History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 4 — John Shaqi
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.
the hippodrome. In this narrow space, the disorderly and affrighted
crowd was incapable of resisting on either side a firm and regular
attack; the blues signalized the fury of their repentance; and it is
computed, that above thirty thousand persons were slain in the merciless
and promiscuous carnage of the day. Hypatius was dragged from his
throne, and conducted, with his brother Pompey, to the feet of the
emperor: they implored his clemency; but their crime was manifest,
their innocence uncertain, and Justinian had been too much terrified to
forgive. The next morning the two nephews of Anastasius, with eighteen
_illustrious_ accomplices, of patrician or consular rank, were privately
executed by the soldiers; their bodies were thrown into the sea, their
palaces razed, and their fortunes confiscated. The hippodrome itself
was condemned, during several years, to a mournful silence: with the
restoration of the games, the same disorders revived; and the blue
and green factions continued to afflict the reign of Justinian, and to
disturb the tranquility of the Eastern empire.
III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations
whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as the frontiers
of ∆thiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces,
and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; his dominions were blessed
by nature with the advantages of soil, situation, and climate: and the
improvements of human art had been perpetually diffused along the coast
of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile from ancient Troy to the
Egyptian Thebes. Abraham had been relieved by the well-known plenty of
Egypt; the same country, a small and populous tract, was still capable
of exporting, each year, two hundred and sixty thousand quarters of
wheat for the use of Constantinople; and the capital of Justinian was
supplied with the manufactures of Sidon, fifteen centuries after
they had been celebrated in the poems of Homer. The annual powers of
vegetation, instead of being exhausted by two thousand harvests,
were renewed and invigorated by skilful husbandry, rich manure,
and seasonable repose. The breed of domestic animals was infinitely
multiplied. Plantations, buildings, and the instruments of labor
and luxury, which are more durable than the term of human life, were
accumulated by the care of successive generations. Tradition preserved,
and experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts: society
was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of exchange; and
every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the industry of a
thousand hands. The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously
ascribed to the gods. In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable
productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length _silk_, have
been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they
were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was
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