The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (33 page)

But Belisarius did not despair. By the time he reached Portus, where the Tiber flowed out into the sea, he had already laid his plans. While Bessas kept the Goths occupied with diversionary sorties, he proposed to lead an amphibious attack against their rear, marching part of his army along the south bank of the river while the rest, embarked on
200
ships, would smash the enemy fleet and then sail upstream in support. During the entire operation, the Armenian general Isaac was to remain in charge at Portus, looking after the reserves, the provisions, the remaining vessels and - by no means the least important - his wife Antonina, who had recently arrived to join him. Under no circumstances whatever, he emphasized - not even if it was reported that he himself had been captured or killed - was Isaac to leave his post.

In the event Bessas made no sorties, nor indeed the slightest effort of any kind to help his chief. Belisarius launched his expedition regardless. Keeping at bay the Gothic defenders along the banks with streams of arrows fired from the decks, his ships slowly forced their way up the river. After four miles, he easily smashed through the great iron chain and wooden boom that Totila had flung across as an additional protection, and was just about to attack the heavily fortified bridge that constituted the last obstacle before Rome itself when an urgent message was brought to him: Isaac had been taken prisoner. As Belisarius saw it, this could mean one thing only: the Goths had launched a surprise attack on Portus, seized the town and cut him off from the sea. And there was something else, still more terrible to contemplate: if Isaac had been captured, so too had Antonina. Calling off the attack at once, he dashed back to the coast - only to discover that Isaac, chafing at his enforced inactivity, had attacked the Gothic garrison at Ostia in flagrant disobedience of his orders and had been overcome by his intended victims. Apart from himself and the few soldiers who had accompanied him, everything and everyone else - including Antonina - was safe.

The last chance had been lost: Rome's fate was sealed. And yet, sick and starving as the Romans were, it was neither sickness nor starvation that caused the city's fall. It never surrendered; but on the night of
17
December
546
a group of four discontented Isaurian soldiers of the garrison opened up the Asinarian Gate, and the Goths flooded in. Whether the traitors had been among those Isaurians to whom Totila had shown such unusual consideration after his capture of Naples three and a half years before, we shall never know; but the young King certainly had little cause to regret his generosity.

Bessas took flight at once, together with most of the garrison, leaving all his ill-gotten treasure behind to swell the Gothic coffers. Several of the Roman nobles - those of them who had not been obliged to eat their horses - rode off with him. The remainder sought refuge in the churches till Totila had brought his men under control, then slowly emerged to resume their desperate search for food until such time as supplies in the city returned to normal. Of the populace, Procopius
1
tells us that only
500
citizens were left. Some of us may agree with Gibbon in finding this figure hard to accept; in fact, however, there seems nothing particularly improbable about it. There can in any case be no doubt that although, strategically speaking, the fall of Rome was of little real significance, as a symbol it was all-important; and Totila understandably saw its capture as an opportunity to send ambassadors to the Emperor, offering him peace on the basis of a return to the status quo of happier days. 'You will have learned,' he wrote,

of what has occurred in the city of the Romans; this I propose to pass over in silence. Why I am sending you these envoys, however, I shall explain. It is our wish that you should accept for yourself the blessings of peace, and that you should grant them also to us. Of these blessings we have most excellent examples and reminders in Anastasius and Theodoric, who ruled not long ago and whose reigns were given over to peace and prosperity. If this should be also your desire, I shall look upon you as my father, and you may henceforth count on us as your allies against all your enemies.

But Justinian would have none of it. To accept Totila's proposals would have been effectively to write off ten years' campaigning and to admit the defeat not only of his armies but also of his most cherished ambitions. Belisarius, he pointed out, was his commander in Italy, and was possessed of complete plenipotentiary authority. If the King of the Goths had anything he wished to communicate, it was to him that his words should properly be addressed.

It is unlikely that Totila even approached Belisarius as Justinian had suggested; and it is unlikelier still that, even had he done so, he would have received a remotely encouraging reply. The fall of Rome was soon forgotten - the Byzantines even managed briefly to reoccupy it in April
547,
though they were to lose it again less than three years later - and after a few more months of desultory fighting up and down the peninsula it became clear that the two sides had reached a stalemate, with neither strong enough to eliminate the other. Belisarius decided on one last

1
His full account of Totila's siege of Rome will be found in his
History
of
the Wars,
VII, xv-xx.

appeal to his Emperor. He knew that for Justinian the international situation had improved since his last attempt: peace had finally been concluded - though at a considerable price - with King Chosroes, and the rebellion in Africa, which had been raging for the past five years and had made formidable demands of money and manpower, had finally been put down. Perhaps, in the calmer conditions now prevailing, he might at last get what he wanted.

His emissary on this occasion was his wife Antonina. She had seen for herself the difficulties that he was having to face, and could speak of them from first-hand experience. She had, moreover, direct access to the Empress, and through her to Justinian himself; she would not allow herself to be fobbed off with underlings. Around midsummer,
548,
she left for Constantinople - only to find the city plunged into deepest mourning. Just a few days before, on
28
June, Theodora had died of cancer. Antonina saw at once that her mission was doomed: the Emperor, prostrated with grief, would see no one and was incapable of taking decisions. All that she managed to obtain from those in temporary control was the recall of her husband; if failure in Italy was now inevitable, she was determined that he should not carry the blame.

Early in
549
Belisarius returned to the capital. After the glory of his first Italian campaign, his second had brought him only five years of frustration and disappointment. But he had saved Italy, at least temporarily, for the Empire. Had it not been for his energy and resolve, in the face of the most discouraging conditions imaginable, there is little doubt that the Byzantines would have been expelled in
544;
thanks to him the foundations for reconquest were laid for the second time, making it relatively easy when the moment came for his old rival Narses - possessed of all the resources for which he, Belisarius, had appealed in vain -to win the victories and the acclaim that should rightfully have been his own.

12

The Last Years of Justinian

[549-65]

The natural course for a high-souled Emperor to pursue is to seek to enlarge the Empire, and make it more glorious.

Procopius

Justinian greeted his general like a long-lost friend - which, in a sense, he was. For years the two men had been kept apart by the intrigues of Theodora, who had continually poisoned her husband's mind with fabricated stories about Belisarius - his faithlessness, his duplicity, his imperial ambitions. The Emperor had never really believed her; yet the doubts that she implanted in his mind were enough to produce a vague feeling of mistrust which endured for as long as she lived. With her death, however, this feeling was quickly dissipated; by the time Belisarius returned to Constantinople, Justinian had recovered from the initial shock of his bereavement — though he continued to mourn his wife until the day he died - and welcomed him with open arms, adopting him as his closest confidant and going so far as to erect a gilded statue of him, next to that of
his uncle Justin, in the Augus
teum.

Even Belisarius, however, seems to have been unable to persuade the Emperor to provide the men and money for a final all-out attack on Totila. It was not that Justinian lacked determination to regain Italy for the Empire. This had, after all, been his primary objective ever since his accession, and his categorical refusal to receive Totila's ambassadors after the latter's capture of Rome is clear enough indication that he had in no way weakened in his resolve. But for the past six years he had had a major theological problem on his hands - a problem which the death of his wife had rendered, if anything, still more intractable; and the hiatus which now occurs in the story of the Italian reconquest - following the recall of Belisarius and preceding the brief final act of the drama -provides us with a welcome opportunity to see what had occurred.

At the root of the trouble there lay the same old enigma that had caused all the previous disputes - the identity of Christ. The orthodox view was that laid down nearly a century before by the Council of Chalcedon: that the Saviour possessed, in his one person, two natures inseparably united, the human and the divine. But this view had never been accepted by the monophysites, according to whom the divine nature alone existed and who consequently saw Christ as God rather than man; and these, heretics as they might be, were far too numerous and too widespread to be eliminated. Egypt, for example, was monophysite through and through; in Syria and Palestine, too, the doctrine had taken a firm and potentially dangerous hold. In the West, on the other hand, such heresy as existed at all was Arian rather than monophysite and was to be found almost exclusively among the barbarians. The Roman Church was staunchly orthodox and quick to protest at any deviation from the Chalcedonian path. Justinian therefore had a difficult and delicate course to steer. If he dealt too harshly with the monophysites, he risked rebellion and the possible loss to the Empire of valuable provinces -Egypt was one of its chief sources of corn. If he treated them with too much consideration, he incurred the wrath of the orthodox and split his subjects more than ever. Fortunately Theodora had strong monophysite sympathies, even going so far as to maintain a discreet monastery in the Great Palace; her husband could thus on occasion afford to take an outwardly rigid line in the knowledge that she would secretly be able to temper its severity.

Thanks to this somewhat disingenuous policy, the Emperor had managed to curb most of the monophysite communities - outside Egypt, where he left them firmly alone — with considerable success; but then, suddenly, there emerged a charismatic new leader. Jacob Baradaeus ('the Ragged') was a Syriac-speaking monk from Mesopotamia. He had already spent fifteen years in Constantinople - where he may well have been one of the Empress's proteges - during which time he had caused the authorities little trouble; but in
543
the exiled monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria chose to consecrate him Bishop of Edessa. The fact that he had no hope of ever setting foot in his see, which was already safely held by a perfectly sound Chalcedonian, worried him not a bit: for him the important thing was the consecration itself, and its effect on him was electric. Disguised as a poor beggar - hence his name - he embarked on a mission to revive
monophysite sentiment throughout the East, travelling constantly and at prodigious speed the length and breadth of Syria and Palestine, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, consecrating some thirty bishops as he went and ordaining several thousand priests.

Unable to stamp out the flames of fanaticism that sprang up everywhere in the wake of Baradaeus, Justinian found himself in a quandary. The monophysites in their present mood needed still more careful treatment than before; at the same time he was already being criticized in the West for weakness and inertia in the face of the new threat. Some kind of positive action was clearly required; and so, for want of any better solution, he decided on a public condemnation - not of the monophysites but of those who occupied the other end of the theological spectrum, professing the humanity rather than the divinity of Christ: the Nestorians. This by now half-forgotten sect had been anathematized as early as
431
at the Council of Ephesus; afterwards the majority had fled eastward, to Persia and beyond, and few if any of them now remained within the imperial frontiers. It thus mattered little whether they were attacked again or not; but they had the advantage of being detested by monophysites and orthodox alike, and an
ex cathedra
pronouncement of the kind the Emperor intended would, he hoped, do something to defuse the increasing hostility between the two. Early in
544
he published an edict, condemning not the heresy itself but three particular manifestations of it, soon to become notorious as the 'Three Chapters': the person and writings of Nestorius's teacher, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and certain specific works of two other, still more obscure theologians, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa.