e had not eaten for
months; the sponge was to bathe his eyes, weakened with continual tears;
the lyre, to enable him to set to music an ode which he had composed on
the subject of his misfortunes. A few days more passed by, and then came
Gelimer's offer to surrender at discretion, trusting to the generosity
of the Emperor. What finally broke down his proud spirit was the sight
of a delicately nurtured child, the son of one of his Vandal courtiers,
fighting with a dirty little Moor for a half-baked piece of dough, which
the two boys had pulled out of the ashes where it was baking.

Gelimer, whose reason was perhaps somewhat unhinged by his hardships,
gave a loud laugh--professedly at the instability of human
greatness--when brought into the presence of Belisarius. He and his
captors soon embarked for Constantinople, where they arrived probably
about the middle of 534. It had thus taken less than a year to level
with the ground the whole fabric of Vandal dominion, reared a century
before by the terrible Gaiseric, and to reunite Africa to the Roman
Republic. Belisarius received a splendid triumph, the chief figure of
which was of course the captive Gelimer, who, with a purple robe on his
shoulders, paced through the streets, shouting ever and anon in a
melancholy voice, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". When the
procession reached the palace, Gelimer by constraint and Belisarius
willingly prostrated themselves at the feet of "Justinianus Augustus".
The promises on the faith of which the Vandal king had surrendered
himself were well kept. He might have been raised to the dignity of
Patrician, if he would have renounced his Arian creed. As it was, he
lived in honourable exile on the large estates in Galatia, which he had
received from the bounty of the Emperor.

In the same year (534) which witnessed the triumph of Belisarius over
the conquered Vandals came the final overthrow of the Burgundian
monarchy. In 523 Sigismund, the son-in-law of Theodoric, the convert to
Catholicism who ordered the murder of his son, had been defeated in
battle by the sons of Clovis, and together with his wife and two sons
had been thrown down a deep well and so slain. Theodoric, incensed at
the murder of his grandson, had taken part against Sigismund and
obtained a large accession of territory in Dauphine as the price of his
alliance with the Franks. But a brother of Sigismund's, named Godamir,
rallied the beaten Burgundians, defeated the Fra