his proceeding, exclaimed, "Are you not bound to obey me?"
The reply was, "Yes, in every thing else according to the Emperor's
commission; but not in this matter." On receiving this answer, the
commander-in-chief ordered his guards to be summoned. The order
astonished Konstantinos, who saw the affair was assuming a more serious
aspect than he had foreseen. Well aware that peculation and extortion
were not very heinous offences in the Roman armies, he immediately
suspected the existence of a project to ruin him for some other reason,
and cried out, "Are the guards ordered in to murder me?" "No," said
Belisarius, "only to compel you to restore the plunder which your
adjutant seized in the church at Spoleto." Konstantinos saw the
commander-in-chief enraged, and knew the Byzantine government well
enough to feel his life insecure under the turn affairs seemed taking.
With the quick determination of the daring chiefs who then led the
fierce soldiers of the empire, he resolved to secure revenge, and
perhaps make it the means of escape. Suddenly drawing his sword, he
sprang at Belisarius, and made a thrust at his heart. The
commander-in-chief, struck with amazement, only contrived to escape by
jumping back and dodging behind Bessas, a Thracian Goth of high rank in
the Roman army.[28] Konstantinos turned to escape, but was seized by the
generals Ildiger and Valerian; and the guards entering dragged him from
the council chamber to another room, where he was shortly after murdered
by the order of Belisarius.[29]

Now it must be recollected that we have an account of these two
remarkable events in the life of Belisarius from an eye-witness. The
very reserve of Procopius, who, in the affair of the Pope, omits all
mention of Antonina, and glides over the injustice of the proceedings
from dread of the feminine ferocity of the lady, and the priestly
persecution of the successor of Silverius, who still continued to occupy
the Papal chair when the history was written, affords us an indubitable
warrant for the accuracy of the graphic description of the impressive
scene which attended the murder of Konstantinos. When the History of the
Gothic War was published, many of the generals who had been present at
the council were still living.

These pictures of Belisarius and his times are not very favourable. A
governor-general sitting in council, with his wife on the sofa directing
the despatch of business, and a commander-in-chief holding a c