r
faces to the enemy: innumerable arrows glanced without effect from the
compact and shelving order of their bucklers; an impenetrable line of
pikes was opposed to the repeated assaults of the Persian cavalry; and
after a resistance of many hours, the remaining troops were skilfully
embarked under the shadow of the night. The Persian commander retired
with disorder and disgrace, to answer a strict account of the lives of
so many soldiers, which he had consumed in a barren victory. But the
fame of Belisarius was not sullied by a defeat, in which he alone had
saved his army from the consequences of their own rashness: the approach
of peace relieved him from the guard of the eastern frontier, and
his conduct in the sedition of Constantinople amply discharged his
obligations to the emperor. When the African war became the topic of
popular discourse and secret deliberation, each of the Roman generals
was apprehensive, rather than ambitious, of the dangerous honor; but as
soon as Justinian had declared his preference of superior merit, their
envy was rekindled by the unanimous applause which was given to the
choice of Belisarius. The temper of the Byzantine court may encourage
a suspicion, that the hero was darkly assisted by the intrigues of
his wife, the fair and subtle Antonina, who alternately enjoyed the
confidence, and incurred the hatred, of the empress Theodora.

The birth of Antonina was ignoble; she descended from a family of
charioteers; and her chastity has been stained with the foulest
reproach. Yet she reigned with long and absolute power over the mind of
her illustrious husband; and if Antonina disdained the merit of conjugal
fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to Belisarius, whom she
accompanied with undaunted resolution in all the hardships and dangers
of a military life. [7]

[Footnote 5: (Procop. Vandal. l. i. c. 11.) Aleman, (Not. ad Anecdot. p.
5,) an Italian, could easily reject the German vanity of Giphanius and
Velserus, who wished to claim the hero; but his Germania, a metropolis
of Thrace, I cannot find in any civil or ecclesiastical lists of the
provinces and cities. Note *: M. von Hammer (in a review of Lord Mahon's
Life of Belisarius in the Vienna Jahrbucher) shows that the name of
Belisarius is a Sclavonic word, Beli-tzar, the White Prince, and that
the place of his birth was a village of Illvria, which still bears the
name of Germany.--M.]

[Footnote 6: The two first Persian campaigns