Shock and consternation clubbed Justinian when he received the news of what was happening in Italy. His Grand Plan, it seemed, was fast unravelling; perhaps, he conceded to himself, it had been a mistake to alternate the command among his generals. Radical steps must be taken to stop the rot before it was too late. Belisarius, unfortunately, could not be spared, what with a newly aggressive Persia under Khusro threatening the eastern frontier. His generals in Italy, even tough old veterans like Bessas, had proved a sorely disappointing lot. None of them, it appeared, was capable of taking on this Totila. But perhaps there was one man, presently here in Constantinople, who might be equal to the task — a certain Maximinus.
Maximinus, a senator and courtier, had recently come to the emperor’s attention by the sound advice he had offered to officials at the Treasury — advice which had helped to fill the void in fiscal policy resulting from the departure of John of Cappadocia. Wit, poet, man of culture and sophistication, to say nothing of his administrative skills, this second Petronius Arbiter possessed the sort of over-arching intelligence that perhaps made him the ideal person to tackle the Hydra-headed crisis that had blown up in Italy. The more he thought about it, the more Justinian convinced himself that Maximimus was the man to send. Granted, he lacked military experience, but perhaps, given the recent woeful performance of the generals, that might even be an advantage; Maximinus would be coming to the job with a fresh, objective outlook, and no baggage.
But before The Prodigy could be dispatched to Italy, calamity — on a scale unprecedented in its reach and terror — struck the Empire’s eastern provinces. .
* Faenza in Tuscany.
* A king who is merely a figurehead. (See Aesop’s Fables.)
* Treviso.
* Belisarius had taken the heavy cavalry with him to the east, leaving behind only light horse — suitable for scouting or skirmishing, but useless against enemy en masse.
* The Battle of Faventia/Faenza was fought in the spring of 542.
** Florence.
TWENTY-FIVE
During these times there was a pestilence by which the whole human race
came near to being annihilated
‘They say the pestilence ’as got to Syria,’ declared a lighterman to the patrons of Damian’s, a wine shop near the Harbour of Phosphorion at the entrance to the Golden Horn.
‘Stale news, mate,’ chipped in a packer from the horrea, the rows of warehouses for storing grain that lined the wharves. ‘It’s now in Phrygia. Three hundred miles to go, and then it’s our turn.’
‘The Bosphorus’ll stop it,’ murmured a coppersmith hopefully.
‘Oh, really,’ scoffed a seaman. ‘If it’s come a thousand miles from Egypt, stands to reason a puddle of water won’t make any difference.’
‘Repent, all ye — for the Day of Judgement is at hand!’ bawled Scripture Simon, a burly stevedore celebrated for his extempore hellfire harangues. ‘That dread day, when the Last Trump shall sound and the graves give up their dead, and Christ shall divide the sheep from the — ’
‘Stuff a sponge in it, Simon,’ sighed the bartender. ‘What with the pestilence and the End of the World coming, we’d best not waste any more drinking time. Next orders, gentlemen.’
‘In view of the fact that the pestilence is now in Chalcedon, a mere mile across the Bosphorus,’ Cyril, princeps or head of the University of Constantinople, addressed his staff assembled in a lecture hall, ‘I have decided, for obvious health reasons, to close this institution. I trust you all concur.’
There followed a general nodding of heads and mutter of agreement.
‘Do we know anything about the causes of the pestilence?’ enquired the Chair of Law, ‘or what precautions can be taken to reduce the risk of infection?’
‘The answer to both your questions is, sadly, “no”,’ replied Cyril, whose sturdy frame and ruddy complexion suggested more a prosperous peasant than an academic. ‘All I can tell you, you most likely know already. Namely, that it seems to be quite indiscriminate and arbitrary as to whom it strikes. That thus far it has caused death on a devastating scale wherever it has spread, with whole towns and villages depopulated. That beyond total isolation from one’s fellow-men, there is no known safeguard against catching the disease. Nor is there any cure; one either recovers, or, in the case of at least two-thirds of those affected, succumbs. As to its cause — some subtle distemper in the air?; “cadaveric poisoning” or touching of a corpse? One can only guess.’
‘The writer John of Ephesus suggests there may be some association with rats,’ observed a grammarian. ‘He relates how large numbers of the rodents have often been seen in places affected by the plague.’
‘Coincidence, I’d say,’ replied the princeps. ‘The pestilence is naturally most prevalent in densely populated centres where risk of contagion, if that is indeed how it is spread, is highest. Id est, in towns and cities, whose refuse dumps attract rats in large numbers. Anyway, only a tiny proportion of plague victims could have received a rat bite, which virtually rules out any direct connection.’
‘I’ve heard that, prior to infection, some sufferers have had dreams of headless figures sitting in bronze boats and holding bronze staves, moving across the sea towards them,’ put in the librarian.
‘Sounds as if they had too much wine with a heavy dinner,’ responded Cyril, to general laughter.
‘I was only repeating what I’d heard,’ countered the librarian defensively. ‘By what symptoms then, should we recognize the onset of the disease?’
‘Like yourself, I can only repeat hearsay. Apparently, a mild fever is followed by the appearance of bubones — gross swellings in the groin and armpits, or black pustules breaking out all over the body. In the latter case, or in the event of the bubones turning gangrenous, the patient swiftly dies. But should the bubones discharge pus, the inflammation is relieved and the patient soon recovers.’
‘Perhaps the Almighty has a lesson for us here, whose meaning we should endeavour to interpret,’ declared a professor of Theology — one of a new breed of appointees, chosen as much for their subscription to strict Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, as for their professional qualifications.
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ snapped Cyril, a classically educated rationalist of the old school. ‘Let’s stick to facts, not bring in mumbo-jumbo.’
‘I don’t imagine the emperor or Patriarch would be impressed by that remark,’ retorted the professor, colouring.
‘I rather think they’ll soon have more urgent matters to occupy their minds,’ said Cyril wearily. ‘As will we all. I therefore bring this meeting to a close, and hope to see you all again when, God willing, the pestilence shall have run its course.’
In the summer of that year,* the plague leapt across the Bosphorus and battened on the capital. In the maze of close-packed houses, especially the poorer quarters, it spread like wildfire seemingly through contagion, the appearance of the swellings usually amounting to a death-sentence. The symptoms were invariably the same, and most of those infected died in agony within a few days, or even on the same day that the symptoms manifested themselves.
The death-rate escalated swiftly — from five thousand in a day, to ten thousand, to sixteen thousand on the worst day of all. Disposal of the dead became a nigh-insuperable problem. To deal with this distasteful task, Justinian appointed an imperial private secretary named Theodore. Theodore’s solution was to dig vast burial pits at the suburb of Sykae across the Golden Horn. But so relentless was the torrent of fresh corpses that these rapidly filled up; in desperation, Theodore then resorted to pulling off the roofs of the towers of the suburb’s walls, and filling them with the dead. In consequence, whenever the wind blew from the north, an appalling stench from Sykae pervaded Constantinople, whose inhabitants cowered in their houses, too terrified to venture out in case they caught the plague. Countless homes throughout the city became charnel houses, in which their dead inmates lay rotting for lack of anyone brave enough to bury them.