He had been scarcely able to control his impatience during the journey. At last he reached the outposts of the Byzantines at Capua, where Johannes, the commander, sent his younger brother Perseus and a few horsemen to lead him to the head-quarters.
Arrived in the camp, Cethegus did not ask for the commander-in-chief, but caused himself to be conducted at once to the tent of the privy-councillor, Procopius of Cæsarea.
Procopius had been his fellow-student in the Schools of Law at Berytus; and the two gifted men had attracted each other greatly.
But not the warmth of friendship led the Prefect first of all to this man. Procopius knew the whole political past of Belisarius, and was probably the confidant of his future plans.
The privy-councillor greeted the friend of his youth with great pleasure. He was a man of sound commonsense, one of the few men of science of that time, whose capability of healthy feeling and simple apprehension had not been suffocated by the artificial ornaments of Byzantine knowledge in the Schools of Rhetoric.
Clear sense was expressed on his open brow, and in his still youthfully bright eyes shone delight in all that was good.
When Cethegus had washed off the dust and heat of travel in a carefully-prepared bath, his host, before inviting him to the evening meal in his tent, led him round the camp, and showed him the quarters of the principal divisions, pointing out the most famous generals, and, in a few words, describing their peculiarities, their services, and the often singular contrasts of their past lives.
There were the sons of rude Thracia, Constantinus and Bessas, who had worked their way up from the rank of rough hirelings; brave soldiers, but without culture, and filled with the presumption of self-made men. They considered themselves to be the indispensable supports and equally capable successors of Belisarius.
There was the aristocratic Iberian Peranius, of the royal family of the Iberians, the hostile neighbours of Persia, who had given up his fatherland and hope of the crown out of hatred to the Persian conqueror, and had taken service in the Emperor's army.
Then Valentinus, Magnus, and Innocentius, daring, leaders of the horsemen; Paulus, Demetrius, Ursicinus, the leaders of the foot-soldiers; Ennes, the Isaurian chief and commander of the Isaurians of Belisarius; Aigan and Askan, the leaders of the Massagetæ; Alamundarus and King Abocharabus, the Saracens; Ambazuch and Bleda, the Huns; Arsakes, Amazaspes, and Artabanes, the Armenians (the Arsakide Phaza had been left behind in Neapolis with the rest of the Armenians); Azarethas and Barasmanes, the Persians; and Antallas and Cabaon, the Moors.