After the Persians had drawn back, foiled in their attempt to conquer
 Mesopotamia, and after the suppression of the "Nika" sedition had cowed
 the unruly populace of Constantinople, Justinian found himself at last
 free, and was able to take in hand his great scheme for the reconquest of
 the lost provinces of the empire.
 
 The enforced delay of six years between his accession and his first
 attempt to execute his great plan, was, as it happened, extremely
 favourable to the Emperor. In each of the two German kingdoms with which
 he had first to deal, the power had passed within those six years into the
 hands of a weak and incapable sovereign. In Africa, Hilderic, the king of
 the Vandals, had been dethroned by his cousin Gelimer, a warlike and
 ambitious, but very incapable, ruler. In Italy, Theodoric, the great king
 of the Ostrogoths, had died in A.D. 526, and his grandson and successor,
 Athalaric, in A.D. 533. After the death of the young Athalaric, the
 kingdom fell to his mother, Amalasuntha, and she, compelled by Gothic
 public opinion to take a husband to rule in her behalf, had unwisely
 wedded Theodahat, her nearest kinsman. He was cruel, scheming, and
 suspicious, and murdered his wife, within a year of her having brought him
 the kingdom of Italy as a dowry. Cowardly and avaricious as well as
 ungrateful, Theodahat possessed exactly those vices which were most suited
 to make him the scorn of his warlike subjects; he could count neither on
 their loyalty nor their respect in the event of a war.
 
 Both the Vandals in Africa and the Goths in Italy were at this time so
 weak as to invite an attack by an enterprising neighbour. They had, in
 fact, conquered larger realms than their limited numbers were really able
 to control. The original tribal hordes which had subdued Africa and Italy
 were composed of fifty or sixty thousand warriors, with their wives and
 children. Now such a body concentrated on one spot was powerful enough to
 bear down everything before it. But when the conquerors spread themselves
 abroad, they were but a sprinkling among the millions of provincials whom
 they had to govern. In all Italy there were probably but three
 cities--Ravenna, Verona, and Pavia--in which the Ostrogoths formed a large
 proportion of the population. A great army makes but a small nation, and
 the Goths and Vandals were too few to occupy such wide tracts as Italy and
 Africa. They formed merely a small aristocracy, governing by dint of the
 ascendency which their fathers had won over the minds of the unwarlike
 populations which they had subdued. The only chance for the survival of
 the Ostrogothic and Vandal monarchies lay in the possibility of their
 amalgamating with the Roman provincial population, as the Franks, under
 more favourable circumstances, did with the conquered inhabitants of Gaul.
 This was seen by Theodoric, the great conqueror of Italy; and he did his
 best to reconcile Goth and Roman, held the balance with strict justice
 between the two, and employed Romans as well as Goths in the government of
 the country. But one generation does little to assuage old hatreds such as
 that between the conquerors and the conquered in Italy. Theodoric was
 succeeded by a child, and then by a ruffian, and his work ended with him.
 Even he was unable to strike at the most fatal difference of all between
 his countrymen and the Italians. The Goths were Arians, having been
 converted to Christianity in the fourth century by missionaries who held
 the Arian heresy. Their subjects, on the other hand, were Orthodox
 Catholics, almost without exception. When religious hatred was added to
 race hatred, there was hardly any hope of welding together the two
 nationalities.
 
 Another source of weakness in the kingdoms of Africa and Italy must be
 noted. The Vandals of the third generation and the Goths of the second,
 after their settlement in the south, seem to have degenerated in courage
 and stamina. It may be that the climate was unfavourable to races reared
 in the Danube lands; it may be that the temptations of unlimited luxury
 offered by Roman civilization sufficed to demoralize them. A Gothic sage
 observed at the time that "the Goth, when rich, tends to become Roman in
 his habits; the Roman, when poor, Gothic in his." There was truth in this
 saying, and the result of the change was ominous for the permanence of the
 kingdom of Italy. If the masters softened and the subjects hardened, they
 would not preserve for ever their respective positions.
 
 The case of the kingdom of Africa was infinitely worse than that of the
 kingdom of Italy. The Vandals were less numerous than the Goths, in
 proportion to their subjects; they were not merely heretics, but fanatical
 and persecuting heretics, which the Goths were not. Moreover, they had
 never had at their head a great organizer and administrator like
 Theodoric, but only a succession of turbulent princes of the Viking type,
 fit for war and nothing else.
 
 Justinian declared war on King Gelimer the moment that he had made peace
 with Persia, using as his _casus belli_, not a definite re-assertion of
 the claim of the empire over Africa--for such language would have provoked
 the rulers of Italy and Spain to join the Vandals, but the fact that
 Gelimer had wrongfully deposed Hilderic, the Emperor's ally. In July, 533,
 Belisarius, who was now at the height of his favour for his successful
 suppression of the "Nika" rioters, sailed from the Bosphorus with an army
 of 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. He was accompanied, luckily for history,
 by his secretary, Procopius, a very capable writer, who has left a full
 account of his master's campaigns. Belisarius landed at Tripoli, at the
 extreme eastern limit of the Vandal power. The town was at once betrayed
 to him by its Roman inhabitants. From thence he advanced cautiously along
 the coast, meeting with no opposition; for the incapable Gelimer had been
 caught unprepared, and was still engaged in calling in his scattered
 warriors. It was not till he had approached within ten miles of Carthage
 that Belisarius was attacked by the Vandals. After a hard struggle he
 defeated them, and the city fell into his hands next clay. The provincials
 were delighted at the rout of their masters, and welcomed the imperial
 army with joy; there was neither riot nor pillage, and Carthage had not
 the aspect of a conquered town.
 
 Calling up his last reserves, Gelimer made one more attempt to try the
 fortunes of war. He advanced on Carthage, and was met by Belisarius at
 Tricameron, on the road to Bulla. Again the day went against him; his army
 broke up, his last fortresses threw open their gates, and there was an end
 of the Vandal kingdom. It had existed just 104 years, since Genseric
 entered Africa in A.D. 429.
 
 Gelimer took refuge for a time with the Moorish tribes who dwelt in the
 fastnesses of Mount Atlas. But ere long he resolved to surrender himself
 to Belisarius, whose humanity was as well known as his courage. He sent to
 Carthage to say that he was about to give himself up, and--so the story
 goes--asked but for three things: a harp, to which to chant a dirge he had
 written on the fate of himself and the Vandal race; a sponge, to wipe away
 his tears; and a loaf, a delicacy he had not tasted ever since he had been
 forced to partake of the unsavoury food of the Moors! Belisarius received
 Gelimer with kindness, and took him to Constantinople, along with the
 treasures of the palace of Carthage, which included many of the spoils of
 Rome captured by the Vandals eighty-six years before, when they sacked the
 imperial city, in 453. It is said that among these spoils were some of the
 golden vessels of the Temple at Jerusalem, which Titus had brought in
 triumph to Rome, and which Gaiseric had carried from Rome to Carthage.
 
                               
 
      Cavalry Scouts. (_From a Byzantine MS._) _Reproduced from "L'Art
           Byzantin."  Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._
 
 
 The triumphal entry of Belisarius into Constantinople with his captives
 and his spoils, encouraged Justinian to order instant preparations for an
 attack on the second German kingdom, on his western frontier. He declared
 war on the wretched King Theodahat in the summer of A.D. 435, using as his
 pretext the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, whom, as we have already said,
 her ungrateful spouse had first imprisoned and then strangled within a
 year of their marriage.
 
 The king of the Goths, whether he was conscience-stricken or merely
 cowardly, showed the greatest terror at the declaration of war. He even
 wrote to Constantinople offering to resign his crown, if the Emperor would
 guarantee his life and his private property. Meanwhile he consulted
 soothsayers and magicians about his prospects, for he was as superstitious
 as he was incompetent. Procopius tells us a strange tale of the doings of
 a Jewish magician of note, to whom Theodahat applied. He took thirty
 pigs--to represent unclean Gentiles, we must suppose--and penned them in
 three styes, ten in each. The one part he called "Goths," the second
 "Italians," and the third "Imperialists." He left the beasts without food
 or water for ten days, and bade the king visit them at the end of that
 time, and take augury from their condition. When Theodahat looked in he
 found all but two of the "Goth" pigs dead, and half of the "Italians," but
 the "Imperialists," though gaunt and wasted, were all, or almost all,
 alive. This portent the Jew expounded as meaning that at the end of the
 approaching war the Gothic race would be exterminated and their Italian
 subjects terribly thinned, while the Imperial troops would conquer, though
 with toil and difficult.
 
 While Theodahat was busying himself with portents, actual war had broken
 out on the Illyrian frontier between the Goths and the governor of
 Dalmatia. There was no use in making further offers to Justinian, and the
 king of Italy had to face the situation as best he could.
 
 In the summer of 535, Belisarius landed in Sicily, with an even smaller
 army than had been given him to conquer Africa--only 3,000 Roman troops,
 all Isaurians, and 4,500 barbarian auxiliaries of different sorts.
 Belisarius' first campaign was as fortunate as had been that which he had
 waged against Gelimer. All the Sicilian towns threw open their gates
 except Palermo, where there was a considerable Gothic garrison, and
 Palermo fell after a short siege. In six months the whole island was in
 the hands of Belisarius.
 
 Theodahat seemed incapable of defending himself; he fell into a condition
 of abject helplessness, which so provoked his warlike subjects, that when
 the news came that Belisarius had crossed over into Italy and taken
 Rhegium, they rose and slew him. In his stead the army of the Goths
 elected as their king Witiges, a middle-aged warrior, well known for
 personal courage and integrity, but quite incompetent to face the
 impending storm.
 
 After the fall of Rhegium, Belisarius marched rapidly on Naples, meeting
 no opposition; for the Goths were very thinly scattered through Southern
 Italy, and had not even enough men to garrison the Lucanian and Calabrian
 fortresses. Naples was taken by surprise, the Imperialists finding their
 way within the walls by crawling up a disused aqueduct. After this
 important conquest, Belisarius made for Rome, though his forces were
 reduced to a mere handful by the necessity of leaving garrisons in his
 late conquests. King Witiges made no effort to obstruct his approach. He
 had received news that the Franks were threatening an evasion of Northern
 Italy, and went north to oppose an imaginary danger in the Alps, when he
 should have been defending the line of the Tiber. Having staved off the
 danger of a Frankish war by ceding Provence to King Theuderic, Witiges
 turned back, only to learn that Rome was now in the hands of the enemy.
 The troops of Leudaris, the Gothic general, who had been left with 4,000
 men to defend the city, had been struck with panic at the approach of
 Belisarius, and were cowardly and idiotic enough to evacuate it without
 striking a blow. Five thousand men had sufficed to seize the ancient
 capital of the world! [December, 536.]
 
 Next spring King Witiges came down with the main army of the Goths--more
 than 100,000 strong--and laid siege to Rome. The defence of the town by
 Belisarius and his very inadequate garrison forms the most interesting
 episode in the Italian war. For more than a year the Ostrogoths lay before
 its walls, essaying every device to force an entry. They tried open storm;
 they endeavoured to bribe traitors within the city; they strove to creep
 along the bed of a disused aqueduct, as Belisarius had done a year before
 at Naples. All was in vain, though the besiegers outnumbered the garrison
 twenty-fold, and exposed their lives with the same recklessness that their
 ancestors had shown in the invasion of the empire a hundred years back.
 The scene best remembered in the siege was the simultaneous assault on
 five points in the wall, on the 21st of March, 537. Three of the attacks
 were beaten back with ease; but near the Praenestine Gate, at the
 south-east of the city, one storming party actually forced its way within
 the walls, and had to be beaten out by sheer hard fighting; and at the
 mausoleum of Hadrian, on the north-west, another spirited combat took
 place. Hadrian's tomb--a great quadrangular structure of white marble, 300
 feet square and 85 feet high--was surmounted by one of the most magnificent
 collections of statuary in ancient Rome, including four great equestrian
 statues of emperors at its corners. The Goths, with their ladders, swarmed
 at the foot of the tomb in such numbers, that the arrows and darts of the
 defenders were insufficient to beat them back. Then, as a last resource,
 the Imperialists tore down the scores of statues which adorned the
 mausoleum, and crushed the mass of assailants beneath a rain of marble
 fragments. Two famous antiques, that form the pride of modern
 galleries--the "Dancing Faun" at Florence, and the "Barberini Faun" at
 Munich--were found, a thousand years later, buried in the ditch of the tomb
 of Hadrian, and must have been among the missiles employed against the
 Goths. The rough usage which they then received proved the means of
 preserving them for the admiration of the modern world.
 
 A year and nine days after he had formed the siege of Rome, the unlucky
 Witiges had to abandon it. His army, reduced by sword and famine, had
 given up all hope of success, and news had just arrived that the
 Imperialists had launched a new army against Ravenna, the Gothic capital.
 Belisarius, indeed, had just received a reinforcement of 6,000 or 7,000
 men, and had wisely sent a considerable force, under an officer named
 John, to fall on the Adriatic coast.
 
 The scene of the war was now transported further to the north; but its
 character still remained the same. The Romans gained territory, the Goths
 lost it. Firmly fixed at Ancona and Rimini and Osimo, Belisarius gradually
 forced his way nearer to Ravenna, and, in A.D. 540 laid siege to it.
 Witiges, blockaded by Belisarius in his capital, made no such skilful
 defence as did his rival at Rome three years before. To add to his
 troubles, the Franks came down into Northern Italy, and threatened to
 conquer the valley of the Po, the last Gothic stronghold. Witiges then
 made proposals for submission; but Belisarius refused to grant any terms
 other than unconditional surrender, though his master Justinian was ready
 to acknowledge Witiges as vassal-king in Trans-Padane Italy. Famine drove
 Ravenna to open its gates, and the Goths, enraged at their imbecile king,
 and struck with admiration for the courage and generosity of Belisarius,
 offered to make their conqueror Emperor of the West. The loyal general
 refused; but bade the Goths disperse each to his home, and dwell peaceably
 for the future as subjects of the empire. [May, 540 A.D.] He himself,
 taking the great Gothic treasure-hoard from the palace of Theodoric, and
 the captive Witiges, sailed for Constantinople, and laid his trophies at
 his master's feet.
 
 Italy now seemed even as Africa; only Pavia and Verona were still held by
 Gothic garrisons, and when he sailed home, Belisarius deemed his work so
 nearly done, that his lieutenants would suffice to crush out the last
 embers of the strife. He himself was required in the East, for a new
 Persian war with Chosroesroes, son of Kobad, was on the eve of breaking
 out. But things were not destined to end so. At the last moment the Goths
 found a king and a hero to rescue them, and the conquest of Italy was
 destined to be deferred for twelve years more. Two ephemeral rulers
 reigned for a few months at Pavia, and came to bloody ends; but their
 successor was Baduila, the noblest character of the sixth century--"the
 first knight of the Middle Ages," as he has been called. When the generals
 of Justinian marched against him, to finish the war by the capture of
 Verona and Pavia, he won over them the first victory that the Goths had
 obtained since their enemies landed in Italy. This was followed by two
 more successes; the scattered armies of Witiges rallied round the banner
 of the new king, and at once the cities of Central and Southern Italy
 began to fall back into Gothic hands, with the same rapidity with which
 they had yielded to Belisarius. The fact was, that the war had been a
 cruel strain on the Italians, and that the imperial governors, and still
 more their fiscal agents, or "logothetes," had become unbearably
 oppressive. Italy had lived through the fit of enthusiasm with which it
 had received the armies of Justinian, and was now regretting the days of
 Theodoric as a long-lost golden age. Most of its cities were soon in
 Baduila's hands; the Imperialists retained only the districts round Rome,
 Naples, Otranto, and Ravenna. Of Naples they were soon deprived. [B.C.
 543.] Baduila invested it, and ere long constrained it to surrender. He
 treated the inhabitants with a kindness and consideration which no Roman
 general, except Belisarius, had ever displayed. A speech which he
 delivered to his generals soon after this success deserves a record, as
 showing the character of the man. A Gothic warrior had been convicted of
 violating the daughter of a Roman. Baduila condemned him to death. His
 officers came round him to plead for the soldier's life. He answered them
 that they must choose that day whether they preferred to save one man's
 life or the life of the Gothic race. At the beginning of the war, as they
 knew well, the Goths had brave soldiers, famous generals, countless
 treasure, horses, weapons, and all the forts of Italy. And yet under
 Theodahat--a man who loved gold better than justice--they had so angered God
 by their unrighteous lives, that all the troubles of the last ten years
 had come upon them. Now God seemed to have avenged Himself on them enough.
 He had begun a new course with them, and they must begin a new course with
 Him, and justice was the only path. As for the present criminal being a
 valiant hero, let them know that the unjust man and the ravisher was never
 brave in fight; but that, according to a man's life, such was his luck in
 battle.
 
 Such was the justice of Baduila; and it seemed as if his dream was about
 to come true, and that the regenerate Goths would win back all that they
 had lost. Ere long he was at the gates of Rome, prepared to essay, with
 15,000 men, what Witiges had failed to do with 100,000. Lest all his
 Italian conquests should be lost, Justinian was obliged to send back
 Belisarius, for no one else could hold back the Goths. But Belisarius was
 ill-supplied with men; he had fallen into disfavour at Court, and the
 imperial ministers stinted him of troops and money. Unable to relieve
 Rome, he had to wait at Portus, by the mouth of the Tiber, watching for a
 chance to enter the city. That chance he never got. The famine-stricken
 Romans, angry with the cruel and avaricious Bessas, who commanded the
 garrison, began to long for the victory of their enemy; and one night some
 traitors opened the Asinarian Gate, and let in Baduila and his Goths. The
 King thought that his troubles were over; he assembled his chiefs, and
 bade them observe how, in the time of Witiges, 7,000 Greeks had conquered,
 and robbed of kingdom and liberty, 100,000 well-armed Goths. But now that
 they were few, poor, and wretched, the Goths had conquered more than
 20,000 of the enemy. And why? Because of old they looked to anything
 rather than justice: they had sinned against each other and the Romans.
 Therefore they must choose henceforth, and be just men and have God with
 them, or unjust and have God against them.
 
 Baduila had determined to do that which no general since Hannibal had
 contemplated: he would destroy Rome, and with it all the traditions of the
 world-empire of the ancient city--to him they seemed but snares, tending to
 corrupt the mind of the Goths. The people he sent away unharmed--they were
 but a few thousand left after the horrors of the famine during the siege.
 But he broke down the walls, and dismantled the palaces and arsenals. For
 a few weeks Rome was a deserted city, given up to the wolf and the owl
 [A.D. 550].
 
 For eleven unquiet years, Baduila, the brave and just, ruled Italy,
 holding his own against Belisarius, till the great general was called home
 by some wretched court intrigue. But presently Justinian gathered another
 army, more numerous than any that Belisarius had led, and sent it to
 Italy, under the command of the eunuch Narses. It was a strange choice
 that made the chamberlain into a general; but it succeeded. Narses marched
 round the head of the Adriatic, and invaded Italy from the north. Baduila
 went forth to meet him at Tagina, in the Apennines. For a long day the
 Ostrogothic knights rode again and again into the Imperialist ranks; but
 all their furious charges failed. At evening they reeled back broken, and
 their king received a mortal wound in the flight [A.D. 553].
 
 With the death of Baduila, it was all up with the Goths; their hero's
 knightly courage and kingly righteousness had not sufficed to save them
 from the same doom which had overtaken the Vandals. The broken army made
 one last stand in Campania, under a chief named Teia; but he was slain in
 battle at Nuceria, and then the Goths surrendered. They told Narses that
 the hand of God was against them; they would quit Italy, and go back to
 dwell in the north, in the land of their fathers. So the poor remnant of
 the conquering Ostrogoths marched off, crossed the Po and the Alps, and
 passed away into oblivion in the northern darkness. The scheme of
 Justinian was complete. Italy was his; but an Italy so wasted and
 depopulated, that the traces of the ancient Roman rule had almost
 vanished. "The land," says a contemporary chronicler, "was reduced to
 primeval solitude"--war and famine had swept it bare.
 
                               
 
                           Details Of St. Sophia.
 
 
 It is strange to find that the Emperor was not tired out by waging this
 desperate war with the Goths; the moment it ended he began to essay
 another western conquest. There was civil war in Spain, and, taking
 advantage of it, Liberius, governor of Africa, landed in Andalusia, and
 rapidly took the great towns of the south of the peninsula--Cordova,
 Cartagena, Malaga, and Cadiz. The factious Visigoths then dropped their
 strife, united in arms under King Athangild, and checked the further
 progress of the imperial arms. But a long slip of the lost territory was
 not recovered by them. Justinian and his successors, down to A.D. 623,
 reigned over the greater part of the sea-coast of Southern Spain.