The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Chap. XLIV-XLVII

Front Cover
Vernor, Hood, & Sharpe, 1806 - Byzantine Empire

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 2 - Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence was digested in the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutions : the public reason of the Romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of Europe, and the laws of Justinian still command the respect or obedience of independent nations.
Page 370 - Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten.
Page 161 - Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honour and dominion.
Page 347 - The husbandmen cultivated the palmtree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs, or nobles, of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude, or the fear, of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself.
Page 281 - On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics : her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.
Page 21 - ... the clenched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit ; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw ; weights and scales were introduced into every payment; and the heir who accepted a testament was sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to leap and dance with real or affected transport.
Page 56 - But the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity, by the nations who never Classics in History: Edward Gibbon ElecBook Chap.
Page 53 - According to his discretion, a father might chastise the real or imaginary faults of his children, by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them to the country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death * ; and the examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome, beyond the times of Pompey and Augustus.
Page 10 - But although these venerable monuments were considered as the rule of right and the fountain of justice, they were overwhelmed by the weight and variety of new laws, which, at the end of five centuries, became a grievance more intolerable than the vices of the city.
Page 62 - Passion, interest, or caprice, suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage ; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation ; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit and pleasure.

Bibliographic information