Count Belisarius (34 page)

News had by this time come to Belisarius which grieved him greatly: that Rufinus and Aigan and the 500 cuirassiers that he had left behind with Solomon had been destroyed by the Moors. Solomon had sent them to the interior, to a town called the Royal Springs in the centre of the corn country, 100 miles inland from Hadrumetum; they were to rescue a large number of Roman African peasants who had been carried off in a Moorish raid. The cuirassiers succeeded in this task and were slowly escorting the peasants home when they were trapped in a narrow mountain-pass by a force of several thousand Moors, who cut them to pieces in a desperate fight. The Moors were now also raiding in the western parts of the Diocese, and Solomon's forces were altogether inadequate to protect the Roman Africans. Solomon wrote to the Moorish chieftains, protesting against these outrages: he reminded them that they were now Justinian's allies, that they had sent their children to Carthage as hostages of good behaviour, and that they should be warned by the fate of the Vandals. The Moors
merely laughed at this letter. They pointed out in their reply that their alliance with Justinian had not improved their condition in the least. Being polygamous, they did not set much store by children, who were easily replaceable, nor did they indulge those soft sentiments of family affection which had lost Geilimer two battles and his kingdom. The defeat of the Vandals was a sadder augury for the Roman Africans than for themselves, they said. Their raids continued.

Solomon took the field against them with all his available forces. The Moors now made the mistake of concentrating in a great army, rather than breaking up into raiding parties and devastating the Diocese piecemeal. Troops as undisciplined as these Moors, who possess no body-armour and carry flimsy shields and only a couple of javelins apiece and an occasional sword, lose fighting value proportionately to their increased concentration in mass. They adopted a strange defensive formation that had once baffled the Vandals in Tripoli. They built a circular palisade at the foot of a hill; having put their women and other non-combatants behind it, they surrounded it with twelve lines of camels, tied head to tail, sideways to the enemy. When Solomon's force appeared, some of them stood on the backs of the camels, prepared to hurl javelins down, while some crouched under the beasts' bellies, prepared to rush out and stab. Their cavalry also formed up on the hill, having undertaken to charge down as soon as the camp should be attacked; these also were armed with javelins and swords.

Solomon launched his attack. But the Roman cavalry horses, being unaccustomed to the smell of camels, reared up and could not be persuaded to charge; and the Moors did a deal of damage with their javelins. Then Solomon dismounted the squadron of Thracian Goths – big, strong men in shirts of mail – and himself led them with raised shields and drawn swords against the ring of camels. They butchered 200 camels in no time, and broke the ring. The Moorish infantry fled in disorder; their cavalry did not come into action. Solomon captured all the women and all the camels; and 10,000 Moors were killed in the pursuit.

The Moors recovered from their defeat a few weeks later and invaded the corn-growing country again with the biggest army that they had ever gathered together – so big that it was not only useless but self-destructive. Solomon surprised it at dawn one day, encamped on a mountain, and stampeded it into a ravine. In the confusion of flight these savages trampled one another down, and not a man of
them thought of defending himself. Incredible though this may seem, 50,000 of them perished before the sun was high, and not a single Roman soldier received so much as a scratch. So great was the number of captive women and children that a healthy Moorish boy, whose price in the Constantinople market would not be less than ten gold pieces, could be bought here for two pieces of silver, the price of a fat sheep. Thus Rufinus and Aigan were avenged.

The survivors of the Moors took refuge with their kinsmen on Mount Aures, a huge mountain thirteen days' journey inland from Carthage on the border of Morocco. This mountain, which is sixty miles in circumference, is very easy to defend, and most fertile on its upper slopes, with plentiful springs of water. Thirty thousand fighting men now made it their headquarters for raids.

As for the rest of Roman Africa: the inhabitants were now heartily wishing the Vandals back again – not only because of the Moorish raids, but because of Justinian's tax-gatherers, who settled like hungry leeches on the land. The Vandals had also been leeches, but gorged leeches: they only taxed the farmers one-tenth of their produce, and were negligent in their collection of it. Justinian, on the other hand, required one-third, and made sure that he was paid promptly. Then, again, there was discontent in the Army because of the soldiers' Vandal wives. It seemed no more than justice that the victorious soldiers should be awarded the fertile lands and well-built houses of those whom they had dispossessed. But by Justinian's orders these properties were sequestrated and sold on behalf of the Imperial Treasury. The troops were given nothing of what they expected, but sent away to build and guard remote block-houses and expected to cultivate poor and waterless lands in the neighbourhood. The Vandal women made the loudest outcry against the injustice of this arrangement, goading their new husbands to insist upon proper redress. But Solomon had no authority to satisfy their demands.

There was still another cause for complaint in the Army, and a fair one in my opinion, caused by Justinian's foolish zeal for the Orthodox faith. Solomon's forces included, as you know, a squadron of 500 Thracian Goths and Pharas's 300 Herulians, and about 200 other barbarians from beyond the Danube: these were all Arian heretics. But Justinian had sent an order for the extirpation of the Arian heresy and the persecution of Arian priests; he forbade any Arian to receive any of the Sacraments unless he recanted, or to have his children baptized.
This rule applied not only to the surviving Vandals – old men and women, and the wives and stepchildren of the soldiers – and to Roman African converts to the heresy, but also to these brave soldiers, who never before had been thus affronted.

Solomon's reports of the situation in Africa were so disquieting that Belisarius pleaded with Justinian that the Arian soldiers should be allowed to receive the Sacraments from their own priests, as was customary. But Justinian protested that to do this would be an impious act and would imperil his own chances of salvation. Belisarius could not press the matter. He next asked Justinian to find reinforcements for Solomon (who had also been obliged to send an expedition against bandits in Sardinia) to be used as block-house troops, while the original troops should be garrisoned in Carthage and given, not palaces and parks perhaps, but decent houses and lands to content them. Justinian seemed to agree, and gathered a force of 20,000 men from Thrace and the Persian frontier, replacing them with the new Vandal squadrons. Then he told Belisarius in a public audience that he must soon return to Carthage with them and take over the governorship from Solomon. However, this was all a deception. Justinian had another war in mind. The troops were not intended for Africa, but for the conquest of Sicily.

I have mentioned the claim made by Belisarius, on Justinian's behalf, to the promontory of Lilybaeum. It was referred by the Gothic Governor of Sicily to Queen Amalasontha, Regent of Italy and Sicily and Dalmatia and South-eastern France for her young son Athalrich, with whom Justinian had made the treaty which enabled Belisarius to revictual at Syracuse on his way to the capture of Carthage. Queen Amalasontha officially took the view that on the extinction of the Vandal monarchy Lilybaeum had reverted to her own patrimony. But privately she did not wish to quarrel with Justinian, since it was a most precarious position to be queen over the Goths, who had always thought it below their dignity to be ruled by a woman.

Her father, the great King Theoderich, had been a miracle among barbarians. He was of that Ostrogothic nation which won the great victory at Adrianople, as related in a former chapter, and subsequently became allied to the Emperor of the East and protected his frontiers for him. Not many years later, at the suggestion of the Emperor of the East, nearly the whole nation, led by Theoderich from Thrace, migrated in wagons to Italy, to make war against a barbarian general
who had deposed the Emperor of the West. Only a few thousands remained behind. King Theoderich conquered and killed the usurper, and seized Italy for himself and his people. Ruling justly, wisely, and long, he restored prosperity to the whole of Italy; and, while nominally the vassal of the Emperor at Constantinople, retained complete independence of action. Though no scholar himself, Theoderich was a friend to learning. The Goths – who, like all Germans, prefer barbaric to civilized virtues – could not accuse him of softness; for he was the best horseman and the best archer in his dominions, and avoided luxury like the plague. His noblest quality was his religious tolerance: though an Arian heretic, he permitted complete religious liberty to Orthodox Christians, and to heretics of any reputable sort, throughout his dominions.

Amalasontha inherited her father's courage and ability, and was, besides, very beautiful. But she had few friends among the Gothic nobility; when at Theoderich's death the crown passed to her ten-year-old son, Athalrich, with herself as regent, they interfered in all her arrangements, even in Athalrich's education. Theoderich had wished him to become a cultivated man, capable of conversing on equal terms with Emperor or Pope or Roman senator, and had put him under grave tutors; but this barbarian gentry insisted that the youth be allowed to run wild with companions of his own age and learn to drink and drab and ride cock-horse and swagger about with his sword loose in his scabbard, just as they themselves had done when young.

The result was that Athalrich grew to be a young ruffian. He came to despise his mother and, egged on by his companions, openly threatened to seize the management of the country from her. She treated him with gentle scorn, but secretly prepared to leave Italy with a shipful of treasure – a quarter of a million in gold coin – and take refuge with Justinian at Constantinople. She even sent a letter informing him of her intentions, and he replied with a warm welcome. However, she succeeded in assassinating the three young nobles who were causing her the most trouble; and thus found it unnecessary to sail. But it is a long way from Ravenna, where Amalasontha's Court was, to Constantinople. Justinian became impatient for further news. He sent an envoy to Amalasontha, ostensibly to take up the matter of Lilybaeum with her, but in reality to find out why she did not come; and he also sent two bishops, ostensibly to confer with the Pope on a knotty point of doctrine, but in reality for secret talks with a certain
Theudahad, Theoderich's nephew, who had inherited great estates in Tuscany – the district lying on the coast northward from Rome. Now, Amalasontha had recently summoned Theudahad to Ravenna and reproached him for his unjust seizure of the lands of Roman citizens, his neighbours, as also of lands belonging to the Crown; and had obliged him to make restoration and apology.

The envoy and the bishops returned, with the welcome news that Theudahad, in return for a settled income and an estate at Constantinople, was willing, for hatred of Amalasontha, to betray Tuscany to Justinian's soldiers whenever he cared to send an army of occupation; and that Amalasontha was secretly willing to transfer her regency of Italy to Justinian on the same terms – since she could not long continue to control her son. But her official reply in the matter of Lilybaeum was a denial that Justinian had any right to it.

Then a sudden event changed the whole complexion of events. Young Athalrich, his health undermined by drink and debauchery, fell into a decline and died. Amalasontha, who only ruled by virtue of being his mother, was thus, according to Gothic law, relegated to private citizenship. She decided to choose at once a noble Goth, by marriage to whom she could still remain queen. There was, she thought, no more suitable person to become her husband than this same Theudahad, her cousin (of whose intrigues with Justinian she was unaware, as he of hers): an elderly, unsoldierly man, unlike any other of the Goths in having taken to the study of philosophy and to the writing of Latin hexameter verse. He would no doubt feel honoured by a union with herself, and would allow her to rule in his name without interference. She therefore proposed marriage to him, emphasizing the advantage of thus protecting himself against the hostility both of the Gothic nobility, who despised him for his learning, and of the Italians, who hated him for his rapacity. Nobody had a better claim to the throne than he, she said, but without her he could not hope either to seize or hold it. He consented, with every appearance of pleasure, and was duly crowned king, and acclaimed as such by the Goths; for no other claimant of royal blood appeared. But Amalasontha had over-reached herself. What should Theudahad do, as soon as he had the crown on his head, but violate his sacred oath to her that he would not meddle in public business. He actually excluded her from his council room and carried her off to a small island of his in a Tuscan lake, keeping her a close prisoner there.

When Justinian heard of Theudahad's action, he was more pleased than he pretended to be. He sent another envoy to Italy, to inform Amalasontha that she would be given all the support against her enemies that she needed; and the envoy had instructions not to conceal this message from Theudahad or from any of his nobles. He hoped thus to throw the whole kingdom into confusion. But by the time that the envoy arrived in Italy, Amalasontha was dead: the relatives of the three young men whom she had killed had persuaded Theudahad to avenge their death. She was surprised one summer afternoon as she was bathing with her women in the lake, and her head forced under the water until she drowned.

Now, though Justinian continued to protest his great love for Theodora, she also was relieved at this queen's death, whom she regarded as a rival. It was true that Amalasontha, whom Justinian had known when she was a child, was of better birth than Theodora and a little younger and far more beautiful. Cappadocian John put it about that Theodora had arranged the assassination herself.