An Age of Magic
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Humanity
has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious,
but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
|
Tom Robbins
|

This was the epic age
of
the Teutonic tribes. Theoderic the Great (454 – 526 AD) –
“Dietrich of Bern” – and Attila
the Hun (406 – 453 AD)
– “King Etzel” – are
characters in
the Nibelungen
saga; the formidable Hagen is the prototype of Darth Vader. The glow of the Hagias Sophia
gave the Golden Horn its name; according to Roman propaganda the
treacherous
city on the Bosporus was now the New Jerusalem. The
David and Bathsheba of this New Jerusalem –
Emperor Justinian (483 –
565 AD) and his wife Theodora (500 – 548 AD) –
were doing a Bonny and Clyde act.
Both invented countless schemes to invade the pockets of their
subjects. The
historian Procopius (500
– 565 AD) knew the two personally. He was
not the only one to think of them as a pair of demons, sent to harass
the human
race. Justinian was a hyperactive bat, never sitting down for a meal
but
devouring scraps on the go; Theodora spent one half of the day on her
beauty
sleep and the other half masturbating behind a veiled window to the
torture
chambers in the dungeons. A regular to the brothels would recognize
Theodora’s
type: quick-witted and sarcastic, with a short attention span.
It
was her custom to keep a petitioner standing for days in a stuffy and
overcrowded antechamber without chairs and bathroom facilities. Then in
the
company of her maidservants she would flip with breakneck speed through
the
most elaborate deposition, only to dismiss the petitioner with a joke
about his
cramps: “you better take care of your
hernia” (Procopius).
The
currency experienced a meltdown and in the year 476 AD the western
half of the Roman Empire declared bankruptcy. The last emperor of the
West retired
to a chicken farm near Naples. His former chief of staff waited for
instructions from Constantinople. If he expected to receive
accreditation as
the new governor of Italy, he was sadly mistaken. There was already a
successor
waiting to replace him. We
like to think of the fifth century as a time of bad sanitation,
bad
government, bad food, bad teeth, bad hygiene, bad everything. In the
real world
there was undeniable vitality, a reckless and irresponsible exuberance
and
curiosity. In Toulouse a clairvoyant engineer attached waterwheels to
the hull
of a ship using a pair of oxen as the propellant. Byzantine monks
returned from
a long journey to the East. Hidden in their hollow walking staffs they
had
smuggled the eggs of silk worms through the Chinese border controls. It
broke
the monopoly of China, but silk still continued to be manufactured
under a
monopoly. The Byzantine emperor’s financial wizard, John
of Cappadocia, made sure of it. A textile manufacturer In Syria
carved
patterns into wood and printed it on the fabric. The Chinese used the
exact same
technology for printing books.
There was an
increase in the population. We hear of people reaching a biblical age.
Many of
the key players began their career late in life. Narses was in his
sixties when
he started his career in the services of Justinian and Theodora, and he
was
still making plans for the future at the age of 98. King Gaiseric died
at 88,
Emperor Justinian, like his uncle, at 83 and we hear of centenarians in
the
monastic community.
Stripped of gold
and ornaments, the imposing facades of the ancient temples were still
maintained, although the populace was using these premises as public
urinals.
In the capital cities the magistrates continued handing out foodstuff
to the
citizenry, a handout irrespective of actual need. The vast public
baths, the
games in the arena, the theatre, the races in the hippodrome continued
on the
public budget. In Trier, Carthage and Rome, the people, although mostly
Christian, remained convinced that the occult power of the games in the
arena
protracted the survival of their city. With insane expenses to their
private
purse, the sponsors accommodated ever more grandiose displays of water
battles
and wild beast hunts. The marvelous and wonderful captured everybody’s
imagination. People told stories of a traveler who’d lost his way in
the desert
and delirious with thirst was found by a satyr. It was a satyr of the
goaty
kind, walking on hooves, with pointy ears and hairy thighs. The strange
creature provided food and water and the traveler repaid kindness with
kindness, inviting this descendant of Pan to be his guest in
Alexandria. At the
traveler’s home the satyr suddenly fell ill and died. Pickled in salt
the
corpse was sent to Antioch, presented to the Emperor and held on
display there
for many years. This was widely believed to be true. Even the eminent
Jerome (347 – 420 AD) kept an open mind whether such creatures indeed existed –
perhaps somewhere in the remote reaches of the antipodes, hanging there
upside
down like bats in a cave?
The gods of the ancients had retired to the edges of the
world, lingering on there in the shadows. People thought of them as
demons or, sometimes, as benevolent genies. Baptized or not, everybody
shared a belief in demons and blood sucking Lamias. The Christians in
Africa continued celebrating the pagan cult of daemon coelestis (Salvian,
I, c,
and lib VII, VIII).
There
are more epistolary collections from the 5th century than of all
previous ages together. It was the time when the autobiography was
born.
Travelers have left us their itineraries, there was an Indian summer of
outstanding poetry and some of the greatest preachers of the Church
left us the
tomes of their sermons. The
Gentile intelligentsia, many of them formally baptized without really
meaning
it, produced a last bumper-crop of talent. The Athenian Proclus (412 – 485 AD), the last in the golden chain of Neo-Platonic philosophers,
was a mathematician of note. In Africa, sometime after the invasion of
the
Vandals, Martianus Minneus Felix Capella single-handedly invented the
medieval
curriculum of grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy and
music. He wrote a book On the Wedding of
Philology and Mercury and of the Seven Liberal Arts. In
Constantinople
another immigrant from Africa, Nonnos of Panopolis (400 – 476 AD), the most versatile poet in the Greek language ever,
composed the Dionysiaca, a story
about the life and exploits of the god Dionysus. A work of sheer
genius,
baroque, complex, and of insufferable monotony; the Finnegan’s
Wake of ancient times. After 21,000 hexameters of
unrelenting mythology, Nonnos finally got fed up and went to the church
next
door for a dip into the baptismal basin. He took holy orders and later
published a poetic paraphrase of the Gospel of John.
By far the finest
philosophical brain of the period was St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD). Apart from his theological preoccupations he is mainly
remembered for his speculations on the character of time. His dialogue
on the
nature of language is an under-appreciated piece of advanced reasoning.
A certain Fabius Planciades Fulgentius (late 5th
– early 6th century)
was living in Carthage, which was still a cosmopolitan metropolis when
the
Vandals made it their capital. Fulgentius was a schoolmaster; he
excelled
in bilingual epigrams in Latin and the language of the Vandals and has
left us
75 allegorical narratives on mythological subjects with biblical
parallels. Urban
education was still going strong. Under King Theoderic Italy
experienced a
first renaissance. The state kept teachers and doctors on the public
budget,
the senators in Rome received compensation for their expenses in the
election
campaigns. Everywhere the builders erected scaffoldings; sculptors and
silversmiths produced a dazzling array of miniature work. Yet we should
not
romanticize the period. Theoderic the Great was a tyrant. At the drop
of a hat,
members of the opposition found themselves imprisoned, waiting to get
their eyes
gouged out before been bludgeoned to death. In 524 AD, one of these
dissidents
on death row, Boethius (480 –
524 AD), wrote
an all time golden book, The Consolation
of Philosophy. It remained a bestseller and perhaps the most loved
book
throughout the medieval ages. The author was a highly educated mediator
between
Latin and Geek. He translated Aristotle and Porphyry. He was a
Christian and has
also left a body of homilies. The Consolation,
however, is taking recourse exclusively to Gentile philosophy, and
Christianity
is not even mentioned.
Yet at the same
time the big monasteries begun recruiting the very young. These
adolescent
monks and nuns did not simply vanish behind the cloister walls. Years
later,
they reappeared as the new clerical elite with a Christian education
based
exclusively on liturgy and the Bible. What this means we see these days
in the
Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Education is mandatory but the state will
not
spend a single penny on public schools. So the pauper, who can’t afford
the
fees for private schooling, will send his kids to the Maddrassas where
the only
item on the curriculum is the Quran and nothing but the Quran. This has
become
the breeding ground of the Taliban. Something very similar happened in
the
fifth century. It inaugurated the
universal decline of urban education, and in 529 AD, on Good Friday,
Emperor
Justinian shut down for good the last remaining institution of higher
learning,
founded by Aristotle himself, 900 years before. Justinian's decree
drove into
exile every Gentile lecturer if he refused baptism. It took a treaty,
presented
by foreign powers on the point of a scimitar, before some of the more
prominent
exiles could rejoin their families and end their lives in obscurity and
peace.
The Christian apparatchiks decided, if the end of Hellenistic learning
meant
the end of learning, so be it. Pope Gregory, “the Great” (590 – 604 AD), found it was his most pressing business to reprimand a
cleric in France for being “in the habit
of expounding grammar. This thing we strongly disapprove,” said
Gregory, “it
causes us groaning and sadness.” And as late as 1049 AD, a synod in
Constantinople still anathematized those “who
go through a course of Hellenic studies and teach them without
hesitation.”
So when in the 13th century Dante celebrated Homer as the king of the
poets, it was a mere name to him. He had never seen any of Homer’s
works. There existed no translation, and Dante, like most of even the
well educated, didn’t speak Greek.
Back in the 5th
century this was still unthinkable. Synesius of Cyrene (373 – 414 AD) was a true gentlemen and scholar. In his hours of leisure
he wrote allegorical satires about the corruption of Roman officials.
He
married in 403 AD and was totally taken by surprise when six years
later, with
popular acclaim, a committee of Christians
invested
him as Bishop of Ptolemais. Apparently Synesius neither received holy
orders
nor was he ever baptized. This didn’t prevent him to become an
efficient
cleric. Yet before taking up office, he insisted on written guarantees
from the
Bishop in Alexandria, allowing him to differ in his opinions on the
creation of
the soul, the literal belief in the resurrection and the end of the
world. In
other words he never abandoned his Gentile beliefs. Synesius had the
good
fortune to end his life unmolested from the fanatics and doctrinaires.
A peace sometimes
given to the meek, other people were less fortunate. Fanatically
unwashed and
flea infested, the monks either camped out in a solitary makeshift
shelter or
incarcerated themselves in a monastic compound where they flogged each
other to
the point of sepsis. In Antioch, Martha, the mother of Simeon Stylite
the
Younger (521 –
597
AD) trained her
seven-year-old son to perch like a bird on a tall pillar. He became the
first
of a whole gaggle of child saints, crapping and peeing on the gawking
rubbernecks underneath. The pillars overlooked wide stretches of desert
where
the wind carried from the monasteries the hollering and wailing of
monks and
hermits suffering from involuntary hallucinations. It was not uncommon
to hear
the voices of “wailing infants, the
lament of women, the roar of lions, the stomping feet of an army on the
march.”
To draw a line here between asceticism and mental instability is almost
impossible. The writer and poet Sylvia Plath (1932
– 1963)
was institutionalized for thinking that “it
seemed so silly to wash my clothes and my hair one day when I would
have to
wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to
do
everything once and for all and be through with it” (Sylvia Plath,
The
Bell Jar). Living
on “one grain of spelt a day, picked from
the dung of a camel” (Jerome), one of these unfortunates was heard to scream on the top
of his voice when he felt “a tormentor
spring upon his back and drive his heels into his sides” (Jerome,
Vita
Hilarionis); a
scene as if from J.K. Rowling’s book. A
sight that made the passing tourist pause: “Fleeing
from the light,” says Namatianus, “these
men call themselves monks or solitaries. They fear the gifts of
fortune, and
from the apprehension of losing them embrace voluntary wretchedness.
Unable to
support the blessings of the human condition, they exercise on their
own bodies
the tortures which the hand of justice is inflicting on fugitive slaves"
(Itinerary I: 439-448).
Among the major players of the period the Vandal nation was
the smallest. Harassed from all sides by Huns, Goths, and Romans, the
Vandals took to the road. Persian tribesmen, the Alani, lost their
leader in battle and voluntarily placed themselves under the authority
of the Vandal king. So when in Constantinople the Alani Flavius Ardabur
Aspar (400 –
471 AD) rose to the rank of supreme commander of
the Byzantine forces, the king of the Vandals was Aspar's king as well.
For the moment this didn’t mean a whole lot.
After years of
travel and defeat, a beaten people, the Vandals and their allies
crossed the
Pyrenees to Spain in 409 AD. They settled in comfort, farmed the land
and gave
Andalusia its name. In 420 AD, the Vandal-Alani alliance even defeated
a small
Gothic raiding party in Roman pay. But the Vandal leadership knew,
their
vineyards grew on borrowed time. The western branch of the much
stronger Gothic
nation continued filtering through the Pyrenees and their settlements
gradually
encircled the possessions of the Vandals. So when a new King acceded to
the
throne of the Vandals, he proposed a radical solution to the problem.
King
Gaiseric (389
– 477
AD) was a medium
sized man with a limp and three sons taller than him, a man of few
words who
never let on what he was thinking. He transformed an intimidated crowd
of fugitives
into a warlike nation of seafarers who commanded the strongest navy in
the
Mediterranean. In 428 AD, King Gaiseric received an invitation. His "Illustrious and Magnificent Highness,"
the Roman Governor of Africa, Count Boniface, contemplated sedition
from Italy.
It came to
hostilities
between Rome and Carthage. In return for the promise of land
allotments,
Boniface asked the Vandals to send him troops. He really thought he
could buy the
king’s services for a stretch of barely arable land towards the Sahara,
where
the Vandal settlers were supposed to shore up defenses against a new
breed of
raiders, nomads attacking on camels. (In 272 AD the Roman military
imported the camel from the Arabian Peninsula. It soon changed hands to
the natives.)
King Gaiseric
spotted the opportunity of a lifetime.
The province of
Africa was the breadbasket of the Roman world and seemed indispensable
for
Italy’s economy. North Africa was a torn country of religious schisms
between
Catholics and Donatists, Donatists and Montanists, Montanists and
Tertullianists. When the exchange of harsh words failed to make an
impression,
their conflicts often ended in bloodshed.
Africa seemed an
easy prey. King Gaiseric convinced his people to give up all their
possessions
in Spain and entrust their fortunes to the sea. He held a census. The
figure added up to barely 80,000 people: the Vandals, their Alani
confederates, women, children and slaves, fugitives and political
refugees picked up from every nation along the long trail of their
wanderings. In three waves King Gaiseric
ferried
this motley crowd across the straights of Gibraltar and forged a Vandal
kingdom
on the Roman territories between Hippo Regius (the
modern Annaba)
and Tripoli, with the third biggest city of the Mediterranean as his
capital:
Carthage, (the
modern Tunis), in which the population
outnumbered the Vandals several times over.
North Africa was
virtually denuded of defenders and yet it took Gaiseric eleven years
before he
actually could make Carthage his residence. Count Boniface had realized
his
mistake and tried to stop the Vandals’ advance. His men got caught up
with fugitives
from all over the country who sought safety behind the walls of Hippo
Regius. A
long siege brought misery and disease to both sides of the walls. In
the
streets of Hippo, Saint Augustine led a procession to the church,
praying for
relief. He combined this prayer with an appeal to turn this war into a
religious confrontation between Roman Catholics and Vandal Arians. This
radicalized the conflict and the consequences remained with the country
for decades
to come, while the instigator of the sufferings died in the third month
of the
siege, in 430 AD.
Over a year
later, Hippo was still under siege when a Byzantine expedition force
under
Marshal Aspar landed at Carthage. The marshal handed the troops over to
Count
Boniface and himself took position on the walls of Carthage to watch
the events
unfolding. The Vandals were outnumbered, yet they consummately routed
the
Count’s positions and perhaps not unexpected, Boniface shipped back to
Italy
leaving it to Aspar to pick up the pieces.
The marshal and
King Gaiseric exchanged gifts and hammered out a formal treaty that
initially
did not include the possession of Carthage. As a gesture of good will,
Gaiseric
agreed to send his oldest son Prince Hunneric as a hostage to the court
at
Ravenna. At the same time and unknown to Aspar, King Gaiseric struck an
alliance with Attila the Hun. After eight years in Ravenna, on October
19, 439
AD, Prince Hunneric took leave from his gracious hosts and returned to
Africa
on a flotilla of Vandal navy cruisers. In a surprise assault the prince
overpowered the harbor defenses of Carthage and conquered the city,
presenting
it to his father as a birthday gift. The secure moorings and supplies
of the
strongest naval base in the Mediterranean now belonged to the Sea Lord
of the
Vandals. Yet this was a violation of the treaty with Byzantium. If
Gaiseric had
meant to test Aspar’s resolve he was in for an unpleasant surprise. In
440 AD,
a Byzantine fleet defeated the Vandals in the waters of Sicily. To gain
time for
regrouping, Gaiseric sent his envoy to Attila and asked a favor,
throwing in
some treasure into the bargain. Attila agreed to pay the Byzantines a
visit.
King Gaiseric had no intention to keep this a state secret and the
Byzantine
forces returned to base. Premature, as it turned out.
The burghers of
Azimuntium, a small town in Thrace on the border to modern Bulgaria,
had no
garrison to defend the less than impressive looking walls and depended
entirely
on emergency levis from the town’s citizenry. No match for the Huns,
one should
think. Yet the Azimuntians sallied out and raided the Huns with
impunity, even
captured hostages, then negotiated a prisoner exchange but executed the
Huns
they held prisoner without holding their end of the bargain. And
Attila, the
mighty Attila, “the scourge of God,”
was powerless. His envoys even lodged a complaint at the court of
Constantinople, demanding compensation, but only received a shrug: “As much as we like to comply, we’ve lost
jurisdiction over the Azimuntians. Must
be the water down there, it makes people cranky.” The great
chieftain was beginning to look ridiculous. So, did he call together
his confederates and in full force came to wipe out Azimuntium? This
would have been overkill and make him look even more ridiculous.
Instead Attila negotiated and offered more hostages as guarantee for
the safe conduct of the Azimuntian envoys. He got nothing and his
hostages were executed as well, apparently even before the town’s
returning delegation had crossed the gate.
In 443 AD the
Vandal kingdom became the first foreign nation to receive diplomatic
recognition as an autonomous state on Roman territory. The Empress Eudoxia betrothed her daughter to King
Gaiseric’s son
Prince Hunneric, hoping to at least
maintain an
alliance with the former territories.
Gaiseric's
kingdom stretched all the way to the Balearics, Sardinia and Corsica,
including
Sicily and the isles in the Adriatic. In Africa there was the
inevitable land
reform and some of the wealthiest people in the ancient world went into
exile,
singing for a meal in the streets of Antioch. It was unheard of; the
camel
had passed through the eye of a needle. Only yesterday these people had
been
proverbial for owning the whole of Africa – between the four of them.
Meanwhile the populace in Rome celebrated a major victory over Attila’s
Huns in
the fields of Chalon, and although the retreating Attila was
raiding the
north of Italy, he felt not strong enough to pursue his campaign
without
calling in his favor from King Gaiseric. The Vandal king could have
safely
ignored the demand, but once again the diplomat in Carthage spotted an
opportunity. Letters crossed the Sea between Hunneric and his mother in
law in Ravenna. Subsequently the Empress Eudoxia arranged for the
assassination of the Roman general who just had defeated the Huns. This
was the favor; next season
Italy
would be wide open for the Huns. In his Hungarian camp, Attila
celebrated the
news with a marriage to a Gothic maiden. The next morning he was found
dead in
his bed. This, however, was not part of King Gaiseric’s plan; the
maiden was on
the payroll of the secret service in Constantinople. But it was part of
Gaiseric’s
plan to drop behind the back of the assassins an anonymous tip to the
troops of
the murdered Roman general. In a riot the angry soldiery murdered the
teenage emperor
and, as expected, the Empress Eudoxia, fearing for her life, wrote to
Carthage
for help. After all, Gaiseric was her daughter’s father in law. This
gave the
wily Vandal the pretext he needed. On Mai 31, 455 AD, King Gaiseric
took command
in person, sailing for Ostia, the seaport of the city of Rome.
The word “Vandal”
and “vandalism” these days stands for mayhem and mindless destruction.
Nothing
could be further from truth. King Gaiseric assured the intimidated
magistrates
that there would be no killing, no destruction of buildings, public or
private,
and no torturing to discover the location of hidden treasure. He kept
his
promise. The Vandal expedition force entered the city of Rome without
firing a
shot. The plunder was conducted with dispassionate precision and
discipline.
For two weeks the Vandals collected all the items on their shopping
list,
treasures, statues, the gilded tiles on the roof of the Temple of
Jupiter
Capitolinus. Everything was carted to Ostia and loaded into the waiting
ships.
The fleet departed in good order, nobody in Rome came to harm. The
Empress
Eudoxia and her daughters sailed with Gaiseric into exile. Back home,
however,
there was trouble. The Vandal nobility resented the illegitimate birth
of King Gaiseric. Encouraged by enemies across the border, they
repeatedly plotted the assassination of the king.
The Vandal barons
were connoisseurs of Arabian horses and looked with disdain on the new
breed of
Gaiseric’s weather hardened mariners. Perfumed and pampered, the Vandal
grandee
presided over opulent banquets in mosaic-incrusted halls of marble. He
wore
long-flowing, almost transparent silk robes and had a maiden with a
basket full
of rose petals walk before him. The puritan temper of King Gaiseric had
no
patience with these treacherous ponces and his retribution was harsh,
inflicting
heavy losses on the Vandal aristocracy. The actual number of executions
remained a closely guarded state secret. The king appointed his cabinet
strictly on merit and recruited many of his administrators from the
Roman civil service.
The faith of the Vandals was Arian, but Gaiseric himself was
baptized as a Catholic before he converted to Arianism. He expected the
same from the foreigners in his administration. Not every Roman
patrician collaborated, and a vessel with refugees set sail for
Constantinople and an uncertain future of hopes and
handouts.
Since Augustine’s inflammatory appeal, the Catholic clergy continued
opposing
the Vandals every step on the way. Gaiseric closed their churches and
deported
the priests who refused to perform the Arian liturgy. The king felt he
couldn’t
tolerate resistance in any form; he didn’t have much of an army.
His forces on
land barely amounted to 5,000 cavalry, most of them Alani, mounted
archers
without heavy armor. The two Gothic Nations could put 60,000 ironclad
horsemen
into the field, forerunners of the medieval knight. At least on two
occasions
it was the loyalty of his Iranian guards, which protected the king from
assassins. The Vandal troops were thinly stretched. Time and again the
camel-nomads punched through the defenses towards the Sahara, and in
one of
these skirmishes King Gaiseric lost the tallest of his sons, Prince
Genzo.
Observers from abroad took notice.
In 468 AD, if the
figures can be trusted, Constantinople launched the greatest amphibian
venture
before the landing in the Normandy. The Vandals got off to a bad start,
lost
their overseas bases and were defeated in two naval battles near Sicily
and
Sardinia. Unimpeded the Byzantine expedition force landed at Tripoli.
The
Vandals threw at them their best troops, even camel corps from the
nomads, but
were forced to retreat, screening the main-road to Carthage. It was
time for
King Gaiseric to pull a rabbit out of the hat; and he did. When the
Byzantine
main fleet dropped anchor at Cape Bon, Tunisia, Vandal emissaries
approached
the commanding admiral and initiated negotiations of surrender, buying
time for
Gaiseric’s next move. In a night attack the outnumbered Vandal navy
burned to
smoldering ember half of the Byzantine fleet, the rest slipped anchor
and fled
in panic. It was the signal for the Byzantine troops in Libya to run
for their
transports in Tripoli before they, too, could be destroyed. Another
fleet of
the Byzantines could have saved the day, yet mysteriously the commander
was
found strangled in his cabin. Who was behind the assassination has
remained a
well kept secret ever since.
Constantinople
was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. It would take decades to
recover the
losses. Marshal Aspar was forced into retirement. Three years later an
assassin
killed him and his family in his own home. For King Gaiseric this was
the
signal to land raiding parties in the territories of the East. The
imperial court
in Constantinople could not afford another war and sent its best
diplomats to
Carthage. The negotiations ended with a full recognition of all Vandal
possessions in exchange for the prisoners and hostages held in
Carthage. As a
political bargain chip, Gaiseric threw in a voluntary recall of all
Catholic
clerics living in exile and permitted to reopen the Catholic churches.
The
treaty was signed, the Vandal cruisers lifted the blockade, the kingdom
was
secure. For two generations at least, before Gaiseric’s inapt
successors would
lose it all.
The other nations
took notice of Gaiseric’s example and began establishing their sway
over Roman
territories in the North. The Franks gave Gaul their name, the two
branches of
the Goths established kingdoms in Italy and Spain. Spain remained a
Gothic
possession until the Arabs invaded it, but in Italy, after King
Theoderic’s death,
Byzantine diplomacy and a small expedition corps ended a brilliant
reign. The
Byzantine commander ordered the evacuation of the city of Rome and
repopulated
the abandoned city with squatters from the South of Italy. It was the
end of
ancient Rome and her beginning as a medieval town.
© –
3/23/2009 – by michael sympson, 4,700
words, all
rights reserved