The Scarlet Banner

by Felix Dahn

CHAPTER IX

Procopius to Cethegus:

I am writing this--really and truly, though it is not yet three months since we left Constantinople--in Carthage, at the capitol, in the royal palace of the Asdings, in the hall of Genseric the Terrible. I often doubt the fact myself--but it is so! On the day after the battle at Decimum the infantry, coming from the camp, joined us, and the whole army marched to Carthage, which we reached in the evening. We chose a place to encamp outside of the city, though no one opposed our entrance. Nay, the Carthaginians had opened all their gates and lighted torches and lanterns everywhere in the streets and squares. All night long the bonfires shone from the city into our camp, while the few Vandals who had not fled sought shelter in the Catholic churches.

But Belisarius most strictly prohibited entering the city during the night. He feared an ambush, a stratagem of war. He could not believe that Genseric's capital had actually fallen into his hands with so little trouble.

On the following day, borne by a favoring breeze, our ships rounded the promontory. As soon as the Carthaginians recognized our flag, they broke the iron chains of their outer harbor, Mandracium, and beckoned to our sailors to enter. But the commanders, mindful of Belisarius's warning, anchored in the harbor of Stagnum, five thousand paces from the city, waiting further orders. Yet that the worthy citizens of Carthage might make the acquaintance of their liberators on the very first day, a ship's captain, Kalonymos, with several sailors, entered Mandracium, against the orders of Belisarius and the Quæstor, and plundered all the merchants--Carthaginians as well as strangers--who had their homes and storehouses on the harbor. He took all their money, many of their goods, and even the beautiful candlesticks and lanterns which they had brought out in honor of our arrival.

We had hoped--Belisarius gave orders for a diligent search--to liberate the captive King Hilderic and his nephew. But this, it appears, was not accomplished. In the royal citadel, high up on the hill crowned by the capitol, is the gloomy dungeon where the usurper held the Asdings prisoners, as he barred all his foes here. The executioner supplied the place of a jailer to his predecessors. He also held captive many merchants of our empire, fearing (and my Hegelochus showed with what good reason; the General sent him to-day with rich gifts to Syracuse) that, if allowed to sail thither, they might bring us all sorts of valuable information. When the jailer, a Roman, heard of our victory at Decimum, and saw our galleys rounding the promontory, he released all these captives. He wanted to set the King and Euages free also, but their dungeon was empty. No one knows what has become of them.

At noon Belisarius ordered the ships' crews to land, all the troops to clean their weapons and armor, to present the best appearance, and now the whole army marched in full battle-array--for we still feared an ambush of the Vandals--through the "Grove of the Empress Theodora" (so I hear the grateful Carthaginians have rebaptized it); then through the southern Byzacenian gate, and finally through the lower city. Belisarius and the principal leaders, with some picked troops, went up to the capitol, and our General formally took his seat upon Genseric's gold and purple throne. Belisarius ordered the noonday meal to be served in the dining-hall where Gelimer entertained the Vandal nobles. It is called "Delphica," because its principal ornament is a beautiful tripod. Here the General feasted the leaders of his army. A banquet had been prepared in it the day before for Gelimer, but we now ate the dishes made to celebrate his victory; spiced by this thought, their flavor was excellent. And Gelimer's servants brought in the platters, filled the drinking vessels with fragrant wine, waited upon us in every way. This is another instance of the goddess Tyche's pleasure in playing with the changing destinies of mortals. You, O Cethegus, I am well aware, have a different opinion of the final causes of events; you see the fixed action of a law in the deeds of human beings, as well as in storms and sunshine. This may be magnificent, heroic, but it is terrible. I have a narrow mind, and am precisely the opposite of a hero; I cannot endure it. I waver skeptically to and fro. Sometimes I see only the whimsical ruling of a blind chance, which delights in alternately lifting up and casting down; sometimes I think an inscrutable God directs everything to mysterious ends. I have renounced all philosophizing, and enjoy the motley current of events, not without scorn and derision for the follies of other people, but no less for those of Procopius.

And yet I do not wish to break off entirely all relations with the Christian's God. We do not know whether, after all, the Son of Man may not yet return in the clouds of heaven. In that case, I would far rather be with the sheep than with the goats.

The people, the liberated Romans, the Catholics, in their delight over their rescue, see signs and wonders everywhere. They regard our Huns as angels of the Lord. They will yet learn to know these angels, especially if they have pretty wives or daughters, or even only full money-chests. The comical part of it is that (except Belisarius's body-guard), our soldiers, with all due respect to the Emperor, are principally a miserable lot of rascals from all the provinces of the empire, and all the Barbarian peoples in the neighborhood; they are always as ready to steal, pillage, and murder as they are to fight. Yet we ourselves, in consequence of the amazing good fortune which has accompanied us throughout this whole enterprise, are beginning to consider ourselves the chosen favorites of the Lord, His sacred instrument--thieves and cut-throats though we are! So the entire army, pagans as well as Christians, believe that that spring gushed out for us in the desert only by a miracle of God. So both the army and the Carthaginians believe in a lantern miracle in the following singular incident.

The Carthaginians' principal saint is Saint Cyprian, who has more than a dozen basilicas and chapels, in which all his festivals, "the great Cypriani," are magnificently celebrated. But the Vandals took nearly all the churches from the Catholics, and dedicated them to the Arian worship. This was the case with the great basilica of Saint Cyprian down by the harbor, from which they drove the Catholic priests. The loss of this cathedral caused them special sorrow, and they said that Saint Cyprian had repeatedly appeared to devout souls in a dream, comforted them, and announced that he would some day avenge the wrong committed by the Vandals. This seems to me rather unsaintly in the great saint; we poor sinners on earth are daily exhorted to forgive our enemies, and the wrathful saint ought to let his vengeful feelings cool, and thus remain the holy Cyprian. The pious Catholics, thus pleasantly strengthened and justified in their thirst for revenge by their patron saint, had long waited, in mingled curiosity and anxiety, for the blow Saint Cyprian was to deal the heretics. On this day it became evident. The festival of the great Cyprian was just at hand; it fell on the day following the battle of Decimum. On the evening before, the Arian priests themselves had decorated the entire church magnificently, and especially arranged thousands of little lamps, in order to have a brilliant illumination at night to celebrate the victory; for they did not doubt the success of their own army. By the written order of the Archdeacon Verus,--he had accompanied the King to the field,--all the church vessels and church treasures of every description were brought out of the hidden thesauri and placed upon the seven altars of the basilica. Never would these unsuspected riches have been found in the secret vaults of the church, had not Verus given these directions and sent the keys.

But we, not the Vandals, won the battle of Decimum. At this news the Arian priests fled headlong from the city. The Catholics poured into the basilica, discovered the secret treasures of the heretics, and lighted their lamps to celebrate the victory of the champions of the true faith. "This is the vengeance of Saint Cyprian!" "This is the miracle of the lamps!" Through the city they went, roaring these words and cuffing and pounding every doubter until he believed and shouted with them: "Yes, this is Saint Cyprian's vengeance and the miracle of the lamps!"

Now I have not the least objection to an occasional miracle. On the contrary, I am glad when something often happens that the all-explaining philosophers who have so long tormented me cannot understand. But then it must be a genuine, thorough-going miracle. If a miracle cannot present itself as something entirely beyond the limits of reason, it would better not attempt to be a miracle at all; it isn't worth while. And this miracle appears to me far too natural. Belisarius reproved my incredulous derision. But I replied that Saint Cyprian seems to me the patron saint of the lamplighters; I don't belong to that society.

* * * * *

Fara, the Herulian, captured the fairest booty at Decimum. True, he received from the noble a sharp lance-thrust in the arm through his brazen shield. But the shield had done its duty; the point did not penetrate too deeply into the flesh. And when he entered the nearest villa,--he was just breaking in,--the door opened, and a wonderfully beautiful woman, with superb jewels and scarlet flowers in her black hair, came to meet him. Except the flowers and gems, she was not burdened with too much clothing.

The vision held out a wreath of laurel and pomegranate blossoms.

"Whom did you expect?" asked the Herulian, in amazement.

"The victor," replied the beautiful woman.

A somewhat oracular reply! This Sphinx--she looks, I have already told you, exactly like one--would undoubtedly have given her wreath and herself just as willingly to the victorious Vandals. After all, what does the Carthaginian care for either Vandals or Byzantines? She is the prize of the stronger, the conqueror--perhaps to his destruction. But I think the Sphinx has now found her Œdipus. If one of this strange pair of lovers must perish, it will hardly be my friend Fara. He took me to her; he has some regard for me, because I can read and write. He had evidently praised me. In vain. She scanned me from head to foot, and from foot to head, it did not consume much time; I am not very tall,--then, with a contemptuous curl of her full red lips, she moved far away from me. I will not assert that I am handsome, while Fara, next to Belisarius, is certainly the stateliest of all our six and thirty thousand men. But I was indignant that my mortal part at once so repelled her that she did not even desire to know the immortal side. I am angered against her, I wish her no evil; but it would neither greatly surprise, nor deeply grieve me, if she should come to a bad end.