The Eastern Empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations whom she had conquered beyond the Adriatic, and as far as the frontiers of Ethiopia and Persia.  Justinian reigned over 64 provinces and 935 cities.  The arts and agriculture flourished under his rule, but the avarice and profusion of Justinian oppressed the people.  His expensive taste for building almost exhausted the resources of the empire.  Heavy custom tolls, taxes on the food and industry of the poor, the exercise of intolerable monopolies, were not excused or compensated for by the parsimonious saving in the salaries of court officials, and even in the pay of the soldiers.  His stately edifices were cemented with the blood and treasures of his people, and the rapacity and luxury of the emperor were imitated by the civil magistrates and officials.

The schools of Athens, which still kept alight the sacred flame of the ancient philosophy, were suppressed by Justinian.  The academy of the Platonics, the Lyceum of the Peripatetics, the Portico of the Stoics, and the Garden of the Epicureans had long survived.

With the death of Simplicius and his six companions, who terminate the long list of Grecian philosophers, the golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the Platonic succession was broken, and the Edict of Justinian (529) imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens.

The Roman consulship was also abolished by Justinian in 541; but this office, the title of which admonished the Romans of their ancient freedom, still lived in the minds of the people.  They applauded the gracious condescension of successive princes by whom it was assumed in the first year of their reign, and three centuries elapsed after the death of Justinian before that obsolete office, which had been suppressed by law, could be abolished by custom.

The usurpation by Gelimer (530) of the Vandalic crown of Africa, which belonged of right to Hilderic, first encouraged Justinian to undertake the African war.  Hilderic had granted toleration to the Catholics, and for this reason was held in reproach by his Arian subjects.  His compulsory abdication afforded the emperor of the East an opportunity of interfering in the cause of orthodoxy.  A large army was entrusted to the command of Belisarius, one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation.  Proved in the Persian war, Belisarius was given unlimited authority.  He set sail from Constantinople with a fleet of six hundred ships in June 533.  He landed on the coast of Africa in September, defeated the degenerate Vandals, reduced Carthage within a few days, utterly vanquished Gelimer, and completed the conquest of the ancient Roman province by 534.  The Vandals in Africa fled beyond the power or even the knowledge of the Romans.

III.—­Gothic Italy