The Byzantine Empire Part 3

With the departure of the Ostrogoths we have seen our last of the Germans in the Balkan Peninsula; after 488 the Slavs take their place as the molesters of the Roman frontier on the Danube.

VI. JUSTINIAN.

The Emperor Anastasius died in A.D. 518 at the ripe age of eighty-eight, and his sceptre pa.s.sed to Justinus, the commander of his body-guard, whom Senate and army alike hailed as most worthy to succeed the good old man.

The late emperor had nephews, but he had never designated them as his heirs, and they retired into private life at his death. Justinus was well advanced in years, as all his three predecessors had been when they mounted the throne. But unlike Leo, Zeno, and Anastasius, he had won his way to the front in the army, not in the civil service. He had risen from the ranks, was a rough uncultured soldier, and is said to have been hardly able to sign his own name. His reign of nine years would have been of little note in history-for he made no wars and spent no treasure-if he had not been the means of placing on the throne of the East the greatest ruler since the death of Constantine.

Justinus had no children himself, but had adopted as his heir his nephew Justinian, son of his deceased brother Sabatius. This young man, born after his father and uncle had won their way to high places in the army, was no uncultured peasant as they had been, but had been reared, as the heir of a wealthy house, in all the learning of the day. He showed from the first a keen intelligence, and applied himself with zeal to almost every department of civil life. Law, finance, administrative economy, theology, music, architecture, fortification, all were dear to him. The only thing in which he seems to have taken little personal interest was military matters. His uncle trusted everything to him, and finally made him his colleague on the throne.

Justinian was heir designate to the empire, and had pa.s.sed the age of thirty-five, giving his contemporaries the impression that he was a staid, business-like, and eminently practical personage. "No one ever remembered him young," it was said, and most certainly no one ever expected him to scandalize the empire by a sensational marriage. But in A.D. 526 the world learnt, to the horror of the respectable and the joy of all scandal-mongers, that he had declared his intention of taking to wife the dancer Theodora, the star of the Byzantine comic stage.

So many stories have gathered around Theodora's name that it is hard to say how far her early life had been discreditable. A libellous work called the "Secret History," written by an enemy of herself and her husband,(4) gives us many scandalous details of her career; but the very virulence of the book makes its tales incredible. It is indisputable, however, that Theodora was an actress, and that Roman actresses enjoyed an unenviable reputation for light morals. There was actually a law which forbade a member of the senate to marry an actress, and Justinian had to repeal it in order to legalize his own marriage. There had been scores of bad and reckless men on the throne before, but none of them had ever dared to commit an action which startled the world half so much as this freak of the staid Justinian. His own mother used every effort to turn him from his purpose, and his uncle the Emperor threatened to disinherit him: but he was quietly persistent, and ere the aged Justinus died he had been induced to acknowledge the marriage of his nephew, and to confer on Theodora the t.i.tle of "Patrician."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The Empress Theodora And Her Court. _Reproduced from "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._

Theodora, as even her enemies allow, was the most beautiful woman of her age. Procopius, the best historian of the day, says "that it was impossible for mere man to describe her comeliness in words, or imitate it in art." All that her detractors could say was that she was below the middle height, and that her complexion was rather pale, though not unhealthy. It is unfortunate that we have no representation of her surviving, save the famous mosaic in San Vitale at Ravenna, and mosaic is of all forms of art that least suited to reproduce beauty.

Whatever her early life may have been, Theodora was in spirit and intelligence well suited to be the mate of the Emperor of the East. After her marriage no word of scandal was breathed against her life. She rose to the height of her situation: once her courage saved her husband's throne, and always she was the ablest and the most trusted of his councillors. The grave, studious, and hard-working Emperor never regretted his choice of a consort.

It cannot be said, however, that either Justinian or Theodora are sympathetic characters. The Emperor was a hard and suspicious master, and not over grateful to subjects who served him well; he was intolerant in religious, and unscrupulous in political matters. When his heart was set on a project he was utterly unmindful of the slaughter and ruin which it might bring upon his people. In the extent of his conquests and the magnificence of his public works, he was incomparably the greatest of the emperors who reigned at Constantinople. But the greatness was purely personal: he left the empire weaker in resources, if broader in provinces, than he found it. Of all the great sovereigns of history he may be most fairly compared with Louis XIV. of France; but it may be remembered to his credit in the comparison that Louis has nothing to set against Justinian's great legal work-the compilation of the _Pandects_ and _Inst.i.tutes_, and that Justinian's private life, unlike that of the Frenchman, was strict even to austerity. All night long, we read, he sat alone over his State papers in his cabinet, or paced the dark halls in deep thought. His sleepless vigilance so struck his subjects that the strangest legends became current even in his life-time: his enemies whispered that he was no mere man, but an evil spirit that required no rest. One grotesque tale even said that the Emperor had been seen long after midnight traversing the corridors of his palace-without his head.

If Justinian seemed hardly human to those who feared him, Theodora is represented as entirely given up to pride and ambition, never forgiving an offence, but hunting to death or exile all who had crossed her in the smallest thing. She is reproached-but who that has risen from a low estate is not?-of an inordinate love for the pomps and vanities of imperial state. High officials complained that she had as great a voice in settling political matters as her husband. Yet, on the whole, her influence would appear not to have been an evil one-historians acknowledge that she was liberal in almsgiving, religious after her own fashion, and that she often interfered to aid the oppressed. It is particularly recorded that, remembering the dangers of her own youth, she was zealous in establishing inst.i.tutions for the reclaiming of women who had fallen into sin.

The aged Justinus died in 527 A.D., and Justinian became the sole occupant of the throne, which he was destined to occupy for thirty-eight years. It was less than half the century, yet his personality seems to pervade the whole period, and history hardly remembers the insignificant predecessors and successors whose reigns eke out the remainder of the years between 500 and 600.

The empire when Justinian took it over from the hands of his uncle was in a more prosperous condition than it had known since the death of Constantine. Since the Ostrogoths had moved out of the Balkan Peninsula in A.D. 487, it had not suffered from any very long or destructive invasion from without. The Slavonic tribes, now heard of for the first time, and the Bulgarians had made raids across the Danube, but they had not yet shown any signs of settling down-as the Goths had done-within the limits of the empire. Their incursions, though vexatious, were not dangerous.

Still the European provinces of the empire were in worse condition than the Asiatic, and were far from having recovered the effects of the ravages of Fritigern and Alaric, Attila, and Theodoric. But the more fortunate Asiatic lands had hardly seen a foreign enemy for centuries.(5) Except in the immediate neighbourhood of the Persian frontier there was no danger, and Persian wars had been infrequent of late. Southern Asia Minor had once or twice suffered from internal risings-rebellions of the warlike Isaurians-but civil war left no such permanent mark on the land as did barbarian invasions. On the whole, the resources of the provinces beyond the Bosphorus were intact.

Justinus in his quiet reign had spent little or none of the great h.o.a.rd of treasure which Anastasius had bequeathed to him. There were more than 300,000 lbs. of gold [13,400,000] in store when Justinian came to the throne. The army, as we have had occasion to relate in the last chapter, was in good order, and composed in a larger proportion of born subjects of the empire than it had been at any time since the battle of Adrianople.

There would appear to have been from 150,000 to 200,000 men under arms, but the extent of the frontiers of the empire were so great that Justinian never sent out a single army of more than 30,000 strong, and forces of only a third of that number are often found entrusted with such mighty enterprises as the invasion of Africa or the defence of the Armenian border. The flower of the Roman army was no longer its infantry, but its mailed hors.e.m.e.n (_Cataphracti_), armed with lance and bow, as the Parthian cavalry had once been of old. The infantry comprised more archers and javelin-men than heavy troops: the Isaurians and other provincials of the mountainous parts of Asia Minor were reckoned the best of them. Among both horse and foot large bodies of foreign auxiliaries were still found: the Huns and Arabs supplied light cavalry, the German Herules and Gepidae from beyond the Danube heavier troops.

The weakest point in the empire when Justinian took it over was its financial system. The cardinal maxim of political economy, that "taxes should be raised in the manner least oppressive to those who pay them" was as yet undreamt of. The exaction of arbitrary customs dues, and the frequent grant of monopolies was noxious to trade. The deplorable system of tax-farming through middlemen was employed in many branches of the revenue. Landed proprietors, small and great, were still mercilessly overtaxed, in consideration of their exemption from military service. The budget was always handicapped by the necessity for providing free corn for the populace of Constantinople. Yet in spite of all these drawbacks Justinian enjoyed an enormous and steady revenue. His finance minister, John of Cappadocia, was such an ingenious extortioner that the treasury was never empty in the hardest stress of war and famine: but it was kept full at the expense of the future. The grinding taxation of Justinian's reign bore fruit in the permanent impoverishment of the provinces: his successors were never able to raise such a revenue again. Here again Justinian may well be compared to Louis XIV.

Justinian's policy divides into the departments of internal and foreign affairs. Of his doings as legislator, administrator, theologian, and builder, we shall speak in their proper place. But the history of his foreign policy forms the main interest of his reign. He had determined to take up a task which none of his predecessors since the division of the Empire under Arcadius and Honorius had dared to contemplate. It was his dream to re-unite under his sceptre the German kingdoms in the Western Mediterranean which had been formed out of the broken fragments of the realm of Honorius; and to end the solemn pretence by which he was nominally acknowledged as Emperor West of the Adriatic, while really all power was in the hands of the German rulers who posed as his vicegerents.

He aimed at reconquering Italy, Africa, and Spain-if not the further provinces of the old empire. We shall see that he went far towards accomplishing his intention.

But during the first five years of his reign his attention was distracted by other matters. The first of them was an obstinate war of four years'

duration, with Kobad, King of Persia. The causes of quarrel were ultimately the rival pretensions of the Roman and Persian Empires to the suzerainty of the small states on their northern frontiers near the Black Sea, the kingdoms of Lazica and Iberia, and more proximately the strengthening of the fortresses on the Mesopotamian border by Justinian.

His fortification of Dara, close to the Persian frontier town of Nisibis, was the _casus belli_ chosen by Kobad, who declared war in 528, a year after Justinian's accession.

The Persian war was b.l.o.o.d.y, but absolutely indecisive. All the attacks of the enemy were repelled, and one great pitched battle won over him at Dara in 530. But neither party succeeded in taking a single fortress of importance from the other; and when, on the death of Kobad, his son Chosroes made peace with the empire, the terms amounted to the restoration of the old frontier. The only importance of the war was that it enabled Justinian to test his army, and showed him that he possessed an officer of first-rate merit in Belisarius, the victor of the battle of Dara.

This famous general was a native of the Thracian inland; he entered the army very young, and rose rapidly, till at the age of twenty-three he was already Governor of Dara, and at twenty-five _Magister militum_ of the East.(6) His influence at Court was very great, as he had married Antonina, the favourite and confidante of the Empress Theodora. His position, indeed, was not unlike that which Marlborough, owing to his wife's ascendency, enjoyed at the Court of Queen Anne. Like Marlborough, too, Belisarius was ruled and bullied by his clever and unscrupulous wife.

Unlike the great d.u.c.h.ess Sarah, Antonina never set herself to thwart her mistress; but after Theodora's death she and her husband lost favour, and in declining years knew much the same misfortune as did the Marlboroughs.

The year which saw the Persian War end [A.D. 532], saw also the rise and fall of another danger, which while it lasted was much more threatening to the Emperor's life and power. We have already noticed the "Blues" and "Greens," the great factions of the Byzantine Circus.(7) All through the fifth century they had been growing stronger, and interfered more and more in politics, and even in religious controversies. To be a "Green" in 530 meant to be a partisan of the house of the late Emperor Anastasius, and a Monophysite.(8) The "Blues" posed as partisans of the house of Justinus, and as strictly orthodox in matters ecclesiastical. From mere Circus factions they had almost grown into political parties; but they still retained at the bottom many traces of their low sporting origin. The rougher elements pre-dominated in them; they were p.r.o.ne to riot and mischief, and, as the events of 532 were to show, they were a serious danger to the State.

In January of that year there was serious rioting in the streets.

Justinian, though ordinarily he favoured the Blue faction, impartially ordered the leaders of the rioters on both sides to be put to death. Seven were selected for execution, and four of them were duly beheaded in the presence of a great and angry mob, in front of the monastery of St. Conon.

The last three rioters were to be hung, but the hangman so bungled his task that two of the criminals, one a Blue the other a Green, fell to the ground alive. The guards seized them and they were again suspended; but once more-owing no doubt to the terror of the executioners at the menaces of the mob-the rope slipped. Then the mult.i.tude broke loose, the guards were swept away, and the half-hung criminals were thrust into sanctuary at the adjacent monastery.

This exciting incident proved the commencement of six days of desperate rioting. The Blues and Greens united, and taking as their watchword, _Nika_, "conquer," swept through the city, crying for the deposition of John of Cappadocia, the unpopular finance minister, and of Eudemius, Praefect of the city, who was immediately responsible for the executions.

The ordinary police of the capital were quite unable to master them, and Justinian was weak enough to promise to dismiss the officials. But the mob was now quite out of hand, and refused to disperse: the trouble was fomented by the partisans of the house of the late emperor, who began to shout for the deposition of Justinian, and wished to make Hypatius, nephew of Anastasius, Caesar in his stead. The city was almost empty of troops, owing to the garrison having been sent to the Persian War. The Emperor could only count on 4,000 men of the Imperial Guard, a few German auxiliaries, and a regiment of 500 "Cataphracti," mailed hors.e.m.e.n, under Belisarius, who had just returned from the seat of war.

Belisarius was placed in command of the whole, and sallied out to clear the streets, but the rioters, showing the same pluck that the Byzantine mob displayed against the soldiers of Gainas a hundred and twenty-five years before, offered a stout resistance. The main fighting took place around the great square of the Augustaeum, between the Imperial palace and the Hippodrome. In the heat of the fight the rebels set fire to the Brazen Porch by the Senate House. The Senate House caught fire, and then the conflagration spread east and north, till it was wafted across the square to St. Sophia. On the third day of the riot the great cathedral was burnt to the ground, and from thence the flames issued out to burn the hospital of Sampson and the church of St. Irene.(9) The fire checked the fighting, and the insurgents were now in possession of most of the city. But they could not find their chosen leader, for the unfortunate Hypatius, who had no desire to risk his neck, had taken refuge with the Emperor in the palace. It was not till he was actually driven out by Justinian, who feared to have him about his person, that this rebel in spite of himself, fell into the hands of his own adherents. But on the sixth day of the riots they led him to the Hippodrome, installed him in the royal seat of the Kathisma, and crowned him there with a gold chain of his wife's, for want of a proper diadem.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Theodora Imperatrix. _From the Painting by Val. Prinsep. The copyright is in the Artist's hands._

Meanwhile there was dismay and diversity of councils in the Palace. John of Cappadocia and many other ministers strove to persuade the Emperor to fly by sea, and gather additional troops at Heraclea. There was nothing left in his power save the palace, and they insisted that if he remained there longer he would be surrounded by the rebels and cut off from escape.

It was then that the Empress Theodora rose to the level of the occasion, refused to fly, and urged her husband to make one final a.s.sault on the enemy. Her words are preserved by Procopius.

"This is no occasion to keep to the old rule that a woman must not speak in the council. Those who are most concerned have most right to dictate the course of action. Now every man must die once, and for a king death is better than dethronement and exile. May I never see the day when my purple robe is stripped from me, and when I am no more called Lady and Mistress!

If you wish, O Emperor, to save your life, nothing is easier: there are your ships and the sea. But _I_ agree with the old saying that 'Empire is the best winding-sheet.' "

Spurred on by his wife's bold words, Justinian ordered a last a.s.sault on the rebels, and Belisarius led out his full force. The factions were now in the Hippodrome, saluting their newly-crowned leader with shouts of "_Hypatie Auguste, tu vincas,_" preparatory to a final attack on the palace. Belisarius attacked at once all three gates of the Hippodrome: that directed against the door of the Kathisma failed, but the soldiery forced both the side entrances, and after a hard struggle the rebels were entirely routed. Crowded into the enormous building with only five exits, they fell in thousands by the swords of the victorious Imperialists. It is said that 35,000 men were slain in the six days of this great "Sedition of Nika."

It is curious to learn that not even this awful slaughter succeeded in crushing the factions. We hear of the Blues and Greens still rioting on various occasions during the next fifty years. But they never came again so near to changing the course of history as in the famous rising of A.D.

532.

VII. JUSTINIAN'S FOREIGN CONQUESTS.

After the Persians had drawn back, foiled in their attempt to conquer Mesopotamia, and after the suppression of the "Nika" sedition had cowed the unruly populace of Constantinople, Justinian found himself at last free, and was able to take in hand his great scheme for the reconquest of the lost provinces of the empire.

The enforced delay of six years between his accession and his first attempt to execute his great plan, was, as it happened, extremely favourable to the Emperor. In each of the two German kingdoms with which he had first to deal, the power had pa.s.sed within those six years into the hands of a weak and incapable sovereign. In Africa, Hilderic, the king of the Vandals, had been dethroned by his cousin Gelimer, a warlike and ambitious, but very incapable, ruler. In Italy, Theodoric, the great king of the Ostrogoths, had died in A.D. 526, and his grandson and successor, Athalaric, in A.D. 533. After the death of the young Athalaric, the kingdom fell to his mother, Amalasuntha, and she, compelled by Gothic public opinion to take a husband to rule in her behalf, had unwisely wedded Theodahat, her nearest kinsman. He was cruel, scheming, and suspicious, and murdered his wife, within a year of her having brought him the kingdom of Italy as a dowry.(10) Cowardly and avaricious as well as ungrateful, Theodahat possessed exactly those vices which were most suited to make him the scorn of his warlike subjects; he could count neither on their loyalty nor their respect in the event of a war.

Both the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy were at this time so weak as to invite an attack by an enterprising neighbour. They had, in fact, conquered larger realms than their limited numbers were really able to control. The original tribal hordes which had subdued Africa and Italy were composed of fifty or sixty thousand warriors, with their wives and children. Now such a body concentrated on one spot was powerful enough to bear down everything before it. But when the conquerors spread themselves abroad, they were but a sprinkling among the millions of provincials whom they had to govern. In all Italy there were probably but three cities-Ravenna, Verona, and Pavia-in which the Ostrogoths formed a large proportion of the population. A great army makes but a small nation, and the Goths and Vandals were too few to occupy such wide tracts as Italy and Africa. They formed merely a small aristocracy, governing by dint of the ascendency which their fathers had won over the minds of the unwarlike populations which they had subdued. The only chance for the survival of the Ostrogothic and Vandal monarchies lay in the possibility of their amalgamating with the Roman provincial population, as the Franks, under more favourable circ.u.mstances, did with the conquered inhabitants of Gaul.

This was seen by Theodoric, the great conqueror of Italy; and he did his best to reconcile Goth and Roman, held the balance with strict justice between the two, and employed Romans as well as Goths in the government of the country. But one generation does little to a.s.suage old hatreds such as that between the conquerors and the conquered in Italy. Theodoric was succeeded by a child, and then by a ruffian, and his work ended with him.

Even he was unable to strike at the most fatal difference of all between his countrymen and the Italians. The Goths were Arians, having been converted to Christianity in the fourth century by missionaries who held the Arian heresy. Their subjects, on the other hand, were Orthodox Catholics, almost without exception. When religious hatred was added to race hatred, there was hardly any hope of welding together the two nationalities.

Another source of weakness in the kingdoms of Africa and Italy must be noted. The Vandals of the third generation and the Goths of the second, after their settlement in the south, seem to have degenerated in courage and stamina. It may be that the climate was unfavourable to races reared in the Danube lands; it may be that the temptations of unlimited luxury offered by Roman civilization sufficed to demoralize them. A Gothic sage observed at the time that "the Goth, when rich, tends to become Roman in his habits; the Roman, when poor, Gothic in his." There was truth in this saying, and the result of the change was ominous for the permanence of the kingdom of Italy. If the masters softened and the subjects hardened, they would not preserve for ever their respective positions.

The case of the kingdom of Africa was infinitely worse than that of the kingdom of Italy. The Vandals were less numerous than the Goths, in proportion to their subjects; they were not merely heretics, but fanatical and persecuting heretics, which the Goths were not. Moreover, they had never had at their head a great organizer and administrator like Theodoric, but only a succession of turbulent princes of the Viking type, fit for war and nothing else.

Justinian declared war on King Gelimer the moment that he had made peace with Persia, using as his _casus belli_, not a definite re-a.s.sertion of the claim of the empire over Africa-for such language would have provoked the rulers of Italy and Spain to join the Vandals, but the fact that Gelimer had wrongfully deposed Hilderic, the Emperor's ally. In July, 533, Belisarius, who was now at the height of his favour for his successful suppression of the "Nika" rioters, sailed from the Bosphorus with an army of 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. He was accompanied, luckily for history, by his secretary, Procopius, a very capable writer, who has left a full account of his master's campaigns. Belisarius landed at Tripoli, at the extreme eastern limit of the Vandal power. The town was at once betrayed to him by its Roman inhabitants. From thence he advanced cautiously along the coast, meeting with no opposition; for the incapable Gelimer had been caught unprepared, and was still engaged in calling in his scattered warriors. It was not till he had approached within ten miles of Carthage that Belisarius was attacked by the Vandals. After a hard struggle he defeated them, and the city fell into his hands next clay. The provincials were delighted at the rout of their masters, and welcomed the imperial army with joy; there was neither riot nor pillage, and Carthage had not the aspect of a conquered town.