Chapter 16

The presence of the Lady Antonina at Carthage and Rome, compelled Belisarius to keep up a splendid and expensive court. The commander-in-chief was fond of wealth, Antonina of splendour. The fortunes of private individuals were still enormous, and rivalled the wealth of Crassus and the debts of Cæsar.[23] Belisarius, like a noble Roman, availed himself of his commands in Africa, and Italy, to become master of sums equalling in amount the mighty accumulations of extortion collected by the consuls and proconsuls of old Rome, when they plundered Syria, Egypt, Pontus and Armenia. Of this wealth Belisarius made no inconsiderable display when at Constantinople. He passed along the streets, and appeared in the Hippodrome, attended by a numerous and brilliant suite of Gothic, Vandal, and Mauritanian chiefs, mounted on the finest horses, and clad in the richest armour, that wealth could command. In the days of his greatest prosperity, his own guards amounted to 7000 horsemen; and they were more formidable from their discipline and military experience than from their numbers. To this band of well-trained veterans, he owed many of his victories over the Goths in Italy.[24]

The civil administration of Belisarius was never very successful. His bad financial management involved his African army in revolt; and in Italy he overlooked disorders, which at last produced indiscipline in his own ranks, and famine among the Italians. The expense of supporting his cohorts of personal guards, and the necessity of securing the services of the most experienced and boldest troopers in this chosen corps, induced him to wink at irregularities in Africa and Italy, that he would have been obliged to punish severely near Constantinople or in Greece. At Abydos, he had ordered two Huns of the mercenary cavalry to be hanged for committing a murder; at Rome, he ran the risk of being murdered himself in the midst of a council of war, by one of his generals, from having neglected too long to cheek the rapacity and injustice every where perpetrated under the sanction of his authority.

His own personal conduct, and the manner in which he governed Italy, cannot be better illustrated than by two examples recorded, not in the secret libel, but in the public history of his secretary Procopius.

Belisarius deposed the Pope of Rome, as well as the Kings of the Vandals and the Goths. The account Procopius gives us of this extraordinary act, is conveyed in so few and in such cautious words, that it is necessary to notice their brevity. "The Pope Silverius was suspected of holding treasonable communication with the Goths, who at that time besieged Rome. Belisarius seized him, and banished him to Greece."[25] But even if the fact that Pope Silverius had really held treasonable communication with the Goths, be admitted, still the manner in which he was condemned by Belisarius affords irrefragable evidence of the injustice of his civil administration.

As the representative of the emperor, Belisarius held a court with all the pomp of a sovereign prince. Yet when the Pope, accompanied by his clergy, presented himself at the palace to answer the summons of the imperial lieutenant, he was compelled to enter alone into the cabinet, where the affairs of Italy were decided by the governor-general. In this hall of audience, the Pope found Belisarius seated, while Antonina was reclining on a sofa, in the midst of the assembly, and taking an active part in the business transacted. It was she, and not Belisarius, who interrogated the pontiff. The general's wife insulted the representative of Saint Peter with reproaches, while the general remained a silent spectator of the lady's arrogance, and did not even investigate the evidence of the Pope's guilt. Prejudged by the suspicions of Belisarius, and condemned by the anger of Antonina, Silverius was allowed no opportunity of repelling the accusations brought against him. In the very presence of the commander-in-chief, his pontifical robes were torn off; and as he was hurried away, he was hastily covered with the garb of a monk, and immediately embarked for Greece, to die an exile.

Now, whether it be true or not that Belisarius and Antonina persecuted the Pope to gratify the revenge of Theodora, who had vainly demanded his approbation of an heretical favourite, or that they committed this act of injustice to participate in a large bribe paid by his successor, there can be no doubt that the manner of the Pope's condemnation, without trial, must have destroyed all confidence in the justice of Belisarius throughout Italy, and from this moment every calumny against his administration would readily find credence.

The second example of the arbitrary government of Belisarius, affords the means of estimating the extent to which the officers of the army were allowed to carry their peculation and extortion, as well as the total disregard of all the principles of judicial administration displayed by the commander-in-chief himself, in compelling them to disgorge their plunder. The details of this singular event are reported by Procopius with minuteness and simplicity, and he concludes his narration with a distinct condemnation of the injustice of his patron's conduct. He says, it was the only dishonourable act of his life, but adds, that in spite of the usual moderation of Belisarius, Konstantinos was murdered.[26]

Konstantinos, a Thracian general, was one of the bravest and most active of the Byzantine officers. He led a division of the army against Perugia and Spoleto; and during the assault of Rome by the Goths, the defence of the tomb of Hadrian had been confided to him. He defended this strange fortress with great valour, though his proceedings have been the subject of execration for the lovers of ancient art ever since, as he used the innumerable statues with which the tomb was adorned, to serve as missiles against the enemy.[27]

Præsidius, a Roman of Italy, and a man of some distinction, resided at Ravenna under the dominion of the Goths. Wishing to escape from their power, he fled, and sought refuge in a church near Spoleto. The only objects of great value he had carried away with him, were two splendid daggers set in gold, and richly adorned with valuable gems. Konstantinos, hearing of this booty, sent his adjutant to take away the daggers. Præsidius hastened to Rome, and on arriving complained to Belisarius, who only requested Konstantinos to arrange the affair. Such conduct appeared to Præsidius a mockery of justice; and one day, as Belisarius was riding through the Agora, he laid hold of the reins of the general's horse, and called with a loud voice, "Is it permitted, Belisarius, by the laws of the Roman empire, that a suppliant who implores your protection against the barbarians be plundered by Roman generals?" In vain the staff officers around ordered Præsidius to let go the general's bridle, and threatened him with punishment; he refused, until he received a promise from Belisarius that he should receive justice. There is something truly Oriental in all this, and very little in accordance with the principles of the Justinian code: the promise of Belisarius is considered of more value than the laws of the empire. He appears in the character of a vizier or a sultan in the Arabian Nights.

Next day a council of the principal officers of the army was convoked in the palace of Belisarius; and, in the presence of the assembled generals, Konstantinos was summoned to restore the jewelled daggers to Præsidius. The attempt to discountenance military license, which had so long been tolerated, appeared to the rude Thracian a parade of justice, assumed merely for the purpose of imposing on the Italians; he conceived, that while surrounded by his colleagues, he might safely despise what he considered to be a farce. He therefore refused to give up his plunder, and said gaily that he would rather throw the daggers into the Tiber than restore them. Belisarius, enraged at the insolent boldness of his proceeding, exclaimed, "Are you not bound to obey me?" The reply was, "Yes, in every thing else according to the Emperor's commission; but not in this matter." On receiving this answer, the commander-in-chief ordered his guards to be summoned. The order astonished Konstantinos, who saw the affair was assuming a more serious aspect than he had foreseen. Well aware that peculation and extortion were not very heinous offences in the Roman armies, he immediately suspected the existence of a project to ruin him for some other reason, and cried out, "Are the guards ordered in to murder me?" "No," said Belisarius, "only to compel you to restore the plunder which your adjutant seized in the church at Spoleto." Konstantinos saw the commander-in-chief enraged, and knew the Byzantine government well enough to feel his life insecure under the turn affairs seemed taking. With the quick determination of the daring chiefs who then led the fierce soldiers of the empire, he resolved to secure revenge, and perhaps make it the means of escape. Suddenly drawing his sword, he sprang at Belisarius, and made a thrust at his heart. The commander-in-chief, struck with amazement, only contrived to escape by jumping back and dodging behind Bessas, a Thracian Goth of high rank in the Roman army.[28] Konstantinos turned to escape, but was seized by the generals Ildiger and Valerian; and the guards entering dragged him from the council chamber to another room, where he was shortly after murdered by the order of Belisarius.[29]

Now it must be recollected that we have an account of these two remarkable events in the life of Belisarius from an eye-witness. The very reserve of Procopius, who, in the affair of the Pope, omits all mention of Antonina, and glides over the injustice of the proceedings from dread of the feminine ferocity of the lady, and the priestly persecution of the successor of Silverius, who still continued to occupy the Papal chair when the history was written, affords us an indubitable warrant for the accuracy of the graphic description of the impressive scene which attended the murder of Konstantinos. When the History of the Gothic War was published, many of the generals who had been present at the council were still living.

These pictures of Belisarius and his times are not very favourable. A governor-general sitting in council, with his wife on the sofa directing the despatch of business, and a commander-in-chief holding a council at which one of his generals of division rushes at him with a drawn sword, do not give us an exalted idea of the order maintained in society during the brilliant conquests of Justinian's reign. Reasoning from analogy, it may appear natural enough that such a governor-general and commander-in-chief should end his career by having his eyes put out and by begging his bread.

There was another circumstance which very much increased the probability of Belisarius dying a beggar. We do not wish to deprive the tale of the smallest portion of the just sympathy of the latest posterity. The fact is, Belisarius grew enormously rich during his successful campaigns against Gelimer and Witiges, and even contrived to accumulate treasures during his unsuccessful wars with Chosroes and Totila.[30] Like his friend Bessas and his enemy Konstantinos, as the truth must be spoken, he did not neglect the golden opportunities he enjoyed of gaining golden spoils from all sorts of men. Now, from the days of Sylla, to those of Justinian, not to say a good deal earlier and later, it was the avowed system of the financiers of Rome to increase the budget by confiscations. The Ottoman empire, heir to most of the vices and some of the grandeur of Imperial Constantinople, cherished the system as a part of its strength, until it adopted the more pitiful vices of Western Europe. Anastasius--not the ecclesiastical historian of the earlier Popes, but the hero of the "Memoirs of a Greek," by Mr Thomas Hope--in his ratiocination on the principles of Ottoman finance, gives us a compendious abstract of those of Imperial Rome during eleven centuries, from Augustus to Constantine Dragoses:--

"Regarding each officer of the state only in the light of one of the smaller and more numerous reservoirs, distributed on distant points to collect the first produce of dews, and drip, and rills, ere the collective mass be poured into the single greater central basin of the Sultan's treasury, you give yourself no trouble to check the dishonesty of your agent, or to prevent his peculations. You rather for a while connive at, and favour and lend your own authority to his exactions, which will enable you, when afterwards you squeeze him out, to combine greater profit with a more signal show of justice. In permitting a temporary defalcation from your treasury, you consider yourselves as only lending out your capital at more usurious interest. Nine long years, while your work is done for you gratuitously, you feign to sleep, and the tenth you wake from your deceitful slumber; like the roused lion, you look round where grazes the fattest prey, stretch your ample claw, crush your devoted victim, and make every drop of his blood, so long withheld from your appetite, at last flow into the capacious bowels of your insatiable _hazné_"--(treasury).[31]

Belisarius was certainly a fatted prey, and it is no wonder that his inordinate wealth excited the cravings of the minister of finance of the lavish Justinian and the luxurious Theodora. After his return from the conquest of Italy, he lived at Constantinople in a degree of magnificence unrivalled by the proudest modern sovereign. His household consisted, as we have already seen, of a small army; and as he was fond of parade, he rarely appeared in public without a splendid staff of mounted officers. His liberality and his military renown ensured him the applause of the people whenever he presented himself among them. Such wealth, such a train of guards, and such popularity, not unnaturally excited both envy and alarm. Accordingly, when the unsuccessful issue of the campaigns against the Persians under Chosroes, in 541 and 542, had diminished the popularity of Belisarius, the Emperor seized the occasion of rendering him less an object of fear by depriving him of a considerable number of his guards and great part of his treasures.[32] The picture Procopius has drawn of Belisarius in his disgrace, is by no means flattering to the general; it represents him as a mean-spirited and uxorious courtier. "It was a strange spectacle, and incredible, had we not been eye-witnesses of the fact, to behold Belisarius, deprived of all his official rank, walking in the streets of Constantinople almost alone, dejected, melancholy, and fearing for his life."[33]

Shortly after, Belisarius was partially reinstated in favour and sent to command in Italy against Totila. In 548, he quitted that country for the second time, after struggling unsuccessfully against the Gothic monarch. The jealousy of Justinian had prevented his receiving the supplies necessary for carrying on the war with vigour; and the want of success is not to be considered as any stain on the military reputation of Belisarius. Though he returned ingloriously to Constantinople, still, even amidst the misfortunes of the Roman arms in Italy, he had not neglected to save or accumulate wealth, and he was enabled to pass the rest of his life in great if not in regal splendour.[34]

He enjoyed the glory of his earlier exploits, and the popularity secured by his equable temperament, undisturbed for eleven years. In the year 559, an incursion of the Huns was pushed forward to the very walls of Constantinople. The weakness of Justinian, the avarice of his ministers, and the rapacity of his courtiers, had introduced such abuses in the military establishments of the capital, that in this unexpected danger the city appeared almost without a regular garrison. In this difficulty, all ranks, from Justinian to the populace, turned to Belisarius as the champion of the empire. The aged hero, finding the imperial guards useless as a military corps, since it had been converted into a body of pensioners, appointed by the favour of ministers and courtiers, and its ranks filled up with shopkeepers and valets--assembled such of the provincial troops and of his old guards as were living in the capital.[35] With a small body of experienced veterans, and an army in which fear at least ensured obedience to his orders, he took the field against the Huns. Victory attended his standard. He not only drove back the barbarians, but overtook and destroyed the greater part of their army.

There was nothing of romance in this last campaign of Belisarius. He could no longer lead his gallant guards to display his own, and their valour, in some rash enterprise. His war-horse, Balan, was in its grave, and his own strength no longer served him to act the colonel of cuirassiers. But he was, perhaps, all the better general for the change; and his manoeuvres effected a more complete destruction of the Huns, than would have resulted from the defeat of their army by the bold sallies of his youthful tactics.

The glory of the aged hero, and the proofs it afforded of his great popularity and extensive authority over the military classes throughout the empire, again revived the jealousy of the court. The ministers of Justinian perhaps dreaded that the affection of the emperor for his former favourite might recall Belisarius into public life, and effect a change in the cabinet. To prevent this, they calumniated him to the feeble prince, and worked so far on his timidity as to induce the emperor to withhold those testimonials for great public services which, it was customary to bestow. The fact that he was persecuted by the court, endeared Belisarius to the people and augmented the aversion of the emperor.[36]

Belisarius was now an object of suspicion to the government. And at this interesting period of his life, all cotemporary history suddenly fails us. The events of his latter days are recorded by writers who lived more than two hundred years after his death.[37]

In the year 562, a plot against the life of Justinian was discovered, and Belisarius was accused by some of the conspirators as privy to it. The accusation was sure to please the party in power. Several of his dependents, on being put to the torture, gave evidence against him. He was suspected by the government; but his conduct during a long life rendered the charge improbable, and the Roman law never placed any great reliance on evidence extracted by torture.[38] In this bitter hour, it must be confessed that Justinian treated Belisarius with more justice than he had treated the Pope Silverius. A privy council was convoked, at which the principal nobles, the patriarch, and some of the officers of the imperial household, were present with the emperor in person. Belisarius was summoned, and the cause of the conspirators was heard. Justinian was induced for a moment to believe in his guilt. The order was given to place him under arrest. He was deprived of the guards that still attended him, his fortune was sequestered, and he was confined a prisoner in his palace. Six days after the first examination, the business of the conspiracy was again investigated, and Justinian did not retract his previous suspicions. Belisarius was kept under arrest in his own palace without any further proceedings being directed against him. These examinations took place on the 5th and 11th of December; and the text of Malalas must be received as convincing evidence that Justinian took no stronger measures against Belisarius before the commencement of the year 563.[39]

On the 19th of July of that year Belisarius was restored by Justinian to all his honours. Some months of cool reflection had convinced the emperor, that the extorted evidence of a few dependents against an opposition leader, ought not not to outweigh the testimony of a long life of unstained loyalty. The remainder of that life was passed in tranquillity; and in the month of March of the year 565, the patrician Belisarius terminated his glorious career, and his fortune reverted to the imperial treasury. Such is the brief account which we possess of the last days of the conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths--the restorer of the spoils of Jerusalem--the deposer of a Pope--the destroyer of the tomb of Hadrian--and the last of the Romans who triumphed, leading kings captive in his train.[40] Antonina survived her husband, and lived in retirement with Vigilantia, the sister of Justinian, but in the enjoyment of wealth. Before her death she reconstructed the church of St Procopius, which had been destroyed by fire; and it received, from her affection for Justinian's sister, the name of Vigilantia.[41]

We must now notice the accounts of the modern Byzantine writers. George Cedrenus was a monk of the eleventh century, who has left us a history of the world to the year 1057. It contains many popular stories, but often transcribes or abridges official documents as well as ancient historians. In this work we might expect to find any fable, generally accredited, concerning Belisarius; but the account of his latter days is in exact conformity with those of Theophanes and Malalas.[42]

John Zonaras had been Grand Drungary, or First Lord of the Admiralty at Constantinople, before he retired to end his days in a monastery on Mount Athos. His Chronicle extends from the Creation to the year 1118, and contains much information not found elsewhere. He is considered as among the most valuable of the Byzantine historians. He mentions that Belisarius was compromised in the plot against the life of Justinian; that he was deprived of his guards and kept prisoner in his house; and that, when he died, his fortune was taken by the imperial treasury.[43] Consequently Belisarius was in possession of his fortune at the time of his death, and it is possible that Justinian may have been his legal heir.[44]

The chronicle published under the name of Leo Grammaticus, which dates from the twelfth century, states that Belisarius, having been accused of plotting against the Emperor Justinian, died of grief.[45]

Such are the historical accounts which the annals of the Byzantine empire furnish concerning the fate of Belisarius. But, attached to the collection of Justinian's laws, there is a rescript, which would alone afford conclusive evidence of the restoration of Belisarius to all his honours, if we could place implicit reliance on the date it bears. Unfortunately, however, for our purpose, the authority on which Cujacius published it, is not sufficiently established to give satisfactory authenticity to its date. This date is 565, and in the month of March of this year Belisarius died; and in the month of November Justinian also followed him. The rescript speaks of Belisarius incidentally as "our most glorious patrician;" an expression incompatible with his having suffered any great indignity, or remained in permanent disgrace.[46]