t how to believe or to relate the
transports with which the hero is said to have received this ignominious
pardon. He fell prostrate before his wife, he kissed the feet of his
savior, and he devoutly promised to live the grateful and submissive
slave of Antonina. A fine of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds
sterling was levied on the fortunes of Belisarius; and with the office
of count, or master of the royal stables, he accepted the conduct of the
Italian war. At his departure from Constantinople, his friends, and even
the public, were persuaded that as soon as he regained his freedom,
he would renounce his dissimulation, and that his wife, Theodora, and
perhaps the emperor himself, would be sacrificed to the just revenge
of a virtuous rebel. Their hopes were deceived; and the unconquerable
patience and loyalty of Belisarius appear either below or above the
character of a man. [117]

[Footnote 117: The continuator of the Chronicle of Marcellinus gives,
in a few decent words, the substance of the Anecdotes: Belisarius de
Oriente evocatus, in offensam periculumque incurrens grave, et invidiae
subeacens rursus remittitur in Italiam, (p. 54.)]

Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.--Part I.

State Of The Barbaric World.--Establishment Of The Lombards
On the Danube.--Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians.--
Origin, Empire, And Embassies Of The Turks.--The Flight Of
The Avars.--Chosroes I, Or Nushirvan, King Of Persia.--His
Prosperous Reign And Wars With The Romans.--The Colchian Or
Lazic War.--The Aethiopians.

Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common faculties of
mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or
speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation,
as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age and
country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass
unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies. Leonidas, and
his three hundred companions, devoted their lives at Thermopylae; but
the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared,
and almost insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would
approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight
thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. [1] The great
Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had defeated in battle
two millions of enemies, and reduced fiftee