormented by the
thirst of power, and tempted by a Sclavonian chief, who offered
to break their prison, and to lead them in arms, and in the
purple, to the gates of Constantinople. But the Athenian people,
ever zealous in the cause of Irene, prevented her justice or
cruelty; and the five sons of Copronymus were plunged in eternal
darkness and oblivion.

1117 (return) [ Schlosser thinks more highly of Leo’s mind; but
his only proof of his superiority is the successes of his
generals against the Saracens, Schlosser, p. 256.—M.]

1118 (return) [ The second offence was on the accession of the
young Constantine—M.]

For himself, that emperor had chosen a Barbarian wife, the
daughter of the khan of the Chozars; but in the marriage of his
heir, he preferred an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years
old, whose sole fortune must have consisted in her personal
accomplishments. The nuptials of Leo and Irene were celebrated
with royal pomp; she soon acquired the love and confidence of a
feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the empress
guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine the
Sixth, who was no more than ten years of age. During his
childhood, Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her
public administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her
zeal in the restoration of images has deserved the name and
honors of a saint, which she still occupies in the Greek
calendar. But the emperor attained the maturity of youth; the
maternal yoke became more grievous; and he listened to the
favorites of his own age, who shared his pleasures, and were
ambitious of sharing his power. Their reasons convinced him of
his right, their praises of his ability, to reign; and he
consented to reward the services of Irene by a perpetual
banishment to the Isle of Sicily. But her vigilance and
penetration easily disconcerted their rash projects: a similar,
or more severe, punishment was retaliated on themselves and their
advisers; and Irene inflicted on the ungrateful prince the
chastisement of a boy. After this contest, the mother and the son
were at the head of two domestic factions; and instead of mild
influence and voluntary obedience, she held in chains a captive
and an enemy. The empress was overthrown by the abuse of victory;
the oath of fidelity, which she exacted to herself alone, was
pronounced with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the
Armenian guards encouraged a free and general declaration, that
Constantine the Sixth was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In
this character he ascended his hereditary throne, and dismissed
Irene to a life of solitude and repose. But her haughty spirit
condescended to the arts of dissimulation: she flattered the
bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial tenderness of the prince,
regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The
character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit;
but his education had been studiously neglected; and the
ambitious mother exposed to the public censure the vices which
she had nourished, and the actions which she had secretly
advised: his divorce and second marriage offended the prejudices
of the clergy, and by his imprudent rigor he forfeited the
attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy was
formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though
widely diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the
emperor, suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople,
with the design of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this
hasty flight, the empress was left on the brink of the precipice;
yet before she implored the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a
private epistle to the friends whom she had placed about his
person, with a menace, that unless they accomplished, she would
reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered them intrepid; they
seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was transported
to the porphyry apartment of the palace, where he had first seen
the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every
sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her
bloody council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of
the throne: her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and
stabbed their daggers with such violence and precipitation into
his eyes as if they meant to execute a mortal sentence. An
ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded the annalist of the
church that death was the immediate consequence of this barbarous
execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by the
authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the
patroness of images. 1119 Yet the blind son of Irene survived
many years, oppressed by the court and forgotten by the world;
the Isaurian dynasty was silently extinguished; and the memory of
Constantine was recalled only by the nuptials of his daughter
Euphrosyne with the emperor Michael the Second.

1119 (return) [ Gibbon has been attacked on account of this
statement, but is successfully defended by Schlosser. B S. Kaiser
p. 327. Compare Le Beau, c. xii p. 372.—M.]

The most bigoted orthodoxy has justly execrated the unnatural
mother, who may not easily be paralleled in the history of
crimes. To her bloody deed superstition has attributed a
subsequent darkness of seventeen days; during which many vessels
in midday were driven from their course, as if the sun, a globe
of fire so vast and so remote, could sympathize with the atoms of
a revolving planet. On earth, the crime of Irene was left five
years unpunished; her reign was crowned with external splendor;
and if she could silence the voice of conscience, she neither
heard nor regarded the reproaches of mankind. The Roman world
bowed to the government of a female; and as she moved through the
streets of Constantinople, the reins of four milk-white steeds
were held by as many patricians, who marched on foot before the
golden chariot of their queen. But these patricians were for the
most part eunuchs; and their black ingratitude justified, on this
occasion, the popular hatred and contempt. Raised, enriched,
intrusted with the first dignities of the empire, they basely
conspired against their benefactress; the great treasurer
Nicephorus was secretly invested with the purple; her successor
was introduced into the palace, and crowned at St. Sophia by the
venal patriarch. In their first interview, she recapitulated with
dignity the revolutions of her life, gently accused the perfidy
of Nicephorus, insinuated that he owed his life to her
unsuspicious clemency, and for the throne and treasures which she
resigned, solicited a decent and honorable retreat. His avarice
refused this modest compensation; and, in her exile of the Isle
of Lesbos, the empress earned a scanty subsistence by the labors
of her distaff.

Many tyrants have reigned undoubtedly more criminal than
Nicephorus, but none perhaps have more deeply incurred the
universal abhorrence of their people. His character was stained
with the three odious vices of hypocrisy, ingratitude, and
avarice: his want of virtue was not redeemed by any superior
talents, nor his want of talents by any pleasing qualifications.
Unskilful and unfortunate in war, Nicephorus was vanquished by
the Saracens, and slain by the Bulgarians; and the advantage of
his death overbalanced, in the public opinion, the destruction of
a Roman army. 1011 His son and heir Stauracius escaped from the
field with a mortal wound; yet six months of an expiring life
were sufficient to refute his indecent, though popular
declaration, that he would in all things avoid the example of his
father. On the near prospect of his decease, Michael, the great
master of the palace, and the husband of his sister Procopia, was
named by every person of the palace and city, except by his
envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre now falling from his
hand, he conspired against the life of his successor, and
cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman empire.
But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the
people and to remove the scruples of the candidate: Michael the
First accepted the purple, and before he sunk into the grave the
son of Nicephorus implored the clemency of his new sovereign. Had
Michael in an age of peace ascended an hereditary throne, he
might have reigned and died the father of his people: but his
mild virtues were adapted to the shade of private life, nor was
he capable of controlling the ambition of his equals, or of
resisting the arms of the victorious Bulgarians. While his want
of ability and success exposed him to the contempt of the
soldiers, the masculine spirit of his wife Procopia awakened
their indignation. Even the Greeks of the ninth century were
provoked by the insolence of a female, who, in the front of the
standards, presumed to direct their discipline and animate their
valor; and their licentious clamors advised the new Semiramis to
reverence the majesty of a Roman camp. After an unsuccessful
campaign, the emperor left, in their winter-quarters of Thrace, a
disaffected army under the command of his enemies; and their
artful eloquence persuaded the soldiers to break the dominion of
the eunuchs, to degrade the husband of Procopia, and to assert
the right of a military election. They marched towards the
capital: yet the clergy, the senate, and the people of
Constantinople, adhered to the cause of Michael; and the troops
and treasures of Asia might have protracted the mischiefs of
civil war. But his humanity (by the ambitious it will be termed
his weakness) protested that not a drop of Christian blood should
be shed in his quarrel, and his messengers presented the
conquerors with the keys of the city and the palace. They were
disarmed by his innocence and submission; his life and his eyes
were spared; and the Imperial monk enjoyed the comforts of
solitude and religion above thirty-two years after he had been
stripped of the purple and separated from his wife.

1011 (return) [ The Syrian historian Aboulfaradj. Chron. Syr. p.
133, 139, speaks of him as a brave, prudent, and pious prince,
formidable to the Arabs. St. Martin, c. xii. p. 402. Compare
Schlosser, p. 350.—M.]

A rebel, in the time of Nicephorus, the famous and unfortunate
Bardanes, had once the curiosity to consult an Asiatic prophet,
who, after prognosticating his fall, announced the fortunes of
his three principal officers, Leo the Armenian, Michael the
Phrygian, and Thomas the Cappadocian, the successive reigns of
the two former, the fruitless and fatal enterprise of the third.
This prediction was verified, or rather was produced, by the
event. Ten years afterwards, when the Thracian camp rejected the
husband of Procopia, the crown was presented to the same Leo, the
first in military rank and the secret author of the mutiny. As he
affected to hesitate, “With this sword,” said his companion
Michael, “I will open the gates of Constantinople to your
Imperial sway; or instantly plunge it into your bosom, if you
obstinately resist the just desires of your fellow-soldiers.” The
compliance of the Armenian was rewarded with the empire, and he
reigned seven years and a half under the name of Leo the Fifth.
Educated in a camp, and ignorant both of laws and letters, he
introduced into his civil government the rigor and even cruelty
of military discipline; but if his severity was sometimes
dangerous to the innocent, it was always formidable to the
guilty. His religious inconstancy was taxed by the epithet of
Chameleon, but the Catholics have acknowledged by the voice of a
saint and confessors, that the life of the Iconoclast was useful
to the republic. The zeal of his companion Michael was repaid
with riches, honors, and military command; and his subordinate
talents were beneficially employed in the public service. Yet the
Phrygian was dissatisfied at receiving as a favor a scanty
portion of the Imperial prize which he had bestowed on his equal;
and his discontent, which sometimes evaporated in hasty
discourse, at length assumed a more threatening and hostile
aspect against a prince whom he represented as a cruel tyrant.
That tyrant, however, repeatedly detected, warned, and dismissed
the old companion of his arms, till fear and resentment prevailed
over gratitude; and Michael, after a scrutiny into his actions
and designs, was convicted of treason, and sentenced to be burnt
alive in the furnace of the private baths. The devout humanity of
the empress Theophano was fatal to her husband and family. A
solemn day, the twenty-fifth of December, had been fixed for the
execution: she urged, that the anniversary of the Savior’s birth
would be profaned by this inhuman spectacle, and Leo consented
with reluctance to a decent respite. But on the vigil of the
feast his sleepless anxiety prompted him to visit at the dead of
night the chamber in which his enemy was confined: he beheld him
released from his chain, and stretched on his jailer’s bed in a
profound slumber. Leo was alarmed at these signs of security and
intelligence; but though he retired with silent steps, his
entrance and departure were noticed by a slave who lay concealed
in a corner of the prison. Under the pretence of requesting the
spiritual aid of a confessor, Michael informed the conspirators,
that their lives depended on his discretion, and that a few hours
were left to assure their own safety, by the deliverance of their
friend and country. On the great festivals, a chosen band of
priests and chanters was admitted into the palace by a private
gate to sing matins in the chapel; and Leo, who regulated with
the same strictness the discipline of the choir and of the camp,
was seldom absent from these early devotions. In the
ecclesiastical habit, but with their swords under their robes,
the conspirators mingled with the procession, lurked in the
angles of the chapel, and expected, as the signal of murder, the
intonation of the first psalm by the emperor himself. The
imperfect light, and the uniformity of dress, might have favored
his escape, whilst their assault was pointed against a harmless
priest; but they soon discovered their mistake, and encompassed
on all sides the royal victim. Without a weapon and without a
friend, he grasped a weighty cross, and stood at bay against the
hunters of his life; but as he asked for mercy, “This is the
hour, not of mercy, but of vengeance,” was the inexorable reply.
The stroke of a well-aimed sword separated from his body the
right arm and the cross, and Leo the Armenian was slain at the
foot of the altar. A memorable reverse of fortune was displayed
in Michael the Second, who from a defect in his speech was
surnamed the Stammerer. He was snatched from the fiery furnace to
the sovereignty of an empire; and as in the tumult a smith could
not readily be found, the fetters remained on his legs several
hours after he was seated on the throne of the Caesars. The royal
blood which had been the price of his elevation, was unprofitably
spent: in the purple he retained the ignoble vices of his origin;
and Michael lost his provinces with as supine indifference as if
they had been the inheritance of his fathers. His title was
disputed by Thomas, the last of the military triumvirate, who
transported into Europe fourscore thousand Barbarians from the
banks of the Tigris and the shores of the Caspian. He formed the
siege of Constantinople; but the capital was defended with
spiritual and carnal weapons; a Bulgarian king assaulted the camp
of the Orientals, and Thomas had the misfortune, or the weakness,
to fall alive into the power of the conqueror. The hands and feet
of the rebel were amputated; he was placed on an ass, and, amidst
the insults of the people, was led through the streets, which he
sprinkled with his blood. The depravation of manners, as savage
as they were corrupt, is marked by the presence of the emperor
himself. Deaf to the lamentation of a fellow-soldier, he
incessantly pressed the discovery of more accomplices, till his
curiosity was checked by the question of an honest or guilty
minister: “Would you give credit to an enemy against the most
faithful of your friends?” After the death of his first wife, the
emperor, at the request of the senate, drew from her monastery
Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine the Sixth. Her august
birth might justify a stipulation in the marriage-contract, that
her children should equally share the empire with their elder
brother. But the nuptials of Michael and Euphrosyne were barren;
and she was content with the title of mother of Theophilus, his
son and successor.

The character of Theophilus is a rare example in which religious
zeal has allowed, and perhaps magnified, the virtues of a heretic
and a persecutor. His valor was often felt by the enemies, and
his justice by the subjects, of the monarchy; but the valor of
Theophilus was rash and fruitless, and his justice arbitrary and
cruel. He displayed the banner of the cross against the Saracens;
but his five expeditions were concluded by a signal overthrow:
Amorium, the native city of his ancestors, was levelled with the
ground and from his military toils he derived only the surname of
the Unfortunate. The wisdom of a sovereign is comprised in the
institution of laws and the choice of magistrates, and while he
seems without action, his civil government revolves round his
centre with the silence and order of the planetary system. But
the justice of Theophilus was fashioned on the model of the
Oriental despots, who, in personal and irregular acts of
authority, consult the reason or passion of the moment, without
measuring the sentence by the law, or the penalty by the offense.
A poor woman threw herself at the emperor’s feet to complain of a
powerful neighbor, the brother of the empress, who had raised his
palace-wall to such an inconvenient height, that her humble
dwelling was excluded from light and air! On the proof of the
fact, instead of granting, like an ordinary judge, sufficient or
ample damages to the plaintiff, the sovereign adjudged to her use
and benefit the palace and the ground. Nor was Theophilus content
with this extravagant satisfaction: his zeal converted a civil
trespass into a criminal act; and the unfortunate patrician was
stripped and scourged in the public place of Constantinople. For
some venial offenses, some defect of equity or vigilance, the
principal ministers, a 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.

1012 (return) [ In a campaign against the Saracens, he betrayed
both imbecility and cowardice. Genesius, c. iv. p. 94.—M.]

The genealogy of Basil the Macedonian (if it be not the spurious
offspring of pride and flattery) exhibits a genuine picture of
the revolution of the most illustrious families. The Arsacides,
the rivals of Rome, possessed the sceptre of the East near four
hundred years: a younger branch of these Parthian kings continued
to reign in Armenia; and their royal descendants survived the
partition and servitude of that ancient monarchy. Two of these,
Artabanus and Chlienes, escaped or retired to the court of Leo
the First: his bounty seated them in a safe and hospitable exile,
in the province of Macedonia: Adrianople was their final
settlement. During several generations they maintained the
dignity of their birth; and their Roman patriotism rejected the
tempting offers of the Persian and Arabian powers, who recalled
them to their native country. But their splendor was insensibly
clouded by time and poverty; and the father of Basil was reduced
to a small farm, which he cultivated with his own hands: yet he
scorned to disgrace the blood of the Arsacides by a plebeian
alliance: his wife, a widow of Adrianople, was pleased to count
among her ancestors the great Constantine; and their royal infant
was connected by some dark affinity of lineage or country with
the Macedonian Alexander. No sooner was he born, than the cradle
of Basil, his family, and his city, were swept away by an
inundation of the Bulgarians: he was educated a slave in a
foreign land; and in this severe discipline, he acquired the
hardiness of body and flexibility of mind which promoted his
future elevation. In the age of youth or manhood he shared the
deliverance of the Roman captives, who generously broke their
fetters, marched through Bulgaria to the shores of the Euxine,
defeated two armies of Barbarians, embarked in the ships which
had been stationed for their reception, and returned to
Constantinople, from whence they were distributed to their
respective homes. But the freedom of Basil was naked and
destitute: his farm was ruined by the calamities of war: after
his father’s death, his manual labor, or service, could no longer
support a family of orphans and he resolved to seek a more
conspicuous theatre, in which every virtue and every vice may
lead to the paths of greatness. The first night of his arrival at
Constantinople, without friends or money, the weary pilgrim slept
on the steps of the church of St. Diomede: he was fed by the
casual hospitality of a monk; and was introduced to the service
of a cousin and namesake of the emperor Theophilus; who, though
himself of a diminutive person, was always followed by a train of
tall and handsome domestics. Basil attended his patron to the
government of Peloponnesus; eclipsed, by his personal merit the
birth and dignity of Theophilus, and formed a useful connection
with a wealthy and charitable matron of Patras. Her spiritual or
carnal love embraced the young adventurer, whom she adopted as
her son. Danielis presented him with thirty slaves; and the
produce of her bounty was expended in the support of his
brothers, and the purchase of some large estates in Macedonia.
His gratitude or ambition still attached him to the service of
Theophilus; and a lucky accident recommended him to the notice of
the court. A famous wrestler, in the train of the Bulgarian
ambassadors, had defied, at the royal banquet, the boldest and
most robust of the Greeks. The strength of Basil was praised; he
accepted the challenge; and the Barbarian champion was overthrown
at the first onset. A beautiful but vicious horse was condemned
to be hamstrung: it was subdued by the dexterity and courage of
the servant of Theophilus; and his conqueror was promoted to an
honorable rank in the Imperial stables. But it was impossible to
obtain the confidence of Michael, without complying with his
vices; and his new favorite, the great chamberlain of the palace,
was raised and supported by a disgraceful marriage with a royal
concubine, and the dishonor of his sister, who succeeded to her
place. The public administration had been abandoned to the Caesar
Bardas, the brother and enemy of Theodora; but the arts of female
influence persuaded Michael to hate and to fear his uncle: he was
drawn from Constantinople, under the pretence of a Cretan
expedition, and stabbed in the tent of audience, by the sword of
the chamberlain, and in the presence of the emperor. About a
month after this execution, Basil was invested with the title of
Augustus and the government of the empire. He supported this
unequal association till his influence was fortified by popular
esteem. His life was endangered by the caprice of the emperor;
and his dignity was profaned by a second colleague, who had rowed
in the galleys. Yet the murder of his benefactor must be
condemned as an act of ingratitude and treason; and the churches
which he dedicated to the name of St. Michael were a poor and
puerile expiation of his guilt. The different ages of Basil the
First may be compared with those of Augustus. The situation of
the Greek did not allow him in his earliest youth to lead an army
against his country; or to proscribe the nobles of her sons; but
his aspiring genius stooped to the arts of a slave; he dissembled
his ambition and even his virtues, and grasped, with the bloody
hand of an assassin, the empire which he ruled with the wisdom
and tenderness of a parent.

A private citizen may feel his interest repugnant to his duty;
but it must be from a deficiency of sense or courage, that an
absolute monarch can separate his happiness from his glory, or
his glory from the public welfare. The life or panegyric of Basil
has indeed been composed and published under the long reign of
his descendants; but even their stability on the throne may be
justly ascribed to the superior merit of their ancestor. In his
character, his grandson Constantine has attempted to delineate a
perfect image of royalty: but that feeble prince, unless he had
copied a real model, could not easily have soared so high above
the level of his own conduct or conceptions. But the most solid
praise of Basil is drawn from the comparison of a ruined and a
flourishing monarchy, that which he wrested from the dissolute
Michael, and that which he bequeathed to the Mecedonian dynasty.
The evils which had been sanctified by time and example, were
corrected by his master-hand; and he revived, if not the national
spirit, at least the order and majesty of the Roman empire. His
application was indefatigable, his temper cool, his understanding
vigorous and decisive; and in his practice he observed that rare
and salutary moderation, which pursues each virtue, at an equal
distance between the opposite vices. His military service had
been confined to the palace: nor was the emperor endowed with the
spirit or the talents of a warrior. Yet under his reign the Roman
arms were again formidable to the Barbarians. As soon as he had
formed a new army by discipline and exercise, he appeared in
person on the banks of the Euphrates, curbed the pride of the
Saracens, and suppressed the dangerous though just revolt of the
Manichaeans. His indignation against a rebel who had long eluded
his pursuit, provoked him to wish and to pray, that, by the grace
of God, he might drive three arrows into the head of Chrysochir.
That odious head, which had been obtained by treason rather than
by valor, was suspended from a tree, and thrice exposed to the
dexterity of the Imperial archer; a base revenge against the
dead, more worthy of the times than of the character of Basil.
But his principal merit was in the civil administration of the
finances and of the laws. To replenish an exhausted treasury, it
was proposed to resume the lavish and ill-placed gifts of his
predecessor: his prudence abated one moiety of the restitution;
and a sum of twelve hundred thousand pounds was instantly
procured to answer the most pressing demands, and to allow some
space for the mature operations of economy. Among the various
schemes for the improvement of the revenue, a new mode was
suggested of capitation, or tribute, which would have too much
depended on the arbitrary discretion of the assessors. A
sufficient list of honest and able agents was instantly produced
by the minister; but on the more careful scrutiny of Basil
himself, only two could be found, who might be safely intrusted
with such dangerous powers; but they justified his esteem by
declining his confidence. But the serious and successful
diligence of the emperor established by degrees the equitable
balance of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a
peculiar fund was appropriated to each service; and a public
method secured the interest of the prince and the property of the
people. After reforming the luxury, he assigned two patrimonial
estates to supply the decent plenty, of the Imperial table: the
contributions of the subject were reserved for his defence; and
the residue was employed in the embellishment of the capital and
provinces. A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some
praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is
encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or
pleasure: the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is
obvious and solid; and the hundred churches that arose by the
command of Basil were consecrated to the devotion of the age. In
the character of a judge he was assiduous and impartial; desirous
to save, but not afraid to strike: the oppressors of the people
were severely chastised; but his personal foes, whom it might be
unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of their eyes,
to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language and
manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of
Justinian: the voluminous body of his Institutes, Pandects, Code,
and Novels, was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom;
and the Basilics, which were improved and completed by his son
and grandson, must be referred to the original genius of the
founder of their race. This glorious reign was terminated by an
accident in the chase. A furious stag entangled his horns in the
belt of Basil, and raised him from his horse: he was rescued by
an attendant, who cut the belt and slew the animal; but the fall,
or the fever, exhausted the strength of the aged monarch, and he
expired in the palace amidst the tears of his family and people.
If he struck off the head of the faithful servant for presuming
to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of despotism,
which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last moments
of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of
mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his
father, whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering
impostor and a vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was
content with the honors of a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and
Alexander were alike invested with the purple, but the powers of
government were solely exercised by the elder brother. The name
of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the title of
philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the
active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the
perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short
of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and
appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the
pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines;
and even the clemency which he showed, and the peace which he
strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indolence
of his character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his
subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition;
the influence of the clergy, and the errors of the people, were
consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in
prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts
of astrology and divination. If we still inquire the reason of
his sage appellation, it can only be replied, that the son of
Basil was less ignorant than the greater part of his
contemporaries in church and state; that his education had been
directed by the learned Photius; and that several books of
profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or
in the name, of the Imperial philosopher. But the reputation of
his philosophy and religion was overthrown by a domestic vice,
the repetition of his nuptials. The primitive ideas of the merit
and holiness of celibacy were preached by the monks and
entertained by the Greeks. Marriage was allowed as a necessary
means for the propagation of mankind; after the death of either
party, the survivor might satisfy, by a second union, the
weakness or the strength of the flesh: but a third marriage was
censured as a state of legal fornication; and a fourth was a sin
or scandal as yet unknown to the Christians of the East. In the
beginning of his reign, Leo himself had abolished the state of
concubines, and condemned, without annulling, third marriages:
but his patriotism and love soon compelled him to violate his own
laws, and to incur the penance, which in a similar case he had
imposed on his subjects. In his three first alliances, his
nuptial bed was unfruitful; the emperor required a female
companion, and the empire a legitimate heir. The beautiful Zoe
was introduced into the palace as a concubine; and after a trial
of her fecundity, and the birth of Constantine, her lover
declared his intention of legitimating the mother and the child,
by the celebration of his fourth nuptials. But the patriarch
Nicholas refused his blessing: the Imperial baptism of the young
prince was obtained by a promise of separation; and the
contumacious husband of Zoe was excluded from the communion of
the faithful. Neither the fear of exile, nor the desertion of his
brethren, nor the authority of the Latin church, nor the danger
of failure or doubt in the succession to the empire, could bend
the spirit of the inflexible monk. After the death of Leo, he was
recalled from exile to the civil and ecclesiastical
administration; and the edict of union which was promulgated in
the name of Constantine, condemned the future scandal of fourth
marriages, and left a tacit imputation on his own birth. In the
Greek language, purple and porphyry are the same word: and as the
colors of nature are invariable, we may learn, that a dark deep
red was the Tyrian dye which stained the purple of the ancients.
An apartment of the Byzantine palace was lined with porphyry: it
was reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses; and the royal
birth of their children was expressed by the appellation of
porphyrogenite, or born in the purple. Several of the Roman
princes had been blessed with an heir; but this peculiar surname
was first applied to Constantine the Seventh. His life and
titular reign were of equal duration; but of fifty-four years,
six had elapsed before his father’s death; and the son of Leo was
ever the voluntary or reluctant subject of those who oppressed
his weakness or abused his confidence. His uncle Alexander, who
had long been invested with the title of Augustus, was the first
colleague and governor of the young prince: but in a rapid career
of vice and folly, the brother of Leo already emulated the
reputation of Michael; and when he was extinguished by a timely
death, he entertained a project of castrating his nephew, and
leaving the empire to a worthless favorite. The succeeding years
of the minority of Constantine were occupied by his mother Zoe,
and a succession or council of seven regents, who pursued their
interest, gratified their passions, abandoned the republic,
supplanted each other, and finally vanished in the presence of a
soldier. From an obscure origin, Romanus Lecapenus had raised
himself to the command of the naval armies; and in the anarchy of
the times, had deserved, or at least had obtained, the national
esteem. With a victorious and affectionate fleet, he sailed from
the mouth of the Danube into the harbor of Constantinople, and
was hailed as the deliverer of the people, and the guardian of
the prince. His supreme office was at first defined by the new
appellation of father of the emperor; but Romanus soon disdained
the subordinate powers of a minister, and assumed with the titles
of Caesar and Augustus, the full independence of royalty, which
he held near five-and-twenty years. His three sons, Christopher,
Stephen, and Constantine were successively adorned with the same
honors, and the lawful emperor was degraded from the first to the
fifth rank in this college of princes. Yet, in the preservation
of his life and crown, he might still applaud his own fortune and
the clemency of the usurper. The examples of ancient and modern
history would have excused the ambition of Romanus: the powers
and the laws of the empire were in his hand; the spurious birth
of Constantine would have justified his exclusion; and the grave
or the monastery was open to receive the son of the concubine.
But Lecapenus does not appear to have possessed either the
virtues or the vices of a tyrant. The spirit and activity of his
private life dissolved away in the sunshine of the throne; and in
his licentious pleasures, he forgot the safety both of the
republic and of his family. Of a mild and religious character, he
respected the sanctity of oaths, the innocence of the youth, the
memory of his parents, and the attachment of the people. The
studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the
jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil,
were a constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a
scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was
not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a
personal talent, which few princes could employ in the hour of
adversity.

The fall of Romanus was occasioned by his own vices and those of
his children. After the decease of Christopher, his eldest son,
the two surviving brothers quarrelled with each other, and
conspired against their father. At the hour of noon, when all
strangers were regularly excluded from the palace, they entered
his apartment with an armed force, and conveyed him, in the habit
of a monk, to a small island in the Propontis, which was peopled
by a religious community. The rumor of this domestic revolution
excited a tumult in the city; but Porphyrogenitus alone, the true
and lawful emperor, was the object of the public care; and the
sons of Lecapenus were taught, by tardy experience, that they had
achieved a guilty and perilous enterprise for the benefit of
their rival. Their sister Helena, the wife of Constantine,
revealed, or supposed, their treacherous design of assassinating
her husband at the royal banquet. His loyal adherents were
alarmed, and the two usurpers were prevented, seized, degraded
from the purple, and embarked for the same island and monastery
where their father had been so lately confined. Old Romanus met
them on the beach with a sarcastic smile, and, after a just
reproach of their folly and ingratitude, presented his Imperial
colleagues with an equal share of his water and vegetable diet.
In the fortieth year of his reign, Constantine the Seventh
obtained the possession of the Eastern world, which he ruled or
seemed to rule, near fifteen years. But he was devoid of that
energy of character which could emerge into a life of action and
glory; and the studies, which had amused and dignified his
leisure, were incompatible with the serious duties of a
sovereign. The emperor neglected the practice to instruct his son
Romanus in the theory of government; while he indulged the habits
of intemperance and sloth, he dropped the reins of the
administration into the hands of Helena his wife; and, in the
shifting scene of her favor and caprice, each minister was
regretted in the promotion of a more worthless successor. Yet the
birth and misfortunes of Constantine had endeared him to the
Greeks; they excused his failings; they respected his learning,
his innocence, and charity, his love of justice; and the ceremony
of his funeral was mourned with the unfeigned tears of his
subjects. The body, according to ancient custom, lay in state in
the vestibule of the palace; and the civil and military officers,
the patricians, the senate, and the clergy approached in due
order to adore and kiss the inanimate corpse of their sovereign.
Before the procession moved towards the Imperial sepulchre, a
herald proclaimed this awful admonition: “Arise, O king of the
world, and obey the summons of the King of kings!”

The death of Constantine was imputed to poison; and his son
Romanus, who derived that name from his maternal grandfather,
ascended the throne of Constantinople. A prince who, at the age
of twenty, could be suspected of anticipating his inheritance,
must have been already lost in the public esteem; yet Romanus was
rather weak than wicked; and the largest share of the guilt was
transferred to his wife, Theophano, a woman of base origin
masculine spirit, and flagitious manners. The sense of personal
glory and public happiness, the true pleasures of royalty, were
unknown to the son of Constantine; and, while the two brothers,
Nicephorus and Leo, triumphed over the Saracens, the hours which
the emperor owed to his people were consumed in strenuous
idleness. In the morning he visited the circus; at noon he
feasted the senators; the greater part of the afternoon he spent
in the sphoeristerium, or tennis-court, the only theatre of his
victories; from thence he passed over to the Asiatic side of the
Bosphorus, hunted and killed four wild boars of the largest size,
and returned to the palace, proudly content with the labors of
the day. In strength and beauty he was conspicuous above his
equals: tall and straight as a young cypress, his complexion was
fair and florid, his eyes sparkling, his shoulders broad, his
nose long and aquiline. Yet even these perfections were
insufficient to fix the love of Theophano; and, after a reign of
four 1013 years, she mingled for her husband the same deadly
draught which she had composed for his father.

1013 (return) [ Three years and five months. Leo Diaconus in
Niebuhr. Byz p. 50—M.]

By his marriage with this impious woman, Romanus the younger left
two sons, Basil the Second and Constantine the Ninth, and two
daughters, Theophano and Anne. The eldest sister was given to
Otho the Second, emperor of the West; the younger became the wife
of Wolodomir, great duke and apostle of russia, and by the
marriage of her granddaughter with Henry the First, king of
France, the blood of the Macedonians, and perhaps of the
Arsacides, still flows in the veins of the Bourbon line. After
the death of her husband, the empress aspired to reign in the
name of her sons, the elder of whom was five, and the younger
only two, years of age; but she soon felt the instability of a
throne which was supported by a female who could not be esteemed,
and two infants who could not be feared. Theophano looked around
for a protector, and threw herself into the arms of the bravest
soldier; her heart was capacious; but the deformity of the new
favorite rendered it more than probable that interest was the
motive and excuse of her love. Nicephorus Phocus united, in the
popular opinion, the double merit of a hero and a saint. In the
former character, his qualifications were genuine and splendid:
the descendant of a race illustrious by their military exploits,
he had displayed in every station and in every province the
courage of a soldier and the conduct of a chief; and Nicephorus
was crowned with recent laurels, from the important conquest of
the Isle of Crete. His religion was of a more ambiguous cast; and
his hair-cloth, his fasts, his pious idiom, and his wish to
retire from the business of the world, were a convenient mask for
his dark and dangerous ambition. Yet he imposed on a holy
patriarch, by whose influence, and by a decree of the senate, he
was intrusted, during the minority of the young princes, with the
absolute and independent command of the Oriental armies. As soon
as he had secured the leaders and the troops, he boldly marched
to Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his
correspondence with the empress, and without degrading her sons,
assumed, with the title of Augustus, the preeminence of rank and
the plenitude of power. But his marriage with Theophano was
refused by the same patriarch who had placed the crown on his
head: by his second nuptials he incurred a year of canonical
penance; 1014 a bar of spiritual affinity was opposed to their
celebration; and some evasion and perjury were required to
silence the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity of
the emperor was lost in the purple: in a reign of six years he
provoked the hatred of strangers and subjects: and the hypocrisy
and avarice of the first Nicephorus were revived in his
successor. Hypocrisy I shall never justify or palliate; but I
will dare to observe, that the odious vice of avarice is of all
others most hastily arraigned, and most unmercifully condemned.
In a private citizen, our judgment seldom expects an accurate
scrutiny into his fortune and expense; and in a steward of the
public treasure, frugality is always a virtue, and the increase
of taxes too often an indispensable duty. In the use of his
patrimony, the generous temper of Nicephorus had been proved; and
the revenue was strictly applied to the service of the state:
each spring the emperor marched in person against the Saracens;
and every Roman might compute the employment of his taxes in
triumphs, conquests, and the security of the Eastern barrier.
1015

1014 (return) [ The canonical objection to the marriage was his
relation of Godfather sons. Leo Diac. p. 50.—M.]

1015 (return) [ He retook Antioch, and brought home as a trophy
the sword of “the most unholy and impious Mahomet.” Leo Diac. p.
76.—M.]

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

Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under
his standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and
obtained the most eminent rewards. The stature of John Zimisces
was below the ordinary standard: but this diminutive body was
endowed with strength, beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the
jealousy of the emperor’s brother, he was degraded from the
office of general of the East, to that of director of the posts,
and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and exile. But
Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the empress: on
her intercession, he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon, in the
neighborhood of the capital: her bounty was repaid in his
clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano
consented, with alacrity, to the death of an ugly and penurious
husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her
most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night,
Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small
boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and
silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the
female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings
of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the
fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect
Nicephorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every door was
open to the assassins. As he slept on a bear-skin on the ground,
he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and thirty daggers
glittered before his eyes. It is doubtful whether Zimisces
imbrued his hands in the blood of his sovereign; but he enjoyed
the inhuman spectacle of revenge. 1016 The murder was protracted
by insult and cruelty: and as soon as the head of Nicephorus was
shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and the Armenian
was emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he was
stopped on the threshold of St. Sophia, by the intrepid
patriarch; who charged his conscience with the deed of treason
and blood; and required, as a sign of repentance, that he should
separate himself from his more criminal associate. This sally of
apostolic zeal was not offensive to the prince, since he could
neither love nor trust a woman who had repeatedly violated the
most sacred obligations; and Theophano, instead of sharing his
imperial fortune, was dismissed with ignominy from his bed and
palace. In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and
impotent rage; accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted,
with words and blows, her son Basil, as he stood silent and
submissive in the presence of a superior colleague; and avowed
her own prostitution in proclaiming the illegitimacy of his
birth. The public indignation was appeased by her exile, and the
punishment of the meaner accomplices: the death of an unpopular
prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten in
the splendor of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less
useful to the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his
gentle and generous behavior delighted all who approached his
person; and it was only in the paths of victory that he trod in
the footsteps of his predecessor. The greatest part of his reign
was employed in the camp and the field: his personal valor and
activity were signalized on the Danube and the Tigris, the
ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double triumph
over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of
savior of the empire, and conqueror of the East. In his last
return from Syria, he observed that the most fruitful lands of
his new provinces were possessed by the eunuchs. “And is it for
them,” he exclaimed, with honest indignation, “that we have
fought and conquered? Is it for them that we shed our blood, and
exhaust the treasures of our people?” The complaint was reechoed
to the palace, and the death of Zimisces is strongly marked with
the suspicion of poison.

1016 (return) [ According to Leo Diaconus, Zimisces, after
ordering the wounded emperor to be dragged to his feet, and
heaping him with insult, to which the miserable man only replied
by invoking the name of the “mother of God,” with his own hand
plucked his beard, while his accomplices beat out his teeth with
the hilts of their swords, and then trampling him to the ground,
drove his sword into his skull. Leo Diac, in Niebuhr Byz. Hist. l
vii. c. 8. p. 88.—M.]

Under this usurpation, or regency, of twelve years, the two
lawful emperors, Basil and Constantine, had silently grown to the
age of manhood. Their tender years had been incapable of
dominion: the respectful modesty of their attendance and
salutation was due to the age and merit of their guardians; the
childless ambition of those guardians had no temptation to
violate their right of succession: their patrimony was ably and
faithfully administered; and the premature death of Zimisces was
a loss, rather than a benefit, to the sons of Romanus. Their want
of experience detained them twelve years longer the obscure and
voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by
persuading them to indulge the pleasures of youth, and to disdain
the labors of government. In this silken web, the weakness of
Constantine was forever entangled; but his elder brother felt the
impulse of genius and the desire of action; he frowned, and the
minister was no more. Basil was the acknowledged sovereign of
Constantinople and the provinces of Europe; but Asia was
oppressed by two veteran generals, Phocas and Sclerus, who,
alternately friends and enemies, subjects and rebels, maintained
their independence, and labored to emulate the example of
successful usurpation. Against these domestic enemies the son of
Romanus first drew his sword, and they trembled in the presence
of a lawful and high-spirited prince. The first, in the front of
battle, was thrown from his horse, by the stroke of poison, or an
arrow; the second, who had been twice loaded with chains, 1017
and twice invested with the purple, was desirous of ending in
peace the small remainder of his days. As the aged suppliant
approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering steps, leaning
on his two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the insolence of
youth and power, “And is this the man who has so long been the
object of our terror?” After he had confirmed his own authority,
and the peace of the empire, the trophies of Nicephorus and
Zimisces would not suffer their royal pupil to sleep in the
palace. His long and frequent expeditions against the Saracens
were rather glorious than useful to the empire; but the final
destruction of the kingdom of Bulgaria appears, since the time of
Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms. Yet,
instead of applauding their victorious prince, his subjects
detested the rapacious and rigid avarice of Basil; and in the
imperfect narrative of his exploits, we can only discern the
courage, patience, and ferociousness of a soldier. A vicious
education, which could not subdue his spirit, had clouded his
mind; he was ignorant of every science; and the remembrance of
his learned and feeble grandsire might encourage his real or
affected contempt of laws and lawyers, of artists and arts. Of
such a character, in such an age, superstition took a firm and
lasting possession; after the first license of his youth, Basil
the Second devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the
penance of a hermit, wore the monastic habit under his robes and
armor, observed a vow of continence, and imposed on his appetites
a perpetual abstinence from wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth
year of his age, his martial spirit urged him to embark in person
for a holy war against the Saracens of Sicily; he was prevented
by death, and Basil, surnamed the Slayer of the Bulgarians, was
dismissed from the world with the blessings of the clergy and the
curse of the people. After his decease, his brother Constantine
enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures,
of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the
succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus;
and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most
obscure, of the Byzantine history.

1017 (return) [ Once by the caliph, once by his rival Phocas.
Compare De Beau l. p. 176.—M.]

A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period of one hundred
and sixty years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks to the
Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice respected by the
usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine the
Ninth, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene
presents itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do
not equal the space of his single reign. His elder brother had
preferred his private chastity to the public interest, and
Constantine himself had only three daughters; Eudocia, who took
the veil, and Zoe and Theodora, who were preserved till a mature
age in a state of ignorance and virginity. When their marriage
was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold or
pious Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her
sister Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar.
Romanus Argyrus, a patrician of a graceful person and fair
reputation, was chosen for her husband, and, on his declining
that honor, was informed, that blindness or death was the second
alternative. The motive of his reluctance was conjugal affection
but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to his safety
and greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed the only
bar to the Imperial nuptials. After the decease of Constantine,
the sceptre devolved to Romanus the Third; but his labors at home
and abroad were equally feeble and fruitless; and the mature age,
the forty-eight years of Zoe, were less favorable to the hopes of
pregnancy than to the indulgence of pleasure. Her favorite
chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian of the name of Michael,
whose first trade had been that of a money-changer; and Romanus,
either from gratitude or equity, connived at their criminal
intercourse, or accepted a slight assurance of their innocence.
But Zoe soon justified the Roman maxim, that every adulteress is
capable of poisoning her husband; and the death of Romanus was
instantly followed by the scandalous marriage and elevation of
Michael the Fourth. The expectations of Zoe were, however,
disappointed: instead of a vigorous and grateful lover, she had
placed in her bed a miserable wretch, whose health and reason
were impaired by epileptic fits, and whose conscience was
tormented by despair and remorse. The most skilful physicians of
the mind and body were summoned to his aid; and his hopes were
amused by frequent pilgrimages to the baths, and to the tombs of
the most popular saints; the monks applauded his penance, and,
except restitution, (but to whom should he have restored?)
Michael sought every method of expiating his guilt. While he
groaned and prayed in sackcloth and ashes, his brother, the
eunuch John, smiled at his remorse, and enjoyed the harvest of a
crime of which himself was the secret and most guilty author. His
administration was only the art of satiating his avarice, and Zoe
became a captive in the palace of her fathers, and in the hands
of her slaves. When he perceived the irretrievable decline of his
brother’s health, he introduced his nephew, another Michael, who
derived his surname of Calaphates from his father’s occupation in
the careening of vessels: at the command of the eunuch, Zoe
adopted for her son the son of a mechanic; and this fictitious
heir was invested with the title and purple of the Caesars, in
the presence of the senate and clergy. So feeble was the
character of Zoe, that she was oppressed by the liberty and power
which she recovered by the death of the Paphlagonian; and at the
end of four days, she placed the crown on the head of Michael the
Fifth, who had protested, with tears and oaths, that he should
ever reign the first and most obedient of her subjects.

The only act of his short reign was his base ingratitude to his
benefactors, the eunuch and the empress. The disgrace of the
former was pleasing to the public: but the murmurs, and at length
the clamors, of Constantinople deplored the exile of Zoe, the
daughter of so many emperors; her vices were forgotten, and
Michael was taught, that there is a period in which the patience
of the tamest slaves rises into fury and revenge. The citizens of
every degree assembled in a formidable tumult which lasted three
days; they besieged the palace, forced the gates, recalled their
mothers, Zoe from her prison, Theodora from her monastery, and
condemned the son of Calaphates to the loss of his eyes or of his
life. For the first time the Greeks beheld with surprise the two
royal sisters seated on the same throne, presiding in the senate,
and giving audience to the ambassadors of the nations. But the
singular union subsisted no more than two months; the two
sovereigns, their tempers, interests, and adherents, were
secretly hostile to each other; and as Theodora was still averse
to marriage, the indefatigable Zoe, at the age of sixty,
consented, for the public good, to sustain the embraces of a
third husband, and the censures of the Greek church. His name and
number were Constantine the Tenth, and the epithet of Monomachus,
the single combatant, must have been expressive of his valor and
victory in some public or private quarrel. But his health was
broken by the tortures of the gout, and his dissolute reign was
spent in the alternative of sickness and pleasure. A fair and
noble widow had accompanied Constantine in his exile to the Isle
of Lesbos, and Sclerena gloried in the appellation of his
mistress. After his marriage and elevation, she was invested with
the title and pomp of Augusta, and occupied a contiguous
apartment in the palace. The lawful consort (such was the
delicacy or corruption of Zoe) consented to this strange and
scandalous partition; and the emperor appeared in public between
his wife and his concubine. He survived them both; but the last
measures of Constantine to change the order of succession were
prevented by the more vigilant friends of Theodora; and after his
decease, she resumed, with the general consent, the possession of
her inheritance. In her name, and by the influence of four
eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen
months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they
persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael
the Sixth. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military
profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see
with the eyes, and execute with the hands, of his ministers.
Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the
last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily
reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive
period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below
the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of
cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.

From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of
spirit, begins to emerge: the Greeks either preserved or revived
the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary
virtue: and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliances of
the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni,
who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed
the honor of a Roman origin: but the family had been long since
transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was
situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighborhood of the
Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the
paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret,
the modest though honorable dwelling of his fathers. The first of
their line was the illustrious Manuel, who in the reign of the
second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the
troubles of the East: he left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac
and John, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed
to the gratitude and favor of his sovereign. The noble youths
were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts
of the palace, and the exercises of the camp: and from the
domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the
command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled
the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient
nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers,
with a captive princess of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a
patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon from the number of
enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had
served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters; the
elevation of Michael the Sixth was a personal insult to the more
deserving generals; and their discontent was inflamed by the
parsimony of the emperor and the insolence of the eunuchs. They
secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes
of the military synod would have been unanimous in favor of the
old and valiant Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the
veteran had not suggested the importance of birth as well as
merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnenus was approved
by general consent, and the associates separated without delay to
meet in the plains of Phrygia at the head of their respective
squadrons and detachments. The cause of Michael was defended in a
single battle by the mercenaries of the Imperial guard, who were
aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle
of honor and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the
emperor solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the
moderation of the Comnenian. But the former was betrayed by his
ambassadors, and the latter was prevented by his friends. The
solitary Michael submitted to the voice of the people; the
patriarch annulled their oath of allegiance; and as he shaved the
head of the royal monk, congratulated his beneficial exchange of
temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven; an exchange, however,
which the priest, on his own account, would probably have
declined. By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac Comnenus was
solemnly crowned; the sword which he inscribed on his coins might
be an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquest; but
this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic
enemies of the state. The decline of his health and vigor
suspended the operation of active virtue; and the prospect of
approaching death determined him to interpose some moments
between life and eternity. But instead of leaving the empire as
the marriage portion of his daughter, his reason and inclination
concurred in the preference of his brother John, a soldier, a
patriot, and the father of five sons, the future pillars of an
hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might be the
natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate
and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show
of virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty,
and a rare offence against his family and country. The purple
which he had refused was accepted by Constantine Ducas, a friend
of the Comnenian house, and whose noble birth was adorned with
the experience and reputation of civil policy. In the monastic
habit, Isaac recovered his health, and survived two years his
voluntary abdication. At the command of his abbot, he observed
the rule of St. Basil, and executed the most servile offices of
the convent: but his latent vanity was gratified by the frequent
and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in his
person the character of a benefactor and a saint. If Constantine
the Eleventh were indeed the subject most worthy of empire, we
must pity the debasement of the age and nation in which he was
chosen. In the labor of puerile declamations he sought, without
obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious, in his opinion,
than that of Rome; and in the subordinate functions of a judge,
he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior. Far from
imitating the patriotic indifference of the authors of his
greatness, Ducas was anxious only to secure, at the expense of
the republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His three
sons, Michael the Seventh, Andronicus the First, and Constantine
the Twelfth, were invested, in a tender age, with the equal title
of Augustus; and the succession was speedily opened by their
father’s death. His widow, Eudocia, was intrusted with the
administration; but experience had taught the jealousy of the
dying monarch to protect his sons from the danger of her second
nuptials; and her solemn engagement, attested by the principal
senators, was deposited in the hands of the patriarch. Before the
end of seven months, the wants of Eudocia, or those of the state,
called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier; and her heart had
already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from the
scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a treasonable attempt
had exposed him to the severity of the laws: his beauty and valor
absolved him in the eyes of the empress; and Romanus, from a mild
exile, was recalled on the second day to the command of the
Oriental armies.

Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public; and the promise
which would have betrayed her falsehood and levity, was stolen by
a dexterous emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Xiphilin
at first alleged the sanctity of oaths, and the sacred nature of
a trust; but a whisper, that his brother was the future emperor,
relaxed his scruples, and forced him to confess that the public
safety was the supreme law. He resigned the important paper; and
when his hopes were confounded by the nomination of Romanus, he
could no longer regain his security, retract his declarations,
nor oppose the second nuptials of the empress. Yet a murmur was
heard in the palace; and the Barbarian guards had raised their
battle-axes in the cause of the house of Lucas, till the young
princes were soothed by the tears of their mother and the solemn
assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the
Imperial station with dignity and honor. Hereafter I shall relate
his valiant, but unsuccessful, efforts to resist the progress of
the Turks. His defeat and captivity inflicted a deadly wound on
the Byzantine monarchy of the East; and after he was released
from the chains of the sultan, he vainly sought his wife and his
subjects. His wife had been thrust into a monastery, and the
subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of the civil
law, that a prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived, as by
the stroke of death, of all the public and private rights of a
citizen. In the general consternation, the Caesar John asserted
the indefeasible right of his three nephews: Constantinople
listened to his voice: and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in
the capital, and received on the frontier, as an enemy of the
republic. Romanus was not more fortunate in domestic than in
foreign war: the loss of two battles compelled him to yield, on
the assurance of fair and honorable treatment; but his enemies
were devoid of faith or humanity; and, after the cruel extinction
of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and corrupt, till in
a few days he was relieved from a state of misery. Under the
triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers were
reduced to the vain honors of the purple; but the eldest, the
pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman
sceptre; and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach
which he shared with an avaricious favorite, who enhanced the
price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of
Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia
made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric; but his
character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a
monk and the learning of a sophist. Strong in the contempt of
their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head
of the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at
Adrianople and Nice. Their revolt was in the same months; they
bore the same name of Nicephorus; but the two candidates were
distinguished by the surnames of Bryennius and Botaniates; the
former in the maturity of wisdom and courage, the latter
conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While
Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active
competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The
name of Bryennius was illustrious; his cause was popular; but his
licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and
pillaging a suburb; and the people, who would have hailed the
rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This
change of the public opinion was favorable to Botaniates, who at
length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of
Chalcedon. A formal invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the
synod, and the senate, was circulated through the streets of
Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the dome of St.
Sophia, debated, with order and calmness, on the choice of their
sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this
unarmed multitude; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own
moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was
rewarded with the monastic habit, and the title of Archbishop of
Ephesus. He left a son, a Constantine, born and educated in the
purple; and a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the
blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.

John Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in
peace and dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his
wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and a policy, he left
eight children: the three daughters multiplied the Comnenian
alliance with the noblest of the Greeks: of the five sons, Manuel
was stopped by a premature death; Isaac and Alexius restored the
Imperial greatness of their house, which was enjoyed without toil
or danger by the two younger brethren, Adrian and Nicephorus.
Alexius, the third and most illustrious of the brothers was
endowed by nature with the choicest gifts both of mind and body:
they were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the
school of obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from
the perils of the Turkish war, by the paternal care of the
emperor Romanus: but the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring
face, was accused of treason, and banished, by the sons of Ducas,
to an island in the Propontis. The two brothers soon emerged into
favor and action, fought by each other’s side against the rebels
and Barbarians, and adhered to the emperor Michael, till he was
deserted by the world and by himself. In his first interview with
Botaniates, “Prince,” said Alexius with a noble frankness, “my
duty rendered me your enemy; the decrees of God and of the people
have made me your subject. Judge of my future loyalty by my past
opposition.” The successor of Michael entertained him with esteem
and confidence: his valor was employed against three rebels, who
disturbed the peace of the empire, or at least of the emperors.
Ursel, Bryennius, and Basilacius, were formidable by their
numerous forces and military fame: they were successively
vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of the
throne; and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid
and cruel court, they applauded the clemency, as well as the
courage, of their conqueror. But the loyalty of the Comneni was
soon tainted by fear and suspicion; nor is it easy to settle
between a subject and a despot, the debt of gratitude, which the
former is tempted to claim by a revolt, and the latter to
discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexius to march
against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed the
merit or memory of his past services: the favorites of Botaniates
provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused; and the
retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of
their life and liberty. The women of the family were deposited in
a sanctuary, respected by tyrants: the men, mounted on horseback,
sallied from the city, and erected the standard of civil war. The
soldiers who had been gradually assembled in the capital and the
neighborhood, were devoted to the cause of a victorious and
injured leader: the ties of common interest and domestic alliance
secured the attachment of the house of Ducas; and the generous
dispute of the Comneni was terminated by the decisive resolution
of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger brother with
the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to Constantinople,
to threaten rather than besiege that impregnable fortress; but
the fidelity of the guards was corrupted; a gate was surprised,
and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George
Palaeologus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing
that he labored for his posterity. Alexius ascended the throne;
and his aged competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of
various nations was gratified with the pillage of the city; but
the public disorders were expiated by the tears and fasts of the
Comneni, who submitted to every penance compatible with the
possession of the empire. The life of the emperor Alexius has
been delineated by a favorite daughter, who was inspired by a
tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate
his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers, the
princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests, that, besides her
personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings
of the most respectable veterans: and after an interval of thirty
years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful
solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the
naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of
her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative
which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and
science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The
genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of
virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology
awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the historian
and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her
judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times
were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every
calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on
his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his
predecessors. In the East, the victorious Turks had spread, from
Persia to the Hellespont, the reign of the Koran and the
Crescent: the West was invaded by the adventurous valor of the
Normans; and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth
new swarms, who had gained, in the science of war, what they had
lost in the ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less
hostile than the land; and while the frontiers were assaulted by
an open enemy, the palace was distracted with secret treason and
conspiracy. On a sudden, the banner of the Cross was displayed by
the Latins; Europe was precipitated on Asia; and Constantinople
had almost been swept away by this impetuous deluge. In the
tempest, Alexius steered the Imperial vessel with dexterity and
courage. At the head of his armies, he was bold in action,
skilful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his
advantages, and rising from his defeats with inexhaustible vigor.
The discipline of the camp was revived, and a new generation of
men and soldiers was created by the example and precepts of their
leader. In his intercourse with the Latins, Alexius was patient
and artful: his discerning eye pervaded the new system of an
unknown world and I shall hereafter describe the superior policy
with which he balanced the interests and passions of the
champions of the first crusade. In a long reign of thirty-seven
years, he subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals: the laws
of public and private order were restored: the arts of wealth and
science were cultivated: the limits of the empire were enlarged
in Europe and Asia; and the Comnenian sceptre was transmitted to
his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the
difficulties of the times betrayed some defects in his character;
and have exposed his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach.
The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his
daughter so often bestows on a flying hero: the weakness or
prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of
personal courage; and his political arts are branded by the
Latins with the names of deceit and dissimulation. The increase
of the male and female branches of his family adorned the throne,
and secured the succession; but their princely luxury and pride
offended the patricians, exhausted the revenue, and insulted the
misery of the people. Anna is a faithful witness that his
happiness was destroyed, and his health was broken, by the cares
of a public life; the patience of Constantinople was fatigued by
the length and severity of his reign; and before Alexius expired,
he had lost the love and reverence of his subjects. The clergy
could not forgive his application of the sacred riches to the
defence of the state; but they applauded his theological learning
and ardent zeal for the orthodox faith, which he defended with
his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by
the superstition of the Greeks; and the same inconsistent
principle of human nature enjoined the emperor to found a
hospital for the poor and infirm, and to direct the execution of
a heretic, who was burned alive in the square of St. Sophia. Even
the sincerity of his moral and religious virtues was suspected by
the persons who had passed their lives in his familiar
confidence. In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife
Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a
pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant
reply of the empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb,
“You die, as you have lived—A Hypocrite!”

It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving
sons, in favor of her daughter the princess Anne whose philosophy
would not have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of
male succession was asserted by the friends of their country; the
lawful heir drew the royal signet from the finger of his
insensible or conscious father and the empire obeyed the master
of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated by ambition and
revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and when the
design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she
passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes,
and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons
of Alexius, John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the
hereditary virtue of their race, and the younger brother was
content with the title of Sebastocrator, which approached the
dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same
person the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately
united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive
stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes, or
John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously
applied to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her
treason, the life and fortune of Anne were justly forfeited to
the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but
he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the
rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That
respectable friend Axuch, a slave of Turkish extraction, presumed
to decline the gift, and to intercede for the criminal: his
generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his
favorite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was
the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example
of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by
conspiracy or rebellion: feared by his nobles, beloved by his
people, John was never reduced to the painful necessity of
punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies. During his
government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was
abolished in the Roman empire, a law of mercy most delightful to
the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and
vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety.
Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal,
abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the
artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not
borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately
magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people,
so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince,
innocence had nothing to fear, and merit had every thing to hope;
and, without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he
introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the public and
private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this
accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds, the love
of arms and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John
the Handsome may be justified, at least in their principle, by
the necessity of repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the
Bosphorus. The sultan of Iconium was confined to his capital, the
Barbarians were driven to the mountains, and the maritime
provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient blessings of their
deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and Aleppo, he
repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and in the
sieges and battles of this holy war, his Latin allies were
astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek. As he
began to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient
limits of the empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates
and Tigris, the dominion of Syria, and the conquest of Jerusalem,
the thread of his life and of the public felicity was broken by a
singular accident. He hunted the wild boar in the valley of
Anazarbus, and had fixed his javelin in the body of the furious
animal; but in the struggle a poisoned arrow dropped from his
quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced a
mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the
Comnenian princes.

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

A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the
Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or
affection preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying
prince was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valor
of his favorite in the Turkish war. The faithful Axuch hastened
to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in honorable
confinement, and purchased, with a gift of two hundred pounds of
silver, the leading ecclesiastics of St. Sophia, who possessed a
decisive voice in the consecration of an emperor. With his
veteran and affectionate troops, Manuel soon visited
Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the title of
Sebastocrator; his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial
graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the
flattering promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the
activity and vigor of youth. By the experience of his government,
they were taught, that he emulated the spirit, and shared the
talents, of his father whose social virtues were buried in the
grave. A reign of thirty seven years is filled by a perpetual
though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the
hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Manuel
were exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the
coast of Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece:
the influence of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome
and Russia; and the Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an
object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe.
Educated in the silk and purple of the East, Manuel possessed the
iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled,
except in the lives of Richard the First of England, and of
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise
in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was
incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor.
In a famous tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser,
and overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the
Italian knights. The first in the charge, the last in the
retreat, his friends and his enemies alike trembled, the former
for his safety, and the latter for their own. After posting an
ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some perilous
adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful
Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen,
after a short combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the
enemy increased; the march of the reenforcement was tardy and
fearful, and Manuel, without receiving a wound, cut his way
through a squadron of five hundred Turks. In a battle against the
Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched
a standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost
alone, who passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy. In
the same country, after transporting his army beyond the Save, he
sent back the boats, with an order under pain of death, to their
commander, that he should leave him to conquer or die on that
hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a captive
galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against the
volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian
admiral enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In
one day, he is said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians
with his own hand; he returned to the camp, dragging along four
Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his saddle:
he was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat;
and the gigantic champions, who encountered his arm, were
transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword, of the
invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as a
model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a
reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not,
to vindicate their credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe,
that, in the long series of their annals, Manuel is the only
prince who has been the subject of similar exaggeration. With the
valor of a soldier, he did not unite the skill or prudence of a
general; his victories were not productive of any permanent or
useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last
unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains
of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the
sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel,
is the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness
and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he
appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in
the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men
and horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the
camp. No sooner did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned
himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury: the
expense of his dress, his table, and his palace, surpassed the
measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were idly
wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous
love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and
dissolute prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes;
and Manuel, in the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured
a bitter reproach from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he
quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of a fountain
was mingled with Christian blood. “It is not the first time,”
exclaimed a voice from the crowd, “that you have drank, O
emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects.” Manuel Comnenus
was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha or Irene of Germany,
and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of
Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for
Bela, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople
under the name of Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials
might have transferred the Roman sceptre to a race of free and
warlike Barbarians. But as soon as Maria of Antioch had given a
son and heir to the empire, the presumptive rights of Bela were
abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride; but the
Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers,
and displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of
the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and at the age of
ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his father’s
decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.

The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had
been sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion.
By ambition, Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and
rebellion, from whence he was reclaimed by the firmness and
clemency of John the Handsome. The errors of Isaac, the father of
the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial; but John, the
elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion. Provoked by a
real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman
to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan’s
daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of
a princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the
Second boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family.
Andronicus, the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and
grandson of Alexius Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous
characters of the age; and his genuine adventures might form the
subject of a very singular romance. To justify the choice of
three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me to observe,
that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions of
strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic
muscles, and the air and deportment of a soldier. The
preservation, in his old age, of health and vigor, was the reward
of temperance and exercise. A piece of bread and a draught of
water was often his sole and evening repast; and if he tasted of
a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands,
it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous in
arms, he was ignorant of fear; his persuasive eloquence could
bend to every situation and character of life, his style, though
not his practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and,
in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to
contrive, and a hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of
the emperor John, he followed the retreat of the Roman army; but,
in the march through Asia Minor, design or accident tempted him
to wander in the mountains: the hunter was encompassed by the
Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some time a reluctant or
willing captive in the power of the sultan. His virtues and vices
recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared the perils
and the pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived in
public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her
sister Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the
decencies of her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his
concubine; and both the palace and the camp could witness that
she slept, or watched, in the arms of her lover. She accompanied
him to his military command of Cilicia, the first scene of his
valor and imprudence. He pressed, with active ardor, the siege of
Mopsuestia: the day was employed in the boldest attacks; but the
night was wasted in song and dance; and a band of Greek comedians
formed the choicest part of his retinue. Andronicus was surprised
by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled in
disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of
the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia,
he was received by Manuel with public smiles and a private
reproof; but the duchies of Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria,
were the reward or consolation of the unsuccessful general.
Eudocia still attended his motions: at midnight, their tent was
suddenly attacked by her angry brothers, impatient to expiate her
infamy in his blood: his daring spirit refused her advice, and
the disguise of a female habit; and, boldly starting from his
couch, he drew his sword, and cut his way through the numerous
assassins. It was here that he first betrayed his ingratitude and
treachery: he engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the
king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the royal tent
at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal
foe; and imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an
instrument of flight and safety. The monarch dissembled his
suspicions; but, after the close of the campaign, Andronicus was
arrested and strictly confined in a tower of the palace of
Constantinople.

In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful
restraint, from which the thirst of action and pleasure
perpetually urged him to escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived
some broken bricks in a corner of the chamber, and gradually
widened the passage, till he had explored a dark and forgotten
recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself, and the remains of
his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former position,
and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the hour
of the customary visit, his guards were amazed by the silence and
solitude of the prison, and reported, with shame and fear, his
incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were
instantly shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the
provinces, for the recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the
suspicion of a pious act, was basely imprisoned in the same
tower. At the dead of night she beheld a spectre; she recognized
her husband: they shared their provisions; and a son was the
fruit of these stolen interviews, which alleviated the
tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the
vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive
had accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought
back to Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length
he found the moment, and the means, of his deliverance. A boy,
his domestic servant, intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax
the impression of the keys. By the diligence of his friends, a
similar key, with a bundle of ropes, was introduced into the
prison, in the bottom of a hogshead. Andronicus employed, with
industry and courage, the instruments of his safety, unlocked the
doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself all day among
the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden-wall of the
palace. A boat was stationed for his reception: he visited his
own house, embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a
fleet horse, and directed his rapid course towards the banks of
the Danube. At Anchialus in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied
him with horses and money: he passed the river, traversed with
speed the desert of Moldavia and the Carpathian hills, and had
almost reached the town of Halicz, in the Polish Russia, when he
was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who resolved to convey
their important captive to Constantinople. His presence of mind
again extricated him from danger. Under the pretence of sickness,
he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from
the troop: he planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it
with his cap and upper garment; and, stealing into the wood, left
a phantom to amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Walachians.
From Halicz he was honorably conducted to Kiow, the residence of
the great duke: the subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and
confidence of Ieroslaus; his character could assume the manners
of every climate; and the Barbarians applauded his strength and
courage in the chase of the elks and bears of the forest. In this
northern region he deserved the forgiveness of Manuel, who
solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in the invasion of
Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity
on one side, and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the
head of the Russian cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube.
In his resentment Manuel had ever sympathized with the martial
and dissolute character of his cousin; and his free pardon was
sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in which he was second, and
second only, to the valor of the emperor.

No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than
his ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the
public, misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the
succession of the more deserving males of the Comnenian blood;
her future marriage with the prince of Hungary was repugnant to
the hopes or prejudices of the princes and nobles. But when an
oath of allegiance was required to the presumptive heir,
Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman name, declined
the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the
adoption of a stranger. His patriotism was offensive to the
emperor, but he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was
removed from the royal presence by an honorable banishment, a
second command of the Cilician frontier, with the absolute
disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In this station the Armenians
again exercised his courage and exposed his negligence; and the
same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was unhorsed, and
almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus soon
discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of
Poitou, the Latin prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his
station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments: to his
love she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer
of an advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for
this domestic affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left
the indiscreet princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band
of desperate adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem.
His birth, his martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced
him as the champion of the Cross: he soon captivated both the
clergy and the king; and the Greek prince was invested with the
lordship of Berytus, on the coast of Phoenicia.

In his neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his
own nation and family, great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis,
and widow of Baldwin the Third, king of Jerusalem. She visited
and loved her kinsman. Theodora was the third victim of his
amorous seduction; and her shame was more public and scandalous
than that of her predecessors. The emperor still thirsted for
revenge; and his subjects and allies of the Syrian frontier were
repeatedly pressed to seize the person, and put out the eyes, of
the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe; but the tender
Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied his flight. The
queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious
concubine; and two illegitimate children were the living
monuments of her weakness. Damascus was his first refuge; and, in
the characters of the great Noureddin and his servant Saladin,
the superstitious Greek might learn to revere the virtues of the
Mussulmans. As the friend of Noureddin he visited, most probably,
Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after a long circuit round
the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he finally settled
among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies of his
country. The sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to
Andronicus, his mistress, and his band of outlaws: the debt of
gratitude was paid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of
Trebizond; and he seldom returned without an ample harvest of
spoil and of Christian captives. In the story of his adventures,
he was fond of comparing himself to David, who escaped, by a long
exile, the snares of the wicked. But the royal prophet (he
presumed to add) was content to lurk on the borders of Judaea, to
slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his miserable state, the
life of the avaricious Nabal. The excursions of the Comnenian
prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern
world the glory of his name and religion.

By a sentence of the Greek church, the licentious rover had been
separated from the faithful; but even this excommunication may
prove, that he never abjured the profession of Chistianity.

His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret
persecution of the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the
captivity of his female companion. The governor of Trebizond
succeeded in his attempt to surprise the person of Theodora: the
queen of Jerusalem and her two children were sent to
Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the tedious solitude of
banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a final pardon,
with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign, who was
satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate
on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his
past rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some
faithful subject would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an
iron chain with which he had secretly encircled his neck. This
extraordinary penance excited the wonder and pity of the
assembly; his sins were forgiven by the church and state; but the
just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a distance from
the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with rich
vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine. The death of
Manuel, and the disorders of the minority, soon opened the
fairest field to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or
fourteen years of age, without vigor, or wisdom, or experience:
his mother, the empress Mary, abandoned her person and government
to a favorite of the Comnenian name; and his sister, another
Mary, whose husband, an Italian, was decorated with the title of
Caesar, excited a conspiracy, and at length an insurrection,
against her odious step-mother. The provinces were forgotten, the
capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order was
overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months. A civil war
was kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody
battle in the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a
regular siege in the cathedral of St. Sophia. The patriarch
labored with honest zeal to heal the wounds of the republic, the
most respectable patriots called aloud for a guardian and
avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise of the talents and
even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement, he affected to
revolve the solemn duties of his oath: “If the safety or honor of
the Imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose the
mischief to the utmost of my power.” His correspondence with the
patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from
the Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and he
patiently waited till he was called to her deliverance by the
voice of his country. In his march from Oenoe to Constantinople,
his slender train insensibly swelled to a crowd and an army: his
professions of religion and loyalty were mistaken for the
language of his heart; and the simplicity of a foreign dress,
which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed a
lively image of his poverty and exile. All opposition sunk before
him; he reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the
Byzantine navy sailed from the harbor to receive and transport
the savior of the empire: the torrent was loud and irresistible,
and the insects who had basked in the sunshine of royal favor
disappeared at the blast of the storm. It was the first care of
Andronicus to occupy the palace, to salute the emperor, to
confine his mother, to punish her minister, and to restore the
public order and tranquillity. He then visited the sepulchre of
Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as he
bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they
heard, a murmur of triumph or revenge: “I no longer fear thee, my
old enemy, who hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the
earth. Thou art safely deposited under a seven-fold dome, from
whence thou canst never arise till the signal of the last
trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily will I trample on thy
ashes and thy posterity.” From his subsequent tyranny we may
impute such feelings to the man and the moment; but it is not
extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret
thoughts. In the first months of his administration, his designs
were veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude
only the eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius was
performed with due solemnity, and his perfidious guardian,
holding in his hands the body and blood of Christ, most fervently
declared that he lived, and was ready to die, for the service of
his beloved pupil. But his numerous adherents were instructed to
maintain, that the sinking empire must perish in the hands of a
child, that the Romans could only be saved by a veteran prince,
bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by the long
experience of fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of
every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to
undertake the burden of the public care. The young emperor was
himself constrained to join his voice to the general acclamation,
and to solicit the association of a colleague, who instantly
degraded him from the supreme rank, secluded his person, and
verified the rash declaration of the patriarch, that Alexius
might be considered as dead, so soon as he was committed to the
custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded by the
imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her
reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the
multitude, the tyrant accused and tried the empress for a
treasonable correspondence with the king of Hungary. His own son,
a youth of honor and humanity, avowed his abhorrence of this
flagitious act, and three of the judges had the merit of
preferring their conscience to their safety: but the obsequious
tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any defence,
condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son subscribed
the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse was
buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of
her beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he
was strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to
pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth,
struck it rudely with his foot: “Thy father,” he cried, “was a
knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool!”

The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by
Andronicus about three years and a half as the guardian or
sovereign of the empire. His government exhibited a singular
contrast of vice and virtue. When he listened to his passions, he
was the scourge; when he consulted his reason, the father, of his
people. In the exercise of private justice, he was equitable and
rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality was abolished, and
the offices were filled with the most deserving candidates, by a
prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish. He
prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and
persons of shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the
objects of oppression or neglect, revived in prosperity and
plenty; and millions applauded the distant blessings of his
reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of his daily
cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man who
returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
truth, to Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third
time in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a
black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit,
opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only
comfort of his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge.
The necessary extinction of the young emperor and his mother
imposed the fatal obligation of extirpating the friends, who
hated, and might punish, the assassin; and the repetition of
murder rendered him less willing, and less able, to forgive. 1018
A horrid narrative of the victims whom he sacrificed by poison or
the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be less expressive of
his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days, which was
applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant strove
to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer
mistake the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the
Greeks, more especially those who, by descent or alliance, might
dispute the Comnenian inheritance, escaped from the monster’s
den: Nice and Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of
refuge; and as their flight was already criminal, they aggravated
their offence by an open revolt, and the Imperial title. Yet
Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable
enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised: the Sicilians
were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the distance of
Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the tyrant.
His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people
without arms. Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from
the great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or
superstition of the emperor. 1019 In a moment of despair, Angelus
defended his life and liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to
the church of St. Sophia. The sanctuary was insensibly filled
with a curious and mournful crowd, who, in his fate,
prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were soon turned
to curses, and their curses to threats: they dared to ask, “Why
do we fear? why do we obey? We are many, and he is one: our
patience is the only bond of our slavery.” With the dawn of day
the city burst into a general sedition, the prisons were thrown
open, the coldest and most servile were roused to the defence of
their country, and Isaac, the second of the name, was raised from
the sanctuary to the throne. Unconscious of his danger, the
tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the toils of state, in the
delicious islands of the Propontis. He had contracted an indecent
marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis the Seventh, of
France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his society,
more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of a
young wife and a favorite concubine. On the first alarm, he
rushed to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty;
but he was astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of
the city, and the general desertion of mankind. Andronicus
proclaimed a free pardon to his subjects; they neither desired,
nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to resign the crown to
his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could not expiate his
father’s crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat; but the
news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had
ceased, obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued
and taken by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to
the presence of Isaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long
chain round his neck. His eloquence, and the tears of his female
companions, pleaded in vain for his life; but, instead of the
decencies of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned the
criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had deprived of a
father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a
hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss:
and a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the
bitterness of death. Astride on a camel, without any danger of a
rescue, he was carried through the city, and the basest of the
populace rejoiced to trample on the fallen majesty of their
prince. After a thousand blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung
by the feet, between two pillars, that supported the statues of a
wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could reach the public
enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or brutal
cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their
swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In
this long and painful agony, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” and “Why
will you bruise a broken reed?” were the only words that escaped
from his mouth. Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the
man; nor can we blame his pusillanimous resignation, since a
Greek Christian was no longer master of his life.

1018 (return) [ Fallmerayer (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von
Trapezunt, p. 29, 33) has highly drawn the character of
Andronicus. In his view the extermination of the Byzantine
factions and dissolute nobility was part of a deep-laid and
splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire. It was
necessary for the wise and benevolent schemes of the father of
his people to lop off those limbs which were infected with
irremediable pestilence— “and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea,
excused his devilish deeds!!”—Still the fall of Andronicus was a
fatal blow to the Byzantine empire.—M.]

1019 (return) [ According to Nicetas, (p. 444,) Andronicus
despised the imbecile Isaac too much to fear him; he was arrested
by the officious zeal of Stephen, the instrument of the Emperor’s
cruelties.—M.]

I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character
and adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the
series of the Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The
branches that sprang from the Comnenian trunk had insensibly
withered; and the male line was continued only in the posterity
of Andronicus himself, who, in the public confusion, usurped the
sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in history, and so famous in
romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia, Constantine Angelus,
had emerged to wealth and honors, by his marriage with a daughter
of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus is conspicuous only by
his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and succeeded the
tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the ambition
of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of
the Eastern empire.

If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be
found, that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty
emperors, including in the Augustan list some female sovereigns;
and deducting some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the
capital, and some princes who did not live to possess their
inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each
emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton,
who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies,
has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an
ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was most tranquil and
prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession; five
dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and
Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and
four generations; several princes number the years of their reign
with those of their infancy; and Constantine the Seventh and his
two grandsons occupy the space of an entire century. But in the
intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and
broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased
by a more fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to
the summit of royalty: the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by
the stroke of conspiracy, or undermined by the silent arts of
intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers or people, of the senate
or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately clothed
with the purple: the means of their elevation were base, and
their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature
of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer
measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and
contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager,
in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and shortlived
enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and
enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition
of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have
rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to
a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the throne: the
success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of
his prize and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty
phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly
dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and
climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy,
may abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he condemns
the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to
obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion. To the greater part of
the Byzantine series, we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of
fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Comnenus was
beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of the princes, who
procede or follow that respectable name, have trod with some
dexterity and vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish
policy: in scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the
Isaurian, Basil the First, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus,
the second Basil, and Manuel Comnenus, our esteem and censure are
almost equally balanced; and the remainder of the Imperial crowd
could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity. Was
personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I shall
not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I
may surely observe, that their condition, of all others, is the
most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope. For
these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed in the
revolutions of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of
the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph
of Alexander or the fall of Darius. But the peculiar infelicity
of the Byzantine princes exposed them to domestic perils, without
affording any lively promise of foreign conquest. From the
pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated by a death
more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but the most
glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their
subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious
without spirit, the nation turbulent without freedom: the
Barbarians of the East and West pressed on the monarchy, and the
loss of the provinces was terminated by the final servitude of
the capital.

The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the
Caesars to the last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen
hundred years: and the term of dominion, unbroken by foreign
conquest, surpasses the measure of the ancient monarchies; the
Assyrians or Medes, the successors of Cyrus, or those of
Alexander.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4" ***

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