It was now easy for the friends of Belisarius to prove that the recall of that hero had been the origin of all these disasters.
It was clear that as long as Belisarius had been in Italy victory had followed victory; and no sooner had he turned his back, than misfortunes crowded one upon the other.
The Byzantine generals in Italy openly acknowledged that they could not replace Belisarius.
"I am not able," wrote Demetrius from Ravenna, "to meet Totila in the open field. Scarcely am I able to defend this fortress in the marshes. Neapolis has fallen. Rome may surrender any day. Send us again the lion-hearted man, whom, in our vanity, we dreamed we could replace--the conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths."
And Belisarius, although he had sworn never again to serve the ungrateful Emperor, forgot all his wrongs as soon as Justinian smiled upon him. And when, after the fall of Neapolis, he actually embraced him and called him "his faithful sword"--in truth, the Emperor had never believed in the general's rebellion, but was envious of his sovereign position--Belisarius could no longer be restrained by Antonina and Procopius. As, however, the Emperor feared the expense of a second enterprise in Italy (besides that of the Persian wars, which Narses conducted successfully but expensively in Asia), avarice and ambition produced a struggle within him, which would, perhaps, have lasted longer than the resistance of Rome and Ravenna, had not Prince Germanus and Belisarius proposed an expedient. The noble Prince was impelled by the wish to revisit Ravenna and the tomb of Mataswintha, and to revenge her memory on the rude barbarians, for Cethegus had declared that the cause of the tragic end of this incomparable woman was that her mind had been disordered in consequence of her forced marriage with Witichis.
Belisarius, on his side, could not endure that all his fame should be imperilled by Totila's success. "For," asked his enemies at court, "could he really have conquered a people who, within the year, had again almost made themselves masters of Italy?"
He had given his word to annihilate the Goths, and he would keep it.
So, influenced by these motives, Germanus and Belisarius proposed to conquer Italy for the Emperor at their own expense. The Prince offered his whole fortune for the equipment of a fleet; Belisarius all his lately reinforced body-guard and lance-bearers.
"That is a proposition after Justinian's own heart!" cried Procopius, when informed of it by Belisarius. "Not a solidus out of his own pocket! And perhaps the laurels of fame and a province for this world, and the wholesale destruction of heretics to rejoice Heaven and Theodora! You may be sure that he will accept, and give you his fatherly benediction into the bargain. But nothing else. You, Belisarius, I know, can be as little kept back as Balan, your piebald, when he hears the call of the trumpet; but I will not see your lamentable fall."
"Fall? Wherefore, Raven of Misfortune?"