The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (29 page)

Once the Roman ships had been sighted off the coast, Gelimer had acted quickly. His fleet and part of his army were indeed away in Sardinia, but he still had plenty of men under arms at home, and by the time the invaders had disembarked his plans were already laid. The place he had chosen for the confrontation was a point near the tenth milestone, where the road from the south entered a narrow valley. The attack itself was to
be threefold: his brother Ammatas would attack the vanguard while his nephew Gibamund swept down on the centre from the western hills and he himself dealt with the rear. It was an ambitious plan, which depended for its success- on careful timing; unfortunately for Gelimer, his communications let him down. Ammatas moved too early; the Byzantines, forewarned, were ready and waiting for him. In the battle that followed, the Vandal prince was killed, though not before he had accounted for a dozen Romans; his own soldiers, seeing their leader fall, soon lost heart. Some were cut to pieces around him; the remainder fled.

The flanking attack was no more successful, and a good deal less glorious. By now the element of surprise had been lost, but if Gibamund had moved in quickly enough to the assistance of Ammatas, the two divisions might yet have saved the day. Instead, he hesitated, ordered a halt, and began carefully drawing up his troops in line of battle. He was still doing so when Belisarius's cavalry charged. They were Huns, hideous, savage and implacable. The Vandals took one look at the advancing horde and ran for their lives. All now depended on Gelimer himself. He started well, somehow contriving to cut Belisarius and his generals off from the main bulk of their army; at this point, however, he suddenly came upon the body of his brother - and the fight went out of him. For some time he remained motionless, refusing to leave the spot until the corpse had been carried from the field and arrangements made for its proper burial. Once again, Belisarius saw his chance. Swiftly regrouping, he bore down upon the Vandal host and scattered it to right and left. The battle was over. The defenders fled, not to the north whence they had come - for that road was already under Roman control - but westward into the deserts of Numidia. Carthage lay open.

Two days later, on Sunday
1
5
September, Belisarius - with Antonina at his side - made his formal entry into the city. Since the day of their first landing in Africa, his men had been under strict orders to respect the lives and property of the local people, who despite a century of barbarian occupation remained Roman citizens like themselves. There was no swagger, no insolence or arrogance, no braggadocio; everything bought in the shops was paid for, promptly and in full. As for Belisarius, he went straight to the palace where, seated on the throne of the Vandal King, he received the leading citizens and later dined in state with his officers - off dishes, Procopius tells us, that had been prepared for Gelimer himself.

But Gelimer had not given up the struggle. From his temporary refuge at Bulla Regia in Numidia, some hundred miles west of Carthage, he had sent an urgent message to his surviving brother Tzazo, who was in command of the Sardinian expedition, summoning him and his forces back at once to Africa. Meanwhile he settled down to reorganize and regroup his own army, and to rally support among the local Punic and Berber tribes, offering them generous rewards for every Roman head that they could lay before him. Thus, little by little, he built up his position; and when Tzazo and his men joined him early in December he felt himself strong enough once more to take the offensive. The new Vandal army was certainly not ten times the size of the Roman, as Procopius claims that Gelimer boasted to his followers; but it was nevertheless an impressive force that marched out of Bulla with the two brothers at its head, and took the road to Carthage - pausing on the way to demolish the great aqueduct on which the capital chiefly depended for its water supply.

Although Belisarius had spent the weeks since the Battle of the Tenth Milestone strengthening the Carthaginian defences, he had no wish to face a siege - particularly since he was beginning to suspect the loyalty of the Huns and other barbarians under his command. They had, he knew, been secretly approached by agents of Gelimer, who had appealed to them as fellow-Arians to transfer their allegiance; if they intended to betray him, he preferred that they should do so in the open field rather than surreptitiously in a besieged city. He too gave the order to march, and met the Vandal army at Tricamarum, thirty miles west of Carthage.

The battle was fought on
1
5
December. The Romans, with their vastly superior training and leadership, immediately took the initiative, charging three times into the thick of the Vandal ranks; and in the hand-to-hand fighting that followed the third charge Tzazo was cut down under the eyes of his brother. Once again Gelimer hesitated; his soldiers, seeing his indecision, began to draw back; and only then did the Huns - who, as Belisarius had suspected, had been waiting to see which way the battle would turn - make up their minds to enter the fray. Spurring their horses forward in a single thundering charge, they quickly turned the Vandal retreat into a rout. Gelimer fled back into his Numidian fastness, his army pell-mell after him. This time it was the end. Belisarius advanced to the city of Hippo - which opened its gates to him at once - and took possession of the royal treasure. Then, with a train of Vandal prisoners behind him and his wagons loaded with plunder, he returned to Carthage.

Gelimer, though well aware that his Kingdom was lost, did not at first surrender. For some weeks he wandered in the mountains, sheltered by Berber tribesmen. Early in
534
he found himself surrounded by a Roman force whose commander, Pharas the Herulian, encouraged him to give himself up - with assurances that Justinian bore him no grudge, that he would treat him as the king he was and arrange for him a dignified and comfortable retirement. But still Gelimer refused, asking only to be sent a sponge, a loaf of bread and a lyre - requests which caused the Romans some bewilderment until the messenger explained that his master needed the sponge to bathe an infected eye and the loaf to satisfy a craving for real bread after weeks of unleavened peasant dough. As for the lyre, he pointed out that Gelimer had devoted his time in hiding to the composition of a dirge bewailing his recent misfortunes, and was eager to try it out.

We are not told whether his wishes were granted; but in March, after a long and extremely disagreeable winter, the King of the Vandals finally surrendered. As he was led into the presence of Belisarius, those in attendance were surprised to see him shaking with uncontrollable laughter. Procopius suggests that his mirth was a cynical comment on the vanity of human ambition. Perhaps it was; there were, however, others present who concluded - more plausibly perhaps - that the unsuccessful usurper, after all his sufferings, was no longer quite right in the head.

It was high summer when Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople. Africa was not entirely pacified - some years were to elapse before the Berber tribes eventually became reconciled to imperial dominion - but that was a task that could be left to the Praetorian Prefect charged with the responsibility for the seven new provinces - they included Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands - which had been set up in the former Vandal territories. For his victorious general the Emperor had other, more ambitious plans.First, however, he must be properly rewarded; and it was typical of Justinian's love of ancient customs and traditions that he should have accorded Belisarius a Triumph. Since the earliest days of the Empire these ceremonies had been the prerogative of the Emperor himself - or, very occasionally, members of his immediate family - and in recent centuries the practice had almost died out, even for them: the last non-imperial recipient of the honour had been Lucius Cornelius Balbus the younger in
19
bc
. Now,
553
years later, the Roman populace cheered to the echo as Belisarius marched
1
into the Hippodrome at the head of his

1
Procopius makes it clear, however, that even Belisarius was obliged to enter the Hippodrome on foot, rather than in the
quadriga,
the four-horse chariot that he would certainly have been given in ancient times.

soldiers, followed by Gelimer, his family, and all the tallest and best looking of the Vandal prisoners. The procession continued with a seemingly endless succession of wagons, creaking under the weight of the spoils of war - including the
menorah,
that sacred seven-branched candlestick that had been brought by the Emperor Titus in
ad
71
from the Temple in Jerusalem to Rome, whence in
455
Gaiseric had taken it to Carthage.

Later, after representations by the Jewish community - who emphasized the bad luck that would inevitably fall on Constantinople if it were allowed to remain - the ever-superstitious Justinian returned the
menorah
,
together with the other vessels from the Temple, to Jerusalem. For the time being, however, objects that were at once so famous and so venerable lent additional lustre to the Triumph of Belisarius. The climax of the ceremony came when he and Gelimer - the latter's purple cloak now torn from his shoulders - prostrated themselves before the imperial box, where Justinian and Theodora sat in state. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity', the last King of the Vandals is said to have murmured as he grovelled in the dust beside his conqueror. In a subsequent private conversation with the Emperor, however, while refusing the offer of Patrician rank - which would ha
ve obliged him to abandon his Ari
an faith - he gratefully accepted Justinian's offer of rich estates in Galatia where, safely out of the way, he could live in quiet retirement with his family and worship as he liked. His fellow-prisoners were less fortunate: rounded up and formed into five imperial regiments known as the
Vandali Jus
tiniani,
they were marched off to the Persian front, there to fight unwillingly for the Empire and to survive as best they could.

But neither Justinian nor Belisarius were to pay them much attention. Their minds were now fixed on the next stage of the Emperor's grand design to restore his Empire to its ancient glory: the reconquest of Italy.

Ever since he first came to power in his uncle's day, Justinian had cherished the dream of bringing the entire Italian peninsula back into the imperial fold. A Roman Empire that did not include Rome was an obvious absurdity; an Ostrogothic and Arian Kingdom that did, however well-disposed it might be, could never be anything but an abomination in his sight. Henceforth, too, it could be politically dangerous: now that Theodoric was dead, it was far from certain whether the friendly relations that he had always sought to maintain towards Constantinople would be continued by his successors - who could cause the Byzantine authorities all manner of trouble in the Balkans if they chose to do so.

Clearly, then, the Kingdom must be destroyed; the only question to be settled was the manner of its destruction. The situation in Italy was altogether different from that which had prevailed in Vandal North Africa. Where Gaiseric and his successors had arrogantly asserted their independence, the Ostrogothic King ruled - theoretically at any rate - in the Emperor's name as his Viceroy. Where they had cruelly persecuted the orthodox church, he - while himself remaining staunchly Arian -took immense pains to cultivate the friendship and support of the Pope and the leading Romans. In consequence he enjoyed great popularity among the citizens of the Empire whom he governed; and Justinian was well aware that those citizens, satisfied as they were with the status quo, might well resent the increased regimentation - to say nothing of the far heavier taxation - that would be sure to follow Italy's reintegration in the Empire.

Shortly before his death
in
5
26,
Theodoric had summoned the leading Gothic chieftains to his bedside and had presented to them as their future King his eight-year-old grandson Athalaric. The boy was the son of his only daughter Amalasuntha, now four years a widow and one of the most remarkable women of her time - as remarkable in her own way as Theodora herself, possessed of the same driving ambition and love of power for its own sake but at the same time an intellectual, fluent in Latin and Greek, enjoying a breadth of culture rare in any woman of the sixth century and unique among the Goths. Unfortunately for her, however, she had no Justinian to rely on for strength and support; and Gothic society was far more male-orientated than Greek. From the moment her father died and she assumed the regency on behalf of her son, she was conscious of the growing resentment of those around her -a resentment aggravated by her insistence on giving Athalaric a thorough classical education similar to that which she herself had received. Barely a year later, a body of influential Gothic nobles - almost all of whom were illiterate themselves - forced a showdown and, claiming that Athalaric should be studying the arts of war instead of spending his time with greybeard grammarians and philosophers, removed the young King altogether from his mother's control.

Amalasuntha had no choice but to yield. From that moment on she renounced all responsibility for Athalaric, who almost immediately fell into undesirable company and soon began, while still little more than a child, a decline into drunkenness and dissipation that was to kill him before he was seventeen. Meanwhile his mother, conscious of the increasing danger of her own position, entered into secret correspondence with Justinian. Over the next few years, although they never met, their relations grew steadily closer until finally a plot was hatched according to which Amalasuntha would flee across the Adriatic to the imperial port of Dyrrachium, where she would formally seek asylum and call on the Emperor to restore to her the power that was rightfully hers.

With the great Theodoric's daughter at his side, Justinian knew that he would be able to count on a large measure of support among the Goths themselves; given a modicum of good luck, he might even regain Italy for the Empire without bloodshed. But - just as in Africa three years before - events moved too fast for him. On
2
October
534
young Athalaric, exhausted by his debauches, died at Ravenna; and the throne passed to the last surviving male member of Theodoric's line, his nephew Theodahad. The new King was an unattractive figure, whose greed for vast territorial estates and lack of scruple in their acquisition had already made him the largest land-owner in the Kingdom; but he took no interest in power, preferring to lead the life of a Platonic gentleman-scholar in one of his innumerable villas. Amalasuntha was almost certainly unaware that he too had been in secret contact with Justinian; but with his accession she saw her chance. Let the two of them, she proposed, divide the sovereignty between them. Theodahad would thus be able to enjoy all the pleasures and privileges of kingship with none of its attendant responsibilities, while she herself took over the regulation of affairs. She was not, she emphasized, suggesting marriage - apart from anything else Theodahad had a wife already - merely a joint monarchy, with King and Queen working harmoniously together on an equal footing.

Theodahad agreed, and the new dispensation was duly proclaimed; almost at once, however, he regretted his decision and began to plot his cousin's overthrow. Amalasuntha still had many enemies in high places, plenty of them only too happy to enter into a new conspiracy against her. In April
535
she was seized and shut up in a castle on an island in Lake Bolsena, where she was shortly afterwards strangled in her bath. Theodahad vehemently disclaimed all complicity in the crime, but the rich rewards which he lavished on the murderers were enough to persuade most of his subjects otherwise.

Procopius tells us that Justinia
n, the moment he heard of Amala
suntha's imprisonment, sent Theodahad a message through his ambassador, Peter the Patrician, warning him that if the Queen were not immediately restored to the throne he would be forced to intervene; but that at the same time another message arrived secretly from the Empress, containing secret assurances that her husband would do no such thing
and that Theodahad could feel free to deal with his prisoner in any way he saw fit. Whether this second message was prompted, as Procopius suggests, by jealousy or whether Theodora - perhaps with Justinian's connivance - was deliberately acting as an
agent provocateur
we do not know; in any event, by his murder of his cousin Theodahad played straight into Byzantine hands, giving the Emperor precisely the
casus belli
he needed. As soon as the news reached him in Constantinople, Justinian issued his orders. Mundus, the
magister militum per Illyricum,
was to occupy Dalmatia, which formed part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom; meanwhile Belisarius, fresh from his Triumph, was commanded to sail with an army of
7,500
men to Sicily.

The expeditions started well enough, but soon ran into difficulties. Gothic resistance in Dalmatia proved a good deal more stubborn than had been expected, and within a few weeks Mundus was killed in battle. Belisarius took Sicily with scarcely a struggle,
1
but was then called urgently to Africa to deal with a serious mutiny by the imperial army of occupation. This delayed him for many weeks, and on his return he found that dissatisfaction had spread among his own troops. By the time their morale had in turn been restored, winter was approaching and the campaigning season was at an end. It was not until the late spring of
536
that his army was finally able to land on Italian soil. Meanwhile Theodahad - who had panicked on first hearing of the Byzantine expeditions and had actually concluded a secret treaty with Justinian, according to which he undertook to hand over the entire government of Italy in return for the promise of
1,200
pounds of gold a year and a high position at Constantinople - had reneged on the agreement and, in an uncharacteristic burst of courage, ordered the striking of new coins depicting himself alone, bearing the imperial insignia.

But his elation was short-lived. One night in April or early May, Belisarius crossed the Straits of Messina, landed his army at Reggio and pressed onward up the peninsula. He met no resistance until he reached Naples, whose citizens defended it stoutly for three weeks; they would have held out still longer had not one of the Isaurians in the besieging army accidentally stumbled upon an ancient water-conduit, through which
400
picked men were able to crawl beneath the fortifications and

1
The only show of resistance was made by the Gothic garrison in Panormus - the present Palermo, b
ut then a small port of relativ
ely little importance. Belisarius massed his fleet so close inshore that the masts of his ships rose above the town walls. He then filled the ships' boats with men and hoisted them up to the yard-arms, whence they were able to fire their arrows down on the defenders and then leap directly on to the battlements. The garrison soon capitulated.

into the city. At a given signal from them, the remainder of the army then set up its scaling-ladders and launched a concerted attack on the walls. The defenders, finding themselves simultaneously assailed from within and without, were obliged to surrender and Naples was regained for the Empire.

Or what was left of it. Belisarius had warned the Neapolitans at the beginning of the siege that if they put up any resistance he would be unable to restrain his army - which, he reminded them, was largely composed of semi-savage barbarians - from the murder, rapine and pillage which they would consider their just reward after the capture of the city. But the warning had been ignored, and the miserable citizens now paid the price of their heroism. It was many hours before Belisarius was able to persuade his motley hordes of Alans and Isaurians, Herulians and Huns - these last the most terrifying of all since, being pagans, they had no compunction in burning down the churches in which their intended victims had sought asylum - to put up their swords and spears and return to their various camps. Soon, he explained, they would be on the march again; and their next objective would be Rome itself.

The Byzantine capture of Naples dealt a severe blow to the morale of the Goths, who unhesitatingly laid the blame for their defeat on Theodahad. He had long been detested by his subjects for his avarice and his extortions; more recently, persistent rumours of his secret correspondence with the enemy had done still more harm to his reputation. The fact that he had not dispatched a single soldier to the relief of Naples seemed to confirm these rumours: such apparent apathy could mean only that he had been bribed by Justinian to betray his people. Accordingly, at a vast assembly near Terracina, the Gothic leaders solemnly declared him deposed and, in the absence of any male descendant of Theodoric, nominated as his successor an elderly and not particularly impressive general named Vitiges. The first command issued by the new King of the Goths was for the execution of the old one: Theodahad had fled to the north, but was captured near Ravenna and dispatched on the spot.

Meanwhile Belisarius was about to march on Rome; and many of the Gothic chieftains must have wondered whether they had been wise in their choice of King when Vitiges announced that he would not be defending the city. Its people must look after themselves as best they could while he withdrew to Ravenna, there to consolidate his forces, draw up his long-term strategy and - somewhat more controversially divorce his wife of many years in favour of Athalaric's sister Matasuntha. There were, it must be admitted, sound political reasons for such a marriage. Vitiges was of humble origins and needed to improve his social status; he knew, too, that any other husband of the young princess might prove a dangerous rival. Finally there was the consideration that, with the granddaughter of Theodoric on the throne, Justinian would have less cause for intervention in Italy. But the marriage, as might have been expected, was an unhappy one from the start, and seems to have done the old man's reputation more harm than good.

With the retreat of Vitiges to Ravenna, Belisarius might have been expected to march with all speed on Rome. In fact, he showed himself to be in no particular hurry, preferring to spend the summer and autumn consolidating his hold on South Italy. Only in December did he move northward, ostensibly in answer to an invitation from Pope Silverius
1
to occupy the holy city; and one is tempted to conclude that the intervening months had been passed in arranging for such an invitation - which must have greatly strengthened his diplomatic position - to be sent. There is no reason to believe that Silverius was any more favourably disposed to the invaders than were his fellow-Romans: the Goths might be Arians, but they had always been tolerant and considerate rulers, whereas the Byzantines were widely mistrusted and their barbarian troops universally feared. But the formidable reputation of Belisarius himself - to say nothing of memories of the recent fate of Naples -would have been more than enough to persuade the Pope to do as he was told. Whatever the truth may be, on
9
December
536
Belisarius led his army north from Naples,
2
entering Rome by the Porta Asinaria near the Basilica of Constantine (now St John Lateran) as the Gothic garrison marched out through the Porta Flaminia.

But if Silverius and his flock imagined that by opening the gates to the imperial army they had avoided the miseries of a siege, they were to be disappointed. Belisarius himself entertained no such delusion. He knew that the Goths would be back soon enough; and the strength of the opposition encountered by the advance units that he had sent to