[33] Ibid, Tom. iii. p. 31.
[34] De Bello Gotthico, iii. 35.
[35] Agathias, lib. v. c. 6, p. 159, ed. Paris.—The conversion of royal guards into cheesemongers is by no means a very uncommon corruption. The dreaded janissaries degenerated into a corporation of hucksters and green-grocers. The Hellenic kingdom, founded as an incorporation of the spirit of anarchy and despotism, by the grace of the foreign secretaries of the three great powers of >Europe, possesses a more singular body of military than even the defunct Ottoman corps of green-grocers. It consists of officers without troops. Its inventor, Armansperg, the quintessence of Bavarian corruption in Greece, called it the Phalanx.
[36] Agathias, v. ii. p. 161, ed. Paris.
[37] The authentic history of the last events of the life of Belisarius must be gathered from Theophanes, p. 201, John Malalas, p. 239, and Cedrenus, p. 387. Though, perhaps, Cedrenus may be objected to as living too long after these events. Theophanes died in 817 at the age of 60. His chronography ends with the year 813. John Malalas lived in the ninth century. The chronicle of Cedrenus ends with the year 1057.
[38] Pandects, xlvii. tit. 18. 1, s. 23.—Quæstioni fidem non semper, nec tamen nunquam habendum, constitutionibus declaratur; etenim res est fragilis, et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat.—Every one conversant with the social condition of the people of the East, (and probably it is the case under all despotic governments,) knows the extreme difficulty of obtaining judicial evidence that can be relied on, and the temptation judges incur to sanction torture. Hence the common assertion of public functionaries, that torture is absolutely necessary to secure the administration of justice; and of course people who require torture to persuade them to speak the truth, are unfit for self-government and constitutional liberty. Thus falsehood and oppression are perpetuated, and truth kept perpetually at bay.
[39] Joannis Antiocheni cognomenti Malalæ Historia Chronica. Pars altera, p. 84, ed. Venet.
[40] Theophanis Chronographia, p. 201, ed. Paris. The accounts of Theophanes and Malalas must be compared together, as the comparison establishes the fact that they were both drawn from official sources. See also p. 202, 203, and note.
[41] Georgius Codinus de Originibus Constantinopolitanis, p. 54.
[42] Georgii Cedreni Compendium Historiarum, p. 387.