fit into which he had been thrown by loss of blood, were expressive of
his martial spirit. He called for his horse and arms, and was impatient
to rush into the battle. His remaining strength was exhausted by the
painful effort, and the surgeons who examined his wound discovered the
symptoms of approaching death. He employed the awful moments with the
firm temper of a hero and a sage; the philosophers who had accompanied
him in this fatal expedition compared the tent of Julian with the prison
of Socrates; and the spectators whom duty or friendship or curiosity had
assembled round his couch listened with respectful grief to the funeral
oration of their dying emperor:--"Friends and fellow soldiers, the
seasonable period of my departure is now arrived, and I discharge, with
the cheerfulness of a ready debtor, the demands of nature. I have
learned from philosophy how much the soul is more excellent than the
body; and that the separation of the nobler substance should be the
subject of joy rather than of affliction. I have learned from religion
that an earthly death has often been the reward of piety; and I accept,
as a favor of the gods, the mortal stroke that secures me from the
danger of disgracing a character which has hitherto been supported by
virtue and fortitude. I die without remorse, as I have lived without
guilt. I am pleased to reflect on the innocence of my private life; and
I can affirm with confidence that the supreme authority, that emanation
of the Divine power, has been preserved in my hands pure and immaculate.
Detesting the corrupt and destructive maxims of despotism, I have
considered the happiness of the people as the end of government.
Submitting my actions to the laws of prudence, of justice, and of
moderation, I have trusted the event to the care of Providence. Peace
was the object of my counsels as long as peace was consistent with the
public welfare; but when the imperious voice of my country summoned me
to arms, I exposed my person to the dangers of war with the clear
foreknowledge (which I had acquired from the art of divination) that I
was destined to fall by the sword. I now offer my tribute of gratitude
to the Eternal Being, who has not suffered me to perish by the cruelty
of a tyrant, by the secret dagger of conspiracy, or by the slow tortures
of lingering disease. He has given me, in the midst of an honorable
career, a splendid and glorious departure from this world; and I hold it
equally absurd, equally base, to solicit or to decline the stroke of
fate. Thus much I have attempted to say; but my strength fails me, and I
feel the approach of death. I shall cautiously refrain from any word
that may tend to influence your suffrages in the election of an emperor.
My choice might be imprudent or injudicious; and if it should not be
ratified by the consent of the army, it might be fatal to the person
whom I should recommend. I shall only, as a good citizen, express my
hopes that the Romans may be blessed with the government of a virtuous
sovereign." After this discourse, which Julian pronounced in a firm and
gentle tone of voice, he distributed by a military testament the remains
of his private fortune; and making some inquiry why Anatolius was not
present, he understood from the answer of Sallust that Anatolius was
killed, and bewailed with amiable inconsistency the loss of his friend.
At the same time he reproved the immoderate grief of the spectators, and
conjured them not to disgrace by unmanly tears the fate of a prince who
in a few moments would be united with heaven and with the stars. The
spectators were silent; and Julian entered into a metaphysical argument
with the philosophers Priscus and Maximus on the nature of the soul. The
efforts which he made, of mind as well as body, most probably hastened
his death. His wound began to bleed with fresh violence; his respiration
was embarrassed by the swelling of the veins; he called for a draught of
cold water, and as soon as he had drunk it expired without pain, about
the hour of midnight. Such was the end of that extraordinary man, in the
thirty-second year of his age, after a reign of one year and about eight
months from the death of Constantius. In his last moments he displayed,
perhaps with some ostentation, the love of virtue and of fame which had
been the ruling passions of his life.
THE FALL OF ROME
At the hour of midnight the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the
inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet.
Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the
imperial city which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of
mankind was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany
and Scythia.
The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a
vanquished city, discovered however some regard for the laws of
humanity and religion. He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the
rewards of valor, and to enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy
and effeminate people; but he exhorted them at the same time to spare
the lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of
the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul as holy and inviolable sanctuaries.
Amidst the horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the Christian Goths
displayed the fervor of a recent conversion; and some instances of their
uncommon piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by the
zeal of ecclesiastical writers. While the Barbarians roamed through the
city in quest of prey, the humble dwelling of an aged virgin who had
devoted her life to the service of the altar was forced open by one of
the powerful Goths. He immediately demanded, though in civil language,
all the gold and silver in her possession; and was astonished at the
readiness with which she conducted him to a splendid hoard of massy
plate of the richest materials and the most curious workmanship. The
Barbarian viewed with wonder and delight this valuable acquisition, till
he was interrupted by a serious admonition addressed to him in the
following words: "These," said she, "are the consecrated vessels
belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to touch them, the sacrilegious
deed will remain on your conscience. For my part, I dare not keep what I
am unable to defend." The Gothic captain, struck with reverential awe,
dispatched a messenger to inform the King of the treasure which he had
discovered, and received a peremptory order from Alaric that all the
consecrated plate and ornaments should be transported, without damage or
delay, to the church of the Apostle. From the extremity, perhaps, of the
Quirinal hill, to the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous
detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle through the principal
streets, protected with glittering arms the long train of their devout
companions, who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and
silver; and the martial shouts of the Barbarians were mingled with the
sound of religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses a crowd of
Christians hastened to join this edifying procession; and a multitude of
fugitives, without distinction of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the
good fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the
Vatican. The learned work 'Concerning the City of God' was professedly
composed by St. Augustine to justify the ways of Providence in the
destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates with peculiar
satisfaction this memorable triumph of Christ, and insults his
adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a
town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been
able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries.
In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican and the Apostolic churches could receive a very small proportion
of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns
who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the name, or
at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect without any breach
of charity or candor that in the hour of savage license, when every
passion was inflamed and every restraint was removed, the precepts of
the gospel seldom influenced the behavior of the Gothic Christians. The
writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency have freely
confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans, and that the
streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which remained without
burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the Barbarians were provoked
by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the
innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves
was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which
they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty
or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself....
The want of youth, or beauty, or chastity protected the greatest part of
the Roman women from the danger of a rape. But avarice is an insatiate
and universal passion, since the enjoyment of almost every object that
can afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind may
be procured by the possession of wealth. In the pillage of Rome, a just
preference was given to gold and jewels, which contain the greatest
value in the smallest compass and weight; but after these portable
riches had been removed by the more diligent robbers, the palaces of
Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture. The
sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and
purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons that always followed the
march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly
handled or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of
the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil,
was shivered into fragments by the stroke of a battle-axe. The
acquisition of riches served only to stimulate the avarice of the
rapacious Barbarians, who proceeded by threats, by blows, and by
tortures, to force from their prisoners the confession of hidden
treasure. Visible splendor and expense were alleged as the proof of a
plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to a
parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured
the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of
their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under
the lash for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures. The edifices
of Rome, though the damage has been much exaggerated, received some
injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance through the
Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent houses to guide their march and
to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which encountered
no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and
public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in
the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration.
Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could scarcely
consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength of man
was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures. Some
truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion that the wrath
of Heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage, and that the proud
Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and heroes,
was leveled in the dust by the stroke of lightning....
It was not easy to compute the multitudes who, from an honorable station
and a prosperous future, were suddenly reduced to the miserable
condition of captives and exiles.... The nations who invaded the Roman
empire had driven before them into Italy whole troops of hungry and
affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of famine.
The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to the most
lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge.... The
Italian fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the coast
of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the
village of Bethlem, the solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female
converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex and every
age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past
fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire
with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin
disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to
exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who
applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of Oriental prophecy, were
sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital and the
dissolution of the globe.
SILK
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
silkworms 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 marvelous 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, the
color of the skin, might gratify vanity or provoke desire; the silks
which had been closely woven in China were sometimes unraveled by the
Phoenician 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 silkworm 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 traveler 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 era 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 Phoenicians, 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 AEthiopian ship as
a simple passenger.
As silk became of indispensable use, the Emperor Justinian saw with
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
AEthiopians 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 silkworms, 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 silkworm 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 were 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 practiced
by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and the entire decades of Livy
would have been perpetuated in the editions of the sixth century.
MAHOMET'S DEATH AND CHARACTER