s of exaggeration.]

III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations
whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as the frontiers
of Aethiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces,
and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; [54] his dominions were blessed
by nature with the advantages of soil, situation, and climate: and the
improvements of human art had been perpetually diffused along the coast
of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile from ancient Troy to the
Egyptian Thebes. Abraham [55] had been relieved by the well-known
plenty of Egypt; the same country, a small and populous tract, was still
capable of exporting, each year, two hundred and sixty thousand
quarters of wheat for the use of Constantinople; [56] and the capital of
Justinian was supplied with the manufactures of Sidon, fifteen centuries
after they had been celebrated in the poems of Homer. [57] The annual
powers of vegetation, instead of being exhausted by two thousand
harvests, were renewed and invigorated by skilful husbandry, rich
manure, and seasonable repose. The breed of domestic animals was
infinitely multiplied. Plantations, buildings, and the instruments of
labor and luxury, which are more durable than the term of human life,
were accumulated by the care of successive generations. Tradition
preserved, and experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts:
society was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of
exchange; and every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the
industry of a thousand hands. The invention of the loom and distaff has
been piously ascribed to the gods. In every age, a variety of animal and
vegetable productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length
silk, have been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body;
they were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil
was successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom. In the
choice of those colors [58] which imitate the beauties of nature, the
freedom of taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple [59]
which the Phoenicians extracted from a shell-fish, was restrained to the
sacred person and palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason
were denounced against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the
prerogative of the throne. [60]

[Footnote 54: Hierocles, a contemporary of Justinian, composed his
(Itineraria, p. 631,) review of the e