These Gepids have a shortage of metal, iron as well as gold, and their jewels are of trifling value.
Many of the officers who later distinguished themselves under his leadership in his four principal wars were trained in this campaign; or in the punitive expedition that he made in the following summer against the Bulgarian Huns of the Lower Danube, who had lately been active again on our side of the river. He had 600 heavy cavalry with him on this occasion, not 200. With the Bulgarians, who are horse-archers, the problem was how to come to close quarters with them, not how to hold them off. His method was to use live bait, a small body of men on fast horses, and draw the greedy Bulgarians into an unfavourable position, from which their retreat could be cut off. The Bulgarians, like the Gepids, protected their communities, when halted during the march, by barricades of wagons. Belisarius would ride to the windward of these and set them alight by means of fire-arrows. He caused the Bulgarians heavy losses and took numerous prisoners, but the plunder that the captured camps yielded was small.
For his feats Belisarius was promoted in title from ‘Distinguished Patrician’ to ‘Illustrious Patrician’. Justinian was now Commander of the Imperial Guards under his adoptive father the Emperor Justin. He was, however, no soldier, and in practice army matters were still controlled by Justin. On the other hand, Justin had no understanding of statecraft or civil business, and let the officers of State do more or less what they pleased, under the supervision of Justinian.
Belisarius was now employed as general supervisor of military training, and spent the next four years going from one garrison town to the other throughout the Eastern half of the Empire, writing detailed reports on the condition of the troops he inspected and on the capacity of their officers, and making recommendations for improvements in training and equipment. He gained many friends among steady old officers whose work he praised, and active young officers whom he recommended for promotion; but more enemies. He always refused to turn a blind eye to incompetence or to deficiencies in equipment, and was known to be unbribable.
He remained in high favour at Court, yet when he was pressed to marry this high-born woman or that, he always excused himself as at present too much of a traveller. When he could settle down he would marry, he said. But he had no love-affairs with women, married or unmarried, and abstained from visits to the grand brothel which Constantine had built and which was the general meeting-place of all the wit and fashion of Constantinople. His enemies hinted that he was no lover of women merely because he preferred his own sex; but that was a foolish lie. If he did not marry, that was, in my naturally prejudiced view, because the memory of my mistress Antonina had remained with him; and he abstained from the brothel because to attend it was against the Christian law which he had sworn to observe. Besides, his work was enough to occupy his mind, and should he want amusement he would go hunting with his staff. If there was a shortage of deer or hare or other game, this would not trouble him much: he would shoot as readily at hawk in the sky or snake in the hedge as at nobler game, and not less accurately. He encouraged his officers at the same practice; for hunting, he said, was a sort of drill. Boar-hunting with the lance he especially recommended.
He came to Antioch twice in the course of his duties, but on the first occasion my mistress and her husband happened to be staying at their villa in the Lebanon; and on the second she did not meet him either, though she longed to do so. Her husband invited him to a dinner at the house, but he refused, pleading his official duties. However, he wrote a letter in his own hand as a particular compliment to my mistress’s husband. My naturally prejudiced view was that he would have felt embarrassed at meeting my mistress again as the wife of another man.
This may seem an extravagant story, but I later met its parallel in Italy: a young patrician had fallen in love with a married woman when he was only thirteen. Not only did he abstain from love of any other woman, but he went out into the wilderness and lived in a cave, and later formed a society of hermit monks whom they now call Benedictines after this desperate Benedict. They were a decent fraternity, whose employments were three only – namely, worship of God, reading, manual labour; they abstained from butcher’s meat, politics, and vice. But they came to hold with Benedict that man and woman should not merely be strangers to each other but natural, irreconcilable foes; which, to me, is nonsensical. I visited their high-walled hermitage on Mount Cassino once, above the Latin Way between Rome and Naples, and found everything under the strictest and exactest discipline. I reported what I had seen to my mistress, who by the rules of the monastery was not permitted to enter, and said to her of Benedict: ‘A good soldier is lost in him.’ Belisarius, who was present, answered me in the Christian sense: ‘No, Eugenius, a good soldier found.’
This Benedict was nearly defeated once, for the woman with whom he was in love took pity on him at last, and engaged a party of theatre-women to come with her one evening to the monastery, one woman for each monk. They knocked at the great door; and when the porter – a gigantic Goth – opened to them he was assaulted by fondling arms and smothered in scented kisses, and led away prisoner. The attack was carried out most vigorously, and all the monks succumbed except two or three, who locked themselves in their cells and threw the keys out of the window to be rid of the temptation: as Ulysses in the story immobilized himself against the temptations of the Sirens by ordering his sailors to lash him hand and foot to the mast. Only Benedict stood his ground. He took the leader of the enemy by the hand and spoke to her with loving frankness, and made her bitterly ashamed of her action. If this story be true, Benedict was as staunch a character as Belisarius. Or perhaps the woman had lost her looks in the meantime; for she was certainly a good deal older than he, and patrician women at Rome are gluttonous and lazy and soon grow as fat as the captive carp in their fish-pools.
At all events, Belisarius lived an upright and regular life, and in these years only failed on one expedition: that was against Porphyry, the famous whale, who now for twenty-five years had harassed the shipping of the Bosphorus and Black Sea, and could not by any means be killed or trapped. This Porphyry was the only whale that was ever known to enter the Mediterranean Sea. Much larger whales, called sperm whales, are frequently met in the Atlantic, and one of great size was once stranded at Cadiz. Larger still are met with in the Indian Ocean by Red Sea traders, who sail to Ceylon every year with the monsoon-wind – these are the whales that yield whalebone, and are often 400 feet in length. Porphyry was no more than one-eighth of that size; but unlike the Indian whales, who are shy creatures and avoid shipping, he carried on a destructive war with the Empire. Whales do not, as one might suppose, eat large fish and dolphins and seals and sharks, but only the smallest fry: they rush through the water with their mouths open and engulf millions at a time. Porphyry would cruise about in the Black Sea, feeding on the sea-bottom in the breeding grounds of fish, and sometimes would disappear for months on end. But always he would return and station himself in the narrows of the Bosphorus, or the Hellespont, and let swarms of fish be swept into his mouth by the current. It happened at Porphyry’s first appearance that a bold fisherman, annoyed at having his nets broken, managed as he shot by in a small boat to throw a heavy fish-spear into Porphyry’s flank. This was a formal declaration of war, and Porphyry, whose intentions had hitherto been peaceable enough, charging after the boat, broke it with a swing of his tail. Then it was realized that Porphyry was not a young whale of the usual unwarlike sort but a full-grown killer-whale, as they are called, such as have been observed by sailors on the Indian voyage in the act of making war on the great whales and flogging them to pieces with repeated blows.
Porphyry would lurk in the depths of the sea and suddenly appear, spouting water from a hole in his head, and dash at any boat or small ship he saw, and strike at it with his tail, and destroy it. He also sank two ships of considerable tonnage, at different times, by rising suddenly from beneath them and starting their timbers with the impact of his head against them.
This was perhaps an accident, however.
All sorts of explanations were given for Porphyry’s ravages. The Orthodox held that he was sent as a punishment for the heretical sin of Monophysitism, but the Monophysites said that this could not be so, for Porphyry struck at Orthodox and Monophysites alike. (And by the time of which I speak the breach with Rome had been repaired.) Others said that he was looking for a Jonah – and many an unpopular sailor, Orthodox or Monophysite as the case might be, had been thrown out to him as a sacrifice. Bishops of both opinions had been sent to preach to him from the shore, and texts floated down the current to him, written on strips of paper, conjuring him in the name of the Trinity to return to the Ocean whence he came. But Porphyry was unlettered and unbaptized, and paid no attention.
Belisarius volunteered to hunt Porphyry. He stationed himself at the entrance of the Black Sea about the time that the whale was expected to return to its usual fishing grounds. He was in a ship of a size greater than Porphyry was accustomed to attack, and it was armed with a siege-catapult of the sort that throws not the usual short bolt with wooden feathers, but a heavy, long spear. Justinian provided, for the management of the catapult, a detachment of City militia of the Blue faction – the responsibility for the defence of the walls of Constantinople was divided between the Demarch of the Blues and the Demarch of the Greens – who were animated by a desire to earn glory for their Colour by the extinction of Porphyry. The ship’s crew were also Blues. They painted the catapult spears with blue paint, and painted the cheeks of the vessel blue too, and the blades of the oars.
Reports arrived at last that Porphyry had been sighted farther along the north coast, moving slowly down towards the City, and that he was in a mischievous mood. Belisarius ordered a keen look-out to be kept; and tested the catapult, giving the militia-men a drill in its management to make them perfect. He instructed them to aim at a cask which he had thrown overboard until they could calculate to a nicety the propulsive force of the ropes when tightened with a crank. Presently the look-out sighted the spouting Porphyry at half a mile’s distance. Porphyry came closer, swimming on the surface, and made straight for the vessel, as if he intended to ram it. He was an animal of intelligence and wit, and knew how terrible his reputation had become: at a sight of him ships used to put on all sail and flee before the wind, sometimes going fifty miles or more out of their course. But this ship held its ground.
Nearer and nearer came the beast, and now Belisarius gave the order to shoot. The spear hurtled through the air – and went clean through the cask at which the prudent militia-men, terrified of Porphyry’s anger, preferred still to aim. Porphyry contented himself with a flourish of his tail – which snapped two dozen oar-blades – and then dived and disappeared. But before he went Belisarius had driven a heavy arrow into him, from a stiff steel bow of the sort used in siege-warfare against enemy who try to force city-gates under the cover of shields of extreme thickness. He aimed where he reckoned the brain would be; but the anatomy of the whale is peculiar, and the arrow sank out of sight in protective blubber.
That was the last that the hunters saw of Porphyry; after cruising about for a few days they returned. The crew had talked matters over among themselves, and agreed on a story that satisfied their pride. According to them, Belisarius had shot with his bow but missed, and they had then shot with the catapult. The spear had gone straight into Porphyry’s open jaws, but Porphyry had bitten the shaft off and gone away bellowing, with the head of the spear deeply embedded in his throat. ‘Soon he will die of his wounds,’ they boasted, ‘and you will recognize our spear-head by its colour.’ The Greens refused to accept these claims, particularly as Belisarius had not supported them. All that he would say was: ‘The militia-men fought their catapult energetically and showed themselves accurate marksmen. I have handed in an official report to his Serenity the Emperor. Doubtless he will publish it, in due course.’ But, for the honour of the Blues, Justin withheld the report.
Porphyry continued to destroy nets and shipping for many year after this. The Greens, though convinced that the Blues had been cowards, were not anxious to make fools of themselves by volunteering to put an end to Porphyry.
CHAPTER 5
WAR WITH PERSIA
THE Emperor of the Romans and the Great King of the Persians are ancient enemies; yet they think of themselves, together, as the twin eyes of the world and as the joint light-houses of civilization. Each finds the existence of the other a comfort to him in the loneliness of his sacred office, and there is a note of comradeship which constantly recurs in the royal letters that they exchange – in time of war no less than in time of peace. They greet each other like two veteran backgammon players who play together in the wine-shop every day for the price of the day’s drinks. One eye, or one light-house, shines over a great part of Europe, and over Asia Minor, and part of Africa; the other, over immense territories in Greater Asia. It is true that in both cases the sovereignty exercised over many regions is only titular. The Persian cannot control such distant satrapies as Bactria and Sogdiana and Arachosia; and the Roman, at the time of which I am writing, had in all but title lost Britain to the Picts and Saxons, Gaul to the Franks and Burgundians, North Africa to the Vandals and Moors, Spain to one nation of Goths, and Italy, with Rome itself, to the other. Nevertheless, the true control of a large part of the world remained, and remains, in the power of one or the other, and so also does the nominal control of another large part.
Fortunately for world peace, there are deserts of sand and great rocky uplands intervening between the two realms for practically the entire length of their common frontier – which runs from the eastern end of the Black Sea through Armenia and behind Syria and Palestine to the northern end of the Red Sea. Seldom in the history of the world have Western armies succeeded in conquering parts of Asia beyond these boundaries, or Eastern armies overflowed into Europe or Africa. Even when this has happened the invasion has not been lasting. Xerxes the Persian failed to conquer Greece, despite the immense armies he brought over into Europe by his bridge of boats across the Hellespont; Alexander the Greek conquered Persia, but his swollen Empire did not survive his death. More usually the invaders from either side have been defeated close to the frontier; or, if successful, have not attempted to retain the territories occupied, but have retired home after exacting tribute in some form or other. Such conflicts have almost all taken place in Mesopotamia, in the region between the upper waters of Euphrates and Tigris. This is the most convenient campaigning ground – which, however, favours the Persians in the matter of ready access to food depots and garrison towns.
For several centuries after the time of Alexander, the Persian Empire was known as the Parthian because the Arsacids, the ruling dynasty, were of Parthian origin; but, about a hundred years before Constantine turned Christian and transferred the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, a descendant of the old Persian Kings, by name Artaxerxes, had revolted and overthrown the Arsacids. His new dynasty, the Sassanids, restored the Persian name and tradition to the Empire and has maintained itself in power ever since. (At the time of which I write, Kobad, the nineteenth of the line, wore the regal diadem.) The Sassanids had purified and strengthened the ancient religion of the Persians, which is the worship of fire according to the revelation of the Prophet and Mage Zoroaster. This religion had been much corrupted by Greek philosophy – as the ancient Roman and Jewish religions had also been, and the Christian religion too. (Compare the fine, simple story contained in the four Gospels, obviously born among illiterate peasants and fishermen who had never studied either grammar or rhetoric, with the wearisome philosophic Christianity of our time!) But King Artaxerxes banished all the philosophers from his realm. They returned to us with Persian notions and inflicted on Christianity a new heresy, the Manichean. These Manichees have hit upon a totally original theory of the nature of Christ. They hold that it was dual, and not only dual but contradictory: Jesus, the historical man, being imperfect and a sinner, an
d Christ, his spiritual counterpart, being a Divine Deliverer. Manichees are hated both in Persia and Christendom, and I have not a word to say in their defence. The Persians encourage them only in Persian Armenia, in order to weaken the bonds of religious sympathy between that country, which is Christian, and Roman Armenia, which is Christian too and rigidly Orthodox.
By forbidding talk of an unnecessary sort – this is all that philosophy appears to be to a practical person like me – and ordering a return to a primitive directness of action, speech, and thought, Artaxerxes restored the native power of the Persians alike in the civil and military sides of government. Great wars were waged between his descendants and successive Roman Emperors, in which, on the whole, the Persians had the advantage. But the fourteenth of the line was Bahram the Hunter, so called because he had a passion for hunting the wild ass of the desert. He became involved in a war with us because he persecuted Christians as fanatically almost as we persecute our fellow-Christians; and was conquered in battle and forced to pledge his royal honour to keep the peace for a hundred years. His sons and grandsons, for fear of provoking the anger of his ghost, kept the peace strictly, and the hundred years did not expire until modern times. Then, as I have already mentioned, war broke out again, and Anastasius’s army, disgracefully led, was disgracefully defeated. This was the campaign which the burgess Simeon had witnessed.