Count Belisarius

My mistress's son Photius happened to be out of the city at the time, though he had been staying with us ever since Belisarius's departure. He had incurred enormous debts by commercial speculation at Antioch before the city was destroyed, and from betting at the races and the bear-fighting. If he could not soon meet his obligations he would be degraded, as a bankrupt, from the Patrician Order; but he felt sure that his mother would come to the rescue to avoid a family scandal. Perhaps she would have done so, had Theodosius not told her a story that angered her exceedingly. He said that he had run away to Ephesus because Photius had threatened to kill both her and him unless he left the city at once: this was why he had been so reluctant to return.

A great to-do followed. My mistress, of course, refused to pay Photius's debts; and because, on hearing the story, she had asked for police protection for Theodosius and herself and the whole matter had therefore become public, she sent Belisarius a full report. She also threatened Photius with severe punishment at Theodora's hands.

Photius hurriedly crossed the Bosphorus and took a post-chaise to the Persian frontier, to throw himself on Belisarius's protection. Exactly what he told Belisarius I do not know, but the gist of it was that when Theodosius went to Ephesus the second time it was with the intention of returning to my mistress at Constantinople as soon as Belisarius was out of the way; that he had so returned, and that the two of them were now living in open sin together. He further complained that my mistress had stolen a large sum of his money from him and conferred it on her paramour; and that in addition to having brought him to the verge of bankruptcy, she was persecuting him in every possible way because he knew, too much about her.

Belisarius heard this horrible talc from Photius on the very day that he was holding his council of war at Sisauranum. To think that it influenced him in his decision to retire from Persian territory might be natural, were it not so manifest that he put his duty as a soldier before all personal considerations. At least his military associates should have been aware of this trait in him. Nevertheless, the suggestion went the rounds, given circulation by the very generals who had been most timorous about crossing the Tigris.

After the council of war, Belisarius had further talk with Photius, who swore by the Holy Ghost – the most terrible oath that a Christian can swear, and one which if broken consigns the soul, they say, to everlasting torment in Hell – that he spoke the truth. To support his testimony he had brought two of my fellow-domestics as witnesses, and a Senator who happened to be one of his principal creditors and was nearly bankrupt himself. These, with Photius, succeeded in convincing Belisarius. Perhaps his disappointment with the campaign and the shaky state of his health after a month of dysentery played a part in confusing his usually clear powers of judgement. Furthermore, it should be said in his defence that my mistress's relations with Theodosius ccrtainly did give a very mysterious impression. Even I, as I have already confessed earlier in this work, could never make up my mind as to their true character. At all events, Belisarius succumbed to an attack of jealous rage; all his officers were aghast at the change in him. For once in his life he forgot to be patient or gentle with his men, acting just like any other general, except that in his furies he refrained from blasphemy. Nor was his condition improved by a letter from my mistress, in which she wrote that Photius had escaped from Constantinople with his mouth full of slander and that she was following in haste to fill it with mud. She informed him that Theodosius, for fear of assassination by Photius's friends, was temporarily returning to Ephesus in her absence.

However, the affair of Cappadocian John had to be settled before she set out; otherwise the plot might turn against her. So she sent me to Cappadocian John to say that she was setting out for Daras at once, for the purpose of persuading Belisarius that a move for Justinian's overthrow and supersession could now be safely made. I arranged that

Cappadocian John should meet my mistress secretly on the following midnight in an orchard of Belisarius's estate at Rufinianae, a suburb of Constantinople across the Bosphorus: this would be her first stopping-place after leaving the city. She had no doubt but that he would fall into her trap – for had she not used the name of the Holy Ghost to Euphemia in asseverating the earnestness of Belisarius's intentions and her own?