ign, and laws with abuses; the partial
injustice of a moment is dexterously applied as the general maxim of a
reign of thirty-two years; the emperor alone is made responsible for the
faults of his officers, the disorders of the times, and the corruption
of his subjects; and even the calamities of nature, plagues,
earthquakes, and inundations, are imputed to the prince of the daemons,
who had mischievously assumed the form of Justinian. [84]

[Footnote 7711: See the character of Anastasius in Joannes Lydus de
Magistratibus, iii. c. 45, 46, p. 230--232. His economy is there said to
have degenerated into parsimony. He is accused of having taken away
the levying of taxes and payment of the troops from the municipal
authorities, (the decurionate) in the Eastern cities, and intrusted it
to an extortionate officer named Mannus. But he admits that the imperial
revenue was enormously increased by this measure. A statue of iron had
been erected to Anastasius in the Hippodrome, on which appeared one
morning this pasquinade. This epigram is also found in the Anthology.
Jacobs, vol. iv. p. 114 with some better readings. This iron statue
meetly do we place To thee, world-wasting king, than brass more
base; For all the death, the penury, famine, woe, That from thy
wide-destroying avarice flow, This fell Charybdis, Scylla, near to thee,
This fierce devouring Anastasius, see; And tremble, Scylla! on thee,
too, his greed, Coining thy brazen deity, may feed. But Lydus, with no
uncommon inconsistency in such writers, proceeds to paint the character
of Anastasius as endowed with almost every virtue, not excepting the
utmost liberality. He was only prevented by death from relieving
his subjects altogether from the capitation tax, which he greatly
diminished.--M.]

[Footnote 78: Evagrius (l. ii. c. 39, 40) is minute and grateful, but
angry with Zosimus for calumniating the great Constantine. In collecting
all the bonds and records of the tax, the humanity of Anastasius was
diligent and artful: fathers were sometimes compelled to prostitute
their daughters, (Zosim. Hist. l. ii. c. 38, p. 165, 166, Lipsiae,
1784.) Timotheus of Gaza chose such an event for the subject of a
tragedy, (Suidas, tom. iii. p. 475,) which contributed to the abolition
of the tax, (Cedrenus, p. 35,)--a happy instance (if it be true) of the
use of the theatre.]

[Footnote 79: See Josua Stylites, in the Bibliotheca Orientalis of
Asseman, (tom. p. 268.) This capitation t