he reached a place where the tunnel narrowed to a hole in a rock, large enough to admit a boy, though impassable by a soldier in full armour. This rock was not granite, but some soft, volcanic rock which could easily be cut away with a pickaxe. He could see, a few yards away on the other side, light coming from above as if the aqueduct was unroofed at that point, and he could also make out a number of wind-fallen olives, a ragged headkerchief, and some broken crockery. He had then returned and next day walked along the road beside the aqueduct, looking for signs of an olive-tree overhanging the roof at any point, but could see none. He therefore concluded that the rock was inside the city somewhere.
Belisarius took twenty Isaurians of this man's company into the secret, but nobody else. He gave them muffled hammers and chisels and baskets and set them at enlarging the hole, which he first inspected himself. They must work as silently as possible. At midday they reported that the hole was large enough to admit the passage of a man in full armour, and that beyond it the aqueduct tunnel was three times the height of a man, and that a part of the brick roof had fallen in at this spot. The roots of an olive-tree had broken through the lower course of brick- work, deriving sustenance in normal times from the water of the aqueduct. The tree itself was outside the aqueduct, but one of its branches was spread across the hole in the roof. They brought the ragged headkerchief back with them, and some olives. Belisarius examined these things and said: 'The cotton kerchief has been newly washed and blown from where it was put to dry; and these are cultivated olives, not wild ones. Be sure that the tree is growing in some old woman's backyard.'
Then he sent another warning to the Neapolitan City Fathers: 'If you do not surrender your city tonight you will have lost it tomorrow, for I know how to take it. I swear this on my honour, which I am not accustomed to pledge idly. If you disbelieve me I shall be offended. When we storm the walls, I cannot promise that there will be no violence'
But they did not believe him.
That night he sent 600 mail-clad men down the aqueduct, though at first they were most unwilling to go, saying that they were soldiers, not sewer-rats. My mistress's son Photius asked to have the honour of leading them, but Belisarius would not entrust so difficult an undertaking to a mere boy; though he allowed him to bring up the rear and be responsible for reporting progress. It occurred to Belisarius that 600 men in armour, stumbling however carefully down the dark aqueduct, would surely make a great noise; so he decided to drown the noise by a diversion.
He had with him an old acquaintance — Bessas, the Thracian Goth, who had been present at the banquet of Modessus. He was a veteran of fifty now, but still strong and full of fight. Belisarius desired this Bessas to go out with some of his fellow-Goths to a point near the entrance of the aqueduct and there engage the enemy sentries in talk in their own language, as if trying to bribe them to surrender the city. Bessas's men were to make as much clatter as possible, scuffling among the stones in the dark and indulging in loud horse-play as if drunken.
The ruse succeeded. Insults, shouts, cheers, jokes were exchanged, Gothic ballads were sung, Bessas loudly proclaimed his loyalty to the Emperor Justinian and the Gothic sentries theirs to King Theudahad; and the 600 men passed through the aqueduct without being overheard. They carried lanterns with them, to give them courage.
The leading man, the Isaurian who had originally discovered the way, wore no mail-coat, and was armed only with a dagger. When he reached the place where the roof was broken, he climbed up the side of the aqueduct from the shoulders of a comrade. Gaining a hand-hold on a projecting brick, he mounted higher, and after a struggle reached the top. A long strap was thrown to him; this he fastened to the branch of the olive-tree and then put a leg over the wall and looked around him. As Belisarius had foreseen, it was the courtyard of a house. Nobody was about. He beckoned with his hand, and four men in armour, including an officer, soon joined him in the court. Then he stole into the house, which was ruinous but occupied. It was now past midnight.
As he climbed in through the window his nostrils were assailed by the sour smell of poverty. He was in the kitchen; in the moonlight he saw a single cup and a single plate on a wretched table, where the owner had supped. Pausing, he heard a weak cough from the next room and a mumbling noise that could only come from an aged woman in prayer. He was upon her before she could scream, his dagger raised; but this was only for a moment. He took from his bosom the same ragged kerchief that he had shown to Belisarius, and returned it to her with a smile of friendship. He also gave her a lump of cheese, which she smelt and then ate delightedly. The officer now came in. He asked in Latin where her house was situated and who her neighbours were. She described its location and said that her neighbours were poor folk like herself, from whom there was nothing to fear. The 600 men were signalled to climb up. They stepped into the courtyard, which was a large one, one by one, massing themselves together. Photius returned to report to Belisarius that all was well so far.
Belisarius had a party with scaling-ladders ready in a lemon-grove not far from the aqueduct. As soon as he heard the two trumpet-flourishes from the city, and saw from the swinging of lanterns where exactly on the northern course of the circuit-wall the Isaurians had gained a lodgement, he brought these ladders up hurriedly and ordered an escalade. Constantine, to whom had been entrusted the task of preparing the ladders, had under- estimated the height of the wall, so that they were short by a good twenty feet; he lengthened them, however, by lashing them together, two and two, and little time was lost. The Isaurians had captured two towers and a considerable stretch of wall between them, so it was not long before 2,000 men had mounted and joined them there. Naples was as good as captured.
The only defenders who fought with true courage were the Jews. They knew that they had little hope of freedom if captured, Justinian being a persecutor of their religion; he blamed all Jews for the complicity of their ancestors in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But at last they, too, were overpowered. The gates being opened by some of the citizens, in swarmed the rest of the army.
Naples was given up to plunder for the rest of the night, and many acts of savagery were done which Belisarius was powerless to prevent. Especially violent were 200 Massagetic Huns, heathen, who had elected not to return to their own country, preferring to serve with Belisarius. They broke into the churches, robbed the church- treasuries, and killed the priests at the altars — a sacrilege which distressed Belisarius when it was reported to him, especially as these were churches of the Orthodox faith. In the morning he announced an amnesty and put an end to the looting. The soldiers had to be content with their plunder of money and jewels and silver plate, for he took away from them the Neapolitan women and children whom they had seized as slaves and restored them to their families. Then he held a court of justice, as he had done in Carthage at its capture. He informed the 800 Gothic prisoners that they would be sent to Constantinople and there given the choice cither of becoming unpaid manual labourers or of serving as paid soldiers of the Emperor on the Persian frontier. They assured him that they would choose to remain soldiers, and he praised them.
While this court was in progress, an official messenger of the Italian Civil Service — ghastly faced, exhausted, spattered with mud — was admitted to Belisarius's presence. He carried with him a letter from King Theudahad to Honorius, the City Governor of Rome. He had not broken the seals, but believed it to be a message of the utmost importance and secrecy, for he had been roused from sleep long after midnight and kept waiting for six hours while it was being penned. Being a loyal Roman who hated the heretical Goths, he had at great danger to himself passed disguised down the Appian Way and brought this letter to the hand of conquering Belisarius, Vice-Regent to His Sacred Majesty the Emperor Justinian, who was Vice-Regent to God Himself. As he passed through the town of Terracina, at dusk, he had been questioned by a Gothic officer; to avoid capture or delay, he had stabbed the Goth in the belly and left him dying on the road.
Belisarius broke the seals of the letter and soon began to laugh so heartily that we feared for his senses. At last, recovering his gravity, he read out to the assembled company, in sonorous tones, the following document:
King Theudahad to the Illustrious Honorius, Governor of the Eternal City Rome, Greeting!
We regret to learn from your report that the brazen elephants placed in the Sacred Way (so named after the many superstitions to which it was consecrated of old) are falling into decay.
It is to be much regretted that, whereas these animals live in the flesh for more than a thousand years, their brazen effigies should be so soon crumbling to ruin. Sec, therefore, that their gaping limbs be strengthened by iron hooks, and that their sagging bellies be underpinned by massive masonry.
The living elephant, when it falls prostrate on the ground, as often occurs when it is helping men to fell trees, cannot rise again unaided. This is because it has no joints in its feet; and accordingly in the torrid lauds frequented by these beasts you may often see numbers of them lying as if dead until men approach to help them to stand upright again. Thus this creature, so terrible by its size, is in point of fact not equally endowed by Nature with the tiny ant.
