CHAPTER IV.

From the Death of Justinian to the Restoration of Roman Power in the East by Heraclius.  A.D.565-633

 

Sect. I

 The Reign of Justin II

 

The history of the Roman empire assumes a new aspect during the period which elapsed between the deaths of Justinian and Heraclius. The mighty nation, which the union of the Macedonians and Greeks had formed in the greater part of the East, was rapidly declining, and in many provinces hastening to extinction. Even the Hellenic race in Europe, which had for many centuries displayed the appearance of a people closely united by feelings, language, and religion, was in many districts driven from its ancient seats by the emigration of a rude Sclavonian population. Hellenic civilization, and all the fruits of the policy of Alexander the Great, at last succumbed to Roman oppression. The people of Hellas directed their exclusive attention to their own local institutions. They expected no benefits from the imperial government; and the emperor and the administration of the empire could now give but little attention to any provincial business, not directly connected with the all-absorbing topic of the fiscal exigencies of the State.

The inhabitants of the various provinces of the Roman Empire were everywhere forming associations, independent of the general government, and striving to recur as rarely as possible to the central administration at Constantinople. National feelings daily exerted additional force in separating the subjects of the empire into communities, where language and religious opinions operated with more power on society than the political allegiance enforced by the emperor. This separation of the interests and feelings soon put an end to every prospect of regenerating the empire, and even presented momentary views of new political, religious, and national combinations, which seemed to threaten the immediate dissolution of the Eastern Empire. The history of the West offered the counterpart of the fate which threatened the East; and, according to all human calculations, Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Hellas, were on the point of becoming independent states. But the inexorable principle of Roman centralization possessed an inherent energy of existence very different from the unsettled republicanism of Greece, or the personality of the Macedonian monarchies. The Roman empire never relaxed its authority over its own subjects, nor did it ever cease to dispense to them an equal administration of justice, in every case in which its own fiscal demands were not directly concerned, and even then it invoked laws to authorize its acts of injustice. It never permitted its subjects to bear arms, unless those arms were received from the State, and directed by the emperor’s officers; and when the imperial forces were defeated by the Avars and the Persians, its policy was unaltered. The emperors displayed the same spirit when the enemy was encamped before Constantinople as the senate had shown when Hannibal marched from the field of Cannae to the walls of Rome.

Events which no human sagacity could foresee, against which no political wisdom could contend, and which the philosopher can only explain by attributing them to the dispensation of that Providence who exhibits, in the history of the world, the education of the whole human species, at last put an end to the existence of the Roman domination in a large part of its dominions in the East. Yet the inhabitants of the countries freed from the Roman yoke, instead of finding a freer range for the improvement of their individual and national advantages, found that the religion of Mahomet, and the victories of his followers, strengthened the power of despotism and bigotry; and several of the nations which had been enslaved by the Macedonians, and oppressed by the Romans, were exterminated by the Saracens.

The Roman emperors of the East appear to have believed that the strict administration of justice in civil and criminal affairs superseded the necessity of carefully watching the ordinary proceedings of the administrative department, forgetting that the legal establishment could only take cognizance of the exceptional cases, and that the well-being of the people depended on the daily conduct of their civil governors. It soon became apparent that Justinian’s reforms in the legislation of the empire had produced no improvement in the civil administration. That portion of the population of the capital, and of the empire, which arrogated to itself the title of Romans, turned the privileges conferred by their rank in the imperial service into a means of living at the expense of the people. The central administration lost some of its former control over the people; and Justin II showed some desire to make concessions tending to revive the feeling that civil order, and security of property, flowed, as a natural result, from the mere existence of the imperial government, — a feeling which had long contributed powerfully to support the throne of the emperors.

The want of a fixed order of succession in the Roman empire was an evil severely felt, and the enactment of precise rules for the hereditary transmission of the imperial dignity would have been a wise and useful addition to the lex regia or constitution of the State. This constitution was supposed to have delegated the legislative power to the emperor; for the theory, that the Roman people was the legitimate source of all authority, still floated in public opinion. Justinian, however, was sufficiently versed both in the laws and constitutional forms of the empire, to dread any precise qualification of this vague and perhaps imaginary law; though the interests of the empire imperiously required that measures should be adopted to prevent the throne from becoming an object of civil war. A successor is apt to be a rival, and a regency in the Roman Empire would have revived the power of the senate, and might have converted the government into an oligarchical aristocracy. Justinian, as he was childless, naturally felt unwilling to circumscribe his own power by any positive law, lest he should create a claim which the authority of the senate and people of Constantinople might have found the means of enforcing, and thus a legal control over the arbitrary exercise of the imperial power would have been established. A doubtful succession was also an event viewed with satisfaction by most of the leading men of the senate, the palace, and the army, as they might expect to advance their private fortunes, during the period of intrigue and uncertainty inseparable from such a contingency. The partisans of a fixed succession would only be found among the lawyers of the capital, the clergy, and the civil and financial administrators in the provinces; for the Roman citizens and nobility, forming a privileged class, were generally averse to the project, as tending to diminish their importance. The abolition of the ceremony attending the sanction of the emperor’s election by the senate and the people, would have been viewed as an arbitrary change in the constitution, and as an attempt to rob the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire of the boast that they lived under a legal monarch, and not under a hereditary despot like the Persians,— a boast which they still uttered with pride.

The death of Justinian so long threatened the empire with civil war, that all parties were anxious to avert the catastrophe; and Justin, one of his nephews, who held the office of master of the palace, was peaceably installed as his uncle’s successor. The energy of his personal character enabled him to turn to his advantage the traces of ancient forms that still survived in the Roman state; and the momentary political importance thus given to these forms, proves that the Roman government was even then very far from a pure despotism. The phrase, ‘the senate and the Roman people’, still exerted so much influence over public opinion, that Justin considered their formal election as constituting his legal title to the throne. The senate was instructed by his partisans to solicit him to accept the imperial dignity, though he had already secured both the troops and the treasury; and the people were assembled in the hippodrome, in order to enable the new emperor to deliver an oration, in which he assured them that their happiness, and not his own repose, should always be the chief object of his government. The character of Justin II was honourable, but it is said to have been capricious; he was, however, neither destitute of personal abilities nor energy. Disease, and temporary fits of insanity, compelled him at last to resign the direction of public business to others, and in this critical conjuncture his choice displayed both judgment and patriotism. He passed over his own brothers and his son-in-law, in order to select the man who appeared alone capable of re-establishing the fortunes of the Roman Empire by his talents. This man was Tiberius II.

The commencement of Justin’s reign was marked by vigour, perhaps even by rashness. He considered the annual subsidies paid by Justinian to the Persians and the Avars in the light of a disgraceful tribute, and, as he refused to make any farther payments, he was involved in war with both these powerful enemies at the same time. Yet, so inconsistent was the Roman administration that the Lombards, by no means a powerful or numerous people, were allowed to conquer the greater part of Italy almost unopposed. As this conquest was the first military transaction that occurred during his reign, and as the Lombards occupy an important place in the history of European civilization, the loss of Italy has been usually selected as a convincing proof of the weakness and incapacity of Justin.

The country occupied by the Lombards on the Danube was exhausted by their oppressive rule; and they found great difficulty in maintaining their position, in consequence of the neighbourhood of the Avars, the growing strength of the Sclavonians, and the perpetual hostility of the Gepids. The diminished population and increasing poverty of the surrounding countries no longer supplied the means of supporting a numerous body of warriors in that contempt for every useful occupation which was essential to the preservation of the national superiority of the Gothic race. The Sclavonic neighbours and subjects of the Gothic tribes were gradually becoming as well armed as their masters; and as many of those neighbours combined the pursuits of agriculture with their pastoral and predatory habits, they were slowly rising to a national equality. Pressed by these circumstances, Alboin, king of the Lombards, resolved to emigrate, and to effect a settlement in Italy, the richest and most populous country in his neighbourhood. To secure himself during the expedition, he proposed to the Avars to unite their forces and destroy the kingdom of the Gepids, agreeing to abandon all claims to the conquered country, and to remain satisfied with half the movable spoil.

This singular alliance was successful: the united forces of the Lombards and Avars overpowered the Gepids, and destroyed their kingdom in Pannonia, which had existed for one hundred and fifty years. The Lombards immediately commenced their emigration. The Heruls had already quitted this desolated country, and thus the last remains of the Gothic race, which had lingered on the confines of the Eastern Empire, abandoned their possessions to the Hunnic tribes, which they had long successfully opposed, and to the Sclavonians, whom they had for ages ruled.

The historians of this period, on the authority of Paul the Deacon, a Lombard chronicler, have asserted that Narses invited the Lombards into Italy in order to avenge an insulting message with which the empress Sophia had accompanied an order of her husband Justin for the recall of the old eunuch to Constantinople. The court was dissatisfied with the expense of Narses in the administration of Italy, and required that a larger sum should be annually remitted to the imperial treasury. The Italians, on the other hand, complained of the military severity and fiscal oppression of his government. The last acts of the life of Narses are, however, quite incompatible with treasonable designs; and probably the knowledge which the emperor Justin and his cabinet must have possessed of the impossibility of deriving any surplus revenue from the agricultural districts of Italy, offers the simplest explanation of the indifference manifested at Constantinople to the Lombard invasion. It would be apparently nearer the truth to affirm that the Lombards entered Italy with the tacit sanction of the empire, than that Narses acted as a traitor.

As soon as Narses received the order of recall, he proceeded to Naples, on his way to Constantinople; but the advance of the Lombards alarmed the Italians to such a degree, that they despatched a deputation to beg him to resume the government. The Bishop of Rome repaired to Naples, to persuade Narses of the sincere repentance of the provincials, who perceived the danger of losing a ruler of talent at such a crisis. No suspicion, therefore, could have then prevailed amongst the Italians of any communications between Narses and the Lombards, nor could they have suspected that an experienced courtier, a wise statesman, and an able general, would, in his extreme old age, allow revenge to get the better of his reason, else they would have trembled at his return to power, and dreaded his vengeance instead of confiding in his talents. And even in examining history at this distance of time, we ought to weigh the conduct and character of a long public life against a dramatic tale, even when it is repeated by a great historian. The story that the empress Sophia sent a distaff and spindle to the ablest soldier in the empire, and that the veteran should have declared in his passion that he would spin her a thread which she should not easily unravel, seems a fable, which bears a character of fancy and of simplicity of ideas, marking its origin in a ruder state of society than that which reigned at the court of Justin II. A Gothic or Lombard origin of the fable is farther supported by the fact, that it must have produced no ordinary sensation among the Germanic nations, to see an eunuch invested with the highest commands in the army and the State, and the sensation could not fail to give rise to many idle tales. The story of Narses’s treason may have arisen at the time of his death; but it is remarkable that no Greek author mentions it before the tenth century; and this fact countenances the inference that the Lombard conquest received at least a tacit approval on the part of the emperor. Narses really accepted the invitation of the Italians to return to Rome, where he commenced the necessary preparations for resisting the Lombards, but his death occurred before their arrival in Italy.

The historians of Justin's reign are full of complaints of the abuses which had infected the administration of justice, yet the facts which they record tend distinctly to exculpate the emperor from any fault, and prove incontestably that the corruption had its seat in the vices of the whole system of the civil government of the empire. The most remarkable anecdote selected to illustrate the corruption of the judicial department, indicates that the real cause of the disorder lay in the increasing power of the official aristocracy connected with the civil administration. A man of rank, on being cited before the prefect of the city for an act of injustice, ridiculed the summons, and excused himself from appearing to answer it, as he was engaged to attend an entertainment given by the emperor. In consideration of this circumstance, the prefect did not venture to arrest him; but he proceeded immediately to the palace, entered the state apartments, and addressing Justin, declared that, as a judge, he was ready to execute every law for the strict administration of justice, but since the emperor honoured criminals, by admitting them to the imperial table, where his authority was of no avail, he begged to be allowed to resign his office. Justin, without hesitation, asserted that he would never defend any act of injustice, and that even should he himself be the person accused, he would submit to be punished. The prefect, thus authorized, seized the accused, and carried him to his court for trial. The emperor applauded the conduct of his judge; but this act of energy is said to have so stupefied the inhabitants of Constantinople, that, for thirty days, no accusation was brought before the prefect. This effect of the impartial administration of justice on the people seems strange, if the historians of the period are correct in their complaints of the general injustice. The anecdote is, however, valuable, as it reveals the real cause of the duration of the Eastern Empire, and shows that the crumbling political edifice was sustained by the judicial administration. Justin also relieved his subjects from the burden which the arrears of the public taxes were always accumulating, without enriching the treasury.

If Justin engaged rashly in a quarrel with Persia, he omitted no means of strengthening himself during the contest. He formed alliances with the Turks of central Asia, and with the Ethiopians who occupied a part of Arabia; but, in spite of his allies, the arms of the empire were unsuccessful in the East. A long series of predatory excursions were carried on by the Romans and the Persians, and many provinces of both empires were reduced to a state of desolation by this barbarous species of warfare. Chosroes succeeded in capturing Dara, the bulwark of Mesopotamia, and in devastating Syria in the most terrible manner; half a million of the inhabitants of this flourishing province were carried away as slaves into Persia. In the meantime the Avars consolidated their empire on the Danube, by compelling the Huns, Bulgarians, Sclavonians, and the remains of the Goths, to submit to their authority. Justin vainly attempted to arrest their career, by encouraging the Franks of Austrasia to attack them. The Avars continued their war with the empire, and defeated the Roman army under Tiberius the future emperor.

The misfortunes which assailed the empire on every side, and the increasing difficulties of the internal administration, demanded exertions, of which the health of Justin rendered him incapable. Tiberius seemed the only man competent to guide the vessel of the State through the storm, and Justin had the magnanimity to name him his successor, with the dignity of Caesar, and the sense to commit to him the entire control over the public administration. The conduct of the Caesar soon changed the fortune of war in the East, though the European provinces were still abandoned to the ravages of the Sclavonians. Chosroes was defeated in Melitene, though he commanded his army in person, and the Romans, pursuing their success, penetrated into Babylonia, and plundered all the provinces of Persia to the very shores of the Caspian Sea.

It is surprising that we find no mention of the Greek people, nor of Greece itself, in the memorials of the reign of Justin. Justinian plundered Greece of as large a portion of her revenues as he could; Justin and his successors utterly neglected her defence against the Sclavonian incursions, yet it appears that the Greeks contrived still to retain so much of their ancient spirit of independence and their exclusive nationality, as to awaken a feeling of jealousy amongst that more aristocratic portion of their nation which assumed the Roman name. That the imperial government overlooked no trace of nationality among any section of its subjects, is evident from a law which Justin passed to enforce the conversion of the Samaritans to Christianity, and which apparently was successful in exterminating that people, as, though they previously occupied almost as important a place in the history of the Eastern Empire as the Jews, they cease to be mentioned from the time of Justin’s law.

 

Sect. II

Disorganization of all Political and National

Influence during the Reigns of Tiberius II and Maurice.

 

A vague feeling of terror pervaded society throughout the Roman Empire after the death of Justinian. The cement of the imperial edifice was crumbling into sand and the whole fabric threatened to fall in shapeless fragments. Nor was the alarm unwarranted, though it arose from popular instinct lather than political foresight. There is perhaps no period of history in which society was so universally in a state of demoralization, nor in which all the nations known to the Greeks and Romans were so utterly destitute of energy and virtue, as during the period which elapsed from the death of Justinian to the appearance of Mahomet. Theophylactus Simocatta, the contemporary historian of the reign of Maurice, mentions a curious proof of the general conviction that a great revolution was impending in the Roman Empire. He recounts that an angel appeared to the emperor Tiberius II in a dream, and announced to him that on account of his virtues the days of anarchy should not commence during his reign.

The reigns of Tiberius and Maurice present the remarkable spectacle of two princes, of no ordinary talents, devoting all their energies to improve the condition of their country, without being able to arrest its decline, though that decline evidently proceeded from internal causes. Great evils arose in the Roman Empire from the discord existing between the government and almost every class of its subjects. A powerful army still kept the field, the administration was perfectly arranged, the finances were not in a state of disorder, and every exertion was made to enforce the strictest administration of justice; yet, with so many elements of good government, the government was bad, unpopular, and oppressive. No feeling of patriotism existed in any class; no bond of union united the monarch and his subjects; and no ties of common interest rendered their public conduct amenable to the same laws. No fundamental institution of a national character enforced the duties of a citizen by the bonds of morality and religion; and thus the emperors could only apply administrative reforms as a cure for an universal political palsy. Great hopes of improvement were, however, entertained when Tiberius mounted the throne; for his prudence, justice, and talents were the theme of general admiration. He opposed the enemies of the empire with vigour, but as he saw that the internal ills of the State were infinitely more dangerous than the Persians and the Avars, he made peace the great object of his exertions, in order that he might devote his exclusive attention to the reform of the civil and military administration. But he solicited peace from Hormisdas, the son of Chosroes, in vain. When he found all reasonable terms of accommodation rejected by the Persian, he attempted, by a desperate effort, to terminate the war. The whole disposable military force of the empire was collected in Asia Minor, and an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men was, by this means, assembled. The Avars were allowed to seize Sirmium, and the emperor consented to conclude with them an inglorious and disadvantageous peace, so important did it appear to him to secure success in the struggle with Persia. The war commenced with some advantage, but the death of Tiberius interrupted all his plans. He died after a short reign of four years, with the reputation of being the best sovereign who had ever ruled the Eastern Empire, and he bequeathed to his son-in-law Maurice the difficult task of carrying into execution his extensive schemes of reform.

Maurice was personally acquainted with every branch of the public administration — he possessed all the qualities of an excellent minister — he was a humane and an honourable man, — but he wanted the great sagacity necessary to rule the Roman Empire in the difficult times in which he reigned. His private character merited all the eulogies of the Greek historians, for he was a good man and a true Christian. When the people of Constantinople and their bigoted patriarch determined to burn an unfortunate individual as a magician, he made every effort, though in vain, to save the persecuted man. He gave a feeling proof of the sincerity of his faith after his dethronement; for when the child of another was offered to the executioners instead of his own, he himself revealed the error, lest an innocent person should perish by his act. He was orthodox in his religion, and economical in his expenditure, virtues which his subjects were well qualified to appreciate, and much inclined to admire. The one ought to have endeared him to the people, and the other to the clergy; but unfortunately, his want of success in war was connected with his parsimony, and his humanity was regarded as less orthodox than Christian. The impression of his virtues was thus neutralized, and he could never secure to his government the great political advantages which he might have derived from popularity. As soon as his reign proved unfortunate he was called a miser and a Marcionite. (The Marcionites held, that an intermediate deity of a mixed nature, neither perfectly good nor perfectly evil, is the creator of the world. Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History)

By supporting the Bishop of Constantinople in his assumption of the title of oecumenical patriarch, Maurice excited the violent animosity of Pope Gregory I; and the great reputation of that sagacious pontiff has induced Western historians to examine all the actions of the Eastern emperor through a veil of ecclesiastical prejudice. Gregory, in his letters, accuses Maurice of supporting the venality of the public administration, and even of selling the high office of exarch. These accusations are doubtless correct enough when applied to the system of the Byzantine court; but no prince seems to have felt more deeply than Maurice the evil effects of that system, or made sincerer efforts to reform it. That personal avarice was not the cause of the financial errors of his administration, is attested by numerous instances of his liberality recorded in history, and by the fact that even during his turbulent reign he was intent on reducing the public burdens of his subjects, and actually succeeded in his plans to a considerable extent. The flatteries heaped by Gregory the Great on the worthless tyrant Phocas, show clearly enough that policy, not justice, regulated the measure of the pope’s praise and censure.

Maurice had been selected by Tiberius as his confidential agent in the reform of the army; and much of the new emperor’s misfortune originated from attempting to carry into execution plans which required the calm judgment and the elevation of character of their author, in order to create throughout the empire the feeling that their adoption was necessary for the salvation of the Roman power. The enormous expense of the army, and the independent existence which it maintained, now compromised the safety of the government, as much as it had done before the reforms of Constantine. Tiberius began cautiously to lay the foundation of a new system, by adding to his household troops a corps of fifteen thousand heathen slaves, whom he purchased and disciplined. He placed this little army under the immediate command of Maurice, who had already displayed an attachment to military reforms, by attempting to restore the ancient mode of encamping Roman armies. This revival of the old Roman castrametation caused great dissatisfaction in the army, and there seems every reason to ascribe the unsuccessful operations of Maurice on the Iberian frontier, in the year 580, to the discontent of the soldiers. That he was a military pedant, may be inferred from the fact that he found time to write a work on military tactics, without succeeding in acquiring a great military reputation; and it is certain that he was suspected by the soldiers of being an enemy to the privileges and pretensions of the army, and that by them all his actions were scanned with a jealous eye. During the Persian war, he rashly attempted to diminish the pay and rations of the troops, and this ill-timed measure caused a sedition, which was suppressed with the greatest difficulty, but which left feelings of ill-will in the minds of the emperor and the army, and laid the foundation of the ruin of both.

Fortune, however, proved eminently favourable to Maurice in his contest with Persia, and he obtained that peace which neither the prudence nor the military exertions of Tiberius had succeeded in concluding. A civil war rendered Chosroes II, the son of Hormisdas, an exile, and compelled him to solicit the protection of the Romans. (Chosroes II succeeded Hormisdas III in A.D. 590, and reigned 37 years. Chosroes II was dethroned by his son Siroes in A.D. 628). Maurice received Chosroes II with humanity, and, acting according to the dictates of a just and generous policy, aided him to recover his paternal throne. When reinstated on the throne of Persia, Chosroes concluded a peace with the Roman Empire, which promised to prove lasting; for Maurice wisely sought to secure its stability, by demanding no concession injurious to the honour or political interests of Persia. Dara and Nisibis were restored to the Romans, and a strong and defensible frontier formed by the cession, on the part of Chosroes, of a portion of Pers-Armenia.

 

Sect. III

Maurice causes a revolution by attempting to re-establish the ancient authority of the Imperial Administration.

 

As soon as Maurice had established tranquillity in the Asiatic provinces, he directed his whole force against the Avars, in order to restrain the ravages which they were annually committing in the country between the Danube and the coast of the Mediterranean. The Avar kingdom now embraced all that portion of Europe which extends from the Carnian Alps to the Black Sea; and the Huns, Sclavonians, and Bulgarians, who had previously lived under independent governments, were either united with their conquerors, or submitted, if not as subjects, at least as vassals, to the Avar monarch. After the conclusion of peace with Persia, the sovereign of the Avars was the only dangerous enemy to the Roman power; but the Avars, in spite of their rapid and extensive conquests, were unable to assemble an army capable of encountering the regular forces of the empire in the open field. Maurice, confident in the superiority of Roman discipline, resolved to conduct a campaign against the barbarians in person; and there appeared no doubt of its proving successful. His conduct, on this important occasion, is marked by singular vacillation of purpose. He quitted Constantinople apparently with the firm determination to place himself at the head of the army; yet, when a deputation from the court and senate followed him, and entreated that he would take care of his sacred person, he made this solicitation a pretext for an immediate return to his capital. His courage was very naturally called in question, and both his friends and enemies attributed his alarm to sinister omens. It seems, however, not improbable, that his firmness was really shaken by more alarming proofs of his unpopularity, and by the conviction that he would have to encounter far greater difficulties than he had previously expected, in enforcing his projects of reform among the troops. As very often happens to weak and obstinate men, he became distrustful of the success of his measures after he had committed himself to attempt their execution; and he shrank from attempting to perform the task in person, though he must have doubted whether an undertaking requiring so rare a combination of military skill and political sagacity could ever succeed, unless conducted under the eye, and supported by the personal influence and prompt authority, of the emperor. His conduct excited the contempt of the soldiers; and whether he trembled at omens, or shrank from responsibility, he was laughed at in the army for his timidity: so that even had nothing occurred to awaken the suspicion or rouse the hatred of the troops employed against the Avars, their scorn for their sovereign would have brought them to the very verge of rebellion.

Though the Roman army gained several battles, and displayed considerable skill, and much of the ancient military superiority in the campaigns against the Avars, still the inhabitants of Moesia, Illyria, Dardania, Thrace, Macedonia, and even Greece, were exposed to annual incursions of hostile hordes, who crossed the Danube to plunder the cultivators of the soil, so that, at last, whole provinces remained almost entirely depopulated. The imperial armies were generally ill commanded, for the generals were usually selected, either from among the relations of the emperor, or from among the court aristocracy. The spirit of opposition which had arisen between the camp and the court, made it unsafe to intrust the chief command of large bodies of troops to soldiers of fortune, and the most experienced of the Roman officers, who had been bred to the profession of arms, were only employed in secondary posts. (The court generals of the time were Maurice himself, his brother Peter, his son-in-law Philippicus, Heraclius, the father of the emperor of that name, Comentiolus, and prolmbly Priscus, who appears to be the same person as Crispus. The professional soldiers who attained high commands were Droctulf, a Sueve, Apsich, a Hun, and Ilifred, whose name proves his Gothic or Germanic origin)

Priscus, one of the ablest and most influential of the Roman generals, carried on the war with some success, and invaded the country of the Avars and Sclavonians; but his successes appear to have excited the jealousy of the emperor, who, fearing his army more than the forces of his enemies, removed Priscus from the command, in order to intrust it to his own brother. The first duty of the new general was to remodel the organization of the army, to prepare for the reception of the emperor’s ulterior measures of reform. The commencement of a campaign was most unwisely selected as the time for carrying this plan into execution, and a sedition among the soldiery was the consequence. The troops being now engaged in continual disputes with the emperor and the civil administration, selected from among their officers the leaders whom they considered most attached to their own views, and these leaders began to negotiate with the government, and consequently all discipline was destroyed. The mutinous army was soon defeated by the Avars, and Maurice was constrained to conclude a treaty of peace. The provisions of this treaty were the immediate cause of the ruin of Maurice. The Avars who had taken prisoners about twelve thousand of the Roman soldiers, offered to ransom their captives for twelve thousand pieces of gold. Maurice refused to pay this sum, and it was said, that they reduced their demand, and asked only four pieces of silver for each captive; but the emperor, though he consented to add twenty thousand pieces of gold to the former subsidy, refused to pay anything in order to ransom the Roman prisoners.

By this treaty, the Danube was declared the frontier of the empire, and the Roman officers were allowed to cross the river, in order to punish any ravages which the Sclavonians might commit within the Roman territory — a fact which seems to indicate the declining power of the Avar monarch, and the virtual independence of the Sclavonic tribes, to whom this provision applied. It may be inferred also from these terms, that Maurice could easily have delivered the captive Roman soldiers had he wished to do so; and it is natural to conclude that he left them in captivity to punish them for their mutinous behaviour, to which he attributed both their captivity and the misfortunes of the empire. It was commonly reported, however, at the time, that the emperor’s avarice induced him to refuse to ransom the soldiers, though it is impossible to suppose that Maurice would have committed an act of inhumanity for the paltry saving which thereby accrued to the imperial treasury. The Avars, with singular, and probably unexpected barbarity, put all their prisoners to death. Maurice certainly never contemplated the possibility of their acting with such cruelty, or he would have felt all the impolicy of his conduct, even if it be supposed that passion had, for a time, extinguished the usual humanity of his disposition. The murder of these soldiers was universally ascribed to the avarice of the emperor; and the aversion which the army had long entertained to his government was changed into a deep-rooted hatred of his person; while the people participated in the feeling from a natural dislike to an economical and unsuccessful reformer.

The peace with the Avars was of short duration. Priscus was again intrusted with the command of the army, and again restored the honour of the Roman arms. He carried hostilities beyond the Danube; and affairs were proceeding prosperously, when Maurice, with that perseverance in an unpopular course which weak princes generally consider a proof of strength of character, renewed his attempts to enforce his schemes for restoring the severest discipline. His brother was despatched to the army as commander-in-chief, with orders to place the troops in winter quarters in the enemy’s country, and compel them to forage for their subsistence. A sedition was the consequence: and the soldiers, already supplied with leaders, broke out into rebellion, and raised Phocas, one of the officers who had risen to distinction in the previous seditions, to the chief command. Phocas led the army directly to Constantinople, where, having found a powerful party dissatisfied with Maurice, he lost no time in mounting the throne. The injudicious system of reform pursued by Maurice had rendered him not only hateful to the army, whose abuses he endeavoured to eradicate, but also unpopular among the people, whose burdens he wished to alleviate. Yet the emperor’s confidence in the rectitude of his intentions supported him in the most desperate circumstances; and when abandoned by all his subjects, and convinced that the termination both of his reign and his life was approaching, he showed no signs of cowardice. As his plan of reform had been directed to the increase of his own power as the centre of the whole administration, and as he had shown too clearly that his increased authority was to be directed against more than one section of the government agents, he lost all influence from the moment he lost his power; and when he found it necessary to abandon Constantinople, he was deserted by every follower. He was soon captured by the agents of Phocas, who ordered him to be immediately executed with his whole family. The conduct of Maurice at his death proves that his private virtues could not be too highly eulogized. He died with fortitude and resignation, after witnessing the execution of his children; and when an attempt, which has been already alluded to, was made to substitute the infant of a nurse instead of his youngest child, he himself revealed the deceit, in order to prevent the death of an innocent person.

The sedition which put an end to the reign of Maurice, though it originated in the camp, became, as the army advanced towards the capital, a popular as well as a military movement. Many causes had long threatened a conflict between official power and popular feeling, for the people hated the administration, and the discordant elements of society in the East had latterly been gaining strength. The central government had found great difficulty in repressing religious disputes and ecclesiastical party feuds. The factions of the amphitheatre, and the national hatred of various classes in the empire, frequently broke out in acts of bloodshed. Monks, charioteers, and usurers, could all raise themselves above the law; and the interests of particular bodies of men proved often more powerful to produce disorder than the provincial government to enforce tranquillity. The administrative institutions were everywhere too weak to replace the declining strength of the executive government. A persuasion arose that it was absolutely necessary to infuse new strength into the administration in order to escape from anarchy: but the power of a rapacious aristocracy, and the corruption of an idle populace in the capital, fed by the State, presented insuperable obstacles to the tranquil adoption of any reasonable plan of political reformation. The provincials were too poor and ignorant to originate any scheme of amelioration, and it was dangerous even for an emperor to attempt the task, as no national institutions enabled the sovereign to unite any powerful body of his subjects in a systematic opposition to the venality of the aristocracy, the corruption of the capital, and the license of the army. Those national feelings which began to acquire force in some provinces, and in a few municipalities where the attacks of Justinian had proved ineffectual, tended more to awaken a longing for independence than a wish for reform or a desire to support the emperor in any attempt to improve the administration.

The arbitrary and illegal conduct of the imperial officers, while it rendered sedition venial, very often insured its partial success and complete impunity. The measures of reform proposed by Maurice appear to have been directed, like the reforms of most absolute monarchs, rather to increase his own authority than to establish a system of administration on a legal basis, more powerful than the despotic will of the emperor himself. To confine the absolute power of the emperor to the executive administration, to make the law supreme, and to vest the legislative authority in some responsible body or senate, were not projects suitable to the age of Maurice, and perhaps hardly possible in the state of society. Maurice resolved that his first step in the career of improvement should be to render the army, long a licentious and turbulent check on the imperial power, a well-disciplined and efficient instrument of his will; and he hoped in this manner to repress the tyranny of the official aristocracy, restrain the license of the military chiefs, prevent the sects of Nestorians and Eutychians from forming separate states, and render the authority of the central government supreme in all the distant provinces and isolated cities of the empire. In his struggle to obtain this result he was compelled to make use of the existing administration; and, consequently, he appears in the history of the empire as the supporter and protector of a detested aristocracy, equally unpopular with the army and the people; while his ulterior plans for the improvement of the civil condition of his subjects were never fully made known, and perhaps never clearly framed even by himself, though it is evident that many of them ought to have preceded his military changes. This view of the political position of Maurice, as it could not escape the observation of his contemporaries, is alluded to in the quaint expression of Evagrius, that Maurice expelled from his mind the democracy of the passions, and established the aristocracy of reason, though the ecclesiastical historian, a cautious courtier, either could not or would not express himself with a more precise application, or in a clearer manner.

 

Sect. IV

Phocas was the representative of a Revolution, not of a National Party

 

Though Phocas ascended the throne as leader of the rebellious army, he was universally regarded as the representative of the popular hostility to the existing order of administration, to the ruling Aristocracy, and to the government party in the church. A great portion of the Roman world expected improvement as a consequence of any change, but the change produced by the election of Phocas was followed by a series of misfortunes almost unparalleled in the history of revolutions. The ties which connected the social and political institutions of the Eastern Empire were severed, and circumstances which may have appeared to contemporaries only as the prelude of a passing storm tending to purify the moral horizon, soon created a whirlwind which tore up the very roots of the Roman power, and prepared the minds of men to receive new Impressions.

The government of Phocas convinced the majority of his subjects that the rebellion of a licentious army, and the sedition of a pampered populace, were not the proper instruments for ameliorating the Condition of the empire. In spite of the hopes of his followers, of the eulogium on the column which still exists in the Roman forum, and of the praises of Pope Gregory the Great, it was quickly discovered that Phocas was a worse sovereign than his predecessor. Even as a soldier he was inferior to Maurice, and the glory of the Roman arms was stained by his cowardice or incapacity. Chosroes, the king of Persia, moved, as he asserted, by gratitude, and the respect due to the memory of his benefactor Maurice, declared war against the murderer. A war commenced between the Persian and Roman empires, which proved the last and bloodiest of their numerous struggles; and its violence and strange vicissitudes contributed in a great degree to the dissolution of both these ancient monarchies. The empire of the Sassanides, after bringing the Roman empire to the verge of ruin, received a mortal wound from Heraclius and was soon after destroyed by the followers of Mahomet. The Roman empire escaped destruction, after witnessing Persian armies encamped on the Bosphorus and Arabian armies besieging Constantinople, but it lost many of its richest provinces, and both its institutions and political character underwent a change. It is customary to call the Roman empire, after this modification in its external and internal form was completed, the Byzantine empire. The victories of Chosroes compelled Phocas to conclude an immediate peace with the Avars, in order to secure himself from being attacked in Constantinople. The treaty is of great importance in the history of the Greek population in Europe, but, unfortunately, we are ignorant of its tenor and can only trace it in its effects at a later period. The whole of the agricultural districts of the empire in Europe were virtually abandoned to the ravages of the northern nations, and, from the Danube to the Peloponnesus, the Sclavonian tribes ravaged the country with impunity, or settled in the depopulated provinces. Phocas availed himself of the treaty to transport into Asia the whole military force which he could collect, but the Roman armies, having lost their discipline, were everywhere defeated. Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Galatia, and Paphlagonia, were laid waste; and nothing appears to have saved the Roman empire from complete conquest by the Persians, but the wars carried on at the time by Chosroes with the Armenians and the Turks, which prevented his concentrating his whole force against Constantinople. The tyranny and incapacity of Phocas rapidly increased the disorders in the civil and military administration; seditions broke out in the army, and rebellions in the provinces. The emperor, either because he partook of the bigotry of his age, or because he desired to secure the support of the clergy and the applause of the populace, determined to prove his orthodoxy by ordering all the Jews in the empire to be baptized. The Jews, who formed a wealthy and powerful class in many of the cities of the East, resisted this act of oppression, and caused bloody seditions which contributed much to the progress of the Persian arms.

Various districts and provinces in the distant parts of the empire, observing the confusion which reigned in the central administration, and the increasing weakness of the imperial power, availed themselves of the opportunity to extend the authority of their municipal institutions. The dawn of the temporal power of the Popes, and of the liberty of the Italian cities, may be traced to this period, though still hardly perceptible. Pope Gregory the Great only cavilled at the conduct of Maurice, who allowed the Bishop of Constantinople to assume the title of oecumenical patriarch, and he eulogized the virtues of Phocas, who compelled the patriarch to lay aside the irritating epithet. Phocas at last exhausted the patience even of the timid aristocracy of Constantinople, and all classes directed their attention to find a successor to the tyrant. Heraclius, the exarch of Africa, had long governed that province, in which his family possessed great influence, almost as an independent sovereign. He had distinguished himself in the command of a Roman army during the Persian wars. To him the leading men at Constantinople addressed their complaints, inviting him to deliver the empire from ruin, and dethrone the reigning tyrant.

The exarch of Africa soon collected a considerable army and a numerous fleet. The command of this expedition was given to his son Heraclius; and as the possession of Egypt, which supplied Constantinople with provisions for its idle populace, was necessary to secure tranquillity after conquest, Nicetas, the nephew of the exarch, was Sent with an army to support his cousin, and occupy both Egypt and Syria. Heraclius proceeded directly to Constantinople, and the fate of Phocas was decided in a single naval engagement, fought within sight of his palace. The disorder which reigned in every branch of the administration, in consequence of the folly and incapacity of the ignorant soldier who ruled the empire, was so great, that no measures had been adopted for offering a vigorous resistance to the African expedition. Phocas was taken prisoner, stripped of the imperial robes, covered with a black cloak, and carried on board the ship of Heraclius with his hands tied behind his back. The young conqueror indignantly addressed him: “Wretch! in what manner have you governed the empire?” The dethroned tyrant, roused by the tone which seemed to proclaim that his successor would prove as cruel as he had been himself, and perhaps feeling the difficulties of the task to be insurmountable, answered with a sneer, “You will govern it better!” Heraclius lost his temper at the advantage which his predecessor had gained in this verbal contest; and showed that it was very questionable whether he himself would prove either a wiser sovereign or a better man than Phocas, by striking the dethroned emperor and ordering his hands and feet to be cut off on the deck of the vessel before he was decapitated. His head and mutilated members were then sent on shore to be dragged through the streets by the populace of Constantinople. All the leading partisans of Phocas were executed, as if to afford evidence that the cruelty of that tyrant had been as much a national as a personal vice. Since his death, he has been fortunate enough to find defenders, who consider that his alliance with Pope Gregory, and his leaning towards the Latin party in the church, are signs of virtue, and proofs of a capacity for government.

 

Sect. V

 The Empire under Heraclius

 

The young Heraclius became Emperor of the East, and his father continued to rule Africa, which the family appear to have regarded as a hereditary domain. For several years the government of the new emperor was quite as unsuccessful as that of his predecessor, though it was more popular and less tyrannical. There are reasons, however, for believing that this period of apparent misgovernment and general misfortune was not one of complete neglect. Though defeats and disgraces followed one another with rapidity, the causes of these disasters had grown up during the preceding reigns; and Heraclius was compelled to labour silently in clearing away many petty abuses, and in forming a new corps of civil and military officers, before he could venture on any important act. His chief attention was of necessity devoted to prepare for the great struggle of restoring the Roman empire to some portion of its ancient strength and power; and he had enough of the Roman spirit to resolve, that, if he could not succeed, he would risk his own life and fortune in the attempt, and perish amidst the ruins of civilized society. History has preserved few records of the measures adopted by Heraclius during the early years of his reign; but their effect in restoring the strength of the empire, and in reviving the energy of the imperial administration, is testified by the great changes which mark the subsequent period.

The reign of Heraclius is one of the most remarkable epochs both in the history of the empire and in the annals of mankind. It warded off the almost inevitable destruction of the Roman government; it laid the foundation of that policy which prolonged the existence of the imperial power at Constantinople under a new modification, as the Byzantine monarchy; and it was contemporary with the commencement of the great moral change in the condition of the people which transformed the language and manners of the ancient world into those of modem nations. The Eastern Empire was indebted to the talents of Heraclius for its escape from those ages of barbarism which, for many centuries, prevailed in all western Europe. No period of society could offer a field for instructive study more likely to present practical results to the highly-civilized political communities of modern Europe; yet there is no time of which the existing memorials of the constitution and frame of society are so imperfect and unsatisfactory. A few important historical facts and single events can alone be gleaned, from which an outline of the administration of Heraclius may be drawn, and an attempt made to describe the situation of his Greek subjects.

The loss of many extensive provinces, and the destruction of numerous large armies since the death of Justinian, had given rise to a persuasion that the end of the Roman empire was approaching; and the events of the earlier part of the reign of Heraclius were not calculated to remove this impression. Fanaticism and avidity were the prominent social features of the time. The civil government became more oppressive in the capital as the revenues of the provinces conquered by the Persians were lost. The military power of the empire declined to such a degree, from the poverty of the imperial government, and the aversion of the people to military service, that the Roman armies were nowhere able to keep the field. Heraclius found the treasury empty, the civil administration demoralized, the agricultural classes ruined, the army disorganized, the soldiers deserting their standards to become monks, and the richest provinces occupied by his enemies. A review of the position of the empire at his accession attests the extraordinary talents of the man who could emerge from the accumulated disadvantages of this situation, and achieve a career of glory and conquest almost unrivalled. It proves also the wonderful perfection of the system of administration which admitted of reconstructing the fabric of the civil government, when the very organization of civil society had been completely shattered. The ancient supremacy of the Roman empire could not be restored by human genius; the progress of mankind down the stream of time had rendered a return to the past condition of the world impracticable; but yet the speed of the vessel of the State in descending the torrent was moderated, and it was saved from being dashed to pieces on the rocks. Heraclius delivered the empire and the imperial city of Constantinople from almost certain destruction by the Persians and the Avars; and though his fortune sank before the first fury of Mahomet’s enthusiastic votaries, his sagacious administration prepared those powerful means of resistance which enabled the Greeks to check the Saracen armies almost at the threshold of their dominions; and the caliphs, while extending their successful conquests to the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, were for centuries compelled to wage a doubtful war on the northern frontiers of Syria.

It was perhaps a misfortune for mankind that Heraclius was by birth a Roman rather than a Greek, as his views were from that accident directed to the maintenance of the imperial dominion, without any reference to the national organization of his people. His civilization, like that of the ruling class in the Eastern Empire, was too far removed from the state of ignorance into which the mass of the population had fallen, for the one to be influenced by the feelings of the other, or for both to act together with the energy conferred by unity of purpose. Heraclius, being by birth and family connections an African noble, regarded himself as of pure Roman blood, superior to all national prejudices, and bound by duty and policy to repress the domineering spirit of the Greek aristocracy in the State, and of the Greek hierarchy in the Church. Language and manners began to give to national feelings almost as much power in forming men into distinct societies as political arrangements. The influence of the clergy followed the divisions established by language, rather than the political organization adopted by the government: and as the clergy formed the most popular and the ablest portion of society, the church exerted more influence over the minds of the people than the civil administration and the imperial power, even though the emperor was the acknowledged sovereign and master of the patriarchs and the pope. It is necessary to observe here, that the established church of the empire had ceased to be the universal Christian church. The Greeks had rendered themselves the depositaries of its power and influence; they had already corrupted Christianity into the Greek church; and other nations were rapidly forming separate ecclesiastical societies to supply their own spiritual wants. The Armenians, Syrians, and Egyptians, were induced by national aversion to the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Greeks, as well as by spiritual preference of the doctrines of Nestorius and Eutyches, to oppose the established church. At the time Heraclius ascended the throne, these national and religious feelings already exercised their power of modifying the operations of the Roman government, and of enabling mankind to advance one step towards the establishment of individual liberty and intellectual independence. Circumstances, which will be subsequently noticed, prevented society from making any progress in this career of improvement, and effectually arrested its advance for many centuries. In western Europe, this struggle never entirely lost its important characteristic of a moral contest for the enjoyment of personal rights and the exercise of individual opinion; and as no central government succeeded in maintaining itself permanently independent of all national feelings, a check on the formation of absolute authority always existed, both in the Church and State. Heraclius, in his desire to restore the power of the empire, strove to destroy these sentiments of religious liberty. He persecuted all who opposed his political power in ecclesiastical matters; he drove the Nestorians from the great church of Edessa, and gave it to the orthodox. He banished the Jews from Jerusalem, and forbade them to approach within three thousand paces of the Holy City. His plans of coercion would evidently have failed as completely with the Nestorians, Eutychians, and Jacobites, as they did with the Jews; but the contest with Mohammedanism closed the struggle, and concentrated the whole strength of the unconquered population of the empire in support of the Greek church and Constantinopolitan government.

In order fully to comprehend the lamentable state of weakness to which the empire was reduced, it is necessary to take a cursory view of the condition of the different provinces. The continual ravages of the barbarians who occupied the country beyond the Danube had extended as far as the southern shores of the Peloponnesus. The agricultural population was almost exterminated, except where it was protected by the immediate vicinity of fortified towns, or secured by the fastnesses of the mountains. The inhabitants of all the countries between the Archipelago and the Adriatic had been greatly diminished, and fertile provinces remained everywhere desolate, ready to receive new occupants. As great part of these countries yielded very little revenue to the government, they were considered by the court of Constantinople as of hardly any value, except in so far as they covered the capital from hostile attacks, or commanded the commercial routes to the west of Europe. At this time the Indian and Chinese trade had in part been forced round the north of the Caspian Sea, in consequence of the Persian conquests in Syria and Egypt, and the disturbed state of the country immediately to the east of Persia. The rich produce transported by the caravans, which reached the northern shores of the Black Sea, was then transported to Constantinople, and from thence distributed through western Europe. Under these circumstances, Thessalonica and Dyrrachium became points of great consequence to the empire, and were successfully defended by the emperor amidst all his calamities. These two cities commanded the extremities of the usual road between Constantinople and Ravenna, and connected the towns on the Archipelago with the Adriatic and with Rome. The open country was abandoned to the Avars and Sclavonians, who were allowed to effect permanent settlements even to the south of the Via Egnatia; but none of these settlements were suffered to interfere with the lines of communication, without which the imperial influence in Italy would have been soon annihilated, and the trade of the West lost to the Greeks. The ambition of the barbarians prompted them to make daring attempts to share the wealth of the Eastern Empire, and they tried to establish a system of maritime depredations in the Archipelago; but Heraclius was able to frustrate their schemes, though it is probable that he owed his success more to the exertions of the mercantile population of the Greek cities, than to the exploits of his own troops.

When disorder reigned in the territory nearest to the seat of government, it cannot be supposed that the administration of the distant provinces was conducted with greater prudence or success. The Gothic kingdom of Spain was, at this time, ruled by Sisebut,  an able and enlightened monarch, whose policy was directed to gain over the Roman provincials by peaceful measures, and whose arms were employed to conquer the territories of the empire in the Peninsula. He soon reduced the imperial possessions to a small extent of coast on the ocean, embracing the modern province of Algarve, and a few towns on the shores of the Mediterranean. He likewise interrupted the communications between the Roman troops and Spain and Africa, by building a fleet, and conquering Tangiers and the neighbouring country. Heraclius concluded a treaty with Sisebut, in the year 614, and the Romans were thus enabled to retain their Spanish territories until the reign of Suintilla, who, while Heraclius was engaged in his Persian campaigns, finally expelled the Romans (or the Greeks, as they were generally termed in the West) from the Spanish continent. Seventy-nine years had elapsed since the Roman authority had been re-established in the south of Spain by the conquests of Justinian. Even under the disadvantages to which the imperial power was exposed, the commercial superiority of the Greeks still enabled them to retain possession of the Balearic Islands until a later period.

National distinctions and religious interests tended to divide the population, and to balance political power, much more in Italy than in the other countries of Europe. The influence of the church in protecting the people, the weakness of the Lombard sovereigns, from the small numerical strength of the Lombard population, and the oppressive fiscal government of the Roman exarchs, gave the Italians the means of creating a national existence, amidst the conflicts of their masters. Yet so imperfect was the unity of interests, or so great were the difficulties of communication between the people of various parts of Italy, that the imperial authority not only defended its own dominions with success against foreign enemies, but also repressed with ease the ambitious or patriotic attempts of the popes to acquire political power, and punished equally the seditions of the people and the rebellions of the chiefs, who, like John Compsa of Naples and the exarch Eleutherinus, aspired at independence.

Africa alone, of all the provinces of the empire, continued to use the Latin language in ordinary life; and its inhabitants regarded themselves, with some reason, as the purest descendants of the Romans. After the victories of John the Patrician, it had enjoyed a long period of tranquillity, and its prosperity was undisturbed by any spirit of nationality adverse to the supremacy of the empire, or by schismatic opinions hostile to the church. The barbarous tribes to the south were feeble enemies, and no foreign State possessed a naval force capable of troubling its repose or interrupting its commerce. Under the able and fortunate administration of Heraclius and Gregoras, the father and uncle of the emperor,

Africa formed the most flourishing portion of the empire. Its prosperous condition, and the wars raging in other countries, threw great part of the commerce of the Mediterranean into the hands of the Africans. Wealth and population increased to such a decree, that the naval expedition of the emperor Heraclius, and the army of his cousin Nicetas, were fitted out from the resources of Africa alone. Another strong proof of the prosperity of the province, of its importance to the empire, and of its attachment to the interests of the Heraclian family, is afforded by the resolution which the emperor adopted, in the ninth year of his reign, of transferring the imperial residence from Constantinople to Carthage.

The immense population of Constantinople gave great inquietude to the government. Constantine the Great, in order to favour the increase of his new capital, granted daily allowances of bread to the possessors of houses. Succeeding emperors, for the purpose of caressing the populace, had largely increased the numbers of those entitled to this gratuity. In 618, the Persians overran Egypt, and by their conquest stopped the annual supplies of grain destined for these public distributions. Heraclius, ruined in his finances, but fearing to announce the discontinuance of allowances, so necessary to keep the population of Constantinople in good humour, engaged to continue the supply, on receiving a payment of three pieces of gold from each claimant. His necessities, however, very soon became so great, that he ceased to continue the distributions, and thus defrauded those citizens of their money whom the fortune of war had deprived of their bread. The danger of his position must have been greatly increased by this bankruptcy, and the dishonour must have rendered his residence among the people whom he had deceived galling to his mind. Shame, therefore, may possibly have suggested to Heraclius the idea of quitting Constantinople; but his selection of Carthage, as the city to which he wished to transfer the seat of government, must have been determined by the wealth, population, and security of the African province. Carthage offered military resources for recovering possession of Egypt and Syria, of which we can only now estimate the extent by taking into consideration the expedition that placed Heraclius himself on the throne. Many reasons connected with the constitution of the civil government of the empire, might likewise be adduced as tending to influence the preference.

In Constantinople, an immense body of idle inhabitants had been collected, a mass that had long formed a burden on the State, and acquired a right to a portion of its resources. A numerous nobility, and a permanent imperial household, conceived that they formed a portion of the Roman government, from the prominent part which they acted in the ceremonial that connected the emperor with the people. Thus, the great natural advantages of the geographical position of the capital were neutralized by moral and political causes; while the desolate state of the European provinces, and the vicinity of the northern frontier, began to expose it to frequent sieges. As a fortress and place of arms, it might have still formed the bulwark of the empire in Europe; but while it remained the capital, its immense unproductive population required that too large a part of the resources of the State should be devoted to supplying it with provisions, to guarding against the factions and the seditions of its populace, and to maintaining in it a powerful garrison. The luxury of the Roman court had, during ages of unbounded wealth and unlimited power, assembled round the emperor an infinity of courtly offices, and caused an enormous expenditure, which it was extremely dangerous to suppress and impossible to continue.

No national feelings or particular line of policy connected Heraclius with Constantinople, and his frequent absence during the active years of his life indicates that, as long as his personal energy and health allowed him to direct the public administration, he considered the constant residence of the emperor in that city injurious to the general interests of the State. On the other hand Carthage was, at this time, peculiarly a Roman city; and in actual wealth, in the numbers of its independent citizens, and in the activity of its whole population, was probably inferior to no city in the empire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Heraclius, when compelled to suppress the public distributions of bread in the capital, to retrench the expenditure of his court and make many reforms in his civil government, should have wished to place the imperial treasury and his own resources in a place of greater security, before he engaged in his desperate struggle with Persia. The wish, therefore, to make Carthage the capital of the Roman Empire may, with far greater probability, be connected with the gallant project of his Eastern campaigns, than with the cowardly or selfish motives attributed to him by Byzantine writers.

When the project of Heraclius to remove to Carthage was generally known, the Greek patriarch, the Graeco-Roman aristocracy, and the Byzantine people became alarmed at the loss of power, wealth, public shows, and largesses consequent on the departure of the court, and were eager to change his resolution. As far as Heraclius was personally concerned, the anxiety displayed by every class to retain him, may have relieved his mind from the shame caused by his financial fraud; and as want of personal courage was certainly not one of his defects, he may have abandoned a wise resolution without much regret, if he had thought the enthusiasm which he witnessed likely to aid his military plans. The Patriarch and the people, hearing that he had shipped his treasures, and was prepared to follow with all the imperial family, assembled tumultuously, and induced the emperor to swear in the church of St Sophia, that he would defend the empire to his death, and regard the people of Constantinople as peculiarly the children of his throne.

Egypt, from its wonderful natural resources, and its numerous and industrious population, had long been the most valuable province of the empire. It poured a great portion of its produce into the imperial treasury; for its agricultural population, being destitute of all political power and influence, were compelled to pay, not only their regular taxes in money like other provincials, but also a tribute in grain, which was viewed as a rent for the soil. At this time, however, the wealth of Egypt was on the decline. The circumstances which had driven the trade of India to the north, had caused a great decrease in the demand for the grain of Egypt on the shores of the Red Sea, and for its manufactures in Arabia and Ethiopia. The canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, whose existence is intimately connected with the prosperity of these countries, had been neglected during the government of Phocas. A large portion of the Greek population of Alexandria had been ruined, because an end had been put to the public distributions of grain in that city. Poverty had invaded the fertile land of Egypt. John the Almsgiver, who was patriarch and imperial prefect in the reign of Heraclius, did everything in his power to alleviate this misery. He established hospitals, and devoted the revenues of his See to charity; but he was an enemy to heresy, and consequently he was hardly looked on as a friend by the native population. National feelings, religious opinions, and local interests, had always nourished, in the minds of the native Egyptians, a deep-rooted hatred of the Roman administration and of the Greek Church; and this feeling of hostility only became more concentrated after the union of the offices of prefect and patriarch by Justinian. A complete line of separation existed between the Greek colony of Alexandria and the native population, who during the decline of the Greeks and Jews of Alexandria intruded themselves into political business, and gained some degree of official importance. The cause of the emperor was now connected with the commercial interests of the Greek and Melchite parties, but these ruling classes were regarded by the agricultural population of the rest of the province as interlopers on their sacred Jacobite soil. John the Almsgiver, though a Greek patriarch, and an imperial prefect, was not perfectly free from the charge of heresy, nor, perhaps, of employing the revenues under his control with more attention to charity than to public policy. The exigencies of Heraclius were so great that he sent his cousin, the patrician Nicetas, to Egypt, to seize the immense wealth which the patriarch John was said to possess. In the following year the Persians invaded the province; and the patrician and patriarch, unable to defend even the city of Alexandria, fled to Cyprus, while the enemy was allowed to subdue the valley of the Nile to the borders of Libya and Ethiopia, without meeting any opposition from the imperial forces, and apparently with the good wishes of the Egyptians. The plunder obtained from public property and slaves was immense; and as the power of the Greeks was annihilated, the native Egyptians availed themselves of the opportunity to acquire a dominant influence in the administration of their country.

(The Melchites were those Christians in Syria and Egypt who, though not Greeks, followed the doctrines of the Greek church. They were called Melchites (royalists, from Melcha, Syriac, a king) by their adversaries, on account of their implicit obedience to the edict of Marcian in favour of the Council of Chalcedon. Jacob Baradaeus, or Zanzalus, bishop of Edessa, the great heterodox apostle of the East, blended the various sects of Eutychians and Monophysites into a powerful church, whose followers were generally called, after his death. Jacobites. He died A.D. 578. Mosheim’s Ecelesiastical History

For ten years the province owned allegiance to Persia, though it enjoyed a certain degree of doubtful independence under the immediate government of a native intendant-general of the land revenues, named Mokaukas, who subsequently, at the time of the Saracen conquest, acted a conspicuous part in the history of his county. During the Persian supremacy, he became so influential in the administration, that he is styled by several writers the Prince of Egypt, Mokaukas, under the Roman government, had conformed to the established church, in order to hold an official situation, but he was, like most of his countrymen, at heart a Monophysite, and consequently inclined to oppose the imperial administration, both from religious and political motives. Yet, it appears that a portion of the Monophysite clergy steadily refused to submit to the Persian government; and Benjamin, their patriarch, retired from his residence at Alexandria when that city fell into the hands of the Persians, and did not return until Heraclius recovered possession of Egypt. Mokaukas established himself in the city of Babylon, or Misr, which had grown up, on the decline of Memphis, to be the native capital of the province, and the chief city in the interior. The moment appears to have been extremely favourable for the establishment of an independent state by the Monophysite Egyptians, since, amidst the conflicts of the Persian and Roman empires, the immense revenues and supplies of grain formerly paid to the emperor might have been devoted to the defence of the country. But the native population appears, from the conduct of the patriarch Benjamin, not to have been united in its views; and probably the agricultural classes, though numerous, living in abundance, and firm in their Monophysite tenets, had not the knowledge necessary to aspire at national independence, the strength of character required to achieve it, or the command of the precious metals necessary to purchase the service of mercenary troops and provide the materials of war. They had been so long deprived of arms and of all political rights, that they had probably adopted the opinion prevalent among the subjects of despotic governments, that public functionaries are invariably knaves, and that the oppression of the native is more grievous than the yoke of a stranger. Moral defects therefore quite as much as political obstacles, in all probability, prevented the establishment of an independent Egyptian and Jacobite state at this favourable conjuncture.

In Syria and Palestine, the different races who peopled the country were then, as in our own day, extremely divided; and their separation, by language, manners, interests, and religion, rendered it impossible for them to unite for the purpose of gaining any object opposed by the imperial government. The Persians penetrated into Palestine, plundered Jerusalem, burned the church of the holy sepulchre, and carried off the holy cross with the patriarch Zacharias into Persia in the year 614. The native Syrians, though they retained their language and literature, and showed the strength of their national character by their opposition to the Greek Church, seemed not to have constituted the majority of the inhabitants of the province. They were farther divided by their religious opinions ; for, though generally Monophysites, a part was attached to the Nestorian church. The Greeks appear to have formed the most numerous class of the population, though they were almost entirely confined within the walls of the cities. Many were, doubtless, the direct descendants of the colonies which prospered under the domination of the Seleucidae. The protection and patronage of the civil and ecclesiastical administration of the Eastern Empire had preserved these Greek colonies separate from the natives, and supported them by a continual influx of Greeks engaged in the service of the Church and State. But though the Greeks probably formed the most numerous body of the population, yet the circumstance of their composing the ruling class, united all the other classes in opposition to their authority. Being, consequently, deprived of the support of the agricultural population, and unable to recruit their numbers by an influx from their rural neighbours, they became more and more aliens in the country, and were alone incapable of offering a long and steady resistance to any foreign enemy, without the constant support of the imperial treasury and armies.

The Jews, whose religion and nationality have always supported one another, had, for more than a century, been increasing very remarkably, both in numbers and wealth, in every part of the civilized world. The wars and rivalry of the various nations of conquerors, and of conquered people, in the south of Europe, had opened to the Jews a freedom of commercial intercourse with all parties, which each nation, moved by national jealousy, refused to its own neighbours, and only conceded to a foreign people, of whom no political jealousy could be entertained. This circumstance explains the extraordinary increase in the number of the Jews, which becomes apparent, in the seventh century, in Greece, Africa, Spain, and Arabia, by referring it to the ordinary laws of the multiplication of the human species, when facilities are found for acquiring augmented supplies of the means of subsistence, without inducing us to suppose that the Jews succeeded, during this period, in making more proselytes than they had done at other times. This increase of their numbers and wealth soon roused the bigotry and jealousy of the Christians; while the deplorable condition of the Roman Empire, and of the Christian population in the East, inspired the Jews with some expectations of soon re-establishing their national independence under the expected Messiah. It must be confessed that the desire of availing themselves of the misfortunes of the Roman Empire, and of the dissensions of the Christian church, was the natural consequence of the oppression to which they had long been subjected, but it not unnaturally tended to increase the hatred with which they were viewed, and added to their persecutions.

It is said that about this time a prophecy was current, which declared that the Roman Empire would be overthrown by a circumcised people. This report may have been spread by the Jews, in order to excite their own ardour, and assist their projects of rebellion; but the prophecy was saved from oblivion by the subsequent conquests of the Saracens, which could never have been foreseen by its authors. The conduct of the Jews excited the bigotry, as it may have awakened the fears, of the imperial government, and both Phocas and Heraclius attempted to exterminate the Jewish religion, and if possible to put an end to the national existence. Heraclius not only practised every species of cruelty himself to effect this object within the bounds of his own dominions, but he even made the forced conversion or banishment of the Jews a prominent feature in his diplomacy. He consoled himself for the loss of most of the Roman possessions in Spain, by inducing Sisebut to insert an article in the treaty of peace concluded in 614, engaging the Gothic monarch to force baptism on the Jews; and he considered, that even though he failed in persuading the Franks to cooperate with him against the Avars, in the year 620, he rendered the empire and Christianity some service by inducing Dagobert to join in the project of exterminating the unfortunate Jews.

The other portions of the Syrian population aspired at independence, though they did not openly venture to assert it; and during the Persian conquest, the coast of Phoenicia successfully defended itself under the command of its native chiefs. At a later period, when the Mohammedans invaded the province, many chiefs existed who had attained a considerable degree of local power, and exercised an almost independent authority in their districts.

As the Roman administration grew weaker in Syria, and the Persian invasions became more frequent, the Arabs gradually acquired many permanent settlements amidst the rest of the inhabitants; and from the commencement of the seventh century, they must be reckoned as an important class of the population. Their power within the Roman provinces was increased by the existence of the two independent Arab kingdoms of Ghassan and Hira, which had been formed in part from territories gained from the Roman and Persian empires. Of these kingdoms, Ghassan was the constant ally or vassal of the Romans; and Hira was equally attached to, or dependent on, Persia. Both were Christian states, though the conversion of Hira took place not very long before the reign of Heraclius, and the greater part of the inhabitants were Jacobites, mixed with some Nestorians. It may be remarked that the Arabs had been advancing in civilization during the sixth century, and that their religious ideas had undergone a very great change. The decline of their powerful neighbours allowed them to increase their commerce, and its extension gave them more enlarged views of their own importance, and suggested ideas of national unity which they had not previously entertained. These causes had produced powerful effects on the whole of the Arab population during the century which preceded the accession of Heraclius; and it must not be overlooked that Mahomet himself was born during the reign of Justin II, and that he was educated under the influence of this national excitement.

The country between Syria and Armenia, or that part of ancient Chaldea which was subject to the Romans, had been so repeatedly laid waste during the Persian wars, that the agricultural population was nearly exterminated, or had retired into the Persian provinces. The inhabitants of no portion of the empire were so eager to throw off their allegiance as the Chaldaic Christians, called by the Greeks Nestorians, who formed the majority of the population of this country. They had clung firmly to the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, after its condemnation by the council of Ephesus (A.D. 449), and when they found themselves unable to contend against the temporal power and spiritual influence of the Greeks, they had established an independent church, which directed its attention, with great zeal, to the spiritual guidance of those Christians who dwelt beyond the limits of the Roman empire. The history of their missions, by which churches were established in India and China, is an extremely interesting portion of the annals of Christianity. Their zealous exertions, and their connection with the Christian inhabitants of Persia, induced the Roman emperors to persecute them with great cruelty, from political as well as religious motives; and this persecution often insured them the favour of the Persian monarchs. Though they did not always escape the bigotry and jealousy of the Persians, still they usually enjoyed equitable protection, and became active enemies both of the Greek church and the Roman empire, though the geographical position and physical configuration of their country afforded them little hope of being able to gain political independence.

(The Chaldaic Christians considered, and still consider, theirs the real apostolic church, though, like all other Christian churches, it partook largely of a national character. They used the Syriac language in public worship. Their patriarch resided at Seleucia, in Persia. He now resides at a monastery near Mosul. They had many bishops in Syria and Armenia, as well as in Mesopotamia. They were charged with confounding the divine and human natures of Christ, and they wished the Virgin Mary to be called the mother of Christ, not, as was then usual, the mother of God. They worshipped no images, and they venerated Nestorius.Whether Nestorius did or did not hold the views which his opponents ascribed to him, the doctrine for which he was condemned by the council of Ephesus was that of .the existence of two persons in Christ. The charge of confounding the divine and human natures in Christ was brought, not against the Nestorians, but against the Eutychians).

Armenia was favourably situated for maintaining its independence, as soon as the Persian and Roman empires began to decline. Though the country was divided by these rival governments, the people preserved their national character, manners, language, and literature, in as great a degree of purity as the Greeks themselves; and as their higher classes had retained more of wealth, military enterprise, and political independence, than the nobility of the other nations of the East, their services were very highly estimated by their neighbours. Their reputation for fidelity and military skill induced the Roman emperors, from the time of Justinian, to raise them to the highest offices in the empire. Though the Armenians were unable to defend their political independence against the Romans and Persians, they maintained their national existence unaltered; and, amidst all the convulsions which have swept over the face of Asia, they have continued to exist as a distinct people, and succeeded in preserving their language and literature. Their national spirit placed them in opposition to the Greek church, and they adopted the opinions of the Monophysites, though under modifications which gave to their church a national character, and separated it from that of the Jacobites. Their history is worthy of a more attentive examination than it has yet met with in English literature. Armenia was the first country in which Christianity became the established religion of the land; and the people, under the greatest difficulties, long maintained their independence with the most determined courage; and after the loss of their political power, they preserved their manners, language, religion, and national character alike under the government of the Persians, Greeks, Saracens, and Turks.

Asia Minor became the chief seat of the Roman power in the time of Heraclius, and it was the only portion in which the majority of the population was attached to the imperial government and to the Greek Church. Before the reign of Phocas, it had escaped any extensive devastation, so that it still retained much of its ancient wealth and splendour ; and the social life of the people was still modelled on the institutions and usages of preceding ages. A considerable internal trade was carried on; and the great roads, being kept in a tolerable state of repair, served as arteries for the circulation of commerce and civilization. That it had, nevertheless, suffered very severely in the general decline caused by over-taxation, and by reduced commerce, neglected agriculture, and diminished population, is attested by the magnificent ruins of cities which had already fallen to decay, and which never again recovered their ancient prosperity.

The power of the central administration over its immediate officers was almost as completely destroyed in Asia Minor as in the more distant provinces of the empire. A remarkable proof of this general disorganization is found in the history of the early years of the reign of Heraclius; and one deserving particular attention from its illustrating both his personal character and the state of the empire. Crispus, the son-in-law of Phocas, had assisted Heraclius in obtaining the throne; and as a recompense, he was entrusted with the administration of Cappadocia, one of the richest provinces of the empire, along with the chief command of the troops in his government. Crispus, a man of influence, and of a daring, heedless character, soon ventured to act, not only with independence, but even with insolence, towards the emperor. He neglected the defence of his province; and when Heraclius visited Caesarea to examine into its state and prepare the means of carrying on the war against Persia in person, Crispus displayed a spirit of insubordination and an assumption of importance which amounted to treason. Heraclius, who was prudent enough to restrain his fiery temperament, visited the too powerful officer in his bed, which he kept under a slight or affected illness, and persuaded him to visit Constantinople'. On his appearance in the senate, he was arrested, and compelled to become a monk. His authority and position rendered it absolutely necessary for Heraclius to punish his presumption, before he could advance with safety against the Persians. Many less important personages, in various parts of the empire, acted with equal independence, without the emperor's considering that it was either necessary to observe, or prudent to punish, their ambition. The decline of the power of the central government, the increasing ignorance of the people, the augmented difficulties in the way of communication, and the general insecurity of property and life, effected extensive changes in the state of society, and threw political influence into the hands of the local governors, the municipal and provincial chiefs, and the whole body of the clergy.

 

Sect. VI

 Change in the position of the Greek population which was produced by the Sclavonic establishments in Dalmatia

A.D. 565-633

 

Heraclius endeavoured to form a permanent barrier in Europe against the encroachments of the Avars and Sclavonians. For the furtherance of this project, it was evident that he could derive no assistance from the inhabitants of the provinces to the south of the Danube. The imperial armies, too, which, in the time of Maurice, had waged an active war in Illyricum and Thrace, and frequently invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable: for, in Europe, no agricultural population remained to supply the recruits required to form a new army. The only feasible plan for circumscribing the ravages of the northern enemies of the empire which presented itself, was the establishment of powerful colonies of tribes hostile to the Avars and their Sclavonian allies, in the deserted provinces of Dalmatia and Illyricum. To accomplish this object, Heraclius induced the Serbs, or western Sclavonians, who occupied the country about the Carpathian Mountains, and who had successfully opposed the extension of the Avar empire in that direction, to abandon their ancient seats, and move down to the South into the provinces between the Adriatic and the Danube. The Roman and Greek population of these provinces had been driven towards the sea-coast by the continual incursions of the northern tribes, and the desolate plains of the interior had been occupied by a few Sclavonian subjects and vassals of the Avars. The most important of the western Sclavonian tribes who moved southward at the invitation of Heraclius were the Servians and Croatians, who settled in the countries still peopled by their descendants. Their original settlements were formed in consequence of friendly arrangements, and, doubtless, under the sanction of an express treaty; for the Sclavonian people of Illyricum and Dalmatia long regarded themselves as bound to pay a certain degree of territorial allegiance to the Eastern Empire.

The measures of Heraclius were carried into execution with skill and vigour. From the borders of Istria to the territory of Dyrrachium, the whole country was occupied by a variety of tribes of Servian or western Sclavonic origin, hostile to the Avars. These colonies, unlike the earlier invaders of the empire, were composed of agricultural communities; and to the facility which this circumstance afforded them of adopting into their political system any remnant of the old Sclavonic population of their conquests, it seems just to attribute the permanency and prosperity of their settlements. Unlike the military races of Goths, Huns, and Avars, who had preceded them, the Servian nations increased and flourished in the lands which they had colonized ; and by the absorption of every relic of the ancient population, they formed political communities and independent states, which offered a firm barrier to the Avars and other hostile nations.

It may here be observed, that if the original population of the countries colonized by the Servian nations had at an earlier period been relieved from the weight of the imperial taxes, which encroached on their capital, and from the jealous oppression of the Roman government, which prevented their bearing arms; in short, if they had been allowed to enjoy all the advantages which Heraclius was compelled to concede to the Servians, we may reasonably suppose that they could have successfully defended their country. But after the most destructive ravages of the Goths, Huns, and Avars, the imperial tax-gatherers had never failed to enforce payment of the tribute as long as anything remained undestroyed, though, according to the rules of justice, the Roman government had really forfeited its right to levy the taxes, as soon as it failed to perform its duty in defending the population.

The modem history of the eastern shores of the Adriatic commences with the establishment of the Sclavonian colonies in Dalmatia. Though, in a territorial point of view, vassals of the court of Constantinople, these colonies always preserved the most complete national independence, and formed their own political governments, according to the exigencies of their situation. The states which they constituted were of considerable weight in the history of Europe; and the kingdoms or bannats of Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, Rascia, and Dalmatia, occupied for some centuries a political position very similar to that now held by the secondary monarchical states of the present day. The people of Narenta, who enjoyed a republican form of government, once disputed the sway of the Adriatic with the Venetians; and, for some time, it appeared probable that these Servian colonies established by Heraclius were likely to take a prominent part in advancing the progress of European civilization.

But, although the ancient provinces of Dalmatia, Illyricum, and Moesia, received a new race of inhabitants, and new geographical divisions and names, still several fortified towns on the Adriatic continued to maintain their immediate connection with the imperial government, and preserved their original population, augmented by numbers of Roman citizens whose wealth enabled them to escape from the Avar invasions and gain the coast. These towns long supported their municipal independence by means of the commerce which they carried on with Italy, and defended themselves against their Servian neighbours by the advantages which they derived from the vicinity of the numerous islands on the Dalmatian coast. For two centuries and a half they continued, though surrounded by Servian tribes, to preserve their direct allegiance to the throne of Constantinople, until at length, in the reign of the Emperor Basil I, they were compelled to become tributary to their Sclavonic neighbours. Ragusa alone ultimately obtained and secured its Independence, which it preserved amidst all the vicissitudes of the surrounding countries, until its liberty was finally destroyed by the French, when the conquests of Napoleon annihilated the existence of most of the smaller European republics.

It seems hardly possible that the western Sclavonians, who entered Dalmatia under the various names of Servians, Croatians, Narentins, Zachloumians, Terbounians, Diocleans, and Decatrians, constituted the whole stock of the population. Their numbers could hardly be sufficient to form more than the dominant race at the time of their arrival; and, depopulated as the country was, they probably found some remains of a primitive Sclavonian people who had inhabited the same countries from an earlier period. The remnant of these ancient inhabitants, even if reduced to the condition of agricultural-serfs or slaves, would survive the miseries which exterminated their masters; and doubtless mingled with the invaders of a kindred race from the northern banks of the Danube, who, ever since the reign of Justinian, had pushed their incursions into the empire. With these people the ruling class of Servian Sclavonians would easily unite without violating any national prejudice. The consequence was natural; the various branches of the population were soon confounded, and their numbers rapidly increased as they melted into one people. The Romans, who at one period had formed a large portion of the inhabitants of these countries, gradually died out, while the Illyrians, who were the neighbours of these colonies to the south, were ultimately pushed down on that part of the continent occupied by the Greeks.

From the settlement of the Servian Sclavonians within the bounds of the empire, we may therefore venture to date the earliest encroachments of the Illyrian or Albanian race on the Hellenic population. The Albanians or Arnauts, who are called by themselves Shkipetars, are supposed to be a tribe of the great Thracian race which, under various names, and more particularly as Paeonians, Epirots, and Macedonians, take an important part in early Grecian history. No distinct trace of the period at which they began to be co-proprietors of Greece with the Hellenic race can be found in history; but it is evident that, at whatever time it occurred, the earliest Illyrian or Albanian colonists who settled among the Greeks did so as members of the same political state, and of the same church; that they were influenced by precisely the same feelings and interests, and, what is even more remarkable, that their intrusion occurred under such circumstances that no national prejudices or local jealousies were excited in the susceptible minds of the Greeks. A common calamity of no ordinary magnitude must have produced these wonderful effects; and it seems very difficult to trace back the history of the Greek nation, without suspecting that the germs of their modern condition, like those of their neighbours, are to be sought in the singular events which occurred in the reign of Heraclius.

The power of the Avar monarchy had already declined, but the prince or great chagan was still acknowledged as suzerain, from the frontiers of Bavaria to the Dacian Alps, which bound Transylvania and the Bannat, and as far as the shores of the Black Sea, about the mouth of the Danube. The Sclavonian, Bulgarian, and Hunnish tribes, which occupied the country between the Danube and the Volga, and who had been the earliest subjects of the Avars in Europe, had re-asserted their independence. The actual numerical strength of the Avar nation had never been very great, and their barbarous government everywhere thinned the original population of the lands which they conquered. The remnant of the old inhabitants, driven by poverty and desperation to abandon all industrious pursuits, soon formed bands of robbers, and quickly became as warlike and as numerous as the Avar troops stationed to awe their districts. In a succession of skirmishes and desultory engagements, the Avars soon ceased to maintain their superiority, and the Avar monarchy fell to pieces with nearly as great rapidity as it had arisen. Yet, in the reign of Heraclius, the chagan could still assemble a variety of tribes under his standard whenever he proposed to make a plundering expedition into the provinces of the empire.

It seems impossible to decide, from any historical evidence, whether the measures adopted by Heraclius to circumscribe the Avar power, by the settlement of the Servian Sclavonians in Illyricum, preceded or followed a remarkable act of treachery attempted by the Avar monarch against the emperor. If Heraclius had then succeeded in terminating his arrangements with the Servians, the dread of having their power reduced may have appeared to the Avars some apology for an attempt at treachery, too base even for the ordinary latitude of savage revenge and avidity, but which we find repeated by a Byzantine emperor against a king of Bulgaria two centuries later. In the year 619, the Avars made a terrible incursion into the heart of the empire. They advanced so far into Thrace, that when Heraclius proposed a personal meeting with their sovereign, in order to arrange the terms of peace, Heraclea (Perinthus), on the Sea of Marmora, was selected as a convenient spot for the interview. The emperor advanced as far as Selymbria, accompanied by a brilliant train of attendants; and preparations were made to amuse the barbarians with a theatrical festival. The avarice of the Avars was excited, and their sovereign, thinking that any act by which so dangerous an enemy as Heraclius could be removed was pardonable, determined to seize the person of the emperor while his troops plundered the imperial escort. The great wall was so carelessly guarded, that large bodies of Avar soldiers passed it unnoticed or unheeded; but their movements at last awakened the suspicion of the court, and Heraclius was compelled to fly in disguise to Constantinople, leaving his tents, his theatre, and his household establishment, to be pillaged by his treacherous enemies. The followers of the emperor were pursued to the very walls of the capital, and the crowd assembled to grace the festival became the slaves of the Avars; who carried off an immense booty, and two hundred and seventy thousand prisoners. The weakness of the empire was such, that Heraclius considered it politic to overlook even this insult, and instead of attempting to efface the stain on his reputation, which his ridiculous flight could not fail to produce, he allowed the affair to pass unnoticed. He continued his preparations for attacking Persia, as it was evident that the fate of the Roman empire depended on the success of the war in Asia. To secure himself as much as possible from any diversion in Europe, he condescended to renew his negotiations with the Avars, and by making many sacrifices, he succeeded in concluding a peace on what he vainly hoped might be a lasting basis.

Several years later, however, when Heraclius was absent on the frontiers of Persia, the Avars considered the moment favourable for renewing hostilities, and formed the project of attempting the conquest of Constantinople, in conjunction with a Persian army, which advanced to the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. The chagan of the Avars, with a powerful army of his own subjects, aided by bands of Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, attacked the capital by land, while the Persian army afforded him every possible assistance by investing the Asiatic suburb and cutting off all supplies on that side. Their combined attacks were defeated by the garrison of Constantinople, without Heraclius considering it necessary to retrace his steps, or turn back from his career of conquest in the East. The naval superiority of the Roman government prevented the junction of its enemies, and the Avars were at last compelled to effect a precipitate retreat. This siege of Constantinople is the last memorable exploit of the Avar nation recorded by the Byzantine historians; their power rapidly declined, and the people soon became so completely lost amidst the Sclavonian and Bulgarian inhabitants of their dominions, that an impenetrable veil is now cast over the history of their race and language. The Bulgarians who had already acquired some degree of power, began to render themselves the ruling people among the nations between the Danube and the Don; and, from this time, they appear in history as the most dangerous enemies of the Roman Empire on its northern frontier.

Before Heraclius induced the western Sclavonians to settle in Illiyricum, numerous bodies of the Avars and their Sclavonic subjects had already penetrated into Greece, and established themselves even as far south as the Peloponnesus. No precise evidence of the extent to which the Avars succeeded in pushing their conquests in Greece can now be obtained; but there are testimonies which establish with certainty that their Sclavonic subjects retained possession of these conquests for many centuries. The political and social condition of these Sclavonic colonies on the Hellenic soil utterly escapes the research of the historian; but their power and influence was, for a long time, very great. The passages of the Greek writers which refer to these conquests are so scanty, and so vague in expression, that it becomes the duty of the modern historian to pass them in review, particularly since they have been employed with much ability by a German writer, to prove that the Hellenic race in Europe has been exterminated, and that the modern Greeks are a mixed race composed of the descendants of Roman slaves and Sclavonian colonists. This opinion, it is true, has been combated with great learning by one of his countrymen, who asserts that the ingenious dissertation of his predecessor is nothing more than a plausible theory. We must therefore examine for ourselves the scanty records of historical truth during this dark period.

The earliest mention of the Avar conquests in Greece occurs in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius of Epiphania, in Coele-Syria, who wrote at the end of the sixth century. He mentions that, while the forces of the Emperor Maurice were engaged in the East, the Avars advanced to the great wall before Constantinople, captured Singidon (Belgrade), Anchialus, and all Greece, and laid waste everything with fire and sword. These incursions took place in the years 588 and 589, but no inference could be drawn from this vague and incidental notice of an Avar plundering incursion, so casually mentioned, in favour of the permanent settlement of Sclavonian colonies in Greece, had this passage not received considerable importance from later authorities. The testimony of Evagrius is confirmed in a very remarkable manner by a letter of the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicolaus, to the emperor Alexius Comnenus in the year 1081. The patriarch mentions that the emperor Nicephorus (A.D. 802-811) granted various concessions to the episcopal see of Patrae, in consequence of the miraculous aid which St. Andrew afforded that city in destroying the Avars, who held possession of the greater part of the Peloponnesus for two hundred and eighteen years, and had so completely separated their conquests from the Roman empire that no Roman (that is to say Greek connected with the imperial administration) dared to enter the country. Now this siege of Patrae is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and its date is fixed in the year 807; consequently, these Avars, who had conquered the Peloponnesus two hundred and eighteen years before that event, must have arrived precisely in the year 589, at the very period indicated by Evagrius. The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions the Sclavonian colonies in the Peloponnesus more than once, though he never affords any accurate information concerning the period at which they entered the country. In his work on the provinces of the empire — he informs us that the whole country was subdued and rendered barbarous after the great plague in the reign of Constantine Copronymus, an observation which implies that the complete extermination of the rural population of Hellenic race, and the establishment of the political power of the Sclavonic colonies, and their assumption of total independence in Greece, dated from that period. It is evident that they acquired great power, and became an object of alarm to the emperors, a few years later. In the reign of Constantine VI, an expedition was sent against them at a time when they possessed great part of the country from the frontiers of Macedonia to the southern limits of the Peloponnesus. Indeed the fortified towns alone appear to have remained in the possession of the Greeks.

It seems surprising that no detailed account of the important change in the condition and fortunes of the Greek race, which these facts imply, is contained in the Byzantine historians. Yet, when we reflect that these Sclavonic colonies never united into one state, nor pursued any fixed line of policy in their attacks on the empire; and when we recall to mind also that the Byzantine historians occupied themselves so little with the real history of mankind as to pass over the Lombard invasion of Italy without notice, our wonder must cease. All the Greek writers who mention this period of history were men connected either with the Constantinopolitan government, or with the orthodox church; and they were consequently destitute of every feeling of Greek nationality, and viewed the agricultural population of ancient Hellas as a rude and degenerate race of semi-barbarians, little superior to the Sclavonians, with whom they were carrying on a desultory warfare. As comparatively little revenue could, in the time of Heraclius, be drawn from Greece, that emperor never seems to have occupied himself about its fate; and the Greeks escaped the extermination with which they were threatened by their Avar and Sclavonian invaders, through the neglect, and not in consequence of the assistance, of the imperial government. The Avars made considerable exertions to complete the conquest of Greece by carrying their predatory expeditions into the Archipelago. They attacked the eastern coast, which had hitherto been secure from their invasions, and, to execute this design, they obtained shipbuilders from the Lombards, and launched a fleet of plundering barks in the Aegean Sea. The general danger of the islands and commercial cities of Greece roused the spirit of the inhabitants, who united for the defence of their property, and the plans of the Avars proved . unsuccessful. The Greeks, however, were -long exposed to the plundering Sclavonians on one side, and to the rapacity of the imperial government on the other ; and their success in preserving some portion of their commercial wealth and political influence is to be attributed to the efficacy of their municipal organization, and to the weakness of the central government, which could no longer prevent their bearing arms for their own defence.

 

Sect. VII

The Campaigns of Heraclius in the East

 

The personal character of Heraclius exercised great influence on the events of his reign. Unfortunately, the historians of his age have not conveyed to posterity any very accurate picture of the peculiar traits of his mind. His conduct shows that he possessed judgment, activity, and courage; and, though he was sometimes imprudent and rash, at others he displayed an equanimity and force of character in repressing his passion, which mark him as a really great man. (His cruelty to Phocas only proves that he partook of the barbarous feelings of his age. A religious strain runs through his letters, which are preserved in the Paschal Chronicle, and in the speeches reported by Theophanes, which have an air of authenticity. It is true that this style may have been the official language of an emperor, who felt himself so peculiarly the head of the Christian church, and the champion of the orthodox faith. Persia was his ecclesiastical as well as his political enemy). In the opinion of his contemporaries, his fame was sullied by two indelible stains. His marriage with his niece Martina was regarded as incestuous, and the religious edicts, by which he proposed to regulate the faith of his subjects, were branded as heretical. Both were serious errors of policy in a prince who was so dependent on public opinion for support in his great scheme of restoring the lost power of the Roman Empire; yet the constancy of his affection for his wife, and the immense importance of reconciling all the adverse sects of Christians within the empire in common measures of defence against external enemies, may form some apology for these errors. The patriarch of Constantinople remonstrated against his marriage with his niece; but the power of the emperor was still absolute over the persons of the ecclesiastical functionaries of the empire; and Heraclius, though he allowed the bishop to satisfy his conscience by stating his objections, commanded him to practise his civil duties, and celebrate the marriage of his sovereign. The pretensions of papal Rome had not yet arisen in the Christian church. (The power of Gregory the Great was so small that he durst not consecrate a bishop without the consent of his enemy the emperor Maurice; and he was forced to obey the edict forbidding all persons to quit public employments in order to become monks, and prohibiting soldiers during the period of their service from being received into monasteries).The Patriarch Sergius does not appear to have been deficient in zeal or courage, and Heraclius was not free from the religious bigotry of his age. Both knew that the established church was a part of the State, and that though in matters of doctrine the general councils put limits to the imperial authority, yet, in the executive direction of the clergy, the emperor was nearly absolute, and possessed full power to remove the patriarch had he ventured to disobey his orders. As the marriage of Heraclius with Martina was within the prohibited degrees, it was an act of unlawful compliance on the part of Sergius to celebrate the nuptials, for the duty of the Patriarch as a Christian priest was surely, in such a case, of more importance than his obedience as a Roman subject.

The early part of the reign of Heraclius was devoted to reforming the administration and recruiting the army. He tried every means of obtaining peace with Persia in vain, and even allowed the senate to make an independent attempt to enter into negotiations with Chosroes. For twelve years, the Persian armies ravaged the empire from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Bosphorus almost without encountering any opposition. It is impossible to explain in what manner Heraclius employed his time during this interval, but it is evident that he was engaged by many cares besides those of preparing for his war with Persia. The independent negotiation which the senate attempted with Persia, seems to indicate that the Roman aristocracy had succeeded in encroaching on the emperor’s authority during the general confusion which reigned in the administration after the fall of Maurice, and that he may have been occupied with political contests at home, before he could attend to the exigencies of the Persian war. As no civil hostilities appear to have broken out, we possess no records of his difficulties in the meagre chronicles of his reign. Perhaps this random conjecture ought not to find a place in a historical work; but when the state of the Roman administration at the close of the reign of Heraclius is compared with the confusion in which he found it at his accession, it is evident, that he effected a great political change, and infused new vigour into the weakened fabric of the government.

When Heraclius had settled the internal affairs of his empire, filled his military chest, and re-established the discipline of the Roman armies, he commenced a series of campaigns, which entitle him to rank as one of the greatest military commanders whose deeds are recorded in history. The object of his first campaign was to render himself master of a line of communications extending from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Mediterranean, and resting on positions in Pontus and Cilicia. The Persian armies, which had advanced into Asia Minor and occupied Ancyra, would, by this manoeuvre, be separated from the supplies and reinforcements on their own frontiers, and Heraclius would have it in his power to attack their troops in detail. He landed at a pass called ‘the gates’, from whence he advanced into the interior and reached the frontiers of Armenia. The rapidity of his movements rendered his plan successful; the Persians, compelled to fight in the positions chosen by Heraclius, were completely defeated, and at the commencement of winter the Roman army took up its quarters in the regions of Pontus. In the second campaign, the emperor pushed forward into the heart of Persia from his camp in Pontus. Ganzaca was captured; Thebarmes, the birthplace of Zoroaster, with its temple and fire-altars, was destroyed; and after laying waste the northern part of Media, Heraclius retired to Albania, where he placed his army in winter quarters. This campaign proved to the world that the Persian Empire was in the same state of internal weakness as the Roman, and equally incapable of offering any national resistance to an active and enterprising enemy. The third and fourth campaigns were occupied in laborious marches and severe battles, in which Heraclius proved himself both a brave soldier and an able general. Under his guidance, the Roman troops recovered their ancient superiority in war. At the end of the third campaign, he established his winter quarters in the Persian dominions, and at the conclusion of the fourth he led his army back into Asia Minor, to winter behind the Halys, that he might be able to watch the movements concerted between the Persians and the Avars, for the siege of Constantinople. The fifth campaign was at first suspended by the presence of the Persian army on the shores of the Bosphorus, where it endeavoured to assist the Avars in an attack on Constantinople. Heraclius, having divided his forces into three armies, sent one to the relief of Constantinople ; the second, which he placed under the command of his brother Theodore, defeated the Persians in a great battle; and with the third he took up a position in Iberia, where he waited to hear that the Khazars had invaded Persia. As soon as he was informed that his Turkish allies had passed the Caspian gates, and was assured that the attempt on his capital had failed, he hastened forward into the very heart of the Persian Empire, and sought his rival in his palace. The sixth campaign opened with the Roman army in the plains of Assyria; and, after laying waste some of the richest provinces of the Persian Empire, Heraclius marched through the country to the east of the Tigris, and captured the palace of Dastagerd, where the Persian monarchs had accumulated the greatest part of their enormous treasures, in a position always regarded as secure from any foreign enemy. Chosroes fled at the approach of the Roman army, and his flight became a signal for the rebellion of his generals. Heraclius pushed forward to within a few miles of Ctesiphon, but then found that his success would be more certain by watching the civil dissensions of the Persians, than by risking an attack on the populous capital of their empire with his diminished army. The emperor therefore led his army back to Ganzaca in the month of March, and the seventh spring terminated the war. Chosroes was seized and murdered by his rebellious son Siroes, and a treaty of peace was concluded with the Roman emperor. The ancient frontiers of the two empires were re-established, and the holy cross, which the Persians had carried off from Jerusalem, was restored to Heraclius, with the seals of the case which contained it unbroken.

Heraclius had repeatedly declared that he did not desire to make any conquest of Persian territory. His conduct when success had crowned his exertions, and when his enemy was ready to purchase his retreat at any price, proves the sincerity and justice of his policy. His empire required not only a lasting peace to recover from the miseries of the late war, but also many reforms in the civil and religious administration, which could only be completed during such a peace, in order to restore the vigour of the government. Twenty-four years of a war, which had proved, in turns, unsuccessful to every nation engaged in it, had impoverished and diminished the population of a great part of Europe and Asia. Public institutions, buildings, roads, ports, and commerce, had fallen into decay; the physical power of governments had declined; and the utility of a central political authority became less and less apparent to mankind. Even the religious opinions of the subjects of the Roman and Persian empires had been shaken by the misfortunes which had happened to what each sect regarded as the talisman of its faith. The ignorant Christians viewed the capture of Jerusalem, and the loss of the holy cross, as indicating the wrath of heaven and the downfall of religion; they remembered that in the last days perilous times shall come. The fire-worshippers considered the destruction of Thebarmes, and the extinction of the sacred fire, as ominous of the annihilation of every good principle on earth. Both the Persians and the Christians had so long regarded their faith as a portion of the State, and reckoned political and military power as the inseparable allies of their ecclesiastical establishments, that they considered their misfortunes a proof of divine reprobation. Both orthodox Magians and orthodox Christians saw the abomination of desolation in their holy places, and their traditions and their prophets told them that this was the sign which was to herald the approach of the last great and terrible day.

The fame of Heraclius would have rivalled that of Alexander, Hannibal, or Caesar, had he expired at Jerusalem, after the successful termination of the Persian war. He had established peace throughout the empire, restored the strength of the Roman government, revived the power of Christianity in the East, and replanted the holy cross on Mount Calvary. His glory admitted of no addition. Unfortunately, the succeeding years of his reign have, in the general opinion, tarnished his fame. Yet these years were devoted to many arduous labours; and it is to the wisdom with which he restored the strength of his government during this time of peace that we must attribute the energy of the Asiatic Greeks who arrested the great tide of Mohammedan conquest at the foot of Mount Taurus. Though the military glory of Heraclius was obscured by the brilliant victories of the Saracens, still his civil administration ought to receive its meed of praise, when we compare the resistance made by the empire which he reorganized with the facility which the followers of Mahomet found in extending their conquests over every other land from India to Spain.

The policy of Heraclius was directed to the establishment of a bond of union, which should connect all the provinces of his empire into one body, and he hoped to replace the want of national unity by identity of religious belief. The church was closely connected with the people, and the emperor, as political head of the church, hoped to direct a well-organized body of churchmen. But Heraclius engaged in the impracticable task of imposing a rule of faith on all his subjects, without assuming the character of a saint or the authority of a prophet. His measures, consequently, like most religious reforms which are adopted solely from political motives, only produced additional discussions and difficulties. In the year 630, he propounded the doctrine that in Christ, after the union of the two natures, there was but one will and one operation. Without gaining over any great body of the schismatics whom he wished to restore to the communion of the established church, by his new rule of faith, he was himself generally stigmatized as a heretic. The epithet monothelite was applied to him and his doctrine, to show that neither was orthodox. In the hope of putting an end to the disputes which he had rashly awakened, he again, in 639, attempted to legislate for the church, and published his celebrated Ecthesis, which attempts to remedy the effects of his prior proceedings, by forbidding all controversy on the question of the single or double operation of the will in Christ, but which nevertheless includes a declaration in favour of unity. The bishop of Rome, who directed the proceedings of the Latin clergy, and who aspired at increasing his spiritual authority, though he did not contemplate assuming political independence, entered actively into the opposition excited by the publication of the Ecthesis, and was supported by a considerable party in the Extern church.

It cannot appear surprising that Heraclius should have endeavoured to reunite the Nestorians, Eutychians, and Jacobites, to the established church, when we remember how closely the influence of the church was connected with the administration of the State, and how completely religious passions replaced national feelings in these secondary ages of Christianity. The union was an indispensable step to the re-establishment of the imperial power in the provinces of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia; and it must not be overlooked that the theological speculations and ecclesiastical reforms of Heraclius were approved of by the wisest councillors whom he had been able to select to aid him in the government of the empire. The state of society required some strong remedy, and Heraclius only erred in adopting the plan which had always been pursued by absolute monarchs, namely, that of making the sovereign’s opinion the rule of conduct for his subjects. We can hardly suppose that Heraclius would have succeeded better, had he assumed the character or deserved the veneration due to a saint. The marked difference which existed between the higher and educated classes in the East, and the ignorant and superstitious populace, rendered it next to impossible that any line of conduct could secure the judgment of the learned, and awaken the fanaticism of the people. As a farther apology for Heraclius, it may be noticed that his acknowledged power over the orthodox clergy was much greater than that which was possessed by the Byzantine emperors at a later period, or that which was admitted by the Latin Church after its separation. In spite of all the advantages which he possessed, his attempt ended in a signal failure; yet no experience could ever induce his successors to avoid his error. His effort to strengthen his power, by establishing a principle of unity, aggravated all the evils which he intended to cure; for while the Monophysites and the Greeks were as little disposed to unite as ever, the authority of the Eastern Church, as a body, was weakened by the creation of a new schism, and the incipient divisions between the Greeks and the Latins, assuming a national character, began to prepare the way for the separation of the two churches.

The hope of attaining unity is one of the inveterate delusions of mankind. While Heraclius was endeavouring to restore the strength of the empire in the East, by enforcing unity of religious views, Mahomet, by a juster application of the aspirations of mankind after unity, succeeded in uniting Arabia into one state by persuading it to adopt one religion. The first attacks of the followers of Mahomet on the Christians were directed against those provinces of the Roman Empire which Heraclius had been anxiously endeavouring to reunite in spirit to his government. The difficulties of their administration had compelled the emperor to fix his residence for some years in Syria, and he was well aware of the uncertainty of their allegiance, before the Saracens commenced their invasion. The successes of the Mohammedan arms, and the retreat of the emperor, carrying off with him the holy cross from Jerusalem, have induced historians to suppose that his later years were spent in sloth, and marked by weakness. His health, however, was in so precarious a state, that he could no longer direct the operations of his army in person; at times, indeed, he was incapable of all bodily exertion ^ Yet the resistance which the Saracens encountered in Syria presents a strong contrast to the ease with which it had yielded to the Persians at the commencement of the emperor's reign, and attests that his administration had not been without fruit. Many of his reforms could only have been effected after the conclusion of the Persian war, when he recovered possession of Syria and Egypt. He seems, indeed, never to have omitted an opportunity of strengthening his position; and when a chief of the Huns or Bulgarians threw off his allegiance to the Avars, Heraclius is recorded to have immediately availed himself of the opportunity to form an alliance, in order to circumscribe the power of his dangerous northern enemy. Unfortunately, few traces can be gleaned from the Byzantine writers of the precise acts by which he effected his reforms; and the most remarkable facts, illustrating the political history of the time, must be collected from incidental notices, preserved in the treatise of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, concerning the administration of the empire, written for the instruction of his son Romanus, in the middle of the tenth century.

Though Heraclius failed in gaining over the Syrians and Egyptians, yet he succeeded completely in reuniting the Greeks of Asia Minor to his government, and in attaching them to the empire. The moment the Mohammedan armies were compelled to rely solely on their military skill and religious enthusiasm, and ceased to derive any aid from the hostile feeling of the inhabitants to the imperial government, their career of conquest was checked; and almost a century before Charles Martel stopped their progress in the west of Europe, the Greeks had arrested their conquests in the East, by the steady resistance which they offered in Asia Minor.

The difficulties of Heraclius were very great. The Roman armies were still composed of a rebellious soldiery collected from many discordant nations; and the only leaders whom the emperor could trust with important military commands were his immediate relations, like his brother Theodore, and his son Heraclius Constantine, or soldiers of fortune who could not aspire to the imperial dignity. The apostasy and treachery of a considerable number of Roman officers in Syria, warranted Heraclius in regarding the defence of that province as utterly hopeless; but the meagre historians of his reign can hardly be received as conclusive authorities, to prove that on his retreat he displayed an unseemly despair, or a criminal indifference. The fact that he carried the holy cross, which he had restored to Jerusalem, along with him to Constantinople, attests that he had lost all expectation of defending the Holy City; but his exclamation of ‘Farewell, Syria!’ was doubtless uttered in the bitterness of his heart, on seeing a great part of the labours of his life for the restoration of the Roman empire utterly vain. The disease which had long undermined his constitution, put an end to his life about five years after his return to Constantinople. He died in March 641, after one of the most remarkable reigns recorded in history; a reign chequered by the greatest successes and reverses, during which the social condition of mankind underwent a mighty revolution. Yet there is, unfortunately, no period of man's annals covered with greater obscurity.