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him a long time in the nature of a Concubine, he married her, and she lived with him to his dying day. Justin was not capable of doing his Subjects either good or hurt; for he was a Man of extraordinary stupidity and sottishness, and extraordinary brutish. But Justinian his Sisters Son, who was young, and governed the State, brought more and greater evils upon the Empire, then were ever mentioned in all the Histories of former times. He made no scruple of sequestring any mans estate, nor murdering any mans person, and could without any remorse give orders for the putting to death a great multitude of innocent persons at once. He never executed the resolutions that were taken, but on the contrary was so great a lover of Novelty, that he delighted to subvert and undo all things that were well ordered, with a word. During his Reign, as I have said before in my other Books) there hapned so great a contagion quite thorow his Dominions, that few or none escaped who were infected, and few or none escaped without infection: But as to the Tyranny of Justinian, there was scarce a Subject of the whole Roman Empire but had had some experiment of it. This unhappy Prince (as if he had been sent down from Heaven as a Plague upon his People) put some of them to death in a criminal way; and others he kept alive, but in such deplorable poverty, they desired a thousand times to be delivered by the greatest punishment he could inflict. Not contented that he had ruined and subverted the
