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of a love of fine writing is upon him;" an Ossianic admixture of poetic phraseology, with the most thread-bare prose, bombastic nothings, archaisms containing a jumble of all the dialects, pompous announcements of trivial and common-place sentiments, make the respectable author so frequently ridiculous, that we almost forget the merits concealed under the meretricious mask that he so fatally assumed. Yet is this history one of the most valuable in the series; indeed the greatest blockhead that ever scrawled paper could not have written the annals of Justinian's reign without being interesting. There were the heroic deeds of Belisarius and Narses, recalling for a brief space the hours of Roman glory; there was the Pagan religion, and there was the Pagan philosophy, beautiful in their falsehood, struggling in the last throes of mortal agony; Christianity, long victorious, was about to become permanently triumphant; the empires of Byzantium and Persia were "towering for the last time in their pride of place;" the twilight of civilization and literature, fondly lingering after a long and glorious day, was fast going down the sky, and leaving the way for gloom interrupted only by meteoric flashes, "like angel visits, few and far between." The impartiality of Agathias atones for many of his errors; so little does he favour either sect or party, that it is impossible to determine from his writings whether he was a Heathen or a Christian. The monkish commentators, with characteristic simplicity, infer from this that he was a Pagan, because, say they, "no Christian would have written so tenderly respecting Pagan opinions and superstitions;" but as we believe in the possible existence of Christianity without bigotry, and of religion unsullied by intolerance, we do not acknowledge the cogency of their inference. Not only was Agathias well acquainted with the policy and condition of the Byzantine court, but he had an extensive and accurate knowledge of its eastern contemporaries. His account of the celebrated Chosroes (or Nushirvan, as he is called by the Asiatics,) displays more acuteness in the developement of character, a more intimate acquaintance with eastern usages, and a greater readiness to do justice to an illustrious enemy, than was to be expected from the historian's age or nation. Chosroes was one of those fortunate individuals who have obtained immortal fame rather by their comparative than substantial merits. A despot in the worst sense of the word, he secured his power by the murder of his brethren, and rewarded the general to whom he owed his crown with a cruel death for performing an act of humanity: but in the eyes of the slavish Orientals, the firmness, stability and impartiality of his government more than atoned for its rigour; and his military prowess inspired respect among the Greeks, who had witnessed too many

instances of imperial iniquity to be shocked by these examples of royal cruelty. A smattering of knowledge was magnified by the ignorance and flattery of the Persian courtiers into the consummation of terrestrial wisdom, for "blessed are the one-eyed in the eity of the blind;" and not only the barbarians, but the Greeks themselves, adopted the belief that a half-educated prince was the very incarnation of intelligence. This mistake led to one of the most whimsical events recorded in history. Seven Athenian philosophers, wearied by Christian persecution, and pained at witnessing the downfall of their dynasty, resolved to visit Persia, where they expected to see the golden dreams of Plato amply realized. Agathias gives us an amusing account of their adven

tures.

"These seven, the topmost bloom, to speak poetically, of modern philosophers, displeased with the belief of a Superior Intelligence that prevailed among the Romans, deemed that the polity of the Persians was much superior, persuaded by the narratives, so extensively circulated, how the government was the most just, and what Plato describes, a perfect union of empire and philosophy. The obedience of subjects also was wise and decorous; neither thieves nor robbers existed, nor was any species of fraud perpetrated; if a person should leave the most precious article in a desert place, there it would remain, though unguarded, until the owner's return."

To this moral Eldorado the seven philosophers hastened with lofty hopes and high-wrought anticipations; but they were doomed to meet with disappointment.

"First they found that those who were in authority were proud and ostentatious beyond measure, and these they immoderately detested; then they beheld many house-breakers, robbers, and thieves, of whom some were taken, and others escaped. They saw every species of injustice flourish, for the rulers oppressed their inferiors, and behaved with great cruelty and inhumanity. And what was still more opposed to right reason, though each could marry as many wives as he pleased, and the privilege was freely used, yet adulterers were by no means uncommon. For all these reasons, the philosophers were grieved, and bitterly repented of their migration."

Thus disappointed, the illustrious seven returned to Greece; but it is gratifying to find that Chosroes, pleased with the confidence they had shown him, stipulated with Justinian for their future security.

The collection of the tracts on Legations is connected with this period of Roman history; we say Roman, for until the establishment of Charlemagne's empire in the West, we consider the Eastern empire as Roman rather than Byzantine. The volume contains many curious particulars of the negociations between the emperors and the various tribes of barbarians with whom a short

sighted policy induced them to form alliances; alliances productive of temporary benefits and permanent injuries. Here, for the first time, we find mention made of the Turks, a tribe of Tartars distinguished for the simplicity of their manners and the ferocity of their courage, just beginning to press on the other swarms that had previously quitted the Scythian hive. Little did the Eastern emperor, who first received the deputies of this tribe, and encouraged them to wage war against the Persians, deem that the representatives of the future possessors of Constantinople stood before him. The specimens of ancient diplomacy contained in this volume will well repay the student's toil; unfortunately they are preserved in too imperfect a form to interest the general reader, without longer explanations than our limits will allow.

The two volumes of Constantine the Porphyrogennete, contain a long and minute, but not a very interesting, account of the ceremonies used in the Byzantine court; such a history of childish form and unmeaning ritual it has never before been our fate to see, and we are utterly at a loss to discover how the volumes came to be introduced in this series. The imperial author, born to empire, as the epithet Porphyrogennete imports,* is, both as a sovereign and an author, a specimen of hopeless, helpless imbecility. His uncle, his mother, a usurping general, that general's sons, and the empress Helena, successively assumed the management of the state, while Constantine was writing bad books on the theory of government, and leaving to the several administrations worse practice. We cannot agree with the editors in their estimate of the instruction to be derived from this ponderous farrago; it may be, indeed it probably is true, that many usages of the Augustan court were preserved in Constantinople, but they were so mixed and adulterated with others of meaner growth, that it would be scarcely possible to disentangle them from the mass, and even if it were, the result would not be worth the trouble. It is also true that in these volumes we find a description of the splendid ceremonials and imposing forms of the Eastern church, in its high and palmy state, and that many of the observances here described are still preserved in the Russian church; but it needs not much toil to acquire the knowledge that the purity of Christianity has been sullied and obscured by ostentatious folly in every age, and that mummery will beget mummery to the end of the chapter. There is one topic which the imperial writer might have made interesting, the description of the factions of the circus, which, by a strange concatenation of events, became a kind

Literally "born in the purple or porphyry chamber," an apartment in the Byzantine palace reserved for the use of the pregnant empresses.

of order in the state; on this head, however, though we have many words, we have but few facts; the Porphyrogennete is as dull, dry, and unsatisfactory as he well can be, and his faithful commentators, "regis ad exemplar," contrive to leave the subject just as obscure as they found it.

As we proceed, the series begins to improve, the volume containing the works of Leo Diaconus being both the most interesting and the most complete in the collection. The period of which it treats is that in which the Byzantines, under the guidance of Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces obtained a momentary glimpse of former glory, when laurel wreaths once again covered the arches that had been bare for centuries, and the notes of triumph awoke echoes that had long ceased to respond to such sounds. Subjoined to the volume are, the Tract on military skirmishing, drawn up under the direction, and probably at the dictation of Nicephorus; the Acroasis of some court poet on the capture of Crete, which does not rise beyond the ordinary level of a laureate's verses; an account of an Embassy sent from the western to the eastern emperor, and the Arabic accounts of the Asiatic campaigns of Nicephorus. Leo's style is florid and inflated, but his matter compensates for the faults of his manner; he displays an undeviating honesty of purpose and a manly candour, which we should scarcely have expected from the contemporary of a despot. A comparison of his narrative of the Syrian war with the accounts given by the Arabic historians, proves that he did "nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice," but executed his task with strict and stern fidelity. But the account that Luitprand, the ambassador of the emperor Otho, gives of the Byzantine court, and his reception by Nicephorus, is the gem of the volume. Luitprand was sent to demand the hand of one of the Byzantine princesses for his master, but Nicephorus imprisoned the unfortunate ambassador, overwhelmed him with the grossest insults when he dared to complain, half poisoned him with the abominations of Constantinopolitan cookery, and shocked his religious prejudices by sundry observances, which one church regarded as mortal sins, and the other as absolutely essential to salvation. Luitprand took a characteristic revenge; he scrawled some barbarous hexameters, vituperating Byzantium and all that it contained more bitterly than poetically; he wrote to his master a lengthy epistle descriptive of his sufferings among "the beasts in semi-human shape," to whom he had been sent, and quitted Constantinople with a fierce malediction on a capital so inhospitable and heretical. It is curious to compare his description of Nicephorus with that of Leo; the outlines of both portraits are the

same, but the general effect of the pictures is as different as possible.

"He was," says the Byzantine," of a complexion more dark than fair; his hair was long and black; his eyes black and thoughtful, shaded by heavy brows; his nose neither large nor small, a little hooked at the extremity; his beard was trim and regular, but a few grey hairs were on his cheeks; his form was round and firm, his breast and shoulders were broad; in strength he seemed another Hercules. In prudence, in moderation, and in singular readiness of wit to take immediate advantage of every opportunity, he excelled all his equals."

Luitprand gives a less favourable description.

"I found him," says the enraged prelate, "a man perfectly monstrous, pigmy-sized, fat-headed, mole-eyed, with a short, broad, coarse and greyish beard, covered like Jopas with long thick hair; an Æthiopian in colour, one whom you would not like to meet at midnight; pot-bellied, with thighs disproportionately long, legs very short, and splay-footed; clad in woollen dress of a dirty white colour that stunk from age and filth, wearing Sicyonian shoes, insolent in speech, a fox in cunning, a Ulysses in perjury and lying."

A still more ludicrous portraiture is given when Luitprand proceeds to give his master a flattering interpretation of a popular prophecy which it appears was current both in eastern and western Europe. This Delphic prediction was, "the lion and the cub shall destroy the wild ass;" which the Greeks understood to signify that the eastern and western emperors should destroy the Saracens. Luitprand indignantly rejects this explanation, proves indisputably that Nicephorus was not a lion, but rather a wild ass, and that the lion and cub were beyond doubt Otho and his son, to whom he promises a speedy victory over the ass Nicephorus, as soon as they should turn their arms against the east. The good bishop's valediction to Constantinople must not be omitted.

"On the second of October, at ten o'clock, having departed from that city, once most opulent and flourishing, but now starved, perjured, deceitful, lying, fraudulent, rapacious, covetous, avaricious and vainglorious, after forty-nine days of ass-riding, walking, horse-driving, hungering, thirsting, sighing, groaning, weeping and scolding, I came to Naupactus."

The western bishop seems to have been very unfavourably disposed to his episcopal brethren of the eastern church. He says,

"In all Greece I did not find one hospitable bishop. They are rich, but they are also poor; rich in gold pieces, but poor in their utensils. They sit down by themselves to a naked table, serving up for their food ship-biscuit, sipping, not drinking, from a moderate glass. They are buyers and sellers, porters and door-keepers, butlers and grooms, capons and caupons, (inn-keepers,) &c."

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