The triple scourge of war, pestilence and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired, in some of the fairest countries of the globe.”[20] [19] See Appendix, No. II. [20] Gibbon’s Hist. vol. iv. Procopius, in speaking of the numbers who died in this extraordinary plague, compares them to the sand of the sea; and afterwards expresses them by a phrase which has been translated _two hundred millions_. The phrase is _myriadas myriadon myrias_. Mr. Gibbon, by dropping the first word, restricts the sense to _one hundred millions_; which he thinks not wholly inadmissible; but the probability seems to be, that Procopius did not mean to specify the number, but to represent it as incalculable. This is done by putting a comma, or semicolon, after the first word; and we may then read, that there perished _myriads; a myriad of myriads_. The grammar is rectified by reading _myriades_ instead of _myriadae_. This plague broke out in the time of Justinian, in the year 541 or 542 of the christian era; and not only ravaged Constantinople in the time of Justinian, but returned with increased violence during the reigns of many of his successors. In the time of Mauritius we find the Avari, a barbarous nation to the north of the Danube, driven back by the plague after they had crossed that river to invade the Roman territories. The reign of Phocas, successor to Mauritius, was still more unfortunate. “Great numbers were swept off, either by famine or pestilence; the earth refused her fruits in season; the winters were so severe, that the seas were frozen, and the fish destroyed.” Phocas ascended the imperial throne in 603; but in the midst of such confusion as then filled the world, we can scarce expect an accurate account of the time when this most malignant pestilence ceased. We can scarcely suppose it to have lasted two centuries; but, in the reign of Constantine Copronymus, which began in 742, we find the distemper still raging, and the same dreadful phenomena of nature still continuing. The plague, we are now told, broke out in Calabria in Italy; whence it soon spread over Greece, Sicily, the islands in the Ægean sea; and at last reached Constantinople; where it raged for three years together, with such fury, that the living were scarce sufficient to bury the dead. The earthquakes, which accompanied or preceded this pestilence, were such as had never been known in any age. In Syria and Palestine several cities were swallowed up; others, entirely ruined; and some, if we may give credit to Nicephorus, removed without any considerable damage, six miles and upwards from their former seats. At the same time happened an extraordinary darkness, which lasted from the fourth of August to the first of October, there being little or no distinction, during all that time, between day and night.[21] During the reign of the same prince,