CH. LIII.] MEMORIALS OF THE GREEK EMPIRE.

181

CHAPTER LIII.-STATE OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE IN THE TENTH CENTURY.-EXTENT AND DIVISION.-WEALTH AND REVENUE.-PALACE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.-TITLES AND OFFICES.-PRIDE AND POWER OF THE EMPERORS.-TACTICS OF THE GREEKS, ARABS, AND FRANKS.— LOSS OF THE LATIN TONGUE. STUDIES AND SOLITUDE OF THE GREEKS.

A BAY of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,* which he composed at a mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to unfold the state of the Eastern empire, both in peace and war, both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of Constantinople, according to his own practice and that of his predecessors. In the second he attempts an accurate survey of the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of Europe and Asia. The system of Roman tactics, the discipline and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections, which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo.§

* The epithet of Пoppuрoyevnтos, Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple, is elegantly defined by Claudian:

Ardua privatos nescit fortuna Penates;

Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas
Excepit Tyrio venerabile pignus in ostro.

And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many
passages expressive of the same idea.
A splendid MS. of
Constantine, de Ceremoniis Aulæ et Ecclesiæ Byzantine, wandered
from Constantinople to Buda, Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was
published in a splendid edition by Leich and Reiske (A.D. 1751, in
folio), with such lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the
worthy or worthless object of their toil.
See, in the first

volume of Banduri's Imperium Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando Imperio, p. 45-127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of Meursius is corrected from a MS. of the royal library of Paris, which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen (Epist. ad Polybium, p. 10), and the sense is illustrated by two maps of William De L'Isle, the prince of geographers, till the appearance of the greater D'Anville. The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published with the aid of some new MSS. in the great edition of the works of Meursius, by the learned John Lami (tom. vi. p. 531— 920. 1211-1417, Florent. 1745), yet the text is still corrupt and mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial

182

THE BASILICS AND GEOPONICS.

*

[CH LIII. In the fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labours of the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and history, might redound to the benefit of the subject, and the honour of the Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics, the code of the pandects of civil jurispru dence, were gradually framed in the three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty. The art of agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens, of the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponicst of Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and virtue were methodised in fifty-three books, and every citizen might apply to his contemporaries or himself the lesson or the warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator, the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a teacher and a scribe; and if his successors and subjects were regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy.

A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift,

library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new editor. (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)

*On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. tom. xii. p. 425-514), and Heineccius (Hist. Juris Romani, p. 396-399), and Giannone (Istoria Civile de Napoli, tom. i. p. 450-458), as historical civilians, may be usefully consulted. XLI. books of this Greek code have been published with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Fabrottus (Paris, 1647), in seven tomes in folio; four other books have been since discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman's Novus Thesaurus Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books, John Leunclavius has printed (Basil, 1575), an eclogue or synopsis. The CXIII. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found in the Corpus Juris Civilis. [Much labour has since been bestowed on the Basilica by Dutch and German jurists. See Brunet, vol. ii. page 260-261, edit. 1842.-ED.] + I have used the last and best edition of the Geoponics (by Nicolas Niclas, Lipsiæ, 1781, two vols. in octavo). I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two books of Hippiatrica, or horse-physic, were published at Paris, 1530, in folio (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 493-500).

Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus, Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603), and de Virtutibus et Vitiis (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris, 1634).

CH. LIII.]

THEIR IMPERFECTIONS.

183

and the gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these imperial treasures we may still deplore our poverty and ignorance; and the fading glories of their authors will be obliterated by indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink to a broken copy, a partial and mutilated version in the Greek language, of the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is often superseded by the influence of bigotry; and the absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money, enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life. In the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a pitch of energy and elevation the human character had formerly aspired. But a contrary effect must have been produced by a new edition of the lives of the saints which the great logothete, or chancellor of the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was enriched by the fabulous and florid legends of Simeon the Metaphrast.* The merits and miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage, than the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the Creator, and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in expounding the precepts of the destroying art, which has been taught since the days of Xenophon,† as the art of heroes and kings. But the

The life and writings of Simeon Metaphrastes are described by Hankius (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460). This biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible of the original texture. + According to the first book of the Cyropædia, professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood. A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new MSS. and his learning might illustrate the military history of the ancients. But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and alas! Quintus Icilius is no more. [The Mémoires Militaires of M. Guischardt (see note, ch. 56, and Gibbon's Misc. 5. 218-222), were so highly appreciated, that, although he had seen but a short term of service as ensign in a Dutch regiment, Frederick of Prussia appointed him immediately to a distinguished post, and indirectly comparing himself to Julius Cæsar, called his new aide-de-camp Quintus Icilius, by which name he was afterwards generally known.`M. Niebuhr gives

184

:

or

TACTICS OF LEO AND CONSTANTINE. [CH. LIII. Tactics of Leo and Constantine are mingled with the baser alloy of the age in which they lived. It was destitute of original genius; they implicitly transcribe the rules and maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was unskilled in the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound the most distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and Theodosius. Even the use, at least the importance, of these military rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory is dictated by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the application. The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather than by study the talents of a commander are appropriated to those calm, though rapid minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a moment; and the + battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. The book of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state since the gradual decay of the purity of the one, and the power of the other: A review of the themes or provinces might promise such authentic and useful information, as the curiosity of government only can obtain, instead of traditionary fables on the origin of the cities, and malicious epigrams on the vices of their inhabitants.* Such information the historian would have been pleased to record; nor should his silence be condemned if the most interesting objects, the population of the capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the numbers of subjects and

him the credit of being the only modern writer on tactics, who understood the Roman system. Lectures, 1. 440, note.-ED.]

* After observing that the demerit of the Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus:

Καππαδόκην ποτ ̓ ἔχιδνα κακὴ δάκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὴ
Κάτθανε, γευσαμένη αἱματος ἰοβόλου.

The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram against
Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron-Eh bien? Le serpent
en mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the Anthology,
I should be curious to learn through what channel it was conveyed for
their imitation. (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Themat. c. 2. Brunck.
Analect. Græc. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodai Anthologia. 1. 2, p. 244.)

CH. LIII.]

EMBASSY OF LUITPRAND.

185

strangers who served under the imperial standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are delineated with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century his style is glowing, his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and passions of Luitprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and genius.* From this scanty fund of foreign and domestic materials I shall investigate the form and substance of the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil government and military force, the character and literature, of the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of Heraclius to the successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.

After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany overspread the provinces, and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion: her limits were inviolate, or at least entire ; and the kingdom of Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbours of Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The remaining provinces, under the obedience

* The Legatio Luitprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad Nicephorum Phocam, is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii.