Athens, after her Persian triumphs, adopted the philosophy of Ionia and the rhetoric of Sicily; and these studies became the patrimony of a city whose inhabitants, about thirty thousand males, condensed, within the period of a single life, the genius of ages and millions. Our sense of the dignity of human nature is exalted by the simple recollection, that Isocrates(143) was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first representations of the Edipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his pupils Eschines and Demosthenes contended for the crown of patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of Theophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the Stoic and Epicurean sects.(144) The ingenious youth of Attica enjoyed the benefits of their domestic education, which was communicated without envy to the rival cities. Two thousand disciples heard the lessons of Theophrastus ;(145) the schools of rhetoric must have been still more populous than those of philosophy; and a rapid succession of students diffused the fame of their teachers, as far as the utmost limits of the Grecian language and name. Those limits were enlarged by the victories of Alexander; the arts of Athens survived her freedom and dominion; and the Greek colonies which the Macedonians planted in Egypt, and scattered over Asia, undertook long and frequent pilgrimages to worship the Muses in their favourite temple on the banks of the flissus. The Latin conquerors respectfully listened to the instructions of their subjects and captives; the names of Cicero and Horace were enrolled in the schools of Athens; and after the perfect settlement of the Roman empire, the natives of Italy, of Africa, and of Britain, conversed in the groves of the academy with their fellow-students of the East. The studies of philosophy and eloquence are congenial to a popular state, which encourages the freedom of inquiry, and submits only to the force of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome, the art of speaking was the powerful engine of patriotism or ambition; and the schools of rhetoric poured forth a colony of statesmen and legislators. When the liberty of public debate was suppressed, the orator, in the honourable prefession of an advocate, might plead the cause of innocence and justice; he might abuse his talents in the more profitable trade of panegyric; and the same precepts continued to dictate the fanciful declamations of the sophist, and the chaster beauties of historical composition. The systems which professed to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe, entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the skeptics, or decide with the stoics, sublimely speculate with Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples of Zeno, and even those of Epicurus, were taught both to act and to suffer; and the death of Petronius was not less effectual than that of Seneca, to humble a tyrant by the discovery of his impotence. The light of Science could not indeed be confined within the walls of Athens. Her incomparable writers address themselves to the human race; the living masters emigrated to Italy and Asia; Berytus, in later times, was devoted to the study of the law; astronomy and physic were cultivated in the museum of Alexandria; but the Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy maintained their superior reputation from the Peloponnesian war to the reign of Justinian. Athens, though situated in a barren soil, possessed a pure air, a free navigation, and the monuments of ancient art. That sacred retirement was seldom disturbed by the business of trade or government; and the last of the Athenians were distinguished by their lively wit, the purity of their taste and language, their social manners, and some traces, at least in discourse, of the magnanimity of their fathers. In the suburbs of the city, the

(143) The life of Isocrates extends from Olymp. lxxxvi. 1, to ex. 3 (ante Christ. 436-438). See Dionys Halicarn. tom. ii. p. 149, 150, edit. Hudson, Plutarch (sive anonymous), in Vit. X. Oratorum, p. 1538— 1543, edit. H. Steph. Phot. cod. celix. p. 1453.

(144) The schools of Athens are copiously though concisely represented in the Fortuna Attica Meursius (c. viii. p. 59-73, in tom. i. Opp.) For the state and arts of the city, see the first book of Pausanias, and a small tract of Dicæarchus (in the second volume of Hudson's Geographers), who wrote about Olymp. cxvii. (Dodwell's Dissertat. sect. 4.)

(145, Diogen. Laert. de Vit. Philosoph. I. v. segm. 37, p. 289.

academy of the Platonists, the lyceum of the Peripatetics, the portico of the Stores, and the garden of the Epicureans, were planted with trees and decorated with statues; and the philosophers, instead of being immured in a cloister, delivered their instructions in spacious and pleasant walks, which, at different hours, were consecrated to the exercises of the mind and body. The genius of the founders still lived in those venerable seats; the ambition of succeeding to the masters of human reason, excited a generous emulation; and the merit of the candidates was determined, on each vacancy, by the free voices of an enlightened people. The Athenian professors were paid by their disciples: according to their mutual wants and abilities, the price appears to have varied from a mina to a talent; and Isocrates himself, who derides the avarice of the sophists, required, in his school of rhetoric, about thirty pounds from each of his hundred pupils. The wages of industry are just and honourable, yet the same Isocrates shed tears at the first receipt of a stipend; the Stoic might blush when he was hired to preach the contempt of money; and I should be sorry to discover, that Aristotle or Plato so far degenerated from the example of Socrates, as to exchange knowledge for gold. But some property of lands and houses was settled by the permission of the laws, and the legacies of deceased friends, on the philosophic chairs of Athens. Epicurus bequeathed to his disciples the gardens which he had purchased for eighty mine or two hundred and fifty pounds, with a fund sufficient for their frugal subsistence and monthly festivals;(146) and the patrimony of Plato afforded an annual rent, which, in eight centuries, was gradually increased from three to one thousand pieces of gold.(147) The schools of Athens were protected by the wisest and most virtuous of the Roman princes. The library which Hadrian founded, was placed in a portico adorned with pictures, statues, and a roof of alabaster, and supported by one hundred columns of Phrygian marble. The public salaries were assigned by the generous spirit of the Antonines; and each professor, of politics, of rhetoric, of the Platonic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean philosophy, received an annual stipend of ten thousand drachmæ, or more than three hundred pounds sterling.(148) After the death of Marcus, these liberal donations, and the privileges attached to the thrones of science, were abolished and revived, diminished and enlarged: but some vestige of royal bounty may be found under the successors of Constantine; and their arbitrary choice of an unworthy can didate, might tempt the philosophers of Athens to regret the days of indepen dence and poverty. (149) It is remarkable, that the impartial favour of the Antonines was bestowed on the four adverse sects of philosophy, which they considered as equally useful, or at least as equally innocent. Socrates had for merly been the glory and the reproach of his country; and the first lessons of Epi curus so strangely scandalized the pious ears of the Athenians, that by his exile, and that of his antagonists, they silenced all vain disputes concerning the nature of the gods. But in the ensuing year they recalled the hasty decree, restored the liberty of the schools, and were convinced by the experience of ages, that the moral character of philosophers is not affected by the diversity of their theological speculations.(150)

The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establish

(146) See the testament of Epicurus in Diogen. Laert. 1. x. segm. 16-20, p. 611, 612. A single epistle (ad Familiares, xiii. 1), displays the injustice of the Areopagus, the fidelity of the Epicureans, the dexterous politeness of Cicero, and the mixture of contempt and esteem with which the Roman senators considered the philosophy and philosophers of Greece.

(147) Damascius, in Vit. Isidor. apud Photium, cod. ccxlii. p. 1054.

(148) See Lucian (in Eunech. tom. ii. p. 350-359, edit. Reitz), Philostratus (in Vit. Sophist. I. ii. c. 2), and Dion Cassius, or Xiphilin (1. Ixxi. p. 1195), with their editors Du Soul, Olearius, and Reimar, and, above all, Salmasius (ad Hist. August. p. 72). A judicious philosopher (Smith's Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 340-374), prefers the free contributions of the students to a fixed stipend for the professor. (149) Brucker, Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 310, &e.

(150) The birth of Epicurus is fixed to the year 342 before Christ (Bayle), Olympiad cix. 3; and he opened his school at Athens, Olymp. exviii. 3, 306 years before the same era. This intolerant law (Athenæus, I. xiii. p. 610. Diogen. Lærtius, I. v. c. 38, p. 290. Julius Pollux, ix. 5,) was enacted in the same, or the succeeding year (Sigonius, Opp. tom. v. p. 62. Menagius, ad Diogen. Lært. p. 204. Corsini Fasti Attici, tom. iv. p. 67, 68). Theophrastus, chief of the Peripatetics, and disciple of Aristotle, was involved in the same exile.

ment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or skeptic to eternal flames. In many a volume of laborious controversy, they exposed the weakness of the understanding and the corruption of the heart, insulted human nature in the sages of antiquity, and proscribed the spirit of philosophical inquiry, so repugnant to the doctrine, or at least to the temper, of an humble believer. The surviving sect of the Platonists, whom Plato would have blushed to acknowledge, extravagantly mingled a sublime theory with the practice of superstition and magic; and as they remained alone in the midst of a Christian world, they indulged a secret rancour against the government of the church and state, whose severity was still suspended over their heads. About a century after the reign of Julian,(151) Proclus(152) was permitted to teach in the philosophic chair of the academy, and such was his industry that he frequently, in the same day, pronounced five lessons, and composed seven hundred lines. His sagacious mind explored the deepest questions of morals and metaphysics, and he ventured to urge eighteen arguments against the Christian doctrine of the creation of the world. But in the intervals of study, he personally conversed with Pan, Esculapius, and Minerva, in whose mysteries he was secretly initiated, and whose prostrate statues he adored; in the devout persuasion that the philosopher, who is a citizen of the universe, should be the priest of its various deities. An eclipse of the sun announced his approaching end; and his life, with that of his scholar Isidore,(153) compiled by two of their most learned disciples, exhibits a deplora ble picture of the second childhood of human reason. Yet the golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the Platonic succession, continued forty-four years from the death of Proclus to the edict of Justinian,(154) [A. D. 485–529.] which imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens, and excited the grief and indignation of the few remaining votaries of Grecian science and superstition. Seven friends and philosophers, Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, who dissented from the religion of their sovereign, embraced the resolution of seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied in their native country. They had heard, and they credulously believed, that the republic of Plato was realized in the despotic government of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned over the happiest and most virtuous of nations. They were soon astonished by the natural discovery, that Persia resembled the other countries of the globe; that Chosroes, who affected the name of a philosopher, was vain, cruel, and ambitious; that bigotry and a spirit of intolerance, prevailed among the Magi; that the nobles were haughty, the courtiers servile, and the magistrates unjust; that the guilty sometimes escaped, and that the innocent were often oppressed. The disappoint ment of the philosophers provoked them to overlook the real virtues of the Persians; and they were scandalized more deeply perhaps than became their profession, with the plurality of wives and concubines, the incestuous marriages, and the custom of exposing dead bodies to the dogs and vultures, instead of hiding them in the earth, or consuining them with fire. Their repentance was expressed by a precipitate return, and they loudly declared that they had rather die on the borders of the empire, than enjoy the wealth and favour of the Barbarian. From this journey, however, they derived a benefit which reflects the purest lustre on the character of Chosroes. He required, that the seven sages who had visited the court of Persia, should be exempted from the penal laws which Justinian enacted against his pagan subjects; and this privilege,

(151) This is no fanciful era: the pagans reckon their calamities from the reign of their nero. Proclus whose nativity is marked by his horoscope (A. D. 412, February 8, at C. P.) died 124 years año 1sλtavs Baoiλews, A. D. 485 (Marin. Vita Procli, e. 36).

(152) The life of Proclus, by Marinus, was published by Fabricius (Hamburg, 1700, et ad calcem Bibliot. Latin. Lond. 1703). See Suidas (tom. iii. p. 185, 186), Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. i. v. c. 26, p. 449– 552), and Brucker (Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 319-326).

(153) The life of Isidore was composed by Damascius (apud Photium, cod. cexlii. p. 1028-1076). See the last age of the pagan philosophers in Brucker (tom. ii. p. 341-351).

(154) The suppression of the schools of Athens is recorded by John Malala (tom. ii. p 187, sur Decio Cos. Sol, and an anonymous Chronicle in the Vatican library (apud Aleman. p 106)

expressly stipulated in a treaty of peace, was guarded by the vigilance of a powerful mediator.(155) Simplicius and his companions ended their lives in peace and obscurity; and as they left no disciples, they terminate the long list of Grecian philosophers, who may be justly praised, notwithstanding their defects, as the wisest and most virtuous of their contemporaries. The writings of Simplicius are now extant. His physical and metaphysical commentaries on Aristotle have passed away with the fashion of the times; but his moral interpretation of Epictetus is preserved in the library of nations, as a classic book, most excellently adapted to direct the will, to purify the heart, and to confirm the understanding, by a just confidence in the nature both of God and man.

[A. D. 541.] About the same time that Pythagoras first invented the appellation of philosopher, liberty and the consulship were founded at Rome by the elder Brutus. The revolutions of the consular office, which may be viewed in the successive lights of a substance, a shadow, and a name, have been occasionally mentioned in the present history. The first magistrates of the republic had been chosen by the people, to exercise, in the senate and in the camp, the powers of peace and war, which were afterward translated to the emperors. But the tradition of ancient dignity was long revered by the Romans and Barbarians. A Gothic historian applauds the consulship of Theodoric as the height of all temporal glory and greatness;(156) the king of Italy himself congratu lates those annual favourites of fortunes, who, without the cares, enjoyed the splendour of the throne; and at the end of a thousand years, two consuls were created by the sovereigns of Rome and Constantinople, for the sole purpose of giving a date to the year and a festival to the people. But the expenses of this festival, in which the wealthy and the vain aspired to surpass their predecessors, insensibly arose to the enormous sum of fourscore thousand pounds; the wisest senators declined a useless honour, which involved the ruin of their families; and to this reluctance I should impute the frequent chasms in the last age of the consular Fasti. The predecessors of Justinian had assisted from the public treasures the dignity of the less opulent candidates; the avarice of that prince preferred the cheaper and more convenient method of advice and regulation. (157) Seven processions or spectacles were the number to which his edict confined the horse and chariot races, the athletic sports, the music, and pantomimes of the theatre, and the hunting of wild beasts; and small pieces of silver were discreetly substituted to the gold medals, which had always excited tumult and drunkenness, when they were scattered with a profuse hand among the populace. Notwithstanding these precautions, and his own example, the succession of consuls finally ceased in the thirteenth year of Justinian, whose despotic temper might be gratified by the silent extinction of a title which admonished the Romans of their ancient freedom. (158) Yet the annual consulship still lived in the minds of the people; they fondly expected its speedy restoration; they applauded the gracious condescension of successive princes by whom it was assumed in the first year of their reign; and three centuries elapsed, after the death of Justinian, before that obsolete dignity, which had been suppressed by custom, could be abolished by law.(159) The imperfect mode of distinguishing each year by the name of a magistrate, was usually supplied by the date of a permanent era the creation of the world,

(155) Agathias (1. ii. p. 69, 70, 71,) relates this curious story. Chosroes ascended the throne in the year 531, and made his first peace with the Romans in the beginning of 533, a date most compatible with his young fame and the old age of Isidore (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient, tom. iii. p. 404, Pagi, tom. ii. p. 543, 550).

(156) Cassiodor. Variarum Epist. vi. 1. Jornandes, c. 57, p. 696, edit. Grot. Quod summum bonum primumque in mundo decus edicitur.

(157) See the regulations of Justinian (Novell. cv.) dated at Constantinople, July 5, and addressed to Strategius, treasurer of the empire.

(158) Procopius, in Anecdot. c. 26. Aleman. p. 105. In the xviiith year after the consulship of Basifius, according to the reckoning of Marcellinus, Victor, Marius, &c. the secret history was composed, and in the eyes of Procopius, the consulship was finally abolished."

(159) By Leo the philosopher (Novell. xciv. A. D. 886-911). See Pagi (Dissertat. Hypatica, p. 325— 362), and Ducange (Gloss. Græc. p. 1635, 1636). Even the title was vilified consulatus codicilli.... vilescunt, says the emperor himself.

according to the Septuagint version, was adopted by the Greeks :(160) and the Latins, since the age of Charlemagne, have computed their time from the birth of Christ.(161)

CHAPTER XLI.

Conquests of Justinian in the West-Character and first campaigns of Belisarius -He invades and subdues the Vandal kingdom of Africa-His triumph-The Gothic war-He recovers Sicily, Naples, and Rome-Siege of Rome by the Goths-Their retreat and losses-Surrender of Ravenna-Glory of Belisarius -His domestic shame and misfortunes.

[A. D. 533.] WHEN Justinian ascended the throne, about fifty years after the fall of the Western empire, the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals had obtained a solid, and, as it might seem, a legal establishment both in Europe and Africa. The titles which Roman victory had inscribed, were erased with equal justice by the sword of the Barbarians; and their successful rapine derived a more venerable sanction from time, from treaties, and from the oaths of fidelity already repeated by a second or third generation of obedient subjects. Experience and Christianity had refuted the superstitious hope, that Rome was founded by the gods to reign for ever over the nations of the earth. But the proud claim of perpetual and indefeasible dominion, which her soldiers could no longer maintain, was firmly asserted by her statesmen and lawyers, whose opinions have been sometimes revived and propagated in the modern schools of jurisprudence. After Rome herself had been stripped of the imperial purple, the princes of Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred sceptre of the monarchy; demanded, as their rightful inheritance, the provinces which had been subdued by the consuls, or possessed by the Cesars; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of the West from the usurpation of heretics and Barbarians. The execution of this splendid design was in some degree reserved for Justinian. During the first five years of his reign, he reluctantly waged a costly and unprofitable war against the Persians; till his pride submitted to his ambition, and he purchased at the price of four hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling, the benefit of a precarious truce, which in the language of both nations, was dignified by the appellation of the endless peace. The safety of the East enabled the emperor to employ his forces against the Vandals; and the internal state of Africa afforded an honourable motive, and promised a powerful support, to the Roman arms. (1)

[A. D. 523–530.] According to the testament of the founder, the African Kingdom had lineally descended to Hilderic the eldest of the Vandal princes. A mild disposition inclined the son of a tyrant, the grandson of a conqueror, to prefer the counsels of clemency and peace; and his accession was marked by

(160) According to Julius Africanus, &c. the world was created the first of September, 5508 years, three months, and twenty-five days before the birth of Christ (see Pezrod, Antiquité des Tems defendii p. 20-28); and this era has been used by the Greeks, the Oriental Christians, and even by the Russians, till the reign of Peter I. The period, however arbitrary, is clear and convenient. Of the 7296 years which are supposed to elapse since the creation, we shall find 3000 of ignorance and darkness; 2000 either fabulous or doubtful; 1000 of ancient history, commencing with the Persian empire, and the republics of Rome and Athens; 1000 from the fall of the Roman empire in the west to the discovery of America; and the remaining 296 will almost complete three centuries of the modern state of Europe and mankind. I regret this chronology, so far preferable to our double and perplexed method of counting backwards and forwards the years before and after the Christian era.

(161) The era of the world has prevailed in the East since the sixth general council (A. D. 681). In the West the Christian era was first invented in the sixth century; it was propagated in the seventh by the authority and writings of venerable Bede: but it was not till the tenth that the use became legal and popular. See l'Art de verifier les Dates, Dissert. Preliminaire, p. iii. xii. Dictionaire Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 329-337: the works of a laborious society of Benedictine monks.

(1) The complete series of the Vandal war is related by Procopius in a regular and elegant narrative (1. i. c. 9-25, 1. ii. c. 1-13); and happy would be my lot, could I always tread in the footsteps of such a guide. From the entire and diligent perusal of the Greek text, I have a right to pronounce that the Latin and French versions of Grotius and Cousin may not be implicitly trusted; yet the president Cousin has been often praised, and Hugo Grotius was the first scholar of a learned age