XL.

before it was sheathed, fourscore thousand of the CHA P. inhabitants had expiated the blood of their companions. After the siege of Amida, the war continued three years, and the unhappy frontier tasted the full measure of its calamities. The gold of Anastasius was offered too late, the number of his troops was defeated by the number of their generals; the country was stripped of its inhabitants, and both the living and the dead were abandoned to the wild beasts of the desert. The resistance of Edessa, and the deficiency of spoil, inclined the mind of Cabades to peace: he sold his conquests for an exorbitant price; and the same line, though marked with slaughter and devastation, still separated the two empires. To avert the repetition of the same evils, Anastasius resolved to found a new colony, so strong, that it should defy the power of the Persian, so far advanced towards Assyria, that its stationary troops might defend the province by the menace or operation of offensive war. For this purpose, the Fortifica. town of Dara *, fourteen miles from Nisibis, and tions of four days journey from the Tigris, was peopled and adorned; the hasty works of Anastasius were improved by the perseverance of Justinian; and without insisting on places less important, the fortifications of Dara may represent the military architecture of the age. The city was surrounded with two walls, and the interval between them, of

fifty

*The description of Dara is amply and correctly given by Procopius (Persic. 1. i. c. 10. 1. ii. c. 13. De Edific. I. . c. 1, i. 2, 3. 1. iii. c. 5.). See the situation in d'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 53, 54, 55.), though he seems to double the interval between Dara and Nisibis.

Dara.

CHA P. fifty paces, afforded a retreat to the cattle of the XL. besieged. The inner wall was a monument of

strength and beauty : it measured sixty feet from the ground, and the height of the towers was one hundred feet; the loop-holes, from whence an enemy might be annoyed with missile weapons, were small, but numerous: the soldiers were planted along the rampart, under the shelter of double galleries, and a third platform, spacious and secure, was raised on the summit of the towers. The exterior wall appears to have been less lofty, but more solid ; and each tower was protected by a quadrangular bulwark. A hard rocky soil resisted the tools of the miners, and on the south-east, where the ground was more tractable, their approach was retarded by a new work, which advanced in the shape of an half-moon, The double and treble ditches were filled with a stream of water; and in the management of the river, the most skilful labour was employed to supply the inhabitants, to distress the besiegers, and to prevent the mischiefs of a natural or artificial inundation. Dara continued more than sixty years to fulfil the wishes of its founders, and to provoke the jealousy of the Persians, who inces. santly complained, that this impregoable fortress had been constructed in manifest violation of the

treaty of peace between the two empires. The Case

Between the Euxine and the Caspian, the pian or

countries of Colchos, Iberia, and Albania, are Iberian gates. intersected in every direction by the branches of

Mount Caucasus; and the two principal gates or passes, from north to south have been frequently

XL.

eonfounded in the geography both of the ancients c H A P. and moderns. The name of Caspian or Albanian gates is properly applied to Derbend *, which occupies a short declivity between the mountains and the sea: the city, if we give credit to lo. cal tradition, had been founded by the Greeks; and this dangerous entrance was fortified by the kings of Persia, with a mole, double walls, and doors of iron. The Iberian gates † are formed by a narrow passage of six miles in Mount Caucasus, which opens from the northern side of Iberia or Georgia, into the plain that reaches to the Tanais and the Volga. A fortress designed by Alexander perhaps, or one of his successors, to command that important pass, had descended by right of conquest or inheritance to a prince of the Huns, who offered it for a moderate price to the emperor : but while Anastasius paused, while he timorously computed the cost and the distance, a more vigilant rival interposed, and Cabades forcibly occupied the streights of Caucasus. The

' Albanian and Iberian gates excluded the horsemen of Scythia from the shortest and most practicable roads, and the whole front of the mountains was covered by the rampart of Gog and Magog, the

long

1

* For the city and pass of Derbend, see d'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 157. 291. 807.), Petite de la Croix (Hist. de Gengiscan, I. iv. c. 9.), Histoire Genealogique des Tatars (tom. i. p. 120.), Olearius (Voyage en Perse, p. 1039--1041.), and Corneille le Bruyn (Voyages tom. i. p. 146, 147.): his view may be compared with the plan of Olearius, who judges the wall to be of shells and gravel hardened by time.

+ Procopius, though with some confusion, always denomi. nates them Caspian (Persic. 1. i. c. 10.), The pass is now styled Tatartopa, the 'Tartar-gates (a'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 119, 120.).

XL.

CHAP. long wall which has excited the curiosity of an Arabian caliph and a Russian conqueror †. According to a recent description, huge stones seven feet thick, twenty-one feet in length, or height, are artificially joined without iron or cement, to compose a wall which runs above three hundred miles from the shores of Derbend, over the hills and through the vallies of Daghestan and Georgia. Without a vision, such a work might be undertaken by the policy of Cabades; without a miracle, it might be accomplished by his son, so formidable to the Romans under the name of Chosroes; so dear to the Orientals, under the appellation of Nushirwan. The Persian monarch held in his hand the keys both of peace and war; but he stipulated, in every treaty, that Justinian should contribute to the expence of a common barrier, which equally protected the two empires from the inroads of the Scythians ‡.

VII. Justinian suppressed the schools of Athens and the consulship of Rome, which had given so many sages and heroes to mankind. Both these

institu

* The imaginary rampart of Gog and Magog, which was seriously explored and believed by a caliph of the ixth century, appears to be derived from the gates of Mount Caucasus, and a vague report of the wall of China (Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 267-270. Memoires de l'Academie, tom. xxxi. p. 210-219.).

See a learned dissertation of Baier, de muro Caucaseo, in Comment. Acad. Petropol. ann. 1726. tom. i. p. 425—463.; but it is destitute of a map or plan. When the czar Peter I. became master of Derbend in the year 1722, the measure of the wall was found to be 3285 Russian orgygia, or fathom, each of seven feet English; in the whole somewhat more than four miles in length.

See the fortifications and treaties of Chosroes or Nushirwan, in Procopius (Persic, 1. i. c. 16. 22, 1. ii.) and d'Herbelot (p. 682.).

XL.

institusions had long since degenerated from their CHAP primitive glory ; yet some reproach may be justly inflicted on the avarice and jealousy of a prince, by whose hands such venerable ruins were destroyed. Athens, after her Persian triumphs, adopted the The schools

of Athens. philosophy of lonia and the rhetoric of Sicily ; and these studies became the patriinony of a city whose inhabitants, about tbirty thousand males, condensed, within the period of a single life, the genius of ages and millions. Our sense of the dignity of human nature is exalted by the simple recollection, that Isocrates * was the companion of Plato and Xenophon; that he assisted, perhaps with the historian Thucydides, at the first representations of the Oedipus of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Euripides; and that his pupils Æschines and Demosthenes contended for the crown of patriotism in the presence of Aristotle, the master of Theophrastus, who taught at Athens with the founders of the Stoic and Epicurean sects f. The ingenuous youth of Attica enjoyed the benefits of their domestic education, which was communicated without envy to the rival cities. Two thousand disciples heard the lessons of Theo

phrastus;

* The life of Isocrates extends from Olymp. lxxxvi. 1. to cx. 3. (ante Christ. 436-438.). See Dionys. Halicarn, tom. jj. p. 149, 150. edit. Hudson. Plutarch (sive anonymous), in Vit. X. Oratorum, p. 1538–1543. edit. H. Steph. Phot. cod. cclix.

p. 1453 + The schools of Athens are copiously though concisely represented in the Fortuna Attica of Meursius (c. vii. p. 5973 in tom. i. Opp.). For the state and arts of the city, sec the first book of Pausanias, and a small tract of' Dicæarchus (in the second volume of Hudson's Geographers), who wrote about Olymp. cxvii. Dodwell's Dissertat. sect. 4.).