ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE EXPEDITION OF GERMANUS.
The noblest and probably the eldest-born of the character nephews of the
childless Emperor, he who, as far as anyone could be said to inherit in an
elective monarchy, might be called the heir-presumptive of Justinian, was
Germanus. An active and warlike general, he had struck terror into the
Slavonian marauders by the striking success of his campaign against them in the
year of his uncle's accession. He had afterwards, as we have seen, been
successfully engaged in quelling the mutiny in Africa. In his civil career he
had equally won the approbation of his countrymen. Of a grave and dignified demeanour,
both in the Palace and the Forum, yet ever ready to listen to the cry of the
needy, and willing to give freely or to lend large sums without interest as the
nature of the case required; an upright judge, a gracious and courteous host,
keeping open house every day for the foremost citizens of Byzantium, yet
studiously separating himself from the factions of the Circus and the Agora;
such, according to Procopius (who, after his quarrel with Belisarius,
transferred all his devotion to the Imperial nephew), was the warrior and
statesman Germanus. By his wife Passara, who had died
several years before the time which we have now reached, he had two sons,
Justin and Justinian. The former was Consul in 540, the year of the fall of
Ravenna, and while clothed with that dignity followed his father to battle
against Chosroes. The latter, like his brother often employed against the
Slavonian and Gepid troublers of the Empire, was also a valiant soldier and the
useful lieutenant of his father.
But Germanus, though thus richly endowed with all qualities which should
have made him a pillar of the throne of Justinian, perhaps we should rather
say, because endowed with those qualities, was annoyed by a perpetual, if
petty, persecution on the part of the Empress Theodora. The military talents of
his sons were seldom made use of; those who wished to stand well at Court
avoided his friendship; his daughter remained unmarried till the rough soldier
John dared to incur a temporary displeasure for the sake of so brilliant an
alliance and married the great-niece of the Emperor. The most recent grievance
of Germanus had reference to the wealth of his lately deceased brother Boraides, who, leaving to his widow and only daughter so
much only as was absolutely necessary to prevent his testament from being
declared invalid, directed that all the rest of his large property should pass
to Germanus. This disposition was probably made in order to strengthen the
claims of that branch of the family on the succession to the Imperial throne:
and, probably for the very same reason, Justinian, or Theodora, intervening,
ordered that the widow and daughter should be the sole legatees.
The death of Theodora might have been expected at once to place her
enemy Germanus in a position of undisputed eminence at Court. Just at this
time, however, some of the stored-up resentments of earlier years fermented
into a conspiracy which well-nigh brought about the ruin of Germanus. There
were at Constantinople two natives of Persarmenia,
princes of the Arsacid line, who had risen high in the Imperial service, but
each of whom had his own bitter grievance against Justinian and Theodora.
Artabanes, who in 545 stabbed the usurper Gontharis at Carthage and restored
Africa to the Emperor, claimed one reward for his conspicuous services, the
hand of Justinian's niece Praejecta, whom he had both
avenged and rescued by his daring deed. She, in her gratitude, was willing,
nay, eager thus to reward him, but there was one fatal obstacle. Artabanes had
a wife already, whom he had put away and well-nigh forgotten, but who, now that
his fortunes were brightening, showed no sign of forgetting him. This woman
sought the succor of Theodora, whose chief redeeming
virtue it was that she could not close her ears to the cry of a woman in
distress. Theodora insisted upon Artabanes taking back his long discarded wife,
and gave Praejecta to another husband. The tall,
stately, silent Armenian rose high in the favor of
the Emperor; he became Magister Militum in Praesenti,
General of the Foederati, and at last Consul; but all these honors and emoluments could not deaden his sense of the wrong which he conceived
himself to have endured, in that he had lost the woman whom he loved and was
daily in the company of the woman whom he hated.
While Artabanes, as all men knew, was thus brooding over his matrimonial
grievance, his fellow-countryman Arsaces diligently fanned the flame of his
resentment. The reasons for the discontent of Arsaces were more discreditable
than those which had alienated Artabanes. He had been detected in treasonable
negotiations with Chosroes, and had been punished, not by the sentence of death
which he richly deserved, but by a slight flogging and by being paraded through
the City on a camel with the marks of his chastisement still upon him. This
clemency was wasted on the fierce Oriental, and he now was forever at the ear
of Artabanes, accusing him of inopportune bravery, and timidity which a woman
would be ashamed of. “You slew Gotharis though he was
your friend and you were a guest at his banquet. And now you scruple about
killing Justinian, the hereditary enemy of your race, and him who has done you
this grievous wrong. And yet to anyone who will reflect on the matter for a
moment, the assassination of Justinian will seem to be a very simple and easy
action, and one that no one need fear to attempt. There he sits till far into
the night in his unsentinelled library, with a few
doting priests around him, wholly intent on turning over the precious rolls
which contain the Christian oracles. You have nothing to fear from the
relatives of the Emperor. Germanus, the most powerful of them all, is smarting
under wrongs more grievous even than ours; and he and his gallant young sons, I
doubt not, will eagerly join in our conspiracy”. By such arguments as these,
Artabanes was at length induced to enter into the plot, which was then
communicated to another Armenian, Chanaranges by
name, a handsome and volatile young man, who had no particular grievance
against the Emperor, but was willing to join with a light heart in this
glorious scheme for murdering an unguarded and elderly man in the midst of his
theological studies.
The next step was to secure the adhesion of Germanus and his family, and
for this purpose the elder son Justin, a youth with the first manly down upon
his lips, was sounded by Arsaces. After swearing a tremendous oath that he
would reveal what was about to be told him to no man save his father only, the
young man was first artfully reminded of all the grievances which his father,
his brother, and he had received at the hands of Justinian, ending with the
crowning injustice of withholding from them the inheritance of his uncle Boraides. “Nor”, said Arsaces, “are these injuries likely
soon to come to an end. Belisarius, your enemy, is ordered home from Italy. He
is reported to be even now half-way through Illyria. When he comes, you will
find that you are treated even more contemptuously than before”. And with that,
Arsaces in a whisper revealed to him the design to kill his uncle the Emperor;
and gave the names of Artabanes and Chanaranges as
already privy to the plot.
The young Justin turned giddy with contending emotions as the deed, so
wicked and yet opening up the possibility of such a welcome change in his
condition, was disclosed to him; but the nobler passion of horror at the crime
prevailed, and in a few curt words he told the tempter that neither he nor his
father could ever be accomplices in such a deed. He then departed and told his
father what he had heard. Germanus, perplexed at the tidings and seeing danger
round him on every hand, violated his son's oath by unfolding the whole matter
to his friend Marcellus, Captain of the Palace-guards.
Marcellus was a man of somewhat austere character, careless of money, of
pleasure, and of popularity, but a lover of justice; one whom his natural
taciturnity and almost churlishness of temper made a singularly faithful
confidant. The advice, the dangerous advice, as it proved, which he gave, was
not to hurry the conspirators into crime, nor to run the risk of a counteraccusation
by making an immediate disclosure to the Emperor, but to draw them on to a
confession of their villainy in the presence of an unsuspected witness, and
thus to make certain that punishment should fall only on the guilty. This
treacherous scheme of unmasking treachery was accordingly adopted. The young
Justin was told to re-open the negotiations which he had abruptly closed.
Arsaces was now dumb concerning the plot, but Chanaranges,
full of eagerness for the conspiracy, desired nothing better than to have a
conversation first with Justin and then with his father respecting it. On a
given day, therefore, he repaired by appointment to the palace of Germanus. In
the triclinium where they met, a thick muslin curtain hung from the ceiling to
the floor, veiling the couch on which the master of the house was wont to
recline at the banquet. It veiled also, though Chanaranges knew it not, the crouching form of Leontius, a man with the highest reputation
for justice and truthfulness— according to the standard of Byzantium in the
sixth century—who had been selected, apparently with no reluctance on his part,
for the honourable office of eaves-dropper.
This was the purport of the conversation of Chanaranges as to the plans of the conspirators. “We have reflected that if we slay
Justinian while Belisarius is still on his way to Constantinople, we shall be
no nearer our purpose of setting you, 0 Germanus! on the throne. For Belisarius
will then certainly collect an army in Thrace to avenge the murder of the
Emperor, and when he appears before the gates of the City we shall have no
means of repelling him. We must therefore wait till he has actually arrived, and
is closeted with the Emperor in the palace. Then, late in the evening, we will
resort thither with daggers in our hands and slay Justinian, Belisarius, and
Marcellus all at once. After that we can dispose of matters as we will”.
When Marcellus heard from Leontius of this atrocious proposition, he
still, for some mysterious other reason, postponed reporting it to the Emperor.
Germanus however, truly perceiving that the mere fact of listening unmoved to
such a conversation must subject him to the most odious imputations, took two
other great officials into his confidence. These were Constantian,
late general in Dalmatia and governor of Ravenna, and Buzes,
the unhappy exconsul who had been kept for
twenty-eight months in a dark dungeon by Theodora, but who appears to have been
still loyal to her Imperial spouse.
Tidings soon came of the near approach of the returning Belisarius. Then
at length the taciturn Marcellus informed his master of the danger impending
over both their lives. Artabanes and some of his confidential officers were put
to the torture, and the Senate was summoned to the Palace to read and to
deliberate upon the depositions thus obtained. Of course the names of Germanus
and Justin were among the first mentioned by the criminals in their agony. When
these names were read out, many faces in the assembly were turned with horror
and amazement to Germanus; and it seemed as if nothing could save him from
immediate condemnation. When he told the whole story, however, and called on
Marcellus, Leontius, Constantian, and Buzes as vouchers for its truth, the tide of opinion
turned, and the Senate by an unanimous vote acquitted Germanus and his son of
all evil designs against the Republic.
Not so, however, the Emperor. When the Senators went in to the Presence
Chamber to report the result of their deliberations, he burst into a torrent of
angry invective against his nephew for his tardiness in bringing him tidings of
the plot. Two of the nobles, in order to curry favour with the Emperor,
affected to sympathize with his views, and thus hounded him on to yet more
violent expressions. The rest of the Senate stood trembling and silent, ashamed
to condemn and afraid to acquit Germanus. At this crisis the stern rugged
character of Marcellus shone forth in all its nobleness. He loudly asserted
that all the blame, if blame there was, for the delay must rest upon his
shoulders; that Germanus had consulted him at the earliest possible moment, and
that he from motives of policy had insisted that Justinian should not then be
told of the plot. He thus at length succeeded in mollifying the wrath of the
Emperor against his nephew, earning himself great praise from all men for his
fearless truthfulness.
The clemency of Justinian's nature was shown in a conspicuous manner
towards those who had planned his murder. Artabanes was for the time deprived
of his office, but, as we have seen, received next year an important command in
Sicily. All the conspirators were kept for a time in honourable confinement in
the Palace, not in the public gaol, and even this punishment was probably not
of long duration.
A ruler who knew that his life was in danger from plots such as that of
Arsaces might be excused for some vacillation in the choice and the promotion
of his generals. Other cares were also pressing upon the wearied brain of
Justinian, and making even the recovery of Italy seem a light matter in
comparison with them. The sneer of the Armenian about the midnight hours spent
in turning over theological treatises in the company of doting priests was not
undeserved. Justinian was now, and had been for the last five years, deep in
the controversy of ‘The Three Chapters'. When Pope Vigilius, who had been
summoned to Constantinople for this very purpose, together with the other Roman
refugees, the Patrician Gothigus at their head,
pressed upon him the necessity of a vigorous effort for the deliverance of
Italy, he replied, in substance, that the affairs of Italy should have his
attention when he had succeeded in reconciling the contradictions of Christians
as to their common faith. A long adjournment certainly of his performance of
the humbler duties of a ruler.
There were also other wars going on in the Empire, some much nearer home
than that of Italy, which distracted the energies of Justinian. The eternal
contest with Persia was at this time transferred to the eastern end of the
Black Sea, to the region now known as Mingrelia, where from 549 to 557 what was
called the Lazic war was being waged with varying fortunes, but upon the whole
with a preponderance of success on the side of the Romans.
North of the Danube there was discontent, and a dangerous spirit of
enterprise abroad among the fierce neighbours of the Empire. Where the Drave
and the Theiss flow into the Danube, the Gepidae and Lombards were fiercely
disputing with one another, imploring the intervention of Justinian, and then
joining to attack his general when he invasion of entered their land. Further
east in the country which we now call Wallachia, the Slavonians, long despised
and comparatively harmless, were becoming a terrible scourge of the Empire. In
the year 549 three thousand of these barbarians crossed the Danube, marched to
the Hebrus, defeated Roman armies more numerous than their own, took captive
the Roman General Asbad—one of the
sumptuously-equipped Candidati, the pampered
guardsmen of the Emperor—and after cutting off long strips of skin from his
back, burned the miserable man alive. Then they pressed on to Topirus on the coast of the Aegean, nearly opposite the
isle of Thasos, and only twelve days' journey from Constantinople. They drew
forth the garrison by a feigned flight, took the city, ransacked its treasures,
slew the men to the number of fifteen thousand, and carried off all the women
and children into captivity. Thus they spread throughout Illyria and Thrace,
ravaging the lands and torturing the inhabitants with fiendish cruelty. The
terrible punishment of impalement, with which the Danubian lands have since been fatally familiarized, inflicted by men of another race
than the Slavonian, now makes its appearance, and is described by Procopius
with ghastly accuracy and vivid power. At length, drunk with their debauch of
blood, the Slavonians retreated across the Danube, driving the endless files of
their weeping captives before them, and leaving all Thrace and Illyria full of
unburied corpses.
Two more invasions of these barbarians followed in the next year. It was
thought by some that Totila had hired them to harass Justinian and prevent his
attending to the affairs of Italy: but men who had been able to gratify their
savage passions with so little labour or danger to themselves were not likely
to require much pressing to undertake another raid into the feebly- defended
Empire.
It will thus be seen that there was some reason why Justinian (stripped
as he was by death of his bold and strenuous partner Theodora) should hesitate
and delay and waver in his counsels with reference to the war in Italy. The
name of Germanus as commander-in-chief for this war had been proposed shortly
after the recall of Belisarius. Then the Emperor changed his mind and appointed
the elderly and unwarlike Liberius. This appointment, as we have seen, had soon
been cancelled, again made and again revoked. Now, probably at the beginning of
550, Justinian, while sending Artabanes to Sicily, took the bold and wise step
of declaring Germanus, as Belisarius had been declared, commander with absolute
powers for the whole war against Totila and the Goths. He gave him a large
army, and instructions to add to it by raising new levies in Thrace and
Illyria. More to the surprise of his councillors, he unloosed his purse-strings
and sent his nephew a large store of treasure. To this Germanus, whose heart
was set on restoring Italy, as he had already restored Africa after the
rebellion of Stutza to the obedience of the Empire, added large sums from his
own private fortune. The fame of so popular a commander, and the unwonted
abundance of money at head-quarters, soon attracted large numbers of eager
recruits, especially from among the barbarians of the Danube. All these flocked
to Sardica (now the Bulgarian capital, Sophia), where
Germanus had set up his standard. His son-in-law, the valiant and unscrupulous
John, was of course with him. With him too were his martial sons Justin and
Justinian, eager to embrace the long-desired opportunity of showing their
prowess in war. There was Philemuth King of the
Heruli, who had fought under Belisarius in his first Italian command: and
there—a name of ill-omen for the Roman power in Italy—were one thousand
heavy-armed soldiers of the Lombard nation.
The most potent, however, of all the allies of Germanus, the one who
most daunted the hearts of the Goths, already dispirited at the thought of so
great a commander coming against them, was his newly-wedded wife. This was none
other than Matasuentha, widow of King Witigis and
granddaughter of the great Theodoric. Again was the Amal princess married to a
husband considerably older than herself; but there are some slight indications
that this union was more to her taste than that with the humbly-born Witigis.
At any rate, she was now a member of the Imperial family, and, as her
countryman Jordanes proudly records, a legitimate Patrician. The three
references made to this marriage by the Gothic historian, who wrote within two
years after its consummation, show the great importance attached to it by his
nation, and entirely confirm the statement of Procopius as to the depression
which came over the soldiers of Totila at the thought of fighting with one who
was now in a certain sense a member of the family of the great Theodoric.
Both hopes and fears, however, springing out of the appointment of
Germanus to the supreme command were alike to be proved vain. The first of the
two Slavonic invasions of the year 550, in which the marauders penetrated as
far as Naissus in Servia, alarmed the Emperor, who
sent orders to Germanus to suspend his westward march and succour Thessalonica,
which was threatened by the barbarians. The terror of his name, and the
remembrance of the great deeds which he had wrought twenty years before in the Danubian lands, sufficed to turn the Slavonians from their
purpose and to divert their march into Dalmatia. In two days more the army
would have resumed its interrupted journey towards Italy: but suddenly Germanus
was attacked by disease—possibly a fever caught during his marches over the
corpse-strewn valleys of Thrace—and after a very short illness he died.
The picture drawn of this prince has necessarily been taken from the
pages of his partisan Procopius, who very likely has painted in too bright colours
the character of his patron: but after making all necessary allowance for this
partiality, it seems impossible to deny that here was a man of great gifts, of
many noble qualities, and of splendid possibilities. As with a rising English
statesman who dies before he attains ‘Cabinet-rank', the premature death of
Germanus has prevented him from leaving a great name in history. Had it fallen
to his lot to defeat Totila, to restore the Western Empire, to bequeath its
crown to a long line of descendants boasting a combined descent from Theodoric
and Justinian, the name of Germanus might be at this day one of the most
familiar land-marks on the frontier line between ancient and modern history.
In a few lines we must trace the subsequent history of the family of
Germanus, since that is now the sole remaining branch of the family of
Theodoric. After the death of her husband, Matasuentha bore a son, who was named after his father, Germanus. In this infant the hopes
of Jordanes were centered when he wrote his Gothic
history. It has been suggested that there was a scheme on the part of a
nationalist Italian party headed by Vigilius to proclaim this infant as heir to
Theodoric, or Emperor of the West, and obtain his recognition by Justinian,
wearied out as he was by the war. The 'De Rebus Geticis'
of Jordanes is thus supposed to have been a sort of political pamphlet written
in the interest of this combination. The theory is an ingenious one, but seems
to lack that amount of contemporary evidence which would make it anything more
than a theory. In any case, however, it is interesting to note that we have now
reached the date of the composition of the treatises of Jordanes, with the
contents of which we have become so familiar. The death of Germanus and the
birth of his posthumous son are the last events of importance recorded by that
writer, and it is clear that both the ‘De Regnorum Successione' and the ‘De Rebus Geticis'
or, as Mommsen prefers to call them, the ‘Romana et Getica Jordanis', were written in the year 551.
As for Germanus Postumus, the child of Matasuentha,
he appears to have played a respectable, if not a highly distinguished part, as
a great nobleman of Constantinople. His daughter married Theodosius, son of the
Emperor Maurice; and the tumults which ended the reign of that Emperor, the
popularity of Germanus caused him to be spoken of as a suitable candidate for
the Imperial purple. The rumour of such a project nearly cost him his life,
owing to the suspicious fears of Maurice. On the fall of that Emperor, the
fierce and illiterate soldier who succeeded him, Phocas, made a show of
offering the diadem to Germanus, but the latter, knowing well how precarious
would be the life of an Emperor elected under such conditions, wisely declined
the proffered dignity. When the cruel character of the tyrant who thereupon
ascended the throne had exhibited itself, and his unfitness for the diadem was
made clear to all men, Germanus made two attempts to dethrone him, by reviving
the old loyalty of the Blue Faction to the house of Maurice, and appealing to
the compassion of the populace on behalf of Constantina, widow of that Emperor.
The first of these attempts cost him his official position, for he was ordered
to cut off his hair and become a priest. The second cost him, and those on
whose behalf he was conspiring, their lives. Constantina and her three
daughters were slain with the sword upon the very spot where Maurice and his
five sons had been put to death three years before; and Germanus with his
daughter (the widow of the young Theodosius) were beheaded upon the little
island of Prote in the Sea of Marmora, five miles
south of Chalcedon. There, within sight of the towers and domes of
Constantinople, associated for ever with the fame of Justinian, so often gazed
upon with wonder by the young Theodoric, perished the two in whose veins flowed
the blended blood of Emperor and King, the last descendants that History can
discern of the glorious lineage of the Amala.
