Count Belisarius

The next day, the sixth of December, was the feast of Bishop Nicholas, the patron saint of children. St Nicholas was much cultivated by Justinian, who built a church in his honour at Constantinople. About him more absurd miracles are related, I verily believe, than about any other saint in the Calendar: no sooner was he born than he stood up and lisped thanks to Almighty God for the gift of existence, and as an infant he rigidly observed the canonical fasts of Wednesdays and Fridays, by abstaining on those days from sucking the breasts of his mother Joanna – to her great discomfort but greater wonder. For some unexplained reason, St Nicholas has become the heir of the Sea-God Poseidon, whose temples have nearly all been rededicated to him; as the heiress to the Goddess Venus is the Virgin Mary, and the heir to the Dog Cerberus is the Apostle Peter (Jesus Himself being heir to Orpheus, who timed savage things with his charming melodies). Every saint acknowledged by the Church has his peculiar character and virtue, Nicholas has conic to be an emblem of child-like simplicity. On this occasion the Thracian soldiers, being of the Orthodox faith, regarded the day as of particularly good omen, since it was recorded of Nicholas that at the famous Council of Nicaca he was carried away by his hot religious feelings and dealt his fellow-cleric Arius, the founder of the Arian heresy (which the Goths profess), a tremendous box on the ear.

Early in the morning of St Nicholas's Day, then, Belisarius was ready to begin his voyage up the river with oars and sails. Two thousand of his Household Troops, those for whom he had no horses, kept pace on cither side of the stream, and his remaining squadron of cavalry acted as a screen. My mistress embraced him and wished him godspeed and victory, and he departed. We who remained waited anxiously on the battlements.

About noon a mounted messenger came back with glorious news. Belisarius's fleet had first encountered a chain net fixed across the river a little distance below the boom – the very same chain that he had himself used for protecting the water-mills during his defence of the city – but the infantry, with a volley of arrows and a charge, had scattered the guards posted at cither end; they unhooked the obstruction and proceeded. The tall, floating tower, with the long-boat suspended from the top of it, had been pulled up the tow-path by a number of pack animals. Then, while the archers in the galleys and the infantry on the banks hotly engaged the Goths in the twin land-towers, this floating tower was warped up into position against the land-tower on the tow-path. Now Belisarius's intentions were disclosed. The longboat was lowered from the davits with a rush: as it fell among the crowded Goths in the tower, a dozen flaming torches were thrown into it. The boat had been filled with pitch and oil and resin and other combustible materials, so that in less than a minute the whole Gothic tower was ablaze. A squadron of Goths came charging down the tow-path, but hesitated at the sight of the burning tower and at the sound of men screaming from the fiery mass. Our infantry drove them back in disorder. Belisarius began destroying the boom, and was ready to continue his advance as soon as Bessas should make his sortie. Two hundred Goths had been burned alive in the tower. The garrison of the other tower had fled.

When Isaac the Armenian heard this news he shouted for joy, as we all did at the Port. He decided to win his share of glory by an attack on a stockaded Gothic camp which lay at half a mile's distance, guarding Ostia. Gathering a hundred horsemen together, he spurred out from the fortress into the delta of the river and cried to my mistress Antonina as he went: 'The fortress is safe under your guardianship, gracious lady; soon I shall return with gifts.'

Isaac never returned. He carried the camp at his first charge, scattered the garrison, and mortally wounded their commander. But the Goths realized that this was not the vanguard of a large army, it was merely a madman with a hundred adventurers behind him. They came rushing back to find Isaac's men busily engaged in plundering the huts. Isaac was struck down, and not ten of his hundred men won safely back to the fortifications. One man, finding his return barred, escaped by galloping away up to the head of the delta. He shouted across the stream to an outpost which Belisarius had left there: 'O comrades, Isaac is killed, and I alone of his men am left; and I am wounded in the side. Fetch mc across the river, I beg.' With that he fainted.