n taught
by experience, that if merit sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or
even guilt, would obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. [4] In
such an age, the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine
with incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest
shades of disgrace and calamity. While the lieutenant of Justinian
subdued the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the emperor, [5] timid,
though ambitious, balanced the forces of the Barbarians, fomented their
divisions by flattery and falsehood, and invited by his patience and
liberality the repetition of injuries. [6] The keys of Carthage, Rome,
and Ravenna, were presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was
destroyed by the Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of
Constantinople.

[Footnote 1: It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read Herodotus, (l.
vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615.) The conversation of Xerxes and Demaratus
at Thermopylae is one of the most interesting and moral scenes in
history. It was the torture of the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish
and remorse, the virtue of his country.]

[Footnote 2: See this proud inscription in Pliny, (Hist. Natur. vii.
27.) Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and disgrace;
nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking example of the
vicissitudes of fortune, and the vanity of human wishes.]

[Footnote 3: This last epithet of Procopius is too nobly translated by
pirates; naval thieves is the proper word; strippers of garments, either
for injury or insult, (Demosthenes contra Conon Reiske, Orator, Graec.
tom. ii. p. 1264.)]

[Footnote 4: See the third and fourth books of the Gothic War: the
writer of the Anecdotes cannot aggravate these abuses.]

[Footnote 5: Agathias, l. v. p. 157, 158. He confines this weakness of
the emperor and the empire to the old age of Justinian; but alas! he was
never young.]

[Footnote 6: This mischievous policy, which Procopius (Anecdot. c. 19)
imputes to the emperor, is revealed in his epistle to a Scythian prince,
who was capable of understanding it.]

Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to the state,
since they abolished the important barrier of the Upper Danube, which
had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric and his daughter. For the
defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated Pannonia and Noricum, which
they left in a peaceful and flourishing condition: the sovereignty
was claimed by the emperor