Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
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Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.
Part I.
State Of The Barbaric World. - Establishment Of The Lombards
On the Danube. - Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians. - Origin,
Empire, And Embassies Of The Turks. - The Flight Of The Avars. -
Chosroes I, Or Nushirvan, King Of Persia. - His Prosperous Reign
And Wars With The Romans. - The Colchian Or Lazic War. - The
Aethiopians.
Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common
faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue,
either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much
by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend
above the level of their age and country; and the same stature,
which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear
conspicuous in a race of pygmies. Leonidas, and his three
hundred companions, devoted their lives at Thermopylae; but the
education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and
almost insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would
approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and
eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. ^1
The great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had
defeated in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen
hundred cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea: ^2 but the
fortune of Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were
oppressed by their own fears, and the invincible legions which he
commanded, had been formed by the habits of conquest and the
discipline of ages. In this view, the character of Belisarius
may be deservedly placed above the heroes of the ancient
republics. His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the
times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or
reflection; he raised himself without a master or a rival; and so
inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole
advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his
adversaries. Under his command, the subjects of Justinian often
deserved to be called Romans: but the unwarlike appellation of
Greeks was imposed as a term of reproach by the haughty Goths;
who affected to blush, that they must dispute the kingdom of
Italy with a nation of tragedians pantomimes, and pirates. ^3 The
climate of Asia has indeed been found less congenial than that of
Europe to military spirit: those populous countries were
enervated by luxury, despotism, and superstition; and the monks
were more expensive and more numerous than the soldiers of the
East. The regular force of the empire had once amounted to six
hundred and forty- five thousand men: it was reduced, in the time
of Justinian, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and this number,
large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over the sea and land;
in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt, on the banks of the
Danube, the coast of the Euxine, and the frontiers of Persia.
The citizen was exhausted, yet the soldier was unpaid; his
poverty was mischievously soothed by the privilege of rapine and
indolence; and the tardy payments were detained and intercepted
by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without courage or
danger, the emoluments of war. Public and private distress
recruited the armies of the state; but in the field, and still
more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always
defective. The want of national spirit was supplied by the
precarious faith and disorderly service of Barbarian mercenaries.
Even military honor, which has often survived the loss of virtue
and freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were
multiplied beyond the example of former times, labored only to
prevent the success, or to sully the reputation of their
colleagues; and they had been taught by experience, that if merit
sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or even guilt, would
obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. ^4 In such an age,
the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine with
incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest
shades of disgrace and calamity. While the lieutenant of
Justinian subdued the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the
emperor, ^5 timid, though ambitious, balanced the forces of the
Barbarians, fomented their divisions by flattery and falsehood,
and invited by his patience and liberality the repetition of
injuries. ^6 The keys of Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna, were
presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was destroyed by the
Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of
Constantinople.
[Footnote 1: It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read
Herodotus, (l. vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615.) The conversation
of Xerxes and Demaratus at Thermopylae is one of the most
interesting and moral scenes in history. It was the torture of
the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish and remorse, the virtue
of his country.]
[Footnote 2: See this proud inscription in Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
-
27.) Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and
disgrace; nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking
example of the vicissitudes of fortune, and the vanity of human
wishes.]
[Footnote 3: This last epithet of Procopius is too nobly
translated by pirates; naval thieves is the proper word;
strippers of garments, either for injury or insult, (Demosthenes
contra Conon Reiske, Orator, Graec. tom. ii. p. 1264.)]
[Footnote 4: See the third and fourth books of the Gothic War:
the writer of the Anecdotes cannot aggravate these abuses.]
[Footnote 5: Agathias, l. v. p. 157, 158. He confines this
weakness of the emperor and the empire to the old age of
Justinian; but alas! he was never young.]
[Footnote 6: This mischievous policy, which Procopius (Anecdot.
-
19) imputes to the emperor, is revealed in his epistle to a
Scythian prince, who was capable of understanding it.]
Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to
the state, since they abolished the important barrier of the
Upper Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric
and his daughter. For the defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated
Pannonia and Noricum, which they left in a peaceful and
flourishing condition: the sovereignty was claimed by the emperor
of the Romans; the actual possession was abandoned to the
boldness of the first invader. On the opposite banks of the
Danube, the plains of Upper Hungary and the Transylvanian hills
were possessed, since the death of Attila, by the tribes of the
Gepidae, who respected the Gothic arms, and despised, not indeed
the gold of the Romans, but the secret motive of their annual
subsidies. The vacant fortifications of the river were instantly
occupied by these Barbarians; their standards were planted on the
walls of Sirmium and Belgrade; and the ironical tone of their
apology aggravated this insult on the majesty of the empire. "So
extensive, O Caesar, are your dominions, so numerous are your
cities, that you are continually seeking for nations to whom,
either in peace or in war, you may relinquish these useless
possessions. The Gepidae are your brave and faithful allies; and
if they have anticipated your gifts, they have shown a just
confidence in your bounty." Their presumption was excused by the
mode of revenge which Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting
the rights of a sovereign for the protection of his subjects, the
emperor invited a strange people to invade and possess the Roman
provinces between the Danube and the Alps and the ambition of the
Gepidae was checked by the rising power and fame of the Lombards.
^7 This corrupt appellation has been diffused in the thirteenth
century by the merchants and bankers, the Italian posterity of
these savage warriors: but the original name of Langobards is
expressive only of the peculiar length and fashion of their
beards. I am not disposed either to question or to justify their
Scandinavian origin; ^8 nor to pursue the migrations of the
Lombards through unknown regions and marvellous adventures.
About the time of Augustus and Trajan, a ray of historic light
breaks on the darkness of their antiquities, and they are
discovered, for the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder.
Fierce, beyond the example of the Germans, they delighted to
propagate the tremendous belief, that their heads were formed
like the heads of dogs, and that they drank the blood of their
enemies, whom they vanquished in battle. The smallness of their
numbers was recruited by the adoption of their bravest slaves;
and alone, amidst their powerful neighbors, they defended by arms
their high-spirited independence. In the tempests of the north,
which overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of
the Lombards still floated on the surface: they gradually
descended towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end of
four hundred years, they again appear with their ancient valor
and renown. Their manners were not less ferocious. The
assassination of a royal guest was executed in the presence, and
by the command, of the king's daughter, who had been provoked by
some words of insult, and disappointed by his diminutive stature;
and a tribute, the price of blood, was imposed on the Lombards,
by his brother the king of the Heruli. Adversity revived a sense
of moderation and justice, and the insolence of conquest was
chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the
Heruli, who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. ^9
The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship
of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they
passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the
cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit
of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample limits; they
wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium,
and presumed, with familiar rudeness to enter the towns and
houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had
escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the
sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers,
were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor; but the
arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of
thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the
Gepidae. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before
the throne of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom
the Barbarians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial
and ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by
slow and ineffectual succors. Their strength was formidable,
since the Lombards, who sent into the field several myriads of
soldiers, still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of
the Romans. Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the
uncertainty of courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck
with a panic; they fled from each other, and the rival kings
remained with their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A
short truce was obtained; but their mutual resentment again
kindled; and the remembrance of their shame rendered the next
encounter more desperate and bloody Forty thousand of the
Barbarians perished in the decisive battle, which broke the power
of the Gepidae, transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian,
and first displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince
of the Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy. ^10
[Footnote 7: Gens Germana feritate ferocior, says Velleius
Paterculus of the Lombards, (ii. 106.) Langobardos paucitas
nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per
obsequium, sed praeliis et perilitando, tuti sunt, (Tacit. de
Moribus German. c. 40.) See likewise Strabo, (l. viii. p. 446.)
The best geographers place them beyond the Elbe, in the bishopric
of Magdeburgh and the middle march of Brandenburgh; and their
situation will agree with the patriotic remark of the count de
Hertzberg, that most of the Barbarian conquerors issued from the
same countries which still produce the armies of Prussia.
Note: See Malte Brun, vol. i. p 402. - M]
[Footnote 8: The Scandinavian origin of the Goths and Lombards,
as stated by Paul Warnefrid, surnamed the deacon, is attacked by
Cluverius, (Germania, Antiq. l. iii. c. 26, p. 102, &c.,) a
native of Prussia, and defended by Grotius, (Prolegom. ad Hist.
Goth. p. 28, &c.,) the Swedish Ambassador.]
[Footnote 9: Two facts in the narrative of Paul Diaconus (l. i.
-
20) are expressive of national manners: 1. Dum ad tabulam
luderet - while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia
lina. The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce,
agriculture, and manufactures]
[Footnote 10: I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the
facts in Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 14, l. iii. c. 33, 34, l.
-
c. 18, 25,) Paul Diaconus, (de Gestis Langobard, l. i. c. 1 -
23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 405 -
419,) and Jornandes, (de Success. Regnorum, p. 242.) The patient
reader may draw some light from Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, and
Annotat. xxiii.) and De Buat, (Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. ix.
-
xi.)]
The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of
Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of
Justinian, under the two great families of the Bulgarians ^11 and
the Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who
touched the Euxine and the Lake Maeotis, derived from the Huns
their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and
well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and
dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh,
of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to
whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were
practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was
divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each
other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the
friendship, or rather the gifts, of the emperor; and the
distinctions which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and
the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only
verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. ^12
The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by
Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian
name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic
Sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same
race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the
possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however
distant or adverse, used one common language, (it was harsh and
irregular,) and where known by the resemblance of their form,
which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and approached without
attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German.
Four thousand six hundred villages ^13 were scattered over the
provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built
of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron.
Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the
banks of rivers, or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps,
without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver;
which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water,
for the escape of the savage inhabitant, an animal less cleanly,
less diligent, and less social, than that marvellous quadruped.
The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor of the natives,
supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their sheep and
horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they
sowed with millet or panic ^14 afforded, in place of bread, a
coarse and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their
neighbors compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but
on the appearance of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a
people, whose unfavorable character is qualified by the epithets
of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their supreme god, they
adored an invisible master of the thunder. The rivers and the
nymphs obtained their subordinate honors, and the popular worship
was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The Sclavonians disdained
to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate; but their
experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to
compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary
respect was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or village
existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where
none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and
except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor; their
weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows,
and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance,
and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field, the
Sclavonian infantry was dangerous by their speed, agility, and
hardiness: they swam, they dived, they remained under water,
drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and a river or lake
was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these
were the achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art
was unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their
conquests were inglorious. ^15
[Footnote 11: I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from
Ennodius, (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p.
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