Count Belisarius

I have now made it clear why Belisarius was ordered to take an army to the invasion of Sicily, which lay at the extremity of King Theudahad's dominions, and the population of which, moreover, was highly discontented. Sicily, the granary of Rome, had for some time been suffering from poor harvests due to bad weather and an exhaustion of the soil, so that the fanners did not find it easy to pay the tithe-tax that the Goths levied on them. In the autumn of the year of his Consulship, Belisarius set sail for this island. Antonina came with him (and I with her), and her boy Photius, and Theodosius too. But the forces under his command amounted only to 12,000, not 20,000. At the last moment Justinian detached 8,000 and sent them to Mundus (the Commander of the armies in Illyria who had assisted Belisarius in quelling the Victory Riots) with orders that he should lead them against the Goths in Dalmatia, as a diversion. Dalmatia, with the whole of the north-eastern coast of the Adriatic sea, was under Gothic rule at this time. Justinian also planned to injure the Goths in yet another quarter. He wrote to the Franks, who since the baptism of King Clovis had been Orthodox Christians, that they would now have a chance to invade the Gothic territories between the Alps and the Rhone; and that this would be a holy war against Arian heretics, blessed by their spiritual father, the Pope.

The weather was favourable and the voyage pleasant. We landed at Catania early in the month of December. The people there, remembering how honestly we had treated them on our former visit, gave us a welcome. They complained greatly of the Goths, and asked us whether we could not stay a little longer with them this time; for nobody but Belisarius knew that we were not continuing our voyage to Carthage, as had been announced. At last Belisarius openly declared his intentions, announcing himself as their protector and sending messengers to all the principal cities with invitations to submission. Within a few days the whole of Sicily had surrendered to him without a blow, with the single exception of Palermo. Here the Gothic forces of the island concentrated, taking refuge behind the fine fortifications. But even Palermo yielded with unexpected suddenness. Belisarius sailed into the harbour, which was not protected by a boom, and found that the masts of most of his vessels were considerably higher than the adjacent fortifications. What was easier than to hoist up boats by a pulley between mainmast and foremast and fill them with trained archers? (Yet so simple a plan would not perhaps have occurred to an ordinary general.) These archers could shoot straight along the streets of the city and prevent anyone from showing his head out of a doorway, unless in a side-street. Belisarius threatened, unless Palermo yielded speedily, to shoot fire-arrows and bum the houses down. So the townsfolk compelled the Goths to surrender.

You may doubt whether so short a paragraph as the last can decently cover the story of how a fertile island, full of splendid cities and no less than 70,000 square miles in extent, was recaptured from the barbarians by our Imperial troops. Yet I cannot recall any relevant circumstance that I have omitted which would swell the single paragraph to two. It was the name of Belisarius that captured Sicily rather than his army – assisted by the short-sighted zeal of the Orthodox Christians, who expected to receive better treatment at the hands of Justinian, their co-religionist, than from the Arian king. On the last day of the year, then, when Belisarius's term of office as Consul expired, he marched unopposed into the capital city of Syracuse, and there laid down his rods and axe, as the expression was. As he entered, he distributed largesse of gold and silver to the citizens from the personal treasure captured from the Goths who had opposed him at Palermo; and was hailed as their deliverer.