Count Belisarius

Belisarius replied smiling: 'If it were given me now, so that I could march on to capture Rome before winter sets in, it would be worth a million in gold. If the gift were delayed until the spring I should have small use for it.'

The Isaurian said: 'One hundred gold pieces for every man in my company and five hundred each for my officers and one thousand for myself and two thousand for the private soldier who has found the weak spot that you told us to find for you!'

‘I would double that,' cried Belisarius, starting up. 'But I pay only when the keys of the city are in my hand.'

'Agreed,' said the Isaurian. Then he brought forward the private soldier.

This man, a rough, unkempt fellow, told Belisarius his story. It had occurred to him to crawl along the dry conduit of the aqueduct, from the point where it had been cut, a mile or more away, to where it entered the city. He wished to sec whether the end was perhaps closed by a grating or some other obstacle. It was an easy journey – he was able to walk nearly upright, and there were frequent ventilation holes above him in the brick vaulting. At last he reached a place where the tunnel narrowed to a hole in a rock, large enough to admit a boy, though impassable by a soldier in full armour. This rock was not granite, but some soft, volcanic rock which could easily be cut away with a pickaxe. He could see, a few yards away on the other side, light coming from above as if the aqueduct was unroofed at that point, and he could also make out a number of wind-fallen olives, a ragged headkerchief, and some broken crockery. He had then returned and next day walked along the road beside the aqueduct, looking for signs of an olive-tree overhanging the roof at any point, but could see none. He therefore concluded that the rock was inside the city somewhere.

Belisarius took twenty Isaurians of this man's company into the secret, but nobody else. He gave them muffled hammers and chisels and baskets and set them at enlarging the hole, which he first inspected himself. They must work as silently as possible. At midday they reported that the hole was large enough to admit the passage of a man in full armour, and that beyond it the aqueduct tunnel was three times the height of a man, and that a part of the brick roof had fallen in at this spot. The roots of an olive-tree had broken through the lower course of brick-work, deriving sustenance in normal times from the water of the aqueduct. The tree itself was outside the aqueduct, but one of its branches was spread across the hole in the roof. They brought the ragged headkerchief back with them, and some olives. Belisarius examined these things and said: 'The cotton kerchief has been newly washed and blown from where it was put to dry; and these are cultivated olives, not wild ones. Be sure that the tree is growing in some old woman's backyard.'

Then he sent another warning to the Neapolitan City Fathers: 'If you do not surrender your city tonight you will have lost it tomorrow, for I know how to take it. I swear this on my honour, which I am not accustomed to pledge idly. If you disbelieve me I shall be offended. When we storm the walls, I cannot promise that there will be no violence'

But they did not believe him.

That night he sent 600 mail-clad men down the aqueduct, though at first they were most unwilling to go, saying that they were soldiers, not sewer-rats. My mistress's son Photius asked to have the honour of leading them, but Belisarius would not entrust so difficult an undertaking to a mere boy; though he allowed him to bring up the rear and be responsible for reporting progress. It occurred to Belisarius that 600 men in armour, stumbling however carefully down the dark aqueduct, would surely make a great noise; so he decided to drown the noise by a diversion.

He had with him an old acquaintance – Bessas, the Thracian Goth, who had been present at the banquet of Modessus. He was a veteran of fifty now, but still strong and full of fight. Belisarius desired this Bessas to go out with some of his fellow-Goths to a point near the entrance of the aqueduct and there engage the enemy sentries in talk in their own language, as if trying to bribe them to surrender the city. Bessas's men were to make as much clatter as possible, scuffling among the stones in the dark and indulging in loud horse-play as if drunken.

The ruse succeeded. Insults, shouts, cheers, jokes were exchanged, Gothic ballads were sung, Bessas loudly proclaimed his loyalty to the Emperor Justinian and the Gothic sentries theirs to King Theudahad; and the 600 men passed through the aqueduct without being overheard. They carried lanterns with them, to give them courage.