JUSTINIAN AND HIS WARS
A.D. 528-540
Character of Justinian—His marriage with Theodora—His first War with
Persia, 528-31—Rise of Belisarius—Justinian suppresses the ‘Nika’
sedition, 532—His foreign policy—Belisarius conquers the Vandals,
533-4—Decay of the Ostrogoths in Italy—Justinian attacks
Theodahat—Belisarius conquers Sicily, Naples, and Rome—Siege of Rome
by the Ostrogoths (537-8)—Belisarius defeats the Ostrogoths and
captures Ravenna (540).
For three quarters of a century, during the reigns of the four cautious
and elderly Caesars, whose annals fill the space between 457 and 527,
the East-Roman Empire had been recovering its strength, and storing up
new energy for a sudden outburst of vigour under the able, restless, and
ambitious sovereign who followed the aged Justinus I. Justinian—the son
of Sabatius the brother of Justinus—was nearly forty years old when he
became, by his uncle’s death, sole ruler of the empire. He was no mere
uncultured soldier like his predecessor; when he obtained promotion in
the army, Justinus sent for his nephew from the Dardanian village where
his family dwelt, and had him reared in the capital in all the
accomplishments which befitted the heir of a great fortune. [Sidenote:
Character of Justinian.] By the acknowledgment of his bitterest enemies
Justinian had an extraordinary power of assimilating knowledge of all
kinds: he took a keen interest alike in statecraft and architecture, in
theology and law, in finance and music. When his uncle came to the
throne, the student soon developed into the practical administrator, for
Justinus trusted him with all those details of civil government which he
himself was unable to understand or to manage. It soon became known that
the heir of Justinus was a man of extraordinary ability and untiring
thirst for work. At an age when most young men would have been tempted
by their sudden elevation to plunge into the enjoyments that lay open to
an imperial prince, Justinian applied himself to mastering all the
tiresome details of the administration of the empire. Men noted with
surprise that he never seemed happy save when he was in his cabinet,
surrounded by his secretaries, his registers, his files of reports, and
despatches. He was like the Aristotelian character who was ‘too
indifferent to things pleasurable,’ for nothing save work appeared to
have any attraction for him. He rose early, spent his day in
administrative duties, and his night in reading and writing. As he grew
older he seemed to dispense with sleep altogether, as if he had become
free from the common necessities of man’s nature. There was something
strange and horrible in his cold-blooded, untiring energy; superstitious
men whispered that he was inspired by a restless demon who gave him no
peace, or that he was actually a demon himself. Had not a belated
courtier met him after midnight pacing the dark corridors of the palace
with a fearful and changed countenance that was no longer human, or
even—as the story grew—with no face at all, a shapeless monstrous
shadow?
But that Justinian was a man, with all a man’s waywardness and
recklessness, was proved ere long. To the surprise of the whole
population of the empire, and the utter horror and confusion of all
respectable persons, it was suddenly noised abroad that the heir of the
empire had announced his intention of marrying Theodora the dancer, the
chief star of the Byzantine comic stage. The staid passionless
bureaucrat was contemplating a step from which Nero or Heliogabalus
would have shrunk with dismay.
We have elaborate but untrustworthy details of the scandalous early life
of Theodora in a book—the ‘Secret History’—which bears the name of the
historian Procopius, but was in all probability no work of his.[8] She
was the daughter of Acacius the Cypriot, an employé of the ‘Green
Faction’ at the Hippodrome, and had for some years appeared on the stage
as an actress and dancer. So much we may take for truth; knowing the
general character of Roman actresses we may assume that there was some
foundation for the stories over which the ‘Secret History’ gloats.
[Sidenote: Theodora.] As to the particular facts alleged, we may
conclude that they are untrustworthy—among those which the ‘Secret
History’ gives as most certain are the statements that she was a
vampire, and often held intercourse with evil spirits; the rest is
written in the same spirit of silly and superstitious malignity. But we
may fairly conclude that the marriage of Justinian was a scandal and a
wonder. His mother and his aunt the Empress Euphemia, as we know, set
their faces against it; but he went on in his usual steady persistence,
gradually warred down the will of his old uncle Justinus, and formally
took Theodora to wife. The emperor was even induced to bestow upon her
the high title of Patrician.
Footnote 8:
For a discussion of this print see Mr. Bury’s _Later Roman Empire_,
vol. i. p. 359, where he concludes—with Ranke—that the work is the
forged compilation of a personal enemy.
In brains and power of will Theodora was a fit enough occupant for the
imperial throne, whatever her past history may have been. She was as
ambitious, restless, and capable as her husband, and acted as much as
his colleague as his consort. We shall see how on one occasion of crisis
she stood boldly forward and interposed between him and destruction. Her
worst enemies do not suggest that she was an unfaithful or profitless
spouse to him; the ‘Secret History’ itself calls her after her marriage
luxurious, cruel, capricious, arrogant, but does not accuse her of
evil-living or folly. Against this we may set the well-ascertained facts
that she was devoted to the exercises of religion, and founded many
charitable institutions. Remembering the dangers of her own youth, she
built a great institution for the reclaiming of fallen women—the first
of the kind known in Christendom. She was zealous in buying and freeing
slaves, and in caring for the bringing up of orphans and the marriage of
dowerless girls.
Theodora was by all accounts the most beautiful woman of her age. Even
the ‘Secret History’ allows this, adding only that she was rather below
the middle stature, that her complexion was somewhat pale, and that she
devoted untold hours to the mysteries of the toilet. Two portraits of
her have survived, one at the monastery on Mount Sinai, the other in the
Church of San Vitale at Ravenna—two spots so far apart as to call up
vividly to our memory the wide extent of her influence. Unfortunately
the hieratic style of art into which Roman portraiture had long sunk,
and the intractable nature of mosaic as a material do not allow us to
judge from these representations what was her actual appearance.
Justinian has left behind him an almost unparalleled reputation as a
conqueror, a builder, and a lawgiver, besides a less happy record of
theological activity. It is mainly, however, with his foreign policy
that we shall have to concern ourselves: the other spheres of his labour
are better fitted for another work. But his dealings with Africa, Italy,
and Spain form a great landmark and turning-point in the history of
southern Europe, and their results were not entirely exhausted till the
eleventh century. His long struggles with Persia are less interesting
and less important, but they filled a great space in the view of
contemporary observers, and were not without their moment.
Justinian’s reign opened with a fierce war with the old Persian king
Kobad. The struggle which this monarch had waged with Anastasius,
twenty-five years before, had been so indecisive that the Sassanian
longed for a new trial of arms. Almost immediately on Justinian’s
accession he issued his declaration of war, using as a pretext the
erection of some fortifications near Nisibis, which were being
constructed by Belisarius, governor of Daras, a young officer whose name
was destined to be intimately associated with the whole history of
Justinian’s reign. [Sidenote: First war with Persia, 528-31.] The war
opened with a defeat in the open field, suffered by the Roman army of
Mesopotamia; but when reinforcements came up the Persians retreated
beyond their frontier. After the winter of 528-29 was over neither side
advanced in force, and all that occurred was a flying Roman raid into
Assyria, and an equally hasty Persian incursion into Syria, both of
which did some harm, but had no practical result on the fate of the war.
Things went far otherwise in the next year, 530: the Persians crossed
the frontier in full force, and marched on Daras, where they were met by
Belisarius, who had lately been appointed commander-in-chief in the
East. Under the walls of Daras the decisive battle of the war was
fought, in which Belisarius, with 25,000 men, defeated 40,000 Persians
by means of his tactical skill. The plan which he worked was to draw
back his centre, containing all the Roman infantry, and when the
Persians followed it, to launch against their exposed flanks all his
cavalry, a miscellaneous gathering of Hunnish light horse, Teutonic
Heruli from the Danube, and Roman _Cataphracti_ or cuirassiers. This
plan, much resembling Hannibal’s manœuvre at Cannae, and perhaps
consciously copied from it, resulted in the complete rout of the
Sassanian host.
After this defeat Kobad commenced abortive negotiations for peace, but
the war was protracted into the next year, and Belisarius did not fare
so well in 531. In stopping a Persian raiding force on the middle
Euphrates, which aimed at Syria, and had turned the southern flank of
the Mesopotamian fortresses, he suffered serious loss at the affair of
Callinicum. Though he was defeated, his resistance had yet turned and
frustrated the Persian expedition. Four months later king Kobad died,
and his successor Chosroes I. made peace on the base of the _status quo
ante_, fearing to continue the Roman war while his throne was insecure.
(September, 531.)
The end of the Persian war left Justinian free to cast his eyes on the
affairs of his neighbours to the West. Though so indecisive, it had not
been without its uses, for it had permitted him to test the solidity of
his army, and to discover several officers of merit, and one general of
commanding ability—the young victor of Daras. [Sidenote: Belisarius.]
Belisarius was now twenty-six years of age: he was, like his master, a
native of the borderland between Thrace and Illyricum, bred at an
unknown village named Germania, but not, as the name of his birthplace
might seem to suggest, of Teutonic but of Thracian blood.[9] He had
entered the army at a very early age, and had fought his way up to the
post of governor of the great fortress of Daras before he was
twenty-four. His favour with Justinian had been confirmed by his
marriage with Antonina, the friend and confidante of the empress
Theodora. She was a clever, unscrupulous, domineering woman, several
years older than her husband, and exercised over him a domestic tyranny
which any man less easy tempered than the young general would have found
unbearable. The position of Belisarius and Antonina at the Court of
Justinian has been not unaptly compared to that of Marlborough and his
imperious wife at the court of Queen Anne; but it is only fair to the
East-Roman to say that he was in every way a better man than the
Englishman, while his wife had all the faults of Duchess Sarah, without
her one redeeming virtue of fidelity to her spouse.
Footnote 9:
There seems no reason to make him a Slav, as some have done on account
of his rather Slavonic-looking name.
Before he was able to turn his attention to the West, and just after the
crisis of the Persian war had passed, Justinian was exposed to a sharp
and sudden danger, the most perilous experience of his whole career. We
have already spoken at some length of the rivalries of the Blue and
Green factions,[10] and explained how, in the early sixth century, the
Greens were reckoned heterodox and supporters of the house of
Anastasius, while the Blues were orthodox and favoured Justinus and his
nephew. Accident conspired with the innate turbulence of the factions to
stir them up into fierce disorder in the year 532, and brought about the
celebrated ‘Nika’ sedition. To provide for the expenses of the Persian
war, Justinian had not only drawn upon the hoarded wealth of Anastasius,
but had imposed heavy additional taxation. This act made his instruments
the Quaestor Tribonian and the Praetorian Prefect John of Cappadocia
very unpopular. Both of them were suspected—and not incorrectly—of
having used the opportunity to fill their pockets at the expense of the
public, and John the Cappadocian had made himself particularly odious by
his cruel treatment of defaulting debtors. In January 532 there were
riotous scenes in the circus, caused by the protests of the Greens
against the oppression they were suffering. There soon followed tumults
in the streets, and the factions settled their grievances with bludgeon
and knife. [Sidenote: The ‘Nika’ Sedition, 532.] Justinian often allowed
the Blues a free hand in dealing with their adversaries, but, on this
occasion, his supporters had gone too far. The police seized many
ring-leaders of both factions, and seven of the chiefs were condemned to
the axe or the cord. While an angry crowd stood round, five of the
rioters were put to death, but when the last two, a Blue and a Green,
were being hung, the cord slipped twice, owing to the nervousness of the
executioner, and the criminals fell to the ground. The populace then
burst through the police and hurried off the men to sanctuary in a
neighbouring monastery. This incident proved the beginning of a fearful
uproar. Instead of dispersing, the mobs paraded the place shouting for
the dismissal of the unpopular ministers John and Tribonian. Blues and
Greens united in the cry, the whole city poured out into the streets,
and the police were trampled down and driven away.
Footnote 10:
See page 50.
Frightened by the storm Justinian had the weakness to yield; instead of
sending out the imperial guard to clear the streets, he announced that
he had determined to remove the obnoxious Quaestor and Prefect. This
only made matters worse; after burning the official residence of the
prefect of the city, the mob mustered in a most threatening attitude
outside the palace. This constrained the emperor to use force, but he
happened to be very short of soldiery at the moment. All the garrison of
Constantinople save 3500 of the _scholarii_, or imperial guard, had been
sent off to the Persian war. Only two regiments had as yet returned, a
corps of 500 cuirassiers under Belisarius, and a body of Heruli of about
the same number. Five thousand men were hardly enough to cope with an
angry populace of half-a-million souls in the narrow streets of the
capital.
When attacked by the troops the rioters set fire to the city, and an
awful conflagration ensued. The great church of St. Sophia perished
among the flames, together with all the houses and public buildings to
the north and east of it. Blood having once flowed, the mob were set
upon something more than a riot—a revolution was in the air, and the
Greens, who took the lead in the struggle, sought about for their
favourite the patrician Hypatius, the nephew of their old patron
Anastasius I. [Sidenote: Hypatius proclaimed Emperor.] But Hypatius was
a prudent and cautious person, with no ambition to risk his head; he had
entered the palace and put himself in Justinian’s hands to keep out of
harm’s way. It was not till the emperor, who feared traitors about him,
ordered all senators to retire to their homes that Hypatius fell into
the hands of his own partisans. The unhappy rebel in spite of himself
was at once hurried off to the Hippodrome, placed on the imperial seat,
and crowned with a diadem extemporised from his wife’s gold necklace.
It was in vain that Justinian issued from the palace next day, and
proclaimed an amnesty; he was chased back with insulting cries.
[Sidenote: The Counsel of Theodora.] Losing heart he summoned the chief
of his courtiers and guards, and proposed to them to abandon
Constantinople and take refuge in Asia, as Zeno had done in a similar
time of trouble. John of Cappadocia and many of the ministers advised
him to fly; but the intrepid Theodora stepped forward to save her
husband from destruction. ‘It has been said,’ she cried, ‘that the voice
of a woman should not be heard among the councils of men. But those
whose interests are most concerned have the best right to speak. To
death the inevitable we must all submit, but to survive dignity and
honour, to descend from empire to exile, to such shame there is no
compulsion. Never shall the day come when I put off this purple robe and
am no more hailed as sovereign lady. If you wish to protract your life,
O Emperor, flight is easy; there are your ships and there is the sea.
But consider whether, if you escape to exile, you will not wish every
day that you were dead. As for me, I hold with the ancient saying that
the imperial purple is a glorious shroud.’
Spurred on by the fiery words of his wife Justinian tried the fortune of
war once more. A few reinforcements had arrived; with these, and the
harassed troops who had already faced five days’ street-fighting,
Belisarius once more sallied forth from the palace. The rebels were off
their guard, for a false rumour had got about that Justinian was already
fled. At this moment the mob was crowding the Hippodrome and saluting
their creature with shouts of _Hypatie Auguste tu vincas_. [Sidenote:
Suppression of the Sedition.] After a vain attempt to break in by the
imperial staircase, Belisarius assaulted the main side gate of the
circus, and burst in at a point where the conflagration had three days
before made a breach in the wall. Penned into the great amphitheatre,
and taken by surprise, the rebels made a weak resistance. Soon they
turned to fly, but all the issues were choked, and the victims of the
sword of Belisarius were numbered by the ten thousand. Hypatius and his
brother were caught alive and brought to Justinian, who ordered them to
be beheaded. The next day he heard of all the facts concerning the
unwillingness of Hypatius, and gave his body honourable burial. It was
many years before the Blues and Greens ever vexed him by another riot.
The awful carnage in the circus kept the city quiet for a whole
generation.
Justinian was now free from trouble at home and abroad, and turned to
those ambitious schemes of foreign policy which were to occupy the rest
of his reign. The dream of his heart was to reunite the Roman Empire, by
bringing once more under his sceptre all those western provinces which
were occupied by Teutonic kings, and paid only the shadow of homage to
the imperial name. A few years before, the dream would have seemed
fantastically overweening, but of late matters had been growing more and
more promising. Justinian was, compared with his four predecessors,
young and vigorous; he had an immense store of treasure, all the hoard
of Anastasius, a large and efficient army, and at least one general of
first-rate ability. His throne was firmly rooted; his eastern frontier
secure; nothing now prevented him from undertaking wars of aggression.
Meanwhile, everything in the West favoured his projects. In Italy the
great Theodoric was dead, and, since his death, the Ostrogothic kingdom
had been faring ill. The old hero had left his realm to his grandson
Athalaric, a boy of eight years old, under the guardianship of his
mother Amalaswintha, the widow of Eutharic. The daughter of Theodoric
was a clever and masterful woman, but she had a difficult task in
teaching the turbulent Ostrogoths to obey a female regent. [Sidenote:
Minority of Athalaric, 526-34.] They murmured at all her doings, and
most especially at her taste for Roman and Greek letters, and her
frequent promotions of Roman officials. She strove to bring up her son,
it was said, more as an Italian than a Goth, placing him under Roman
tutors and keeping him tight to the desk, in spite of the saying of
Theodoric that ‘he who has trembled before the pedagogue’s rod will not
face the spear willingly.’ It was as much as Amalaswintha could do to
keep the Goths in their obedience while her son was young, but when he
had attained the age of twelve or thirteen, and began to show some will
of his own, the murmurs of the people grew louder. At last, when he had
one day been chastised by his mother, he burst into the guard-room, and
bade his subjects take note how a king of the Goths was treated worse
than a slave. This scene produced a tumult, and the chiefs of the Goths
took the education of the boy out of his mother’s hands, though they
left her the regency. Handed over to unsuitable companions Athalaric
grew idle, drunken, and reckless; he was of a weakly habit of body, and,
before he reached manhood, had developed the symptoms of consumption.
Meanwhile, Amalaswintha was contending for power with the chiefs of the
Goths, and had earned much unpopularity by putting to death, without
form of trial, the three heads of the party which opposed her. So
uncertain was her position that she sent secretly to Justinian in 533 to
beg him to give her refuge at Dyrrhachium if she should be forced to
fly. The emperor soon grasped the position—a divided people, an
unpopular regent, a boy-king sinking into his grave invited him to
active interference in Italy.
In Africa the condition of affairs was equally tempting. [Sidenote:
Hilderic’s Reign, 523-30.] We have already mentioned how, on the death
of king Thrasamund, the Vandal throne had fallen to his kinsman
Hilderic, the son of king Hunneric and the Roman princess, Eudocia.
Hilderic was elderly, unversed in affairs of state, and a conscientious
Catholic, inheriting from his Roman mother that orthodoxy which his
Arian subjects detested. He had but a short reign of seven years, but in
it he succeeded in alienating the affections of the Vandals in every
way. He incurred great odium for putting to death his predecessor’s
widow Amalafrida, the sister of the great Theodoric, because he found
her conspiring against him. His wars were uniformly unsuccessful, the
Moors of Atlas cut to pieces a whole army, and pushed their incursions
close to the gates of Carthage. Probably his open confession of
Catholicism, and promotion of Catholics to high office, were even
greater sources of wrath. In 530 his cousin Geilamir organised a
conspiracy against him, overthrew him with ease, and plunged him into a
dungeon. Justinian professed great indignation at this dethroning of an
orthodox and friendly sovereign, and resolved to make use of it as a
grievance against the new king of the Vandals. Just before the ‘Nika’
sedition broke out he had sent an embassy to Carthage to bid Geilamir
replace his cousin on the throne, and be contented with the place of
regent. The usurper answered rudely enough: ‘King Geilamir wishes to
point out to king Justinian that it is a good thing for rulers to mind
their own business.’[11] He trusted to the remoteness of his situation
and the domestic troubles of Justinian, and little thought that he was
drawing down the storm on his head.
Footnote 11:
There was deliberate insult in the use of the word βασιλεύς for both
monarchs, as if they were equal and bore the same title.
For Justinian had fully made up his mind to begin his attack on the West
by subduing the Vandals. All things were in his favour, notably the
facts that an Arian king was once more making life miserable to the
African Catholics, and that Vandal and Ostrogoth had been completely
estranged by the murder of Amalafrida nine years before. Amalaswintha
favoured rather than discouraged the emperor’s attack on her nearest
Teutonic neighbours. There was yet one more piece of good fortune: king
Geilamir had just sent off the flower of the Vandal troops to an
expedition against Sardinia.
Encouraged by these considerations, Justinian prepared an army for the
invasion of Africa in the summer of 533, though some of his ministers,
and above all the financier, John of Cappadocia, warned him against
‘attacking the ends of the earth, from which a message would hardly
reach Byzantium in a year,’ a ridiculous plea to any one who remembered
the ancient organisation of the empire. The army was not very large: it
consisted of 10,000 foot and 5000 horse, half regular troops from the
Asiatic provinces, half Hunnish and Herulian auxiliaries. [Sidenote:
Belisarius invades Africa, 533.] But its commander, Belisarius, was a
host in himself, and confidence in him buoyed up many who would
otherwise have despaired. The voyage was protracted by contrary winds to
the unprecedented length of eighty days, but at last the armament cast
anchor at Caput Vada, on the cape which faces Sicily, in the beginning
of September. The Vandals were caught wholly unprepared: their king was
absent in Numidia, their best troops were in Sardinia, their fleet had
not been even launched. A blind confidence in their remoteness from
Constantinople had led them to despise all Justinian’s threats, and no
preparation whatever had been made against an invasion. Geilamir hurried
down to the coast, put his prisoner Hilderic to death, and summoned in
his warriors from every side; but it was eleven days before he mustered
in sufficient force to attack the Romans, and meanwhile Belisarius had
advanced unopposed to within ten miles of the gates of Carthage. The
provincials received him everywhere with joy; for he proclaimed that he
came to deliver them from Arian oppression, and kept his soldiery in
such good order that not a field or a cottage was plundered.
Belisarius had reached the posting-station of Ad Decimum, and was
advancing cautiously with strong corps of observation securing his flank
and front, when suddenly he was assailed by the whole force of the
Vandals, who outnumbered him in at least the proportion of two to one.
He was beset on three sides at once; one corps of Vandals under the
king’s brother Ammatas issued from Carthage to attack him in front;
another body beset his left flank; the main army under Geilamir himself
assailed the rear of his long column of march. But the Vandals
mismanaged their tactics, and failed to combine the three attacks. First
the troops from Carthage came out, and were beaten off with the loss of
their leader; then the turning corps was driven back by the Hunnish
cavalry, whom Belisarius had kept lying out on his flank. When the main
Vandal army came up there was more serious fighting with the centre and
rear of the Roman column. Geilamir furiously burst through the line of
march, and cleft the Roman army in twain, but he did not know how to use
his advantage. Instead of improving his first success, he halted his
troops, and allowed Belisarius to rally and re-form his men. It is said
that he was so transported with grief at finding the corpse of his
brother, who had fallen in the earlier engagement, that he gave no more
orders, and cast himself weeping on the ground. Presently, the Romans
were in good array again; their victorious vanguard had returned to aid
the centre, and they fell once more, as the evening closed in, on the
stationary masses of the Vandals. The conquerors of Africa must have
forgotten their ancient valour, for, after a very paltry resistance,
they turned and fled westward under cover of the night.
Carthage at once threw open its gates, and Belisarius dined next day in
the royal palace on the meal that had been prepared for the Vandal king.
[Sidenote: Carthage taken.] Geilamir reaped now the reward for the
hundred years of persecution to which his forefathers had subjected the
Africans. Every town that was not garrisoned opened its gates to the
Romans, and the provincials hastened to place everything they possessed
at the disposal of Belisarius. His entry into Carthage was like the
triumph of a home-coming king, and the order and discipline of his
troops was so great that none even of the Vandal and Arian citizens
suffered loss.
Geilamir meanwhile retired into the Numidian hills, with an army that
had suffered more loss of _morale_ than loss of numbers. He was soon
joined by the troops whom he had sent to Sardinia; having subdued that
island they returned, and raised his forces to nearly 50,000 men.
Finding that Belisarius was repairing the walls of Carthage before
marching out to finish the campaign, Geilamir resolved to take the
offensive himself. Descending from the hills he marched on Carthage, and
met the Roman army at Tricameron, twenty miles westward of the city.
Here Belisarius won a pitched battle after a struggle far more severe
than that he had gone through at Ad Decimum. Thrice the Romans were
beaten back, but their gallant leader rallied them, and at last his
cuirassiers burst through the Vandal ranks and slew Tzazo, the king’s
brother. Geilamir turned to fly, though his men fought on until their
retreat was cut off. Almost the whole Vandal race perished in this fight
and the bloody pursuit which followed. Geilamir himself took refuge in
the heights of Mount Atlas among the Moors, and dwelt among them
miserably enough for a few months.
[Sidenote: End of the Vandal kingdom.] Discovering that he could not
raise a third army, and that life was unendurable among the filthy
barbarians, he determined to surrender, and yielded himself and his
family to Belisarius, on the assurance that he should receive honourable
treatment, in spite of the fact that he had murdered the emperor’s
friend Hilderic.
In the spring of 534 Belisarius was able to return in triumph to
Constantinople, bringing with him the king and most of the surviving
Vandals as captives. His ships were loaded with all the plunder of the
palace of Carthage, the trophies of a century of successful pirate
raids, including the plate and ornaments which Gaiseric had carried off
from Rome in 455. It is said that the emperor recognised among this
store the seven-branched candlestick and golden vessels of the temple of
Jerusalem, which Titus Caesar had taken to Rome when he conquered Judea
four hundred years back. He sent them to be placed in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, in the Holy City where they had been first consecrated.
Belisarius was allowed the honours of an ancient Roman triumph, a
privilege denied to a subject for four centuries; he entered the
Hippodrome in state, and laid his prisoners and his booty at Justinian’s
feet, while senate and people saluted him as the new Scipio Africanus, a
title which he had fairly earned. Next year he was promoted to the
consulship, and given every honour that the emperor could devise. His
captive, king Geilamir, was kindly treated, and presented with a great
estate in Phrygia, where he and his family long dwelt in ease.
The year of the triumph of Belisarius saw new opportunities arising for
him and for his master. In the autumn of 534 died the sickly and
debauched youth who held the title of king of the Ostrogoths; he had not
yet attained his eighteenth birthday. His mother, Amalaswintha, was now
left face to face with the wild Goths, stripped of the protection of the
royal name, and exposed to the enmity of the families of the chiefs whom
she had executed. In despair of inducing the Goths to endure the rule of
a queen-regnant, she determined to choose a colleague, and confer on him
the title of king. Theodoric’s next male heir after Athalaric was a
certain Theodahat, the son of his sister Amalaberga. [Sidenote:
Amalaswintha and Theodahat.] This prince had been excluded by his uncle
from all affairs of state for his notorious cowardice, covetousness, and
duplicity. He was a Romanised Teuton of the worst type, and, as was
truly said, _Vilis Gothus imitatur Romanum_; he had pronounced literary
tastes, called himself a Platonic philosopher, and showed some care for
the arts, but was wholly mean and corrupt. Amalaswintha thought to
presume on the cowardice of her cousin, and to force him to become her
tool; she forgot that even a coward may be ambitious. At the queen’s
behest the assembly of the warriors of Italy hailed Theodahat and
Amalaswintha joint rulers of the Ostrogoths. But in less than six months
the intriguing king had suborned his partisans to seize and imprison his
unfortunate cousin. She was cast into a castle on the lake of Bolsena,
and shortly afterwards murdered, with Theodahat’s connivance, by some of
the kinsfolk of the nobles whom she executed five years before. (May,
535.)
Justinian had now an even better _casus belli_ in Italy than he had
possessed in Africa. His ally had been dethroned and murdered, and her
crown was possessed by a creature far inferior to Geilamir, who was at
least a warrior if an unfortunate one. The miserable Theodahat grovelled
with fear when he received the angry ultimatum of Justinian. He even
made secret proposals to the emperor’s ambassadors to the effect that he
would abandon his crown and betray his people, if only he were granted
his life and a suitable maintenance. When even this did not avail, he
took to consulting soothsayers and magicians. We are told that a Jewish
seer bade him pen up thirty pigs—to represent unclean Gentiles, we must
suppose—in three sties, calling ten ‘Goths,’ ten ‘Italians,’ and ten
‘Imperialists.’ He was to leave them ten days without food or water, and
then take augury from their condition. When Theodahat looked in at the
appointed hour, he found all the ‘Goth’ pigs dead save two, and half of
the ‘Italians,’ but the ‘Imperialists,’ though gaunt and wasted, were
all, or almost all, alive. This the Jew told the downcast king would
portend a war in which the Gothic race was to be well-nigh exterminated,
and the Italians to be terribly cut down, while the Imperial armies
would conquer after much toil and privation!
While Theodahat was vainly busy with his soothsayers, the Roman armies
had already attacked the Gothic province in Dalmatia. The wretched
usurper had to face war, whether he willed it or no. Justinian had
determined, as was but natural, to intrust the Ostrogothic war to the
conqueror of Africa, and, in the autumn of the year of his consulship,
Belisarius sailed for the West with a small army of 7500 men, of whom
3000 were Isaurians, and the rest equally divided between Roman regulars
and Hunnish and Herule auxiliaries. It was a small force with which to
attack a king who commanded the swords of a hundred thousand gallant
Germans, but reinforcements were to follow, and Theodahat’s cowardice
and incapacity were well known.
In September 535 Belisarius fell on Sicily; here as in Africa the
provincials hastened to throw open the gates of their cities to the
invader. There were few Goths in Sicily; they garrisoned Palermo, but
Belisarius took the place by a sudden assault, after lying only a few
days before its walls. [Sidenote: Belisarius conquers Sicily, 535.] By
the approach of winter the whole island was in his hands. He would have
hastened on to attack Italy, but for a mutiny which broke out in Africa
and compelled him to cross the sea and spend some time in the
neighbourhood of Carthage.
Meanwhile the poor craven Theodahat did nothing but besiege the ears of
Justinian with more fruitless proposals for peace. He was as unprepared
as ever for resistance when Belisarius crossed over the straits of
Messina, in April 536, and overran Bruttium and Lucania. So greatly were
the Goths of the south discouraged by his helplessness, that Ebermund,
the Count of Lucania, surrendered to Belisarius, and entered the
imperial service with all his followers. It was not till he had pushed
on to Naples that Belisarius met with any opposition; all through
southern Italy the city gates swung open the moment that he touched them
with his spear. The old Greek city of Naples, however, held by a strong
Gothic garrison, made a very obstinate defence, and held out for many
weeks, awaiting the arrival of a relieving army. King Theodahat had
gathered a great army at Rome, but the coward dared not close, and kept
50,000 men idle, while 7000 Romans were beleaguering Naples. At last the
city fell, a party of Isaurian soldiers having found their way up a
disused aqueduct, and stormed one of the gates from within. The news of
the fall of Naples raised the wrath of the Goths against their wretched
king to boiling point. At a great folk-moot at Regeta in the Pomptine
Marshes the army solemnly deposed Theodahat, and, as no male Amal was
left, raised on the shield Witiges, an elderly warrior of respectable
character, who had won credit in the old wars of Theodoric. The
dethroned king fled away to seek refuge at Ravenna, but a private enemy
pursued him and cut his throat ‘like a sheep’ long ere he had reached
the City of the Marshes.
The choice of Witiges was a fearful error on the part of the Goths; they
had mistaken respectability for talent, and paid the penalty in seeing
the stupid veteran wreck all their hopes. The first blunder on the part
of the new king was to draw his army northward on the news that the
Franks were crossing the Alps to ravage the valley of Po. He left only
4000 men in Rome, and marched on Ravenna with all the rest. The moment
that he was departed Belisarius moved northward to attack the imperial
city. It fell into his hands without a blow; the Gothic garrison felt
that they were left deserted among a populace ready to betray them to
the enemy; indeed Pope Silverius and the Senate had already written to
pray Belisarius to deliver them. [Sidenote: Belisarius takes Rome, 536.]
When the Imperialists appeared before the southern gate, the Goths fled
out of the northern, in a panic that was inexcusable, for they were
well-nigh as numerous as the 5000 men that Belisarius brought with him.
(December 9, 536.)
Belisarius was now master of Rome, but he knew that his hold on it was
precarious. Witiges had settled matters with the Franks by paying them
130,000 gold solidi and ceding his Transalpine dominions in Provence.
After marrying Mataswintha, the sister of the late king Athalaric, and
the last scion of the house of the Amals, he resolved to return and
deliver Rome. All north Italy had sent him its Gothic warriors, and
100,000 men marched under his banner to besiege Rome in the spring of
537.
The defence of Rome is the greatest of all the titles to glory that
Belisarius won. The walls of Aurelian were strong, but there were only
5000 men to defend their vast circuit, and within was an unruly mass of
cowardly citizens, liable to all sorts of panic fears—mouths to be fed
without hands to strike, for hardly a Roman took arms to aid the
imperial troops. In the middle of March the Goths appeared before the
walls, and pitched seven camps opposite the northern and eastern gates
of the city. They then cut all the aqueducts which supplied Rome with
water, and commenced the construction of siege-engines for a great
assault. With the want of thoroughness that he always displayed, king
Witiges made no adequate preparation for blockading the southern side of
the city, or for stopping its communications with Ostia and Naples. All
through the siege convoys of provisions and reinforcements were
frequently able to creep into Rome by night, eluding the outposts which
were all that Witiges placed on the side of the Tiber and the Campagna.
A fortnight after arriving in front of the walls Witiges had his engines
ready, and delivered his great assault on the northern and north-eastern
fronts of the city. Everywhere the attack failed; the towers and rams
which the Goths had drawn forward never reached the walls; the oxen
which drew them were shot down before they neared the ditch. But
thousands of wild warriors with scaling-ladders delivered assaults
against innumerable portions of the enceinte. In most cases they failed
entirely; the walls of Aurelian were too strong; but at two points, at
opposite ends of the city, they nearly won success. At the Praenestine
gate a battering-ram broke in the outer bulwarks, and a swarm of Goths
was only held back by an inner entrenchment till the reinforcements of
Belisarius arrived. But greater danger still was encountered at the
Mausoleum of Hadrian (castle of St. Angelo), just beyond the Ælian
Bridge. [Sidenote: Belisarius defends Rome, 536-37.] There the Goths
filled the ditch, overwhelmed the defenders with arrows, and were
fitting their ladders to the embrasures, when they were at last checked
by a strange expedient. The walls of the mausoleum were lined with
dozens of splendid statues, some of them figures of emperors, others the
ancient spoils of Greece. At the supreme moment the desperate garrison
flung these colossal figures on the besiegers below, and drove them off
by the hail of marble fragments.
At the end of the day Belisarius was everywhere successful; 20,000 Goths
had fallen, and the self-confidence of Witiges was so broken that he
never again tried a general assault. He relied instead on a blockade,
but, though he inflicted great misery on the garrison, and still more on
the populace, he never closed the roads or the river sufficiently to
exclude occasional convoys of provisions. He did not prevent Belisarius
from transferring to Campania the greater part of the women, aged men,
and slaves in the city. Meanwhile the summer drew on, and the Gothic
hosts began to suffer from malaria, and from the filthy state of the
crowded camps. On the other hand, Belisarius at last began to receive
reinforcements from Constantinople, and was able to make sallies, in
which his horsemen handled the Gothic outposts very roughly.
When both assault and blockade had been proved ineffectual, and when an
attempt to creep into the city through the empty aqueducts had been
foiled, Witiges would probably have done well to raise the siege, and
throw on Belisarius, whose army was still very small, the burden of
taking the offensive. Instead of doing this he lay obstinately in his
camp for a year and nine days, watching his army melt away under the
scourge of pestilence, and allowing the numbers and boldness of the
Imperialists to increase. At last Belisarius had been so strongly
reinforced that he was able, while still holding Rome, to put a second
force in the field. This he sent, under an officer named John the
Bloody, through the Sabine hills to make a dash into Picenum and menace
Ravenna. [Sidenote: Siege of Rome raised, 538.] John, a very able
officer, seized the important town of Rimini, only thirty-three miles
from Ravenna, in February 538. The news that his capital was being
threatened, and that the enemy was in his rear, at last forced the
sluggish king of the Goths to move. He set his seven camps on fire, and
retired up the Flaminian Way into Picenum. Thus the prudence and valour
of Belisarius were at last vindicated, and the Romans, after a siege of
374 days, could once more breathe freely.
Middle Italy was now lost to the Goths, and the scene of operations
shifted into Picenum, north Etruria, and the valley of the Po, where the
war was to endure for two years more (538-40). It resolved itself into a
struggle for the coast towns between Ravenna and Ancona, and for the
command of the passes of the Apennines. One half of the Roman army was
concentrated at Rimini and Ancona, while Belisarius himself with the
other was occupied in clearing the Gothic garrisons out of northern
Etruria. Two Gothic armies at Ravenna and Auximum penned the northern
Roman force into the narrow sea-coast plain, and at last laid siege to
both Rimini and Ancona. Here Witiges seemed for once likely to succeed,
but, when the garrisons had been brought to the last extremity, they
were relieved by new forces from Constantinople commanded by the eunuch
Narses the _praepositus sacri cubiculi_.
Thrown on the defensive Witiges drew back to Ravenna, and allowed the
Romans to overrun the province of Æmilia, and even to cross the Po, and
raise an insurrection in the great city of Milan. There now followed a
long pause: Belisarius found that Narses was set on asserting an
independent authority over the newly-arrived army, and had to send to
the emperor to beg him to recall the eunuch. Meanwhile he laid siege to
the last two Gothic fortresses south of Ravenna, the towns of Fiesole in
Etruria and Auximum (Osimo) in Picenum. Both cities made a gallant
resistance, and while Belisarius was at a standstill Uraias, the warlike
nephew of Witiges, stormed and sacked Milan, and restored the Gothic
dominion north of the Po (539). Meanwhile the king took the only wise
step which occurred to him during the whole war: he sent ambassadors to
the East to inform Chosroes, king of Persia, that well-nigh the whole
Roman army was occupied in Italy, and that he might overrun Syria and
Mesopotamia with ease. Taken two years earlier, this step might have
saved the Goths, but now it was too late: Chosroes moved, but moved only
in time to hear that Witiges was dethroned and a captive.
After holding out seven months, Auximum surrendered to Belisarius at
mid-winter, 539-40. Witiges had done nothing to save the gallant
garrison, alleging that a Frankish raid into the valley of the Po
prevented him from moving. The excuse was true but insufficient, for
when the Franks of Theudebert, thinned by disease, turned home again,
the Gothic king did not stir any the more.
At last, in the spring of 540, Narses had been recalled, and Belisarius
had full possession of all Picenum and Etruria, and could safely advance
on Ravenna. After posting a covering force to ward off any attempt to
relieve the town by the Goths of northern Italy, he drew his main army
round the great fortress in the marshland, the chosen home of Theodoric,
the storehouse of the hoarded wealth of the Amals. The defence was weak,
far weaker than that of the smaller stronghold of Auximum. Witiges
seemed to have the power of communicating his sloth and hesitation to
all who came near him. He listened first to offers from Theudebert the
Frank, then to proposals for surrender sent in by Belisarius. At last he
determined to close with the terms offered by Justinian, that he should
resign all Italy south of the Po, give up half the royal hoard, and
reign in the Transpadane as the emperor’s vassal. The terms were not
hard, for Justinian had just been attacked by Persia, and wished to end
his Italian war at once. It would have been well for all parties if they
had been carried out; but two wills intervened: the Gothic nobles were
wildly indignant at their master’s cowardice: Belisarius, looking at his
military advantages, thought the terms too liberal. [Sidenote: Witiges
surrenders Ravenna, 540.] From this discontent came an extraordinary
result: the Teutonic chiefs boldly proposed to the imperial general that
he should reign over them,—whether as king of the Goths or Roman Caesar
they cared not,—but their swords should be his, and the craven Witiges
should be cast away, if he would take them as his vassals and administer
Italy. Belisarius temporised, and the simple Goths, believing that no
man could resist such an offer, threw open the gates. But the great
general was loyal to the core: instead of proclaiming himself emperor,
he took over the town in Justinian’s name, bade the Gothic warriors
disperse each to his own home, and shipped all the golden stores of
Ravenna off to Constantinople.
It seemed as if the monarchy of the Goths was ended: nothing remained to
them save Pavia, Verona, and a few more north Italian cities. Justinian
resolved to recall Belisarius before these places should fall; meaner
generals would suffice to take them. Two motives stirred the emperor:
his great captain was wanted on the eastern frontier to keep back the
advancing Persian; but suspicion also played its part: Justinian was not
too well pleased that Belisarius had overruled his project of making
peace with Witiges, and he had been somewhat frightened by the Gothic
proposal to make Belisarius emperor. It had been declined, it is true,
but might not the seeds of disloyalty have sunk into the heart of the
general? It would be safer to bring him away from the temptation.
So, by the imperial mandate, Belisarius sailed for the Bosphorus, taking
with him the captive Witiges, and all the gold and gems of the great
hoard of the Amals. He was denied a formal triumph such as he had won by
his Vandal victory, but none the less his reception was magnificent. His
personal body-guard of 7000 chosen men had followed him to the capital,
and, as they passed through the streets, the populace exclaimed ‘the
household of one man has destroyed the kingdom of the Goths.’ Happy
would it have been for the great general if he had died at the moment of
this his grandest success. He was reserved for lesser wars and years of
chequered fortune (540).
------------------------------------------------------------------------