It is significant, if hardly surprising, that not one of the imperial generals in Italy should have made any attempt to relieve the city. Now, and only now, did Justinian steel himself to appoint a Praetorian Prefect with supreme powers in the province; but this man, Maximin, delayed till the end of the year on the coast of Epirus and, having finally landed at Syracuse, refused absolutely to leave it. By this time one naval relief expedition, launched on his own initiative by an old colleague of Belisarius, had been destroyed by Totila; a second, dispatched in January 543 by Maximin - who took care, however, not to join it himself - was overtaken by a sudden storm and dashed against the rocks.
Meanwhile the Gothic blockade of the city was total; and in May the Neapolitans were starved into surrender. Totila's terms were characteristically generous: the soldiers of the Byzantine garrison were allowed to leave in peace with all their possessions, and even had ships put at their disposal to take them wherever they liked. They chose Rome, and when contrary winds made the sea journey impossible they were given horses and beasts of burden and sent on their way with an escort. Typical too was the consideration shown by the young King to the Neapolitans themselves. Well understanding the danger of giving too much food too quickly to starving men, he first sealed off the city and then had a relatively small amount of food distributed to each household; the next day the ration was increased, and so on succeeding days until the people had once again returned to their normal diet.
The fall of Naples - for the second time in seven years - dealt a further blow to Byzantine morale. For the rest of the year Totila continued to mop up pockets of resistance and to consolidate his hold on the peninsula, and by January 544 the Greek generals in their various redoubts decided that they had had enough. A letter to Justinian was drafted by Constantian in Ravenna - Maximin, if he was around at all, seems to have been universally ignored - and signed by his fellow-commanders, declaring that they could no longer defend the imperial cause in Italy; it was this letter, almost certainly, that decided the Emperor to send back Belisarius. Meanwhile, in the hope that he might be able to gain control of the city without bloodshed, Totila addressed a passionate appeal to the Senate in Rome, an extract from which, condensed and somewhat freely translated, will be found at the head of this chapter.
It received no answer. John, who was commanding in Rome, forbade the Senate to send a reply - much as they would probably have liked to do so. Totila then tried a direct appeal to the Romans. He arranged for a number of copies to be made of a shortened version of his letter and smuggled in under cover of darkness; and the populace awoke one morning to find these posted up in prominent places all over the city, assuring them that the Gothic King wished only to bring them freedom, and that he promised to respect the lives and property of all those Romans who were prepared to give him their support. John, now seriously alarmed, persuaded himself that the Arian clergy had been responsible for the propagation of the letter and went so far as to expel them wholesale; but the true culprits were never identified.
Nor, however, was there a spontaneous uprising by the people of Rome that Totila may have hoped for: if he wished to occupy the city he could do so only by force. By now he was far away to the south, besieging the little Apulian port of Hydruntum (Otranto) which he feared might be used as a bridgehead for a Byzantine relief expedition; but its resistance proved fiercer than he had expected; leaving a small force beneath the walls to continue the siege, in the early summer of 544 he set off at once with the bulk of his army on the long march up the peninsula to Rome.
He might, conceivably, have been one degree less confident had he known that, while he was marching, Beiisarius was already on his way to Italy. The next round of the long contest between Greek and Goth could not be much longer delayed.
From the moment he left Constantinople, Belisarius had known that he would have to fight his second Italian campaign with, effectively, one hand tied behind his back. Justinian had entrusted him with the re-conquest of the peninsula, but had given him only a handful of inexperienced troops, little authority and no money at all. It was even rumoured that the Emperor had extracted a promise from his general not to request funds from the imperial treasury, but to provide both the men and the necessary equipment at his own expense. In former days Belisarius would probably have accepted such charges willingly enough; with a private fortune greater than that of any other citizen of the Empire outside the imperial family he would hardly have noticed them, and a few victories would soon have replenished his coffers. But now, with much of his wealth expropriated by the Empress and fully conscious that in the existing situation there might be no victories at all, he was powerless; and the few extra soldiers that he had managed to recruit on his way to Italy were not such as to inspire any greater confidence in the future.
He did his best. Within a year of his arrival in the summer of 544, he had relieved Otranto and Osimo and rebuilt the defences of Pesaro, which subsequently withstood a determined attack by Totila. During this time, however, he had also seen several defections by imperial troops, many of whom had received no pay for well over a year, and had understood all too clearly how radically the situation had changed in the four years that he had been away. It was no longer just the Goths who were actively hostile to the Empire; it was virtually the whole population. With the forces at his command he might just succeed in maintaining an imperial presence in Italy; but he could never reconquer it.
Such were the considerations in his mind when he wrote in May 545 to Justinian, telling him of his desperate need of men, horses, arms and money:
A man who has not a sufficient supply of these cannot, I believe, wage war. It is true that after laborious searches in Thrace and Illyria I was able to collect some soldiers there; but they are few in number, wretched in quality, have no weapons worth speaking of and are altogether inexperienced in fighting. As for the soldiers whom I found here, they are discontented and discouraged, demoralised by frequent defeats, and at first sign of a foe are so bent on flight that they slip at once from their horses and hurl their arms to the ground. To find money in Italy for the war is impossible, since the country has been largely reconquered by the enemy. Thus we cannot give the soldiers their long overdue arrears of pay, and this knowledge of our indebtedness makes it hard for us to speak freely to them.
Sire, you must be plainly told that the greatest part of your army has enlisted and is now serving under the enemy's standards. If the mere sending of Belisarius to Italy were all that were necessary, your preparations for war would be perfect; but if you would overcome your enemies you must do something more than this, for a general is nothing without his officers. First and foremost you must send me my own guards, both cavalry and foot-soldiers; secondly, a large number of Huns and other barbarians; and thirdly, money with which they may all be paid.
Belisarius entrusted this letter to John, whom he naturally expected to return as soon as possible with whatever military and financial help the Emperor might have been persuaded to provide. John, however, delayed for several months in Constantinople; it was not until late autumn that he returned, to find Belisarius awaiting him impatiently in Dyrrachium. The latter's irritation at the delay can hardly have been diminished by the news that his subordinate had taken advantage of his stay in the capital to woo and marry the daughter of Germanus, the Emperor's first cousin; henceforth, with his new imperial connections, he would be more insufferable than ever. On the other hand he had brought with him a considerable army, a mixed force of Romans and barbarians under the joint command of himself and an Armenian general named Isaac. They all crossed at once to Italy, landing there not a moment too soon: almost simultaneously, the army of Totila reached Rome and laid siege to the city.
To the Byzantines, the prospects looked bleak. Totila controlled all the territory between Rome and the sea, while his fleet was already drawn up at the mouth of the Tiber. Moreover the commander of the imperial garrison, Bessas, was of Gothic origin and uncertain loyalty. He had
made no effort to lay in emergency food supplies; provisions were already found to be short when the siege began, and as it progressed he showed himself less interested in defending the city than in lining his own pocket by selling off what little was left to the highest bidder. As famine took hold, the saintly deacon Pelagius - Pope Vigilius being, for reasons shortly to be explained, under imperial arrest in Sicily - attempted negotiations with Totila, but they came to nothing. Belisarius saw at once that the only hope lay in sailing quickly to the mouth of the Tiber, running the gauntlet of the Gothic fleet, then landing his men and falling on the besieging army from behind; but John, though technically his junior, once again refused to obey. The first priority, he insisted, must be to recapture the south; only then could the army advance northwards to Rome. The result of this disagreement was probably the worst expedient of all: a division of the limited forces available, with each commander pursuing his own plan of action.
But Belisarius did not despair. By the time he reached Portus, where the Tiber flowed out into the sea, he had already laid his plans. While Bessas kept the Goths occupied with diversionary sorties, he proposed to lead an amphibious attack against their rear, marching part of his army along the south bank of the river while the rest, embarked on 200 ships, would smash the enemy fleet and then sail upstream in support. During the entire operation, the Armenian general Isaac was to remain in charge at Portus, looking after the reserves, the provisions, the remaining vessels and - by no means the least important - his wife Antonina, who had recently arrived to join him. Under no circumstances whatever, he emphasized - not even if it was reported that he himself had been captured or killed - was Isaac to leave his post.
In the event Bessas made no sorties, nor indeed the slightest effort of any kind to help his chief. Belisarius launched his expedition regardless. Keeping at bay the Gothic defenders along the banks with streams of arrows fired from the decks, his ships slowly forced their way up the river. After four miles, he easily smashed through the great iron chain and wooden boom that Totila had flung across as an additional protection, and was just about to attack the heavily fortified bridge that constituted the last obstacle before Rome itself when an urgent message was brought to him: Isaac had been taken prisoner. As Belisarius saw it, this could mean one thing only: the Goths had launched a surprise attack on Portus, seized the town and cut him off from the sea. And there was something else, still more terrible to contemplate: if Isaac had been captured, so too had Antonina. Calling off the attack at once, he dashed back to the coast - only to discover that Isaac, chafing at his enforced inactivity, had attacked the Gothic garrison at Ostia in flagrant disobedience of his orders and had been overcome by his intended victims. Apart from himself and the few soldiers who had accompanied him, everything and everyone else - including Antonina - was safe.
The last chance had been lost: Rome's fate was sealed. And yet, sick and starving as the Romans were, it was neither sickness nor starvation that caused the city's fall. It never surrendered; but on the night of 17 December 546 a group of four discontented Isaurian soldiers of the garrison opened up the Asinarian Gate, and the Goths flooded in. Whether the traitors had been among those Isaurians to whom Totila had shown such unusual consideration after his capture of Naples three and a half years before, we shall never know; but the young King certainly had little cause to regret his generosity.
Bessas took flight at once, together with most of the garrison, leaving all his ill-gotten treasure behind to swell the Gothic coffers. Several of the Roman nobles - those of them who had not been obliged to eat their horses - rode off with him. The remainder sought refuge in the churches till Totila had brought his men under control, then slowly emerged to resume their desperate search for food until such time as supplies in the city returned to normal. Of the populace, Procopius1 tells us that only 500 citizens were left. Some of us may agree with Gibbon in finding this figure hard to accept; in fact, however, there seems nothing particularly improbable about it. There can in any case be no doubt that although, strategically speaking, the fall of Rome was of little real significance, as a symbol it was all-important; and Totila understandably saw its capture as an opportunity to send ambassadors to the Emperor, offering him peace on the basis of a return to the status quo of happier days. 'You will have learned,' he wrote,
of what has occurred in the city of the Romans; this I propose to pass over in silence. Why I am sending you these envoys, however, I shall explain. It is our wish that you should accept for yourself the blessings of peace, and that you should grant them also to us. Of these blessings we have most excellent examples and reminders in Anastasius and Theodoric, who ruled not long ago and whose reigns were given over to peace and prosperity. If this should be also your desire, I shall look upon you as my father, and you may henceforth count on us as your allies against all your enemies.
But Justinian would have none of it. To accept Totila's proposals would have been effectively to write off ten years' campaigning and to admit the defeat not only of his armies but also of his most cherished ambitions. Belisarius, he pointed out, was his commander in Italy, and was possessed of complete plenipotentiary authority. If the King of the Goths had anything he wished to communicate, it was to him that his words should properly be addressed.
It is unlikely that Totila even approached Belisarius as Justinian had suggested; and it is unlikelier still that, even had he done so, he would have received a remotely encouraging reply. The fall of Rome was soon forgotten - the Byzantines even managed briefly to reoccupy it in April 547, though they were to lose it again less than three years later - and after a few more months of desultory fighting up and down the peninsula it became clear that the two sides had reached a stalemate, with neither strong enough to eliminate the other. Belisarius decided on one last
1 His full account of Totila's siege of Rome will be found in his History of the Wars, VII, xv-xx.
appeal to his Emperor. He knew that for Justinian the international situation had improved since his last attempt: peace had finally been concluded - though at a considerable price - with King Chosroes, and the rebellion in Africa, which had been raging for the past five years and had made formidable demands of money and manpower, had finally been put down. Perhaps, in the calmer conditions now prevailing, he might at last get what he wanted.
His emissary on this occasion was his wife Antonina. She had seen for herself the difficulties that he was having to face, and could speak of them from first-hand experience. She had, moreover, direct access to the Empress, and through her to Justinian himself; she would not allow herself to be fobbed off with underlings. Around midsummer, 548, she left for Constantinople - only to find the city plunged into deepest mourning. Just a few days before, on 28 June, Theodora had died of cancer. Antonina saw at once that her mission was doomed: the Emperor, prostrated with grief, would see no one and was incapable of taking decisions. All that she managed to obtain from those in temporary control was the recall of her husband; if failure in Italy was now inevitable, she was determined that he should not carry the blame.
Early in 549 Belisarius returned to the capital. After the glory of his first Italian campaign, his second had brought him only five years of frustration and disappointment. But he had saved Italy, at least temporarily, for the Empire. Had it not been for his energy and resolve, in the face of the most discouraging conditions imaginable, there is little doubt that the Byzantines would have been expelled in 544; thanks to him the foundations for reconquest were laid for the second time, making it relatively easy when the moment came for his old rival Narses - possessed of all the resources for which he, Belisarius, had appealed in vain -to win the victories and the acclaim that should rightfully have been his own.
12
The Last Years of Justinian
[549-65]
The natural course for a high-souled Emperor to pursue is to seek to enlarge the Empire, and make it more glorious.
Procopius
Justinian gree
ted his general like a long-lost friend - which, in a sense, he was. For years the two men had been kept apart by the intrigues of Theodora, who had continually poisoned her husband's mind with fabricated stories about Belisarius - his faithlessness, his duplicity, his imperial ambitions. The Emperor had never really believed her; yet the doubts that she implanted in his mind were enough to produce a vague feeling of mistrust which endured for as long as she lived. With her death, however, this feeling was quickly dissipated; by the time Belisarius returned to Constantinople, Justinian had recovered from the initial shock of his bereavement — though he continued to mourn his wife until the day he died - and welcomed him with open arms, adopting him as his closest confidant and going so far as to erect a gilded statue of him, next to that of his uncle Justin, in the Augusteum.
Even Belisarius, however, seems to have been unable to persuade the Emperor to provide the men and money for a final all-out attack on Totila. It was not that Justinian lacked determination to regain Italy for the Empire. This had, after all, been his primary objective ever since his accession, and his categorical refusal to receive Totila's ambassadors after the latter's capture of Rome is clear enough indication that he had in no way weakened in his resolve. But for the past six years he had had a major theological problem on his hands - a problem which the death of his wife had rendered, if anything, still more intractable; and the hiatus which now occurs in the story of the Italian reconquest - following the recall of Belisarius and preceding the brief final act of the drama -provides us with a welcome opportunity to see what had occurred.
The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Page 30