Jack Ludlow: Triumph

To his rear, runners emerged from the open gate carrying flaming torches, others bearing amphorae of oil, this poured over the wooden constructs before the flames were applied. With the Goth foot soldiers stuck, Witigis got his horsemen mounted, no doubt expecting the customary charge from his enemies needed to drive home the reverse.

Flavius failed to oblige; with superb discipline and on command, the bucellarii of his comitatus reined in their mounts. Once certain the rams and towers were well alight they shepherded the men who had fired them back through the gates, which were quickly shut.

Witigis had launched several simultaneous assaults, indeed there was good reason to believe that the effort just repulsed had acted as something of a feint to pin the main defence. Once back inside the walls and dismounted, Flavius was brought news from the other places at risk, the most dangerous being on the Porta Cornelia hard by Hadrian’s Tomb on the western walls.

There, abundant foliage and the remains of exterior buildings had allowed the enemy to get close to the base without suffering too many casualties and this obliged the archers placed there to lean far out to take aim, this obviously exposing them, which led to losses that soon became too serious to sustain. Also, the catapults placed on the roof of the mausoleum were of no use since they could only fire outwards.

Running out of stones to drop on the heads of their ladder-climbing enemies and with too many wounded bowmen to hold by arrow fire, Constantinus had ordered broken up the numerous classical statues that adorned the rim of the massive tomb. These were then hurled at their enemies in sufficient quantity to drive them back and thus render them vulnerable to the catapults.

Word came that an assault on the Porta Pancratia, also on the west bank of the Tiber but further to the south of Hadrian’s Tomb, had likewise been repulsed. Yet as this good news was being delivered, word of real threat came from the Porta Chiusa, three gates to the south of the attack Flavius had just smashed.

He had known from his very first inspections this was a vulnerable spot: due to natural subsidence the original wall had collapsed and a new one had been built on the outer side to shield the damaged section. The Goths, as well as employing siege engines, had been mining under that outer wall, and given they were seemingly successful, there was danger of a collapse. If they followed that up they would press hard and, unaided, his men might not be able to hold.

Such an emergency required the presence of the man in command, the sight of which raised the spirits of those facing the enemy. Here was Flavius Belisarius, who had so often outwitted his opponents. That he did now; the space between the two walls was known as the Vivarium, it being used to graze livestock, but there were none there now and it represented an empty zone, one Flavius saw he could use to advantage.

Instead of seeking to oppose the Goth mining he let it proceed, and soon, as a battering ram was added to effort, the sound of crashing masonry filled the air, followed by a billowing cloud of dust, proof a breach had been created. The first of the attackers who came clambering over the pile of debris could not do so in any real order. What faced them across the greensward Vivarium was not another wall but one where the rubble of the previous collapse had been so raised as to make it defensible.

The sight of such an unexpected obstacle took the verve out of the Goth thrust; it was obvious the man leading the attack was at a loss to know how to proceed against a hindrance he and his men were seeing for the first time. Flavius sent forward his Isaurians to engage them, throwing the Goth ranks into confusion and such disorder that they sought to withdraw through the breach they had just made. Climbing to get clear, the rubble was no easier than their entry and that left them as easy prey to the spears and swords of their enemies.

As soon as the withdrawal turned into flight, Flavius came forward with his cavalry and that ensured a second rout, one that again allowed his men to fire the engines of war the Goths had abandoned and send, in the smoke from all along the east wall, a message to Witigis that his first attempt to retake Rome had failed abysmally.

Even if it was to be the first of many such a reverse, it must provide a dent to their morale, while that of the men Flavius led must likewise soar to see the enemy so comprehensively repulsed. Added to that, it might still the grumbles of those Roman citizens who feared the city was indefensible.

‘Your Imperial Eminence must be aware that with the troops I have at my disposal, and having had to detach numerous bodies to act as garrisons in those places which have surrendered to your authority in the southern half of Italy, I can do no more than hold what I have without either reinforcements or some act of others to draw off Witigis and his forces. Lacking that, if I can repel attempts to retake Rome, I cannot break the siege and proceed to fulfil that aim with which you charged me.’

Procopius finished reading the despatch that, once approved, would be sent to Justinian and he looked to his general for authorisation; it had, of course, been discussed prior to composition and included a report on the successful repulse of the first attempt by Witigis to take the city. The information regarding garrisons was accurate; close to a full third of his army was thus engaged and he feared to gather them to him and leave the route south open to rupture.

His secretary and assessor was forced to await a response. Flavius was deep in thought, Procopius wondering if those ruminations might include reflections on the nature of the man they both served. It was no secret between them that Procopius reposed less faith in Justinian than the army commander. Flavius talked of him as a friend, Procopius saw him as a fickle weathercock too much influenced by his endemically suspicious wife.

Always seeing plots to depose her husband – that some were real was true but to such a vivid imagination more were pure fantasy – Procopius was as aware as his master that the Empress Theodora saw Flavius Belisarius as a major threat, not only to Justinian but through him to her own person, and her reasoning, to a disinterested mind, was understandable if misplaced.

The man who had won the Battle of Dara on the Persian frontier, the first victory against the Sassanid Empire for several decades, and defeated the Vandals in North Africa was popular in a capital city where those who held the reins of power were not, being seen as honest and straightforward in his dealings, a reputation spread by the very men he led into battle.

The imperial couple stood at the apex of empire and tended to be blamed for everything seen to be wrong, not least the endemic corruption of the empire’s officials with whom the common folk had to deal. Justinian had worked hard since coming to power to curb the depredations as well as the perceived rights the patrician class had abrogated to themselves over centuries: well-paid sinecures and offices in a vast and sprawling empire in which the diversion of monies intended for the imperial treasury was too easy and justice in the courts went to those with the deepest purse.

In trying to promote men of merit regardless of class, Justinian had become locked in a battle of wills with what he called a hydra-headed monster, a nexus of self-interest so tangled it defied full comprehension. The empire must be governed; those qualified to do so and who were incorruptible were too few for the tasks that required execution, all layered into a system: tax-collecting, provincial governance, judicial oversight and military commands.

Added to that there was a relentless campaign of vilification from those who felt threatened by moves to suborn their privileges, while neither Justinian nor Theodora were free from the taint of being born into the wrong class by those who cared deeply for their bloodlines. Justinian’s father might have been a patrician but his mother came, like the Emperor Justin and thus his succeeding nephew, from a clan of what were held to be Illyrian peasants.