The Historians' History of the World 07

Anastasius’ accession was not undisputed. Zeno’s brother Longinus claimed the throne and with his brother Isaurians fought for it. A five years’ war beginning in 491 was the result. Constantinople furnished the scene for several bloody riots, especially when, after a decisive victory of the troops at Colyæum in 493, Anastasius issued an edict expelling the Isaurians from the capital. The adherents of the banished nation kept up desultory fighting until in 496 Longinus and his brother were taken. The Isaurian War was the temporary ruin of Asia Minor, and the Persian monarch Kobad found it no difficult task to seize Martyropolis, Amida, and other Armenian strongholds in 503. The cause of this hostile act is a matter of dispute; it may have been that the emperor refused a payment promised by Leo, or Anastasius may have declined to grant Kobad a loan he wished to raise. The consequence of this war might have been most serious for the empire had not the Huns invaded Persia at this critical moment. Kobad was now anxious to sue for peace, the more so since the new Roman general Celer was fast undoing the mistakes of his predecessor, Hypatius. The treaty was signed in 505. The next few years are marked chiefly with the revolt of Vitalian, the Goth. In 514 he attempted to seize the throne, but Anastasius brought him to terms with the office of magister militum of Thrace, and a present of money.a

JUSTIN I

Justin I is said to have been an illiterate Illyrian peasant, who, with two other peasants of the same village, deserted for the profession of arms the more useful employment of husbandmen or shepherds. On foot, with a scanty provision of biscuit in their knapsacks, the three youths followed the high road to Constantinople, and were soon enrolled, for their strength and stature, among the guards of the emperor Leo.

Under the two succeeding reigns, the fortunate peasant emerged to wealth and honours; and his escape from some dangers which threatened his life was afterwards ascribed to the guardian angel who watches over the fate of kings. His long and laudable service in the Isaurian and Persian wars would not have preserved from oblivion the name of Justin; yet they might warrant the military promotion which in the course of fifty years he gradually obtained—the rank of tribune, of count, and of general, the dignity of senator, and the command of the guards, who obeyed him as their chief at the important crisis when the emperor Anastasius was removed from the world. The powerful kinsmen, whom he had raised and enriched, were excluded from the throne; and the eunuch Amantius, who reigned in the palace, had secretly resolved to fix the diadem on the head of the most obsequious of his creatures. A liberal donative, to conciliate the suffrage of the guards, was entrusted for that purpose in the hands of their commander. But these weighty arguments were treacherously employed by Justin in his own favour; and as no competitor presumed to appear, the Dacian peasant was invested with the purple, by the unanimous consent of the soldiers, who knew him to be brave and gentle, of the clergy and people, who believed him to be orthodox, and of the provincials, who yielded a blind and implicit submission to the will of the capital.

[518-527 A.D.]

The elder Justin, as he is distinguished from another emperor of the same family and name, ascended the Byzantine throne at the age of sixty-eight years; and, had he been left to his own guidance, every moment of a nine years’ reign must have exposed to his subjects the impropriety of their choice. His ignorance was similar to that of Theodoric; and it is remarkable that in an age not destitute of learning two contemporary monarchs had never been instructed in the knowledge of the alphabet. But the genius of Justin was far inferior to that of the Gothic king; the experience of a soldier had not qualified him for the government of an empire, and, though personally brave, the consciousness of his own weakness was naturally attended with doubt, distrust, and political apprehension. But the official business of the state was diligently and faithfully transacted by the quæstor Proclus, and the aged emperor adopted the talents and ambition of his nephew Justinian, an aspiring youth whom his uncle had drawn from the rustic solitude of Dacia, and educated at Constantinople, as the heir of his private fortune and at length of the Eastern Empire.