OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 359 which represent the shape of the human eye. The two mules that draw the chariot of the monarch are perfectly white, and shining all over with gold. The chariot itself, of pure and solid gold, attracts the admiration of the spectators, who contemplate the purple curtains, the snowy carpet, the size of the precious stones, and the resplendent plates of gold, that glitter as they are agitated by the motion of the carriage. The Imperial pictures are white on a blue ground ; the emperor appears seated on his throne, with his arms, his horses, and his guards beside him ; and his vanquished enemies in chains at his feet." The successors of Constantine established their perpetual resi- dence in the royal city which he had erected on the verge of Europe and Asia. Inaccessible to the menaces of their enemies, and perhaps to the complaints of their people, they received, with each wind, the tributary productions of every climate ; while the impregnable strength of their capital continued for ages to defy the hostile attempts of the Barbarians. Their dominions were bounded by the Hadriatic and Tigiis ; and the whole interval of twenty-five days' navigation, which separated the extreme cold of Scythia from the torrid zone of Ethiopia,^ was comprehended withm the limits of the empire of the East. The populous countries of that empire were the seat of art and learning, of luxury and wealth ; and the inhabitants, who had assumed the language and manners of Greeks, styled themselves, with some appearance of truth, the most enlightened and civilized portion of the human species. The foi-m of govern- ment was a pure and simple monarchy ; the name of the Roman Republic, which so long preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the Latin provinces ; and the princes of Con- stantinople measured their greatness by the servile obedience of their people. They were ignorant how much this passive dis- position enervates and degrades every faculty of the mind. The subjects, who had resigned their will to the absolute commands of a master, were equally incapable of guarding their lives and fortunes against the assaults of the Barbarians or of defending their reason from the terrors of superstition. 2 According to the loose reckoning that a ship could sail, with a fair wind, looo stadia, or 125 miles, in the revolution of a day and night ; Diodorus Siculus computes ten days from the Palus Masotis to Rhodes, and four days from Rhodes to Alexandria, The navigation of the Nile, from Alexandria to Syene, under the tropic of Cancer, required, as it was against the stream, ten days more. Diodor. Sicul. torn. i. 1. iii. p. 200, edit. Wesseling. He might, without much impro- priety, measure the extreme heat from the verge of the torrid zone ; but he speaks of the Masotis in the 47th degree of northern latitude, as if it lay within the polar circle. [On rates of sea travelling see Appendix 24.]
