CHAPTER VII
To Cethegus, a Friend.
The Vandal war has been given up, and for what pitiable reasons! You know that I have thought it far wiser for our rulers to attend to the matters immediately around us than to meddle with the Barbarians. For so long as this unbearable burden of taxation and abuse of official power continues in the Roman Empire, so long every conquest, every increase in the number of our subjects, will merely swell the list of unfortunates. Yet if Africa could be restored to the Empire, we ought not to relinquish the proud thought from sheer cowardice!
There stands the ugly word,--unhappily a true one. From cowardice? Not Theodora's. Indeed, that is not one of the faults of this delicate, otherwise womanly woman. Two years ago, when the terrible insurrection of the Greens and Blues in the Circus swept victoriously over the whole city, when Justinian despaired and wished to fly, Theodora's courage kept him in the palace, and Belisarius's fidelity saved him. But this time the blame does not rest upon the Emperor; it is the cowardice of the Roman army, or especially, the fleet. True, Justinian's zeal has cooled considerably since the failure of the crafty plan to destroy Genseric's kingdom; almost without a battle, principally by "arts,"--treachery, ordinary people term them. Hilderic, at an appointed time, was to send his whole army into the interior for a great campaign against the Moors; our fleet was to run into the unprotected harbors of Carthage, land the army, occupy the city, and make Hilderic, Hoamer, and a Senator the Emperor's three governors of the recovered province of Africa.
But this time we crafty ones were outwitted by a brain still more subtle. Our friend from Tripolis writes that he was deceived in the Arian priest whom he believed he had won for our cause. This man, at first well disposed, afterwards became wavering, warned, dissuaded--nay, perhaps even betrayed the plan to the Vandals. So an open attack must be made. This pleased Belisarius, but not the Emperor. He hesitated.
Meanwhile--Heaven knows through whom--the rumor of the coming Vandal war spread through the court, into the city, among the soldiers and sailors; and--disgrace and shame on us--nearly all the greatest dignitaries, the generals, and also the army and the fleet were seized with terror. All remembered the last great campaign against this dreaded foe, when, two generations ago--it was under the Emperor Leo--the full strength of the whole empire was employed. The ruler of the Western Empire attacked the Vandals simultaneously in Sardinia and Tripolis. Constantinople accomplished magnificent deeds. One hundred and thirty thousand pounds of gold were used; Basiliscus, the Emperor's brother-in-law, led a hundred thousand warriors to the Carthaginian coast. All were destroyed in a single night. Genseric attacked with firebrands the triremes packed too closely together at the Promontory of Mercury, while his swift horsemen at the same time assailed the camp on the shore; fleet and army were routed in blood and flame. Even to the present day do the Prefect and the Treasurer lament the loss. "It will be just the same now as it was then. The last money in the almost empty coffers will be flung into the sea!" But the generals (except Belisarius and Narses), what heroes they are! Each fears that the Emperor will choose him. And how, even if they overcome the terrors of the ocean, is a landing to be made upon a hostile coast defended by the dreaded Germans? The soldiers, who have just returned from the Persian War, have barely tasted the joys of home. They are talking mutinously in every street; no sooner returned from the extreme East, they must be sent to the farthest West, to the Pillars of Hercules, to fight with Moors and Vandals. They were not used to sea-battles, were not trained for them, were not enlisted for the purpose, and therefore were under no obligations. The Prefect, especially, represented to the Emperor that Carthage was a hundred and fifty days' march by land from Egypt, while the sea was barred by the invincible fleet of the Vandals. "Don't meddle with this African wasp's nest," he warned him. "Or the corsair ships will ravage all our coasts and islands as they did in the days of Genseric." And this argument prevailed. The Emperor has changed his mind. How the hero Belisarius fumes and rages!
Theodora resents--in silence. But she vehemently desired this war! I am really no favorite of hers. I am far too independent, too much the master of my own thoughts, and my conscience pricks me often enough for my insincerity. She certainly has the best--that is, the best trained--conscience: it no longer disturbs her. Doubtless she smoothed down its pricks long ago. But I have repeatedly received the dainty little papyrus rolls whose seal bears a scorpion surrounded by flames,--little notes in which she earnestly urged me to the "war spirit," if I desired to retain her friendship.