Now it must be recollected that we have an account of these two remarkable events in the life of Belisarius from an eye-witness. The very reserve of Procopius, who, in the affair of the Pope, omits all mention of Antonina, and glides over the injustice of the proceedings from dread of the feminine ferocity of the lady, and the priestly persecution of the successor of Silverius, who still continued to occupy the Papal chair when the history was written, affords us an indubitable warrant for the accuracy of the graphic description of the impressive scene which attended the murder of Konstantinos. When the History of the Gothic War was published, many of the generals who had been present at the council were still living.
These pictures of Belisarius and his times are not very favourable. A governor-general sitting in council, with his wife on the sofa directing the despatch of business, and a commander-in-chief holding a council at which one of his generals of division rushes at him with a drawn sword, do not give us an exalted idea of the order maintained in society during the brilliant conquests of Justinian's reign. Reasoning from analogy, it may appear natural enough that such a governor-general and commander-in-chief should end his career by having his eyes put out and by begging his bread.
There was another circumstance which very much increased the probability of Belisarius dying a beggar. We do not wish to deprive the tale of the smallest portion of the just sympathy of the latest posterity. The fact is, Belisarius grew enormously rich during his successful campaigns against Gelimer and Witiges, and even contrived to accumulate treasures during his unsuccessful wars with Chosroes and Totila.[30] Like his friend Bessas and his enemy Konstantinos, as the truth must be spoken, he did not neglect the golden opportunities he enjoyed of gaining golden spoils from all sorts of men. Now, from the days of Sylla, to those of Justinian, not to say a good deal earlier and later, it was the avowed system of the financiers of Rome to increase the budget by confiscations. The Ottoman empire, heir to most of the vices and some of the grandeur of Imperial Constantinople, cherished the system as a part of its strength, until it adopted the more pitiful vices of Western Europe. Anastasius—not the ecclesiastical historian of the earlier Popes, but the hero of the "Memoirs of a Greek," by Mr Thomas Hope—in his ratiocination on the principles of Ottoman finance, gives us a compendious abstract of those of Imperial Rome during eleven centuries, from Augustus to Constantine Dragoses:—
"Regarding each officer of the state only in the light of one of the smaller and more numerous reservoirs, distributed on distant points to collect the first produce of dews, and drip, and rills, ere the collective mass be poured into the single greater central basin of the Sultan's treasury, you give yourself no trouble to check the dishonesty of your agent, or to prevent his peculations. You rather for a while connive at, and favour and lend your own authority to his exactions, which will enable you, when afterwards you squeeze him out, to combine greater profit with a more signal show of justice. In permitting a temporary defalcation from your treasury, you consider yourselves as only lending out your capital at more usurious interest. Nine long years, while your work is done for you gratuitously, you feign to sleep, and the tenth you wake from your deceitful slumber; like the roused lion, you look round where grazes the fattest prey, stretch your ample claw, crush your devoted victim, and make every drop of his blood, so long withheld from your appetite, at last flow into the capacious bowels of your insatiable hazné"—(treasury).[31]
Belisarius was certainly a fatted prey, and it is no wonder that his inordinate wealth excited the cravings of the minister of finance of the lavish Justinian and the luxurious Theodora. After his return from the conquest of Italy, he lived at Constantinople in a degree of magnificence unrivalled by the proudest modern sovereign. His household consisted, as we have already seen, of a small army; and as he was fond of parade, he rarely appeared in public without a splendid staff of mounted officers. His liberality and his military renown ensured him the applause of the people whenever he presented himself among them. Such wealth, such a train of guards, and such popularity, not unnaturally excited both envy and alarm. Accordingly, when the unsuccessful issue of the campaigns against the Persians under Chosroes, in 541 and 542, had diminished the popularity of Belisarius, the Emperor seized the occasion of rendering him less an object of fear by depriving him of a considerable number of his guards and great part of his treasures.[32] The picture Procopius has drawn of Belisarius in his disgrace, is by no means flattering to the general; it represents him as a mean-spirited and uxorious courtier. "It was a strange spectacle, and incredible, had we not been eye-witnesses of the fact, to behold Belisarius, deprived of all his official rank, walking in the streets of Constantinople almost alone, dejected, melancholy, and fearing for his life."[33]
Shortly after, Belisarius was partially reinstated in favour and sent to command in Italy against Totila. In 548, he quitted that country for the second time, after struggling unsuccessfully against the Gothic monarch. The jealousy of Justinian had prevented his receiving the supplies necessary for carrying on the war with vigour; and the want of success is not to be considered as any stain on the military reputation of Belisarius. Though he returned ingloriously to Constantinople, still, even amidst the misfortunes of the Roman arms in Italy, he had not neglected to save or accumulate wealth, and he was enabled to pass the rest of his life in great if not in regal splendour.[34]
He enjoyed the glory of his earlier exploits, and the popularity secured by his equable temperament, undisturbed for eleven years. In the year 559, an incursion of the Huns was pushed forward to the very walls of Constantinople. The weakness of Justinian, the avarice of his ministers, and the rapacity of his courtiers, had introduced such abuses in the military establishments of the capital, that in this unexpected danger the city appeared almost without a regular garrison. In this difficulty, all ranks, from Justinian to the populace, turned to Belisarius as the champion of the empire. The aged hero, finding the imperial guards useless as a military corps, since it had been converted into a body of pensioners, appointed by the favour of ministers and courtiers, and its ranks filled up with shopkeepers and valets—assembled such of the provincial troops and of his old guards as were living in the capital.[35] With a small body of experienced veterans, and an army in which fear at least ensured obedience to his orders, he took the field against the Huns. Victory attended his standard. He not only drove back the barbarians, but overtook and destroyed the greater part of their army.
There was nothing of romance in this last campaign of Belisarius. He could no longer lead his gallant guards to display his own, and their valour, in some rash enterprise. His war-horse, Balan, was in its grave, and his own strength no longer served him to act the colonel of cuirassiers. But he was, perhaps, all the better general for the change; and his manœuvres effected a more complete destruction of the Huns, than would have resulted from the defeat of their army by the bold sallies of his youthful tactics.
The glory of the aged hero, and the proofs it afforded of his great popularity and extensive authority over the military classes throughout the empire, again revived the jealousy of the court. The ministers of Justinian perhaps dreaded that the affection of the emperor for his former favourite might recall Belisarius into public life, and effect a change in the cabinet. To prevent this, they calumniated him to the feeble prince, and worked so far on his timidity as to induce the emperor to withhold those testimonials for great public services which, it was customary to bestow. The fact that he was persecuted by the court, endeared Belisarius to the people and augmented the aversion of the emperor.[36]
Belisarius was now an object of suspicion to the government. And at this interesting period of his life, all cotemporary history suddenly fails us. The events of his latter days are recorded by writers who lived more than two hundred years after his death.[37]