The Emperor Anastasius died in A.D. 518 at the ripe age of eighty-eight,
 and his sceptre passed to Justinus, the commander of his body-guard, whom
 Senate and army alike hailed as most worthy to succeed the good old man.
 The late emperor had nephews, but he had never designated them as his
 heirs, and they retired into private life at his death. Justinus was well
 advanced in years, as all his three predecessors had been when they
 mounted the throne. But unlike Leo, Zeno, and Anastasius, he had won his
 way to the front in the army, not in the civil service. He had risen from
 the ranks, was a rough uncultured soldier, and is said to have been hardly
 able to sign his own name. His reign of nine years would have been of
 little note in history--for he made no wars and spent no treasure--if he had
 not been the means of placing on the throne of the East the greatest ruler
 since the death of Constantine.
 
 Justinus had no children himself, but had adopted as his heir his nephew
 Justinian, son of his deceased brother Sabatius. This young man, born
 after his father and uncle had won their way to high places in the army,
 was no uncultured peasant as they had been, but had been reared, as the
 heir of a wealthy house, in all the learning of the day. He showed from
 the first a keen intelligence, and applied himself with zeal to almost
 every department of civil life. Law, finance, administrative economy,
 theology, music, architecture, fortification, all were dear to him. The
 only thing in which he seems to have taken little personal interest was
 military matters. His uncle trusted everything to him, and finally made
 him his colleague on the throne.
 
 Justinian was heir designate to the empire, and had passed the age of
 thirty-five, giving his contemporaries the impression that he was a staid,
 business-like, and eminently practical personage. "No one ever remembered
 him young," it was said, and most certainly no one ever expected him to
 scandalize the empire by a sensational marriage. But in A.D. 526 the world
 learnt, to the horror of the respectable and the joy of all
 scandal-mongers, that he had declared his intention of taking to wife the
 dancer Theodora, the star of the Byzantine comic stage.
 
 So many stories have gathered around Theodora's name that it is hard to
 say how far her early life had been discreditable. A libellous work called
 the "Secret History," written by an enemy of herself and her husband,
 gives us many scandalous details of her career; but the very virulence of
 the book makes its tales incredible. It is indisputable, however, that
 Theodora was an actress, and that Roman actresses enjoyed an unenviable
 reputation for light morals. There was actually a law which forbade a
 member of the senate to marry an actress, and Justinian had to repeal it
 in order to legalize his own marriage. There had been scores of bad and
 reckless men on the throne before, but none of them had ever dared to
 commit an action which startled the world half so much as this freak of
 the staid Justinian. His own mother used every effort to turn him from his
 purpose, and his uncle the Emperor threatened to disinherit him: but he
 was quietly persistent, and ere the aged Justinus died he had been induced
 to acknowledge the marriage of his nephew, and to confer on Theodora the
 title of "Patrician."
 
                               
 
 The Empress Theodora And Her Court. _Reproduced from "L'Art Byzantin." Par
                   Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
 
 
 Theodora, as even her enemies allow, was the most beautiful woman of her
 age. Procopius, the best historian of the day, says "that it was
 impossible for mere man to describe her comeliness in words, or imitate it
 in art." All that her detractors could say was that she was below the
 middle height, and that her complexion was rather pale, though not
 unhealthy. It is unfortunate that we have no representation of her
 surviving, save the famous mosaic in San Vitale at Ravenna, and mosaic is
 of all forms of art that least suited to reproduce beauty.
 
 Whatever her early life may have been, Theodora was in spirit and
 intelligence well suited to be the mate of the Emperor of the East. After
 her marriage no word of scandal was breathed against her life. She rose to
 the height of her situation: once her courage saved her husband's throne,
 and always she was the ablest and the most trusted of his councillors. The
 grave, studious, and hard-working Emperor never regretted his choice of a
 consort.
 
 It cannot be said, however, that either Justinian or Theodora are
 sympathetic characters. The Emperor was a hard and suspicious master, and
 not over grateful to subjects who served him well; he was intolerant in
 religious, and unscrupulous in political matters. When his heart was set
 on a project he was utterly unmindful of the slaughter and ruin which it
 might bring upon his people. In the extent of his conquests and the
 magnificence of his public works, he was incomparably the greatest of the
 emperors who reigned at Constantinople. But the greatness was purely
 personal: he left the empire weaker in resources, if broader in provinces,
 than he found it. Of all the great sovereigns of history he may be most
 fairly compared with Louis XIV. of France; but it may be remembered to his
 credit in the comparison that Louis has nothing to set against Justinian's
 great legal work--the compilation of the _Pandects_ and _Institutes_, and
 that Justinian's private life, unlike that of the Frenchman, was strict
 even to austerity. All night long, we read, he sat alone over his State
 papers in his cabinet, or paced the dark halls in deep thought. His
 sleepless vigilance so struck his subjects that the strangest legends
 became current even in his life-time: his enemies whispered that he was no
 mere man, but an evil spirit that required no rest. One grotesque tale
 even said that the Emperor had been seen long after midnight traversing
 the corridors of his palace--without his head.
 
 If Justinian seemed hardly human to those who feared him, Theodora is
 represented as entirely given up to pride and ambition, never forgiving an
 offence, but hunting to death or exile all who had crossed her in the
 smallest thing. She is reproached--but who that has risen from a low estate
 is not?--of an inordinate love for the pomps and vanities of imperial
 state. High officials complained that she had as great a voice in settling
 political matters as her husband. Yet, on the whole, her influence would
 appear not to have been an evil one--historians acknowledge that she was
 liberal in almsgiving, religious after her own fashion, and that she often
 interfered to aid the oppressed. It is particularly recorded that,
 remembering the dangers of her own youth, she was zealous in establishing
 institutions for the reclaiming of women who had fallen into sin.
 
 The aged Justinus died in 527 A.D., and Justinian became the sole occupant
 of the throne, which he was destined to occupy for thirty-eight years. It
 was less than half the century, yet his personality seems to pervade the
 whole period, and history hardly remembers the insignificant predecessors
 and successors whose reigns eke out the remainder of the years between 500
 and 600.
 
 The empire when Justinian took it over from the hands of his uncle was in
 a more prosperous condition than it had known since the death of
 Constantine. Since the Ostrogoths had moved out of the Balkan Peninsula in
 A.D. 487, it had not suffered from any very long or destructive invasion
 from without. The Slavonic tribes, now heard of for the first time, and
 the Bulgarians had made raids across the Danube, but they had not yet
 shown any signs of settling down--as the Goths had done--within the limits
 of the empire. Their incursions, though vexatious, were not dangerous.
 Still the European provinces of the empire were in worse condition than
 the Asiatic, and were far from having recovered the effects of the ravages
 of Fritigern and Alaric, Attila, and Theodoric. But the more fortunate
 Asiatic lands had hardly seen a foreign enemy for centuries. Except in
 the immediate neighbourhood of the Persian frontier there was no danger,
 and Persian wars had been infrequent of late. Southern Asia Minor had once
 or twice suffered from internal risings--rebellions of the warlike
 Isaurians--but civil war left no such permanent mark on the land as did
 barbarian invasions. On the whole, the resources of the provinces beyond
 the Bosphorus were intact.
 
 Justinus in his quiet reign had spent little or none of the great hoard of
 treasure which Anastasius had bequeathed to him. There were more than
 300,000 lbs. of gold [L13,400,000] in store when Justinian came to the
 throne. The army, as we have had occasion to relate in the last chapter,
 was in good order, and composed in a larger proportion of born subjects of
 the empire than it had been at any time since the battle of Adrianople.
 There would appear to have been from 150,000 to 200,000 men under arms,
 but the extent of the frontiers of the empire were so great that Justinian
 never sent out a single army of more than 30,000 strong, and forces of
 only a third of that number are often found entrusted with such mighty
 enterprises as the invasion of Africa or the defence of the Armenian
 border. The flower of the Roman army was no longer its infantry, but its
 mailed horsemen (_Cataphracti_), armed with lance and bow, as the Parthian
 cavalry had once been of old. The infantry comprised more archers and
 javelin-men than heavy troops: the Isaurians and other provincials of the
 mountainous parts of Asia Minor were reckoned the best of them. Among both
 horse and foot large bodies of foreign auxiliaries were still found: the
 Huns and Arabs supplied light cavalry, the German Herules and Gepidae from
 beyond the Danube heavier troops.
 
 The weakest point in the empire when Justinian took it over was its
 financial system. The cardinal maxim of political economy, that "taxes
 should be raised in the manner least oppressive to those who pay them" was
 as yet undreamt of. The exaction of arbitrary customs dues, and the
 frequent grant of monopolies was noxious to trade. The deplorable system
 of tax-farming through middlemen was employed in many branches of the
 revenue. Landed proprietors, small and great, were still mercilessly
 overtaxed, in consideration of their exemption from military service. The
 budget was always handicapped by the necessity for providing free corn for
 the populace of Constantinople. Yet in spite of all these drawbacks
 Justinian enjoyed an enormous and steady revenue. His finance minister,
 John of Cappadocia, was such an ingenious extortioner that the treasury
 was never empty in the hardest stress of war and famine: but it was kept
 full at the expense of the future. The grinding taxation of Justinian's
 reign bore fruit in the permanent impoverishment of the provinces: his
 successors were never able to raise such a revenue again. Here again
 Justinian may well be compared to Louis XIV.
 
 Justinian's policy divides into the departments of internal and foreign
 affairs. Of his doings as legislator, administrator, theologian, and
 builder, we shall speak in their proper place. But the history of his
 foreign policy forms the main interest of his reign. He had determined to
 take up a task which none of his predecessors since the division of the
 Empire under Arcadius and Honorius had dared to contemplate. It was his
 dream to re-unite under his sceptre the German kingdoms in the Western
 Mediterranean which had been formed out of the broken fragments of the
 realm of Honorius; and to end the solemn pretence by which he was
 nominally acknowledged as Emperor West of the Adriatic, while really all
 power was in the hands of the German rulers who posed as his vicegerents.
 He aimed at reconquering Italy, Africa, and Spain--if not the further
 provinces of the old empire. We shall see that he went far towards
 accomplishing his intention.
 
 But during the first five years of his reign his attention was distracted
 by other matters. The first of them was an obstinate war of four years'
 duration, with Kobad, King of Persia. The causes of quarrel were
 ultimately the rival pretensions of the Roman and Persian Empires to the
 suzerainty of the small states on their northern frontiers near the Black
 Sea, the kingdoms of Lazica and Iberia, and more proximately the
 strengthening of the fortresses on the Mesopotamian border by Justinian.
 His fortification of Dara, close to the Persian frontier town of Nisibis,
 was the _casus belli_ chosen by Kobad, who declared war in 528, a year
 after Justinian's accession.
 
 The Persian war was bloody, but absolutely indecisive. All the attacks of
 the enemy were repelled, and one great pitched battle won over him at Dara
 in 530. But neither party succeeded in taking a single fortress of
 importance from the other; and when, on the death of Kobad, his son
 Chosroes made peace with the empire, the terms amounted to the restoration
 of the old frontier. The only importance of the war was that it enabled
 Justinian to test his army, and showed him that he possessed an officer of
 first-rate merit in Belisarius, the victor of the battle of Dara.
 
 This famous general was a native of the Thracian inland; he entered the
 army very young, and rose rapidly, till at the age of twenty-three he was
 already Governor of Dara, and at twenty-five _Magister militum_ of the
 East. His influence at Court was very great, as he had married
 Antonina, the favourite and confidante of the Empress Theodora. His
 position, indeed, was not unlike that which Marlborough, owing to his
 wife's ascendency, enjoyed at the Court of Queen Anne. Like Marlborough,
 too, Belisarius was ruled and bullied by his clever and unscrupulous wife.
 Unlike the great Duchess Sarah, Antonina never set herself to thwart her
 mistress; but after Theodora's death she and her husband lost favour, and
 in declining years knew much the same misfortune as did the Marlboroughs.
 
 The year which saw the Persian War end [A.D. 532], saw also the rise and
 fall of another danger, which while it lasted was much more threatening to
 the Emperor's life and power. We have already noticed the "Blues" and
 "Greens," the great factions of the Byzantine Circus. All through the
 fifth century they had been growing stronger, and interfered more and more
 in politics, and even in religious controversies. To be a "Green" in 530
 meant to be a partisan of the house of the late Emperor Anastasius, and a
 Monophysite. The "Blues" posed as partisans of the house of Justinus,
 and as strictly orthodox in matters ecclesiastical. From mere Circus
 factions they had almost grown into political parties; but they still
 retained at the bottom many traces of their low sporting origin. The
 rougher elements pre-dominated in them; they were prone to riot and
 mischief, and, as the events of 532 were to show, they were a serious
 danger to the State.
 
 In January of that year there was serious rioting in the streets.
 Justinian, though ordinarily he favoured the Blue faction, impartially
 ordered the leaders of the rioters on both sides to be put to death. Seven
 were selected for execution, and four of them were duly beheaded in the
 presence of a great and angry mob, in front of the monastery of St. Conon.
 The last three rioters were to be hung, but the hangman so bungled his
 task that two of the criminals, one a Blue the other a Green, fell to the
 ground alive. The guards seized them and they were again suspended; but
 once more--owing no doubt to the terror of the executioners at the menaces
 of the mob--the rope slipped. Then the multitude broke loose, the guards
 were swept away, and the half-hung criminals were thrust into sanctuary at
 the adjacent monastery.
 
 This exciting incident proved the commencement of six days of desperate
 rioting. The Blues and Greens united, and taking as their watchword,
 _Nika_, "conquer," swept through the city, crying for the deposition of
 John of Cappadocia, the unpopular finance minister, and of Eudemius,
 Praefect of the city, who was immediately responsible for the executions.
 The ordinary police of the capital were quite unable to master them, and
 Justinian was weak enough to promise to dismiss the officials. But the mob
 was now quite out of hand, and refused to disperse: the trouble was
 fomented by the partisans of the house of the late emperor, who began to
 shout for the deposition of Justinian, and wished to make Hypatius, nephew
 of Anastasius, Caesar in his stead. The city was almost empty of troops,
 owing to the garrison having been sent to the Persian War. The Emperor
 could only count on 4,000 men of the Imperial Guard, a few German
 auxiliaries, and a regiment of 500 "Cataphracti," mailed horsemen, under
 Belisarius, who had just returned from the seat of war.
 
 Belisarius was placed in command of the whole, and sallied out to clear
 the streets, but the rioters, showing the same pluck that the Byzantine
 mob displayed against the soldiers of Gainas a hundred and twenty-five
 years before, offered a stout resistance. The main fighting took place
 around the great square of the Augustaeum, between the Imperial palace and
 the Hippodrome. In the heat of the fight the rebels set fire to the Brazen
 Porch by the Senate House. The Senate House caught fire, and then the
 conflagration spread east and north, till it was wafted across the square
 to St. Sophia. On the third day of the riot the great cathedral was burnt
 to the ground, and from thence the flames issued out to burn the hospital
 of Sampson and the church of St. Irene. The fire checked the fighting,
 and the insurgents were now in possession of most of the city. But they
 could not find their chosen leader, for the unfortunate Hypatius, who had
 no desire to risk his neck, had taken refuge with the Emperor in the
 palace. It was not till he was actually driven out by Justinian, who
 feared to have him about his person, that this rebel in spite of himself,
 fell into the hands of his own adherents. But on the sixth day of the
 riots they led him to the Hippodrome, installed him in the royal seat of
 the Kathisma, and crowned him there with a gold chain of his wife's, for
 want of a proper diadem.
 
                               
 
 Theodora Imperatrix. _From the Painting by Val. Prinsep. The copyright is
                          in the Artist's hands._
 
 
 Meanwhile there was dismay and diversity of councils in the Palace. John
 of Cappadocia and many other ministers strove to persuade the Emperor to
 fly by sea, and gather additional troops at Heraclea. There was nothing
 left in his power save the palace, and they insisted that if he remained
 there longer he would be surrounded by the rebels and cut off from escape.
 It was then that the Empress Theodora rose to the level of the occasion,
 refused to fly, and urged her husband to make one final assault on the
 enemy. Her words are preserved by Procopius.
 
 "This is no occasion to keep to the old rule that a woman must not speak
 in the council. Those who are most concerned have most right to dictate
 the course of action. Now every man must die once, and for a king death is
 better than dethronement and exile. May I never see the day when my purple
 robe is stripped from me, and when I am no more called Lady and Mistress!
 If you wish, O Emperor, to save your life, nothing is easier: there are
 your ships and the sea. But _I_ agree with the old saying that 'Empire is
 the best winding-sheet.' "
 
 Spurred on by his wife's bold words, Justinian ordered a last assault on
 the rebels, and Belisarius led out his full force. The factions were now
 in the Hippodrome, saluting their newly-crowned leader with shouts of
 "_Hypatie Auguste, tu vincas,_" preparatory to a final attack on the
 palace. Belisarius attacked at once all three gates of the Hippodrome:
 that directed against the door of the Kathisma failed, but the soldiery
 forced both the side entrances, and after a hard struggle the rebels were
 entirely routed. Crowded into the enormous building with only five exits,
 they fell in thousands by the swords of the victorious Imperialists. It is
 said that 35,000 men were slain in the six days of this great "Sedition of
 Nika."
 
 It is curious to learn that not even this awful slaughter succeeded in
 crushing the factions. We hear of the Blues and Greens still rioting on
 various occasions during the next fifty years. But they never came again
 so near to changing the course of history as in the famous rising of A.D.
 532.