saying: 'So few, and such miserable little men! Yet you always allowed them to defeat you.'
The husbands answered:' No, it was not they! It was that handsome tall general who rode by at their head on the white-faced bay. He did everything. He is to be our new ruler. He is the wisest, noblest, boldest man who ever lived. He is Belisarius.'
Belisarius accepted the submission, not the homage of Wittich; and, though the Goths expected him at any moment to proclaim himself Emperor, he gave no sign. But they were satisfied to wait, because he kept his oath about not enslaving or plundering the people of Ravenna, seizing only tie royal treasures in the Emperor's name, and because he brought in a few ship-loads of provisions. Further, he allowed all the Goths who owned lands to the south of the Po to leave the city and return to cultivate them. This was a safe step, for all the fortified towns in the South were now garrisoned by his troops.
For the first few days Belisarius was certainly allowing the Goths to believe that he would, before long, accept the Diadem. My mistress Antonina, growing hopeful, asked him: 'Have you then taken the wise decision?' To which he replied: 'Yes, that of continuing loyal to my oath as a general. It would have been wrong to let slip any opportunity for occupying the enemy's capital without loss of life.'
My mistress Antonina was so angry with him for respecting an oath sworn long ago to a scoundrel that she would hardly speak to hint Theodosius seemed angry too, perhaps because he had been promised by her the governorship of Rome when Belisarius became Emperor. He told Antonina in private: 'In order that Belisarius may keep his faith virginal, Italy must be destroyed.'
She asked: 'How destroyed?'
Theodosius answered: 'Belisarius will be recalled, and the destruction will come about through greedy tax- gatherers, unjust laws, stupid generals, wilful subalterns, mutiny, revolt, invasion. You will see.'
CHAPTER 18
Ravenna is a city of paradoxes. It is built on piles in a lagoon. 'The frogs in Ravenna greatly outnumber the citizens,' they say, 'and its mosquitoes outnumber even the angels of Heaven.' The sea, however, is gradually receding from the coast, so that the harbour which the Emperor Augustus built is now orchard land. 'Apples grow on the masts in Ravenna harbour,' they say. A yard or two below the surface of the soil water is always struck, which is inconvenient for the building of walls and the burial of corpses; but the water is brackish, and the inhabitants rely on rain-catchment for drinking and cooking. They say: 'Here the dead swim and the living go thirsty. Here waters stand and walls fall.' A colony of retired Syrian traders is settled at Ravenna, all very pious; whereas the local priests are mercenary and inclined to disregard Canon law. 'Here Syrians pray, but priests practise usury,' they say. There is no hunting to be had in the neighbourhood, and no sport but hand-ball at the baths; nevertheless, because of the damp a man must take vigorous exercise to keep in health. As a result, many wealthy civilians belong to a militia and practise military exercises on the parade-ground and in the tilt-yard; but the garrison- officers, from sheer boredom, join literary clubs in order to improve their education. 'Here men of letters play at being soldiers, and soldiers at being men of letters,' they say. To these many paradoxes was now added a man who could have been a sovereign but would not, and a man who would have liked to remain a sovereign but could not.
Paradoxical, too, was the discovery that my former master Barak, so knowledgeable in relics, had been piously adoring in a local church a relic of St Vitalis which, as any historical expert would tell you, cannot possibly have been his: I found a votive offering hanging in the church to commemorate Barak's miraculous cure from gall- stones by means of this relic. And for Barak a whole series of paradoxes was in store. He came to Ravenna to claim a great reward from Belisarius for having suggested to the Goths that he should be invited to become Emperor of the West. But Belisarius, so far from rewarding him, arrested him at my instance on that thirty-three-year-old charge of forgery, and sent him under guard to Constantinople to stand his trial. However, in his report on the case Belisarius did not mention Barak's part in the plot to make him Emperor: he regarded the whole transaction with such distaste that he preferred to suppress all reference Co it. At Constantinople Barak secured an honourable release by bribery, and though by now seventy years of age, resumed his long-interrupted task as overseer of monuments in the Holy Places. It was Ids pleasure to refresh the blood-marks on the pillar of scourging; and to renew the hyssop-sponge at Golgotha, which the piety of pilgrims had worn almost to nothing; and to discover at Joppa, buried in an old chest during the persecutions of the Emperor Nero, a startling number of early Christian relics of the first importance and in an agreeably sound state of preservation.
Fortunately we left Ravenna before the mosquito season began. Bloody John had written a warning letter to Justinian as soon as he became aware that the Goths had offered the Diadem to Belisarius. Justinian immediately recalled Belisarius, commending him warmly for his magnificent services and hinting that he would soon be employed in a yet wider field. Belisarius would have wished first to settle accounts with Uriah's army, now reduced to a mere thousand men, but he would not risk Justinian's displeasure by any further act of apparent disobedience. He therefore ordered his household to begin packing up, preparatory to moving. When Uriah at Pavia heard of this he was surprised and greatly disappointed; for he had believed that Belisarius still intended to proclaim himself Emperor. He concluded that Belisarius, weighing the strength of the Imperial troops hostile to him against that of the Gothic armies, considered that the step was too risky. He therefore persuaded his fellow-nobles to elect as Gothic king a certain Hildibald, who was a nephew of the Visigothic King of Spain; the prospect of a military alliance between the Goths of Italy and the Goths of Spain would perhaps tip the balance of Belisarius's judgement in favour of accepting the Diadem. Hildibald undertook to go to Ravenna and there do homage to Belisarius at once.
But Belisarius scornfully refused this renewed offer, and in the spring of the year of our Lord 540 we set sail for Constantinople again, leaving Pavia still untaken. Justinian meanwhile appointed eleven generals of equal rank — including Bloody John — to command the armies in Italy; these were united only in their jealousy of Belisarius and in their greed of money and power. At Belisarius's departure they proved incapable of concerted action, and did not even make any serious attempt to capture Pavia. However, Bloody John arranged for Uriah's murder by the new king, Hildibald; and then Uriah's death was avenged on Hildibald himself; and then one Erarich was elected but soon assassinated. Finally, the dangerous crown passed to Hildi-bald's young nephew Teudel. Thus in seven years seven monarchs had reigned over the Goths.
The civil governor appointed to rule Italy for Justinian was Alexander, surnamcd 'The Scissors'; formerly a money-changer, he had first come to the attention of the authorities at Constantinople as an adept clipper of the gold coinage. From every fifty coins that passed through his hands he would clip the equivalent of five, and this without making the coins seem any smaller. Cappadocian John, so far from punishing him for this fraud, had employed him in increasing the face-value of the gold in the Military Treasury by the same methods, and in other dishonest transactions. The Scissors soon showed such ingenuity in finding new ways of raising taxes that he was adjudged worthy of the highest offices. He had recently acted as chief tax-gatherer under Solomon in Africa. The problem of procuring money for Justinian's enormous expenditure was more pressing than ever now, because of the Bulgarian raids which had impoverished so wide an extent of country. The Scissors practised his usual extortions on Italy; and whatever treasure the war had spared he contrived to seize for his royal Master, who allowed him to retain five per cent of his takings as commission. Moreover, nobody could accuse The Scissors of partiality: he snipped away not only the fortunes of the Goths and Italians but the pay and rations of the Imperial troops as well. Theodosius's gloomy forecast of the future of Italy was proving correct in every article. But of this more will be told later.
Just before we had sailed King Khosrou of Persia had begun his threatened invasion of Syria. It was not an altogether unjustified one, because Justinian had been in secret treaty with the White Huns who live beyond the Caspian Sea, trying to bribe them to invade Persia from the North; and with the old King of the Saracens, trying to detach him from his allegiance. Being dissatisfied with the terms he offered, they had put Khosrou in possession of both sets of correspondence. Khosrou tried the southern route once more, marching along the right bank of the Euphrates from the plains of Babylon, and crossed the frontier unopposed. Having only cavalry with him, he reached
Sura after six days' march; and captured it by a trick during a truce arranged for the discussion of capitulation
