The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1617]
[Footnote 38: A census, or capitation, says Anastasius, (p. 156;) a most cruel tax, unknown to the Saracens themselves, exclaims the zealous Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclastes, l. i.,) and Theophanes, (p. 344,) who talks of Pharaoh's numbering the male children of Israel. This mode of taxation was familiar to the Saracens; and, most unluckily for the historians, it was imposed a few years afterwards in France by his patron Louis XIV.]
[Footnote 39: See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, (in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i.,) whose deeper shade of barbarism marks the difference between Rome and Ravenna. Yet we are indebted to him for some curious and domestic facts - the quarters and factions of Ravenna, (p. 154,) the revenge of Justinian II, (p. 160, 161,) the defeat of the Greeks, (p. 170, 171,) &c.]
[Footnote 40: Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis .... imaginum sacrarum .... destructor .... extiterit, sit extorris a cor pore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius ecclesiae unitate. The canonists may decide whether the guilt or the name constitutes the excommunication; and the decision is of the last importance to their safety, since, according to the oracle (Gratian, Caus. xxiii. q. 5, 47, apud Spanheim, Hist. Imag. p. 112) homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant.]
[Footnote 41: Compescuit tale consilium Pontifex, sperans conversionem principis, (Anastas. p. 156.) Sed ne desisterent ab amore et fide R. J. admonebat, (p. 157.) The popes style Leo and Constantine Copronymus, Imperatores et Domini, with the strange epithet of Piissimi. A famous Mosaic of the Lateran (A.D. 798) represents Christ, who delivers the keys to St. Peter and the banner to Constantine V. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. vi. p. 337.)]
The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude, from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the Caesars, the triumphs of the consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the empire, the god Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded from the ocean, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to her ancient territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tyber. ^42 When the kings were banished, the republic reposed on the firm basis which had been founded by their wisdom and virtue. Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two annual magistrates: the senate continued to exercise the powers of administration and counsel; and the legislative authority was distributed in the assemblies of the people, by a well-proportioned scale of property and service. Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war: the will of the community was absolute: the rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty thousand citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of freedom and ambitious of glory. ^43 When the sovereignty of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome presented the sad image of depopulation and decay: her slavery was a habit, her liberty an accident; the effect of superstition, and the object of her own amazement and terror. The last vestige of the substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious Barbarians. As often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their