I had been sent by Belisarius to the municipal lime kilns on the first days to sec whether any lime was available for making mortar, so that at least the angles of the walls might be strengthened; but I found only a few bags. Nailed to the wall in the President's office was a parchment document which, since it was no longer valid, I took down and kept as a memento of the siege. I copy it out here as a curiosity. It was the President's official appointment by Theoderich some years previously.
King Theoderich to the Distinguished Faustulus, President of the Lime Kilns, greeting!
It is a glorious labour indeed to serve the City of Rome! Who can doubt that lime, which is snow-white in hue and imponderable as an African sponge, is of mighty service in the construction of the most magnificent edifices? In proportion as it is itself debilitated and broken down by the fierce breath of fire, so does it lend force to massive masonry. It is a dissolvable stone, a petrifying downiness, a sandy pebble which (O wonder) burns the best when abundantly watered, without which stones do not stay nor grains of gravel commodiously cohere.
Therefore we set you, our industrious lord Faustulus, over the burning of lime and its decent distribution; that there may be plenty of this substance available both for public and private works, and that thereby people may be persuaded and encouraged confidently to build and rebuild our beloved City. Perform this well, and you shall be promoted to yet more honourable offices.
When I first read these elegant words I did not know whether to laugh or weep, they seemed so incongruous to the present desolation of the city and the barbarous Camp Latin of the soldiers who now formed its principal population. A philosophical train of thought was started in my mind, about the essentially evil nature of war, however just the cause; which I instantly smothered as monkish Christian and no more congruous to the situation than the document itself. But enough of this.
When King Teudel came within sight of the city he made an immediate attack upon us from the north-cast, sending his men in mass against the Nomentan, Tiburtine, and Praenestine Gates. I think that he expected the rebuilt walls to fall at the mere noise of his war-horns, as the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen to the war-horns of Jewish Joshua. I witnessed the cavalry-charge at the Tiburtine Gate, where I was once more at the same task that had me occupied ten years previously — serving a catapult with bolts while my mistress laid the sights. There were 10,000 Gothic lancers drawn up just out of range, and squadron by squadron they charged in column with levelled lances at the bridge that guarded the gate. It was like pouring wine into a bottle with an obstruction in the neck.
Few indeed of the Goths reached the gate, over a mound of dead and dying, to spit themselves there upon the spears of the phalanx as an Indian bear upon the quills of a porcupine. Their fearful losses were due not merely to our heavy and accurate fire from the walls, with bows, catapults, scorpions, wild asses, but to the iron caltrops which guarded the approach — a device never before used against the Goths. I have remarked that the necessary artisans for the making of new city gates were not available; but the farricr-sergcants of the army had been working night and day, employing all skilled and half-skilled men in the manufacture of these iron caltrops. A caltrop consists of four stout spikes, each a foot in length, fitted to an iron ball at such an angle that all their points are equidistant from one another. Thus, however thrown upon the ground, the caltrop always rests upon a firm triangle of spikes, with one spike sticking threateningly upward. Some call it the 'Devil's tripod". The caltrop was the family badge of Belisarius, and was embroidered in gold by my mistress's women upon the white Household standard. The motto read: 'Quocunque jeceris, stabit' — 'wheresoever you cast it, it will find its feet'. Cavalry cannot pass a position heavily strewn with caltrops unless they first dismount and carry them away one by one; otherwise the horses catch their feet in the spikes and stumble and fall impaled.
Five squadrons in succession charged this fearful barrier. The mound of dead rose higher and higher until every upward spike had spitted a man or a horse. Thus — as the rhetoricians would put it — the bridge became passable at last by reason of its very impassability. There was heavy fighting at the gate, the Gothic infantry being now engaged, and from the flanking-towers stones, boiling water, and beams came showering down upon them. Our spearmen, Isaurians, fought in relays; but since there were only fifty men in each team and the Goths came pressing forward in their hundreds and hundreds, they grew very weary. It was only my mistress's heartening presence and her promise of great rewards to every man who survived the day that kept them at their post. By midday our catapults had exhausted their supply of bolts and the wild-asses had kicked themselves to pieces. I seized a bow and found that I had not altogether forgotten my former archery practice, though my arms were feeble.
There was no pause for dinner, but we snatched mouthfuls of bread and cheese as we fought, and slaves carried around pitchers of sour wine. In the afternoon it rained heavily, the rain turned to sleet, and our bow-strings became useless. Even soldiers who usually took an honest pleasure in fighting began groaning and cursing in their distress. But the Goths suffered more than we. The approach to the gate became very slippery; our spearmen, to whom my mistress gave rough cloths to tic about their feet, had a great advantage over the enemy, who staggered and slid here and there on their wet leather soles.
The battle ended at nightfall, the Goths being held at every gate. They retired for the night, and we sent out the labourers in gangs with torches to recover bolts and arrows, for which we paid them by the bundle of fifty; while we ourselves cleared the bridges, freeing the bloody caltrops of their dead and taking plunder of golden torques and rinqs and shitts of mail.
King Teudel attacked again shortly after dawn, and again there was the same dreadful drama of slaughter, and again every bridge was held. I killed a Goth with my second arrow, striking him in the face at short range. They withdrew at noon, pursued by two squadrons of Household cuirassiers from the Praenestinc Gate; but rallied a mile away. Our whole cavalry was sent out to support these squadrons. In the battle which followed, bow and arrow once more prevailed over the lance. During these two days 15,000 Goths had been killed and many more carried away seriously wounded. Twenty thousand dead horses also strewed the battlefield. Our total losses were 450, 200 of whom were killed in the cavalry engagements.
A few days later the Goths returned to attack for the third time, but with such evident reluctance that Belisarius — who knew better than any general who ever lived, I suppose, exactly when to turn from the defensive to the offensive — went out himself against them with all the cavalry. They say that from a quarter of a mile's distance, with his strongest bow, Belisarius aimed at the Gothic standard-bearer riding ahead of the line. There was a following wind, or the shot would have been impossible: the arrow, falling from a great height, struck the standard-bearer in the groin, and pinned him to the saddle, so that the horse, pricked by the arrow, reared up and threw him. Others, jealous perhaps of Belisarius's feats, claim that the arrow was not fired by Belisarius, but by Sisifried, the guardsman who had survived Isaac's defeat; but if so, Sisifried did something extraordinary and far beyond his usual powers. The more natural account is that the arrow was Belisarius's, though perhaps Sisifried also aimed one at the standard-bearer.