The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
By Edward Gibbon
With extra notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)
Chapter XLII
Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common
faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or
virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured,
not so much by their real elevation, as by the height to
which they ascend above the level of their age and country;
and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass
unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies.
Leonidas, and his three hundred companions, devoted their
lives at Thermopylae; but the education of the infant, the
boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost insured, this
memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather
than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight
thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. (1) The
great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had
defeated in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced
fifteen hundred cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea:
(2) but the fortune of Rome flew before his eagles; the
nations were oppressed by their own fears, and the
invincible legions which he commanded, had been formed by
the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages. In this
view, the character of Belisarius may be deservedly placed
above the heroes of the ancient republics. His
imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his
virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection;
he raised himself without a master or a rival; and so
inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his
sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of
his adversaries. Under his command, the subjects of
Justinian often deserved to be called Romans: but the
unwarlike appellation of Greeks was imposed as a term of
reproach by the haughty Goths; who affected to blush, that
they must dispute the kingdom of Italy with a nation of
tragedians pantomimes, and pirates. (3) The climate of Asia
has indeed been found less congenial than that of Europe to
military spirit: those populous countries were enervated by
luxury, despotism, and superstition; and the monks were more
expensive and more numerous than the soldiers of the East.
The regular force of the empire had once amounted to six
hundred and forty- five thousand men: it was reduced, in the
time of Justinian, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and
this number, large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over
the sea and land; in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt,
on the banks of the Danube, the coast of the Euxine, and the
frontiers of Persia. The citizen was exhausted, yet the
soldier was unpaid; his poverty was mischievously soothed by
the privilege of rapine and indolence; and the tardy
payments were detained and intercepted by the fraud of those
agents who usurp, without courage or danger, the emoluments
of war. Public and private distress recruited the armies of
the state; but in the field, and still more in the presence
of the enemy, their numbers were always defective. The want
of national spirit was supplied by the precarious faith and
disorderly service of Barbarian mercenaries. Even military
honor, which has often survived the loss of virtue and
freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were
multiplied beyond the example of former times, labored only
to prevent the success, or to sully the reputation of their
colleagues; and they had been taught by experience, that if
merit sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or even guilt,
would obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. (4) In
such an age, the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of
Narses, shine with incomparable lustre; but they are
encompassed with the darkest shades of disgrace and
calamity. While the lieutenant of Justinian subdued the
kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the emperor, (5) timid,
though ambitious, balanced the forces of the Barbarians,
fomented their divisions by flattery and falsehood, and
invited by his patience and liberality the repetition of
injuries. (6) The keys of Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna, were
presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was destroyed by
the Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of
Constantinople.
Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to
the state, since they abolished the important barrier of the
Upper Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by
Theodoric and his daughter. For the defence of Italy, the
Goths evacuated Pannonia and Noricum, which they left in a
peaceful and flourishing condition: the sovereignty was
claimed by the emperor of the Romans; the actual possession
was abandoned to the boldness of the first invader. On the
opposite banks of the Danube, the plains of Upper Hungary
and the Transylvanian hills were possessed, since the death
of Attila, by the tribes of the Gepidae, who respected the
Gothic arms, and despised, not indeed the gold of the
Romans, but the secret motive of their annual subsidies.
The vacant fortifications of the river were instantly
occupied by these Barbarians; their standards were planted
on the walls of Sirmium and Belgrade; and the ironical tone
of their apology aggravated this insult on the majesty of
the empire. "So extensive, O Caesar, are your dominions, so
numerous are your cities, that you are continually seeking
for nations to whom, either in peace or in war, you may
relinquish these useless possessions. The Gepidae are your
brave and faithful allies; and if they have anticipated your
gifts, they have shown a just confidence in your bounty."
Their presumption was excused by the mode of revenge which
Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting the rights of a
sovereign for the protection of his subjects, the emperor
invited a strange people to invade and possess the Roman
provinces between the Danube and the Alps and the ambition
of the Gepidae was checked by the rising power and fame of
the Lombards. (7) This corrupt appellation has been diffused
in the thirteenth century by the merchants and bankers, the
Italian posterity of these savage warriors: but the original
name of Langobards is expressive only of the peculiar length
and fashion of their beards. I am not disposed either to
question or to justify their Scandinavian origin; (8) nor to
pursue the migrations of the Lombards through unknown
regions and marvellous adventures. About the time of
Augustus and Trajan, a ray of historic light breaks on the
darkness of their antiquities, and they are discovered, for
the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder. Fierce,
beyond the example of the Germans, they delighted to
propagate the tremendous belief, that their heads were
formed like the heads of dogs, and that they drank the blood
of their enemies, whom they vanquished in battle. The
smallness of their numbers was recruited by the adoption of
their bravest slaves; and alone, amidst their powerful
neighbors, they defended by arms their high-spirited
independence. In the tempests of the north, which
overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of
the Lombards still floated on the surface: they gradually
descended towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end
of four hundred years, they again appear with their ancient
valor and renown. Their manners were not less ferocious.
The assassination of a royal guest was executed in the
presence, and by the command, of the king's daughter, who
had been provoked by some words of insult, and disappointed
by his diminutive stature; and a tribute, the price of
blood, was imposed on the Lombards, by his brother the king
of the Heruli. Adversity revived a sense of moderation and
justice, and the insolence of conquest was chastised by the
signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the Heruli, who
were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. (9) The
victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship
of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they
passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the
cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the
spirit of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample
limits; they wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as
far as Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness to
enter the towns and houses of their Roman allies, and to
seize the captives who had escaped from their audacious
hands. These acts of hostility, the sallies, as it might be
pretended, of some loose adventurers, were disowned by the
nation, and excused by the emperor; but the arms of the
Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of thirty
years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the
Gepidae. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause
before the throne of Constantinople; and the crafty
Justinian, to whom the Barbarians were almost equally
odious, pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and
dexterously protracted the war by slow and ineffectual
succors. Their strength was formidable, since the Lombards,
who sent into the field several myriads of soldiers, still
claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the Romans.
Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of
courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a
panic; they fled from each other, and the rival kings
remained with their guards in the midst of an empty plain.
A short truce was obtained; but their mutual resentment
again kindled; and the remembrance of their shame rendered
the next encounter more desperate and bloody Forty thousand
of the Barbarians perished in the decisive battle, which
broke the power of the Gepidae, transferred the fears and
wishes of Justinian, and first displayed the character of
Alboin, the youthful prince of the Lombards, and the future
conqueror of Italy. (10)
The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of
Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age
of Justinian, under the two great families of the Bulgarians
(11) and the Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers,
the former, who touched the Euxine and the Lake Maeotis,
derived from the Huns their name or descent; and it is
needless to renew the simple and well-known picture of
Tartar manners. They were bold and dexterous archers, who
drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh, of their fleet and
indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds followed, or
rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose
inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were
practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation
was divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who
pursued each other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly
disputed the friendship, or rather the gifts, of the
emperor; and the distinctions which nature had fixed between
the faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an
ambassador who received only verbal instructions from the
mouth of his illiterate prince. (12) The Bulgarians, of
whatsoever species, were equally attracted by Roman wealth:
they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian name, and
their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic Sea,
or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same
race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every
age, the possession of the same countries. Their numerous
tribes, however distant or adverse, used one common
language, (it was harsh and irregular,) and where known by
the resemblance of their form, which deviated from the
swarthy Tartar, and approached without attaining the lofty
stature and fair complexion of the German. Four thousand six
hundred villages (13) were scattered over the provinces of
Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of
rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron.
Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on
the banks of rivers, or the edges of morasses, we may not
perhaps, without flattery, compare them to the architecture
of the beaver; which they resembled in a double issue, to
the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitant,
an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social, than
that marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather
than the labor of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of
the Sclavonians. Their sheep and horned cattle were large
and numerous, and the fields which they sowed with millet or
panic (14) afforded, in place of bread, a coarse and less
nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their neighbors
compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but on
the appearance of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a
people, whose unfavorable character is qualified by the
epithets of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their
supreme god, they adored an invisible master of the thunder.
The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate honors,
and the popular worship was expressed in vows and sacrifice.
The Sclavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or
even a magistrate; but their experience was too narrow,
their passions too headstrong, to compose a system of equal
law or general defence. Some voluntary respect was yielded
to age and valor; but each tribe or village existed as a
separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none
could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and
except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor;
their weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small
poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they dexterously
threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a
running noose. In the field, the Sclavonian infantry was
dangerous by their speed, agility, and hardiness: they swam,
they dived, they remained under water, drawing their breath
through a hollow cane; and a river or lake was often the
scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these were the
achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art was
unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and
their conquests were inglorious. (15)
I have marked the faint and general outline of the
Sclavonians and Bulgarians, without attempting to define
their intermediate boundaries, which were not accurately
known or respected by the Barbarians themselves. Their
importance was measured by their vicinity to the empire; and
the level country of Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied by
the Antes, (16) a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles
of Justinian with an epithet of conquest. (17) Against the
Antes he erected the fortifications of the Lower Danube; and
labored to secure the alliance of a people seated in the
direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two
hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the
Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to
stem the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed
Sclavonians, from a hundred tribes, pursued with almost
equal speed the footsteps of the Bulgarian horse. The
payment of one piece of gold for each soldier procured a
safe and easy retreat through the country of the Gepidae,
who commanded the passage of the Upper Danube. (18) The hopes
or fears of the Barbarians; their intense union or discord;
the accident of a frozen or shallow stream; the prospect of
harvest or vintage; the prosperity or distress of the
Romans; were the causes which produced the uniform
repetition of annual visits, (19) tedious in the narrative,
and destructive in the event. The same year, and possibly
the same month, in which Ravenna surrendered, was marked by
an invasion of the Huns or Bulgarians, so dreadful, that it
almost effaced the memory of their past inroads. They
spread from the suburbs of Constantinople to the Ionian
Gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or castles, erased
Potidaea, which Athens had built, and Philip had besieged,
and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses' heels one
hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of Justinian. In
a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the Thracian
Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the inhabitants,
boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to their
companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party,
which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans,
penetrated, without opposition, from the Straits of
Thermopylae to the Isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of
Greece has appeared an object too minute for the attention
of history. The works which the emperor raised for the
protection, but at the expense of his subjects, served only
to disclose the weakness of some neglected part; and the
walls, which by flattery had been deemed impregnable, were
either deserted by the garrison, or scaled by the
Barbarians. Three thousand Sclavonians, who insolently
divided themselves into two bands, discovered the weakness
and misery of a triumphant reign. They passed the Danube and
the Hebrus, vanquished the Roman generals who dared to
oppose their progress, and plundered, with impunity, the
cities of Illyricum and Thrace, each of which had arms and
numbers to overwhelm their contemptible assailants.
Whatever praise the boldness of the Sclavonians may deserve,
it is sullied by the wanton and deliberate cruelty which
they are accused of exercising on their prisoners. Without
distinction of rank, or age, or sex, the captives were
impaled or flayed alive, or suspended between four posts,
and beaten with clubs till they expired, or enclosed in some
spacious building, and left to perish in the flames with the
spoil and cattle which might impede the march of these
savage victors. (20) Perhaps a more impartial narrative would
reduce the number, and qualify the nature, of these horrid
acts; and they might sometimes be excused by the cruel laws
of retaliation. In the siege of Topirus, (21) whose obstinate
defence had enraged the Sclavonians, they massacred fifteen
thousand males; but they spared the women and children; the
most valuable captives were always reserved for labor or
ransom; the servitude was not rigorous, and the terms of
their deliverance were speedy and moderate. But the
subject, or the historian of Justinian, exhaled his just
indignation in the language of complaint and reproach; and
Procopius has confidently affirmed, that in a reign of
thirty-two years, each annual inroad of the Barbarians
consumed two hundred thousand of the inhabitants of the
Roman empire. The entire population of Turkish Europe,
which nearly corresponds with the provinces of Justinian,
would perhaps be incapable of supplying six millions of
persons, the result of this incredible estimate. (22)
In the midst of these obscure calamities, Europe felt the
shock of revolution, which first revealed to the world the
name and nation of the Turks. (A) Like Romulus, the founder
(B) of that martial people was suckled by a she-wolf, who
afterwards made him the father of a numerous progeny; and
the representation of that animal in the banners of the
Turks preserved the memory, or rather suggested the idea, of
a fable, which was invented, without any mutual intercourse,
by the shepherds of Latium and those of Scythia. At the
equal distance of two thousand miles from the Caspian, the
Icy, the Chinese, and the Bengal Seas, a ridge of mountains
is conspicuous, the centre, and perhaps the summit, of Asia;
which, in the language of different nations, has been styled
Imaus, and Caf, (23) and Altai, and the Golden Mountains, (C)!
and the Girdle of the Earth. The sides of the hills were
productive of minerals; and the iron forges, (24) for the
purpose of war, were exercised by the Turks, the most
despised portion of the slaves of the great khan of the
Geougen. But their servitude could only last till a leader,
bold and eloquent, should arise to persuade his countrymen
that the same arms which they forged for their masters,
might become, in their own hands, the instruments of freedom
and victory. They sallied from the mountains; (25) a sceptre
was the reward of his advice; and the annual ceremony, in
which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a smith's
hammer (D) was successively handled by the prince and his
nobles, recorded for ages the humble profession and rational
pride of the Turkish nation. Bertezena, (E)!! their first
leader, signalized their valor and his own in successful
combats against the neighboring tribes; but when he presumed
to ask in marriage the daughter of the great khan, the
insolent demand of a slave and a mechanic was contemptuously
rejected. The disgrace was expiated by a more noble alliance
with a princess of China; and the decisive battle which
almost extirpated the nation of the Geougen, established in
Tartary the new and more powerful empire of the Turks. (F)
They reigned over the north; but they confessed the vanity
of conquest, by their faithful attachment to the mountain of
their fathers. The royal encampment seldom lost sight of
Mount Altai, from whence the River Irtish descends to water
the rich pastures of the Calmucks, (26) which nourish the
largest sheep and oxen in the world. The soil is fruitful,
and the climate mild and temperate: the happy region was
ignorant of earthquake and pestilence; the emperor's throne
was turned towards the East, and a golden wolf on the top of
a spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. One of
the successors of Bertezena was tempted by the luxury and
superstition of China; but his design of building cities and
temples was defeated by the simple wisdom of a Barbarian
counsellor. "The Turks," he said, "are not equal in number
to one hundredth part of the inhabitants of China. If we
balance their power, and elude their armies, it is because
we wander without any fixed habitations in the exercise of
war and hunting. Are we strong? we advance and conquer: are
we feeble? we retire and are concealed. Should the Turks
confine themselves within the walls of cities, the loss of a
battle would be the destruction of their empire. The bonzes
preach only patience, humility, and the renunciation of the
world. Such, O king! is not the religion of heroes." They
entertained, with less reluctance, the doctrines of
Zoroaster; but the greatest part of the nation acquiesced,
without inquiry, in the opinions, or rather in the practice,
of their ancestors. The honors of sacrifice were reserved
for the supreme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns,
their obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the
earth; and their priests derived some profit from the art of
divination. Their unwritten laws were rigorous and
impartial: theft was punished with a tenfold restitution;
adultery, treason, and murder, with death; and no
chastisement could be inflicted too severe for the rare and
inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the subject nations
marched under the standard of the Turks, their cavalry, both
men and horses, were proudly computed by millions; one of
their effective armies consisted of four hundred thousand
soldiers, and in less than fifty years they were connected
in peace and war with the Romans, the Persians, and the
Chinese. In their northern limits, some vestige may be
discovered of the form and situation of Kamptchatka, of a
people of hunters and fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by
dogs, and whose habitations were buried in the earth. The
Turks were ignorant of astronomy; but the observation taken
by some learned Chinese, with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes
the royal camp in the latitude of forty-nine degrees, and
marks their extreme progress within three, or at least ten
degrees, of the polar circle. (27) Among their southern
conquests the most splendid was that of the Nephthalites, or
white Huns, a polite and warlike people, who possessed the
commercial cities of Bochara and Samarcand, who had
vanquished the Persian monarch, and carried their victorious
arms along the banks, and perhaps to the mouth, of the
Indus. On the side of the West, the Turkish cavalry
advanced to the Lake Maeotis. They passed that lake on the
ice. The khan who dwelt at the foot of Mount Altai issued
his commands for the siege of Bosphorus, (28) a city the
voluntary subject of Rome, and whose princes had formerly
been the friends of Athens. (29) To the east, the Turks
invaded China, as often as the vigor of the government was
relaxed: and I am taught to read in the history of the
times, that they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp
or grass; and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an
emperor who repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances.
This extent of savage empire compelled the Turkish monarch
to establish three subordinate princes of his own blood, who
soon forgot their gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors
were enervated by luxury, which is always fatal except to an
industrious people; the policy of China solicited the
vanquished nations to resume their independence and the
power of the Turks was limited to a period of two hundred
years. The revival of their name and dominion in the
southern countries of Asia are the events of a later age;
and the dynasties, which succeeded to their native realms,
may sleep in oblivion; since their history bears no relation
to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. (30)
In the rapid career of conquest, the Turks attacked and
subdued the nation of the Ogors or Varchonites (G) on the
banks of the River Til, which derived the epithet of Black
from its dark water or gloomy forests. (31) The khan of the
Ogors was slain with three hundred thousand of his subjects,
and their bodies were scattered over the space of four days'
journey: their surviving countrymen acknowledged the
strength and mercy of the Turks; and a small portion, about
twenty thousand warriors, preferred exile to servitude. They
followed the well-known road of the Volga, cherished the
error of the nations who confounded them with the Avars, and
spread the terror of that false though famous appellation,
which had not, however, saved its lawful proprietors from
the yoke of the Turks. (32) After a long and victorious
march, the new Avars arrived at the foot of Mount Caucasus,
in the country of the Alani (33) and Circassians, where they
first heard of the splendor and weakness of the Roman
empire. They humbly requested their confederate, the prince
of the Alani, to lead them to this source of riches; and
their ambassador, with the permission of the governor of
Lazica, was transported by the Euxine Sea to Constantinople.
The whole city was poured forth to behold with curiosity and
terror the aspect of a strange people: their long hair,
which hung in tresses down their backs, was gracefully bound
with ribbons, but the rest of their habit appeared to
imitate the fashion of the Huns. When they were admitted to
the audience of Justinian, Candish, the first of the
ambassadors, addressed the Roman emperor in these terms:
"You see before you, O mighty prince, the representatives of
the strongest and most populous of nations, the invincible,
the irresistible Avars. We are willing to devote ourselves
to your service: we are able to vanquish and destroy all the
enemies who now disturb your repose. But we expect, as the
price of our alliance, as the reward of our valor, precious
gifts, annual subsidies, and fruitful possessions." At the
time of this embassy, Justinian had reigned above thirty, he
had lived above seventy-five years: his mind, as well as his
body, was feeble and languid; and the conqueror of Africa
and Italy, careless of the permanent interest of his people,
aspired only to end his days in the bosom even of inglorious
peace. In a studied oration, he imparted to the senate his
resolution to dissemble the insult, and to purchase the
friendship of the Avars; and the whole senate, like the
mandarins of China, applauded the incomparable wisdom and
foresight of their sovereign. The instruments of luxury
were immediately prepared to captivate the Barbarians;
silken garments, soft and splendid beds, and chains and
collars incrusted with gold. The ambassadors, content with
such liberal reception, departed from Constantinople, and
Valentin, one of the emperor's guards, was sent with a
similar character to their camp at the foot of Mount
Caucasus. As their destruction or their success must be
alike advantageous to the empire, he persuaded them to
invade the enemies of Rome; and they were easily tempted, by
gifts and promises, to gratify their ruling inclinations.
These fugitives, who fled before the Turkish arms, passed
the Tanais and Borysthenes, and boldly advanced into the
heart of Poland and Germany, violating the law of nations,
and abusing the rights of victory. Before ten years had
elapsed, their camps were seated on the Danube and the Elbe,
many Bulgarian and Sclavonian names were obliterated from
the earth, and the remainder of their tribes are found, as
tributaries and vassals, under the standard of the Avars.
The chagan, the peculiar title of their king, still affected
to cultivate the friendship of the emperor; and Justinian
entertained some thoughts of fixing them in Pannonia, to
balance the prevailing power of the Lombards. But the
virtue or treachery of an Avar betrayed the secret enmity
and ambitious designs of their countrymen; and they loudly
complained of the timid, though jealous policy, of detaining
their ambassadors, and denying the arms which they had been
allowed to purchase in the capital of the empire. (34)
Perhaps the apparent change in the dispositions of the
emperors may be ascribed to the embassy which was received
from the conquerors of the Avars. (35) The immense distance
which eluded their arms could not extinguish their
resentment: the Turkish ambassadors pursued the footsteps of
the vanquished to the Jaik, the Volga, Mount Caucasus, the
Euxine and Constantinople, and at length appeared before the
successor of Constantine, to request that he would not
espouse the cause of rebels and fugitives. Even commerce
had some share in this remarkable negotiation: and the
Sogdoites, who were now the tributaries of the Turks,
embraced the fair occasion of opening, by the north of the
Caspian, a new road for the importation of Chinese silk into
the Roman empire. The Persian, who preferred the navigation
of Ceylon, had stopped the caravans of Bochara and
Samarcand: their silk was contemptuously burnt: some Turkish
ambassadors died in Persia, with a suspicion of poison; and
the great khan permitted his faithful vassal Maniach, the
prince of the Sogdoites, to propose, at the Byzantine court,
a treaty of alliance against their common enemies. Their
splendid apparel and rich presents, the fruit of Oriental
luxury, distinguished Maniach and his colleagues from the
rude savages of the North: their letters, in the Scythian
character and language, announced a people who had attained
the rudiments of science: (36) they enumerated the conquests,
they offered the friendship and military aid of the Turks;
and their sincerity was attested by direful imprecations (if
they were guilty of falsehood) against their own head, and
the head of Disabul their master. The Greek prince
entertained with hospitable regard the ambassadors of a
remote and powerful monarch: the sight of silk-worms and
looms disappointed the hopes of the Sogdoites; the emperor
renounced, or seemed to renounce, the fugitive Avars, but he
accepted the alliance of the Turks; and the ratification of
the treaty was carried by a Roman minister to the foot of
Mount Altai. Under the successors of Justinian, the
friendship of the two nations was cultivated by frequent and
cordial intercourse; the most favored vassals were permitted
to imitate the example of the great khan, and one hundred
and six Turks, who, on various occasions, had visited
Constantinople, departed at the same time for their native
country. The duration and length of the journey from the
Byzantine court to Mount Altai are not specified: it might
have been difficult to mark a road through the nameless
deserts, the mountains, rivers, and morasses of Tartary; but
a curious account has been preserved of the reception of the
Roman ambassadors at the royal camp. After they had been
purified with fire and incense, according to a rite still
practised under the sons of Zingis, (H) they were introduced
to the presence of Disabul. In a valley of the Golden
Mountain, they found the great khan in his tent, seated in a
chair with wheels, to which a horse might be occasionally
harnessed. As soon as they had delivered their presents,
which were received by the proper officers, they exposed, in
a florid oration, the wishes of the Roman emperor, that
victory might attend the arms of the Turks, that their reign
might be long and prosperous, and that a strict alliance,
without envy or deceit, might forever be maintained between
the two most powerful nations of the earth. The answer of
Disabul corresponded with these friendly professions, and
the ambassadors were seated by his side, at a banquet which
lasted the greatest part of the day: the tent was surrounded
with silk hangings, and a Tartar liquor was served on the
table, which possessed at least the intoxicating qualities
of wine. The entertainment of the succeeding day was more
sumptuous; the silk hangings of the second tent were
embroidered in various figures; and the royal seat, the
cups, and the vases, were of gold. A third pavilion was
supported by columns of gilt wood; a bed of pure and massy
gold was raised on four peacocks of the same metal: and
before the entrance of the tent, dishes, basins, and statues
of solid silver, and admirable art, were ostentatiously
piled in wagons, the monuments of valor rather than of
industry. When Disabul led his armies against the frontiers
of Persia, his Roman allies followed many days the march of
the Turkish camp, nor were they dismissed till they had
enjoyed their precedency over the envoy of the great king,
whose loud and intemperate clamors interrupted the silence
of the royal banquet. The power and ambition of Chosroes
cemented the union of the Turks and Romans, who touched his
dominions on either side: but those distant nations,
regardless of each other, consulted the dictates of
interest, without recollecting the obligations of oaths and
treaties. While the successor of Disabul celebrated his
father's obsequies, he was saluted by the ambassadors of the
emperor Tiberius, who proposed an invasion of Persia, and
sustained, with firmness, the angry and perhaps the just
reproaches of that haughty Barbarian. "You see my ten
fingers," said the great khan, and he applied them to his
mouth. "You Romans speak with as many tongues, but they are
tongues of deceit and perjury. To me you hold one language,
to my subjects another; and the nations are successively
deluded by your perfidious eloquence. You precipitate your
allies into war and danger, you enjoy their labors, and you
neglect your benefactors. Hasten your return, inform your
master that a Turk is incapable of uttering or forgiving
falsehood, and that he shall speedily meet the punishment
which he deserves. While he solicits my friendship with
flattering and hollow words, he is sunk to a confederate of
my fugitive Varchonites. If I condescend to march against
those contemptible slaves, they will tremble at the sound of
our whips; they will be trampled, like a nest of ants, under
the feet of my innumerable cavalry. I am not ignorant of
the road which they have followed to invade your empire; nor
can I be deceived by the vain pretence, that Mount Caucasus
is the impregnable barrier of the Romans. I know the course
of the Niester, the Danube, and the Hebrus; the most warlike
nations have yielded to the arms of the Turks; and from the
rising to the setting sun, the earth is my inheritance."
Notwithstanding this menace, a sense of mutual advantage
soon renewed the alliance of the Turks and Romans: but the
pride of the great khan survived his resentment; and when he
announced an important conquest to his friend the emperor
Maurice, he styled himself the master of the seven races,
and the lord of the seven climates of the world. (37)
Disputes have often arisen between the sovereigns of Asia
for the title of king of the world; while the contest has
proved that it could not belong to either of the
competitors. The kingdom of the Turks was bounded by the
Oxus or Gihon; and Touran was separated by that great river
from the rival monarchy of Iran, or Persia, which in a
smaller compass contained perhaps a larger measure of power
and population. The Persians, who alternately invaded and
repulsed the Turks and the Romans, were still ruled by the
house of Sassan, which ascended the throne three hundred
years before the accession of Justinian. His contemporary,
Cabades, or Kobad, had been successful in war against the
emperor Anastasius; but the reign of that prince was
distracted by civil and religious troubles. A prisoner in
the hands of his subjects, an exile among the enemies of
Persia, he recovered his liberty by prostituting the honor
of his wife, and regained his kingdom with the dangerous and
mercenary aid of the Barbarians, who had slain his father.
His nobles were suspicious that Kobad never forgave the
authors of his expulsion, or even those of his restoration.
The people was deluded and inflamed by the fanaticism of
Mazdak, (38) who asserted the community of women, (39) and the
equality of mankind, whilst he appropriated the richest
lands and most beautiful females to the use of his
sectaries. The view of these disorders, which had been
fomented by his laws and example, (40) imbittered the
declining age of the Persian monarch; and his fears were
increased by the consciousness of his design to reverse the
natural and customary order of succession, in favor of his
third and most favored son, so famous under the names of
Chosroes and Nushirvan. To render the youth more
illustrious in the eyes of the nations, Kobad was desirous
that he should be adopted by the emperor Justin: (I) the hope
of peace inclined the Byzantine court to accept this
singular proposal; and Chosroes might have acquired a
specious claim to the inheritance of his Roman parent. But
the future mischief was diverted by the advice of the
quaestor Proclus: a difficulty was started, whether the
adoption should be performed as a civil or military rite;
(41) the treaty was abruptly dissolved; and the sense of this
indignity sunk deep into the mind of Chosroes, who had
already advanced to the Tigris on his road to
Constantinople. His father did not long survive the
disappointment of his wishes: the testament of their
deceased sovereign was read in the assembly of the nobles;
and a powerful faction, prepared for the event, and
regardless of the priority of age, exalted Chosroes to the
throne of Persia. He filled that throne during a prosperous
period of forty-eight years; (42) and the Justice of
Nushirvan is celebrated as the theme of immortal praise by
the nations of the East.
But the justice of kings is understood by themselves, and
even by their subjects, with an ample indulgence for the
gratification of passion and interest. The virtue of
Chosroes was that of a conqueror, who, in the measures of
peace and war, is excited by ambition, and restrained by
prudence; who confounds the greatness with the happiness of
a nation, and calmly devotes the lives of thousands to the
fame, or even the amusement, of a single man. In his
domestic administration, the just Nushirvan would merit in
our feelings the appellation of a tyrant. His two elder
brothers had been deprived of their fair expectations of the
diadem: their future life, between the supreme rank and the
condition of subjects, was anxious to themselves and
formidable to their master: fear as well as revenge might
tempt them to rebel: the slightest evidence of a conspiracy
satisfied the author of their wrongs; and the repose of
Chosroes was secured by the death of these unhappy princes,
with their families and adherents. One guiltless youth was
saved and dismissed by the compassion of a veteran general;
and this act of humanity, which was revealed by his son,
overbalanced the merit of reducing twelve nations to the
obedience of Persia. The zeal and prudence of Mebodes had
fixed the diadem on the head of Chosroes himself; but he
delayed to attend the royal summons, till he had performed
the duties of a military review: he was instantly commanded
to repair to the iron tripod, which stood before the gate of
the palace, (43) where it was death to relieve or approach
the victim; and Mebodes languished several days before his
sentence was pronounced, by the inflexible pride and calm
ingratitude of the son of Kobad. But the people, more
especially in the East, is disposed to forgive, and even to
applaud, the cruelty which strikes at the loftiest heads; at
the slaves of ambition, whose voluntary choice has exposed
them to live in the smiles, and to perish by the frown, of a
capricious monarch. In the execution of the laws which he
had no temptation to violate; in the punishment of crimes
which attacked his own dignity, as well as the happiness of
individuals; Nushirvan, or Chosroes, deserved the
appellation of just. His government was firm, rigorous, and
impartial. It was the first labor of his reign to abolish
the dangerous theory of common or equal possessions: the
lands and women which the sectaries of Mazdak has usurped
were restored to their lawful owners; and the temperate (J)
chastisement of the fanatics or impostors confirmed the
domestic rights of society. Instead of listening with blind
confidence to a favorite minister, he established four
viziers over the four great provinces of his empire,
Assyria, Media, Persia, and Bactriana. In the choice of
judges, praefects, and counsellors, he strove to remove the
mask which is always worn in the presence of kings: he
wished to substitute the natural order of talents for the
accidental distinctions of birth and fortune; he professed,
in specious language, his intention to prefer those men who
carried the poor in their bosoms, and to banish corruption
from the seat of justice, as dogs were excluded from the
temples of the Magi. The code of laws of the first
Artaxerxes was revived and published as the rule of the
magistrates; but the assurance of speedy punishment was the
best security of their virtue. Their behavior was inspected
by a thousand eyes, their words were overheard by a thousand
ears, the secret or public agents of the throne; and the
provinces, from the Indian to the Arabian confines, were
enlightened by the frequent visits of a sovereign, who
affected to emulate his celestial brother in his rapid and
salutary career. Education and agriculture he viewed as the
two objects most deserving of his care. In every city of
Persia orphans, and the children of the poor, were
maintained and instructed at the public expense; the
daughters were given in marriage to the richest citizens of
their own rank, and the sons, according to their different
talents, were employed in mechanic trades, or promoted to
more honorable service. The deserted villages were relieved
by his bounty; to the peasants and farmers who were found
incapable of cultivating their lands, he distributed cattle,
seed, and the instruments of husbandry; and the rare and
inestimable treasure of fresh water was parsimoniously
managed, and skilfully dispersed over the arid territory of
Persia. (44) The prosperity of that kingdom was the effect
and evidence of his virtues; his vices are those of Oriental
despotism; but in the long competition between Chosroes and
Justinian, the advantage both of merit and fortune is almost
always on the side of the Barbarian. (45)
To the praise of justice Nushirvan united the reputation of
knowledge; and the seven Greek philosophers, who visited his
court, were invited and deceived by the strange assurance,
that a disciple of Plato was seated on the Persian throne.
Did they expect, that a prince, strenuously exercised in the
toils of war and government, should agitate, with dexterity
like their own, the abstruse and profound questions which
amused the leisure of the schools of Athens? Could they hope
that the precepts of philosophy should direct the life, and
control the passions, of a despot, whose infancy had been
taught to consider his absolute and fluctuating will as the
only rule of moral obligation? (46) The studies of Chosroes
were ostentatious and superficial: but his example awakened
the curiosity of an ingenious people, and the light of
science was diffused over the dominions of Persia. (47) At
Gondi Sapor, in the neighborhood of the royal city of Susa,
an academy of physic was founded, which insensibly became a
liberal school of poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric. (48) The
annals of the monarchy (49) were composed; and while recent
and authentic history might afford some useful lessons both
to the prince and people, the darkness of the first ages was
embellished by the giants, the dragons, and the fabulous
heroes of Oriental romance. (50) Every learned or confident
stranger was enriched by the bounty, and flattered by the
conversation, of the monarch: he nobly rewarded a Greek
physician, (51) by the deliverance of three thousand,
captives; and the sophists, who contended for his favor,
were exasperated by the wealth and insolence of Uranius,
their more successful rival. Nushirvan believed, or at
least respected, the religion of the Magi; and some traces
of persecution may be discovered in his reign. (52) Yet he
allowed himself freely to compare the tenets of the various
sects; and the theological disputes, in which he frequently
presided, diminished the authority of the priest, and
enlightened the minds of the people. At his command, the
most celebrated writers of Greece and India were translated
into the Persian language; a smooth and elegant idiom,
recommended by Mahomet to the use of paradise; though it is
branded with the epithets of savage and unmusical, by the
ignorance and presumption of Agathias. (53) Yet the Greek
historian might reasonably wonder that it should be found
possible to execute an entire version of Plato and Aristotle
in a foreign dialect, which had not been framed to express
the spirit of freedom and the subtilties of philosophic
disquisition. And, if the reason of the Stagyrite might be
equally dark, or equally intelligible in every tongue, the
dramatic art and verbal argumentation of the disciple of
Socrates, (54) appear to be indissolubly mingled with the
grace and perfection of his Attic style. In the search of
universal knowledge, Nushirvan was informed, that the moral
and political fables of Pilpay, an ancient Brachman, were
preserved with jealous reverence among the treasures of the
kings of India. The physician Perozes was secretly
despatched to the banks of the Ganges, with instructions to
procure, at any price, the communication of this valuable
work. His dexterity obtained a transcript, his learned
diligence accomplished the translation; and the fables of
Pilpay (55) were read and admired in the assembly of
Nushirvan and his nobles. The Indian original, and the
Persian copy, have long since disappeared; but this
venerable monument has been saved by the curiosity of the
Arabian caliphs, revived in the modern Persic, the Turkish,
the Syriac, the Hebrew, and the Greek idioms, and transfused
through successive versions into the modern languages of
Europe. In their present form, the peculiar character, the
manners and religion of the Hindoos, are completely
obliterated; and the intrinsic merit of the fables of Pilpay
is far inferior to the concise elegance of Phaedrus, and the
native graces of La Fontaine. Fifteen moral and political
sentences are illustrated in a series of apologues: but the
composition is intricate, the narrative prolix, and the
precept obvious and barren. Yet the Brachman may assume the
merit of inventing a pleasing fiction, which adorns the
nakedness of truth, and alleviates, perhaps, to a royal ear,
the harshness of instruction. With a similar design, to
admonish kings that they are strong only in the strength of
their subjects, the same Indians invented the game of chess,
which was likewise introduced into Persia under the reign of
Nushirvan. (56)
The son of Kobad found his kingdom involved in a war with
the successor of Constantine; and the anxiety of his
domestic situation inclined him to grant the suspension of
arms, which Justinian was impatient to purchase. Chosroes
saw the Roman ambassadors at his feet. He accepted eleven
thousand pounds of gold, as the price of an endless or
indefinite peace: (57) some mutual exchanges were regulated;
the Persian assumed the guard of the gates of Caucasus, and
the demolition of Dara was suspended, on condition that it
should never be made the residence of the general of the
East. This interval of repose had been solicited, and was
diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his
African conquests were the first fruits of the Persian
treaty; and the avarice of Chosroes was soothed by a large
portion of the spoils of Carthage, which his ambassadors
required in a tone of pleasantry and under the color of
friendship. (58) But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the
slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment,
envy, and fear, that Sicily, Italy, and Rome itself, had
been reduced, in three rapid campaigns, to the obedience of
Justinian. Unpractised in the art of violating treaties, he
secretly excited his bold and subtle vassal Almondar. That
prince of the Saracens, who resided at Hira, (59) had not
been included in the general peace, and still waged an
obscure war against his rival Arethas, the chief of the
tribe of Gassan, and confederate of the empire. The subject
of their dispute was an extensive sheep-walk in the desert
to the south of Palmyra. An immemorial tribute for the
license of pasture appeared to attest the rights of
Almondar, while the Gassanite appealed to the Latin name of
strata, a paved road, as an unquestionable evidence of the
sovereignty and labors of the Romans. (60) The two monarchs
supported the cause of their respective vassals; and the
Persian Arab, without expecting the event of a slow and
doubtful arbitration, enriched his flying camp with the
spoil and captives of Syria. Instead of repelling the arms,
Justinian attempted to seduce the fidelity of Almondar,
while he called from the extremities of the earth the
nations of Aethiopia and Scythia to invade the dominions of
his rival. But the aid of such allies was distant and
precarious, and the discovery of this hostile correspondence
justified the complaints of the Goths and Armenians, who
implored, almost at the same time, the protection of
Chosroes. The descendants of Arsaces, who were still
numerous in Armenia, had been provoked to assert the last
relics of national freedom and hereditary rank; and the
ambassadors of Vitiges had secretly traversed the empire to
expose the instant, and almost inevitable, danger of the
kingdom of Italy. Their representations were uniform,
weighty, and effectual. "We stand before your throne, the
advocates of your interest as well as of our own. The
ambitious and faithless Justinian aspires to be the sole
master of the world. Since the endless peace, which betrayed
the common freedom of mankind, that prince, your ally in
words, your enemy in actions, has alike insulted his friends
and foes, and has filled the earth with blood and confusion.
Has he not violated the privileges of Armenia, the
independence of Colchos, and the wild liberty of the Tzanian
mountains? Has he not usurped, with equal avidity, the city
of Bosphorus on the frozen Maeotis, and the vale of
palm-trees on the shores of the Red Sea? The Moors, the
Vandals, the Goths, have been successively oppressed, and
each nation has calmly remained the spectator of their
neighbor's ruin. Embrace, O king! the favorable moment; the
East is left without defence, while the armies of Justinian
and his renowned general are detained in the distant regions
of the West. If you hesitate or delay, Belisarius and his
victorious troops will soon return from the Tyber to the
Tigris, and Persia may enjoy the wretched consolation of
being the last devoured." (61) By such arguments, Chosroes
was easily persuaded to imitate the example which he
condemned: but the Persian, ambitious of military fame,
disdained the inactive warfare of a rival, who issued his
sanguinary commands from the secure station of the Byzantine
palace.
Whatever might be the provocations of Chosroes, he abused
the confidence of treaties; and the just reproaches of
dissimulation and falsehood could only be concealed by the
lustre of his victories. (62) The Persian army, which had
been assembled in the plains of Babylon, prudently declined
the strong cities of Mesopotamia, and followed the western
bank of the Euphrates, till the small, though populous, town
of Dura (K) presumed to arrest the progress of the great
king. The gates of Dura, by treachery and surprise, were
burst open; and as soon as Chosroes had stained his cimeter
with the blood of the inhabitants, he dismissed the
ambassador of Justinian to inform his master in what place
he had left the enemy of the Romans. The conqueror still
affected the praise of humanity and justice; and as he
beheld a noble matron with her infant rudely dragged along
the ground, he sighed, he wept, and implored the divine
justice to punish the author of these calamities. Yet the
herd of twelve thousand captives was ransomed for two
hundred pounds of gold; the neighboring bishop of
Sergiopolis pledged his faith for the payment: and in the
subsequent year the unfeeling avarice of Chosroes exacted
the penalty of an obligation which it was generous to
contract and impossible to discharge. He advanced into the
heart of Syria: but a feeble enemy, who vanished at his
approach, disappointed him of the honor of victory; and as
he could not hope to establish his dominion, the Persian
king displayed in this inroad the mean and rapacious vices
of a robber. Hierapolis, Berrhaea or Aleppo, Apamea and
Chalcis, were successively besieged: they redeemed their
safety by a ransom of gold or silver, proportioned to their
respective strength and opulence; and their new master
enforced, without observing, the terms of capitulation.
Educated in the religion of the Magi, he exercised, without
remorse, the lucrative trade of sacrilege; and, after
stripping of its gold and gems a piece of the true cross, he
generously restored the naked relic to the devotion of the
Christians of Apamea. No more than fourteen years had
elapsed since Antioch was ruined by an earthquake; (L) but
the queen of the East, the new Theopolis, had been raised
from the ground by the liberality of Justinian; and the
increasing greatness of the buildings and the people already
erased the memory of this recent disaster. On one side, the
city was defended by the mountain, on the other by the River
Orontes; but the most accessible part was commanded by a
superior eminence: the proper remedies were rejected, from
the despicable fear of discovering its weakness to the
enemy; and Germanus, the emperor's nephew, refused to trust
his person and dignity within the walls of a besieged city.
The people of Antioch had inherited the vain and satirical
genius of their ancestors: they were elated by a sudden
reenforcement of six thousand soldiers; they disdained the
offers of an easy capitulation and their intemperate clamors
insulted from the ramparts the majesty of the great king.
Under his eye the Persian myriads mounted with
scaling-ladders to the assault; the Roman mercenaries fled
through the opposite gate of Daphne; and the generous
assistance of the youth of Antioch served only to aggravate
the miseries of their country. As Chosroes, attended by the
ambassadors of Justinian, was descending from the mountain,
he affected, in a plaintive voice, to deplore the obstinacy
and ruin of that unhappy people; but the slaughter still
raged with unrelenting fury; and the city, at the command of
a Barbarian, was delivered to the flames. The cathedral of
Antioch was indeed preserved by the avarice, not the piety,
of the conqueror: a more honorable exemption was granted to
the church of St. Julian, and the quarter of the town where
the ambassadors resided; some distant streets were saved by
the shifting of the wind, and the walls still subsisted to
protect, and soon to betray, their new inhabitants.
Fanaticism had defaced the ornaments of Daphne, but Chosroes
breathed a purer air amidst her groves and fountains; and
some idolaters in his train might sacrifice with impunity to
the nymphs of that elegant retreat. Eighteen miles below
Antioch, the River Orontes falls into the Mediterranean.
The haughty Persian visited the term of his conquests; and,
after bathing alone in the sea, he offered a solemn
sacrifice of thanksgiving to the sun, or rather to the
Creator of the sun, whom the Magi adored. If this act of
superstition offended the prejudices of the Syrians, they
were pleased by the courteous and even eager attention with
which he assisted at the games of the circus; and as
Chosroes had heard that the blue faction was espoused by the
emperor, his peremptory command secured the victory of the
green charioteer. From the discipline of his camp the people
derived more solid consolation; and they interceded in vain
for the life of a soldier who had too faithfully copied the
rapine of the just Nushirvan. At length, fatigued, though
unsatiated, with the spoil of Syria, (M) he slowly moved to
the Euphrates, formed a temporary bridge in the neighborhood
of Barbalissus, and defined the space of three days for the
entire passage of his numerous host. After his return, he
founded, at the distance of one day's journey from the
palace of Ctesiphon, a new city, which perpetuated the joint
names of Chosroes and of Antioch. The Syrian captives
recognized the form and situation of their native abodes:
baths and a stately circus were constructed for their use;
and a colony of musicians and charioteers revived in Assyria
the pleasures of a Greek capital. By the munificence of the
royal founder, a liberal allowance was assigned to these
fortunate exiles; and they enjoyed the singular privilege of
bestowing freedom on the slaves whom they acknowledged as
their kinsmen. Palestine, and the holy wealth of Jerusalem,
were the next objects that attracted the ambition, or rather
the avarice, of Chosroes. Constantinople, and the palace of
the Caesars, no longer appeared impregnable or remote; and
his aspiring fancy already covered Asia Minor with the
troops, and the Black Sea with the navies, of Persia.
These hopes might have been realized, if the conqueror of
Italy had not been seasonably recalled to the defence of the
East. (63) While Chosroes pursued his ambitious designs on
the coast of the Euxine, Belisarius, at the head of an army
without pay or discipline, encamped beyond the Euphrates,
within six miles of Nisibis. He meditated, by a skilful
operation, to draw the Persians from their impregnable
citadel, and improving his advantage in the field, either to
intercept their retreat, or perhaps to enter the gates with
the flying Barbarians. He advanced one day's journey on the
territories of Persia, reduced the fortress of Sisaurane,
and sent the governor, with eight hundred chosen horsemen,
to serve the emperor in his Italian wars. He detached
Arethas and his Arabs, supported by twelve hundred Romans,
to pass the Tigris, and to ravage the harvests of Assyria, a
fruitful province, long exempt from the calamities of war.
But the plans of Belisarius were disconcerted by the
untractable spirit of Arethas, who neither returned to the
camp, nor sent any intelligence of his motions. The Roman
general was fixed in anxious expectation to the same spot;
the time of action elapsed, the ardent sun of Mesopotamia
inflamed with fevors the blood of his European soldiers; and
the stationary troops and officers of Syria affected to
tremble for the safety of their defenceless cities. Yet
this diversion had already succeeded in forcing Chosroes to
return with loss and precipitation; and if the skill of
Belisarius had been seconded by discipline and valor, his
success might have satisfied the sanguine wishes of the
public, who required at his hands the conquest of Ctesiphon,
and the deliverance of the captives of Antioch. At the end
of the campaign, he was recalled to Constantinople by an
ungrateful court, but the dangers of the ensuing spring
restored his confidence and command; and the hero, almost
alone, was despatched, with the speed of post-horses, to
repel, by his name and presence, the invasion of Syria. He
found the Roman generals, among whom was a nephew of
Justinian, imprisoned by their fears in the fortifications
of Hierapolis. But instead of listening to their timid
counsels, Belisarius commanded them to follow him to
Europus, where he had resolved to collect his forces, and to
execute whatever God should inspire him to achieve against
the enemy. His firm attitude on the banks of the Euphrates
restrained Chosroes from advancing towards Palestine; and he
received with art and dignity the ambassadors, or rather
spies, of the Persian monarch. The plain between Hierapolis
and the river was covered with the squadrons of cavalry, six
thousand hunters, tall and robust, who pursued their game
without the apprehension of an enemy. On the opposite bank
the ambassadors descried a thousand Armenian horse, who
appeared to guard the passage of the Euphrates. The tent of
Belisarius was of the coarsest linen, the simple equipage of
a warrior who disdained the luxury of the East. Around his
tent, the nations who marched under his standard were
arranged with skilful confusion. The Thracians and
Illyrians were posted in the front, the Heruli and Goths in
the centre; the prospect was closed by the Moors and
Vandals, and their loose array seemed to multiply their
numbers. Their dress was light and active; one soldier
carried a whip, another a sword, a third a bow, a fourth,
perhaps, a battle axe, and the whole picture exhibited the
intrepidity of the troops and the vigilance of the general.
Chosroes was deluded by the address, and awed by the genius,
of the lieutenant of Justinian. Conscious of the merit, and
ignorant of the force, of his antagonist, he dreaded a
decisive battle in a distant country, from whence not a
Persian might return to relate the melancholy tale. The
great king hastened to repass the Euphrates; and Belisarius
pressed his retreat, by affecting to oppose a measure so
salutary to the empire, and which could scarcely have been
prevented by an army of a hundred thousand men. Envy might
suggest to ignorance and pride, that the public enemy had
been suffered to escape: but the African and Gothic triumphs
are less glorious than this safe and bloodless victory, in
which neither fortune, nor the valor of the soldiers, can
subtract any part of the general's renown. The second
removal of Belisarius from the Persian to the Italian war
revealed the extent of his personal merit, which had
corrected or supplied the want of discipline and courage.
Fifteen generals, without concert or skill, led through the
mountains of Armenia an army of thirty thousand Romans,
inattentive to their signals, their ranks, and their
ensigns. Four thousand Persians, intrenched in the camp of
Dubis, vanquished, almost without a combat, this disorderly
multitude; their useless arms were scattered along the road,
and their horses sunk under the fatigue of their rapid
flight. But the Arabs of the Roman party prevailed over
their brethren; the Armenians returned to their allegiance;
the cities of Dara and Edessa resisted a sudden assault and
a regular siege, and the calamities of war were suspended by
those of pestilence. A tacit or formal agreement between
the two sovereigns protected the tranquillity of the Eastern
frontier; and the arms of Chosroes were confined to the
Colchian or Lazic war, which has been too minutely described
by the historians of the times. (64)
The extreme length of the Euxine Sea (65) from Constantinople
to the mouth of the Phasis, may be computed as a voyage of
nine days, and a measure of seven hundred miles. From the
Iberian Caucasus, the most lofty and craggy mountains of
Asia, that river descends with such oblique vehemence, that
in a short space it is traversed by one hundred and twenty
bridges. Nor does the stream become placid and navigable,
till it reaches the town of Sarapana, five days' journey
from the Cyrus, which flows from the same hills, but in a
contrary direction to the Caspian Lake. The proximity of
these rivers has suggested the practice, or at least the
idea, of wafting the precious merchandise of India down the
Oxus, over the Caspian, up the Cyrus, and with the current
of the Phasis into the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas. As it
successively collects the streams of the plain of Colchos,
the Phasis moves with diminished speed, though accumulated
weight. At the mouth it is sixty fathom deep, and half a
league broad, but a small woody island is interposed in the
midst of the channel; the water, so soon as it has deposited
an earthy or metallic sediment, floats on the surface of the
waves, and is no longer susceptible of corruption. In a
course of one hundred miles, forty of which are navigable
for large vessels, the Phasis divides the celebrated region
of Colchos, (66) or Mingrelia, (67) which, on three sides, is
fortified by the Iberian and Armenian mountains, and whose
maritime coast extends about two hundred miles from the
neighborhood of Trebizond to Dioscurias and the confines of
Circassia. Both the soil and climate are relaxed by
excessive moisture: twenty-eight rivers, besides the Phasis
and his dependent streams, convey their waters to the sea;
and the hollowness of the ground appears to indicate the
subterraneous channels between the Euxine and the Caspian.
In the fields where wheat or barley is sown, the earth is
too soft to sustain the action of the plough; but the gom, a
small grain, not unlike the millet or coriander seed,
supplies the ordinary food of the people; and the use of
bread is confined to the prince and his nobles. Yet the
vintage is more plentiful than the harvest; and the bulk of
the stems, as well as the quality of the wine, display the
unassisted powers of nature. The same powers continually
tend to overshadow the face of the country with thick
forests; the timber of the hills, and the flax of the
plains, contribute to the abundance of naval stores; the
wild and tame animals, the horse, the ox, and the hog, are
remarkably prolific, and the name of the pheasant is
expressive of his native habitation on the banks of the
Phasis. The gold mines to the south of Trebizond, which are
still worked with sufficient profit, were a subject of
national dispute between Justinian and Chosroes; and it is
not unreasonable to believe, that a vein of precious metal
may be equally diffused through the circle of the hills,
although these secret treasures are neglected by the
laziness, or concealed by the prudence, of the Mingrelians.
The waters, impregnated with particles of gold, are
carefully strained through sheep-skins or fleeces; but this
expedient, the groundwork perhaps of a marvellous fable,
affords a faint image of the wealth extracted from a virgin
earth by the power and industry of ancient kings. Their
silver palaces and golden chambers surpass our belief; but
the fame of their riches is said to have excited the
enterprising avarice of the Argonauts. (68) Tradition has
affirmed, with some color of reason, that Egypt planted on
the Phasis a learned and polite colony, (69) which
manufactured linen, built navies, and invented geographical
maps. The ingenuity of the moderns has peopled, with
flourishing cities and nations, the isthmus between the
Euxine and the Caspian; (70) and a lively writer, observing
the resemblance of climate, and, in his apprehension, of
trade, has not hesitated to pronounce Colchos the Holland of
antiquity. (71)
But the riches of Colchos shine only through the darkness of
conjecture or tradition; and its genuine history presents a
uniform scene of rudeness and poverty. If one hundred and
thirty languages were spoken in the market of Dioscurias,
(72) they were the imperfect idioms of so many savage tribes
or families, sequestered from each other in the valleys of
Mount Caucasus; and their separation, which diminished the
importance, must have multiplied the number, of their rustic
capitals. In the present state of Mingrelia, a village is
an assemblage of huts within a wooden fence; the fortresses
are seated in the depths of forests; the princely town of
Cyta, or Cotatis, consists of two hundred houses, and a
stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence of kings.
Twelve ships from Constantinople, and about sixty barks,
laden with the fruits of industry, annually cast anchor on
the coast; and the list of Colchian exports is much
increased, since the natives had only slaves and hides to
offer in exchange for the corn and salt which they purchased
from the subjects of Justinian. Not a vestige can be found
of the art, the knowledge, or the navigation, of the ancient
Colchians: few Greeks desired or dared to pursue the
footsteps of the Argonauts; and even the marks of an
Egyptian colony are lost on a nearer approach. The rite of
circumcision is practised only by the Mahometans of the
Euxine; and the curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa
no longer disfigure the most perfect of the human race. It
is in the adjacent climates of Georgia, Mingrelia, and
Circassia, that nature has placed, at least to our eyes, the
model of beauty in the shape of the limbs, the color of the
skin, the symmetry of the features, and the expression of
the countenance. (73) According to the destination of the two
sexes, the men seemed formed for action, the women for love;
and the perpetual supply of females from Mount Caucasus has
purified the blood, and improved the breed, of the southern
nations of Asia. The proper district of Mingrelia, a
portion only of the ancient Colchos, has long sustained an
exportation of twelve thousand slaves. The number of
prisoners or criminals would be inadequate to the annual
demand; but the common people are in a state of servitude to
their lords; the exercise of fraud or rapine is unpunished
in a lawless community; and the market is continually
replenished by the abuse of civil and paternal authority.
Such a trade, (74) which reduces the human species to the
level of cattle, may tend to encourage marriage and
population, since the multitude of children enriches their
sordid and inhuman parent. But this source of impure wealth
must inevitably poison the national manners, obliterate the
sense of honor and virtue, and almost extinguish the
instincts of nature: the Christians of Georgia and Mingrelia
are the most dissolute of mankind; and their children, who,
in a tender age, are sold into foreign slavery, have already
learned to imitate the rapine of the father and the
prostitution of the mother. Yet, amidst the rudest
ignorance, the untaught natives discover a singular
dexterity both of mind and hand; and although the want of
union and discipline exposes them to their more powerful
neighbors, a bold and intrepid spirit has animated the
Colchians of every age. In the host of Xerxes, they served
on foot; and their arms were a dagger or a javelin, a wooden
casque, and a buckler of raw hides. But in their own
country the use of cavalry has more generally prevailed: the
meanest of the peasants disdained to walk; the martial
nobles are possessed, perhaps, of two hundred horses; and
above five thousand are numbered in the train of the prince
of Mingrelia. The Colchian government has been always a
pure and hereditary kingdom; and the authority of the
sovereign is only restrained by the turbulence of his
subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead a
numerous army into the field; but some faith is requisite to
believe, that the single tribe of the Suanians as composed
of two hundred thousand soldiers, or that the population of
Mingrelia now amounts to four millions of inhabitants. (75)
It was the boast of the Colchians, that their ancestors had
checked the victories of Sesostris; and the defeat of the
Egyptian is less incredible than his successful progress as
far as the foot of Mount Caucasus. They sunk without any
memorable effort, under the arms of Cyrus; followed in
distant wars the standard of the great king, and presented
him every fifth year with one hundred boys, and as many
virgins, the fairest produce of the land. (76) Yet he
accepted this gift like the gold and ebony of India, the
frankincense of the Arabs, or the negroes and ivory of
Aethiopia: the Colchians were not subject to the dominion of
a satrap, and they continued to enjoy the name as well as
substance of national independence. (77) After the fall of
the Persian empire, Mithridates, king of Pontus, added
Colchos to the wide circle of his dominions on the Euxine;
and when the natives presumed to request that his son might
reign over them, he bound the ambitious youth in chains of
gold, and delegated a servant in his place. In pursuit of
Mithridates, the Romans advanced to the banks of the Phasis,
and their galleys ascended the river till they reached the
camp of Pompey and his legions. (78) But the senate, and
afterwards the emperors, disdained to reduce that distant
and useless conquest into the form of a province. The
family of a Greek rhetorician was permitted to reign in
Colchos and the adjacent kingdoms from the time of Mark
Antony to that of Nero; and after the race of Polemo (79) was
extinct, the eastern Pontus, which preserved his name,
extended no farther than the neighborhood of Trebizond.
Beyond these limits the fortifications of Hyssus, of
Apsarus, of the Phasis, of Dioscurias or Sebastopolis, and
of Pityus, were guarded by sufficient detachments of horse
and foot; and six princes of Colchos received their diadems
from the lieutenants of Caesar. One of these lieutenants,
the eloquent and philosophic Arrian, surveyed, and has
described, the Euxine coast, under the reign of Hadrian.
The garrison which he reviewed at the mouth of the Phasis
consisted of four hundred chosen legionaries; the brick
walls and towers, the double ditch, and the military engines
on the rampart, rendered this place inaccessible to the
Barbarians: but the new suburbs which had been built by the
merchants and veterans, required, in the opinion of Arrian,
some external defence. (80) As the strength of the empire was
gradually impaired, the Romans stationed on the Phasis were
neither withdrawn nor expelled; and the tribe of the Lazi,
(81) whose posterity speak a foreign dialect, and inhabit the
sea coast of Trebizond, imposed their name and dominion on
the ancient kingdom of Colchos. Their independence was soon
invaded by a formidable neighbor, who had acquired, by arms
and treaties, the sovereignty of Iberia. The dependent king
of Lazica received his sceptre at the hands of the Persian
monarch, and the successors of Constantine acquiesced in
this injurious claim, which was proudly urged as a right of
immemorial prescription. In the beginning of the sixth
century, their influence was restored by the introduction of
Christianity, which the Mingrelians still profess with
becoming zeal, without understanding the doctrines, or
observing the precepts, of their religion. After the decease
of his father, Zathus was exalted to the regal dignity by
the favor of the great king; but the pious youth abhorred
the ceremonies of the Magi, and sought, in the palace of
Constantinople, an orthodox baptism, a noble wife, and the
alliance of the emperor Justin. The king of Lazica was
solemnly invested with the diadem, and his cloak and tunic
of white silk, with a gold border, displayed, in rich
embroidery, the figure of his new patron; who soothed the
jealousy of the Persian court, and excused the revolt of
Colchos, by the venerable names of hospitality and religion.
The common interest of both empires imposed on the Colchians
the duty of guarding the passes of Mount Caucasus, where a
wall of sixty miles is now defended by the monthly service
of the musketeers of Mingrelia. (82)
But this honorable connection was soon corrupted by the
avarice and ambition of the Romans. Degraded from the rank
of allies, the Lazi were incessantly reminded, by words and
actions, of their dependent state. At the distance of a
day's journey beyond the Apsarus, they beheld the rising
fortress of Petra, (83) which commanded the maritime country
to the south of the Phasis. Instead of being protected by
the valor, Colchos was insulted by the licentiousness, of
foreign mercenaries; the benefits of commerce were converted
into base and vexatious monopoly; and Gubazes, the native
prince, was reduced to a pageant of royalty, by the superior
influence of the officers of Justinian. Disappointed in
their expectations of Christian virtue, the indignant Lazi
reposed some confidence in the justice of an unbeliever.
After a private assurance that their ambassadors should not
be delivered to the Romans, they publicly solicited the
friendship and aid of Chosroes. The sagacious monarch
instantly discerned the use and importance of Colchos; and
meditated a plan of conquest, which was renewed at the end
of a thousand years by Shah Abbas, the wisest and most
powerful of his successors. (84) His ambition was fired by
the hope of launching a Persian navy from the Phasis, of
commanding the trade and navigation of the Euxine Sea, of
desolating the coast of Pontus and Bithynia, of distressing,
perhaps of attacking, Constantinople, and of persuading the
Barbarians of Europe to second his arms and counsels against
the common enemy of mankind. Under the pretence of a
Scythian war, he silently led his troops to the frontiers of
Iberia; the Colchian guides were prepared to conduct them
through the woods and along the precipices of Mount
Caucasus; and a narrow path was laboriously formed into a
safe and spacious highway, for the march of cavalry, and
even of elephants. Gubazes laid his person and diadem at
the feet of the king of Persia; his Colchians imitated the
submission of their prince; and after the walls of Petra had
been shaken, the Roman garrison prevented, by a
capitulation, the impending fury of the last assault. But
the Lazi soon discovered, that their impatience had urged
them to choose an evil more intolerable than the calamities
which they strove to escape. The monopoly of salt and corn
was effectually removed by the loss of those valuable
commodities. The authority of a Roman legislator, was
succeeded by the pride of an Oriental despot, who beheld,
with equal disdain, the slaves whom he had exalted, and the
kings whom he had humbled before the footstool of his
throne. The adoration of fire was introduced into Colchos
by the zeal of the Magi: their intolerant spirit provoked
the fervor of a Christian people; and the prejudice of
nature or education was wounded by the impious practice of
exposing the dead bodies of their parents, on the summit of
a lofty tower, to the crows and vultures of the air. (85)
Conscious of the increasing hatred, which retarded the
execution of his great designs, the just Nashirvan had
secretly given orders to assassinate the king of the Lazi,
to transplant the people into some distant land, and to fix
a faithful and warlike colony on the banks of the Phasis.
The watchful jealousy of the Colchians foresaw and averted
the approaching ruin. Their repentance was accepted at
Constantinople by the prudence, rather than clemency, of
Justinian; and he commanded Dagisteus, with seven thousand
Romans, and one thousand of the Zani, (N) to expel the
Persians from the coast of the Euxine.
The siege of Petra, which the Roman general, with the aid of
the Lazi, immediately undertook, is one of the most
remarkable actions of the age. The city was seated on a
craggy rock, which hung over the sea, and communicated by a
steep and narrow path with the land. Since the approach was
difficult, the attack might be deemed impossible: the
Persian conqueror had strengthened the fortifications of
Justinian; and the places least inaccessible were covered by
additional bulwarks. In this important fortress, the
vigilance of Chosroes had deposited a magazine of offensive
and defensive arms, sufficient for five times the number,
not only of the garrison, but of the besiegers themselves.
The stock of flour and salt provisions was adequate to the
consumption of five years; the want of wine was supplied by
vinegar; and of grain from whence a strong liquor was
extracted, and a triple aqueduct eluded the diligence, and
even the suspicions, of the enemy. But the firmest defence
of Petra was placed in the valor of fifteen hundred
Persians, who resisted the assaults of the Romans, whilst,
in a softer vein of earth, a mine was secretly perforated.
The wall, supported by slender and temporary props, hung
tottering in the air; but Dagisteus delayed the attack till
he had secured a specific recompense; and the town was
relieved before the return of his messenger from
Constantinople. The Persian garrison was reduced to four
hundred men, of whom no more than fifty were exempt from
sickness or wounds; yet such had been their inflexible
perseverance, that they concealed their losses from the
enemy, by enduring, without a murmur, the sight and
putrefying stench of the dead bodies of their eleven hundred
companions. After their deliverance, the breaches were
hastily stopped with sand-bags; the mine was replenished
with earth; a new wall was erected on a frame of substantial
timber; and a fresh garrison of three thousand men was
stationed at Petra to sustain the labors of a second siege.
The operations, both of the attack and defence, were
conducted with skilful obstinacy; and each party derived
useful lessons from the experience of their past faults. A
battering-ram was invented, of light construction and
powerful effect: it was transported and worked by the hands
of forty soldiers; and as the stones were loosened by its
repeated strokes, they were torn with long iron hooks from
the wall. From those walls, a shower of darts was
incessantly poured on the heads of the assailants; but they
were most dangerously annoyed by a fiery composition of
sulphur and bitumen, which in Colchos might with some
propriety be named the oil of Medea. Of six thousand Romans
who mounted the scaling-ladders, their general Bessas was
the first, a gallant veteran of seventy years of age: the
courage of their leader, his fall, and extreme danger,
animated the irresistible effort of his troops; and their
prevailing numbers oppressed the strength, without subduing
the spirit, of the Persian garrison. The fate of these
valiant men deserves to be more distinctly noticed. Seven
hundred had perished in the siege, two thousand three
hundred survived to defend the breach. One thousand and
seventy were destroyed with fire and sword in the last
assault; and if seven hundred and thirty were made
prisoners, only eighteen among them were found without the
marks of honorable wounds. The remaining five hundred
escaped into the citadel, which they maintained without any
hopes of relief, rejecting the fairest terms of capitulation
and service, till they were lost in the flames. They died
in obedience to the commands of their prince; and such
examples of loyalty and valor might excite their countrymen
to deeds of equal despair and more prosperous event. The
instant demolition of the works of Petra confessed the
astonishment and apprehension of the conqueror. A Spartan
would have praised and pitied the virtue of these heroic
slaves; but the tedious warfare and alternate success of the
Roman and Persian arms cannot detain the attention of
posterity at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The advantages
obtained by the troops of Justinian were more frequent and
splendid; but the forces of the great king were continually
supplied, till they amounted to eight elephants and seventy
thousand men, including twelve thousand Scythian allies, and
above three thousand Dilemites, who descended by their free
choice from the hills of Hyrcania, and were equally
formidable in close or in distant combat. The siege of
Archaeopolis, a name imposed or corrupted by the Greeks, was
raised with some loss and precipitation; but the Persians
occupied the passes of Iberia: Colchos was enslaved by their
forts and garrisons; they devoured the scanty sustenance of
the people; and the prince of the Lazi fled into the
mountains. In the Roman camp, faith and discipline were
unknown; and the independent leaders, who were invested with
equal power, disputed with each other the preeminence of
vice and corruption. The Persians followed, without a
murmur, the commands of a single chief, who implicitly
obeyed the instructions of their supreme lord. Their
general was distinguished among the heroes of the East by
his wisdom in council, and his valor in the field. The
advanced age of Mermeroes, and the lameness of both his
feet, could not diminish the activity of his mind, or even
of his body; and, whilst he was carried in a litter in the
front of battle, he inspired terror to the enemy, and a just
confidence to the troops, who, under his banners, were
always successful. After his death, the command devolved to
Nacoragan, a proud satrap, who, in a conference with the
Imperial chiefs, had presumed to declare that he disposed of
victory as absolutely as of the ring on his finger. Such
presumption was the natural cause and forerunner of a
shameful defeat. The Romans had been gradually repulsed to
the edge of the sea-shore; and their last camp, on the ruins
of the Grecian colony of Phasis, was defended on all sides
by strong intrenchments, the river, the Euxine, and a fleet
of galleys. Despair united their counsels and invigorated
their arms: they withstood the assault of the Persians and
the flight of Nacoragan preceded or followed the slaughter
of ten thousand of his bravest soldiers. He escaped from the
Romans to fall into the hands of an unforgiving master who
severely chastised the error of his own choice: the
unfortunate general was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed
into the human form, was exposed on a mountain; a dreadful
warning to those who might hereafter be intrusted with the
fame and fortune of Persia. (86) Yet the prudence of Chosroes
insensibly relinquished the prosecution of the Colchian war,
in the just persuasion, that it is impossible to reduce, or,
at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and
efforts of its inhabitants. The fidelity of Gubazes
sustained the most rigorous trials. He patiently endured
the hardships of a savage life, and rejected with disdain,
the specious temptations of the Persian court. (O) The king
of the Lazi had been educated in the Christian religion; his
mother was the daughter of a senator; during his youth he
had served ten years a silentiary of the Byzantine palace,
(87) and the arrears of an unpaid salary were a motive of
attachment as well as of complaint. But the long
continuance of his sufferings extorted from him a naked
representation of the truth; and truth was an unpardonable
libel on the lieutenants of Justinian, who, amidst the
delays of a ruinous war, had spared his enemies and trampled
on his allies. Their malicious information persuaded the
emperor that his faithless vassal already meditated a second
defection: an order was surprised to send him prisoner to
Constantinople; a treacherous clause was inserted, that he
might be lawfully killed in case of resistance; and Gubazes,
without arms, or suspicion of danger, was stabbed in the
security of a friendly interview. In the first moments of
rage and despair, the Colchians would have sacrificed their
country and religion to the gratification of revenge. But
the authority and eloquence of the wiser few obtained a
salutary pause: the victory of the Phasis restored the
terror of the Roman arms, and the emperor was solicitous to
absolve his own name from the imputation of so foul a
murder. A judge of senatorial rank was commissioned to
inquire into the conduct and death of the king of the Lazi.
He ascended a stately tribunal, encompassed by the ministers
of justice and punishment: in the presence of both nations,
this extraordinary cause was pleaded, according to the forms
of civil jurisprudence, and some satisfaction was granted to
an injured people, by the sentence and execution of the
meaner criminals. (88)
In peace, the king of Persia continually sought the
pretences of a rupture: but no sooner had he taken up arms,
than he expressed his desire of a safe and honorable treaty.
During the fiercest hostilities, the two monarchs
entertained a deceitful negotiation; and such was the
superiority of Chosroes, that whilst he treated the Roman
ministers with insolence and contempt, he obtained the most
unprecedented honors for his own ambassadors at the Imperial
court. The successor of Cyrus assumed the majesty of the
Eastern sun, and graciously permitted his younger brother
Justinian to reign over the West, with the pale and
reflected splendor of the moon. This gigantic style was
supported by the pomp and eloquence of Isdigune, one of the
royal chamberlains. His wife and daughters, with a train of
eunuchs and camels, attended the march of the ambassador:
two satraps with golden diadems were numbered among his
followers: he was guarded by five hundred horse, the most
valiant of the Persians; and the Roman governor of Dara
wisely refused to admit more than twenty of this martial and
hostile caravan. When Isdigune had saluted the emperor, and
delivered his presents, he passed ten months at
Constantinople without discussing any serious affairs.
Instead of being confined to his palace, and receiving food
and water from the hands of his keepers, the Persian
ambassador, without spies or guards, was allowed to visit
the capital; and the freedom of conversation and trade
enjoyed by his domestics, offended the prejudices of an age
which rigorously practised the law of nations, without
confidence or courtesy. (89) By an unexampled indulgence, his
interpreter, a servant below the notice of a Roman
magistrate, was seated, at the table of Justinian, by the
side of his master: and one thousand pounds of gold might be
assigned for the expense of his journey and entertainment.
Yet the repeated labors of Isdigune could procure only a
partial and imperfect truce, which was always purchased with
the treasures, and renewed at the solicitation, of the
Byzantine court Many years of fruitless desolation elapsed
before Justinian and Chosroes were compelled, by mutual
lassitude, to consult the repose of their declining age. At
a conference held on the frontier, each party, without
expecting to gain credit, displayed the power, the justice,
and the pacific intentions, of their respective sovereigns;
but necessity and interest dictated the treaty of peace,
which was concluded for a term of fifty years, diligently
composed in the Greek and Persian languages, and attested by
the seals of twelve interpreters. The liberty of commerce
and religion was fixed and defined; the allies of the
emperor and the great king were included in the same
benefits and obligations; and the most scrupulous
precautions were provided to prevent or determine the
accidental disputes that might arise on the confines of two
hostile nations. After twenty years of destructive though
feeble war, the limits still remained without alteration;
and Chosroes was persuaded to renounce his dangerous claim
to the possession or sovereignty of Colchos and its
dependent states. Rich in the accumulated treasures of the
East, he extorted from the Romans an annual payment of
thirty thousand pieces of gold; and the smallness of the sum
revealed the disgrace of a tribute in its naked deformity.
In a previous debate, the chariot of Sesostris, and the
wheel of fortune, were applied by one of the ministers of
Justinian, who observed that the reduction of Antioch, and
some Syrian cities, had elevated beyond measure the vain and
ambitious spirit of the Barbarian. "You are mistaken,"
replied the modest Persian: "the king of kings, the lord of
mankind, looks down with contempt on such petty
acquisitions; and of the ten nations, vanquished by his
invincible arms, he esteems the Romans as the least
formidable." (90) According to the Orientals, the empire of
Nushirvan extended from Ferganah, in Transoxiana, to Yemen
or Arabia Faelix. He subdued the rebels of Hyrcania,
reduced the provinces of Cabul and Zablestan on the banks of
the Indus, broke the power of the Euthalites, terminated by
an honorable treaty the Turkish war, and admitted the
daughter of the great khan into the number of his lawful
wives. Victorious and respected among the princes of Asia,
he gave audience, in his palace of Madain, or Ctesiphon, to
the ambassadors of the world. Their gifts or tributes,
arms, rich garments, gems, slaves or aromatics, were humbly
presented at the foot of his throne; and he condescended to
accept from the king of India ten quintals of the wood of
aloes, a maid seven cubits in height, and a carpet softer
than silk, the skin, as it was reported, of an extraordinary
serpent. (91)
Justinian had been reproached for his alliance with the
Aethiopians, as if he attempted to introduce a people of
savage negroes into the system of civilized society. But
the friends of the Roman empire, the Axumites, or
Abyssinians, may be always distinguished from the original
natives of Africa. (92) The hand of nature has flattened the
noses of the negroes, covered their heads with shaggy wool,
and tinged their skin with inherent and indelible blackness.
But the olive complexion of the Abyssinians, their hair,
shape, and features, distinctly mark them as a colony of
Arabs; and this descent is confirmed by the resemblance of
language and manners the report of an ancient emigration,
and the narrow interval between the shores of the Red Sea.
Christianity had raised that nation above the level of
African barbarism: (93) their intercourse with Egypt, and the
successors of Constantine, (94) had communicated the
rudiments of the arts and sciences; their vessels traded to
the Isle of Ceylon, (95) and seven kingdoms obeyed the Negus
or supreme prince of Abyssinia. The independence of the
Homerites, (P) who reigned in the rich and happy Arabia, was
first violated by an Aethiopian conqueror: he drew his
hereditary claim from the queen of Sheba, (96) and his
ambition was sanctified by religious zeal. The Jews,
powerful and active in exile, had seduced the mind of
Dunaan, prince of the Homerites. They urged him to
retaliate the persecution inflicted by the Imperial laws on
their unfortunate brethren: some Roman merchants were
injuriously treated; and several Christians of Negra (97)
were honored with the crown of martyrdom. (98) The churches
of Arabia implored the protection of the Abyssinian monarch.
The Negus passed the Red Sea with a fleet and army, deprived
the Jewish proselyte of his kingdom and life, and
extinguished a race of princes, who had ruled above two
thousand years the sequestered region of myrrh and
frankincense. The conqueror immediately announced the
victory of the gospel, requested an orthodox patriarch, and
so warmly professed his friendship to the Roman empire, that
Justinian was flattered by the hope of diverting the silk
trade through the channel of Abyssinia, and of exciting the
forces of Arabia against the Persian king. Nonnosus,
descended from a family of ambassadors, was named by the
emperor to execute this important commission. He wisely
declined the shorter, but more dangerous, road, through the
sandy deserts of Nubia; ascended the Nile, embarked on the
Red Sea, and safely landed at the African port of Adulis.
From Adulis to the royal city of Axume is no more than fifty
leagues, in a direct line; but the winding passes of the
mountains detained the ambassador fifteen days; and as he
traversed the forests, he saw, and vaguely computed, about
five thousand wild elephants. The capital, according to his
report, was large and populous; and the village of Axume is
still conspicuous by the regal coronations, by the ruins of
a Christian temple, and by sixteen or seventeen obelisks
inscribed with Grecian characters. (99) But the Negus (Q)!
gave audience in the open field, seated on a lofty chariot,
which was drawn by four elephants, superbly caparisoned, and
surrounded by his nobles and musicians. He was clad in a
linen garment and cap, holding in his hand two javelins and
a light shield; and, although his nakedness was imperfectly
covered, he displayed the Barbaric pomp of gold chains,
collars, and bracelets, richly adorned with pearls and
precious stones. The ambassador of Justinian knelt; the
Negus raised him from the ground, embraced Nonnosus, kissed
the seal, perused the letter, accepted the Roman alliance,
and, brandishing his weapons, denounced implacable war
against the worshipers of fire. But the proposal of the
silk trade was eluded; and notwithstanding the assurances,
and perhaps the wishes, of the Abyssinians, these hostile
menaces evaporated without effect. The Homerites were
unwilling to abandon their aromatic groves, to explore a
sandy desert, and to encounter, after all their fatigues, a
formidable nation from whom they had never received any
personal injuries. Instead of enlarging his conquests, the
king of Aethiopia was incapable of defending his
possessions. Abrahah, (R)!! the slave of a Roman merchant of
Adulis, assumed the sceptre of the Homerites,; the troops of
Africa were seduced by the luxury of the climate; and
Justinian solicited the friendship of the usurper, who
honored with a slight tribute the supremacy of his prince.
After a long series of prosperity, the power of Abrahah was
overthrown before the gates of Mecca; and his children were
despoiled by the Persian conqueror; and the Aethiopians were
finally expelled from the continent of Asia. This narrative
of obscure and remote events is not foreign to the decline
and fall of the Roman empire. If a Christian power had been
maintained in Arabia, Mahomet must have been crushed in his
cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a revolution
which has changed the civil and religious state of the
world. (100) (S)
This document (last modifiedFebruary 27, 1998) from Believerscafe.com
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