e and
ability. His master, the Emperor Justinian, was an equally remarkable
personage, capable of conceiving and accomplishing magnificent
designs, yet withal of a mean, ungenerous, ungrateful character. The
codification under Christian conditions of the old Roman law, so as to
serve as the foundation of jurisprudence to all the European nations
except the English; the building of the church of St. Sophia, and the
rolling back for a time the flood that on all sides was overwhelming
the ancient Empire of Rome were all due to this prince.

For the last two centuries the East and the West had been separated,
though sometimes coalescing under one head, but in 476, the last
titular Emperor of the West had been deposed. Italy had been the prey
of successive swarms of Teutonic nations. Vandals and Ostro-or Eastern
Goths had burst upon Rome, and while the Vandals proceeded to
devastate the great Roman province of Northern Africa and set up a
kingdom there, the Goths had established another in Italy.
Constantinople still held its ground as the magnificent capital of the
Eastern Empire, maintaining the old civilization, but her dominions
were threatened by the vigorous Persians on the east, and on the north
by the Bulgarians, a nation chiefly Slavonic and very savage and
formidable.

[Illustration: Man carrying a child. [TN]]

This was the inheritance to which Justinian succeeded, in right of his
uncle Justin, a successful soldier. He was forty-five years old at the
time, 527, having had an entirely civil and literary training, and
though warfare continued through the thirty-eight years of his reign,
he never once appeared at the head of his armies. Yet his foresight
and ambition were great, and he had not long been on the throne before
he decided on an endeavor to recover the African provinces. The
Vandals were Arian heretics, denying the Godhead and Eternity of our
Blessed Lord, and they had cruelly persecuted and constantly oppressed
the Catholics, who entreated the Eastern Empire to deliver them, so
that religious zeal added strength to Justinian's ambition. The
luxuries of Carthage and the other African cities had in a couple of
generations done much to destroy the vigor of the Vandals, so that the
conjuncture was favorable.

Belisarius had proved his abilities in a dangerous retreat in the
Persian war, but he probably owed his appointment to the African
expedition to his wife Antonina. She was the daughter of a chariot