From the Mohammedan Invasion of Syria to the Extinction of the Roman Power in the East A.D. 633-716

Sect. I

The Roman Empire gradually changed into the Byzantine.

The precise date at which the Eastern Empire lost its Roman character has been variously fixed. Gibbon remarks, that Tiberius by the Arabs, and Maurice by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire. But if manners, language, and religion are to decide concerning the commencement of the Byzantine empire, the preceding pages have shown that its origin must be carried back to an earlier period; while, if the administrative peculiarities in the form of government be taken as the ground of decision, the Roman Empire may be considered as indefinitely prolonged with the existence of the title of emperor of the Romans, which the sovereigns of Constantinople continued to retain as long as Constantinople was ruled by Christian princes. The privileges and the prejudices of the governing classes, both in Church and State, kept them completely separated from every race of subjects, and rendered the imperial administration, and the people of the empire, two distinct bodies, with different, and frequently adverse views and interests. Even when the conquests of the Othoman Turks had reduced the Greek empire to a narrow strip of territory in the vicinity of Constantinople, some traditions of the Roman Empire continued to animate the government, and guide the councils of the emperor. The period, therefore, at which the Roman empire of the East terminated, is decided by the events which confined the authority of the imperial government to those provinces where the Greeks formed the majority of the population; and it is marked by the adoption of Greek as the language of the government, by the prevalence of Greek civilization, and by the identification of the nationality of the people and the policy of the emperors with the Greek church. This occurred when the Saracen conquests severed from the empire all those provinces which possessed a native population distinct from the Greeks by language, literature, and religion. The central government of Constantinople was then compelled to fall back on the interests and passions of the remaining inhabitants, who were chiefly Greeks; and though Roman principles of administration continued to exercise a powerful influence in separating the aristocracy, both in Church and State, from the body of the people, still public opinion among the educated classes began to exert some influence on the administration, and that public opinion was in its character entirely Greek. Yet, as it was by no means identified with the interests and feelings of the native inhabitants of Hellas, it is correctly termed Byzantine, and the empire is, consequently, justly called the Byzantine Empire. Alexander the Great, during his short and brilliant career, implanted some habits and institutions in the lands he subdued, which outlived the authority of the Romans, though they ruled many of his conquests for 700 years, and at last the Eastern Empire identified itself with the feelings and interests of that portion of the Greek nation which owed its political existence to the Macedonian conquests. On the numbers, wealth, and power of this class the emperor and the Orthodox Church were, after the commencement of the eighth century, compelled to depend for the defence of the government and the Christian religion.

The difficulty of fixing the precise moment which marks the end of the Roman empire, arises from the slow transformation it underwent in changing its Latin for its Greek character, and because the change resulted rather from the internal evils nourished in its political organization, than from the attacks of its external enemies. The termination of the Roman power was consequently nothing more than the reform of a corrupt and antiquated government, and its transformation into a new state by the power of time and circumstance was feebly aided by the intellects and acts of superstitious and servile statesmen. The Goths, Huns, Avars, Persians, and Saracens, all failed as completely in overthrowing the Roman Empire, as the Mohammedans did in destroying the Christian religion. Even the final loss of Egypt, Syria, and Africa only reveals the transformation of the Roman Empire, when the consequences resulting from their loss produced visible effects on the internal government The Roman Empire seems, therefore, really to have terminated with the anarchy which followed the murder of Justinian II, the last sovereign of the family of Heraclius; and Leo III, or the Isaurian, who identified the imperial administration with ecclesiastical forms and questions, must be ranked as the first of the Byzantine monarchs, though neither the emperor, the clergy, nor the people perceived the change in their position, which makes the establishment of this new era historically correct.

Under the sway of the Heraclian family, the extent of the empire was circumscribed nearly within the bounds which it continued to occupy during many subsequent centuries. As this diminution of territory was chiefly caused by the separation of provinces, inhabited by people of different races, manners, and opinions, and placed, by a concurrence of circumstances, in opposition to the central government, it is not improbable that the empire was strengthened by the loss. The connection between the court and the Greek nation became closer; and though this connection, in so far as it affected the people, was chiefly based on religious feelings, and operated with greater force on the inhabitants of the cities than on the whole body of the population, still its effect was extremely beneficial to the imperial government.

While the Roman and Persian empires, ruined by their devastating wars, rapidly declined in wealth, power, and population, two nations, which had previously exercised no influence on civilization, suddenly became so powerful as to become the arbiters of the fate of mankind. The Turks in the north of Asia, and the Arabs in the south, were now placed in immediate contact with the civilized portion of mankind. The Turkish power of this time, however, never came into direct military relations with the Roman Empire, nor did the conquests of this race immediately affect the political and social condition of the Greeks, until some centuries later. With the Arabs, or Saracens, the case was very different. As they were placed on the confines of Syria, Egypt, and Persia, the wars of Heraclius and Chosroes threw a considerable portion of the rich trade with Ethiopia, Southern Africa, and India, into their hands. The long hostilities between the two empires gave a constant occupation to the warlike population of Arabia, and directed the attention of the Arabs to views of extended national policy. The natural advantages of their unrivalled cavalry were augmented by habits of order and discipline, which they could never have acquired in their native deserts, but which they learned as mercenaries in the Roman service. The Saracens in the service of the empire are spoken of with praise by Heraclius in his last campaign, when they accompanied him into the heart of Persia. The increase of their commercial and military enterprise doubtless caused an increase of population. The edict of Justinian, which prohibited the exportation of grain from every port of Egypt except Alexandria, closed the canal of Suez, and put an end to the trade on the Red Sea, or at least threw whatever trade remained into the hands of the Arabians. Their intimate connection with the Roman and Persian armies revealed to them the weakness of the two empires; yet the extraordinary power and conquests of the Arabs must be attributed rather to the moral strength which the nation acquired by the influence of their prophet Mahomet, than to the extent of their improvement in military or political knowledge. The difference in the social circumstances of a declining and an advancing population must not be lost sight of in weighing the relative strength of nations, which appear the most dissimilar in wealth and population, and even in the extent of their military establishments. Nations which, like the inhabitants of the Roman and Persian empires in the seventh century, expend their whole revenues, public and private, in the course of the year, though composed of numerous and wealthy subjects, may prove weak when a sudden emergency requires extraordinary exertion; while a people with scanty revenues and small resources may, from its frugal habits and constant activity, command a larger revenue for great public works or military enterprises. In one case it may be impossible to assemble more than one-twentieth of the population under arms; in the other, it may be possible to take the field with one-fifth.

Sect. II

Conquest of the Southern Provinces of the Empire of which the majority of the population was not Greek nor orthodox.

Strange as were the vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Persian and Roman empires during the reigns of Chosroes and Heraclius, every event in their records sinks into insignificance when compared with the mighty influence which Mahomet, the prophet of Arabia, exercised on the political, moral, and religious condition of the countries whose possession these sovereigns so eagerly disputed. Historians are apt to be enticed from their immediate subject, in order to contemplate the personal history of a man who obtained so marvellous a dominion over the minds and actions of his followers; and whose talents laid the foundations of a political and religious system, which has ever since continued to govern millions of mankind, of various races and dissimilar manners. The success of Mahomet as a law-giver, among the most ancient nations of Asia, and the stability of his institutions during a long series of generations, and in every condition of social polity, proves that this extraordinary man was formed by a rare combination of the qualities both of a Lycurgus and an Alexander, But still, in order to appreciate with perfect justness the influence of Mahomet on his own times, it is safer to examine the history of his contemporaries with reference to his conduct, and to fix our attention exclusively on his actions and opinions, than to trace from them the exploits of his followers, and attribute to them the rapid propagation of his religion. Even though it be admitted that Mahomet laid the foundations of his laws in the strongest principles of human nature, and prepared the fabric of his empire with the profoundest wisdom, still there can be no doubt that no human intelligence could, during his lifetime, have foreseen, and no combinations on the part of one individual could have insured, the extraordinary success of his followers. The laws which govern the moral world insure permanent success, even to the greatest minds, only as long as they form types of the mental feelings of their fellow-creatures. The circumstances of the age in which Mahomet lived, were indeed favourable to his career; they formed the mind of this wonderful man, who has left their impress, as well as that of his own character, on succeeding generations. He was born at a period of visible intellectual decline amongst the aristocratic and governing classes throughout the civilized world. Aspirations after something better than the then social condition of the bulk of mankind, had rendered the inhabitants of almost every country dissatisfied with the existing order of things. A better religion than the paganism of the Arabs was felt to be necessary in Arabia; and, at the same time, even the people of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, required something more satisfactory to their religious feelings than the disputed doctrines which the Magi, Jews, and Christians inculcated as the most important features of their respective religions, merely because they presented the points of greatest dissimilarity. The great success of Mani in propagating a new religion (for Manichaeism cannot properly be called a heresy) is a strong testimony of this feeling. The fate, too, of the Manichaeans would probably have foreshadowed that of the Mohammedans, had the religion of Mahomet not presented to foreign nations a national cause as well as an universal creed. Had Mahomet himself met with the fate of Mani, it is not probable that his religion would have been more successful than that of his predecessor. But he found a whole nation in the full tide of rapid improvement, eagerly in search of knowledge and power. The excitement in the public mind of Arabia, which produced the mission of Mahomet, induced many other prophets to make their appearance during his lifetime. His superior talents, and his clearer perception of justice, and we may say, truth, destroyed all their schemes.

The misfortunes of the times created in the East a belief that unity was the thing principally wanting to cure existing evils, and secure the permanent happiness of mankind. This vague desire of unity is indeed no uncommon delusion of the human intellect Mahomet seized the idea; his creed, ‘there is but one God’, was a truth that insured universal assent; the addition, ‘and Mahomet is the prophet of God’, was a simple fact, which, if doubted, admitted of an appeal to the sword, an argument that, even to the minds of the Christian world, was long considered as an appeal to God. The principle of unity was soon embodied in the frame of Arabic society; the unity of God, the national unity of the Arabs, and the unity of the religious, civil, judicial, and military administration, in one organ on earth, entitled the Mohammedans to assume, with justice, the name of Unitarians, a title in which they particularly gloried. Such sentiments, joined to the declaration made and long kept by the Saracens, that liberty of conscience was granted to all who put themselves under the protection of Islam, were enough to secure the goodwill of that numerous body of the population of both the Persian and the Roman empires which was opposed to the state religion, and which was continually exposed to persecution by these two bigoted governments. In Persia, Chosroes persecuted orthodox Christians with as much cruelty as Heraclius tormented Jews and heretics within the bounds of the empire. The ability with which Mahomet put forward his creed removed it entirely from the schools of theology, and secured among the people a secret feeling in favour of its justice, particularly when its votaries appeared as offering a refuge to the oppressed, and a protection against religious persecution.

As this work only proposes to notice the influence of Mohammedanism on the fortunes and condition of the Greek nation, it is not necessary to narrate in detail the progress of the Arab conquests in the Roman Empire. The first hostilities between the followers of Mahomet and the Roman troops occurred while Heraclius was at Jerusalem, engaged in celebrating the restoration of the holy cross, bearing it on his own shoulders up Mount Calvary, and persecuting the Jews by driving them out of their native city. (The holy cross was replaced in the Church of the Resurrection on the 14th of September, 629. In the month of Djoumadi I, in the eighth year of the Hegira, September, 629, war broke out between the Christian subjects of the empire and the Saracens, followers of Mahomet). In his desire to obtain the favour of Heaven by purifying the Holy City, he overlooked the danger which his authority might incur from the hatred and despair of his persecuted subjects. The first military operations of the Arabs excited little alarm in the minds of the emperor and his officers in Syria; the Roman forces had always been accustomed to repel the incursions of the Saracens with ease; the irregular cavalry of the desert, though often successful in plundering incursions, had hitherto proved ineffective against the regularly disciplined and completely armed troops of the empire. But a new spirit was now infused into the Arabian armies; and the implicit obedience which the troops of the Prophet paid to his commands, rendered their discipline as superior to that of the imperial forces, as their tactics and their arms were inferior.

Mahomet did not live to profit by the experience which his followers gained in their first struggle with the Romans. A long series of wars in Arabia ended in the destruction of many rival prophets, and at last united the Arabs into one great nation under the spiritual rule of Mahomet. But Aboubekr, who succeeded to his power as chief of the true believers, was compelled, during the first year of his government, to renew the contest, in consequence of fresh rebellions and insurrections of false prophets, who expected to profit by the death of Mahomet. When tranquillity was established in Arabia, Aboubekr commenced those wars for the propagation of Mohammedanism, which destroyed the Persian empire of the Sassanides, and eclipsed the power of Rome. The Christian Arabs who owned allegiance to Heraclius were first attacked in order to complete the unity of Arabia, by forcing them to embrace the religion of Mahomet. In the year 633 the Mohammedans invaded Syria, where their progress was rapid, although Heraclius himself generally resided at Emesa or Antioch, in order to devote his constant attention to restoring Syria to a state of order and obedience. The imperial troops made considerable efforts to support the military renown of the Roman armies, but were almost universally unsuccessful. The emperor did not neglect his duty; he assembled all the troops that he could collect, and intrusted the command of the army to his brother Theodore, who had distinguished himself in the Persian wars by gaining an important victory in very critical circumstances. Vartan, who commanded after Theodore, had also distinguished himself in the last glorious campaign in Persia. Unfortunately the health of Heraclius prevented his taking the field in person. The absence of all moral checks in the Roman administration, and the total want of patriotism in the officers and troops at this period, rendered the personal influence of the emperor necessary at the head of the imperial armies, in order to preserve due subordination, and enforce union among the leading men in the empire, as each individual was always more occupied in intriguing to gain some advantage over his colleagues than in striving to advance the service of the State. The ready obedience and devoted patriotism of the Saracens formed a sad contrast to the insubordination and treachery of the Romans, and would fully explain the success of the Mohammedan arms, without the assistance of any very extraordinary impulse of religious zeal, with which, however, there can be no doubt the Arabs were deeply imbued. The easy conquest of Syria by the Arabs is by no means so wonderful as the facility with which they governed it when conquered, and the tranquillity of the population under their government.

Towards the end of the year 633, the troops of Aboubekr laid siege to Bostra, a strong frontier town of Syria, which was surrendered early in the following year by the treachery of its governor. During the campaign of 634 the Roman armies were defeated at Adjnadin, in the south of Palestine, and at a bloody and decisive battle on the banks of the river Yermouk, in which it is said that the imperial troops were commanded by the emperor’s brother Theodore. Theodore was replaced by Vartan, but the rebellion of Vartan’s army and another defeat terminated this general's career. In the third year of the war the Saracens gained possession of Damascus by capitulation, and they guaranteed to the inhabitants the full exercise of their municipal privileges, allowed them to use their local mint, and left the orthodox in possession of the great church of St. John. About the same time, Heraclius quitted Edessa and returned to Constantinople, carrying with him the holy cross, which he had recovered from the Persians, and deposited at Jerusalem with great solemnity only six years before, but which he now considered it necessary to remove into Europe for greater safety. His son, Heraclius Constantine, who had received the imperial title when an infant, remained in Syria to supply his place and direct the military operations for the defence of the province. The events of this campaign illustrate the feelings of the Syrian population. The Arabs plundered a great fair at the monastery of Abilkodos, about thirty miles from Damascus; and the Syrian towns, alarmed for their wealth, and indifferent to the cause of their rulers, began to negotiate separate truces with the Arabs. Indeed, wherever the imperial garrison was not sufficient to overawe the inhabitants, the native Syrians sought to make any arrangement with the Arabs which would insure their towns from plunder, feeling satisfied that the Arab authorities could not use their power with greater rapacity and cruelty than the imperial officers. The garrison of Emesa defended itself for a year in the vain hope of being relieved by the Roman army, and they obtained favourable terms from the Saracens, even after this long defence. Arethusa (Restan), Epiphanea (Hama), Larissa (Schizar), and Heliopolis (Baalbec), all entered into treaties, which led to their becoming tributary to the Saracen. Chalcis (Kinesrin) alone was plundered as a punishment for its tardy submission, or for some violation of a truce. No general arrangements, either for defence or submission, were adopted by the Christians, whose ideas of political union had been utterly extinguished by the Roman power, and who were now satisfied if they could preserve their lives and properties, without seeking any guarantee for the future. The Romans retained some hope of reconquering Syria, until the loss of another decisive battle in the year 636 compelled them to abandon the province. In the following year, A.D. 637, the Arabs advanced to Jerusalem, and the surrender of the holy city was accompanied by some particular arrangements between the patriarch Sophronius and the caliph Omar, who repaired in person to Palestine to take possession of so distinguished a conquest. The Christian patriarch looked rather to the protection of his own bishopric than to his duty to his country and his sovereign. The facility with which the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, at this time, and the patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadius, at the time of the conquest of the Byzantine empire by Mohammed II (A.D. 1453), became the ministers of their Mohammedan conquerors, shows the slight hold which national feelings retained over the minds of the orthodox Greek clergy. It appears strange that Sophronius, who was the head of a Greek and Melchite congregation, living in the midst of a numerous and hostile Jacobite population, should have so readily consented to abandon his connection with the Greek empire and the orthodox church, when both religion and policy seemed so strongly to demand greater firmness; and on this very account, his conduct must be admitted to afford evidence of the humanity and good faith with which the early Mohammedans fulfilled their promises. The state of society in the Roman provinces rendered it impossible to replace the great losses which the armies had suffered in the Syrian campaigns; and the financial resources of the empire forbade any attempt to raise a mercenary force among the northern nations sufficiently powerful to meet the Saracens in the field. Yet the exertions of Heraclius were so great that he concentrated an army at Amida (Diarbekr) in the year 638, which made a bold attempt to regain possession of the north of Syria. Emesa was besieged; but the Saracens soon assembled an overwhelming force; the Romans were defeated, the conquest of Syria was completed, and Mesopotamia was invaded. The subjection of Syria and Palestine was not effected by the Saracens until they had laboured through five vigorous campaigns, and fought several bloody battles. The contest affords conclusive testimony that the reforms of Heraclius had already restored the discipline and courage of the Roman armies; but, at the same time, the indifference of the native population to the result of the wars testifies with equal certainty that he had made comparatively small progress in his civil and financial improvements.

The Arab conquest not only put an end to the political power of the Romans, which had lasted seven hundred years, but it also soon rooted out every trace of the Greek civilisation introduced by the conquests of Alexander the Great, which had flourished in the country for upwards of nine centuries. A considerable number of native Syrians endeavoured to preserve their independence, and retreated into the fastnesses of Mount Lebanon, where they continued to defend themselves. Under the name of Mardaltes, they soon became formidable to the Mohammedans, and for some time checked the power of the caliphs in Syria, and by the diversions which they made whenever the arms of the Arabs were employed in Asia Minor, they contributed to arrest their progress. The year after Syria was subdued, Mesopotamia was invaded, and proved an easy conquest, as its imperial governors and the inhabitants of the cities readily entered into treaties with the Mohammedans.

As soon as the Arabs had completed the conquest of Syria, they invaded Egypt. The national and religious hostility which prevailed between the native population and the Greek colonists, insured the Mohammedans a welcome from the Egyptians; but at the same time, this very circumstance excited the Greeks to make the most determined resistance. The patriarch Cyrus had adopted the Monothelite opinions of his sovereign, and this rendered his position uneasy amidst the orthodox Greeks of Alexandria. Anxious to avert any disturbance in the province, he conceived the idea of purchasing peace for Egypt from the Saracens, by paying them an annual tribute; and he entered into negotiations for this purpose, in which Mokaukas, who remained at the head of the fiscal department, joined him. The Emperor Heraclius, informed of this intrigue, sent an Armenian governor, Manuel, with a body of troops, to defend the province, and ordered the negotiations to be broken off. The fortune of the Arabs again prevailed, and the Roman army was defeated. Amrou, the Saracen general, having taken Pelusium, laid siege to Misr, or Babylon, the chief native city of Egypt, and the seat of the provincial administration. The treachery or patriotism of Mokaukas, for his position warrants either supposition, induced him to join the Arabs, and assist them in capturing the town. A capitulation was concluded, by which the native Egyptians retained possession of all their property, and enjoyed the free exercise of their religion as Jacobites, on paying a tribute of two pieces of gold for every male inhabitant. If the accounts of historians can be relied on, it would seem that the population suffered less from vicious administration in Egypt than in any other part of the Roman empire; for about the time of its conquest by the Romans it contained seven millions and a half, exclusive of Alexandria, and its population was now estimated at six millions. This is by no means impossible, for the most active cause of the depopulation of the Roman empire arose from the neglect of all those accessories of civilization which facilitate the distribution and circulation as well as the production of the necessaries of life. From neglect of this kind Egypt had suffered comparatively little, as the natural advantages of the soil, and the physical conformation of the country, intersected by one mighty river, had compensated for the supineness of its rulers. The Nile was the great road of the province, and nature kept it constantly available for transport at the cheapest rate, for the current enabled the heaviest laden boats, and even the rudest rafts, to descend the river with their cargoes rapidly and securely; while the north wind, blowing steadily for almost nine months in the year, enabled every boat that could hoist a sail to stem the current, and reach the limits of the province with as much certainty, if not with such rapidity, as a modem steam-boat. And when the waters of the Nile were separated over the Delta, they became a valuable property to corporations and individuals, whose rights the Roman law respected, and whose interests and wealth were sufficient to keep in repair the canals of irrigation; so that the vested capital of Egypt suffered little diminution, while war and oppression annihilated the accumulations of ages over the rest of the world. The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria, the only port which Egypt possessed for communicating with the empire, still made it one of the first cities in the world for riches and population, though it suffered severely by the Persian conquest.

The canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea furnished the means of transporting the agricultural produce of the rich valley of Egypt to the arid coast of Arabia, and created and nourished a trade which added considerably to the wealth and population of both countries. This canal, in its most improved state, commenced at Babylon, and ended at Arsinoe (Suez). It fertilized a large district on its banks, which has again relapsed into the same condition as the rest of the desert, and it created an oasis of verdure on the shore of the Red Sea. Arsinoe flourished amidst groves of palm-trees and sycamores, with a branch of the Nile flowing beneath its walls, where Suez now withers in a dreary waste, destitute alike of vegetables and of potable water, which are transported from Cairo for the use of the travellers who arrive from India. This canal was anciently used for the transport of large and bulky commodities, for which land carriage would have proved either impracticable or too expensive. By means of it, Trajan transported from the quarries on the Red Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean the columns and vases of porphyry with which he adorned Rome. It may have been neglected during the troubles in the reigns of Phocas and Heraclius, while the Persians occupied the country; but it was in such a state of preservation as to require but slight repairs from the earlier caliphs. A year after Amrou completed the conquest of Egypt, he established the water communication between the Nile and the Red Sea; and the large supplies of grain which he transported to the Red Sea by the canal of Suez, enabled him to relieve the inhabitants of Mecca, who were suffering from famine. After more than one interruption from neglect, it was allowed to become nearly useless for navigation by the policy of the caliphs of Bagdad, and was finally closed by Almanzor A. D. 762-767.

As soon as the Arabs had settled the affairs of the native population, they laid siege to Alexandria. This city made a vigorous defence, and Heraclius exerted himself to succour it; but, though it held out for several months, it was taken by the Arabs, when the troubles which occurred at Constantinople after the death of Heraclius prevented the Roman government from sending reinforcements to the garrison. The confidence of the Saracens induced them to leave a feeble garrison for its defence; and the Roman troops, watching an opportunity for renewing the war, recovered the city, and massacred the Mohammedans, but were soon compelled to retire to their ships, and make their escape. The conquest of Alexandria is said to have cost the Arabs twenty-three thousand men; and they are accused of using their victory like rude barbarians, because they destroyed the libraries and works of art of the Greeks, though a Mohammedan historian might appeal to the permanence of their power, and the increase in the numbers of the votaries of the Prophet, as a proof of the profound policy and statesman-like views of the men who rooted out every trace of an adverse civilization and a hostile race. The professed object of the Saracens was to replace Greek persecution by Mohammedan toleration. Political sagacity convinced the Arabs that it was necessary to exterminate Greek civilization in order to destroy Greek influence. The Goths, who sought only to plunder the Roman Empire, might spare the libraries of the Greeks, but the Mohammedans, whose object was to convert as well as subdue, considered it a duty to root out everything that presented any obstacle to the ultimate success of their schemes for the advent of Mohammedan civilization. In less than five years (A. D. 646), a Roman army, sent by the emperor Constans under the command of Manuel, again recovered possession of Alexandria, by the assistance of the Greek inhabitants who had remained in the place; but the Mohammedans soon appeared before the city, and, with the assistance of the Egyptians, compelled the imperial troops to abandon their conquest. The walls of Alexandria were thrown down, the Greek population driven out, and the commercial importance of the city destroyed. Thus perished one of the most remarkable colonies of the Greek nation, and one of the most renowned seats of that Greek civilization of which Alexander the Great laid the foundations in the East, after having flourished in the highest degree of prosperity for nearly a thousand years. (Alexandria was founded B.C. 332. After the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, the Egyptian or Coptic language began to give way to the Arabic, because the number of the Copts was gradually reduced by the oppressive government of their new masters. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, who governed it several years, is said to have left at his death a sum equal to eight millions sterling, accumulated by his extortions. The caliph Othman is said to have left only seven millions in the Arabian treasury at his death. The officers soon became richer than the State).

The conquest of Cyrenaica followed the subjugation of Egypt as an immediate consequence. The Greeks are said to have planted their first colonies in this country six hundred and thirty-one years before the Christian era and twelve centuries of uninterrupted possession appeared to have constituted them the perpetual tenants of the soil; but the Arabs were very different masters from the Romans, and under their domination the Greek race soon became extinct in Africa. It is not necessary here to follow the Saracens in their conquests westward. The dominant people with whom they had to contend in the western provinces, was Latin, and not Greek. The ruling classes were attached to the Roman government, though often rendered discontented by the tyranny of the emperors; they defended themselves with far more courage and obstinacy than the Syrians and Egyptians. The war was marked by considerable vicissitudes, and it was not till the year 698 that Carthage fell permanently into the hands of the Saracens, who, according to their usual policy, threw down the walls and ruined the public buildings, in order to destroy every trace of the Roman government in Africa. The Saracens were singularly successful in all their projects of destruction; in a short time both Latin and Greek civilization was exterminated on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.

The success of the Mohammedan religion, under the earlier caliphs, did not keep pace with the progress of the Arab arms. Of all the native populations of the countries subdued, the Arabs of Syria alone appear to have immediately adopted the new religion of their co-national race; but the great mass of the native races in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Africa, clung firmly to their faith, and the decline of Christianity in all these countries is to be attributed rather to the extermination than to the conversion of the Christian inhabitants. The decrease in the number of the Christians was invariably attended by a decrease in the numbers of the inhabitants, and arose evidently from the oppressive treatment which they suffered under the Mohammedan rulers of these countries, — a system of tyranny which was at last carried so far as to reduce whole provinces to unpeopled deserts, ready to receive an Arab population, almost in a nomad state, as the successors of the exterminated Christians. It was only when Mohammedanism presented its system of unity, in opposition to the evident falsity of idolatry, or to the unintelligible discussions of an incomprehensible theology, that the human mind was easily led away by its religious doctrines, which addressed the passions of mankind rather too palpably to be secure of commanding their reason. The earliest Mohammedan conversions of foreign races were made among the subjects of Persia, who mingled native or provincial superstitions with the Magian faith, and among the Christians of Nubia and the interior of Africa, whose religion may have departed very far from the pure doctrines of Christianity. The success of the Mohammedans was generally confined to barbarous and ignorant converts; and the more civilized people retained their faith as long as they could secure their national existence. This fact contrasts remarkably with the progress of Christianity. In one case success was obtained solely by moral influence; in the other principally by material power. The peculiar causes which enabled the Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries, in the debased mental condition into which they had fallen, to resist Mohammedanism, and to prefer extinction to apostasy, deserve a more accurate investigation than they have yet met with from historians.

The construction of the political government of the Saracen Empire was far more imperfect than the creed of the Mohammedans, and shows that Mahomet neither contemplated extensive foreign conquests, nor devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the consideration of the questions of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a numerous and wealthy population possessed of property but deprived of civil rights. No attempt was made to arrange any systematic form of political government, and the whole power of the State was vested in the hands of the chief priest of the religion, who was only answerable for the due exercise of this extraordinary power to God, his own conscience, and his subjects' patience. The moment, therefore, that the responsibility created by national feelings, military companionship, and exalted enthusiasm, ceased to operate on the minds of the caliphs, their administration became far more oppressive than that of the Roman emperors. No local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests, connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration, independent of the military and financial authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the government. Socially and politically the Saracen Empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet’s religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny.

Even the military successes of the Arabs are to be ascribed in some measure to accidental causes, over which they themselves exercised no control. The number of disciplined and veteran troops who had served in the Roman and Persian armies could not have been matched by the Arabian armies. But no inconsiderable part of the followers of Mahomet had been trained in the Persian war, and the religious zeal of neophytes, who regarded war as a sacred duty, enabled the youngest recruits to perform the service of veterans. The enthusiasm of the Arabians was more powerful than the discipline of the Roman troops, and their strict obedience to their leaders compensated in a great degree for their inferiority in arms and tactics. But a long war proved that the military qualities of the Roman armies were more lasting than those of the Arabs. The important and rapid conquests of the Mohammedans were assisted by the religious dissensions and national antipathies which placed the great bulk of the people of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in hostility to the Roman government, and neutralized many of the advantages which they might have derived from their military skill and discipline amidst a favourable population. The Roman government had to encounter the excited energies of the Arabs, at a moment, too, when its resources were exhausted and its strength was weakened by a long war with Persia, which had for years paralyzed the influence of the central executive administration, and enabled numerous chiefs to acquire an independent authority. These chiefs were generally destitute of every feeling of patriotism; nor can this excite our wonder, for the feeling of patriotism was then an unknown sentiment in every rank of society throughout the Eastern Empire ; their conduct was entirely directed by ambition and interest, and they sought only to retain possession of the districts which they governed. The example of Mokaukas in Egypt, and of Youkinna at Aleppo, are remarkable instances of the power and treasonable disposition of many of these imperial officers. But almost every governor in Syria displayed equal faithlessness. Yet in spite of the treason of some officers, and the submission of others, the defence of Syria does not appear to have been on the whole disgraceful to the Roman army, and the Arabs purchased their conquest by severe fighting and at the cost of much blood. An anecdote mentioned in the History of the Saracens shows that the importance of order and discipline was not overlooked by Khaled, the Sword of God, as he was styled by his admiring countrymen; and that his great success was owing to military skill, as well as religious enthusiasm and fiery valour. ‘Mead’, says the historian, encouraged the Saracens with the hopes of Paradise, and the enjoyment of everlasting life, if they fought for the cause of God and religion. “Softly”, said Khaled; “let me get them into good order before you set them upon fighting”. Under all the disadvantages mentioned, it is not surprising that the hostile feelings of a numerous, wealthy, and heretical portion of the Syrian community, willing to purchase peace and toleration at any reasonable sacrifice, should have turned the scale against the Romans. The struggle became doubtful from the moment that the people of Damascus concluded an advantageous truce with the Arabs. Emesa and other cities could then venture to follow the example, merely for the purpose of securing their own property, without any reference to the general interests of the province, or the military plans of defence of the Roman government. Yet one of the chiefs, who held a portion of the coast of Phoenicia, succeeded in maintaining his independence against the whole power of the Saracens, and formed in the mountains of Lebanon a small Christian principality, of which the town of Byblos (Djebail) was the capital. Round this nucleus some native Syrians, called Mardaltes, rallied in considerable force.

The great influence exercised by the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria tended also to weaken and distract the measures adopted for the defence of Syria and Egypt, Their willingness to negotiate with the Arabs, who were resolved only to be satisfied with conquest, placed the Roman armies and government in a disadvantageous position. Where the chances of war are nearly balanced, the good will of the people will eventually decide the contest in favour of the party that they espouse. Now there is strong reason to believe, that even a majority of the orthodox subjects of the Roman empire, in the provinces which were conquered during the reign of Heraclius, were the well-wishers of the Arab; that they regarded the emperor with aversion as a heretic; and that they fancied they were sufficiently guaranteed against the oppression of their new masters, by the rigid observance of justice which characterized their earlier acts. A temporary diminution of tribute, or escape from some oppressive act of administration, induced them to compromise their religious position and their national independence. The fault is too natural to be severely blamed. They feared that Heraclius might commence a persecution in order to enforce conformity with his monothelite opinions, for of religious liberty the age had no just conception; and the Syrians and Egyptians had been slaves for far too many centuries to be impressed with any idea of the sacrifices which a nation ought to make in order to secure its independence. The moral tone adopted by the Caliph Aboubekr, in his instructions to the Syrian army, was also so unlike the principles of the Roman government, that it must have commanded profound attention from a subject people. “Be just”, said the proclamation of Aboubekr, “the unjust never prosper; be valiant, die rather than yield; be merciful, slay neither old men, children, nor women. Destroy neither fruit-trees, grain, nor cattle; keep your word, even to your enemies; molest not those men who live retired from the world, but compel the rest of mankind to become Mussulmans, or to pay us tribute, — if they refuse these terms, slay them”. Such a proclamation announced to Jews and Christians sentiments of justice and principles of toleration which neither Roman emperors nor orthodox bishops had ever adopted as the rule of their conduct. This remarkable document must have made a deep impression on the minds of an oppressed and persecuted people. Its effect was soon increased by the wonderful spectacle of the Caliph Omar riding into Jerusalem on the camel which carried all the baggage and provisions which he required for his journey from Mecca. The contrast thus offered between the rude simplicity of a great conqueror and the extravagant pomp of the provincial representatives of a defeated emperor must have embittered the hatred already strong in an oppressed people against a rapacious government. Had the Saracens been able to unite a system of judicial legislation and administration, and of elective local and municipal governments for their conquered subjects, with the vigour of their own central power and the religious monarchy of their own national government, it is difficult to conceive that any limits could ultimately have been opposed to their authority by the then existing states into which the world was divided.

But the political system of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous, and it only caught a passing gleam of justice, while worldly prudence tempered the religious feelings of their prophet’s doctrines. A remarkable feature of the policy by which they maintained their power over the provinces which they conquered, ought not to be overlooked, as it illustrates both their confidence in their military superiority and the low state of their social civilization. They generally destroyed the walls of the cities which they subdued, whenever the fortifications offered peculiar facilities for defence, or contained a native population active and bold enough to threaten danger from rebellion. Many celebrated Roman cities were destroyed, and the Saracen administration was transferred to new capitals, founded where a convenient military station for overawing the country could be safely established. Thus Alexandria, Babylon or Misr, Carthage, Ctesiphon, and Babylon were destroyed, and Fostat, Kairowan, Cufa, Bussora, and Bagdad rose to supplant them.

Sect. III

Constans II. A.D. 641-668.

After the death of Heraclius, the short reigns of his sons, Constantine III, or Heraclius Constantine, and Heracleonas, were disturbed by court intrigues and the disorders which result from the want of a settled law of succession. In such conjunctures, the people and the courtiers learn alike to traffic in sedition. Before the termination of the year in which Heraclius died, his grandson, Constans II, mounted the imperial throne at the age of eleven, in consequence of the death of his father Constantine and the dethronement of his uncle Heracleonas. An oration made by the young prince to the senate after his accession, in which he invoked the aid of that body, and spoke of their power in terms of reverence, warrants the conclusion that the official aristocracy had again recovered its influence over the imperial administration; and that, though the emperor's authority was still held to be absolute by the constitution of the empire, it was really cotrolled by the influence of the patricians and other great officers in the state.

Constans grew up to be a man of considerable abilities and of an energetic character, but possessed of violent passions, and destitute of all the amiable feelings of humanity. The early part of his reign was marked by the loss of several portions of the empire. The Lombards extended their conquests in Italy from the maritime Alps to the frontiers of Tuscany; and the exarch of Ravenna was defeated with considerable loss near Modena; but still they were unable to make any serious impression on the exarchate. Armenia was compelled to pay tribute to the Saracens. Cyprus was rendered tributary to the caliph, though the amount of the tribute imposed was only seven thousand two hundred pieces of gold, which is said to have been half the amount previously paid to the emperor. But this trifling sum can have hardly amounted to the moiety of the surplus usually paid into the imperial treasury after the expenses of the local government were defrayed, and cannot have borne any relation to the amount of taxation levied by the Roman emperors in the island. It contrasts strangely with the large payments made by single cities for a year’s truce in Syria, and the immense wealth collected by the Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Africa. The commercial town of Aradus, in Syria, which had hitherto resisted the Saracens from the strength of its insular position, was now taken and destroyed. In a subsequent expedition, Cos was taken by the treachery of its bishop, and the city plundered and laid waste. Rhodes was then conquered, and its conquest is memorable for the destruction of the celebrated Colossus, which, though it fell about fifty-six years after its erection, had been, even in its prostrate condition, regarded as one of the wonders of the world. The admiration of the Greeks and Romans had protected it from destruction for nine centuries. The Arabs, to whom works of art possessed no value, broke it in pieces, and sold the bronze of which it was composed. The metal is said to have loaded nine hundred and eighty camels.

As soon as Constans was old enough to assume the direction of public business, the two great objects of his policy were the establishment of the absolute power of the emperor over the Orthodox Church, and the recovery of the lost provinces of the empire. With the view of securing a perfect control over the ecclesiastical affairs of his dominions, he published an edict, called the Type, in the year 648, when he was only eighteen years old. It was prepared by Paul, the patriarch of Constantinople, and was intended to terminate the disputes produced by the Ecthesis of Heraclius. All parties were commanded by the Type to observe a profound silence on the previous quarrels concerning the operation of the will in Christ. Liberty of conscience was an idea almost unknown to any but the Mohammedans, so that Constans never thought of appealing to any such right; and no party in the Christian church was inclined to waive its orthodox authority of enforcing its own opinions upon others. The Latin church, led by the Bishop of Rome, was always ready to oppose the Greek clergy, who enjoyed the favour of the imperial court, and this jealousy engaged the pope in violent opposition to the Type. But the bishop of Rome was not then so powerful as directly to question the authority of the emperor in regulating such matters. Perhaps it appeared to him hardly prudent to rouse the passions of a young prince of eighteen, who might prove not very bigoted in his attachment to any party, as, indeed, the provisions of the Type seemed to indicate. The pope Theodore, therefore, directed the whole of his ecclesiastical fury against the Patriarch of Constantinople, whom he excommunicated with circumstances of singular and impressive violence. He descended with his clergy into the dark tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican, now under the centre of the dome in the vault of the great Cathedral of Christendom, where he consecrated the sacred cup, and, having dipped his pen in the blood of Christ, signed an act of excommunication, condemning a brother bishop to the pains of hell. To this indecent proceeding Paul the Patriarch replied by persuading the emperor to persecute the clergy who adhered to the pope’s opinion, in a more regular and legal manner, by depriving them of their temporalities, and condemning them to banishment. The pope was supported by nearly the whole body of the Latin clergy, and even by a considerable party in the East; yet, when Martin, the successor of Theodore, ventured to anathematize the Ecthesis and the Type, he was seized by order of Constans, conveyed to Constantinople, tried, and condemned on a charge of having supported the rebellion of the Exarch Olympius, and of having remitted money to the Saracens. The emperor, at the intercession of the Patriarch Paul, commuted his punishment to exile, and the pope died in banishment at Cherson. Though Constans did not succeed in inculcating his doctrines on the clergy, he succeeded in enforcing public obedience to his decrees in the church, and the fullest acknowledgment of his supreme power over the persons of the clergy. These disputes between the heads of the ecclesiastical administration of the Greek and Latin churches afforded an excellent pretext for extending the breach, which had its real origin in national feelings and clerical interests, and which was only widened by the not very intelligible distinctions of monothelitism. Constans himself, by his vigour and personal activity in this struggle, incurred the bitter hatred of a large portion of the clergy, and his conduct has been unquestionably the object of much misrepresentation and calumny.

The attention of Constans to ecclesiastical affairs induced him to visit Armenia, where his attempts to unite the people to his government by regulating the affairs of their church were as unsuccessful as his religious interference elsewhere. Dissensions were increased; one of the imperial officers of high rank rebelled; and the Saracens availed themselves of this state of things to invade both Armenia and Cappadocia, and succeeded in rendering several districts tributary. The increasing power of Moawyah, the Arab general, induced him to form a project for the conquest of Constantinople, and he began to fit out a great naval expedition at Tripoli in Syria. A daring enterprise of two brothers, Christian inhabitants of the place, rendered the expedition abortive. These two Tripolitans and their partisans broke open the prisons in which the Roman captives were confined, and, placing themselves at the head of an armed band which they had hastily formed, seized the city, slew the governor, and burnt the fleet. A second armament was at length prepared by the energy of Moawyah, and as it was reported to be directed against Constantinople, the Emperor Constans took upon himself the command of his own fleet. He met the Saracen expedition off Mount Phoenix in Lycia, and attacked it with great vigour. The Roman fleet was utterly destroyed and twenty thousand Romans are said to have perished in the battle. The emperor himself owed his safety to the valour of one of the Tripolitan brothers, whose gallant defence of the imperial galley enabled the emperor to escape before its valiant defender was slain and the vessel fell into the hands of the Saracens. Constans retired to Constantinople, but the hostile fleet had suffered too much to attempt any farther operations, and the expedition was abandoned for that year. The death of Othman, and the pretensions of Moawyah to the caliphate, withdrew the attention of the Arabs from the empire for a short time, and Constans turned his forces against the Sclavonians, in order to deliver the European provinces from their ravages. They were totally defeated, numbers were carried off as slaves, and many were compelled to submit to the imperial authority. No certain grounds exist for determining whether this expedition was directed against the Sclavonians who had established themselves between the Danube and Mount Haemus, or against those who had settled in Macedonia. The name of no town is mentioned in the accounts of the campaign.

When the affairs of the European provinces were tranquillized Constans again prepared to engage the Arabs; and Moawyah, having need of all the forces he could command for his contest with All, the son-in-law of Mahomet, consented to make peace, on terms which contrast strangely with the perpetual defeats which Constans is represented by the orthodox historians of the empire to have suffered. The Saracens engaged to confine their forces within Syria and Mesopotamia, and Moawyah consented to pay Constans, for the cessation of hostilities, the sum of a thousand pieces of silver, and to furnish him with a slave and a horse for every day during which the peace should continue. A. D. 659.

During the subsequent year, Constans condemned to death his brother Theodosius, whom he had previously compelled to enter the priesthood. The cause of this crime, or the pretext for it, is not mentioned. From this brother’s hand the emperor had often received the sacrament; and this fratricide is supposed to have rendered a residence at Constantinople insupportable to the criminal, who was reported nightly to behold the spectre of his brother offering him the consecrated cup, filled with human blood, and exclaiming, “Drink, brother!”. Certain it is, that two years after his brother’s death, Constans quitted his capital, with the intention of never returning; and he was only prevented, by an insurrection of the people, from carrying off the empress and his children. He meditated the reconquest of Italy from the Lombards, and proposed rendering Rome again the seat of empire. On his way to Italy the emperor stopped at Athens, where he assembled a considerable body of troops. This casual mention of Athens by Latin writers affords strong evidence of the tranquil, flourishing, and populous condition of the city and country around. The Sclavonian colonies in Greece must, at this time, have owned perfect allegiance to the imperial power, or Constans would certainly have employed his army in reducing them to subjection. From Athens, the emperor sailed to Italy; he landed with his forces at Tarentum, and attempted to take Beneventum, the chief seat of the Lombard power in the south of Italy. His troops were twice defeated, and he then abandoned his projects of conquest.

The emperor himself visited Rome, where he remained only a fortnight According to the writers who describe the event, he consecrated twelve days to religious ceremonies and processions, and the remaining two he devoted to plundering the wealth of the church. His personal acquaintance with the affairs of Italy and the state of Rome soon convinced him that the eternal city was ill adapted for the capital of the empire, and he quitted it for Sicily, where he fixed on Syracuse for his future residence. Grimoald, the able monarch of the Lombards, and his son Romuald, the Duke of Beneventum, continued the war in Italy with vigour. Brundusium and Tarentum were captured, and the Romans were expelled from Calabria, so that Otranto and Gallipoli were the only towns on the eastern coast of which Constans retained possession.

When residing in Sicily, Constans directed his attention to the state of Africa. His measures are not detailed with precision, but were evidently distinguished by the usual energy and caprice which marked his whole conduct. He recovered possession of Carthage, and of several cities which the Arabs had rendered tributary; but he displeased the inhabitants of the province, by compelling them to pay to himself the same amount of tribute as they had agreed by treaty to pay to the Saracens; and as Constans could not expel the Saracen forces from the province, the amount of the public taxes of the Africans was thus often doubled, — since both parties were able to levy the contributions which they demanded. Moawyah sent an army from Syria, and Constans one from Sicily, to decide who should become sole master of the country. A battle was fought near Tripoli; and the army of Constans, consisting of thirty thousand men, was completely defeated. Yet the victorious Saracens were unable to take the small town of Geloula (Usula), until the accidental fall of a portion of the ramparts laid it open to their assault; and this trifling conquest was followed by no farther success. In the East, the empire was exposed to greater danger, yet the enemies of Constans were eventually unsuccessful in their projects. In consequence of the rebellion of the Armenian troops, whose commander, Sapor, assumed the title of emperor, the Saracens made a successful incursion into Asia Minor, captured the city of Amorium, in Phrygia, and placed in it a garrison of five thousand men; but the imperial general appointed by Constans soon drove out this powerful garrison, and recovered the place.

It appears, therefore, that in spite of all the defeats which Constans is reported to have suffered, the empire underwent no very sensible diminution of its territory during his reign, and he certainly left its military forces in a more efficient condition than he found them. He was assassinated at Syracuse, by an officer of his household, in the year 668, at the age of thirty-eight, after a reign of twenty-seven years. The fact of his having been murdered by one of his own household, joined to the capricious violence that marked many of his public acts, warrants the supposition that his character was of the unamiable and unsteady nature, which rendered the accusation of fratricide, so readily believed by his contemporaries, by no means improbable. It must, however, be admitted, that the occurrences of his reign afford irrefragable testimony that his heretical opinions have induced orthodox historians to give an erroneous colouring to many circumstances, since the undoubted results do not correspond with their narrative of the passing events.

Sect. IV

Constantine IV, yielded to the popular ecclesiastical party among the Greeks.

Constantine IV, called Pogonatus, or the Bearded, has been regarded by posterity with a high degree of favour. Yet his merit seems to have consisted in his superior orthodoxy, rather than in his superior talents as emperor. The concessions which he made to the see of Rome, and the moderation that he displayed in all ecclesiastical affairs, placed his conduct in strong contrast with the stern energy with which his father had enforced the subjection of the orthodox ecclesiastics to the civil power, and gained for him the praise of the priesthood, whose eulogies have exerted no inconsiderable influence on all historians. Constantine, however, was certainly an intelligent and just prince, who, though he did not possess the stubborn determination and talents of his father, was destitute also of his violent passions and imprudent character.

As soon as Constantine was informed of the murder of his father, and that a rebel had assumed the purple in Sicily, he hastened thither in person to avenge his death and extinguish the rebellion. To satisfy his vengeance, the patrician Justinian, a man of high character, compromised in the rebellion, was treated with great severity, and his son Germanos with a degree of inhumanity that would have been recorded by the clergy against Constans as an instance of the grossest barbarity. (This Germanos, notwithstanding his mutilation by Constantine, became bishop of Cyzicus, and joined the Monothelites in the reign of Philippicus. He retracted, and was made patriarch of Constantinople by Anastasius II,and figured as an active defender of images against Leo III the Isaurian). The return of the emperor to Constantinople was signalized by a singular sedition of the troops in Asia Minor. They marched towards the capital, and having encamped on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus, demanded that Constantine should admit his two brothers, on whom he had conferred the rank of Augustus, to an equal share in the public administration, in order that the Holy Trinity in heaven, which governs the spiritual world, might be represented by a human trinity, to govern the political empire of the Christians. The very proposal is a proof of the complete supremacy of the civil over the ecclesiastical authority in the eyes of the people, and the strongest evidence, that in the public opinion of the age the emperor was regarded as the head of the church. Such reasoning as the rebels used could be rebutted by no arguments, and Constantine had energy enough to hang the leaders of the sedition, and sufficient moderation not to molest his brothers. But several years later, either from increased suspicions, or from some intrigues on their part, he deprived them of the rank of Augustus, and condemned them to have their noses cut off (A.D. 681). The condemnation of his brother to death by Constans figures in history as one of the blackest crimes of humanity, while the barbarity of the orthodox Constantine is passed over as a lawful act. Both rest on the same authority on the testimony of Theophanes, the earliest Greek chronicler, and both may really have been acts of justice necessary for the security of the throne and the tranquillity of the empire. Constans was a man of a violent temper, and Constantine of a mild disposition; both may have been equally just, but both were, without doubt, unnecessarily severe. A brother's political offences could hardly merit a greater punishment from a brother than seclusion in a monastery, and the devotion of monks is not necessarily increased by the loss of their noses. (Theophanes says that the brothers of Constantine IV lost their noses in 609, but were not deprived of the imperial title until 681).

The great object of the imperial policy at this period was to oppose the progress of the Mohammedans. Constans had succeeded in arresting their conquests, but Constantine soon found that they would give the empire no rest unless he could secure it by his victories. He had hardly quitted Sicily to return to Constantinople, before an Arab expedition from Alexandria invaded the island, stormed the city of Syracuse, and after plundering the treasures accumulated by Constans, immediately abandoned the place. In Africa the war was continued with various success, but the Christians were long left without any succours from Constantine, while Moawyah supplied the Saracens with strong reinforcements. In spite of the courage and enthusiasm of the Mohammedans, the native Christian population maintained their ground with firmness, and carried on the war with such vigour, that in the year 676 a native African leader, who commanded the united forces of the Romans and Berbers, captured the newly founded city of Kairowan, which at a subsequent period became renowned as the capital of the Fatimite caliphs. (Kairowan was founded by Akbah in 670; taken by the Christians in 676; recovered by the Arabs under Zohair; but retaken by the Christians in 683; and finally conquered by Hassan in 697).

The ambition of the caliph Moawyah induced him to aspire to the conquest of the Roman Empire; and the military organization of the Arabian power, which enabled the caliph to direct the whole resources of his dominions to any single object of conquest, seemed to promise success to the enterprise. A powerful expedition was sent to beside Constantinople. The time required for the preparation of such an armament did not enable the Saracens to arrive at the Bosphorus without passing a winter on the coast of Asia Minor, and on their arrival in the spring of the year 672, they found that the emperor had made every preparation for defence. Their forces, however, were so numerous, that they were sufficient to invest Constantinople by sea and land. The troops occupied the whole of the land side of the triangle on which the city is constructed, while the fleet effectually blockaded the port. The Saracens failed in all their assaults, both by sea and land; but the Romans, instead of celebrating their own valour and discipline, attributed their success principally to the use of the Greek fire, which was invented shortly before this siege, and was first used on this occasion. The military art had declined during the preceding century as rapidly as every other branch of national culture; and the resources of the mighty empire of the Arabs were so limited, that the caliph was unable to maintain his forces before Constantinople during the winter. The Saracen army was nevertheless enabled to collect sufficient supplies at Cyzicus to make that place a winter station, while their powerful fleet commanded the Hellespont and secured their communications with Syria. When spring returned, the fleet again transported the army under the walls of Constantinople. This strange mode of besieging cities, unattempted since the times when the Dorians had invaded Peloponnesus, was continued for seven years; but in this warfare the Saracens suffered far more severely than the Romans, and were at last compelled to abandon their enterprise. (During the siege of Constantinople, Abou Eyoub, who had received Mahomet into his house on his flight to Medina, died; and the celebrated mosque of Eyoub, in which the Sultan, on his accession, receives the investiture of the sword, is said to mark the spot where he was buried). The land forces tried to effect their retreat through Asia Minor, but were entirely cut off in the attempt; and a tempest destroyed the greater part of their fleet off the coast of Pamphylia. During the time that this great body of his forces was employed against Constantinople, Moawyah sent a division of his troops to invade Crete, which had been visited by a Saracen army in 651. The island was compelled to pay tribute, but the inhabitants were treated with mildness, as it was the policy of the caliph at this time to conciliate the good opinion of the Christians, in order to pave the way for future conquests. Moawyah carried his religious tolerance so far as to rebuild the church of Edessa at the intercession of his Christian subjects.

The destruction of the Saracen expedition against Constantinople, and the advantage which the mountaineers of Lebanon took of the absence of the Arab troops, by carrying their incursions into the plains of Syria, convinced Moawyah of the necessity of peace. The hardy mountaineers of Lebanon, called Mardaltes, had been increased in numbers, and supplied with wealth, in consequence of the retreat into their country of a mass of native Syrians who had fled before the Arabs. They consisted chiefly of Melchites and Monothelites, and on that account they had adhered to the cause of the Roman Empire when the Monophysites joined the Saracens. The political state of the empire required peace; and the orthodox Constantine did not feel personally inclined to run any risk in order to protect the Mardaites. Peace was concluded between the emperor and the caliph in the year 678, Moawyah consenting to pay the Romans annually three thousand pounds of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty Arabian horses. It appears strange that a prince, possessing the power and resources at the command of Moawyah, should submit to these conditions; but the fact proves that policy, not pride, was the rule of the caliph's conduct, and that the advancement of his real power, and of the spiritual interests of the Mohammedan religion, were of more consequence in his eyes than any notions of earthly dignity.

In the same year in which Moawyah purchased peace by paying tribute to the Roman emperor, the foundations of the Bulgarian monarchy were laid in the country between the Danube and Mount Haemus, and the emperor Constantine himself became tributary to a small horde of Bulgarians. One of the usual emigrations which take place amongst barbarous nations induced Asparuch, a Bulgarian chief, to seize the low country about the mouth of the Danube; his power and activity obliged the emperor Constantine to take the field against him in person. The expedition was so ill conducted, that it ended in the complete defeat of the Roman army, and the Bulgarians subdued a district inhabited by a body of Sclavonians, called the seven tribes, who were compelled to become their tributaries. These Sclavonians had once been formidable to the empire, but their power had been broken by the emperor Constans. Asparuch established himself in the town of Varna, near the ancient Odessus, and founded the Bulgarian monarchy, a kingdom long engaged in hostilities with the emperors of Constantinople, and whose power tended greatly to accelerate the decline of the Greeks and reduce the numbers of their race in Europe.

The event, however, which exercised the greatest influence on the internal condition of the empire during the reign of Constantine Pogonatus, was the assembly of the sixth general council of the church at Constantinople, which was held under circumstances peculiarly favourable to candid discussion. The ecclesiastical power was not yet too strong to set both reason and the civil authorities at defiance. The decisions of the council were adverse to the Monothelites; and the orthodox doctrine of two natures and two wills in Christ was received by the common consent of the Greek and Latin parties as the true faith of the Christian church. Religious discussion had now taken a strong hold on public opinion, and as the majority of the Greek population had never adopted the opinions of the Monothelites, the decisions of the sixth general council contributed powerfully to promote the union of the Greeks with the imperial administration.

Sect. V

Justinian II. — Depopulation of the Empire, and decrease of the Greeks.

Justinian II succeeded his father Constantine at the age of sixteen, and though so very young, he immediately assumed the personal direction of the government. He was by no means destitute of talents, but his cruel and presumptuous character rendered him incapable of learning to perform the duties of his situation with justice. His violence at last rendered him hateful to his subjects; and as the connection of the emperor with the Roman government and people was direct and personal, he was easily driven from his throne by a popular sedition. His rebellious subjects cut off his nose and banished him to Cherson, A.D. 695. In exile his energy and activity gained him the alliance of the Khazars and Bulgarians, and he returned to Constantinople as a conqueror, after an absence of ten years. His character was one of those to which experience is useless, and he persisted in his former course of violence, until, having exhausted the patience of his subjects, he was dethroned and murdered, A.D. 705-711.

The reign of such a tyrant was not likely to be inactive. At its commencement, he turned his arms against the Saracens, though the caliph Abdalmelik offered to make additional concessions, in order to induce the emperor to renew the treaty of peace which had been concluded with his father. Justinian sent a powerful army into Armenia under Leontius, by whom he was subsequently dethroned. All the provinces which had shown any disposition to favour the Saracens were laid waste, and the army seized an immense booty, and carried off a great part of the inhabitants as slaves. The barbarism of the Roman government had now reached such a pitch that the Roman armies were permitted to plunder and depopulate even those provinces where a Christian population still afforded the emperor some assurance that they might be retained in permanent subjection to the Roman government The soldiers of an undisciplined army, — legionaries without patriotism or nationality, — were allowed to enrich themselves by slave hunts in Christian countries, and the most flourishing agricultural districts were reduced to deserts, incapable of offering any resistance to the Mohammedan nomads. But the caliph Abdalmelik, being engaged in a struggle for the caliphate with powerful rivals, and disturbed by rebels even in his own Syrian dominions, found himself reduced to the necessity of purchasing peace on terms far more favourable to the empire than those of the treaty between Constantine and Moawyah. He engaged to pay Justinian an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty-five thousand pieces of gold, three hundred and sixty slaves, and three hundred and sixty Arabian horses. The provinces of Iberia, Armenia, and Cyprus were equally divided between the Romans and the Arabs; but Abdalmelik obtained the principal advantage from the treaty, for Justinian not only consented to abandon the cause of the Mardaites, but even engaged to assist the caliph in expelling them from Syria. This was effected by the treachery of Leontius, who entered their country as a friend, and murdered their chief. Twelve thousand Mardaite soldiers were enrolled in the armies of the empire, and distributed in garrisons in Armenia and Thrace. A colony of Mardaites was established at Attalia in Pamphylia, and the power of this valiant people was completely broken. The removal of the Mardaites from Syria was one of the most serious errors of the reign of Justinian. As long as they remained in force on Mount Lebanon, near the centre of the Saracen power, the emperor was able to render them a serious check on the Mohammedans, and create dangerous diversions whenever the caliphs invaded the empire. Unfortunately, in this age of religious bigotry, the Monothelite opinions of the Mardaites made them an object of aversion or suspicion to the imperial administration; and even under the prudent government of Constantine Pogonatus, they were not viewed with a friendly eye, nor did they receive the support which should have been granted to them on a just consideration of the interests of Christianity, as well as of the Roman empire.

The general depopulation of the empire suggested to many of the Roman emperors the project of repeopling favoured districts, by an influx of new inhabitants. The origin of many of the most celebrated cities of the Eastern Empire could be traced back to small Greek colonies. These emigrants, it was known, had rapidly increased in number and risen to wealth. The Roman government appears never to have clearly comprehended that the same causes which produced the diminution of the ancient population would be sure to prevent the increase of new settlers ; and their attempts at repeopling provinces, and removing the population of one district to new seats, were frequently renewed. Justinian lI had a great taste for these emigrations. Three years after the conclusion of peace with Abdalmelik, he withdrew the inhabitants from the half of the island of Cyprus, of which he remained master, in order to prevent the Christians from becoming accustomed to the Saracen administration. The Cypriote population was transported to a new city near Cyzicus, which the emperor called after himself, Justinianopolis. It is needless to offer any remarks on the impolicy of such a project; the loss of life, and the destruction of property inevitable in the execution of such a scheme, could only have been replaced under the most favourable circumstances, and by a long career of prosperity. It is known that, in consequence of this desertion, many of the Cypriote towns fell into complete ruin, from which they have never since recovered.

Justinian, at the commencement of his reign, made a successful expedition into the country occupied by the Sclavonians in Macedonia, who were closely allied with the Bulgarian principality beyond Mount Haemus. This people, emboldened by their new alliance, pushed their plundering excursions as far as the Propontis. The imperial army was completely successful, and both the Sclavonians and their Bulgarian allies were defeated and the country of the Sclavonians subdued. In order to repeople the fertile shores of the Hellespont about Abydos, Justinian transplanted a number of Sclavonian families into the province of Opsicium. This colony was so numerous and powerful, that it furnished a considerable contingent to the imperial armies.

The peace with the Saracens was not of long duration. Justinian refused to receive the first gold pieces coined by Abdalmelik, which bore the legend, ‘God is the Lord’. The tribute had previously been paid in money from the municipal mints of Syria; and Justinian imagined that the new Arabian coinage was an attack on the Holy Trinity. He led his army in person against the Saracens, and a battle took place near Sebastopolis, on the coast of Cilicia, in which he was entirely defeated, in consequence of the treason of the leader of his Sclavonian troops. Justinian fled from the field of battle, and on his way to the capital he revenged himself on the Sclavonians who had remained faithful to his standard for the desertion of their countrymen by putting most of them to death, and he ordered the wives and children of those who had joined the Saracens to be murdered. The deserters were established by the Saracens on the coast of Syria and in the Island of Cyprus; and under the government of the caliph, they were more prosperous than under that of the Roman emperor. It was during this war that the Saracens inflicted the first great badge of civil degradation on the Christian population of their dominions. Abdalmelik established the Haratch, or Christian capitation tax, in order to raise money to carry on the war with Justinian. This unfortunate mode of taxing the Christian subjects of the caliph in a different manner from the Mohammedans completely separated the two classes, and reduced the Christians to the rank of serfs of the State, whose most prominent political relation with the Mussulman community was that of furnishing money to the government. The decline of the Christian population throughout the dominions of the caliphs was the consequence of this ill-judged measure, which has probably tended more to the depopulation of the East than the tyranny of Mussulman rulers or the ravages of Mussulman armies.

The restless spirit of Justinian plunged into the ecclesiastical controversies which divided the church. He assembled a general council, called usually in Trullo from the hall of its meeting having been covered with a dome. The proceedings of this council tended only to increase the growing differences between the Greek and Latin parties in the church. Of one hundred and two canons which it sanctioned, the pope finally rejected six, as adverse to the usages of the Latins. Thus an additional cause of separation was created between the Greeks and Latins, and at the very time when both statesmen and priests declared that the strictest unity in religious opinions was necessary to maintain the political power of the empire, the measures of the church, the political arrangements of the times, and the social feelings of the people, all tended to render union impossible. (The six canons rejected were — the fifth, which approves of the eighty-five apostolic canons, commonly attributed to Clement; the thirteenth, which allows priests to live in wedlock; the fifty-fifth, which condemns fasting on Saturdays; the sixty-seventh, which earnestly enjoins abstinence from blood and things strangled; the eighty-second, which prohibits the painting of Christ in the image of a lamb; and the eighty-sixth, concerning the equality of the bishops of Rome and Constantinople).

A taste for building is a common fancy of sovereigns who possess the absolute disposal of large funds without any feeling of their duty as trustees for the benefit of the people whom they govern. Even in the midst of the greatest public distress, the treasury of nations, on the very verge of ruin and bankruptcy, must contain large sums of money drawn from annual taxation. This treasure, when placed at the irresponsible disposal of princes who affect magnificence, is frequently employed in useless and ornamental building; and this fashion has been so general with despots, that the princes who have been most distinguished for their love of building, have not unfrequently been the worst and most oppressive sovereigns. It is always a delicate and difficult task for a sovereign to estimate the amount which a nation can wisely afford to expend on ornamental architecture; and, from his position, he is seldom qualified to judge correctly on what buildings ornament ought to be employed, in order to make art accord with the taste and feelings of the people. Public opinion affords the only criterion for the formation of a sound judgment on this department of public administration; for, when princes possessing a taste for building are not compelled to consult the wants and wishes of their subjects in the construction of national edifices, they are apt, by their wild projects and lavish expenditure, to create evils far greater than any which could result from an exhibition of bad taste alone. In an evil hour, the love of building took possession of Justinian’s mind. His lavish expenditure soon obliged him to make his financial administration more rigorous, and general discontent quickly pervaded the capital. The religious and superstitious feelings of the population were severely wounded by the emperor’s eagerness to destroy a church of the Virgin, in order to embellish the vicinity of his palace with a splendid fountain. Justinian’s own scruples required to be soothed by a religious ceremony, but the patriarch for some time refused to officiate, alleging that the church had no prayers to desecrate holy buildings. The emperor, however, was the head of the church and the master of the bishops, whom he could remove from office, so that the patriarch did not long dare to refuse obedience to his orders. It is said, however, that the patriarch showed very clearly his dissatisfaction, by repairing to the spot and authorizing the destruction of the church by an ecclesiastical ceremony, to which he added these words, ‘to God, who suffers all things, be rendered glory, now and for ever. Amen’. The ceremony was sufficient to satisfy the conscience of the emperor, who perhaps neither heard nor heeded the words of the patriarch, but the public discontent was loudly expressed, and the fury of the populace threatened a rebellion in Constantinople. To avert the danger, he took every measure which unscrupulous cruelty could suggest. As generally happens in periods of general discontent and excitement, the storm burst in an unexpected quarter, and left the emperor suddenly without support. Leontius, one of the ablest generals of the empire, whose exploits have been already mentioned, had been thrown into prison, but was at this time ordered to assume the government of the province of Hellas. He considered the nomination as a mere pretext to remove him from the capital, in order to put him to death at a distance without any trial. On the eve of his departure, Leontius placed himself at the head of a sedition; Justinian was seized, his ministers were murdered by the populace with savage cruelty, and Leontius was proclaimed emperor. Leontius spared the life of his dethroned predecessor for the sake of the benefits which he had received from Constantine Pogonatus. He ordered Justinian’s nose to be cut off, and exiled him to Cherson. From this mutilation the dethroned emperor received the insulting nickname of Rhinotmetus, or Docknose, by which he is distinguished in Byzantine history.

Sect. VI

 Anarchy in the Administration until the accession of Leo III

The government of Leontius was characterized by the unsteadiness which not unfrequently marks the administration of the ablest sovereigns who obtain their thrones by accidental circumstances rather than by systematic combinations. The most important event of his reign was the final loss of Africa, which led to his dethronement. The indefatigable caliph Abdalmelik despatched a powerful expedition into Africa under Hassan ; the province was soon conquered, and Carthage was captured after a feeble resistance. An expedition sent by Leontius to defend the province arrived too late to save Carthage, but the commander-in-chief forced the entrance into the port, recovered possession of the city, and drove the Arabs from most of the fortified town on the coast. The Arabs received new reinforcements, which the Roman general demanded from Leontius in vain. At last the Arabs assembled a fleet, and the Romans, being defeated in a naval engagement, were compelled to abandon Carthage, which the Arabs utterly destroyed, — having too often experienced the superiority of the Romans, both in naval affairs and in the art of war, to venture on retaining populous and fortified cities on the sea coast. This curious fact affords strong proof of the great superiority of the Roman commerce and naval resources, and equally powerful evidence of the disorder in the civil and military administration of the empire, which rendered these advantages useless, and allowed the imperial fleets to be defeated by ships collected by the Arabs from among their Egyptian and Syrian subjects. At the same time it is evident that the naval victories of the Arabs could never have been gained unless a powerful party of the Christians had been induced, by their feelings of hostility to the Roman empire, to afford them a willing support; for there were as yet few shipbuilders and sailors among the Mussulmans.

The Roman expedition, on its retreat from Carthage, stopped in the Island of Crete, where a sedition broke out among the troops, in which their general was killed and Apsimar, the commander of the Cibyraiot troops, was declared emperor by the name of Tiberius. (The Cibyraiot Theme included the ancient Caria, Lyda, Pamphylia, and a part of Phrygia; Cibyra Magna was a considerable town at the angle of Phrygia, Caria, and Lycia. Tiberius Caesar was regarded as its second founder, from his having remitted the tribute after a severe earthquake). The fleet proceeded directly to Constantinople, which offered no resistance. Leontius was dethroned, his nose was cut off, and he was confined in a monastery. Tiberius Apsimar governed the empire with prudence, and his brother Heraclius commanded the Roman armies with success. The imperial troops penetrated into Syria; a victory was gained over the Arabs at Samosata, but the ravages committed by the Romans in this invasion surpassed the greatest cruelties ever inflicted by the Arabs; two hundred thousand Saracens are said to have perished during the campaign. Armenia was alternately invaded and laid waste by the Romans and the Saracens, as the various turns of war favoured the hostile parties, and as the changing interests of the Armenian population induced them to aid the emperor or the caliph. But while Tiberius was occupied in the duties of government, and living without any fear of a domestic enemy, he was suddenly surprised in his capital by Justinian, who appeared before Constantinople at the head of a Bulgarian army.

Ten years of exile had been spent by the banished emperor in vain attempts to obtain power. His violent proceedings made him everywhere detested, but he possessed the daring enterprise and the ferocious cruelty necessary for a chief of banditti, joined to a singular confidence in the value of his hereditary claim to the imperial throne; so that no undertaking appeared to him hopeless. After quarrelling with the inhabitants of Cherson, and with his brother-in-law, the king of the Khazars, he succeeded, by a desperate exertion of courage, in reaching the country of the Bulgarians. Terbelis, their sovereign, agreed to assist him in recovering his throne, and they marched immediately with a Bulgarian army to the walls of Constantinople. Three days after their arrival, they succeeded in entering the capital during the night. Ten years of adversity had increased the natural ferocity of Justinian’s disposition: and a desire of vengeance, so unreasonable as to verge on madness, seems henceforward to have been the chief motive of his actions. The population of Constantinople was as cruel, if not quite so barbarous, as the nations beyond the pale of Christian civilization. Justinian gratified them by celebrating his restoration with splendid chariot races in the circus. He sat on an elevated throne, with his feet resting on the necks of the dethroned emperors, Leontius and Tiberius, who were stretched on the platform below, while the Greek populace shouted the words of the Psalmist, ‘Thou shalt tread down the asp and the basilisk, thou shalt trample on the lion and the dragon’. The dethroned emperors and Heraclius, who had so well sustained the glory of the Roman arms against the Saracens, were afterwards hung from the battlements of Constantinople. Justinian’s whole soul was occupied with plans of vengeance. The conquest of Tyana laid Asia Minor open to the incursions of the Saracens, but instead of opposing these dangerous enemies, he directed his disposable forces to punish the cities of Ravenna and Cherson, because they had incurred his personal hatred. Both the proscribed cities had rejoiced at his dethronement; they were both taken and treated with savage cruelty. The Greek city of Cherson, though the seat of a flourishing commerce, and inhabited by a numerous population, was condemned to utter destruction. Justinian ordered all the buildings to be razed with the ground, and every soul within its walls to be put to death; but the troops sent to execute these barbarous orders revolted, and proclaimed an Armenian, called Bardanes, emperor, under the name of Philippicus. Seizing the fleet, they sailed directly to Constantinople. Justinian was encamped with an army in Asia Minor .when Philippicus arrived, and took possession of the capital without encountering any resistance. Justinian was immediately deserted by his whole army, for the troops were as little pleased with his conduct since his restoration, as every other class of his subjects; but his ferocity and courage never failed him, and his rage was unbounded when he found himself abandoned by every one. He was seized and executed, without having it in his power to offer the slightest resistance. His son Tiberius, though only six years of age, was torn from the altar of a church, to which he had been conducted for safety, and cruelly massacred; and thus the race of Heraclius was extinguished, after the family had governed the Roman empire for exactly a century (A.D. 611 to 711).

During the interval of six years which elapsed from the death of Justinian II to the accession of Leo the Isaurian, the imperial throne was occupied by three sovereigns. Their history is only remarkable as proving the inherent strength of the Roman body politic, which could survive such continual revolutions, even in the state of weakness to which it was reduced. Philippicus was a luxurious and extravagant prince, who thought only of enjoying the situation which he had accidentally obtained. He was dethroned by a band of conspirators, who carried him off from the palace while in a fit of drunkenness, and after putting out his eyes, left him helpless in the middle of the hippodrome. The reign of Philippicus would hardly deserve notice, had he not increased the confusion into which the empire had fallen, and exposed the total want of character and conscience among the Greek clergy, by re-establishing the Monothelite doctrines in a general council of the eastern bishops.

As the conspirators who dethroned Philippicus had not formed any plan for choosing his successor, the first secretary of state was elected emperor by a public assembly held in the great church of St. Sophia, under the name of Anastasius II. He immediately re-established the orthodox faith, and his character is consequently the subject of eulogy with the historians of his reign. The Saracens, whose power was continually increasing, were at this time preparing a great expedition at Alexandria, in order to attack Constantinople, Anastasius sent a fleet with the troops of the theme Opsicium, to destroy the magazines of timber collected on the coast of Phoenicia for the purpose of assisting the preparations at Alexandria. The Roman armament was commanded by a deacon of St. Sophia, who also held the office of grand treasurer of the empire. The nomination of a member of the clergy to command the army gave great dissatisfaction to the troops, who were not yet so deeply tinctured with ecclesiastical ideas and manners as the aristocracy of the empire. A sedition took place while the army lay at Rhodes: John the Deacon was slain, and the expedition quitted the port in order to return to the capital. The soldiers on their way landed at Adramyttium, and finding there a collector of the revenues of a popular character, they declared him emperor, under the name of Theodosius III.

The new emperor was compelled unwillingly to follow the army. For six months Constantinople was closely besieged, and the emperor Anastasius, who had retired to Nicaea, was defeated in a general engagement. The capital was at last taken by the rebels, who were so sensible of their real interests, that they maintained strict discipline, and Anastasius, whose weakness gave little confidence to his followers, consented to resign the empire to Theodosius, and to retire into a monastery, that he might secure an amnesty to all his friends. Theodosius was distinguished by many good qualities, but his reign is only remarkable as affording a pretext for the assumption of the imperial dignity by Leo III, called the Isaurian. This able and enterprising officer, perceiving that the critical times rendered the empire the prize of any man who had talents to seize and power to defend it, placed himself at the head of the troops in Asia Minor, assumed the title of emperor, and soon compelled Theodosius to quit the throne and become a priest.

During the period which elapsed between the death of Heraclius and the accession of Leo, the few principles of administration which had lingered in the imperial court were gradually neglected. The long cherished hope of restoring the ancient power and glory of the Roman Empire expired, and even the aristocracy, which always clings the last to antiquated forms and ideas, no longer dwelt with confidence on the memory of former days. The conviction that the empire had undergone a great moral and political change, which severed the future irrevocably from the past, though it was probably not fully understood, was at least felt and acted on both by the people and the government. The sad fact that the splendid light of civilization which had illuminated the ancient world had now become as obscure at Constantinople as at Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage, was too evident to be longer doubted; the very twilight of antiquity had faded into darkness. It is rather the province of the antiquary than of the historian to collect all the traces of this truth scattered over the records of the seventh century.

There is one curious and important circumstance in the history of the later days of the Roman Empire, of which little beyond the mere fact has been transmitted by historians. A long and violent contention was carried on between the imperial power and the aristocracy, which represented the last degenerate remains of the Roman senate. This struggle distracted the councils and paralyzed the energy of the Roman government. It commenced in the reign of Maurice, and existed under various modifications during the whole period of the government of the family of Heraclius. This aristocratic influence had more of an oriental than of a Roman character; its feelings and views originated in that class of society imbued with a semi-Greek civilization which had grown up during the days of the Macedonian rather than of the Roman Empire; and both Heraclius and Constans II, in their schemes for circumscribing its authority in the State, resolved to remove the capital of the empire from Constantinople to a Latin city. Both conceived the vain hope of re-establishing the imperial power on a purely Roman basis, as a means of subduing, or at least controlling, the power of Greek nationality, which was gaining ground both in the State and the Church. The contest terminated in the destruction of that political influence in the Eastern Empire, which was purely Roman in its character. But the united power of Greek and oriental feelings could not destroy the spirit of Rome, until the well-organized civil administration of Augustus and Constantine ceased to exist. The subjects of the empire were no great gainers by the change. The political government became a mere arbitrary despotism, differing little from the prevailing form of monarchy in the East, and deprived of all those fundamental institutions, and that systematic character, which had enabled the Roman state to survive the extravagancies of Nero and the incapacity of Phocas.

The disorganization of the Roman government at this period, and the want of any influence exercised upon the court by the Greek nation, are visible in the choice of the persons who occupied the imperial throne after the extinction of the family of Heraclius. They were selected by accident, and several were of foreign origin, who did not even look upon themselves as either Greeks or Romans. Philippicus was an Armenian, and Leo III, whose reign opens a new era in eastern history, was an Isaurian. On the throne he proved that he was destitute of any attachment to Roman political institutions, and any respect for the Greek ecclesiastical establishment. It was by the force of his talents, and by his able direction of the State and of the army, that he succeeded in securing his family on the Byzantine throne; for he unquestionably placed himself in direct hostility to the feelings and opinions of his Greek and Roman subjects, and transmitted to his successors a contest between the imperial power and the Greek nation concerning picture-worship, in which the very existence of Greek nationality, civilization, and religion became at last compromised. From the commencement of the iconoclastic contest, the history of the Greeks assumes a new aspect. Their civilization, and their connection with the Byzantine empire, become linked with the policy and fortunes of the Eastern Church, and ecclesiastical affairs obtained in their minds a supremacy over all social and political considerations.

Sect. VII

General view of the condition of the Greeks at the extinction of the Roman Power in the East

The history of the European Greeks becomes extremely obscure after the reign of Justinian I. Yet during this period new nations intruded themselves into Greece and the Hellenic race was compelled to struggle hard in order to maintain a footing in its native seats. It has been already mentioned that Avar and Sclavonian tribes effected permanent settlements in Greece. The Hellenic population, unable to contend with the misery to which the cultivators of the soil were reduced, abandoned whole provinces to foreign emigrants, and retired under the protection of walled towns. The Thracian race, which always effectually resisted the influence of Greek civilization, began also to disappear. From an early period the extensive countries in which it was predominant, from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Aegean sea were exposed to constant invasions. Romans, Goths, Sclavonians, and Bulgarians depopulated its ancient seats as conquerors and settled in them as colonists. But the territorial changes produced by the Saracen conquests increased the political importance of the Greek race. The frontier towards Syria commenced at Mopsuestia in Cilicia, the last fortress of the Arab power. It ran along the chains of Mounts Amanus and Taurus to the moimtainous district to the north of Edessa and Nisibis, called, after the time of Justinian, the Fourth Armenia, of which Martyropolis was the capital. It then followed nearly the ancient limits of the empire until it reached the Black Sea, a short distance to the east of Trebizond. On the northern shores of the Euxine, Cherson was now the only city that acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, retaining at the same time all its wealth and commerce, with the municipal privileges of a free city. In Europe, Mount Haemus formed the barrier against the Bulgarians, while the mountainous ranges which bound Macedonia to the north-west, and encircle the territory of Dyrrachium, were regarded as the limits of the free Sclavonian states. It is true that large bodies of Sclavonians had penetrated to the south of this line, and formed separate communities in Greece and the Peloponnesus, but not in the same independent condition with reference to the imperial administration as their northern brethren of the Servian family.

Istria, Venice, and the cities on the Dalmatian coast, acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, though their distant position, their commercial connections, and their religious feelings, were all tending towards a final separation. In the centre of Italy, the exarchate of Ravenna still held Rome in subjection, but the people of Italy were entirely alienated from the political administration, which was now regarded by them as purely Greek, and the Italians, with Rome before their eyes, could hardly admit the pretensions of the Greeks to be regarded as the legitimate representatives of the Roman Empire. The national feelings of the Italians were hostile to the imperial government as soon as it fell into the hands of Greeks; it would have required, therefore, an able and energetic central administration to prevent the loss of central Italy. The condition of the population of the south of Italy and of Sicily was very different. There the majority of the inhabitants were Greeks in language and manners, and few portions of the Greek race had suffered less in number and wealth ; yet the cities of Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi, and Sorrento, the district of Otranto, and the peninsula to the south of the ancient Sybaris, now called Calabria, were the only parts which remained under the Byzantine government. Sicily, though it had begun to suffer from the incursions of the Saracens, was still populous and wealthy. Sardinia, the last possession of the Greeks to the westward of Italy, was conquered by the Saracens in the year A.D. 711.

In order to conclude the view which, in the preceding pages, we have endeavoured to present of the various causes that gradually diminished the numbers, and destroyed the civilization, of the Greek race, it is necessary to sketch the position of the nation at the commencement of the eighth century. At this unfortunate period in the history of mankind, the Greeks were placed in imminent danger of the same extinction as their Roman conquerors. The Arabs threatened to annihilate their political power, and the Sclavonians were colonizing their ancient territories. The victories of the Arabs were attended with very different consequences to the Greek population of the countries which they subdued, from those which had followed the conquests of the Romans. Like the earlier domination of the Parthians, the Arab power ultimately exterminated the whole Greek population in the conquered countries; and though, for a short period, the Arabs, like their predecessors the Parthians, protected Greek civilization, their policy soon changed, and everything Greek was proscribed. The arts and sciences which flourished at the court of the caliphs were chiefly derived from their Syrian subjects, whose acquaintance both with Syriac and Greek literature opened to them an extensive range of scientific knowledge from sources utterly lost to the moderns. It is to be observed, that a very great number of the eminent literary and scientific authors of later times were Asiatics, and that these writers frequently made use of their native languages in those useful and scientific works which were intended for the practical instruction of their own countrymen. In Egypt and CyrenaTca the Greek population was soon exterminated by the Arabs, and every trace of Grecian civilization was much sooner effaced than in Syria; though even there no very long interval elapsed before a small remnant of the Greek population was all that survived. Antioch itself, long the third city of the Eastern Empire, the spot where the Christians first received their name and the principal seat of Greek civilization in Asia for upwards of nine centuries, though it was not depopulated and razed to the ground like Alexandria and Carthage, nevertheless soon ceased to be a Grecian city.

The numerous Greek colonies which had flourished in the Tauric Chersonese, and on the eastern and northern shores of the Euxine, were almost all deserted. The greater number had submitted to the Khazars, who occupied all the open country with their flocks and herds. During the reign of Justin, the city of Bosporus, in Tauris, had been captured by the Turks, who then occupied a considerable portion of the Tauric Chersonesus. The city of Cherson alone continued to maintain its independence in the northern regions of the Black Sea, resembling, in its political relation to the empire, the cities of Dalmatia, and by its share of the northern trade, balancing the power and influence of the barbarian princes in the neighbourhood. Its inhabitants, shut out from the cultivation of the rich lands whose harvests had formerly supplied Athens with grain, were entirely supported by foreign commerce. Their ships exchanged the hides, wax, and salt fish of the neighbouring districts for the necessaries and luxuries of a city life, in Constantinople and the maritime cities of the empire. It affords matter for reflection to find that Cherson, — situated in a climate which, from the foundation of the colony, opposed insurmountable barriers to the introduction of much of the peculiar character of Greek social civilization, and which deprived the art and the popular literature of the mother country of some portion of their charm, — to whose inhabitants the Greek temple, the Greek agora, and the Greek theatre, must ever have borne the characteristics of foreign habits, and in a land where the piercing winds and heavy clouds prevented a life out of doors from being the essence of existence — should still have preserved, to this late period of history, both its Greek municipal organization, and its independent civic government. Yet such was the case; and we know from the testimony of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, that Cherson continued to exist in a condition of respectable independence, though under imperial protection, down to the middle of the tenth century.

In Greece itself the Hellenic race had been driven from many fertile districts by Sclavonian settlers, who had established themselves in large bodies in Greece and the Peloponnesus, and had often pushed their plundering and piratical incursions among the islands of the Archipelago, from which they had carried off numerous bands of slaves. In the cities and islands which the Greeks still possessed, the secluded position of the population, and the exclusive attention which they were compelled to devote to their local interests and personal defence, introduced a degree of ignorance which soon extinguished the last remains of Greek civilization, and effaced all knowledge of Greek literature. The diminished population of the European Greeks occupied the shores of the Adriatic to the south of Dyrrachium, and the maritime districts of Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, as far as Constantinople. The interior of the country was everywhere overrun by Sclavonic colonies, though many mountainous districts and most of the fortified places still remained in the possession of the Greeks. It is, unfortunately, impossible to explain with precision the real nature and extent of the Sclavonic colonization of Greece; and, indeed, before it be possible to decide how far it partook of conquest, and how far it resulted from the occupation of deserted and uncultivated lands, it becomes absolutely necessary to arrive at some definite information concerning the diminution which had taken place in the native agricultural classes, and in the social position of the slaves and serfs who survived in the depopulated districts. The scanty materials existing render the inquiry one which can only engage the attention of the antiquary, who can glean a few isolated facts; but the historian must turn away from the conjectures which would connect these facts into a system. The condition of social life during the decline of the Roman empire led to the division of the provincial population into two classes, the urban and the rustic, or into citizens and peasants; and the superior postion and greater security of the citizens gradually enabled them to assume a political superiority over the free peasants, and at last to reduce them, in a great measure, to the rank of serfs, Slaves became, about the same time, of much greater relative value, and more difficult to be procured; and the distinction naturally arose between purchased slaves, who formed a part of the household and of the family of the possessor, and agricultural serfs, whose partial liberty was attended by the severest hardships, and whose social condition was one of the lowest degradation and of the greatest personal danger. The population of Greece and the islands, in the time of Alexander the Great, may be estimated at three millions and a half; and probably half of this number consisted of slaves. We know from the testimonies of Strabo, Plutarch, and Pausanias, that the population decreased greatly under the Roman government and that large districts lay waste. The extent, however, to which the general depopulation affected the agricultural population, and the value of labour, must be ascertained before full light can be thrown on the real nature of the Sclavonic and Albanian colonization of Greece.

No description could exaggerate the sufferings of an agricultural population while it is diminishing in numbers, whether those sufferings proceed from hostile violence or want of food. The plains of Greece were often laid waste by armies of invaders, who carried off slaves and cattle and left landlords to starve in the midst of uncultivated fields. Cities situated in the most fertile regions were dependent on supplies of food from abroad and soon dwindled into walled villages, where what had once been flower-gardens sufficed to furnish grain for the inhabitants and pasture for their cattle. Even Thessalonica, with a territory renowned for its fertility, was only saved from famine by large importations of foreign grain. The smaller cities of Greece and the Peloponnesus did not possess the same advantages of situation, and sank rapidly into ruin. Roads, bridges, aqueducts, and quays were all allowed to decay after Justinian confiscated the municipal revenues of the Greek cities. The transport of provisions by land in a country so precipitous as Greece must always be expensive. The neglect of roads is therefore a primary cause of poverty and barbarism. Even during the period of its greatest prosperity, the Roman government paid attention to those roads only which served as great military lines of communication.

At the beginning of the eighth century we find the native Greeks called Helladikoi by Byzantine writers in order to distinguish them from the ancient Hellenes and from the Romaioi or Greeks of the Roman empire. The word was a contemptuous name for them as mere provincials. The appellation Hellenes was generally used to indicate the votaries of paganism, and was too closely connected with the historic glory of ancient Hellas to be bestowed on the rude people of an insignificant province. Even so late as the ninth century the inhabitants of the mountainous regions in Laconia still adhered to paganism. Their heathenism however consisted, in all probability, rather in a superstitious repetition of ancient ceremonies than in the retention of the ideas and feelings of Greek mythology or pagan worship, of which they were doubtless as ignorant as they were of contemporary Christianity.

Even in Asia Minor the decline of the numbers of the Greek race had been rapid. This decline must, however, be attributed rather to bad government causing insecurity of property and difficulty of communication than to hostile invasions; for from the period of the Persian invasion during the reign of Heraclius, the greater part of this immense country had enjoyed almost a century of uninterrupted peace. The Persian invasions had never been very injurious to the sea- coast, where the Greek cities were still numerous and wealthy; but oppression and neglect had already destroyed the internal trade of the central provinces, and literary instruction was becoming daily of less value to the inhabitants of the isolated and secluded districts of the interior. The Greek tongue began to be neglected, and the provincial dialects, corrupted by an admixture of the Lydian, Carian, Phrygian, Cappadocian, and Lycaonian languages, became the ordinary medium of business and conversation. Bad government had caused poverty, poverty had produced barbarism, and the ignorance created by barbarism became the means of perpetuating an arbitrary and oppressive system of administration. The people, ignorant of all written language, felt unable to check the exercise of official abuses by the control of the law, and by direct application to the central administration. Their wish, therefore, was to abridge as much as possible all the proceedings of power; and as it was always more easy to save their persons from the central power than their properties from the subordinate officers of the administration, despotism became the favourite form of government with the great mass of the Asiatic population.

It is impossible to attempt any detailed examination of the changes which had taken place in the numbers of the Greek population in Asia Minor. The fact that extensive districts once populous and wealthy, were already deserts, is proved by the colonies which Justinian II settled in various parts of the country. The frequent repetition of such settlements, and the great extent to which they were carried by the later emperors, prove that the depopulation of the country had proceeded more rapidly than the destruction of its material resources. The descendants of Greek and Roman citizens ceased to exist in districts, while the buildings stood tenantless, and the olive groves yielded an abundant harvest. In this strange state of things the country easily received new races of inhabitants. The sudden settlement of a Sclavonian colony so numerous as to be capable of furnishing an auxiliary army of thirty thousand men, and the unexpected migration of nearly half of the inhabitants of the island of Cyprus, without mentioning the emigration of the Mardaites who were established in Asia Minor, could never have taken place unless houses, wells, fruit-trees, water-courses, enclosures, and roads had existed in tolerable preservation, and thus furnished the new colonists with an immense amount of what may be called vested capital to assist their labour. The fact that these colonies could survive and support themselves, seems a curious circumstance when connected with the depopulation and declining state of the empire which led to their establishment.

The existence of numerous and powerful bands of organized brigands who plundered the country in defiance of the government was one of the features of society at this period, which almost escapes the notice of the meagre historians whom we possess, though it existed to such an extent as to have greatly aggravated the distress of the Greek population. Even had history been entirely silent on the subject, there could have been no doubt of their existence in the latter days of the Roman Empire, from the condition of the inhabitants, and from the geographical conformation of the land. History affords, however, a few casual evidences of the extent of the evil. The existence of a tribe of brigands in the mountains of Thrace during a period of two centuries, is proved by the testimony of unimpeachable authorities. Menander mentions bands of robbers, under the name of Scamars, who plundered the ambassadors sent by the Avars to the emperor Justin II; and these Scamars continued to exist as an organized society of robbers in the same district until the time of Constantine V  (Copronymus), A.D. 765, when the capture and cruel torture of one of their chiefs is narrated by Theophanes.

History also records numerous isolated facts which, when collected, produce on the mind the conviction that the diminution in numbers, and the decline in civilization of the Greek race, were the effect of the oppression and injustice of the Roman government, not of the violence and cruelty of the barbarian invaders of the empire. During the reign of that insane tyrant Justinian II, the imperial troops, when properly commanded, showed that the remains of Roman discipline enabled them to defeat all their enemies in a fair field of battle. The emperor Leontius, and Heraclius the brother of Tiberius Apsimar, were completely victorious over the re- doubted Saracens; Justinian himself defeated the Bulgarians and Sclavonians. But the whole power and wealth of the empire was withdrawn from the people and concentrated in the hands of the government. The Greek municipal guards had been deprived of their arms under Justinian I, whose timid policy regarded internal rebellion as far more to be dreaded than foreign invasions. The people were disarmed because their hostile feelings were known and feared. The European Greeks were regarded as provincials just as much as the wild Lycaonians or Isaurians; and if they succeeded in obtaining arms and resisting the progress of the Sclavonians, they owed their success to the weakness and neglect which, in all despotic governments, prevent the strict execution of those laws which are at variance with the feelings and interests of the population, the moment that the agents of the government can derive no direct profit from enforcing them.

The Roman government always threw the greatest difficulties in the way of their subjects' acquiring the means of defending themselves without the aid of the imperial army. The injury Justinian inflicted on the Greek cities by disbanding their local militia, and robbing them of the municipal funds devoted to preserve their physical well-being and mental culture, caused a deep-rooted hatred of the imperial government. This feeling is well portrayed in the bitter satire of Procopius. The hatred between the inhabitants of Hellas and the Roman Greeks connected with the imperial administration soon became mutual; and at last, as has been already mentioned, a term of contempt was used by the historians of the Byzantine empire to distinguish the native Greeks from the other Greek inhabitants of the empire, — they were called Helladikoi.

After the time of Justinian we possess little authentic information concerning the details of the provincial and municipal administration of the Greek population. The state of public roads and buildings, of ports, of trade, of maritime communications; of the nature of the judicial, civil, and police administration, and of the extent of education among the people — in short, the state of all those things which powerfully influence the character and the prosperity of a nation, are almost unknown. It is certain that they were all in a declining and neglected state. The local administration of the Greek cities still retained some shadow of ancient forms, and senates existed in many, even to a late period of the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, they must all have enjoyed very much the same form of government as Venice and Amalfi, at the period when these cities first began to enjoy a virtual independence.

The absence of all national feeling, which had ever been a distinguishing feature of the Roman government, continued to exert its influence at the court of Constantinople long after the Greeks formed the bulk of the population of the empire. This spirit separated the governing classes from the people, and constituted all those who obtained employments in the service of the State into a body, directly opposed to Greek nationality, because the Greeks formed the great mass of the governed. The election of many emperors not of Greek blood at this period must be attributed to the strength of this feeling. This opposition between the Greek people and the imperial administration contributed to revive the authority of the Eastern Church. The church was peculiarly Greek; indeed, so much so, that an admixture of foreign blood was generally regarded as almost equivalent to a taint of heresy. As the priests were chosen from every rank of society, the whole Greek nation was usually interested in the prosperity and passions of the church. In learning and moral character the higher clergy were far superior to the rest of the aristocracy, and they possessed sufficient influence to protect their friends and adherents among the people, in many questions with the civil government. This legitimate authority, supported by national feelings and prejudices, gave them unbounded influence, the moment that any dispute ranged the Greek clergy and people on the same side in their opposition to the imperial power. The Greek Church appears for a long period of history as the only public representative of the feelings and views of the nation, and, after the accession of Leo the Isaurian, it must be regarded as an institution which tended to preserve the national existence of the Greeks.

Amidst the numerous vices in the political state of mankind at this period, it is consoling to be able to find a single virtue. The absence of all national feeling in the imperial armies exercised a humane influence on the wars which the empire carried on against the Saracens. It is certain that the religious hatred, subsequently so universal between the Christians and Mohammedans, was not very violent in the seventh and eighth centuries. The facility with which the orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria submitted to the Mohammedans has been already mentioned. The empire, it is true, was generally the loser by this want of national and patriotic feeling among the Christians; but, on the other hand, the gain to humanity was immense, as is proved by the liberality of Moawyah, who rebuilt the church of Edessa. The Arabs for some time continued to be guided by the sentiments of justice which Mahomet had carefully inculcated, and their treatment of their heretic subjects was far from oppressive, in a religious point of view. When Abdalmelik desired to convert the splendid church of Damascus into a mosque, he abstained, on finding that the Christians of Damascus were entitled to keep possession of it, by the terms of their original capitulation. The insults which Justinian II and the caliph Walid respectively offered to the religion of his rival, were rather the effect of personal insolence and tyranny, than of any sentiment of religious bigotry. Justinian quarrelled with Abdalmelik, on account of the ordinary superscription of the caliph’s letters — “Say there is pone God, and that Mahomet is his prophet”. Walid violently expelled the Christians from the great church of Damascus, and converted it into a mosque. At this period, any connection of Roman subjects with the Saracens was viewed as ordinary treason, and not as subsequently in the time of the Crusades, in the light of an inexpiable act of sacrilege. Even the accusation brought against the Pope, Martin, of corresponding with the Saracens, does not appear to have been made with the intention of charging him with blacker treason than that which resulted from his supporting the rebel exarch Olympius. All rebels who found their enterprise desperate, naturally sought assistance from the Saracens, as the most powerful enemies of the empire. The Armenian, Mizizius, who was proclaimed emperor at Syracuse, after the murder of Constans II, applied to the Saracens for aid. The Armenian Christians continually changed sides between the emperor and the caliph, as the alliance of each appeared to afford them the fairest hopes of serving their political and religious interests. But as the Greek nation became more and more identified with the political interests of the church, and as barbarism and ignorance spread more widely among the population of the Byzantine and Arabian empires, the feelings of mutual hatred nourished by almost constant hostilities became more violent.

The government of the Roman Empire had long been despotic and weak, and the financial administration corrupt and oppressive; but still its subjects enjoyed a benefit of which the rest of mankind were almost entirely destitute, in the existence of an admirable code of laws, and a complete judicial establishment, separated from the other branches of the public administration. It is to the existence of this judicial establishment, guided by a published code, and controlled by a body of lawyers educated in public schools, that the subjects of the empire were chiefly indebted for the superiority in civilization which they retained over the rest of the world. In spite of the neglect displayed in the other branches of the administration, the central government always devoted particular care to the dispensation of justice in private cases, as the surest means of maintaining its authority, and securing its power, against the evil effects of its fiscal extortions. The profession of the law continued to form an independent body, in which learning and reputation were a surer means of arriving at wealth and honour than the protection of the great; for the government itself was, from interest, generally induced to select the ablest members of the legal profession for judicial offices. The existence of the legal profession, uniting together a numerous body of educated men, guided by the same general views, and connected by similar studies, habits of thought, and interests, must have given the lawyers an independence both of character and position, which, when they were removed from the immediate influence of the court, could not fail to operate as some check on the arbitrary abuse of administrative and fiscal power.

In all countries which exist for any length of time in a state of civilization, a number of local, communal, and municipal institutions are created, which really perform a considerable portion of the duties of civil government; for no central administration can carry its control into every detail; and those governments which attempt to carry their interference farthest are generally observed to be those which leave most of the real work of government undone. During the greater period of the Roman domination, the Greeks had been allowed to retain their own municipal and provincial institutions, as has been stated in the earlier part of this work, and the details of the civil administration were left almost entirely in their hands. Justinian I destroyed this system as far as lay in his power; and the effects of the unprotected condition of the Greek population have been seen in the facilities which were afforded to the ravages of the Avars and Sclavonians. As the empire grew weaker, and the danger from the barbarians more imminent, the imperial regulations could not be enforced. Unless the Greeks had obtained the right of bearing arms, their towns and villages must have fallen a prey to every passing band of brigands, and their commerce would have been annihilated by Sclavoman and Saracen cruisers. The inhabitants of Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia, the citizens of Gaeta, Capua, Naples, and Salerno, and the inhabitants of continental Greece, the Peloponnesus, and the Archipelago, would have been exterminated by their barbarous neighbours, unless they had possessed not only arms which they were able and willing to use, but also a municipal administration capable of directing the energies of the people without consulting the central government at Constantinople. The possession of arms, and the government of a native magistracy, gradually revived the spirit of independence; and to these circumstances must be traced the revival of the wealth of the Greek islands, and of the commercial cities of the Peloponnesus. Many patriotic Greeks may possibly have brooded over the sufferings of their country in the monasteries, whose number was one of the greatest social evils of the time; and the furious monks, who frequently issued from their retirement to insult the imperial authority under some religious watchword, were often inspired by political and national resentments which they could not avow, and which perhaps they did not themselves fully understand.

The period of history treated in this volume has brought down the record of events to the final destruction of ancient political society in the Eastern Empire; still the reader must carefully bear in mind that in the seventh and eighth centuries the external appearance of the principal cities of the empire was generally little changed. The outward aspect of the Roman world was modified, but it was not metamorphosed. Though the wealth and the numbers of the inhabitants had diminished, most of the public buildings of the ancient Greeks existed in all their splendour, and it would be a very incorrect picture indeed of a Greek city of this period, to suppose that it resembled in any way the filthy and ill-constructed burghs of the middle ages. The solid fortifications of ancient military architecture still defended many cities against the assaults of the Sclavonians, Bulgarians and Saracens; the splendid monuments of ancient art were still preserved in all their brilliancy, though unheeded by the passer-by; the agoras were frequented, though by a less numerous and less busy population; the ancient courts of justice were still in use, and the temples of Athens had yet sustained no injury from time, and little from neglect. The enmity of the iconoclasts to picture-worship, which, as Colonel Leake justly remarks, has been the theme for much exaggeration, had not yet caused the destruction of the statues and paintings of pure Grecian art. The classical student, with Pausanias in his hand, might unquestionably have identified every ancient site noticed by that author in his travels, and viewed the greater part of the buildings which he describes. In many of the smaller cities of Greece it is doubtless true that the barbarians had left dreadful marks of their ravages. When imperial vanity could be gratified by the destruction of ancient works of art, or when the value of their materials became an object of cupidity, the masterpieces of sculpture were exposed to ruin. The emperor Anastasius I permitted the finest bronze statues, which Constantine had collected from all the cities of Greece, to be melted into a colossal image of himself. During the reign of Constans II, the bronze tiles of the Pantheon of Rome were taken away. Yet new statues continued to be erected to the emperors in the last days of the empire. A colossal statue of bronze, attributed to the emperor Heraclius, existed at Barletta, in Apulia, as late as the fourteenth century. That the Greeks had not yet ceased entirely to set some value on art, is proved by the well-executed cameos and intaglios, and the existing mosaics, which cannot be attributed to an earlier period. Yet no more barbarous coinage ever circulated than that which issued from the mint of Constantinople during the early part of the seventh century. The soul of art had fled; that public feeling which inspires correct taste was extinct, and the excellence of execution still existing was only the result of mechanical dexterity and apt imitation of good models.

The destinies of literature were very similar to those of art; nothing was now either produced or understood, but what was deemed of practical utility to the body or the soul; yet the memory of the ancient writers was still respected, and the cultivation of ancient literature still conferred a high degree of reputation. Learning was neither neglected nor despised, though its objects were sadly misunderstood, and its pursuits confined to a small circle of votaries. The learned institutions, the libraries, and the universities of Alexandria, Antioch, Berytus, and Nisibis, were destroyed; but at Athens, Thessalonica, and Constantinople, literature and science were not utterly neglected; public libraries and all the conveniences for a life of study still existed. Many towns must have contained individuals who solaced their hours by the use of these libraries; and although poverty, the difficulties of communication, and declining taste, daily circumscribed the numbers of the learned, there can be no doubt that they were never without some influence on society. Their habits of life and the love of retirement, which a knowledge of the past state of their country tended to nourish, inclined this class rather to conceal themselves from public notice, than to intrude on the attention of their countrymen. The principal Greek poet who flourished during the latter years of the Roman Empire, and whose writings have been preserved, is George Pisida, the author of three poems in iambic verses on the exploits of Heraclius, written in the seventh century. It would perhaps be difficult, in the whole range of literature, to point to poetry which conveys less information on the subject which he pretends to celebrate, than that of George Pisida. In taste and poetical inspiration he is quite as deficient as in judgment, and he displays no trace of any national character. The historical literature of the period is certainly superior to the poetical in merit, for though most of the writers offer little to praise in their style, still much that is curious and valuable is preserved in the portion of their writings which we possess. The fragments of the historian Menander of Constantinople, written about the commencement of the seventh century, make us regret the loss of his entire work. From these fragments we derive much valuable information concerning the state of the empire, and his literary merit is by no means contemptible. The most important work relating to this period is the general history of Theophylactus Simocatta, who wrote in the earlier part of the seventh century. His work contains a great deal of curious information, evidently collected with considerable industry; but, as Gibbon remarks, he is destitute of taste and genius, and these deficiencies lead him to mistake the relative importance of historical facts. He is supposed to have been of Egyptian origin.

Two chronological writers, John Malalas, and the author of the ‘Chronicon Paschale’, likewise deserve notice, as they supply valuable and authentic testimony as to many important events. The frequent notices concerning earthquakes, inundations, fires, plagues, and prodigies, which appear in the Byzantine chronicles, afford strong ground for inferring that something like our modem newspapers must have been published even in the latter days of the empire. The only ecclesiastical historian who belongs to this period is Evagrius, whose church history extends from A.D. 429 to 593. In literary merit he is inferior to the civil historians, but his work has preserved many facts which would otherwise have been lost. The greater number of the literary and scientific productions of this age are not deserving of particular notice. Few, even of the most learned and industrious scholars, consider that an acquaintance with the pages of those whose writings are preserved, is of more importance than a knowledge of the names of those whose works are lost. The discovery of paper, which Gibbon says came from Samarcand to Mecca about 710, seems to have contributed quite as much to multiply worthless books as to preserve the most valuable ancient classics. By rendering the materials of writing more accessible in an age destitute of taste, and devoted to ecclesiastical and theological disputation, it announced the arrival of the stream of improvement in a deluge of muddy pedantry and dark stupidity.

The mighty change which had taken place in the influence of Greek literature since the time of the Macedonian conquest deserves attention. All the most valuable monuments of its excellence were preserved, and time had in no way diminished their value. But the mental supremacy of the Greeks had, nevertheless, received a severer shock than their political power; and there was far less hope of their recovering from the blow, since they were themselves the real authors of their degeneracy, and the sole admirers of the inflated vanity which had become their national characteristic. The admitted superiority of Greek authors in taste and truth, those universal passports to admiration, had once induced a number of writers of foreign race to aspire to fame by writing in Greek; and this happened, not only during the period of the Macedonian domination, but also under the Roman Empire, after the Greeks had lost all political supremacy, when Latin was the official language of the civilized world, and the dialects of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia possessed a civil and scientific, as well as an ecclesiastical literature. The Greeks forfeited this high position by their inordinate self-adulation. This feeling kept their minds stationary, while the rest of mankind was moving forward. Even when they embraced Christianity they could not lay aside the trammels of a state of society which they had repudiated; they retained so many of their old vices that they soon corrupted Christianity into Greek orthodoxy.

The conquests of the Arabs changed the intellectual as well as the religious and political condition of the East. At Alexandria, in Syria, and in Cyrenaica, the Greeks soon became extinct; and that portion of their literature which still retained a value in the eyes of mankind came to be viewed in a different light. The Arabs of the eighth century undoubtedly regarded the scientific literature of the Greeks with great respect, but they considered it only as a mine from which to extract a useful metal. The study of the Greek language was no longer a matter of the slightest importance, for the learned Arabians were satisfied if they could master the results of science by the translations of their Syrian subjects. It has been said that Arabic has held the rank of an universal language as well as Greek, but the fact must be admitted only in the restricted sense of applying it to their extensive empire. The different range of the mental and moral power of the literatures of Arabia, of Rome, and of Greece, is in our age fully apparent.

There is no country in the world more directly dependent on commerce for the well-being of its inhabitants than the land occupied by the Greeks round the Aegean Sea. Nature has separated these territories by mountains and seas into a variety of districts, whose productions are so different, that unless commerce afford great facilities for exchanging the surplus of each, the population must remain comparatively small, and languish in a state of poverty and privation.

The Greeks retained the greater share of that commerce which they had for ages enjoyed in the Mediterranean. The conquest of Alexandria and Carthage gave it a severe blow, and the existence of a numerous maritime population in Syria, Egypt, and Africa, enabled the Arabs to share the profits of a trade which had hitherto been a monopoly of the Greeks. The absolute government of the caliphs, their jealousy of their Christian subjects, and the civil wars which so often laid waste their dominions, rendered property too insecure in their dominions for commerce to flourish with the same tranquillity which it enjoyed under the legal despotism of the Eastern emperors; for commerce cannot long exist without a systematic administration, and soon declines, if its natural course be at all interrupted.

The wealth of Syria at the time of its conquest by the Arabs proves that the commerce of the trading cities of the Roman Empire was still considerable. A caravan, consisting of four hundred loads of silk and sugar, was on its way to Baalbec at the time the place was attacked. Extensive manufactories of silk and dye-stuffs flourished, and several great fairs assisted in circulating the various commodities of the land through the different provinces. The establishment of post-horses was at first neglected by the Arabs, but it was soon perceived to be so essential to the prosperity of the country, that it was restored by the caliph Moawyah. The Syrian cities continued, under the Saracen government, to retain their wealth and trade as long as their municipal rights were respected. No more remarkable proof of this fact need be adduced, than the circumstance of the local mints supplying the whole currency of the country until the year 695, when the Sultan Abdalmelik first established a national gold and silver coinage.

Even the Arabian conquests were insufficient to deprive the empire of the great share which it held in the Indian trade. Though the Greeks lost all direct political control over it, they still retained possession of the carrying trade of the south of Europe; and the Indian commodities destined for that market passed almost entirely through their hands. The Arabs, in spite of the various expeditions which they fitted out to attack Constantinople, never succeeded in forming a maritime power; and their naval strength declined with the numbers and wealth of their Christian subjects, until it dwindled into a few piratical squadrons. The emperors of Constantinople really remained the masters of the sea, and their subjects the inheritors of the riches which its commerce affords.

The principal trade of the Greeks, after the Arabian conquests, consisted of three branches, — the Mediterranean trade with the nations of Western Europe, the home trade, and the Black Sea trade. The state of society in the south of Europe was still so disordered, in consequence of the settlements of the barbarians, that the trade for supplying them with Indian commodities and the manufactures of the East was entirely in the hands of the Jews and Greeks, and commerce solely in that of the Greeks. The consumption of spices and incense was then enormous; a large quantity of spice was employed at the tables of the rich, and Christians burned incense daily in their churches. The wealth engaged in carrying on this traffic belonged chiefly to the Greeks; and although the Arabs, after they had rendered themselves masters of the two principal channels of the Indian trade, through Persia and Syria, and by the Red Sea and Egypt, contrived to participate in its profits, the Greeks still regulated the trade by the command of the northern route through central Asia to the Black Sea. The consumption of Indian productions was generally too small at any particular port to admit of whole cargoes forming the staple of a direct commerce with the West. The Greeks rendered this traffic profitable, from the facility with which they could prepare mixed cargoes by adding the fruit, oil, and wine of their native provinces, and the produce of their own industry; for they were then the principal manufacturers of silk, dyed woollen fabrics, jewellery, arms, rich dresses and ornaments. The importance of this trade was one of the principal causes which enabled the Roman empire to retain the conquests of Justinian in Spain and Sardinia, and this commercial influence of the Greek nation checked the power of the Groths, the Lombards, and the Avars, and gained for them as many allies as the avarice and tyranny of the exarchs and imperial officers created enemies. It may not be superfluous to remark, that the invectives against the government and persons of the exarchs which abound in the works of the Italians, and from them have been copied into the historians of Western Europe, must always be sifted with care, as they are the outbreaks of the violent political aversion of the Latin ecclesiastics to the authority of the Eastern Empire, not an echo of the general opinion of society. The people of Rome, Venice, Genoa, Naples, and Amalfi clung to the Roman empire from feelings of interest, long after they possessed the power of assuming perfect independence. These feelings of interest arose from the commercial connection of the West and East. The Italians did not yet possess capital sufficient to carry on the eastern trade without the assistance of the Greeks. The cargoes from the north consisted chiefly of slaves, wood for building, raw materials of various kinds, and provisions for the maritime districts.

The most important branch of trade, in a large empire, must ever be that which is carried on within its own territory, for the consumption of its subjects. The peculiar circumstances have been noticed that make the prosperity of the inhabitants of those countries which are inhabited by the Greek race essentially dependent on commerce. Internal commerce, if it had been left unfettered by restrictions, would probably have saved the Roman empire; but the financial difficulties, caused by the lavish expenditure of Justinian I, induced that emperor to invent a system of monopolies which ultimately threw the trade of the empire into the hands of the free citizens of Venice, Amalfi, and other cities, whom it had compelled to assume independence. Silk, oil, various manufactures, and even grain, were made the subject of monopolies, and temporary restrictions were at times laid on particular branches of trade for the profit of favoured individuals. The traffic in grain between the different provinces of the empire was subjected to onerous, and often arbitrary arrangements; and the difficulties which nature had opposed to the circulation of the necessaries of life, as an incentive to human industry, were increased, and the inequalities of price augmented for the profit of the treasury or the gain of the fiscal officers, until industry was destroyed.

These monopolies, and the administration which supported them, were naturally odious to the mercantile classes. When it became necessary, in order to retain the Mediterranean trade, to violate the great principle of the empire, that the subjects should neither be intrusted with arms, nor allowed to fit out armed vessels to carry on distant commerce, these armed vessels, whenever they were able to do so with impunity, violated the monopolies and fiscal regulations of the emperors. The independence of the Italian and Dalmatian cities then became a condition of their commercial prosperity. There can be little doubt, that if the Greek commercial classes had been able to escape the superintendence of the imperial administration as easily as the Italians, they, too, would have asserted their independence; for the emperors of Constantinople never viewed the merchants of their dominions in any other light than as a class from whom money was to be obtained in every possible way. This view is common in all absolute governments. An instinctive aversion to the independent position of the commercial classes, joined to a contempt for trade, usually suggests such measures as eventually drive commerce from countries under despotic rule. The little republics of Greece, the free cities of the Syrian coast, Carthage, the republics of Italy, the Hanse towns, Holland, England, and America, all illustrate by their history how much trade is dependent on those free institutions which offer a security against financial oppression; while the Roman empire affords an instructive lesson of the converse.

The trade of Constantinople with the countries round the Black Sea was an important element in the commercial prosperity of the empire. Byzantium served as the entrepot of this commerce and the traffic to the south of the Hellespont, even before it became the capital of the Roman Empire. After that event, its commerce was as much augmented as its population. It was supplied with grain from Egypt, and cattle from the Tauric Chersonese, and large public distributions of provisions attracted population, kept and made it the seat of a flourishing manufacturing industry. The trade in fur and the commerce with India by the Caspian, the Oxus, and the Indus, centred at Constantinople, whence the merchants distributed the various articles they imported among the nations of the West, and received in exchange the productions of these countries. The great value of this commerce, even to the barbarous nations which obtained a share in it, is frequently mentioned by the Byzantine historians. The Avars profited greatly by this traffic, and the decline of their empire was attributed to its decay; though there can be little doubt that the real cause, both of the decline of the trade and of the Avar power, arose from the insecurity of property, originating in bad government. The wealth of the mercantile and manufacturing classes in Constantinople contributed, in no small degree, to the success with which that city repulsed the attacks of the Avars and the Saracens.

Nothing could tend more to give us a correct idea of the real position of the Greek nation at the commencement of the eighth century, than a view of the moral condition of the lower orders of the people; but, unfortunately, all materials, even for a cursory inquiry into this subject, are wanting. The few casual notices which can be gleaned from the lives of the saints, afford the only authentic evidence of popular feeling. It cannot, however, escape notice, that even the shock which the Mohammedan conquests gave to the Orthodox Church, failed to recall its ministers back to the pure principles of the Christian religion. They continued their old practice of confounding the intellects of their congregations, by propagating a belief in false miracles, and by discussing the unintelligible distinctions of scholastic theology. From the manner in which religion was treated by the Eastern clergy, the people could profit little from the histories of imaginary saints, and understand nothing of the doctrines which they were instructed to consider as the essence of their religion. The consequence was, that they began to fall back on the idle traditions of their ancestors, and to blend the last recollections of paganism with new superstitions, derived from a perverted application of the consolations of Christianity. Relics of pagan usages were retained; a belief that the spirits of the dead haunted the paths of the living was general in all ranks; a respect for the bones of martyrs, and a confidence in the figures on amulets, became the real doctrines of the popular faith. The connection which existed between the clergy and the people, powerful and great as it really was, appears at bottom to have been based on social and political grounds. Pure religion was so rare, that the word only served as a pretext for increasing the power of the clergy, who appear to have found it easier to make use of the superstitions of the people than of their religious and moral feelings. The ignorant condition of the lower orders, and particularly of the rural population, explains the curious fact, that paganism continued to exist in the mountains of Greece as late as the reign of the Emperor Basil (A.D. 867-886), when the Mainates of Mount Taygetus were at last converted to Christianity.

It is often cited as a proof of the barbarous condition to which Greece was at this time reduced, that it is only mentioned by historians as a place of banishment for criminals. But this mode of announcing the fact, that many persons of rank were exiled to the cities of Greece, leaves an incorrect impression on the mind of the reader, for the most flourishing cities of the East were often selected as the places best adapted for the safe custody of political prisoners. We know from Constantine Porphyrogenitus that Cherson was a powerful commercial city, whose alliance or enmity was of considerable importance to the Byzantine Empire, even so late as the tenth century. Yet this city was selected as a place of banishment for persons of high rank, who were regarded as dangerous state criminals. Pope Martin was banished thither by Constans II, and it was the place of exile of the emperor Justinian II. The emperor Philippicus, before he ascended the throne, had been exiled by Tiberius Apsimar to Cephalonia, and by Justinian I. to Cherson, a circumstance which would lead us to infer that a residence in the islands of Greece was considered a more agreeable sojourn than that of Cherson. Several of the adherents of Philippicus were, after his dethronement, banished to Thessalonica, one of the richest and most populous cities of the empire.

The command of the imperial troops in Greece was considered an office of high rank, and it was accordingly conferred on Leontius, when Justinian II wished to persuade that general that he was restored to favour. Leontius made it the stepping-stone to the throne. But the strongest proof of the wealth and prosperity of the cities of Greece, is to be found in the circumstance of their being able to fit out the expedition which ventured to attempt wresting Constantinople from the grasp of a soldier and statesman, such as Leo the Isaurian was known to be, at the time when the Greeks deliberately resolved to overturn his throne.

It is difficult to form any correct representation of a state of society so different from our own, as that which existed among the Greeks in the eighth century. The rural districts, on the one hand, were reduced to a state of desolation, and the towns, on the other, flourished in wealth; agriculture was at the lowest ebb, while trade was in a prosperous condition. If, however, we look forward to the long series of misfortunes which were required to bring this favoured land to the state of complete destitution to which it sank at a later period, we may arrive at a more accurate knowledge of its condition in the early part of the eighth century, than would be possible were we to confine our view to looking back at the records of its ancient splendour, and to comparing a few lines in the meagre chronicles of the Byzantine writers with the volumes of earlier history recounting the greatest actions with unrivalled elegance.