Volume 1
A history of the later Roman Empire : from Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.) / by J.B. Bury.
- J. B. Bury
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A history of the later Roman Empire : from Arcadius to Irene (395 A.D. to 800 A.D.) / by J.B. Bury. Source: Wellcome Collection.
510/528 page 470
![through his dominions^ and the consequence was that the com- merce between the Empire and Abyssinia ceased. Then Adad, the king of Axum (as Abyssinia was called), said to Damian, You have injured my kingdom ” ; and they made war. And Adad said, ‘‘ If I defeat the Homerites, I will become a Christian.” He took Damian alive, and subdued the land of Yemen. True to his promise, he besought Justinian to send him a bishop and clergy, and an Abyssinian church was founded.^ Less promising converts to Christianity were the Heruls, proverbially notorious for brutish habits and stupidity,^ who had first sought an asylum with the Gepids, but were soon driven away on account of their intolerable manners. Then admitted into the Empire by Anastasius, they incurred his resentment and chastisement. Justinian made corps of Heruls a standing part of his army. In the year 548 four envoys arrived at Constantinople from the Goths of Crimea, who are known as the Tetraxite Goths, to request Justinian to send them a new bishop, as their bishop had died. These Goths were presumably con- verted in the fourth century, and not joining in the westward movement of the other tribes of their nationality, lived quietly in a secluded nook in the peninsula of Bosporus and Cherson. Their religion no longer possessed the distinctive marks of Arianism, though originally they were Arians. Pro- copius says that their religion was simple and pious.^ Thus in the Crimea, where Justinian had already made the city of Bosporus an imperial dependency, the Tetraxite Goths acknow- ledged his supremacy. There was some reason for the fears of Chosroes, and for the words which Procopius puts into the mouth of the Armenian ambassadors concerning Justinian, The whole world does not contain him,”—and that was in 539. At that time, as the ambassadors said, besides having subdued Africa and Sicily and almost subdued Italy, he had imposed the yoke of servitude on ^ Theophanes, Chron. ad 6035 a.m. lian conquered the Axuraites (Vopiscus, (542, 543 A.D.) Theophanes calls the 33,4), On the “Axumitic Kingdom,” realm of Axum i] evdoTcpa’lvdia. Coins see an essay by Dillinann in the Ab- show that Greek was known in the handlungen der Berliner Akademie, country for some time after the intro- 1878. dnction of Christianity, and disappeared ^ See Procopius, B. G. ii. 14, only about the seventh century. Aure- ^ Ih. iv. 4.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29353300_0001_0510.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
