Count Belisarius

Thus ended the so-called Victory Riots, and with them, for a time at least, the feud between Greens and Blues. The Greens were utterly broken, and Justinian stabilized this happy state of affairs by putting an end by edict to all chariot-racing in the City. However, it was revived again a few years later; so the Green faction was bound to be revived too. The Blues could not, after all, compete against themselves. In a few years' time the Greens had become as rowdy as ever, gathering together under the protection of their Colour all elements in the City hostile to the Emperor and to the Orthodox Faith; and once more there were murder-gangs abroad at dusk.

Belisarius was always neutral – a White, as in his schooldays; but my mistress Antonina was a Blue, because of the wrong done to her father, and because of the club-house, and because of Theodora, who was her sworn friend.

CHAPTER 10

THE EXPEDITION AGAINST CARTHAGE

Justinian now planned'a great expedition against the Vandals, a much-travelled people whose capital city was Carthage in North Africa; and, at Theodora's insistence, he entrusted the sole command to Belisarius.

Who the Vandals were and what they were doing in Africa can be told shortly. They were Germans of sorts, and first reported as residing on the frozen shores of the Baltic Sea at about the time that Jesus was alive on earth among the Jews. They migrated southward by slow stages to the rich plains enclosed by the Carpathian mountains, where they increased their numbers by alliance and intermarriage with the I Iimnish tribes who already occupied this territory. By the time that the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the State religion they had outgrown their new kingdom: because of a scarcity of provisions and the fertility of their women, a large number of them were obliged to cross over into the Roman Empire on this side of the Upper Danube, where they were given lands and the status of allies, and learned Roman methods of warfare. Two generations later they crossed the Danube again and invaded Germany, plundering and burning as they went, and then marched northward. They debated an invasion of the island of Britain, which had just been denuded of its Roman garrison. There were transports enough in the French ports, but the Vandals were not experienced sailors, and the English Channel seemed too rough a sea-passagc. So, leaving Britain to the mercy of Saxon pirates, they invaded France instead, crossing the River Rhine on New Year's Eve when it was frozen over. For two years they raided and plundered in France, and then marched into Spain, where they established themselves in the southernmost part, and called their kingdom Andalusia. But a few years later they were invited to Carthage by Count Boniface, the Roman Governor of North Africa. Count Boniface had been wrongfully accused of plotting against his Emperor and needed allies to save him from a shameful death: he offered the Vandals one-third part of the lands about Carthage for their own if they came to his help.

The Vandals had made sailors of themselves while in Spain, though there was a law among the Romans decreeing death to anyone who should teach any German barbarians the art of building or managing a ship. So they crossed over by sea from one of the two rocky Pillars of Hercules, namely Gibraltar in Spain, to the other, which is Ccuta in Morocco, and then marched eastward along the coast. There were 200,000 of them in all, but only 50,000 fighting men, the rest being women and children and the aged; for they came all together and only a very few elected to remain behind. These Vandals were Christians, but like most other German tribes, they were Arian heresies. Alas, here is one more theory of the nature of the Son to expound.