The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 116: The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names
of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and
Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers.
Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris;
of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore,
reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]

[Footnote 117: Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam
everteret .... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe
existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud
Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only
with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the
true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or
Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name
of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a
more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the
royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]

[Footnote 118: See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and
Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of
Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras
(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199 - l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend.
p. 649 - 684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the
Ms. history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the
Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version,
(Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.)

Note: The whole original work of Leo the Deacon has been
published by Hase, and is inserted in the new edition of the
Byzantine historians. M Lassen has added to the Arabian
authorities of this period some extracts from Kemaleddin's
account of the treaty for the surrender of Aleppo. - M.]

Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.

Part I.

Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century. - Extent
And Division. - Wealth And Revenue. - Palace Of Constantinople. -
Titles And Offices. - Pride And Power Of The Emperors. - Tactics
Of The Greeks, Arabs, And Franks. - Loss Of The Latin Tongue. -
Studies And Solitude Of The Greeks.

A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of
the tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal
volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, ^1 which he composed at a
mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to
unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war,
both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely
describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of
Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his
predecessors. ^2 In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of
the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of
Europe and Asia. ^3 The system of Roman tactics, the discipline
and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and
sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections,
which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. ^4 In the
fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the
secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile
intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labors
of the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and
history, might redound to the benefit of the subject and the
honor of the Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the
Basilics, ^5 the code and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were
gradually framed in the three first reigns of that prosperous
dynasty. The art of agriculture had amused the leisure, and
exercised the pens, of the best and wisest of the ancients; and
their chosen precepts are comprised in the twenty books of the
Geoponics ^6 of Constantine. At his command, the historical
examples of vice and virtue were methodized in fifty-three books,
^7 and every citizen might apply, to his contemporaries or
himself, the lesson or the warning of past times. From the august
character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East descends to
the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; and if his
successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we
may inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy.

[Footnote 1: The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple,
is elegantly defined by Claudian: -

Ardua privatos nescit fortuna Penates;
Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas
Excepit Tyrio venerabile pignus in ostro.

And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many
passages expressive of the same idea.]

[Footnote 2: A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae
et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda,
Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid
edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such
lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or
worthless object of their toil.]

[Footnote 3: See, in the first volume of Banduri's Imperium
Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1 - 24, de
Administrando Imperio, p. 45 - 127, edit. Venet. The text of the
old edition of Meursius is corrected from a Ms. of the royal
library of Paris, which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist.
ad Polybium, p. 10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of
William Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance
of the greater D'Anville.]

[Footnote 4: The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published
with the aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works
of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531 - 920,
1211 - 1417, Florent. 1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and
mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial
library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new
editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)]

[Footnote 5: On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.
Graec. tom. xii. p. 425 - 514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris
Romani, p. 396 - 399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,
tom. i. p. 450 - 458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully
consulted: xli. books of this Greek code have been published,
with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris,
1647,) in seven tomes in folio; iv. other books have been since
discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman's Novus Thesaurus
Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books,
John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or
synopsis. The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found
in the Corpus Juris Civilis.]

[Footnote 6: I have used the last and best edition of the
Geoponics, (by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.)
I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the
long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two
books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris,
1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 493 - 500.)]

[Footnote 7: Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been
preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus,
Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and
de Virtutibus et Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris,
1634.)]

A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift,
and the gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these
Imperial treasures we may still deplore our poverty and
ignorance; and the fading glories of their authors will be
obliterated by indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink
to a broken copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek
language, of the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old
civilians is often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and
the absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest
for money, enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of
private life. In the historical book, a subject of Constantine
might admire the inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might
learn to what a pitch of energy and elevation the human character
had formerly aspired. But a contrary effect must have been
produced by a new edition of the lives of the saints, which the
great logothete, or chancellor of the empire, was directed to
prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was enriched by the
fabulous and florid legends of Simon the Metaphrast. ^8 The
merits and miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in
the eyes of a sage, than the toil of a single husbandman, who
multiplies the gifts of the Creator, and supplies the food of his
brethren. Yet the royal authors of the Geoponics were more
seriously employed in expounding the precepts of the destroying
art, which had been taught since the days of Xenophon, ^9 as the
art of heroes and kings. But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine
are mingled with the baser alloy of the age in which they lived.
It was destitute of original genius; they implicitly transcribe
the rules and maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It
was unskilled in the propriety of style and method; they blindly
confound the most distant and discordant institutions, the
phalanx of Sparta and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and
Trajan, of Augustus and Theodosius. Even the use, or at least
the importance, of these military rudiments may be fairly
questioned: their general theory is dictated by reason; but the
merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the application. The
discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather than by
study: the talents of a commander are appropriated to those calm,
though rapid, minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of
armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter
the glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics
may be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of
criticism. The book of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet
imperfect, of the despicable pageantry which had infected the
church and state since the gradual decay of the purity of the one
and the power of the other. A review of the themes or provinces
might promise such authentic and useful information, as the
curiosity of government only can obtain, instead of traditionary
fables on the origin of the cities, and malicious epigrams on the
vices of their inhabitants. ^10 Such information the historian
would have been pleased to record; nor should his silence be
condemned if the most interesting objects, the population of the
capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the
numbers of subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial
standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son
Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is
stained with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by
peculiar merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or
fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are
delineated with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks
alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe,
the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a
bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about
the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his
narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices
and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character
of freedom and genius. ^11 From this scanty fund of foreign and
domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of
the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil
government and military force, the character and literature, of
the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of
Heraclius to his successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.

[Footnote 8: The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are
described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418 - 460.)
This biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose
paraphrase of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His
Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased in the Latin version of
Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible of the original
texture.]

[Footnote 9: According to the first book of the Cyropaedia,
professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were
already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood.

A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not
unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new
Mss., and his learning might illustrate the military history of
the ancients. But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and
alas! Quintus Icilius is no more.

Note: M. Guichardt, author of Memoires Militaires sur les
Grecs et sur les Romains. See Gibbon's Extraits Raisonnees de
mes Lectures, Misc. Works vol. v. p. 219. - M]

[Footnote 10: After observing that the demerit of the
Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he
inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.

The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram
against Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron - Eh bien? Le
serpent en mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the
Anthology, I should be curious to learn, through what channel it
was conveyed for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de
Themat. c. ii. Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei
Anthologia, l. ii. p. 244.)]

[Footnote 11: The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad
Nicephorum Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum
Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i.]

After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the
swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the
provinces and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The
weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion:
her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the kingdom of
Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and
Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient
and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was
torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were
oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of
Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province
which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The
islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval
powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbors of
Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel
emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The
remaining provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were
cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents,
the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the institution
of the themes, ^12 or military governments, which prevailed under
the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the
royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and
seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful
or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but
some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear,
were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that
were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the
respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most
eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the memory of lost
dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of
the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were
transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the
duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the
theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the
successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid
advantages. The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and
Basil the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries,
of the Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of
Antioch, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the
allegiance of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed
to the throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was
destroyed; and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty
extended their sway from the sources of the Tigris to the
neighborhood of Rome. In the eleventh century, the prospect was
again clouded by new enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of
Italy were swept away by the Norman adventures; and almost all
the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the
Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the emperors of the
Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube to
Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the
winding stream of the Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace,
Macedonia, and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre; the
possession of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the
fifty islands of the Aegean or Holy Sea; ^13 and the remnant of
their empire transcends the measure of the largest of the
European kingdoms.

[Footnote 12: See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i.
p. 1 - 30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a
legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post
or province, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some
etymologies are attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian,
Thracesian, themes.]

[Footnote 13: It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the
corrupt names of Archipelago, l'Archipel, and the Arches, have
been transformed by geographers and seamen, (D'Anville,
Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la
Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the
islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos, (Observations de
Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the epithet of
holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the
Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of
goats, to the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph.
Antiq. tom. i. p. 829.)]

The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that
of all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest
city, ^14 the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and
populous state. With the decline and fall of the empire, the
cities of the West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of
Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of
Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the
situation and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces and
churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her
treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled,
and still promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the
Persian and Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces
were less fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few
cities, could be discovered which had not been violated by some
fierce Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless
to possess. From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was
sinking below its former level; the powers of destruction were
more active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war
were imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the
Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of
his sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer,
and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents
and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal
service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire
were still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their
country was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil,
climate, and situation; and, in the support and restoration of
the arts, their patient and peaceful temper was more useful than
the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces
that still adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by
the misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost. From the
yoke of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa
retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of
their brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of
oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile, and
Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of
Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled
from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably
entertained: their followers were encouraged to build new cities
and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and
Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of
these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had
seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were
gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as
long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity
supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers. Did we
possess sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of
the Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a
chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the clearest light
should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name
of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.

[Footnote 14: According to the Jewish traveller who had visited
Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the
great city of the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par
Baratier, tom. l. c. v. p. 46.)]

As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the
Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus, ^15 were overrun by
some Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of
Bulgaria. The strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops,
had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and
learning; but the savages of the north eradicated what yet
remained of their sickly and withered roots. In this irruption,
the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the Grecian
blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus
were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the
diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure
purified from the Barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by
an oath of obedience, tribute, and military service, which they
often renewed and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed
by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and
the Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction
of the approach of the praetor of Corinth revived the courage of
the citizens. Their sally was bold and successful; the strangers
embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was
ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the foremost
ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine
which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of
victory, and the captive race was forever devoted to the service
and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt
of two Sclavonian tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and
Lacedaemon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed. They
sometimes insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the
oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at length the
approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to
define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi,
whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of
gold. From these strangers the Imperial geographer has
accurately distinguished a domestic, and perhaps original, race,
who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the
much-injured Helots. The liberality of the Romans, and
especially of Augustus, had enfranchised the maritime cities from
the dominion of Sparta; and the continuance of the same benefit
ennobled them with the title of Eleuthero, or Free-Laconians. ^16
In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the
name of Mainotes, under which they dishonor the claim of liberty
by the inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky
shores. Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives,
extended to the Cape of Malea: they accepted a chief or prince
from the Byzantine praetor, and a light tribute of four hundred
pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity, rather than of
their dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the character
of Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks. By
the zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of
Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by
these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were
proscribed in the Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus, ^17
forty cities were still numbered, and the declining state of
Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be suspended in the tenth
century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique
splendor and their present desolation. The duty of military
service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the
lands or benefices of the province; a sum of five pieces of gold
was assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the same
capitation was shared among several heads of inferior value. On
the proclamation of an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused
themselves by a voluntary oblation of one hundred pounds of gold,
(four thousand pounds sterling,) and a thousand horses with their
arms and trappings. The churches and monasteries furnished their
contingent; a sacrilegious profit was extorted from the sale of
ecclesiastical honors; and the indigent bishop of Leucadia ^18
was made responsible for a pension of one hundred pieces of gold.
^19