almost everywhere and in a greater or less degree, to the more excellent law-system of the Empire. Rome must fulfil her destiny and give laws to the nations.

Though longer delayed in their adoption, the law maxims and principles of the Empire at length became more widely spread and influential than the Latin speech; for Germany, which never gave up her Teutonic tongue, now, through the relation of the German kings to the restored Roman Empire, of which we shall hear much hereafter, adopted the Roman law-system, to the degree of making its principles the basis of her jurisprudence. And even England, though she clung tenaciously to her Teutonic customs and maxims, just as she held on to her own Teutonic speech, could not escape the influence of the Roman jurisprudence, which penetrated there, and, to a certain extent, chiefly through the courts of the Church, modified English law, just as the Latin in an indirect way finally modified and enriched the English speech, while leaving it the same in groundwork and structure. "Our laws," says Lord Bacon, "are mixed as our language; and as our language is so much the richer, the laws are the more complete."

Under the influence of the classical revival, the various ordeals, which were already disappearing before the growing enlightenment of the age and the steady opposition of the Church, or rather of the papal authority, rapidly gave way to modes of trial more consonant with reason and the spirit of the civil law.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. 47483.A.C

The Era of Justinian (A.D. 527-565). At the time of the dethronement of Augustulus by Odoacer, the imperial throne in the East was held by Zeno, a weak and obscure prince. Το him it was that the crown and purple robe of the Western Emperors were sent as an acknowledgment that he was now the sole representative of the power and authority of the Cæsars.

During the fifty years immediately following this event, Zeno and his successors Anastasius and Justin, struggled hard and doubtfully to withstand the waves of the barbarian inundation which constantly threatened to overwhelm Constantinople with the same awful calamities that had befallen the imperial city of the West. Had the new Rome the destined refuge for a thousand years of Græco-Roman learning and culture. also gone down at this time before the storm, the loss to the cause of civilization would have been incalculable.

Fortunately, in the year 527 there ascended the Eastern throne a prince of unusual ability, to whom fortune gave a general of such rare genius that his name has been allotted a place in the short list of the great commanders of the world. Justinian was the name of the prince, and Belisarius that of the soldier. The sovereign has given name to the period, which is called after him the "Era of Justinian"; but it is mainly the conquests and achievements of his general that cause the annals of the period to fill so prominent a place in the records of the Empire, or rather, we should say, in the pages of world-history; for, in the words of Finlay," the unerring instinct of mankind has fixed on this period as one of the greatest in man's annals.”

We shall first notice, very briefly, the wars of Justinian,- the management of which was entrusted, for the most part, to his famous general Belisarius, whose relations to his jealous and ungrateful master were strikingly like those sustained by the renowned Stilicho to the unworthy Honorius; afterwards we shall say something of his works of peace, which, far more than the conquests of his arms, entitle the prince to our praise and admiration.

The Conquest of Africa. —Ambition and religious motives united in urging Justinian to endeavor to wrest out of the hands of the barbarians those provinces of the Empire in the West upon which they had seized. It seemed to him a reproach and disgrace that the sovereigns of the new Rome should appear unable to retain the territories won by the valor of the consuls and Cæsars of the old. He coveted for himself the honor of restoring to their ancient and most extended circuit the boundaries of the Roman State.

To these natural promptings of pride and ambition were added the persuasions of religion. The barbarians that had taken possession of the Western provinces were, as we have learned, with the exception of the Franks, followers of Arius, whose doctrines had been declared heretical by the Nicene Council. But these semi-Christians were, nevertheless, zealous converts, and making up in zeal what they lacked in orthodoxy, became, some of them, and notably the Vandals, furious persecutors of the professors of the Athanasian creed. A strong appeal was thus made to the piety of the Emperor to deliver the true Catholic Church of the West out of the hands of the barbarian heretics.

The state of affairs in Africa invited the intervention of Justinian first in that quarter. The Vandal king Hilderic, who, animated by less of the spirit of persecution than his predecessors, had restored to liberty many of the imprisoned bishops and priests of the orthodox Church and granted freedom of worship to his subjects, had been pushed aside and his throne usurped by Gelimer, a zealous and bigoted Arian. Justinian sent an embassy to expos

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tulate with the usurper, and demand the restoration of the throne to Hilderic. Gelimer replied to the imperial commissioners with that haughty insolence characteristic of his race. Justinian now resolved upon war. But such was the terror of the Vandal name that the subjects of the Emperor declaimed against such a distant and hazardous enterprise. For a moment Justinian wavered in his purpose. But a zealous ecclesiastic reanimated the hesitating resolution of the Emperor, by declaring that he had seen a vision, in which God commanded that the war should be immediately undertaken. "It is the will of Heaven, O Emperor!" exclaimed the bishop, "that you should not abandon your holy enterprise for the deliverance of the African Church. The God of battles will march before your standard, and disperse your enemies, who are the enemies of his Son."

The mixed character of the forces that gathered at Constantinople for the execution of the holy undertaking reveals to us how utterly un-Roman the Empire in the East had already become. The army, numbering about 200,000 men, was composed almost entirely of barbarian mercenaries ;- Goths, Huns, Thracians, Isaurians, Parthians, and Persians filled the motley ranks. And, as if to illustrate how completely the rulers of Constantinople had come to rely upon barbarian talent and valor, we see the expedition entrusted to the command of a general born as a Thracian peasant. But Belisarius, for he was the leader of whom we speak, was worthy of the confidence that his master reposed in his fidelity and genius. Already in five years' warfare upon the Persian frontier he had illustrated his rare qualities as a commander.

The results of the expedition have been spoken of in a previous chapter, in connection with the kingdom of the Vandals, and so need not detain us long in this place. The empire of the barbarians was completely destroyed, and 8,000,000 of African provincials, who claimed the name of Romans, were delivered from the rule of a nation of 600,000 savage intruders. Africa was again united to the Empire, and its affairs were administered by imperial officers who took the title of Exarchs (A.D. 533).

The Conquest of Italy. - The subversion of the Vandal power in Africa was quickly followed by the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy. In the year 535 Belisarius disembarked his army, recruited by many Vandals who had enlisted under the standard of their conquerer, upon the shores of Sicily, then in the hands of the Goths, and in a single campaign wrested that island from their grasp. The next year he crossed the Sicilian straits and entered upon the conquest of the peninsula. Naples was taken by stratagem after a brief siege. The gates of Rome were opened by its inhabitants to the Deliverer, as Belisarius was hailed, and the Gothic garrison fled toward the north.

Vitiges, the brave and able king of the Goths, rallied his warriors from one end of Italy to the other, for the maintenance of the rich possessions which the valor of their fathers had won. Belisarius with his little army was shut up within the walls of Rome, and there besieged by an army of 150,000 barbarians. The investment lasted an entire year, during which time the Goths attempted again and again to carry the defences by assault, but without success. 50,000 barbarians are estimated to have fallen before the walls of the capital. Nor were the losses of the besieged any less considerable. A large proportion of the population of the city perished from hunger, disease, and the various accidents of war. The ancient monuments suffered irreparable damage from their material being used in the construction of defenses. The stately mausoleum of Hadrian was converted into a fortress, and the masterpieces of Greek and Roman art which embellished it were used as ammunition, and thrown down upon the heads of the besiegers.

During the siege Belisarius sent repeated and urgent embassies to his master at Constantinople, asking for immediate relief. Small reinforcements were at length thrown into the city; and the Goths, despairing of the reduction of the place, broke up camp and commenced a hasty retreat northward, closely pursued by Belisarius, who at last drove them within the walls of Ravenna. Vitiges was finally compelled to surrender and was sent to Con