posed to fly with the imperial treasures. She found means to communicate with the leaders of the blues and to sow the seeds of jealousy, which soon revived the animosity of the factions. The blues were easily persuaded to turn their weapons against their old foes, and the greens were left deserted in the hippodrome with their unfortunate emperor. Then Justinian took his revenge in a slaughter which assured the greens that their cause was hopeless. Thirty thousand of them were murdered almost in cold blood. Hypatius, with nineteen so-called accomplices of patrician rank, was privately executed: their palaces were razed, and their fortunes were confiscated. For several years the hippodrome was closed.
The conquests and campaigns of Justinian's generals, Belisarius and Narses, cannot find any place in this volume. After the disgrace and retirement of Belisarius the emperor was forced to send for him once more, and entrust to his aged hands the defence of the city. Both emperor and general were old, the former in the thirty-second year of his reign and the seventy-fourth of his age. This time the attack was made by the Bulgarians. The winter had been exceptionally severe: the Danube was frozen, and immense multitudes of the wild tribes of the north flocked down and joined the standard of Zabergan the Bulgarian chief. In spite of Justinian's vaunted fortresses they met with nothing to oppose their southward march; they crossed the Balkans, descended into the plain, and spread in innumerable swarms over the fertile plain of Roumelia. The long wall had been partly thrown down by an earthquake, and the citizens
