having presented his plan of campaign, called upon the eunuch to second his efforts with loyal consistency. Narses, however, dissented from his views, and expressed his intention of leading the forces which were at his disposal to a different part of the country. Thereupon Belisarius produced a rescript from the Emperor, in which all were enjoined to obey him as sole commander-in-chief, whilst Narses was excluded by a special clause from having any claim to exercise such authority. Nevertheless the dissident party, distorting a formal expression of the rescript by a verbal quibble into permission to do as they liked, seceded from the Master of Soldiers, and decamped with the Imperial treasurer to wage war according to their own judgment in the province of Aemilia.[1]
The greatest calamity which befell Italy during this war was the recapture of Milan by the Goths, a disaster which appeared to be a direct result of the counsels of Belisarius having been rendered inoperative by Narses. As soon as the dedition of that city was announced to Vitigis, he detached one of his generals to beset it with a large force of Goths and ten thousand Burgundians sent to his aid clandestinely by Theodebert, King of the Franks. Belisarius wished to despatch one half of the Byzantine army at once
- ↑ Of the misery caused throughout Italy by the protracted war, Procopius has some anecdotal illustrations to give about this time. In one case a fugitive mother had to abandon her infant in its cradle, whereupon the family goat, attracted by its wailing, entered the hut, and managed to suckle the child effectively. This lasted for some time till the villagers returned, when the maternal solicitude of the animal for its anomalous nursling became a spectacle for exhibition in the district. As agriculture was brought to a standstill in many places famine was often urgent, and he mentions the instance of two women killing and eating seventeen men whom they had received as guests, but they were detected and killed by the eighteenth; De Bel. Goth., ii, 17, 20.
