1 The only show of resistance was made by the Gothic garrison in Panormus - the present Palermo, but then a small port of relatively little importance. Belisarius massed his fleet so close inshore that the masts of his ships rose above the town walls. He then filled the ships' boats with men and hoisted them up to the yard-arms, whence they were able to fire their arrows down on the defenders and then leap directly on to the battlements. The garrison soon capitulated.
into the city. At a given signal from them, the remainder of the army then set up its scaling-ladders and launched a concerted attack on the walls. The defenders, finding themselves simultaneously assailed from within and without, were obliged to surrender and Naples was regained for the Empire.
Or what was left of it. Belisarius had warned the Neapolitans at the beginning of the siege that if they put up any resistance he would be unable to restrain his army - which, he reminded them, was largely composed of semi-savage barbarians - from the murder, rapine and pillage which they would consider their just reward after the capture of the city. But the warning had been ignored, and the miserable citizens now paid the price of their heroism. It was many hours before Belisarius was able to persuade his motley hordes of Alans and Isaurians, Herulians and Huns - these last the most terrifying of all since, being pagans, they had no compunction in burning down the churches in which their intended victims had sought asylum - to put up their swords and spears and return to their various camps. Soon, he explained, they would be on the march again; and their next objective would be Rome itself.
The Byzantine capture of Naples dealt a severe blow to the morale of the Goths, who unhesitatingly laid the blame for their defeat on Theodahad. He had long been detested by his subjects for his avarice and his extortions; more recently, persistent rumours of his secret correspondence with the enemy had done still more harm to his reputation. The fact that he had not dispatched a single soldier to the relief of Naples seemed to confirm these rumours: such apparent apathy could mean only that he had been bribed by Justinian to betray his people. Accordingly, at a vast assembly near Terracina, the Gothic leaders solemnly declared him deposed and, in the absence of any male descendant of Theodoric, nominated as his successor an elderly and not particularly impressive general named Vitiges. The first command issued by the new King of the Goths was for the execution of the old one: Theodahad had fled to the north, but was captured near Ravenna and dispatched on the spot.
Meanwhile Belisarius was about to march on Rome; and many of the Gothic chieftains must have wondered whether they had been wise in their choice of King when Vitiges announced that he would not be defending the city. Its people must look after themselves as best they could while he withdrew to Ravenna, there to consolidate his forces, draw up his long-term strategy and - somewhat more controversially divorce his wife of many years in favour of Athalaric's sister Matasuntha. There were, it must be admitted, sound political reasons for such a marriage. Vitiges was of humble origins and needed to improve his social status; he knew, too, that any other husband of the young princess might prove a dangerous rival. Finally there was the consideration that, with the granddaughter of Theodoric on the throne, Justinian would have less cause for intervention in Italy. But the marriage, as might have been expected, was an unhappy one from the start, and seems to have done the old man's reputation more harm than good.
With the retreat of Vitiges to Ravenna, Belisarius might have been expected to march with all speed on Rome. In fact, he showed himself to be in no particular hurry, preferring to spend the summer and autumn consolidating his hold on South Italy. Only in December did he move northward, ostensibly in answer to an invitation from Pope Silverius1 to occupy the holy city; and one is tempted to conclude that the intervening months had been passed in arranging for such an invitation - which must have greatly strengthened his diplomatic position - to be sent. There is no reason to believe that Silverius was any more favourably disposed to the invaders than were his fellow-Romans: the Goths might be Arians, but they had always been tolerant and considerate rulers, whereas the Byzantines were widely mistrusted and their barbarian troops universally feared. But the formidable reputation of Belisarius himself - to say nothing of memories of the recent fate of Naples -would have been more than enough to persuade the Pope to do as he was told. Whatever the truth may be, on 9 December 536 Belisarius led his army north from Naples,2 entering Rome by the Porta Asinaria near the Basilica of Constantine (now St John Lateran) as the Gothic garrison marched out through the Porta Flaminia.
But if Silverius and his flock imagined that by opening the gates to the imperial army they had avoided the miseries of a siege, they were to be disappointed. Belisarius himself entertained no such delusion. He knew that the Goths would be back soon enough; and the strength of the opposition encountered by the advance units that he had sent to
Silverius, who had been raised to the pontificate only six months before, was probably the only Pope in history to be the legitimate son of another. His father was Pope Hormisdas, who took orders only after the early death of his wife.
It is intriguing to reflect that had Belisarius stopped for rest and refreshment at the great abbey which he must have seen dominating the road from a high hill on his right, he would have found himself face to face with St Benedict in person, who had established his monastery - and the Order that still bears his name - on Monte Cassino only eight years before.
capture other strategic points in Umbria, Tuscany and the Marches suggested that they would fight a hard battle. Immediately he set his men to the task of repairing and strengthening the Aurelian walls; meanwhile he requisitioned immense quantities of corn from the surrounding countryside and ordered additional shiploads from Sicily, until the huge public granaries of Rome were full to overflowing. Once the Goths arrived and surrounded the city he could not be sure of keeping open his supply lines to the port of Ostia; and the coming siege, he knew, might be a long one.
And so it was. After a fierce encounter near the Milvian Bridge in which the Byzantines, though righting with supreme courage, were unable to stem the Gothic advance, Vitiges and his men took up their positions around the city in the middle of March, 537. They were to hold them for a year and nine days - an agonizing time for besiegers and besieged alike, at the very beginning of which the Goths cut all the aqueducts, thereby dealing Rome a blow from which it was not to recover for a thousand years. The history of the aqueducts stretched almost as far back into the past: it had been as early as 312 BC that the Romans, no longer prepared to make do with the murky insufficiency of the Tiber, built the first of these magnificent conduits; over the eight centuries that followed they were to construct ten more, the better to supply not only their domestic needs but the innumerable fountains and public baths for which their city was famous. And those aqueducts provided something else as well: the hydraulic power which drove, among other things, the mills on which the people depended for their bread. It was, we read, Belisarius himself who now had the idea of mounting millstones on small boats, suspending water-wheels between them and then tethering them beneath the arches of a bridge where the current was strongest, thereby ensuring a regular supply of flour throughout the siege.
Meanwhile he had applied to Justinian for reinforcements, the first of which arrived before the end of April - some 1,600 Slavs and Huns, who broke through the blockade and for the first time made it possible to launch occasional sorties outside the walls. But the stalemate continued, and as summer drew on the sufferings increased on both sides - for those within the city, famine; for those outside, disease and pestilence. Only in November did the balance begin to shift in favour of the Byzantines, when 5,000 more men, both cavalry and infantry, arrived from the East under the command of John, nephew of that rebellious Vitalian who had given so much trouble to old Anastasius twenty years before.
Soon afterwards the Goths asked for a three-month truce, during which they offered peace proposals which Belisarius would have rejected out of hand had he not
been obliged to transmit them to Constantinople for the Emperor's consideration. While awaiting a reply, he dispatched John with 2,000 horsemen on a punitive campaign along the eastern slopes of the Apennines. Leaving a trail of devastation behind him, John advanced rapidly up the peninsula, ignoring the fortified hill-towns of Urbino and Osimo but occupying the low-lying port of Rimini (then known as Ariminum) where he set up his advance headquarters.
The knowledge that the invaders were now in possession of an important city 200 miles in his rear and only thirty-three from Ravenna was enough to persuade Vitiges to raise the siege of Rome. Although there had been as yet no reply from Constantinople he was by now practically certain that his peace proposals had been rejected; he knew, too, that Belisarius had succeeded in bringing in fresh provisions during the early days of the truce and would therefore be able to hold out in Rome almost indefinitely. One early morning in the middle of March 538 his troops, sick, demoralized and dispirited, methodically set fire to their seven camps around the city and headed northwards along the Via Flaminia. But even now their humiliation was not over: Belisarius and his men came pouring out of the gates, fell on them from behind and, after yet another engagement at the Milvian Bridge, left several hundred more Goths dead on the river banks or drowned, weighed down by their armour, in the spring flood of the Tiber.
After this battle the surviving Goths were allowed to retreat in peace. A few days later, however, leaving only a small garrison in Rome, Belisarius himself set out to the north, occupying towns and mopping up isolated pockets of resistance as he went. Spoleto, Perugia and Narni had been taken by his advance parties even before the siege of Rome; to these he now added Ancona, together with a whole chain of strong-points linking those towns and Rome with the Adriatic. One thing only-worried him: the knowledge that John with his large force of cavalry was still dangerously exposed in Rimini. He therefore sent two of his trusted officers up the coast with orders to the general to withdraw and to rejoin him, with his men, in Ancona.
And John, who seems to have inherited his uncle's rebellious streak, flatly refused. He had ambitions of his own; besides, he was in secret communication with Queen Matasuntha, a pro-imperialist like her mother, who was by now longing to do down her detested husband in any way that she could. The two officers had no choice but to return and report this flagrant piece of insubordination; and hardly had they done so when the Gothic army appeared beneath the walls of Rimini. A few days later the siege began, and the prospects for those within looked grim indeed. Unlike Rome, which had been able to hold out thanks to its splendid walls and the immense quantity of provisions laid in by Belisarius before the arrival of the Goths, here was a small town in a dead-flat plain, ill-protected and poorly stocked with food. The fury of Belisarius when he heard the news can be imagined. The loss of John he could probably by now contemplate with equanimity; but his 2,000 horsemen were less easily spared. On the other hand any relief expedition would be fraught with difficulty and danger, particularly since Auximum (Osimo) was still held by the Goths. Was he, for the sake of a single regiment of cavalry, to put his entire army in jeopardy? Should not John, who was after all solely responsible for his own misfortunes, now be left to pay the price of his disobedience?
Belisarius was still considering his next move when fresh troops arrived from Constantinople, headed by the most powerful figure at the imperial court: the eunuch Narses, who has already made a brief appearance in this story when as commander of the imperial bodyguard he played a decisive part, with Belisarius and Mundus, in putting down the Nika revolt. Born some sixty years before in that part of eastern Armenia that had been transferred to Persia in the partition of 387, he had risen steadily through the palace hierarchy to be Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi or Grand Chamberlain, a position which gave him the rank of illustris and made him an equal of the Praetorian Prefects and Magistrum Militum -although, being constantly at the Emperor's side, he probably wielded more influence than any of them.
But he was no soldier. His life had been spent in the Palace, and even his command of the bodyguard was more of a domestic appointment than a military one. The question therefore arises, why he was given the leadership of the new expeditionary force; and to it there can be but one answer. Justinian was beginning to have his doubts about Belisarius. The general was too brilliant, too successful - and, being still only in his early thirties, too young. He was the stuff of which Emperors were made; worse, he was the stuff of men who made themselves Emperors. In short, he needed watching; and who better to watch him than Justinian's most intelligent and trusted confidant, a man whose age and condition alike debarred him from any imperial ambitions of his own? Even the eunuch's instructions from
Justinian gave a hint as to the real reason for his presence in Italy: he was to obey Belisarius in all things, so far as seemed consistent with the public weal. In other words, he must accept the general's orders in military matters, but could overrule him on all major decisions of state policy.
Within days of his arrival, Narses found himself taking part in a council of war summoned by Belisarius at Firmium - now Fermo - to discuss whether or not to mount an expedition to relieve Rimini. The majority of those present (who included, as always, Procopius) were hostile to John, on the grounds that 'he had been moved by insensate recklessness and a desire for large financial gain' - this last motive is not explained - 'to occupy the dangerous position in which he found himself; and that he had refused to allow his commander-in-chief to conduct the campaign according to his own ideas of strategy'. After all the junior commanders had had their say, Narses arose. Readily admitting his own lack of military experience, he pointed out that the Goths were deeply dispirited after the succession of reverses that they had suffered over the past two years. The capture of Rimini, however, and of so important a Byzantine force within its walls, would be hailed by them as a major victory, perhaps as the turning-point of the whole war. 'If,' he concluded, turning to Belisarius, 'John has treated your orders with contempt, it is in your power to deal with him as you like once the city is relieved. But see that in punishing him for the mistakes that he has made through ignorance you do not exact a penalty from the Emperor himself and from us his subjects.'1
The suggestion that John had acted 'through ignorance' can perhaps best be explained by Procopius's statement that 'Narses loved him above all other men'; at any rate, the eunuch's counsels prevailed and Belisarius, who seems wisely to have kept silent so that he should not appear to be overruled, began to make his plans accordingly. A week or two later, by means of a brilliantly executed amphibious operation in which he contrived to suggest to the Goths outside Rimini that they themselves were surrounded - and by a far more numerous force than in fact existed - he put the entire besieging army to flight and entered the city just in time to save the defenders from starvation. His natural resentment of his new rival, however, cannot have been diminished when John, instead of apologizing for his conduct and expressing gratitude for his rescue, attributed it exclusively to Narses and refused absolutely to thank anyone else. Between the general and the eunuch the seeds of dissension had
1 Procopius, History of the Wars, VI, xvi.
been sown; but neither could have imagined how bitter the harvest was to be.
Belisarius was a supreme strategist and, thanks to his immense physical courage, a superb commander in the field. As a general, however, there was one quality that he lacked: the ability to inspire the unquestioning loyalty of those under him. One of his chief lieutenants had already disobeyed his orders; now, after the relief of Rimini, a considerable portion of the army made it clear that, in the event of a split in the high command, they would follow Narses rather than himself. He knew that he was powerless to change matters, and it may have been as much to save his own face as for any other reason that he divided the army into two for the mopping-up operations that followed. At the start, the system worked well enough: the Byzantines took Urbino, Imola and Orvieto and re-annexed the province of
Emilia. But now, suddenly and unexpectedly, there came disaster. The cause of it was the growing hostility between the two commanders; the place Mediolanum - better known to us as Milan.
The previous spring, at the time of the three-month truce during the siege of Rome, Archbishop Datius of Milan had appeared in the city and implored Belisarius to send troops to deliver his diocese from alien -and Arian - occupation; and the general had agreed. Why he did so is not altogether clear - it seems to have been just the same kind of mistake as that which had led John to occupy Rimini, dangerously over-extending his lines of communication and supply - but he had nevertheless dispatched 1,000 troops back with the archbishop to the north. They went by sea to Genoa, used the ships' boats to cross the Po, and decisively defeated a Gothic army beneath the walls of Pavia. To their disappointment they failed to take the city, but on their arrival at Milan the citizens immediately opened the gates. Bergamo, Como, Novara and several other towns gave them a similar welcome. Each, however, required a small garrison of imperial troops - which effectively reduced the force in Milan to some 300 men.
Now Milan was already the largest and most prosperous of all the cities of Italy, its population considerably greater than that of Rome itself; and its voluntary surrender came as a bitter blow to the Goths. Immediately he heard the news, Vitiges sent an army to recover it under his nephew Uraias. At the same time, and to the additional discomfiture of the Byzantine garrison, there arrived a body of some 10,000 Burgundians, sent by the Frankish King Theudibert. Thus, by the high
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