‘What lingo’s that they’re talking?’ one young harvester wondered aloud, stopping work to rest on his scythe. ‘Not Latin, that’s for sure.’
‘It’s Greek, you ignoramus,’ muttered a greybeard, shaking his head in disgust. ‘When I was your age, everyone still understood some of the old tongue, even if they didn’t speak it much. Why do you think this part of Italy’s called Magna Graecia? Settled by our ancestors from across the Mare Ionium‡ centuries ago.’
‘Weird-looking bunch,’ someone observed, as the strangers drew near. ‘Like ancient legionaries.’ And indeed, with their scale-armour loricae* and classical Attic helmets, and commanded by an officer in muscle-cuirass, they needed only long rectangular shields to resemble Roman soldiers from the time of Trajan or the Antonines. Apart from swords, they were equipped with strange cylindrical bundles which they held in their right hands.
After testing the wind direction, the officer led his men to the upper margin of the fields, along which the soldiers formed a line.
‘The bastards are going to fire the crop!’ exclaimed a middle-aged harvester. ‘See the flashes from their strike-a-lights.’ And he raced uphill to confront them. ‘Stop!’ he shouted, planting himself before their officer.
With a grin, the officer unsheathed his sword and, almost nonchalantly, drew the tip across the other’s cheek. With a cry of shock and pain, the harvester clapped a hand to his face to stem the blood pouring from the wound.
No one interfered, as the soldiers flung burning torches into the standing corn. Cowed and silent, the villagers watched in helpless fury as the fruits of that year’s labour disappeared in roaring flames.
Their task completed, the soldiers returned to the fleet, which continued its progress down the coast to select fresh targets. The seaboard of Apulia and then Calabria came to be defined by a lengthening wall of smoke from burning crops as the fleet moved south, sacking Sipontum† en route. Rounding the heel of Italy into the Sinus Tarentinus,‡ it prepared to assault the city of Tarentum. But the Tarentines were made of sterner stuff than the Sipontians. Inspired, perhaps, by the defiant spirit of their forefathers, who had broken an alliance forced on them by Rome (to side instead with Hannibal), they made ready to resist. In this they were assisted by topography.
The harbour to the east of the port was sheltered by the twin islets of the Choerades, while the town itself, situated on an island, was connected to the mainland by a bridge and aqueduct — all features which militated against a concerted onslaught. Booms, formed from vessels chained together and joining the Choerades to each other and the mainland, made a defensive necklace across the harbour mouth. This forced Julian to split his offensive into two separate attacks, one by land, the other from the sea. While the dromons, harrassed by archery from the islets and the shore, attempted to sink the booms by the time-consuming method of ramming each vessel and leaving it to founder, Julian’s eight-thousand-strong force of soldiers and marines fought its way slowly along the bridge and the narrow channel of the aqueduct, the Tarentines grimly contesting every hard-fought yard. The end, however, could only be delayed, not prevented. After several hours of bloody hand-to-hand combat as Roman battled Roman, the city fell. It was then subjected to an orgy of pillage and destruction.
The capture of Tarentum marked the culmination of the raid. Getting wind that Theoderic’s fleet was now almost strong enough to match his own, Julian, well satisfied with his campaign of retribution, gave the order to make sail for Constantinople. He had paid back Theoderic a hundredfold. As for the Isaurian, the fact that nothing had been heard from him before the expedition left the Golden Horn suggested that the king had detained him as a hostage — preferably in some dank and noisome gaol. How true the saying was that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.
In Ravenna, a mood of black depression settled on Theoderic. Fortune seemed to have deserted him: his dreams of reviving the Western Empire lay in ruins; he had been humiliated by Anastasius — forced to return his conquests in Illyricum, and watch impotently while the south of his kingdom was ravaged by an Eastern fleet. His rival, Clovis, had triumphed in Gaul, destroying the kingdom of his friends and kinsmen, the Visigoths. The Vandals and Burgundians had thrown off their allegiances, the Burgundians by siding with the Franks against the Visigoths, the Vandals (who had a powerful fleet) by withholding aid against the Eastern expedition. Hardest of all to bear, perhaps, was the knowledge that Timothy — who had once been more a trusted friend than a servant — had played him false. To rub salt into his wounds, Anastasius had chosen to honour Clovis, awarding him an honorary consulship — along with the title of Augustus — while his own consular nominee,* Venantius, had been turned down. All this was clearly intended to serve as a reminder that such titles were in the gift of Anastasius, and as a calculated snub designed to put a presumptuous monarch in his place.
In this dark hour, only the counsel of his three Roman advisers, Boethius, Symmachus and Cassiodorus, provided a modicum of comfort. Rational and positive, they encouraged him to maintain his self-belief, pointing out that his present setbacks weighed less in the balance than his achievements, which were numerous and great. The darkest hour was followed by the dawn, he told himself; then angrily dismissed the thought. A king should be above seeking consolation in such hoary saws.
* One of the high-ranking titles in the gift of the emperor: vir illuster, vir gloriosus, and so on.
* 28 September 505.
* Symmachus, Boethius and Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus, although a scion of an old Bruttium (toe of Italy) family rather than a Roman one, was very much a part of the senatorial establishment and, as such, definitely ‘one of us’.
* The port of Ravenna.
* Perhaps at Vouille, near Poitiers.
† Arles, Toulouse, Barcelona.
* Mount Gargano, a vast, isolated peak on the promontory that forms the ‘spur’ above Italy’s ‘heel’.
† Roughly translated, ‘Take it easy, but don’t forget you’re under orders.’
‡ The Ionian Sea.
* Cuirasses.
† Now Manfredonia, founded in 1261 from the ruins of ancient Sipontum, by Manfred, king of Sicily and regent of Apulia.
‡ The Gulf of Taranto.
* For the year 507.
THIRTY-ONE
It is proper for us, most clement emperor, to seek peace
Despite Theoderic’s rejection of wishful thinking contained in ancient maxims, the Wheel of Fortune spun a full half-circle, and his career, which in the course of his confrontation with the empire had seemed to reach a nadir, began to climb rapidly towards its zenith.
The Ostrogothic army that had failed to rescue Alaric found itself confronted by Clovis’s mighty host. In the ensuing battle, Count Ibba was victorious; the loss of thirty thousand of his finest warriors broke the power of Clovis. Mopping-up operations under Duke Mammo pushed the Franks back beyond the Liger and forced their Burgundian allies to withdraw from Provincia.* With their great persecutor defeated, the grateful remnant of the nation of the Visigoths was happy to be incorporated into the realm of its Ostrogothic cousins; thus, almost at a stroke, Theoderic saw his rule extended over southern Gaul and most of Spain.† The Vandals and Burgundians (conscious of their mistake in having roused a sleeping tiger) returned to their allegiance, while the Heruls, Rhaetians and Thuringians eagerly accepted his overtures and became his allies, forming a protective buffer zone to his kingdom, in the north. Finally, the ring of defences was closed to the eastward by an agreement sub rosa with Sabinianus, whereby Pannonia would quietly once more come under Ostrogothic rule — on the understanding that there would be no more incursions into imperial territory.