hird
generation of obedient subjects. Experience and Christianity had refuted
the superstitious hope, that Rome was founded by the gods to reign
forever over the nations of the earth. But the proud claim of perpetual
and indefeasible dominion, which her soldiers could no longer maintain,
was firmly asserted by her statesmen and lawyers, whose opinions
have been sometimes revived and propagated in the modern schools of
jurisprudence. After Rome herself had been stripped of the Imperial
purple, the princes of Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred
sceptre of the monarchy; demanded, as their rightful inheritance, the
provinces which had been subdued by the consuls, or possessed by the
Caesars; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of the
West from the usurpation of heretics and Barbarians. The execution of
this splendid design was in some degree reserved for Justinian. During
the five first years of his reign, he reluctantly waged a costly and
unprofitable war against the Persians; till his pride submitted to
his ambition, and he purchased at the price of four hundred and forty
thousand pounds sterling, the benefit of a precarious truce, which, in
the language of both nations, was dignified with the appellation of the
endless peace. The safety of the East enabled the emperor to employ his
forces against the Vandals; and the internal state of Africa afforded
an honorable motive, and promised a powerful support, to the Roman arms.
[1]

[Footnote 1: The complete series of the Vandal war is related by
Procopius in a regular and elegant narrative, (l. i. c. 9--25, l. ii. c.
1--13,) and happy would be my lot, could I always tread in the footsteps
of such a guide. From the entire and diligent perusal of the Greek
text, I have a right to pronounce that the Latin and French versions
of Grotius and Cousin may not be implicitly trusted; yet the president
Cousin has been often praised, and Hugo Grotius was the first scholar of
a learned age.]

According to the testament of the founder, the African kingdom had
lineally descended to Hilderic, the eldest of the Vandal princes. A mild
disposition inclined the son of a tyrant, the grandson of a conqueror,
to prefer the counsels of clemency and peace; and his accession was
marked by the salutary edict, which restored two hundred bishops to
their churches, and allowed the free profession of the Athanasian creed.
[2] But the Catholics accepted, with cold and transient gr