116 historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood of the Tigris. His ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping the virgin treasures of Ecbatana," a wellknown name, under which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the Abbassides. The consternation of the fugi tives had already diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied, that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the ap prehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the saints and martyrs; the Nestorians 116 The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers. Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris; of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore, reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe præstans. fi Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam everteret . . aiunt enim urbium quæ usquam sunt ac toto orbe existunt felicissi mam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only with Bagdad, and can not possibly apply either to Hamadan, the true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a more classic authority (Cicero pro Lege Maniliâ, c. 4) to the royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus. and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to an orthodox niaster; and the numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state. Of these extensive con quests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia and the Isle of Cy. prus, was alone restored, a permanent and useful accession to the Roman empire."1 See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199—1. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 649-684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the MS. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.)* The whole original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M Lassen has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some extract: from Kemaleddin's account of the treaty for the surrender of Alep po.-M. CHAPTER LIII. ATE OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE IN THE TENTH CENTUI F.-st EXTENT AND DIVISION. - WEALTH AND REVENUE. CONSTANTINOPLE.-TITLES - PAL AND OFFICES.-PRIDE ACE OF STUDIES AND SOLITUDE OF THE GREEKS. A RAY of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,' which he composed at a mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war, both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his predecessors. In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of Europe and Asia.' The system of Roman tactics, the discipline and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and sea, are ex 1 The epithet of Пoppvpoyevnтos, Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple, is elegantly defined by Claudian : Ardua privatos nescit fortuna Penates; Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many passages expressive of the same idea. 2 A splendid MS. of Constantine, de Cæremoniis Aulæ et Ecclesiæ Byzantine, wandered from Constantinople to Buda, Frankfort and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid edition by Leich and Reiske, (A. D. 1751, in folio,) with such lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or worthless object of their toil. 3 See, in the first volume of Banduri's Imperium Orientale, Con stantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando Imperio, p. 45127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of Meursius is corrected from a MS. of the royal library of Paris, which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist. ad Polybium, p. 10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of William Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance of the greater D'Anville. piained in the third of these didactic collections, which may e ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. In the fourth, of the ad ninistration of the empire, he reveals the secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labors of the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and history, might redound to the benefit of the subject and the honor of the Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics, the code and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were gradually ramed in the three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty The art of agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens, of the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics of Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and virtue were methodized in fifty-three books,' and every citizen might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; 6 The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published with the aid of some new MSS. in the great edition of the works of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531-920, 1211-1417, Florent. 1745.) yet the text is still corrupt and mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.) 5 On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc. tom. xii. p. 425-514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris Romani, p. 396-399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i. p. 450-458,) as historical civilia may be usefully consulted: XLI. books of this Greek code have been published, with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris, 1647,) in seven tomes in folio; IV. other books have been since discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman's Novus Thesaurus Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books, John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or synopsis. The cx. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found in the Corpus Juris Civilis. I have used the last and best edition of the Geoponics, (by Nicoias Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.) I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris, 1580, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 49-500.) Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus, Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and de Virtutibus et Vitiis, by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris, 1634.) and if his successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy. A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the gratitude of posterity in the possession of these Imperial treasures we may still deplore our poverty and ig norance; and the fading glories of their authors will be oblit erated by indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink t a broken copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek language, of the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and the absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money, enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life. In the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a pitch of energy and elevation the human character had formerly aspired. But a contrary effect must have been produced by a new edition of the lives of the saints, which the great logothete, or chancellor of the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was enriched by the fabulous and florid legends of Simon the Metaphrast. The merits and miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage, than the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the Creator. and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in expounding the precepts of the destroying art, which had been taught since the days of Xenophon, as the art of heroes and kings. • The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460.) This biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible of the original texture. 9 9 According to the first book of the Cyropædia, professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood. A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new MSS., and his learning might illus trate the mutary history of the ancients. But this scholar should likewise a soldier; and alas! Quintus Icilius is no more.* ▾ M. Guichardt, author of Mémoires Militaires sur les Grecs et sur les R mains. See Gibbon's Extraits Raisonnées de mes Lectures, Mic. Worka val. v. p. 219.-M |