CHAPTER XLII: State Of The Barbaric World .-- Part I.
State Of The Barbaric World .-- Establishment Of The Lombards On the Danube .-- Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians .-- Origin, Empire, And Embassies Of The Turks .-- The Flight Of The Avars .-- Chosroes I, Or Nushirvan, King Of Persia .-- His Prosperous Reign And Wars With The Romans .-- The Colchian Or Lazic War .-- The Aethiopians.
Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common faculties of mankind.

The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age and country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies.

Leonidas, and his three hundred companions, devoted their lives at Thermopylae; but the education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable.

[1] The great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had defeated in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea: [2] but the fortune of Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were oppressed by their own fears, and the invincible legions which he commanded, had been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages.

In this view, the character of Belisarius may be deservedly placed above the heroes of the ancient republics.