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doxy 136 THE DECTJNE AND FALL planted on their holy mount of Garizim,i but the persecution of Justinian offered only the alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the latter ; under the standard of a desperate leader, they rose in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the property, and the temples, of a defenceless people. The Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the East : twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold by the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the re- mains of that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has been computed that one hun- dred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated in the Samaritan war,^"^ which converted the once fruitful province into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the creed of Justinian the guilt of murder could not be applied to the slaughter of un- believers ; and he piously laboured to establish with fire and sword the unity of the Christian faith. '-'"^ HUortho- With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to be always in the right. In the first years of his administra- tion, he signalised his zeal as the disciple and patron of ortho- doxy ; the reconciliation of the Greeks and Latins established the tuine of St. Leo as the creed of the emperor and the empire ; the Nestorians and Eutychians were exposed, on either side, to the double edge of persecution ; and the four synods of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were ratified by the code of a Catholic lawgiver.^ But, while Justinian strove to iSichem, Xeapolis, Naplous, the ancient and modern seat of the Samaritans, is situate in a valley between the barren Ebal, the mountain of cursing to the north, the fruitful Garizim, or mountain of cursing to the south, ten or eleven hours' travel from Jerusalem. .See Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo, &c. p. 59-63. ^ Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122 [^/eg. 152; p. 178, ed. de Boor]. John Malala, Chron. tom. ii. p. 62 [p. 447, ed. Bonn]. I remember an observation, half philosophical, half superstitious, that the province which had been ruined by the bigotry of Justinian was the same through which the Ma- hometans penetrated into the empire. ^The expression of Procopius is remarkable ; ov ydp oi i&oKn (J)6i'o? iiflpwrrwc t'vai., 7iv ye fiTf TT)? avroO So^tjs ot TeAeuTwt'Te? rvxonv oi'TcS. Anecdot. C. I3. " See the Chronicle of Victor, p. 328, and the original evidence of the laws of Justinian. During the first years of his reign, Baronius himself is in extreme good humour with the emperor, who courted the popes till he got them into his power. [The ecclesiastical policy of Justinian's reign consists of a series of endeavours to undo the consequences of the fatal recognition of the Chalcedonian dogma, which had signalised the accession of Justin. The Monophysites of the East had been alienated, and the attempts to win them back, without sacrificing the newly achieved reconciliation with Rome, proved a failure. The importance of Theo- dora consisted in her intelligent Monophysitic policy. The deposition of the Mono- physite Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch, .^nthimus and Severus, in A. u. 536, would never have occurred but for a political reason — to assist the arms