ted victory. At
this point Procopius indulges in a strain of meditation which is not
unusual with him: "We may see hereby how Fortune wantons in her pride,
how she teaches us that she is mistress of all things, and that she will
not suffer Man to have anything which he can call his own".

Though Carthage was taken, the war was not yet over. Tzazo, who, in the
midst of his victories in Sardinia, heard of the ruin of his country,
hastened home with a valiant and hitherto triumphant army, and joined
his brother, Gelimer, on the plain of Bulla, in Numidia. When the two
brothers met they clasped one another round the neck and for long could
not loosen their hold, yet could they speak no word to each other, but
wrung their hands and wept; and so did each one of the companions of
Gelimer with some one of the officers of the army of Sardinia. But tears
soon gave place to the longing for revenge, and the two armies, forming
one strong and determined host, moved eastward to Tricamaron, about
twenty miles distant from Carthage, and began a partial blockade of the
capital. On the 15 th December Belisarius met the Vandals in
battle-array. The fight was more stubbornly contested than that of Ad
Decimum; but Tzazo fell in the thickest of the battle, and again the
impulsive nature of Gelimer was so moved by the sight of a brother's
blood that he renounced the struggle for his crown and galloped away
from the field.

Now the conquest of Africa was indeed completed, but Belisarius was set
upon capturing the person of the fugitive king, as an ornament to his
triumph and the pledge of victory. The tedious task was delegated to a
Teutonic chief named Pharas, who for three months beleaguered the
impregnable hill on the confines of Mauritania, on the summit of which
was the fortress in which Gelimer had taken refuge. The incidents which
marked his final surrender have been often described. He who had been of
late the daintily-living lord of Africa found life hard indeed among the
rough, half-savage Moors, who were partly his body-guard and partly his
gaolers. An ambassador sent by Pharas to exhort him to surrender and
cast himself on the clemency of Justinian brought back his proud refusal
to submit to one who had done him so much undeserved wrong, but brought
back also a pathetic request that his courteous foe would grant him
three things, a lyre, a sponge, and a loaf of bread. The loaf was to
remind him of the taste of baked bread, which h