93 ([return])
[ Leonis Tactica, c. 18, p. 805. The emperor Leo died A.D. 911: an historical poem, which ends in 916, and appears to have been composed in 910, by a native of Venetia, discriminates in these verses the manners of Italy and France:
—Quid inertia bello
Pectora (Ubertus ait) duris praetenditis armis,
O Itali? Potius vobis sacra pocula cordi;
Saepius et stomachum nitidis laxare saginis
Elatasque domos rutilo fulcire metallo.
Non eadem Gallos similis vel cura remordet:
Vicinas quibus est studium devincere terras,
Depressumque larem spoliis hinc inde coactis
Sustentare—
(Anonym. Carmen Panegyricum de Laudibus Berengarii Augusti, l. n. in Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ii. pars i. p. 393.)]
By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from Britain to Egypt, were entitled to the name and privileges of Romans, and their national sovereign might fix his occasional or permanent residence in any province of their common country. In the division of the East and West, an ideal unity was scrupulously observed, and in their titles, laws, and statutes, the successors of Arcadius and Honorius announced themselves as the inseparable colleagues of the same office, as the joint sovereigns of the Roman world and city, which were bounded by the same limits. After the fall of the Western monarchy, the majesty of the purple resided solely in the princes of Constantinople; and of these, Justinian was the first who, after a divorce of sixty years, regained the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted, by the right of conquest, the august title of Emperor of the Romans. [94] A motive of vanity or discontent solicited one of his successors, Constans the Second, to abandon the Thracian Bosphorus, and to restore the pristine honors of the Tyber: an extravagant project, (exclaims the malicious Byzantine,) as if he had despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or rather to expose, the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron. [95] But the sword of the Lombards opposed his settlement in Italy: he entered Rome not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive, and, after a visit of twelve days, he pillaged, and forever deserted, the ancient capital of the world. [96] The final revolt and separation of Italy was accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue. That legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of the campus and tribunals of the East. [97] But this foreign dialect was unknown to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic provinces, it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of the interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a short conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete institutions of human power: for the general benefit of his subjects, Justinian promulgated his novels in the two languages: the several parts of his voluminous jurisprudence were successively translated; [98] the original was forgotten, the version was studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic merit deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal, as well as popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and residence of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman idiom: Tiberius by the Arabs, [99] and Maurice by the Italians, [100] are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire: the silent revolution was accomplished before the death of Heraclius; and the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in the terms of jurisprudence and the acclamations of the palace. After the restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos, the names of Franks and Latins acquired an equal signification and extent; and these haughty Barbarians asserted, with some justice, their superior claim to the language and dominion of Rome. They insulted the alien of the East who had renounced the dress and idiom of Romans; and their reasonable practice will justify the frequent appellation of Greeks. [101] But this contemptuous appellation was indignantly rejected by the prince and people to whom it was applied. Whatsoever changes had been introduced by the lapse of ages, they alleged a lineal and unbroken succession from Augustus and Constantine; and, in the lowest period of degeneracy and decay, the name of Romans adhered to the last fragments of the empire of Constantinople. [102]
94 ([return])
[ Justinian, says the historian Agathias, (l. v. p. 157,). Yet the specific title of Emperor of the Romans was not used at Constantinople, till it had been claimed by the French and German emperors of old Rome.]
95 ([return])
[ Constantine Manasses reprobates this design in his barbarous verse, and it is confirmed by Theophanes, Zonaras, Cedrenus, and the Historia Miscella: voluit in urbem Romam Imperium transferre, (l. xix. p. 157 in tom. i. pars i. of the Scriptores Rer. Ital. of Muratori.)]
96 ([return])
[ Paul. Diacon. l. v. c. 11, p. 480. Anastasius in Vitis Pontificum, in Muratori’s Collection, tom. iii. pars i. p. 141.]