the last emperor
usurped the title of Augustus; his cause was powerfully supported by
the arms, the treasures, and the magazines, collected by Zeno; and the
native Isaurians must have formed the smallest portion of the hundred
and fifty thousand Barbarians under his standard, which was sanctified,
for the first time, by the presence of a fighting bishop. Their
disorderly numbers were vanquished in the plains of Phrygia by the valor
and discipline of the Goths; but a war of six years almost exhausted the
courage of the emperor. [123] The Isaurians retired to their mountains;
their fortresses were successively besieged and ruined; their
communication with the sea was intercepted; the bravest of their leaders
died in arms; the surviving chiefs, before their execution, were
dragged in chains through the hippodrome; a colony of their youth was
transplanted into Thrace, and the remnant of the people submitted to the
Roman government. Yet some generations elapsed before their minds were
reduced to the level of slavery. The populous villages of Mount Taurus
were filled with horsemen and archers: they resisted the imposition
of tributes, but they recruited the armies of Justinian; and his civil
magistrates, the proconsul of Cappadocia, the count of Isauria, and the
praetors of Lycaonia and Pisidia, were invested with military power to
restrain the licentious practice of rapes and assassinations. [124]

[Footnote 119: Turn back to vol. i. p. 328. In the course of this
History, I have sometimes mentioned, and much oftener slighted, the
hasty inroads of the Isaurians, which were not attended with any
consequences.]

[Footnote 120: Trebellius Pollio in Hist. August. p. 107, who lived
under Diocletian, or Constantine. See likewise Pancirolus ad Notit. Imp.
Orient c. 115, 141. See Cod. Theodos. l. ix. tit. 35, leg. 37, with a
copious collective Annotation of Godefroy, tom. iii. p. 256, 257.]

[Footnote 121: See the full and wide extent of their inroads in
Philostorgius (Hist. Eccles. l. xi. c. 8,) with Godefroy's learned
Dissertations.]

[Footnote 122: Cod. Justinian. l. ix. tit. 12, leg. 10. The punishments
are severs--a fine of a hundred pounds of gold, degradation, and even
death. The public peace might afford a pretence, but Zeno was desirous
of monopolizing the valor and service of the Isaurians.]

[Footnote 123: The Isaurian war and the triumph of Anastasius are
briefly and darkly represented by John Malala, (tom. ii. p. 1