the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted, by the right of conquest,
the august title of Emperor of the Romans. A motive of vanity or
discontent solicited one of his successors, Constans the Second, to
abandon the Thracian Bosphorus, and to restore the pristine honors of
the Tyber: an extravagant project, (exclaims the malicious Byzantine,)
as if he had despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or
rather to expose, the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron. But
the sword of the Lombards opposed his settlement in Italy: he entered
Rome not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive, and, after a visit of twelve
days, he pillaged, and forever deserted, the ancient capital of the
world. The final revolt and separation of Italy was accomplished about
two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and from his reign we
may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue. That legislator had
composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which
he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman government,
the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of the
campus and tribunals of the East. But this foreign dialect was unknown
to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic provinces, it was imperfectly
understood by the greater part of the interpreters of the laws and
the ministers of the state. After a short conflict, nature and habit
prevailed over the obsolete institutions of human power: for the general
benefit of his subjects, Justinian promulgated his novels in the two
languages: the several parts of his voluminous jurisprudence were
successively translated; the original was forgotten, the version was
studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic merit deserved indeed the
preference, obtained a legal, as well as popular establishment in
the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and residence of succeeding princes
estranged them from the Roman idiom: Tiberius by the Arabs, and Maurice
by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars,
as the founders of a new dynasty and empire: the silent revolution was
accomplished before the death of Heraclius; and the ruins of the Latin
speech were darkly preserved in the terms of jurisprudence and the
acclamations of the palace. After the restoration of the Western empire
by Charlemagne and the Othos, the names of Franks and Latins acquired an
equal signification and extent; and these haughty Barbarians asserted,
with some justi