fession 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 favour she had deserved by the recent services of the disgrace of a præfect, and the exile and murder of a pope. At the end of the campaign, Belisarius was recalled; he complied, as usual, with the Imperial mandate. His mind was not prepared for rebellion his obedience, however adverse to the dictates of honour, 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 favour." 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.' As soon as the curiosity and impatíence of Antonina were kindled, the door of a bedchamber 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 saviour. 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 Persecution of an amorous interview. 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,‡ 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 re

of her son.

* 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.

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-ἀλλά τις προτερήσασα δίκη νόσω ἁλόντα δυσεντερίας ἐξ ἀνθρώπων αὐτὸν

apaviet. 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.

The expression of Procopius does not appear to me to mean this kind of torture-Tov de αἰκισμοῖς τε ἄλλοις ἀνδραποδώδεσι περιβαλοῦσα, καὶ ξάνασα κατὰ τε τῶν νόμων (leg. ὤμων) καὶ τοῦ νώτου πολλὰς. ibid. – Η

1

ligion as of pity; and the helpless youth, amidst the clamours 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.

submission of

In the succeeding campaign, Belisarius was again sent against the Disgrace and Persians he saved the East, but he offended Theodora, and per-Belisarius. haps the emperor himself. The malady of Justinian had countenanced the rumour 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 coloured 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 an 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 dis66 pleasure. 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 for"feited to the state. Let your gratitude, where it is due, be dis

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"played, not in words, but in your future behaviour." 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 saviour, 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).

Weakness of

Justinian,

527-565.

CHAPTER XLII.

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 Ethiopians.

OUR estimate of personal merit is relative to the common faculties the empire of of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in A. D. 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 or country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pigmies. Leonidas, and his three hundred companions, devoted their lives at Thermopyla; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost ensured this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight thousand of his fellowcitizens 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 Mæotis to

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

(1) It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read Herodotus (I. vii. c. 104. 134. p. 550. 615.). The conversation of Xerxes and Demaratus at Thermopyla 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.

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 rapin and indolence; and the tardy payments were detained and inte by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without cour ercepted the emoluments of war. Public and private J: age or danger, armies of the state; but in the field, and of the enemy, their numbers were national spirit was supplied L

stress recruited the u still more in the presence always defective. The want of

service of Barbarian ~ by the precarious faith and disorderly Mercenaries. Even military honour, which has often survive". a the loss of virtue and freedom, was almost totally extinct. Th generals, who were multiplied beyond the example of former times, laboured 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 eyen guilt, would obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor (4).

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

(3) Γραικούς.... ἐξ ὧν τὰ πρότερα οὐδένα ἐς Ιταλίαν ἥκοντα εἶδον, ὅτι μὴ τραγωδοὺς, καὶ ναύτας λωποδύτας. 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. in Reiske Orator. Græc. tom. ii. p. 1264.).

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

State of the

Barbarians.

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.

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 The Gepida. death of Attila, by the tribes of the Gepida, 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 Cæsar, are your domips so numerous are your cities; that you are continually seeking ca nations to whom, either in peace or war, you may "relinquish the useless possessions. The Gepida are your brave "and faithful allies; if they have anticipated your gifts, they "have shown a just confice in your bounty." Their presumption was excused by the moof revenge which Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting the rigs 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 Gepida was checked by the rising power and fame of the LOMBARDS (7). This corrupt appellation

(5) Agathias, 1. 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) 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. Ấyav πpoμnoñ xal άyxivoúcτatov, says Agathias (1. v. p. 170, 171.).

(7) Gens Germana feritate ferocior, says Velleius Paterculus of the Lombards (ii. 106.). Langobardos paucitas nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per obsequium, sed præliis et periclitando, tuti sunt (Tacit. de Moribus German. c. 40.). See likewise Strabo (1. vii. 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