Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/292

 270 THE DECLINE AND FALL AD. 533 CHAPTER XLI Coiiijucsts of Justinian in the West — Character and first ("(unpaigiis of Belisariu.s — He invades and subdues the Vandal Kingdom of Africa — His Triumph — The Gothic War — He recovers Sicily, Naples, and Rome — Siege of Rome bxj the Goths — Their Re- treat and Losses^Surrender of Ravenna — Glori/ of Belisarius — His domestic Shame and Misfortunes Justinian re- When Justiiiian asceiiclecl the throne, about fifty years after the vide A^ica". fall of the Western empire, the kingdom of the Goths and Vandals had obtained a solid and, as it might seem, a legal establishment both in Europe and Africa. The titles which Roman victory had inscribed were erazed with equal justice by the sword of the Barbarians ; and their successful rapine derived a more venerable sanction from time, from treaties, and from the oaths of fidelity, already repeated by a second or third generation of obedient subjects. Experience and Christianity had refuted the superstitious hope that Rome was founded by the gods to reign for ever over the nations of the earth. But the proud claim of perpetual and indefeasible dominion, which her soldiers could no longer maintain, was firmly asserted by her statesmen and lawyers, whose opinions have been sometimes revived and propagated in the modern schools of jurisprudence. After Rome herself had been stripped of the Imperial purple, the princes of Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred sceptre of the monarchy ; demanded, as their rightful inherit- ance, the provinces which had been subdued by the consuls or possessed by the Caesars ; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of the West from the usurpation of heretics and Barbarians. The execution of this splendid design was in some degree reserved for Justinian. During the five first years of his reign, he reluctantly waged a costly and unprofitable war against the Persians ; till his pride submitted to his ambition, and he purchased, at the price of four hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling, the benefit of a precarious truce, which, in the language of both nations, was dignified with the