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From the earth, Boethius ascended to heaven in search of the SUPREME GOOD; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance and destiny, of prescience and free-will, of time and eternity; and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of the Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government. Such topics of consolation, so obvious, so vague, or so abstruse, are ineffectual to subdue the feelings of human nature. Yet the sense of misfortune may be diverted by the labour of thought; and the sage who could artfully combine in the same work the various riches of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, must already have possessed the intrepid calmness which he affected to seek. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length determined by the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps exceeded, the inhuman mandate of Theodoric. A strong cord was fastened round the head of Boethius and forcibly tightened, till his eyes almost started from their sockets; and some mercy may be discovered in the milder torture of beating him with clubs till he expired.111 But his genius survived to diffuse a ray of knowledge over the darkest ages of the Latin world; the writings of the philosopher were translated by the most glorious of the English kings; 112 and the third emperor of the name of Otho removed to a more honourable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint, who, from his Arian persecutors, had acquired the honours of martyrdom and the fame of miracles.113 In the last hours of Boethius, he derived some comfort from the safety of his two sons, of his wife, and of his father-in-law, the venerable Symmachus. But the grief of Symmachus was indiscreet, and perhaps disrespectful: he had presumed to lament, he might dare

111 He was executed in Agro Calventiano (Calvenzano, between Marignano and Pavia), Anonym. Vales. p. 723 [§ 87], by order of Eusebius, count of Ticinum or Pavia. The place of his confinement is styled the baptistery, an edifice and name peculiar to cathedrals. It is claimed by the perpetual tradition of the church of Pavia. The tower of Boethius subsisted till the year 1584, and the draught is yet preserved (Tiraboschi, tom. iii. p. 47, 48).

112 See the Biographica Britannica, ALFRED, tom. i. p. 80, 2d edition. The work is still more honourable if performed under the learned eye of Alfred by his foreign and domestic doctors. [Alfred made both a prose and a poetical translation.] For the reputation of Boethius in the middle ages, consult Brucker (Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 565, 566). [Chaucer also translated the Consolation.]

113 The inscription on his new tomb was composed by the preceptor of Otho the third, the learned Pope Silvester II. who, like Boethius himself, was styled a magician by the ignorance of the times. The Catholic martyr had carried his head in his hands a considerable way (Baronius, A.D. 526, No. 17, 18); yet, on a similar tale, a lady of my acquaintance once observed, "La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte" [Madame du Deffand].

Symmachus.

to revenge, the death of an injured friend. He was dragged in Death of chains from Rome to the palace of Ravenna; and the suspicions D. 525 of Theodoric could only be appeased by the blood of an innocent and aged senator.1

114

death of

A.D. 526,

Humanity will be disposed to encourage any report which Remorse and testifies the jurisdiction of conscience and the remorse of kings; Theodoric. and philosophy is not ignorant that the most horrid spectres are August 30 sometimes created by the powers of a disordered fancy and the weakness of a distempered body. After a life of virtue and glory, Theodoric was now descending with shame and guilt into the grave: his mind was humbled by the contrast of the past, and justly alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity. One evening, as it is related, when the head of a large fish was served on the royal table,115 he suddenly exclaimed that he beheld the angry countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and his mouth armed with long sharp teeth which threatened to devour him. The monarch instantly retired to his chamber, and, as he lay trembling with aguish cold, under a weight of bedclothes, he expressed in broken murmurs to his physician Elpidius his deep repentance for the murders of Boethius and Symmachus.116 His malady increased, and, after a dysentery which continued three days, he expired in the palace of Ravenna, in the thirty-third, or, if we compute from the invasion of Italy, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. Conscious of his approaching end, he divided his treasures and provinces between his two grandsons, and fixed the Rhone as their common boundary.117 Amalaric was restored to the throne of Spain. Italy, with all the conquests of the Ostrogoths, was bequeathed to Athalaric; whose

114 Boethius applauds the virtues of his father-in-law (1. i. pros. 4, p. 59; 1. ii. pros. 4, p. 118). Procopius (Goth. 1. i. c. 1), the Valesian Fragment (p. 724), and the Historia Miscella (1. xv. p. 105) agree in praising the superior innocence or sanctity of Symmachus; and, in the estimation of the legend, the guilt of his murder is equal to the imprisonment of a pope. [Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus was great-grandson of the orator Symmachus who fought under Gratian and Theodosius for the dying cause of Paganism.]

115 In the fanciful eloquence of Cassiodorius, the variety of sea and river fish are an evidence of extensive dominion; and those of the Rhine, of Sicily, and of the Danube were served on the table of Theodoric (Var. xii. 14). The monstrous turbot of Domitian (Juvenal. Satir. iii. 39) had been caught on the shores of the Adriatic.

116 Procopius, Goth. 1. i. c. 1. But he might have informed us whether he had received this curious anecdote from common report or from the mouth of the royal physician.

117 Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 1, 2, 12, 13. This partition had been directed by Theodoric, though it was not executed till after his death. Regni hereditatem superstes reliquit (Isidor. Chron. p. 721, edit. Grot.).

age did not exceed ten years, but who was cherished as the last male offspring of the line of Amali, by the short-lived marriage of his mother Amalasuntha with a royal fugitive of the same blood.118 In the presence of the dying monarch, the Gothic chiefs and Italian magistrates mutually engaged their faith and loyalty to the young prince and to his guardian mother; and received, in the same awful moment, his last salutary advice, to maintain the laws, to love the senate and people of Rome, and to cultivate with decent reverence the friendship of the emperor. 119 The monument of Theodoric was erected by his daughter Amalasuntha, in a conspicuous situation, which commanded the city of Ravenna, the harbour, and the adjacent coast. A chapel of a circular form, thirty feet in diameter, is crowned by a dome of one entire piece of granite: from the centre of the dome four columns arose, which supported, in a vase of porphyry, the remains of the Gothic king, surrounded by the brazen statues of the twelve apostles.120 His spirit, after some previous expiation, might have been permitted to mingle with the benefactors of mankind, if an Italian hermit had not been witness in a vision to the damnation of Theodoric,121 whose soul was plunged, by the ministers of divine vengeance, into the vulcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal world. 122

118 Berimund, the third in descent from Hermanric, king of the Ostrogoths, had retired into Spain, where he lived and died in obscurity (Jornandes, c. 33, p. 202, edit. Murator.). See the discovery, nuptials, and death, of his grandson Eutharic (c. 58, p. 220). His Roman games might render him popular (Cassiodor. in Chron.), but Eutharic was asper in religione (Anonym. Vales. p. 722, 723 [§ 80]).

119 See the counsels of Theodoric, and the professions of his successor, in Procopius (Goth. 1. i. c. 1, 2), Jornandes (c. 59, p. 220, 221), and Cassiodorius (Var. viii. 1-7). These epistles are the triumph of his ministerial eloquence.

120 Anonym. Vales. p. 724, Agnellus de Vitis Pont. Raven. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 67. Alberti Descrittione d'Italia, p. 311. [In the time of Agnellus, the body of Theodoric was no longer in the mausoleum. In 1854 workmen found a skeleton with a golden cuirass and helmet, some hundred yards from the tomb. It is held by the archæologist of Ravenna, C. Ricci, that this was the body of Theodoric; others have named Odovacar. The gold armour was hidden and melted down by the discoverers, but some bits of the cuirass were rescued and are in the museum at Ravenna. Mr. Hodgkin has a fanciful conjecture on the removal of the body, iii. 583.]

121 This legend is related by Gregory I. (Dialog. iv. 30), and approved by Baronius (A.D. 526, No. 28); and both the Pope and Cardinal are grave doctors, sufficient to establish a probable opinion.

122 Theodoric himself, or rather Cassiodorius, had described in tragic strains the vulcanos of Lipari (Cluver. Sicilia, p. 406, 410), and Vesuvius (iv. 50).

CHAPTER XL

Elevation of Justin the Elder-Reign of Justinian :-I. The Empress Theodora II. Factions of the Circus, and Sedition of Constantinople-III. Trade and Manufacture of Silk-IV. Finances and Taxes-V. Edifices of Justinian-Church of St. SophiaFortifications and Frontiers of the Eastern Empire-Abolition of the Schools of Athens and the Consulship of Rome

emperor

A.D. 482, May

THE emperor Justinian was born 1 near the ruins of Sardica (the Birth of the modern Sophia), of an obscure race 2 of Barbarians,3 the inhabi- Justinian. tants of a wild and desolate country, to which the names of 5, or A.D. 483, Dardania, of Dacia, and of Bulgaria have been successively applied. May 11 His elevation was prepared by the adventurous spirit of his uncle Justin, who, with two other peasants of the same village, deserted, for the profession of arms, the more useful employment of husbandmen or shepherds. On foot, with a scanty provision of

1 There is some difficulty in the date of his birth (Ludewig in Vit. Justiniani, p. 125); none in the place-the district Bederiana-the village Tauresium, which he afterwards decorated with his name and splendour (D'Anville, Mém. de l'Acad. &c. tom. xxxi. p. 287-292). [See below, p. 251, n. 114.]

2 The names of these Dardanian peasants are Gothic, and almost English: Justinian is a translation of uprauda (upright); his father Sabatius (in Græcobarbarous language stipes) was styled in his village istock (stock); his mother Bigleniza was softened into Vigilantia. [For the name of Justinian's father Sabatius we have the authority of Procopius; it is a Thracian word, connected with the name of the Thracian sun-god. But it was the family name, for Justinian himself also bore it; see his full name below, note 9. The other names are Slavonic (not Gothic) and are derived from the Justiniani Vita of Theophilus, quoted by Alemanni and rediscovered by Mr. Bryce (see above, vol. i., Introduction, p. lix., lx.). Mediæval Slavonic legend (if it is represented in this work) conceived Justinian as a Slav. Upravda is a translation of Justinianus (and not vice versa); istok means a fountain; Biglenizza is explained as coming from bieli "white". But these (and other Slavonic names in the Vita) are late and bad formations (compare C. Jireček, Eng. Hist. Review, 1887, p. 685). The only result from the Vita, Mr. Bryce thinks, is "to give us a glimpse into a sort of cyclus of Slavonic legends, attaching themselves to the great name of Justinian" (ib. p. 684). Prof. Jagic thinks the names are mainly a fabrication of Luccari (Copioso ristretto degli Annali di Rausa, 1605) and other Dalmatian scholars of the time. Arch. für slavische Philologie, xi. 300-4, 1888.]

3 Ludewig (p. 127-135) attempts to justify the Anician name of Justinian and Theodora, and to connect them with a family from which the house of Austria has been derived.

4 See the anecdotes of Procopius (c. 6) with the notes of N. Alemannus. The satirist would not have sunk, in the vague and decent appellation of ye@pyos, the

biscuit in their knapsacks, the three youths followed the highroad of Constantinople, and were soon enrolled, for their strength and stature, among the guards of the emperor Leo. Under the two succeeding reigns, the fortunate peasant emerged to wealth and honours; and his escape from some dangers which threatened his life was afterwards ascribed to the guardian angel who watches over the fate of kings. His long and laudable service in the Isaurian and Persian wars would not have preserved from oblivion the name of Justin; yet they might warrant the military promotion which in the course of fifty years he gradually obtained; the rank of tribune, of count, and of general, the dignity of senator, and the command of the guards, who obeyed him as their chief, at the important crisis when the emperor Anastasius was removed from the world. The powerful kinsmen whom he had raised and enriched were excluded from the throne; and the eunuch Amantius, who reigned in the palace, had secretly resolved to fix the diadem on the head of the most obsequious of his creatures. A liberal donative, to conciliate the suffrage of the guards, was entrusted for that purpose in the hands of their commander. But these weighty arguments were treacherously employed by Justin in his own favour; and, as no Elevation and competitor presumed to appear, the Dacian peasant was invested uncle Justin I. with the purple, by the unanimous consent of the soldiers who 10: A.D. 527, knew him to be brave and gentle, of the clergy and people who

reign of his

A.D. 518, July

April 1 or
August 1

believed him to be orthodox, and of the provincials who yielded a blind and implicit submission to the will of the capital. The elder Justin, as he is distinguished from another emperor of the same family and name, ascended the Byzantine throne at the age of sixty-eight years; and, had he been left to h's own guidance, every moment of a nine years' reign must have exposed to his subjects the impropriety of their choice. His ignorance was similar to that of Theodoric; and it is remarkable that, in an age not destitute of learning, two contemporary monarchs had never been instructed in the knowledge of the alphabet. But the genius of Justin was far inferior to that of the Gothic king; the experience of a soldier had not qualified him for the government of an empire ; and, though personally brave, the consciousness of his own weakness was naturally attended with doubt, distrust, and political apprehension. But the official business of the state

Boukotos and σupopßós of Zonaras. Yet why are those names disgraceful?—and what German baron would not be proud to descend from the Eumæus of the Odyssey? 4 [Cp. John Lydus, de Mag. 3, c. 51, ἀνὴρ δὲ ἦν απράγμων και μηδὲν ἁπλῶς παρὰ τὴν τῶν ὅπλων πεῖραν ἐπιστάμενος.]

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