remained within the Roman Empire ever since, to protect it against the new nations of barbarians that press against the frontiers, and against the ancient Persians, your neighbours.'
But Modestus remains sunk in gloom. He recalls other incidents of the battle. The legions fought on empty stomachs, because of some foolish Christian fast…
Then Belisarius asks permission from Bessas to speak; because being only a boy he must in general refrain from doing so until addressed. Bessas nods consent, and Belisarius speaks, stammering a little from embarrassment, what is in his mind.
' 'Roman' is a name borne by hundreds of thousands who have never seen the City of Rome, and never will; and so it was, I believe, in the greatest days of the Empire. To be Roman is to belong not to Rome, a city in Italy, but to the world. The Roman legionaries who perished with Valens were Gauls and Spaniards and Britons and Dalmatians and many other sorts; of true-born Romans among them there cannot have been many hundreds. Then, I do not think that perfection in equipment and military tactics has been attained by the Gothic lancer. The Gothic lancer is a brave man, and his charge is terrible because of the weight of his horse, and because of the heavy armour he wears-cuirass, shield, helmet, greaves. But the Hun horseman is a brave man too, and he can let loose a rain of arrows while riding at full gallop; only his horse is too light to carry a fully armoured man. Thus the Hun has not attained perfection cither. Yet, noble Bessas, was it not fear of the Huns that first drove you Goths over the Danube into our Thrace? For your foot-archers could not overtake them, nor could your lancers withstand their volleys of arrows. Now, suppose that one could combine Hun archer and Gothic lancer into a single fighting man and civilize him as a Roman, and put him under proper camp discipline — that, I think, would be to breed a soldier as near perfection as possible. And he would be a Roman both in name and spirit. I intend to command such troops one day.'
Belisarius spoke with such quiet sincerity and such good sense that everyone applauded loudly, and the heart of my mistress Antonina went suddenly out to him in unmistakable love.
When dessert was brought in, Antonina gave an exhibition of sword-dancing in the old Spartan style. By now the dispute had ended, for it was realized that Belisarius had said the last word that needed saying; and that the future of warfare lay with him and his boy-companions. Modestus called his nephew to him, and embraced him drunkcnly. 'When I the this villa of mine is yours — tables, plate, frieze, and all. I could not leave it to better hands.' Indeed, the poor fellow died soon after, and was asgood as his word. The property was a very valuable one.
There is little more to be recorded of the rest of the banquet, which lasted until a late hour. Everyone but my mistress and Belisarius was very drunk — even Malthus — and young Uliaris grew boisterous and seized up a carving-knife and had to be disarmed. Modestus began, once more, his rambling disquisitions, and tied himself into such knots that he won almost as much applause as my mistress did with her last dance, when she so contorted herself that her legs seemed arms, and her belly, buttock. Being drenched in wine, he utterly forgot that he was a Christian and indulged in the most scandalous abuse and blasphemy of the Son (whether single, double, or many- natured) — though not of the Father, whom he generously identified with Jupiter, the supreme Deity of his own race. He went on to tell how the ruin of Rome had been her forsaking of the Old Gods and her taking up of this Galilean impostor — whose meek, unwarlikc philosophy had rotted the Empire through and through; so that unlettered barbarians must be hired to undertake the defence of the Empire not merely in the lower ranks of the Army, but also in the capacity of colonels and generals and even commanders of armies.
Now, while I am on this subject, let me copy out from Modestus's book of poems an example of his Latin hcndccasyllabics — the metre that he favoured most. It will show both the weakness and the occasional strength of his verse. Its weakness, in the continual puns and word-play — aniens, a military column, or phalanx, and amiculus, a rabbit; nipibus, rocks, and ruptis, broken; fate, widely, and huci, lurks. Its strength when, for once, an antithetic contrast (the triumph of the rabbits, that is to say the Christians, by means of their unwarrior-like meekness) is felt with a noble and sincere disgust. Chorazin, I believe, is a village in Galilee which Jesus cursed, but is used instead of'Galilee', the part for the whole, according to poetical convention.
DE CUNICULOPOLITANIS
Ruptis rupibus in Choraanis
Servili cunco cuniculorum
Laic qui latet, allocutus isto
Adridens BASILEUS, inermis ipse…*
ON THE INHABITANTS OF RABBITOPOLIS
In Galilean rocks the rabbits breed, A feeble folk, to whom their frail LORD said, Smiling: 'Be bold to cowardice, yea with speed Dart from your Foe — unless he too has fled.'
To our Eternal City these short-lived Prolific coneys came, and burrows found in catacombs, where they in darkness wived And numerous grew and pitted all the ground. * [Literally:
To that serville phalanx of rabbits that lurks in the broken cargo of Chorazin over a wide extent of country, the KING. Himself defenceless, spoke smiling… R. G.]
Thistles of controversy, coney-burrows,
Injured the fanning of our frontier lands:
No more the Roman sword with straight plough-furrows
Securely drove through all marauding bands.
Soon rabbits everywhere swarmed over-ground -
Constantine took to him a rabbit bride,
A white scut to his purple back he bound
And two long ears exchanged for laurel pride.
Rabbitopolitans, long sunk in shame,
You bribe the fox, the ferrets and the stoats
To constable your warren in Rome's name:
So blood spurts frequent from your furry throats.
The next morning my mistress was thoughtful and silent, and I asked her at last what was on her mind.
She replied: 'Did you notice that boy Belisarius? Last night after the banquet he declared his love for me.'
'There was surely no harm in that, was there, Mistress?' I asked.
'Such a strange declaration! Eugenius, imagine, he spoke of marrying me if I would have the patience to wait for him, and meanwhile he would look at no other woman. A boy of fourteen, indeed! Yet somehow I could not laugh.'
'How did you answer him?'
'I asked him whether he realized who I was — a public entertainer, a charioteer's daughter, a Megaraean Sphinx — and his answer was: 'Yes, a pearl from the muddy mussel.' He was evidently unaware that marriage between a man of his rank and a woman of my profession is forbidden by law. I did not know what to answer the poor fellow. I could not even kiss him. It was a foolish situation.'
'And now you are weeping, Mistress. That is more foolish still.'
'Oh, Eugenius, sometimes I wish I were dead!' she cried.
However, the melancholy fit soon passed when we were back again in Constantinople.
The story of how I had come to be in attendance on the dancing-girl Antonina, my mistress.
There was a Syrian merchant from Acre, by name Barak, and his trade was in Christian relics. If any of these relics happened to be genuine, it was accidental, since I cannot remember that he ever handled any object for which he had to pay a fancy price. His chief talent lay in investing a worthless object with a spurious sanctity. For example, on a voyage to Ireland he carried with him a relic which he confidently ascribed to St Sebastian, martyred under Diocletian. It was a worn-out old military boot (appropriate because Sebastian had been an Army captain) picked up from the roadside in a suburb of Alexandria. Barak had been to the trouble of drawing out the rusty nails from the boot-heel and replacing them with golden ones, and lacing the uppers with purple silk cords, and finding a crimson-lined cedar-wood casket to hold this fine relic. He also brought with him the harsh, heavy loin-cloth of St John the Baptist, enclosed in a casket of silver and crystal. It was made not from linen but from asbestos, a
