Count Belisarius

This was in the autumn of the year of our Lord 532, a few months after the riots, and the winter was spent in making all necessary preparations. My mistress was glad that the expedition was not sailing until the spring, for about New Year she was expecting a child by Belisarius, and she had determined not to be left behind when he went to the wars. She intended to find a foster-mother for the child and give it into Theodora's charge. This she did, and the child proved to be a daughter whom they named Joannina. The Emperor and Empress stood sponsors for it at the font. This was the only child that my mistress bore to Belisarius, and she proved a disappointment to them in the end.

There were dismal feelings of foreboding in Constantinople when the details of the expedition were announced. The City Governor is reported to have said to Cappadocian John one evening at the Palace: 'I fear that this disaster may prove as great as the one that our grandfathers suffered at the hands of Geiserich.'

And Cappadocian John to have replied cheerfully: 'That cannot be. For in that campaign we lost one hundred thousand men, no less; but now I have persuaded the Emperor to send only fifteen thousand, and most of these are infantry.'

The City Governor again: 'At what fighting strength do you reckon the Vandal army?'

Cappadocian John's reply: 'At more than a hundred thousand, counting their Moorish allies.'

The City Governor, astonished: 'Best of men, what possible hope of success can Belisarius have in that case?'

But Cappadocian John, shrugging: 'A bishop has a right to his dreams.' The phrase became proverbial.

The infantry were of good quality, mostly Isaurian mountaineers; Belisarius had been training them in marching and digging, as well as in the use of weapons. The cavalry numbered only 5,000, because of the difficulty of transporting horses a distance of some 1,500 miles. But among them were the remnants of the Massagetic Huns who had fought so well at Daras and by the Euphrates, 600 of them (for many of the seriously wounded had recovered); and Pharas's 400 Herulians; and Belisarius's well-trained Household Regiment of 1,500 cuirassiers. The remainder were Thracians who had served under Boutzces; but Boutzces himself had remained on the Persian frontier. Belisarius had entrusted the command of these Thracians to Rufinus and (o a Massagetic Hun called Aigan, the son of Sunicas, whom Sunicas had commended to Belisarius as he lay dying on the battlefield. Belisarius's chief of staff was an Armenian eunuch named Solomon; he was a eunuch not by deliberate castration but by an accident which had happened to him when a baby in swaddling clothes, and had lived with soldiers all his life.

It needed a fleet of 500 transports to convey this army to Carthage. They were as mixed a collection of vessels as were ever brought together, their burden varying from 30 to 500 tons. They were manned by 30,000 sailors, for the most part Egyptians and Greeks from Asia Minor, and commanded by an Alexandrian admiral. Besides these transports there was a flotilla of ninety-two fast single-banked galleys, all decked in as a protection to the oarsmen in case of a sea-battle. There were twenty oarsmen to each galley, men of Constantinople of the sort called 'marines', who are paid above the usual rate because they can be used as infantry in an emergency. Cappadocian John was made responsible for victualling this fleet, and two officers were sent to the royal pastures in Thrace to round up 3,000 horses and have them ready at Heraclea, on the northern coast of the Sea of Marmora, when the fleet touched there.

We started at last, at the time of the spring equinox. Belisarius and my mistress had an impressive godspeed from Justinian and Theodora, and a blessing from the Patriarch of Constantinople. We embarked at the Imperial harbour, which is close to the Palace, at the point where the Sea of Marmora narrows into the Bosphorus. Here there are broad white marble steps, and gilded state barges, and ornamental trees from the East; and a graceful chapel in which are shown the authentic swaddling clothes of Jesus, and a portrait of him in later life attributed to the Evangelist Luke. Above the harbour stands a sculptural group of a bull in a death-struggle with a lion. We eyed it with superstitious interest, for the Bull is a symbol of the Roman armies, as the Lion is of North Africa. My mistress Antonina said, grinning, to the City Governor who stood by: 'I will wager you five thousand to two thousand that the Bull brings it off. The Lion is under-muscled, and the Bull, though small, is of the fighting breed.'