Count Belisarius

I was at our suite in the Palace as usual, in attendance on my mistress Antonina, and I must confess that the whole household was terrified, in spite of Belisarius's calm, not to say scornful, demeanour. Imperial orders came that none of us should leave the Palace grounds under any pretext. Vigorous action of some sort should clearly have been taken long ago, but Theodora could do nothing with Justinian, who was praying in his private chapel. Cappadocian Jolm had disappeared, and the Guards, in the unburned part of the Brazen House, were consequently without orders. However, the rabble would certainly have slaughtered them if they had attempted to intervene. Belisarius was still nominally Commander of the Armies in the East, but had no authority in the City. When my mistress urged him to offer Justinian his services and those of his Household cuirassiers – they were quartered not far away – he refused: as a servant of the Emperor he must not speak out of turn, but wait for orders. No orders came. Justinian was as obstinate as a mule; praying fervently and assuring Theodora that Heaven would provide.

At last, on the fifteenth day of January, Justinian moved to end the disorders. His method was to appeal to the Christian scruples of his subjects. He sent out a deputation of bishops and priests with banners and a parcel of sacred relics – a small portion of the True Cross, and the authentic horn of the Patriarch Abraham's ram, which will be sounded upon Judgement Day, and the serpent-shaped rod of Moses with which miracles were once done in Egypt and Sinai – and, besides these, the bones of Zoc the virgin martyr and of some other martyrs of lesser importance. But no miracle resulted, and the clergy were forced to retreat to the Daphne Palace, pursued by a smart shower of stones and bricks. Justinian was watching from a balcony and called out: ' Oh, protect them, quickly! Let someone go out at once and protect them!' Belisarius went out, glad of an opportunity for action, with a party of forty Thracian-Gothic soldiers who were on permanent duty in the Daphne colonnades; and drove the rioters back, killing a number of them, so that the clergy returned with the relics undamaged.

This action of Belisarius's enraged the factions, which were now altogcdicr out of control. On the next day Justinian sent out a herald to the Square of Augustus to announce that Cappadocian John had resigned his command and that the City Governor and Tribonian, the Lord Chief Justice, had also retired from office. (Tribonian had been so busy with his work of re-codifying the laws that he had not had sufficient time to supervise the administration of justice.) But this concession was no longer enough to restore peace, especially as the truce between the factionists had been broken in quarrels over the division of plunder, and the Green cause had revived with unexpected strength. By the seventeenth of January there had been sacked and burned: the churches of St Sophia and St Irene, and the Royal Porch, which was a famous library containing among other curiosities the complete works of Homer written upon the intestines of a serpent forty yards in length, and the Baths of Zeuxippus lying between the Brazen House and the Hippodrome, and the silversmiths' colonnades, and the High Street as far as the Square of Constantine. A vast amount of treasure was thus destroyed. We domestics watched the fires from an upper window and did not dare to go to bed at night for fear of being burned to death if we did.