Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the circus, raged with
redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the reign of Anastasius, this
popular frenzy was inflamed by religious zeal; and the greens, who
had treacherously concealed stones and daggers under baskets of
fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue
adversaries. From this capital, the pestilence was diffused into the
provinces and cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two
colors produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the
foundations of a feeble government. The popular dissensions, founded on
the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the
obstinacy of this wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families,
divided friends and brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom
seen in the circus, to espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or
to contradict the wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human
or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was
successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress
or public calamity. The license, without the freedom, of democracy,
was revived at Antioch and Constantinople, and the support of a faction
became necessary to every candidate for civil or ecclesiastical honors.
A secret attachment to the family or sect of Anastasius was imputed to
the greens; the blues were zealously devoted to the cause of orthodoxy
and Justinian, and their grateful patron protected, above five years,
the disorders of a faction, whose seasonable tumults overawed the
palace, the senate, and the capitals of the East. Insolent with royal
favor, the blues affected to strike terror by a peculiar and Barbaric
dress, the long hair of the Huns, their close sleeves and ample
garments, a lofty step, and a sonorous voice. In the day they concealed
their two-edged poniards, but in the night they boldly assembled in
arms, and in numerous bands, prepared for every act of violence and
rapine. Their adversaries of the green faction, or even inoffensive
citizens, were stripped and often murdered by these nocturnal robbers,
and it became dangerous to wear any gold buttons or girdles, or to
appear at a late hour in the streets of a peaceful capital. A daring
spirit, rising with impunity, proceeded to violate the safeguard of
private houses; and fire was employed to facilitate the attack, or
to conceal the crimes of these factious rioters. No place was safe or
sacred from their depredations; to gratify either avarice or revenge,
they profusely spilt the blood of the innocent; churches and altars were
polluted by atrocious murders; and it was the boast of the assassins,
that their dexterity could always inflict a mortal wound with a single
stroke of their dagger. The dissolute youth of Constantinople adopted
the blue livery of disorder; the laws were silent, and the bonds
of society were relaxed: creditors were compelled to resign their
obligations; judges to reverse their sentence; masters to enfranchise
their slaves; fathers to supply the extravagance of their children;
noble matrons were prostituted to the lust of their servants; beautiful
boys were torn from the arms of their parents; and wives, unless they
preferred a voluntary death, were ravished in the presence of their
husbands. The despair of the greens, who were persecuted by their
enemies, and deserted by the magistrates, assumed the privilege of
defence, perhaps of retaliation; but those who survived the combat were
dragged to execution, and the unhappy fugitives, escaping to woods
and caverns, preyed without mercy on the society from whence they were
expelled. Those ministers of justice who had courage to punish the
crimes, and to brave the resentment, of the blues, became the victims
of their indiscreet zeal; a prÊfect of Constantinople fled for refuge to
the holy sepulchre, a count of the East was ignominiously whipped, and a
governor of Cilicia was hanged, by the order of Theodora, on the tomb of
two assassins whom he had condemned for the murder of his groom, and a
daring attack upon his own life. An aspiring candidate may be tempted to
build his greatness on the public confusion, but it is the interest as
well as duty of a sovereign to maintain the authority of the laws.
The first edict of Justinian, which was often repeated, and sometimes
executed, announced his firm resolution to support the innocent, and to
chastise the guilty, of every denomination and _color_. Yet the balance
of justice was still inclined in favor of the blue faction, by the
secret affection, the habits, and the fears of the emperor; his equity,
after an apparent struggle, submitted, without reluctance, to the
implacable passions of Theodora, and the empress never forgot, or
forgave, the injuries of the comedian. At the accession of the younger
Justin, the proclamation of equal and rigorous justice indirectly
condemned the partiality of the former reign. "Ye blues, Justinian is no
more! ye greens, he is still alive!"
A sedition, which almost laid Constantinople in ashes, was excited by
the mutual hatred and momentary reconciliation of the two factions. In
the fifth year of his reign, Justinian celebrated the festival of the
ides of January; the games were incessantly disturbed by the clamorous
discontent of the greens: till the twenty-second race, the emperor
maintained his silent gravity; at length, yielding to his impatience, he
condescended to hold, in abrupt sentences, and by the voice of a crier,
the most singular dialogue that ever passed between a prince and his
subjects. Their first complaints were respectful and modest; they
accused the subordinate ministers of oppression, and proclaimed their
wishes for the long life and victory of the emperor. "Be patient and
attentive, ye insolent railers!" exclaimed Justinian; "be mute, ye Jews,
Samaritans, and ManichÊans!" The greens still attempted to awaken his
compassion. "We are poor, we are innocent, we are injured, we dare not
pass through the streets: a general persecution is exercised against our
name and color. Let us die, O emperor! but let us die by your command,
and for your service!" But the repetition of partial and passionate
invectives degraded, in their eyes, the majesty of the purple; they
renounced allegiance to the prince who refused justice to his people;
lamented that the father of Justinian had been born; and branded his son
with the opprobrious names of a homicide, an ass, and a perjured tyrant.
"Do you despise your lives?" cried the indignant monarch: the blues
rose with fury from their seats; their hostile clamors thundered in the
hippodrome; and their adversaries, deserting the unequal contest spread
terror and despair through the streets of Constantinople. At this
dangerous moment, seven notorious assassins of both factions, who
had been condemned by the prÊfect, were carried round the city, and
afterwards transported to the place of execution in the suburb of Pera.
Four were immediately beheaded; a fifth was hanged: but when the same
punishment was inflicted on the remaining two, the rope broke, they fell
alive to the ground, the populace applauded their escape, and the monks
of St. Conon, issuing from the neighboring convent, conveyed them in a
boat to the sanctuary of the church. As one of these criminals was
of the blue, and the other of the green livery, the two factions were
equally provoked by the cruelty of their oppressor, or the ingratitude
of their patron; and a short truce was concluded till they had delivered
their prisoners and satisfied their revenge. The palace of the prÊfect,
who withstood the seditious torrent, was instantly burnt, his officers
and guards were massacred, the prisons were forced open, and freedom was
restored to those who could only use it for the public destruction.
A military force, which had been despatched to the aid of the civil
magistrate, was fiercely encountered by an armed multitude, whose
numbers and boldness continually increased; and the Heruli, the wildest
Barbarians in the service of the empire, overturned the priests and
their relics, which, from a pious motive, had been rashly interposed
to separate the bloody conflict. The tumult was exasperated by this
sacrilege, the people fought with enthusiasm in the cause of God; the
women, from the roofs and windows, showered stones on the heads of the
soldiers, who darted fire brands against the houses; and the various
flames, which had been kindled by the hands of citizens and strangers,
spread without control over the face of the city. The conflagration
involved the cathedral of St. Sophia, the baths of Zeuxippus, a part of
the palace, from the first entrance to the altar of Mars, and the long
portico from the palace to the forum of Constantine: a large hospital,
with the sick patients, was consumed; many churches and stately edifices
were destroyed and an immense treasure of gold and silver was either
melted or lost. From such scenes of horror and distress, the wise and
wealthy citizens escaped over the Bosphorus to the Asiatic side; and
during five days Constantinople was abandoned to the factions, whose
watchword, _Nika_, _vanquish!_ has given a name to this memorable
sedition.
As long as the factions were divided, the triumphant blues, and
desponding greens, appeared to behold with the same indifference the
disorders of the state. They agreed to censure the corrupt management of
justice and the finance; and the two responsible ministers, the artful
Tribonian, and the rapacious John of Cappadocia, were loudly arraigned
as the authors of the public misery. The peaceful murmurs of the people
would have been disregarded: they were heard with respect when the city
was in flames; the quÊstor, and the prÊfect, were instantly removed, and
their offices were filled by two senators of blameless integrity.
After this popular concession, Justinian proceeded to the hippodrome
to confess his own errors, and to accept the repentance of his grateful
subjects; but they distrusted his assurances, though solemnly pronounced
in the presence of the holy Gospels; and the emperor, alarmed by their
distrust, retreated with precipitation to the strong fortress of the
palace. The obstinacy of the tumult was now imputed to a secret
and ambitious conspiracy, and a suspicion was entertained, that the
insurgents, more especially the green faction, had been supplied with
arms and money by Hypatius and Pompey, two patricians, who could neither
forget with honor, nor remember with safety, that they were the
nephews of the emperor Anastasius. Capriciously trusted, disgraced, and
pardoned, by the jealous levity of the monarch, they had appeared as
loyal servants before the throne; and, during five days of the tumult,
they were detained as important hostages; till at length, the fears of
Justinian prevailing over his prudence, he viewed the two brothers in
the light of spies, perhaps of assassins, and sternly commanded them to
depart from the palace. After a fruitless representation, that obedience
might lead to involuntary treason, they retired to their houses, and in
the morning of the sixth day, Hypatius was surrounded and seized by the
people, who, regardless of his virtuous resistance, and the tears of
his wife, transported their favorite to the forum of Constantine, and
instead of a diadem, placed a rich collar on his head. If the usurper,
who afterwards pleaded the merit of his delay, had complied with the
advice of his senate, and urged the fury of the multitude, their first
irresistible effort might have oppressed or expelled his trembling
competitor. The Byzantine palace enjoyed a free communication with the
sea; vessels lay ready at the garden stairs; and a secret resolution was
already formed, to convey the emperor with his family and treasures to a
safe retreat, at some distance from the capital.
Justinian was lost, if the prostitute whom he raised from the theatre
had not renounced the timidity, as well as the virtues, of her sex. In
the midst of a council, where Belisarius was present, Theodora alone
displayed the spirit of a hero; and she alone, without apprehending his
future hatred, could save the emperor from the imminent danger, and his
unworthy fears. "If flight," said the consort of Justinian, "were
the only means of safety, yet I should disdain to fly. Death is the
condition of our birth; but they who have reigned should never survive
the loss of dignity and dominion. I implore Heaven, that I may never
be seen, not a day, without my diadem and purple; that I may no longer
behold the light, when I cease to be saluted with the name of queen. If
you resolve, O CÊsar! to fly, you have treasures; behold the sea, you
have ships; but tremble lest the desire of life should expose you to
wretched exile and ignominious death. For my own part, I adhere to
the maxim of antiquity, that the throne is a glorious sepulchre." The
firmness of a woman restored the courage to deliberate and act, and
courage soon discovers the resources of the most desperate situation.
It was an easy and a decisive measure to revive the animosity of the
factions; the blues were astonished at their own guilt and folly, that
a trifling injury should provoke them to conspire with their implacable
enemies against a gracious and liberal benefactor; they again proclaimed
the majesty of Justinian; and the greens, with their upstart emperor,
were left alone in the hippodrome. The fidelity of the guards was
doubtful; but the military force of Justinian consisted in three
thousand veterans, who had been trained to valor and discipline in the
Persian and Illyrian wars. Under the command of Belisarius and Mundus,
they silently marched in two divisions from the palace, forced their
obscure way through narrow passages, expiring flames, and falling
edifices, and burst open at the same moment the two opposite gates of
the hippodrome. In this narrow space, the disorderly and affrighted
crowd was incapable of resisting on either side a firm and regular
attack; the blues signalized the fury of their repentance; and it is
computed, that above thirty thousand persons were slain in the merciless
and promiscuous carnage of the day. Hypatius was dragged from his
throne, and conducted, with his brother Pompey, to the feet of the
emperor: they implored his clemency; but their crime was manifest,
their innocence uncertain, and Justinian had been too much terrified to
forgive. The next morning the two nephews of Anastasius, with eighteen
_illustrious_ accomplices, of patrician or consular rank, were privately
executed by the soldiers; their bodies were thrown into the sea, their
palaces razed, and their fortunes confiscated. The hippodrome itself
was condemned, during several years, to a mournful silence: with the
restoration of the games, the same disorders revived; and the blue
and green factions continued to afflict the reign of Justinian, and to
disturb the tranquility of the Eastern empire.
III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations
whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as the frontiers
of ∆thiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces,
and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; his dominions were blessed
by nature with the advantages of soil, situation, and climate: and the
improvements of human art had been perpetually diffused along the coast
of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile from ancient Troy to the
Egyptian Thebes. Abraham had been relieved by the well-known plenty of
Egypt; the same country, a small and populous tract, was still capable
of exporting, each year, two hundred and sixty thousand quarters of
wheat for the use of Constantinople; and the capital of Justinian was
supplied with the manufactures of Sidon, fifteen centuries after
they had been celebrated in the poems of Homer. The annual powers of
vegetation, instead of being exhausted by two thousand harvests,
were renewed and invigorated by skilful husbandry, rich manure,
and seasonable repose. The breed of domestic animals was infinitely
multiplied. Plantations, buildings, and the instruments of labor
and luxury, which are more durable than the term of human life, were
accumulated by the care of successive generations. Tradition preserved,
and experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts: society
was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of exchange; and
every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the industry of a
thousand hands. The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously
ascribed to the gods. In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable
productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length _silk_, have
been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they
were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was
successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom. In the choice
of those colors which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of
taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple which the Phnicians
extracted from a shell-fish, was restrained to the sacred person and
palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason were denounced
against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the
throne.
Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.--Part III.
I need not explain that _silk_ is originally spun from the bowels of a
caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb, from whence a worm
emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian,
the silk-worm who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were
confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common
in the forests both of Asia and Europe; but as their education is
more difficult, and their produce more uncertain, they were generally
neglected, except in the little island of Ceos, near the coast of
Attica. A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean
manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired
both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the
garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer,
who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of
the Seres or Chinese; and this natural error, less marvellous than the
truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable insect, the
first artificer of the luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury
was censured, in the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans;
and Pliny, in affected though forcible language, has condemned the
thirst of gain, which explores the last confines of the earth, for the
pernicious purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies and
transparent matrons. A dress which showed the turn of the limbs, and
color of the skin, might gratify vanity, or provoke desire; the silks
which had been closely woven in China were sometimes unravelled by the
Phnician women, and the precious materials were multiplied by a looser
texture, and the intermixture of linen threads. Two hundred years after
the age of Pliny, the use of pure, or even of mixed silks, was confined
to the female sex, till the opulent citizens of Rome and the provinces
were insensibly familiarized with the example of Elagabalus, the first
who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied the dignity of an emperor and
a man. Aurelian complained, that a pound of silk was sold at Rome for
twelve ounces of gold; but the supply increased with the demand, and
the price diminished with the supply. If accident or monopoly sometimes
raised the value even above the standard of Aurelian, the manufacturers
of Tyre and Berytus were sometimes compelled, by the operation of the
same causes, to content themselves with a ninth part of that extravagant
rate. A law was thought necessary to discriminate the dress of comedians
from that of senators; and of the silk exported from its native country
the far greater part was consumed by the subjects of Justinian.
They were still more intimately acquainted with a shell-fish of the
Mediterranean, surnamed the silk-worm of the sea: the fine wool or
hair by which the mother-of-pearl affixes itself to the rock is now
manufactured for curiosity rather than use; and a robe obtained from the
same singular materials was the gift of the Roman emperor to the satraps
of Armenia.
A valuable merchandise of small bulk is capable of defraying the expense
of land-carriage; and the caravans traversed the whole latitude of
Asia in two hundred and forty-three days from the Chinese Ocean to the
sea-coast of Syria. Silk was immediately delivered to the Romans by the
Persian merchants, who frequented the fairs of Armenia and Nisibis; but
this trade, which in the intervals of truce was oppressed by avarice
and jealousy, was totally interrupted by the long wars of the rival
monarchies. The great king might proudly number Sogdiana, and even
_Serica_, among the provinces of his empire; but his real dominion
was bounded by the Oxus and his useful intercourse with the Sogdoites,
beyond the river, depended on the pleasure of their conquerors,
the white Huns, and the Turks, who successively reigned over that
industrious people. Yet the most savage dominion has not extirpated the
seeds of agriculture and commerce, in a region which is celebrated as
one of the four gardens of Asia; the cities of Samarcand and Bochara are
advantageously seated for the exchange of its various productions; and
their merchants purchased from the Chinese, the raw or manufactured silk
which they transported into Persia for the use of the Roman empire. In
the vain capital of China, the Sogdian caravans were entertained as
the suppliant embassies of tributary kingdoms, and if they returned in
safety, the bold adventure was rewarded with exorbitant gain. But the
difficult and perilous march from Samarcand to the first town of Shensi,
could not be performed in less than sixty, eighty, or one hundred days:
as soon as they had passed the Jaxartes they entered the desert; and the
wandering hordes, unless they are restrained by armies and garrisons,
have always considered the citizen and the traveller as the objects of
lawful rapine. To escape the Tartar robbers, and the tyrants of Persia,
the silk caravans explored a more southern road; they traversed the
mountains of Thibet, descended the streams of the Ganges or the Indus,
and patiently expected, in the ports of Guzerat and Malabar, the annual
fleets of the West. But the dangers of the desert were found less
intolerable than toil, hunger, and the loss of time; the attempt was
seldom renewed, and the only European who has passed that unfrequented
way, applauds his own diligence, that, in nine months after his
departure from Pekin, he reached the mouth of the Indus. The ocean,
however, was open to the free communication of mankind. From the great
river to the tropic of Cancer, the provinces of China were subdued and
civilized by the emperors of the North; they were filled about the
time of the Christian Êra with cities and men, mulberry-trees and their
precious inhabitants; and if the Chinese, with the knowledge of the
compass, had possessed the genius of the Greeks or Phnicians, they might
have spread their discoveries over the southern hemisphere. I am not
qualified to examine, and I am not disposed to believe, their distant
voyages to the Persian Gulf, or the Cape of Good Hope; but their
ancestors might equal the labors and success of the present race, and
the sphere of their navigation might extend from the Isles of Japan to
the Straits of Malacca, the pillars, if we may apply that name, of an
Oriental Hercules. Without losing sight of land, they might sail along
the coast to the extreme promontory of Achin, which is annually visited
by ten or twelve ships laden with the productions, the manufactures,
and even the artificers of China; the Island of Sumatra and the opposite
peninsula are faintly delineated as the regions of gold and silver; and
the trading cities named in the geography of Ptolemy may indicate, that
this wealth was not solely derived from the mines. The direct interval
between Sumatra and Ceylon is about three hundred leagues: the Chinese
and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and
periodical winds; and the ocean might be securely traversed in
square-built ships, which, instead of iron, were sewed together with
the strong thread of the cocoanut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana,
was divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the
mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle, and the other
enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, foreign trade, and
the capacious harbor of Trinquemale, which received and dismissed
the fleets of the East and West. In this hospitable isle, at an equal
distance (as it was computed) from their respective countries, the silk
merchants of China, who had collected in their voyages aloes, cloves,
nutmeg, and sandal wood, maintained a free and beneficial commerce with
the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf. The subjects of the great king
exalted, without a rival, his power and magnificence: and the Roman, who
confounded their vanity by comparing his paltry coin with a gold medal
of the emperor Anastasius, had sailed to Ceylon, in an ∆thiopian ship,
as a simple passenger.