OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

271

CHAP. XLII.

State of the barbaric ivorld—Establishment ofthe Lombards on the Danube — Tribes and in-roads of the Sclavonians — Origin, empire, andembassies of the Turks—Theflight of the Avars—Chosroes I. or Nus/tirvan, king of Persia —

His prosperous reign and wars with the Ra-mans — The Colehian or Lazic war—The^Ethiopians .

OlJR estimate of personal merit is relative to chap.the common faculties of mankind. The aspir-ing efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active weaknessor speculative life, are measured, not so muchby their real elevation, as by the height to which Justinian ,they ascend above the level of their age or scs.country : and the same stature, which in a peo-ple of giants would pass unnoticed, must ap-pear conspicuous in a race of pigmies. Leo-nidas , and his three hundred companions, de-voted their lives at Thermopylae ; but the edu-cation of the infant, the boy, and the man, hadprepared, and almost insured, this memorablesacrifice; and each Spartan would approve,rather than admire, an act of duty, of whichhimself and eight thousand of his fellow citizenswere equally capable.* The great Pompey

* It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read Herodotus (1- wii, e. 104,

134, p. 530, 616). The conversation of Xerxes and Deraaraius atThermopylte, is one of the most interesting and moral scenes in his-tory-