Count Belisarius (40 page)

Among the enemy were the deserters of the Thracian Goths, who recognized Belisarius and cried out to their companions: ‘Aim at the bay and end the war at one stroke!' And ‘Aim at the bay!' was the cry that every Goth took up.

Then began a fiercer encounter even than the conflict with the Persians on the Euphrates bank. Not only was Belisarius's squadron fighting against enormous odds, but every man of the Goths was eager to win imperishable renown by killing ‘the Greek on the white-faced. bay', as they called him. Never, I think, was such a bitter struggle seen
since the world began. Belisarius's staff fought desperately at his side, warding off javelin-casts and spear-thrusts; Belisarius himself, cutting and thrusting and parrying with his sword, pressed forward into the very heart of the enemy. His horse Balan fought with him, having been trained to rear up and strike with his fore-hooves and savage an enemy. Still the cry continued in the Gothic tongue, ‘Aim at the bay!' ‘Kill the Greek on the white-faced bay!' Belisarius shouted for a new sword, for his own was blunted with use. A dying groom, one Maxentius, gave him his. Belisarius soon broke off this gift-sword close to the hilt, and a third one was found for him, taken from a dead Gothic nobleman, which lasted him through that battle and many another. After three hours or more of this fighting the Goths had their bellyful and turned in flight, leaving a full thousand dead behind them on the meadow. (Four times that number had been engaged.) They say that Belisarius had accounted for sixty or more with his own right arm. He was bespattered with the blood that had spurted on him from lopped limbs and severed necks, but by some miracle had not been so much as scratched by any Gothic weapon. When Belisarius fought he did not smile and joke as most of his men did; he considered it a very serious matter to kill a man, especially a fellow-Christian. Nor did he ever boast of his battle exploits.

The wounded men rode back to Rome in small parties. The last of them to arrive brought the news that Belisarius was killed; because when Maxentius died the groom was confused with the master. Then all of us in the city gave ourselves up for lost, except my mistress Antonina, who would not believe the news, and behaved with the greatest fortitude. After a tour of the sentries on the walls and an inspection of the garrisons at the gates, to encourage the men and forestall treachery, she took up her station at the Flaminian Gate. My mistress was popular with the men – courage is a commodity that is always prized. Also, she was not above exchanging bawdy jokes with them, and was free with her money, and could sit a horse well and even handle a bow.

Meanwhile Belisarius pursued the fleeing enemy towards the bridge, hoping to drive them back across the river and thus to relieve the detachment which, for all he knew, was still desperately holding out in the flanking towers at the bridge. But by this time a strong force of Gothic infantry had also crossed the river. They opened their ranks for a moment to receive the cavalry fugitives, then closed them again
and held their ground, greeting our men with a shower of arrows. Belisarius wheeled round his squadron, now greatly reduced in numbers, and seized a hill near by from which he could see clearly whether the Imperial banner still flew from the towers. It had gone. Then 10,000 Gothic cavalry thundered against him and he was forced from his position. His men still had their quivers full of arrows, for the fighting had been hand to hand. They were now able, by picking off the leading horsemen of the enemy, to fight a profitable rearguard action all the way back to Rome.

Belisarius arrived at the Salarian Gate at dusk with large forces of the enemy pursuing him, just out of bowshot.

As I have said, my mistress Antonina was at the Flaminian Gate, a whole mile to the west of the Salarian, where there was a guard of marines. The marines had heard the news of Belisarius's death, and could not believe that it was indeed he who was clamouring for admission. They suspected a trick. Belisarius crossed the bridge over the fosse and came close to the Gate shouting: ‘Do you not know Belisarius? Open at once, Sailors, or I will come round by the Flaminian Gate and flog every second man of you.'

His face was unrecognizable for blood and dust; but some of the men knew his voice and were for admitting him. Others were afraid, lest they should admit the Goths too. The gates remained shut, Belisarius and his bodyguard crowding up against them between the two flanking towers. The Goths halted in disorder on the other side of the bridge and began encouraging one another to charge across. Then Belisarius, who was never at a loss, dug his heels into Balan, uttered his war-cry, and charged fiercely back with his exhausted men across the bridge. In the growing darkness the Goths supposed that a new force of the enemy had sallied from the Gate. They fled in all directions.

At this, the marines at last opened to Belisarius. They humbly begged his pardon, which he granted; and soon he was embracing his Antonina and asking her for the news of the day. She told him of the measures that she had taken on her own initiative for the defence of the city. When the rumour came of his death she had strengthened the guards on the wall: she had dealt out picks to the common Roman labourers, and detailed them for duty, a few to each guard-tower. She had told them: ‘It is a simple task. Keep your eyes open. If you see a Goth climbing up the wall, shout “Turn out, the guard!” loudly and,
at the same moment, strike him with your pick!' She had also enlisted, from the unemployed artisans: masons and smiths with their sledge-hammers, timber-men and butchers with their axes, and watermen with their boat-hooks. She had said: ‘I do not need to teach you how to handle your arms.' But she had given them helmets to remind them that they were soldiers. Belisarius greatly approved of her work.

Then, wearied as he was, and having eaten nothing since the morning, he yet made a tour of the fortifications to see that everything was in order and every man at his post. There are fourteen main gates to Rome and several more postern gates; it was midnight before he had completed his rounds. He went round right-handed, that is to say the way of the sun; but when he reached the Tiburtine Gate to the east of the city a messenger from Bessas overtook him, having run from the Praenestine Gate which Belisarius had just quitted. He brought alarming news. Bessas had heard that the Goths had broken in on the other side of the city, by the Janiculan Hill, and were already close to the Capitol.

The news caused a panic among the Isaurians who were guarding the Tiburtine Gate; but Belisarius, questioning the messenger, soon began to doubt the story, especially as Bessas's sole informant had been a priest of St Peter's Cathedral. He sent scouts at once to investigate; and presently they returned, reporting that no Goths had been seen anywhere. So he circulated an order to all officers that they were to believe no rumours put about by enemies inside the walls to frighten them from their posts. If danger came he undertook to inform them of it himself; but they must stand fast, each trusting that his brave comrades at other parts of the walls were doing the same. He ordered fires to be lighted along the whole circuit of the walls, so that the Goths might see that Rome was well guarded and the citizens might sleep more securely.

When he came round to the Salarian Gate again he found a crowd of soldiers and Roman citizens listening to the speech of a Gothic nobleman. The Goth addressed himself to the citizens in good Latin (which the marines did not understand), reproaching them for their faithlessness in admitting a pack of Greeks from Constantinople into their city. ‘Greeks!' he cried, contemptuously. ‘What salvation do you expect from a pack of Greeks? Surely you know what Greeks are from those whom you have seen – those companies of strutting Greek
actors and those lewd pantomime dancers and those thieving, cowardly sailors?'

Belisarius turned to the marines and said to them smiling: ‘I wish that you understood Latin.'

They asked: ‘What does he say?'

‘He is particularly abusing you sailors, and some of the things that he says are true.'

My mistress persuaded him to eat a little bread and meat and drink a cup of wine. As he was eating, five of the leading Senators came to him trembling, and asked: ‘Tomorrow, General, you will yield?'

He laughed: ‘Treat the Goths with contempt, my illustrious friends, for they are beaten already.'

They looked away from him and exchanged glances of wonder. He told them: ‘I am not either joking or bragging, for today I learned that the victory is ours if we behave with ordinary prudence.'

‘But, Illustrious Belisarius, the arrows of their infantry headed you away from the Mulvian Bridge, and their cavalry in enormous strength chased you all the way back to Rome.'

Belisarius wiped his lips with a napkin and said: ‘Excellent fellow-patricians, you have described exactly what happened, and this is the reason why I say that the Goths are already beaten.'

They muttered indignantly to themselves that he must be mad. But anyone with the least common sense would have seen at once what he meant. Their infantry had shown only defensive powers against him, and their cavalry also had been unable to ride him down, even with enormous superiority in numbers, and fresh horses. For, not being archers, they were obliged to keep their distance. We recalled another remark of Belisarius's, made at Daras: rare as was a general who could handle 40,000 men, he was rarer still who could handle 80,000. What of Wittich, who had brought nearly twice that number against us?

The first night of the Defence of Rome passed, and no attack was made at dawn.

T
HE
first action that the Goths took against the city was to build six fortified camps, complete with ditch, rampart, and palisade. These were sited at intervals around the whole northern circuit, at distances from the walls varying between three hundred paces and one mile. Their next action was to cut every one of the fourteen aqueducts that had for centuries past supplied the city with abundant pure water fetched from a great distance. However, there were rain-water wells, and the western wall enclosed a stretch of the River Tiber, so we were by no means waterless; but the richer citizens took it very ill that they were obliged to drink rain-water and, if they wished to keep clean, to bathe in the river, being deprived of their own commodious baths. Belisarius was careful to stop up the aqueduct conduits with masonry at convenient points. He also built semicircular screens enclosing several of the city gates from inside, with only a small, well-guarded door in each of them, to prevent the citizens from making a sudden treacherous rush and admitting the enemy. The Flaminian Gate was so closely threatened by a Gothic camp that he blocked it altogether. He inspected the whole course of the defences very carefully, both from inside and outside, in search of a weak spot, inquiring especially about the exits of the city sewers; but he found that these emptied into the Tiber, under the water, so that nobody could enter by them.

The greatest inconvenience that we suffered at first was from the stoppage of the public corn-mills on the Janiculan Hill, which were worked by water from Trajan's aqueduct. Since we had no horses or oxen in the city to spare for turning the cranks, for the time being we were compelled to use slaves. But Belisarius soon had the mills working again by water-power. Just below the Aurelian Bridge he tied two stout ropes across the river, tightened them with a winch, and used them to hold two large barges in position, head-on to the current and only two feet apart. He put a corn-mill in each barge, geared to a mill-wheel suspended between them, which the rush of water from under the arch of the bridge turned round at a good speed. When he saw that the method was successful he strengthened the ropes; and forty
more barges, in couples with mill-wheels between them, were tied on to the original pair in a long line downstream. Thenceforward we had no difficulty in grinding our corn; except when a few days later the Goths, having heard of the mills from deserters, sent trunks of trees floating down the river, some of which were carried against the mill-wheels and broke them. Belisarius then tied an iron chain-work across the bridge, constructed like a shallow fishing-seine. The floating tree-trunks were caught in this, and boatmen pulled them ashore to cut up as fuel for the public bakeries.

The citizens of Rome had hitherto been entirely unacquainted with the trials and perils of war, but Belisarius soon let them know that they must not expect to be inactive spectators, like the audience at a play: what privations the soldiers suffered, they must suffer too. In order to spare a reserve force of fighting men who could be hurried to any part of the walls threatened by attack, he enrolled still more unemployed labourers as sentries. He gave some of them daily archery practice in the Fields of Mars, and others he trained as spearmen. But they were sulky soldiers and remained a rabble, however hard the officers and sergeants worked at them.

Wherever Belisarius went in the city, Romans of both sexes and every social class had only black looks for him. They were angry that he had dared to take the field against the Goths before he had received sufficient troops from the Emperor, and thus involved them in a siege that threatened to end in starvation and massacre. King Wittich was told by deserters that the Senate was especially indignant against Belisarius; and therefore sent envoys to the city to take advantage of the disharmony.

These Goths, brought blindfolded into the Senate House, were permitted to address the Senators in the presence of Belisarius and his staff. They forgot the courtesies of the occasion and spoke roughly to the luxurious patricians, accusing them of having broken faith with the Gothic Army of National Defence and admitted a mixed force of ‘Greek interlopers' to man the fortifications of the city. On Wittich's behalf they offered a general amnesty conditional upon Belisarius's quitting the city at once; they would even undertake to give him ten days' grace before starting in pursuit, which was most generous, they said, considering that the forces at his disposal were wholly inadequate to the defence of so enormous a stretch of walls.