Count Belisarius

While this court was in progress, an official messenger of the Italian Civil Service – ghastly faced, exhausted, spattered with mud – was admitted to Belisarius's presence. He carried with him a letter from King Theudahad to Honorius, the City Governor of Rome. He had not broken the seals, but believed it to be a message of the utmost importance and secrecy, for he had been roused from sleep long after midnight and kept waiting for six hours while it was being penned. Being a loyal Roman who hated the heretical Goths, he had at great danger to himself passed disguised down the Appian Way and brought this letter to the hand of conquering Belisarius, Vice-Regent to His Sacred Majesty the Emperor Justinian, who was Vice-Regent to God Himself. As he passed through the town of Terracina, at dusk, he had been questioned by a Gothic officer; to avoid capture or delay, he had stabbed the Goth in the belly and left him dying on the road.

Belisarius broke the seals of the letter and soon began to laugh so heartily that we feared for his senses. At last, recovering his gravity, he read out to the assembled company, in sonorous tones, the following document:

King Theudahad to the Illustrious Honorius, Governor of the Eternal City Rome, Greeting!

We regret to learn from your report that the brazen elephants placed in the Sacred Way (so named after the many superstitions to which it was consecrated of old) are falling into decay.

It is to be much regretted that, whereas these animals live in the flesh for more than a thousand years, their brazen effigies should be so soon crumbling to ruin. Sec, therefore, that their gaping limbs be strengthened by iron hooks, and that their sagging bellies be underpinned by massive masonry.

The living elephant, when it falls prostrate on the ground, as often occurs when it is helping men to fell trees, cannot rise again unaided. This is because it has no joints in its feet; and accordingly in the torrid lauds frequented by these beasts you may often see numbers of them lying as if dead until men approach to help them to stand upright again. Thus this creature, so terrible by its size, is in point of fact not equally endowed by Nature with the tiny ant.

That the elephant, however, surpasses all other animals in intelligence is proved by the adoration which it renders to Him whom it understands to be the Almighty Ruler of all. Moreover, it pays to good princes a homage which it refuses to tyrants.

This beast uses its proboscis, that nosed hand which Nature has awarded it in compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting those presents which will be most profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, mindful of that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was the prelude to its captivity. At its master'] bidding it will exhale its breath – which is said to be a remedy for the human headache, especially if it sneezes.

When the elephant comes to water, it sucks up in its trunk a vast quantity, which at a word of command it will squirt forth like a shower. If anyone has treated it with contempt, it will pour forth such a stream of dirty water over him that one would believe a river had entered his house. For this beast has a wonderfully long memory, both of injury and of kindness. Its eyes are small but move solemnly. There is a sort of regal dignity in its appearance, and while it recognizes with pleasure all that is honourable, it evidently despises scurrilous jests. Its skin is furrowed by deep channels, like those of the victims of the foreign disease named after it, elephantiasis. It is on account of the impenetrability of its hide that the Persian Kings use the elephant in war.

It is most desirable that we should preserve the likeness of these creatures, and that our citizens should thus be familiarized with the sight of the denizens of foreign lands. Do not therefore permit them to perish, since it adds to the glory of Rome to collect all specimens of processes by which the art of workmen has imitated the productions of wealthy Nature in far parts of the world.

Farewell!

The messenger was crestfallen and angry that the letter was such a silly one; but Belisarius soothed him with compliments upon his courage and loyalty. He gave him a reward of five pounds of gold, which is 360 gold pieces, and enrolled him as a courier on his own staff. Belisarius said that the letter was of far greater value than appeared at first reading: it indicated clearly that King Theudahad was busying himself with scholarly trifles instead of attending to the defence of his kingdom.' Now I can march against Rome without anxiety,' he told us.