Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847

9

Procopius de Bello Vandalico, lib. i. c. 11. Gibbon (vol. vii. p. 161. note e) says that he could not find the Germania, a metropolis of Thrace, mentioned by Alemanni, in any civil or ecclesiastical lists of the provinces and cities. Alemanni's authority may be found in Notitiæ Græcorum Episcopatuum, where Germania is the sixty-seventh metropolitan see dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople.—(Codinus de officiis Magnæ Ecclesiæ et Aulæ Constantinopolitanæ, p. 380, ed. Paris.) It is probable that the city Germane of the Edifices of Procopius (iv. 3) is the same as Germania. There was a fort in its territory, called Germas. De Ædif. iii. 4. Germanos is still a favourite ecclesiastical name with the Greeks. There is a place on the Gulf of Corinth, in the territory of Megara, with splendid remains of the military architecture of an ancient burgh, now called Porto Germano, the ancient Ægosthenæ.—(Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 405.) Herodotus mentions Germanii, Γερμανιοι, as an agricultural tribe of Persians in the time of Cyrus.—(Clio, 125.) These various Germans and Germanians can hardly be blood relations of our Germany or Deutschland.

10

Lord Mahon's Life of Belisarius, p. 3. Procopius de Bello Vand. ii. 6.

11

Procopius de Bello Persico, i. 12. Clinton's Fasti Romani. From this time Procopius was the official secretary of Belisarius.

12

A good soldier can only be formed from men between eighteen and forty years of age. In ancient times it required more strength to make a soldier than in modern. The demand for such men, in an improving state of society, makes them too valuable to be expended on the game of war, and hence despots in civilised ages are compelled to use an inferior class. Good troops must always be highly paid. A good heavy-armed soldier, in ancient Greece, had half the pay of his captain. The pay of the celebrated English archers, in the middle ages, was extremely high; as it required the service of a brave and vigorous yeomanry to give that corps the efficiency it displayed in so many hard-fought battles—(Hallam's Constitutional History of England, ch. ix. vol. 2.) Lord Brougham, however, overrates the pay of a mounted archer, in making it "equal to thirty shillings of our money" a-day.—(Political Philosophy, part iii. p. 237.)

13

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vii. 166. It is impossible to resist transcribing Gibbon's note.

Νευρην μεν μαζω Πελασεν τοξω δε σιδηρον.

Λιγξε βιοϛ, νευρη δε μεγ ιαχεν αλτο δ'οιστοϛ.

Iliad, iv. 124-125

14

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 18.

15

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 21.

16

Ibid. 28-29.

17

This singular military manœuvre was repeated more than once by Roman generals, and shows how admirably the troops were drilled in what are called the degenerate days of the Roman armies.—(Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 246.)

18

The best edition of the works of Procopius is that published at Bonn in the new Corpus Scriptorum Byzantinæ Historiæ commenced under the auspices of Niebuhr. It is edited by W. Dindorff, and contains a corrected text with various readings, and a reprint of the notes of Alemanni on the Secret History. 3 vols. 8vo. 1833-8.

19

Procopius de Bello Vandalico, ii. c. 9.

20

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, ii. c. 28. Βασιλια τ*ϛ Εσπιριαϛ βελισαριοϛ α*ειπειν εγιωσαν

21

Life of Belisarius, p. 1.

22

Decline and Fall, vol. vii. 161.

23

Crassus was in the habit of saying, that no man was rich who could not maintain an army.

24

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, iii. 1.

25

Compare Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 25, with Anastasius de Vitis Pontificum Romanorum, p. 38, ed., Paris.

26

De Bello Gotthico, ii. c. 8.

27

Ibid. i. 22.

28

There is a touch of the malicious spirit of the Secret History in the narration of Procopius, caused probably by some in avoiding the stab aimed at him by Konstantinos. The whole scene could hardly fail to produce a profound impression on the coolest spectator, even in that age, when men were more accustomed to stabbing than in our delicate daysof gunshot wounds. Ὁ δε (Βελισἁριοϛ) καταπλαγειϛ ὁπισω τε ἁπἑστη και Βἱσσα ἱγγὑϛ του ἑστκατι περιπλακειϛ διαφυγειν ισχιοϛ —(De Bello Gotthico, ii. 8.) Bessas was as great an extortioner as Konstantinos. (See Ibid. iv. 13.)

29

Ildiger, doubtless a barbarian, from his name, was married to a daughter of Antonina by her first husband.—(De Bello Vandalico, ii. 8.) Valerian was also probably a barbarian, as he commanded a division of federate cavalry in the African war. He was general of the right wing of the Roman army under Narses at the battle of Taginas or Lentagio, which put an end to the life of the gallant Totila, and gave the mortal wound to the monarchy of the Ostrogoths.—(De Bello Gotthico, iv. 31.)

30

Procopius would lead us to believe that a fine of 300 lbs. of gold (upwards of £140,000 in specie, and twice that sum in value) extorted from Belisarius in 543, was the produce of his profits during the Asiatic campaigns of 541 and 542. But it is difficult to know what confidence ought to be placed in the details of the Secret History.—C. 4, p. 32, l. 1, ed. Bonn. Clinton's Fasti Romani, p. 780.

31

Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Greek, by Thomas Hope, vol. ii. 393., first edition. The writer of these pages remembers reading Anastasius with singular pleasure, at the time of its publication. Now, after four-and-twenty years' intimate acquaintance with the East, and with the representatives of most of the classes of men depicted in the novel, he finds that its correctness of description and truth of character give it all the inexhaustible freshness of actual life.

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