Jack Ludlow: Triumph

The Goths lost more than Flavius, yet he was forced to retire to Portus once more, to bathe and have such gashes and abrasions treated, to be made aware – and not for the first time, as he examined old scars and recalled other areas of his body rendered black and blue by combat – of how lucky he had been in so many years of battle to still be whole.

‘You are a fool to risk yourself. You’re a general, you should behave like one.’

This was the constant lament from Antonina, who could not be barred from observance of his latest lacerations and bruises. It would have seemed like sympathy if he had not wondered, instead, if her concern was prompted by fear for her own needs should he expire. Only Flavius alive made her of use to Theodora.

Justinian responded to the peace offer from Totila by advising the Goth to treat with his representative in Italy. Flavius knew as much as the Goth that he was in receipt of a refusal. The war had to go on, but with little faith from the general in command that he could repeat his previous success; he had neither the men to do so nor, in the likes of Bessas and John Vitalianus, inferior commanders who would unquestioningly obey his orders, the former because of his greed, John through the connection he had to Theodora through his marriage.

Not a man to rest, even with odds so heavily stacked against him, and sure he had both luck and God with him, Flavius left Portus with nothing but token protection and marched with all the men he could muster on Rome, which he entered into unopposed to find much destruction. Time was not on his side and he needed new gates made, added to which there was a huge stretch of wall to be repaired.

Bluff was needed; ramparts were erected that would not withstand much in the way of assault or mining but he made sure that was hidden on the outer face by adding a smooth coating of lime. Employing the ditch he had dug prior to the previous siege Flavius had stakes placed in the base to make it more of an obstacle. Most important of all were the supplies he brought in to the city, which could not rely as it usually did on the ravaged countryside that surrounded it.

Totila did not make it to Ravenna; the news of the Belisarius move obliged him to reverse his course and make for Rome, where he expected a quick return to the status in which he had left it. Yet the Goth army moved at no great pace, giving Flavius over three weeks to effect repairs, so what the enemy was faced with, a lack of gates notwithstanding, looked formidable; it was not, but show was as good as strength when that was the only choice.

Totila did not hesitate to attack, he threw his men forward with no preparation at the open spaces where the gates once stood, these now filled with the best troops Flavius could deploy. They held because the Goths, in such a constrained killing zone, could not deploy sufficient numbers to overpower the defence and, pressing forward, they were at the mercy of murderous archery and rocks thrown from the parapets to either side.

Exhaustion and the approach of nightfall brought the fighting to an end but it was renewed at first light, only this time Flavius had decided not to stay on the defensive and that threw the Goths into such confusion that, when assaulted, they fell back. The danger for Flavius now was a too eager pursuit and it was only by riding out at the head of his fastest cavalry that he could get ahead of his own fighting men and, having ordered a withdrawal, could cover their retreat.

On the third day he again varied his tactics, leading his whole force out of Rome to confront Totila on open ground. That it was luck that carried the day rather than better soldiering was later accepted. The man bearing the standard of his king fell and the banner with him, which indicated to the Goths their leader had perished and that caused a degree of panic. In some disarray they did recover the standard but the heart had gone from their purpose and, since he held the ground, Flavius could claim to have been victorious.

Whatever decided Totila to abandon his attempt to take Rome – it was suspected to be arguments amongst his nobles – the Goth King withdrew to the east to winter, this while Flavius set about the task of once more making the city the formidable obstacle it had been on his first campaign. When the next season arrived, Rome had warehouses bulging with food, a strong garrison, solid walls and new gates.

Copies of the keys to the city had been sent to Justinian.

What drew Totila off were the activities of John Vitalianus. The Goth decided he was a thorn he had to excise and he marched south with a large part of his army to effect this. By avoiding the roads and using mountain tracks he avoided John’s scouts and managed to surprise him in his encampment, which he attacked after the sun went down. While that was a success in the sense that the Byzantines fled, it failed, due to the darkness, in his main aim, which was destruction.

Unbeknown to the Goths, reinforcements were beginning to arrive from Justinian, the largest contingent from Armenia, but they were immediately reduced in number by being caught in an ambush by Totila, the price paid for their commander refusing to put himself under the orders of John Vitalianus and thus caught unprepared and exposed.

An even larger contingent was coming with Valerian, magister militum per Armeniam , but he took the view that it was too late in the year to begin campaigning and settled down to winter in Illyricum. It took a direct order from Justinian and the arrival of spring to get Valerian to move across the Adriatic.

There he combined with John Vitalianus and Flavius, who had left Rome under the command of a general called Conon. Totila was not idle; he knew where his enemies were and brought all the forces he could muster south to fight them in what became a to and fro set of engagements that were far from decisive for either side.

Rome came close to being lost again due to the behaviour of Conon; he had, no doubt, heard of the kind of monies Bessas had made when he held the city and he set out to copy his behaviour, selling food at inflated prices and controlling what came into the city. This time the citizens rebelled and the soldiers, unpaid for a year, declined to intervene.

Conon was murdered in the Senate House and, realising how far that put them beyond the approval of Constantinople, they sent a message to Justinian threatening to hand the city over to Totila if their crimes were not pardoned and the troops supposed to protect them paid, both demands rapidly acceded to.

Flavius calculated that he did not have the men to beat the Goths, and thanks to his subordinates the mood of the natives was no longer one of welcoming the men from the east as liberators. With a war seemingly endless, in which their homes and crops were either destroyed or seized and their wealth expropriated by both sides, the circumstances did not exist for a repeat of the previous conquest without the deployment of overwhelming force.

Sending piecemeal packets would not serve, the fighting would go on but to no conclusion. That message required to be sent back to the capital, and since he assumed that all his previous pleas for more men had to bypass the suspicions of Theodora, he decided that the appeal should be made to the Empress, and there was only one envoy he could think of who might persuade her.

‘My place is here by you.’

‘Your place is like mine, Antonina, where the empire needs you. I require you to go to Theodora-’

‘Require!’ was the huffy response.

‘I need more soldiers and a lot of them. I need you to persuade the Empress to cease to worry about what ambitions I might have and think of the good of the empire as well. I can write to her, I can send someone else, but I have no one in my entourage or among my officers who can do that which you will find easy. Not only to get to see her immediately but to have her listen.’