The slackness with which the generals of Justinian prosecuted the Gothic
 war in the period between the triumph of Belisarius at Ravenna in A.D.
 540, and the final conquest of Italy in A.D. 553, is mainly to be
 explained by the fact that, just at the moment of the fall of Ravenna, the
 empire became involved in a new struggle with its great Eastern neighbour.
 Chosroes of Persia was seriously alarmed at the African and Italian
 conquests of Justinian, and remembered that he too, as well as the Vandals
 and Goths, was in possession of provinces that had formerly been Roman,
 and might one day be reclaimed by the Emperor. He determined to strike
 before Justinian had got free from his Italian war, and while the flower
 of the Roman army was still in the West. Using as his pretext for war some
 petty quarrels between two tribes of Arabs, subject respectively to Persia
 and the empire, he declared war in the spring of A.D. 540. Justinian, as
 the king had hoped, was caught unprepared: the army of the Euphrates was
 so weak that it never dared face the Persians in the field, and the
 opening of the war was fraught with such a disaster to the empire as had
 not been known since the battle of Adrianople, more than a hundred and
 sixty years before. Avoiding the fortresses of Mesopotamia, Chosroes, who
 led his army in person, burst into Northern Syria. His main object was to
 strike a blow at Antioch, the metropolis of the East, a rich city that had
 not seen an enemy for nearly three centuries, and was reckoned safe from
 all attacks owing to its distance from the frontier. Antioch had a strong
 garrison of 6,000 men and the "Blues" and "Greens" of its circus factions
 had taken arms to support the regular troops. But the commander was
 incompetent, and the fortifications had been somewhat neglected of late.
 After a sharp struggle, Chosroes took the town by assault; the garrison
 cut its way out, and many of the inhabitants escaped with it, but the city
 was sacked from cellar to garret and thousands of captives were dragged
 away by the Persians. Chosroes planted them by the Euphrates--as
 Nebuchadnezzar had done of old with the Jews--and built for them a city
 which he called Chosroantiocheia, blending his own name with that of their
 ancient abode.
 
 This horrible disaster to the second city of the Roman East roused all
 Justinian's energy; neglecting the Italian war, he sent all his disposable
 troops to the Euphrates frontier, and named Belisarius himself as the
 chief commander. After this, Chosroes won no such successes as had
 distinguished his first campaign. Having commenced an attack on the Roman
 border fortresses in Colchis, far to the north, he was drawn home by the
 news that Belisarius had invaded Assyria and was besieging Nisibis. On the
 approach of the king the imperial general retired, but his manoeuvre had
 cost the Persian the fruits of a whole summer's preparation, and the year
 A.D. 541 ended without serious fighting. In the next spring very similar
 operations followed: Belisarius defended the line of the Euphrates with
 success, and the invaders retired after having reduced one single
 Mesopotamian fortress. The war lingered for two years more, till Chosroes,
 disgusted at the ill-success of all his efforts since his first success at
 Antioch, and more especially humiliated by a bloody repulse from the walls
 of Edessa, consented to treat for peace [A.D. 545]. He gave up his
 conquests--which were of small importance--but regarded the honours of the
 war as being his own, because Justinian consented to pay him 2,000 lbs. of
 gold [L108,000] on the ratification of the treaty. One curious clause was
 inserted in the document--though hostilities ceased everywhere else, the
 rights of the two monarchs to the suzerainty of the kingdom of Lazica, on
 the Colchian frontier, hard by the Black Sea, were left undefined. For no
 less than seven years a sort of by-war was maintained in this small
 district, while peace prevailed on all other points of the Perso-Roman
 frontier. It was not till A.D. 556, after both parties had wasted much
 treasure and many men on the unprofitable contest, that Chosroes resigned
 the attempt to hold the small and rugged mountain kingdom of the Lazi, and
 resigned it to Justinian on the promise of an annual grant of L18,000 as
 compensation money.
 
 But although Justinian had brought his second Persian war to a not
 unsuccessful end, the empire had come badly out of the struggle, and was
 by 556 falling into a condition of incipient disorder and decay. This was
 partly caused by the reckless financial expedients of the Emperor, who
 taxed the provinces with unexampled rigour while forced to maintain at
 once a Persian and an Italian war.
 
 The main part of the damage, however, was wrought by other than human
 means. In A.D. 542 there broke out in the empire a plague such as had not
 been known for three hundred years--the last similar visitation had fallen
 in the reign of Trebonianus Gallus, far back in the third century. This
 pestilence was one of the epoch-making events in the history of the
 empire, as great a landmark as the Black Death in the history of England.
 The details which Procopius gives us concerning its progress and results
 leave no doubt that it operated more powerfully than any other factor in
 that weakening of the empire which is noticeable in the second half of the
 sixth century. When it reached Constantinople, 5,000 persons a day are
 said to have fallen victims to it. All customary occupations ceased in the
 city, and the market-place was empty save for corpse-bearers. In many
 houses not a single soul remained alive, and the government had to take
 special measures for the burial of neglected corpses. "The disease," says
 the chronicler, "did not attack any particular race or class of men, nor
 prevail in any particular region, nor confine itself to any period of the
 year. Summer or winter, North or South, Greek or Arabian, washed or
 unwashed--of such distinctions the plague took no account. A man might
 climb to the hill-top, and it was there; he might retire to the depths of
 a cavern, and it was there also." The only marked characteristic of its
 ravages that the chronicler could find was that, "whether by chance or
 providential design, it strictly spared the most wicked."
 
 Justinian himself fell ill of the plague: he recovered, but was never his
 old self again. Though he persevered inflexibly to his last day in his
 scheme for the reconquest of the empire, yet he seems to have declined in
 energy, and more especially to have lost that power of organization, which
 had been his most marked characteristic. The chroniclers complain that he
 had grown less hopeful and less masterful. "After achieving so much in the
 days of his vigour, when he entered into the last stage of his life he
 seemed to weary of his labours, and preferred to create discord among his
 foes or to mollify them with gifts, instead of trusting to his arms and
 facing the dangers of war. So he allowed his troops to decline in numbers,
 because he did not expect to require their services. And his ministers,
 who collected his taxes and maintained his armies were affected with the
 same indifference."
 
 One feature of the Emperor's later years was that he took more and more
 interest in theological disputes, even to the neglect of State business.
 The Church question of the day was the dispute on Monophysitism, the
 heresy which denied the existence both of a human and a divine nature in
 Our Lord. Justinian was not a monophysite himself, but wished to unify the
 sect with the main body of the Church by edicts of comprehension, which
 forbade the discussion of the subject, and spent much trouble in coercing
 prelates orthodox and heretical into a reconciliation which had no chance
 of permanent success. His chief difficulty was with the bishops of Rome.
 He forced Pope Vigilius to come to Constantinople, and kept him under
 constraint for many months, till he signed all that was required of him
 [A.D. 554]. The only result was to win Vigilius the reputation of a
 heretic, and to cause a growing estrangement between East and West.
 
 The gloom of Justinian's later years was even more marked after the death
 of his wife; Theodora died in A.D. 548, six years after the great plague,
 and it may be that her loss was no less a cause of the diminished energy
 of his later years than was his enfeebled health. Her bold and adventurous
 spirit must have buoyed him up in many of the more difficult enterprises
 of the first half of his reign. After her death, Justinian seems to have
 trusted no one: his destined successor, Justinus, son of his sister, was
 kept in the background, and no great minister seems to have possessed his
 confidence. Even Belisarius, the first and most loyal soldier of the
 empire, does not appear to have been trusted: in the second Gothic war the
 Emperor stinted him of troops and hampered him with colleagues. At last he
 was recalled [A.D. 549] and sent into private life, from which he was only
 recalled on the occurrence of a sudden military crisis in A.D. 558.
 
 This crisis was a striking example of the mismanagement of Justinian's
 later years. A nomad horde from the South Russian steppes, the Cotrigur
 Huns, had crossed the frozen Danube at mid-winter, when hostilities were
 least expected, and thrown themselves on the Thracian provinces. The
 empire had 150,000 men under arms at the moment, but they were all
 dispersed abroad, many in Italy, others in Africa, others in Spain, others
 in Colchis, some in the Thebaid, and a few on the Mesopotamian frontier.
 There was such a dearth of men to defend the home provinces that the
 barbarians rode unhindered over the whole country side from the Danube to
 the Propontis plundering and burning. One body, only 7,000 strong, came up
 to within a few miles of the city gates, and inspired such fear that the
 Constantinopolitans began to send their money and church-plate over to
 Asia. Justinian then summoned Belisarius from his retirement, and placed
 him in command of what troops there were available--a single regiment of
 300 veterans from Italy, and the "Scholarian guards," a body of local
 troops 3,500 strong, raised in the city and entrusted with the charge of
 its gates, which inspired little confidence as its members were allowed to
 practice their trades and avocations and only called out in rotation for
 occasional service. With this undisciplined force, which had never seen
 war, at his back, Belisarius contrived to beat off the Huns. He led them
 to pursue him back to a carefully prepared position, where the only point
 that could be attacked was covered with woods and hedges on either side.
 The untrustworthy "Scholarians" were placed on the flanks, where they
 could not be seriously molested, while the 300 Italian veterans covered
 the one vulnerable point. The Huns attacked, were shot down from the woods
 and beaten off in front, and fled leaving 400 men on the field, while the
 Romans only lost a few wounded and not a single soldier slain. Thus the
 last military exploit of Belisarius preserved the suburbs of the imperial
 city itself from molestation; after defending Old Rome in his prime, he
 saved New Rome in his old age.
 
 Even this last service did not prevent Justinian from viewing his great
 servant with suspicion. Four years later an obscure conspiracy against his
 life was discovered, and one of the conspirators named Belisarius as being
 privy to the plot. The old emperor affected to believe the accusation,
 sequestrated the general's property, and kept him under surveillance for
 eight months. Belisarius was then acquitted and restored to favour: he
 lived two years longer, and died in March, 565. The ungrateful master
 whom he had served so well followed him to the grave nine months later.
 
                   -------------------------------------
 
 Of Justinian as conqueror and governor we have said much. But there remain
 two more aspects of his life which deserve notice--his work as a builder
 and his codification of the laws. From the days of Diocletian the style of
 architecture which we call Byzantine, for want of a better name, had been
 slowly developing from the old classic forms, and many of the emperors of
 the fourth and fifth centuries had been given to building. But no previous
 monarch had combined in such a degree as did Justinian the will and the
 power to launch out into architectural experiments. He had at his disposal
 the hoarded treasures of Anastasius, and his tastes were as magnificent as
 those of the great builders of the early empire, Augustus and Nero and
 Hadrian. All over the empire the monuments of his wealth and taste were
 seen in dozens of churches, halls of justice, monasteries, forts,
 hospitals, and colonnades. The historian Procopius was able to compose a
 considerable volume entirely on the subject of Justinian's buildings, and
 numbers of them survive, some perfect and more in ruins, to witness to the
 accuracy of the work. Even in the more secluded or outlying portions of
 the empire, any fine building that is found is, in two cases out of three,
 one of the works of Justinian. Not merely great centres like
 Constantinople or Jerusalem, but out-of-the-way tracts in Cappadocia and
 Isauria, are full of his buildings. Even in the newly-conquered Ravenna
 his great churches of San Vitale, containing the celebrated mosaic
 portraits of himself and his wife, and of St. Apollinare in the suburb of
 Classis, outshine the older works of the fifth-century emperors and of the
 Goth Theodoric.
 
                               
 
                           Columns In St. Sophia.
 
 
                               
 
                          Galleries Of St. Sophia.
 
 
 Justinian's churches, indeed, are the best known of his buildings. In
 Oriental church-architecture his reign forms a landmark: up to his time
 Christian architects had still been using two patterns copied straight
 from Old Roman models. The first was the round domed church, whose origin
 can be traced back to such Roman originals as the celebrated Temple of
 Vesta--of such the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Rome may serve as a
 type. The second was the rectangular church with apses, which was nothing
 more than an adaptation for ecclesiastical purposes of the Old Roman
 law-courts, and which had borrowed from them its name of _Basilica_. St.
 Paul's Outside the Walls, at Rome is a fair specimen. Justinian brought
 into use for the first time on a large scale the combination of a
 cruciform ground-plan and a very large dome. The famous Church of St.
 Sophia may serve as the type of this style. The great cathedral of
 Constantinople had already been burnt down twice, as we have had occasion
 to relate: the first time on the eve of the banishment of John Chrysostom,
 the second in the great "Nika" riot of 532. Within forty days of its
 destruction Justinian had commenced preparations for rebuilding it as a
 monument of his triumph in the civil strife. He chose as his architect
 Anthemius of Tralles, the greatest of Byzantine builders, and one of the
 few whose names have survived. The third church was different in plan from
 either of its predecessors, showing the new combination which we have
 already specified. It is a Greek cross, 241 feet long and 224 broad,
 having in its midst a vast dome, pierced by no less than forty windows,
 light and airy and soaring 180 feet above the floor. In the nave the
 aisles and side apses are parted from the main central spaces by
 magnificent colonnades of marble pillars, the majority of _verde antique_.
 These are not for the most part the work of Justinian's day, but were
 plundered from the chief pagan temples of Asia, which served as an
 inexhaustible quarry for the Christian builder. The whole of the interior,
 both roof and dome, was covered with gilding or mosaics, which the
 Vandalism of the Turks has covered with a coat of whitewash, to hide the
 representations of human forms which are offensive to the Moslems' creed.
 Procopius describes the church with enthusiasm, and his praises are well
 justified--
 
 
     "It presents a most glorious spectacle, extraordinary to those who
     behold it, and altogether incredible to those who know it by
     report only. In height it rises to the very heavens, and overtops
     the neighbouring buildings like a ship anchored among them. It
     towers above the city which it adorns, and from it the whole of
     Constantinople can be beheld, as from a watch-tower. Its breadth
     and length are so judiciously chosen, that it appears both broad
     and long without disproportion. For it excels both in size and
     harmony, being more magnificent than ordinary buildings, and much
     more elegant than the few which approach it in size. Within it is
     singularly full of light and sunshine; you would declare that the
     place is not lighted from without, but that the rays are produced
     within itself, such an abundance of light is poured into it. The
     gilded ceiling adds glory to its interior, though the light
     reflected upon the gold from the marble surpasses it in beauty.
     Who can tell of the splendour of the columns and marbles with
     which the church is adorned? One would think that one had come
     upon a meadow full of flowers in bloom--one wonders at the purple
     tints of some, the green of others, the glowing red and glittering
     white, and those, too, which nature, like a painter, has marked
     with the strongest contrasts of colour. Moreover, it is impossible
     accurately to describe the treasures of gold and silver plate and
     gems which the Emperor has presented to the church: the Sanctuary
     alone contains forty thousand pounds weight of silver."
 
 
 Justinian was almost as great a builder of forts as of churches, but his
 military works have for the most part disappeared. It may give some idea
 of his energy in fortifying the frontiers when we state that the Illyrian
 provinces alone were protected by 294 forts, of which Procopius gives a
 list, disposed in four successive lines from the Danube back to the
 Thessalian hills. Some were single towers, but many were elaborate
 fortresses with outworks, and all had to be protected by garrisons.
 
 Thus much of Justinian as builder: space fails to enumerate a tithe of his
 works. Of his great legal achievement we must speak at even shorter
 length. The Roman law, as he received it from his predecessors was an
 enormous mass of precedents and decisions, in which the original basis was
 overlaid with the various and sometimes contradictory rescripts of five
 centuries of emperors. Several of his predecessors, and most especially
 Theodosius II., had endeavoured to codify the chaotic mass and reduce it
 to order. But no one of them had produced a code which sufficed to bring
 the law of the day into full accord with the spirit of the times. It was
 no mean work to bring the ancient legislation of Rome, from the days of
 the Twelve Tables down to the days of Justinian, into strict and logical
 connection with the new Christian ideas which had worked their way into
 predominance since the days of Constantine. Much of the old law was
 hopelessly obsolete, owing to the change in moral ideas which Christianity
 had introduced, but it is still astonishing to see how much of the old
 forms of the times of the early empire survived into the sixth century.
 Justinian employed a commission, headed by the clever but unpopular lawyer
 Tribonian, to draw up his new code. The work was done for ever and a day,
 and his "Institutes" and "Pandects" were the last revision of the Old
 Roman laws, and the starting-point of all systematic legal study in
 Europe, when, six hundred years later, the need for something more than
 customary folk-right began to make itself felt, as mediaeval civilization
 evolved itself out of the chaos of the dark ages. If the Roman Empire had
 flourished in the century after Justinian as in that which preceded him,
 other revisers of the laws might have produced compilations that would
 have made the "Institutes" seem out of date. But, as a matter of fact,
 decay and chaos followed after Justinian, and succeeding emperors had
 neither the need nor the inclination to do his work over again. Hence it
 came to pass that his name is for ever associated with the last great
 revision of Roman law, and that he himself went down to posterity as the
 greatest of legislators, destined to be enthroned by Dante in one of the
 starry thrones of his "Paradise," and to be worshipped as the father of
 law by all the legists of the Renaissance.