a more prosperous condition than it had known since the death of
Constantine. Since the Ostrogoths had moved out of the Balkan Peninsula in
A.D. 487, it had not suffered from any very long or destructive invasion
from without. The Slavonic tribes, now heard of for the first time, and
the Bulgarians had made raids across the Danube, but they had not yet
shown any signs of settling down—as the Goths had done—within the limits
of the empire. Their incursions, though vexatious, were not dangerous.
Still the European provinces of the empire were in worse condition than
the Asiatic, and were far from having recovered the effects of the ravages
of Fritigern and Alaric, Attila, and Theodoric. But the more fortunate
Asiatic lands had hardly seen a foreign enemy for centuries.(5) Except in
the immediate neighbourhood of the Persian frontier there was no danger,
and Persian wars had been infrequent of late. Southern Asia Minor had once
or twice suffered from internal risings—rebellions of the warlike
Isaurians—but civil war left no such permanent mark on the land as did
barbarian invasions. On the whole, the resources of the provinces beyond
the Bosphorus were intact.
Justinus in his quiet reign had spent little or none of the great hoard of
treasure which Anastasius had bequeathed to him. There were more than
300,000 lbs. of gold [£13,400,000] in store when Justinian came to the
throne. The army, as we have had occasion to relate in the last chapter,
was in good order, and composed in a larger proportion of born subjects of
the empire than it had been at any time since the battle of Adrianople.
There would appear to have been from 150,000 to 200,000 men under arms,
but the extent of the frontiers of the empire were so great that Justinian
never sent out a single army of more than 30,000 strong, and forces of
only a third of that number are often found entrusted with such mighty
enterprises as the invasion of Africa or the defence of the Armenian
border. The flower of the Roman army was no longer its infantry, but its
mailed horsemen (_Cataphracti_), armed with lance and bow, as the Parthian
cavalry had once been of old. The infantry comprised more archers and
javelin-men than heavy troops: the Isaurians and other provincials of the
mountainous parts of Asia Minor were reckoned the best of them. Among both
horse and foot large bodies of foreign auxiliaries were still found: the
Huns and Arabs supplied light cavalry, the German Herules and Gepidæ from
beyond the Danube heavier troops.
The weakest point in the empire when Justinian took it over was its
financial system. The cardinal maxim of political economy, that “taxes
should be raised in the manner least oppressive to those who pay them” was
as yet undreamt of. The exaction of arbitrary customs dues, and the
frequent grant of monopolies was noxious to trade. The deplorable system
of tax-farming through middlemen was employed in many branches of the
revenue. Landed proprietors, small and great, were still mercilessly
overtaxed, in consideration of their exemption from military service. The
budget was always handicapped by the necessity for providing free corn for
the populace of Constantinople. Yet in spite of all these drawbacks
Justinian enjoyed an enormous and steady revenue. His finance minister,
John of Cappadocia, was such an ingenious extortioner that the treasury
was never empty in the hardest stress of war and famine: but it was kept
full at the expense of the future. The grinding taxation of Justinian’s
reign bore fruit in the permanent impoverishment of the provinces: his
successors were never able to raise such a revenue again. Here again
Justinian may well be compared to Louis XIV.
Justinian’s policy divides into the departments of internal and foreign
affairs. Of his doings as legislator, administrator, theologian, and
builder, we shall speak in their proper place. But the history of his
foreign policy forms the main interest of his reign. He had determined to
take up a task which none of his predecessors since the division of the
Empire under Arcadius and Honorius had dared to contemplate. It was his
dream to re-unite under his sceptre the German kingdoms in the Western
Mediterranean which had been formed out of the broken fragments of the
realm of Honorius; and to end the solemn pretence by which he was
nominally acknowledged as Emperor West of the Adriatic, while really all
power was in the hands of the German rulers who posed as his vicegerents.
He aimed at reconquering Italy, Africa, and Spain—if not the further
provinces of the old empire. We shall see that he went far towards
accomplishing his intention.
But during the first five years of his reign his attention was distracted
by other matters. The first of them was an obstinate war of four years’
duration, with Kobad, King of Persia. The causes of quarrel were
ultimately the rival pretensions of the Roman and Persian Empires to the
suzerainty of the small states on their northern frontiers near the Black
Sea, the kingdoms of Lazica and Iberia, and more proximately the
strengthening of the fortresses on the Mesopotamian border by Justinian.
His fortification of Dara, close to the Persian frontier town of Nisibis,
was the _casus belli_ chosen by Kobad, who declared war in 528, a year
after Justinian’s accession.
The Persian war was bloody, but absolutely indecisive. All the attacks of
the enemy were repelled, and one great pitched battle won over him at Dara
in 530. But neither party succeeded in taking a single fortress of
importance from the other; and when, on the death of Kobad, his son
Chosroës made peace with the empire, the terms amounted to the restoration
of the old frontier. The only importance of the war was that it enabled
Justinian to test his army, and showed him that he possessed an officer of
first-rate merit in Belisarius, the victor of the battle of Dara.
This famous general was a native of the Thracian inland; he entered the
army very young, and rose rapidly, till at the age of twenty-three he was
already Governor of Dara, and at twenty-five _Magister militum_ of the
East.(6) His influence at Court was very great, as he had married
Antonina, the favourite and confidante of the Empress Theodora. His
position, indeed, was not unlike that which Marlborough, owing to his
wife’s ascendency, enjoyed at the Court of Queen Anne. Like Marlborough,
too, Belisarius was ruled and bullied by his clever and unscrupulous wife.
Unlike the great Duchess Sarah, Antonina never set herself to thwart her
mistress; but after Theodora’s death she and her husband lost favour, and
in declining years knew much the same misfortune as did the Marlboroughs.
The year which saw the Persian War end [A.D. 532], saw also the rise and
fall of another danger, which while it lasted was much more threatening to
the Emperor’s life and power. We have already noticed the “Blues” and
“Greens,” the great factions of the Byzantine Circus.(7) All through the
fifth century they had been growing stronger, and interfered more and more
in politics, and even in religious controversies. To be a “Green” in 530
meant to be a partisan of the house of the late Emperor Anastasius, and a
Monophysite.(8) The “Blues” posed as partisans of the house of Justinus,
and as strictly orthodox in matters ecclesiastical. From mere Circus
factions they had almost grown into political parties; but they still
retained at the bottom many traces of their low sporting origin. The
rougher elements pre-dominated in them; they were prone to riot and
mischief, and, as the events of 532 were to show, they were a serious
danger to the State.
In January of that year there was serious rioting in the streets.
Justinian, though ordinarily he favoured the Blue faction, impartially
ordered the leaders of the rioters on both sides to be put to death. Seven
were selected for execution, and four of them were duly beheaded in the
presence of a great and angry mob, in front of the monastery of St. Conon.
The last three rioters were to be hung, but the hangman so bungled his
task that two of the criminals, one a Blue the other a Green, fell to the
ground alive. The guards seized them and they were again suspended; but
once more—owing no doubt to the terror of the executioners at the menaces
of the mob—the rope slipped. Then the multitude broke loose, the guards
were swept away, and the half-hung criminals were thrust into sanctuary at
the adjacent monastery.
This exciting incident proved the commencement of six days of desperate
rioting. The Blues and Greens united, and taking as their watchword,
_Nika_, “conquer,” swept through the city, crying for the deposition of
John of Cappadocia, the unpopular finance minister, and of Eudemius,
Praefect of the city, who was immediately responsible for the executions.
The ordinary police of the capital were quite unable to master them, and
Justinian was weak enough to promise to dismiss the officials. But the mob
was now quite out of hand, and refused to disperse: the trouble was
fomented by the partisans of the house of the late emperor, who began to
shout for the deposition of Justinian, and wished to make Hypatius, nephew
of Anastasius, Cæsar in his stead. The city was almost empty of troops,
owing to the garrison having been sent to the Persian War. The Emperor
could only count on 4,000 men of the Imperial Guard, a few German
auxiliaries, and a regiment of 500 “Cataphracti,” mailed horsemen, under
Belisarius, who had just returned from the seat of war.
Belisarius was placed in command of the whole, and sallied out to clear
the streets, but the rioters, showing the same pluck that the Byzantine
mob displayed against the soldiers of Gainas a hundred and twenty-five
years before, offered a stout resistance. The main fighting took place
around the great square of the Augustaeum, between the Imperial palace and
the Hippodrome. In the heat of the fight the rebels set fire to the Brazen
Porch by the Senate House. The Senate House caught fire, and then the
conflagration spread east and north, till it was wafted across the square
to St. Sophia. On the third day of the riot the great cathedral was burnt
to the ground, and from thence the flames issued out to burn the hospital
of Sampson and the church of St. Irene.(9) The fire checked the fighting,
and the insurgents were now in possession of most of the city. But they
could not find their chosen leader, for the unfortunate Hypatius, who had
no desire to risk his neck, had taken refuge with the Emperor in the
palace. It was not till he was actually driven out by Justinian, who
feared to have him about his person, that this rebel in spite of himself,
fell into the hands of his own adherents. But on the sixth day of the
riots they led him to the Hippodrome, installed him in the royal seat of
the Kathisma, and crowned him there with a gold chain of his wife’s, for
want of a proper diadem.
[Illustration]
Theodora Imperatrix. _From the Painting by Val. Prinsep. The copyright is
in the Artist’s hands._
Meanwhile there was dismay and diversity of councils in the Palace. John
of Cappadocia and many other ministers strove to persuade the Emperor to
fly by sea, and gather additional troops at Heraclea. There was nothing
left in his power save the palace, and they insisted that if he remained
there longer he would be surrounded by the rebels and cut off from escape.
It was then that the Empress Theodora rose to the level of the occasion,
refused to fly, and urged her husband to make one final assault on the
enemy. Her words are preserved by Procopius.
“This is no occasion to keep to the old rule that a woman must not speak
in the council. Those who are most concerned have most right to dictate
the course of action. Now every man must die once, and for a king death is
better than dethronement and exile. May I never see the day when my purple
robe is stripped from me, and when I am no more called Lady and Mistress!
If you wish, O Emperor, to save your life, nothing is easier: there are
your ships and the sea. But _I_ agree with the old saying that ‘Empire is
the best winding-sheet.’ ”
Spurred on by his wife’s bold words, Justinian ordered a last assault on
the rebels, and Belisarius led out his full force. The factions were now
in the Hippodrome, saluting their newly-crowned leader with shouts of
“_Hypatie Auguste, tu vincas,_” preparatory to a final attack on the
palace. Belisarius attacked at once all three gates of the Hippodrome:
that directed against the door of the Kathisma failed, but the soldiery
forced both the side entrances, and after a hard struggle the rebels were
entirely routed. Crowded into the enormous building with only five exits,
they fell in thousands by the swords of the victorious Imperialists. It is
said that 35,000 men were slain in the six days of this great “Sedition of
Nika.”
It is curious to learn that not even this awful slaughter succeeded in
crushing the factions. We hear of the Blues and Greens still rioting on
various occasions during the next fifty years. But they never came again
so near to changing the course of history as in the famous rising of A.D.
532.
VII. JUSTINIAN’S FOREIGN CONQUESTS.
After the Persians had drawn back, foiled in their attempt to conquer
Mesopotamia, and after the suppression of the “Nika” sedition had cowed
the unruly populace of Constantinople, Justinian found himself at last
free, and was able to take in hand his great scheme for the reconquest of
the lost provinces of the empire.
The enforced delay of six years between his accession and his first
attempt to execute his great plan, was, as it happened, extremely
favourable to the Emperor. In each of the two German kingdoms with which
he had first to deal, the power had passed within those six years into the
hands of a weak and incapable sovereign. In Africa, Hilderic, the king of
the Vandals, had been dethroned by his cousin Gelimer, a warlike and
ambitious, but very incapable, ruler. In Italy, Theodoric, the great king
of the Ostrogoths, had died in A.D. 526, and his grandson and successor,
Athalaric, in A.D. 533. After the death of the young Athalaric, the
kingdom fell to his mother, Amalasuntha, and she, compelled by Gothic
public opinion to take a husband to rule in her behalf, had unwisely
wedded Theodahat, her nearest kinsman. He was cruel, scheming, and
suspicious, and murdered his wife, within a year of her having brought him
the kingdom of Italy as a dowry.(10) Cowardly and avaricious as well as
ungrateful, Theodahat possessed exactly those vices which were most suited
to make him the scorn of his warlike subjects; he could count neither on
their loyalty nor their respect in the event of a war.
Both the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy were at this time so
weak as to invite an attack by an enterprising neighbour. They had, in
fact, conquered larger realms than their limited numbers were really able
to control. The original tribal hordes which had subdued Africa and Italy
were composed of fifty or sixty thousand warriors, with their wives and
children. Now such a body concentrated on one spot was powerful enough to
bear down everything before it. But when the conquerors spread themselves
abroad, they were but a sprinkling among the millions of provincials whom
they had to govern. In all Italy there were probably but three
cities—Ravenna, Verona, and Pavia—in which the Ostrogoths formed a large
proportion of the population. A great army makes but a small nation, and
the Goths and Vandals were too few to occupy such wide tracts as Italy and
Africa. They formed merely a small aristocracy, governing by dint of the
ascendency which their fathers had won over the minds of the unwarlike
populations which they had subdued. The only chance for the survival of
the Ostrogothic and Vandal monarchies lay in the possibility of their
amalgamating with the Roman provincial population, as the Franks, under
more favourable circumstances, did with the conquered inhabitants of Gaul.
This was seen by Theodoric, the great conqueror of Italy; and he did his
best to reconcile Goth and Roman, held the balance with strict justice
between the two, and employed Romans as well as Goths in the government of
the country. But one generation does little to assuage old hatreds such as
that between the conquerors and the conquered in Italy. Theodoric was
succeeded by a child, and then by a ruffian, and his work ended with him.
Even he was unable to strike at the most fatal difference of all between
his countrymen and the Italians. The Goths were Arians, having been
converted to Christianity in the fourth century by missionaries who held
the Arian heresy. Their subjects, on the other hand, were Orthodox
Catholics, almost without exception. When religious hatred was added to
race hatred, there was hardly any hope of welding together the two
nationalities.
Another source of weakness in the kingdoms of Africa and Italy must be
noted. The Vandals of the third generation and the Goths of the second,
after their settlement in the south, seem to have degenerated in courage
and stamina. It may be that the climate was unfavourable to races reared
in the Danube lands; it may be that the temptations of unlimited luxury
offered by Roman civilization sufficed to demoralize them. A Gothic sage
observed at the time that “the Goth, when rich, tends to become Roman in
his habits; the Roman, when poor, Gothic in his.” There was truth in this
saying, and the result of the change was ominous for the permanence of the
kingdom of Italy. If the masters softened and the subjects hardened, they
would not preserve for ever their respective positions.
The case of the kingdom of Africa was infinitely worse than that of the
kingdom of Italy. The Vandals were less numerous than the Goths, in
proportion to their subjects; they were not merely heretics, but fanatical
and persecuting heretics, which the Goths were not. Moreover, they had
never had at their head a great organizer and administrator like
Theodoric, but only a succession of turbulent princes of the Viking type,
fit for war and nothing else.
Justinian declared war on King Gelimer the moment that he had made peace
with Persia, using as his _casus belli_, not a definite re-assertion of
the claim of the empire over Africa—for such language would have provoked
the rulers of Italy and Spain to join the Vandals, but the fact that
Gelimer had wrongfully deposed Hilderic, the Emperor’s ally. In July, 533,
Belisarius, who was now at the height of his favour for his successful
suppression of the “Nika” rioters, sailed from the Bosphorus with an army
of 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. He was accompanied, luckily for history,
by his secretary, Procopius, a very capable writer, who has left a full
account of his master’s campaigns. Belisarius landed at Tripoli, at the
extreme eastern limit of the Vandal power. The town was at once betrayed
to him by its Roman inhabitants. From thence he advanced cautiously along
the coast, meeting with no opposition; for the incapable Gelimer had been
caught unprepared, and was still engaged in calling in his scattered
warriors. It was not till he had approached within ten miles of Carthage
that Belisarius was attacked by the Vandals. After a hard struggle he
defeated them, and the city fell into his hands next clay. The provincials
were delighted at the rout of their masters, and welcomed the imperial
army with joy; there was neither riot nor pillage, and Carthage had not
the aspect of a conquered town.
Calling up his last reserves, Gelimer made one more attempt to try the
fortunes of war. He advanced on Carthage, and was met by Belisarius at
Tricameron, on the road to Bulla. Again the day went against him; his army
broke up, his last fortresses threw open their gates, and there was an end
of the Vandal kingdom. It had existed just 104 years, since Genseric
entered Africa in A.D. 429.
Gelimer took refuge for a time with the Moorish tribes who dwelt in the
fastnesses of Mount Atlas. But ere long he resolved to surrender himself
to Belisarius, whose humanity was as well known as his courage. He sent to
Carthage to say that he was about to give himself up, and—so the story
goes—asked but for three things: a harp, to which to chant a dirge he had
written on the fate of himself and the Vandal race; a sponge, to wipe away
his tears; and a loaf, a delicacy he had not tasted ever since he had been
forced to partake of the unsavoury food of the Moors! Belisarius received
Gelimer with kindness, and took him to Constantinople, along with the
treasures of the palace of Carthage, which included many of the spoils of
Rome captured by the Vandals eighty-six years before, when they sacked the
imperial city, in 453. It is said that among these spoils were some of the
golden vessels of the Temple at Jerusalem, which Titus had brought in
triumph to Rome, and which Gaiseric had carried from Rome to Carthage.
[Illustration]
Cavalry Scouts. (_From a Byzantine MS._) _Reproduced from "L’Art
Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
The triumphal entry of Belisarius into Constantinople with his captives
and his spoils, encouraged Justinian to order instant preparations for an
attack on the second German kingdom, on his western frontier. He declared
war on the wretched King Theodahat in the summer of A.D. 435, using as his
pretext the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, whom, as we have already said,
her ungrateful spouse had first imprisoned and then strangled within a
year of their marriage.
The king of the Goths, whether he was conscience-stricken or merely
cowardly, showed the greatest terror at the declaration of war. He even
wrote to Constantinople offering to resign his crown, if the Emperor would
guarantee his life and his private property. Meanwhile he consulted
soothsayers and magicians about his prospects, for he was as superstitious
as he was incompetent. Procopius tells us a strange tale of the doings of
a Jewish magician of note, to whom Theodahat applied. He took thirty
pigs—to represent unclean Gentiles, we must suppose—and penned them in
three styes, ten in each. The one part he called “Goths,” the second
“Italians,” and the third “Imperialists.” He left the beasts without food
or water for ten days, and bade the king visit them at the end of that
time, and take augury from their condition. When Theodahat looked in he
found all but two of the “Goth” pigs dead, and half of the “Italians,” but
the “Imperialists,” though gaunt and wasted, were all, or almost all,
alive. This portent the Jew expounded as meaning that at the end of the
approaching war the Gothic race would be exterminated and their Italian
subjects terribly thinned, while the Imperial troops would conquer, though
with toil and difficult.
While Theodahat was busying himself with portents, actual war had broken
out on the Illyrian frontier between the Goths and the governor of
Dalmatia. There was no use in making further offers to Justinian, and the
king of Italy had to face the situation as best he could.
In the summer of 535, Belisarius landed in Sicily, with an even smaller
army than had been given him to conquer Africa—only 3,000 Roman troops,
all Isaurians, and 4,500 barbarian auxiliaries of different sorts.
Belisarius’ first campaign was as fortunate as had been that which he had
waged against Gelimer. All the Sicilian towns threw open their gates
except Palermo, where there was a considerable Gothic garrison, and
Palermo fell after a short siege. In six months the whole island was in
the hands of Belisarius.
Theodahat seemed incapable of defending himself; he fell into a condition
of abject helplessness, which so provoked his warlike subjects, that when
the news came that Belisarius had crossed over into Italy and taken
Rhegium, they rose and slew him. In his stead the army of the Goths
elected as their king Witiges, a middle-aged warrior, well known for
personal courage and integrity, but quite incompetent to face the
impending storm.