on foot covered
by the horsemen. Thus till the battle became a hand-to-hand encounter
the horsemen could make no reply to the arrows discharged at them from a
distance, and were therefore easily thrown into disorder, while the
foot-soldiers, though able to reply to the enemy's archers, could not
stand against the charges of his horse".[144] From this passage we can
see what were the means by which Belisarius won his great victories.
While the Goth, with his huge broadsword and great javelin, chafing for
a hand-to-hand encounter with the foe, found himself mowed down by the
arrows of a distant enemy, the nimble barbarian who called himself a
Roman solder discharged his arrows at the cavalry, dashed in impetuous
onset against the infantry, wheeled round, feigned flight, sent his
arrows against the too eagerly advancing horsemen, in fact, by Parthian
tactics won a Roman victory, or to use a more modern illustration, the
_Hippo-toxotai_ were the "Mounted Rifles" of the Imperial army.

[Footnote 144: Procophis, "De Bello Gotthico", i, 27.]

The expedition under the command of Belisarius made its first attack on
the Gothic kingdom in Sicily. Here the campaign was little more than a
triumphant progress. In reliance on its professions of loyalty,
Theodoric and his successors had left the wealthy and prosperous island
almost bare of Gothic troops, and now the provincials, eager to form
once more a part of the Eternal Roman Empire, opened the gates of city
after city to the troops of Justinian; only at Palermo was a stout
resistance made by the Gothic soldiers who garrisoned the city. The
walls were strong, and that part of them which bordered on the harbour
was thought to be so high and massive as not to need the defence of
soldiers. When unobserved by the foe, Belisarius hoisted up his men,
seated in boats, to the yard-arms of his ships and made them clamber out
of the boats on to the unguarded parapet. This daring manoeuvre gave him
the complete command of the Gothic position, and the garrison
capitulated without delay. So was the whole island of Sicily won over
to the realm of Justinian before the end of 535, and Belisarius, Consul
for the year, rode through the streets of Syracuse on the last day of
his term of office, scattering his "donative" to the shouting soldiers
and citizens.

Operations in 536, the second year of the war, were suspended for some
months by a military mutiny at Carthage, which called for the presenc