taxation,[1] restrained extravagance, and, though practising thrift,[2] responded liberally to every genuine application.[3] His administration was much admired by those who were free from sectarian prejudice;[4] and even the bigoted adherents of the Chalcedonian synod cannot avoid being eulogistic when recounting some of his measures.[5]
Within the Byzantine province of Dardania, to the south of modern Servia, was situated the municipal town of Scupi,[6] in a plain almost contained by a mountainous amphitheatre, consisting of the Scardus chain, and its connections with the greater ranges of Pindus and Haemus.[7] Among its dependent villages, lying along the banks of the Axius or Vardar, the river of the plain, were the hamlets of Bederiana and Tauresium.[8] Under Roman rule the language and manners of
- ↑ See p. 155. But the exactions of Marinus the Syrian, P.P. who committed the local supervision of the taxes to so-called vindices of his own creation, instead of to the Decurions, ultimately branded A. with the opprobrium of being a grasping character: Jn. Lydus, De Magistr., iii, 36, 46, 49; Evagrius, iii, 42, etc.
- ↑ The large sum he left in the Treasury has already been alluded to; see p. 163.
- ↑ The closest personal view of him is to be got from Cyril Scythop. Vit. S. Saba, 50, et seq. He was surnamed Dicorus (double-pupil), because his eyes differed in colour.
- ↑ Procopius, De Bel. Pers., i, 10; De Aedific., iii, 2, etc.; Jn. Lydus, De Magistr., iii, 47, et passim.
- ↑ Especially Evagrius and Cyril Scythop., both of whom condemned him as a heretic.
- ↑ Marcellinus Com., an. 518. Now Uskiub, a flourishing Turkish town, nearly on the same site. The whole district has recently been explored by Evans; Antiquarian Researches in Illyricum, Archaeologia, xlix, 1885.
- ↑ The Balkans. See generally Tozer's Travels in the Turkish Highlands, 1869, i, 16, etc.
- ↑ Procopius, De Aedific., iv, 1. It seems that they are still represented by villages called Taor and Bader; see Tozer, op. cit., ii. Append.
