of Italy depended on his life; and the deserters pointed to the conspicuous horse, a bay,85 with a white face, which he rode on that memorable day. "Aim at the bay horse," was the universal cry. Every bow was bent, every javelin was directed against that fatal object, and the command was repeated and obeyed by thousands who were ignorant of its real motive. The bolder Barbarians advanced to the more honourable combat of swords and spears; and the praise of an enemy has graced the fall of Visandus, the standard-bearer,86 who maintained his foremost station, till he was pierced with thirteen wounds, perhaps by the hand of Belisarius himself. The Roman general was strong, active, and dexterous; on every side he discharged his weighty and mortal strokes; his faithful guards imitated his valour and defended his person; and the Goths, after the loss of a thousand men, fled before the arms of an hero. They were rashly pursued to their camp; and the Romans, oppressed by multitudes, made a gradual, and at length a precipitate, retreat to the gates of the city; the gates were shut (Porta against the fugitives; and the public terror was increased by the report that Belisarius was slain. His countenance was indeed disfigured by sweat, dust, and blood; his voice was hoarse, his strength was almost exhausted; but his unconquerable spirit still remained; he imparted that spirit to his desponding companions; and their last desperate charge was felt by the flying Barbarians, as if a new army, vigorous and entire, had been poured from the city. The Flaminian gate was thrown open to a real triumph; but it Valour of was not before Belisarius had visited every post, and provided for the public safety, that he could be persuaded by his wife and friends to taste the needful refreshments of food and sleep. In the more improved state of the art of war, a general is seldom required, or even permitted, to display the personal prowess of a soldier; and the example of Belisarius may be added to the rare examples of Henry IV., of Pyrrhus, and of Alexander. Salaria] Belisarius of Rome After this first and unsuccessful trial of their enemies, the His defence whole army of the Goths passed the Tiber, and formed the Early in siege of the city, which continued above a year, till their final 85 An horse of a bay or red colour was styled bios by the Greeks, balan by the Barbarians, and spadix by the Romans. Honesti spadices, says Virgil (Georgic. L iii. 72, with the Observations of Martin and Heyne). Zradit or Baior sign hes a branch of the palm-tree, whose name, doivit, is synonymous to red (Aulus Gellius. ii. 26). 86 I interpret Bavõadápios, not as a proper name, but an office, standard-bearer, from bandum (vexillum), a Barbaric word adopted by the Greeks and Romans (Paul Diacon. Lic. 20, p. 760. Grot. Nomina Gothica, p. 575 Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p. 539, 540). [But we should expect Bardodópos.] March 237] departure. Whatever fancy may conceive, the severe compass of the geographer defines the circumference of Rome within a line of twelve miles and three hundred and forty-five paces; and that circumference, except in the Vatican, has invariably been the same from the triumph of Aurelian to the peaceful but obscure reign of the modern popes.87 But in the day of her greatness, the space within her walls was crowded with habitations and inhabitants; and the populous suburbs, that stretched along the public roads, were darted like so many rays from one common centre. Adversity swept away these extraneous ornaments, and left naked and desolate a considerable part even of the seven hills. Yet Rome in its present state could send into the field above thirty thousand males of a military age; 88 and, notwithstanding the want of discipline and exercise, the far greater part, inured to the hardships of poverty, might be capable of bearing arms for the defence of their country and religion. The prudence of Belisarius did not neglect this important resource. His soldiers were relieved by the zeal and diligence of the people, who watched while they slept, and laboured while they reposed; he accepted the voluntary service of the bravest and most indigent of the Roman youth; and the companies of townsmen sometimes represented, in a vacant post, the presence of the troops which had been drawn away to more essential duties. But his just confidence was placed in the veterans who had fought under his banner in the Persian and African wars; and, although that gallant band was reduced to five thousand men, he undertook, with such contemptible numbers, to defend a circle of twelve miles, against an army of one hundred and fifty thousand Barbarians. In the walls of Rome, which Belisarius constructed or restored, the materials of ancient architecture may be discerned; and the whole fortification was completed, except in a chasm still extant between the Pincian and Flaminian gates, which the prejudices of the Goths and 89 87 M. d'Anville has given, in the Mémoires of the Academy for the year 1756 (tom. xxx. p. 198-236), a plan of Rome on a smaller scale, but far more accurate than that which he had delineated in 1738 for Rollin's history. Experience had improved his knowledge; and, instead of Rossi's topography, he used the new and excellent map of Nolli. Pliny's old measure of xiii must be reduced to viii miles. It is easier to alter a text than to remove hills or buildings. [The change is unnecessary.] 88 In the year 1709, Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. iii. p. 218) reckoned 138,568 Christian souls, besides 8000 or 10,000 Jews-without souls ?—In the year 1763, the numbers exceeded 160,000. 89 The accurate eye of Nardini (Roma Antica, l. i. c. viii. p. 31) could distinguish the tumultuarie opere di Belisario. Romans left under the effectual guard of St. Peter the apostle.20 The battlements or bastions were shaped in sharp angles; a ditch, broad and deep, protected the foot of the rampart; and the archers on the rampart were assisted by military engines: the balista, a powerful cross-bow, which darted short but massy arrows; the onagri, or wild asses, which, on the principle of a sling, threw stones and bullets of an enormous size.91 A chain was drawn across the Tiber; the arches of the aqueducts were made impervious, and the mole or sepulchre of Hadrian 92 was converted, for the first time, to the uses of a citadel. That venerable structure, which contained the ashes of the Antonines, was a circular turret, rising from a quadrangular basis: it was covered with the white marble of Paros, and decorated by the statues of gods and heroes; and the lover of the arts must read with a sigh that the works of Praxiteles or Lysippus were torn from their lofty pedestals, and hurled into the ditch on the heads of the besiegers. 93 To each of his lieutenants Belisarius assigned the defence of a gate with the wise and peremptory instruction that, whatever might be the alarm, they should steadily adhere to their respective posts and trust their general for the safety of Rome. The formidable host of the Goths was insufficient to embrace the ample measure of the city; of the fourteen gates, seven only were invested from the Prænestine to the Flaminian way; 94 and Vitiges divided his troops into six camps, each of 90 The fissure and leaning in the upper part of the wall, which Procopius observed (Goth. 1. i. c. 13), is visible to the present hour (Donat. Roma Vetus, 1. i. c. 17, p. 53, 54). [This bit is known as the Muro Torto.] 1 Lipsius (Opp. tom. iii. Poliorcet. 1. iii.) was ignorant of this clear and conspicuous passage of Procopius (Goth. 1. i. c. 21). The engine was named övaypos, the wild ass, a calcitrando (Hen. Steph. Thesaur. Linguæ Græc. tom. ii. p. 1340, 1341, tom. iii. p. 877). I have seen an ingenious model, contrived and executed by General Melville, which imitates or surpasses the art of antiquity. 92 The description of this mausoleum, or mole, in Procopius (1. i. c. 25) is the first and best. The height above the walls axedòv és dílov Boλýv [not the height, but the length of each of the sides]. On Nolli's great plan, the sides measure 260 English feet. 93 Praxiteles excelled in Fauns, and that of Athens was his own masterpiece. Rome now contains above thirty of the same character. When the ditch of St. Angelo was cleansed under Urban VIII. the workmen found the sleeping Faun of the Barberini palace; but a leg, a thigh, and the right arm had been broken from that beautiful statue (Winckelmann, Hist. de l'Art, tom. ii. p. 52, 53; tom. iii. p. 265); [The Dancing Faun, now at Florence, was also found here.] 94 [The six camps of the Goths invested according to Procopius" five gates," from P. Flaminia to P. Prænestina, the intervening being P. Salaria, P. Nomentana (close to modern P. Pia) and P. Tiburtina (P. San Lorenzo). He does not include the P. Pinciana, which was only a postern. But he might have included the P. Labicana, which was adjacent to the P. Prænestina (together they form the modern P. Maggiore); as the camp which invested the one invested the other. Mr. J. H. Parker in his Archæology of Rome has sought to determine the positions of the camps, which are also discussed by Mr. Hodgkin (4, p. 146 sqq.).] Repulses a general as Bault of the which was fortified with a ditch and rampart. On the Tuscan side of the river, a seventh encampment was formed in the field or circus of the Vatican, for the important purpose of commanding the Milvian bridge and the course of the Tiber; but they approached with devotion the adjacent church of St. Peter; and the threshold of the holy apostles was respected during the siege by a Christian enemy. In the ages of victory, as often as the senate decreed some distant conquest, the consul denounced hostilities, by unbarring in solemn pomp the gates of the temple of Janus. 95 Domestic war now rendered the admonition superfluous, and the ceremony was superseded by the establishment of a new religion. But the brazen temple of Janus was left standing in the forum; of a size sufficient only to contain the statue of the god, five cubits in height, of a human form, but with two faces, directed to the east and west. The double gates were likewise of brass; and a fruitless effort to turn them on their rusty hinges revealed the scandalous secret that some Romans were still attached to the superstition of their ancestors. Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers to provide all the instruments of attack which antiquity had invented. Fascines were prepared to fill the ditches, scaling ladders to ascend the walls. The largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of four battering rams; their heads were armed with iron; they were suspended by ropes, and each of them was worked by the labour of fifty men. The lofty wooden turrets moved on wheels or rollers, and formed a spacious platform of the level of the rampart. On the morning of the nineteenth day, a general attack was made from the Prænestine gate to the Vatican seven Gothic columns, with their military engines, advanced to the assault; and the Romans who lined the ramparts listened with doubt and anxiety to the cheerful assurances of their commander. As soon as the enemy approached the ditch, Belisarius himself drew the first arrow; and such was his strength and dexterity that he transfixed the foremost of the Barbarian leaders. A shout of applause and victory was re-echoed along the wall. He drew a second arrow, and the stroke was followed with the same success and the same acclamation. The Roman general then gave the word that the archers should aim at the teams of oxen; they were 95 Procopius has given the best description of the temple of Janus, a national deity of Latium (Heyne, Excurs. v. ad 1. vii. Æneid.). It was once a gate in the primitive city of Romulus and Numa (Nardini, p. 13, 256, 329). Virgil has described the ancient rite, like a poet and an antiquarian. giore] instantly covered with mortal wounds; the towers which they drew remained useless and immoveable, and a single moment disconcerted the laborious projects of the king of the Goths. After this disappointment, Vitiges still continued, or feigned to continue, the assault of the Salarian gate, that he might divert the attention of his adversary, while his principal forces more strenuously attacked the Prænestine gate and the sepulchre [Porta Mag of Hadrian, at the distance of three miles from each other. Near the former, the double walls of the Vivarium 96 were low or broken; the fortifications of the latter were feebly guarded; the vigour of the Goths was excited by the hope of victory and spoil; and, if a single post had given way, the Romans, and Rome itself, were irrecoverably lost. This perilous day was the most glorious in the life of Belisarius. Amidst tumult and dismay, the whole plan of the attack and defence was distinctly present to his mind; he observed the changes of each instant, weighed every possible advantage, transported his person to the scenes of danger, and communicated his spirit in calm and decisive orders. The contest was fiercely maintained from the morning to the evening; the Goths were repulsed on all sides, and each Roman might boast that he had vanquished thirty Barbarians, if the strange disproportion of numbers were not counterbalanced by the merit of one man. Thirty thousand Goths, according to the confession of their own chiefs, perished in this bloody action; and the multitude of the wounded was equal to that of the slain. When they advanced to the assault, their close disorder suffered not a javelin to fall without effect; and, as they retired, the populace of the city joined the pursuit, and slaughtered, with impunity, the backs of their flying enemies. Belisarius instantly sallied from the gates; and, while the His sallies soldiers chaunted his name and victory, the hostile engines of war were reduced to ashes. Such was the loss and consternation of the Goths that, from this day, the siege of Rome degenerated into a tedious and indolent blockade; and they were incessantly harassed by the Roman general, who in frequent skirmishes destroyed above five thousand of their bravest troops. Their cavalry was unpractised in the use of the bow; their archers served on foot; and this divided force was incapable of contending with their adversaries, whose lances and arrows, at a Vivarium was an angle in the new wall inclosed for wild beasts (Procopius, Goth. 1. i. c. 23). The spot is still visible in Nardini (1. iv. c. 2, p. 159, 160) and Nolli's great plan of Rome. [The Vivarium was probably between the wall and the Via Labicana, close to the Porta Maggiore.] |
