General Belisarius: Hero of the Roman Empire

Introducing General Belisarius

0:00Today, we are going to talk about an incredible Roman general, but one whose name you are probably not that familiar with. General Belisarius is the man who reconquered Rome after the barbarian invasions of 476. He is the reason why there are beautiful Byzantine mosaics on the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. He's also the man who reclaimed the Roman province of North Africa after the Vandals took it, and he fought many successful battles

0:34against the Persians. He was a man of incredible courage and stainless loyalty. Some historians rank him as one of the best generals in Roman imperial history. So why is his name not better known? You are listening to Villains and Virgins Podcast, and this is the story of General Belisarius. Before we get into that story, though, there are a couple of special announcements. First, I'm only a few weeks away from starting a very special online course through Simon Fraser

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3:17Patreon. I'm very grateful for each and every one of you, and for the input that I get from you on our live history conversations. So I'm looking forward to discussing this one with you in a couple of weeks time. And now, let's get into today's story. We've heard General Belisarius's name before on this podcast, because I've just finished a three-part series on Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora, and General Belisarius turns up in the margins of that story. I didn't focus on him specifically

3:48because I wanted to save him for these episodes, where he gets to be the star of his own story. But we've seen him in the background of the story of Justinian and Theodora. And so part of this story brushes up against those events and those people, because it's part of the same historical moment.

Procopius and the Secret History

4:07The other thing that's fascinating about General Belisarius and his wife Antonina is that they become almost a parallel of Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. There are a striking number of similarities between the two men in these couples and the two women. These four people will be the most powerful in the Eastern Roman Empire in their generation. As we're about to see, Belisarius will distinguish himself with incredible military victories. So why is his name not better known?

4:41The reason for this is Procopius. Procopius works for General Belisarius for many years, and he writes an official record of the wars, the military campaigns that General Belisarius conducts. But then, in private, he writes this venomous, slanderous document called The Secret History. And in that little document, Procopius takes a hatchet to all four of these incredibly powerful people of his age. Emperor Justinian, Empress Theodora, Belisarius, and Belisarius's wife Antonina.

5:15And Procopius does absolutely everything he can to undermine General Belisarius's image, specifically by portraying him as a man who was hopelessly infatuated with his wife, blind to her infidelities, and shamefully subservient to a woman who demonstrated no loyalty to him whatsoever. So it's a scandalous picture that Procopius paints of Belisarius, and it's an image that's deliberately designed to be the opposite of manly or heroic, and something that poisoned the minds of

5:49many generations afterwards, because historians like Edward Gibbon and others often took Procopius at his word. So when Procopius is giving very factual accounts of the wars, he's believed, and when he's giving not-so-factual accounts about these four people in The Secret History, he was also believed. And as I'm going to argue today, Procopius is not entirely unreliable. He gives us incredibly valuable information about the wars that General Belisarius fought in his official histories. But when he's writing

6:23his secret history, his goal is not to give us the facts. His goal is invective. It is slander. And to take him with the same degree of seriousness when he's writing in The Secret History, as we do when he's writing the wars, is a great mistake. But it's one that has been made by several generations of historians and readers who have, as a result, developed an image of Belisarius that is weak and altogether inaccurate. More recently, historians have taken a much more critical view of Procopius

6:57in The Secret History, and we're going to do that here. So we're going to talk about Belisarius, but it's impossible to talk about the man and his legacy without also mentioning Procopius, and of course, Belisarius' famous or infamous wife Antonina. The beginning of Belisarius' life

Early Life and Rapid Promotion

7:16offers us few details. He was born in the town of Germana, now known as Saparevska Bania, in western Bulgaria, probably about the year 500. And at that time, this area was called the Roman province of Thrace. Being born in this location likely meant that young Belisarius spoke Thracian as a first language and Latin as a second one. And this he had in common with Emperor Justinian himself, who, as you might recall, was also born in Thrace and also grew up speaking Latin.

7:48But unlike Emperor Justinian, who came from a peasant family, it seems likely that Belisarius was born into a family that was at least middle class. We can assume that Belisarius joined the army somewhere between age 16 to 18. But we know that by the early 520s, he was already a part of Justinian's personal corps of bodyguards. So Justinian is not yet Emperor in the early 520s, but he's very much a man on the make, a man who's being positioned to inherit the throne from his uncle,

8:23the Emperor Justin. Now this suggests a very rapid promotion curve for young Belisarius, because if he's born in 500 and he's joined the army in 518, but in the early 520s he's already a bodyguard in the imperial court, well that's a very rapid rise. We don't know exactly how that happened. Did Belisarius have connections? Was he hand-picked? We can't be certain, but we do know that he's already rising very rapidly through the ranks, and he's now positioned very close to the man who will be the next

8:57emperor. Justinian, by the way, is significantly older than Belisarius. So if Belisarius is in his early 20s, in the 520s, Justinian is approaching 40. So there's an age gap between these two men. But the 520s are going to be a really interesting time for young Belisarius. In 526, Belisarius and another member of Justinian's guard, a guy called Cittas, are put in charge of a raid on Persian-controlled territory. And there was a long border that the Eastern Roman Empire shared with Persian-controlled

9:33territory. So this was an expedition that was designed to test the military skills of Cittas and Belisarius. It was basically a hit-and-run affair. These two men and the party of soldiers under their command conducted this raid, and they got out with captives and a lot of valuables. And it seems that Justinian was very pleased with the results of this little expedition. Justinian becomes emperor the following year, in 527. And this results in a promotion for Belisarius. He's awarded the

10:05title of Duke of Mesopotamia. So he's going to be in charge of a very important border region, again with the Persians. When I say Mesopotamia here, I'm talking about the Roman province of Mesopotamia, which was a bit smaller than the larger geographic region that we sometimes talk about when we're talking about the birth of civilizations. But it was in roughly the same area. So the Roman province of Mesopotamia involved parts of modern Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. This is a very significant promotion. And remember, Belisarius is probably only about 27 years old. So this promotion can only be

10:42explained by a high degree of trust and confidence that emperor Justinian has now placed in Belisarius. And this is a result of several years of close personal contact. So for a man who hasn't yet reached 30, Belisarius is already making a bit of a name for himself. And it's round about this time,

Marriage to Antonina

11:03during his late twenties and this promotion to being in charge of the province of Mesopotamia, that historians think it's likely his marriage occurred. And because his wife is such a significant part of his story, both the real one and the slanderous one, we need to spend a little bit of time introducing Antonina. Antonina was the daughter of a father who was a charioteer and a mother who was an actress. She might have been born in Thessaloniki or in Constantinople, we can't be sure, but very likely she spent most of her life growing up in Constantinople. And there are

11:37a number of fascinating questions about her early life. Charioteers, like her father, made pretty decent money. Yes, they were members of the circus and the hippodrome, so they weren't members of respectable society. But much like celebrity sports car drivers or athletes, charioteers could be very well paid, especially compared to other people in their same social class. So if Antonina grew up with her father around, she would have had a reasonably comfortable childhood. But we don't know if her

12:09father was part of the picture as she was growing up. If he wasn't, then Antonina's childhood would have much more closely resembled Theodora's childhood, where she relied much more on her mother to provide and might often have been living on the edge of poverty. Like Theodora, Antonina would have grown up in a circus family. People who were paid by factions like the Greens and the Blues to put on performances during the hippodrome races, or these halftime shows. And as a result, Antonina may have grown up

12:42working as an actress, as Theodora did. We don't know for sure. Procopius, who's later going to write this slanderous account of her life, claims that she was sexually unrestrained. So he's suggesting that she was very promiscuous. She slept with all kinds of people. He doesn't specifically charge her with being an actress though. And given that he was really happy to use this label for Theodora and also for Antonina's mother, it seems strange that he would have omitted using it for Antonina if it

13:13were available. So perhaps she didn't grow up as an actress at all. Perhaps she was just born into this family and had a very different life planned. Antonina was probably born between 495 and 500. So she's a little bit older than Belisarius, but she can't be significantly older than Belisarius. Procopius will later exaggerate this point, but we know this because there is other historical information about the ages of her children that indicates that she has to be young enough to have

13:45children of various ages at other points in the story. So by the time that Belisarius meets her, Antonina is a single mother, she's a widow, and she has at least two children that we know about. She might have had other children or other pregnancies that miscarried or children who died in infancy or early childhood. This was fairly common at the time. But we know that she had a boy called Photius and a girl whose name is not recorded. So when she meets Belisarius,

14:17she's in a very similar position to the one that Theodora was in when she met Justinian. You'll remember that Empress Theodora had come from a circus background. She had been an actress. She was a single mother of a daughter. And then she meets Justinian and begins that relationship. So we can already see this remarkable parallel with Antonina and Belisarius' relationship. Antonina is in essentially the same position. It may even be that during this period of her life, when Antonina's husband is dead and she has these children, that she's approached Theodora for assistance. Because

14:51Empress Theodora was known to have a soft spot for women who came from the lower classes, and especially women who were struggling. So it's possible that Antonina approached Theodora for these reasons. And it seems very likely that Belisarius encounters Antonina somewhere in the imperial court. We can only speculate about when exactly Belisarius marries her and how long he had known her before this time. But one historian estimates that it was probably in 528, within a year of his major promotion to his

15:24post in Mesopotamia. And the reason for this is that that same year was the year after Justinian had become emperor. And it was also the year that the other prominent guardsman, Sittas, who had been on that raid with Belisarius into Persian territory, marries Theodora's older sister, who was an actress. So it may be that in this period there is a wave of promotions and marriages and Belisarius may have married Antonina right about the same time. What we have no doubt about was that this was a love match.

15:57Belisarius was a young man with a very bright set of career prospects ahead of him. And he could have had his pick of any number of well-born young women from the imperial court. If he'd wanted to marry for financial resources or political alliances, he would have picked somebody else. In marrying Antonina, he's choosing someone who's essentially a nobody. A woman who already has children that need looking after. So the only reason to choose Antonina was for the woman herself. Because Belisarius was very

16:31much in love with her. And we'll see evidence of the strength of that bond throughout their lives. This marriage is the beginning of a remarkable relationship that will last for decades. By the very next year, in 529, Belisarius is promoted yet again. And his new title is even more illustrious. It is General of the East, or Magister Militum Pro Orientum. This means he's one of the top six generals in the entire empire. There are four generals that have regional commands.

17:02These are the generals of the East, Thrace, Illyricum, and Armenia. And then there are two other generals, whose official title is General of the Armies in the Emperor's Presence. But basically, they're a centralized reserve force. So Belisarius is now one of these six men. He's part of the inner circle, and he has an incredibly important position. It is a position of far greater responsibility than he's ever held before. And Belisarius is anxious to prove himself worthy of his post. He leaves his

17:36wife Antonina behind in Constantinople, because she has her two children from a previous marriage to look after, and probably a pregnancy by Belisarius that is now underway. So she's left in the safety of Constantinople, and Belisarius heads off to the East, where he's preparing to face the armies of the

The Sixth-Century Roman Army

17:56Persians. Since we're about to look at some of the events in Belisarius' military campaigns, it's worth pausing for a moment to ask, what did the Roman army in Belisarius' time actually look like? Because the Roman Empire lasted for an incredible number of centuries, and the army changed and evolved over time. So the army we're looking at in Belisarius' career is very different from the citizen farmer armies of the early Roman Republic. And it's also different from the 5,000 man legions commanded by

18:31early imperial generals like Augustus. The army has changed its organization, it's changed its composition, and it's even changed some of its tools and tactics. Now in the 6th century, the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire have been remodeled. Legions are much closer to 1,000 men each. So there are more legions, but each individual legion is smaller. The famous Roman cavalry is now comprised of mounted archers. The better to deal with nomadic steppe peoples, like the Huns and the Bulgars, who are a perpetual threat

19:08to the empire's eastern borders. The Roman cavalry even used composite reflex bows, modeled on those used by the Huns, but not exactly the same. And speaking of the Huns, if you were standing next to Belisarius as he reviewed his troops in preparation for heading east, you would have seen Hunnic units. The Eastern Roman army used mercenary Hun units regularly at this point, alongside other groups of what the Romans would have called barbarians, including the Goths,

19:39and another group sometimes called the Heruls or Iruli. Now you've heard of the Goths, but the Iruli are a less well-known group. Some sources will write them with an H, as in H-E-R-U-L-I, and others drop the H and just call them the Iruli. Some historians speculate that they were a Germanic group, and others say they might have originated in Scandinavia. There's dispute about this. What we do know is that they were pagans, so not Christians, they hadn't converted to Aryan Christianity like many of the

20:12Goth tribes had, and they were very fierce fighters. So not only are they part of the imperial army, but we find Iruli as part of Belisarius' own personal guard. So these are men who he trusted personally, and whose competence as fighters he had incredible confidence in. The other interesting thing to note about the Roman army at this point is that the state wasn't mass producing armor and distributing it to soldiers, and then deducting that from their wages. Instead, soldiers were paid in full,

20:43but then they were expected to purchase armor and equipment themselves. And this meant that there was a much larger variation in the types of helmets, armor, and even weapons that you would have seen if you were standing next to Belisarius and inspecting his army. Of course, men would have had to purchase the types of weapons that their unit was expected to use, and also to paint their helmets and shields in colors that would identify them as a member of their unit. But the actual design or style

21:14of some of their armor and helmets could vary quite significantly. Some soldiers would have purchased lamellar armor, which was basically made of strips of metal wired together. And the advantage of this was that it was cheap, but it wasn't particularly flexible. The next level up was scale mail, and this is something that was very popular in armies of the East for many centuries. It had been used by the Scythians and the Persians for quite some time, and we do have evidence that people in the Eastern Roman army wore scale armor as well. The Roman version was called Lorica squamata. And then,

21:47of course, there was chainmail. Chainmail combined the best of both worlds. It was very strong, it was also very flexible. But if you know any smiths who've tried to make chainmail, I know a few of them, they will tell you that it is incredibly labor-intensive to produce. It takes a long time, and so it's correspondingly much more expensive. A few soldiers would have been willing to fork out the money for chainmail, but you wouldn't have seen it everywhere in the ranks. The Romans called this particular style of armor Lorica hamata. So if you were standing beside General

22:19Belisarius and you're looking out over all these different legions and units, you would have seen men from across the empire, some of whom were sometimes enemies like the Huns, but on this occasion were fighting as part of the Roman army. You would have seen men with very different ethnic backgrounds, with different styles of helmets, different colors, different sword lengths. It was a very diverse army, and it was one whose tactics and strategies had evolved to deal with the threats that were most

22:51pressing in the empire at the time. As General of the East, Belisarius is going to be dealing with the Persians. And things at this time were heating up with Persia. The King of Persia had actually issued a payment demand to Emperor Justinian. He'd said, you have one year to come up with this amount of money, and if you don't, I'm going to lead an invasion into your territory. Emperor Justinian had no intention of paying the King of Persia, so he had instructed Belisarius, his new general of the East,

23:21to prepare men on that border for war. Belisarius begins massing his troops along this border, and the Persians who are manning that border take this as a pretty clear sign that Emperor Justinian is probably not going to pay them. So instead of giving the Romans the full benefit of the complete one-year term, which just gives them more time to prepare, the Persians decide to take the initiative and attack before that one-year period is up. This engagement will be known as the Battle of Dera.

The Battle of Dara

23:51So Dera is a Roman fortified city. It's on the border. And Belisarius and his army are camped in and around this place. The Persian force begins to advance toward Dera, and Procopius reports some 40,000 Persians arrive, whereas Belisarius has some 25,000 Roman soldiers under his command. It's likely that Procopius is exaggerating the Persian numbers somewhat. I mean, he wasn't going to get an exact count. He's eyeballing things. And also there would be an incentive to exaggerate the numbers a bit just

24:25to make Belisarius look even better. But what we can be sure of is that there were significantly more Persians than Romans. And the other thing about this, as these two armies are facing off, is that the Persians demonstrate an incredible degree of swagger. So reportedly the Persian general sends a message to Belisarius and he says, have a bath prepared for me in Dara so that when this battle is over, I can enjoy that bath. In other words, there's no question that I'm going to win this battle and take the city. So how about you just set things up for me so I can be comfortable later today when

25:00I walk in there. And then there's a sort of David and Goliath moment where these two armies are facing off. The battle hasn't started yet, but they're eyeballing each other. And this Persian warrior steps out in front of his lines and he says, I'm challenging any Roman who's man enough to defeat me in single combat. Let's see what kind of fighters you are. Is there anyone willing to rise to the challenge? And apparently when this challenge is issued, there's silence in the Roman ranks for

25:30several long minutes. And then a guy called Andreas steps forward. Andreas isn't a regular soldier. Apparently he was a wrestling trainer who was working as a member of the general staff for one of the other generals under Belisarius. But Andreas is not willing to sit quietly and let this guy swagger and disparage the Romans. So he steps forward and says, sure, I'll fight you. So you can imagine these two guys in front of their respective armies, Andreas, the Roman wrestling trainer, and this unnamed Persian, who's presumably a very large and formidable fighter. And they engage in this

26:05fight. And apparently Andreas kills the Persian fairly quickly. And then another Persian soldier steps forward to take his place. And Andreas kills that guy as well. So single combat time is over. There's no further fighting in front of the armies. They withdraw. But you can imagine the amount of cheering that the Roman soldiers probably engaged in as they've watched Andreas demolish two different Persian fighters before the battle even starts. The battle doesn't begin immediately after this. There's another full day and night that pass, actually. And apparently the Persian commander

26:39was waiting for another unit or two to arrive. So he's biding his time until he has the full complement of his forces before he opens battle. Belisarius had his own words of contempt when he was addressing his troops before they were going to face the Persians in battle. He described the Persian infantry as, quote, a crowd of pitiful peasants, unquote. And this is kind of a bold claim, because the Persians could be formidable adversaries. And the Roman army had suffered several significant defeats at their hands in the last several centuries. There had been actually two Roman emperors who had

27:15been either captured or killed while fighting the Persians. So it's not as though the Persians could be taken lightly. But you can see Belisarius here trying to give his men confidence. And he basically says, stick to your formations, follow my orders, and everything will be fine. You have nothing to worry about here. Battle is finally joined around noon. And what happens is that the Roman cavalry charge, led by those units of Huns, breaks the Persian infantry, just as Belisarius had predicted. The

27:46Persian infantry scatters, they throw down their shields, they begin running. And when that happens, they're pursued and cut down very easily from behind. So this battle inflicts massive losses on the Persian army. In fact, it had been a century since the Romans had defeated a Persian force so thoroughly. Belisarius's reputation as a brilliant general is beginning to build. Unfortunately,

Defeat at Callinicum

28:11it's followed the very next year by a resounding defeat at the hands of the Persians. This was the Battle of Calinicum. And it's a really interesting moment in Belisarius's career because there are two very different versions of what happened at this battle. So what we know for certain is that Belisarius and his men are essentially shadowing the Persian army and chasing them out of Roman territory. The Persians had made yet another attack. Belisarius and his men are pushing them out. But Belisarius is not engaging them in a direct battle. And the reason for this is,

28:45their objective is to expel the Persians. If they can do this without hazarding all the risks and casualties of a battle, why run those risks? So Belisarius is perfectly happy to maintain the pressure and keep the Persians moving out back to their own territory. But many of his officers don't feel the same way. They feel that if the Persians have invaded Roman territory, they've taken captives, they've stolen stuff, they should be punished. They should be put in their place. And so some of his men are spoiling for a fight. And there's this pressure on Belisarius, you know, let us fight these guys.

29:19We need to teach them a lesson. And Belisarius is saying, it's not necessary. I don't know why you want to do that. There's no need for it. But things get so heated that there's even the threat of a mutiny. Some of his officers are saying, we're going to fight these guys one way or the other and you need to fall in line with this because we're not going to be content with this strategy of just pushing them out. So Belisarius apparently, reluctantly, agrees to fight. And there are a few other issues here because the time that his men are pressuring this is right around Easter.

29:49And we know that Belisarius takes Easter and other Christian festivals very seriously. So he's fasting, as are many of the men in his army who are Christians. And again, Belisarius is saying, you know, why do we want to fight at a time when our men are actually weaker? They're not going to be at their best when they haven't been eating all day. But nevertheless, he's under this enormous amount of pressure. And so he agrees to lead his men into battle. It does not go well. This time, it was the Roman infantry with some of their Arab allies that broke under Persian pressure.

30:23They scattered. And this meant enormous casualties for Belisarius's army. The Persians won this battle decisively. The problem was, a couple of Belisarius's officers gave a very different account of this battle when they wrote back to Emperor Justinian. Because of course, he wanted to know what had happened and why. These officers alleged that there had been no near mutiny or dispute between Belisarius and his officers. That they had been the ones who led the defense against the Persians and Belisarius

30:55had kind of left the field and kept himself safe. So there are two different versions. In one of them, Belisarius looks like a man who succumbed to pressure but fought heroically. And in the other version, the one that his officers told, they were the heroes. And Belisarius was someone who just fled the field. Emperor Justinian receives these two very different accounts. He conducts an investigation. And the result of this is that Belisarius is recalled to Constantinople. He is relieved of his command.

31:25Belisarius is recalled to Constantinople in the summer of 531. He's no longer General of the East. And it seems like his glorious military career, which had started so promisingly, has just come to an abrupt halt. But only six months later, everything would change.

The Nika Riots

31:43You can imagine Belisarius back in Constantinople at loose ends, wondering what's going to happen next, spending some time with his wife Antonina. And then in the early days of 532, the Nica riots happen. And we've covered this in some detail in our series on Justinian and Theodora, so I'm not going to go into a full summary. But very briefly, crowds begin to demand change from Emperor Justinian in the Hippodrome. And there are chants. And there are these angry demands.

32:14And the Emperor ignores them. He dismisses them. And then things escalate. And these crowds go out into the city. And they break into the prison. And they set fires across the city for several days. There's rioting. And the Emperor is unable to stabilize the situation. And then things escalate even further. And now the rioters are demanding a new Emperor. So it's a terrifying moment for Justinian. He's five years into his reign. He's been very busy with enormous reforms of the civil service,

32:45of the legal code. And now it looks like he could be on the verge of losing his throne. If this insurrection succeeds, Justinian is finished. And he's actually contemplating leaving Constantinople on a ship and fleeing. And it's at this moment that his wife, the formidable Empress Theodora, gives a speech and essentially says that the imperial purple makes a fine shroud. In other words, it's better to die an emperor than to live in exile. So Justinian,

33:16his spine suitably stiffened by this speech, decides to send in two men that he thinks he can trust. He sends in General Belisarius and another general who are then stationed in Constantinople. And he asks them to go into the Hippodrome and deal with the crowds that are busy chanting and have already crowned an alternative candidate for emperor. So Belisarius goes into the Hippodrome and he and the men under his command are dealing with these rioters. And what ensues ends up being a slaughter.

33:49So the men under his command begin attacking and then there are people screaming and running and being trampled. The casualties are recorded as well over 30,000 people. But what's easy to lose track of when we look at this in retrospect is that there were no guarantees at the time of how this was going to turn out. Belisarius was very firmly placing his body and his future alongside Emperor Justinian. And if they had not succeeded in quelling that insurrection, if Justinian had been toppled,

34:25Belisarius would have gone with him. So he's very much throwing the dice here and he's putting himself in the emperor's camp, win or lose. These actions in a moment of great risk were proof of Belisarius's loyalty to Justinian and something that he did not forget. But you can imagine that these actions did nothing to endear Belisarius to the people of Constantinople. I mean, how do you think the citizens of that city felt about a general who'd been involved in the slaughter in the Hippodrome?

34:58Not a very popular guy. But in the relationship between Justinian and Belisarius, this is a key moment. If you look at the long history of the Roman Empire, the most serious threats to any sitting emperor are successful generals. And so by demonstrating his own loyalty to Justinian in this moment, Belisarius is proving that he's a man who can be trusted. And this is very likely the reason why Belisarius is given a new command. He's going to be put in charge of an incredibly ambitious

35:30military campaign. That plan is the reconquest of the Roman province of North Africa from the Vandals.

Preparing for the Vandal Campaign

35:38So we have to pause here, first of all, and say why. Why is Emperor Justinian so keen on attacking the Vandals? Well, first of all, the Eastern Roman Empire has been hostile to the Vandals for almost a century, since 455, when the Vandals attacked and sacked the city of Rome. So Rome was the western imperial capital, Constantinople is the eastern imperial capital, and the emperors in Constantinople were none too keen on the Vandals after what they had done to Rome. They even mounted a campaign

36:09against the Vandals in 468. This was obviously a previous emperor. We're looking at a span of some 60 years before Justinian's reign. But there'd been a previous campaign by an Eastern Roman Emperor against the Vandals in 468, which had been ruinous. That whole Roman fleet had been destroyed. It was incredible loss of men and money. So a bit of a disaster. And with these events in the background, many of Emperor Justinian's advisors were none too keen on this idea that what they should do next was

36:42wage another war with the Vandals. But here's the thing. In the wake of the Nica riots of 532, Justinian needs a win. He's recovering from the shock of nearly having lost his throne. So he feels a certain need for something that's going to make him look good, something that's going to bolster his legitimacy. And if he can succeed in defeating the Vandals, well that would fit the bill marvelously. And there were another couple of factors right around this time that probably tipped the balance

37:13in favour of attacking the Vandals. First, they just had a change of ruler. So the old Vandal king had been relatively tolerant, but the new Vandal king, who was an Arian Christian, had decided to start persecuting non-Arian Christians, or Nicene Christians if you like, in his territory of North Africa. And you remember that Justinian was a guy who was a kind of defender of religious orthodoxy. He would have seen the Nicene Christians as the right kind of Christian, and the Vandals as Arian

37:45heretic Christians. And so the idea that these heretic Arians were now persecuting the right kinds of Christians may have been a factor. And in addition to that, there were a number of local revolts against the Vandals that had just happened. So there are a whole bunch of factors that Emperor Justinian probably looked at and said, if I could win this campaign, it would be great for me politically. And now if there are some revolts going on already, the Vandals might be in a weaker position that increases my odds. Now's the time to attack. So the man he chooses to be in charge of this incredibly

38:21important and very ambitious campaign is General Belisarius. Justinian equips Belisarius with at least 18,000 men and something like 592 ships. Try to imagine a fleet of this size outside the walls of Constantinople or the city that is now Istanbul. If you've ever visited Istanbul, you'll know the waters that surround the city. Try to imagine this many ships with their sails filling up the horizon as

38:52far as the eye could see. It was a once in a lifetime sight. No fleet of this size had been assembled since the last time the Romans tried to attack the Vandals back in 468, so more than 60 years ago. This armada sets out of Constantinople in June of 533 and they're heading for what is now Tunisia. One of the interesting things about this departure is that Belisarius brings his wife Antonina along on this campaign. And this is really quite remarkable. Noble women weren't in the habit of accompanying

39:26generals on military campaigns. This wasn't something that was very widespread. It wasn't unprecedented. There had been occasional records of noble Roman women accompanying generals on campaign, but it was very rare. Now that didn't mean that there were no women in the camp or on campaign. There were other soldiers who probably brought along female slaves or concubines. There would have been camp followers, including prostitutes that would have followed the armies around. So it would be incorrect to imagine that a Roman army on campaign didn't have women around.

40:01But high status women, people of Antonina's rank, were not a common sight. And there's one other detail of Belisarius's life around about this time that we need to mention at this point. Belisarius and his wife Antonina adopt a boy at about this time. He's probably in his early teens, and his name is Theodosius. He's from Thrace, so the same Roman province that Belisarius and Emperor Justinian had come from. And the reason for this is likely that Antonina and Belisarius realized they

40:31weren't going to have any more children, but they wanted to have a son together. Now they have three children they're looking after already. Antonina has a daughter and a son called Photius from her previous marriage. She's also given birth to a daughter by Belisarius. So when they adopt young Theodosius, they now have a family that consists of two girls and two boys. So Theodosius is probably in his early teens, and so also is Photius, most likely. He might be a few years older, but he's not that much older.

41:03And it's even possible, although we don't know for sure, that these two boys accompanied Belisarius and Antonina on this trip. So we have these two young men, Theodosius, who's been adopted, and Photius, Antonina's son, who's already trying to follow in Belisarius's footsteps and preparing for a career in the military. Did both of these young men accompany their parents on this campaign? We don't know for certain, but it's possible. On the voyage to Tunisia, Antonina proved that she was no mere

41:36pretty face. She had a trick for preserving the drinking water of the ship that she was on, and basically she put it in glass jars. She submerged these glass jars in sand, and in this way she kept that water fresh, because the sand kept light and heat out of those jars. So presumably that inhibited the growth of algae and other bacteria that might have been present. The other ships were not so lucky. They didn't have Antonina or her method to rely on, and the result of that was that the drinking

42:08water on several other ships in the fleet spoiled, and that caused men to get sick. So we don't know where Antonina got this knowledge on how to keep water fresh, but it was certainly highly valued by everyone on the ship she traveled with. And spoiled water wasn't the only problem they had on this campaign. There'd been a government official in charge of supplying the bread as military rations for this expedition, at least for the voyage, and he'd gone a very cheap route in producing this bread. Which meant that some of the bread wasn't even cooked all the way through, and spoiled really badly.

42:43So something like 500 men died just of food poisoning on the voyage to Tunisia. The journey was going to take some 10 weeks, and so there were times when the ships had to make port and resupply, you know, get fresh water or bread they could actually eat or wait out the winds. And it was during one of these shore stops that a couple of Hun soldiers who were traveling with the army got really drunk, and they got really angry because another soldier began to make fun of them while they were drunk.

43:16And so these two Huns decided, well, we'll just kill this guy because he's made us angry. So this was an event that Belisarius took really seriously. And he punished these two drunken, murderous soldiers by impaling them and displaying them at the top of a hill so that they'd be highly visible to anyone in the vicinity. Impalement is a horrific form of execution. I don't really want to detail it here. I've done that in previous episodes. The Huns themselves used it. And here we see Belisarius using it on the Huns. But the idea was to make an example of these men and send a very

43:52clear message that disorderly conduct would not be tolerated on this campaign. We see Belisarius demonstrating a very similar attitude as soon as his troops go ashore in Tunisia itself. So the ships are at anchor, the men go ashore, they start to make camp, and they send a foraging party out, which is standard. So these guys go out and they begin to grab whatever food they can find. And they're not in a wilderness area. So they're essentially taking fruit from people's orchards, taking vegetables and grain from their fields. And Belisarius puts a stop to this immediately. And he says, listen, we can't

44:26be stealing from these people. These are former Roman citizens. We're trying to make them Roman citizens again. We need them to be on our side. They're definitely not going to be on our side if we're busy stealing their food. So he eliminates, so he puts a stop to this immediately. Belisarius soon organizes his army and begins marching them toward the city of Carthage, which is something like 150 miles away. So Belisarius forms up his army. He takes his Hun units and puts them to the west of the main body

44:59of the troops. He has 300 men and he puts them in front as the vanguard. And he has his ships following along the coast onto the east of the main force. So in this formation, they're spread out a little bit and they're heading towards Carthage. Belisarius didn't know it at that moment, but his arrival timing was impeccable. The Vandal king, Gelimer, wasn't in the capital city of Carthage. He was actually several days march inland. And a whole bunch of other Vandal warriors,

45:30under the command of one of the king's brothers, had actually gone off to Sardinia to put down a revolt there. So Carthage itself was very lightly defended. It was a perfect time for Belisarius to be marching his army in that direction. It didn't take long, though, for word of the Roman army landing to reach the Vandal king, Gelimer. And so he quickly sends word to his brother Amatis, who is in Carthage. And he says, take the men you have left in Carthage who are defending that city

46:02and march out of it to a place called Ad Decimum. Meanwhile, I, Gelimer, will take my Vandals and turn around and head back to the same place. So we have Amatis coming out of Carthage toward Ad Decimum, and Gelimer coming from the other direction to the same place. And ideally, they're going to trap the Roman army between them in a classic pincer movement, which hopefully will slaughter the Romans from all sides. It didn't work out that way. What happened was that the vanguard of the Roman army encountered

The Battle of Ad Decimum

46:35Amatis and the Vandals coming out of Carthage. And even worse, Amatis wasn't even riding in formation with his men. He was riding out ahead, he had units of men strung out at irregular distances behind him, and he wasn't waiting for his brother Gelimer, the king, to arrive before engaging the Romans. So Amatis and the men riding in his immediate vicinity encounter the vanguard of Belisarius' army, and they're cut to pieces. The remaining Vandals scatter and start fleeing back towards Carthage,

47:08presumably to rejoin the other units that are heading out of there. The main body of the army is now approaching Ad Decimum, which is some 10 miles out of Carthage. But ahead of them, they send scouts. So these scouts are arriving ahead of the main army, they reach Ad Decimum, and they find the bodies that are left from the engagement of the vanguard with Amatis and his Vandals. The vanguard has continued ahead. So these scouts just find corpses. And then they see dust on the horizon. And they realize that a much

47:43larger party of Vandals is about to arrive at Ad Decimum. So these scouts now have a very difficult decision to make. There's a hill nearby. So option one is that they position themselves on that hill and try to hold out on this high ground against this unknown party of Vandals that's about to arrive and hope that they can survive until the main body of Belisarius' army shows up. The other option is simply to turn tail and ride as fast as they can out of Ad Decimum and go back to Belisarius.

48:16The scouts try to take the hill and hold out, but they're very quickly scattered and forced to flee by Gelimer's much larger Vandal force. Now this is a moment where something very curious happens. We have these Roman scouts fleeing back toward Belisarius, and Gelimer and the Vandals do not pursue them. And this is very odd because cutting down men who are running away from you is, as we've already seen twice in this episode, fairly easy. Normally you can inflict large casualties in this

48:48situation. So why does Gelimer not take this opportunity? It seems that what happened was Gelimer saw the body of his brother Amatis on the plains of Ad Decimum. So he sees the same corpses that the scouts had encountered, he recognizes one of those corpses, and he's overcome with grief. So he stops military operations, he takes the time to bury his brother. And this is a strategic mistake, as we will see given how the Battle of Ad Decim is about to unfold, but it's perhaps unfair to blame Gelimer too much.

49:23He doesn't know the full situation. He doesn't know that Amatis had ridden out with only part of his forces when he encountered the Romans. He doesn't know how many Romans there are or where they are. So instead of pursuing these scouts into an unknown danger, he takes the opportunity to bury his brother and to confer with his advisors on what to do next. Unfortunately, this was the wrong decision, because what it meant was that Gelimer and the Vandals were totally unprepared for the imminent

49:54arrival of Belisarius and the main body of his army, which had kept marching toward Ad Decimum. The scouts had rejoined them and let them know what was going on, and they arrived shortly after. The Vandals are completely unprepared and in disarray when Belisarius shows up with the main body of his army. And under pressure of the Roman cavalry charge, their units scatter. So the Romans spend a lot of time pursuing them and cutting them down as the day fades into night, and it becomes clear that the

50:25Battle of Ad Decimum was a resounding victory for the Romans. This allows them to march into the city of Carthage a few days later unopposed, which opens its gates to them and they take it without a fight. Now this is remarkably good news for Belisarius. So far this campaign has gone far more easily than anyone could have anticipated, and it looks like a big win. But the war isn't over yet. It's not done until the Vandal King Gelimer himself can be captured. Because some of his units have escaped, he could reunite

50:59them and turn up later. So the job isn't finished. Belisarius has to preside over the pursuit of Gelimer. Belisarius and most of his men stay inside the city of Carthage. They're busy fortifying the walls, making sure it's a defensible position, but Belisarius selects one of his own personal guardsmen, a guy called Diogenes, and he gives him 22 other guardsmen under his command and the mission to go scout and find where Gelimer and the surviving Vandals have gone. And this is an incredible story.

51:34Diogenes and this small number of soldiers set out, but unbeknownst to them, Gelimer has been busy bribing farmers and people in the area to let him know if there are any Roman forces on the move and also to kill any Roman foragers that they can get away with. You know, if you see a small party of Romans coming through your land, please kill them and I'll pay you. Let me know if any of them pass by. So some of these people tip off the Vandals that there's this small recon unit of Romans operating in

52:07the area. And so it is that as night falls, Diogenes and his 22 guardsmen have made camp inside a farmhouse. They're trying to get some sleep and 300 Vandals show up outside this farmhouse. And apparently they're conferring amongst themselves about how to capture the leader of this Roman party alive when they actually go in and attack. Now, some member of Diogenes guard company was either

52:37an insomniac or a really light sleeper because he wakes up and hears these soldiers outside whispering or murmuring amongst themselves about how they're going to plan their operation. And so this guy quickly and silently wakes up Diogenes and the rest of the guys inside the farmhouse. And as quickly as they can without making noise, they put their armor on, they grab their weapons, and they get onto their horses. And what happens next is they suddenly open the doors of the farmhouse and go riding out at top

53:13speed at a complete gallop. So they're essentially running a gauntlet. They're riding at top speed through a force of 300 Vandals who've been sent there to kill them. And what's amazing is that only two of them die. So this can only be explained by the fact that they had the element of surprise in their favor and that the Vandals were completely unprepared for this sudden onslaught of galloping guys swinging their swords or whatever they had to hand. So it's a remarkable escape story. And if they had not

53:46charged, if they waited inside the farmhouse for the attack, it is unlikely that any of them would have survived. In 534, the Vandal King Gelimer reappears with a much larger force of Vandals,

The Battle of Trichamarum

54:01not far from Carthage. His other brother, who was in Sardinia with a large party of Vandals, has now had time to return, to regroup with Gelimer, and to make a new plan. So General Belisarius realizes that he's going to have to prepare his forces for another battle with this much larger Vandal force. The Vandals are besieging Carthage, but not in the way that this is normally done. You normally think of a siege as the enemy army camped right outside the walls of the city. In this case, Gelimer and the Vandals were blockading all the roads into the city. So they

54:35were preventing food and people from getting in or out, but they were doing so from a much larger perimeter, about 20 miles outside the city. So you couldn't really see them from inside Carthage. This means that General Belisarius won't be fighting from behind fortified walls. He's going to have to march his men out of the city and go find the Vandals where they are and fight them there. This will be known as the Battle of Trichamarum. Belisarius marches his men out of Carthage, and by the time they come within sight of the Vandal camp, it's near the end of the day. So ancient

55:10armies didn't voluntarily engage in pitched battles in the dark very usually. So Belisarius and his men make their camp, which is the normal thing to do, and they expect to engage the Vandals the following day. The sun comes up the next morning and the Vandals are preparing for this battle. So they put their women and children in the center of their camp, along with the wagons and the baggage. And again, this is a thing that might surprise you. You wouldn't think of women and children, your families, traveling with an army when it's on campaign. But this happened fairly frequently in the ancient world.

55:44So it's happening here with the Vandals. Their wives and their children are with them. It happens with people like the Celts in much earlier Roman campaigns. So you can imagine all of these much more vulnerable people inside the army camp, and then the Vandals go out ahead of the army camp, and they form up in lines and prepare to fight. And of course, Gelimer gives his men an inspiring speech, and he says, fight for your women and children, do not dishonor the names of your glorious kings and your ancestors, fight like the men you are, etc, etc. The Romans, of course, are also putting themselves

56:20in battle array and formations. And apparently there's a stream between these two armies, which makes perfect sense, because that's where you would establish an army camp, preferably, next to some running water. So think of the Vandals on one side, the Romans on the other, this stream in the center, and they're staring each other down. And Belisarius orders some skirmishes. He orders some of his units to go and basically test the Vandal lines. So it's not an all-out assault, it's a targeted attack on certain more vulnerable sections of the Vandal line. And basically ordering

56:53some units to run in, attack, and retreat, and watch what the Vandals do. And this doesn't result in the Vandals engaging in an all-out attack. So Belisarius is sort of hoping to draw that response, it's not happening. After a couple of these skirmishes, Belisarius orders a more serious assault on the Vandal lines. At this point, several Vandal units begin to scatter, and this turns into men beginning to turn and run and retreat back in the direction of camp. So Belisarius reforms his men,

57:25and he begins pursuing the Vandals back toward their army camp. And at this point, the Vandal King Gelimer is looking at the scale of the army, he's looking at the disorder of his own men, and he realizes that this is a losing battle. That there's no chance the Vandals are going to win this one. And so instead of sticking around, he just gets on his horse and he flees. And once that happens, a lot of his officers and nobles lose heart, as you would. If your commander has given you a vote of no confidence and has elected to flee the field, it doesn't really fill you with a lot of motivation

57:59to stay there and fight until you get hacked to death. So what happens is even more of a dispersal. People begin to break and run, and very soon the Battle of Trichimerum is a clear Roman victory. The Romans completely encircle and capture the Vandal camp, and that means that all the women and children and gear that are left in that camp become Roman property. So the wives and children of these Vandals were enslaved. And this sounds horrific, which it is, but it was very standard

58:30practice in Roman imperial armies at the time. This is what you did with war captives. The campaign wouldn't be complete until Gelimer himself was captured, of course, and this took a little bit

Triumph in Constantinople

58:40longer to arrange, but eventually he also surrendered. Emperor Justinian was overjoyed. This Vandal campaign had been a risky venture. It had been a significant gamble of manpower and of financial resources, and a gamble that had failed for the last Roman emperor who tried it. Justinian desperately needed a win, and General Belisarius had provided it. So it was a great moment for both of them. Justinian was now the emperor who had reconquered the Roman province of North Africa, and he was very willing to

59:16reward General Belisarius handsomely for furnishing this opportunity. And apparently, this was the first Roman triumph granted to a man who was not an emperor in centuries. So it's a very special honor in the 6th century. Belisarius and his parade made their way through the streets of Constantinople, beginning outside Belisarius' own house and proceeding toward the Hippodrome, which was very much the center of the life of the city. And when they got to the Hippodrome, they went inside and they

59:49made one full rotation around the racing track before stopping in front of the emperor's box, the place where the emperor himself viewed the races. And you can think of Belisarius being followed by hundreds of people. Behind him marched Gelimer, king of the Vandals, and his entire family, as well as any other high-profile Vandal prisoners. Many others who'd been enslaved would also have shown up as part of this procession, along with servants who were carrying all kinds of chests

1:00:21full of treasure. And what's remarkable is that some of this treasure had belonged to the Roman Empire before. Because the Vandals, remember, had sacked the city of Rome in 455, and so they took anything valuable that they could carry away. The most fascinating part of this was that some of this treasure had been seized by the Romans themselves from the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70. So they'd seized it from this temple, it had been seized from the Romans by the Vandals,

1:00:52and now Belisarius has taken it back from the Vandals, and it's in Constantinople. Gelimer, the king of the Vandals, was forced to publicly kneel in front of Emperor Justinian. And this was a gesture of submission and humiliation and defeat, which was a very standard feature of Roman triumphs. And you can imagine the thousands of people in the stands screaming and cheering and celebrating this incredible victory. And Gelimer himself is heard to whisper,

1:01:23Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. He's quoting from the book of Ecclesiastes. And he does this because, of course, he might be a Vandal, but he's an Arian Christian. And so in this moment, he's reminding himself that everything, victory and defeat, is fleeting. It means nothing. General Belisarius himself then ritually prostrates himself before Emperor Justinian, acknowledging that the victory belongs to the Emperor. The Vandal king,

1:01:56Gelimer was not executed, as you might expect if you've read about some earlier Roman triumphs. Instead, Emperor Justinian sends him into retirement on a fairly generous estate. So, all things considered, it doesn't turn out too badly for Gelimer. Although, of course, he's now just a rich landowner, no longer a king. Belisarius is now the most celebrated general in the Empire. He's pulled off a high-risk campaign, he's brought back a lost province, he's brought glory to the Emperor,

1:02:28and he's rewarded not just with a triumph, but with promotions. Belisarius and his wife Antonina have accrued significant wealth in the course of their campaign against the Vandals, and they're then promoted to the rank of patrician by Emperor Justinian. And within a year, Belisarius is given an additional promotion to the rank of consul. Belisarius is at the peak of his power. He's now incredibly popular with the people of Constantinople, who celebrate him as a hero. And this is just the

1:03:00beginning. But his career has just gotten started. He will go on to retake the lost imperial capital of Rome itself. But that is the story of our next episode, along with the scandal and the slander that Procopius spins around this general to defame him for generations to come. I hope you'll join me for the rest of this story. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss the next one. And if you'd like to join me for a live conversation about General

1:03:34Belisarius or look at the ever-growing monthly collection of extra bonus episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert and become a supporter of Villains and Virgins podcast. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope I'll see you in the second half of the tale of General Belisarius.