Count Belisarius

CHAPTER 15

The 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 threatencd 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 com; 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.

Belisarius replied briefly that the Roman patricians had not been treacherous: they had merely admitted fellow-patricians into the city, together with the Imperial Forces that these noblemen lawfully commanded. 'My Gothic lords, I am empowered to answer with the voice of this loyal Senate, being of high rank among them, as well as with that of my Serene Master. I reply, then, that it was not Goths or any other Germans who originally built this city or these walls — why, you have not even kept them in good repair! Thus it is you who are the interlopers and without any title to possession. Wittich, your king, is not even recognized by my Serene Master as his vassal. So away now, I advise you, excellent Goths, and use your eloquence to persuade your compatriots of their folly; or the time will come, I warn you, when you and they will be glad to hide your heads in bramble-bushes and thistle-patches to avoid our lances. Meanwhile, understand well that Rome is only to be won from us by siege-craft and hard fighting. Siege-craft is an art in which no Goth, fortunately for ourselves, was ever adept; diercfore our forces, though small at present, are more than adequate to defend the walls which our ancestors built and which you Goths have abandoned without a struggle.'

King Wittich was anxious to hear from the returning envoys what sort of a man this Belisarius was. They told him: 'He is a bearded lion of a man, has no fear, uses few unnecessary words; in feature and colour and bodily build resembles ourselves (but that his hair is dark and his eyes, which are blue like our own, are set deep in his head). His swift look and gracious bearing impose respect on all about him. We also saw Antonina, his wife, a lioness of the same breed, red-haired. King Wittich, you must be prepared to fight energetically.'

It was a fortnight before Wittich could complete his preparations for the assault. When, one morning at dawn, Belisarius saw from the rampart what these preparations were, he began to laugh; which caused a scandal among the citizens. They asked one another indignantly: 'Does he laugh that we are to be eaten up by these Arian beasts?'

I must confesss that I, too, did not sec where the joke lay, for as I looked I could make out, a quarter of a mile away, a number of formidable framework structures on wheels, being drawn towards us by teams of oxen and escorted by swarms of Gothic lancers. They were like towers, each with an inside stairway mounting to a platform at the top, and seemed to be of an equal height with our wall. There were also a great number of long scaling-ladders being carried forward by their infantry, and wagons piled high with what appeared to be bundles of faggots, and more wagons loaded with planks. It was plain that their intention was to fill up a part of our moat with the faggots, then wheel the towers across a plank road resting on the faggots and take the walls by escalade. There were also four smaller wheeled structures encased in horse-hide, each with an iron-tipped beam protruding. These I recognized as battering-rams; the beam is swung on ropes within the structure and by repeated pounding will eventually knock a hole in even the stoutest wall.

They chose the Salarian Gate as the main point of their attack, and Belisarius immediately concentrated on the neighbouring towers all the defensive artillery within reach. This consisted of scorpions, which are small stone-throwing machines worked by the tight twisting and sudden release of a hemp rope; and wild asses, a larger sort of scorpion; and catapults, which are mechanical bows, worked on the same principle as these other machines, from the grooves of which thick bolts with wooden feathers are shot with force sufficient to outrange any ordinary bow. We had a few wolves also, which are machines for hooking the head of a battering-ram as it strikes and hauling it sideways, with a pulley, so that the tower overturns.

Belisarius called calmly to his armour-bearer, Chorsomantis, a Massagetic Hun, and said: 'Fetch me my hunting-bow and two deer-arrows, Chorsomantis.' These were his weapons of precision. A Gothic nobleman, a cousin as it proved to King Wittich, was superintending the advance of the enemy siege-engines. He was armed in gilded armour and wore a tall purple plume. But while he was still out of bow-shot, as he thought, death overtook him: Belisarius, with careful aim, struck him in the throat with a deer-arrow, so that he toppled dead from his horse. The range was not less than 200 paces. Unaware that this was Belisarius's customary accuracy of aim, the Goths were appalled by so evil an omen. A taunting cheer went up from the walls, and the Goths paused for a while while the dead man was carried away. Another nobleman, his brother, then took command; but as he signalled for the cavalcade to advance, Belisarius aimed again and proved, to anyone who might doubt it, that the first shot had not been a matter of mere luck. This time the arrow struck the Goth in the mouth, as he was shouting something, and the barbed head stood out through the back of his neck; he, too, fell dead. I began dancing for joy and cried: 'Oh, well done, my lord I Give us leave to shoot now!' For I had a bow in my hand, as had all my fcllow-domestics.

He said:' Wait until the trumpet blows the signal. Then let everyone about me aim at the oxen.'

The trumpet sounded, we all bent our bows and let fly. More than a thousand Goths fell, and all the oxen, poor beasts. A fearful cry went up. Then, I remember, I aimed at a tall infantryman as he ran forward with a bundle of faggots; but 1 missed my mark, and the arrow struck a horse in the rump, which reared up and threw his rider. I aimed at the horseman as he lay senseless; after three shots my arrow kissed his shoulder and glanced off. Since he continued to lie there as if dead, I looked for other targets, but saw none; for the Goths had retreated in consternation and taken up positions out of arrow range.

A large Gothic force of all arms then moved off out of sight. Though we did not know it, they were ordered to attack the Wild Beast Pen near the Praenestine Gate, two miles away to the right of us. But since 40,000 men remained as a threat to the Salarian Gate, Belisarius could not spare any troops from here as reinforcements elsewhere.

In the meanwhile there was great danger at the Aelian Gate across the river, where Constantine was in command. Only a stone's throw from the walls, just across the Aelian Bridge which leads to St Peter's Cathedral, stands the marble mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. This is a square building surmounted by a cylindrical drum around which runs a covered colonnade; the drum is capped by a rounded dome. In the construction of this wonderful edifice, no mortar at all was used, but only white marble stones, jointed together. Along the colonnade at intervals stand equestrian statues, also in white marble; they represent, I believe, the generals who served under Hadrian in his wars. The mausoleum was used as an outwork of the fortifications, the bridge being an extension of the City wall. It was here that Constantine's 300 men stood on guard, with catapults and sharp-shooting archers and a small detachment of army-farriers provided with heavy hammers.

The Gothic commander of the force ordered to assault this place was a man of discretion. Realizing that the part of the main wall which was protected by the river on cither side of the Aelian Bridge would be weakly held, he kept a number of boats ready for an attack at a favourable point half a mile away upstream. This was a mud-flat under the walls sufficiently firm and wide to plant scaling-ladders upon. Here it was his plan to send an escalade party across in the boats, as soon as the attack against the mausoleum itself had been launched.

He handled the mausoleum attack ably enough. His men — heavy-armed infantry, with scaling-ladders — moved under his direction down the covered cloisters which run from St Peter's Cathedral to within a very short distance of the mausoleum. Constantine's men in the colonnade of statues, though on the alert, could do nothing until the Goths emerged from the cloisters. They then defended themselves vigorously, but only with arrows and darts: the catapults could not be depressed to fire at such a steep angle. Next, large bodies of Gothic archers, covering all four corners of the mausoleum and protected by huge shields, opened a most harassing cross-fire upon the colonnade, causing the defenders heavy losses. The situation grew dangerous. Constantine, warned of the impending attack from the mud-flat, had to leave hastily with twenty men to repel it. There was no capable officer to take over the command from him.

Soon scaling-ladders were planted against the mausoleum walls, and up clambered the Goths in complete mail-armour. The defenders' arrows and darts made little impression upon them. Then Rome would have been lost but for the sudden thought of a brave sergeant of farriers. He struck with his hammer at one of the statues and broke off a leg. His neighbour seized this huge lump of marble and hurled it down the ladder. The leading Goth fell stunned, involving in his crashing fall a whole row of climbing men behind him. The same farrier-sergeant broke off another leg, and down came the statue; this he frantically beat into convenient pieces which his neighbour distributed to all who needed them. Then the Goths were pelted from all their ladders with the mutilated limbs and trunks of these antique heroes and their steeds. They ran bawling away into the open, pursued by arrows; where they soon came within catapult-range. The whir of the great bolts, that would drive right through a man or a tree, made them run all the faster. Constantine easily checked the attack from the mud-flat, so that here on the western side the Goths failed in their hopes, as they failed also eastward at the Tiburtine Gate and northward at the Flaminian, where in each case the walls rise from a steep slope, disadvantageous for assault.

At the Salarian Gate the main Gothic force still threatened, but by now they kept well out of range, warned by the fate of one of their chiefs; he had been standing perched on the branch of a pine-tree, close to the trunk, shooting at us on the battlements. My mistress Antonina was managing a catapult, for she had learned how to lay a sight with these machines. Two men would wind the crank until the manager signed 'enough'; while he was studying his target, his mate would put a bolt in the horn groove and release the catch when the signal came. I was acting as mate to my mistress, and two Roman artisans were at the crank. She laid carefully on this sharp-shooting Goth, and presently signalled 'Release'. I pressed the lever, and the bolt whizzed out. Then a fearful sight was seen. The bolt, striking the Goth fair and square in the middle of his corselet, drove through and sunk for half its length into the tree; he was pinned there like a crow nailed to a barn-door as a warning to other crows.

My mistress was commanding here as lieutenant for Belisarius, who had now hurried away to help Bessas and his men at the Wild Beast Pen — a place close to the Praenestine Gate — where a strong attack had been launched. It was triangular in shape, formed by two weak outer walls at right-angles to each other built up against the main wall; and had formerly been used as a pen for lions destined for sport in the Colosseum. The outer walls could not be held by us, being low and of insufficient thickness to allow a breastwork to be built upon them. Wittich was aware, moreover, that the main wall which they enclosed was ruinous, and that it would soon yield to the pounding of a battering-ram. Gothic infantry clambered across the fosse with picks to undermine one of the outer walls, which would meanwhile screen them somewhat against arrow-attack from the battlements. Once the Pen was captured he could have hopes of victory. Faggots and planks were ready, and scaling-towcrs and ladders, just as at the Salarian Gate. A large force of Gothic lancers stood by.

The Goths across the fosse swung their picks industriously; and after a time a portion of the wall fell outward with a crash and they swarmed into the Pen. Belisarius at once sent two strong parties of Isaurians down over the main wall, by ladders, upon the outer walls. From here they leaped among the crowded Goths and closed the entrance of the Pen; then butchered them at their leisure. For whereas the Isaurians carried short cutlasses, which are excellent for fighting in cramped quarters, the Goths had two-handed broadswords, which need plenty of space for effective use. More Gothic infantry ran forward to assist their comrades, but suddenly the Praenestinc Gate near by swung open: out poured a column of cuirassiers of Belisarius's Household, together with a few Thracian Goths. They charged the barbarian lancers, who were standing about in no regular order, and drove them in rout with heavy loss back to their camp, half a mile away. Then the cuirassiers turned and set fire to the scaling-towers and rams and ladders, which made a huge blaze; and so rode back in safety. A sudden sally was also made at the Salarian Gate, at my mistress's order, with the same success: here also the Goths fled and the engines were burned. Then our men hurried out and stripped the dead. With my mistress's permission, I went out with them and found the man whom I had killed: I saw that his neck had been broken. I took away his golden torque and the golden-hilted dagger from his belt — a eunuch house-slave playing the hero.

By the late afternoon the attack had everywhere failed. In shooting against so dense a mass as the Goths presented, the worst archers in the world could hardly have failed to cause great destruction; and we had a number of quick-firing marksmen with us and a plentiful supply of arrows. We reckoned the enemy losses that day as upward of 20,000 killed or disabled. The Goths withdrew sullenly to their camps, and all that night we could hear psalm-singing and lamentations as they buried their dead. On the following morning we were ready for them again; but no new attack was made at any point, nor for many days afterwards.

Belisarius had written to Justinian once more, explaining his need of 30,000 reinforcements and urging that at least 10,000 be sent without an hour's delay. Before the letter could reach Constantinople news came that reinforcements were already on their way. But it seemed that they numbered a mere 2,000 and had been forced by bad weather to winter in Greece, unable to cross the Adriatic Sea. There was no indication that they were the advance-guard of an army of reputable size. Belisarius knew now that he would be confined within the walls of Rome for three or four months longer at least. Provisions were still being brought into the city at night, by the gates on the southern side, but not in sufficient quantities to feed 600,000 persons for any length of time. He therefore ordered the speedy evacuation to Naples of all women, children, and aged people, and of all other civilians, except priests and senators and such, who were incapable of bearing arms.

Between dusk and dawn the Goths now kept close inside their palisaded camps; this was the fighting hour of the Moors, who were excused ordinary duty, but spent their nights outside the city walls. They would ride out in parties of three or four, wearing clothes of the colour of mud; and, tethering their horses in some clump of trees, hide in ditches by the wayside, or behind bushes. They would then spring upon single soldiers, cut their throats, rob them, and gallop away. Sometimes, combining their parties, they would destroy quite large companies of Goths. They used especially to lie in wait near the Gothic camp latrines, which were in each ease dug outside the ditch, in order to catch men who were taken short in the night. They also haunted the horse-lines and the grazing paddocks. It was from fear of these Moors, as I say, that the Goths learned to keep close to their camps all night. So the long processions of evacuated civilians went out unmolested, night after night; and no Gothic camp covered the road that they took.

The first party was sent to the Port of Rome, where our fleet was; from there they took ship to Naples. But the rest were forced to go on foot all the way, carrying bundles or pushing handcarts heaped with household treasures. Processions of 50,000 and upwards went out nightly, straggling down the Appian Way. It was a lamentable sight to sec them go, and many were the tears shed by these poor folk at the Appian Gate, and by the men whom they left behind. But at least they had a good road to travel by. The Appian Way is built of hard lava, as firm and unbroken as when it was first paved, hundreds of years ago under the Republic. Furthermore, Belisarius provided each party in turn with a cavalry escort for the first stage of the journey, and gave them sufficient food to last until they came to Naples.

On the day after the departure of the first party from the Port of Rome, which lies eighteen miles from the city, King Wittich seized the fortifications at this place; we had been unable to spare troops to guard them, and sailors are not fighters. Hitherto convoys of stores had reached us in barges from the Port, hauled up the river by oxen. We were now cut off from the sea, and our fleet retired to Naples. This occurred in April. In May we were put on half-rations of corn. In June the reinforcements arrived from Greece, under a general named Martin: 1,600 heathen Slavs and Bulgarian Huns.

These Slavs, who have curiously European features for so wild a race, had recently appeared in great force on the banks of the Danube, dispossessing the Gepids. They are horse-archers and excellent fighters if well fed, well paid and well led; and are also men of their word, but very dirty in their habits. Justinian had provided them with body-armour and helmets- usually they wear only leather jerkins and trews. He had also paid a great sum of money on their account to the priests of their tribe: for the Slavs have all things in common, and the priests, by whose ministrations they worship the Lightning God, act as their treasurers. When these Slavs learned that Belisarius was of their race and even knew a little of their language, they became well disposed to him; and so did the Huns (whom I have already described) on finding a few fellow-tribesmen of theirs in his Household Regiment held in great honour.

Belisarius now proposed to take the offensive against the Goths, though 1,600 men are not 10,000. He did not wish the new arrivals to feel that they were cooped up like prisoners in the city; as soon as they had been posted to their stations and given instruction in their guard-duties he staged a demonstration for their benefit. In broad daylight he sent out from the Salarian Gate 200 of his Household cuirassiers, under an Illyrian named Trajan, a troop commander and a wonderfully cool fellow. Following the orders that they had received, these men galloped to a little hill within sight of the walls and there formed up in a ring. Out rushed the indignant Goths from the nearest camp, snatching up their weapons and mounting their horses in great eagerness to attack them. By the time that it takes a Christian to say a Paternoster slowly, Trajan's men had shot 4,000 arrows into their disorderly column and killed or wounded 800 horsemen; but as soon as the Gothic infantry began to arrive Trajan's men galloped off, shooting from the saddle. They accounted for 200 more Goths before they returned, without a single casualty, to the shelter of the gate, where they entered under covering fire from a massed battery of catapults. Observe: the Gothic horsemen were armed only with lance and sword, and those of their infantry who were archers wore no body-armour and would go nowhere without the escort of mail-clad spearmen, who were very slow of foot. It was not to be wondered at that Trajan's men had it all their own way. A few days later a second force of 200 cuirassiers went out, but with a hundred Slavs attached to them for instructional purposes. They, too, seized a small hill, shot down Goths by the hundred, retired. A few days later still another force, Household cuirassiers and Bulgars, did the same thing. In these skirmishes the Goths lost 4,000 men; yet Wittich did not draw the obvious moral as to the inferiority of his armament, believing that the success of our men had been due merely to their daring. He ordered 500 of his own Royal Lancers to make a similar demonstration on a hill near the Asinarian Gate. Belisarius sent out a thousand Thracian cavalry under Bessas; the Goths were shot to pieces, hardly a hundred escaping back to their camp. The next day Wittich, who had reviled the survivors for cowards, sent out another lancer squadron of similar size. Belisarius let the Slavs and Bulgars loose on them, and every Goth was killed or taken prisoner.

The summer advanced slowly. One night a convoy came up from Terracina with sacks of coin for the payment of the troops, and with another sort of treasure for my mistress's household, namely the person of Theodosius. I must record that, although she greeted him very kindly, my mistress was so busy with her management of military affairs that the young man no longer seemed half her life; she had little time now for his sly witticisms and graces. She was prouder than ever before of being Belisarius's wife: there were continual praises of him in every common soldier's mouth and in almost every officer's, and her name was respectfully coupled with his. Theodosius, on the other hand, was a person of little importance, after all. He was not even a good marksman with a bow, and only a fair horseman — my mistress judged people mainly by these standards now, taking her duties very seriously. But she found a use for him as legal secretary to her husband. Soon it came to my ears that Constantine was reviving the old scandal among his brother-officers; and that the Catholic clergy were privately using the scandal to discredit our household among the civil population. But I said nothing, since we had troubles enough.

The same convoy also brought in a number of wagons of com. They were the last that reached us, for the Goths now began to blockade the roads closely. Seven miles south-westward from the city two great aqueducts intersected, enclosing a considerable space with their enormous brick arches; by filling up the open intervals with clay and stones the Goths made a strong fortress, to which they built outworks. There they placed a garrison of 7,000 men and were thus in command of both the Latin Way and the Appian Way. Even before the winter closed down on us there was great distress in Rome for lack of food. The remaining citizens, though impressed by Belisarius's frequent successes, refused to volunteer for active service; they grew more disaffected than ever, especially after a partial reverse that we suffered, which I shall soon describe.

It was by my mistress Antonina's vigilance that the treachery of the Pope Silverius was revealed. Belisarius had deputed to her the task of granting civilians permission to leave the city on business. She was very sharp in detecting any fraud — before she undertook this task a great number of Romans needed for defence work had managed to escape on various pretexts. One day a smooth-spoken priest came before her and asked permission to be absent for two or three nights: he had left a book in the sacristy-cupboard of his parish church near the Mulvian Bridge, and now wished to consult it. My mistress asked: 'What book?' He answered that it was the letters of St Jerome. She knew that no priest in his senses would risk passing through the Gothic lines merely to fetch these out-of-date, ill-tempered letters — of which, moreover, copies were surely to be had in any church library in Rome. But she concealed her suspicions and granted him a pass. The priest was arrested that night as he was passing out of the Pincian postern-gate. Sewn in his skirt was found a letter to King Wittich, signed by all the leading senators and by the Pope himself, offering to open the Asinarian Gate to admit the Gothic army on such a night as Wittich might appoint.

I should explain that Belisarius, in order to be as free as possible from judicial work that might interfere with his military duties, had also deputed to Antonina the settling of all civilian disputes and the punishment of all civilian offenders, though disputes and crimes of the military still came up before him. My mistress held a daily court in her quarters at the Pincian Palace. When she told him the names of the traitors and showed him the letter, he was angry but not astonished: he was aware that Wittich had threatened to kill the Roman hostages that he had at Ravenna if Italy continued to hold out against him. Belisarius did not think it just, however, that merely because the traitors were persons of such distinction they should be tried by himself rather than by her. Indeed, he was glad that the case lay in Antonina's jurisdiction: he would have been ashamed, as a devout Christian, to sit in judgement on the spiritual head of his Church. My mistress certainly had no such scruples, being still a pagan at heart. She said: 'A traitor in a mitre, or a traitor in a helmet — where is the difference?' Nevertheless, Belisarius was present at the trial, not wishing to seem a shirker of responsibility. My mistress, being unwell that day, reclined on a couch; he sat at her feet as her coadjutor.

The Pope Silverius, summoned before the court, appeared in full regalia of gold and purple and white silk, as if to overawe my mistress. He had his Fisherman's ring on his finger, his pastoral staff in his hand, the great jewelled tiara on his head. Behind him followed a retinue of bishops and deacons, splendidly gowned. But these were instructed by my mistress Antonina to wait in the first and second ante-chambers, according to their rank.

The Pope Silverius rapped with his staff on the floor and asked my mistress: 'Why, Illustrious Antonina, Sister in Christ, have you brought us here, rudely interrupting our devotions with your impetuous summons? What ails you that you could not instead come to our Palace, as courtesy demanded?'

She bent her brows in the style of Theodora and, disdaining any reply to his question, asked him directly:' Pope Silverius, what have we done to you that you should betray us to the Goths?'

He feigned indignation: 'Would you accuse the anointed successor of the Holy Apostle Peter of a miserable felony?'

But she: 'Do you think that because tradition entrusts you with the Keys of Heaven you have power also over the keys of the Asinarian Gate?'

'Who accuses us of this treachery?'

'Your own signature and seal.' She showed him the intercepted letter.

'Adulteress, it is a forgery,' he bellowed at her.

' Be respectful to the court, cleric, or you shall be scourged,' she threatened. Then she confronted him with the parish priest, who had made a full confession without any necessity of torture.

The Pope Silverius trembled for shame, yet continued to deny his guilt. The nine senators who had also signed the letter were now produced in witness against him. They had already thrown themselves on the mercy of my mistress, and tearfully blamed the Pope to his face for seducing them from their loyalty.

My mistress delivered her verdict, after a short conference with Belisarius:' Whereas the sentence that the Law requires to be inflicted on traitors, during the defence of a city, is mutilation of the features, and to be paraded for public insult through the streets, and then to be put to a disgraceful death at the stake, we yet have more regard for the good name of the Church than to keep strictly to the letter of the law. None the less, a shepherd who sells his flock to the Arian wolf cannot be allowed to retain his crook. Eugenius, disrobe this priest and give him the monk's robe hanging on the peg yonder. Silverius, you are deposed from your bishopric, and leave the city tonight.'

Although the clerics of the Papal retinue were appalled at the sacrilege when the sentence was announced to them, they could not dispute the human justice of it. I approached the Pope and took away his pastoral staff, his ring, and his tiara, laying them upon a table. Then I conducted him to a room where the regional sub-deacon was waiting. He removed all Silverius's priestly garments, until he stood before us only in his shirt — and not a hair-shirt, cither, but a fine silk one embroidered with flowers like a woman's chemise. Then we gave him the monk's robe and put it over his head, and tied the cord for him, all without a word.

When we brought him back into the court my mistress addressed him, saying: 'Spend the rest of your days in repentance, Brother Silverius, as did your illustrious predecessor, the first Bishop of Rome, after similarly breaking faith with his Master. He finally made amends by martyrdom in the Hippodrome of Caligula, close to the city — but so much sanctity we do not expect of you.'

Belisarius said nothing all this time, and appeared very ill at case.

Silverius was escorted out of the Palace by two Massagetic Huns, who placed him in the guard-room at the Pincian Gate; that night he left the city for Naples, and the East.

His subordinates met to elect a new Pope. The deacon Vigilius was the successful candidate — having gone to the trouble of bribing the electors with a matter of 15,000 gold pieces. Gold was more highly prized by these greedy clerics than ever before. The civil population was allowed only a very small corn-ration, which it would eke out with cabbage and such green herbs as nettle and dandelion and hare's car; but good food in plenty only gold could purchase. During that summer soldiers took to making nightly raids on the harvest-fields behind the Gothic lines, cutting the heads of com off by the handful with sickles and thrusting them into sacks slung over the backs of their horses. A sack of com fetched a hundred times its peace-time price.

As winter drew on, these supplies ceased: sausages made from mule-flesh were the only palatable supplement to the meagre corn-ration that even the wealthiest purse could buy. Cats, rats, and axle-grease were eaten. Of wine alone there was no great shortage, since Belisarius had requisitioned all stocks from private cellars for public distribution. The city was very dose to famine; yet, strangely enough, 1 never saw a single under-nourished priest. 'Ah,' said my mistress drily, when I remarked on this to her, 'the ravens feed them, as they miraculously fed the Prophet Elijah.'

As for the nine senators who had attached their names to the intercepted letter, Antonina could not injustice punish them more severely than the Pope. She banished them, confiscated their goods, and sent them out of the city in Brother Silverius's company. Belisarius was still uneasy: other Romans as well might be implicated in the plot. He therefore employed locksmiths to change or interchange the locks of all the gates twice a month, so that it would be more difficult for traitors to obtain a key to fit them. He also appointed officers for guard duty at these gates according to an irregular roster, to make it impossible for any of them to be bribed in advance to open any particular gate on any agreed night. To make the watches less tedious my mistress had formed bands of musicians from the theatre to give frequent concerts at every gate; but for greater vigilance on these occasions Belisarius set outposts beyond the fosse, chiefly Moors, and every outpost had a watchdog trained to growl at the least sound of approaching feet.

I must pause here just long enough to relate how cleverly my mistress Antonina managed these musicians. If any musician played ill my mistress would seize his instrument from him and show him: 'The tunc goes so.' And she would taunt them, 'O you miserable Romans, you cannot fight and you cannot fiddle. Of what use are you?' To this an aggrieved daring musician once replied, attempting to abash her with obscenity: 'We are great adepts at procreation.' She replied coldly: 'In this at least you surpass your fathers.' The joke was repeated from mouth to mouth, and has become one of the most famous of her many sayings.

The reverse of which I promised to tell was due to the elation of our troops at the success of the cavalry skirmishes. They were impatient of Belisarius's policy of gradually wearing down the enemy's forces and courage, and clamoured for a general engagement. It was his policy never to discourage a warlike spirit in his men, but he did not think that the time was yet ripe for a pitched battle. The enormous difference in size between the armies still remained, and the Goths, though discouraged, were still fighting courageously. He tried to keep his men busy with more frequent sorties. But on two or three occasions he found that the Goths were ready for him, having been warned of his intentions by deserters. The Roman population now began to clamour for a battle too — or at least for a speedy end to the siege, one way or the other. He could no longer refuse the plea: he must not lose the respect of his men, or allow the civil population to become unmanageable.

The largest Gothic camp lay a mile beyond the mausoleum of Hadrian in what is called the Plain of Nero. Belisarius was anxious that his main attack against the camps outside the Pincian and Salariau Gates should not be hindered by enemy reinforcements hurried up from that quarter. He therefore ordered the Moorish cavalry to make a feint against the Goths there as soon as he was engaged; they were to ride out from the Aclian Gate under an officer named Valentine. After them would follow a force of city infantry, drawing up in defensive formation a short distance outside the gate. He told these Romans to look as much like soldiers as possible, but did not expect any serious fighting from them. His main attack he would make with cavalry alone. He had increased his cavalry forces by 1,000: in the recent fighting a great number of riderless horses had been captured, and part of the Isaurian infantry had converted itself — very successfully — into cavalry. The remaining Isaurians pleaded to be allowed also to take part in the battle. He could not refuse them, but stipulated that a few of them must remain on the walls and at the gates, to stiffen the city levies and to manage the catapults and scorpions and wild asses.

Early one autumn morning Belisarius led out his cavalry dirough the Pincian and Salarian Gates; the Isaurian infantry followed behind. Wittich was waiting for them, warned as usual. He had mustered every available man from his four northern camps, drawing up his infantry in the centre of his line and his cavalry on the wings; he stood at a distance of half a mile from the city, to allow more room for pursuit when he had overwhelmed us.

At nine o'clock the battle began, and Belisarius did just as he pleased at first, because the Goths stood on the defensive. 1 Ie had divided his cavalry into two columns, one to each flank, which poured thousands of arrows into their dense mass. But to keep their infantry amused, a few small bodies of our Isaurian spearmen came up between, very close to their centre, and challenged equal bodies of Goths to combat; they were victorious in every such encounter. After a while the enemy cavalry began to retreat, their infantry keeping pace with them. By midday our men had pressed them back against their most distant camps. But here their archers came into action at last and, protected by huge shields, began shooting at our horses from the top of the ramparts. Before long so many of our cavalry were cither wounded or unhorsed that no more than four full squadrons survived to resist fifty of theirs. To have broken off the engagement at this point, however, would have meant abandoning our infantry to its fate. At last the Gothic right wing took courage and charged. Bessas, who was commanding the cavalry on our left, fell back on the infantry; the infantry did not hold, and the whole line began to retire. It was easy enough for our cavalry to fight a rearguard action, but the slower-moving infantry suffered heavily. In all we lost a thousand men, whom we could ill spare, before covering fire from the siege-engines on the walls halted the rush of the enemy. Some of the Roman soldiers shut the Pincian Gate against the returning men, but my mistress and I were there with a few trusty spearmen. We resisted, killing several, and opened the gate again.

In the Plain of Nero meanwhile the two other armies had stood facing each other for a long time — the city levies drawn up in a formidable line, several thousand strong, with a screen of Moorish cavalry in front. The Goths had acquired a superstitious fear of the black-faced Moors by now; the Moors knew this, and kept harrying them with sudden charges, hurling their javelins and retiring with whoops of laughter. At midday the Moors made an unexpected charge in mass. The Goths, who outnumbered them by thirty to one, turned and fled to the Vatican Hill, leaving their camp unguarded. Valentine marched the whole army forward across the plain, intending to seize the Gothic camp and leave the Roman infantry to guard it while he and the Moors made a raid northward to destroy the Mulvian Bridge. Had this plan succeeded, Wittich would have been compelled to abandon his northern camps, since all food supplies for them came down the Flaminian Way and across this bridge. But when the rabble of Roman infantry began to plunder the Gothic camp, the Moors were loath to be deprived of their share of the plunder and joined in the merry work. Presently a few enemy scouts ventured down from the Vatican Hill and observed what was happening. They prevailed on the others to make an effort to recapture the camp. Soon the Goths came charging back in their thousands, and Valentine could not restore order in time: he was driven from the camp and forced back to the walls again, with heavy losses.

This was the last pitched battle which Belisarius consented to fight during the long defence of Rome.

Still no reinforcements arrived from Constantinople. Though we did not know it at the time, it was Cappadocian John who prevented their dispatch: apparently he insisted to Justinian that not another man could be spared. My mistress was for writing to Theodora, but Belisarius did not think it appropriate that his wife should appeal to the Empress in a military matter which directly concerned neither of them. Nevertheless, she did write, secretly, at the end of November, on the day that Silverius was deposed, making her plea a postscript to her lively account of the trial. Theodora would, my mistress knew, be delighted to hear of Silverius's humiliation, for he had angered her recently by refusing a request of hers — not backed by Justinian's authority — to reinstate a Patriarch who, though a most energetic and worthy man, had been removed from his see for Monophysite leanings. 'The new Pope promises to be more obliging', my mistress Antonina wrote to Theodora.

It was now very difficult for Belisarius to keep the civil population in good heart, for they were subsisting on a diet consisting almost wholly of herbs. Pestilence broke out and carried off 12,000 of them; but the soldiers still had their daily corn-ration and their wine and a little salted meat, so not many of them died. Sorties were made every two or three days, when it was found that the Goths were by no means so eager as before to come to grips with our horse-archers. Nobody enjoys being shot at and being unable to reply; but Wittich had not thought to form a corps of horse-archers of his own.

Of the smaller incidents of the siege I could write endlessly. There are a few stories concerned with wounds that must not be left untold. On the day that Theodosius entered Rome with the convoy Belisarius had engaged the attention of the enemy with brisk skirmishes at the other gates. The Household Regiment was heavily engaged, and on their return that evening two of the cuirassiers presented an extraordinary sight. One of them, Arzes, a Persian formerly belonging to the Immortals, came riding back with an arrow sunk in his face close to his nose; and another, a Thracian called Cutilas, came back with a javelin sticking in his head and waving about like a plume. Neither of them had paid the least attention to these wounds, but had continued fighting indefatigably, to the horror and alarm of the Goths, who cried:' These are not men but demons.'

The javelin was afterwards drawn from Cutilas's head by a surgeon; but the wound grew inflamed, and he was dead in two days. Arzes, however, was examined by the same surgeon, who pressed the back of his neck and asked: 'Does this pressure hurt?' 'Yes,' replied Arzes. Then the surgeon opened the skin at the back of Arzes' neck. He found the point of the arrow, caught hold of it with a pair of forceps and, having first cut off the shaft close to the nose, tugged the arrow through, barb and all. Arzes fainted with the pain, but his blood was healthy: the wound healed up without any suppuration. He led the next sally, and survived the war.

On another occasion, Trajan, the troop-commander whose exploits I have already mentioned, was pierced close above the right eye and near the nose by the long, barbed head of an arrow. The shaft had been insecurely fastened to it, and fell off at the moment of impact. Trajan continued fighting. For days and months after his comrades expected him to drop dead at any moment; but he lived on and suffered no pain or inconvenience, though the barbed head remained imbedded in his flesh. Five years later it began slowly to emerge again. Twelve years more, and he was able to pluck it out like a thorn.

But as strange a story as any concerns the wound of Chorsomantis, Belisarius's armour-bearer. This was not a deep or a very remarkable wound, being a mere spear-prick in his shin, but it kept him in hi; quarters for several days, with poultices of wound-wort wrapped around it. In consequence he was absent from the pitched battle, in which a number of his comrades distinguished themselves. When he was well again he swore to be avenged on the Goths for this 'insult to his shin', as he called it. His white marc having recently foaled, he now had the necessary milk from her for brewing havasse; and kavasse he brewed. One day after his midday meal, having drunk a good deal of this liquor, Chorsomantis armed himself, mounted his marc, and rode to the Pincian postern-gate. He told the sentry on duty there that the Illustrious Lord Belisarius had entrusted him with a mission to the enemy's camp. As Chorsomantis was known to enjoy Belisarius's fullest confidence, the sentry did not doubt his word; the gate was unlocked for him.

The sentry watched Chorsomantis ride easily over the plain until an outpost of the Goths, a party of twenty men, sighted him. Taking him for a deserter, they came spurring eagerly forward, each hoping to win the mare for his own booty. Chorsomantis drew his bow. Twang! twang! twang! — down went three Goths, and the others turned hurriedly about. He shot three more of them as they fled, then returned towards the city at a slow walk, holding in his mettlesome marc. A troop of sixty Goths now came charging down on him, but he turned and galloped about them in a half-circle. He killed two more men, wounded two, and completed the circle with the slaughter of four more. I happened to be watching from the rampart, ran hurriedly and called to my mistress, who was in conference with the officers of a guard-house near by, begging her not to miss this extraordinary spectacle.' Here's a man has gone mad,' I cried.

She recognized the mare: 'No, not mad, my good Eugenius. That is only our Chorsomantis avenging the insult to his shin.'

Then Chorsomantis was caught between two enemy troops; but he charged clean through the nearer one, using his lance and sword this time. We cheered loudly, for we saw that he was safe at last, if he wished. My mistress ordered a strong covering fire from the catapults to assist his return, but our cheer determined him to continue the fight. He turned yet again and disappeared from our view, driving some of the enemy before him, but pursued by others. We heard distant shouts and cries for a good while longer as the fight continued towards their camp.

In the end a Gothic cheer from close to their palisade informed us that Chorsomantis was no more. While many Christians made the sign of the Cross upon their breasts and offered a prayer for his soul my mistress cried out with a loud pagan oath:' By the body of Bacchus and the club of Hercules, that was an angry man!'