Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/831

 JUSTINIAN 797 laws provoked the Samaritans to a revolt, from whose effects Palestine had not recovered when conquered by the Arabs in the following century. The Nestorians and the Eutychian Monophysites were not threatened with such severe civil penalties, although their worship was interdicted, and their bishops were sometimes banished ; but this vexa tious treatment was quite enough to keep them disaffected, and the rapidity of the Mahometan conquests may be partly traced to that alienation of the bulk of the Egyptian and a large part of the Syrian population which dates from Justinian s persecutions. 1 4. Justinian was engaged in three great foreign wars, two of them of his own seeking, the third a legacy which nearly every emperor had come into for three centuries, the secular strife of Rome and Persia. The Sassanid kings of Persia ruled a dominion which extended from the confines of Syria to those of India, and from the straits of Oman to the Caucasus. The martial character of their population made them formidable enemies to the Romans, whose troops were at this epoch mainly barbarians, the settled and civilized subjects of the empire being as a rule averse to war. When Justinian came to the throne, his troops were maintaining an unequal struggle on the Euphrates against the armies of Kobad. After some campaigns, in which the skill of Belisarius obtained considerable successes, a peace was concluded in 533 with Chosroes Anushirvan, who had succeeded Kobad two years before. This lasted till 539, when Chosroes declared war, alleging that Justinian had been secretly intriguing against him with the Ephtha- lite Huns, and doubtless moved by alarm and envy at the victories which the Romans had been gaining in Italy. The emperor was too much occupied in the West to be able adequately to defend his eastern frontier. Chosroes advanced into Syria with little resistance, and in 540 captured Antioch, then the greatest city in Asia, carrying off its inhabitants into captivity. The war continued with varying fortunes for four years more in this quarter ; while in the meantime an even fiercer struggle had begun in the mountainous region inhabited by the Lazes at the south eastern corner of the Black Sea. When after two and twenty years of fighting no substantial advantage had been gained by either party, Chosroes agreed in 562 to a peace which left Lazica to the Romans, but under the dishonour able condition of their paying thirty thousand pieces of gold annually to the Persian king. Thus no result of permanent importance flowed from these Persian wars, except that they greatly weakened the Roman empire, increased Justinian s financial embarrassments, and prevented him from prosecut ing with sufficient vigour his enterprises in the West. These enterprises had begun in 533 with an attack on the Vandals, who were then reigning in Africa. Belisarius, despatched from Constantinople with a large fleet and army, landed without opposition, and destroyed the barbarian power in two engagements. North Africa from beyond the straits of Gibraltar to the Syrtes became again a Roman province, although the Moorish tribes of the interior maintained a species of independence; and part of southern Spain was also recovered for the empire. The ease with which so important a conquest had been effected encouraged Justinian to attack the Ostrogoths of Italy, whose kingdom, though vast in extent, for it included part of south-eastern Gaul, Rhastia, Dalmatia, and part of Pannonia, as well as Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, had been grievously weakened by the death first of the great Theodoric, and some years later of his grandson Athalaric, so that the Gothic nation was practically without 1 For a fuller account of the ecclesiastical policy of Justinian and its results the present writer ventures to refer to the article &quot; Jus tinian &quot; which he has contributed to the third volume of Dr Smith s Dictionary of Christian Biography. a head. Justinian began the war in 535, taking as his pretext the murder of Queen Amalasontha, daughter of Theodoric, who had placed herself under his protection, and alleging that the Ostrogothic kingdom had always owned a species of allegiance to the emperor at Constanti nople. There was some foundation for this claim, although of course it could not have been made effective against Theodoric, who was more powerful than his supposed suzerain. Belisarius, who had been made commander of the Italian expedition, overran Sicily, reduced southern Italy, and in 536 occupied Rome. Here he was attacked in the following year by Vitigis, who had been chosen king by the Goths, with a greatly superior force. After a siege of more than a year, the energy, skill, and courage of Belisarius, and the sickness which was preying on his troops, obliged Vitigis to retire. Belisarius pursued his diminished army northwards, shut him up in Ravenna, and ultimately received the surrender of that impregnable city. Vitigis was sent prisoner to Constantinople, where Justinian treated him, as he had previously treated the captive Vandal king, with clemency. The imperial administration was established through Italy, but its rapacity soon began to excite discontent, and the kernel of the Gothic nation had not submitted. After two short and unfortunate reigns, the crown had been bestowed on Totila or Baduila, a warrior of distinguished abilities, who by degrees drove the imperial generals and governors out of Italy. Belisarius was sent against him, but with forces too small for the gravity of the situation. He moved from place to place during several years, but saw city after city captured by or open its gates to Totila, till only Ravenna, Otranto, and Ancona remained. Justinian was occupied by the ecclesiastical controversy of the Three Chapters, and had not the money to fit out a proper army and fleet; indeed, it may be doubted whether he would ever have roused himself to the necessary exertions but for the presence at Constantinople of a knot of Roman exiles, who kept urging him to reconquer Italy, representing that with their help and the sympathy of the people it would not be a difficult enterprise. The emperor at last complied, and in 552 a powerful army was despatched under Narses, an Armenian eunuch now advanced in life, but reputed the most skilful general of the age, as Belisarius was the hottest soldier. He marched along the coast of the Gulf of Venice, and encountered the army of Totila at Taginse, not far from Cesena. Totila was slain, and the Gothic cause irretrievably lost. The valiant remains of the nation made anotherstand under Teiason the Lactarian hillin Campania; after that they disappear from history. Italy was recovered for the empire, but it was an Italy terribly impoverished and depopulated, whose possession carried little strength with it. Justinian s policy both in the Vandalic and in the Gothic war stands condemned by the result. The resources of the state, which might better have been spent in defend ing the northern frontier against Slavs and Huns and the eastern frontier against Persians, were consumed in the conquest of two countries which had suffered too much to be of any substantial value, and which, separated by language as well as by intervening seas, could not be per manently retained. However, Justinian must have been almost preternaturally wise to have foreseen this: his conduct was in the circumstances only what might have been expected from an ambitious prince who perceived an opportunity of recovering territories that had formerly belonged to the empire, and over which its rights were conceived to be only suspended. Besides these three great foreign wars, Justinian s reign was troubled by a constant succession of border inroads, especially on the northern frontier, where the various Slavonic and Hunnish tribes who were established along