The consequence of this state of things was that the administration of the south scarcely changed at all, and that it peaceably submitted to the government to which it was accustomed, indifferent to the fact that the sovereign was a Gothic king instead of a Roman emperor. There are few records of Gothic actions in Sicily. When Theodoric married his sister Amalafrida to the king of the Vandals, he presented her with the district of Lilybaeum, which became Marsala, ‘the harbour of God,’ under the Saracens. It appears that there was a Gothic garrison there, as well as in Syracuse, Palermo, and Messina; and it is certain that in the division of lands some estates in Sicily and on the southern mainland fell to the lot of the Gothic captives; but there is excellent historical evidence to show that there were practically no Goths at all in the south when Belisarius landed, in 535. The fact that there were none is adduced to explain why the south surrendered to the imperial general without a struggle.
The Gothic law, for Goths, was administered by counts created by the king for the purpose; in differences between Goths and Romans, that is to say, free Italians, the Gothic count was associated with a Roman judge well acquainted with Roman law. This fact implies that there were counts in Sicily, at least where there were Gothic garrisons, and a few letters are extant in which some of them are mentioned by name, and which deal with matters of administration. They are largely of the time of Athalaric, and it is remarkable that a number of them were written to censure the Gothic officials for having collected taxes beyond the amounts due. There is ample evidence that it was the intention of the kings to treat the south well, and that they did so; and the vast amount of cornº which Sicily was able to send to Rome in the final struggle that resulted in the victory of the Byzantines, shows clearly enough that under Gothic domination the island recovered from the ravages of Genseric with its usual vitality and became extremely prosperous. The instructions given to the Count of Syracuse with regard to his journeys when ‘on circuit,’ as we should say, exhibit a care for the people’s interests which contrasts strongly with the rapacious methods tolerated in the days of Verres. His functions are to be exercised for one year, during which he is to be escorted by a detachment of Gothic soldiers; the latter are to be quartered on the citizens, but the count is warned that he is not to allow any rudeness or rough treatment on the part of his men, who are everywhere to take what is given them without complaint and with a modest behaviour.
Nevertheless this Gildilas, Gothic Count of Syracuse under Athalaric, seems to have had an eye to his own advantage, for we find him severely taken to task for oppressing the provincials. He is told that he has received money for repairing the walls of the city, but has used it for other purposes, and must now either refund it or execute the work; that he has appropriated to the treasury the property of natives who have died without heirs, a proceeding only authorized in the case of foreigners; that he has made the costs of judicial proceedings excessive; that he has presumed to judge cases of difference arising between Roman parties, whereas his jurisdiction only extends over Goths; that he has forced merchants to sell him the cargoes of incoming vessels at a derisory price; and on the whole that he had behaved very badly, in a manner unbecoming to a Gothic count, that he is to remember that it is the glory of the Goths to protect all citizens, and that he must immediately mend his ways.
In order to understand what there is to tell about the situation in Sicily at the end of the Gothic domination, during the wars in which Belisarius, and Narses after him, commanded the Byzantine armies, we must glance at the causes of those wars, which were fought by the Emperor Justinian, against the successors of Theodoric, for the possession of Rome. Their result may be described as a preservation of Rome’s identity as a Latin capital; for if the Goths had beaten Justinian, as it at one time seemed probable that they might, Rome would soon have ceased to be a true Latin centre, though it might not have become more really Gothic than Vienna is German in our own times.
We have seen that the powers delegated by the Emperor of the East to Odoacer and Theodoric were undefined, if they were unlimited. They had in fact been granted purposely in such a manner as to make them revocable at the emperor’s pleasure, and in this respect the kingdom of Italy resembled a feudal holding of the Middle Ages. Odoacer was a mere adventurer and a general of mercenary troops; Theodoric was indeed by right a king, but was not King of Italy in any correct acceptation of the title. He was, in the imperial theory, the governor of the country as long as the emperor chose that he should remain in office. In real fact, he was the chieftain of an army of giants who, to use an expression proverbial among seamen, would rather drink than eat, and would rather fight than drink; huge men, of huge appetites, gifted with a sort of honourable judgment which would have been common sense if it had not been strongly imbued with a spirit half poetic, half theatrical, and altogether barbaric; guileless as children, and yet dangerous as madmen when thwarted in their immediate desires or when roused to anger, especially by any piece of deception or treachery; spendthrifts who squandered their possessions, their strength, and themselves, and who, speaking figuratively, would swing a sledge-hammer to crush a fly; they were, in a word, a tribe of big, handsome, headstrong, quick-tempered boys, among whom a man like Theodoric appeared now and then, who knew how to manage them, and had something of that cool and unerring spirit which, at a later period, distinguished the Normans from other northern people.
It is doubtful whether the struggle for the possession of Rome was brought on by circumstances into which questions of religion entered, but it is certain that the Catholic Church in Italy stirred up the people against Theodoric in his old age. He was an Arian, but he did not behave like one; on the contrary, he favoured the attack made by the emperor on the Arian Genseric, and had himself assumed the government with the approval and support of the bishops, who already played so important a part in the state. But towards the end of his reign there was something like a religious revival throughout Italy; there was at all events a sudden and great increase of religious fervour all over the country, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that such a movement, proceeding as it did from a Latin and Catholic source, should have produced some manifestation of Latin patriotism as opposed to foreign and Arian domination, by drawing the Latin people more closely together.
Now Latin patriotism had come to mean adherence to the Eastern Empire. The patriotic sentiment of Italians was not for Italy, but for the Empire under which they had lived five hundred years, and the fact that its seat had long been transferred to Constantinople did not affect that sentiment in any great degree. The Emperor Justin was as wise as he was enterprising, and he was quick to take advantage of a change of feeling in Italy at a time when that country had practically been long separated from his dominion and seemed forever lost to the Empire. He was assured that to reconquer it he had only to drive out the Goths, who, though very warlike, were by no means a military nation, who could therefore be beaten by a scientific general commanding trained troops, and who, moreover, would have to fight in the enemy’s country, since the whole south and a great part of central Italy were decidedly in favour of what was certainly a reoccupation. Justin began to seek occasion against Theodoric, and maintained continued relations with the Catholic party in Italy.
It has been said that Theodoric was at no time an independent sovereign, that he understood what he was made to do by his great prime minister, and approved, so to say, of his own actions, but that he was nothing more than a lay figure of royalty, wholly directed by Cassiodorus. There is much evidence in favour of this theory. The only objection to it which suggests itself to me is that Cassiodorus was a Roman by birth, by character, and by education, and one would therefore suppose that if he had possessed the directing power attributed to him by some historians he would not have used it to widen the breach between himself and all that distinctively belonged to Rome. Yet he had served Odoacer before serving Theodoric, and it was undoubtedly owing to his efforts that the south submitted peaceably to the Go
thic rule. He retired from political life in the last years of Theodoric’s reign, but he returned to serve the latter’s daughter and grandson in his former capacity; he outlived the fall of the Gothic kingdom and still had nearly thirty years of life to spend in the retirement of the cloister he had founded in his native place, Squillace, not far from Catanzaro, in southern Calabria, near the sea. There he composed a great part of his many books, most of which have been preserved.
The struggle for the possession of Rome, which Felix Dahn has told in one of the most remarkable historical novels ever composed, did not begin until Theodoric was dead. In his old age the king had done unworthy deeds, yielding to the counsels of courtiers who played upon him at his will; he had caused the great Boethius to be put to death with horrible tortures and had beheaded the equally innocent Symmachus, and it is said that Boethius died because he protected the provincials against the extortions of the public officials, a fact which shows how much Theodoric’s government had degenerated in his later days. Before his death Justin had issued an edict requiring that the Arian churches in Constantinople should accept the Catholic rite; Theodoric forced Pope John the First to act as his ambassador to the emperor to request a revocation of the order. Justin received the Pope with every honour, but refused the request, and Theodoric retorted by imprisoning the unfortunate pontiff, who died in prison, if he was not actually murdered. In the same year, 526, and only three months later, Theodoric himself passed away, and while the Gothic nation mourned him and buried him magnificently in Ravenna, a hermit of the south gravely assured the Catholic world that he had seen the shades of Pope John and of Symmachus casting the soul of the dead king bound into the crater of Volcano, the island that lies close to Lipari, off the Sicilian coast. Theodoric was succeeded by his daughter Amalasuntha, for he left no son, and his grandson Athalaric was but a boy. In 527, the next year, Justin died and was succeeded by the great Justinian, his nephew and adopted son. Amalasuntha, brought up in the Roman civilization and culture, effected a reconciliation with the new emperor, but the Arian Goths hated her, and her own cousin murdered her nine years after her father’s death. She had allowed the imperial troops to land and collect provisions in Sicily during the Vandal war, and Justinian found it convenient to avenge so useful an ally since vengeance was an excuse for seizing Rome. Sardinia and Corsica had already declared their allegiance to the Empire, and Belisarius appeared before Catania with a force of which the cavalry comprised Huns, Moors, and several thousand nondescript allies, while the infantry was composed of a few thousand Isaurians. Palermo alone was defended by its Gothic garrison, but Belisarius sent his ships into the old harbour, which was in the midst of what is now the city, and actually hoisted his archers in boats to the mastheads of the vessels, whence they were enabled to shoot over the low ramparts. Palermo having been thus easily reduced, Sicily received Belisarius and the imperial power with open arms, Naples fell into his hands by the discovery of a disused aqueduct that led into the city, and the victorious general advanced upon Rome itself. The unapproachable Gibbon has told the story of what followed, and the genius of Dahn has adorned it; to those who come after such writers nothing remains but to quote or to condense the result of their labours. The Goths chose the brave Vitiges to be their leader, but he was unable to prevent Belisarius from entering Rome. Such armies as the Goths possessed were scattered throughout their dominions, whereas the imperial force was concentrated, well trained, and commanded by a general of genius. During the winter, however, the Gothic warriors assembled at Ravenna to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand men and marched thence through the open country upon Rome. With a thousand cavalry Belisarius rode out to reconnoitre the enemy’s position. Almost before he realized his danger, the general was surrounded, and a desperate fight ensued in which the leader’s life was only saved by his own extraordinary strength and skill. Instead of retiring at once he pursued the Goths to their camp, and it was not until a thousand of them lay dead upon the field that Belisarius was forced to retreat. The vast army of the Goths immediately besieged the city, but Rome was strong, and the walls of Aurelian made an almost impregnable defence, the mausoleum of Hadrian was for the first time converted into a fortress, chains were thrown across the river, and the engines of war were immediately got ready and planted in position. Before the arrival of Vitiges and the Goths, the city had received from Sicily such a quantity of grain as enabled it to defy the terrors of famine, and during the fruitless siege, which lasted a whole year, it does not appear that the inhabitants suffered any great hardship. The Goths brought fascines, scaling-ladders, and battering-rams against the walls, and wooden towers on wheels; and the Romans opposed these with all the military devices of antiquity, among which were enormous catapults, to provide missiles for which the priceless statues on Hadrian’s tomb were broken into fragments. Belisarius himself fought from the walls with a bow and arrows, and so completely was the first assault repulsed that the Goths determined to blockade the city, though it was now defended by scarcely four thousand men-at‑arms. Reënforcements arrived at last, which the Goths believed to be only the vanguard of a great army, and they treated for peace. Their forces were greatly diminished; for a vast number of their soldiers had succumbed to the malarious fever of the Campagna, while it is certain that the besiegers suffered more from lack of provisions than the besieged. The Goths at last gave up the siege in despair, burned their tents, and retired. Within a few months all that remained of the Gothic monarchy in Italy had taken shelter in Ravenna, and it seemed as if the Gothic cause were lost beyond all hope. But the Gothic kingdom in Italy was not the Gothic nation, and the handful of warlike foreigners who remained in the country had friends beyond the Alps both able and willing to help them. Ten thousand Burgundians took Milan and destroyed it, and the king of the Austrasians descended upon Italy at the head of a hundred thousand men, who, if they did not appear out of disinterested friendship for the Goths, were certainly not inspired by any friendly feeling for the emperor. They retired, however, after committing every species of cruelty, and Belisarius was again left to deal with Italy as he could. He forced or tricked Ravenna to a surrender, and the flower of the Goths took service in the imperial army. Belisarius now departed to Constantinople with a vast amount of spoil, and taking with him as a captive the brave but unfortunate Vitiges.
Nevertheless the end of the Goths had not yet come. Belisarius left behind him, as governors of the reconquered country and as chiefs of the imperial forces, a number of officers to whom he gave equal authority, and most of whom proceeded to abuse it. The mistake, or it would be more just to say the crime, of all governments seated in the East has been, and still is, excessive financial oppression. For Italy, Justinian appointed a number of officers who were called ‘logothetes,’ who acted as tax-gatherers and some of whom soon accumulated vast fortunes by a regular system of embezzlement. They did not confine their operations to the citizens and provincials, but extended them to thefts from the pay of the army, for they acted also as controllers. One of their favourite methods for making money in this way was to keep down a great number of veterans, who would be entitled to an increase of pay, by pretending that the deceased soldiers who had held the higher rank were still alive, and keeping their names on the rolls as if this were the case. Moreover, the provincials were called upon to render an account of all money which had passed through their hands under the Gothic administration, and in this way a great number of Italians who had been in sympathy with Belisarius were again turned against the emperor. At the time of Belisarius’s departure in 540 only about a thousand Gothic soldiers were left in Italy. Within a year their numbers had so increased that they defeated one of the governors near Venice; and though a quarrel for what was no longer anything more than the chieftainship of the Goths soon led to the murder of the chief himself, and though his immediate successor had no hold upon his people, they continued to regain their strength at such a rate that when they at last chose Totila to be their king,
they immediately became once more a match for the imperial oppressor. They seized Verona, and Totila pursued the Roman generals with a force of five thousand men. Before long Totila was able to cross the Apennines, and in a battle which ensued at a place once called Mugello, but of which the site is now forgotten, the Goths completely routed the Roman troops. Avoiding Rome, Totila crossed the Tiber and marched southwards upon Beneventum, which he destroyed lest it should harbour an imperial force; a little later he besieged Naples, which was defended only by a thousand men. Justinian now appointed a praetorian prefect of Italy, to whom he intrusted the supreme power over all his forces; but this officer lingered in Syracuse while another general failed to relieve Naples, and the squadron with which he arrived there was seized by the Goths. It was winter when the prefect sailed from Syracuse, and his fleet perished in a storm within sight of Naples, amid the cries and lamentations of the people who were assembled on the walls. The city now surrendered, and Totila dismantled the fortifications, though he treated the inhabitants with great kindness. All sense of discipline was lost in the imperial armies; the generals gave themselves up to a licentious existence in the cities which they still held, the soldiers of Justinian plundered the country, and the emperor was soon informed that it was no longer possible to hold Italy. Totila wrote a sort of open letter to the Roman Senate, boldly stating that it was his purpose to rescue Italy from her tyrants, and copies of the writing were posted in the Forum and in the chief streets for the people to read. Yet the Romans did not see fit to open their gates to him, and he therefore advanced with the greater part of his army to take it by siege. This happened in the year 544.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1429