Count Belisarius

On the next day I met the young man from Cyzicus under the statue of the Elephant. I drew him aside to a private place and said to him:' Here in this bag are five hundred pieces of gold. They will keep your family in decent plenty for the rest of their lives. But in order to cam them you must do a desperate thing.'

He asked: 'What can that be, benefactor?'

'You must kill the Bishop of Cyzicus. He is an enemy of my master's, whose gold this is.' 'Your words frighten me,' he cried.

'How, when you have so few months to live in any case, and when by this deed you will, at a stroke, secure both revenge for your injuries and provision for your destitute family?'

He asked:' Who is your master?'

I answered: 'I do not hesitate to tell you that. He is Cappadocian John, now a priest of the Cathedral at Cyzicus.'

I made him believe that I was in earnest about the gold; when I gave him ten gold pieces on account he undertook to commit the murder and went cheerfully away.

Soon the expected news came from Cyzicus. The young man had fulfilled his obligation. He had waited outside the Cathedral porch after Mass and, as the Bishop emerged, sunk a long dagger into him.

He was arrested and threatened with the rack unless he revealed the motives of this sacrilegious deed. As I had expected, he avoided mention of his own wrongs, telling the officers merely that he had been bribed to the deed by a gift often pieces of gold from Cappadocian John. Cappadocian John's enmity towards the Bishop was well known. He was arrested and tried before the judges of that place, found guilty as accessory to the murder, and sentenced to death. By my mistress's intercession with Theodora the young man's life was spared, and later I sent the remainder of the 500 gold pieces to him. How long he lived afterwards, I do not know.

Cappadocian John's life, too, was spared by Justinian, with the excuse that his guilt was insufficiently proved. Nevertheless, he was stripped of his robe and thrashed and made to confess to his past sins; though he would not own to murder, the rest of the talc was disgraceful enough to have hanged him a dozen times over. All his goods were forfeited to the Crown, and he was set naked on a trading-ship bound for Egypt (but for charity someone lent him a rough blanket); where-ever the ship touched he was made to go ashore and beg for bread and coppers on the quay. Thus vengeance was at last fully accomplished; for it was to John's nakedness and beggary that Theodora and my mistress had pledged themselves, not to his death by violence. The soul of the charioteer Damocles, my former master, had peace by the banks of Styx.

My mistress could now go before Theodora and beg her to receive Belisarius back into favour; saying that she herself proposed to forgive and live with him again. Her devotion to Theodora's cause was once more proved, and Belisarius would do nothing further to earn the displeasure of his Empress – of that she could be assured.

Theodora did not reject the plea. She sent an Imperial messenger to Belisarius with a letter which ran as follows: 'You are yourself well aware, best of men, how you have wronged your Sovereigns. But since I am greatly indebted to your wife for her services to mc, I have, at her request, expunged from the records all charges against you, and given you my gracious pardon. For the future, then, you need not fear as to your safety or your prosperity; but we shall judge your behaviour not only by your actions in regard to ourselves, but by your attitude to her.'

Thus Belisarius was restored to favour again, for even Justinian considered that his pride had now been sufficiently humbled; and one half of his treasure was given back to him, and all the land and houses. Justinian held back the remainder of the treasure, which amounted to one-quarter of a million gold pieces, saying that the possession of so much money did not become a subject when there was such urgent need of funds in the Imperial Treasury.

As a tribute to the close friendship existing between my mistress Antonina's family and her own, Theodora now decided that Joannina, my mistress's child by Belisarius, should be betrothed to her own nearest relative, Anastasius 'Longlegs', son of Sittas the general and her sister Anastasia. It was to this youth that she intended the Diadem to pass, after Justinian's death and her own: the marriage would greatly strengthen his position in the city. So this was done.