'' PROCOPIUS'S MONUMENT OF JOSHUA's CONQUEST OF CANAAN." 235 



year the reflection forced itself upon me, "If the letters were 

 SO deeply cut as to be readable two thousand years after 

 they Avere inscribed, Avhy should they not be readable now ? 

 Is it not likely that the atmosphere of North Africa, so 

 famous for its dryness, failed to destroy them as the atmo- 

 sphere of the Orient has failed to destroy those of so many 

 monuments of Babylonian and Assyrian kings ? " My 

 curiosity could no longer be restrained. I broke away from 

 other studies at the British Museum to ransack the writings 

 of Procopius for this allusion, which after all might be much 

 more expHcit than the rough quotation that I had read. 

 And my search was presently rewarded by my finding in the 

 second book of that author's history of the Vandal War a 

 good deal more information than I expected. 



And now a word as to Procopius and his times. In 

 A.D. 395 was made the final division of the Homan 

 dominion into the Empires of the West and of the East, with 

 their respective capitals at Rome and at Byzantium, or 

 Constantinople ; in A.D. 439 Carthage and the whole of 

 Western North Africa fell beneath the arms of the Vandals; 

 and in A.D. 476 Rome and its surrounding territory were 

 finally absorbed into the Gothic kingdom of Italy. But the 

 reign of the Eastern Emperor Justinian, between A.D. 527 

 and 565, revived the prospect of a renewal of the palmiest 

 days of Roman rule. By means of his great generals 

 Belisarius and Narses and the armies that they raised, 

 largely recruited from the newly settled barbarians, he not 

 only kept all invaders from the Danube to the Tigris at bay, 

 but wrested all Italy back from the Goths, and North Africa 

 from the Vandals, restoring those countries to a domi- 

 nation that was called " Roman" still ; while, like the most 

 prudent of his predecessors, he covered his dominions with 

 fortified towns, roads, and bridges, building also numerous 

 churches and other ecclesiastical edifices. But his chief fame 

 rests upon his procuring a complete codification of the 

 Roman law and a digest of all Roman judicial decisions, 

 which have maintained their authority in some European 

 countries down to this very day, and provided a foundation 

 for our first Avriters upon international law. Justinian's 

 predecessor, in the last year of his reign, appointed one 

 Procopius, lawyer and teacher of rhetoric in Constantinople, 

 to be " assessor " — that is evidently civil adviser — to 

 Belisarius ; and the assessor accompanied the great com- 

 mander in all his wars in Armenia, Persia, Africa, and Italy. 



