Justinian (33 page)

‘Archers,' groaned Aligern to Totila the following morning, as a long line of unarmoured men formed up in front of the Roman army. In what seemed almost a casual, unconcerned manner, they advanced in open order up the valley towards the Gothic line – a double row of spearmen forming a wall of shields flanked by woods, across the valley's head. Clad in undyed linen tunics with indigo government roundels at hip and shoulder, bows and quivers slung carelessly on backs, the Roman archers looked curiously unthreatening. Yet both Gothic leaders knew just how devastating and demoralizing arrow-fire could prove, unless countered effectively.

‘Once that lot starts shooting, it's going to take all your authority to stop our fellows from going after them,' observed Aligern. ‘Which, of course, is what the Romans hope we'll do.'

‘They must just stand and take it. As long as the men stay behind their shields, they'll be all right – barring a few inevitable casualties; we must
accept that. So long as we don't react, they'll call off their archers soon enough.'

So long as we don't react, the young king repeated to himself. Everything depended on the Goths maintaining discipline, something that ran counter to their nature, but whose importance he had striven with every fibre to make them understand. While the shield-wall stayed intact, the enemy would be unable, on a narrow front, to bring his advantage of superior numbers to bear. Then, provided we can hold him . . .

A hundred paces in front of the Goths' formation, the archers halted then formed up in an extended line. Unhurriedly, they strung their bows – powerful, recurved, composite affairs of laminated wood and horn – nocked arrows, raised their shooting-arms to a steep angle, and drew the shafts to an anchor-point at the chin. Suddenly, they no longer looked innocuous, but deadly.

With a soft, whirring sound a flight of arrows arced towards the Gothic line, racing its speeding shadow on the ground to strike the wall of shields with a ripple of thuds. One or two
andbahtos
– retainers – cried out in pain or slumped to the ground; the great majority remained unharmed. After enduring several volleys however, the Goths began to grow restive, their line showing the first signs of losing cohesion, as individual warriors fought their instinct to rush forward and close with these cowards who dared fight only from a distance. Sensing the danger, Totila, golden hair swinging about his shoulders, strode along the line urging restraint, an arrow clanging off his
Spangenhelm
, while two others smacked into his shield. His words had the desired effect; everywhere, the shield-wall firmed and straightened.

Except at one point near the centre. Here, a group of Goths rushed forward. With the incline in their favour, they could expect to catch their tormentors before the archers could run back to the protection of their army. Instead there came a blur of movement in the Roman ranks, which opened to allow passage for a cloud of horsemen. Though only light cavalry, they were more than capable of dealing with an isolated group of the enemy.
*
Galloping through the scattering archers they were among the Goths in a flash, thrusting and slashing with their long
spathae
till not a man remained alive. It was a chilling, and salutary, object-lesson. Thereafter, no one in the shield-wall needed further encouragement to stay in line.

A trumpet sounded, recalling the archers and the horse. Now the Roman infantry rolled forward – rank upon rank of mailed soldiers, moving
as one like some grim machine, or monster clad in iron scales. With a deafening clash the two lines came together, when began a deadly shoving-match, with victory destined for the side that did not break. The Goths – big fair-haired men – had the slope in their favour, while the woods at either end of their line meant that they could not be outflanked. Against this, their formation was only two deep compared with the Romans' six; most were unarmoured, relying for protection solely on their oval wooden shields. Gradually, the greater weight of the Roman line began to tell; slowly, fighting stubbornly every yard of the way, the Goths found themselves being forced back.

Then, just when it seemed that a Roman victory was inevitable, the surprise that Totila had planned all along was sprung. Away to the flank, concealed from view until the moment it was needed, was the cream of Totila's force – a body of heavy lancers, several hundred strong, armoured and equipped from the armoury of Trabesium, after that city's capture. Now, thundering up the valley from its mouth they smashed into the Romans from behind, inflicting massive carnage and causing widespread confusion. Desperately pushing forward to escape those terrible lance-points, the rear ranks caused the ones in front to become jammed together. Soon the whole army had become a close-packed, struggling mass, in which men were unable to lift their weapons, or, losing their footing, were trodden underfoot to suffocate. In such a situation panic spreads like wildfire, and this scenario was no exception. With shocking suddenness, the Roman army broke and fled, not stopping in their flight until reaching safety behind the strong walls of Faventia.

For the Goths it was a famous victory.
*
News of it spread rapidly; men flocked to join Totila's standard and within days his army had quadrupled in strength. Badly mauled though still intact, the Roman army withdrew south towards Florentia,
**
via the long Mugello valley. Here, Totila ambushed them, winning a second – and decisive – victory. Too distracted and demoralized to send out scouts, strung out in a straggling column along the length of the defile, the Romans fell easy prey to the Goths charging down upon them from the heights. Having sustained serious losses, the Roman army now broke up into separate sections (each commanded by a different general), which proceeded to take refuge in the fortresses of central Italy. Here, apprehensive and rudderless, they remained bottled up to lick their wounds.

Meanwhile, nothing less than a social revolution was sweeping the peninsula. All over Italy, those who had suffered the consequences of Justinian's ‘liberation': the merchants, the urban middle classes, and the peasants – ground between the upper and nether millstones of Alexander ‘the Scissors' ruthless tax machine, and the casual plundering of East Roman troops – hailed Totila as a saviour. Like a second Spartacus, the young monarch divided up the great estates among the tenants, sweeping away crippling rents and corvées; freeing the slaves, who willingly enrolled in his army; cleansing the civil service of the corrupt and greedy officials who had run the administration very much with an eye to their own profit, and staffing it instead with humble Romans. Within a few short months, apart from Rome, Ravenna, and a few towns on the coast or in the central Apennines, the whole of Italy had fallen to the Goths. Only the senatorial class held out against Totila. To these, the young ‘barbarian' continued to extend an olive branch (for he hoped eventually to bring them round), treating with kindness and respect all aristocrats who fell into his hands. Meanwhile the expulsion of landlords, freeing of slaves and ending of abuses went on apace, with ordinary Romans everywhere enthusiastically supporting their charismatic new champion.

Shock and consternation clubbed Justinian when he received the news of what was happening in Italy. His Grand Plan, it seemed, was fast unravelling; perhaps, he conceded to himself, it had been a mistake to alternate the command among his generals. Radical steps must be taken to stop the rot before it was too late. Belisarius, unfortunately, could not be spared, what with a newly aggressive Persia under Khusro threatening the eastern frontier. His generals in Italy, even tough old veterans like Bessas, had proved a sorely disappointing lot. None of them, it appeared, was capable of taking on this Totila. But perhaps there
was
one man, presently here in Constantinople, who might be equal to the task – a certain Maximinus.

Maximinus, a senator and courtier, had recently come to the emperor's attention by the sound advice he had offered to officials at the Treasury – advice which had helped to fill the void in fiscal policy resulting from the departure of John of Cappadocia. Wit, poet, man of culture and sophistication, to say nothing of his administrative skills, this second Petronius Arbiter possessed the sort of over-arching intelligence that perhaps made him the ideal person to tackle the Hydra-headed crisis that had blown up in Italy. The more he thought about it, the more Justinian convinced himself that Maximimus was the man to send. Granted, he lacked military
experience, but perhaps, given the recent woeful performance of the generals, that might even be an advantage; Maximinus would be coming to the job with a fresh, objective outlook, and no baggage.

But before The Prodigy could be dispatched to Italy, calamity – on a scale unprecedented in its reach and terror – struck the Empire's eastern provinces . . .

*
Faenza in Tuscany.

*
A king who is merely a figurehead. (See Aesop's
Fables
.)

*
Treviso.

*
Belisarius had taken the heavy cavalry with him to the east, leaving behind only light horse – suitable for scouting or skirmishing, but useless against enemy en masse.

*
The Battle of Faventia/Faenza was fought in the spring of 542.

**
Florence.

During these times there was a pestilence by which the whole human race
came near to being annihilated

Procopius,
The Wars of Justinian
, after 552

‘They say the pestilence 'as got to Syria,' declared a lighterman to the patrons of Damian's, a wine shop near the Harbour of Phosphorion at the entrance to the Golden Horn.

‘Stale news, mate,' chipped in a packer from the
horrea
, the rows of warehouses for storing grain that lined the wharves. ‘It's now in Phrygia. Three hundred miles to go, and then it's our turn.'

‘The Bosphorus'll stop it,' murmured a coppersmith hopefully.

‘Oh, really,' scoffed a seaman. ‘If it's come a thousand miles from Egypt, stands to reason a puddle of water won't make any difference.'

‘Repent, all ye – for the Day of Judgement is at hand!' bawled Scripture Simon, a burly stevedore celebrated for his extempore hellfire harangues. ‘That dread day, when the Last Trump shall sound and the graves give up their dead, and Christ shall divide the sheep from the –'

‘Stuff a sponge in it, Simon,' sighed the bartender. ‘What with the pestilence and the End of the World coming, we'd best not waste any more drinking time. Next orders, gentlemen.'

‘In view of the fact that the pestilence is now in Chalcedon, a mere mile across the Bosphorus,' Cyril,
princeps
or head of the University of Constantinople, addressed his staff assembled in a lecture hall, ‘I have decided, for obvious health reasons, to close this institution. I trust you all concur.'

There followed a general nodding of heads and mutter of agreement.

‘Do we know anything about the causes of the pestilence?' enquired the Chair of Law, ‘or what precautions can be taken to reduce the risk of infection?'

‘The answer to both your questions is, sadly, “no”,' replied Cyril, whose sturdy frame and ruddy complexion suggested more a prosperous peasant than an academic. ‘All I can tell you, you most likely know already. Namely, that it seems to be quite indiscriminate and arbitrary as to whom it strikes.
That thus far it has caused death on a devastating scale wherever it has spread, with whole towns and villages depopulated. That beyond total isolation from one's fellow-men, there is no known safeguard against catching the disease. Nor is there any cure; one either recovers, or, in the case of at least two-thirds of those affected, succumbs. As to its cause – some subtle distemper in the air?; “cadaveric poisoning” or touching of a corpse? One can only guess.'

‘The writer John of Ephesus suggests there may be some association with rats,' observed a grammarian. ‘He relates how large numbers of the rodents have often been seen in places affected by the plague.'

‘Coincidence, I'd say,' replied the
princeps
. ‘The pestilence is naturally most prevalent in densely populated centres where risk of contagion, if that is indeed how it is spread, is highest.
Id est
, in towns and cities, whose refuse dumps attract rats in large numbers. Anyway, only a tiny proportion of plague victims could have received a rat bite, which virtually rules out any direct connection.'

‘I've heard that, prior to infection, some sufferers have had dreams of headless figures sitting in bronze boats and holding bronze staves, moving across the sea towards them,' put in the librarian.

‘Sounds as if they had too much wine with a heavy dinner,' responded Cyril, to general laughter.

‘I was only repeating what I'd
heard
,' countered the librarian defensively. ‘By what symptoms then, should we recognize the onset of the disease?'

‘Like yourself, I can only repeat hearsay. Apparently, a mild fever is followed by the appearance of
bubones
– gross swellings in the groin and armpits, or black pustules breaking out all over the body. In the latter case, or in the event of the
bubones
turning gangrenous, the patient swiftly dies. But should the
bubones
discharge pus, the inflammation is relieved and the patient soon recovers.'

‘Perhaps the Almighty has a lesson for us here, whose meaning we should endeavour to interpret,' declared a professor of Theology – one of a new breed of appointees, chosen as much for their subscription to strict Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, as for their professional qualifications.

‘Oh, for goodness sake!' snapped Cyril, a classically educated rationalist of the old school. ‘Let's stick to facts, not bring in mumbo-jumbo.'

‘I don't imagine the emperor or Patriarch would be impressed by
that
remark,' retorted the professor, colouring.