50

Justinian's last years

[548-565 unpaid army became disorganised and weak. Without money to maintain an effective force and provision the posts, the badly defended frontier gave way under the assault of the barbarians, and, to get rid of them, recourse was had to a ruinous diplomacy, which did not even protect the Empire against invasions. Without money the attempted administrative reform had to be abandoned, and the vices of an openly corrupt administration to be condoned. Without money the government was driven to strange expedients, often most unsuitable to its economic as to its financial policy. To meet expenses the burden of taxation was increased until it became almost intolerable; and as time passed, and the disproportion between the colossal aims of the imperial ambition and the condition of the financial resources of the monarchy became greater, the difficulty of overcoming the deficit led to even harsher measures. "The State," wrote Justinian in 552, “greatly enlarged by the divine mercy and led by this increase to make war on her barbaric neighbours, has never been in greater need of money than to-day." Justinian exercised all his ingenuity to find this money at any sacrifice, but in spite of real economies amongst others the suppression of the consulship (541) — by which he tried to restore some proportion to the Empire's budget, the Emperor could never decide to curtail his luxury, or his building operations, while the money which had been collected with such difficulty was too often squandered to please favourites or upon whims. Therefore a terrible financial tyranny was established in the provinces, which effected the ruin of the West already overwhelmed by war, of the Balkan peninsula ravaged by barbarians, and of Asia fleeced by Chosroes. The time came when it was impossible to drag anything from these exhausted countries, and seeing the general misery, the growing discontent and the suspicions which increased every day, contemporaries asked, with a terrified stupor, "whither the wealth of Rome had vanished." Thus the end of the reign was strangely sad.

The death of Theodora (June 548), while it deprived the Emperor of a vigorous and faithful counsellor, dealt Justinian a blow from which he never recovered. Henceforth, as his age increased - he was 65 then the defects of his character only became more prominent. His irresolution was more noticeable, while his theological mania was inflamed. He disregarded military matters, finding the direction of the wars which he had so dearly loved tiresome and useless; he cared more for the exercise of a diplomacy, often pitifully inadequate, than for the prestige of arms. Above all, he carried on everything with an ever-increasing carelessness. Leaving the trouble of finding money at any cost to his ministers, to Peter Barsymes the successor of John of Cappadocia, and to the quaestor Constantine, the successor of Tribonian, he gave himself up to religious quarrels, passing his nights in disputations with his bishops. As Corippus, a man not noted for severity towards princes, wrote "The old man no longer cared for anything; his spirit was in heaven."

551-565]

Death of Justinian

51

Under these circumstances, everything was lost. The effective force of the army, which ought to have numbered 645,000 men, was reduced to 150,000 at the most in 555. No garrisons defended the ramparts of the dilapidated fortresses, "Even the barking of a watch-dog was not to be heard" wrote Agathias, somewhat brutally. Even the capital, inadequately protected by the wall of Anastasius, which was breached in a thousand places, only had a few regiments of the palatine guardsoldiers of no military worth-to defend it, and was at the mercy of a sudden attack. Added to this, successive invasions took place in Illyricum and Thrace; the Huns only just failed to take Constantinople in 558, while in 562 the Avars insolently demanded land and money from the Emperor.

Then there was the misery of earthquakes, in 551 in Palestine, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia, in 554 and 557 at Constantinople. It was in 556 that the scourge of famine came, and in 558 the plague, which desolated the capital during six months. Above all there was the increasing misery caused by the financial tyranny. During the last years of the reign the only supplies came from such expedients as the debasement of the coinage, forced loans and confiscations. The Blues and Greens again filled Byzantium with disturbances: in 553, 556, 559, 560, 561, 562, and 564 there were tumults in the streets, and incendiarism in the town. In the palace the indecision as to a successor led to continual intrigues: already the nephews of the basileus quarrelled over their heritage. There was even a conspiracy against the Emperor's life, and on this occasion Justinian's distrust caused the disgrace of Belisarius once more for a few weeks (562).

Thus when the Emperor died (November 565) at the age of 83 years, relief was felt throughout the Empire. In ending this account of Justinian's reign the grave Evagrius wrote, "Thus died this prince, after having filled the whole world with noise and troubles: and having since the end of his life received the wages of his misdeeds, he has gone to seek the justice which was his due before the judgment-seat of hell." He certainly left a formidable heritage to his successors, perils menacing all the frontiers, an exhausted Empire, in which the public authority was weakened in the provinces by the development of the great feudal estates, in the capital by the growth of a turbulent proletariat, susceptible to every panic and ready for every sedition. The monarchy had no strength with which to meet all these dangers. In a novel of Justin II promulgated the day after Justinian's death we read the following, word for word-"We found the treasury crushed by debts and reduced to the last degree of poverty, and the army so completely deprived of all necessaries that the State was exposed to the incessant invasions and insults of the barbarians."

It would, however, be unjust to judge the whole of Justinian's reign by the years of his decadence. Indeed, though every part of the work

of the Byzantine Caesar is not equally worthy of praise it must not be forgotten that his intentions were generally good, and worthy of an Emperor. There is an undeniable grandeur in his wish to restore the Roman traditions in every branch of the government, to reconquer the lost provinces, and to recover the imperial suzerainty over the whole barbarian world. In his wish to efface the last trace of religious quarrels he shewed a pure feeling for the most vital interests of the monarchy. In the care which Justinian took to cover the frontiers with a continuous network of fortresses, there was a real wish to assure the security of his subjects; and this solicitude for the public good was shewn still more clearly in the efforts which he made to reform the administration of the State. Furthermore, it was not through vanity alone, or because of a puerile wish to attach his name to a work great enough to dazzle posterity, that Justinian undertook the legal reformation, or covered the capital and Empire with sumptuous buildings. In his attempt to simplify the law, and to make justice more rapid and certain, he undoubtedly had the intention of improving the condition of his subjects and even in the impetus given to public works we can recognise a love of greatness, regrettable in its effects perhaps, but commendable all the same because of the thought which inspired it.

Certainly the execution of these projects often compared unfavourably with the grandiose conceptions which illuminated the dawn of Justinian's reign. But however hard upon the West the imperial restoration may have been, however useless the conquest of Africa and Italy may have been to the East, Justinian none the less gave the monarchy an unequalled prestige for the time being, and filled his contemporaries with admiration or terror. Whatever may have been the faults of his diplomacy, none the less by that adroit and supple combination of political negotiations and religious propaganda he laid down for his successors a line of conduct which gave force and duration to Byzantium during several centuries. And if his successes were dearly bought by the sufferings of the East and the wide-spread ruin caused by a despotic and cruel government, his reign has left an indelible mark in the history of civilisation. The Code and St Sophia assure eternity to the memory of Justinian.

CHAPTER III

ROMAN LAW

ROMAN LAW is not merely the law of an Italian Community which existed two thousand years ago, nor even the law of the Roman Empire. It was, with more or less modification from local customs and ecclesiastical authority, the only system of law throughout the Middle Ages, and was the foundation of the modern law of nearly all Europe. In our own island it became the foundation of the law of Scotland, and, besides general influence, supplied the framework of parts of the law of England, especially of marriage, wills, legacies, and intestate succession to personalty. Through their original connexion with the Dutch, it forms a main portion of the law of South Africa, Ceylon and Guiana, and it has had considerable influence in the old French province of Louisiana. Its intrinsic merit is difficult to estimate, when there is no comparable system independent of its influence. But this may fairly be said: Roman Law was the product of many generations of a people trained to government and endowed with cultivated and practical intelligence. The area of its application became so wide and varied that local customs and peculiarities gradually dropped away, and it became law adapted not to one tribe or nation but to man generally. Moreover, singular good fortune befell it at a critical time. When civilisation was in peril through the influx of savage nations, and an elaborate and complicated system of law might easily have sunk into oblivion, a reformer was found who by skilful and conservative measures stripped the law of much antiquated complexity, and made it capable of continued life and general use without any breach of its connexion with the past.

Sir Henry Maine has drawn attention to its influence as a system of reasoned thought on other subjects: "To Politics, to Moral Philosophy, to Theology it contributed modes of thought, courses of reasoning, and a technical language. In the Western provinces of the Empire it supplied the only means of exactness of speech, and still more emphatically, the only means of exactness, subtlety, and depth in thought."

Gibbon in his 44th Chapter has employed all his wit and wealth of allusion to give some interest to his brief history of Roman jurisprudence and to season for the lay palate the dry morsels of Roman Law. The present chapter makes no such pretension. It is confined to a notice of

the antecedents and plan of Justinian's legislation, and a summary those parts of it which are most connected with the general society the period or afford some interest to an English reader from th resemblance or contrast to our own law. Unfortunately a concise a eclectic treatment cannot preserve much, if anything, of the logic a subtlety of a system of practical thought.

The sources of law under the early Emperors were Statutes (leg rare after Tiberius; Senate's decrees (senatus consulta), which propo by the Emperor took the place of Statutes; Edicts under the Empero own name; Decrees, i.e. his final decisions as judge on appeal; Mando instructions to provincial governors; Rescripta, answers on points of submitted to him by judges or private persons; the praetor's edict as revi and consolidated by the lawyer Salvius Julianus at Hadrian's comma and confirmed by a Senate's decree (this is generally called The Edic and finally treatises on the various branches of law, which were compos at any rate chiefly, by jurists authoritatively recognised, and wh embodied the Common Law and practice of the Courts. By the mid of the third century A.D. the succession of great jurists came to an e and, though their books, or rather the books written by the later of the still continued in high practical authority, the only living source of 1 was the Emperor, whose utterances on law, in whatever shape whet oral or written, were called constitutiones. If written, they were by Le enactment (470) to bear the imperial autograph in purple ink.

Diocletian, who reformed the administration of the law as well as general government of the Empire, issued many rescripts, some at le of which are preserved to us in Justinian's Codex, but few rescripts later date are found. Thereafter new general law was made only imperial edict, and the Emperor was the sole authoritative interpret Anyone attempting to obtain a rescript dispensing with Statute L was (384) to be heavily fined and disgraced.

The imperial edicts were in epistolary form, and were published being hung up in Rome and Constantinople and the larger proving towns, and otherwise made known in their districts by the officers whom they were addressed. There does not appear to have been a collection of Constitutions, issued to the public, until the Co Gregorianus was made in the eastern part of the Empire. (Co refers to the book-form as opposed to a roll.) This collection was t work probably of a man named Gregorius, about the end of the th century. In the course of the next century a supplement was ma also in the Eastern Empire and called Codex Hermogenianus, probal the work of a man of that name. Both contained chiefly rescrip A comparatively small part of both has survived in the later codes a in some imperfectly preserved legal compilations. During the four century, perhaps as Mommsen thinks-in Constantine's time, but w later additions, a compilation was made in the West, of which