He also sent out expeditions to the various detached parts of the Vandal Empire, to win these back to their former allegiance, increasing his army by levies of Roman Africans. He sent one expedition to Corsica and Sardinia, armed with the head of Zazo as a proof that he was not lying when he claimed to have conquered Carthage; and another to Morocco with the head of Ammatas, who had formerly governed that country; and another to Tripoli; and still another to the fertile Balearic Islands, rich in olive-oil and almonds and figs. All these islands or regions submitted at once to his authority.
The only failure that he experienced was in Sicily, where, in Justinian's name, he claimed the promontory of Lilybaeum as part of the Vandal Empire: on the ground that it had passed to the Gothic Crown in the dowry that King Theoderich gave King Hilderich with his sister. The Goths of Sicily refused to surrender this place, though it was rocky and desolate enough, and assisted the small Vandal garrison there to drive Belisarius's men away. Then Belisarius wrote a stern letter to the Governor of Sicily, reasserting Justinian's inalienable claim to the place, and threatening war if they refused; for he was aware that a foothold in Sicily would be a security against a possible Gothic invasion of Africa. I mention this matter of Lilybacum because it later assumed great political importance.
Now let me close this chapter with the conclusion of the story of King Geilimer. There he was with his nephews and cousins and brothers-in-law on Mount Pappua, living with the wild Moorish tribesmen, in despair of rescue — what more miserable man in all Africa? For if the Vandals could have been described as the most luxurious nation in the world, their neighbours the Moors were among the most poverty-stricken, living all the year round in underground huts which were stifling or dank according to the season. They slept on the floor, each with only a single sheepskin under him, and wore the same rough shirt and hooded burnous, winter and summer; and had no armour worth the name and few possessions. Bread, wine and oil were absent from their diet, which consisted of water and herbs and unleavened barley-cake made not of milled flour but of grams bruised in a rough mortar and baked in the embers.
The sufferings of Geilimer and his family cannot easily be understated. They were forced to be grateful to their Moorish friends for the miserable hospitality which these offered; and since Pharas was keeping strict guard, no fresh supplies could enter. Soon the barley began to give out. They had no amusements, no baths, no horses, no charming women, no music; and far in the distance below them they could sec the white walls and towers of Hippo Regius, and the oval of the Hippodrome, and vessels sailing in and out of the harbour; and among the dark masses of green, which were orchards, shone little silver patches, which were cool fish-pools.
Pharas, growing weary of the siege, attempted an assault on the mountain cliff; but his Herulians were repulsed with heavy loss by the Moorish garrison, who toppled boulders down upon them. He decided to starve Geilimer out. One day he wrote him a letter which ran as follows:
Dear Sir and King, I greet you.
I am a mere barbarian and totally uneducated. But I am speaking this to a scribe who will record what I have to tell you faithfully, I trust, (if not, I will whip him well.) What in the world, my dear Geilimer, has come upon you that you and your kinsmen stay perched up on that desolate crag with a pack of naked, verminous Moors? Is it perhaps that you wish to avoid becoming a slave? What is slavery? A foolish word. What living man is not a slave? None. My men are slaves to me in all but name; and I to my anda, Belisarius; and he to the Emperor Justinian; and Justinian, they say, to his wife, the beautiful Theodora; and she to someone else, I know not whom, but perhaps it is her God or sonic bishop or other. Come down, monarch of Mount Pappua, and become a fellow-slave with the great Belisarius, my master and anda, to the Emperor Justinian, the slave of a slave. Belisarius is willing, I know, to spare your life and send you to Kesarorda [Constantinople] where you shall be made a patrician and given rich estates and pass the rest of your life in every comfort, among horses and fruit-trees and full-bosomed women with charmingly small noses. He will pledge you his word, I am confident, and once you have that assurance, you have everything.
Signed: x the mark of Pharas, the Herulian your well-wisher.
Geilimer sobbed when he had read this letter. Using the ink and parchment which Pharas had thoughtfully sent with his messenger, he answered briefly that honour forbade him to yield; for the war was an unjust one. He prayed that God would punish Belisarius one day for the misery that he had inflicted on the innocent Vandals. He ended: 'As for me, I cannot write more; for misfortune has robbed me of my wits. Farewell, then, good-hearted Pharas, and of your charity send me a harp and a sponge, and a single loaf of white bread.'
Pharas read the last sentence over and over, but could make no sense of it. The messenger then interpreted it: Geilimer wished to experience again the smell and taste of good bread, which he had not eaten for so long a time; and the sponge was to treat an inflamed eyefor the Moors suffer from ophthalmia, which is infectious; and the harp was to provide musical accompaniment to an elegy that he had composed upon his misfortunes. Then Pharas, being a man of generous feelings, sent the gifts, but did not relax his watch.
One day, when the siege had lasted three months, King Geilimer was sitting in a hut watching a Moorish woman, his hostess, making a very small barley-cake. When she had pounded the barley and made a paste of it with water and kneaded it a little, she put it to bake in the embers of her thorn fire. Two children, his little nephew and the son of his hostess, were crouched beside the hearth, both very hungry. They waited impatiently for the cake to be baked. The young Vandal was suffering severely from intestinal worms, caught from the Moorish children, which rob the stomach of its sustenance and so increase the natural appetite. The cake was only half- baked, but he could wait no longer, and snatched it from the ashes and, without dusting it or waiting for it to cool, thrust it into his mouth and began eating it. The young Moor seized him by the hair of his head, struck him on the temple with his fist, and thumped him between the shoulders, so that the cake flew out of his mouth; and then ate it himself.
This was too much for the sensitive soul of Geilimer. He immediately took a pointed stick and a torn piece of sheepskin, and ink of powdered charcoal and goat's milk, and wrote to Pharas again. He said that he surrendered on the terms that had been proposed; but he must first be given Belisarius's pledge in writing.
Thus the siege ended, for Belisarius gave the pledge required and sent an escort to bring Geilimer to him. Geilimer descended from the mountain with all his family; and a few days later, at Carthage, he met Belisarius for the first time, who came to greet him in the suburbs.
I was present at that meeting, in attendance on my mistress, and I was a witness of King Geilimer's pitiful and strange behaviour. For, as he came towards Belisarius, he smiled, and the smile changed to hysterical laughter, and the laughter to weeping. There were tears in Belisarius's eyes, too, as he took the former monarch by the hand and led him into a neighbouring house for a drink of water. He laid him down on a bed and comforted him as a woman comforts a sick child.
CHAPTER 12
Th ough the Vandals were crushed beyond question, the wild Moors of the interior still constituted a threat to our men and to the 8,000,000 unwarlike Roman Africans of the Diocese. The Moors, who numbered perhaps 2,000,000, had been at constant war with the Vandals and, as the latter degenerated, had gradually encroached on their territories. When Belisarius first landed, all but a few, such as the tribe on Mount Pappua, allied themselves with him, promising to help him against his enemies and sending their children to him as hostages. These Moors live principally in Morocco, which lies opposite to Spain, but they are also settled in the interior of the whole coast from Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean. They claim to be descendants of those Canaanites whom Joshua the son of Nun drove out of Palestine. Ever since the time when the Emperor Claudius, shortly after the time of the Crucifixion, conquered and annexed Morocco, their paramount chiefs have not been acknowledged by their vassals as worthy of obedience unless presented with insignia of office by the Emperor himself. The insignia consist of a silver staff, fluted with gold; and a crown-shaped cap of silver tissue, banded with silver; and a white Thessalian cape with a golden brooch on the right shoulder containing a medallion of the Emperor; and a gold-embroidered tunic; and a pair of gilded top-boots. During the last hundred years the chiefs had grudgingly accepted these objects from the Vandal kings, to whom the sovereignty of Africa had lapsed; but their vassals had often made it an excuse for disobedience that they were not the authentic insignia, especially the brooches. Belisarius therefore won the favour
