527.

A.D. of the Emperor was solely confined to the fac tions of the circus* and the disputations of the Church; and the nation, attracted by the royal example, hastened to espouse the same pursuits: whilst every individual of energy or talent thus attracted to the arena of bootless controversy, can be regarded in no other light than as withdrawn from the cause of literature and knowledge. By birth a barbarian, and possessed of no hereditary claim to the exalted honours to which the extraordinary fortunes of Justin his uncle had taught him to aspire, his life was one continued struggle for popularity. In turn, a philosopher, a poet, a theologian, a lawyer, a musician, and an architect, he sought under each character to humour the reigning passion of the day; nor, amongst his manifold pursuits, does he seem to have adopted any that did not promise to unite ostentation with utility. In compliance with the prevailing taste of the age for architecture, he devoted

* Gibbon, c. xl. sec. ii. Rizo, Cours, &c. p. 16,

+ Ibid. c. xlvii.

↑ Berington, app. i. p. 526. It has been well observed by Montesquieu, that it would be as difficult to decide the arguments of churchmen by attending to their affected subtleties, as to abolish duelling by erecting a court with a commission to trace a point of honour through all its refinements.-c. xxii. Gr. et Dec.

527.

529.

to the erection of countless edifices, not only A.D. the legal revenues of the kingdom, but the sums extorted by injustice and oppression; and it has been well observed, that the edifices of Justinian were cemented with the blood and treasures of his people.* In order to complete the line of barriers thrown up against the incursions of the barbarians, who despised such powerless bulwarks,† he closed the schools of A.D. Athens on the plea of their encouraging heathenism, and applied to the construction of fortresses the stipends allotted by the munificence of former sovereigns to the support of their professors. Rusticity and ignorance now rose in rank luxuriance around the deserted seats of the Muses, insulted Science sought a new asylum at the courts of the East, and Athens was gradually abandoned to poverty, obscurity, and decay.

Literature, in such an era, and under such auspices, cannot be supposed to have been cul

Montesquieu, Gran. et Decad. &c. c. xx. Gibbon, c. xl. + "The barbarians, in their annual inroads, passed and contemptuously repassed these useless bulwarks; and the inhabitants of the frontier, instead of reposing under the shadow of the general defence, were compelled to guard with incessant vigilance their separate habitation."-Gibbon.

† A. D. 529.

§ Gibbon, c. xl. sec. 7. Mill's Theod. Ducas, vol. i. 29. Berington, app. i. p. 518. Rizo, Cours, &c. p. 16.

p.

529.

A.D. tivated with ardour; and in fact, with the exception of the judicial works completed under his own inspection, the age of Justinian can boast but few monuments of learned industry, or literary genius. In these grand undertakings, his efficient agent was Tribonian, of Side, in Pamphylia, a poet, a courtier, a lawyer, and a scholar, on whom devolved the task of collecting and collating all the codes from Hadrian to his own times, which, with the aid of ten associates, he accomplished in fourteen months, and published A. D. 529, under the title of The Justinian Code. To this succeeded, in a. D. 533, his Pandects, or digest of all the decisions of previous jurisconsults, as they existed in upwards of two thousand heterogeneous volumes: a labour which occupied him and his colleagues for three years, during which they boasted to have compressed the contents of three millions of lines or sentences into the more compendious compass of one hundred and fifty thousand. At the same time, the Elements, or Institutes of Roman Law, were compiled in four books by Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus; and these, together with the Novels and Edicts, remain as the most distinguished memorials of the age of Justinian.* During the residue of his administration, however, these labours of

Gibbon, c. xliv. Schoell, 1. vi, c. xevii.

his distinguished agents were undergoing perpetual alterations, arising from the caprices, the despotism, or the venality of the prince; and, according to Procopius, each day of the tedious reign of this eminent legislator was marked by some glaring infringement or innovation of his

own enactments.*

As historians, the names of Procopius and Agathias alone occupy a prominent place in the period of which I speak. The former was born at Cæsarea, in Palestine, in the early part of the sixth century, and after serving under Belisarius in Africa and Italy, became a senator and prefect of Constantinople, an office of which he was deprived by Justinian. His History of his own Times, as far as relates to the foreign policy of the age, must be regarded as a work of accuracy and elegance, but its authority is invariably questionable as often as the Emperor, his voluptuous consort Theodora, or the renowned Belisarius, appear upon the scene. Here his pen betrays all the cautious. timidity of one who writes under the surveillance of those whose exploits he is narrating; but in a subsequent volume of Anecdotes or Secret Memoirs, he does ample justice to the truth, which he had been compelled to outrage in his former production, and represents Rizo, Cours, p. 17.

A.D.

529.

559.

A.D. Justinian in his true character as a hypocrite and charlatan, Theodora as a vindictive voluptuary, and Belisarius the hero of the embattled field, but the slave of an imperious and abandoned wife.* His history was continued by Agathias from A. D. 553 to 559.† The author, who was passionately devoted to poetry,‡ has evinced this partiality by the laboured and flowing decorations of his style; but the work abounds in facts and illustrations of the early manners of the Franks, the Goths, and Persians, which render it valuable and highly interesting.§ Besides these, the names of Paulus Silentiarius, an obscure versifier;|| of Quintus of Smyrna, or, as he is more usually styled, the Calabrian,¶ a

* Fabricius, l. v. c. v. 3. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxxiii. Harles, sec. v. p. 529.

+ A third work of Procopius, περὶ τῶν τοῦ δεσπότου Ιουστ τινιανοῦ κτισμάτων, treats of the numerous and costly edifices of Justinian.

He wrote some Epigrams, of which about one hundred are extant, but devoid of all terseness or point; and compiled an Anthology, which is now unfortunately lost.

§ Harles, sec. v. p. 533. Berington, app. i. p. 530. Fabricius, l. v. c. v. 4. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxii. c. lxxxvi.

|| Paulus composed in the reign of Justinian several epigrams of indifferent merit, and poems descriptive of the Pythian Baths in Bithynia, (see Gibbon, c. xl. sec. i.) the Cathedral of St. Sophia, &c. Harles, sec. v. p. 527. Schoell, 1. vi. c. lxxii. c. lxxiii. c. lxxxvii. Fabricius, 1. v. c. v. 5.

¶ So called erroneously by Bessarion, from finding a copy