History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
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;
5 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.
1 (return) [ There is some difficulty in the date of his birth
(Ludewig in Vit. Justiniani, p. 125;) none in the place—the
district Bederiana—the village Tauresium, which he afterwards
decorated with his name and splendor, (D’Anville, Hist. de
l’Acad. &c., tom. xxxi. p. 287—292.)]
2 (return) [ The names of these Dardanian peasants are Gothic,
and almost English: Justinian is a translation of uprauda,
(upright;) his father Sabatius (in Graeco-barbarous language
stipes) was styled in his village Istock, (Stock;) his mother
Bigleniza was softened into Vigilantia.]
3 (return) [ Ludewig (p. 127—135) attempts to justify the Anician
name of Justinian and Theodora, and to connect them with a family
from which the house of Austria has been derived.]
4 (return) [ See the anecdotes of Procopius, (c. 6,) with the
notes of N. Alemannus. The satirist would not have sunk, in the
vague and decent appellation of Zonaras. Yet why are those names
disgraceful?—and what German baron would not be proud to descend
from the Eumaeus of the Odyssey! Note: It is whimsical enough
that, in our own days, we should have, even in jest, a claimant
to lineal descent from the godlike swineherd not in the person of
a German baron, but in that of a professor of the Ionian
University. Constantine Koliades, or some malicious wit under
this name, has written a tall folio to prove Ulysses to be Homer,
and himself the descendant, the heir (?), of the Eumaeus of the
Odyssey.—M]
411 (return) [ St. Martin questions the fact in both cases. The
ignorance of Justin rests on the secret history of Procopius,
vol. viii. p. 8. St. Martin’s notes on Le Beau.—M]
5 (return) [ His virtues are praised by Procopius, (Persic. l. i.
c. 11.) The quaestor Proclus was the friend of Justinian, and the
enemy of every other adoption.]
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