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Chap, xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 465 extort a confession that man has industriously laboured for his own destruction. The institution of great cities, which include a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realizes the wish of Caligula that the Roman people had but one neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the earth- a.d. sae, quake of Autioch, whose domestic multitudes were swelled by the conflux of strangers to the festival of the Ascension. The loss of Berytus 12 ° was of smaller account, but of much greater a.d. 551, value. That city, on the coast of Phoenicia, was illustrated by the study of the civil law, which opened the surest road to wealth and dignity ; the schools of Berytus were filled with the rising spirits of the age ; and many a youth was lost in the earthquake, who might have lived to be the scourge or the guardian of his country. In these disasters, the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage or the tent of an Arab may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant ; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their Spanish con- querors, who with so much cost and labour erected their own sepulchres. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own head ; a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edifices ; and the conflagration is kindled and pro- pagated by the innumerable fires which are necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great city. Instead of the mutual sympathy which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully experience the vices and passions which are released from the fear of punishment : the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice ; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim ; and the earth often swallows the assas- sin, or the ravisher, in the consummation of their crimes. Superstition involves the present danger with invisible terrors ; and, if the image of death may sometimes be subservient to the virtue or repentance of individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved to expect the end of the world or to deprecate with servile homage the wrath of an avenging Deity. III. ^Ethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized in every piague-its origin and 126 Th e university, splendour, and ruin of Berytus are celebrated by Heineccius (p. 351-356) as an essential part of the history of the Roman law. It was over- thrown in the xxvth year of Justinian, a.d. 551, July 9 (Theophanes, p. 192 [a.m. 6043]) ; but Agathias (1. ii. p. 51, 52 [c. 15]) suspends the earthquake till he has achieved the Italian war. vol. iv. — 30 nature. a.d. 542