plundering. When the spring of 554 appeared, Lothaire with his part of the army insisted on marching back to Gaul, there to deposit in safety the plunder which they had reaped. In an unimportant engagement near Pesaro he was worsted by the Roman generals, and this hastened his northward march. At Ceneda in Venetia he died of a raging fever. Pestilence broke out in his army, which was so wasted as to be incapable of further operations in Italy. Meanwhile his brother Buccelin, whose army was also suffering grievously from disease, partly induced by free indulgence in the grapes of Campania, encamped at Casilinum, the site of modern Capua. Here, after a time, Narses accepted the offered battle (554). The barbarians, whose army was in the form of a wedge, pierced the Roman centre. But by a most skilful manœuvre Narses contrived to draw his lines into a curve, so that his mounted archers on each flank could aim their arrows at the backs of the troops who formed the other side of the Alamannic wedge. They thus fell in whole ranks by the hands of unseen antagonists. Soon the Roman centre, which had been belated in its march, arrived upon the field and completed the work of destruction. Buccelin and his whole army were destroyed, though we need not accept the statement of the Greek historian (Agathias ii. 9) that only five men out of the barbaric host of 30,000 escaped, and only eighty out of the Roman 18,000 perished.
The only other important military operation of Narses which is recorded—and that indistinctly—is his defeat of the Herulian king Sindbal, who had served under him at Capua, but who subsequently revolted, was defeated, taken captive and hanged by the eunuch’s order (565). In the main the thirteen years after the battle of Capua (554–567) were years of peace, and during them Narses ruled Italy from Ravenna with the title of prefect.[1] He rebuilt Milan and other cities destroyed in the Gothic War; and two inscriptions on the Salarian bridge at Rome have preserved to modern times the record of repairs effected by him in the year 564.
His administration, however, was not popular. The effect of the imperial organization was to wring the last solidus out of the emaciated and fever-stricken population of Italy, and the belief of his subjects was that no small portion of their contributions remained in the eunuch’s private coffers. At the close of 565 Justinian died, and a deputation of Romans waited upon his successor Justin II., representing that they found “the Greeks” harder taskmasters than the Goths, that Narses the eunuch was determined to reduce them all to slavery, and that unless he were removed they would transfer their allegiance to the barbarians. This deputation led to the recall of Narses in 567, accompanied, according to a somewhat late tradition, by an insulting message from the empress Sophia, who sent him a golden distaff, and bade him, as he was not a man, go and spin wool in the apartments of the women. “I will spin her such a hank,” Narses is represented as saying, “that she shall not find the end of it in her lifetime”; and forthwith he sent messengers to the Lombards in Pannonia, bearing some of the fruits of Italy, and inviting them to enter the land which bore such goodly produce. Hence came the invasion of Alboin (568), which wrested the greater part of Italy from the empire, and changed the destinies of the peninsula.[2]
Narses, who had retired to Naples, was persuaded by the pope (John III.) to return to Rome. He died there about 573, and his body, enclosed in a leaden coffin, was carried to Constantinople and buried there. Several years after his death the secret of the hiding-place of his vast stores of wealth is said to have been revealed by an old man to the emperor Tiberius II., for whose charities to the poor and the captives they furnished an opportune supply.
Narses was short in stature and lean in figure. His freehandedness and affability made him very popular with his soldiers. Evagrius tells us that he was very religious, and paid especial reverence to the Virgin, never engaging in battle till he conceived that she had given him the signal. Our best authorities for his life are his contemporaries Procopius and Agathias. See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vols. iv. and v., edited by J. B. Bury (1898). (T. H.)
NARSINGHGARH, a native state of Central India, in the
Bhopal agency. Area, 741 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 92,093; estimated
revenue, £33,000; tribute to Holkar, £4000. The chief,
whose title is raja, is a Rajput of the Omat clan. The state was
founded about 1681 by a minister of Rajgarh, who compelled
the ruler of that state to transfer to him half his territory.
The town of Narsinghgarh had a population in 1901 of 8778.
NARSINGHPUR, a town and district of British India, in the
Nerbudda division of the Central Provinces. The town is on the
river Singri, and has a railway station 52 m. E. of Jubbulpore;
pop. (1901) 11,233. The district has an area of 1976 sq. m.
It forms a portion of the upper part of the Nerbudda valley.
The first of those wide alluvial basins which, alternating with
rocky gorges, give so varied a character to the river’s course,
opens out just below the famous marble rocks in Jubbulpore, and
extends westward for 225 m., including the whole of Narsinghpur,
together with the greater part of Hoshangabad. The Satpura
hills to the south are here a generally regular range, nowhere
more than 500 ft. above the plain, and running almost parallel
to the river, at a distance of 15 or 20 m. In the intervening
valley, the rich level of black wheat land is seldom broken,
except by occasional mounds of gravel or nodular limestone,
which afford serviceable village sites. Along the foot of the
boundary hills the alluvium gives way to belts of red gravelly
soil, rice and sugar-cane take the place of wheat, and forest trees
that of mango groves. The population in 1901 was 315,518,
showing a decrease of 14.5% in the decade, due to famine.
The principal crops are wheat, millets, rice, pulses, oil-seeds
and cotton. There are manufactures of cotton, silk, brass and
iron-ware. At Mohpani are coal-mines. The Great Indian
Peninsula railway runs through the district, with a branch to Mohpani.
See Narsinghpur District Gazetteer (Bombay, 1906).
NARTHEX (Gr. νάρθηξ, the name of the plant giant-fennel, in Lat. ferula), the name applied in architecture, probably from a supposed resemblance in shape to the reed-like plant, to the long arcaded porch forming the entrance into a Christian church, to which the catechumens and penitents were admitted. Sometimes there was a second narthex or vestibule within the church when the outer one was known as the exonarthex. In Byzantine churches this inner narthex formed part of the main structure of the church, being divided from it by a screen of columns. A narthex is found in some German churches, where, however, it had no ritual meaning but was introduced as a western transept to give more importance to the west end. One of the finest examples to be found in England is that of Ely cathedral, where its northern portion, however, was, apparently never completed.
NARVA (Rugodiv of Russian annals, also Ivangorod), a seaport and fortress of Russia, in the government of St Petersburg, 100 m. by rail W.S.W. of the city of St Petersburg. Pop. (1897) 16,577. It stands on the Narova river, which flows from Lake Peipus or Chudskoye, and enters the Gulf of Finland in Narva Bay, 8 m. below this town. The town was founded in 1223 by Danes, and changed hands between the Teutonic knights, Danes, Swedes and Russians until it was taken by Peter the Great in 1704, after the Russians had suffered here a terrible defeat at the hands of Charles XII. of Sweden four years
- ↑ Gibbon’s statement that Narses was “the first and most powerful of the exarchs” is more correct in substance than in form. The title of exarch does not appear to be given to Narses by any contemporary writer. He is always “Praefectus Italiae,” “Patricius” or “Dux Italiae,” except when he bears the style of his former offices in the imperial household, “Ex-Praepositus [Cubiculi]” or “Chartularius.”
- ↑ This celebrated story seems to be unknown to strictly contemporary authors. We find no hint of it in Agathias (who wrote between 566 and 582), in Marius (532–596), or in Gregory of Tours (540–594). The possibly contemporary Liber Pontificalis and Isidore of Seville (560–636) hint at the invitation to the Lombards. Fredegarius (so-called), who probably wrote in the middle of the 7th century, and Paul the Deacon, towards the close of the 8th, supply the saga-like details, which become more minute the farther the narrators are from the action. On the whole, the transaction, though it is too well vouched for to allow us to dismiss it as entirely fabulous, cannot take its place among the undoubted facts of history.
