[Ch. III. § 1. its supplies of grain, and the Greeks in Egypt were reduced in number and consideration. Antioch was sacked by Chosroes, and the position of the Greek population of Syria permanently weakened.

But it was in Greece itself that the Hellenic race and institutions received the severest blow. Justinian seized the revenues of the free cities, and deprived them of their most valuable privileges, for the loss of their revenues compromised their political existence. Poverty produced barbarism. Roads, streets, and public buildings could no longer be repaired or constructed unless by the imperial treasury. That want of police which characterizes the middle ages, began to be felt in the East. Public instruction was neglected, but the public charities were liberally supported; the professors and the physicians were robbed of the funds destined for their maintenance. The municipalities themselves continued to exist in an enfeebled state, for Justinian affected to reform, but never attempted to destroy them; and even his libeller, Procopius, only accuses him of plundering, not of destroying them. The poverty of the Greeks rendered it impossible for them to supply their municipalities with new funds, or even to allow local taxes to be imposed, for maintaining the old establishments. At this crisis, the population was saved from utter barbarism by the close connection which existed between the clergy and the people, and the powerful influence of the church. The clergy and the people being united by a community of language, feelings, and prejudices, the clergy, as the most powerful class of the community, henceforth took the lead in all public business in the provinces. They lent their aid to support the charitable institutions, to replace the means of instruction, and to maintain the knowledge of the healing art; they supported the communal and municipal organization of the people; and by preserving the local feelings of the Greeks, they strengthened the foundations of a national organization. History supplies few materials to illustrate the precise period at which the clergy in Greece formed their alliance with the municipal organization of the

perpetuated the name, and a mortal blow was given to the power of the municipality. The pope assumed the direction of civil affairs, and prepared the way for his future temporal sovereignty. See Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts im Mittelalter, vol. i. p. 367.

A.D. 527-565.]

people, independent of the central authority; but the alliance became of great national importance, and exercised permanent effects after the municipalities had been impoverished by Justinian's reforms.

SECT. II.-Military Forces of the Empire.

The history of the wars and conquests of Justinian is narrated by Procopius, the secretary of Belisarius, who was often an eyewitness of the events which he records with a minuteness which supplies much valuable information on the military system of the age. The expeditions of the Roman armies were so widely extended, that most of the nations of the world were brought into direct communication, with the empire. During the time Justinian's generals were changing the state of Europe, and destroying some of the nations which had dismembered the Western Empire, circumstances beyond the control of that international system of policy, of which the sovereigns of Constantinople and Persia were the arbiters, produced a general movement in the population of central Asia. The whole human race was thrown into a state of convulsive agitation, from the frontiers of China to the shores of the Atlantic. This agitation destroyed many of the existing governments, and exterminated. several powerful nations, while, at the same time, it laid the foundation of the power of new states and nations, some of which have maintained their existence to the present time.

The Eastern Empire bore no inconsiderable part in raising this mighty storm in the West, and in quelling its violence in the East; in exterminating the Goths and Vandals, and in arresting the progress of the Avars and Turks. Yet the number and composition of the Roman armies have often been treated by historians as weak and contemptible. It is impossible, in this sketch, to attempt any examination of the whole military establishment of the Roman empire 'during Justinian's reign; but in noticing the influence exercised by the military system on the Greek population, it is necessary to make a few general observations'. The army

Lord Mahon, in his Life of Belisarius (chap. i.), gives a sketch of the Roman armies in Justinian's reign.

[Ch. III. § 2. consisted of two distinct classes,—the regular troops, and the mercenaries. The regular troops were composed both of native subjects of the Roman empire, raised by conscription, and of barbarians, who had been allowed to occupy lands within the emperor's dominions, and to retain their own usages, on the condition of furnishing a fixed number of recruits for the army. The Roman government still clung to the great law of the empire, that the portion of its subjects which paid the land-tax could not be allowed to escape that burden by entering the army'. The proprietors of the land were responsible for the tribute; the cultivators of the soil, both slaves and serfs, secured the amount of the public revenues; neither could be permitted to forego their fiscal obligations to perform military duties. For some centuries it had been more economical to purchase the service of barbarians than to employ native troops; and perhaps, if the oppressive system of the imperial administration had not impaired the resources of the State, and diminished the population by consuming the capital of the people, this might have long continued to be the case. Native troops were always drawn from the mountainous districts, which paid a scanty tribute, and in which the population found difficulty in procuring subsistence. The invasions of the barbarians, likewise, threw numbers of the peasantry of the provinces to the south of the Danube out of employment, and many of these entered the army. A supply of recruits was likewise obtained from the idle and needy population of the towns 3. The most active and intelligent soldiers were placed in the cavalry, a force that was drilled with the greatest care, subjected to the most exact discipline, and sustained the glory of the Roman arms in the field of battle1. As the higher and middle classes in the provinces

1 Cod. Justin. x. 32. 17; xii. 32. 2, 4. He who quitted his civil position as servant of the fisc was to be sent back to his duty. Citizens were not allowed to possess arms, except for hunting and travelling.

The exemption of the military from taxation was used as an argument for conceding a similar privilege to the clergy, who were members of the militia warring against the legions of Satan.

Slaves were, of course, excluded from military service by the Roman laws. Cod. Justin, xii. 33. 6, 7. Yet, in the decline of the empire, they were sometimes enfranchised in order to be admitted as recruits; and Justinian declares the slave free who had served in the army with his master's consent. The enactment proves that slaves were rapidly attaining the level to which the free population had sunk. Novell. 81. Colons were also excluded from military service. Cod. Justin. xi. 48. 18. The cavalry was carefully trained to act on foot, and its steady behaviour on

A.D. 527-565.]

had, for ages, been excluded from the military profession, and the army had been at last composed chiefly of the rudest and most ignorant peasants, of enfranchised slaves, and naturalized barbarians, military service was viewed with aversion; and the greatest repugnance arose among the civilians to become soldiers. In the mean time, the depopulation of the empire. daily increased the difficulty of raising the number of recruits required for a service which embraced an immense extent of territory, and entailed a great destruction of human life.

The troops of the line, particularly the infantry, had deteriorated considerably in Justinian's time; but the artillery and engineer departments were not much inferior, in science and efficiency, to what they had been in the best days of the empire. Military resources, not military knowledge, had diminished. The same arsenals continued to exist; mere mechanical skill had been uninterruptedly exercised; and the constant demand which had existed for military mechanicians, armourers, and engineers, had never allowed the theoretical instruction of this class to be neglected, nor their practical skill to decline from want of employment. This fact requires to be borne in mind1.

The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant portion of the army; and it was the fashion of the day to copy and admire the dress and manners of the barbarian cavalry. The empire was now surrounded by numbers of petty princes, who, though they had seized possession of provinces once belonging to the Romans, by force, and had often engaged in war with the emperor, still acknowledged

dismounting, when surrounded by superior numbers, proves the perfection of the Roman discipline, even in the time of Justinian. Procopius mentions this trait in his description of the battle of Callinicum. De Bell. Pers. i. 18. Salomon made use of the same formation of the cavalry on foot against the African Moors. Vand. ii. 12. It was again employed at the battle of Solacon, in the reign of the emperor Maurice. Theophylactus Simoc. ii. 4, p. 73, edit. Bonn. Hannibal ridiculed the conduct of Aemilius Paulus in ordering the Roman cavalry to dismount at the battle of Cannae. Livy, xxii. 49. But there is no invariable rule in war.

The engineers of Theodoric the Great could not be superior to those of Justinian, for Theodoric had often been obliged to obtain artists from the East; yet the tomb of Theodoric, near Ravenna, rivals the remains of the pre-Homeric times at Mycenae. The circular stone of the dome is 35 feet in diameter, and weighs 940,000 lbs. ; yet it is supposed to have been brought from the quarries in Istria. See the plates in the Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens, depuis sa Décadence au IVe Siècle, par Seroux D'Agincourt, tom. i. pl. xviii. [Engl. trans., published by Longmans, London, 1847.]

[Ch. III. § 2. a certain degree of dependence on the Roman power. Some of them, as the kings of the Heruls and the Gepids, and the king of Colchis, held their regal rank, by a regular investiture, from Justinian. These princes, and the kings of the Lombards, Huns, Saracens, and Moors, all received regular subsidies. Their best warriors entered the Roman service, and served in separate bands, under their own leaders, and with their national weapons, but subjected to the regular organization and discipline of the Roman armies, though not to the Roman system of military exercises and manœuvres. Some of these corps of barbarians were also formed of volunteers, who were attracted by the high pay which they received, and the license with which they were allowed to behave.

The superiority of these troops arose from natural causes. The northern nations who invaded the empire consisted of a population trained from infancy to warlike exercises, and following no profession but that of arms. Their lands were cultivated by the labour of their slaves, or by that of the Roman subjects who still survived in the provinces they had occupied; but their only pecuniary resources arose from the plunder of their neighbours, or the subsidies of the Roman emperors. Their habits of life, the celerity of their movements, and the excellence of their armour, rendered them the choicest troops of the age. The emperors preferred armies composed of a number of small bands of mercenary foreigners, attached to their own persons by high pay, and commanded by chiefs who could never pretend to political rank, and who had much to lose and little to gain by rebellion; for experience proved that they perilled their throne by intrusting the command of a national army to a native general, who, from a popular soldier, might become a dangerous rival'. Though the barbarian mercenaries in the service of Rome generally proved far more efficient troops than their free countrymen, yet they were on the whole unequal to the native Roman cavalry of Justinian's army, the Cataphracti, sheathed in complete steel on the Persian model, and armed with the Grecian spear, who were

Justinian, however, sometimes united the civil and military power. Novell.

24 31.