.* works, which exhausted the public treasure, could not remove the just apprehensions of Justinian and his European subjects. The warm baths of Anchialus in Thrace were rendered as safe as they were salutary; but the rich pastures of Thessalonica were foraged by the Scythian cavalry; the delicious vale of Tempe, three hundred miles from the Danube, was continually alarmed by the sound of war;* and no unfortified spot, however distant or solitary, could securely enjoy the blessings of peace. The straits of Thermopyla, which seemed to protect, but which had so often. betrayed, the safety of Greece, were diligently strengthened by the labours of Justinian. From the edge of the seashore, through the forest 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 Platea, were carefully restored; the barbarians were discouraged by the prospect of successive and painful sieges; and the naked cities of Peloponnesus were covered by the fortifications of the isthmus of Corinth. At the extremity of Europe, another peninsula, the Thracian Chersonesus, runs three days' journey into the sea, to form, with the adjacent shores of Asia, the straits of the Hellespont. The intervals between eleven populous towns were filled by lofty woods, fair pastures, and arable lands: and the isthmus, of thirty-seven stadia or furlongs, had been fortified by a Spartan general nine hundred years before the reign of Justinian.† In an age of freedom and valour, the slightest rampart may pre * 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 one hundred and twenty feet in breadth. Its verdant beauties are elegantly described by Pliny (Hist. Natur. 1. 4, 15), and more diffusely by Elian (Hist. Var. 1. 3, c. 1). + Xenophon, Hellenic. 1. 3, 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. [During the ascendancy of the Lacedæmonians in Greece and their war with Persia, their general, Dercyllidas, in the year 398 B.C. raised the wall, described by vent 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 neighbouring country, and the territory of Constantinople, a paradise of nature, was adorned with the luxurious gardens and villas of the senators and opulent citizens. But their wealth served only to attract the bold and rapacious barbarians; the noblest of the Romans, in the bosom of peaceful indolence, were led away into Scythian captivity, and their sovereign might view, from his palace, the hostile flames which were insolently spread to the gates of the imperial city. At the distance only of forty miles, Anastasius was constrained to establish a last frontier; his long wall, of sixty miles from the Propontis to the Euxine, proclaimed the impotence of his arms; and as the danger became more imminent, new fortifications were added by the indefatigable prudence of Justinian.* Asia Minor, after the submission of the Isaurians,t 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 igno. minious station in the heart of the Roman provinces.‡ Xenophon. Clinton, F. H. ii, p. 92. It is rather remarkable, that after an interval of 2256 years, the combined armies of England and France are constructing (1854) a similar fortification on the same ground.-ED.] * See the long wall in Evagrius. (1. 4, c. 48). This whole article is drawn from the fourth book of the Edifices, except Anchialus (1. 3, c. 7). Turn back to vol. i, p. 349. 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. Trebellius Pollio, in Hist. August. p. 107, who lived under Diocletian, or Constantine. See likewise Pancirolus ad Notit. Imp. Orient. But no sooner was the vigilance of power relaxed or diverted, than the light-armed squadrons descended from the hills, and invaded the peaceful plenty of Asia. Although the Isaurians were not remarkable for stature or bravery, want rendered them bold, and experience made them skilful, in the exercise of predatory war. They advanced with secrecy and speed to the attack of villages and defenceless towns; their flying parties have sometimes touched the Hellespont, the Euxine, and the gates of Tarsus, Antioch, or Damascus, and the spoil was lodged in their inaccessible mountains, before the Roman troops had received their orders, or the distant province had computed its loss. The guilt of rebellion and robbery excluded them from the rights of national enemies; and the magistrates were instructed by an edict, that the trial or punishment of an Isaurian, even on the festival of Easter, was a meritorious act of justice and piety. If the captives were condemned to domestic slavery, they maintained, with their sword or dagger, the private quarrel of their masters; and it was found expedient for the public tranquillity, to prohibit the service of such dangerous retainers. When their countryman Trascalissæus 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 c. 115. 141. See Cod. Theodos. 1. 9, tit. 35. leg. 37, with a copious collective Annotation of Godefroy, tom. iii, p. 256, 257. * See the full and wide extent of their inroads in Philostorgius, (Hist. Eccles. 1. 11, c. 8,) with Godefroy's learned Dissertations. + Cod. Justinian. 1. 9, tit. 12. leg. 10. The punishments are severea 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 valour and service of the Isaurians. by the arms, the treasures, and the magazines, collected by Zeno; and the native 1saurians 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 valour and discipline of the Goths; but a war of six years almost exhausted the courage of the emperor.* The Isaurians retired to their mountains; their fortresses were successively besieged and ruined; their communication with the sea was intercepted; the bravest of their leaders died in arms; the surviving chiefs, before their execution, were dragged in chains through the Hippodrome; a colony of their youth was transplanted into Thrace, and the remnant of the people submitted to the Roman government. Yet some generations elapsed before their minds were reduced to the level of slavery. The populous villages of mount Taurus were filled with horsemen and archers; they resisted the imposition of tributes, but they recruited the armies of Justinian; and his civil niagistrates, the proconsul of Cappadocia, the count of Isauria, and the prætors of Lycaonia and Pisidia, were invested with military power to restrain the licentious practice of rapes and assassinations.† 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 Ethiopia, and on the other, the long walls which he constructed in Crimea for the protection of his friendly Goths, a colony of three *The Isaurian war and the triumph of Anastasius are briefly and darkly represented by John Malalas (tom. ii, p. 10, 6, 107), Evagrius (1.3, c. 35), Theophanes (p. 118-120), and the Chronicle of Marcellinus. + Fortes ea regio (says Justinian) viros habet, nec in ullo differt ab Isauria, though Procopius (Persic. 1. 1, 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, 1. 3, 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 Æneas), gave a name and people to Lycaonia. (Novell. 24, 25. 27. 30.) See Procopius, Persic. 1. 1, c. 19. The altar of national concord, of annual sacrifice and oaths, which Diocletian had erected in the isle of Elephantine, was demolished by Justinian with less policy than zeal. * thousand shepherds and warriors. From that peninsula to Trebizond, the eastern curve of the Euxine was secured by forts, by alliance, or by religion: and the possession of Lazica, the Colchos of ancient, the Mingrelia of modern, geography, soon became the object of an important war. Trebizond, in after-times the seat of a romantic empire, was indebted to the liberality of Justinian for a church, an aqueduct, and a castle, whose ditches are hewn in the solid rock. From that maritime city, a frontier-line of five hundred miles may be drawn to the fortress of Circesium, the last Roman station on the Euphrates.+ Above Trebizond immediately, and five days' journey to the south, the country rises into dark forests and craggy mountains, as savage, though not so lofty, as the Alps and the Pyrenees. In this rigorous climate, where the snows seldom melt, the fruits are tardy and tasteless; even honey is poisonous; the most industrious tillage would be confined to some pleasant valleys; and the pastoral tribes obtained a scanty sustenance from the flesh and milk of their cattle. The Chalybians § derive their name and temper from the iron * Procopius de Edificiis, 1. 3, c. 7. Hist. 1. 8, c. 3, 4. These unambitious Goths had refused to follow the standard of Thecdoric. As late as the fifteenth and sixteenth century, the name and nation might be discovered between Caffa and the Straits of Azoph. (D'Anville, Mémoires de l'Académie, 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, Peyssonel, &c. For the geography and architecture of this Armenian border, see the Persian Wars and Edifices (1. 2, c. 4—7 ; 1. 3, c. 2-7) of Procopius. The country is described by lettre 17, 18). That skilful infects the honey. (Plin. 21, Tournefort (Voyage au Levant, tom. iii, botanist soon discovered the plant that 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 two thousand four hundred toises, is equivalent to the cold of the polar circle. (Remond, Observations sur les Voyages de Coxe dans la Suisse, tom. ii, p. 104.) § The identity or proximity of the Chalybians, or Chaldæans, may be investigated in Strabo (1. 12, p. 825, 826), Ceilarius (Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii, p. 202-204), and Freret, (Mém. de l'Académie, tom. iv, p. 594). Xenophon supposes, in his romance, |