Page:Secret History of the Court of the Emperor Justinian 1674.djvu/42

 him a long time in the nature of a Concubine, he married her, and she lived with him to his dying day. Justin was not capable of doing his Subjects either good or hurt; for he was a Man of extraordinary stupidity and sottishness, and extraordinary brutish. But Justinian his Sisters Son, who was young, and governed the State, brought more and greater evils upon the Em­pire, then were ever mentioned in all the Histo­ries of former times. He made no scruple of sequestring any mans estate, nor murdering any mans person, and could without any remorse give orders for the putting to death a great mul­titude of innocent persons at once. He never executed the resolutions that were taken, but on the contrary was so great a lover of Novelty, that he delighted to subvert and undo all things that were well ordered, with a word. During his Reign, as I have said before in my other Books) there hapned so great a contagion quite thorow his Dominions, that few or none escaped who were infected, and few or none escaped without infection: But as to the Tyranny of Justinian, there was scarce a Sub­ject of the whole Roman Empire but had had some experiment of it. This unhappy Prince (as if he had been sent down from Heaven as a Plague upon his People) put some of them to death in a criminal way; and others he kept a­live, but in such deplorable poverty, they de­sired a thousand times to be delivered by the greatest punishment he could inflict. Not con­tented that he had ruined and subverted the Roman