ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XIX.
ROMA CAPTA.
When the Goths had entered by the Asinarian Gate, Totila, still fearful of some treachery, caused them all to halt in good
order till day-light dawned. Meanwhile, universal uproar and confusion reigned
in the panic-stricken City. The three thousand Imperial soldiers streamed out
of the Flaminian Gate, even as the Gothic garrison had done ten years before.
Bessas and Conon were mingled with the crowd of fugitives, not being compelled
by any exaggerated sense of honour to die upon the scene of their discomfiture.
The best proof that Bessas was indeed taken unawares is furnished by the fact
that all the treasure which he had accumulated at the cost of so much human
suffering was left behind in his palace and fell into the hands of the Gothic
King. Before the night had ended a messenger came in haste to tell the King of
the flight of the Governor and his army. “Excellent tidings!” said Totila. “No!
I will not pursue after them. What more delightful news could anyone wish for
than to hear that his enemies are fleeing?”. Of the Roman nobles, a few who
were fortunate enough to possess horses accompanied the flight of the army: the
rest sought shelter in the various churches. Among the refugees we find the
names of Decius and Basilius, the former perhaps descended from the Emperor and
from the great Decii of the Republic, the latter probably the same nobleman
whom we have already taken note of as the last Roman Consul. Among the
suppliants at the altars the names of Maximus, Olybrius, and Orestes also
remind us, truly or falsely, of men eminent in the struggles of the preceding
century.
When day dawned, Totila proceeded to St Peter's basilica to return
thanks to God for his victory. His soldiers roamed through the city, slaying
and plundering. One horror usually accompanying the sack of a captured city was
absent. No Roman maid, wife, or widow suffered the least insult from any of the
Gothic soldiery, so strict were the orders of Totila on this point, and so
little did his subjects dare to disobey him.
The plunder of the Roman palaces was, however, freely permitted to them,
on the somewhat ambiguous condition that the most valuable of the
property—meaning probably silver, gold, and jewels—was to be brought to the
King to form the nucleus of a new great Gothic hoard.
Thus then, amid the noise and confusion of the plunder of a mighty city,
amid the shouts of the slayers and the groans of the dying, Totila proceeded to
the great basilica on the Vatican. Arrived there, he found the deacon Pelagius
awaiting him, bearing a roll of the Sacred Scriptures and expressing in every
gesture the humility of a suppliant. “Spare thine own subjects, 0 our Master!!”
said the submissive ecclesiastic. With a scoff which he could not forbear at
the haughty demeanour of Pelagius on the occasion of their last meeting, Totila
said, “Now, then, thou art willing to make requests of me”. “Yes” said
Pelagius, “since God hath made me thy slave. But spare thy slaves, Master!
Henceforward”. Totila listened to the request, and at once sent messengers all
through the City, saying that, though the plunder might continue, no more blood
was to be shed. Already, twenty-six soldiers and sixty citizens had fallen
under the swords of the Goths. The smallness of these numbers points rather to
the depopulation of the City than to the humanity of the conquerors. Procopius
was informed that only five hundred citizens were left in Rome, the greater
part of whom had fled to the churches; nor does there seem any reason for
supposing that he has underestimated this number, notwithstanding the vast
contrast with the many myriads who once thronged the streets of the Eternal
City.
The condition of the survivors of the Roman people was so miserable that
death from the Gothic broadsword might seem in comparison scarcely an evil to
be dreaded. Proud Senators and their delicately nurtured wives, clothed in the
garb of peasants and of slaves, wandered about from house to house, knocking at
the doors and craving from the charity of the Gothic warriors a morsel of food
to keep the life within them. Among these abject suppliants was one whose tale
seems to carry us back for two generations. Rusticiana,
the daughter of Symmachus and the widow of Boethius, yet lived, and in these
darkest days of her country she had distinguished herself by the generosity
with which she had devoted her wealth to the relief of her starving
fellow-citizens. She too was now a humble petitioner for a morsel of bread.
When the Goths discovered who she was, many of them clamoured that she should
be slain, the chief crime of which she was accused being that she had given
money to the Roman generals as the price of their consent to the destruction of
the statues of Theodoric. Her resentment against the sovereign who had put her
husband and father to death is easily understood : but it is not probable that
either Belisarius or Bessas would require much persuasion to induce them to
sanction the destruction of the visible emblems of the great Ostrogoth. True or
false as the story might be, Totila refused to allow Rusticiana to be molested on account of it, and gave strict orders that the venerable lady
should be treated with all courtesy. We hear nothing more concerning her, and
with this incident the family of Boethius passes out of history.
On the day after the capture of the City, Totila addressed two very
different harangues to two very different audiences. The Goths were all
gathered together, surely in the same Forum which once echoed Cicero's
denunciations against Catiline, and Antony's praises of the murdered Julius:
and here their King congratulated them on an event which he almost described in
Cromwell's words as “a crowning mercy” so urgently did he insist on the truth
that it was not by human strength, but by God's manifest blessing on the
righteous cause, that the victory had been won. “At the beginning of the war,
200,000 valiant Goths, rich in money, in arms, in horses, and with numbers of
prudent veterans to guide their counsels, lost empire, life, liberty, to a
little band of 7000 Greeks. Now, from more than 20,000 of the same enemies, a
scanty remnant of the nation, poor, despised, utterly devoid of experience, had
wrested the great prize of the war. Why this difference? Because aforetime the Goths, putting justice last in their thoughts,
committed, against the subject Romans and one another, all sorts of unholy
deeds: but now they had been striving to act righteously towards all men”. In
this resolution, even at the risk of wearying them, he besought them to
continue. For if they changed, assuredly God's favour towards them would change
likewise, since it is not this race or that nation, as such, on whose side God
fights, but He assists all men everywhere who honour the precepts of eternal
righteousness.
It is not without a feeling of pain that we pass from the Forum to the
Senate House, and listen to the bitter words with which the Gothic King;
rebuked the cowering Senators of Rome. He reminded them of all the benefits
which they had received at the hands of Theodoric and Athalaric; how these
Kings had left in their keeping all the great offices of state and had
permitted them to accumulate boundless wealth; and yet after all this they had
turned against their benefactors and brought Greeks into the common fatherland.
“What harm did the Goths ever do you? And now tell me, what good have you ever
received from Justinian the Emperor? Has he not taken away from you almost all
the great offices of state? Has he not insulted and oppressed you by means of
the men who are called his Logothetes? Has he not compelled you to give an
account to him of every solidus which you received from the public funds even
under the Gothic Kings? All harassed and impoverished as you are by the war,
has he not compelled you to pay to the Greeks the full taxes which could be
levied in a time of profoundest peace?”. With words like these, the boldness of
which astonishes us in a subject of Justinian, though he does put them into the
mouth of a Gothic King, did Totila lash the wincing
Senators even as an angry master scolds his slaves. Then, pointing to
Herodian, the former Roman General, and to the four Isaurian deserters, “These
men” he said, “strangers and aliens, have done for us what you our
fellow-citizens failed to do. Herodian received us into Spoleto, the Isaurians
into Rome. Wherefore they, our friends, shall be received into the places of
trust and honour, and you henceforward shall be treated as slaves”. Not a
single Senator dared to make an answer to this torrent of upbraiding. Pelagius,
however, soothed the wrath of Totila, begged him to have compassion on the
fallen, and obtained from him a promise of kinder treatment than his speech had
foreshadowed. The Deacon, who had evidently acquired considerable influence
over the mind of Totila, was now (after solemnly swearing speedily to return)
sent to Constantinople, in company with a Roman orator named Theodore, to
propose terms of peace.
The letter which they bore was in the following words: “I shall keep
silence about the events which have happened in the City of the Romans, because
I think you will have already heard them from other quarters. But I will tell
you shortly why I have sent these ambassadors. I pray you to secure for
yourself and to grant to us the blessings of peace. You and I have excellent
memorials and models in Anastasius and Theodoric, who reigned not long ago, and
who filled their own lives and those of their subjects with peace and all
prosperity. If this request should be consented to by you, I shall look upon
you as a father, and gladly be your ally in whatsoever expedition you may
meditate”. The written courtesies of the letter were supplemented by a verbal
threat, that if the Emperor would not consent to peace, the Eternal City should
be razed to the ground, and Totila, with his triumphant Goths, would invade the
provinces of Illyricum. The only reply, however, which Justinian deigned to
make to either courtesies or threats was that Belisarius had full powers for
the conduct of the war and any proposals for peace must be addressed to him.
Meanwhile the war in Lucania, under the guidance of Tullianus,
who had gathered the peasants of the province round him, was being prosecuted
with some vigour. Three hundred Antae, wild mountaineers from the hills of
Bosnia, were holding the fastnesses of the Apennines against all comers, and
successfully repulsed some followers of Totila who were sent to dislodge them.
The Gothic King was desirous to transfer his operations to the South of Italy,
but feared either to weaken his army by leaving a garrison in Rome, or to give
Belisarius, still lying sick at Portus, the chance of recovering it if left
ungarrisoned. In these circumstances, from no blind rage against the prostrate
City, but simply as a matter of strategy, he decided to make it untenable and
uninhabitable. He threw down large portions of the walls, so that it was
roughly computed that only two-thirds of the line of defence remained standing.
He was about to proceed to burn all the finest buildings in Rome, and turn the
City by the Tiber into a sheep-walk, when ambassadors were announced who
brought a letter from Belisarius.
“Fair cities” said the General, “are the glory of the great men who have
been their founders, and surely no wise man would wish to be remembered as the
destroyer of any of them. But of all cities under the sun Rome is confessed to
be the greatest and the most glorious. No one man, no single century reared her
greatness. A long line of kings and emperors, the united efforts of some of the
noblest of men, a vast interval of time, a lavish expenditure of wealth, the
most costly materials and the most skilful craftsmen of the world, have all
united to make Rome. Slowly and gradually has each succeeding age there reared
its monuments. Any act, therefore, of wanton outrage against that City will be
resented as an injustice by all men of all ages, by those who have gone before
us, because it effaces the memorials of their greatness, by those who shall
come after, since the most wonderful sight in the world will be no longer
theirs to look upon. Remember too, that this war must end either in the
Emperor's victory or your own. If you should prove to be the conqueror, how
great will be your delight in having preserved the most precious jewel of your
crown. If yours should turn out to be the losing side, great will be the thanks
due from the conqueror for your preservation of Rome, while its destruction
would make every plea for mercy and humanity on your behalf inadmissible. And
last of all comes the question what shall be your own eternal record in history,
whether you will be remembered as the preserver or the destroyer of the
greatest city in the world”.
Belisarius, in writing this letter, had not miscalculated the temper of
his antagonist. Totila read it over and over again, laid its warnings to heart,
and dismissed the ambassadors with the assurance that he would do no further
damage to the monuments of the Eternal City. He then withdrew the greater part
of his troops to Mount Algidus, a shoulder of the
high Alban mount, about twenty miles south-east of Rome, and marched himself
into Lucania to prosecute the war against John and his eager ally Tullianus. The Senators had to follow in his train,
unwilling hostages. Their wives and children were sent to the chief cities of
Campania. Rome herself, though not ruined, was left without a single
inhabitant.
The archaeologist who reads how narrowly Rome thus escaped destruction
at the hands of Totila may, at first, almost regret that he was prevented from
carrying his purpose into effect. There would then, so he thinks, have been one
mighty conflagration, in which all that was of wood must have perished, but
which the mighty walls of temple and palace would assuredly have survived. Then
the City would have become a wilderness of grass-grown mounds, amid which the
shepherd of the Campagna might have wandered while his goats nibbled the short
grass in the halls of Emperors and Consuls. The successive sieges by Lombard,
Norman, and German, the havoc wrought by ignorant feudal barons, the yet worse
havoc of statue-hunting Papal Nephews, the slow but ceaseless ruin effected by
the ‘little citizens' of Rome, whose squalid habitations burrowed into the
foundations of temple and forum and theatre, the detestable industry of the
lime-kilns, which for ten centuries were perpetually burning into mortar the
noblest monuments of Greek and Roman art,—all this would have been avoided, and
the buried city might have lain hidden for twelve centuries, till another
Layard or another Schliemann revealed its wonders to a generation capable of
understanding and appreciating them.
But no: this could never have been. The religious memories which
clustered around Rome were too mighty to allow of her ever being thus utterly
deserted. If Rome herself in the plenitude of her power could not obliterate
Jerusalem, much less could the Northern barbarians cause Rome to be forgotten.
The successor of St. Peter must inevitably have come back to the tombs of the
Fisherman and the Tent-maker; pilgrims from all the countries of the West must
have flocked to the scenes of the saints' martyrdoms; convents and hostelries
must again have risen by the Tiber; and in the course of centuries, if not of a
few generations, another city, not very unlike the Rome of the Middle Ages,
would have covered the space of the marble-strewn sheep-walk left by Totila.
