determine all matters in dispute and to end the war. But Justin did not recover, and by the masterful will of the Empress, Tiberius was adopted as the Emperor's son and created Caesar in the presence of the patriarch John and of the officials of the Court (Friday, 7 Dec. 574). It was a scene which deeply impressed the imagination of contemporary historians. Justin in a pathetic speech confessed with sincere contrition his failure, and in this brief interval of unclouded mental vision warned his successor of the dangers which surrounded the throne.
Tiberius, his position now established, at once busied himself with the work of reorganisation. His assumption of power marks a change of policy which is of the highest importance. The new Caesar, himself by birth a Thracian, had seen service on the Danube, and realised that from the military standpoint the intransigeant imperialism of Justin was too heroic an ideal for the exhausted Empire. Years before he had approved of terms of peace which would have given the Avars land on which to settle within Rome's frontiers. Greek influence was everywhere on the increase; at all costs it was the Greek-speaking Asiatic provinces which must be defended and retained. Persia was the formidable foe and it was her rivalry which was the dominating factor in the situation. Tiberius had indeed with practical insight comprehended Rome's true policy. Syrian chroniclers of a later day rightly appreciated this: to them Tiberius stands at the head of a new imperial line, they know him as the first of the Greek emperors. But if in his view the Empire, though maintaining its hold on such bulwark cities as Sirmium, was in the future to place no longer its chief reliance on those European provinces from which he had himself sprung, the administration must scrupulously abstain from arousing the hostility of the eastern nationalities: religious persecution must cease and it must be unnecessary for his subjects to seek under a foreign domination a wider tolerance and a more spacious freedom for the profession of their own faith. The Monophysites gratefully acknowledged that during his reign they found in the Emperor a champion against their ecclesiastical oppressors. This was not all: there are hints in our authorities which suggest that he regarded as ill-timed the aristocratic sympathies of Justin, and strove to increase the authority of the popular elements in the State. It is possible that the demesmen, suppressed by Justinian after the Nika sedition and cowed by Justin, owed to the policy of Tiberius some of the influence which they exercised towards the close of the reign of Maurice. Even at the risk of what might be judged financial improvidence, the autocrat must strive to win the esteem, if not the affection, of his subjects. Tiberius forthwith remitted a year's taxation and endeavoured to restore the ravages which Adarmaanes had inflicted on Syria. At the same time he began to remodel the army, attracting to the service of the State sturdy barbarian soldiers wherever such could be found.[1]
- ↑ Is not Theophanes 251, 24 really summarising the Persian war as carried on by
