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The hour had struck as I say, and the man had appeared with the hour. That man was the great soldier Belisarius, the instrument of Justinian in all his heroic design. Belisarius was entirely successful in his African campaign.
If Justinian recalled Belisarius, it was not certain that he would obey; and, in the worst case, it would be in favor of Persia that the Goths of Italy, and the Armenians who for centuries had been subjects of Rome, were now ready to make common cause with her." Thus urged, the Persian king determined on openly declaring war and making an attack in force on the eastern provinces of the empire.
And I do heartily wish that every man would lay aside his own business, meddle no more with his profession nor trade, and throw all affairs concerning himself behind his back, to attend this wholly, without distracting or troubling his mind with anything else, until he have learned them without book; that if by chance the art of printing should cease, or in case that in time to come all books should perish, every man might truly teach them unto his children, and deliver them over to his successors and survivors from hand to hand as a religious cabal; for there is in it more profit than a rabble of great pocky loggerheads are able to discern, who surely understand far less in these little merriments than the fool Raclet did in the Institutions of Justinian.
Whether this is a "nearly unaltered Christian building of the fourth century," or a construction of Abd-el-Malek, the second Caliph, erected in the year 688, has been debated keenly; but what is beyond debate is that this structure is very Byzantine, or, to speak with more exactness, very like some of the buildings of Justinian in plan and section, and that from early times it was in the possession of the Saracens, and was regarded by them as the next most venerable and sacred spot in the world after Mecca.
This fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of Justinian; and at the moment of his seasonable departure, the clergy had refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared to persecute, and the people were resolved to suffer or resist. A bishop of Treves, secure beyond the limits of his power, addressed the monarch of the East in the language of authority and affection.
A law was thought necessary to discriminate the dress of comedians from that of senators; and of the silk exported from its native country the far greater part was consumed by the subjects of Justinian.
Bardanes, or Philippicus, was hailed at Constantinople as a hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant; and he might taste some moments of happiness in the first transports of sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left behind him an ample treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but this useful fund was soon and idly dissipated by his successor.
The Emperor Justinian, upon receiving this letter, having been angry with Gelimer even before then, was still more eager to punish him.
He and the bishops attending him saw in this edict a scheme to help the Acephali, upon whom Vigilius repeated his anathema. But Mennas feared the emperor much more than he feared the Pope, whose name he now removed from commemoration at the Mass. Justinian tried repeatedly his personal influence with the Pope, that also of bishops and officers of State.
Justinian embraced a more humble expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies, the Æthiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror.
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