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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 183 proscribed colony. In the short interval, the Chersonites had returned to their city, and were prepared to die in arms ; the khan of the Chozars had renounced the cause of his odious brother ; the exiles of every province were assembled in Tauris ; and Bardanes, under the name of Philippicus, was invested with the purple. The Imperial troops, unwilling and unable to perpetrate the revenge of Justinian, escaped his displeasure by abjuring his allegiance ; the fleet, under their new sovereign, steered back a more auspicious course to the harbours of Sinope and Constantinople ; and every tongue was prompt to pronounce, every hand to execute, the death of the tyrant. ^^ Destitute of friends, he was deserted by his barbarian guards ; and the stroke of the assassin was praised as an act of patriotism and Roman virtue. His son Tiberius had taken refuge in a church ; his aged grandmother guarded the door ; and the innocent youth, suspending round his neck the most formidable relics, embraced with one hand the altar, with the other the wood of the true cross. But the popular fury that dares to trample on superstition is deaf to the cries of humanity ; and the race of Heraclius was extinguished after a reign of one hundred years. Between the fall of the Heraclian and the rise of the phiuppicu*. Isaurian dynasty, a short interval of six years is divided into December three reigns. Bardanes, ^"^ or Philippicus, was hailed at Con- stantinople as an hero who had delivered his country from a tyrant ; and he might taste some moments of happiness in the first transports of sincere and universal joy. Justinian had left behind him an ample treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine ; but this useful fund was soon and idly dissipated by his suc- cessor. On the festival of his birthday, Philippicus enter- tained the multitude with the games of the hippodrome ; from thence he paraded through the streets with a thousand banners and a thousand trumpets ; refreshed himself in the baths of ^•' [Justinian's treatment of Ravenna at the western extremity of his empire, which is the parallel to his treatment of C'herson at the eastern extremity, is incidentally referred to below, p. 261. The sources are Liber Pontificalis, Life of Constantine I., and Agnellus, Life of Felix (Muratori, Scr. Rer. Ital. ii. i, 160). The Ravennates had presumed to protect Pope Sergius whom Justinian had ordered to be arrested, and had shown pleasure at the Emperor's deposition. Justinian, on his restoration, sent a fieet to Ravenna ; the nobles, &c., of the city were invited to a banquet at Classe, arrested, thrown into the vessels, and taken to New Rome, where they were put to death, except Archbishop Felix, whose eyes were put out. Ravenna was set on fire.] 1^ [Of Armenian race. He was merely a man of pleasure. His reign was marked by a momentary restitution of Monotheletism in the East ; and by an invasion of the Bulgarians up to the very gates of the capital.]