Popular superstitions are extremely rife at this time in the Orient; a few examples of such may be here given. In choosing a name for a child it is the practice to light a number of candles, and to christen them by various names; the candle which burns longest is then selected to convey its appellation to the infant as an earnest of long life.[500] Another custom is to take a baby to one of the public baths and to sign its forehead with some of the sedimental mud found there as a charm against the evil eye and all the powers of enchantment.[501] Amulets are commonly worn, hung about the neck, and of these, miniature copies of the Gospels are in great favour, especially for the protection of infants.[502] Should a merchant on his way to business for the day first meet with a sacred virgin, he curses his luck and anticipates a bad issue to any pending negotiations; on the contrary, should the first woman he encounters be a prostitute, he rejoices in the auspicious omen with which his day has opened.[503] At funerals the old Roman custom of hiring females to act as mourners, who keep up a discordant wailing and shed tears copiously at will, is still maintained.[504] Black clothes are worn as a mark of sorrow for the dead.[505] Great extravagance is often shown in the erection of handsome sepulchral monuments.[506]

That the capital of the East, and by inference the whole Empire, is a hotbed of vice and immorality will impress itself on the mind of the most superficial reader. The dissoluteness of youth is in fact so appalling that the most sane of fathers resort to the extreme measure of expelling their sons from home in a penniless state, with the view that after a term of trial and hardship they may return as reformed and chastened members to the family circle.[507] Yet to complete the picture one other sin against morality must be mentioned, which travels beyond the belief and almost eludes the conception of any ordinary mind. The incredible perversion of sexual instinct named paederasty is still more than ever rife in the principal cities of the East. Idealized by the Greek philosophers,[508] tolerated by the later Republic,[509] and almost deified[510] under many of the pagan emperors,[511] it has withstood the pronouncements of Trajan and Alexander,[512] the diatribes of the Christian Fathers,[513] and even the laws of Constantius and Valentinian, by which such delinquents are condemned to be burnt alive.[514] Preaching at Antioch a century before this time, the earnest and fearless Chrysostom cannot refrain from expressing his amazement that that metropolis, in its open addiction to this vice, does not meet with the biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.[515] Nor is there any evidence to refute the assumption that Constantinople at the beginning of the sixth century is in this respect less impure than the Syrian capital.[516]

The Byzantine coinage, which has been recast by Anastasius, consists of gold, silver, and copper. The standard gold coin, the aureus or solidus, subdivides the pound[517] of gold into seventy-two equal parts, and is, therefore, to be valued at nearly twelve English shillings. Halves and thirds of the aureus are regularly minted for circulation. There is also a silver solidus which weighs nearly fifteen times as much as that of gold.[518] Twelfths, twenty-fourths, and forty-eighths of this coin are issued; they are named the milliaresion, the siliqua, and the half-siliqua respectively. In the copper coinage at the head of the list stands the follis, two hundred and ten of which are contained in the solidus.[519] Hence the milliaresion is not much less in value than a shilling, whilst the follis represents but little more than a halfpenny. Yet the follis is divided hypothetically into forty nummia, but pieces of five nummia are the smallest coins in actual use,[520] approximately quarter-farthings, and less even than continental centimes, etc. The money of old Byzantium was generally figured with a crescent and a star, or with a dolphin contorted round a trident,[521] but the Imperial coinage of Constantinople is stamped on the obverse with the bust of the reigning emperor,[522] and on the reverse, in the case of gold or silver pieces, with a figure of Victory bearing a cross and a crown or some similar device. On the reverse of copper coins, with accompanying crosses and even crescents, we find a large letter—M, K, I, or E—indicating that they contain 40, 20, 10, or 5 nummia respectively. As specimens of art the coinage of this epoch appears degraded to the most uncritical eye.[523]

The population of Constantinople in the sixth century is unknown, but it may be estimated with some approach to accuracy at considerably over a million of inhabitants.[524] The suburbs also are extremely populous, and for many miles around the capital, both in Europe and Asia, are covered with opulent country villas, farmhouses, and innumerable habitations of meaner residents.[525] In this district are situated immense reservoirs for water, and many of the valleys are spanned by imposing aqueducts raised by a double series of lofty arches to a great height.[526] At a distance of thirty-two miles westwards from the city is situated the Long Wall, a stupendous bulwark against the inroads of barbarians, built by Anastasius in 512. It stretches between the Euxine and Propontis, a range of nearly fifty miles, and forms also a safe and facile road for those travelling from sea to sea.[527]

The description of manners given in this chapter, although nominally applied only to Constantinople, may be received as illustrating at this date the social features of the whole Roman Empire; or, to speak more accurately, of the Grecian fragment of that empire which once extended universally over Latins and Greeks.

Before concluding this sociological exposition of the Graeco-Roman people during the period I am treating of, a brief reference to their language may be deemed essential to the integrity of the subject. Viewed from the philological side the aspect of the Byzantines is peculiar and, perhaps, unique,[528] since to them may fairly be applied the epithet of a trilingual nation. By the union of the Roman and Greek factors of the Empire the Latin tongue, as the official means of expression, became engrafted on the Eastern provinces;[529] and in the lapse of centuries a third mode of speech, a popular vernacular,[530] has been evolved, which often has little affinity with the first two. Sustained by the solid foundations of laws and literature, Latin and Greek of a more or less classical cast[531] are the requisite equipment of every one who aims at civil or military employment in any governmental department,[532] or who even pretends to recognition as a person of average culture. In the pride of original supremacy we may perceive that citizens of Latin lineage despise the feeble Greeks who forfeited nationality and independence, whilst the latter, pluming themselves on their inheritance of the harmonious tongue in which are enshrined all the masterpieces of poetry and philosophy, contemn the uninspired genius of the Romans, whose efforts to create a literature never soared above imitation and plagiarism.[533]

CHAPTER II
THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS: THE INHERITANCE OF JUSTINIAN

That a spirit of dominion was implanted in the breasts of those early settlers or refugees who rallied around Romulus, when, about 750 B.C., he raised his standard on the Palatine hill, is made plain by the subsequent history of that infant community; and the native daring which first won wives for a colony of outcasts, foreshadowed the career of conquest and empire which eventually attached itself to the Roman name.[534] Contemned, doubtless, and disregarded by their more reputable neighbours as a band of adventurers with nothing to lose, in despair of being respected they determined to make themselves feared; and the original leaven was infused through every further accretion of population, and was entailed as an inheritance on all succeeding generations who peopled the expanding city of the Tiber. When their kings threatened to become despotic they drove them out; when the patricians attempted to maintain an exclusive control the more numerous plebs revolted and gradually achieved the establishment of a republic, in which political honours and aristocracy became synonymous with the ability to fill, or the energy to gain, a ruling position. They devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the task of self-government, and sacrificed their private interests to the welfare of the Republic. Without history and without science, inflated by ambition within their narrow sphere, they applied the conception of immortality, which millenniums would not justify, to being acclaimed in the ephemeral fervour of the populace or to being remembered for a few decades in the finite language of poetry and rhetoric.

While the Roman state was in its cradle a citizen and a soldier were equivalent terms, and every man gave his military service as a free contribution to the general welfare of the public. But as wars became frequent and aggressive, and armies were compelled to keep the field for indefinite periods, a system of payment[535] was introduced in order to compensate the soldier for the enforced neglect of his family duties. By the continued growth of the military system, war became a profession, veteran legions sprang into existence, and generals, whose rank was virtually permanent, became a power among the troops and a menace to the state. Finally the transition was made from a republic governed by a democracy to an empire ruled by the army. In the meantime the dominion of Rome had been extended on all sides to the great natural barriers of its position on the hemisphere; to the Atlantic ocean on the west, to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euxine on the north, to the Euphrates on the east, and on the south to the securest frontier of all, the impassable deserts of Libya and Arabia.

The first emperors affected to rule as civil magistrates and accepted their appointment from the Senate, but their successors assumed the purple as the nominees of the troops, and often held it by right of conquest over less able competitors.[536] Concurrently the Imperial city had been insensibly undergoing a transformation; by the persistent influx of strangers of diverse nationalities its ethnical homogeneity was lost;[537] a new and more populous Rome, in which the traditions of republican freedom were dissipated, was evolved; and the inhabitants without a murmur saw themselves deprived of the right to elect their own magistrates.[538] The laws of the Republic were submitted for ratification to the citizens, but in the ascent to absolutism the emperor became the sole legislator of the nation.[539] The elevation of an emperor seemed at first to be an inalienable privilege of the metropolis, and the original line of Caesars necessarily descended from a genuine Roman stock; but in little more than a century the instability of this law was made plain, and many an able general of provincial blood was raised to the purple at his place of casual sojourn.[540] In the sequel, when men of an alien race, who neither knew nor revered Rome, obtained the first rank, they chose their place of residence according to some native preference or in view of its utility as a base for military operations. The simultaneous assumption of the purple by several candidates in different localities, each at the head of an army, foreboded the division of the Empire; and after the second century an avowed sharing of the provinces became the rule rather than the exception. As each partner resided within his own territory, Rome gradually became neglected and at last preserved only a semblance of being the capital of the Empire.[541] But after Constantine founded a capital of his own choice even this semblance was lost, and the new Rome on the Bosphorus assumed the highest political rank. From this event we may mark the beginning of mediaevalism, of the passing of western Europe under the cloud of the dark ages; and the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West was achieved by the barbarians within the following century and a half. In 395 a final partition of the Empire, naturally halved as it was by the Adriatic sea, was made; and the incapable sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius,[542] were seated as independent sovereigns on thrones in the East and West. During this period a central administrative energy to uphold Rome as an Imperial seat was entirely wanting; and a succession of feeble emperors maintained a mere shadow of authority while their provinces were being appropriated by the surplus populations of the north. Italy and south-west Gaul became the prey of East and West Goths; the valorous Franks under Clovis founded a kingdom which made itself permanently respected under the name of France; Vandals, with kindred tribes, gained possession of Spain and even erected a monarchy in north Africa, which extended beyond the limits of ancient Carthage; Britain, divested of Roman soldiers in 409, for centuries became the goal of acquisitive incursions by the maritime hordes who issued from the adjacent seaboards, Saxons, Angles, and Danes.