Hilderic. This outrage was keenly resented
by the court of Ravenna. Hostilities between the two states were
apparently imminent, but probably Amalasuentha felt that war, whether
successful or unsuccessful, would be too dangerous for the dynasty, and
sullen alienation took the place of the preparation of fleets and
armies. In June, 531, five years after the accession of Athalaric, the
elderly and effeminate Hilderic was deposed by his martial subjects who
had long chafed under the rule of such a sovereign, and his cousin, the
warlike Gelimer, ascended the throne. The deposition of Hilderic,
followed for the present not by his death but by his close imprisonment,
furnished the ambitious Justinian with a fair pretext for war, since
Hilderic was not only the ally of the Empire, and a Catholic, but was
descended on his mother's side from the great Theodosius and related to
many of the Byzantine nobility. In spite of the opposition of the more
cautious among his counsellors, Justinian decided to despatch an
expedition for the conquest of Carthage, and about Midsummer, 533, a
fleet of 500 ships, manned by 20,000 sailors and conveying 15,000
soldiers (10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry), sailed forth from the
Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmora, bound for the Libyan waters. At the
head of the army was Belisarius, now about twenty-eight years of age, a
man who came, like his Imperial master, from the highlands of Illyricum,
but who, unlike that master, was probably of noble lineage. Three years
before, he had won the battle of Daras, defeating the Persian general,
whose army was nearly twice as numerous as his own, and he had already
shown signs of that profound knowledge of the science, and that
wonderful mastery of the art of war which he was afterwards to display
in many a hard-fought campaign, and which entitled him to a place in the
innermost circle of the greatest generals that the world has seen.

The voyage of the Imperial fleet was slow and tedious, and had the
Vandal king been well served by his ambassadors there was ample time to
have anticipated its attack. But Gelimer seems to have been quite
ignorant of the projected expedition, and had actually sent off some of
his best troops under the command of his brother, Tzazo, to suppress a
rebellion which had broken out in Sardinia. Moreover, the estrangement
between Vandals and Ostrogoths was a most fortunate event for the
Imperial cause. In consequence of that estrangement