Then Belisarius asks permission from Bessas to speak; because being only a boy he must in general refrain from doing so until addressed. Bessas nods consent, and Belisarius speaks, stammering a little from embarrassment, what is in his mind.
' "Roman" is a name borne by hundreds of thousands who have never seen the City of Rome, and never will; and so it was, I believe, in the greatest days of the Empire. To be Roman is to belong not to Rome, a city in Italy, but to the world. The Roman legionaries who perished with Valens were Gauls and Spaniards and Britons and Dalmatians and many other sorts; of true-born Romans among them there cannot have been many hundreds. Then, I do not think that perfection in equipment and military tactics has been attained by the Gothic lancer. The Gothic lancer is a brave man, and his charge is terrible because of the weight of his horse, and because of the heavy armour he wears-cuirass, shield, helmet, greaves. But the Hun horseman is a brave man too, and he can let loose a rain of arrows while riding at full gallop; only his horse is too light to carry a fully armoured man. Thus the Hun has not attained perfection cither. Yet, noble Bessas, was it not fear of the Huns that first drove you Goths over the Danube into our Thrace? For your foot-archers could not overtake them, nor could your lancers withstand their volleys of arrows. Now, suppose that one could combine Hun archer and Gothic lancer into a single fighting man and civilize him as a Roman, and put him under proper camp discipline – that, I think, would be to breed a soldier as near perfection as possible. And he would be a Roman both in name and spirit. I intend to command such troops one day.'
Belisarius spoke with such quiet sincerity and such good sense that everyone applauded loudly, and the heart of my mistress Antonina went suddenly out to him in unmistakable love.
When dessert was brought in, Antonina gave an exhibition of sword-dancing in the old Spartan style. By now the dispute had ended, for it was realized that Belisarius had said the last word that needed saying; and that the future of warfare lay with him and his boy-companions. Modestus called his nephew to him, and embraced him drunkcnly. 'When I the this villa of mine is yours – tables, plate, frieze, and all. I could not leave it to better hands.' Indeed, the poor fellow died soon after, and was asgood as his word. The property was a very valuable one.
There is little more to be recorded of the rest of the banquet, which lasted until a late hour. Everyone but my mistress and Belisarius was very drunk – even Malthus – and young Uliaris grew boisterous and seized up a carving-knife and had to be disarmed. Modestus began, once more, his rambling disquisitions, and tied himself into such knots that he won almost as much applause as my mistress did with her last dance, when she so contorted herself that her legs seemed arms, and her belly, buttock. Being drenched in wine, he utterly forgot that he was a Christian and indulged in the most scandalous abuse and blasphemy of the Son (whether single, double, or many-natured) – though not of the Father, whom he generously identified with Jupiter, the supreme Deity of his own race. He went on to tell how the ruin of Rome had been her forsaking of the Old Gods and her taking up of this Galilean impostor – whose meek, unwarlikc philosophy had rotted the Empire through and through; so that unlettered barbarians must be hired to undertake the defence of the Empire not merely in the lower ranks of the Army, but also in the capacity of colonels and generals and even commanders of armies.
Now, while I am on this subject, let me copy out from Modestus's book of poems an example of his Latin hcndccasyllabics – the metre that he favoured most. It will show both the weakness and the occasional strength of his verse. Its weakness, in the continual puns and word-play – aniens, a military column, or phalanx, and amiculus, a rabbit; nipibus, rocks, and ruptis, broken; fate, widely, and huci, lurks. Its strength when, for once, an antithetic contrast (the triumph of the rabbits, that is to say the Christians, by means of their unwarrior-like meekness) is felt with a noble and sincere disgust. Chorazin, I believe, is a village in Galilee which Jesus cursed, but is used instead of'Galilee', the part for the whole, according to poetical convention.
DE CUNICULOPOLITANIS
Ruptis rupibus in Choraanis
Servili cunco cuniculorum
Laic qui latet, allocutus isto
Adridens BASILEUS, inermis ipse…*
ON THE INHABITANTS OF RABBITOPOLIS
In Galilean rocks the rabbits breed, A feeble folk, to whom their frail LORD said, Smiling: 'Be bold to cowardice, yea with speed Dart from your Foe – unless he too has fled."
To our Eternal City these short-lived Prolific coneys came, and burrows found in catacombs, where they in darkness wived And numerous grew and pitted all the ground. * [Literally:
