tius in his turn had been dethroned
and mutilated by the rebel Apsimar, who assumed the more respectable
name of Tiberius. But the claim of lineal succession was still
formidable to a plebeian usurper; and his jealousy was stimulated by the
complaints and charges of the Chersonites, who beheld the vices of the
tyrant in the spirit of the exile. With a band of followers, attached
to his person by common hope or common despair, Justinian fled from the
inhospitable shore to the horde of the Chozars, who pitched their tents
between the Tanais and Borysthenes. The khan entertained with pity and
respect the royal suppliant: Phanagoria, once an opulent city, on the
Asiatic side of the lake Moeotis, was assigned for his residence; and
every Roman prejudice was stifled in his marriage with the sister of
the Barbarian, who seems, however, from the name of Theodora, to have
received the sacrament of baptism. But the faithless Chozar was soon
tempted by the gold of Constantinople: and had not the design been
revealed by the conjugal love of Theodora, her husband must have
been assassinated or betrayed into the power of his enemies. After
strangling, with his own hands, the two emissaries of the khan,
Justinian sent back his wife to her brother, and embarked on the Euxine
in search of new and more faithful allies. His vessel was assaulted by a
violent tempest; and one of his pious companions advised him to deserve
the mercy of God by a vow of general forgiveness, if he should be
restored to the throne. "Of forgiveness?" replied the intrepid tyrant:
"may I perish this instant--may the Almighty whelm me in the waves--if I
consent to spare a single head of my enemies!" He survived this impious
menace, sailed into the mouth of the Danube, trusted his person in the
royal village of the Bulgarians, and purchased the aid of Terbelis, a
pagan conqueror, by the promise of his daughter and a fair partition
of the treasures of the empire. The Bulgarian kingdom extended to the
confines of Thrace; and the two princes besieged Constantinople at the
head of fifteen thousand horse. Apsimar was dismayed by the sudden and
hostile apparition of his rival whose head had been promised by the
Chozar, and of whose evasion he was yet ignorant. After an absence of
ten years, the crimes of Justinian were faintly remembered, and the
birth and misfortunes of their hereditary sovereign excited the pity
of the multitude, ever discontented with the ruling powers; a