Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/679

Rh JUSTINTANUS. immense nnmber of forts and towers, interspersed with larger regular fortresses, but even most of the towns in the very heart of Greece, Thrace, and Asia were provided with walls and towers, to protect the inliabitants against the irresistible in- roads of the barbarians. Thence Montesquieu ob- serves, that the Roman empire at the time of Justinian resembled the Frankish kingdom in the time of the Norman inroads, when, iu spite of every village being a fortress, the kingdom was weaker than at any other period. The entire course of the Danube was defended by about eighty forts, of different dimensions, all of which were guarded by numerous garrisons ; other fortresses were erected beyond the river, in the middle of the countries of the barbarians. But these detached forts were utterly unable to protect Thrace against an enemy who used to appear suddenly with overwhelming forces, leaving no alternative to the Roman garrisons than of shutting themselves up within their walls, and of beholding as inactive spectators the Bul- garians swimming over the Danube with 20,000 horses at once, or crossing it in the winter on the solid ice. Similar forts were built, too, from the junction of the Save with the Danube north, towards Pannonia, and they proved quite as in- effective against the Avars as the forts along the Danube against the Bulgarians. Italy was fortified by nature, yet the Franks crossed the Alps with impunity. Thence the necessity of creating a system of inland fortifications. The ancient Greek wall across the Thracian Chersonnese, near Con- stantinople, was carefully restored, and brought to a degree of strength which caused the admiration of Procopius ; the Bulgarians nevertheless crossed it, and fed their horses in the gardens round Con- stantinople. Similar walls, with towers, were constructed across Thessaly (beginning with the defiles of Thermopylae) and across the isthmus of Corinth ; yet Bulgarians, Slavonians, and other barbarians, kept the inhabitants of Greece in con- stant fear of being carried off as slaves. At what- ever point these savage warriors appeared, they were always the strongest, and the poor Romans had no other chance of safety left than of taking refuge within the larger towns, the solid forti- fications of which were sufficient to keep the enemy at a distance. In the north-east the isthmus of the Chersonnesus Taurica, the present Crimea, was fortified in the same way as the isthmus of Corinth, by a long wall. The Roman possessions along the eastern shores of the Euxine and in the Caucasus were covered with forts and military stations ; and from the corner of Colchis to the sources of the Euphrates, and along the river as far as Syria, and thence along the edge of the Syro- Arabic desert, there was scarcely a town or a defile but was surrounded by walls and ditches, or shut up by massive barriers of stone, against the inroads of the Persians. Syria was thought to be sufficiently guarded by the great desert between the Euphrates and the Lebanon, and the fortifica- tions of the Syrian towns were allowed to fall into decay, till the repeated invasions of Nushirwan and the sack of Antioch directed the attention of Justinian to that quarter also. Dara, not far from Nisibis, was the strongest bulwark of the empire on the side of Mesopotamia, and constantly pio- ■voked the jealousy of the Persians. The enormous sums which the defence of the empire required, together with the gold which JUSTINTANUS. 665 Justinian lavished upon the barbarians, involun- tarily led to the system of his administration. Procopius, in his Secret History or Anecdota, gives an awful description of it ; but however vicious that administration was, the colours of Procopius are too dark, and his motives in writing that work were not fair. There was decided order and regularity in the administration, but the leading principles of it were suspicion and avarice. The taxes were so heavy, their assessment so unequal, that Gibbon compares them to a hail-storm that fell upon the land, and to a devouring pestilence with regard to its inhabitants. In cases of necessity, the inha- bitants of whole districts were compelled to bring their stores of corn to Constantinople, or other places where the troops might be in want of it, and they were either not paid at all, or received such bad prices that they were often completely ruined. In all the provinces the officers of the crown took much more from the people than the law allowed, because the venality of places was carried on openly as a means of filling the emperor's treasury, and the purses of his prime minister ; and those who purchased places, which were, after all, badly paid, could not keep their engagements with the sellers, nor enrich themselves, without carrying on that system of robbery, which is at the present day the general practice in Turkey and most of the other countries in the East. Justinian certainly tried to check peculation and venality {Novella^ viii.), but this thundering edict was soon forgotten, and it would seem that the emperor himself lent his en- deavours to throw it into oblivion. Another great abuse which the principal officers made of their power was that of prevailing upon wealthy persons to make wills in their favour, to the disadvantage of the natural heirs. A great source of revenue for the imperial treasury consisted in the numberless duties, entry fees, and other charges, mostly arbitrary, laid upon trade and manufactui'es, and we may fairly presume that the tradespeople were as much oppressed as the land-owners. Some branches of trade, as for instance silk, were made monopolies of the crown, and, in short, there were no means left untried to fill his treasury. However, he never tampered with the coinage, nor gave it an artificial value. The millions thus obtained by Justinian were not only sufficient to cover the expenses occasioned by the army, the fortifications, the wars, and the bribery of barbarians, but enough remained to enable him to indulge his passion of perpetuating his name by public festivals, and especially by those beautiful buildings and monuments which were erected by his order, and render his time con- spicuous in the history of art. Procopius describes them in his work "De Aedificiis Justiniani." The church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, that splendid edifice, which, though now transfomied into a Turkish mosque, still excites the admiration of the spectator, was the most magnificent building erected by Justinian. Besides this Church of St. Sophia, there were twenty-five other churches constructed in Constantinople and its suburbs, among which were the beautiful churches of St. John the Apostle and St. Mary the Virgin, near the Blachernae, the latter of which he perhaps only repaired. The imperial palace at Constantinople was embellished with unparalleled splendour and taste; and his new palace with the gardens at Heraeum,near Chalcedon, was praised as the most beautiful residence in tha world. The " Antiquities of Constantinople," by