Volume Iii Part 16 (2/2)

All the day long he showed these messengers his army and fleet.

The night following the messengers had disappeared.

They were Thoris.m.u.th and Aligern, who had been sent by King Totila, and now furnished him with the much-desired particulars.

So, from the very beginning, fate was against Belisarius, and the whole course of this campaign was unworthy of the fame of that great general.

It is true that he succeeded in running into the harbour of Ravenna, and providing that city with provisions.

But, the very day that he arrived. Prince Germa.n.u.s was attacked by a fatal malady while visiting the tomb of Mataswintha.

She had been buried in the vault of the palace, near the graves of her brother and the young King Athalaric.

Germa.n.u.s died, and, according to his last wish, was buried beside the woman he had loved so truly.

In a little niche in the same vault there reposed a heart which had ever beat warmly for Queen ”Beautiful-hair.”

Aspa, the Numidian slave, would not outlive her beloved mistress.

”In my home,” she had said, ”the virgins of the G.o.ddess of the Sun often voluntarily leap into the flames which receive the G.o.dhead.

Aspa's G.o.ddess, the lovely, bright, and kind, has left her. Aspa will not live forlorn in the cold and darkness. She will follow her Sun.”

She had heaped up flowers in the death-chamber of her mistress--heaped them still higher than on the day when she had prepared the same small room for a bridal chamber--and had kindled unknown combustibles and African resin, the stupefying odours of which drove away all the other slaves. But Aspa had spent the night in the room.

The next morning Syphax, attracted by the well-known but dangerous odour, which reminded him of his country's sacrificial customs, went softly into the room, which was as silent as the grave. At Mataswintha's feet, her head buried in flowers, he had found his Antelope--dead.

”She died,” he told Cethegus, ”for love of her mistress. And now I have none left on earth but you.”

After the burial of Germa.n.u.s, Belisarius left Ravenna with the whole fleet.

But his very next undertaking, an attempt to surprise Pisaurum, was repulsed with great loss.

And King Totila, now acquainted with the small number of Belisarius's troops, had sent skirmishers, under the command of Wisand, supported by a few s.h.i.+ps of war, to take Firmum, which was situated on the same coast, almost under the generals very eyes.

The Byzantines, Herodian and Bonus, surrendered Spoletium to Earl Grippa, after the lapse of thirty days, during which they had hoped for reinforcements from Belisarius in vain.

In a.s.sisium the commander of the garrison was a man of the name of Sisifrid, a Goth who had deserted in the days of the fall of Witichis.

This man well knew what was in store for him, should he fall into Hildebrand's hands, who besieged the fort in person. Hatred of such treason had enticed the old man from the siege of Ravenna to complete this task of retribution.

The Goth obstinately defended the town, but when, during a sally, the axe of the old master-at-arms sent him to the other world, the citizens obliged the Thracian garrison to yield. Many aristocratic Italians, members of the old Catacomb conspiracy, three hundred Illyrian hors.e.m.e.n, and some chosen body-guards of Belisarius, were taken prisoners.

Immediately afterwards, Placentia, the last town in the aemilia which was held by a Saracen garrison for the Emperor, was forced to capitulate to Earl Markja, who commanded the small army of investment.

In Bruttia, the fortress of Ruscia, the most important harbour for Thurii, surrendered to the bold Aligern.

<script>