Count Belisarius

Count Belisarius entered Rome on the Feast of the Three Kings; King Teudel did not return until the first day of February (of this new year of our Lord 547). In those twenty-five days a miracle had been accomplished. The whole fosse had been cleared of earth and nibble and planted with pointed stakes cut from the rafters of ruined houses; and the dressed stones of the rampart had been collected and laid back in place, though without mortar. The walls presented a bold face again to the enemy, and only fell short by a few feet, in the rebuilt places, of their original height. Only there were no gates, and for lack of skilled smiths and carpenters none could be improvised in that short time. Belisarius was therefore obliged to resort to the tactics of the ancient Spartans: he closed the gateways with human gates, which were his best spearmen drawn up in phalanx. We had all worked in the eight-hour shifts: soldiers, domestics, civilians, including women and children – not one of us was allowed to a void the corvie. I, a pampered eunuch, broke my well-trimmed nails on the rough stones and wearied my plump shoulders carrying baskets of earth. Belisarius was everywhere at once, like lightning in a storm.

I had been sent by Belisarius to the municipal lime kilns on the first days to sec whether any lime was available for making mortar, so that at least the angles of the walls might be strengthened; but I found only a few bags. Nailed to the wall in the President's office was a parchment document which, since it was no longer valid, I took down and kept as a memento of the siege. I copy it out here as a curiosity. It was the President's official appointment by Theoderich some years previously.

King Theoderich to the Distinguished Faustulus, President of the Lime Kilns, greeting!

It is a glorious labour indeed to serve the City of Rome! Who can doubt that lime, which is snow-white in hue and imponderable as an African sponge, is of mighty service in the construction of the most magnificent edifices? In proportion as it is itself debilitated and broken down by the fierce breath of fire, so does it lend force to massive masonry. It is a dissolvable stone, a petrifying downiness, a sandy pebble which (O wonder) burns the best when abundantly watered, without which stones do not stay nor grains of gravel commodiously cohere.

Therefore we set you, our industrious lord Faustulus, over the burning of lime and its decent distribution; that there may be plenty of this substance available both for public and private works, and that thereby people may be persuaded and encouraged confidently to build and rebuild our beloved City. Perform this well, and you shall be promoted to yet more honourable offices.

When I first read these elegant words I did not know whether to laugh or weep, they seemed so incongruous to the present desolation of the city and the barbarous Camp Latin of the soldiers who now formed its principal population. A philosophical train of thought was started in my mind, about the essentially evil nature of war, however just the cause; which I instantly smothered as monkish Christian and no more congruous to the situation than the document itself. But enough of this.

When King Teudel came within sight of the city he made an immediate attack upon us from the north-cast, sending his men in mass against the Nomentan, Tiburtine, and Praenestine Gates. I think that he expected the rebuilt walls to fall at the mere noise of his war-horns, as the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen to the war-horns of Jewish Joshua. I witnessed the cavalry-charge at the Tiburtine Gate, where I was once more at the same task that had me occupied ten years previously – serving a catapult with bolts while my mistress laid the sights. There were 10,000 Gothic lancers drawn up just out of range, and squadron by squadron they charged in column with levelled lances at the bridge that guarded the gate. It was like pouring wine into a bottle with an obstruction in the neck.