cle
Justinianas in the index to the viith volume of his Annals.]

[Footnote 11: The reign of the elder Justin may be found in the three
Chronicles of Marcellinus, Victor, and John Malala, (tom. ii. p.
130--150,) the last of whom (in spite of Hody, Prolegom. No. 14, 39,
edit. Oxon.) lived soon after Justinian, (Jortin's Remarks, &c., vol. iv
p. 383:) in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 1, 2, 3,
9,) and the Excerpta of Theodorus Lector, (No. 37,) and in Cedrenus,
(p. 362--366,) and Zonaras, (l. xiv. p. 58--61,) who may pass for an
original. * Note: Dindorf, in his preface to the new edition of Malala,
p. vi., concurs with this opinion of Gibbon, which was also that of
Reiske, as to the age of the chronicler.--M.]

From his elevation to his death, Justinian governed the Roman empire
thirty-eight years, seven months, and thirteen days.

The events of his reign, which excite our curious attention by their
number, variety, and importance, are diligently related by the secretary
of Belisarius, a rhetorician, whom eloquence had promoted to the rank of
senator and praefect of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of
courage or servitude, of favor or disgrace, Procopius [12] successively
composed the history, the panegyric, and the satire of his own times.
The eight books of the Persian, Vandalic, and Gothic wars, [13] which
are continued in the five books of Agathias, deserve our esteem as a
laborious and successful imitation of the Attic, or at least of the
Asiatic, writers of ancient Greece. His facts are collected from the
personal experience and free conversation of a soldier, a statesman, and
a traveller; his style continually aspires, and often attains, to the
merit of strength and elegance; his reflections, more especially in
the speeches, which he too frequently inserts, contain a rich fund of
political knowledge; and the historian, excited by the generous ambition
of pleasing and instructing posterity, appears to disdain the prejudices
of the people, and the flattery of courts. The writings of Procopius
[14] were read and applauded by his contemporaries: [15] but, although
he respectfully laid them at the foot of the throne, the pride
of Justinian must have been wounded by the praise of a hero, who
perpetually eclipses the glory of his inactive sovereign. The conscious
dignity of independence was subdued by the hopes and fears of a slave;
and the secretary of Belisarius labored for pardon and