of remorse at his own crimes. A large fish was placed before Theodoric at his supper. The King be- Fate after held in it the gory head of Symmachus, with the death. teeth set and gnawing the lower lip, and the eyes rolling in a fierce frenzy, and sternly menacing his murderer. Theodoric, shivering with cold, rushed to his chamber; he called for more clothes to be heaped upon his bed, but nothing could restore the warmth of life; he sent for his physician, and bitterly, and in an agony of tears, reproached himself with the death of Symmachus and of Boethius." He died a few days after; and even Procopius adds, that these were the first and the last acts of injustice committed by Theodoric against his subjects. But later visionaries did not the less pursue his soul to its eternal condemnation; he was seen by an hermit hurled by the ministers of the divine retribution into the volcano of Lipari: volcanoes in those days were believed to be the openings to hell.s Ravenna still, among the later works of Justinian and the Byzantine Exarchs, preserves some memorials of the magnificence of Theodoric. Of his stately palace remain but some crumbling and disfigured walls. Byzantine art has taken possession of his churches; Justinian and Theodora still dimly blaze in the gold and purple of the mosaics. The monument of Theodoric, perhaps the oldest work of Christian art, is still entire, marking some tendency to that transition from the Roman grandeur of bold and massy arches to the multiplicity of medieval details. Yet in these remains nothing can be traced which realises those singular expressions of Cassiodorus, so prophetic it might seem of what was afterwards characteristic of the socalled Gothic architecture-the tall, slender, reed-like pillars, the lofty roof supported, as it were, by clustered lances." Empire of Justinian. CHAPTER IV. JUSTINIAN. HISTORY Scarcely offers a more extraordinary contrast than that between the reign and the character of the Emperor Justinian. Under the nephew, colleague, and heir of Justin, the Roman Empire appears suddenly to resume her ancient majesty and power. The signs of a just, able, and vigorous administration, internal peace, prosperity, conquest, and splendour surround the master of the Roman world. The greatest generals, since the days perhaps of Trajan, Belisarius and Narses appear at the head of the Roman armies. Persia is kept at bay, during several campaigns if not continuously successful, yet honourable to the arms of Rome. The tide of barbarian conquest is rolled back. Africa, the Illyrian and Dalmatian provinces, Sicily, Italy, with the ancient Capital, are again under the empire of Rome; the Vandal kingdom, the Gothic kingdom fall before the irresistible generals of the East. The frontiers of the empire are defended with fortifications, constructed at enormous cost; but become necessary now that Roman valour had lost its spell of awe over the human mind; and that the perpetual migrations and movements from the North and the East were continually propelling new and formidable nations against the boundaries of the Roman world. Justinian aspires to be the legislator of mankind; a vast system of jurisprudence embodies the wisdom of ancient and of imperial statutes, mingled with some of the benign influences of Christianity, of which the author might almost have been warranted in the presumptuous vaticination, that it would exercise an unrepealed authority to the latest ages. The cities of the empire are adorned with buildings, civil as well as religious, of great magnificence and apparent durability, which, with the comprehensive legislation, might recal the peaceful days of the Antonines. The empire, at least at first, is restored to religious unity: Catholicism resumes its sway, and Arianism, so long its rival, dies out in remote and neglected congregations. In Spain alone it is the religion of the sovereign. The creator of this new epoch in Roman greatness, at least he who filled the throne during its creation, the Emperor Justinian, unites in himself the most opposite vices, -insatiable rapacity and lavish prodigality, intense pride and contemptible weakness, unmeasured ambition and dastardly cowardice. He is the uxorious slave of his empress, whom, after she had ministered to the licentious pleasures of the populace as a courtezan, and as an actress, in the most immodest exhibitions (we make due allowance for the malicious exaggerations in the secret history of Procopius), in defiance of decency, of honour, of the remonstrances of his friends, and of religion, he had made the partner of his throne. In the Christian Emperor seem to meet the crimes of those, who won or secured their empire by the assassination of all whom they feared, the passion for public diversions, without the accomplishments of Nero or the brute strength of Commodus, the dotage of Claudius. Constantinople might appear to retrograde to paganism. The peace of the city and even the stability of the empire are endangered not by foreign invasion, not at first by a dangerous rival for the throne, nor even by religious dissensions, but by the factions of the Circus, the partisans of the Blue and of the Green, by the colours worn in the games by the contending charioteers. Justinian himself, during the memorable sedition, the Nike, had nearly abandoned the throne, and fled before a despicable antagonist. "The throne is a glorious sepulchre," exclaimed the prostitute whom he had raised to that throne, and Justinian and the empire are saved by her courage. This imperious woman, even if from exhaustion or lassitude she discontinued, or at least condescended to disguise those vices which dishonoured her husband, in her cruelties VOL. I. Ꮓ knew no restraint. And these cruelties, exercised in order to gratify her rapacity, if not in sheer caprice, as a substitute for that excitement, which had lost its keenness and its zest, are almost more culpable indications of the Emperor's weakness. This meanness of subservience to female influence becomes the habit of the court, and the great Belisarius, like his master, is ruled and disgraced by an insolent and profligate wife. Nor do either of them, in shame, or in conscious want of Christian holiness, stand aloof from the affairs of that religion, whose precepts and whose spirit they thus trample under foot. Theodora, a bigot without faith, a heretic, it might almost be presumed, without religious convictions, by the superior strength of her character domineers in this as in other respects over the whole court, mingles in all religious intrigues, appoints to the highest ecclesiastical dignities, sells the Papacy itself. Her charities alone (if we except her masculine courage, and no doubt that great ability which mastered the inferior mind of her husband) if they sprung from lingering womanly tenderness, or that inextinguishable kindness which Christianity sometimes infuses into the hardest hearts, if they were not designed as a deliberate compromise with heaven for her vices and cruelties, may demand our admiration. The feeling which induced the degraded and miserable victim of the lusts and contempt of men to found, perhaps, the first penitentiaries for her sisters in that wretched class, as it shows her superior to the base fear of awakening remembrances of her own former shame, may likewise be considered as an enforced homage to female virtue. Even in Theodora we would discover the very feeblest emotions of Christianity. Justinian aspires too to be the legislator not of the empire alone, but of Christendom, enacts ordinances for the whole Church; and unhappily, not content with establishing the doctrines of Nicea and Chalcedon as the religion of the Empire, by his three Chapters replunges Christendom into religious strife. The reign of Justinian, during the period between the I have studied, besides the ordinary authorities, a life of Justinian by Ludewig.- Hal. Salic. 1781. To the great lawyer the vices and weaknesses of Justinian are lost in admiration of his jurisprudence. wars. A.D. 526-533. of Schools at death of Theodoric and the conquest of Italy, was occupied by the Persian and African wars, and the commo- Persian and tions arising out of the public games in Constanti- African nople. The only event which commands religious interest is the suppression of the schools in Athens. That last vain struggle of Grecian philosophy against Christianity, which had so signally failed even with an Emperor Julian at its head; that Platonic theism which had endeavoured to give new life to paganism, by enlisting the imagination in its service, and establishing a sensible communication with the unseen world; which, in order to command the innate superstition of mankind, had allied itself with magic; and which still (its better function) promulgated noble precepts of somewhat dreamy Suppression morality; was not allowed to expire like a worn- Athens. out veteran in peaceful dignity. It was forcibly expelled from the ancient groves and porches of Athens, where recently, under Proclus, it had rallied, as it were, for a last gleam of lustre; it was driven out by the impatient zeal of Justinian. Seven followers of Proclus, it is well known, sought a more hospitable retreat in Persia; but the Magianism of that kingdom was not much more tolerant than the Christianity of the East. Philosophy found no resting place; and probably few of her disciples could enjoy the malicious consolation which might have been drawn from the manner in which she had long been revenging herself on Christianity by suggesting, quickening with her contentious spirit, and aiding with all her subtleties of language those disputes, which had degraded the faith of Jesus from its sublime, moral, and religious dictatorship over the human mind. Justinian, when he determined to attempt the reconquest of Africa, might take the high position of the vindicator of the Catholics from long, cruel, and almost unrelenting persecution. The African Catholics had enjoyed a short gleam of peace during the reign of Hilderic, who had deviated into toleration, unknown to the Arianism of the Vandals alone; he had restored about two hundred bishops to their churches. The Catholics might behold with terror the overthrow of |