capital. The elder Justin, as he is
distinguished from another emperor of the same family and name, ascended
the Byzantine throne at the age of sixty-eight years; and, had he been
left to his own guidance, every moment of a nine years' reign must have
exposed to his subjects the impropriety of their choice. His ignorance
was similar to that of Theodoric; and it is remarkable that in an age
not destitute of learning, two contemporary monarchs had never been
instructed in the knowledge of the alphabet. [411] But the genius of
Justin was far inferior to that of the Gothic king: the experience of
a soldier had not qualified him for the government of an empire; and
though personally brave, the consciousness of his own weakness was
naturally attended with doubt, distrust, and political apprehension.
But the official business of the state was diligently and faithfully
transacted by the quaestor Proclus; [5] and the aged emperor adopted the
talents and ambition of his nephew Justinian, an aspiring youth, whom
his uncle had drawn from the rustic solitude of Dacia, and educated at
Constantinople, as the heir of his private fortune, and at length of the
Eastern empire.

[Footnote 1: There is some difficulty in the date of his birth
(Ludewig in Vit. Justiniani, p. 125;) none in the place--the district
Bederiana--the village Tauresium, which he afterwards decorated with
his name and splendor, (D'Anville, Hist. de l'Acad. &c., tom. xxxi. p.
287--292.)]

[Footnote 2: The names of these Dardanian peasants are Gothic, and
almost English: Justinian is a translation of uprauda, (upright;) his
father Sabatius (in Graeco-barbarous language stipes) was styled in
his village Istock, (Stock;) his mother Bigleniza was softened into
Vigilantia.]

[Footnote 3: Ludewig (p. 127--135) attempts to justify the Anician name
of Justinian and Theodora, and to connect them with a family from which
the house of Austria has been derived.]

[Footnote 4: See the anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 6,) with the notes of
N. Alemannus. The satirist would not have sunk, in the vague and decent
appellation of Zonaras. Yet why are those names disgraceful?--and what
German baron would not be proud to descend from the Eumaeus of the
Odyssey! Note: It is whimsical enough that, in our own days, we should
have, even in jest, a claimant to lineal descent from the godlike
swineherd not in the person of a German baron, but in that of a
professor of the Ionian University. Con