Justinian paid no attention, trusting that all Italy would soon be his. As for the Franks, Wittich made peace with them, paying them 150,000 in gold – the sum already promised by Theudahad – and yielding them the Gothic territories between the Alps and the Rhône on condition that they should send troops to help him against Belisarius. But the Franks, wishing to seem on good terms with us still, would promise none of their own troops; armies of their subject allies would be sent in due time, they said.
Then we marched on Rome, by the Latin Way, which runs through Capua, parallel with the coast about thirty miles inland; for the shorter Appian Way was readily defensible at Terracina and several other points, and Belisarius could not afford delay or further loss of men. Everywhere we were greeted with joy by the natives, and especially by the priests. The soldiers had strict orders to pay for all provisions that they might need and to act with politeness. To us domestics the sights of Italy, ancient and modern, were of great interest; but our mistress had no eyes for them and involved us in her own gloomy feelings. A letter had at last come from Theodosius, who had become a monk at Ephesus, just as Belisarius had advised him to do. In it he protested his love and gratitude to Belisarius, but excused himself from returning to us at present. ‘I cannot come, my dearest Godparents, while your son Photius is with you: for you tell me that Macedonia has been punished, and I fear her lover’s revenge. I do not charge him with having incited her to slander me, but you must know that he hated me even before this. For you gave me many gifts, dear Godmother Antonina; and these he regarded as stolen from his own inheritance.’
Belisarius wished to revive my mistress from her melancholy and at the same time to make generous amends to Theodosius for his former suspicions of him. He therefore sent Photius back to Constantinople; who took with him, for Justinian, the keys of Naples, the Gothic prisoners, and a letter requesting immediate reinforcements. Then Belisarius wrote to tell Theodosius that he could now return without fear. But my mistress thought it a weary time to wait.
The Gothic garrison at Rome was surprised by our arrival: their advance-guard, posted on the Appian Way, had believed us still to be at Naples. Once more the name of Belisarius proved its value. The people of Rome were convinced that the City must fall to him, and were anxious to avoid the fate of the Neapolitans. The Pope Silverius then violated his oath to Wittich, with the excuse that it was sworn under duress and to a heretic. He sent Belisarius a letter inviting him to enter without fear, since he would soon persuade the Gothic garrison to march out. As we descended the long ridge of Albano and entered the city by the Asinarian Gate, the Gothic garrison marched out of the Flaminian, to the northward. Only their commander refused to desert his post. Belisarius took him alive and sent him to Constantinople with the keys of the city.
I confess that the sight of Rome disappointed me. It is venerable and vast indeed, and contains most remarkable buildings, the greatest of them overshadowing anything that we can show in Constantinople. But in three things it is inferior in my mind even to Carthage: it is a city that has greatly declined in riches and population, it does not lie upon the sea, the climate is unhealthy.
The Roman Senators and clergy greeted us warmly and urged us to push on to Ravenna and destroy the usurper Wittich before he had time to assemble his forces. But they were distressed when Belisarius replied that he preferred to remain awhile in the city and enjoy its hospitality, and especially when he began to repair the city defences, which were in a ruinous condition. The Pope Silverius himself came to my mistress secretly, and said to her – I was present – ‘Most Virtuous and Illustrious daughter, perhaps you will be able to persuade the victorious Belisarius, your husband, to give over his unwise intentions. It seems that he is intending to stand a siege in our Holy Rome, which (though abundantly blessed by God) is the least defensible city in the world, and in twelve hundred years of its history has never successfully stood a long siege. Its circuit walls, as you can see, are twelve miles in length and rise from a level plain; it is without sufficient food for its many hundred thousands of souls, and cannot easily be provisioned from the sea – as Naples, for instance, could be. Since your forces are insufficient, why not return to Naples and leave us Romans in peace?’
My mistress Antonina replied: ‘Beloved of Christ, Most Holy and Eminent Silverius, fix your thoughts rather on the Heavenly City, and my husband and I will concern ourselves with this earthly one. Permit me to warn Your Holiness that it is to your advantage not to meddle in our affairs.’
Pope Silverius went away offended, not offering my mistress his customary blessing – which, as you may imagine, did not greatly distress her. Enmity sprang up between them, and he repented of having welcomed our small army. He was convinced that we would be overwhelmed, and that Wittich would depose him for his breach of faith.
Belisarius, having sent out Constantine and Bessas with a small force to win Tuscany over to our arms, set his remaining troops to work at strengthening the ancient city ramparts, clearing and deepening the choked fosse, and patching up the gates. Since early in Theoderich’s reign no one had troubled about the repair of the ramparts. They consisted of the customary broad terrace of earth enclosed between two battlemented walls, with guard-towers at intervals. Belisarius now improved on the battlements by adding a defensive wing to each of them, on the left; so that to birds or angels looking down from the sky they would appear thus: ΓΓΓΓΓ, like the letter Gamma written many times over. He employed all the available masons and labourers in the city on this work, as he had done at Carthage. He also filled the Roman granaries with corn that he had brought from Sicily and requisitioned all stocks of grain within 100 miles of the city; paying for them at a fair price.
We had entered Rome on the tenth day of December; three months were gone before King Wittich came against us with his army. But by then it was a very strong army, drawn from every part of Italy and from across the Alps – consisting for the most part of heavy cavalry. Tuscany had yielded to our arms, but Belisarius now recalled from there all but the garrisons which he had put into Perugia and Narni and Spoleto, a mere thousand men. With the marines whom he took from the fleet, he had 10,000 men of all arms to oppose to 150,000 Goths. Thus the siege of Rome began.
Wittich rode southward at the head of his army, which strung out behind him on the Flaminian Way for a hundred miles and with only a little interval between division and division. Not far from Rome, he met a priest being carried out from the city in a sedan-chair on his way to take up a bishopric in the North. Wittich asked this priest: ‘What news, Holy Father? Is Belisarius still at Rome? Do you think that we shall catch him before he falls back on Naples?’
The priest, who was a man of penetration, replied: ‘There is no need to hurry, King Wittich. The Lady Antonina, wife of this Belisarius, is reglazing the windows of a palace which they are to occupy, and putting new hinges on the doors and buying furniture and pictures, and re-planting the garden with rose-trees and building a new north porch. Belisarius himself is doing the same sort of thing for the city defences – when you reach the Tiber you will find a new sort of north porch that he has built at the Mulvian Bridge.’
There are many bridges over the Tiber. The Mulvian is the only one near Rome that is not part of the city fortifications, lying two miles to the northward. Belisarius had built two strong stone towers here and garrisoned them with a detachment of 150 cavalrymen, whom he provided with catapults and scorpions to sink any boat in which the Goths might attempt to cross the river and take them in the rear. He intended the fortification of this bridge to delay Wittich’s advance, obliging him either to make a long detour or to send his men across the river by tens or twenties in a few small ferry-boats – he had removed all larger boats and barges himself. Whichever choice Wittich made, his army was so huge that Belisarius would gain something like twenty days for completing his work on the city fortifications; and in those twenty days the reinforcements that he was expecting from Constantinople might well arrive
. Perhaps he would also be able to delay the enemy’s crossing at another point.
The Mulvian Bridge garrison proved cowardly. When they saw the Gothic knights approaching in their hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, mounted on fine horses, the spring sunshine twinkling on helmets and armour and lance-points and frontlets and poitrails, they said to one another: ‘Why should we stay here and be killed to please Belisarius? Not even he would care to face the odds of a thousand to one.’ Some of them were Thracian Goths, who suddenly realized that this impressive army consisted of their kinsmen and co-religionists. What quarrel had they with them? At dusk the garrison fled: the Thracian Goths as deserters to Wittich, the remainder in the direction of Campania, being ashamed or afraid to return to Rome.
On the following morning Belisarius rode out towards the Mulvian Bridge with a thousand men of the Household Regiment, to hear what news there might be of the Goths; the usual dawn report from the officer commanding the Bridge garrison had not reached him. He was mounted on Balan, the white-faced bay charger that Theodora had given him after Daras, and was only a mile away from the Bridge when, emerging from a wood with his staff, he suddenly came upon an unexpected and unwelcome sight: four or five Gothic squadrons, already across the river, trotting in mass towards him over a large grassy meadow. Not hesitating for a moment, he charged straight at them, yelling to his leading troop to follow. When they came pouring up behind, shooting from the saddle as they rode, they found him and his staff doing the bloody work of common troopers; nor would he then draw out, but forced his way deeper into the fight.
Among the enemy were the deserters of the Thracian Goths, who recognized Belisarius and cried out to their companions: ‘Aim at the bay and end the war at one stroke!’ And ‘Aim at the bay!’ was the cry that every Goth took up.
Then began a fiercer encounter even than the conflict with the Persians on the Euphrates bank. Not only was Belisarius’s squadron fighting against enormous odds, but every man of the Goths was eager to win imperishable renown by killing ‘the Greek on the white-faced. bay’, as they called him. Never, I think, was such a bitter struggle seen since the world began. Belisarius’s staff fought desperately at his side, warding off javelin-casts and spear-thrusts; Belisarius himself, cutting and thrusting and parrying with his sword, pressed forward into the very heart of the enemy. His horse Balan fought with him, having been trained to rear up and strike with his fore-hooves and savage an enemy. Still the cry continued in the Gothic tongue, ‘Aim at the bay!’ ‘Kill the Greek on the white-faced bay!’ Belisarius shouted for a new sword, for his own was blunted with use. A dying groom, one Maxentius, gave him his. Belisarius soon broke off this gift-sword close to the hilt, and a third one was found for him, taken from a dead Gothic nobleman, which lasted him through that battle and many another. After three hours or more of this fighting the Goths had their bellyful and turned in flight, leaving a full thousand dead behind them on the meadow. (Four times that number had been engaged.) They say that Belisarius had accounted for sixty or more with his own right arm. He was bespattered with the blood that had spurted on him from lopped limbs and severed necks, but by some miracle had not been so much as scratched by any Gothic weapon. When Belisarius fought he did not smile and joke as most of his men did; he considered it a very serious matter to kill a man, especially a fellow-Christian. Nor did he ever boast of his battle exploits.
The wounded men rode back to Rome in small parties. The last of them to arrive brought the news that Belisarius was killed; because when Maxentius died the groom was confused with the master. Then all of us in the city gave ourselves up for lost, except my mistress Antonina, who would not believe the news, and behaved with the greatest fortitude. After a tour of the sentries on the walls and an inspection of the garrisons at the gates, to encourage the men and forestall treachery, she took up her station at the Flaminian Gate. My mistress was popular with the men – courage is a commodity that is always prized. Also, she was not above exchanging bawdy jokes with them, and was free with her money, and could sit a horse well and even handle a bow.
Meanwhile Belisarius pursued the fleeing enemy towards the bridge, hoping to drive them back across the river and thus to relieve the detachment which, for all he knew, was still desperately holding out in the flanking towers at the bridge. But by this time a strong force of Gothic infantry had also crossed the river. They opened their ranks for a moment to receive the cavalry fugitives, then closed them again and held their ground, greeting our men with a shower of arrows. Belisarius wheeled round his squadron, now greatly reduced in numbers, and seized a hill near by from which he could see clearly whether the Imperial banner still flew from the towers. It had gone. Then 10,000 Gothic cavalry thundered against him and he was forced from his position. His men still had their quivers full of arrows, for the fighting had been hand to hand. They were now able, by picking off the leading horsemen of the enemy, to fight a profitable rearguard action all the way back to Rome.
Belisarius arrived at the Salarian Gate at dusk with large forces of the enemy pursuing him, just out of bowshot.
As I have said, my mistress Antonina was at the Flaminian Gate, a whole mile to the west of the Salarian, where there was a guard of marines. The marines had heard the news of Belisarius’s death, and could not believe that it was indeed he who was clamouring for admission. They suspected a trick. Belisarius crossed the bridge over the fosse and came close to the Gate shouting: ‘Do you not know Belisarius? Open at once, Sailors, or I will come round by the Flaminian Gate and flog every second man of you.’
His face was unrecognizable for blood and dust; but some of the men knew his voice and were for admitting him. Others were afraid, lest they should admit the Goths too. The gates remained shut, Belisarius and his bodyguard crowding up against them between the two flanking towers. The Goths halted in disorder on the other side of the bridge and began encouraging one another to charge across. Then Belisarius, who was never at a loss, dug his heels into Balan, uttered his war-cry, and charged fiercely back with his exhausted men across the bridge. In the growing darkness the Goths supposed that a new force of the enemy had sallied from the Gate. They fled in all directions.
At this, the marines at last opened to Belisarius. They humbly begged his pardon, which he granted; and soon he was embracing his Antonina and asking her for the news of the day. She told him of the measures that she had taken on her own initiative for the defence of the city. When the rumour came of his death she had strengthened the guards on the wall: she had dealt out picks to the common Roman labourers, and detailed them for duty, a few to each guard-tower. She had told them: ‘It is a simple task. Keep your eyes open. If you see a Goth climbing up the wall, shout “Turn out, the guard!” loudly and, at the same moment, strike him with your pick!’ She had also enlisted, from the unemployed artisans: masons and smiths with their sledge-hammers, timber-men and butchers with their axes, and watermen with their boat-hooks. She had said: ‘I do not need to teach you how to handle your arms.’ But she had given them helmets to remind them that they were soldiers. Belisarius greatly approved of her work.
Then, wearied as he was, and having eaten nothing since the morning, he yet made a tour of the fortifications to see that everything was in order and every man at his post. There are fourteen main gates to Rome and several more postern gates; it was midnight before he had completed his rounds. He went round right-handed, that is to say the way of the sun; but when he reached the Tiburtine Gate to the east of the city a messenger from Bessas overtook him, having run from the Praenestine Gate which Belisarius had just quitted. He brought alarming news. Bessas had heard that the Goths had broken in on the other side of the city, by the Janiculan Hill, and were already close to the Capitol.
The news caused a panic among the Isaurians who were guarding the Tiburtine Gate; but Belisarius, questioning the messenger, soon began to doubt the story, especially as Bessas’s sole informant had been a priest of St Peter’s Cathedral. He sent scou
ts at once to investigate; and presently they returned, reporting that no Goths had been seen anywhere. So he circulated an order to all officers that they were to believe no rumours put about by enemies inside the walls to frighten them from their posts. If danger came he undertook to inform them of it himself; but they must stand fast, each trusting that his brave comrades at other parts of the walls were doing the same. He ordered fires to be lighted along the whole circuit of the walls, so that the Goths might see that Rome was well guarded and the citizens might sleep more securely.
When he came round to the Salarian Gate again he found a crowd of soldiers and Roman citizens listening to the speech of a Gothic nobleman. The Goth addressed himself to the citizens in good Latin (which the marines did not understand), reproaching them for their faithlessness in admitting a pack of Greeks from Constantinople into their city. ‘Greeks!’ he cried, contemptuously. ‘What salvation do you expect from a pack of Greeks? Surely you know what Greeks are from those whom you have seen – those companies of strutting Greek actors and those lewd pantomime dancers and those thieving, cowardly sailors?’
Belisarius turned to the marines and said to them smiling: ‘I wish that you understood Latin.’
They asked: ‘What does he say?’
‘He is particularly abusing you sailors, and some of the things that he says are true.’
My mistress persuaded him to eat a little bread and meat and drink a cup of wine. As he was eating, five of the leading Senators came to him trembling, and asked: ‘Tomorrow, General, you will yield?’
He laughed: ‘Treat the Goths with contempt, my illustrious friends, for they are beaten already.’
They looked away from him and exchanged glances of wonder. He told them: ‘I am not either joking or bragging, for today I learned that the victory is ours if we behave with ordinary prudence.’