Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/479

chap, xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 417 about ten years. The pillage of the city and the indiscriminate slaughter of its inhabitants were suspended only by darkness, sleep, and intoxication ; the governor, with seven companions, among whom was the historian Procopius, escaped to Sicily ; two thirds of the army were involved in the guilt of treason ; and eight thousand insurgents, assembling in the field of Bulla, elected Stoza 2 for their chief, a private soldier, who possessed in a superior degree the virtues of a rebel. Under the mask of freedom, his eloquence could lead, or at least impel, the passions of his equals. He raised himself to a level with Belisarius and the nephew of the emperor, by daring to encounter them in the field ; and the victorious generals were compelled to acknow- ledge that Stoza deserved a purer cause and a more legitimate command. Vanquished in battle 3 he dexterously employed the arts of negotiation ; a Boman army was seduced from their allegiance, and the chiefs who had trusted to his faithless promise were murdered by his order in a church of Numidia. When every resource either of force or perfidy was exhausted, Stoza, with some desperate Vandals, retired to the wilds of Mauritania, obtained the daughter of a Barbarian prince, and eluded the pursuit of his enemies by the report of his death. The personal weight of Belisarius, the rank, the spirit, and the temper, of Germanus, the emperor's nephew, and the vigour [ A .d. 537- and success of the second administration of the eunuch Solomon, u. D . 539- restored the modesty of the camp, and maintained for a while the tranquillity of Africa. But the vices of the Byzantine court were felt in that distant province ; the troops complained that they were neither paid nor relieved, and, as soon as the public disorders were sufficiently mature, Stoza was again alive, in arms, and at the gates of Carthage. He fell in a single com- [Battle of Thacea. a.d. 545] 2 [The name appears as Stutias in Corippus, Stuza in Victor Tonn.] 3 [Stutias was defeated first by Belisarius, a.d. 536, at Membressa (Medjez el Bab), on the Bagradas, 50 miles from Carthage, cp. Procop. Vand. 2, 14, with Corippus, Joh. 3, 311: — hunc Membressa suis vidit concurrere campis, &o. Then by Germanus, a.d. 537, at Cellas Vatari (KaWao-pdrapas Procop. ; cp. the village Vatari in Tab. Peuting. iii. F. The idea that this name represents a Latin form Scalae Veteres must be wrong). There was a third battle in which GermanuB was again victor at Autenti in Byzacium. See Corippus, ib. 316 : — similique viros virtute necabas Germano spargente feruru victumque tyrannum. te Cellas Vatari miro spectabat amore, te Autenti saevos mactantem viderat hostes.] vol. iv.— 27