his bed, and
expected, in an agony of grief and terror, the death which he had so
often braved under the walls of Rome. Long after sunset a messenger
was announced from the empress: he opened, with anxious curiosity, the
letter which contained the sentence of his fate. "You cannot be ignorant
how much you have deserved my displeasure. I am not insensible of the
services of Antonina. To her merits and intercession I have granted your
life, and permit you to retain a part of your treasures, which might be
justly forfeited to the state. Let your gratitude, where it is due, be
displayed, not in words, but in your future behavior." I know not 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.

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
edu