But almost between the Church of St. Sophia and the Imperial Palace lay in old times the Great Hippodrome, centre of the popular life of the capital, where the excited multitudes cheered with rapture, or howled in execration, at the victory of the Blue or the Green charioteer; where many a time the elevation or the deposition of an Emperor was accomplished by the acclamations of the same roaring throng. Of this Hippodrome we have still a most interesting memorial in the Atmeidan (the Place of Horses), which, though with diminished area, still preserves something of the form of the old racecourse. And here to this day are two monuments on which the young hostage may have often gazed, wondering at their form and meaning. The obelisk of Thothmes I., already two thousand years old when Constantinople was founded, was reared in the Hippodrome, by order of the great Emperor Theodosius, and some of the bas-reliefs on its pedestal still explain to us the mechanical devices by which it was lifted into position, while in others Theodosius, his wife, his sons, and his colleague sit in solemn state, but, alas! with grievously mutilated countenances. Near it is a spiral column of bronze which, almost till our own day, bore three serpents twined together, whose heads long ago supported a golden tripod. This bronze monument is none other than the votive offering to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, presented by the confederated states of Greece, to celebrate the victory of Platæa. The golden tripod was melted down at the time of Philip of Macedon, but the twisted serpents, brought by Constantine to adorn and hallow his new capital by the Bosphorus, bore and still bear the names, written in archaic characters, of all the Hellenic states which took part in that great deliverance.

He saw here for the first time, and by degrees he apprehended, the results of that state of civilitas which in after years he was to be constantly recommending to his people. Sprung from a race of hunters and shepherds, having slowly learned the arts of agriculture, and then perhaps partly unlearned them under the over-lordship of the nomad Huns, the Ostrogoths at this time knew nothing of a city life. A city was probably in their eyes little else than a hindrance to their freebooting raids, a lair of enemies, a place behind whose sheltering walls, so hard to batter down, cowards lurked in order to sally forth at a favourable moment and attack brave men in their rear. At best it was a treasure-house, which valiant Goths, if Fortune favoured them, might sack and plunder: but Fortune seldom did favour the children of Gaut in their assaults upon the fenced cities of the Empire.

As the boy grew to manhood, the deep underlying cause of this difference perhaps became clearer to his mind. He could see more or less plainly that the soul which held all this marvellous body of civilisation together was reverence for Law. He visited perhaps some of the courts of law; he may have seen the Illustrious Prætorian Prefect, clothed in Imperial purple, move majestically to the judgment-seat, amid the obsequious salutations of the dignified officials, ²⁵ who in their various ranks and orders surrounded the hall. The costly golden reed-case, the massive silver inkstand, the silver bowl for the petitions of suitors, all emblems of his office, were placed solemnly before him, and the pleadings began. Practised advocates arose to plead the cause of plaintiff or defendant; busy short-hand writers took notes of the proceedings; at length in calm and measured words the Prefect gave his judgment; a judgment which was necessarily based on law, which had to take account of the sayings of jurisconsults, of the stored-up wisdom of twenty generations of men; a judgment which, notwithstanding the venality which was the curse of the Empire, was in most instances in accordance with truth and justice. How different, must Theodoric often have thought, in after years, when he had returned to Gothland,--how different was this settled and orderly procedure from the usage of the barbarians. With them the "blood-feud", the "wild justice of revenge", often prolonged from generation to generation, had been long the chief righter of wrongs done; and if this was now slowly giving place to judicial trial, that trial was probably a coarse and almost lawless proceeding, in which the head man of the district, with a hundred assessors, as ignorant as himself, amid the wild cries of the opposed parties, roughly fixed the amount of blood-money to be paid by a murderer, or decided at hap-hazard, often with an obvious reference to the superior force at the command of one or other of the litigants, some obscure dispute as to the ownership of a slave or the right to succeed to a dead man's inheritance.

Footnote 25: (return) Officium, or Militia Literata.

Law carefully thought out, systematised, and in the main softened and liberalised, from generation to generation, was the great gift of the Roman Empire to the world, and by her strong, and uniform, and, in the main, just administration of this law, that Empire had kept, and in the days of Theodoric was still keeping, her hold upon a hundred jarring nationalities. What hope was there that the German intruders into the lands of the Mediterranean could ever vie with this great achievement? Yet if they could not, if it was out of their power to reform and reinvigorate the shattered state, if they could only destroy and not rebuild, they would exert no abiding influence on the destinies of Europe.

I do not say that all these thoughts passed at this time through the mind of Theodoric, but I have no doubt that the germs of them were sown by his residence in Constantinople. When he returned, a young man of eighteen years and of noble presence to the palace of his father, he had certainly some conception of what the Greeks meant when he heard them talking about politeia, some foreshadowing of what he himself would mean when in after days he should speak alike to his Goth and Roman subjects of the blessings of civilitas.

he young Theodoric, who was now in his nineteenth year, was sent back by Leo to his father with large presents, and both the recovered son and the tokens of Imperial favour brought joy to the heart of the father. There had been some changes in the Ostrogothic kingdom during the boy's absence. There had been vague and purposeless wars with the savage nations around them,--Swabians, Sarmatians, Scyri--besides one final encounter with their old lords, the Huns. These last, we are told, they had driven forth so hopelessly beaten from their territory, that for a century from that time all that was left of the Hunnish nation trembled at the very name of the Goths. But in a battle with another people of far less renown, the barbarous Scyri beyond the Danube, Walamir, while cheering on his men to the combat, was thrown from his horse and being pierced by the lances of the enemy was left dead on the field. His death, it is said, was avenged most ruthlessly on the Scyri, and Theudemir, the brother who was next him in age, became chief king of the Ostrogoths.

Scarcely had Theodoric returned to his home when, without communicating his purpose to his father, he distinguished himself by a gallant deed of arms. On the south-east of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in the country which we now call Servia, there reigned at this time a Sclavonic chief called Babai, who was full of pride and self-importance because of a victory which he had lately gained over the forces of the Empire. Theodoric had probably heard at Constantinople the other side of this story: on his journey to the north-west he had passed through those regions, and marked the pride of the insolent barbarian. Sympathy with the humiliated Empire, but, far more, the young warrior's desire at once to find "a foeman worthy of his steel", and to win laurels for himself wherewith he might surprise his father, drove him into his new enterprise. Having collected some of his father's guardsmen, and those of his people with whom he was personally popular, or who were dependent upon him, he thus mustered a little army of six thousand men, with whom he crossed the Danube. ²⁶ Falling suddenly upon King Babai, he defeated and slew him, took his family prisoners,and returned with large booty in slaves and the rude wealth of the barbarian to his surprised but joyful father. The result of this expedition was the capture of the important frontier city of Singidunum (whose site is now occupied by Belgrade), a city which Babai had wrested from the Empire, but which Theodoric, whatever may have been his inclination to favour Constantinople, did not deem it necessary to restore to his late host.

Footnote 26: (return) The words of Jordanes (which are important on account of their bearing on the passage of Tacitus quoted below) are: "Ascitis certis ex satellitibus patris et ex populo amatores sibi clientesque consocians pæne sex mille viros cum quibus inscio patre emenso Danubio super Babai Sarmatarum regem discurrit" (Getica, lv.).

This incident of the early manhood of Theodoric is a good illustration of the Teutonic custom which Tacitus describes to us under the name of the comitatus, a custom which was therefore at least four centuries old (probably far older) in the days of Theodoric, and which, lasting on for several centuries longer, undoubtedly influenced if it did not actually create the chivalry of the Middle Ages. The custom was so important that it will be better to translate the very words of Tacitus concerning it, though they occur in one of the best-known passages of the "Germania".

"The Germans transact no business either of a public or private nature except with arms in their hands. But it is not the practice for any one to begin the wearing of arms until the State has approved his ability to wield them. When that is done, in the great Council of the nation one of the chiefs, perhaps the father or some near relation of the candidate, equips the youth with shield and spear. This is with them like the toga virilis with us, the first dignity bestowed on the young man. Before this he was looked upon as part of his father's household--now he is a member of the State. Eminently noble birth, or great merit on the part of their fathers, assigns the dignity of a chief ²⁷ even to very young men. They are admitted to the fellowship of other youths stronger than themselves, and already tried in war, nor do they blush to be seen among the henchmen. ²⁸ There is a gradation in rank among the henchmen, determined by the judgment of him whom they follow, and there is a great emulation among the henchmen, who shall have the highest place under the chief, and among the chiefs who shall have the most numerous and the bravest henchmen. This is their dignity, this their strength, to be ever surrounded by a band of chosen youths, an honour in peace, a defence in battle. And not only in his own nation, but among the surrounding states also, each chief's name and glory are spread abroad according to the eminence of his 'train of henchmen' ²⁹ in number and valour. Chiefs thus distinguished are in request for embassies, are enriched with costly presents, and often they decide a war by the mere terror of their name".

Footnote 27: (return) Dignationem principis; the true rendering of this sentence is very doubtful.

Footnote 28: (return) I think upon the whole "henchmen" is the best translation of this difficult word "comites", "Companions" is too indefinite; "comrades" implies too much equality with the chief.

Footnote 29: (return) Comitatus.

"When they stand on the battle-field, it is held a disgraceful thing for the chief to be surpassed in bravery by his henchmen, for the henchmen not to equal the valour of their chief. Now too it will mark a man as infamous, and a target for the scorn of men for all the rest of his life, if he escapes alive from the battle-field where his chief needed his help. To defend him, the chief; to guard his person; to reckon up one's own brave deeds as enhancing his glory: this is the henchman's one great oath of fealty. ³⁰ The chiefs fight for victory, the henchmen for their chief. If the state in which they are born should be growing sluggish through ease and a long peace, most of the noble young men seek of their own accord those nations which are then waging war, both because a quiet life is hateful to this people, and because they can more easily distinguish themselves in perilous times, nor can they keep together a great train of henchmen, except by war and the strong hand. For it is from the generosity of their chief that each henchman expects that mighty war-horse which he would bestride, that gory and victorious spear, which he would brandish. Banquets, too, and all the rough but plentiful appliances of the feast are taken as part of the henchman's pay; and the means of supplying all this prodigality must be sought by war and rapine. You would not so easily persuade them to plough the fields and wait in patience for a year's harvest, as to challenge an enemy and earn honourable wounds; since to them it seems always a slow and lazy process to accumulate by the sweat of your brow what you might win at once by the shedding of blood".

Footnote 30: (return) Præcipuum sacramentum.

These words of Tacitus, written in the year 98 after Christ, describe with wonderful exactness the state of Ostrogothic society in the year 472. We are not expressly told of Theodoric's assumption of the shield and spear in the great Council of the nation, but probably this ceremony immediately followed his return from Constantinople. Then we see the gathering together of the band of henchmen, the sudden march away from the peaceful land, growing torpid through two or three years of warlessness, the surprise of the Sclavonic king, the copious effusion of blood which was the preferred alternative to the sweat of the land-tiller, the return to the young chief's own land with spoils sufficient to support perhaps for many months the "generosity" expected by the henchmen.

There is one point, however, in which the description of the Germans given by Tacitus is probably not altogether applicable to the Goths of the fifth century: and that is, their invincible preference for the life of the warrior over that of the agriculturist. There are some indications that the Germans, when Tacitus wrote, had not long exchanged the nomadic life of a nation of shepherds and herdsmen (such as was led by the earlier generations of the Israelitish people) for the settled life which alone is consistent with the pursuits of the tiller of the soil. Hence the roving instinct was still strong within them, and this roving instinct easily allied itself with the thirst for battle and the love of the easy gains of the freebooter. Four centuries, however, of agriculture and of neighbourhood to the great civilised stable Empire of Rome had apparently wrought some change in the Goths and in many of the other Teutonic nations. The work of agriculture was now not altogether odious in their eyes; they knew something of the joys of the husbandman as well as of the joys of the warrior; they began to feel something of that "land-hunger" which is the passion of a young, growing, industrious people. Still, however, the songs of the minstrels, the sagas of the bards, the fiery impulses of the young princeps surrounded by his comitatus pointed to war as the only occupation worthy of freemen. Hence we can perceive a double current in the ambitions of these nations which often perplexes the historian now, as it evidently then perplexed their mighty neighbour, the Roman Augustus, and the generals and lawyers who counselled him in his consistory. Sometimes the Teutonic king is roused by some real or imagined insult; the minstrels sing their battle-songs; the fiery henchmen gather round their chief; the barbarian tide rolls over the frontier of the Empire: it seems as if it must be a duel to the death between civilisation and its implacable foes. Then suddenly

Food, not glory, seems to be the supreme object of the Teuton's ambition. He begs for land, for seed to sow in it, for a legal settlement within the limits of the Empire. If only these necessary things are granted to him, he promises, and not without intending to keep his promise, to be a peaceable subject, yes and a staunch defender, of the Roman Augustus. Had the Imperial statesmen truly understood this strange duality of purpose in the minds of their barbarian visitors, and had they set themselves loyally and patiently to foster the peaceful agricultural instincts of the Teuton, haply the Roman Empire might still be standing. As it was, the statesmen of the day, men of temporary shifts and expedients, living only as we say "from hand to mouth", saw, in the changing moods of the Germans, only the faithlessness of barbarism, which they met with the faithlessness of civilisation, and between the two the Empire--which no one really wished to destroy--was destroyed.

Even such a change it was which now came over the minds of the Ostrogothic people. There was dearth in Pannonia, partly, perhaps, the consequence of the frequent wars with the surrounding nations which had occurred during the twenty years of the Ostrogothic settlement. But even the cessation of those wars brought with it a loss of income to the warrior class. As the Gothic historian expresses it: "From the diminution of the spoils of the neighbouring nations the Goths began to lack food and clothing, and to those men to whom war had long furnished all their sustenance peace began to be odious, and all the Goths with loud shouts approached their king Theudemir praying him to lead his army whither he would, but to lead it forth to war".

Here again it can hardly be doubted that Jordanes, writing about the fifth century, describes for us the same state of things as Tacitus writing about the first, and that this loudly shouted demand of the people for war was expressed in one of those national assemblies--the "Folc-motes" or "Folc-things" of Anglo-Saxon and German history--which formed such a real limitation to the power of the early Teutonic kings. "Concerning smaller matters", says Tacitus, ³¹ "the chiefs deliberate; concerning greater matters, the whole nation; but in such wise that even those things which are in the power of the commonalty are discussed in detail by the chiefs. They come together, unless any sudden and accidental emergency have arisen, on fixed days determined by the new or full moon; for these times they deem the most fortunate for the transaction of business. An ill consequence flowing from their freedom is their want of punctuality in assembling; often two or three days are spent in waiting for the loiterers. When the crowd chooses, they sit down, arrayed in their armour (and commence business). Silence is called for by the priests, who have then the power even of keeping order by force. Then the king or one of the chiefs begins to speak, and is listened to in right either of his age, or his noble birth, or his glory in the wars, or his eloquence. In any case, he rather persuades than commands; not power, but weight of character procures the assent of his hearers.

Footnote 31: (return) Germania, xi.

Before such an assembly of the nation in arms, the question, not of Peace or War? but of War with whom? was debated. It was decided that the Empire should be the victim, and that East and West alike should feel the heavy hand of the Ostrogoths. The lot was cast (so said the national legend), ³² and it assigned to Theudemir the harder but, as it seemed, more profitable task of warring against Constantinople, while his younger brother Widemir was to attack Rome.

Footnote 32: (return) Kopke "Anfange des Konigthums", (p. 146) throws doubt on this story of the decision by lot, and there seems something to be said on his side.

Of Widemir's movements there is little to tell. He died in Italy, not having apparently achieved any brilliant exploits, and his son and namesake was easily persuaded to turn aside into Gaul, where he joined his forces to those of the kindred Visigoths, and became absorbed in their flourishing kingdom. This branch of Amal royalty henceforward bears no fruit in history.

More important, at any rate in its ultimate consequences, was the march of Theudemir and his people into the dominions of the Eastern Cæsar. They crossed the Save, and by their warlike array terrified into acquiescence the Sclavonic tribes which were settled in the neighbourhood of Belgrade.

Having pushed up the valley of the Morava, they captured the important city of Naissus (now Nisch), "the first city of Illyricum". Here Theudemir tarried for a space, sending on his son with a large and eager comitatus farther up the valley of the Morava. They reached the head of that valley, they crossed the watershed and the plain of Kossova, and descended the valley of the Vardar. Monastir in Macedonia, Larissa in Thessaly were taken and sacked; and a way having thus been made by these bold invaders into the heart of the Empire, a message was sent to Theudemir, inviting him to undertake the siege of Thessalonica. Leaving a few guards in Naissus, the old king moved southward with the bulk of his army, and was soon standing with his men before the walls of the Macedonian capital. The Patrician Hilarianus held that city with a strong force, but when he saw it regularly invested by the Goths and an earthen rampart drawn all round it, he lost heart, and, despairing of a successful resistance, opened negotiations with the besiegers. The result of these negotiations (accompanied by handsome presents to the king) was that Theudemir abandoned the siege, resumed the often adopted, perhaps never wholly abandoned, position of a fœderatus or sworn auxiliary of the Empire, and received for himself and his people the unquestioned possession of six towns ³³ and the surrounding country by the north-east corner of the Ægean, where the Vardar discharges itself into the Thermaic Gulf.

Footnote 33: (return) The best known of these towns are Pella, Pydna, and Bercea.

Thus ingloriously, thus unprofitably ended the expedition into Romania, which had been proposed amid such enthusiastic applause at the great Council of the nation, and pressed with such loud acclamations and such brandishing of defiant spears upon the perhaps reluctant Theudemir. The Ostrogoths in 472 were an independent people, practically supreme in Pannonia. Those broad lands on the south and west of the Danube, rich in corn and wine, the very kernel of the Austrian monarchy of to-day, were theirs in absolute possession. Any tie of nominal dependence which attached Pannonia to the Empire was so merely theoretical, now that the Hun had ruled and ravaged it for a good part of a century, that it was not worth taking into consideration; it was in fact rather an excuse for claiming stipendia from the Emperor than a bond of real vassalage. But now in 474 this great and proud nation, crowded into a few cities of Macedonia, with obedient subjects of the Empire all round them, had practically no choice between the life of peaceful provincials on the one hand and that of freebooters on the other. If they accepted the first, they would lose year by year something of their old national character. The Teutonic speech, the Teutonic customs would gradually disappear, and in one or two generations they would be scarcely distinguishable from any of the other oppressed, patient, tax-exhausted populations of the great and weary Empire. On the other hand, if they accepted (which in fact they seem to have done) the other alternative, and became a mere horde of plunderers wandering up and down through the Empire, seeking what they might destroy, they abandoned the hope of forming a settled and stable monarchy, and, doing injustice to the high qualities and capacities for civilisation which were in them, they would sink lower into the depths of barbarism, and becoming like the Hun, like the Hun they would one day perish. Certainly, so far, the tumultuous decision of the Parliament on the shores of Lake Pelso was a false step in the nation's history.

The sentence thus written by the sensitive young poet, a child of London of the nineteenth century, was eminently exemplified in the history of the martial chief of the Ostrogoths. The next fourteen years in the life of Theodoric, which will be described in this chapter, were years of much useless endeavour, of marches and countermarches, of alliances formed and broken, of vain animosities and vainer reconciliations, years in which Theodoric himself seems never to understand his own purpose, whether it shall be under the shadow of the Empire or upon the ruins of the Empire, that he will build up his throne. Take the map of what is now often called "the Balkan peninsula", the region in which these fourteen years were passed; look at the apparently purpose, less way in which the mountain ranges of Hæmus, Rhodope, and Scardus cross, intersect, run parallel, approach, avoid one another; look at the strange entanglement of passes and watersheds and table-lands which their systems display to us. Even such as the ranges among which he was manœuvring--perplexed, purposeless, and sterile--was the early manhood of Theodoric.

Leo I., who reigned at Constantinople from 457 to 474, and who was therefore Emperor during the whole time that Theodoric dwelt there as hostage, was not, as far as we can ascertain, a man of any great abilities in peace or war, or originally of very exalted station. But he was "curator" or steward in the household of Aspar, the successful barbarian adventurer who has been already alluded to. ³⁴ As an Arian by religion, and a barbarian, or the son of a barbarian, by birth, Aspar could not himself assume the diadem, but he could give it to whom he would, and Leo the steward was the second of his dependants whom he had thus honoured. Once placed upon the throne, however, Leo showed himself less obsequious to his old master than was expected. The post of Prefect of the City became vacant; Aspar suggested for the office a man who, like himself, was tainted with the heresy of Arius. At the moment Leo promised acquiescence, but immediately repented, and in the dead of night privately conferred the important office on a Senator who professed the orthodox faith. Aspar in a rage laid a rough hand on the Imperial purple, saying to Leo: "Emperor! it is not fitting that one who wears this robe should tell lies". Leo answered with some spirit: "Neither is it fitting that an Emperor should be bound to do the bidding of any of his subjects, and so injure the State".

Footnote 34: (return) See p. 36.

After this encounter there were thirteen years of feud between King-maker and King, between Aspar and Leo. At length in 471 Aspar and his three valiant sons fell by the swords of the Eunuchs of the Palace. The foul and cowardly deed was perhaps marked by some circumstances of especial cruelty, which earned for Leo the title by which he was long after remembered in Constantinople, "The Butcher". ³⁵

Footnote 35: (return) Leo Macellus.

In order to strengthen himself against the adherents of Aspar, Leo cultivated the friendship of a set of wild, uncouth mountaineers, who at this time played the same part in Constantinople which the Swiss of the Middle Ages played in Italy. These were the Isaurians, men from the rugged highlands of Pisidia, whose lives had hitherto been chiefly spent either in robbing or in defending themselves from robbery. At their head was a man named Tarasicodissa,--probably well born, if a chieftain from the Isaurian highlands could be deemed to be well born by the contemptuous citizens of Constantinople, no soldier, for we are told that even the picture of a battle frightened him, but a man whom the other Isaurians seem to have followed with clannish loyalty, like that which the Scottish Camerons showed even to the wily and unwarlike Master of Lovat.

As it had been planned so it came to pass. Leo the Butcher died (3d Feb. 474); the younger Leo, a child of seven years old, was hailed by Senate and People as his successor: Zeno came at the head of a brilliant train of senators, soldiers, and magistrates, to "adore" the new Emperor, and the child, carefully instructed by his mother in the part which he had to play, placed on the bowed head of his father the Imperial diadem. This act of "association" as it was called, generally practised upon a son or nephew by a veteran Emperor anxious to be relieved from some of the cares of reigning, required to be ratified by the acclamations of the soldiery; but no doubt these acclamations, which could generally be purchased by a sufficiently liberal donative, were not wanting on this occasion. Zeno, otherwise called Tarasicodissa the Isaurian, was now Emperor, and nine months after, when his child-partner died, he became sole ruler of the Roman world, except in so far as his dignity might be considered to be shared by the phantom Emperors of the West, who at this time were dethroning and being dethroned with fatal rapidity at Rome and Ravenna.

Thus mean and devious were the paths by which an adventurer could climb in the fifth century to that which was still looked upon as the pinnacle of earthly greatness. For however unworthy a man might feel himself to be, and however unworthy all his subjects might know him to be of the highest place in the Empire, when once he had obtained it his power was absolute and the honours rendered to him were little less than divine. All laws were passed by his "sacred providence"; all officers, military and civil, received their authority from him. In the edicts which he put forth to the world he spoke of himself as "My Eternity", "My Mildness", "My Magnificence", and of course these expressions, or, if it were possible, expressions more adulatory than these, were used by his subjects when they laid their petitions at the footstool of "the sacred throne". He lived, withdrawn from vulgar eyes, in the innermost recesses of the palace, a sort of Holy of Holies behind the first and the second veil. A band of pages, in splendid dress, waited upon his bidding; thirty stately silentiarii, with helmets and brightly burnished cuirasses, marched backwards and forwards before the second veil, to see that no importunate petitioner disturbed the silence of "the sacred cubicle". On the comparatively rare occasions when he showed himself to his subjects, he wore upon his head the diadem, a band of white linen, in which blazed the most precious jewels of the Empire. Hung round his shoulders and reaching down to his feet was that precious purple robe, for the sake of which so many crimes were committed, and which often proved itself a very "garment of Nessus" to him who dared to assume it without force sufficient to render his usurpation legitimate. On the feet of the Emperor were buskins which, like the diadem, were studded with precious stones, and like the robe were dyed with the Imperial purple. Thus gorgeously arrayed he took his place in the podium, the royal box in the Amphitheatre, and from thence, while gazed upon by his subjects, gazed himself upon the savage beast-fight, or in the Hippodrome, with difficulty restraining his eagerness for the success of the Blue or the Green faction, gave the sign for the chariot races to begin. Or he sat surrounded by his court in the purple presence-chamber to consult upon public affairs with his Consistory, a sort of Privy Council, composed of the great ministers of state. Conspicuous among these were the fifteen officers of highest rank, Generals, Judges, Grand Chamberlains, Finance Ministers, who had each the right to be addressed as "Illustrious". When any subject of the Emperor, were it one of these Illustrious ones himself, were it the son or brother of his predecessor, were it even a former patron, like Aspar, by whose favour he had been selected to wear the purple, was admitted to an audience of "Augustus" (that great name went as of right with the diadem), the etiquette of the court required that he should not merely bow nor kneel, but absolutely prostrate himself before the Sacred Majesty of the Emperor, who, if in a gracious mood, then with outstretched hand raised him from the earth and permitted him to kiss his knee or the fringe of his Imperial mantle.

To this dizzy height of greatness--for such, however small Marcian or Leo or Zeno may now seem to us by the lapse of centuries, it was felt to be by the contemporary generations--it was possible under the singular combination of election and inheritance which regulated the succession to the throne, for almost any citizen of the Empire, if not of barbarian blood or heretical creed, to aspire. Diocletian, the second founder of the Empire, was the son of a slave; Justinian--an even greater name--was the nephew of a Macedonian peasant, who with a sheepskin bag containing a week's store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital Zeno, as we have seen, though perhaps better born than either Diocletian or Justinian, was only a little Isaurian chieftain. Thus the possibilities open to aspiring ambition were great in the Empire of the Cæsars. As any male citizen of the United States, born between the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande, may one day be installed in the White House as President, so any "Roman" and orthodox inhabitant of the Empire, whether noble, citizen, or peasant, might flatter himself with the hope that he too should one day wear the purple of Diocletian, be saluted as Augustus, and see Prefects and Masters of the Soldiery prostrating themselves before "His Eternity". This was, in a sense, the better, the democratic side of the Roman monarchy. Power which was supposed to be conveyed by the will of the people (as expressed by the acclamations of the army) might be wielded by the arm of any member of that people. On the other hand there was an evil in the habit thus engendered in men's minds, of humbling themselves before mere power without regard to the manner of its acquirement. When we compare the polity of Rome or Constantinople, where a century was a long time for the duration of a dynasty, with the far simpler polities of the Teutonic tribes which invaded the Empire, almost all of whom had their royal houses, reaching back into and even beyond the dawn of national history, supposed to be sprung from the loins of the gods, and rendered illustrious by countless deeds of valour recorded in song or saga, we see at once that in these ruder states we are in presence of a principle which the Empire knew not, but which Mediæval Europe knew and glorified, the principle of Loyalty. This principle, the same that bound Bayard to the Valois, and Montrose to the Stuart, has been, with all the follies and even crimes which it may have caused, an element of strength and cohesion in the states which have arisen on the ruins of the Roman Empire. The self-respecting but loving loyalty, with which the Englishman of to-day cherishes the name of the descendant of Cerdic, of Alfred, and of Edward Plantagenet, who wields the sceptre of his country, is utterly unlike the slavish homage offered by the adoring courtiers of Byzantium to the pinchbeck divinity of Zeno Tarasicodissa.

Raised as Zeno had been to the throne by a mere palace intrigue, and destitute as he was of any of the qualities of a great statesman or general, it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen years, was continually disturbed by conspiracies and rebellions. In most of these rebellions his mother-in-law, Verina, widow of Leo, an ambitious and turbulent woman, played an important part.

From thence,(July, 477) after nearly two years of exile, he was by a strange turn of the wheel of Fortune restored to his throne. Religious bigotry (for Basiliscus did not belong to the party of strict orthodoxy) and domestic jealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result. Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome, returned to the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded that the linen curtain should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing rays of the July sun, gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations on his elevation and prayers for his continued triumph. ³⁶

Footnote 36: (return) "Zeno Imperator Tu Vincas", would be, as we know from other similar instances, the most frequently uttered acclamation. It is a curious instance of "survival" that this was always shouted in Latin, though Greek was the vernacular tongue of the vast majority of the inhabitants of Constantinople.