XL. which could not be successfully defended, and the CHAP. conflagration of Theodosiopolis might justify the conduct of their prudent neighbours. 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 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. Scalingladders 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 Fortificapurpose, the town of Dara, fourteen miles from Dara. 5 The description of Dara is amply and correctly given by Procopius (Persic. VOL. V. I tions of XL. CHAP. 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 loop-holes, 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 labour 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. Between the Euxine and the Caspian, the countries 1. i. c. 10. 1. 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. XL. pian or of Colchos, Iberia, and Albania, are intersected in CHAP. every direction by the branches of Mount Caucasus; and the two principal gates, or passes, from north to The Cassouth, have been frequently confounded in the geo- Iberian graphy both of the ancients and moderns. The name gates. of Caspian or Albanian gates is properly applied to Derbend," 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 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 the rampart of Gog and Magog, the long wall which has excited the curiosity of an Arabian caliph and h For the city and pass of Derbend, see D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 157. 291. 807), Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Gengiscan, 1. 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. i Procopius, though with some confusion, always denominates them Caspian (Persic. 1. i. c. 10). The pass is now styled Tatar-topa, the Tartar-gates (D'Anville, Géographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 119, 120). The imaginary rampart of Gog and Magog, which was seriously explored and believed by a caliph of the ixth century, appears to be derived from the gates CHAP. The schools of Athens. k a Russian conqueror. According to a recent description, huge stones seven feet thick, 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.' 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 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). * 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 orgygia, or fathom, each of seven feet English; in the whole somewhat more than four miles in length. 1 See the fortifications and treaties of Chosroes or Nushirwan, in Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 16. 22. 1. ii.) and D'Herbelot (p. 682). m XL. nature is exalted by the simple recollection, that CHAP. Isocrates was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first representations of the Edipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his pupils Æschines 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." 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;° 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 favourite 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 m The life of Isocrates extends from Olymp. lxxxvi. 1. to cx. 3. (ante Christ. 436-338). 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. n 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 Dicaarchus (in the second volume of Hudson's Geographers), who wrote about Olymp. cxvii. (Dodwell's Dissertat. sect. 4.) • Diogen. Laert. de Vit. Philosoph. 1. v. segm. 37. p. 289. |