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before their minds were reduced to the level of slavery. The populous villages of Mount Taurus were filled with horsemen and archers; they resisted the imposition of tributes, but they recruited the armies of Justinian; and his civil magistrates, the proconsul of Cappadocia, the count of Isauria, and the prætors of Lycaonia and Pisidia, were invested with military power to restrain the licentious practice of rapes and assassinations.[1]
Fortifications of the empire from the Euxine to the Persian frontier If we extend our view from the tropic to the mouth of the Tanais, we may observe, on one hand, the precautions of Justinian to curb the savages or Æthiopia,[2] and, on the other, the long walls which he constructed in Crimea for the protection of his friendly Goths, a colony of three thousand shepherds and warriors.[3] From that peninsula to Trebizond, the eastern curve of the Euxine was secured by forts, by alliance, or by religion; and the possession of Lazica, the Colchos of ancient, the Mingrelia of modern, geography, soon became the object of an important war. Trebizond, in after-times the seat of a romantic empire, was indebted to the liberality of Justinian for a church, an aqueduct, and a castle, whose ditches are hewn in the solid rock. From that maritime city, a frontier-line of five hundred miles may be drawn to the fortress of Circesium, the last Roman station on the Euphrates.[4] Above Trebizond immediately, and five days' journey to the south, the country rises into dark forests and craggy mountains, as savage though not so lofty as the Alps and the Pyrenees. In this rigorous climate,[5] where the snows seldom melt, the fruits are tardy and- ↑ Fortes ea regio (says Justinian) viros habet, nec in ullo differt ab Isauriâ, though Procopius (Persic. l. i. c. 18) marks an essential difference between their military character; yet in former times the Lycaonians and Pisidians had defended their liberty against the great king (Xenophon, Anabasis, l. iii. c. 2). Justinian introduces some false and ridiculous erudition of the ancient empire of the Pisidians, and of Lycaon, who, after visiting Rome (long before Æneas), gave a name and people to Lycaonia (Novell. 24, 25, 27, 30. [23, 24, 26, 44, ed. Zachariä]).
- ↑ See Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 19. The altar of national concord, of annual sacrifice and oaths, which Diocletian had erected in the isle of Elephantine, was demolished by Justinian with less policy than zeal.
- ↑ Procopius de Aedificiis, l. iii. c. 7. Hist. l. viii. c. 3, 4. These unambitious Goths had refused to follow the standard of Theodoric. As late as the xvth and xvith century, the name and nation might be discovered between Caffa and the straits of Azov (d'Anville, Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xxx. p. 240). They well deserved the curiosity of Busbequius (p. 321-326), but seem to have vanished in the more recent account of the Missions du Levant (tom. i.), Tott, Peyssonel, &c.
- ↑ For the geography and architecture of this Armenian border, see the Persian Wars and Edifices (l. ii. c. 4-7; l. iii. c. 2-7) of Procopius.
- ↑ The country is described by Tournefort (Voyage au Levant, tom. iii. lettre xvii. xviii.). That skilful botanist soon discovered the plant that infects the honey
