Theodoric the Goth

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We may now return to the palace of Ravenna and be present at the
audience granted, probably in the summer of 534, by Amalasuentha to
Alexander, the ambassador of Justinian. To the demands for the surrender
of Lilybaeum and the complaints as to the enlistment of Hunnish
deserters, Amalasuentha made, in public, a suitable and sprited reply:
"It was not the part of a great and courageous monarch to pick a quarrel
with an orphaned king, too young to be accurately informed of what was
going on in all parts of his dominions, about such paltry matters as the
possession of Lilybaeum, a barren and worthless rock of Sicily, about
ten wild Huns who had sought refuge in Italy, and about the offence
which the Gothic soldiers had, in their ignorance, committed against a
friendly city in Moesia. Justinian should look at the other side of the
account, should remember the aid and comfort which his soldiers, on
their expedition against the Vandals, had received from the friendly
Ostrogoths in Sicily, and should ask himself whether without that aid he
would ever have recovered possession of Africa. If Lilybaeum did belong
by right to the Emperor it was not too great a reward for him to bestow
on his young ally for such opportune assistance".

This was publicly the answer of Amalasuentha--a bold and determined
refusal to surrender the rock of Lilybaeum. In her private interview with
the ambassador, she assured him that she was ready to fulfil her compact
and to make arrangements for the transfer to the Emperor of the whole of
Italy.

When the two sets of ambassadors, civil and ecclesiastical, returned to
Constantinople the Emperor perceived that here were two negotiations to
be carried on of the most delicate kind and requiring the presence of a
master of diplomacy. He accordingly despatched to Ravenna a rhetorician
named Peter, a man of considerable intellectual endowments--he was a
historian as well as an orator--and one who had, eighteen years before,
held the high office of consul. But it was apparently winter before
Peter started on his journey, and when he arrived at Aulon (now Valona),
just opposite Brindisi, he heard such startling tidings as to the events
which had occurred on the Italian side of the Adriatic, that he waited
there and asked for further instructions from his master as to the
course which he was to pursue in the existing position of affairs. (2nd
Oct., 534.)

First of all came the death of the unhappy lad, Athalaric, in his
eighteenth year, the victim of unwise strictness, followed by unwise
licence, and of the barbarian's passion for swinish and sensual
pleasures. When her son was dead, Amalasuentha, who had an instinctive
feeling that the Goths would never submit to undisguised female
sovereignty, took a strange and desperate resolution. She sent for
Theodahad, now the only surviving male of the stock of Theodoric, and,
fashioning her lips to a smile, began to apologise for the humiliating
sentence which had issued against him from the King's Court. "She had
known all along", she said, "that her boy would die, and as he,
Theodahad, would then be the one hope of Theodoric's line, she had
wished to abate his unpopularity and set him straight with his future
subjects by strictly enforcing their rights against him. Now all that
was over: his record was clear and she was ready to invite him to become
the partner of her throne;[143] but he must first swear the most solemn
oaths that he would be satisfied with the name of royalty and that the
actual power should remain, as it had done for nine years, in the hands
of Amalasuentha".

[Footnote 143: As colleague, not as husband; Theodahad's wife, Gudelina,
was still living when he ascended the throne.]

Theodahad cheerfully swore tremendous oaths to the observance of this
compact. Proclamations in the name of the two new sovereigns were put
forth to all the Goths and Italians. In them Theodahad grovelled in
admiration of the wisdom, the virtue, the eloquence of the noble lady
who had raised him to so high a station and who had done him the
inestimable favour of making him feel her justice before she bestowed
upon him her grace. Few weeks, however, passed, before Amalasuentha was
a prisoner, hurried away to a little lonely island in the Lake of
Bolsena in Tuscany by order of the partner of her throne. Having taken
this step, Theodahad began with craven apologies to excuse it to the
Eastern Caesar. "He had done no harm to Amalasuentha; he would do no harm
to her, though she had been guilty of the most nefarious designs against
him: he only sought to protect her from the vengeance of the kinsmen of
the three Gothic nobles whom she had murdered". An embassy composed of
Roman Senators was ordered to carry this tale to Justinian and to
confirm it by a letter which, under duresse, had been wrung from the
unfortunate princess in her prison. When the ambassadors arrived at
Constantinople one of them spoke the words of the part which had been
set down for him and declared that Theodahad had done nothing against
Amalasuentha of which any reasonable complaint could be made; but the
others, headed by the brave Liberius, "a man of singularly high and
noble nature, and of the most watchful regard to truth", told the whole
story exactly as it had happened to the Emperor. The result was a
despatch to the ambassador Peter enjoining him to find means of
assuring Amalasuentha that Justinian would exert all his influence for
her safety, and to inform Theodahad publicly, in presence of all his
counsellors, that it was at his own peril that he would touch a hair of
the head of the Gothic queen.

Scarcely, however, had Peter touched the Italian shore--he had not
conveyed a letter to the prison nor uttered a word in the palace--when
the sad tragedy was ended. The relations of the three nobles, who had
"blood-feud" with the queen, and who were perhaps, according to the code
of barbarian morality, justified in avenging their death, made their way
to Amalasuentha's island prison, and there, in that desolate abode, the
daughter of Theodoric met her death at their hands, dying with all that
stately dignity and cold self-possession with which she had lived.

Justinian's ambassador at once proceeded to the King's Court, and there,
in the presence of all the Gothic nobles, denounced the foul deed which
they had permitted to be done, and declared that for this there must be
"truceless war" between the Emperor and them. Theodahad, as stupid as he
was vile, renewed his ridiculous protestations that he had no part in
the violence done to Amalasuentha, but had heard of it with the utmost
regret, and this although he had already rewarded the murderers with
signal tokens of his favour.

Thus, by the folly of the wise and the criminal audacity of the coward,
had a train been laid for the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom.
All the petty pretexts for war, the affair of Lilybaeum, the Hunnish
deserters, the sack of Gratiana, faded into insignificance before this
new and most righteous cause of quarrel. If Hilderic's deposition had
been avenged by the capture of Carthage, with far more justice might the
death of the noble Amalasuentha be avenged by the capture of Ravenna and
of Rome. In the great war which was soon to burst upon Italy Justinian
could figure not only as the protector of the provincials, not only as
the defender of the Catholics, but as the avenger of the blood of the
daughter of Theodoric.

[Illustration: PIECE OF FORTY NUMMI OF THEODAHAD. NUMMI (COPPER).]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI.

BELISARIUS.

Justinian begins his great Gothic war--Dalmatia recovered for the
Empire--Belisarius lands in Sicily--Siege of Palermo--The South of Italy
overrun--Naples taken by a stratagem--Theodahad deposed by the
Goths--Witigis elected king--The Goths evacuate Rome--Belisarius enters
it--The long siege of Rome by the Goths who fail to take it--Belisarius
marches northward and captures Ravenna.

The Emperor's preparations for the Gothic war were soon made, and in the
summer of 535 two armies were sent forth from Constantinople, one
destined to act on the east and the other on the west of the Adriatic.
When we think of the mighty armaments by means of which Pompey and
Caesar, or even Licinius and Constantine, had contended for the mastery
of the Roman world, the forces entrusted to the generals of Justinian
seem strangely small. We are not informed of the precise number of the
army sent to Dalmatia, but the whole tenor of the narrative leads us to
infer that it consisted of not more than 3,000 or 4,000 men. It fought
with varying fortunes but with ultimate success. Salona, the Dalmatian
capital, was taken by the Imperial army, wrested from them by the Goths,
retaken by the Imperialists. The Imperial general, a brave old barbarian
named Mundus, fell dead by the side of his slaughtered son; but another
general took his place, and being well supported by a naval expedition,
succeeded, as has been said, in reconquering Salona, drove out the
Gothic generals, and reincorporated Dalmatia with the Empire. This
province, which had for many generations been treated almost as a part
of Italy, was now for four centuries to be for the most part a
dependency of Constantinople. The Dalmatian war was ended by the middle
of 536.

But it was of course to the Italian expedition that the eyes of the
spectators of the great drama were most eagerly turned. Here Belisarius
commanded, peerless among the generals of his own age, and not surpassed
by many of preceding or following ages. The force under his command
consisted of only 7,500 men, the greater part of whom were of barbarian
origin--Huns, Moors, Isaurians, Gepidse, Heruli, but they were welded
together by that instinct of military discipline and that unbounded
admiration for their great commander and confidence in his success which
is the surest herald of victory. Not only in nationality but in mode of
fighting they were utterly unlike the armies with which republican Rome
had won the sovereignty of the world. In those days it might have been
truly said to the inhabitant of the seven-hilled city as Macaulay has
imagined Capys saying to Romulus:

"Thine, Roman | is the pilum:
Roman | the sword is thine.
The even trench, the bristling mound,
The legion's ordered line"--

but now, centuries of fighting with barbarian foes, especially with the
nimble squadrons of Persia, had completely changed the character of the
Imperial tactics. It was to the deadly aim of his _Hippo-toxotai_
(mounted bowmen) that Belisarius, in pondering over his victories,
ascribed his antonishing success. "He said that at the beginning of his
first great battle he had carefully studied the characteristic
differences of each army, in order that he might prevent his little band
from being overborne by sheer force of numbers. The chief difference
which he noted was that almost all the Roman (Imperialist) soldiers and
their Hunnish allies were good _Hippo-toxotai_, while the Goths had none
of them practised the art of shooting on horseback. Their cavalry fought
only with javelins and swords, and their archers fought on foot covered
by the horsemen. Thus till the battle became a hand-to-hand encounter
the horsemen could make no reply to the arrows discharged at them from a
distance, and were therefore easily thrown into disorder, while the
foot-soldiers, though able to reply to the enemy's archers, could not
stand against the charges of his horse".[144] From this passage we can
see what were the means by which Belisarius won his great victories.
While the Goth, with his huge broadsword and great javelin, chafing for
a hand-to-hand encounter with the foe, found himself mowed down by the
arrows of a distant enemy, the nimble barbarian who called himself a
Roman solder discharged his arrows at the cavalry, dashed in impetuous
onset against the infantry, wheeled round, feigned flight, sent his
arrows against the too eagerly advancing horsemen, in fact, by Parthian
tactics won a Roman victory, or to use a more modern illustration, the
_Hippo-toxotai_ were the "Mounted Rifles" of the Imperial army.

[Footnote 144: Procophis, "De Bello Gotthico", i, 27.]

The expedition under the command of Belisarius made its first attack on
the Gothic kingdom in Sicily. Here the campaign was little more than a
triumphant progress. In reliance on its professions of loyalty,
Theodoric and his successors had left the wealthy and prosperous island
almost bare of Gothic troops, and now the provincials, eager to form
once more a part of the Eternal Roman Empire, opened the gates of city
after city to the troops of Justinian; only at Palermo was a stout
resistance made by the Gothic soldiers who garrisoned the city. The
walls were strong, and that part of them which bordered on the harbour
was thought to be so high and massive as not to need the defence of
soldiers. When unobserved by the foe, Belisarius hoisted up his men,
seated in boats, to the yard-arms of his ships and made them clamber out
of the boats on to the unguarded parapet. This daring manoeuvre gave him
the complete command of the Gothic position, and the garrison
capitulated without delay. So was the whole island of Sicily won over
to the realm of Justinian before the end of 535, and Belisarius, Consul
for the year, rode through the streets of Syracuse on the last day of
his term of office, scattering his "donative" to the shouting soldiers
and citizens.

Operations in 536, the second year of the war, were suspended for some
months by a military mutiny at Carthage, which called for the presence
of Belisarius in Africa. But the mutineers quailed before the very name
of their late commander. Carthage was delivered from the siege wherewith
they were closely pressing it, a battle was won in the open field, and
the rebellion though not yet finally crushed was sufficiently weakened
for Belisarius to return to Sicily in the late spring of 536. He crossed
the Straits of Messina, landed in Italy, was received by the provincials
of Bruttii and Lucania with open arms, and met with no check to his
progress till, probably in the early days of June, he stood with his
army under the walls of the little town of Neapolis, which in our own
days is represented by a successor ten times as large, the superbly
situated city of Naples. Here a strong Gothic garrison held the place
for Theodahad and prevented the surrender which many of the citizens,
especially those of the poorer class, would gladly have made. An orator,
who was sent by the Neapolitans to plead their cause in the general's
camp, vainly endeavoured to persuade Belisarius to march forward to
Rome, leaving the fate of, Naples to be decided under the walls of the
capital. The Imperial general could not leave so strong a place untaken
in his rear, and though himself anxious enough to meet Theodahad,
commenced the siege of the city. His land army was supported by the
fleet which was anchored in the harbour, yet the operations of the siege
languished, and after twenty days Belisarius seemed to be no nearer
winning the prize of war than on the first day. But just then one of his
soldiers, a brave and active Isaurian mountaineer, reported that he had
found a means of entering the empty aqueduct through which, till
Belisarius severed the communication, water had been supplied to the
city. The passage was narrow, and at one point the rock had to be filed
away to allow the soldiers to pass, but all this was done without
arousing the suspicions of the besieged, and one night Belisarius sent
six hundred soldiers, headed by the Isaurian, into the aqueduct, having
arranged with them the precise portion of the walls to which they were
to rush as soon as they emerged into the city. The daring attempt
succeeded. The soldiers found themselves in a large cavern with a narrow
opening at the top, on the brink of which was a cottage. Some of the
most active among them swarmed up the sides of the cave, found the
cottage inhabited by one old woman who was easily frightened into
silence, and let down a stout leather thong which they fastened to the
stem of an olive-tree, and by which all their comrades mounted. They
rushed to that part of the walls beneath which Belisarius was standing,
blew their trumpets, and assisted the besiegers to ascend. The Gothic
garrison were taken prisoners and treated honourably by Belisarius. The
city suffered some of the usual horrors of a sack from the wild Hunnish
soldiers of the Empire, but these were somewhat mitigated, and the
citizens who had been taken prisoners were restored to liberty, in
compliance with the earnest entreaties of Belisarius.

The fall of Neapolis, to whose assistance no Gothic army had marched,
and the unhindered conquest of Southern Italy crowned the already
towering edifice of Theodahad's unpopularity. It is not likely that this
selfish and unwarlike pedant--a "nithing", as they probably called
him--had ever been aught but a most unwelcome necessity to the
lion-hearted Ostrogoths, and for all but the families and friends of the
three slain noblemen, the imprisonment and the permitted murder of his
benefactress must have deepened dislike into horror. His dishonest
intrigues with Constantinople were known to many, intrigues in which
even after Amalasuentha's death he still offered himself and his crown
for sale to the Emperor, and the Emperor, notwithstanding his brave
words about a truceless war, seemed willing to pay the caitiff his
price. Some gleams of success which shone upon the Gothic arms in
Dalmatia towards the end of 535 filled the feeble soul of Theodahad with
presumptuous hope, and he broke off with arrogant faithlessness the
negotiations which he had begun. Still, with all the gallant men under
him longing to be employed, he struck not one blow for his crown and
country, but shut himself up in his palace, seeking by the silliest
auguries to ascertain the issue of the war. The most notable of these
vaticinations was "the Augury of the Hogs", which he practised by the
advice of a certain Jewish magician. He shut up in separate pens three
batches of hogs, each batch consisting of ten. One batch was labelled
"Romans" (meaning the Latin-speaking inhabitants of Italy), another
"Goths", and the third "Soldiers of the Emperor". They were all left for
a certain number of days without food, and when the appointed day was
come, and the pens were opened, all the "Gothic" hogs but two were found
dead. The "Emperor's soldiers", with very few exceptions, were living;
of the "Romans" half only were alive, and all had lost their bristles.
Ridiculous as the manner of divination was, it furnished no inapt type
of the miseries which the Gothic war was to bring upon all concerned in
it, and not least upon that Latin population which was still so keen to
open its gates to Belisarius.

But, as I have said, when Neapolis had fallen, the brave Gothic warriors
felt that they had submitted too long to the rule of a dastard like
Theodahad. They met in arms, a nation-parliament, on the plain of
Regeta, about forty-three miles from Rome in the direction of Terracina.
Here there was plenty of grass for the pasture of their horses, and
here, while the steeds grazed, the dismounted riders could deliberate as
to the fortunes of the state. There was found to be an unanimous
determination that Iheodahad should be dethroned, and, instead of him,
they raised on the shield, Witigis, a man somewhat past middle age, not
of noble birth, who had distinguished himself by his deeds of valour
thirty years before in the war of Sirmium. As soon as Theodahad heard
the tidings of his deposition, he sought to escape with all speed to
Ravenna. The new king ordered a Goth named Optaris to pursue him and
bring him back alive or dead. Optaris had his own wrongs to avenge, for
he had lost a rich and beautiful bride through Theodahad's purchased
interference on behalf of another suitor. He followed him day and night,
came up with him while still on the road, "made him lie down on the
pavement, and cut his throat as a priest cuts the throat of a
victim".[145] So did Theodahad perish, one of the meanest insects that
ever crawled across the page of history.

[Footnote 145: There was perhaps an interval of some months during which
Theodahad was in hiding. His deposition is fixed by one authority
(Anastasius) to August, and his death, by another (Agnellus), to
December, 536, but all our chronological details as to this part of the
history are vague and uncertain.]

Witigis, the new king of the Goths, had personal courage and some
experience of battles, but he was no statesman and, as the event proved,
no general. By his advice, the Goths committed the astounding blunder of
abandoning Rome and concentrating their forces for defence in the north
of Italy. It is true that a garrison of four thousand Goths was left in
the city under the command of the brave veteran Leudaris, but,
unsupported by any army in the field, this body of men was too small to
hold so vast a city unless they were aided by the inhabitants. As for
Witigis, he marched northward to Ravenna with the bulk of the Gothic
army and there celebrated, not a victory, but a marriage. The only
remaining scion of the race of Theodoric was a young girl named
Matasuentha, the sister of Athalaric. In some vain hope of consolidating
his dynasty, Witigis divorced his wife and married this young princess.
The marriage was, as might have been expected, an unhappy one.
Matasuentha shared the Romanising tendencies of her mother, and her
spirit revolted against the alleged reasons of state which gave her this
elderly and low-born barbarian for a husband. In the darkest hour of the
Gothic fortunes (540) Matasuentha was suspected of opening secret
negotiations with the Imperial leaders, and even of seeking to aid the
progress of their arms by crime.

By the end of November, 536, Belisarius, partly aided by the treachery
of the Gothic general who commanded in Samnium, had recovered for the
Empire all that part of the Italian peninsula which, till lately, formed
the Kingdom of Naples. Pope Silverius, though he had sworn under duresse
an oath of fealty to King Witigis, sent messengers offering to surrender
the Eternal City, and the four thousand Goths, learning what
negotiations were going forward, came to the conclusion that it was
hopeless for them to attempt to defend the City against such a general
as Belisarius and against the declared wish of the citizens. They
accordingly marched out of Rome by a northern gate as Belisarius entered
it on the south.[146] The brave old Leudaris, refusing to abandon his
trust, was taken prisoner, and sent, together with the keys of the City,
to Justinian, most undoubted evidences of victory.

[Footnote 146: December, 536.]

Belisarius took up his headquarters in the Pincian Palace (on that hill
at the north of the City which is now the fashionable promenade of the
Roman aristocracy), and from thence commanded a wide outlook over that
part of the Campagna on which, as he knew, a besieging army would
shortly encamp. He set to work with all speed to repair the walls of the
City, which had been first erected by Aurelian and afterwards repaired
by Honorius at dates respectively 260 and 130 years before the entry of
Belisarius. Time and barbarian sieges had wrought much havoc on the line
of defence, the work of repair had to be done in haste, and to this day
some archaeologists think that it is possible to recognise the parts
repaired by Belisarius through the rough style of the work and the
heterogeneous nature of the materials employed in it. All through the
winter months his ships were constantly arriving with cargoes of corn
from Sicily, which were safely stored away in the great
State-warehouses. These preparations were viewed with dismay by the
citizens, who had fondly imagined that their troubles were over when the
Gothic soldiers marched forth by the Porta Flaminia; that any fighting
which might follow would take place on some distant field, and that they
would have nothing to do but calmly to await the issue of the combat.
This, however, was by no means the general's idea of the right way of
playing the game. He knew that the Goths immensely outnumbered his
forces; he knew also that they were of old bad besiegers of cities, the
work of siege requiring a degree of patience and scientific skill to
which the barbarian nature could not attain; and his plan was to wear
them down by compelling them to undertake a long and wearisome blockade
before he tried conclusions with them in the open field. If the Roman
clergy and people had known that this was in his thoughts, they would
probably not have been so ready to welcome the eagles of the Emperor
into their city.

Some hint of the growing disaffection of the Roman people was carried to
Ravenna and quickened the impatience of Witigis, who was now eager to
retrieve the blunder which he had committed in the evacuation of Rome.
He marched southward with a large army, which is represented to us as
consisting of 150,000 men, and in the early days of March he was already
at the other end of the Milvian Bridge,[147] about two miles from Rome.
Belisarius had meant to dispute the passage of the Tiber at this point.
The fort on the Tuscan side of the river was garrisoned, and a large
body of soldiers was encamped on the Roman side; but when the garrison
of the fort saw the vast multitude of the enemy, who at sunset pitched
their tents upon the plain, they despaired of making a successful
resistance, and abandoning the fort under cover of the night, skulked
off into the country districts of Latium. Thus one point of the game was
thrown away. Next morning the Goths finding their passage unopposed,
marched quietly over the bridge and fell upon the Roman camp. A
desperate battle followed, in which Belisarius, exposing himself more
than a general should have done, did great deeds of valour. He was
mounted on a noble steed, dark roan, with a white star on its forehead,
which the barbarians, from that mark on its brow, called "Balan". Some
Imperial soldiers who had deserted to the enemy knew the steed and his
rider, and shouted to their comrades to aim all their darts at Balan. So
the cry "Balan! Balan!" resounded through the Gothic ranks, and though
only imperfectly understood by many of the utterers, had the effect of
concentrating the fight round Belisarius and the dark-roan steed. The
general was nobly protected by the picked troops which formed his guard.
They fell by scores around him, but he himself, desperately fighting,
received never a wound, though a thousand of the noblest Goths lay dead
in the narrow space of ground where this Homeric combat had been going
forward. The Imperialists not merely withstood the Gothic onset, but
drove their opponents back to their camp, which had been already erected
on the Roman bank of the Tiber. Fresh troops, especially of cavalry,
issuing forth from thence turned the tide of battle, and, overborne by
irresistible numbers, Belisarius and his soldiers were soon in full
flight towards Rome. When they arrived under the walls, with the
barbarians so close behind them that they seemed to form one raging
multitude, they found the gates closed against them by the
panic-stricken garrison. Even Belisarius in vain shouted his orders to
open the gates; in his gory face and dust-stained figure the defenders
did not recognise their brilliant leader. A halt was called, a desperate
charge was made upon the pursuing Goths, who were already beginning to
pour down into the fosse; they were pushed back some distance, not far,
but far enough to enable the Imperialists to reform their ranks, to make
the presence of the general known to the defenders on the walls, to have
the gates opened, and in some sort of military order to enter the city.
Thus the sun set on Rome beleaguered, the barbarians outside the City.
Belisarius with his gallant band of soldiers thinned but not
disheartened by the struggle, within its walls, and the citizens--

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