ELISARIUS (Sclavonic Belitzar, "White Prince") was born at Germania about A. D. 505. In his youth he served in the body-guard of Justinian, and was afterward successively appointed to the chief command of the armies against Persia, Africa and Italy. During the Italian campaign he was offered the crown of Italy, but remained true to Justinian. Tzetzes, a writer of the twelfth century, describes him in his old age as a blind beggar, wandering through the streets of Constantinople; and this account has been adopted by Marmontel, but is considered a fiction by Gibbon and other historians. The great painting of Gérard, however, represents him in the guise of a mendicant seeking alms. From this celebrated painting we give a medallion engraving on steel.

BARON FRANÇOIS GÉRARD

Was one of the first portrait and historical painters of the modern French school. He was of French parentage, but was born at Rome in A. D. 1770, his father being connected with the French legation at that city. When but a youth he went to Paris, and there studied with Pajou, the sculptor, after which he worked with the painter Brenet. In A. D. 1795 he exhibited his first great painting, "Belisarius," which was followed by "Psyche and Cupid,' "but his greatest work, both as regards size and merit, is his Entrance

of Henri Quatre into Paris.' It is thirty feet wide by fifteen high, glowing with life, bright with color, and accurate in costume. It was painted in A. D. 1817.” He was appointed by Louis XVIII. court-painter, and raised to the rank of baron. He died at Paris in his sixty-seventh year, on January 11, A. D. 1837.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF BELISARIUS. FROM DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

THE Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps educated, among the Thracian peasants, without any of those advantages which had formed the virtues of the elder and the younger Scipio-a noble origin, liberal studies and the emulation of a free state.

The silence of a loquacious secretary may be admitted to prove that the youth of Belisarius could not afford any subject of praise : he served, most assuredly with valor and reputation, among the private guards of Justinian; and when his patron became emperor, the domestic was promoted to military command. After a bold inroad into Persarmenia, in which his glory was shared by a colleague and his progress was checked by an enemy, Belisarius repaired to the important station of Dara, where he first accepted the service of Procopius, the faithful companion and diligent historian of his exploits. The Mirranes of Persia advanced with forty thousand of her best troops to raze the fortifications of Dara, and signified the day and the hour on which the citizens should prepare a bath for his refreshment after the toils of

victory. He encountered an adversary equal to himself by the new title of general of the East, his superior in the science of war, but much inferior in the number and quality of his troops, which amounted only to twentyfive thousand Romans and strangers, relaxed in their discipline and humbled by recent disasters.

As the level plain of Dara refused all shelter to stratagem and ambush, Belisarius protected his front with a deep trench, which was prolonged at first in perpendicular, and afterward in parallel, lines, to cover the wings of cavalry advantageously posted to command the flanks and rear of the enemy. When the Roman centre was shaken, their well-timed and rapid charge decided the conflict the standard of Persia fell; the immortals fled; the infantry threw away their bucklers, and eight thousand of the vanquished were left on the field of battle.

In the next campaign Syria was invaded on the side of the desert, and Belisarius, with twenty thousand men, hastened from Dara to the relief of the province. During the whole summer the designs of the enemy were baffled by his skilful dispositions; he pressed their retreat, occupied each night their camp of the preceding day, and would have secured a bloodless victory if he could have resisted the impatience of his own troops. Their valiant promise was faintly supported in the hour of battle; the right wing was exposed by the treacherous or cowardly desertion of the Christian Arabs; the Huns, a veteran band of eight hundred warriors, were oppressed by superior numbers; the flight of the Isaurians was intercepted; but the Roman infantry stood firm on the left, for Belisarius himself, dismounting from his horse,

showed them that intrepid despair was their only safety. They turned their backs to the Euphrates and their faces to the enemy; innumerable arrows glanced without effect from the compact and shelving order of their bucklers; an impenetrable line of pikes was opposed to the repeated assaults of the Persian cavalry; and after a resistance of many hours the remaining troops were skilfully embarked under the shadow of the night. The Persian commander retired with disorder and disgrace to answer a strict account of the lives of so many soldiers, which he had consumed in a barren victory. But the fame of Belisarius was not sullied by a defeat in which he alone had saved his army from the consequences of their own rashness: the approach of peace relieved him from the guard of the eastern frontier, and his conduct in the sedition of Constantinople amply discharged his obligations to the emperor.

When the African war became the topic of popular discourse and secret deliberation. each of the Roman generals was apprehensive rather than ambitious of the dangerous honor, but as soon as Justinian had declared his preference of superior merit their envy was rekindled by the unanimous applause which was given to the choice of Belisarius. The temper of the Byzantine court may encourage a suspicion that the hero was darkly assisted by the intrigues of his wife, the fair and subtle Antonina, who alternately enjoyed the confidence and incurred the hatred of the empress Theodora. The birth of Antonina was ignoble; she descended from a family of charioteers, and her chastity has been stained with the foulest reproach. she reigned with long and absolute power over the mind of her illustrious husband;

Yet

and if Antonina disdained the merit of conjugal fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to Belisarius, whom she accompanied with undaunted resolution in all the hardships and dangers of a military life.

AFRICAN WAR (A. D. 533).

The preparations for the African war were not unworthy of the last contest between Rome and Carthage. The pride and flower of the army consisted of the guards of Belisarius, who, according to the pernicious indulgence of the times, devoted themselves by a particular oath of fidelity to the service of their patrons. Their strength and stature, for which they had been curiously selected, the goodness of their horses and armor and the assiduous practice of all the exercises of war enabled them to act whatever their courage might prompt; and their courage was exalted by the social honor of their rank and the personal ambition of favor and fortune. Four hundred of the bravest of the Heruli marched under the banner of the faithful and active Pharas; their intractable valor was more highly prized than the tame submission of the Greeks and Syrians, and of such importance was it deemed to procure a reinforcement of six hundred Massagetæ, or Huns, that they were allured by fraud and deceit to engage in a novel expedition. Five thousand horse and ten thousand foot were embarked at Constantinople for the conquest of Africa, but the infantry, for the most part levied in Thrace and Isauria, yielded to the more prevailing use and reputation of the cavalry, and the Scythian bow was the weapon on which the armies of Rome were now reduced to place their principal dependence. From a laudable desire to assert the dignity

of his theme, Procopius defends the soldiers of his own time against the morose critics who confined that respectable name to the heavy-armed warriors of antiquity, and maliciously observed that the word archer is introduced by Homer as a term of contempt: "Such contempt might perhaps be due to the naked youths who appeared on foot in the fields of Troy, and, lurking behind a tombstone or the shield of a friend, drew the bow-string to their breast and dismissed a feeble and lifeless arrow. But our archers (pursues the historian) are mounted on horses which they manage with admirable skill; their head and shoulders are protected by a casque or buckler; they wear greaves of iron on their legs, and their bodies are guarded by a coat of mail. On their right side hangs a quiver, a sword on their left, and their hand is accustomed to wield a lance or javelin in closer combat. Their bows are strong and weighty; they shoot in every possible direction, advancing, retreating, to the front, to the rear or to either flank; and as they are taught to draw the bow-string not to the breast, but to the right ear, firm indeed must be the armor that can resist the rapid violence of their shaft." Five hundred transports, navigated by twenty thousand mariners of Egypt, Cilicia and Ionia, were collected in the harbor of Constantinople. The smallest of these vessels may be computed at thirty, the largest at five hundred, tons; and the fair average will supply an allowance, liberal but not profuse, of about one hundred thousand tons for the reception of thirty-five thousand soldiers and sailors, of five thousand horses, of arms, engines and military stores, and of a sufficient stock of water and provisions for a voyage perhaps of

three months. The proud galleys which in former ages swept the Mediterranean with so many hundred oars had long since disappeared, and the fleet of Justinian was escorted only by ninety-two light brigantines covered from the missile weapons of the enemy and rowed by two thousand of the brave and robust youth of Constantinople. Twenty-two generals are named, most of whom were afterward distinguished in the wars of Africa and Italy; but the supreme command, both by land and sea, was delegated to Belisarius alone, with a boundless power of acting according to his discretion as if the emperor himself were present. The separation of the naval and military professions is at once the effect and the cause of the modern improvements in the science of navigation and maritime war.

In the seventh year of the reign of Justinian, and about the time of the summer solstice, the whole fleet of six hundred ships was ranged in martial pomp before the gardens of the palace. The patriarch pronounced his benediction, the emperor signified his last commands, the general's trumpet gave the signal of departure, and every heart, according to its fears or wishes, explored with anxious curiosity the omens of misfortune and success. The first halt was made at Perinthus, or Heraclea, where Belisarius waited five days to receive some Thracian horsesa military gift of his sovereign. thence the fleet pursued their course through the midst of the Propontis; but as they struggled to pass the straits of the Hellespont an unfavorable wind detained them four days at Abydus, where the general exhibited a memorable lesson of firmness and severity. Two of the Huns, who in a drunken quarrel

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had slain one of their fellow-soldiers, were instantly shown to the army suspended on a lofty gibbet. The national indignity was resented by their country, who disclaimed the servile laws of the empire and asserted the free privilege of Scythia, where a small fine was allowed to expiate the hasty sallies of intemperance and anger. Their complaints were specious, their clamors were loud, and the Romans were not averse to the example of disorder and impunity. But the rising sedition was appeased by the authority and eloquence of the general, and he represented to the assembled troops the obligation of justice, the importance of discipline, the rewards of piety and virtue and the unpardonable guilt of murder, which, in his apprehension, was aggravated rather than excused by the vice of intoxication.

In the navigation from the Hellespont to Peloponnesus, which the Greeks, after the siege of Troy, had performed in four days. the fleet of Belisarius was guided in their course by his master-galley, conspicuous in the day by the redness of the sails, and in the night by the torches blazing from the mast-head. It was the duty of the pilots, as they steered between the islands and turned the capes of Malea and Tænarium, to preserve the just order and regular intervals of such a multitude of ships. As the wind was fair and moderate, their labors were not unsuccessful, and the troops were safely disembarked at Methone, on the Messenian coast, to repose themselves for a while after the fatigues of the sea. In this place they experienced how avarice invested with authority may sport with the lives of thousands which are bravely exposed for the public service. According to military practice,

the bread or biscuit of the Romans was twice prepared in the oven, and a diminution of one-fourth was cheerfully allowed for the loss of weight. To gain this miserable profit and to save the expense of wood, the prefect John of Cappadocia had given orders that the flour should be slightly baked by the same fire which warmed the baths of Constantinople; and when the sacks were opened, a soft and mouldy paste was distributed to the army. Such unwholesome food, assisted by the heat of the climate and season, soon produced an epidemical disease which swept away five hundred soldiers. Their health was restored by the diligence of Belisarius, who provided fresh bread at Methone and boldly expressed his just and humane indignation. The emperor heard his complaint; the general was praised, but the minister was not punished.

From the port of Methone the pilots steered along the western coast of Peloponnesus as far as the isle of Zacynthus, or Zant, before they undertook the voyage (in their eyes a most arduous voyage) of one hundred leagues over the Ionian sea. As the fleet was surprised by a calm, sixteen days were consumed in the slow navigation; and even the general would have suffered the intolerable hardship of thirst if the ingenuity of Antonina had not preserved the water in glass bottles, which she buried deep in the sand in a part of the ship impervious to the rays of the At length the harbor of Caucana, on the southern side of Sicily, afforded a secure and hospitable shelter. The Gothic officers, who governed the island in the name of the daughter and grandson of Theodoric, obeyed their imprudent orders to receive the troops of Justinian like friends and allies; provisions were liberally supplied, the cavalry was

sun.

remounted, and Procopius soon returned from Syracuse with correct information of the state and designs of the Vandals. His intelligence determined Belisarius to hasten his operations, and his wise impatience was seconded by the winds. The fleet lost sight of Sicily, passed before the isle of Malta, discovered the capes of Africa, ran along the coast with a strong gale from the north-east, and finally cast anchor at the promontory of Caput Vada, about five days' journey to the south of Carthage.

If Gelimer had been informed of the approach of the enemy, he must have delayed the conquest of Sardinia for the immediate defence of his person and kingdom. A detachment of five thousand soldiers and one hundred and twenty galleys would have joined the remaining forces of the Vandals, and the descendant of Genseric might have surprised and oppressed a fleet of deep-laden transports incapable of action, and of light brigantines that seemed only qualified for flight. Belisarius had secretly trembled when he overheard his soldiers, in the passage, emboldening each other to confess their apprehensions: if they were once on shore, they hoped to maintain the honor of their arms; but if they should be attacked at sea, they did not blush to acknowledge that they wanted courage to contend at the same time with the winds, the waves and the barbarians. The knowledge of their sentiments. decided Belisarius to seize the first opportunity of landing them on the coast of Africa, and he prudently rejected, in a council of war, the proposal of sailing with the fleet and army into the port of Carthage.

Three months after their departure from Constantinople the men and horses, the arms