The ministers of Justinian legal or natural heirs, which Procopius imputes to the reign of Justinian. His charge is supported by eminent names and scandalous examples; neither widows nor orphans were spared; and the art of soliciting, or extorting, or supposing, testaments was beneficially practised by the agents of the palace. This base and mischievous tyranny invades the security of private life; and the monarch who has indulged an appetite for gain will soon be tempted to anticipate the moment of succession, to interpret wealth as an evidence of guilt, and to proceed from the claim of inheritance to the power of confiscation. VII. Among the forms of rapine, a philosopher may be permitted to name the conversion of Pagan or heretical riches to the use of the faithful; but in the time of Justinian this holy plunder was condemned by the sectaries alone, who became the victims of his orthodox avarice. 91 92 Dishonour might be ultimately reflected on the character of Justinian; but much of the guilt, and still more of the profit, was intercepted by the ministers, who were seldom promoted for their virtues, and not always selected for their talents.91 The merits of Tribonian the quæstor will hereafter be weighed in the reformation of the Roman law; but the economy of the East was subordinate to the Prætorian præfect, and Procopius has justified his Anecdotes by the portrait, which he exposes in his public history, of John of Cap. the notorious vices of John of Cappadocia.9 His knowledge was not borrowed from the schools,93 and his style was scarcely legible; but he excelled in the powers of native genius to suggest the wisest counsels and to find expedients in the most desperate situations. The corruption of his heart was equal to the vigour of his understanding. Although he was suspected of magic and Pagan superstition, he appeared insensible to the fear of God or the reproaches of man; and his aspiring fortune was raised on the death of thousands, the poverty of millions, the ruin of cities, and padocia 91 John Malala, tom. ii. p. 101, 102, 103 [p. 439-40, ed. Bonn]. 91a One of these, Anatolius, perished in an earthquake-doubtless a judgment ! The complaints and clamours of the people in Agathias (1. v. p. 146, 147) are almost an echo of the anecdote. The aliena pecunia reddenda of Corippus (l. ii. 381, &c.) is not very honourable to Justinian's memory. 92 See the history and character of John of Cappadocia in Procopius (Persic. I. i. c. 24, 25; l. ii. c. 30. Vandal. 1. i. c. 13. Anecdot. c. 2, 17, 22). The agreement of the history and Anecdotes is a mortal wound to the reputation of the præfect. [Besides Procopius, we have a long notice in the treatise De Magistratibus of John Lydus, who is equally unsparing.] 93 Οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο οὐδὲν ἐς γραμματιστοῦ φοιτῶν ἔμαθεν ὅτι μὴ γράμματα, καὶ ταῦτα κακὰ κακῶς γράψαι a forcible expression. the desolation of provinces. From the dawn of light to the moment of dinner, he assiduously laboured to enrich his master and himself at the expense of the Roman world; the remainder of the day was spent in sensual and obscene pleasures; and the silent hours of the night were interrupted by the perpetual dread of the justice of an assassin. His abilities, perhaps his vices, recommended him to the lasting friendship of Justinian; the emperor yielded with reluctance to the fury of the people; his victory was displayed by the immediate restoration of their enemy; and they felt above ten years, under his oppressive administration, that he was stimulated by revenge rather than instructed by misfortune. Their murmurs served only to fortify the resolution of Justinian; but the præfect in the insolence of favour provoked the resentment of Theodora, disdained a power before which every knee was bent, and attempted to sow the seeds of discord between the emperor and his beloved consort. Even Theodora herself was constrained to dissemble, to wait a favourable moment, and by an artful conspiracy to render John of Cappadocia the accomplice of his own destruction. At a time when Belisarius, unless he had been a hero, must have shewn himself a rebel, his wife Antonina, who enjoyed the secret confidence of the empress, communicated his feigned discontent to Euphemia, the daughter of the Præfect; the credulous virgin imparted to her father the dangerous project; and John, who might have known the value of oaths and promises, was tempted to accept a nocturnal, and almost treasonable, interview with the wife of Belisarius. An ambuscade of guards and eunuchs had been posted by the command of Theodora; they rushed with drawn swords to seize or to punish the guilty minister; he was saved by the fidelity of his attendants; but, instead of appealing to a gracious sovereign who had privately warned him of his danger, he pusillanimously fled to the sanctuary of the church. The favourite of Justinian was sacrificed to conjugal tenderness or domestic tranquillity; the conversion of a præfect into a priest extinguished his ambitious hopes; but the friendship of the emperor alleviated his disgrace, and he retained in the mild exile of Cyzicus an ample portion of his riches. Such imperfect revenge could not satisfy the unrelenting hatred of Theodora; the murder of his old enemy, the bishop of Cyzicus, afforded a decent pretence; and John of Cappadocia, whose actions had deserved a thousand deaths, was at last condemned for a crime of which he was innocent. A great minister, who had been invested with the honours of consul and patrician, was ignominiously scourged like 16 VOL. IV [A.D. 543] His edifices and archi tects the vilest of malefactors; a tattered cloak was the sole remnant of his fortunes; he was transported in a bark to the place of his banishment at Antinopolis in Upper Egypt, and the præfect of the East begged his bread through the cities which had trembled at his name. During an exile of seven years, his life was protracted and threatened by the ingenious cruelty of Theodora ; and, when her death permitted the emperor to recal a servant whom he had abandoned with regret, the ambition of John of Cappadocia was reduced to the humble duties of the sacerdotal profession. His successors convinced the subjects of Justinian that the arts of oppression might still be improved by experience and industry; the frauds of a Syrian banker were introduced into the administration of the finances; and the example of the præfect was diligently copied by the quæstor, the public and private treasurer, the governors of provinces, and the principal magistrates of the Eastern empire.94 V. The edifices of Justinian were cemented with the blood and treasure of his people; but those stately structures appeared to announce the prosperity of the empire, and actually displayed the skill of their architects. Both the theory and practice of the arts which depend on mathematical science and mechanical power were cultivated under the patronage of the emperors; the fame of Archimedes was rivalled by Proclus and Anthemius; and, if their miracles had been related by intelligent spectators, they might now enlarge the speculations, instead of exciting the distrust, of philosophers. A tradition has prevailed that the Roman fleet was reduced to ashes in the port of Syracuse by the burning-glasses of Archimedes; 95 and it is asserted that a similar expedient was employed by Proclus to destroy the Gothic vessels in the harbour of Constantinople, and to protect his benefactor Anastasius against the bold enterprise of Vitalian.96 A machine was fixed on the walls of the city, consisting of an hexagon mirror 94 The chronology of Procopius is loose and obscure; but with the aid of Pagi I can discern that John was appointed prætorian præfect of the East in the year 530; that he was removed in January 532-restored before June 533-banished in 541 [to Cyzicus]-and recalled between June 548 and April 1, 549. Aleman. (p. 96, 97) gives the list of his ten successors-a rapid series in a part of a single reign. 95 This conflagration is hinted by Lucian (in Hippia, c. 2) and Galen (1. iii. de Temperamentis, tom. i. p. 81, edit. Basil) in the second century. A thousand years afterwards, it is positively affirmed by Zonaras (1. ix. p. 424) on the faith of Dion Cassius, by Tzetzes (Chiliad ii. 119, &c.), Eustathius (ad Iliad. E. p. 338), and the scholiast of Lucian. See Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. 1. iii. c. 22, tom. ii. p. 551, 552), to whom I am more or less indebted for several of these quotations. 96 Zonaras (1. xiv. p. 55 [c. 3]) affirms the fact, without quoting any evidence. [He seems to have followed George Monachus here (ed. Muralt, i. 517), but to have added the artifice of the mirror, out of his own head.] of polished brass, with many smaller and moveable polygons to receive and reflect the rays of the meridian sun; and a consuming flame was darted to the distance, perhaps, of two hundred feet.97 The truth of these two extraordinary facts is invalidated by the silence of the most authentic historians; and the use of burning-glasses was never adopted in the attack or defence of places. 98 Yet the admirable experiments of a French philosopher 99 have demonstrated the possibility of such a mirror; and, since it is possible, I am more disposed to attribute the art to the greatest mathematicians of antiquity than to give the merit of the fiction to the idle fancy of a monk or a sophist. According to another story, Proclus applied sulphur to the destruction of the Gothic fleet; 100 in a modern imagination, the name of sulphur is instantly connected with the suspicion of gunpowder, and that suspicion is propagated by the secret arts of his disciple Anthemius, 101 A citizen of Tralles in Asia had five sons, who were all distinguished in their respective professions by merit and success. Olympius excelled in the knowledge and practice of the Roman jurisprudence. Dioscorus and Alexander became learned physicians; but the skill of the former was exercised for the benefit of his fellow-citizens, while his more ambitious brother acquired wealth and reputation at Rome. The fame of Metrodorus the grammarian, and of Anthemius the mathematician and architect, reached the ears of the emperor Justinian, who invited them to Constantinople; and, while the one instructed the rising generation in the schools of eloquence, the other filled the capital and provinces with more lasting 97 Tzetzes describes the artifice of these burning-glasses, which he had read, perhaps with no learned eyes, in a mathematical treatise of Anthemius. That treatise, Tepi Tapadówν unxamμárov, has been lately published, translated, and illustrated, by M. Dupuys, a scholar and a mathematician (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xlii. p. 392-451). [See A. Westermann's Paradoxographi, p. 149 sqq.; and, for a new fragment of Anthemius, C. Belger in Hermes, xvi. p. 261 sqq. (1881), and C. Wachsmuth, ib. p. 637 sqq.] 98 In the siege of Syracuse, by the silence of Polybius, Plutarch, Livy; in the siege of Constantinople, by that of Marcellinus and all the contemporaries of the vith century. 99 Without any previous knowledge of Tzetzes or Anthemius, the immortal Buffon imagined and executed a set of burning-glasses, with which he could inflame planks at the distance of 200 feet (Supplément à l'Hist. Naturelle, tom. i. p. 399-483, quarto edition). What miracles would not his genius have performed for the public service, with royal expense, and in the strong sun of Constantinople or Syracuse? 100 John Malala (tom. ii. p. 120-124 [403-5]) relates the fact; but he seems to confound the names or persons of Proclus and Marinus. [Marinus was the prætorian præfect to whom Proclus gave his mixture.] 101 Agathias, I. v. p. 149-152. The merit of Anthemius as an architect is loudly praised by Procopius (de Edif. 1. i. c. 1), and Paulus Silentiarius (part i. 134, &c.). Foundation of the church monuments of his art. In a trifling dispute relative to the walls The principal church, which was dedicated by the founder of of St. Sophia Constantinople to Saint Sophia, or the eternal wisdom, had been twice destroyed by fire: after the exile of John Chrysostom, and during the Nika of the blue and green factions. No sooner did the tumult subside than the Christian populace deplored their sacrilegious rashness; but they might have rejoiced in the calamity, had they foreseen the glory of the new temple, which at the end of forty days was strenuously under 102 See Procopius (de Edificiis, 1. i. c. 1, 2, 1. ii. c. 3). He relates a coincidence of dreams which supposes some fraud in Justinian or his architect. They both saw, in a vision, the same plan for stopping an inundation at Dara. A stone quarry near Jerusalem was revealed to the emperor (1. v. c. 6); an angel was tricked into the perpetual custody of St. Sophia (Anonym. de Antiq. C. P. 1. iv. p. 70). |
