Count Belisarius Read Free Page B

forbade all ecclesiastical disputation within the walls of his house, as being unprofitable to the soul and destroying the family peace. This was my mistress Antonina’s decision first of all, but he agreed with her after a time and made it his, and subjected even bishops and abbots, if they happened to be his guests, to the same discipline.
    So this was the first of the three oaths he swore; and the second was to his Emperor – to the old Emperor Anastasius, in whose reign he was born, and subsequently to the two successors of Anastasius; and the third oath was to my mistress Antonina as his wife. These remarks will serve as preface to the work which follows, which I am writing in extreme old age at Constantinople in the year of our Lord 571; which is the thirteen hundred and sixth year from the foundation of the City of Rome.
    Belisarius was born in the year of our Lord 500, and his motherregarded this as ominous. For the Devil was, she believed, allowed dominion on this earth for a thousand years, and at the close of this time mankind would finally be redeemed: therefore the year of her only son’s birth came, as she said, in the very centre of the long black night dividing the first day of glory from the second. But I, Eugenius the Eunuch, confess that I regard such opinions as superstitious and altogether unworthy of sensible persons; nor did my dear mistress Antonina think otherwise in these matters.
    This young Belisarius dutifully said good-bye to his mother and the household retainers, who (taking the slaves with the free and counting in children and old people) numbered some two hundred souls; and mounting his fine white pony rode towards Adrianople. There accompanied him John, the bailiff’s son, an Armenian boy of his own age who had played the part of Belisarius’s lieutenant in the small private army he enrolled from children living on the estate; and Palaeologus, a Greek tutor who had already taught him the rudiments of reading and writing and ciphering; and two Thracian slaves. Palaeologus was unarmed, but the slaves carried swords, and Belisarius and Armenian John had light bows suitable to their strength with a few good arrows. These boys were already very handy with their bows, both on foot and when mounted; as might be expected. For the Armenians are a sturdy race and Belisarius was of Slavonic stock – as his name Beli Tsar, meaning the White Prince, indicates; the heathen Slavs, who live beyond the River Danube, are notable archers and horsemen. His father’s family had been settled at Tchermen for a hundred years, and was wholly Romanized and had been raised to the second of the three ranks of nobility.
    This journey from Tchermen was by the fields, not by the main road from Constantinople to Adrianople, which passes near this village. Several times Belisarius and John, with their tutor’s permission, rode off the track in pursuit of game; and Belisarius was fortunate enough to shoot a hare, which provided a meal for them that night at the inn where they proposed to lodge. It was only a small inn, not much frequented, and the old landlady was in deep distress: her husband had recently been killed by the fall of an elm-branch while tending his vines, and their man-slave had thereupon run off, stealing the only horse in the stables, and might be anywhere by now. She had only a young girl slave left, who inexpertly tended the animals and vines while she herself worked in the house. The travellers perceivedthat at this inn they must provide their own food and do their own cooking. Of their two slaves, one was a porter, a strong, brave man without knowledge or adaptability, and the other was a youngster, Andreas, who had been trained as a bath-attendant; neither of them could dress a hare. Palaeologus sent the porter off to gather firewood and draw water, and set Andreas at scouring the greasy inn-table with sand. He himself skinned and jointed the hare, which presently was