Disadvantages of Byzantium On Land
They consist in the fact that its territory is so completely
-- 320 -- hemmed in by Thrace from shore to shore, that the
Byzantines have a perpetual and dangerous
war continually on hand with the Thracians. note
For they are unable once for all to arm and
repel them by a single decisive battle, owing to the number
of their people and chiefs,
three others still more formidable invade their territory. Nor
again do they gain anything by consenting to pay tribute
and make terms; for a concession of any sort to one brings at
once five times as many enemies upon them. Therefore, as I
say, they are burdened by a perpetual and dangerous war: for
what can be more hazardous or more formidable than a war
with barbarians living on your borders? Nay, it is not only
this perpetual struggle with danger on land, but, apart from the
evils that always accompany war, they have to endure a misery
like that ascribed by the poets to Tantalus: for being in
possession of an extremely fertile district, no sooner have
they expended their labour upon it and been rewarded by
crops of the finest quality, than the barbarians sweep down,
and either destroy them, or collect and carry them off; and
then, to say nothing of the loss of their labour and expense,
the very excellence of the crops enhances the misery and
distress of seeing them destroyed before their eyes. Still,
habit making them able to endure the war with the Thracians,
they maintained their original connexions with the other
Greeks; but when to their other misfortunes was added the
attack of the Gauls under Comontorius, they were reduced to
a sad state of distress indeed.
