CHAPTER XIV.

JUSTINIAN

 

SOME time after his accession to the Empire, the elderly Anastasius was troubled with a restless curiosity to know who should be his successor. He had three nephews, Hypatius son of one of his sisters, and the brothers Probus and Pompeius, who were possibly children of his brother. Inviting them one day to dine with him at the palace, he caused three couches to be spread upon which his nephews might take their siesta. Under the pillow of one of the couches he had secretly slipped a paper with the word REGNUM written upon it. ‘Whichsoever of my nephews,’ thought he, ‘chooses that couch, he shall reign after me.' Unfortunately when the time for the noontide slumber came, Hypatius chose one couch, the two brothers in their love for one another chose to occupy the second together, and the pillow that had ‘regnum’ beneath it was left undimpled. Then Anastasius knew that none of his nephews should wear the diadem after him.

It was not one of the three delicately nurtured princes, but a man who had begun life in very different fashion, who was to be clothed with the out-worn purple of Anastasius. In the reign of Leo, three young peasants from the central highlands of Macedonia, tired of the constant struggle for existence in their poverty-stricken homes, strode down the valley of the Axius (Vardar) to Thessalonica, determined to better their lot by taking service in the army. They had each a sheep-skin wallet over his shoulder, in which was stored a sufficient supply of home-baked biscuit to last them till they reached the capital: no other possessions had they in the world. Being tall and handsome young men, Zimarchus, Ditybistus, and Justin—so the peasant-lads were named—had no difficulty in entering the army: nay, they soon found places in the ranks of the guards of the palace, an almost certain avenue to yet higher promotion. Once indeed Justin had a narrow escape from death. For some offence— probably against military discipline—which he had committed, he was ordered into arrest and condemned to death by his captain John the Hunchback, under whose orders he had been sent upon the Isaurian campaign. But a figure of majestic size appeared to the Hunchback in his dreams and threatened him with sore punishment if he did not release the prisoner, who was fated to do good service to the Church in days to come. After this vision had been seen for three successive nights, the general thought it must be from above and dismissed Justin unharmed.

Now, in the aged Emperor's perplexity, when with fasting and prayer he had besought from Heaven an indication as to who should be his successor, it was revealed to him that the destined one was he who should be first announced to him in the sacred bed-chamber on the morrow morning. The first person to arrive was Justin, who had now attained the high rank of Count of the Guardsmen; come to report the execution of some orders given to him on the previous night. The aged Emperor bowed his head and recognised his destined successor. So firmly was this belief implanted in his mind that when, at some great ceremonial in the palace, Justin, eager to set right some mistake in the procession in front of the Emperor, brushed too hastily past him and trod upon the skirts of the purple mantle, the Emperor uttered no hasty word, but mildly said, ‘Why such haste?' which men understood to mean, ‘Canst thou not wait till thy turn comes to wear it? It will come before long'

These are the legendary half-poetical adornments of the prosaic story which was told in a previous chapter, concerning the elevation of the orthodox Justin, by means of the misappropriated gold of Amantius, on the death of the Monophysite Anastasius. Whatever the precise chain of causes and effects which brought it to pass, the result was that an elderly Macedonian peasant, unable to read or write, but strictly orthodox as regards the subtle controversy between Leo and Eutyches, was seated on the throne of the Eastern Caesars. The difficulty arising from the presence of an unlettered emperor on the throne was evaded by making a wooden tablet containing the needful perforations through which the imperial scribe drawing his pen dipped in purple ink might trace the first four letters of his name. Proclus, the Quaestor, composed his speeches and acted as his prompter on all state-occasions. Upon the whole, the elderly Emperor, good-tempered, clownish, and of tall stature, seems to have played this last scene in his strangely varied life without discredit, if also without any brilliant success.

It was seen, however, in the negotiations with the Roman See as to the close of the schism, and it became more and more visible to all men as time went on, that the real wielder of all power in the new administration was the Emperor's sister's son Justinian. More than thirty years of age at his uncle's accession, and having, probably through that uncle's influence, already filled some post in the civil service of the Empire; a man always eager for work and a lover of the details of administration; such a nephew was an invaluable assistant to the rustic soldier who had to preside over the highly cultured and polished staff of officials through whom he must seem to govern the Empire.

The influence of Proclus the Quaestor gradually paled before that of the all-powerful nephew, whose servant he willingly became. A more formidable rival was the stout soldier Vitalian, who had upheld the standard of orthodoxy in the evil days of Anastasius, and whose restoration to office was an indispensable part of the reconciliation with the See of Rome. He probably looked for the reversion of the imperial dignity after the death of its aged possessor, and when he found himself raised to the rank of Magister Militum and created Consul (for the year 520), he might almost seem set forth to the people as Emperor Elect. To prevent any such mistake for the future, Justinian, or some one of his friends, caused him, in the seventh month of his consulship, to be attacked in the palace by a band of assassins. He fell, pierced by sixteen wounds: his henchmen, Paulus and Celerianus, fell with him, and the triumph of the party of Justinian was secure.

In the correspondence with Rome, Justinian had called Vitalian ‘his most glorious brother', and the fact that the two men had solemnly partaken together of the Holy Communion should, according to the feelings of the age, have secured for the Master of the Soldiery an especial immunity from all murderous thoughts in the heart of his younger rival. The dark deed was not in accordance with the general character of Justinian, who showed himself in the course of his reign averse to taking the lives even of declared enemies : but there seems little reason to doubt that in this case he at least sanctioned, if he did not directly instigate, the murder of a dangerous competitor.

In the following year (521) Justinian celebrated his own consulship with a splendour to which, under the reign of the frugal Anastasius, the Byzantine populace had long been strangers. A sum of 280,000 solidi (£168,000) was spent on the machinery for the shows or distributed as largesse to the people. Twenty lions, thirty panthers, and a multitude of other beasts, appeared at the same time in the Amphitheatre. Horses in great numbers, and equipped in magnificent trappings, were driven by the most highly skilled charioteers of the Empire round the Circus. Already, however, even in the midst of the general rejoicing a note of discord was struck between the future Emperor and his subjects. So great was the excitement of the people, raised no doubt by the. victory of one or other of the rival factions in the Circus, that the Consul found it necessary to strike out of the programme the last race which should have been exhibited.

A successor thus announced to the people before-hand was almost certain of the diadem. In fact Justinian was associated in the Empire four months before the death of his uncle, and appears to have succeeded to sole and supreme power without difficulty.

Delivered by the death of Justin from one associate in the Empire, Justinian lost no time in providing himself with another, of a kind such as Augustus would indeed have marvelled to behold using his name and wielding his decorously veiled supremacy.

During the reign of Anastasius a certain Acacius, who had charge of the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre for the Green party, died, and, as he had saved nothing out of his small salary, his widow and three daughters were left nearly destitute. The widow became the wife or the paramour of another menagerie-keeper, for whom she tried to retain her late husband's situation. But though the three little girls, Comito, Theodora, and Anastasia, appeared like sacrificial victims with fillets on their heads, and stretched out their little hands beseechingly to the spectators, the Greens, who were entirely guided by their manager Asterius, took away the place from their stepfather and gave it to another man. The Blues, the rival faction, were more accommodating, and having lately lost their keeper by death, gave his post to the husband of the widow of Acacius. In one of those little fillet-crowned heads was born on that day an undying resentment against the Green party, and an undying attachment to the Blue.

The child Theodora grew up into a lovely woman, rather too short of stature, but with a delicate red-and-white complexion, and with brilliant quickly-glancing eyes, which told of the keen, restless, nimble intellect within. She evidently had something of the charm which belongs to a clever and beautiful Frenchwoman. Unfortunately, however, she was utterly destitute of womanly virtue or womanly shame. The least moral performer of the opera bouffe in Paris or Vienna is a chaste matron by comparison with the life of unutterable degradation which Theodora is said to have led in girlhood and early womanhood, as a prostitute and a dancer on the stage at Cyrene, at Alexandria, and throughout the cities of the East.

Returned to Constantinople, this bright and fascinating though abandoned woman kindled an irrepressible passion in the breast of the decorous and middle-aged student Justinian. His aunt Lupicina, who had taken the more stately name of Euphemia, and who had been first the slave and then the wedded wife of Justin, firmly and, for the time, successfully opposed his scheme of marrying Theodora. Though lowly born herself, she would not consent that her husband's heir should be the instrument by which the unspeakable degradation of hailing such a woman as Augusta should be inflicted on the Roman Empire. Before long, however, the Empress Euphemia died, and then Justinian, whose passion had but grown stronger by delay, at once married the daughter of the menagerie-keeper. Laws which had come down from the old days of the Republic, forbidding the union of a Senator with a woman of notoriously bad character, were abrogated by the feeble old Emperor on the imperious request of his nephew. Theodora was raised to the dignity of a Patrician, and when at length Justinian wore the imperial diadem he insisted on sharing it with her, not as Empress-Consort, to borrow the terms of a later day, but as Empress-Regnant must Theodora sit upon the throne of the Roman world. All ranks in Church and State crouched low before the omnipotent prostitute. The people, who had once acclaimed her indecent dances on the stage, now greeted her name with shouts of loyal veneration, and with outspread hands implored her protection as if she were divine. The clergy grovelled before her, calling her Mistress and Sovereign Lady, and not one Christian priest with honest indignation protested against this degrading adulation.

Raised to the throne of the world, Theodora assumed a demeanour in some degree corresponding to her elevation. Though not absolutely faithful to her husband, she disgraced his choice by no such acts of open licentiousness as those by which Messalina had insulted the Emperor Claudius. It would seem as if her own nature underwent a change, and as if Pride now took possession of the character which hitherto had been swayed only by Lust. Heartless she had always been, in the midst of her wild riot of debauchery; and heartless she remained in the stupendous egotism which made Justinian and all the ranks of the well-ordered hierarchy of the Empire the ministers of her insatiable pride.

In all things it seems to have been her fancy to play a part unlike that of her husband. He was strictly orthodox and Chalcedonian, she was a vehement Monophysite. He was simple and frugal in his personal habits, however extravagant as a ruler; she carried the luxury of the bath and the banquet to the highest point to which an opulent Roman could attain. He seldom slept more than four hours out of the twenty-four; she prolonged her siesta till sunset and her night's sleep till long after sunrise. He was merciful by temperament; she delighted in the power of being cruel. He showed himself easy of access to all his subjects, and would often hold long and confidential conversations with persons of undistinguished rank; she surrounded herself with an atmosphere of unapproachable magnificence, and while rigorously insisting that her subjects should present themselves in her audience-chamber, made the ceremony of audience as short, as contemptuous, and as galling to every feeling of self-respect as it was possible to make it. A pitiable sight it was to see the consuls, the senators, the captains and high functionaries of that which still called itself the Roman Republic waiting, a servile crowd, in this harlot's ante-chamber. The room was small and stifling, but they dared, not be absent. Her long slumbers ended, and the ceremonies of the bath and the toilette accomplished, an eunuch would open the door of the hall of audience. The wretched nobles pressed forward, or, if behind, stood on tip-toe to attract the menial's notice. He singled out one and another with contemptuous patronage. The favoured one crept in behind the eunuch into the presence ­chamber, his heart in his mouth for fear. He prostrated himself before the haughty Augusta; he kissed reverently the feet which he had once seen briskly moving in lascivious dance on the public stage; he looked up with awe, not daring to speak till spoken to by the supreme disposer of all men's lives and fortunes.

Such is the miserable picture presented to us by Procopius of the degradation of the great Roman commonwealth under its Byzantine rulers. Alas, for the day when the Senate, that assembly of kings, received with majestic gravity the over-awed ambassador of King Pyrrhus! Alas, for the selfish corruption of the optimates, and yet more for the misguided patriotism of a Caius Gracchus or a Livius Drusus, which had turned the old and noble Republic into an Empire, foul itself and breeding foulness!

Let it be said for Justinian, who had brought this shame upon the State, that he gave his days and nights freely to what he deemed to be its service. If he was insatiable in drawing all power into his own hand, he at least shrank not from the labour, even the drudgery, which the position of a conscientious autocrat involves. Especially, at the very beginning of his reign, did he devote himself to that which his experience as a high officer of state under his uncle had shown him to be necessary, the reform of the laws of the Empire. Speaking without technical precision, one may say that the jurisprudence of Rome at this period consisted, like our own, of two great divisions, Statute Law and Case Law. The Statutes as contained in the Theodosian Code were insufficient, and the Cases contained in the Responsa Prudentum, the Institutions and the Sentences of great jurists such as Glaius, Paullus, and Ulpian, were redundant, be­wildering, and often contradictory. Before Justinian had been a year on the throne he had appointed a commission, consisting of nine officials of high rank, to inquire into and codify the Statute Law. The leading spirit in this Commission and the chief mover in all the legal reforms of Justinian was the far-famed Tribonian, who was raised successively to the dignities of Quaestor and Master of the Offices; a man whose love of money and far from spotless integrity could not avail to dim the splendour of a reputation acquired by his vast learning, and made bearable by his gentle courtesy to all with whom he came in contact.

After little more than a year of labour the Commissioners had completed the first part of their duties, and the Code of Justinian in twelve books was issued by the sovereign authority, expanding and superseding the Code of Theodosius and all previous collections of imperial rescripts.

The next piece of work was a harder one. Tribonian and his fellow Commissioners were directed to arrange in one systematic treatise, called the Digest, all that Roman lawyers of eminence had said concerning the principles of the law, as the varying circumstances of civil society had brought point after point under their attention. In fact their duty was similar to that which would be laid upon an English lawyer if he was called upon to codify the ‘judge-made law' of England, incorporating with it all that is of importance and authority in the text-books, and where there is a conflict of opinion deciding which opinion is to prevail. This immense work, which ‘condensed the wisdom of nearly two thousand treatises into fifty books, and recast three million “verses” from older writers into one hundred and fifty thousand,' was accomplished in three years by Tribonian and his colleagues. Work done in such fierce haste as this could hardly be all accurate, but probably no injustice which it could cause was so great as that which it removed by letting day-light into the thick jungle of those three millions of legal sentences.

The Digest, which was divided into fifty books, is not arranged in any scientific order, but follows apparently more or less closely the order of that which had for centuries been the great programme of Roman jurisprudence, the so-called Perpetual Edict of the Praetors.

The Code and the Digest being finished, Tribonian and his two most eminent colleagues were directed to prepare a short scientific treatise on the amended law of Rome, for the benefit of students. Thus came into being the Four Books of the Institutes, that book by which the fame of Justinian has been most widely spread over the civilised world in the two hemispheres. The far-reaching relations in time of such a book as this are vividly apprehended when we remember that as it rests on the treatise of Gaius—which Niebuhr discovered in palimpsest in the Cathedral Library of Verona—it is itself rested upon by our own eighteenth century Blackstone, who of course had the name and the arrangement of this book in his mind when he composed his Institutes of English Law. Justinian's name and titles head the majestic manual. Of course Tribonian and the two professors, his colleagues, are really responsible for the literary execution of the work. Still, the historical student is never so well disposed to take a lenient view of the faults of the great Emperor as when he finds Caesar Flavius Justinianus, Alamannicus, Gothicus, Vandalicus, and so forth, crowned with names of victory over many barbarous races, but cheering the young student to the commencement of his task, and promising not to encumber his mind at first with details, lest he should disgust him at the outset, and cause him to abandon his studies in despair.

Notwithstanding his attempt to put the stamp of finality on his two great works, the Code and the Digest, neither Justinian himself nor his indefatigable Quaestor could keep their hands from all further law-making. The Novellae Constitutiones, generally spoken of under a title which has since acquired such a strangely different meaning, that of Novels, were promulgated at intervals for nearly thirty years (535-664), and in some respects seriously altered the unalterable Code.

Except for some over-activity in issuing fresh laws after the publication of his Code, the fame of Justinian as a legislator is unassailable. The hour had come for clearing broad and traversable highways through the stately but sky-hiding forest of Roman jurisprudence. With Tribonian for his engineer-in-chief, Justinian undertook this necessary work, and did it nobly. Rightly and justly therefore is the name of the peasant's son from the valley of the Vardar mentioned with reverence, wherever, from the Mississippi to the Ganges, teachers of the law expound the greatest of Rome's legacies to the nations, the Corpus Juris Civilis.

But it is a trite axiom in politics and in every-day life, that good legislation does not necessarily imply good administration. Many a man whose journal records the most excellent maxims for the conduct of his life, has been a torment to his family and friends. Many a public company, with admirably-framed Articles of Association, has chosen the pleasant road to an early bankruptcy. Many an Oriental state has proclaimed, and is proclaiming at the present day, the most excellent principles of government, not one of which it ever dreams of reducing into practice.

As an administrator Justinian does not occupy nearly so high a position as that to which his legislative triumphs entitle him. He certainly had one of the most necessary qualifications for a ruler, the power of selecting fitting instruments for his work. The man who chose Tribonian for his legal adviser, Belisarius and Narses for his generals, the designers of Saint Sophia for his architects, can assuredly have been no mean judge of human character. He had also the power of forming truly grand conceptions, and is superior herein to two monarchs, with each of whom some points in his character tempt us to compare him—Louis XIV of France and Philip II of Spain. These merits, however, were more than counterbalanced by two great faults—intense egotism and financial extravagance. Coming as he did from the lower ranks of society to the administration of an old and highly-organized state, he was determined to leave his mark on every city of the Empire, on every department of the State. Some changes, like those involved in the codification of the Roman law, required to be made, and here the imperial egotist's passion for change worked well for the State. But besides this, many old and useful institutions were swept away, simply in order that the name of Justinian might be magnified. Local self-government received from him some of its severest blows.

The postal service, one of the best legacies from the great days of the Empire, he allowed to be ruined by greedy and shortsighted ministers, who sold the post-horses and divided the proceeds between their master and themselves. The venerable institution of the consulship, which still linked the fortunes of New Rome with the dim remembrance of the republican virtues of Brutus and Publicola, must be swept away. The schools of philosophy at Athens, touched certainly with the feebleness of age, but still showing an unbroken descent from Socrates, and deserving to be spared, if only for the sake of their late illustrious pupil Boethius, were closed by imperial decree, and the seven last Platonists were driven forth into exile, obtaining at length by the intercession of the King of Persia permission to exist, but no longer to teach, in that which had once been the mother city of all philosophy.

The mania of the empurpled Nihilist for destroying every institution which could not show cause for its existence by ministering to the imperial vanity, would have been less disastrous if it had not been coupled with an utter indifference to expense. Whatever dispute there may be as to other parts of the character of Justinian, there can be none as to his having been one of the worst of the many bad financiers who wore the diadem of the Caesars.

In reading the two histories in which Procopius records the vast operations of this monarch, both in peace and war, we are inclined to ask, ‘Did the question once in his whole reign occur to the mind of Justinian, whether he was justified in spending the money of his subjects on this campaign which he meditated, or on that palace or basilica for which the architect had furnished him with plans?'.Certainly the results of his financial administration speak for themselves : the carefully and wisely hoarded treasure of Anastasius all spent, the very wars themselves starved, and in some cases protracted to three or four times their necessary length by the emptiness of the exchequer, and the people of his realms left at Justinian's death in a state of exhaustion and misery greater, if that be possible, than the subjects of Louis XIV of France after that monarch's seventy years' quest of glory.

The treasure of Anastasius had perhaps been melting away during the nine years of the reign of Justin. During this time the war with Persia War was begun, a war about which something will be said in the following chapter. Before Justinian had been five years on the throne the financial oppression of his subjects, particularly in the country districts, was becoming intolerable. Owing to changes in the mode of collecting the land-revenue and the abolition of the cursus publicus, the inhabitants were impoverished by the oppressive rights of pre-emption claimed by the government, and worn out with forced labour in moving produce from the interior of the country to the sea. Women with babes at their breasts were forced to take part in this cruel toil, and often did they, their husbands, and brothers fall dead by the road-side, where they were left, unpitied and unburied. There was no time for funeral rites; the Emperor's corn must be delivered in so many days at the sea-port, where, without fail, some venal officer or some slave of one of the palace slaves stood ready to take his tithe of the tithes collected at the cost of so much agony.

The very names of the new taxes imposed on various pretexts, about twenty in number, were terrible to the bewildered people. And this was what they had earned by those delirious shouts of joy which hailed the accession of Justin and the death of Anastasius, the tender ­hearted Anastasius, who with such infinite trouble had rooted out one obnoxious tax, the Chrysargyron, in the room of which Justinian had planted a score.

Despairing of earning a subsistence in the country, the dispirited peasantry nocked into the towns, above all into the capital city. In Constantinople there was at least food to be had, for the corn-rations were still distributed to the people; and in Constantinople there was the delicious excitement for an absolutely idle populace, of the races in the Hippodrome. We have already made some little acquaintance with the contending colours of these circus-factions. Once four in number, they had now, by the disuse or obscurity of the Red and the White, become practically reduced to two, the Blue and the Green. And such was the excitement produced among the favourers of these two colours, by the victory or defeat of their respective champions, that the contemporary Byzantine historian can call it nothing less than a madness, a curse, and a disease of the soul. They would pour out their money; they would expose themselves to blows and the most contemptuous insults, yea, even to death itself; they would rush into the thickest of a fray, well knowing that in a few minutes the city-guards would be upon them, and would drag them off to the dungeon and to death. All this they heeded not if only the Blues might take their revenge on the bodies of their antagonists for the victory of a Green charioteer, if only the Greens might pay off a long score of insults by breaking the heads of a mob of presumptuous Blues. Murder was of course the frequent consequence of these faction-fights; and it was perhaps not always murder in hot blood, but sometimes secret and premeditated. Even women, though not allowed to visit the theatre, were bitten with the madness of the strife; and brothers, friends, the companions of a life-time were turned into irreconcilable enemies by these absolutely senseless quarrels. Certainly of all the strange exhi­bitions of his character which Man has given since he first appeared upon our planet, few have been more unutterably absurd than the fights of Blues and Greens in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.

It was evident, soon after his accession, that the husband of Theodora meant to favour the Blue party, and in a few years, a long list of grievances was recorded in the hearts of the opposite faction against him. Such was the state of feeling in the multitude—the Blues jubilant with imperial favour, the Greens sore at heart and indignant against their oppressor, a multitude of the country-folk, having not as yet taken sides definitely with either colour, but remembering and cursing the tyrannical acts which had driven them from their immemorial homes—when on the morning of the Ides of January, 532, the august Emperor took his seat in the podium and commanded the races to begin. Race after race, till twenty-two races had been run, was disturbed by the clamours of the angry Green faction. Their fury was chiefly directed against the Grand Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard, Calopodius, to whom they attributed their ill-treatment. At length Justinian, worried out of his usual self-control, began to argue with the interrupters; and so the following extraordinary debate took place, in shrill shouts to and from the Imperial podium.

The Green party. ‘Many years mayest thou live, Justinianus Augustus. Tu vincas. O only good one, I am oppressed. God knows it, but I dare not mention the oppressor's name lest I suffer it'.

The Emperor s answer to the people came back from the lips of a stalwart Mandator who stood, beside his throne, while a busy short-hand writer (Exceptor) at once began to take down all the words of this strange dialogue, that they might be enrolled in the official Acta of the Empire.

Mandator. ‘Whom you mean, I know not.'

The Greens. ‘O thrice August one, he who oppresses me will be found at the shoemakers' shops'.

Mandator. ‘I know not whom you are speaking of'.

The Greens. ‘Calopodius the Guardsman oppresses me, O Lord of all.'

Mandator. ‘Calopodius has no public charge.'

The Greens. ‘Whatever he may be, he will suffer the fate of Judas. God will reward him according to his works.'

Mandator. ‘Did you come hither to see the games, or only to rail at your rulers?'

The Greens. ‘If any one oppresses me, I hope he will die like Judas.'

Mandator. ‘Hold your peace, ye Jews, ye Manicheans, ye Samaritans.'

The Greens. ‘Do you call us Jews and Samaritans? We all invoke the Virgin, the Mother of God.'

Some sentences of scarcely intelligible religious abuse between the two parties to the dialogue follow. Then says the Mandator—‘In truth, if you are not quiet I will cut off your heads'

The Greens. ‘Be not enraged at the cry of the afflicted. God himself bears all patiently. [How can I appeal to you in your palace?] I cannot venture thither, scarcely even into the city except by one street when I am riding on my mule.'

Mandator. ‘Every one can move freely about in this city, without danger.'

The Greens. ‘You talk of freedom, but I do not find that I can get it. Let a man be ever so free, if he is suspected of being a Green, he is taken and beaten in public.'

Mandator. ‘Gallows-birds! have you no care for your own lives, that you thus speak? '

The Greens. ‘Take off that colour [the emblem of the Blues] and do not let justice seem to take sides. I wish Sabbatius [the father of Justinian] had never been born. Then would he never have begotten a murderous son. It is twenty years since [one of our party] was murdered at the Yoking-place. In the morning he was looking on at the games, and in the evening twilight, 0 Lord of all, he had his throat cut.'

The Blues here interposed with angry denial.

‘All the murders on the race-course have been committed by you alone.'

The Greens. ‘ Sometimes you murder and run away'

The Blues. ‘You murder and throw everything into confusion. All the murders on the race-course are your work alone.'

The Greens. ‘Lord Justinian! They stir us up to strife, but no one kills them. Remember, even if you do not wish to do so, who slew the wood-seller at the Yoking-place, 0 Emperor!'

Mandator. ‘You slew him.'

The Greens. ‘ Who slew the son of Epagathus, O Emperor?'

Mandator. ‘Him too you slew, and then tried to throw the blame on the Blues.'

The Greens. ‘Again! and again! Lord have mercy on us! Truth is trodden under foot by a tyrant. I should like to throw these things in the teeth of those who say that God governs the world. Whence then this villainy?'

Mandator. ‘God cannot be tempted with evil.'

The Greens. ‘ “God cannot be tempted with evil.” Then who is it that allows me to be oppressed? Let any one, whether Philosopher or Hermit, read me this riddle.'

Mandator. ‘Blasphemers and accursed ones! when will ye be quiet?'

The Greens. ‘If your Majesty will fawn upon that party, I hold my peace, though unwillingly. OThrice August one, I know all, all: but I am silent. Farewell, Justice : you have no more business here. I shall depart hence, and then I will turn Jew. It is better to become a Heathen than a Blue, God knows! '

The Blues. ‘We hate the very sight of you. Your petty spite exasperates us.'

The Greens. ‘Dig up the bones of the [murdered] spectators.'

With that the whole faction of the Greens streamed out of the Hippodrome, leaving the Emperor and the Blue party sole occupants of the long rows of stone subsellia.

The day was drawing towards a close when this multitude of enraged Orientals poured forth into the streets of Constantinople. Soon it was evident that the tumults which had embittered the later days of Anastasius were to be renewed, on a larger scale, and with more appalling circumstances, by reason of the crowds of hungry, idle, and exasperated rustics who had flocked into the town. Fire began to be applied to the buildings round the Hippodrome, and to the porticoes of the Palace in which the household troops were lodged. All through the earlier stages of the sedition Justinian kept quiet in his palace, with the nobles who had assembled there according to custom on the Ides of January, to offer their congratulations and to receive from his hands the tokens of their various promotions for the new year. Probably his expectation was, that the insurrection, if unopposed, would wear itself out; or that, at the worst, the fury of the attacked Blues would check the fury of the attacking Greens.

Soon, however, an ominous symptom appeared. The Blues began to sympathise with the Greens, and to join in the wild orgie in which their rivals were engaged. In a recent attempt to deal out even-handed justice between the two factions, the Prefect of the City had arrested seven notorious murderers, chosen indifferently from both parties. Four had been sentenced to death by beheading, three by hanging. The sword had done its work surely, but the gallows had broken under the weight of their victims, and two of the culprits, one a Blue, the other a Green, had thus escaped for a time the sentence of the law. The good monks of the neighbouring monastery of St. Conon had found them not quite dead, had put them on board ship, and had carried them to the church of St. Lawrence. The Prefect of the City insisted that the law should have its due, but popular sympathy was aroused on behalf of the wretches who had so narrowly escaped death. A common interest in the fate of their friends seems to have brought the two factions, hating one another with such deadly hatred, into momentary accord. As the old watch­words of party were suddenly become obsolete, they invented new ones. Not the loyal cry, ‘August Justinian, may you conquer!' but ‘Long live the friendly Greens and Blues!' was to be the battle-shout of the united factions, and ‘Nika' (Victory) their secret pass-word.

With this reconciliation of the Circus-factions the sedition assumed a more important and a political character. The name of the chamberlain Calopodius drops out of the story, and those of the Quaestor Tribonian, of the Praetorian Prefect, John of Cappadocia, begin to be beard. Tribonian, with all his matchless knowledge of the law, was suspected, perhaps justly suspected, of sometimes framing the new laws so as to suit the convenience of those litigants who approached him with the heaviest purse in their hands. John of Cappadocia was undoubtedly a man absolutely devoid of principle, coarse, unlettered, vicious, but one whose daemonic force of will and whose relentless heart were all put at the disposal of his master for the purpose of wringing the maximum of taxes out of a fainting and exhausted people.

When the cry for the removal of these ministers came, Justinian at once yielded to it, and replaced them by men who stood higher in favour with the people. But still the riot went on. The futile endeavours of the soldiers to cope with it only increased its fury; and, sure mark that all the lowest and most lawless elements of society had broken loose, Fire was the favourite weapon in the combat. The Senate-house, the Palace of the Praetorian Prefect, the Baths of Zeuxippus, the Baths of Alexander, were all burnt. At last, either because the mob had grown wild and desperate with destruction, or because the wind which had sprung up respected not the distinctions which they would have made, the sacred buildings themselves were given to the devouring flame. The great church of Saint Sophia, and its neighbour the church of Saint Irene, fell in blackened ruin. Between these two edifices, the dwellings of Divine Wisdom and Peace, the charity of a devout man of earlier time, Sampson by name, had reared a hospital for the reception of the sick and aged poor. This noble illustration of the spirit of Christianity shared the fate of its statelier neighbours, and, alas for the madness of the populace, all the sick folk who were lying in the wards of the hospital perished in the flames.

Thus for five days raged the demon Fire through the streets of Constantinople^. Through the short January day thick clouds of smoke rolled round basilica and portico. At night two red and flaring lines mirrored themselves in the Golden Horn and the Bosporus. The ineffectual efforts of the soldiers to suppress the riot did but increase the mischief. The Octagon was set fire to by them in their endeavours to expel the rebels, and the flames thus kindled consumed the church of St. Theodore and the vestry adjoining it.

Still for some time the insurrection lacked an aim and a leader. Justinian was despised, but no name was suggested instead of his. On the first or second day, it is true, the rioters marched to the house of Probus (no doubt the nephew of Anastasius and brother of Pompeius), searched the house for arms, and shouted as they searched, ‘Probus for Emperor of Romania!', but not succeeding in their quest, nor prevailing on Probus to accept the Probus will offered diadem, they cast fire into his house and the added it to the general destruction.

On Sunday, the fifth day of the insurrection, Justinian sought to propitiate the mob by following the example of Anastasius and making an appeal to their compassion. Taking his place in the seat of honour in the Circus, he held on high the roll of the Holy Gospels. The populace streamed once more into the Hippodrome, to hear what their sovereign would say to them. Laying his hand on the sacred books, he swore a solemn oath : ‘By this power I swear that I forgive you all your offences, and will order the arrest of none of you, if only you will now return to your obedience. The blame is none of yours, but all mine. For the punishment of my sins I did not grant your requests when first you addressed me in this place'. The humiliation was as great as that of Anastasius, but not so efficacious in disarming the fury of the mob. Some shouted ‘Justiniane Auguste, tu vincas!' but many were silent, and there was even heard the insulting cry, ‘O ass, thou art swearing falsely!'

With his dignity ruffled and his easy temper disturbed Justinian returned to the palace. There, apparently, all the nobles who had assembled on the Ides of January were still mustered, not having dared to return to their homes through the raging populace. The Emperor's eye fell on Hypatius and Pompeius, the nephews of Anastasius, and in an angry voice he ordered them to leave the palace. Procopius doubts whether to refer this strange order to suspicion of a conspiracy on their part, or to the influence of a mysterious destiny. The humbler theory, that it was due to mere ill-temper and annoyance, may perhaps be deserving of consideration. The two cousins naturally suggested that it was unfair to throw them at such a critical moment in the very path of conspirators and rebels; but Justinian insisted, and forth they went, slinking under cover of the twilight to their homes.

Next day, when the news of their departure from the palace was noised abroad, the whole multitude flocked to the house of Hypatius, intent on proclaiming him Emperor. In the campaign against Vitalian, eighteen years before, Hypatius had held the highest command, and the course of events seems to have pointed him out as, upon the whole, the most eminent of the nephews of Anastasius. When the multitude announced their intention of proclaiming Hypatius in the Forum, his wife Mary, a woman of great ability and noble character, with tears and cries besought them not to lead her husband to certain death. Hypatius also earnestly pleaded that he had no desire for the dangerous honour. But the people were inexorable. Mary's entwining arms were thrust aside, and Hypatius was borne by the shouting multitude to the Forum of Constantine, where he appears to have been soon after joined by his cousin Pompeius. As no diadem was at hand, a collar of gold was placed on the head of Hypatius. He was raised high up on the steps of the statue of Constantine, clothed in the white chlamys which was to mark his military rank, and all the vast multitude shouted with one accord, ‘Hypatie Auguste, tu vincas!'

There was a discussion among the adherents of the new Emperor whether they should at once march to the palace of Justinian and grapple with their foe. Had they done so, Justinian would probably have been faintly remembered in history as a sovereign who made some attempt to reform the Roman laws and perished in a tumult after a reign of five years. And in truth this was the view which he himself was prepared to take of the chances for and against him. In a council held in the palace his voice apparently was for flight by the sea-gate, outside of which his ships were moored. But then was heard the manly voice of Theodora, insisting on resistance to the death.

“When man has once come into the world, death sooner or later is his inevitable doom. But as for living, a royal fugitive, that is an intolerable thought. Never may I exist without this purple robe; never may the day dawn on me in which the voices of all who meet me shall not salute me as Sovereign Lady. If then, O Emperor, you wish to escape, there is no difficulty in the matter. Here is the sea: there are the ships. But just consider whether, when you have escaped, you will not every day wish that you were dead. For my part, I favour that ancient saying, “There is no grander sepulchre for any man than the Kingship”.'

The stirring words of Theodora prevailed. Belisarius, a young officer who had acquired great renown in the Persian war, was commissioned to attack with his small but disciplined body of troops the vast mob of Constantinople; and at the same time a middle-aged Armenian named Narses, an eunuch who had attained the rank of Grand Chamberlain in the imperial household, stole out of the palace with a heavy purse of money in his hand, to persuade and bribe the leaders of the Blue faction back to their old allegiance.

While this council was resolving on resistance to the uttermost, that of Hypatius resolved on procrastination. The advice of a Senator named Origen had determined them to leave the palace of Justinian unattacked, trusting that its occupant would soon be a fugitive, and to make for the old palace, which still bore the name of Flaccilla, the wife of Theodosius. On their way to this building the whole multitude halted for a time in the Hippodrome. Hypatius, who was still a most unwilling of claimant of the purple, at this juncture sent one of the noble guard named Ephraemius to Justinian with this message: ‘Thy enemies are all assembled in the Circus; thou canst do with them what thou wilt'. Unfortunately Ephraemius met the Emperor's physician and confidant Thomas, who had heard of the rumoured flight, but had not heard of the later resolution to defend the palace. ‘Whither are you going?' said Thomas to the glittering Candidatus : ‘there is no one in the palace; Justinian has fled'. This message, brought to Hypatius, seemed to show that there was nothing for him but to reign; and he accordingly accepted the situation, mounted to the podium, and probably harangued the Roman people as­sembled in the Circus as their lawful Imperator.

Better had it been for Hypatius to be crouching, as he crouched eighteen years before, by the Scythian shore, up to his neck in the water and only his head showing, ‘like a sea-bird's,' above the waves. He was in less danger then from the savage Huns than now from the insulted Emperor whom he had failed to dethrone. Belisarius heard that the rebels were all in the Hippodrome. With the instinct of a born general he saw in a moment his one chance of victory. With his band of disciplined soldiers, most of them barbarians, he mounted the broad and stately cochlea (spiral staircase) which led from the palace to the Emperor's box in the Hippodrome. A barred door prevented his entrance. He shouted to the soldiers, some of his own veterans, who were in attendance on Hypatius, ‘Open the door, that I may get to the usurper!'. The soldiers, who wished to commit themselves to neither side, feigned not to hear. Then did Belisarius well-nigh despair of success, and, returning to the palace, he told the Emperor that his cause was ruined. But there remained another gate called the Brazen Gate, on the side to which the populace had set fire, and to it, amid falling timbers and over smoking ruins, Belisarius and his soldiers forced their way. This entrance adjoined the portico of the Blues, and perhaps was for this reason better adapted to the purposes of Belisarius; for at the same time the leaders of the Blue party who had received the bribes of Narses were beginning to shout, ‘Justiniane Auguste, tu vincas!'. Then was heard the war-cry of Belisarius; the flashing swords were seen; suspicions of treachery, which soon grew into panic fear, fell upon the multitude. The one desire of every citizen was to escape from the Hippodrome, a desire impossible of fulfilment; for, lo! at the same moment Mundus, another of Justinian's generals, hearing the uproar and rightly divining the manoeuvre of Belisarius, pressed in to the Circus by another gate, called, as if in prophecy, the Gate of the Dead. The two generals did their bloody work relentlessly, so that no civilian, either citizen of Constantinople or stranger, either partisan of the Blues or the Greens, who chanced that day to be in the Hippodrome, left it alive.

It was estimated that 35,000 persons fell in this tumult. Justinian announced his victory as it had been won over some foreign toe, in exulting letters to all the great cities of his Empire. The triumph was won by ruthless disregard of human life, by an utter refusal to attempt to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty: but it was not a wholly barren one for the State. After this terrible lesson, it was long before the populace of Constantinople attempted to renew the disturbances which had disgraced the later years of Anastasius.

Hypatius and his cousin Pompeius were dragged out of the imperial box in the Circus and brought into the presence of Justinian. They fell prostrate before him, and began to sue for pardon on the plea that it was by their persuasion that the enemies of Justinian had been collected in the Hippodrome. ‘That was well done,' said the Emperor (who had not yet heard of the message sent by Hypatius), ‘but if the multitude were so willing to obey your orders, could you not have done it before half the city was burnt down'. He ordered them away to close confinement, upon which Pompeius, a man with whom all things till then had gone smoothly, began with tears and groans to bewail his hard fate. The more rugged Hypatius sharply rebuked him: ‘Courage, my cousin: do not thus demean thyself. We perish as innocent men: for we could not resist the pressure of the people, and it was out of no ill-will to the Emperor that we went into the Hippodrome'.

On the following day they were slain by the soldiers, their goods were confiscated, and their bodies were cast into the sea. After a few days, however, Justinian relented towards them, having heard the true story of the message of Hypatius. Thomas, the doctor who had so ill served the interests of his august patient, was ordered to be beheaded. The property of the two unfortunate Patricians was restored to their relatives, and commands were issued for the burial of their bodies. Only that of Hypatius, however, could be recovered from the keeping of the Bosporus, and over this when buried, Justinian, with all his clemency, could not deny himself the pleasure of carving an insulting epitaph:

‘Here lies the Emperor of Luppa'. The insult is too subtle to reach the ears of posterity.

The blackened heaps representing the stately buildings of Constantinople reminded a spectator . who saw them of the masses of lava and cinders surrounding the cones of Vesuvius and Lipari. Soon however, by the command of the Emperor, troops of workmen were busily engaged in clearing away the rubbish and laying the foundations of new churches, baths, and porticoes. Thus was employment found for the ruined provincials who still swarmed in the city : and before long a new and fairer Constantinople rose from the ruins of the old.

So ended the celebrated sedition of the Nika. Its chief interest for us is that it brings us face to face with two men who gathered great fame in Italy, Belisarius and Narses.

 

CHAPTER XV. BELISARIUS