fortifications in all the frontier towns concealed the actual weakness of the empire, while they conveyed the external aspect of impregnable strength.

Commerce and luxury received an important impetus in the home manufacture of silk, hitherto confined to the Persian market, at exorbitant prices, but now established in the capital and European provinces, by the importation of the silk-worm from China, concealed in a hollow cane to deceive the jealousy of the natives. But the greatest triumph of Justinian, and the most imperishable monument of his fame, is the celebrated code of laws which has survived his other labours, and has become the model for civil jurisprudence in every country of civilized Europe, England alone excepted. The code was long supposed to be lost. A copy had been brought by a merchant from Constantinople to the little city of Amalfi, a seaport of Naples, on the Gulf of Salerno, but not used there, as they had adopted that of Theodosius. When the Pisans took and pillaged Amalfi,* in the twelfth century, they found and carried away the Pandects of Justinian, which were destined to as many travels and changes of residence as the Casa Santa of Loretto, or the coffins of St. Patrick and St. Cuthbert. When the Florentines took Pisa in 1406, the Pandects were removed to the capital of Tuscany, elevated to the dignity of sacred relics, bound in purple, and exhibited with reverence to curious travellers (duly qualified) by the monks and magistrates, bareheaded and with lighted tapers. The Emperor Lotharius, when they arrived in Lombardy, caused them to be revised and arranged by Irnerius, and to be taught in all the schools throughout his dominions. They were afterwards reduced to their present form of codices and digests, by Accursius, a celebrated legal scholiast.†

The conquests of Justinian are forgotten; their political importance has been swept away with the extinction of his empire; his palaces and fortifications have long crumbled into dust; the Christian church of St. Sophia is converted into a Turkish mosque; but

the code, the Pandects, and the Institutes remain. They will endure while the external world exists in its present form, and the name of the imperial legislator is inscribed on a fair and lasting monument.

The reign of Justinian, to a cursory reader, appears to be a revival of the golden age, when all was contentment, prosperity and happiness A closer investigation shows the picture in another light, and with very opposite features. The nations under his control, were oppressed by incessant taxes, monopolies, and other grinding expedients of wasteful or avaricious tyranny. They submitted sullenly to an iron despotism they were unable to throw off, and were forced to express public exultation for triumphs from which they derived no advantage. In every department of the state there was corruption, dishonesty, peculation, embezzlement and plunder the rich trampling on the poor, the wealth of one accumulated by the ruin of a thousand. Neither was the wrath of heaven without palpable demonstration. Famine and pestilence weighed heavily on the land, decimated the population, and produced a decrease of the human species, which has never been replaced, in some of the fairest countries of the globe. During the late destroying sweep of the Asiatic cholera, we were struck with terror, when two or three hundred deaths were recorded daily for two or three weeks, in some of the most thickly inhabited cities of western Europe. When the plague burst !. forth in the fifteenth year of the reign of Justinian, for three months, five, and at length ten thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; while many cities of the East were left at the mercy of the beasts of prey; and in several of the richest districts of Italy, the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground for want of hands to gather them in. And how were the mass of those occupied who escaped the deadly visitation, which languished and revived periodically for more than half a century? In humility, in prayer, in penitence? - in humble supplication to the offended

Gibbon, “Decline and Fall,” ch. xliv.

Deity?-in systematic temperance and strenuous efforts to discover a resisting antidote? No; they laughed, and revelled, and drank, and gambled, and intrigued, and blasphemed, as usual. War succeeded war; sedition followed sedition; and all the evil passions of man's nature appeared to gain strength from the surrounding terrors which should have checked or extinguished them. In those ages there were neither sanatory restrictions nor qua rantine laws, and the cleanliness of modern habits was unpractised even among the highest classes. The mor tality arising from pestilence alone, in the Roman dominions, during a single reign of thirty-eight years, has been computed vaguely and somewhat poetically, by a credible writer,* as amounting to several myriads of myriadst in reasonable interpreta tion, one hundred millions.

The ingenious fiction of Marmontel, derived originally from a fable of the twelfth century, in the "Chiliads" of Tzetzes, has long taught us to believe that the illustrious general of Justinian was deprived of his eyes, and reduced in old age to beggary. As children we have wept over his wrongs, and wished to revenge them. The tale has served for a leading illustration in all treatises on the vicissitudes of fortune, the fickle nature of popularity, and the ingratitude of princes. Lord Mahon believes it,§ in opposition to other modern historians, and tries to establish his view by argument and evidence, but neither, in our humble opinion, sufficient for the purpose. We are much consoled by the conclusion, that the whole has no foundation in truth. That Belisarius was ill-treated by a heartless sovereign, who owed to him his life and empire, is as certain as that Etius was slain by the cowardly hand of Valentinian, and that the Admiral Coligny was murdered through the treachery of Charles IX. He was falsely accused of joining in a conspiracy against the life of Justinian; disgraced, imprisoned, and heavily

"Procopius, Anecdot.," c. 18.

amerced; restored to freedom and honour with a broken heart; but his person was unprofaned, and he died in his own palace. The massive ruins of that palace, still bearing his name, are shown to this day, as among the most interesting antiquities of Constantinople. The story loses in moral application, in sympathetic excitement, and in painful interest; but the memory of the hero gains in dignity, and preserves the halo of respect with which heroes require to be surrounded. Cato falling on his sword at Utica; Cæsar, slaughtered in the senate house; Brutus and Cassius dying on the field of Phillippi, are more in keeping than Hannibal flying from court to court a pensioner on sufferance; or Bajazet exhibited in an iron cage. In spite of reason and philosophy, it is as difficult as unpleasant, to associate the lofty image of the conqueror of many kingdoms, the victor of a hundred battles, the restorer of his country's power and glory, with the squalid attributes of an old blind street mendicant, led by a boy, with a dog, and a hat or a bowl, howling forth the professional cry of " Give a penny to Belisarius the general." That he should stand at the gates of the convent of Laurus to beg his bread is much less likely than that he should knock at those gates to claim admission and sanctuary, while his wife Antonina was still able, from the wreck of their fortunes, to pay his entrance fee. The legend, as it stands, would embellish Fox's "Book of Martyrs," in which the persevering and accurate Professor Jamieson detected three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fallacies in one night, and declared that he certainly would have made up the four thousand, only he fell asleep.

Some authorities claim for Belisarius the advantages of noble blood, and the inheritance of a patrimonial fortune. The general silence of Procopius on these points, and one or two indirect passages, favour the opinion, but preponderating testimony places his

birth among the peasants of Thrace, and withholds from him the benefits of early studies and liberal education. He entered the private guards of Justinian before he was emperor, and rose to rank and distinction by individual merit, without interest. Nature had endowed him with a tall, commanding form, a noble countenance, great activity and vigour, coolness, constitutional self-possession and daring courage. The external requisites were combined with the intellectual composition of a hero. He began his military course precisely as what, in our own days, is termed a soldier of fortune, trusting for advancement to chance and opportunity. A successful campaign against the Persians, which he commenced in a subordinate capacity, but terminated as commander-in-chief, followed by his faithful service in the great sedition of Constantinople, between the blue and green factions of the circus, established his ability and reputation with the emperor, and placed him, while yet in the prime of life, beyond the reach of envious rivalry. Ilis fortunes were materially promoted by his marriage with Antonina, who, though a widow, without dowry, possessed much political influence, as having been long the chosen friend and companion of the empress Theodora, the participator and confidante in her early irregularities. In the imperial household she seems to have filled an important office, nearly the same as that of lady of the bedchamber in modern courts, with rank, honour, and emolument in due accordance. Ignoble in birth (her father was a charioteer, her mother an actress of loose character), and disdaining the commonplace merit of conjugal fidelity, Antonina expressed for Belisarius, the friendship of a military comrade, who accompanied him in all his wars, regardless of personal hardship or privation. In like manner the career of Marlborough was assisted by the ascendancy which his duchess for a long time maintained over the unstable mind and variable affections of Queen Anne. The effect in both cases was the same, but between the characters of the English and the Roman ladies a wide distinction is to be drawn. The former were respectable in private mo. rality, and faithful in domestic relations; bearing no resemblance, and

forming no parallel to the unrestrained licentiousness by which the Eastern empress and her favourite were degraded. Sarah of Marlborough was mean and vindictive; ambitious, griping, selfish, and cold-hearted; but her chastity was unimpeached, and she discharged her duties as a wife and mother without stain or reproach.

When Belisarius made his first essay as commander-in-chief in the Persian war, he was a very young general, not more than six-and-twenty, being of the same age as Napoleon when he conquered Italy, and the elder Africanus when he wrested Spain from Carthage. His two Persian campaigns were illustrated by two great battles, fought at Dara and Callinicum. In the first, he obtained a complete victory over an army doubling his own in number. In the second, he was defeated by the same overwhelming force, and through the delinquency of his own troops, who clamorously insisted on engaging, contrary to his better judgment, and proved faithless to him and to themselves in the hour of difficulty. There are points of peculiar interest attached to this battle, which deserve a plan and a minute explanation. It affords a memorable example of the power with which high intuitive genius soars above established rules, and triumphs, when mediocrity or incapacity sins against them and fails. The Persians had invaded the Roman territories on the side of Mesopotamia, and, crossing the Euphrates, advanced against Chalcis and Antioch. Belisarius hastily collected such forces as he had at his disposal, and hastened from Dara, where he was stationed on the frontiers, to intercept them. He arrived in time, and the Persian army, remembering the overthrow of Dara, paused and retreated.* Belisarius, not wishing to hazard a battle with very inferior numbers, and in which victory could scarcely give him more advantages than he already possessed, followed them cautiously, remaining usually at one day's march behind them, encamping each night on the station they had left the morning before. He felt the wisdom and adopted the maxim of Cæsar, who was of opinion that a good general, in most cases, should make a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy. The Persians marched along the right bank of the Euphrates,

a broad and rapid river, until they came opposite to Callinicum, a little above which they intended to cross, and passing (as on their advance) through Mesopotamia, to regain their own country. The Roman soldiers, indignant at seeing their enemies escape, and over-estimating their own prowess, assailed Belisarius with loud reproaches. They attributed his systematic caution to cowardice or ignorance, and urged by the inferior officers, loudly demanded to be led to battle. Belisarius, compelled to sacrifice his own judgment to this senseless clamour, submitted cheerfully to the dangerous alternative he

could no longer avoid, regained the confidence of his troops by pretending that he had only delayed the combat to test their alacrity and spirit, and proceeded to make the ablest arrangement of his forces which circumstances allowed. It was by no choice of his own that he fought with an unfordable river in his rear; a vicious disposition, contrary to all sound principles, and seldom ventured on without fatal consequences. We shall soon see that what would have ruined an ordinary general, his ready genius converted to a source of safety.

Belisarius drew up his best troops, his infantry, on the left. The Arab auxiliaries, on whom he placed less dependence, he posted on the right, and took his own station with the cavalry, in the centre. The arms of his men, both offensive and defensive, were superior to those of the enemy, but the Persians were more rapid and more skilful bowmen than the GreekRomans. For a considerable part of the day, no advantage was gained on either side; at length the Isaurians fled, actuated by either cowardice or treachery, or more probably by both. The Persians then surrounded the cavalry, who, pressed on all sides, and exhausted with fatigue, gave way, and fled headlong to some islands on the Euphrates in the rear. Those who failed to effect their escape, were

slaughtered or made prisoners on the spot. Belisarius dismounted from his horse, calling upon all his staff to follow his example, and took part at the head of the infantry of the left, who still stood firm in their original places. His eagle eye detected at a glance, the advantages of the ground, and that by rapidly wheeling back their right, the bend of the river immediately behind them would cover both flanks, and enable them to maintain their position. At all events, their lives depended on an obstinate defence. Procopius relates what followed, with the clear accuracy of an eye-witness. He says:

Persians.

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