The Age of Justinian E-Book

William Holmes

• Herausgeber: Blackmore Dennett
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Justinian, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and also Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire. Justinian's rule constitutes a distinct epoch in the history of the Later Roman empire, and his reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire".

Leseprobe

THE AGE

OF

JUSTINIAN

by William Holmes

Published 2019 by Blackmore Dennett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROEM

CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY

THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS

BIRTH AND FORTUNES OF THE ELDER JUSTIN

PRE-IMPERIAL CAREER OF THEODORA

THE PERSIANS AND JUSTINIAN’S FIRST WAR WITH THEM

JUSTINIAN’S FIRST WAR WITH THE PERSIANS

THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY AT ATHENS AND THEIR ABOLITION BY JUSTINIAN

THE INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

THE NIKA REVOLT

CARTHAGE UNDER THE ROMANS

RECOVERY OF AFRICA FROM THE VANDALS

THE BUILDING OF ST. SOPHIA: THE ARCHITECTURAL WORK OF JUSTINIAN

ROME IN THE SIXTH CENTURY : WAR WITH THE GOTHS IN ITALY

THE SECOND PERSIAN WAR

PRIVATE LIFE IN THE IMPERIAL CIRCLE AND ITS DEPENDENCIES

THE FINAL CONQUEST OF ITALY AND ITS ANNEXATION TO THE EMPIRE

RELIGION IN THE SIXTH CENTURY

JUSTINIAN AS A THEOLOGIAN

PECULIATIRIES OF THE ROMAN LAW

THE LEGISLATION OF JUSTINIAN

THE LAST DAYS OF JUSTINIAN

LITERATURE AND ART IN THE SIXTH CENTURY

SUMMARY AND REVIEW OF THE REIGN

PROEM

THE birth and death of worlds are ephemeral events in a cycle of astronomical time. In the life history of a stellar system, of a planet, of an animal, parallel periods of origin, exuberance, and of extinction are exhibited to our experience, or to our understanding. Man, in his material existence confined to a point, by continuity of effort and perpetuity of thought, becomes coequal and coextensive with the infinities of time and space. The intellectual store of ages has evolved the supremacy of the human race, but the zenith of its ascendancy may still be far off, and the aspiration after progress has been entailed on the heirs of all preceding generations. The advancement of humanity is the sum of the progress of its component members, and the individual who raises his own life to the highest attainable eminence becomes a factor in the elevation of the whole race. Familiarity with history dispels the darkness of the past, which is so prolific in the myths that feed credulity and foster superstition, the frequent parents of the most stubborn obstacles which have lain in the path of progress. The history of the past comprises the lessons of the future; and the successes and failures of former times are a prevision of the struggles to come and the errors to be avoided. The stream of human life having once issued from its sources, may be equal in endurance to a planet, to a stellar system, or even to the universe itself. The mind of the universe may be man, who may be the confluence of universal intelligence. The eternity of the past, the infinity of the present, may be peopled with races like our own, but whether they die out with the worlds they occupy, or enjoy a perpetual existence, transcends the present limits of our knowledge. From century to century the solid ground of science gains on the illimitable ocean of the unknown, but we are ignorant as to whether we exist in the dawn or in the noonday of enlightenment. The conceptions of one age become the achievements of the next; and the philosopher may question whether this world be not some remote, unaffiliated tract, which remains to be annexed to the empire of universal civilization. The discoveries of the future may be as undreamt of as those of the past, and the ultimate destiny of our race is hidden from existing generations.

In the period I have chosen to bring before the reader, civilization was on the decline, and progress imperceptible, but the germs of a riper growth were still existent, concealed within the spreading darkness of medievalism. When Grecian science and philosophy seemed to stand on the threshold of modern enlightenment the pall of despotism and superstition descended on the earth and stifled every impulse of progress for more than fifteen centuries. The Yggdrasil of Christian superstition spread its roots throughout the Roman Empire, strangling alike the nascent ethics of Christendom, and the germinating science of the ancient world. Had the leading minds of that epoch, instead of expending their zeal and acumen on theological inanities, applied themselves to the study of nature, they might have forestalled the march of the centuries, and advanced us a thousand years beyond the present time. But the atmosphere of the period was charged with a metaphysical mysticism whereby all philosophic thought and material research were arrested. The records of a millennium comprise little more than the rise, the progress, and the triumph of superstition and barbarism. The degenerate Greeks became the serfs and slaves of the land in which they were formerly the masters, and retreated gradually to a vanishing point in the vast district from the Adriatic to the Indus, over which the eagle-wing of Alexander had swept in uninterrupted conquest. Unable to oppose their political solidarity and martial science to the fanaticism of the half-armed Saracens, they yielded up to them insensibly their faith and their empire, and their place was filled by a host of unprogressive Mohammedans, who brought with them a newer religion more sensuous in its conceptions, but less gross in its practice, than the Christianity of that day. But the hardy barbarians of the North, drinking at the fountain of knowledge, had achieved some political organization, and became the natural and irresistible barriers against which the waves of Moslem enthusiasm dashed themselves in vain. The term of Asiatic encroachment was fixed at the Pyrenees in the west, and at the Danube in the east by the valorous Franks and Hungarians; and on the brink of the turning tide stand the heroic figures of Charles Martel and Matthias Corvinus. Civilization has now included almost the whole globe in its comprehensive embrace; both the old world and the new have been overrun by the intellectual heirs of the Greeks; in every land the extinction of retrograde races proceeds with measured certainty, and we appear to be safer from a returning flood of barbarism than from some astronomical catastrophe. The mediaeval order of things is reversed, the ravages of Attila reappear under a new aspect, and the descendants of the Han and the Hun alike are raised by the hand, or crushed under the foot of aggressive civilization.

In the infancy of human reason intelligence outstrips knowledge, and the mature, but vacant, mind soon loses itself in the dark and trackless wilderness of natural phenomena. An imaginative system of cosmogony, baseless as the fabric of a dream, is the creation of a moment; to dissipate it the work of ages in study and investigation. Less than a century ago philosophic scepticism could only vent itself in a sneer at the credibility of a tradition, or the fidelity of a manuscript; and the folklore of peasants, encrusted with the hoar of antiquity, was accepted by erudite mystics as the solution of cosmogony and the proof of our communion with the supernatural. An illegible line, a misinterpreted phrase, a suspected interpolation, in some decaying document, the proof or the refutation, was often hailed triumphantly by ardent disputants as announcing the establishment or the overthrow of revelation. But the most signal achievements of historic research or criticism were powerless to elucidate the mysteries of the universe; and the inquirer had to fall back perpetually on the current mythology for the interpretation of his objective environment. In the hands of science alone were the keys which could unlock the book of nature, and open the gates of knowledge as to the enigmas of visible life. A flood of light has been thrown on the order of natural phenomena, our vision has been prolonged from the dawn of history to the dawn of terrestrial life, an intelligible hypothesis of existence has been deduced from observation and experiment, idealism and dogma have been recognized as the offspring of phantasy and fallacy, and the mystical elements of Christianity have been dismissed by philosophy to that limbo of folly which long ago engulfed the theogonies of Greece and Rome. The sapless trunk of revelation lies rotting on the ground, but the undiscerning masses, too credulous to inquire, too careless to think, have allowed it to become invested with the weeds of superstition and ignorance; and the progeny of hierophants, who once sheltered beneath the green and flourishing tree, still find a cover in the rank growth. In the turn of the ages we are confronted by new Pagans who adhere to an obsolete religion; and the philosopher can only hope for an era when everyone will have sufficient sense and science to think according to the laws of nature and civilization.

The history of the disintegrating and moribund Byzantine Empire has been explored by modern scholars with untiring assiduity; and the exposition of that debased political system will always reflect more credit on their brilliant researches than on the chequered annals of mankind.

CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY

THE Byzantine peninsula has been regarded from a very early date as an ideal situation for a capital city. Placed at the junction of two great seas which wash the shores of three continents, and possessed of a safe and extensive anchorage for shipping, it might become the centre of empire and commerce for the whole Eastern hemisphere. Yet, owing to an adverse fate, the full realization of this splendid conception remains a problem of the future. Byzantium as an independent city was little more than an outpost of civilization; as a provincial town of the Roman Empire its political position allowed it no scope for development; as the metropolis of the same Empire in its age of decadence its fitful splendor is an unsubstantial pageant without moral or political stability. Lastly, in the hands of the Turk its growth has been fettered by the prejudices of a nation unable to free itself from the bondage of an effete civilization.

HISTORY

The first peopling of the site of Constantinople is a question in prehistoric research, which has not yet been elucidated by the paleontologist. Unlike the Roman area, no relics of an age of stone or bronze have been discovered here; do not, perhaps, exist, but doubtless the opportunities, if not the men, have been wanting for such investigations. That the region seemed to the primitive Greeks to be a wild and desolate one, we learn from the tradition of the Argonautic expedition; and the epithet of “Axine”, or inhospitable, applied in the earliest times to the Euxine or Black Sea. By the beginning, however, of the seventh century before the Christian era these seas and maritime channels had been explored, and several colonies had been planted by the adventurous Greeks who issued from the Ionian seaport of Miletus. Later than the Milesians, a band of Dorians from Megara penetrated into these parts and, by a strange choice, as it was afterwards considered, selected a point at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Asiatic shore for a settlement, which they called Chalcedon. Seventeen years later a second party from Megara fixed themselves on the European headland, previously known as Lygos, nearly opposite their first colony. The leader of this expedition was Byzas, and from him the town they built was named Byzantium. The actual limits of the original city are now quite unknown, but doubtless they were small at first and were gradually extended according as the community increased in wealth and prosperity. During the classic period of Greek history the town rose to considerable importance, as its commanding position enabled it to impose a toll on ships sailing to and from the Euxine sea; a power of which, however, it made a very sparing use. It was also enriched by the countless shoals of fish which, when the north winds blew, descended from the Euxine and thronged the narrow but elongated gulf called, most probably for that reason, Chrysoceras or Golden Horn.

Ultimately Byzantium became the largest city in Thrace, having expanded itself over an area which measured four and a half miles in circumference, including, probably, the suburbs. It exercised a suzerainty over Chalcedon and Perinthus, and reduced the aboriginal Bithynians to a state of servitude comparable to that of the Spartan Helots. Notwithstanding its natural advantages, the town never won any pre-eminence among the Hellenic communities, and nothing more unstable than its political position is presented to us in the restless concourse of Grecian nationalities. In the wars of Persians with Greeks, and of Greeks with Greeks, it always became the sport of the contending parties; and during a century and a half (about 506 BC to 350 BC) it was taken and re-taken at least six times by Medes, Spartans, Athenians, and Thebans, a change of constitution following, of course, each change of political connection. In 340 BC, however, the Byzantines, with the aid of the Athenians, withstood a siege successfully, an occurrence the more remarkable as they were attacked by the greatest general of the age, Philip of Macedon. In the course of this beleaguerment, it is related, on a certain wet and moonless night the enemy attempted a surprise, but were foiled by reason of a bright light which, appearing suddenly in the heavens, startled all the dogs in the town and thus roused the garrison to a sense of their danger. To commemorate this timely phenomenon, which was attributed to Hecate, they erected a public statue to that goddess and, as it is supposed, assumed the crescent for their chief national device. For several centuries after this event the city enjoyed a nominal autonomy, but it appears to have been in perpetual conflict with its civilized or barbarous neighbors; and in 279 BC it was even laid under tribute by the horde of Gauls who penetrated into Asia and established themselves permanently in Galatia. After the appearance of the Roman legionaries in the East the Byzantines were always the faithful friends of the Republic, while it was engaged in suppressing the independent potentates of Macedonia and Asia Minor. For its services Byzantium was permitted to retain the rank of a free city, and its claim to indulgence was allowed by more than one of the Roman emperors, even after AD 70, when Vespasian limited its rights to those of a provincial town.

Of all the ancient historians one only has left us a description capable of giving some visual impression as to the appearance of old Byzantium. “This city”, says Dion Cassius, “is most favorably situated, being built upon an eminence, which juts out into the sea. The waters, like a torrent, rushing downwards from the Pontus impinge against the promontory and flow partly to the right, so as to form the bay and harbors, but the main stream runs swiftly alongside the city into the Propontis. The town is also extremely well fortified, for the wall is faced with great square stones joined together by brazen clamps, and it is further strengthened on the inside through mounds and houses being built up against it. This wall seems to consist of a solid mass of stone, and it has a covered gallery above, which is very easily defended. On the outside there are many large towers, perforated with frequent loopholes and ranged in an irregular line, so that an attacking party is surrounded by them and exposed on all sides at once. Toward the land the fortifications are very lofty, but less so on the side of the water, as the rocks on which they are founded and the dangers of the Bosphorus render them almost unassailable. There are two harbors within the walls, guarded by chains, and at the ends of the moles inclosing them towers facing each other make the passage impracticable to an enemy. I have seen the walls standing and have also heard them speaking; for there are seven vocal towers stretching from the Thracian gates to the sea. If one shouts or drops a pebble in the first it not only resounds itself or repeats the syllables, but it transmits the power for the next in order to do the same; and thus the voice or echo is carried in regular succession through the whole series”.

At the end of the second century the Byzantines were afflicted by the severest trial which had ever come within their experience. In the tripartite struggle between the Emperor Severus and his competitors of Gaul and Asia, the city unfortunately threw in its lot with Niger, the Proconsul of Syria. Niger soon fell, but Byzantium held out with inflexible obstinacy for three years and, through the ingenuity of an engineer named Priscus, defied all the efforts of the victor. During this time the inhabitants suffered progressively every kind of hardship and horror which has been put on record in connection with sieges of the most desperate character. Stones torn from the public buildings were used as projectiles, statues of men and horses, in brass and marble, were hurled on the heads of the besiegers, women gave their hair to be twisted into cords and ropes, leather soaked in water was eaten, and finally they fell on one another and fed on human flesh. At last the city yielded, but Severus was exasperated, and his impulse of hostility only ceased with the destruction of the prize he had won at such a cost in blood and treasure. The garrison and all who had borne any public office, with the exception of Priscus, were put to death, the chief buildings were razed, the municipality was abolished, property was confiscated, and the town was given over to the previously subject Perinthians, to be treated as a dependent village. With immense labor the impregnable fortifications were leveled with the ground, and the ruins of the first bulwark of the Empire against the barbarians of Scythia attested the wisdom and temperance of the master of the East and West.

But the memory of Byzantium dwelt in the mind of Severus and he was attracted to revisit the spot. In cooler moments he surveyed the wreck; the citizens, bearing olive branches in their hands, approached him in a solemn and suppliant procession; he determined to rebuild, and at his mandate new edifices were reared to supply the place of those which had been ruined. He even purchased ground, which had been previously occupied by private gardens, for the laying out of a hippodrome, a public luxury with which the town had never before been adorned. But the hateful name of Byzantium was abolished and the new city was called Antonina by Severus, in honor of his eldest sons; a change, however, which scarcely survived the life of its author. Through Caracalla, or some rational statesman acting in the name of that reprobate, the city regained its political privileges, but the fortifications were not restored, and for more than half a century it remained defenseless against the barbarians, and even against the turbulent soldiery of the Empire. Beginning from about 250 the Goths ravaged the vicinity of the Bosphorus and plundered most of the towns, holding their own against Decius and several other short-lived emperors. Under Gallienus a mutinous legion is said to have massacred most of the inhabitants, but shortly afterwards the same emperor gave a commission to two Byzantine engineers to fortify the district, and henceforward Byzantium again appears as a stronghold, which was made a centre of operations against the Goths, in the repulse of whom the natives and their generals even played an important part.

In 323 Licinius, the sole remaining rival of Constantine, after his defeat in a great battle near Adrianople, took refuge in Byzantium, and the town again became the scene of a contest memorable in history, not for the magnitude of the siege, but for the importance of the events which it inaugurated. Licinius soon yielded, and a new era dawned for Byzantium, which in a few years became lastingly known to the nations as the City of Constantine.

The tongue of land on which Constantinople is built is essentially a low mountainous ridge, rising on three sides by irregular slopes from the sea. Trending almost directly eastward from the continent of Europe, it terminates abruptly in a rounded headland opposite the Asiatic shore, from which it is separated by the entrance of the Bosphorus, at this point a little more than a mile in width. This diminutive peninsula, which is bounded on the north by the inland extension of the Bosphorus, called the Golden Horn, and on the south by the Propontis or Sea of Marmora, has a length of between three and four miles. At its eastern extremity it is about a mile broad and it gradually expands until, in the region where it may be said to join the mainland, its measurement has increased to more than four times that distance. The unlevel nature of the ground and reminiscences of the seven hills of classical Rome have always caused a parallel to be drawn between the sites of the two capitals of the Empire, but the resemblance is remote and the historic import of the Roman hills is totally wanting in the case of those of Constantinople. The hills of the elder city were mostly distinct mounts, which had borne suggestive names in the earliest annals of the district. Every citizen had learned to associate the Palatine with the Roma Quadrata of Romulus, the Aventine with the ill-omened auspices of Remus, the Quirinal with the rape of the Sabine women, the Esquiline with the murder of King Servius, the Capitol with the repulse of the Gauls by Manlius; and knew that when the standard was raised on the Janiculum the comitia were assembled to transact the business of the Republic. But the Byzantine hills are little more than variations in the face of the slope as it declines on each side from the central dorsum to the water, and have always been nameless unless in the numerical descriptions of the topographer. On the north five depressions constitute as many valleys and give rise to six hills, which are numbered in succession from the narrow end of the promontory to the west. Thus the first hill is that on which stood the acropolis of Byzantium. Two of the valleys, the third and fifth, can be traced across the dorsum of the peninsular from sea to sea. A rivulet, called the Lycus, running from the mainland, joins the peninsula near its centre and then turns in a south-easterly direction so as to fall into the Propontis. The valley through which this stream passes, the sixth, hounds the seventh hill, an elevation known as the Xerolophos or Drymount, which, lying in the southwest, occupies more than a third of the whole area comprised within the city walls. From every high point of the promontory the eye may range over seas and mountains often celebrated in classic story—the Trojan Ida and Olympus, the Hellespont, Athos and Olympus of Zeus, and the Thracian Bosphorus embraced by wooded hills up to the “blue Symplegades” and the Euxine, so suggestive of heroic tradition to the Greek mind. The Golden Horn itself describes a curve to the north-west of more than six miles in length, and at its extremity, where it turns upon itself, becomes fused with the estuary of two small rivers named Cydarus and Barbyses. Throughout the greater part of its course it is about a quarter of a mile in width, but at one point below its centre, it is dilated into a bay of nearly double that capacity. This inlet was not formerly, in the same sense as it is now, the port of Constantinople; to the ancients it was still the sea, a moat on a large scale, which added the safety of water to the mural defences of the city; and the small shipping of the period was accommodated in artificial harbors formed by excavations within the walls or by moles thrown out from the shore. The climate of this locality is very changeable, exposed as it is to north winds chilled by transit over the Russian steppes, and to warm breezes which originate in the tropical expanses of Africa and Arabia. The temperature may range through twenty degrees in a single day, and winters of such arctic severity that the Golden Horn and even the Bosphorus are seen covered with ice are not unknown to the inhabitants. Variations of landscape due to vegetation are found chiefly in the abundance of plane, pine, chestnut, and other trees, but more especially of the cypress. Earthquakes are a permanent source of annoyance, and have sometimes been very destructive. Such in brief are the geographical features of this region, which the caprice of a prince, in a higher degree, perhaps, than its natural endowments, appointed to contain the metropolis of the East.

When Constantine determined to supplant the ancient capital on the Tiber by building a new city in a place of his own choice, he does not appear to have been more acute in discerning the advantages of Byzantium than were the first colonists from Megara. It is said that Thessalonica first fixed his attention; it is certain that he began to build in the Troad, near the site of Homeric Ilios; and it is even suggested that when he shifted his ground from thence he next commenced operations at Chalcedon. By 328, however, he had come to a final decision, and Byzantium was exalted to be the actual rival of Rome. This event, occurring at so advanced a date and under the eye of civilization, yet became a source of legend, so as to excel even in that respect the original foundation by Byzas. The oracles had long been lapsing into silence, but their place had been gradually usurped by Christian visions, and every zealot who thought upon the subject conceived of Constantine as acting under a special inspiration from the Deity. More than a score of writers in verse and prose have described the circumstances under which he received the divine injunctions, and some have presented to us in detail the person and words of the beatific visitant. On the faith of an ecclesiastical historian we are asked to believe that an angelic guide even directed the Emperor as he marked out the boundaries of his future capital. When Constantine, on foot with a spear in his hand, seemed to his ministers to move onwards for an inordinate distance, one of them exclaimed: “How far, 0 Master?”. “Until he who precedes me stands”, was the reply by which the inspired surveyor indicated that he followed an unseen conductor. Whether Constantine was a superstitious man is an indeterminate question, but that he was a shrewd and politic one is self-evident from his career, and, if we believe that he gave currency to this and similar marvelous tales, we can perceive that he could not have acted more judiciously with the view of gaining adherents during the flush of early Christian enthusiasm.

The area of the city was more than quadrupled by the wall of Constantine, which extended right across the peninsula in the form of a bow, distant at the widest part about a mile and three-quarters from the old fortifications. This space, by comparison enormous, and which yet included only four of the hills with part of the Xerolophos, was hastily filled by the Emperor with buildings and adornments of every description. Many cities of the Empire, notably Rome, Athens, Ephesus, and Antioch, were stripped of some of their most precious objects of art for the embellishment of the new capital. Wherever statues, sculptured columns, or metal castings were to be found, there the agents of Constantine were busily engaged in arranging for their transfer to the Bosphorus. Resolved that no fanatic spirit should mar the cosmopolitan expectation of his capital the princely architect subdued his Christian zeal, and three temples to mythological divinities arose in regular conformity with pagan custom. Thus the “Fortune of the City” took her place as the goddess Anthusa in a handsome fane, and adherents of the old religion could not declare that the ambitious foundation was begun under unfavorable auspices. In another temple a statue of Rhea, or Cybele, was erected in an abnormal posture, deprived of her lions and with her hands raised as if in the act of praying over the city. On this travesty of the mother of the Olympians, we may conjecture, was founded the belief which prevailed in a later age that the capital at its birth had been dedicated to the Virgin. That a city permanently distinguished by the presence of an Imperial court should remain deficient in population is opposed to common experience of the laws which govern the evolution of a metropolis. But Constantine could not wait, and various artificial methods were adopted in order to provide inhabitants for the vacant inclosure. Patricians were induced to abandon Rome by grants of lands and houses, and it is even said that several were persuaded to settle at Constantinople by means of an ingenious deception. Commanding the attendance in the East of a number of senators during the Persian war, the Emperor privately commissioned architects to build counterparts of their Roman dwellings on the Golden Horn. To these were transferred the families and households of the absent ministers, who were then invited by Constantine to meet him in his new capital. There they were conducted to homes in which to their astonishment they seemed to revisit Rome in a dream, and henceforth they became permanent residents in obedience to a prince who urged his wishes with such unanswerable arguments. As to the common herd we have no precise information, but it is asserted by credible authority that they were raked together from diverse parts, the rabble of the Empire who derived their maintenance from the founder and repaid him with servile adulation in the streets and in the theatre.

By the spring of 330 the works were sufficiently advanced for the new capital to begin its political existence, and Constantine decreed that a grand inaugural festival should take place on the 11th of May. The “Fortune of the City” was consecrated by a pagan ceremony in which Praetextatus, a priest, and Sopater, a philosopher, played the principal parts; largess was distributed to the populace, and magnificent games were exhibited in the Hippodrome, where the Emperor presided, conspicuous with a costly diadem decked with pearls and precious stones, which he wore for the first time. On this occasion the celebration is said to have lasted forty days, and at the same time Constantine instituted the permanent “Encaenia”, an annual commemoration, which he enjoined on succeeding emperors for the same date. A gilded statue of himself, bearing a figure of Anthusa in one hand, was to be conducted round the city in a chariot, escorted by a military guard, dressed in a definite attire, and carrying wax tapers in their hands. Finally, the procession was to make the circuit of the Hippodrome and, when it paused before the cathisma, the emperor was to descend from his throne and adore the effigy. We are further told that an astrologer named Valens was employed to draw the horoscope of the city, with the result that he predicted for it an existence of 696 years.

After the fall of Licinius it appears most probable that Constantine, as a memorial of his accession to undivided power, gave Byzantium the name of Constantinople. When, however, he transformed that town into a metropolis, in order to express clearly the magnitude of his views as to the future, he renamed it Second, or New Rome. At the same time he endowed it with special privileges, known in the legal phraseology of the period as the “right of Italy and prerogative of Rome”; and to keep these facts in the public eye he had them inscribed on a stone pillar, which he set up in a forum, or square, called the Strategium, adjacent to an equestrian statue of himself. To render it in all respects the image of Rome, Constantinople was provided with a Senate, a national council known only at that date in the artificial form which owes its existence to despots. After his choice of Byzantium for the eastern capital Constantine never dwelt at Rome, and in all his acts seems to have aimed at extinguishing the prestige of the old city by the grandeur of the new one, a policy which he initiated so effectively that in the century after his death the Roman Empire ceased to be Roman.

Constantine is credited with the erection of many churches in and around Constantinople, but, with the exception of St. Irene, the Holy Cross, and the Twelve Apostles, their identification rests with late and untrustworthy writers. One, St. Mocius, is said to have been built with the materials of a temple of Zeus, which previously stood in the same place, the summit of the Xerolophos, outside the walls. Another, St. Mena, occupied the site of the temple of Poseidon founded by Byzas. Paganism was tolerated as a religion of the Empire until the last decade of the fourth century, when it was finally overthrown by the preponderance of Christianity. Laws for its total suppression were enacted by Theodosius I, destruction of temples was legalized, and at the beginning of the fifth century it is probable that few traces remained of the sacred edifices which had adorned old Byzantium.

After the age of Constantine the progress of New Rome as metropolis of the east was extremely rapid, the suburbs became densely populous, and in 413 Theodosius II gave a commission to Anthemius, the Praetorian Prefect, to build a new wall in advance of the old one nearly a mile further down the peninsula. The intramural space was thus increased by an area more than equal to half its former dimensions; and, with the exception of some small additions on the Propontis and the Golden Horn, this wall marked the utmost limit of Constantinople in ancient or modern times. In 447 a series of earthquakes, which lasted for three months, laid the greater part of the new wall in ruins, fifty-seven of the towers, according to one account, having collapsed during the period of commotion. This was the age of Attila and the Huns, to whom Theodosius, sooner than offer a military resistance, had already agreed to pay an annual tribute of seven hundred pounds of gold. With the rumor that the barbarians were approaching the undefended capital the public alarm rose to fever-heat, and the Praetorian Prefect of the time, Cyrus Constantine, by an extraordinary effort, not only restored the fortifications of Anthemius, but added externally a second wall on a smaller scale, together with a wide and deep fosse, in the short space of sixty days. To the modern observer it might appear incredible that such a prodigious mass of masonry, extending over a distance of four miles, could be reared within two months, but the fact is attested by two inscriptions still existing on the gates, by the Byzantine historians, and by the practice of antiquity in times of impending hostility.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS

THAT a spirit of dominion was implanted in the breasts of those early settlers or refugees who rallied around Romulus, when, about 750 BC, he raised his standard on the Palatine hill, is made plain by the subsequent history of that infant community; and the native daring which first won wives for a colony of outcasts, foreshadowed the career of conquest and empire which eventually attached itself to the Roman name. Contemned, doubtless, and disregarded by their more reputable neighbors as a band of adventurers with nothing to lose, in despair of being respected they determined to make themselves feared; and the original leaven was infused through every further accretion of population, and was entailed as an inheritance on all succeeding generations who peopled the expanding city of the Tiber. When their kings threatened to become despotic they drove them out; when the patricians attempted to maintain an exclusive control the more numerous plebs revolted and gradually achieved the establishment of a republic, in which political honors and aristocracy became synonymous with the ability to fill, or the energy to gain, a ruling position. They devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the task of self-government, and sacrificed their private interests to the welfare of the Republic. Without history and without science, inflated by ambition within their narrow sphere, they applied the conception of immortality, which millenniums would not justify, to being acclaimed in the ephemeral fervor of the populace or to being remembered for a few decades in the finite language of poetry and rhetoric.

While the Roman state was in its cradle a citizen and a soldier were equivalent terms, and every man gave his military service as a free contribution to the general welfare of the public. But as wars became frequent and aggressive, and armies were compelled to keep the field for indefinite periods, a system of payment was introduced in order to compensate the soldier for the enforced neglect of his family duties. By the continued growth of the military system, War became a profession, veteran legions sprang into existence, and generals, whose rank was virtually permanent, became a power among the troops and a menace to the state. Finally the transition was made from a republic governed by a democracy to an empire ruled by the army. In the meantime the dominion of Rome had been extended on all sides to the great natural barriers of its position on the hemisphere; to the Atlantic ocean on the west, to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euxine on the north, to the Euphrates on the east, and on the south to the securest frontier of all, the impassable deserts of Libya and Arabia.

The first emperors affected to rule as civil magistrates and accepted their appointment from the Senate, but their successors assumed the purple as the nominees of the troops, and often held it by right of conquest over less able competitors. Concurrently the Imperial city had been insensibly undergoing a transformation; by the persistent influx of strangers of diverse nationalities its ethnical homogeneity was lost; a new and more populous Rome, in which the traditions of republican freedom were dissipated, was evolved; and the inhabitants without a murmur saw themselves deprived of the right to elect their own magistrates. The laws of the Republic were submitted for ratification to the citizens, but in the ascent to absolutism the emperor became the sole legislator of the nation.

The elevation of an emperor seemed at first to be an inalienable privilege of the metropolis, and the original line of Caesars necessarily descended from a genuine Roman stock; but in little more than a century the instability of this law was made plain, and many an able general of provincial blood was raised to the purple at his place of casual sojourn. In the sequel, when men of an alien race, who neither knew nor revered Rome, obtained the first rank, they chose their place of residence according to some native preference or in view of its utility as a base for military operations. The simultaneous assumption of the purple by several candidates in different localities, each at the head of an army, foreboded the division of the Empire; and after the second century an avowed sharing of the provinces became the rule rather than the exception. As each partner resided within his own territory, Rome gradually became neglected and at last preserved only a semblance of being the capital of the Empire. But after Constantine founded a capital of his own choice even this semblance was lost, and the new Rome on the Bosphorus assumed the highest political rank. From this event we may mark the beginning of mediaevalism, of the passing of western Europe under the cloud of the dark ages; and the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West was achieved by the barbarians within the following century and a half.

In 395 a final partition of the Empire, naturally halved as it was by the Adriatic sea, was made; and the incapable sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius, were seated as independent sovereigns on thrones in the East and West. During this period a central administrative energy to uphold Rome as an Imperial seat was entirely wanting; and a succession of feeble emperors maintained a mere shadow of authority while their provinces were being appropriated by the surplus populations of the north. Italy and southwest Gaul became the prey of East and West Goths; the valorous Franks under Clovis founded a kingdom which made itself permanently respected under the name of France; Vandals, with kindred tribes, gained possession of Spain and even erected a monarchy in north Africa, which extended beyond the limits of ancient Carthage; Britain, divested of Roman soldiers in 409, for centuries became the goal of acquisitive incursions by the maritime hordes who issued from the adjacent seaboards, Saxons, Angles, and Danes.

In the change from a nominally popular or constitutional monarchy to a professed despotism, a reconstitution of all subordinate authority was regarded as a matter of necessity. At first the Empire was administered in about forty provinces, but under the later scheme of control it was parcelled out into nearly three times that number. In earlier times a Roman proconsul in his spacious province was almost an independent potentate during his term of office, the head alike of the civil and military power. But in the new dispensation no man was intrusted with such plenary authority, and each contracted province was ruled by a purely civil administrator, whilst the local army obeyed a different master. For further security, each of these in turn was dependent on a higher civil or military officer, to whom was delegated the collective control of a number of his subordinates. Again a shift of authority was made, and the reins of government were delivered into fewer hands, until, at the head of the system, the source of all power, stood the Emperor himself. In order to perfect this policy the army itself was treated in detail on a similar plan; and for the future no homogeneous body of troops of considerable number was collocated in the hands of a single leader.

A typical Roman legion had previously consisted of about six thousand foot, seven hundred horse, and of a band of auxiliaries drawn from foreign or barbarian sources, in all, perhaps, ten thousand men. Each legion was thus in itself an effective force; and as it yielded implicit obedience to a single praefect, the loyalty or venality of a few such officers in respect of their common general had often sufficed to seat him firmly on the throne. To obviate the risk, therefore, of revolt, usurpation, or even of covert resistance to the will of the Emperor, existing legions were broken up into detachments which were relegated to different stations so as to be dispersed over a wide area. As a consequence the praefect of the legion could only exist in name, and that office was soon regarded as obsolete. Consistently, when new legions had to be enrolled for the exigences of defence or warfare, their number was limited to about one fifth of the original amount. To complete the fabric of autocracy all the pomp and pretensions of Oriental exclusiveness were adopted by Diocletian, so that henceforward the monarch was only accessible to the subject under forms of such complexity and abasement as seemed to betoken a being of more than mortal mould.

Another signal divergence from the simple manners of the first emperors was the permanent establishment of eunuchs in high offices about the royal person. The Grand Chamberlain, as the constant attendant on the privacy of the monarch, generally became his confidant, and sometimes his master.

Ultimately, by habitude, or perhaps with a feeling for the vicious propensities of the times, the Emperor developed an almost feminine reserve in relation to the “bearded” or masculine sex; and in his movements he was guarded by his staff of eunuchs with as much jealousy as if his virtue were something as delicate as that of a woman.

THE EMPIRE

The dominions of Anastasius the Elder, for there was a later emperor of that name, corresponded generally to those ruled during the first quarter of the past century by the Ottoman sultans, who were the last to conquer them, and who became possessed of the whole in 1461. Proceeding from east to west, the northern boundary of the Empire followed the coast of the Euxine in its sweep from the mouth of the Phasis (adjacent to the modern town of Batoum) to the estuaries of the Danube, as it delimits Asia on the north and Europe on the east, by the bold curve of its unequal arms. From the latter point, taking the Danube for its guide, the northern frontier stretched westwards to its termination on the banks of that river in the neighborhood of Sirmium. The western border, descending from thence almost due south, was directed in part of its course by the river Drina, and halved nearly vertically the modern principality of Montenegro as it struck towards the shores of the Adriatic. The coast of Greece, with its associated islands on this aspect, traced the western outline of the Empire for the rest of its course, excepting a small portion to be reached by crossing the Mediterranean to the Syrtis Major, where at this date the confines of Roman Africa were to be found. In this vicinity the Egyptian territory began, and the southern frontier coincided for the most part with the edge of the Libyan desert as it skirts the fertile lands of the north and east, that is, the Cyrenaica and the valley of the Nile. An artificial line, cutting that valley on a level with the first cataract and the Isle of Philae, marked the southern extension of Egypt as far as claimed by the Byzantine emperors.’ From a corresponding point on the opposite shore of the Red Sea the Asiatic border of their dominions began. Passing northwards to regain that part of the Euxine from whence we started, the eastern frontier pursued a long and irregular track, at first along the margin of the Arabian desert as it verges on the Sinaitic peninsula, Palestine, and Syria; then crossing the Euphrates it gained the Tigris, so as to include the northern portion of Mesopotamia. Finally, returning to the former river, it joined it in its course along the western limits of Armenia, whence it reached the Phasis on the return journey, the point from which we set out. Considered in their greatest length, from the Danube above Sirmium, to Syene on the Nile, and in their extreme width, from the Tigris in the longitude of Daras or Nisibis, to the Acroceraunian rocks on the coast of Epirus, these ample dominions stretch from north to south for nearly eighteen hundred miles, and from east to west for more than twelve hundred. In superficial area this tract may be estimated to contain about half a million of square miles, that is, an amount of surface fully four times greater than that covered by Great Britain and Ireland. At the present day it is calculated that these vast regions are peopled by only about twenty-eight millions of inhabitants, but their modern state of decay is practically the reverse of their condition in the sixth century, when they were the flourishing, though already failing, seat of the highest civilization at that time existing on the earth; and there is good reason to believe that they were then considerably more, perhaps even double as, populous.

For the purposes of civil government the Empire was divided into sixty-four provinces, each of which was placed under an administrator, who was usually drawn from the profession of the law. These officers were, as a rule, of nearly equal rank, but in three instances the exceptional extent and importance of the provinces necessitated the bestowal of a title more lofty than usual on the governors.

THE PROVINCES

The whole of Greece, including Hellas proper and the Peloponnesus, though now no longer classical, was ruled under the name of Achaia by a vicegerent, to whom was conceded the almost obsolete dignity of a proconsul. 2. Similarly, the central maritime division of Asia Minor, containing the important cities of Smyrna and Ephesus with many others and grandiosely named ‘Asia’, was also allowed to confer on its ruler the title of proconsul. This magistrate had the privilege of reporting directly to the Emperor without an intermediary, and had also jurisdiction over the governors of two adjacent provinces, viz.: the Hellespont, which abutted on the strait of that name, and The Islands, a term applied collectively to about a score of the Cyclades and Sporades. 3. The main district of Lower Egypt, adorned by the magnificent and populous city of Alexandria, the second capital of the Empire, was placed under an administrator bearing the unique title of the Augustal Praefect. The sixty-one remaining provinces were entrusted to governors of practically the same standing; of these, twenty-seven were called consulars, thirty-one presidents, two correctors, and one duke, the latter officer being on the southern frontier of Egypt, apparently in both civil and military charge.

To enumerate severally in this place all the petty provinces of the Empire would be mere prolixity, but there are a few whose designations present peculiarities which may save them from being passed over without notice. The comprehensive names of Europe and Scythia, which in general suggest such vast expansions of country, were given to two small portions of Thrace, the first to that which extended up to the walls of Constantinople, and the second to the north-east corner which lay between the Danube and the Euxine. With parallel magniloquence, a limited area adjoining the southeast border of Palestine was denominated Arabia. The maritime province of Honorias on the north of Asia Minor, perpetuated the memory of the despicable Emperor of the West, Honorius. The name of Arcadia awakens us to reminiscences of Mount Cyllene with Hermes and ‘universal’ Pan, of Artemis with her train of nymphs heading the chase through the woods of Erymanthus, or of the historic career of Epaminondas and the foundation of Megalopolis. But the Arcadia officially recognized in the Eastern Empire had no higher associations than the feeble son of Theodosius, brother of the above-named, and we may be surprised to find it in central Egypt with Oxyrhyncus and Memphis for its chief towns.

By a second disposition of the Empire of an inclusive kind the provinces were grouped in seven Dioceses, namely: three European, Dacia, Thrace, and Macedonia; three Asiatic, the Asian, the Pontic, and the Orient; and one African, Egypt. The first of these obeys the Praetorian Praefect of Illyricum, the sixth the Count of the Orient or East, and the last the Augustal Praefect, whilst the rulers of the remaining four are entitled Vicars. When I add that the Orient, the most extensive of these divisions, comprised in fifteen provinces the whole of Palestine and Syria as well as the southern tract of Asia Minor, from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, and the island of Cyprus, the limits of the other dioceses may be conjectured from their names with sufficient accuracy for our present purpose. By a final partition the dominions of the Byzantine Emperor were assigned, but very unequally, to two officers of the highest or Illustrious rank, viz.: the Praetorian Praefects of the East and of Illyricum. Dacia and Macedonia fell to the rule of the latter, whilst the remaining five dioceses were consolidated under the control of the former minister. The Praefect of the East is in general to be regarded as the subject in closest proximity to the throne, in fact, the first minister of the crown. The Imperial capital, as being outside all these subordinate arrangements, was treated as a microcosm in itself; and with its Court in permanent residence, its bureaus of central administration, and its special Praefect of Illustrious rank, may almost be considered as a third of the prime divisions of the Empire. Here, as a rule, through the long series of Byzantine annals, by the voice of the populace and the army, or by the intrigues of the Court, emperors were made or unmade.

THE EMPEROR

The whole Empire was traversed by those narrow, but solidly constructed roads, the abundant remains of which still attest how thoroughly his work was done by the Roman engineer. The repair and maintenance of these public ways was enjoined on the possessors of the lands through which they passed; and similarly in the case of waterways, the care of bridges and banks was an onus on the shoulders of the riparian owners. On all the main roads an elaborate system of public posts was studiously maintained; and at certain intervals, about the length of an average day’s journey, mansions or inns were located for the accommodation of those travelling on the public service. Each of such stations was equipped with a sufficient number of light and heavy vehicles, of draught horses and oxen, of pack-horses, sumpter mules, and asses for the exigences of local transit. Stringent rules were laid down for the equitable loading of both animals and carriages, and also for the humane treatment of the former. Thus a span of four oxen was allowed to draw a load of fifteen hundred pounds, but the burden of an ordinary pack-horse was limited to thirty. It was forbidden to beat the animals with heavy or knotted sticks; they were to be urged onwards by the use only of a sharp whip or rod fit to “admonish their lagging limbs with a harmless sting”.

In addition to the mansions there were usually four or five intermediate stations called mutations, where a few relays were kept for the benefit of those speeding on an urgent mission. The abuse of the public posts was jealously guarded against, and only those bearing an order from the Emperor or one of the Praetorian Praefects could command their facilities, and then only to an extent restricted to their purely official requirements. A Vicar could dispose of a train of ten horses and thirteen asses on a dozen occasions in the year, in order to make tours of inspection throughout his diocese; legates from foreign countries and delegates from provincial centres, journeying to Constantinople to negotiate a treaty or to lay their grievances before the Emperor, were provided for according to circumstances. The highways were constantly permeated by the Imperial couriers bearing dispatches to or from the capital. These emissaries were also deputed to act as spies, and to report at headquarters any suspicious occurrences they might observe on their route, whence they were popularly spoken of as “the eyes of the Emperor”. They were known by their military cloak and belt, their tight trousers, and by a spray of feathers in their hair to symbolize the swiftness of their course. One or two were appointed permanently to each province with the task of scouring the district continually as inspectors of the public posts. There was also a regular police patrol on the roads, called Irenarchs, whose duty it was to act as guardians of the peace.

A Roman emperor of this age, as an admitted despot subjected to no constitutional restraints, could formulate and promulgate whatever measures commended themselves to his arbitrary will. But such authority, however absolute in theory, must always be restricted in practice by the operation of sociological laws. Although a prince with a masterful personality might dominate his subordinates to become the father or the scourge of his country, a feeble monarch would always be the slave of his great officers of state. Yet even the former had to stoop to conciliate the people or the army, and a sovereign usually stood on treacherous ground when attempting to maintain a balance between the two. The army, as the immediate and effectual instrument of repression, was generally chosen as the first stay of the autocracy, and there are few instances of a Byzantine emperor whose throne was not on more than one occasion cemented with the blood of his subjects. But many a virtuous prince in his efforts to curb the licence of the troops lost both his scepter and his life.

The Council of the Emperor, besides the three Praefects already mentioned, consisted of five civil and of an equal number of military members, all of Illustrious dignity. Their designations were severally: 1. Praepositus of the Sacred Cubicle, or Grand Chamberlain, Master of the Offices, Quaestor, Count of the Sacred Largesses, and Count of the Privy Purse. 2. Five Masters of Horse and Foot, two at head-quarters, and one each for the Orient, Thrace, and Illyricum. To these may be added the Archbishop or Patriarch of Constantinople, always a great power in the State. In the presence of a variable number of these ministers it was usual for the Emperor to declare his will, to appeal to their judgment, or to act on their representations, but the time, place, and circumstances of meeting were entirely in the discretion of the prince. The formal sittings of the Council were not held in secret, but before an audience of such of the Spectabiles as might wish to attend. The legislation of the Emperor, comprised under the general name of Constitutions, fell naturally into two classes, viz., laws promulgated on his own initiative and those issued in response to some petition. Edicts, Acts, Mandates, Pragmatic Sanctions, and Epistles usually ranked in the first division; Rescripts in the second. A Rescript was granted, as a rule, in compliance with an ex parte application, and might be disregarded by the authority to whom it was addressed should it appear to have been obtained by false pretences, but the Court which set it aside did so at its own peril.

THE SENATE

The Senate of Constantinople, created in imitation of that of Rome, was designed by Constantine rather to grace his new capital than to exercise any of the functions of government. Like the new order of patricians, the position of Senator was mainly an honorary and not an executive rank. All the members enjoyed the title of Clarissimus, that of the third grade of nobility, and assembled under the presidency of the Praefect of the city. As a body the Senate was treated with great ostensible consideration by the Emperor, and was never referred to in the public acts without expressions of the highest esteem, such as ‘the Venerable’, ‘the Most Noble Order, amongst whom we reckon ourselves’. This public parade of their importance, however, endowed them with a considerable moral power in the popular idea; and the subscription of the impotent Senate was not seldom demanded by a prudent monarch to give a wider sanction to his acts of oppression or cruelty. During an interregnum their voice was usually heard with attention; and a prince with a weak or failing title to the throne would naturally cling to them for support. They were sometimes constituted as a High Court for the trial of criminal cases of national importance, such as conspiring against the rule or life of the Emperor. They could pass resolutions to be submitted for the approval of the crown; they had a share in the nomination of some of the higher and lower officials; and they performed generally the duties of a municipal council.