Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/386

 366 THE DECLINE AND FALL and that those rash men who shall presume to solicit the pardon of traitors shall themselves be branded with public and perpetual infamy. III. " With regard to the sons of the traitors" (con- tinues the emperor), " although they ought to share the punish- ment, since they will probably imitate the guilt, of their parents, yet, by the special effect of our Imperial lenity, we grant them their lives ; but, at the same time, we declare them incapable of inheriting, either on the father's or on the mother's side, or of receiving any gift or legacy from the testament either of kinsmen or of strangers. Stigmatized with hereditary infamy, excluded from the hopes of honours or fortune, let them endure the pangs of poverty and contempt, till they shall consider life as a calamity, and death as a comfort and relief." In such words, so well adapted to insult the feelings of mankind, did the emperor, or rather his favourite eunuch, applaud the moderation of a law which transferred the same unjust and inhuman penalties to the children of all those who had seconded, or who had not disclosed, these fictitious conspiracies. Some of the noblest regulations of Roman jurisprudence have been suffered to expire; but this edict, a convenient and forcible engine of ministerial tyranny, was carefully inserted in the codes of Theodosius and Justinian ; and the same maxims have been revived in modem ages, to protect the electors of Germany and the cardinals of the church of Rome.-° ^^emOTof Yet these sanguinary laws, which spread terror among a A.D ae disarmed and dispirited people, were of too weak a texture to resti'ain the bold enterprise of Tribigild ^i the Ostrogoth. The colony of that warlike nation, which had been planted by Theodosius in one of the most fertile districts of Phrygia,^^ impatiently compared the slow returns of laborious husbandry incline to the sentiments of Baldus. Yet Bartolus was gravely quoted by the la^vye^s of Cardinal Richelieu ; and Eutropius was indirectly guilty of the murder of the virtuous de Thou. 20 Godefroy, torn. iiL p. 89. It is, however, suspected tMt this law, so re- pugnant to the maxims of Germanic freedom, has been surreptitiously added to the golden bulL 21 A copious and circumstantial narrative (which he might have reserved for more important events) is bestowed by Zosimus (L v. p. 304-312 [issff.]) on the revolt of Tribigild and Gainas. See likewise Socrates, 1. vi. c. 6, and Sozomen, L viii. c. 4, The second book of Claudian against Eutropius is a fine, though imperfect, piece of history. 22 Claudian (in Eutrop. L ii. 237-250) very accurately observes that the ancient name and nation of the Phrygians extended very far on eveiy side, till their limits were contracted by the colonies of the Bithynians of Thrace, of the Greeks, and at last of the Gauls. His description (iu 257-272) of the fertility of Phrygia, and of the four rivers tha; produce gold, is just aad picturesque.