Defeat and death of Teias, the

last king of the Goths. A.D. 553, March

[Jan. and Feb. 553 (?)]

The Gothic war was yet alive. The bravest of the nation retired beyond the Po; and Teias was unanimously chosen to succeed and revenge their departed hero. The new king immediately sent ambassadors to implore, or rather to purchase, the aid of the Franks, and nobly lavished for the public safety the riches which had been deposited in the palace of Pavia. The residue of the royal treasure was guarded by his brother Aligern at Cuma in Čampania; but the strong castle which Totila had fortified was closely besieged by the arms of Narses. From the Alps to the foot of mount Vesuvius, the Gothic king, by rapid and secret marches, advanced to the relief of his brother, eluded the vigilance of the Roman chiefs, and pitched his camp on the banks of the Sarnus or Draco,72 which flows from Nuceria into the bay of Naples. The river separated the two armies; sixty days were consumed in distant and fruitless combats, and Teias maintained this important post, till he was deserted by his fleet and the hope of subsistence. With reluctant steps he ascended the Lactarian mount, where the physicians of Rome, since the time of Galen, had sent their patients for the benefit of the air and the milk.7 73 But the Goths soon embraced a more generous resolution: to descend the hill to dismiss their horses, and to die in arms and in the possession of freedom. The king marched at their head, bearing in his right hand a lance, and an ample buckler in his left: with the one he struck dead the foremost of the assailants; with the other he received the weapons which every hand was ambitious to aim against his life. After a combat of many hours, his left arm was fatigued by the weight of twelve javelins which hung from his shield. Without moving from his ground or suspending his blows, the hero called aloud on his attendants for a fresh buckler, but in the moment while his side was uncovered it was pierced by a mortal dart. He fell; and his head, exalted on a spear, proclaimed to the nations that the Gothic kingdom was no more. But the example of his death served only to animate the

The

72 The Apákov of Procopius (Goth. 1. iv. c. 35) is evidently the Sarnus. text is accused or altered by the rash violence of Cluverius (1. iv. c. 3, p. 1156); but Camillo Pellegrini of Naples (Discorsi sopra la Campania Felice, p. 330, 331) has proved from old records, that as early as the year 822 that river was called the Dracontio, or Draconcello.

73 Galen (de Method. Medendi, 1. v. apud Cluver. 1. iv. c. 3, p. 1159, 1160) describes the lofty site, pure air, and rich milk of mount Lactarius, whose medicinal benefits were equally known and sought in the time of Symmachus (1. vi. epist. 1817, ed. Seeck) and Cassiodorius (Var. xi. 10). Nothing is now left except the name of the town Lettere.

companions who had sworn to perish with their leader. They fought till darkness descended on the earth. They reposed on their arms. The combat was renewed with the return of light, and maintained with unabated vigour till the evening of the second day. The repose of a second night, the want of water, and the loss of their bravest champions, determined the surviving Goths to accept the fair capitulation which the prudence of Narses was inclined to propose. They embraced the alternative of residing in Italy as the subjects and soldiers of Justinian, or departing with a portion of their private wealth, in search of some independent country.74 Yet the oath of fidelity or exile was alike rejected by one thousand Goths, who broke away before the treaty was signed, and boldly effected their retreat to the walls of Pavia. The spirit as well as the situation of Aligern prompted him to imitate rather than to bewail his brother: a strong and dexterous archer, he transpierced with a single arrow the armour and breast of his antagonist; and his military conduct defended Cuma 75 above a year against the forces of the Romans. Their industry had scooped the Sibyll's cave 76 into a prodigious mine; combustible materials were introduced to consume the temporary props; the wall and the gate of Cuma sunk into the cavern, but the ruins formed a deep and inaccessible precipice. On the fragment of a rock Aligern stood alone and unshaken, till he calmly surveyed the hopeless condition of his country, and judged it more honourable to be the friend of Narses than the slave of the Franks.77 After the death of Teias, the Roman general separated his troops to reduce the cities of Italy; Lucca sustained a long and vigorous siege; and such was the humanity

74 Buat (tom. xi. p. 2, &c.) conveys to his favourite Bavaria this remnant of Goths, who by others are buried in the mountains of Uri, or restored to their native isle of Gothland (Mascou, Annot. xxi.).

75 I leave Scaliger (Animadvers. in Euseb. p. 59) and Salmasius (Exercitat. Pliman. p. 51, 52) to quarrel about the origin of Cuma, the oldest of the Greek colonies in Italy (Strab. 1. v. p. 372 [4, § 4]. Velleius Paterculus, l. i. c. 4), already vacant in Juvenal's time (Satir. iii.), and now in ruins.

76 Agathias (1. i. c. [leg. p.] 21 [c. 10]) settles the Sibyll's cave under the wall of Cuma; he agrees with Servius (ad l. vi. Æneid.); nor can I perceive why their opinion should be rejected by Heyne, the excellent editor of Virgil (tom. ii. p. 650, 651). In urbe mediâ secreta religio! But Cuma was not yet built; and the lines (1. vi. 96, 97) would become ridiculous, if Æneas were actually in a Greek city. [Cp. Beloch, Campanien, p. 160. There is no reason to suppose that the cave which is now shown as the Sibyl's grotto, south of L. Avernus, had any ancient tradition associated with it.]

77 [The surrender of Cuma was subsequent to that of Lucca.]

Invasion of

Italy by the
Franks and
Alemanni.
A.D. 553,
August

or the prudence of Narses that the repeated perfidy of the inhabitants could not provoke him to exact the forfeit lives of their hostages. These hostages were dismissed in safety; and their grateful zeal at length subdued the obstinacy of their countrymen.78

Before Lucca had surrendered, Italy was overwhelmed by a new deluge of Barbarians. A feeble youth, the grandson of Clovis, reigned over the Austrasians or oriental Franks.79 The guardians of Theodebald entertained with coldness and reluctance the magnificent promises of the Gothic ambassadors. But the spirit of a martial people outstripped the timid counsels of [Leatharis] the court: two brothers, Lothaire and Buccelin,80 the dukes of the Alemanni, stood forth as the leaders of the Italian war; and seventy-five thousand Germans descended in the autumn from the Rhætian Alps into the plain of Milan. The vanguard of the Roman army was stationed near the Po, under the conduct of Fulcaris, a bold Herulian, who rashly conceived that personal bravery was the sole duty and merit of a commander. As he marched without order or precaution along the Æmilian way, an ambuscade of Franks suddenly rose from the amphitheatre of Parma; his troops were surprised and routed; but their leader refused to fly, declaring to the last moment that death was less terrible than the angry countenance of Narses.81 The death of Fulcaris, and the retreat of the surviving chiefs, decided the fluctuating and rebellious temper of the Goths; they flew to the standard of their deliverers, and admitted them into the cities which still resisted the arms of the Roman general. The conqueror of Italy opened a free passage to the irresistible torrent of Barbarians. They passed under the walls of Cesena, and answered by threats and reproaches the advice of Aligern 82 that the Gothic treasures could no longer repay the labour of an invasion. Two thousand Franks were destroyed

78 There is some difficulty in connecting the 35th chapter of the ivth book of the Gothic war of Procopius with the first book of the history of Agathias. We must now relinquish a statesman and soldier, to attend the footsteps of a poet and rhetorician (1. i. p. 11; 1. ii. p. 51, edit. Louvre). [Procopius ends in March, and Agathias begins in April with the 27th year of Justinian.]

79 [Theudebald had succeeded Theudebert in A.D. 548.]

80 Among the fabulous exploits of Buccelin, he discomfited and slew Belisarius, subdued Italy and Sicily, &c. See in the historians of France, Gregory of Tours (tom. ii. 1. iii. c. 32, p. 203), and Aimoin (tom. iii. 1. ii. de Gestis Francorum, c. 23. P. 59).

81 [Agathias says, the speech of Narses.]

82 [Who after the capitulation of Cuma was appointed governor of Cesena.]

by the skill and valour of Narses himself, who sallied from Rimini at the head of three hundred horse, to chastise the licentious rapine of their march. On the confines of Samnium the two brothers divided their forces. With the right wing, Buccelin assumed the spoil of Campania, Lucania, and Bruttium; with the left, Lothaire accepted the plunder of Apulia and Calabria. They followed the coast of the Mediterranean and the Hadriatic, as far as Rhegium and Otranto, and the extreme lands of Italy were the term of their destructive progress. The Franks, who were Christians and Catholics, contented themselves with simple pillage and occasional murder. But the churches, which their piety had spared, were stripped by the sacrilegious hands of the Alemanni, who sacrificed horses' heads to their native deities of the woods and rivers; 83 they melted or profaned the consecrated vessels, and the ruins of shrines and altars were stained with the blood of the faithful. Buccelin was actuated by ambition, and Lothaire by avarice. The former aspired to restore the Gothic kingdom; the latter, after a promise to his brother of speedy succours, returned by the same road to deposit his treasure beyond the Alps. The strength of their armies was already wasted by the change of climate and contagion of disease; the Germans revelled in the vintage of Italy; and their own intemperance avenged in some degree the miseries of a defenceless people.

Franks and

Narses. A.D.

At the entrance of the spring, the Imperial troops, who had Defeat of the guarded the cities, assembled to the number of eighteen Alamanni by thousand men, in the neighbourhood of Rome. Their winter 554 hours had not been consumed in idleness. By the command, and after the example, of Narses they repeated each day their military exercise on foot and on horseback, accustomed their ear to obey the sound of the trumpet, and practised the steps and evolutions of the Pyrrhic dance. From the straits of Sicily, Buccelin, with thirty thousand Franks and Alemanni, slowly moved towards Capua, occupied with a wooden tower the bridge of Casilinum,84 covered his right by the stream of the Vulturnus, and secured the rest of his encampment by a rampart of sharp stakes and a circle of waggons, whose wheels

83 Agathias notices their superstition in a philosophic tone (l. i. p. 18 [c. F.]). At Zug, in Switzerland, idolatry still prevailed in the year 613: St. Columban and St. Gall were the Apostles of that rude country; and the latter founded an hermitage, which has swelled into an ecclesiastical principality and a populous city, the seat of freedom and commerce.

84 [Casilinum, on the Vulturnus, is the modern Capua; the ancient Capua, about 3 miles distant, is now S. Maria di Capua Vetere.]

[Garda]

were buried in the earth. He impatiently expected the return
of Lothaire; ignorant, alas! that his brother could never return,
and that the chief and his army had been swept away by a
strange disease 85
on the banks of the lake Benacus, between
Trent and Verona. The banners of Narses soon approached the
Vulturnus, and the eyes of Italy were anxiously fixed on the
event of this final contest. Perhaps the talents of the Roman
general were most conspicuous in the calm operations which pre-
cede the tumult of a battle. His skilful movements intercepted
the subsistence of the Barbarian, deprived him of the advantage
of the bridge and river, and, in the choice of the ground and
moment of action, reduced him to comply with the inclination
of his enemy. On the morning of the important day, when the
ranks were already formed, a servant, for some trivial fault, was
killed by his master, one of the leaders of the Heruli. The
justice or passion of Narses was awakened: he summoned the
offender to his presence, and, without listening to his excuses,
gave the signal to the minister of death. If the cruel master
had not infringed the laws of his nation, this arbitrary execution
was not less unjust than it appears to have been imprudent.
The Heruli felt the indignity; they halted; but the Roman
general, without soothing their rage or expecting their resolu-
tion, called aloud, as the trumpets sounded, that, unless they
hastened to occupy their place, they would lose the honour of
the victory. His troops were disposed 86 in a long front, the
cavalry on the wings; in the centre, the heavy-armed foot; the
archers and slingers in the rear. The Germans advanced in a
sharp-pointed column, of the form of a triangle or solid wedge.
They pierced the feeble centre of Narses, who received them
with a smile into the fatal snare and directed his wings of
cavalry insensibly to wheel on their flanks and encompass their
rear. The host of the Franks and Alamanni consisted of in-
fantry: a sword and buckler hung by their side, and they used
as their weapons of offence a weighty hatchet and a hooked
javelin, which were only formidable in close combat or at a
short distance. The flower of the Roman archers on horseback,

85 See the death of Lothaire in Agathias (1. ii. p. 38 [c. 3]), and Paul Warnefrid, surnamed Diaconus (1. ii. c. 3 [leg. 2], 775). The Greek makes him rave and tear his flesh. He had plundered churches. [Leuthar's troops had previously been surprised and defeated near Fano.]

86 Père Daniel (Hist. de la Milice Françoise, tom. i. p. 17-21) has exhibited a fanciful representation of this battle, somewhat in the manner of the Chevalier Folard, the once famous editor of Polybius, who fashioned to his own habits and opinions all the military operations of antiquity.