Count Belisarius

They chose the Salarian Gate as the main point of their attack, and Belisarius immediately concentrated on the neighbouring towers all the defensive artillery within reach. This consisted of scorpions, which are small stone-throwing machines worked by the tight twisting and sudden release of a hemp rope; and wild asses, a larger sort of scorpion; and catapults, which are mechanical bows, worked on the same principle as these other machines, from the grooves of which thick bolts with wooden feathers are shot with force sufficient to outrange any ordinary bow. We had a few wolves also, which are machines for hooking the head of a battering-ram as it strikes and hauling it sideways, with a pulley, so that the tower overturns.

Belisarius called calmly to his armour-bearer, Chorsomantis, a Massagetic Hun, and said: 'Fetch me my hunting-bow and two deer-arrows, Chorsomantis.' These were his weapons of precision. A Gothic nobleman, a cousin as it proved to King Wittich, was superintending the advance of the enemy siege-engines. He was armed in gilded armour and wore a tall purple plume. But while he was still out of bow-shot, as he thought, death overtook him: Belisarius, with careful aim, struck him in the throat with a deer-arrow, so that he toppled dead from his horse. The range was not less than 200 paces. Unaware that this was Belisarius's customary accuracy of aim, the Goths were appalled by so evil an omen. A taunting cheer went up from the walls, and the Goths paused for a while while the dead man was carried away. Another nobleman, his brother, then took command; but as he signalled for the cavalcade to advance, Belisarius aimed again and proved, to anyone who might doubt it, that the first shot had not been a matter of mere luck. This time the arrow struck the Goth in the mouth, as he was shouting something, and the barbed head stood out through the back of his neck; he, too, fell dead. I began dancing for joy and cried: 'Oh, well done, my lord I Give us leave to shoot now!' For I had a bow in my hand, as had all my fcllow-domestics.

He said:' Wait until the trumpet blows the signal. Then let everyone about me aim at the oxen.'

The trumpet sounded, we all bent our bows and let fly. More than a thousand Goths fell, and all the oxen, poor beasts. A fearful cry went up. Then, I remember, I aimed at a tall infantryman as he ran forward with a bundle of faggots; but 1 missed my mark, and the arrow struck a horse in the rump, which reared up and threw his rider. I aimed at the horseman as he lay senseless; after three shots my arrow kissed his shoulder and glanced off. Since he continued to lie there as if dead, I looked for other targets, but saw none; for the Goths had retreated in consternation and taken up positions out of arrow range.

A large Gothic force of all arms then moved off out of sight. Though we did not know it, they were ordered to attack the Wild Beast Pen near the Praenestine Gate, two miles away to the right of us. But since 40,000 men remained as a threat to the Salarian Gate, Belisarius could not spare any troops from here as reinforcements elsewhere.

In the meanwhile there was great danger at the Aelian Gate across the river, where Constantine was in command. Only a stone's throw from the walls, just across the Aelian Bridge which leads to St Peter's Cathedral, stands the marble mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. This is a square building surmounted by a cylindrical drum around which runs a covered colonnade; the drum is capped by a rounded dome. In the construction of this wonderful edifice, no mortar at all was used, but only white marble stones, jointed together. Along the colonnade at intervals stand equestrian statues, also in white marble; they represent, I believe, the generals who served under Hadrian in his wars. The mausoleum was used as an outwork of the fortifications, the bridge being an extension of the City wall. It was here that Constantine's 300 men stood on guard, with catapults and sharp-shooting archers and a small detachment of army-farriers provided with heavy hammers.

The Gothic commander of the force ordered to assault this place was a man of discretion. Realizing that the part of the main wall which was protected by the river on cither side of the Aelian Bridge would be weakly held, he kept a number of boats ready for an attack at a favourable point half a mile away upstream. This was a mud-flat under the walls sufficiently firm and wide to plant scaling-ladders upon. Here it was his plan to send an escalade party across in the boats, as soon as the attack against the mausoleum itself had been launched.