312 The Eastern Empire. ROME. The Eastern Empire. 
trates; and, under a prince of the Arian persuasion, it ap¬ 
pears that the catholics lived unmolested. 
But though Odoacer was formidable to his external enemies, 
he was not able to restrain the licentiousness of his own 
troops, who claimed a third of the landed property of Italy; 
and in consequence of a compliance with their demands, the 
misery and desolation of the other two thirds followed. The 
tributary harvests of Africa and Egypt being withdrawn, the 
number of inhabitants was continually diminished with the 
means of subsistence; and pope Gelasius, a subject of 
Odoacer, affirms, that in some districts the human species 
was almost extirpated; while famine and pestilence gleaned 
the miserable refuse that had escaped the edge of the sword. 
Yet, amidst the general distress, Odoacer maintained with 
reputation his station for fourteen years, during which he 
strengthened his power by alliances with the most powerful 
of the barbarians; but at last he was compelled to yield to 
the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. 
The name of the Western empire was now gradually 
changed to that of Kingdom of Italy; and the whole terri¬ 
tory was permanently usurped by foreign nations. The 
names of Theodoric, Euric, and the other Goths, are con¬ 
sidered under the article Goths in this work; and the stream 
of history is successively resumed under the articles Lom¬ 
bardy, France, Germany, Italy, Naples, Palermo, 
and Piedmont. The Papal territory has received particular 
illustration under the article Pope. 
At the period of the dissolution of the Western Empire, 
the Saxons, according to Gibbon, fiercely struggled with the 
natives for the possession of Britain ; Gaul and Spain were 
divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and 
Visigoths, and the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and 
Burgundians: Africa was exposed to the cruel persecution of 
the Vandals, and the savage insults of the Moors: Rome 
and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were in the 
the hands of Theodoric. 
We shall turn to the description of that fine empire which 
so long survived the fall of its contemporary. 
V. —The Eastern Empire. 
The empire of the East, from the reign of Arcadius 
to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted 
one thousand and fifty-eight years, in a state of premature 
and perpetual decay. Its sovereign assumed, and obstinately 
detained, the fictitious title of Emperor of the Romans, 
and the hereditary appellations of Caesar and Augustus. 
The palace of Constantinople rivalled, and perhaps excelled, 
the magnificence of Persia; and the eloquent sermons of 
St. Chrysostom celebrate, while they condemn, the pompous 
luxury of the reign of Arcadius. “ The emperor,” says he, 
“ wears on his head, either a diadem, or a crown of gold, 
decorated with precious stones of inestimable value. These 
ornaments, and his purple garments, are reserved for his 
sacred person alone; and his robes of silk are embroidered 
with the figures of golden dragons. His throne is of massy 
gold. Whenever he appears in public, he is surrounded by 
his courtiers, his guards, and his attendants. Their spears, 
their shields, their cuirasses, the bridles and trappings of 
their horses, have either the substance, or the appearance, of 
gold ; and the large splendid boss in the midst of their shield, 
is encircled with smaller bosses, which represent the shape 
of the human eye. The two mules that draw the chariot of 
the monarch, are perfectly white, and shining all over with 
gold. The chariot, itself of pure and solid gold, attracts 
the admiration of the spectators, who contemplate the pur¬ 
ple curtains, the snowy carpet, the size of the precious 
stones, and the resplendent plates of gold, that glitter as 
they are agitated by the motion of the carriage. The impe¬ 
rial pictures are white, on a blue ground ; the emperor 
appears seated on his throne, with his arms, his horses, and 
his guards beside him; and his vanquished enemies in chains 
at his feet.” The successors of Constantine established their 
perpetual residence in the royal city, which he had erected 
on the verge of Europe and Asia. Inaccessible to the men¬ 
aces of their enemies, and perhaps to the complaints of 
their people, they received, with each wind, the tributary 
productions of every climate; while the impregnable strength 
of their capital continued forages to defy the hostile attempts 
of the barbarians. Their dominions were bounded by the 
Adriatic and the Tigris; and the whole interval of twenty- 
five days’ navigation, which separated the extreme cold of 
Scythia from the torrid zone of ./Ethiopia, was compre¬ 
hended within the limits of the empire of the East. The 
populous countries of that empire were the seat of art and 
learning, of luxury and wealth; and the inhabitants, who 
had assumed the language and manners of Greeks, styled 
themselves, with some appearance of truth, the most 
enlightened and civilized portion of the human species. 
The form of government was a pure and simple monarchy ; 
the name of the Roman Republic, which so long preserv¬ 
ed a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the Latin 
provinces; and the princes of Constantinople measured their 
greatness by the servile obedience of their people. They 
were ignorant how much this passive disposition enervates 
and degrades every faculty of the mind. The subjects, who 
had resigned their will to the absolute commands of a master, 
were equally incapable of guarding their lives and fortunes 
against the assaults of the barbarians, or of defending their 
reason from the terrors of superstition. 
The first events of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius 
are so intimately connected, that the rebellion of the Goths, 
and the fall of Rufinus, have already claimed a place in the 
history of the West. It has already been observed, that 
Eutropius, one of the principal eunuchs of the palace of 
Constantinople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin 
he had accomplished, and whose vices he soon imitated. 
Under the weakest of the predecessors of Arcadius, the reign 
of the eunuchs had been secret and almost invisible. They 
insinuated themselves into the confidence of the prince ; but 
their ostensible functions were confined to the menial service 
of the wardrobe and imperial bed-chamber. Eutropius was 
the first of his class, who dared to assume the character of a 
Roman magistrate and general. Sometimes in the presence 
of the blushing senate, he ascended the tribunal, to pro¬ 
nounce judgment, or to repeat elaborate harangues; and 
sometimes appeared on horseback, at the head of his troops, 
in the dress and armour of a hero. 
The poet Claudius, who has delivered Rufinus to the 
hatred of posterity as a sanguinary and vindictive tyrant, has 
upheld to our scorn the decrepit person, the vain and 
arrogant manners and mean avarice of his successor Eu¬ 
tropius. To this miserable being we are indebted for the 
law of Arcadius against treason, which made thoughts 
and actions punishable with equal severity, and the know¬ 
ledge of, though without concurrence in, a treasonable in¬ 
tention criminal in the highest degree, unless revealed. 
The whole body of Imperial dependants claimed this 
edict as a privilege, which screened them, in the loosest 
moments of their lives, from the hasty, perhaps the justi¬ 
fiable, resentment of their fellow-citizens: and, by a 
strange perversion of the laws, the same degree of guilt and 
punishment was applied to a private quarrel, and to a 
deliberate conspiracy against the emperor and the empire. 
The fall of Eutropius was at length effected. Tribigild 
the Ostrogoth impatiently comparing the slow returns of 
laborious husbandry with the successful rapine and liberal 
rewards of Alaric, penetrated into Asia Minor, and gradu¬ 
ally alarmed both the court and the capital. When he 
advanced into the inland country, the Romans were in¬ 
clined to suppose that he meditated the passage of Mount 
Taurus, and the invasion of Syria. He descended 
towards the sea, and they imputed, and perhaps suggested, 
to the Gothic chief, the more dangerous project of arming 
a fleet in the harbours of Ionia, and of extending his de¬ 
predations along the maritime coast, from the mouth of the 
Nile to the port of Constantinople. The approach of dan¬ 
ger, and the obstinacy of Tribigild, who refused all terms 
of accommodation, compelled Eutropius to summon a council 
of war- After claiming for himself the privilege of a ve¬ 
teran soldier, the eunuch entrusted the guard of Thrace and 
the Hellespont to Gainas the Goth; and the command of 
the Asiatic army to his favourite Leo; two generals, who 
differently, 
