On the day after the departure of the first party from the Port of Rome, which lies eighteen miles from the city, King Wittich seized the fortifications at this place; we had been unable to spare troops to guard them, and sailors are not fighters. Hitherto convoys of stores had reached us in barges from the Port, hauled up the river by oxen. We were now cut off from the sea, and our fleet retired to Naples. This occurred in April. In May we were put on half-rations of corn. In June the reinforcements arrived from Greece, under a general named Martin: 1,600 heathen Slavs and Bulgarian Huns.
These Slavs, who have curiously European features for so wild a race, had recently appeared in great force on the banks of the Danube, dispossessing the Gepids. They are horse-archers and excellent fighters if well fed, well paid and well led; and are also men of their word, but very dirty in their habits. Justinian had provided them with body-armour and helmets- usually they wear only leather jerkins and trews. He had also paid a great sum of money on their account to the priests of their tribe: for the Slavs have all things in common, and the priests, by whose ministrations they worship the Lightning God, act as their treasurers. When these Slavs learned that Belisarius was of their race and even knew a little of their language, they became well disposed to him; and so did the Huns (whom I have already described) on finding a few fellow-tribesmen of theirs in his Household Regiment held in great honour.
Belisarius now proposed to take the offensive against the Goths, though 1,600 men are not 10,000. He did not wish the new arrivals to feel that they were cooped up like prisoners in the city; as soon as they had been posted to their stations and given instruction in their guard-duties he staged a demonstration for their benefit. In broad daylight he sent out from the Salarian Gate 200 of his Household cuirassiers, under an Illyrian named Trajan, a troop commander and a wonderfully cool fellow. Following the orders that they had received, these men galloped to a little hill within sight of the walls and there formed up in a ring. Out rushed the indignant Goths from the nearest camp, snatching up their weapons and mounting their horses in great eagerness to attack them. By the time that it takes a Christian to say a Paternoster slowly, Trajan's men had shot 4,000 arrows into their disorderly column and killed or wounded 800 horsemen; but as soon as the Gothic infantry began to arrive Trajan's men galloped off, shooting from the saddle. They accounted for 200 more Goths before they returned, without a single casualty, to the shelter of the gate, where they entered under covering fire from a massed battery of catapults. Observe: the Gothic horsemen were armed only with lance and sword, and those of their infantry who were archers wore no body-armour and would go nowhere without the escort of mail-clad spearmen, who were very slow of foot. It was not to be wondered at that Trajan's men had it all their own way. A few days later a second force of 200 cuirassiers went out, but with a hundred Slavs attached to them for instructional purposes. They, too, seized a small hill, shot down Goths by the hundred, retired. A few days later still another force, Household cuirassiers and Bulgars, did the same thing. In these skirmishes the Goths lost 4,000 men; yet Wittich did not draw the obvious moral as to the inferiority of his armament, believing that the success of our men had been due merely to their daring. He ordered 500 of his own Royal Lancers to make a similar demonstration on a hill near the Asinarian Gate. Belisarius sent out a thousand Thracian cavalry under Bessas; the Goths were shot to pieces, hardly a hundred escaping back to their camp. The next day Wittich, who had reviled the survivors for cowards, sent out another lancer squadron of similar size. Belisarius let the Slavs and Bulgars loose on them, and every Goth was killed or taken prisoner.
The summer advanced slowly. One night a convoy came up from Terracina with sacks of coin for the payment of the troops, and with another sort of treasure for my mistress's household, namely the person of Theodosius. I must record that, although she greeted him very kindly, my mistress was so busy with her management of military affairs that the young man no longer seemed half her life; she had little time now for his sly witticisms and graces. She was prouder than ever before of being Belisarius's wife: there were continual praises of him in every common soldier's mouth and in almost every officer's, and her name was respectfully coupled with his. Theodosius, on the other hand, was a person of little importance, after all. He was not even a good marksman with a bow, and only a fair horseman — my mistress judged people mainly by these standards now, taking her duties very seriously. But she found a use for him as legal secretary to her husband. Soon it came to my ears that Constantine was reviving the old scandal among his brother-officers; and that the Catholic clergy were privately using the scandal to discredit our household among the civil population. But I said nothing, since we had troubles enough.
The same convoy also brought in a number of wagons of com. They were the last that reached us, for the Goths now began to blockade the roads closely. Seven miles south-westward from the city two great aqueducts intersected, enclosing a considerable space with their enormous brick arches; by filling up the open intervals with clay and stones the Goths made a strong fortress, to which they built outworks. There they placed a garrison of 7,000 men and were thus in command of both the Latin Way and the Appian Way. Even before the winter closed down on us there was great distress in Rome for lack of food. The remaining citizens, though impressed by Belisarius's frequent successes, refused to volunteer for active service; they grew more disaffected than ever, especially after a partial reverse that we suffered, which I shall soon describe.
It was by my mistress Antonina's vigilance that the treachery of the Pope Silverius was revealed. Belisarius had deputed to her the task of granting civilians permission to leave the city on business. She was very sharp in detecting any fraud — before she undertook this task a great number of Romans needed for defence work had managed to escape on various pretexts. One day a smooth-spoken priest came before her and asked permission to be absent for two or three nights: he had left a book in the sacristy-cupboard of his parish church near the Mulvian Bridge, and now wished to consult it. My mistress asked: 'What book?' He answered that it was the letters of St Jerome. She knew that no priest in his senses would risk passing through the Gothic lines merely to fetch these out-of-date, ill-tempered letters — of which, moreover, copies were surely to be had in any church library in Rome. But she concealed her suspicions and granted him a pass. The priest was arrested that night as he was passing out of the Pincian postern-gate. Sewn in his skirt was found a letter to King Wittich, signed by all the leading senators and by the Pope himself, offering to open the Asinarian Gate to admit the Gothic army on such a night as Wittich might appoint.
I should explain that Belisarius, in order to be as free as possible from judicial work that might interfere with his military duties, had also deputed to Antonina the settling of all civilian disputes and the punishment of all civilian offenders, though disputes and crimes of the military still came up before him. My mistress held a daily court in her quarters at the Pincian Palace. When she told him the names of the traitors and showed him the letter, he was angry but not astonished: he was aware that Wittich had threatened to kill the Roman hostages that he had at Ravenna if Italy continued to hold out against him. Belisarius did not think it just, however, that merely because the traitors were persons of such distinction they should be tried by himself rather than by her. Indeed, he was glad that the case lay in Antonina's jurisdiction: he would have been ashamed, as a devout Christian, to sit in judgement on the spiritual head of his Church. My mistress certainly had no such scruples, being still a pagan at heart. She said: 'A traitor in a mitre, or a traitor in a helmet — where is the difference?' Nevertheless, Belisarius was present at the trial, not wishing to seem a shirker of responsibility. My mistress, being unwell that day, reclined on a couch; he sat at her feet as her coadjutor.