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 council at which one of his generals of division rushes at him with a drawn sword, do not give us an exalted idea of the order maintained in society during the brilliant conquests of Justinian's reign. Reasoning from analogy, it may appear natural enough that such a governor-general and commander-in-chief should end his career by having his eyes put out and by begging his bread.
There was another circumstance which very much increased the probability of Belisarius dying a beggar. We do not wish to deprive the tale of the smallest portion of the just sympathy of the latest posterity. The fact is, Belisarius grew enormously rich during his successful campaigns against Gelimer and Witiges, and even contrived to accumulate treasures during his unsuccessful wars with Chosroes and Totila.[30] Like his friend Bessas and his enemy Konstantinos, as the truth must be spoken, he did not neglect the golden opportunities he enjoyed of gaining golden spoils from all sorts of men. Now, from the days of Sylla, to those of Justinian, not to say a good deal earlier and later, it was the avowed system of the financiers of Rome to increase the budget by confiscations. The Ottoman empire, heir to most of the vices and some of the grandeur of Imperial Constantinople, cherished the system as a part of its strength, until it adopted the more pitiful vices of Western Europe. Anastasius--not the ecclesiastical historian of the earlier Popes, but the hero of the "Memoirs of a Greek," by Mr Thomas Hope--in his ratiocination on the principles of Ottoman finance, gives us a compendious abstract of those of Imperial Rome during eleven centuries, from Augustus to Constantine Dragoses:--