Vandal King bewailed his misfortunes; that the hard fare of the Moors did not include such a luxury as baked bread; and that the sponge was intended to bathe the eyes of the sufferer, which had become inflamed by weeping. The officer compassionately acceded to the prayer, but maintained his guard as strictly as before. After the lapse of three months the pride and resentment of Gelimer became subdued, chiefly through his being a spectator of the hardships entailed on those who had attended him to his comfortless retreat; and he signified his willingness to resign himself to the custody of Belisarius. He was conducted to Carthage, and shortly afterwards the Byzantine leader, with his principal captives and all the spoils of the war, set sail for Constantinople. Belisarius was, in fact, glad that the time had come for him to take his departure, as envy and slander had lately begun to be rife about him; and it was insinuated at Court that he had assumed a regal state, as if he contemplated an independent sovereignty, a line of conduct which was wholly foreign to his temperament and aspirations.[1]*
- ↑ The good fortune which attended Belisarius, and the fortuitous
character of most of his success in this campaign will be evident to the
most superficial reader. The Byzantines themselves seem to have been
fully alive to the fact, and Procopius (op. cit., i, 18; ii, 7) indulges in
some reflections which may be exactly represented by the words of
Hamlet (v, 2):
"Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well,
When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."To the credit of the Roman General it must be remembered that his heterogeneous and ill-disciplined army fell far short of being an efficient
