believed him to be orthodox, and
of the provincials, who yielded a blind and implicit submission to
the will of the capital. The elder Justin, as he is distinguished from
another emperor of the same family and name, ascended the Byzantine
throne at the age of sixty-eight years; and, had he been left to his own
guidance, every moment of a nine years' reign must have exposed to his
subjects the impropriety of their choice. His ignorance was similar to
that of Theodoric; and it is remarkable that in an age not destitute
of learning, two contemporary monarchs had never been instructed in the
knowledge of the alphabet. But the genius of Justin was far inferior
to that of the Gothic king: the experience of a soldier had not
qualified him for the government of an empire; and though personally
brave, the consciousness of his own weakness was naturally attended with
doubt, distrust, and political apprehension. But the official business
of the state was diligently and faithfully transacted by the quaestor
Proclus; and the aged emperor adopted the talents and ambition of his
nephew Justinian, an aspiring youth, whom his uncle had drawn from the
rustic solitude of Dacia, and educated at Constantinople, as the heir of
his private fortune, and at length of the Eastern empire.

Since the eunuch Amantius had been defrauded of his money, it became
necessary to deprive him of his life. The task was easily accomplished
by the charge of a real or fictitious conspiracy; and the judges were
informed, as an accumulation of guilt, that he was secretly addicted to
the Manichaean heresy. Amantius lost his head; three of his companions,
the first domestics of the palace, were punished either with death or
exile; and their unfortunate candidate for the purple was cast into a
deep dungeon, overwhelmed with stones, and ignominiously thrown, without
burial, into the sea. The ruin of Vitalian was a work of more difficulty
and danger. That Gothic chief had rendered himself popular by the civil
war which he boldly waged against Anastasius for the defence of the
orthodox faith, and after the conclusion of an advantageous treaty, he
still remained in the neighborhood of Constantinople at the head of a
formidable and victorious army of Barbarians. By the frail security of
oaths, he was tempted to relinquish this advantageous situation, and
to trust his person within the walls of a city, whose inhabitants,
particularly the _blue_ faction, were artfully incen