which he found in Malalas under 527-8.6 It must be observed that Malalas was not the only source of Theophanes. On the other hand Ibn Ishaq (apud Tabari; Nöldeke, p. 219) gives a succession of kings of Yemen which leaves no room for Damian. The succession is Abraha, Yaksum, Masruq (who is supposed to be the same as Sanaturkes in Theophanes of Byzantium; which seems doubtful; for Sana in this name seems to correspond to the Homerite town Sana). Ibn Ishaq assigns an impossible number of years to these kings; and I doubt whether his statements are absolutely decisive as against Theophanes.7

It is another question whether, as Gutschmid and Nöldeke have suggested, Malalas and Theophanes and John of Ephesus (who has the same story) have interchanged the names of the Axumite and Homerite kings (see Nöldeke, Tabari, p. 175). The reason is that on the obverse of some coins Aunár appears as the heathen king of the Axumites; while on the reverse 'Adidas is represented as the vassal king of the Homerites. (Revue Numismat. 1868, t., ii. 1, 2.) This conjecture seems highly probable. In any case the form Dimêan explains the Greek variants Δίμνος and Δαμιανός, 8

In

The Persian invasion of Yemen took place between 562 and 572 (cp. Nöldeke, p. 224), and formed one of the causes of the war between Justin and Chosroes. Arethas was at this time king of the Axumites, and Justin sent an ambassador named Julian to him, urging him to hostilities against Persia. noticing this embassy (sub anno 571-2-A.M. 6064) Theophanes has borrowed the account that is given by Malalas of the reception of the ambassador Nonnosus by Elesbaas; and hence he is always supposed to refer to the same embassy and to have misdated it. But the substitution of the new names (Arethas for Elesbaas, and Julianus for the ambassador whom Malalas does not name) refutes this opinion.

In this note I have derived much help from the valuable article of M. l'abbé Duchesne, Missions chrétiennes au sud de l'empire romain, which is included in his Eglises Séparées, 1896. Here will be found also an account of the conversions of the Blemmyes and the Nobadae of Upper Egypt.

18. THE WAR IN AFRICA AFTER THE DEATH OF SOLOMON -(P. 390 sqq.)

John-who is distinguished, among the numerous officers who bore the same name, as the "brother of Pappus" (Jordanes calls him Troglita; Rom. 385)arrived in Africa towards the end of A.D. 546. He had served under Belisarius in the overthrow of the Vandal kingdom and had remained in Africa during the first military governorship of Solomon (Joh. i., 470). He was then commander of the army in Mesopotamia in the Persian War (Procop. B.P. 2, 14), and was engaged in the battle of Nisibis in which Nabedes was defeated in 541. Procopius (ib. 17) represents him as on this occasion rashly involving the army in extreme peril, which was only avoided by the skill of Belisarius; but Corippus ascribes the victory to his hero :

expulit ut Persas, stravit quo vulnere Parthos
confisos turbis densisque obstare sagittis

tempore quo late manarunt Nitzibis agri
sanguine Persarum, Parthoque a rege secundus

congressus Nabedes, fretus virtute feroci,

amisit socias ipso superante catervas, &c. (i. 58 sqq.).

6 The motive of Malalas was to group it with other conversions of heathen kings.

7 It is to be observed that the expedition of Abraha against Mecca, being mentioned by Procopius, B.P. i., 20 (see Nöldeke, p. 205), was earlier than A.D. 545; so that Abraha might conceivably have been dead before 542; and another ruler might have intervened between him and Yaksum (Ιαξωμί).

8 This variation seems in itself to prove that Theophanes had before him another

source.

John contrived to enter Theodosiopolis, when it was besieged by the host of Mermeroes, and took part in the defeat of that general at Daras (Coripp., ib. 70 sqq.). He brought with him to Africa a trusted councillor named Recinariuslateri Recinarius haerens (ib. 2, 314),—who had been employed in the negotiations with Chosroes in A. D. 544.

It would probably have been impossible for the Roman power to hold its own in Africa, if the Moors from the Syrtis Major to Mt. Atlas had been united in a solid league. It is highly important to observe that the success of the Empire depended on the discord of the Moorish chiefs, and that the forces upon which John relied in the war were more Moorish than Roman. The three most important chiefs were Antāla, king of the Frexenses (Fraschisch), in Byzacium; Cusina, whose tribe1 was settled under Mount Aurasius, in the neighbourhood of Lambaesis; and Jaudas, king of the Moors of Mt. Aurasius. Cusina and Antala were always on opposite sides. Antala was loyal to Rome, when Cusina rebelled in 535; Cusina was true to Solomon, when Antala took up arms in 544. John was now supported by Cusina, and by Ifisdaias, the chief of another tribe in Numidia. The first battle was fought in the interior regions of Byzacium, in the winter A.D. 546-7, and Antala was routed. John returned to Carthage, but in the following summer had to face a great coalition of the Syrtic tribes, including the Laguantan and the Marmarides, under the leadership of Carcasan. This league was not joined by Antala. The Romans suffered a complete defeat near Marta, a place about ten Roman miles from Tacape on the Lesser Syrtis (Partsch, Procem. p. xxxiii.), and John was unable to resume hostilities till the following year. He retired to Laribus in Western Zeugitana, a town which Justinian had fortified :

urbs Laribus mediis surgit tutissima silvis
et muris munita novis quos condidit ipse
Iustinianus apex, orbis dominator Eoi
occiduique potens Romani gloria regni.

Here he was close to Numidia and his Moorish confederates, the faithful Cusina and the savage Ifisdaias, and here he spent the winter A.D. 547-8. He succeeded in obtaining the help of king Jaudas, who was generally hostile to Rome; and the whole army, including the immense forces of Cusina and Ifisdaias, assembled in the plain of Arsuris, an unknown place, probably in Byzacium. The Marmaridae and Southern Moors had now been joined by Antala. His wise advice was not to venture on a battle until they had wearied the enemy out by long marches, and the Moors withdrew to the south of Byzacium. But John declined to pursue them; he fortified himself in a stronghold on the coast of that province, where he would probably have awaited their attack if the event had not been hastened by the impatience of his mutinous soldiers. With the help of his Moorish allies he repressed the sedition, but thought it wise to lead his army down into the plains. He encamped in an unknown region called the "fields of Cato," and the Moors, pressed by hunger, were soon compelled to leave their camp and take the field. The defeat of Marta was brilliantly retrieved. Carcasan fell, and the Moors were so effectually broken that Africa had rest for about fourteen years. John remained in Africa as magister militum, at least till A.D. 553, in which year we find him undertaking an expedition to Sardinia.3

In A.D. 562 the Moorish troubles broke out again. Cusina, the faithful adherent to the Roman cause, was treacherously killed by John Rogatinus, the magister militum, and his sons roused the Moors to vengeance, and devastated the provinces.*

1 The name is not certain. The verse 3, 408,

is obviously corrupt.

Cusina Mastracianis secum viribus ingens

2 A plan of the citadel is given in Diehl, l'Afrique byzantine, p. 273.

3 Procop. B. G., 4, 24.

4 John Malalas, p. 495, ed. Bonn. Cp. Diehl, p. 599.

In this account I have been assisted by the disquisition of J. Partsch, in the Procemium to his edition of Corippus, and by the narrative of M. Ch. Diehl, in L'Afrique byzantine.

19. THE EXARCHS-(P. 391, 423)

The earliest mention of the name Exarch in connexion with the government of Italy is in a letter of Pope Pelagius II. to the deacon Gregory (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. 82, p. 707; cp. Diehl, Etudes sur l'administration byzantine dans l'exarchat de Ravenne, p. 173), dated Oct. 4, 484. Seven years later we meet the earliest mention of an Exarch of Africa (Gregory the Great, Ep. i. 59), in July, 591. Under the Emperors Justin and Tiberius (A.D. 565-582) the supreme military governor is entitled magister militum. It is therefore plausible to ascribe to Maurice (Diehl, L'Afrique byzantine, p. 478) the investiture of the military governor with extraordinary powers and a new title designating his new position. Gennadius was the first exarch of Africa.

From the first hour of the Imperial restoration in Africa military and civil governors existed side by side, and the double series of magistri militum (and exarchs) and Praetorian Praefects can be imperfectly traced till the middle of the seventh century. On some exceptional occasions the two offices were united in a single individual. Thus Solomon was both magister militum and Praetorian Praefect in A.D. 535, and again in A.D. 539, &c.; and Theodorus held the same powers in A.D. 569. Throughout, the tendency was to subordinate the civil to the military governor, and the creation of the exarchate, with its large powers, decisively reduced the importance of the Praetorian Praefect.

20. THE COMET OF A.D. 531-(P. 433-4)

The identity of the comet of A.D. 1680 with the comets of A.D. 1106, A.D. 531, B.C. 44, &c., is merely an ingenious speculation of Halley. See his Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets, at end of Whiston's "Sir Isaac Newton's mathematick Philosophy more easily demonstrated" (1716), p. 440 sqq. The eccentricity of the comet of A.D. 1680 was calculated by Halley (Philosophical Transactions, 1705, p. 1882), and subsequently by Encke, Euler, and others, -on the basis, of course, of the observations of Flamsteed and Cassini. Newton regarded its orbit as parabolic (Principia, 3, Prop. 41); but it has been calculated that the eccentricity arrived at by Encke, combined with the perihelion distance, would give a period of 8813-9 years (J. C. Houzeau, Vademecum de l' Astronome, 1887, p. 762-3). The observations were probably not sufficiently accurate or numerous to establish whether the orbit was a parabola, or an ellipse with great eccentricity; but in any case there is nothing in the data to suggest 575 years, nor have we material for comparison with the earlier comets which Halley proposed to identify.

For the Chinese observations to which Gibbon refers, see John Williams, Observations of Comets from Chinese Annals, 1871: for comet of B. c. 44, p. 9, for a doubtful comet (?) of A.D. 532, p. 33, for comet of A.D. 1106, p. 60.

21. ROMAN LAW IN THE EAST-(C. XLIV.)

New light has been thrown on the development of Imperial legislation from Constantine to Justinian, and on the reception of Roman law in the eastern half of the empire (especially Syria and Egypt), by the investigations of L. Mitteis, in his work "Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen Kaiserreichs" (1891). The study is mainly based on Egyptian papyri and on the Syro-Roman Code of the fifth century, which was edited by Bruns and Sachau (1880).

It was only to be expected that considerable resistance should be presented to
the Roman law, which became obligatory for the whole empire after the issue of
the Constitutio Antoniniana (or Law of Caracalla), among races which had old
legal systems of their own, like the Greeks, Egyptians, or Jews. The description
which Socrates gives of the survival of old customs at Heliopolis, which were
contrary to the law of the empire, indicates that this law was not everywhere
and absolutely enforced; the case of Athenais, put off by her brothers with
a small portion of the paternal property, points to the survival of the Greek
law of inheritance; and the will of Gregory Nazianzen, drawn up in Greek,
proves that the theoretical invalidity of a testament, not drawn up in Latin and
containing the prescribed formulæ, was not practically applied. Theory and
practice were inconsistent. It was found impossible not to modify the applica
tion of the Roman principles by national and local customs; and thus there
came to be a particular law in Syria (cp. the Syro-Roman law book) and another
in Egypt. The old legal systems of the East, still surviving though submitted
to the influence of the Roman system, presently had their effect upon Im-
perial legislation, and modified the Roman law itself. The influence of Greek
ideas on the legislation of Constantine the Great can be clearly traced. It can
be seen, for instance, in his law concerning the bona materni generis, by which,
on a mother's death, her property belonged to the children, their father having
only the administration and usufruct of it, and no right of alienation. The
same law is found in the Code of Gortyn (6, 31 sqq.).

The degeneration of Roman law (adulterina doctrina), caused by the tenacity
of "Volksrechte" in the eastern provinces, was a motive of the compilation of
Justinian's Digest.

1 Cp. Mitteis, Beilage III., p. 548 sqq. Ammian calls Constantine novator turbatorque
priscarum legum.

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