concern that the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly
of this important supply, and that the wealth of his subjects was
continually drained by a nation of enemies and idolaters. An active
government would have restored the trade of Egypt and the navigation of
the Red Sea, which had decayed with the prosperity of the empire; and
the Roman vessels might have sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the
ports of Ceylon, of Malacca, or even of China. Justinian embraced a more
humble expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies,
the ∆thiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of
navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, still
decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror. Along the African
coast, they penetrated to the equator in search of gold, emeralds, and
aromatics; but they wisely declined an unequal competition, in which
they must be always prevented by the vicinity of the Persians to the
markets of India; and the emperor submitted to the disappointment, till
his wishes were gratified by an unexpected event. The gospel had been
preached to the Indians: a bishop already governed the Christians of St.
Thomas on the pepper-coast of Malabar; a church was planted in
Ceylon, and the missionaries pursued the footsteps of commerce to
the extremities of Asia. Two Persian monks had long resided in China,
perhaps in the royal city of Nankin, the seat of a monarch addicted to
foreign superstitions, and who actually received an embassy from the
Isle of Ceylon. Amidst their pious occupations, they viewed with a
curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, the manufactures of silk,
and the myriads of silk-worms, whose education (either on trees or
in houses) had once been considered as the labor of queens. They soon
discovered that it was impracticable to transport the short-lived
insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be preserved and
multiplied in a distant climate. Religion or interest had more power
over the Persian monks than the love of their country: after a long
journey, they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project to the
emperor, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and promises of
Justinian. To the historians of that prince, a campaign at the foot of
Mount Caucasus has seemed more deserving of a minute relation than
the labors of these missionaries of commerce, who again entered China,
deceived a jealous people by concealing the eggs of the silk-worm in a
hollow cane, and returned in triumph with the spoils of the East. Under
their direction, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the
artificial heat of dung; the worms were fed with mulberry leaves;
they lived and labored in a foreign climate; a sufficient number of
butterflies was saved to propagate the race, and trees were planted
to supply the nourishment of the rising generations. Experience and
reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt, and the Sogdoite
ambassadors acknowledged, in the succeeding reign, that the Romans were
not inferior to the natives of China in the education of the insects,
and the manufactures of silk, in which both China and Constantinople
have been surpassed by the industry of modern Europe. I am not
insensible of the benefits of elegant luxury; yet I reflect with some
pain, that if the importers of silk had introduced the art of printing,
already practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and the
entire decads of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of the
sixth century. A larger view of the globe might at least have promoted
the improvement of speculative science, but the Christian geography was
forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture, and the study of nature was
the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The orthodox faith confined
the habitable world to _one_ temperate zone, and represented the earth
as an oblong surface, four hundred days' journey in length, two hundred
in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal
of the firmament.
IV. The subjects of Justinian were dissatisfied with the times, and with
the government. Europe was overrun by the Barbarians, and Asia by the
monks: the poverty of the West discouraged the trade and manufactures of
the East: the produce of labor was consumed by the unprofitable servants
of the church, the state, and the army; and a rapid decrease was felt in
the fixed and circulating capitals which constitute the national wealth.
The public distress had been alleviated by the economy of Anastasius,
and that prudent emperor accumulated an immense treasure, while he
delivered his people from the most odious or oppressive taxes.
Their gratitude universally applauded the abolition of the _gold of
affliction_, a personal tribute on the industry of the poor, but more
intolerable, as it should seem, in the form than in the substance, since
the flourishing city of Edessa paid only one hundred and forty pounds
of gold, which was collected in four years from ten thousand artificers.
Yet such was the parsimony which supported this liberal disposition,
that, in a reign of twenty-seven years, Anastasius saved, from his
annual revenue, the enormous sum of thirteen millions sterling, or three
hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold. His example was neglected,
and his treasure was abused, by the nephew of Justin. The riches of
Justinian were speedily exhausted by alms and buildings, by ambitious
wars, and ignominious treaties. His revenues were found inadequate to
his expenses. Every art was tried to extort from the people the gold and
silver which he scattered with a lavish hand from Persia to France:
his reign was marked by the vicissitudes or rather by the combat, of
rapaciousness and avarice, of splendor and poverty; he lived with the
reputation of hidden treasures, and bequeathed to his successor the
payment of his debts. Such a character has been justly accused by
the voice of the people and of posterity: but public discontent is
credulous; private malice is bold; and a lover of truth will peruse
with a suspicious eye the instructive anecdotes of Procopius. The secret
historian represents only the vices of Justinian, and those vices are
darkened by his malevolent pencil. Ambiguous actions are imputed to the
worst motives; error is confounded with guilt, accident with design,
and laws with abuses; the partial injustice of a moment is dexterously
applied as the general maxim of a reign of thirty-two years; the emperor
alone is made responsible for the faults of his officers, the disorders
of the times, and the corruption of his subjects; and even the
calamities of nature, plagues, earthquakes, and inundations, are imputed
to the prince of the dÊmons, who had mischievously assumed the form of
Justinian.
After this precaution, I shall briefly relate the anecdotes of avarice
and rapine under the following heads: I. Justinian was so profuse that
he could not be liberal. The civil and military officers, when they were
admitted into the service of the palace, obtained an humble rank and a
moderate stipend; they ascended by seniority to a station of affluence
and repose; the annual pensions, of which the most honorable class was
abolished by Justinian, amounted to four hundred thousand pounds; and
this domestic economy was deplored by the venal or indigent courtiers as
the last outrage on the majesty of the empire. The posts, the salaries
of physicians, and the nocturnal illuminations, were objects of more
general concern; and the cities might justly complain, that he usurped
the municipal revenues which had been appropriated to these useful
institutions. Even the soldiers were injured; and such was the decay
of military spirit, that they were injured with impunity. The emperor
refused, at the return of each fifth year, the customary donative
of five pieces of gold, reduced his veterans to beg their bread, and
suffered unpaid armies to melt away in the wars of Italy and Persia. II.
The humanity of his predecessors had always remitted, in some auspicious
circumstance of their reign, the arrears of the public tribute, and they
dexterously assumed the merit of resigning those claims which it was
impracticable to enforce. "Justinian, in the space of thirty-two years,
has never granted a similar indulgence; and many of his subjects have
renounced the possession of those lands whose value is insufficient to
satisfy the demands of the treasury. To the cities which had suffered by
hostile inroads Anastasius promised a general exemption of seven years:
the provinces of Justinian have been ravaged by the Persians and Arabs,
the Huns and Sclavonians; but his vain and ridiculous dispensation of a
single year has been confined to those places which were actually
taken by the enemy." Such is the language of the secret historian, who
expressly denies that any indulgence was granted to Palestine after the
revolt of the Samaritans; a false and odious charge, confuted by the
authentic record which attests a relief of thirteen centenaries of gold
(fifty-two thousand pounds) obtained for that desolate province by
the intercession of St. Sabas. III. Procopius has not condescended to
explain the system of taxation, which fell like a hail-storm upon the
land, like a devouring pestilence on its inhabitants: but we should
become the accomplices of his malignity, if we imputed to Justinian
alone the ancient though rigorous principle, that a whole district
should be condemned to sustain the partial loss of the persons or
property of individuals. The _Annona_, or supply of corn for the use
of the army and capital, was a grievous and arbitrary exaction, which
exceeded, perhaps in a tenfold proportion, the ability of the farmer;
and his distress was aggravated by the partial injustice of weights and
measures, and the expense and labor of distant carriage. In a time
of scarcity, an extraordinary requisition was made to the adjacent
provinces of Thrace, Bithynia, and Phrygia: but the proprietors, after
a wearisome journey and perilous navigation, received so inadequate a
compensation, that they would have chosen the alternative of delivering
both the corn and price at the doors of their granaries. These
precautions might indicate a tender solicitude for the welfare of the
capital; yet Constantinople did not escape the rapacious despotism of
Justinian. Till his reign, the Straits of the Bosphorus and Hellespont
were open to the freedom of trade, and nothing was prohibited except the
exportation of arms for the service of the Barbarians. At each of these
gates of the city, a prÊtor was stationed, the minister of Imperial
avarice; heavy customs were imposed on the vessels and their
merchandise; the oppression was retaliated on the helpless consumer; the
poor were afflicted by the artificial scarcity, and exorbitant price
of the market; and a people, accustomed to depend on the liberality of
their prince, might sometimes complain of the deficiency of water
and bread. The _aerial_ tribute, without a name, a law, or a definite
object, was an annual gift of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds,
which the emperor accepted from his PrÊtorian prÊfect; and the means of
payment were abandoned to the discretion of that powerful magistrate.
IV. Even such a tax was less intolerable than the privilege of
monopolies, which checked the fair competition of industry, and, for
the sake of a small and dishonest gain, imposed an arbitrary burden
on the wants and luxury of the subject. "As soon" (I transcribe the
Anecdotes) "as the exclusive sale of silk was usurped by the Imperial
treasurer, a whole people, the manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus, was
reduced to extreme misery, and either perished with hunger, or fled to
the hostile dominions of Persia." A province might suffer by the
decay of its manufactures, but in this example of silk, Procopius has
partially overlooked the inestimable and lasting benefit which the
empire received from the curiosity of Justinian. His addition of one
seventh to the ordinary price of copper money may be interpreted with
the same candor; and the alteration, which might be wise, appears to
have been innocent; since he neither alloyed the purity, nor enhanced
the value, of the gold coin, the legal measure of public and private
payments. V. The ample jurisdiction required by the farmers of the
revenue to accomplish their engagements might be placed in an odious
light, as if they had purchased from the emperor the lives and fortunes
of their fellow-citizens. And a more direct sale of honors and offices
was transacted in the palace, with the permission, or at least with the
connivance, of Justinian and Theodora. The claims of merit, even those
of favor, were disregarded, and it was almost reasonable to expect,
that the bold adventurer, who had undertaken the trade of a magistrate,
should find a rich compensation for infamy, labor, danger, the debts
which he had contracted, and the heavy interest which he paid. A sense
of the disgrace and mischief of this venal practice, at length awakened
the slumbering virtue of Justinian; and he attempted, by the sanction
of oaths and penalties, to guard the integrity of his government: but
at the end of a year of perjury, his rigorous edict was suspended, and
corruption licentiously abused her triumph over the impotence of the
laws. VI. The testament of Eulalius, count of the domestics, declared
the emperor his sole heir, on condition, however, that he should
discharge his debts and legacies, allow to his three daughters a decent
maintenance, and bestow each of them in marriage, with a portion of ten
pounds of gold. But the splendid fortune of Eulalius had been consumed
by fire, and the inventory of his goods did not exceed the trifling sum
of five hundred and sixty-four pieces of gold. A similar instance, in
Grecian history, admonished the emperor of the honorable part prescribed
for his imitation. He checked the selfish murmurs of the treasury,
applauded the confidence of his friend, discharged the legacies and
debts, educated the three virgins under the eye of the empress Theodora,
and doubled the marriage portion which had satisfied the tenderness of
their father. The humanity of a prince (for princes cannot be generous)
is entitled to some praise; yet even in this act of virtue we may
discover the inveterate custom of supplanting the legal or natural
heirs, which Procopius imputes to the reign of Justinian. His charge is
supported by eminent names and scandalous examples; neither widows
nor orphans were spared; and the art of soliciting, or extorting, or
supposing testaments, was beneficially practised by the agents of
the palace. This base and mischievous tyranny invades the security of
private life; and the monarch who has indulged an appetite for gain,
will soon be tempted to anticipate the moment of succession, to
interpret wealth as an evidence of guilt, and to proceed, from the claim
of inheritance, to the power of confiscation. VII. Among the forms of
rapine, a philosopher may be permitted to name the conversion of Pagan
or heretical riches to the use of the faithful; but in the time of
Justinian this holy plunder was condemned by the sectaries alone, who
became the victims of his orthodox avarice.
Chapter XL: Reign Of Justinian.--Part IV.
Dishonor might be ultimately reflected on the character of Justinian;
but much of the guilt, and still more of the profit, was intercepted
by the ministers, who were seldom promoted for their virtues, and not
always selected for their talents. The merits of Tribonian the quÊstor
will hereafter be weighed in the reformation of the Roman law; but
the economy of the East was subordinate to the PrÊtorian prÊfect, and
Procopius has justified his anecdotes by the portrait which he exposes
in his public history, of the notorious vices of John of Cappadocia.
* His knowledge was not borrowed from the schools, and his style was
scarcely legible; but he excelled in the powers of native genius,
to suggest the wisest counsels, and to find expedients in the most
desperate situations. The corruption of his heart was equal to the
vigor of his understanding. Although he was suspected of magic and
Pagan superstition, he appeared insensible to the fear of God or the
reproaches of man; and his aspiring fortune was raised on the death
of thousands, the poverty of millions, the ruins of cities, and the
desolation of provinces. From the dawn of light to the moment of dinner,
he assiduously labored to enrich his master and himself at the expense
of the Roman world; the remainder of the day was spent in sensual and
obscene pleasures, and the silent hours of the night were interrupted
by the perpetual dread of the justice of an assassin. His abilities,
perhaps his vices, recommended him to the lasting friendship of
Justinian: the emperor yielded with reluctance to the fury of the
people; his victory was displayed by the immediate restoration of
their enemy; and they felt above ten years, under his oppressive
administration, that he was stimulated by revenge, rather than
instructed by misfortune. Their murmurs served only to fortify the
resolution of Justinian; but the resentment of Theodora, disdained a
power before which every knee was bent, and attempted to sow the seeds
of discord between the emperor and his beloved consort. Even Theodora
herself was constrained to dissemble, to wait a favorable moment, and,
by an artful conspiracy, to render John of Cappadocia the accomplice
of his own destruction. At a time when Belisarius, unless he had been
a hero, must have shown himself a rebel, his wife Antonina, who
enjoyed the secret confidence of the empress, communicated his feigned
discontent to Euphemia, the daughter of the prÊfect; the credulous
virgin imparted to her father the dangerous project, and John, who might
have known the value of oaths and promises, was tempted to accept
a nocturnal, and almost treasonable, interview with the wife of
Belisarius. An ambuscade of guards and eunuchs had been posted by the
command of Theodora; they rushed with drawn swords to seize or to punish
the guilty minister: he was saved by the fidelity of his attendants; but
instead of appealing to a gracious sovereign, who had privately warned
him of his danger, he pusillanimously fled to the sanctuary of the
church. The favorite of Justinian was sacrificed to conjugal tenderness
or domestic tranquility; the conversion of a prÊfect into a priest
extinguished his ambitious hopes: but the friendship of the emperor
alleviated his disgrace, and he retained in the mild exile of Cyzicus
an ample portion of his riches. Such imperfect revenge could not satisfy
the unrelenting hatred of Theodora; the murder of his old enemy, the
bishop of Cyzicus, afforded a decent pretence; and John of Cappadocia,
whose actions had deserved a thousand deaths, was at last condemned
for a crime of which he was innocent. A great minister, who had been
invested with the honors of consul and patrician, was ignominiously
scourged like the vilest of malefactors; a tattered cloak was the sole
remnant of his fortunes; he was transported in a bark to the place of
his banishment at Antinopolis in Upper Egypt, and the prÊfect of the
East begged his bread through the cities which had trembled at his name.
During an exile of seven years, his life was protracted and threatened
by the ingenious cruelty of Theodora; and when her death permitted
the emperor to recall a servant whom he had abandoned with regret, the
ambition of John of Cappadocia was reduced to the humble duties of
the sacerdotal profession. His successors convinced the subjects of
Justinian, that the arts of oppression might still be improved by
experience and industry; the frauds of a Syrian banker were introduced
into the administration of the finances; and the example of the prÊfect
was diligently copied by the quÊstor, the public and private treasurer,
the governors of provinces, and the principal magistrates of the Eastern
empire.
V. The _edifices_ of Justinian were cemented with the blood and treasure
of his people; but those stately structures appeared to announce the
prosperity of the empire, and actually displayed the skill of their
architects. Both the theory and practice of the arts which depend on
mathematical science and mechanical power, were cultivated under the
patronage of the emperors; the fame of Archimedes was rivalled by
Proclus and Anthemius; and if their _miracles_ had been related by
intelligent spectators, they might now enlarge the speculations, instead
of exciting the distrust, of philosophers. A tradition has prevailed,
that the Roman fleet was reduced to ashes in the port of Syracuse, by
the burning-glasses of Archimedes; and it is asserted, that a similar
expedient was employed by Proclus to destroy the Gothic vessels in
the harbor of Constantinople, and to protect his benefactor Anastasius
against the bold enterprise of Vitalian. A machine was fixed on the
walls of the city, consisting of a hexagon mirror of polished brass,
with many smaller and movable polygons to receive and reflect the rays
of the meridian sun; and a consuming flame was darted, to the distance,
perhaps of two hundred feet. The truth of these two extraordinary facts
is invalidated by the silence of the most authentic historians; and the
use of burning-glasses was never adopted in the attack or defence of
places. Yet the admirable experiments of a French philosopher have
demonstrated the possibility of such a mirror; and, since it is
possible, I am more disposed to attribute the art to the greatest
mathematicians of antiquity, than to give the merit of the fiction
to the idle fancy of a monk or a sophist. According to another story,
Proclus applied sulphur to the destruction of the Gothic fleet; in a
modern imagination, the name of sulphur is instantly connected with the
suspicion of gunpowder, and that suspicion is propagated by the secret
arts of his disciple Anthemius. A citizen of Tralles in Asia had five
sons, who were all distinguished in their respective professions by
merit and success. Olympius excelled in the knowledge and practice
of the Roman jurisprudence. Dioscorus and Alexander became learned
physicians; but the skill of the former was exercised for the benefit
of his fellow-citizens, while his more ambitious brother acquired wealth
and reputation at Rome. The fame of Metrodorus the grammarian, and
of Anthemius the mathematician and architect, reached the ears of the
emperor Justinian, who invited them to Constantinople; and while the one
instructed the rising generation in the schools of eloquence, the other
filled the capital and provinces with more lasting monuments of his
art. In a trifling dispute relative to the walls or windows of their
contiguous houses, he had been vanquished by the eloquence of his
neighbor Zeno; but the orator was defeated in his turn by the master
of mechanics, whose malicious, though harmless, stratagems are darkly
represented by the ignorance of Agathias. In a lower room, Anthemius
arranged several vessels or caldrons of water, each of them covered by
the wide bottom of a leathern tube, which rose to a narrow top, and
was artificially conveyed among the joists and rafters of the adjacent
building. A fire was kindled beneath the caldron; the steam of the
boiling water ascended through the tubes; the house was shaken by the
efforts of imprisoned air, and its trembling inhabitants might wonder
that the city was unconscious of the earthquake which they had felt. At
another time, the friends of Zeno, as they sat at table, were dazzled
by the intolerable light which flashed in their eyes from the reflecting
mirrors of Anthemius; they were astonished by the noise which he
produced from the collision of certain minute and sonorous particles;
and the orator declared in tragic style to the senate, that a mere
mortal must yield to the power of an antagonist, who shook the earth
with the trident of Neptune, and imitated the thunder and lightning of
Jove himself. The genius of Anthemius, and his colleague Isidore
the Milesian, was excited and employed by a prince, whose taste for
architecture had degenerated into a mischievous and costly passion.
His favorite architects submitted their designs and difficulties to
Justinian, and discreetly confessed how much their laborious meditations
were surpassed by the intuitive knowledge of celestial inspiration of an
emperor, whose views were always directed to the benefit of his people,
the glory of his reign, and the salvation of his soul.