Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/378

 328 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xli according to his character. What is your meaning? You are a philosopher — Justinian is emperor of the Romans : it would ill become the disciple of Plato to shed the blood of thousands in his private quarrel ; the successor of Augustus should vindicate his rights, and recover by arms the ancient provinces of his empire^ This reasoning might not convince, but it was sufficient to alarm and subdue, the weakness of Theodatus ; and he soon descended to his last offer, that for the poor equivalent of a pension of forty-eight thousand pounds sterling he would resign the kingdom of the Goths and Italians, and spend the remainder of his days in the innocent pleasures of philosophy and agriculture. Both treaties were entrusted to the hands of the ambassador, on the frail security of an oath not to produce the second till the first had been positively re- jected. The event may be easily foreseen: Justinian required and accepted the abdication of the Gothic king. His indefati- gable agent returned from Constantinople to Eavenna, with ample instructions ; and a fair epistle, which praised the wisdom and generosity of the royal philosopher, granted his pension, with the assurance of such honours as a subject and a catholic might enjoy, and wisely referred the final execution of the treaty to the presence and authority of Belisarius. But, in the in- terval of suspense, two Boman generals, who had entered the province of Dalmatia, were defeated and slain by the Gothic troops. From blind and abject despair, Theodatus capriciously rose to groundless and fatal presumption, 70 and dared to receive with menace and contempt the ambassador of Justinian, who claimed his promise, solicited the allegiance of his subjects, and boldly asserted the inviolable privilege of his own character. The march of Belisarius dispelled this visionary pride ; and, as the first campaign 71 was employed in the reduction of Sicily, 70 A Sibylline oracle was ready to pronounce — Africa capta, mundus cum nato peribit ; a sentence of portentous ambiguity (Gothic. 1. i. c. 7), which has been published in unknown characters by Opsopaeus, an editor of the oracles. The Pere Maltret has promised a commentary ; but all his promises have been vain and fruitless. [Cp. Appendix 15.] 71 In his chronology, imitated in some degree from Thucydides, Procopius begins each spring the years of Justinian and of the Gothic war [cp. Appendix 1] ; and his first sera coincides with the first of April 535, and not 536, according to the Annals of Baronius (Pagi, Crit. torn. ii. p. 555, who is followed by Muratori and the editors of Sigonius). Yet in some passages we are at a loss to reconcile the dates of Procopius with himself and with the Chronicle of Marcellinus.