opportunity for which the unruly Visigothic nobles, crushed for thirty years under the strong hands of Leovigild and Reccared, had been long waiting. In the second year of his reign Leova was surprised and murdered by conspirators under the guidance of a certain count Witterich, who had headed an Arian rising in 588, but had been spared on conforming to Catholicism. He now repaid Reccared's clemency by murdering his son (603).

After thirty-three years of strong government, Spain once more fell back into the state of civil strife from which it had been rescued by Leovigild. But the character of the struggle was now changed; for the future it was a contest between the Catholic hierarchy and the Visigothic nobles, as to which should appoint and control the king.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUCCESSORS OF JUSTINIAN

565-610

Justin II. and his unhappy financial policy-His troubles with the Persians and Avars-Reign of Tiberius Constantinus-Accession of MauriceHis victory over Persia-His failure against the Slavs and Avars-Disasters in the Balkan Peninsula-Fall of Maurice-Tyranny of Phocas-His unfortunate war with Persia-He is dethroned and slain by Heraclius, 610.

THE forty years which followed the death of Justinian were a period of rapid decline and decay for the East-Roman world. The empire was paying, by exhaustion within and the loss of provinces without, for the spasmodic outburst of energy into which it had been galvanised by the great emperor. He left to his heirs broad and dangerous frontiers in his newly-acquired provinces, with an army which had got somewhat out of hand, and a civil population shorn to the skin by the excessive taxation of the last twenty years.

Justinian's heirs were, unhappily for the empire, princes who tried to maintain their great predecessor's ambitious policy, at a moment when the less brilliant, but more cautious and economical, rule of a second Anastasius would have been the best thing for the East-Roman world. The Emperor's nephew, Justinus, son of his sister Vigilantia, mounted the throne on his decease without meeting with any opposition. He had served his uncle as Curopalata, or Master of the Palace, for the last ten years, and had been able to make things ready for his own peaceful succession, though Justinian had never

PERIOD I.

Justin II., 565-78.

consented to allow him to be crowned as his colleague as long as he lived. Justin was married to Sophia, the niece of the empress Theodora, a lady who resembled her aunt in her masterful spirit, but was far from rivalling her abilities. Justin and his wife had led a somewhat repressed and constrained existence during the old emperor's life, and were set upon asserting their individuality the moment that Justinian was buried. Justin had high ideas of the dignity of the imperial name and the majesty of the empire, and had determined to inaugurate a spirited foreign policy when he seized the helm of affairs. His first measure was to refuse to continue any of the comparatively trifling subsidies to barbarian princes on the frontier, which Justinian had been content to pay in order to keep them from petty raids-much as the Indian Government to-day subsidises the chiefs of the Khyber Pass. This involved him in a long and ultimately dangerous war with the Chagan of the Avars, a Tartar tribe newly established on the north bank of the lower Danube, whom Justinian had paid to keep off the Huns and other troublesome neighbours. The Avars, originally a race of no great importance, obtained at this moment a great extension of power and territory by allying themselves with the Lombards, in order to destroy the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who dwelt north of Sirmium on the middle Danube. After exterminating their Teutonic neighbours, the Lombards passed on to invade Italy,1 and left the Avars in possession of the whole line of the Danube, from Vienna to its mouth. Thenceforth the Avars were a scourge to the already half-desolate provinces of Moesia and Illyricum. They ranged over the whole territory up to the Balkans, in spite of the innumerable fortresses which Justinian had built and garrisoned to defend the Danube bank. This trouble was continually growing worse all through the reign of Justin II., and became an actual source of danger, as well as of mere annoyance, in the time of his successors.

Another refusal of Justin to make a payment of money, which he considered degrading to his majesty, was destined to bring on a struggle even more ruinous than that with the Avars. It will be remembered that the peace between Justinian and Chosroes of Persia, concluded in 562, had stipulated for some payments from the East-Romans to the king. In 571 Justin refused to fulfil his obligations, and plunged the empire into a wholly unnecessary war with his great Oriental neighbour. Several causes conspired to induce Justin to undertake this struggle. He was implored by the Christian population of Persian Armenia to deliver them from the fire-worshipping Sassanians, and the Turks of the Oxus had sent an embassy to promise him help from the East if he would assault Chosroes. Dizabul, their great Khan, engaged to distract the forces of the enemy by crossing the Oxus and invading northern Persia, while Justin's generals were to cross the Tigris and attack Media.

This war, which the emperor undertook with such a light heart, was destined to last no less than nineteen years (572591), and to drag on into the reigns of two of his successors. It was quite as inconclusive, and quite as costly in men and money, as had been the previous struggle in the Persian War reign of Justinian. On the whole, the Romans of Justin. lost no territory during its course. Their farthest frontier stronghold of Daras was the only place of importance that fell into Persian hands in the earlier years of the war, and the secondary fortress of Martyropolis, in the Armenian Highlands, the only loss of its later years. Both were destined to be recovered, and the second Roman line of defence, based on Edessa and Amida, held good. If the armies of Chosroes once succeeded in penetrating into Syria, it is only fair to add that the imperial troops made several incursions into the Persian border-lands of Arzanene and Corduene. It was not so much by the loss of fortresses or the ravaging of territory that the war was harmful to the empire, as by the long, fruitless drain of taxation that it brought about. Where the tax-gatherer

of Justinian's time had shorn the population close, the taxgatherer of Justin's was obliged to flay them, in order to wring out the necessary solidi. Having begun the war at his own pleasure, Justin found that he could not conclude it in a similar way. The Persians hoped to win by exhausting the empire's resources, and were set on protracting the weary game.

In the ninth year after his succession to the throne, Justin was seized with suicidal mania, and had to be placed in close restraint for all the rest of his life. On his first lucid interval he nominated as his colleague, and crowned as Caesar, a respectable military officer, named Tiberius Constantinus, who, in conjunction with the empress Sophia, acted as regent for the demented emperor till 578. Sophia, a proud and restless woman, kept most of the power in her own hands, for Tiberius was not of a pushing or ambitious disposition. His accession to power made little or no difference in the policy of the court, which was still guided by the empress.

While Justin saw the Balkan peninsula ravaged by the Avars, and the Mesopotamian frontier beset by the Persians, he was destined to suffer a still more grievous loss in another region of his empire. The Lombards, emigrating from the middle Danube, followed the track that the Ostrogoths had taken eighty years before, and threw themselves on the newlyrecovered province of Italy, only fifteen years after it had been finally secured to the empire by the victories of Narses at Taginae and Casilinum. Their fortunes will be described in another chapter. Here it must suffice to say that ere the end of the reign of Justin II. they had torn two-thirds of the peninsula from the grasp of the East-Roman governors.

In 578, four years after he had fallen into a state of lunacy, Justin 11. died, and his colleague, Tiberius Constantinus, became sole ruler of the empire. Tiberius II. was a thoroughly upright and well-intentioned man, who had been chosen as heir by his predecessor solely on the ground of his merits, and in spite of the fact that Justin had a son-in-law and several cousins to whom he might have left the legacy of