Under these circumstances, everything was lost. The effective force of the army, which ought to have numbered 645,000 men, was reduced to 150,000 at the most in 555. No garrisons defended the ramparts of the dilapidated fortresses, "Even the barking of a watch-dog was not to be heard" wrote Agathias, somewhat brutally. Even the capital, inadequately protected by the wall of Anastasius, which was breached in a thousand places, only had a few regiments of the palatine guard — soldiers of no military worth — to defend it, and was at the mercy of a sudden attack. Added to this, successive invasions took place in Illyricum and Thrace; the Huns only just failed to take Constantinople in 558, while in 562 the Avars insolently demanded land and money from the Emperor.
Then there was the misery of earthquakes, in 551 in Palestine, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia, in 554 and 557 at Constantinople. It was in 556 that the scourge of famine came, and in 558 the plague, which desolated the capital during six months. Above all there was the increasing misery caused by the financial tyranny. During the last years of the reign the only supplies came from such expedients as the debasement of the coinage, forced loans and confiscations. The Blues and Greens again filled Byzantium with disturbances: in 553, 556, 559, 560, 561, 562 and 564 there were tumults in the streets, and incendiarism in the town. In the palace the indecision as to a successor led to continual intrigues: already the nephews of the basileus quarrelled over their heritage. There was even a conspiracy against the Emperor's life, and on this occasion Justinian's distrust caused the disgrace of Belisarius once more for a few weeks (562).
Thus when the Emperor died (November 565) at the age of 83 years, relief was felt throughout the Empire. In ending this account of Justinian's reign the grave Evagrius wrote, "Thus died this prince, after having filled the whole world with noise and troubles: and having since the end of his life received the wages of his misdeeds, he has gone to seek the justice which was his due before the judgment-seat of hell." He certainly left a formidable heritage to his successors, perils menacing all the frontiers, an exhausted Empire, in which the public authority was weakened in the provinces by the development of the. great feudal estates, in the capital by the growth of a turbulent proletariat, susceptible to every panic and ready for every sedition. The monarchy had no strength with which to meet all these dangers. In a novel of Justin II promulgated the day after Justinian's death we read the following, word for word — "We found the treasury crushed by debts and reduced to the last degree of poverty, and the army so completely deprived of all necessaries that the State was exposed to the incessant invasions and insults of the barbarians."
It would, however, be unjust to judge the whole of Justinian's reign by the years of his decadence. Indeed, though every part of the work
