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 land, and exemption from taxation on a graduated scale for himself and his family.

Such was the carefully digested scheme of military defence bequeathed to his successors by Constantine, who doubtless anticipated that he had granted a lease of endurance to the regenerated Empire for many centuries to come. But in the course of a hundred and fifty years this fine system fell gradually to pieces; and by the beginning of the sixth century no more than a cento of the original fabric can be discerned in the chronicles of the times. The whole forces were diminished almost to a moiety of their full complement; the great peripheral bulwark of the Limitanei, scarcely discoverable on the Illyrian frontier, in other regions was represented by meagre bodies of one or two hundred men; whilst the Palatines and Comitatenses betrayed such an altered character that they could claim merely a nominal existence. The very name of legion, so identified with Roman conquest, but no longer available in the deteriorated military organization, became obsolete. In a Byzantine army at this period three constituents exist officially, but with little practical distinction. They appear as the Numeri, the Foederati, and the Buccellarii. 1. The Numeri are the

laden with soldiers and munitions of war); Procopius, De Bel. Vand., i, 11, etc.]
 * [Footnote: dromonibus." By "armed ships" I presume he means bulky transports