BELISARIUS 65 sometimes coalescing under one head, but in 476, the last titular Emperor of the West had been deposed. Italy had been the prey of successive swarms of Teu- tonic nations. Vandals and Ostro- or Eastern Goths had burst upon Rome, and while the Vandals proceeded to devastate the great Roman prov- ince of Northern Africa and set up a kingdom there, the Goths had established another in Italy. Con- stantinople still held its ground as the magnificent capital of the East- ern Empire, maintaining the old civilization, but her dominions were threatened by the vigorous Persians on the east, and on the north by the Bulgarians, a nation chiefly Slav- onic and very savage and formida- ble. This was the inheritance to which Justinian succeeded, in right of his uncle Justin, a successful sol- dier. He was forty-five years old at the time, 527, having had an entirely civil and literary training, and though warfare continued through the thirty-eight years of his reign, he never once appeared at the head of his armies. Yet his foresight and ambition were great, and he had not long been on the throne before he decided on an en- deavor to recover the African provinces. The Vandals were Arian heretics, denying the Godhead and Eternity of our Blessed Lord, and they had cruelly persecuted and constantly oppressed the Catholics, who entreated the Eastern Empire to deliver them, so that religious zeal added strength to Justinian's am- bition. The luxuries of Carthage and the other African cities had in a couple of generations done much to destroy the vigor of the Vandals, so that the conjunc- ture was favorable. Belisarius had proved his abilities in a dangerous retreat in the Persian war, but he probably owed his appointment to the African expedition to his wife Antonina. She was the daughter of a charioteer in the exhibitions of the hippo- drome, which were loved to a passionate, almost incredible degree, by the people of the Eastern cities ; and Theodora, the wife of the emperor was likewise the child of one of these competitors in the races. Both ladies were devotedly loved by their husbands, though scarcely worthy of their affection, and it was thus that Belisarius obtained the opportunity for his career, a curious parallel in this, as in other respects, to the great Duke of Marlborough. Belisarius only took on this expedition 10,000 foot and 6,000 horse, picked men, with carefully selected officers, bred in the old Roman discipline, for he 5
