Count Belisarius Read Online Free PDF

and reproved His stepfather Joseph. But in favour of this version I can say that it came to me not at third but at first hand, and that I knew Andreas as a man of confidence. Nor must it be objected that so young a child as Belisarius then was could not have spoken good Latin, the Latin of Rome: for good Latin was his mother’s native tongue. Her own father had been a Roman Senator who left Italy with his family, fifty years before this time, when the barbarian Vandal, King Geiserich, plundered the temples and noble houses of Rome; he came to the Eastern part of the Roman Empire for security, and his family remained true to good Latin. So it was that Belisarius spoke three languages already: the Thracian vernacular of his family estate, and Latin, in which his mother and her chaplain always conversed with him, and Greek, the common language of the Eastern Empire – but Greek not fluently as yet.
    Well, whoever it was who acted as general on this occasion, I can tell you at least how the battle went. First, Belisarius secretly cut Simeon’s cords with his dagger. He was unperceived by the Cappadocians, who had finished their meat by now but were still seated drinking at the table. Then, nudging Armenian John to preparedness, he took a great fistful of ground pepper and came up to the table and whirled it in their faces, blinding all six of them. Up jumped Simeonwith a roar, brandishing the red-hot spit which Belisarius had put to heat in the hearth; and the Thracians, Andreas and the porter ran to catch up their weapons, which had been stacked not far from them.
    The Cappadocians roared like bulls with pain and helpless anger. They were fuddled with wine, entangled with the cord at their feet, blinded with pepper, and paralysed by sneezes. Simeon at the first onset struck two of them terrible blows on the head with the red-hot spit; so that even though Palaeologus took no part whatsoever in the fight, the Cappadocians were now outnumbered, four by five. Their stools were pulled from under them, and they fell sprawling to the ground. The boys and the slaves stood over them with drawn swords and daggers raised.
    Simeon hurriedly fetched some pieces of harness from the stable and bound them one by one – he was a saddler by trade, and handy with knots. He, as it were, knotted each bond with a Monophysite argument, saying: ‘Escape this logical predicament, Sir, if you can’ or ‘That text draws tight on your conscience, does it not?’
    They answered piteously: ‘For Christ’s sake, best of men, bring sponge and water, or we shall go blind with this fire-dust.’
    But he began in a powerful voice to sing the Hymn of the Seraphim with those interpolations in the Monophysite style which had caused scandals, riots, and bloodshed in many Christian churches. When they were all secure, Simeon informed them that Christ had enjoined him to forgive his enemies; and sponged their inflamed eyes tenderly, saying, ‘In the name of single-natured Christ.’ So they thanked him.
    When Simeon learned from Belisarius how he had planned the battle he turned to Palaelogus and said: ‘I had thought it a simple miracle, and was not therefore greatly astonished, just as I think the prophet Balaam was not greatly astonished when his ass suddenly spoke in God’s name. For all things are possible with God, and one should no more be surprised at such obvious irrationalities as speaking asses or food sufficient for twelve men being stretched to feed 5,000 (and even leaving a superfluity), than at the natural braying of asses or at citizens starving naturally because no food is left in their city. For in the one case you have God, whose function it is to transcend the impossible, and in the other you have nature, whose function it is to obey the ways that God has indicated for beasts and men. But where justifiable astonishment arises is in a case like the present, where nature excels herself by neither