B 442070

ARTES
1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E PLURIBUS UNUM
TUEBOR
SI QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAMU
CIRCUMSPICE
DF
239
.FS
1857
HISTORY OF GREECE
UNDER
FOREIGN DOMINATION
BY
GEORGE FINLAY, LL.D.
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLVII

MANO
RVM
ONIVSTINI
ANVSPPA
00009
2000000
658
200000000000000000000000
ဘာဟ
24: 900
SALVSETCL
ORIA
3000
R
CONOB
GOLD MEDALLION OF JUSTINIAN AND COPPER NUMMUS.
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS
207 Pink 13.
A HISTORICAL VIEW
OF THE
CONDITION OF THE GREEK NATION
FROM ITS CONQUEST BY THE ROMANS
UNTIL THE EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER IN THE EAST
B. C. CXLVI. TO A. D. DCCXVI.
BY
GEORGE FINLAY, LL.D.
==
Καὶ ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθώδες
αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται.
THUCYD. i. 22.
SECOND EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLVII
TO JAMES MACGREGOR, ESQ., M.P.
MY DEAR JAMES,
I dedicate to you this History of Greece under Foreign
Domination.
Your encouragement often cheered me to prosecute the
work when my literary deficiencies suggested doubts whether,
in my hands, it could be of any use.
Had the hopes with which I joined the cause of Greece
in 1823 been fulfilled, it is not probable that I should have
abandoned the active duties of life, and the noble task of
labouring to improve the land, for the sterile occupation of
recording its misfortunes. But the demerits of my literary
efforts, in the cause of civil liberty and national institutions,
will not, I am sure, diminish your affection for the Author;
and though this page is a trifling proof of gratitude, you will
receive it with pleasure, as a testimony of the sincere friend-
ship of
Your affectionate Brother,
ATHENS, 12th November 1856.
GEORGE FINLAY.
CONTENTS.
Explanation of the Frontispiece,
Preface to the History of Greece under Foreign Domination,
Preface to Greece under the Romans,
Chronology,
Page
viii
ix
xvii
xxi
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE
AS CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. B. C. 146-A. D. 330.
Introduction-Changes produced by the conquests of Alexander the Great
on the condition of the Greek nation,
SECT. I. Immediate causes of the conquest of Greece by the Romans,
II. Treatment of Greece after its conquest,
III. Effects of the Mithridatic war on the state of Greece,
IV. Ruin of the country by the pirates of Cilicia,
V. Nature of the Roman provincial administration in Greece,
VI. Fiscal administration of the Romans,
1
20
26
30
34
39
47
VII. Depopulation of Greece caused by the Roman government,
VIII. Roman colonies established in Greece,
59
66
IX. Political condition of Greece from the time of Augustus to that of
Caracalla,
71
•
X. The Greeks and Romans never showed any disposition to unite and
form one people,
78
XI. State of society among the Greeks,
XII. Influence of religion and philosophy on society,
84
95
XIII. The social condition of the Greeks affected by the want of colonies
of emigration,
102
XIV. Effects produced in Greece by the inroads of the Goths,
106
XV. Changes which preceded the establishment of Constantinople as
the capital of the Roman empire,
116
vi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE AS CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE, TO THE ACCESSION OF JUSTINIAN. A. D. 330-527.
Page
SECT. I. Constantine, in reforming the government of the Roman empire,
placed the administration in direct hostility to the people,
II. The condition of the Greeks was not improved by Constantine's
reforms,
121
136
III. Changes produced in the social condition of the Greeks by the
alliance of Christianity with their national manners,
142
IV. The Orthodox Church became identified with the Greek nation,
V. Condition of the Greek population of the empire from the reign of
Constantine to that of Theodosius the Great,
159
165
VI. Communications of the Greeks with countries beyond the bounds
of the Roman empire,
172
VII. Effect of the separation of the Eastern and Western Empires on the
Greek nation, a. D. 395,
VIII. Attempts of the Goths to establish themselves in Greece,
176
184
IX. The Greeks arrested the conquests of the northern barbarians,
X. Declining condition of the Greek population in the European pro-
vinces of the Eastern Empire,
195
202
XI. Improvement in the Eastern Empire from the death of Arcadius to
the accession of Justinian,
205
XII. State of civilisation, and influence of national feelings, during this
period,
223
CHAPTER III.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS UNDER THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
A. D. 527-565.
SECT. I. Influence of the imperial power on the condition of the Greek
nation during the reign of Justinian,
II. Military forces of the empire,
III. Influence of Justinian's legislation on the Greek population,
IV. Internal administration, as it affected the Greeks,
•
V. Influence of Justinian's conquests on the Greek population, and the
change effected by the conquest of the Vandal kingdom of
Africa,
232
244
256
261
274
VI. Causes of the easy conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy by
Belisarius,
284
VII. Relations of the northern nations with the Roman empire and the
Greek nation,
300
VIII. Relations of the Roman empire with Persia,
315
IX. Commercial position of the Greeks, and comparison with the other
nations living under the Roman government,
321
X. Influence of the Orthodox Church on the national feelings of the
Greeks,
332
XI. State of Athens during the decline of paganism, and until the ex-
tinction of its schools by Justinian,
335
CONTENTS.
vii
CHAPTER IV.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS FROM THE DEATH OF JUSTINIAN TO THE RESTORATION
OF ROMAN POWER IN THE EAST BY HERACLIUS.
A. D. 565-633.
Page
SECT. I. The reign of Justin II.,
349
II. Disorganisation of all political and national influence during the
reigns of Tiberius II. and Maurice,
361
III. Maurice causes a revolution by attempting to re-establish the ancient
authority of the imperial administration,
366
IV. Phocas was the representative of a revolution, not of a national party,
V. The empire under Heraclius,
374
•
378
VI. Change in the position of the Greek population produced by the
Sclavonic establishments in Dalmatia,
VII. Influence of the campaigns of Heraclius in the East,
VIII. Condition of the native population of Greece,
402
414
426
CHAPTER V.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS FROM THE MOHAMMEDAN INVASION OF SYRIA TO THE
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER IN THE EAST. A. D. 633-716.
SECT. I. The Roman empire gradually changed into the Byzantine,
431
II. Conquest of the southern provinces of the empire, of which the
majority of the population was not Greek nor orthodox,
436
III. Constans II. followed the policy of Heraclius,
459
IV. Constantine IV. yielded to the popular ecclesiastical party among
the Greeks,
467
V. Depopulation of the empire, and decrease of the Greeks, under
Justinian II.,
474
VI. Anarchy in the administration until the accession of Leo III.,
VII. General view of the condition of the Greeks at the extinction of
the Roman power in the East,
481
490
APPENDIX.
I. On the Blindness of Belisarius,
II. On Roman and Byzantine Money,
523
•
526
III. On the Site of the Holy Sepulchre,
547
IV. Catalogue of the edition of the Byzantine historians printed at Paris and
reprinted at Venice, with the additions required to complete it,
568
EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
THE large medallion is the representation of a gold coin of Justinian I., equal
in value to 36 solidi, and weighing half a Roman pound. It was found at Cæsareia
of Cappadocia in 1721, and was stolen from the collection of medals at Paris in
1832 by thieves, who melted it immediately. The engraving from which this
is copied was published in the Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.
xxvi. p. 523. The relief is described as having been three lines from the sur-
face of the medal, and its weight seems to have exceeded 2500 grains, but it is
not accurately given.
The inscription round the portrait of Justinian is Dominus Noster IVSTI-
NIANVS Per Petuus AVGustus. The reverse represents Victory conducting the
emperor on horseback, with the legend SALVS ET GLORIA ROMANORVM.
In the exergue CONstantinopoli OB. The letters OB have received many in-
terpretations. They are now generally supposed to indicate that the pound of
gold contained 72 solidi or units of coinage.
The small coin is a noumion of copper from the collection of the Author. It
weighs seven grains, but is too imperfect to serve as an example of the normal
weight of these pieces. Two similar coins, one of which weighs about ten grains,
have a small o under the A-A.
PREFACE.
THE history of Greece under foreign domination records.
the degradation and the calamities of the nation which
attained the highest degree of civilisation in the ancient
world. Two thousand years of suffering have not obliterated
the national character, nor extinguished the national ambi-
tion. In order to compress an account of the vicissitudes
in the condition of Greece, during this long period, within
the
space of five volumes, it has been necessary to confine
the attention of the reader to the political state of the nation,
without entering into details concerning the general history
of the foreign conquerors. This plan has perhaps circum-
scribed the interest of the work. The history of enslaved
Greece has hitherto been neglected, because it was supposed
to offer little instruction to the patriot and the scholar; but
it deserves to be attentively studied by the statesman and
the political economist, for under the government of the
Byzantine emperors it affords an instructive example of the
great power that scientific administrative arrangements
exert on the political existence and material prosperity of a
nation, even when the government is neither supported by
X
PREFACE.
popular sympathies, nor invigorated by the impulse of
national progress. At the present time, more especially,
when the European monarchies are centralising all the
powers of government, and separating the feelings and
interests of the administration from the sympathies and
prosperity of the people, the history of the Byzantine empire
offers a solemn warning to sovereigns, and the national
degradation of the Greek people presents an instructive
picture to their subjects. Despotism has a powerful agent
in administrative centralisation, and two strong camps in
political servility and popular anarchy.
The records of enslaved Greece are as much a portion of
her national existence as her heroic poetry and her classic
history. The people who sent out a hundred colonies, and
who fought at Salamis and Platea, were the ancestors of the
men who fled before the Romans, and who yielded up their
own land to be peopled by Sclavonians and Albanians. The
ancient Greeks purchased foreign slaves to labour in their
fields, the modern Greeks delivered up their own children.
to form the janissaries, who held them in a state of slavery.
The modern Greeks turn with aversion from the study of
their own history. They take no interest in the fortunes.
of their ancestors, but they claim an imaginary genealogy
to connect their national existence with the extinct races
of privileged aristocratic tribes, whose existence ceased as
Paganism expired. Indeed, the lineal descendants of the
Spartans, and of the original citizens of Solon's Athens, did
not survive the Roman conquest. The rich inheritance of
the intellectual wealth of Greece was divided with Asia
Minor, Syria, and Egypt, while Greece still retained its
independence. In order to acquire political knowledge, the
PREFACE.
xi
present race of Greeks must study their history as a subject
people. More practical information is to be gained by an
examination of the effects of their communal institutions
under the Othomans, than by unravelling the signification
of impure fables and obscure myths. They can only trace
their connection with the Hellenes through the records of
twenty centuries of national or political slavery. If they
emulate the patriotism of the ancient Greeks, and rival
their eminence in literature and art, all Europe will readily
admit their claims to the purest Hellenic genealogy. Na-
tional vanity has for the present so completely vitiated
public opinion at Athens, that an English writer may expect
more readers than a Greek. To those who are familiar
with the works of Grote, it may not be uninteresting to
know something of the political changes which degraded
the social civilisation of Greece. The history of a people
which preserved its language and its nationality through
centuries of misfortune, and whose energy has so far revived
as to form an independent State, ought not to be utterly
neglected.
The condition of Greece during its long period of ser-
vitude was not one of uniform degeneracy. Under the
Romans, and subsequently under the Othomans, the Greeks
formed only an insignificant portion of a vast empire.
Their unwarlike character rendered them of little political
importance, and many of the great changes and revolutions
which occurred in the dominions of the emperors and of
the sultans, exerted no direct influence on Greece. Con-
sequently, neither the general history of the Roman nor
of the Othoman empire forms a portion of Greek history.
Under the Byzantine emperors the case was different; the
xii
PREFACE.
Greeks became then identified with the imperial adminis-
tration. The dissimilarity in the political position of the
nation during these periods requires a different treatment
from the historian to explain the characteristics of the
times.
The changes which affected the political and social con-
dition of the Greeks divide their history, as a subject people,
into six distinct periods.
1. The first of these periods comprises the history of
Greece under the Roman government. The physical and
moral degradation of the people deprived them of all poli-
tical influence, until Greek society was at length regene-
rated by the Christian religion. After Christianity became
the religion of the Roman emperors, the predominant
power of the Greek clergy, in the ecclesiastical establish-
ment of the Eastern Empire, restored to the Greeks some
degree of influence in the government, and gave them a
degree of social authority over human civilisation in the
East, which rivalled that which they had formerly obtained
by the Macedonian conquests. In the portion of this work
devoted to the condition of Greece under the Romans, the
Author has confined his attention exclusively to the con-
dition of the people, and to those branches of the Roman
administration which affected their condition. The predo-
minant influence of Roman feelings and prejudices in the
Eastern Empire terminates with the accession of Leo the
Isaurian, who gave the administration at Constantinople a
new character.
2. The second period embraces the history of the East-
ern Roman Empire in its new form, under its conventional
title of the Byzantine Empire. The records of this des-
PREFACE.
xiii
potism, modified, renovated, and reinvigorated by the Icono-
clast emperors, constitute one of the most remarkable and
instructive lessons in the history of monarchical institu-
tions. They teach us that a well-organised central govern-
ment can with ease hold many subject nations in a state
of political nullity. During this period, the history of the
Greeks is closely interwoven with the annals of the Impe-
rial government, so that the history of the Byzantine Em-
pire forms a portion of the history of the Greek nation.
Byzantine history extends from the accession of Leo the
Isaurian, in the year 716, to the conquest of Constantinople
by the Crusaders in 1204.
3. After the destruction of the Eastern Roman Empire,
Greek history diverges into many channels. The exiled
Roman-Greeks of Constantinople fled to Asia, and esta-
blished their capital at Nicæa; they prolonged the Impe-
rial administration in some provinces on the old model and
with the old names. After the lapse of less than sixty
years, they recovered possession of Constantinople; but
though the government they exercised retained the proud
title of the Roman Empire, it was only a degenerate repre-
sentative even of the Byzantine state. This third period
is characterised as the Greek Empire of Constantinople.
Its feeble existence was terminated by the Othoman Turks
at the taking of Constantinople in 1453.
4. When the Crusaders conquered the greater part of
the Byzantine Empire, they divided their conquests with
the Venetians, and founded the Latin Empire of Romania,
with its feudal principalities in Greece. The domination
of the Latins is important, as marking the decline of Greek
influence in the East, and as causing a rapid diminution
xiv
PREFACE.
#
in the wealth and numbers of the Greek nation. This
period extends from the conquest of Constantinople in
1204, until the conquest of Naxos by the Othoman Turks
in 1566.
5. The conquest of Constantinople in 1204 caused the
foundation of a new Greek state in the eastern provinces.
of the Byzantine Empire, called the Empire of Trebizond.
Its existence is a curious episode in Greek history, though
the government was characterised by peculiarities which
indicated the influence of Asiatic rather than of European
manners. It bore a strong resemblance to the Iberian and
Armenian monarchies. During two centuries and a half,
it maintained a considerable degree of influence, based,
however, rather on its commercial position and resources
than on its political strength or its Greek civilisation. Its
existence exerted little influence on the fate or fortunes of
Greece, and its conquest, in the year 1461, excited little
sympathy.
6. The sixth and last period of the history of Greece
under foreign domination extends from 1453 to 1821, and
embraces the records both of the Othoman rule and of the
temporary occupation of the Peloponnesus by the Venetian
Republic, from 1685 to 1715. Nations have, perhaps, per-
petuated their existence in an equally degraded position;
but history offers no other example of a nation which had
sunk to such a state of debasement making a successful
effort to recover its independence.
The object of this work is to lay before the reader those
leading facts that are required to enable him to estimate
correctly the political condition of the Greek nation under
its different masters; not to collect all the materials neces-
PREFACE.
XV
sary to form a complete history of Greece under foreign
domination. The ecclesiastical and literary records are
consequently only noticed with reference to political his-
tory. A complete history of the modern Greeks might,
perhaps, be rendered both instructive and interesting to
Greeks, but it would be difficult to render it attractive to
foreigners.
ATHENS, 21st December 1855.
:
12
PREFACE TO GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS
THE Social and political organisation of life among the
Greeks and Romans was essentially different, even during
the period when they were subject to the same govern-
ment; and this difference must be impressed on the mind,
before the relative state of civilisation in the Eastern and
Western Empires can be thoroughly understood.
The Romans were a tribe of warriors. All their insti-
tutions, even those relating to property and agriculture,
were formed with reference to war. The people of the
Western Empire, including the greater part of Italy, con-
sisted of a variety of races, who were either in a low state
of civilisation at the time of their conquest by the Romans,
or else had been already subjected to foreigners. They were
generally treated as inferior beings, and the framework of
their national institutions was everywhere destroyed. The
provincials of the West, when thus left destitute of every
bond of national union, were exposed to the invasions of
warlike tribes, which, under the first impulses of civilisa-
tion, were driven on to seek the means of supplying new
wants. The moment, therefore, that the military forces
of the Roman government were unable to repulse these
strangers, the population of the provinces was exposed
to subjection, slavery, or extermination, according as the
interests or the policy of the invading barbarians might
determine.
b
xviii
PREFACE TO
In that portion of the Eastern Empire peopled by the
Greeks, the case was totally different. There the executive
power of the Roman government was modified by a sys-
tem of national institutions, which conferred, even on the
rural population, some control over their local affairs. The
sovereign authority was relieved from that petty sphere of
administration and police, which meddles with the daily
occupations of the people. The Romans found this branch
of government completely organised, in a manner not
closely connected with the political sovereignty; and though
the local institutions of the Greeks proved less powerful
than the central despotism of their conquerors, they pos-
sessed greater vitality. Their nationality continued to
exist even after their conquest; and this nationality was
again called into activity when the Roman government,
from increasing weakness, gradually began to neglect the
duties of administration.
But while the conquest of Greece by the Romans had
indeed left the national existence nearly unaltered, time,
as it changed the government of Rome, modified likewise
the institutions of the Greeks. Still, neither the Roman
Cæsars, nor the Byzantine emperors, any more than the
Frank princes and Turkish sultans, were able to interrupt
the continual transmission of a political inheritance by each
generation of the Greek race to its successors; though it is
too true that, from age to age, the value of that inheritance
was gradually diminished, until in our own times a noble
impulse and a desperate struggle restored to the people
its political existence.
The history of the Greek nation, even as a subject people,
cannot be destitute of interest and instruction. The Greeks
are the only existing representatives of the ancient world.
They have maintained possession of their country, their
language, and their social organisation, against physical
and moral forces, which have swept from the face of the
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.
xix
earth all their early contemporaries, friends, and enemies.
It can hardly be disputed that the preservation of their
national existence is to be partly attributed to the institu-
tions which they have received from their ancestors. The
work now offered to the public attempts to trace the effects
of the ancient institutions on the fortunes of the people
under the Roman government, and endeavours to show in
what manner those institutions were modified or supported
by other circumstances.
It was impossible, in the following pages, to omit treating
of events already illustrated by the genius of Gibbon. But
these events must be viewed by the historian of the Roman
Empire, and of the Greek people, under very different
aspects. The observations of both may be equally true,
though inferior skill and judgment may render the views,
in the present work, less correct as a picture, and less
impressive as a history. The same facts afford innumerable
conclusions to different individuals, and in different ages.
History will ever remain inexhaustible; and much as we
have read of the Greeks and Romans, and deeply as we
appear to have studied their records, there is much still to
be learned from the same sources.
In the references to the authorities followed in this work,
a preference will often be shown to those modern treatises,
which ought to be in the hands of the general reader. It
has often required profound investigation and long dis-
cussion to elicit a fact now generally known, or to settle
an opinion now universally adopted, and in such cases
it would be useless to collect a long array of ancient
passages.
1st May 1843.
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.
CHRONOLOG Y.
B. C.
323. Death of Alexander. Lamian war.
322. Antipater disfranchised 12,000 Athenian citizens.-Plutarch; "Pho-
cion," 28.
321. Ptolemy founds a monarchy in Egypt.
312. Era of Seleucidæ.
310. Agathocles invades Carthaginian possessions in Africa.
303. Demetrius Poliorcetes raises siege of Rhodes.
300. Mithridates Ariobarzanes founds kingdom of Pontus.
280. Achaian league commenced.
Pyrrhus landed in Italy to defend the Greeks against the Romans.
279. Gauls invade Greece, and are repulsed at Delphi.
278. Nicomedes brings the Gauls into Asia.
271. Romans complete the conquest of Magna Græcia.
260. Romans prepare their first fleet to contend with Carthage.
250. Parthian monarchy founded by Arsaces.
241. Attalus, king of Pergamus.
228. First Roman embassy to Greece.-Polybius, ii. 12.
218. Hannibal invades Italy.
212. Syracuse taken by Romans. Sicily conquered.
210. Sicily reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
202. Battle of Zama.
197. Battle of Cynoscephalæ.
196. The Greeks declared free by Flamininus at the Isthmian games.
192. Antiochus the Great invaded Greece.
188. The laws of Lycurgus abrogated by Philopomen.
181. Death of Hannibal.
168. Battle of Pydna. End of Macedonian monarchy.
167. One thousand Achaian citizens sent as hostages to Rome.
155. The fine of 500 talents imposed on Athens for plundering the Oro-
pians remitted by the Romans.
147. Macedonia reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
146. Corinth taken by Mummius. Greece reduced to the condition of
a Roman province.
133. Rebellion of slaves in the Attic silver mines.
130. Asia, embracing great part of the country between the Halys and
Mount Taurus, constituted a Roman province.
xxii
CHRONOLOGY.
B. C.
96. Cyrenaïca became a Roman possession by the will of Ptolemy Apion.
86. Athens taken by Sylla.
77. Depredations of the pirates on the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor
at their acme.
75. Bithynia and Pontus constituted a Roman province.
67. Crete conquered by Metellus after a war of two years and a-half,
and shortly after reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
It was subsequently united with Cyrenaica.
66. Monarchy of the Seleucida conquered by Pompey.
65. Cilicia reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
48. Cæsar destroyed Megara.
44. Cæsar founded a Roman colony at Corinth.
30. Augustus founded Nicopolis.
Egypt reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
25. Galatia and Lycaonia constituted a Roman province.
24. Pamphylia and Lycia constituted a Roman province.
21. Cyprus reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
Athens deprived of its jurisdiction over Eretria and Ægina, and
the confederacy of the free Laconian cities formed by Augustus.
14. Augustus establishes a Roman colony at Patras.
A. D. Year of Rome 753. 194th Olympiad, 4th year, A. M. 5508 of the
Byzantines, called the Era of Constantinople; but other calcu-
lations were adopted at Alexandria and Antioch. See l'Art de
vérifier les Dates depuis la naissance de Jésus-Christ, and Ideler
Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie.
18. Cappadocia reduced to the condition of a Roman province.
22. The Roman senate restricted the right of asylum claimed by the
Greek temples and sanctuaries.
66. Nero in Greece.
67. Nero celebrates the Olympic games.
72. Commagene reduced to a Roman province.-Clinton, Fasti Romani.
73. Thrace reduced to a Roman province by Vespasian.
Rhodes, Samos, and other islands on the coast of Asia deprived of
their privileges as free states, and reduced to the condition of a
Roman province called the Islands.
74. Vespasian expels the philosophers from Rome.
90. Domitian expels the philosophers from Rome.
96. Apollonius of Tyana at Ephesus at the time of Domitian's death.
98. Plutarch flourished.
103. Epictetus taught at Nicopolis. Arrian heard his lessons.
112. Hadrian, archon of Athens.
115. Martyrdom of Ignatius.
122. Hadrian visits Athens.
125. Hadrian again at Athens.
129. Hadrian passes the winter at Athens.
132. Jewish war.
135. Hadrian is at Athens towards the close of the Jewish war.
143. Herodes Atticus consul.
CHRONOLOGY.
xxiii
A. D.
162. Galen at Rome.
flourished.
Pausanias, Polyænus, Lucian, and Ptolemy
168. Disgrace of Herodes Atticus at Sirmium.
176. Marcus Aurelius visits Athens and establishes scholarchs of the
four great philosophic sects.
180. Dio Cassius, Herodian, Athenæus flourished.
212. Edict of Caracalla, conferring the Roman citizenship on all the
free inhabitants of the empire.
226. Artaxerxes overthrows the Parthian empire of the Arsacides, and
founds the Persian monarchy of the Sassanides.
238. Herodian, Ælian, Philostratus.
251. The emperor Decius defeated and slain by the Goths.
267. Athens taken by the Goths.-Dexippus.
284. Era of Diocletian, called Era of the Martyrs.
312. 1st September. Cycle of Indictions of Constantine.
325. Council of Nicæa.
330. Dedication of CONSTANTINOPLE.
332. Cherson assists Constantine against the Goths.
337. Constantine II., CONSTANTIUS, Constans, emperors.
355. Julian appointed Cæsar.
361. JULIAN.
363. JOVIAN.
364. Valentinian I. VALENS.
365. Earthquake in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily.-Amm. Marcell.
xxvi. 10.
375. Earthquake felt especially in Peloponnesus.-Zosimus, iv. 18.
Gratian emperor.
378. Defeat and death of Valens.
379. THEODOSIUS the Great.
381. Second œcumenical council.
Constantinople.
394. Olympic games abolished.—Cedrenus, i. 326.
395. ARCADIUS and Honorius. Huns ravage Asia Minor. Alaric in-
vades Greece.
398. Alaric governor of Eastern Illyricum.
408. Theodosius II.
425. University of Constantinople organised.
428. Genseric invades Africa.
431. Third œcumenical council. Ephesus.
438. Publication of the Theodosian Code.
439. Genseric takes Carthage.
441. Theodosius II. sends a fleet against Genseric.
442. Attila invades Thrace and Macedonia.
447. Attila ravages the country of Thermopylæ.
Walls of Constantinople repaired by Theodosius II.
449. Council of Ephesus, called the Council of Brigands.
450. MARCIAN.
451. Fourth oecumenical council. Chalcedon.
457. LEO I., called the Great, and the Butcher.
458. Great earthquake felt from Antioch to Thrace.
460. Earthquake at Cyzicus.
xxiv
CHRONOLOGY.
A. D.
465. Fire which destroyed parts of eight of the sixteen quarters of Con-
stantinople.
468. Leo I. sends a great expedition against Genseric.
473. Leo II, crowned.
474. LEO II. ZENO the Isaurian.
476. End of the Western Roman Empire.
477. Return of Zeno, twenty months after he had been driven from
Constantinople by Basiliskos.
480. Earthquakes at Constantinople during forty days.
Statue of Theodosius the Great thrown from its column.
491. ANASTASIUS I., called Dicorus.
499. Bulgarians invade the empire.
507. Anastasius constructs the long wall of Thrace.
514. Revolt of Vitalianus.
518. JUSTIN I.
526. Death of Theodoric.
527. JUSTINIAN I.
Gretes, king of the Huns, receives baptism at Constantinople.
The Tzans submit to the Roman empire.
528. Gordas, king of the Huns, on the Cimmerian Bosphorus, receives
baptism at Constantinople, and is murdered by his subjects on
his return.
Justinian commences his lavish expenditure on fortifications and
public buildings.
529. First edition of the Code of Justinian.
Schools of philosophy at Athens closed.
531. Battle of Callinicum. Death of Kobad, king of Persia.
Plague commenced which ravaged the Roman empire for fifty
years.
532. Sedition of Nika.
Peace concluded with Chosroes.
533. Conquest of the Vandal kingdom in Africa.
Institutions and Pandects published.
534. Belisarius returns to Constantinople.
Second edition of the Code.
536. Belisarius takes Rome.
537. Siege of Rome by Goths under Witiges.
Dedication of St Sophia's.
538. Bulgarians invade the empire.
Famine in Italy.
539. Witiges besieged in Ravenna.
Huns plunder Greece to the isthmus of Corinth.-Procopius, Pers.
ii. 4.
540. Surrender of Ravenna.-Marini Papiri, 336. Savigny. Geschichte
des Roemischen Rechts im Mittelalter, i. 347.
Chosroes invades Syria. Sack of Antioch.
541. Totila king of the Goths.
Consulate abolished by Justinian.
542. Great pestilence at Constantinople.
CHRONOLOGY.
XXV
A. D.
546. Rome taken by Totila.
547. Rome taken by Belisarius.
548. Belisarius quits Italy.
Death of Theodora.
549. Rome again taken by Totila.
Justinian's armies occupy the country of the Lazi.
550. Sclavonians and Huns invade the empire.
551. Silkworm introduced into the Roman Empire.
552. Totila defeated. Rome retaken by Narses.
553. Fifth œcumenical council. Constantinople.
554. Earthquakes at Constantinople, Nicomedia, Berytus, and Cos.
Church of Cyzicus fell during divine service.
557. Terrible earthquake at Constantinople. Justinian did not wear
his crown for forty days.—Agathias, 145; Malalas, xviii. 233.
558. Zabergan, king of the Huns, defeated near Constantinople by
Belisarius.
562. Treaty of peace with Persia. Belisarius accused of treason.
563. Belisarius restored to his rank.
565. March-death of Belisarius.
13th Nov.-death of Justinian in the thirty-ninth year of his reign.
JUSTIN II.
567. Kingdom of Gepids destroyed by Lombards.
568. Lombards invade Italy.
569. Justin sends the embassy of Zemarchos to the Turks.
571. Mahomet born. Weil (Mohammed sein Leben und seine Lehre,
21) says he died in 632, at the age of 63 lunar years, which
places his birth in April 571. Silvestre de Sacy says 20th or
21st April. See also Sprenger's Life of Mohammed, 75.
572. War between the Roman empire and Persia.
574. Tiberius defeated by the Avars.
Tiberius proclaimed Cæsar by Justin.
576. Battle of Melitene.
578. Death of Justin II.
579. Death of Chosroes.
Romans penetrate to Caspian Sea.
TIBERIUS II.
581. Persian army defeated by Maurice in his fourth campaign.
582. 14th Aug.--death of Tiberius. MAURICE.
John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, uses the title Ecu-
menic, granted to the patriarch by Justinian.
589. Incursions of the Avars and Sclavonians into Greece.-Evagrius,
Hist. Eccles. vi. 10. From this time Sclavonian colonies were
settled in the Peloponnesus.
590. Maurice crowns his son Theodosius at Easter. Hormisdas, king
of Persia, dethroned and murdered.
591. Chosroes II. restored to the Persian throne by the assistance of
Maurice.
Maurice marches out of Constantinople against the Avars.
600. Maurice fails to ransom the Roman prisoners.
602. Rebellion of the army. PHOCAS proclaimed emperor.
603. Persian war commences.
xxvi
CHRONOLOGY.
A. D.
608. Priscus, the son-in-law of Phocas, invites Heraclius.
609. Persians lay waste Asia Minor, and reach Chalcedon.
610. Phocas slain. HERACLIUS.
613. Heraclius Constantine, or Constantine III., crowned 22d Jan. ;
he was born 3d May 612.
614. Jerusalem taken by the Persians, and Church of the Holy Sepul-
chre burned.
615. Heraclius sends the patrician Niketas to seize the wealth of John
the Charitable, patriarch of Alexandria.
616. Persians invade Egypt.
617. Persians occupy Chalcedon with a garrison.
618. Public distributions of bread at Constantinople commuted for a
payment in money preparatory to its abolition.
619. Avars attempt to seize Heraclius at a conference for peace.
620. Peace concluded with the Avars.
621. Great preparations for carrying on the Persian war.
622. Monday, 5th April-Heraclius left Constantinople and proceeded
by sea to Pylæ. He collected troops from the provinces, and
exercised his army. He advanced to the frontiers of Armenia,
and made dispositions to winter in Pontus, but suddenly ad-
vanced through Armenia into Persia. The Persians made a
diversion against Cilicia, but, on Heraclius continuing his ad-
vance, turned and pursued him. Heraclius gained a battle, and
placed his army in winter quarters in Armenia. 16th July-Era
of the Hegira of Mahomet.
623. 25th March-Heraclius left Constantinople, joined the army in
Armenia, and was in the Persian territory by the 20th April.
Chosroes rejects terms of peace, and Heraclius takes Ganzaca
and Thebarmes. Chosroes fled by the passes into Media, and
Heraclius retired to winter in Albania.
Death of Sisebut, king of the Visigoths, who had conquered the
Roman possessions in Spain.
624. Chosroes sends an army, under Sarablagas and Perozites, to
guard the passes by which Heraclius was likely to invade Persia ;
but the emperor, making a long circuit by the plains, engaged
Sarablagas before he was joined by Sarbaraza, and gained the
battle. Sarbaraza, and then Saen, are also defeated. The Lazes
and Abasges abandoned Heraclius in this campaign. Heraclius
wintered in the Persian territory. This was a campaign of
marches and counter-marches in a mountainous country, and
Heraclius was opposed by greatly superior forces, who succeeded
in preventing his advance into Persia.
625. Heraclius resolves to return into the south-eastern part of Asia
Minor. From his winter quarters there were two roads—a
short mountain-road by Taranton, where nothing could be found
for the troops; a longer road, by the passes of Mount Taurus,
where supplies could be obtained. After a difficult march of
seven days over Taurus, Heraclius crossed the Tigris, marched
by Martyropolis to Amida, where he rested, and despatched a
CHRONOLOGY.
xxvii
A. D.
courier to Constantinople. As the Persians were following,
Heraclius placed guards in the passes, crossed the Nymphius,
and reached the Euphrates, where he found the bridge of boats
withdrawn. He crossed by a ford, and passed by Samosata over
Mount Taurus to Germanicia and Adana, where he encamped
between the city and the bridge over the Saros. Sarbaraza
advances to the Saros, and, after a battle, retires. Heraclius
advances to Sebaste, crosses the Halys, and puts his army
into winter quarters.
Chosroes plunders the Christian churches in Persia, and compels
all Christians in his dominions to profess themselves Nestorians.
626. The scholarians make a tumult at Constantinople because they
are deprived of the bread which had previously been distributed.
John Seismos attempts to raise the price of bread from three to
eight pholles.
Constantinople besieged by the Avars from 29th July to 8th
August.
A Persian army under Sarbaraza occupies Chalcedon. Another
under Saen is defeated by Theodore, the emperor's brother.
Heraclius stations himself in Lazica, and waits until he is
assured of the defeat of the Avars before Constantinople, and
the passage of the Caspian gates by an army of Khazars under
Ziebel. Meeting of Heraclius and Ziebel took place near Tiflis,
which was occupied by a Persian garrison. The Khazars furnish
Heraclius with 40,000 troops.
The church of Blachernes is enclosed within the fortifications of
the city by a new wall.
627. Heraclius appears to have derived little advantage from the
assistance of the 40,000 Khazars, unless we suppose that by
their assistance he was able to render himself master of Persar-
menia and Atropatene. They quitted him during the year 627.
9th October-Heraclius entered the district of Chamaetha, where
he remained seven days. 1st December-Heraclius reached the
greater Zab, crossed and encamped near Nineveh. Rhazetas
quitted his station at Ganzaca, and pursued Heraclius-crossed
the greater Zab by a ford three miles lower down than Herac-
lius passed it. Battle in which Rhazetes was defeated on Satur-
day, 12th December. Sarbaraza recalled from Chalcedon to
oppose the advance of Heraclius, who occupied Nineveh, and
passed the greater Zab again. 23d December-Heraclius passed
the lesser Zab, and rested several days in the palace of Jesdem,
where he celebrated Christmas.
628. 1st January-Heraclius passed the river Torna, took the palace of
Beglali with its parks, and Dastagerd, where Chosroes had re-
sided for twenty-four years, and accumulated great treasures.
Heraclius recovered three hundred standards taken by the
Persians from the Romans at different times, and passed the
feast of Epiphany (6th January) at Dastagerd. He quitted
Dastagerd on the 7th, and in three days reached the neighbour-
xxviii
CHRONOLOGY.
A. D.
hood of Ctesiphon, and encamped twelve miles from the Arba,
which he found was not fordable. He then ascended the Arba
to Siazouron, and spent the month of February in that country.
In March he spent seven days at Varzan, where he received news
of the revolution which had taken place, and that Siroes had
dethroned his father. Heraclius then retired from the neigh-
bourhood of Ctesiphon by Siarzoura, Chalchas, Jesdem. He
passed mount Zara (Zagros), where there was a great fall of
snow during the month of March, and encamped near Ganzaca,
which had then three thousand houses.
3d April-An ambassador of Siroes arrived at the camp of Heraclius.
Peace concluded. 8th April-Heraclius quitted his camp at
Ganzaca. 15th May-His letters announcing peace were read in
the church of St Sophia at Constantinople.
629. Death of Siroes, or Kabad, succeeded by his son Ardeshir.
Heraclius visits Jerusalem, and restores the Holy Cross to the
keeping of the patriarch.
630. Heraclius at Hierapolis occupied with ecclesiastical reforms.
632. Death of Mahomet, 7th or 8th June.
Era of Yesdedjerd, 15th August.
633. The chronology of the Saracen campaigns in Syria is extremely
uncertain. The accounts of the Greek and Arabian writers re-
quire to be adjusted by the sequence of a few events which can
be fixed with accuracy. There are several excellent observations
on the subject in Weil's notes to his Geschichte der Chalifen, and
I have often preferred his authority to that of Pagi and Clinton.
Wakidi, who is received as the best authority by Ockley, Gib-
bon, and Clinton, is now considered by orientalists as furnishing
materials for romance rather than for history.-Weil, i. 39,
note 3.
Bosra besieged, and perhaps it was taken early in the following year.
Abubekr was occupied, for some time after the death of Mahomet,
in reducing the rebellious Arabs to submission, and in subduing
several false prophets.
634. 30th July-Battle of Adjnadin.
Weil, i. 40, note 1.
22d August-Death of Abubekr.
Concerning its position, see
September-Battle of Yermuk (Hieromax). Omar was already
proclaimed chalif in the Syrian army.
635. Damascus taken after a siege of several months. The siege com-
menced after the battle of Yermuk.--See the correction of Theo-
phanes in Weil, i. 48 note.
Heraclius, taking the Holy Cross with him, quitted Syria, and retired
to Constantinople.
636. Various towns on the sea-coast taken by the Saracens, and another
battle fought.
Vahan, the commander of the Roman army, appears to have been
proclaimed emperor in this or the preceding year.-Theophanes,
280, edit. Par.
CHRONOLOGY.
xxix
A. D.
637. Capitulation of Jerusalem. The date of Omar's entry into Jeru-
salem and of the duration of the siege are both uncertain.-Theo-
phanes, 281; Weil, i. 80.
638. Invasion of Syria by a Roman army from Diarbekr, which besieges
Emesa, but is defeated. Weil, i. 81.
Antioch taken.-Theophanes, 282. Ecthesis published after Sep-
tember.
639. Jasdos (Aïad) takes Edessa and conquers Mesopotamia.—Theo-
phanes, 282.
December-Amrou invades Egypt.-Weil, i. 107, notes 1,3; Theoph.
282.
640. The 19th Hegira began 2d January 640.
The Caliph Omar orders a census of his dominions.-Theoph. 283.
Cairo taken. Capitulation of Mokaukas for the Copts.
641. February or March-Death of Heraclius. His reign of 30 years,
4 months, 6 days, would terminate 10th February.
Heraclius Constantine reigned 103 days, to 24th May.
HERACLEONAS sole emperor less than five months.
October-Constans II.-Clinton, Fasti Romani, App. 177.
December-Alexandria taken by Saracens, retaken by Romans, and
recovered by Saracens.
643. Omar rebuilds or repairs the temple of Jerusalem.-Theoph.
284.
Canal of Suez restored by Amrou.-Weil, i. 122.
644. Death of Omar.
647. Saracens drive Romans out of Africa, and impose tribute on the
province. Theoph. 285.
Moawyah invades Cyprus.
648. Moawyah besieges Aradus, and takes it by capitulation.
Constans II. publishes the Type.
653. Moawyah takes Rhodes, and destroys the Colossus.-Theoph. 286.
654. Pope Martin banished to Cherson.
655. Constans II. defeated by the Saracens in a great naval battle off
Mount Phoenix in Lycia.
656. Othman assassinated, 17th June.
658. Expedition of Constans II. against the Sclavonians.
Peace concluded with Moawyah.
659. Constans II. puts his brother Theodosius to death.
661. Murder of Ali, 22d January.-—Weil, i. 252.
Constans II. quits Constantinople, and passes the winter at Athens.
-Anastasius, De vit. Pont. Rom. 51.
662. Saracens ravage Romania (Asia Minor), and carry off many pri-
soners. Theoph. 289.
663. Constans II. visits Rome.
668. The Saracens advance to Chalcedon, and take Amorium, where
they leave a garrison; but it is soon retaken. Theoph. 291.
Constans II. assassinated at Syracuse.
CONSTANTINE IV. (Pogonatus).
669. The Saracens carry off 180,000 prisoners from Africa.
XXX
CHRONOLOGY.
A. D.
The troops of the Orient theme demand that the brothers of Con-
stantine IV. should receive the imperial crown, in order that
three emperors might reign on earth to represent the Trinity in
heaven.-Theoph. 293.
670. Saracens pass the winter at Cyzicus.
671. Saracens pass the winter at Smyrna and in Cilicia.
672. Constantine IV. prepares ships to throw Greek fire on the Saracens,
who besiege Constantinople.
673. Saracens, who have wintered at Cyzicus, penetrate into the port of
Constantinople, and attack Magnaura and Cyclobium, the two
forts at the continental angles of the city.
Saracens again pass the winter at Cyzicus.
674. Third year of the siege of Constantinople.
Saracen troops pass the winter in Crete.
677. Sixth year of the siege of Constantinople.
The Mardaïtes alarm the Caliph Moawyah by their conquests on
Mount Lebanon.
Thessalonica besieged by the Avars and Sclavonians.
678. Seventh year of the siege of Constantinople.
The Saracen fleet destroyed by Greek fire invented by Callinicus.
-Theoph. 295, and Nic. Pat. 22.
Bulgarians found a monarchy south of the Danube, in the country
still called Bulgaria.
Peace concluded with the Caliph Moawyah.
679. War with the Bulgarians.
680. Death of the caliph Moawyah.
Sixth general council of the church.
681. Heraclius and Tiberius, the brothers of Constantine IV., are de-
prived of the imperial title.
684. The caliph Abdalmelik offers to purchase peace by the payment of
an annual tribute of 365,000 pieces of gold, 365 slaves, and 365
horses.
685. September-Death of Constantine IV. (Pogonatus).
Justinian II. ascends the throne, aged sixteen.
686. Treaty of peace between the emperor and the caliph.
687. Emigration of Mardaïtes.
The Sclavonians of Strymon carry their piratical expeditions into
the Propontis.
689. Justinian II. forces the Greeks to emigrate from Cyprus.
691. Defeat of Justinian II., and desertion of the Sclavonian colonists.
692. General council of the church in Trulle.
The haratch established by the caliph.
695. Justinian II. deposed, his nose cut off, and banished to Cherson.
LEONTIUS emperor.
697. Saracens carry off great numbers of prisoners from Romania
(Asia Minor).
First doge of Venice elected.
Carthage taken by the Romans, and garrisoned.
698. Carthage retaken by the Saracens.
CHRONOLOGY.
xxxi
A. D.
698. Leontius dethroned and his nose cut off.
Tiberius III. (Apsimar), emperor.
703. Saracens defeated in Cilicia by Heraclius, the brother of Tiberius
III.
705. JUSTINIAN II. (Rhinotmetus) recovers possession of the empire.
708. The Saracens push their ravages to the Bosphorus.
709. Moslemah transports 80,000 Saracens from Lampsacus into
Thrace.
710. Ravenna and Cherson treated with inhuman cruelty by Justi-
nian II.
711. Justinian II. dethroned and murdered.
PHILIPPICUS emperor.
713. Philippicus dethroned, and his eyes put out.
ANASTASIUS II. emperor.
716. Anastasius II. dethroned.
THEODOSIUS III. emperor.
Leo the Isaurian relieves Amorium, concludes a truce with
Moslemah, and is proclaimed emperor by the army.
!
GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE TO THE ESTABLISH-
MENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE AS CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE. B. C. 146-A. D. 330.
INTRODUCTION-CHANGES PRODUCED BY THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER THE
GREAT ON THE CONDITION OF THE GREEK NATION-CAUSES OF THE CON-
QUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS-TREATMENT OF GREECE AFTER ITS
CONQUEST-EFFECTS OF THE MITHRIDATIC WAR ON THE STATE OF GREECE
RUIN OF THE COUNTRY BY THE PIRATES OF CILICIA-NATURE OF THE
ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION IN GREECE-FISCAL ADMINISTRATION
OF THE ROMANS-DEPOPULATION OF GREECE CAUSED BY THE ROMAN
GOVERNMENT-ROMAN COLONIES ESTABLISHED IN GREECE-POLITICAL CON-
DITION OF GREECE FROM THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS TO THAT OF CARACALLA
-THE GREEKS AND ROMANS NEVER SHOWED ANY DISPOSITION TO UNITE-
STATE OF SOCIETY AMONG THE GREEKS INFLUENCE OF RELIGION AND
PHILOSOPHY-SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE GREEKS AFFECTED BY THE WANT OF
COLONIES OF EMIGRATION-EFFECTS PRODUCED IN GREECE BY THE INROADS
OF THE GOTHS-CHANGES WHICH PRECEDED THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
CONSTANTINOPLE AS THE CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
THE Conquests of Alexander the Great effected a per-
manent change in the political condition of the Greek
nation, and this change powerfully influenced its moral
and social state during the whole period of its subjec-
tion to the Roman empire. The international system
of policy by which Alexander connected Greece with
Western Asia and Egypt, was only effaced by the reli-
A
2
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. gion of Mahomet,¹ and the conquests of the Arabs.
Though Alexander was himself a Greek, both from
education, and the prejudices cherished by the pride
of ancestry, still neither the people of Macedonia, nor
the chief part of the army, whose discipline and valour
had secured his victories, was Greek, either in language
or feelings.2 Had Alexander, therefore, determined on
organising his empire with the view of uniting the
Macedonians and Persians in common feelings of op-
position to the Greek nation, there can be no doubt
that he could easily have accomplished the design.
The Greeks might then have found themselves enabled
to adopt a very different course in their national career
from that which they were compelled to follow by the
powerful influence exercised over them by Alexander's
conduct. Alexander himself, undoubtedly, perceived
that the greater numbers of the Persians, and their
equality, if not superiority, in civilisation to the Mace-
donians, rendered it necessary for him to seek some
powerful ally to prevent the absorption of the Mace-
donians in the Persian population, the loss of their
language, manners, and nationality, and the speedy
change of his empire into the sovereignty of a mere
Græco-Persian dynasty. It did not escape his dis-
cernment, that the political institutions of the Greeks
created a principle of nationality capable of combating
the unalterable laws of the Medes and Persians.
Alexander was the noblest model of a conqueror ;
his ambition aspired at eclipsing the glory of his un-
paralleled victories by the universal prosperity which
was to flow from his civil government. New cities
1 In conformity with the established usage, the name of the Arabian pro-
phet is written Mahomet; but the same name when applied to any other indi-
vidual is written Mohammed, as being more correct.
2 Q. Curtius, vi. 9. 35. K. O. Müller ueber die Makedoner, p. 34. Müller's
Dorians, i. 499, Eng. trans. Plutarch (Aratus, 38) shows us the light in
which the Greeks viewed the noblest Macedonians when compared with the
Spartans.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
3
A. D. 330.
and extended commerce were to found an era in the B. c. 146-
world's history. Even the strength of his empire was
to be based on a political principle which he has the
merit of discovering, and of which he proved the effi-
cacy; this principle was the amalgamation of his sub-
jects into one people by permanent institutions. All
other conquerors have endeavoured to augment their
power by the subjection of one race to another.¹ The
merit of Alexander is very much increased by the
nature of his position with regard to the Greek nation.
The Greeks were not favourably disposed either to-
wards his empire or his person; they would willingly
have destroyed both as the surest way of securing
their own liberty. But the moral energy of the Greek
national character did not escape the observation of
Alexander, and he resolved to render this quality
available for the preservation of his empire, by intro-
ducing into the East those municipal institutions
which gave it vigour, and thus facilitate the infusion
of some portion of the Hellenic character into the
hearts of his conquered subjects.
The moderation of Alexander in the execution of
his plans of reform and change is as remarkable as
the wisdom of his extensive projects. In order to
mould the Asiatics to his wishes, he did not attempt
to enforce laws and constitutions similar to those of
Greece. He had profited too well by the lessons of
Aristotle to think of treating man as a machine. But
he introduced Greek civilisation as an important
element in his civil government, and established Greek
colonies with political rights throughout his conquests.
It is true that he seized all the unlimited power of the
1 History and poetry seem to have taken Alexander as the type of an am-
bitious warrior. The phrase, "Macedonia's madman," and the circumstance
of his weeping for worlds to conquer, hardly convey a correct idea of one whose
views of glory were so intimately connected with the effects his conquests were
to produce. From Alexandria to Candahar the unlettered do him more justice.
4
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. Persian monarchs, but, at the same time, he strove to
secure administrative responsibility, and to establish
free institutions in municipal government. Any laws
or constitution which Alexander could have promul-
gated to enforce his system of consolidating the popu-
lation of his empire into one body, would most probably
have been immediately repealed by his successors, in
consequence of the hostile feelings of the Macedonian
army. But it was more difficult to escape from the
tendency imprinted on the administration by the sys-
tematic arrangements which Alexander had introduced.
He seems to have been fully aware of this fact, though
it is impossible to trace the whole series of measures
he adopted to accelerate the completion of his great
project of creating a new state of society, and a new
nation, as well as a new empire, in the imperfect re-
cords of his civil administration which have survived.
His death left his own scheme incomplete, yet his
success was wonderful; for though his empire was
immediately dismembered, its numerous portions long
retained a deep imprint of that Greek civilisation
which he had introduced.¹ The influence of his phil-
anthropic policy survived the kingdoms which his
arms had founded, and tempered the despotic sway of
the Romans by its superior power over society; nor
was the influence of Alexander's government utterly
effaced in Asia until Mahomet changed the govern-
ment, the religion, and the frame of society in the
East.
The monarchs of Egypt, Syria, Pergamus, and Bac-
triana, who were either Macedonians or Greeks, re-
spected the civil institutions, the language, and the
religion of their native subjects, however adverse they
1 Tacitus, Ann. vi. 42, notices the effect of the municipal organisation of
Seleucia in maintaining its liberty amidst the despotism of the Parthian empire
as late as the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
MACEDONIAN INFLUENCE.
5
A. D. 330.
might be to Greek usages; and the sovereigns of B. c. 146-
Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Parthia, though
native princes, retained a deep tincture of Greek
civilisation after they had thrown off the Macedonian
yoke. They not only encouraged the arts, sciences,
and literature of Greece, but they even protected the
peculiar political constitutions of the Greek colonies
settled in their dominions, though at variance with the
Asiatic views of monarchical government.
The Greeks and Macedonians long continued separate
nations, though a number of the causes which ultimately
produced their fusion began to exert some influence
shortly after the death of Alexander. The moral and
social causes which enabled the Greeks to acquire a
complete superiority over the Macedonian race, and
ultimately to absorb it as a component element of their
own nation, were the same which afterwards enabled
them to destroy the Roman influence in the East. For
several generations, the Greeks appeared the feebler
party in their struggle with the Macedonians. The
new kingdoms, into which Alexander's empire was
divided, were placed in very different circumstances
from the older Greek states. Two separate divisions
were created in the Hellenic world, and the Macedonian
monarchies on the one hand, and the free Greeks on
other, formed two distinct international systems of
policy. The Macedonian sovereigns had a balance of
power to maintain, in which the free states of Europe
could only be directly interested when the over-
whelming influence of a conqueror placed their inde-
pendence in jeopardy. The multifarious diplomatic
relations of the free states among themselves required
constant attention, not only to maintain their political
independence, but even to protect their property and
civil rights. These two great divisions of Hellenic
society were often governed by opposite views and
6
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. feelings in morals and politics, though their various
members were continually placed in alliance as well as
collision by their struggles to preserve the balance of
power of their respective systems.
The immense power and wealth of the Seleucidæ
and Ptolemies rendered vain all the efforts of the small
European states to maintain the high military, civil,
and literary rank they had previously occupied. Their
best soldiers, their wisest statesmen, and their ablest
authors, were induced to emigrate to a more profitable
and extensive scene of action. Alexandria became the
capital of the Hellenic world. Yet the history of the
European states still continued to maintain its pre-
dominant interest, and as a political lesson, the
struggles of the Achaian League to defend the inde-
pendence of Greece against Macedonia and Rome, are
not less instructive than the annals of Athens and
Sparta. The European Greeks at this period per-
ceived all the danger to which their liberties were
exposed from the wealth and power of the Asiatic
monarchies, and they vainly endeavoured to effect a
combination of all the free states into one federal
body. Whatever might have been the success of such
a combination, it certainly offered the only hope of
preserving the liberty of Greece against the powerful
states with which the altered condition of the civilised
world had brought her into contact.
At the very time when the Macedonian kings were
attacking the independence of Greece, and the Asiatic
courts undermining the morals of the Greek nation,
the Greek colonies, whose independence, from their
remote situation, was secured against the attacks of
the Eastern monarchs, were conquered by the Romans.
Many circumstances tending to weaken the Greeks,
and over which they had no control, followed one
another with fatal celerity. The invasion of the Gauls,
DECLINE OF THE GREEKS.
7
A. D. 330.
though bravely repulsed, inflicted great losses on B. c. 146-
Greece. Shortly after, the Romans completed the
conquest of the Greek states in Italy.2 From that
time the Sicilian Greeks were too feeble to be any-
thing but spectators of the fierce struggle of the
Romans and Carthaginians for the sovereignty of their
island, and though the city of Syracuse courageously
defended its independence, the struggle was a hopeless
tribute to national glory. The cities of Cyrenaica
had been long subject to the Ptolemies, and the re-
publics on the shores of the Black Sea had been unable
to maintain their liberties against the repeated attacks
of the sovereigns of Pontus and Bithynia.
3
Though the Macedonians and Greeks were separated
into two divisions by the opposite interests of the
Asiatic monarchies and the European republics, still
they were united by a powerful bond of national feel-
ings. There was a strong similarity in the education,
religion, and social position of the individual citizen in
every state, whether Greek or Macedonian. Wherever
Hellenic civilisation was received, the free citizens
formed only one part of the population, whether the
other was composed of slaves or subjects; and this
peculiarity placed their civil interests as Greeks in a
more important light than their political differences as
subjects of various states. The Macedonian Greeks of
Asia and Egypt were a ruling class, governed, it is
true, by an absolute sovereign, but having their
interest so identified with his, in the vital question of
retaining the administration of the country, that the
Greeks, even in the absolute monarchies, formed a
favoured and privileged class. In the Greek republics,
the case was not very dissimilar; there, too, a small
2
1
B. C. 279.
B. C. 272.
4
B. C. 220. Polybius, iv. 56.
3
B. C. 212.
Strabo, 1. 7, p. 93, edit. Tauch. Memnonis
Heracleæ, Ponti Histor. excerpt. lib. xiii. xiv. Fragmenta Historicorum
Græcorum, iii. 532, edit. Didot..
8
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. body of free citizens ruled a large slave or subject
population, whose numbers required not only constant
attention on the part of the rulers, but likewise a deep
conviction of an ineffaceable separation in interests and
character, to preserve the ascendancy. This peculiarity
in the position of the Greeks cherished their exclusive
nationality, and created a feeling that the laws of
honour and of nations forbade free men ever to make
common cause with slaves. The influence of this feel-
ing was visible for centuries on the laws and education
of the free citizens of Greece, and it was equally powerful
wherever Hellenic civilisation spread.¹
Alexander's conquests soon exercised a widely ex-
tended influence on the commerce, literature, morals,
and religion of the Greeks. A direct communication
was opened with India, with the centre of Asia, and
with the southern coast of Africa. This immense
extension of the commercial transactions of the Asiatic
and Egyptian Greeks diminished the relative wealth
and importance of the European states, while, at the
same time, their stationary position assumed the aspect
of decline from the rapidly increasing power and
civilisation of Western Europe. A considerable trade
began to be carried on directly with the great com-
mercial depots of the East which had formerly afforded
large profits to the Greeks of Europe by passing
through their hands. As soon as Rome rose to some
degree of power, its inhabitants, if not its franchised
citizens, traded with the East, as is proved by the
existence of political relations between Rome and
Rhodes, more than three centuries before the Christian
era.2 There can be no doubt that the connection
¹ Plutarch, Sylla, xviii. Plutarch, in Hyperide. Cato, 78. Appian, De
Bell. Cir. I. Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 42. Dig. xxix. 5. 1, 32. 39.
2 Polybius, xxx. 5, 6. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, iii. 84. 2. The earliest
connection of Rome with Carthage was also commercial, consequently the
trading portion of the Roman state was not unimportant, though it was not
INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE.
9
A. D. 330.
between the two states had its origin in the interests B. c. 146-
of trade. New channels were opened for mercantile
enterprise as direct communications diminished the
expense of transport. The increase of trade rendered
piracy a profitable occupation. Both the sovereigns
of Egypt and the merchants of Rhodes favoured
the pirates who plundered the Syrians and Phoeni-
cians, so that trading vessels could only navigate
with safety under the protection of powerful states,
in order to secure their property from extortion
and plunder.¹ These alterations in commercial affairs
proved every way disadvantageous to the small repub-
lics of European Greece; and Alexandria and Rhodes
soon occupied the position once held by Corinth and
Athens.
The literature of a people is so intimately connected
with the local circumstances which influence education,
taste, and morals, that it can never be transplanted
without undergoing a great alteration. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that the literature of the Greeks,
after the extension of their dominion in the East,
should have undergone a great change; but it seems
remarkable that this change should have proved in-
variably injurious to all its peculiar excellencies. It is
singular, at the same time, to find how little the
Greeks occupied themselves in the examination of the
stores of knowledge possessed by the Eastern nations.
The situation and interests of the Asiatic and Egyptian
Greeks must have compelled many to learn the languages
of the countries which they inhabited, and the literature
represented in the body politic. This explains the adverse assertions of
Polybius in his first book (c. 1), with the fact of the existence of the
Carthaginian treaties noticed in his third. The Romans had trade worth
regulating by treaty five hundred years before the Christian era, though
personally they despised commerce; and previous to their commercial treaty
with Rhodes, they had sent an embassy to Alexander the Great at Babylon, as
Niebuhr allows, on the authority of Clitarchus, cited by Pliny. Hist. Nat. iii.
9. Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, iii. 169.
1 The Piracies of Scerdiliadas. Polybius, v. 95. Strabo, xiv. 5.
10
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. of the East was laid open to their investigation. They
appear to have availed themselves very sparingly of
these advantages. Even in history and geography,
they made but small additions to the information
already collected by Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon;
and this supercilious neglect of foreign literature has
been the cause of depriving modern times of all records
of the powerful and civilised nations which flourished
while Greece was in a state of barbarism. Had the
Macedonians or Romans treated the history and
literature of Greece with the contempt which the
Greeks showed to the records of the Phoenicians,
Persians, and Egyptians, it is not probable that any
very extensive remains of later Greek literature would
have reached us.¹ At a subsequent period, when the
Arabs had conquered the Syrian and Egyptian Greeks,
their neglect of the language and literature of Greece
was severely felt.
The munificence of the Ptolemies, the Seleucidæ, and
the kings of Pergamus, enabled their capitals to eclipse
the literary glory of the cities of Greece. The eminent
men of Europe sought their fortunes abroad; but when
genius emigrated it could not transplant those circum-
stances which created and sustained it. In Egypt and
in Syria, Greek literature lost its peculiar national
character; and that divine instinct in the portraiture
of nature, which had been the charm and characteristic
of its earlier age, never emigrated. This deficiency
forms, indeed, the marked distinction between the
literature of the Grecian and Macedonian periods; and
it was a natural consequence of the different situa-
tions held by literary men. Among the Asiatic and
1
¹ At a still later period the general introduction of the Latin language as the
official means of communication in the East, which, from the time of
Caracalla, was almost universal, was not without its effect on Greek literature.
Even Greek inscriptions of a public nature become rare after the time of
Caracalla.
MACEDONIAN INFLUENCE.
11
A. D. 330.
Alexandrine population, literature was a trade, know- B. C. 146-
ledge was confined to the higher classes, and literary
productions were addressed to a public widely dis-
persed and dissimilar in many tastes and habits. The
authors who addressed themselves to such a public
could not escape a vagueness of expression on some
subjects, and an affectation of occult profundity on
others. Learning and science, in so far as they could
be rendered available for upholding literary renown,
were most studiously cultivated, and most successfully
employed; but deep feeling, warm enthusiasm, and
simple truth, were, from the very nature of the case,
impossible.
The frame of society in earlier times had been very
different in the free states of Greece. Literature and
the fine arts then formed a portion of the usual educa-
tion and ordinary life of every citizen in the State;
they were consequently completely under the influence
of public opinion, and received the impress of the
national mind which they reflected from the mirror of
genius. The effects of this popular character in Greek
literature and art are evident, in the total freedom of
all the productions of Greece, in her best days, from
anything that partakes of mannerism or exaggeration.
The truer to nature any production could be rendered,
which was to be offered to the attention of the people,
the abler would they be to appreciate its merits, and
their applause would be obtained with greater certainty;
yet, at the same time, the farther the expression of
nature could be removed from vulgarity, the higher
would be the degree of general admiration. The
sentiment necessary for the realisation of ideal perfec-
tion, which modern civilisation vainly requires from
those who labour only for the polished and artificial
classes of a society broken into sections, arose in pro-
fusion, under the free instinct of the popular mind to
12
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. reverence simplicity and nature, when combined with
beauty and dignity.
The connection of the Greeks with Assyria and
Egypt, nevertheless, aided their progress in mathe-
matics and scientific knowledge; yet astrology was
the only new object of science which their Eastern
studies added to the domain of the human intellect.
From the time Berosus introduced astrology into Cos,
it spread with inconceivable rapidity in Europe. It
soon exercised a powerful influence over the religious
opinions of the higher classes, naturally inclined to
fatalism, and assisted in demoralising the private and
public character of the Greeks. From the Greeks it
spread with additional empiricism among the Romans:
it even maintained its ground against Christianity,
with which it long strove to form an alliance, and
it has only been extirpated in modern times.¹ The
Romans, as long as they clung to their national usages
and religious feelings, endeavoured to resist the pro-
gress of a study so destructive to private and public
virtue; but it embodied opinions which were rapidly
gaining ground. In the time of the Cæsars, astrology
was generally believed, and extensively practised.2
The general corruption of morals which followed
from the Macedonian conquests, was the inevitable
effect of the position in which mankind were every-
where placed. The accumulated treasures of the Per-
sian empire, which must have amounted to between
seventy and eighty millions sterling, were suddenly
thrown into general circulation. The Greeks profited
1 Astrology was adopted by the Christians at an early period. St Anthony
was a believer in its scientific pretensions, and, in modern times, Pope Paul
III. and most of his cardinals. Ranke, History of the Popes, p. 64. Kelly's
translation.
2 The astrologers or Chaldæans, as they were called, were banished from
Rome, A. D. 179. Valerius Max. i. 3, 2. Tacitus recounts a remarkable
instance of the superstition of Tiberius, accompanied by some very curious
reflections of his own. Annals, vi. 20--22; see also, Hist. i. 22; and Vitru-
vius, ix. 7.
DEMORALISATION OF THE GREEKS.
13
A. D. 330.
greatly by the expenditure of these treasures, and their B. c. 146-
social position became soon so completely changed by
the facilities afforded them of gaining high pay, and
of enjoying luxury in the service of foreign princes,
that public opinion ceased to exercise a direct influence
on private character.¹ The mixture of Macedonians,
Greeks, and natives, in the conquered countries of the
East, was very incomplete, and they generally formed
distinct classes of society: this circumstance alone con-
tributed to weaken the feelings of moral responsibility,
which are the most powerful preservatives of virtue.
It is difficult to imagine a state of society more com-
pletely destitute of moral restraint than that in which
the Asiatic Greeks lived. Public opinion was power-
less to enforce even an outward respect for virtue;
military accomplishments, talents for civil adminis-
tration, literary eminence, and devotion to the power
of an arbitrary sovereign, were the direct roads to dis-
tinction and wealth; honesty and virtue were very
secondary qualities. In all countries or societies where
a class becomes predominant, a conventional character
is formed, according to the exigencies of the case, as
the standard of an honourable man; and it is usually
very different, indeed, from what is really necessary to
constitute a virtuous, or even an honest citizen.
With regard to the European Greeks, high rank at
the Asiatic courts was often suddenly, and indeed acci-
dentally, placed within their reach, by qualities that
had in general only been cultivated as a means of
obtaining a livelihood. It is not, therefore, wonderful
that wealth and power, obtained under such circum-
stances, should have been wasted in luxury, and
squandered in the gratification of lawless passions.
1 Diodorus, xvii. 66--71. Curtius, v. 2, 8. Strabo, xv. 730. Arrian states
that Alexander found at Susa alone a treasury containing 50,000 talents, equal
to £19,000,000 sterling; iii. 16, 12. Plutarch (Alexander), 37.
14
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. Yet, in spite of the complaints most justly recorded in
history against the luxury, idleness, avarice, and de-
bauchery of the Greeks, it seems surprising that the
people resisted, so effectually as it did, the powerful
means at work to accomplish the national ruin. There
never existed a people more perfectly at liberty to
gratify every passion. During two hundred and fifty
years, the Greeks were the dominant class in Asia;
and the corrupting influence of this predominance was
extended to the whole frame of society, in their Euro-
pean as well as their Asiatic possessions. The history
of the Achaian League, and the endeavours of Agis and
Cleomenes to restore the ancient institutions of Sparta,
prove that public and private virtue were still admired
and appreciated by the native Greeks. The Romans,
who were the loudest in condemning and satirising the
vices of the Greek nation, proved far less able to resist
the allurements of wealth and power; and in the course
of one century, their demoralisation far exceeded the
corruption of the Greeks. The severe tone in which
Polybius animadverts on the vices of his countrymen,
must always be contrasted with the picture of Roman
depravity in the pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, in
order to form a correct estimate of the moral position
of the two nations. The Greeks afford a sad spectacle
of the debasing influence of wealth and power on the
higher classes; but the Romans, after their Asiatic
conquests, present the loathsome picture of a whole
people throwing aside all moral restraint, and openly
wallowing in those vices which the higher classes else-
where have generally striven to conceal.¹
The religion of the Greeks was little more than a
section of the political constitution of the State. The
power of religion depended on custom. Strictly speak-
1 Romans, chap. i. ver. 26-32. Juvenal, Tacitus, and Lucian, are full of
illustrations.
DEMORALISATION OF THE GREEKS.
15
A. D. 330.
ing, therefore, the Greeks never possessed anything B. C. 146—
more than a national form of worship, and their reli-
gious feelings produced no very important influence
on their moral conduct. The conquests of Alexander
effected as great a change in religion as in manners.
The Greeks willingly adopted the superstitious practices
of the conquered nations, and, without hesitation, paid
their devotions at the shrines of foreign divinities;
but, strange to say, they never appear to have pro-
foundly investigated either the metaphysical opinions
or the religious doctrines of the Eastern nations. They
treated with neglect the pure theism of Moses, and the
sublime religious system of Zoroaster, while they culti-
vated a knowledge of the astrology, necromancy, and
sorcery of the Chaldæans, Syrians, and Egyptians.
The separation of the higher and lower ranks of
society, which only commenced among the Greeks
after their Asiatic conquests, produced a marked effect
on the religious ideas of the nation. Among the wealthy
and the learned, indifference to all religions rapidly
gained ground. The philosophical speculations of Alex-
ander's age tended towards scepticism; and the state
of mankind, in the following century, afforded practical
proofs to the ancients of the insufficiency of virtue and
reason to insure happiness and success either in public
or private life. The consequence was, that the greater
number embraced the belief in a blind overruling
destiny, while a few became atheists. The absurdities
of popular paganism had been exposed and ridiculed,
while its mythology had not yet been explained by
philosophical allegories. No system of philosophy, on
the other hand, had sought to enforce its moral truths
among the people, by declaring the principle of man's
responsibility. The lower orders were without philo-
sophy, the higher without religion.
This separation in the feelings and opinions of the
16
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. different ranks of society, rendered the value of pub-
lic opinion comparatively insignificant to the philoso-
phers; and consequently, their doctrines were no longer
addressed to the popular mind. The education of the
lower orders, which had always depended on the public
lessons they had received from voluntary teachers in
the public places of resort, was henceforward neglected;
and the priests of the temples, the diviners and sooth-
sayers, became their instructors and guides. Under
such guidance, the old mythological fables, and the new
wonders of the Eastern magicians, were employed as
the surest means of rendering the superstitious feelings
of the people, and the popular dread of supernatural
influences, a source of profit to the priesthood.¹ While
the educated became the votaries of Chaldæans and
astrologers, the ignorant were the admirers of Egyptians
and conjurors.
2
The Greek nation, immediately before the conquest
of the Romans, was rich both in wealth and numbers.
Alexander had thrown the accumulated treasures of
centuries into circulation; the dismemberment of his
empire prevented his successors from draining the
various countries of the world, to expend their re-
sources on a single city. The number of capitals and
independent cities in the Grecian world kept money in
circulation, enabled trade to flourish, and caused the
Greek population to increase. The elements of national
prosperity are so various and complex, that a know-
ledge of the numbers of a people affords no certain
criterion for estimating their wealth and happiness;
still, if it were possible to obtain accurate accounts of
the population of all the countries inhabited by the
Greeks after the death of Alexander, such knowledge
1 Apuleius, Metam. viii. p. 571.
2 Lucian's Alexander, and the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus, by Philostratus,
belong to a much later period, but they afford the means of illustrating this
subject.
GREEK POPULATION.
17
A. D. 330.
would afford better means of estimating the real pro- B. c. 146-
gress or decline of social civilisation, than either the
records which history has preserved of the results of
wars and negotiations, or than the memorials of art and
literature. The population of Greece, as of every other
country, must have varied very much at different
periods; even the proportion of the slave to the free
inhabitants can never have long remained exactly the
same. We are, unfortunately, so completely ignorant
of the relative density of the Greek population at
different periods, and so well assured that its abso-
lute numbers depended on many causes which it is
now impossible to appreciate fully, that it would be a
vain endeavour to attempt to fix the period when the
Greek race was most numerous. The empire of the
Greeks was most extensive during the century which
elapsed immediately after the death of Alexander;
but it would be unsafe to draw, from that single fact,
any certain conclusion concerning the numbers of the
Greek race at that period, as compared with the
following century.
The fallacy of any inferences concerning the popula-
tion of ancient times, which are drawn from the num-
bers of the inhabitants in modern times, is apparent,
when we reflect on the rapid increase of mankind,
in the greater part of Europe, in late years. Gibbon
estimates the population of the Roman empire, in
the time of Claudius, at one hundred and twenty
millions, and he supposed modern Europe to contain,
at the time he wrote, one hundred and seven millions.1
Seventy years have not elapsed, and yet the countries
which he enumerated now contain upwards of two
hundred and ten millions.2 The variations which have
1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in 1776, vol. i. p. 179 of Dr Smith's
edition. In 1854, the population of Europe was 260,700,000.
2 See the tables of population in the Almanach de Gotha. 1842.
B
18
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. taken place in the numbers of the Jews at different
periods, illustrate the vicissitudes to which an ex-
patriated population, like a large portion of the Greek
nation, is always liable. The Jews have often been
far less-perhaps they have been frequently more
numerous than they are at present, yet their
numbers now seem to equal what they were at the
era of the greatest wealth, power, and glory of their
nation under Solomon.¹ A very judicious writer has
estimated the population of continental Greece, Pelo-
ponnesus, and the Ionian Islands, at three millions and
a half, during the period which elapsed from the
Persian wars to the death of Alexander.2 Now, if we
admit a similar density of population in Crete, Cyprus,
the islands of the Archipelago, and the colonies on the
coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, this number would
require to be more than doubled. The population of
European Greece declined after the time of Alexander.
Money became more abundant; it was easy for a
Greek to make his fortune abroad; increased wealth
augmented the wants of the free citizens, and the
smaller states became incapable of supporting as
large a free population as in earlier times, when wants
1 The census of David (2 Samuel, xxiv. 9) shows that the Jews were then
about five millions. The immense riches of Solomon (1 Kings, x. 14, 22),
who must have had about two millions sterling of annual revenue, and the
present population of Malta and Guernsey, which is proportionally greater
than that of Judæa in ancient times, render this neither improbable nor
miraculous. In the time of our Saviour the Jews were very numerous, and
very widely dispersed, and had already lost their own language, and adopted
that of the countries they inhabited (Acts, ii. 9). The Greeks were always more
tenacious of their language. See also Josephus, Ant. XIV. vii. 2.
2 Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ii. 386. But the extreme uncertainty of all
calculations about population in ancient times is evident from a comparison of
the various opinions of Boeckh and Letronne concerning the population of
Attica; of Brottier, Gibbon, and Dureau de la Malle, concerning that of Rome.
With regard to the population of Attica, Boeckh makes it 500,000; Letronne
only 220,000. See Leake's Topography of Athens and Attica, 2 vols. 1840, vol.
i. 618. After a judicious examination of the subject Colonel Leake fixes the
population of Attica at 527,000. Strabo, xvii. p. 833, mentions that Carthage
contained a population of 700,000 at the commencement of the third Punic
war, and Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 30, tells us that Seleucia had 600,000 inhabitants.
Diodorus, xvii. 42, says Alexandria had 300,000 free inhabitants.
COMMERCE.
19
A. D. 330.
were fewer, and emigration difficult. The size of pro- B. c. 146—
perties and the number of slaves, therefore, increased.
The diminution which had taken place in the popula-
tion of Greece must, however, have been trifling, when
compared with the immense increase in the Greek
population of Asia and Egypt; in Magna Græcia,
Sicily, and Cyrene, the number of the Greeks had not
decreased.¹ Greek civilisation had extended itself from
the banks of the Indus to the Pillars of Hercules, and
from the shores of the Palus Mæotis to the island of
Dioscorides. It may therefore be admitted, that the
Greeks were, at no earlier period of their history,
more numerous than at the time the Romans com-
menced the subjugation of the countries which they
inhabited.
The history of the Greeks under the Roman domina-
tion tends to correct the opinion, that national changes
are to be solely attributed to those remarkable occur-
rences which occupy the most prominent place in the
annals of states. It not unfrequently happened that
those events which produced the greatest change on
the fortunes of the Romans, exerted no very important
or permanent influence on the fate of the Greeks
while, on the other hand, some change in the state of
India, Bactria, Ethiopia, or Arabia, by altering the
direction of commerce, powerfully influenced their
prosperity and future destinies. A revolution in the
;
1 Cicero furnishes data for framing a calculation of the numbers of the
population in Sicily in his time. They seem to have been about two millions.
-Economie politique des Romains, par Dureau de la Malle, ii. 380.
We
possess likewise exact information concerning the army and revenues of
Ptolemy Philadelphus (B. C. 245). His kingdom embraced Egypt, Cyrenaica,
Cole-Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia. His army
consisted of 200,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, 2000 war-chariots, and 400
elephants; his fleet, of 1500 galleys of war, and 1000 ships of transport.
The annual revenues of his kingdom were 14,800 talents, or £2,500,000 in
money, and 1,500,000 artabas, or five million bushels of wheat paid in kind.
His treasury was said to contain seven hundred and forty thousand talents,
or above one hundred millions sterling.-Egypt under the Ptolemies, by Samuel
Sharpe, p. 94.
20
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. commercial intercourse between Europe and eastern
Asia assisted in producing the great changes which
took place in the Greek nation, from the period of
the subjection of Greece by the Romans, to that of
the conquest of the semi-Greek provinces which
had belonged to the Macedonian empire, by the
Saracens. The history of mankind requires a more
accurate illustration than has yet been undertaken,
of the causes of the general degradation of all the
political governments with which we are acquainted,
during this eventful period; but the task belongs to
universal history. To obtain a correct view of the
social condition of the European nations in the
darkest periods of the middle ages, it is necessary to
examine society through a Greek as well as a Roman
medium, and to weigh the experience and the passions
of the East against the force and the prejudices of the
West. It will then be found, that many germs of that
civilisation which seemed to have arisen in the dark
ages as a natural development of society, were really
borrowed from the Greek people and the Byzantine
empire, in which a Græco-Macedonian civilisation long
pervaded society.
SECT. I. IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE CONQUEST OF GREECE
BY THE ROMANS.
The great difference which existed in the social con-
dition of the Greeks and Romans during the whole of
their national existence, must be kept in view, in order
to form a just idea of their relative position when ruled
by the same government. The Romans formed a
nation with the organisation of a single city; their
political government, always partaking of its municipal
origin, was a type of concentration in administrative
CONQUEST OF GREECE.
21
A. D. 330.
power, and was enabled to pursue its objects with un- B. c. 146-
deviating steadiness of purpose. The Greeks were a
people composed of a number of rival states, whose
attention was incessantly diverted to various objects.
The great end of existence among the Romans was
war; they were the children of Mars, and they rever-
enced their progenitor with the most fervent en-
thusiasm. Agriculture itself was only honoured from
necessity. Among the Greeks, civil virtues were called
into action by the multifarious exigencies of society,
and were honoured and deified by the nation. Linked
together by an international system of independent
states, the Greeks regarded war as a means of obtain-
ing some definite object, in accordance with the
established balance of power. A state of peace was, in
their view, the natural state of mankind. The Romans
regarded war as their permanent occupation; their
national and individual ambition was exclusively
directed to conquest. The subjection of their enemies,
or a perpetual struggle for supremacy, was the only
alternative that war presented to their minds.
The success of the Roman arms, and the conquest of
Greece, were the natural results of concentrated national
feelings, and superior military organisation, contending
with an ill-cemented political league, and an inferior
military system. The Roman was instructed to regard
himself merely as a component part of the republic, and
to view Rome as placed in opposition to the rest of
mankind. The Greek, though he possessed the moral
feeling of nationality quite as powerfully as the Roman,
could not concentrate equal political energy.
The
Greeks after the period of the Macedonian conquests,
occupied the double position of members of a widely
spread and dominant people, and of citizens of inde-
pendent states. Their minds were enlarged by this
extension of their sphere of civilisation; but what they
22
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. gained in general feelings of philanthropy, they appear
to have lost in patriotic attachment to the interest of
their native states.
It would be a vain exercise of ingenuity to speculate
on the course of events, and on the progress of civilisa-
tion in the ancient world, had the national spirit of
Greece been awakened in her struggle with Rome, and
the war between the two peoples involved the question
of Greek nationality, as well as political independence.
On the one hand, Greece and Rome might be supposed
existing as rival states, mutually aiding the progress
of mankind by their emulation; on the other, the ex-
tinction of the Greek people, as well as the destruction
of their political government, might be regarded as a
not improbable event. No strong national feeling was,
however, raised in Greece by the wars with Rome, and
the contest remained only a political one in the eyes of
the people; consequently, even if the military power
of the belligerents had been more nearly balanced than
it really was, the struggle could hardly have terminated
in any other way
than by the subjugation of the Greeks.
It seems at first sight more difficult to explain the
causes of the facility with which the Greeks accom-
modated themselves to the Roman sway, and of the
rapidity with which they sank into political insigni-
ficancy, than the ease with which they were vanquished
in the field. The fact, however, is undeniable, that the
conquest was generally viewed with satisfaction by the
great body of the inhabitants of Greece, who considered
the destruction of the numerous small independent
governments in the country, as a necessary step to-
wards improving their own condition. The political
constitutions even of the most democratic states of
Greece excluded so large a portion of the inhabitants
from all share in the public administration, and after
the introduction of large mercenary armies, military
CONQUEST OF GREECE.
23
service became so severe a burden on the free citizens, B. c. 146—
that the majority looked with indifference on the loss A. D. 330.
of their independence, when that loss appeared to in-
sure a permanent state of peace. The selfishness of the
Greek aristocracy, which was prominently displayed at
every period of history, proved peculiarly injurious in
the latter days of Greek independence. The aristocracy
of the Greek cities and states indulged their ambition
and cupidity to the ruin of their country. The selfish-
ness of the Roman aristocracy was possibly as great,
but it was very different. It found gratification in in-
creasing the power and glory of Rome, and it identified
itself with pride and patriotism; Greek selfishness, on
the contrary, submitted to every meanness from which
an aristocracy usually recoils, in order to gratify its
passions, to which it even sacrificed its country. Greece
had arrived at that period of civilisation, when political
questions were determined by financial reasons, and
the hope of a diminution of the public burdens was a
powerful argument in favour of submission to Rome.
When the Romans conquered Macedonia, they fixed
the tribute at one half the amount which had been
paid to the Macedonian kings.¹
At the period of the Roman conquest, public opinion
had been vitiated, as well as weakened, by the power
and corrupt influence of the Asiatic monarchies.
Many of the Greek princes employed large sums in
purchasing the military services and civic flatteries
of the free states. The political and military leaders
throughout Greece were thus, by means of foreign
alliances, rendered masters of resources far beyond
what the unassisted revenues of the free states could
1 Livy, xlv. 18. The instructions to the commissioners appointed to settle
the affairs of Macedonia and Illyria give an admirable and concise picture of
the policy of Rome while she was still aspiring at conquest, and dared not
forego the advantages to be derived from appearing as the champion of the
people's cause.
24
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. have placed at their disposal. It soon became evident
that the fate of many of the free states depended on
their alliances with the kings of Macedonia, Egypt,
Syria, and Pergamus; and the citizens could not avoid
the despairing conclusion that no exertion on their part
could produce any decisive effect in securing the tran-
quillity of Greece. They could only increase their own
taxes, and bring to their own homes all the miseries of
a most inhuman system of warfare. This state of public
affairs caused the despair which induced the Acarna-
nians,' and the citizens of Abydos,2 to adopt the heroic
resolution not to survive the loss of their independence;
but its more general effect was to spread public and
private demoralisation through all ranks of society.
Peace alone, to the reflecting Greeks, seemed capable
of restoring security of property, and of re-establishing
due respect for the principles of justice; and peace
seemed only attainable by submission to the Romans.
The continuation of a state of war, which was rapidly
laying the fortified towns in ruin, and consuming the
resources of the land, was regarded by the independent
Greeks as a far greater evil than the acknowledgment
of the Roman supremacy. So ardently was the ter-
mination of the contest desired by the great body of
the people, that a common proverb, expressive of a
wish that the Romans might speedily prevail, was
everywhere current. This saying, which was common
after the conquest, has been preserved by Polybius:
"If we had not been quickly ruined, we should not
have been saved."3
It was some time before the Greeks had great reason
to regret their fortune. A combination of causes, which
1 Livy, xxvi. 25.
2 Polybius, xvi. 32. Livy, xxxi. 17. And the financial oppression of the
Romans at Tarsus caused a similar despair at a later period. Appian, Bell.
civ. iv.
3 Polybius, xl. 5. 12.
GREEK INSTITUTIONS.
25
A. D. 330.
could hardly have entered into the calculations of any B. c. 146—
politician, enabled them to preserve their national insti-
tutions, and to exercise all their former social influence,
even after the annihilation of their political existence.
Their vanity was flattered by their admitted superiority
in arts and literature, and by the respect paid to their
usages and prejudices by the Romans. Their political
subjection was at first not very burdensome; and a
considerable portion of the nation was allowed to retain
the appearance of independence. Athens and Sparta
were honoured with the title of allies of Rome.¹ The
nationality of the Greeks was so interwoven with their
municipal institutions, that the Romans found it im-
possible to abolish the local administration; and an
imperfect attempt, made at the time of the conquest
of Achaia, was soon abandoned. These local institu-
tions ultimately modified the Roman administration
itself, long before the Roman empire ceased to ex-
ist; and, even though the Greeks were compelled to
adopt the civil law and judicial forms of Rome, its
political authority in the East was guided by the
feelings of the Greeks, and moulded according to
Greek customs.
The social rank which the Greeks held in the eyes
of their conquerors, at the time of their subjection, is
not to be overlooked. The bulk of the Greek popula-
tion in Europe consisted of landed proprietors, occupy-
ing a position which would have given some rank in
Roman society. No class precisely similar existed at
Rome, where a citizen that did not belong to the senate,
the aristocracy, or the administration, was of very little
account, for the people always remained in an inferior
1 Athens retained this independent existence, partaking something of the
position of Hamburg in the Germanic body, until the time of Caracalla, when
its citizens were absorbed into the Roman empire, by the decree which con-
ferred the rights and imposed the burdens of Roman citizenship on all the free
inhabitants in the dominions of Rome.
*
26
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
1
CHAP. I. Social rank. The higher classes at Rome always felt
either contempt or hostility towards the populace of
the city; and even when the emperors were induced
to favour the people, from a wish to depress the great
families of the aristocracy, they were unable to efface
the general feeling of contempt with which the people
was regarded. To the Greeks,-who had always main-
tained a higher social position, not only in Europe, but
also in the kingdoms of the Seleucida and the Ptolemies,
-a high position was conceded by the Roman aristo-
cracy, as it awakened no feelings either of hostility or
jealousy. Polybius was an example.
SECT. II.-TREATMENT OF GREECE AFTER ITS CONQUEST.
The Romans generally commenced by treating their
provinces with mildness. The government of Sicily
was arranged on a basis which certainly did not aug-
ment the burdens on the inhabitants. The tribute
imposed on Macedonia was less than the amount of
taxation which she had paid to her own kings; and
there is no reason for supposing that the burdens of
the Greeks, whose country was embraced in the pro-
vince of Achaia, were increased by the conquest. The
local municipal administration of the separate cities
was allowed to exist, but, in order to enforce submis-
sion more readily, their constitutions were modified by
fixing a census, which restricted the franchise in the
democratic commonwealths.2 Some states were long
allowed to retain their own political government, and
were ranked as allies of the republic. It is impossible
to trace the changes which the Romans gradually
effected in the financial and administrative condition
1 The tribune Lucius Martius Philippus asserted, that there were not 2000
Roman citizens proprietors of land. Cicero, De Offic. ii. 21.
2 Pausanias, vii. 16, 6.
EFFECTS OF THE CONQUEST.
27
A. D. 330.
of Greece with chronological precision. Facts, often B. C. 146—
separated by a long series of years, require to be
gleaned; and caution must be used in attributing to
them a precise influence on the state of society at other
periods. The Roman senate was evidently not without
great jealousy and some fear of the Greeks; and great
prudence was displayed in adopting a number of
measures by which they were gradually weakened, and
cautiously broken to the yoke of their conquerors.
This caution proves that the despair of the Achaians
had produced a considerable effect on the Romans, who
perceived that the Greek nation, if roused to a general
combination, possessed the means of offering a deter-
mined and dangerous resistance. It was not until
after the time of Augustus, when the conquest of
every portion of the Greek nation had been completed,
that the Romans began to view the Greeks in the con-
temptible light in which they are represented by the
writers of the capital. Crete was not reduced into the
form of a province until about eight years after the
subjection of Achaia, and its conquest was not effected
without difficulty, after a war of three years, by the
presence of a consular army. The resistance it offered
was so obstinate, that it was almost depopulated ere
the Romans could complete its conquest.'
1
No attempt was made to introduce uniformity into
the general government of the Grecian states; any
such plan, indeed, would have been contrary to the
principles of the Roman government, which had never
aspired at establishing unity even in the administra-
tion of Italy. The attention of the Romans was
directed to the means of ruling their various con-
quests in the most efficient manner, of concentrating
all the military power in their own hands, and of
levying the greatest amount of tribute which cir-
B. c. 67. Freinsheim, Supp. Liv. xcix. 47.
1
28
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. cumstances would permit. Thus, numerous cities in
Greece, possessing but a very small territory, as Delphi,
Tespiæ, Tanagra, and Elatea, were allowed to retain
that degree of independence, which secured to them
the privilege of being governed by their own laws and
usages, so late even as the times of the emperors.
Rhodes also long preserved its own government as a
free state,¹ though it was completely dependent on Rome.
The Romans adopted no theoretical principles which
required them to enforce uniformity in the geographical
divisions, or in the administrative arrangements of the
provinces of their empire, particularly where local habits
or laws opposed a barrier to any practical union.
2
The Roman government, however, soon adopted
measures tending to diminish the resources of the
Greek states when received as allies of the republic.
We are informed by Diodorus, that in consequence of
the tyranny of the collectors of the tribute in Sicily,
numbers of free citizens were reduced to slavery.
These slaves were sold even within the dominions of
the king of Bithynia. This conduct of the Romans
produced an extensive insurrection of the slaves; and
contemporary with a seditious rising in Sicily, there
occurred also a great rebellion of the slaves employed
in the silver mines of Attica.3 The Attic slaves seized
the fortified town of Sunium, and committed extensive
ravages before the government of Athens was able to
overpower them. It is so natural for slaves to rebel
when a favourable occasion presents itself, that it is
hazardous to look beyond ordinary causes for any ex-
1 Tacitus, Ann. xii. 58. The precise privileges of autonomia in the Roman
empire do not appear to be exactly determined.
2 Diod. Sic., xxxvi. 1.
3 Athenæus, vi. 104. There were two servile wars in Sicily. The first
B. c. 134 to 132, and the second, B. c. 103, which lasted almost four years.
Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii. The rebellion of the Attic slaves occurred
during the first; and about the same time insurrections of slaves took place at
Delos and other places in Greece. Diodorus, Frag. xxxiv. 3.
REBELLION OF SLAVES.
29
A. D. 330.
planation of this insurrection, particularly as the de- B. c. 146-
clining state of the silver mines of Laurium, at this
period, rendered the slaves less valuable, and would
cause them to be worse treated, and more negligently
guarded. Still the simultaneous rebellion of slaves, in
these two distant Greek countries, seems not uncon-
nected with the measures of the Roman government
towards its subjects.
If we could place implicit faith in the testimony
of so firm and partial an adherent of the Romans as
Polybius, we must believe, that the Roman adminis-
tration was at first characterised by a love of justice,
and that the Roman magistrates were far less venal
than the Greeks. If the Greeks, he says, are intrusted
with a single talent of public money, though they give
written security, and though legal witnesses be present,
they will never act honestly; but if the largest sums be
confided to the Romans engaged in the public service,
their honourable conduct is secured simply by an oath.¹
Under such circumstances, the people must have ap-
preciated highly the advantages of the Roman domi-
nation, and contrasted the last years of their troubled
and doubtful independence with the just and peaceful
government of Rome, in a manner extremely favour-
able to their new masters. Less than a century of
irresponsible power effected a wonderful change in the
conduct of the Roman magistrates. Cicero declares,
that the senate made a traffic of justice to the pro-
vincials. There is nothing so holy, that it cannot be
violated, nothing so strong, that it cannot be destroyed
by money, are his words.2
But as the government!
of Rome grew more oppressive, and the amount of
the taxes levied on the provinces was more severely
exacted, the increased power of the republic rendered
any rebellion of the Greeks utterly hopeless. The com-
1 Polybius, vi. 56, 13.
2 In Verrem. 1, 2.
30
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
i
CHAP. I. plete separation in the administration of the various
provinces, which were governed like so many separate
kingdoms, viceroyalties, or pashalics, and the preserva-
tion of a distinct local government in each of the allied
kingdoms and free states, rendered their management
capable of modification, without any compromise of
the general system of the republic; and this admirable
fitness of its administration to the exigences of the
times, remained an attribute of the Roman state for
many centuries. Each state in Greece, continuing in
possession of as much of its peculiar political constitu-
tion as was compatible with the supremacy and fiscal
views of a foreign conqueror, retained all its former
jealousies towards its neighbours, and its interests were
likely to be as often compromised by disputes with the
surrounding Greek states as with the Roman govern-
ment. Prudence and local interests would every-
where favour submission to Rome; national vanity
alone would whisper incitements to venture on a
struggle for independence.
SECT. III.-EFFECTS OF THE MITHRIDATIC WAR ON THE
STATE OF GREECE.
For sixty years after the conquest of Achaia, the
Greeks remained docile subjects of Rome. But during
that period, the policy of the government aided the
tendencies of society towards the accumulation of
property in the hands of few individuals. The number
of Roman usurers increased, and the exactions of
Roman publicans in collecting the taxes became more
oppressive, so that when the army of Mithridates
invaded Greece, B. c. 86, while Rome appeared plunged
in anarchy by the civil broils of the partisans of Marius
and Sylla, the Greeks in office conceived the vain hope
:
MITHRIDATIC WAR.
31
A. D. 330.
of recovering their independence. When they saw the B. c. 146-
king drive the Romans out of Asia and transport a
large army into Europe, they expected him to rival the
exploits of Hannibal, and to carry the war into Italy.
But the people in general did not take much interest
in the contest; they viewed it as a struggle for supre-
macy between the Romans and the King of Pontus; and
public opinion favoured the former, as likely to prove
the milder and more equitable masters. Many of the
leading men in Greece, and the governments of most
of those states and cities which retained their independ-
ence, declared in favour of Mithridates. Some Lace-
dæmonian and Achaian troops joined his army, and
Athens engaged heartily in his party. As soon, how-
ever, as Sylla appeared in Greece with his army, every
state hastened to submit to Rome, with the exception
of the Athenians, who probably had some particular
cause of dissatisfaction at this time.¹ The vanity of
the Athenians, puffed up by constant allusions to their
fame, induced them to engage in a direct contest with
the whole force of Rome. They were commanded by
a demagogue and philosopher named Aristion, whom
they had elected Strategos and intrusted with absolute
power. The Roman legions were led by Sylla.2 The
exclusive vanity of the Athenians, while it cherished
in their hearts a more ardent love of liberty than had
survived in the rest of Greece, blinded them to their
own insignificancy when compared with the belligerents
into whose quarrel they rashly thrust themselves. But
though they rushed precipitately into the war, they
conducted themselves in it with great constancy.
Sylla was compelled to besiege Athens in person; and
the defence of the city was conducted with such cou-
rage and obstinacy, that the task of subduing it proved
1 Zinkeisen, Geschichte Griechenlands, 467, n. 1. Athenæus, v. 48.
2 Aristion is called Athenion by two ancient writers.
32
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
one of great difficulty to a Roman army, commanded
by that celebrated warrior. When the defence grew
hopeless, the Athenians sent a deputation to Sylla to
open negotiations; but the orator beginning to recount
the glories of their ancestors at Marathon, as an argu-
ment for mercy, the proud Roman cut short the discus-
sion with the remark, that his country had sent him to
Athens to punish rebels, not study history.¹ Athens
was at last taken by assault, and it was treated by
Sylla with unnecessary cruelty; the rapine of the troops
was encouraged, instead of being checked, by their
general. The majority of the citizens was slain; the
carnage was so fearfully great, as to become memorable
even in that age of bloodshed; the private movable pro-
perty was seized by the soldiery, and Sylla assumed
some merit to himself for not committing the rifled
houses to the flames. He declared that he saved the
city from destruction, and allowed Athens to continue
to exist, only on account of its ancient glory. He
carried off some of the columns of the temple of Jupiter
Olympius, to ornament Rome; but as that temple was
in an unfinished state, and he inflicted no injury on
any public building, it seems probable that he only
removed materials which were ready for transport,
without pulling down any part of the edifice. From
the treasury of the Parthenon, however, he carried off
40 talents of gold and 600 of silver.2 The fate of the
Piræus, which he utterly destroyed, was more severe
than that of Athens. From Sylla's campaign in Greece,
the commencement of the ruin and depopulation of the
country is to be dated. The destruction of property
caused by his ravages in Attica was so great, that Athens
1 Plutarch, Sylla. Marathon has proved a sad stumblingblock to Greek
rhetoricians, from the time of Plato down to the days of the Logiotati. 'Eri
πᾶσι δὲ ὁ Μαραθὼν καὶ ὁ Κυναίγειρος, ὧν οὐκ ἂν τὶ ἄνευ γένοιτο. Lucian, Rhetor.
Præcep. 18.
2 Appian, 39.
SYLLA AT ATHENS.
33
A. D. 330.
from that time lost its commercial as well as its political B. c. 146-
importance. The race of Athenian citizens was almost
extirpated, and a new population, composed of a
heterogeneous mass of settlers, received the right of
citizenship.¹ Still as Sylla left Athens in possession of
freedom and autonomia, with the rank of an allied city,
the vitality of Greek institutions inspired the altered
body; the ancient forms and laws continued to exist.
in their former purity, and the Areopagus is mentioned
by Tacitus, in the reign of Tiberius, as nobly disre-
garding the powerful protection of Piso, who strove to
influence its decisions, and corrupt the administration
of justice.2
Athens was not the only city in Greece which suf-
fered severely from the cruelty and rapacity of Sylla.
He plundered Delos, Delphi, Olympia, and the sacred
enclosure of Esculapius, near Epidaurus; and he razed
Anthedon, Larymna, and Halæ to the ground. After
he had defeated Archelaus, the general of Mithridates,
at Cheronea, he deprived Thebes of half its territory,
which he consecrated to Apollo and Jupiter. The ad-
ministration of the temporal affairs of the
pagan deities
was not so wisely conducted as the civil business
of the municipalities. The Theban territory declined
in wealth and population, and in the time of Pau-
sanias the Cadmea or citadel was the only inhabited
portion of ancient Thebes. Both parties, during the
Mithridatic war, inflicted severe injuries on Greece,
plundered the country, and destroyed property most
wantonly. Many of the losses were never repaired.
The foundations of national prosperity were under-
1 Tacitus, Ann. ii. 55.
2 Plutarch, Sylla. Strabo, ix. 398. Tacitus, Ann. ii. 53. The Athenians
were forbidden to make a trade of selling their citizenship by Augustus, but
they soon resumed the practice, and appear to have sold it cheap.-Antho-
logia Græca, xi. 319; tom. iii. 70.
3 Plutarch, Sylla.
C
34
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP 1. mined; and it henceforward became impossible to save
from the annual consumption of the inhabitants the
sums necessary to replace the accumulated capital of
ages, which this short war had annihilated. In some
cases the wealth of the communities became insufficient
to keep the existing public works in repair.
SECT. IV.-RUIN OF THE COUNTRY BY THE PIRATES OF
CILICIA.
The Greeks, far from continuing to enjoy permanent
tranquillity under the powerful protection of Rome,
found themselves exposed to the attacks of every enemy,
against whom the policy of their masters did not re-
quire the employment of a regular army. The conquest
of the eastern shores of the Mediterranean by the Ro-
mans destroyed the maritime police which had been en-
forced by the Greek states as long as they possessed an
independent navy. But even Rhodes, after its services
ceased to be indispensable, was watched with jealousy
by the Romans, though it had remained firmly attached
to Rome and given asylum to numbers of Roman
citizens who fled from Asia Minor to escape death at
the hands of the partisans of Mithridates. The cau-
tion of the senate did not allow the provinces to main-
tain any considerable armed force, either by land or sea;
and the guards whom the free cities were permitted to
keep, were barely sufficient to protect the walls of
their citadels. Armies of robbers, and fleets of pirates,
remains of the mercenary forces of the Asiatic mon-
archs, disbanded in consequence of the Roman victories,
began to infest the coasts of Greece. As long as the
provinces continued able to pay their taxes with regu-
larity, and the trade of Rome did not suffer directly,
little attention was paid to the sufferings of the Greeks.
PIRACY.
35
A. D. 330.
The geographical configuration of European Greece, B. C. 146—
intersected, in every direction, by high and rugged
mountains, and separated by deep gulfs and bays into
a number of promontories and peninsulas, renders com-
munication between the thickly peopled and fertile
districts more difficult than in most other regions.
The country opposes barriers to internal trade, and
presents difficulties to the formation of plans of mutual
defence between the different districts, which it requires
care and judgment, on the part of the general govern-
ment, to remove. The armed force that can instantly
be collected at one point, must often be small; and this
circumstance has marked out Greece as a suitable field
where piratical bands may plunder, as they have it in
their power to remove their forces to distant spots with
great celerity. From the earliest ages of history to the
present day, these circumstances, combined with the
extensive trade which has always been carried on in
the eastern part of the Mediterranean, have rendered
the Grecian seas the scene of constant piracies. At
many periods, the pirates have been able to assemble
forces sufficient to give their expeditions the character
of regular war; and their pursuits have been so lucra-
tive, and their success so great, that their profession
has ceased to be viewed as a dishonourable occupation.1
A system of piracy, which was carried on by con-
siderable armies and large fleets, began to be formed
soon after the conclusion of the Mithridatic war. The
indefinite nature of the Roman power in the East, the
weakness of the Asiatic monarchs and of the sove-
reigns of Egypt, the questionable nature of the protec-
tion which Rome accorded to her allies, and the general
1 Piracy flourished before the time of Homer, and it had some flattering re-
miniscences in the days of Tournefort. It is said that the piracies committed
during the late revolutionary war contributed quite as much as the humanity
of the allies to the signature of the treaty of the 6th of July 1827, and to the
foundation of a German monarchy in Greece.
36
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
A
CHAP. I. disarming of the European Greeks, all encouraged
and facilitated the enterprises of these pirates.
political, as well as a military organisation, was given
to their forces, by the seizure of several strong positions.
on the coast of Cilicia. From these stations they di-
rected their expeditions over the greater part of the
Mediterranean.1 The immense wealth which ages of
prosperity had accumulated in the small towns and
numerous temples of Greece was now defenceless; the
country was exposed to daily incursions, and a long list
of the devastations of the Cilician pirates is recorded
in history. Many even of the largest and wealthiest
cities in Europe and Asia were successfully attacked
and plundered, and the greater number of the cele-
brated temples of antiquity were robbed of their im-
mense treasures. Samos, Clazomene, and Samothrace,
the great temples at Hermione, Epidaurus, Tænarus,
Calauria, Actium, Argos, and the Isthmus of Corinth,
were all pillaged. To such an extent was this system
of robbery carried, and so powerful and well-disciplined
were the forces of the pirates, that it was at last neces-
sary
for Rome either to share with them the dominion
of the sea, or to devote all her military energies to
their destruction. In order to carry on war with
this band, the last remains of the mercenaries who
had upheld the Macedonian empire in the East,-
Pompey was invested with extraordinary powers as
commander-in-chief over the whole Mediterranean. An
immense force was placed at his absolute disposal, and
he was charged with a degree of authority over the
officers of the republic, and the allies of the State, which
had never before been intrusted to one individual. His
success in the execution of this commission was con-
sidered one of his most brilliant military achievements;
he captured ninety ships with brazen beaks, and took
1 Appian, De Bello Mith. 92, 3. Plutarch, Pompey. 24.
PIRACY.
37
A. D. 330.
twenty thousand prisoners. Some of these prisoners B. c. 146-
were established in towns on the coast of Cilicia; and
Soli, which he rebuilt, and peopled with these pirates,
was honoured with the name of Pompeiopolis. The
Romans, consequently, do not seem to have regarded
these pirates as having engaged in a disgraceful war-
fare, otherwise Pompey would hardly have ventured to
make them his clients.
The proceedings of the senate during the piratical
war, revealed to the Greeks the full extent of the dis-
organisation which already prevailed in the Roman
government. The administration was in a state of
anarchy; a few families who considered themselves.
above the law, and who submitted to no moral re-
straint, ruled both the senate and the people, so that
the policy of the republic changed and vacillated
according to the interests and passions of a small
number of leading men in Rome. Some events during
the conquest of Crete afford a remarkable instance of
the incredible disorder in the republic, which fore-
shadowed the necessity of a single despot as the only
escape from anarchy. While Pompey, with unlimited
power over the shores and islands of the Mediterra-
nean, was exterminating piracy and converting pirates
into citizens, Metellus, under the authority of the
senate, was engaged in conquering the island of Crete,
in order to add it to the list of Roman provinces of
which the senate alone named the governors. A con-
flict of authority arose between Pompey and Metellus.
The latter was cruel and firm; the former mild but
ambitious, and eager to render the whole maritime
population of the east his dependents. He became
jealous of the success of Metellus, and sent one of his
lieutenants to stop the siege of the Cretan towns in-
vested by the Roman army. But Metellus was not
deterred by seeing the ensigns of Pompey's authority
38
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. displayed from the walls. He pursued his conquests,
and neither Pompey nor the times were yet prepared
for an open civil war between consular armies.¹
Crete had been filled with the strongholds of the
pirates as well as Cilicia, and there is no doubt that
the greater number consisted of Greeks who could
find no other means of subsistence. Despair is said to
have driven many of the citizens of the states con-
quered by the Romans to suicide; it must certainly
have forced a far greater number to embrace a life of
piracy and robbery. The government of Rome was at
this time subject to continual revolutions; and in the
disorders produced by the civil wars, the Romans lost
all respect for the rights of property either at home or
abroad. Wealth and power were the only objects of
pursuit, and the force of all moral ties was broken.
Justice ceased to be administered, and men, in such
cases, always assume the right of revenging their own
wrongs. Those who considered themselves aggrieved
by any act of oppression, or fancied they had received
some severe injury, sought revenge in the
way which
presented itself most readily; and when the oppressor
was secure against their attacks, they made society re-
sponsible. The state of public affairs was considered
an apology for the ravages of the pirates even in those
districts of Greece which suffered most severely from
their lawless conduct. They probably spent liberally
among the poor the treasures which they wrested from
the rich; and so little, indeed, were they placed beyond
the pale of society, that Pompey himself settled a
colony of them at Dyme, in Achaia, where they seem to
have prospered.2 Though piracy was not subsequently
1 Plutarch, Pompey, 29. Florus, iii. 7. Dion Cassius, xxxvi. 8. See article
"Metellus Creticus" (No. 23) in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography.
2 Strabo, viii. c. 7. This colony went to ruin during the civil war, and the
colonists resumed their old habits of piracy. Dyme was placed under the
government of Patras when that city was made a Roman colony by Augustus.
Pausanias, vii. 17, 3.
ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION.
39
A. D. 330.
carried on so extensively as to merit a place in history, B. O. 146-
it was not entirely extirpated even by the fleet which
the Roman emperors maintained in the East; and that
cases still continued to occur in the Grecian seas is
proved by public inscriptions.' The carelessness of the
senate in superintending the administration of the
distant provinces caused a great increase of social
corruption, and left crimes against the property and
persons of the provincials often unpunished. Kidnap-
ping land and sea became a regular profession. The
great slave-mart of Delos enabled the man-stealers to
sell thousands in a single day. Even open brigandage
was allowed to exist in the heart of the eastern pro-
vinces at the time of Rome's greatest power. Strabo
mentions several robber chiefs who maintained them-
selves in their fastnesses like independent princes.2
SECT. V.-NATURE OF THE ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION
IN GREECE.
The Romans reduced those countries where they met
with resistance into the form of provinces, a procedure
which was generally equivalent to abrogating the ex-
isting laws, and imposing on the vanquished a new
system of civil as well as political administration. In
the countries inhabited by the Greeks this policy under-
went considerable modification. The Greeks, indeed,
were so much farther advanced in civilisation than the
Romans, that it was no easy task for a Roman pro-
consul to effect any great change in the civil adminis-
tration. He could not organise his government, with-
out borrowing largely from the existing laws of the
1 Boeckh, Corpus Inscrip. Græcarum, Nos. 2335 and 2347; and “ Addenda,”
No. 2263. Tom. ii. p. 1032.
2 Strabo, xiv. 5, 2, and xii. 8, where he mentions Cleon the brigand chief on
Mount Olympus of Bithynia.
40
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. province. The constitution of Sicily, which was the
first Greek province of the Roman dominions, presents
a number of anomalies in the administration of its dif-
ferent districts.¹ That portion of the island which had
composed the kingdom of Hiero was allowed to retain
its own laws, and paid the Romans the same amount
of taxation which had been formerly levied by its own
monarchs. The other portions of the island were sub-
jected to various regulations concerning the amount of
their taxes, and the administration of justice. The
province contained three allied cities, five colonies,
five free, and seventeen tributary cities.2 Macedonia,
Epirus, and Achaia, when conquered, were treated very
much in the same way, if we make due allowance for
the increasing severity of the fiscal government of the
Roman magistrates. Macedonia, before it was reduced
to the condition of a province, was divided into four
districts, each of which was governed by its own ma-
gistrates elected by the people. When Achaia was con-
quered, the walls of the towns were thrown down, the
aristocracy was ruined, and the country impoverished
by fines. But as soon as the Romans were convinced
that Greece was too weak to be dangerous, the Achaians.
were allowed to revive some of their old civic usages
and federal institutions. As the province of Achaia
embraced the Peloponnesus, northern Greece, and
southern Epirus, the revival of local confederacies, and
the privileges accorded to free cities and particular
districts, really tended to disunite the Greeks, without
affording them the means of increasing their national
strength.³ Crete, Cyprus, Cyrene, and Asia Minor,
were subsequently reduced to provinces, and were
1 Niebühr (Hist. Rome, iii. 616) gives a sketch of the state of Sicily when it
was reduced to a Roman province.
2 Pliny, Hist. Nat. iii. 14. Economie Politique des Romains, par Dureau de
la Malle, ii. 353.
3 Livy, xlv. 18, 29. Pausanias, viii. 30, 9.
ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION.
41
A. D. 330.
allowed to retain much of their laws and usages. B. c. 146-
Thrace, even so late as the time of Tiberius, was
governed by its own sovereign, as an ally of the
Romans.¹ Many cities within the bounds of the pro-
vinces retained their own peculiar laws, and, as far as
their own citizens were concerned, they continued to
possess the legislative as well as the executive power,
by administering their own affairs, and executing jus-
tice within their limits, without being liable to the
control of the proconsul.²
As long as the republic continued to exist, the pro-
vinces were administered by proconsuls or prætors,
chosen from among the members of the senate, and
responsible to that body for their administration. The
authority of these provincial governors was immense;
they had the power of life and death over the Greeks,
and the supreme control over all judicial, financial, and
administrative business, was vested in their hands.
They had the right of naming and removing most of
the judges and magistrates under their orders, and
most of the fiscal arrangements regarding the provin-
cials depended on their will. No power ever existed
more liable to be abused; for while the representatives
of the most absolute sovereigns have seldom been in-
trusted with more extensive authority, they have never
incurred so little danger of being punished for its abuse.
The only tribunal before which the proconsuls could
be cited for any acts of injustice which they might
commit was that very senate which had sent them
out as its deputies, and received them back into
its body as members.3
1 Livy, xlv. 34.
2 Pliny the Younger, Ep. x. 56, 88. Tacitus (Ann. ii. 78, 80) mentions the
existence of small independent principalities with their own troops in the time
of Tiberius.
3 Cicero, in many of his orations, recounts deeds of Roman proconsuls and
proprætors, which surpass in infamy, and equal in cruelty, the worst acts of
Turkish pashas. See particularly, "in Verrem," "in Pisonem," "pro lege
Maniliâ." Arnold's History of the later Roman Commonwealth, chap. vii.
42
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
When the imperial government was consolidated by
Augustus, the command of the whole military force of
the republic devolved on the emperor; but his consti-
tutional position was not that of sovereign. The early
emperors concentrated in their persons the offices of
commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of
Rome, of minister of war and of finance, and of Pontifex
Maximus, which gave them a sacred character, as head
of the religion of the State, and their persons were in-
violable, as they were invested with the tribunitian
power; but the senate and people were still possessed
of the supreme legislative authority, and the senate
continued to direct the civil branches of the executive
administration. In consequence of this relation between
the jurisdiction of the senate and the emperors, the
provinces were divided into two classes: Those in
which the military forces were stationed were placed
under the direct orders of the emperor, and were
governed by his lieutenants or legates; the other pro-
vinces, which did not require to be constantly occupied
by the legions, remained dependent on the senate, as
the chief civil authority in the State, governed by pro-
consuls or proprætors. Most of the countries inhabited
by the Greeks were in that peaceable condition which
placed them in the rank of senatorial provinces. Sicily,
Macedonia, Epirus, Achaia, Crete, Cyrene, Bithynia, and I
Asia Minor, remained under the control of the senate.
Cyprus, from its situation as affording a convenient
post for a military force to watch Cilicia, Syria, and
Egypt, was at first classed among the imperial provinces;
but Augustus subsequently exchanged it for the more
important position of Dalmatia, where an army could
be stationed to watch Rome, and separate Italy and
the proconsular provinces of Greece.
The proconsuls and proprætors occupied a higher
rank in the State than the imperial legates; the splen-
ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION.
43
A. D. 330.
dour of their courts, and the numerous train by which B. c. 146-
they were attended, were maintained at the expense
of their provinces. Their situation deprived them of
all hope of military distinction, the highest object of
Roman ambition. This exclusion of the aristocracy
from military pursuits, by the emperors, is not to be
lost sight of in observing the change which took place
in the Roman character. Avarice was the vice which
succeeded in stifling their feelings of self-abasement
and disappointed ambition; and as the proconsuls
were not objects of jealousy to the emperors, they were
enabled to gratify their ruling passion without danger.
As they were created from among the senate in suc-
cession, they felt assured of finding favourable judges
under any circumstances. Irresponsible government
soon degenerates into tyranny; the administration of
the Roman proconsuls soon became as oppressive as
that of the worst despots, and was loudly complained
of by the provincials. The provinces under the govern-
ment of the emperor were better administered. The
imperial lieutenants, though inferior in rank to pro-
consuls, possessed a more extensive command, as they
united in their persons the chief civil and military
authority. The effect of their possessing more power
was, that the limits of their authority, and the forms
of their proceedings, were determined with greater pre-
cision-were more closely watched, and more strictly
controlled by the military discipline to which they
were subjected; while, at the same time, the constant
dependence of all their actions on the immediate orders
of the emperor, and the various departments of which
he was the head, forbade all arbitrary proceedings.
The expenses of the proconsular administration were
paid by the provinces, and it was chiefly by abuses
augmenting their amount that the proconsuls were
enabled to accumulate enormous fortunes during their
31
44
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. short tenure of government. The burden was so heavily
felt by Macedonia and Achaia, even as early as the
reign of Tiberius, that the complaints of these two pro-
vinces induced that emperor to unite their administration
with that of the imperial province of Moesia; but Clau-
dius restored them to the senate.¹ Thrace, when it was
reduced to a Roman province by Vespasian, was also
added to the imperial list. As the power of the em-
perors rose into absolute authority over the Roman
world, and the pageant of the republic faded
away, all
distinction between the different classes of provinces
disappeared. They were distributed according to the
wish of the reigning emperor, and their administration
arbitrarily transferred to officers of whatever rank he
thought fit to select. The Romans, indeed, had never
affected much system in this, any more than in any other
branch of their government. Pontius Pilate, when he
condemned our Saviour, governed Judæa with the rank
of procurator of Cæsar; he was vested with the whole ad-
ministrative, judicial, fiscal, and military authority,
almost as completely as it could have been exercised by
a proconsul, yet his title was only that of a finance
officer, charged with the administration of those revenues
which belonged to the imperial treasury.
The provincial governors usually named three or four
deputies to carry on the business of the districts into
which the province was divided, and each of these de-
puties was controlled and assisted by a local council.
It may be remarked, that the condition of the inha-
bitants of the western portion of the Roman empire was
different from that of the eastern; the people were
generally treated as little better than serfs; they were
not considered the absolute proprietors of the lands they
cultivated. Adrian first
Adrian first gave them a full right of pro-
perty in their lands, and secured to them a regular
1 Tacitus, Ann. i. 76. Seutonius, Claudius, 25.
ROMAN PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION.
45
system of law. In Greece, on the other hand, the peo- B. c. 146—
ple retained all their property and private rights. AA. D. 330.
'rare exception, indeed, occurred in the case of the Cor-
inthian territory, which was confiscated for the benefit
of the Roman state, and declared ager publicus after the
destruction of the city by Mummius. Throughout all
the countries inhabited by the Greeks, the provincial
administration was necessarily modified by the circum-
stance of the conquered being much farther advanced
in social civilisation than their conquerors.¹ To facili-
tate the task of governing and taxing the Greeks, the
Romans found themselves compelled to retain much of
the civil government, and many of the financial arrange-
ments, which they found existing; and hence arose the
marked difference which is observed in the administra-
tion of the eastern and western portions of the empire.
When the great jurist Scævola was proconsul of Asia,
he published an edict for the administration of his pro-
vince, by which he allowed the Greeks to have judges
of their own nation, and to decide their suits according
to their own laws; a concession equivalent to the re-
storation of their civil liberties in public opinion, accord-
ing to Cicero, who copied it when he was proconsul of
Cilicia. The existence of the free cities, of the local
tribunals and provincial assemblies, and the respect
paid to their laws, gave the Greek language an official
character, and enabled the Greeks to acquire so great
an influence in the administration of their country, as
either to limit the extent of the despotic power of their
Roman masters, or, when that proved impossible, to
share its profits. But though the arbitrary decisions of
2
3
1 Barthelemy, Voyage d'Anacharsis, c. xx. The high state of social civilisa-
tion among the Greeks is proved by the existence of societies formed for the
purpose of mutual assistance. Plinii, Epist. x. 93, 94. These friendly societies
held property. See an inscription in the collection of the Author, published in
the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. iii. part 2.
2 Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum, vi. 1. Diodorus, Frag. xxxv. S.
3 Cicero (Ep. ad. Attic. vi. 2) mentions the extortions of the Greek magistrates
:
46
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. the proconsuls received some check from the existence
of fixed rules and permanent usages, still these barriers
were insufficient to prevent the abuse of irresponsible
authority. Those laws and customs which a proconsul
dared not openly violate, he could generally nullify by
some concealed measure of oppression. The avidity
displayed by Brutus in endeavouring to make Cicero
enforce payment of forty-eight per cent interest when
his debtors, the Salaminians of Cyprus, offered to pay
the capital with twelve per cent interest, proves with
what injustice and oppression the Greeks were treated
even by the mildest of the Roman aristocracy. The fact
that throughout the Grecian provinces, as well as in the
rest of the empire, the governors superintended the
financial administration, and exercised the judicial
power, is sufficient to explain the ruin and poverty
which the Roman government produced. Before the
wealth of the people had been utterly consumed, an
equitable proconsul had it in his power to confer happi-
ness on his provinces, and Cicero draws a very favourable
picture of his own administration in Cilicia :¹ but a
few governors like Verres and Caius Antonius soon re-
duced a province to a state of poverty, from which it
would have acquired ages of good government to enable
it to recover. The private letters of Cicero afford re-
peated proofs that the majority of the officers employed
by the Roman government openly violated every prin-
ciple of justice to gratify their passions and their avarice.
Many of them even condescended to engage in trade,
and, like Brutus, became usurers.²
who plundered their fellow-citizens. The politarchs of Thessalonica are men-
tioned in the Acts of the Apostles, xvii. 6.
¹ Cicero, pro Lege Manilia, 22; in Pisonem, 40. The extortion and cruelty of
Caius Antonius, the uncle of the triumvir, in Greece and Macedonia, rivalled
the wickedness of Verres; but we are not so well acquainted with the details of
his misconduct. It is one of the blots on Cicero's reputation that he defended
such a man under such circumstances.
2 Multæ civitates omni ære alieno liberatæ multæ valde levatæ sunt. Omnes
suis legibus, et judiciis usæ, avrovoμíav adeptæ, revixerunt.-Ep. ad. Att. vi. 2.
:
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
47
A. D. 330.
The early years of the empire were certainly more B. c. 146—
popular than the latter years of the republic in the pro-
vinces. The emperors were anxious to strengthen them-
selves against the senate by securing the goodwill of
the provincials, and they consequently exerted their au-
thority to check the oppressive conduct of the senatorial
officers, and to lighten the fiscal burdens of the people
by a stricter administration of justice. Tiberius, Clau-
dius, and Domitian, though Rome groaned under their
tyranny, were remarkable for their zeal in correcting
abuses in the administration of justice, and Hadrian
established a council of jurisconsults and senators to
assist him in reviewing the judicial business of the pro-
vinces as well as of the capital.¹
SECT. VI.-FISCAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE ROMANS.
The legal amount of the taxes, direct and indirect,
levied by the Romans on the Greeks, was probably not
greater than the sum paid to their national governments
in the days of their independence. But a small amount
of taxation arbitrarily imposed, unjustly collected, and
injudiciously spent, weighs more heavily on the re-
sources of the people, than immense burdens properly
distributed and wisely employed. The wealth and re-
sources of Greece had been greatest at the time when
each city formed a separate state, and the inhabitants
of each valley possessed the power of employing the
taxes which they paid, for objects which ameliorated
their own condition. The moment the centralisation
of political power enabled one city to appropriate the
revenues of another to its wants, whether for its archi-
tectural embellishment or for its public games, theatrical
1 Tacitus, Ann. iii. 10. Seutonius, Claud. xiv. xv. Domit. viii; Historia
Augustæ Script. Spartianus, Adrian, xvii.-xxi.
=
48
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. representations, and religious ceremonies, the decline of
the country commenced: but all the evil effects of cen-
tralisation were not felt until the taxes were paid to
foreigners.¹ When the tributes were remitted to Rome,
it was difficult to persuade absent administrators of the
necessity of expending money on a road, a port, or an
aqueduct, which had no direct connection with Roman.
interests. Had the Roman government acted according
to the strictest principles of justice, Greece must have
suffered from its dominion; but its avarice and corrup-
tion, after the commencement of the civil wars, knew
no bounds. The extraordinary payments levied on the
provinces soon equalled, and sometimes exceeded, the
regular and legal taxes. Sparta and Athens, as allied
states, were exempt from direct taxation; but, in order
to preserve their liberty, they were compelled to make
voluntary offerings to the Roman generals, who held
the fate of the East in their hands, and these sometimes
equalled the amount of any ordinary tribute. Cicero
supplies ample proof of the extortions committed by
the proconsuls, and no arrangements were adopted to
restrain their avarice until the time of Augustus. It
is, therefore, only under the empire that any accurate
picture of the fiscal administration of the Romans in
Greece can be attempted.
Until the time of Augustus, the Romans had main-
tained their armies by seizing and squandering the
accumulated capital hoarded by all the nations of the
world. They emptied the treasuries of all the kings
and states they conquered; and when Julius Cæsar
marched to Rome, he dissipated that portion of the
plunder of the world which had been laid up in the
coffers of the republic. When that source of riches
The Greek republics appear to have treated their subjects with as much
fiscal extortion as Rome treated hers. See Aristotle, Anonymi Economica, and
the complaints of the Lycians against the Rhodians. Livy, xli. 6. Cicero, ad
Atticum, vi. 2.
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
49
A. D. 330.
was exhausted, Augustus found himself compelled to B. c. 146-
seek for regular funds for maintaining the army: "And
it came to pass in those days, that there went out a
decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should
be taxed."1 A regular survey of the whole empire
was made, and the land-tax was assessed according to
a valuation taken of the annual income of every species
of property. A capitation-tax was also imposed on all
the provincials whom the land-tax did not affect.2
The ordinary provincial taxes in the East were this
land-tax, which generally amounted to a tenth of the
produce, though, in some cases, it constituted a fifth,
and in others fell to a twentieth. The land-tax was
rendered uniform in all the provinces, and converted
at last into a money payment, by Marcus Aurelius. It
was not assessed annually: but a valuation was made
at stated periods for a determinate number of years,
and the annual amount was called the Indictio before
the time of Constantine, when the importance of this
fiscal measure on the well-being of the inhabitants of
the Roman empire is attested by the cycle of indictions
becoming the ordinary chronological record of time.
Italy itself was subjected to the land-tax and capitation
by Galerius, A. D. 306.³ The subjects of the empire
paid also a tax on cattle, and a variety of duties on
importation and exportation, which were. levied even
on the conveyance of goods from one province to
another. In Greece, the free cities also retained the
right of levying local duties on their citizens. Contri-
butions of provisions and manufactures were likewise
exacted for feeding and clothing the troops stationed
1 St Luke, ii. 1.
2 Savigny, Ueber die Romeische Steuerverfassung unter den Kaisern.—Abhand.
Acad. o. Berlin, 1822. Economie Politique des Romains, par Dureau de la
Malle, who has most ably explained a remarkable passage of Hyginus.—Vol. i.
177; ii. 418, 434.
3 Gibbon, chap. xiv. vol. ii. 114; Smith's edit. Savigny. Abhandlungen der
K. Akadémie von Berlin, 1822-23, p. 50. See infra, p. 127, note 1.
D
50
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. in the provinces. Even under Augustus, who devoted
his personal attention to reforming the financial ad-
ministration of the empire, the proconsuls and provin-
cial governors ventured to avail themselves of their
position, as a means of gratifying their avarice. Licinus
accumulated immense riches in Gaul.¹ Tiberius per-
ceived that the weight of the Roman fiscal system was
pressing too severely on the provinces, and he rebuked
the prefect of Egypt, for remitting too large a sum to
Rome, as the amount proved he had overtaxed his pro-
vince. The mere fact of a prefect's possessing the
power of increasing or diminishing the amount of his
remittances to the treasury, is enough to condemn the
arbitrary nature of the Roman fiscal administration. The
prefect was told by the emperor that a good shepherd
should shear, not flay, his sheep. But no rulers ever
estimated correctly the amount of taxes that their sub-
jects could advantageously pay; and Tiberius received
a lesson on the financial system of his empire from
Battas, King of Dalmatia, who, on being asked the
cause of a rebellion, replied, that it arose from the
emperor's sending wolves to guard his flocks instead
of shepherds.2
The financial policy of the Roman republic was to
transfer as much of the money circulating in the pro-
vinces, and of the precious metals in the hands of pri-
vate individuals, as it was possible, into the coffers
of the State. The city of Rome formed a drain for
the wealth of all the provinces, and the whole empire
was impoverished for its support. When Caligula
expressed the wish that the Roman people had only
one neck, in order that he might destroy them all
1 See "Licinus" in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.
"Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato parvo,
Pompeius nullo; quis putet esse deos?"
2 Suetonius, Tiber. 32. The rapidity with which the provinces were reduced
from a state of prosperity to wretchedness is described by Juvenal, Sat. viii. 87.
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
51
A. D. 330.
at a single blow, the idea found a responsive echo in B. c. 146–
many a breast. There was a wise moral in the senti-
ment uttered in his frenzy; and many felt that the
dispersion of the immense pauper population of Rome,
which was nourished in idleness by the public revenues,
would have been a great benefit to the rest of the
empire.¹ The desire of seizing wealth wherever it
could be found continued to be long the dominant
feeling in the personal policy of the emperors, as well
as the proconsuls. The provincial governors enriched
themselves by plundering their subjects, and the em-
perors filled their treasuries by accusing the 'senators
of those crimes which entailed confiscation of their
fortunes. From the earliest periods of Roman history,
down to the time of Justinian, confiscation of private
property was considered an ordinary and important
branch of the imperial revenue. When Alexander the
Great conquered Asia, the treasures which he dispersed
increased the commerce of the world, created new cities,
and augmented the general wealth of mankind. The
Romans collected far greater riches from their con-
quests than Alexander had done, as they pushed their
exactions much farther; but the rude state of society,
in which they lived at the time of their first great suc-
cesses, prevented their perceiving, that by carrying off
or destroying all the movable capital in their con-
quests, they must ultimately diminish the amount of
their own revenues. The wealth brought away from
the countries inhabited by the Greeks was incredible;
for the Romans pillaged the conquered, as the Span-
iards plundered Mexico and Peru, and ruled them as
the Turks subsequently governed Greece. The riches
which centuries of industry had accumulated in Syra-
1 Suet. Calig. 30. Caligula was evidently thinking of the sums which would
remain for his own extravagance, if he could have eluded furnishing the grain
for the public distributions, and the money for maintaining a fixed price in the
markets.
52
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. cuse, Tarentum, Epirus, Macedonia, and Greece, and
the immense sums seized in the treasuries of the kings
of Cyprus, Pergamus, Syria, and Egypt, were removed
to Rome, and consumed in a way which virtually con-
verted them into premiums for neglecting agriculture.
They were dispersed in paying an immense army, in
feeding an idle populace, which was thus withdrawn
from all productive occupations, and in maintaining
the household of the emperor, the senators, and the
imperial freedmen. The consequence of the arrange-
ments adopted for provisioning Rome was felt over the
whole empire, and seriously affected the prosperity of
the most distant provinces. It is necessary to notice
them, in order to understand perfectly the financial
system of the empire during three centuries.
The citizens of Rome were considered entitled to a
share of the revenues of the provinces which they had
conquered, and which were long regarded in the light
of a landed estate of the republic. The Roman State
was held to be under an obligation of supporting all
who were liable to military service, if they were poor
and without profitable employment. The history of
the public distributions of grain, and of the measures
adopted for securing ample supplies to the market, at
low prices, form an important chapter in the social
and political records of the Roman people.' An im-
mense quantity of grain was distributed in this way,
which was received as tribute from the provinces.
Cæsar found three hundred and twenty thousand per-
sons receiving this gratuity. It is true he reduced
the number one half. The greater part of this grain
was drawn from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. This dis-
tribution enabled the poor to live in idleness, and was
of itself extremely injurious to industry; while the
1 Distributions of grain existed in other states, and at Athens, as early as the
time of Pericles.-Aristophanes, Wasps, 716.
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
53
A. D. 330.
arrangements adopted by the Roman government, for B. c. 146--
selling grain at a low price, rendered the cultivation of
land around Rome unprofitable to its proprietors. A
large sum was annually employed by the State in pur-
chasing grain in the provinces, and in transporting it
to Rome, where it was sold to the bakers at a fixed
price. A premium was also paid to the private im-
porters of grain, in order to insure an abundant supply.
In this manner a very large sum was expended to
keep bread cheap in a city where a variety of circum-
stances tended to make it dear. This singular system
of annihilating capital, and ruining agriculture and
industry, was so deeply rooted in the Roman adminis-
tration, that similar gratuitous distributions of grain
were established at Antioch and Alexandria, and other
cities, and they were introduced at Constantinople
when that city became the capital of the empire. ¹
It is not surprising that Greece suffered severely
under a government equally tyrannical in its conduct
and unjust in its legislation. In almost every depart-
ment of public business the interests of the State were
placed in opposition to those of the people; even when
the letter of the law was mild, its administration was
burdensome. The customs of Rome were moderate,
and consisted of a duty of five per cent on exports and
imports. Where the customs were so reasonable, com-
merce ought to have flourished; but the real amount
levied under an unjust government bears no relation to
the nominal payment. The government of Turkey has
ruined the commerce of its subjects, with duties equally
1 It is curious to find Tacitus praising the establishment of bounties on the
importation of foreign grain by Tiberius, without a single word on the evil
effects of the system.-Hist. iv. 40. He must have traced their consequences.
-Ann. vi. 13. Naudet, Des Secours Publics chez les Romains. Mémoires
de l'Institut Royal de France.-" Inscriptions et Belles-lettres," tome xiii. For
the powers granted to Pompey for provisioning Rome, see Merivale, History
of the Romans under the Empire, i. 394. Herodian informs us that Maxi-
minus I. seized the municipal funds, which were set apart in many cities for
these distributions.
54
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. moderate. The Romans despised commerce; they
considered merchants as little better than cheats, and
concluded that they were always in the wrong when
they sought to avoid making any payment to govern-
ment. The provinces in the eastern part of the
Mediterranean are inhabited by a mercantile popula-
tion. The wants of many parts can only be supplied
by sea; and as the various provinces and small inde-
pendent states were often separated by double lines of
custom-houses, the subsistence of the population was
frequently at the mercy of the revenue officers.1 The
customs payable to Rome were let to farmers, who
possessed extensive powers for their collection, and a
special tribunal existed for the enforcement of their
claims; these farmers of the customs were conse-
quently powerful tyrants in all the countries round
the Ægean Sea.
The ordinary duty on the transport of goods from
one province to another amounted to two and a half
per cent; but some kinds of merchandise were sub-
jected to a tax of an eighth, which appears to have been
levied when the article first entered the Roman empire.
2
The provincial contributions pressed as heavily on
the Greeks as the general taxes. The expense of the
household of the proconsuls was very great; they had
also the right of placing the troops in winter quarters,
in whatever towns they thought fit. This power was
rendered a profitable means of extorting money from
the wealthy districts. Cicero mentions that the island
of Cyprus paid two hundred talents-about forty-five
thousand pounds annually-in order to purchase ex-
emption from this burden.3 The power of the fiscal
1 Cic. ad Atticum, ii. 16.
2 Naudet, Des Changemens opérés dans toutes les Parties de l'Administration
de l'Empire Romain_sous les règnes de Dioclétien, de Constantin, et de leurs
successeurs, jusqu'à Julien. 2 vols.
3 Ep. ad Atticum, v. 21.
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
55
A. D. 330.
agents, charged to collect the extraordinary contribu- B. c. 146-
tions in the provinces, was unlimited. One of the
ordinary punishments for infringing the revenue laws
was confiscation,-a punishment which was converted
by the collectors of the revenue into a systematic
means of extortion. A regular trade in usury was
established, in order to force proprietors to sell their
property; and accusations were brought forward in the
fiscal courts, merely to levy fines, or compel the
accused to incur debts. Free Greeks were constantly
sold as slaves because they were unable to pay the
amount of taxation to which they were liable. The
establishment of posts, which Augustus instituted for
the transmission of military orders, was soon converted
into a burden to the provinces, instead of being
gradually rendered a public benefit, by allowing
private individuals to make use of its services. The
enlisting of recruits was another source of abuse.1
Privileges and monopolies were granted to merchants
and manufacturers; the industry of a province was
ruined, to raise a sum of money for an emperor or a
favourite,2 and we find Trajan himself encouraging
fraud by a monopoly.3
The free cities and allied states were treated with
as much injustice as the provinces, though their posi-
tion enabled them to escape many of the public
burdens. The crowns of gold, which had once been
given by cities and provinces as a testimony of grati-
tude, were converted into a forced gift, and at last
extorted as a tax of a fixed amount.5
In addition to the direct weight of the public
burdens, their severity was increased by the exemption
1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 18.
2 Lampridius, in Alex. p. 122.
3 Philostratus, Vit. Soph. 1. xXV. 3.
4 Diodorus, xxxvi. 1. Juvenal, viii. 107. Tac. Ann. xv. 45.
5 Cic. in Pis. 37. The aurum coronarium is indicated as a tax in the Monu-
mentum Ancyranum, Hist. Augustæ Script. Capitolinus, Antonin. Pius, c. 4.
Justinian's Code, x. 78.
56
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. Which Roman citizens enjoyed from the land-tax, the
customs, and the municipal burdens, in the provinces,
the free cities, and the allied states. This exemption
filled Greece with traders and usurers, who obtained
the right of citizenship as a speculation, merely to
evade the payment of the local taxes. The Roman
magistrates had the power of granting this immunity;
and as they were in the habit of participating in the
profits even of their enfranchised slaves, there can be
no doubt that a regular traffic in citizenship was estab-
lished, and this cause exercised considerable influence
in accelerating the ruin of the allied states and free
cities, by defrauding them of their local privileges and
revenues. When Nero wished to render himself popu-
lar in Greece, he extended the immunity from tribute
to all the Greeks; but Vespasian found the financial
affairs of the empire in such disorder that he was
compelled to revoke all grants of exemption to the
provinces. Virtue, in the old times of Rome, meant
valour; liberty, in the time of Nero, signified freedom
from taxation. Of this liberty Vespasian deprived
Greece, Byzantium, Samos, Rhodes, and Lycia.¹
The financial administration of the Romans inflicted,
if possible, a severer blow on the moral constitution of
society than on the material prosperity of the country.
It divided the population of Greece into two classes,
one possessing the title of Roman citizens,-a title often
purchased by their wealth, and which implied freedom
from taxation;-the other consisting of the Greeks
who, from poverty, were unable to purchase the envied
privilege, and thus by their very poverty were com-
pelled to bear the whole weight of the public burdens
laid on the province. The rich and poor were thus
ranged in two separate castes of society.
¹ Pausanias, Achaica, xvii. 2. Suetonius, l'esp. 8. Philostratus, Apoll. Tyan.
v. 41.
ROMAN FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.
57
A. D. 330.
By the Roman constitution, the knights were in- B. c. 146-
trusted with the management of the finances of the
State. They were a body in whose eyes wealth, on
which their rank substantially depended, possessed an
undue value. The prominent feature of their character
was avarice, notwithstanding the praises of their justice
which Cicero has left us. The knights not only acted
as collectors of the revenues, but they also frequently
farmed the taxes of a province for a term of years, sub-
letting portions. They formed companies for farming
the customs, and for employing capital in public or
private loans. They were favoured by the policy of
Rome; while their own riches, and their secondary
position in political affairs, served to screen them from
attacks in the forum. For a long period, too, all the
judges were selected from their order, and consequently
knights alone decided those commercial questions which
most seriously affected their individual profits.
1
The heads of the financial administration in Greece
were thus placed in a moral position unfavourable to
an equitable collection of the revenues. The case of
Brutus, who attempted to oblige the Salaminians of
Cyprus to pay him compound interest, at the rate of
four per cent a month, shows that avarice and extortion
were not generally considered dishonourable in the eyes
of the Roman aristocracy. The practices of selling the
right of citizenship, of raising unjust fiscal prosecutions
to extort fines, and enforce confiscation to increase
landed estates, have been already mentioned. They
produced effects which have found a place in history.
The existence of all these crimes is well known; their
effects may be observed in the fact that a single citizen,
in the time of Augustus, had already rendered himself
proprietor of the whole island of Cythera, and was able
to raise a rebellion in Laconia by the severity of his
1 Cic. ad Att. v. 22; vi. 1.
58
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. extortions. His name was Julius Eurycles, and the
circumstances are mentioned by Strabo.¹ And the
island of Cephallenia had been held by Caius Antonius
as his private property, though he resided there as a
criminal banished for extortion.2
The Roman citizens in Greece escaped the oppressive
powers of the fiscal agents, not only in those cases
wherein they were by law exempt from the payment
of the provincial taxes, but also because they possessed
the means of defending themselves against injustice by
the right of carrying their causes to Rome for judgment
by appeal. These privileges soon rendered the number
of Roman citizens engaged in mercantile speculation
and trade very great in Greece. A considerable mul-
titude of the inhabitants of Rome had, from the ear-
liest times, been employed in trade and commerce, with-
out obtaining the right of citizenship at home. They
did not fail to settle in numbers in all the Roman
conquests, and, in the provinces, they were correctly
called Romans. They always enjoyed from the re-
public the fullest protection, and soon acquired the
rights of citizenship. Even the Roman citizens were
sometimes so numerous in the provinces that they
could furnish not a few recruits to the legions.³ Their
numbers were so great at the commencement of the
Mithridatic war (B. c. 88) that eighty thousand were
put to death in Asia when the king took up arms
against the Romans. The greater part undoubtedly
consisted of merchants, traders, and money-dealers.
The Greeks at last obtained the right of Roman
citizenship in such multitudes, that Nero may have
made no very enormous sacrifice of public revenue
when he conferred liberty, or freedom from tribute, on
all the Greeks.
It is unnecessary to dwell at any length on the
1 Strabo, viii. c. vi.
Strabo, x. c. 2.
3 Cicero, ad Att. v. 18.
DEPOPULATION.
59
effects of the extensive system of general oppression
and partial privileges which has been described. Hon-
est industry was useless in trade, and political in-
trigue was the easiest mode of making a large fortune,
even in commerce. A rapid decline in the wealth of
Greece, and a great diminution in the numbers of the
population, took place. So early as the time of Augus-
tus many of the richest cities of Greece were in a
ruinous condition, some of the most fertile regions
depopulated, and the inexhaustible supply of wealth,
which the Romans supposed they would find in the
provinces, began to fail.¹
B. C. 146-
A. D. 330.
SECT. VII.DEPOPULATION OF GREECE CAUSED BY THE ROMAN
GOVERNMENT.
Experience proves that the same law of the progress
of society wich gives to an increasing population a
tendency to outgrow the means of subsistence, com-
pels a declining one to press on the limits of taxation.
A government may push taxation up to that point
when it arrests all increase in the means of subsistence;
but the moment this stationary condition of society is
produced, the people will begin to consume a portion
of the wealth previously absorbed by the public taxes,
and the revenues of the country will have a tendency
to decrease; or, what is the same thing in so far as the
political law is concerned, the government will find
greater difficulty in collecting the same amount of re-
venue, and, if it succeed, will cause a diminution in
the population.
The depopulation of the Roman provinces was, how-
ever, not caused entirely by the financial oppression of
1 Sallust says,
"Omnibus modis pecuniam trahunt, vexant; tamen summa
libidine divitias suas vincere nequeunt." Cicero, ad Fam. xv. 1. Strabo gives
many instances of depopulation of Greece.-viii. ; vol. ii. pp. 185, 190, 216, 226;
ix. pp. 251, 294; x. p. 346; edit. Tauch.
60
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
1
CHAP. I. the government. In order to secure new conquests
against rebellion, the armed population was generally
exterminated, or reduced to slavery. If the people
displayed a spirit of independence, they were regarded
as robbers, and destroyed without mercy; and this
cruelty was so engrafted into the system of the Roman
administration that Augustus treated the Salassi in
this manner, when their disorders could easily have
been effectually prevented by milder measures.¹ At
the time the Romans first engaged in war with the
Macedonians and Greeks, the contest was of so doubt-
ful a nature that the Romans were not likely to relax
the usual policy which they adopted for weakening
their foes; Macedonia, Epirus, Ætolia, and Achaia,
were therefore treated with the greatest severity at
the time of their conquest. Æmilius Paulus, in order
to secure the submission of Epirus, destroyed seventy
cities, and sold one hundred and fifty thousand of the
inhabitants as slaves. The policy which considered a
reduction of the population necessary for securing
obedience, would not fail to adopt efficient measures to
prevent its again becoming either numerous or wealthy.
The utter destruction of Carthage, and the extermina-
tion of the Carthaginians, is a fact which has no parallel
in the history of any other civilised state. Mummius
razed Corinth to the ground, and sold its whole popu-
lation as slaves. Delos was the great emporium of the
trade of the East about the time of the conquest of
Greece; it was plundered by the troops of Mithridates,
and again by the orders of Sylla. It only recovered
its former state of prosperity under the Romans as a
slave-market. Sylla utterly destroyed several cities
of Boeotia, and depopulated Athens, the Piræus, and
¹ Strabo, iv. Suetonius, Aug. 21. The inhabitants of the valley of Aosta,
of whom 36,000 were sold as slaves.
2 Livy, xlv. 34.
Diodorus, xxxi. Plutarch, Emilius Paulus.
DEPOPULATION.
61
A. D. 330.
Thebes.¹ The inhabitants of Megara were nearly ex- B. c. 146—
terminated by Julius Cæsar; and a considerable number
of the cities of Achaia, Ætolia, and Acarnania, were laid
waste by order of Augustus, that their inhabitants
might be compelled to dwell in the newly established
Roman colonies of Nicopolis and Patras.2 Brutus levied
five years' tribute in advance from the inhabitants of
Asia Minor. His severity made the people of Xanthus
prefer extermination to submission. Cassius, after he
had taken Rhodes, treated it in the most tyrannical
manner, and displayed a truly Roman spirit of fiscal
rapacity. The celebrated letter of Sulpicius to Cicero,
so familiar to the lovers of poetry from the paraphrase
of Lord Byron, affords irrefragable testimony to the
rapid decline of Greece under the Roman government.
3
Greece suffered very severely during the civil wars.
The troops which she still possessed were compelled
to range themselves on one side or the other. The
Ætolians and Acarnanians joined Cæsar; the Athenians,
Lacedæmonians, and Boeotians, ranged themselves as
partisans of Pompey. The Athenians, and most of the
other Greeks, afterwards espoused the cause of Brutus
and Cassius; but the Lacedæmonians sent a body of
two thousand men to serve as auxiliaries to Octavius.
The destruction of property caused by the progress
through Greece of the various bodies of troops, whose
passions were inflamed by the disorders of the civil
war, was not compensated by the favours conferred on
¹ See pages 32, 33.
2 Though we have no picture, by a contemporary, of the misery which
Augustus caused in Greece, still we can imagine it to have been severe from
the manner in which he treated Italy. He seized the property of the inhabi-
tants of eighteen of the richest cities, and divided the lands amongst his
soldiers. The soldiers extended their invasions to the possessions of other
cities; and Virgil has immortalised their encroachments and robberies. Augus-
tus must have settled nearly 160,000 men in his various military colonies,
which were generally formed by confiscating the lands of the lawful pro-
prietors.-Appian, Bell. Civ. v. 5, 13, 22.
3 Appian, Bell. Cir. iv. 65, 81. Brutus promised his soldiers the sack of
Thessalonica and Sparta, if they proved victorious at Philippi.
62
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
a few cities by Cæsar, Antony, and Augustus. The
remission of a few taxes, or the present of additional
revenues to an oligarchical magistracy, could exercise
no influence on the general prosperity of the country.
1
The depopulation caused by war alone might have
been very soon repaired, had the government of Greece
been wisely administered. Yet Attica appears never to
have recovered from the ravages committed by Philip
V. of Macedon as early as the year B. c. 200, when
he burned down the buildings and groves of Cynos-
arges and the Lyceum in the immediate vicinity of
Athens, and the temples, olive-trees, and vineyards,
over the whole country. The Athenians had even
then lost the social and moral energy necessary for
repairing the damage produced by a great national
calamity. They could no longer pursue a life of agri-
cultural employment: their condition had degene-
rated into that of a mere city population, and the
thoughts and feelings of Greek freemen were those of a
town mob. In such circumstances the ravages of an
enemy permanently diminished the resources of the
country, for in a land like Greece, ages of labour, and
the accumulated savings of generations, are required to
make the arid limestone mountains capable of yielding
considerable supplies of food, to cover them with olive
and fig trees, and to construct cisterns and canals of
irrigation.2 In Athens bad government, social corrup-
tion, literary presumption, and national conceit, were
nourished by liberal donations from foreign princes,
who repaid base flattery by feeding a worthless city
population. Servility became more productive than
honest industry. This degradation of honest labour,
and the depopulation of the country which resulted
from it, continued when Greece enjoyed peace under the
¹ Livy, xxxi. 24.
2 Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ii. 381.-On the population of ancient Greece.
DEPOPULATION.
63
domination of Rome. The statues of the gods erected B. c. 146-
in temples which had fallen into ruins, sculptured A. D. 330.
dedications and marble tombs, monuments of a wealthy
and dense rural population of free citizens in the agri-
cultural demes of Attica, were seen in the times of
Hadrian, as the turbaned tombstone may now be seen.
in Turkey near the solitary desolation of the ruined
mosque, testifying the rapid depopulation and destruc-
tion of vested capital which is now going on in the
Othoman empire. A Roman writer says, that in Attica
there were more gods and heroes than living men.
It is impossible to point out, in precise detail, all the
various measures by which the Roman administration
undermined the physical and moral strength of the
Greek nation; it is sufficient to establish the fact, that
too much was exacted from the body of the people in
the shape of public burdens, and that the neglect of all
its duties on the part of the government gradually
diminished the productive resources of the country.
While no useful public works were repaired, bands of
robbers were allowed to infest the provinces for long
periods without molestation. The extortions of the
Roman magistrates, however, were more injurious, and
rendered property more insecure, than the violence of
the banditti. The public acts of robbery are those
only which have been preserved by history; but for
each open attack on public property, hundreds of
private families were reduced to poverty, and thou-
sands of free Greeks sold as slaves. Fulvius despoiled
the temples of Ambracia of their most valuable orna-
ments, and even carried away the statues of the gods.1
Verres, on his passage through Greece to his post
in Cilicia, carried off a quantity of gold from the
temple of Minerva at Athens.² Piso, while procon-
1 B. C. 189. Livy, xxxviii. 43.
2 Verres compelled a single city in Sicily to pay 34,000 medimni of wheat to
one of his favourites.-Cic. in Ver. ii. 1, 17, 44.
64
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. Sul of Macedonia, plundered both it and Greece, and
left both to be ravaged by Thracian banditti.¹ Even
under the cautious and conciliatory administration of
Augustus, the oppressive conduct of the Romans caused
seditions, both in Laconia-which was a favoured dis-
trict, from its having taken part with the emperor
against Antony-and in Attica, where the weakness
to which the city was reduced seemed to render any
expression of discontent impossible." The Greeks had
not, in the time of Augustus, entirely lost their ancient
spirit and valour, and though comparatively feeble,
their conduct was an object of some solicitude to the
Roman government.
The moral causes of depopulation were perhaps even
more powerful than the political. They had been long
in operation, and had produced great changes in the
Greek character before the Roman conquest; and as
some similar social evils were acting on the Romans
themselves, the moral condition of Greece was not
improved by the Roman government. The most pre-
valent evil was a spirit of self-indulgence and utter
indifference to the duty of man in private life, which
made every rank averse to marriage, and unwilling to
assume the responsibility of educating a family. The
Greeks never adorned the vestibules of their houses
with the statues and busts of their ancestors; their in-
ordinate self-conceit taught them to concentrate their
admiration on themselves. And the Romans, even
with the family pride which led to this noble practice,
were constantly losing the glories of their race by con-
ferring their name on adopted scions of other houses.
The religion, and often the philosophy, of the ancients.
encouraged vicious indulgence, and the general rule of
1 Cic. in Pisonem, 17, 34, 40; pro Font. 16.
2 Strabo, Laconia, vol. ii. pp. 186, 190; edit. Tauch. Ahrens, De Athenarum
statu politico, &c., 12, and his authorities.
DEPOPULATION.
65
society in the first century of the Roman empire, was B. c. 146—
to live with concubines selected from a class of female A. D. 330.
slaves educated for this station. The land, which had
formerly maintained a thousand free citizens capable
of marching to defend their country as hoplites, was
now regarded as affording a scanty provision for the
household of a single proprietor who considered him-
self too poor to marry. His estate was cultivated by
a tribe of slaves, while he amused himself with the
music of the theatre, or the equally idle sounds of the
philosophic schools. The desire of the population to
occupy larger properties than their ancestors had
cultivated, has already been noticed as an effect of the
riches obtained by the Macedonian conquests; and its
influence as a moral check on the amount of the
population of Greece has been adverted to.1 This
powerful cause of depopulation increased under the
Roman government. The love of immense parks,
splendid villas, and luxurious living, fostered vice and
celibacy to such an extent in the higher ranks, that the
wealthy families of the empire became gradually ex-
tinct. The line of distinction between the rich and
the poor was constantly becoming more marked. The
rich formed an aristocratic class, the poor were sinking
towards a dependent grade in society; they were
fast approaching the state of coloni or serfs. In this
state of society, neither class shows a tendency to in-
crease. It appears indeed to be a law of human
society, that all classes of mankind which are sepa-
rated, by superior wealth and privileges, from the
body of the people, are, by their oligarchical constitu-
tion, liable to a rapid decline. As the privileges which
they enjoy have created an unnatural position in life,
vice is increased beyond that limit which is consistent
with the duration of society. The fact has been long
1 See page 18.
E
66
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. observed with regard to the oligarchies of Sparta and
Rome. It had its effect even on the more extended
citizenship of Athens, and it even affected, in our times,
the two hundred thousand electors who formed the
oligarchy of France during the reign of Louis Philippe.¹
SECT. VIII.-ROMAN COLONIES ESTABLISHED IN GREECE.
Two Roman colonies, Corinth and Patras, were estab-
lished in Greece, which soon became the principal cities,
and were for ages the centres of the political adminis-
tration. Their influence on Greek society was very
great, yet Latin continued to be the spoken language of
the inhabitants, and their institutions and local govern-
ment remained Roman until the decree of Caracalla
extended the Roman franchise to all Greece.
The site of Corinth had been devoted to the gods.
when Mummius destroyed the city and exterminated
its inhabitants. From that time it remained desolate
until Julius Cæsar repeopled it with a colony of Romans.
The advantages of its position, its rich territory, its
impregnable citadel, its narrow isthmus, and its ports
on two seas, made it equally valuable as a military and
naval station, and as a commercial mart. Cæsar re-
fortified the Acro-Corinth, repaired the temples, rebuilt
the city, restored the ports, and established a numerous
population of veteran legionaries and industrious freed-
men in the new city. Corinth became once more flourish-
ing and populous. Its colonial coinage from the time
1 Arist. De Rep. ii. vi. 12. Plutarch, Lycurgus, 8. The numerous admis-
sions of new citizens at Athens are mentioned by Dureau de la Malle
(Economie Politique des Romains, i. 419), who has the following passage con-
cerning the electors in France (i. 417): "Ainsi, à Paris, où il règne plus
d'aisance que dans le reste du royaume, la moyenne des enfants par ménage
n'est que de 33, nombre insuffisant pour maintenir la population au même
niveau, puisque à vingt ans la moitié des enfants a péri avant de se marier. Si
l'on prend la même moyenne sur les 200,000 électeurs, elle se trouve encore
plus faible; cependant la population totale augmente par an de 15."
ΙΣΤ
ROMAN COLONIES.
67
of Julius to that of Gordian III. is abundant, and often B. c. 146-
beautiful. It attests the extent of its trade and the A. D. 320.
taste of its inhabitants. But the new Corinth was not
a Greek city. The mother of so many Hellenic colonies
was now a foreign colony in Hellas. Her institutions
were Roman, her language was Latin, her manners were
tinctured with the lupine ferocity of the race of Romu-
lus. Shows of gladiators were the delight of her amphi-
theatre; and though she shed a strong light over fallen
Greece, it was only a lurid reflection of the splendour
of Rome.¹
The position of Corinth was admirably suited for a
military station to overlook the proceedings of the
Greeks who were opposed to Cæsar's government. The
measure was evidently one of precaution, and very little
was done to give it the show of having originated in a
wish to revive the prosperity of Greece. The popula-
tion of the new Corinth was allowed to collect building
materials, and search for wealth, in any way, how offen-
sive soever it might be to the feelings of the Greeks.
The tombs, which had alone escaped the fury of Mum-
mius, were destroyed to construct the new buildings,
and excavated for the rich ornaments and valuable
sepulchral vases which they often contained.
So sys-
tematically did the Romans pursue this profession of
violating the tombs, that it became a source of very
considerable wealth to the colony, and Rome was filled
with works of archaic art.2 The facilities which the
position of Corinth afforded for maritime communica-
tions, not only with every part of Greece, but also with
Italy and Asia Minor, rendered it the seat of the Roman
provincial administration, and the usual residence of
the proconsul of Achaia.³
1 "Totius Græciæ lumen."-Cicero.
2 Strabo, viii. 6. Yet the tombs in the Corinthian territory even now fre-
quently yield considerable booty to excavators.
3 Theodos. Cod. ix. 1, 2.
68
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
The policy of Augustus towards Greece was openly
one of precaution. The Greeks still continued to occupy
the attention of the ruling class at Rome, more perhaps
than their declining power warranted; they had not
yet sunk into the political insignificancy which they
were destined to reach in the days of Juvenal and
Tacitus. Augustus reduced the power of all those
Greek states that retained any influence, whether they
had joined his own party or favoured Antony. Athens
was deprived of its authority over Eretria and Egina,
and forbidden to increase its local revenues by selling
the right of citizenship.' Lacedæmon was also weak-
ened by the establishment of the independent commu-
nity of the free Laconians, a confederation of twenty-
four maritime cities, whose population, consisting
chiefly of perioikoi, had hitherto paid taxes to Sparta.
Augustus, it is true, assigned the island of Cythera,
and a few places on the Messenian frontier, to the Lace-
dæmonian state; but the gift was a very slight com-
pensation for the loss sustained in a political point of
view, whatever it might have been in a financial.
Augustus established a Roman colony at Patras to
extinguish the smouldering nationality of Achaia, and
to keep open a gate through which a Roman force might
at any time pour into Greece. Patras then lay in ruins,
and the proprietors of its territory dwelt in the villages
around. Augustus repaired the city, and re-peopled it
with Roman citizens, freedmen, and the veterans of the
twenty-second legion. To fill up the void in the numbers
of the middle and lower orders of the free population,
necessary for the immediate formation of a large city,
the inhabitants of some neighbouring Greek towns.
were compelled to abandon their dwellings and reside
in Patras. The local government of the colony was
endowed with municipal revenues taken from several
1 See p. 33, note 2.
ROMAN COLONIES.
69
A. D. 330.
Achaian and Locrian cities which were deprived of their B. c. 146-
civic existence. Patras was often the residence of the
proconsul of Achaia, and it flourished for ages both as
a Roman administrative station and as a port possess-
ing great commercial resources. Its colonial coinage,
though neither so abundant nor so elegant in its fabric
as that of Corinth, extends from the time of Augustus
to that of Gordian III. As in all Roman colonies, the
political institutions of Rome were closely imitated at
Corinth and Patras. Their highest magistrates were
duumviri, who represented the consulate, and who were
annually elected; or, perhaps, it would be more correct
to say, were selected for a nominal election by the im-
perial authorities. Other magistrates were elected,
and some were appointed to perform those duties in
the colonies which were similar to the functions of the
great office-bearers in Rome. And as the model of the
Roman government was originally that of a single city,
the resemblance was easily maintained. Under the em-
perors, however, the colonies gradually sank into ordi-
nary corporations for the transaction of administrative
and fiscal business, under the immediate control of the
Roman proconsuls and provincial governors.¹
Augustus also founded a new city called Nicopolis,
to commemorate the victory of Actium, but it was as
much a triumphal monument as a political establish-
ment. Its organisation was that of a Greek city, not
of a Roman colony; and its quinquennial festival of the
Actia was instituted on the model of the great games
of Greece, and placed under the superintendence of the
Lacedæmonians. Its population consisted of Greeks
compelled to desert their native cities in Epirus, Acar-
nania, and Ætolia. Its territory was extensive, and it
1 A coin of Hadrian in second brass, from the mint of Corinth, commemorates
the Concordia of Corinth and Patras; but it is not easy to decide what mutual
privileges were thereby conceded. The coin is in the small collection of the
Author.
70
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. was admitted into the Amphictyonic council as a Greek
state.¹ The manner in which Augustus peopled Nico-
polis proves his indifference to the feelings of humanity,
and the imperfection of his knowledge in that political
science which enables a statesman to convert a small
territory into a flourishing State.
The principles of his colonisation contributed as
directly to the decline and depopulation of Italy and
Greece, as the accidental tyranny or folly of any of his
successors. The inhabitants of a great part of Ætolia
were torn from their abodes, where they were residing
on their own property, surrounded by their cattle, their
olive-trees and vineyards, and compelled to construct
such dwellings as they were able, and find such means
of livelihood as presented themselves, at Nicopolis.
The destruction of an immense amount of vested
capital in provincial buildings was the consequence;
the agriculture of a whole province was ruined, and the
population must have soon died away, in the poverty
which they would experience under the change of a
city life. Nicopolis long continued to be the principal
city in Epirus. Its local coinage extends from Augustus
down to the reign of Gallienus. The legends are Greek,
and the fabric rude. The peculiar privileges conferred
on the three colonies of Corinth, Patras, and Nicopolis,
and the close connection in which they were placed
with the imperial government, enabled them to flourish
for centuries amidst the general poverty which the
despotic system of the Roman provincial administration
spread over the rest of Greece.³
2
3
1 Tacitus (Ann. v. 10), in calling Nicopolis a Roman colony, evidently does
not intend to say more than that it was a colony of Greeks founded by the
Romans.
2 In the latter half of the fourth century, the greater part of Nicopolis was
the property of Paula, one of the Roman ladies celebrated for her devotion to
St Jerome. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, i. 73.
3 Pausanias, Eliac. Pr. xxiii. 2; Phoc. xxxviii. 2; Achaica, xviii. 6.
POLITICAL CONDITION OF GREECE.
71
SECT. IX.-POLITICAL CONDITION OF GREECE FROM THE TIME OF
AUGUSTUS TO THAT OF CARACALLA.
2
Two descriptions of Greece have been preserved,
which afford vivid pictures of the impoverished condi-
tion of the country during two centuries of the Roman
government. Strabo has left us an account of the de-
populated aspect of Greece, shortly after the foundation
of the colonies of Patras and Nicopolis. Pausanias
has described, with melancholy exactness, the desolate
appearance of many celebrated cities, during the time
of the Antonines.¹ Governors and proconsuls were
sent to administer the government of Greece who were
ignorant of the Greek language. The taxes imposed
on the country, and the burden of the provincial ad-
ministration, drained off all the wealth of the people;
and those necessary public works, which required a
large expenditure for their maintenance and preserva-
tion, were allowed to deteriorate and fall gradually into
ruin. The emperors, at times, indeed, attempted, by a
few isolated acts of mercy, to alleviate the sufferings
of the Greeks. Tiberius, as we have already mentioned,
united the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia to the
imperial government of Moesia, in order to deliver them
from the weight of the proconsular administration.³
His successor restored them to the senate. When
Nero visited Greece to receive a crown at the Olympic
games, he recompensed the Greeks for flattering his
music by declaring them free from tribute. The im-
munities which he conferred produced some serious
disputes between the various states, concerning the
collection of their municipal taxes; and Vespasian
rendered these disputes a pretext for annulling the
1 The Eliacs of Pausanias were written a. D. 173. Leake's Topography of
Athens and Attica-Introduction.
2 Philostratus, Apoll. Vit. v. 36.
3
Tacitus, Ann. i. 76, 80.
B. C. 146-
A. D. 330.
72
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
-
CHAP. I. freedom conferred by Nero.' The free cities of Greece
still possessed not only the administration of consider-
able revenues, but also the power of raising money, by
local taxes, for the maintenance of their temples, schools,
universities, aqueducts, roads, ports, and public build-
ings. Trajan carefully avoided destroying any of the
municipal privileges of the Greeks, and he endeavoured
to improve their condition by his just and equitable
administration; yet his policy was adverse to the in-
crease of local institutions.2
the
Hadrian opened a new line of policy to the sovereigns
of Rome, and avowed the determination of reforming
the institutions of the Romans, and adapting his govern-
ment to the altered state of society in the empire. He
perceived that the central government was weakening
its power, and diminishing its resources, by acts of in-
justice, which rendered property everywhere insecure.
He remedied the evils which resulted from the irregular
dispensation of the laws by the provincial governors,
and effected reforms which certainly exercised a favour-
able influence on the condition of the inhabitants of the
provinces. His reign laid the foundation of that regular
and systematic administration of justice in the Roman
empire, which gradually absorbed all the local judica-
tures of the Greeks, and, by forming a numerous and
well-educated society of lawyers, guided by uniform
rules, raised up a partial barrier against arbitrary
power. In order to lighten the weight of taxation,
Hadrian abandoned all the arrears of taxes accumulated
in preceding years. His general system of adminis-
trative reforms was pursued by the Antonines, and
perfected by the edict of Caracalla, which conferred
the rank of Roman citizens on all the free inhabitants
of the empire. Hadrian certainly deserves the merit
3
¹ Pausanias, Ach. xvii. 2. Philostratus, Apoll. Tyan. v. 14.
2 Pliny, Epist. x. 23, 43, 94, 97.
Spartianus, in Adriano, p. 10.
HADRIAN.
73
of having first seen the necessity of securing the im- e. c. 146—
perial government, by effacing the badges of servitude A. D. 330.
from the provincials, and connecting the interests of
the majority of the landed proprietors throughout the
Roman empire, with the existence of the imperial ad-
ministration. He was the first who laid aside the
prejudices of a Roman, and secured to the provincials
that legal rank in the constitution of the empire which
placed their rights on a level with those of Roman
citizens, and for this he was hated by the senate.
Hadrian, from personal taste, cultivated Greek lite-
rature, and admired Grecian art. He left traces of his
love of improvement in every portion of the empire,
through which he kept constantly travelling; but
Greece, and especially Attica, received an extraor-
dinary share of the imperial favour. It is difficult to
estimate how far his conduct immediately affected the
general well-being of the population, or to point out
the precise manner of its operation on society; but it
is evident that the impulse given to improvement by
his example and his administration, produced some
tendency to ameliorate the condition of the Greeks.
Greece had, perhaps, sunk to its lowest state of poverty
and depopulation under the financial administration of
the Flavian family, and it enjoyed the advantage of
good government under Hadrian. The extraordinary
improvements which the Roman emperors might have
effected in the empire, by a judicious employment of
the public revenues, may be estimated from the im-
mense public works executed by Hadrian. At Athens
he completed the temple of Jupiter Olympius, which
had been commenced by Pisistratus, and of which six-
teen columns still exist to astonish the spectator by
their size and beauty. He built temples to Juno and
1 Since this passage was written, one of the columns of the temple of Jupi-
ter Olympius was blown down in a hurricane during the month of Octo-
74
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. to Jupiter Panhellenius, and ornamented the city with
a magnificent pantheon, a library, and a gymnasium.
He commenced an aqueduct to convey an abundant
stream of water from Cephisia, which was completed
by Antoninus. At Megara, he rebuilt the temple of
Apollo. He constructed an aqueduct which conveyed
the waters of the lake Stymphalus to Corinth, and he
erected new baths in that city. But the surest proof
that his improvements were directed by a judicious.
spirit is to be found in his attention to the roads. No-
thing could tend more to advance the prosperity of this
mountainous country than removing the difficulties of
intercourse between its various provinces; for there is
no country where the expense of transport presents a
greater barrier to trade, or where the difficulty of inter-
nal communications forms a more serious impediment
to improvement in the social condition of the agricultu-
ral population. He rendered the road from Northern
Greece to the Peloponnesus, by the Scironian rocks,
easy and commodious for wheeled carriages. Great,
however, as these improvements were, he conferred one
still greater on the Greeks, as a nation, by commencing
the task of moulding their various local customs and
laws into one general system, founded on the basis of
the Roman jurisprudence; and while he ingrafted the
law of the Romans on the stock of society in Greece, he
did not seek to destroy the municipal institutions of the
people. The policy of Hadrian, in raising the Greeks
to an equality of civil rights with the Romans, sanc-
tioned whatever remained of the Macedonian institu-
tions throughout the East; and as soon as the edict
of Caracalla had conferred on all the subjects of the
empire the rights of Roman citizenship, the Greeks be-
¹
ber 1852. The stone substructure beneath the soil appeared to have received
some injury in modern times.
¹ Spanheim, Orbis Romanus, p. 393.
ANTONINUS.
75
came, in reality, the dominant people in the Eastern B. c. 146-
portion of the Roman empire, and Greek institutions A. D. 330.
ultimately ruled society under the supremacy of Roman
law.
It is curious that Antoninus, who adopted all the
views of Hadrian with regard to the annihilation of the
exclusive supremacy of the Roman citizens, should have
thought it worth his attention to point out the sup-
posed ancient connection between Rome and Arcadia.
He was the first Roman who commemorated this fan-
ciful relationship between Greece and Rome by any
public act. He conferred on Palantium, the Arcadian
city from which Evander was supposed to have led a
Greek colony to the banks of the Tiber, all the privi-
leges ever granted to the most favoured municipalities
in the Roman empire. The habits and character of
Marcus Aurelius led him to regard the Greeks with the
greatest favour; and had his reign been more peaceful,
and left his time more at his own disposal, the sophists
and philosophers of Greece would, in all probability,
have profited by his leisure. He rebuilt the temple of
Eleusis, which had been burnt to the ground; he im-
proved the schools of Athens, and increased the salaries
of the professors, who then rendered that city the most
celebrated university in the civilised world. Herodes
Atticus, whose splendid public edifices in Greece rivalled
the works of Hadrian, gained great influence by his
eminence in literature and taste, as well as by his
enormous wealth. It was the golden age of rhetoricians,
whose services to the public were rewarded not only
with liberal salaries and donations in money, but even
with such magisterial authority and honour as the
Greek cities could confer. Herodes Atticus had been
selected by Antoninus Pius to give lessons in eloquence
to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and he had been
always treated with distinction by Marcus Aurelius,
ง
76
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. until the emperor felt it was a duty to punish his
oppressive and tyrannical conduct to the Athenians.
The friendship of the emperor did not save him from
disgrace, though his freedmen alone were punished.'
Little can be collected concerning the condition of
Greece under the successors of Marcus Aurelius. The
Roman government was occupied with wars, which
seldom directly affected the provinces occupied by the
Greeks. Literature and science were little regarded by
the soldiers of fortune who mounted the imperial throne ;
and Greece, forgotten and neglected, appears to have
enjoyed a degree of tranquillity and repose, which en-
abled her to profit by the improvements in the impe-
rial government which Hadrian had introduced and the
decree of Caracalla had ratified.
The institutions of the Greeks, which were uncon-
nected with the exercise of the supreme executive power
in the country, were generally allowed to exist, even by
the most jealous of the emperors. When these institu-
tions disappeared, their destruction was effected by the
progressive change which time gradually introduced
into Greek society, and not by any violence on the
part of the Roman government. It is difficult, indeed,
to trace the limits of the state and city administration
in matters of taxation, or the exact extent of their con-
trol over their local funds. Some cities possessed in-
dependence, and others were free from tribute; and
these privileges gave the Greek nation a political posi-
tion in the empire, which prevented their being con-
founded with the other provincials in the East, until the
reign of Justinian. As the Greek cities in Thrace,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, preserved these impor-
3
1 Philostratus, Vita Soph. ii. 12, 13. See also the Memoir on the life of
Herodes Atticus by de Burigny, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions,
tome xxx.
2
A. D. 212-217.
Αὐτονομία was the privilege of some cities, others were ἀτελεῖς φορῶν.
GREECE NEGLECTED.
77
A. D. 330.
tant privileges, it is not wonderful that, in Greece, the B. C. 146—
whole frame of the ancient social institutions was pre-
served.1
Pausanias found the Amphictyonic council still hold-
ing its meetings, three centuries after the Roman con-
quest.2 The deputies of the Achaian, Boeotian, and
Phocic commonwealths, continued to meet for the pur-
pose of transacting the business of their confederacies.3
The Athenians were allowed to maintain an armed
6
guard in the island of Delos.* The Olympic, Pythic,
and Isthmian games were regularly celebrated.5 The
Areopagus at Athens, and the Gerontia at Sparta, still
exercised their functions. The different cities and
provinces affected the use of their peculiar dialects, and
the inhabitants of Sparta continued to imitate the
Laconism of antiquity in their public despatches, though
their altered manners rendered it ridiculous." The
mountaineers of Attica, in the time of Antoninus, spoke
a purer language than the populace of the city of
Athens, which still bore evidence of its heterogeneous
origin after the massacre of Sylla. Had the financial
burdens of the Roman government not weighed too
heavily on the population, the rivalry of the Greeks,
actively directed to local improvements and to com-
merce, instead of being too exclusively and ostenta-
tiously devoted to philosophy, literature, and the arts,
might have proved more useful and honourable to
1 The assemblies of the people in the Greek cities were, however, regarded
by the Romans with great jealousy: Acts, xix. 40, “For we are in danger to be
called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may
give an account of this concourse. Even Trajan felt some fear or jealousy of
the influence of local organisation in the Greek cities.-Pliny, Epist. lib. x. 43,
94.
2 Phoc. viii. 2.
4 Arcad. xxxiii.
3 Achaica, xvi. 7; Boot. xxxiv. 1; Phoc. iv. 2.
5 Eliac. Pr. vii. 4; Phoc. vii. 2; Corinth. ii. 2.
6 Attica, xxviii. 5; Facon. xi. 2.
7 Strabo, viii. 1; vol. ii. 138; edit. Tauch.
Apoll. Tyan. ii, 62.
8 Philostratus, Vit. Soph. Herod. Alt.
illam nationum."--Dio. 54, 7.
Paus. Messen. xxvii. 5. Philostratus,
Tacitus, Ann. ii. 55.
"Conluviem
78
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. their country. But the moral supports of the old frame-
work of society were destroyed before the edict of Cara-
calla had emancipated Greece; and when tranquillity
arrived, they were only capable of enjoying the felicity
of having been forgotten by their tyrants.
SECT. X.-THE GREEKS AND ROMANS NEVER SHOWED ANY DISPO-
SITION TO UNITE AND FORM ONE PEOPLE.
The habits and tastes of the Greeks and Romans
were so different, that their familiar intercourse pro-
duced a feeling of antipathy in the two nations. The
Roman writers, from prejudice and jealousy, of which
they were themselves, perhaps, unconscious, have trans-
mitted to us a very incorrect picture of the state of
the Greeks during the first centuries of the empire.
They did not observe, with attention, the marked dis-
tinction between the Asiatic and Alexandrine Greeks,
and the natives of Hellas. The European population,
pursuing the quiet life of landed proprietors, or engaged
in the pursuits of commerce and agriculture, was con-
sidered, by Roman prejudice, as unworthy of notice.
Lucian, himself a Greek, indeed contrasts the tranquil
and respectable manner of life at Athens with the
folly and luxury of Rome; but the Romans looked on
provincials as little better than serfs (coloni), and
merchants were, in their eyes, only tolerated cheats.
The Greek character was estimated from the conduct of
the adventurers, who thronged from the wealthy and
corrupted cities of the East to seek their fortunes at
Rome, and who, from motives of fashion and taste,
were unduly favoured by the wealthy aristocracy.2
1 Nigrinus, tom. i. 21; edit. Tauch.
2" Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes,
Augur, schoenobates, medicus, magus; omnia novit.
Græculus esuriens, in cœlum jusseris, ibit."
Juvenal, Sat. iii. 76.
C.
GREEKS AND ROMANS.
79
The most distinguished of these Greeks were literary
men, professors of philosophy, rhetoric, grammar,
mathematics, and music. Great numbers were en-
gaged as private teachers; and this class was regarded
with some respect by the Roman nobility, from its in-
timate connection with their families. The great mass
of the Greeks residing at Rome were, however, employed
in connection with the public and private amusements
of the capital, and were found engaged in every pro-
fession, from the directors of the theatres and opera-
houses, down to the swindlers who frequented the
haunts of vice. The testimony of the Latin authors
may be received as sufficiently accurate concerning
the light in which the Greeks were regarded at Rome,
and as a not incorrect portraiture of the Greek popula-
tion of the capital.¹
.
The expressions of the Romans, when speaking of the
Greeks, often display nothing more than the manner in
which the proud aristocracy of the empire regarded all
foreigners, those even whom they admitted to their
personal intimacy. The Greeks were confounded with
the great body of strangers from the Eastern nations,
in one general sentence of condemnation; and not un-
naturally, for the Greek language served as the ordinary
means of communication with all foreigners from the
East. The magicians, conjurers, and astrologers of
Syria, Egypt, and Chaldæa, were naturally mixed up,
both in society and public opinion, with the adventurers
of Greece, and contributed to form the despicable type
which was unjustly enough transferred from the for-
tune-hunters at Rome to the whole Greek nation.
It is hardly necessary to observe that Greek literature,
as cultivated at Rome during this period, had no con-
¹ Tacitus, Hist. iii. 47, mentions the "desidiam licentiamque Græcorum ;'
and Trajan speaks with contempt of the Greeks.-Pliny, Ep. x. 49 : Gymnasiis
indulgent Græculi."
(C
B. C. 146-
A. D. 330.
80
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. nection with the national feelings of the Greek people.
As far as the Greeks themselves were concerned, learn-
ing was an honourable and lucrative occupation to its
successful professors; but in the estimation of the
higher classes at Rome, Greek literature was merely an
ornamental exercise of the mind, a fashion of the
wealthy.1 This ignorance of Greece and the Greeks
induced Juvenal to draw his conclusive proof of the
utter falsity of the Greek character, and of the fabu-
lous nature of all Greek history, from his own doubts
concerning a fact which is avouched by the testimony
of Herodotus and Thucydides; but as a retort to the
Græcia mendax of the Roman satirist, the apter ob-
servation of Lucian may be cited-that the Romans
spoke truth only once in their lives, and that was when
they made their wills.2
The Greeks repaid the scorn of the Romans with
greater and not more reasonable contempt. When the
two nations first came into collision, the Romans were
certainly far less polished than the Greeks, though they
were much superior to them in virtue and courage.
They acknowledged their inferiority, and readily derived
lessons of instruction from a people unable to resist
their arms. The obligation was always recognised. And
Roman gratitude inflated Greek vanity to such a de-
gree, that the conquered never perceived that their mas-
ters became at last as much their superiors in literary
genius as in political and military science. The Greeks
seem always to have remained ignorant that there were
Roman writers whose works would, by successive gene-
rations and distant nations, be placed almost in the
i Claudius dismissed a Greek magistrate from his employment, because he
was ignorant of Latin.-Suetonius, Claud. 16.
2
"Creditur olim
Velificatus Athos, et quicquid Græcia mendax
Audet in historia."-Juv. Sat. x. 173.
Herod. vii. 21. Thucyd. iv. 109. Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, iii. 145.
GREEKS AND ROMANS.
81
A.D. 330.
same rank as their own classic authors. The rhetorical B. c. 146-
contemporaries of Tacitus and of Juvenal never sus-
pected that the original genius of those writers had
extended the domain of literature, nor could any critic
have persuaded them that Horace had already sur-
passed the popularity of their own poets by a graceful
union of social elegance with calm sagacity.
A single example of the supercilious egoism of the
Greeks will be sufficient to show the extent of their
presumption during their political degradation as
Roman provincials. When Apollonius of Tyana, the
pythagorean philosopher, who excited the admiration
of the Hellenic world during the first century, vis-
ited Smyrna, he was invited to attend the Panionian
Assembly. On reading the decree of the council, he
observed that it was signed by men who had adopted
Roman names, and he immediately addressed a letter
to the Panionians blaming their barbarism. He re-
proached them for laying aside the names of their
ancestors, for quitting the names of heroes and legis-
lators to assume such names as Lucullus and Fabricius.
Now, when we remember that this rebuke was gravely
uttered by a native of the Cappadocian city of Tyana,
to a corporation of degenerate Asiatic Greeks, it forms
a curious monument of the delusions of national
vanity.1
The Romans were never very deeply imbued with a
passionate admiration for Grecian art, with which every
rank in Greece was animated. The national pride and
personal vanity of the conquerors, it is true, often
coveted the possession of the most celebrated works.
of art, which were transported to Rome as much on
account of their celebrity as their merit, for the paint-
ing and sculpture which they could procure as articles
of commercial industry were sufficient to gratify Roman
¹ Philostratus, Apoll. Vita, iv. 5; Apoll. Ep. 71.
F
82
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. taste. This was peculiarly fortunate for Greece, since
there can be no doubt that, if the Romans had been as
enthusiastic lovers of art as they were indefatigable
hunters after riches, they would not have hesitated to
regard all those works of art, which were the public
property of the Grecian states, as belonging to the
Roman commonwealth by the right of conquest. It
was only because the avarice of the people would have
received little gratification from the seizure, that Greece
was allowed to retain her statues and paintings when
she was plundered of her gold and silver. The great
dissimilarity of manners between the two nations
appears in the aversion with which many distinguished
senators viewed the introduction of the works of
Grecian art, by Marcellus and Mummius, after the
This aversion
conquests of Syracuse and Corinth.
unquestionably contributed much to save Greece from
the general confiscation of her treasures of art, to which
the people clung with the most passionate attachment.
Cicero says that no Greek city of Europe or Asia would
consent to sell a painting, or a statue, or a work of art,
but that, on the contrary, all were ready to become
purchasers.2 The inhabitants of Pergamus resisted the
attempt of Acratus, a commissioner sent by Nero, to
carry off the most celebrated works of art from the
cities of Asia. The feeling of art, in the two people,
is not inaptly illustrated, by comparing the conduct
of the Rhodian republic with that of the Emperor
Augustus. When the Rhodians were besieged by
Demetrius Poliorcetes, they refused to destroy his
statues, and those of his father, which had been erected
in their agora. But when Augustus conquered Egypt
he ordered all the statues of Antony to be destroyed,
and, with a meanness somewhat at variance with
patrician dignity, he accepted a bribe of one thousand
1 Paus. Arcad. xlvi. 2 Verr. in Sig. 59. 3 Tacit. Ann. xv. 45; xvi. 23.
GREEKS AND ROMANS.
83
talents from the Alexandrines, to spare the statues of B. c. 146–
Cleopatra. The Greeks honoured art even more than A. D. 330.
the Romans loved vengeance. Works of art were, at
times, carried away by those Roman governors who
spared nothing they could pillage in their provinces ;
but these spoliations were always regarded in the light
of direct robberies; and Fulvius Nobilior, Verres, and
Piso, who had distinguished themselves in this species
of violence, were considered as the most infamous of
the Roman magistrates.
It is true that Sylla carried off the ivory statue of
Minerva from the temple of Alalcomenæ, and that
Augustus removed that of the great temple of Tegea,
as a punishment to that city for espousing the party
of Antony.¹ But these very exceptions prove how
sparingly the Romans availed themselves of their rights
of conquest; or history would have recorded the re-
markable statues which they had allowed to remain in
Greece, rather than signalised as exceptions the few
which they transported to Rome. When Caligula and
Nero were permitted to govern the world according to
the impulses of insanity, they ordered many celebrated
works of art to be conveyed to Rome-among these,
the celebrated Cupid of Praxiteles was twice removed.
It was restored to Thespia by Claudius; but, on being
again taken away by Nero, it perished in a confla-
gration. After the great conflagration at Rome, in
which innumerable works of art perished, Nero trans-
ported 500 brazen statues from Delphi, to adorn the
capital and replace the loss it had suffered, and he
ordered all cities of Greece and Asia Minor to be
systematically plundered. Very little is subsequently
2
3
1 Paus. Boot. xxxiii. 4; Arcad. xlvi. 1. Augustus carried away the tusks
of the Calydonian boar, which were three feet in length, to be placed among
the wonders accumulated at Rome. Strabo (viii. 381) mentions that the in-
difference of Mummius to art induced him to present many works brought
from Corinth to the cities near Rome.
2 Paus. Boot. xxvii. 3.
3 Pausanias, Phocio. vii. Tacitus, Ann. xv. 45. Some statues were removed
84
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I recorded concerning this species of plunder, which
Hadrian and his two immediate successors would
hardly have permitted. From the great number of the
most celebrated works of ancient art which Pausanias
enumerates in his tour through Greece, it is evident
that no extensive injury had then occurred, even to
the oldest buildings. After the reign of Commodus,
the Roman emperors paid but little attention to art;
and unless the value of the materials caused the de-
struction of ancient works, they were allowed to stand
undisturbed until the buildings around them crumbled
into dust. During the period of nearly a century
which elapsed from the time of Pausanias until the
first irruption of the Goths into Greece, it is certain
that the temples and public buildings of the inhabited
cities were very little changed in their general aspect,
from the appearance which they had presented when
the Roman legions first entered Hellas.'
SECT. XI.-STATE OF SOCIETY AMONG THE GREEKS.
In order to give a complete account of the state of
society among the Greeks under the Roman empire, it
would be necessary to enter into several dissertations
connected with the political history of the Romans.
To avoid so extensive a field, it will be necessary to
give only a cursory sketch of those social peculiarities
whose influence, though apparent in the annals of the
Roman empire, did not permanently affect the politi-
cal history of the empire. The state of civilisation,
the popular objects of pursuit, even the views of
from Olympia.-Paus. Eliac. v. 25, 5. Nearer Rome the republic displayed
greater rapacity: two thousand statues were carried off from the Etruscan
town Volsinii.-Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 16.
1 See the lists of works of art carried off from Greece, in Smith's Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities, art. "Painting and Statuary."
STATE OF SOCIETY.
85
A. D. 330.
national advancement, continued, under the imperial B. c. 146--
government, to be very different, and often opposite,
in different divisions of the Greek nation.
The inhabitants of Hellas had sunk into a quiet and
secluded population. The schools of Athens were still
famous, and Greece was visited by numbers of fashion-
able and learned travellers from other countries, as
Italy now is; but the citizens dwelt in their own little
world, clinging to antiquated forms and usages, and
to old superstitions,-holding little intercourse, and
having little community of feeling, either with the
rest of the empire or with the other divisions of the
Hellenic race.¹
1
The maritime cities of Europe, Asia Minor, and the
Archipelago, embraced a considerable population, chiefly
occupied in commerce and manufactures, and taking
little interest in the politics of Rome, or in the litera-
ture of Greece. All commerce was despised by the
Romans; and though the Greeks had looked on trade
with more favour, yet the influence of declining wealth,
and of unjust laws, was rapidly tending to depreciate
the mercantile character, and to render the occupation
less respectable, even in the commercial cities.²¯ It is
not inappropriate to notice one instance of Roman com-
mercial legislation. Julius Cæsar, among his projects
of reform, thought fit to revive an old Roman law,
which prohibited any citizen from having in his posses-
sion a larger sum than sixty thousand sesterces in the
precious metals. This law was, of course, neglected;
but under Tiberius it was made a pretext by informers
to levy various fines and confiscations in Greece and
Syria. The commerce of this portion of the world,
4
1 Lucian (Cataplus, i. 351, edit. Tauch) tells us that the arrival of an Egyptian
ship at Piræus was a rare event.
2 Philostratus (Apoll. Vit. iv. 32) mentions the manner in which Apollonius
rebuked a Lacedæmonian of good family who engaged in commerce.
3 £600.
* Suetonius, in Tib. 49.
86
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
1
CHAP. I. which had once consisted of commodities of general
consumption, declined, under the fiscal avarice of the
Romans, into an export trade of some articles of luxury
to the larger cities of the west of Europe. The wines
of the Archipelago, the carpets of Pergamus, the cambric
of Cos, and the dyed woollens of Laconia, are particu-
larly mentioned. The decline of trade is not to be
overlooked as one of the causes of the decline and de-
population of the Roman empire; for wealth depended
even more on commerce, in ancient times, than it does
in modern, from the imperfect means of transport, and
the impolitic laws relating to the exportation of grain
to Rome, and its gratuitous distribution and sale at a
price below the cost of its production in Italy.
The division of the Greek nation which occupied
the most important social position in the empire, con-
sisted of the remains of the Macedonian and Greek
colonies in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria. These coun-
tries were filled with Greeks; and the cities of Alexan-
dria and Antioch, the second and third in the empire
in size, population, and wealth, were chiefly peopled
by Greeks. The influence of Alexandria alone on the
Roman empire, and on European civilisation, would
require a treatise, in order to do justice to the subject.
Its schools of philosophy produced modifications of
Christianity in the East, and attempted to infuse a
new life into the torpid members of paganism by means
of gnosticism and neoplatonism. The feuds between
the Jews and Christians, which its municipal disputes
first created, were bequeathed to following centuries;
so that, in western Europe, we still debase Christianity
by the admixture of those prejudices which had their
rise in the amphitheatre of Alexandria. Its wealth and
population excited the jealousy of Augustus, who de-
prived it of its municipal institutions, and rendered it
1 Pliny, Hist. Nat. xiv. viii. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 101. Horace, Sat. i. 2.
STATE OF SOCIETY.
87
A. D. 330.
a prey to the factions of the amphitheatre, the curse of B. c. 146-
Roman civic anarchy. The populace, unrestrained by
any system of order founded on ties of domestic and
corporate institutions, and without any social guidance
derived from any acknowledged municipal rank, was
abandoned to the passions of the wildest democracy,
whenever they were crowded together. Hadrian was
struck with the activity and industry of the Alexan-
drines; and though he does not appear to have admired
their character, he saw that the increase of privileges to
some organised classes of the population was the true
way to lessen the influence of the mob.
Antioch and the other Greek cities of the East had
preserved their municipal privileges; and the Greek
population in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria, remained
everywhere completely separated from the original in-
habitants. Their corporate organisation often afforded
them an opportunity of interfering with the details of
the public administration, and their intriguing and
seditious spirit enabled them to defend their own
rights and interests. When the free population of the
provinces acquired the rights of Roman citizenship, the
Greeks of these countries, who formed the majority of
the privileged classes, and were already in possession
of the principal share of the local administration, be-
came soon possessed of the whole authority of the
Roman government. They appeared as the real repre-
sentatives of the State, placed the native population
in the position of a party excluded from power, and,
consequently, rendered it more dissatisfied than for-
merly. In the East, therefore, after the publication of
Caracalla's edict, the Greeks became again the dominant
people. In spite of the equality of all the provincials
in the eye of the law, a violent opposition was created
between the Greeks and the native population in
Syria, Egypt, and a large part of Asia Minor, where
88
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. Various nations still retained their own customs and
languages. The Greeks, in a large portion of the
eastern half of the empire, occupied a position nearly
similar to that of the Romans in the western. The
same causes produced similar effects, and from the
period when the Greeks became a privileged and
dominant class, administering the severe fiscal supre-
macy of the Roman government, instead of ruling with
the more tolerant habits of their Macedonian prede-
cessors, their numbers and influence began to decline.
Like the Romans of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, the Greeks
of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, destroyed them-
selves.
It is now necessary to enter on a more minute in-
quiry into the causes which affected the social condition
of the native Greeks, since their secluded position in
the empire almost conceals them from the view of the
political historian. The principal causes of the decline
of Greece have been already explained; but the tone
of society in the country, and the manner of living
adopted by the upper and middle ranks, must not
be overlooked, in tracing the progress of national de-
cay. During the disorders of the civil wars, while the
Roman generals were distributing the accumulated
treasures of numerous sovereigns in order to gain
partisans, not only was the value of the precious
metals very much reduced, but enormous fortunes also
were made by many Greeks; and a scale of expense
was adopted, by all those who were connected with
the administration, which individuals were rarely pru-
dent enough to diminish before their incomes had de-
clined, and the value of money had risen. It has been
already remarked, that the increase of wealth consequent
on the Macedonian conquests, had tended to augment
the size of private properties, and to add to the numbers
of slaves in Greece. Under the Romans, the general
STATE OF SOCIETY.
89
A. D. 330.
riches of the country were indeed very much dimi- B. c. 146——
nished; but individuals were enabled to acquire for-
tunes greater than had been possessed by the ancient
monarchs, and to possess estates larger than the terri-
tories of many celebrated republics. Julius Eurycles
owned a province, and Herodes Atticus could have
purchased a kingdom.' While a few individuals could
amass unbounded wealth, the bulk of the people were
prevented from acquiring even a moderate indepen-
dency; and when Plutarch says that Greece, in his
time, could not arm more than three thousand hoplita,
though the small states of Sicyon and Megara each
furnished that number at the battle of Platea, it is
necessary to remember the change which had taken
place in the size of private properties, as well as the
altered state of society, for both tended to diminish
the numbers of the free population. The taxes of
Greece were remitted to Rome, and expended beyond
the limits of the province. The most useful public
works were neglected, except when a benevolent empe-
ror like Hadrian, or a wealthy individual like Herodes.
Atticus, thought fit to direct some portion of their ex-
penditure to what was useful as well as ornamental.
Under a continuance of such circumstances, Greece
was drained of money and capital.
2
The poverty of Greece was farther increased by the
gradual rise in the value of the precious metals,-an
evil which began to be generally felt about the time
of Nero, and which affected Greece with great severity,
from the altered distribution of wealth in the country,
and the loss of its foreign commerce. Greece had once
been rich in mines, which had been a source of wealth
1
The unjust acquisitions of C. Antonius in Cephallenia have been mentioned
at page 58. Tacitus tells us that Claudius Timarchus of Crete afforded another
example of the exorbitant accumulation of riches by individuals in Greece.—-
Ann. xv. 20.
2 De Defectu Oraculorum, c. viii.
90
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. and prosperity to Siphnos and Athens, and had laid
the foundation of the power of Philip of Macedon.
Gold and silver mines, when their produce is regarded
as articles of commerce, are a surer basis of wealth
than mines of lead and copper. The evils which have
arisen in countries where gold and silver have been
produced, have proceeded from the fiscal regulations
of the government. The fiscal measures of the Romans
soon rendered it a ruinous speculation for private in-
dividuals to attempt working mines of the precious
metals, and, in the hands of the State, they soon proved
unprofitable. Many mines were exhausted; and even
though the value of the precious metals was enhanced,
some, beyond the influence of the Roman power, were
abandoned from those causes which, after the second
century of the Christian era, produced a sensible dimi-
nution in the commercial transactions of the old hemi-
sphere.¹
Greece suffered in the general decay; her commerce
and manufactures, being confined to supplying the con-
sumption of a diminished and impoverished population,
sank into insignificancy. It may be observed, that in
a declining state of society, where political, financial,
and commercial causes combine to diminish the wealth
of a nation, it is difficult for individuals to alter their
manner of life, and to restrict their expenditure, with
the promptitude necessary to escape impoverishment.
It is indeed seldom in their power to estimate the
progress of the decay; and a reasonable jointure, or a
necessary mortgage, may ruin a family.
In this declining state of society, complaints of
1 Jacob's Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the
Precious Metals, i. 35, 42. Though the principles of this Inquiry are correct,
the author is certainly in error in his estimate of the amount of gold and
silver drawn from mines and put in circulation during the middle ages. The
gold coinage of the Byzantine empire was so abundant that it circulated over
all Europe, from the tenth to the twelfth century, and it must have been
supplied by mines then worked.
STATE OF SOCIETY.
91
1
A. D. 330.
excessive luxury are generally prevalent, and the Greek B. c. 146-
writers of the second century are filled with lamenta-
tions on this subject. Such complaints, however, when
applied to Greece, do not prove that the majority of the
higher classes were living in a manner injurious to
society, either from their effeminacy or vicious expen-
diture. They only show that the greater part of the
incomes of private persons was consumed by their per-
sonal expenditure; and that a due proportion was not
set apart for creating new productive property, in order
to replace the deterioration, which time is ever causing
in that which already exists. People of property, when
their annual incomes proved insufficient for their per-
sonal expenditure, began to borrow money, instead of
trying to diminish their expenses.
An accumulation
of debts became general throughout the country, and
formed a great evil in the time of Plutarch. These
debts were partly caused by the oppression of the Ro-
man government, and by the chicanery of the fiscal
officers, always pressing for ready money, and were
generally contracted to Roman money-lenders. It was
in this way that the Roman administration produced
its most injurious effects in the provinces, by affording
to capitalists the means of accumulating enormous
wealth, and by forcing the proprietors of land into
abject poverty. The property of Greek debtors was at
last transferred, to a very great extent, to their Roman
creditors. This transference, which, in a homogeneous
society, might have invigorated the upper classes, by
substituting an industrious timocracy for an idle aris-
tocracy, had a very different effect. It introduced new
feelings of rivalry and extravagance, by filling the
country with foreign landlords. The Greeks could not
long maintain the struggle, and they sank gradually
lower and lower in wealth, until their poverty intro-
1 Περὶ τοῦ μὴ δειν δανείζεσθαι. - De Vitando Ere alieno.
92
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. duced an altered state of society, and taught them the
prudential and industrious habits of farmers, in which
tranquil position they escape, not only from the eye of
history, but even from antiquarian research.
It is difficult to convey a correct notion of the evils
and demoralisation produced by private debts in the
ancient world, though they often appear as one of the
most powerful agents in political revolutions, and were
a constant subject of attention to the statesman, the
lawgiver, and the political philosopher. Modern society
has completely annihilated their political effects. The
greater facilities afforded to the transference of landed
property, and the ease with which capital now circulates,
have given an extension to the operations of banking
which has remedied this peculiar defect in society. It
must be noticed, too, that the ancients regarded landed
property as the accessory of the citizen, even when its
amount determined his rank in the commonwealth :
but the moderns view the proprietor as the accessory
of the landed property; and the political franchise,
being inherent in the estate, is lost by the citizen who
alienates his property.
In closing this view of the state of the Greek people
under the imperial government, it is impossible not to
feel that Greece cannot be included in the general as-
sertion of Gibbon, that "if a man were called to fix the
period in the history of the world during which the
condition of the human race was most happy and pros-
perous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
Commodus."1 It may be doubted whether the Roman
government ever relaxed the systematic oppression
1 Decline and Fall, i. 216, Smith's edit. The state of Egypt was almost as
bad as that of Greece.-Aristides, Orat. Egypt. Compare Milman's History of
Christianity, vol. i. book ii. c. vii.; and Hegewisch, Essai sur l'Epoque de
Histoire Romaine la plus heureuse pour le Genre humain, tr. par Solvet, which
support the opinion of Gibbon with many examples.
با
STATE OF SOCIETY.
93
under which the agricultural and commercial population B. C. 146-
of its provinces groaned; and even Hadrian himself A. D. 330.
can hardly claim greater merit than that of having
humanely administered a system radically bad, and en-
deavoured to correct its most prominent features of
injustice. Greece, indeed, reached its lowest degree of
misery and depopulation about the time of Vespasian;
but still there is ample testimony in the pages of co-
temporary writers, to prove that the desolate state of the
country was not materially improved for a long period,
and that only partial signs of amelioration were appa-
rent in the period so much vaunted by Gibbon.¹ The
liberality of Hadrian, and the munificence of Herodes
Atticus, were isolated examples, and could not change
the constitution of Rome. Many splendid edifices of
antiquity were repaired by these two benefactors of
Greece, but many works of public utility remained
neglected on account of the poverty of the diminished
population of the country; and most of the works of
Hadrian and Herodes Atticus contributed little more
to the well-being of the people than the wages of the
labour expended on their construction.2 The roads and
aqueducts of Hadrian are wise exceptions, as they
diminished the expenses of transport, and afforded in-
creased facilities for production. Still the sumptuous
edifices, of which remains still exist, indicate that the
object of building was the erection of magnificent
monuments of art to commemorate the taste and
splendour of the founder, not to increase the resources
of the land or improve the condition of the industrious
classes.
The condition of a declining population by no means
implies that any portion of the people is actually suf-
Plutarch, Lucian, Pausanias, Philostratus.
2 The Athenians ridiculed the ostentation of Herodes in covering the seats of
the Stadium with marble with the money he had gained from them by his sharp
bargains. They said it was truly Panathenaic.-Philostr. Sophist. Vitæ, ii. iv.
94
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. fering from want of the necessaries of life. A sudden
change in the direction of commerce, and a considerable
decrease in the demand for the productions of manu-
facturing industry, must indeed, at the time when such
events occur, deprive numbers of their usual means of
subsistence, and create great misery, before the popu-
lation suffers the ultimate diminution which these
causes necessitate. Such events may occur in an im-
proving as well as in a declining society. But, when
the bulk of a country's productions is drawn from its
own soil, and consumed by its own inhabitants, the
population may be in a declining condition, without the
circumstance being suspected for some time, either at
home or abroad. The chief cause of the deterioration
of the national resources will then arise from the mem-
bers of society consuming too great a proportion of
their annual income, without dedicating a due portion
of their revenues to reproduction; in short, from ex-
pending their incomes, without creating new sources of
income, or striving to augment the old. Greece suf-
fered from all the causes alluded to; her commerce and
manufactures were transferred to other lands; and, when
the change was completed, her inhabitants resolved to
enjoy life, instead of labouring to replace the wealth
which their country had lost. But this diminution in
the wealth of the people requires to be noticed, as lay-
ing the foundation for a great step in the improvement
of the human species. Poverty rendered slavery less
frequent, and destroyed many of the channels by which
the slave trade had flourished. The condition of the
slaves also underwent several modifications, as the
barrier between the slave and the citizen was broken
down. At this favourable conjuncture Christianity
stepped in, to prevent avarice from ever recovering the
ground which humanity had gained.
Under oppressive governments, the person sometimes
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION.
95
A. D. 330.
becomes more insecure than property. This appears B. C. 146—
to have been the case under the Roman, as it has
since been under the Turkish government; and the
population, in such cases, decreases much more rapidly
than property is destroyed. The inhabitants of Greece
under the Roman empire found themselves possessed
of buildings, gardens, vineyards, olive plantations,
and all the agricultural produce which the accumulated
capital of former ages had created, to an extent capable
of maintaining a far more numerous population. The
want of commerce, neglected roads, the rarity of the
precious metals in circulation, and the difficulties
thrown in the way of petty traffic, by injudicious legis-
lation, rendered the surplus produce of each separate
district of little value. The inhabitants enjoyed the
mere necessaries of life, and some of the luxuries of
their climate, in great abundance; but when they sought
to purchase the productions of art and foreign com-
merce, they felt themselves to be poor. Such a state
of society inevitably introduces a system of wasting
what is superfluous, and of neglecting to prepare new
means of future production. In this condition of in-
difference and ease the population of Greece remained,
until the weakness of the Roman government, the dis-
orders of the army, and the diminution and disarming
of the free population, opened a way for the northern
nations into the heart of the empire.¹
SECT. XII.-INFLUENCE OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY ON SOCIETY.
The earliest records of the Greeks represent them
as living completely free from the despotic authority
of a priestly class. The natural consequence of this
1 The depreciation in Roman money after the time of Caracalla must have ac-
celerated the impoverishment of the people. See Appendix II., on Roman and
Byzantine money.
96
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. freedom was an indefinite latitude in the dogmas of the
national faith and the priesthood, as it existed, became
a very incorrect interpreter of public opinion in re-
ligious questions. The belief in the gods of Olympus
had been shaken as early as the age of Pericles, and
had undergone many modifications after the Mace-
donian conquests. From the time the Romans became
masters of Greece, the majority of the educated were
votaries of the different philosophical sects,-every one
of which viewed the established religion as a mere
popular delusion. But the Roman government, and
the municipal authorities, continued to support the
various religions of the different provinces in their
legal rights, though the priesthood generally enjoyed
this support rather in their character of constituted
corporations than because they were regarded as
spiritual guides. The amount of their revenues, and
the extent of their civic rights and privileges, were
the chief objects which engaged the attention of the
magistrate.
.
The wealth and number of the religious establish-
ments in Greece, and the large funds possessed by cor-
porations, which were appropriated to public festivals,
contributed in no small degree to encourage idleness
among the people, and perpetuate a taste for extrava-
gance. The great festivals of the Olympic, Pythic,
and Isthmian games, in so far as they served to unite
the whole Greek nation in a common place of assembly
for national objects, were, indeed, productive of many
advantages. They contributed to maintain a general
standard of public opinion throughout the Hellenic
race, and they kept up a feeling of nationality. But
the dissipation occasioned by the multitude of local
religious feasts, and the extravagant public amuse-
ments celebrated at the expense of the funds belonging
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION.
97
to the temples, produced the most injurious effects on B. c. 146—
society.
The privilege called the right of asylum, by which
some ancient temples became sanctuaries where fugitive
slaves were protected against the vengeance of their
masters, where debtors could escape the pursuit of their
creditors, and where the worst criminals defied the
justice of the law, tended to encourage the open viola-
tion of every principle of justice. The fear of punish-
ment, the strength of moral obligations, and the re-
spect due to religion, were destroyed by the impunity
thus openly granted to the most heinous crimes. This
abuse had extended to such a degree under the Roman
government, that the senate found it necessary, in the
reign of Tiberius, to mitigate the evil; but superstition
was too powerful to allow a complete reform, and many
shrines were allowed to retain the right of asylum to a
much later period.¹
1
Though ancient superstitions were still practised, old
religious feelings were extinct. The oracles, which had
once formed the most remarkable of the sacred institu-
tions of the Greeks, had fallen into decay. It is, how-
ever, incorrect to suppose that the Pythoness ceased to
deliver her responses from the time of our Saviour's
birth, for she was consulted by the emperors long after.
Many oracles continued to be in considerable repute,
even after the introduction of Christianity into Greece.
Pausanias mentions the oracle of Mallos, in Cilicia, as
the most veracious in his time.3 Claros and Didymi
were famous, and much consulted in the time of
Lucian; and even new oracles were commenced as a
profitable speculation. The oracles continued to give
1 Tacitus, Ann. iii. 60. Crebrescebat enim Græcas per urbes licentia atque
impunitas asyla statuendi.—Ibid. iv. 14.
3 Attica, xxxiv. 2.
2 Plutarch, De Orac. Defect. vii. 709; edit. Tauch.
4 Lucian's Alexander and Peregrinus.
Ꮐ
A. D. 330.
98
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
3
CHAP. I. their responses to fervent votaries, long after they had
fallen into general neglect. Julian endeavoured to re-
vive their influence, and he consulted those of Delphi,
Delos, and Dodona, concerning the result of his Persian
expedition.¹ He vainly attempted to restore Delphi,
and Daphne, near Antioch, to their ancient splendour.2
Even so late as the reign of Theodosius the Great, those
of Delphi, Didymi, and Jupiter Ammon, were in ex-
istence, but from that period they became utterly
silent. The reverence which had formerly been paid.
to them was transferred to astrologers, who were con-
sulted by all ranks and on all occasions. Tiberius,
Otho, Hadrian, and Severus, are all mentioned as
votaries of this mode of searching into the secrets of
futurity. Yet hidden divination, to which astrology
belonged, had been prohibited by the laws of the
twelve tables, and was condemned both by express
law and by the spirit of the Roman state religion. It
was regarded, even by the Greeks, as an illicit and dis-
graceful practice.5
4
During the first century of the Christian era, the
worship of Serapis made great progress in every part
of the Roman empire. This worship inculcated the
existence of another world, and of a future judgment.
The fact deserves notice, as it indicates the annihilation
of all reverence for the old system of paganism, and
marks a desire in the public mind to search after those
truths which the Christian dispensation soon after re-
vealed. A moral rule of life with a religious sanction
¹ Theodoretus, Hist. Eccles. iii. 16.
2 Cedrenus, Hist Comp. p. 304. Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 12.
3 See various authorities cited by Van Limburg Brouwer, Histoire de la
Civilisation morale et religieuse des Grecs, vol. vi. p. 32. Symmachus, Epist. iv.
35.
Tacitus, Ann. vii. 20; Hist. i. 22. Spartianus, Hadrian, 2. Severus, p.
65, edit. Paris, 1620.
5 Ars mathematica damnabilis est et interdicta omnino.- Cod. Just. 9, 8, 2.
Bonamy, Du Rapport de la Magie avec la Theolgie Paiennc.- Mémoires de l'Aca-
démie des Inscriptions, vii. 25.
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION.
99
was a want which society began to feel when Christi- B. c. 146—
anity appeared to supply it.
The speculations of the philosophers had first shaken
the respect of the Greeks for the religion of their an-
cestors. The religion of the people was, however, so
utterly worthless as a moral guide, that the worst
effect of the destruction of its influence was the se-
paration of the ethic and intellectual education of the
higher and lower classes, which ensued as soon as the
systems of the philosophers and priests were brought
into direct opposition. In so far as the civilisation of
the Greek race was concerned, it was doubtless more
effectually advanced by the formation of a national
philosophy than it could ever have been by the au-
thority of a religion so utterly destitute of intellectual
power, and so compliant in its form, as that of Greece.
The attention which the Greeks always paid to philo-
sophy and metaphysical speculation, is a curious feature
in their mental character, and owes its origin, in part,
to the happy logical analogies of their native language;
but, in the days of Grecian independence, this was only
a distinctive characteristic of a small portion of the
cultivated minds in the nation. From that peculiar
condition of society which resulted from the existence
of a number of small independent states, a large portion
of the nation was occupied with the higher branches
of political business than has ever been the case in any
other equally numerous body of mankind. Every city
in Greece held the rank of a capital, and possessed its
own statesmen and lawyers. The sense of this impor-
tance, and the weight of this responsibility, stimulated
the Greeks to the extraordinary exertions of intellect
with which their history is filled; for the strongest
spur to exertion among men is the existence of a duty
imposed as a voluntary obligation.
The habits of social intercourse, and the simple
Uor M
A. D. 330.
100
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. manner of life, which prevailed in the Greek republics,
rendered the private conduct of every distinguished
citizen as well known, and as constantly a subject of
scrutiny to his fellow-citizens, as his public career.
This powerful agency of public opinion served to en-
force a conventional morality which, though lax in its
ethics, was at least imperative in its demands. But
when the international system of the Hellenic states
was destroyed, when an altered condition of society
had introduced greater privacy into the habits of social
life, and put a stop to public intercourse among the
citizens of the same region, by giving a marked pro-
minence to the distinctions of rank and wealth, the
private conduct of those who were engaged in public
life was, in a great degree, withdrawn from the exami-
nation of the people; and the effect of public opinion.
was gradually weakened as the grounds on which it
was formed became less personal and characteristic.
Political circumstances began, about the same time,
to weaken the efficacy of public opinion in affairs of
government and administration. The want of some
substitute, to replace its powerful influence on the
everyday conduct of man, was so imperiously felt
that one was eagerly sought for. Religion had long
ceased to be a guide in morality; and men strove to
find some feeling which would replace the forgotten
fear of the gods, and that public opinion which could
once inspire self-respect.' It was hoped that philosophy
could supply the want; and it was cultivated not only
by the studious and the learned, but by the world at
large, in the belief that the self-respect of the philoso-
pher would prove a sure guide to pure morality, and
inspire a deep sense of justice. The necessity of ob-
1 Tacitus owns the confusion in his own feelings.-Ann. vi. 22.
Sed mihi,
hæc ac talia audienti, in incerto judicium est, fatone res mortalium et neces-
sitate immutabili, an forte volvantur."
INFLUENCE OF RELIGION.
101
A. D. 330.
taining some permanent power over the moral conduct B. c. 146–
of mankind was naturally suggested to the Greeks by
the political injustice under which they suffered; and
the hope that philosophical studies would temper the
minds of their masters to equity, and awaken feelings
of humanity in their hearts, could not fail to exert
considerable influence. When the Romans themselves
had fallen into a state of moral and political degrada-
tion, lower even than that of the Greeks, it is not sur-
prising that the educated classes should have cultivated
philosophy with great eagerness, and with nearly similar
views. The universal craving after justice and truth af-
fords a key to the profound respect with which teachers
of philosophy were regarded. Their authority and their
character were so high that they mixed with all ranks,
and preserved their power, in spite of all the ridicule
of the satirists. The general purity of their lives, and
the justice of their conduct, were acknowledged, though
a few may have been corrupted by court favour; and
pretenders may often have assumed a long beard and
dirty garments, to act the ascetic or the jester with
greater effect in the houses of the wealthy Romans.
The inadequacy of any philosophical opinions to pro-
duce the results required of them was, at last, apparent
in the changes and modifications which the various
sects were constantly making in the tenets of their
founders, and the vain attempts that were undertaken
to graft the paganism of the past on the modern sys-
tems of philosophy. The great principle of truth,
which all were eagerly searching after, seemed to
elude their grasp; yet these investigations were not
without great use in improving the intellectual and
moral condition of the higher orders, and rendering
life tolerable, when the tyranny and anarchy of the
imperial government threatened the destruction of
society. They prepared the minds of men for listen-
102
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
ing candidly to a purer religion, and rendered many
of the votaries of philosophy ready converts to the
doctrines of Christianity.
Philosophy lent a splendour to the Greek name;
yet, with the exception of Athens, learning and philo-
sophy were but little cultivated in European Greece.
The poverty of the inhabitants, and the secluded
position of the country, permitted few to dedicate
their time to literary pursuits; and after the time of
the Antonines, the wealthy cities of Asia, Syria, and
Egypt, contained the real representatives of the intel-
lectual supremacy of the Hellenic race. The Greeks
of Europe, unnoticed by history, were carefully cherish-
ing their national institutions; while, in the eyes of
foreigners the Greek character and fame depended on
the civilisation of an expatriated population, already
declining in number, and hastening to extinction.
The social institutions of the Greeks have, therefore,
been even more useful to them in a national point of
view than their literature.
SECT. XIII.-THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE GREEKS AFFECTED BY
THE WANT OF COLONIES OF EMIGRATION.
The want of foreign colonies, which admitted of a
constant influx of new emigrants, must have exercised
a powerful influence in arresting the progress of society
in the Roman world. Rome never, like Phoenicia and
Greece, permitted numerous bands of her citizens to
depart from poverty in their own country, in order to
better their fortunes and enjoy the benefits of self-gov-
ernment as independent communities in other lands.
Her oligarchical constitution regarded the people as
the property of the State. The civilisation of the
Romans followed only in the train of their armies, and
DECLINE OF THE GREEKS.
103
A. D. 330.
stopped when the emperors ceased to pursue the B. c. 146-
system of conquest which had previously engaged the
energies and increased the population of the State.
For several ages war operated as a stimulant to popu-
lation at Rome, as colonisation has served in modern
times. It increased the general wealth by an influx of
slave labour; it excited the active energies of the people,
and it opened a career of advancement. But the gains
derived from an evil source cannot be productive of
permanent good. Even before the policy of Augustus
had established universal peace, and reduced the
Roman army into a corps of gendarmerie or armed
police for guarding the internal tranquillity of the pro-
vinces, or watching the frontiers, a combination of
inherent defects in the constitution of the Roman
state had begun to destroy the lower order of Roman
citizens. The people required a new field of action
when the old career of conquest was closed for ever, in
order to engage their energies in active pursuits, and
prevent them from pining away in poverty and idle-
ness. The want of colonies of emigration, at this con-
juncture, kept all the evil elements of the population
fermenting within the State. The want of some distant
spot connected with the past history of their race, but
freed from the existing social restrictions which weighed
heavily on the industrious, the ambitious, and the proud,
was required by the Romans to relieve society and
render political reforms possible. Various attempts
were made to counteract the poverty and the want
of occupation among the free labourers which was pro-
duced at Rome by every long cessation of war. C.
Gracchus introduced the annual distributions of grain,
which became one of the principal causes of the ruin of
¹ See the able examination of this subject in the Economie Politique des
Romains, par Dureau de la Malle; and the excellent Mémoire sur les Secours
publics chez les Romains, par Naudet-Académie des Inscriptions, Nouv. Coll.
tom. xiii.
104
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
:
CHAP. 1. the republic; and Augustus established his colonies
of legionaries over Italy in a manner that accelerated
its depopulation.
Foreign emigration was but ill replaced by military
colonies, by colonial municipalities, and by the prac-
tice adopted by the Roman citizens of seeking their
fortunes in Spain, Gaul, and Britain; though that
species of emigration long tended to preserve an im-
pulse towards improvement in the western portion of
the Roman empire. The policy of the emperors was
directed to render society stationary; and it escaped
the observation of profound statesmen, like Augustus
and Tiberius, that the most efficient means of securing
it from decline consisted in the formation of a regular
demand on the population, by permitting emigration.
Foreign colonisation was, however, adverse to all the
prejudices of a Roman. The policy and religion of
the State were equally opposed to the residence of any
citizen beyond the bounds of the empire; and the
constant diminution of the inhabitants of Italy, which
had accompanied the extended conquests of the re-
public, indicated that the first duty of the masters of
Italy was to encourage an increase of the population,
which they were not aware could be promoted by
emigration.
The decline in the population of Italy proceeded
from evils inherent in the political system of the Roman
government. They exercised their influence in the
Grecian provinces of the empire, but they can only be
traced with historical accuracy, in their details, close
to the centre of the executive power. The system of
administration in the republic had always tended to
aggrandise the aristocracy, who talked much of glory,
but thought constantly of wealth. When the conquests
of Rome were extended over all the richest countries
of the ancient world, the leading families accumulated
IMMIGRATION.
105
A. D. 330.
incredible riches, riches, indeed, far exceeding the B. c. 146-
wealth of modern sovereigns. Villas and parks were
formed over all Italy on a scale of the most sumptuous
grandeur, and land became more valuable as hunting
grounds than as productive farms. The same habits
were introduced into the provinces.¹ In the neighbour-
hood of Rome, agriculture was ruined by the public dis-
tributions of grain which was received as tribute from
the provinces, and by the bounty granted to importing
merchants in order to secure a maximum price of bread.²
The public distributions at Alexandria and Antioch
must have proved equally injurious. Another cause
of the decline in the population of the empire was the
great increase of the slaves which took place on the
rapid conquests of the Romans, and the diffusion of the
immense treasures suddenly acquired by their victories.
There is always a considerable waste of productive in-
dustry among a slave population; and free labourers
cease to exist, rather than perpetuate their race, if their
labour be degraded to the same level in society as that
of slaves. When the insecurity of property and person
under the Roman government after the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, and the corrupt state of society, are added to
these various causes of decay, the decline and depopula-
tion of the empire does not require farther explanation.
Yet society would not, probably, have declined as it
did, under the weight of the Roman power, had the
active, intelligent, and virtuous members of the middle
classes possessed the means of escaping from a social
position so calculated to excite feelings of despair. It
is in vain to offer conjectures on the subject; for the
vice in the Roman constitution which rendered all
their military and state colonies merely sources of
¹ Latifundia perdidere Italiam, jam vero et provincias.-Pliny, Hist. Nat.
xvii. 7, 3. Tacitus, Ann. iii. 54. We now see something similar in the deer-
forests recently formed in Scotland.
2 Suetonius, Aug. 42.
106
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. aggrandisement to the aristocracy, may have proceeded
from some inherent defect in the social organisation of
the people, and, consequently, might have entailed ruin
on any Roman society established beyond the authority
of the senate or the emperors. The social organisation
of nations affects their vitality as much as their political
constitution affects their power and fortunes.
The exclusively Roman feeling, which was adverse
to all foreign colonisation, was first attacked when
Christianity spread itself beyond the limits of the
empire. The fact that Christianity was not identical
with citizenship, or, at least, with subjection to Rome,
was a powerful cause of creating that adverse feeling
towards the Christians which branded them as enemies
of the human race; for, in the mouth of a Roman, the
human race was a phrase for the empire of Rome, and
the Christians were really persecuted by emperors like
Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, because they were re-
garded as having no attachment to the Roman govern-
ment, because their humanity was stronger than their
citizenship.
SECT. XIV.-EFFECTS PRODUCED IN GREECE BY THE INROADS
OF THE GOTHS.
After the reign of Alexander Severus, the whole at-
tention of the Roman government was absorbed by
the necessity of defending the empire against the inva-
sions of the northern nations. Two centuries of com-
munication with the Roman world had extended the
effects of incipient civilisation throughout all the north
of Europe. Trade had created new wants, and given
a new impulse to society. This state of improvement
always causes a rapid increase of population, and
awakens a spirit of enterprise, which makes the appa-
INROADS OF GOTHS.
107
A. D. 330.
rent increase even greater than the real. The history B. c. 146-
of every people which has attained any eminence in
the annals of mankind, has been marked by a similar
period of activity. The Greeks, the Romans, and the
Arabs, poured out a succession of armies, which must
have astonished the nations which they attacked, quite
as much as the apparently inexhaustible armies of the
Goths amazed the degenerate Romans. Yet few events,
in the whole course of history, seem more extraordinary
than the success of the uncivilised Goths against the
well-disciplined legions of imperial Rome, and their
successful inroads into the thickly-peopled provinces
of the Roman empire. The causes of the success of the
Goths are evidently to be sought within the empire:
the defenceless state of the population, which was every-
where carefully disarmed, the oppression of the pro-
vincials, the disorder in the finances, and the relaxation
in the discipline of the troops, contributed more to
their victories than their own strength or military skill.
If any national feeling, or common political interest,
had connected the people, the army, and the sovereign,
the Roman empire would have easily repulsed the
attacks of all its enemies; nay, had the government not
placed itself in direct opposition to the interests of
its subjects, and arrested their natural progress by
vicious legislation and corrupt administration, the
barbarous inhabitants of Germany, Poland, and Russia,
could have offered no more effective resistance to the
advance of Roman colonisation than those of Spain,
Gaul, and Britain. But the task of extending the
domain of civilisation required to be supported by the
energy of national feelings; it was far beyond the
strength of the imperial or any other central govern-
ment. The ablest of the despots who styled themselves
the world's masters, did not dare, though nourished in
camps, to attempt a career of foreign conquest; these
108
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. imperial soldiers were satisfied with the inglorious task
of preserving the limits of the empire without diminu-
tion. Even Severus, after he had consolidated a syste-
matic despotism, based on military power, did not
succeed in extending the empire. This avowed in-
ability of the Roman armies to make any further pro-
gress, invited the barbarians to attack the provinces.
If a body of assailants proved successful in breaking
through the Roman lines, they were sure of considerable
plunder. If they were repulsed, they could generally
evade pursuit. These incursions were at first the en-
terprises of armed bands and small tribes, but they
became afterwards the employment of armies and
nations. To the timid eye of the unwarlike and un-
armed citizens of the empire, the whole population of
the north appeared to be constantly on its march, to
plunder and enslave the wealthy and peaceable inhabi-
tants of the south.
Various means of defence were employed by the
reigning sovereigns. Alexander Severus secured the
tranquillity of the frontiers by paying subsidies to the
barbarians; Decius fell, defending the provinces against
an immense army of Goths which had penetrated into
the heart of Moesia; and Gallus purchased the retreat
of the victors by engaging to pay them an annual
tribute. The disorder in the Roman government in-
creased, the succession of emperors became more rapid,
and the numbers of the invaders augmented. Various
tribes and nations, called, by the Greeks and Romans,
Scythians and Goths, and belonging to the great families
now called the Sclavonic and Germanic stock, under
the names of East and West Goths, Vandals, Heruls,
Borans, Karps, Peuks, and Urugunds, crossed the
Danube.¹ Their incursions were pushed through
Moesia into Thrace and Macedonia; an immense booty
¹ Zosimus, i. 31, 42.
INROADS OF GOTHS.
109
A. D.330.
was carried away, and a still greater amount of pro- B. c. 146-
perty was destroyed; thousands of the industrious in-
habitants were reduced to slavery, and a far greater
number massacred by the cruelty of the invaders.
The Greeks were awakened, by these invasions, from
the state of lethargy in which they had reposed for
three centuries. They began to repair the long ne-
glected fortifications of their towns, and muster their
city guards and rural police, for a conflict in defence
of their property.
Cowardice had long been sup-
posed, by the Romans, to be an incurable vice of the
Greeks, who had been compelled to appear before the
Romans with an obsequious and humble mien, and
every worthless Roman had thence arrogated to him-
self a fancied superiority. But the truth is, that all the
middle classes in the Roman world had, from the time
of Augustus, become averse to sacrificing their ease
for the doubtful glory to be gained in the imperial
service. No patriotic feeling drew men to the camp;
and the allurements of ambition were stifled by ob-
scurity of station and hopelessness of promotion. The
young nobility of Rome, when called upon to serve in
the legions, after the defeat of Varus, displayed signs
of cowardice unparalleled in the history of Greece.
Like the Fellahs of modern Egypt, they cut off their
thumbs in order to escape military service.¹ Greece
could contribute but little to the defence of the empire;
but Caracalla had drawn from Sparta some recruits
whom he had formed into a Lacedæmonian phalanx.2
Decius, before his defeat, intrusted the defence of Ther-
mopyla to Claudius, who was afterwards emperor,
but who had only fifteen hundred regular troops, in
addition to the ordinary Greek militia of the cities.3
2 Herodian, iv. 8.
¹ Suetonius, in Aug. 24.
3 These troops consisted of 200 Dardanians, 100 heavy-armed soldiers, 160
cavalry, 60 Cretan bowmen, and 1000 newly enrolled troops of the line.-
Trebellius Pollio, Claud. 16. Gibbon, chap. x. note 35.
110
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. The smallness of the number is curious; it indicates
the tranquil condition of the Hellenic population before
the northern nations penetrated into the heart of the
empire.
The preparations for defending the country were
actively carried on, both in northern Greece and at
the isthmus. In the reign of Valerian the walls of
Athens, which had not been put in a proper state of
defence from the time of Sylla, were repaired, and the
fortifications across the isthmus of Corinth were re-
stored and garrisoned by Peloponnesian troops.' It
was not long before the Greeks were called upon to
prove the efficiency of their warlike arrangements.² A
body of Goths, having established themselves along the
northern shores of the Black Sea, commenced a series
of naval expeditions. They soon penetrated through
the Thracian Bosphorus, and, aided by additional bands
who had proceeded from the banks of the Danube by
land, they marched into Asia Minor, and plundered
Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicea, and Prusa, A. D. 259.
This successful enterprise was soon followed by still
more daring expeditions.
3
In the year 267, another fleet, consisting of five hun-
dred vessels, manned chiefly by the Goths and Heruls,
passed the Bosphorus and the Hellespont. They seized
Byzantium and Chrysopolis, and advanced, plundering
1 Zosimus, i. c. 29. Zonaras, i. 629. Some antiquaries have traced an ima-
ginary wall round Athens, and these two passages are brought forward to
prove that Valerian constructed this new wall. The foundation would be in-
sufficient for a historian. I agree with Colonel Leake, in thinking that the repairs
of Valerian followed the line of the ancient walls, and I regret to see the wall
of the antiquaries, against which the ground protests, traced as authentic in the
plan of Athens annexed to the excellent article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Geography. Twenty years' personal observation on my part has
only confirmed the unrivalled topographical sagacity of Colonel Leake. It is, how-
ever, a mere matter of opinion, but foundations, broken tiles, and marble frag-
ments, appear to me better evidence than strained interpretations and applica-
tions of the passages in Thucydides and Zosimus. The fountain of Callirhoe,
the stadium, and Ardettus, were without the walls before the time of Themis-
tocles; why not after? Traces of the ancient wall of the time of Pericles must
be found, not imagined.
3 Zosimus, i. 34.
2 Syncellus, Chron. 381.
INROADS OF GOTHS.
111
1
the islands and coasts of the Ægean Sea, and laying
waste many of the principal cities of the Peloponnesus.
Cyzicus, Lemnos, Skyros, Corinth, Sparta, and Argos,
are named as having suffered by their ravages. From
the time of Sylla's conquest of Athens, a period of
nearly three hundred and fifty years had elapsed, during
which Attica had escaped the evils of war; yet when
the Athenians were called upon to defend their homes
against the Goths, they displayed a spirit worthy of
their ancient fame. An officer, named Cleodamus, had
been sent by the government from Byzantium to Athens,
in order to repair the fortifications, but a division of
these Goths landed at the Piræus, and succeeded in
carrying Athens by storm, before any means were taken
for its defence. Dexippus, an Athenian of rank in the
Roman service, soon contrived to reassemble the gar-
rison of the Acropolis; and by joining to it such of the
citizens as possessed some knowledge of military dis-
cipline, or some spirit for warlike enterprise, he formed
a little army of two thousand men. Choosing a strong
position in the Olive Grove, he circumscribed the move-
ments of the Goths, and so harassed them by a close.
blockade that they were soon compelled to abandon
Athens. Cleodamus, who was not at Athens when it
was surprised, had in the mean time assembled a fleet and
gained a naval victory over a division of the barbarian
fleet.2 These reverses were a prelude to the ruin of the
Goths. A Roman fleet entered the Archipelago, and a
Roman army, under the emperor Gallienus, marched
into Illyricum; the separate divisions of the Gothic
expedition were everywhere overtaken by these forces,
1 Syrcellus, 382.
2
Zonaras, xii. 26, vol. i. p. 635. Zinkeisen (Geschichte Griechenlands) judi-
ciously corrects the chronology of Zonaras (p. 591, note.) A modern Greek
authority, in which I have no confidence, says that these Scythians destroyed
the temples, burned the olive trees, and threw down six columns of the temple
of Jupiter Olympius, which it is not probable was then in such a state of dilapi-
dation as to render the exploit an easy one.-Fallmerayer, Die Entstehung der
heutigen Griechen, 22.
B. C. 146-
A. D. 330.
112
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I.
and destroyed in detail. During this invasion of the
empire, one of the divisions of the Gothic army crossed
the Hellespont into Asia, and succeeded in plundering
the cities of the Troad, and in destroying the cele-
brated temple of Diana of Ephesus.
1
Dexippus was himself the historian of the Gothic
invasion of Attica, but, unfortunately, little informa-
tion on the subject can be collected from the fragments
of his works which now exist. There is a celebrated
anecdote connected with this incursion which throws
some light on the state of the Athenian population,
and on the conduct of the Gothic invaders of the
empire. The fact of its currency is a proof of the
easy circumstances in which the Athenians lived, of
the literary idleness in which they indulged, and the
general mildness of the assailants, whose sole object
was plunder. It is said that the Goths, when they
had captured Athens, were preparing to burn the
splendid libraries which adorn the city; but that a
Gothic soldier dissuaded them, by telling his country-
men that it was better that the Athenians should con-
tinue to waste their time in their halls and porticos
over their books, than that they should begin to oc-
cupy themselves with warlike exercises. Gibbon, in-
deed, thinks the anecdote may be suspected as the
fanciful conceit of a recent sophist; and he adds, that
the sagacious counsellor reasoned like an ignorant bar-
barian. But the national degradation of the Greeks.
has co-existed with their pre-eminence in learning during
many centuries, so that it appears that this ignorant
barbarian reasoned like an able politician. Even the
Greeks, who repeated the anecdote, seem to have thought
1829.
2
¹ Corpus Scriptorum Historic Byzantina. Dexippus, Eunapius, &c. Bonn,
2 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, i. 402; Smith's edit. Zonaras, i. 635.
"To doze and dream by governments oppress'd,
The spirit of a book-worm in each breast."
Campbell, Lines on Poland,
INROADS OF GOTHS.
113
A. D. 330.
that there was more sound sense in the arguments of B. c. 146–
the Goth than the great historian is willing to admit.
Something more than mere reading and study is re-
quired to form the judgment. The cultivation of
learning does not always bring with it the develop-
ment of good sense. It does not always render men
wiser, and it generally proves injurious to their bodily
activity. When literary pursuits, therefore, become
the exclusive object of national ambition, and dis-
tinction in the cultivation of literature and abstract
science is more esteemed than sagacity and prudence
in the everyday duties of life, effeminacy is undoubt-
edly more likely to prevail, than when literature is
used as an instrument for advancing practical acquire-
ments, and embellishing active occupations. The rude
Goths themselves would probably have admired the
poetry of Homer and of Pindar, though they despised
the metaphysical learning of the schools of Athens.¹
The celebrity of Athens, and the presence of the
historian Dexippus, have given to this incursion of the
barbarians a prominent place in history; but many
expeditions are casually mentioned, which must have
inflicted greater losses on the Greeks, and spread de-
vastation more widely over the country. These in-
roads must have produced important changes in the
condition of the Greek population, and given a new
impulse to society. The passions of men were called
into action, and the protection of their property often
depended on their own exertions. Public spirit was
again awakened, and many cities of Greece success-
fully defended their walls against the immense armies
1 Ataulph, the Gothic king who married Placidia the sister of Honorius,
reasoned like the Goth at Athens. He thought it better to possess the Roman
empire, and govern it by Roman officials, than to found a Gothic kingdom,
and be obliged to induce a part of the Goths to lay aside their arms, and study
as civilians.-Thierry, Lettres sur l'Histoire de France.
H
114
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. of barbarians who broke into the empire in the reign
of Claudius. Thessalonica and Cassandra were at-
tacked by land and sea. Thessaly and Greece were
invaded; but the walls of the towns were generally
found in a state of repair, and the inhabitants ready
to defend them. The great victory obtained by the
emperor Claudius II., at Naissus, broke the power of
the Goths; and a Roman fleet in the Archipelago de-
stroyed the remains of their naval forces. The exter-
mination of these invaders of Greece was completed
by a great plague which ravaged the East for fifteen
years.
During the repeated invasions of the barbarians, an
immense number of slaves were either destroyed by
war, or carried away by the Goths beyond the Danube.
Great facilities were likewise afforded to dissatisfied
slaves to escape and join the invaders. The numbers
of the slave population in Greece must, therefore, have
undergone a reduction, which could not prove other-
wise than beneficial to those who remained, and which
must also have produced a very considerable change
on the condition of the poorer freemen, the value of
whose labour must have been considerably increased.
The danger in which men of wealth lived, necessitated
an alteration in their mode of life; every one was
compelled to think of defending his person, as well as
his property; new activity was infused into society;
the losses caused by the ravages of the Goths, and the
mortality produced by the plague, appear to have
caused a general improvement in the circumstances of
the inhabitants of Greece.
It must here be observed, that the first great inroads
of the northern nations, who succeeded in penetrating
into the heart of the Roman empire, were directed
against the eastern provinces, and that Greece suffered
severely by the earliest invasions; yet the eastern
INROADS OF GOTHS.
115
A. D. 330.
portion of the empire alone succeeded in driving back B. c. 146—
the barbarians, and preserving its population free from
any admixture of the Gothic race. This successful
resistance was chiefly owing to the national feelings
and political organisation of the Greek people. The
institutions which the Greeks retained prevented them
from remaining utterly helpless in the moment of
danger; the magistrates possessed a legitimate autho-
rity to take measures for any extraordinary crisis, and
citizens of wealth and talent could render their services
useful, without any violent departure from the usual
forms of the local administration.¹ The evil of anarchy
was not, in Greece, added to the misfortune of invasion.
Fortunately for the Greeks, the insignificancy of their
military forces prevented the national feelings, which
these measures aroused, from giving umbrage either to
the Roman emperors or to their military officers in the
provinces.
From the various accounts of the Gothic wars of
this period which exist, it is evident that the expedi-
tions of the barbarians were, as yet, only undertaken
for the purpose of plundering the provinces. The in-
vaders entertained no idea of being able to establish
themselves permanently within the bounds of the em-
pire. The celerity of their movements generally made
their numbers appear greater than they really were ;
while the inferiority of their arms and discipline ren-
dered them an unequal match for a much smaller body
of the heavy-armed Romans. When the invaders met
with a steady and well-combined resistance, they were
defeated without much difficulty; but whenever a
moment of neglect presented itself, their attacks were
repeated with undiminished courage. The victorious
reigns of Claudius II., Aurelian, and Probus, prove the
immense superiority of the Roman armies when pro-
1 Cod. Justinianeus, xi. 29, 3, 4, and 41, 1.
116
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. perly commanded; but the custom, which was con-
stantly gaining ground, of recruiting the legions from
among the barbarians, reveals the deplorable state of
depopulation and weakness to which three centuries
of despotism and bad administration had reduced the
empire.¹ On the one hand, the government feared the
the spirit of its subjects, if intrusted with arms, far
more than it dreaded the ravages of the barbarians;
and on the other, it was unwilling to reduce the
number of the citizens paying taxes, by draughting
too large a proportion of the industrious classes into
the army.
The imperial fiscal system rendered it
necessary to keep all the provincial landed proprietors
carefully disarmed, lest they should revolt, and perhaps
make an attempt to revive republican institutions;2
and the defence of the empire seemed, to the Roman
emperors, to demand the maintenance of a larger army
than the population of their own dominions, from
which recruits were drawn, could supply.3
SECT. XV.—CHANGES WHICH PRECEDED THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
CONSTANTINOPLE AS THE CAPITAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The Romans had long been sensible that their social
vices threatened their empire with ruin, though they
never contemplated the possibility of their cowardice
delivering it up a prey to barbarous conquerors.
Augustus made a vain attempt to stem the torrent
of corruption, by punishing immorality in the higher
1 Ammianus Marcellinus, xix. 2; xxxi. 4, 10. Spanheim, Orbis Romanus,
p. 508.
2 Gibbon mentions the alarm of Gallienus when the senate repulsed an in-
vasion of the barbarians.-i. 394, Smith's edit.
3 A similar state of society existed in Britain when it was overrun by the
Saxons, and in Gaul when it was plundered by the Normans. "Vulgus promis-
cuum inter Sequanas et Ligerim adversos Danos fortiter resistit; sed quia
in caute suscepta est congregatio, a potentioribus nostris facile interficitur."
Annales Bertin. ad ann. 859; quoted by Depping, Histoire des Expeditions
Maritimes des Normands, p. 213.
CONSTANTINOPLE.
117
1
A. D. 330.
orders. But a privileged class is generally sufficiently B. C. 146.
powerful to be able to form its own social code of
morality, and protect its own vices as long as it can
maintain its existence. The immorality of the Romans
at last undermined the political fabric of the empire.
Two centuries and a half after the failure of Augustus,
the emperor Decius endeavoured with as little effect
to reform society. Neither of these sovereigns under-
stood how to cure the malady which was destroying
the State. They attempted to improve society by
punishing individual nobles for general vices. They
ought to have annihilated the privileges which raised
senators and nobles above the influence of law and
public opinion, and subjected them to nothing but the
despotic power of the emperor. St Paul, however, in-
forms us that the whole frame of society was so utterly
corrupted that even this measure would have proved
ineffectual. The people were as vicious as the senate;
all ranks were suffering from a moral gangrene, which
no human art could heal. The dangerous abyss to
which society was hastening did not escape observa-
tion. The alarm gradually spread through every class
in the wide extent of the Roman world. A secret ter-
ror was felt by the emperors, the senators, and even
by the armies. Men's minds were changed, and a
divine influence produced a reform of which man's
wisdom and strength had proved incapable. From
the death of Alexander Severus to the accession of
Diocletian, a great social alteration is visible in pagan-
ism; the aspect of the human mind seemed to have
undergone a complete metamorphosis. The spirit of
Christianity was floating in the atmosphere, and to its
influence we must attribute that moral change in the
pagan world, during the latter half of the third century,
2
1 Tacitus, Ann. iii. 24. Ilist. Aug. Trebellius Pollio. Valer. 2.
2 Romans, i. 24, 32.
118
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. which tended to prolong the existence of the western
Roman empire.
Foreign invasions, the disorderly state of the army,
the weight of the taxes, and the irregular constitution
of the imperial government, produced at this time a
general feeling that the army and the State required a
new organisation, in order to adapt both to the exi-
gencies of altered circumstances, and save the empire
from impending ruin. Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian,
and Constantine, appeared as reformers of the Roman
empire. The history of their reforms belongs to the
records of the Roman constitution, as they were con-
ceived with very little reference to the institutions of
the provinces; and only some portion of the modifica-
tions then made in the form of the imperial administra-
tion will fall within the scope of this work. But
though the administrative reforms produced little
change in the condition of the Greek population, the
Greeks themselves actively contributed to effect a
mighty revolution in the whole frame of social life, by
the organisation which they gave to the church from
the moment they began to embrace the Christian
religion. It must not be overlooked, that the Greeks
had organised a Christian church before Christianity
became the established religion of the empire.
Diocletian found that the Roman empire had lost
much of its internal cohesion, and that it could no
longer be conveniently governed from one adminis-
trative centre. He attempted to remedy the increasing
weakness of the coercive principle, by creating four
centres of executive authority, controlled by a single
imperial legislative emperor. But no human skill
could long preserve harmony between four executive
despots. Constantine restored the unity of the Roman
empire. His reign marks the period in which old
Roman political feelings lost their power, and the
CONSTANTINOPLE.
119
The B. c. 146—
superstitious veneration for Rome herself ceased.
liberty afforded for new political ideas by the new
social organisation was not overlooked by the Greeks.
The transference of the seat of government to Byzan-
tium weakened the Roman spirit in the public ad-
ministration. The Romans, indeed, from the establish-
ment of the imperial government, had ceased to form
a homogeneous people, or to be connected by feelings
of attachment and interest, to one common country;
and as soon as the rights of Roman citizenship had
been conferred on the provincials, Rome became a mere
ideal country to the majority of Romans. The Roman
citizens, however, in many provinces, formed a civilised
caste of society, dwelling among a number of ruder
natives and slaves; they were not melted into the
mass of the population. In the Grecian provinces, no
such distinction prevailed. The Greeks, who had taken
on themselves the name and the position of Roman
citizens, retained their own language, manners, and
institutions; and as
and as soon as Constantinople was
founded and became the capital of the empire, a
struggle arose whether it was to become a Greek or a
Latin city.
Constantine himself does not appear to have per-
ceived this tendency of the Greek population to acquire
a predominant influence in the East by supplanting the
language and manners of Rome, and he modelled his
new capital entirely after Roman ideas and prejudices.
Constantinople was, at its foundation, a Roman city,
and Latin was the language of the higher ranks of its
inhabitants. This fact must not be lost sight of; for
it affords an explanation of the opposition which is for
ages apparent in the feelings, as well as the interests,
of the capital and of the Greek nation. Constantinople
was a creation of imperial favour; a regard to its own
advantage rendered it subservient to despotism, and,
A. D. 330.
120
MUMMIUS TO CONSTANTINE.
CHAP. I. for a long period, impervious to any national feeling.
The inhabitants enjoyed exemptions from taxation, and
received distributions of grain and provisions, so that
the misery of the empire, and the desolation of the
provinces, hardly affected them. Left at leisure to
enjoy the games of the circus, they were bribed by
government to pay little attention to the affairs of
the empire. Such was the position of the people of
Constantinople at the time of its foundation, and such
it continued for many centuries.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE AS CAPI-
TAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, TO THE ACCESSION OF
JUSTINIAN. A. D. 330-527.
CONSTANTINE, IN REFORMING THE GOVERNMENT, PLACED THE ADMINISTRATION
IN DIRECT HOSTILITY TO THE PEOPLE THE CONDITION OF THE GREEKS
WAS NOT IMPROVED BY CONSTANTINE'S REFORMS-CHANGES PRODUCED IN
THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE GREEKS BY THE ALLIANCE OF CHRISTIANITY
WITH THEIR NATIONAL USAGES-THE ORTHODOX CHURCH BECAME IDENTIFIED
WITH THE GREEK NATION-CONDITION OF THE GREEK POPULATION OF THE
EMPIRE, FROM THE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE, TO THAT OF THEODOSIUS THE
GREAT-COMMUNICATION OF THE GREEKS WITH COUNTRIES BEYOND THE
BOUNDS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE-EFFECT OF THE COMPLETE SEPARATION OF
THE EASTERN FROM THE WESTERN EMPIRE ON THE GREEK NATION-
ATTEMPTS OF THE GOTHS TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES IN GREECE - THE
NATIONAL FEELINGS OF THE GREEKS ARRESTED THE CONQUESTS OF THE
NORTHERN BARBARIANS-DECLINING CONDITION OF THE GREEK POPULA-
TION IN THE EUROPEAN PROVINCES OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE-IMPROVE-
MENT IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE FROM THE DEATH OF ARCADIUS TO THE
ACCESSION OF JUSTINIAN-STATE OF CIVILISATION, AND INFLUENCE OF
NATIONAL FEELINGS.
SECT. I. -CONSTANTINE, IN REFORMING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE, PLACED THE ADMINISTRATION IN DIRECT HOSTILITY
TO THE PEOPLE.
THE warlike frenzy of the Romans rendered the empe-
rors, from commanders of the army, masters of the
State. But the soldiers, as soon as they fully com-
prehended the extent of their power in conferring the
imperial dignity, strove to make the emperors their
agents in the management of the empire, of which they
considered themselves the real proprietors. The army
was consequently the branch of the government to
which all the others were considered subordinate. The
122
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. disorders committed, and the defeats experienced, by
the troops, at last weakened their influence, and forced.
the emperors to make various endeavours to reduce the
army into a mere instrument of the imperial authority,
and to destroy its power in the disposal of the imperial
dignity. Two great measures of reform had been con-
templated by several of the predecessors of Constantine.
Severus had sought to put an end to the civil authority
of the senate in the administration of the empire, and
to efface the remains of the ancient political constitu-
tion. Diocletian had endeavoured to deprive the army
of the power of choosing and of dethroning the sove-
reign; but until the reign of Constantine, the empire
was entirely a military State, and the chief characteristic
of the imperial dignity was the military command.
Constantine first moulded the measures of reform of
preceding emperors into a new system of government.
He completed the political edifice on the foundations
which Diocletian had laid, by remodelling the army,
reconstituting the executive power, creating a new
capital, and adopting a new religion. Unfortunately
for the bulk of mankind, Constantine, when he com-
menced his plan of reform, was, from his situation, un-
connected with the popular or national sympathies of
any class of his subjects, and he considered this state of
isolation to be the surest basis of the imperial power,
and the best guarantee for the impartial administration
of justice.¹
The emperors had long ceased to regard themselves
as belonging to any particular country, and the imperial
government was no longer influenced by any attach-
ment to the feelings or institutions of ancient Rome.
The glories of the republic were forgotten in the con-
1 Gibbon, in his seventeenth chapter, has an admirable review of Constantine's
policy.
CONSTANTINE'S REFORMS.
123
stant and laborious duty of administering and defending
the empire. New maxims of policy had been formed,
and, in cases where the earlier emperors would have
remembered their feelings as citizens of Rome, as well
as their policy as sovereigns, the wisest counsellors of
Constantine would have calmly appealed to the dictates
of general expediency. In the eyes of the emperors,
that which their subjects considered as national was
only provincial; the history, language, and religion of
Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Syria, were merely distinctive
characteristics of these different portions of the empire.
The emperor, the government, and the army, stood
apart, completely separated from the hopes, fears, and
interests of the body of the people. Constantine cen-
tralised every branch of the executive power in the
person of the emperor, and, at the same time, framed a
bureaucracy in the administration of each department
of public business, in order to guard against the effects
of the incapacity or folly of any future sovereign. No
more perfect machine of government appears ever to
have been established; and, had it combined any
principle capable of enforcing responsibility on the
public servants, it might have proved perpetual. It
is true that, according to the moral laws of the uni-
verse, a government ought to be so constituted as to
conform to the principles of truth and justice; but,
practically, it is sufficient for the internal security of a
State that the government do not act in such a manner
as to make the people believe that it is perversely
unjust. No foreign enemy ever assailed the Roman
empire that could not have been repulsed with ease,
had the government and the people formed a united
body acting always for the general interest. Constan-
tine, unfortunately, organised the government of the
Roman empire as if it were the household of the empe-
A. D.
330-527.
124
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. ror, and constituted the imperial officials into a caste
separate from the people; thus placing it, from the very
nature of man, in opposition to the mass of his subjects.
In his desire to save the world from anarchy, he created
that struggle between the administration and the
governed which has ever since existed, either actively
or passively, in every country which has inherited the
monarchical principle and the laws of imperial Rome.
The problem of combining efficient administration
with constant responsibility seems, in these states, still
unsolved.
A series of changes in the Roman government had
been commenced before the time of Constantine; yet
the extent and durability of his reforms, and the dis-
tinctness of purpose with which they were conceived,
must entitle him to rank as one of the greatest legis-
lators of mankind. His defects during his declining
years, when his mind and body no longer possessed the
activity necessary to inspect and control every detail
of a despotic administration which centred in the sove-
reign's person, ought not to alter our judgment of his
numerous wise laws and judicious reforms. Few legis-
lators have effected greater revolutions than Constantine.
He transferred the despotic power of the emperor as
commander-in-chief of the army, to the emperor as
political head of the government; thus rendering the
military power subservient to the civil, in the whole
range of the administration. He consolidated the
dispensation of justice over the whole empire, by uni-
versal and systematic laws, which he deemed strong
enough to form a bulwark for the people against
oppression on the part of the government. Feeble as
this theoretic bulwark of law was found to be on great
emergencies, it must be owned that, in the ordinary
course of public affairs, it was not ineffectual, and that
it mainly contributed to prevent the decline of the
FISCAL SYSTEM.
125
Roman empire from proceeding with that rapidity
which has marked the decay of most other despotic
monarchies. Constantine gave the empire a new
capital; and he adopted a new religion, which, with
unrivalled prudence, he rendered predominant under
circumstances of great difficulty. His reforms have
been supposed to have hastened the decline of the
empire which they were intended to save; but the con-
trary was really the case. He found the empire on the
eve of being broken up into a number of smaller states,
in consequence of the measures which Diocletian had
adopted in order to secure it against anarchy and civil
war. He reunited its provinces by a succession of
brilliant military achievements; and the object of his
legislation appeared to be the maintenance of perfect
uniformity in the civil administration by the strictest
centralisation in what he termed the divine hierarchy
of the imperial government. But his conduct was at
variance with his policy, for he divided the executive
power among his three sons and two nephews; and the
empire was only saved from dismemberment or civil
war by the murder of the greatest part of his family.'
Perhaps the empire was really too extensive, and the
dissimilarity of its provinces too great for executive
unity, considering the imperfect means of communi-
cation which then existed, in a society which neither
admitted the principle of hereditary succession nor of
primogeniture, in the transmission of the imperial
dignity.
The permanent success of Constantine's reforms de-
pended on his financial arrangements, supplying ample
funds for all the demands of the administration. This
fact indicates some similarity between the political
condition of his government and the present state of
most European monarchies, and may render a close
1
¹ Constantine II., Constantius, Constans, Dalmatius and Hanniballianus.
A. D.
330-527.
126
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. study of the errors of his financial arrangements not
without profit to modern statesmen.
The sums re-
quired for the annual service of the imperial govern-
ment were immense; and in order to levy as great an
amount of revenue from his subjects as possible, Con-
stantine revised the census of all the taxes, and carried
their amount as high as he possibly could. Every
measure was adopted to transfer the whole circulating
medium of the empire annually into the coffers of the
State. No economy or industry could enable his sub-
jects to accumulate wealth; while any accident, a fire,
an inundation, an earthquake, or a hostile incursion of
the barbarians, might leave a whole province incapable
of paying its taxes, and plunge it in hopeless debt and
ruin.
In general the outward forms of taxation were very
little altered by Constantine, but he rendered the whole
fiscal system more regular and more stringent; and
during no period was the maxim of the Roman govern-
ment, that the cultivators of the soil were nothing but
the instruments for feeding and clothing the imperial
court and the army, more steadily kept in view.¹ All
privileges were abolished; the tribute, or land-tax,
was levied on the estates of all Roman subjects; and
in the concessions made to the church, measures were
usually adopted to preserve the rights of the fisc. A
partial exemption of the property of the clergy was
conceded by Constantine, in order to confer on the
Christian priesthood a rank equal to that of the ancient
senators; but this was so contrary to the principles of
his legislation that it was withdrawn in the reign of
Constantius. A great change in the revision of the
general register of taxation must have taken place in
the year 312, throughout the whole Roman empire;
but as Constantine was not then sole emperor, it is
¹ Julian, Orat. ii. 92, edit. Span.
FISCAL SYSTEM.
127
evident that the financial policy of his reign, with
which it appears to be closely connected, was the con-
tinuation of a system already completely organised.
The absorbing interest of taxation to the subjects of
the Roman empire rendered the revision of the census
from this time the ordinary method of chronological
notation. Time was reckoned from the first year, or
Indictio, of the new assessment, and when the cycle of
fifteen years was completed, a new revision took place,
and a new cycle was commenced; the people thus
taking no heed of the lapse of time except by noting
the years of similar taxation.¹ Constantine, it is true,
passed many laws to protect his subjects from the
oppression of the tax-gatherers; but the number and
nature of these laws afford the strongest proof that
the officers of the court, and the administration, were
vested with powers too extensive to be used with
moderation, and that all the vigilance of the emperor
was required to prevent their destroying the source of
the public revenues by utterly ruining the tax-payers.2
Instead of reducing the numbers of the imperial house-
hold, and reforming the expenses of the court, in order
to increase the fund available for the civil and military
service of the State, Constantine added to the burden
of an establishment which already included a large and
useless population, by indulging in the most lavish
ornament and sumptuous ceremonial. It is evident
that he regarded the well-paid offices of his court as
baits to allure and attach the civil and military leaders
to his service. His measures were successful; and
from this time rebellions became less frequent, for the
1 The period is calculated from 1st September, 312, and Constantine de-
feated Maxentius and entered Rome on the 27th October of that year. The
year is termed, from the tax, Indictio. Documents in which this manner of
marking time is used, often contain no means of ascertaining their date beyond
the year of the indiction. There are traces of this cycle of indictions at an
earlier period.—Ideler. ii. 350.
2 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxv. 4.
A. D.
330-527.
128
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. majority of public officials considered it more advan-
tageous to intrigue for advancement than to risk their
lives and fortunes in civil war. Nothing reveals more
fully the state of barbarism and ignorance to which the
Roman world had fallen; the sovereign sought to
secure the admiration of his people by outward show;
he held them incapable of judging of his conduct,
which was guided by the emergencies of his position.
The people, no longer connected with the government,
and knowing only what passed in their own province,
were terrified by the magnificence and wealth which
the court displayed; and, hopeless of any change for
the better, they regarded the emperor as an instru-
ment of divine power.
The reforms of Constantine required additional
revenues. Two new taxes were imposed, which were
regarded as the greatest grievances of his reign, and
frequently selected as characteristic of his internal
policy. These taxes were termed the Senatorial tax,
and the Chrysargyron. The first alienated the aristo-
cracy, and the second excited the complaints of every
class of society, for it was a tax on profits, and it was
levied in the severest manner on every species of re-
ceipts. All the existing constitutions, ordinary and
extraordinary, and all the monopolies and restrictions
affecting the sale of grain, were retained. The exac-
tions of prior governments were stretched to the ut-
most. All the presents and gifts which had usually
been made to former sovereigns were exacted by Con-
stantine as a matter of right, and regarded as ordinary
sources of revenue.
2
1
The subjection of Greece to the Roman municipal
system forms an epoch in Hellenic history of great
social importance; but it was effected so silently that
the facts and dates which mark the progress of this
1 Zosimus, ii. 38.
2 Amm. Marcell. xvii. 3. Cod. Theodos. xi. t. 28.
ROMAN MUNICIPAL SYSTEM.
129
A. D.
political revolution cannot be traced with accuracy.
The law of Caracalla, which conferred the rights of 330-527.
citizenship on all the provincials, annihilated the dis-
tinctive privileges of the Roman colonies, the old
municipia, and the Greek free cities. A new municipal
organisation, more conformable to a central despotism,
was gradually introduced over the whole empire, by
which the national ideas and character of the Greeks
were ultimately much modified. The legislation of
Constantine stamped the municipal institutions of the
empire with the fiscal character, which they retained as
long as the empire existed; and his laws inform the
historian that the influence of the city republic of
ancient Hellas had already ceased. Popular opinion
had disappeared from Greek society as completely as
political liberty from Greece.
The change which
transformed the ancient language into its Romaic re-
presentative, had commenced, and a modern Greek
nation was consolidating its existence; disciplined to
despotism, and boasting that it was composed of
Romans and not of Greeks. The inhabitants of
Athens and Sparta, the Achaians, Etolians, Dorians,
and Ionians, lost their distinctive characteristics, and
were blended into one dull mass of uniformity as
citizens of the fiscal municipalities of the empire, and
as Romaic Greeks.
It is only necessary in this work to describe the
general type of the municipal organisation which ex-
isted in the provinces of the Roman empire after the
time of Constantine, without entering on the many
doubtful questions that arise in examining the subject
in detail. The proprietors of land in the Roman pro-
vinces generally dwelt in towns and cities, as a pro-
tection against brigands and man-stealers. Every
town had an agricultural district which formed its
territory, and the landed proprietors constituted the
I
130
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. municipality. The whole local authority was vested
in an oligarchical senate called the Curia, consisting
probably of one hundred of the wealthiest landed pro-
prietors in the city or township. This body elected
the municipal authorities and officers, and filled up
vacancies in its own body. It was therefore inde-
pendent of the proprietors from among whom it was
taken, and whose interests it ought to have represented.
The curia--not the body of landed proprietors-formed
therefore the Roman municipality. The curia was
used by the imperial government as an instrument of
fiscal extortion, and as a means of preventing too great
a concentration of opposition against the central ad-
ministration in the collection of taxes. The curia was
intrusted with the collection of the land-tax, and its
members were rendered responsible for the amount.
As they were the wealthiest men of the place, no curial
was allowed to change his condition or quit the place
of his residence.1
The other free inhabitants of the municipal district,
who were not liable to the land-tax, but only paid the
capitation-merchants, tradesmen, artists, and labour-
ers-formed a separate and inferior class, and were
called tributaries, as distinguished from proprietors.
They had no connection with the curia, but were
formed into corporations and trade-guilds.²
As the wealth and population of the Roman empire
declined, the operation of the municipal system became
more oppressive. The chief attention of the imperial
governors in the provinces was directed to preventing
any diminution in the revenue, and the Roman legisla-
tion attempted to enforce the payment of the ancient
amount of land-tax and capitation from a declining
and impoverished population. Laws were enacted to
2
1 The Curiales were called also Decuriones.
Savigny, Geschichte des Roemischen Rechts im Mittelalter, i. 75.
ROMAN MUNICIPAL SYSTEM.
131
fix every class of society in its actual condition with
regard to the revenue. The son of a member of the
curia was bound to take his father's place; the son of
a landed proprietor could neither become a tradesman
nor a soldier, unless he had a brother who could replace
his father as a payer of the land-tax. The son of an
artisan was bound to follow his father's profession,
that the amount of the capitation might not be dimin-
ished. Every corporation or guild had the power of
compelling the children of its members to complete its
numbers. Fiscal conservatism became the spirit of
Roman legislation. To prevent the land beyond the
limits of a municipality from falling out of cultivation,
by the free inhabitants of the rural districts quitting
their lands in order to better their condition in the
towns, the laws gradually attached them to the soil,
and converted them into serfs.
pro-
In this state of society the emperor, the imperial
officials, and the army, felt the danger of rebellion, and
to prevent it, both the tributaries and the landed
prietors were carefully disarmed. The military class
was separated from the landed proprietors by an in-
separable barrier. No landed proprietor could become
a soldier, and no soldier could become a member of a
curia. When the free population of the empire was so
much diminished that it became difficult to find recruits,
the son of a soldier was bound to follow the profession
of arms.
In order to protect the tax-payers against the
exactions of the imperial governors, fiscal agents
and military officers, it became necessary that every
municipality should have an official protector, whose
duty it was to watch the conduct of the civil and
judicial authorities and of the fiscal officers. He was
called a defensor, and was elected by all the free
citizens of the township, both tributaries and pro-
A. D.
330-527.
132
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. prietors. No municipal senator or curial could hold
the office of defensor, as it might be his duty to appeal
to the emperor against the exactions of the curia, as
well as against the oppressive conduct of a provincial
governor or judge.
Such was the municipal organisation which sup-
planted the city communities of ancient Greece, and
extinguished the spirit of Hellenic life. The free
action, both of the physical and intellectual powers, of
the Greeks was fettered by these new social bonds.
We can read many curious details relating to the
system in the Theodosian code, and in the legislation
of Justinian; and we can trace its effects in the ruins
of the Western Empire, and in the torpidity of the
Greek mind on all political questions in the Eastern
Empire.¹
Municipalities henceforward began to be regarded
as a burden rather than a privilege. Their magistrates
formed an aristocratic class in accordance with the
whole fabric of the Roman constitution. These magis-
trates had willingly borne all the burdens imposed on
them by the State as long as they could throw the
heaviest portion of the load on the people over whom
they presided. But the people at last became too
poor to lighten the burden of the rich, and the govern-
ment found it necessary to force every wealthy citizen
to enter the curia, and make good any deficiency in
the taxes of the district from his own private revenues.
As the Roman empire declined, the members of one
curia after another sank to the same level of general
poverty. It required little more than a century from
the reign of Constantine to effect the ruin of the
western provinces; but the social condition of the
eastern, and the natural energy of the Greek character,
saved them from the same fate.
1 See the references in Savigny.
MILITARY SYSTEM.
133
The principle adopted by the Roman government in
all its relations with the people and with the munici-
palities, was in every contested case to assume that the
citizens were always endeavouring to evade burdens
which they were well able to bear. This feeling sowed
the seeds of hatred to the imperial administration in
the hearts of its subjects, who, seeing that they were
excluded from every hope of justice in fiscal questions,
became often eager to welcome the barbarians.'
In Greece the old system of local governments was
not entirely eradicated, though it was modified on the
imperial model; but every fiscal burden was as rigor-
ously enforced by the imperial government, whenever
it tended to relieve the treasury from any expense;
but, at the same time, all those privileges which
had once alleviated the pressure of the revenue law,
in particular districts, were now abolished. The de-
struction of the great oligarchs, who had rendered them-
selves proprietors of whole provinces in the earlier
days of the Roman domination, was now effected. A
number of small properties were created at the same
time that a moral improvement took place in Greek
society by the influence of Christianity. The higher
classes became less corrupt, and the lower more in-
dustrious. This change enabled the eastern provinces
to bear their fiscal burdens with more ease than the
western.
The military organisation of the Roman armies was
greatly changed by Constantine; and the change is
peculiarly remarkable, as the barbarians were adopting
the very principles of tactics which the emperors
found it necessary to abandon. The system of the
Roman armies, in ancient times, was devised to make
1 Cod. Theodos. xi. t. 36, 1. 6, &c. To escape from their fiscal burdens the
members of municipalities often became hermits and monks; and the emperors
ordered them to be dragged from their retreats and forced to resume their
station in the municipality.-Cod. Theod. xii. 1. 36. Cod. Justin. x. 31, 26.
A. D.
330-527.
134
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. them efficient on the field of battle. As the Romans
were always invaders, they knew well that they could
at last force their enemies to decide their differences in
a pitched battle. The frontiers of the empire required
a very different method for their defence. The chief
duty of the army was to occupy an extended line
against an active enemy, far inferior in the field. The
necessity of effecting rapid movements of the troops,
in bodies varying continually in number, became a
primary object in the new tactics. Constantine re-
modelled the legions, by reducing the number of men
to fifteen hundred; and he separated the cavalry en-
tirely from the infantry, and placed them under a
different command. He increased the number of the
light troops, instituted new divisions in the forces, and
made considerable modifications in the armour and
weapons of the Romans. This change in the army was
in some degree rendered necessary by the difficulty
which the government experienced, in raising a suffi-
cient number of men of the class and strength neces-
sary to fill the ranks of the legions, according to the
old system. It became necessary to choose between
diminishing the number of the troops, or admitting an
inferior class of soldiers into the army.¹ Motives of
economy, and the fear of the seditious spirit of the
legions, also dictated several changes in the constitu-
tion of the forces. From this time the Roman armies
were composed of inferior materials, and the northern
nations began to prepare themselves for meeting them
in the field of battle.
The opposition which always existed between the
fiscal interest of the Roman government and of the
provincials, rendered any intimate connection or com-
munity of feeling between the soldiers and the people a
thing to be cautiously guarded against by the emperor.
1 Cod. Theodos. vii. t. 18, 1. 4.
MILITARY SYSTEM.
135
The interests of the army required to be kept carefully
separated from those of the citizens; and when Con-
stantine, from motives of economy, withdrew a large
number of the troops from the camps on the frontiers,
and placed them in garrison in the towns, their dis-
cipline was relaxed, and their license overlooked, in
order to prevent them from acquiring the feelings of
citizens.¹ As the barbarians were beyond the influence
of any provincial or political sympathies, and were sure
to be regarded as enemies by every class in the empire,
they became the chosen troops of the emperors.2 These
favourites soon discovered their own importance, and
behaved with as great insolence as the prætorian bands
had ever displayed.³
The necessity of preventing the possibility of a falling
off in the revenue, was, in the eyes of the imperial court,
of as much consequence as the maintenance of the
efficiency of the army. Proprietors of land, and citizens
of wealth, were not allowed to enrol themselves as
soldiers, lest they should escape from paying their
taxes; and only those plebeians and peasants who were
not liable to the land-tax were taken as recruits.*
When Rome conquered the Greeks the armies of the
republic consisted of Romans, and the conquered pro-
vinces supplied the republic with tribute to maintain
these armies; but when the rights of citizenship were
extended to the provincials, it became the duty of the
poor to serve in person, and of the rich to supply the
revenues of the State. The effect of this was, that the
Roman forces were often recruited with slaves, in spite
of the laws frequently passed to prohibit this abuse;
and, not long after the time of Constantine, slaves were
3 Amm. Marcell. xix. 11.
1 Zosimus, ii. 34.
9 Ib. xiv. 10; xv. 5.
* Naudet corrects Gibbon's opinion (iii. 65) that "every proprietor was
obliged either to take up arms, or to procure a substitute, or purchase his
exemption by the payment of a heavy fine."-Sur les Changemens dans l'Admin-
istration de l'Empire Romain, ii. 175. Cod. Theod. viii. 4, 30, sect. 2.
Justin. x. 32, 17-"Qui derelicta curia militaverit revocetur ad curiam."
Cod.
A. D.
330-527.
136
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. often admitted to enter the army on receiving their
freedom.¹ The subjects of the emperors had therefore
little to attach them to their government, which was
supported by mercenary troops composed of barbarians
and slaves, and in all the provinces the inhabitants
were carefully disarmed.2
SECT. II. THE CONDITION OF THE GREEKS WAS NOT IMPROVED
BY CONSTANTINE'S REFORMS.
The general system of Constantine's government was
by no means favourable to the advancement of the
Greeks as a nation. His new division of the empire
into four prefectures neutralised, by administrative
arrangements, any influence that the Greeks might
acquire, from the union which their language and
manners naturally produced in a large portion of the
population. The four prefectures of the empire were
the Orient, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, and a prætorian
prefect directed the civil administration of each of
these great divisions of the empire. The prefectures
were divided into governments, and these governments
were again subdivided into provinces.3 The prefecture
of the Orient embraced five governments: the first was
called by the name of the prefecture, the Orient; the
others were Egypt, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace. In all
these, the Greeks formed only a section of the popula-
tion, and their influence was controlled by the adverse
prejudices and interests of the natives. The prefecture
of Illyricum consisted of three governments, Achaia,
1 Cod. Theod. vii. t. 18, 1. 4. Cod. Just. vii. t. 13, 1. 4. Novell. 81.
2 The sale of arms was absolutely prohibited.-Solos autem fieri et vendi a
privatis et privatis vendi permittimus cultellos minores, quibus nullus in
præliis utitur.-Pand. xlvii. 6, 2, 2; Novell. 85. Even in the time of Augustus,
provincials and barbarians had been admitted into the army.—Tacitus, Ann.
i. 24; Suetonius, August. 49. Freedmen supplied recruits for the city cohorts
in the time of Nero.-Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 27.
³ See the table in Gibbon, ii. 315, Smith's edit.
DECLINE OF GREECE.
137
Macedonia, and Dacia. Achaia retained the honour of
being governed by a proconsul. This distinction was
only shared with the government called Asia, for there
were now only two proconsular provinces; but Achaia
was poor, and it was not of sufficient extent and im-
portance to be subdivided. It embraced the Pelopon-
nesus and the continent south of Thessaly and Epirus,
occupying nearly the limits of the present kingdom of
Greece. Macedonia included six provinces,-two Mace-
donias, Crete, Thessaly, Old Epirus, and New Epirus.
In these two governments of Achaia and Macedonia, the
population was almost entirely Greek. In Dacia, or the
provinces between the Danube and Mount Hæmus, the
Adriatic and the Black Sea, the civilised portion of the
inhabitants was more imbued with the language and
prejudices of Rome than of Greece. The proconsular
government of Asia was separated from the prætorian
prefectures, and placed under the immediate authority
of the emperor. It included two provinces, the Helles-
pont and the islands between Greece and Asia Minor.
Its native population was entirely Greek.¹
The Greek population had been losing ground in the
east since the reign of Hadrian. Pescennius Niger had
shown that national feelings might be roused against
the oppression of Rome, without adopting Hellenic
prejudices. The establishment of the kingdom of
Palmyra by Odenathus, and the conquest of Syria and
Egypt, gave a severe blow to the influence of the Greeks
in these countries. Zenobia, it is true, cultivated Greek
literature, but she spoke Syriac and Coptic with equal
fluency; and when her power was overthrown, she ap-
pears to have regretted that the advice of her Greek
councillors had induced her to adopt ambitious projects
1 “Notitia dignitatum Imperii Romani." The language of Thrace, dialects of
which appear to have been spoken in many districts from Thessaly to Dacia,
seems to have had a closer affinity to Latin than to Greek.
A. D.
330-527.
138
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. I. unconnected with the immediate interests of her native
subjects, and she abandoned them to the vengeance of
the Romans. Her armies were composed of Syrians and
Saracens; and in the civil administration, the natives of
each province claimed an equal rank with the Greeks.
The cause of the Greek population, especially in Syria
and Egypt, became from this time more closely con-
nected with the declining power of Rome; and as early
as the reign of Aurelian, immediately after he had con-
quered Zenobia, an attempt was made, by a portion
of the native population in Egypt, to throw off the
Roman yoke, and put an end to Greek influence. The
rebellion of Firmus is almost neglected in the history
of the numerous rival emperors who were subdued
by Aurelian; but the very fact that he was styled by
his conqueror a robber, and not a rival, shows that his
cause made him a deadly enemy.1
These signs of nationality could not be overlooked by
Constantine, and the political organisation of the empire
was rendered more efficient than it had formerly been
to crush the smallest manifestations of national feeling
among any body of its subjects. On the other hand,
nothing was done by Constantine with the direct view
of improving the condition of the Greeks. Two of his
laws have been much praised for their humanity; but
they really afford the strongest proofs of the miserable
condition to which the inhumanity of the government
had reduced the people; and though these laws, doubt-
less, granted some relief to Greece, they originated in
views of general policy. By the one, the collectors of
the revenue were prohibited, under pain of death, from
seizing the slaves, cattle, and instruments of agriculture,
of the farmer, for the payment of his taxes; and, by
the other, all forced labour at public works was ordered
¹Vopiscus. Probus.
COMMERCE.
139
to be suspended during seed-time and harvest.¹ The
agriculture and commerce of Greece had derived some
advantage from the tranquillity they had enjoyed
during the widespread civil wars which preceded the
reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. But as far as
the imperial government was concerned, commerce still
suffered from the old spirit of neglect, and was circum-
scribed by monopoly. The officers of the palace, and
even the Christian clergy, were allowed to carry mer-
chandise from one province to another, free from the
duties which fell heavily on the regular trader.2 It
was not, indeed, until the reign of Valentinian III.
that the clergy were finally prohibited from engaging
in commerce.3 The emperor was himself both a
merchant and manufacturer; and his commercial opera-
tions contributed materially to impoverish his subjects,
and to diminish the internal trade of his dominions.
The imperial household formed a numerous population,
separated from the other subjects of the empire; and
the imperial officers endeavoured to maintain this host,
and the immense military establishment, with the small-
est possible outlay of public money. The public posts
furnished the means of transporting merchandise free
of expense, and the officers charged with its conveyance
availed themselves of this opportunity to enrich them-
selves, by importing whatever they could sell with
profit. Imperial manufactories supplied those goods
which could be produced in the empire; and there can
be little doubt that private manufacturers would seldom
venture to furnish the same articles, lest their trade
should interfere with the secret sources of profit of some
powerful officer. These facts sufficiently explain the
rapid decline in the trade, manufactures, and general
wealth of the population of the Roman empire which
¹ Cod. Theodos. 11, 30, 1.
2 Cod. Theodos. xvi. 2, 7.
Cod. Just. viii. 17, 7; xi. 47, 1.
3 A. D. 452. Novell. lib. ii. 12.
A. D.
330-527.
140
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. followed the transference of the capital to Constantinople.
Yet, while commerce was thus ruined, the humble and
honest occupation of the shopkeeper was treated as a
dishonourable profession, and his condition was rendered
doubly contemptible. He was made the serf of the cor-
poration in which he was inscribed, and his industry
was fettered by restrictions which compelled him to
remain in poverty. The merchant was not allowed to
travel with more than a limited sum of money, under
pain of exile.¹ This singular law must have been
adopted, partly to secure the monopolies of the import-
ing merchants, and partly to serve some interest of the
officers of government, without any reference to the
general good of the empire.
Though the change of the capital from Rome to
Constantinople produced many modifications in the
government, its influence on the Greek population was
much less than one might have expected. The new
city was an exact copy of old Rome. Its institutions,
manners, interests, and language, were Roman; and it
inherited all the isolation of the old capital, and stood
in direct opposition to the Greeks, and all the provincials.
It was inhabited by senators from Rome. Wealthy
individuals from the provinces were likewise compelled
to keep up houses at Constantinople, pensions were
conferred upon them, and a right to a certain amount
of provisions from the public stores was annexed to
these dwellings. Eighty thousand loaves of bread were
distributed daily to the inhabitants of Constantinople.
1
¹ Cod. Theod. ix. 23, 1. The law says one thousand folles. The follis was
used to indicate a sum of 125 miliaresia, as the Turks now use the expression
a purse for 500 piastres. As there were 60 or 70 miliaresia to a pound of
silver at this time, the sum would be equal to about £5600 sterling. The copper
coin called follis was, at the date of the law, A. D. 356, the 24th part of a mili-
aresion. Gibbon was so puzzled by these extremes that he conjectured there
must have been another follis of an intermediate value, but this does not seem
necessary. The merchants of the East required considerable sums in specie for
their trade.-Naudet, ii. 119, 316. Dureau de la Malle, i. 119. Gibbon, iv. 74,
note 27.
DISTRIBUTIONS OF PROVISIONS.
141
The claim to a share in this distribution, though granted
as a reward for merit, in some cases was rendered
hereditary, but at the same time made alienable by the
receiver, and was always strictly attached to the pos-
session of property in the city. This distribution con-
sequently differed in its nature from the distributions
bestowed at Rome on poor citizens who had no other
means of livelihood.' The tribute of grain from Egypt
was appropriated to supply Constantinople, and that of
Africa was left for the consumption of Rome. We here
discover the tie which bound the new capital to the
cause of the emperors, and an explanation of the tolera-
tion shown by the emperors to the factions of the cir-
cus, and the disorders of the populace. The emperor
and the inhabitants of the capital felt that they had
a common interest in supporting the despotic power
by which the provinces were drained of money to
supply the luxurious expenditure of the court, and to
furnish provisions and amusements for the people; and,
consequently, the tumults of the populace never induced
the emperors to weaken the influence of the capital;
nor did the tyranny of the emperors ever induce the
citizens of the capital to demand the systematic circum-
scription of the imperial authority.
Even the change of religion produced very little.
improvement in the imperial government. The old
evils of Roman tyranny were perpetrated under a more
regular and legal despotism, and a purer religion, but
they were not less generally oppressive. The govern-
ment grew daily weaker as the people grew poorer;
the population rapidly diminished, and the framework
of society became gradually disorganised. The regula-
1 Gibbon. ii. 300, with Dr Smith's note correcting Naudet's opinion. Des
Secours publics chez les Romains. Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom.
xiii., which I had adopted in the first edition of this work. Compare Socrates,
Hist. Eccles. ii. sect. 13, with Phot. Bibl. No. 257, p. 475, edit. Bekker. Cod.
Theod. xiv. 17, 12, 13. Cod. Just. xi. 23, 1.
A. D.
330-527.
142
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II.
rity of the details of the administration rendered it more
burdensome; the obedience enforced in the army had
only been obtained by the deterioration of its discipline.
The barrier which the empire opposed to the ravages
of the barbarians, became, consequently, weaker under
each succeeding emperor.
SECT. III. CHANGES PRODUCED IN THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE
GREEKS BY THE ALLIANCE OF CHRISTIANITY WITH THEIR NATIONAL
MANNERS.
The decline of Roman influence, and of the supremacy
of the Roman government, brought about some favour-
able conjunctures for the Greeks to improve their con-
dition. Christianity connected itself with the social
organisation of the people, without meddling with their
political condition; but, in so doing, it everywhere
awakened the feelings of humanity, and soon produced
a marked improvement in the social as well as in the
moral and religious position of the Greeks. Though
Christianity failed to arrest the decline of the Roman
empire, it reinvigorated the popular mind, and reorgan-
ised the people, by giving them a powerful and perma-
nent object on which to concentrate their attention, and
an invariable guide for their conduct in every relation.
of life. As it was long confined chiefly to the middle
and lower classes of society, it was compelled, in every
different province of the empire, to assume the language
and usages of the locality, and thus it combined indi-
vidual attachments with universal power. It must be
observed that a great change took place in the feelings
and conduct of the Christians from the period that
Constantine formed a political alliance with the church,
and constituted the clergy into a corporate body. The
great benefits which the inhabitants of the Roman
empire had previously derived from the connection of
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
143
---
their bishops and presbyters with local national feelings,
was then neutralised. The church became a political
institution of the Roman empire, dependent, like every
other department of the public administration, on the
emperor's authority; and henceforward, whenever the
ministers and teachers of the Christian religion became
closely connected with national feelings, they were
accused of heresy.
Paganism had undergone a great change about the
time of the establishment of the Roman empire. A
belief in the resurrection of the body had begun to
spread, both among the Romans and the Greeks; and
it is to the prevalence of this belief that the great suc-
cess of the worship of Serapis, and the adoption of the
practice of burying the dead in a sarcophagus of marble
instead of burning it on a funeral pile, are to be attri-
buted.¹ The decline of paganism had proceeded far
before Christianity was preached to the Greeks. The
ignorance of the people on the one hand, and the spe-
culations of the philosophers on the other, had already
almost succeeded in destroying all reverence for the
ancient gods of Greece, and for their worship, which
rested more on mythological and historical recollections,
and on associations derived from and connected with
art, than on moral principles or mental conviction. The
paganism of the Greeks was a worship identified with
particular tribes, and with precise localities; and the want
of this local and material union had been constantly felt
by the Greeks of Asia and Alexandria, and had tended
much to introduce those modifications in the national
faith by which the Alexandrine philosophers attempted
to unite it with their metaphysical views. Many Greeks
and Romans had learned just ideas of religion from the
1 Serapis was the god of futurity, and the judge of the dead. Visconti has
shown that the practice of burial had commenced in the time of Augustus.
-Museo, Pio Clem. T. v. 10.
A. D.
330-527.
144
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. Jews. "They had acquired true notions of the divine
nature, and of the duties which God requires of man.
While, on the other hand, a religion which could deify
Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus, must have
fallen into contempt with all reflecting men; and even
those who believed in its claims to superhuman autho-
rity must have regarded it with hatred, as having
formed an unjust alliance with their tyrants. It is not,
therefore, surprising that a disbelief in the gods of the
empire was general among the people throughout the
East. But it is impossible for man to exist in society
without some religious feeling. The worship of the gods
was therefore immediately replaced by a number of
superstitious practices, borrowed from foreign nations,
or by the revival of the traditions of a ruder period,
relating to an inferior class of spirits.
The wealth of the temples in Greece, and the large
funds appropriated to public feasts and religious cere-
monies, kept up an appearance of devotion; but a
considerable portion of these funds began to be enjoyed
as the private fortunes of the hereditary priests, or was
diverted, by the corporations charged with their adminis-
tration, to other purposes than the service of the temples,
without these changes exciting any complaints. The
progressive decline of the ancient religion is marked by
the numerous laws which the emperors were compelled
to pass against secret divination, and the rites of magi-
cians, diviners, and astrologers. Though these modes
of prying into futurity had always been regarded by
the Romans and the Greeks as impious, and hostile to
the religion of the State, and been strictly forbidden by
public laws, they continued to gain ground under the
empire.2 The contempt of the people for the ancient
1 Arnold observes that they are called the "devout" in the Acts of the Apostles,
x. 2, xiii. 50, xvii. 4, 17; also xiii. 43, xvi. 14, xviii. 7. Hist. of the later Roman
Commonwealth, 511, American edit.
2 Bonamy, Du Rapport de la Magie avec la Théologie Paienne. Mémoires de
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
145
1
religion as early as the time of Trajan was shown by
their general indifference to the rites of sacrifice, and to
the ceremonials of their festivals. While the great
struggle with Christianity was openly carried on, this
was peculiarly remarkable. The emperor Julian often
complains, in his works, of this indifference, and gives
rather a ludicrous instance of its extent in an anecdote
which happened to himself. As emperor and Pontifex
Maximus, he repaired to the temple of Apollo at Daphne,
near Antioch, on the day of the great feast. He de-
clares that he expected to see the temple filled with
sacrifices, but he found not even a cake, nor a grain of
incense; and the god would have been without an offer-
ing had the priest himself not brought a goose, the only
victim which Apollo received on the day of his festival.
Julian proves, by this anecdote, that all the population
of Antioch was Christian, otherwise curiosity would
have induced a few to visit the temple.2
The laws of the moral world prevent any great re-
formation in society from being affected, without the
production of some positive evil. The best feelings
of humanity are often awakened in support of very
questionable institutions; and all opinions hallowed by
the lapse of time become so endeared by old recollec-
tions, that the most self-evident truths are frequently
overlooked, and the greatest benefits to the mass of
mankind are peremptorily rejected, when their first
announcement attacks an existing prejudice. No prin-
ciples of political wisdom, and no regulations of human
prudence, could therefore have averted the many evils
l'Académie des Inscriptions, vii. 25. Suetonius, Tiber. c. 63. Cod. Theodos. ix.
16. See before, page 98.
1 Pliny, Ep. x. 97.-"Prope jam desolata templa sacra--solennia diu inter-
missa."
2 Even at Athens paganism had ceased to be publicly practised before Julian
ascended the throne.-Libanius, in Julian. necem, p. 288, edit. Morell. The con-
tending influence of Christianity and paganism on the municipal authorities of
the Greek cities, might perhaps be illustrated by a careful study of the "Acts of
the Saints."
K
A. D.
330-527.
1-
146
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. which attended the change of religion in the Roman
empire, even though that change was from fable to
truth, from paganism to Christianity.
66
The steady progress which Christianity made against
paganism, and the deep impression it produced on the
middle classes of society, and on the votaries of philo-
sophy, are certainly wonderful, when the weight of
prejudice, the wealth of the temples, the pride of the
schoolmen, and the influence of college endowments,
are taken into consideration. Throughout the East,
the educated Greeks, from the peculiar disposition of
their minds, were easily led to grant an attentive hearing
to the promulgators of new doctrines and systems.
Even at Athens, Paul was listened to with great respect
by many of the philosophers; and after his public ora-
tion to the Athenians at the Areopagus, some said,
We will hear thee again of this matter." A belief
that the principle of unity, both in politics and religion,
must, from its simplicity and truth, lead to perfection,
was an error of the human mind extremely prevalent
at the time that Christianity was first preached. That
one according spirit might be traced in the universe,
and that there was one God, the Father of all, was a
very prevalent doctrine.¹ This tendency towards des-
potism in politics, and deism in religion, is a feature of
the human mind which continually reappears in certain
conditions of society and corruptions of civilisation.
At the same time a very general dissatisfaction was
felt at these conclusions; and the desire of establishing
the principle of man's responsibility, and his connection
with another state of existence, seemed hardly com-
patible with the unity of the divine essence adored by
¹ Maximus Tyrius, Diss. xvii. Quarterly Review, July, 1840-" Alexandria and
the Alexandrines."-The analogy which it was supposed ought to exist between
the government of earth and heaven, induced the army, at a later period, to
demand that the imperial power should be vested in three emperors, in order
that the Trinity might be represented.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
147
the philosophers. Deism was indeed the prevailing
opinion in religion, yet it was generally felt that it did
not supply the void created by the absence of belief in
the power of the ancient pagan divinities, who had been
supposed to pervade all nature, to be ever present on
the earth or in the air, that they might watch the
actions of men with sympathies almost human. The
influence of deism was cold and inanimate, while an
affectation of superior wisdom almost invariably in-
duced the philosophers to introduce some maxim into
their tenets adverse to the plain common-sense of man-
kind, which abhors paradox. The people felt that the
moral corruption of which the pagan Juvenal, in his
intense indignation, has given us so many vivid de-
scriptions, must eventually destroy all social order. A
reformation was anxiously desired, but no power ex-
isted capable of undertaking the work. At this crisis
Christianity presented itself, and offered men the precise
picture of the attributes of God of which they were in
search; it imposed on them obligations of which they
acknowledged the necessity, and it required from them
a faith, of which they gradually recognised the power.
Under these circumstances, Christianity could not
fail of making numerous converts. It boldly announced
the full bearing of truths, of which the Greek philo-
sophers had only afforded a dim glimpse; and it dis-
tinctly contradicted many of the favourite dreams of the
national but falling faith of Greece. It required either
to be rejected or adopted. Among the Greeks, there-
fore, Christianity met everywhere with a curious and
attentive audience. The feelings of the public mind
were dormant; Christianity opened the sources of elo-
quence, and revived the influence of popular opinion.
From the moment a people, in the state of intellectual
civilisation in which the Greeks were, could listen to
the preachers, it was certain they would adopt the
A. D.
330-527.
148
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. religion. They might alter, modify, or corrupt it, but
it was impossible that they should reject it. The ex-
istence of an assembly, in which the dearest interests
of all human beings were expounded and discussed in
the language of truth, and with the most earnest ex-
pressions of persuasion, must have lent an irresistible
charm to the investigation of the new doctrine among a
people possessing the institutions and feelings of the
Greeks. Sincerity, truth, and a desire to persuade
others, will soon create eloquence where numbers are
gathered together. Christianity revived oratory, and
with oratory it awakened many of the national charac-
teristics which had slept for ages. The discussions of
Christianity gave also new vigour to the communal
and municipal institutions, as it improved the intel-
lectual qualities of the people.
The injurious effect of the demoralisation of society
prevalent throughout the world on the position of the
females, must have been seriously felt by every Grecian
mother. The educated females in Greece, therefore,
naturally welcomed the pure morality of the Gospel
with the warmest feelings of gratitude and enthusiasm ;
and to their exertions the rapid conversion of the
middle orders must in some degree be attributed.
Female influence must not be overlooked, if we would
form a just estimate of the change produced in society
by the conversion of the Greeks to Christianity.
The effect of Christianity extended to political society,
by the manner in which it enforced the observance of
the moral duties on every rank of men without distinc-
tion, and the way in which it called in the aid of public
opinion to enforce that self-respect which a sense of
responsibility is sure to nourish. This political influence
of Christianity soon displayed itself among the Greeks.
They had always been deeply imbued with a feeling of
equality, and their condition, after their conquest by
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
149
the Romans, had impressed on them the necessity of a
moral code, to which superiors and inferiors, rulers and
subjects, were equally amenable. The very circum-
stances, however, which gave Christianity peculiar at-
tractions for the Greeks, excited a feeling of suspicion
among the Roman official authorities. Considering,
indeed, the manner in which the Christians formed
themselves into separate congregations in all the cities
and towns of the East, the constituted form which they
gave to their own society, entirely independent of the
civil authority in the State, the high moral character,
and the popular talents, of many of their leaders, it is
not wonderful that the Roman emperors should have
conceived some alarm at the increase of the new sect,
and deemed it necessary to exterminate it by perse-
cution. Until the government of the empire was pre-
pared to adopt the tenets of Christianity, and identify
itself with the Christian population, is was not unnatural
that the Christians should be regarded as a separate,
and consequently inimical class; for it must be con-
fessed that the bonds of their political society were too
powerful to allow any government to remain at ease.
Let us, for a moment, form a picture of the events.
which must have been of daily occurrence in the cities
of Greece. A Christian merchant arriving at Argos or
Sparta would soon excite attention in the agora and
the lesche. His opinions would be examined and con-
troverted. Eloquence and knowledge were by no means
rare gifts among the traders of Greece, from the time
of Solon the oil-merchant. The discussions which had
been commenced in the markets would penetrate into
the municipal councils. The smaller states in alliance.
with the empire, like Athens and Sparta, and the free
cities generally, would be roused to an unwonted energy,
and the Roman governors astonished and alarmed.¹
¹ We see something which admits of a comparison in the moral condition of
A. D.
330-527.
150
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II.
It was, undoubtedly, the power of the Christians as
a political body which excited several of the persecu-
tions against them; and the accusation to which they
were subjected, of being the enemies of the human race,
was caused by their enforcing general principles of
humanity at variance with the despotic maxims of
the Roman government.
The emperor Decius, the
first great persecutor of Christianity, is reported to
have declared that he would rather divide his throne
with another emperor, than have it shared by the
bishop of Rome. When the cry of popular hatred
was once excited, accusations of promiscuous profli-
gacy, and of devouring human sacrifices, were the
calumnious additions, in accordance with the credulity
of the age.2 The first act of legal toleration which the
Christians met with from the Roman government, was
conceded to their power as a political party by Maxen-
tius. They were persecuted and tolerated by Maximin,
according to what he conceived to be the dictates of
his interest for the time. Constantine, who had long
acted as the leader of their political party, at last
seated Christianity on the throne, and, by his pru-
dence, the world for many years enjoyed the happiness
of religious toleration.*
3
From the moment Christianity was adopted by the
Hellenic race, it was so identified with the habits of
the people as to become essentially incorporated with
the subsequent history of the nation. The earliest cor-
porations of Greek Christians were united in distinct
bodies by civil as well as by religious ties. The members
Mussulman society in the Othoman empire at present. The same deep-rooted
corruption has produced the same conviction that all human measures of reform
will prove inadequate.
1 Gibbon, ii. 261.
2 "Epulæ Thyesteæ, promiscuus concubitus, odium generis humani."
3 Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. viii. c. 14; ix. c. 9.
Tzschirmer, Der Fall des Heidenthums, Leip. 1829. Beugnot, Histoire de lu
Destruction du Paganisme en Occident, 2 vols.; Paris, 1835.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
151
د
of each congregation assembled not only for divine.
worship, but also when any subject of general interest
required their opinion or decision; and the everyday
business of the community was intrusted to their
spiritual teachers, and to the most influential indivi-
duals in the society. It is impossible to determine
exactly the limits of the authority of the clergy and
the elders in the various Christian communities during
the first century. As there was usually a perfect con-
cord on every subject, precise regulations, either to
settle the bounds of clerical authority, or the form of
administering the business of the society, could not be
considered necessary. It cannot, indeed, be supposed
that one uniform course of proceeding was adopted for
the internal government of all the Christian communi-
ties throughout the world. Such a thing would have
been too much at variance with the habits of the Greeks
and the nature of the Roman empire. Circumstances
must have rendered the government of the Christian
churches, in some parts of the East, strictly monarchi-
cal; while, in the municipalities of Greece, it would
certainly appear more for the spiritual interests of
religion, that even the doctrines of the society should
be discussed according to the forms used in trans-
acting the public business of these little autonomous
cities. Such differences would excite no attention
among the cotemporary members of the respective
churches, for both would be regarded as equally con-
formable to the spirit of Christianity. Precise laws
and regulations usually originate in the necessity of
preventing definite evils, so that principles of action
operate as guides to conduct, and exert a practical in-
fluence on the lives of thousands, for years before they
become embodied in public enactments.
The most distant communities of Christian Greeks
in the East were connected by the closest bonds of
A. D.
330-527.
152
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. union, not only for spiritual purposes, but also on ac-
count of the mutual protection and assistance which
they were called upon to afford one another in the
days of persecution. The progress of Christianity
among the Greeks was so rapid, that they soon sur-
passed in numbers, wealth, and influence, any other
body separated, by peculiar usages, from the mass of
the population of the Roman empire. The Greek
language became the ordinary medium of communi-
cation on ecclesiastical affairs in the East; and the
Christian communities of Greeks were gradually melted
into one nation, having a common legislation and a
common civil administration in many things, as well
as a common religion. Their ecclesiastical govern-
ment thus acquired a moral force which rendered it
superior to the local authorities, and which at last
rivalled the influence of the political administration of
the empire. The Greek church had grown up to be
almost equal in power to the Roman state, before Con-
stantine determined to unite the two in strict alliance.
This power had received a regular organisation as
early as the second century. Deputies from the dif-
ferent congregations in Greece met together at stated
intervals and places, and formed provincial synods,
which replaced the Achaian, Phocic, Boeotic, and
Amphyctionic assemblies of former days.¹ How these
assemblies were composed, what part the people took
in the election of the clerical deputies, and what rights
the laity possessed in the provincial councils, are points
which have been much disputed, and do not yet seem
to be very accurately determined. The people, the lay
elders, and the clergy or spiritual teachers, were the
component parts of each separate community in the
earliest periods.2 The numbers of the Christians soon
¹ Tertullian, De Jejun. p. 650; Paris 1580. Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. v. 16.
2 Acts of the Apostles, vi. 2; xv.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
153
required that several congregations should be formed
in a single city; these congregations sought to main-
tain a constant communication, in order to secure per-
fect unanimity. Deputies were appointed to meet for
this purpose; and the most distinguished and ablest
member of the clergy naturally became the president
of this assembly. He was the bishop, and soon became
charged with the conduct of public business during
the intervals between the meetings of the deputies.
The superior education and character of the bishops
placed the direction of the greater part of the civil
affairs of the community in their hands; ecclesiastical
business was their peculiar province by right; they
possessed the fullest confidence of their flocks; and,
as no fear was then entertained that the power in-
trusted to these disinterested and pious men could
ever be abused, their authority was never called in
question.
When Christianity became the religion of the em-
peror, the political organisation and influence of the
Christian communities could not fail to arrest the
attention of the Roman authorities. The provincial
synods replaced, in the popular mind, the older national
institutions; and, in a short time, the power of the
Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria excited the
jealousy of the emperors themselves. The monarchical
ideas of the eastern Greeks vested extensive authority
in the hands of their bishops and patriarchs; and
their power excited more alarm in the Roman go-
vernment than the municipal forms of conducting
ecclesiastical business which were adopted by the
natives of Greece, in accordance with the civil con-
stitutions of the Greek cities and states. This fact
is evident from an examination of the list of the mar-
tyrs who perished in the persecutions of the third
century, when political alarm, rather than religious zeal,
A. D.
330-527.
154
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. moved the government to acts of cruelty. While num-
bers were murdered in Antioch, Alexandria, Cæsarea,
Smyrna, and Thessalonica, very few were sacrificed at
Corinth, Athens, Patras, and Nicopolis.'
Christianity formed a confederation of communities
in the heart of the eastern portion of the Roman
empire, in avowed opposition to some of the political
maxims of the State. The power which Christianity
had acquired, evidently exercised some influence in
determining Constantine to transfer his capital into
that part of his dominions where so numerous and
powerful a body of his subjects were attached to his
person and his cause. Both Constantine and the
Christians had their own grounds of hostility to Rome
and the Romans. The senate and the Roman nobility
remained firmly attached to paganism, which was con-
verted into the bond of union of the conservative party
in the western portion of the empire, and thus the
Greeks were enabled to secure a predominancy in the
Christian church. The imperial prejudices of Con-
stantine appear to have concealed from him this fact ;
and he seems never to have perceived that the cause
of the Christian church and the Greek nation were al-
ready closely interwoven, unless his inclination to
Arianism, in his latter days, is to be attributed to a
wish to suppress the national spirit, which began to
display itself in the Eastern Church. The policy of
circumscribing the power of orthodoxy, as too closely
connected with national feelings, was more openly
followed by Constantius.
The numbers of the Christians in the Roman empire
at the time of the first general council of the Christian
church at Nice, is a subject of great importance to-
wards affording a just estimation of many historical
1
¹ Menologium Græcorum jassu Basilii Imp. editum; Urbini, 1727. Fall-
merayer, i. 110. Zinkeisen, 604.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
155
2
facts. If the conjecture be correct, that the Christians,
at the time of Constantine's conversion, hardly amount-
ed to a twelfth, and perhaps did not exceed a twentieth
part of the population of the empire, this would certainly
afford the strongest proof of the admirable civil organisa-
tion by which they were united.¹ But this can hardly
be considered possible, when applied to the eastern
provinces of the empire, and is certainly incorrect with
regard to the Greek cities. It seems established by
the rescript of Maximin, and by the testimony of the
martyr Lucianus-supported as these are by a mass
of collateral evidence-that the Christians formed.
throughout the East, the majority of the middle
classes of Greek society. Still history affords few facts
which supply a fair criterion to estimate the numbers
or strength of either the Christian or pagan popula-
tion generally throughout the empire. The imperial
authority, supported by the army, which was equally
destitute of religion and nationality, was powerful
enough to oppress or persecute either party, according
to the personal disposition of the emperor. There were
Christians who endeavoured to excite Constantius to
persecute the pagans, and to seize the wealth which
their temples contained.3 Constantine had found him-
self strong enough to carry off the gold and silver
statues and ornaments from many temples; but, as
this was done with the sanction and assistance of the
Christian population where it occurred, it seems pro-
bable that it only happened in those places where the
whole community, or at least the corporation possess-
ing the legal control over the temporal concerns of
these, had embraced Christianity. An arbitrary ex-
4
¹ Labastie, 4me. Mémoire sur le Souverain Pontificat des Empereurs Romains.
Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. xv. 77.
2 Milman, however, doubts the fact of the Christians forming a majority of
the population in the East.-History of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 21; Paris edit.
Beugnot, i. 149.
Eusebius, Laud. Const. c. 8.
3
1
A. D.
330-527.
156
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. ercise of the emperor's authority as Pontifex Maximus,
for the purpose of plundering the temples he was
bound to protect, cannot be suspected; it would be
too strongly at variance with the systematic toleration
of Constantine's reign.
The pagan Julian was strongly incited to persecute
the Christians by the more fanatical of the pagans;
nor did he himself ever appear to doubt that his power
was sufficient to have commenced a persecution; and,
consequently, he takes credit to himself, in his writings,
for the principles of toleration which he adopted.¹ The
attempt of Julian to re-establish paganism was, how-
ever, a very unstatesmanlike proceeding, and exhibited
the strongest proof that the rapidly decreasing numbers
of the pagans proclaimed the approaching dissolution
of the old religion. Julian was an enthusiast; and he
was so far carried away by his ardour as to desire the
restoration of ceremonies and usages long consigned to
oblivion, and ridiculous in the eyes of his pagan contem-
poraries. In the East he accelerated the ruin of the
cause which he espoused. His own acquaintance with
paganism had been gained chiefly from books, and
from the lessons of philosophers; for he had long been
compelled to conform to Christianity, and to acquire
his knowledge of paganism only by stealth. When
he acted the Pontifex Maximus, according to the
written instructions of the old ceremonial, he was
looked upon as the pedantic reviver of an antiquated
ceremony. The religion, too, which he had studied,
was that of the ancient Greeks,—a system of belief
which had irrevocably passed away. With the con-
servative pagan party of Rome he never formed any
alliance. The fancy of Julian to restore Hellenism,
1 Julian, Epist. 41, p. 98. Beugnot gives a clear and fair view of the tole-
rant policy of Julian's reign-Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme en
Occident.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
157
and to call himself a Greek, was therefore regarded by
all parties in the empire as an imperial folly. Nothing
but princely ignorance of the state of opinion in his
age could have induced Julian to endeavour to awaken
the national feelings of the Greeks in favour of pagan-
ism, in order to oppose them to Christianity, for their
nationality was already engaged in the Christian cause.
This mistaken notion of the emperor was seen by the
Romans, and made a strong impression on the historians
of Julian's reign. They have all condemned his super-
stition; for such, in their eyes, his fanatic imitation of
antiquated Hellenic usages appeared to be.¹
1
We must not overlook the important fact that the
Christian religion was long viewed with general aver-
sion, from being regarded by all classes as a dangerous
as well as secret political association. The best in-
formed heathens appear to have believed that hostility
to the established order of society, odium humani gene-
ris, as this was called by the Romans, was a character-
istic of the new religion. The Roman aristocracy and
populace, with all those who identified themselves with
Roman prejudices, adopted the opinion that Christian-
ity was one of the causes of the decline of the Roman
empire. Rome was a military state, Christianity was
a religion of peace. The opposition of their principles
was felt by the Christians themselves, who seem to
have considered that the success of Christianity im-
plied the fall of the empire; and as the duration of
the empire and the existence of civilised society ap-
peared inseparable, they inferred that the end of the
world was near at hand. Nor is this surprising. The
invasion of the barbarians threatened society with ruin ;
no political regeneracy seemed practicable by means of
any internal reforms; the empire of Christ was surely
approaching, and that empire was not of this world.
1 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxv. 4. Aurelius Victor, Epit. Eutropius.
A. D.
330-527.
158
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II.
But these opinions and reasonings were not so pre-
valent in the East as in the West, for the Greeks espe-
cially were not under the influence of the same political
feelings as the Romans. They were farther removed
from the scenes of war, and they suffered less from the
invasions of the barbarians. They were occupied with
the daily business of life, and their attention was not so
frequently diverted to the crimes of the emperors and
the misfortunes of the State. They felt no sympathy,
and little regret, when they perceived that the power
of Rome was on the decline, for they deemed it pro-
bable that they should prove gainers by the change.
One feature of Christian society which excited general
disapprobation about the time of the accession of Julian,
was the great number of men who became monks and
hermits. These enemies of social life proclaimed that
it was better to prepare for heaven in seclusion, than
to perform man's active duties, and to defend the cause
of civilisation against the barbarians. Millions of
Christians who did not imitate their example openly
approved of their conduct; so that it is not wonderful
that all who were not Christians regarded Christianity
with aversion, as a political institution hostile to the
existing government of the Roman empire. The cor-
ruptions of Christianity, and the dissensions of the
Christians, had also caused a reaction against the re-
ligion, towards the latter part of the reign of Constan-
tius II. Julian profited by this feeling, but he had
not the talent to render it subservient to his views.
The circumstance which rendered Christianity most
hateful to him, as an emperor and a philosopher, was
the liberty of private judgment assumed as one of the
rights of man by monks and theologians. To combat
Christianity with any chance of success, Julian must
have connected the theoretic paganism of the schools
with moral principles and strong faith. To succeed in
ORTHODOXY.
159
such a task, he must have preached a new religion, and
assumed the character of a prophet. He was unequal
to the enterprise, for he was destitute of the popular
sympathies, firm convictions, fiery enthusiasm, and
profound genius of Mahomet.1
A. D.
330-527.
SECT. IV.-THE ORTHODOX CHURCH BECAME IDENTIFIED WITH
THE GREEK NATION.
When Constantine embraced Christianity, he allowed
paganism to remain the established religion of the State,
and left the pagans in the possession of all their privi-
leges. The principle of toleration was received as a
political maxim of the Roman government; and it
continued, with little interruption, to be so, until the
reign of Theodosius the Great, who undertook to
abolish paganism by legislative enactments. The
Christian emperors continued, until the reign of Gra-
tian, to bear the title of Pontifex Maximus, and to act
as the political head of the pagan religion. This poli-
tical supremacy of the emperor over the pagan priest-
hood was applied also to the Christian church; and,
in the reign of Constantine, the imperial power over
the external and civil affairs of the church was fully
admitted by the whole Christian clergy. The respect
which Constantine showed to the ministers of Christi-
anity, never induced him to overlook this supremacy.
Even in the general council of Nice, the assembled
clergy would not transact any business until the
emperor had taken his seat, and authorised them to
proceed. All Constantine's grants to the church were
regarded as marks of imperial favour; and he con-
sidered himself entitled to resume them, and transfer
them to the Arians. During the Arian reigns of Con-
¹ Neander (Julian and his Generation) fills up, very ably, Gibbon's able account
of the apostate.
160
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. stantius and Valens, the power of the State over the
church was still more manifest.¹
From the death of Constantine until the accession
of Theodosius the Great, a period of thirty years elapsed,
during which Christianity, though the religion of the
emperors, and of a numerous body of their subjects,
was not the religion of the State. In the western pro-
vinces, paganism was still predominant; and even in
the eastern provinces, which had embraced Christianity,
the Christian party was weakened by rival sects. The
Arians and orthodox regarded one another with as
much hostility as they did the pagans. During this
period, the orthodox clergy were placed in a state of
probation, which powerfully contributed towards con-
necting their interests and feelings with those of the
Greek population. Constantine had determined to
organise the Christian church precisely in the same
manner as the civil government. The object of this
arrangement was to render the church completely sub-
servient to the imperial administration, and to break,
as much as possible, its connection with the people.
For this purpose, the higher ecclesiastical charges were
rendered independent of public opinion. The wealth
and temporal power which the clergy suddenly at-
tained by the favour of Constantine, soon produced
the usual effects of sudden riches and irresponsible au-
thority in corrupting the minds of men. The disputes
relating to the Arian heresy were embittered by the
eagerness of the clergy to possess the richest episcopal
sees, and their conflicts became so scandalous, that
they were rendered a subject of popular satire in places
of public amusement. The favour shown by the Arian
emperors to their own party, proved ultimately bene-
2
1 Eusebius, De Vita Constant. Mag. iv. 24. He told the bishops that they
were appointed to teach the doctrine of the church, but that he was the supreme
bishop for its government.
2 Eusebius, De Vita Constant. Mag. 1. ii. 61.
ORTHODOXY.
161
ficial to the orthodox clergy. The Roman empire was
still nominally pagan, the Roman emperors were avow-
edly Arian, and the Greeks felt little disposed to sym-
pathise with the traditional superstitions of their con-
querors, or the personal opinions of their masters.
During this period, therefore, they listened with re-
doubled attention to the doctrines of the orthodox
clergy, and from this time the Greek nation and the
orthodox church became closely identified.
The orthodox teachers of the Gospel, driven from
the ecclesiastical preferments which depended on court
favour, and deserted by the ambitious and worldly-
minded clergy, cultivated those virtues, and pursued
that line of conduct, which had endeared the earlier
preachers of Christianity to their flocks. The old
popular organisation of the church was preserved, and
more completely amalgamated with the social institu-
tions of the Greek nation. The people took part in
the election of their spiritual pastors, and influenced
the choice of their bishops. The national as well as
the religious sentiments of the Greeks were called into
action, and provincial synods were held for the purpose
of defending the orthodox priesthood against the im-
perial and Arian administration. The majority of the
orthodox congregations were Greek, and Greek was
the language of the orthodox clergy. Latin was the
language of the court and of the heretics. Many cir-
cumstances, therefore, combined to consolidate the
connection formed at this time between the ortho-
dox church and the Greek population throughout the
eastern provinces of the empire; while some of these
circumstances tended more particularly to connect the
clergy with the educated Greeks, and to lay the foun-
dation of the orthodox church becoming a national in-
stitution.
In ancient Hellas and the Peloponnesus, paganism
L
A. D.
330-527.
162
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. was still far from being extinct, or, at least, as was not
unfrequently the case, the people, without caring much
about the ancient religion, persisted in celebrating, with
some enthusiasm, the rites and festivals consecrated by
antiquity.¹ Valentinian and Valens renewed the laws
which had been often passed against various pagan
rites; and both of these emperors encouraged the per-
secution of those who were accused of this imaginary
crime. It must be observed, however, that these
accusations were generally directed against wealthy
individuals; and, on the whole, they appear to have
been dictated by the old imperial maxim of filling
the treasury by confiscations in order to avoid the
dangers likely to arise from the imposition of new
taxes.2 In Greece, the ordinary ceremonies of pagan-
ism often bore a close resemblance to the prohib-
ited rites; and the new laws could not have been en-
forced without causing a general persecution of pagan-
ism, which does not appear to have been the object of
the emperors. The proconsul of Greece, himself a
pagan, solicited the emperor Valens to exempt his pro-
vince from the operation of the law; and so tolerant
was the Roman administration, when the district was
too poor to offer a rich harvest for the fisc, that Greece
was allowed to continue to celebrate its pagan festivals.3
Until this period, the temples had generally pre-
served all their property and revenues administered by
private individuals, and drawn from sources uncon-
nected with the public treasury. The rapid destruction
of the temples, which took place after the reign of
Valens, must have been caused, in a great measure, by
the conversion of those intrusted with their care to
Christianity. When the hereditary priests seized the
revenues of the heathen god as a private estate, they
1 Beugnot, vol. ii. p. 162, note b.
2 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxx. 1, 9. Zosimus, iv. 13.
3 Zosimus, iv. 3.
ORTHODOXY.
ལཱ་
163
would rejoice in seeing the temple fall rapidly to ruin,
if they did not dare to destroy it openly. Towards the
end of his reign the Emperor Gratian laid aside the
title of Pontifex Maximus, and removed the altar of
Victory from the senate-house of Rome.¹ These acts
were equivalent to a declaration that paganism was no
longer the acknowledged religion of the senate and the
Roman people. It was Theodosius the Great, however,
who finally established Christianity as the religion of
the empire; and in the East he succeeded completely
in uniting the orthodox church with the imperial ad-
minstration; but in the West, the power and preju-
dices of the Roman aristocracy prevented his measures
from attaining full success.
Theodosius, in rendering orthodox Christianity the
established religion of the empire, increased the ad-
ministrative and judicial authority of the bishops; and
the Greeks, being in possession of a predominant in-
fluence in the orthodox church, were thus raised to the
highest social position which subjects were capable of
attaining. The Greek bishop, who preserved his
national language and customs, was now the equal of
the governor of a province, who assumed the name
and language of a Roman. The court, as well as the
civil administration of Theodosius the Great, continued
Roman; and the Latin clergy, aided by the great
power and high character of St Ambrose, prevented
the Greek clergy from appropriating to themselves an
undue share of ecclesiastical authority and preferment
in the West. The power now conferred on the clergy,
supported as it was by the popular origin of the priest-
hood, by the feelings of brotherhood which pervaded
the Greek church, and by the strong attachment of
their flocks, was generally employed to serve and pro-
tect the people, and often succeeded in tempering the
1 A. D. 383. Clinton, Fasti Rom. vol. ii. 122.
A. D.
330-527.
164
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. despotism of the imperial authority. The clergy began.
to form a part of the State. A popular bishop could
hardly be removed from his diocese, without the govern-
ment's incurring as much danger as it formerly en-
countered in separating a successful general from his
army. The difficulties which the emperor Constantine
met with, in removing St Athanasius from the See of
Alexandria, and the necessity he was under of obtain-
ing his condemnation in a general council, show that
the church, even at that early period, already possessed
the power of defending its members; and that a new
power had arisen which imposed legal restraints on the
arbitrary will of the emperor. Still, it must not be
supposed that bishops had yet acquired the privilege
of being tried only by their peers. The emperor was
considered the supreme judge in ecclesiastical as well
as in civil matters, and the council of Sardica was satis-
fied with petitioning for liberty of conscience, and free-
dom from the oppression of the civil magistrate.¹
Though the good effects of Christianity on the moral
and political condition of the ancient world have never
been called in question, historians have, nevertheless,
more than once reproached the Christian religion with
accelerating the decline of the Roman empire. A care-
ful comparison of the progress of society in the eastern
and western provinces must lead to a different con-
clusion. It appears certain that the Latin provinces
were ruined by the strong conservative attachment of
the aristocracy of Rome to the forgotten forms and
forsaken superstitions of paganism, after they had lost
all practical influence on the minds of the people;
while there can be very little doubt that the eastern
1 A. D. 347. The "Constantinus non ausus est de causa episcopi judicare" is
an idle phrase of St Augustine.-Milman's Hist. of Christ. vol. ii. p. 36, 297.
Paris edit. Cod. Theodos. xvi. 2, 12. Compare the rescript of Constantine,
Baronius, Ann. Eccl. a. D. 329, viii.-where he says, in speaking of the disputes
of Athanasius and Eusebius to the provincial synod, "Sestri est, non mei
judicii de ea re cognoscere,”—with his saying as reported by Eusebius, in the pre-
ceding note at page 160.
ORTHODOXY.
165
provinces were saved by the unity with which all ranks
embraced Christianity. In the Western Empire, the
people, the Roman aristocracy, and the imperial ad-
ministration, formed three separate sections of society,
unconnected either by religious opinion or national
feelings; and each was ready to enter into alliances
with armed bands of foreigners in the empire, in order
to serve their respective interests, or gratify their pre-
judices or passions. The consequence of this state of
things was, that Rome and the Western Empire, in
spite of their wealth and population, were easily con-
quered by comparatively feeble enemies; while Con-
stantinople, with all its original weakness, beat back
both the Goths and the Huns, in the plenitude of their
power, in consequence of the union which Christianity
inspired. Rome fell because the senate and the Roman
people clung too long to ancient institutions, forsaken by
the great body of the population; while Greece escaped
destruction because she modified her political and
religious institutions in conformity with the opinions
of her inhabitants, and with the policy of her govern-
ment. The popular element in the social organisation
of the Greek people, by its alliance with Christianity,
infused into society the energy which saved the Eastern
Empire; the disunion of the pagans and Christians,
and the disorder in the administration flowing from
this disunion, ruined the Western.
A. D.
330-527.
SECT. V.-CONDITION OF THE GREEK POPULATION OF THE EMPIRE,
FROM THE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE TO THAT OF THEODOSIUS THE
GREAT.
The establishment of a second capital at Constanti-
nople has generally been considered a severe blow to
the Roman empire; but, from the time of Diocletian,
Rome had ceased to be the residence of the emperors.
Various motives induced the emperors to avoid Rome;
166
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. the wealth and influence of the Roman senators cir-
cumscribed their authority; the turbulence and numbers
of the people rendered even their government insecure ;
while the immense revenues required for donatives, for
distributions of provisions, for pompous ceremonies, and
for public games, formed a heavy burden on the impe-
rial treasury, and the insubordination of the prætorian
guards continually threatened their persons. When the
emperor, therefore, by becoming a Christian, was placed
in personal opposition to the Roman senate, there could
be no longer any doubt that Rome became a very un-
suitable residence for the Christian court. Constantine
was compelled to choose a new capital; and in doing
so he chose wisely. His selection of Byzantium was,
it is true, determined by reasons connected with the
imperial administration, without any reference to the
influence which his choice might have on the prosperity
of his subjects. Its first effect was to preserve the
unity of the Eastern Empire. The Roman empire had,
for some time previous to the reign of Constantine,
given strong proofs of a tendency to separate into a
number of small states. The necessity of the personal
control of the sovereign over the executive power in the
provinces, was so great, that Constantine himself, who
had done all he could to complete the concentration of
the general government, thought it necessary to divide
the executive administration of the empire among his
family before his death. The union effected by cen-
tralising the management of the army and the civil and
judicial authority, prevented the division of the execu-
tive power from immediately partitioning the empire.
It was not until the increased difficulties of intercom-
munication had created two distinct centres of admin-
istration that the separation of the Eastern and West-
ern empires was completed.
The foundation of Constantinople was the particular
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
167
act which secured the integrity of the eastern provinces,
and prevented their separating into a number of inde-
pendent states. It is true, that by transferring the
administration of the East more completely into the
hands of the Greeks, it roused the nationality of the
Syrians and Egyptians into activity,-an activity, how-
ever, which seemed to present no danger to the empire,
as both these provinces were peopled almost exclusively
by a tax-paying population, and contributed proportion-
ally few recruits to the army. The establishment of
the seat of government at Constantinople enabled the
emperors to destroy many abuses, and effect numerous
reforms, which recruited the resources and revived the
strength of the eastern portion of the empire. The
energy thus developed gave to the empire of the East
the strength which enabled it ultimately to repulse all
those hordes of barbarians who subdued the West.
Society underwent some modifications in the East,
in consequence of the change of the capital. It acquired
a more settled and stationary form. Before the reign
of Constantine, ambition had been the leading feature
of the Roman state. Everybody was striving for
official rank; and the facilities of ascending the throne,
or arriving at the highest dignities, were indefinitely
multiplied by the rapid succession of emperors, by the
repeated proscriptions of senators, and by the incessant
confiscations of the property of the wealthiest Romans.
Constantine, in giving to the government the form of
a regular monarchy, introduced greater stability into
society; and as ambition could no longer be gratified
with the same ease as formerly, avarice, or rather rapa-
city, became the characteristic feature of the ruling
classes. This love of riches soon caused the venality
of justice. The middle classes, already sinking under
the general anarchy and fiscal oppression of the empire,
were now exposed to the extortions of the aristocracy,
A. D.
330-527.
168
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. and property became almost as insecure among the
smaller proprietors as it had formerly been among
those who held great estates.
The condition of Greece, nevertheless, improved con-
siderably in the interval which elapsed between the
invasion of the Goths in the reign of Gallienus and the
time of Constantine. History, it is true, supplies only
a few scattered incidents from which the fact of this
improvement can be inferred; but the gradual progress
of the amelioration is satisfactorily established. When
Constantine and Licinius prepared to dispute the sole
possession of the empire, they assembled two powerful
fleets, both of which were composed chiefly of Greek
vessels. The armament of Constantine consisted of two
hundred light galleys of war, and two thousand trans-
ports, and these immense naval forces were assembled
at the Piræus. This selection of the Piræus as a naval
station indicates that it was no longer in the desolate
condition in which it had been seen by Pausanias in
the second century, and it shows that Athens itself had
recovered from whatever injury it had sustained during
the Gothic expedition. To these frequent reconstruc-
tions of the buildings and walls of Greek cities, caused
by the vicissitudes which frequently occurred in the
numbers and wealth of their inhabitants during the
period of eight centuries and a half which is reviewed
in this volume, we are to attribute the disappearance
of the immense remains of ancient constructions which
once covered the soil, and of which no traces now exist,
as they have been broken up on these occasions to serve
as materials for new structures.
The fleet of Constantine was collected among the
Europeans; that of Licinius, which consisted of tri-
remes, was furnished chiefly by the Asiatic and Libyan
Greeks. The number of the Syrian and Egyptian
vessels was comparatively smaller than would have
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
169
been the case two centuries earlier. It appears, there-
fore, that the commerce of the Mediterranean had re-
turned into the hands of the Greeks. The trade of
central Asia, which took the route of the Black Sea,
had increased in consequence of the insecure state of
the Red Sea, Egypt, and Syria, and had given an im-
pulse to Greek industry.
The carrying trade of western Europe was again
falling into Greek hands. Athens, as the capital of the
old Hellenic population, from its municipal liberty and
flourishing schools of learning, was rising into import-
ance. Constantine honoured this city with marks of
peculiar favour, which were conferred certainly from a
regard to its political importance, and not from any
admiration of the studies of its pagan philosophers.
He not only ordered an annual distribution of grain
to be made to the citizens of Athens, from the imperial
revenues, but he accepted the title of Strategos when
offered by its inhabitants.
As soon as Julian had assumed the purple in Gaul,
and marched against Constantius, he endeavoured to
gain the Greek population to his party, by flattering
their national feelings; and he strove to induce them
to connect their cause with his own, in opposition to
the Roman government of Constantius. He seems, in
general, to have been received with favour by the
Greeks, though his aversion to Christianity must have
excited some distrust. Unless the Greek population
in Europe had greatly increased in wealth and in-
fluence, during the preceding century, or Roman in-
fluence had suffered a considerable diminution in the
East, it could hardly have entered into the plans of
Julian to take the prominent measures which he
adopted to secure their support. He addressed letters
to the municipalities of Athens, Corinth, and Lacedæ-
mon, in order to persuade these cities to join his cause.
A. D.
330-527.
170
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. The letter to the Athenians is a carefully prepared
political manifesto, explaining the reasons which com-
pelled him to assume the purple. Athens, Corinth,
and Lacedæmon, must have possessed some acknow-
ledged political and social influence in the empire,
otherwise Julian would only have rendered his cause
ridiculous by addressing them at such a critical mo-
ment; and, though he was possibly ignorant of the
state of religious feeling in the popular mind, he must
have been too well acquainted with the statistics of
the empire to commit any error of this kind in public
business. It may also be observed, that the care with
which history has recorded the ravages caused in
Greece by earthquakes, during the reigns of Valentin-
ian and Valens, affords conclusive testimony of the
importance then attached to the well-being of the
Greek population.¹
The ravages committed by the Goths in the pro-
vinces immediately to the south of the Danube must
have turned for a time to the profit of Greece. Though
some bands of the barbarians pushed their incursions.
into Macedonia and Thessaly, still Greece generally
served as a place of retreat for the wealthy inhabit-
ants of the invaded districts.2 When Theodosius,
therefore, subdued the Goths, the Greek provinces,
both in Europe and Asia, were among the most flour-
ishing portions of the empire; and the Greek popu-
lation, as a body, was, without question, the most
numerous and best organised part of the emperor's
subjects; property, in short, was nowhere so secure as
among the Greeks.
The rapacity of the imperial government had, how-
ever, undergone no diminution; and the weight of
taxation was still compelling the people everywhere
1 Ammianus Marcell. xxvi. 10. Zosimus, iv. 18.
2 Zosimus, iv. 20. Eunapius, p. 51, edit. Bonu.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
171
to encroach on the capital accumulated by former
ages, and to abstain from all investments which only
promised a distant remuneration.¹ The influx of
wealth from the ruined provinces of the North, and
the profits of a change in the direction of trade, were
temporary causes of prosperity, and could only render
the burden of the public taxes lighter for one or two
generations. The imperial treasury was sure ulti-
mately to absorb the whole of these accidental supplies.
It was, indeed, only in the ancient seats of the Hellenic
race that any signs of returning prosperity were visi-
ble; for in Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene, the Greek popula-
tion displayed evident proofs that they were suffering
in the general decline of the empire. Their number was
gradually diminishing in comparison with that of the
native inhabitants of these countries. Civilisation was
sinking to the level of the lower grades of society. In
the year A. D. 363, the Asiatic Greeks received a blow
from which they never recovered. Jovian, by his
treaty with Sapor II., ceded to Persia the five pro-
vinces of Arzanene, Moxoene, Zabdicene, Rehimene,
and Corduene, and the Roman colonies of Nisibis and
Singara in Mesopotamia. As Sapor was a fierce per-
secutor of the Christians, the whole Greek population
of these districts was obliged to emigrate. The bigoted
attachment of the Persians to the Magian worship
never allowed the Greeks to regain a footing in these
countries, or to obtain again any considerable share in
their trade. From this time the natives acquired the
complete ascendancy in all the country beyond the
Euphrates. The bigotry of the Persian government is
not to be overlooked in estimating the various causes
which drove the trade of India through the northern
regions of Asia to the shores of the Black Sea.
1 It is needless to accumulate proofs of the nature of the fiscal administration
of this period,-every page of history offers them. Julian, as an emperor, is a
good authority: "Rapere non accipere sciunt agentes in rebus."—Amm. Mar.
xvi. 15.
A. D.
330-527.
172
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
SECT. VI.— -COMMUNICATIONS OF THE GREEKS WITH COUNTRIES
BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
CHAP. II.
It would be a depressing idea were it to be admitted
that the general degradation of mankind after the time
of the Antonines was the effect of some inherent
principle of decay, proceeding from an inevitable state
of exhaustion in the condition of a highly civilised
society; that a moral deficiency produced incurable
corruption, and rendered good government impracti-
cable; that these evils were irremediable, even by the
influence of Christianity; and, in short, that the
destruction of all the elements of civilisation was
necessary for the regeneration of the social as well as
the political system. But there is haply no ground for
any such opinion. The evils of society were produced
by the injustice and oppression of the Roman govern-
ment, and that government was unfortunately too
powerful to enable the people to force it to reform its
conduct. The middle classes were almost excluded
from all influence in their own municipal affairs by the
oligarchical constitution of the curia, so that public
opinion was powerless. After the Roman central
authority was destroyed, similar causes produced
the same effects in the barbarian monarchies of the
West; and the revival of civilisation commenced only
when the people had acquired power sufficient to en-
force some respect for their feelings and rights. History
has fortunately preserved some scanty memorials of a
Greek population living beyond the bounds of the
Roman empire, which afford the means of estimating
the effects of political causes in modifying the
character and destroying the activity of the Greek
nation. The flourishing condition of the independent
Greek city of Cherson, in Tauris, furnishes ample
.
FOREIGN TRADE.
173
testimony that the state of society among the Greeks
admitted of the existence of those virtues, and of the
exercise of that energy, which are necessary to support
independence; but without institutions which confer
on the people some control over their government, and
some direct interest in public affairs, nations soon sink
into lethargy, from which they can only be roused by
war.
The Greek city of Chersonesos, a colony of Hera-
clea in Pontus, was situated on a small bay to the
south-west of the entrance into the great harbour of
Sevastopol, a name now memorable in European his-
tory.¹ The defeat of Mithridates, to whom it had been
subject, did not re-establish its independence. But
in the time of Augustus it possessed the privileges of
freedom and self-government under the protection of
Rome. Its distant and isolated situation protected it
from the arbitrary exactions of Roman magistrates, and
rendered its municipal rights equivalent to political
independence. In the reign of Hadrian, this inde-
pendence was officially recognised, and it received the
rank of an allied city. In the third century we find
the name of Chersonesos contracted into Cherson, and
the city removed somewhat to the eastward of the old
site. Its extent was diminished, and the fortifications
of Cherson only embraced a circumference of about two
miles, on the promontory to the west of the present
Quarantine harbour or bay. It preserved the re-
publican form of government of the Greek states, and
contrived to defend its freedom for centuries against
the ambition of the kings of Bosporus, and the attacks
of the neighbouring Goths, who had rendered them-
selves masters of the open country. The wealth and
power of Cherson depended on its commerce, and
this commerce flourished under institutions which
1 Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. iv. c. 26.
A. D.
330-527.
174
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. guaranteed the rights of property. The Emperor
Constantine, in his Gothic wars, did not disdain to
demand the aid of this little State; and he acknow-
ledged with gratitude the great assistance which the
Roman empire had derived from the military forces of
the Chersonites. No history could present more in-
structive lessons to centralised despotisms than the
records of the administration and taxation of these
Greeks, in the Tauric Chersonesus, during the decline
of the empire, and it is deeply to be regretted that
none exists. About three hundred and fifty years
before the Christian era, the kingdom of the Cimmerian
Bosporus, one of these Greek colonies, was in a flourish-
ing agricultural condition; and its monarch had been
able to prevent a famine at Athens, by supplying that
city with two million bushels of wheat in a single
season.¹ Three hundred and fifty years after the birth
of Christ all was changed in ancient Greece, and
Cherson alone of all the cities inhabited by Greeks en-
joyed the blessing of freedom. The fertile fields which
had fed the Athenians were converted into pasturage
for the cattle of the Goths; but the commerce of the
Chersonites enabled them to import corn, oil, and wine
from the richest provinces of the Roman empire.
The commercial Greeks of the empire began to feel
that there were countries in which men could live and
prosper beyond the power of the Roman administra-
tion. Christianity had penetrated far into the East,
and Christians were everywhere united by the closest
ties. The speculations of trade occupied an important
place in society. Trade carried many Greeks of educa-
tion among foreign nations little inferior to the Romans
in civilisation, and surpassing them in wealth. It was
impossible for these travellers to avoid examining the
conduct of the imperial administration with the critical
1 Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens, 1, 121.
FOREIGN TRADE.
175
eye of men who viewed various countries and weighed
the merits of different systems of fiscal government.
For them, therefore, oppression had certain limits from
which, when transgressed, they would have escaped by
transporting themselves and their fortunes beyond the
reach of the imperial tax-gatherers. The inhabitants
of the Western Empire could entertain no similar hope
of avoiding oppression.
About the time of Constantine, the Greeks carried
on an extensive commerce with the northern shores of
the Black Sea, Armenia, India, Arabia, and Ethiopia,
and some merchants carried their adventures as far as
Ceylon. A Greek colony had been established in the
island of Socotra (Dioscorides), in the time of the
Ptolemies, as a station for the Indian trade; and this
colony, mixed with a number of Syrians, still con-
tinued to exist, in spite of the troubles raised by the
Saracens on the northern shores of the Red Sea, and
their wars with the emperors, particularly with Valens.1
The travels of the philosopher Metrodorus, and the
missionary labours of the Indian bishop Theophilus,
prove the existence of a regular intercourse between
the empire, India, and Ethiopia, by the waters of the
Red Sea. The curiosity of the philosopher, and the
enthusiasm of the missionary, were excited by the re-
ports of the ordinary traders; while their enterprises
were everywhere facilitated by the mercantile specula-
tions of a regular traffic. Feelings of religion at this
time extended the efforts of the Christians, and opened
up new channels for commerce. The kingdom of Ethi-
opia was converted to Christianity by two Greek slaves,
who rose to the highest dignities in the State, whose
1 Socrat. iv. 36. Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. vi. 38. The Indies were in ancient
times divided into the East and West, according to their direction from the
Straits of Babelmandel; and Ethiopia is often called India. The inhabitants of
Dioscorides spoke Syriac in the middle of the fourth century, and Greek, when
visited by Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth. Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-
Empire, 1, 441, with the notes of Saint-Martin.
A. D.
330-527.
176
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. influence must have originated in their connection with
the Roman empire, and whose power must have opened
new means of communication with the heathens in the
south of Africa, and assisted Greek traders, as well as
Christian missionaries, in penetrating into countries
whither no Roman had ever ventured.
SECT. VII.-EFFECT OF THE SEPARATION OF THE EASTERN AND
WESTERN EMPIRES ON THE GREEK NATION. A. D. 395.
The separation of the eastern and western portions of
the Roman empire into two independent states, under
Arcadius and Honorius, was the last step, in a long
series of events, which seemed tending to restore the
independence of the Greek nation. The interest of the
sovereigns of the Eastern Empire became intimately
connected with the fortunes of their Greek subjects.
The Greek language began to be generally spoken at
the court of the eastern emperors, and Greek feelings of
nationality gradually made their way, not only into the
administration and the army, but even into the family
of the emperors. The numbers of the Greek population
in the Eastern Empire gave a unity of feeling to the
inhabitants, a nationality of character to the govern-
ment, and a degree of power to the Christian church,
which were completely wanting in the ill-cemented
structure of the West. New vigour seemed on the
point of being infused into the imperial government, as
circumstances strongly impelled the emperors to parti-
cipate in the feelings and national interests of their
subjects. Nor were these hopes entirely delusive. The
slow and majestic decline of the Roman empire was
arrested under a singular combination of events, as
if expressly to teach the historical lesson that the
Roman government had fallen through its own faults,
by consuming the capital from which its own resources
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.
177
were derived, by fettering the industry of the people,
and thus causing a decline in the numbers of the popu-
lation; for even in the West the strength of the bar-
barians was only sufficient to occupy provinces already
depopulated by the policy of the government.
As soon as the Eastern Empire was definitively sepa-
rated from the Western, the spirit of the Greek munici-
palities, and the direct connection of the body of the
people with the clergy, began to exercise a marked
influence on the general government. The increasing
authority of the defensor in the municipalities modi-
fied, in some degree, the oligarchy, of the Roman curia.
Though the imperial administration continued, in fiscal
matters, to maintain the old axiom that the people
were the serfs of the State, yet the emperors, from the
want of an aristocracy whom they could plunder, were
thrown back on the immediate support of the people,
whose goodwill could no longer be neglected. It is
not to be supposed that, in the general decline of the
empire, any disorganisation of the frame of civil society
was manifest in the various nations which lived under
the Roman government. The numbers of the popula-
tion had, indeed, everywhere diminished, but no con-
vulsions had yet shaken the frame of society. Property
was as secure as it had ever been, and the courts of
law were gaining additional authority and a better
organisation. Domestic virtue was by no means rarer
than it had been in brighter periods of history. The
even tenor of life flowed calmly on, in a great portion
of the Eastern Empire, from generation to generation.
Philosophical and metaphysical speculations had, in the
absence of the more active pursuits of political life, been
the chief occupation of the higher orders; and when
the Christian religion became universal, it gradually
directed the whole attention of the educated to theo-
logical questions. These studies certainly exercised a
M
A. D.
330-527.
178
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. favourable influence on the general morality, if not on
the temper of mankind, and the tone of society was
characterised by a purity of manners, and a degree of
charitable feeling to inferiors, which have probably
never been surpassed. Nothing can more remarkably
display the extent to which the principles of humanity
had penetrated, than the writings of the Emperor Julian.
In the fervour of his pagan enthusiasm, he continually
borrows Christian sentiments and inculcates Christian
philanthropy.
Public opinion, which in the preceding century had
attributed the decline of the empire to the progress of
Christianity, now, with more justice, fixed on the fiscal
system as the principal cause of its decay. The com-
plaints of the oppression of the public administration
were, by the common consent of the prince and people,
directed against the abuses of the revenue-officers. The
historians of this period, and the decrees of the emperors
themselves, charge these officers with producing the
general misery by the peculations which they com-
mitted; but no emperor yet thought of devoting his
attention to a careful reformation of the system which
allowed such disorders. The indignation of the emperor,
however, who threatens the agents of the treasury with
death if they indulge in extortion, speaks indirectly in
favour of the state of society in which the vices of the
administration were so severely reprehended.¹
An anecdote often illustrates the condition of society
more correctly than a dissertation, though there is
always some danger that an anecdote has found its
place in history from the singularity of the picture
which it presents. The one now selected seems, how-
ever, interesting, as affording a faithful picture of
1 Cod. Theodos. i. xvi. 7.-Cessent jam nunc rapaces officialium manus, cessent,
inquam: nam si moniti non cessaverint, gladiis præcidentur. Salvian. De
Gubernatione Dei. Magna Bibliotheca Patrum, v. 89--92.
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE,
179
general manners, and as giving an accurate view of the
most prominent defects in the Roman administration.
Acyndinus, the prefect of the Orient, enjoyed the repu-
tation of an able, just, and severe governor. He col-
lected the public revenues with inflexible justice. In
the course of his ordinary administration, he threatened
one of the inhabitants of Antioch, already in prison,
with death, in case he should fail to discharge, within
a fixed term, a debt due to the imperial treasury. His
power was admitted, and his habitual attention to the
claims of the fisc gave public defaulters at Antioch no
hope of escaping with any punishment short of slavery,
which was civil death. The prisoner was married to a
beautiful woman, and the parties were united by the
warmest affection. The circumstances of their case,
and their situation in life, excited some attention. A
man of great wealth offered to pay the husband's debt,
on condition that he should obtain the favours of his
beautiful wife. The proposal excited the indignation
of the lady, but when it was communicated to her im-
prisoned husband, he thought life too valuable not to
be preserved by such a sacrifice; and his prayers had
more effect with his wife than the wealth or the solici-
tations of her admirer. The libertine, though wealthy,
proved to be mean and avaricious, and contrived to
cheat the lady with a bag filled with sand instead of
gold. The unfortunate wife, baffled in her hopes of
saving her husband, threw herself at the feet of the
Prefect Acyndinus, to whom she revealed the whole of
the disgraceful transaction. The prefect was deeply
moved by the evil effects of his severity. Astonished
at the variety of crimes which he had caused, he at-
tempted to render justice, by apportioning a punish-
ment to each of the culprits, suitable to the nature of
his offence. As the penalty of his own severity, he
condemned himself to pay the debt due to the imperial
A. D.
330-527.
180
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. treasury.
He sentenced the fraudulent seducer to
transfer to the injured lady the estate which had sup-
plied him with the wealth which he had so infamously
employed. The debtor was immediately released-he
appeared to be sufficiently punished by his imprison-
ment and shame.'
1
The severity of the revenue laws, and the arbitrary
power of the prefects in matters of finance, are well re-
presented in this anecdote. The injury inflicted on
society by a provincial administration so constituted
must have been incalculable. Even the justice and
disinterestedness of such a prefect as Acyndinus re-
quired to be called into action by extraordinary crimes,
and, after all, virtues such as his could afford no very
sure guarantee against oppression.
In spite of the great progress which Christianity
had made, there still existed a numerous body of pagans
among the higher ranks of the old aristocracy, who
maintained schools of philosophy, in which a species of
allegorical pantheism was taught. The pure morality
inculcated, and the honourable lives of the teachers in
these schools, enabled these philosophers to find votaries.
long after paganism might be considered virtually ex-
tinct as a national religion. While the pagans still
possessed a succession of distinguished literary charac-
ters, a considerable body of the Christians were begin-
ning to proclaim an open contempt of all learning
which was not contained in the Scriptures. This fact
is connected with the increased power of national feel-
ings in the provinces, and with the aversion of the
natives to the oppression of the Roman government and
the insolence of Greek officials. Literature was iden-
tified with Roman supremacy and Greek feelings. The
Greeks, having long been in possession of the privileges
of Roman citizens, and calling themselves Romans, now
1 Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, i. 414, and the authorities referred to.
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.
181
filled the greater part of the civil employments in the
East.
From the time of Constantine, the two great princi-
ples of law and religion began to exert a favourable
influence on Greek society, by their effect in moderat-
ing the despotic power of the imperial administration
in its ordinary communications with the people. They
became institutions in the State, having a sphere of
action independent of the arbitrary power of the em-
peror. The lawyers and the clergy acquired a fixed
position, based on their organisation as political bodies;
and thus the branches of government with which they
were connected were, in some degree, emancipated from
arbitrary changes, and obtained a systematic or consti-
tutional form. The dispensation of justice, though it re-
mained dependent on the executive government, was
placed in the hands of a distinct class; and as the law
required a long and laborious study, its administration
followed a steady and invariable course, which it was
difficult for any other branch of the executive to inter-
rupt. The lawyers and judges, formed in the same
school and guided by the same written rules, were
placed under the influence of a limited public opinion,
which at least insured a certain degree of self-respect,
supported by professional interests, but founded on
general principles of equity. The body of lawyers not
only obtained a complete control over the judicial pro-
ceedings of the tribunals, and restrained the injustice of
proconsuls and prefects, but they even assigned limits to
the wild despotism exercised by the earlier emperors. The
department of general legislation was likewise intrusted
to lawyers; and the good effects of this arrangement
are apparent, from the conformity of the decrees of the
worst emperors, after this period, with the principles of
justice.
The power of the clergy, originally resting on a more
A. D.
330-527.
182
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
popular and purer basis than that of the law, became
at last so great, that it suffered the inevitable corrup-
tion of all irresponsible authority intrusted to human-
ity. The power of the bishops almost equalled that
of the provincial governors, and was not under the
constant control of the imperial administration. To
gain such a position, intrigue, simony, and popular
sedition were often employed. Supported by the people,
a bishop ventured to resist the emperor himself; sup-
ported by the emperor and the people, he ventured
even to neglect the principles of Christianity. Theo-
philus, the patriarch of Alexandria, ordained the Pla-
tonic philosopher Synesius, bishop of Ptolemaïs, in
Cyrenaïca, when he was a recent and not orthodox
Christian; for, as a bishop, he refused to put away his
wife, and he declared that he neither believed in the
resurrection of the body nor in the eternity of punish-
ments.¹
In estimating the relative extent of the influence
exercised by law and religion on the social condition of
the Greeks, it must be remarked that Greek was the
language of the Eastern Church from the time of its
connection with the imperial administration; while,
unfortunately for the law, Latin continued to be the
language of legal business in the East, until after the
time of Justinian. This fact explains the compara-
tively trifling influence exercised by the legal class, in
establishing the supremacy of the Greek nation in the
Eastern Empire, and accounts also for the undue in-
fluence which the clergy were enabled to acquire in
civil affairs. Had the language of the law been that of
the people, the Eastern lawyers, supported by the muni-
cipal institutions and democratic feelings of the Greeks,
could hardly have failed, by combining with the church,
¹ Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, translated by Torrey,
ii. 702. Synesius, Epist. 95--105.
DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.
183
The
to form a systematic and constitutional barrier against
the arbitrary exercise of the imperial authority.
want of national institutions forming a portion of their
system of law, was a defect in the social condition of
the Greeks which they never supplied.
Slavery continued to exist in the same manner as in
earlier times; and the slave-trade formed the most
important branch of the commerce of the Roman em-
pire. It is true that the humanity of a philosophical
age, and the precepts of the Gospel, introduced a few
restraints on the most barbarous features of the power
possessed by the Romans over the lives and persons of
their slaves; still, freemen were sold as slaves by gov-
ernment if they failed to pay their taxes, and parents
were allowed to sell their own children. A new and
more systematic slavery than the old personal service
grew up in the rural districts, in consequence of the
fiscal arrangements of the empire. The public registers
showed the numbers of slaves employed in the cultiva-
tion of every farm
farm; and the proprietor was bound to
pay a certain tax for these slaves according to their em-
ployment. Even when the land was cultivated by free
peasants, the proprietor was responsible to the fisc for
their capitation-tax. As the interest of the government
and of the proprietor, therefore, coincided to restrain
the free labourer employed in agriculture from abandon-
ing the cultivation of the land, he was attached to the
soil, and gradually sank into the condition of the serf;
while, on the other hand, in the case of slaves employed
in farming, the government had an interest in prevent-
ing the proprietor from withdrawing their labour from
the cultivation of the soil: these slaves, therefore, rose
to the rank of serfs. The cultivators of the soil be-
came, for this reason, attached to it, and their slavery
ceased to be personal; they acquired rights, and pos-
sessed a definite station in society. This was the first
A. D.
330-527.
184
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. step made by mankind towards the abolition of sla-
very.¹
1
The double origin of serfs must be carefully observed,
in order to explain some apparently contradictory ex-
pressions of the Roman law. There is a law of Con-
stantius preserved in Justinian's code, which shows that
slaves were then attached to the soil, and could not be
separated from it. There is a law, also, of the Emperor
Anastasius, which proves that a freeman, who had cul-
tivated the property of another for thirty years, was
prohibited from quitting that property; but he remained
in other respects a freeman.2 The cultivator was called
by the Romans colonus, and might, consequently, be
either a slave or a freeman. His condition, however,
was soon so completely determined by special laws, that
its original constitution was lost.³
SECT. VIII. ATTEMPTS OF THE GOTHS TO ESTABLISH THEMSELVES
IN GREECE.
The first great immigration of the Goths to the
south of the Danube took place with the permission of
the emperor Valens; but as the Roman government
adopted no measures for insuring their tranquil settle-
ment in the country, these troublesome colonists were
soon converted into dangerous enemies. Being ill sup-
plied with provisions, finding the country unprotected,
and having been allowed to retain possession of their
¹ On the subject of ancient slavery, see Blair, Inquiry into the State of Slavery
amongst the Romans. Edin. 1833. De l'Abolition de l'Esclavage ancien en
Occident, par E. Biot; and Wallon, Histoire de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité.
3 vols.
2 Codex Just. "de Agric. et Cens." xi. 48, 2 and 19.
3 Some of the opinions of Savigny, in his profound essay, Ueber den Roem-
ischen Colonat (Abhand. Acad. von Berlin, 1822), seem to overlook this double
origin of the condition of serfs after the time of Constantine. The interests
of the revenue being against the free farmer, and in favour of the slave culti
vator, naturally rendered the law cruel to the one, and humane to the other.
Compare, Cod. Just. xi. 48, 4, 6, 7, 12, 18, 23, and Const. Justiniani, Justini et
Tiberii, vii. See infra, p. 241-242.
GOTHIC INVASIONS.
185
arms, they began to plunder Moesia, Thrace, and Mace-
donia, for subsistence. At last, emboldened by success,
they extended their incursions over the whole country,
from the walls of Constantinople to the borders of
Illyria. The Roman troops were defeated. The empe-
ror Valens, advancing inconsiderately in the confidence
of victory, was vanquished in the battle of Adrianople,
and perished A. D. 378. The massacre of a consider-
able number of Goths, retained in Asia as hostages and
mercenaries, roused the fury of their victorious country-
men, and gave an unusual degree of cruelty to the war
of devastation which they carried on for three years.
Theodosius the Great put an end to these disorders.
The Goths were still unable to resist the Roman troops
when properly conducted. Theodosius induced their
finest bodies of warriors to enter the imperial service,
and either destroyed the remaining bands, or compelled
them to escape beyond the Danube.
The depopulated state of the empire induced Theo-
dosius to establish colonies of Goths, whom he had
forced to submit, in Phrygia and Lydia. Thus the
Roman government began to replace the ancient
population of its provinces, which its exactions were
exterminating, by introducing new races of inhabit-
ants into its dominions. Theodosius granted peculiar
privileges to the dangerous foreigners whom he intro-
duced, and left these hordes of barbarians in possession
of their national institutions, merely on condition that
they should furnish a certain number of recruits for
the military service of the State.¹ When the native
population of the empire was gradually diminishing,
some suspicion must surely have been entertained that
this diminution was principally caused by the conduct
of the government; yet so deeply rooted was the
1 These colonies adopted the Greek language, and the Gotho-Greeks are fre-
quently mentioned by the Byzantine writers. Theophanis Ch. 323, edit. Par.
A. D.
330-527.
186
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. Opposition of interests between the government and
the governed, and so distrustful were the emperors of
their subjects, that they preferred confiding in foreign
mercenaries, to reducing the amount, and changing the
nature, of the fiscal contributions, though by doing
this they might have secured the support, and awaken-
ed the energy, of their native subjects.
The Roman despotism had left the people almost
without any political rights to defend, and with but
few public duties to perform; while the free inhabit-
ants deplored the decline of the agricultural popula-
tion, and lamented their own degeneracy, which in-
duced them to crowd into the towns. They either did
not perceive, or did not dare to proclaim, that these
evils were caused by the imperial administration, and
could only be remedied by a milder and more equit-
able system of government. In order to possess the
combination of moral and physical courage necessary
to defend their property and rights against foreign in-
vasion, civilised nations must feel convinced that they
have the power of securing that property and those
rights against all domestic injustice and arbitrary
oppression on the part of the sovereign.
1
The Goths had commenced their relations with the
Roman empire before the middle of the third century;
and during the period they had dwelt in the countries
adjoining the Roman provinces, the people had made
great progress in civilisation, and the chiefs in mili-
tary and political knowlege. From the time Aurelian
abandoned to them the province of Dacia beyond the
Danube, they became the lords of a fertile, cultivated,
and well-peopled country. As the great body of the
agricultural population had been left behind by the
Romans when they vacated the province, the Goths
found themselves the proprietors of lands, from which
1 Excerpta e Petri Pat. Hist. p. 124, edit. Bonn. A. D. 230.
GOTHIC INVASIONS.
187
they appear to have drawn a fixed revenue, leaving the
old inhabitants in the enjoyment of their estates. To
warriors of their simple habits of life, these revenues
were amply sufficient to enable them to spend their
time in hunting, to purchase arms and horses, and to
maintain a band of retainers trained to war.
The per-
sonal independence enjoyed by every Gothic warrior
who possessed a landed revenue, created a degree of
anarchy in the territories they subdued which was
everywhere more ruinous than the systematic oppres-
sion of Rome. Still in Dacia the Goths were enabled
to improve their arms and discipline, and to assume the
ideas and manners of a military and territorial aristo-
cracy. Though they remained always inferior to the
Romans in military science and civil arts, they were
their equals in bravery, and their superiors in honesty
and truth; so that the Goths were always received with
favour in the imperial service. It must not be for-
gotten, that no comparison ought to be established
between the Gothic contingents and the provincial
conscripts. The Gothic warriors were selected from a
race of landed gentry devoted exclusively to arms, and
which looked with contempt on all industrious occupa-
tions; while the native troops of the empire were taken
from the poorest peasantry, torn from their cottages,
and mingled with slaves and the dissolute classes of
the cities, who were induced to enlist from hunger or a
love of idleness. The number and importance of the
Gothic forces in the Roman armies during the reign of
Theodosius, enabled several of their commanders to
attain the highest rank; and among these officers,
Alaric was the most distinguished by his future
greatness.
1
The death of Theodosius threw the administration of
the Eastern Empire into the hands of Rufinus, the
1 Zosimus, v. 5.
A. D.
330-527.
188
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. minister of Arcadius; and that of the Western, into
those of Stilicho, the guardian of Honorius. The dis-
cordant elements which composed the Roman empire
began to reveal all their incongruities under these two
ministers. Rufinus was a civilian from Gaul; and
from his Roman habits and feelings, and western pre-
judices, disagreeable to the Greeks. Stilicho was of
barbarian descent, and consequently equally unaccept-
able to the aristocracy of Rome; but he was an able
and popular soldier, and had served with distinction
both in the East and in the West. As Stilicho was the
husband of Serena, the niece and adopted daughter of
Theodosius the Great, his alliance with the imperial
family gave him an unusual influence in the administra-
tion. The two ministers hated one another with all
the violence of aspiring ambition; and, unrestrained by
any feeling of patriotism, each was more intent on ruin-
ing his rival than on serving the State.
The greater
number of the officers in the Roman service, both
civil and military, were equally inclined to sacrifice
every public duty for the gratification of their avarice
or ambition.
At this time Alaric, partly from disgust at not
receiving all the preferment which he expected, and
partly in the hope of compelling the government of the
Eastern Empire to agree to his terms, quitted the im-
perial service and retired towards the frontiers, where
he assembled a force sufficiently large to enable him to
act independently of all authority. Availing himself of
the disputes between the ministers of the two emperors,
and perhaps instigated by Rufinus or Stilicho to aid
their intrigues, he established himself in the provinces
to the south of the Danube. In the year 395 he ad-
vanced to the walls of Constantinople; but the move-
ment was evidently a feint, as he must have known his
inability to attack a large and populous city defended
GOTHIC INVASIONS.
189
by a powerful garrison, and which even in ordinary
times received the greater part of its supplies by sea.
After this demonstration, Alaric marched into Thrace
and Macedonia, and extended his ravages into Thessaly.
Rufinus has been accused of assisting Alaric's invasion,
and his negotiations with him while in the vicinity of Con-
stantinople authorise the suspicion. When the Goth
found the northern provinces exhausted, he resolved to
invade Greece and Peloponnesus, which had long en-
joyed profound tranquillity. The cowardly behaviour
of Antiochus the proconsul of Achaia, and of Gerontius
the commander of the Roman troops, both friends of
Rufinus, was considered a confirmation of his treachery.
Thermopyla was left unguarded, and Alaric entered
Greece without encountering any resistance.
The ravages committed by Alaric's army have been
described in fearful terms; villages and towns were
burnt, the men were murdered, and the women and
children carried away to be sold as slaves by the
Goths. But even this invasion affords proofs that
Greece had recovered from the desolate condition in
which it had been seen by Pausanias. The walls of
Thebes had been rebuilt, and it was in such a state of
defence that Alaric could not venture to besiege it,
but hurried forward to Athens. He concluded a treaty
with the civil and military authorities, which enabled
him to enter that city without opposition; his success
was probably assisted by treacherous arrangements
with Rufinus, and by the treaty with the municipal au-
thorities, which secured the town from being plundered
by the Gothic soldiers; for he appears to have really
occupied Athens rather as a federate leader than as a
foreign conqueror. The tale recorded by Zosimus of
the Christian Alaric having been induced by the
apparition of the goddess Minerva to spare Athens, is
refuted by the direct testimony of other writers, who
A. D,
330-527.
190
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
1
CHAP. II. mention the capitulation of the city. The fact that
the depredations of Alaric hardly exceeded the ordinary
license of a rebellious general, is, at the same time,
perfectly established. The public buildings and monu-
ments of ancient splendour suffered no wanton de-
struction from his visit; but there can be no doubt
that Alaric and his troops levied heavy contributions
on the city and its inhabitants. Athens evidently
owed its good treatment to the condition of its popula-
tion, and perhaps to the strength of its walls, which
imposed some respect on the Goths; for the rest of
Attica did not escape the usual fate of the districts
through which the barbarians marched. The town of
Eleusis, and the great temple of Ceres, were plundered
and then destroyed. Whether this work of devastation
was caused by the Christian monks who attended the
Gothic host, and excited their bigoted Arian votaries
to avenge the cause of religion on the temples of the
pagans at Eleusis, because they had been compelled to
spare the shrines at Athens, or whether it was the
accidental effect of the eager desire of plunder, or of
the wanton love of destruction, among a disorderly
body of troops, is not very material. Bigoted monks,
avaricious officers, and disorderly soldiers, were nume-
rous in Alaric's band.
Gerontius, who had abandoned the pass of Thermo-
pylæ, took no measures to defend the Isthmus of Cor-
inth, or the difficult passes of Mount Geranion, so that
Alaric marched unopposed into the Peloponnesus, and,
in a short time, captured almost every city in it with-
out meeting with any resistance. Corinth, Argos, and
Sparta, were all plundered by the Goths. The security
in which Greece had long remained, and the policy of
1 The manner in which Zosimus passes over the destruction of Eleusis by
Alaric, saying expressly that he committed no ravages in Attica, deprives his
narrative of all credit.-i. 5. Hieronymi Ep. 60, tom. 1, p. 343. Philostorgius,
xii. 2. Claudianus, in Rufin. ii. 191. Synes. Epist. 136.
GOTHIC INVASIONS.
191
the government, which discouraged their independent
institutions, had conspired to leave the province without
protection, and the people without arms.¹ The facility
which Alaric met with in effecting his conquest, and
his views, which were directed to obtain an establish-
ment in the empire as an imperial officer or feudatory
governor, rendered the conduct of his army not that
of avowed enemies. Yet it often happened that they
laid waste everything in the line of their march, burnt
villages, and massacred the inhabitants.2
3
Alaric passed the winter in the Peloponnesus with-
out encountering any opposition from the people; yet
many of the Greek cities still kept a body of municipal
police, which might surely have taken the field, had
the imperial officers performed their duty, and endea-
voured to organise a regular resistance in the country
districts. The moderation of the Goth, and the treason
of the Roman governor, seem both attested by this
circumstance. The government of the Eastern Empire
had fallen into such disorder at the commencement of
the reign of Arcadius, that even after Rufinus had been
assassinated by the army, the new ministers of the
empire gave themselves very little concern about the
fate of Greece. Honorius had a more able, active, and
ambitious minister in Stilicho, and he determined to
punish the Goths for their audacity in daring to estab-
lish themselves in the empire without the imperial au-
thority. Stilicho had attempted to save Thessaly in
the preceding year, but had been compelled to return
to Italy, after he had reached Thessalonica, by an ex-
press order of the emperor Arcadius, or rather of his
minister Rufinus. In the spring of the year 396, he
1 Zosimus (vi. 254, edit. Bonn) has a remarkable passage indicating the de-
fenceless condition to which the Roman government had reduced the Greeks:
“ Καὶ αὐτὴ δὲ ἡ Σπάρτα συναπήγετο τῇ κοινῇ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀλώσει, μήτε ὅπλοις ἔτι
μήτε ἀνδράσι μαχίμοις τετειχισμένη διὰ τὴν Ρωμαίων πλεονεξίαν.”
2 Eunapius, in Prisc. i. 17, edit. Boissonade.
Procopius, De Edificiis, iv. 2.
A. D.
330-527.
192
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. assembled a fleet at Ravenna, and transported his army
directly to Corinth, which the Goths do not appear to
have garrisoned; and where, probably, the Roman gov-
ernor still resided. Stilicho's army, aided by the in-
habitants, soon cleared the open country of the Gothic
bands, and Alaric drew together the remains of his
diminished army in the elevated plain of Mount
Pholoe, which has since served as a point of retreat
for the northern invaders of Greece.1 Stilicho con-
tented himself with occupying the passes with his
army; but his carelessness, or the relaxed discipline
of his troops, soon afforded the watchful Alaric an
opportunity of escaping with his army, of carrying off
all the plunder which they had collected, and, by forced
marches, of gaining the Isthmus of Corinth.2
Alaric succeeded in conducting his army into Epirus,
where he disposed his forces to govern and plunder that
province, as he had expected to rule Peloponnesus.
Stilicho was supposed to have winked at his proceed-
ings, in order to render his own services indispensable
by leaving a dangerous enemy in the heart of the
Eastern Empire; but the truth appears to be, that
Alaric availed himself so ably of the jealousy with
which the court of Constantinople viewed the pro-
ceedings of Stilicho, as to negotiate a treaty, by which
he was received into the Roman service, and that he
really entered Epirus as a general of Arcadius. Stili-
cho was again ordered to retire from the Eastern Em-
pire, and he obeyed rather than commence a civil war
by pursuing Alaric. The conduct of the Gothic troops
in Epirus was, perhaps, quite as orderly as that of the
Roman legionaries; so that Alaric was probably wel-
¹ The Albanian colony of Lalla, composed of the remains of the Albanian
troops who ravaged the Morea after the defeat of the Russian invasion in 1770,
and who retired to Mount Pholoe when defeated by Hassan Pasha, at Tripolitza,
in 1779.
Zosimus, v. 7, 26. Clinton, Fasti Romani.
GOTHIC INVASIONS.
193
2
1
comed as a protector when he obtained the appoint-
ment of Commander-in-chief of the imperial forces
in Eastern Illyricum, which he held for four years.'
During this time he prepared his troops to seek his
fortune in the Western Empire. The military com-
manders, whether Roman or barbarian, were equally
indifferent to the fate of the people whom they were
employed to defend; and the Greeks appear to have
suffered equal oppression from the armies of Stilicho
and Alaric.
The condition of the European Greeks underwent a
great change for the worse, in consequence of this un-
fortunate plundering expedition of the Goths. The
destruction of their property, and the loss of their
slaves, were so great, that the evil could only have
been slowly repaired under the best government, and
with perfect security of their possessions. In the
miserable condition to which the Eastern Empire was
reduced, this was hopeless; and a long period elapsed
before the mass of the population of Greece again at-
tained the prosperous condition in which Alaric had
found it; nor were some of the cities which he de-
stroyed ever rebuilt. The ruin of roads, aqueducts,
cisterns, and public buildings, erected by the accu-
mulation of capital in prosperous and enterprising
ages, was a loss which could never be repaired by
a diminished and impoverished population. History
generally preserves but few traces of the devastations
which affect only the people; but the sudden misery
inflicted on Greece was so great, when contrasted with
her previous tranquillity, that testimonies of her suf-
ferings are to be found in the laws of the empire.
Her condition excited the compassion of the govern-
ment during the reign of Theodosius II. There
1
¹ Greece formed a part of Eastern Illyricum.
2 Claudianus, De Bell. Gil. v. 535.
N
A. D.
330-527.
194
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. exists a law which exempts the cities of Illyricum
from the charge of contributing towards the expenses
of the public spectacles at Constantinople, in conse-
quence of the sufferings which the ravages of the
Goths, and the oppressive administration of Alaric,
had inflicted on the inhabitants. There is another law
which proves that many estates were without owners,
in consequence of the depopulation caused by the Gothic
invasions; and a third law relieves Greece from two-
thirds of the ordinary contributions to government, in
consequence of the poverty to which the inhabitants
were reduced.¹
This unfortunate period is as remarkable for the de-
vastations committed by the Huns in Asia, as for those
of the Goths in Europe, and marks the commencement
of the rapid decrease of the Greek race, and of the
decline of Greek civilisation throughout the empire.
While Alaric was laying waste the provinces of Euro-
pean Greece, an army of Huns from the banks of the
Tanais penetrated through Armenia into Cappadocia,
and extended their ravages over Syria, Cilicia, and
Mesopotamia. Antioch, at last, resisted their assaults,
and arrested their progress; but they took many Greek
cities of importance, and inflicted an incalculable injury
on the population of the provinces which they entered.
In a few months they retreated to their seats on the
Palus Mæotis, having contributed much to accelerate
the ruin of the richest and most populous portion of
the civilised world.2
1 Cod. Theodos. xv. 5, 5; x. viii. 5; xi. 1. 33.
2 Philostorgius, ix. 8. Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, v. 101. Ammianus
Marcellinus (xiv. 6 ; xxviii. 5) indicates the depopulation of the empire.
GREECE STOPS THE BARBARIANS.
195
SECT. IX.-THE GREEKS ARRESTED THE CONQUESTS OF THE
NORTHERN BARBARIANS.
From the time of Alaric's ravages in the Grecian
provinces, until the accession of Justinian, the govern-
ment of the Eastern Empire assumed more and more
that administrative character which it retained until
the united forces of the Crusaders and Venetians de-
stroyed it in the year 1204. A feeling that the inte-
rests of the emperor and his subjects were identical,
began to become prevalent throughout the Greek popu-
lation. This feeling was greatly strengthened by the
attention which the government paid to improving the
civil condition of its subjects. The judicial and finan-
cial administration received, during this period, a greater
degree of power, as well as a more bureaucratic organi-
sation; and the whole strength of the government no
longer reposed on the military establishments. Rebel-
lions of the army became of rarer occurrence, and usually
originated in civil intrigues, or the discontent of unre-
warded mercenaries. A slight glance at the history of
the Eastern Empire is sufficient to show that the court
of Constantinople possessed a degree of authority over
its most powerful officers, and a direct connection with
its distant provinces, which had not previously existed
in the Roman empire.
Still the successful resistance which the Eastern Em-
pire offered to the establishment of the northern nations.
within its limits, must be attributed to the density of
the native population, to the number of the walled
towns, and to its geographical configuration, rather
than to the spirit of the Greeks, to the military force
of the legions, or to any general measures of improve-
ment adopted by the imperial government. Even
where most successful, it was a passive rather than an
A. D.
330-527.
196
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. active resistance. The sea which separated the Euro-
pean and Asiatic provinces opposed physical difficulties
to invaders, while it afforded great facilities for defence,
retreat, and renewed attack to the Roman forces, as
long as they could maintain a naval superiority. These
circumstances unfortunately increased the power of the
central administration to oppress the people, as well as
to defend them against foreign invaders, and allowed
the emperors to persist in the system of fiscal rapacity
which constantly threatened to annihilate a large por-
tion of the wealth from which a considerable mass of
the citizens derived their subsistence. At the very
moment when the evils of the system became so ap-
parent as to hold out some hope of reform, the fiscal
exigencies of the government were increased by money
becoming an important element in war, since it was
necessary to hire armies as well as to provide faci-
lities of transport, and means of concentration, in cases
of danger, defeat, or victory; so that it began to be a
financial calculation in many cases, whether it was
more prudent to defend or to ransom a province. The
great distance of the various frontiers, though it in-
creased the difficulty of preventing every hostile in-
cursion, hindered any rebellious general from uniting
under his command the whole forces of the empire.
The control which the government was thus enabled
to exercise over all its military officers, secured a re-
gular system of discipline, by centralising the services
of equipping, provisioning, and paying the soldiers
and the direct connection between the troops and the
government could no longer be counteracted by the
personal influence which a general might acquire, in
consequence of a victorious campaign. The
The power of
the emperors over the army, and the complete separa-
tion which existed in the social condition of the citizen
and the soldier, rendered any popular movement in
;
GREECE STOPS THE BARBARIANS.
197
favour of reform hopeless. A successful rebellion
could only have created a new military power, it
could not have united the interests of the military
with those of the people, unless changes had been
effected which were too great to be attempted by any
individual legislator, and too extensive to be accom-
plished during one generation. The subjects of the
empire were also composed of so many nations, differ-
ing in language, usages, and civilisation, that unity
of measures on the part of the people was impossible,
while no single province could expect to obtain redress
of its own grievances by an appeal to arms.
The age was one of war and conquest; yet, with all
the aspirations and passions of a despotic and military
State, the Eastern Empire was, by its financial position,
compelled to act on the defensive, and to devote all its
attention to rendering the military subordinate to the
civil power, in order to save the empire from being
eaten up by its own defenders. Its measures were at
last successful; the northern invaders were repulsed,
the army was rendered obedient, and the Greek nation
was saved from the fate of the Romans. The army
became gradually attached to the source of
pay and
honour; and it was rather from a general feature of
all despotic governments, than from any peculiarity in
the Eastern Empire, that the soldiery frequently appear
devoted to the imperial power, but perfectly indifferent
to the person of the emperor. The condition of the
Western Empire requires to be contrasted with that of
the Eastern, in order to appreciate the danger of the
crisis through which favourable circumstances, and
some prudence, carried the government of Constanti-
nople. Yet, even in the West, in spite of all the dis-
organisation of the government, the empire suffered
more from the misconduct of the Roman officers than
from the strength of its assailants. Even Genseric
A. D.
330-527.
198
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. could hardly have penetrated into Africa unless he
had been invited by Boniface, and assisted by his re-
bellion; while the imperial officers in Britain, Gaul,
and Spain, who, towards the end of the reign of Hon-
orius, assumed the imperial title, laid those provinces
open to the incursions of the barbarians. The govern-
ment of the Western Empire was really destroyed, the
frame of political society was broken in pieces, and the
provinces depopulated, some time before its final con-
quest had been achieved by foreigners. The Roman
principle of aristocratic rule was unable to supply that
bond of union which the national organisation of the
Greeks, aided by the influence of the established church,
furnished in the East.
It has been already observed that the geographical
features of the Eastern Empire exercised an important
influence on its fate. Both in Europe and Asia ex-
tensive provinces are bounded or divided by chains.
of mountains which terminate on the shores of the
Adriatic, the Black Sea, or the Mediterranean. These
mountain-ranges compel all invaders to advance by
certain well-known roads and passes, along which the
means of subsistence for large armies can only be col-
lected by foresight and prudent arrangements. The
ordinary communication by land between neighbour-
ing provinces is frequently tedious and difficult; and
the inhabitants of many mountain districts retained
their national character, institutions, and language,
almost unaltered during the whole period of the Roman
sway. In these provinces the population was active
in resisting every foreign invader; and the conviction
that their mountains afforded them an impregnable
fortress insured the success of their efforts. Thus the
feelings and prejudices of the portion of the inhabi-
tants of the empire which had been long opposed to
the Roman government, now operated powerfully to
GREECE STOPS THE BARBARIANS.
199
1
support the imperial administration. These circum-
stances, and some others which acquired strength as
the general civilisation of the empire declined, con-
curred to augment the importance of the native popu-
lation existing in the different provinces of the Eastern
Empire, and prevented the Greeks from acquiring a
moral, as well as a political, ascendancy in the distant
provinces. In Europe, the Thracians distinguished
themselves by their hardihood and military propensi-
ties. In Asia, the Pamphylians, having obtained arms
to defend themselves against the brigands who began
to infest the provinces in large bands, employed them
with success in opposing the Goths. The Isaurians,
who had always retained possession of their arms, be-
gan to occupy a place in the history of the empire,
which they acquired by their independent spirit and
warlike character. The Armenians, the Syrians, and
the Egyptians, all began to engage in a rivalry with
the Greeks, and even contested their superiority in
literary and ecclesiastical knowledge. These circum-
stances exercised considerable influence in preventing
the court of Constantinople from identifying itself
with the Greek people, and enabled the Eastern em-
perors to cling to the maxims and pride of ancient
Rome as the ground of their sovereignty over so many
various races of mankind.
The wealth of the Eastern Empire was a principal
means of its defence against the barbarians. While it
invited their invasions, it furnished the means of re-
pulsing their attacks or of bribing their forbearance.
It was usefully employed in securing the retreat of
those bodies who, after having broken through the
Roman lines of defence, found themselves unable to
seize any fortified post, or to extend the circle of their
ravages. Rather than run the risk of engaging with
1 Zosimus, v. 15, 16, p. 265, edit. Bonn.
A. D.
330-527.
200
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. the Roman troops, by delaying their march for the
purpose of plundering the open country, they were
often content to retire without ravaging the district,
on receiving a sum of money and a supply of pro-
visions. These sums were generally so inconsiderable,
that it would have been the height of folly in the
government to refuse to pay them, and thus expose its
subjects to ruin and slavery; but as it was evident
that the success of the barbarians would invite new
invasions, it is surprising that the imperial administra-
tion should not have taken better measures to place
the inhabitants of the exposed districts in a condition
to defend themselves, and thus secure the treasury
against a repetition of this ignominious expenditure.
But the jealousy with which the Roman government
regarded its own subjects was the natural consequence
of the oppression with which it ruled them. No danger
seemed so great as that of intrusting the Greek popula-
tion with arms.
The commerce of the Eastern Empire, and the gold
and silver mines of Thrace and Pontus, still furnished
abundant supplies of the precious metals. We know
that the mint of Constantinople was always rich in
gold, for its gold coinage circulated through western
and northern Europe for several centuries after the de-
struction of the Western Empire. The proportion in the
value of gold to silver, which in the time of Herodotus
was as one to thirteen, was, after a lapse of eight cen-
turies, in the time of Arcadius and Honorius, as one to
fourteen and two fifths. The commerce of Constanti-
nople embraced, at this time, almost the trade of the
world. The manufactories of the East supplied western
Europe with many articles of daily use, and the mer-
chants carried an extensive transport trade with central
Asia. By means of the Red Sea, the productions of
¹ Herodotus, iii. 95. Cod. Theod. xiii. 2, 1. A. D. 397.
GREECE STOPS THE BARBARIANS.
201
southern Africa and India were collected and distri-
buted among numerous nations who inhabited the
shores within and without the Straits of Babelmandeb
---countries which were then far richer, more populous,
and in a much higher state of civilisation than at
present. The precious metals, which were becoming
rare in Europe, from the stagnation of trade, and the
circumscribed exchanges which take place in a rude
society, were still kept in active circulation by the
various wants of the merchants who brought their
commodities from far distant lands. The island of
Jotaba, which was a free city in the Red Sea, became
a mercantile position of great importance; and from
the title of the collectors of the imperial customs which
were exacted in its port, the Eastern emperors must
have levied a duty of ten per cent on all the merchan-
dise destined for the Roman empire. This island was
occupied by the Arabs for some time, but returned
under the power of the Eastern Empire during the reign
of Anastasius.2
1
As the Eastern Empire generally maintained a decided
naval superiority over its enemies, the commerce of the
empire seldom suffered any serious interruption. The
pirates who infested the Hellespont about the year 438,
and the Vandals under Genseric who ravaged the
coasts of Greece in 466 and 475, were more dreaded
by the people on account of their cruelty than by the
government or the merchants in consequence of their
success, which was never great.3 In the general dis-
order which reigned over the whole of western Europe,
the only depots for merchandise that could be formed
in security were in the Eastern Empire. The emperors
saw the importance of this commercial influence, and
1 Malchi, Hist. p. 232, edit. Bonn. Axarnλóyor.
2 Theophanes, Chron. p. 121, edit. Paris.
8 Procopius, De Bello Vand. 1, 5. Malchus, p. 260, edit. Bonn. Clinton's
Fasti Romani.
A. D.
330-527.
202
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. made considerable exertions to support the naval su-
periority of the empire. Theodosius II. assembled a
fleet of eleven hundred transports when he proposed
to attack the Vandals in Africa. The armament of
Leo the Great, for the same purpose, was on a still
larger scale, and formed one of the greatest naval
forces ever assembled by the Roman power."
SECT. X,-DECLINING CONDITION OF THE GREEK POPULATION IN
THE EUROPEAN PROVINCES OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE.
The ravages inflicted by the northern nations on the
frontier provinces, during the century which elapsed
from the defeat of Valens to the immigration of the
Ostrogoths into Italy, were so continual that the
agricultural population was almost destroyed in the
countries immediately to the south of the Danube, and
the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia were greatly
diminished in number, and began to lose the use of their
ancient languages from their admixture with foreign
races. The declining trade caused by decreased con-
sumption, poverty, and insecurity of property, also
lowered the scale of civilisation among the whole Greek
people. One tribe of barbarians followed another, ast
long as anything was left to plunder. The Euns, under
Attila, laid waste the provinces to the south of the
Danube for about five years, and were only induced to
retreat, on receiving from the emperor six thousand
pounds of gold, and the promise of an annual payment
of two thousand. The Ostrogoths, after obtaining an
establishment to the south of the Danube, as allies of
the empire, and receiving an annual subsidy from the
Emperor Marcian to guard the frontiers, availed them-
3
1 A. D. 441. Theophanes, Chron. 87.
2 A. D. 468. See below, page 214.
3 A. D. 412 to 447. Equal to £288,000 and £96,000.
DECLINE OF GREECE.
203
selves of every pretext to plunder Moesia, Macedonia,
Thrace, and Thessaly. Their king, Theodoric, proved
by far the most dangerous enemy that the Eastern Em-
pire had yet encountered. Educated at the court of
Constantinople as a hostage, his ten years' residence
enabled him to acquire a complete knowledge of the
languages, the politics, and the administration of the
imperial government.¹ Though he inherited an inde-
pendent sovereignty over the Goths in Pannonia, he
found that country so exhausted by the oppression of
his countrymen, and by the ravages of other barbarians,
that the whole nation of the Ostrogoths was compelled
to emigrate, and Theodoric became a military adven-
turer in the Roman service, and acted as an ally, a
mercenary, or an enemy, according as circumstances
appeared to render the assumption of these different
characters most conducive to his own aggrandisement.
It would throw little additional light on the state of
the Greeks, to trace minutely the records of Theodoric's
quarrels with the imperial court, or to narrate, in detail,
the ravages committed by him, or by another Gothic
mercenary of the same name, in the provinces, from the
shores of the Black Sea to those of the Adriatic.
plundering expeditions were not finally terminated until
Theodoric quitted the Eastern Empire to conquer Italy,
and found the Ostrogothic monarchy, by which he
obtained the title of the Great.¹
These
It was certainly no imaginary feeling of respect which
prevented Alaric, Genseric, Attila, and Theodoric, from
attempting the conquest of Constantinople. If they had
thought the task as easy as the subjugation of Rome,
there can be no doubt that the Eastern Empire would
have been as fiercely assailed as the Western, and new
Rome would have shared the fate of the world's an-
cient mistress. These warriors could only have been
1 A.D. 461 to 471.
2 A.D. 489.
A. D.
330-527.
204
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. restrained by the great difficulties which the undertaking
presented, and by the conviction that they would meet
with a far more determined resistance on the part of
the inhabitants, than the corrupt condition of the im-
perial court, and the disordered state of the public
administration, appeared at first sight to promise. Their
experience in civil and military affairs revealed to them
the existence of an inherent strength in the population
of the Eastern Empire, and a multiplicity of resources
which their attacks might call into action but could not
overcome. Casual encounters often showed that the
people were neither destitute of courage nor military
spirit, when circumstances favoured their display. Attila
himself, the terror both of Goths and Romans-the
Scourge of God-was defeated before the town of Ase-
mous, a frontier fortress of Illyria. Though he regarded
its conquest as a matter of the greatest importance to
his plans, the inhabitants baffled all his attempts, and
set his power at defiance.¹ Genseric was defeated by
the inhabitants of the little town of Tænarus in Laconia.2
Theodoric did not venture to attack Thessalonica, even
at a time when the inhabitants, enraged at the neglect
of the imperial government, drove out the officers of
the emperor, overthrew his statues, and prepared to
defend themselves against the barbarians with their own
unassisted resources.3 There is another remarkable
example of the independent spirit of the Greek people,
which saved their property from ruin, in the case of
Heraclea, a city of Macedonia. The inhabitants, in the
moment of danger, placed their bishop at the head of
the civil government, and intrusted him with power to
treat with Theodoric, who, on observing their prepar-
ations for defence, felt satisfied that it would be wiser
1 Priscus, p. 143, edit. Bonn. Gibbon considers this to be the same place
whose privilege of maintaining a native garrison is mentioned by Theophylactus,
vii. c. 3. Gibbon. c. xlvi. note 36.
2 Procopius, De Bello Vand. i. 22.
³ Malchus, 255, edit. Bonn.
IMPROVEMENT.
205
to retire on receiving a supply of provisions for his army,
than venture on plundering the country. Many other
instances might be adduced to prove that the hordes
of the northern barbarians were in reality not suffi-
ciently numerous to overcome a determined resistance
on the part of the Greek nation, and that the principal
cause of their success within the Roman territories was
the vicious nature of the Roman government.
Theodoric succeeded, during the year 479, in surpris-
ing Epidamnus by treachery; and the alarm which this
conquest caused at the court of Constantinople shows
that the government was not blind to the importance
of preventing any foreign power from acquiring a per-
manent dominion over a Greek city. The emperor
Zeno offered to cede to the Goths the extensive province
of Dardania, which was then almost destitute of inhab-
itants, in order to induce Theodoric to quit Epidamnus.
That city, the emperor declared, constituted a part of
the well-peopled provinces of the empire, and it was
therefore in vain for Theodoric to expect that he could
keep possession of it. This remarkable observation
shows that the desolation of the northern provinces was
now beginning to compel the government of the.Eastern
Empire to regard the countries inhabited by the Greeks,
which were still comparatively populous, as forming the
national territory of the Roman empire in Europe.
1
A. D.
330-527.
SECT. XI.-IMPROVEMENT IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE, FROM THE
DEATH OF ARCADIUS TO THE ACCESSION OF JUSTINIAN.
2
From the death of Arcadius to the accession of
Justinian, during a period of one hundred and twenty
years, the empire of the East was governed by six
sovereigns of very different characters, whose reigns
have been generally viewed through the medium of
1
Malchus, 254, edit. Bonn.
2
A. D. 408 to 527.
206
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
1
CHAP. II. religious prejudices; yet, in spite of the dissimilarity
of their personal conduct, the general policy of their
government is characterised by strong features of re-
semblance. The power of the emperor was never more
unlimited, but it was never more systematically ex-
ercised. The administration of the empire, and of the
imperial household, were equally regarded as a part of
the sovereign's private estate, while the lives and
fortunes of his subjects were considered as a portion of
the property of which he was the master. The absolute
power of the emperor was now controlled by the danger
of foreign invasions, and by the power of the church.
The oppressed could seek refuge with the barbarians, and
the persecuted might find the means of opposing the
government by the power of the orthodox clergy, who
were strong in the support of a great part of the popu-
lation. The fear of divisions in the Church itself, which
was now intimately connected with the State, served
also in some degree as a restraint on the arbitrary con-
duct of the emperor. The interest of the sovereign
became thus identified with the sympathies of the
majority of his subjects; yet the difficulty of deciding
what policy the emperor ought to follow in the eccle-
siastical disputes of the heretics and the orthodox, was
so great, as at times to give an appearance of doubt
and indecision to the religious opinions of several
emperors.
The decline of the Roman power had created an
eager desire to remedy the disorders which had brought
the empire to the brink of destruction. Most of the
provinces of the West were inhabited by mixed races
without union; the power of the military commanders
was beyond the control of public opinion; and neither
the emperor, the senate, nor the higher clergy, were
1 Cod. Theod. ix. 14, 3-" Nam et ipsi pars corporis nostri sunt." Cod. Just.
ix. 8, 5.
IMPROVEMENT.
207
1
directly connected with the body of the people. In
the East, the opinion of the people possessed some
authority, and it was consequently studied and treated
with greater deference. The importance of enforcing
the impartial administration of justice was so deeply
felt by the government, that the emperors themselves
attempted to restrict the application of their legislative
power in individual and isolated cases. At a later
period the Emperor Anastasius ordered the judges to
pay no attention to any private rescript, if it should be
found contrary to the received laws of the empire, or
to the public good; in such cases, he commanded the
judges to follow the established laws. The senate of
Constantinople possessed great authority in controlling
the general administration, and the dependent position
of its members prevented that authority from being
regarded with jealousy. The permanent existence of
this body enabled it to establish fixed maxims of pol-
icy, and to render these maxims the grounds of the
ordinary decisions of government. By this means a
systematic administration was firmly consolidated, in
some degree under the influence of public opinion; and
its steady and permanent regulations became a powerful
check on the temporary and fluctuating views of the
sovereign.
Theodosius II. succeeded his father Arcadius at the
age of eight; and he governed the empire for forty-
two years, during which he left the care of the pub-
lic administration very much in the hands of others.
His sister Pulcheria, though only two years older than
her brother, exercised great influence over his education ;
and she seems, in all her actions, to have been guided
by sentiments of philanthropy as well as piety. She
taught him to perform the ceremonial portion of his
imperial duties with grace and dignity, but she could
1 Cod. Just. i. 22, 6.
A, D.
330-527.
208
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. not teach him, perhaps he was incapable of learning,
how to act and think as became a Roman emperor. At
the age of fifteen Pulcheria received the rank of
Augusta, and assumed the direction of public affairs for
her brother. Theodosius was naturally mild, humane,
and devout. Though he possessed some manly per-
sonal accomplishments, his mind and character were
deficient in strength. He cultivated the arts of writing
and painting with such success as to render his skill in
the illumination of manuscripts his most remarkable
personal distinction. His Greek subjects, mingling
kindness with contempt, bestowed on him the name of
Kalligraphos. His incapacity for business was so great,
that he is hardly accused of having augmented the
misfortunes of his reign by his own acts. A spirit of
reform, and a desire of improvement, had penetrated
into the imperial administration; and his reign was
distinguished by many internal changes for the better.
Among these, the publication of the Theodosian code,
and the establishment of the university of Constanti-
nople, were the most important. The Theodosian code
afforded the people the means of arraigning the conduct
of their rulers before fixed principles of law, and the
university of Constantinople established the influence
of Greek literature, and gave the Greek language an
official position in the Eastern Empire. The reign of
Theodosius was also distinguished by two great re-
missions of arrears of taxation. By these concessions
the greatest possible boon was conferred on the people,
for they extinguished all claim for unpaid taxation
over a period of sixty years. The weakness of the
emperor, by throwing the direction of public business
into the hands of the senate and the ministers, for a
2
1
1 Cod. Theod. xiv. 9, 3. Cod. Just. xi. 18, 1. See Infra, p, 228.
2 The first remission was in 414, for forty years ending in 408. The second
in 443, for twenty years ending in 428. Cod. Theod. xi. 28, 9, 16, 17.
IMPROVEMENT.
209
long period consolidated that systematic administration
which characterises the government of his successors.
He was the first of the emperors who was more a Greek
than a Roman in his feelings and tastes; but his in-
activity prevented his private character from exercis-
ing much influence on his public administration.
In the long series of eight centuries which elapsed
from the final establishment of the Eastern Empire, at
the accession of Arcadius, to its destruction by the
Crusaders, no Athenian citizen gained a place of honour
in the annals of the empire. The schools of Athens
were fruitful in pedants, but they failed to produce true
men. In ancient times, it was observed that those who
were trained as athletes were not distinguished as
soldiers; and modern times confirm the testimony
afforded by the history of the Eastern Empire, that pro-
fessors of universities, and teachers even of political
philosophy, make bad statesmen. But though the men
of Athens had degenerated into literary triflers, the
women upheld the fame of the city of Minerva. Two
Athenian beauties, Eudocia and Irene, are among the
most celebrated empresses who occupied the throne of
Constantinople. The eventful life of Eudocia, the wife
of Theodosius II., does not require to borrow romantic
incidents from Eastern tales; it only asks for genius in
the narrator to unfold a rich web of romance. Some
circumstances in her history deserve notice, even in
this volume, as they throw light incidentally on the
state of society among the Greeks.
The beautiful Eudocia was the daughter of an
Athenian philosopher, Leontios, who still sacrificed
to the heathen divinities. Her heathen name was
Athenais. She received a classical education, while
she acquired the elegant accomplishments of that aris-
tocratic society which had cultivated the amenities of
life from the time of Plato, who made use of carpets in
A. D.
330-527.
210
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. his rooms, and allowed ladies to attend his lectures.¹
Her extraordinary talents induced her father to give
her a careful literary and philosophical education. All
her teachers were gratified with her progress. Her
native accent charmed the inhabitants of Constanti-
nople, accustomed to pure Attic Greek by the elo-
quence of Chrysostom; and she also spoke Latin with.
the graceful dignity of a Roman lady. The only proof
of rustic simplicity which her biography enables us to
trace in Athenian manners, is the fact that her father,
who was a man of wealth as well as a philosopher, be-
lieved that her beauty, virtue, and accomplishments,
would obtain her a suitable marriage without any
dowry. He left his whole fortune to his son, and the
consequence was that the beautiful Athenais, unable to
find a husband among the provincial nobles who visited
Athens, was compelled to try her fortune at the court
of Constantinople, under the patronage of Pulcheria, in
the semi-menial position which we now term a maid of
honour. Pulcheria was then only fifteen years old, and
Eudocia was probably twenty. The young Augusta
was soon gratified by the conversion of her beautiful
heathen protegée to Christianity; but time passed on,
and the courtiers of Constantinople showed no better
taste in matrimony than the provincial decurions. The
dowerless Eudocia remained unmarried, until Pulcheria
persuaded her docile brother to fall in love with the
fair Athenian. At the ripe age of twenty-seven, she
became the wife of Theodosius II., who was twenty,
and the pagans might then boast that Leontios had
acted as a seer, not as a pedant, in leaving her without
a dowry.
2
2
Twenty years after her marriage, Eudocia was accused
1 Diogenes Laertius. Diogenes, vi. 2, 26. Plato, iii. xxxi. sect. 46.
A. D. 414. Eudocia was married in 421, became Augusta in 423, and was
exiled to Jerusalem in 444. - Clinton, Fasti Romani; Tables and Appendix,
p. 136.
IMPROVEMENT.
211
of a criminal passion for Paulinos, a handsome officer
of the court. At the age of fifty the blood is usually
tame, and waits upon the judgment. We are also led
to suppose that Paulinos, whom one of the chroniclers
tells us Eudocia loved because he was very learned and
very handsome, had also fallen into the sere and yellow
leaf, for the unlawful attachment of the empress was
revealed by his being laid up with the gout. The story
runs thus. As the emperor Theodosius was going to
church on the feast of Epiphany, a poor man presented
him with a Phrygian apple of extraordinary size. The
emperor and all the senate stopped and admired the
monstrous apple, and Theodosius made his treasurer
pay the poor man 150 gold byzants. The apple was
sent immediately to Eudocia, who lost no time in for-
warding it to the constant object of her thoughts, the
gouty Paulinos. He, with less of devoted affection than
might have been expected considering the rank and
circumstances of the donor, despatched it as a present
to the emperor, who, on his return from church, found
his costly Phrygian apple ready to welcome him a
second time. Theodosius not being satisfied with the
manner in which his wife had treated his present, asked
her what she had done with it; and Eudocia, whose fifty
years had not diminished her appetite for fruit in a
forenoon, replied with delightful simplicity, that she
had eaten the monster. This falsehood awakened green-
eyed jealousy in the heart of Theodosius. Perhaps the
Kalligraphos, on his way home from church, had con-
templated adorning the initial letter of a manuscript
with a miniature of Eudocia holding the enormous
apple in her hand. A scene of course followed; the
apple was produced; the emperor was eloquent in his
reproaches, the empress equally eloquent in her tears,
as may be found better expressed in similar cases in
modern novels than in ancient histories. The result was
A. D.
330-527.
212
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. that the handsome man with the gout was banished,
and shortly after put to death. The empress was sent
into exile with becoming pomp, under the pretext of
making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she displayed
her learning by paraphrasing several portions of Scrip-
ture in heroic verses. Gibbon very justly observes that
this celebrated story of the apple is fit only for the
Arabian Nights, where something not very unlike it
may be found. His opinion is doubly valuable, from
the disposition he generally shows to credit similar
tales of scandal, as in the case of the secret history of
Procopius, to which he ascribes more authority than it
deserves.¹ Eudocia on her deathbed declared that the
reports of her criminal attachment to Paulinos were
false. They must have been very prevalent, or she
would not have considered it necessary to give them
this solemn denial. Her death is placed in the year 460.
2
Marcian, a Thracian of humble birth, who had risen
from a common soldier to the rank of senator, and had
already attained the age of fifty eight, was selected by
Pulcheria as the man most worthy to fill the imperial
throne on the death of her brother. He received the
rank of her husband merely to secure his title to the
empire. She had taken monastic vows at an early age,
though she continued to bear, during her brother's
reign, a considerable part in the conduct of public
business, having generally acted as his counsellor. The
conduct of Marcian, after he became emperor, justified
Pulcheria's choice; and it is probable that he was one
of the senators who had supported the systematic
3
1 The story is found in the Chronicon Paschale, 316; Theophanes, 85; Zonaras
and Cedrenus; Gibbon, chap. xxxii. note 77, vol. iv. p. 165. The story of the
three apples is probably an imitation of this Greek original. It is remarkable for
the true picture it gives of the character of Haroun.
2 Marcian had been taken prisoner by Genseric when he accompanied Aspar
with an army to support Boniface.-Procopius, De Bello Vand. lib. i.
3 It is singular to find hereditary rights and celibacy growing up together.
During the fifth century, it was by no means unusual to take vows, and con-
tinue to bear an active part in public business.
IMPROVEMENT.
213
A. D.
policy by which Pulcheria endeavoured to restore the
strength of the empire; a policy which sought to limit 330-527.
the arbitrary exercise of the despotic power of the
emperor by fixed institutions, well-regulated forms of
procedure, and an educated and organised body of civil
officials. Marcian was a soldier who loved peace with-
out fearing war.
One of his first acts was to refuse
payment of the tribute which Attila had exacted from
Theodosius. His reign lasted six years and a half, and
was chiefly employed in restoring the resources of the
empire, and alleviating its burdens. In the theological
disputes which divided his subjects, Marcian attempted
to act with impartiality; and he assembled the council
of Chalcedon in the vain hope of establishing a system
of ecclesiastical doctrine common to the whole empire.
His attempt to identify the Christian church with the
Roman empire only widened the separation of the
different sects of Christians; and the opinions of the
dissenters, while they were regarded as heretical, began
to be adopted as national. Religious communities
began everywhere to assume a national character.
The Eutychian heresy became the religion of Egypt;
Nestorianism was that of Mesopotamia. In such a
state of things Marcian sought to temporise from feel-
ings of humanity, and bigots made this spirit of toler-
ation a reproach.
Leo the Elder, another Thracian, was elected emperor,
on the death of Marcian, by the influence of Aspar, a
general of barbarian descent, who had acquired an
authority similar to that which Stilicho and Etius had
possessed in the West. Aspar being a foreigner and
an Arian, durst not himself, notwithstanding his influ-
ence and favour with the army, aspire to the imperial
throne; a fact which proves that the political constitu-
tion of the government, and the fear of public opinion,
exercised some control over the despotic power of the
214
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. court of Constantinople. The insolence of Aspar and
his family determined Leo to diminish the authority of
the barbarian leaders in the imperial service; and he
adopted measures for recruiting the army from his
native subjects. The system of his predecessors had
been to place more reliance on foreigners than on
natives; to employ mercenary strangers as their guards,
and to form the best armed and highest paid corps.
entirely of barbarians. In consequence of the neglect
with which the native recruits had been treated, they
had fallen into such contempt that they were ranked
in the legislation of the empire as an inferior class of
military. Leo could not reform the army, without re-
moving Aspar; and, despairing of success by any other
means, he employed assassination; thus casting, by the
murder of his benefactor, so deep a stain on his own
character that he acquired the surname of the Butcher.
During his reign, the arms of the empire were generally
unsuccessful; and his great expedition against Genseric,
the most powerful and expensive naval enterprise which
the Romans had ever prepared, was completely defeat-
ed.2 As it was dangerous to confide so mighty a force
to any general of talent, Basilicus, the brother of the
empress, was intrusted with the chief command. His
incapacity assisted the Vandals in defeating the expedi-
tion quite as much as the prudence and talents of Gen-
seric. The Ostrogoths, in the mean time, extended their
ravages from the Danube as far as Thessaly, and there
appeared some probability that they would succeed in
establishing a permanent kingdom in Illyria and Mace-
donia, completely independent of the imperial power.
1 Cod. Theodos.
2 Theophanes, Chron. 99. Gibbon, iv. 284. The fleet consisted of 1113 ships;
the army and navy included 100,000 men.
Gibbon estimates the expense of
this expedition at a sum equal to £5,200,000 sterling, and Lydus (De Magist.
iii. 43) confirms this estimate by stating that the expenditure amounted to
65,000 lb. of gold, and 700,000 lb. of silver. Compare Suidas, xgigw and
C. Scrip. Hist. Byz. excerpta e Menandri Historia, edit. Niebuhr, p. 427.
IMPROVEMENT.
215
The civil administration of Leo was conducted with
great prudence. He followed in the steps of his pre-
decessor in all his attempts to lighten the burdens of
his subjects, and to improve their condition. When
Antioch suffered severely from an earthquake, he re-
mitted the public taxes to the amount of one thousand
pounds of gold, and granted freedom from all imposts
to those who rebuilt their ruined houses. In the dis-
putes which still divided the church, he adopted the
orthodox or Greek party, in opposition to the Euty-
chians and Nestorians. The epithet of Great has been
bestowed on him by the Greeks a title, it should
seem, conferred upon him rather with reference to his
being the first of his name, and on account of his
orthodoxy, than from the pre-eminence of his personal
actions.' He died at the age of sixty-three, and was
succeeded by his grandson, Leo II., an infant, who sur-
vived his elevation only a few months. A. D. 474.
Zeno mounted the throne on the death of his son,
Leo II. He was an Isaurian, whom Leo the Great had
selected as the husband of his daughter Ariadne, when
he was engaged in rousing the military spirit of his
own subjects against the barbarian mercenaries. In
the eyes of the Greeks, the Isaurians were little
better than barbarians; but their valour had obtained
for them a high reputation among the troops in
the capital. The origin of Zeno rendered him unpo-
pular with the Greeks; and as he did not participate in
their nationality in religion, any more than in descent,
he was accused of cherishing heretical opinions. He
appears to have been unsteady in his views, and vicious
in his conduct; yet the difficulties of his position were
so great, and the prejudices against him so strong, that,
¹ Leo was the author of the earliest law condemning to death converts to
Christianity who relapsed to paganism. The Othoman Turks have only copied
the bigotry of their Christian predecessors at Constantinople.—Cod. Just. i. xi. 10.
A. D.
330-527.
216
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. in spite of all the misfortunes of his reign, the fact of
his having maintained the integrity of the Eastern
Empire attests that he could not have been totally de-
ficient in courage and talent. The year after he as-
cended the throne, he was driven from Constantinople
by Basiliskos, the brother of Leo's widow Verina; but
Basiliskos could only keep possession of the capital for
about twenty months, and Zeno recovered his authority.
The great work of his reign, which lasted seventeen
years and a half, was the formation of an army of native
troops to serve as a counterpoise to the barbarian mer-
cenaries who threatened the Eastern Empire with the
same fate as the Western. About the commencement
of his reign he witnessed the final extinction of the
Western Empire, and, for many years, the Theodorics
threatened him with the loss of the greater part of the
European provinces of the Eastern. Surely the man
who successfully resisted the schemes and the forces of
the great Theodoric could not have been a contemptible
emperor, even though his orthodoxy were questionable.
When it is remembered, therefore, that Zeno was an
Isaurian, and a peacemaker in theological quarrels, it
will not be surprising that the Greeks, who regarded
him as a heterodox barbarian, should have heaped
many calumnies on his memory. From his laws which
have been preserved in the code of Justinian, he seems
to have adopted judicious measures for alleviating the
fiscal obligations of the landed proprietors, and his
prudence was shown by his not proposing to the senate
the adoption of his brother as his successor. The times
were difficult; his brother was worthless, and the sup-
port of the official aristocracy was necessary. The dis-
posal of the imperial crown was again placed in the
hands of Ariadne.
Anastasius secured his election by his marriage with
Ariadne. He was a native of Epidamnus, and must
IMPROVEMENT.
217
have been near the age of sixty when he ascended the
throne. In the year 514, Vitalian, general of the bar-
barian mercenaries, and a grandson of Aspar, assumed
the title of emperor, and attempted to occupy Con-
stantinople.¹ His principal reliance was on the bigotry
of the orthodox Greeks, for Anastasius showed a dis-
position to favour the Eutychians. But the military
power of the mercenaries had been diminished by the
policy of Leo and Zeno; and it now proved insufficient
to dispose of the empire, as it could derive little sup-
port from the Greeks, who were more distinguished
for ecclesiastical orthodoxy than for military courage.
Vitalian was defeated in his attempt on Constanti-
nople, and consented to resign the imperial title on
receiving a large sum of money, and the government
of Thrace. The religious opinions of Anastasius un-
fortunately rendered him always unpopular, and he
had to encounter some serious seditions while the em-
pire was involved in wars with the Persians, Bulgarians,
and Goths. Anastasius was more afraid of internal
rebellions and seditions than of defeat by foreign ar-
mies; and he sub-divided the command of his troops
in such a way, that success in the field of battle was
almost impossible. In one important campaign against
Persia, the intendant-general was the officer of highest
rank in an army of fifty thousand men. Military
subordination, and vigorous measures, under such an
arrangement, were impossible; and it reflects some
credit on the organisation of the Roman troops, that
they were enabled to keep the field without total ruin.
Anastasius devoted his anxious care to alleviate the
misfortunes of his subjects, and to diminish the taxes
which oppressed them. He reformed the oligarchical
system of the Roman curia, which had already received
some modifications tending to restrict the ruinous
1 Gold coins of Vitalian exist.
A. D.
330-527.
218
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
2
CHAP. II. obligation of mutual responsibility imposed on the
curiales. The immediate consequence of his reforms was
to increase the imperial revenue, a result which was
probably effected by preventing the local aristocracy
from combining with the officers of the fisc. Such
changes, though they are extremely beneficial to the
great body of the people, are rarely noticed with much
praise by historians, who generally write under the in-
fluence of central prejudices.¹ He constructed the great
wall, to secure from destruction the rich villages and
towns in the vicinity of Constantinople. This wall
extended from the Sea of Marmora, near Selymbria, to
the Black Sea, forming an arc of about forty-two miles,
at a distance of twenty-eight miles from the capital.
The rarest virtue of a sovereign is the sacrifice of his
own revenues, and, consequently, the diminution of
his own power, to increase the happiness of his people.
The greatest action of Anastasius was this voluntary
diminution of the revenues of the State. He abolished
the chrysargyron, a lucrative but oppressive tax which
affected the industry of every subject. The increased
prosperity which this concession infused into society
soon displayed its effects; and the brilliant exploits
of the reign of Justinian must be traced back to the
reinvigoration of the body politic of the Roman em-
pire by Anastasius. He expended large sums in re-
pairing the damages caused by war and earthquakes.
He constructed a canal from the lake Sophon to the
Gulf of Astacus, near Nicomedia, a work which Pliny
had proposed to Trajan, and which was restored by
the Byzantine emperor Alexius I. ;3 yet so exact was
1
¹ Lydus, De Magistratibus, iii. 49. Lydus was a conservative, and a sufferer
by the reforms in the imperial administration.-Evagrius, iii. 38.
2 Traces of this wall are still visible, about twenty feet broad.
3 Anna Comnena, 282, edit. Par. Pliny, Ep. x. 50. Ainsworth's Travels
and Researches in Asia Minor, i. 26. The importance of this work has induced
several Othoman Sultans to discuss projects for its restoration. An inscription,
copied by Chandler, at Megara, informs us that its fortifications were repaired
by Count Diogenes, an officer of Anastasius who had distinguished himself in
IMPROVEMENT.
219
1
his economy, and so great were the revenues of the
Eastern Empire, that he was enabled to accumulate,
during his reign, three hundred and twenty thousand
pounds of gold in the public treasury. The people
had prayed at his accession that he might reign as he
had lived; and, even in the eyes of the Greeks, he
would probably have been regarded as the model of
a perfect monarch, had he not shown a disposition to
favour heresy. Misled, either by his wish to compre-
hend all sects in the established church,-as all nations
were included in the empire, or by a too decided
attachment to the doctrines of the Eutychians, he
excited the opposition of the orthodox party, whose
domineering spirit troubled his internal administration
by several dangerous seditions, and induced the Greeks
to overlook his humane and benevolent policy. He
reigned more than twenty-seven years.
Justin, the successor of Anastasius, had the merit of
being strictly orthodox. He was a Thracian peasant
from Tauresium, in Dardania, who entered the impe-
rial guard as a common soldier. At the age of sixty-
eight, when Anastasius died, he had attained the rank
of commander-in-chief of the imperial guards, and a
seat in the senate. It is said that he was intrusted
with a large sum of money to further a court intrigue
for the purpose of placing the crown on the head of
some worthless courtier. He appropriated the money
to secure his own election. His reign tended to unite
more closely the church with the imperial authority,
and to render the opposition of the heterodox more
national in the various provinces where a national
clergy and a national language existed.
Justin was
2
the Isaurian rebellion.-Chandler's Travels, c. 43. Leake, Travels in Northern
Greece, ii. 390.
¹ £13,000,000. Procopius, Hist. Arc. 19. Gibbon, vii. 109.
2 Constantine I. had established Sclavonian colonies in Thrace (Eusebius,
Vit. Const. iv. 6.); but Justin was perhaps of the old Thracian stock, then
beginning to undergo the modifications which ultimately transformed it into
the Vallachian race.
A. D.
330-527.
220
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. without education, but he possessed experience and
talents. In his civil government he imitated the wise
and economical policy of his predecessor, and his mili-
tary experience enabled him to improve the condition
of the army. He furnished large sums to alleviate the
misery caused by a terrible earthquake at Antioch, and
paid great attention to repairing the public buildings
throughout the empire. His reign lasted nine years,
A. D. 518-527.
It must be observed that the five emperors of whose
character and policy the preceding sketch has described
the prominent features, were men born in the middle.
or lower ranks of society; and all of them, with the ex-
ception of Zeno, had witnessed, as private individuals,
the ravages of the barbarians in their native provinces,
and suffered personally from the weak and disorganised
state of the empire. They had all ascended the throne
at a mature age, and these coincidences tended to im-
print on their councils that uniformity of policy which
marks their history. They had all more of the feelings
of the people than of the dominant class, and were,
consequently, more subjects than Romans. They ap-
pear to have participated in popular sympathies to a
degree natural only to men who had long lived with-
out courtly honours, and rare, indeed, even among
those of the greatest genius, who are born or edu-
cated near the steps of a throne. That some part of
the merit of these sovereigns was commonly ascribed to
the experience which they had gained by a long life, is
evident from the reply which, it is said, the Emperor
Justin gave to the senators, who wished him to raise
Justinian, at the age of forty, to the dignity of Augustus:
"You should pray," said the prudent monarch, "that a
young man may never wear the imperial robes."1
1 Gibbon considers this a sneer at the senators who had sold their votes to
Justinian. v. 39. Zonaras, ii. 60, edit. Par.
IMPROVEMENT.
221
During this eventful period, the Western Empire
crumbled into ruins, while the Eastern was saved, in
consequence of these emperors having organised the
system of administration which has been most un-
justly calumniated, under the name of Byzantine.
The highest officers, and the proudest military com-
manders, were rendered completely dependent on
ministerial departments, and were no longer able to
conspire or rebel with impunity. The sovereign was
no longer exposed to personal danger, nor the treasury
to open peculation. But, unfortunately, the central
executive power could not protect the people from
fraud with the same ease as it guarded the treasury;
and the emperors never perceived the necessity of in-
trusting the people with the power of defending them-
selves from the financial oppression of the subaltern
administration.
The principles of political science and civil liberty
were, indeed, very little understood by the people of the
Roman empire. The legislative, executive, and admin-
istrative powers of government were confounded, as well
as concentrated, in the person of the sovereign. The
emperor represented the sovereignty of Rome, which,
even after the establishment of Christianity, was con-
sidered as something superhuman, if not precisely a
divine institution. But, so ill can despotism balance
the various powers of the State, and so incapable is it
of studying the condition of the governed, that even
under the best emperors, seditions and rebellions were
not rare. They constituted the only means whereby
the people could make their petitions heard; and the
moment the populace ceased to be overawed by mili-
tary force, every trifling discontent might, from acci-
dent, break out into a rebellion. The continual abuse
to which arbitrary power is liable was felt by the em-
perors; and several of them attempted to restrain its
A. D.
330-527.
222
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. exercise, in order that the general principles of legisla-
tion might not be violated by the imperial ordinances.
Such laws express the sentiments of justice which ani-
mate the administration, but they are always useless;
for no law can be of any avail unless a right to enforce
its observance exist in some tribunal, independent of
the legislative and executive powers of the State; and
the very existence of such a tribunal implies that the
State possesses a constitution which renders the law
more powerful than the prince. Much, however, as
many of the Roman emperors may have loved justice,
no one was ever found who felt inclined to diminish
his own authority so far as to render the law perma-
nently superior to his own will. Yet a strong impulse
towards improvement was felt throughout the empire;
and, if the middle and upper classes of society had
not been already so far reduced in number as to make
their influence almost nugatory in the scale of civilisa-
tion, there might have been some hope of the political
regeneration of the Roman state. Patriotism and
political honesty can, however, only become national
virtues when the people possess a control over the
conduct of their rulers, and when the rulers them-
selves publicly announce their political principles.
Erroneous views also of political economy led many
of the emperors to increase the evil which they were
endeavouring to remedy.¹ Had the Emperor Anastasius
left the three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of
gold which he accumulated in the treasury circulating
among his subjects, or had he employed it in works
extending the industry of his people, and adding to the
security of their property, it is probable that his reign
would have very greatly augmented the population of
¹ Julian caused a famine at Antioch, by fixing the price at which provisions
were to be sold, and distributing four hundred thousand bushels of grain with-
out judgment, as appears from his own account in the Misopogon.
STATE OF CIVILISATION.
223
the empire, and pressed back the barbarians on their
own thinly peopled lands. If it had been in his power
to have added to this boon some guarantee against
arbitrary impositions on the part of his successors, and
against the unjust exactions of the administration,
there can be no doubt that his reign would have re-
stored to the empire much of the pristine energy of the
republic; and that, instead of giving a false brilliancy
to the reign of Justinian, he would have increased the
happiness of the most civilised portion of mankind, and
given a new impulse to population.
A. D.
330-527.
SECT. XII.-STATE OF CIVILISATION, AND INFLUENCE OF
NATIONAL FEELINGS DURING THIS PERIOD.
The ravages of the Goths and Huns in Europe and
Asia assisted in producing a great change in the state
of society in the Eastern Empire, even though their
efforts at conquest were successfully repulsed. In
many provinces the higher classes were completely
exterminated. The loss of their slaves and serfs, who
had been carried away by the invaders, either reduced
them to the condition of humble cultivators, or forced
them to emigrate, and abandon their land, from which
they were unable to obtain any revenue in the miser-
able state of cultivation to which the capture of their
slaves, the destruction of their agricultural buildings,
and the want of a market, had reduced the country.
In many of the towns the diminished population was
reduced to misery by the ruin of the district. The
higher classes disappeared under the weight of the
municipal duties which they were called upon to per-
form. Houses remained unlet; and even when let,
the portion of rent which was not absorbed by the im-
perial taxes, was insufficient to supply the demands of
224
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. the local expenditure. The labourer and the artisan
alone could find bread; the walls of cities were allowed
to fall into ruins; the streets were neglected; many
public buildings had become useless; aqueducts re-
mained unrepaired; internal communications ceased;
and, with the extinction of the wealthy and educated
classes, the local prejudices of the lower orders became
the law of society. Yet, on the other hand, even
amidst all the evidences of decline and misery in many
parts of the empire, there were some favoured cities
which afforded evidence of progress. The lives and for-
tunes of the lower orders, and particularly of the slaves,
were much better protected than in the most glorious
periods of Greek and Roman history. The police was
improved; and though luxury assisted the progress of
effeminacy, it also aided the progress of civilisation by
giving stability to order. The streets of the great
cities of the East were traversed with as much security
during the night as by day.
The devastations of the northern invaders of the
empire prepared the way for a great change in the
races of mankind who dwelt in the regions between
the Danube and the Mediterranean. New races were
introduced from abroad, and new races were formed by
the admixture of native proprietors and colons with
emigrants and domestic slaves. Colonies of agricultural
emigrants were introduced into every province of the
empire. Several of the languages still spoken in
eastern Europe bear evidence of changes which com-
menced at this period. Modern Greek, Albanian, and
Vallachian, are more or less the representatives of the
ancient languages of Greece, Epirus, and Thrace, modified
by the influence of foreign elements. In the provinces,
the clergy alone were enabled to maintain a position
which allowed them to devote some time to study.
They accordingly became the principal depositaries of
STATE OF CIVILISATION.
225
knowledge, and as their connection with the people was
of the most intimate and friendly character, they em-
ployed the popular language to instruct their flocks, to
preserve their attachment, and rouse their enthusiasm.
In this way, ecclesiastical literature grew up in every
province which possessed its own language and national
character. The Scriptures were translated, read, and
expounded to the people in their native dialect, in Ar-
menian, in Syriac, in Coptic, and in Gothic, as well as
in Latin and Greek. It was this connection between
the people and their clergy which enabled the orthodox
church, in the Eastern Empire, to preserve a popular
character, in spite of the exertions of the emperors and
the popes to give it a Roman or imperial organisation.
Christianity, as a religion, was always universal in its
character, but the Christian church long carried with it
many national distinctions. The earliest church had
been Jewish in its forms and opinions, and in the East
it long retained a tincture of the oriental philosophy
of its Alexandrine proselytes. After Christianity be-
came the established religion of the empire, a struggle
arose between the Latin and Greek clergy for supre-
macy in the church. The greater learning, and the
more popular character of the Greek clergy, supported
by the superior knowledge and higher political im-
portance of the laity in the East, soon gave to the
Greeks a predominant influence. But this influence
was still subordinate to the authority of the Bishop of
Rome, who arrogated the rank of a spiritual emperor,
and whose claims to represent the supremacy of Rome
were admitted, though not without jealousy, by the
Greeks. The authority of the Bishop of Rome, and of
the Latin element in the established church, was so
great in the reign of Marcian, that the legate of Pope
Leo the Great, at the general council of Chalcedon,
though a Greek bishop, made use of the Latin language
P
A. D.
330-527.
226
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. when addressing an audience composed entirely of
Eastern bishops, and for whom his discourse required
to be translated into Greek. It was inconsistent with
the dignity of the Roman pontiff to use any language
but that of Rome, though doubtless St Peter had made
use of Greek, except when speaking with the gift of
tongues. Latin, however, was the official language of
the empire; and the Emperor Marcian, in addressing
the same council of the church, spoke that language,
though he knew that Greek alone could be intelligible
to the greater number of the bishops whom he ad-
dressed. It was fortunate for the Greeks, perhaps also
for the whole Christian world, that the popes did not,
at this time, lay claim to the gift of tongues, and
address every nation in its own language. If it had
occurred to them that the head of the universal church
ought to speak all languages, the bishops of Rome
might perhaps have rendered themselves the political
sovereigns of the Christian world.
The attempt of the popes to introduce the Latin
language into the East, roused the opposition of all the
Greeks. The constitution of the Eastern Church still
admitted the laity to a share in the election of their
bishops, and obliged the members of the ecclesiastical
profession to cultivate the goodwill of their flocks. In
the East, the language of the people was the language
of religion and of ecclesiastical literature, consequently
the cause of the Greek clergy and people was united.
This connection with the people gave a weight and
authority to the Greek clergy, which proved extremely
useful in checking the civil tyranny of the emperors
and the religious despotism of the popes.
Though the emperor still maintained his supremacy
over the clergy, and regarded and treated the popes
and patriarchs as his ministers, still the church as a
body had already rendered itself superior to the person
STATE OF CIVILISATION.
227
of the emperor, and had established the principle, that
the orthodoxy of the emperor was a law of the empire.¹
The Patriarch of Constantinople, suspecting the empe-
ror Anastasius of attachment to the Eutychian heresy,
refused to crown him until he gave a written declara-
tion of his orthodoxy.2 Yet the ceremony of the em-
peror's receiving the imperial crown from the Patriarch
was introduced, for the first time, on the accession of
Leo the Great, sixty-six years before the election of
Anastasius. It is true that the church was not always
able to enforce the observance of the principle that the
empire of the East could only be governed by an or-
thodox sovereign. The aristocracy and the army proved
at times stronger than the orthodox clergy.
3
The state of literature and the fine arts always
affords a correct representation of the condition of so-
ciety among the Greeks, though the fine arts, during
the existence of the Roman empire, were more closely
connected with the government and the aristocracy
than with popular feelings. The assertion that Chris-
tianity tended to accelerate the decline of the Roman
empire has been already refuted; but although the
Eastern Empire received immeasurable benefits from
Christianity, both politically and socially, still the
literature and the fine arts of Greece received from
it a mortal blow. The Christians soon declared them-
selves the enemies of all pagan literature. Homer, and
the Attic tragedians, were prohibited books; and the
fine arts were proscribed, if not persecuted. Many of
the early fathers held opinions which were not uncon-
genial with the fierce contempt for letters and art en-
1 The Theodosian code, and particularly the sixteenth book, proves the supre-
macy of the civil power.
2 Eutyches taught that in Christ there was but one nature, namely, that of
the Word, who became incarnate.-Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, translated
by James Murdock, D.D.; edited by Soames; 4 vols. London, 1841; vol. i.
490. This excellent translation contains many valuable notes.
Gibbon, ch. xxxvi. note 68.
A. D.
330-527.
228
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. tertained by the first Mohammedans. It is true that this
anti-pagan spirit might have proved temporary, had it
not occurred at a period when the decline of society
had begun to render knowledge rarer, and learning of
more difficult attainment than formerly.
Theodosius the Younger found the administration
in danger of not procuring a regular supply of well-
educated aspirants to civil offices; and in order to
preserve the State from such a misfortune, he esta-
blished a university at Constantinople, as has been
already mentioned,' and which was maintained at the
public expense. The composition of this university
demonstrates the important political position occupied
by the Greek nation: fifteen professors were appointed
to teach Greek, grammar, and literature; thirteen only
were named to give instruction in Latin; two profes-
sors of law were added, and one of philosophy. Such
was the imperial university of Theodosius, who did
everything in his power to render the rank of professor
highly honourable. The candidate who aspired to a
chair in the university was obliged to undergo an ex-
amination before the senate, and it was necessary for
him to possess an irreproachable moral character, as
well as to prove that his learning was profound. The
term of twenty years' service secured for the profes-
sors the title of count, and placed them among the no-
bility of the empire. Learning, it is evident, was still
honoured and cultivated in the East; but the atten-
tion of the great body of society was directed to reli-
gious controversy, and the greatest talents were de-
voted to these contests. The few philosophers who
kept aloof from the disputes of the Christian church,
plunged into a mysticism more injurious to the human
intellect, and less likely to be of any use to society,
than the most furious controversy.
Most of these
1 ¹ Page 208.
STATE OF CIVILISATION.
229
speculators in metaphysical science abandoned all in-
terest in the fate of their country, and in the affairs of
this world, from an idle hope of being able to establish
a personal intercourse with an imaginary world of spirits.
With the exception of religious writings, and historical
works, there was very little in the literature of this
period which could be called popular.
The people
amused themselves with chariot races instead of the
drama; and, among the higher orders, music had long
taken the place of poetry. Yet the poets wanted
genius, not encouragement; for John Lydus tells us
that one of his poetical effusions was rewarded by the
patron in whose praise it was written, with a gold
byzant for each line. Pindar probably would not
have expected more.'
1
The same genius which inspires poetry is necessary
to excellence in the fine arts; yet, as these are more
mechanical in their execution, good taste may be long
retained, after inspiration has entirely ceased, by the
mere effect of imitating good models. The very con-
stitution of society seemed to forbid the existence of
genius. In order to produce the highest degree of
excellence in works of literature and art, it seems
absolutely necessary that the author and the public
should participate in some common feelings of admira-
tion for simplicity, beauty, and sublimity. When the
condition of society places the patron of works of
genius in a totally different rank of life from their
authors, and renders the criticisms of a small and
exclusive circle of individuals the law in literature
and art, then an artificial taste must be cultivated, in
order to secure the applause of those who alone possess
the means of rewarding the merit of which they
approve. The very fact that this taste, which the
author or the artist is called upon to gratify, is to him
1 Lydus, De Magistratibus, iii. 27, p. 219, edit. Bonn.
A. D.
330-527.
230
CONSTANTINE TO JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. II. more a task of artificial study than an effusion of
natural feeling, must of itself produce a tendency to
exaggeration or mannerism. There is nothing in the
range of human affairs so completely democratic as
taste. Demosthenes spoke to the crowd; Phidias
worked for the people.
Christianity engaged in direct war with the arts.
The Greeks had united painting, sculpture, and archi-
tecture, in such a way, that their temples formed a har-
monious illustration of the beauties of the fine arts.
The finest temples were museums of paganism, and,
consequently, Christianity repudiated all connection
with this class of buildings until it had disfigured and
degraded them. The courts of judicature, the basilics,
not the temples, were chosen as the models of Chris-
tian churches, and the adoption of the ideal beauty of
ancient sculpture was treated with contempt. The
earlier Fathers of the church wished to represent our
Saviour as unlike the types of the pagan divinities as
possible.¹
Works of art gradually lost their value as creations
of the mind; and their destruction commenced when-
ever the material of which they were composed was of
great value, or happened to be wanted for some other
purpose more useful in the opinion of the possessor.
The Theodosian Code contains many laws against the
destruction of works of ancient art and the plundering
of tombs.2 The Christian religion, when it deprived
the temples and the statues of a religious sanction,
permitted the avaricious to destroy them in order to
appropriate the materials; and, when all reverence for
antiquity was effaced, it became a profitable, though
disgraceful occupation, to ransack the pagan tombs for
the ornaments which they contained. The clergy of
1 Milman's History of Christianity, ii. 353; Paris edit.
2 Cod. Theodos. ix. tit. 17.
STATE OF CIVILISATION.
231
the new religion demanded the construction of new
churches; and the desecrated buildings, falling into
ruins, supplied materials at less expense than the
quarries.
Many of the celebrated works of art which had
been transported to Constantinople at its foundation,
were destroyed in the numerous conflagrations to
which that city was always liable. The celebrated
statues of the Muses perished in the time of Arcadius.
The fashion of erecting statues had not become obsolete,
though statuary and sculpture had sunk in the general
decline of taste; but the vanity of the ambitious was
more gratified by the costliness of the material than
by the beauty of the workmanship. A silver statue of
the Empress Eudocia, placed on a column of porphyry,
excited so greatly the indignation of John Chrysostom,
that he indulged in the most violent invectives against
the empress. His virulence caused the government
to exile him from the patriarchal chair. Many valuable
Grecian works of bronze were melted down, in order
to form a colossal statue of the Emperor Anastasius,
which was placed on a lofty column to adorn the capi-
tal;¹ others, of gold and silver, were melted, and coined
into money, and augmented the sums which he laid
up in the public treasury. Still it is unquestionable
that a taste for painting had not entirely ceased among
the educated and wealthy classes. Mosaics and en-
graved gems were fashionable luxuries, but the general
poverty had decreased the numbers of the patrons of
art, and the prejudices of the Christians had greatly
restricted its range.
1 Zeno erected an equestrian statue of his ally Theodoric in the palace.-
Jornandes, De Reb. Get. 57. The senate of Rome erected a golden statue
of Theodoric.-Isidor. Chron. Er. 549. Procopius describes a rude mosaic
statue representing Theodoric, which soon began to fall to pieces, and was
considered by the people as an emblem of the Ostrogothic monarchy. Was
this not probably a Gothic imitation of a chryselephantine statue ?-Procop.
De Bell. Goth. i. 24.
A. D.
330-527.
CHAPTER III.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS UNDER THE REIGN OF
JUSTINIAN. A. D. 527-565.
INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL POWER ON THE CONDITION OF THE GREEK NATION
DURING THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN-MILITARY FORCES OF THE EMPIRE—
INFLUENCE OF JUSTINIAN'S LEGISLATION ON THE GREEK POPULATION OF THE
EMPIRE-INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION, AS IT affected the GREEK NATION—
INFLUENCE OF JUSTINIAN'S CONQUESTS ON THE GREEK POPULATION, AND THE
CHANGE EFFECTED BY THE CONQUEST OF THE VANDAL KINGDOM OF AFRICA-
CAUSES OF THE EASY CONQUEST OF THE OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM OF ITALY
BY BELISARIUS, AND OF THE CONQUESTS IN SPAIN RELATIONS OF THE
NORTHERN NATIONS WITH THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GREEK NATION
RELATIONS WITH PERSIA COMMERCIAL POSITION OF THE GREEKS, AND
COMPARISON WITH THE OTHER NATIONS LIVING UNDER THE ROMAN GOVERN-
MENT-INFLUENCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH ON THE NATIONAL FEELINGS
OF THE GREEKS-STATE OF ATHENS TO THE EXTINCTION OF ITS SCHOOLS BY
JUSTINIAN.
SECT. I.INFLUENCE OF THE IMPERIAL POWER ON THE CONDITION OF
THE GREEK NATION DURING THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
It happens not unfrequently, that, during long periods
of time, national feelings and popular institutions escape
the attention of historians; their feeble traces are lost
in the importance of events, apparently the effect of
accident, destiny, or the special intervention of Provi-
dence. In such cases, history becomes a chronicle of
facts, or a series of biographical sketches; and it ceases
to yield the instructive lessons which it always affords,
as long as it connects events with local habits, national
customs, and the general ideas of a people. The his-
tory of the Eastern Empire often assumes this form,
POWER OF EMPEROR.
233
and is frequently little better than a mere chronicle.
Its historians hardly display national character or popu-
lar feeling, and only participate in the superstition and
party spirit of their situation in society. In spite of
the brilliant events which have given the reign of Jus-
tinian a prominent place in the annals of mankind, it
is presented to us in a series of isolated and incongruous
facts. Its chief interest is derived from the biographical
memorials of Belisarius, Theodora, and Justinian; and
its most instructive lesson has been drawn from the
influence which its legislation has exercised on foreign
nations. The unerring instinct of mankind has, how-
ever, fixed on this period as one of the greatest eras
in man's annals. The actors may have been men of
ordinary merit, but the events of which they were the
agents effected the mightiest revolutions in society.
The frame of the ancient world was broken to pieces,
and men long looked back with wonder and admiration
at the fragments which remained, to prove the existence
of a nobler race than their own. The Eastern Empire,
though too powerful to fear any external enemy, was
withering away from the rapidity with which the State
devoured the resources of the people; and this malady
or corruption of the Roman government appeared to
the wisest men of the age so utterly incurable, that it
was supposed to indicate the approaching dissolution of
the globe. No dawn of a new social organisation had
yet manifested its advent in any part of the known
world. A large portion, perhaps the majority of the
human race, continued to live in a state of slavery; and
slaves were still regarded as intelligent domestic animals,
not as men.1 Society was destined to be regenerated
by the destruction of predial slavery; but, to destroy
predial slavery, the free inhabitants of the civilised
1 "Oh demens, ita servus homo est ?"-Juvenal, Sat. vi. 221.
A. D.
527-565.
234
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
Chap. III. world were compelled to descend to the state of poverty
and ignorance in which they had, for ages, kept the
servile population. The field for general improvement
could only be opened, and the reorganisation of society
could only commence, when slaves and freemen were so
closely intermingled in the cares and duties of life as to
destroy the prejudices of class; then, at last, feelings of
philanthropy were called into action by the necessities
of man's condition.
his age.
The reign of Justinian is more remarkable as a por-
tion of the history of mankind, than as a chapter in the
annals of the Roman empire or of the Greek nation.
The changes of centuries passed in rapid succession be-
fore the eyes of one generation. The life of Belisarius,
either in its reality or its romantic form, has typified
In his early youth, the world was populous
and wealthy, the empire rich and powerful. He con-
quered extensive realms and mighty nations, and led
kings captive to the footstool of Justinian, the lawgiver
of civilisation. Old age arrived; Belisarius sank into
the grave suspected and impoverished by his feeble and
ungrateful master; and the world, from the banks of the
Euphrates to those of the Tagus, presented the awful
spectacle of famine and plague, of ruined cities, and
of nations on the brink of extermination. The impres-
sion on the hearts of men was profound. Fragments of
Gothic poetry, legends of Persian literature, and the
fate of Belisarius himself, still indicate the eager atten-
tion with which this period was long regarded.
The expectation that Justinian would be able to re-
establish the Roman power was entertained by many,
and not without reasonable grounds, at the time of his
accession to the throne; but, before his death, the
delusion was utterly dissipated. Anastasius, by filling
the treasury, and remodelling the army, had prepared
the way for reforming the financial administration and
POWER OF EMPEROR.
235
improving the condition of the people. Justinian un-
fortunately employed the immense wealth and effective
army to which he succeeded, in such a manner as to
increase the burden of the imperial government, and
render hopeless the future reform of the system. Yet
it must still be observed that the decay of the internal
resources of the empire, which proceeded with such
fearful rapidity in the latter days of Justinian's reign,
was interwoven with the frame of society. For six
centuries, the Roman government had ruled the East in
a state of tranquillity, when compared with the ordinary
fortunes of the human race; and during this long
period, the people had been moulded into slaves of the
imperial treasury. Justinian, by introducing measures
of reform, tending to augment the powers and revenues
of the State, only accelerated the inevitable catastrophe
prepared by centuries of fiscal oppression.
It is impossible to form a correct idea of the position
of the Greek population in the East, without taking a
general, though cursory view of the nature of the Ro-
man administration, and observing the effect which it
produced on the whole population of the empire. The
contrast presented by the increasing endeavours of the
government to centralise every branch of the adminis-
tration, and the additional strength which local feelings
were gaining in the distant provinces, is a singular
though natural consequence of the increasing wants of
the sovereign, and the declining civilisation of the people.
The civil organisation of the empire attained its highest
degree of perfection in the reign of Justinian; the im-
perial power secured a practical supremacy over the
military officers and beneficed clergy, and placed them
under the control of the civil departments of the state;
the absolute authority of the emperor was fully estab-
lished, and systematically exercised in the army, the
church, and the state. A century of prudent adminis-
A. D.
527-565.
236
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. tration had infused new vigour into the government,
and Justinian succeeded to the means of rendering
himself one of the greatest conquerors in the annals
of the Roman empire. The change which time had
effected in the position of the emperors, from the reign
of Constantine to that of Justinian, was by no means
inconsiderable. Two hundred years, in any government,
must prove productive of great alterations.
1
It is true that in theory the power of the military
emperor was as great as that of the civil monarch;
and, according to the phrases in fashion with their con-
temporaries, both Constantine and Justinian were con-
stitutional sovereigns, equally restrained, in the exercise
of their power, by the laws and usages of the Roman
empire. But there is an essential difference between
the position of a general and a king; and all the
Roman emperors, until the accession of Arcadius, had
been generals. The leader of an army must always,
to a certain extent, be the comrade of his soldiers; he
must often participate in their feelings, and make their
interests and views coincide with his own. This
community of sentiment generally creates so close a
connection, that the wishes of the troops exercise great
influence over the conduct of their leader, and moderate
to them, at least, the arbitrary exercise of despotic
power, by confining it within the usages of military
discipline, and the habits of military life. When the
civil supremacy of the Roman emperors became firmly
established by the changes which were introduced
into the imperial armies after the time of Theodosius
the Great, the emperor ceased to be personally con-
nected with the army, and considered himself quite as
much the master of the soldiers whom he payed, as of
1 "Sub libertate Romana" was the expression which marked the regularity of
the imperial administration, based on rules of procedure and law, as opposed to
an arbitrary despotism.
POWER OF EMPEROR.
237
the subjects whom he taxed. The sovereign had no
longer any notion of public opinion beyond its exist-
ence in the church, and its display in the factions of
the court or the amphitheatre. The immediate effects
of absolute power were not, however, fully revealed in
the details of the administration, until the reign of
Justinian. Various circumstances have been noticed
in the preceding chapter, which tended to connect the
policy of several of the emperors who reigned during
the fifth century with the interests of their subjects.
Justinian found order introduced into every branch of
the public administration, immense wealth accumulated
in the imperial treasury, discipline re-established in the
army, and the church eager to support an orthodox
emperor. Unfortunately for mankind, this increase in
the power of the emperor rendered him independent of
the goodwill of his subjects, whose interests seemed to
him subordinate to the exigencies of the public admin-
istration; and his reign proved one of the most in-
jurious, in the history of the Roman empire, to the
moral and political condition of its subjects. In form-
ing an opinion concerning the events of Justinian's
reign, it must be borne in mind that the foundation of
its power and glory was laid by Anastasius, while
Justinian sowed the seeds of the misfortunes of
Maurice; and, by persecuting the very nationality of
his heterodox subjects, prepared the way for the con-
quests of the Mussulmans.
Justinian mounted the throne with the feelings, and
in the position, of a hereditary sovereign, prepared,
however, by every advantage of circumstance, to hold
out the expectation of a wise and prudent reign. Born
and educated in a private station, he had attained the
mature age of forty-five before he ascended the throne.¹
1 It would answer no purpose to crowd the pages of this work with refer-
ences to Procopius. The statements in the Anecdotes, the Edifices, and the
A. D.
527-565.
238
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. He had received an excellent education.
He was a
man of honourable intentions, and of a laborious disposi-
tion, attentive to business, and well versed in law and
theology; but his abilities were moderate, his judg-
ment was feeble, and he was deficient in decision of
character. Simple in his own habits, he, nevertheless,
added to the pomp and ceremonial of the imperial
court, and strove to make the isolation of the emperor,
as a superior being, visible in the public pageantry of
government. Though ambitious of glory, he was in-
finitely more attentive to the exhibition of his power
than to the adoption of measures for securing the
essentials of national strength.
1
The Eastern Empire was an absolute monarchy, of a
regular and systematic form. The emperor was the
head of the government, and the master of all those
engaged in the public service; but the administration
was an immense establishment, artfully and scienti-
fically constructed in its details. The numerous in-
dividuals employed in each ministerial department of
the State consisted of a body of men appropriated to
that special service, which they were compelled to
study attentively, to which they devoted their lives,
and in which they were sure to rise by talents and
industry. Each department of the State formed a
separate profession, as completely distinct, and as per-
fectly organised in its internal arrangements, as the
legal profession is in modern Europe. A Roman
emperor would no more have thought of suddenly
Histories, are too dissimilar to be cited together without explanations. Yet
Procopius seems a valuable authority even in his Anecdotes, and he shows him-
self often credulous in his Histories. Justinian appears to have been descended
from a Sclavonic family. His father's name was Istok, of which Sabbatios is a
translation. His mother and sister were named Wiglenitza. His own native
name was Uprawda, corresponding to jus, justitia. Schafarik, Slavische Alter-
thümer, ii. 160; and Aleman's notes to the Hist. Arcana of Procopius, p. 418,
edit. Bonn.
1 No correct idea of the Roman administration can be formed, without con-
sulting the Notitia Dignitatum et Administrationum, in the excellent edition of
Dr Boecking, Bonn, 1839, &c.
POWER OF EMPEROR.
239
1
creating a financier, or an administrator, than a modern
sovereign would think of making a lawyer. This cir-
cumstance explains at once how education and offi-
cial knowledge were so long and so well preserved in
the Roman administration, where, as in the law and the
church, they flourished for ages after the extinction of
literary acquirements in all other classes of the people ;¹
and it affords also an explanation of the singular dura-
tion of the Roman government, and of its inherent prin-
ciple of vitality. If it wanted the energy necessary for
its own regeneration, which could only have proceeded
from the influence of a free people on the sovereign
power, it at least escaped the evils of official anarchy
and vacillating government. Nothing but this sys-
tematic composition of the multifarious branches of
the Roman administration could have preserved the
empire from dissolution during the period in which it
was a prey to internal wars and foreign invasions;
and this supremacy of the system over the will of
individuals gave a character of immutability to ad-
ministrative procedure, which warranted the boast of
the subjects of Constantine and Justinian that they
lived under the protection of the Roman constitu-
tion. The greatest imperfection of the government
arose from the total want of any popular control over
the moral conduct of the public servants. Political
morality, like pure taste, cannot live without the
atmosphere of public opinion.2
The state of society in the Eastern Empire underwent
far greater changes than the imperial administration.
1 The law of Valentinian, forbidding students to remain in Rome after the
twentieth year of their age, shows that restrictions were put on education.
Cod. Theod. xiv. 9, 1.
2 When we blame the evils of the Roman government, we ought not to over-
look the inconveniences which would result in a declining state of society,
from the neglect of general interests in large representative assemblies, intent
on temporary expedients, and incapable, at such a period, of attending to any-
thing but local claims.
A. D.
527-565.
240
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
1
CHAP. III. The race of wealthy nobles, whose princely fortunes
and independent bearing had excited the fears and the
avarice of the early Cæsars, had been long extinct.
The imperial court and household now included all the
higher classes in the capital. The senate was now only
a corps of officials, and the people had no position in
the State but that of tax-payers. While the officers of
the civil, finance, and judicial departments, the clergy
and the military, were the servants of the emperor, the
people, the Roman people, were his slaves. No con-
necting link of common interest or national sympathy
united the various classes as one body, and connected
them with the emperor. The only bond of union was
one of universal oppression, as everything in the im-
perial government had become subordinate to the ne-
cessity of supplying the treasury with money. The
fiscal severity of the Roman government had for cen-
turies been gradually absorbing all the accumulated
wealth of society, as the possession of large fortunes
was almost sure to entail their confiscation. Even if
the wealth of the higher classes in the provinces es-
caped this fate, it was, by the constitution of the em-
pire, rendered responsible for the deficiencies which
might occur in the taxes of the districts from which
it was obtained; and thus the rich were everywhere
rapidly sinking to the level of the general poverty.
The destruction of the higher classes of society had
swept away all the independent landed proprietors be-
fore Justinian commenced his series of reforms in the
provinces.
The effect of these reforms extended to future times,
and exercised an important influence on the internal
1 The Roman people now consisted chiefly of Greeks; but Latin seems to
have been spoken in Illyricum and Thrace by a very numerous portion of the
population. Perhaps the original languages of these countries blended easily
with Latin from being cognate tongues, and soon began to form dialects which
time has now modified into the Vallachian and Albanian languages of the pre-
sent day.
POWER OF EMPEROR.
241
composition of the Greek people. In ancient times, a
very large portion of society consisted of slaves. They
formed the great body of the rural population; and,
as they received no moral training, they were inferior,
in every mental quality, to the barbarians of the north:
from this very cause they were utterly incapable of
making any exertion to improve their condition; and
whether the province which they inhabited belonged
to the Romans or Greeks, the Goths or the Huns, they
remained equally slaves. The oppressive system of
the Roman financial administration, by depressing the
higher classes, and impoverishing the rich, found the
lower orders at last burdened with the great part of
the land-tax. The labourer of the soil became an ob-
ject of great interest to the treasury, and, as the chief
instrument in furnishing the financial resources of the
State, obtained almost as important a position in the
eyes of the fisc as the landed proprietor himself. The
first laws which conferred any rights on the slave, are
those which the Roman government enacted to prevent
the landed proprietors from transferring their slaves
engaged in the cultivation of lands, assessed for the
land-tax, to other employments which, though more
profitable to the proprietor of the slave, would have
yielded a smaller, or less permanent, return to the im-
perial treasury.¹ The avarice of the imperial treasury,
by reducing the mass of the free population to the
same degree of poverty as the slaves, had removed one
cause of the separation of the two classes. The posi-
tion of the slave had lost most of its moral degradation,
and occupied precisely the same political position in
society as the poor labourer, from the moment that the
Roman fiscal laws compelled any freeman who had
cultivated lands for the space of thirty years to re-
main for ever attached, with his descendants, to the
1 Cod. Theod. xi. tit. 3, 1, 2. Cod. Just. xi. tit. 48.
Q
A. D.
527-565.
242
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
1
CHAP. II. same estate. The lower orders were from that period
blended into one class: the slave rose to be a member
of this body; the freeman descended, but his descent
was necessary for the improvement of the great bulk
of the human race, and for the extinction of slavery.
Such was the progress of civilisation in the Eastern
Empire. The measures of Justinian which, by their
fiscal rapacity, tended to sink the free population to
the same state of poverty as the slaves, really prepared
the way for the rise of the slaves as soon as any general
improvement took place in the condition of the human
race.
Justinian found the central administration still aid-
ed and controlled by the municipal institutions and
the numerous corporate communities throughout the
empire, as well as by the religious assemblies of the
orthodox and heterodox congregations. Many of these
bodies possessed large revenues. The fabric of the
ancient world still existed. Consuls were still named.
Rome, though subject to the Goths, preserved its senate.
Constantinople enjoyed all the license of the hippo-
drome; Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and
many other cities, received public distributions of grain.
Athens and Sparta were still governed as little states,
and a body of Greek provincial militia still guarded
the pass of Thermopyla. The Greek cities possessed
their own revenues, and maintained their roads, schools,
hospitals, police, public buildings, and aqueducts; they
paid professors and public physicians, and kept their
streets paved, cleaned, and lighted. The people enjoyed
their local festivals and games; and though music had
supplanted poetry, the theatres were still open for the
public amusement.
Justinian defaced these traces of the ancient world
far more rapidly in Greece than Theodoric in Italy. He
1 Cod. Just. xi. tit. 48, 1, 19; and 1, 23. See page 184.
POWER OF EMPEROR.
243
was a merciless reformer, and his reforms were directed
solely by fiscal calculations.1 The importance of the
consulate was abolished, to save the expenses attendant
on the installation of the consuls. The Roman senators
were exterminated in the Italian wars, during which
the ancient race of the inhabitants of Rome was nearly
destroyed.2 Alexandria was deprived of its supplies of
grain, and the Greeks in Egypt were reduced in number
and consideration. Antioch was sacked by Chosroes,
and the position of the Greek population of Syria per-
manently weakened.
But it was in Greece itself that the Hellenic race and
institutions received the severest blow. Justinian seized
the revenues of the free cities, and deprived them of
their most valuable privileges, for the loss of their
revenues compromised their political existence. Poverty
produced barbarism. Roads, streets, and public build-
ings could no longer be repaired or constructed unless
by the imperial treasury. That want of police which
characterises the middle ages, began to be felt in the
East. Public instruction was neglected, but the public
charities were liberally supported; the professors and the
physicians were robbed of the funds destined for their
maintenance. The municipalities themselves continued
to exist in an enfeebled state, for Justinian affected to
reform, but never attempted to destroy them; and even
his libeller, Procopius, only accuses him of plundering,
not of destroying them. The poverty of the Greeks
rendered it impossible for them to supply their munici-
palities with new funds, or even to allow local taxes to
be imposed, for maintaining the old establishments.
At this crisis, the population was saved from utter bar-
1 Procopius, Hist. Arc. p. 74, 76, edit. Par.
2 When Rome was repeopled, a senate seems to have again arisen, but it only
perpetuated the name, and a mortal blow was given to the power of the muni-
cipality. The Pope assumed the direction of civil affairs, and prepared the way
for his future temporal sovereignty.-See Geschichte des Roemischen Rechts im
Mittelalter. F. C. Von Savigny. Vol. i. p. 367.
A. D.
527-565.
244
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. barism by the close connection which existed between
the clergy and the people, and the powerful influence
of the church. The clergy and the people being united
by a community of language, feelings, and prejudices,
the clergy, as the most powerful class of the community,
henceforth took the lead in all public business in the
provinces. They lent their aid to support the charitable
institutions, to replace the means of instruction, and to
maintain the knowledge of the healing art; they sup-
ported the communal and municipal organisation of the
people; but, while preserving the local feelings of the
Greeks, they strengthened the foundations of a national
organisation. History supplies few materials to illus-
trate the precise period at which the clergy in Greece
formed their alliance with the municipal organisation of
the people, independent of the central authority; but
the alliance became of great national importance, and
began to exercise permanent effects on the social ex-
istence of the Greeks, after the municipalities had been
impoverished by Justinian's reforms.
SECT. II.-MILITARY FORCES OF THE EMPIRE.
The history of the wars and conquests of Justinian
is narrated by Procopius, the secretary of Belisarius,
who was often an eyewitness of the events which he
records with a minuteness which supplies much valuable
information on the military system of the age. The
expeditions of the Roman armies were so widely ex-
tended, that most of the nations of the world were
brought into direct communication with the empire.
During the time Justinian's generals were changing the
state of Europe, and destroying some of the nations
which had dismembered the Western Empire, circum-
MILITARY FORCE.
245
stances beyond the control of that international system
of policy, of which the sovereigns of Constantinople
and Persia were the arbiters, produced a general move-
ment in the population of central Asia. The whole
human race was thrown into a state of convulsive
agitation, from the frontiers of China to the shores of
the Atlantic. This agitation destroyed many of the ex-
isting governments, and exterminated several powerful
nations, while, at the same time, it laid the foundation
of the power of new states and nations, some of which
have maintained their existence to the present times.
The Eastern Empire bore no inconsiderable part in
raising this mighty storm in the West, and in quelling
its violence in the East; in exterminating the Goths
and Vandals, and in arresting the progress of the Avars
and Turks. Yet the number and composition of the
Roman armies have often been treated by historians
as weak and contemptible. It is impossible, in this
sketch, to attempt any examination of the whole mili-
tary establishment of the Roman empire during Justi-
nian's reign; but in noticing the influence exercised
by the military system on the Greek population, it is
necessary to make a few general observations.' The
army consisted of two distinct classes, the regular
troops, and the mercenaries. The regular troops were
composed both of native subjects of the Roman empire,
raised by conscription, and of barbarians, who had
been allowed to occupy lands within the emperor's
dominions, and to retain their own usages on the con-
dition of furnishing a fixed number of recruits for the
army. The Roman government still clung to the great
law of the empire, that the portion of its subjects which
paid the land-tax could not be allowed to escape that
1 Lord Mahon, in his Life of Belisarius (chap. i.), gives a sketch of the Roman
armies in Justinian's reign.
A. D.
527-565.
246
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. burden by entering the army. The proprietors of the
land were responsible for the tribute; the cultivators
of the soil, both slaves and serfs, secured the amount of
the public revenues; neither could be permitted to forego
their fiscal obligations for their military duties.2 For
some centuries it had been more economical to purchase
the service of the barbarians than to employ native
troops; and perhaps, if the oppressive system of the im-
perial administration had not impaired the resources
of the State, and diminished the population by consum-
ing the capital of the people, this might have long con-
tinued to be the case. Native troops were always drawn
from the mountainous districts, which paid a scanty
tribute, and in which the population found difficulty in
procuring subsistence. The invasions of the barbarians,
likewise, threw numbers of the peasantry of the pro-
vinces to the south of the Danube out of employment,
and many of these entered the army. A supply of
recruits was likewise obtained from the idle and needy
population of the towns. The most active and intel-
ligent soldiers were placed in the cavalry,—a force that
was drilled with the greatest care, subjected to the most
exact discipline, and sustained the glory of the Roman
arms in the field of battle. As the higher and middle
1 Cod. Just. x. 32, 17; xii. 32, 2, 4. He who quitted his civil position as
servant of the fisc was to be sent back to his duty. Citizens were not allowed
to possess arms, except for hunting and travelling.
2 The exemption of the military from taxation was used as an argument for
conceding a similar privilege to the clergy, who were members of the militia
warring against the legions of Satan.
3 Slaves were, of course, excluded from military service by the Roman laws.—
Cod. Just. xii. 33, 6, 7. Yet, in the decline of the empire, they were sometimes
enfranchised in order to be admitted as recruits; and Justinian declares the
slave free who had served in the army with his master's consent. The enact-
ment proves that slaves were rapidly attaining the level to which the free
population had sunk.-Novell. 81. Colons were also excluded from military
service.-Cod. Just. xi. 48, 18.
+ The cavalry was carefully trained to act on foot, and its steady behaviour on
dismounting, when surrounded by superior numbers, proves the perfection of
the Roman discipline, even in the time of Justinian. Procopius mentions this
trait in his description of the battle of Callinicum.-De Bell. Pers. i. 18. Salomon
made use of the same formation of the cavalry on foot against the African
Moors.- Vand. book. ii. c. 12. It was again employed at the battle of Solacon, in
MILITARY FORCE.
247
classes in the provinces had, for ages, been excluded
from the military profession, and the army had been at
last composed chiefly of the rudest and most ignorant
peasants, of enfranchised slaves, and naturalised barba-
rians, military service was viewed with aversion; and
the greatest repugnance arose among the civilians to
become soldiers. In the mean time, the depopulation
of the empire daily increased the difficulty of raising
the number of recruits required for a service which
embraced an immense extent of territory, and entailed
a great destruction of human life.
The troops of the line, particularly the infantry, had
deteriorated considerably in Justinian's time; but the
artillery and engineer departments were not much in-
ferior, in science and efficiency, to what they had been
in the best days of the empire. Military resources, not
military knowledge, had diminished. The same arsenals
continued to exist; mere mechanical skill had been
uninterruptedly exercised; and the constant demand
which had existed for military mechanicians, armourers,
and engineers, had never allowed the theoretical in-
struction of this class to be neglected, nor their practi-
cal skill to decline from want of employment. This
fact requires to be borne in mind.¹
1
The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant
portion of the army; and it was the fashion of the day
to copy and admire the dress and manners of the bar-
barian cavalry. The empire was now surrounded by
numbers of petty princes, who, though they had seized
the reign of the emperor Maurice.-Theophylactus, Simoc. ii. 4. Hannibal
ridiculed the conduct of Æmilius Paulus in ordering the Roman cavalry to
dismount at the battle of Cannæ. But there is no invariable rule in war.
1 The engineers of Theodoric the Great could not be superior to those of Justi-
nian, for Theodoric had often been obliged to obtain artists from the East; yet
the tomb of Theodoric, near Ravenna, rivals the remains of the anti-Homeric
times at Mycenae. The circular stone of the dome is 35 feet in diameter, and
weighs 940,000 lbs; yet it is supposed to have been brought from the quarries
in Istria. See the plates in the Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens, depuis sa
Décadence au I Ve Siècle, par Seroux D'Agincourt, tom. i. pl. xviii,
A. D.
527-565.
248
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
possession of provinces once belonging to the Romans,
by force, and had often engaged in war with the em-
peror, still acknowledged a certain degree of dependence
on the Roman power. Some of them, as the kings of
the Heruls and the Gepids, and the king of Colchis, held
their regal rank, by a regular investiture, from Justinian.
These princes, and the kings of the Lombards, Huns,
Saracens, and Moors, all received regular subsidies.
Some of them furnished a number of their best warriors,
who entered the Roman service, and served in separate
bands, under their own leaders, and with their national
weapons, but subjected to the regular organisation and
discipline of the Roman armies, though not to the
Roman system of military exercises and manœuvres.
Some of these corps of barbarians were also formed of
volunteers, who were attracted by the high pay which
they received, and the license with which they were
allowed to behave.
The superiority of these troops arose from natural
causes. The northern nations who invaded the empire
consisted of a population trained from infancy to war-
like exercises, and following no profession but that of
arms. Their lands were cultivated by the labour of
their slaves, or by that of the Roman subjects who still
survived in the provinces they had occupied ; but their
only pecuniary resources arose from the plunder of their
neighbours, or the subsidies of the Roman emperors.
Their habits of life, the celerity of their movements, and
the excellence of their armour, rendered them the
choicest troops of the age; and their most active war-
riors were generally engaged to serve in the imperial
forces. The emperors preferred armies composed of a
number of motley bands of mercenary foreigners, at-
tached to their own persons by high pay, and com-
manded by chiefs who could never pretend to political
rank, and who had much to lose and little to gain by
MILITARY FORCE.
249
rebellion; for experience proved that they perilled their
throne by intrusting the command of a national army
to a native general, who, from a popular soldier, might
become a dangerous rival.¹ Though the barbarian
mercenaries in the service of Rome generally proved
far more efficient troops than their free countrymen,
yet they were on the whole unequal to the native Ro-
man cavalry of Justinian's army, the Cataphracti,
sheathed in complete steel on the Persian model, and
armed with the Grecian spear, who were still the best
troops in a field of battle, and were the real type of the
chivalry of the middle ages.
Justinian weakened the Roman army in several ways
by his measures of reform. His anxiety to reduce its
expenditure induced him to diminish the establishment
of camels, horses, and chariots, which attended the
troops for transporting the military machines and bag-
gage. This train had been previously very large, as it
was calculated to save the peasantry from any danger
of having their labours interrupted, or their cattle seized,
under the pretext of being required for transport.
Numerous abuses were introduced by diminishing the
pay of the troops, and by neglecting to pay them
with regularity and to furnish them with proper food
and clothing. At the same time, the efficiency of the
army in the field was more seriously injured, by con-
tinuing the policy adopted by Anastasius, of restricting
the power of the generals; a policy, however, which, it
must be confessed, was not unnecessary in order to avoid
greater evils. This is evident from the numerous rebel-
lions in Justinian's reign, and the absolute want of any
national or patriotic feeling in the majority of the
Roman officers. Large armies were at times composed
of a number of corps, each commanded by its own
1 Justinian, however, sometimes united the civil and military power.-Novell.
24-31.
A. D.
527-565.
250
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. officer, over whom the nominal commander-in-chief had
little or no authority; and it is to this circumstance that
the unfortunate results of some of the Gothic and Persian
campaigns are to be attributed, and not to any inferiority
of the Roman troops. Even Belisarius himself, though
he gave many proofs of attachment to Justinian's
throne, was watched with the greatest jealousy. He
was treated with constant distrust, and his officers were
at times encouraged to dispute his measures, and never
punished for disobeying his orders.¹ The fact is, that
Belisarius might, if so disposed, have assumed the purple,
and perhaps dethroned his master. Narses was the only
general who was implicitly trusted and steadily sup-
ported; but Narses was an aged eunuch, and could
never have become emperor.
The imperial military forces consisted of one hundred
and fifty thousand men ; and though the extent of the
frontier which these troops were compelled to guard was
very great, and lay open to the incursions of many active
hostile tribes, still Justinian was able to assemble some
admirably appointed armies for his foreign expeditions.2
The armament which accompanied Belisarius to Africa
consisted of ten thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry,
1 Narses had evidently been sent to Italy by Justinian before the conquest of
Witiges, expressly to watch Belisarius, and guard against his acquiring too much
personal influence over the troops. The circumstance of officers of rank being
allowed to maintain a large body-guard of cavalry, the members of which swore
fidelity to their chief, as well as allegiance to the emperor, is a singular fact
when contrasted with the imperial jealousy. The guards of Belisarius amounted
to seven thousand horsemen after his return from the conquest of Italy.-Pro-
copius, Gotth. iii. c. 1, vol. iii. p. 283, edit. Bonn. Crassus is reported to have
said that he only could be called a rich man who could maintain an army. The
households of Piso and his wife Plancina were so numerous, that when Piso re-
sisted the orders of Germanicus, he armed several thousand slaves and formed
a corps equal to a Roman legion.-Tacitus, Ann. ii. 80.
2 Agathias states that the military establishment of the empire once consisted
of 645,000 men. The statement seems to have rested on official documents, as
it is repeated by another writer. It probably included the local militia and
the garrisons, as well as the regular army. Agathias, v. 157, edit. Par.
Joannes Antiochenus, Frag. Historicorum Græc. iv. 622, edit. Didot. See the
note to the Anecdotes of Procopius, p. 164, edit. Par., and vol. iii. p. 454, of the
edition of Bonn. Gibbon (i. 27) states the Roman forces, in the time of Ha-
drian, at 375,000, a number which seems too small for anything but the regular
army.
MILITARY FORCE.
251
and twenty thousand sailors. Belisarius must have
had about thirty thousand troops under his command
in Italy before the taking of Ravenna. Germanus,
when he arrived in Africa, found that only one-third of
the Roman troops about Carthage had remained faithful,
and the rebels under Stozas amounted to eight thousand
men. As there were still troops in Numidia which had
not joined the deserters, the whole Roman force in
Africa cannot have been less than fifteen thousand.
Narses, in the year 551, when the empire began to show
evident proofs of the bad effects of Justinian's govern-
ment, could assemble thirty thousand chosen troops, an
army which defeated the veterans of Totila, and de-
stroyed the fierce bands of Franks and Alemanns which
hoped to wrest Italy from the Romans. The character
of the Roman troops, in spite of all that modern writers
have said to depreciate them, still stood so high that
Totila, the warlike monarch of the Goths, strove to in-
duce them to join his standard by offers of high pay.
No army had yet proved itself equal to the Roman on
the field of battle; and their exploits in Spain, Africa,
Colchis, and Mesopotamia, prove their excellence;
though the defeats which they sustained, both from the
Persians and on the Danube, reveal the fact that their
enemies were improving in military science, and watch-
ing every opportunity of availing themselves of any
neglect of the Roman government in maintaining the
efficiency of the army.
Numerous examples could be cited of almost in-
credible disorder in the armies,-originating generally
in the misconduct of the imperial government. Beli-
sarius attempted, but found it impossible, to enforce
strict discipline,' when the soldiers were unpaid, and
1 At the commencement of his African expedition he executed two Huns
for killing one of their companions in a drunken quarrel.-Procopius, Vand. i.
c. 12. Belisarius, in addressing his troops, told them that the Persians did not
surpass them in valour, but excelled them in discipline.-Procopius, Pers. i. c. 14.
A. D.
527-565.
252
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. the officers authorised to act independently of his orders.
Two thousand Heruls ventured to quit his standard
in Italy, and, after marching round the Adriatic, were
pardoned by Justinian, and again engaged in the im-
perial service. Procopius mentions repeatedly that the
conduct of the unpaid and unpunished troops ruined
the provinces; and in Africa, no less than three Roman
officers, Stozas, Maximin, and Gontharis, attempted to
render themselves independent, and were supported by
large bodies of troops.¹ The Greeks were the only por-
tion of the population who were considered as sincerely
attached to the imperial government, or, at least, who
would readily defend it against every enemy; and ac-
cordingly, Gontharis, when he wished to secure Car-
thage, ordered all the Greeks to be murdered without
distinction. The Greeks were, however, from their
position and rank in society as burgesses or tax-payers,
almost entirely excluded from the army, and, though
they furnished the greater part of the sailors for the
fleet, they were generally an unwarlike population.
Witiges, the Gothic king, calls the Roman army of
Belisarius an army of Greeks, a band of pirates, actors,
and mountebanks.2
One of the most unfortunate measures of Justinian
was the disbanding all the provincial militia. This is
incidentally mentioned in the Secret History of Proco-
pius, who informs us that Thermopyla had been pre-
viously guarded by two thousand of this militia; but
that this corps was dissolved, and a garrison of regular
troops placed in Greece. As a general measure it was
probably dictated by a plan of financial reform, and
3
¹ Constantine, one of the officers of the army in Italy, attempted to assassi-
nate Belisarius, who had ordered him to restore property which he had plun-
dered. The African army rebelled against John the patrician.- Corippus,
vii. 50. The garrison of Petra entered the service of Chosroes.-Procopius,
Pers. ii. 17. That of Spoleto joined Totila.-Gotth. iii. 12; iv. 26.
2 Procopius, Gotth. i. c. 18, 29.
3 Procopius, Hist. An. 26; vol. iii. 147, edit. Bonn. Gotth. iv. 26.
MILITARY FORCE.
253
not by any fear of popular insurrection; but its effects
were extremely injurious to the empire in the declining
state of society, and in the increasing disorganisation
of the central power; and though it may possibly
have prevented some provinces from recovering their
independence by their own arms, it prepared the way
for the easy conquests of the Avars and Arabs. Justi-
nian was desirous of centralising all power, and render-
ing all public burdens uniform and systematic; and
had adopted the opinion that it was cheaper to defend
the empire by walls and fortresses than by a movable
army. The practice of moving the troops with great
celerity to defend the frontiers, had induced the offi-
cers to abandon the ancient practice of fortifying a
regular camp; and at last, even the art of encamping
was neglected.' The barbarians, however, could always
move with greater rapidity than the regular troops of
the empire.
To secure the frontiers, Justinian adopted a plan of
constructing extensive lines supported by innumerable
forts and castles, in which he placed garrisons, in order
that they might be ready to sally out on the invad-
ing bands. These lines extended from the Adriatic to
the Black Sea, and were farther strengthened by the
long wall of Anastasius, which covered Constantinople
by walls protecting the Thracian Chersonesus and the
Peninsula of Pallene, and by fortifications at Thermo-
pylæ, and at the Isthmus of Corinth, which were all
carefully repaired. At all these posts permanent gar-
risons were maintained. The eulogy of Procopius on
the public edifices of Justinian seems almost irrecon-
cilable with the events of the latter years of his reign;
for Zabergan, king of the Huns, penetrated through
breaches he found unrepaired in the long wall, and
advanced almost to the very suburbs of Constantinople.2
¹ Menandri Frag. p. 440, edit. Bonn.
2 See infra, page 307.
A. D.
527-565.
254
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III.
Another instance of the declining state of military
tactics may be mentioned, as it must have originated
in the army itself, and not in consequence of any ar-
rangements of the government. The combined man-
œuvres of the divisions of the regiments had been so
neglected that the bugle-calls once used had fallen into
desuetude, and were unknown to the soldiers. The
motley recruits, of dissimilar habits, could not acquire,
with the requisite rapidity, a perception of the delicacy
of the ancient music, and the Roman infantry no longer
moved
In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood,
Of flutes and soft recorders.
It happened, during the siege of Auximum in Italy,
that Belisarius was placed in difficulty from the want
of an instantaneous means of communicating orders to
the troops engaged in skirmishing with the Goths. On
this occasion it was suggested to him by Procopius, his
secretary and the historian of his wars, to replace the
forgotten bugle-calls by making use of the brazen
trumpet of the cavalry to sound a charge, and of the
infantry bugle to summon a retreat.'
Foreigners were preferred by the emperors as the
occupants of the highest military commands; and
the confidence with which the barbarian chiefs were
honoured by the court enabled many to reach the
highest rank in the army. Narses, the most distin-
guished military leader after Belisarius, was a Pers-
Armenian captive. Peter, who commanded against
the Persians in the campaign of 528, was also a Pers-
Armenian. Pharas, who besieged Gelimer in Mount
Pappua, was a Herul. Mundus, who commanded in
Illyria and Dalmatia, was a Gepid prince.2 Chilbud,
who, after several victories, perished with his army in
1 Procopius, Gotth. ii. 24. The bugle of the infantry was composed of wood
and leather.
2 Joan. Malalas, p. alt. 64, edit. Ven.
MILITARY FORCE.
255
defending the frontiers against the Sclavonians, was of
northern descent, as may be inferred from his name.
Salomon, who governed Africa with great courage and
ability, was a eunuch from Dara. Artaban was an
Armenian prince. John Troglita, the patrician, the
hero of the poem of Corippus, called the Johannid, is
also supposed to have been an Armenian. Yet the
empire might still have furnished excellent officers, as
well as valiant troops; for the Isaurians and Thracians
continued to distinguish themselves in every field of
battle, and were equal in courage to the fiercest of the
barbarians.
1
It became the fashion in the army to imitate the
manners and habits of the barbarians; their headlong
personal courage became the most admired quality, even
in the highest rank; and nothing tended more to hasten.
the decay of the military art. The officers in the Roman
armies became more intent on distinguishing themselves
for personal exploits than for exact order and strict dis-
cipline in their corps. Even Belisarius himself appears
at times to have forgotten the duties of a general in
his eagerness to exhibit his personal valour on his bay
charger; though he may, on such occasions, have con-
sidered that the necessity of keeping up the spirits of
his army was a sufficient apology for his rashness. Un-
questionably the army, as a military establishment,
had declined in excellence ere Justinian ascended the
throne, and his reign tended to sink it much lower;
yet it is probable that it was never more remarkable
for the enterprising valour of its officers, or for their
personal skill in the use of their weapons. The death
¹ Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, tom. ix. 91, 93. Notes de Saint Martin.
Many more might be added. John, the Armenian, was killed in the pursuit of
Gelimer. Akoum, a Hun, commanded the troops in Illyria.-Theoph. p. 184.
Peran, son of a king of Iberia; Bessas, a Goth, but subject of the empire;
Isak, an Armenian; Philemuth, a Hun, were all generals. See the Index to
Procopius.
A. D.
527-565.
256
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. of numbers of the highest rank in battles and skirmishes
in which they rashly engaged, proves this fact. There
was, however, one important feature of ancient tactics
still preserved in the Roman armies, which gave them
a decided superiority over their enemies. They had
still the confidence in their discipline and skill to form
their ranks, and encounter their opponents in line; the
bravest of their enemies, whether on the banks of the
Danube or the Tigris, only ventured to charge them,
or receive their attack, in close masses.¹
SECT. III.-INFLUENCE OF JUSTINIAN'S LEGISLATION ON THE
GREEK POPULATION.
The Greeks long remained strangers to the Roman
law. The free cities continued to be governed by their
own legal systems and local usages, and the Greek
lawyers did not consider it necessary to study the
civil law of their masters. But this state of things
underwent a great modification, after Constantine
transformed the Greek town of Byzantium into the
Roman city of Constantinople. The imperial adminis-
tration, after that period, came into more immediate
connection with its eastern subjects; the legislative
power of the emperors was more frequently exercised
in the regulation of provincial business; and the
Christian church, by uniting the whole Greek popula-
tion into one body, often called forth general measures
of legislation. While the confusion arising from the
incongruity of old laws to the new exigencies of society
was generally felt, the increasing poverty, depopulation,
and want of education in the Greek cities, rendered it
difficult to maintain the ancient tribunals. The Greeks
were often compelled to study at the universities where
1 Even the rebel troops in Africa fought in bands, like barbarians, and not
in regular ranks, like Romans.
LEGISLATION.
257
Roman jurisprudence alone was cultivated, and thus
the municipal law-courts were at last guided in their
decisions by the rules of Roman law. As the number
of the native tribunals decreased, their duties were
performed by judges named by the imperial adminis-
tration; and thus Roman law, silently, and without
any violent change or direct legislative enactment, was
generally introduced into Greece.
Justinian, from the moment of his accession to the
throne, devoted his attention to the improvement of
every department of government, and carried his
favourite plan, of centralising the direction of the com-
plicated machine of the Roman administration in his
own person, as far as possible. The necessity of con-
densing the various authorities of Roman jurisprudence,
and of reducing the mass of legal opinions of eminent
lawyers into a system of legislative enactments, possess-
ing unity of form and facility of reference, was deeply
felt. Such a system of legislation is useful in every
country; but it becomes peculiarly necessary, after a
long period of civilisation, in an absolute monarchy,
in order to restrain the decisions of legal tribunals by
published law, and prevent the judges from assuming
arbitrary power, under the pretext of interpreting
obsolete edicts and conflicting decisions. A code of
laws, to a certain degree, serves as a barrier against
despotism, for it supplies the people with the means of
calmly confuting the acts of their government and the
decisions of their judges by recognised principles of
justice; and at the same time it is a useful ally to the
absolute sovereign, as it supplies him with increased
facilities for detecting legal injustice committed by his
official agents.
The faults or merits of Justinian's system of laws
belong to the lawyers intrusted with the execution of
his project, but the honour of having commanded this
R
A. D.
527-565.
258
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Work may be ascribed to the emperor alone.
It is to
be regretted that the position of an absolute sovereign
is so liable to temptation from passing events, that
Justinian himself could not refrain from injuring the
surest monument of his fame, by later enactments,
which mark too clearly that they emanated either from
his own increasing avarice, or from weakness in yield-
ing to the passions of his wife or courtiers.¹ It could
not be expected that his political sagacity should have
devised the means of securing the rights of his subjects
against the arbitrary exercise of his own power; but
he might have consecrated the great principle of equity,
that legislation can never act as a retrospective decision ;
and he might have ordered his magistrates to adopt the
oath of the Egyptian judges, who swore, when they
entered an office, that they would never depart from
the principles of equity (law), and that if the sovereign
ordered them to do wrong, they would not obey.
Justinian, however, was too much of a despot, and too
little of a statesman, to proclaim the law, even while
retaining the legislative power in his person, to be
superior to the executive branch of the government.
But in maintaining that the laws of Justinian might
have been rendered more perfect, and have been framed
to confer greater benefits on mankind, it is not to be
denied that the work is one of the most remarkable
monuments of human wisdom; and we should re-
member with gratitude, that for thirteen hundred years
the Pandects served as the magazine or source of legal
lore, and constitution of civil rights, to the Christian
world, both in the East and in the West; and if it has
now become an instrument of administrative tyranny
in the continental monarchies of Europe, the fault is
in the nations who refuse to follow out the principles
of equity logically in regulating the dispensation of
1 Justinian indicates that he was sensible of this.- Cod. Just. xii. 24, 7.
LEGISLATION.
259
justice, and do not raise the law above the sovereign,
nor render every minister and public servant amenable
to the regular tribunals for every act he may commit
in the exercise of his official duty, like the humblest
citizen.¹
The government of Justinian's empire was Roman,
its official language was Latin. Oriental habits and
usages, as well as time and despotic power, had indeed
introduced modifications in the old forms; but it
would be an error to consider the imperial adminis-
tration as having assumed a Greek character. The
accident of the Greek language having become the
ordinary dialect in use at court, and of the church in
the Eastern Empire being deeply tinctured with Greek
feelings, is apt to create an impression that the Eastern
Empire had lost something of its Roman pride, in order
to adopt a Greek character. The circumstance that
its enemies often reproached it with being Greek, is a
proof that the imputation was viewed as an insult. As
the administration was entirely Roman, the laws of
Justinian-the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutions
—were published in Latin, though many of the latter
edicts (novells) were published in Greek. Nothing
can illustrate in a stronger manner the artificial and
anti-national position of the eastern Roman empire
than this fact, that the Latin language was used in the
promulgation of a system of laws for an empire, the
language of whose church and literature was Greek.
Latin was preserved in official business, and in public
1 In Continental constitutions there is generally an article declaring that all
citizens are equal before the law, and yet this is followed by others which allow
the sovereign to establish exceptional tribunals for judging the conduct of
government officials, according to a system of privileges and immunities called
administrative law. Where true liberty exists, every agent of the administra-
tion, from the gendarme to the finance minister, must be rendered personally
responsible to the citizen whom his act affects for the legality of every act he
carries into execution. This is the real foundation of English liberty, and the
great legal principle which distinguishes the law of England from the laws of
the continental nations of Europe and that of Rome, from which they are
derived.
A. D.
527-565.
260
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. ceremonials, from feelings of pride connected with the
ancient renown of the Romans, and the dignity of the
Roman empire. So strong is the hold which anti-
quated custom maintains over the minds of men, that
even a professed reformer, like Justinian, could not
break through so irrational an usage as the publication
of his laws in a language incomprehensible to most of
those for whose use they were framed.
The laws and legislation of Justinian throw only an
indistinct and vague light on the state of the Greek
population. They were drawn entirely from Roman
sources, calculated for a Roman state of society, and
occupied with Roman forms and institutions. Justinian
was so anxious to preserve them in all their purity, that
he adopted two measures to secure them from altera-
tion. The copyists were commanded to refrain from
any abridgment, and the commentators were ordered
to follow the literal sense of the laws. All schools of
law were likewise forbidden, except those of Constanti-
nople, Rome, and Berytus, a regulation which must
have been adopted to guard the Roman law from being
corrupted, by falling into the hands of Greek teachers,
and becoming confounded with the customary law of
the various Greek provinces.1 This restriction, and the
importance attached to it by the emperor, prove that
the Roman law was now the universal rule of conduct
in the empire. Justinian took every measure which
prudence could dictate to secure the best and purest
legal instruction and administration for the Roman
tribunals; but only a small number of students could
study in the licensed schools, and Rome, one of these
schools, was, at the time of the publication of the law,
in the hands of the Goths. It is therefore not surpris-
1 Const. ad Antecessores, and De Confirm. Digestorum. Cod. Just. i. 17, 3.
Joan. Malalas (p. 63, edit. Ven.) says that Justinian sent a copy of his laws to
Athens as well as to Berytus.
LEGISLATION.
261
ing that a rapid decline in the knowledge of Roman law
commenced very shortly after the promulgation of Jus-
tinian's legislation.
Justinian's laws were soon translated into Greek with-
out the emperor's requiring that these paraphrases
should be literal and Greek commentaries of an ex-
planatory nature were published. His novells were sub-
sequently published in Greek when the case required
it; but it is evident that any remains of Greek laws
and customs were rapidly yielding to the superior sys-
tem of Roman legislation, perfected as this was by the
judicious labours of Justinian's councillors. Some
modifications were made in the jurisdiction of the judges
and municipal magistrates at this time; and we must
admit the testimony of Procopius as
a proof that
Justinian sold judicial offices, though the vagueness
of the accusation does not afford us the means of ascer-
taining under what pretext the change in the earlier
system was adopted. It is perhaps impossible to de-
termine what share of authority the Greek municipal
magistrates retained in the administration of justice
and police, after the reforms effected by Justinian in
their financial affairs, and the seizure of a large part of
their local revenues. The existence of Greek corpora-
tions in Italy shows that they possessed an acknow-
ledged existence in the Roman empire.
A. D.
527-565.
SECT. IV.—INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION, AS IT AFFECTED THE GREEKS.
The internal administration of Justinian was remark-
able for religious intolerance and financial rapacity.¹
Both assisted in increasing the deep-rooted hatred of
the imperial power throughout the provinces, and
his successors soon experienced the bitter effects of his
1 Evagrius, iv. 29. Procopius, Anecd. 11.
262
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. policy. Even the commencement of his own reign
gave some alarming manifestations of the general feel-
ing. The celebrated sedition of the Nika, though it
broke out among the factions of the amphitheatre, ac-
quired its importance in consequence of popular dis-
satisfaction with the fiscal measures of the emperor.
This sedition possesses an unfortunate celebrity in the
annals of the empire, from the destruction of many
public buildings and numerous works of ancient art,
occasioned by the conflagrations raised by the rebels.
Belisarius succeeded in suppressing it with considerable
difficulty after much bloodshed, and not until Justinian
had felt his throne in imminent danger. The alarm
produced a lasting impression on his mind; and more
than one instance occurred during his reign to remind
him that popular sedition puts a limit to despotic
power. At a subsequent period, an insurrection of the
people compelled him to abandon a project for recruiting
the imperial finances, according to a common resource
of arbitrary sovereigns, by debasing the value of the
coin.¹
We possess only scanty materials for describing the
condition of the Greek population during the reign of
Justinian. The relations of the Greek provinces and
cities with the central administration had endured for
ages, slowly undergoing the changes produced by time,
but without the occurrence of any general measure of
reform, until the decree of Caracalla conferred on all the
Greeks the rights and privileges of Roman citizens.
That decree, by converting all Greeks into Romans,
must have greatly modified the constitution of the free
and autonomous cities; but history furnishes no means
of determining with precision its effect on the inhabi-
tants of Greece. Justinian made another great change
by confiscating the local revenues of the municipalities;
1 Malalce Ch. pars. ii. p. 80, edit. Ven.
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
263
but in the six centuries which had elapsed from the fall
of the Roman republic to the extinction of municipal
freedom in the Greek cities, the prominent feature of
the Roman administration had been invariably the same
-fiscal rapacity, which gradually depopulated the coun-
try, and prepared the way for its colonisation by foreign
races.
The colossal fabric of the Roman government em-
braced not only a numerous imperial court and house-
hold, a host of administrators, finance agents, and
judges, a powerful army and navy, and a splendid
church establishment; it also conferred the privilege
of titular nobility on a large portion of the higher
classes, both on those who were selected to fill local
offices in connection with the public administration, and
on those who had held public employments during some
period of their lives. The titles of this nobility were
official; its members were the creatures of government,
attached to the imperial throne by ties of interest; they
were exempted from particular taxes, separated from
the body of the people by various privileges, and
formed, from their great numbers, rather a distinct na-
tion than a privileged class. They were scattered over
all the provinces of Justinian's empire, from the Atlan-
tic to the Euphrates, and constituted, at this period, the
real nucleus of civil society in the Roman world. Of
their influence, many distinct traces may be found, even
after the extinction of the Roman power, both in the
East and in the West.1
The population of the provinces, and more especially
the proprietors and cultivators of the soil, stood com-
¹ Notitia Dignitatum, edit. Boecking. Lydus, De Magistratibus Reipub.
Romanæ, ii. 13. C. T. vi. tit. 5. C. J. xii. 8. "Ut dignitatum ordo servetur."
The prefect of Africa was allowed by Justinian to have three hundred and
ninety-six officers and clerks, and each of his lieutenants and deputies, fifty.
Cod. Just. i. 27, 3. Arcadius had forbidden the Comes of the Orient, who was
under the orders of the prefect of the East, to have more than six hundred.
Just. C. xii. 57. Compare Lactantius, De Mort. Pers. 7, 4. Manso, Leben
Constantius, p. 139.
A. D.
527-565.
મ
264
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. pletely apart from these representatives of the Roman
supremacy, and almost in a state of direct opposition to
the government. The weight of the Roman yoke had
now pressed down all the provincials to nearly the same
level. As a general rule, they wereexcluded from the
profession of arms;¹ their poverty caused them to ne-
glect the cultivation of arts, sciences, and literature,
and their whole attention was absorbed in watching the
increasing rapacity of the imperial treasury, and in find-
ing means to evade the oppression which they saw no
possibility of resisting. The land and capitation taxes
formed the source of this oppression. No taxes were,
perhaps, more equitable in their general principle, and
few appear ever to have been administered, for so long
a period, with such unfeeling prudence. Their severity
had been so gradually increased, that but a very small
annual encroachment had been made on the savings of
the people, and centuries elapsed before its whole accu-
mulated capital was consumed; but at last the whole
wealth of the empire was drawn into the imperial trea-
sury; fruit-trees were cut down, and free men were
sold to pay taxes; vineyards were rooted out, and
buildings were destroyed to escape taxation.
The manner of collecting the land and capitation
taxes displays singular ingenuity in the mode of esti-
mating the value of the property to be taxed, and an in-
human sagacity in framing a system capable of extract-
ing the last farthing which that property could yield.
The registers underwent a public revision every fif-
teenth year, but the indictio, or amount of taxation to be
paid, was annually fixed by an imperial ordinance. The
whole empire was divided into capita, or hides of land.2
1
¹ The states of Greece had preserved their local militia even to Justinian's
time, as appears from the existence of the provincial guard for the defence of
Thermopyle, which he disbanded.-Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 26.
2 The capita were not only assessed at different amounts in the different pro-
vinces, according to circumstances, but even in the same provinces, where they
were assessed at the same amount, their size would differ according to the
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
265
The proprietors of these capita were grouped together
in communities, the wealthier members of which were
formed into a permanent magistracy, and rendered
liable for the amount of the taxes due by their com-
munity. The same law of responsibility was applied to
the senates and magistrates of cities and free states.
Confiscation of private property had, from the earliest
days of the empire, been regarded as an important
financial resource. In the days of Tiberius, the nobles
of Rome, whose power, influence, and character alarmed
the jealous tyrant, were swept away. Nero attacked
the wealthy to fill his exhausted treasury; and from
that time to the days of Justinian, the richest indivi-
duals in the capital and the provinces had been system-
atically punished for every offence by the confiscation
of their fortunes. The pages of Suetonius and Tacitus,
of Zosimus and Procopius, attest the extent and dura-
tion of this war against private wealth. Now, in the
eyes of the Roman government, the greatest political
offence was the failure to perform a public duty; and
the most important duty of a Roman subject had long
been to furnish the amount of taxes required by the
State. The increase of the public burdens at last pro-
ceeded so far, that every year brought with it a failure
in the taxes of some province, and consequently the
confiscation of the private property of the wealthiest
citizens of the insolvent district, until at last all the
rich proprietors were ruined, and the law became nuga-
tory. The poor and ignorant inhabitants of the rural
districts in Greece forgot the literature and arts of their
ancestors; and as they had no longer anything to sell,
nor the means of purchasing foreign commodities, money
ceased to circulate.
But though the proud aristocracy and the wealthy
fertility of the district. They corresponded to the modern Zevyάgia. In rich
lands where a part is irrigable, a zevgari is sometimes not more than thirty
acres, but in sterile Attica there are zevgaria of more than one hundred acres.
A. D.
527-565.
266
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Votaries of art, literature, and philosophy, disappeared,
and though independent citizens and proprietors now
stood scattered over the provinces as isolated indivi-
duals, without exercising any direct influence on the
character of the age, still the external framework of
ancient society displayed something of its pomp and
greatness. The decay of its majesty and strength was
felt; mankind perceived the approach of a mighty
change, but the revolution had not yet arrived; the
past glory of Greece shed its colouring on the unknown
future, and the dark shadow which that future now
throws back, when we contemplate Justinian's reign,
was then imperceptible.
Many of the habits, and some of the institutions of
ancient civilisation, still continued to exist among the
Greek population. Property, though crumbling away
under a system of slow corrosion, was regarded by
public opinion as secure against lawless violence or
indiscriminate confiscation; and it really was so, when
a comparison is made between the condition of a sub-
ject of the Roman empire and a proprietor of the soil
in any other country of the then known world. If
there was much evil in the state of society, there was
also some good; and, when contemplating it from our
modern social position, we must never forget that the
same causes which destroyed the wealth, arts, literature,
and civilisation of the Romans and Greeks, began to
eradicate from among mankind the greatest degrada-
tion of our species-the existence of slavery.
In the reign of Justinian, the Greeks as a people had
lost much of their superiority over the other sub-
jects of the empire. The schools of philosophy, which
had afforded the last refuge for the ancient literature
of the country, had long fallen into neglect, and were
on the very eve of extinction, when Justinian closed
them by a public edict. The poverty and ignorance
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
267
of the inhabitants of Greece had totally separated the
philosophers from the people. The town population
had everywhere embraced Christianity. The country
population, composed now in great part of the offspring
of freedmen and slaves, was removed from all instruc-
tion, and paganism continued to exist in the retired
mountains of the Peloponnesus. Those principles of
separation which originated in non-communication of
ideas and interests, and which began to give the Roman
empire the aspect of an agglomeration of nations, rather
than the appearance of a single State, operated as pow-
erfully on the Greek people as on the Egyptian, Syrian,
and Armenian population. The needy cultivators of
the soil--the artisans in the towns-and the servile
dependents on the imperial administration,-formed
three distinct classes of society. A strong line of dis-
tinction was created between the Greeks in the service
of the empire and the body of the people, both in the
towns and country. The mass of the Greeks naturally
participated in the general hostility to the Roman ad-
ministration; yet the immense numbers who were
employed in the State, and in the highest dignities of
the Church, neutralised the popular opposition, and pre-
vented the Greek nation from aspiring at national in-
dependence.
It has been already observed that Justinian restricted
the powers and diminished the revenues of the Greek
municipalities, but that these corporations continued
to exist, though shorn of their former power and in-
fluence. Splendid monuments of Grecian architecture,
and beautiful works of Grecian art, still adorned the
Agora and the Acropolis of many cities in Greece.
Where the ancient walls were falling into decay, and
the untenanted buildings presented an aspect of ruin,
they were cleared away to construct the new fortifica-
tions, the churches, and the monasteries, with which
A. D.
527-565.
268
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Justinian covered the empire. The hasty construction
of these buildings, rapidly erected from the materials
furnished by the ancient structures around, accounts
both for their number and for the facility with which
time has effaced almost every trace of their existence.
Still, even in architecture, the Roman empire displayed
some traces of its greatness; the church of St Sophia,
and the aqueduct of Constantinople, attest the supe-
riority of Justinian's age over subsequent periods, both
in the East and in the West.
The superiority of the Greek population must at this
time have been most remarkable in their regulations of
internal government and police administration.¹ Pub-
lic roads were still maintained in a serviceable state,
though not equal in appearance or solidity of construc-
tion to the Appian Way in Italy, which excited the
admiration of Procopius.2 Streets were kept in repair
by the proprietors of the houses forming them.3 The
astynomoi and the agoranomoi were still elected, but
their number often indicated the former greatness of
a diminished population. The post-houses, post-man-
sions, and every means of transport, were maintained
in good order, but they had long been rendered a
means of oppressing the people; and, though laws had
often been passed to prevent the provincials from suffer-
ing from the exactions of imperial officers when travel-
ling, the extent of the abuses was beginning to ruin
the establishment.4 The Roman empire, to the latest
period of its existence, paid considerable attention to
the police of the public roads, and it was indebted to
1 Procopius, in the Secret History, accuses Justinian of neglecting the public
aqueducts, but we have no data for ascertaining the precise changes he
effected in the water police and administration. The names of the modern
officers charged with the distribution of the water of the Cephissus for irriga-
tion, and of the water of the ancient subterraneous aqueduct which supplies
Athens, and which supplied it before the days of Pericles, are oraμάgxns and
νεροκράτης.
2 De Bello Gotth. i. 14.
3 Dig. xliii. 10, 11.
4 Cod. Theod. viii. tit. 5, "De Cursu Publico."
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
269
this care for the preservation of its military superiority
over its enemies, and of its lucrative commerce.
1
2
The activity of the government in clearing the
country of robbers and banditti, and the singular
severity of the laws on this subject, show that the
slightest danger of a diminution of the imperial
revenues inspired the Roman government with energy
and vigour. Nor were other means of advancing the
commercial interests of the people neglected. The
ports were carefully cleaned, and their entry indicated
by lighthouses, as in earlier times; and, in short, only
that portion of ancient civilisation which was too ex-
pensive for the diminished resources of the age had
fallen into neglect. Utility and convenience were
universally sought, both in private and public life;
but solidity, taste, and the durability which aspires at
immortality, were no longer regarded as objects of
attainable ambition. The basilica, or the monastery,
constructed by breaking to pieces the solid blocks of
a neglected temple, and cemented together by lime
burnt from the marble of the desecrated shrine, or
from some heathen tomb, was intended to contain a
certain number of persons; and the cost of the build-
ing, and its temporary sufficiency for the required
purpose, were just as much the general object of the
architect's attention in the time of Justinian as in
our own.
The worst feature of Justinian's administration was
its venality. This vice, it is true, generally prevails in
every administration uninfluenced by public opinion,
and based on an organised bureaucracy; for whenever
the corps of administrators becomes too numerous for
the moral character of individuals to be under the
1 Cod. Just. i. 55, 6, "De Defensoribus Civitatum; " 10, 75, "De Iren-
archis; " ix. 47, 18, "De Ponis."
2 Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 12,) shows that the provincial towns of Ostia and
Ravenna had borrowed this Greek invention.
A. D.
527-565.
270
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
1
CHAP. III. direct control of their superiors, usage secures to them
a permanent official position, unless they grossly neglect
their duties. Justinian, however, countenanced the
venality of his subordinates by an open sale of offices;
and the violent complaints of Procopius are confirmed
by the legislative measures of the emperor. When
shame prevented the emperor himself from selling an
official appointment, he did not blush to order the pay-
ment of a stated sum to be made to the empress
Theodora. This conduct opened a door to abuses on
the part of the imperial ministers and provincial
governors, and contributed, in no small degree, to the
misfortunes of Justin II. It diminished the influence
of the Roman administration in the distant provinces,
and neutralised the benefits which Justinian had con-
ferred on the empire by his legislative compilations.
A strong proof of the declining condition of the Greek
nation is to be found in the care with which every
misfortune of this period is recorded in history. It is
only when little hope is felt of repairing the ravages of
disease, fire, and earthquakes, that these evils perma-
nently affect the prosperity of nations. In an improv-
ing state of society, great as their ravages may prove,
they are only personal misfortunes and temporary
evils; the void which they create in the population is
quickly replaced, and the property which they may
destroy rises from its ruins with increased solidity and
beauty. When it happens that a pestilence leaves a
country depopulated for many generations, and that
conflagrations and earthquakes ruin cities, which are
never again reconstructed of their former size-these
evils are apt to be mistaken by the people as the
primary cause of the national decline, and acquire an
1
¹ Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 14, 21. Cod. Just. i. 27, 1, 2, "De Officio Præfecti
Prætorio Africæ." Nov. 8. Nov. 24.
2 Nor. 30, c. 6.
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
271
undue historical importance in the popular mind. The
age of Justinian was remarkable for a terrible pestilence
which ravaged every province of the empire in succes-
sion, for many famines which swept away no incon-
siderable portion of the population, and for earth-
quakes which laid waste no small number of the most
flourishing and populous cities of the empire.'
1
Greece had suffered very little from hostile attacks
after the departure of Alaric; for the piratical incur-
sions of Genseric were neither very extensive nor very
successful; and after the time of these barbarians, the
ravages of earthquakes begin to figure in history, as an
important cause of the impoverished and declining con-
dition of the country. The Huns, it is true, extended
their plundering expeditions, in the year 540, as far as
the Isthmus of Corinth, but they do not appear to have
succeeded in capturing a single town of any note.2 The
fleet of Totila plundered Corcyra, and the coast of
Epirus, from Nicopolis up to Dodona; but these mis-
fortunes were temporary and partial, and could have
caused no irreparable loss, either of life or property.
The fact appears to be, that Greece was in a declining
condition; but that the means of subsistence were
abundant, and the population had but an incorrect and
vague conception of the means by which the govern-
ment was consuming their substance, and depopulating
their country. In this state of things, several earth-
quakes, of singular violence, and attended by unusual
phenomena, made a deep impression on men's minds,
by producing a degree of desolation which a declining
state of society rendered irreparable. Corinth, which
was still a populous city, Patras, Naupactus, Cheronea,
1 Gibbon (ch. xliii.) gives an account of the earthquakes and of the great
pestilence. See notes 58, 60, 83 and 95. Procopius (Gotth. ii. c. 17) gives a
fearful picture of the famine in Italy, and says that millions perished in Africa,
which suffered less than Italy. --Hist. Arc. c. 18.
2 Procopius, Pers. ii. 4.
A. D.
527-565.
272
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. and Coronea, were all laid in ruins. An immense
assembly of Greeks was collected at the time to cele-
brate a public festival; the whole population was
swallowed up in the midst of their ceremonies. The
waters of the Maliac Gulf retired suddenly, and left the
shores of Thermopylae dry; but the sea, suddenly re-
turning with violence, swept up the valley of the
Sperchius, and carried away the inhabitants.
In an
age of ignorance and superstition, when the prospects
of mankind were despondent, and at the moment when
the emperor was effacing the last relics of the religion
of their ancestors-a religion which had filled the sea
and the land with guardian deities-these awful occur-
rences could not fail to produce an alarming effect on
men's minds, and were not unnaturally regarded as a
supernatural confirmation of the despair which led
many to imagine that the ruin of our globe was
approaching. It is not wonderful that many pagans
believed with Procopius that Justinian was the demon
destined to complete the catastrophe of the human
race.1
The condition of the Greek population in Achaia
seems to have been as little understood by the courtiers
of Justinian as that of the newly-established Greek
kingdom by its Bavarian masters and the protecting
powers. The splendid appearance which the ancient
monuments, shining in the clear sky with the freshness
of recent constructions, gave to the Greek cities, induced
the Constantinopolitans and other strangers who visited
the country, to suppose that the aspect of elegance and
delicacy of finish, everywhere apparent, were the result
of constant municipal expenditure. The buildings of
Constantine and Theodosius in the capital were pro-
bably begrimed with dust and smoke, so that it was
natural to conceive that those of Pericles and Epam-
Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 18.
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION.
273
inondas could retain a perpetual youth only by a liberal
expenditure for their preservation. The celebrity of the
city of Athens, the privileges which it still enjoyed, the
society by which it was frequented, as an agreeable
residence, as a school for study, or as a place of retire-
ment for the wealthy literary men of the age, gave the
people of the capital a far too exalted idea of the well-
being of Greece. The cotemporaries of Justinian judged
the Greeks of their age by placing them in too close a
relation with the inhabitants of the free states of anti-
quity; we, on the contrary, are too apt to confound
them with the rude inhabitants who dwelt in the Pelo-
ponnesus after it was filled with Sclavonian and Al-
banian colonies. Had Procopius rightly estimated the
condition of the rural population, and reflected on the
extreme difficulty which the agriculturist always en-
counters in quitting his actual employment in order
to seek any distant occupation, and the impossibility of
finding money in a country where there are no pur-
chasers for extra produce, he would not have signalised
the penurious disposition of the Greeks as their national
characteristic. The population which spoke the Greek
language in the capital and in the Roman administra-
tion was now influenced by a very different spirit from
that of the inhabitants of the true Hellenic lands; and
this separation of feeling became more and more con-
spicuous as the empire declined in power. The central
administration soon ceased to pay any particular atten-
tion to Greece, which was sure to furnish its tribute,
as it hated the Romans less than it feared the barbarians.
From henceforward, therefore, the inhabitants of Hellas
τε σμικρολογία.”
1 De Edificiis, iv. 11. “Taúry re rỹ sµingohoyiz." The historical works of
Procopius were written for the literary classes, the Secret History for the people.
It is probable that many works like the Secret History, circulated in the Lower
Empire, were particularly addressed to Greek readers. Compare the unwill-
ingness to blame the Greeks in c. 24 with the above passage in the Edificiis.
Επικαλοῦντες τοῖς μὲν ὡς Γραικοὶ εἶεν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἐξὸν τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς τὸ παράπαν τινὶ
γενναίῳ γενέσθαι.”
A. D.
527-565.
Մ
274
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. become almost lost to the historians of the empire; and
the motley and expatriated population of Constanti-
nople, Asia Minor, Syria, and Alexandria, is represented
to the literary world as forming the real body of the
Greek nation—an error which has concealed the history
of a nation from our study, and replaced it by the
annals of a court and the records of a government.
SECT. V. INFLUENCE OF JUSTINIAN'S CONQUESTS ON THE GREEK
POPULATION, AND THE CHANGE EFFECTED BY THE CONQUEST OF
THE VANDAL KINGDOM OF AFRICA.
The attention of Justinian's immediate predecessors
had been devoted to improving the internal condition
of the empire, and that portion of the population of the
Eastern Empire which spoke Greek forming the most
important body of the emperor's subjects, it had parti-
cipated in the greatest degree in this improvement.
The Greeks were on the eve of securing a national pre-
ponderance in the Roman state, when Justinian forced
them back into their former secondary condition, by
directing the influence of the public administration to
arms and law, the two departments of the Roman
government from which the Greeks were in a great
measure excluded. The conquests of Justinian, how-
ever, tended to improve the condition of the mercantile
and manufacturing portion of the Greek population, by
extending its commercial relations with the West; and
the trading population of the East began to acquire an
influence in public affairs, which tended to support the
central government at Constantinople, when the frame-
work of the Roman imperial administration began to
give way in the provinces. With the exception of
Sicily, and the southern portion of Italy, the whole of
Justinian's conquests in the West were peopled by the
Latin race; and the inhabitants, though attached to
CONQUEST OF AFRICA.
275
the imperial government of Constantinople as the poli-
tical head of the orthodox church, were already opposed
to the Greek nation.
When the Goths, Sueves, and Vandals had completed
their establishments in Spain, Africa, and Italy, and
their armies were spread over these countries as landed
proprietors, the smallness of their number became ap-
parent to the mass of the conquered population; and
the barbarians soon lost in individual intercourse as
citizens the superiority which they had enjoyed while
united in armed bands. The Romans, in spite of the
confiscation of a portion of their estates to enrich their
conquerors, and in spite of the oppression with which
they were treated, still formed the majority of the
middle classes; the administration of the greater part
of the landed property, the commerce of the country,
the municipal and judicial organisation, all centred in
the hands of the Roman population. In addition to
this political existence, they were separated from their
conquerors by religion. The northern invaders of the
Western Empire were Arians, the Roman population
was orthodox. This religious feeling was so strong,
that the Catholic king of the Franks, Clovis, was often
able to avail himself of the assistance of the orthodox
subjects of the Arian Goths, in his wars with the Gothic
kings. As soon, however, as Justinian proved that the
Eastern Empire had recovered some portion of the
ancient Roman vigour, the eyes of all the Roman popu-
lation in Spain, Gaul, Africa, and Italy, were directed
to the imperial court; and there can be no doubt that
the government of Justinian maintained extensive rela-
tions with the Roman population and the orthodox
clergy over all Europe, to prepare for assisting his
military operations.
1
Justinian had succeeded to the empire while it was
1 Gregory of Tours, 1. ii. c. 37.
A. D.
527-565.
276
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. embroiled in war with Persia, but he was fortunate
enough to conclude a peace with Chosroes the Great,
who ascended the Persian throne in the fourth year of
his reign. In the East the emperor could never expect
to make any permanent conquests; while in the West
a large portion of the population of the countries which
he proposed attacking was ready to receive his troops
with open arms; and, in case of success, they were
sure to form submissive and probably attached sub-
jects. Both policy and religion induced Justinian to
commence his attacks on the invaders of the Roman
empire in Africa. The conquest of the northern coast
of Africa by the Vandals, like the conquest of the other
great provinces of the Western Empire by the Goths,
the Burgundians, and the Franks, was gradually effected;
for the number of Genseric's troops was too small to
subdue and garrison the whole country in a series of
consecutive campaigns. The Vandals, who quitted
Spain in 428, could not arm more than 80,000 men.
In the year 431, Genseric, having defeated Boniface,
took Hippo; but it was not until 439 that he gained
possession of Carthage; and the conquest of the whole
African coast to the frontier of the Greek settlements
in Cyrenaïca was not completed until after the death
of Valentinian III., and the sack of Rome in 455. The
Vandals were bigoted Arians, and their government
was peculiarly tyrannical; they always treated the
Roman inhabitants of Africa as political enemies, and
persecuted them as religious opponents. The Visigoths
in Spain had occupied two-thirds of the subjugated
lands, the Ostrogoths in Italy had been satisfied with
one-third; and both these people had acknowledged
the civil rights of the Romans as citizens and Chris-
tians. The Vandals adopted a different policy. Gen-
seric reserved immense domains to himself and to his
sons. He divided the densely peopled and rich dis-
CONQUEST OF AFRICA.
277
trict of Africa proper among the Vandal warriors, ex-
empting them from taxation, and binding them to
military service. Eighty thousand lots were appor-
tioned, clustered round the large possessions of the
highest officers. They seized all the richest lands, and
the most valuable estates, and exterminated the higher
class of the Romans. Only the poorer proprietors were
permitted to preserve the arid and distant parts of the
country. Still the number of Romans excited the fears
of the Vandals, who destroyed the walls of the provin-
cial towns in order to prevent the people from receiving
succours from the Eastern Empire, which might have
supported a rebellion. The Roman population was
enfeebled by these measures, but its hatred of the
Vandal government was increased; and when Gelimer
assumed the royal authority in the year 531, the people
of Tripolis rebelled, and solicited assistance from Jus-
tinian.
Justinian could not overlook the great wealth of
Africa at the time of its conquest by Genseric; the
distributions of grain which it had furnished for Rome,
and the immense tribute which it had once paid. Only
a century had elapsed, so that he could hardly have
supposed it possible that the wealth and population of
the country had suffered to the extent of their actual
diminution, from the oppressive government of the
Vandal kings. On the other hand, he was doubtless
perfectly aware of the neglected state of military dis-
cipline among the Vandals. The conquest of a civil-
ised population by rude warriors must always be at-
tended by the ruin, and often by the extermination, of
the numerous classes which are supported by the profits
of those manufactures which are destined for the con-
sumption of the refined. The first conquerors despise
the appearance and manners of the conquered, and
never adopt immediately their costly dress, which is
A. D.
527-565.
278
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. naturally considered as a sign of effeminacy and
cowardice, nor do they adorn their dwellings with
the same taste and refinement. The vanquished being
deprived of the wealth necessary to procure these
luxuries, the ruin of a numerous class of manufac-
turers, and of a great portion of the industrious popu-
lation, is an inevitable consequence of this cessation
of demand. Thousands of artisans, tradesmen, and
labourers, must either emigrate or perish by starva-
tion; and the annihilation of a large commercial
capital employed in supporting human life takes place
with wonderful rapidity. Yet the conquerors may
long live in wealth and luxury; the accumulated
riches of the country will for many years be found
amply sufficient to gratify all the desires of the victors,
and the whole of this wealth will generally be consumed,
and even the power of reproducing it be greatly dimin-
ished, before any signs of poverty are perceived by the
conquerors. These facts are illustrated in the clearest
manner by the history of the Vandal domination in
Africa. The emigration of Vandal families from Spain
did not consist of more than eighty thousand males of
warlike age; and when Genseric conquered Carthage,
his whole army amounted only to fifty thousand war-
riors; yet this small horde devoured all the wealth
of Africa in the course of a single century, and, from
an army of hardy soldiers, it was converted into a
caste of luxurious nobles living in splendid villas
round Carthage. In order fully to understand the
influence of the Vandals on the state of the country
which they occupied, it must be observed that their
oppressive government had already so far lowered the
condition, and reduced the numbers of the Roman pro-
vincials, that the native Moors began to reoccupy the
country from which Roman industry and Roman capi-
1 Procopius, Vand. i. c. 5.
CONQUEST OF AFRICA.
279
tal had excluded them. The Moorish population being
in a lower state of civilisation than the lowest grade of
the Romans, could exist in districts abandoned as un-
inhabitable after the destruction of buildings and plan-
tations which the oppressed farmer had no means of
replacing; and thus, from the time of the Vandal in-
vasion, we find the Moors continually gaining ground
on the Latin colonists, gradually covering an increased
extent of country, and augmenting in numbers and
power. As the property of the province was destroyed,
its Roman inhabitants perished.
When Justinian attacked the Vandals they had be-
come one of the most luxurious nations in the world;
but as they continued to affect the character of soldiers,
they were admirably armed, and ready to take the field
with their whole male population. The neglect of mili-
tary discipline and science rendered their armies very
inefficient in spite of their splendid equipments. Hil-
deric, the fifth monarch of the Vandal kingdom, the
grandson of Genseric, and son of Eudocia, the daughter
of the Emperor Valentinian III., showed himself in-
clined to protect his orthodox and Roman subjects.
This disposition, and his Roman descent, excited the
suspicion of his Vandal and Arian countrymen, with-
out attaching the orthodox provincials to his hated
race.
Gelimer, the great-grandson of Genseric, availed
himself of the general discontent to dethrone Hilderic,
but the revolution was not effected without manifesta-
tions of dissatisfaction. The Roman inhabitants of the
province of Tripolis availed themselves of the oppor-
1 The succession of the Vandal monarchs was as follows:-
They invaded Africa,
Genseric ascended the throne,
Hunneric,
Gundamund,
Thorismund,
Hilderic,
Gelimer seized the crown,
A. D. 428
429
477
484
•
496
523
531
1
A. D.
527-565.
280
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. tunity to throw off the Vandal yoke, and solicit assist-
ance from Justinian; and a Gothic officer who com-
manded in Sardinia rebelled against the usurper.
The treason of Gelimer afforded Justinian an ex-
cellent pretext for invading the Vandal kingdom.
Belisarius, a general already distinguished by his con-
duct in the Persian war, was selected to command an
expedition of considerable magnitude, though by no
means equal to the great expedition which Leo I. had
sent to attack Genseric.¹ Ten thousand infantry,
and five thousand cavalry, were embarked in a fleet
of five hundred transports, which was protected and
escorted by ninety-two light galleys of war. The troops
were all veterans, inured to discipline, and the cavalry
was composed of the choicest soldiers in the imperial
service. After a long navigation, and some delay at
Methone and in Sicily, they reached Africa. The Van-
dals, who, in the time of Genseric, had been redoubted
pirates, and as such were national enemies of the com-
mercial Greeks, were now too wealthy to court danger,
and were ignorant of the approach of the Roman arma-
ment, until they received the news that Belisarius was
marching towards Carthage. They were numerous,
and doubtless brave, but they were no longer trained
to war, or accustomed to regular discipline, and their
behaviour in the field of battle was contemptible. Two
engagements of cavalry, in the bloodiest of which the
Vandals lost only eight hundred men, decided the fate
of Africa, and enabled Belisarius to subjugate the Van-
dal kingdom. The brothers of Gelimer fell gallantly
in the field. His own behaviour renders even his per-
sonal courage doubtful,- he fled to the Moors of the
mountainous districts; but the misery of barbarous
warfare, and the privations of a besieged camp, soon
1 See page 214.
CONQUEST OF AFRICA.
281
extinguished his feelings of pride, and his love of inde-
pendence. Belisarius led him prisoner to Constantinople,
where he appeared in the pageantry of a triumphal
procession. A conquering general, a captive monarch,
and a Roman triumph, offered strong temptations to
romantic fancies; but we are informed by Procopius
that Gelimer received from Justinian large estates in
Galatia, to which he retired with his relations. Justinian
offered him the rank of patrician, and a seat in the
senate; but he was attached to his Arian principles,
and believing that his personal dignity would be best
maintained by avoiding to appear in a crowd of servile
senators, he refused to join the orthodox church.¹
The Vandals displayed as little patriotism and forti-
tude as their king. Some were slain in the war, the
rest were incorporated in the Roman armies, or escaped
to the Moors. The provincials were allowed to reclaim
the lands from which they had been expelled at the
conquest; the Arian heresy was proscribed, and the
race of these remarkable conquerors was in a short time
exterminated. A single generation sufficed to confound
their women and children in the mass of the Roman
inhabitants of the province, and their very name was
totally forgotten. There are few instances in history
of a nation disappearing so rapidly and so completely
as the Vandals of Africa. After their conquest by Beli-
sarius, they vanish from the face of the earth as com-
pletely as the Carthaginians after the taking of Carthage
by Scipio. Their first monarch, Genseric, had been
powerful enough to plunder both Rome and Greece,
yet his army hardly exceeded fifty thousand men. His
successors, who held the absolute sovereignty of Africa
for one hundred and seven years, do not appear to have
commanded a larger force. The whole Vandals seem
1 Procopius, Vand. ii, c. 9.
A. D.
527-565.
282
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. I. never to have multiplied beyond the oligarchical posi-
tion in which their sudden acquisition of immense
wealth had placed them.¹
Belisarius soon established the Roman authority so
firmly round Carthage, that he was able to despatch
troops in every direction, in order to secure and extend
his conquests. The western coast was subjected as far
as the Straits of Hercules; a garrison was placed in
Septum, and a body of troops stationed in Tripolis, to
secure the eastern part of this extensive province from
the incursions of the Moors. Sardinia, Corsica, Majorca,
Minorca, and Iviça, were added to the empire, merely
by sending officers to take the command of these islands,
and troops to form the garrisons. The commercial re-
lations of the Greeks, and the civil institutions of the
Romans, still exercised a very powerful influence over
the populations of these islands.
Justinian determined to re-establish the Roman
government on precisely the same basis as it existed
before the Vandal invasion; but as the registers of the
land-tax and capitation, and the official admeasurement
of the estates, no longer existed, officers were sent from
Constantinople for the assessment of the taxes; and the
old principle of extorting as much of the surplus pro-
duce of the land as possible, was adopted as the rule
for apportioning the tribute. Yet, in the opinion of the
provincials, the financial rapacity of the imperial govern-
ment was a more tolerable evil than the tyranny of the
Vandals, and they remained long sincerely attached to
the Roman power. Unfortunately, the rebellion of
the barbarian mercenaries, who formed the flower of
Justinian's army in Africa, the despair of the persecuted
Arians, the seductions of the Vandal women, and the
hostile incursions of the Moorish tribes, aided the
1 The Vandal domination in Spain has left a permanent memorial in the
name of Andalusia from Vindelicia.
CONQUEST OF AFRICA.
283
severity of the taxes in desolating this flourishing pro-
vince. The exclusion of the Roman population from
the right of bearing arms, and forming themselves into
a local militia, even for the protection of their property
against the plundering expeditions of the neighbouring
barbarians, prevented the African provincials from aspir-
ing after independence, and rendered them incapable of
defending their property without the aid of the experi-
enced though disorderly soldiery of the imperial armies.
Religious persecution, financial oppression, the seditions
of unpaid troops, and the incursions of barbarous tribes,
though they failed to cause a general insurrection of the
inhabitants, ruined their wealth, and lessened their
numbers. Procopius records the commencement of the
desolation of Africa in his time; and subsequently, as the
imperial government grew weaker, more negligent, and
more corrupt, it pressed more heavily on the industry and
well-being of the provincials, and enabled the barbarous
Moors to extend their encroachments on Roman civili-
sation.¹
The glory of Belisarius deserves to be contrasted
with the oblivion which has covered the exploits of
John the Patrician, one of the ablest generals of Jus-
tinian. This experienced general assumed the command
in Africa when the province had fallen into a state of
great disorder; the inhabitants were exposed to a
dangerous coalition of the Moors, and the Roman army
was in such a state of destitution that their leader was
compelled to import the necessary provisions for his
troops.2 Though John defeated the Moors, and re-
stored prosperity to the province, his name is almost
forgotten. His actions and talents only affected the
interests of the Byzantine empire, and prolonged the
existence of the Roman province of Africa; they ex-
1 Procopius, De Bello Vand. ii. 14-28. Hist Arc. 18. Corippus, Johannides.
2 Corippus, Johannides, v. 384.
A. D.
527-565.
284
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. erted no influence on the fate of any of the European
nations whose history has been the object of study in
modern times, so that they were utterly forgotten,
when the recently discovered poetry of Corippus, one
of the last and worst of the Roman poets, rescued them
from complete oblivion.
SECT. VI.CAUSES OF THE EASY CONQUEST OF THE OSTROGOTHIC
KINGDOM OF ITALY BY BELISARIUS.
The empire of the Ostrogoths, though established on
principles of a just administration by the wisdom of
the great Theodoric, soon began to suffer as complete
a national demoralisation as that of the Vandals, though
the Goths themselves, from being more civilised, and
living more directly under the restraint of laws which
protected the property of their Roman subjects, had
not become individually so corrupted by the possession
of wealth. The conquest of Italy had not produced
any very great revolution in the state of the country.
The Romans had long been accustomed to be defended
in name, but, in fact, to be ruled, by the commanders
of the mercenary troops in the emperor's service. The
Goths, even after the conquest, allowed them to retain
two-thirds of their landed estates, with all their mov-
able property; and as they had really been as com-
pletely excluded from military service under their own
emperors, their social condition underwent but little.
change.¹ Policy induced Theodoric to treat the inhabi-
:
¹ Odoacer and Theodoric divided amongst their followers one-third of the
Roman estates in Italy.-Procopius, De Bello Gotth. i. c. 1. For an account of
the Ostrogothic government of Italy, see Essai sur l'état, civil et politique, des
Peuples d'Italie sous le gouvernement des Goths, par Sartorius, Paris 1811; and
Geschichte des Ost- Gothischen Reichs in Italien, Von Manso Breslau, 1824.
It is remarkable that the barbarians, on establishing themselves in Italy,
adopted the ancient Roman usage of appropriating a third of the conquered
lands. This resemblance to the old Roman colonies cannot have been ac-
cidental in a people who imitated so much of the laws of Rome in their terri-
torial administration. The Goths constituted themselves the military de-
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
285
tants of Italy with mildness. The permanent main-
tenance of his conquests required a considerable revenue,
and that revenue could only be supplied by the industry
and civilisation of his Italian subjects. His sagacity
told him, that it was wiser to tax the Romans than to
plunder them, and that it was necessary, in order to
secure the fruits of a regular system of taxation, to
leave them in the possession of those laws and privi-
leges which enabled them to defend their civilisation.
It is singular that the empire of Theodoric, the most
extensive and most celebrated of those which were
formed by the conquerors of the Roman provinces,
should have proved the least durable. The justice of
Theodoric, and the barbarity of Genseric, were equally
ineffectual in consolidating a permanent dominion.
The civilisation of the Romans was more powerful than
the mightiest of the barbarian monarchs; and until that
civilisation had sunk nearly to the level of their con-
querors, the institutions of the Romans were always
victorious over the national strength of the barbarians.
Under Theodoric, Italy was still Roman. The senate
of Rome, the municipal councils of the other cities, the
old courts of law, the parties of the circus, the factions
in the church, and even the titles and the pensions
attached to nominal offices in the State, all still ex-
isted unchanged; men still fought with wild beasts in
the Coliseum. The orthodox Roman lived under his
own law, with his own clergy, and the Arian Goth only
enjoyed equal liberty. The powerful and the wealthy,
whether they were Romans or Goths, were equally sure
1
fenders of the unarmed tax-payers, and both as such, and as the conquerors of
the country, they could claim under the Roman laws all the privileges which
Augustus had bestowed on his colonies of veterans. The Romans at last
suffered the evils they had inflicted on others. That Romans served in the
Gothic armies, though the case may have been rare, appears from the passages
pointed out by Sartorius.-P. 248.
1
¹ Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 24, 26. Manso (p. 140) observes that Theodoric
only tolerated the shows of the amphitheatre, of which he disapproved. Cassio-
dorus, Variæ, v. 42.
A. D.
527-565.
286
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. of obtaining justice; the poor, whether Goths or Ro-
mans, were in equal danger of being oppressed."
The kingdom which the great Theodoric left to his
grandson Athalaric, under the guardianship of his
daughter Amalasonta, embraced not only Italy, Sicily,
and a portion of the south of France; it also included
Dalmatia, a part of Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, and
Rhætia. In these extensive dominions, the Gothic
race formed but a small part of the population; and
yet the Goths, from the privileges which they enjoyed,
were everywhere regarded with jealousy by the bulk
of the inhabitants. Dissensions arose in the royal
family; Athalaric died young; Amalasonta was mur-
dered by Theodatus, his successor; and as she had been
in constant communication with the court of Constanti-
nople, this crime afforded Justinian a decent pretext
for interfering in the affairs of the Goths. To prepare
the way for the reconquest of Italy, Belisarius was sent
to attack Sicily, which he invaded with an army of
seven thousand five hundred men, in the year 535, and
subjected without difficulty. During the same cam-
paign, Dalmatia was conquered by the imperial arms,
recovered by the Goths, but again reconquered by
Justinian's troops. A rebellion of the troops in Africa
arrested, for a while, the progress of Belisarius, and
compelled him to visit Carthage; but he returned to
Sicily in a short time, and crossing over to Rhegium,
marched directly to Naples. As he proceeded, he was
1
¹ Theodoric says, in his edict, "Quod si forsitan persona potentior, aut ejus
procurator, vel vicedominus ipsius, aut certe conductor seu barbari, seu Ro-
mani, in aliquo genere causæ præsentia non permiserint edicta servari," &c.
Sartorius, 284. A great improvement took place in the condition of the rural
population of Italy during the thirty years' reign of Theodoric. A considerable
part of the land previously in pasturage was restored to agriculture, in con-
sequence of the grain trade being left free by the cessation of distributions
and maximum of market prices. Italy again began to produce enough for its
own consumption. This change led to the formation of a free class of culti-
vators of the soil-Romans, who farmed the landed estates of the Gothic
warriors.
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
287
everywhere welcomed by the inhabitants, who were
then almost universally Greeks; even the Gothic com-
mander in the south of Italy favoured the progress of
the Roman general.¹
The city of Naples made a vigorous defence; but
after a siege of three weeks it was taken by introducing
into the place a body of troops through the passage of
an ancient aqueduct. The conduct of Belisarius, after
the capture of the city, was dictated by policy, and
displayed very little humanity. As the inhabitants had
shown some disposition to assist the Gothic garrison
in defending the city, and as such conduct would have
greatly increased the difficulty of his campaign in Italy,
in order to intimidate the population of other cities.
he appears to have winked at the pillage of the town,
to have tolerated the massacre of many of the citizens
in the churches, where they had sought an asylum,
and to have overlooked a sedition of the lowest popu-
lace, in which the leaders of the Gothic party were
assassinated. From Naples, Belisarius marched forward
to Rome.
Only sixty years had elapsed since Rome had been
conquered by Odoacer; and during this period its
population, the ecclesiastical and civil authority of its
bishop, who was the highest dignitary in the Christian
world, and the influence of its senate, which still con-
tinued to be in the eyes of mankind the most honour-
able political body in existence, enabled it to preserve
a species of independent civic constitution. Theodoric
had availed himself of this municipal government to
1 Evermor, or Eurimond (for Jornandes gives him one name in his History
of the Goths, and another in his Chronicle), was the son-in-law of the King
Theodatus, yet he joined Belisarius. The Romans had a party among the
Goths; and, after the conquest, many Goths were converted from Arians to
Catholics. Jornandes speaks of himself: "Ego item, quamvis agrammatus,
Jornandes, ante conversionem meam notarius fui." This, however, implies
perhaps that he had embraced the clerical life. His Roman attachments are
strongly shown in his works.-De Rebus Geticis, p. 382.
A. D.
527-565.
288
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP.
Cпap. III. smooth away many of the difficulties which presented
themselves in the administration of Italy. The Goths,
however, in leaving the Romans in possession of their
own civil laws and institutions, had not diminished
their aversion to a foreign yoke; yet as they possessed
no distinct feelings of nationality apart from their con-
nection with the imperial domination and their reli-
gious orthodoxy, they never aspired to independence,
and were content to turn their eyes towards the empe-
ror of the East as their legitimate sovereign. Belisarius,
therefore, entered the "Eternal City" rather as a friend
than as a conqueror; but he had hardly entered it
before he perceived that it would be necessary to take
every precaution to defend his conquest against the
new Gothic king Witiges. He immediately repaired
the walls of Rome, strengthened them with a breast-
work, collected large stores of provisions, and prepared
to sustain a siege.
1
The Gothic war forms an important epoch in the
history of the city of Rome; for, within the space of
sixteen years, it changed masters five times, and suffered
three severe sieges. Its population was almost de-
stroyed; its public buildings and its walls must have
undergone many changes, according to the exigencies
of the various measures required for its defence. It
has, consequently, been too generally assumed that the
existing walls indicate the exact position of those of
Aurelian. This period is also memorable for the ruin
of many monuments of ancient art, which the generals
of Justinian destroyed without compunction. With
the conquest of Rome by Belisarius the history of the
1 Rome was taken by Belisarius,
Besieged by Witiges,
Besieged and taken by Totila,
Retaken by Belisarius,
Again besieged and retaken by Totila,
Taken by Narses,
-Clinton, Fasti Romani.
A. D. 536
537
546
547
•
549
552
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
289
ancient city may be considered as terminating; and
with his defence against Witiges commences the his-
tory of the middle ages,—of the times of destruction
and of change.
1
Witiges laid siege to Rome with an army said by
Procopius to have amounted to 150,000 men, yet this
army was insufficient to invest the whole circuit of the
city. The Gothic king distributed his troops in seven
fortified camps; six were formed to surround the city,
and the seventh was placed to protect the Milvian
bridge. Five camps covered the space from the Pre-
nestine to the Flaminian gates, and the remaining
camp was formed beyond the Tiber, in the plain below
the Vatican. By these arrangements the Goths only
commanded about half the circuit of Rome, and the
roads to Naples and to the ports at the mouth of the
Tiber remained open. The Roman infantry was now
the weakest part of a Roman army. Even in the de-
fence of a fortified city it was subordinate to the
cavalry, and the military superiority of the Roman
arms was sustained by mercenary horsemen. It is
strange to find the tactics of the middle ages described
by Procopius in classic Greek. The Goths displayed
an utter ignorance of the art of war; they had no skill
in the use of military engines, and they could not even
1 Honorius made changes and repairs in the walls. Theodoric repaired them.
Cassiodorus, Var. 1, ep. 25, 11; ep. 34. Belisarius found them in a ruinous
state, the ditch filled up in some places. In general the sieges during the
Gothic War required the reduction of the size of the place, where this was
practicable. The feebleness of the outer wall of the Vivarium indicates that
this was not the original external wall. Totila destroyed about one-third of
the wall of Rome. Procop. Gotth. iii. 22. Marcell. Chron. ap. Sermond. ii. 385.
Belisarius must have made changes in repairing this destruction; and Diogenes,
who defended Rome against Totila in 548, could hardly fail to do so.
added to the walls near the Mole of Adrian.-Procop. Gotth. iii. 36; iv. 33.
The whole defences must have been remodelled by Narses, as they then con-
sisted in great part of temporary works and hasty repairs.-De Romæ veteris
Muris atque Portis. Scripsit G. A. Becker, Prof. Lips.; Leipsic, 1842. Pope
Gregory II. began to repair the walls from the gate of St Lawrence.-Anas-
tasius, Bibl., "De Vitis Pont. Roman." 67; edit. Ven.
2 De Bello Gotth. i. 14.
T
Totila
A. D.
527-565.
290
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. render their numerical superiority available in assaults.
The leading operations of the attack and defence of
Rome consisted in a series of cavalry engagements
fought under its walls; and in these the superior dis-
cipline and skill of the mercenaries of Belisarius gene-
rally secured them the victory. The Roman cavalry,-
for so the mixture of Huns, Heruls, and Armenians
which formed the élite of the army must be termed,
trusted chiefly to the bow; while the Goths placed
their reliance on the lance and sword, which the able
manoeuvres of their enemies seldom allowed them to
use with effect. The infantry of both armies usually
remained idle spectators of the combat. Belisarius
himself considered it of little use in a field of battle;
and when he once reluctantly admitted it, at the press-
ing solicitation of its commanders, to share in one of
his engagements, its defeat, after the exhibition of great
bravery on the part both of the officers and men, con-
firmed him in his preference of the cavalry.
In spite of the prudent arrangements adopted by
Belisarius to insure supplies of provisions from his re-
cent conquests in Sicily and Africa, Rome suffered very
severely from famine during the siege; but the Gothic
army was compelled to undergo equal hardships, and
suffered far greater losses from disease. The communi-
cations of the garrison with the coast were for a time
interrupted, but at last a body of five thousand fresh
troops, and an abundant supply of provisions, des-
patched by Justinian to the assistance of Belisarius,
entered Rome. Shortly after the arrival of this rein-
forcement, the Goths found themselves constrained to
abandon the siege, in which they had persevered for a
year. Justinian again augmented his army in Italy,
by sending over seven thousand troops under the
command of the eunuch Narses, a man whose military
talents were in no way inferior to those of Belisarius,
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
291
and whose name occupies an equally important place in
the history of Italy. The emperor, guided by the prudent
jealousy which dictated the strictest control over all the
powerful generals of the empire, had conferred on Narses
an independent authority over his own division, and
that general, presuming too far on his knowledge of
Justinian's feelings, ventured to throw serious obstacles
in the way of Belisarius. The dissensions of the two
generals delayed the progress of the Roman arms. The
Goths availed themselves of the opportunity to continue
the war with vigour; they succeeded in reconquering
Milan, which had admitted a Roman garrison, and
sacked the city, which was second only to Rome in
wealth and population. They massacred the whole
male population, and behaved with such cruelty that
three hundred thousand persons were said to have
perished—a number which probably only indicates the
whole population of Milan at this period.¹
A state of warfare soon disorganised the ill-cemented
government of the Gothic kingdom; and the ravages
caused by the wide-extended military operations of the
armies, which degenerated into a succession of sieges
and skirmishes, created a dreadful famine in the north
of Italy. Whole provinces remained uncultivated;
great numbers of the industrious natives perished by
actual starvation, and the ranks of the Goths were
thinned by misery and disease. Society advanced one
step towards barbarism. Procopius, who was himself in
Italy at the time, records a horrible story of two women
who lived on human flesh, and were discovered to have
murdered seventeen persons, in order to devour their
bodies. This famine assisted the progress of the Roman
arms, as the imperial troops drew their supplies of pro-
visions from the East, while the measures of their
enemies were paralysed by the general want.
2
1 Procopius, De Bello Gotth. ii. 21. A. D. 539. 2 De Bello Gotth. ii. 30,
A. D.
527-565.
292
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. IIL
The
Witiges, finding his resources inadequate to check
the conquests of Belisarius, solicited the aid of the
Franks, and despatched an embassy to Chosroes to
excite the jealousy of the Persian monarch. The
Franks, under Theodebert, entered Italy, but they
were soon compelled to retire; and Belisarius, being
placed at the head of the whole army by the recall of
Narses, soon terminated the war. Ravenna, the Gothic
capital, was invested; but the siege was more remark-
able for the negotiations which were carried on during
its progress than for the military operations.
Goths, with the consent of Witiges, made Belisarius
the singular offer of acknowledging him as the Emperor
of the West, on condition of his joining his forces to
theirs, permitting them to retain their position and
property in Italy, and thus insuring them the pos-
session of their nationality and their peculiar laws.
Perhaps neither the state of the mercenary army which
he commanded, nor the condition of the Gothic nation,
rendered the project very feasible. It is certain that
Belisarius only listened to it, in order to hasten the
surrender of Ravenna, and secure the person of Witiges
without farther bloodshed. Italy submitted to Justinian,
and the few Goths who still maintained their indepen-
dence beyond the Po pressed Belisarius in vain to de-
clare himself emperor. But even without these solicita-
tions, his power had awakened the fears of his sovereign,
and he was recalled, though with honour, from his
command in Italy. He returned to Constantinople
leading Witiges captive, as he had formerly appeared
conducting Gelimer.
Great as the talents of Belisarius really were, and
sound as his judgment appears to have been, still it
must be confessed that his name occupies a more pro-
minent place in history than his merits are entitled to
claim. The accident that his conquests put an end to
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
293
two powerful monarchies, of his having led captive to
Constantinople the representatives of the dreaded
Genseric and the great Theodoric, joined with the cir-
cumstance that he enjoyed the singular good fortune of
having his exploits recorded in the classic language of
Procopius, the last historian of the Greeks, have ren-
dered a brilliant career more brilliant from the medium
through which it is seen. At the same time the tale of
his blindness and poverty has extended a sympathy
with his misfortunes into circles which would have
remained indifferent to the real events of his history,
and made his name an expression for heroic greatness
reduced to abject misery by royal ingratitude. But
Belisarius, though he refused the Gothic throne and
the empire of the West, did not despise nor neglect
wealth; he accumulated riches which could not have
been acquired by any commander-in-chief amidst the
wars and famines of the period, without rendering the
military and civil administration subservient to his
pecuniary profit. On his return from Italy he lived at
Constantinople in almost regal splendour, and main-
tained a body of seven thousand cavalry attached to
his household.¹ In an empire where confiscation was
an ordinary financial resource, and under a sovereign
whose situation rendered jealousy only common pru-
dence, it is not surprising that the wealth of Belisarius
excited the imperial cupidity, and induced Justinian
to seize great part of it. His fortune was twice reduced
by confiscations. The behaviour of the general under
his misfortunes, and the lamentable picture of his de-
pression which Procopius has drawn, when he lost a
portion of his wealth on his first disgrace, does not tend
to elevate his character. At a later period, his wealth
was again confiscated on an accusation of treason, and
on this occasion it is said that he was deprived of his
¹ Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iii. 1.
A. D.
527-565.
294
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. sight, and reduced to such a state of destitution that he
begged his bread in a public square, soliciting charity
with the exclamation, "Give Belisarius an obolus!" But
ancient historians were ignorant of this fable, which has
been rejected by every modern authority in Byzantine
history. Justinian, on calm reflection, disbelieved the
treason imputed to a man who, in his younger days,
had refused to ascend a throne; or else he pardoned
what he supposed to be the error of a general to whose
services he was so deeply indebted; and Belisarius, re-
instated in some part of his fortune, died in possession
of wealth and honour.¹
Belisarius had hardly quitted Italy when the Goths
reassembled their forces. They were accustomed to
rule, and nourished in the profession of arms. Justinian
sent a civilian, Alexander the logothete, to govern Italy,
hoping that his financial arrangements would render
the new conquest a source of revenue to the imperial
treasury. The fiscal administration of the new governor
soon excited great discontent. He diminished the
number of the Roman troops, and put a stop to those
profits which a state of war usually affords the military;
while, at the same time, he abolished the pensions and
privileges which formed no inconsiderable portion of
the revenue of the higher classes, and which had never
been entirely suppressed during the Gothic domination.
Alexander may have acted in some cases with undue
severity in enforcing these measures; but it is evident,
from their nature, that he must have received express
orders to put an end to what Justinian considered the
lavish expenditure of Belisarius.
A part of the Goths in the north of Italy retained
their independence after the surrender of Witiges. They
raised Hildibald to the throne, which he occupied about
a year, when he was murdered by one of his own guards.
¹ See Appendix, No. 1. On the Blindness of Belisarius.
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
295
The tribe of Rugians then raised Erarich their leader to
the throne; but on his entering into negotiations with
the Romans he was murdered, after a reign of only five
months. Totila was then elected king of the Goths,
and had he not been opposed to the greatest men whom
the declining age of the Roman empire produced, he
would probably have succeeded in restoring the Gothic
monarchy in Italy.1 His successes endeared him to his
countrymen, while the justice of his administration
contrasted with the rapacity of Justinian's government,
and gained him the respect and submission of the na-
tive provincials. He was on the point of commencing
the siege of Rome, when Belisarius, who, after his de-
parture from Ravenna, had been employed in the Persian
war, was sent back to Italy to recover the ground
already lost. The imperial forces were completely des-
titute of that unity and military organisation which
constitute a number of different corps into one army.
The various bodies of troops were commanded by officers
completely independent of one another, and obedient
only to Belisarius as commander-in-chief. Justinian,
acting on his usual maxims of jealousy, and distrust-
ing Belisarius more than formerly, had retained the
greater part of his body-guard, and all his veteran
followers, at Constantinople; so that he now appeared
in Italy unaccompanied by a staff of scientific officers
and a body of veteran troops on whose experience and
discipline he could rely for implicit obedience to his
orders. The heterogeneous elements of which his army
was composed made all combined operations imprac-
1 CHRONOLOGY OF THE KINGS OF THE OSTROGOTHS.
Theodoric,
Athalaric,
Amalasontha.
Theodatus,
Witiges,
•
•
A. D.
493-526
526-534
Hildibald,
Erarich,
Totila,¹
534-536
Theïas,
536-540
1
Totila is named Baduila on his coins.
A. D.
540-541
541-541
541-552
552-553
A. D.
527-565.
296
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. ticable, and his position was rendered still more disad-
vantageous by the change that had taken place in that
of his enemy. Totila was now able to command every
sacrifice on the part of his followers, for the Goths,
taught by their misfortunes, and deprived of their
wealth, felt the inportance of union and discipline, and
paid the strictest attention to the orders of their sove-
reign. The Gothic king laid siege to Rome, and Beli-
sarius established himself in Porto, at the mouth of the
Tiber; but all his endeavours to relieve the besieged
city proved unsuccessful, and Totila compelled it to
surrender under his eye, and in spite of all his exer-
tions.
The national and religious feelings of the orthodox
Romans rendered them the irreconcilable enemies of
the Arian Goths. Totila soon perceived that it would
not be in his power to defend Rome against a scientific
enemy and a hostile population, in consequence of the
great extent of the fortifications, and the impossibility
of dislodging the imperial troops from the forts at the
mouth of the Tiber. But he also perceived that the East-
ern emperors would be unable to maintain a footing in
central Italy without the support of the Roman popula-
tion, whose industrial, commercial, aristocratic, and eccle-
siastical influence was concentrated in the city popu-
lation of Rome. He therefore determined to destroy
the "Eternal City," and if policy authorise kings on
great occasions to trample on the precepts of huma-
nity, the king of the Goths might claim a right to de-
stroy the race of the Romans. Even the statesman may
still doubt whether the decision of Totila, if it had been
carried into execution in the most merciless manner,
would not have purified the moral atmosphere of Italian
society. He commenced the destruction of the walls;
but either the difficulty of completing his project, or
the feelings of humanity which were inseparable from
his enlightened ambition, induced him to listen to
BELISARIUS.
297
1
the representations of Belisarius, who conjured him to
abandon his barbarous scheme of devastation. Totila,
nevertheless, did everything in his power to depopulate
Rome; he compelled the inhabitants to retire into the
Campania, and forced the senators to abandon their
native city. It is to this emigration that the utter ex-
tinction of the old Roman race and civic government
must be attributed; for when Belisarius, and, at a later
period, Totila himself, attempted to repeople Rome, they
laid the foundations of a new society, which connects
itself rather with the history of the middle ages than
with that of preceding times.
Belisarius entered the city after the departure of the
Goths; and as he found it deserted, he had the greatest
difficulty in putting it in a state of defence. But though
Belisarius was enabled, by his military skill, to defend
Rome against the attacks of Totila, he was unable to make
any head against the Gothic army in the open field; and
after vainly endeavouring to bring back victory to the
Roman standards in Italy, he received permission to
resign the command and return to Constantinople. His
want of success must be attributed solely to the inade-
quacy of the means placed at his disposal for encoun-
tering an active and able sovereign like Totila. The
unpopularity of his second administration in Italy arose
from the neglect of Justinian in paying the troops, and
the necessity which that irregularity imposed on their
commander, of levying heavy contributions on the
Italians, while it rendered the task of enforcing strict
discipline, and of protecting the property of the people
from the ill paid soldiery, quite impracticable. Justice,
however, requires that we should not omit to mention
that Belisarius, though he returned to Constantinople with
diminished glory, did not neglect his pecuniary interests,
and came back without any diminution of his wealth.
As far as a feeling for ancient art was concerned, it may be doubted whether
Belisarius had more taste than Totila for classic purity.
A. D.
527-565.
298
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III.
As soon as Totila was freed from the restraint im-
posed on his movements by the fear of Belisarius, he
quickly recovered Rome; and the loss of Italy appeared
inevitable, when Justinian decided on making a new
effort to retain it. As it was necessary to send a large
army against the Goths, and invest the commander-in-
chief with great powers, it is not probable than Justi-
nian would have trusted any other of his generals more
than Belisarius had he not fortunately possessed an
able officer, the eunuch Narses, who could never rebel
with the hope of placing the imperial crown on his own
head. The assurance of his fidelity gave Narses great
influence in the interior of the palace, and secured him
a support which would never have been conceded to
any other general. His military talents, and his free-
dom from the reproach of avarice or peculation, aug-
mented his personal influence, and his diligence and
liberality soon assembled a powerful army. The choicest
mercenary troops-Huns, Heruls, Armenians, and Lom-
bards-marched under his standard with the veteran
Roman soldiers. The first object of Narses after his
arrival in Italy was to force the Goths to risk a general
engagement, trusting to the excellence of his troops,
and to his own skill in the employment of their supe-
rior discipline. The rival armies met at Tagina, near
Nocera, and the victory of Narses was complete.¹
Totila and six thousand Goths perished, and Rome
again fell under the dominion of Justinian. At the
solicitation of the Goths, an army of Franks and Ger-
mans was permitted by Theobald, king of Austrasia,
to enter Italy for the purpose of making a diversion in
their favour.2 Bucelin, the leader of this army, was
met by Narses on the banks of the Casilinus, near
Capua. The forces of the Franks consisted of thirty
1 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xliii. note 34.
2 Theobald reigned from A. D. 548 to 555.
CONQUESTS IN SPAIN.
299
thousand men, those of the Romans did not exceed
eighteen thousand, but the victory of Narses was so
complete that but few of the former escaped. The
remaining Goths elected another king, Theïas, who
perished with his army near the banks of the Sarno.
His death put an end to the kingdom of the Ostro-
goths, and allowed Narses to turn his whole attention
to the civil government of his conquests, and to estab-
lish security of property and a strict administration
of justice. He appears to have been a man singularly
well adapted to his situation-possessing the highest
military talents, combined with a perfect knowledge
of the civil and financial administration; and he was
consequently able to estimate with exactness the sum
which he could levy on the province, and remit to Con-
stantinople, without arresting the gradual improvement
of the country. His fiscal government was, neverthe-
less, regarded by the Italians as extremely severe, and
he was unpopular with the inhabitants of Rome.
The existence of a numerous Roman population in
Spain, connected with the Eastern Empire by the
memory of ancient ties, by active commercial relations,
and by a strong orthodox feeling against the Arian
Visigoths, enabled Justinian to avail himself of these
advantages in the same manner as he had done in
Africa and Italy. The king Theudes had attempted
to make a diversion in Africa by besieging Ceuta, in
order to call off the attention of Justinian from Italy.
His attack was unsuccessful, but the circumstances
were not favourable at the time for Justinian's at-
tempting to revenge the injury. Dissensions in the
country soon after enabled the emperor to take part
in a civil war, and he seized the pretext of sending a
fleet and troops to support the claims of a rebel chief,
in order to secure the possession of a large portion of
1 A. D. 545. Procop. De Bello Gotth. ii. c. 30.
A. D.
527-565.
300
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. the south of Spain."
The rebel Athanagild having
been elected king of the Visigoths, vainly endeavoured
to drive the Romans out of the provinces which they
had occupied. Subsequent victories extended the con-
quests of Justinian from the mouth of the Tagus, Ebora,
and Corduva, along the coast of the ocean, and of the
Mediterranean, almost as far as Valentia; and at times
the relations of the Romans with the Catholic popula-
tion of the interior enabled them to carry their arms
almost into the centre of Spain.2 The Eastern Empire
retained possession of these distant conquests for about
sixty years.
SECT. VII. RELATIONS OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS WITH THE
ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GREEK NATION.
The reign of Justinian witnessed the total decline
of the power of the Gothic race on the banks of the
Danube, where a void was created in the population
which neither the Huns nor the Sclavonians could fill.
The consequence was that new races of barbarians
from the East poured into the countries between the
Black Sea and the Carinthian Alps; and the military
aristocracy of the Goths, whose social arrangements
conformed to the system of the ancient world, was suc-
ceeded by the ruder domination of nomade tribes. The
causes of this change are to be found in the same great
principle which was modifying the position of the vari-
ous races of mankind in every region of the earth; and
by the destruction of all the elements of civilisation in
the country immediately to the south of the Danube,
in consequence of the repeated ravages to which it had
been exposed; and in the impossibility of any agricul-
tural population, not sunk very low in the scale of civil
1 Agila was elected king a. D. 549; he was murdered, and the rebel Athana-
gild elected in 554.
2 Aschbach, Geschichte der Westgothen, p. 192. Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Em-
pire, ix. 306,—Saint Martin's notes.
NORTHERN NATIONS.
301
1
society, finding the means of subsistence where villages,
farm-houses, and barns were in ruins; where the fruit
trees were cut down; where the vineyards were de-
stroyed, and the cattle required for cultivating the land
were carried off. The Goths, who had once ruled all
the country from the Lake Mæotis to the Adriatic,
and who were the most civilised of all the invaders of
the Roman empire, were the first to disappear. Only
a single tribe, called the Tetraxits, continued to inhabit
their old seats in the Tauric Chersonese, where some of
their descendants survived until the sixteenth century.¹
The Gepids, a kindred people, had defeated the Huns,
and established their independence after the death of
Attila.2 They obtained from Marcian the cession of a
considerable district on the banks of the Danube, and
an annual subsidy in order to secure their alliance in
defending the frontier of the empire against other in-
vaders. In the reign of Justinian their possessions
were reduced to the territories lying between the Save
and the Drave, but the alliance with the Roman em-
pire continued in force, and they still received their
subsidy.
3
The Heruls, a people whose connection with Scandi-
navia is mentioned by Procopius, and who took part
in some of the earliest incursions of the Gothic tribes
into the empire, had, after many vicissitudes, obtained
from the emperor Anastasius a fixed settlement; and
in the time of Justinian they possessed the country to
the south of the Save, and occupied the city of Singi-
dunum (Belgrade). The Lombards, a Germanic people,
who had once been subject to the Heruls, but who had
subsequently defeated their masters, and driven them
within the bounds of the empire for protection, were
3
1 Busbequius, Epist. iv. p. 321; edit. Elz. 1669. Gibbon, ch. xl. note 126.
2 Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis, xvii.
Procopius, De Bello Gotth. ii. 15.
A. D.
527-565.
302
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. induced by Justinian to invade the Ostrogothic king-
dom, and establish themselves in Pannonia, to the
north of the Drave. They occupied the country be-
tween the Danube and the Teisse, and, like their
neighbours, received an annual subsidy from the
Eastern Empire.' These Gothic nations never formed
the bulk of the population in the lands which they
occupied; they were only the lords of the soil, who
knew no occupations but those of war and hunting.
But their successes in war, and the subsidies by which
they had been enriched, had accustomed them to a
degree of rude magnificence which became constantly
of more difficult attainment, as their own oppressive
government, and the ravages of their more barbarous
neighbours, depopulated all the regions around their
settlements. When they became, like the other north-
ern conquerors, a territorial aristocracy, they suffered
the fate of all privileged classes which are separated
from the mass of the people. Their luxury increased,
and their numbers diminished. At the same time, in-
cessant wars and ravages of territory swept away the
unarmed population, so that the conquerors were at
last compelled to abandon these possessions to seek richer
seats, as the Indians of the American continent quit
the lands where they have destroyed the wild game,
and plunge into new forests.
Beyond the territory of the Lombards, the country
to the south and east was inhabited by various tribes
of Sclavonians, who occupied the country between the
Adriatic and the Danube, including a part of Hungary
and Vallachia, where they mingled their settlements
with the Dacian tribes who had dwelt in these regions
from an earlier period.2 The independent Sclavonians
1 The Lombards are mentioned by Strabo, lib. vii. Velleius Paterculus, ii.
106. Tacitus, De M. G. c. 40; Annal. ii. 45. Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iii. 33.
2 Schafarik, Slavische Alterthümer, Deutsch. Von Mosig Von Aehrenfeld,
herausgegeben Von H, Wuttke. For the Sclavonians, see vol. i. pp. 44, 68,
BULGARIANS.
303
were, at this time, a nation of savage robbers, in the
lowest condition of social civilisation, whose ravages and
incursions were rapidly tending to reduce all their
neighbours to the same state of barbarism. Their
plundering expeditions were chiefly directed against
the rural population of the empire, and were often
pushed many days' journey to the south of the Danube.
Their cruelty was dreadful; but neither their numbers
nor their military power excited, at this time, any
alarm that they would be able to effect permanent
conquests within the bounds of the empire.¹
The Bulgarians, a nation of Hunnish or Turkish
race, occupied the eastern parts of ancient Dacia, from
the Carpathian mountains to the Dniester. Beyond
them, as far as the plains to the east of the Tanais, the
country was still ruled by the Huns, who had now
separated into two independent kingdoms: that to the
west was called the Kutigur; and the other, to the
east, the Utugur. The Huns had conquered the whole
Tauric Chersonese except the city of Cherson. The
importance of the commercial relations which Cherson
kept up between the northern and southern nations.
was so advantageous to all parties, that while the
carrying trade of the Black Sea secured wealth and
power to these distant Greek colonists, it also main-
tained them in possession of their political indepen-
dence.2
In the early part of Justinian's reign (A.D. 528) the
city of Bosporus was taken and plundered by the
159, 199, 252; for the Dacians, pp. 31, 292, ii. 199. Thunmann, Untersuch-
ungen über die Geschichte der östliche Europäischen Völker, Leipsig 1774, where
the authorities are always cited with care.
Procopius, Gotth. iii. c. 14, iv. c. 25.
2 Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iv. 18. For proofs that the Huns at one time.
possessed all the Crimea, De Edificiis, iii. 7; De Bello Pers. i. 12.
That
Roman garrisons occupied Cherson and Bosporus in the time of Justin, Pers. i.
12, and of Justinian, Theophanes, Chron. p. 159. Procopius (De Bello Pers. i.
12) speaks of Cherson, the last city of the Roman empire, as twenty days'
journey from the city of Bosporus. To what Cherson does he allude? There
was a city of this name near the modern Warna. Theophanes, Chron. 153.
A. D.
527-565.
304
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Huns. It was soon recovered by an expedition fitted
out by the emperor at Odyssopolis (Varna); but
these repeated conquests of a mercantile emporium,
and an agricultural colony, by pastoral nomades like
the Huns, and by mercenary soldiers like the imperial
army, must have had a very depressing effect on the
remains of Greek civilisation in the Tauric Chersone-
sus. 1
The increasing barbarism of the inhabitants of
these regions diminished the commerce which had
once flourished in the neighbouring lands, and which
was now almost entirely centred in Cherson. The
hordes of plundering nomades, who never remained
long in one spot, had little to sell, and did not possess
the means of purchasing foreign luxuries; and the
language and manners of the Greeks, which had once
been prevalent all around the shores of the Euxine,
began from this time to fall into neglect. The various
Greek cities which still maintained some portion of
their ancient social and municipal institutions received
many severe blows during the reign of Justinian. The
towns of Kepoi and Phanagoris, situated near the Cim-
merian Bosphorus, was taken by the Huns.3 Sebasto-
polis, or Diospolis, and Pityontis, distant two days'
journey from one another, on the eastern shores of the
Euxine, were abandoned by their garrisons during the
Colchian war; and the conquests of the Avars at last
confined the influence of the Roman empire, and the
trade and civilisation of the Greeks, to the cities of
Bosporus and Cherson.*
2
It is necessary to record a few incidents which mark
the progress of barbarism, poverty, and depopulation,
1 Theophanes, 150, edit. Par. Lebeau, viii. 105.
2 Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iv. 7.
Eaanvicovres oi ävbewton. Agathias (1. iv.
p. 103) mentions that the chiefs of the Lazes understood Greek.
Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iv. 5.
4 In the reign of Justin II. (A.D. 575) a Turkish army besieged and took
Bosporus, and established itself for some time in the Chersonesus.-Menander,
404, edit. Bonn.
SCLAVONIANS.
305
1
in the lands to the south of the Danube, and explain
the causes which compelled the Roman and Greek
races to abandon their settlements in these countries.
Though the commencement of Justinian's reign was
illustrated by a signal defeat of the Antes, a powerful
Sclavonian tribe, still the invasions of that people were
soon renewed with all their former vigour. In the
year 533 they defeated and slew Chilbudius, a Roman
general of great reputation, whose name indicates his
northern origin. In 538 a band of Bulgarians de-
feated the Roman army charged with the defence of
the country, captured the general Constantiolus, and
compelled him to purchase his liberty by the payment
of one thousand pounds of gold,-a sum which was
considered sufficient for the ransom of the flourishing
city of Antioch by the Persian monarch Chosroes. In
539 the Gepids ravaged Illyria, and the Huns laid
waste the whole country from the Adriatic to the long
wall which protected Constantinople. Cassandra was
taken, and the peninsula of Pallene plundered; the
fortifications of the Thracian Chersonese were forced,
and a body of the Huns crossed over the Dardanelles
into Asia, while another, after ravaging Thessaly,
turned Thermopylæ, and plundered Greece as far as
the Isthmus of Corinth. In this expedition, the Huns
are said to have collected and carried away one hun-
dred and twenty thousand prisoners, chiefly belonging
to the rural population of the Greek provinces.2 The
fortifications erected by Justinian, and the attention
which the misfortunes of his arms compelled him to
pay to the efficiency of his troops on the northern
frontier, restrained the incursions of the barbarians for
some years after this fearful foray; but in 548, the
1 A. D. 540. Chosroes offered to leave Antioch unattacked for 1000 lb. of
gold; his offer was refused, and he took the city. See infra, page 319.
Procopius, De Bello Pers. ii. 4.
U
A. D.
527-565.
306
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Sclavonians again ravaged Illyria to the very walls of
Dyrrachium, murdering the inhabitants, and carrying
them away as slaves in face of a Roman army of fifteen
thousand men, which was unable to arrest their pro-
gress. In 550 fresh incursions desolated Illyria and
Thrace. Topirus, a flourishing city on the Ægean Sea,
was taken by assault. Fifteen thousand of the inhabi-
tants were massacred, while an immense number of
women and children were carried away into captivity.
In 551 an eunuch named Scholasticus, who was in-
trusted with the defence of Thrace, was defeated by
the barbarians near Adrianople. Next year, the Scla-
vonians again entered Illyria and Thrace, and these pro-
vinces were reduced to such a state of disorder, that an
exiled Lombard prince, who was dissatisfied with the
rank and treatment which he had received from Jus-
tinian, taking advantage of the confusion, fled from
Constantinople with a company of the imperial guards
and a few of his own countrymen, and, after traversing
all Thrace and Illyria, plundering the country as he
passed, and evading the imperial troops, at last reached
the country of the Gepids in safety. Even Greece,
though usually secure from its distance and its moun-
tain passes against the incursions of the northern
nations, did not escape the general destruction. It has
been mentioned that Totila despatched a fleet of three
hundred vessels from Italy to ravage Corfou and the
coast of Epirus, and this expedition plundered Nicopolis
and Dodona.2 Repeated ravages at last reduced the
great plains of Moesia to such a state of desolation that
Justinian allowed even the savage Huns to form settle-
ments to the south of the Danube.
Thus the Roman government began to replace the agri-
cultural population by hordes of nomade herdsmen, and
¹ Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iii. 29.
2 Ibid. De Bello Gotth. iv. 22. See above, page 271.
HUNS.
307
abandoned the defence of civilisation as a vain struggle
against the increasing strength of barbarism.'
The most celebrated invasion of the empire at this
period, though by no means the most destructive, was
that of Zabergan, the king of the Kutigur Huns, who
crossed the Danube in the year 559. Its historical fame
is derived from its success in approaching the walls of
Constantinople, and because its defeat was the last
military exploit of Belisarius. Zabergan had formed
his army into three divisions, and he found the country
everywhere so destitute of defence, that he ventured to
advance on the capital with one division, amounting
to only seven thousand men. After all the lavish and
injudicious expenditure of Justinian in building forts
and erecting fortifications, he had allowed the long wall
of Anastasius to fall into such a state of dilapidation,
that Zabergan passed it without difficulty, and advanced
to within seventeen miles of Constantinople, before he
encountered any serious resistance. The modern his-
torian must be afraid of conveying a false impression
of the weakness of the empire, and of magnifying the
neglect of the government, if he venture to transcribe
the ancient accounts of this expedition. Yet the
miserable picture which ancient writers have drawn of
the close of Justinian's reign is authenticated by the
calamities of his successors. As soon as the wars with
the Persians and Goths ceased, Justinian dismissed
the greater part of those chosen mercenaries who had
proved themselves the best troops of the age, and he
neglected to fill up the vacancies in the native legions
of the empire by enrolling new conscripts. His im-
mense expenditure in fortifications, civil and religious
buildings, and court pageants, forced him at times to be
as economical and rapacious as he was at others careless
and lavish. The army which had achieved so many
1
Procopius, De Bello Gotth. iv. 27.
A. D.
527-565.
308
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. foreign conquests was now so reduced, and the garrison
of Constantinople, where Belisarius had appeared with
seven thousand horsemen, was so neglected, that the
great wall was left unguarded. Zabergan established
his camp at the village of Melantias, on the river
Athyras, which flows into the lake now called Buyuk
Tchekmedjee, or the great bridge.
At this crisis the fate of the Roman empire depended
on the ill-paid and neglected troops of the line, who
formed the ordinary garrison of the capital, and on the
veterans and pensioners who happened to reside at
Constantinople, and who immediately resumed their
arms.
The corps of imperial guards called Silentiarioi,
Protectores, and Domestikoi, shared with the chosen
mercenaries the duty of mounting guard on the fortifi-
cations of the imperial palace, and of protecting the
person of Justinian, not only against the barbarian
enemy, but also against any attempt which a rebellious
general or a seditious subject might make, to profit by
the general confusion. After the walls of Constanti-
nople were properly manned, Belisarius marched out
of the city with his army. The principal body of his
troops, from the regularity of its organisation and the
splendour of its equipments, was the legion of Schola-
rians. Their ordinary duty was to guard the outer
court and the avenues of the emperor's residence, and
their number amounted to 3500. They may be con-
sidered as the representatives of the prætorian guards
of an earlier period of Roman history, and the manner
in which their discipline was ruined by Justinian affords
a curious parallel to many similar bodies in other des-
potic states. The scholarians received higher pay than
the troops of the line. Previous to the reign of Zeno,
they had been composed of veteran soldiers, who were
appointed to vacancies in the corps as a reward for
good service. Armenians were generally preferred by
SCHOLARIANS.
309
Zeno's immediate predecessors, because the volunteers
of this warlike nation were considered more likely to
remain firmly attached to the emperor's person in case of
any rebellious movement in the empire, than native sub-
jects who might participate in the exasperation caused
by the measures of the government. The instability of
Zeno's throne induced him to change the organisation
of the scholarians. His object was to form a body of
troops whose interests secured their fidelity to his
person. Instead of veteran soldiers who brought their
military habits and prejudices into the corps, he filled
its ranks with his own countrymen, from the mountains
of Isauria. These men were valiant, and accustomed
to the use of arms. Though they were ignorant of
tactics and impatient of discipline, their obedience to
their officers was secured by their attachment to Zeno
as their countryman and benefactor, and by their ab-
solute dependence on his power as emperor for the
enjoyment of their enviable position. The jealousy
with which these rude mountaineers were regarded by
the whole army, and the hatred felt to them by the
people of Constantinople, kept them separate from the
rest of the world, secluded in their barracks and steady
to their duty in the palace. Anastasius and Justin I.
introduced the practice of appointing the scholarians
by favour, without reference to their military services;
and Justinian is accused of establishing the abuse of
selling places in their ranks to wealthy citizens, and
householders of the capital who had no intention of
following a military life, but who purchased their en-
rolment in the scholarians to enjoy the privilege of the
military class in the Roman empire. It is remarkable
that absolute princes, whose power is so seriously en-
dangered by the inefficiency of their army, should be
so often themselves the corrupters of its discipline.
The abuses which render chosen troops useless as
A. D.
527-565.
310
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. soldiers are generally introduced by the sovereign, as
in this example of the scholarians of Justinian, but
they are sometimes caused by the power of the soldiers,
who convert their corps into a hereditary corporation,
as in the case of the janissaries of the Othoman empire.'
On such troops Belisarius was forced to depend for
the defence of the country round Constantinople, and
for the more difficult task of conserving his own mili-
tary reputation unsullied in his declining years. While
the federates remained to guard Justinian, his general
marched to encounter the Huns at the head of a motley
army, composed of the neglected troops of the line, and
of the sleek scholarians, who, though they formed the
most imposing and brilliant portion of his force in ap-
pearance, were in reality the worst-trained and least
courageous troops under his orders. A crowd of volun-
teers also joined his standard, and from these he was
able to select upwards of 300 of those veteran horse-
guards who had been so often victorious over the Goths
and the Persians. Belisarius established his camp at
Chettoukome, a position which enabled him to circum-
scribe the ravages of the Huns, and stop their advance
to the villages and country houses in the immediate
vicinity of Constantinople. The peasants who had fled
from the enemy assembled round his army, and their
labour enabled him to cover his position with strong
works and a deep ditch, before the Huns could prepare
to attack his troops.
There can be no doubt that the historians of this
campaign misrepresent the facts when they state that
the Roman army was inferior in number to the division
1 Agathias, lib. v. p. 159, edit. Par. Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 24. Compare
what Tacitus (Hist. 1. 46) says of the abuses in the prætorian guards, caused
by the officers selling leave of absence to the soldiers. Corruption would have
"Mox donati civitate Romana,
appeared to him natural in Greek prætorians.
signa armaque in nostrum modum, desidiam licentiamque Græcorum reti-
nebant."
LAST VICTORY OF BELISARIUS.
311
of the Huns which Zabergan led against Constantinople.
This inferiority could only exist in the cavalry; but we
know that Belisarius had no confidence in the Roman
infantry, and the ill-disciplined troops then under his
orders must have excited his contempt. They, on the
other hand, were confident in their numbers, and their
general was fearful lest their rashness should compro-
mise his plan of operations. He therefore addressed
them in a speech, which modified their precipitation by
assuring them of success after a little delay. A cavalry
engagement, in which Zabergan led 2000 Huns in person
to beat up the quarters of the Romans, was completely
defeated. Belisarius allowed the enemy to approach
without opposition, but before they could extend their
line to charge, they were assailed in flank by the unex-
pected attack of a body of two hundred chosen cavalry,
which issued suddenly from a woody glen, and at the
same moment Belisarius charged them in front. The
shock was irresistible. The Huns fled instantly, but their
retreat was embarrassed by their position, and they left
four hundred men dead on the field. This trifling affair
finished the campaign. The Huns, finding that they
could no longer collect supplies, were anxious to save
the booty in their possession. They broke up their
camp at Melantias, retired to St Stratonikos, and
hastened to escape beyond the long wall. Belisarius
had no body of cavalry with which he could venture
to pursue an active and experienced enemy. An un-
successful skirmish might still compromise the safety of
many districts, and the jealousy of Justinian was per-
haps as dangerous as the army of Zabergan. The victor
returned to Constantinople, and there heard himself
reproached by courtiers and sycophants for not bringing
back the king of the Kutigurs a prisoner, as in other
days he had presented the kings of the Vandals and of
the Ostrogoths captives before Justinian's throne. Beli-
A. D.
527-565.
312
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. sarius was ungratefully treated by Justinian, suspected
of resenting the imperial ingratitude, accused of treason,
plundered, and pardoned.
The division of the Huns sent against the Thracian
Chersonese was as unsuccessful as the main body of the
army. But while the Huns were incapable of forcing
the wall which defended the isthmus, they so utterly
despised the Roman garrison, that six hundred em-
barked on rafts, in order to paddle round the fortifica-
tions. The Byzantine general possessed twenty galleys,
and with this naval force he easily destroyed all who had
ventured to sea. A well-timed sally on the barbarians
who had witnessed the destruction of their comrades,
routed the remainder, and showed them that their con-
tempt of the Roman soldiery had been carried too far.
The third division of the Huns had been ordered to
advance through Macedonia and Thessaly. It pene-
trated as far as Thermopylæ, but was not very suc-
cessful in collecting plunder, and retreated with as
little glory as the other two.
Justinian, who had seen a barbarian at the head of
an army of twenty thousand men ravage a consider-
able portion of his empire, instead of pursuing and
crushing the invader, engaged the king of the Utugur
Huns, by promises and money, to attack Zabergan.
These intrigues were successful, and the dissensions of
the two monarchs prevented the Huns from again
attacking the empire. A few years after this incursion
the Avars invaded Europe, and, by subduing both the
Hunnish kingdoms, gave the Roman emperor a far
more dangerous and powerful neighbour than had
lately threatened his northern frontier.
The Turks and the Avars become politically known
to the Greeks, for the first time, towards the end of
Justinian's reign. Since that period the Turks have
always continued to occupy a memorable place in the
TURKS AND AVARS.
313
history of mankind, as the destroyers of ancient
civilisation. In their progress towards the West, they
were preceded by the Avars, a people whose arrival in
Europe produced the greatest alarm, whose dominion
was soon widely extended, but whose complete ex-
termination, or amalgamation with their subjects,
leaves the history of their race a problem never likely
to receive a very satisfactory solution. The Avars are
supposed to have been a portion of the inhabitants of a
powerful Asiatic empire which figures in the annals of
China as ruling a great part of the centre of Asia, and
extending to the Gulf of Corea. The great empire of the
Avars was overthrown by a rebellion of their Turkish
subjects, and the noblest caste soon became lost to
history amidst the revolutions of the Chinese empire.
The original seats of the Turks were in the country
round the great chain of Mount Altai. As subjects of
the Avars, they had been distinguished by their skill
in working and tempering iron; their industry had
procured them wealth, and wealth had inspired them
with the desire for independence. After throwing off
the yoke of the Avars, they waged war with that
people, and compelled the military strength of the
nation to fly before them in two separate bodies. One
of these divisions fell back on China; the other ad-
vanced into western Asia, and at last entered Europe.
The Turks engaged in a career of conquest, and in a
few years their dominions extended from the Wolga
and the Caspian Sea to the shores of the ocean, or the
Sea of Japan, and from the banks of the Oxus (Gihoun)
to the deserts of Siberia. The western army of the
Avars, increased by many tribes who feared the Turkish
government, advanced into Europe as a nation of
conquerors, and not as a band of fugitives. The mass
of this army is supposed to have been composed of
people of the Turkish race, because those who after-
A. D.
527-565.
314
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. wards bore the Avar name in Europe seem to have
belonged to that family. It must not, however, be
forgotten, that the mighty army of Avar emigrants
might easily, in a few generations, lose all national
peculiarities, and forget its native language, amidst
the greater number of its Hunnish subjects, even if we
should suppose the two races to have been originally
derived from different stocks. The Avars, however,
are sometimes styled Turks, even by the earliest his-
torians. The use of the appellation Turk, in an ex-
tended sense, including the Mongol race, is found in
Theophylactus Simocatta, a writer possessing consider-
able knowledge of the affairs of eastern Asia, and who
speaks of the inhabitants of the flourishing kingdom
of Taugus as Turks.1 This application of the term
appears to have arisen from the circumstance, that
the part of China to which he alluded was subject
at the time to a foreign, or, in his phrase, a Turkish
dynasty.
The Avars soon conquered all the countries as far
as the banks of the Danube, and before Justinian's
death they were firmly established on the borders of
Pannonia. Their pursuers, the Turks, did not visit
Europe until a later period; but they extended their
conquests in central Asia, where they destroyed the
kingdom of the Ephthalite Huns to the east of Persia,
a part of which Chosroes had already subdued. They
engaged in long wars with the Persians; but it is
sufficient to pass over the history of the first Turkish
empire with this slight notice, as it exercised but a
2
1 Theoph. Sim. vii. 7. Ἔθνος ἀλκιμώτατον καὶ πολυανθρωπότατον καὶ τοῖς
He calls the Avars
κατὰ τὴν οικουμένην έθνεσι, διά το μέγεθος, ἀπαράλληλον.
Scythians, vii. c. 8. Menander (298, edit. Bonn) mentions that the Turks used
the Scythian character (?) in the letter they addressed to Justin II.
alphabet was called Scythian in the sixth century is a question.
What
2 Vivien de Saint Martin, Les Huns Blanc ou Ephthalites des Historiens
Byzantins, p. 77. This work shows the uncertainty of modern inquiries con-
cerning the ethnological history of the Huns.
PERSIAN WARS.
315
very trifling direct influence on the fortunes of the
Greek nation. The wars of the Turks and Persians
tended, however, greatly to weaken the Persian empire,
to reduce its resources, and increase the oppression of
the internal administration, by the call for extraordinary
exertions, and thus prepared the way for the easier con-
quest of the country by the followers of Mahomet.
The sudden appearance of the Avars and Turks in
history, marks the singular void which a long period
of vicious government and successive conquests had
created in the population of regions which were once
flourishing. Both these nations took a prominent part
in the destruction of the frame of ancient society in
Europe and Asia; but neither of them contributed
anything to the reorganisation of the political, social,
or religious condition of the modern world. Their
empires soon fell to decay, and the very nations were
again almost lost to history. The Avars, after having
attempted the conquest of Constantinople, became at
last extinct; and the Turks, after having been long for-
gotten, slowly rose to a high degree of power, and at
length achieved the conquest of Constantinople, which
their ancient rivals had vainly attempted.
A. D.
527-565.
SECT. VIII.-RELATIONS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE WITH PERSIA.
The Asiatic frontier of the Roman empire was less
favourable for attack than defence. The range of the
Caucasus was occupied, as it still is, by a cluster of small
nations of various languages, strongly attached to
their independence, which the nature of their country
enabled them to maintain amidst the wars and conflict-
ing negotiations of the Romans, Persians, and Huns, by
whom they were surrounded. The kingdom of Col-
chis (Mingrelia) was in permanent alliance with the
316
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Romans, and the sovereign received a regular investi-
ture from the emperor. The Tzans, who inhabited the
mountains about the sources of the Phasis, enjoyed a
subsidiary alliance with Justinian until their plunder-
ing expeditions within the precincts of the empire in-
duced him to garrison their country. Iberia, to the
east of Colchis, the modern Georgia, formed an inde-
pendent kingdom under the protection of Persia.
Armenia, as an independent kingdom, had long formed
a slight counterpoise between the Roman and Persian
empires. In the reign of Theodosius II. it had been
partitioned by its powerful neighbours; and about
the year 429, it had lost the shadow of independence
which it had been allowed to retain. The greater part
of Armenia had fallen to the share of the Persians;
but as the people were Christians, and possessed their
own church and literature, they had maintained their
nationality uninjured after the loss of their political
government. The western, or Roman part of Armenia,
was bounded by the mountains in which the Araxes,
the Boas, and the Euphrates take their rise; and it was
defended against Persia by the fortress of Theodosio-
polis (Erzeroum), situated on the very frontier of Pers-
Armenia.¹ From Theodosiopolis the empire was bounded
by ranges of mountains which cross the Euphrates and
extend to the River Nymphæus, and here the city of
Martyropolis, the capital of Roman Armenia, east of
the Euphrates, was situated. From the junction of
the Nymphæus with the Tigris the frontier again
followed the mountains to Dara, and from thence it
proceeded to the Chaboras and the fortress of Kir-
kesium.
2
The Arabs or Saracens who inhabited the district
between Kirkesium and Idumæa, were divided into
1 Saint Martin, Mémoires Historiques et Géographiques sur l'Arménie, i. 67.
2 This was called the Fourth Armenia.-Justiniani Nov. xxxi.
PERSIAN WARS.
317
two kingdoms that of Ghassan, towards Syria, main-
tained an alliance with the Romans; and that of Hira,
to the east, enjoyed the protection of Persia. Palmyra,
which had fallen into ruins after the time of Theo-
dosius II., was repaired and garrisoned;¹ and the coun-
try between the Gulfs of Ailath and Suez, forming a
province called the Third Palestine, was protected by
a fortress constructed at the foot of Mount Sinai, and
occupied by a strong body of troops.2
Such a frontier, though it presented great difficulties
in the way of invading Persia, afforded admirable means
for protecting the empire; and, accordingly, it had
very
rarely indeed happened that a Persian army had ever
penetrated into a Roman province. It was reserved
for Justinian's reign to behold the Persians break
through the defensive line, and contribute to the ruin
of the wealth, and the destruction of the civilisation,
of some of the most flourishing and enlightened por-
tions of the Eastern Empire. The wars which Justi-
nian carried on with Persia reflect little glory on his
reign; but the celebrated name of his rival, the great
Chosroes Nushirvan, has rendered his misfortunes and
misconduct venial in the eyes of historians. The Per-
sian and Roman empires were at this time nearly equal
in power and civilisation: both were ruled by princes
whose reigns form national epochs; yet history affords
ample evidence that the brilliant exploits of both these
sovereigns were effected by a wasteful expenditure of
the national resources, and by a consumption of the
lives and capital of their subjects which proved irre-
parable. Neither empire was ever able to regain its
former state of prosperity, nor could society recover
the shock which it had received. The governments
were too demoralised to venture on political reforms,
2
1 Malala Ch. pr. ii. p. 53, edit. Venet.
Procopius, Edific. v. 8. Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, viii. 115.
A. D.
527-565.
318
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. and the people too ignorant and too feeble to attempt
a national revolution.
The governments of declining countries often give
but slight signs of their weakness and approaching dis-
solution as long as the ordinary relations of war and
peace require to be maintained only with habitual
friends or enemies, though the slightest exertion,
created by extraordinary circumstances, may cause
the political fabric to fall to pieces. The armies of
the Eastern Empire and of Persia had, by long ac-
quaintance with the military force of one another,
found the means of balancing any peculiar advantage
of their enemy, by a modification of tactics, or by an
improvement in military discipline, which neutralised
its effect. War between the two states was conse-
quently carried on according to a regular routine of
service, and was continued during a succession of cam-
paigns in which much blood and treasure were ex-
pended, and much glory gained, with very little
change in the relative military power, and none in the
frontiers, of the two empires.
The avarice of Justinian, or his inconstant plans,
often induced him to leave the eastern frontier of the
empire very inadequately garrisoned; and this frontier
presented an extent of country against which a Persian
army, concentrated behind the Tigris, could choose its
point of attack. The option of carrying the war into
Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, or Colchis, generally lay
with the Persians; and Chosroes attempted to pene-
trate into the empire by every portion of this frontier
during his long wars. The Roman army, in spite of
the change which had taken place in its arms and
organisation, still retained its superiority.
The war in which Justinian found the empire engaged
on his succession, was terminated by a peace which the
Romans purchased by the payment of eleven thousand
PERSIAN WARS.
319
pounds of gold to Chosroes. The Persian monarch re-
quired peace to regulate the affairs of his own kingdom;
and the calculation of Justinian, that the sum which he
paid to Persia was much less than the expense of con-
tinuing the war, though correct, was injudicious, as it
really conveyed an admission of inferiority and weakness.
Justinian's object had been to place the great body of
his military forces at liberty, in order to direct his
exclusive attention to recovering the lost provinces of
the Western Empire. Had he availed himself of peace
with Persia to diminish the burdens on his subjects,
and consolidate the defence of the empire instead of
extending its frontiers, he might perhaps have re-
established the Roman power. As soon as Chosroes
heard of the conquests of Justinian in Africa, Sicily, and
Italy, his jealousy induced him to renew the war. The
solicitations of an embassy sent by Witiges are said to
have had some effect in determining him to take up
arms.
In 540 Chosroes invaded Syria with a powerful army,
and laid siege to Antioch, the second city of the empire
in population and wealth. He offered to raise the siege
on receiving payment of one thousand pounds' weight
of gold, but this small sum was refused. Antioch was
taken by storm, its buildings were committed to the
flames, and its inhabitants were carried away captive,
and settled as colonists in Persia. Hierapolis, Berrhœa
(Aleppo), Apamea, and Chalcis, escaped this fate by pay-
ing the ransom demanded from each. To save Syria
from utter destruction, Belisarius was sent to take the
command of an army assembled for its defence, but he
was ill supported, and his success was by no means
brilliant. The fact that he saved Syria from utter
devastation, nevertheless, rendered his campaign of 543
by no means unimportant for the empire. The war was
carried on for twenty years, but during the latter period
A. D.
527-565.
320
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. of its duration, military operations were confined to
Colchis. It was terminated in 562 by a truce for fifty
years, which effected little change in the frontiers of the
empire. The most remarkable clause of this treaty of
peace, imposed on Justinian the disgraceful obligation
of paying Chosroes an annual subsidy of thirty thousand
pieces of gold; and he was compelled immediately to
advance the sum of two hundred and ten thousand, for
seven years. The sum, it is true, was not very great,
but the condition of the Roman empire was sadly
changed, when it became necessary to purchase peace
from all its neighbours with gold, and with gold to find
mercenary troops to carry on its wars. The moment,
therefore, a supply of gold failed in the imperial treasury,
the safety of the Roman power was compromised.
The weakness of the Roman empire, and the necessity
of finding allies in the East, in order to secure a share
of the lucrative commerce of which Persia had long
possessed a monopoly, induced Justinian to keep up
friendly communications with the king of Ethiopia
(Abyssinia). Elesboas, who then occupied the Ethiopian
throne, was a prince of great power, and a steady ally
of the Romans. The wars of this Christian monarch
in Arabia are related by the historians of the empire;
and Justinian endeavoured, by his means, to transfer
the silk trade with India from Persia to the route by
the Red Sea. The attempt failed from the great length
of the sea voyage, and the difficulties of adjusting the
intermediate commerce of the countries on this line of
communication; but still the trade of the Red Sea was
so great, that the king of Ethiopia, in the reign of Justin,
was able to collect a fleet of seven hundred native ves-
sels, and six hundred Roman and Persian merchantmen,
which he employed to transport his troops into Arabia.'
¹ Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, viii. 60. Acta Martyr. Metaphrast. ap.
Surium, tom. v. p. 1042.
COMMERCE.
321
The diplomatic relations of Justinian with the Avars
and Turks, and particularly with the latter nation,
were influenced by the position of the Roman empire
with regard to Persia, both in a commercial and poli-
tical point of view.1
A. D.
527-565.
SECT. IX. COMMERCIAL POSITION OF THE GREEKS, AND COMPARI-
SON WITH THE OTHER NATIONS LIVING UNDER THE ROMAN GOV-
ERNMENT.
Until the northern nations conquered the southern
provinces of the Western Empire, the commerce of
Europe was in the hands of the subjects of the Roman
emperors; and the monopoly of the Indian trade, its
most lucrative branch, was almost exclusively possessed
by the Greeks.2 But the invasions of the barbarians,
by diminishing the wealth of the countries which they
subdued, greatly diminished the demand for the valu-
able merchandise imported from the East; and the
financial extortions of the imperial government gradu-
ally impoverished the Greek population of Syria, Egypt,
and Cyrenaïca, the greater portion of which had derived
its prosperity from this now declining trade. In order
to comprehend fully the change which must have taken.
place in the commercial relations of the Greeks with
the western portion of Europe, it is necessary to compare
the situation of each province, in the reign of Justinian,
with its condition in the time of Hadrian. Many
countries which had once supported an extensive trade
in articles of luxury imported from the East, became
incapable of purchasing any foreign production, and
could hardly supply a diminished and impoverished
1 Theophanes Ch. 196. Malake Ch. pars 2, p. 81, edit. Venet. Menander,
Exc. Leg. p. 282, edit. Bonn. Theophanes, Ch. 203.
2"Minimaque computatione millies centena millia sestertium annis omnibus
India et Seres, peninsulaque illa, Arabia, imperio nostro adimunt, tanto nobis
deliciæ et femina constant."-Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. xii. c. xviii.
X
322
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. population with the mere necessaries of life.' The wines
of Lesbos, Rhodes, Cnidus, Thasos, Chios, Samos, and
Cyprus, the woollen cloths of Miletus and Laodicea, the
purple dresses of Tyre, Getulia, and Laconia, the cam-
bric of Cos, the manuscripts of Egypt and Pergamus, the
perfumes, spices, pearls, and jewels of India, the ivory,
the slaves, and tortoise-shell of Africa, and the silks of
China, were once abundant on the banks of the Rhine
and in the north of Britain. Treves and York were
long wealthy and flourishing cities, where every foreign
luxury could be obtained. Incredible quantities of the
precious metals in coined money then circulated freely,
and trade was carried on with activity far beyond the
limits of the empire. The Greeks who traded in amber
and fur, though they may have rarely visited the
northern countries in person, maintained constant com-
munications with these distant lands, and paid for the
commodities which they imported in gold and silver
coin, in ornaments, and by inducing the barbarians to
consume the luxuries, the spices, and the incense of the
East. Nor was the trade in statues, pictures, vases,
and objects of art in marble, metals, earthenware, ivory,
and painting, a trifling branch of commerce, as it may
be conjectured from the relics which are now so fre-
quently found, after having remained concealed for ages
beneath the soil.
In the time of Justinian, Britain, Gaul, Rhætia,
Pannonia, Noricum, and Vindelicia, were reduced to such
a state of poverty and desolation, that their foreign
commerce was almost annihilated, and their internal
trade reduced to a trifling exchange of the rudest com-
modities. Even the south of Gaul, Spain, Italy, Africa,
and Sicily, had suffered a great decrease of population
1 The emperor Julian says, "Ex immensis opibus egentissima est tandem
Romana Respublica, impetitum ærarium est, urbes exinanitæ, populatæ pro-
vinciæ."-Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiv. c. 3.
COMMERCE.
323
1
and wealth under the government of the Goths and
Vandals; and though their cities still carried on a con-
siderable commerce with the East, that commerce was
very much less than it had been in the times of the
empire. As the greater part of the trade of the Medi-
terranean was in the hands of the Greeks, this trading
population was often regarded in the West as the type
of the inhabitants of the eastern Roman empire. The
mercantile class was generally regarded by the barba-
rians as favouring the Roman cause; and probably not
without reason, for its interests must have required it
to keep up constant communications with the empire.
When Belisarius touched at Sicily, on his way to attack
the Vandals, Procopius found a friend at Syracuse, who
was a merchant, carrying on extensive dealings in Africa,
as well as with the East. The Vandals, when they were
threatened by Justinian's expedition, threw many of
the merchants of Carthage into prison, as they suspected
them of favouring Belisarius. The laws adopted by the
barbarians for regulating the trade of their native sub-
jects, and the dislike with which most of the Gothic
nations viewed trade, manufactures, and commerce,
naturally placed all commercial and money transactions
in the hands of strangers. When it happened that war
or policy excluded the Greeks from participating in
these transactions, they were generally conducted by
the Jews. We find, indeed, after the fall of the Western
2
1 Vides universa Italiæ loca originariis viduata cultoribus, et illa mater
humanæ messis Liguria, cui numerosa agricolarum solebat constare progenies,
orbata atque sterilis jejunum cespitem nostris monstrat obtutibus."-Ennodius,
v. St Epiph. Opera, edit. J. Sirmondi: Paris, 1611, p. 358.
2 "Prætia debent communi deliberatione constitui: quia non est delectatio
commercii quæ jubetur invitis." Sartorius, in citing this passage from a letter
of king Athalaric, addressed to Gildia, comte of Syracuse, observes very justly,
"J'entends par les mots deliberatio communis, non pas ce dont les acheteurs et
vendeurs conviennent entre eux, ce qui serait un commerce libre; mais comme
il est prouvé par tout ce qui précède, une vente et un achat d'après les prix
fixés d'un commun accord entre le magistrat, l'évêque, et le peuple, ce qui est
précisement le contraire."-See Cassiodorus, Varice, xi. 14. Sartorius, Essai sur
l'Etat civil et politique des Peuples d'Italie, sous le gouvernement des Goths, 333.
A. D.
527-565.
324
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. Empire, that the Jews, availing themselves of their com-
mercial knowledge and neutral political character, began
to be very numerous in all the countries gained by
conquest from the Romans, and particularly so in those
situated on the Mediterranean, which maintained con-
stant communications with the East.
Several circumstances, however, during the reign of
Justinian contributed to augment the commercial trans-
actions of the Greeks, and to give them a decided pre-
ponderance in the Eastern trade. The long war with
Persia cut off all those routes by which the Syrian and
Egyptian population had maintained their ordinary
communications with Persia; and it was from Persia
that they had always drawn their silk, and great part
of their Indian commodities, such as muslins and jewels.
This trade now began to seek two different channels, by
both of which it avoided the dominions of Chosroes;
the one was to the north of the Caspian Sea, and the
other by the Red Sea. This ancient route through
Egypt still continued to be that of the ordinary trade.
But the importance of the northern route, and the ex-
tent of the trade carried on by it through different ports
on the Black Sea, are authenticated by the numerous
colony of the inhabitants of central Asia established at
Constantinople in the reign of Justin II. Six hundred
Turks availed themselves, at one time, of the security
offered by the journey of a Roman ambassador to the
Great Khan of the Turks, and joined his train.¹ This
fact affords the strongest evidence of the great import-
ance of this route, as there can be no question that the
great number of the inhabitants of central Asia, who
visited Constantinople, were attracted to it by their
commercial occupations.
The Indian commerce through Arabia and by the Red
Sea was still more important; much more so, indeed,
than the mere mention of Justinian's failure to establish
1 Menander, p. 398, edit. Bonn.
COMMERCE.
325
a regular importation of silk by this route might lead
us to suppose. The immense number of trading vessels
which habitually frequented the Red Sea shows that
it was very great.
It is true that the population of Arabia now first
began to share the profits and feel the influence of this
trade. The spirit of improvement and inquiry roused
by the excitement of this new field of enterprise, and
the new subjects for thought which it opened, prepared
the children of the desert for national union, and awak-
ened the social and political impulse which gave birth
to the character of Mahomet.
As the whole trade of western Europe, in Chinese
and Indian productions, passed through the hands of
the Greeks, its amount, though small in any one district,
yet as a whole must have been large. The Greek mer-
cantile population of the Eastern Empire had declined,
though perhaps not yet in the same proportion as the
other classes, so that the relative importance of the
trade remained as great as ever with regard to the
general wealth of the empire; and its profits were pro-
bably greater than formerly, since the restricted nature
of the transactions in the various localities must have
discouraged competitors and produced the effects of a
monopoly, even in those countries where no recognised
privileges were granted to the merchants. Justinian was
also fortunate enough to secure to the Greeks the com-
plete control of the silk trade, by enabling them to
share in the production and manufacture of this pre-
cious commodity. This trade had excited the attention
of the Romans at an early period. One of the emperors,
probably Marcus Aurelius, had sent an ambassador to
the East, with the view of establishing commercial
relations with the country where silk was produced, and
this ambassador succeeded in reaching China. Justinian
1
1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xl. Lebeau, Histoire
du Bas-Empire, ix. 222. Saint Martin.
A. D.
527-565.
326
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. long attempted in vain to open direct communications
with China; but all his efforts to obtain a direct sup-
ply of silk either proved unavailing or were attended
with very partial success.¹ The people of the Roman
empire were compelled to purchase the greater part of
their silk from the Persians, who alone were able to
supply the Chinese and Indian trade with the commodi-
ties suitable for that distant market. The Persians
were, however, unable to retain the monopoly of this
profitable commerce; for the high price of silk in the
West during the Persian wars induced the nations of
central Asia to avail themselves of every opportunity of
opening direct communications by land with China, and
conveying it, by caravans, to the frontiers of the Roman
empire. This trade followed various channels, according
to the security which political circumstances afforded to
the traders. At times it was directed towards the fron-
tiers of Armenia, while at others it proceeded as far
north as the Sea of Asof. Jornandes, in speaking of
Cherson at this time, calls it a city whence the merchant
imports the produce of Asia.2
At a moment when Justinian must almost have
abandoned the hope of participating in the direct trade
with China, he was fortunate enough to be put in pos-
session of the means of cultivating silk in his own
dominions. Christian missions had been the means
of extending very widely the benefits of civilisation.
Christian missionaries first maintained a regular com-
munication between Ethiopia and the Roman em-
pire, and they had frequently visited China. In the
year 551 two monks, who had studied the method of
rearing silkworms and winding silk in China, succeeded
1 Procopius, De Bello Pers. i. 20.
3
* Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis, c. ii. "Juxta Chersonem, quo Asiæ bona avidus
mercator importat.'
""
3 Versuch einer allgemeinen Missions Geschichte der Kirche von Blumhardt.—
Basel, iii. 40.
COMMERCE.
327
in conveying the eggs of the moth to Constantinople,
enclosed in a cane. The emperor, delighted with the
acquisition, granted them every assistance which they
required, and encouraged their undertaking with great
zeal. It would not, therefore, be just to deny to Jus-
tinian some share in the merit of having founded a
flourishing branch of trade, which tended very materi-
ally to support the resources of the Eastern Empire, and
to enrich the Greek nation for several centuries.1
The Greeks, at this time, maintained their superiority
over the other people in the empire only by their com-
mercial enterprise, which preserved that civilisation in
the trading cities which was rapidly disappearing among
the agricultural population. The Greeks in general
were now reduced almost to the same level with the
Syrians, Egyptians, Armenians, and Jews. The Greeks
of Cyrenaica and Alexandria had suffered from the same
government, and declined in the same proportion as the
native population. Of the decline of Egypt we possess
exact information, which it may not be unprofitable to
pass in review. In the reign of Augustus, Egypt fur-
nished Rome with a tribute of twenty millions of modii
of grain annually, and it was garrisoned by a force
rather exceeding twelve thousand regular troops.3
Under Justinian the tribute in grain was reduced to
about five millions and a-half modii, that is 800,000
artabas; and the Roman troops, to a cohort of six hun-
dred men." There can be little doubt that even the
1 Aristotle (Hist. Animalium. v. c. xvii. 6) mentions that the art of manu-
facturing the silk of some species of caterpillars was known in Cos.
2 Aurelius Victor, ep. c. 1, "Ducenties centena millia modiorum."
3 More, certainly, under Augustus; but under Tiberius, Nero, and Vespasian,
the garrison was two legions.-Tacitus, Ann. 4, 5. Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 16,
4. Tacitus, Hist. ii. 16. Varges, De Statu Ægypti, 69.
4 Justinian, Edict. xiii. Ptolemy Philadelphus had only received 1,500,000
artabas of grain as tribute, but he received a money revenue of 14,800 talents,
about £2,500,000 sterling. Egypt was now incapable of making any such pay-
ments. The customs of its ports, and the taxes of its towns, must have formed
a comparatively small sum.
A. D.
527-565.
328
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. reduced production and diminished prosperity of Egypt
were prevented from sinking still lower by the expor-
tation of a portion of its grain to supply the trading
population on the shores of the Red Sea. The canal
connecting the Nile with the Red Sea afforded the
means of exporting an immense quantity of the infe-
rior qualities of grain to the arid coasts of Arabia, and
formed a great artery for the civilisation and commerce
of Arabia and Ethiopia.
About this period the Jewish nation attained a degree
of importance which is worthy of attention, as explain-
ing many circumstances connected with the history of
the human race. It appears unquestionable that the
Jews had increased very much in the age immediately
preceding Justinian's reign. This increase is to be ac-
counted for by the decline of the rest of the population
in the countries round the Mediterranean, and by the
general decay of civilisation, in consequence of the
severity of the Roman fiscal system, which trammeled
every class of society with regulations restricting the
industry of the people. These circumstances afforded
an opening for the Jews, whose social position had been
previously so bad, that the decline of their neighbours,
at least, afforded them some relative improvement.
The Jews, too, at this period, were the only neutral
nation who could carry on their trade equally with the
Persians, Ethiopians, Arabs, and Goths; for, though
they were hated everywhere, the universal dislike was
a reason for tolerating a people never likely to form
common cause with any other. In Gaul and Italy they
had risen to considerable importance; and in Spain
they carried on an extensive trade in slaves, which ex-
cited the indignation of the Christian church, and which
kings and ecclesiastical councils vainly endeavoured to
destroy. The Jews generally found support from the
barbarian monarchs; and Theodoric the Great granted
LITERATURE.
329
them every species of protection. Their alliance was
often necessary to render the country independent of
the wealth and commerce of the Greeks.¹
To commercial jealousy, therefore, as well as religious
zeal, we must attribute some of the persecutions which
the Jews sustained in the Eastern Empire. The cruelty
of the Roman government nourished that bitter nation-
ality and revengeful hatred of their enemies, which
have always marked the energetic character of the
Israelites; but the history of the injustice of one party,
and of the crimes of the other, does not fall within the
scope of this inquiry, though the position of the Jews
and Greeks in modern times offers many points of simi-
larity and comparison.
The Armenians, who at present take a large share in
the trade of the East, were then entirely occupied with
war and religion, and appeared in Europe only as
mercenary soldiers in the pay of Justinian, in whose
service many attained the highest military rank. In
civilisation and literary attainments, the Armenians
held, however, as high a rank as any of their contem-
poraries. In the year 551 their patriarch, Moses II.,
assembled a number of their learned men, in order to
reform their calendar; and they then fixed on the era
which the Armenians have since continued to use.2 It
is true that the numerous translations of Greek books
which distinguished the literature of Armenia were
chiefly made during the preceding century, for the
sixth only produced a few ecclesiastical works. The
literary energy of Armenia is remarkable, inasmuch
as it excited the fears of the Persian monarch, who
ordered that no Armenian should visit the Eastern
Empire to study at the Greek universities of Constan-
tinople, Athens, or Alexandria.
1 Ed. Thod. art. 143. Cassiod. F'ar. ep. 33, v. 37.
2 Saint Martin, Mémoires sur l'Armenie, i. 330. C. F. Neumann, Versuch
einer Geschichte der Armenischen Literatur: Leipzig, 1836, 8vo, p. 92.
A. D.
527-565.
330
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III.
The literature of the Greek language ceased, from
this time, to possess a national character, and became
more identified with the government, the governing
classes of the Eastern Empire, and the orthodox church,
than with the inhabitants of Greece. The fact is easily
explained by the poverty of the native Hellenes, and
by the position of the ruling caste in the Roman
Empire. The highest offices in the court, in the civil
administration, and in the orthodox church, were filled
with a Greco-Roman caste, sprung originally from the
Macedonian conquerors of Asia, and now proud of the
Roman name which repudiated all idea of Greek
nationality, and affected to treat Greek national dis-
tinctions as mere provincialism, at the very time it was
acting under the impulse of Greek prejudices, both in
the State and the Church. The long existence of the
new Platonic school of philosophy at Athens, seems to
have connected paganism with Hellenic national feel-
ings, and Justinian was doubtless induced to put an
end to it, and drive its last teachers into banishment,
from his hostility to all independent institutions.
The universities of the other cities of the empire were
intended for the education of the higher classes des-
tined for the public administration, or for the church.
That of Constantinople possessed a philosophical, phi-
lological, legal, and theological faculty. Alexandria
added to these a celebrated medical school. Berytus
was distinguished for its school of jurisprudence,
and Edessa was remarkable for its Syriac, as well
as its Greek faculties. The university of Antioch suf-
fered a severe blow in the destruction of the city by
Chosroes, but it again rose from its ruin. The Greek
poetical literature of this age is utterly destitute of
popular interest, and shows that it formed only the
amusement of a class of society, not the portrait of a
nation's feelings. Paul the Silentiary, and Agathias
LITERATURE.
331
the historian, wrote many epigrams, which exist in the
Anthology. The poem of "Hero and Leander," by
Musæus, is generally supposed to have been composed
about the year 450, but it may be mentioned as one of
the last Greek poems which displays a true Greek
character; and it is peculiarly valuable, as affording us
a testimony of the late period to which the Hellenic
people preserved their correct taste. The poems of
Coluthus and Tryphiodorus, which are almost of the
same period, are very far inferior in merit; but as both
were Egyptian Greeks, it is not surprising that their
poetical productions display the frigid character of the
artificial school. After this period, the verses of the
Greeks are entirely destitute of the spirit of poetry,
and even the curious scholar finds their perusal a
wearisome task.
The prose literature of the sixth century can boast
of some distinguished names. The commentary of
Simplicius on the manual of Epictetus has been fre-
quently printed, and the work has even been translated
into German. Simplicius was a pupil of Damascius,
and one of the philosophers who, with that celebrated
teacher, visited Persia on the dispersion of the Athenian
schools. The collection of Stobæus, even in the
mutilated form in which we possess it, contains much
curious information; the medical works of Aetius and
Alexander of Tralles have been printed several times,
and the geographical writings of Hierocles and Cosmas
Indicopleustes possess considerable interest. In history,
the writings of Procopius and Agathias are of great
merit, and have been translated into several modern
languages. Many other names of authors, whose
works have been preserved in part and published in
modern times, might be cited; but they possess little
interest for the general reader, and it does not belong
to our inquiry to enter into details, which can be found
A. D.
527-565.
332
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. in the history of Greek literature, nor does it fall within
our province to signalise any of the legal and ecclesi-
astical writers of the age.¹
SECT. X.-INFLUENCE OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH ON THE
NATIONAL FEELINGS OF THE GREEKS.
It is necessary here to advert to the effect which the
existence of the established Church, as a constituted
body, and forming a part of the State, produced both
on the government and on the people; though it will
only be to notice its connection with the Greeks as a
nation. The political connection of the Church with
the State displayed its evil effects by the active part
which the clergy took in exciting the numerous per-
secutions which distinguish this period. The alliance
of Justinian and the Roman government of his time
with the orthodox Christians was forced on the parties
by their political position. Their interests in Africa,
Italy, and Spain, identified the imperial party and the
orthodox believers, and invited them to appeal to arms
as the arbiter of opinions. It became, or was thought
necessary, at times, even within the limits of the empire,
to unite political and ecclesiastical power in the same
hands; and the union of the office of prefect and
patriarch of Egypt, in the person of Apollinarius, is a
memorable instance. To the combination, therefore, of
Roman policy with orthodox bigotry, we must attri-
bute the religious persecutions of the Arians, Nesto-
rians, Eutychians, and other heretics; as well as of Pla-
tonic philosophers, Manichæans, Samaritans, and Jews.
The various laws which Justinian enacted to enforce
unity of opinion in religion, and to punish any differ-
1 Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur, (a German translation, by J. Schwarze
and Dr Pinder, of Schoell's Histoire de la Litterature Grecque: the French
original is in 8 vols. 8vo; the German translation in 3 vols.); and Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology and Biography.
ORTHODOX CHURCH.
333
A. D.
ence of belief from that of the established church, occupy
a considerable space in his legislation; yet as if to show 527-565.
the impossibility of fixing opinions with perfect cer-
tainty, it appeared at the end of his reign that this
most orthodox of Roman emperors and munificent
patron of the church, held that the body of Jesus was
incorruptible, and adopted a heterodox interpretation
of the Nicene creed, in denying the two natures of
Christ.
The religious persecutions of Justinian tended to ripen
the general feelings of dissatisfaction with the Roman
government, which were universal in the provinces, into
feelings of permanent hostility in all those portions of
the empire in which the heretics formed the majority
of the population. The orthodox church, unfortunately,
rather exceeded the common measure of bigotry in this
age; and it was too closely connected with the Greek
nation for the spirit of persecution not to acquire a
national as well as a religious character. As Greek
was the language of the civil and ecclesiastical admin-
istration, those acquainted with the Greek language
could alone attain the highest ecclesiastical prefer-
ments. The jealousy of the Greeks generally endea-
voured to raise a suspicion of the orthodoxy of their
rivals, in order to exclude them from promotion; and,
consequently, the Syrians, Egyptians, and Armenians
found themselves placed in opposition to the Greeks
by their national language and literature.
The Scriptures had, at a very early period, been
translated into all the spoken languages of the East;
and the Syrians, Egyptians, and Armenians, not only
made use of their own language in the service of the
church, but also possessed at this time a provincial
clergy in no ways inferior to the Greek provincial
clergy in learning and piety, and their ecclesiastical
literature was fully equal to the portion of the Greek
334
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. ecclesiastical literature which was accessible to the
mass of the people. This use of the national language
gave the church of each province a national character;
the ecclesiastical opposition which political circum-
stances created in these national churches against the
established church of the emperors, furnished a pre-
text for the imputation of heresy, and, probably, at
times gave a heretical impulse to the opinions of the
provincials. But a large body of the Armenians and
the Chaldæans had never submitted to the supremacy
of the Greek church in ecclesiastical matters, and a
strong disposition to quarrel with the Greeks had
always displayed itself among the natives of Egypt.
Justinian carried his persecutions so far that in several
provinces the natives separated from the established
church and elected their own bishops, an act which, in
the society of the time, was a near approach to open
rebellion. Indeed, the hostility to the Roman govern-
ment throughout the East was everywhere connected
with an opposition to the Greek clergy. The Jews re-
vived an old saying indicating a national as well as
political and religious animosity,-"Cursed is he who
eateth swine's flesh, or teacheth his child Greek.”¹
Power, whether ecclesiastical or civil, is so liable to
abuse, that it is not surprising that the Greeks, as soon
as they had succeeded in transforming the established
church of the Roman empire into the Greek church,
should have acted unfairly to the provincial clergy of
the eastern provinces of the empire, in which the
Greek liturgy was not used; nor is it surprising that
the national differences should have soon been identi-
fied with opposite opinions in points of doctrine. As
soon as any question arose, the Greek clergy, from their
1 Yet, even among the Jews, there was a government party who wished to
introduce the use of the Greek Scriptures in the synagogues, and a reasonable
"Vel etiam patria
party who wished the people to understand the Scriptures.
forte-Italica hac dicimus-lingua," &c.-Justiniani Nov. 146. Auth. Const. 125.
ORTHODOX CHURCH.
335
alliance with the State, and their possession of the ec-
clesiastical revenues of the Church, were sure of being
orthodox; and the provincial clergy were in constant
danger of being regarded as heterodox, merely because
they were not Greeks. There can be no doubt that
several of the national churches of the East owe some
increase of their hostility to the Roman government to
the circumstances adverted to. The sixth century gave
strong proofs of the necessity that each country which
possessed a language and literature should possess also
its national church; and the struggle of the Roman
empire and of the Greek ecclesiastical establishment
against this attempt at national independence on the
part of the Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians, Africans,
and Italians, involved the empire in many difficulties,
and opened a way, first for the Persians to push their
invasions into the heart of the empire, and afterwards
for the Mohammedans to conquer the eastern provinces,
and virtually to put an end to the Roman power.
A. D.
527-565.
SECT. XI.-STATE OF ATHENS DURING THE DECLINE OF PAGANISM,
AND UNTIL THE EXTINCTION OF ITS SCHOOLS BY JUSTINIAN.
Ancient Greek literature and Hellenic traditions ex-
pired at Athens in the sixth century. In the year 529
Justinian closed the schools of rhetoric and philosophy,
and confiscated the property devoted to their support.¹
The measure was probably dictated by his determina-
tion to centralise all power and patronage at Constan-
tinople in his own person; for the municipal funds
appropriated annually by the Athenian magistrates to
pay the salaries of public teachers could not have ex-
cited the cupidity of the emperor during the early part
of his reign, while the imperial treasury was still over-
flowing with the savings of Anastasius and Justin.
1 Joan. Malales, 64, edit. Ven. Theophanes, 153. Agathias, ii. 30.
336
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. The conduct of the great lawgiver must have been the
result of policy rather than of rapacity.
It seems to be generally supposed that Athens had
dwindled into a small town; that its schools were fre-
quented only by a few lazy pedants, and that the office
of professor had become a sinecure before Justinian
closed for ever the gates of the Academy, the Lyceum,
and the Stoa, and allowed the last Athenian philosophers
to wander to Persia in search of the votaries they were
no longer allowed to seek among the citizens of the
Roman empire.¹ A passage of Synesius, who was com-
pelled to touch at the port of the Piræus without having
any desire to visit Athens, has been cited to prove the
decay of learning, and the decline of population. The
African philosopher says that the deserted aspect of
the city of Minerva reminded him of the skin of an
animal which had been sacrificed, and whose body had
been consumed as an offering. Athens had nothing
to boast of but great names.
The Academy, the
Lyceum, and the Stoa, were indeed still shown to tra-
vellers, but learning had forsaken these ancient re-
treats, and, instead of philosophers in the agora, you
met only dealers in honey.2 The Dorian prejudices of
the Cyrenian, who boasted of his descent from Spartan
kings, evidently overpowered the candour of the visi-
tor. His spleen may have been caused by some neglect
on the part of the Athenian literary aristocracy to
welcome their distinguished guest, but it does little
honour to the taste of Synesius that he could see the
glorious spectacle of the Acropolis in the rich hue of
its original splendour, and walk along surrounded by
the many noble monuments of architecture, sculpture,
and painting, which then adorned the city, without one
¹ Cod. Just. i. xi. 10.
2 Synesii Epist. 135.
refer to this passage.
Procopius, Arc. Hist. 74, 77, edit. Par.
Gibbon, ch. xxx. note 8; Neander, ii. 84,-who both
STATE OF ATHENS.
337
expression of admiration. The time of his visit was
not the most favourable for one who sought Athenian
society, for it was only two years after the invasion of
Alaric; but, after every allowance has been made for the
peevishness of the writer, and for the deserted state of
the city in consequence of the Gothic invasion, there
exists ample proof that this description is a mere
flourish of rhetorical exaggeration. History tells us
that Athens prospered, and that her schools were fre-
quented by many eminent men long after the ravages
of Alaric and the visit of Synesius.
The empress
Eudocia (Athenaïs) was a year old, and Synesius
might have seen in a nurse's arms the infant who re-
ceived at Athens the education which made her one of
the most accomplished and elegant ladies of a brilliant
and luxurious court, as well as a person of learning,
even without reference to her sex and rank.
St
Athens was not then a rude provincial town.
John Chrysostom informs us that, in the court of Pul-
cheria's mother, a knowledge of dress, embroidery, and
music, were considered as the most important objects
on which taste could be displayed; but that to converse
with elegance, and to compose pretty verses, were re-
garded as necessary proofs of intellectual superiority.'
Pulcheria, though born in this court, against which
Chrysostom declaimed with eloquent but sometimes
unseemly violence, lived the life of a saint. Yet she
adopted the elegant heathen maiden Athenaïs as a
protegée, and, when she converted her, bestowed on
her the name of her own mother Eudocia. Though
history tells us nothing of the fashionable society of
Athens at this time, it supplies us with some interest-
ing information concerning the social position of her
1 See the Memoir on the manners of the age of Theodosius I. and Arcadius,
which Montfaucon wrote while editing the works of Chrysostom.-Mémoires
de l'Academie des Inscrip. xiii. 474.
Y
A. D.
527-565.
338
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. learned men, and we know that they were generally
gentlemen whose chief pride was that they were also
scholars.
1
When the members of the native aristocracy in Greece
found that they were excluded by the Romans from the
civil and military service of the State, they devoted
themselves to literature and philosophy. It became
the tone of good society to be pedantic. The wealth
and the fame of Herodes Atticus have rendered him
the type of the Greek aristocratic philosophers. The
Emperor Hadrian had revived the importance and
augmented the prosperity of Athens by his visits, and
he gave additional consequence to its schools by ap-
pointing an official professor of the branch of learning
called Sophistics. Lollianus, who first occupied this
chair, was a native of Ephesus; but he was welcomed
by the Athenians, for the strong remedies the Romans
had applied to diminish their pride had at least cured
them of the absurd vanity of autochthonism. Lolli-
anus not only received the rights of citizenship, he was
elected strategos, then the highest office in the local
magistracy. During his term of service he employed
his own wealth and his personal credit to alleviate
the sufferings caused by a severe famine; and he dis-
charged all the debts contracted for this purpose from
his private fortune. The Athenians rewarded him for
his generosity by erecting two statues to his memory.2
Antoninus Pius increased the public importance, and
gave an official character to the schools, by allowing
the professors named by the emperor an annual salary
of ten thousand drachmas.³ Marcus Aurelius, who
1 See the Memoir on the Life of Herodes Atticus, by Burigny. Mem. de
l'Acad. des Inscrip. xxx. 1.
2 Philostratus, Vit. Soph. 225, edit. Kayser. Before the corn arrived, the
people would have stoned their strategos if Pankratios the cynic had not turned
aside their anger by asking them whether they did not know that the trade of
Lollianus was to supply words, not bread.
* Philostratus, Vit. Soph. 245, edit. Kayser.
STATE OF ATHENS.
339
visited Athens on his return from the East after the
rebellion of Avidius Cassius, established official teachers
of every kind of learning then publicly taught, and or-
ganised the philosophers into an university. Scholarchs
were appointed for the four great philosophical sects of
the stoics, platonists, peripatetics, and epicureans, who
received fixed salaries from the government.¹ The
wealth and avarice of the Athenian philosophers be-
came after this a common subject of envy and reproach.
Many names of some eminence in literature might be
cited as connected with the Athenian schools during
the second and third centuries; but to show the uni-
versal character of the studies pursued, and the free-
dom of inquiry that was allowed, it is only necessary
to mention the Christian writers Quadratus, Aristeides,
and Athenagoras, who shared with their heathen con-
temporaries the fame and patronage of which Athens
could dispose.
It appears that even before the end of the second
century the population of the city had undergone a
great change, in consequence of the constant immigra-
tion of Asiatic and Alexandrian Greeks who visited it
in order to frequent its schools, and make use of its
libraries. The attendants and followers of these wealthy
strangers settled at Athens in such numbers as to modify
the spoken dialect, which then lost its classic purity;
and it was only in the depopulated demoi, and among
the impoverished landed proprietors of Attica, who
were too poor to purchase foreign slaves or to asso-
ciate with wealthy sophists, that pure Attic Greek was
any longer heard. Strangers filled the chairs of elo-
quence and philosophy, and rhetoricians were elected
to be the chief magistrates. In the third century,
2
1 Dion Cassius, lxxi. 31. Philostratus, Vit. Soph. 245. Lucian, Eunuch. 3.
Ellisen, Zur Geschichte Athens nach dem Verluste seiner Selbstandigkeit.
2 Philostratus, Vit. Soph. 238.
A. D.
527-565.
340
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. however, we find the Athenian Dexippus, a rhetor-
ician, a patriot, and a historian, holding the highest
offices in the local administration with honour to him-
self and to his country.¹
Both Athens and the Piræus had completely recovered
from the ravages committed by the Goths before the
time of Constantine. The large crews which were
embarked in ancient galleys, and the small space
which they contained for the stowage of provisions,
rendered it necessary to select a station well supplied
either from its own resources or from its being a centre
of commercial communication, in order to assemble a
great naval force. The fact that Constantine selected
the Piræus as the harbour at which his son Crispus
concentrated the large force with which he defeated
Licinius at the Hellespont, proves at least that the
Athenian markets afforded abundant supplies of pro-
visions.
The heathen city of Minerva enjoyed the favour and
protection of the Christian emperors. Constantine con-
tinued the salaries of the scholarchs and professors. He
enlarged their privileges, and exempted them from
many onerous taxes and public burdens. He furnished
the city with an annual supply of grain for distribu-
tion, and he accepted the title of strategos, as Hadrian
had accepted that of archon, to show that he deemed
it an honour to belong to its local magistrature.2
Constantius granted a donative of grain to the city as
a special mark of favour to Proæresius; and during
his reign we find its schools extremely popular, crowded
with wealthy students from every province of the em-
pire, and attended by all the great men of the time.
Four celebrated men resided there nearly at the same
1 Corpus Script. Hist. Byz., "De Dexippo," p. xiv. edit. Bonn.
2 Julian, Orat. in Laud. Constantii, p. 8, edit. Spanheim. Eunapius, Vit.
Soph. 22, edit. Boissonade. Cod. Theod. xiii. 3, 1 and 3.
Eunapius, Vit. Soph. 90, edit. Boissonade.
3
STATE OF ATHENS.
341
period-the future Emperor Julian, the sophist Libanius,
St Basil, and St Gregory Nazianzenus. Athens then
enjoyed the inestimable blessing of toleration. Heathens
and Christians both frequented her schools unmolested,
in spite of the laws already promulgated against some
pagan rites, for the regulations against soothsayers and
diviners were not supposed to be applicable to gentle-
men and philosophers. Athenian society consequently
suffered for some time very little from the changes
which took place in the religious opinions of the em-
perors. It gained nothing from the heathenism of
Julian, and lost nothing by the Arianism of Valens.
Julian, it is true, ordered all the temples to be re-
paired, and regular sacrifices to be performed with
order and pomp; but his reign was too short to effect
any considerable change, and his orders met with little
attention in Greece, for Christianity had already made
numerous converts among the priests of the temples,
who, strange to say, appear to have embraced the
doctrines of Christianity much more readily and
promptly than the philosophers. Many priests had
already been converted to Christianity with their
whole families, and in many temples it was difficult
to procure the celebration of the heathen ceremonies.¹
Julian attempted to inflict one serious wound on
Christianity at Athens, by issuing an unjust and ar-
bitrary edict forbidding Christians from giving instruc-
tions publicly in rhetoric and literature. By this law
he believed that it would be in his power to reduce the
Christians to a state of ignorance. His respect for the
character of Proæresius, an Armenian, who was then a
professor at Athens, induced him to exempt that teacher
from his ordinance; but Proæresius refused to avail
¹ Panegyrici Veteres. Mamertini gratiarum actio Juliano, c. 9; quoted by
Zinkeisen, Geschichte Griechenlands, p. 621. The priests had begun to forget
or to neglect the ancient rites in the time of Apollonius of Tyana.-Philostra-
tus, iii. 58.
A. D.
527-565.
342
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. himself of the emperor's permission, for, as new cere-
monies were prescribed in the resorts of public teaching,
he considered it his duty to cease lecturing rather than
appear tacitly to conform to heathen usages.¹
2
The supremacy of paganism was of short duration.
About two years after Julian had proclaimed it the
established religion of the Roman empire, Valentinian
and Valens published an edict forbidding incantations,
magical ceremonies, and offerings by night, under pain
of death. The application of this law, according to
the letter, would have prevented the celebration of the
Eleusinian mysteries, and rendered life intolerable to
many fervid votaries of Hellenic superstition, and of
the Neo-platonic philosophy. The suppression of the
great heathen festivals, of which some of the rites were
celebrated during the night, would have seriously in-
jured the prosperity of Athens, and some other cities
in Greece. The celebrated Prætextatus, a heathen
highly esteemed for his integrity and administrative
talents, was then proconsul of Achaia. His represen-
tations induced the emperors to make some necessary
modifications in the application of the edict, and the
Eleusinian mysteries continued to be celebrated until
Alaric destroyed the temple.3
Paganism rapidly declined, but the heathen philoso-
phers at Athens continued to live as a separate class
of society, refusing to embrace Christianity, though
without offering any opposition to its progress. They
considered their own religious opinions as too elevated
for the vulgar, so that there existed no community of
feeling between the aristocratic Neo-platonists of the
schools, the burgesses of the towns, whether they were
heathens or Christians, and the agriculturists in the
¹ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxv. 4. See the article “Proæresius," in Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
2 Cod. Theod. ix. 16, 7. A. D. 364.
3 Zosimus, iv. 3. Lasaulx, Der Untergang des Hellenismus, p. 84, note 242.
STATE OF ATHENS.
343
country, who were generally pagans. Hence the em-
perors entertained no political dislike to the philoso-
phers, and continued to employ them in the public
service. Neither Christian emperors nor Christian
bishops felt any rancour against the amiable scholars
who cherished the exclusive prejudices of Hellenic
civilisation, and who considered the philanthropic
spirit of Christianity as an idle dream. The Neo-pla-
tonists viewed man as by nature a brutal creature, and
they deemed slavery to be the proper condition of the
labouring classes. They scorned equally the rude idol-
atry of corrupted paganism, and the simple doctrines
of pure Christianity. They were deeply imbued with
those social prejudices which have for centuries separ-
ated the rural and urban population in the East; pre-
judices which were first created by the prevalence of
predial slavery, but which were greatly increased by
the fiscal system of the Romans, which enthralled men
to degraded employment in hereditary castes. Liba-
nius, Themistius, and Symmachus, were favoured even
by the orthodox emperor Theodosius the Great. St
Basil corresponded with Libanius. Musonius, who
had taught rhetoric at Athens, was imperial governor
of Asia in the year 367; but, as it is possible that he
had then embraced Christianity, this circumstance can
only be cited to prove the social rank still maintained
by the teachers of the Athenian schools.¹
The last breath of Hellenic life was now rapidly
passing away, and its dissolution conferred no glory
on Greece. The Olympic games were celebrated until
the reign of Theodosius I. The last recorded victor
was an Armenian. Alexander, son of Amyntas, king
of Macedon, had not been allowed to become a com-
petitor for a prize until he had proved his Hellenic
descent; but the Hellenes were at this time prouder
Clinton, Fasti Romani. See Musonius, and the citations relating to him.
A. D.
527-565.
344
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. of being Romaioi than of being Greeks, and the Arme-
nian Varastad, whose name closes the long list which
commences with demi-gods, and is filled with heroes,
was a Romaios.' Hellenic art also fled from the soil
of Hellas. The chryselephantine statue of the Olym-
pian Jupiter was transported to Constantinople, where
it was destroyed in one of the great fires which so often
laid waste that city. The statue of Minerva, which the
pagans believed had protected her favourite city against
Alaric, was carried off about the same time, and thus
the two great works of Phidias were exiled from Greece."
The destruction of the great temple of Olympia followed
soon after, but the exact date is unknown. Some have
supposed that it was burned by the Gothic troops of
Alaric; others think that it was destroyed by Chris-
tian bigotry in the reign of Theodosius II. The Olym-
piads, which for generation after generation had served
to record the noble emulation of the Greeks, were now
supplanted by the notation of the indiction. Glory
resigned her influence over society to taxation.
3
2
The restrictions which Julian had placed on public
instruction in order to acquire the power of injuring
Christianity, had not been productive of permanent
effects. Theodosius II. was the first emperor who
interfered with public instruction for the direct ob-
ject of controlling and circumscribing public opinion.
While he honoured those professors who were ap-
pointed by his own authority, and propagated the
principles of submission, or rather of servility, to the
imperial commands, he struck a mortal blow at the
¹ Moses Chorenensis, iii. 40, cited by Lasaulx, note 310. The suppression
of the Olympic games, overlooked by Clinton (Fasti Romani), is mentioned by
Cedrenus, i, 326. A. D. 394 (?)
2 Marinus, Vit. Procli, c. 29, 30, edit. Boissonade; cited by Chastel, Histoire
de la Destruction du Paganisme dans l'Empire d'Orient, p. 235. See the de-
scription of the statue of Minerva in Codinus, De Orig. Constant. p. 13. Other
statues were carried off from Athens to adorn Constantinople in the time of
Theodosius II.-See Codinus, p. 26, 32, edit. Par.
3 Cod. Just. xiii. 3, 5; x. 52, 7.
STATE OF ATHENS.
345
spirit of free inquiry by forbidding private teachers to
give public lectures under pain of infamy and banish-
ment.¹ Private teachers of philosophy had hitherto
enjoyed great freedom in teaching throughout Greece;
but henceforth thought was enslaved even at Athens,
and no opinions were allowed to be taught except such
as could obtain a license from the imperial authorities.
Emulation was destroyed, and genius, which is always
regarded with suspicion by men of routine, for it sheds
new light even on the oldest subject, was now officially
suppressed. Men not having the liberty of uttering
their thoughts soon ceased to think.
Though we are acquainted with very few precise
facts relating to the state of society in Athens from
the time of Theodosius II. to the suppression of the
schools of philosophy by Justinian, we are, neverthe-
less, able to form some idea of the peculiarities which
distinguished it from the other provincial cities of the
empire. The privileges and usages transmitted from
the time when Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius treated
Athens, as a free city, were long tolerated by the Chris-
tian emperors. Some Hellenic pride was still nourished
at Athens, from the tradition of its having been long an
ally and not a subject of Rome. A trace of this memory
of the past seems discernible in the speech of the Em-
press Eudocia to the people of Antioch, as she was on her
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It closed with a boast of their
common Hellenic origin.2 The spirit of emulation be-
tween the votaries of the Gospel and the schools un-
doubtedly tended to improve the morality of Athens.
Paganism, after it had been driven from the mind,
survived in the manners of the people in most of the
great cities of the empire. But at Athens the philoso-
phers distinguished themselves by purity of morals;
and the Christians would have been ashamed in their
1 Cod. Theod. xiv. 9, 3; Cod. Just. xi. 18, 1. 2 Evagrius, Hist. Eccles. i. 20.
A. D.
527-565.
346
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. presence of the exhibitions of tumult and simony
which disgraced the ecclesiastical elections at Rome,
Alexandria, and Constantinople. In the mean time,
the civilisation of the ancient world was not extinct,
though many of its vices were banished. Public hotels
for strangers existed on the model which the Moham-
medans have gained so much honour by imitating ;
alms-houses for the destitute, and hospitals for the
sick, were to be found in due proportion to the popula-
tion, or the want would have been justly recorded to
the disgrace of the wealthy pagans. The truth is, that
the spirit of Christianity had penetrated into heathen-
ism, which had become virtuous and unobtrusive, as
well as mild and timid. The habits of Athenian
society were soft and humane; the wealthy lived in
palaces, and purchased libraries. Many philosophers,
like Proclus, enjoyed ample revenues, and perhaps, like
him, received rich legacies.¹ Ladies wore dresses of
silk embroidered with gold. Both sexes delighted in
boots of thick silk ornamented with tassels of gold
fringe. The luxurious drank wine of Cnidus and
Thasos, as we find attested by the inscribed handles
of broken amphora still scattered in the fields round
the modern city. The luxury and folly against which
Chrysostom declaimed at Constantinople were perhaps
not unknown at Athens, but, as there was less wealth,
vice could not exhibit itself so shamelessly in the phi-
losophic as in the orthodox city. It is not probable
that the Bishop of Athens found it necessary to preach
against ladies swimming in public cisterns, which ex-
cited the indignation of the saint at Constantinople,
and which continued to be a favourite amusement of
the fair sex for several generations, until Justinian
suppressed it by admitting it as a ground of divorce.3
2
1 Chastel, Hist. de la Destruction du Paganisme, 260.
2 Those of Rhodes are rarely of a late period.
* Montfaucon, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscrip. xiii. 482.
Cod. Just. v.
STATE OF ATHENS.
347
Theodosius I., Arcadius, and Theodosius II., passed
many laws prohibiting the ceremonies of paganism,
and ordering the persecution of its votaries. It ap-
pears that many of the aristocracy, and even some
men in high official employment, long adhered to its
delusions. Optatus, the prefect of Constantinople in
404, was a heathen. Isokasios, questor of Antioch,
was accused of the same crime in 467; and Tribonian,
the celebrated jurist of Justinian, who died in 545, was
supposed to be attached to philosophic opinions hostile
to Christianity, though he made no scruple in con-
forming outwardly to the established religion. His
want of religious principle caused him to be called an
atheist.' The philosophers were at last persecuted
with great cruelty, and anecdotes are related of their
martyrdom in the reign of Zeno.2 Phocas, a patrician,
poisoned himself in the reign of Justinian to avoid
being compelled to embrace Christianity, or suffer
death as a criminal. Yet the most celebrated histo-
rians of this period were heathens. Of Eunapius and
Zosimus there is no doubt, and the general opinion re-
fuses to regard Procopius as a Christian.
At last, in the year 529, Justinian confiscated all
the funds devoted to philosophic instruction at Athens,
closed the schools, and seized the endowments of the
academy of Plato, which had maintained an uninter-
rupted succession of teachers for nine hundred years.
The last teacher enjoyed an annual revenue of one
thousand gold solidi, but it is probable that he wan-
dered in a deserted grove, and lectured in an empty
hall. Seven Athenian philosophers are celebrated for
4
17, 9. This state of manners renders the picture of Theodora's conduct, and
that of her companions, as given by Procopius, evidence concerning the state
of society, though it may be individually calumnious.
Suidas, ii. 1204, edit. Bernhardi.
2 Lasaulx, 140. Suidas, 'Iegoxλñs, i. 953, edit. Bernh.
9 Lasaulx, 147.
4 The same property yielded only three gold pieces in the time of Plato.
Suidas, Paárov, ii. 297, edit. Bernh.
A. D.
527-565.
348
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. III. exiling themselves to Persia, where they were sure to
escape the persecutions of Justinian, and where they
hoped to find disciples. But they met with no sym-
pathy among the followers of Zoroaster, and they were
soon happy to avail themselves of the favour of Chos-
roes, who obtained for them permission to return and
spend their lives in peace in the Roman empire.¹ Toler-
ation rendered their declining influence utterly insigni-
ficant, and the last heathen fancies of the philosophic
schools disappeared from the conservative aristocracy,
where they had found their last asylum.
2
¹ Neander, Hist. of the Christian Religion and Church, ii. 84.
Clinton
2 Clinton, Fasti Romani. A. D. 529-531. Agathias (69, edit. Par.) gives the
names of the seven philosophers. Simplicius is the best known.
(Fasti Romani, Appendix) furnishes us with lists of their writings.
Justinian considered Athens as a city of so much importance that he sent it
a copy of his laws. See before, page 260, note.
CHAPTER IV.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS FROM THE DEATH OF JUSTI-
NIAN TO THE RESTORATION OF ROMAN POWER IN
THE EAST BY HERACLIUS.
A. D. 565-633.
THE REIGN OF JUSTIN II.-DISORGANISATION OF ALL POLITICAL AND NATIONAL
INFLUENCE DURING THE REIGNS OF TIBERIUS II. AND MAURICE MAURICE
CAUSES A REVOLUTION, BY ATTEMPTING TO RE-ESTABLISH THE ANCIENT
AUTHORITY OF THE IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION-PHOCAS WAS THE REPRE-
SENTATIVE OF A REVOLUTION, NOT OF A NATIONAL PARTY-THE EMPIRE
UNDER HERACLIUS-CHANGE IN THE POSITION OF THE GREEK POPULATION,
PRODUCED BY THE SCLAVONIC ESTABLISHMENTS IN DALMATIA-INFLUENCE
OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF HERACLIUS IN THE EAST-CONDITION OF THE NATIVE
POPULATION OF GREECE.
SECT. I. THE REIGN OF JUSTIN II.
THE history of the Roman empire assumes a new aspect
during the period which elapsed between the deaths of
Justinian and of Heraclius. The mighty nation, which
the union of the Macedonians and Greeks had formed
in the greater part of the East, was rapidly declining,
and in many provinces hastening to extinction. Even
the Hellenic race in Europe, which had for many
centuries displayed the appearance of a people closely
united by feelings, language, and religion, was in many
districts driven from its ancient seats by an emigration
of a rude Sclavonian population. Hellenic civilisation,
and all the fruits of the policy of Alexander the Great,
had at last succumbed to Roman oppression. The
people of Hellas directed their exclusive attention to
350
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. IV. their own local and religious institutions. They ex-
pected no benefits from the imperial government; and
the emperor and the administration of the empire
could now give but little attention to any provincial
business, not directly connected with the all-absorbing
topic of the fiscal exigencies of the State.
The inhabitants of the various provinces of the
Roman empire were everywhere forming local and reli-
gious associations, independent of the general govern-
ment, and striving to recur as rarely as possible to
the central administration at Constantinople. National
feelings daily exerted additional force in separating
the subjects of the empire into communities, where
language and religious opinions operated with more
power on society than the political allegiance enforced
by the emperor. This separation of the interests and
feelings soon put an end to every prospect of regenerat-
ing the empire, and even presented momentary views
of new political, religious, and national combinations,
which seemed to threaten the immediate dissolution of
the Eastern Empire. The history of the West offered
the counterpart of the fate which threatened the East;
and, according to all human calculations, Armenia,
Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Hellas, were on the point of
becoming independent states. But the inexorable prin-
ciple of Roman centralisation possessed an inherent
energy of existence very different from the unsettled
republicanism of Greece, or the personality of the Mace-
donian monarchies. The Roman empire never re-
laxed its authority over its own subjects, nor did it
ever cease to dispense to them an equal administration
of justice, in every case in which its own fiscal demands
were not directly concerned, and even then it authorised
injustice by positive law. It never permitted its sub-
jects to bear arms, unless those arms were received from
the State, and directed by the emperor's officers; and
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
351
when the imperial forces were defeated by the Avars
and the Persians, its pride was unconquered. The
emperors displayed the same spirit when the enemy
was encamped before Constantinople as the senate had
shown when Hannibal marched from the field of
Cannæ to the walls of Rome.
Events which no human sagacity could foresee,
against which no political wisdom could contend, and
which the philosopher can only explain by attributing
them to the dispensation of that Providence who ex-
hibits, in the history of the world, the progress of the
education of the whole human species, at last put an end
to the existence of the Roman domination in a large
part of its dominions in the East. Yet the inhabitants
of the countries freed from the Roman yoke, instead
of finding a freer range for the improvement of their
individual and national advantages, found that the
religion of Mahomet, and the victories of his followers,
strengthened the power of despotism and bigotry; and
many of the nations which had been enslaved by the
Macedonians, and oppressed by the Romans, were ex-
terminated by the Saracens.
The Roman emperors of the East appear to have
fancied that the strict administration of justice in
civil and criminal affairs superseded the necessity of
carefully watching the ordinary proceedings of the
government officers in the administrative department,
forgetting that the legal establishment could only take
cognisance of the exceptional cases, and that the well-
being of the people depended on the daily conduct of
their civil governors. It soon became apparent that
Justinian's reforms in the legislation of the empire had
produced no improvement in the civil administration.
That portion of the population of the capital, and of
the empire, which arrogated to itself the title of Ro-
mans, turned the privileges conferred by their rank in
A. D.
565-633.
352
REIGN OF JUSTINIAN.
CHAP. IV. the imperial service into a means of living at the ex-
pense of the people. But the emperor began to per-
ceive that the central administration had lost some of
its former control over the people; and Justin II.
seemed willing to make the concessions necessary to
revive the feeling that civil order, and security of pro-
perty, flowed, as a natural result, from the mere exist-
ence of the imperial government, a feeling which had
long contributed powerfully to support the throne of
the emperors.¹
The want of a fixed order of succession in the Roman
empire was an evil severely felt, and the enactment of
precise rules for the hereditary transmission of the
imperial dignity would have been a wise and useful
addition to the lex regia, or constitution of the State.2
This constitution was supposed to have delegated the
legislative power to the emperor; for the theory, that
the Roman people was the legitimate source of all
authority, still floated in public opinion. Justinian,
however, was sufficiently versed both in the laws and
constitutional forms of the empire, to dread any precise
qualification of this vague and perhaps imaginary law ;
though the interests of the empire imperiously required
that measures should be adopted to prevent the throne
from becoming an object of civil war. A successor is
apt to be a rival, and a regency in the Roman empire
1 The Novell cxlix. is ascribed to Justin. It is altogether a curious docu-
ment for the illustration of the history of his reign. The following passage
is worthy of attention: "Hortamur cujusque provinciæ sanctissimos episco-
pos, eos etiam qui inter possessores et incolas principatum tenent, ut per com-
munem supplicationem ad potentiam nostram eos deferant, quos ad admin-
istrationem provinciæ suæ idoneos existiment."-Ed. Just. iv.
2 "Sed et, quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem: cum lex regia quæ de
ejus imperio lata est, populus ei, et in eum, omne imperium suum et potestatem
concedat."-Just. Inst. i. 2, 6. This lex regia alluded to by Justinian was
therefore equivalent to an act of parliament, vesting the legislative power in
the Crown, but it cannot have been unconnected in the opinion of the Romans
with the lex curiata de imperio, which conferred the sovereignty on Romulus.
It indicated that the commonwealth whose will was expressed in this law, was
something greater than the emperor; and in consequence of this feeling, the
Romans always, even under the empire, regarded themselves as a free people,
over whom the law was the sovereign authority.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
353
would have revived the power of the senate, and pro-
bably converted the government into an oligarchical
aristocracy. Justinian, as he was childless, naturally
felt unwilling to circumscribe his own power by any
positive law, lest he should create a claim which the
authority of the senate and people of Constantinople
might have found the means of enforcing, and thus a
legal control over the arbitrary exercise of the imperial
power would have been established. A doubtful suc-
cession was also an event viewed with satisfaction by
most of the leading men in the senate, the palace, and
the army, as they might expect to advance their private
fortunes, during the period of intrigue and uncertainty
inseparable from such a contingency. The partisans
of a fixed succession would only be found among the
lawyers of the capital, the clergy, and the civil and
financial administrators in the provinces; for the Roman
citizens and nobility, forming a privileged class, were
generally averse to the project, as tending to diminish
their importance. The abolition of the ceremony at-
tending the sanction of the emperor's election by the
senate and the people, would have been viewed as an
arbitrary change in the constitution, and as an attempt
to rob the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire of the
boast "that they lived under a legal monarch, and not
under a hereditary despot like the Persians,"-a boast
which they still uttered with pride.
The death of Justinian had so long threatened the
empire with civil war, that all parties were anxious to
avert the catastrophe; and Justin, one of his nephews,
who held the office of master of the palace, was peaceably
installed as his uncle's successor. The energy of his
personal character enabled him to turn to his advantage
the traces of ancient forms that still survived in the
Roman state; and the momentary political importance
thus given to these forms, serves to explain to us that
Z
A. D.
565-633.
354
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. the Roman government was even then very far from a
pure despotism. The phrase, "the senate, and the
Roman people," still exerted so much influence over
public opinion, that Justin considered their formal
election as constituting his legal title to the throne.
The senate was instructed by his partisans to solicit
him to accept the imperial dignity, though he had
already secured both the troops and the treasury; and
the people were assembled in the hippodrome, in order
to enable the new emperor to deliver an oration, in
which he assured them that their happiness, and not
his own repose, should always be the chief object of his
government. The character of Justin II. was honour-
able, but it is said to have been capricious; he was,
however, neither destitute of personal abilities nor
energy.2 Disease, and temporary fits of insanity, com-
pelled him at last to resign the direction of public
business to others, and in this critical conjuncture his
choice displayed both judgment and patriotism. He
passed over his own brothers and his son-in-law, in
order to select the man who appeared alone capable of
re-establishing the fortunes of the Roman empire by
his talents. This man was Tiberius II.
1
The commencement of Justin's reign was marked by
vigour, perhaps even by rashness. He considered the
annual subsidies paid by Justinian to the Persians and
the Avars in the light of a disgraceful tribute, and, as
he refused to make any farther payments, he was in-
volved in war with both these powerful enemies at the
same time. Yet, so inconsistent was the Roman ad-
ministration, that the Lombards, by no means a power-
ful or numerous people, were allowed to conquer the
1 Corippus, De Laud. Justini Minoris, 1. ii. v. 337. Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, De Ceremoniis Aula Byzantince, i. c. 93. vol. i. p. 429, edit. Bonn.
Justin says, Τῇ τοῦ πανταδυνάμου, Θεοῦ κρίσει, τῇ τε ὑμετέρᾳ κοινῇ ἐκλογῆ πρὸς τὴν
βασιλείαν χωρήσαντες, τὴν οὐράνιον πρόνοιαν ἐπικαλούμεθα. His principles of admin-
istration are also developed in the Novells, cxlviii. and cxlix.
2 Theophanes, Chron. p. 208.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
355
greater part of Italy almost unopposed. As this con-
quest was the first military transaction that occurred
during his reign, and as the Lombards occupy an im-
portant place in the history of European civilisation,
the loss of Italy has been usually selected as a convinc-
ing proof of the weakness and incapacity of Justin.
The country occupied by the Lombards on the
Danube was exhausted by their oppressive rule; and
they found great difficulty in maintaining their position,
in consequence of the neighbourhood of the Avars, the
growing strength of the Scalvonians, and the perpetual
hostility of the Gepids. The diminished population
and increasing poverty of the surrounding countries
no longer supplied the means of supporting a numerous
body of warriors in that contempt for every useful oc-
cupation which was essential to the preservation of the
national superiority of the Gothic race. The Sclavonic
neighbours and subjects of the Gothic tribes were
gradually becoming as well armed as their masters;
and as many of those neighbours combined the pursuits
of agriculture with their pastoral and predatory habits,
they were slowly rising to a national equality. Pressed
by these circumstances, Alboin, king of the Lombards,
resolved to emigrate, and to effect a settlement in Italy,
the richest and most populous country in his neigh-
bourhood. To secure himself during the expedition, he
proposed to the Avars to unite their forces and destroy
the kingdom of the Gepids, agreeing to abandon all
claims to the conquered country, and to remain satisfied
with half the movable spoil.
This singular alliance was successful: the united
forces of the Lombards and Avars overpowered the
Gepids, and destroyed their kingdom in Pannonia, which
had existed for one hundred and fifty years. The
Lombards immediately commenced their emigration.
The Heruls had already quitted this desolated country,
A. D.
565-633.
356
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. and thus the last remains of the Gothic race, which
had lingered on the confines of the Eastern Empire,
abandoned their possessions to the Hunnic tribes,
which they had long successfully opposed, and to the
Sclavonians, whom they had for ages ruled.
1
The historians of this period, on the authority of
Paul the Deacon, a Lombard chronicler, have asserted
that Narses invited the Lombards into Italy in order
to avenge an insulting message with which the empress
Sophia had accompanied an order of her husband Justin
for the recall of the ancient eunuch to Constantinople.¹
The court was dissatisfied with the expense of Narses
in the administration of Italy, and required that the
province should remit a larger sum to the imperial
treasury than it had hitherto done. The Italians, on
the other hand, complained of the military severity
and fiscal oppression of his government. The last acts
of the life of Narses are, however, quite incompatible
with treasonable designs; and probably the knowledge
which the emperor Justin and his cabinet must have
possessed of the impossibility of deriving any surplus
revenue from the agricultural districts of Italy, offers
the simplest explanation of the indifference manifested
at Constantinople to the Lombard invasion. It would
be apparently nearer the truth to affirm that the
Lombards entered Italy with the tacit sanction of the
empire, than that Narses acted as a traitor.
As soon as Narses received the order of recall, he
proceeded to Naples, on his way to Constantinople; but
the advance of the Lombards alarmed the Italians to
such a degree, that they despatched a deputation to
beg him to resume the government. The Bishop of
Rome repaired to Naples, to persuade Narses of the
1 Paulus Diaconus, De Gestis Langobardorum, iii. 5. The Lombards were
accompanied by twenty thousand Saxons, who were defeated by the Bur-
gundians in the Valais.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
357
sincere repentance of the provincials, who now per-
ceived the danger of losing a ruler of talent at such a
crisis. No suspicion, therefore, could have then pre-
vailed amongst the Italians of any communications
between Narses and the Lombards, nor could they have
suspected that an experienced courtier, a wise states-
man, and an able general, would, in his extreme old age,
allow revenge to get the better of his reason, else they
would have trembled at his return to power, and
dreaded his vengeance instead of confiding in his
talents. And even in examining history at this dis-
tance of time, we ought certainly to weigh the con-
duct and character of a long public life against the
dramatic tale of an empress sending to a viceroy a
grossly insulting message, and the improbability that
the viceroy should publicly proclaim his thirst for
revenge. The story that the empress Sophia sent a
distaff and spindle to the ablest soldier in the empire,
and that the veteran should have declared in his
passion that he would spin her a thread which she
should not easily unravel, seems a fable, which bears a
character of fancy and of simplicity of ideas, marking
its origin in a ruder state of society than that which
reigned at the court of Justin II. A Gothic or Lom-
bard origin of the fable is farther supported by the
fact, that it must have produced no ordinary sensation
among the Germanic nations, to see a eunuch invested
with the highest commands in the army and the State,
and the sensation could not fail to give rise to many
idle tales. The story of Narses's treason may have
arisen at the time of his death; but it is remarkable
that no Greek author mentions it before the tenth
century; and what is still more extraordinary, and
countenances in some degree the inference of at least
tacit consent on the part of the Roman emperor, is
the fact, that no earlier account of the conquest of
A. D.
565-633.
358
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
Italy by the Lombards occurs in any Greek writer.'
Narses really accepted the invitation of the Italians to
return to Rome, where he commenced the necessary
preparations for resisting the Lombards, but his death
occurred before their arrival in Italy.
The historians of Justin's reign are full of complaints
of the abuses which had infected the administration of
justice, yet the facts which they record tend distinctly
to exculpate the emperor from any fault, and prove in-
contestably that the corruption had its seat in the
vices of the whole system of the civil government of
the empire. The most remarkable anecdote selected
to illustrate the corruption of the judicial department,
indicates that the real cause of the disorder lay in the
increasing power of the official aristocracy connected
with the civil administration. A man of rank, on being
cited before the prefect of the city for an act of in-
justice, ridiculed the summons, and excused himself
from appearing to answer it, as he was engaged to
attend an entertainment given by the emperor.2
consideration of this circumstance, the prefect did not
venture to arrest him; but he proceeded immediately
to the palace, entered the state apartments, and ad-
dressing Justin, declared that, as a judge, he was
ready to execute every law for the strict administration
of justice, but since the emperor honoured criminals,
by admitting them to the imperial table, where his
authority was of no avail, he begged to be allowed to
resign his office. Justin, without hesitation, asserted
that he would never defend any act of injustice, and
In
1 A. D. 949. Constantine Porph. De Adm. Imperio, 17. The emperor's ex-
treme want of exactness in his account of this event, proves that he had no
authentic document to copy. It confounds chronology and persons; mentions
an empress Irene, and a patriarch Zacharias the Athenian, as cotemporaries
of Narses, and never names the emperor Justin. See Banduri's Note, vol. iii.
p. 331, edit. Bonn.
2 Μάγιστρος τις. Cedrenus, vol. i. 389. Τῶν ἐπισημοτέρων συγκλητικών ἕνα.
Zonaras, ii. 71. Manasses, Chron. p. 69.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
359
that even should he himself be the person accused, he
would submit to be punished. The prefect, thus
authorised, seized the accused, and carried him to his
court for trial. The emperor applauded the conduct
of his judge; but this act of energy is said to have
so completely astonished the inhabitants of Constanti-
nople, that, for thirty days, no accusation was brought
before the prefect. This effect of the impartial admin-
istration of justice on the people seems strange, if the
historians of the period are correct in their complaints
of the general injustice. The anecdote is, however,
valuable, as it reveals the real cause of the duration of
the Eastern Empire, and shows that the crumbling
political edifice was sustained by the judicial admin-
istration. Justin also paid every attention to relieve
his subjects from the burden which the arrears of the
public taxes were always causing to the people, without
enriching the treasury.'
If Justin engaged rashly in a quarrel with Persia, he
certainly omitted no means of strengthening himself
during the contest. He formed alliances with the Turks
of central Asia, and with the Ethiopians who occupied
a part of Arabia; but, in spite of his allies, the arms of
the empire were unsuccessful in the East.
A long
series of predatory excursions were carried on by the
Romans and the Persians, and many provinces of both
empires were reduced to a state of desolation by this
barbarous species of warfare. Chosroes succeeded in
capturing Dara, the bulwark of Mesopotamia, and in
ravishing Syria in the most terrible manner;
half a
million of the inhabitants of this flourishing province
were carried away as slaves into Persia. In the mean
time the Avars consolidated their empire on the Danube,
1 See Novell. cxlviii. and cxlix. both ascribed to Justin. Also Novell. cxli.
of Tiberius, who says, " Ab avaritia eorum, qui magistratus emunt magis, quam
accipiunt."
A. D.
565-633.
360
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. by compelling the Huns, Bulgarians, Sclavonians, and
the remains of the Goths, to submit to their authority.
Justin vainly attempted to arrest their career, by en-
couraging the Franks of Austrasia to attack them.
The Avars continued their war with the empire, and
defeated the Roman army under Tiberius the future
emperor.
The misfortunes which assailed the empire on every
side, and the increasing difficulties of the internal ad-
ministration, demanded exertions, of which the health
of Justin rendered him incapable. Tiberius seemed the
only man competent to guide the vessel of the State
through the storm, and Justin had the magnanimity to
name him as successor, with the dignity of Cæsar, and
the sense to commit to him the entire control over the
public administration. The conduct of the Cæsar soon
changed the fortune of war in the East, though the
European provinces were still abandoned to the
ravages of the Sclavonians.¹ Chosroes was defeated at
Melitene, though he commanded his army in person,
and the Romans, pursuing their success, penetrated into
Babylonia, and plundered all the provinces of Persia to
the very shores of the Caspian Sea.
It is surprising that we find no mention of the Greek
people, nor of Greece itself, in the memorials of the
reign of Justin. Justinian had plundered Greece of as
large a portion of her revenues as he could; Justin and
his successors utterly neglected her defence against the
Sclavonian incursions, yet it appears that the Greeks
contrived still to retain so much of their ancient spirit
of independence and their exclusive nationality, as to
awaken a feeling of jealousy amongst that more aristo-
cratic portion of their nation which assumed the Roman
name. That the imperial government overlooked no
trace of nationality among any section of its subjects,
¹ Menander, pp. 124, 164, edit, Paris; 327, 404, edit. Bonn.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.
361
is evident from a law which Justin passed to enforce
the conversion of the Samaritans to Christianity, and
which apparently was successful in exterminating that
people, as, though they previously occupied almost as
important a place in the history of the Eastern Empire
as the Jews, they cease to be mentioned from the time
of Justin's law.¹
A. D.
565-633.
SECT. II.-DISORGANISATION OF ALL POLITICAL AND NATIONAL INFLU-
ENCE DURING THE REIGNS OF TIBERIUS II. AND MAURICE.
The reigns of Tiberius and Maurice present the re-
markable spectacle of two princes, of no ordinary talents,
devoting all their energies to improve the condition of
their country, without being able to arrest its decline,
though that decline evidently proceeded from internal
causes. Great evils arose in the Roman empire from
the discord existing between the government and almost
every class of its subjects. A powerful army still kept
the field, the administration was perfectly arranged, the
finances were not in a state of disorder, and every exer-
tion was made to enforce the strictest administration
of justice; yet, with so many elements of good govern-
ment, the government was bad, unpopular, and oppres-
sive. No feeling of patriotism existed in any class; no
bond of union united the monarch and his subjects;
and no ties of common interest rendered their public
conduct amenable to the same laws. No fundamental
institution of a national character enforced the duties
of a citizen by the bonds of morality and religion; and
thus the emperors could only apply administrative re-
forms as a cure for an universal political palsy. Great
hopes of improvement were, however, entertained when
Tiberius mounted the throne; for his prudence, justice,
1
¹ A. D. 572. Novell. cxliv.
362
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. and talents, were the theme of general admiration. He
opposed the enemies of the empire with vigour, but
as he saw that the internal ills of the State were infin-
itely more dangerous than the Persians and the Avars,
he made peace the great object of his exertions, in order
that he might devote his exclusive attention and the
whole power of the empire to the reform of the civil
and military administration. But he solicited peace
from Hormisdas, the son of Chosroes, in vain. When
he found all reasonable terms of accommodation rejected
by the Persian, he attempted, by a desperate effort, to
terminate the war. The whole disposable military
force of the empire was collected in Asia Minor, and an
army of one hundred and fifty thousand men was, by
this means, assembled. The Avars were allowed to
seize Sirmium, and the emperor consented to conclude
with them an inglorious and disadvantageous peace,
so important did it appear to him to secure success in
the struggle with Persia. The war commenced with
some advantage, but the death of Tiberius interrupted
all his plans. He died after a short reign of four
years, with the reputation of being the best sovereign
who had ever ruled the Eastern Empire, and he be-
queathed to his son-in-law Maurice the difficult task
of carrying into execution his extensive schemes of
reform.
Maurice was personally acquainted with every branch
of the public administration - he possessed all the
qualities of an excellent minister- he was a humane
and honourable man, but he wanted the great sagacity
necessary to rule the Roman empire in the difficult
times in which he reigned. His private character
merited all the eulogies of the Greek historians, for he
was a good man and a true Christian. When the
people of Constantinople and their bigoted patriarch
determined to burn an unfortunate individual as a
THE EMPEROR MAURICE.
363
magician, he made every effort, though in vain, to save
the persecuted man.' He gave a feeling proof of the
sincerity of his faith after his dethronement; for when
the child of another was offered to the executioners
instead of his own, he himself revealed the error, lest
an innocent person should perish by his act. He was
orthodox in his religion, and economical in his expen-
diture, virtues which his subjects were well qualified to
appreciate, and much inclined to admire. The one ought
to have endeared him to the people, and the other to
the clergy; but unfortunately, his want of success in war
was connected with his parsimony, and his humanity
was regarded as less orthodox than Christian. The
impression of his virtues was thus neutralised, and he
could never secure to his government the great political
advantages which he might have derived from popu-
larity. As soon as his reign proved unfortunate he was
called a miser and a Marcionite.2
By supporting the Bishop of Constantinople in his
assumption of the title of oecumenical patriarch, Maurice
excited the violent animosity of Pope Gregory I.; and
the great reputation of that sagacious pontiff has in-
duced Western historians to examine all the actions of
the Eastern emperor through a veil of ecclesiastical pre-
judice. Gregory, in his letters, accuses Maurice of sup-
porting the venality of the public administration, and
even of selling the high office of exarch. These accusa-
tions are doubtless correct enough when applied to the
system of the Byzantine court; but no prince seems to
have felt more deeply than Maurice the evil effects of
that system, or made sincerer efforts to reform it. That
personal avarice was not the cause of the financial
errors of his administration, is attested by numerous
1 Theophylactus Simocatta, Hist. i. xi. Evagrius, vi. 2.
2 The Marcionites held, that an intermediate deity of a mixed nature, neither
perfectly good nor perfectly evil, is the creator of the world.-Mosheim's
Ecclesiastical History.
A. D.
565-633.
364
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. instances of his liberality recorded in history, and from
the fact that even during his turbulent reign he was
intent on reducing the public burdens of his subjects,
and actually succeeded in his plans to a considerable
extent.' The flatteries heaped by Gregory the Great
on the worthless tyrant Phocas, show clearly enough
that policy, not justice, regulated the measure of the
pope's praise and censure.
Maurice had been selected by Tiberius as his confi-
dential agent in the projects adopted for the reform of
the army; and much of the new emperor's misfortune
originated from attempting to carry into execution plans
which required the calm judgment, and the elevation
of character, of their author, in order to create through-
out the empire the feeling that their adoption was
necessary for the salvation of the Roman power. The
enormous expense of the army, and the independent
existence, unaffected by any national feeling, which it
maintained, now compromised the safety of the govern-
ment, as much as it had done before the reforms of
Constantine. Tiberius had begun cautiously to lay
the foundation of a new system, by adding to his house-
hold troops a corps of fifteen thousand heathen slaves,
whom he purchased and disciplined. He placed this
2
1 Theophylactus Simocatta says that Maurice reduced the taxes one-third,
but the assertion is too general to induce us to admit that so important a
change could remain unnoticed by every other authority. The phrase almost
warrants the inference that a remission of arrears was the concession accorded
by the emperor, but only a Byzantine panegyrist could ascribe any great merit
to the remission of one-third of a bad debt. . ᾿Αναφέρεται δὲ καὶ τὴν τρίτην μοίραν
dè
τῶν φόρων συγχωρῆσαι τοῖς ὑπηκόοις τὸν βασιλέα Μαυρίκιον.—lib. viii. 13.
2 Theophanes, Chron. 213. The words of Theophanes show that this corps
perfectly resembled the Janissaries in their earliest organisation, and adds
another to the many examples already noticed, of the powerful influence ex-
ercised on the policy of the rulers of Constantinople by the singular position
of that city, both political and geographical. Ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Τιβέριος ἀγοράσας
σώματα ἐθνικῶν, κατέστησε στράτευμα εἰε ὄνομα ἴδιον ἀμφίασας καὶ καθοπλίσας
αὐτούς. The formation of this corps of slaves indicates the isolated position
and the irresponsible power of the Roman emperor, and the degraded position
of the Greek nation. Natives could not be trusted, yet good soldiers were re-
quired to overawe the foreign mercenaries. The position of the Roman
emperor and of the Roman empire, at this time, was not unlike that of the
THE EMPEROR MAURICE.
365
little army under the immediate command of Maurice,
who had already displayed an attachment to military
reforms, by attempting to restore the ancient mode of
encamping Roman armies.
This taste for improve-
ments appears to have created a feeling of dissatisfaction
in the army, and there seems every reason to ascribe
the unsuccessful operations of Maurice on the Iberian
frontier, in the year 580, to a feeling of discontent
among the soldiers.' That he was a military pedant,
may be inferred from the fact that he found time to
write a work on military tactics, without succeeding in
acquiring a great military reputation; and it is certain
that he was suspected by the soldiers of being an
enemy to the privileges and pretensions of the army,
and that by them all his actions were scanned with a
jealous eye. During the Persian war, also, he rashly
attempted to diminish the pay and rations of the troops,
and this ill-timed measure caused a sedition, which was
suppressed with the greatest difficulty, but which left
feelings of ill-will in the minds of the emperor and the
army, and laid the foundation of the ruin of both.3
2
Fortune, however, proved eminently favourable to
Maurice in his contest with Persia, and he obtained
that peace which neither the prudence nor the military
exertions of Tiberius had succeeded in concluding. A
civil war rendered Chosroes, the son of Hormisdas, an
exile, and compelled him to solicit the protection of the
Romans. Maurice received him with humanity, and,
acting according to the dictates of a just and generous
policy, aided him to recover his paternal throne. When
caliphate of Bagdat, three centuries later, and in military matters, somewhat
similar to the Othoman empire after the termination of its period of conquest.
Theophylactus Sim. Hist. iii. 1. Menandri Fr. p. 435, edit. Bonn.
1
2 Arriani Tactica cum Mauricii Artis Militaris, lib. xii. primus edid. vers. lat.
notisque illustr. J. Scheffer. Upsal, 1664, 8vo. I possess a copy of this work,
which Gibbon says was to him an inaccessible book. It deserves a new edition
with notes by a tactician. The military language of the time was a curious
mixture of Roman, Greek, and barbarian terms.
3
A. D. 588.
A. D.
565-633.
366
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. reinstated on the throne of Persia, Chosroes concluded
a peace with the Roman empire, which promised to
prove lasting; for Maurice wisely sought to secure its
stability, by demanding no concession injurious to the
honour or political interests of Persia. Dara and Nisibis
were restored to the Romans, and a strong and defen-
sible frontier formed by the cession, on the part of
Chosroes, of a portion of Pers-Armenia.
SECT. III.-MAURICE
-MAURICE CAUSES A REVOLUTION, BY ATTEMPTING TO RE-
ESTABLISH THE ANCIENT AUTHORITY OF THE IMPERIAL ADMINIS-
TRATION.
As soon as Maurice had established tranquillity in
the Asiatic provinces, he directed his whole force
against the Avars, in order to restrain the ravages
which they were annually committing in all the
country between the Danube and the coast of the
Mediterranean. The Avar kingdom now embraced all
that portion of Europe which extends from the Carnian
Alps to the Black Sea; and the Huns, Sclavonians,
and Bulgarians, who had previously lived under inde-
pendent governments, were either united with their
conquerors, or submitted, if not as subjects, at least as
vassals, to own the superiority of the Avar monarch.
After the conclusion of peace with Persia, the sove-
reign of the Avars was the only dangerous enemy to
the Roman power then in existence; but the Avars, in
spite of their rapid and extensive conquests, were un-
able to assemble an army capable of encountering the
regular forces of the empire in the open field. Maurice,
confident in the superiority of Roman discipline, re-
solved to conduct a campaign against the barbarians in
person; and there appeared no doubt of its proving
successful. His conduct, on this important occasion,
is marked by the most singular vacillation of purpose.
AVAR WAR.
367
He quitted Constantinople apparently with the firmest
determination to place himself at the head of the army,
yet, when a deputation from the court and senate
followed him, and entreated that he would take care of
his sacred person, he made this solicitation a pretext
for a change of resolution, and returned back to his
capital. His courage was very naturally called in
question, and both his friends and enemies attributed
his alarm to sinister omens. It seems, however, not im-
probable, that his firmness was really shaken by more
alarming proofs of his unpopularity, and by the con-
viction that he would have to encounter far greater
difficulties than he had previously expected, in en-
forcing his projects of reform among the troops. As
very often happens to weak and obstinate men, he be-
came distrustful of the success of his measures when he
had committed himself to attempt their execution; and
he shrank from the effort to perform the task in per-
son, though he must have doubted whether an undertak-
ing requiring so rare a combination of military skill and
political sagacity could ever succeed, unless conducted
under the eye of its author, and supported by the per-
sonal influence and prompt authority of the emperor.
His conduct excited the contempt of the soldiers; and
whether he trembled at omens, or shrank from re-
sponsibility, he was laughed at in the army for his
timidity: so that even had nothing occurred to awaken
the suspicion or rouse the hatred of the troops em-
ployed against the Avars, their scorn for their sove-
reign would have brought them to the very verge of
rebellion.
Though the Roman army gained several battles, and
displayed considerable skill, and much of the ancient
military superiority in the campaigns against the Avars,
still the inhabitants of Moesia, Illyria, Dardania, Thrace,
Macedonia, and even Greece, were exposed to annual
A. D.
565-633.
368
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. incursions of the hostile hordes, who crossed the Danube
to plunder the proprietors and cultivators of the soil,
so that, at last, whole provinces were left uncultivated,
and remained almost entirely depopulated. The im-
perial armies were generally ill commanded, for the
generals were usually selected, either from among the
relations of the emperor, or from among the court aris-
tocracy. The spirit of opposition which had arisen be-
tween the camp and the court, made it unsafe to intrust
the chief command of large bodies of troops to soldiers
of fortune, and the most experienced of the Roman
officers, who had been bred to the profession of arms,
were only employed in secondary posts.¹
Priscus, who was one of the ablest and most in-
fluential of the Roman generals, carried on the war
with some success, and invaded the country of the
Avars and Sclavonians; but his successes appear to
have excited the jealousy of the emperor, who, fearing
his army more than the forces of his enemies, removed
Priscus from the command, in order to intrust it to
his own brother. The first duty of the new general
was to remodel the organisation of the army, to prepare
for the reception of the emperor's ulterior measures of
reform. The commencement of a campaign was most
unwisely selected as the time for carrying this plan
into execution, and a new sedition among the soldiery
was the consequence. The troops being now engaged
in continual disputes with the emperor and the civil
administration, selected from among their officers the
leaders whom they considered most attached to their
own views, and these leaders began to negotiate with
1 The court generals of the time were Maurice himself, his brother Peter,
his son-in-law Philippicus, Heraclius, the father of the emperor of that name,
Comentiolus, and probably Priscus, who appears to be the same person as
Crispus. See Gibbon, ch. xlvi. note 52. The professional soldiers, who
attained high commands, were Droctulf, a Sueve, Apsich, a Hun, and Ilifred,
whose name proves his Gothic or Germanic origin.
AVAR WAR.
369
1
the government, and consequently, to undermine the
existing discipline. The mutinous army was soon
defeated by the Avars, and Maurice was constrained to
conclude a treaty of peace. The provisions of this
treaty were the immediate cause of the ruin of Maurice.
The Avars had taken prisoners about twelve thousand
of the Roman soldiers, and offered to ransom their
captives for twelve thousand pieces of gold. It is even
said, that when Maurice refused to pay this sum they
reduced their demand, and asked only four pieces of
silver for each captive; but the emperor, though he
consented to add twenty thousand pieces of gold to the
former subsidy, refused to pay anything in order to
ransom the Roman prisoners.2
By this treaty, the Danube was declared the frontier
of the empire, and the Roman officers were allowed to
cross the river, in order to punish any ravages which
the Sclavonians might commit within the Roman ter-
ritory a fact which seems to indicate the declining
power of the Avar monarch, and the virtual independence
of the Sclavonic tribes, to whom this provision applied.
It may be inferred also from these terms, that Maurice
could easily have delivered the captive Roman soldiers
had he wished to do so; and it is natural to conclude
that he left them in captivity to punish them for their
mutinous behaviour and neglect of discipline, to which
he attributed both their captivity and the misfortunes
of the empire. It was commonly reported, however,
1 A. D. 600.
2 Twelve of the silver coins called Miliaresia were equal to one gold solidus.
See Appendix, No. II., tables.
3 It is not improbable that many of the prisoners were really deserters.
Desertion was very prevalent among the native conscripts, and Maurice had
found it necessary, some years before, to issue an edict prohibiting soldiers and
recruits from receiving shelter in monasteries when they deserted their stand-
ards. This edict caused much dissatisfaction among the clergy. Gregory the
Great considered it an impious setting up of the service of the creature against
that of the Creator. He wrote to Maurice, "I, your unworthy servant, know
many converted soldiers who in our days have worked miracles and done many
signs and wonders." The Pope, it appears, did not think that the most appro-
A. D.
565-633.
2 A
370
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. at the time, that the emperor's avarice induced him to
refuse to ransom the soldiers, though it is impossible to
suppose that Maurice would have committed an act of
inhumanity for the paltry saving which thereby accrued
to the imperial treasury. The Avars, with singular, and
probably unexpected barbarity, put all their prisoners
to death. Maurice certainly never contemplated the
possibility of their acting with such cruelty, or he would
have felt all the impolicy of his conduct, even if it be
supposed that passion had, for a time, extinguished the
usual humanity of his disposition.' The murder of these
soldiers was universally ascribed to the avarice of the
emperor; and the aversion which the army had long
entertained to his government was changed into a deep-
rooted hatred of his person; while the people partici-
pated in the feeling from a natural dislike to an eco-
nomical and unsuccessful reformer.
The peace with the Avars was of short duration.
Priscus was again intrusted with the command of the
army, and again restored the honour of the Roman arms.
He carried hostilities beyond the Danube; and affairs
were proceeding prosperously, when Maurice, with that
perseverance in an unpopular course which weak princes
generally consider a proof of strength of character,
renewed his attempts to enforce all his schemes for
restoring the severest system of discipline. His brother
was despatched to the army as commander-in-chief, with
orders to place the troops in winter quarters in the
enemy's country, and compel them to forage for their
subsistence. A sedition was the consequence and the
soldiers, already supplied with leaders, broke out into
priate miracle for these military saints would have been to drive back the bar-
barians, and save the provinces from pillage and the provincials from starvation
or slavery among the heathen.-See Milman, History of Latin Christianity, i. 459.
Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, iii. 97, American
edit.
1 Theophylactus Sim. Hist. vii. 15. Theophanes, Ch. 235, compared with the
notice in the Chronicon Paschale, p. 379; a. D. 602.
MURDER OF MAURICE.
371
rebellion, threw off their allegiance, and raised Phocas,
one of the officers who had risen to distinction in the
previous seditions, to the chief command. Phocas led
the army directly to Constantinople, where, having
found a powerful party dissatisfied with Maurice, he
lost no time in securing the throne. The injudicious
system of reform pursued by Maurice had rendered
him not only hateful to the army, whose abuses he had
resolved to eradicate, but also unpopular among the
people, whose burdens he wished to alleviate. Yet the
emperor's confidence in the rectitude of his intentions
supported his character in the most desperate circum-
stances; and when abandoned by all his subjects, and
convinced by a succession of misfortunes that the
termination both of his reign and his life was approach-
ing, he showed no signs of cowardice. As his plan of
reform had been directed to the increase of his own
power as the centre of the whole administration, and
as he had shown too clearly to all men that his in-
creased authority, when attained, was to be directed
against more than one section of the government agents,
he lost all influence from the moment he lost his power;
and when he found it necessary to abandon Constan-
tinople, he was deserted by every follower. He was
soon captured with his family by the agents of Phocas,
who ordered them to be immediately executed.¹ The
conduct of Maurice at his death affords proof that his
private virtues could not be too highly eulogised. He
died with fortitude and resignation, after witnessing
the execution of his children; and when an attempt,
which has been already alluded to, was made to substi-
tute the infant of a nurse instead of his youngest child,
he himself revealed the deceit, in order to prevent the
death of an innocent person.
The sedition which put an end to the reign of Maurice,
¹ At the Eutropian port beyond Chalcedon, now Mundi Bournou.
A. D.
565-633.
372
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. though it originated in the camp, became, as the army
advanced towards the capital, a popular as well as a
military movement. Many causes had long threatened
a conflict between official power and popular feeling,
for the people hated the administration, and the discor-
dant elements of society in the East had latterly been
gaining strength. The central government had found
great difficulty in repressing religious disputes and
ecclesiastical party feuds. The factions of the amphi-
theatre, and the national hatred of various classes in the
empire, frequently broke out into acts of violence which
caused bloodshed. Monks, charioteers, and usurers,
could all raise themselves above the law; and the
interests of particular bodies of men proved often more
powerful to produce disorder and disorganisation than
the provincial and local government to enforce tran-
quillity. The administrative institutions were every-
where too weak to replace the declining strength of the
central authority. A persuasion of the absolute neces-
sity of reinvigorating the Roman government had gone
abroad; but the power of a rapacious aristocracy, and
the corruption of an idle populace in the capital, fed
by the State, presented insuperable obstacles to the
tranquil adoption of any reasonable plan of political
reformation. The provincials were too poor and ignor-
ant to originate any scheme of amelioration, and it was
dangerous even for an emperor to attempt the task, as
no national institutions enabled the sovereign to unite
any powerful body of his subjects in a systematic oppo-
sition to the venality of the aristocracy, the corruption
of the capital, and the license of the army.
Those
national feelings which began to acquire force in some
provinces, and in a few municipalities where the
attacks of Justinian had proved ineffectual, tended
more to awaken a desire for independence than a wish
SOCIAL DISORGANISATION.
373
to support the emperor, or a hope of improvement in
the Roman administration.
The arbitrary and illegal conduct of the imperial
officers, while it rendered sedition venial, very often
insured its partial success and complete impunity."
The measures of reform proposed by Maurice appear
to have been directed, like the reforms of most ab-
solute monarchs, rather to increase his own authority
than to establish a system of administration so firmly
established on a legal basis, as to prove even more
powerful than the despotic will of the emperor him-
self. To confine the absolute power of the emperor to
the executive administration, to make the law supreme,
and to vest the legislative authority in some respon-
sible body or senate, were not projects suitable to the
age of Maurice, and perhaps hardly possible in the
state of society. Maurice resolved that his first step
in the career of improvement should be to render the
army, long a licentious and turbulent check on the im-
perial power, a well-disciplined and efficient instrument
of his will; and he hoped in this manner to repress the
tyranny of the official aristocracy, restrain the license
of the military chiefs, prevent the sects of Nestorians
and Eutychians from forming separate states, and render
the authority of the central government supreme in all
the distant provinces and isolated cities of the empire.
In his struggle to obtain this result he was compelled
to make use of the existing administration; and, con-
sequently, he appears in the history of the empire as
the supporter and protector of a detested aristocracy,
equally unpopular with the army and the people; while
his ulterior plans for the improvement of the civil con-
dition of his subjects were never fully made known,
and perhaps never clearly framed even by himself,
1 The sedition of Asimus.-Theophylactus Sim. Hist. vii. 3.
A. D.
565-633.
374
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. though it is evident that many of them ought to have
preceded his military changes. This view of the poli-
tical position of Maurice, as it could not escape the ob-
servation of his contemporaries, is alluded to in the
quaint expression of Evagrius, that Maurice expelled
from his mind the democracy of the passions, and
established the aristocracy of reason, though the eccle-
siastical historian, a cautious courtier, either could not
or would not express himself with a more general ap-
plication, or in a clearer manner."
SECT. IV.-PHOCAS WAS THE REPRESENTATIVE OF A REVOLUTION,
NOT OF A NATIONAL PARTY.
Though Phocas ascended the throne in virtue of his
position as leader of the rebellious army, he was uni-
versally regarded as the representative of the popular
hostility to the existing order of administration, to the
ruling aristocracy, and to the government party in the
church. A great portion of the Roman world expected
improvement as a consequence of any change, but that
produced by the election of Phocas to the Roman purple
was followed by a series of misfortunes almost unpar-
alleled in the history of revolutions. The ties which
connected the social and political institutions of the
Eastern Empire were severed, and circumstances which
must have appeared to contemporaries only as the pre-
lude of a passing storm tending to purify the moral
horizon, soon created a whirlwind which tore up the
very roots of the Roman power, and prepared the minds
of men to receive new impressions.
The government of Phocas convinced the majority
' Gibbon's Decline and Fall, xlv. note 31. Evagrius, vi. 1. Proof that the
fabric of the imperial administration was felt to be in danger before the acces-
sion of Maurice is given by Theophylactus Simocatta, p. 11, edit. Par. An angel
appeared to Tiberius II. in a dream, and informed him that days of anarchy
should not commence during his reign.
PHOCAS.
375
of his subjects that the rebellion of a licentious army,
and the sedition of a pampered populace, were not the
proper instruments for ameliorating the condition of
the empire. In spite of the hopes of his followers, of
the eulogium on the column which still exists in the
Roman forum, and of the praises of Pope Gregory the
Great, it was quickly discovered that Phocas was a
worse sovereign than his predecessor. Even as a
soldier he was inferior to Maurice, and the glory of
the Roman arms was stained by his cowardice or in-
capacity. Chosroes, the king of Persia, moved, as he
asserted, by gratitude, and the respect due to the
memory of his benefactor Maurice, declared war
against the murderer. A war commenced between the
Persian and Roman empires, which proved the last
and bloodiest of their numerous struggles; and its
violence and strange vicissitudes contributed in a
great degree to the dissolution of both these ancient
monarchies. The success of Chosroes compelled Phocas
to conclude an immediate peace with the Avars, in
order to secure himself from being attacked in Con-
stantinople.¹ The treaty which he concluded is of
great importance in the history of the Greek popula-
tion in Europe, but, unfortunately, we can only trace
it in its effects at a later period. The whole of the
agricultural districts of the Roman empire in Europe.
were virtually abandoned to the ravages of the northern
nations, and, from the Danube to the Peloponnesus, the
Sclavonian tribes ravaged the country with impunity,
or settled in the depopulated provinces. Phocas availed
himself of the treaty to transport into Asia the whole
military force which he could collect, but the Roman
armies, having lost their discipline, were everywhere
defeated. Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia,
Cappadocia, Galatia, and Paphlagonia, were laid waste;
1 Theophanes, Chron. 245, 251.
A. D.
565-633.
376
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. and nothing appears to have saved the Roman empire
from complete conquest by the Persians, but the wars
carried on at the time by Chosroes with the Armenians.
and the Turks, which prevented his concentrating his
whole force against Constantinople. The tyranny and
incapacity of Phocas rapidly increased the disorders in
the civil and military administration; seditions broke
out in the army, and rebellions in the provinces. The
emperor, either because he partook of the bigotry of his
age, or because he desired by his measures to secure the
support of the clergy and the applause of the populace,
determined to prove his orthodoxy by ordering all the
Jews in the empire to be baptised. The Jews, who
formed a wealthy and powerful class in many of the
cities of the East, resisted this act of oppression, and
caused a bloody sedition, which contributed much to
aid the progress of the Persian arms.
Various districts and provinces in the distant parts
of the empire, observing the confusion which reigned in
the central administration, and the increasing weak-
ness of the imperial power, availed themselves of the
opportunity to extend the authority of their municipal
institutions. The dawn of the temporal authority of
the Popes, and of the liberty of the Italian cities, may
be traced to this period, though they were still hardly
perceptible. Pope Gregory the Great only cavilled
at the conduct of Maurice, who allowed the Bishop
of Constantinople to assume the title of oecumenical
patriarch, and he eulogised the virtues of Phocas, who
compelled the patriarch to lay aside the irritating
epithet.¹ Phocas at last exhausted the patience even
of the timid aristocracy of Constantinople, and all
classes directed their attention to seek a successor to
1 On the subject of the supposed concession of the title of universal bishop
to pope Boniface III., see Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the
Middle Ages, i. 520; and Supp. Notes, 189.
PHOCAS.
377
1
the tyrant. Heraclius, the exarch of Africa, had com-
manded with success in the former war with Persia,
and had long governed Africa, in which his family
possessed great influence, almost as an independent
sovereign. To him the leading men at Constantinople
addressed their complaints, and prayed him to deliver
the empire from ruin, and dethrone the reigning tyrant.
The exarch of Africa soon collected a considerable
army, and fitted out a numerous fleet. The command
of this expedition was given to his son Heraclius; and
as the possession of Egypt, which supplied Constan-
tinople with provisions for its idle populace, was
necessary to secure tranquillity after conquest, Nicetas,
the nephew of the exarch, was sent with an army to
support his cousin, and secure both Egypt and Syria.
Heraclius proceeded directly to Constantinople, and the
fate of Phocas was decided in a single naval engage-
ment, fought within sight of his palace. The disorder
which reigned in every branch of the administration,
in consequence of the folly and incapacity of the
ignorant soldier who ruled the empire, was so great,
that no measures had been concerted for offering a
vigorous resistance to the African expedition. Phocas
was taken prisoner, stripped of the imperial robes,
covered with a black cloak, and, with his hands tied
behind him, was carried on board the ship of Hera-
clius. The young conqueror indignantly addressed him:
"Wretch in what manner have you governed the
empire?"
The dethroned tyrant, roused by the tone
which seemed to proclaim that his successor would
prove as cruel as he had been himself, and perhaps
feeling the difficulties of the task to be insurmountable,
answered with a sneer, "You will govern it better!"
Heraclius lost his temper at the advantage which his
predecessor had gained in this verbal contest; and
1 ¹ Ducange, Ilistoria Byzantina, 117.
A. D.
565-633.
378
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. showed that it was very questionable whether he him-
self would prove either a wiser sovereign or a better
man than Phocas, by ordering the dethroned emperor
to be immediately decapitated, and his mutilated
members to be exhibited to the populace of Constanti-
nople. All the leading partisans of Phocas were
executed, as if to afford evidence that the cruelty of
that tyrant had been as much a national as a personal
vice.
Since his death, he has been fortunate enough
to find defenders, who consider that his alliance with
Pope Gregory, and his leaning towards the Latin
party in the church, are to be regarded as signs of
virtue, and proofs of a capacity for government.¹
SECT. V.-THE EMPIRE UNDER HERACLIUS.
The young Heraclius became Emperor of the East,
and his father continued to rule Africa, which the
family appear to have regarded as a hereditary domain.
For several years the government of the new emperor
was quite as unsuccessful as that of his predecessor,
though, doubtless, it was more popular and less tyran-
nical. There are reasons, however, for believing that
this period of apparent misgovernment and general
1 Several works have been published concerning the emperor Phocas, but
in 1843 I found them wanting in the Bibliothèque du Roi, and in the library
of the British Museum: A. de Stoppelaar, Oratio pro Phoca Imperatore; and
Simon Van der Brink, Oratio in Phocam Imperatorem, Amstel. 1732. Vertheid-
idung des K. Phocas, in Erlangischen gelehrten Anzeigen auf das Jahr 1749,
pp. 321, 328, 409, 414. This last work defends him against the accusation of
having founded the power of the Popes-a virtue, and not a crime, in the eyes.
of some. D. Cyprian. Vom Ursprung des Papsthums, c. xvii. 812.
See Bibliotheca Historica instructa a Struvio, aucta a Budero, nunc vero a
Muselio digesta. Lipsiæ, Weidmann, 1790, 11 vols.
Both Phocas and Maurice were Cappadocians, and the verses in the An-
thology probably were not very advantageous to the tranquillity of these em-
perors,
Καππαδόκαι φαῦλοι μὲν ἀεί· ζώνης δὲ τυχόντες,
φαυλότεροι· κέρδους δ' εἵνεκα φαυλότατοι.
x. T. λ.
Antholog. iii. 54 edit. Tauch. Joannes Lydus, De Magist. P. R. p. 250, edit.
Bonn.
HERACLIUS.
379
act.
misfortune was not one of complete neglect. Though
defeats and disgraces followed one another with
rapidity, the causes of these disasters had grown up
during the preceding reigns; and Heraclius was com-
pelled to labour silently in clearing away many petty
abuses, and in forming a new corps of civil and mili-
tary officers, before he could venture on any important
His chief attention was of necessity devoted to
prepare for the great struggle of restoring the Roman
empire to some portion of its ancient strength and
power; and he had enough of the Roman spirit to re-
solve, that, if he could not succeed, he would risk his
own life and fortune in the attempt, and perish in the
ruins of civilised society. History has preserved few
records of the measures adopted by Heraclius during
the early years of his reign; but their effect in restor-
ing the strength of the empire, and in reviving the
energy of the imperial administration, is testified by
the great changes which mark the subsequent period.
The reign of Heraclius is one of the most remarkable
epochs, both in the history of the empire and in the
annals of mankind. It warded off the almost inevitable
destruction of the Roman government for another
century; it laid the foundation of that policy which
prolonged the existence of the imperial power at Con-
stantinople under a new modification, as the Byzantine
monarchy; and it was contemporary with the com-
mencement of the great moral change in the condition
of the people which transformed the language and man-
ners of the ancient world into those of modern nations.
The Eastern Empire was indebted to the talents of
Heraclius for its escape from those ages of barbarism
which, for many centuries, prevailed in all western
Europe. No period of society could offer a field for
instructive study more likely to present practical re-
sults to the highly-civilised political communities of
A. D.
565-633.
380
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. modern Europe; yet there is no time of which the
existing memorials of the constitution and frame of
society are so imperfect and unsatisfactory. A few
important historical facts and single events can alone
be gleaned, from which an outline of the administration
of Heraclius may be drawn, and an attempt made to
describe the situation of his Greek subjects.
The loss of many extensive provinces, and the de-
struction of numerous large armies since the death of
Justinian, had given rise to a persuasion that the end
of the Roman empire was approaching; and the events.
of the earlier part of the reign of Heraclius were not
calculated to remove this impression. Fanaticism and
avidity were the prominent social features of the time.
The civil government became more oppressive in the
capital as the revenues of the provinces conquered by
the Persians were lost. The military power of the
empire declined to such a degree, from the poverty of
the imperial government, and the aversion of the people
to military service, that the Roman armies were no-
where able to keep the field. Heraclius found the
treasury empty, the civil administration demoralised,
the agricultural classes ruined, the army disorganised,
the soldiers deserting their standards to become monks,
and the richest provinces occupied by his enemies. A
review of the position of the empire at his accession
attests the extraordinary talents of the man who could
emerge from the accumulated disadvantages of this
situation, and achieve a career of glory and conquest
almost unrivalled. It proves also the wonderful per-
fection of the system of administration which admitted
of reconstructing the fabric of the civil government,
when the very organisation of civil society had been
completely shattered. The ancient supremacy of the
Roman empire could not be restored by human genius;
the progress of mankind down the stream of time had
·
HERACLIUS.
381
rendered a return to the past condition of the world
impracticable; but yet the speed of the vessel of the
State in descending the torrent was moderated, and it
was saved from being dashed to pieces on the rocks.
Heraclius delivered the empire and the imperial city
of Constantinople from almost certain destruction by
the Persians and the Avars; and though his fortune.
sank before the first fury of Mahomet's enthusiastic
votaries, his sagacious administration had prepared
those powerful means of resistance which enabled the
Greeks to check the Saracen armies almost at the
threshold of their dominions; and the caliphs, while
extending their successful conquests to the Indian
Ocean and the Atlantic, were for centuries compelled
to wage a doubtful war on the northern frontiers of
Syria.
It was perhaps a misfortune for mankind that Hera-
clius was by birth a Roman rather than a Greek, as his
views were from that accident directed to the mainte-
nance of the imperial dominion, without any reference to
the national organisation of his people. His civilisation,
like that of a large portion of the ruling class in the
Eastern Empire, was too far removed from the state of
ignorance into which the mass of the population had
fallen, for the one to be influenced by the feelings of
the other, or for both to act together with the energy
conferred by unity of purpose in a variety of ranks.
Heraclius, being by birth and family connections an
African noble, must have regarded himself as of pure Ro-
man blood, superior to all national prejudices, and bound
by duty and policy to repress the domineering spirit
of the Greek aristocracy in the State, and of the Greek
hierarchy in the Church. Language and manners be-
gan to give to national feelings almost as much power in
forming men into distinct societies as political arrange-
1
¹ Ducange, Historia Byzantina, 117.
A. D.
565-633.
382
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. ments. The influence of the clergy followed the divi-
sions established by language, rather than the political
organisation adopted by the government and as the
clergy now formed the most popular and the ablest
portion of society, the church exerted more influence
over the minds of the people than the civil adminis-
tration and the imperial power, even though the emperor
was the acknowledged sovereign and master of the
patriarchs and the pope. It is necessary to observe
here, that the established church of the empire had
ceased to be the universal Christian church. The Greeks
had rendered themselves the depositaries of its power
and influence; they had already corrupted Christianity
into the Greek church; and other nations were rapidly
forming separate ecclesiastical societies to supply their
own spiritual wants. The Armenians, Syrians, and
Egyptians, were induced by national aversion to the
ecclesiastical tyranny of the Greeks, as well as by spirit-
ual preference of the doctrines of Nestorius and Euty-
ches, to oppose the established church. At the time
Heraclius ascended the throne, these national and reli-
gious feelings already exercised their power of modi-
fying the operations of the Roman government, and of
enabling mankind to advance one step towards the
establishment of individual liberty and intellectual in-
dependence. Circumstances, which will be subsequently
noticed, prevented society from making any progress
in this career of improvement, and effectually arrested
its advance for many centuries. In western Europe,
this struggle never entirely lost its important charac-
teristic of a moral contest for the enjoyment of personal
rights, and the exercise of individual opinion; and as
no central government succeeded in maintaining itself
permanently independent of all national feelings, a check
on the formation of absolute authority always existed,
both in the Church and State. Heraclius, in his desire
HERACLIUS.
383
to restore the power of the empire, strove to destroy
these sentiments of religious liberty. He persecuted
all who opposed his political power in ecclesiastical
matters; he drove the Nestorians from the great church
of Edessa, and gave it to the orthodox. He banished
the Jews from Jerusalem, and forbade them to approach
within three thousand paces of the Holy City. His
plans of coercion or conciliation would evidently have
failed as completely with the Nestorians, Eutychians,
and Jacobites, as they did with the Jews; but the
contest with Mohammedanism closed the struggle, and
concentrated the whole strength of the unconquered
population of the empire in support of the Greek
church, and Constantinopolitan government.
In order fully to comprehend the lamentable state
of weakness to which the empire was reduced, it will
be necessary to take a cursory view of the condition of
the different provinces. The continual ravages of the
barbarians who occupied the country beyond the Danube
had extended as far as the southern shores of the Pelo-
ponnesus. The agricultural population was almost ex-
terminated, except where it was protected by the im-
mediate vicinity of fortified towns, or secured by the
fastnesses of the mountains. The inhabitants of all
the countries between the Archipelago and the Adria-
tic had been greatly diminished, and fertile provinces
remained everywhere desolate, ready to receive new
occupants. As great part of these countries yielded
very little revenue to the government, they were con-
sidered by the court of Constantinople as of hardly any
value, except in so far as they covered the capital from
hostile attacks, or commanded the commercial routes
to the west of Europe. At this time the Indian and
Chinese trade had in part been forced round the north
of the Caspian Sea, in consequence of the Persian con-
quests in Syria and Egypt, and the disturbed state of
A. D.
565-633.
384
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. the country immediately to the east of Persia. The
rich produce transported by the caravans, which
reached the northern shores of the Black Sea, was
then transported to Constantinople, and from thence
distributed through western Europe. Under these
circumstances, Thessalonica and Dyrrachium became
points of great consequence to the empire, and were
successfully defended by the emperor amidst all his
calamities. These two cities commanded the extre-
mities of the usual road between Constantinople and
Ravenna, and connected the towns on the Archipelago
with the Adriatic and with Rome.¹ The open country
was abandoned to the Avars and Sclavonians, who were
allowed to effect permanent settlements even to the
south of the Via Egnatia; but none of these settle-
ments were suffered to interfere with the lines of com-
munication, without which the imperial influence in
Italy would have been soon annihilated, and the trade
of the West lost to the Greeks. The ambition of the
barbarians was inclined to dare any attempt to encroach
on the wealth of the Eastern Empire, and they tried
to establish a system of maritime depredations in the
Archipelago; but Heraclius was able to frustrate their
schemes, though it is probable that he owed his success
more to the exertions of the mercantile population of
the Greek cities, than to the exploits of his own troops.
2
When disorder reigned in the territory nearest to the
seat of government, it cannot be supposed that the ad-
ministration of the distant provinces was conducted
with greater prudence or success. The Gothic kingdom
of Spain was, as this time, ruled by Sisebut, an able
and enlightened monarch, whose policy was directed to
gain over the Roman provincials by peaceful measures,
3
1 Tafel, De Thessalonica, proleg. cviii. p. 221. Hüllman, Geschichte des
Byzantin. Handels, 76.
2 Paul. Diaconus, iv. 21.
3 A. D. 610-619.
HERACLIUS.
385
and whose arms were employed to conquer the remain-
ing territories of the empire in the Peninsula. He soon
reduced the imperial possessions to a small extent of
coast on the ocean, embracing the modern province of
Algarve, and a few towns on the shores of the Mediter-
ranean. He likewise interrupted the communications
between the Roman troops and Spain and Africa, by
building a fleet, and conquering Tangiers and the
neighbouring country. Heraclius concluded a treaty
with Sisebut, in the year 614, and the Romans were
thus enabled to retain their Spanish territories until
the reign of Suintilla, who, while Heraclius was engaged
in his Persian campaigns, finally expelled the Romans
(or the Greeks, as they were generally termed in the
West) from the Spanish continent. Seventy-nine years
had elapsed since the Roman authority had been re-
established in the south of Spain by the conquests of
Justinian. Even under the disadvantages to which
the imperial power was exposed, the commercial superi-
ority of the Greeks still enabled them to retain posses-
sion of the Balearic Islands until a later period.2
1
National distinctions and religious interests tended
to divide the population, and to balance political power,
much more in Italy than in the other countries of
Europe. The influence of the church in protecting the
people, the weakness of the Lombard sovereigns, from
the small numerical strength of the Lombard popula-
tion, and the oppressive fiscal government of the Roman
exarchs, gave the Italians the means of creating a
national existence, amidst the conflicts of their masters.
Yet so imperfect was the unity of interests, or so great
were the difficulties of communication between the
1
.
A. D. 623.
2 Roman and Greek interests, and party feelings, continued to maintain some
influence in the Peninsula for many years. In 673, the Duke Flavius Paulus, a
provincial in the service of the Goths, almost succeeded in seizing the crown of
Spain. History of Spain and Portugal, i. 137. Cabinet Cyclop. Aschbach's
Geschichte der Westgothen, 279.
A. D.
565-633.
2 B
386
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. people of various parts of Italy, that the imperial
authority not only defended its own dominions with
success against foreign enemies, but also repressed with
ease the ambitious or patriotic attempts of the popes
to acquire political power, and punished equally the
seditions of the people and the rebellions of the chiefs,
who, like John Compsa of Naples, and the exarch
Eleutherinus, aspired at independence.
Africa alone, of all the provinces of the empire, con-
tinued to use the Latin language in ordinary life; and
its inhabitants regarded themselves, with some reason,
as the purest descendants of the Romans. After the
victories of John the Patrician, it had enjoyed a long
period of tranquillity, and its prosperity was undis-
turbed by any spirit of nationality adverse to the
supremacy of the empire, or by schismatic opinions
hostile to the church. The barbarous tribes to the
south were feeble enemies, and no foreign State pos-
sessed a naval force capable of troubling its repose or
interrupting its commerce. Under the able and fortu-
nate administration of Heraclius and Gregoras, the
father and uncle of the emperor, Africa formed the
most flourishing portion of the empire. Its prosperous
condition, and the wars raging in other countries, threw
great part of the commerce of the Mediterranean into
the hands of the Africans. Wealth and population
increased to such a degree, that the naval expedition
of the emperor Heraclius, and the army of his cousin
Nicetas, were fitted out from the resources of Africa
alone. Another strong proof of the prosperity of the
province, of its importance to the empire, and of its
attachment to the interests of the Heraclian family, is
afforded by the resolution which the emperor adopted,
in the ninth year of his reign, of transferring the impe-
rial residence from Constantinople to Carthage.
The immense population of Constantinople gave great
BANKRUPTCY OF HERACLIUS.
387
inquietude to the government. Constantine the Great,
in order to favour the increase of his new capital, had
granted daily allowances of bread to the possessors of
houses. Succeeding emperors, for the purpose of caress-
ing the populace, had largely increased the numbers of
those entitled to this gratuity. In 618, the Persians
overran Egypt, and by their conquest stopped the annual
supplies of grain destined for the public distributions in
the capital. Heraclius, ruined in his finances, but fear-
ing to announce the discontinuance of these allowances,
so necessary to keep the population of Constantinople
in good humour, engaged to continue the supply, on
receiving a payment of three pieces of gold from each
claimant. His necessities, however, very soon became
so great, that he ceased to continue the distributions,
and thus defrauded those citizens of their money whom
the fortune of war had deprived of their bread.¹ The
danger of his position must have been greatly increased
by this bankruptcy, and the dishonour must have ren-
dered his residence among the people whom he had
deceived galling to his mind. Shame, therefore, may
possibly have suggested to Heraclius the idea of quitting
Constantinople; but his selection of Carthage, as the
city to which he wished to transfer the seat of govern-
ment, must have been determined by the wealth, popu-
lation, and security of the African province. Carthage
offered military resources for recovering possession of
Egypt and Syria, of which we can only now estimate
the extent by taking into consideration the expedition
that placed Heraclius himself on the throne. Many
reasons connected with the constitution of the civil
1 Chronicon Paschale, 389. The abolition of these public distributions of
provisions appears to have infused new life into the administration. The ebb
in the fortunes of the empire changed when liberty of commerce and the
abolition of ancient privileges gave labour additional value. The condition of
nations is oftener changed by an addition to the wages of labour than by the
political theories of philosophers, yet history often records the idle speculation.
and overlooks the practical improvement.
A. D.
565-633.
388
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. government of the empire, might likewise be adduced
as tending to influence the preference.
In Constantinople, an immense body of idle inhabi-
tants had been collected, a mass that had long formed
a burden on the State, and acquired a right to a portion
of its resources. A numerous nobility, and a perma-
nent imperial household, conceived that they formed a
portion of the Roman government, from the prominent
part which they acted in the ceremonial that connected
the emperor with the people. Thus, the great natural
advantages of the geographical position of the capital
were neutralised by moral and political causes; while
the desolate state of the European provinces, and the
vicinity of the northern frontier, began to expose it to
frequent sieges. As a fortress and place of arms, it might
have still formed the bulwark of the empire in Europe;
but while it remained the capital, its immense unpro-
ductive population required that too large a part of the
resources of the State should be devoted to supplying it
with provisions, to guarding against the factions and
the seditions of its populace, and to maintaining in it a
powerful garrison. The luxury of the Roman court had,
during ages of unbounded wealth and unlimited power,
assembled round the emperor an infinity of courtly
offices, and caused an enormous expenditure, which it
was extremely dangerous to suppress and impossible to
continue.
No national feelings or particular line of policy con-
nected Heraclius with Constantinople, and his frequent
absence during the active years of his life indicates that,
as long as his personal energy and health allowed him
to direct the public administration, he considered the
constant residence of the emperor in that city injurious
to the general interests of the State. On the other hand
Carthage was, at this time, peculiarly a Roman city;
and in actual wealth, in the numbers of its independent
HERACLIUS.
389
citizens, and in the activity of its whole population, was
probably inferior to no city in the empire. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Heraclius, when compelled to
suppress the public distributions of bread in the capital,
to retrench the expenditure of his court and make many
reforms in his civil government, should have wished to
place the imperial treasury and his own resources in a
place of greater security, before he engaged in his des-
perate struggle with Persia. The wish, therefore, to
make Carthage the capital of the Roman empire may,
with far greater probability, be connected with the
gallant project of his Eastern campaigns, than with the
cowardly or selfish motives attributed to him by the
Byzantine writers.
When the project of Heraclius to remove to Carthage
was generally known, the Greek patriarch, the Greco-
Roman aristocracy, and the Byzantine people, became
alarmed at the loss of power, wealth, public shows, and
largesses consequent on the departure of the court, and
were eager to change his resolution. As far as Heraclius
was personally concerned, the anxiety displayed by
every class to retain him, may have relieved his mind
from the shame caused by his financial fraud; and as
want of personal courage was certainly not one of his
defects, he may have abandoned a wise resolution with-
out much regret, if he had thought the enthusiasm
which he witnessed likely to aid his military plans.
The Patriarch and the people, hearing that he had
shipped his treasures, and was prepared to follow with
all the imperial family, assembled tumultuously, and in-
duced the emperor to swear in the church of St Sophia,
that he would defend the empire to his death, and
regard the people of Constantinople as peculiarly the
children of his throne.
Egypt, from its wonderful natural resources, and its
numerous and industrious population, had long been
A. D.
565-633.
390
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. the most valuable province of the empire. It poured a
very great portion of its gross produce into the imperial
treasury; for its agricultural population, being destitute
of all political power and influence, were compelled to
pay, not only taxes, but a tribute, which was viewed as
a rent for the soil, to the Roman government. At this
time, however, the wealth of Egypt was on the decline.
The circumstances which had driven the trade of India
to the north, had caused a great decrease in the demand
for the grain of Egypt on the shores of the Red Sea,
and for its manufactures in Arabia and Ethiopia. The
canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, whose exist-
ence is intimately connected with the prosperity of these
countries, had been neglected during the government
of Phocas. A large portion of the Greek population of
Alexandria had been ruined, because an end had been
put to the public distributions of grain, and poverty
had invaded the fertile land of Egypt. John the Alms-
giver, who was patriarch and imperial prefect in the
reign of Heraclius, did everything in his power to
alleviate this misery. He established hospitals, and
devoted the revenues of his See to charity; but he was
an enemy to heresy, and consequently he was hardly
looked on as a friend by the native population. Na-
tional feelings, religious opinions, and local interests,
had always nourished, in the minds of the native
Egyptians, a deep-rooted hatred of the Roman admin-
istration and of the Greek church; and this feeling of
hostility only became more concentrated after the
union of the offices of prefect and patriarch by Justin-
ian. A complete line of separation existed between
the Greek colony of Alexandria and the native popula-
tion, who during the decline of the Greeks and Jews
of Alexandria intruded themselves into political busi-
ness, and gained some degree of official importance.
The cause of the emperor was now connected with the
•
HERACLIUS.
391
commercial interests of the Greek and Melchite parties,
but these ruling classes were regarded by the agricul-
tural population of the rest of the province as inter-
lopers on their sacred Jacobite soil.¹ John the Alms-
giver, though a Greek patriarch, and an imperial pre-
fect, was not perfectly free from the charge of heresy,
nor, perhaps, of employing the revenues under his con-
trol with more attention to charity than to public
utility. The exigencies of Heraclius were so great
that he sent his cousin, the patrician Nicetas, to Egypt,
in order to seize the immense wealth which the patri-
arch John was said to possess. In the following year
the Persians invaded the province; and the patrician
and patriarch, unable to defend even the city of Alex-
andria, fled to Cyprus, while the enemy was allowed to
subdue the valley of the Nile to the borders of Libya
and Ethiopia, without meeting any opposition from the
imperial forces, and apparently with the good wishes of
the Egyptians. The plunder obtained from public pro-
perty and slaves was immense; and as the power of the
Greeks was annihilated, the native Egyptians availed
themselves of the opportunity to acquire a dominant
influence in the administration of their country.
For ten years the province owned allegiance to
Persia, though it enjoyed a certain degree of doubtful
independence under the immediate government of a
native intendant-general of the land revenues, named
Mokaukas, who subsequently, at the time of the Sara-
cen conquest, acted a conspicuous part in the history
of his country. During the Persian supremacy, he
1 The Melchites were those Christians in Syria and Egypt who, though not
Greeks, followed the doctrines of the Greek church. They were called Melchites
(royalists, from Melcha, Syriac, a king) by their adversaries, on account of their
implicit obedience to the edict of Marcian in favour of the Council of Chalce-
don. Jacob Baradæus, or Zanzalus, bishop of Edessa, the great heterodox
apostle of the East, blended the various sects of Eutychians and Monophysites
into a powerful church, whose followers were generally called, after his death,
Jacobites. He died A. D. 578.-Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Soames' edit.
il. 56.
A. D.
565-633.
392
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. became so influential in the administration, that he is
styled by several writers the Prince of Egypt.1 Mo-
kaukas, under the Roman government, had conformed
to the established church, in order to hold an official
situation, but he was, like most of his countrymen, at
heart a Monophysite, and consequently inclined to
oppose the imperial administration, both from religious
and political motives. Yet, it appears that a portion
of the Monophysite clergy steadily refused to submit
to the Persian government; and Benjamin, their patri-
arch, retired from his residence at Alexandria when
that city fell into the hands of the Persians, and did
not return until Heraclius had recovered possession of
Egypt.2 Mokaukas established himself in the city of
Babylon, or Misr, which had grown up, on the decline
of Memphis, to be the native capital of the province,
and the chief city in the interior. The moment
appears to have been extremely favourable for the
establishment of an independent state by the Mono-
physite Egyptians, since, amidst the conflicts of the
Persian and Roman empires, the immense revenues
and supplies of grain formerly paid to the emperor
might have been devoted to the defence of the country.
But the native population appears, from the conduct
of the patriarch Benjamin, not to have been united
¹ P. Rahebi Chronicon Orientale, à J. S. Assemano, 85; edit. Venet. The
mission of the Patrician Nicetas to seize the wealth of John the Charitable
must have taken place before the year 616, as in that year he died on his way
to Constantinople. Le Beau and Gibbon, on the authority of Baronius in his
Annales Ecclesiastica, place this event in the year 620; but Petau, in his
Notes to Nicephorus the Patriarch, had observed the anachronism of five years.
Nicephori Pat. Hist. Notæ, 64. See also Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, xi.
53. Gibbon's Decline and Fall, c. xlvii. note 147. Assemani Biblioth. Orient.
iv. 1. Chronicon Orientale, 126, edit. Venet.
2 Chronicon Orientale, 127. Abfuit autem sede sua profugus per annos 13,
decem scilicet sub imperio Heraclii quibus Persæ, Egyptum et Alexandriam
possederant, et tres sub imperio Mohametanorum," &c. Yet Benjamin is said
to have been banished by Heraclius for ten years.-Renaudot, Ilistoria Patri-
archorum Alexandrinorum Jacobitorum.
3 Strabo (lib. xvii. c. 1. tom. iii. p. 447, edit. Tauch) mentions Babylon as a
fortified town, and one of the stations of the Roman garrison in Egypt. It
occupied the site of Old Cairo, and is famous in the history and poetry of the
middle ages. Le Beau, xi. 277, notes de S. M.
JEWS AND SYRIANS.
393
in its views; and probably the agricultural classes,
though numerous, living in abundance, and firm in
their Monophysite tenets, had not the knowledge
necessary to aspire at national independence, the
strength of character required to achieve it, or the
command of the precious metals necessary to purchase
the service of mercenary troops and provide the mate-
rials of war. They had been so long deprived of arms
and of all political rights, that they had probably
adopted the opinion prevalent among the subjects of
all despotic governments, that public functionaries
are invariably knaves, and that the oppression of the
native is more grievous than the yoke of a stranger.
The moral defects of the people could certainly, at
this favourable conjuncture, alone have prevented the
establishment of an independent Egyptian and Jaco-
bite state.
In Syria and Palestine, the different races who
peopled the country were then, as in our own day,
extremely divided; and their separation, by language,
manners, interests, and religion, rendered it impos-
sible for them to unite for the purpose of gaining any
object opposed by the imperial government. The
Persians had penetrated into Palestine, plundered Jeru-
salem, burned the church of the holy sepulchre, and
carried off the holy cross with the patriarch Zachurias
into Persia in the year 614. The native Syrians,
though they retained their language and literature,
and showed the strength of their national character
by their opposition to the Greek church, seemed not to
have constituted the majority of the inhabitants of the
province. They were farther divided by their reli-
gious opinions; for, though generally Monophysites,
a part was attached to the Nestorian church. The
Greeks appear to have formed the most numerous
1
1 Chronicon Pasch. 385.
A. D.
565-633.
394
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. class of the population, though they were almost en-
tirely confined within the walls of the cities. Many
of them were, doubtless, the direct descendants of the
colonies which had prospered and increased under the
domination of the Seleucidæ. The protection and
patronage of the civil and ecclesiastical administra-
tion of the Eastern Empire had preserved these Greek
colonies separate from the natives, and supported them
by a continual influx of Greeks engaged in the service.
of the Church and State. But though the Greeks pro-
bably formed the most numerous body of the popula-
tion, yet the circumstances of their composing the
ruling class in the land, united all the other classes in
opposition to their authority. Being, consequently,
deprived of the support of the agricultural population,
and unable to recruit their numbers by an influx from
their rural neighbours, they became more and more
aliens in the country, and were alone incapable of
offering a long and steady resistance to any foreign
enemy, without the constant support of the imperial
treasury and armies.
The Jews, whose religion and nationality have
always supported one another, had, for more than a
century, been increasing very remarkably, both in
numbers and wealth, in every part of the civilised
world. The wars and rivalry of the various nations
of conquerors, and of conquered people, in the south
of Europe, had opened to the Jews a freedom of com-
mercial intercourse with all parties, which each nation,
moved by national jealousy, refused to its own neigh-
bours, and only conceded to a foreign people, of whom
no political jealousy could be entertained. This cir-
cumstance explains the extraordinary increase in the
number of the Jews, which becomes apparent, in the
seventh century, in Greece, Africa, Spain, and Arabia,
by referring it to the ordinary laws of the multiplica-
JEWS AND SYRIANS.
395
tion of the human species, when facilities are found
for acquiring augmented supplies of the means of sub-
sistence, without inducing us to suppose that the Jews
succeeded, during this period, in making more prose-
lytes than they had done at other times. This increase
of their numbers and wealth soon roused the bigotry
and jealousy of the Christians; while the deplorable
condition of the Roman empire, and of the Christian
population in the East, inspired the Jews with some
expectations of soon re-establishing their national inde-
pendence under the expected Messiah. It must be
confessed that the desire of availing themselves of the
misfortunes of the Roman empire, and of the dissen-
sions of the Christian church, was the natural conse-
quence of the oppression to which they had long been
subjected, but it not unnaturally tended to increase the
hatred with which they were viewed, and added to
their persecutions.
It is said that about this time a prophecy was cur-
rent, which declared that the Roman empire would be
overthrown by a circumcised people. This report may
have been spread by the Jews, in order to excite their
own ardour, and assist their projects of rebellion; but
the prophecy was saved from oblivion by the subse-
quent conquests of the Saracens, which could never
have been foreseen by its authors. The conduct of the
Jews excited the bigotry, as it may have awakened the
fears, of the imperial government, and both Phocas
and Heraclius attempted to exterminate the Jewish
religion, and if possible to put an end to the national
existence.¹ Heraclius not only practised every species
1
Eutychii Annales Ecclesiast. Alexand. ii. 216, 236.
The number of the
Jews at Tyre was 40,000. Their riches appear to have caused their oppres-
sion, and the tyranny of their rulers drove them to rebellion. The policy of
Heraclius contrasts very unfavourably with that of the Gothic king, Theodoric
the Great, who, about a century before, addressed the Jews of Genoa in these
words, We cannot command religion, for no one can be compelled to believe
if he be unwilling."-Cassiodorus, Var. lib. xii. c. ii. ep. 27.
CC
A. D.
565-633.
396
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. of cruelty himself to effect this object within the
bounds of his own dominions, but he even made the
forced conversion or banishment of the Jews a pro-
minent feature in his diplomacy. He consoled himself
for the loss of most of the Roman possessions in Spain,
by inducing Sisebut to insert an article in the treaty
of peace concluded in 614, engaging the Gothic mon-
arch to force baptism on the Jews; and he considered,
that even though he failed in persuading the Franks
to co-operate with him against the Avars, in the year
620, he had rendered the empire and Christianity some
service by inducing Dagobert to join in the project of
exterminating the unfortunate Jews."
2
The other portions of the Syrian population aspired
at independence, though they did not openly venture
to assert it; and during the Persian conquest, the
coast of Phoenicia successfully defended itself under
the command of its native chiefs. At a later period,
when the Mohammedans invaded the province, many
chiefs existed who had attained a considerable degree
of local power, and exercised an almost independent
authority in their districts.³
As the Roman administration grew weaker in Syria,
and the Persian invasions became more frequent, the
Arabs gradually acquired many permanent settlements
amidst the rest of the inhabitants; and from the com-
mencement of the seventh century, they must be
reckoned as an important class of the population.
Their power within the Roman provinces was increased
by the existence of the two independent Arab king-
1 There were still Christians who disapproved of the forced conversion of the
Jews. Saint Isidore says, "Sisebutus Judæos ad fidem Christianam permovens
æmulationem quidem Dei habuit, sed non scientiam."-Isidor. Hisp. Ch. Goth.
See Aschbach's Geschichte der Westgothen, 240.
2 Assemani Bib. Orient. iii. 421; and his Bibliotheca Juris Orientalis, vol. vi.
c. 20, p. 393.
3 Ockley's History of the Saracens, i. 233; for Edessa, Theophanes, Ch. 283,
and Abou'lfaradj, Ch. Syr. 119.
JEWS AND SYRIANS.
397
doms of Ghassan and Hira, which had been formed
in part from territories gained from the Roman and
Persian empires. Of these kingdoms, Ghassan was the
constant ally or vassal of the Romans; and Hira was
equally attached to, or dependent on Persia. Both
were Christian states, though the conversion of Hira
took place not very long before the reign of Heraclius,
and the greater part of the inhabitants were Jacobites,
mixed with some Nestorians.¹ It may be remarked
that the Arabs had been gradually advancing in moral
and political civilisation during the sixth century, and
that their religious ideas had undergone a very great
change. The decline of their powerful neighbours
had allowed them to increase the importance of the
commerce which they retained in their own hands, and
its extension gave them more enlarged views of their
own importance, and suggested ideas of national unity
which they had not previously entertained. These
causes had produced powerful effects on the whole
of the Arab population during the century which pre-
ceded the accession of Heraclius; and it must not be
overlooked that Mahomet himself was born during the
reign of Justin II., and that he was educated under the
influence of this national excitement.
The country between Syria and Armenia, or that
part of ancient Chaldea which was subject to the
Romans, had been so repeatedly laid waste during the
Persian wars, that the agricultural population was
nearly exterminated, or had retired into the Persian
provinces. The inhabitants of no portion of the em-
pire were so eager to throw off their allegiance as the
Chaldaic Christians, called by the Greeks Nestorians,
who formed the majority of the population of this
country. They had clung firmly to the doctrine of the
2
¹ Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, 30.
2 The Chaldaic Christians considered, and still consider, theirs the real
A. D.
565-633.
398
JUSTIN II. HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. two natures of Christ, after its condemnation by the
council of Ephesus (A.D. 449), and when they found
themselves unable to contend against the temporal
power and spiritual influence of the Greeks, they had
established an independent church, which directed its
attention, with great zeal, to the spiritual guidance of
those Christians who dwelt beyond the limits of the
Roman empire. The history of their missions, by
which churches were established in India and China, is
an extremely interesting portion of the annals of Chris-
tianity. Their zealous exertions, and their connection
with the Christian inhabitants of Persia, induced the
Roman emperors to persecute them with great cruelty,
from political as well as religious motives; and this
persecution often insured them the favour of the
Persian monarchs. Though they did not always
escape the bigotry and jealousy of the Persians, still
they usually enjoyed equitable protection, and became
active enemies both of the Greek church and the
Roman empire, though the geographical position and
physical configuration of their country afforded them
little hope of being able to gain political indepen-
dence.2
Armenia was favourably situated for maintaining
its independence, as soon as the Persian and Roman
empires began to decline. Though the country was
divided by these rival governments, the people had
apostolic church, though, like all other Christian churches, it partook largely
of a national character. They used the Syriac language in public worship.
Their patriarch resided at Seleucia, in Persia. He now resides at a monastery
near Mossul. They had many bishops in Syria and Armenia, as well as in
Mesopotamia. They were charged with confounding the divine and human
natures of Christ, and they wished the Virgin Mary to be called the mother of
They worshipped no
Christ, not, as was then usual, the mother of God.
images, and they venerated Nestorius.
1 Blumhardh. Versuch einer allgem einen Missions geschichte der Kirche,
vol. iii.
2 The Jacobites appear not to have been so cruelly persecuted as the Nes-
When the Persians
torians, for they were very numerous in Mesopotamia.
took Edessa they gave up all the churches to the Jacobites.-Elmacin. Hist.
Sarac. 14.
CHALDAIC CHRISTIANS.
399
preserved their national character, manners, language,
and literature, in as great a degree of purity as the
Greeks themselves; and as their higher classes had
retained more of wealth, military enterprise, and poli-
tical independence, than the nobility of the other
nations of the East, their services were very highly
estimated by their neighbours. Their reputation for
fidelity and military skill induced the Roman em-
perors, from the time of Justinian, to raise them to the
highest offices in the empire. The Armenians were
unable to defend their political independence against
its two powerful enemies; but even after the Romans
and Persians had divided their kingdom, they main-
tained their national existence unaltered; and, amidst
all the convulsions which have swept over the face of
Asia, they have continued to exist as a distinct people,
and succeeded in preserving their language and litera-
ture. Their national spirit placed them in opposition.
to the Greek church, and they adopted the opinions of
the Monophysites, though under modifications which
gave to their church a national character, and sepa-
rated it from that of the Jacobites. Their history is
worthy of a more attentive examination than it has yet
met with in English literature. Armenia was the first
country in which Christianity became the established
religion of the land; and the people, under the greatest
difficulties, long maintained their independence with
the most determined courage; and after the loss of
their political power, they have defended their manners,
language, religion, and national character with success,
against Persians, Greeks, Saracens, and Turks.¹
1 History of Armenia by Father Michael Chamich, translated from the
Armenian by J. Avdall: Calcutta, 1827, 2 vols. 8vo. M. de Saint Martin,
Mémoires Historiques et Géographiques sur l'Arménie, 2 vols. Paris, 1818; and
numerous additions to the edition of Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, Paris,
1824, &c., 21 tomes, by the same author. Neumann, Versuch einer Geschichte
der Armenischen Literatur nach den werken der Mechitaristen.
A. D.
565-633.
400
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV.
Asia Minor had become the chief seat of the Roman
power in the time of Heraclius, and the only portion
in which the majority of the population was attached
to the imperial government and to the Greek church.
Before the reign of Phocas, it had escaped any ex-
tensive devastation, so that it still retained much
of its ancient wealth and splendour; and the social
life of the people was still modelled on the institutions
and usages of preceding ages. A considerable internal
trade was carried on; and the great roads, being kept
in a tolerable state of repair, served as arteries for the
circulation of commerce and civilisation. That it had,
nevertheless, suffered very severely in the general decline
caused by over-taxation, and by reduced commerce,
neglected agriculture, and diminished population, is
attested by the magnificent ruins of cities which had
already fallen to decay, and which never again re-
covered their ancient prosperity.
The power of the central administration over its im-
mediate officers was almost as completely destroyed in
Asia Minor as in the more distant provinces of the em-
pire. A remarkable proof of this general disorganisa-
tion of the government is found in the history of the
early years of the reign of Heraclius; and one deserv-
ing particular attention from its illustrating both his
personal character and the state of the empire. Crispus,
the son-in-law of Phocas, had materially assisted Hera-
clius in obtaining the throne; and as a recompense, he
was charged with the administration of Cappadocia, one
of the richest provinces of the empire, along with the
chief command of the troops in his government.1
Crispus, a man of influence, and of a daring, heedless
character, soon ventured to act, not only with indepen-
dence, but even with insolence, towards the emperor.2
1 Justinian attests the wealth and importance of Cappadocia.-Novell. xxx.
2 His character warrants Gibbon's conjecture, that he may have been the
HERACLIUS.
401
He neglected the defence of his province; and when
Heraclius visited Cesarea to examine into its state
and prepare the means of carrying on the war against
Persia in person, he displayed a spirit of insubordina-
tion and an assumption of importance which amount-
ed to treason. Heraclius, who possessed the means of
restraining his fiery temperament, visited the too
powerful officer in his bed, which he kept under a
slight or affected illness, and persuaded him to visit
Constantinople. On his appearance in the senate, he
was arrested, and compelled to become a monk. His
authority and position rendered it absolutely necessary
for Heraclius to punish his presumption, before he
could advance with safety against the Persians. Many
less important personages, in various parts of the em-
pire, acted with equal independence, without the em-
peror's considering that it was either necessary to
observe, or prudent to punish, their ambition. The
decline of the power of the central government, the
increasing ignorance of the people, the augmented
difficulties in the way of communication, and the
general insecurity of property and life, effected ex-
tensive changes in the state of society, and threw
political influence into the hands of the local governors,
the municipal and provincial chiefs, and the whole
body of the clergy.
Priscus who figured in the reign of Maurice. Decline and Fall, xlvi, note
52. Nicephorus Pat. (4), and Cedrenus (i. 406, edit. Par.) call the son-in-law of
Phocas, Crispus. Theophanes (246, 248) and Zonaras (ii. 81) call him Priscus ;
but Zonaras (p. 82, 83) distinguishes the governor of Cappadocia, whom he calls
Crispus.
A. D.
565-633.
2 C
402
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV.
SECT. VI. CHANGE IN THE POSITION OF THE GREEK POPULATION,
WHICH WAS PRODUCED BY THE SCLAVONIC ESTABLISHMENTS IN
DALMATIA.
Heraclius appears to have formed the plan of esta-
blishing a permanent barrier in Europe against the en-
croachments of the Avars and Sclavonians. For the
furtherance of this project, it was evident that he could
derive no assistance from the inhabitants of the provinces
to the south of the Danube. The imperial armies, too,
which, in the time of Maurice, had waged an active war
in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently invaded the terri-
tories of the Avars, had melted away during the dis-
orders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable:
for, in Europe, no agricultural population remained to
supply the recruits required to form a new army.¹ The
only feasible plan for circumscribing the ravages of the
northern enemies of the empire which presented itself,
was the establishment of powerful colonies of tribes
hostile to the Avars and their eastern Sclavonian allies,
in the deserted provinces of Dalmatia and Illyria. To
accomplish this object, Heraclius induced the Serbs, or
western Sclavonians, who occupied the country about
the Carpathian Mountains, and who had successfully
opposed the extension of the Avar empire in that direc-
tion, to abandon their ancient seats, and move down to
the South into the provinces between the Adriatic and
the Danube. The Roman and Greek population of
these provinces had been driven towards the sea coast
by the continual incursions of the northern tribes, and
the desolate plains of the interior had been occupied by
a few Sclavonian subjects and vassals of the Avars.
¹ The Dalmatian cities sent every year 1000 cavalry to assist in guarding the
passage of the Danube.-Constantinus Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. c. 30, p. 141,
edit. Bonn.
SERVIAN COLONIES.
403
A. D.
The most important of the western Sclavonian tribes
who moved southward at the invitation of Heraclius 565-633.
were the Servians and Croatians, who settled in the
countries still peopled by their descendants. Their
original settlements were formed in consequence of
friendly arrangements, and, doubtless, under the sanc-
tion of an express treaty; for the Sclavonian people
of Illyria and Dalmatia long regarded themselves as
bound to pay a certain degree of territorial allegiance
to the Eastern Empire.¹
The measures of Heraclius were carried into execution
with skill and vigour. From the borders of Istria to
the territory of Dyrrachium, the whole country was
occupied by a variety of tribes of Servian or western
Sclavonic origin, hostile to the Avars. These colonies,
unlike the earlier invaders of the empire, were composed
of agricultural communities; and to the facility which
this circumstance afforded them of adopting into their
political system any remnant of the old Sclavonic popu-
lation of their conquests, it seems just to attribute the
permanency and prosperity of their settlements. Un-
like the military races of Goths, Huns, and Avars, who
had preceded them, the Servian nations increased and
flourished in the lands which they had colonised; and
by the absorption of every relic of the ancient popu-
lation, they formed political communities and indepen-
dent states, which offered a firm barrier to the Avars
and other hostile nations.
It may here be observed, that if the original population
of the countries colonised by the Servian nations had at
an earlier period been relieved from the weight of the
imperial taxes, which encroached on their capital, and
from the jealous oppression of the Roman government,
which prevented their bearing arms; in short, if they
had been allowed to enjoy all the advantages which
1 Const. Porphyr. De Administrando Imperio, c. 31-36.
404
JUSTIN II.—HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. Heraclius was compelled to concede to the Servians,
we may reasonably suppose that they could have suc-
cessfully defended their country. But after the most
destructive ravages of the Goths, Huns, and Avars, the
imperial tax-gatherers had never failed to enforce pay-
ment of the tribute as long as anything remained un-
destroyed, though, according to the rules of justice, the
Roman government had really forfeited its right to levy
the taxes, as soon as it failed to perform its duty in de-
fending the population.
The modern history of the eastern shores of the
Adriatic commences with the establishment of the Scla-
vonian colonies in Dalmatia. Though, in a territorial
point of view, vassals of the court of Constantinople,
these colonies always preserved the most complete na-
tional independence, and formed their own political
governments, according to the exigencies of their situ-
ation. The states which they constituted were of con-
siderable weight in the history of Europe; and the
kingdoms or bannats of Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, Rascia,
and Dalmatia, occupied for some centuries a political
position very similar to that now held by the secondary
monarchical states of the present day. The people of
Narenta, who enjoyed a republican form of government,
once disputed the sway of the Adriatic with the Vene-
tians; and, for some time, it appeared probable that
these Servian colonies established by Heraclius were
likely to take a prominent part in advancing the pro-
gress of European civilisation.
But, although the ancient provinces of Dalmatia,
Illyricum, and Moesia, received a new race of inhabi-
tants, and new geographical divisions and names, still
several fortified towns on the Adriatic continued to
maintain their immediate connection with the impe-
rial government, and preserved their original popula-
tion, augmented by numbers of Roman citizens whose
SERVIANS.
405
wealth enabled them to escape from the Avar invasions
and gain the coast. These towns long supported their
municipal independence by means of the commerce
which they carried on with Italy, and defended them-
selves against their Servian neighbours by the advan-
tages which they derived from the vicinity of the
numerous islands on the Dalmatian coast. For two
centuries and a half they continued, though surrounded
by Servian tribes, to preserve their direct allegiance to
the throne of Constantinople, until at length, in the
reign of the Emperor Basil I., they were compelled to
become tributary to their Sclavonic neighbours.¹ Ra-
gusa alone ultimately obtained and secured its inde-
pendence, which it preserved amidst all the vicissi-
tudes of the surrounding countries, until its liberty
was finally destroyed by the French, when the con-
quests of Napoleon annihilated the existence of most
of the smaller European republics.
+
It seems hardly possible that the western Sclavonians,
who entered Dalmatia under the various names of Ser-
vians, Croatians, Narentins, Zachloumians, Terbounians,
Diocleans, and Decatrians, constituted the whole stock
of the population. Their numbers could hardly be
sufficient to form more than the dominant race at the
time of their arrival; and, depopulated as the country
was, they probably found some remains of a primitive
Sclavonian people who had inhabited the same coun-
tries from the earliest periods of history. The remnant
of these ancient inhabitants, even if they had been re-
duced to the condition of agricultural serfs or slaves,
1
A. D. 867-886. Const. Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. c. 30 (vol. iii. 147, edit.
Bonn.) The small annual tribute paid by these towns to the Eastern Empe-
rors, and afterwards to the Sclavonian princes, may be considered as a proof of
their poverty on the one hand, and of their virtual independence on the other.
In either case it is deserving of particular attention, as an illustration of the
state of society. Aspalathus (Spalatro) paid 200 pieces of gold; Tetrangurium
(Trau), Opsara, Arbe, Vekla, each 100; Jadera, which is represented by the
modern Zara, 110; and Ragusa, for the rural district possessed by its citizens,
72.
A. D.
565-633.
406
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS,
CHAP. IV. Would survive the miseries which exterminated their
masters; and they had doubtless mingled with the
invaders of a kindred race from the northern banks of
the Danube, who, ever since the reign of Justinian,
had pushed their incursions into the empire. With
these people the ruling class of Servian Sclavonians
would easily unite without violating any national pre-
judice. The consequence was natural; the various
branches of the population were soon confounded, and
their numbers rapidly increased as they melted into
one people. The Romans, who at one period had
formed a large portion of the inhabitants of these
countries, gradually died out, while the Illyrians, who
were the neighbours of these colonies to the south,
were ultimately pushed down on that part of the con-
tinent occupied by the Greeks.
From the settlement of the Servian Sclavonians with-
in the bounds of the empire, we may therefore venture
to date the earliest encroachments of the Illyrian or
Albanian race on the Hellenic population. The Alba-
nians or Arnauts, who are now called by themselves
Skiptars, are supposed to be remains of the great Thra-
cian race which, under various names, and more parti-
cularly as Paionians, Epirots, and Macedonians, take
an important part in early Grecian history. No dis-
tinct trace of the period at which they began to be
co-proprietors of Greece with the Hellenic race can be
found in history; but it is evident that, at whatever
time it occurred, the earliest Illyrian or Albanian colo-
nists who settled among the Greeks did so as members
of the same political state, and of the same church;
that they were influenced by precisely the same feel-
ings and interests, and, what is even more remarkable,
1 The numbers of the Albanian race are at present estimated by Schafarik
not to exceed one million and a half. The Wallachians, Moldavians, and
Transylvanians, are composed of a mixture of the true Thracians with Romans
and Sclavonians.-Schafarik, Slavische Alterthumer, vol. i. p. 31.
ILLYRIANS OR ALBANIANS.
407
that their intrusion occurred under such circumstances
that no national prejudices or local jealousies were
excited in the susceptible minds of the Greeks. A
common calamity of no ordinary magnitude must have
produced these wonderful effects; and it seems very
difficult to trace back the history of the Greek nation,
without suspecting that the germs of their modern
condition, like those of their neighbours, are to be
sought in the singular events which occurred in the
reign of Heraclius.
1
The power of the Avar monarchy had already de-
clined, but the prince or great khakan was still ac-
knowledged as suzerain, from the frontiers of Bavaria
to the Dacian Alps, which bound Transylvania and
the Bannat, and as far as the shores of the Black Sea,
about the mouth of the Danube. The Sclavonian,
Bulgarian, and Hunnish tribes, which occupied the
country between the Danube and the Wolga, and who
had been the earliest subjects of the Avars in Europe,
had re-asserted their independence. The actual numeri-
cal strength of the Avar nation had never been very great,
and their barbarous government everywhere thinned
the original population of the lands which they con-
quered. The remnant of the old inhabitants, driven
by poverty and desperation to abandon all industrious
pursuits, soon formed bands of robbers, and quickly
became as warlike and as numerous as the Avar
troops stationed to awe their districts. In a succes-
sion of skirmishes and desultory engagements, the
Avars soon ceased to maintain their superiority, and
1 The great social distinction which has always existed in the East between
the population of the city and of the country, has facilitated the changes and
translocations of the rural population.
Some valuable works have been lately published on the history and language
of Albania. Albanesische Studien, by Dr Von Hahn, who resided in the country
as Austrian Consul, is a valuable volume on this almost unknown subject.
Bopp has published a Memoir on the Albanian language in the Memoirs of the
Academy of Berlin.
A. D.
565-633.
408
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. the Avar monarchy fell to pieces with nearly as great
rapidity as it had arisen. Yet, in the reign of Hera-
clius, the khakan could still assemble a variety of tribes.
under his standard whenever he proposed to make a
plundering expedition into the provinces of the em-
pire.¹
1
It seems impossible to decide, from any historical
evidence, whether the measures adopted hy Heraclius
to circumscribe the Avar power, by the settlement of
the Servian Sclavonians in Illyria, preceded or follow-
ed a remarkable act of treachery attempted by the
Avar monarch against the emperor.
If Heraclius had
then succeeded in terminating his arrangements with
the Servians, the dread of having their power reduced
may have appeared to the Avars some apology for an
attempt at treachery, too base even for the ordinary
latitude of savage revenge and avidity, but which we
find repeated by a Byzantine emperor against a king of
Bulgaria two centuries later.2 In the year 619, the
Avars made a terrible incursion into the heart of the
empire. They advanced so far into Thrace, that when
Heraclius proposed a personal meeting with their sove-
reign, in order to arrange the terms of peace, Heraclea
(Perinthus), on the Sea of Marmora, was selected as a
convenient spot for the interview. The emperor ad-
vanced as far as Selymbria, accompanied by a brilliant
train of attendants; and preparations were made to
amuse the barbarians with a theatrical festival. The
avarice of the Avars was excited, and their sove-
reign, thinking that any act by which so dangerous an
enemy as Heraclius could be removed was pardonable,
determined to seize the person of the emperor, while
his troops plundered the imperial escort.
The great
wall was so carelessly guarded, that large bodies of
J
Georgii Pisida Bellum Avaricum, v. 197.
2
A. D. 813. Byzantine Empire, vol. i. 135.
AVARS.
409
Avar soldiers passed it unnoticed or unheeded; but
their movements at last awakened the suspicion of the
court, and Heraclius was compelled to fly in disguise
to Constantinople, leaving his tents, his theatre, and
his household establishment, to be pillaged by his
treacherous enemies. The followers of the emperor
were pursued to the very walls of the capital, and the
crowd assembled to grace the festival, became the
slaves of the Avars, who carried off an immense booty,
and two hundred and seventy thousand prisoners.¹
The weakness of the empire was such, that Heraclius
considered it politic to overlook even this insult, and
instead of attempting to efface the stain on his reputa-
tion, which his ridiculous flight could not fail to pro-
ducc, he allowed the affair to pass unnoticed. He con-
tinued his preparations for attacking Persia, as it was
evident that the fate of the Roman empire depended
on the success of the war in Asia. To secure himself
as much as possible from any diversion in Europe, he
condescended to renew his negotiations with the Avars,
and by making many sacrifices, he succeeded in con-
cluding a peace on what he vainly hoped might be a
lasting basis.
Several years later, however, when Heraclius was
absent on the frontiers of Persia, the Avars considered
the moment favourable for renewing hostilities, and
formed the project of attempting the conquest of Con-
stantinople, in conjunction with a Persian army, which
advanced to the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus.2 The
khakan of the Avars, with a powerful army of his own
subjects, aided by bands of Sclavonians, Bulgarians,
and Huns, attacked the capital by land, while the
Persian army endeavoured to afford him every possible
1 Nicephorus, De Rebus post Mauricium gestis, p. 10. It is difficult to read
this account of the numbers of the prisoners without a suspicion that some
important fact is concealed.
A. D. 626.
A. D.
565-633.
410
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. assistance by investing the Asiatic suburb and cutting
off all supplies on that side. Their combined attacks
were defeated by the garrison of Constantinople, with-
out Heraclius considering it necessary to retrace his
steps, or turn back from his career of conquest in the
East. The naval superiority of the Roman govern-
ment prevented the junction of its enemies, and the
Avars were at last compelled to effect a precipitate
retreat. This siege of Constantinople is the last
memorable exploit of the Avar nation recorded by the
Byzantine historians; their power rapidly declined, and
the people soon became so completely lost amidst the
Sclavonian and Bulgarian inhabitants of their dominions,
that an impenetrable veil is now cast over the history
of their race and language. The Bulgarians, who had
already acquired some degree of power, began to
render themselves the ruling people among the Hunnish
nations between the Danube and the Don; and, from
this time, they appear in history as the most danger-
ous enemies of the Roman empire on its northern
frontier.
Before Heraclius commenced the arrangements by
which he induced the western Sclavonians to settle in
Illyria, numerous bodies of the Avars and their
Sclavonic subjects had already penetrated into Greece,
and established themselves even as far south as the
Peloponnesus.¹ No precise evidence of the extent to
which the Avars succeeded in pushing their conquests
in Greece can now be obtained; but there are testi-
monies which establish with certainty that their
Sclavonic subjects retained possession of these con-
quests for many centuries. The political and social
condition of these Sclavonic colonies on the Hellenic
soil, utterly escapes the research of the historian; but
1 Leake's Researches in Greece, 376. Tafel, De Thessalonica Proleg. lxxviii.
lxxxvii. 70. Theophanes, Ch. 385.
SCLAVONIANS IN GREECE.
411
their power and influence in Greece was, for a long
time, very great. The passages of the Greek writers
which refer to these conquests are so scanty, and so
vague in expression, that it becomes the duty of the
modern historian to pass them in review, particularly
since they have been employed with much ability by a
German writer, to prove that "the Hellenic race in
Europe has been exterminated," and that the modern
Greeks are a mixed race composed of the descendants of
Roman slaves and Sclavonian colonists. This opinion,
it is true, has been combated with great learning by
one of his countrymen, who asserts that the ingenious
dissertation of his predecessor is nothing more than a
plausible theory.2 We must therefore examine for
ourselves the scanty records of historical truth during
this dark period.
3
1
The earliest mention of the Avar conquests in Greece
occurs in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius of
Epiphania, in Cole-Syria, who wrote at the end of the
sixth century. He mentions that, while the forces of
the Emperor Maurice were engaged in the East, the
Avars advanced to the great wall before Constanti-
nople, captured Singidon, Anchialus, and all Greece,
and laid waste everything with fire and sword. These
incursions took place in the years 588 and 589, but no
inference could be drawn from this vague and incidental
4
1 Geschichte der halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters, von Prof. Fall-
merayer, preface, and pp. 179–199.;
2 Geschichte Griechenlands, von J. W. Zinkeisen, p. 837.
"His history ends with the year 593, and he is supposed to have died not
long afterwards.
4 Evagrii Hist. Eccles. vi. 10, cum adnotat. Valesii. Tafel, Thessalonica
Proleg. Ixx. Zinkeisen, 699. Fallmerayer, i. 185. Evagrius appears to men-
tion Singidon, on the extreme western frontier of the empire, and Anchialus,
on the Black Sea, in conjunction with all Greece, because his rhetoric and his
courtly tone prevented him from telling his readers plainly that the Avars laid
waste every province in Europe. A proof that some considerable change took
place in the condition of the Greek population of the Peloponnesus during the
reign of Maurice, exists in the fact that Monemvasia was then raised to the
rank of a Metropolitan see.-Phrantzes, 398, edit. Bonn. Lequien, Oriens
Christianus, ii. 216.
A. D.
565-633.
412
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. notice of an Avar plundering incursion so casually
mentioned in favour of the permanent settlement of
Sclavonian colonies in Greece, had this passage not re-
ceived considerable importance from later authorities.
The testimony of Evagrius is confirmed in a very re-
markable manner by a letter of the patriarch of Con-
stantinople, Nicolaus, to the emperor Alexius Comnenus
in the year 1081.¹ The patriarch mentions that the
emperor Nicephorus (A. D. 802-811) had granted vari-
ous concessions to the episcopal see of Patras, in con-
sequence of the miraculous aid which Saint Andrew
had afforded that city in destroying the Avars, who
had held possession of the greater part of the Pelopon-
nesus for two hundred and eighteen years, and had so
completely separated their conquests from the Roman
empire that no Roman (that is to say Greek connected
with the imperial administration) dared to enter the
country. Now this siege of Patras is mentioned by
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and its date is fixed in the
year 807; consequently, these Avars, who had conquer-
ed the Peloponnesus two hundred and eighteen years
before that event, must have arrived precisely in the
year 589, at the very period indicated by Evagrius.2
The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus repeatedly
mentions the Sclavonian colonies in the Peloponnesus,
though he never affords any accurate information con-
cerning the period at which they entered the country.
In his work on the provinces of the empire, he informs
us that the whole country was subdued and rendered
barbarous after the great plague in the reign of Con-
stantine Copronymus, an observation which implies
that the complete extermination of the rural popula-
tion of Hellenic race, and the establishment of the
political power of the Sclavonic colonies, and their
1 Leunclavius, Jus Græco-Romanum, i. 278.
2 Constantinus Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. c. 49, iii. 217; edit. Bonn.
SCLAVONIANS IN GREECE.
413
assumption of total independence in Greece, dated
from that period.' It is evident that they acquired
great power, and became an object of alarm to the em-
perors, a few years later. In the reign of Constan-
tine VI., an expedition was sent against them at a
time when they possessed great part of the country
from the frontiers of Macedonia to the southern limits
of the Peloponnesus. Indeed the fortified towns alone
appear to have remained in the possession of the Greeks.3
2
It seems surprising that no detailed account of the
important change in the condition and fortunes of the
Greek race, which these facts imply, is contained in the
Byzantine historians. Yet, when we reflect that these
Sclavonic colonies never united into one state, nor
pursued any fixed line of policy in their attacks on the
empire; and when we recall to mind also that the
Byzantine historians occupied themselves so little with
the real history of mankind as to pass over the Lom-
bard invasion of Italy without notice, our wonder
must cease. All the Greek writers who mention this
period of history were men connected either with the
Constantinopolitan government, or with the orthodox
church; and they were consequently destitute of every
feeling of Greek nationality, and viewed the agricultu-
ral population of ancient Hellas as a rude and degene-
rate race of semi-barbarians, little superior to the Scla-
vonians, with whom they were carrying on a desultory
warfare. As comparatively little revenue could, in the
time of Heraclius, be drawn from Greece, that emperor
never seems to have occupied himself about its fate;
and the Greeks escaped the extermination with which
they were threatened by their Avar and Sclavonian
] A. D. 746. Const. Porphyr. De Thematibus, ii. c. 6.
2 A. D. 783. Theophanes, Ch. 385. See also the Epitome to Strabo, in the
edition of Almeloveen. Amst. 1707, pp. 1251, 1261.
3 Joannina maintained itself always as a Greek city.-Leake's Travels in
Northern Greece, iv. 202.
A. D.
565-633.
414
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. invaders, through the neglect, and not in consequence
of the assistance, of the imperial government. The
Avars made considerable exertions to complete the
conquest of Greece by carrying their predatory ex-
peditions into the Archipelago. They attacked the
eastern coast, which had hitherto been secure from
their invasions, and, to execute this design, they ob-
tained shipbuilders from the Lombards, and launched
a fleet of plundering barks in the Egean Sea. The
general danger of the islands and commercial cities of
Greece roused the spirit of the inhabitants, who united
for the defence of their property, and the plans of the
Avars proved unsuccessful.' The Greeks, however,
were long exposed to the plundering Sclavonians on
one side, and to the rapacity of the imperial govern-
ment on the other; and their success in preserving
some portion of their commercial wealth and political
influence, is to be attributed to the efficacy of their
municipal organisation, and to the weakness of the
central government, which could no longer prevent
their bearing arms for their own defence.
SECT. VII.-INFLUENCE OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF HERACLIUS IN
THE EAST.
The personal character of Heraclius must have exer-
cised great influence on the events of his reign. Un-
fortunately, the historians of his age have not conveyed
to posterity any very accurate picture of the peculiar
traits of his mind. His conduct shows that he possessed
judgment, activity, and courage; and, though he was
sometimes imprudent and rash, at others he displayed
an equanimity and force of character in repressing his
passion, which mark him to have been really a great
1 Paulus Diaconus, De Gestis Langob. iv. 21. Tafel, Thessalonica Prolcy.
lxxiii. lxxix.
CHARACTER OF HERACLIUS.
415
man.' In the opinion of his contemporaries, his fame
was sullied by two indelible stains. His marriage
with his niece Martina was regarded as incestuous, and
his religious edicts, by which he proposed to regulate
the faith of his subjects, were branded as heretical.
Both were serious errors of policy in a prince who was
so dependent on public opinion for support in his great
scheme of restoring the lost power of the Roman em-
pire; yet the constancy of his affection for his wife,
and the immense importance of reconciling all the ad-
verse sects of Christians within the empire in common
measures of defence against external enemies, may
form some apology for these errors. The patriarch of
Constantinople remonstrated against his marriage with
his niece; but the power of the emperor was still ab-
solute over the persons of the ecclesiastical function-
aries of the empire; and Heraclius, though he allowed
the bishop to satisfy his conscience by stating his ob-
jections, commanded him to practise his civil duties,
and celebrate the marriage of his sovereign. The pre-
tensions of papal Rome had not yet arisen in the
Christian church.2 The Patriarch Sergius does not
appear to have been deficient in zeal or courage, and
Heraclius was not free from the religious bigotry of
his age. Both knew that the established church was
a part of the State, and that though in matters of
doctrine the general councils put limits to the impe-
1 His cruelty to Phocas only proves that he partook of the barbarous feelings
of his age. A religious strain runs through his letters, which are preserved in
the Paschal Chronicle, and in the speeches reported by Theophanes, which have
an air of authenticity. It is true that this style may have been the official
language of an emperor, who felt himself so peculiarly the head of the Chris-
tian church, and the champion of the orthodox faith. Persia was his ecclesi-
astical as well as his political enemy.
2 The power of Gregory the Great was so small that he durst not consecrate
a bishop without the consent of his enemy the emperor Maurice; and he was
forced to obey the edict forbidding all persons to quit public employments in
order to become monks, and prohibiting soldiers during the period of their
service from being received into monasteries.-Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiast. 1. 35,
50; 36, 43.
A. D.
565-633.
416
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. rial authority, yet, in the executive direction of the
clergy, the emperor was nearly absolute, and possessed
full power to remove the patriarch had he ventured to
disobey his orders. As the marriage of Heraclius with
Martina was within the prohibited degrees, it was an
act of unlawful compliance on the part of Sergius to
celebrate the nuptials, for the duty of the patriarch as
a Christian priest was surely, in such a case, of more
importance than his obedience as a Roman subject.
The early part of the reign of Heraclius was devoted
to reforming the administration and recruiting the army.
He tried every means of obtaining peace with Persia
in vain, and even allowed the senate to make an inde-
pendent attempt to enter into negotiations with Chos-
roes.¹ For twelve years, the Persian armies ravaged
the empire almost without encountering any opposition,
from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Bosphorus.
It is impossible to explain in what manner Heraclius
employed his time during this interval, but it is evident
that he was engaged by many cares besides those of
preparing for his war with Persia. The independent
negotiation which the senate attempted with Persia,
seems to indicate that the Roman aristocracy had suc-
ceeded in encroaching on the emperor's authority during
the general confusion which reigned in the administra-
tion after the fall of Maurice, and that he may have
been occupied with a political contest at home, before
he could attend to the exigencies of the Persian war.
As no civil hostilities appear to have broken out, the
circumstance is not recorded in the meagre chronicles
of his reign. This may perhaps seem a random con-
jecture, which ought not to find a place in a historical
work; but when the state of the Roman administration
at the close of the reign of Heraclius is compared with
the confusion in which he found it at his accession, it
1 Chronicon Paschale, 387.
CAMPAIGNS OF HERACLIUS.
417
is evident, that he had succeeded in effecting a great
political change, and in infusing new vigour into the
weakened fabric of the government.
1
When Heraclius had settled the internal affairs of his
empire, filled his military chest, and re-established the
discipline of the Roman armies, he commenced a series
of campaigns, which entitle him to rank as one of the
greatest military commanders whose deeds are recorded
in history. The great object which he proposed to
himself in his first campaign, was to render himself
master of a line of communications extending from the
shores of the Black Sea to those of the Mediterranean,
and resting on positions in Pontus and Cilicia. The
Persian armies, which had advanced into Asia Minor
and occupied Ancyra, would, by this manoeuvre, be
separated from supplies and reinforcements on their
own frontiers, and Heraclius would have it in his
power to attack their troops in detail. The rapidity of his
movements rendered his plan successful; the Persians
were compelled to fight in the positions chosen by
Heraclius, and were completely defeated. In the second
campaign, the emperor pushed forward into the heart
of Persia from his camp in Pontus.3 Ganzaca was
captured; Thebarmes, the birthplace of Zoroaster, with
its temple and fire-altars, was destroyed; and after
laying waste the northern part of Media, Heraclius
retired to Albania, where he placed his army in winter
quarters. This campaign proved to the world that the
Persian empire was in the same state of internal weak-
ness as the Roman, and equally incapable of offering
The industry of Le Beau, the learning of Gibbon, and the sagacity of
D'Anville, have been employed in illustrating the chronology and geography of
the campaigns of Heraclius; but something still requires to be done to enable
us to follow his steps with certainty, and the labour of a scholar might be
advantageously bestowed on this interesting period. D'Anville and Gibbon
place Ganzaca at Tabreez, but Colonel Rawlinson has given reasons for placing
it at Takht-i-Soleiman.-Journal R. Geograph. Soc. vol. x. The site of The-
barmes is generally placed at Urimiyeh.
2
4. D. 622.
3 A. D. 623.
A. D.
565-633.
2 D
418
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. any popular or national resistance to an active and
enterprising enemy. The third and fourth campaigns
were occupied in laborious marches and severe battles,
in which Heraclius proved himself both a brave soldier
and an able general. Under his guidance, the Roman
troops recovered all their ancient superiority in war.
At the end of the third campaign, he established their
winter quarters in the Persian dominions, and at the
conclusion of the fourth he led his army back into Asia
Minor, to winter behind the Halys, that he might
be able to watch the movements concerted between
the Persians and the Avars, for the attack of Constan-
tinople. The fifth campaign was at first suspended by
the presence of the Persian army on the shores of the
Bosphorus, in order to assist the Avars in the siege of
Constantinople. Heraclius, having divided his forces
into three armies, sent one to the relief of Constanti-
nople; the second, which he placed under the command
of his brother Theodore, defeated the Persians in a
great battle; and with the third he took up a position.
in Iberia, where he waited to hear that the Khazars
had invaded Persia. As soon as he was informed that
his Turkish allies had passed the Caspian gates, and
was assured that the attempt on his capital had failed,
he hastened to advance into the very heart of the
Persian empire, and to seek his rival in his palace. The
sixth campaign opened with the Roman army in the
plains of Assyria; and, after laying waste some of the
richest provinces of the Persian empire, Heraclius
marched through the country to the east of the Tigris,
1 Gibbon countenances the opinion that Heraclius penetrated as far as
Ispahan, but this rests on a very doubtful conjecture.-Chap. xlvi. vol. v. 403.
In order to gain allies against Persia, Heraclius promised his daughter in mar-
riage to the son of the king, or chief, of the Khazars, a Turkish tribe who were,
for some centuries, powerful in the countries between the Black Sea and the
Caspian.-Le Beau, xi. 115,-Notes de S. M.
"A senator of Rome, while Rome survived,
Would not have match'd his daughter with a king."
CAMPAIGNS OF HERACLIUS.
419
and captured the palace of Dastargerd, where the
Persian monarchs had accumulated the greatest part of
their enormous treasures, in a position always regarded
as secure from any foreign enemy. Chosroes fled at the
approach of the Roman army, and his flight became a
signal for the rebellion of his generals. Heraclius
pushed forward to within a few miles of Ctesiphon, and
then found that his success would be more certain by
watching the civil dissensions of the Persians, than by
risking an attack on the populous capital of their
empire with his diminished army. The emperor led
his army back to Ganzaca in the month of March, and
the seventh spring terminated the war. Chosroes was
seized and murdered by his rebellious son Siroes, and a
treaty of peace was concluded with the Roman emperor.
The ancient frontiers of the two empires were re-estab-
lished, and the holy cross, which the Persians had
carried off from Jerusalem, was restored to Heraclius,
with the seals of the case which contained it unbroken.¹
2
1
Heraclius had repeatedly declared that he did not
desire to make any conquest of Persian territory. His
conduct when success had crowned his exertions, and
when his enemy was ready to purchase his retreat at
any price, proves the sincerity and justice of his policy.
His empire required not only a lasting peace to recover
from the miseries of the late war, but also many reforms
in the civil and religious administration, which could
only be completed during such a peace, in order to restore
the vigour of the government. Twenty-four years of a
war, which had proved, in turns, unsuccessful to every
nation engaged in it, had impoverished and diminished
1 See the chronology of the campaigns of Heraclius in the table at the com-
mencement of this volume.
If the site now shown as that of the Holy Sepulchre be supposititious, no
period was better adapted to the fraud than the reign of Heraclius, yet even
then it appears impossible.-See "Observations on the Site of the Holy
Sepulchre." Appendix, No. III.
Chronicon Paschale, 401.
A. D.
565-633.
420
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. the population of a great part of Europe and Asia.
Public institutions and buildings, roads, ports, and
commerce, had fallen into decay; the physical power
of governments had declined; and the utility of a cen-
tral political authority became less and less apparent
to mankind. Even the religious opinions of the subjects
of the Roman and Persian empires had been shaken by
the misfortunes which had happened to what each sect
regarded as the talisman of its faith. The ignorant
Christians viewed the capture of Jerusalem, and the
loss of the holy cross, as indicating the wrath of heaven
and the downfall of religion; and the fire-worshippers
considered the destruction of Thebarmes, and the ex-
tinction of the sacred fire, as an irreparable evil, and
ominous of the annihilation of every good principle on
earth. Both the Persians and the Christians had so
long regarded their faith as a portion of the State, and
reckoned political and military power as the inseparable
allies of their ecclesiastical establishments, that they
considered their religious misfortune as a proof of the
divine reprobation. Both the orthodox magians and
the orthodox Christians believed that they saw the
abomination of desolation in their holy places, and their
traditions and their prophets told them that this was
the sign which was to herald the approach of the last
great and terrible day.
The fame of Heraclius would have rivalled that of
Alexander, Hannibal, or Cæsar, had he expired at
Jerusalem, after the successful termination of the
Persian war. He had established peace throughout
the empire, restored the strength of the Roman govern-
ment, revived the power of Christianity in the East,
and replanted the holy cross on Mount Calvary. His
glory admitted of no addition. Unfortunately, the
succeeding years of his reign have, in the general
opinion, tarnished his fame. Yet these years were de-
REFORMS OF HERACLIUS.
421
voted to many arduous labours; and it is to the wisdom
with which he restored the strength of his govern-
ment during this time of peace that we must attribute
the energy of the Asiatic Greeks who arrested the
great tide of Mohammedan conquest at the foot of
Mount Taurus. Though the military glory of Hera-
clius was obscured by the brilliant victories of the Sara-
cens, still his civil administration ought to receive its
meed of praise, when we compare the resistance made
by the empire which he reorganised with the facility
which the followers of Mahomet found in extending
their conquests over every other land from India to
Spain.
The policy of Heraclius was directed to the establish-
ment of a bond of union, which should connect all the
provinces of his empire into one body, and he hoped
to replace the want of national unity by identity of
religious belief. The church was far more closely con-
nected with the people than any other institution, and
the emperor, as political head of the church, hoped to
direct a well-organised body of churchmen. But Hera-
clius engaged in the impracticable task of imposing a
rule of faith on his subjects, without assuming the
office, or claiming the authority of a prophet or a saint.
His measures, consequently, like all ecclesiastical and
religious reforms, which are adopted solely from poli-
tical motives, only produced additional discussions and
difficulties. In the year 630, he propounded the doc-
trine "that in Christ, after the union of the two natures,
there was but one will and one operation." Without
gaining over any great body of the schismatics whom
he wished to restore to the communion of the establish-
ed church, by his new rule of faith, he was himself
generally stigmatised as a heretic. The epithet mono-
thelite was applied to him and to his doctrine, to show
that neither was orthodox. In the hope of putting an
A. D.
565-633.
422
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. end to the disputes which he had rashly awakened, he
again, in 639, attempted to legislate for the church, and
published his celebrated Ecthesis, which, though it
attempts to remedy the effects of his prior proceedings,
by forbidding all controversy on the question of the
single or double operation of the will in Christ, never-
theless includes a declaration in favour of unity.¹ The
bishop of Rome, already aspiring after an increase of
his spiritual authority, though perhaps not yet contem-
plating the possibility of perfect independence, entered
actively into the opposition excited by the publication
of the Ecthesis, and was supported by a considerable
party in the Eastern church, while he directed the
ceedings of the whole of the Western clergy.
pro-
On a careful consideration of the religious position
of the empire, it cannot appear surprising that Hera-
clius should have endeavoured to reunite the Nes-
torians, Eutychians, and Jacobites, to the established
church, particularly when we remember how closely
the influence of the church was connected with the
administration of the State, and how completely reli-
gious passions replaced national feelings in these
secondary ages of Christianity. The union was an in-
dispensable step to the re-establishment of the imperial
power in the provinces of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia,
and Armenia; and it must not be overlooked that the
theological speculations and ecclesiastical reforms of
Heraclius were approved of by the wisest councillors
whom he had been able to select to aid him in the
government of the empire. The state of society re-
quired some strong remedy, and Heraclius only erred
in adopting the plan which had always been pursued
by absolute monarchs, namely, that of making the
sovereign's opinion the rule of conduct for his subjects.
We can hardly suppose that Heraclius would have
1 The Ecthesis is contained in Hardouin's Concilia, tom. ii. 791.
RELIGIOUS REFORMS.
423
succeeded better, had he assumed the character or de-
served the veneration due to a saint. The marked
difference which existed between the higher and
educated classes in the East, and the ignorant and
superstitious populace, rendered it next to impossible
that
any line of conduct could secure the judgment of
the learned, and awaken the fanaticism of the people.
As a farther apology for Heraclius, it may be noticed
that his acknowledged power over the orthodox clergy
was much greater than that which was possessed by
the Byzantine emperors at a later period, or that which
was admitted by the Latin church after its separation.
In spite of all the advantages which he possessed, his
attempt ended in a most signal failure; yet no ex-
perience could ever induce his successors to avoid his
error. His effort to strengthen his power, by establish-
ing a principle of unity, aggravated all the evils which
he intended to cure; for while the Monophysites and
the Greeks were as little disposed to unite as ever, the
authority of the Eastern church, as a body, was weak-
ened by the creation of a new schism, and the incipient
divisions between the Greeks and the Latins, assuming
a national character, began to prepare the way for the
separation of the two churches.
While Heraclius was endeavouring to restore the
strength of the empire in the East, and enforce unity
of religious views, the pursuit of which has ever been
one of the greatest errors of the human mind,—
Mahomet, by a juster application of the aspiration of
mankind after unity, had succeeded in uniting Arabia
into one state, and in persuading it to adopt one reli-
gion. The force of this new empire of the Saracens
was directed against those provinces of the Roman.
empire which Heraclius had been anxiously endeavour-
ing to reunite in spirit to his government.
The diffi-
culties of their administration had compelled the em-
A. D).
565-633.
424
JUSTIN II.—HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. peror to fix his residence for some years in Syria, and
he was well aware of the uncertainty of their allegiance,
before the Saracens commenced their invasion.1 The
successes of the Mohammedan arms, and the retreat
of the emperor, carrying off with him the holy cross
from Jerusalem, have induced historians to suppose
that his latter years were spent in sloth, and marked
by weakness.2
His health, however, was in so pre-
carious a state, that he could no longer direct the
operations of his army in person; at times, indeed, he
was incapable of all bodily exertion.³ Yet the resist-
ance which the Saracens encountered in Syria was
very different from the ease with which it had yielded
to the Persians at the commencement of the emperor's
reign, and attests that his administration had not been
without fruit. Many of his reforms could only have
been effected after the conclusion of the Persian war,
when he recovered possession of Syria and Egypt.
He seems, indeed, never to have omitted an opportunity
of strengthening his position; and when a chief of the
Huns or Bulgarians threw off his allegiance to the
Avars, Heraclius is recorded to have immediately availed
himself of the opportunity to form an alliance, in order
to circumscribe the power of his dangerous northern
enemy. Unfortunately, few traces can be gleaned
from the Byzantine writers of the precise acts by which
he effected his reforms; and the most remarkable facts,
illustrating the political history of the time, must be
collected from incidental notices, preserved in the
treatise of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
concerning the administration of the empire, written
¹ Heraclius resided almost entirely in the East, from A. D. 629 to 635.
2 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ix. 418. Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, xi.
173.
3 Niceph. Cap. 17. Ockley's History of the Saracens, i. 271. The story of
the Arabian historian, mentioned by Ockley, confirms the account of the patri-
arch Nicephorus, and shows that the health of Heraclius had declined before
he quitted Syria.
LOSS OF SYRIA.
425
1
for the instruction of his son Romanus, in the middle
of the tenth century.¹
Though Heraclius failed in gaining over the Syrians
and Egyptians, yet he succeeded completely in re-
uniting the Greeks of Asia Minor to his government,
and in attaching them to the empire. His success may
be estimated from the failure of the Saracens in their
attacks on the population of this province. The moment
the Mohammedan armies were compelled to rely on
their military skill and religious enthusiasm, and were
unable to derive any profit from the hostile feeling
of the inhabitants to the imperial government, their
career of conquest was checked; and almost a century
before Charles Martel stopped their progress in the
west of Europe, the Greeks had arrested their conquests
in the East, by the steady resistance which they offer-
ed in Asia Minor.
The
The difficulties of Heraclius were very great.
Roman armies were still composed of a rebellious
soldiery collected from many discordant nations; and
the only leaders whom the emperor could venture to
trust with important military commands, were his
immediate relations, like his brother Theodore, and his
son Heraclius Constantine, or soldiers of fortune who
could not aspire at the imperial dignity.2 The apostasy
and treachery of a considerable number of the Roman
officers in Syria, warranted Heraclius in regarding the
defence of that province as utterly hopeless; but the
meagre historians of his reign can hardly be received
as conclusive authorities, to prove that on his retreat he
displayed an unseemly despair, or a criminal indiffer-
ence. The fact that he carried the holy cross, which
he had restored to Jerusalem, along with him to Con-
1 Published in Banduri Imperium Orientale, fol. Paris, 1711, tom. i., and in
the third volume of the Bonn edition of the works of Constantine Porph.
2 Theophanes, Chron. 280. Eutychius, ii. 273. Elmacin, Hist. Sarac. 26.
A. D.
565-633.
426
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
66
CHAP. IV. stantinople, attests that he had lost all expectation of
defending the Holy City; but his exclamation of
Farewell, Syria !" was doubtless uttered in the bitter-
ness of his heart, on seeing a great part of the labours
of his life for the restoration of the Roman empire ut-
terly vain. The disease which had long undermined his
constitution, put an end to his life about five years after
his return to Constantinople. He died in March 641,
after one of the most remarkable reigns recorded in
history, chequered by the greatest successes and re-
verses, during which the social condition of mankind
underwent a considerable change, and the germs of
modern society began to sprout; yet there is, un-
fortunately, no period of man's annals covered with
greater obscurity.
SECT. VIII.-CONDITION OF THE NATIVE POPULATION OF GREECE.
The history of the European Greeks becomes ex-
tremely obscure after the reign of Justinian. Yet this
period is one of great interest in the history of the Hel-
lenic race, which was reduced, like most of the others,
to struggle hard to escape extermination from invaders
far inferior in power and civilisation. It has been al-
ready mentioned that the Avar and Sclavonian tribes
had penetrated into Greece in considerable numbers,
and effected settlements in many districts, from which
they waged a perpetual war with the Greeks. Unable
to live in the state of misery and destitution to which
the agricultural classes were now reduced in Europe,
the Greek race confined itself to the towns where it
could carry on trade, or to those districts which were
defended by permanent garrisons.
The Thracian race had always effectually resisted the
influence of Greek civilisation; and even when the
EUROPEAN GREEKS.
427
population of Greece was increasing with the greatest
rapidity, and while its colonies were multiplied in every
land, from Sicily to the Tauric Chersonese, the Greeks
were unable to press back towards the north the popu-
lation of the border regions of Epirus and Macedonia,
much less of the great Thracian plains between the
Ægean Sea and the Danube. Yet these lands have from
the earliest times lain open to constant invasion and
emigration.¹ In the time of Maurice, the language of
the Thracians had a much stronger resemblance to
Latin than to Greek, and indeed Latin appears to
have mixed more easily than Greek with the native
dialects of all the nations on the northern limits of
the Hellenic race.2
It is impossible to trace with accuracy the effects of
the depopulation of Greece, and of the poverty of the
inhabitants. No description could exaggerate the
sufferings of a country in a similar situation.2 The
slaves who had formerly laboured for the wealthy had
now disappeared, and the free labourer had sunk into
a serf.
The uncultivated plains were traversed by
armed bands of Sclavonians, who gradually settled in
great numbers in Macedonia and the Peloponnesus.
The cities of Greece ceased to receive the usual supplies
1 From the time of the Celts to that of the Turks.-Niebuhr's Kleine Schriften,
375.
3 Ετερος προσφωνει τῇ πατρώᾳ φωνῇ τόρνα φράτρε. - Theophanes, C. 218.-Theo-
phylact. Sim. ii. 15. This was the language of the Muleteers. The prevalent
opinion at present seeins to be that the Vallachian language represents the an-
cient Thracian, and that the Albanian is a dialect of the language of Macedonia
and Epirus.
3 Niebuhr thus describes the effects of the wars of Napoleon in Germany:
"Whole villages have entirely disappeared; and in many, which are not alto-
gether gone, the population is entirely, or almost entirely, destroyed by plunder,
famine, and disease. The towns, part of which are in ashes, are equally desolate;
and every inhabitant is sunk nearly to the same state of poverty. Almost all
the landowners are bankrupt, and there has been a total change in the property
of the soil-a great misfortune, for the rich who spring up out of war and want
are sure to be the very worst of their class."-Lebens nachrichten uber B. G.
Niebuhr, 424. In order to form some idea of the state of Greece, add to this
picture the difference between a declining and advancing state of society, and
between the French of the nineteenth century and the Avars and Sclavonians
of the seventh.
A. D.
565-633.
428
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. of agricultural produce from the country, and even
Thessalonica with its fertile territory and abundant
pastures, was dependent on foreign importations of grain.
for relief from famine.¹ The smaller cities, destitute of
the same advantages of situation, would naturally be
more exposed to depopulation, and sink more rapidly to
decay. Roads, bridges, aqueducts, and quays were every-
where allowed to fall to ruin after the confiscation of
the municipal revenues of the Greek cities by Justinian,
and the transport of provisions by land, in a country
like Greece, became difficult. This neglect of the roads
had always been a cause of poverty and barbarism in
the mountainous districts of the Roman empire, even
during the period of its greatest prosperity, for the cen-
tral government paid no attention to any roads but
those connected with the great military lines of com-
munication.
A complete opposition of feelings and interests now
began to separate the inhabitants of Greece from the
Greek population connected with the imperial adminis-
tration. This circumstance warrants us in fixing on the
reign of Heraclius as the period at which the ancient
existence of the Hellenic race terminates. It is vain
to attempt to fix with accuracy the precise time at
which the ancient usages were allowed, one by one, to
expire, for no change in social life which is long in pro-
gress, can be considered as really accomplished, until
the existence of a new order of things can be distinctly
pointed out. National transitions can rarely be effected
in one generation, and are often not completed in a
century. But when the Byzantine writers, after the
time of Heraclius, find it necessary to mention the Greeks
of Hellas and Peloponnesus, they do so with feelings of
contempt. This display of ill will induces us to con-
jecture that the fate of the Greek cities engaged in re-
¹ Tafel, De Thessalonica ejusque Agro, proleg. lxviii.
EUROPEAN GREEKS.
429
sisting the Sclavonian invaders had not been very dif
ferent from that of the imperial cities on the Adriatic,
and that they had been compelled to develop a spirit
of independence, which had caused a return of prosperity
sufficient to awaken the envy of the Byzantine Greeks.
The inhabitants of Greece are called Helladikoi, to
distingush them alike from the ancient Hellenes and
from the Romans of the empire. This expression seems
almost to imply envy as well as contempt.¹ The
term Hellenes was now either used to indicate the
votaries of paganism, or was too closely associated with
reminiscences of the glory of ancient Hellas, to be con-
ferred on the rude Christian population of the Pelopon-
nesus, by the courtiers of Constantinople, the prototypes
of the hated Phanariots.
In the midst of the darkness which conceals the
political and social condition of the Greeks from our
view during this period, a curious record of a later
time informs us that a portion of the Hellenic race, in
the mountains of Laconia still continued to preserve
its ancient habits, and even clung to the pagan religion.2
This circumstance supplies the strongest testimony of
the neglected and secluded condition of the people,
among whom the ideas of the enlightened portion of
mankind had not succeeded in penetrating. These
heathens were, of course, only uninstructed peasantry,
who had preserved some of the superstitious usages of
their ancestors, and who, probably, were not more
ignorant of the ideas and feelings of ancient paganism
than they were of Christian doctrines.
The barbarism of the Greeks at this period was the
consequence of their poverty, which prevented their
procuring the means of education, and restricted the
1 Theophanes, Ch. 339. Cedrenus, i. 454. Tafel, De Thessalonica, proleg. lxx.
221, 513.
2 Constantin. Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. c. 50, iii. 224; edit. Bonn.
A. D.
565-633.
430
JUSTIN II.-HERACLIUS.
CHAP. IV. uses of the knowledge which they might possess.
In
the circumstances to which they were reduced, it is not
surprising that the Greeks lost all veneration both for
literature and art, and that Greece, for some centuries,
hardly furnishes a single name in the long list of Greek
writers whose works have been considered worthy of
mention. In this state of depopulation and ignorance,
the relics of ancient art began to fall unnoticed to the
ground another age covered them with the ruins of
the buildings which they had once adorned; and thus
many remained concealed and preserved, until increas-
ing population, and reviving prosperity, caused the re-
construction of new cities.
It was not in their native seats alone that the Greeks
declined in numbers and civilisation at this period;
even their distant colonies were rapidly sinking to ruin.
During the reign of Justin, the city of Bosporus, in
Tauris, had been captured by the Turks, who then
occupied a considerable portion of the Tauric Cherso-
nesus.¹ The city of Cherson alone continued to main-
tain its independence in the northern regions of the
Black Sea, resembling, in its political relation to the
empire, the cities of Dalmatia, and by its share of the
northern trade, balancing the power and influence of
the barbarian princes in the neighbourhood.
1 Excerpta e Menandri Historia, 404, edit. Bonn.
CHAPTER V.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS FROM THE MOHAMMEDAN
INVASION OF SYRIA TO THE EXTINCTION OF THE
ROMAN POWER IN THE EAST. A. D. 633-716.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE GRADUALLY CHANGED INTO THE BYZANTINE-CONQUEST
OF THE SOUTHERN PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE, OF WHICH THE MAJORITY OF
THE POPULATION WAS NOT GREEK NOR ORTHODOX-CONSTANS II. FOLLOWED
THE POLICY OF HERACLIUS-CONSTANTINE IV. YIELDED TO THE POPULAR
ECCLESIASTICAL PARTY AMONG THE GREEKS-DEPOPULATION OF THE EMPIRE,
AND DECREASE OF THE GREEKS UNDER JUSTINIAN II.-ANARCHY IN THE
ADMINISTRATION UNTIL THE ACCESSION OF LEO III.-GENERAL VIEW OF THE
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS AT THE EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER IN
THE EAST.
7
SECT. I.-THE ROMAN EMPIRE GRADUALLY CHANGED INTO THE
BYZANTINE.
THE precise date at which the eastern Roman empire
ceased to exist has been variously fixed. Gibbon re-
marks, "that Tiberius by the Arabs, and Maurice by
the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek
Cæsars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire."¹
But if manners, language, and religion are to decide
concerning the commencement of the Byzantine empire,
the preceding pages have shown that its origin must
be carried back to an earlier period; while, if the ad-
ministrative peculiarities in the form of government
be taken as the ground of decision, the Roman empire
may be considered as indefinitely prolonged with the
¹ Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vii. 38, chap. liii.
432
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. IV. existence of the title of Roman emperor, which the
sovereigns of Constantinople continued to retain as
long as Constantinople was ruled by Christian princes.
While the prejudices of the governing classes, both in
Church and State, kept them completely separated from
the national feelings of every race of their subjects,
and rendered the imperial administration, and the
people of the empire, two distinct bodies, with dif-
ferent, and frequently adverse views and interests, the
spirit of Roman domination continued to animate the
government, and guide the councils of the emperor.
The period, therefore, at which the Roman empire of
the East terminated, is decided by the events which
confined the authority of the imperial government to
those provinces where the Greeks formed the majority
of the population; and it is marked by the adoption
of Greek as the language of the government, by the
prevalence of Greek civilisation, and by the identifica-
tion of the nationality of the people, and the policy of
the emperors with the Greek church. For, when the
Saracen conquests had severed from the empire all
those provinces which possessed a native population
distinct from the Greeks, by language, literature, and
religion, the central government of Constantinople was
gradually compelled to fall back on the interests and
passions of the remaining inhabitants, who were chiefly
Greeks; and though Roman principles of administra-
tion continued to exercise a powerful influence in sepa-
rating the aristocracy, both in Church and State, from
the body of the people, still public opinion, among the
educated classes, began to exert some influence on the
administration, and that public opinion was in its
character really Greek. Yet, as it was by no means
identified with the interests and feelings of the native
inhabitants of Hellas, it ought correctly to be termed
Byzantine, and the empire is, consequently, justly called
TRANSFORMATION OF THE EMPIRE.
433
the Byzantine empire. As the relics of the Macedo-
nian empire at last overpowered the Roman element
in the Eastern Empire, the court of Constantinople be-
came identified with the feelings and interests of that
portion of the Greek nation which, in Asia, owed its
political existence to the Macedonian conquests; and
on the numbers, wealth, and power of this class, the
emperor and the orthodox church were, after the com-
mencement of the eighth century, compelled to depend
for the defence of the government and the Christian
religion.
The difficulty of fixing the precise moment which
marks the end of the Roman empire, arises from the
circumstance of its having perished, rather from the
internal evils nourished in its political organisation,
than from the attacks of its external enemies. The
termination of the Roman power was consequently
nothing more than the reform of a corrupt and anti-
quated government, and its transformation into a new
state by the power of time and circumstance was
feebly aided by the intellects and acts of superstitious
and servile men. The Goths, Huns, Avars, Persians,
and Saracens, all failed as completely in overthrow-
ing the Roman empire, as the Mohammedans did
in destroying the Christian religion. For even the
final loss of Egypt, Syria, and Africa only reveals
the transformation of the Roman empire, when the
consequences of the change begin to produce visible
effects on the internal government. The Roman em-
pire seems, therefore, really to have terminated with the
anarchy which followed the murder of Justinian II.,
the last sovereign of the family of Heraclius; and Leo
III., or the Isaurian, who identified the imperial ad-
ministration with ecclesiastical forms and questions,
must be ranked as the first of the Byzantine monarchs,
though neither the emperor, the clergy, nor the people
A. D.
633-716,
2 E
434
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. perceived at the time the moral change in their posi-
tion, which makes the establishment of this new era
historically correct.
Under the sway of the Heraclian family, the extent
of the empire was circumscribed nearly within the
bounds which it continued to occupy during many
subsequent centuries. As this diminution of territory
was chiefly caused by the separation of provinces, in-
habited by people of different races, manners, and
opinions, and placed, by a concurrence of circum-
stances, in opposition to the central government, it is
not improbable that the empire was actually strength-
ened by the loss. The connection between the Con-
stantinopolitan court and the Greek nation became
closer; and though this connection, in so far as it
affected the people, was chiefly based on religious and
not on political feelings, and operated with greater
force on the inhabitants of the cities than on the
whole body of the population, still its effect was ex-
tremely beneficial to the imperial government.
While the Roman and Persian empires, ruined by
their devastating wars, had rapidly declined in wealth,
power, and population, two nations had grown up to the
possession of a greatly increased importance, and taken
their place as arbiters of the fate of mankind. The
Turks in the north of Asia, and the Arabs in the south,
were now the most numerous and the most powerful
nations in immediate contact with the civilised portion
of mankind. The Turkish power of this time, however,
never came into direct military relations with the Roman
empire, nor did the conquests of this race immediately
affect the political and social condition of the Greeks,
until some centuries later.¹ With the Arabs, or Sara-
1 The Turks, by their wars with Persia at this period, facilitated the conquest
of the Persian empire by the Arabs. There is an excellent description of the
Saracens before the time of Mahomet in Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv. 4.
ARABS.
435
1
cens, the case was very different. As they were placed
on the confines of Syria, Egypt, and Persia, the dis-
turbances caused by the wars of Heraclius and Chos-
roes threw a considerable portion of the rich trade
with Ethiopia, Southern Africa, and India, into their
hands. The long hostilities between the two empires
gave a constant occupation to the warlike population
of Arabia, and directed the attention of the Arabs to
views of extended national policy. The natural advan-
tages of their unrivalled cavalry were augmented by
habits of order and discipline, which they could never
have acquired in their native deserts. The Saracens
in the service of the empire are spoken of with praise
by Heraclius in his last campaign, when they accom-
panied him into the heart of Persia. The profits
derived from their increased commercial and military
adventures had doubtless given the population of
Arabia a tendency to increase. The edict of Justi-
nian, which prohibited the exportation of grain from
every port of Egypt except Alexandria, must have
closed the canal of Suez, and put an end to the trade
on the Red Sea, or at least thrown whatever trade
remained into the hands of the Arabians.2 Their
intimate connection with the Roman and Persian
armies had revealed to them the weakness of the two
empires; yet the extraordinary power and conquests
of the Arabs must be attributed, rather to the moral
strength which the nation acquired by the influence of
their prophet Mahomet, than to the extent of their
improvement in military or political knowledge. The
difference in the social circumstances of a declining
and an advancing population must not be lost sight
of in weighing the relative strength of nations, which
1 Chronicon Paschale, 318.
2 Corpus Juris Civilis, Edict xiii., “De Alexandrinis et Egyptiacis pro-
vinciis.'
A. D.
633-716.
436
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. appear the most dissimilar in wealth and population,
and even in the extent of their military establishments.
Nations which, like the inhabitants of the Roman and
Persian empires in the seventh century, expend their
whole revenues, public and private, in the course of
the year, though composed of numerous and wealthy
subjects, may prove weak when a sudden emergency
requires extraordinary exertion; while a people with
scanty revenues and small resources may, from its
frugal habits and constant activity, command a larger
superfluity of its annual revenues for great public
works or military enterprises. In one case it may be
impossible to assemble more than one-twentieth of the
population under arms; in the other, it may be pos-
sible to take the field with one-fifth.
SECT. II.-CONQUEST OF THE SOUTHERN PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE,
OF WHICH THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION WAS NOT GREEK
NOR ORTHODOX.
Strange as were the vicissitudes in the fortunes of
the Persian and Roman empires during the reigns of
Chosroes and Heraclius, every event in their records.
sinks into comparative insignificance, from the mighty
influence which their contemporary Mahomet, the
prophet of Arabia, soon began to exercise on the poli-
tical, moral, and religious condition of the countries
whose possession these sovereigns had so eagerly dis-
puted. Historians are apt to be enticed from their
immediate subject, in order to contemplate the personal
history of a man who obtained so marvellous a domi-
nion over the minds and actions of his followers
and whose talents laid the foundations of a political
and religious system, which has ever since continued
to govern millions of mankind, of various races and
dissimilar manners. The success of Mahomet as a law-
MAHOMET.
437
giver, among the most ancient nations of Asia, and
the stability of his institutions during a long series of
generations, and in every condition of social polity,
prove that this extraordinary man was formed by a rare
combination of the qualities both of a Lycurgus and
an Alexander. But still, in order to appreciate with
perfect justness the influence of Mahomet on his own
times, it is safer to examine the history of his contem-
poraries with reference to his conduct, and to fix our
attention exclusively on his actions and opinions, than
to trace from them the exploits of his followers, and
attribute to them the rapid propagation of his religion.
Even though it be admitted that Mahomet laid the
foundations of his laws in the strongest principles of
human nature, and prepared the fabric of his empire
with the profoundest wisdom, still there can be no
doubt that the intelligence of no man could, during
his lifetime, have foreseen, and no combinations on the
part of one individual could have insured, the extraor-
dinary success of his followers. The laws which govern
the moral world insure permanent success, even to the
greatest minds, only as long as they form types of the
mental feelings of their fellow-creatures. The circum-
stances of the age in which Mahomet lived, were in-
deed favourable to his career; they formed the mind
of this wonderful man, who has left their impress,
as well as that of his own character, on succeeding
generations. He was born at a period of visible intel-
lectual decline amongst the aristocratic and governing
classes throughout the civilised world. Aspirations after
something better than the then social condition of the
bulk of mankind, had rendered the inhabitants of
almost every country dissatisfied with the existing
order of things. A better religion than the paganism
of the Arabs was felt to be necessary in Arabia; and,
at the same time, even the people of Persia, Syria, and
A. D.
633-716.
438
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
•
Egypt, required something more satisfactory to their
religious feelings than the disputed doctrines which the
Magi, Jews, and Christians inculcated as the most im-
portant features of their respective religions, merely
because they presented the points of greatest dissi-
milarity. The great success of Mani in propagating
a new religion (for Manicheism cannot properly be
called a heresy) is a strong testimony of this feeling.
The fate, too, of the Manicheans, would probably have
foreshadowed that of the Mohammedans, had the reli-
gion of Mahomet not presented to foreign nations a
national cause as well as an universal creed. Had
Mahomet himself met with the fate of Mani, it is not
probable that his religion would have been more suc-
cessful than that of his predecessor. But he found a
whole nation in the full tide of rapid improvement,
eagerly in search of knowledge and power. The excite-
ment in the public mind of Arabia, which produced
the mission of Mahomet, induced many other prophets
to make their appearance during his lifetime. His
superior talents, and his clearer perception of justice,
and, we may say, truth, destroyed all their schemes.¹
The misfortunes of the times had directed public
opinion in the East to a belief that unity was the thing
principally wanting to cure the existing evils, and
secure the permanent happiness of mankind. This
vague desire of unity is indeed no uncommon delusion
of the human intellect. Mahomet seized the idea; his
creed, "there is but one God," was a truth that in-
sured universal assent; the addition, "and Mahomet
is the prophet of God," was a simple fact, which, if
doubted, admitted of an appeal to the sword, an argu-
ment that, even to the minds of the Christian world,
was long considered as an appeal to God. The principle
1 Ockley's Ilist. of the Saracens, i. 13, edit. 1757. Sale's Korun, Prel. Dis. i.
238. Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. li.
MAHOMET.
439
of unity was soon embodied in the frame of Arabic
society; the unity of God, the national unity of the
Arabs, and the unity of the religious, civil, judicial, and
military administration, in one organ on earth, entitled
the Mohammedans to assume, with justice, the name of
Unitarians, a title in which they particularly gloried.¹
Such sentiments, joined to the declaration made and
long kept by the Saracens, that liberty of conscience
was granted to all who would put themselves under the
protection of Islam, were enough to secure the good-
will of that numerous body of the population of both
the Persian and the Roman empires which was opposed
to the state religion, and which was continually ex-
posed to persecution by these two bigoted governments.
In Persia, Chosroes persecuted the orthodox Christians
with as much cruelty as Heraclius tormented Jews and
heretics within the bounds of the empire. The ability
with which Mahomet put forward his creed removed
it entirely from the schools of theology, and secured
among the people a secret feeling in favour of its
justice, particularly when its votaries appeared as
offering a refuge to the oppressed, and a protection
against religious persecution.
2
As this work only proposes to notice the influence
of Mohammedanism on the fortunes and condition of
the Greek nation, it is not necessary to narrate in de-
tail the progress of the Arab conquests in the Roman
empire. The first hostilities between the followers of
Mahomet and the Roman troops occurred while Herac-
lius was at Jerusalem, engaged in celebrating the restor-
ation of the holy cross, bearing it on his own shoulders
up Mount Calvary, and persecuting the Jews by driving
them out of their native city.3 In his desire to obtain
¹ Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, i. 197.
2 Theophanes, Chron. 252. Elmacin, Hist. Surac. pp. 12, 14.
3 The holy cross was replaced in the Church of the Resurrection on the 14th
September 629. In the month of Djoumadi I., in the eighth year of the
A. D.
633-716.
440
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. the favour of Heaven by purifying the Holy City, he
overlooked the danger which his authority might incur
from the hatred and despair of his persecuted subjects.
The first military operations of the Arabs excited little
alarm in the minds of the emperor and his officers in
Syria; the Roman forces had always been accustomed
to repel the incursions of the Saracens with ease; the
irregular cavalry of the desert, though often successful
in plundering incursions, had hitherto proved ineffective
against the regularly disciplined and completely armed
troops of the empire. But a new spirit was now infused
into the Arabian armies; and the implicit obedience
which the troops of the Prophet paid to his commands,
rendered their discipline as superior to that of the im-
perial forces, as their tactics and their arms were in-
ferior.
Mahomet did not live to profit by the experience
which his followers gained in their first struggle with
the Romans. A long series of wars in Arabia ended in
the destruction of many rival prophets, and at last
united the Arabs into one great nation under the
spiritual rule of Mahomet. But Aboubekr, who suc-
ceeded to his power as chief of the true believers, was
compelled, during the first year of his government, to
renew the contest, in consequence of fresh rebellions
and insurrections of false prophets, who expected to
profit by the death of Mahomet. When
When tranquillity
was established in Arabia, Aboubekr commenced those
wars for the propagation of Mohammedanism which
destroyed the Persian empire of the Sassanides, and
extinguished the power of Rome in the East. The
Christian Arabs who owned allegiance to Heraclius were
first attacked in order to complete the unity of Arabia,
by forcing them to embrace the religion of Mahomet.
Hegira (September 629), war broke out between the Christian subjects of the
empire and the Saracens, followers of Mahomet.
CONQUEST OF SYRIA.
441
In the year 633 the Mohammedans invaded Syria, where
their progress was rapid, although Heraclius himself
was in the neighbourhood, for he generally resided at
Emesa or Antioch, in order to devote his constant at-
tention to restoring Syria to a state of order and obe-
dience. The imperial troops made considerable efforts
to support the military renown of the Roman armies,
but were almost universally unsuccessful. The emperor
did not neglect his duty; he assembled all the troops
that he could collect, and intrusted the command of the
army to his brother Theodore, who had distinguished
himself in the Persian wars by gaining an important
victory in very critical circumstances.¹ Vartan, who
commanded after Theodore, had also distinguished him-
self in the last glorious campaign in Persia.2 Unfor-
tunately the health of Heraclius prevented his taking
the field in person.3 The absence of all moral checks
in the Roman administration, and the total want of
patriotism in the officers and troops at this period, ren-
dered the personal influence of the emperor necessary
at the head of his armies, in order to preserve due sub-
ordination, and enforce union among the leading men
in the empire, as each individual was always more oc-
cupied in intriguing to gain some advantage over his
colleagues than in striving to advance the service of
the State. The ready obedience and devoted patriotism
of the Saracens formed a sad contrast to the insubor-
dination and treachery of the Romans, and would fully
explain the success of the Mohammedan arms, without
the assistance of any very extraordinary impulse of re-
ligious zeal, with which, however, there can be no doubt
the Arabs were deeply imbued. The easy conquest of
Syria by the Arabs is by no means so wonderful as the
1 Theophanes, Chron. 263.
2 Ibid. 265. Either in the year 634 or 636.
3 Nicephorus Constantinopolitanus, p. 17. Ockley, Hist Sarac. i. 271.
A. D.
633-716.
442
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. facility with which they governed it when conquered,
and the tranquillity of the population under their
government.
Towards the end of the year 633, the troops of Abou-
bekr laid siege to Bostra, a strong frontier town of Syria,
which was surrendered early in the following year by
the treachery of its governor. During the campaign
of 634 the Roman armies were defeated at Adjnadin,
in the south of Palestine, and at a bloody and decisive
battle on the banks of the river Yermouk, in which it
is said that the imperial troops were commanded by the
emperor's brother Theodore. Theodore was replaced by
Vartan, but the rebellion of Vartan's army and another
defeat terminated this general's career.2 In the third
year of the war the Saracens gained possession of
Damascus by capitulation, and they guaranteed to the
inhabitants the full exercise of their municipal privileges,
allowed them to use their local mint, and left the ortho-
dox in possession of the great church of St John. About
the same time, Heraclius quitted Edessa and returned
to Constantinople, carrying with him the holy cross
which he had recovered from the Persians, and deposited
at Jerusalem with great solemnity only six years before,
but which he now considered it necessary to remove
into Europe for greater safety. His son, Heraclius
Constantine, who had received the imperial title when
an infant, remained in Syria to supply his place and
direct the military operations for the defence of the
province. The events of this campaign illustrate the
1 For the chronology of the Syrian war, see the table at the commencement
of this volume. I have followed Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen. But the con-
fusion is often so great as to defy all explanation.
2 Ockley (i. 70) names this general Werdan, and says he was slain at the
battle of Adjnadin. Theophanes (Chron. p. 280) calls him Vahan (Baάvys)
and mentions the rebellion of his army. Eutychius (ii. 276) says he retired
from the field of battle, and became a monk at Mount Sinai.
³ Theophanes, Chron. 280. Ockley's Arabian authorities confounded the
young Heraclius with his father. See p. 271, where the father is spoken of
when he could not be in Syria, and the son is mentioned at p. 282. I follow
Theophanes as the best authority in what relates to Heraclius.
JERUSALEM.
443
power
feelings of the Syrian population. The Arabs plundered
a great fair at the monastery of Abilkodos, about thirty
miles from Damascus ; and the Syrian towns, alarmed
for their wealth, and indifferent to the cause of their
rulers, began to negotiate separate truces with the
Arabs. Indeed, wherever the imperial garrison was not
sufficient to overawe the inhabitants, the native Syrians
sought to make any arrangement with the Arabs which
would insure their towns from plunder, feeling satisfied
that the Arab authorities could not use their
with greater rapacity and cruelty than the imperial
officers. The garrison of Emesa defended itself for a
year in the vain hope of being relieved by the Roman
army, and they obtained favourable terms from the
Saracens, even after this long defence. Arethusa (Res-
tan), Epiphanea (Hama), Larissa (Schizar), and Helio-
polis (Baalbec), all entered into treaties, which led to
their becoming tributary to the Saracen. Chalcis
(Kinesrin) alone was plundered as a punishment for
its tardy submission, or for some violation of a truce.
No general arrangements, either for defence or submis-
sion, were adopted by the Christians, whose ideas of
political union had been utterly extinguished by the
Roman power, and who were now satisfied if they could
preserve their lives and properties, without seeking any
guarantee for the future. The Romans still retained
some hope of reconquering Syria, until the loss of
another decisive battle in the year 636 compelled them
to abandon the province.' In the following year, A.D.
1 Theophanes (Chron. p. 280) appears to place the battle of Yermouk in this
year, and speaks of Vahan defeated at Yermouk, as the same person who com-
manded in the second campaign, and whom the Arabian historian distinguishes.
This Vahan is called Mahan by Ockley (i. 29), who follows the authority of Theo-
phanes for the date of the battle of Yermouk. Theophanes, however, indicates
that the battle of Yermouk followed immediately after the death of Aboubekr,
and appears to have confused the two great battles which decided the fate of
Syria. Ockley's conjecture that Manuel was meant has been copied in the
Universal History, and by Le Beau. Both Vartan and Vahan are Armenian
names. Manuel, who subsequently commanded in Egypt, was also an Armenian.
Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, xi.—Notes de Saint Martin.
A. D.
633-716.
444
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
CHAP. V. 637, the Arabs advanced to Jerusalem, and the sur-
render of the holy city was marked by arrangements
between the patriarch Sophronius and the caliph Omar,
who repaired in person to Palestine to take possession
of so distinguished a conquest. The conditions of the
capitulation indicate that the Christian patriarch looked
rather to the protection of his own bishopric than to his
duty to his country and his sovereign. The facility with
which the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, at
this time, and the patriarch of Constantinople, Gennad-
dius, at the time of the conquest of the Byzantine empire
by Mohammed II. (A. D. 1453), became the ministers
of their Mohammedan conquerors, shows the slight hold
which national feelings retained over the minds of
the orthodox Greek clergy. It appears strange that
Sophronius, who was the head of a Greek and Melchite
congregation, living in the midst of a numerous and
hostile Jacobite population, should have so readily con-
sented to abandon his connection with the Greek em-
pire and the orthodox church, when both religion and
policy seemed so strongly to demand greater firmness;
and on this very account, his conduct must be admitted
to afford evidence of the humanity and good faith with
which the early Mohammedans fulfilled their promises.³
The state of society in the Roman provinces rendered
it impossible to replace the great losses which the armies
had suffered in the Syrian campaigns; and the finan-
¹ During the middle ages the Christians forged a document purporting to
be a charter of protection to the inhabitants of Jerusalem by the prophet Ma-
homet himself, dated in the fourth year of the Hegira, but it is doubtful
whether this forgery is as old as the first crusade. Ă Latin text is given in
Negociations de la France dans le Levant, i. xvi.
2 The Greek patriarchs of this age did little honour to their religion. Pyr-
rhus, patriarch of Constantinople, when banished after the death of Heraclius,
renounced his Monothelite opinions in orthodox Africa, and made a public ab-
juration of them at Rome before Pope Theodore. Yet when he visited
Ravenna, he as publicly returned to his Monothelite belief.
3 The violence with which Sophronius had opposed the opinions of the
Monothelites, may have induced him to confound treason with orthodoxy.
-Acta Sanctorum, tom. ii. 65.
CONQUEST OF MESOPOTAMIA.
445
cial resources of the empire forbade any attempt to raise
a mercenary force among the northern nations suffi-
ciently powerful to meet the Saracens in the field. Yet
the exertions of Heraclius were so great that he concen-
trated an army at Amida (Diarbekr) in the year 638,
which made a bold attempt to regain possession of the
north of Syria. Emesa was besieged; but the Saracens
soon assembled an overwhelming force; the Romans
were defeated, the conquest of Syria was completed,
and Mesopotamia was invaded.¹ The subjection of
Syria and Palestine was not effected by the Saracens
until they laboured through five vigorous campaigns,
and fought several bloody battles. The contest affords
conclusive testimony that the reforms of Heraclius had
already restored the discipline and courage of the
Roman armies; but, at the same time, the indifference
of the native population to the result of the wars testifies
with equal certainty that he had made comparatively
small progress in his civil and financial improve-
ments.2
3
The Arab conquest not only put an end to the political
power of the Romans, which had lasted seven hun-
dred years, but it also soon rooted out every trace of the
Greek civilisation introduced by the conquests of Alex-
ander the Great, and which had flourished in the country
for upwards of nine centuries. A considerable number
of native Syrians endeavoured to preserve their indepen-
dence, and retreated into the fastnesses of Mount Leba-
where they continued to defend themselves. Under
the name of Mardaïtes, they soon became formidable to
the Mohammedans, and for some time checked the power
of the caliphs in Syria, and by the diversions which they
made whenever the arms of the Arabs were employed in
non,
1 Weil, i. 81.
2 Theophanes, 282.
3 Pompey expelled Antiochus, B. c. 65. Alexander the Great conquered Syria
B. C. 331.
A. D.
633-716.
446
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. Asia Minor, they contributed to arrest their progress.1
The year after Syria was subdued, Mesopotamia was
invaded, and proved an easy conquest; as its imperial
governors, and the inhabitants of its cities, showed the
same readiness to enter into treaties with the Moham-
medans.2
As soon as the Arabs had completed the conquest of
Syria, they invaded Egypt. The national and religious
hostility which prevailed between the native population
and the Greek colonists, insured the Mohammedans a
welcome from the Egyptians; but at the same time, this
very circumstance excited the Greeks to make the most
determined resistance. The patriarch Cyrus had adopted
the Monothelite opinions of his sovereign, and this ren-
dered his position uneasy amidst the orthodox Greeks
of Alexandria. Anxious to avert any disturbance in
the province, he conceived the idea of purchasing peace
for Egypt from the Saracens, by paying them an annual
tribute; and he entered into negotiations for this pur-
pose, in which Mokaukas, who remained at the head
of the fiscal department, joined him. The Emperor
Heraclius, informed of this intrigue, sent an Armenian
governor, Manuel, with a body of troops, to defend the
province, and ordered the negotiations to be broken off.
The fortune of the Arabs again prevailed, and the Ro-
man army was defeated. Amrou, the Saracen general,
having taken Pelusium, laid siege to Misr, or Babylon,
the chief native city of Egypt, and the seat of the pro-
vincial administration. The treachery or patriotism of
Mokaukas, for his position warrants either supposition,
induced him to join the Arabs, and assist them in
capturing the town.3 A capitulation was concluded,
1 The Mardaïtes are supposed
-Theophanes, Chron. 295, 300.
2 Theophanes, Chron. 202.
proved traitors.
by some to be the ancestors of the Maronites.
Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. Vat. tom. i. 496.
The governors of Osrhoene and Edessa both
Ockley calls Mokaukas the prefect of Heraclius, of the sect of the Jacobites,
and a mortal enemy of the Greeks. Eutychius (ii. 302) is his authority.
CONQUEST OF EGYPT.
447
by which the native Egyptians retained possession of
all their property, and enjoyed the free exercise of their
religion as Jacobites, on paying a tribute of two pieces
of gold for every male inhabitant. If the accounts of
historians can be relied on, it would seem that the
population of Egypt had suffered less from the vicious
administration of the Roman empire, and from the
Persian invasion, than any other part of their domi-
nions; for about the time of its conquest by the
Romans it contained seven millions and a half, exclu-
sive of Alexandria, and its population was now esti-
mated at six millions.¹ This account is by no means
impossible, for the most active cause of the depopula-
tion of the Roman empire arose from the neglect of
all those accessories of civilisation which facilitate the
distribution and circulation as well as the production
of the necessaries of life. From neglect of this kind
Egypt had suffered comparatively little, as the natural
advantages of the soil, and the physical conformation of
the country, intersected by one mighty river, had com-
pensated for the supineness of its rulers. The Nile
was the great road of the province, and nature kept
it constantly available for transport at the cheapest
rate, for the current enabled the heaviest laden boats,
and even the rudest rafts, to descend the river with
their cargoes rapidly and securely; while the north
wind, blowing steadily for almost nine months in the
year, enabled every boat that could hoist a sail to stem
the current, and reach the limits of the province with
as much certainty, if not with such rapidity, as a
1 Josephus, B. J. ii. 16; vol. v. 206 (Whiston's translation). Eutychius
(ii. 311) says that those registered for the tribute amounted to 6,000,000. He
seems to confound this with the whole number of the native population.
2 Strabo says the revenue of Egypt under Ptolemy Auletes was about two
and a half millions sterling, and double under the Romans. In 1566, it yielded
the Turks only £150,000.- Dr Vincent, ii. 69. Reference has been made at
page 435 to the edict which prohibited the exportation of grain from every
port in Egypt except Alexandria; and the exportation from Alexandria had
diminished even in the time of Justinian.
A. D.
633-716.
448
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. modern steam-boat.
And when the waters of the Nile
were separated over the Delta, they became a valuable
property to corporations and individuals, whose rights
the Roman law respected, and whose interests and
wealth were sufficient to keep in repair the canals of
irrigation; so that the vested capital of Egypt suffered
little diminution, while war and oppression annihilated
the accumulations of ages over the rest of the world.
The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria,
the only port which Egypt possessed for communicat-
ing with the empire, still made it one of the first cities
in the world for riches and population, though its
strength had received a severe blow by the Persian
conquest.¹
The canal which connected the Nile with the Red
Sea furnished the means of transporting the agricultu-
ral produce of the rich valley of Egypt to the arid coast
of Arabia, and created and nourished a trade which
added considerably to the wealth and population of
both countries.2 This canal, in its most improved
state, commenced at Babylon, and ended at Arsinoe
(Suez). It fertilised a large district on its banks,
which has again relapsed into the same condition as
the rest of the desert, and it created an oasis of verdure
on the shore of the Red Sea. Arsinoe flourished amidst
groves of palm-trees and sycamores, with a branch of
the Nile flowing beneath its walls, where Suez now
withers in a dreary waste, destitute alike of vegetables
and of potable water, which are transported from Cairo
for the use of the travellers who arrive from India.
This canal was anciently used for the transport of large
and bulky commodities, for which land carriage would
1 The Emperor Hadrian was struck by the commercial activity of Alexan-
dria: "Civitas in qua nemo vivat otiosus."-Hist. Aug. Scrip. 245.
2 Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo, saw this canal in operation.-Herod. ii.
158. Diod. i. 33, 83. Strabo, 1, 17. See also Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi. 29. Plu-
tarch's Life of Antony, sect. 82. Lucian, Pseudomant, sect. 44.
CONQUEST OF EGYPT.
449
have proved either impracticable or too expensive. By
means of it, Trajan transported, from the quarries on the
Red Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, many of the
columns and vases of granite and porphyry with which
he adorned Rome.' This canal may have been neglect-
ed during the troubles in the reigns of Phocas and
Heraclius, while the Persians occupied the country;
but it was in such a state of preservation as to require
but slight repairs from the earlier caliphs. A year
after Amrou had completed the conquest of Egypt, he
had established the water communication between the
Nile and the Red Sea; and, by sending large supplies
of grain by the canal to Suez, he was able to relieve
the inhabitants of Mecca, who were suffering from
famine. After more than one interruption from ne-
glect, the policy of the caliphs of Bagdat allowed it
to fall into decay, and it was filled up by Al Manzor,
A. D. 762-767.3
As soon as the Arabs had settled the affairs of the
native population, they laid siege to Alexandria. This
city made a vigorous defence, and Heraclius exerted
himself to succour it; but, though it held out for
several months, it was at last taken by the Arabs, for
the troubles which occurred at Constantinople after
the death of Heraclius prevented the Roman govern-
ment from sending reinforcements to the garrison.
The confidence of the Saracens induced them to leave.
a feeble corps for its defence after they had taken it;
and the Roman troops, watching an opportunity for
renewing the war, recovered the city, and massacred
the Mohammedans, but were soon compelled to retire
to their ships, and make their escape. The conquest
¹ Strabo, xvii. 788, 804. Ptol. Geog. iv. 5, p. 108. It was called, after
Trajan's repairs, Teaïavòs Toraμós.
2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. viii. c. 8. Paul. Silent. Disc. Sancla Sophiæ, i. v. 379,
625.
3 Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, xi. 300,-Notes de S. M. Notices des
Manuscrits Arabes, par Langles, tom. vi. 334.
A. D.
633-716.
2 F
450
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. of Alexandria is said to have cost the Arabs twenty-
three thousand men; and they are accused of using
their victory like rude barbarians, because they de-
stroyed the libraries and works of art of the Greeks,
though a Mohammedan historian might appeal to the
permanence of their power, and the increase in the
numbers of the votaries of the Prophet, as a proof of
the profound policy and statesman-like views of the
men who rooted out every trace of an adverse civilisa-
tion, and of a hostile race. The professed object of the
Saracens was to replace Greek domination by Moham-
medan toleration. Political sagacity at the same time
convinced the Arabs that it was necessary to exter-
minate Greek civilisation in order to destroy Greek
influence. The Goths, who sought only to plunder
the Roman empire, might spare the libraries of the
Greeks, but the Mohammedans, whose object was to
convert or to subdue, considered it a duty to root out
everything that presented any obstacle to the ultimate
success of their schemes for the advent of Mohammedan
civilisation.¹ In less than five years (A. D. 646), a Ro-
man army, sent by the emperor Constans under the
command of Manuel, again recovered possession of
Alexandria, by the assistance of the Greek inhabitants
who had remained in the place; but the Mohammedans
soon appeared before the city, and, with the assistance
of the Egyptians, compelled the imperial troops to
abandon their conquest. The walls of Alexandria
were thrown down, the Greek population driven out,
and the commercial importance of the city destroyed.
Thus perished one of the most remarkable colonies of
the Greek nation, and one of the most renowned seats
of that Greek civilisation of which Alexander the Great
2
¹ Gibbon, in his account of the destruction of the great Alexandrian library,
depreciates the injury which literature sustained.-Ch. li.
2
Eutychius, 2, 339. Ockley, i. 325.
SARACEN CONQUESTS.
451
had laid the foundations in the East, after having flour-
ished in the highest degree of prosperity for nearly a
thousand years.¹
2
The conquest of Cyrenaïca followed the subjugation
of Egypt as an immediate consequence. The Greeks
are said to have planted their first colonies in this
country six hundred and thirty-one years before the
Christian era, and twelve centuries of uninterrupted
possession appeared to have constituted them the per-
petual tenants of the soil; but the Arabs were very
different masters from the Romans, and under their
domination the Greek race soon became extinct in
Africa. It is not necessary here to follow the Saracens
in their farther conquests westward. The dominant
people with whom they had to contend was Latin,
and not Greek, in the western provinces; the ruling
classes were attached to the Roman government, though
often disgusted by the tyranny of the emperors; and
consequently they defended themselves with far more
courage and obstinacy than the Syrians and Egyptians.
The war was marked by considerable vicissitudes, and
it was not till the year 698 that Carthage fell perman-
ently into the hands of the Saracens, who, according
to their usual policy, threw down the walls and ruined
the public buildings, in order to destroy every political
trace of Roman government in Africa. The Saracens
were singularly successful in all their projects of
destruction; in a short time both Latin and Greek
civilisation was exterminated on the southern shores
of the Mediterranean.
1 Alexandria was founded B. c. 332. After the conquest of Egypt by the
Saracens, the Egyptian or Coptic language began to give way to the Arabic.
This followed because the numbers of the Copts were gradually reduced by the
oppressive government of their new masters, until they formed a minority of
the population. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, who governed it several
years, is said to have left at his death a sum equal to eight millions sterling,
accumulated by his extortions. The caliph Othman is said to have left only
seven millions in the Arabian treasury at his death. The officers soon became
richer than the State.
2 Clinton's Fasti II ellenici, i. 204.
A. D.
633-716.
452
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V.
It may be observed that the success of the Moham-
medan religion, under the earlier caliphs, did not keep
pace with the progress of the Arab arms. Of all the
native population of the countries subdued, the Arabs
of Syria alone appear to have immediately adopted the
new religion of their co-national race; but the great
mass of the Christians in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
Cyrenaïca, and Africa, clung firmly to their faith, and
the decline of Christianity in all these countries is to
be attributed rather to the extermination than to the
conversion of the Christian inhabitants. The decrease
in the number of the Christians was invariably attended
by a decrease in the numbers of the inhabitants, and
arose evidently from the oppressive treatment which
they suffered under the Mohammedan rulers of these
countries, a system of tyranny which was at last
carried so far as to reduce whole provinces to un-
peopled deserts, ready to receive an Arab population,
almost in a nomade state, as the successors of the ex-
terminated Christians. It was only when Mohammed-
anism presented its system of unity, in opposition to
the evident falsity of idolatry, or to the unintelligible
discussions of an incomprehensible theology, that the
human mind was easily led away by its religious doc-
trines, which addressed the passions of mankind rather
too palpably to be secure of commanding their reason.
The earliest Mohammedan conversions of foreign races
were made among the subjects of Persia, who mingled
native or provincial superstitions with the Magian faith,
and among the Christians of Nubia and the interior of
Africa, whose religion may have departed very far from
the pure doctrines of Christianity. The success of the
Mohammedans was generally confined to barbarous
and ignorant converts; and the more civilised people
retained their faith as long as they could secure their
national existence. This fact deserves to be carefully
MOHAMMEDAN CONQUESTS.
453
contrasted with the progress of Christianity, which
usually indicated an immediate advance in the scale
of civilisation. Yet the peculiar causes which enabled
the Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries, in
the ignorant and debased mental condition into which
they had fallen, to resist steadily the attacks of Mo-
hammedanism, and to prefer extinction to apostasy,
deserve a more accurate investigation than they have
yet met with from historians.
The construction of the political government of the
Saracen empire was far more imperfect than the creed
of the Mohammedans, and shows that Mahomet had
neither contemplated extensive foreign conquests, nor
devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the con-
sideration of the questions of administration which
would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a nume-
rous and wealthy population possessed of property
but deprived of civil rights. No attempt was made
to arrange any systematic form of political govern-
ment, and the whole power of the State was vested in
the hands of the chief priest of the religion, who was
only answerable for the due exercise of this extra-
ordinary power to God, his own conscience, and his
subjects' patience. The moment, therefore, that the re-
sponsibility created by national feelings, military com-
panionship, and exalted enthusiasm, ceased to operate
on the minds of the caliphs, the administration became
far more oppressive than that of the Roman empire.
No local magistrates elected by the people, and no
parish priests, connected by their feelings and interests
both with their superiors and inferiors, bound society
together by common ties; and no system of legal ad-
ministration, independent of the military and financial
authorities, preserved the property of the people from
the rapacity of the government. Socially and politi-
cally the Saracen empire was little better than the
A. D.
633-716.
454
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it
proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is
to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Ma-
homet's religion, which tempered for some time its
avarice and tyranny.
Even the military successes of the Arabs are to be
ascribed in some measure to accidental causes, over
which they themselves exercised no control. The
number of disciplined and veteran troops who had
served in the Roman and Persian armies could not
have been matched by the Arabian armies. But no
inconsiderable part of the followers of Mahomet had
been trained in the Persian war, and the religious zeal
of Neophytes, who regarded war as a sacred duty,
enabled the youngest recruits to perform the service
of veterans. The enthusiasm was more powerful than
the courage of the Roman troops, and their strict obe-
dience to their leaders compensated in a great degree
for their inferiority in arms and tactics.1
But a long
war proved that the military qualities of the Roman
armies were more lasting than those of the Arabs.
The important and rapid conquests of the Mohamme-
dans were assisted by the religious dissensions and
national antipathies which placed the great bulk of
the people of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, in hos-
tility to the Roman government, and neutralised many
of the advantages which they might have derived from
their military skill and discipline amidst a favourable
population. The Roman government had to encounter
the excited energies of the Arabs, at a moment, too,
when its resources were exhausted, and its strength
was weakened by a long war with Persia, which had
1
¹ Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, i. 85. The Greeks (Roman troops) were
completely armed; the Arabs were almost without defensive armour until
they had obtained the arms of the Greeks by conquest. The statements in
Ockley's History must be received with caution. His principal authority,
Al Wakidi, indulges in romantic colouring, and is careless of facts and dates.
Weil, i. 48, note 1.
MOHAMMEDAN CONQUESTS.
455
for several years totally destroyed the influence of the
central executive administration, and enabled nume-
rous chiefs to acquire an almost independent authority.
These chiefs were generally destitute of every feeling
of patriotism; nor can this excite our wonder, for the
feeling of patriotism was then an unknown sentiment
in every rank of society throughout the Eastern Em-
pire; their conduct was entirely directed by ambition
and interest, and they sought only to secure themselves
in the possession of the districts which they governed.
The example of Mokaukas in Egypt, and of Youkinna
at Aleppo, areremarkable instances of the power and
treasonable disposition of many of these imperial officers.
But almost every governor in Syria displayed equal
faithlessness.¹ Yet in spite of the treason of some
officers, and the submission of others, the defence of
Syria does not appear to have been on the whole dis-
graceful to the Roman army, and the Arabs purchased
their conquest by severe fighting, and at the cost of
much blood. An anecdote mentioned in the "History
of the Saracens," shows that the importance of order
and discipline was not overlooked by Khaled, the
Sword of God, as he was styled by his admiring
countrymen; and that his great success was owing
to military skill, as well as religious enthusiasm and
fiery valour. "Mead," says the historian, "encouraged
the Saracens with the hopes of Paradise, and the enjoy-
ment of everlasting life, if they fought for the cause of
God and religion. Softly,' said Khaled; 'let me get
them into good order before you set them upon fight-
ing.'" Under all the disadvantages mentioned, it is
not surprising that the hostile feelings of a numerous,
C
Mansour, the governor of Damascus.-Eutychius, ii. 281. Bostra, Emesa,
Kinnisrin, and Aleppo.-Ockley, i. 156-162. The citizens of Baalbec.-Ockley,
i. 179.
2 Ockley, i. 70.
3 A similar anecdote is told of Cromwell, who once addressed his troops,
"Put your trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry."
A. D.
633-716.
:
456
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. wealthy, and heretical portion of the Syrian community,
engaged in trade, and willing to purchase peace and
toleration at any reasonable sacrifice, should have
turned the scale against the Romans.
The struggle
became doubtful from the moment that the people of
Damascus concluded an advantageous truce with the
Arabs. Emesa and other cities could then venture to
follow the example, merely for the purpose of securing
their own property, without any reference to the general
interests of the province, or the military plans of defence
of the Roman government. Yet one of the chiefs, who
held a portion of the coast of Phoenicia, succeeded in
maintaining his independence against the whole power
of the Saracens, and formed in the mountains of Le-
banon a small Christian principality, of which the
town of Byblos (Djebail) was the capital. Round this
nucleus the Mardaïtes, or native Syrians, appear to have
rallied in considerable force.
The great influence exercised by the patriarchs of
Jerusalem and Alexandria in their provinces, tended
also to weaken and distract the measures adopted for
the defence of these countries. Their willingness to
negotiate with the Arabs, who were resolved only to be
satisfied with conquest, placed the Roman armies and
government in a disadvantageous position. Where the
chances of war are nearly balanced, the good will of
the people will eventually decide the contest in favour
of the party that they espouse. Now there is strong
reason to believe, that even a majority of the orthodox
subjects of the Roman empire, in the provinces which
were conquered during the reign of Heraclius, were the
well-wishers of the Arabs; that they regarded the em-
peror with aversion as a heretic; and that they fancied
they were sufficiently guaranteed against the oppression
of their new masters, by the rigid observance of justice
which characterised all their earlier acts. A temporary
MOHAMMEDAN CONQUESTS.
457
diminution of tribute, or escape from some oppressive
act of administration, induced them to compromise
their religious position and their national independence.
The fault is too natural a one to be severely blamed.
They feared that Heraclius might commence a perse-
cution in order to enforce conformity with his mono-
thelite opinions, for of religious liberty the age had no
just conception; and the Syrians and Egyptians had
been slaves for far too many centuries to be impressed
with any idea of the sacrifices which a nation ought to
make in order to secure its independence. The moral
tone adopted by the Caliph Aboubekr, in his instruc-
tions to the Syrian army, was also so unlike the prin-
ciples of the Roman government, that it must have
commanded profound attention from a subject people.
"Be just," said the proclamation of Aboubekr, "the
unjust never prosper; be valiant, die rather than yield;
be merciful, slay neither old men, children, nor women.
Destroy neither fruit-trees, grain, nor cattle; keep
your word, even to your enemies; molest not those
men who live retired from the world, but compel the
rest of mankind to become Mussulmans, or to pay us
tribute,-if they refuse these terms, slay them." Such
a proclamation announced to Jews and Christians
sentiments of justice and principles of toleration which
neither Roman emperors nor orthodox bishops had ever
adopted as the rule of their conduct. This remarkable
document must have made a deep impression on the
minds of an oppressed and persecuted people. Its effect
was soon increased by the wonderful spectacle of the
Caliph Omar riding into Jerusalem on the camel which
carried all the baggage and provisions which he re-
quired for his journey from Mecca. The contrast thus
offered between the rude simplicity of a great con-
queror and the extravagant pomp of the provincial
representatives of a defeated emperor must have em-
A. D.
633-716.
458
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. bittered the hatred already strong in an oppressed
people against a rapacious government. Had the
Saracens been able to unite a system of judicial legisla-
tion and administration, and of elective local and
municipal governments for their conquered subjects,
with the vigour of their own central power and the
religious monarchy of their own national government,
it is difficult to conceive that any limits could ulti-
mately have been opposed to their authority by the
then existing states into which the world was divided.'
But the political system of the Saracens was of itself
utterly barbarous, and it only caught a passing gleam
of justice, while worldly prudence tempered the religious
feelings of their prophet's doctrines. A remarkable
feature of the policy by which they maintained their
power over the provinces which they conquered, ought
not to be overlooked, as it illustrates both their confi-
dence in their military superiority and the low state of
their social civilisation. They generally destroyed the
walls of the cities which they subdued, whenever the
fortifications offered peculiar facilities for defence, or
contained a native population active and bold enough
to threaten danger from rebellion. Many celebrated
Roman cities were destroyed, and the Saracen adminis-
tration was transferred to new capitals, founded where
a convenient military station for overawing the country
could be safely established. Thus Alexandria, Babylon
or Misr, Carthage, Ctesiphon, and Babylon, were de-
stroyed, and Fostat, Kairowan, Cufa, Bussora, and
Bagdat, rose to supplant them.
1 It is not correct to reproach the early Mohammedans with fanaticism.
Even the fire-worshippers of Persia, who were idolators in the eyes of the
Saracens, and did not worship the true God, were, by their principles of toler-
ation, allowed the exercise of their religion on paying tribute, a fact proved by
several passages in the Arabian historians. The instructions of the Othoman
Sultan Suleiman in the Multekas, display the increase of bigotry in modern
times. If the infidel refuse to embrace Islam, or to pay the capitation-tax, his
land is to be rendered desolate with fire, his trees are to be cut down, his corn-
fields laid waste, and he is to be slain or enslaved.-Hammer, Staatsverfassung
und Staatsverwaltung des osmanischen Reichs, i. 163.
CONSTANS II.
459
SECT. III.- -CONSTANS II., A. D. 641-668.
After the death of Heraclius, the short reigns of his
sons, Constantine III., or Heraclius Constantine, and
Heracleonas, were disturbed by court intrigues and
the disorders which naturally result from the want of
a settled law of succession. In such conjunctures, the
people and the courtiers learn alike to traffic in sedition.
Before the termination of the year in which Heraclius
died, his grandson, Constans II., mounted the imperial
throne at the age of eleven, in consequence of the death
of his father Constantine, and the dethronement of his
uncle Heracleonas. An oration made by the young
prince to the senate after his accession, in which he
invoked the aid of that body, and spoke of their power
in terms of reverence, warrants the conclusion that the
aristocracy had again recovered its influence over the
imperial administration; and that, though the em-
peror's authority was still held to be absolute by the
constitution of the empire, it was really controlled by
the influence of the persons holding ministerial offices.¹
Constans grew up to be a man of considerable abili-
ties and of an energetic character, but possessed of vio-
lent passions, and destitute of all the amiable feelings
of humanity. The early part of his reign, during which
the imperial ministers were controlled by the selfish
aristocracy, was marked by the loss of several portions
of the empire. The Lombards extended their conquests.
in Italy from the maritime Alps to the frontiers of
Tuscany; and the exarch of Ravenna was defeated
with considerable loss near Modenna; but still they
were unable to make any serious impression on the
exarchate. Armenia was compelled to pay tribute to
the Saracens. Cyprus was rendered tributary to the
¹ Theophanes, Chron. 284.
1
A. D.
633-716.
460
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V.
caliph, though the amount of the tribute imposed was
only seven thousand two hundred pieces of gold-half
of what it had previously paid to the emperor. This
trifling sum can have hardly amounted to the moiety of
the surplus usually paid into the imperial treasury after
all the expenses of the local government were defrayed,
and cannot have borne any relation to the amount of
taxation levied by the Roman emperors in the island.
It contrasts strangely with the large payments made
by single cities for a year's truce in Syria, and the im-
mense wealth collected by the Arabs in Syria, Egypt,
Persia, and Africa. The commercial town of Aradus,
in Syria, had hitherto resisted the Saracens from the
strength of its insular position. It was now taken and
destroyed. In a subsequent expedition, Cos was taken
by the treachery of its bishop, and the city plundered
and laid waste. Rhodes was then attacked and cap-
tured. This last conquest is memorable for the de-
struction of the celebrated Colossus, which, though it
fell about fifty-six years after its erection, had been
always, even in its prostrate condition, regarded as one
of the wonders of the world. The admiration of the
Greeks and Romans had protected it from destruction
for nine centuries. The Arabs, to whom works of art pos-
sessed no value, broke it in pieces, and sold the bronze
of which it was composed. The metal is said to have
loaded nine hundred and eighty camels.
As soon as Constans was old enough to assume the
direction of public business, the two great objects of
his policy were the establishment of the absolute power
1 The governor of Jushiyah paid 4000 pieces of gold, and fifty pieces of silk,
for a year's truce.-Ockley, i. 150. Hems paid 10,000 pieces of gold, and 200
pieces of silk.-P. 154. Baalbec, 2000 ounces of gold, 4000 of silver, and 2000
pieces of silk.-P. 177. Kinnisrin and Alhadir, 5000 ounces of gold, as many
of silver, and 2000 vests of silk.-P. 233. The tribute of Egypt was two pieces
of gold a-head.-Eutychius, ii. 308. The accounts of the wealth of Ctesiphon
are almost incredible, and those of Sufetula in Byzacene completely so.-Le
Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, vol. xi. 313, 329.
RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.
461
of the emperor over the orthodox church, and the re-
covery of the lost provinces of the empire. With the
view of obtaining and securing a perfect control over
the ecclesiastical affairs of his dominions, he published
an edict, called the Type, in the year 648, when he was
only eighteen years old.¹ It was prepared by Paul, the
patriarch of Constantinople, and was intended to ter-
minate the disputes produced by the Ecthesis of Hera-
clius. All parties were commanded by the Type to ob-
serve a profound silence on the previous quarrels con-
cerning the operation of the will in Christ. Liberty of
conscience was an idea almost unknown to any but the
Mohammedans, so that Constans never thought of ap-
pealing to any such right; and no party in the Chris-
tian church was inclined to waive its orthodox authority
of enforcing its own opinions upon others. The Latin
church, led by the Bishop of Rome, was always ready
to oppose the Greek clergy, who enjoyed the favour of
the imperial court, and this jealousy engaged the pope
in violent opposition to the Type. But the bishop of
Rome was not then so powerful as the popes became at
a subsequent period, so that he durst not attempt
directly to question the authority of the emperor in
regulating such matters. Perhaps it appeared to him
hardly prudent to rouse the passions of a young prince
of eighteen, who might prove not very bigoted in his
attachment to any party, as, indeed, the provisions of
the Type seemed to indicate. The pope Theodore, there-
fore, directed the whole of his ecclesiastical fury against
the Patriarch of Constantinople, whom he excommuni-
cated with circumstances of singular and impressive
violence. He descended with his clergy into the dark
tomb of Saint Peter in the Vatican, now under the
centre of the dome in the vault of the great Cathedral
of Christendom, consecrated the sacred cup, and, hav-
The Type is contained in Hardouin's Concilia, tom. i. p. 834.
A. D.
633-716.
462
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. ing dipped his pen in the blood of Christ, signed an
act of excommunication, condemning a brother bishop
to the pains of hell. To this indecent proceeding Paul
the Patriarch replied by persuading the emperor to per-
secute the clergy who adhered to the pope's opinion, in
a more regular and legal manner, by depriving them of
their temporalities, and condemning them to banish-
ment. The pope was supported by nearly the whole
body of the Latin clergy, and even by a considerable
party in the East; yet, when Martin, the successor of
Theodore, ventured to anathematise the Ecthesis and
the Type, he was seized by order of Constans, conveyed
to Constantinople, tried, and condemned on a charge
of having supported the rebellion of the Exarch Olym-
pius, and of having remitted money to the Saracens.
The emperor, at the intercession of the Patriarch Paul,
commuted his punishment to exile, and the pope died
in banishment at Cherson in Tauris. Though Constans
did not succeed in inculcating his doctrines on the
clergy, he completely succeeded in enforcing public
obedience to his decrees in the church, and the fullest
acknowledgment of his supreme power over the persons
of the clergy. These disputes between the heads of the
ecclesiastical administration of the Greek and Latin
churches afforded an excellent pretext for extending
the breach, which had its real origin in national feelings
and clerical interests, and was only widened by the
difficult and not very intelligible distinctions of mono-
thelitism. Constans himself, by his vigour and personal
activity in this struggle, incurred the bitter hatred of
a large portion of the clergy, and his conduct has been
unquestionably the object of much misrepresentation
and calumny.
The attention of Constans to ecclesiastical affairs in-
duced him to visit Armenia, where his attempts to unite
the people to his government by regulating the affairs
RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.
463
of their church, were as unsuccessful as his religious in-
terference elsewhere. Dissensions were increased; one
of the imperial officers of high rank rebelled; and the
Saracens availed themselves of this state of things to
invade both Armenia and Cappadocia, and succeeded in
rendering several districts tributary. The increasing
power of Moawyah, the Arab general, induced him to
form a project for the conquest of Constantinople, and
he began to fit out a great naval expedition at Tripoli
in Syria. A daring enterprise of two brothers, Chris-
tian inhabitants of the place, rendered the expedition
abortive. These two Tripolitans and their partisans
broke open the prisons in which the Roman captives
were confined, and, placing themselves at the head of
an armed band which they had hastily formed, seized
the city, slew the governor, and burnt the fleet. A
second armament was at length prepared by the energy
of Moawyah, and as it was reported to be directed
against Constantinople, the Emperor Constans took
upon himself the command of his own fleet. He met the
Saracen expedition off Mount Phoenix in Lycia, and at-
tacked it with great vigour. Twenty thousand Romans
are said to have perished in the battle ;¹ and the emperor
himself owed his safety to the valour of one of the Tri-
politan brothers, whose gallant defence of the imperial
galley enabled the emperor to escape before its valiant
defender was slain, and the vessel fell into the hands
of the Saracens. The emperor retired to Constanti-
nople, but the hostile fleet had suffered too much to
attempt any farther operations, and the expedition was
abandoned for that year. The death of Othman, and
the pretensions of Moawyah to the caliphate, withdrew
the attention of the Arabs from the empire for a short
time, and Constans turned his forces against the Scla-
vonians, in order to deliver the European provinces.
1
1 ¹ Theophanes, 287. Abulpharag. Ch. Syr. iii.
A. D.
633-716.
464
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. from their ravages. They were totally defeated, numbers
were carried off as slaves, and many were compelled to
submit to the imperial authority. No certain grounds
exist for determining whether this expedition was
directed against the Sclavonians, who had established
themselves between the Danube and Mount Hæmus, or
against those who had settled in Macedonia. The
name of no town is mentioned in the accounts of the
campaign.2
When the affairs of the European provinces, in the
vicinity of the capital, were tranquillised, Constans
again prepared to engage the Arabs; and Moawyah,
having need of all the forces he could command for his
contest with Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet, consented
to make peace, on terms which contrast curiously with
the perpetual defeats which Constans is always repre-
sented by the orthodox historians of the empire to
have suffered. The Saracens engaged to confine their
forces within Syria and Mesopotamia, and Moawyah
consented to pay Constans, for the cessation of hostilities,
the sum of a thousand pieces of silver, and to furnish
him with a slave and a horse for every day during
which the peace should continue. A. D. 659.
During the subsequent year, Constans condemned to
death his brother Theodosius, whom he had compelled
to enter the priesthood. The cause of this crime, or
the pretext for it, is not mentioned. From this brother's
hand, the emperor had often received the sacrament;
and the fratricide is supposed to have rendered a
residence at Constantinople insupportable to the con-
science of the criminal, who was reported nightly to
behold the spectre of his brother offering him the con-
secrated cup, filled with human blood, and exclaiming,
Drink, brother!" Certain it is, that two years after
CC
1 Theophanes, Ch. pp. 288, 299. Zinkeisen, i. 733. Tafel, Thessalonica,
lxxxiii.
CONSTANS II.
465
his brother's death, Constans quitted his capital, with
the intention of never returning; and he was only pre-
vented, by an insurrection of the people, from carrying
off the empress and his children. He meditated the
reconquest of Italy from the Lombards, and proposed
rendering Rome again the seat of empire. On his way
to Italy the emperor stopped at Athens, where he as-
sembled a considerable body of troops. This casual
mention of Athens by Latin writers affords strong
evidence of the tranquil, flourishing, and populous con-
dition of the city and country around.' The Scla-
vonian colonies in Greece must, at this time, have
owned perfect allegiance to the imperial power, or
Constans would certainly have employed his army in
reducing them to subjection. From Athens, the em-
peror sailed to Italy; he landed with his forces at
Tarentum, and attempted to take Beneventum, the
chief seat of the Lombard power in the south of Italy.
His troops were twice defeated, and he then abandoned
all his projects of conquest.
His visit
The emperor himself repaired to Rome.
lasted only a fortnight. According to the writers who
describe the event, he consecrated twelve days to reli-
gious ceremonies and processions, and the remaining
two he devoted to plundering the wealth of the church.
His personal acquaintance with the affairs of Italy and
the state of Rome, soon convinced him that the eternal
city was ill adapted for the capital of the empire, and
he quitted it for Sicily, where he fixed on Syracuse for
his future residence. Grimoald, the able monarch of
the Lombards, and his son Romuald, the Duke of Bene-
ventum, continued the war in Italy with vigour. Brun-
dusium and Tarentum were captured, and the Romans
expelled from Calabria, so that Otranto and Gallipoli
1 Anastasius, De Vitis Pont. Rom. p. 51, edit. Par. Schlosser, Geschichte der
Bilderstürmenden Kaiser, 81.
A. D.
633-716.
2 G
466
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. were the only towns on the eastern coast of which
Constans retained possession.
When residing in Sicily, Constans directed his atten-
tion to the state of Africa. His measures are not de-
tailed with precision, but were evidently distinguished
by the usual energy and caprice which marked his
whole conduct. He recovered possession of Carthage,
and of several cities which the Arabs had rendered
tributary; but he displeased the inhabitants of the
province, by compelling them to pay to himself the
same amount of tribute as they had agreed by treaty
to pay to the Saracens; and as Constans could not
expel the Saracen forces from the province, the amount
of the public taxes of the Africans was thus often
doubled, since both parties were able to levy the
contributions which they demanded. Moawyah sent
an army from Syria, and Constans one from Sicily, to
decide who should become sole master of the country.
A battle was fought near Tripoli; and though the army
of Constans consisted of thirty thousand men, it was
completely defeated. Yet the victorious army of the
Saracens was unable to take the small town of Geloula
(Usula), until the accidental fall of a portion of the
ramparts laid it open to their assault; and this trifling
conquest was followed by no farther success. In the
East, the empire was exposed to greater danger, yet
the enemies of Constans were eventually unsuccessful
in their projects. In consequence of the rebellion of
the Armenian troops, whose commander, Sapor, assumed
the title of emperor, the Saracens made a successful
incursion into Asia Minor, captured the city of Amo-
rium, in Phrygia, and placed in it a garrison of five
thousand men ; but the imperial general appointed by
Constans soon drove out this powerful garrison, and
recovered the place.
It appears, therefore, that in spite of all the defeats
CONSTANTINE IV.
467
which Constans is reported to have suffered, the empire
underwent no very sensible diminution of its territory
during his reign, and he certainly left its military forces
in a more efficient condition than he found them. He
was assassinated in a bath at Syracuse, by an officer
of his household, in the year 668, at the age of thirty-
eight, after a reign of twenty-seven years. The fact of
his having been murdered by one of his own household,
joined to the capricious violence that marked many of
his public acts, warrants the supposition that his cha-
racter was of the unamiable and unsteady nature, which
rendered the accusation of fratricide, so readily believed
by his contemporaries, by no means impossible. It
must, however, be admitted, that the occurrences of
his reign afford irrefragable testimony that his here-
tical opinions have induced orthodox historians to give
an erroneous colouring to many circumstances, since
the undoubted results do not correspond with their
descriptions of the passing events.
A. D.
633-716.
SECT. IV.-CONSTANTINE IV. YIELDED TO THE POPULAR ECCLESIASTICAL
PARTY AMONG THE GREEKS.
Constantine IV., called Pogonatus, or the Bearded,
has been regarded by posterity with a high degree
of favour.¹ 1 Yet his merit seems to have con-
sisted in his superior orthodoxy, rather than in his
superior talents as emperor. The concessions which he
made to the see of Rome, and the moderation that he
displayed in all ecclesiastical affairs, placed his conduct
in strong contrast with the stern energy with which
his father had enforced the subjection of the orthodox
ecclesiastics to the civil power, and gained for him the
praise of the priesthood, whose eulogies have exerted
¹ Constantine IV. is called Pogonatus, but it is his father who is called Con:
stantine on his coins, and is represented with an enormous beard.
468
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. no inconsiderable influence on all historians. Constan-
tine, however, was certainly an intelligent and just
prince, who, though he did not possess the stubborn
determination and talents of his father, was destitute
also of his violent passions and imprudent character.
As soon as Constantine was informed of the murder
of his father, and that a rebel had assumed the purple
in Sicily, he hastened thither in person to avenge his
death, and extinguish the rebellion. To satisfy his
vengeance, the patrician Justinian, a man of high cha-
racter, compromised in the rebellion, was treated with
great severity, and his son Germanos with a degree of
inhumanity that would have been recorded by the
clergy against Constans as an instance of the grossest
barbarity.¹ The return of the emperor to Constantin-
ople was signalised by a singular sedition of the troops
in Asia Minor. They marched towards the capital,
and having encamped on the Asiatic shores of the
Bosphorus, demanded that Constantine should admit
his two brothers, on whom he had conferred the rank
of Augustus, to an equal share in the public adminis-
tration, in order that the Holy Trinity in heaven,
which governs the spiritual world, might be repre-
sented by a human trinity, to govern the political em-
pire of the Christians. The very proposal is a proof of
the complete supremacy of the civil over the ecclesias-
tical authority, in the eyes of the people, and the
strongest evidence, that in the public opinion of the
age the emperor was regarded as the head of the
church. Such reasoning as the rebels used could be
rebutted by no arguments, and Constantine had energy
enough to hang the leaders of the sedition, and suffi-
1 This Germanos, notwithstanding his mutilation by Constantine, became
bishop of Cyzicus, and joined the Monothelites in the reign of Philippicus.
He retracted, and was made patriarch of Constantinople by Anastasius II.
(A.D. 715), and figured as an active defender of images against Leo III., the
Isaurian.
MOHAMMEDAN WAR.
469
cient moderation not to molest his brothers. But seve-
ral years later, either from increased suspicions, or from
some intrigues on their part, he deprived them of the
rank of Augustus, and condemned them to have their
noses cut off;¹ (A.D. 681). The condemnation of his
brother to death by Constans, figures in history as one
of the blackest crimes of humanity, while the barbarity
of the orthodox Constantine is passed over as a lawful
act. Both rest on the same authority, on the testimony
of Theophanes, the earliest Greek chronicler, and both
may really have been acts of justice necessary for the
security of the throne and the tranquillity of the em-
pire. Constans was a man of a violent temper, and
Constantine of a mild disposition; both may have
been equally just, but both were, without doubt, unne-
cessarily severe. A brother's political offences could
hardly merit a greater punishment from a brother than
seclusion in a monastery.²
2
The great object of the imperial policy at this period
was to oppose the progress of the Mohammedans.
Constans had succeeded in arresting their conquests,
but Constantine soon found that they would give the
empire no rest unless he could secure it by his
victories. He had hardly quitted Sicily to return to
Constantinople, before an Arab expedition from Alex-
andria invaded the island, and stormed the city of
Syracuse, and after plundering the treasures accumu-
lated by Constans, immediately abandoned the place.
In Africa the war was continued with various success,
but the Christians were long left without any succours
from Constantine, while Moawyah supplied the Sara-
cens with strong reinforcements. In spite of the
courage and enthusiasm of the Mohammedans, the
1 Theophanes, Chron. 298, 303.
2 Theophanes (293, 300) says that the brothers of Constantine IV. lost their
noses in 669, but were not deprived of the imperial title until 681.
A. D.
633-716.
470
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. native Christian population maintained their ground
with firmness, and carried on the war with such vigour,
that in the year 676 a native African leader, who com-
manded the united forces of the Romans and Berbers,
captured the newly founded city of Kairowan, which
at a subsequent period became renowned as the capital
of the Fatimite caliphs.'
The ambition of the caliph Moawyah induced him
to aspire at the conquest of the Roman empire; and
the military organisation of the Arabian power, which
enabled the caliph to direct the whole resources of his
dominions to any single object of conquest, seemed to
promise success to the enterprise. A powerful expedi-
tion was sent to besiege Constantinople. The time re-
quired for the preparation of such an armament did not
enable the Saracens to arrive at the Bosphorus without
passing a winter on the coast of Asia Minor, and on
their arrival in the spring of the year 672, they found
that the emperor had made every preparation for de-
fence. Their forces, however, were so numerous, that
they were sufficient to invest Constantinople by sea
and land. The troops occupied the whole of the land side
of the triangle on which the city is constructed, while
the fleet effectually blockaded the port. The Saracens
failed in all their assaults, both by sea and land; but
the Romans, instead of celebrating their own valour
and discipline, attributed their success principally to
the use of the Greek fire, which was invented shortly
before this siege, and was first used on this occasion."
The military art had declined during the preceding
century, as rapidly as every other branch of national
culture; and the resources of the mighty empire of the
1 Kairowan was founded by Akbah in 670; taken by the Christians in 676;
recovered by the Arabs under Zohair; but retaken by the Christians in 683;
and finally conquered by Hassan in 697.
2 For an account of the Greek fire, see the articles "Callinicus" (vi. 551), and
"Marcus Græcus" (xxvi. 623) in the Biographie Universelle.
SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, A. D. 672—678.
471
Arabs were so limited by the ignorance and bad ad-
ministration of its rulers, that the caliph was unable to
maintain his forces before Constantinople during the
winter. The Saracen army was nevertheless enabled
to collect sufficient supplies at Cyzicus to make that
place a winter station, while their powerful fleet com-
manded the Hellespont and secured their communica-
tions with Syria. When spring returned, the fleet again
transported the army to encamp under the walls of
Constantinople. This strange mode of besieging cities,
unattempted since the times the Dorians had invaded
Peloponnesus, was continued for seven years; but in
this warfare the Saracens suffered far more severely
than the Romans, and were at last compelled to abandon
their enterprise.¹ The land forces tried to effect their
retreat through Asia Minor, but were entirely cut off
in the attempt; and a tempest destroyed the greater
part of their fleet off the coast of Pamphylia. During
the time that this great body of his forces was em-
ployed against Constantinople, Moawyah sent a division
of his troops to invade Crete, which had been visited
by a Saracen army in 651. The island was now com-
pelled to pay tribute, but the inhabitants were treated
with great mildness, as it was the policy of the caliph
at this time to conciliate the good opinion of the
Christians by his liberal government, in order to pave
the way for future conquests. Moawyah carried his
religious tolerance so far as to rebuild the church of
Edessa at the intercession of his Christian subjects.
The destruction of the Saracen expedition against
Constantinople, and the advantage which the moun-
taineers of Libanon had contrived to take of the absence
1
During the siege of Constantinople, Abou Ayoub, who had received Ma-
homet into his house on his flight to Medina, died; and the celebrated
mosque of Ayoub, in which the Sultan, on his accession, receives the investi-
ture of the sword, is said to mark the spot where he was buried.—See the
chronology of the operations of the siege, xxxii.
A. D.
633-716.
472
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. of the Arab troops, by carrying their incursions into
the plains of Syria, convinced Moawyah of the necessity
of peace.
The hardy mountaineers of Libanon, called
Mardaïtes, had been increased in numbers, and supplied
with wealth, in consequence of the retreat into their
country of a mass of native Syrians who had fled be-
fore the Arabs.1 They consisted chiefly of Melchites
and Monothelites, and on that account they had adhered
to the cause of the Roman empire when the Mono-
physites joined the Saracens. Their Syrian origin
renders it probable that they were ancestors of the
Maronites, though the desire of some Maronite his-
torians to show that their countrymen were always
perfectly orthodox, has perplexed a question which of
itself was by no means of easy solution.2 The political
state of the empire required peace; and the orthodox
Constantine did not feel personally inclined to run any
risk in order to protect the Monothelite Mardaïtes.
Peace was concluded between the emperor and the
caliph in the year 678, Moawyah consenting to pay the
Romans annually three thousand pounds of gold, fifty
slaves, and fifty Arabian horses. It appears strange that
a prince, possessing the power and resources at the com-
mand of Moawyah, should submit to these conditions;
but the fact proves that policy, not pride, was the rule of
the caliph's conduct, and that the advancement of his
real power, and of the spiritual interests of the Moham-
medan religion, were of more consequence in his eyes
than any notions of earthly dignity.
In the same year in which Moawyah had been in-
duced to purchase peace by consenting to pay tribute
to the Roman emperor, the foundations of the Bulgarian
monarchy were laid, and the emperor Constantine him-
1 The earliest mention of the Mardaïtes is found in Theophanes, Chron. p.
295.
2 Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, with notes by James Murdock, D.D.
Edited by the Rev. H. Soames, ii. 109.
BULGARIAN MONARCHY.
473
self was compelled to become tributary to a small horde
of Bulgarians. One of the usual emigrations which
take place amongst barbarous nations had induced
Asparuch, a Bulgarian chief, to seize the low country
about the mouth of the Danube; his power and acti-
vity obliged the emperor Constantine to take the field
against these Bulgarians in person. The expedition
was so ill conducted, that it ended in the complete de-
feat of the Roman army, and the Bulgarians subdued
all the country between the Danube and Mount Hamus,
compelling a district inhabited by a body of Sclavonians,
called the seven tribes, to become their tributaries.
These Sclavonians had once been formidable to the em-
pire, but their power had been broken by the emperor
Constans. Asparuch established himself in the town
of Varna, near the ancient Odessus, and laid the found-
ation of the Bulgarian monarchy, a kingdom long
engaged in hostilities with the emperors of Constanti-
nople, and whose power tended greatly to accelerate the
decline of the Greeks, and reduce the numbers of their
race in Europe.'
The event, however, which exercised the most favour-
able influence on the internal condition of the empire
during the reign of Constantine Pogonatus, was the as-
sembly of the sixth general council of the church at Con-
stantinople. This council was held under circumstances
peculiarly favourable to candid discussion. The eccle-
siastical power was not yet too strong to set both reason
and the civil authorities at defiance. Its decisions were
adverse to the Monothelites; and the orthodox doctrine
of two natures and two wills in Christ was received by
the common consent of the Greek and Latin par-
ties as the true rule of faith of the Christian church.
Religious discussion had now taken a strong hold on
public opinion, and as the majority of the Greek popu-
1
¹ Ducange, Familiæ Byzantinc, p. 305. Theophanes, Chron. 298.
A. D.
633-716.
474
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. lation had never adopted the opinions of the Monothe-
lites, the decisions of the sixth general council contri-
buted powerfully to promote the union of the Greeks
with the imperial administration.
SECT. V. DEPOPULATION OF THE EMPIRE, AND DECREASE OF THE
GREEKS UNDER JUSTINIAN II.
ment.
Justinian II. succeeded his father Constantine at the
age of sixteen, and though so very young, he imme-
diately assumed the personal direction of the govern-
He was by no means destitute of talents, but
his cruel and presumptuous character rendered him in-
capable of learning to perform the duties of his situa-
tion with justice. His violence at last rendered him
hateful to his subjects; and as the connection of the
emperor with the Roman government and people was
direct and personal, his power was so undermined by
the loss of his influence, that, in the ninth year of his
reign, he was easily driven from his throne by a popu-
lar sedition. His nose was cut off, and he was banished
to Cherson, A. D. 695. In exile his energy and activity
enabled him to secure the alliance of the Khazars and
Bulgarians, and he returned to Constantinople as a con-
queror, after an absence of ten years. His character
was one of those to which experience is useless, and he
persisted in his former course of violence, until, having
exhausted the patience of his subjects, he was de-
throned and murdered, A. D. 705-711.
The reign of such a tyrant was not likely to be in-
active. At its commencement, he turned his arms
against the Saracens, though the caliph Abdalmelik
offered to make additional concessions, in order to in-
duce the emperor to renew the treaty of peace which
had been concluded with his father. Justinian sent a
JUSTINIAN II.
475
powerful army into Armenia under Leontius, by whom
he was subsequently dethroned. All the provinces
which had shown any disposition to favour the Saracens
were laid waste, and the army carried off an immense
booty, and drove away a great part of the inhabitants
as slaves. The barbarism of the Roman government
had now reached such a pitch that the Roman armies
were permitted to plunder and depopulate even those
provinces where a Christian population still afforded the
emperor some assurance that they might be retained in
permanent subjection to the Roman government. The
soldiers of an undisciplined army,-legionaries without
patriotism or nationality, were allowed to enrich them-
selves by slave hunts in Christian countries, and the
most flourishing agricultural districts were reduced to
deserts, incapable of offering any resistance to the
Mohammedan nomads. The caliph Abdalmelik, being
engaged in a struggle for the caliphate with powerful
rivals, and disturbed by rebels even in his own Syrian
dominions, arrested the progress of the Roman arms
by purchasing peace on terms far more favourable to
the empire than those of the treaty between Constan-
tine and Moawyah. The caliph engaged to pay the
emperor an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty-
five thousand pieces of gold, three hundred and sixty
slaves, and three hundred and sixty Arabian horses.
The provinces of Iberia, Armenia, and Cyprus, were
equally divided between the Romans and the Arabs ;
but Abdalmelik obtained the principal advantage from
the treaty, for Justinian not only consented to abandon
the cause of the Mardaïtes, but even engaged to assist
the caliph in expelling them from Syria. This was
effected by the treachery of Leontius, who entered their
country as a friend, and murdered their chief. Twelve
thousand Mardaïte soldiers were enrolled in the armies
of the empire, and distributed in garrisons in Armenia
A. D.
633-716.
476
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. and Thrace. A colony of Mardaïtes was established at
Attalia in Pamphylia, and the power of this valiant
people was completely broken. The removal of the
Mardaïtes from Syria was one of the most serious
errors of the reign of Justinian. As long as they re-
mained in force on Mount Libanon, near the centre of
the Saracen power, the emperor was able to render them
a serious check on the Mohammedans, and create dan-
gerous diversions whenever the caliphs invaded the em-
pire. Unfortunately, in this age of religious bigotry,
the Monothelite opinions of the Mardaïtes made them
an object of aversion or suspicion to the imperial ad-
ministration; and even under the prudent government
of Constantine Pogonatus, they were not viewed with
a friendly eye, nor did they receive the support which
should have been granted to them on a just considera-
tion of the interests of Christianity, as well as of the
Roman empire.
The general depopulation of the empire suggested
to many of the Roman emperors the project of re-
peopling favoured districts, by an influx of new inhabi-
tants. The origin of many of the most celebrated
cities of the Eastern Empire could be traced back to
small Greek colonies. These emigrants, it was known,
had rapidly increased in number, and risen to wealth.
The Roman government appears never to have clearly
comprehended that the same causes which produced
the diminution of the ancient population would be
sure to prevent the increase of new settlers; and their
attempts at repeopling provinces, and removing the
population of one district to new seats, were frequently
renewed. Justinian II. had a great taste for these
emigrations. Three years after the conclusion of peace
with Abdalmelik, he resolved to withdraw all the in-
habitants from the half of the island of Cyprus, of
which he remained master, in order to prevent the
ANARCHY.
477
!
Christians from becoming accustomed to the Saracen
administration. The Cypriote population was trans-
ported to a new city near Cyzicus, which the emperor
called after himself, Justinianopolis. It is needless to
offer any remarks on the impolicy of such a project;
the loss of life, and the destruction of property inevit-
able in the execution of such a scheme, could only have
been replaced under the most favourable circumstances,
and by a long career of prosperity. It is known that,
in consequence of this desertion, many of the Cypriote
towns fell into complete ruin, from which they have
never since emerged.
Justinian, at the commencement of his reign, made a
successful expedition into the country occupied by the
Sclavonians in Macedonia, who were now closely allied
with the Bulgarian principality beyond Mount Hamus.
This people, emboldened by their increased force, had
pushed their plundering excursions as far as the Pro-
pontis. The imperial army was completely successful,
and both the Sclavonians and their Bulgarian allies
were defeated. In order to repeople the fertile shores
of the Hellespont about Abydos, Justinian transplanted
a number of the Sclavonian families into the province
of Opsicium. This colony was so numerous and power-
ful, that it furnished a considerable contingent to the
imperial armies.¹
The peace with the Saracens was not of long dura-
tion. Justinian refused to receive the first gold pieces
coined by Abdalmelik, which bore the legend, "God is
the Lord." The tribute had previously been paid in
money from the municipal mints of Syria; and Jus-
tinian imagined that the new Arabian coinage was an
attack on the Holy Trinity. He led his army in per-
son against the Saracens, and a battle took place near
Sebastopolis, on the coast of Cilicia, in which he was
1 30,000.-Nicephorus Pat. 24. Theophanes, 305.
A. D.
633-716.
478
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. entirely defeated, in consequence of the treason of the
leader of his Sclavonian troops.¹ Justinian fled from
the field of battle, and on his way to the capital he
revenged himself on the Sclavonians who had remained
faithful to his standard for the desertion of their coun-
trymen. The Sclavonians in his service were put to
death, and he even ordered the wives and children of
those who had joined the Saracens to be murdered.
The deserters were established by the Saracens on the
coast of Syria, and in the Island of Cyprus; and under
the government of the caliph, they were more prosper-
ous than under that of the Roman emperor.
It was
during this war that the Saracens inflicted the first
great badge of civil degradation on the Christian popu-
lation of their dominions. Abdalmelik established the
Haratch, or Christian capitation tax, in order to raise
money to carry on the war with Justinian. This unfor-
tunate mode of taxing the Christian subjects of the
caliph, in a different manner from the Mohammedans,
completely separated the two classes, and reduced the
Christians to the rank of serfs of the State, whose most
prominent political relation with the Mussulman com-
munity was that of furnishing money to the govern-
ment. The decline of the Christian population through-
out the dominions of the caliphs was the consequence
of this ill-judged measure, which has probably tended
more to the depopulation of the East than all the
tyranny and military violence of the Mohammedan
armies.
The restless spirit of Justinian naturally plunged
into the ecclesiastical controversies which divided the
church. He assembled a general council, called usually
in Trullo, from the hall of its meeting having been
1 The Sclavonian leader Gebulus, or Nebulus, carried off 20,000 men, accord-
ing to Theophanes (305); but Saint-Martin cites an Armenian historian who
reduces the number to 7000 cavalry.-Le Beau, xii. 22.
PROGRESS OF THE SARACENS.
479
covered with a dome. The proceedings of this council,
as might have been expected from those of an assembly
controlled by such a spirit as that of the emperor,
tended only to increase the growing differences be-
tween the Greek and Latin parties in the church. Of
one hundred and two canons sanctioned by this coun-
cil, the pope finally rejected six, as adverse to the
usages of the Latins.1
of the Latins.1 And thus an additional cause of
separation was permanently created between the Greeks
and Latins, and the measures of the church, as well as the
political arrangements of the times, and the social feel-
ings of the people, all tended to render union impossible.
A taste for building is a common fancy of sovereigns
who possess the absolute disposal of large funds with-
out any feeling of their duty as trustees for the benefit
of the people whom they govern. Even in the midst
of the greatest public distress, the treasury of nations,
on the very verge of ruin and bankruptcy, must con-
tain large sums of money drawn from the annual taxa-
tion. This treasure, when placed at the irresponsible
disposal of princes who affect magnificence, is fre-
quently employed in useless and ornamental building;
and this fashion has been so general with despots, that
the princes who have been most distinguished for their
love of building, have not unfrequently been the worst
and most oppressive sovereigns. It is always a delicate
and difficult task for a sovereign to estimate the amount
which a nation can wisely afford to expend on orna-
mental architecture; and, from his position, he is
seldom qualified to judge correctly on what buildings
1 Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. by Murdock, Soames's edit. ii. 111. The six
canons rejected were-the fifth, which approves of the eighty-five apostolic
canons, commonly attributed to Clement; the thirteenth, which allows priests
to live in wedlock; the fifty-fifth, which condemns fasting on Saturdays; the
sixty-seventh, which earnestly enjoins abstinence from blood and things
strangled; the eighty-second, which prohibits the painting of Christ in the
image of a lamb; and the eighty-sixth, concerning the equality of the bishops
of Rome and Constantinople.-Schlegel's note.
A. D.
633-716.
480
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. ornament ought to be employed, in order to make
art accord with the taste and feelings of the people.
Public opinion affords the only criterion for the for-
mation of a sound judgment on this department of
public administration; for, when princes possessing a
taste for building are not compelled to consult the
wants and wishes of their subjects, in the construction
of national edifices, they are apt, by their wild projects
and lavish expenditure, to create evils far greater than
any which could result from an exhibition of bad taste
alone.
In an evil hour, the love of building took possession of
Justinian's mind. His lavish expenditure soon obliged him
to make his financial administration more rigorous, and
general discontent quickly pervaded the capital. The re-
ligious and superstitious feelings of the population were
severely wounded by the emperor's eagerness to destroy
a church of the Virgin, in order to embellish the vicinity
of his palace with a splendid fountain. Justinian's own
scruples required to be soothed by a religious ceremony,
but the patriarch for some time refused to officiate,
alleging that the church had no prayers to desecrate
holy buildings. The emperor, however, was the head
of the church and the master of the bishops, whom he
could remove from office, so that the patriarch did not
long dare to refuse obedience to his orders. It is said,
however, that the patriarch showed very clearly his
dissatisfaction, by repairing to the spot and authoris-
ing the destruction of the church by an ecclesiastical
ceremony, to which he added these words, “to God,
who suffers all things, be rendered glory, now and for
ever. Amen." The ceremony was sufficient to satisfy
the conscience of the emperor, who perhaps neither
heard nor heeded the words of the patriarch. The
public discontent was loudly expressed, and Justinian
soon perceived that the fury of the populace threatened
ANARCHY.
481
A. D.
a rebellion in Constantinople. To avert the danger, he
took every measure which unscrupulous cruelty could 633-716.
suggest; but, as generally happens in periods of general
discontent and excitement, the storm burst in an un-
expected quarter, and the hatred of Justinian left him
suddenly without support. Leontius, one of the ablest
generals of the empire, whose exploits have been already
mentioned, had been thrown into prison, but was at
this time ordered to assume the government of the
province of Hellas. He considered the nomination as
a mere pretext to remove him from the capital, in order
to put him to death at a distance without any trial.
On the eve of his departure, Leontius placed himself at
the head of a sedition; Justinian was seized, and his
ministers were murdered by the populace with the most
savage cruelty. Leontius was proclaimed emperor, but
he spared the life of his dethroned predecessor for the
sake of the benefits which he had received from Con-
stantine Pogonatus. He ordered Justinian's nose to
be cut off, and exiled him to Cherson. From this
mutilation the dethroned emperor received the insult-
ing nickname of Rhinotmetus, or Docknose, by which
he is distinguished in Byzantine history.
SECT. VI.-ANARCHY IN THE ADMINISTRATION UNTIL THE ACCESSION
OF LEO III.
The government of Leontius was characterised by
the unsteadiness which not unfrequently marks the
administration of the ablest sovereigns who obtain
their thrones by accidental circumstances rather than
by systematic combinations.
The most important
event of his reign was the final loss of Africa, which
led to his dethronement. The indefatigable caliph
Abdalmelik despatched a powerful expedition into
Africa under Hassan; the province was soon con-
2 H
482
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. quered, and Carthage was captured after a feeble re-
sistance.¹ An expedition sent by Leontius to relieve
the province arrived too late to save Carthage, but the
commander-in-chief forced the entrance into the port,
recovered possession of the city, and drove the Arabs
from most of the fortified towns on the coast. The
Arabs constantly received new reinforcements, which
the Roman general demanded from Leontius in vain.
At last the Arabs assembled a fleet, and the Romans,
being defeated in a naval engagement, were compelled
to abandon Carthage, which the Arabs utterly destroy-
ed, having too often experienced the superiority of
the Romans, both in naval affairs and in the art of
war, to venture on retaining populous and fortified
cities on the sea coast. This curious fact affords
strong proof of the great superiority of the Roman
commerce and naval resources, and equally powerful
evidence of the shameful disorder in the civil and
military administration of the empire, which rendered
these advantages useless, and allowed the imperial
fleets to be defeated by the naval forces collected by
the Arabs from among their Egyptian and Syrian sub-
jects. At the same time it is evident that the naval
victories of the Arabs could never have been gained
unless a powerful party of the Christians had been in-
duced, by their feelings of hostility to the Roman em-
pire, to afford them a willing support; for there were as
yet neither shipbuilders nor sailors among the Mussul-
mans.
The Roman expedition, on its retreat from Carthage,
stopped in the Island of Crete, where a sedition broke
out among the troops, in which their general was killed.
Apsimar, the commander of the Cibyraiot troops, was
1 Carthage was founded B. c. 878. The Tyrian colony was exterminated by
the Romans B. c. 146. The Roman colony of Carthage was founded by Julius
Cæsar B. C. 44, and destroyed by the Arabs A. D. 698.
RETURN OF JUSTINIAN IL
483
declared emperor by the name of Tiberius.¹ The fleet
proceeded directly to Constantinople, which offered no
resistance. Leontius was taken prisoner, his nose cut
off, and his person confined in a monastery. Tiberius.
Apsimar governed the empire with prudence, and his
brother Heraclius commanded the Roman armies with
success. The imperial troops penetrated into Syria;
a victory was gained over the Arabs at Samosata, but
the ravages committed by the Romans in this in-
vasion surpassed the greatest cruelties ever inflicted
by the Arabs; for two hundred thousand Saracens
are said to have perished during the campaign. Ar-
menia was alternately invaded and laid waste by the
Romans and the Saracens, as the various turns of war
favoured the hostile parties, and as the changing in-
terests of the Armenian population induced them to
aid the emperor or the caliph. But while Tiberius
was occupied in the duties of government, and living
without any fear of a domestic enemy, he was suddenly
surprised in his capital by Justinian, who appeared be-
fore Constantinople at the head of a Bulgarian army.
Ten years of exile had been spent by the banished
emperor in vain attempts to obtain power. His violent
proceedings made him everywhere detested, but he
possessed the daring enterprise and the ferocious
cruelty necessary for a chief of banditti, joined to a
singular confidence in the value of his hereditary
claim to the imperial throne; so that no undertaking
appeared to him hopeless. After quarrelling with the
inhabitants of Cherson, and with his brother-in-law,
The Cibyraiot Theme included the ancient Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, and
a part of Phrygia; Cibyra Magua was a considerable town at the angle of
Phrygia, Caria, and Lycia. Tiberius Cæsar was regarded as its second founder,
from his having remitted the tribute after a severe earthquake.-Tacitus, Ann.
iv. 13. From him Apsimar must have taken the name of Tiberius, and not
from the emperor of Constantinople of better fame. Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, indeed, says the Theme in question was named from the insignificant
town of Cibyra in Pamphylia, but his authority is of little value on such a
point.-De Them. lib. i. p. 16.
A. D.
633-716.
484
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. the king of the Khazars, he succeeded, by a desperate
exertion of courage, in reaching the country of the
Bulgarians. Terbelis, their sovereign, agreed to assist
him in recovering his throne, and they marched im-
mediately with a Bulgarian army to the walls of Con-
stantinople. Three days after their arrival, they suc-
ceeded in entering the capital during the night. Ten
years of adversity had increased the natural ferocity of
Justinian's disposition; and a desire of vengeance, so
unreasonable as to verge on madness, seems hencefor-
ward to have been the chief motive of his actions. The
population of Constantinople had now sunk to the same
degree of barbarism as the nations surrounding them,
and in cruelty they were worthy subjects of their em-
peror. Justinian gratified them by celebrating his re-
storation with splendid chariot races in the circus. He
sate on an elevated throne, with his feet resting on the
necks of the dethroned emperors, Leontius and Tiberius,
who were stretched on the platform below, while the
Greek populace around shouted the words of the Psalm-
ist, "Thou shalt tread down the asp and the basilisk,
thou shalt trample on the lion and the dragon. The
dethroned emperors and Heraclius, who had so well
sustained the glory of the Roman arms against the
Saracens, were afterwards hung from the battlements
of Constantinople. Justinian's whole soul was occu-
pied with plans of vengeance. Though the conquest
of Tyana laid open Asia Minor to the incursions of the
Saracens, instead of opposing them, he directed his
disposable forces to punish the cities of Ravenna and
Cherson, because they had incurred his personal hatred.
Both the proscribed cities had rejoiced at his dethrone-
ment; they were both taken and treated with savage
"1
1 These are the words of the Septuagint, Psalm xc. 13. In our version, Psalın
xci. 13, the passage stands, "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the
young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."
ANARCHY.
485
cruelty. The Greek city of Cherson, though the seat
of a flourishing commerce, and inhabited by a nume-
rous population, was condemned to utter destruction.
Justinian ordered all the buildings to be razed with
the ground, and every soul within its walls to be put
to death; but the troops sent to execute these barbar-
ous orders revolted, and proclaimed an Armenian, called
Bardanes, emperor, under the name of Philippicus.'
Seizing the fleet, they sailed directly to Constantinople.
Justinian was encamped with an army in Asia Minor
when Philippicus arrived, and took possession of the
capital without encountering any resistance. He was
immediately deserted by his whole army, for the troops
were as little pleased with his conduct since his restor-
ation, as was every other class of his subjects; but his
ferocity and courage never failed him, and his rage
was unbounded when he found himself abandoned by
every one. He was seized and executed, without hav-
ing it in his power to offer the slightest resistance. His
son Tiberius, though only six years of age, was torn
from the altar of a church, to which he had been con-
ducted for safety, and cruelly massacred; and thus the
race of Heraclius was extinguished, after the family
had governed the Roman empire for exactly a century
(A. D. 611 to 711).
During the interval of six years which elapsed from
the death of Justinian II. to the accession of Leo the
Isaurian, the imperial throne was occupied by three
sovereigns. Their history is only remarkable as proving
the inherent strength of the Roman body politic, which
could survive such continual revolutions, even in the
state of weakness to which it was reduced. Philippicus
was a luxurious and extravagant prince, who thought
only of enjoying the situation which he had accidentally
1 Theophanes calls him the son of Nicephorus the Patrician.-P. 311. Nice-
phorus Pat. mentions that he was an Armenian.-P. 50, cdit. Bonn.
A. D.
633-716.
4.86
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. obtained.
He was soon dethroned by a band of con-
spirators, who carried him off from the palace while in
a fit of drunkenness, and after putting out his eyes, left
him helpless in the middle of the hippodrome. The
reign of Philippicus would hardly deserve notice, had
he not increased the confusion into which the empire
had fallen, and exposed the total want of character and
conscience among the Greek clergy, by re-establishing
the Monothelite doctrines in a general council of the
eastern bishops.
As the conspirators who had dethroned Philippicus
had not formed any plan for choosing his successor,
the first secretary of state was elected emperor by a
public assembly held in the great church of St Sophia,
under the name of Anastasius II. He immediately re-
established the orthodox faith, and his character is
consequently the subject of eulogy with the historians
of his reign. The Saracens, whose power was con-
tinually increasing, were at this time preparing a great
expedition at Alexandria, in order to attack Constanti-
nople. Anastasius sent a fleet with the troops of the
theme Opsicium, to destroy the magazines of timber
collected on the coast of Phoenicia for the purpose of
assisting the preparations at Alexandria. The Roman
armament was commanded by a deacon of St Sophia,
who also held the office of grand treasurer of the em-
pire. The nomination of a member of the clergy to
command the army gave great dissatisfaction to the
troops, who were not yet so deeply tinctured with
ecclesiastical ideas and manners, as the aristocracy of
the empire. A sedition took place while the army lay
at Rhodes: John the Deacon was slain, and the expedi-
tion quitted the port in order to return to the capital.
The soldiers on their way landed at Adramyttium, and
finding there a collector of the revenues of a popular
1 Nicephorus Pat. 32. Theophanes, 322.
ANARCHY.
487
character, they declared him emperor, under the name
of Theodosius III.
The new emperor was compelled unwillingly to
follow the army. For six months, Constantinople was
closely besieged, and the emperor Anastasius, who had
retired to Nicæa, was defeated in a general engagement.
The capital was at last taken by the rebels, who were
so deeply sensible of their real interests, that they
maintained strict discipline, and Anastasius, whose
weakness gave little confidence to his followers, con-
sented to resign the empire to Theodosius, and to retire
into a monastery, that he might secure an amnesty to
all his friends. Theodosius was distinguished by many
good qualities, but on the throne he proved a perfect
cipher, and his reign is only remarkable as affording a
pretext for the assumption of the imperial dignity by
Leo III., called the Isaurian. This able and enterpris-
ing officer, perceiving that the critical times rendered
the empire the prize of any man who had talents to
seize, and power to defend it, placed himself at the
head of the troops in Asia Minor, assumed the title of
emperor, and soon compelled Theodosius to quit the
throne and become a priest.
During the period which elapsed between the death
of Heraclius and the accession of Leo, the few remains
of Roman principles of administration which had
lingered in the imperial court, were gradually extin-
guished. The long cherished hope of restoring the
ancient power and glory of the Roman empire expired,
and even the aristocracy, which always clings the last
to antiquated forms and ideas, no longer dwelt with
confidence on the memory of former days. The con-
viction that the empire had undergone a great moral
and political change, which severed the future irrevo-
cably from the past, though it was probably not fully
understood, was at least felt and acted on both by
A. D.
633-716.
488
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. the people and the government. The sad fact that the
splendid light of civilisation which had illuminated the
ancient world had now become as obscure at Constan-
tinople as at Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage,
was too evident to be longer doubted; the very
twilight of antiquity had faded into darkness. It is
rather, however, the province of the antiquary than of
the historian to collect all the traces of this truth
scattered over the records of the seventh century.
There is one curious and important circumstance in
the history of the later days of the Roman empire, of
which little beyond the mere fact has been transmitted
by historians. A long and violent contention was
carried on between the imperial power and the aristo-
cracy, which represented the last degenerate remains
of the Roman senate. This struggle distracted the
councils and paralysed the energy of the Roman govern-
ment. It commenced in the reign of Maurice, and
existed under various modifications during the whole
period of the government of the family of Heraclius.
This aristocratic influence had more of an oriental than
of a Roman character; its feelings and views had
originated in that class of society imbued with a semi-
Greek civilisation which had grown up during the days
of the Macedonian rather than of the Roman empire;
and both Heraclius and Constans II., in their schemes
for circumscribing its authority in the State, resolved
to remove the capital of the empire from Constanti-
nople to a Latin city. Both conceived the vain hope
of re-establishing the imperial power on a purely Roman
basis, as a means of subduing, or at least controlling,
the power of Greek nationality, which was gaining
ground both in the State and the Church. The contest
terminated in the destruction of that political influence
in the Eastern Empire, which was purely Roman in its
character. But the united power of Greek and oriental
ANARCHY,
489
feelings could not destroy the spirit of Rome, until the
well-organised civil administration of Augustus and
Constantine ceased to exist. The subjects of the empire
were no great gainers by the change. The political
government became a mere arbitrary despotism, differ-
ing little from the prevailing form of monarchy in the
East, and deprived of all those fundamental institutions,
and that systematic character, which had enabled the
Roman state to survive the extravagancies of Nero and
the incapacity of Phocas.
ment.
The disorganisation of the Roman government at
this period, and the want of any influence over the
court by the Greek nation, are visible in the choice of
the persons who occupied the imperial throne after the
extinction of the family of Heraclius. They were
selected by accident, and several were of foreign origin,
who did not even look upon themselves as either Greeks
or Romans. Philippicus was an Armenian, and Leo III.,
whose reign opens a new era in eastern history, was an
Isaurian. On the throne he proved that he was desti-
tute of any attachment to Roman political institutions,
and any respect for the Greek ecclesiastical establish-
It was by the force of his talents, and by his
able direction of the State and of the army, that he suc-
ceeded in securing his family on the Byzantine throne;
for he unquestionably placed himself in direct hostility
to the feelings and opinions of his Greek and Roman
subjects, and transmitted to his successors a contest
between the imperial power and the Greek nation con-
cerning picture-worship, in which the very existence of
Greek nationality, civilisation, and religion, became at
last compromised. From the commencement of the
iconoclastic contest, the history of the Greeks assumes
a new aspect. Their civilisation, and their connection
with the Byzantine empire, become linked with the
policy and fortunes of the Eastern Church, and ecclesi-
A. D.
633-716.
490
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. astical affairs obtain a supremacy over all social and
political considerations in their minds.
SECT. VII.-GENERAL VIEW OF THE CONDITION OF THE GREEKS AT
THE EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER IN THE EAST.
The geograpical extent of the empire at the time of
its transition from the Roman to the Byzantine empire
affords evidence of the influence which the territorial
changes produced by the Saracen conquests exercised
in conferring political importance on the Greek race.
The frontier towards the Saracens of Syria commenced
at Mopsuestia in Cilicia, the last fortress of the Arab
power. It ran along the chains of Mounts Amanus and
Taurus to the mountainous district to the north of
Edessa and Nisibis, called, after the time of Justinian,
the Fourth Armenia, of which Martyropolis was the
capital. It then followed nearly the ancient limits
of the empire until it reached the Black Sea, a short
distance to the east of Trebizond. On the northern
shores of the Euxine, Cherson was now the only city
that acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, retain-
ing at the same time all its wealth and commerce, with
the municipal privileges of a free city. In Europe,
Mount Hamus formed the barrier against the Bulga-
rians, while the mountainous ranges which bound Mace-
donia to the north-west, and encircle the territory of
Dyrrachium, were regarded as the limits of the free
Sclavonian states. It is true that large bodies of Scla-
vonians had penetrated to the south of this line, and
lived in Greece and Peloponnesus, but not in the same
independent condition with reference to the imperial
administration as their northern brethren of the Servian
family.
1
1 Gibbon, ch. xvii. vol. ii. p. 360, Smith's edit. Constant. Porphyr. De Adm.
Imp. c. 58.
ANARCHY.
491
Istria, Venice, and the cities on the Dalmatian coast,
still acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, though
their distant position, their commercial connections,
and their religious feelings, were all tending towards a
final separation. In the centre of Italy, the exarchate
of Ravenna still held Rome in subjection, but the people
of Italy were entirely alienated from the political ad-
ministration, which was now regarded by them as
purely Greek, and the Italians, with Rome before their
eyes, could hardly admit the pretensions of the Greeks
to be regarded as the legitimate representatives of the
Roman empire. The loss of northern and central Italy
was consequently an event in constant danger of oc-
curring; it would have required an able and energetic and
just government to have repressed the national feel-
ings of the Italians, and conciliated their allegiance.
The condition of the population of the south of Italy
and of Sicily was very different. There the majority
of the inhabitants were Greeks in language and man-
ners; but at this time the cities of Gaëta, Naples,
Amalfi, and Sorento, the district of Otranto, and the
peninsula to the south of the ancient Sybaris, now
called Calabria, were the only parts which remained
under the Byzantine government. Sicily, though it
had begun to suffer from the incursions of the Saracens,
was still populous and wealthy. Sardinia, the last
possession of the Greeks to the westward of Italy, was
conquered by the Saracens about this time, A.D. 711.¹
In order to conclude the view which, in the preced-
ing pages, we have endeavoured to present of the
various causes that gradually diminished the numbers,
and destroyed the civilisation, of the Greek race, it is
necessary to add a sketch of the position of the nation
at the commencement of the eighth century. At this
unfortunate period in the history of mankind, the
¹ Price, Mohammedan IIistory, i. 471.
A. D.
633-716.
492
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. Greeks were placed in imminent danger of that an-
nihilation which had already destroyed their Roman
conquerors. The victories of the Arabs were attended
with very different consequences to the Greek popula-
tion of the countries which they subdued, from those
which had followed the conquests of the Romans. Like
the earlier domination of the Parthians, the Arab
power was employed in such a manner as ultimately
to exterminate the whole Greek population in the con-
quered countries; and though, for a short period, the
Arabs, like their predecessors the Parthians, protected
Greek art and Grecian civilisation, their policy soon
changed, and the Greeks were proscribed. The arts
and sciences which flourished at the court of the caliphs
were chiefly derived from their Syrian subjects, whose
acquaintance both with Syriac and Greek literature
opened to them an extensive range of scientific know-
ledge from sources utterly lost to the moderns. It is to
be observed, that a very great number of the eminent
literary and scientific authors of later times were
Asiatics, and that these writers frequently made use of
their native languages in those useful and scientific
works which were intended for the practical instruction.
of their own countrymen. In Egypt and Cyrenaïca the
Greek population was soon exterminated by the Arabs,
and every trace of Grecian civilisation was much sooner
effaced than in Syria; though even there no very
long interval elapsed before a small remnant of the
Greek population was all that survived. Antioch itself,
long the third city of the Eastern Empire, the spot
where the Christians had first received their name,'
and the principal seat of Greek civilisation in Asia for
upwards of nine centuries, though it was not depopu-
lated and razed to the ground like Alexandria and
Carthage, nevertheless soon ceased to be a Grecian city.
1 Acts, xi. 26.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
493
1
The numerous Greek colonies which had flourished
in the Tauric Chersonese, and on the eastern and
northern shores of the Euxine, were now almost all
deserted. The greater number had submitted to the
Khazars, who now occupied all the open country with
their flocks and herds; and the inhabitants of the free
city of Cherson, shut out from the cultivation of the
rich lands whose harvests had formerly supplied Athens
with grain, were entirely supported by foreign com-
merce. Their ships exchanged the hides, wax, and salt
fish of the neighbouring districts, for the necessaries
and luxuries of a city life, in Constantinople and the
maritime cities of the empire. It affords matter for
reflection to find that Cherson, situated in a climate
which, from the foundation of the colony, opposed in-
surmountable barriers to the introduction of much of
the peculiar character of Greek social civilisation, and
which deprived the art and the popular literature of
the mother country of some portion of their charm,-
to whose inhabitants the Greek temple, the Greek
agora, and the Greek theatre, must ever have borne the
characteristics of foreign habits, and in a land where the
piercing winds and heavy clouds prevented a life out of
doors being the essence of existence-should still have
preserved, to this late period of history, both its Greek
municipal organisation, and its independent civic gov-
ernment. Yet such was the case; and we know from
the testimony of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, that
Cherson continued to exist in a condition of respect-
¹ Leucon, king of Bosporus (B. c. 393-353), once sent to Athens from the
Tauric Chersonese, in a year of scarcity, upwards of two million bushels of
grain. The ordinary importation was about six hundred thousand.—Strabo,
vii. c. 4, vol. 2, 97, edit. Tauch. Demosthenes, in Leptin. 467. In the time of
Strabo, the eastern part of the Chersonese was a country very fertile in grain;
but in that of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Cherson imported corn, wine, and
oil as foreign luxuries. Gibbon, in copying Constantine Porphyrogenitus when
speaking of the time of Justinian II., omits to notice the commercial pros-
perity of the place, and represents it as a lonely settlement.-Ch. xlviii. vol. iv.
P. 78. See pp. 173, 174, of this volume.
A. D.
633-716.
494
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. able independence, though under imperial protection,
down to the middle of the tenth century.
In Greece itself the Hellenic race had been driven
from many fertile districts by Sclavonian settlers, who
had established themselves in large bodies in Greece
and the Peloponnesus, and had often pushed their plun-
dering and piratical incursions among the islands of the
Archipelago, from which they had carried off numerous
bands of slaves.1 In the cities and islands which the
Greeks still possessed, the secluded position of the
population, and the exclusive attention which they were
compelled to devote to their local interests and personal
defence, introduced a degree of ignorance which soon
extinguished the last remains of Greek civilisation, and
effaced all knowledge of Greek literature. The dimin-
ished population of the European Greeks now occupied
the shores of the Adriatic to the south of Dyrrachium,
and the maritime districts of Greece, Macedonia, and
Thrace, as far as Constantinople. The interior of the
country was everywhere overrun by Sclavonic colonies,
though many mountainous districts and most of the
fortified places still remained in the possession of the
Greeks. It is, unfortunately, impossible to explain
with precision the real nature and extent of the Scla-
vonic colonisation of Greece; and, indeed, before it be
possible to decide how far it partook of conquest, and
how far it resulted from the occupation of deserted
and uncultivated lands, it becomes absolutely necessary
to arrive at some definite information concerning the
diminution which had taken place in the native agri-
cultural classes, and in the social position of the slaves
and serfs who survived in the depopulated districts.
The scanty materials existing render the inquiry one
which can only engage the attention of the anti-
1 Niceph. Pat. pp. 49, 86, edit. Bonn.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
495
quary, who can glean a few isolated facts; but the his-
torian must turn away from the conjectures which
would connect these facts into a system. The condition
of social life during the decline of the Roman empire
had led to the division of the provincial population
into two classes, the urban and the rustic, or into
citizens and peasants; and the superior position and
greater security of the citizens gradually enabled them
to assume a political superiority over the free peasants,
and at last to reduce them, in a great measure, to the
rank of serfs.¹ Slaves became, about the same time,
of much greater relative value, and more difficult to be
procured; and the distinction naturally arose between
purchased slaves, who formed a part of the household
and of the family of the possessor, and agricultural
serfs, whose partial liberty was attended by the severest
hardships, and whose social condition was one of the
lowest degradation and of the greatest personal danger.
The population of Greece and the islands, in the time of
Alexander the Great, may be estimated at three millions
and a half;² and probably half of this number consisted
of slaves. During the vicissitudes of the Greek popu-
lation under the Roman domination, the diminution of
its numbers cannot have been less than the total
amount of the whole slave population, though the dimi-
nution did not fall exclusively on any one class of
society. The extent, however, to which the general
depopulation affected the agricultural population, and
the value of labour, must be ascertained before full
light can be thrown on the real nature of the Sclavonic
and Albanian colonisation of Greece.³
In the island of Sicily, and in the south of Italy, the
1 Cod. Just. xi. t. 49, 1, 1. Cod. Theod. v. par. t. 9 and 11, &c.
2 Clinton's Fusti Hell., vol. ii. թ. 431.
3 The high value of labour in many thinly-peopled countries in a declining
state, as Turkey, is a subject for curious investigation, as connected with the
decline of one race of the population, and its replacement by another.
A. D.
633-716.
496
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. great bulk of the population was Greek, both in lan-
guage and manners, and few portions of the Greek race
had succeeded so well in preserving their wealth and
property uninjured.¹
Even in Asia Minor the decline of the numbers of
the Greek race had been rapid. This decline must,
however, be attributed rather to bad government caus-
ing insecurity of property and difficulty of communica-
tion than to hostile invasions; for from the period of
the Persian invasion during the reign of Heraclius, the
greater part of this immense country had enjoyed
almost a century of uninterrupted peace. The Persian
invasions had never been very injurious to the sea-coast,
where the Greek cities were still numerous and wealthy;
but oppression and neglect had already destroyed the
internal trade of the central provinces, and literary in-
struction was becoming daily of less value to the in-
habitants of the isolated and secluded districts of the
interior.2 The Greek tongue began to be neglected,
and the provincial dialects, corrupted by an admixture
of the Lydian, Carian, Phrygian, Cappadocian, and Ly-
caonian languages, became the ordinary medium of
business and conversation. Bad government had caused
poverty, poverty had produced barbarism, and the
ignorance created by barbarism became the means of
perpetuating an arbitrary and oppressive system of
administration. The people, ignorant of all written
language, felt unable to check the exercise of official
abuses by the control of the law, and by direct appli-
cation to the central administration. Their wish, there-
fore, was to abridge as much as possible all the pro-
ceedings of power; and as it was always more easy to
1 For the antiquity of the Greek race and language in Magna Græcia, see
Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, i. 61, English trans. The Greek language continued
in use until the fourteenth century.
او
2 The barbarism of the provincial Asiatics is often alluded to by the Byzan-
tine writers. Auxάovás Tivas λuxavigáπous.-Theophanes, Chron. 406. For the
existence of Lycaonian dialect, see Acts, xiv. 11.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
497
save their persons from the central power than their
properties from the subordinate officers of the adminis-
tration, despotism became the favourite form of govern-
ment with the great mass of the Asiatic population.
It is impossible to attempt any detailed examination
of the changes which had taken place in the numbers
of the Greek population in Asia Minor. The fact that
extensive districts, once populous and wealthy, were
already deserts, is proved by the colonies which Jus-
tinian II. settled in various parts of the country. The
frequent repetition of such settlements, and the great
extent to which they were carried by the later emperors,
prove that the depopulation of the country had pro-
ceeded more rapidly than the destruction of its mate-
rial resources. The descendants of Greek and Roman
citizens ceased to exist in districts, while the buildings
stood tenantless, and the olive groves yielded an abun-
dant harvest. In this strange state of things the
country easily received new races of inhabitants. The
sudden settlement of a Sclavonian colony so numerous
as to be capable of furnishing an auxiliary army of
thirty thousand men, and the unexpected migration
of nearly half of the inhabitants of the island of Cyprus,
without mentioning the emigration of the Mardaïtes
who were established in Asia Minor, could never have.
taken place unless houses, wells, fruit-trees, water-
courses, enclosures, and roads had existed in tolerable
preservation, and thus furnished the new colonist with
an immense amount of what may be called vested
capital to assist his labour. The fact that these new
colonies, planted by Justinian II., could survive and
support themselves, seems a curious circumstance when
connected with the depopulation and declining state of
the empire which led to their establishment.
The existence of numerous and powerful bands of
organised brigands who plundered the country in defi-
A. D.
633-716.
2 I
498
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. ance of the government was one of the features of so-
ciety at this period, which almost escapes the notice
of the meagre historians whom we possess, though it
existed to such an extent as materially to have aggra-
vated the distress of the Greek population. Even had
history been entirely silent on the subject, there could
have been no doubt of their existence in the latter
days of the Roman empire, from the knowledge which
we have of the condition of the inhabitants, and of the
geographical conformation of the land. History affords,
however, a few casual glances of the extent of the evil.
The existence of a tribe of brigands in the mountains
of Thrace during a period of two centuries, is proved
by the testimony of authorities which the time and
circumstances render unimpeachable. Menander men-
tions bands of robbers, under the name of Scamars,
who plundered the ambassadors sent by the Avars to
the emperor Justin II.; and these Scamars continued
to exist as an organised society of robbers in the same
district until the time of Constantine V. (Copronymus),
A. D. 765, when the capture and cruel torture of one of
their chiefs is narrated by Theophanes.¹
History also records numerous isolated facts which,
when collected, produce on the mind the conviction that
the diminution in numbers, and the decline in civilisa-
tion of the Greek race, were the effect of the oppression
and injustice of the Roman government, not of the vio-
lence and cruelty of the barbarian invaders of the em-
pire. During the reign of that insane tyrant Justinian
II., the imperial troops, when properly commanded,
1 Excerpta e Menandri Hist. p. 313, edit. Bonn. Theophanes, Chron. 367.
The Bagaudæ in Spain and Gaul were a similar race of outlaws.-Ducange,
Gloss. Med. et Infra Lat., in voce. In the time of Gallienus, Sicily was ravaged
In the reign of
by armies of brigands.-Script. Aug. Trebell. Poll. c. 4.
Arcadius, bands of slaves in the dress of Huns plundered Thrace.-Zosimus, v.
22. The frequent portents of insurrections of slaves and ravages of brigands,
indicated by Lydus, proved that men lived in constant fear of these calamities
during the sixth century.-De Ostentis, xxxiv. 7, 15, 25.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
499
showed that the remains of Roman discipline enabled
them to defeat all their enemies in a fair field of battle.
The emperor Leontius, and Heraclius the brother of
Tiberius Apsimar, were completely victorious over the
redoubted Saracens; Justinian himself defeated the
Bulgarians and Sclavonians. But the whole power of
the empire was withdrawn from the people to be con-
centrated in the government. The Greek municipal
guards had been carefully deprived of their arms under
Justinian I., whose timid policy regarded internal re-
bellion as far more to be dreaded than foreign inva-
sions. The people were everywhere disarmed because
their hostile feelings were known and feared. The
European Greeks were regarded as provincials just as
much as the wild Lycaonians or Isaurians; and if they
anywhere succeeded in obtaining arms and resisting
the progress of the Sclavonians, they owed their success
to the weakness and neglect which, in all despotic gov-
ernments, prevent the strict execution of those laws
which are at variance with the feelings and interests
of the population, the moment that the agents of the
government can derive no direct profit from enforcing
them.
The Roman government always threw the greatest
difficulties in the way of their subjects' acquiring the
means of defending themselves without the aid of the
imperial army. The injury Justinian inflicted on the
Greek cities by disbanding their local militia, and rob-
bing them of the municipal funds devoted to preserve
their physical well-being and mental culture, caused a
deep-rooted hatred of the imperial government. This
feeling is well portrayed in the bitter satire of the
"Secret History" of Procopius. The hatred between
the inhabitants of Hellas and the Roman Greeks con-
nected with the imperial administration soon became
mutual; and at last a term of contempt is used by
A. D.
633-716.
500
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. the historians of the Byzantine empire to distinguish
the native Greeks from the other Greek inhabitants of
the empire, they were called Helladikoi.
After the time of Justinian we possess little authentic
information concerning the details of the provincial and
municipal administration of the Greek population. The
state of public roads and buildings, of ports, of trade,
of maritime communications; of the nature of the
judicial, civil, and police administration, and of the
extent of education among the people-in short, the
state of all those things which powerfully influence
the character and the prosperity of a nation, are
almost unknown. It is certain that they were all in
a declining and neglected state. Thessalonica, though
situated in one of the richest provinces of Europe, was
often reduced to great distress by famine, and unfor-
tunately these famines arose in as great a degree from
the fiscal regulations and commercial monopolies of
the Roman government, as from the devastations of
the barbarians.¹ The local administration of the Greek
cities still retained some shadow of ancient forms, and
senates existed in many, even to a late period of the
Byzantine empire. Indeed, they must all have enjoyed
very much the same form of government as Venice and
Amalfi, at the period when these cities first began to
enjoy a virtual independence.
The absence of all national feeling, which had ever
been a distinguishing feature of the Roman govern-
ment, continued to exert its influence at the court of
Constantinople long after the Greeks formed the bulk
of the population of the empire. This spirit separated
the governing classes from the people, and induced all
those who obtained employments in the service of the
State to constitute themselves into a body, directly
opposed to Greek nationality, because the Greeks
1 Tafel, Thessalonica, p. lxvii.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
501
formed the great mass of the governed. The election
of many emperors not of Greek blood at this period
must be attributed to the strength of this feeling.¹
This opposition between the Greek people and the
imperial administration contributed, in a considerable
degree, to revive the authority of the Eastern Church.
The church was peculiarly Greek; indeed, so much so,
that an admixture of foreign blood was generally re-
garded as almost equivalent to a taint of heresy. As
the priests were chosen from every rank of society,
the whole Greek nation was usually interested in the
prosperity and passions of the church. In learning
and moral character, the higher clergy were far supe-
rior to the rest of the aristocracy, and thus they pos-
sessed a moral influence capable of protecting their
friends and adherents among the people, in many
questions with the civil government. This legitimate
authority, which was very great in the civil adminis-
tration, and was supported by national feelings and
prejudices, gave them unbounded influence, the moment
that any dispute ranged the Greek clergy and people
on the same side in their opposition to the imperial
power. The Greek Church appears for a long period
of history as the only public representative of the
feelings and views of the nation, and, after the acces-
sion of Leo the Isaurian, it must be regarded as an
institution which tended to preserve the national ex-
istence of the Greeks.
Amidst the numerous vices in the social state of
mankind at this period, it is consoling to be able to
find a single virtue. The absence of all national feel-
ing in the imperial armies exercised a humane influence
¹ Heraclius was a Roman of Africa; Leontius was an Isaurian (Niceph. Pat.
25); Leo, an Isaurian (see Theophanes, Ch. 300; Le Beau, xii. 93, 97). Phi-
lippicus and Leo V. were Armenians; Nicephorus was of Arabian descent
(Abou'lfaradj, 139). Michael II., of Amorium, was said to be a Jew (Cedrenus,
H. C. 2, 496); he was probably of Phrygian race.
A. D.
633-716.
502
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. on the wars which the empire carried on against the
Saracens. It is certain that the religious hatred, subse-
quently so universal between the Christians and
Mohammedans, was not very violent in the seventh
and eighth centuries. The facility with which the
orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem and of Alexandria
submitted to the government of the Mohammedans has
been already mentioned. The empire, it is true, was
generally the loser by this want of national and
patriotic feeling among the Christians; but, on the
other hand, the gain to humanity was immense, as is
proved by the liberality of Moawyah, who rebuilt the
church of Edessa. The Arabs for some time contin-
ued to be guided by the sentiments of justice which
Mahomet had carefully inculcated, and their treatment
of their heretic subjects was far from oppressive, in a
religious point of view. When Abdalmelik desired to
convert the splendid church of Damascus into a mosque,
he abstained, on finding that the Christians of Damascus
were entitled to keep possession of it, by the terms of
their original capitulation. The insults which Justinian
II. and the caliph Walid respectively offered to the
religion of his rival, were rather the effect of personal
insolence and tyranny, than of any sentiment of reli-
gious bigotry. Justinian quarrelled with Abdalmelik,
on account of the ordinary superscription of the caliph's
letters-"Say there is one God, and that Mahomet is his
prophet." Walid violently expelled the Christians from
the great church of Damascus, and converted it into a
mosque. At this period, any connection of Roman
subjects with the Saracens was viewed as ordinary
treason, and not as subsequently in the time of the
Crusades, in the light of an inexpiable act of sacrilege.
Even the accusation brought against the Pope, Martin,
of corresponding with the Saracens, does not appear to
have been made with the intention of charging him
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
503
with blacker treason than that which resulted from his
supporting the rebel exarch Olympius. All rebels who
found their enterprise desperate, naturally sought assist-
ance from the Saracens, as the most powerful enemies
of the empire. The Armenian, Mizizius, who was pro-
claimed emperor at Syracuse, after the murder of Con-
stans II., applied to the Saracens for aid. The Arme-
nian Christians continually changed sides between the
emperor and the caliph, as the alliance of each appeared
to afford them the fairest hopes of serving their poli-
tical and religious interests. But as the Greek nation
became more and more identified with the political in-
terests of the church, and as barbarism and ignorance
spread more widely among the population of the Byzan-
tine and Arabian empires, the feelings of mutual hatred
became daily more violent.
The government of the Roman empire had long been
despotic and weak, and the financial administration
corrupt and oppressive; but still its subjects enjoyed a
benefit of which the rest of mankind were almost entirely
destitute, in the existence of an admirable code of laws,
and a complete judicial establishment, separated from
the other branches of the public administration. It is
to the existence of this judicial establishment, guided
by a published code of laws, and controlled by a body of
lawyers educated in public schools, that the subjects of
the empire were chiefly indebted for the superiority in
civilisation which they still retained over the rest of
the world. In spite of the neglect displayed in the
other branches of the administration, the central gov-
ernment always devoted particular care to the dispensa-
tion of justice in private cases, as the surest means of
maintaining its authority, and securing its power,
against the evil effects of its fiscal extortions. The
profession of the law continued to form an independent
body, in which learning and reputation were a surer
A. D.
633-716.
504
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. means of arriving at wealth and honour than the
pro-
tection of the great; for the government itself was,
from interest, generally induced to select the ablest
members of the legal profession for judicial offices.
The existence of the legal profession, uniting together
a numerous body of educated men, guided by the same
general views, and connected by similar studies, habits
of thought, and interests, must have given the lawyers
an independence both of character and position, which,
when they were removed from the immediate influence
of the court, could not fail to operate as some check
on the arbitrary abuse of administrative and fiscal
power.
In all countries which exist for any length of time
in a state of civilisation, a number of local, communal,
and municipal institutions are created, which really
perform a considerable portion of the duties of civil
government; for no central administration can carry
its control into every detail; and those governments
which attempt to carry their interference farthest are
generally observed to be those which leave most of
the real work of government undone. During the
greater period of the Roman domination, the Greeks
had been allowed to retain their own municipal and
provincial institutions, as has been stated in the
earlier part of this work, and the details of the civil
administration were left almost entirely in their
hands. Justinian I. destroyed this system as far as
lay in his power; and the effects of the unprotected
condition of the Greek population have been seen in
the facilities which were afforded to the ravages of the
Avars and Sclavonians. As the empire grew weaker,
and the danger from the barbarians more imminent,
the imperial regulations could not be regarded. Un-
less the Greeks had obtained the right of bearing arms,
their towns and villages must have fallen a prey to
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
505
every passing band of brigands, and their commerce
would have been annihilated by Sclavonian and Sara-
cen cruisers. The inhabitants of Venice, Istria, and
Dalmatia, the citizens of Gaëta, Capua, Naples, and
Salerno, and the inhabitants of continental Greece, the
Peloponnesus, and the Archipelago, would have been
exterminated by their barbarous neighbours, unless
they had possessed not only arms which they were
able and willing to use, but also a municipal form of
local administration capable of directing the energies
of the people without consulting the central govern-
ment at Constantinople. The possession of arms, and
the government of a native magistracy, gradually re-
vived the spirit of independence; and to these circum-
stances must be traced the revival of the wealth of the
Greek islands, and of the commercial cities of the Pelo-
ponnesus. Many patriotic Greeks may possibly have
lived brooding over the sufferings of their country in
the monasteries, whose number was one of the greatest
social evils of the time; and the furious monks, who
frequently issued from their retirement to insult the
imperial authority under some religious watchword,
were often inspired by political and national resent-
ments which they could not avow.
Although the period of history which has been treated
in this work has brought down the record of events to
the final destruction of ancient political society in the
Eastern Empire, still the reader must carefully bear
in mind that the change had not, in the seventh and
eighth centuries, completely changed the external ap-
pearance of the ancient cities of the empire. Though
the wealth and the numbers of the inhabitants had
diminished, most of the public buildings of the ancient
Greeks existed in all their splendour, and it would be
a very incorrect picture indeed of a Greek city of this
period, to suppose that it resembled in any way the
A. D.
633-716.
506
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
2
CHAP. V. filthy and ill-constructed burghs of the middle ages.¹
The solid fortifications of ancient military architecture
still defended many cities against the assaults of the
Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and Saracens; the splendid
monuments of ancient art were still preserved in all
their brilliancy, though unheeded by the passer-by;
the agoras were frequented, though by a less numerous
and less busy population; the ancient courts of justice
were still in use, and the temples of Athens had yet
sustained no injury from time, and little from neglect.
The enmity of the iconoclasts to picture-worship, which,
as Colonel Leake justly remarks, has been the theme
for much exaggeration, had not yet caused the destruc-
tion of the statues and paintings of pure Grecian art.
The classical student, with Pausanias in his hand,
might unquestionably have identified every ancient
site noticed by that author in his travels, and viewed
the greater part of the buildings which he describes.
In many of the smaller cities of Greece it is doubtless
true that the barbarians had left dreadful marks of
their severity. When imperial vanity could be grati-
fied by the destruction of ancient works of art, or when
the value of their materials made them an object of
cupidity, the finest masterpieces of sculpture were
exposed to ruin. The emperor Anastasius I. per-
mitted the finest bronze statues, which Constantine
had collected from all the cities of Greece, to be
melted into a colossal image of himself.3 During the
reign of Constans II., the bronze tiles of the Pantheon
1 Some fine statues were found in the ruins of Eclana, a town near Beneven-
tum which was destroyed by Constans II. (4. D. 663). They were conveyed
to Spain.-- Le Beau, xi. 387.
2
Topography of Athens and the Demi, vol. i. p. 65. I am not quite sure that
"it was about the age of the iconoclastic dispute that the productions of an-
cient sculpture finally disappeared from every part of the ancient world, with
the sole exception of the Byzantine capital." They appear, from the position
in which monuments are often found, to have been preserved untouched to a
much later period, and it seems probable that they only then began to be ex-
posed to destruction for the use of the materials of which they were composed.
Malalas, xvi. 42, edit. Venet.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
507
A. D.
of Rome were taken away. Yet new statues continued
to be crected to the emperors in the last days of the 633-716.
empire. A colossal statue of bronze, attributed to the
emperor Heraclius, existed at Barletta, in Apulia, as
late as the fourteenth century.
That the Greeks had
not yet ceased entirely to set some value on art, is
proved by the well-executed cameos and intaglios, and
the existing mosaics, which cannot be attributed to an
earlier period. Yet no more barbarous coinage ever
circulated than that which issued from the mint of
Constantinople during the early part of the seventh
century. The soul of art, indeed, that public feeling
which inspires correct taste, was extinct, and the ex-
cellence of execution still existing was only the result
of mechanical dexterity, and apt imitation of good
models.
The destinies of literature were very similar to those
of art; nothing was now understood but what was
directly connected with practical utility; but the
memory of the ancient writers was still respected, and
the cultivation of literature still conferred a high degree
of reputation. Learning was neither neglected nor
despised, though its objects were sadly misunderstood,
and its pursuits confined to a small circle of votaries.
The learned institutions, the libraries, and the univer-
sities of Alexandria, Antioch, Berytus, and Nisibis, were
destroyed; but at Athens, Thessalonica, and Constan-
tinople, literature and science were not utterly neglected;
public libraries and all the conveniences for a life of
study still existed. Many towns must have contained
individuals who solaced their hours by the use of these
libraries; and although poverty, the difficulties of com-
munication, and declining taste, daily circumscribed the
numbers of the learned, there can be no doubt that they
were never without some influence on society. Their
1 Visconti, Icon. Rom. iv. 165.
508
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
1
CHAP. V. habits of life and the love of retirement, which a know-
ledge of the past state of their country tended to nourish,
certainly inclined this class rather to conceal themselves
from public notice, than to intrude on the attention
of their countrymen. The principal Greek poet who
flourished during the latter years of the Roman empire,
and whose writings have been preserved, is George
Pisida, the author of three poems in iambic verses on
the exploits of Heraclius, written in the seventh century.
It would perhaps be difficult, in the whole range of
literature, to point to poetry which conveys less infor-
mation on the subject which he pretends to celebrate,
than that of George Pisida. In taste and poetical inspir-
ation, he is quite as deficient as in judgment, and he dis-
plays no trace of any national character. The historical
literature of the period is certainly superior to the
poetical in merit, for though most of the writers offer
little to praise in their style, still much that is curious
and valuable is preserved in the portion of their writ-
ings which we possess. The fragments of the historian
Menander of Constantinople, written about the com-
mencement of the seventh century, make us regret the
loss of his entire work. From these fragments we
derive much valuable information concerning the state
of the empire, and his literary merit is by no means
contemptible. The most important work relating to
this period is the general history of Theophylactus Simo-
catta, who wrote in the earlier part of the seventh cen-
tury. His work contains a great deal of curious infor-
mation, evidently collected with considerable industry;
but, as Gibbon remarks, he is harmless of taste or genius,
2
1 The best edition is that of Bekker, in the collection of the Byzantine his-
torians, now publishing at Bonn. It is included in the same volume as Paulus
Silentiarius and the patriarch Nicephorus. The two poets deserved an index,
for nobody is likely to peruse them for amusement.
2 The fragments of Menander are contained in the first volume of the Bonn
edition of the Byzantine historians, a volume valuable to those who may feel
little interest in the greater part of the collection.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
509
and these deficiencies lead him to mistake the relative
importance of historical facts.' He is supposed to have
been of Egyptian origin.
Two chronological writers, John Malalas, and the
author of the "Chronicon Paschale," likewise deserve
notice, as they supply valuable and authentic testimony
as to many important events. The many curious
notices concerning earthquakes, inundations, fires,
plagues, and prodigies, which appear in the Byzantine
chronicles, afford strong ground for inferring that some-
thing like our modern newspapers must have been pub-
lished even in the latter days of the empire. The only
ecclesiastical historian who belongs to this period is
Evagrius, whose church history extends from A. D. 429
to 593. In literary merit he is inferior to the civil
historians, but his work has preserved many facts which
would otherwise have been lost. The greater number
of the literary and scientific productions of this age are
not deserving of particular notice. Few, even of the
most learned and industrious scholars, consider that an
acquaintance with the pages of those whose writings
are preserved, is of more importance than a knowledge
of the names of those whose works are lost.2 The dis-
covery of paper, which Gibbon says came from Samar-
cand to Mecca about 710, seems to have contributed
quite as much to multiply worthless books as to preserve
the most valuable ancient classics. By rendering the
materials of writing more accessible in an age destitute
of taste, and devoted to ecclesiastical and theological
disputation, it announced the arrival of the stream of
improvement in a deluge of muddy pedantry and dark
stupidity.
1 Decline and Fall, ch. xlvi. notes 34, 55.
2 For information on Greek literary history, see Fabricii, Bibliotheca Græca,
edit. Harless. Hamb. 1790, &c. Schoell, Histoire de la Litterature Grecque
Profane, &c., Paris, 1823; or the improved German translation by Dr Pinder.
Petersen, Handbuch der Griechischen Litteratur Geschichte. Hamb. 1831.
A. D.
633-716.
510
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V.
The mighty change which had taken place in the
influence of Greek literature since the time of the Mace-
donian conquest deserves attention. All the most valu-
able monuments of its excellence were preserved, and
time had in no way diminished their value. But the
mental supremacy of the Greeks had, nevertheless,
received a far severer shock than their political power;
and there was far less hope of their recovering from the
blow, since they were themselves the real authors of
their literary degeneracy, and the sole admirers of the
inflated vanity which had become their national cha-
racteristic.¹ The admitted superiority of Greek authors
in taste and truth, those universal passports to admira-
tion, had once induced a number of writers of foreign
race to aspire to fame by writing in Greek; and this
happened not only during the period of the Macedonian
domination, but also under the Roman empire, after
the Greeks had lost all political supremacy, when Latin
was the official language of the civilised world, and the
dialects of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, possessed a civil
and scientific, as well as an ecclesiastical literature.
The Greeks forfeited this high position by their inor-
dinate self-adulation. This feeling kept their minds
stationary, while the rest of mankind was moving for-
ward. Even when they embraced Christianity they
could not lay aside the trammels of a state of society
which they had repudiated; they retained so many of
their old vices that they soon corrupted Christianity
into Greek orthodoxy.
The position of the Greeks was completely changed by
the conquests of the Arabs. At Alexandria, in Syria, and
Cyrenaïca, they soon became extinct; and that portion
of their literature which still retained a value in the
eyes of mankind came to be viewed in a totally dif
ferent light. The Arabs of the eighth century un-
1 Dion. Chrysostomus, Οr. 38. Ἑλληνικὰ ἁμαρτήματα.
CONDITION OF THE GREEKS.
511
doubtedly regarded the scientific literature of the
Greeks with great respect, but they considered it only
as a mine from which to extract a useful metal. The
study of the Greek language was no longer a matter
of the slightest importance, for the learned Arabians
were satisfied if they could master the results of science
by the translations of their Syrian subjects. It has
been said that Arabic has held the rank of an universal
language as well as Greek, but the fact must be ad-
mitted only in the restricted sense of applying it to
their extensive empire. The different range of the
mental and moral power of the literatures of Arabia, of
Rome, and of Greece, is only, in our age, becoming fully
apparent.
There is no country in the world more directly de-
pendent on commerce for the well-being of its inhabi-
tants than the land occupied by the Greeks round the
Ægean Sea. Nature has separated these territories by
mountains and seas into a variety of districts, whose
productions are so different, that unless commerce
afford great facilities for exchanging the surplus of each,
the population must remain comparatively small, and
must languish in a state of poverty and privation.
The Greeks still possessed the greater share of that
commerce which they had for ages enjoyed in the Medi-
terranean. The conquest of Alexandria and Carthage
undoubtedly gave it a severe blow, and the existence
of a numerous maritime population in Syria, Egypt,
and Africa, enabled the Arabs to share the profits of a
trade which had hitherto been a monopoly of the Greeks.
The absolute government of the caliphs, their jealousy
of their Christian subjects, and the civil wars which so
often laid waste their dominions, rendered property too
insecure in their dominions for commerce to flourish
with the same tranquillity which it enjoyed under the
legal despotism of the Eastern emperors; for commerce
A. D.
633-716.
512
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. cannot long exist without a systematic administration,
and soon declines, if its natural course be at all inter-
rupted.
1
The wealth of Syria at the time of its conquest by
the Arabs proves that the commerce of the trading
cities of the Roman empire was still considerable. A
caravan, consisting of four hundred loads of silk and
sugar was on its way to Baalbec at the time the place
was attacked. Extensive manufactories of silk and
dye-stuffs flourished, and several great fairs assisted in
circulating the various commodities of the land through
the different provinces. The establishment of post-
horses was at first neglected by the Arabs, but it was
soon perceived to be so essential to the prosperity of
the country, that it was restored by the caliph Moawyah.
The Syrian cities continued, under the Saracen govern-
ment, to retain their wealth and trade as long as their
municipal rights were respected. No more remarkable
proof of this fact need be adduced, than the circum-
stance of the local mints supplying the whole currency
of the country until the year 695, when the Sultan
Abdalmelik first established a national gold and silver
coinage.2
Even the Arabian conquests were insufficient to de-
prive the empire of the great share which it held in the
Indian trade. Though the Greeks lost all direct political
control over it, they still retained possession of the
carrying trade of the south of Europe; and the Indian
commodities destined for that market passed almost
entirely through their hands. The Arabs, in spite of
the various expeditions which they fitted out to attack
Constantinople, never succeeded in forming a maritime
power; and their naval strength declined with the
1 Ockley, i. 166.
2 Sauley, Lettres à M. Reinaud, Membre de l'Institut, sur quelques points de
la Numismatique Arabe. Curt Bose, Ueber Arabische Byzantinische Münzen.
Grunina, 1840.
COMMERCE.
513
1
numbers and wealth of their Christian subjects, until it
dwindled into a few piratical squadrons. The emperors
of Constantinople really remained the masters of the
sea, and their subjects the inheritors of the riches which
its commerce affords.2
The principal trade of the Greeks, after the Arabian
conquests, consisted of three branches,-the Mediter-
ranean trade with the nations of Western Europe, the
home trade, and the Black Sea trade. The state of
society in the south of Europe was still so disordered,
in consequence of the settlements of the barbarians, that
the trade for supplying them with Indian commodities.
and the manufactures of the East was entirely in the
hands of the Jews and Greeks, and commerce solely in
that of the Greeks. The consumption of spices and
incense was then enormous; a large quantity of spice
was employed at the tables of the rich, and Christians
burned incense daily in their churches. The wealth
engaged in carrying on this traffic belonged chiefly to
the Greeks; and although the Arabs, after they had
rendered themselves masters of the two principal chan-
nels of the Indian trade, through Persia and Syria, and
by the Red Sea and Egypt, contrived to participate in
its profits, the Greeks still regulated the trade by the
command of the northern route through central Asia
to the Black Sea. The consumption of Indian produc-
tions was generally too small at any particular port to
admit of whole cargoes forming the staple of a direct
commerce with the West. The Greeks rendered this
traffic profitable, from the facility with which they
could prepare mixed cargoes by adding the fruit, oil,
and wine of their native provinces, and the produce of
their own industry; for they were then the principal
1
Compare Theophanes, Ch. 332, and Scriptores post Theoph. 46.
To
2 Τὸ τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Κωνσταντινουπόλεως θαλασσοκρατεῖν μέχρι τῶν Ἡρακλέους
ornhŵv xai raoñs óμov rñi wds Daλáoons."-Constant. Porphyr. De Them. p. 58,
edit. Bonn.
A. D.
633-716.
2 K
514
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. manufacturers of silk, dyed woollen fabrics, jewellery,
arms, rich dresses, and ornaments. The importance of
this trade was one of the principal causes which enabled
the Roman empire to retain the conquests of Justinian
in Spain and Sardinia, and this commercial influence of
the Greek nation checked the power of the Goths, the
Lombards, and the Avars, and gained for them as many
allies as the avarice and tyranny of the exarchs and
imperial officers created enemies. It may not be super-
fluous to remark, that the invectives against the govern-
ment and persons of the exarchs which abound in the
works of the Italians, and from them have been copied
into the historians of Western Europe, must always be
sifted with care, as they are the outbreaks of the violent
political aversion of the Latin ecclesiastics to the au-
thority of the Eastern Empire, not an echo of the
general opinion of society. The people of Rome, Venice,
Genoa, Naples, and Amalfi, clung to the Roman empire
from feelings of interest, long after they possessed the
power of assuming perfect independence. These feelings
of interest arose from the commercial connection of the
West and East. The Italians did not yet possess capital
sufficient to carry on the eastern trade without the
assistance of the Greeks. The return cargoes from the
north consisted chiefly of slaves, wood for building,
raw materials of various kinds, and provisions for the
maritime districts.¹
The most important branch of trade, in a large empire,
must ever be that which is carried on within its own
territory, for the advantage of its subjects. The pecu-
liar circumstances have been noticed that make the
prosperity of the inhabitants of those countries which
are inhabited by the Greek race essentially dependent on
1 Constant. Porph. De Cer. Aulæ Byz. 1. i. c. 72; vol. i. p. 363, edit. Bonn.
Anastasius, De Vitis Pont. Rom. p. 79. The Venetians, in 960, were forbidden
by the Pope to export Christian slaves to sell them to the Saracens.
COMMERCE.
515
2
commerce.¹ The internal commerce, if it had been left
unfettered by restrictions, would probably have saved
the Roman empire; but the financial difficulties, caused
by the lavish expenditure of Justinian I., induced that
emperor to invent a system of monopolies, which ulti-
mately threw the trade of the empire into the hands of
the free citizens of Venice and Amalfi, whom it had
compelled to assume independence. Silk, oil, various
manufactures, and even grain, were made the subject of
monopolies, and temporary restrictions were at times
laid on particular branches of trade for the profit of
favoured individuals.³ The traffic in grain between
the different provinces of the empire was subjected to
onerous, and often arbitrary arrangements; and the
difficulties which nature had opposed to the circulation
of the necessaries of life, as an incentive to human in-
dustry were increased, and the inequalities of price
augmented for the profit of the treasury or the gain of
the fiscal officers, until industry was destroyed by the
burden.5
4
These monopolies, and the administration which sup-
ported them, were naturally odious to the mercantile
classes. When it became necessary, in order to retain
the Mediterranean trade, to violate the great principle
of the empire, that the subjects should not be intrusted
with arms, nor fit out armed vessels to carry on distant
commerce, these armed vessels, whenever they were able
to do so with impunity, violated the monopolies and
fiscal regulations of the emperors. The independence
1 The ancient prosperity of Greece is shown in the existence of numerous
small towns celebrated for their manufactures. Thus the purple dye of Meliboa,
a little town on Mount Ossa.--Lucretius, 2, 499. Virgil, En. 5, 251. Leake's
Travels in Northern Greece, iii. 388.
2 Procopius, Hist. Arc. c. 25, where particular mention is made of a monopoly
of silk at Berytus and Tyre.
5
3 Leo Gramm. Chron. p. 477.
Procop. Hist. Arc. c. 22, p. 64.
A.D. $88.
Digest. 1. 50, tit. 5, De vacat. et excusat. Muncrum, 1. 9. De Negotiatoribus
Frumentariis.
A. D.
633-716.
516
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. of the Italian and Dalmatian cities then became a con-
dition of their commercial prosperity. There can be
little doubt, that if the Greek commercial classes had
been able to escape the superintendence of the imperial
administration as easily as the Italians, they, too, would
have asserted their independence; for the emperors of
Constantinople never viewed the merchants of their
dominions in any other light than as a class from whom
money was to be obtained in every possible way.¹ This
view is common in all absolute governments. An in-
stinctive aversion to the independent position of the com-
mercial classes, joined to a contempt for trade, usually
suggests such measures as eventually drive commerce
from countries under despotic rule. The little republics
of Greece, the free cities of the Syrian coast, Carthage,
the republics of Italy, the Hanse towns, Holland,
England, and America, all illustrate by their history
how much trade is dependent on those free institutions
which offer a security against financial oppression; while
the Roman empire affords an instructive lesson of the
converse.
2
The trade of Constantinople with the countries round
the Black Sea, was an important element in the com-
mercial prosperity of the empire. Byzantium served as
the entrepôt of this commerce, and the traffic to the
south of the Hellespont, even before it became the
capital of the Roman empire. After that event, its
commerce was as much augmented as its population.
It was supplied with a tribute of grain from Egypt,
and of cattle from the Tauric Chersonese, which kept
provisions generally at a low price, and made it the
seat of a flourishing manufacturing industry. The
commerce of the countries to the north of the Black
1 Procop. Hist. Arc. c. 25.
2 Polybius, Hist. iv. sect. 38, 4; vol. ii. p. 55, edit. Tauch.
3 Cedrenus, 367. Theophanes, Chron. p. 149. Constant. Porph. De Adm.
Imp. c. 6.
RELIGIOUS FEELING.
517
Sea, the fur and the Indian trade, by the Caspian, the
Oxus, and the Indus, centred at Constantinople, whence
the merchants distributed the various articles they im-
ported among the nations of the West, and received in
exchange the productions of these countries. The great
value of this commerce, even to the barbarous nations
which obtained a share in it, is frequently mentioned
by the Byzantine historians. The Avars had profited
greatly by this traffic, and the decline of their empire
was attributed to its decay; though there can be little
doubt that the real cause, both of the decline of the
trade and of the Avar power, arose from the insecurity
of property, originating in bad government.¹ The
wealth of the mercantile and manufacturing classes in
Constantinople contributed, in no small degree, to the
success with which that city repulsed the attacks of the
Avars and the Saracens.
Nothing could tend more to give us a correct idea
of the real position of the Greek nation at the com-
mencement of the eighth century, than a view of the
moral condition of the lower orders of the people; but,
unfortunately, all materials, even for a cursory inquiry
into this subject, are wanting. The few casual notices
which can be gleaned from the lives of the saints,
afford the only authentic evidence of popular feeling.
It cannot, however, escape notice, that even the shock
which the Mohammedan conquests had given to the
orthodox church, had failed to recall its ministers back
to their real duty of inculcating the pure principles of
the Christian religion. They continued their old prac-
tice of confounding the intellects of their congregations,
by propagating a belief in false miracles, and by discus-
sing the unintelligible distinctions of scholastic theo-
logy. From the manner in which religion was treated
by the Eastern clergy, the people could profit little
1 Suidas, v. Boúλyaçıı.—Vol. i. 1017, edit. Bernhardy.
A. D.
633-716.
518
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAP. V. from the histories of imaginary saints, and understand
nothing of the doctrines which they were instructed to
consider as the essence of their religion. The conse-
quence was, that they began to fall back on the idle tra-
ditions of their ancestors, and to blend the last recollec-
tions of paganism with new superstitions, derived from
a perverted application of the consolations of Christi-
anity. Relics of pagan usages were retained; a belief
that the spirits of the dead haunted the paths of the
living, was general in all ranks; a respect for the bones
of martyrs, and a confidence in the figures on amulets,
became the real doctrines of the popular faith. The
connection which existed between the clergy and the
people, powerful and great as it really was, appears at
bottom to have been based on social and political
grounds. Pure religion was so rare, that the word only
served as a pretext for increasing the power of the clergy,
who appear to have found it easier to make use of the
superstitions of the people than of their religious and
moral feelings. The ignorant condition of the lower
orders, and particularly of the rural population, explains
the curious fact, that paganism continued to exist in
the mountains of Greece as late as the reign of the
Emperor Basil (A.D. 867-886), when the Maniates of
Mount Taygetus were at last converted to Christianity.1
It has often been asserted, that about this time con-
tinental Greece, the Peloponnesus, and the islands of
the Archipelago, were reduced to such a state of desti-
tution and barbarism, because they are only mentioned
by historians as places of banishment for criminals.2
But this mode of announcing the fact, that many
persons of rank were exiled to the cities of Greece,
leaves an incorrect impression on the mind of the
reader, for the most flourishing cities of the East were
1 Constant. Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. c. 50; vol. iii. 224, edit. Bonn.
2 Gibbon, ch. xlviii.; vol. vi. 78, 85, Smith's edit. Emerson's History of
Modern Greece, i. 56.
PLACES OF EXILE.
519
often selected as the places best adapted for the safe
custody of political prisoners. We know from Con-
stantine Porphyrogenitus that Cherson was a powerful
commercial city, whose alliance or enmity was of con-
siderable importance to the Byzantine empire, even so
late as the tenth century.¹ Yet this city was often
selected as a place of banishment for persons of high
rank, who were regarded as dangerous state criminals.
Pope Martin was banished thither by Constans II., and
it was the place of exile of the emperor Justinian II.
The emperor Philippicus, before he ascended the throne,
had been exiled by Tiberius Apsimar to Cephallenia,
and by Justinian II. to Cherson, a circumstance which
would lead us to infer that a residence in the islands
of Greece was considered a more agreeable sojourn
than that of Cherson. Several of the adherents of
Philippicus were, after his dethronement, banished to
Thessalonica, one of the richest and most populous
cities of the empire.2
The command of the imperial troops in Greece was
considered an office of high rank, and it was accord-
ingly conferred on Leontius, when Justinian II. wished
to persuade that general that he was restored to favour.
Leontius made it the stepping-stone to the throne.
But the strongest proof of the wealth and prosperity
of the cities of Greece, is to be found in the circum-
stance of their being able to fit out the expedition
which ventured to attempt wresting Constantinople
from the grasp of a soldier and statesman, such as
Leo the Isaurian was known to be, at the time when
the Greeks deliberately resolved to overturn his throne.³
It is difficult to form any correct representation of
a state of society so different from our own, as that
which existed among the Greeks in the eighth century.
1 Const. Porph. De Adm. Imp. c. 53; vol. iii. 269, edit. Bonn.
3 Theophanes, Chron. 321.
2 See Byzantine Empire, i. 43.
R
A. D.
633-716.
520
EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN POWER.
CHAР. V. The rural districts, on the one hand, were reduced to
a state of desolation, and the towns, on the other,
flourished in wealth; agriculture was at the lowest
ebb, while trade was in a prosperous condition. If,
however, we look forward to the long series of misfor-
tunes which were required to bring this favoured land
to the state of complete destitution to which it sank
at a later period, we may arrive at a more accurate
knowledge of its condition, in the early part of the
eighth century, than would be possible were we to con-
fine our view to looking back at the records of its
ancient splendour, and to comparing a few lines in the
meagre chronicles of the Byzantine writers with the
volumes of earlier history recounting the greatest
actions with unrivalled elegance.
APPENDIX.
I. ON THE BLINDNESS OF BELISARIUS.
II. ON ROMAN AND BYZANTINE MONEY.
III. ON THE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
IV. CATALOGUE OF BYZANTINE HISTORIANS COMPRISED
IN THE EDITIONS OF PARIS AND VENICE.
#
APPENDIX.
I.
ON THE BLINDNESS OF BELISARIUS.¹
2
LORD MAHION, in his Life of Belisarius, published in 1829, has
endeavoured to set aside the verdict of historians concerning the
blindness of Belisarius, which Ducange, Gibbon, Le Beau, and
Clinton pronounce to be an invention of later times. Undoubtedly,
neither the critical sagacity nor the profound knowledge of these
eminent writers ought to command our assent, if historical evidence
could be produced with which they were not acquainted. Lord Mahon
cites what he considers a new authority on the subject. He points
out that the blindness of Belisarius is mentioned as early as the
latter part of the eleventh century in an anonymous writer who has
left a description of Constantinople. This guide-book was written
more than five hundred years after the death of the emperor
Justinian; and unless its authority be quite free from doubt, it can
hardly be considered as more valuable testimony on a point of
Roman history than a London guide-book, written in 1829, would
be concerning the garter of Lady Salisbury. The passage in
question informs us that Justinian, from envy (and not, as history
says, because Belisarius was accused of being privy to a conspiracy
against the emperor), ordered the eyes of his generalissimo Beli-
sarius to be put out, and stationed him in the Laurus, with a bowl
of earthenware in his hand, that passers-by might toss him an
obolus. It seems probable that both Gibbon and Le Beau had not
overlooked this passage, though they make no allusion to it; for
they must have considered it refuted by the marks it bears of
being taken from a tale illustrating the vicissitudes of fortune and
the ingratitude of princes, and not from historical authority. Be-
sides, they probably observed that it was quite inconsistent with a
fact mentioned a few lines farther down on the same page, and for
1 See p. 293.
2 This work is ascribed to Michael Psellus, the prince of the philosophers.
524
APPENDIX.
which the guide-book was an excellent authority-namely, that
there was still standing near the palace of Chalke a gilded statue
of Belisarius beside a statue of the Emperor Justin I., and a cross
erected by Justinian. Now, in the case of a condemned traitor, the
first act was to throw down his statues; and if Belisarius had been
treated with extreme indignity, his statue would not have been
allowed to retain a place of singular honour. The position of this
statue indicates that it was a dedication of Justinian in the early
part of his reign. Belisarius left no posterity, and his exploits
were not likely to receive any public testimony of gratitude from
the successors of Justinian, who soon lost the provinces which had
been reunited to the empire by his victories. The anonymous writer
also, near the end of his work, mentions that Justinian, in order to
honour his victorious general, ordered a medal to be struck, having
on the reverse a figure of Belisarius armed with the inscription,
"Belisarius the glory of the Romans;" but that envy as usual
assailed him in his prosperity, and he was removed from his com-
mand. Here no allusion is made to his having been punished with
the loss of his eyes.
It is not easy to fix the period at which the tale of the blindness
of Belisarius obtained general currency, in company probably with
the secret histories of the court and the lives of the saints; but the
edition seen by the anonymous guide was probably not so old as
the latter part of the ninth century. A historical event somewhat
similar in circumstances is described by several writers ofc hroni-
cles in nearly similar words; and the punishment of Symbatios,
who rebelled against Michael III. (the Drunkard) in the year 866,
appears to have served as the foundation for the tale of Belisarius.
The words of the guide-book are: "Os ('Iouoriviavòs) Voregov
φθονήσας τῷ ξηθέντι στρατηγικωτά τῳ Βελισαρίῳ ἐξώρυξε τούτου τοὺς
ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ προσέταξε τούτον καθεσθῆναι εἰς τὰ Λαύρου καὶ ἐπιδοῦναι
αὐτῷ σκεῦος ὀστράκινον καὶ ἐπιξίπτειν αὐτῷ τοὺς διερχομένους ὀβολόν.
મ
1
The chronicles of the tenth century say: Καὶ ἀποτυφλοῦσι
Συμβατίου τὸν ἕνα ὀφθαλμον, καὶ ἐκκόπτουσι καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτοῦ χειρα :
καὶ ἐκάθισαν αὐτὸν εἰς τὰ Λαύσου καὶ δεδώκασι σκεῦος ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ
αὐτοῦ ἵνα ὃς ἔχῃ προαίρεσιν ἐπιρρίπτῃ αὐτῷ τί
દ
The guide-book would, in any case, require to be corroborated
by other evidence before it can be admitted as evidence of a
doubtful fact in the sixth century. Lord Mahon attempts to
supply confirmatory evidence by depreciating the authority of
Theophanes, and magnifying the value of John Tzetzes. Now,
1 Banduri, Imperium Orientale, tom. i. Ant. Con. p. 7; compare p. 80.
2 Scriptores post Theophanem, Georg. Mon. 540. Simeon Met. 449. Leo
Gramm. p. 469, edit. Par.
BLINDNESS OF BELISARIUS.
525
Theophanes may be, as Gibbon calls him, "the father of many a
lie," for the worthy confessor was credulous as well as pious; but
his chronography proves that he had before him many official
documents relating to the sixth and seventh centuries, and he has
used them generally, in spite of some confusion at times, so as to
be our best guide on many occasions. Theophanes wrote in the
early part of the ninth century, John Tzetzes in the latter part of
the twelfth, and he is generally considered a writer of very little
authority on any subject. One of his critics observes, very justly,
that he wrote a great number of verses, making a display of some
knowledge of everything but poetry. Besides, there is considerable
doubt whether Tzetzes believed the tale of the blindness of Beli-
sarius which he records, for he admonishes his readers that other
chronicles gave a very different account of the last days of Beli-
sarius; that they record that his eyes were not put out, and that he
was restored to his honours. According to every rule of evidence,
the testimony of Tzetzes is of less value than that of either Cedrenus,
Zonaras, or even Glycas. All these historians confirm the account
of Theophanes.
!
There is an edict in the Corpus Juris Civilis, which would decide
the question if its date and authenticity were firmly established.
It is dated in February 565, and was published by Cujacius. In
it Belisarius is entitled gloriosissimum Belisarium patricium. Now,
as Theophanes states that Belisarius was restored to his rank and
honours in the month of July 563, and that his death occurred in
the month of March 565, this edict would confirm his statement.
But a note in the last edition of the Corpus warns lawyers not to
put implicit faith in its authenticity. "Hoc privilegium editum
est in Cujac. obss. sed ex quo fonte desumptum sit, non indicatur,
nisi quod Cujacius a P. Galesio Hispano se id accepisse dicat.
Non sine ratione addidit Beck qui in app. corporis juris civ. hanc
constitutionem recepit, an genuina sit, dubio non carere."¹
If sound criticism, therefore, must set aside this edict, it must
also declare that the guide-book refutes its anonymous author
when he tells us that envy induced Justinian to put out the eyes of
Belisarius whose statue it described, and it cannot give more
weight to one of the statements of John Tzetzes than to the other.
Consequently the only historical authority we possess concerning
the last years of Belisarius is Theophanes, who appears to have
drawn his account of the investigations relating to the conspiracy
in which Belisarius was implicated from official records.²
1
2
Privilegium pro Titionibus. C. J. C. tom. ii. p. 511, edit. St.
Cedrenus, 387, Zonaras, ii. 69, and Glycas, 267, may be compared with
Joannis Tzetza Historiarum Variarum Chiliades, p. 94, edit. Kiessling, Lip. 1826.
526
APPENDIX.
II.
ON ROMAN AND BYZANTINE MONEY.
In reviewing the various causes which contributed to the decline
of the wealth and to the diminution of the population of the Roman
empire, it is necessary to take into account the depreciation of the
coinage, which frequently robbed large classes of the industrious
citizens of great part of their wealth, reduced the amount of
property in the empire, produced confusion in legal contracts, and
The evils which
anarchy in prices even in the public markets.¹
must have resulted from the enormous depreciation of the Roman
coinage at several periods can only be clearly understood by a
chronological record of the principal changes-by remembering that
each issue of a depreciated coinage was an act of bankruptcy on
the part of the reigning emperor-and by observing the ruinous
effects of similar conduct in modern times in the Othoman empire.
Whether the subject of the delinquency of the state be Roman
plated denarii, Turkish pewter piastres, French assignats, or
Austrian imperial paper florins, the fraud is the same in its nature.
A short account of the principal changes which took place in the
monetary system of the empire will be sufficient to explain the
evil results which they produced on the commerce and industry of
the eastern provinces.
From the conquest of Greece to the time of Augustus, both
Greek and Roman money circulated in the East. Large payments,
both of gold and silver, were made by weight. The great dis-
crepancy in the size of Greek silver coins in circulation rendered
the stamp of each mint merely a certificate of the purity of the
metal; for the drachma of different states varied in the proportion
of 7 to 10; and the Roman denarius was one-sixth lighter than the
Attic drachma.2
Augustus imposed the Roman monetary system as the official
standard in financial business for the whole Roman empire. No
mint was allowed to exist without the imperial licence. The per-
mission to coin copper money was, however, conceded to many
Greek local mints, and the privilege of coining silver money was
granted to several cities; but the only local mint of which gold
1 Zosimus, p. 54, edit. Bonn. Speaking of Aurelian's attempt to remedy
these evils, he says, Τὰ συμβόλαια συγχύσεως ἀπαλλάξας.
2 Col. Leake's Numismata Hellenica. A catalogue of Greek coins is of great
value, from giving the weight of all the Greek silver coins of importance,
besides containing many valuable observations.
ROMAN MONEY.
527
1
coins are known is that of Cæsarea in Cappadocia. Under the
carlier emperors, the money in circulation throughout the East
consisted chiefly of Greek and Macedonian coins. Mark Antony
and Augustus, however, appear to have coined a number of pieces of
three denarii in Asia Minor, to facilitate the collection of the taxes
in Roman money. After the restrictions placed on the coinage of
silver by the Greek mints, the tribute of the provinces was paid in
Roman money; and the receivers of the imperial revenues either
compelled the provincials to purchase denarii from the money-
changers, or received payments in Greek money at a rate which
allowed them a profit on the amount of Roman money remitted to
the imperial treasury.
The Roman coins in circulation from the time of Augustus
were, the aureus, of which forty were coined from a pound of gold,
and the half aureus; the denarius, of which eighty-four were
coined from a pound of silver, and the quinarius or victoriatus,
which was a half denarius.2 The copper coins were the sestertius,
weighing an ounce; the dupondius, weighing half-an-ounce'; the as,
which was nearly equal in size and weight to the dupondius, but
was distinguished from it by being coined of red copper, while the
sestertius and the dupondius were of a yellow brass.3 The colour
of the metal is not now always apparent through the rust of
centuries, but the as is generally of inferior fabric. Sixteen asses
were reckoned to the denarius; but in earlier times, as the name
indicates, the denarius had been divided into ten asses, and the
troops were always paid at that rate. The parts of the as in cir-
culation were the semissis, or half; the triens, or third; and the
quadrans, or quarter. Examples of all these coins exist; and it
would be a great improvement in numismatic works and collections
if the coins were arranged under their real denominations, instead
of being classed as large, middle, and small brass.
The Greek mints that were licensed by Augustus continued to
coin money on the old local standard. There are silver didrachmæ
of Nero from the mint of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and drachmæ from
that of Ephesus, with these denominations on the coins. But after
the time of Nero, the coinage of the Greek mints must have ob-
1 Eckhell, Doctrina Numorum Veterum, iii. 187. Sabatier (Production de
l'Or, de l'Argent et du Cuivre, chez les Anciens, p. 103) gives a list of twenty-five
Greek cities which coined silver under the emperors.
It
2 There is great uncertainty concerning the exact weight of the Roman
pound. Hussey estimates it at 5204 grains troy; Boeckh, at 5071; Longperier,
at 5014. In the time of Constantine it appears to have been about 5040.
may have been diminished at the mint during the six centuries which inter-
vened between the taking of Corinth and the fall of the Western Empire. I
have, therefore, assumed the pound after that time to be 5040 grains.
3 Pinkerton, Essay on Medals, i. 132. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 2.
4 Eckhell, vi. 279. Akerman, Numismatic Manual, 16.
528
APPENDIX.
tained only a limited circulation, as they were issued much under
the normal standard, in order to secure a profit to the municipality.
Its value was, nevertheless, maintained within the district where it
circulated, because it was received in all payments at its nominal
rate, not only in the public markets, but by the receivers of muni·
cipal taxes, and by the great civil and religious corporations of the
place. At the same time, the abundant issue of copper money by
many Greek mints must have accelerated the operation of withdraw-
ing silver coin from general circulation. Even Greek local silver
coins would soon be at a premium, from the facility of transporting
them from one place to another in the neighbourhood when con-
siderable payments were required. The increasing rarity of silver
in the Greek cities soon gave rise to the coinage of the large copper
pieces, called medallions, which were current for half a drachma,
or half a denarius, and which became numerous during the second
century. About the same period, the silver coins of Antioch and
Cæsarea are debased with a larger proportion of alloy.
The first official step in the deterioration of the Roman coinage
was made by Nero. He reduced the size both of the aureus and
the denarius by coining 45 aurei from a pound of gold, and 96
denarii from a pound of silver, thereby retaining the proportion of
25 denarii to an aureus; for the relative value of silver to gold was
then as 12 to 1. But as Nero coined his silver money below the
nominal standard, the actual quantity of silver in his denarii made
the proportion in his coins as 10.68 to 1.¹ Succeeding emperors
increased the quantity of alloy in the denarius; and in the time of
Severus (A.D. 193-211), the twenty-five denarii, which were ex-
changed for an aureus, and which ought, according to the standard,
to have contained 1320 grains of pure silver, really contained only
about 670 grains. To this extent the depreciation of the coinage
had been carried by the fraudulent conduct of the emperors at the
commencement of the third century.
2
Caracalla in the year 215 made the second great official change
in the standard of the imperial money. He reduced the value of
the aureus as well as of the denarius, by coining 50 aurei from a
pound of gold, and by adding nearly twenty-five per cent of alloy
to the silver coins. The denarius now weighed only about 50
grains, and of these only about 36 grains were of pure silver.
Caracalla also introduced a new silver coin, the argenteus Antonini-
anus, of 60 to the pound. This became subsequently the principal
¹ Mommsen, Ueber den Verfall des Roemischen Münzwesens in der Kaiserzeit,
192.
2 That the depreciation by Caracalla was effected in the eighteenth year of
his tribunitian power (A.D. 215) is proved by coins.-De la Nauze, Mémoires de
l'Academie des Inscrip., xxx. 392.
ROMAN MONEY.
529
silver coin of the empire. It is distinguished by the radiated
crown of the emperor, and by the bust of the empress being placed
on a half-moon. This new coin was minted with a large proportion
of alloy.¹
1
2
After the time of Caracalla the deterioration of the Roman
coinage took place in the most variable and arbitrary manner.
Some emperors issued both gold and silver coins greatly deficient
in weight and purity, while others returned to the standard of
Caracalla, as appears by the existing aurei of Aurelian, Tacitus,
and Probus. The size of the denarius was retained for a time, in
order to facilitate its circulation, at the rate of 25 to an aureus.
But the proportion of alloy was gradually increased, until the
denarius was replaced by the argenteus, which also became at last
so depreciated, that it was coined by Gallienus, near the end of his
reign, of a base metal washed over with silver. During the whole
period between Caracalla and Gallienus, 25 denarii were reckoned
in account as equal to an aureus. But in the reign of Gordian III.
the denarius had become so depreciated, that the aureus was ex-
changed for 25 argentei, and as long as the argenteus contained.
from 38 to 40 per cent of pure silver, it maintained this course by
its real value. After the reign of Philippus, however, it was
reduced in size, and depreciated in quality in an irregular manner,
so that the derangement in the coinage must have produced a con-
stant variation in the price of gold, and inexplicable confusion in
all monetary transactions. Elagabalus, and even Alexander Seve-
rus, committed acts of bankruptcy, by issuing debased silver coins,
which must have ruined innumerable families, and caused incal-
culable misery. The first lavished money, coined on the legal
standard, among his vicious companions, and paid his debts with
debased money. Even Alexander Severus issued good money to
his friends, and circulated bad among his subjects. Both enforced
payment of the public taxes in gold coins of full weight. The
¹ Dio Cassius, 77, 4, mentions the frauds of Caracalla.
3
2 The proportion of silver in the denarius had fallen to 45 per cent before
the end of Caracalla's reign. It fell lower subsequently.
Under Elagabalus,
A.D. 218-222 it was
38.
>>
Alex. Severus,
Gordianus III.
33.5
""
38.
""
>>
222-235
238-244
After this time the argenteus replaced the denarius, and the proportion was
as follows:-
Under Philippus,
Trajanus Decius,
A.D. 244-249
249-251
it was
42.
34.
Valerianus,
Gallienus,
253-260
35.
260-268
38.
But it diminishes, until it at last disappears, and the argenteus becomes a
copper coin washed with tin.--Mommsen, 231. Letronne, Considerations, 110,
Sabatier, Production de l'Or, 74.
3 Lampridius, "Alex. Sev." 38.
Dio Cassius, 72, 16.
2 L
530
APPENDIX.
depreciation of the coinage in these evil days of Roman history
appears to have proceeded with almost as much activity under the
best as under the worst of the emperors. Alexander Severus, never-
theless, did not entirely overlook the bad effects produced by the
state of the coinage; and he made some efforts to arrest the depre-
ciation of the silver coins, by issuing a large quantity of copper
sesterces; for as long as the denarius could be exchanged for four
sesterces, its value would be maintained as a medium of exchange
in small purchases. The number of large brass coins of Alexander
Severus and Gordianus III. which still exist, must be remarked by
every person who has an opportunity of seeing ancient coins.
Towards the end of the reign of Gallienus, however, the deteriora-
tion of the argenteus was carried so far that its metallic value be-
came less than four copper sesterces. The coinage of the sestertius
and dupondius ceased, and men began to hoard the pieces coined
by Alexander Severus and Gordianus III. The denarius in circu-
lation now ceased to be a silver coin, and the denarius of account
was merely a monetary denomination for one twenty-fifth of an
aureus.
but
From the accession of Claudius Gothicus, A.D. 268, to that of
Diocletian A.D. 284, there was the greatest disorder in the Roman
coinage. The local mints of the Greek cities, one after another,
ceased to exercise the right of coining money, for they could no
longer make a profit by issuing coins on any local standard. The
rapid impoverishment and consequent depopulation of the provinces,
was accelerated by the fiscal proceedings of the emperors. The
debts of the imperial treasury were discharged with tin-washed
copper denarii, which were paid at the rate of 25 to an aureus ;
when taxes were exacted, the provincials were compelled to make
their payments in gold, which they were obliged to purchase (pro-
bably from the agents of the imperial mints) at the rate of 500 to
525 of the base denarii for an aureus. This fact may afford the
student of history some aid in comprehending the wretched condi-
tion to which he finds the Roman empire reduced during the latter
half of the third century. Another circumstance must have tended
to increase the sufferings of the people. During this period, it
appears that the great officers of the court were paid in good money,
and that the donatives of the emperors were distributed in gold and
silver coins of pure metal, for many such are found of periods when
the general currency consisted of base money."
Aurelian (A.D. 270-275) attempted to remedy the disorder in the
1 Gold medallions exist of Aurelian, Severina, Probus and Carinus, and
silver of Probus, besides quinarii of fine silver of emperors who only coined
base denarii.-Mionnet, Médailles Romaines.
ROMAN MONEY.
531
coinage, but the short duration of his busy reign prevented him
from carrying his whole plan into execution. His first object was
to put an end to the continual fluctuations in the price of gold,
caused by the quantity of base money which was issued from the
imperial mint. To effect this with as little injury as possible, he
reduced the base denarii in circulation to the rate at which they
then circulated, which appears to have been 500 or 525 to an aureus,
and he consequently issued from the mint pieces equal to 20 or 21
of these copper denarii as equivalent to a denarius of account. The
weight of the common copper and plated coins of Aurelian and his
successors, which have xx and xxI in the exergue, varies from 56 to
66 grains, and consequently from twenty to twenty-one are equal to
four of the large copper coins or sesterces of Alexander Severus,
and Gordianus III.¹ From this time copper money was generally
used in the markets of the Roman empire, and its proportionate
value to gold became a matter of importance, as it was often em-
ployed in large payments.
The reforms of Aurelian reduced the value of the base denarii
which Gallienus had put in circulation at the rate of eightpence,
before six years had expired, to the value of two-fifths of a penny.
He also took away the privilege of coining money from almost all
the local mints of the empire. His reforms deprived the mint-
masters and the corporations of moneyers of the enormous profits
which they had previously gained by issuing base money and sell-
ing pure gold coins to be used in paying taxes, and probably from
other iniquitous measures. But from whatever sources the gains of
the mint-masters and the moneyers were derived, it is certain that
their power and wealth were very great, and their number consider-
able; their corporations embraced many families in the cities where
imperial mints were established, and like other artisans in the Roman
empire, they were serfs of their corporation, and were compelled to
marry only in the families of the corporation.2 Aurelian's reforms
produced an extensive and dangerous revolt of these moneyers; and
so great was their animosity against the imperial reformer, who had
sacrificed their profits to the public good, that it cost the army
seven thousand men before their rebellion was suppressed.³
1 The numerals XX, XXI, and XXIU, which are supposed to indicate the value
of these pieces, are found on coins of the same size and with the same reverses,
without any very marked difference in weight. Many bear the star, which has
been supposed to indicate the denarius. The XXIU appears first on a coin of
Probus.
2 Cod. Theod. x. 19, 15. Cod. Just. xi. 6, 47. Cod. Theod. x. 20, 1, 10.
Cod. Just. xi. 7, 1, 7.
Aur. Victor, De Cæsaribus. Eutropius, ix.
3 Fl. Vopiscus Aurelianus, 38.
14. Zosimus, i. 61; p. 54, edit. Bonn.
532
APPENDIX.
Diocletian made another great reform in the monetary system of
the empire, but the exact date of the change he effected is not
known, nor can all its details be ascertained with precision. From
existing coins, it is evident that he coined a new aureus of 60 to a
pound of gold, and that he restored the denarius of silver. The
metal of the silver coinage of Diocletian being purer than that of
Caracalla, and the size of the aureus having been reduced about
one-fifth, the pieces which weigh 48 grains appear to represent the
denarius of account, and to have been issued at the rate of 25 to an
aureus. From this we may conclude that the relative value of
silver to gold had been fixed by Diocletian as 14.27 to 1. It has
been conjectured that the numerals xcvi, which we find on some of
the silver coins of Diocletian and his colleagues, indicate that ninety-
six of these pieces were coined from a pound of silver. But if
this were the case, the normal weight of these coins ought to ex-
ceed 52 grains, and if 25 had been current for an aureus, they must
have been minted on a proportion of 16.6 to 1. The fact, however,
is, that the usual silver coins of Diocletian weigh 48 grains, and
the half generally from 22 to 23 grains. These pieces appear to
be the cententionales so frequently mentioned in the Codes, though
the full weight of the 1-100th of a Roman pound ought to be 50.8.
The loss of 2.8 grains for mintage and wear cannot, however, be
considered as too great. Another silver coin, however, appears at
this time, existing specimens of which weigh 62 grains; of these,
therefore, about 80 must have been minted from a pound of silver.
It may be assumed, that in coins of pure silver where there is a
difference in weight of more than five grains, accompanied with a
difference of type and a perceptible difference in diameter, the coins.
were originally of different denominations and value. We find the
mint, in the time of Zeno and Anastasius, issuing copper coins.
weighing little more than 5 grains, and in the time of Justinian
silver coins of 5, 10, and 15 grains were in circulation at Constan-
tinople; so that it cannot be supposed that Diocletian and his col-
leagues could have issued coins weighing 48 grains, and others of
62 grains, as pieces of the same value and denomination.¹
Diocletian also introduced some new copper coins; one of these
weighs one-third of an ounce, and appears to have been called ter-
untianus and also follis." Another weighs about a quarter of an
1 Mommsen, in his valuable essay Ueber den Verfall des Roemischen Münz-
wesens in der Kaiserzeit (p. 264), draws an average from coins which differ
more than a quarter in their weights. Pinder and Friedländer (Beiträge zur
alteren Münzekünde, 22) class together coins which differ more than a quarter.
Thus, well-preserved coins weighing 41.8 and 62 grains, are classed together
because they are all marked XCVI.
2 Marcellini, Chron., cited by Mommsen in Pinder and Friedländer, Beiträge,
ROMAN MONEY.
533
ounce.
The monetary system of Diocletian was soon changed, and
its historical interest would not be very great, but from the circum-
stance that we must seek in it for the key to explain the prices con-
tained in the great tariff of the Roman empire which was published
in the year 301, fixing a maximum price for almost every article
which could be brought to market or produced by human industry.
Considerable fragments of this curious and valuable decrce, both in
Greek and Latin, have been discovered in different provinces of the
empire, proving that it received universal authority, and it has
occupied the attention of many learned men.' The attempt to regu-
late prices on one uniform scale over the whole extent of an empire
so extensive as that of Rome, and whose provinces were in very
different conditions of civilisation, must have produced much misery
and confusion in trade. The monetary reforms of Diocletian appear
to have been abolished from the necessity of abrogating the whole
system on which the prices in this great tariff were based. It is
possible, also, that there was an error in the proportion of value
adopted between silver and gold, or that a change in their relative
values took place about this time. Constantine the Great soon
modified the coinage of Diocletian, but the changes he made indi-
cate that a modification, rather than a revolution, in the monetary
system was intended.
Constantine reduced the size of the aureus by coining 72 pieces
from a pound of gold; and from this time, these coins received a
new name, and were coined at Constantinople on the same standard,
123. There are copper coins of Diocletian and of Maximianus which have been
plated, and weigh more than one-third of an ounce. That representing one-
third generally weighs 130 grains. A smaller size weighs 110. The quarter
ounce, from 106 to 108. The piece weighing 110 marked with a star, may be
the denarius or unit of the tariff. The large copper piece introduced by Dio-
cletian, which is generally plated, was probably the follis, and passed in currency
for an ounce of copper, so that 300, or 25 lb. of copper, would be current for an
aureus, which is one-sixth less than the proportion of copper to gold indicated
in the Cod. Theod. xi. 21, 2, as the aureus was one-sixth heavier than the
solidus. These folles are so abundant, that they must have formed an impor-
tant part of the currency during the reign of Constantine I. Several passages
in the later writers, relating to money, speak of the quadrans both as the quarter
of the follis and as the quarter of an ounce, alluding probably to its value in
currency. But those who desire to know the degree of confusion which exists
in the names and in the evaluation of Roman coins, as transmitted to us by
ancient compilers and lexicographers, will find much curious matter collected,
and great learning poured forth without any very important result, in the work
of Gronovius, De Sestertiis, or De Pecunia vetere.
1 Count Borghesi considers the denarius of the tariff to be the tetrassarion,
of which twenty-four were current to a denarius of silver, which would make
a coin about the size of the copper denarius of Aurelian; and similar pieces of
Diocletian are marked with a star.-Dureau de la Malle, Economic politique des
Romains, i. 113.
Mommsen has published the most complete edition of the edict, with obser-
vations: Das Edict Diocletians de Pretiis Rerum venalium.
534
APPENDIX.
until the Eastern Empire was destroyed by the Crusaders and Venc-
tians in 1204. The gold coin of Constantine was called solidus in
Latin, and nomisma in Greek. When, at a later period, similar
pieces circulated in western Europe, they were called bezants or
byzants. Gold and silver bullion of the standard purity was, after
the time of Constantine, generally received in payment of large
sums at the imperial treasury as well as in commercial transactions.
In these payments, a pound of gold was reckoned as equal to 72
solidi, but we are not acquainted with the manner employed for
verifying the purity of the metal in bars. It appears probable, how-
ever, that a much larger number of gold coins forming multiples of
the solidus, were in general circulation than is usually supposed
from the small number now existing. The legal proportion of
1
1 The proof that Constantine's solidi weighed 4 scruples of 288 to a Roman
pound, is in the law dated A.D. 325.—Cod. Theod. xii. 7, 1. Compare Cod. Just.
x. 71; Cod. Theod. xii. 6, 13, and Cod. Just. x. 70, 5.
Elagabalus coined gold pieces of 100 aurei in addition to the double, quad-
ruple and decuple aurei of preceding emperors.-Hist. Scrip. Aug. Lampridius,
"Alex. Sev." 38. Pinder and Friedländer (Die Münzen Justinians, 68) mention
pieces of 9 solidi, or one-eighth of a pound. The gold medallion of Justinian,
engraved as the frontispiece of this volume, weighed 36 solidi, or half a pound.
Gregory of Tours (Historia Francorum, vi. 2) mentions having seen gold
coins of a pound weight sent by the emperor Tiberius II. to Chilperic. There
are several very large gold medallions of Valens in the Museum of Vienna,
but they are generally fixed in a gold frame. Mongez (Mémoires de l'Academie
des Inscrip., 2 Serie, ix. 277) estimates the weight of four at 19, 27, 33 and 62
aurei. Unfortunately, he seeks his unit of comparison in the aureus of Nero,
instead of the solidus of Constantine. The weight of the largest, as given by
Eckhell (viii. 153), is 118 Hungarian ducats; by Arneth (Synopsis num. Rom.
204) only 118. Now, as the Hungarian ducat weighs 53 grains, this piece is
equal to 92 solidi. Another is stated by Eckhell (viii. 154) to weigh 51½ ducats.
This is exactly 40 solidi. Steinbüchel (Recueil de Medaillons d'Or du Cabinet
de Vienne) has published engravings of these medallions of Valens. It deserves
to be noticed, that the golden seals affixed to the letters addressed by the em-
perors of Constantinople at a later period to foreign princes, were equal to
single, double, triple, or quadruple solidi, according to the etiquette of the
Byzantine court. Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions particularly, that a
letter of his own to the Caliph of Egypt had a seal affixed to it of 18 solidi, or
a quarter of a pound.-De Caremon. Aulæ Byz. ii. 48; p. 689, edit. Bonn. The
silver medallion of Priscus Attalus in the British Museum weighs 1203 grains,
according to Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology,
where a reduced representation of this medal is given. The diameter of the
original is about two inches. The weight of this piece is abnormal. To be a
quarter of a Roman pound, it ought to have weighed 1260 grains; and a silver
inedal representing a solidus ought to weigh 1008 grains. It is true, 4 solidi
are reckoned as equivalent to a pound of silver by a law of Honorius and Theo-
dosius II., dated 422, (Cod. Theod. viii. 4, 27); but this law was intended to
facilitate paying gold at that rate. Its object was to enable four solidi to dis-
charge claims for a pound of silver when a pound of silver was worth five
solidi. As the medal of Attalus must have been coined in 409 or 410, there is
no reason for supposing that the proportion of silver to gold was other than
143 to 1, according to the standard of the Roman mint. Though considerably
under the just weight, this medallion was probably issued as a quarter of a
pound of silver, 60 being reckoned as equal to a pound of gold.
ROMAN MONEY.
535
silver to gold in bullion payments is not known with certainty until
the year 397, when it was fixed by law at 14% to 1.¹
The change which Constantine made in the silver coinage,
appears to have added two new denominations to the pieces already
in circulation; the miliarensis, called by the Greeks miliarision,
and the siliqua, called by the Greeks keration. These new coins must
have circulated for some time contemporaneously with silver money
issued by Diocletian and his colleagues; but the new system be-
came that of the Eastern Empire for ages. Nevertheless, the first
mention of the miliarision in an official act is found in a law of
Justinian dated 536. But, from the derivation given of the word
by a writer of the period, we may conclude that the word had been
long in use as the name of a very common silver coin. The siliqua
is mentioned in a law of the year 428, when 24 were reckoned to
the solidus; and as the proportion of silver to gold had been already
fixed by the law of 397 at 14% to 1, the weight of the siliqua ought
to have been 42 grains. A considerable change in the relative
value of gold and silver had consequently, taken place since the
times of Nero and Caracalla, but the rate as fixed in 397 remained
the legal standard of the mint at Constantinople for several
centuries.*
3
5
The weights of the existing coins of Constantine and his succes-
sors renders it difficult to determine their denomination, and the
proportion they bear to the solidus. If we reckon 12 miliarisia to
a solidus, and take the proportion of silver to gold as 144 to 1, the
miliarision ought to weigh 84 grains, and pieces of this size are
found equal to one-sixtieth of a Roman pound. Much confusion
is found in the statements of the different writers who mention
ancient coins. The texts are often corrupt, from having been
adapted by copyists to more modern times, and vague denomina-
tions are used, or ancient terms are employed, which are quite
inapplicable.
6
1 Cod. Theod. xiii. 2.
2 Corpus Juris Civilis, Nov. cv. 23. Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 9.
3 Coins of this weight are not uncommon.- Cod. Theod. xii. 4, 1, and xiii. 2.
Nov. Major, vii. 6.
Cod. Theod. xiii. 2, repeated Cod. Just. x. 76.
5 Cod. Theod. xv. 9, 1.
• An accurate account of the weights of the known coins of Constantine and
his successors, distinguishing the different types, is required to fix the denomi-
nations of those which can be ascertained. In the time of Constantine, the
miliarensis may have been only 1 siliqua. In that case, the coins weighing
from 70 to 75 grains may be miliarenses. Those from 46 to 50 seem to be
cententionales. Cod. Theod. ix. 23, 1. Those from 37 to 42, siliquæ. It is
possible that there was a variation in the proportion of silver to gold more than
once in the interval between Diocletian and 397. The following are the
weights of coins of different sizes, all having on the reverse, Vot. xx. or xxx.
536
APPENDIX.
A considerable change is observable in the copper coinage of
Constantine, caused probably by the necessity of abrogating the
tariff of Diocletian, and by the necessity of making it conform to
the new system in the gold and silver money.
In the reign of Valentinian I., copper coins of a smaller size than
those previously in use began to be coined in great quantity; and
under Theodosius II. and his successors, until the reign of Anasta-
sius, hardly any copper money, except these small coins, seems to
have issued from the imperial mint. The consequence was, that
the small currency of the empire again fell into a state of confusion.
Of these small copper coins, 7200 pieces were current for a solidus
according to a law of Valentinian III., dated in the year 445. At
nearly the same period also, another small copper coin, called a
denarius, is said by Cassiodorus to have been exchanged at the rate
of 6000 to a solidus." The rarity of silver money during this
period is shown by this evaluation of the gold currency in copper
money. It is not easy to determine accurately to which of the
existing copper coins the names of nummus and of denarius ought
to be given, for we find that in 398 a loaf was sold for a nummus,
and in 419 a pound of bacon was valued at 50 denarii.³
In 396,
the value of copper was fixed by law at 25 lb. for a solidus, and
there seems reason for inferring that, at this period, the copper
coins
of the empire were minted at the full value of the metal. If the
denarius and nummus had been coined on this standard, the dena-
rius ought to weigh 21 grains, and the nummus 173, and existing
coins of Arcadius are found corresponding with these weights."
After Theodosius II., the copper coinage seems to have been again
deteriorated.
In the year 395, Arcadius and Honorius prohibited the circula-
tion of all silver coins larger than the cententionalis, which must have
weighed rather more than 50 grains. They were particularly anxious
to compel all private individuals to bring the large coins called
decargyra to the mint. This law must for a time have put an end
to the circulation of the pieces of sixty to a pound and miliarisia,
Mult. xxx. or xxxx. 84, 75, 49, 31, 21. Here, we have evidently five different
denominations of silver coin in the reign of Constantius II. In my possession
I have one, not well preserved, weighing 41 grains. The other weights are
taken from Pinkerton, Pinder and Friedländer, and Mommsen.
1 Nov. Valentin. iii. "De Pretio Sol." xiv. 1.
2 Cassiodori Var. i. 10.
3 Cod. Theod. xiv. 19, 1.
4 Cod. Theod. xi. 21, 2.
Cod. Theod. xiv. 4, 10.
When this law is repeated by Justinian, the fisc
exacted a solidus for every 20 lb. of copper due.-Cod. Just. x. 29.
The smallest coins of Arcadius agree. A perfect Vot. v. weighs 17½½, a
tolerably preserved Salus republicæ, 19; and the size of this latter, which
appears to be the denarius, is visibly larger.
ROMAN MONEY.
537
1
whether identical or not. After this time, the silver coinage of
the Roman empire is rare, and in the interval between Theodosius
II. and Anastasius even the copper coinage appears to have been
depreciated.
Anastasius introduced a new copper coinage in the year 498, in
order to relieve the people from the inconvenience resulting from the
great variety in the weight and value of the coins in circulation,
many of which must have been much defaced by the tear and wear
of time. The new coinage was composed of pieces with their
value marked on the reverse by large numeral letters indicating the
number of units they contained. The nummus, which was the
smallest copper coin then in circulation, appears to have been taken
as this unit, and its weight had already fallen to about 6 grains.
The pieces in general circulation were those of 1, 5, 10, 20 and 40
nummi, marked A, E, I, K and M. 2
3
Justin I. followed the type and standard of Anastasius, but the
barbarous fabric of his coins, even when minted at Constantinople,
is remarkable. The same system and the same barbarism appear
in the copper money of Justinian I., until the twelfth year of his
reign, A. D. 538. He then improved the fabric to prevent forgery,
and added the date, numbering the years of his reign on the reverse.
Though the value of copper had been fixed by the code at a higher
rate than by the law of 396, since a solidus was exacted where
twenty pounds of copper were due to the fisc, Justinian neverthe-
less increased the size of his copper coins. Now, if we suppose
the coins to have corresponded with the value of copper as indicat-
ed in the code, the normal weight of the nummus being 101 grains,
the piece of 40 nummi would be equal to a Roman ounce, and 240
ought to have been current for a solidus. No piece of 40 nummi
has yet been found weighing an ounce, and it has generally been
supposed that these pieces are the coins mentioned by Procopius,
who says that previous to the reform the money-changers gave 210
obols, which were called pholles, for a solidus, but that Justinian
1 Cod. Theod. ix. 23, 2.
2 Marcellini Chron., as cited by Mommsen, Pinder and Friedländer, Beiträge,
i. 123. This passage states that Anastasius coined pieces called teruntiani by
the Romans, and phollerales by the Greeks; but none of the coins of Anasta-
sius weigh a third of an ounce, so the passage is supposed to indicate that the
large pieces marked M are those indicated. They weigh on an average 260
grains. I presented to the British Museum a set of small coins of this period,
marked A.B.F.A.& €, weighing 6, 11, 16, 24 and 29 grains respectively.
They were found at Athens, and the B,г.&▲, were not previously known.
I have now in my possession pieces marked A, weighing from 6 to 10 grains.
This gives a variation, in the piece M, from 240 to 400 grains. The Roman
ounce at this time was equal to 420 grains, but no M of more than 384 grains
has, I believe, been found, even of Justinian.
3
Compare Cod. Just. x. 29, 1, with Cod. Theod. xi. 21, 2.
538
APPENDIX.
1
180
2
fixed the value of the solidus at 180 obols, by which he robbed the
people of one-sixth of the value of every solidus in circulation.¹
It has, however, lately been conjectured that the obolus to which
Procopius alludes was a silver coin, and according to the propor-
tion between silver and gold then observed at the Roman mint, a
silver coin current as of a solidus ought to have weighed 5.6
grains, and such pieces exist. It is not probable that the copper
coinage of Justinian was ever minted at its real metallic value, and
it is certain that he made frequent reductions in its weight, and
that specimens can be found differing in weight which were issued
from the same mint in the same year. An issue of unusually
deteriorated money in the twenty-sixth year of his reign caused an
insurrection, which was appeased by recalling the debased pieces.³
The system of marking the copper coins of the Eastern Empire
with the letters indicating their value continued until another great
monetary reform by Basil I., after a lapse of more than three cen-
turies. But during this long period frequent changes took place in
the size of the pieces, which must consequently have been often
current at a depreciated value.4
1 Procopius, Hist. Arc. sect. 25.
2
Isambert, in his notes to a new edition of the Secret History of Procopius,
has published a learned dissertation on the money of Justinian.
He gives
an engraving of a coin from his own collection, which he considers the silver
obolos. It weighs rather more than 5 grains.—Anecdota par Procope, trad.
par M. Isambert, p. 860.
The phollis and obolos, at a later period, were certainly two distinct copper
coins.
The
3 Malalas, p. 80, edit. Ven. No traces of this deterioration have been
observed in the coins of this year, but it is possible that the reduction was
confined to the smaller copper pieces, xigua, which are generally rare.
large coins marked M, which have generally been considered to be the phollis
or obolos alluded to by Procopius, are extremely abundant. If so, and 180
were current for a solidus, their normal weight, according to the value of
copper in the Cod. x. 29, ought to have been 560 grains; as, however, the
heaviest seldom weigh more than 366 grains, the solidus, if we suppose these to
be obolos, was then exchanged for 15 pounds 8 ounces of copper.
4 It is curious to note the variations which took place in the weight of the
large pieces marked M, and the attempts repeatedly made to restore its value
by an augmentation in its size.
A.D.
491-539. Six pieces of Anastasius, Justin I., and Justinian I., before
his reform of the coinage, average
Justinian I., Constantinople,
540.
>>
""
""
541.
""
Nicomedia,
Constantinople,
Carthage,
Antioch,
Constantinople,
554.
555.
557.
""
Cyzicus,
·
·
Grains.
264
*384
340
366
361
•
332
•
336
•
286
•
•
273
•
263
263
ROMAN MONEY.
539
The silver coins of Justinian were numerous, and of various sizes
and denominations, which have not yet been identified with the
existing pieces. By a law of the year 536, Justinian allowed the
consuls to scatter silver coins among the people, which had been
forbidden by Marcian. Four denominations are enumerated, with
the addition that similar pieces might also be distributed. Those
mentioned are miliarisia, mela, kaukia, and tetragona.¹ There is
no direct testimony concerning the value of the miliarision at this
time, but we know that it was subsequently current as one-twelfth
of a solidus. At this rate, its normal weight ought, as we have
already seen, to be 84 grains; but as a legal glossator says that it
was at one time only equal to a keration and three quarters, it may,
in the reign of Justinian I., have weighed 73 grains. The kera-
tion was the twenty-fourth of the solidus, so that it weighed 42
grains. No data exist for determining the value of the pieces.
called mela, kaukia, and tetragona.²
It is no easy task to affix names to the specimens of Justinian's
coins which exist; but six different sizes can be distinguished, the
largest weighing about 65 grains, and the smallest about 5. We
must bear in mind that it sometimes happens that a very common
coin in ancient times is now extremely rare; so that though we
cannot identify the keration with any of the existing coins of Jus-
tinian, there is not, from that circumstance, sufficient reason to con-
clude that it was not coined in abundance of its normal weight.
And the same may be said of the miliarision, though it may always
Tiberius II., Constantinople,
A.D.
567.
Justin II., Cyzicus,
579.
582.
Maurice, Constan.,
586.
>>
""
601.
""
610.
Heraclius, Constantinople,
624.
""
628.
دو
""
668-681. Constantine IV. (Pogonatus),
780-790. Constantine VI. and Irene,
813-820.? Leo V. and Constantine,
Grains.
236
274
186
•
•
•
170
185
•
160
60
102
•
·
288
•
•
•
48
•
•
85
The attribution of these coins may be doubtful. They
may be of Leo III. and Constantine V.
821-829. Michael II. and Theophilus,
138
90
829-840. Theophilus,
All these, except the heaviest of Constantinople, marked with an asterisk,
are well preserved, and in my possession.
A well-preserved K of Justinian's twelfth year, A.D. 539, weighs 173 grains;
one of his thirty-eighth, of Thessalonica, only 80. I gave one of his thirty-
ninth, as that date had not been previously found, to the British Museum,
which, from my memorandum, weighed 76 grains.
Corpus Juris Civilis, Nov. cv. 2.
2 The authorities can be found under the respective words, in Ducange,
Glossarium ad Script. Med. ct Inf. Græcitatis, aud De Imperatorum Constantino-
politanorum, seu d'Inferioris Evi vel Imperii uti vocant numismatibus Dissertatio.
540
APPENDIX.
1
have been less abundant. The scarcity of the keration may arise
from its having been employed in paying the troops in the pro-
vinces, and from its always bearing an agio, on account of its cir-
culation in the most distant parts of the empire, and even in the
East beyond its limits. The diminutive size of the smallest coins
of Justinian need not cause any surprise. The Dutch pieces of five
cents weigh only 10 grains, and the French of twenty centimes
only 15 grains, though silver is now less valuable than in the time
of Justinian. There seems no reason for supposing that silver was
coined with less attention to its weight at the mint of Constantinople,
in the sixth century, than it had been by the Athenians a thousand
years earlier. The slaves who were sent to market at Athens had
no difficulty in distinguishing three different silver coins, all frac-
tions of the obolos, which weighed only 11 grains. These diminu-
tive pieces weigh respectively 8, 51, and 23 grains, and they are
still detected by the sharp eyes of the labourers who excavate at
Athens, and collected from time to time.2
4
No official change appears to have taken place in the silver coin-
age under the successors of Justinian, until Heraclius, in the year
¹ Colonel Leake (“Numismata Hellenica,” European Greece, p. 25) observes,
that although the tetrobolon must anciently have been very common, having been
the ordinary pay of an Athenian foot-soldier, it is now very rare, and generally
much worn.
One in my possession, well preserved, weighs forty-two grains.
2 The six different classes of coins seem to be :-
I. That engraved by Pinder and Friedländer (Die Münzen
Justinians, p. 71),
II. A coin mentioned by Isambert, p. 859,
III. With the reverse, Vot. Mut. HTI, 19 to 21,
IV. Coins mentioned by Pinkerton, Pinder and Friedländer,
V. Do.
and Isambert,
do.
do.
VI. Small coin engraved by Isambert, pl. iii. 7,
Grains.
64.5
46.9
21.
14.
to 16.
•
8.
to 12.
4.65 to 5.735
Coins of Zeno, Anastasius, and Justin I., are found, weighing 11.
It may not be superfluous to observe, that the ancient Athenians had no less
than nine silver coins in common use, smaller than the drachma, the value of
which was 9ąd. The following list indicates the normal weight of these pieces
as they issued from the Athenian mint, taken from Colonel Leake's "Numismata
Hellenica," where the various types by which they were distinguished are de-
scribed. The weight of pieces in my own collection is also given, to show the
average deterioration in ancient coins where the type is preserved.
G. F.'s Collection.
Standard.
Pentobolon,
56.25 type much worn,
45.
Tetrobolon,
Triobolon, or half-drachma, 33.75 two, well preserved, each
32.
well preserved,
50. grains.
42.
Diobolon,
22.5
two, worn, each
Trihemiobolon, 1½ obol.,
16.87 tolerable preservation,
Obolos,
Tritemorion, &,
Hemiobolion, ½,
Tetartemorion,
11.25 average of six,
8.45 average of two,
5.62 average of six fine,
2.8
average of three,
18.75
15.
•
10.
•
6.5
•
5.4
•
2.15
ROMAN MONEY.
541
1
615, coined pieces weighing 6 grams, equal to 105 grains, conse-
quently 48 were coined from a pound of silver. The normal pro-
portion of these pieces to the solidus was 9; but as the currency
of the empire was at this time in a state of confusion, in consequence
of the financial embarrassment caused by the conquests of the Per-
sians, who occupied Syria, Egypt, and a great part of Asia Minor,
this new hexagram was probably paid at a higher rate by the im-
perial treasury. Indeed, it is possible that this coin was issued at
the rate of six for a solidus, since it was coined for the purpose of
facilitating or partially concealing the payment of salaries, pensions,
and donatives at a reduced rate equal to one-half of their previous
amount. In the year 621 we are informed that Heraclius coined
miliarisia in great quantity for the expenses of his Persian cam-
paigns. Coins of the same type as the hexagram of Heraclius were
struck by Heraclius, Constantine, Constans II., and Constantine IV.
(Pogonatus). The copper coinage of Heraclius is generally of the
most barbarous fabric, and the size of the pieces bearing the same
denomination varies in the most extraordinary manner. Constan-
tine IV. restored the copper coinage to its condition in the latter
years of Justinian I., but under Justinian II. it became again
depreciated.
The money of the Isaurian dynasty is rare. The hexagram dis-
appears; but the uncertainty in the attribution of the coins of this
period renders it unsafe to make any conjectures concerning the
existing pieces. At this time the silver coins having the name and
title of the emperor across the field on one side, and a cross on
steps with "Jesus Christus nica" on the other, appear to have been
introduced, and it seems very possible that the coins usually
ascribed to Leo V. the Armenian, and his son Constantine, really
belong to Leo III. and his son Constantine V. Coins of this type
are found of three different weights, 30, 41, and 46 grains. Those
weighing 30 and 41 grains are so similar in size that they could
(6
1 Chron. Pasch. 386, edit. Par. Theophanes, 254, edit. Par. The hexagram
and miliarision of Heraclius and his successors seem to have been of the same
type. Two pieces of Heraclius, with the reverse Deus adjuta Romanis," were
purchased by me at Trebizond. They differ only in their thickness and weight.
One weighs 101 grains, the other 72 grains. Sabatier observed a similar varia-
tion in examples he purchased at Teflis. One in the possession of Mr Lambros,
dealer in medals at Corfou, weighed also 72 grains.
2 Tannini, Supplementum ad Bandurii Numism. Imp. Rom., gives the weight
of several pieces. One of Constans II. and Constantine IV., in my possession,
weighs 72 grains. Another of Constantine IV., of the same size, but thicker,
perhaps a piece of five grams, weighs 88 grains. It is impossible to conjecture
how much of the variation which takes place in the imperial coinage arises
from the issue of a deteriorated coinage by the emperors for some temporary
purpose. In the Eastern Empire we see that an organic law existed, though it
was often violated.
542
APPENDIX.
only be distinguished by the names of the emperors or by weighing
them. The copper coinage of this period is greatly diminished in
size, but the Amorian dynasty made an attempt to improve it.
There can be no doubt that it circulated at a high conventional
value, which it received from the mint.'
1
24
Basil I. became sole emperor in 867. He does not seem to have
made any change in the silver coinage, for the principal silver coin
during the long period that his dynasty governed the empire is the
piece which weighs 41 grains, and is in all probability the keration
or of a solidus." In the copper coinage Basil I. seems to have
been the author of a great reform, for it can hardly be doubted that
he restored the large brass coin previously marked M to its original
weight in the reign of Anastasius. It was now called phollis, and
is the largest of the Byzantine coins having a sacred type. The
obverse has the bust of our Saviour, and on the reverse the words
"Jesus Christus Basileu - Basile- " across the field. The weight of
these pieces, when of good fabric, is 260 to 276 grains. The other
copper coin in general circulation was the obolos, bearing the effigy
of the emperor on the obverse, and his name and title across the
field on the reverse. Well-preserved specimens weigh from 118 to
125 grains, but those of Romanus I. or of Constantine VII. (Por-
phyrogenitus) struck over Romanus, frequently weigh more than
140 grains.*
3
It has been generally supposed that John Zimisces introduced
the sacred type in the Byzantine mint, because two historians say
that he placed the image of our Saviour on the nomisma (solidus),
and on the obolos, which was previously the case, and inscribed on
the reverse in Roman letters, "Jesus Christus Basileus Basileon." 5
1 Well-engraved representations of the coins of the Eastern Empire, from
Anastasius, will be found in the works of Sauley, Essai de Classification des
Suites monetaires Byzantines; and Marchant, Lettres sur la Numismatique et
l'Histoire, nouvelle edition.
2 In the preface of the second edition of my Byzantine History, there are repre-
sentations of the silver coins of John I. (Zimisces), and Basil II., and Constantine
VIII., but the weight is erroneously given as 44 grains, instead of 41.
3 A representation of this coin is given in the preface to the second edition
of my Byzantine History, No. 4.
4 There can be no doubt that Sauley is wrong in attributing the coins of
Romanus to the second, instead of the first of the name. I gave an example
of Constantine VII. struck over Romanus, to the British Museum, and I have
two specimens in my possession, besides three of Constantine VII. and
Romanus II. struck over Romanus I.
46
5 Cedrenus, ii. 683. Glycas, 308, edit. Par. Προσέταξε δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ νομίσ-
ματι καὶ ἐν τῷ ὀβολῷ εἰκόνα ἐγγράφεσθαι τοῦ Σωτῆροσ, μὴ πρότερον τούτου γινομένου·
ἐγράφοντο δὲ καὶ γράμματα ῥωμαϊστὶ ἐν θατέρῳ μέρει ὧδε τη διεξιόντα· Ιησους
Χριστὸς Βασιλεὺς Βασιλέων : τοῦτο δὲ καὶ οἱ καθεξὴς ἐτήρησαν βασιλεῖς.” There is in
my possession a well-preserved piece, with the portrait of Romanus I. struck
over the earlier phollis, with this type.
ROMAN MONEY.
543
The plain meaning of this passage seems to be, that John I. made
a change in the type of the gold nomisma and of the copper obolos,
which had previously been distinguished by the portrait of the
emperor; but, strange to say, numismatists, who generally pay
such exclusive attention to types and sizes of coins, have given a
different interpretation to these words. Existing coins confirm the
plain meaning of the passage. It is true that no gold nomisma of
the sacred type has been found; but this is not astonishing, as
those of another type exist, coined probably during the first
years of his reign; and as succeeding emperors restored their
portraits to the obverse of the nomisma, all those of a sacred type
may have been reminted or melted down. But the smaller cop-
per pieces, which appear to have been the obolos, and which had
been previously impressed with the emperor's portrait, disappear
from the Byzantine coinage in the reign of John Zimisces; and
coins of a sacred type of this size are common, though not so ex-
tremely abundant as those of the larger size, which I suppose to be
the phollis. The portrait of the emperor does not reappear on Byzan-
tine copper until the reign of Constantine X. (Ducas), A.D. 1059,
when it is found on the phollis. The smaller copper coins, which
were parts of the obolos, are rare during the Basilian dynasty, and
cannot be accurately identified.
1
The next remarkable change in the coinage of the Roman or
Byzantine empire was the introduction of concave pieces, scyphati
nummi. This form was introduced as early as 1024, but it did not
become the prevailing type of the gold, silver, and copper coinage,
until the end of the eleventh century. No change in the weight
or value of the gold and silver pieces was made, in consequence of
the introduction of concave money; but the size and weight of the
copper coins was greatly reduced as forgery was rendered more
difficult. The phollis and obolos appear to have been generally
concave, and their fractions of the usual form. Under the Com-
neni these smaller pieces are numerous.²
The coinage of the Byzantine empire appears to have been de-
preciated after the reign of Manuel I. (Comnenus); and the coinage
of the Greek empire of Constantinople, after its reconquest from
the Flemish emperors, fell into a state of disorder.
The gold
ducats of Italy were then more esteemed than the ducati, michelati,
and manuelati, of the Eastern Empire; and the gros tournois of the
French kings, and the aspers of the emperors of Trebizond, were
2
1 Tannini, Supp. ad Bandurii Num. Imp. Rom., 428.
There are flat pieces of four different sizes in the time of the Comneni.
The largest may be the obolos. Those of the reigns of John II. and Manuel I.,
of different types, weigh 72, 43, 32, and 24 grains.
544
APPENDIX.
more valued in eastern commerce than the silver money of the
Paleologi of Constantinople.
From the time of Justinian, or even earlier, accounts were kept
in solidi, keratia, and folles, or in solidi, miliarisia, and folles; and
this system continued until the Roman empire was destroyed by
the Crusaders and Venetians.¹ Large sums were reckoned in cen-
tenaries, or hundred pounds-weight of gold or silver bullion. The
gold coins in circulation were the solidus, called by the Greeks
nomisma, and by the Western nations byzant; the semisseion, or
half solidus; the trimission, or one-third; and the tetarteron, or
quarter. The silver coins were numerous, but latterly the milia-
rision, keration, and half-keration, appear to have been the most
abundant.³ The copper coins were the phollis, the obolos, and
apparently, at least, two smaller denominations.
2
The rarity of Byzantine silver coins does not appear to arise
from their having been coined in small quantity, but from the con-
stant demand for silver in the East, where the Indian trade and
the silversmiths have always consumed a great quantity. The
good silver money of the earlier sultans of Constantinople is almost
as rare as that of the last emperors.
The gradual transformation of the Eastern Empire from a Roman
to a Greek state may be traced in the coinage as coincident with a
similar change in the institutions and the general administration.
Under Constantine and his successors until Leo I., everything in
the manners and habits of Constantinople was Roman; but under
Anastasius, Greek letters appear as indications of value on the
copper coins; and under Justinian I. it appears that the imperial
heralds addressed the people in the Greek language when assem-
bled at the chariot-races in the circus. Yet it is curious to observe
how slowly the movement advanced which led the government of
the Eastern Empire to abandon the systematic administrative tyranny
of Rome for the arbitrary despotism of Greece. Heraclius, in the
early part of the seventh century, first introduced a Greek legend,
èv ToũTo víxa, on the copper coins of rude fabric, which were pro-
bably coined for the use of the troops and the provincials during
his Persian campaigns. The Greek titles of Basileus and Despotes
make their first appearance in the place of Augustus during the
1 Analecta Græca, Paris, 1668, p. 316-" Antiquum rationarum Augusti
Cæsaris et novum rationarum Alexii Comneni Imperatoris."
2 The tetarteron is much rarer than the other fractions of the solidus. One
of Theophilus, in perfect preservation, weighs 17 grains.
3 The commonest silver coins of Manuel I. weigh 45 to 46 grains; and
I possess a coin of Nicephorus III. struck over Michael VII., which weighs
only 13, but it is imperfect. The normal weights of the silver coins have
been already mentioned.
ROMAN MONEY.
545
eighth century. In the middle of the ninth, we find Greek inscrip-
tions on the reverses of several coins. A copper coin of Theophilus
has the title Augustus, another Oeofilas basileus round the portrait,
and on the reverse eofile Augouste su nikas. There is a coin of
Michael III. with two portraits. That of the obverse has the
legend Mihael imperat., that of the reverse Basilius rex. Under
the Basilian dynasty, Greek inscriptions occupy the field of the
reverse both of the silver and copper coins, but the reverse of the
gold is usually a bust of our Saviour, with the legend Jesus Christus
Rex Regnantium. This Latin inscription continues on the solidus
until the latter part of the eleventh century: it is found, I believe,
for the last time, in the reign of Michael VII., (A. d. 1078).
Alexius I. (Comnenus) may be considered the first Emperor of the
East who was entirely Greek. After his accession, Latin never
again appears on the coins of the Roman empire, so that its trans-
formation into the Byzantine monarchy was then complete.
As
TABLES OF ROMAN MONEY.
AUGUSTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-B. C. 31 TO A. D. 54.
2 = Dupondius.
24 ∞
8
16
2
Sestertius E.
4
2
8
4
Quinarius R.
2 = Denarius of 84 to lb. R.
400 = 200 = 100 = 50 = 25 = Aureus of 40 to lb. A.
Parts of As.
Quadrans.
1}= Triens.
2 = 11 = Semissis.
4
3 = 2 = As.
NERO AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-A. D. 54 to 215.
Quinarius, Æ and R.
Denarius of 96 to lb.
25 Aureus of 45 to lb.
CARACALLA AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-A. D. 215 to 268.
Quinarius, Æ and R.
2 = Denarius of 96 to lb.
3 = 1 Argenteus of 60 to lb.
=
50 = 25 = 163 = Aureus of 50 to lb.
100 Argentei 6 Aurei.
2 M
546
APPENDIX.
AURELIAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-A. D. 275 TO 300.
Assarion.
4
- Denarius of copper.
=
84 = 21
21 = Argenteus or Denarius of account.
2100=525 = 25 Aureus of 50 to lb.
Assarion.
DIOCLETIAN AND HIS COLLEAGUES, AFTER A. D. 300.
Denarius of copper.
4
16
4
192
Follis.
48 12 Denarius of 48 grs. A or cententionalis.
4800 = 1200 = 300 = 25 = Aureus of 60 to the pound.
CONSTANTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-A. D. 325 TO 491.
Nummus or denarius.
20 - Follis.
་་
240 12 Siliqua R.
480
24 = 12 or 2 = Miliarensis.
5760288=24
12 Solidus of 72 to lb.
5
10
ANASTASIUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS.-A. D. 491 TO 867.
Noumion.
€ Pentanoumion.
2 I Dekanoumion.
20 4
2K Eikosarion or obolos.
40 = 8
240
4
=
2 M Follis E and R.
=
4824
480
5760
to
7200
-
9648=24≈ 12 =
2
12 6 - Keration A.
180=24=12 = Solidus or Nomisma.
Miliarision.
to
210
BASIL I. TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE.-A. D. 867 to 1204.
Small copper pieces of unknown denominations.
Obolos Æ.
2 - Phollis E.
12
24
=
6
Keration R.
12 2 = Miliarision.
-
288 = 144 = 24 = 12 = Solidus, Nomisma, or Byzant A7.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
547
III.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE SITE OF THE HOLY
SEPULCHRE.
The majority of Christians feel anxious to ascertain that the precise
spot where the body of Christ was interred is still known. The
voice of reason may suggest that, in a religious point of view, this
can at present be a matter of little importance; for “God is a
spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and
in truth.' And it is indeed possible that, from the actual state of
education in all Christian nations, superstition will be likely to gain
more than true religion by pointing out the exact site of the death
and burial of our Saviour. Still, it is a duty to search after the
truth, and to examine whether sufficient evidence exists to deter-
mine the site of the Holy Sepulchre, under the conviction that,
when the truth is clearly established, it will aid religion in destroy-
ing superstition.
It would give every Christian a sentiment of dissatisfaction, as
well as of melancholy, to adopt the opinion that no satisfactory evi-
dence can be found to determine the real site of Christ's death and
burial. Yet, if none exist, then the thousands of sincere believers
who, for fifteen centuries, have annually repaired in pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, to visit spots shown as the Golgotha and the place of
the resurrection of Scripture, have been the deluded votaries of a
pious fraud. How can the uninstructed hope to learn the way of
truth, or expect to avoid becoming the dupes of those who specu-
late on man's superstition, if they have been imposed on in this
instance? Of what value is history, if it has entirely omitted to
preserve the means of confirming, or refuting, any hypothesis
directly affecting the identification of sites so deeply interesting to
a large majority of the most enlightened inhabitants of the globe
since the commencement of the fourth century?
OPINIONS CONCERNING THE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
Various opinions have been formed, by learned and conscientious
Christians, concerning the verity of the sites now shown as Gol-
gotha and the place of the resurrection; and a good deal of discus-
sion has taken place between those, on the one hand, who declare
that the sites reverenced by pilgrims have not the smallest title to
be considered authentic, and those, on the other, who maintain
that they are the precise spots mentioned by the Evangelists-that
548
APPENDIX.
the Calvary of the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem is that
spot to which "He, bearing his cross, went forth into a place called
the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where
they crucified Him "—and that the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre
is built over that " new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet
laid."
1) 2
4
The first attempt to assail the identity of the Sepulchre now
shown was made by a German named Korte, who visited Jerusalem
in 1738.3 But the ablest assailant of the actual site is Dr Robin-
son, the author of a learned work on the geography of Palestine,
entitled Biblical Researches. This work enters into a long investi-
gation of all the questions connected with the topography of Jeru-
salem. The opponents as well as the supporters of Dr Robinson's
views consider it the chief source of information on the subject, for
they use it as their guide even while they attack its conclusions.
The able clergymen who composed The Narrative of a Mission of
Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839, declare,
that Dr Robinson's arguments may justly be regarded as a final
settlement of this long-agitated question.
5
The work of Dr Robinson is the most learned and impartial
statement of the reasoning of the dissentients. In order not to
injure the clear and candid manner in which he states his case, I
transcribe his own words. "A true estimate of this long-agitated
question must depend on two circumstances. As there can be no
doubt that both Golgotha and the Sepulchre lay outside of the
ancient city, it must first be shown that the present site may also
anciently have been without the walls. Or, should this in itself
appear to be impossible, then it must be shown that there were, in
the fourth century, historical or traditional grounds for fixing upon
this site, strong enough to counterbalance such an apparent impos-
sibility."6
To the tourists who venture to give decided opinions of dissent
to these principles, without studying the writings of Dr Robinson
or Dr Tobler, it is enough to observe, with Bacon,-" Certainly
there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a
belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting."7 Plus
negare potest asinus, quam probare philosophus.
1 St John, xix. 17.
2 St John, xix. 41.
3 Jonas Korte's Reise nach dem gelobten Lande, Aegypten, Syrien, und Meso-
potamien. Halle, 1751. 8vo.
4 Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petræa. By
Edward Robinson, D.D. 3 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1841.
5 The opinions of Dr Robinson have been ably supported by Dr Tobler.—
Golgatha, &c. St Gallen, 1851.
6 Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 66.
7 Bacon's Essays, "Of Truth."
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
549
On the other hand, the identity of the present sites has found
eloquent defenders in Chateaubriand, Mr Wilde, Dr Olin, Lord
Nugent, the Reverend George Williams, and the Reverend Albert
Schaffter.¹
1
Mr Fergusson has advanced a third opinion, based solely on
architectural proofs, and maintains that the Mosque of Omar indi-
cates the site of the Holy Sepulchre."
HISTORY OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
Before attempting to investigate the existing evidence relative to
the identification of the site of the Holy Sepulchre, it is necessary to
collect the historical information that remains, connected with the
subject. A review of the historical notices preserved will enable
us to appreciate the precise bearing of the evidence to be adduced.
The place of the crucifixion was near the walls of Jerusalem, and
without the gate.
"Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify
the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. And
St John: "For the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the
city." The spot was called, in Hebrew, Golgotha. In the Latin
translation of St Luke, it is translated Calvaria.5
113
The tomb of Joseph of Arimathea was situated in a garden, so
near the spot where Jesus was crucified, that it was said to be in
the same place, or at Golgotha. "Now, in the place where he was
crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre,
wherein was man never yet laid. There laid they Jesus, therefore,
1 F. A. de Chateaubriand. Itineraire de Paris à Jerusalem. 3 tomes. Paris,
1811. Svo.
W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A. Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira and along the
Shores of the Mediterranean. 2 vols. Dublin, 1840.
Stephen Olin, D.D. Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land.
2 vols. New York, 1843.
Lord Nugent. Lands Classical and Sacred. 2 vols. London, 1845.
Rev. Geo. Williams. The Holy City; or, Historical and Topographical
Notices of Jerusalem. 8vo. London, 1845.
A. Schaffter. Die ächte lage des Heiligen Grabes. Bern, 1849.
2 An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem: with restored Plans of the
Temple, and Plans, Sections, and Details of the Church built by Constantine
the Great over the Holy Sepulchre, now known as the Mosque of Omar. Lon-
don, 1847. The architectural illustrations and arguments of this work are
excellent; the inductions are often erroneous, and the proposed topography is
at variance with history.
3 Hebrews, xiii. 12.
* St John, xix. 20.
5 St Matthew, xxvii. 33 : “And when they were come unto a place called
Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
they crucified him."
St Luke, xxiii. 33: "And when they were come to the place which is called
Calvary, there they crucified him." St John, xix. 17: "And he, bearing his
cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the
Hebrew, Golgotha."
550
APPENDIX.
because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh
at hand." 1
The crucifixion and interment of our Lord took place, according
to the common chronology, in the year 33.
WALL OF JERUSALEM EXTENDED BY AGRIPPA.
About the year 42, King Agrippa commenced building a new
wall, to enclose the suburbs on the north side of the city. This
wall commenced at the tower Hippicus, and proceeded to the
north, to the tower Psephinus; it then extended to the vicinity
of the monument of Helena; advancing further, it passed by the
sepulchral caverns of the Kings, and returned to the tower of the
corner. It joined the old wall again at the valley of Kedron.2
This new wall is supposed by all modern writers to have included
the site of the crucifixion within its circuit.
Agrippa did not complete this wall on the plan he had originally
adopted. The jealousy of the Emperor Claudius was awakened by
the Governor of Judea; and Agrippa thought it prudent to modify
his design in the execution, and give the new fortifications less
strength than he had intended. But, from the description Josephus
has left us of the work, it was a magnificent monument of military
architecture; equal-in the style of the masonry, the size of the
stones, and the solidity of the building-to the most celebrated
portions of the ancient walls, and even to the foundations of the
Temple itself.
The whole circuit of the city, after the construction of this wall,
was 33 stades, or about 3 geographical miles. The present walls
enclose a circumference of about 2 geographical miles.
TAKING OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS.
Until the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, in 70, no change could
have taken place in the aspect of Golgotha or of the tomb. The
place must have been known to every inhabitant of Jerusalem.
But the destruction of the city, after its conquest by Titus, might
have produced a great change. That destruction, however, was
not so complete as is usually reported. Josephus indeed mentions
that the city and the Temple were demolished; but at the same
time he relates, that Titus commanded the troops to leave the most
remarkable of the towers, which defended Jerusalem, standing as
a memorial of the splendid construction of the fortifications of the
1
St John, xix. 41.
2
Josephus, Jewish War, book v. chap. iv. 2.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
551
ancient city. And he preserved the whole of the western wall,
to form a fortification for the garrison he placed in his conquest.
The towers left standing were, Phasælus, Hippicus, and Mariamne;
and as it was without the walls that Christ suffered, the place, if on
this side of the city, probably underwent no change. The garrison
consisted of the tenth legion, some squadrons of cavalry, and
several cohorts of infantry. A large force to be stationed in a
ruined city.
1
Around this garrison, permanently established on the western
side of the ancient city, a town of some size would immediately be
formed, for Palestine continued to be extremely populous, and the
Jews still reverenced Jerusalem and were allowed to visit it. The
Christians, too, though they fled to Pella before the siege, soon
returned; and it continued to be the residence of a Christian bishop.2
We are informed by Eusebius, that Simeon, the son of Cleophas,
was elected to the vacant see at Jerusalem on the return of the
Jewish Christians, so that a considerable number of the native in-
habitants must have soon assembled in an open town under the
protection of the Roman garrison.3
It is needless to offer any conjecture concerning the portion of
the city wall preserved by Titus. In a military point of view,
Mount Zion would appear the most suitable place for a fortified
camp within the walls, and that the towers preserved formed part
of the fortifications of the city of David which were added to the
old wall by Herod, is mentioned by Josephus.*
The neighbourhood of Golgotha was not a thickly inhabited
quarter. It had a garden and a tomb in its immediate vicinity.
The present site of the Holy Sepulchre, from its position, could not
have been within the fortifications of Titus. It must also be recol-
lected that the Christian bishop elected to the see of Jerusalem,
after the conquest by Titus, was Simeon the son of Cleophas, who
was the cousin of Jesus, as appears from St John: "Now there
stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister,
Mary, the wife of Cleophas. These circumstances render it impro-
bable that the site of Christ's crucifixion and burial was forgotten
at this period.
5
1 Josephus, Jewish War, book vii. chap. i.
2 Flight to Pella. Eusebius, Eccles. History, book iii. chap. iii.
3 Eusebius, Eccles. History, book iii. chap. xi.
4 Jewish War, book v. chap. iv. v. vi.
5 St John, xix. 25; compare Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., book iii. ch. xi.
552
APPENDIX.
FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN COLONY OF ELIA CAPITOLINA IN JERUSALEM,
BY HADRIAN.
The Emperor Hadrian, in order to destroy the nationality of the
Jews, determined to transform Jerusalem into a Roman city.' The
measures he adopted caused a rebellion in Palestine, and the rebels
took possession of Jerusalem. The success of this rebellion attests
the numbers, wealth, and power of the Jews, and proves that they
had continued to preserve some degree of political organisation
even after their subjugation by Titus. The Romans slowly collected
their forces. The Jews seized on fifty fortified places and nine hun-
dred and eighty-five large villages. The Roman troops at last crushed
the rebellion, recovered Jerusalem, exterminated the rebels, and
punished the rest of the nation as irreconcilable enemies of Rome.
When peace was restored, Hadrian endeavoured to efface all
memory of the ancient Jerusalem : he issued a decree forbidding any
Jew to return to the city; and guards were stationed to prevent
them even from approaching it. A new city, called Ælia Capito-
lina, was founded on its ruins, which was peopled as a Roman
colony, and adorned with the usual public buildings, theatres,
baths, and pagan temples. The inhabitants of Ælia Capitolina
were doubtless chiefly Roman freedmen and Syrian Greeks. Even
the Christians who were allowed to settle in this new city were
converted Gentiles, for the Christian Jews, in the eyes of the
Roman administration, continued to retain the stamp of their na-
tionality, and consequently dared not approach the place.²
The Jewish writers agree with St Jerome in relating that the
Roman governor, Titus Annius Rufus, ordered the foundations of
the Temple to be torn up, and the plough to be drawn over the
site, as a mark that it was devoted to perpetual desolation.³
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE DEFACED.
Everything was done by Hadrian to give Elia Capitolina the cha-
racter of a pagan city as well as of a Roman colony.
Not only
were the Jews expelled for ever from the capital of their forefathers,
Dio Cassius, lxix. c. 12.
2 Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. iv. 6. Justin Mart. Apol. i. 47. “Ori dè Quλácostal
(Ιερουσαλήμ) ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν, ὅπως μηδεὶς ἐν αὐτῇ γένηται, καὶ θάνατος τοῦ καταλαβομένου
Ιουδαίου ἐσιόντες ὥρισθαι, ἀκριβῶς ἐπίστασθε. Sulpicii Severi, Hist. Sac. ii. 45.
"Militum cohortemn custodias in perpetuum agitare jussit, quæ Judæos omnes
Hierosolymæ aditu arceret."
3 Gemarah Taanieh, c. 4: "Quando aravit Turanus Rufus impius porti-
cum," &c. Maimouides "in Bartoloc." Biblioth. Rabb. iii. p. 679. Hieronymi
(Divi) Comm. in Zachar. viii. 19.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
553
but their prejudices and feelings were insulted in order to induce
them to avoid the spot. A temple was dedicated to Jupiter on the
site of the temple of Solomon. Statues of the heathen god and the
pagan Emperor defiled the Holy of Holies.' The figure of a swine
was set over the gate leading to Bethlehem and Hebron.2
Nor were the Christians spared. The Christian Church of Jeru-
salem had until this period been a Jewish congregation governed
by Jewish pastors, and it was naturally enough considered by the
Romans to form a portion of the nation: as such, it was treated
with the same indignity. The site of the Holy Sepulchre was
covered over with earth, and a temple was erected to Venus on the
spot. The place was thus peculiarly desecrated in the eyes of
Christians, whether Jew or Gentile."
3
LOSS OF THE JEWISH TRADITIONS RELATING TO JERUSALEM.
The exertions of the Roman administration to root out Jewish
traditions in the city of Jerusalem, were not fruitless. The
Christians who settled in Ælia Capitolina were a community of
Gentiles. With the Jews they had no common bond of feeling, and
they had no national character. Perhaps one of the most general
sentiments in their body was an aversion to the rebel Jews and to
everything Jewish. A converted Gentile, named Mark, was
elected bishop of the Christian church of Ælia Capitolina. The
preceding bishops of the congregation of Jerusalem had all been by
birth Jews.* 4
The Roman administration would encourage the neglect of every
practice connected with the reminiscences of the old city, whose
name it was the wish of the Emperor should be buried in oblivion.
The traditions of Jerusalem and of the Jews, thus powerfully
assailed and carefully undermined, soon faded away among a popu-
lation of Gentiles. It is, therefore, by no means extraordinary that
1 Dio Cassius, lxix. 12 : Ες δὲ τὰ Ἱεροσόλυμα πόλιν αὐτοῦ ἀντὶ τῆς κατασκαφείσης
οἰκίσαντος, ἣν καὶ Αἰλίαν Καπιτωλίναν ὠνόμασε, καὶ ἐς τὸν τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ τόπον ναὸν
Tậ Ait ÉTegov Úvreysígavros. Hieronymi Comm. in Esai. ii. 8: "Ubi quondam
Διὶ ἕτερον ἀντεγείραντος.
erat templum et religio Dei, ibi Hadriani statua et Jovis idolum collocatum
est." Some of the architectural remains of the Mosque of Omar may date
from this time.
2 Eusebius, Chronicon.
3 Eusebius (Life of Constantine, iii. 26) mentions the Temple of Venus.
Sozomen, Eccles. Hist. ii. 1. The name of Hadrian as the founder of the
Temple is, however, only mentioned by later writers.-Biblical Researches,
vol. ii. p. 73. The practice of desecrating the sacred edifices of the Pagans
was adopted by the Christians at a later period. A church was built at Alex-
andria to insult the votaries of Mithra on the spot where they had performed
their mysteries.-Neander, Julian," 125.
Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. iv. 6.
554
APPENDIX.
between the year 136, when Hadrian dedicated his colony, and the
year 326, when Helena sanctified the site of the Holy Sepulchre,
all tradition of its exact locality had ceased among the Christian
inhabitants of the Roman colony of Ælia Capitolina.
Though it may have been known to the persons connected with
the government of the Church, and with the local administration,
that the temple of Venus marked the site of the Holy Sepulchre,
the general disgust with which the Christians must have viewed the
desecration, led them, without doubt, to neglect the locality. Here,
then, we have evidence sufficient to warrant the conclusion that
during great part of the interval between Hadrian and Constantine,
or a considerable portion of the space of 190 years, there was an
interruption of the general tradition concerning the position of Gol-
gotha, and the site of the Holy Sepulchre. The name of Golgotha
and the place of a skull may have been utterly forgotten by the
citizens of Ælia Capitolina, and the tomb of our Saviour may
have been neglected by the new Christian population of the Roman
colony.
CONSTANTINE SANCTIFIES THE TOMB OF CHRIST.
Immediately after the first general council of Nice, the Emperor
Constantine determined to consecrate the site of the Holy Sepulchre,
and to honour it by erecting a church. Whether he was moved to
this undertaking by what he believed to be a divine impulse, by
the solicitations of his mother Helena, or by the prayers of some of
the bishops at the Council, is not a matter of great moment as
evidence of his having selected the true site. The first step of the
Emperor was to seek for topographical proofs. The temple of
Venus had been constructed to desecrate that site. It was de-
stroyed, and the heaps of earth in which its foundations were raised
were cleared away. When the rubbish was removed, and the
ancient level of the rock laid bare, the tomb was discovered.¹ That
tomb is now disfigured with marble ornaments, and visited annually
by thousands of pilgrims, who mark their devotion to Christianity
with as much superstition as sincerity.
TESTIMONY OF EUSEBIUS.
Eusebius, the cotemporary historian who speaks of the discovery,
may be considered an eyewitness of the event. He was Bishop of
Cæsarea in Palestine, and a man of piety and learning, though a
courtier and a flatterer of his patron the emperor Constantine.
1 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, iii. 28.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
555
This ecclesiastical historian gives the discovery of the Holy
Sepulchre something of a miraculous aspect in his narrative. But
he relates the facts in so clear a manner that his evidence is of the
most precise and unexceptionable nature. His insinuations that an
unbaptised Christian like Constantine was moved by a divine im-
pulse, must be connected with the facts that Constantine was Emperor
of Rome and the protector of Eusebius.¹
The testimony of Eusebius must, however, be admitted to prove
that the discovery was in some degree unexpected by the majority
of the Christians at Jerusalem, and that all memory of the site was
lost to the people.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE BY CONSTANTINE.
After his discovery, the Emperor erected a monument adorned
with columns over the tomb, and a splendid church in its vicinity,
opposite, as Eusebius says, to the ancient Jerusalem, which God
had allowed to be ruined as a punishment for the impiety of its
inhabitants. The dedication of these buildings took place in the
year 336, ten years after the discovery.
2
"No one has ever doubted the identity of the present site with
that selected by Constantine."³ But a great deal of discussion has
arisen concerning the identity of this site with the tomb in which
the body of our Saviour was laid.
ARGUMENTS OF DR ROBINSON AGAINST THE PRESENT SITE.
The arguments of Dr Robinson against the authenticity of the
site actually shown at Jerusalem as the Holy Sepulchre, go so far
as to prove that it cannot by any possibility be the true site. The
evidence adduced in its favour rests, in his opinion, on two grounds,
—on tradition, and on the inference adopted by the Emperor Con-
stantine that the temple of Venus erected by the pagans over the
site of the sepulchre was really so placed. Tradition Dr Robinson
dismisses as a vain and fallacious guide, even if it existed in the
time of Constantine; but he infers, from the circumstance that no
pilgrimages were then made to the Holy Sepulchre, that there
could be no such tradition. Eusebius, the cotemporary ecclesias-
tical historian, whose testimony might be of some value as a proof
1
¹ Constantine had probably embraced Christianity in Gaul, A. D. 312.—
Godefroy. Cod. Theod. xvi. x. 1.
2 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, iii. 33 : ᾿Αντιπρόσωπος τῇ παλαίῃ ταύτῃ ἄντικρυς.
3 Robinson's Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 71. This is no longer correct
since the publication of Mr Fergusson's work.
556
APPENDIX.
of its existence, is absolutely silent concerning any such tradition.
With regard to the temple of Venus, he thinks that the writers who
mention the discovery of the Sepulchre by Constantine, only afford
evidence that such a temple stood over the spot fixed upon by Con-
stantine as the site of the Holy Sepulchre.
Dr Robinson, in concluding his arguments, sums up with the fol-
lowing words: "I am led irresistibly to the conclusion, that the
Golgotha and the tomb now shown in the Church of the Holy Se-
pulchre, are not upon the real places of the crucifixion and resurrection
of our Lord. The alleged discovery of Calvary and the Sepulchre
by the aged and credulous Helena, like her discovery of the cross,
may not improbably have been the work of pious fraud. It would,
perhaps, not be doing injustice to the Bishop Macarius and his
clergy, if we regard the whole as a well-laid and successful plan for
restoring to Jerusalem its former consideration, and elevating his
see to a higher degree of influence and dignity.
"1
So far, however, Dr Robinson's arguments only raise great
doubts concerning the probability of the sites now shown being the
actual sites. The truth of his observations concerning the small
value of tradition, in all historical questions, must be fully admitted.
And the fact that there is no direct evidence of the existence
of any tradition relating to the position of the Holy Sepulchre,
except the supposed connection between its site and that of the
temple of Venus, from the time of Hadrian to that of Constantine,
is undeniable.
But Dr Robinson has gone much farther, and attempted to prove
that the sites now shown cannot by any possibility be the real sites,
because they are within the line of the ancient walls of Jerusalem,
and the places of the crucifixion and interment of our Lord were
without the gate of the city. But Dr Robinson has only supported
this assertion by an opinion of his own concerning the position of
the ancient walls of Jerusalem. He decides the discussion in his
own favour by imagining a line of wall for the city, which would
include the sites whose identity he assails.
It is not proposed to enter on this subject in the following pages,
the questions relating to the position of three walls which enclosed
Jerusalem at different periods, presenting far greater difficulties
than any relating to the site of the Holy Sepulchre. The authen-
ticity of the site assailed by Dr Robinson, must be proved or dis-
proved by direct evidence, and not by any hypothesis concerning
the direction of the city wall in which Titus left the three towers
standing.
1 Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 80.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
557
ARGUMENTS OF THE REV. GEORGE WILLIAMS IN ITS FAVOUR.
The Reverend George Williams, in a learned work on the topo-
graphy of Jerusalem, entitled "The Holy City," endeavours to
prove that the sites now shown are authentic. Mr Williams
attempts to refute all the arguments of Dr Robinson. He considers
tradition competent to establish the identity of these sites, and the
existence of the tradition in their favour he holds to be satisfactorily
proved; borrowing from Chateaubriand the argument that the regu-
lar succession of the Jewish-Christian bishops from the Apostle St
James to the destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian, and of Gentile
bishops from the time of Hadrian to that of Constantine, must have
preserved the memory of these sacred places.
Mr Williams remarks, "that if any apology be required for
attempting a defence of the tradition relating to the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem, it is offered in the consideration, that the credit of
the whole Church for fifteen hundred years is in some measure in-
volved in the question.'
77 1 But Mr Williams is too candid to assert
that the tradition, even in this case, is conclusive evidence. "It
must be admitted, in examining the question, that the nature of the
case does not admit of demonstrative proof; the most we can expect
is a high degree of probability; and, if we can divest ourselves of
an undue prejudice against traditionary evidence, we shall be ready
to grant that there is a strong antecedent presumption on the side
of a tradition which has antiquity and universality in its favour.” 2
He argues also that the name of Golgotha would be preserved, and
"tend to preserve the memorial of the site among the natives;
and that the Christian Church never having been absent from
Jerusalem for more than a few years, the Christians at Jerusalem
must always have been able to identify the true site, however acci-
dent or design might have altered its character.*
1) 3
The impossibility of any pious fraud having been committed by
Helena, or sanctioned by the Bishop of Jerusalem, is also strongly in-
sisted on.
As I have quoted the words in which Dr Robinson sums
up his arguments, I shall do the same with Mr Williams: "The main
authority for the present site of the Holy Sepulchre is Eusebius,
and the warrant for its preservation or recovery is the pagan temple
raised over it by Hadrian, which became a lasting record of the
spot.' And since, in the time of this emperor, the crucifixion and
burial of our Saviour were almost in the memory of man, we may
11 5
1 The Holy City, p. 253.
City, p. 297.
2 Ibid. 256.
3 Ibid. 289.
Ibid. 290.
5 Mr Newman's Preface to Fleury, p. clvi., note f, as quoted in The Holy
558
APPENDIX.
f
conclude "that this powerful record of the means used by pagans
to obliterate the rights of Christianity, seems to afford decisive evi-
dence concerning the locality of the tomb, and to place its situation
beyond the reach of doubt.'
Though Mr Williams seems to think tradition sufficient to satisfy
all impartial inquirers, he nevertheless enlarges with great care on
the topographical evidence which can be brought forward in opposi-
tion to Dr Robinson's opinions. But it must be owned that, able
as some of his topographical observations are, they can no more be
magnified into direct evidence in favour of the sites now shown
than Dr Robinson's topographical opinions into direct evidence.
against them. The truth is, that neither Mr Williams nor Dr
Robinson have adduced any conclusive evidence concerning the
precise line of the ancient walls of Jerusalem. And, on this
particular point, it is evident that Dr Robinson has a very great
advantage in the nature of the question; for, if Dr Robinson's line
of wall be the true one, then the present sites cannot possibly be
authentic, since they are within that wall. But even if Mr Williams's
line of wall should really be proved to rest on the firmest founda-
tions, still it would be possible that the sites now shown, though
without that wall, might not be the true sites.
2
Lord Nugent has also attempted to uphold the evidence of tradi-
tion against the powerful assaults of Dr Robinson's reasoning.3
Lord Nugent considers tradition peculiarly applicable to this case.
What can mankind prove by tradition, if it can be supposed that
Christians could forget the site of their Saviour's burial and resurrec-
tion? Alas, however, for mankind! Man will forget anything.
The supplementary arguments deduced by Lord Nugent from the
direction of the walls, from the position of the gate Gennath, and
from his attempt to identify the present bazaar with the spot where
the troops of Titus carried the second wall, as recorded by Jose-
phus,* even supposing they were all conceded, would still hardly be
sufficient to frame an issue directly affecting the authenticity of the
present sites that could be sent to a jury. His lordship's topogra-
297.
1 Dr Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 549, as quoted in The Holy City, p.
2 In spite of all the learning that has been employed on the subject, and the
laborious researches of Dr Robinson and Mr Williams, we really know but little
concerning the topography of ancient Jerusalem. It is necessary to use great
caution in examining the subject under the guidance of modern authors.
Though the work of Mr Williams is perhaps the best on the subject, he has
too often neglected the canons of archæological science to be a safe guide.
Still, he has added something to our scanty stock of knowledge, and his identi-
fication of the valley Tyropoion is a very important step towards solving many
existing difficulties. The best statement of the historical evidence concerning
the ancient walls, is that of Professor Fallmerayer, "Denkschrift über Gol-
gatha und das Heilig Grab," 1852, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Bavaria.
3 Lands Classical and Sacred. 4 Josephus, Jewish War, book v. ch. 8.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
559
phical arguments, though ingenious, cannot be admitted to be direct
evidence on the question of the identification of the sites of the
crucifixion and resurrection.
In this discussion, Dr Robinson has certainly the advantage in
his arguments, though Mr Williams and Lord Nugent may be right
in their conclusions. It is much easier to find good reasons for
doubting than to find evidence strong enough to refute doubts.
The American divine has also adopted a more correct spirit of in-
vestigation; but the English clergyman has prosecuted his inquiry
with better topographical observations, and the man of the world
has displayed a finer and juster discrimination of the results of facts.
Dr Robinson studied authorities with care; and these authorities,
as he perceived, were far from conclusive. The reverence Mr
Williams resolved to pay to these very authorities made him rest
satisfied with imperfect evidence. Lord Nugent looked at the site
with candour, and, under the guidance of taste and feeling, he felt
convinced. All three have, however, spoiled their case. Dr Robin-
son, by making an untenable hypothesis concerning an imaginary
wall; and Mr Williams and Lord Nugent, by allowing this weak-
ness of their adversary to delude them into indulging in conjecture
as a means of refuting conjecture.
PRESENT STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION CONCERNING THE AUTHENTICITY
OF THE SITE.
The question now at issue is, where is the true site of the Holy
Sepulchre? It is therefore necessary, in the first place, to examine
whether there exists any direct evidence on the subject; for if there
be none, then the question will be a matter of inference and opinion,
and cannot in all probability ever be permanently settled. The
presumption that the site now shown is not the real tomb, has be-
come of late years so general among Protestants, that the burden
of the proof in its favour is now thrown, rather unfairly, it must be
confessed, on those who maintain a fact undisputed for about 1500
years. Undoubtedly, they who first called in question the authen-
ticity of the actual site, ought to have been compelled to prove that
it is not the real tomb, before the public condescended to change
its opinion; but, unfortunately, the doubters have always the ad-
vantage in historical discussion; and be it right or wrong now, it
is evident that if the site shown as the Holy Sepulchre is to be in
future generally admitted to be the tomb of our Saviour, it must
be proved to be so by historical evidence. Tradition will no longer
serve the purpose.
No inferences from the disputed and questionable topography of
560
APPENDIX.
ancient Jerusalem can be admitted. Direct proof must be adduced
that Constantine really brought to light the real tomb of Christ, and
that the site now reverenced is the one which he sanctified. This
spot, though well known after the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus,
appears to have been forgotten or neglected after the foundation of
Ælia Capitolina by Hadrian. It must be proved that documentary
evidence existed for nearly two centuries, while tradition was silent.
Nothing less will satisfy a hesitating world.
EVIDENCE THAT CONSTANTINE FIXED ON THE TRUE SITE.
It is necessary to examine all the evidence which it was in the
power of Constantine to collect in his endeavour to ascertain the
site of the Holy Sepulchre, and to scrutinise this evidence with
perfect impartiality. We may then decide whether the evidence
is sufficient to establish the truth of a point of history.
Eusebius, as has been already noticed, mentions that the pagans
had erected a temple of Venus over the Holy Sepulchre. Tradi-
tion, it has been supposed, would enable the Christians to preserve
some memory of this circumstance. Dr Robinson is of a contrary
opinion. He declares, that "the amount of the testimony relative
to an idol erected over the place of the resurrection, and serving to
mark the spot, is simply that writers, ex post facto, have mentioned
such an idol as standing, not over the sepulchre known of old as
being that of Christ, but over the spot fixed upon by Constantine as
that sepulchre." ¹
1
It becomes, therefore, necessary to show that Constantine had
documentary evidence to prove, that the temple of Venus, or the
idol which stood over the spot fixed upon by his officers as the site
of the Holy Sepulchre, really stood over the sepulchre known of
old as that of Christ. It is the simplest method of arriving at a
solution of the question, to adopt the very ground occupied by Dr
Robinson in his Biblical Researches as the arena of discussion, and
prosecute the search for truth, as far as possible, by his side.
MODE OF INVESTIGATION FOLLOWED BY CONSTANTINE.
What mode of investigation would Constantine adopt, when he
had resolved to ascertain the site of the Holy Sepulchre? In spite
of the reverence many persons display for tradition, I cannot believe
that the Roman emperor instructed his officers in Palestine to com-
mence by an examination of the oldest grave-diggers or notaries
of Ælia Capitolina. There can be no doubt that, in a case of so
1 Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 73.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
561
much importance in the eyes of Constantine himself, and in the
opinion of the whole Christian world, the Emperor would adopt the
usual means afforded by the administration of the Roman empire
for ascertaining the truth in any doubtful topographical or territorial
dispute. In this particular case, as a numerous, powerful, and in-
telligent body of sceptic and pagan philosophers and statesmen
would watch every step of the imperial proceedings with suspicion,
the government would undoubtedly observe strictly the usual
official forms.
It is from the very circumstance of Constantine having scrupu-
lously observed these forms of proceeding in order to ascertain the
truth, that they are not particularly detailed by the ecclesiastical
historians who mention his discovery of the Holy Sepulchre.
PERFECTION OF THE ROMAN CENSUS, AND EXACT REGISTRATION OF PROPERTY.
It is well known that the excellence of the Roman imperial
government consisted in two things,-in an admirable civil admi-
nistration, and an incomparable judicial organisation. Now, in no
department of the civil administration was the superiority of the
Roman system of government over that of modern states more con-
spicuous, than in the mass of statistical information in the possession
of the executive power.
In the time of Vespasian, the political archives of Rome contained
3000 bronze tablets, on which all the public laws, decrees of the
senate, and treaties of peace with foreign powers, as well as special
privileges to confederated states or favoured individuals, were
engraved. But, besides this splendid collection of public documents,
the national archives contained another collection for the preserva-
tion of all statistical information connected with the census.
The census was so perfect, that throughout the wide extent of the
Roman empire every private estate was surveyed. Maps were con-
structed, indicating not only every locality possessing a name, but
so detailed that every field was measured. And in the register con-
nected with the map, even the number of the fruit-trees in the gardens,
the olive-trees in the groves, and the vines in the vineyards, was set
down, the cattle were counted, and the inhabitants, both slaves and
free, were individually inscribed in this register.²
Not only every Roman province, and especially every Roman
colony, but even every municipality, was surveyed with this extreme
accuracy. A plan of the district was engraved on brass, and depo-
2
1 Suetonius, "Vespasian," c. 8.
Ulpian in the Pandects, lib. 1. tit. xiv. 4.
Ulpianus lib. iii. "De Censibus." "Forma censuali cavetur, ut agri sic in con-
2 N
562
APPENDIX.
sited in the imperial register-office; while copies were placed in
the hands of the local administrations, and in the provincial archives.
The fact that these plans were engraved on plates of brass is men-
tioned by Hyginus, and the practice of multiplying copies of these
brazen plates on linen is incidentally recorded in the Theodosian
code.¹
APPLICATION OF THE CENSUS TO JUDEA MENTIONED BY ST LUKE.
Such were the principles on which the Roman census was con-
structed, and these principles were first applied to Judea in the
time of Augustus. St Luke gives us some interesting information
concerning the manner of framing the personal registers of the
census. He shows us the minute attention paid by the Roman ad-
ministration to all statistical details, and supplies us with the means
of contrasting the personal importance of each citizen in ancient
political communities with the utter insignificance of the social posi-
tion of a private individual in modern states. The words of the
Evangelist are: "And it came to pass in those days, that there
went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should
be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was
governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his
own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city
of Nazareth, into Judæa, unto the city of David, which is called
Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to
be taxed." 2
The Pandects also afford evidence that the inspection over
every portion of property was as exact and minute as the control
which was exercised over each individual citizen.³ And Livy
informs us that this administrative organisation was a portion of
the Roman constitution, and had been applied in all its details to
the allied cities, and among the Latins, as early as the year B. C.
173.4
sum referatur: nomen fundi cujusque, et in qua civitate, et in quo pago sit, et quos
duos vicinos proximos habeat, et id arvum quod in decem annis proximis satum
erit, quot jugerum sit, vinea quot vites habeat, olivetum quot jugerum, et
quot arbores habeat, pratum, quod intra decem annos proximos factum erit,
quot jugerum, pascua quot jugerum esse videantur, item silvæ cæduæ, omnia
ipse, qui defert, æstimet.
Quare si agri portio chasmate perierit,
debebit per censitorem relevari."
1 Hyginus, De Limitibus constituendis, p. 193, in the collection of the Agri-
mensones, entitled "Rei Agrariæ auctores legesque, variæ quædam nunc
primum, cætera emendatiora prodeunt cura Wilhelmi Goesii, 4to, Amst. 1674.”
Cod. Theodos. xi. xxvii: “Æreis tabulis vel cerussatis aut linteis mappis
scripta per omnes civitates Italiæ proponatur lex," &c.
2 St Luke, ii. 1-5.
3 Pandects, book 1. tit. xv. 4: "Is vero qui agrum in alia civitate," &c.
4 Livy, xlii. 10.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
563
1
The mass of statistical information collected by the great census
of Augustus, was of such importance, that the Emperor himself was
induced to prepare an abstract of its results, which was presented
to the Senate by his successor Tiberius, and regarded as one of the
most valuable monuments of his government. The registers of the
census were still farther improved in the reigns of Diocletian and
Constantine; and the revision of the taxation based on these
registers was established every fifteenth year, as a fundamental law
of the empire.
The importance of the general survey and registration of property
over the whole Roman empire has not been sufficiently appreciated
by modern historians, nor has its effect on the events of Roman
history been fully developed. It is not one of the least of the
merits of the sagacious Niebuhr that he was the first to point out
the great importance of the Agrimensones, or corps of civil
engineers; and the necessity of studying their duties in order to
enlarge our knowledge of the Roman administration. The business
of the Agrimensones was to measure lands and maintain boundaries,
and a map of their survey was deposited in the imperial archives,
while a copy was placed in those of the colony. During the de-
cline of the empire, and consequently in the time of Constantine,
they formed a numerous and respectable class. Many of them
were men both of rank and science.2
The name of the Surveyor-general of Augustus, Balbus, has
been preserved by history. Frontinus, who mentions it, gives us
some notices concerning the survey. The limits of the provinces,
and the boundaries of the municipalities and cities, were determined
and recorded in the books of Augustus and Nero; and Balbus,
in the time of Augustus, compiled a commentary on the forms and
admeasurements of the census, in which the condition of landed
property throughout the empire was registered and explained.³
The exactitude of the details in this early survey was so great,
that they were applicable to fixing questions relating to private
property; and excited the admiration of posterity as late as the
time of Cassiodorus, who cites its minuteness as enabling each pro-
prietor to know his own rights with certainty, and the amount of
the public taxes to which he was liable, about the middle of the
sixth century.*
¹Tacitus, Annals, 1. 2. Suetonius, "Augustus," c. 28, 102.
2 Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. ii. p. 634.
3 Frontini de Coloniis Libellus, in the collection to the "Rei Agrariæ Auctores
Legesque, ap. Goesium," p. 109.
Cassiodori Variarum, lib. xii. ; lib. iii. 52: “ Augusti si quidem tempori-
bus orbis Romanus agris divisus censuque descriptus est, ut possessio sua nulli
haberetur incerta, quam pro tributorum susceperat quantitate solvenda.”
564
APPENDIX.
MATERIALS AT CONSTANTINE'S DISPOSAL FOR VERIFYING THE SITE.
1
The evidence already produced would be sufficient to prove that
the Roman Archives, in the time of Constantine, afforded the ma-
terials necessary for determining with exactitude the site of any
public building in Jerusalem. The particular mention of Ælia
Capitolina in the Pandects, puts this beyond a doubt. Ulpian there
informs us that the two Roman colonies in Palestine, Ælia Capito-
lina and Cæsarea, did not enjoy the Jus Italicum. Now this
proves that they enjoyed every other advantage of the Roman
administration. The previous application of the census of Augustus
to the citizens of Judea, would require the government of the colony
to pay even more than the usual attention to perfect all the details
of its survey, and compile comparative maps and plans of the topo-
graphy of Jerusalem and the new colony. We have, also, precise
evidence that the details of the census were most rigorously applied
throughout the whole extent of the empire in the reign of Constan-
tine. Lactantius, the tutor of his son, gives a sketch of its
minuteness.2
When Constantine, therefore, had determined to ascertain the
exact site of the tomb of our Saviour, there can be no doubt that
he ordered the imperial archives to be searched for plans of Jeru-
salem, as it existed both before and after its conquest by Titus and
Hadrian. Such plans must have existed, not only in the imperial
archives, but also in the provincial records of Judea, and in the
register-office of the colony of Ælia Capitolina. These plans would
leave no doubt that the Temple of Venus stood over the real site of
the tomb of our Saviour. Had the smallest doubt remained, it could
easily have been removed by actual measurement from some other
position. The position of Golgotha, the gate leading to Golgotha,
and the property of Joseph of Arimathæa, were all places which
must have been inserted in the registers. The words of Eusebius,
already quoted, lead us to believe that the Temple of Venus was,
even in his time, without the walls. Supposing, however, that not
a trace of the walls or of the gate remained, their position could
¹ Pandects, 1. tit. xv. 1, 6: "In Palæstina duæ sunt coloniæ, Cæsariensis et
Elia Capitolina; sed neutra jus Italicum habet."
2 Lactantii de Mortibus Persecutorum, c. 23: Agri glebatim metiebantur,
vites et arbores numerabantur, animalia omnis generis scribebantur, hominum
capita notabantur; unusquisque cum liberis, cum servis aderant."
Siculus Flaccus, edit. Goesii, p. 9: "Titulos finitis spatiis positos, qui indicent
cujus agri quis dominus, quod spatium tueatur."-Rei Agrariæ Auctores.
Dureau de la Malle, in his Economie Politique des Romains, gives an accu-
rate and critical examination of our knowledge relating to all the details of the
Roman census.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
565
easily be ascertained from the title-deeds of property in the vicinity,
inscribed in the register as early as the time of Augustus. With
the place called Golgotha, and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathæa, a
rich man and a counsellor, to search for, both of which must have
been laid down in the plans, and inscribed in the registers, prior to
the time of the crucifixion, any pious fraud of the Christians, in the
time of Constantine, could only have proved injurious to their own
cause.
That the Temple of Venus, consequently, really stood over the
site of the Holy Sepulchre, was a fact that could be verified with-
out difficulty, both by Constantine and his officers. That the site
was so verified, we may rest assured, otherwise the Jews and
Pagans, in the time of Julian, would have pointed out the inaccu-
racy of the researches of Constantine, and revealed the smallest
flaw in the evidence. Any insufficiency in the data on which Con-
stantine had pretended to fix the sites of the crucifixion and the
resurrection, as soon as it was adopted by the Christians, would
have been considered a legitimate ground for drawing the inference,
that the Christians had accepted the fundamental truths of their re-
ligion on the same imperfect testimony. It would not have been
reserved for Korte, a bookseller from Altona, to raise doubts con-
cerning the authenticity of the site; nor for Dr Robinson, an Ameri-
can divine, to make the charitable discovery that Constantine, or
Helena, or the Bishop Macarius, had committed a pious fraud.
ARGUMENTS HITHERTO ADDUCED BOTH AGAINST AND IN FAVOUR OF THE
PRESENT SITE NUGATORY.
The arguments of recent writers against and in favour of the
authenticity of the actual site have now been proved to be nugatory
or irrelevant. Dr Robinson combats tradition, insinuates fraud,
and builds an imaginary wall, when he ought to have searched for
historical evidence. Both Lord Nugent and the Rev. George Wil-
liams adopt conclusions based only on opinions.
The question of the authenticity of the site now shown, really
turns on the probability of the Roman administration having pre-
served documentary evidence for the space of at most one hundred
and ninety years, when we know that at least three copies of this
documentary evidence must have existed originally. During all
the period, too, between the foundation of Elia Capitolina and the
discovery of the Holy Sepulchre, Palestine enjoyed as great a de-
gree of tranquillity as England since the time of Cromwell. The
uniform course of the Roman administration, therefore, renders the
preservation of all the statistical documents required for the verifica-
566
APPENDIX.
tion of the sites sought by Constantine, a fact which must be ad-
mitted, unless historical evidence can be adduced to prove that
their destruction was more probable than their preservation.
AUTHENTICITY OF THE NARRATIVE OF EUSEBIUS.
We now see that the account given of the discovery of the Holy
Sepulchre by Eusebius, as a cotemporary and an eyewitness, is in
the strictest accordance with the official course pursued by Con-
stantine. Eusebius makes no mention of tradition, for he knew
that documentary evidence alone could determine with certainty
that the Temple of Venus was erected over the tomb of our Saviour.
When the removal of the pagan shrine took place, and the founda-
tions were cleared away, the fact that the sepulchre, hewn in
the rock, remained undestroyed, naturally called forth expressions
of wonder and pious gratitude. Its destruction would have been
so easy to those who covered it up with earth, and desecrated it in
the eyes of the Christians, in order to veil it for ever in oblivion,
that Eusebius might well consider that it had been spared only by
a miracle.
SUMMARY.
The arguments concerning the identity of the site at present
shown as the Holy Sepulchre which have been hitherto brought
forward in examining the subject, are insufficient either to prove or
disprove any disputed point of history. They seem to me to be
grounded on unwarranted assumptions, and supported by unfound-
ed suppositions.
I have made an attempt to treat the question as one of historical
evidence. Unless I deceive myself, I have succeeded in demonstrat-
ing that, far from the site of the Holy Sepulchre being, as it has
generally been considered, the most doubtful point in the topo-
graphy of Jerusalem, it is precisely the point which we are enabled
to fix with the greatest certainty. It is the settled base from
which all future investigations of the topography of the Holy City
must proceed.
It is vain to pretend that any argument can be drawn from the
actual appearance of Jerusalem, to render it impossible that the
present site should ever have been without the walls. Eusebius
never could have committed so preposterous an error concerning
the walls of Jerusalem as to suppose it without their limits, had it
been included within their circuit; and the Jews and Pagans in
the time of Julian would have loudly proclaimed the blunder.
SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
567
It appears to me that there are only two points within the
walls of Jerusalem which are incontestable, the site of the Holy
Sepulchre, and of the Temple of the Jews. From these two points,
and the marked topographical features of Mount Sion and the
valley Tyropoion, we must cautiously proceed to the identification
of the rest.
Since the discovery of the tomb by Constantine, the buildings
erected over it, and the church constructed in its vicinity, have been
more than once destroyed.' But while the greatest doubt rests on
the lines of the various walls with which Jerusalem has at different
times been fortified, none can now exist concerning the authenticity
of the site of the Holy Sepulchre, which many rival sects and hos-
tile national churches have ever since agreed in considering as a
holy place of pilgrimage.
If history can prove any facts by collateral evidence, it must be
admitted that it has proved that Constantine could not possibly
have been mistaken in identifying the site of the Holy Sepulchre,
and that Christians cannot have transferred the site from the spot
fixed on by him in his time.
We may consequently rest perfectly satisfied, that when we view
the marble tomb now standing in the Church of the Resurrection
at Jerusalem, we really look on the site of the sepulchre that was
hewn in a rock in the place where Jesus was crucified.
1 Jerusalem was taken by the Persians in the year 614, and the church of
the Holy Sepulchre was burnt.-Chronicon Paschale, p. 385, edit. Paris. It
was rebuilt almost immediately. The church was again burnt by the Moham-
medans in the reign of Nicephorus II., about 966.-Cedrenus, vol. ii. p. 661.
In the year 1010, Hakem caliph of Egypt demolished the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, and defaced the tomb itself.-Cedrenus, 706; William of Tyre, i.
4. Romanus III. and Michael IV. contributed to its reconstruction.-Cedrenus,
731. It was completed in 1048.-William of Tyre, i. 6. After the Crusaders
founded the kingdom of Jerusalem, they erected over, and in connection with,
the sacred places, a stately temple, enclosing the whole of the sacred precints;
the walls and general form of which probably remain to the present day.—
Robinson's Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 61. In the year 1808, the church of
the Holy Sepulchre was nearly destroyed by fire, but the tomb escaped unin-
jured. The repairs of the walls and reconstruction of the church were com-
pleted in the year 1810.
As a proof that no change took place in the site at the destruction of the
church by the Persians in 614, the Iberians who accompanied Heraclius in
his campaigns had been in the habit of making pilgrimages to the Holy
Sepulchre, and sending money for the use of the holy places to the Patriarch
before the Persian invasion, and they continued to do so after the Moham-
medan conquest.-Constantine Porphyr. De Adm. Imp. p. 198, edit. Bonn.
568
APPENDIX.
IV.
CATALOGUE OF THE EDITION OF THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS
PRINTED AT PARIS, AND REPRINTED AT VENICE, WITH THE
ADDITIONS REQUIRED TO COMPLETE IT.
Copies both of the original edition of the collection of the By-
zantine historians, printed at Paris, and of the Venetian reprint,
vary so much in the arrangement and number of the volumes, that
an alphabetical catalogue of the works is necessary in order to en-
able purchasers to form a complete set of these writers, and may
prove useful to students of the history of the Eastern Empire. A
list of the Paris edition, as the volumes were first published, or at
least as they were arranged in the oldest French catalogues, will
be found in Ebert's Bibliographisches Lexicon, and in Schweiger's
Handbuch der Classichen Bibliographie, and an alphabetical index
of all the works, in the third volume of Pinder's Geschichte der
Griechischen Literatur, von Schoell. It is needless to notice the
superiority of the new edition, now in the course of publication at
Bonn, which is often great. Still the older editions often retain
their value, as many works are not entirely reprinted.
1. PH. LABBÆI de Byzantinæ historiæ Scriptoribus emittendis ad
omnes per orbem eruditos protrepticon. Parisiis, 1648.
Excerpta de legationibus ex DEXIPPO Atheniense, EUNAPIO
Sardiano, PETRO Patricio, PRISCO Sophista, MALCHO Phila-
delph., MENANDRO Protect., THEOPHYLACTO Simocatta, a D.
Hoeschelio edita. Item Ecloga historicorum de rebus By-
zantinis, quorum integra scripta aut injuria temporum inter-
ciderunt, aut plura continent ad Constant. historiam minus
spectantia. Selegit interp. recensuit notisque illust. PH.
LABBE. Recensio auctorum, qui in hisce eclogis continentur.
OLYMPIODORUS Thebæus, CANDIDUS Isaurus, THEOPHANES
Byzantius de bello Justini adv. Persas, HESYCHIUS Milesius.
de rebus patriis Constantinopoleos. Parisiis, 1648.
2. AGATHIE Scholastici de imperio et rebus gestis Justiniani, imp.
libri V. gr. et lat. interpr. B. Vulcanio, access. ejusd. Agathiæ
epigrammata. Parisiis, 1660.
3. ANASTASII Bibliothecarii Historia Ecclesiastica, acced. notæ Car.
Annib. Fabroti. Ejusd. Anastasii vitæ Pontificum Romanorum.
Parisiis, 1649.
BYZANTINE AUTHORS.
569
4. COMNENE Porphyrog. Cæsarissa (Anna) Alexias, lib. xv. a Pet.
Passino, lat. interpret glossario et notis illust., accesserunt præ-
fat. ac notæ Dav. Hoeschelii. Parisiis, 1651.
Notæ historicæ et philol. in Annæ Comnenæ Alexiadem.
Parisiis, 1670.
5. and 6. BANDURI (Anselmi) Imperium Orientale, sive Antiqui-
tates Constantinopolitanæ in quatuor partes distributæ. 2 vol.
Parisiis, 1711.
Vol. I. Constantini Porphyro. de Thematibus Orientis et Oc-
cidentis liber. Hieroclis Grammatici Synecdemus Con-
stantini Porphyr. de administrando imperio lib.-Agapeti
Diaconi capita admonitoria ad Justinianum imp.-Basilii
imp. capita exhortationum ad Leonem filium-Theophylacti
Archiep. Bulg. institutio regia ad Constantinum Porphyrog.
-Anonymi origines Constantinopolitanæ ac descriptio ædis.
Sophiana-Breves demonstrationes chronographicæ incerti
auctoris Niceta Choniatæ narratio de statuis Constantino-
politanis, quas Latini, capta urbe, in monetam conflaverunt.
Vol. II. Ans. Banduri animadversiones in Constantini Porph.
libros de thematibus et de adm. inperio; ac breves notæ
ad opuscula Agapeti Diac. Basilii imp. et Theophylacti
etc.
7, 8, and 9. CANTACUZENI (Joan.) Historia, gr. et lat. ex interp. J.
Pontani, c. ejusdem, et J. Gretseri, annot. 3 vol. Parisiis, 1645.
10. CEDRENI (Georgii) Compendium Historiarum, gr. et lat. ex
vers. et c. not. G. Xylandri. Acce. ad not. J. Goar et Car. Annib.
Fabroti glossar. in Cedrenum. Excerpta ex breviario historico
Joannis Skylitzæ Curopolatæ. Parisiis, 1647.
11. CHALCOCONDYLE (Laonici) Historiar. lib. x. de origine et reb.
gestis Turcorum gr. et lat. cum annalibus Sultanorum ex vers.
J. Leunclavii. acc. C. A. Fabroti ind. gloss. Chalcocond. Parisiis
1650.
12. Chronicon Alexandrinum s. Chronion Paschale a mundo con-
dito ad Heraclii imp. a. 20. c. n. chron. et hist. cura Car. Dufresne
Dn. du Cange. Parisiis, 1688.
13. Chronicon Orientale latinitate donatum ab Abrahamo Ecchel-
lensi. Ejusd. Historia Orientalis supplementum. Parisiis, 1651.
Chronicon Orientale Petri Rahebi Ægypti ex Arabico latine
reddittum ab Ab. Ecchellensi, nunc nova interpr. donatum a J.
S. Assemano. Fol. Venet. 1729.
This Venetian edition is improved and augmented.
14. CINNAMI (Joan.) Historiar. libr. vi. gr. et lat. c. not. hist. et
philol. Car. Dufresne du Cange. acc. Pauli Silentiarii descriptio
S. Sophiæ. gr. et lat. c. n. Ducange. Parisiis, 1670.
570
APPENDIX.
15. CODINI (Georgii) et Anonymi excerpta de antiquitat. Constan-
tinopolitanis, gr. et lat. ex. vers. Petr. Lambecii. c. ejusd. not. acc.
MANUEL. CHRYSOLARE, epist. iii. etc. IMP. LEONIS, oracula (c.
fig.) gr. et lat. interpr. Bern. Medonio. Parisiis, 1655.
16. CODINI (Georgii) De off. magnæ ecclesiæ et aulæ Constantino-
politanæ, gr. et lat. ex vers. J. Gretseri c. ejusd. comment. acc.
notitiæ Græcorum episcopatuum a Leone Sapiente ad Androni-
cum Palæologum a J. Goar. Parisiis, 1648.
17 and 18. PORPHYROGEN. (Constantini) Lib. ii. De ceremoniis aulæ
Byzantinæ, gr. et lat. ed. J. H. Leich, et J. Jac. Reiske. 2 vol.
Lipsiæ, 1751.
19. Corporis Historiæ Byz. nova appendix opera GEORGII PISIDÆ,
THEODOSII Diaconi, et CORIPPI Africani complectens, c. notis P. F.
Foggini. Romæ, 1777.
20. DucÆ, (J.) Historia Byzantina, gr. et lat. not. illustrav. Ism.
Bullialdi. Parisiis, 1649.
21. Dufresne D. DUCANGE (Car.) Historia Byzantina duplici com-
mentario illustrata, prior familias ac stemmata imperatorum Con-
stantinopolit. cum eorundem numismatibus; alter descriptionem
urbis Constantinipolotanæ sub imp. Christianis. Parisiis, 1680.
22. GENESIUS (Jos.) de reb. Constantinopolitanis, a Leone Armenio
ad Basilium Macedonem-Geo. PHRANZÆ, Chronicon lat.-J.
R. BENTLEII
ANTIOCHENI Cog. MALALE, Chronographia.
Epistola ad Millium. LEONIS ALLATII Opuscula. Fol. Venet.
1733.
23. ACROPOLITE (Georgii) Historia, gr. et lat. JOELIS Chrono-
graphia Compendiaria, et J. CANANI Narratio de bello Constanti-
nopolitano, gr. et lat. ex interpr. Leon. Allatii c. ejusd. et Theod.
Dousæ observ. acc. Alatii de Georgiis et eorum scriptis diatribæ.
Parisiis, 1651.
24. GLYCE (Mich.) Annales, gr. et lat. ex vers. J. Leunclavii, ex
rec. et c. notis, Ph. Labbæi. Parisiis, 1660.
25. Historiæ Byzantinæ Scriptores post Theophanem.
1685.
Parisiis,
Chronici jassu Constantini Porphyrog. conscripti a Leone
Armenio usque ad Michaelem Theoph. fil. libri iv. Constan-
tini Porphyrog. Basilius Macedo.-Anonymus continuator
Theophanis Orthodoxorum invectiva adv. Iconomachos.
Joannis Jerosolymitani narratio de Iconomachis-Joannis
Cameniatæ narratio de excidio urbis Thessalonica-Demetri
Cydonii monodia occisorum Thessalonica-Symeonis Ma-
gistri ac Logothetæ Annales-Georgii Monachii, vitæ re-
centior. imp. a Leone Armenio usque ad Constantinum
Porphyrogen.
BYZANTINE AUTHORS.
571
26. LEONIS, (Diaconi), Historia, scriptoresque ad res Byzantinas
pertinentes etc. ed. C. B. Hase. Fol. Parisiis, 1819.
LEONIS Diaconi Caloënsis Historiæ, libri x. et liber de velita-
tione bellica Nicephori Augusti, e recensione Car. Ben. Hasii,
addita ejusdem versione atque adnotationibus ab ipso recogni-
tis. Accedunt Theodosii Acroases de Creta capta e rec. F.
Jacobsii et Luitprandi legatio cum aliis libellis qui Nicephori
Phocæ et Joannis Tzimiscis historiam illustrant. Bonnæ, 1828.
27. Lydus, (J. F.) De magistratibus Romanis ed. J. D. Fuss, præf.
est. C. B. Hase. 8vo. Parisiis, 1811.
De ostentis. Parisiis, 1823.
The works of Lydus are printed in one volume of the Bonn edi-
tion. Joannes Lydus, ex. rec. Imm. Bekkeri. 8vo. Bonn, 1837.
28. MALALE, (Joan,) ANTIOCHENI, cognomento J. MALALE, Hist.
Chronica, ed. Ed. Chilmead. Oxon. 8vo. 1691.
Reprinted at Venice, in No. 24.
29. MANASSIS, (Constantini), Breviarium Hist. ex. interpr. J. Leun-
clavii, c. ejusdem et J. Meursii, not. acc. var. lect. cura Leonis
Allatii, et C. Ann. Fabroti, et ejusdem glossarium. Parisiis,
1655.
30. NICETÆ ACOMINATI, Historia, gr. et lat. interpr. Hier. Wolfio,
c. ejusd. notis, acc. C. A. Fabroti. glossarium. Parisiis, 1647.
NICETE ACOMINATI CHONIATE, Narratio de statuis antiquis,
quas Franci post captam anno 1204 Constantinopolin de-
struxerunt. Ex codice Bodleiiano emendatius edita a F.
Wilken. Lipsia, 1830, 8vo.
31. NICEPHORI Patriarchæ, Breviarium Hist. de reb. gest. ab obitu
Mauricii ad Constantinum usque Copronymum. gr. et lat. c. interpr.
et notis D. Petavii. Parisiis, 1648.
32. NICEPHORI, (Bryennii), Commentarii de rebus Byzantinis gr. et
lat. stud. P. Possini. Parisiis, 1661.
33 and 34. NICEPHORI, (Gregoræ), Byzantina Historia, ex. vers.
Hieron. Wolfii et J. Boivini. 2 vol. Parisiis, 1702.
35. Notitia Dignitatum imperii Romani-ex nova recens. PH.
LABBEI. Parisiis, 1651, 8vo. Ven. 1732, Fol.
The new edition by Dr Boecking is so superior that all earlier
ones are useless. 8vo. 2 vols. Bonn, 1839.
36 and 37. PACHYMERIS (Georgii) Historia, gr. et lat. cum
observat. P. Possini. 2 vol. Fol. Romæ typ. Barberinis, 1666-69.
38. POLLUCIS, (Jul.) Historia Physica, seu chronicon ab origine
mundi usque ad Valentis tempora, nunc primum gr. et lat. editum.
ab Ign. Hard. Monach. 1792, 8vo.
It was also published under the title, Anonymi Scriptoris hist.
sacra. Folio. J. B. Bianconi. Bononiæ, 1779.
572
APPENDIX.
39. PHRANTZÆ (Georg.) Chronicon, ed F. C. Alter. Fol. Vindob.
1795. Gr.
A new edition of Phrantzas has been published at Bonn, with
the gr. text and lat. translation.
40 and 41. PROCOPII, (Cæsariensis) Hist. sui temp. lib. viii. Ejusd.
de ædificiis Justiniani, lib. vi. gr. et lat. c. n. C. Maltreti. Ejusd.
Arcana historia, gr. et lat. ex interpr. et c. notis N. Alemanni.
Parisiis, 1662-3, 2 vol.
42. SYNCELLI Chronographia et NICEPHORI Breviarium chronogr.
gr. et lat. interpr. et c. n. Jac. Goar. Parisiis, 1652.
43. THEOPHANIS Chronographia, et Leonis Grammatici Vitæ. recent.
imperator. gr. et lat. ex interpr. J. Goar, et c. ejusd. et F. Com-
befis not. Parisiis, 1655.
44. THEOPHYLACTI Simocattæ Hist. lib. viii. gr. et lat. ex J. Pontani
interp. Parisiis, 1647.
45. THOPHYLACTI Institutio regia ad Porphyrogenitum Constan-
tinum, gr. et lat. interpr. P. Possino. Fol. Venet. 1729.
46 and 47. ZONARE (Joan.) Annales. gr. et lat. ex interpr. Hier.
Wolfii recens. et not. illustr. C. Dufresne, D. Du Cange, 2 vol.
Parisiis, 1686-87.
In order to form a complete set of works on Byzantine history,
it is usual to add the following to the library.
48. Histoire de l'Empire de Constantinople sous les empereurs
François, par GEOFFRAY de Ville-Hardouin, avec les notes du C.
Dufresne, D. Du Cange. Paris, 1657.
49. DUFRESNE, DN. DU CANGE, (C.) Dissertatio de imperator. Con-
stantinop. numismat. 4to. Rom. 1755.
50 and 51. BANDURI. (Ans.) Numismata imperatorum Romanorum
a Trajano Decio ad Palæologos. Fol. 2 vol. Parisiis, 1718.
52. TANINII, (Hier.) Numismatum imperatorum Romanorum a
Bandurio editorum supplementum. Fol, Romæ, 1791.
53, 54, and 55. LEQUIEN, (Mich.) Oriens Christianus. Fol. 3 vol.
Parisiis, 1740.
56. BOSCHII, (Petri), Tractatus de patriarchis Antiochenis. Fol.
Venet. 1748.
57. CUPERI, (Gu.) Tractatus de patriarchis Constantinopolitanis.
Fol. Venet. 1751.
58. CYPRII, (Ph.) Chronicon Eccles. gr ed. M. Blancard, 4to.
Franeg. 1679.
59 and 60. BONGARSII, (Jac) Gesta Dei per Francos s. et 61.
Orientalium expeditionum et regni Francorum Hierosolymitani
hist. Fol. 2 vol. Hanov. 1611.
61, 62, and 63. Menologium Græcorum jussu Basilii Imperatoris,
Græce et Latine prodit studio et opera Card. Albani. 3 vol. Fol.
Urbini, 1727.
|
INDEX.
ABDALMELIK pays tribute to Justinian
II., 475-coinage, 477, 512-establishes
haratch, 478.
Aboubekr, order to army, 457.
Achaia, Roman province, 40, 44-pro-
consular government, 137.
Achaian league, 6, 77.
Acyndinus, prefect, anecdote of, 179.
Administration, Roman, civil, 39 et seq.
-fiscal, 47, 125, 178, 239-justice, 351
-abuses, 358.
Africa, Vandal conquest, 277—Justini-
an's government, 282-rebellions, 251,
252, 282, 286—-Latin the language of,
386-Saracen conquest, 451, 466, 469,
481.
Agriculture protected by Constantine,
138.
Alaric, 188.
Albanians, 406-works on, 407 note.
Alexander the Great, influence of, 2, 5,
349.
Alexandria, 86, 243, 390-ceases to be a
Greek city, 450.
Amorium, 466.
Amphictyonic council, 70, 77.
Anastasius I., emperor, 216-reforms the
curia, 217-abolishes the chrysargy-
ron, 218-compelled to sign a declara-
tion of orthodoxy, 227-laid founda-
tion of Justinian's successes, 237.
Anastasius II., 486.
Antioch, 215, 220, 243, 319-ceases to
be a Greek city, 492.
Antonius, Caius, extortions in Greece,
58,89 note.
Apollonius of Tyana, 81.
Arabs, 316, 396, 434-destroy civilisa-
tion, 451-conquests, 454-build new
capitals, 458-purchase peace, 464,
472-defeated, 483.
Areopagus, 33.
Arians, opposition to Greeks, 154, 275.
Aristocracy, Roman, 106,-official, 358
-military, 368-influence, 488.
Armenia, 316, 398, 462.
Armenians, 197, 329, 333.
Army, the, 135, 236, 247-numbers,
362-hostile to court, 368, 370-of
Heraclius, 425.
Art, cause of excellence in, 11, 229——
works carried to Rome, 82-Greek love
of, 83-Christianity hostile to, 227,
230-destruction of works of, 231-
decay and ruin, 430, 506 et seq.
Asemous repulses Attila, 204.
Asia Minor, principal seat of Greek popu-
lation, 400-resists Mohammedan pro-
gress, 425-state of, 496-languages,
ib.
Aspar, 214.
Asparuch founds Bulgarian Kingdom,
473.
Astacus, gulf, canal to lake Sophon, 218.
Astrology, 12, 98, 144.
Asylum, right of, 97.
Athens, an allied city, 25, 48-taken by
Sylla, 32-prohibited from selling citi-
zenship, 33 note, 68-population, 77—
public distributions of grain at, 52
note, 169-state during decline of pa-
ganism,335 et seq.-Hadrian's works at,
73-influence, 77, 85-walls repaired
by Valerian, 110-taken by Goths, 111
-by Alaric, 189-state of, 145 note,
169, 209, 244, 273, 335 et seq., 465-
schools closed by Justinian I., 347.
Eudocia or Athenaïs, as her life illus-
trates the condition of society, 209
et seq.-water police at, 268 note.
Attica, rebellion of slaves, 28-depopu-
lation, 63-insurrection, 64-Attic
dialect preserved, 77, 339, 340.
Attila, 202, 204, 213.
574
INDEX.
Augustus, policy of, 68.
Avars, invade Europe, 312-use Scythian
letters, 314 note-successes, 355, 360,
362-extent of empire of, 366-mas-
sacre prisoners, 370-conclude peace
with Phocas, 375-in time of Hera-
clius, 407-besiege Constantinople, 409
-penetrate into Greece, 410-plunder
Archipelago, 414-decline, 517.
Banditti, 269, 497 et seq.
Basiliskos, usurper, 216.
Belisarius, 234, 250-guards, ib. note,
293, 254, 280, 286, 290, 297-receives
offer of Western Empire, 292-histori-
cal fame, 293-blindness, 294 - on
his blindness, 523 et seq. — wealth,
294, 297-defence of Constantinople,
308.
Bible translated into eastern languages,
333.
Bigotry, 215 note.
Boeotian league, 77.
Bosphorus, Cimmerian, 174, 304.
by Justinian II., 484-state, 490, 493,
519.
Chersonesos of Thrace, 305.
Chiefs of cities in Roman empire inde-
pendent, 455.
China, 326.
Chosroes Nushirvan, 317-destroys An-
tioch, 319-and Dara, 359-defeated,
360.
Christianity, hostile to Rome, 106, 118,
149, 157, 225-saves society, 142, 148,
164, 165-inimical to fine arts, 227,
229-progress, 146, 149—influence on
female society, 148-persecuted, 150,
-adopted by Constantine as an admi-
nistrative institution, 142-extermi-
nated in Mohammedan provinces, 452
-cause of, betrayed by patriarchs of
Jerusalem and Alexandria, 444, 446,
456.
Chronicon Paschale, 509.
Chronology of Greece under the Romans,
xxi.
Bosporus, city and kingdom, 174, 304, Chrysargyron, established, 128-abolish-
430.
Brigands, see banditti.
Brutus, usurious claim of, 46.
Bulgarian Kingdom founded, a. D. 678,
473.
Bulgarians, 303, 410, 473.
Byblos, independent, 456.
Byzantine empire, commencement of,
431, 433.
Byzantine historians neglect history of
the Greeks, 413-Catalogue of their
works in editions of Paris and Venice,
568 et seq.
Byzantine money, observations on, 526
et seq.
Caligula's wish, 50.
Caliph's power, 453.
Canal, between lake Sophon and gulf of
Nicomedia, 218-Nile and Red Sea,
328, 390-filled up, 448.
Caracalla, edict of, 72, 74, 76, 78, 87, 129
-monetary changes, 528.
Carthage, designed capital of empire,
386, 387-taken by Saracens, 451, 466
-destroyed, 495.
Casilinus, victory of Narses at, 298.
Cavalry dismounted in battle, 246-cata-
phracti, 249.
Celibacy, 64.
Census, Roman, accurate application in
the provinces, 561 et seq.
Centralisation carried too far, 242, 504.
Chaldaic Christians, 397.
Cherson, or Chersonesos, 172, 173, 303-
seat of Asiatic trade, 326, 430—Pope
Martin banished to, 462-devastated
ed, 218.
Church, 151, 160-national, 213-ortho-
dox, 226, 332-in Egypt, Syria, and
Armenia, 334-not universal, 382, 421
-influence, 517.
Cibyraiot theme, 483.
Cicero, censure of Roman venality, 29.
Citizens and soldiers, separation of these
classes in Roman empire, 131, 135.
Clergy, prohibited from trading 139-
corrupted by power, 181-national
character, 225, 244, 517.
Coins, colonial, of Corinth, 66-of Patras,
69 note- Greek, of Nicopolis, 70-
value of Roman and Byzantine, 526-
debased by Justinian, 262.
Colchis, 248, 315, 320.
Colonies, Roman, in Greece, 66 et seq.-
of emigration, 102-at Dioscorides,
175-of Goths, by Theodosius I., 185
-of Huns, by Justinian I., 306—of
Mardaïtes, 476-of Cypriotes, 477—of
Sclavonians in Asia Minor, ib. 497-in
Cyprus, 478, 494-in Greece, 494, 495.
Commerce of Greeks, 8, 19, 78, 85, 139,
175, 200, 321, 383-effect on Greece,
511-state of, 513 et seq., 515 et seq.
Commercial laws, 85, 139.
Confiscation, source of revenue, 51, 265.
Constans II., 459-visits Athens and
Rome, 465.
Constantine the Great, reforms, 118, 122,
124-fiscal, 125, 128-military, 133–
strategos of Athens, 169, 340.
Constantine IV., Pogonatus, 467, 472.
Constantinople, a Roman city, 119, 140
INDEX.
575
-condition, 141, 165, 386—difficulty
of conquest, 203-compared with Car-
thage, 388--besieged by Avars, 409—
by Moawyah for seven years, 470-
chronology of operations, xxii.-taken
by Theodosius III., 487.
Consulate abolished, 243.
Corinth, territory of, ager publicus, 45—
population sold as slaves, 60-Roman
colony, 66-isthmus fortified, 110—
plundered by Alaric, 190.
Corippus, 284.1
Cos plundered, 460.
Council of Chalcedon, 213-Latin lan-
guage employed, 225-sixth general,
473-in Trullo, 478.
Crete conquered by Romans, 27, 37-
pays tribute to Saracens, 471.
Crispus, 400-see Priscus.
Cross, Holy, restored to Jerusalem, 419,
439-carried to Constantinople, 442.
Curia, Roman municipality, 130 et seq.
Cyprus, Roman province, 42—burdens
of, 54-tributary to Saracens, 459, 460
-inhabitants compelled to emigrate,
476.
Cyrenaica, Greeks exterminated in,
451.
Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, treats
with Mohammedans, 546.
Cythera, 68.
Cyzicus, station of Saracens, 471.
Dacia, 186.
Dalmatia, 286-colonised by Sclavonians,
402.
Dara taken by Chosroes, 359-restored,
366.
Debts, effect of, on society in Greece, 91,
92.
Decline of Roman empire attributed to
Christianity, 157.
Defensor of municipality, 131.
Deism, 146.
Delphi, 98.
Depopulation of Greece, 59, 61, 64, 70.
-in time of Plutarch, 89-of Roman
empire, 359, 483.
Despotism pleasing to the people, 496.
Dexippus, 111, 112.
Diocletian, 118-money, 532.
Dioscorides, colony, 175.
Discipline of armies relaxed, 251.
Distributions of grain, at Rome, 52, 103,
140, 242-introduced by Gracchus,
103-at Athens, 52, 169, 340—at An-
tioch and Alexandria, 53, 105—abol-
ished at Alexandria, 243-nature of, at
Constantinople, 52, 140, 387.
Dodona plundered by Totila, 271, 306.
Dyme, colony of pirates, 38.
Dyrrachium, or Epidamnus, 205, 384.
Earthquakes, 170, 215, 220, 270, 271.
Ecclesiastical literature, 225.
Ecthesis, 422, 461.
Egnatia via, 384.
Egypt, 24, 50, 102, 138-decline of,
327, 490-conquered by Persians, 391
-by Arabs, 446-population and re-
venues, 447.
Egyptians, 199.
Eleusis, temple, rebuilt by Marcus Aure-
lius, 75—burned by Alaric, 190.
Emperors, civil and military position,
236-foreigners, 501 note.
Empire, separation, 176, 197 et seq.-
policy of Eastern, 206—relations with
Persia, 315-on eve of dissolution, 350
-extent, 490.
Ephesus, temple, destroyed, 112.
Epidamnus, see Dyrrachium.
Ethiopia, converted to Christianity, 175
-fleet, 320—alliance with empire, 359.
Eudocia, wife of Arcadius, attacked by
Chrysostom, 231.
Eudocia, or Athenaïs, wife of Theodosius
II., biography, 209 et seq.
Eutychians, 227, 332, 383, 422.
Evagrius, 374, 509.
Fallmerayer on the extinction of the
Greek race, 411.
Famine, 271-in Italy, 291.
Fine arts, 11, 80, 81-Theodosius II.,
painter, 208-decline, 227, 229-state
of monuments, 506.
Firmus, rebellion in Egypt, 138.
Fiscal administration, 47-of Constan-
tine, 125-of Justinian, 235, 240—
fiscal obligations opposed to military
service, 245.
Fleets, 168, 201, 214, 280-in Red Sea,
320.
Follis, sum of money, 140 note-coin,
532.
Foreign commanders in Roman armies,
254, 368 note.
Foreign emperors, 489, 501.
Franks, 292-defeated by Narses, 298.
George Pisida, 508.
Gelimer, 277, 279.
Genseric, at Tænarus, 204-defeats ex-
pedition of Leo I., 214 — conquers
Africa, 276.
Gepids. 248, 301, 355.
Germanos, patriarch, 468.
Ghassan, Arab kingdom, 317, 397.
Gibbon, authority questioned, 92, 112—
corrected by Naudet, 135 note-treats
the story of Eudocia's apple with con-
tempt, 212.
Goths, 107, 108, 184 colonies, 185
T
576
INDEX.
-Ostrogoths in Italy, 284, 298-list of
kings, 295 note-Visigoths in Spain,
299-Tetraxits, 301.
Greece, population, 18, 59, 61, 71, 88—
conquered by Romans, 21-condition,
25, 64, 71, 76, 78, 87 et seq., 91, 92,
168, 223, 243, 266, 270, 426, 498-
plundered by pirates, 34-by Roman
officials, 63 et seq.-of works of art,
82 et seq.-Romans jealous of Greek
institutions, 72, 77 note-favoured by
Hadrian, 72-ravaged by Goths, 110,
189, 191, 204, 271, 306-by Huns, 271,
305-by Sclavonians, 410-by Avars,
411-misfortunes, 271-earthquakes,
ib.-place of banishment, 518 — its
history assumes a new character with
Leo III., 489.
Greek character, as viewed by Romans,
78, 79.
Greek church formed, 152 — national
characteristic, 225, 333, 501-separates
from Latin, 462, 479.
Greek cities retain privileges under Ro-
man empire, 25, 28, 39, 76, 87, 242—
revive, 429, 504 et seq.-Roman muni-
cipal system introduced, 129 et seq.
Greek local militia abolished by Jus-
tinian, 252.
Greeks, decline of their national in-
fluence, 6-moral defects of society,
13 et seq.-contrast with Romans, 14
-population, 17 et seq.-despair of
liberty, 24-state at Roman conquest,
25-retain laws, 40, 43, 45—at Rome,
78-remain ignorant of Roman litera-
ture, 80-condition, 99, 136, 172, 175
-decline, 137, 171, 223, 243, 494-re-
pulse Goths, 114-influence controlled
by Constantine's reforms, 136-by
other circumstances, 198 et seq.
verted to Christianity, 147, 150—or-
ganise the Christian church, 118-
orthodox, 154, 161, 163, 333-attached
to government of Eastern Empire, 252
-sailors, not soldiers, ib. — animosity
against foreigners, 334-despised by
Byzantines, 429-in danger of exter-
mination, 492 of southern Italy,
495.
-con-
Gregory I., Pope, 362, 363, 415 note.
Guards of Belisarius, 250 note-of Jus-
tinian, 308.
Hadrian reforms administration, 72-
improvements in Greece, 73.
Haratch established, 478.
Heathens in Greece, 429.
Hellas, 429.
Helladikoi, 429.
Heraclius, exarch of Africa, 377, 378.
Heraclius, emperor, 377, 378-policy of,
380 et seq.-proposes to emigrate to
Carthage as his capital, 386, 389-set-
tles Servian and Sclavonian colonies
in Dalmatia, 402-escapes from Avars,
408-character, 414, 424-campaigns
in Persia, 417-chronology of, xxvi.-
religious views, 421 promulgates
ecthesis, 422-loses Syria, 425, 442-
arrests the progress of Mohammedans
in Asia Minor, 425.
Heraclius Constantine, emperor, called
sometimes Heraclius II., and some-
times Constantine III., 442, 459.
Hereditary succession in Roman empire,
352.
Heresy, national as well as doctrinal,
332 et seq.
Hermits and monks, 133 note.
Herodes Atticus, 75, 93, 138.
Herules, 248, 301.
Hira, Arab kingdom, 317, 397.
Holy sepulchre church burned, A. D.
614, xxvi. 393-restored by Heraclius,
420-on the site of, 547.
Humanity, 501.
Huns ravage Asia Minor, 194, 202, 271,
301, 303-Kutugur, 307 Utugur,
312-Ephthalite, 314-Kutugur de-
feated by Belisarius, 311.
Iberia, 316.
Illyria ravaged by Sclavonians, 306.
Imperial household, 139.
Indian trade, 175, 201, 321, 383.
Indictio, 49, 127.
Infantry, Roman, 290.
Invasions of empire, Gothic, 108, 184,
202—Justinian's reign, 305 et seq.—
Persian, 318, 375, 417.
Isaurians, 199, 215, 489, 499.
Italy, 354, 385, 490, 495.
Jacobites, 383, 391 note, 422.
Jerusalem taken by Persians, 393-
Holy cross restored, 420-carried to
Constantinople, 424.
Jews, numbers, 18 note-commerce, 323,
328-persecuted, 376, 383, 394, 395.
John, the patrician, 283-the almsgiver,
391.
Jornandes, 287 note.
Julian the apostate, 98-anecdote, 145
-policy, 156, 341.
Justice, absence of, guarantee for, in des-
potisms, 221-in Roman empire, 503.
Justin I., 219.
Justin II., 353-election of, 354.
Justinian I., explanation of engraving in
frontispiece, viii.-reign, 232-char-
acter, 237, 272-confiscates municipal
revenues in Greece, 243-revenues of
INDEX.
577
schools of Athens, 335-suppresses
local militia, 253-legislation, 256—
defects of, 259-conquests, 274, 275
-losses, 305, 318-system of defence,
253-purchases peace, 320-neglects
military establishments, 308 civil
administration, 268-venality, 269-
heretical, 332-observation
on his
coinage, 539.
Justinian II., called Rhinotmetus, 474,
481-expatriates the Mardaïtes, 475
-plants colonies, 476, 477-buildings,
479 et seq.-banished to Cherson, 481
-cruelty, 484.
Kairowan, 470.
Khaled, anecdote of, 455.
Khazars, 418.
Lacedæmon, 169.
Laconian confederacy, 68.
Land-tax, 126, 264, 265-in Africa, 282.
Languages spoken in Asia Minor, 496–
of Thrace, 137, 406.
Latin church, 423.
Latin language in East, 259.
Law, influence, 181, 182, 503—ought to
be more powerful than the individual
at the head of the executive, 221—
great principle of legal administration
which renders the law of England supe-
rior to that of Rome, 258.
Leo I., the elder, 213-strengthens native
army, 214-expense of his expedition
against Genseric, ib.
Leo III., the Isaurian, 487, 489.
Leontius, 475
j
emperor, 481 de-
throned, 484-death, ib.
Lex regia, 452.
Literature, Greek, 9 et seq.-cause of ex-
330
cellence, 11-state of, 227 et seq.—330
et seq. ecclesiastical, 225—at Rome,
79-decline, 180, 510-local, 492.
Lollianus, professor and strategos at
Athens, 338.
Lombards, 301-conquer northern Italy,
355.
Lycaonians, 496.
Macedonia, taxes reduced by Romans,
23-four districts, 40, 44 - Roman
Roman
province, 40.
Mahomet, born and educated at a period
of national excitement, 397-national
and religious unity, 423-character,
436-creed, 438-political views, 453.
Malalas, 509.
Mani, 438.
Manufactories, imperial, 139.
Marcian, emperor, 213.
Mardaïtes, 456, 472 expelled from
Syria, 475.
Martin, pope, banished to Cherson, 462.
Martyrs, 153.
Maurice, emperor, character, 362-re-
duced taxation, 364 note-weakness,
366-reforms, 365, 368-peace with
Avars, 369-death, 371
military tactics, 365 note.
Megara, 61, 218 note.
Melchites, 391 note.
Menander, historian, 508.
Mercenaries, 247, 282.
work
on
Metellus conquers Crete in defiance of
Pompey, 37.
Milan sacked by Goths, 291.
Miliaresion, or Miliarensis, Roman and
Byzantine silver coin, 369 note, 535
et seq., passim.
Military affairs, system of Constantine,
133 of Justinian, 245-in East, 196
-forces of empire, 244, 250-service
opposed to fiscal obligations, 131, 135,
246-music, 254.
Mines, 89.
Mithridatic war, 30, 58.
Moawyah, 463, 464, 470.
Mohammedans invade Syria, 441
chronology of campaigns, xxviii.—in-
vade Egypt, 446-Cyrenaica, 451-—
Africa, ib., 466-destroy Greek civili-
sation, 450-Christian races die out
under their dominion, 452-political
system, 455, 457 et seq.
Mokaukas, 391, 446.
Money, 139-rare in Greece, 265-cir-
culation, 322-sums paid as ransom
for cities, 460 note-observations on
Roman and Byzantine, with tables,
526.
Monks, 369 note, 505.
Monopolies, 515.
Monothelites, 421.
Moors encroach on Roman population,
278, 283.
Municipal institutions, 45, 66, 68, 76—
Roman, introduced in Greece, 67, 68,
129 et seq.-reformed by Anastasius,
217-under Justinian, 242, 243, 267.
Music, military, 254.
Naples taken by Belisarius, 287.
Narses, 250, 290-commander-in-chief,
298-character, 299-accused of invit-
ing Lombards, 356-death, 358.
National feelings in Roman empire, 167,
333.
Naval expeditions, Leo I., 214-Beli-
sarius, 280-Moawyah, 463.
Nero carries off 500 statues from Delphi,
83.
Nerocrates, or head of water police of
Athens, 268 note.
Nicomedia, canal near, 218.
20
578
INDEX.
Nicopolis, in Epirus, 69.
Nika sedition, 262.
Nisibis, 366.
Nobility in Roman Empire, 263.
Obolos, Byzantine copper coin, 542 et
seq., passim.
Ockley, history of the Saracens, 454 note.
Olympic games suppressed, 344.
Omar, caliph, 444-enters Jerusalem,
457.
Oracles, 97.
Orthodox church, 159-identified with
Greek nationality, 161, 163, 219, 333,
432.
Ostrogoths, 276-empire of, 286-list of
kings, 295 note.
Paganism, decline, 97, 143, 146, 162—
conservative at Rome, 153-cause of
ruin, 165, 180-laws concerning, 215
note, 342-in Greece, 518.
Palantium, in Arcadia, 75.
Palmyra, kingdom of, 137.
Patras, Roman colony, 68.
Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria,
153-of Constantinople, 376, 462.
Pausanias' account of Greece, 71, 506.
Persecution, 332, 333, 439.
Persian empire, 318, 359 et seq.-peace
with Maurice, 366--war with Phocas,
375-conquests in Roman empire, 318,
391, 393, 416.
Pestilence, 271.
Philippicus, emperor, 485.
Philosophy, influence of, 99, 101-schools
at Athens, 335.
Phocas, emperor, 371, 374 et seq.-
murdered, 378.
Piracy in Greece and Cilicia, 35-cities
and temples plundered, 36-under
emperors, 38-revived by Goths, 110.
Piræus, 168.
Police, 268.
Polybius, unfavourable to Greeks, 14-
praise of Romans, 29.
Pompey commands against pirates, 36-
settles pirates at Soli, 37-at Dyme,
38.
Pope, bishop of Rome, excites jealousy of
pagan emperors, 150 - fortunately
did not arrogate gift of tongues, 226
-excommunicates pratriarch of Con-
stantinople, 462.
Population of Roman empire, 17-of
Greece, 18-Jews, ib. note-decline of,
87-of Egypt, 447-See depopulation.
Posts, 268, 512.
Potomarch, head of rural water-police at
Athens, 268 note.
Precious metals thrown into circulation,
12-rise in value, 89-proportion in
value, 200-accumulation, 219-See
on Roman and Byzantine money, 526.
Prefectures after time of Constantine,
136.
Priscus, 368, 370, 400.
Proæresius, 340, 341.
Proconsuls, 42 et seq.
Procopius, 244, 254, 273 note, 291.
Property, accumulation in hands of in-
dividuals, 57, 70, 88.
Proprietors in Roman municipality, 130
-could not become soldiers, 135-
numbers of wealthy, diminish, 240-
ruined by land-tax, 265.
Ptolemies, 6, 10.
Public distributions of grain, see Dis-
tributions.
Pulcheria, Augusta, 207 patronises
Eudocia, 210-marries Marcian, 212
-policy, 213.
Ragusa, 405.
Ravenna, siege by Belisarius, 292—sack-
ed by Justinian II., 484.
Ravenna, exarchate of, 491.
Rebellions, 221, 251.
Red sea, 200-canal to Nile, 449.
Reforms of Constantine, 121-of Jus-
tinian, 238-of Tiberius II., 361—of
Maurice, 370.
Religion of Greece, 15, 95, 144, 180, 518.
Renegades, 215 note.
Revenue officers, extortion of, 178.
Rhodes, 28, 34-colossus, destroyed by
Saracens, 460.
Roads, improved by Hadrian, 74, 268.
Robbers, 63.
Rome, expenditure at, 50-distributions
of grain, 52-sieges of, 288, 289, 295
-walls, 288-visited by Constans II.,
465.
Rome, bishop of, 150, 225.
Roman administration, 14, 23, 26, 28,
133-colonies in Greece, 66, 68-ter-
minates with Leo III., 487.
Roman citizenship universal by Cara-
calla's edict, 72.
Roman empire, indications of a reform
in, 117-empire of West, ruined, 198—
frontier in East, 316, 508-prophecy
that Eastern Empire should be destroy-
ed by a circumcised people, 395-East
transformed into Byzantine empire,
431, 487, 488.
Roman knights, farmers of revenue, 57.
Romans escape taxation in provinces, 56
-eighty thousand put to death in
Asia Minor, 58-cut off their thumbs
to escape military service, 109.
Rufinus, 187, 188.
Ruins, disappear in Greece, 168.
INDEX.
579
Samaritans, extinction, 361.
Sanctuary, or asylum, right of, abused, 97.
Saracens, 316, 423-converted to Mo-
hammedanism, 438-conquer Syria,
441, &c.-besiege Constantinople, 470.
Sardinia, 282, 491.
Saxons invade Italy with Lombards, 356
note.
Scævola, as proconsul, allows Greeks the
use of their own laws, 45.
Scamars, banditti, 498.
Scholarians, guards of imperial palace,
308.
Sclavonians, 302, 305, 306, 384-settled
in Illyria and Dalmatia, 402—colonise
Greece, 410, 412, 413, 494-settled in
Opsikion, 477-desert Justinian II.,
477-in Bulgaria,,473—in Cyprus, 477.
Seditions, Nika, 262-other, ib.
Seleucia possessed a municipal constitu-
tion under the Parthian emperors, 4
note.
Seleucidæ, 6, 10.
Senate of Rome destroyed, 243, 297-of
Constantinople, 354-solicits peace
from Persia, 416.
Sepulchre, on the site of the Holy, 547.
Serapis, 98, 143 note.
Serbs or Servian Sclavonians, 402.
Serfs, agricultural, 131, 183, 241, 495—
excluded from army, 246 note.
Shopkeepers, 140.
Sicily, condition as a Roman province,
40-conquered by Belisarius, 286-
attacked by Saracens, 491.
Silk trade, 320, 325-worms introduced
in Europe, 326.
Sinai, fortress on, 317.
Slavery, free citizens reduced to, 28-
steps towards its abolition, 183, 234,
241, 267.
Slaves, 8-rebellions in Sicily and Attica,
28-slave-trade at Delos, 39-condi-
tion, 105, 114, 183, 241-admitted into
army, 246 note-condition, 495, 514.
Society, Greek and Roman, 84-declin-
ing, 94, 223-improving, 224, 361
rendered stationary by Roman legis-
lation, 131.
Solidus, gold coin of Eastern Empire, 534
et seq., passim.
Sophon, canal of lake, 218.
Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, sub-
mits to Mohammedans, 444.
Spain, conquests of Justinian, 299--
Roman possessions lost, 394 et seq.
396.
Sparta, allied city, 25, 48, 242.
Statues, 82, 231, 506.
Stilicho, 188, 191, 192.
Strabo, description of Greece by, 71.
Strategos of Athens, 169, 340.
Subsidies paid by Roman empire to bar-
barians, 202, 248.
Suez canal, 328, 390, 448.
Sylla at Athens, 31-plunders Parthe-
non, 32-Delos, Delphi, and Olympia,
33-ruins Thebes, ib.
Synesius, 182-at Athens, 336.
Syracuse, 469.
Syria, 199, 393-ravaged by Chosroes, 359
-state, 393-conquered by Moham-
medans, 442 et seq.-chronology of
campaigns, xxviii.-towns make sepa-
rate treaties, 443-chiefs aspire at in-
dependence, 396.
Tænarus, 204.
Tagina, victory of Narses at, 298.
Taxes, 40, 47, 49-farmed by Roman
knights, 57-land-tax, 49, 126, 218,
245, 264, 404-freemen sold to pay,
183-irregular, 54-Nero remits those
of Greece, 56.
Tetraxit Goths, 301.
Thebes ruined by Sylla, 33-repulses
Alaric, 189.
Theodore, brother of Heraclius, defeats
Persians, 418-defeated by Saracens,
441.
Theodore, pope, excommunicates patri-
arch, 462.
Theodoric, 203, 205-empire of, 285 et
seq.
Theodosius I., the Great, 163, 185-
establishes Gothic colonies in Asia
Minor, 185.
Theodosius II., 207-circumscribes pub-
lic instruction, 344.
Theodosian Code, 208.
Theodosius III., 487.
Theodosius, brother of Constans II.,
murdered, 464.
Theophylactus Simocatta, 364, 374, notes,
508.
Thermopyla, local guard of, 252.
Thessalonica, 204, 384, 428.
Thrace, language of, 137 note-popula-
tion represented by Vallachians, 406
-resisted Greek civilisation, 426.
Tiberius II., 354, 360, 361-forms a
corps of slaves, 364.
Tiberius III., Apsimar, 483, 484.
Toleration, 159, 502.
Tombs, plundered at Corinth, 67-by
Christians, 230.
Totila or Baduila, 295-takes Rome, 296
-spares it, ib.-retakes it, 298-ra-
vages Epirus, 306-death, 298.
Treasures, 12, 48, 51-of Anastasius,
219, 222-of Amrou, 451 note.
580
INDEX.
Treaties with Saracens, A. D. 659, 464
-A. D. 678, 472-A. D. 686, 475.
Tributaries in Roman municipality, 130.
Trinity of emperors demanded, 468.
Troad, plundered by Goths, 112.
Turks, 312-commerce at Constanti-
nople, 324, 359-power, 434.
Type of Constans II., 461.
Tzans, 316.
Unity of God, 146, 422, 438.
University of Constantinople, 208, 228,
330.
Vahan defeated, 441 et seq.
Valens slain, 184.
Vandals conquer Africa, 276-conquer-
ed, 281-list of kings, 279 note.
Vartan, 441 et seq.
Venality of Justinian's administration,
269.
Venice, 491.
Visigoths, 276, 299, 384.
Vitalian, usurper, 217.
Wall, great, of Anastasius, 218, 253, 307,
408.
Walls at Thracian Chersonesus, Pallene,
Thermopyla, and Isthmus of Corinth,
253-built by Justinian, 268-of towns,
destroyed by Vandals, 277-by Sara-
cens, 458-of Rome, 289.
Wealth of East, 16-of Greek temples,
36-of individuals, 57, 88-diminution
of, 171.
Witiges, 288-besieges Rome, 289-sur-
renders to Belisarius, 292.
Zabergan, King of Huns, 253, 307.
Zeno, 215-forms native troops, 216-
remodels scholarians, 309.
Zenobia, 137.
Zevgaria, or capita, of land, 264.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
WORKS PUBLISHED
BY
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD
BLACKWOOD AND SONS,
EDINBURGH AND
AND LONDON.
THE HISTORY OF EUROPE,
FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN 1789 TO THE
BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L.
Library Edition (the Eighth), Fourteen Volumes Demy Octavo, with Portraits, £10, 108.
Crown Octavo Edition, Twenty Volumes, £6.
THE FIFTH VOLUME OF
THE HISTORY OF EUROPE.
FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON TO THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. D.C.L.
- Uniform with the Library Edition of the Author's “ History of Europe," price 15s.

ATLAS TO ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE.
By A. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., &c.
Author of the "Physical Atlas," &c.
109 Maps and Plans of Countries, Battles, Sieges, and Sea-Fights, Coloured. Demy
Quarto, to accompany the Library Edition, and other Editions of the History in
Octavo, £3, 39. Crown Quarto, to accompany the Edition in Crown Octavo,
£1, 11s. 6d.
THE LIFE
A New Edition, being the Third.
OF
MARLBOROUGH.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L.
Two Volumes Demy Octavo, with Maps and Portraits, price 30s.
"Unquestionably the best Life of Marlborough.'"-Morning Post.
"Alison's 'Life of Marlborough' is an enchaining romance."—Blackwood's Magazine.
2
Works Published by
PARIS
AFTER
WATERLOO.
NOTES TAKEN AT THE TIME, AND hitherto UNPUBLISHED;
INCLUDING A REVISED
EDITION-THE TENTH-OF A
VISIT TO FLANDERS AND THE FIELD.
By James Simpson, Esq., Advocate.
Author of "The Philosophy of Education," "Lectures to the Working Classes," &c.
With Two Coloured Plans of the Battle. Crown Octavo, price 59.
"Numerous as are the accounts of Waterloo that have been published, Mr Simpson's
description may still be read with pleasure, from its freshness; it has the life of vegetation
newly gathered-smacking of reality, little of books."-Spectator.
A New Edition, in the Press.
CURRAN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
By Charles Phillips, Esq. B.A.
"Certainly one of the most extraordinary pieces of Biography ever produced.
No library should be without it."-Lord Brougham.
•
•
Three Volumes Octavo, price £1, 16s.,
A
HISTORY
OF
MISSIONS.
By the Rev. W. Brown, M D.
"We know not where else to find, within the same compass, so much well-digested and
reliable information on the subject of Missions as in these volumes. The study of them will
inspire the reader with new views of the importance, responsibility, and dignity of the Mis-
sionary work."-American Bibliotheca Sacra.
Second Edition, Post Octavo, with Illustrations, price 7s. 6d.
THE ANGLER'S COMPANION TO THE
RIVERS AND LOCHS OF SCOTLAND.
By Thomas Tod Stoddart,
Third Edition, in Octavo, with Illustrations, price 12s. 6d.
THE MOOR AND THE LOCH.
CONTAINING MINUTE INSTRUCTIONS IN ALL HIGHLAND SPORTS, WITH
WANDERINGS OVER CRAG AND CORREI, FLOOD AND FEll.
By John Colquhoun, Esq.
William Blackwood and Sons.
3
"
THE STORY OF THE
CAMPAIGN OF SEBASTOPOL.
WRITTEN IN THE CAMP.
By Lieut.-Col. E. Bruce Hamley,
Captain, R.A.
Originally published in Blackwood's Magazine.
With Illustrations, drawn in Camp by the Author, price 21s.
THE POSITION ON THE ALMA.
A COLOURED PANORAMIC VIEW, DONE ON THE FIELD.
"C
By Lieut.-Col. E. Bruce Hamley,
Captain, R.A.
Price Ten Shillings and Sixpence.
Along with this you will get some sketches of the Alma done on the spot, and worked
up since I got my colour-box, &c., which were on board ship."-Extract from Lieut.-
Col. Humley's Letter, Camp before Sebastopol, 29th December 1854.
Two Volumes, price £1, 7s. 6d.
HISTORY OF THE
GREEK
BYZANTINE
716-1453.
EMPIRES,
By George Finlay, Esq., Athens.
AND
"It is the most co uplete and elaborate history of the Byzantine and Greek Empires that
has appeared in an English form."-Leader.
"C
At a time when so much attention is being devoted to the modern history of the Greek
race, and to the constitution and history of the Greek Church, and when even our scholars
are catching the enthusiasm, and insisting on the necessity of studying the modern Greek
language and literature, Mr Finlay's solid and careful works will be welcomed by all who read
to be informed."--Athenæum.
C
"Mr Finlay's work deserves warm praise as a careful and conscientious performance.
General readers might desire that their taste for interesting details should have been
provided for by the author. But the judicious and the schiclarly will admire the severe
abstinence that imparts a Doric severity to this manly and most creditable historical per-
formance, which must confer no small distinction on its author's name."-Press.
By the same Author.
I. GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS, B.C. 146 TO A.D. 717. Octavo, 16s.
II. MEDIEVAL GREECE, 1204-1461. Octavo, 12s.
III. GREECE UNDER OTHOMAN AND VENETIAN DOMINATION, 1453-
1821. Octavo, 10s 6d.
MISS STRICKLAND'S LIVES OF THE
QUEENS OF SCOTLAND.
EMBELLISHED WITH PORTRAITS AND HISTORICAL VIGNETTES.
Volumes 1 to 6 are published, price 10s. 6d. each.
"In no part of the voluminous and charming writings of Miss Strickland does she more
forcibly recommend herself to the reader of history than in the interesting volume before us.
Embracing a period in the annals of Scotland remarkable for the deeds of violence that were
perpetrated in it, and presenting a picture of life and morality strongly contrasting with the
results of modern civilisation, she has had a noble field within which to exercise her extra-
ordinary talents for research, and has produced an historical narrative, unsurpassed, in point
of interest and intrinsic merit, by any of those which have earned for her the high literary
reputation she so deservedly enjoys."-Morning Advertiser.
4
Works Published by
FELICIA HEMANS.
THE POEMS OF FELICIA
Complete in One Volume Large Octavo, with Portrait engraved by FINDEN, 21s.
Another Edition in Six Volumes Foolscap Octavo, 248.
Another Edition, with Life, by her Sister, Seven Volumes, 35s.
"Of no modern writer can it be affirmed, with less hesitation, that she has become an
English Classic, nor, until human nature becomes very different from what it now is, can we
imagine the least probability that the music of her lays will cease to soothe the ear, or the
beauty of her sentiment to charm the gentle heart."-Blackwood's Magazine.
Twenty-second Edition, Foolscap Octavo, price 7s. 6d.
THE COURSE OF TIME.
A POEM IN TEN BOOK S.
By Robert Pollok, A.M.
"Of deep and hallowed impress, full of noble thoughts and graphic conceptions-the pro-
duction of a mind alive to the great relations of being, and the sublime simplicity of our
religion."-Blackwood's Magazine.
LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS,
AND OTHER POEMS.
By W. Edmondstoune Aytoun,
Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh.
Tenth Edition, Foolscap Octavo, 7s. 6d.
"Finer ballads than these, we are bold to say, are not to be found in the language."
Times.
"Professor Aytoun's
Scotland has yet a poet.
now sinks in cadences sad
Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers'-a volume of verse which shows that
Full of the true fire, it now stirs and swells like a trumpet note-
and wild as the wail of a Highland dirge."-Quarterly Review.
Elegantly printed in Small Octavo, price 58.
FIRMILIAN; OR, THE STUDENT OF
BADAJOZ.
A SPASMODIC
TRAGEDY.
By T. Percy Jones.
"Humour of a kind most rare at all times, and especially in the present day, runs through
every page, and passages of true poetry and delicious versification prevent the continual
play of sarcasm from becoming tedious.”—Literary Gazette.
But we must leave our readers to unravel this mystery for themselves. Enough has
been said and sung to make them acquainted with the claims of 'Firmilian,' to be deemed
⚫ the finest poem of the age."-Dublin University Magazine,
William Blackwood and Sons.
5
BOTH WELL:
A
POEM
By W. Edmondstoune Aytoun, D.C.L.,
Author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," &c.
Second Edition.
In Crown Octavo, price 12s.
"A work which, for genius, originality of conception, and poetic brilliancy of execution,
has no rival in modern times. It not only sustains, but will enhance the deservedly high
reputation of the author. The notes are peculiarly interesting, as containing a judicial
collation and summary of the evidences which have induced the Sheriff of Orkney to record
a verdict of acquittal in favour of Mary Stuart, and of reprobation of her self-interested
accusers."-MISS STRICKLAND's Lives of the Queens of Scotland, Vol. VI.
BON GAULTIER'S BOOK OF BALLADS.
Illustrated by DOYLE, LEECH, and CROWQUILL.
New Edition, square 12mo, price 8s. 6d.
An ILLUSTRATED EDITION of
THE COURSE OF TIME.
A POEM.
By Robert Pollok, A.M.
The Designs by BIRKET FOSTER, JOHN TENNIEL, and JOHN R. CLAYTON.
Engraved by EDMUND EVANS, DALZIEL Brothers, GREEN, &c.
In square Svo, elegantly bound in cloth, price 21s. ; or in morocco, price 32s
"This sumptuously-printed book, with its vellum-like paper, its exquisite wood-engrav-
ings, rivalling in light and shadow, in softness of aerial perspective, in translucence of water,
and in truth of foliage, the most highly-finished steel plates of the annuals and books of
beauty of by-past years, is an unique and worthy issue of the great poem of Pollok, a bard
who has now safely assumed a pedestal in the temple of poetic fame."-Morning Advertiser.
Second Edition.
In small 8vo, with a Frontispiece, price 59.
:
JESSIE CAMERON A HIGHLAND STORY.
By the Lady Rachel Butler.
"Those who read 'Jessie Cameron' will desire at once that Lady Butler should con-
tinue to write Highland stories. It is a sweet and tender tale, and proves, on the part of
the writer, a knowledge of humble life and character which can scarcely exist without a
heartfelt sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the poor. This sympathy is abundantly
manifested in the romance of Jessie Cameron's loves and griefs and heroism-the heroism,
the grief, the love, all equally touching, refined, unaffected.
No one can take
up this very agreeable volume without becoming interested, and following its graceful drama
to the end."-Athenaum.
•
THE
SKETCHER.
By the Rev. John Eagles, M.A. Oxon.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
Handsomely printed in 8vo, 10s. 6d.
<
"This volume, called by the appropriate name of The Sketcher,' is one that ought to
be found in the studio of every English landscape-painter,
More instructive
and suggestive readings for young artists, especially landscape-painters, can scarcely be
found."-The Globe


6
Works Published by
ESSAYS; HISTORICA L,
HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND
MISCELLANEOUS.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L.
Three Volumes Demy Octavo, 45s.
"They stamp him as one of the most learned, able, and accomplished writers of the age.
His Essays are a splendid supplement to his History, and the two combined
exhibit his intellect in all its breadth and beauty."-Dublin University Magazine.
Foolscap Octavo, 5s.
LECTURES ON THE POETICAL LITERATURE
OF THE PAST HALF-CENTURY.
By D. M. Moir (^).
"A delightful volume."-Morning Chronicle.
"Exquisite in its taste and generous in its criticisms."-Hugh Miller.
POETICAL WORKS OF D. M. MOIR (A).
WITH PORTRAIT, AND MEMOIR BY THOMAS AIRD.
Two Volumes Foolscap Octavo, 14s.
"These are volumes to be placed on the favourite shelf, in the familiar nook that holds the
books we love, which we take up with pleasure and lay down with regret."- Edinburgh
Courant.
POETICAL
WORKS
OF THOMAS
A New Edition, complete in One Volume, Small Octavo.
Price 6s.
AIRD.
Second Edition, Crown Octavo, 10s. 6d.
THE POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
Translated by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart.
"The translations are executed with consummate ability. The technical difficulties
attending a task so great and intricate have been mastered or eluded with a power
and patience quite extraordinary; and the public is put in possession of perhaps the best
translation of a foreign poet which exists in our language. Indeed, we know of none so
complete and faithful."-Morning Chronicle.

William Blackwood and Sons.
7
LADY LEE'S
WIDOW HOOD.
By Lieut.-Col. E. B. Hamley,
Captain, R.A.
A New Edition, complete in One Volume, price 68.
ZAIDEE:
A
ROMANCE.
By Mrs Oliphant.
In Three Volumes, Post Octavo, price £1, 11s. 6d.
ᏚᎢᎬᎳᎪᎡᎢ
KATIE STEWART: A TRUE
STORY.
Second Edition, in Foolscap Octavo, with Frontispiece and Vignette, 6s.
"A singularly characteristic Scottish story, most agreeable to read and pleasant to recol-
lect. The charm lies in the faithful and life-like pictures it presents of Scottish character and
customs, and manners, and modes of life."-Tait's Magazine.
THE
Second Edition, Post Octavo, price 10s. 6d.
QUIET
HEART.
By the Author of Katie Stewart,"
"We cannot omit our emphatic tribute to 'The Quiet Heart,' a story which, with its deep
clear insight, its gentle but strengthening sympathies, and its pictures so delicately drawn,
has captivated numerous readers, and will confer on many a memory a good and pleasant
influence.”—Excelsior,
THE MOTHER'S
LEGACIE
UNBORNE CHILD E.
By Elizabeth Joceline.
EDITED BY THE VERY REV. PRINCIPAL LEE.
32mo, 4s. 6d.
TO HER
"This beautiful and touching legacie."-Athenæum.
"A delightful monument of the piety and high feeling of a truly noble mother.”—Morn-
ing Advertiser.
8
Works Published by
WORKS OF PROFESSOR WILSON.
EDITED BY HIS SON-IN-LAW,
Professor Ferrier.
Publishing Quarterly, in Crown Octavo, price 6s. each Volune.
The Volumes published contain-
NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ.
Complete in Four Volumes, with GLOSSARY and INDEX, price 24s.
ESSAYS, CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.
CONTRIBUTED TO BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
Vols. 5, 6, and 7.
Future Volumes will contain-
RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH,
POEMS.
TALES.
LECTURES ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
In Octavo, price 14s., with Illustrations by the Author.
THREE YEARS IN CALIFORNIA.
By J. D. Borthwick.
WORKS OF SAMUEL WARREN, D.C.L.
A Cheap Edition, in 5 Vols., price 248. bound in cloth, viz. :—
VOL. I. DIARY OF A LATE PHYSICIAN, 59. 6d.
VOLS. II. & III. TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR, 2 vols., 9s.
VOL. IV. NOW AND THEN, &c., 4s. 6d.
VOL. V. MISCELLANIES, 58.

WORKS OF THE REV. THOMAS M'CRIE, D.D.
EDITED BY HIS SON,
Professor M'Crie.
A New Edition, in Four Volumes, crown 8vo, price 6s. each.
VOL. I. LIFE OF JOHN KNOX.
II. LIFE OF ANDREW MELVILLE.
III. HISTORY OF THE REFORMATIONS IN ITALY AND IN SPAIN.
IV. REVIEW OF SIR W. SCOTT's "TALES OF MY LANDLORD," SERMONS, &C.

William Blackwood and Sons.
9
¡
Octavo, with Map and other Illustrations, Fourth Edition, 14s.
RUSSIAN SHORES OF THE BLACK SEA IN
THE AUTUMN OF 1852.
WITH A VOYAGE DOWN THE VOLGA AND A TOUR THROUGH THE COUNTRY OF THE
DON COSSACKS.
By Laurence Oliphant, Esq.
Author of a
Journey to Nepaul," &c.
"The latest and best account of the actual state of Russia."-Standard.
"The book bears ex facie indisputable marks of the shrewdness, quick-sightedness, can-
dour, and veracity of the author. It is the production of a gentleman, in the true English
sense of the word.”—Daily News.
In Octavo, Illustrated with Engravings, price 12s. 6d.,
MINNESOTA AND THE FAR WEST.
By Laurence Oliphant, Esq.,
Late Civil Secretary and Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs in Canada;
Author of "The Russian Shores of the Black Sea," &c.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE,
Second Edition, Foolscap Octavo, price 4s.
LIFE IN THE FAR
By G. F. Ruxton, Esq.
"One of the most daring and resolute of travellers.
excitement is seldom submitted to the public."--Athenæum.
WEST
A volume fuller of
Two Volumes Octavo, with Maps, &c., price £1, 10s.
NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY THROUGH

SYRIA
AND
PALESTINE.
By Lieut. Van De Velde,
"He has contributed much to the knowledge of the country, and the unction with which
he speaks of the holy places which he has visited, will commend the book to the notice of all
religious readers. His illustrations of Scripture are numerous and admirable."-Daily News.
10
Works Published by
Second Edition, in Crown Octavo, price 10s. 6d.
INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC:
THE
THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING.
By James F. Ferrier, A.B., Oxon.
Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, St Andrews.
"It is a pleasure to meet with a man who, in these days of half-beliefs and feeble asser-
tions, will venture to speak thus strongly. It is a still greater pleasure to meet with a man of
profound thought and astonishing subtlety, who is able to express the most abstruse mean-
ings in the most simple language, and to scatter the light spray of wit and pleasantry over
those abysses of thought which lead down to the terrible Domdaniel roots of the ocean. We
find it difficult to mention any other English work on metaphysics, with even half its power
of thought, which can be compared with it in point of style. The Institutes of Metaphysic
is indeed the most suggestive work on the subject that has been published for many a long
year, and it is the most readable."-Daily News.
BURNETT TREATISE
(SECOND PRIZE.)
In One Vol. Octavo, price 10s. 6d.
THEISM:
THE WITNESS OF REASON AND NATURE TO AN ALL-WISE
AND BENEFICENT CREATOR.
By the Rev. J. Tulloch, D.D.
Principal and Primarius Professor of Theology, St Mary's College, St Andrews.
ON THE
ORIGIN AND CONNECTION OF
THE GOSPELS OF MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE;
WITH SYNOPSIS OF PARALLEL PASSAGES AND CRITICAL NOTES,
By James Smith, Esq. of Jordanhill, F.R.S.
Author of the "Voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul." Medium Octavo, price 16s.
"Displays much learning, is conceived in a reverential spirit, and executed with great
No public school or college ought to be without it."-Standard.
skill.
In Octavo, price 14s.
HISTORY OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANT
REFUGEE S.
By Prof. Charles Weiss of the Lycee Buonaparte.
"We have risen from the perusal of Mr Weiss's book with feelings of extreme gratification.
The period embraced by this work includes the most heart-stirring times of the eventful
History of Protestantism, and is of surpassing interest."-Britannia.

William Blackwood and Sons.
11
DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO HER MAJESTY.
NOW COMPLETED,
In Two large Volumes Royal Octavo, embellished with 1353 Engravings,
THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN.
By Charles M'Intosh,
Late Curator of the Royal Gardens of His Majesty the King of the Belgians,
and latterly of those of His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, at Dalkeith Palace.
Each Volume may be had separately, viz. :-
I. ARCHITECTURAL AND ORNAMENTAL. Pp. 776, embellished with 1073
Engravings, price £2, 10s.
II. PRACTICAL GARDENING. Pp. 876, embellished with 280 Engravings, price
£1, 17s. 6d.
"We must congratulate both editor and publishers on the completion of this work, which is
every way worthy of the character of all concerned in its publication. The scientific knowledge
and great experience of the editor in all that pertains to horticulture, not only as regards cul-
tivation, but as a landscape-gardener and garden architect, has enabled him to produce a work
which brings all that is known of the various subjects treated of down to the present time;
while the manner in which the work is illustrated merits our highest approval."-The Florist.
"Mr M'Intosh's splendid and valuable 'Book of the Garden' is at length complete by
the issue of the second volume. It is impossible in a notice to do justice to this work.
There is no other within our knowledge at all to compare with it in comprehensiveness and
ability; and it will be an indispensable possession for the practical gardener, whether amateur
or professional.”—The London Guardian.
In Two Volumes Royal Octavo, price £3, handsomely bound in cloth,
with upwards of 600 Illustrations.
THE BOOK
OF
THE
FARM.
DETAILING THE LABOURS OF THE
FARMER, FARM-STEWARD, PLOUGHMAN, SHEPHERD, HEDGER, CATTLE-MAN,
FIELD-WORKER, AND DAIRY-MAID, AND FORMING A SAFE MONITOR
FOR STUDENTS IN PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE.
By Henry Stephens, F.R.S.E.
Corresponding Member of the Société Imperiale et Centrale d'Agriculture of France,
and of the Royal Agricultural Society of Galicia.
THE EIGHTH THOUSAND.
"The best practical book I have ever met with."—Professor Johnston.
"We assure agricultural students that they will derive both pleasure and profit from a
diligent perusal of this clear directory to rural labour. The experienced farmer will perhaps
think that Mr Stephens dwells upon some matters too simple or too trite to need explana-
tion; but we regard this as a fault leaning to virtue's side in an instructional book. The
young are often ashamed to ask for an explanation of simple things, and are too often dis-
couraged by an indolent or supercilious teacher.if they do. But Mr Stephens entirely
escapes this error, for he indicates every step the young farmer should take, and, one by one,
explains their several bearings.
We have thoroughly examined these volumes;
but to give a full notice of their varied and valuable contents would occupy a larger space
than we can conveniently devote to their discussion; we therefore, in general terms, com-
mend them to the careful study of every young man who wishes to become a good practical
farmer."-Times.
"A work, the excellence of which is too well known to need any remarks of ours."-
Farmers' Magazine.
12
FARM
Works Published by
ACCOUNTS.
In royal 8vo, bound in cloth, price 2s. 6d.,
A PRACTICAL SYSTEM OF FARM BOOK-KEEPING;
BEING THAT RECOMMENDED IN "THE BOOK OF THE FARM "
BY HENRY STEPHENS, F.R.S.E.;
ALSO,
SEVEN FOLIO ACCOUNT-BOOKS, constructed in accordance with the system, Printed
and Ruled throughout, and bound in separate volumes; the whole being specially
adapted for keeping, by an easy and accurate method, an account of all the Transactions
of the Farm.
THE ACCOUNT-BOOKS CONSIST OF-
I. CASH-BO0K-Ruled with double money-
columns for Dr. and Cr., showing the Cash re-
ceived for produce sold off the Farm, the money
paid on account of the Farm; and all general
Cash and Banking transactions. Price 2s. 6d.
II. LEDGER Ruled with single money
columns, Dr. and Cr, on separate pages, contain-
ing Accounts with every Person or Company
having transactions with the Farm. Price 5s.
III. FARM ACCOUNT-Contains the Cash
received for all the Produce sold off the Farm, and
the Cash paid for all the commodities required for
the Farm, and these alone. Thus the Balance
between the Dr. and Cr. sides of the Farm Ac-
count, at the end of the Agricultural Year, shows
whether the farm has returned or consumed the
largest amount of Cash. Price 2s. 6d.
IV. CORN ACCOUNT Comprises all ac-
counts and statements connected with-1. Wheat;
2. Barley; 3. Oats; 4. Straw; 5. Potatoes; 6.
Turnips, Mangold-Wurzel, Carrots and Parsnips.
These accounts show all the particulars connected.
with the different species of produce-the time
when grain is thrashed-the parties to whom it
has been sold-the uses which have been made of
it on the Farm-the Balance of Grain on hand at
any time in the Corn-barn and Granary the
weight of the Grain, and the prices obtained for it.
Price 3s. 6d.
Consists of
V. LIVE-STOCK ACCOUNT ·
Accounts relating to-1. Cattle; 2. Sheep; 3.
Pigs; 4. Horses; showing the particulars of every
species of Live-Stock, the disposal of them, the
cash paid and the prices obtained for them, and
the numbers on hand at different periods. Price 3s.
VI. LABOUR ACCOUNT-BOOK — Con-
tains, 1. Labour Journal; 2. Labour Account,
the former for showing the Labourers' names, the
days of the week on which they have been employ-
ed, and a register of the number of work-days in
each week; the latter forming a summary of the
amount of all the manual labour executed on the
Farm in the course of a year, including the Har-
vest Expenses. Price 3s.
VII. FIELD-WORKERS' ACCOUNT.
This is a simple form of keeping the Daily Labour-
Account, enabling the total number of Days in
which work has been done for half a year to be
summed up and calculated at the rate of wages per
day, when the gross amount of the half year's
earnings is brought out distinctly. Price 2s. 6d.
The Account-Books are sold separately, and the price of the complete Set,
in Eight Volumes, is 24s. 6d.
ALSO,
A LABOUR ACCOUNT OF THE ESTATE.
This form of Labour Account is specially constructed for the use of Country Gentlemen, whether
residing at home or abroad, who require returns to be made to them of the species of work which
daily engages the time of their labourers in whatever capacity, and whether male or female; that is,
besides Labourers and Field-Workers, the form is as well adapted to Gardeners, Foresters, Hedgers,
Roadmakers, Quarriers, Miners, Gamekeepers, and Dairymaids. Price 2s. 6d.
"We have no hesitation in saying, that of the many systems of keeping farm-accounts which are in
vogue, there is not one which will bear comparison with that just issued by Messrs Blackwood, accord-
ing to the recommendations of Mr Stephens in his invaluable' Book of the Farm.'
The great
characteristic of this system is its simplicity. When once the details are mastered, which it will take
very little trouble to accomplish, it will be prized as the clearest method to show the profit and loss of
business, and to prove how the soundest and surest calculations can be arrived at. We earnestly recom-
mend a trial of the entire series of Books-they must be used as a whole to be thoroughly profitable-
for we are convinced the verdict of our agricultural friends who make such a trial will speedily accord
with our own-that they owe a deep debt of gratitude both to Mr Stephens and Messrs Blackwood for
providing a method so complete and satisfactory to their hands."-Bell's Messenger.
"From experience we can strongly recommend this system to all actual and commencing agricultu-
rists, combining, as it does, all the elements of utility with simplicity."-The Field.
"Mr Stepheus is so thoroughly conversant with all that is essential to be set down in the Farmer's
Account-Book, that it is something to find him induced to prepare a set of books for the agriculturist.
These we find reduced by him to what must be regarded as the simplest and most essential element of a
sound double entry system.
The ease and obvious accuracy of these books abundantly

recommend them."-Notts Guardian.
William Blackwood and Sons.
13
THE YESTER DEEP-LAND
CULTURE.
Being a Detailed Account of the Method of Cultivation which has been successfully
practised for several years by the Marquess of Tweeddale at Yester.
By Henry Stephens, F.R.S.E.
Author of the "Book of the Farm.
In Small Octavo, with Engravings on Wood, price 48. 6d.
ITALIAN IRRIGATION.
A Report on the Agricultural Canals of Piedmont and Lombardy; addressed to the
Hon. the Directors of the East India Company.
With an Appendix, containing a Sketch of the Irrigation System of
Northern and Central India.
By Lieut.-Col. Baird Smith, F.G.S.
Captain, Bengal Engineers.
The Second Edition, in Two Volumes Octavo, with ATLAS in Folio, price 30s.
THE
A New Edition, enlarged.
FORESTER.
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE PLANTING AND MANAGEMENT OF
FOREST TREES.
By James Brown, Forester,
Arniston.
Illustrated with 109 Engravings by Branston. Price 21s.
"Sensible, concise, and useful. We can refer to this as the book to be recommended."—
Gardeners' Chronicle.
"Mr Brown's excellent work."-Quarterly Review.
In Octavo, price 12s.
THE RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND,
SCOTLAND,
AND IRELAND.
By Leonce De Lavergne.
Translated from the French. With Notes by a Scottish Farmer.
"Some years have elapsed since the appearance of a work on agricultural and social eco-
nomy which combined in so large a degree as this volume great practical skill and theoretical
knowledge, with the power of taking extended views and seizing the latent truths contained
in the facts observed. Like all really profound works, the Rural Economy' of M. de
Lavergne is larger than its professed subject; and those who only expect an exposition of
English agriculture, will also find various social problems discussed and resolved, and a light
thrown on several important economical questions.
When we consider
the fulness of matter, the variety of information, the importance of the subject, and the
vigour and picturesqueness with which the whole is presented to the reader, the Rural
Economy of England' may be pronounced one of the best works on the philosophy of agri-
culture and of agricultural political economy that has appeared."-Spectator.
14
Works Published by
A New and Enlarged Edition of
THE PHYSICAL ATLAS OF NATURAL
PHENOMENA.
By Alex. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., &c.
Geographer to the Queen.
Imperial Folio, half-bound morocco, price £12, 12s.
1
"There is no map in this noble Atlas upon which we might not be tempted to write largely.
Almost every one suggests a volume of reflection, and suggests it by presenting, in a few
hours, accurate truths which it would be the labour of a volume to enforce in words, and
by imprinting them, at the same time, upon the memory, with such distinctness that their
outlines are not likely afterwards to be effaced. The Physical Atlas' is a somewhat costly
work, reckoning it only by its paper; but upon its paper is stamped an amount of know-
ledge that could scarcely be acquired without the reading of as many books as would cost
seven times the price."-Examiner, August 12, 1854.
<
0
THE PHYSICAL
PHYSICAL ATLAS.
REDUCED FROM THE IMPERIAL FOLIO FOR THE USE OF COLLEGES, ACADEMIES,
AND FAMILIES
By A. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., &c.
In Imperial Quarto, handsomely bound, half-morocco, price £2, 12s. 6d.
"Executed with remarkable care, and is as accurate, and, for all educational purposes, as
valuable as the splendid large work (by the same author) which has now a European reputa-
tion."―Eclectic Review.
AN ATLAS OF ASTRONOMY.
A complete Series of Illustrations of the Heavenly Bodies, drawn with the greatest care,
from Original and Authentic Documents.
By Alex. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., F.G.S.
Geographer in Ordinary to Her Majesty for Scotland;
Author of "The Physical Atlas," &c.
EDITED BY J. R. HIND, F.R. A. S.
Imperial Quarto, half-bound morocco, price 21s.
"For care of drawing, fulness of matter, and beauty of arrangement, we have seen no
popular Atlas of Astronomy to compare with this volume. The names of Hind and Johnston
on the title-page prepared us for a work of rare excellence; but our satisfaction on comparing
its plates-so new, so accurate, and so suggestively shaded,-with the poor diagrams from
which boys were expected to learn the starry sciences a few years ago, surpassed expectation.
The illustrations are eighteen in number,-lunar, solar, stellar; and are so constructed as to
present to the eye a series of lessons in the most captivating of human studies, simple in
outline and cumulative in result. To say that Mr Hind's Atlas' is the best thing of the
kind is not enough,-it has no competitor."-Athenæum.
ཚ་
A NEW MAP OF EUROPE.
By A. Keith Johnston.
The Plates have been engraved in the highest style of art, and besides the Political divisions,
show distinctly the more important Physical features. The Navigation Tracks, with the dis-
tances of the various ports from each other, in lines of railway on the Continent, and the
Key Map, with all the Lines of Magnetic Telegraph brought down to the latest date, will
be found of the greatest practical utility.
The Map is fully coloured, and measures 4 feet 2 inches by 3 feet 5 inches.
Price, mounted on Cloth and Maliogany Roller, Varnished, or folded
in 4to in a handsome Cloth Case, £2, 2s.
William Blackwood and Sons.
15
In Two Volumes, Crown Octavo, price 11s. 6d.
THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMON
LIFE.
By James F. W. Johnston, M.A., F.R.SS, L. & E., &c.
Author of Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology," &c.
With 113 Illustrations on Wood, and a Copious Index.
"All will concur in admiring the profound thought which has ennobled so many familiar
things, and has even tinged the commonest processes of household life with the hues of
novelty and surprise. The work deserves to be universally read."-British Quarterly Review.
"By the simplicity and lucidness of language and arrangement he shows how thoroughly
he is master of his subject, and how well qualified he is to open our eyes to behold the
wonders of common life, while he conducts us into the laboratory of nature, where we may
see her at her own workshop labouring for the good of man-balancing with consummate skill
the various influences of air, and earth, and water, for the support of organised exertion.
With such a pleasant guide none will refuse to enter into the mysteries of common things,
nor spurn those valuable lessons deducible from his teachings."-Dublin Mail.
A MAP OF THE GEOLOGY OF EUROPE.
By Sir Roderick I. Murchison, D.C.L., M.A., F.R.S.;
AND
James Nicol, F.R.S.E., F.G.S.,
Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen.
On Four Sheets, Imperial Folio.
A
CATECHISM OF PRACTICAL
AGRICULTURE.
By Henry Stephens, Esq., F.R.S.E.
Author of the "Book of the Farm."
With Numerous Illustrations, price 1s. 6d.
Price One Shilling and Sixpence, bound in cloth.
INTRODUCTORY TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY.
By David Page, F.G,S,
Crown Octavo, pp. 128, with Illustrations.
"Of late it has not often been our good fortune to examine a text-book on science of
which we could express an opinion so entirely favourable as we are enabled to do of Mr
Page's little work."-Athenæum.
ADVANCED TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY,
DESCRIPTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL.
By David Page, F.G.S,
Crown Octavo, and Illustrations, price 5s.
"The purpose of these Text-Books may be briefly stated: The 'Introductory' is meant
to exhibit a general outline of Geology intelligible to beginners, and sufficient for those who
wish to become acquainted merely with the leading facts of the science; the ´ Advanced,'
on the other hand, presents the subject in detail, and is intended for senior pupils, and
those who desire to prosecute the study in its principles as well as deductions."
1
16
Works Published by William Blackwood and Sons.
SCHOOL
BY
ATLASES
ALEX. KEITH JOHNSTON,
F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., F.G.S.
Geographer to the Queen, Author of the "Physical Atlas," &c.
1.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, illustrating, in a series of Original Designs,
the Elementary Facts of Geology, Hydrology, Meteorology, and Natural History.
In this Atlas of Physical Geography the subject is treated in a more simple and ele-
mentary manner than in the previous works of the Author-the object being to convey
broad and general ideas on the form and structure of our Planet, and the principal
phenomena affecting its outer crust.
11.
CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY, comprising, in Twenty Plates, Maps and
Plans of all the important Countries and Localities referred to by Classical Authors,
constructed from the best Materials, and embodying the Results of the most Recent
Investigations. Printed in Colours, uniform with the Author's General and Physical
School Atlases, and accompanied by a Complete Index of Places, in which the proper
Quantities of the Syllables are marked, by T. HARVEY, M.A., Oxon., one of the
Classical Masters in the Edinburgh Academy.
III.
GENERAL AND DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY,
exhibiting the
Actual and Comparative Extent of all the Countries in the World; with their present
Political Divisions. Constructed with a special view to the purposes of Sound Instruc-
tion, and presenting the following new features:-1. Enlarged Size, and consequent
Distinctness of Plan. 2. The most Recent Improvements in Geography. 3. A Uni-
form Distinction in Colour between Land and Water. 4. Great Clearness, Uniformity,
and Accuracy of Colouring. 5. A ready way of comparing Relative Areas by means of
Scales. 6. The insertion of the Corresponding Latitudes of Countries, Towns, &c.
7. References to Colonial Possessions, &c., by Figures and Notes. 8. A carefully
compiled and complete Index.
ASTRONOMY.
IV.
Edited by J. R. HIND, Esq., F.R.A.S., &c. With
Notes and descriptive Letterpress to each Plate, embodying all recent discoveries in
Astronomy. Eighteen Maps. Printed in Colours by a new process.
The above are all uniform in size. Price of each Atlas:-In Octavo (for School use),
strongly half-bound, 12s. 6d. In a Portfolio, each Map separate, and mounted on canvass,
16s. 6d. In Quarto, half-bound morocco, £1, 1s. Separate Maps mounted on canvass,
each 8d.
V.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ATLAS OF GENERAL AND DESCRIP-
TIVE GEOGRAPHY, for the use of Junior Classes; including a Map of Canaan and
Palestine, and a General Index. In Demy Quarto, price 78. 6d. half-bound.
VI.
A SERIES OF EIGHT GEOGRAPHICAL PROJECTIONS, to accom-
pany KEITH JOHNSTON'S Atlases of Physical and General School Geography. Com-
prising the WORLD (on Mercator's Projection)-EUROPE-ASIA-AFRICA-NORTH
AMERICA-SOUTH AMERICA-THE BRITISH ISLES. With a Blank Page for laying
down the Meridians and Parallels of any Map by the more advanced Pupils. In a
Portfolio, price 2s. 6d.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
:
BOUND BY
LONDON
3 9015 04349 0914