A Struggle for Rome, v. 3

by Felix Dahn

CHAPTER I.

The destiny of the Goths was soon to be fulfilled. The rolling stone approached the abyss.

When Narses came to his senses and learned what had taken place, he gave orders at once to arrest Liberius and send him to Byzantium to answer for his conduct.

"I will not say," he said to his confidant, Basiliskos, "that he has come to a false decision. I myself could not have done otherwise. But I should have done it for different reasons. His only wish was to save his friend and the ten thousand prisoners. That was wrong. Situated as he was, he ought to have sacrificed them, for he could not overlook the actual condition of the war. He did not know, as I know, that after this battle the Gothic kingdom is lost--whether it be completely destroyed at Rome or Neapolis is indifferent--and that alone would have been, and is, the reason for which the ten thousand should be saved."

"At Neapolis? But why not at Rome? Do you not remember the formidable fortifications of the Prefect? Why should not the Goths throw themselves into Rome and resist for months?"

"Why? Because things are very different with regard to Rome. But the Goths know this as little as Liberius. And Cethegus--above all--must know nothing of it yet; therefore be silent. Where is the Prefect of Rome?"

"He has hastened forward, in order to be the first to conduct the pursuit as soon as the time of truce has expired."

"Surely you have taken care----"

"Do not doubt it! He would have marched with his Isaurians alone, but I--that is, Liberius at my order--gave him Alboin and the Longobardians as companions, and you know----"

"Yes," said Narses, with a smile, "my wolves will not lose sight of him."

"But how long shall he----"

"As long as he is necessary to me; not an hour longer. So the young and royal wonder-worker lies upon his shield! Now may Justinian rightly call himself 'Gothicus,' and again sleep peacefully. But truly--he will never more sleep peacefully--that disappointed widower----"

So the two generals, Narses and Teja, were of one opinion with regard to the Gothic kingdom. It was lost. The flower of the Goths had fallen at Capræ and Taginæ. Totila had placed there five-and-twenty thousand men; not even a thousand had escaped. The two wings of the army had also suffered great loss; and so King Teja commenced his retreat to the south with scarcely twenty thousand men.

He was urged to the greatest speed by the calls for help sent by the little army under Duke Guntharis and Earl Grippa, who were hard pressed by the greater force of the Byzantines under the command of Armatus and Dorotheos, who had landed between Rome and Neapolis.

And besides this, Teja's retreat was also precipitated because of the terrible manner in which, when the truce was ended, he was pursued by Narses.

While the Longobardians and Cethegus pursued the fugitives without pause, Narses slowly followed with the main army, spreading to the right and left his two formidable wings, which extended in the south-west far beyond the Sub-urbicarian Tuscany to the Tyrrhenian sea, and in the north-east through Picenum to the Ionian Gulf, extinguishing as they passed from north to south and from west to east, every trace of the Goths behind them.

This proceeding was considerably facilitated by the now general desertion of the Gothic cause on the part of the Italians. The benevolent King, who had once won their sympathies, had been succeeded by a gloomy hero of terrible reputation. And all who hesitated were speedily drawn over to the other side, not by inclination to the rule of Byzantium, but from fear of Narses and of the Emperor's severity, who threatened all who took the part of the barbarians with death.

The Italians who still served in Teja's army now deserted and hastened to Narses. It also happened much more frequently than before the battle of Taginæ, that Gothic settlers were betrayed to the Romani by their Italian neighbours, generally by the hospes, who had been obliged to relinquish a third of his property to the Goths; or, where the Italians were in the majority, the Goths were either killed, or taken prisoners and delivered up to the two Byzantine fleets, the "Tyrrhenian" and the "Ionian," which, sailing along the coasts of those seas, accompanied the march of the land forces and received all the captured Goths on board--men, women, and children.

The forts and towns, weakly garrisoned--for Teja had been obliged to strengthen his small army by lessening their numbers--generally fell by means of the Italian population, who now overpowered the Gothic garrison, as, after Totila's election, they had done the imperial. Thus fell, during the progress of the war, Namia, Spoletium and Perusia; the few towns which resisted were invested.

So Narses resembled a strong man who walks with outstretched arms through a narrow passage, pursuing all who try to hide themselves before him. Or a fisher, who wades up a stream with a sack-net; behind him all is empty. The few Goths who could yet save themselves fled before the "iron roller" to the army of the King, which soon consisted of a greater number of the defenceless than of warriors.

The Visigoths were again engaged in migration, just as they had been a hundred years before, but this time the iron net of Narses was behind them; and before them, as they advanced farther and farther into the constantly narrowing peninsula, the sea. And not a ship did they possess in which to fly.