the human form, was exposed on a mountain; a | unprecedented honours for his own ambassadors at dreadful warning to those who might hereafter be the imperial court. The successor of Cyrus assumed intrusted with the fame and fortune of Persia. Yet the majesty of the eastern sun, and graciously perthe prudence of Chosroes insensibly relinquished mitted his younger brother Justinian to reign over the prosecution of the Colchian war, in the just the west, with the pale and reflected splendour of persuasion, that it is impossible to reduce, or, at the moon. This gigantic style was supported by the least, to hold a distant country against the wishes pomp and eloquence of Isdigune, one of the royal and efforts of its inhabitants. The fidelity of Gu- chamberlains. His wife and daughters, with a train bazes sustained the most rigorous trials. He pa- of eunuchs and camels, attended the march of the tiently endured the hardships of a savage life, and ambassador: two satraps with golden diadems were rejected, with disdain, the specious temptations of numbered among his followers: he was guarded by the Persian court. The king of the Lazi had been five hundred horse, the most valiant of the Persians; educated in the christian religion; his mother was and the Roman governor of Dara wisely refused to the daughter of a senator; during his youth, he had admit more than twenty of this martial and hostile served ten years a silentiary of the Byzantine pa- caravan. When Isdigune had saluted the emperor, lace, and the arrears of an unpaid salary were a and delivered his presents, he passed ten months at motive of attachment as well as of complaint. But Constantinople without discussing any serious afthe long continuance of his sufferings extorted from fairs. Instead of being confined to his palace, and him a naked representation of the truth; and truth receiving food and water from the hands of his was an unpardonable libel on the lieutenants of Jus-keepers, the Persian ambassador, without spies or tinian, 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 issued 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 cloquence 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.t

Negociations

tween Justinian

and Chosroes, A. D. 540-561.

In the peace, the king of Persia con

and treaties be- tinually sought the pretences of a rupture; but no sooner had he taken up arms, than he expressed his desire of a safe and honourable treaty. During the fiercest hostilities, the two monarchs entertained a deceitful negociation; and such was the superiority of Chosroes, that whilst he treated the Roman ministers with insolence and contempt, he obtained the most

The punishment of flaying alive could not be introduced into Persia by Sapor, (Brisson, de Regn. Pers. 1. 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, (1. iv. p. 132, 133.)

In the palace of Constantinople there were thirty silentiaries, who are styled hastati ante fores cubiculi, της σιγής επίταται, an honourable title, which conferred the rank, without imposing the duties, of a senator. (Cod. Theodos 1. vi. tit. 23. Gothofred. Comment. tom. ii. p. 129.)

On these judicial orations, Agathias, (1. iii. p. 81-89. 1. iv. p. 108—

guards, was allowed to visit the capital; and the freedom of conversation and trade enjoyed by his domestics, offended the prejudice of an age which rigorously practised the law of nations, without confidence or courtesy." 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 labours 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 de

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.

u

Procopius represents the practice of the Gothic court of Ravenna (Goth. 1. i. c. 7.) and foreign ambassadors have been treated with the same jealousy and rigour in Turkey, (Busbequius, epist. ii. P. 242, &c.) Russia, (Voyage D'Olearius,) and China, (Narrative of M. de Lange, in Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 189-311.)

tween the shores of the Red sea. Christianity had raised that nation above the level of African barbarism: their intercourse with Egypt, and the successors of Constantine," had communicated the rudiments of the arts and sciences; their vessels traded to the isle of Ceylon and seven kingdoms obeyed the Negus or supreme prince of Abyssinia. The independence of the Homerites, who reigned in the rich and happy Arabia, was first violated by an Ethiopian conqueror: he drew his hereditary claim from the queen of Sheba,d 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

pendent 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." According to the orientals, the empire of Nushirvan extended from Ferganah, in Transoxiana, to Yemen or Arabia Fælix. He subdued the rebels of Hyr-christians of Negra were honoured with the crown cania, reduced the provinces of Cabul and Zablestan on the banks of the Indus, broke the power of the Euthalites, terminated by an honourable treaty the Turkish war, and admitted the daughter of the great khan into the number of his lawful wives. Victo- | rious and respected among the princes of Asia, he gave audience, in his palace of Madain, or Ctesi-region of myrrh and frankincense. The conqueror phon, 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 extraor-king. Nonnosus, descended from a Their alliance dinary serpent.

Conquests of the Justinian had been reproached for Abyssinians, his alliance with the Ethiopians, as if A. D. 522. 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. 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 be

The negociations and treaties between Justinian and Chosroes are copiously explained by Procopius, (Persic. 1. ii. c. 10. 13. 26-28. Gothic. 1. ii. c. 11. 15.) Agathias, (l. iv. p. 141, 142.) and Menander, (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 132-147.) Consult Barbeyrac, Hist. des. Anciens Traités,

tom. ii. p. 154. 181-184. 193-200.

y

D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 680, 681, 294, 295.

See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 449. This Arab cast of features and complexion, which has continued 3400 years (Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Ethiopic. 1. 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.

a 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 Dis sertations, 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. Ethiopica, Francofurt. 1681. Commentarius, 1691. Appendix, 1694.) in twenty-five languages,

could add little concerning its ancient history. Yet the fame of Caled, or Ellisthæus, the conqueror of Yemen, is celebrated in national songs and legends.

of martyrdom. 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

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

A. D. 533.

family of ambassadors, was named by with Justinian, 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

b The negociations of Justinian with the Axumites, or Ethiopians, 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.

e The trade of the Axumites to the coast of India and Africa, and the isle of Ceylon, is curiously represented by Cosmas Indicoplenstes. (Topograph. Christian. 1. ii. p. 132. 138, 139, 140. 1. xi. p. 338, 339.) d Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. Ethiop. I. ii. c. 3.

The city of Negra, or Nag'ran, in Yemen, is surrounded with palmtrees, 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. Arabiæ, p. 52.)

f 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. xii. 1. viii. c. ii. p. 333-348.) who investigates the state of the Jews in Arabia and Ethiopia.

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.

The troubles of
Africa,

A. D. 535-545.

Grecian characters. But the Negus gave audience | the Romans; and our wonder is reasonably excited 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 worshippers 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 Æthiopia was incapable of defending his possessions. Abrahah, 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 honoured, 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; his children were despoiled by the Persian conqueror; and the Æthiopians 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.h

CHAP. XLIII.

Rebellions of Africa.-Restoration of the Gothic
kingdom by Totila.-Loss and recovery of Rome.
-Final conquest of Italy by Narses.-Extinction
of the Ostrogoths.-Defeat of the Franks and
Alemanni.-Last victory, disgrace, and death of
Belisarius.-Death and character of Justinian.—
Comet, earthquakes, and plague.

THE review of the nations from the Danube to the
Nile has exposed, on every side, the weakness of

g Alvarez (in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 219 vers. 221 vers.) saw the flourishing state of Axume in the year 1520-luogo molto buono e grande. It was ruined in the same century by the Turkish invasion. No more than one hundred houses remain; but the memory of its past greatness is preserved by the regal coronation. (Ludolph. Hist. et Comment. I. ii. c. 11.)

h The revolutions of Yemen in the sixth century must be collected from Procopius, (Persic. 1. i. c. 19, 20.) Theophanes Byzant. (apud Phot. cod. Ixiii. 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

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." 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 clamours 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 honours of the eastern service, forgot their country and religion. But a generous band of four Abrahah is mentioned by Procopius; and his fall, though clouded

with miracles, is an historical fact.

a 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. la the second book of the Vandalic war, he relates the revolt of Stozas, (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 Sergins, (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 por

traits.

Africa

awar

of stren

| 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; and it is singular enough, that an Armenian prince, of the royal family of Arsaces, should re-establish at Carthage the authority of the Roman empire. In the conspiracy which unsheathed the dagger of Brutus against the life of Cæsar, 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.

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 province disclaimed the command of their superiors, a conspiracy was formed at Carthage against the life of Solomon, who filled with honour 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 imboldened 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 negociation; 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 vigour 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. The example of Stoza, and the assurance that a fortunate soldier had been the first king, encouraged the bYet I must not refuse him the merit of painting, in lively colours, 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."

The esd

Moors,
A. D. 543-558.

;

That country was rapidly sinking Rebellion of the into the state of barbarism, from whence it has 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, 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 clamour of arms and revenge was re-echoed 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 Antalus the enemy of the Romans. The defeat of the Vandals had formerly signalized his valour; 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

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

of Justinian.