Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/677

JUSTINIANUS. the Vandals in 534, the Goths occupied the town, and refused to surrender it to Justinian, when he claimed it as an appendage of the Vandal king- dom. Thus the war broke out, the chief events of which, till the final recal of Belisarius in 548, are related in the life of Belisarius. When Beli- sarius was recalled, the Roman army was in a critical position, because the brave Gothic king, Totilas, had gained great advantages over Belisa- rius, and after his recal the Goths made such pro- gress as to reduce the Roman power in Italy to a shadow. Totilas took Rome by a stratagem, re- stored the senate, and made it once more the seat of the Gothic empire. Thence he sailed to Cala- bria, took Tarentum and Rhegium, conquered Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and despatched a fleet of 300 gallies, which were probably manned by Greek natives of Southern Italy, for the Goths were no mariners, to the coast of Greece, where the Gothic warriors landed, and spread terror among the inhabitants. They pushed as far as Nicopolis and Dodona, and Totilas sent envoys to Justinian, offering him peace, and promising to assist him against any enemy, if he would desist from his designs upon Italy. Justinian would perhaps have accepted his offers but for the circumstance that the Goths being Arians, the orthodox church in Italy was in danger of being overthrown by schismatics. Fresh troops were consequently sent to Italy, and Germanus, the nephew of Justinian, who was renowned by many victories over the Bulgarians, the Persians, and the Mauritanians, was destined to command them, but died at Sardica, in lUyricum^ on his march to Italy. [Germanus, No. 2.] The choice of Germanus proves the danger in which the empire was placed by the victories of Totilas. This prince was dear to the Goths through his marriage with Mathasuntha, daughter of Amalasuntha, and grand-daughter of Theodoric the Great ; and as he was also one of the best Roman generals, a suspicious man like Justinian must have had urgent motives for sending him into Italy, where, in case of success, he had still greater chances of becoming king of the Goths than Belisarius could have had in making himself independent in Africa. But Germanus was a man of so excellent a cha- racter as to be above the suspicions even of a Jus- tinian. The mere fact of his being appointed to the command roused the spirit of the Roman army, and ere the eunuch Narses was chosen to succeed him, the Gothic fleet had been defeated, and Sicily reconquered by Artabanus. Narses led the Roman army round the Adriatic into Italy, while a fleet followed him along the shore, and in a dreadful battle at Tagina (July, 552) slew 6000 Goths, and dispersed the rest. Totilas fell in the conflict, and his bloody dress was sent as the most acceptable trophy to Justinian. The successor of Totilas, Teias, continued the war, but he likewise was killed in a pitched battle on the river Sarnus, near Naples, and his death was the downfal of the Gothic kingdom in Italy. A host of Franks and Alemanni descended from the Alps to dispute the possession of Italy with Narses, and their first in- road was so irresistible that they penetrated as far as the straits of Sicily. But in a battle on the river Volturnus, near the bridge of Casilinum, they were routed with great slaughter by Narses, who drove their scattered remnants beyond the Alps (554). Narses was appointed exarch, or viceroy, of Italy, and took up his residence at Ravenna, JUSTINIANUS. 663 and he united his efforts with those of his master in settling the domestic state of Italy, which was nearly ruined through the protracted war, while millions of her inhabitants had perished by the sword and famine. To these conquests the lieutenants of Justinian in Africa added a considerable tract in Spain, along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, from the south-western extremity of Algarve in the west to the confines of the modem kingdom of Murcia in the east, which the West Goths were obliged to cede to the victorious Romans ; and the fortunate Justinian now reigned over the whole extent of the Roman empire as it existed under the earlier emperors, except the greater part of Spain, Gaul, and Britain, where the most warlike of all the barbarians of those times exercised an authority unchecked by either Romans or Greeks. The strength of Justinian's empire, however, did not correspond with its dimensions. Both the Romans and Greeks were enervated, and little disposed to serve in the field, when they could buy foreigners to defend Rome and Constantinople ; and the prac- tice of enlisting barbarians proved very dangerous, since so many veterans, who returned into their native forests or steppes, informed their brethren of the internal weakness of the Roman empire. We thus see that, notwithstanding the fear which the victories of Belisarius, Narses, Germanus, and so many other great generals, necessarily caused among the immediate neighbours of the Romans, many barbarian nations, that lived at greater distances from the Roman frontiers, pushed slowly towards Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, in order to be ready to invade the empire at the first opportunity. Fxom the extreme north of Germany, the Longo- bards, of Saxon origin, advanced towards the Danube, and settled in Moravia and Northern Hungary, whence, but a few years after the death of Justinian, they broke forth for the conquest of Ital3 Their neighbourhood appeared so dangerous to Justinian, that he tried to gain them to his in- terests, and to use them as a barrier against other enemies, by ceding to them Pannonia and Noricum. The latter province was, however, soon taken from the Longobards by the Franks. The neighbours of the Longobards, the Gepidae, had founded a kingdom in Eastern Hungary and Transylvania as early as the middle of the fifth century ; and since they were always annoying the Romans in lUyri- cum, Justinian availed himself of their feuds with the Longobards, and assisted the latter. In con- sequence of this, the power of the Gepidae was weakened, but that of the Longobards increased in proportion ; and had Justinian lived but two years longer, he would have seen that the final overthrow of the Gepidae had, as its immediate consequence, the destruction of the Roman power in Italy by the Longobards. Still farther in the East, on the river Don, appeared in 557 the Avars, a nation of Turk- ish origin. In acoordance with his usual policy of turning the feuds of the barbarians to his own profit, Justinian lavished his money upon the Avars, and employed them together with his own forces against some barbarian tribes which annoyed the Roman possessions in the Chersonnesus Taurica (the Crimea). This was in 558. Only four years afterwards the whole of the nations north of the Danube, as far west as modem Bavaria, was sub- jugated by the Avars, and Justinian II. paid dearly for the timid and wavering conduct of Justinian I. u u 4