ardour; the Walamirs were multiplied by the Gothic swarms already engaged
in the service, or seated in the provinces, of the empire; and each
bold barbarian, who had heard of the wealth and beauty of Italy, was
impatient to seek, through the most perilous adventures, the possession
of such enchanting objects. The march of Theodoric must be considered
as the emigration of an entire people; the wives and children of the
Goths, their aged parents, and most precious effects, were carefully
transported; and some idea may be formed of the heavy baggage that now
followed the camp, by the loss of two thousand wagons, which had been
sustained in a single action in the war of Epirus. For their subsistence,
the Goths depended on the magazines of corn which was ground in portable
mills by the hands of their women; on the milk and flesh of their flocks
and herds; on the casual produce of the chase, and upon the contributions
which they might impose on all who should presume to dispute the
passage, or to refuse their friendly assistance. Notwithstanding these
precautions, they were exposed to the danger, and almost to the distress,
of famine, in a march of seven hundred miles, which had been undertaken
in the depth of a rigorous winter.
Since the fall of the Roman power, Dacia and Pannonia no longer exhibited
the rich prospect of populous cities, well-cultivated fields, and
convenient highways: the reign of barbarism and desolation was restored,
and the tribes of Bulgarians, Gepids, and Sarmatians, who had occupied
the vacant province, were prompted by their native fierceness, or the
solicitations of Odoacer, to resist the progress of his enemy. In many
obscure, though bloody battles, Theodoric fought and vanquished; till at
length, surmounting every obstacle by skilful conduct and persevering
courage, he descended from the Julian Alps, and displayed his invincible
banners on the confines of Italy (489).
Odoacer, a rival not unworthy of his arms, had already occupied the
advantageous and well-known post of the river Sontius near the ruins of
Aquileia, at the head of a powerful host, whose independent kings or
leaders disdained the duties of subordination and the prudence of delays.
No sooner had Theodoric granted a short repose and refreshment to his
wearied cavalry, than he boldly attacked the fortifications of the enemy;
the Ostrogoths showed more ardour to acquire, than the mercenaries to
defend, the lands of Italy; and the reward of the first victory was the
possession of the Venetian province as far as the walls of Verona. In the
neighbourhood of that city, on the steep banks of the rapid Adige, he
was opposed by a new army, reinforced in its numbers, and not impaired
in its courage; the contest was more obstinate, but the event was still
more decisive; Odoacer fled to Ravenna, Theodoric advanced to Mediolanum,
and the vanquished troops saluted their conqueror with loud acclamations
of respect and fidelity. But their want either of constancy or of faith,
soon exposed him to the most imminent danger; his vanguard, with several
Gothic counts, which had been rashly entrusted to a deserter,[99] was
betrayed and destroyed near Faventia (Faenza) by his double treachery;
Odoacer again appeared master of the field, and the invader, strongly
entrenched in his camp of Ticinum, was reduced to solicit the aid of a
kindred nation, the Visigoths of Gaul.
In the course of this history, the most voracious appetite for war
will be abundantly satiated; nor can we much lament that our dark and
imperfect materials do not afford a more ample narrative of the distress
of Italy, and of the fierce conflict, which was finally decided by the
abilities, experience, and valour of the Gothic king.
[Sidenote: [493 A.D.]]
From the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, Theodoric reigned by the
right of conquest; the Vandal ambassadors surrendered the island of
Sicily, as a lawful appendage of his kingdom; and he was accepted as the
deliverer of Rome by the senate and people, who had shut their gates
against the flying usurper. Ravenna alone, secure in the fortifications
of art and nature, still sustained a siege of almost three years; and
the daring sallies of Odoacer carried slaughter and dismay into the
Gothic camp. At length, destitute of provisions, and hopeless of relief,
that unfortunate monarch yielded to the groans of his subjects and
the clamours of his soldiers. A treaty of peace was negotiated by the
bishop of Ravenna; the Ostrogoths were admitted into the city, and the
hostile kings consented, under the sanction of an oath, to rule with
equal and undivided authority the provinces of Italy. The event of such
an agreement may be easily foreseen. After some days had been devoted to
the semblance of joy and friendship, Odoacer, in the midst of a solemn
banquet, was stabbed by the hand, or at least by the command, of his
rival (March 15, 493). Secret and effectual orders had been previously
despatched; the faithless and rapacious mercenaries, at the same moment,
and without resistance, were universally massacred; and the royalty
of Theodoric was proclaimed by the Goths, with the tardy, reluctant,
ambiguous consent of the emperor of the East.
The design of a conspiracy was imputed, according to the usual forms, to
the prostrate tyrant; but his innocence, and the guilt of his conqueror,
are sufficiently proved by the advantageous treaty which force would
not sincerely have granted, nor weakness have rashly infringed. The
jealousy of power, and the mischiefs of discord, may suggest a more
decent apology, and a sentence less rigorous may be pronounced against a
crime which was necessary to introduce into Italy a generation of public
felicity. The living author of this felicity was audaciously praised in
his own presence by sacred and profane orators; but history (in his time
she was mute and inglorious) has not left any just representation of the
events which displayed, or of the defects which clouded, the virtues of
Theodoric.
The reputation of Theodoric may repose with more confidence on the
visible peace and prosperity of a reign of thirty-three years; the
unanimous esteem of his own times, and the memory of his wisdom and
courage, his justice and humanity, which was deeply impressed on the
minds of the Goths and Italians.
THEODORIC THE GREAT (493-526 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [493-526 A.D.]]
The partition of the lands of Italy, of which Theodoric assigned the
third part to his soldiers, is honourably arraigned as the sole injustice
of his life. And even this act may be fairly justified by the example
of Odoacer, the rights of conquest, the true interest of the Italians,
and the sacred duty of subsisting a whole people, who, on the faith of
his promises, had transported themselves into a distant land. Under the
reign of Theodoric, and in the happy climate of Italy, the Goths soon
multiplied to a formidable host of two hundred thousand men, and the
whole amount of their families may be computed by the ordinary addition
of women and children. Their invasion of property, a part of which must
have been already vacant, was disguised by the generous but improper
name of hospitality; these unwelcome guests were irregularly dispersed
over the face of Italy, and the lot of each barbarian was adequate to
his birth and office, the number of his followers, and the rustic wealth
which he possessed in slaves and cattle. The distinctions of noble and
plebeian were acknowledged; but the lands of every freeman were exempt
from taxes, and he enjoyed the inestimable privilege of being subject
only to the laws of his country. Fashion, and even convenience, soon
persuaded the conquerors to assume the more elegant dress of the natives,
but they still persisted in the use of their mother-tongue; and their
contempt for the Latin schools was applauded by Theodoric himself, who
gratified their prejudices, or his own, by declaring, that the child who
had trembled at a rod, would never dare to look upon a sword.
Theodoric studied to protect his industrious subjects, and to moderate
the violence, without enervating the valour, of his soldiers who were
maintained for the public defence. They held their lands and benefices
as a military stipend; at the sound of the trumpet they were prepared
to march under the conduct of their provincial officers; and the
whole extent of Italy was distributed into the several quarters of a
well-regulated camp.
Among the barbarians of the West, the victory of Theodoric had spread
a general alarm. But as soon as it appeared that he was satisfied with
conquest, and desirous of peace, terror was changed into respect, and
they submitted to a powerful mediation, which was uniformly employed for
the best purposes of reconciling their quarrels and civilising their
manners. The ambassadors who resorted to Ravenna from the most distant
countries of Europe, admired his wisdom, magnificence, and courtesy;
and if he sometimes accepted either slaves or arms, white horses or
strange animals, the gift of a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a musician
admonished even the princes of Gaul of the superior art and industry of
his Italian subjects. His domestic alliances, a wife, two daughters,
a sister, and a niece, united the family of Theodoric with the kings
of the Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Vandals, and the
Thuringians; and contributed to maintain the harmony, or at least the
balance, of the great republic of the West. It is difficult, in the dark
forest of Germany and Poland, to pursue the emigration of the Heruli, a
fierce people, who disdained the use of armour, and who condemned their
widows and aged parents not to survive the loss of their husbands, or
the decay of their strength. The king of these savage warriors solicited
the friendship of Theodoric, and was elevated to the rank of his son,
according to the barbaric rites of a military adoption. From the shores
of the Baltic, the Æstians, or Livonians, laid their offerings of native
amber at the feet of a prince, whose fame had excited them to undertake
an unknown and dangerous journey of fifteen hundred miles.
The life of Theodoric represents the rare and meritorious example of a
barbarian, who sheathed his sword in the pride of victory and the vigour
of his age. A reign of three-and-thirty years was consecrated to the
duties of civil government, and the hostilities in which he was sometimes
involved were speedily terminated by the conduct of his lieutenants, the
discipline of his troops, the arms of his allies, and even by the terror
of his name. He reduced, under a strong and regular government, the
unprofitable countries of Rætia, Noricum, Dalmatia, and Pannonia, from
the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians, to the petty
kingdom erected by the Gepids on the ruins of Sirmium. His prudence could
not safely entrust the bulwark of Italy to such feeble and turbulent
neighbours; and his justice might claim the lands which they oppressed,
either as a part of his kingdom, or as the inheritance of his father.
The greatness of a servant, who was named perfidious because he was
successful, awakened the jealousy of the emperor Anastasius; and a
war was kindled on the Dacian frontier, by the protection which the
Gothic king, in the vicissitude of human affairs, had granted to Mundo,
a descendant of Attila. Sabinian, a general illustrious by his own
and father’s merit, advanced at the head of ten thousand Romans; and
the provisions and arms, which filled a long train of wagons, were
distributed to the fiercest of the Bulgarian tribes. But, in the fields
of Margus, the eastern powers were defeated by the inferior forces of
the Goths and Huns; the flower and even the hope of the Roman armies was
irretrievably destroyed; and such was the temperance with which Theodoric
had inspired his victorious troops, that as their leader had not given
the signal of pillage, the rich spoils of the enemy lay untouched at
their feet.
Exasperated by this disgrace, the Byzantine court despatched two hundred
ships and eight thousand men to plunder the sea coast of Calabria
and Apulia; they assaulted the ancient city of Tarentum, interrupted
the trade and agriculture of a happy country, and sailed back to the
Hellespont, proud of their piratical victory over a people whom they
still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren. Their retreat was
possibly hastened by the activity of Theodoric; Italy was covered by a
fleet of a thousand light vessels, which he constructed with incredible
despatch; and his firm moderation was soon rewarded by a solid and
honourable peace. He maintained with a powerful hand the balance of the
West, till it was at length overthrown by the ambition of Clovis; and
although unable to assist his rash and unfortunate kinsman, the king of
the Visigoths, he saved the remains of his family and people, and checked
the Franks in the midst of their victorious career.
It is not desirous to prolong or repeat this narrative of military
events, the least interesting of the reign of Theodoric; and we shall
be content to add that the Alamanni were protected, that an inroad of
the Burgundians was severely chastised, and that the conquest of Arles
and Marseilles opened a free communication with the Visigoths, who
revered him both as their national protector, and as the guardian of his
grandchild, the infant son of Alaric. Under this respectable character,
the king of Italy restored the prætorian prefecture of the Gauls,
reformed some abuses in the civil government of Spain, and accepted
the annual tribute and apparent submission of its military governor,
who wisely refused to trust his person in the palace of Ravenna. The
Gothic sovereignty was established from Sicily to the Danube, from
Sirmium or Belgrade to the Atlantic Ocean; and the Greeks themselves
have acknowledged that Theodoric reigned over the fairest portion of the
Western Empire.
The union of the Goths and Romans might have fixed for ages the transient
happiness of Italy; and the first of nations, a new people of free
subjects and enlightened soldiers, might have gradually arisen from the
mutual emulation of their respective virtues. But the sublime merit of
guiding or seconding such a revolution, was not reserved for the reign
of Theodoric; he wanted either the genius or the opportunities of a
legislator; and while he indulged the Goths in the enjoyment of rude
liberty, he servilely copied the institutions, and even the abuses,
of the political system which had been framed by Constantine and his
successors. From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome, the
barbarian declined the name, the purple, and the diadem, of the emperors;
but he assumed, under the hereditary title of king, the whole substance
and plenitude of imperial prerogative. His addresses to the eastern
throne were respectful and ambiguous; he celebrated in pompous style the
harmony of the two republics, applauded his own government as the perfect
similitude of a sole and undivided empire, and claimed above the kings of
the earth the same pre-eminence which he modestly allowed to the person
or rank of Anastasius. The alliance of the East and West was annually
declared by the unanimous choice of two consuls; but it should seem that
the Italian candidate who was named by Theodoric, accepted a formal
confirmation from the sovereign of Constantinople.
The Gothic palace of Ravenna reflected the image of the court of
Theodosius or Valentinian. The prætorian prefect, the prefect of Rome,
the quæstor, the master of the offices, with the public and patrimonial
treasurers, whose functions are painted in gaudy colours by the rhetoric
of Cassiodorus, still continued to act as the ministers of state. And
the subordinate care of justice and the revenue was delegated to seven
consulars, three correctors and five presidents, who governed the fifteen
regions of Italy, according to the principles and even the forms of Roman
jurisprudence. The violence of the conquerors was abated or eluded by
the slow artifice of judicial proceedings; the civil administration,
with its honours and emoluments, was confined to the Italians; and the
people still preserved their dress and language, their laws and customs,
their personal freedom, and two-thirds of their landed property. It had
been the object of Augustus to conceal the introduction of monarchy; it
was the policy of Theodoric to disguise the reign of a barbarian. If his
subjects were sometimes awakened from this pleasing vision of a Roman
government, they derived more substantial comfort from the character of
a Gothic prince, who had penetration to discern, and firmness to pursue,
his own and the public interest. Theodoric loved the virtues which he
possessed, and the talents of which he was destitute. Liberius was
promoted to the office of prætorian prefect for his unshaken fidelity to
the unfortunate cause of Odoacer. The ministers of Theodoric, Cassiodorus
and Boethius, have reflected on his reign the lustre of their genius and
learning. More prudent or more fortunate than his colleague, Cassiodorus
preserved his own esteem without forfeiting the royal favour; and after
passing thirty years in the honours of the world, he was blessed with an
equal term of repose in the devout and studious solitude of Squillace
(Sylacium).
The public games, such as a Greek ambassador might politely applaud,
exhibited a faint and feeble copy of the magnificence of the cæsars: yet
the musical, the gymnastic, and the pantomimic arts, had not totally
sunk into oblivion; the wild beasts of Africa still exercised in the
amphitheatre the courage and dexterity of the hunters; and the indulgent
Goth either patiently tolerated or gently restrained the blue and green
factions, whose contests so often filled the circus with clamour, and
even with blood. In the seventh year of his reign, Theodoric visited
Rome, the old capital of the world; the senate and people advanced in
solemn procession to salute a second Trajan, a new Valentinian; and he
nobly supported that character by the assurance of a just and legal
government, in a discourse which he was not afraid to pronounce in
public, and to inscribe on a tablet of brass.
Rome, in this august ceremony, shot a last ray of declining glory; and
a saint, the spectator of this pompous scene, could only hope in his
pious fancy, that it was excelled by the celestial splendour of the New
Jerusalem. During a residence of six months, the fame, the person, and
the courteous demeanour of the Gothic king excited the admiration of
the Romans, and he contemplated with equal curiosity and surprise the
monuments that remained of their ancient greatness. He imprinted the
footsteps of a conqueror on the Capitoline Hill, and frankly confessed
that each day he viewed with fresh wonder the Forum of Trajan and his
lofty column. The theatre of Pompey appeared, even in its decay, as a
huge mountain artificially hollowed and polished, and adorned by human
industry; and he vaguely computed, that a river of gold must have been
drained to erect the colossal amphitheatre of Titus. From the mouths of
fourteen aqueducts, a pure and copious stream was diffused into every
part of the city; among these the Claudian water, which arose at the
distance of thirty-eight miles in the Sabine mountains, was conveyed
along a gentle though constant declivity of solid arches, till it
descended on the summit of the Aventine Hill. The long and spacious
vaults which had been constructed for the purpose of common sewers,
subsisted, after twelve centuries, in their pristine strength; and the
subterraneous channels have been preferred to all the visible wonders of
Rome.
The Gothic kings, so injuriously accused of the ruin of antiquity, were
anxious to preserve the monuments of the nation whom they had subdued.
The royal edicts were framed to prevent the abuses, the neglect, or the
depredations, of the citizens themselves; and a professed architect, the
annual sum of two hundred pounds of gold, twenty-five thousand tiles,
and the receipt of customs from the Lucrine port, were assigned for
the ordinary repairs of the walls and public edifices. A similar care
was extended to the statues of metal or marble, of men or animals. The
spirit of the horses, which have given a modern name to the Quirinal, was
applauded by the barbarians; the brazen elephants of the Via Sacra were
diligently restored; the famous heifer of Myron deceived the cattle, as
they were driven through the forum of peace, and an officer was created
to protect those works of art, which Theodoric considered as the noblest
ornaments of his kingdom.
After the example of the last emperors, Theodoric preferred the residence
of Ravenna, where he cultivated an orchard with his own hands. As often
as the peace of his kingdom was threatened (for it was never invaded)
by the barbarians, he removed his court to Verona, on the northern
frontier, and the image of his palace, still extant on a coin, represents
the oldest and most authentic model of Gothic architecture. Agriculture
revived under the shadow of peace, and the number of husbandmen was
multiplied by the redemption of captives. The iron mines of Dalmatia, a
gold mine of Bruttium, were carefully explored, and the Pontine marshes,
as well as those of Spoleto, were drained and cultivated by private
undertakers, whose distant reward must depend on the continuance of
the public prosperity. Whenever the seasons were less propitious, the
doubtful precautions of forming magazines of corn, fixing the price,
and prohibiting the exportation, attested at least the benevolence of
the state; but such was the extraordinary plenty which an industrious
people produced from a grateful soil, that a gallon of wine was sometimes
sold in Italy for less than three farthings (1½ cents), and a quarter
of wheat (8 bushels) at about five shillings and sixpence ($1.37). A
country possessed of so many valuable objects of exchange, soon attracted
the merchants of the world, whose beneficial traffic was encouraged and
protected by the liberal spirit of Theodoric. The free intercourse of the
provinces by land and water was restored and extended; the city gates
were never shut either by day or by night; and the common saying, that a
purse of gold might be safely left in the fields, was expressive of the
conscious security of the inhabitants.
THEODORIC AND THE CHURCH
A difference of religion is always pernicious and often fatal to
the harmony of the prince and people; the Gothic conqueror had been
educated in the profession of Arianism, and Italy was devoutly attached
to the Nicene faith. But the persuasion of Theodoric was not infected
by zeal, and he piously adhered to the heresy of his fathers, without
condescending to balance the subtle arguments of theological metaphysics.
Satisfied with the private toleration of his Arian sectaries, he
justly conceived himself to be the guardian of the public worship;
and his external reverence for a superstition which he despised, may
have nourished in his mind the salutary indifference to a statesman or
philosopher. With the protection, Theodoric assumed the legal supremacy
of the church; and his firm administration restored or extended some
useful prerogatives, which had been neglected by the feeble emperors of
the West. He was not ignorant of the dignity and importance of the Roman
pontiff, to whom the venerable name of Pope was now appropriated. The
peace or the revolt of Italy might depend on the character of a wealthy
and popular bishop, who claimed such ample dominion, both in heaven and
earth; who had been declared in a numerous synod to be pure from all sin,
and exempt from all judgment. When the chair of St. Peter was disputed
by Symmachus and Laurentius, they appeared at his summons before the
tribunal of an Arian monarch, and he confirmed the election of the most
worthy, or the most obsequious candidate. At the end of his life, in a
moment of jealousy and resentment, he prevented the choice of the Romans,
by nominating a pope in the palace of Ravenna. The danger and furious
contests of a schism were mildly restrained, and the last decree of the
senate was enacted to extinguish, if it were possible, the scandalous
venality of the papal elections.
We have descanted with pleasure on the fortunate condition of Italy; but
our fancy must not hastily conceive that the golden age of the poets,
a race of men without vice or misery, was realised under the Gothic
conquest. The fair prospect was sometimes overcast with clouds; the
wisdom of Theodoric might be deceived, his power might be resisted, and
the declining age of the monarch was sullied with popular hatred and
patrician blood. In the first insolence of victory, he had been tempted
to deprive the whole party of Odoacer of the civil, and even the natural
rights of society; a tax unseasonably imposed after the calamities of
war, would have crushed the rising agriculture of Liguria: a rigid
pre-emption of corn, which was intended for the public relief, must
have aggravated the distress of Campania. These dangerous projects were
defeated by the virtue and eloquence of Epiphanius and Boethius, who,
in the presence of Theodoric himself, successfully pleaded the cause of
the people: but if the royal ear was open to the voice of truth, a saint
and a philosopher are not always to be found at the ear of kings. The
privileges of rank, or office, or favour, were too frequently abused
by Italian fraud and Gothic violence; and the avarice of the king’s
nephew was publicly exposed, at first by the usurpation, and afterwards
by the restitution, of the estates which he had unjustly extorted from
his Tuscan neighbours. Two hundred thousand barbarians, formidable even
to their master, were seated in the heart of Italy; they indignantly
supported the restraints of peace and discipline; the disorders of their
march were always felt, and sometimes compensated; and where it was
dangerous to punish, it might be prudent to dissemble, the sallies of
their native fierceness.
Even the religious toleration which Theodoric had the glory of
introducing into the Christian world, was painful and offensive to the
orthodox zeal of the Italians. They respected the armed heresy of the
Goths; but their pious rage was safely pointed against the rich and
defenceless Jews, who had formed their establishments at Neapolis, Rome,
Ravenna, Mediolanum, and Genoa, for the benefit of trade, and under
the sanction of the laws. Their persons were insulted, their effects
were pillaged, and their synagogues were burned by the mad populace of
Ravenna and Rome, inflamed, as it should seem, by the most frivolous
or extravagant pretences. The government which could neglect, would
have deserved such an outrage. A legal inquiry was instantly directed;
and as the authors of the tumult had escaped in the crowd, the whole
community was condemned to repair the damage; and the obstinate bigots
who refused their contributions, were whipped through the streets by
the hand of the executioner. This simple act of justice exasperated the
discontent of the Catholics, who applauded the merit and patience of
these holy confessors; three hundred pulpits deplored the persecution of
the church; and if the chapel of St. Stephen at Verona was demolished
by the command of Theodoric, it is probable that some miracle, hostile
to his name and dignity, had been performed on that sacred theatre. At
the close of a glorious life, the king of Italy discovered that he had
excited the hatred of a people whose happiness he had so assiduously
laboured to promote; and his mind was soured by indignation, jealousy,
and the bitterness of unrequited love. The Gothic conqueror condescended
to disarm the unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons of
offence, and excepting only a small knife for domestic use. The deliverer
of Rome was accused of conspiring with the vilest informers against
the lives of senators whom he suspected of a secret and treasonable
correspondence with the Byzantine court.
After the death of Anastasius, the diadem had been placed on the head
of a feeble old man; but the powers of government were assumed by his
nephew Justinian, who already meditated the extirpation of heresy, and
the conquest of Italy and Africa. A rigorous law, which was published at
Constantinople, to reduce the Arians by the dread of punishment within
the pale of the church, awakened the just resentment of Theodoric, who
claimed, for his distressed brethren of the East, the same indulgence
which he had so long granted to the Catholics of his dominions. At his
command, the Roman pontiff, John I, with four illustrious senators,
embarked on an embassy, of which he must have alike dreaded the failure
or the success. The singular veneration shown to the first pope who had
visited Constantinople was punished as a crime by his jealous monarch;
the artful or peremptory refusal of the Byzantine court might excuse an
equal, and would provoke a larger, measure of retaliation; and a mandate
was prepared in Italy, to prohibit, after a stated day, the exercise of
the Catholic worship. By the bigotry of his subjects and enemies, the
most tolerant of princes was driven to the brink of persecution; and the
life of Theodoric was too long, since he lived to condemn the virtue of
Boethius and Symmachus.
THE FATE OF BOETHIUS AND SYMMACHUS
[Sidenote: [524 A.D.]]
The senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could
have acknowledged for their countryman. As a wealthy orphan, he inherited
the patrimony and honours of the Anician family. Boethius is said to have
employed eighteen laborious years in the schools of Athens, which were
supported by the zeal, the learning, and the diligence of Proclus and his
disciples. After his return to Rome, and his marriage with the daughter
of his friend, the patrician Symmachus, Boethius still continued, in a
palace of ivory and marble, to prosecute the same studies. The church was
edified by his profound defence of the orthodox creed against the Arian,
the Eutychian, and the Nestorian heresies; and the Catholic unity was
explained or exposed in a formal treatise by the indifference of three
distinct, though consubstantial, persons. For the benefit of his Latin
readers, his genius submitted to teach the first elements of the arts
and sciences of Greece. The geometry of Euclid, the music of Pythagoras,
the arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics of Archimedes, the astronomy
of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato, and the logic of Aristotle, with
the commentary of Porphyry, were translated and illustrated by the
indefatigable pen of the Roman senator. And he alone was esteemed capable
of describing the wonders of art, a sun-dial, a water-clock, or a sphere
which represented the motions of the planets.
From these abstruse speculations, Boethius stooped, or, to speak
more truly, he rose to the social duties of public and private life;
the indigent were relieved by his liberality; and his eloquence,
which flattery might compare to the voice of Demosthenes or Cicero,
was uniformly exerted in the cause of innocence and humanity. Such
conspicuous merit was felt and rewarded by a discerning prince; the
dignity of Boethius was adorned with the titles of consul and patrician,
and his talents were usefully employed in the important station of master
of the offices. Notwithstanding the equal claims of the East and West,
his two sons were created, in their tender youth, the consuls of the same
year.
But the favour and fidelity of Boethius declined in just proportion
with the public happiness; and an unworthy colleague was imposed, to
divide and control the power of the master of the offices. In the last
gloomy season of Theodoric, he indignantly felt that he was a slave;
but as his master had only power over his life, he stood without arms
and without fear against the face of an angry barbarian, who had been
provoked to believe that the safety of the senate was incompatible with
his own. The senator Albinus was accused, and already convicted, on the
presumption of hoping, as it was said, the liberty of Rome. “If Albinus
be criminal,” exclaimed the orator, “the senate and myself are all guilty
of the same crime. If we are innocent, Albinus is equally entitled to the
protection of the laws.” These laws might not have punished the simple
and barren wish of an unattainable blessing; but they would have shown
less indulgence to the rash confession of Boethius, that, had he known
of a conspiracy, the tyrant never should. The advocate of Albinus was
soon involved in the danger, and perhaps the guilt, of his client; their
signature (which they denied as a forgery) was affixed to the original
address, inviting the emperor to deliver Italy from the Goths; and three
witnesses of honourable rank, perhaps of infamous reputation, attested
the treasonable designs of the Roman patrician. Yet his innocence
must be presumed, since he was deprived by Theodoric of the means of
justification, and rigorously confined in the tower of Pavia, while the
senate, at the distance of five hundred miles, pronounced a sentence of
confiscation and death against the most illustrious of its members. A
devout and dutiful attachment to the senate was condemned as criminal by
the trembling voices of the senators themselves; and their ingratitude
deserved the wish and prediction of Boethius that, after him, none should
be found guilty of the same offence.
While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected each moment the
sentence or the stroke of death, he composed in the tower of Pavia the
_Consolation of Philosophy_; a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure
of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism
of the times and the situation of the author. The celestial guide, whom
he had so long invoked at Rome and Athens, now condescended to illumine
his dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her
salutary balm. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length determined by
the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps exceeded, the inhuman
mandate of Theodoric. A strong cord was fastened round the head of
Boethius,[100] and forcibly tightened, till his eyes almost started from
their sockets; and some mercy may be discovered in the milder torture
of beating him with clubs till he expired. But his genius survived to
diffuse a ray of knowledge over the darkest ages of the Latin world;
the writings of the philosopher were translated by the most glorious of
English kings, and the third emperor of the name of Otho removed to a
more honourable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint, who, from his Arian
persecutors, had acquired the honours of martyrdom, and the fame of
miracles.
In the last hours of Boethius he derived some comfort from the safety
of his two sons, of his wife, and of his father-in-law, the venerable
Symmachus. But the grief of Symmachus was indiscreet, and perhaps
disrespectful; he had presumed to lament, he might dare to revenge, the
death of an injured friend. He was dragged in chains from Rome to the
palace of Ravenna; and the suspicions of Theodoric could only be appeased
by the blood of an innocent and aged senator.
[Sidenote: [524-526 A.D.]]
Humanity will be disposed to encourage any report which testifies the
jurisdiction or conscience and the remorse of kings; and philosophy is
not ignorant that the most horrid spectres are sometimes created by the
powers of a disordered fancy, and the weakness of a distempered body.
After a life of virtue and glory, Theodoric was now descending with
shame and guilt into the grave; his mind was humbled by the contrast
of the past, and justly alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity.
One evening, as it is related,[101] when the head of a large fish was
served on the royal table, he suddenly exclaimed that he beheld the angry
countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and his
mouth armed with long sharp teeth, which threatened to devour him. The
monarch instantly retired to his chamber, and as he lay trembling with
anguish, cold under the weight of bed-clothes, he expressed in broken
murmurs to his physician Elpidius his deep repentance for the murders
of Boethius and Symmachus. His malady increased, and after a dysentery
which continued three days, he expired in the palace of Ravenna, in
the thirty-third, or, if we compute from the invasion of Italy, in the
thirty-seventh year of his reign, August 30, 526.
Conscious of his approaching end, he divided his treasures and provinces
between his two grandsons, and fixed the Rhone as their common boundary.
Amalaric was restored to the throne of Spain. Italy, with all the
conquests of the Ostrogoths, was bequeathed to Athalaric; whose age did
not exceed ten years, but who was cherished as the last male offspring of
the line of Amali, by the short-lived marriage of his mother Amalasuntha
with a royal fugitive of the same blood. In the presence of the dying
monarch, the Gothic chiefs and Italian magistrates mutually engaged their
faith and loyalty to the young prince, and to his guardian mother; and
received, in the same awful moment, his last salutary advice, to maintain
the laws, to love the senate and people of Rome, and to cultivate with
decent reverence the friendship of the emperor. The monument of Theodoric
was erected by his daughter Amalasuntha, in a conspicuous situation,
which commanded the city of Ravenna, the harbour, and the adjacent coast.
A chapel of a circular form, thirty feet in diameter, is crowned by a
dome of one entire piece of granite: from the centre of the dome four
columns arose, which supported, in a vase of porphyry, the remains of the
Gothic king, surrounded by the brazen statues of the twelve apostles.
His spirit, after some previous expiation, might have been permitted to
mingle with the benefactors of mankind, if an Italian hermit had not
been witness in a vision to the damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was
plunged, by the ministers of divine vengeance,[102] into the volcano of
Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal world.
THE TROUBLES OF AMALASUNTHA
[Sidenote: [526-536 A.D.]]
The birth of Amalasuntha, the regent and queen of Italy, united the two
most illustrious families of the barbarians. Her mother, the sister of
Clovis, was descended from the long-haired kings of the Merovingian race,
and the regal succession of the Amali was illustrated in the eleventh
generation, by her father, the great Theodoric, whose merit might have
ennobled a plebeian origin. The sex of his daughter excluded her from
the Gothic throne: but his vigilant tenderness for his family and his
people discovered the last heir of the royal line, whose ancestors had
taken refuge in Spain; and the fortunate Eutharic was suddenly exalted
to the rank of a consul and a prince. He enjoyed only a short time the
charms of Amalasuntha, and the hopes of the succession; and his widow,
after the death of her husband and father, was left the guardian of her
son Athalaric, and the kingdom of Italy. At the age of about twenty-eight
years, the endowments of her mind and person had attained their perfect
maturity. Her beauty, which, in the apprehension of Theodora herself,
might have disputed the conquest of an emperor, was animated by manly
sense, activity, and resolution. Education and experience had cultivated
her talents; her philosophic studies were exempt from vanity; and, though
she expressed herself with equal elegance and ease in the Greek, the
Latin, and the Gothic tongue, the daughter of Theodoric maintained in her
counsels a discreet and impenetrable silence.
[Illustration: GOTHIC HELMET AND WEAPONS]
By a faithful imitation of the virtues she revived the prosperity of
his reign; while she strove, with pious care, to expiate the faults,
and to obliterate the darker memory, of his declining age. The children
of Boethius and Symmachus were restored to their paternal inheritance;
her extreme lenity never consented to inflict any corporal or pecuniary
penalties on her Roman subjects; and she generously despised the clamours
of the Goths, who, at the end of forty years, still considered the
people of Italy as their slaves or their enemies. Her salutary measures
were directed by the wisdom, and celebrated by the eloquence, of
Cassiodorus[i]; she solicited and deserved the friendship of the emperor;
and the kingdoms of Europe respected, both in peace and war, the majesty
of the Gothic throne.
But the future happiness of the queen and of Italy depended on the
education of her son, who was destined, by his birth, to support the
different and almost incompatible characters of the chief of a barbarian
camp, and the first magistrate of a civilised nation. From the age of
ten years, Athalaric was diligently instructed in the arts and sciences,
either useful or ornamental for a Roman prince; and three venerable Goths
were chosen to instil the principles of honour and virtue into the mind
of their young king. But the pupil who is insensible of the benefits,
must abhor the restraints, of education; and the solicitude of the queen,
which affection rendered anxious and severe, offended the untractable
nature of her son and his subjects. On a solemn festival, when the Goths
were assembled in the palace of Ravenna, the royal youth escaped from
his mother’s apartment, and, with tears of pride and anger, complained
of a blow which his stubborn disobedience had provoked her to inflict.
The barbarians resented the indignity which had been offered to their
king; accused the regent of conspiring against his life and crown; and
imperiously demanded that the grandson of Theodoric should be rescued
from the dastardly discipline of women and pedants, and educated, like a
valiant Goth, in the society of his equals, and the glorious ignorance
of his ancestors. To this rude clamour, importunately urged as the voice
of the nation, Amalasuntha was compelled to yield her reason, and the
dearest wishes of her heart.
[Sidenote: [534-535 A.D.]]
The king of Italy was abandoned to wine, to women, and to rustic sports;
and the indiscreet contempt of the ungrateful youth betrayed the
mischievous designs of his favourites and her enemies. Encompassed with
domestic foes, she entered into a secret negotiation with the emperor
Justinian; obtained the assurance of a friendly reception, and had
actually deposited at Dyrrhachium in Epirus a treasure of forty thousand
pounds of gold. Happy would it have been for her fame and safety, if she
had calmly retired from barbarous faction to the peace and splendour of
Constantinople. But the mind of Amalasuntha was inflamed by ambition and
revenge; and while her ships lay at anchor in the port, she waited for
the success of a crime which her passions excused or applauded as an act
of justice. Three of the most dangerous malcontents had been separately
removed, under the pretence of trust and command, to the frontiers of
Italy: they were assassinated by her private emissaries; and the blood
of these noble Goths rendered the queen-mother absolute in the court of
Ravenna, and justly odious to a free people. But if she had lamented
the disorders of her son, she soon wept his irreparable loss; and the
death of Athalaric, in 534, who, at the age of sixteen, was consumed by
premature intemperance, left her destitute of any firm support or legal
authority. [Athalaric died of the plague.]
Instead of submitting to the laws of her country, which held as a
fundamental maxim, that the succession could never pass from the lance to
the distaff, the daughter of Theodoric conceived the impracticable design
of sharing with one of her cousins the regal title, and of reserving
in her own hands the substance of supreme power. He received the
proposal with profound respect and affected gratitude; and the eloquent
Cassiodorus announced to the senate and the emperor, that Amalasuntha
and Theodatus [or Theodahad] had ascended the throne.[103] His birth
(for his mother was the sister of Theodoric) might be considered as an
imperfect title; and the choice of Amalasuntha was more strongly directed
by her contempt of his avarice and pusillanimity, which had deprived
him of the love of the Italians, and the esteem of the barbarians. But
Theodatus was exasperated by the contempt which he deserved; her justice
had repressed and reproached the oppression which he exercised against
his Tuscan neighbours; and the principal Goths, united by common guilt
and resentment, conspired to instigate his slow and timid disposition.
The letters of congratulation were scarcely despatched before the queen
of Italy was imprisoned in a small island of the lake of Volsiniensis
(Bolsena), where, after a short confinement, she was strangled in the
bath, by the order, or with the connivance, of the new king,[104] who
instructed his turbulent subjects to shed the blood of their sovereigns
(May? 535).
JUSTINIAN INTERVENES
[Sidenote: [535-536 A.D.]]
Justinian beheld with joy the dissensions of the Goths; and the mediation
of an ally concealed and promoted the ambitious views of the conqueror.
His ambassadors, in their public audience, demanded the fortress of
Lilybæum, ten barbarian fugitives, and a just compensation for the
pillage of a small town on the Illyrian borders; but they secretly
negotiated with Theodatus to betray the province of Tuscany, and tempted
Amalasuntha to extricate herself from danger and perplexity, by a free
surrender of the kingdom of Italy. A false and servile epistle was
subscribed by the reluctant hand of the captive queen; but the confession
of the Roman senators, who were sent to Constantinople, revealed the
truth of her deplorable situation; and Justinian, by the voice of a new
ambassador, most powerfully interceded for her life and liberty. Yet the
secret instructions of the same minister were adapted to serve the cruel
jealousy of Theodora, who dreaded the presence and superior charms of a
rival: he prompted, with artful and ambiguous hints, the execution of a
crime so useful to the Romans; received the intelligence of her death
with grief and indignation, and denounced, in his master’s name, immortal
war against the perfidious assassin.
In Italy as well as in Africa, the guilt of an usurper appeared to
justify the arms of Justinian; but the forces which he prepared were
insufficient for the subversion of a mighty kingdom, if their feeble
numbers had not been multiplied by the name, the spirit, and the conduct
of a hero. A chosen troop of guards, who served on horseback, and were
armed with lances and bucklers, attended the person of Belisarius: his
cavalry was composed of two hundred Huns, three hundred Moors, and four
thousand confederates, and the infantry consisted only of three thousand
Isaurians. Steering the same course as in his former expedition, the
Roman consul cast anchor before Catana in Sicily, to survey the strength
of the island, and to decide whether he should attempt the conquest, or
peaceably pursue his voyage for the African coast. He found a fruitful
land and a friendly people. Notwithstanding the decay of agriculture,
Sicily still supplied the granaries of Rome; the farmers were graciously
exempted from the oppression of military quarters; and the Goths, who
trusted the defence of the island to the inhabitants, had some reason
to complain that their confidence was ungratefully betrayed: instead
of soliciting and expecting the aid of the king of Italy, they yielded
to the first summons a cheerful obedience: and this province, the
first-fruits of the Punic Wars, was again, after a long separation,
united to the Roman Empire (535).
The Gothic garrison of Palermo, which alone attempted to resist, was
reduced, after a short siege, by a singular stratagem. Belisarius
introduced his ships into the deepest recess of the harbour; their boats
were laboriously hoisted with ropes and pulleys to the topmast head, and
he filled them with archers, who from that superior station commanded
the ramparts of the city. After this easy though successful campaign,
the conqueror entered Syracuse in triumph, at the head of his victorious
bands, distributing gold medals to the people, on the day which so
gloriously terminated the year of the consulship. He passed the winter
season in the palace of ancient kings, amidst the ruins of a Grecian
colony, which once extended to a circumference of two-and-twenty miles;
but in the spring, about the festival of Easter, the prosecution of his
designs was interrupted by a dangerous revolt of the African forces.
Although Theodatus descended from a race of heroes, he was ignorant of
the art, and averse to the dangers, of war. Although he had studied the
writings of Plato and Tully, philosophy was incapable of purifying his
mind from the basest passions, avarice and fear. He had purchased a
sceptre by ingratitude and murder: at the first menace of an enemy, he
degraded his own majesty, and that of a nation which already disdained
their unworthy sovereign. Astonished by the recent example of Gelimer,
he saw himself dragged in chains through the streets of Constantinople;
the terrors which Belisarius inspired were heightened by the eloquence
of Petrus, the Byzantine ambassador; and that bold and subtle advocate
persuaded him to sign a treaty, too ignominious to become the foundation
of a lasting peace.
Justinian required and accepted the abdication of the Gothic king. His
indefatigable agent returned from Constantinople to Ravenna, with ample
instructions; and a fair epistle, which praised the wisdom and generosity
of the royal philosopher, granted his pension, with the assurance of such
honours as a subject and a Catholic might enjoy; and wisely referred
the final execution of the treaty to the presence and authority of
Belisarius. But in the interval of suspense two Roman generals, who had
entered the province of Dalmatia, were defeated and slain by the Gothic
troops. From blind and abject despair, Theodatus capriciously rose to
groundless and fatal presumption, and dared to receive with menace and
contempt the ambassador of Justinian; who claimed his promise, solicited
the allegiance of his subjects, and boldly asserted the inviolable
privilege of his own character. The march of Belisarius dispelled this
visionary pride.
After Belisarius had left sufficient garrisons in Palermo and Syracuse,
he embarked his troops at Messina, and landed them, without resistance,
on the opposite shores of Rhegium. A Gothic prince, who had married the
daughter of Theodatus, was stationed with an army to guard the entrance
of Italy; but he imitated, without scruple, the example of a sovereign
faithless to his public and private duties. The perfidious Ebermor
deserted with his followers to the Roman camp, and was dismissed to enjoy
the servile honours of the Byzantine court. From Rhegium to Neapolis
(Naples) the fleet and army of Belisarius, almost always in view of each
other, advanced near three hundred miles along the sea coast.
In a much later period, the circumference of Naples measured only 2363
paces: the fortifications were defended by precipices or the sea:
when the aqueducts were intercepted, a supply of water might be drawn
from wells and fountains; and the stock of provisions was sufficient
to consume the patience of the besiegers. At the end of twenty days,
that of Belisarius was almost exhausted, and he had reconciled himself
to the disgrace of abandoning the siege, that he might march, before
the winter season, against Rome and the Gothic king. But his anxiety
was relieved by the bold curiosity of an Isaurian, who explored the
dry channel of an aqueduct, and secretly reported that a passage might
be perforated to introduce a file of armed soldiers into the heart of
the city. When the work had been silently executed, the humane general
risked the discovery of his secret, by a last and fruitless admonition
of the impending danger. In the darkness of the night four hundred
Romans entered the aqueduct, raised themselves by a rope, which they
fastened to an olive tree, into the house or garden of a solitary matron,
sounded their trumpets, surprised the sentinels, and gave admittance to
their companions, who on all sides scaled the walls and burst open the
gates of the city. Every crime which is punished by social justice was
practised as the rights of war; the Huns were distinguished by cruelty
and sacrilege, and Belisarius alone appeared in the streets and churches
of Naples, to moderate the calamities which he predicted.
[Illustration: A GOTH, PEASANT COSTUME]
The faithful soldiers and citizens of Neapolis had expected their
deliverance from a prince who remained the inactive and almost
indifferent spectator of their ruin. Theodatus secured his person
within the walls of Rome, while his cavalry advanced forty miles on
the Appian way, and encamped in the Pontine marshes; which, by a canal
of nineteen miles in length, had been recently drained and converted
into excellent pastures. But the principal forces of the Goths were
dispersed in Dalmatia, Venetia, and Gaul; and the feeble mind of their
king was confounded by the unsuccessful event of a divination, which
seemed to presage the downfall of his empire. The most abject slaves
have arraigned the guilt, or weakness, of an unfortunate master. The
character of Theodatus was rigorously scrutinised by a free and idle
camp of barbarians, conscious of their privilege and power: he was
declared unworthy of his race, his nation, and his throne; and their
general Witiges, whose valour had been signalised in the Illyrian War,
was raised, with unanimous applause, on the bucklers of his companions.
On the first rumour, the abdicated monarch fled from the justice of his
country; but he was pursued by private revenge.[105] A Goth, whom he
had injured in his love, overtook Theodatus on the Flaminian way, and,
regardless of his unmanly cries, slaughtered him, as he lay prostrate on
the ground (536).
WITIGES KING OF THE GOTHS
The choice of the people is the best and purest title to reign over them:
yet such is the prejudice of every age, that Witiges impatiently wished
to return to Ravenna, where he might seize, with the reluctant hand of
the daughter of Amalasuntha, some faint shadow of hereditary right. A
national council was immediately held, and the new monarch reconciled
the impatient spirit of the barbarians to a measure of disgrace, which
the misconduct of his predecessor rendered wise and indispensable. The
Goths consented to retreat in the presence of a victorious enemy: to
delay till the next spring the operations of offensive war; to summon
their scattered forces; to relinquish their distant possessions, and to
trust even Rome itself to the faith of its inhabitants. Leuderis, an aged
warrior, was left in the capital with four thousand soldiers; a feeble
garrison, which might have seconded the zeal, though it was incapable
of opposing the wishes, of the Romans. But a momentary enthusiasm of
religion and patriotism was kindled in their minds. They furiously
exclaimed, that the apostolic throne should no longer be profaned by
the triumph or toleration of Arianism; that the tombs of the Cæsars
should no longer be trampled by the savages of the north; and, without
reflecting that Italy must sink into a province of Constantinople, they
fondly hailed the restoration of a Roman emperor as a new era of freedom
and prosperity. The deputies of the pope and clergy, of the senate and
people, invited the lieutenant of Justinian to accept their voluntary
allegiance, and to enter the city, whose gates would be thrown open for
his reception.
BELISARIUS AND THE SIEGE OF ROME (536-538 A.D.)
As soon as Belisarius had fortified his new conquests, Naples and Cumæ,
he made his entrance through the Asinarian gate, the garrison departed
without molestation along the Flaminian way; and the city, after sixty
years’ servitude, was delivered from the yoke of the barbarians. Leuderis
alone, from a motive of pride or discontent, refused to accompany the
fugitives; and the Gothic chief, himself a trophy of the victory, was
sent with the keys of Rome to the throne of the emperor Justinian.
The designs of Witiges were executed, during the winter season, with
diligence and effect. From their rustic habitations, from their distant
garrisons, the Goths assembled at Ravenna for the defence of their
country; and such were their numbers, that after an army had been
detached for the relief of Dalmatia, 150,000 fighting men marched under
the royal standard. According to the degrees of rank or merit, the Gothic
king distributed arms and horses, rich gifts and liberal promises; he
moved along the Flaminian way, declined the useless sieges of Perusia
and Spoleto, respected the impregnable rock of Narni (Narnia), and
arrived within two miles of Rome, at the foot of the Milvian bridge. The
narrow passage was fortified with a tower, and Belisarius had computed
the value of the twenty days, which must be lost in the construction
of another bridge. But the consternation of the soldiers of the tower,
who either fled or deserted, disappointed his hopes, and betrayed his
person into the most imminent danger. At the head of one thousand horse,
the Roman general sallied from the Flaminian gate to mark the ground
of an advantageous position, and to survey the camp of the barbarians;
but while he still believed them on the other side of the Tiber, he
was suddenly encompassed and assaulted by their innumerable squadrons.
The fate of Italy depended on his life; and the deserters pointed to
the conspicuous horse, a bay, with a white face, which he rode on that
memorable day. “Aim at the bay horse,” was the universal cry. Every bow
was bent, every javelin was directed, against that fatal object, and
the command was repeated and obeyed by thousands who were ignorant of
its real motive. The bolder barbarians advanced to the more honourable
combat of swords and spears; and the praise of an enemy has graced the
fall of Visandus, the standard-bearer,[106] who maintained his foremost
station, till he was pierced with thirteen wounds, perhaps by the hand of
Belisarius himself.
The Roman general was strong, active, and dexterous; on every side he
discharged his weighty and mortal strokes; his faithful guards imitated
his valour, and defended his person; and the Goths, after the loss of a
thousand men, fled before the arms of a hero. They were rashly pursued to
their camp; and the Romans, oppressed by multitudes, made a gradual, and
at length a precipitate, retreat to the gates of the city; the gates were
shut against the fugitives; and the public terror was increased by the
report that Belisarius was slain. His countenance was indeed disfigured
by sweat, dust, and blood; his voice was hoarse, his strength was almost
exhausted; but his unconquerable spirit still remained; he imparted that
spirit to his desponding companions; and their last desperate charge was
felt by the flying barbarians, as if a new army, vigorous and entire, had
been poured from the city. The Flaminian gate was thrown open to a real
triumph; but it was not before Belisarius had visited every post, and
provided for the public safety, that he could be persuaded by his wife
and friends to taste the needful refreshments of food and sleep. In the
more improved state of the art of war, a general is seldom required, or
even permitted, to display the personal prowess of a soldier; and the
example of Belisarius may be added to the rare examples of Henry IV, of
Pyrrhus, and of Alexander.
[Sidenote: [537 A.D.]]
After this first and unsuccessful trial of their enemies, the whole
army of the Goths passed the Tiber, and formed the siege of the city,
which continued above a year, till their final departure. Rome, in its
present state, could send into the field above thirty thousand males
of a military age; and, notwithstanding the want of discipline and
exercise, the far greater part, inured to the hardships of poverty,
might be capable of bearing arms for the defence of their country and
religion. The prudence of Belisarius did not neglect this important
resource. His soldiers were relieved by the zeal and diligence of the
people, who watched while they slept, and laboured while they reposed;
he accepted the voluntary service of the bravest and most indigent of
the Roman youth; and the companies of townsmen sometimes represented,
in a vacant post, the presence of the troops which had been drawn away
to more essential duties. But his just confidence was placed in the
veterans who had fought under his banner in the Persian and African wars;
and although that gallant band was reduced to five thousand men, he
undertook, with such contemptible numbers, to defend a circle of twelve
miles, against an army of 150,000 barbarians. In the walls of Rome, which
Belisarius constructed or restored, the materials of ancient architecture
may be discerned; and the whole fortification was completed, except in
a chasm still extant between the Pincian and Flaminian gates, which the
prejudices of the Goths and Romans left under the effectual guard of St.
Peter the apostle. The battlements or bastions were shaped in sharp
angles; a ditch, broad and deep, protected the foot of the rampart;
and the archers on the rampart were assisted by military engines--the
ballista, a powerful cross-bow, which darted short but massy arrows; the
onagri, or wild asses, which, on the principle of a sling, threw stones
and bullets of an enormous size. A chain was thrown across the Tiber; the
arches of the aqueducts were made impervious, and the mole or sepulchre
of Hadrian was converted, for the first time, to the uses of a citadel.
That venerable structure, which contained the ashes of the Antonines,
was a circular turret rising from a quadrangular basis; it was covered
with the white marble of Paros, and decorated by the statues of gods
and heroes; and the lover of the arts must read with a sigh, that the
works of Praxiteles or Lysippus were torn from their lofty pedestals,
and hurled into the ditch on the heads of the besiegers. To each of his
lieutenants, Belisarius assigned the defence of a gate, with the wise and
peremptory instruction, that, whatever might be the alarm, they should
steadily adhere to their respective posts, and trust their general for
the safety of Rome.
The formidable hosts of the Goths was insufficient to embrace the ample
measure of the city; of the fourteen gates, seven only were invested,
from the Prænestine to the Flaminian way; and Witiges divided his troops
into six camps, each of which was fortified with a ditch and rampart.
On the Tuscan side of the river, a seventh encampment was formed in the
field or circus of the Vatican, for the important purpose of commanding
the Milvian bridge and the course of the Tiber; but they approached with
devotion the adjacent church of St. Peter; and the threshold of the holy
apostles was respected during the siege by a Christian enemy.
Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers, to provide all the
instruments of attack which antiquity had invented. Fascines were
prepared to fill the ditches, scaling-ladders to ascend the walls. The
largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of four battering-rams;
their heads were armed with iron; they were suspended by ropes, and each
of them was worked by the labour of fifty men. The lofty wooden turrets
moved on wheels or rollers, and formed a spacious platform of the level
of the rampart. On the morning of the nineteenth day, a general attack
was made from the Prænestine gate to the Vatican; seven Gothic columns,
with their military engines, advanced to the assault; and the Romans,
who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and anxiety to the cheerful
assurances of their commander. As soon as the enemy approached the ditch,
Belisarius himself drew the first arrow; and such was his strength and
dexterity, that he transfixed the foremost of the barbarian leaders. A
shout of applause and victory was re-echoed along the wall. He drew a
second arrow, and the stroke was followed with the same success and the
same acclamation. The Roman general then gave the word that the archers
should aim at the teams of oxen; they were instantly covered with mortal
wounds; the towers which they drew remained useless and immovable, and
a single moment disconcerted the laborious projects of the king of the
Goths.
After this disappointment, Witiges still continued, or feigned to
continue, the assault of the Salarian gate, that he might divert the
attention of his adversary, while his principal forces more strenuously
attacked the Prænestine gate and the sepulchre of Hadrian, at the
distance of three miles from each other. Near the former, the double
walls of the Vivarium were low or broken; the fortifications of the
latter were feebly guarded: the vigour of the Goths was excited by the
hope of victory and spoil; and if a single post had given way, the
Romans, and Rome itself, were irrecoverably lost. This perilous day
was the most glorious in the life of Belisarius. Amidst tumult and
dismay, the whole plan of the attack and defence was distinctly present
to his mind; he observed the changes of each instant, weighed every
possible advantage, transported his person to the scenes of danger, and
communicated his spirit in calm and decisive orders. The contest was
fiercely maintained from the morning to the evening; the Goths were
repulsed on all sides, and each Roman might boast that he had vanquished
thirty barbarians, if the strange disproportion of numbers were not
counterbalanced by the merit of one man. Thirty thousand Goths, according
to the confession of their own chiefs [so Procopius[j] claims], perished;
and the multitude of the wounded was equal to that of the slain. When
they advanced to the assault, their close disorder suffered not a
javelin to fall without effect; and as they retired, the populace of
the city joined the pursuit, and assailed, with impunity, the backs of
their flying enemies. Belisarius instantly sallied from the gates; and
while the soldiers chanted his name and victory, the hostile engines of
war were reduced to ashes. Such was the loss and consternation of the
Goths, that, from this day, the siege of Rome degenerated into a tedious
and indolent blockade; and they were incessantly harassed by the Roman
general, who, in frequent skirmishes, destroyed about five thousand of
their bravest troops.
Belisarius praised the spirit of his troops, condemned their presumption,
yielded to their clamours, and prepared the remedies of a defeat, the
possibility of which he alone had courage to suspect. In the quarter of
the Vatican, the Romans prevailed; and if the irreparable moments had
not been wasted in the pillage of the camp, they might have occupied the
Milvian bridge, and charged in the rear of the Gothic host. On the other
side of the Tiber, Belisarius advanced from the Pincian and Salarian
gates. But his army, four thousand soldiers perhaps, was lost in a
spacious plain; they were encompassed and oppressed by fresh multitudes,
who continually relieved the broken ranks of the barbarians. The valiant
leaders of the infantry were unskilled to conquer: they died: the retreat
(a hasty retreat) was covered by the prudence of the general, and the
victors started back with affright from the formidable aspect of an armed
rampart. The reputation of Belisarius was unsullied by a defeat; and the
vain confidence of the Goths was not less serviceable to his designs,
than the repentance and modesty of the Roman troops.
SUFFERINGS OF THE ROMANS
From the moment that Belisarius had determined to sustain a siege, his
assiduous care provided Rome against the danger of famine, more dreadful
than the Gothic arms. An extraordinary supply of corn was imported from
Sicily; the harvests of Campania and Tuscany were forcibly swept for
the use of the city: and the rights of private property were infringed
by the strong plea of the public safety. It might easily be foreseen
that the enemy would intercept the aqueducts; and the cessation of the
water-mills was the first inconvenience, which was speedily removed by
mooring large vessels, and fixing millstones in the current of the river.
The stream was soon embarrassed by the trunks of trees, and polluted
with dead bodies; yet so effectual were the precautions of the Roman
general, that the waters of the Tiber still continued to give motion to
the mills and drink to the inhabitants; the more distant quarters were
supplied from domestic wells; and a besieged city might support, without
impatience, the privation of her public baths. A large portion of Rome,
from the Prænestine gate to the church of St. Paul, was never invested
by the Goths; their excursions were restrained by the activity of the
Moorish troops; the navigation of the Tiber, and the Latin, Appian, and
Ostian ways, were left free and unmolested for the introduction of corn
and cattle, or the retreat of the inhabitants, who sought a refuge in
Campania or Sicily.
Anxious to relieve himself from a useless and devouring multitude,
Belisarius issued his peremptory orders for the instant departure of the
women, the children, and the slaves; required his soldiers to dismiss
their male and female attendants, and regulated their allowance, that
one moiety should be given in provisions, and the other in money. His
foresight was justified by the increase of the public distress, as soon
as the Goths had occupied two important posts in the neighbourhood of
Rome. By the loss of the port, or, as it is now called, the city of
Porto, he was deprived of the country on the right of the Tiber, and
the best communication with the sea; and he reflected with grief and
anger, that three hundred men, could he have spared such a feeble band,
might have defended its impregnable works. Seven miles from the capital,
between the Appian and the Latin ways, two principal aqueducts, crossing
and again crossing each other, enclosed within their solid and lofty
arches a fortified space, where Witiges established a camp of seven
thousand Goths to intercept the convoys of Sicily and Campania. The
granaries of Rome were insensibly exhausted, the adjacent country had
been wasted with fire and sword; such scanty supplies as might yet be
obtained by hasty excursions were the reward of valour and the purchase
of wealth: the forage of the horses, and the bread of the soldiers, never
failed; but in the last months of the siege, the people were exposed to
the miseries of scarcity, unwholesome food, and contagious disorders.
Belisarius saw and pitied their sufferings; but he had foreseen, and
he watched, the decay of their loyalty and the progress of their
discontent. Adversity had awakened the Romans from the dreams of grandeur
and freedom, and taught them the humiliating lesson, that it was of
small moment to their real happiness, whether the name of their master
was derived from the Gothic or the Latin language. The lieutenant of
Justinian listened to their just complaints, but he rejected with disdain
the idea of flight or capitulation; repressed their clamorous impatience
for battle; amused them with the prospect of sure and speedy relief;
and secured himself and the city from the effects of their despair or
treachery. Twice in each month he changed the station of the officers
to whom the custody of the gates was committed: the various precautions
of patrols, watchwords, lights, and music, were repeatedly employed to
discover whatever passed on the ramparts; out-guards were posted beyond
the ditch, and the trusty vigilance of dogs supplied the more doubtful
fidelity of mankind.
THE POPE DEPOSED
A letter was intercepted, which assured the king of the Goths that the
Asinarian gate, adjoining to the Lateran church, should be secretly
opened to his troops. On the proof or suspicion of treason, several
senators were banished, and the pope Silverius was summoned to attend
the representative of his sovereign, at his headquarters in the Pincian
palace. The conqueror of Rome and Carthage was modestly seated at the
feet of Antonina, who reclined on a stately couch: the general was
silent, but the voice of reproach and menace issued from the mouth of
his imperious wife. Accused by credible witnesses, and the evidence of
his own subscription, the successor of St. Peter was despoiled of his
pontifical ornaments, clad in the mean habit of a monk, and embarked,
without delay, for a distant exile in the East. [According to Hodgkin[c]
his “contemporaries seem to have entirely acquitted him in the matter,”
and “posterity reverenced him as a martyr.”]
As Justinian was ambitious of fame, he made some efforts, though they
were feeble and languid, to support and rescue his victorious general. A
reinforcement of sixteen hundred Slavonians and Huns was led by Martin
and Valerian; and as they had reposed during the winter season in the
harbours of Greece, the strength of the men and horses was not impaired
by the fatigues of a sea voyage; and they distinguished their valour
in the first sally against the besiegers. About the time of the summer
solstice, Euthalius landed at Tarracina with large sums of money for the
payment of the troops; he cautiously proceeded along the Appian way,
and this convoy entered Rome through the gate Capena, while Belisarius,
on the other side, diverted the attention of the Goths by a vigorous
and successful skirmish. These seasonable aids, the use and reputation
of which were dexterously managed by the Roman general, revived the
courage, or at least the hopes, of the soldiers and people. The historian
Procopius was despatched with an important commission to collect the
troops and provisions which Campania could furnish, or Constantinople
had sent; and the secretary of Belisarius was soon followed by Antonina
herself, who boldly traversed the posts of the enemy, and returned with
the oriental succours to the relief of her husband and the besieged
city. A fleet of three thousand Isaurians cast anchor in the bay of
Naples, and afterwards at Ostia. Above two thousand horse, of whom a
part were Thracians, landed at Tarentum; and, after the junction of five
hundred soldiers of Campania, and a train of wagons laden with wine and
flour, they directed their march, on the Appian way, from Capua to the
neighbourhood of Rome. The forces that arrived by land and sea were
united at the mouth of the Tiber.
A THREE MONTHS’ TRUCE (537-538 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [537-538 A.D.]]
Antonina convened a council of war: it was resolved to surmount, with
sails and oars, the adverse stream of the river; and the Goths were
apprehensive of disturbing, by any rash hostilities, the negotiation to
which Belisarius had craftily listened. They credulously believed that
they saw no more than the vanguard of a fleet and army, which already
covered the Ionian sea and the plains of Campania; and the illusion was
supported by the haughty language of the Roman general, when he gave
audience to the ambassadors of Witiges. After a specious discourse to
vindicate the justice of his cause, they declared that, for the sake of
peace, they were disposed to renounce the possession of Sicily. “The
emperor is not less generous;” replied his lieutenant with a disdainful
smile; “in return for a gift which you no longer possess, he presents
you with an ancient province of the empire--he resigns to the Goths
the sovereignty of the British island;” Belisarius rejected with equal
firmness and contempt the offer of a tribute; but he allowed the Gothic
ambassadors to seek their fate from the mouth of Justinian himself; and
consented, with seeming reluctance, to a truce of three months, from the
winter solstice to the equinox of spring. Prudence might not safely
trust either the oaths or hostages of the barbarians, but the conscious
superiority of the Roman chief was expressed in the distribution of his
troops.
When fear or hunger led the Goths to evacuate Alba, Porto, and
Centumcellæ (Civita Vecchia), their place was soon supplied; the
garrisons of Narni, Spoleto, and Perusia were reinforced, and the seven
camps of the besiegers were gradually encompassed with the calamities
of a siege. The prayers and pilgrimage of Datius, bishop of Milan,
were not without effect; and he obtained one thousand Thracians and
Isaurians to assist the revolt of Liguria against her Arian tyrant. At
the same time, John the Sanguinary, the nephew of Vitalian, was detached
with two thousand chosen horse, first to Alba on the Fucine Lake, and
afterwards to the frontiers of Picenum on the Adriatic Sea. “In that
province,” said Belisarius, “the Goths have deposited their families and
treasures, without a guard or suspicion of danger. Doubtless they will
violate the truce; let them feel your presence, before they hear of your
motions. Spare the Italians; suffer not any fortified places to remain
hostile in your rear; and faithfully reserve the spoil for an equal and
common partition. It would not be reasonable,” he added, with a laugh,
“that whilst we are toiling to the destruction of the drones, our more
fortunate brethren should rifle and enjoy the honey.”
LAST EFFORTS OF THE GOTHS (538 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [538 A.D.]]
The whole nation of the Ostrogoths had been assembled for the attack,
and was almost entirely consumed in the siege, of Rome. If any credit be
due to an intelligent spectator, one-third at least of their enormous
host was destroyed, in frequent and bloody combats under the walls
of the city. The bad fame and pernicious qualities of the summer air
might already be imputed to the decay of agriculture and population;
and the evils of famine and pestilence were aggravated by their own
licentiousness, and the unfriendly disposition of the country. While
Witiges struggled with his fortune; while he hesitated between shame
and ruin; his retreat was hastened by domestic alarms. The king of
the Goths was informed by messengers, that John the Sanguinary spread
the devastations of war from the Apennine to the Adriatic; that the
rich spoils and innumerable captives of Picenum were lodged in the
fortifications of Rimini (Ariminum); and that this formidable chief
had defeated his uncle, insulted his capital, and seduced, by secret
correspondence, the fidelity of his wife, the imperious daughter of
Amalasuntha. Yet, before he retired, Witiges made a last effort either
to storm or to surprise the city. A secret passage was discovered by one
of the aqueducts; two citizens of the Vatican were tempted by bribes
to intoxicate the guards of the Aurelian gate; an attack was meditated
on the walls beyond the Tiber in a place which was not fortified with
towers; and the barbarians advanced with torches and scaling-ladders to
the assault of the Pincian gate. But every attempt was defeated by the
intrepid vigilance of Belisarius and his band of veterans, who, in the
most perilous moments, did not regret the absence of their companions;
and the Goths, alike destitute of hope and subsistence, clamorously urged
their departure, before the truce should expire, and the Roman cavalry
should again be united.
One year and nine days after the commencement of the siege, an army,
so lately strong and triumphant, burned their tents, and tumultuously
repassed the Milvian bridge. They repassed not with impunity: their
thronging multitudes, oppressed in a narrow passage, were driven
headlong into the Tiber by their own fears and the pursuit of the enemy;
and the Roman general, sallying from the Pincian gate, inflicted a severe
and disgraceful wound on their retreat. The slow length of a sickly and
desponding host was heavily dragged along the Flaminian way; from whence
the barbarians were sometimes compelled to deviate, lest they should
encounter the hostile garrisons that guarded the high-road to Rimini and
Ravenna. Yet so powerful was this flying army, that Witiges spared ten
thousand men for the defence of the cities which he was most solicitous
to preserve, and detached his nephew Uraias, with an adequate force, for
the chastisement of rebellious Milan.
At the head of his principal army, Uraias besieged Rimini, only
thirty-three miles distant from the Gothic capital. A feeble rampart
and a shallow ditch were maintained by the skill and valour of John the
Sanguinary, who shared the danger and fatigue of the meanest soldier,
and emulated, on a theatre less illustrious, the military virtues of his
great commander. The towers and battering engines of the barbarians were
rendered useless; their attacks were repulsed; and the tedious blockade,
which reduced the garrison to the last extremity of hunger, afforded time
for the union and march of the Roman forces. A fleet, which had surprised
Ancona, sailed along the coast of the Adriatic, to the relief of the
besieged city. The eunuch Narses landed in Picenum with two thousand
Heruli and five thousand of the bravest troops of the East. The rock of
the Apennine was forced; ten thousand veterans moved round the foot of
the mountains, under the command of Belisarius himself; and a new army,
whose encampment blazed with innumerable lights, appeared to advance
along the Flaminian way. Overwhelmed with astonishment and despair, the
Goths abandoned the siege of Rimini, their tents, their standards, and
their leaders; and Witiges, who gave or followed the example of flight,
never halted till he found a shelter within the walls and morasses of
Ravenna.
JEALOUSY OF THE ROMAN GENERALS
[Sidenote: [538-539 A.D.]]
To these walls, and to some fortresses destitute of any mutual support,
the Gothic monarchy was now reduced. The provinces of Italy had embraced
the party of the emperor; and his army, gradually recruited to the number
of twenty thousand men, must have achieved an easy and rapid conquest,
if their invincible powers had not been weakened by the discord of the
Roman chiefs. In the confidence of approaching victory, they instigated
a powerful rival to oppose the conqueror of Rome and Africa. From the
domestic service of the palace, and the administration of the private
revenue, Narses the eunuch was suddenly exalted to the head of an army;
and the spirit of a hero, who afterwards equalled the merit and glory of
Belisarius, served only to perplex the operations of the Gothic war. To
his prudent counsels, the relief of Rimini was ascribed by the leaders of
the discontented faction, who exhorted Narses to assume an independent
and separate command. The epistle of Justinian had indeed enjoined his
obedience to the general; but the dangerous exception, as far as may be
advantageous to the public service, reserved some freedom of judgment to
the discreet favourite, who had so lately departed from the sacred and
familiar conversation of his sovereign. In the exercise of this doubtful
right, the eunuch perpetually dissented from the opinions of Belisarius;
and, after yielding with reluctance to the siege of Urbino, he deserted
his colleague in the night, and marched away to the conquest of the
Æmilian province.
The fierce and formidable bands of the Heruli were attached to the person
of Narses; ten thousand Romans and confederates were persuaded to march
under his banners; every malcontent embraced the fair opportunity of
revenging his private or imaginary wrongs; and the remaining troops of
Belisarius were divided and dispersed from the garrisons of Sicily to
the shores of the Adriatic. His skill and perseverance overcame every
obstacle: Urbino was taken; the sieges of Fæsulæ (Urbs Vetus), Orvieto
(Fiesole), and Auximum (Osmio), were vigorously prosecuted; and the
eunuch Narses was recalled to the domestic cares of the palace. All
dissensions were healed, and all opposition was subdued, by the temperate
authority of the Roman general, to whom his enemies could not refuse
their esteem; and Belisarius inculcated the salutary lesson that the
forces of the state should compose one body, and be animated by one soul.
But, in the interval of discord, the Goths were permitted to breathe;
an important season was lost, Milan was destroyed, and the northern
provinces of Italy were afflicted by an inundation of the Franks.
A FRANKISH INVASION (539 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [539 A.D.]]
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A GOTHIC WOMAN]
When Justinian first meditated the conquest of Italy, he sent ambassadors
to the kings of the Franks, and adjured them, by the common ties of
alliance and religion, to join in the holy enterprise against the Arians.
The Goths, as their wants were more urgent, employed a more effectual
mode of persuasion, and vainly strove, by the gift of lands and money,
to purchase the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of a light and
perfidious nation. But the arms of Belisarius, and the revolt of the
Italians, had no sooner shaken the Gothic monarchy, than Theudebert
of Austrasia, the most powerful and warlike of the Merovingian kings,
was persuaded to succour their distress by an indirect and seasonable
aid. Without expecting the consent of their sovereign, ten thousand
Burgundians, his recent subjects, descended from the Alps, and joined
the troops which Witiges had sent to chastise the revolt of Milan. After
an obstinate siege, the capital of Liguria was reduced by famine, but no
capitulation could be obtained, except for the safe retreat of the Roman
garrison. Datius, the orthodox bishop, who had seduced his countrymen to
rebellion and ruin, escaped to the luxury and honours of the Byzantine
court, but the clergy, perhaps the Arian clergy, were slaughtered at the
foot of their own altars by the defenders of the Catholic faith. Three
hundred thousand males were reported to be slain; the female sex, and the
more precious spoil, was resigned to the Burgundians; and the houses, or
at least the walls of Milan, were levelled with the ground. The Goths,
in their last moments, were revenged by the destruction of a city second
only to Rome in size and opulence, in the splendour of its buildings, or
the number of its inhabitants; and Belisarius sympathised alone in the
fate of his deserted and devoted friends.
Encouraged by this successful inroad, Theudebert himself, in the ensuing
spring, invaded the plains of Italy with an army of one hundred thousand
barbarians. The king, and some chosen followers, were mounted on
horseback, and armed with lances; the infantry, without bows or spears,
were satisfied with a shield, a sword, and a double-edged battle-axe,
which, in their hands, became a deadly and unerring weapon. Italy
trembled at the march of the Franks; and both the Gothic prince and the
Roman general, alike ignorant of their designs, solicited, with hope and
terror, the friendship of these dangerous allies.
Till he had secured the passage of the Po on the bridge of Pavia,
the grandson of Clovis dissembled his intentions, which he at length
declared, by assaulting, almost at the same instant, the hostile camps of
the Romans and Goths. Instead of uniting their arms, they fled with equal
precipitation; and the fertile, though desolate, provinces of Liguria and
Æmilia, were abandoned to a licentious host of barbarians, whose rage was
not mitigated by any thoughts of settlement or conquest. Among the cities
which they ruined, Genoa, not yet constructed of marble, is particularly
enumerated; and the deaths of thousands, according to the regular
practice of war, appear to have excited less horror than some idolatrous
sacrifices of women and children, which were performed with impunity in
the camp of the most Christian king.
If it were not a melancholy truth that the first and most cruel
sufferings must be the lot of the innocent and helpless, history might
exult in the misery of the conquerors, who, in the midst of riches, were
left destitute of bread or wine, reduced to drink the waters of the Po,
and to feed on the flesh of distempered cattle. The dysentery swept away
one-third of their army; and the clamours of his subjects, who were
impatient to pass the Alps, disposed Theudebert to listen with respect
to the mild exhortations of Belisarius. The memory of this inglorious
and destructive warfare was perpetuated on the medals of Gaul: and
Justinian, without unsheathing his sword, assumed the title of conqueror
of the Franks. The Merovingian prince was offended by the vanity of the
emperor; he affected to pity the fallen fortunes of the Goths; and his
insidious offer of a federal union was fortified by the promise or menace
of descending from the Alps at the head of five hundred thousand men. His
plans of conquest were boundless, and perhaps chimerical. The king of
Austrasia threatened to chastise Justinian, and to march to the gates of
Constantinople; he was overthrown and slain by a wild bull as he hunted
in the Belgic or German forests.
As soon as Belisarius was delivered from his foreign and domestic
enemies, he seriously applied his forces to the final reduction of
Italy. In the siege of Osimo, the general was nearly transpierced with
an arrow, if the mortal stroke had not been intercepted by one of his
guards, who lost, in that pious office, the use of his hand. The Goths
of Osimo, four thousand warriors, with those of Fiesole and the Cottian
Alps, were among the last who maintained their independence; and their
gallant resistance, which almost tired the patience, deserved the esteem
of the conqueror. His prudence refused to subscribe the safe conduct
which they asked, to join their brethren of Ravenna; but they saved, by
an honourable capitulation, one moiety at least of their wealth, with the
free alternative of retiring peaceably to their estates, or enlisting to
serve the emperor in his Persian wars.
THE TEST OF BELISARIUS’ FIDELITY
[Sidenote: [539-540 A.D.]]
The multitudes which yet adhered to the standard of Witiges far surpassed
the number of the Roman troops; but neither prayers, nor defiance,
nor the extreme danger of his most faithful subjects, could tempt the
Gothic king beyond the fortifications of Ravenna. These fortifications
were, indeed, impregnable to the assaults of art or violence; and when
Belisarius invested the capital he was soon convinced that famine only
could tame the stubborn spirit of the barbarians. The sea, the land,
and the channels of the Po, were guarded by the vigilance of the Roman
general; and his morality extended the rights of war to the practice of
poisoning the waters, and secretly firing the granaries of a besieged
city. While he pressed the blockade of Ravenna, he was surprised by the
arrival of two ambassadors from Constantinople, with a treaty of peace,
which Justinian had imprudently signed, without deigning to consult the
author of his victory. By this disgraceful and precarious agreement,
Italy and the Gothic treasure were divided, and the provinces beyond
the Po were left with the regal title to the successor of Theodoric.
The ambassadors were eager to accomplish their salutary commission;
the captive Witiges accepted, with transport, the unexpected offer of
a crown; honour was less prevalent among the Goths than the want and
appetite of food; and the Roman chiefs, who murmured at the continuance
of the war, professed implicit submission to the commands of the emperor.
If Belisarius, at this moment, had possessed only the courage of a
soldier, the laurel would have been snatched from his hand by timid and
envious counsels; but, in this decisive moment, he resolved, with the
magnanimity of a statesman, to sustain alone the danger and merit of
generous disobedience. Each of his officers gave a written opinion, that
the siege of Ravenna was impracticable and hopeless; the general then
rejected the treaty of partition, and declared his own resolution of
leading Witiges in chains to the feet of Justinian. The Goths retired
with doubt and dismay; this peremptory refusal deprived them of the only
signature which they could trust, and filled their minds with the just
apprehension that a sagacious enemy had discovered the full extent of
their deplorable state. They compared the fame and fortune of Belisarius
with the weakness of their ill-fated king; and the comparison suggested
an extraordinary project, to which Witiges, with apparent resignation,
was compelled to acquiesce. Partition would ruin the strength, exile
would disgrace the honour, of the nation; but they offered their arms,
their treasures, and the fortifications of Ravenna, if Belisarius would
disclaim the authority of a master, accept the choice of the Goths, and
assume, as he had deserved, the kingdom of Italy. If the false lustre
of a diadem could have tempted the loyalty of a faithful subject, his
prudence must have foreseen the inconstancy of the barbarians, and his
rational ambition would prefer the safe and honourable station of a
Roman general. Even the patience and seeming satisfaction with which he
entertained a proposal of treason, might be susceptible of a malignant
interpretation. But the lieutenant of Justinian was conscious of his own
rectitude: he entered into a dark and crooked path, as it might lead to
the voluntary submission of the Goths; and his dexterous policy persuaded
them that he was disposed to comply with their wishes, without engaging
an oath or a promise for the performance of a treaty which he secretly
abhorred.
[Sidenote: [540-541 A.D.]]
The day of the surrender of Ravenna was stipulated by the Gothic
ambassadors: a fleet, laden with provisions, sailed as a welcome guest
into the deepest recess of the harbour: the gates were opened to the
fancied king of Italy; and Belisarius, without meeting an enemy,
triumphantly marched through the streets of an impregnable city. The
Romans were astonished by their success; the multitudes of tall and
robust barbarians were confounded by the image of their own patience;
and the masculine females, spitting in the faces of their sons and
husbands, most bitterly reproached them for betraying their dominion and
freedom to these pygmies of the south, contemptible in their numbers,
diminutive in their stature. Before the Goths could recover from their
first surprise, and claim the accomplishment of their doubtful hopes, the
victor established his power in Ravenna, beyond the danger of repentance
and revolt. Witiges, who perhaps had attempted to escape, was honourably
guarded in his palace (540).[d]
He was soon taken with many of his comrades to Constantinople whither the
victorious Belisarius went for his triumph, and met as the reward of his
inexpugnable loyalty to Justinian the refusal of a triumph, though the
people cheered him in the streets and marvelled at the giants whom he had
conquered by sword and stratagem.[a]
THE RISE OF TOTILA
[Sidenote: [541-542 A.D.]]
The jealousy of the Byzantine court had not permitted Belisarius to
finish the conquest of Italy; and his abrupt departure revived the
courage of the Goths, who respected his genius, his virtue, and even the
laudable motive which had urged the servant of Justinian to deceive and
reject them. They had lost their king (an inconsiderable loss), their
capital, their treasures, the provinces from Sicily to the Alps, and
the military force of two hundred thousand barbarians, magnificently
equipped with horses and arms. Yet all was not lost, as long as Pavia was
defended by one thousand Goths, inspired by a sense of honour, the love
of freedom, and the memory of their past greatness. The supreme command
was unanimously offered to the brave Uraias; and it was in his eyes
alone that the disgrace of his uncle Witiges could appear as a reason of
exclusion. His voice inclined the election in favour of Hildibald, whose
personal merit was recommended by the vain hope that his kinsman Theudes,
the Spanish monarch, would support the common interest of the Gothic
nation. The success of his arms in Liguria and Venetia seemed to justify
their choice; but he soon declared to the world, that he was incapable
of forgiving or commanding his benefactor. The consort of Hildibald was
deeply wounded by the beauty, the riches, and the pride of the wife of
Uraias; and the death of that virtuous patriot excited the indignation of
a free people. A bold assassin executed their sentence by striking off
the head of Hildibald in the midst of a banquet; the Rugians, a foreign
tribe, assumed the privilege of election;[107] and Totila, the nephew
of the late king, was tempted by revenge, to deliver himself and the
garrison of Treviso (Tarvisium) into the hands of the Romans. But the
gallant and accomplished youth was easily persuaded to prefer the Gothic
throne before the service of Justinian; and as soon as the palace of
Pavia had been purified from the Rugian usurper, he reviewed the national
force of five thousand soldiers, and generously undertook the restoration
of the kingdom of Italy.
[Sidenote: [542-544 A.D.]]
The successors of Belisarius, eleven generals of equal rank, neglected
to crush the feeble and disunited Goths, till they were roused to action
by the progress of Totila and the reproaches of Justinian. The gates of
Verona were secretly opened to Artabazus, at the head of one hundred
Persians in the service of the empire (542). The Goths fled from the
city. At the distance of sixty furlongs the Roman generals halted to
regulate the division of the spoil. While they disputed, the enemy
discovered the real number of the victors: the Persians were instantly
overpowered, and it was by leaping from the wall that Artabazus preserved
a life which he lost in a few days by the lance of a barbarian, who
had defied him to single combat. Twenty thousand Romans encountered
the forces of Totila, near Faenza, and on the hills of Mugello, of the
Florentine territory. The ardour of freedmen, who fought to regain their
country, was opposed to the languid temper of mercenary troops, who were
even destitute of the merits of strong and well-disciplined servitude.
On the first attack they abandoned their ensigns, threw down their arms,
and dispersed on all sides with an active speed, which abated the loss,
whilst it aggravated the shame, of their defeat.
The king of the Goths, who blushed for the baseness of his enemies,
pursued with rapid steps the path of honour and victory. Totila passed
the Po, traversed the Apennine, suspended the important conquest of
Ravenna, Florence, and Rome, and marched through the heart of Italy, to
form the siege, or rather the blockade, of Naples. The Roman chiefs,
imprisoned in their respective cities, and accusing each other of the
common disgrace, did not presume to disturb his enterprise. But the
emperor, alarmed by the distress and danger of his Italian conquests,
despatched to the relief of Naples a fleet of galleys and a body of
Thracian and Armenian soldiers. They landed in Sicily, which yielded its
copious stores of provisions; but the delays of the new commander, an
unwarlike magistrate, protracted the sufferings of the besieged; and the
succours, which he dropped with a timid and tardy hand, were successively
intercepted by the armed vessels stationed by Totila in the bay of
Naples. The principal officer of the Romans was dragged, with a rope
round his neck, to the foot of the wall, from whence, with a trembling
voice, he exhorted the citizens to implore, like himself, the mercy of
the conqueror. They requested a truce, with a promise of surrendering
the city, if no effectual relief should appear at the end of thirty
days. Instead of one month, the audacious barbarian granted them three,
in the just confidence that famine would anticipate the term of their
capitulation. After the reduction of Naples and Cumæ, the provinces of
Lucania, Apulia, and Calabria, submitted to the king of the Goths (543).
Totila led his army to the gates of Rome, pitched his camp at Tibur,
or Tivoli, within twenty miles of the capital, and calmly exhorted the
senate and people to compare the tyranny of the Greeks with the blessings
of the Gothic reign.
The rapid success of Totila may be partly ascribed to the revolution
which three years’ experience had produced in the sentiments of the
Italians. At the command, or at least in the name, of a Catholic emperor,
the pope, their spiritual father, had been torn from the Roman church,
and either starved or murdered on a desolate island. The virtues of
Belisarius were replaced by the various or uniform vices of eleven
chiefs, at Rome, Ravenna, Florence, Perugia, Spoleto, etc., who abused
their authority for the indulgence of lust and avarice. The subjects
of Justinian who escaped these partial vexations, were oppressed by
the irregular maintenance of the soldiers who were both defrauded and
despised; and their hasty sallies, in quest of wealth or subsistence,
provoked the inhabitants of the country to await or implore their
deliverance from the virtues of a barbarian. Totila was chaste and
temperate; and none were deceived, either friends or enemies, who
depended on his faith or his clemency. To the husbandmen of Italy the
Gothic king issued a welcome proclamation, enjoining them to pursue their
important labours, and to rest assured, that, on the payment of the
ordinary taxes, they should be defended by his valour and discipline from
the injuries of war. The strong towns he successively attacked; and as
soon as they had yielded to his arms, he demolished the fortifications;
to save the people from the calamities of a future siege, to deprive the
Romans of the arts of defence, and to decide the tedious quarrel of the
two nations, by an equal and honourable conflict in the field of battle.
The Roman captives and deserters were tempted to enlist in the service
of a liberal and courteous adversary; the slaves were attracted by the
firm and faithful promise, that they should never be delivered to their
masters; and from the thousand warriors of Pavia, a new people, under
the same appellation of Goths, was insensibly formed in the camp of
Totila. He sincerely accomplished the articles of capitulation, without
seeking or accepting any sinister advantage from ambiguous expressions or
unforeseen events: the garrison of Naples had stipulated that they should
be transported by sea; the obstinacy of the winds prevented their voyage,
but they were generously supplied with horses, provisions, and a safe
conduct to the gates of Rome. The wives of the senators, who had been
surprised in the villas of Campania, were restored, without a ransom,
to their husbands; the violation of female chastity was inexorably
chastised with death; and in the salutary regulation of the diet of the
famished Neapolitans, the conqueror assumed the office of a humane and
attentive physician. The virtues of Totila are equally laudable, whether
they proceeded from true policy, religious principle, or the instinct of
humanity; he often harangued his troops; and it was his constant theme,
that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected; that victory is
the fruit of moral as well as military virtue; and that the prince, and
even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to
punish.
BELISARIUS AGAIN IN ITALY
[Sidenote: [544 A.D.]]
The return of Belisarius, to save the country which he had subdued, was
pressed with equal vehemence by his friends and enemies; and the Gothic
war was imposed as a trust or an exile on the veteran commander. A hero
on the banks of the Euphrates, a slave in the palace of Constantinople,
he accepted, with reluctance, the painful task of supporting his own
reputation, and retrieving the faults of his successors. The sea was open
to the Romans; the ships and soldiers were assembled at Salona, near
the palace of Diocletian; he refreshed and reviewed his troops at Pola
in Istria, coasted round the head of the Adriatic, entered the port of
Ravenna, and despatched orders rather than supplies to the subordinate
cities. Not a man was tempted to desert the standard of the Gothic king.
Belisarius soon discovered that he was sent to remain the idle and
impotent spectator of the glory of a young barbarian; and his own
epistle[108] exhibits a genuine and lively picture of the distress of a
noble mind: “Most excellent prince; we are arrived in Italy, destitute
of all the necessary implements of war, men, horses, arms, and money. In
our late circuit through the villages of Thrace and Illyricum, we have
collected, with extreme difficulty, about four thousand recruits, naked
and unskilled in the use of weapons and the exercises of the camp. The
soldiers already stationed in the province are discontented, fearful, and
dismayed; at the sound of an enemy, they dismiss their horses, and cast
their arms on the ground. No taxes can be raised, since Italy is in the
hands of the barbarians; the failure of payment has deprived us of the
right of command, or even of admonition. Be assured, dread sir, that the
greater part of your troops have already deserted to the Goths. If the
war could be achieved by the presence of Belisarius alone, your wishes
are satisfied; Belisarius is in the midst of Italy. But if you desire to
conquer, far other preparations are requisite; without a military force,
the title of general is an empty name. It would be expedient to restore
to my service my own veterans and domestic guards. Before I can take the
field, I must receive an adequate supply of light and heavy armed troops;
and it is only with ready money that you can procure the indispensable
aid of a powerful body of the cavalry of the Huns.”
An officer in whom Belisarius confided was sent from Ravenna to hasten
and conduct the succours; but the message was neglected, and the
messenger was detained at Constantinople by an advantageous marriage.
After his patience had been exhausted by delay and disappointment, the
Roman general repassed the Adriatic, and expected at Dyrrhachium the
arrival of the troops, which were slowly assembled among the subjects
and allies of the empire. His powers were still inadequate to the
deliverance of Rome, which was closely besieged by the Gothic king. The
Appian way, a march of forty days, was covered by the barbarians; and as
the prudence of Belisarius declined a battle, he preferred the safe and
speedy navigation of five days from the coast of Epirus to the mouth of
the Tiber.
SECOND SIEGE OF ROME (MAY, 544-DECEMBER, 545 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [544-545 A.D.]]
After reducing, by force or treaty, the towns of inferior note in the
midland provinces of Italy, Totila proceeded, not to assault, but to
encompass and starve, the ancient capital. Rome was afflicted by the
avarice, and guarded by the valour, of Bessas, a veteran chief of Gothic
extraction, who filled, with a garrison of three thousand soldiers, the
spacious circle of her venerable walls. From the distress of the people
he extracted a profitable trade, and secretly rejoiced in the continuance
of the siege. It was for his use that the granaries had been replenished;
the charity of Pope Vigilius had purchased and embarked an ample supply
of Sicilian corn; but the vessels which escaped the barbarians were
seized by a rapacious governor, who imparted a scanty sustenance to the
soldiers, and sold the remainder to the wealthy Romans. The medimnus, or
fifth part of the quarter of wheat, was exchanged for seven pieces of
gold; fifty pieces were given for an ox, a rare and accidental prize; the
progress of famine enhanced this exorbitant value, and the mercenaries
were tempted to deprive themselves of the allowance, which was scarcely
sufficient for the support of life. A tasteless and unwholesome mixture,
in which the bran thrice exceeded the quantity of flour, appeased the
hunger of the poor; they were gradually reduced to feed on dead horses,
dogs, cats, and mice, and eagerly to snatch the grass, and even the
nettles, which grew among the ruins of the city.
A crowd of spectres, pale and emaciated, their bodies oppressed with
disease, and their minds with despair, surrounded the palace of the
governor, urged, with unavailing truth, that it was the duty of a master
to maintain his slaves, and humbly requested that he would provide for
their subsistence, permit their flight, or command their immediate
execution. Bessas replied, with unfeeling tranquillity, that it was
impossible to feed, unsafe to dismiss, and unlawful to kill, the subjects
of the emperor. Yet the example of a private citizen might have shown his
countrymen, that a tyrant cannot withhold the privilege of death. Pierced
by the cries of five children, who vainly called on their father for
bread, he ordered them to follow his steps, advanced with calm and silent
despair to one of the bridges of the Tiber, and covering his face, threw
himself headlong into the stream, in the presence of his family and the
Roman people. To the rich and pusillanimous, Bessas sold the permission
of departure; but the greatest part of the fugitives expired on the
public highways, or were intercepted by the flying parties of barbarians.
In the meanwhile, the artful governor soothed the discontent, and revived
the hopes, of the Romans, by the vague reports of the fleets and armies
which were hastening to their relief from the extremities of the East.
They derived more rational comfort from the assurance that Belisarius had
landed at the port; and, without numbering his forces, they firmly relied
on the humanity, the courage, and the skill of their great deliverer.
The foresight of Totila had raised obstacles worthy of such an
antagonist. Ninety furlongs below the city, in the narrowest part of the
river, he joined the two banks by strong and solid timbers in the form
of a bridge; on which he erected two lofty towers, manned by the bravest
of his Goths, and profusely stored with missile weapons and engines of
offence. The approach of the bridge and towers was covered by a strong
and massy chain of iron; and the chain, at either end, on the opposite
sides of the Tiber, was defended by a numerous and chosen detachment of
archers. But the enterprise of forcing these barriers, and relieving
the capital, displays a shining example of the boldness and conduct of
Belisarius. His cavalry advanced from the port along the public road, to
awe the motions and distract the attention of the enemy. His infantry and
provisions were distributed in two hundred large boats; and each boat was
shielded by a high rampart of thick planks, pierced with many small holes
for the discharge of missile weapons. In the front, two large vessels
were linked together to sustain a floating castle, which commanded
the towers of the bridge, and contained a magazine of fire, sulphur,
and bitumen. The whole fleet, which the general led in person, was
laboriously moved against the current of the river. The chain yielded to
their weight, and the enemies who guarded the banks were either slain or
scattered. As soon as they touched the principal barrier, the fire-ship
was instantly grappled to the bridge; one of the towers, with two hundred
Goths, was consumed by the flames; the assailants shouted the victory;
and Rome was saved, if the wisdom of Belisarius had not been defeated by
the misconduct of his officers. He had previously sent orders to Bessas
to second his operations by a timely sally from the town; and he had
fixed his lieutenant, Isaac, by a peremptory command, to the station of
the port. But avarice rendered Bessas immovable; while the youthful
ardour of Isaac delivered him into the hands of a superior enemy.
[Sidenote: [545-546 A.D.]]
The exaggerated rumour of his defeat was hastily carried to the ears of
Belisarius: he paused; betrayed in that single moment of his life some
emotions of surprise and perplexity; and reluctantly sounded a retreat
to save his wife Antonina, his treasures, and the only harbour which
he possessed on the Tuscan coast. The vexation of his mind produced an
ardent and almost mortal fever; and Rome was left without protection to
the mercy or indignation of Totila. The continuance of hostilities had
embittered the national hatred; the Arian clergy was ignominiously driven
from Rome; Pelagius, the archdeacon, returned without success from an
embassy to the Gothic camp; and a Sicilian bishop, the envoy or nuncio of
the pope, was deprived of both his hands, for daring to utter falsehoods
in the service of the church and state.
TOTILA CAPTURES ROME (546 A.D.)
[Illustration: A GOTHIC OFFICER]
Famine had relaxed the strength and discipline of the garrison of Rome.
They could derive no effectual service from a dying people; and the
inhuman avarice of the merchant at length absorbed the vigilance of the
governor. Four Isaurian sentinels unbarred the Asinarian gate, and gave
admittance to the Goths. Till the dawn of day they halted in order of
battle, apprehensive of treachery or ambush; but the troops of Bessas,
with their leader, had already escaped; and when the king was pressed
to disturb their retreat, he prudently replied, that no sight could be
more grateful than that of a flying enemy. The patricians, who were still
possessed of horses, Decius, Basilius, etc., accompanied the governor;
their brethren, among whom Olybrius, Orestes, and Maximus are named by
the historian, took refuge in the church of St. Peter; but the assertion,
that only five hundred persons remained in the capital, inspires some
doubt of the fidelity either of his narrative or of his text.[109] As
soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Goths, their
monarch devoutly visited the tomb of the prince of the apostles; but
while he prayed at the altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens
were put to the sword in the vestibule of the temple. The lives of
the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and matrons was
preserved inviolate from the passions of the hungry soldiers. But they
were rewarded by the freedom of pillage, after the most precious spoils
had been reserved for the royal treasury. The houses of the senators were
plentifully stored with gold and silver; and the avarice of Bessas had
laboured with so much guilt and shame for the benefit of the conqueror.
In this revolution, the sons and daughters of Roman consuls tasted the
misery which they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments
through the streets of the city, and begged their bread, perhaps without
success, before the gates of their hereditary mansions.
[Sidenote: [546-547 A.D.]]
Totila pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish his
victorious Goths, and to reproach the senate, as the vilest of slaves,
with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude; sternly declaring, that their
estates and honours were justly forfeited to the companions of his arms.
Yet he consented to forgive their revolt, and the senators repaid his
clemency by despatching circular letters to their tenants and vassals in
the provinces of Italy, strictly to enjoin them to desert the standard
of the Greeks, to cultivate their lands in peace, and to learn from
their masters the duty of obedience to a Gothic sovereign. Against the
city which had so long delayed the course of his victories, he appeared
inexorable: one-third of the walls, in different parts, were demolished
by his command; fire and engines prepared to consume, or subvert, the
most stately works of antiquity; and the world was astonished by the
fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into a pasture for cattle. The
firm and temperate remonstrance of Belisarius suspended the execution;
he warned the barbarian not to sully his fame by the destruction of
those monuments, which were the glory of the dead, and the delight of
the living; and Totila was persuaded, by the advice of an enemy, to
preserve Rome as the ornament of his kingdom, or the fairest pledge of
peace and reconciliation. When he had signified to the ambassadors of
Belisarius his intention of sparing the city, he stationed an army at the
distance of 120 furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general.
With the remainder of his forces, he marched into Lucania and Apulia, and
occupied, on the summit of Mount Garganus, one of the camps of Hannibal.
The senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the
fortresses of Campania: the citizens, with their wives and children, were
dispersed in exile; and during forty days Rome was abandoned to desolate
and dreary solitude.
BELISARIUS REMANTLES THE DESERTED CITY
[Sidenote: [547-549 A.D.]]
The loss of Rome was speedily retrieved by an action, to which, according
to the event, the public opinion would apply the names of rashness or
heroism. After the departure of Totila, the Roman general sallied from
the port at the head of a thousand horse, cut in pieces the enemy who
opposed his progress, and visited with pity and reverence the vacant
space of the Eternal City. Resolved to maintain a station so conspicuous
in the eyes of mankind, he summoned the greatest part of his troops to
the standard which he erected on the Capitol: the old inhabitants were
recalled by the love of their country and the hopes of food; and the keys
of Rome were sent a second time to the emperor Justinian. The walls, as
far as they had been demolished by the Goths, were repaired with rude and
dissimilar materials; the ditch was restored; iron spikes were profusely
scattered in the highways to annoy the feet of the horses; and as new
gates could not suddenly be procured, the entrance was guarded by a
Spartan rampart of his bravest soldiers. At the expiration of twenty-five
days, Totila returned by hasty marches from Apulia, to avenge the injury
and disgrace. Belisarius expected his approach. The Goths were thrice
repulsed in three general assaults; they lost the flower of their troops;
the royal standard had almost fallen into the hands of the enemy, and the
fame of Totila sank, as it had risen, with the fortune of his arms.
Whatever skill and courage could achieve had been performed by the Roman
general; it remained only that Justinian should terminate, by a strong
and seasonable effort, the war which he had ambitiously undertaken. The
indolence, perhaps the impotence, of a prince who despised his enemies
and envied his servants, protracted the calamities of Italy. After a
long silence, Belisarius was commanded to leave a sufficient garrison
at Rome, and to transport himself into the province of Lucania, whose
inhabitants, inflamed by Catholic zeal, had cast away the yoke of their
Arian conquerors. In this ignoble warfare, the hero, invincible against
the power of the barbarians, was basely vanquished by the delay, the
disobedience, and the cowardice of his own officers. He reposed in his
winter quarters of Crotona, in the full assurance that the two passes of
the Lucanian hills were guarded by his cavalry. They were betrayed by
treachery or weakness; and the rapid march of the Goths scarcely allowed
time for the escape of Belisarius to the coast of Sicily. At length a
fleet and army were assembled for the relief of Ruscianum, or Rossano, a
fortress sixty furlongs from the ruins of Sybaris, where the nobles of
Lucania had taken refuge. In the first attempt, the Roman forces were
dissipated by a storm. In the second they approached the shore; but they
saw the hills covered with archers, the landing-place defended by a line
of spears, and the king of the Goths impatient for battle. The conqueror
of Italy retired with a sigh, and continued to languish, inglorious and
inactive, till Antonina, who had been sent to Constantinople to solicit
succours, obtained, after the death of the empress, the permission of his
return in 548.
The last five campaigns of Belisarius might abate the envy of his
competitors, whose eyes had been dazzled and wounded by the blaze of his
former glory. Instead of delivering Italy from the Goths, he had wandered
like a fugitive along the coast, without daring to march into the
country, or to accept the bold and repeated challenge of Totila. Yet in
the judgment of the few who could discriminate counsels from events, and
compare the instruments with the execution, he appeared a more consummate
master of the art of war, than in the season of his prosperity, when
he presented two captive kings before the throne of Justinian. The
valour of Belisarius was not chilled by age; his prudence was matured by
experience; but the moral virtues of humanity and justice seem to have
yielded to the hard necessity of the times.
TOTILA AGAIN TAKES ROME (549 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [549-551 A.D.]]
Before the departure of Belisarius, Perugia was besieged, and few cities
were impregnable to the Gothic arms. Ravenna, Ancona, and Crotona still
resisted the barbarians; and when Totila asked in marriage one of the
daughters of France, he was stung by the just reproach, that the king of
Italy was unworthy of his title till it was acknowledged by the Roman
people. Three thousand of the bravest soldiers had been left to defend
the capital. On the suspicion of a monopoly, they massacred the governor,
and announced to Justinian, by a deputation of the clergy, that unless
their offence was pardoned, and their arrears were satisfied, they should
instantly accept the tempting offers of Totila. But the officer, who
succeeded to the command (his name was Diogenes), deserved their esteem
and confidence; and the Goths, instead of finding an easy conquest,
encountered a vigorous resistance from the soldiers and people, who
patiently endured the loss of the port, and of all maritime supplies.
The siege of Rome would perhaps have been raised, if the liberality of
Totila to the Isaurians had not encouraged some of their venal countrymen
to copy the example of treason. In a dark night, while the Gothic trumpet
sounded on another side, they silently opened the gate of St. Paul: the
barbarians rushed into the city; and the flying garrison was intercepted
before they could reach the harbour of Centumcellæ (Civita Vecchia).
Above four hundred enemies, who had taken refuge in the sanctuaries, were
saved by the clemency of the victor. He no longer entertained a wish of
destroying the edifices of Rome, which he now respected as the seat of
the Gothic kingdom; the senate and people were restored to their country;
the means of subsistence were liberally provided; and Totila, in the
robe of peace, exhibited the equestrian games of the circus. Whilst he
amused the eyes of the multitude, four hundred vessels were prepared for
the embarkation of his troops. The cities of Rhegium and Tarentum were
reduced; he passed into Sicily, the object of his implacable resentment,
and the island was stripped of its gold and silver, of the fruits
of the earth, and of an infinite number of horses, sheep, and oxen.
Sardinia and Corsica obeyed the fortune of Italy; and the sea coast of
Greece was visited by a fleet of three hundred galleys. The Goths were
landed in Corcyra and the ancient continent of Epirus; they advanced as
far as Nicopolis, the trophy of Augustus, and Dodona, once famous by
the oracle of Jove. In every step of his victories the wise barbarian
repeated to Justinian his desire of peace, applauded the concord of their
predecessors, and offered to employ the Gothic arms in the service of the
empire.
NARSES RETURNS TO ITALY (551 A.D.)
Justinian was deaf to the voice of peace; but he neglected the
prosecution of war; and the indolence of his temper disappointed, in some
degree, the obstinacy of his passions. From this salutary slumber the
emperor was awakened by the pope Vigilius and the patrician Cethegus, who
appeared before his throne, and adjured him, in the name of God and the
people, to resume the conquest and deliverance of Italy.[d]
At last Justinian acted and sent a fleet to Sicily’s aid, under
Artabanes, who was released from prison to command the ships; he
recovered Sicily. On land Germanus was appointed to Belisarius’ post. He
had married the granddaughter of Theodoric, and great hopes were had of
his expedition, but he died before striking a blow. Totila now ravaged
the Grecian coast, 551, with three hundred ships, and besieged Ancona,
but in a naval fight off Sinigaglia his fleet was defeated and he had to
raise the siege of Ancona. Then came Narses.[a]