The Historians' History of the World 07

Our estimate of personal merit is relative to the common faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured not so much by their real elevation as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age or country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pigmies. Leonidas and his three hundred companions devoted their lives at Thermopylæ; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man had prepared, and almost insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable.

The great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies that he had defeated in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred cities from the lake Mæotis to the Red Sea; but the fortune of Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were oppressed by their own fears, and the invincible legions which he commanded had been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages. In this view, the character of Belisarius may be deservedly placed above the heroes of the ancient republic. His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection; he raised himself without a master or a rival; and so inadequate were the arms committed to his hand that his sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his adversaries. Under his command, the subjects of Justinian often deserved to be called Romans; but the unwarlike appellation of Greeks was imposed as a term of reproach by the haughty Goths, who affected to blush that they must dispute the kingdom of Italy with a nation of tragedians, pantomimes, and pirates.

The climate of Asia has indeed been found less congenial than that of Europe to military spirit; those populous countries were enervated by luxury, despotism, and superstition, and the monks were more expensive and more numerous than the soldiers of the East. The regular force of the empire had once amounted to 645,000 men: it was reduced, in the time of Justinian, to 150,000; and this number, large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over the sea and land—in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt, on the banks of the Danube, the coast of Euxine, and the frontiers of Persia. The citizen was exhausted, yet the soldier was unpaid; his poverty was mischievously soothed by the privilege of rapine and indolence; and the tardy payments were detained and intercepted by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without courage or danger, the emoluments of war. Public and private distress recruited the armies of the state; but in the field, and still more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always defective.

The want of national spirit was supplied by the precarious faith and disorderly service of barbarian mercenaries. Even military honour, which has often survived the loss of virtue and freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were multiplied beyond the example of former times, laboured only to prevent the success, or to sully the reputation, of their colleagues; and they had been taught by experience that, if merit sometimes provoked the jealousy, error or even guilt would obtain the indulgence of a gracious emperor.

In such an age the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine with incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest shades of disgrace and calamity.[17]

BARBARIC INROADS

[100-550 A.D.]

Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to the state, since they abolished the important barrier of the upper Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric and his daughter. For the defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated Pannonia and Noricum, which they left in a peaceful and flourishing condition; the sovereignty was claimed by the emperor of the Romans, the actual possession was abandoned to the boldness of the first invader. On the opposite banks of the Danube, the plains of upper Hungary and the Transylvanian hills were possessed, since the death of Attila, by the tribes of the Gepidæ, who respected the Gothic arms and despised not indeed the gold of the Romans but the secret motive of their annual subsidies.