Character of Justinian—His marriage with Theodora—His first War with Persia, 528-31—Rise of Belisarius—Justinian suppresses the ‘Nika’ sedition, 532—His foreign policy—Belisarius conquers the Vandals, 533-4—Decay of the Ostrogoths in Italy—Justinian attacks Theodahat—Belisarius conquers Sicily, Naples, and Rome—Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths (537-8)—Belisarius defeats the Ostrogoths and captures Ravenna (540).

For three quarters of a century, during the reigns of the four cautious and elderly Caesars, whose annals fill the space between 457 and 527, the East-Roman Empire had been recovering its strength, and storing up new energy for a sudden outburst of vigour under the able, restless, and ambitious sovereign who followed the aged Justinus I. Justinian—the son of Sabatius the brother of Justinus—was nearly forty years old when he became, by his uncle’s death, sole ruler of the empire. He was no mere uncultured soldier like his predecessor; when he obtained promotion in the army, Justinus sent for his nephew from the Dardanian village where his family dwelt, and had him reared in the capital in all the accomplishments which befitted the heir of a great fortune. "Character of Justinian." By the acknowledgment of his bitterest enemies Justinian had an extraordinary power of assimilating knowledge of all kinds: he took a keen interest alike in statecraft and architecture, in theology and law, in finance and music. When his uncle came to the throne, the student soon developed into the practical administrator, for Justinus trusted him with all those details of civil government which he himself was unable to understand or to manage. It soon became known that the heir of Justinus was a man of extraordinary ability and untiring thirst for work. At an age when most young men would have been tempted by their sudden elevation to plunge into the enjoyments that lay open to an imperial prince, Justinian applied himself to mastering all the tiresome details of the administration of the empire. Men noted with surprise that he never seemed happy save when he was in his cabinet, surrounded by his secretaries, his registers, his files of reports, and despatches. He was like the Aristotelian character who was ‘too indifferent to things pleasurable,’ for nothing save work appeared to have any attraction for him. He rose early, spent his day in administrative duties, and his night in reading and writing. As he grew older he seemed to dispense with sleep altogether, as if he had become free from the common necessities of man’s nature. There was something strange and horrible in his cold-blooded, untiring energy; superstitious men whispered that he was inspired by a restless demon who gave him no peace, or that he was actually a demon himself. Had not a belated courtier met him after midnight pacing the dark corridors of the palace with a fearful and changed countenance that was no longer human, or even—as the story grew—with no face at all, a shapeless monstrous shadow?

But that Justinian was a man, with all a man’s waywardness and recklessness, was proved ere long. To the surprise of the whole population of the empire, and the utter horror and confusion of all respectable persons, it was suddenly noised abroad that the heir of the empire had announced his intention of marrying Theodora the dancer, the chief star of the Byzantine comic stage. The staid passionless bureaucrat was contemplating a step from which Nero or Heliogabalus would have shrunk with dismay.

We have elaborate but untrustworthy details of the scandalous early life of Theodora in a book—the ‘Secret History’—which bears the name of the historian Procopius, but was in all probability no work of his.^[8] She was the daughter of Acacius the Cypriot, an employÉ of the ‘Green Faction’ at the Hippodrome, and had for some years appeared on the stage as an actress and dancer. So much we may take for truth; knowing the general character of Roman actresses we may assume that there was some foundation for the stories over which the ‘Secret History’ gloats. "Theodora." As to the particular facts alleged, we may conclude that they are untrustworthy—among those which the ‘Secret History’ gives as most certain are the statements that she was a vampire, and often held intercourse with evil spirits; the rest is written in the same spirit of silly and superstitious malignity. But we may fairly conclude that the marriage of Justinian was a scandal and a wonder. His mother and his aunt the Empress Euphemia, as we know, set their faces against it; but he went on in his usual steady persistence, gradually warred down the will of his old uncle Justinus, and formally took Theodora to wife. The emperor was even induced to bestow upon her the high title of Patrician.

In brains and power of will Theodora was a fit enough occupant for the imperial throne, whatever her past history may have been. She was as ambitious, restless, and capable as her husband, and acted as much as his colleague as his consort. We shall see how on one occasion of crisis she stood boldly forward and interposed between him and destruction. Her worst enemies do not suggest that she was an unfaithful or profitless spouse to him; the ‘Secret History’ itself calls her after her marriage luxurious, cruel, capricious, arrogant, but does not accuse her of evil-living or folly. Against this we may set the well-ascertained facts that she was devoted to the exercises of religion, and founded many charitable institutions. Remembering the dangers of her own youth, she built a great institution for the reclaiming of fallen women—the first of the kind known in Christendom. She was zealous in buying and freeing slaves, and in caring for the bringing up of orphans and the marriage of dowerless girls.

Theodora was by all accounts the most beautiful woman of her age. Even the ‘Secret History’ allows this, adding only that she was rather below the middle stature, that her complexion was somewhat pale, and that she devoted untold hours to the mysteries of the toilet. Two portraits of her have survived, one at the monastery on Mount Sinai, the other in the Church of San Vitale at Ravenna—two spots so far apart as to call up vividly to our memory the wide extent of her influence. Unfortunately the hieratic style of art into which Roman portraiture had long sunk, and the intractable nature of mosaic as a material do not allow us to judge from these representations what was her actual appearance.

Justinian has left behind him an almost unparalleled reputation as a conqueror, a builder, and a lawgiver, besides a less happy record of theological activity. It is mainly, however, with his foreign policy that we shall have to concern ourselves: the other spheres of his labour are better fitted for another work. But his dealings with Africa, Italy, and Spain form a great landmark and turning-point in the history of southern Europe, and their results were not entirely exhausted till the eleventh century. His long struggles with Persia are less interesting and less important, but they filled a great space in the view of contemporary observers, and were not without their moment.

Justinian’s reign opened with a fierce war with the old Persian king Kobad. The struggle which this monarch had waged with Anastasius, twenty-five years before, had been so indecisive that the Sassanian longed for a new trial of arms. Almost immediately on Justinian’s accession he issued his declaration of war, using as a pretext the erection of some fortifications near Nisibis, which were being constructed by Belisarius, governor of Daras, a young officer whose name was destined to be intimately associated with the whole history of Justinian’s reign. "First war with Persia, 528-31." The war opened with a defeat in the open field, suffered by the Roman army of Mesopotamia; but when reinforcements came up the Persians retreated beyond their frontier. After the winter of 528-29 was over neither side advanced in force, and all that occurred was a flying Roman raid into Assyria, and an equally hasty Persian incursion into Syria, both of which did some harm, but had no practical result on the fate of the war. Things went far otherwise in the next year, 530: the Persians crossed the frontier in full force, and marched on Daras, where they were met by Belisarius, who had lately been appointed commander-in-chief in the East. Under the walls of Daras the decisive battle of the war was fought, in which Belisarius, with 25,000 men, defeated 40,000 Persians by means of his tactical skill. The plan which he worked was to draw back his centre, containing all the Roman infantry, and when the Persians followed it, to launch against their exposed flanks all his cavalry, a miscellaneous gathering of Hunnish light horse, Teutonic Heruli from the Danube, and Roman Cataphracti or cuirassiers. This plan, much resembling Hannibal’s manoeuvre at Cannae, and perhaps consciously copied from it, resulted in the complete rout of the Sassanian host.

After this defeat Kobad commenced abortive negotiations for peace, but the war was protracted into the next year, and Belisarius did not fare so well in 531. In stopping a Persian raiding force on the middle Euphrates, which aimed at Syria, and had turned the southern flank of the Mesopotamian fortresses, he suffered serious loss at the affair of Callinicum. Though he was defeated, his resistance had yet turned and frustrated the Persian expedition. Four months later king Kobad died, and his successor Chosroes I. made peace on the base of the status quo ante, fearing to continue the Roman war while his throne was insecure. (September, 531.)

The end of the Persian war left Justinian free to cast his eyes on the affairs of his neighbours to the West. Though so indecisive, it had not been without its uses, for it had permitted him to test the solidity of his army, and to discover several officers of merit, and one general of commanding ability—the young victor of Daras. "Belisarius." Belisarius was now twenty-six years of age: he was, like his master, a native of the borderland between Thrace and Illyricum, bred at an unknown village named Germania, but not, as the name of his birthplace might seem to suggest, of Teutonic but of Thracian blood.^[9] He had entered the army at a very early age, and had fought his way up to the post of governor of the great fortress of Daras before he was twenty-four. His favour with Justinian had been confirmed by his marriage with Antonina, the friend and confidante of the empress Theodora. She was a clever, unscrupulous, domineering woman, several years older than her husband, and exercised over him a domestic tyranny which any man less easy tempered than the young general would have found unbearable. The position of Belisarius and Antonina at the Court of Justinian has been not unaptly compared to that of Marlborough and his imperious wife at the court of Queen Anne; but it is only fair to the East-Roman to say that he was in every way a better man than the Englishman, while his wife had all the faults of Duchess Sarah, without her one redeeming virtue of fidelity to her spouse.

Before he was able to turn his attention to the West, and just after the crisis of the Persian war had passed, Justinian was exposed to a sharp and sudden danger, the most perilous experience of his whole career. We have already spoken at some length of the rivalries of the Blue and Green factions,^[10] and explained how, in the early sixth century, the Greens were reckoned heterodox and supporters of the house of Anastasius, while the Blues were orthodox and favoured Justinus and his nephew. Accident conspired with the innate turbulence of the factions to stir them up into fierce disorder in the year 532, and brought about the celebrated ‘Nika’ sedition. To provide for the expenses of the Persian war, Justinian had not only drawn upon the hoarded wealth of Anastasius, but had imposed heavy additional taxation. This act made his instruments the Quaestor Tribonian and the Praetorian Prefect John of Cappadocia very unpopular. Both of them were suspected—and not incorrectly—of having used the opportunity to fill their pockets at the expense of the public, and John the Cappadocian had made himself particularly odious by his cruel treatment of defaulting debtors. In January 532 there were riotous scenes in the circus, caused by the protests of the Greens against the oppression they were suffering. There soon followed tumults in the streets, and the factions settled their grievances with bludgeon and knife. "The ‘Nika’ Sedition, 532." Justinian often allowed the Blues a free hand in dealing with their adversaries, but, on this occasion, his supporters had gone too far. The police seized many ring-leaders of both factions, and seven of the chiefs were condemned to the axe or the cord. While an angry crowd stood round, five of the rioters were put to death, but when the last two, a Blue and a Green, were being hung, the cord slipped twice, owing to the nervousness of the executioner, and the criminals fell to the ground. The populace then burst through the police and hurried off the men to sanctuary in a neighbouring monastery. This incident proved the beginning of a fearful uproar. Instead of dispersing, the mobs paraded the place shouting for the dismissal of the unpopular ministers John and Tribonian. Blues and Greens united in the cry, the whole city poured out into the streets, and the police were trampled down and driven away.

Frightened by the storm Justinian had the weakness to yield; instead of sending out the imperial guard to clear the streets, he announced that he had determined to remove the obnoxious Quaestor and Prefect. This only made matters worse; after burning the official residence of the prefect of the city, the mob mustered in a most threatening attitude outside the palace. This constrained the emperor to use force, but he happened to be very short of soldiery at the moment. All the garrison of Constantinople save 3500 of the scholarii, or imperial guard, had been sent off to the Persian war. Only two regiments had as yet returned, a corps of 500 cuirassiers under Belisarius, and a body of Heruli of about the same number. Five thousand men were hardly enough to cope with an angry populace of half-a-million souls in the narrow streets of the capital.

When attacked by the troops the rioters set fire to the city, and an awful conflagration ensued. The great church of St. Sophia perished among the flames, together with all the houses and public buildings to the north and east of it. Blood having once flowed, the mob were set upon something more than a riot—a revolution was in the air, and the Greens, who took the lead in the struggle, sought about for their favourite the patrician Hypatius, the nephew of their old patron Anastasius I. "Hypatius proclaimed Emperor." But Hypatius was a prudent and cautious person, with no ambition to risk his head; he had entered the palace and put himself in Justinian’s hands to keep out of harm’s way. It was not till the emperor, who feared traitors about him, ordered all senators to retire to their homes that Hypatius fell into the hands of his own partisans. The unhappy rebel in spite of himself was at once hurried off to the Hippodrome, placed on the imperial seat, and crowned with a diadem extemporised from his wife’s gold necklace.

It was in vain that Justinian issued from the palace next day, and proclaimed an amnesty; he was chased back with insulting cries. "The Counsel of Theodora." Losing heart he summoned the chief of his courtiers and guards, and proposed to them to abandon Constantinople and take refuge in Asia, as Zeno had done in a similar time of trouble. John of Cappadocia and many of the ministers advised him to fly; but the intrepid Theodora stepped forward to save her husband from destruction. ‘It has been said,’ she cried, ‘that the voice of a woman should not be heard among the councils of men. But those whose interests are most concerned have the best right to speak. To death the inevitable we must all submit, but to survive dignity and honour, to descend from empire to exile, to such shame there is no compulsion. Never shall the day come when I put off this purple robe and am no more hailed as sovereign lady. If you wish to protract your life, O Emperor, flight is easy; there are your ships and there is the sea. But consider whether, if you escape to exile, you will not wish every day that you were dead. As for me, I hold with the ancient saying that the imperial purple is a glorious shroud.’

Spurred on by the fiery words of his wife Justinian tried the fortune of war once more. A few reinforcements had arrived; with these, and the harassed troops who had already faced five days’ street-fighting, Belisarius once more sallied forth from the palace. The rebels were off their guard, for a false rumour had got about that Justinian was already fled. At this moment the mob was crowding the Hippodrome and saluting their creature with shouts of Hypatie Auguste tu vincas. "Suppression of the Sedition." After a vain attempt to break in by the imperial staircase, Belisarius assaulted the main side gate of the circus, and burst in at a point where the conflagration had three days before made a breach in the wall. Penned into the great amphitheatre, and taken by surprise, the rebels made a weak resistance. Soon they turned to fly, but all the issues were choked, and the victims of the sword of Belisarius were numbered by the ten thousand. Hypatius and his brother were caught alive and brought to Justinian, who ordered them to be beheaded. The next day he heard of all the facts concerning the unwillingness of Hypatius, and gave his body honourable burial. It was many years before the Blues and Greens ever vexed him by another riot. The awful carnage in the circus kept the city quiet for a whole generation.

Justinian was now free from trouble at home and abroad, and turned to those ambitious schemes of foreign policy which were to occupy the rest of his reign. The dream of his heart was to reunite the Roman Empire, by bringing once more under his sceptre all those western provinces which were occupied by Teutonic kings, and paid only the shadow of homage to the imperial name. A few years before, the dream would have seemed fantastically overweening, but of late matters had been growing more and more promising. Justinian was, compared with his four predecessors, young and vigorous; he had an immense store of treasure, all the hoard of Anastasius, a large and efficient army, and at least one general of first-rate ability. His throne was firmly rooted; his eastern frontier secure; nothing now prevented him from undertaking wars of aggression.

Meanwhile, everything in the West favoured his projects. In Italy the great Theodoric was dead, and, since his death, the Ostrogothic kingdom had been faring ill. The old hero had left his realm to his grandson Athalaric, a boy of eight years old, under the guardianship of his mother Amalaswintha, the widow of Eutharic. The daughter of Theodoric was a clever and masterful woman, but she had a difficult task in teaching the turbulent Ostrogoths to obey a female regent. "Minority of Athalaric, 526-34." They murmured at all her doings, and most especially at her taste for Roman and Greek letters, and her frequent promotions of Roman officials. She strove to bring up her son, it was said, more as an Italian than a Goth, placing him under Roman tutors and keeping him tight to the desk, in spite of the saying of Theodoric that ‘he who has trembled before the pedagogue’s rod will not face the spear willingly.’ It was as much as Amalaswintha could do to keep the Goths in their obedience while her son was young, but when he had attained the age of twelve or thirteen, and began to show some will of his own, the murmurs of the people grew louder. At last, when he had one day been chastised by his mother, he burst into the guard-room, and bade his subjects take note how a king of the Goths was treated worse than a slave. This scene produced a tumult, and the chiefs of the Goths took the education of the boy out of his mother’s hands, though they left her the regency. Handed over to unsuitable companions Athalaric grew idle, drunken, and reckless; he was of a weakly habit of body, and, before he reached manhood, had developed the symptoms of consumption. Meanwhile, Amalaswintha was contending for power with the chiefs of the Goths, and had earned much unpopularity by putting to death, without form of trial, the three heads of the party which opposed her. So uncertain was her position that she sent secretly to Justinian in 533 to beg him to give her refuge at Dyrrhachium if she should be forced to fly. The emperor soon grasped the position—a divided people, an unpopular regent, a boy-king sinking into his grave invited him to active interference in Italy.

In Africa the condition of affairs was equally tempting. "Hilderic’s Reign, 523-30." We have already mentioned how, on the death of king Thrasamund, the Vandal throne had fallen to his kinsman Hilderic, the son of king Hunneric and the Roman princess, Eudocia. Hilderic was elderly, unversed in affairs of state, and a conscientious Catholic, inheriting from his Roman mother that orthodoxy which his Arian subjects detested. He had but a short reign of seven years, but in it he succeeded in alienating the affections of the Vandals in every way. He incurred great odium for putting to death his predecessor’s widow Amalafrida, the sister of the great Theodoric, because he found her conspiring against him. His wars were uniformly unsuccessful, the Moors of Atlas cut to pieces a whole army, and pushed their incursions close to the gates of Carthage. Probably his open confession of Catholicism, and promotion of Catholics to high office, were even greater sources of wrath. In 530 his cousin Geilamir organised a conspiracy against him, overthrew him with ease, and plunged him into a dungeon. Justinian professed great indignation at this dethroning of an orthodox and friendly sovereign, and resolved to make use of it as a grievance against the new king of the Vandals. Just before the ‘Nika’ sedition broke out he had sent an embassy to Carthage to bid Geilamir replace his cousin on the throne, and be contented with the place of regent. The usurper answered rudely enough: ‘King Geilamir wishes to point out to king Justinian that it is a good thing for rulers to mind their own business.’^[11] He trusted to the remoteness of his situation and the domestic troubles of Justinian, and little thought that he was drawing down the storm on his head.

For Justinian had fully made up his mind to begin his attack on the West by subduing the Vandals. All things were in his favour, notably the facts that an Arian king was once more making life miserable to the African Catholics, and that Vandal and Ostrogoth had been completely estranged by the murder of Amalafrida nine years before. Amalaswintha favoured rather than discouraged the emperor’s attack on her nearest Teutonic neighbours. There was yet one more piece of good fortune: king Geilamir had just sent off the flower of the Vandal troops to an expedition against Sardinia.

Encouraged by these considerations, Justinian prepared an army for the invasion of Africa in the summer of 533, though some of his ministers, and above all the financier, John of Cappadocia, warned him against ‘attacking the ends of the earth, from which a message would hardly reach Byzantium in a year,’ a ridiculous plea to any one who remembered the ancient organisation of the empire. The army was not very large: it consisted of 10,000 foot and 5000 horse, half regular troops from the Asiatic provinces, half Hunnish and Herulian auxiliaries. "Belisarius invades Africa, 533." But its commander, Belisarius, was a host in himself, and confidence in him buoyed up many who would otherwise have despaired. The voyage was protracted by contrary winds to the unprecedented length of eighty days, but at last the armament cast anchor at Caput Vada, on the cape which faces Sicily, in the beginning of September. The Vandals were caught wholly unprepared: their king was absent in Numidia, their best troops were in Sardinia, their fleet had not been even launched. A blind confidence in their remoteness from Constantinople had led them to despise all Justinian’s threats, and no preparation whatever had been made against an invasion. Geilamir hurried down to the coast, put his prisoner Hilderic to death, and summoned in his warriors from every side; but it was eleven days before he mustered in sufficient force to attack the Romans, and meanwhile Belisarius had advanced unopposed to within ten miles of the gates of Carthage. The provincials received him everywhere with joy; for he proclaimed that he came to deliver them from Arian oppression, and kept his soldiery in such good order that not a field or a cottage was plundered.

Belisarius had reached the posting-station of Ad Decimum, and was advancing cautiously with strong corps of observation securing his flank and front, when suddenly he was assailed by the whole force of the Vandals, who outnumbered him in at least the proportion of two to one. He was beset on three sides at once; one corps of Vandals under the king’s brother Ammatas issued from Carthage to attack him in front; another body beset his left flank; the main army under Geilamir himself assailed the rear of his long column of march. But the Vandals mismanaged their tactics, and failed to combine the three attacks. First the troops from Carthage came out, and were beaten off with the loss of their leader; then the turning corps was driven back by the Hunnish cavalry, whom Belisarius had kept lying out on his flank. When the main Vandal army came up there was more serious fighting with the centre and rear of the Roman column. Geilamir furiously burst through the line of march, and cleft the Roman army in twain, but he did not know how to use his advantage. Instead of improving his first success, he halted his troops, and allowed Belisarius to rally and re-form his men. It is said that he was so transported with grief at finding the corpse of his brother, who had fallen in the earlier engagement, that he gave no more orders, and cast himself weeping on the ground. Presently, the Romans were in good array again; their victorious vanguard had returned to aid the centre, and they fell once more, as the evening closed in, on the stationary masses of the Vandals. The conquerors of Africa must have forgotten their ancient valour, for, after a very paltry resistance, they turned and fled westward under cover of the night.

Carthage at once threw open its gates, and Belisarius dined next day in the royal palace on the meal that had been prepared for the Vandal king. "Carthage taken." Geilamir reaped now the reward for the hundred years of persecution to which his forefathers had subjected the Africans. Every town that was not garrisoned opened its gates to the Romans, and the provincials hastened to place everything they possessed at the disposal of Belisarius. His entry into Carthage was like the triumph of a home-coming king, and the order and discipline of his troops was so great that none even of the Vandal and Arian citizens suffered loss.

Geilamir meanwhile retired into the Numidian hills, with an army that had suffered more loss of morale than loss of numbers. He was soon joined by the troops whom he had sent to Sardinia; having subdued that island they returned, and raised his forces to nearly 50,000 men. Finding that Belisarius was repairing the walls of Carthage before marching out to finish the campaign, Geilamir resolved to take the offensive himself. Descending from the hills he marched on Carthage, and met the Roman army at Tricameron, twenty miles westward of the city.

Here Belisarius won a pitched battle after a struggle far more severe than that he had gone through at Ad Decimum. Thrice the Romans were beaten back, but their gallant leader rallied them, and at last his cuirassiers burst through the Vandal ranks and slew Tzazo, the king’s brother. Geilamir turned to fly, though his men fought on until their retreat was cut off. Almost the whole Vandal race perished in this fight and the bloody pursuit which followed. Geilamir himself took refuge in the heights of Mount Atlas among the Moors, and dwelt among them miserably enough for a few months.

"End of the Vandal kingdom." Discovering that he could not raise a third army, and that life was unendurable among the filthy barbarians, he determined to surrender, and yielded himself and his family to Belisarius, on the assurance that he should receive honourable treatment, in spite of the fact that he had murdered the emperor’s friend Hilderic.

In the spring of 534 Belisarius was able to return in triumph to Constantinople, bringing with him the king and most of the surviving Vandals as captives. His ships were loaded with all the plunder of the palace of Carthage, the trophies of a century of successful pirate raids, including the plate and ornaments which Gaiseric had carried off from Rome in 455. It is said that the emperor recognised among this store the seven-branched candlestick and golden vessels of the temple of Jerusalem, which Titus Caesar had taken to Rome when he conquered Judea four hundred years back. He sent them to be placed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Holy City where they had been first consecrated. Belisarius was allowed the honours of an ancient Roman triumph, a privilege denied to a subject for four centuries; he entered the Hippodrome in state, and laid his prisoners and his booty at Justinian’s feet, while senate and people saluted him as the new Scipio Africanus, a title which he had fairly earned. Next year he was promoted to the consulship, and given every honour that the emperor could devise. His captive, king Geilamir, was kindly treated, and presented with a great estate in Phrygia, where he and his family long dwelt in ease.

The year of the triumph of Belisarius saw new opportunities arising for him and for his master. In the autumn of 534 died the sickly and debauched youth who held the title of king of the Ostrogoths; he had not yet attained his eighteenth birthday. His mother, Amalaswintha, was now left face to face with the wild Goths, stripped of the protection of the royal name, and exposed to the enmity of the families of the chiefs whom she had executed. In despair of inducing the Goths to endure the rule of a queen-regnant, she determined to choose a colleague, and confer on him the title of king. Theodoric’s next male heir after Athalaric was a certain Theodahat, the son of his sister Amalaberga. "Amalaswintha and Theodahat." This prince had been excluded by his uncle from all affairs of state for his notorious cowardice, covetousness, and duplicity. He was a Romanised Teuton of the worst type, and, as was truly said, Vilis Gothus imitatur Romanum; he had pronounced literary tastes, called himself a Platonic philosopher, and showed some care for the arts, but was wholly mean and corrupt. Amalaswintha thought to presume on the cowardice of her cousin, and to force him to become her tool; she forgot that even a coward may be ambitious. At the queen’s behest the assembly of the warriors of Italy hailed Theodahat and Amalaswintha joint rulers of the Ostrogoths. But in less than six months the intriguing king had suborned his partisans to seize and imprison his unfortunate cousin. She was cast into a castle on the lake of Bolsena, and shortly afterwards murdered, with Theodahat’s connivance, by some of the kinsfolk of the nobles whom she executed five years before. (May, 535.)

Justinian had now an even better casus belli in Italy than he had possessed in Africa. His ally had been dethroned and murdered, and her crown was possessed by a creature far inferior to Geilamir, who was at least a warrior if an unfortunate one. The miserable Theodahat grovelled with fear when he received the angry ultimatum of Justinian. He even made secret proposals to the emperor’s ambassadors to the effect that he would abandon his crown and betray his people, if only he were granted his life and a suitable maintenance. When even this did not avail, he took to consulting soothsayers and magicians. We are told that a Jewish seer bade him pen up thirty pigs—to represent unclean Gentiles, we must suppose—in three sties, calling ten ‘Goths,’ ten ‘Italians,’ and ten ‘Imperialists.’ He was to leave them ten days without food or water, and then take augury from their condition. When Theodahat looked in at the appointed hour, he found all the ‘Goth’ pigs dead save two, and half of the ‘Italians,’ but the ‘Imperialists,’ though gaunt and wasted, were all, or almost all, alive. This the Jew told the downcast king would portend a war in which the Gothic race was to be well-nigh exterminated, and the Italians to be terribly cut down, while the Imperial armies would conquer after much toil and privation!

While Theodahat was vainly busy with his soothsayers, the Roman armies had already attacked the Gothic province in Dalmatia. The wretched usurper had to face war, whether he willed it or no. Justinian had determined, as was but natural, to intrust the Ostrogothic war to the conqueror of Africa, and, in the autumn of the year of his consulship, Belisarius sailed for the West with a small army of 7500 men, of whom 3000 were Isaurians, and the rest equally divided between Roman regulars and Hunnish and Herule auxiliaries. It was a small force with which to attack a king who commanded the swords of a hundred thousand gallant Germans, but reinforcements were to follow, and Theodahat’s cowardice and incapacity were well known.

In September 535 Belisarius fell on Sicily; here as in Africa the provincials hastened to throw open the gates of their cities to the invader. There were few Goths in Sicily; they garrisoned Palermo, but Belisarius took the place by a sudden assault, after lying only a few days before its walls. "Belisarius conquers Sicily, 535." By the approach of winter the whole island was in his hands. He would have hastened on to attack Italy, but for a mutiny which broke out in Africa and compelled him to cross the sea and spend some time in the neighbourhood of Carthage.

Meanwhile the poor craven Theodahat did nothing but besiege the ears of Justinian with more fruitless proposals for peace. He was as unprepared as ever for resistance when Belisarius crossed over the straits of Messina, in April 536, and overran Bruttium and Lucania. So greatly were the Goths of the south discouraged by his helplessness, that Ebermund, the Count of Lucania, surrendered to Belisarius, and entered the imperial service with all his followers. It was not till he had pushed on to Naples that Belisarius met with any opposition; all through southern Italy the city gates swung open the moment that he touched them with his spear. The old Greek city of Naples, however, held by a strong Gothic garrison, made a very obstinate defence, and held out for many weeks, awaiting the arrival of a relieving army. King Theodahat had gathered a great army at Rome, but the coward dared not close, and kept 50,000 men idle, while 7000 Romans were beleaguering Naples. At last the city fell, a party of Isaurian soldiers having found their way up a disused aqueduct, and stormed one of the gates from within. The news of the fall of Naples raised the wrath of the Goths against their wretched king to boiling point. At a great folk-moot at Regeta in the Pomptine Marshes the army solemnly deposed Theodahat, and, as no male Amal was left, raised on the shield Witiges, an elderly warrior of respectable character, who had won credit in the old wars of Theodoric. The dethroned king fled away to seek refuge at Ravenna, but a private enemy pursued him and cut his throat ‘like a sheep’ long ere he had reached the City of the Marshes.

The choice of Witiges was a fearful error on the part of the Goths; they had mistaken respectability for talent, and paid the penalty in seeing the stupid veteran wreck all their hopes. The first blunder on the part of the new king was to draw his army northward on the news that the Franks were crossing the Alps to ravage the valley of Po. He left only 4000 men in Rome, and marched on Ravenna with all the rest. The moment that he was departed Belisarius moved northward to attack the imperial city. It fell into his hands without a blow; the Gothic garrison felt that they were left deserted among a populace ready to betray them to the enemy; indeed Pope Silverius and the Senate had already written to pray Belisarius to deliver them. "Belisarius takes Rome, 536." When the Imperialists appeared before the southern gate, the Goths fled out of the northern, in a panic that was inexcusable, for they were well-nigh as numerous as the 5000 men that Belisarius brought with him. (December 9, 536.)

Belisarius was now master of Rome, but he knew that his hold on it was precarious. Witiges had settled matters with the Franks by paying them 130,000 gold solidi and ceding his Transalpine dominions in Provence. After marrying Mataswintha, the sister of the late king Athalaric, and the last scion of the house of the Amals, he resolved to return and deliver Rome. All north Italy had sent him its Gothic warriors, and 100,000 men marched under his banner to besiege Rome in the spring of 537.

The defence of Rome is the greatest of all the titles to glory that Belisarius won. The walls of Aurelian were strong, but there were only 5000 men to defend their vast circuit, and within was an unruly mass of cowardly citizens, liable to all sorts of panic fears—mouths to be fed without hands to strike, for hardly a Roman took arms to aid the imperial troops. In the middle of March the Goths appeared before the walls, and pitched seven camps opposite the northern and eastern gates of the city. They then cut all the aqueducts which supplied Rome with water, and commenced the construction of siege-engines for a great assault. With the want of thoroughness that he always displayed, king Witiges made no adequate preparation for blockading the southern side of the city, or for stopping its communications with Ostia and Naples. All through the siege convoys of provisions and reinforcements were frequently able to creep into Rome by night, eluding the outposts which were all that Witiges placed on the side of the Tiber and the Campagna.

A fortnight after arriving in front of the walls Witiges had his engines ready, and delivered his great assault on the northern and north-eastern fronts of the city. Everywhere the attack failed; the towers and rams which the Goths had drawn forward never reached the walls; the oxen which drew them were shot down before they neared the ditch. But thousands of wild warriors with scaling-ladders delivered assaults against innumerable portions of the enceinte. In most cases they failed entirely; the walls of Aurelian were too strong; but at two points, at opposite ends of the city, they nearly won success. At the Praenestine gate a battering-ram broke in the outer bulwarks, and a swarm of Goths was only held back by an inner entrenchment till the reinforcements of Belisarius arrived. But greater danger still was encountered at the Mausoleum of Hadrian (castle of St. Angelo), just beyond the Ælian Bridge. "Belisarius defends Rome, 536-37." There the Goths filled the ditch, overwhelmed the defenders with arrows, and were fitting their ladders to the embrasures, when they were at last checked by a strange expedient. The walls of the mausoleum were lined with dozens of splendid statues, some of them figures of emperors, others the ancient spoils of Greece. At the supreme moment the desperate garrison flung these colossal figures on the besiegers below, and drove them off by the hail of marble fragments.

At the end of the day Belisarius was everywhere successful; 20,000 Goths had fallen, and the self-confidence of Witiges was so broken that he never again tried a general assault. He relied instead on a blockade, but, though he inflicted great misery on the garrison, and still more on the populace, he never closed the roads or the river sufficiently to exclude occasional convoys of provisions. He did not prevent Belisarius from transferring to Campania the greater part of the women, aged men, and slaves in the city. Meanwhile the summer drew on, and the Gothic hosts began to suffer from malaria, and from the filthy state of the crowded camps. On the other hand, Belisarius at last began to receive reinforcements from Constantinople, and was able to make sallies, in which his horsemen handled the Gothic outposts very roughly.

When both assault and blockade had been proved ineffectual, and when an attempt to creep into the city through the empty aqueducts had been foiled, Witiges would probably have done well to raise the siege, and throw on Belisarius, whose army was still very small, the burden of taking the offensive. Instead of doing this he lay obstinately in his camp for a year and nine days, watching his army melt away under the scourge of pestilence, and allowing the numbers and boldness of the Imperialists to increase. At last Belisarius had been so strongly reinforced that he was able, while still holding Rome, to put a second force in the field. This he sent, under an officer named John the Bloody, through the Sabine hills to make a dash into Picenum and menace Ravenna. "Siege of Rome raised, 538." John, a very able officer, seized the important town of Rimini, only thirty-three miles from Ravenna, in February 538. The news that his capital was being threatened, and that the enemy was in his rear, at last forced the sluggish king of the Goths to move. He set his seven camps on fire, and retired up the Flaminian Way into Picenum. Thus the prudence and valour of Belisarius were at last vindicated, and the Romans, after a siege of 374 days, could once more breathe freely.

Middle Italy was now lost to the Goths, and the scene of operations shifted into Picenum, north Etruria, and the valley of the Po, where the war was to endure for two years more (538-40). It resolved itself into a struggle for the coast towns between Ravenna and Ancona, and for the command of the passes of the Apennines. One half of the Roman army was concentrated at Rimini and Ancona, while Belisarius himself with the other was occupied in clearing the Gothic garrisons out of northern Etruria. Two Gothic armies at Ravenna and Auximum penned the northern Roman force into the narrow sea-coast plain, and at last laid siege to both Rimini and Ancona. Here Witiges seemed for once likely to succeed, but, when the garrisons had been brought to the last extremity, they were relieved by new forces from Constantinople commanded by the eunuch Narses the praepositus sacri cubiculi.

Thrown on the defensive Witiges drew back to Ravenna, and allowed the Romans to overrun the province of Æmilia, and even to cross the Po, and raise an insurrection in the great city of Milan. There now followed a long pause: Belisarius found that Narses was set on asserting an independent authority over the newly-arrived army, and had to send to the emperor to beg him to recall the eunuch. Meanwhile he laid siege to the last two Gothic fortresses south of Ravenna, the towns of Fiesole in Etruria and Auximum (Osimo) in Picenum. Both cities made a gallant resistance, and while Belisarius was at a standstill Uraias, the warlike nephew of Witiges, stormed and sacked Milan, and restored the Gothic dominion north of the Po (539). Meanwhile the king took the only wise step which occurred to him during the whole war: he sent ambassadors to the East to inform Chosroes, king of Persia, that well-nigh the whole Roman army was occupied in Italy, and that he might overrun Syria and Mesopotamia with ease. Taken two years earlier, this step might have saved the Goths, but now it was too late: Chosroes moved, but moved only in time to hear that Witiges was dethroned and a captive.

After holding out seven months, Auximum surrendered to Belisarius at mid-winter, 539-40. Witiges had done nothing to save the gallant garrison, alleging that a Frankish raid into the valley of the Po prevented him from moving. The excuse was true but insufficient, for when the Franks of Theudebert, thinned by disease, turned home again, the Gothic king did not stir any the more.

At last, in the spring of 540, Narses had been recalled, and Belisarius had full possession of all Picenum and Etruria, and could safely advance on Ravenna. After posting a covering force to ward off any attempt to relieve the town by the Goths of northern Italy, he drew his main army round the great fortress in the marshland, the chosen home of Theodoric, the storehouse of the hoarded wealth of the Amals. The defence was weak, far weaker than that of the smaller stronghold of Auximum. Witiges seemed to have the power of communicating his sloth and hesitation to all who came near him. He listened first to offers from Theudebert the Frank, then to proposals for surrender sent in by Belisarius. At last he determined to close with the terms offered by Justinian, that he should resign all Italy south of the Po, give up half the royal hoard, and reign in the Transpadane as the emperor’s vassal. The terms were not hard, for Justinian had just been attacked by Persia, and wished to end his Italian war at once. It would have been well for all parties if they had been carried out; but two wills intervened: the Gothic nobles were wildly indignant at their master’s cowardice: Belisarius, looking at his military advantages, thought the terms too liberal. "Witiges surrenders Ravenna, 540." From this discontent came an extraordinary result: the Teutonic chiefs boldly proposed to the imperial general that he should reign over them,—whether as king of the Goths or Roman Caesar they cared not,—but their swords should be his, and the craven Witiges should be cast away, if he would take them as his vassals and administer Italy. Belisarius temporised, and the simple Goths, believing that no man could resist such an offer, threw open the gates. But the great general was loyal to the core: instead of proclaiming himself emperor, he took over the town in Justinian’s name, bade the Gothic warriors disperse each to his own home, and shipped all the golden stores of Ravenna off to Constantinople.

It seemed as if the monarchy of the Goths was ended: nothing remained to them save Pavia, Verona, and a few more north Italian cities. Justinian resolved to recall Belisarius before these places should fall; meaner generals would suffice to take them. Two motives stirred the emperor: his great captain was wanted on the eastern frontier to keep back the advancing Persian; but suspicion also played its part: Justinian was not too well pleased that Belisarius had overruled his project of making peace with Witiges, and he had been somewhat frightened by the Gothic proposal to make Belisarius emperor. It had been declined, it is true, but might not the seeds of disloyalty have sunk into the heart of the general? It would be safer to bring him away from the temptation.

So, by the imperial mandate, Belisarius sailed for the Bosphorus, taking with him the captive Witiges, and all the gold and gems of the great hoard of the Amals. He was denied a formal triumph such as he had won by his Vandal victory, but none the less his reception was magnificent. His personal body-guard of 7000 chosen men had followed him to the capital, and, as they passed through the streets, the populace exclaimed ‘the household of one man has destroyed the kingdom of the Goths.’ Happy would it have been for the great general if he had died at the moment of this his grandest success. He was reserved for lesser wars and years of chequered fortune (540).