ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK VI
.
CHAPTER I.
THE ALAMANNIC BRETHREN
The Goths, who had fought under their last king, Teias, at the foot of
Mount Vesuvius, made, as the reader will remember, a compact with their
conqueror Narses that they should receive certain sums of money, and march
forth out of Italy to live as free men, somewhere among their barbarian
kinsmen. Either similar conditions were not offered to the other Goths
scattered up and down through Italy, or having been offered and accepted they
had been afterwards repented of, for when the history of Agathias commences,
the curtain rises on a number of detachments of Gothic soldiers, some settled
in Tuscia and Liguria, some wandering about from city
to city of Venetia, all of them bent on remaining in Italy, and equally
determined to abjure the service of the Emperor. With this intent, knowing
themselves to be too weak to fight the Emperor single-handed, they decided to
make one more desperate appeal to the Franks.
As the history of Italy now becomes almost inextricably intertwined with
that of the Franks, and will so continue for a large part of the period
embraced by this volume, it will be well briefly to summarize some of the chief
events in Frankish history during the forty-three years which elapsed after the
death of Clovis.
The founder of the Frankish monarchy, dying in 511, was succeeded by his
four sons, who divided his unwieldy and ill-compacted kingdom between them. The
division was conducted on a most singular plan : all kinds of outlying cities
and districts being allotted to each brother. It was perhaps not desired,
certainly it was not attempted, to give to each brother a well-rounded
territory with a defensible frontier. But a mere approximation to the truth, we
may say that the eldest son, Theodoric, received for his portion the
country on both banks of the Rhine, Lorraine, Champagne and Auvergne, with the
city of Metz for his capital. Chlodomir, from the city of Orleans, ruled
the provinces watered by the Loire. Childebert had the country by the
Seine, Brittany and Normandy, and Paris was his chief city. Chlotochar,
the youngest of the brothers, but the one who was destined one day to reunite
the whole inheritance, had his capital at Soissons, and governed the country by
the Meuse and the plains of Flanders.
But the sons of Clovis had no intention of remaining satisfied with the
ample dominions won by their father. In 523 the three younger brothers invaded
the neighbouring kingdom of Burgundy, defeated its king, their cousin
Sigismund, and seemed on the point of conquering the country. But the vigour of
Sigismund’s younger brother, Godomar averted for a
time the threatened calamity. In the battle of Vézeronce,
Chlodomir, the eldest of the three brothers, was slain, and his fall so
discouraged the Franks that they fled from the field, and their army retired
from the rescued land.
Then followed a well-known domestic tragedy. The two royal brothers,
Childebert and Chlotochar, determined to lay hands on the heritage of the dead
Chlodomir, and for that purpose to put his little children out of the way. With
cruel courtesy they sent a messenger to their mother, the aged Clotilda, to ask
whether she would prefer that her grandchildren should receive the priestly
tonsure or be slain with the sword, and when she in her agony cried out, “I
would rather see them slain than shorn of their royal locks”, they chose to
consider this as sanctioning their crime, and slew the children with their own
hands, the cold-blooded, saturnine Chlotochar preventing his brother, the
weaker villain of the two, from faltering in the execution of their common
purpose.
In 531 Theodoric overthrew the kingdom of the Thuringians, defeating and
slaying Hermanfrid, who had married Amalaberga, the niece of the great
Theodoric.
In 532 a fresh invasion of Burgundy was begun, Theodoric apparently now
joining his younger brothers in the enterprise. This invasion was ultimately,
though not immediately, successful. In 534, Godomar was defeated while attempting to raise the siege of Autun,
and the Frankish kings divided his dominions between them. Henceforward
Burgundy was ‘a geographical expression’—of much historical interest indeed,
and with wide and varying boundaries—but no longer a national kingdom.
The Frankish tribe had now subjected to themselves almost the whole of
the fair land which today goes by their name, together with a vast extent of
territory in what we now call Germany. We may omit for the present further
reference, to the concerns of western Gaul, not troubling ourselves with the
feuds and reconciliations of Childebert and Chlotochar, and may concentrate our
attention on the kings of Metz, or, as they were perhaps already called, the
kings of Austrasia (Eastern-land).
Theodoric died in 534, apparently before the conquest of Burgundy was
completed, and was succeeded by his son Theudebert, who hastened home
from his camp when he heard of his father’s sickness, and by prompt action and
timely liberality to his feudes (the
warrior-chiefs who stood nearest to his throne), defeated his uncles’
endeavours to possess themselves of his inheritance. For Theudebert was no puny
boy, to be thrust contemptuously into a cloister, as had been done with St.
Cloud, the only one of the sons of Chlodomir who escaped his uncles daggers. He
was a bold and enterprising prince with far-reaching schemes of conquest and
government, dreaming of invasions of Moesia and Thrace, accomplishing the
subjection of his haughty Frankish warriors to a land-tax, and issuing—the
first barbarian king who took so much upon him—gold coins like those of the
Emperor, with his own name and effigy.
The sore troubles of the Ostrogothic people, caused by Belisarius'
invasion of Italy, brought much increase of power to their Frankish neighbours.
We have seen that Witigis in the autumn of 536, or ever he marched to his fatal
siege of Rome, ceded to them Provence and all the countries on the lower course
of the Rhone, which had formed part of the kingdom of Theodoric, and at the
same time handed over £80,000 from the Gothic to the Frankish treasury. At this
crisis also we have reason to believe that the protection which the Ostrogothic
monarchy had afforded to the Alamanni and the Bavarians in the province of
Raetia was withdrawn and that they too were absorbed in the great Frankish
monarchy which now stretched over the larger part of southern Germany till it
reached the frontier of Pannonia.
The long siege of Rome ended, as we have seen, in the spring of 538,
disastrously for the Gothic besiegers. But the one event which shed a momentary
gleam of prosperity on their cause was the capture of the great city of Milan
(which had welcomed an imperial garrison), after a siege which lasted about
half a year. This capture was accomplished by the aid of 10,000 Burgundians,
subjects of king Theudebert, whom he had permitted to cross the Alps, and serve
under the Ostrogothic standards, while representing to the ambassadors of
Justinian that they went of their own free will, and that he was not
responsible for their action. The very suggestion of such an excuse shows how
little solidarity as yet existed in the great unwieldy mass of the Frankish
dominion.
Soon, however, this pretence of feebleness was laid aside, and in the
same year which witnessed the fall of Milan, Theudebert descended the Alps with
100.000 men, prepared to make war impartially on both the combatants, shedding
Gothic and Greek blood with equal unconcern, but determined to pluck out of
their calamities no small advantage for himself. Their savage deeds at Pavia,
their rout of both armies under the walls of Tortona, the pestilence which
carried off a third of then number, as they lay encamped on the plains of
Liguria, and compelled their return to their own land, have already been
described. It seems clear, however, that though Theudebert returned to the
north of the Alps, he did not relinquish all the advantages which he had
gained. It is true that Witigis in the supreme moment of the Gothic despair,
just before 5the surrender of Ravenna, refused to avoid submission to Justinian
by accepting the dangerous help of Theudebert, but that refusal did not compel
the entire evacuation of Italy by the Franks. Even Procopius who dislikes that
nation and seeks to minimize their success, admits that the larger part of
Venetia, a good deal of Liguria, and the province known as Alpes Cottiae were retained by Theudebert .
A king whose unscrupulous energy had so great enlarged the borders of
his realm, a king who, more than any other of his kindred, reproduced the type
of character seen in their great ancestor Clovis, was probably obeyed with
enthusiasm by his barbarous subjects, and was disposed to hold his head high
among the monarchs of the world. He watched the gallant defence of the Gothic
nation made by Totila perhaps with increasing sympathy, certainly with
increasing dislike for the arrogant pretensions which, both in victory and in
defeat, were urged by Justinian. For Justinian, so Theudebert was truly told,
called himself (as in the well-known preface to the Institutes) victor of the
Franks and the Alamanni, of the Gepidae and the Langobardi,
and added many other proud titles derived from conquered and enslaved peoples.
Why should this pampered Eastern despot, who had never himself set armies in
the field, nor felt the shock of battle, give himself out as the lord of so
many brave nations, the least of whose chieftains was a better man than he?
Such were the self-colloquies that set the brain of Theudebert on fire. He
contemplated a sort of league of the new barbarian kingdoms, Frankish, Gepid,
Langobard, to quell the arrogance of the Emperor, and he would probably have
led an army into Thrace or Illyria—who can say with what result; but that all
his great projects were cut short by his early death. The authorities differ as
to r cause of this premature ending of what might have been a great career.
Both Procopius and Gregory of Tours attribute it to lingering disease; but
Agathias who is singularly well informed on Frankish affairs says that when
Theudebert was hunting in the forest, a buffalo, which he was about to pierce
with his javelin, rushed towards him, overthrowing a tree by the fury of its
onset. Not the stroke of the buffalo’s horns, but the crash of a branch of the
tree on the kind's head, gave him a fatal wound, of which he died on the same
day.
But whatever the cause of death, the gallant king of the eastern Franks
was dead, and his son, a sickly and feeble child named Theudebald,
sat on his throne. To him, as we have seen, Justinian sent an embassy in 551, endeavouring
to persuade him to recall his troops from northern Italy. The ambassador,
Leontius, returned unsuccessful; but though the Frankish soldiers remained
south of the Alps, guarding the territories which they had won, they do not
appear to have rendered any effective assistance to Totila or Teias in the last
struggle of those brave men for Gothic independence.
And now, in the early months of when Teias had met a warrior’s death in
sight of the cone of Vesuvius, another embassy came from the slender remnant of
the Goths who still held out in Upper Italy, beseeching the Frankish king to
undertake the championship of their cause. According to the report of the
speech supplied—possibly from his own imagination—by Agathias, the ambassadors
implored the Franks in their own interest not to allow this all devouring
Emperor to destroy the last relics of the Gothic name. If they did, they would
soon have cause bitterly to repent it, for, the Goths once rooted out, it would
be the turn of the Franks next. The Empire would never lack specious pretexts
for a quarrel, but would go back, if need were, to the times of Camillus or
Marius for a grievance against the inhabitants of Gaul. Even thus had the
Emperors treated the Goths, permitting, nay inviting their King Theodoric to
enter Italy and root out the followers of Odovacar, and then, 011 the most
shadowy and unjust pretexts, invading their land, butchering their sons, and
selling their wives and daughters into slavery. And yet these emperors called
themselves wise and religious men, and boasted that they alone could rule a
kingdom righteously. “Help us,” said the Gothic orators, in conclusion, “help
us in this crisis of our fortunes; so shall you earn the everlasting gratitude
of our nation, and enrich yourselves with enormous wealth, not only the spoils
of the Romans, but the treasures of the great Gothic hoard, which we will
gladly make over to you.”
The appeal of the Goths fell on unheeding ears, as far as the Frankish
king was concerned. The timid and delicate Theudebald shrank from the hardships of war, and had none of his father's desire to
measure his strength against Justinianus Francicus et Alamannicus. But there were two chieftains standing
beside his throne, whose eyes gleamed at the mention of the spoils of Italy,
and who—so loosely compacted was the great congeries of states which called
itself the kingdom of the Franks—could venture to undertake on their own
responsibility the war which Theudebald declined.
These were two brothers named Leuthar and Butilin who were leaders of that
great Alamannic tribe which as we have seen, after
being protected by Theodoric against Clovis, had recently received the Frank
instead of the Goth for their overlord. A wild and savage people they were,
still heathen, worshipping trees and mountains and waterfalls (in those
Alamanni who dwelt in Switzerland, such nature-worship was perhaps excusable),
cutting off the heads of horses and oxen, and offering them in sacrifice to
their gods, but gradually becoming slightly more civilized owing to their
contact with the Franks. Deep, indeed, must have been the barbarism of that
nation which could gain any increased softness of manners from intercourse with
the Franks of the sixth century.
Thus then, with high hopes and confident of victory, the two chiefs at
the head of their barbarous hordes rushed down into Italy. Already they saw in
imagination the whole fail peninsula their own; they discussed the question of
the conquest of Sicily; they marvelled at the slackness of the Goths who had
allowed themselves to be conquered by such a delicate and womanish thing, such
a haunter of the thalamus, such a mere shadow
of a man as the Eunuch Narses. The despised general was, however, meanwhile
pressing on the war with the utmost vigour, in order to obtain the surrender of
the fortresses still held for the Goths in Etruria and Campania, before their
barbarian allies could appeal upon the scene. His chief endeavours were
directed to procure the early surrender of Cumae, where Aligern, the brother of
Teias, still guarded the Gothic hoard, and in order that no point in the game
might be lost, he superintended the siege in person.
The city of Cumae, founded by settlers from Euboea on a promontory just
outside the bay of Naples was for many generations the stronghold of Hellenic
civilization in southern Italy, and it was from her walls that the emigrants
went forth to found that colony of Neapolis which was one day so immeasurably
to surpass the greatness of the mother-city. For two centuries (700-500 BC)
Cumae successfully resisted the attacks of her Etrurian neighbours, but at last (about 420 BC) she was stormed by the Samnite
mountaineers, and from that day her high place in history knew her no more.
Now, after so many centuries, the hall forgotten Campanian city became once
more the theatre of mighty deeds; and even as the fortress on the lonely
promontory saw the waves of the Mediterranean breaking on the rocks at its
foot, so were Narses and his Greek-speaking host now foiled by the very
fortress which had once sheltered the Creek against the Etruscan.
The old city of Cumae, which stretched down into the plain, had probably
vanished long before the Gothic war began: at any rate it seems to have been
the rock-perched citadel, not the city, which Narses had now to besiege. The
chief gate of the fortress was situated on its least inaccessible,
south-eastern side, and against this the chief efforts of the besiegers were
directed. The mighty engines of the Imperial army discharged their huge
missiles, but were met by equally formidable preparations on the part of the
besieged, who from their ramparts hurled great stones, trunks of trees, axes,
whatever came readiest to hand, upon the ranks of the besiegers. It is strange
that we hear nothing of Herodian, that deserter from the Imperial cause, whose
utter despair of forgiveness must surely have made him one of the chief leaders
of the fierce resistance. Aligern, the youngest brother of Teias, strode round
the ramparts, not only cheering on the defenders but setting them an example of
warlike prowess. The arrows shot from his terrible bow broke even stones to splinters:
and when a certain Palladius, one of the chief officers of Narses, trusting too
confidently in his iron breastplate, came rushing to the wall at the head of
one of the storming parties, Aligern took careful aim at him from the ramparts,
and transfixed him with an arrow which pierced both shield and breastplate.
This long delay before so comparatively insignificant a fortress chafed
the Eunuch's soul, and he began to meditate other schemes for its reduction.
The trachyte rock on which Cumae stands is still honeycombed with caves and
grottoes, and one of these at the south-eastern corner of the cliffs, which
bore the name of Virgil's Sibyl, was so situated that the wall of the fortress
at that point actually rested on its roof. Into this grotto Narses sent a troop
of sappers and miners, who with their mining tools hewed away the rock above
them, till the foundation stones of the wall of the fortress were actually
visible. They were of course careful to underpin the roof with wooden beams so
that no premature subsidence should reveal their operations, and to prevent the
noise of their tools from being heard the troops made perpetual alarums and
excursions against that part of the wall while the work was proceeding. At
length, when all was completed, the workmen set fire to a mass of dry leaves
and other rubbish which they had collected within it and fled from the Sibyl's
cave. As a piece of engineering the work was successful. The walls began slowly
to sink into the ground: the great gate, tightly barred against the enemy,
fell, carrying a large piece of the wall with it: base and wall, cornice and
battlement, rolled down the cliffs into the gorge below. And yet, when the
Imperial troops were hoping to press in through the breach thus made, and
capture the fortress as if with a shout, they were baulked of their desire. For
such was the nature of the igneous rock on which the citadel was built, so
seamed with cracks and fissures, that when this piece of the wall was gone,
there was still a narrow ravine, steep and untraversable, intervening between
them and the towers in which lay hidden the Gothic hoard.
Foiled in this endeavour and in one more attempt to carry the fortress
by storm, Narses was reluctantly compelled to turn the siege into a blockade.
He left a considerable body of troops who surrounded the citadel with a deep
ditch and watched, to cut off any of the garrison who might wander forth in
search of fodder. Narses himself, still anxious to complete as far as possible
the subjugation of Italy ere Leuthar and Butilin, who had already reached the
Po, should penetrate further into the peninsula, marched into Tuscia to reduce the cities in that province, while he
directed the other generals to cross the Apennines, occupy the strongest places
in the valley of the Po, and, without risking a general engagement, harass the
enemy as much as possible by skirmishing warfare.
These generals were of course chiefly those with whom we have already
made acquaintance in the course of the Gothic war.
There was John, the nephew of Vitalian, the old ally of Narses against
Belisarius, the kinsman of Justinian through his marriage with the daughter of
Germanus. There were the ineffective Valerian, and Artabanes the Armenian
prince whom Justinian had so generously forgiven for his share in a foul
conspiracy against his life. But there was not the king of the Heruli, Philemuth, whose name had been so often coupled with
theirs, for he had died of disease a few days previously and had been succeeded
in the command of the 3,000 Herulian foederati by his nephew Phulcaris, a brave soldier but an unskilful general.
Most of the cities of Etruria surrendered speedily to the Imperial
officers. Centumcellae, ‘lordly Volaterrae,’
Luna, Florence, Pisa, all opened their gates, on condition that they were to be
treated as friends of their restored lord and not to suffer pillage from his
troops. There was one exception which caused the impatient Narses some days of
tedious delay. The garrison of Lucca had pledged themselves to surrender their
city within thirty days if no succour reached them, and had given hostages for
the fulfilment of their promise. But when the specified days had passed, being
elated by the hope of the speedy arrival of the Alamannic host, they refused to keep their pledge. At this there were loud and angry
voices in the Imperial camp, calling for the slaughter of the hostages. But
Narses, though chafing at the delay, could not bring himself to kill these men
for the fault of their fellows. He determined, however, to work upon the fears
of the garrison and therefore ordered the hostages to be brought out into the
plain beneath the city walls with their hands tied behind their backs, their
heads bent forward, and all the appearance of criminals awaiting execution. As
the threat of punishment did not shake the resolution of the garrison he
proceeded to a sham execution of his prisoners. The soldiers on the walls could
see their friends kneeling down as if for death, and the executioners with
their bright blades standing over each. They could not see, for the comedy was
enacted too far from their walls, that each prisoner had in fact a wooden lath
fastened to the nape of his neck and covered with an apparent head-dress
projecting above his real head. The town would not surrender, the bright swords
flashed, the heads of the hostages apparently severed from their bodies: obedient
to the word of command they fell prostrate on the ground and after a few
well-feigned wrigglings all apparently was over.
Then arose from the walls of Lucca a cry of agony and indignation. The
hostages were among the noblest of the Gothic host, and while their mothers and
wives gashed their faces and rent their garments in their grief, the soldiers,
with shrill cries, exclaimed against the hard and arrogant heart of the Eunuch
who had put so many brave men to death, and against the disgusting hypocrisy of
the votary of the Virgin, who had shed so much innocent Christian blood. Narses
there-upon drew near to the walls and severely rebuked the garrison for the
breach of faith which had been the cause of this slaughter. ‘But even now,'
said he, ‘if you will repent of your evil deeds and surrender the city
according to your promise, no harm shall happen to you, and you shall receive
your friends once more alive from the dead'. ‘Agreed! agreed!' shouted the
garrison, ‘the city shall be yours if thou canst call the dead back to life'.
With that Narses bade his prostrate prisoners arise and marched them all up to
the wall of the city. The garrison, who were dimly conscious of the trick hat
had been played upon them, again went back from their plighted word and refused
to surrender the city. Then Narses, with really astonishing magnanimity, sent
the hostages all back, unharmed to their Gothic friends. Even the garrison marvelled,
but he said to them, ‘It is not my way to raise fond hopes and then to dash
them to the ground. And it is not upon the hostages that I rely: it is this,'
and therewith he touched his sword, ‘which shall soon reduce you to
submission'. But, in fact, the liberated and grateful hostages, moving about
among their fellow-countrymen and telling every one of the courtesy and
affability of their late captor and the mingled mercy and justice of his rule,
soon formed a strong Imperialist party within the walls of Lucca and
familiarized the minds of the garrison with the thought of surrender.
While Narses was still busied with the siege of Lucca, an unexpected
disaster elsewhere befell a portion of his army. He had ordered his chief
generals, John, Artabanes, Phulcaris, to concentrate
their forces for the capture of Parma, in order that, from that strong city,
placed as it was right across the great Aemilian Way, they might effectually
bar the march of the Franks and Alamanni into central and southern Italy, and
cover his own operations before the walls of Lucca. The other generals would
seem to have performed at any rate part of their march in safety, but the
unfortunate Herulian, Phulcaris, moving blindly
forward, without making any proper reconnaissance, fell headlong into a trap
prepared for him by Butilin, who had posted a considerable body of troops in
the Amphitheatre near the town. At a given signal these men rushed forth and
fell upon the Herulians who were marching along the
great highway in careless disorder. Fearful butchery was followed by
disgraceful flight: only the brave blunderer Phulcaris and his comitatus remained upon the field. They took up a position in front of
a lofty tomb which bordered on the Aemilian, as that of Caecilia Metella
borders on the Appian Way, and there prepared to die the death of soldiers.
They made many a fierce and murderous onslaught on their foes, returning in an
ever-narrower circle to the momentary shelter of their tomb. Still flight was
possible, and some of the henchmen of Phulcaris advised him to fly. But he, who feared dishonour more than death, answered
them, ‘And how then should I abide the speech of Narses when he chides me for
the carelessness which has brought about this calamity?'. And therewith he
sallied forth again to the combat, but was speedily overpowered by numbers. His
breast was pierced by many javelins, his head was cloven by a Frankish
battle-axe, and he fell dead upon his unsurrendered shield. All his henchmen were soon lying dead around him, some having perished
by their own swords and some by the weapons of the enemy.
The defeat and death of Phulcaris seemed as if
it would turn the whole tide of war. The Franks were beyond measure elated by
their success. The Goths of Aemilia and Liguria, who had before only
corresponded with them in secret, now openly fell away to the invaders. And the
Imperial generals, losing heart when they heard of the Herulian's misfortune, relinquished the march upon Parma and skulked off to Faventia, some hundred miles or so further down the
Aemilian Way and almost in sight of Ravenna. Great was the grief and
indignation of Narses when he heard of the death of the brave Herulian and the
cowardly retreat of the generals. It seemed as if he might have to raise the
tedious siege of Lucca, deprived as he now was of his covering army; and what
was worse, the dejection and discouragement of his own soldiers when they heard
the fatal tidings, appeared to forebode yet further disasters. But the little
withered Eunuch had in him a dauntless heart and was inclined by nature to
follow the advice given to Aeneas by the Sibyl of Cumae—
‘The
mightier ills thy course oppose
Press
the more boldly on thy foes.’
First he called his own troops together and addressed them in tones of
rough but spirit stirring eloquence. He told them that they had been spoiled
by an unbroken course of victory, and were now ascribing an absurd importance
to one solitary defeat, the result of a barbarian's neglect of the rules of
scientific warfare. Nay, this very disaster if it taught them prudence and
moderation in the hour of success would be well worth its cost. The Goths were
really already subdued; they had only the Franks to deal with, strangers to the
land, ill-supplied with provisions, and destitute of the shelter of fortified
towns which the Imperial troops enjoyed. Only let them address themselves with
vigour to the siege of Lucca, and they would soon see a satisfactory end to
their labours. The words of the general revived the fainting spirits of his
army, and the siege was pressed more closely than ever.
At the same time Narses sent a certain Stephanus of Dyrrhachium, with
200 horsemen, brave in battle, to chide the timid generals who were cowering
behind the walls of Faventia. Stephanus had been
charged with a message of fierce rebuke, and the sights and sounds which he saw
as he marched through the devastated land, the ruined homesteads, the felled
forests, the wailing of the peasantry, the lowing of the cattle driven from their
stalls, all gave vehemence to his discourse: ‘What spell has come upon you, good
sirs? Where is the memory of your former deeds? How can Narses take Lucca and
complete the subjugation of Etruria while you are selling the passage over
Italy to the foe? I should not like to use the words “cowardice” and “treason”,
but be assured that others will be less fastidious, and if you do not at once
march to Parma and take your allotted share in the campaign, it is not the
indignation of Narses merely, but the heavy hand of the Emperor, that you may
expect to encounter.
The generals faltered out their excuses for their inaction. No pay had
been received for the troops, and the entire failure of the commissariat, for
which they blamed Antiochus, the Praetorian Prefect, who had not fulfilled his
promises towards them, had compelled them to relinquish the camp at Parma.
There was apparently some ground for these complaints, and accordingly
Stephanus betook himself straightway to Ravenna. Having brought back with him
Antiochus, and presumably some of the much needed aurei, having composed the
differences between the civil and military authorities, and ordered the
generals to march without further delay to Parma, Stephanus returned to the
camp and assured Narses that he might now prosecute the siege with confidence
as the returning generals would effectually secure him from the attacks of the
barbarians. The Eunuch brought up his engines close to the walls, and poured a
terrible shower of stones and darts upon the garrison who manned the
battlements. There was division in the counsels of the besieged, the liberated
hostages strongly urging the expediency of surrender to their magnanimous foe,
while some Frankish officers who happened to be in the city exhorted the Gothic
garrison to resist with greater pertinacity than ever. But the complete failure
of a sortie planned by the party of resistance, the terrible gaps made by the
besiegers' engines in the ranks of the besieged, and the ruin of a portion of
the city wall completed the victory of the party of surrender. Narses received
their overtures gladly, showing no sign of resentment at the previous
dishonourable conduct of the garrison. The siege, which had lasted three
months, was ended; the Imperial troops entered the gates amid the acclamations
of the inhabitants, and Lucca was once more a city of the Roman Empire.
The surrender of Lucca was followed by a more important event of the
same kind, the surrender of Cumae. In the long hours of the blockade, Aligern
had had leisure to reflect on the past and to ponder the future of the Gothic
race in Italy, and he perceived more and more clearly that the Frankish
alliance which his countrymen were so eager to accept meant not alliance but
domination. The part which the great Transalpine nation would play in the
affairs of Italy was already marked out for it, not by any great moral
turpitude of its own, but by geographical position and by the inevitable laws
of human conduct. They would offer themselves as champions and remain as
masters, would undertake to free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic, and
would, if they were victorious, make it not free but Frankish1. Of the two
lordships, the choice between which alone lay before him, Aligern preferred
that which, though practically wielded from Constantinople, was exercised in
the name of Rome, which rested on a legitimate foundation, and was still in
accordance with the wishes of the people of the land. Influenced by these self reasonings
he signified to the besieging general his desire to visit Narses. A
safe-conduct was gladly granted him and he repaired to Classis, where the
Eunuch was then abiding. He produced the keys of his rock-fortress, handed them
over to Narses, and promised to become the loyal subject of the Emperor, a
promise which he faithfully kept, so that, as we shall see hereafter, in the
decisive battle with the Alamannic invaders,
Justinian had no braver champion than the Ostrogoth, the brother of Teias.
A portion of the army which had been besieging Cumae was ordered to
occupy that fortress, the great Gothic hoard being of course handed over at
once to the finance-ministers of the Empire. Aligern received the post of
governor of Cesena, which is situated on the great Aemilian Way, about twenty
miles south of Ravenna. Narses desired him to show himself conspicuously on the
wall, that all men might know and perceive that the former champion of the
Goths was now the champion of Rome. An excellent opportunity soon arrived for
this display of himself in his new character. The Franco-Alamannic host arrived under the walls of Cesena, marching southward, intent on the
plunder of Campania. They beheld to their astonishment the stalwart figure of
Gothic Aligern erect upon the walls of this Imperial city, and heard his words
of scorn shouted down from his airy pinnacle:
“You are going on a fool’s errand, oh ye Franks, and are come a day
after the feast. All the Gothic hoard has been taken by the Romans, yea, and
the ensigns of the Gothic sovereignty. If we should ever hereafter proclaim a
king of the Goths he will wear no crown or torque of gold, thanks to our
Frankish allies, but will have to be dressed as a private soldier.”
Then the Franks upbraided him for a deserter and traitor; and they
debated among themselves whether it was worthwhile to continue the war; but
they decided in the end not to relinquish their project, and marched on for the
Flaminian Way and the passage of the Apennines.
Winter was now coming on and the chief care of Narses was to house his
troops in the fortified cities of Italy. He knew that he was thus surrendering
the open country to the ravages of the Alamannic brethren, but this seemed a lesser evil than keeping his men, children of the
south and dependent on warmth, shivering through the winter in the open fields,
while the Franks, still fresh from the chilly north and from the marshes of the
Scheldt, sustained no inconvenience and felt no hardship. He himself repaired
to Rimini with his train of household troops in order to receive the military
oath from Theudebald, king of the Warni (a namesake
of the young king of the Austrasian Franks), who had just succeeded to the
wandering royalty of his father Wakar, a chieftain in
the Imperial army. Simultaneously with the administration of the oath, presents
were given in the Emperor's name to the young king, and perhaps a donative to
all the tribesmen who followed his standard, and thus the bond (for which it is
difficult to find a suitable name) that united these Germans from the distant
Elbe to ‘the Roman Republic' was strengthened and renewed.
While Narses was still quartered at Rimini, a band of Franks, 2,000 in
number, horsemen and foot-soldiers combined, poured over the plain busied in
their work of rapine. From his chamber at the top of the house Narses, with
indignant heart, beheld them ravaging the fields, driving off the oxen (those
great dun-coloured oxen which plough the fields of Umbria), and carrying away
the spoil from hamlet and villa. At length he could bear it no longer, but
mounting his war-horse (high-couraged, but trained to
perfect obedience) and gathering round him his followers to the number of 300
horsemen, he rode in pursuit of the marauders. Too wise in war to allow
themselves to be vanquished in detail, the Franks left their work of spoliation
and formed themselves into a compact mass, the infantry in the centre resting
on a dense forest and the cavalry covering the two wings. Narses soon found
that his horsemen could make no impression on this small but cleverly posted
army, but rather that his own men were suffering from the discharge of the
barbed Frankish spears. Hereupon he resorted to a stratagem which his admirer,
Agathias, confesses to have been of the barbaric type, and more suited to a
Hunnish chief than to an Imperial general. He ordered his men to feign panic and
flight, and not to return till he gave the signal. The device, however
barbaric, justified itself by its success. The Franks, thinking that they saw a
chance of ending the war at one stroke by the capture of the great Imperial
general, left the safe shelter of the wood and dashed forward in eager pursuit.
When all, cavalry and infantry alike, were hurrying in disorder over the plain,
Narses gave the signal for return, and the Franks, dreaming of easy victory,
found themselves being butchered like sheep by the well-armed and well-mounted
horsemen. The cavalry, indeed, made good their return to the wood, but of the
infantry 900 fell and the rest with difficulty escaped, disheartened and
panic-breeding, to the camp of their generals.
After this Narses returned to Ravenna, set in order whatever had gone
wrong under the feeble rule of Antiochus, and went thence to Rome, where he
passed the winter. For a few months, the land, though disquieted by the
marauding invaders, had rest from actual war.
The interval of rest was employed by Narses in patient and systematic
drill of his troops. The arm on which he most relied seems to have been his
cavalry; at least, we hear how his men were taught to spring nimbly on their
horses, and to wheel them to the right or to the left. But the pyrrhic dance,
of which we also hear, was probably performed by the heavy-armed footsoldier; and all, horsemen and foot-men alike, raised
in unison the barritus (that proudly ascending
war-song), when the spirit-stirring notes of the trumpet were heard challenging
them to this martial melody. Meanwhile the barbarian armies, like two
desolating streams of lava, were pouring over the unhappy peninsula. Keeping far
from Rome and the fortresses in its neighbourhood, they marched in company as
far as Samnium. There they separated, and Butilin, taking the western
coast-road, ravaged Campania, Lucania, Bruttii, down
to the very Straits of Messina; while Leuthar, marching down by the Adriatic,
visited, in his destructive career, Apulia and Calabria, penetrating as far as
the city of Otranto. All were bent on plunder, but a difference was observed
between the two invading nationalities whenever they drew near to consecrated
buildings. The Franks, mindful of their reputation for Christian orthodoxy,
did, as a rule, spare the churches, while the heathen or heretic Alamanni
seemed to delight in filling the sacred precincts with filth and gore and the
unburied of their victims. They stripped off the roofs and shook the
foundations of the churches, and the sacred bowls, the chalices, the patens,
and the vessels for holy water, which were often of solid gold, were recklessly
carried off to minister to the vulgar pomp of some barbarian chieftain.
Seven hundred and sixty-one years before, two brothers (but how
different from this pair of blundering barbarians) had led two armies into
Italy, hoping, by a combined effort, to crush out the name of Rome. Fortunately
for the Imperial cause, the folly and the avarice of the Alamannic brethren brought about now that division of their forces which, in the case of
Hannibal and Hasdrubal, was only accomplished by the desperately bold strategy
of the consuls who conquered at the Metaurus. Leuthar
was anxious to return to his barbarian home (perhaps somewhere in the Black
Forest), and there store up in safety the spoils of Italy. Butilin, when he
received his brother's message to this effect, refused to return, alleging the
specious pretext of the alliance with the Goths, to which their oaths were
plighted. The result was that Leuthar set forth on his northward march alone,
intending, however, when he had safely housed his captives and his spoil, to
return with an army to the help of his brother.
For some distance Leuthar and his army, though encumbered with spoil and
captives, marched on in safety; but when they reached the Fane of Fortune, at
the mouth of the Metaurus, disaster befell them. The
Imperial generals, Artabanes and Uldac the Hun, were
quartered in the little town of Pisaurum, about seven
miles to the north of Fanum. When these generals saw the van of the Frankish
host approaching and making their way with difficulty over the rocky headlands,
they fell suddenly upon them, slew many with their swords, and forced the
others to scramble down the steep and slippery sides of the cliff. The paths
were so precipitous that a great number of the fugitives fell headlong into the
Adriatic waves below. The few who did escape rushed back to Fanum and filled
all the barbarian camp with their terrified shouts : “The Romans are upon us.”
Leuthar drew out his army in battle array, expecting an attack, but this the
Imperial generals did not feel themselves strong enough to make. When, however,
the soldiers, renouncing the thought of battle, returned to their quarters,
they found that the greater number of their captives had taken advantage of the
alarm to decamp, carrying with them no small part of the spoil.
Fearing the Imperial armies stationed in the fortresses of the Adriatic,
Leuthar and his men turned inland and pursued their march along the base of the
Apennines. At length they crossed the Po, and came into Venetia, which was now
a recognized part of the Frankish kingdom. Here, at length, at Ceneda, under the shadow of the dolomites, the baneful
career of Leuthar came to a fitting end. His army was attacked by a
pestilence—the punishment,
Agathias thinks, of their cruel and sacrilegious deeds. Some showed
symptoms of fever, some of apoplexy, some of other forms of brain-disease, but,
whatever form the sickness might assume, it was invariably fatal. The leader
was attacked as well as his men, and in his case some of the symptoms seem to
point to delirium tremens. He rolled himself on the ground, uttering fearful
cries; he tore the flesh of his own arms with his teeth; and then, like some
savage beast, licked the flowing gore. Thus, in uttermost misery, he
died—neither the first nor the last of the invaders upon whom the climate of
Italy has taken a terrible revenge for her ravaged homesteads.
We have seen how the debased copy of Hasdrubal suffered defeat by the Metaurus; now we have to mark the reverse which befell the
other brother near the equally fatal Capua. The army of Butilin, like that of
Leuthar, suffered grievously from pestilence. Summer had now ripened into
autumn, and the barbarians, unable to procure wholesome food in their marches—
the country having been wasted by order of the provident Narses—partook too
freely of the fruit which they found in the orchards and of the must which they
pressed for themselves out of abundant clusters of the grapes of Campania.
Butilin, seeing that his forces were simply wasting away under the influence of
disease, determined to strike a blow for Rome, while he still had something
that could be called an army. With this view, he marched northward and fixed
his camp on the banks of the Vulturnus, not far from
Capua.
A word or two must be said as to the topography of this city, the
capital of Campania, once the second city of Italy, and one which, in the days
of the Second Punic War, nourished ambitious hopes of outstripping even Rome.
The Capua of mediaeval and modern times, the Capua which gave its title to a
prince of the Royal Family of Naples, and which is surrounded by lunettes and
bastions after the manner of Vauban, is situated close to the Vulturnus, on its left bank. This city, however,
corresponds not to the Capua of Hannibal or of Narses, but to the little
subject town of Casilinum. The older Capua lay about
three miles to the south-east, away from the river, in the midst of the
fruitful Campanian plain, and of course upon the great Appian Way. It had two
spacious squares,—the Albana, the centre of the political life of the city, which
contained the senate house and the place of popular assembly, and the Seplasia, the great commercial centre, where men bought and
sold the earthenware, the wine, the oil, and pre-eminently the precious
ointments for which Capua was famous on all the shores of the Mediterranean.
Just outside the town, at its north-west comer, was the great amphitheatre,
built, or, at any rate restored, by Hadrian, with dimensions closely corresponding
to those of the Colosseum at Rome, and capable of accommodating 60,000
spectators, but the present ruins of which are less than half the height of the
ruins of its Roman rival. All round the town are the multitudinous graves, in
which archaeologists have been excavating for a century, leaving many still
unexplored. The earthenware vases and ornaments of bronze and gold found in
these sepulchres, and bearing witness to the three civilizations—Etruscan,
Samnite, Roman—whose influence has passed over Capua, are to be found in large
numbers in the museums of England and Italy. The city in old days abounded in
temples, and one, the greatest of all, that of Diana, stood on the commanding
eminence of Mount Tifata, some two or three miles to
the north of Capua. The thick forests which surrounded it have long ago been
felled; the substructures of the temple are still visible, but its pillars now
(apparently) adorn the very interesting eleventh-century basilica of S. Angelo
in Formis, which stands near the site of the ancient
temple.
In this neighbourhood then Butilin pitched his camp, but as he was close
to the river he was probably nearer to Casilinum (the
site of modem Capua) than to Capua Vetere. Though he had 30,000 men under him
and the army of Narses numbered only 18,000, he entrenched himself like one in
presence of an overwhelming danger. All round his camp, except at one narrow
gateway, he planted the heavy waggons which had thus far accompanied his army.
To prevent the enemy from putting horses to these waggons and drawing them
away, he ordered that they should be banked up with earth as high as the axles
of the wheels, and the rude agger thus formed was further fortified with
stakes. The river guarded his right flank, but in order to defend himself from
an attack by way of the bridge he ordered a wooden tower to be erected, which
he manned with some of the most warlike of his troops. Having made all these
arrangements he waited for the arrival of the brother whom he was never again
to behold.
Instead of Leuthar, Narses soon appeared upon the scene, having marched
with all his army from Rome. Great was the excitement in both armies at the
thought of the now imminent battle. Almost equally great was the excitement
throughout the cities of Italy, at the prospect of the speedy decision of the
question whether Justinian or Theudebald was to be
their future lord. The engagement was hastened by an impulse of generous
indignation. Narses could not bear to witness the Frankish ravage of the
villages of Campania, and ordered Charanges the
Armenian, a brave and war-wise officer, whose tents were pitched nearest to the
foe, to chastise their presumption. The horsemen of Charanges easily overtook the creaking wains in which the Alamanni were carrying off the
plunder of Campania, and slew their drivers. One of these waggons was filled
with very dry hay, and by a happy inspiration Charanges ordered that it should be driven up close to the wooden bridge-tower and then
set on fire. The fire caught, the garrison were obliged to evacuate the tower
and rush to their comrades in the camp, and the bridge fell into the hands of
the Romans. The mingled rage and terror which was thus engendered in the
Frankish host compelled their generals to lead them forth to battle at once,
though the day had been pronounced unlucky by the Alamannic soothsayers, who predicted, so we are told, that if Butilin fought on that day
his troops would perish to a man.
The two armies which were now about to meet in deadly combat were
strangely dissimilar in arms and equipments. The
Franks were almost entirely infantry-soldiers: while Narses, like Belisarius,
relied chiefly on his Hippotoxotai, the
mounted archers whose Parthian tactics of flight and pursuit so often wrought
deadly mischief to the heavy Teutonic hosts. Heavy armed, however, the Franks
and Alamanni were not. Few of them wore either helmet or breastplate, and
trousers of linen or leather were the only covering of their legs. A sword hung
at each man’s thigh and a shield covered his left side. They had neither bows
nor slings, but sent their two-edged axes hurtling through the air, and above
all they wielded the terrible ango of which a
description has already been given.
While the two armies were striding to the encounter, Narses performed a
signal act of retributive justice, which seemed at first as if it would lose,
but which eventually gained him the day. A certain Herulian nobleman among his
foederati had, for some trifling neglect of duty, put one of his slaves to
death with circumstances of savage cruelty. News of the crime was brought to
Narses after he had mounted his horse for battle, but wheeling swiftly round he
sought the murderer and charged him with the deed. The Herulian neither denied
nor excused his offence, but stoutly maintained that in all that he had done he
had acted within his rights as a master, and added. that if his other slaves
did not take warning by their comrades fate he would mete out to them the same
punishment. The cruelty and insolence of the man raised the indignation of
Narses, who also felt, moreover, that to shed the blood of such a monster would
be an offering acceptable in the sight of heaven. He therefore ordered his
guardsmen to slay the Herulian, who at once received a fatal sword-thrust in
his side. His countrymen murmured loudly. They hung back from the march, and it
seemed as if they would desert on the very eve of battle. Narses, however,
would not change his tactics for them. He relied on the protection of Divine
Providence, but he also reckoned on the unwillingness of a warlike tribe like
the Herulians to melt away from the field of battle,
when that battle was even now almost joined.
In arraying his troops for the combat, Narses repeated, perhaps not
altogether of his own will, the tactics which had proved so successful in the
battle of the Apennines. Again he left his centre weak and trusted to his
flanks for victory. The barbarians on the other hand had formed themselves into
a solid wedge shape, like a Greek delta, and meant to pierce the centre of the
Imperial host and so to conquer. They were greatly stimulated to the encounter
by the arrival of two deserters of the Herulian tribe, who assured Butilin that
he would find the Imperial host all in confusion owing to the determination of
the Herulians not to fight under the banners of the
man who had slain their comrade.
The disposition of the two armies can be best explained by a diagram.
FRANKS AND ALAMANNI
IMPERIALISTS.
Ante-signani.
Woods] Valerian and
Artabanes NARSES
Cavalry Infantry Cavalry. Zandalas
and the household of Narses
Infantry
Light-armed troops, archers and slingers.
Heruli, slowly coming up.
In the van of the Roman host were the Ante-signani,
picked troops, clothed in long coats of mail reaching down to their feet, and
with stout helmets on their heads. Behind them stood, the light-armed troops,
the archers and slingers, but all this centre of the host was weak by reason of
the tardy movements of the angry Herulians who should
have formed its core of resistance. Narses himself with a strong body of Hippotoxotai formed the right wing of the army; and
just behind him stood his Majordomo Zandalas with all the slaves in his warlike household that
were apt in war, for the family of Narses, like that of his great rival
Belisarius, seems to have been a complete nursery of soldiers. On the left
wing, partly resting on a dense wood and partly ambushed behind it, was another
strong body of Hippotoxotai under Valerian and
Artabanes.
The Frankish army came on with a wild cry and with all the dash and
impetuosity of their nation. The Ante-signani were soon overpowered; the weak place in the centre of the line, where the
Heruli should have been, but were not, was easily pierced: even the rear guard
was scattered in flight, and the point of the attacking wedge was just touching
the Imperial camp. But this apparently easy victory of the barbarians, if it
had not been actually contrived by Narses, suited his plans exactly. Tranquilly
he ordered his two wings to execute a manoeuvre which enabled them to enfold
the barbarian host as in a bag. And now the over-confident Franks and Alamanni
found themselves exposed to a destructive discharge of arrows aimed by
invisible foes. For the orders given to the Hippotoxotai in each wing were to aim not at the breasts of the nearer but at the backs of
the more distant enemies, and this they could easily do, because being on
horseback they could see over the heads of the barbarian infantry. Thus the Hippotoxotai of Narses were raining their deadly
shower upon the backs of the men who were fighting with Valerian, and in like
manner the Hippotoxotai of Valerian were
mowing down from behind the antagonists of Narses. In both cases the custom of
the barbarians to wear no armour for the back made the manoeuvre more fatal.
They could not see the foes by whose arrows they were falling, and even had
they been able to confront them, the shorter range of their own missile
weapons, the battle-axe and the ango, would
have made the combat still unequal.
While this was going on in the broad part of the barbarian wedge, which
was being rapidly thinned down as rank after rank fell under the back-piercing
missiles of the Imperialists, the point of the wedge had also fallen into
disaster. For now at last Sindual, king of the
Heruli, with his tribesmen had appeared upon the field, to atone for the
tardiness of his march by the ferocity of his onset upon the foe. The Franco-Alamannic van perceived that they had fallen into a trap,
and rolled back in helpless disorder upon their beaten comrades. A few escaped
and made for the river Vulturnus, but perished in its
waters. The Roman infantry, both heavy and light-armed, closed in and completed
the work of slaughter which had been begun by the Hippotoxotai.
Soon, over all the battlefield were heard the groans of the dying barbarians.
Butilin fell, the Herulian deserters who had fed him with such false hopes fell
also. Undoubtedly the destruction of the Frankish host was complete, though we
may refuse to give implicit belief to the statement of Agathias that only five
men out of Butilin’s 30,000 escaped to their own
country.
The chief credit of so splendid a victory must undoubtedly be ascribed
to Narses, that marvellous being who, after a lifetime spent in an emperor's
dressing-room, emerged from an atmosphere of cosmetics and compliments to show
himself ‘a heaven-born general', a perfect master of tactics and most fertile
in resource when the hurly-burly of battle was loudest. But the barbarian
chiefs whose strong arms had executed what Narses planned, were deemed also
worthy of commendation : and of these the men who most distinguished themselves
were Sindual the Herulian and Aligern, brother of
Teias, the erewhile enemy of Rome.
Great was the rejoicing in the Imperial host over the victory of Capua.
Having buried their slain of the comrades and stripped the corpses of the foe,
having swarmed over the waggon-rampart and plundered the Frankish camp, the
soldiers marched to Rome, having their heads crowned with garlands and singing
incessant paeans of victory. Quartered in Rome and deeming all the dangers and
fatigues of war over for a lifetime, they began to abandon themselves to the
sensual delights of a soldier’s holiday. Here would you see one of the heroes of
the late encounter who had sold his helmet for a lyre, there a brother in arms
who had parted with his shield for an amphora of wine.
The general, however, soon perceived the growing demoralization of his
troops, and knowing too surely that all danger from the Franks was not at an
end, he called them together and addressed them with grave and earnest words,
blaming their over-confidence, beseeching them to show themselves Romans,
superior to the arrogant elation and panic fears of the barbarians, expressing
his belief that the Franks would ere long renew the war, and exhorting them,
whether that were so or not, in no case to relax that warlike discipline which
alone could ensure success in the hour of danger. The army heard with shame the
reproofs of their great commander, and laying aside their careless and
self-indulgent ways, ‘returned', says the historian, ‘to the habits of their
ancestors'. Those ancestors were of course supposed to be the men of Rome. It
shows what magic yet lay in that mighty name, that this Armenian Eunuch,
addressing his motley host of Huns, Heruli, Isaurians, Warni, could win them
back from dissipation and self-indulgence by this single argument, “They are
unworthy of your Roman forefathers.”
For the present, notwithstanding the forebodings of Narses, the land had
rest from foreign invasion. The sickly child Theudebald,
king of Austrasia, died in 555, and his great-uncle Chlotochar, who succeeded
to his kingdom, showed no sign of wishing to renew the war for the possession
of Italy. Only a little band of Goths, 7,000 in number, who had not, like
Aligern, renounced the alliance with the Franks and entered the service of the
Emperor, still held out in the mountain fortress of Campsa. Their leader was
Ragnaris the Hun, a much-aspiring man, eager to earn notoriety by the arts of
the demagogue, by which he stirred up the Goths to continue a hopeless
resistance. The fortress of Campsa was strong and the nature of the ground made
it impossible to take it by assault, and Narses was therefore compelled to
resort to blockade, a tedious process, as the garrison were well provisioned,
and a dangerous one, as they showed their resentment by frequent and not
altogether unsuccessful sallies.
In this blockade of Campsa the winter months wore away. In early spring
Ragnaris called for a parley, and the two chiefs, the courtly old Armenian and
the upstart Hunnish adventurer, met under the castle walls. However, the tone
of Ragnaris was so arrogant and his demands were so preposterous that Narses
soon broke up the conference in wrath. As each party was returning to its
quarters Ragnaris stealthily fitted an arrow to the string, turned suddenly
round, and discharged it at the Eunuch. But the treacherous heart had ill
inspired his aim: the arrow missed Narses and fell harmlessly to the ground.
The bodyguards of Narses, enraged at the felon deed, at once discharged their
arrows at Ragnaris, who fell, having received a mortal wound. His followers
carried him into the fortress, where he died after two days of agony. On his
death real negotiations for surrender were begun by the garrison, who
stipulated only that their lives should be spared. Narses, whose careful
fidelity and his plighted word on all occasions excited the wonder of a
degenerate age, would not allow one of the Goths to be put to death, but in
order to guard against future disturbance to the peace of Italy, sent them all
to Constantinople. Here, though we are not expressly told anything of their
further fortunes, we may well imagine that the tallest and most soldier-like
men among them would be enlisted in the bodyguards of the aged Justinian.
Sixty-six years, or two generations of men, had passed away since Theodoric led
his nation-army from Moesia into Italy, and now the last dwindled remnant of
the Ostrogoths came back to dwell beside the Euxine of their forefathers and
the Bosphorus of their unconquerable foe.
