clergy. The monks behaved in the rowdiest way, gloating over the spoils, especially the sacred relics which Justinian had promised them for their churches.
In the days of the Roman Republic the victorious general rode with his captives through the streets of the City, and for that one day was supreme in power. The enemy king or chieftain, if he had been captured, was offered as a human sacrifice at the close of the ceremonies. How customs have changed since those heroic times! Observe Geilimer free of chains: as the procession finally reaches the Hippodrome, where Justinian is awaiting it, seated in the Royal Box, he enters with the rest. He removes his purple cloak and, mounting up to the throne, makes obeisance to Justinian; and is then graciously raised up and pardoned. He is given a royal warrant which confers on him vast estates in Galatia for himself and his family; and, in addition, the title of Illustrious Patrician if he consents to renounce his Arian heresy. Observe also Belisarius, the victor, who approaches the throne, removes his purple cloak and makes obeisance at the Emperor's feet; and is given no estate, no words of gratitude, but informed merely that he has obeyed orders well.
You may ask how Geilimer comported himself on this trying occasion. He neither laughed nor wept, but shook his head sadly and wonderingly and continued to repeat over and over again, as a sort of charm, the words of the Prophet Ecclesiastes: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' Shortly afterwards he retired with his family to Galatia, and there lived to a comfortable old age, remaining true to the Arian faith. As for the other Vandal prisoners: the most warlike of them were formed into cavalry squadrons and sent to the defence of the Persian frontier, but first Belisarius had his pick of them for his Household Regiment. The remainder were used as labourers for the building of churches or as oarsmen in the Imperial galleys.
Afterwards Justinian was told by Theodora that if he wished to win the title 'The Great' he must be magnanimous and show Belisarius some worthy mark of favour. He therefore appointed him Consul for the year following, and even struck a medal: his own head on the obverse, and Belisarius riding in full armour on the reverse, with the inscription 'The Glory of the Romans' — a unique honour in our City. Belisarius's induction as Consul took place on New Year's Day. Seated in his ivory chair of office, which was supported by Vandal captives, and with an ivory wand in his hand, he made another short progress through the City from his quarters in the Palace to the Senate House. As he went he distributed largesse to the crowd from his own private spoils of war — gold and silver coin, cups, girdles, brooches — to the value of 100,000 gold pieces. But my mistress Antonina, whose prudence in the matter of the water-bottles will be recalled, took care that he should not beggar himself. When the mob clamoured for more, she told them herself that they were shameless creatures and would strip Belisarius not only of all he had won in Africa but of what he had inherited from his parents or saved of the gifts awarded him by the Emperor. To show the foresight of my mistress in matters of economy, I must tell you that she had, while still at Cardiage and without Belisarius's knowledge, removed a very large quantity of coin from Geilimer's treasure, choosing all the more recently minted Imperial money that she could find, so that its origin should not be suspected, and hidden it away against a rainy day. For Belisarius's household expenses were enormous, and there never was a more generous man to the needy and unfortunate.
The sacred relics were distributed among the churches, appropriately to the dedication of each, and every church of importance received something. But one small, anonymous community of very poor monks, who lived by begging and occupied a ruinous house in the suburb of Blachernae, did not share in all this bounty. Their abbot came to Belisarius presently and asked him, in Christ's name, whether he had perhaps some trifle of his own that he could give them; for while he was in Africa they had prayed for his success night and day.
He replied:' Venerable Father, yours is a fraternity of poor begging brothers who have small regard for silver or gold, and I shall therefore give your house no object that may distract their minds from religious thoughts. But I shall lend you a famous relic, the begging bowl of St Bartimaeus, which the Emperor himself gave me after the fight at Daras, and you shall display it in your house and keep it as a reminder of your vows of poverty, patience and virtue. Remember, it is a loan only, since I cannot seem ungrateful to His Sacred Majesty. One day I may have need for it again.'
Thenceforth this house was never without food and drink, for it became a centre of pilgrimage, and was thereafter known as the monastery of St Bartimaeus.
As for the golden Mercy Seat and the golden seven-branched candlestick and the shew-table and the other Jewish treasures, Justinian was persuaded by the Bishop of Jerusalem to return them to that city. The Bishop argued that they had brought no luck to the men of Rome, whose dominion had passed to the barbarians, nor to the Vandals, whom Justinian himself had defeated. They plainly carried a curse with them. Justinian sent them back to Jerusalem, to the very building where they had once been stored for a thousand years — the Temple of Solomon, which was now a Christian church. What a grand source of profit for the clergy there. The Jews lamented that they were still deprived of their holy instruments of worship, and prophesied that the Christians would before long be cast out of Jerusalem; but this has not come to pass in my time.
When the news of Belisarius's conquest of Africa reached the Persian Court, King Khosrou was surprised and vexed. He sent a congratulatory embassy to Justinian asking, half in earnest, half in joke, for his share of the spoils of Carthage. But for the Persian peace, he said, Justinian would never have been able to spare troops for Carthage. Justinian pretended to take the joke in good part, and sent Khosrou a valuable gold dinner service. So the Eternal Peace still remained in force.
There is no need to give a detailed account of my mistress's life in Constantinople during the days that followed our return from Carthage. She was again in attendance on Theodora, and spent her leisure time in parties and pleasure excursions and visits to the theatre. Theodosius was constantly with her, and a good deal of loose talk about their friendship was current at Court; but Belisarius, since Theodosius was his godson, disdained to take any notice of it, treating the young man with every mark of confidence.
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
