chap, xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 459 was deprived of his eyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread, "Give a penny to Belisarius the general ! " is a fiction of later times, luy which has obtained credit, or rather favour, as a strange example of the vicissitudes of fortune. 110 If the emperor could rejoice in the death of Belisarius, heDMjhMid enjoyed the base satisfaction only eight months, the last period ofjus- of a reign of thirty-eight and a life of eighty-three years. ItA.D.«5. would be difficult to trace the character of a prince who is not the most conspicuous object of his own times; but the confes- sions of an enemy may be received as the safest evidence of his virtues. The resemblance of Justinian to the bust of Domitian is maliciously urged ; U1 with the acknowledgment, however, of 109 The source of this idle fable may be derived from a miscellaneous work of the xiith century, the Chiliads of John Tzetzes, a monk (Basil, 1546, ad calcem Lycophront, Colon. Allobrog. 1614 in Corp. Poet. GreBc). [Tzetzes was not a monk.] He relates the blindness and beggary of Belisarius in ten vulgar or politioal verses (Chiliad iii. No. 88, 339-348, in Corp. Poet. Graec. torn. ii. p. 311). "EKTrui/xa ^vAii/ov Kparu>v dfioa t<£ fxiXlcp Btiffapl<p ofioAhv S6re t<£ ffTpa.TiiKa.TT)
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This moral or romantic tale was imported into Italy with the language and manuscripts of Greece ; repeated before the end of the xvth century by Crinitus, Pontanus, and Volaterranus ; attacked by Alciat, for the honour of the law ; and defended by Baronius (a.d. 561, No. 2, &o.) for the honour of the church. Yet Tzetzes himself had read in other chronicles that Belisarius did not lose his sight and that he recovered his fame and fortunes. [The myth appears earlier than Tzetzes in the TldTpia KwvffTavTivo- ir6ews (cp. above, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 574), but only in Mss. of the Comnenian period. See p. 160, ed. Preger. It was wrought into a political romance in the 14th or 15th century, and we possess it in three forms, of which the oldest is published by Wagner in his Mediaeval Greek Texts (in unrhymed political verses) ; the second, by the Rhodian poet Georgillas (printed by A. Giles at Oxford, 1643), breaks into rhyme near the end (Georgillas represents the transition from rhymeless to rhymed verses) ; the third in rhyme (printed at Venice in 1548). See Krumbacher, Geschiohte der byzantinischen Litteratur, ed. 2, p. 825-7. It should be noted that John of Cappadocia ended his days in beggary (Procopius, B. P. i. 23). But more important for the origin of the Belisarius legend (as Pinlay pointed out) is the story of Sym- batios, in the ninth century. Blinded of one eye, he was placed in front of the palace of Lausus, with a plate on his knees, as a beggar, and in this plight displayed to the public for three days. See George Mon., p. 834 (ed. Bonn) ; Finlay, History of Greece, vol. i. App. 2, and vol. ii. p. 194. On the origin of other details in the later Belisarius legend, see A. Heisenberg, Belisar und Ptocholeon, in Beilage to the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung, November 24 and 25, 1903. The Caesar Alexios who appears in the legend as the son of Belisarius is identified with Alexios Strate- gopulos, who played the leading part in the recovery of Constantinople in a.d. 1261.] 110 The statue in the villa Borghese at Rome, in a sitting posture, with an open hand, which is vulgarly given to Belisarius, may be ascribed with more dignity to Augustus in the act of propitiating Nemesis (Winckelman, Hist, de l'Art, torn. iii. p. 266). Ex nocturno visu etiam stipem, quotannis, die certo, emendicabat a populo, cavam manum asses porrigentibus praebens (Sueton. in August, c. 91, with an ex- cellent note of Casaubon). [The statue is now in the Louvre.] 111 The rubor of Domitian is stigmatized, quaintly enough, by the pen of Tacitus (in Vit. Agricol. c. 45) ; and has been likewise noticed by the younger
