Count Belisarius

My mistress and I and Procopius the secretary, who came with us, set out from Terracina with an escort of twenty soldiers; yet we reached Naples with more than 500! Our way had taken us past the encampment of those cavalrymen who had deserted at the Mulvian Bridge long before. A number of other deserters had since joined them there. When my mistress offered them all a free pardon, they fell in behind her. And at Baiae we found a number of our wounded, who had been sent to take the waters there, now sufficicntly recovered to be able to fight again. But Naples – where the volcano Vesuvius was rumbling ominously, and scattering the ashes that induce such fertility in the vineyards that they fall upon – Naples had happy news for us. A fleet had just arrived from the East with 3,000 Isaurian infantry on board, and was anchored in the bay; and, besides this, 2,000 cavalry under Bloody John had landed at Otranto and were moving up towards us by rapid marches.

Soon our army of 5,500 men was ready to inarch to the relief of Rome. We had collected great quantities of grain and oil and sausages and wine to take with us. Bloody John had assembled a large number of farm-wagons, requisitioned with their teams in his passage through Calabria; we loaded the grain on these. John undertook to escort the convoy into Rome along the Appian Way – if the Goths attacked, the wagons would provide him with a useful barricade in the barbarian style. My mistress took command of the Isaurian fleet itself, storing all the other provisions in it. The weather being fine, we sailed to Ostia at once, agreeing to meet John there four days before Christmas Day.

At the mouth of the River Tiber is an island two miles long and two miles broad. On the northern side is the strongly fortified Port of Rome, connected with the city by a good road along which, in times of peace, barges are drawn up the current by teams of oxen. On the southern side is Ostia, which was once of greater importance than the Port of Rome, but has long lost its trade and declined to a mere open village. This is because the road from here to Rome is unsuitable as a towpath: it was found cheaper to tow goods up the river in barges than to haul them along the road in wagons. Besides, the harbour of Ostia had grown too shallow for convenient use, a great quantity of silt having been carried down the river and retained by the artificial island built at the harbour mouth. However, the Goths now held the Port of Rome, and Ostia was the only other port in the neighbourhood; so to Ostia we went, and found it undefended.

Meanwhile Belisarius, informed of the approach of the convoy, decided to deal the Goths a heavy blow to the northward, in order to distract their attention from what was happening on the river. One early morning, therefore, he ordered a thousand light cavalry under Trajan to ride out from the Pincian Gate against the nearest Gothic camp and shoot arrows over the palisade, inviting a skirmish. The Gothic cavalry soon gathered from the other camps. Trajan retired, according to orders, as soon as they charged, and was pursued back to the city walls. This was only the beginning of the battle. The Goths did not know that our men had been busy in the night removing the buttressed wall with which the Flaminian Gate had long been blocked from inside. From this unexpected quarter burst Belisarius himself at the head of his Household Regiment and, forcing his way through an intervening outpost, charged their confused column in the Hank. Then Trajan's men turned about, and the Goths were caught between the two forces. Very few escaped.

King Wittich was greatly disheartened by this battle and by the messages that now reached him from some of his spies in the city. For my mistress had caught a ring of them just before she left, and Theodosius, who took over this work in her absence, forced them by threats of torture to send out letters containing misleading news. According to these letters, the vanguard of an enormous army – at least 60,000 men – was advancing from Naples. Wittich's own forces had been reduced by battle and sickness to 50,000 men; two large convoys of grain that he needed urgently had been captured by the Tivoli garrison; desertions became frequent. He decided to sue for peace.