ii.
Dissertat xxvii.p.548.On one of these coins we read Hadrianus Papa (A.D.

772;) on the reverse, Vict.Ddnn.with the word Conob, which the Pere Joubert (Science des Medailles, tom.ii.p.

42) explains by Constantinopoli Officina B (secunda.)] In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise of the Olympic games.

[47] Happy would it have been for the Romans, if a similar privilege had guarded the patrimony of St.Peter from the calamities of war; if the Christians, who visited the holy threshold, would have sheathed their swords in the presence of the apostle and his successor.

But this mystic circle could have been traced only by the wand of a legislator and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible with the zeal and ambition of the popes the Romans were not addicted, like the inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and placid labors of agriculture; and the Barbarians of Italy, though softened by the climate, were far below the Grecian states in the institutions of public and private life.