h ignominy the lifeless
corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren submitted to their earthly
monarch, underwent the ceremony of baptism, and labored, by their
extraordinary zeal, to erase the suspicion, or to expiate the guilt,
of idolatry. The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan
war, still retained the last sparks of his mythology: by the care of
the same bishop, seventy thousand Pagans were detected and converted in
Asia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria; ninety-six churches were built for the
new proselytes; and linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases
of gold and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of Justinian.
[86] The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of their immunities,
were oppressed by a vexatious law, which compelled them to observe
the festival of Easter the same day on which it was celebrated by the
Christians. [87] And they might complain with the more reason, since the
Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical calculations of
their sovereign: the people of Constantinople delayed the beginning of
their Lent a whole week after it had been ordained by authority; and
they had the pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed for
sale by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of Palestine [88]
were a motley race, an ambiguous sect, rejected as Jews by the Pagans,
by the Jews as schismatics, and by the Christians as idolaters. The
abomination of the cross had already been planted on their holy mount
of Garizim, [89] but the persecution of Justinian offered only the
alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter: under the
standard of a desperate leader, they rose in arms, and retaliated their
wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples, of a defenceless
people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the
East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs
to the infidels of Persia and India, and the remains of that unhappy
nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has
been computed that one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated
in the Samaritan war, [90] which converted the once fruitful province
into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian,
the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of
unbelievers; and he piously labored to establish with fire and sword the
unity of the Christian faith. [91]

[Footnote 84: This