Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/364

340 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAPTEIl XLII State (if the Bailxirie World — Establishment of the Loiiihan/s on the l)aiiul)e — Tril)es and Inroads of the Selavonians — Origin, Eni- ]>ire, and Embassies of the Turlis — The E/ighl of the Avars — Chosroes L or Xnshirran King of Persia — His prosperous Reign and Wars with the Romans — The Colehian or Lazic War — The ^Ethiopians Weakness of OuR estimate of personal merit is relative to the common ju^tiSL"° faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured not so much by their real elevation as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age or country ; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies. Leonidas and his three hundred companions devoted their lives at Thermopylae ; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost ensured, this memorable sacrifice ; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equal!}- capable.^ The great Pom])ey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had defeated in battle two millions of enemies and reduced fifteen hundred cities from the lake Maeotis to the Red Sea ; - but the fortune of Rome flew before his eagles ; the nations were oppressed by their own fears ; and the invincible legions which he commanded had been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages. In this view, the char- acter of Belisarius may be deservedly placed above the heroes of the ancient republics. His imperfections flowed from the 1 It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read Herodotus (1. vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615). The conversation of Xerxes and Deniaratus at Thermopylae is one of the most interesting and moral scenes in history. It was the torture of the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish and remorse, the virtue of his country. - See this proud inscription in Pliny (Hist Natur. vii. 27). Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and disgrace; nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking example of the vicissitudes of fortune and the vanity of human wishes.