encouraged the ambition of Gontharis, and he promised, by a private
treaty, to divide Africa with the Moors, if, with their dangerous
aid, he should ascend the throne of Carthage. The feeble Areobindus,
unskilled in the affairs of peace and war, was raised, by his marriage
with the niece of Justinian, to the office of exarch. He was suddenly
oppressed by a sedition of the guards, and his abject supplications,
which provoked the contempt, could not move the pity, of the inexorable
tyrant. After a reign of thirty days, Gontharis himself was stabbed at
a banquet by the hand of Artaban; and it is singular enough, that an
Armenian prince, of the royal family of Arsaces, should reestablish
at Carthage the authority of the Roman empire. In the conspiracy
which unsheathed the dagger of Brutus against the life of Caesar, every
circumstance is curious and important to the eyes of posterity; but the
guilt or merit of these loyal or rebellious assassins could interest
only the contemporaries of Procopius, who, by their hopes and fears,
their friendship or resentment, were personally engaged in the
revolutions of Africa.

That country was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence
it had been raised by the Phnician colonies and Roman laws; and every
step of intestine discord was marked by some deplorable victory of
savage man over civilized society. The Moors, though ignorant of
justice, were impatient of oppression: their vagrant life and boundless
wilderness disappointed the arms, and eluded the chains, of a conqueror;
and experience had shown, that neither oaths nor obligations could
secure the fidelity of their attachment. The victory of Mount Auras had
awed them into momentary submission; but if they respected the character
of Solomon, they hated and despised the pride and luxury of his two
nephews, Cyrus and Sergius, on whom their uncle had imprudently bestowed
the provincial governments of Tripoli and Pentapolis. A Moorish tribe
encamped under the walls of Leptis, to renew their alliance, and receive
from the governor the customary gifts. Fourscore of their deputies were
introduced as friends into the city; but on the dark suspicion of a
conspiracy, they were massacred at the table of Sergius, and the clamor
of arms and revenge was reechoed through the valleys of Mount Atlas from
both the Syrtes to the Atlantic Ocean. A personal injury, the unjust
execution or murder of his brother, rendered Antalas the enemy of