CHAPTER XLII. STATE OF THE BARBARIC WORLD. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LOMBARDS ON THE DANUBE. TRIBES AND INROADS OF THE SCLAVONIANS. ORIGIN, EMPIRE, AND EMBASSIES OF THE TURKS. THE FLIGHT OF THE AVARS. CHOSROES I., OR NUSHIRVAN, KING OF PERSIA. HIS PROSPEROUS REIGN AND WARS WITH THE ROMANS. THE COLCHIAN OR LAZIC WAR. - THE ETHIOPIANS. Weakness pire of A.D. 527-565. OUR estimate of personal merit is relative to the common faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured not so much by of the em their real elevation as by the height to which they ascend Justinian, above the level of their age or country; and the same stature which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pigmies. Leonidas and his three hundred companions devoted their lives at Thermopyla; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared and almost ensured this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable.' The great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies that he had defeated in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred cities from the lake Mæotis to the Red Sea ; but the fortune of Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were oppressed by their own fears; and the invincible legions which he commanded had been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages. In this view the character of Belisarius may be deservedly placed above the heroes of the ancient republics. His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection; he raised himself without a master or a rival; and so inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his adversaries. Under his command, the subjects of Justinian often deserved to be called Romans; but the unwarlike appellation of Greeks was imposed as a term of reproach by the It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read Herodotus (1. vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615). The conversation of Xerxes and Demaratus at Thermopyla is one of the most interesting and moral scenes in history. It was the torture of the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish and remorse, the virtue of his country. * See this proud inscription in Pliny (Hist. Natur. vii. 27). Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and disgrace; nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking (xample of the vicissitudes of fortune, and the vanity of human wishes. haughty Goths, who affected to blush that they must dispute the kingdom of Italy with a nation of tragedians, pantomimes, and pirates.3 The climate of Asia has indeed been found less congenial than that of Europe to military spirit: those populous countries were enervated by luxury, despotism, and superstition, and the monks were more expensive and more numerous than the soldiers of the East. The regular force of the empire had once amounted to six hundred and forty-five thousand men: it was reduced, in the time of Justinian, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and this number, large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over the sea and land,-in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt, on the banks of the Danube, the coast of the Euxine, and the frontiers of Persia. The citizen was exhausted, yet the soldier was unpaid; his poverty was mischievously soothed by the privilege of rapine and indolence, and the tardy payments were detained and intercepted by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without courage or danger, the emoluments of war. Public and private distress recruited the armies of the state, but in the field, and still more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always defective. The want of national spirit was supplied by the precarious faith and disorderly service of barbarian mercenaries. Even military honour, which has often survived the loss of virtue and freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were multiplied beyond the example of former times, laboured only to prevent the success or to sully the reputation of their colleagues; and they had been taught by experience that, if merit sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or even guilt, would obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. such an age the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine with incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest shades of disgrace and calamity. While the lieutenant of Justinian subdued the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the emperor, timid, though ambitious, balanced the forces of the barbarians, fomented their divisions by flattery and falsehood, and invited by his patience and liberality the repetition of injuries. The keys of 6 In 3 Γραικοὺς . . . ἐξ ὧν τὰ πρότερα οὐδένα ἐς Ιταλίαν ἥκοντα εἶδον, ὅτι μὴ τραγῳδοὺς, καὶ vaÚTas AWTOÌÚTas [Goth. i. 18, tom. ii. p. 93, ed. Bonn]. This last epithet of Procopius is too nobly translated by pirates; naval thieves is the proper word: strippers of garments, either for injury or insult (Demosthenes contra Conon. in Reiske, Orator. Græc. tom. ii. p. 1264). See the third and fourth books of the Gothic War: the writer of the Anecdotes cannot aggravate these abuses. Agathias, 1. v. [c. 14] p. 157, 158 [p. 306, ed. Bonn]. He confines this weakness of the emperor and the empire to the old age of Justinian; but, alas! he was never young. • This mischievous policy, which Procopius (Anecdot. c. 19 [tom. iii. p. 113, ed. Bonn]) imputes to the emperor, is revealed in his epistle to a Scythian prince who was capable of understanding it. "Ayav #gountñ nai dyxwúcruтov, says Agathias (1. v [c. 5] p. 170, 171 [p. 331, ed. Bonn]). Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna were presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was destroyed by the Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of Constantinople. Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to the state, since they abolished the important barrier of the Upper State of the Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric barbarians. and his daughter. For the defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated Pannonia and Noricum, which they left in a peaceful and flourishing condition: the sovereignty was claimed by the emperor of the Romans; the actual possession was abandoned to the boldness of the first invader. On the opposite banks of the Danube, the plains of Upper Hungary and the Transylvanian hills were possessed, since The Gepida. the death of Attila, by the tribes of the Gepida, who respected the Gothic arms, and despised, not indeed the gold of the Romans, but the secret motive of their annual subsidies. The vacant fortifications of the river were instantly occupied by these barbarians; their standards were planted on the walls of Sirmium and Belgrade; and the ironical tone of their apology aggravated this insult on the majesty of the empire: "So extensive, O Cæsar, are your dominions, so numerous are your cities, that you are continually seeking for "nations to whom, either in peace or war, you may relinquish these "useless possessions. The Gepidæ are your brave and faithful allies, "and, if they have anticipated your gifts, they have shown a just "confidence in your bounty." Their presumption was excused by the mode of revenge which Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting the rights of a sovereign for the protection of his subjects, the emperor invited a strange people to invade and possess the Roman provinces between the Danube and the Alps; and the ambition of the Gepida was checked by the rising power and fame of the LOMBARDS.7 This corrupt appellation has been diffused in the thirteenth bards. century by the merchants and bankers, the Italian posterity of these savage warriors; but the original name of Langobards is expressive only of the peculiar length and fashion of their beards. I am not 66 The Lom 7 Gens Germanâ feritate ferocior, says Velleius Paterculus of the Lombards (ii. 106). Langobardos paucitas nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per obsequium, sed præliis et periclitando, tuti sunt (Tacit. de Moribus German. c. 40). See likewise Strabo (1. vii. p. 446 [p. 290, 291, ed. Casaub.]). The best geographers place them beyond the Elbe, in the bishopric of Magdeburg and the middle march of Brandenburg; and their situation will agree with the patriotic remark of the Count de Hertzberg, that most of the barbarian conquerors issued from the same countries which still produce the armies of Prussia. disposed either to question or to justify their Scandinavian origin, nor to pursue the migrations of the Lombards through unknown regions and marvellous adventures. About the time of Augustus and Trajan, a ray of historic light breaks on the darkness of their antiquities, and they are discovered, for the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder. Fierce, beyond the example of the Germans, they delighted to propagate the tremendous belief that their heads were formed like the heads of dogs, and that they drank the blood of their enemies whom they vanquished in battle. The smallness of their numbers was recruited by the adoption of their bravest slaves; and alone, amidst their powerful neighbours, they defended by arms their high-spirited independence. In the tempests of the north, which overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of the Lombards still floated on the surface; they gradually descended towards the south and the Danube, and at the end of four hundred years they again appear with their ancient valour and renown. Their manners were not less ferocious. The assassination of a royal guest was executed in the presence and by the command of the king's daughter, who had been provoked by some words of insult, and disappointed by his diminutive stature ; and a tribute, the price of blood, was imposed on the Lombards by his brother, the king of the Heruli. Adversity revived a sense of moderation and justice, and the insolence of conquest was chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the Heruli, who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship of the emperors, and, at the solicitation of Justinian, they passed the Danube to reduce, according to their treaty, the cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample limits; they wandered along the coast of the Adriatic as far as Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness, to enter the towns and houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of • The Scandinavian origin of the Goths and Lombards, as stated by Paul Warnefrid [1. i. c. 2], surnamed the Deacon, is attacked by Cluverius (Germania Antiq. 1. iii. c. 26, p. 102, &c.), a native of Prussia, and defended by Grotius (Prolegom. ad Hist. Goth. p. 28, &c.), the Swedish ambassador. Two facts in the narrative of Paul Diaconus (1. i. c. 20) are expressive of national manners: 1. Dum ad tabulam luderet-while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia lina. The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce, agriculture, and manufactures. burg is still called the lange Börde. According to this view Langobardi would signify "inhabitants of the long bord of the river;" and traces of their name are supposed still to occur in such names as Bardengau and Bardewick in the neigh- hostility, the sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers, were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor ; but the arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the Gepida. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the throne of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the barbarians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by slow and ineffectual succours. Their strength was formidable, since the Lombards, who sent into the field several myriads of soldiers, still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the Romans. Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic: they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was obtained; but their mutual resentment again kindled, and the remembrance of their shame rendered the next encounter more desperate and bloody. Forty thousand of the barbarians perished in the decisive battle which broke the power of the Gepidæ, transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince of the Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy.10 The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under the two great families of the BULGARIANS 11 a and the SCLAVONIANS. According to the Greek writers, the former, The Sclavonians. 10 I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the facts in Procopius (Goth. 1. ii. c. 14, 1. iii. c. 33, 34, 1. iv. c. 18, 25), Paul Diaconus (de Gestis Langobard. 1. i. c. 1-23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 405-419), and Jornandes (de Success. Regnorum, p. 242). The patient reader may draw some light from Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, and Annotat. xxiii.) and De Buat (Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. ix. x. xi.). "I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from Ennodius (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1598, 1599), Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn. Successione, p. 242), Theophanes (p. 185 [tom. i. p. 338, ed. Bonn]), and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. The name of Huns is too vague; the tribes of the Cutturgurians and Utturgurians are too minute and too harsh. "The ethnological relations of the Bulgarians are discussed in a note on c. lv. init., where Gibbon relates their history. It is sufficient to remark here that the Greek writers correctly represented the Bulgarians as deriving their descent from the Huns, and that consequently the Bulgarians belonged to the Turkish race. See note, vol. iii. p. 306.-S. The Sclavonians or Slavonians belong, as is well known, to the great IndoEuropean family of nations. They are mentioned by classical writers under the name of Sarmatians. (See Editor's note, vol. ii. p. 359.) The Sarmatians were driven out of their seats on the Danube and on the Pontus by the Goths and the Huns, and retired towards the north. But upon the downfall of the empire of the Huns, and upon the emigration of the Goths from the Danube, they again pressed towards the south, and appeared in their former seats on the Pontus and the lower Danube. An account of them is given in the reign of Justinian both by Jornandes and Procopius. Jornandes distinguishes them by the collective name of Winidæ, which is the same as the term Wends, |