s we see and the effigies of
Justinian and himself.

[Footnote 1: Agnellus, _Liber Pontificalis_ (ed. Holder-Egger. P. 334)
_ad vitam Sancti Agnelli_.]

Such was the work achieved in the fortunate capital. But ruined Italy
awaited a more necessary, if less splendid, labour. This can have been
nothing less than the resurrection of the country, which, in those
eighteen years of war, can have become little less than a desert; and,
as we might expect, all Italy desolate and depopulated looked to
Justinian to succour her in her misery if she was not to perish under
her ruins and her debts. The first step in that work was undertaken in
the very year of the peace, in the August of the year 554, and it took
the form of a solemn "Pragmatic Sanction" addressed to Narses and to
Antiochus, the Prefect of Italy,[1] in Ravenna. It had for its object
the social peace of Italy, the re-establishment of order out of the
chaos of the Ostrogothic war; and it is significant of the true
position of affairs that this decree asserts that it is issued by the
emperor in reply to the petition of the pope.

[Footnote 1: The fact that it was addressed to both surely seems to
show that Narses at this time only held a military power in Italy.
This is interesting as touching the discussion later on of the genesis
of the exarchate.]

It consists of twenty-seven articles, and first establishes what is to
be considered as still having authority in that tempestuous past; what
part of it is to remain and to be confirmed and what is to be utterly
swept away. Thus the emperor confirms all dispositions made by
Amalasuntha, Athalaric, and Theodahad, as well as all his own
acts--and these would include Theodoric's--and those of Theodora. But
everything done by "the most wicked tyrant Totila" is null and void,
"for we will not allow these law-abiding days of ours to take any
account of what was done by him in the time of his tyranny."[1] Totila
had indeed most cruelly attacked the great landed proprietors whom he
suspected of too great an attachment for Constantinople; he had
attacked them in their persons and in their wealth. With a single
stroke of the pen Justinian, as it were, effaced all the ordinances of
the tyrant and rendered again to their legitimate masters, as far as
it could be done, their lands, their flocks, their peasants, and their
slaves which had been taken from them, or which fear had caused them
to alienate.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin,