Count Belisarius (52 page)

If I am right in so interpreting his thoughts, a great disappointment was in store for him. Never before in the world, I think, has a loyal and victorious general received so cold a welcome home from his Emperor. The city mob went perfectly wild in its expressions of admiration for Belisarius, acclaiming him as their only sure defender against the Persians. But Justinian was so jealous that he withheld the deserved triumph; nor did he even make a public exhibition of the Gothic spoils. These were landed privately at the Imperial port and stored in the Porphyry Palace, where none but members of the Senate were permitted to view them. Justinian was for not giving any of the
money to Belisarius; for fear, I suppose, that he would scatter it to the crowd as largesse and so increase his popularity. But Theodora insisted that he should have at least half a million for the expenses of his household, because the men drew no pay or rations from public funds unless on active service. During all his wars, Belisarius not only gave his Household Troops extra pay and rations out of his own pocket, but made good their losses in arms and equipment — which was not at all a usual practice: he also awarded them rings and chains of honour for any signal military exploit and pensioned off the sick and wounded who were incapacitated for further fighting. More than this, if any old soldier came to him and said, as it might be, ‘I lost an arm in your first Persian campaign and have come to beggary at last,' he would give him money, though the man had not been under his direct command at all. Such generosity, of course, increased the suspicion of Justinian whose standard of what was due to distressed veterans was a niggardly one.

The citizens used to say of Belisarius: ‘He is a sort of monster. No man ever saw him drunk; he dresses as simply as his station allows; so far from being lecherous, he has not so much as cast a longing eye on a single one of his captured women though greater beauties than the Vandal and Gothic ladies do not exist in the world; he is not even a religious enthusiast.' Accompanied by my mistress and a large retinue of cuirassiers, he would leave his house in the High Street on foot every day and walk all the way to the Square of Augustus to attend to his business at the War Office, and later to pay his duty to his Sovereigns. The crowd never tired of staring at his tall figure and frank, grave face, and at the soldiers marching with even tread behind him. These were dark-skinned, delicate-featured Persians, and blond, yellow-haired Vandals, and big-limbed, auburn-haired Goths, and bow-legged, slant-eyed Huns, and Moors with crinkly black hair and hooked noses and thick lips. People used to stare at my mistress and whisper: ‘She is a sort of monster, too. She destroyed many Goths herself, aiming with a catapult, and it was she who relieved Rome.' I once overheard a priest say of her: ‘Well did Solomon prophesy of this harlot in the Books of Proverbs: “She hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to Hell, going down to the chambers of death.”'

Then, although only a distorted imagination could have read Belisarius's genuine modesty as affectation, Narses and Cappadocian John
told Justinian: ‘He is contemplating a rebellion. Look how he courts the favour of the mob, so that his least movement through the streets becomes a sort of festival procession. The radiance of Your Own Glorious Majesty is by contrast dimmed for the vulgar eye. He believes now that the two Empires are his for the taking: he has come here to Constantinople to make a parade of his captives, and will in due time attempt to snatch the Diadem from Your Serenity's sacred brow. Be the first to act.'

Justinian, being cowardly, put them off, saying: ‘I have no evidence as yet.' He was afraid of Theodora, to whom my mistress Antonina was so dear a friend; besides, if Khosrou made another invasion in the following year, Belisarius alone would be capable of stemming the attack.

As for King Wittich, he paid homage to Justinian and even renounced his Arian errors; so that he was raised to patrician rank and given great estates in Galatia — which marched with those that had been awarded to Geilimer. But the marriage between him and Matasontha was dissolved at their joint request. As a reward for her services in the matter of the burned granaries, Matasontha was permitted to marry Justinian's own nephew Germanus, the one who had helped to put down the mutiny of Stotzas. The other Gothic captives were formed into cavalry units and sent to guard the Danube frontier. So much, then, for the Goths.

At Constantinople we saw for the first time the completed church of St Sophia. The architect was Anthemius of Tralles. Justinian had told him: ‘Spare no expense to make this the most beautiful and lasting building in the world, that God's name and mine may be glorified.' Anthemius was equal to the task. It is his name that deserves the principal glory; for Justinian merely approved his designs. If any other names are to be honoured, let them be those of Isidore of Miletus, Anthemius's assistant, and of Belisarius, whose Vandalic victory provided both the treasure which paid for the construction of the Cathedral and the necessary slave-labour.

The Cathedral overtops all the neighbouring buildings, lofty though they are. To compare greater with less, it is like some huge merchant ship anchored among ferry-boats in the Horn. Its proportions are so nicely calculated, however, that there is nothing brutal or forbidding in its size. It has, on the contrary, a graceful but serious nobility which I can only express by saying: ‘Had Belisarius been as
fine an architect as he was a soldier, that is the sort of church which he would have built.'

St Sophia's is more than 200 feet broad, and 300 feet long and 150 feet high. A huge cupola crowns it; and, as one gazes up from within at the ceiling, which is inlaid throughout with pure gold, it seems as though the whole structure must collapse at any moment, for there are no cross-beams or central piers to support it, but each part springs inward and upward to the central point of the cupola. The citizens tell country visitors: ‘A demon, at the Emperor's command, suspended the cupola from the sky by a golden chain until the other parts were raised to meet it.' Many visitors take this pleasantry for truth.

There are two porticoes, each with a domed roof inlaid with gold, one for male and one for female worshippers. Who could worthily describe the beauty of the carved columns and the mosaics with which the building is adorned? The place resembles nothing so much as a spring meadow under a broad golden sun, with the great freestone pillars of the transept rising from it like trees; many different colours of marble have been worked into the walls and floor – red and green and speckled purple and straw-colour and butter-yellow and pure white, with here and there the blue sheen of lapis-lazuli. Exquisite carving and chasing and moulding make every detail delightful, and the numerous windows in the walls and cupola flood the transept with light. To appreciate this building and to worship in it the Wisdom to which it is dedicated one does not need to be an Orthodox Christian; and it is open at all times even to poor worshippers, so long as they have not offended against the laws and behave in a seemly manner. A beggar can enter and imagine himself an emperor, standing in the midst of such lavish splendour; only a few parts of the building are barred to him — such as the sanctuary, which is plated with 40,000 pounds' weight of glittering silver, and certain private chapels. As for relics of the saints and martyrs, they are stored here in profusion, and some of the inner doors are made of wood that (they say) once formed part of Noah's ark.

It was during a visit to St Sophia's, I believe, that the conviction came upon Theodosius that he was living a very aimless life, and that he would be at ease again only if he returned to his monastery. It was not that he was more truly a Christian now than before, but that at Ephesus his life had been regulated according to a strict rule and he had not needed ever to think what to do next. Theodosius was no
vicious man; indeed, in accepting the monastic restraint upon the passions, he was enduring what most men would have found unbearable. He was aware, too, that he was the subject of continual gossip in connexion with my mistress Antonina, being called her pleasure-boy; and my mistress, in order to stifle this gossip, always addressed him with humiliating harshness in public, though very affectionately in private. Theodosius was also very weary of war and could not face the prospect of still another campaign — especially in the East, where Belisarius was likely soon to be sent: great heat always made him sick and empty headed. He therefore secretly packed up a few possessions one night, took a passage on a fast merchant vessel, and went off to Ephesus; leaving behind him a short note of apology and farewell.

My mistress was so grieved at his disappearance that she could not touch food or conduct her daily business, and presently took to her bed. She was forty years old now, and the anxieties of the Italian campaign had given her an anxious, haggard look, of which no cosmetics or massage could rid her. Also, the change of her blood had recently begun, so that she was in a nervous and irritable state; she fell into a melancholy from which Belisarius, for all his love and patience, could not rouse her. It seems that she took Theodosius's departure as a sign that her great beauty (which he used to celebrate, courtier-fashion, in songs of his own making) had left her, together with all her widely acknowledged wit and charm. I consider that Belisarius showed true magnanimity on this occasion. When she confessed that only the presence of Theodosius could revive her, he went directly to Justinian and made a humble petition that Theodosius be recalled.

Justinian consented to write to the Abbot of Ephesus, desiring him to release Theodosius from his vows and send him back; but Theodosius claimed the right to become a monk as one that no human authority, not even the Emperor's, could deny him.

When, in the spring, King Khosrou resumed his military operations and Belisarius was sent hurriedly to the frontier to oppose him, my mistress remained behind in the city, saying that in such low spirits she would be only a hindrance to him.

N
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my story enters on a phase in which I have no pleasure, since it was one of great unhappiness for my mistress Antonina and greater unhappiness, even, for Belisarius, her husband; and this despite a remarkable victory that he won over the Persians. But the evil must be told with the good.

My mistress, as I have said, remained in Constantinople while Belisarius was sent against King Khosrou in the late spring of the year of our Lord 541. He had spent as much of his time as his Court duties permitted in training the Gothic recruits of the Household Regiment in the use of the bow and his own well-tried system of cavalry tactics. But there was a very different sort of fighting material waiting for him in the East. On his arrival at Daras — a place, he wrote, sweetened for him by the memory of her visit to him there — he found the Imperial Forces sunk into a sadly low state of discipline and training; and, as for courage, they trembled at the very name of Persia. His own 7,000 men were all that he could count upon for serious fighting. Many regular regiments, of full strength according to the Army List and drawing full pay and rations, were short of several hundred men, and of the so-called trained men one-half were unarmed labourers employed on improving the fortifications of Daras and other places – according to the plan which Belisarius had himself drawn up twelve years before, and of which the necessity had only lately been discovered.

King Khosrou differed from most Eastern monarchs with military ambitions, whose practice is to undertake easy objectives in person while consigning the hazardous ones to their lieutenants: contrariwise, he always chose the post of greatest difficulty. On the invitation of the native Colchians, who were being shamefully squeezed by Justinian's tax-gatherers (though their land was only a Roman protectorate, not a possession), he invaded Colchis by a route through the foot-hills of the Caucasus which no Persian army had ever taken before and which had always been considered impossible. He had sent a large force of pioneers ahead of him to hack a road, through virgin forest and across
the face of precipices, sufficiently broad and firm even for the transport of elephants. His design was not suspected, because he had given out that the expedition was against a tribe of Huns that had been raiding into Persian Iberia. To be short: he penetrated to the coast of Colchis, captured the principal Roman fortress of Petra, killed the Roman Governor, was acclaimed by the Colchians as a deliverer, took possession of the country.

Belisarius heard of the expedition from his spies across the Mesopotamian border, though no news of its outcome was obtainable as yet. He decided that the only hope for Colchis lay in his drawing Khosrou back in a hurry by some counter-stroke. He summoned all available forces from the various garrison cities and spoke very bluntly to his generals, reproaching them for having neglected the forces under their command. He threatened that, unless these were properly armed, equipped, and brought up to strength within two months' time he would see to it that they were all degraded in rank. He also insisted that as generalissimo he expected unhesitating obedience. ‘Nevertheless,' he said, ‘I have been ten years in the Western Empire, and cannot be expected to appreciate the present strategic position in every detail. I should be glad to have a frank opinion from every one of you as to the practicability of an immediate cavalry-raid across the frontier. The Great King is far away. Though he has no doubt left his frontier fortresses well guarded, this is perhaps an excellent opportunity for avenging his sack of Antioch and for restoring the offensive capacities of our men. The Emperor has sent me here for the express purpose of upholding the honour of the Roman Army.'

Boutzes, anxious to regain Belisarius's good opinion of him, agreed that a raid would be an excellent thing; and so did Peter, the Governor of Daras, for the same reason. But the joint-commanders of the Thracian troops from the Lebanon — the same two who had betrayed Antioch by escaping with all their men from the Daphne gate — made difficulties. If they came with Belisarius, they said, there was nothing to prevent the King of the Saracens from raiding Syria and Palestine in their absence.