The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri [best thriller novels of all time TXT] 📗

the public reason of the Romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations. Wise or fortunate is the prince who connects his own reputation with the honor and interest of a perpetual order of men.”

This is what Dante alludes to, Purgatorio VI 89:⁠—

“What boots it, that for thee Justinian
The bridle mend, if empty be the saddle?”

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The heresy of Eutyches, who maintained that only the Divine nature existed in Christ, not the human; and consequently that the Christ crucified was not the real Christ, but a phantom. ↩

Agapetus was Pope, or Bishop of Rome, in the year 515, and was compelled by King Theodotus the Ostrogoth to go upon an embassy to the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople, where he refused to hold any communication with Anthimus, Bishop of Trebizond, who, against the canon of the Church, had been transferred from his own see to that of Constantinople. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, I 460, says:⁠—

“Agapetus, in a conference, condescended, to satisfy the Emperor as to his own unimpeachable orthodoxy. Justinian sternly commanded him to communicate with Anthimus. ‘With the Bishop of Trebizond,’ replied the unawed ecclesiastic, ‘when he has returned to his diocese, and accepted the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Leo.’ The Emperor in a louder voice commanded him to acknowledge the Bishop of Constantinople on pain of immediate exile. ‘I came hither in my old age to see, as I supposed, a religious and a Christian Emperor; I find a new Diocletian. But I fear not kings’ menaces, I am ready to lay down my life for the truth.’ The feeble mind of Justinian passed at once from the height of arrogance to admiration and respect; he listened to the charges advanced by Agapetus against the orthodoxy of Anthimus. In his turn the Bishop of Constantinople was summoned to render an account of his theology before the Emperor, convicted of Eutychianism, and degraded from the see.”

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Belisarius, the famous general, to whom Justinian gave the leadership of his armies in Africa and Italy. In his old age he was suspected of conspiring against the Emperor’s life; but the accusation was not proved. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Ch. XLI, speaks of him thus:⁠—

“The Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps educated, among the Thracian peasants, without any of those advantages which had formed the virtues of the elder and the younger Scipio, a noble origin, liberal studies, and the emulation of a free state. The silence of a loquacious secretary may be admitted, to prove that the youth of Belisarius could not afford any subject of praise: he served, most assuredly with valor and reputation, among the private guards of Justinian; and when his patron became Emperor, the domestic was promoted to military command.”

And of his last years as follows, Ch. XLIII:⁠—

“Capricious pardon and arbitrary punishment embittered the irksomeness and discontent of a long reign; a conspiracy was formed in the palace, and, unless we are deceived by the names of Marcellus and Sergius, the most virtuous and the most profligate of the courtiers were associated in the same designs. They had fixed the time of the execution; their rank gave them access to the royal banquet, and their black slaves were stationed in the vestibule and porticos to announce the death of the tyrant, and to excite a sedition in the capital. But the indiscretion of an accomplice saved the poor remnant of the days of Justinian. The conspirators were detected and seized, with daggers hidden under their garments; Marcellus died by his own hand, and Sergius was dragged from the sanctuary. Pressed by remorse, or tempted by the hopes of safety, he accused two officers of the household of Belisarius; and torture forced them to declare that they had acted according to the secret instructions of their patron. Posterity will not hastily believe that an hero who, in the vigor of life, had disdained the fairest offers of am bition and revenge, should stoop to the murder of his prince, whom he could not long expect to survive. His followers were impatient to fly; but flight must have been supported by rebellion, and he had lived enough for nature and for glory. Belisarius appeared before the council with less fear than indignation; after forty years’ service, the Emperor had prejudged his guilt; and injustice was sanctified by the presence and authority of the patriarch. The life of Belisarius was graciously spared; but his fortunes were sequestered, and from December to July he was guarded as a prisoner in his own palace. At length his innocence was acknowledged; his freedom and honors were restored; and death, which might be hastened by resentment and grief, removed him from the world about eight months after his deliverance. The name of Belisarius can never die; but instead of the funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read that his treasures, the spoils of the Goths and Vandals, were im mediately confiscated for the Emperor. Some decent portion was reserved, however, for the use of his widow; and as Antonina had much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. That he was deprived of his eyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread⁠—‘Give a penny to Belisarius the general!’⁠—is a fiction of later times, which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the vicissitudes, of fortune.”

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The son of Evander, sent to assist Aeneas, and slain by Turnus. Virgil, Aeneid, X, Davidson’s Tr.:⁠—

“Turnus, long poising a javelin tipped with sharpened steel, darts it at Pallas, and thus speaks: