summer of 538, the Milanese found themselves besieged by a far larger force than that which had threatened Rimini, and defended by so few soldiers that all able-bodied male citizens were obliged to take their turn on the ramparts. On this occasion - for which he may well have felt himself to be at least partially to blame - Belisarius unhesitatingly sent two of his best commanders to the relief of Milan, with an army which he believed to be similar in size to that of Uraias. These commanders, however, realized on reaching the Po that they would be hopelessly outnumbered, and refused to advance further without the support of John - who, probably through the influence of Narses, had escaped all punishment for his earlier disobedience - and Justin, who had succeeded Mundus as magister militumper Illyricum.
Belisarius at once issued the necessary instructions, but John and Justin refused point-blank to obey them, claiming that they now took their orders from no one but Narses; and by the time the eunuch had confirmed the command it was too late. The garrison, who had already for some time been reduced to a diet of dogs and even mice, had had enough. Ignoring a stirring exhortation by their commander, Mundilas, they gratefully accepted the terms offered them by Uraias, who gave them his word that they would be allowed to leave the city unharmed.
And so they were; but the offer, as they well knew, did not extend to the people of Milan, who in the eyes of the Goths had betrayed the city. All the male citizens - whose numbers Procopius improbably estimates at 300,000 - were put to the sword, the women being reduced to slavery and presented to the Burgundians in gratitude for their alliance. As for Milan itself, not a house was left standing.
Milan fell in the first months of 539. It was a catastrophe, but it had one useful consequence. On learning what had happened, Justinian recalled his chamberlain at once to Constantinople. The departure of Narses in its turn resulted in the withdrawal of the 2,000 wild Herulians who had accompanied him to Italy and who refused to serve under any other leader; but even this was a small price to pay for a single and undisputed command. No longer troubled by dissension within his ranks, Belisarius was able to concentrate on the capture of Auximum and Fiesole, the last two pockets of resistance south of Ravenna itself. The two towns would have fallen a good deal earlier than they did had it not been for the irruption of a huge Frankish army, this time under Theudibert himself, in the early summer. The Goths, to whom the Franks were bound by treaty, assumed that they had come as allies like the Burgundians in the previous year, opened the gates of Pavia to them and helped them to cross the Po; only then did they reveal themselves in their true colours, suddenly turning on their unsuspecting hosts and slaughtering them wholesale. As the surviving Goths fled towards Ravenna the Byzantines, similarly deceived, now also approached the Franks as new allies; but the barbarians, with a fine lack of discrimination, greeted them with a hail of flying axes - their favourite weapon - and put them in their turn to flight. For a moment it looked as though all Belisarius's careful work was to be undone; then, fortunately, dysentery struck the Frankish camp, accounting for as much as a third of Theudibert's men. The King gave the order to withdraw, and within days his savage, shambling host had dragged itself back across the Alps. The Byzantines, shaken but not seriously weakened, returned to their tasks, and by the end of the year the two stubbornly defended towns had given in.
It was now nearly four years since the imperial forces had first landed on Italian soil: four years during which the peninsula had been fought over, ravaged and laid waste from end to end. The farms had been burnt, the crops destroyed. The land had become a wilderness again, Italians and Goths alike suffering all the miseries of famine. Meanwhile Belisarius was gathering his strength for a final assault on Ravenna which, if successful, would put an end to the Ostrogothic Kingdom once and for all. For Vitiges, the situation was desperate.
One hope only was left to him. Some months before, he had received reports suggesting that Justinian was in difficulties on his eastern frontier, where the Persian King Chosroes I was threatening invasion; if the danger of this were such as to oblige the Emperor to throw his entire military strength against Persia, the cause of Gothic Italy might yet be saved. Vitiges had accordingly sent a letter to Chosroes by the hand of two secret agents, purporting to be a bishop and his chaplain travelling to the East on Church affairs. In it he pointed out to the Great King that the Roman Empire would be a far more redoubtable adversary if it had all the manpower and resources of Italy to draw on. If Chosroes were to strike at once, he would force the Byzantines to fight on both fronts simultaneously and immeasurably increase his own chances of success.
The two agents never returned to the West. Their Syrian interpreter, however, was caught as he tried to slip back across the frontier, brought to Constantinople and interrogated; and gradually the truth was revealed. For a long time Justinian had been worried by the worsening situation in Persia; now he grew seriously alarmed. It would be heartbreaking to have to call off the Italian campaign just as he was on the brink of victory, and to renounce - perhaps for ever - his life's dream of reuniting all Christendom under his aegis. On the other hand he could not possibly afford to take any chances with Chosroes; if the Great King was truly bent on war, the imperial army must be ready for him. The choice was agonizing, but at last he made up his mind. He would have to come to terms with the Goths, in order to free the most brilliant of his generals for another period of service in the East.
By the time the Emperor's orders reached Italy, Belisarius had moved in on Ravenna. The city was already surrounded - to the landward side by his army, to the seaward by the imperial fleet, which had set up a virtually impenetrable blockade. Its surrender could only be a matter of time; all that was required was patience. Then, one day towards the end of 539, ambassadors arrived from Constantinople empowered to sign a treaty with the Goths by the terms of which, in return for capitulation, they would be allowed to retain half their royal treasure and all Italy north of the Po. Belisarius was horror-stricken. This was betrayal indeed; but he could see no way of preventing the proposed agreement and was just about to accept the inevitable when, suddenly and unexpectedly, the Goths played straight into his hands. As astonished, presumably, as he was himself at their apparent good fortune, and perhaps fearing some sort of diplomatic trick, they made it clear that they would accept the treaty as valid only if it bore his own signature as well as those of the imperial plenipotentiaries.
Belisarius seized his chance. The proposed concessions, he thundered, were not only an insult to his soldiers, they were also unnecessary: total victory was imminent, for within a few weeks at the most the Goths could be made to surrender unconditionally. In such circumstances he refused absolutely to sign the treaty, and would agree to do so only on receipt of a personal command from the Emperor himself. For the moment there was stalemate. Then, one night, a secret emissary arrived from the Gothic court, bearing a new and extraordinary proposal: Vitiges would resign his throne and deliver up his crown to Belisarius, on the understanding that the latter should then proclaim himself Emperor of the West. Many an imperial general would have seized such an opportunity; the bulk of the army would probably have supported him, and with the Goths at his back he would have been more than capable of dealing with any punitive expedition from Constantinople. But Belisarius, whatever his long-term ambitions may have been, did not waver in his loyalty. In the words of Procopius, 'he hated the name of usurper with a perfect hatred', and it is unlikely that he gave the Goths' proposal a moment's serious consideration. On the other hand, he saw in it an ideal means of bringing the war to a quick and victorious end. All he had to do was to tell the Goths that he accepted their offer, and the gates of Ravenna would be opened to him.
First he sent away on foraging expeditions those commanders who had formerly allied themselves with Narses: he did not want them making trouble in advance, or claiming the credit afterwards. Then, summoning those on whose loyalty he could rely, he sought their approval for one last effort - an effort which promised
to win back all Italy for the Empire and bring the whole Gothic nobility, with the royal treasure, captive to Constantinople. Once they had given their agreement - which they did without hesitation - no further preparations were necessary. Messengers sped to the Gothic court, with word that the great general looked favourably on their proposals and would formally invest himself with the diadem of the Western Empire after entering his capital. Duly the gates were flung open, and the imperial army marched in.
We do not know exactly when the Goths realized that they had been deceived. It may be that Belisarius never told them in so many words that he had no intention of setting himself up as a rival to Justinian, and that it was only gradually that there came upon them an understanding of the true state of affairs. As they watched the Roman soldiery loading their royal treasure on to the ships while Vitiges, Matasuntha and the chief nobles were all taken off into captivity, they must have reflected bitterly indeed on the perfidy of the general who had betrayed them. But there is no indication that Belisarius's conscience gave him any trouble. The Goths' proposal had been in itself perfidious; besides, were they not all of them rebels against the Emperor's lawful authority? War was war; and, by occupying Ravenna as he had done, he had saved untold bloodshed on both sides. One promise, in any case, he had kept to the letter: there had been no looting of private houses, no rapine and no killing. As he himself took ship for the Bosphorus in May 540 he felt no shame, only elation and pride. His Triumph after the capture of Carthage had been magnificent; how much more splendid might be his reward for returning the whole Italian peninsula, including Ravenna and even Rome itself, to the Empire?
Alas, he was disappointed. Perhaps he would have been doomed to disappointment in any event, for every victory that he won increased the Emperor's jealousy, together with his fears that one day his brilliant young general might take the law into his own hands and usurp the throne. But there was no feeling of victory in the air when he returned to Constantinople, and neither Justinian nor his subjects were in any mood for celebration. In June 540, only a few weeks after the fall of Ravenna, the troops of King Chosroes had invaded the Empire and captured Antioch, demolishing the city, massacring most of its inhabitants and sending the rest into slavery. The presence of Belisarius would be required, not at the Hippodrome but on the eastern front.
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Totila the Goth
[540-49]
Surely in these evil days you must sometimes remember the benefits that you were wont to receive, not so very long ago, at the hands of Theodoric and Amalasuntha . .. My Roman friends, only compare the memory of those rulers with what we now know of the conduct of the Greeks towards their subjects. Do not think that I speak with youthful presumption or barbarian arrogance when I tell you that we shall change all this and deliver Italy from her tyrants -and not through our valour alone, but in the sure belief that we are ministers of divine justice against these oppressors . ..
Totila, in his letter to the Roman Senate, 5451
The Great King Chosroes I of Persia - known to his subjects as Anushirvan, 'of the Immortal Soul' - had occupied the throne since 531. Of all the great Sassanian Kings, perhaps of all the Persian rulers throughout history, he was the most illustrious and is still the best remembered. As a statesman, he reformed and reorganized every branch of government and completely revised the fiscal system; as a general, he created the first standing army loyal to the King alone and pushed forward his frontiers till they extended from the Black Sea to the Yemen, from the Oxus River to the shores of the Mediterranean; as an intellectual, he had given - even before his accession - an enthusiastic welcome to those pagan Greek scientists and philosophers who had drifted to Persia after Justinian's closure of the School of Athens in 5 29. He founded his country's great medical academy at Gondeshapur, codified the Avista - the sacred book of Zoroastrianism - compiled the first collection of the myths and legends of his people and introduced from India the game of chess. He was, in short, a worthy match for Justinian, his adversary and rival for over thirty years.
1 Trans. Hodgkin. In fact, a fairly free translation when compared with the text given by Procopius (History of tbt Wars, VII, ix, 7-18); but at least an admirable precis, which faithfully preserves the tone of the original.
And yet, progressive as he was in many ways, in others Chosroes was very much the child of his time. His wars with the Byzantine Empire, for example, were fought not for conquest but, unashamedly, for plunder. Thus, studiously ignoring first a letter from Justinian in which he was sternly reminded of his treaty obligations under the 'Eternal Peace' and, later, one from Theodora - addressed to a minister but clearly intended for the Great King to see - promising rich rewards in return for non-intervention ('for my husband will do nothing without first seeking my advice') he crossed the imperial frontier in March 540 and captured the town of Sura on the upper Euphrates, whose handful of defenders took one look at the size of the army marching against them and sensibly withdrew. From there he passed on to Beroea (the modern Aleppo), setting fire to the city when the populace failed to raise the 4,000 pounds of silver he had demanded as a ransom, and so in early June found himself before the walls of Antioch - politely drawing his army aside to allow the newly arrived garrison, 6,000 strong but panic-stricken, to flee for its life. The citizens, however, did not give in so easily. They fought with determination and courage, Greens and Blues standing side by side on the ramparts and many of them dying where they stood. Sheer force of numbers allowed Chosroes finally to carry the day; but when he did so he made the people of Antioch pay dearly for their resistance. The great cathedral was stripped of all its gold and silver, and even of the polychrome marbles that adorned its walls; the other churches were similarly pillaged - except that of St Julian, which owed its salvation to its privileged position among the foreign embassies. Meanwhile the Persian soldiery satisfied its various lusts in the traditional manner, to the point where at least two distinguished ladies are said to have flung themselves into the Orontes to escape its attentions.
With all the wealth of Antioch loaded on to his baggage wagons, and before setting out on a triumphal tour of northern Syria during which he proposed to exact heavy tribute from every -city he visited, Chosroes could afford to be generous; he therefore offered peace to Justinian in return for only a little more blood money: 5,000 pounds of gold to be paid at once, plus 500 more each succeeding year. The Emperor had no choice but to accept and pay up; and Chosroes returned to Persia, profoundly satisfied with his campaign. But he was back the following year, when an opportunity arose which, even if it meant a further breach of his treaty obligations, he could not possibly miss.
At the far south-eastern corner of the Black Sea lay the small, semi-autonomous kingdom of Lazica, sometimes known as Colchis. Its ruler, King Gobazes, had in the past been content to be a vassal of the Byzantine Emperor, who had caused him and his immediate predecessors little trouble; but Justinian had recently sent in a personal representative, who had established various imperial monopolies and so antagonized the people that Gobazes in despair appealed to the Persian King. Lazica was a poor country, and would normally have offered Chosroes little temptation; on the other hand, as Gobazes was not slow to point out, it would provide him with a bridgehead on the Black Sea from which he could sail directly against Byzantium and make contact with other potential allies, notably the Huns. So it was that the spring of 541 saw Chosroes once again invading the Empire at the head of his army and marching into Lazica - where, after a pitched battle with the defenders which exacted a heavy toll on both sides, he captured its principal port, the strongly fortified city of Petra.1 The summer would probably have been still more disastrous for Byzantium had it not been for a simultaneous expedition by Belisarius; even this proved, however, to be an oddly lacklustre affair. Ignoring Lazica altogether, he headed straight for Mesopotamia, crossing into Persian territory near Nisibis; but, deciding that this great fortress was too strong for him, he bypassed it and captured only one rela
tively unimportant town, Sisaurani, before the Mesopotamian summer and an outbreak of dysentery among his soldiers forced him to retire.
There seemed to be little in him of the old Belisarius: little of the energy, the cunning and the infinite resourcefulness that had brought him, while still under thirty, to the top of his profession and made his name famous throughout the known world. In 540, after his return from Italy, he had been expected to head straight for the East as ordered; instead, he had remained in his palace at Constantinople, showing himself little in public and seeing only a few close friends. When he did at last set out on campaign he seemed unable to take even minor decisions without seeking the advice and approval of his associates, to whom he appeared somehow distant and preoccupied; and so indeed he was. He had become obsessed by the infidelity of his wife Antonina - infidelity in which she was being abetted and protected by the Empress herself.
Theodora and Antonina had long been friends; but their friendship was further cemented in the course of 541 by their joint conspiracy against the Empress's most hated enemy, the Praetorian Prefect John of Cappadocia. John was well known to have imperial ambitions; and it was an
1 Not, of course, to be confused with the caravan city of southern Arabia, which was by this time already deserted and in ruins.
easy matter for Antonina to entice him to a secret meeting and persuade him to talk about how he planned to achieve his objective, while Theodora's spies remained in hiding, listening to every word. He was arrested, found guilty and dispossessed of his enormous wealth, but he was not condemned to mutilation or execution. His fate - the compulsory taking of holy orders, followed by exile in the comfortable diocese of Cyzicus on the Marmara - was, it was generally agreed, a good deal better than he deserved.
The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Page 28