and the blue
and green factions continued to afflict the reign of Justinian, and to
disturb the tranquility of the Eastern empire.

III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations
whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as the frontiers
of AEthiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces,
and nine hundred and thirty-five cities; his dominions were blessed
by nature with the advantages of soil, situation, and climate: and the
improvements of human art had been perpetually diffused along the coast
of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Nile from ancient Troy to the
Egyptian Thebes. Abraham had been relieved by the well-known plenty of
Egypt; the same country, a small and populous tract, was still capable
of exporting, each year, two hundred and sixty thousand quarters of
wheat for the use of Constantinople; and the capital of Justinian was
supplied with the manufactures of Sidon, fifteen centuries after
they had been celebrated in the poems of Homer. The annual powers of
vegetation, instead of being exhausted by two thousand harvests,
were renewed and invigorated by skilful husbandry, rich manure,
and seasonable repose. The breed of domestic animals was infinitely
multiplied. Plantations, buildings, and the instruments of labor
and luxury, which are more durable than the term of human life, were
accumulated by the care of successive generations. Tradition preserved,
and experience simplified, the humble practice of the arts: society
was enriched by the division of labor and the facility of exchange; and
every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the industry of a
thousand hands. The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously
ascribed to the gods. In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable
productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length _silk_, have
been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they
were stained with an infusion of permanent colors; and the pencil was
successfully employed to improve the labors of the loom. In the choice
of those colors which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of
taste and fashion was indulged; but the deep purple which the Phnicians
extracted from a shell-fish, was restrained to the sacred person and
palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason were denounced
against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the
throne.

Chapter XL: Reign Of