Narses in the palace. But the name of the emperor is eclipsed by the names of his victorious generals; and Belisarius still lives, to upbraid the envy and ingratitude of his sovereign. The partial favour of mankind applauds the genius of a conqueror, who leads and directs his subjects in the exercise of arms. The characters of Philip the Second and of Justinian are distinguished by the cold ambition which delights in war and declines the dangers of the field. Yet a colossal statue of bronze represented the emperor on horseback, preparing to march against the Persians in the habit and armour of Achilles. In the great square before the church of St. Sophia, this monument was raised on a brass column and a stone pedestal of seven steps; and the pillar of Theodosius, which weighed seven thousand four hundred pounds of silver, was removed from the same place by the avarice and vanity of Justinian. Future princes were more just or indulgent to his memory; the elder Andronicus, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, repaired and beautified his equestrian statue; since the fall of the empire, it has been melted into cannon by the victorious Turks.[1]
I shall conclude this chapter with the comets, the earthquakes, and the plague, which astonished or afflicted the age of Justinian.
Comets. A.D. 531-539 I. In the fifth year of his reign, and in the month of September, a comet[2] was seen during twenty days in the western [A.D. 530] quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary: the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible above forty days. The nations who gazed with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from the baleful influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The astronomers dissembled their ignorance of the nature of these blazing stars, which they affected to represent as the floating meteors of the air; and few among them- ↑ See in the C. P. Christiana of Ducange (l. i. c. 24, No. 1) a chain of original testimonies, from Procopius in the vith, to Gyllius in the xvith, century. [For a drawing of the statue, made in A.D. 1340, in a Ms. in the library of the Seraglio, see Mordtmann, Constantinople, p. 65; and for an inscription which may belong to it, ib., p. 55.]
- ↑ The first comet is mentioned by John Malala (tom. ii. p. 190, 219 [454, 477, ed. Bonn]) and Theophanes (p. 154 [A.M. 6023]); the second by Procopius (Persic. l. ii. c. 4). Yet I strongly suspect their identity. The paleness of the sun (Vandal. l. c. ii. 14) is applied by Theophanes (p. 158) to a different year [A.M. 6024 = A.D. 531-2].
