Here Belisarius won a pitched battle after a struggle far more severe
than that he had gone through at Ad Decimum. Thrice the Romans were
beaten back, but their gallant leader rallied them, and at last his
cuirassiers burst through the Vandal ranks and slew Tzazo, the king’s
brother. Geilamir turned to fly, though his men fought on until their
retreat was cut off. Almost the whole Vandal race perished in this fight
and the bloody pursuit which followed. Geilamir himself took refuge in
the heights of Mount Atlas among the Moors, and dwelt among them
miserably enough for a few months.
[Sidenote: End of the Vandal kingdom.] Discovering that he could not
raise a third army, and that life was unendurable among the filthy
barbarians, he determined to surrender, and yielded himself and his
family to Belisarius, on the assurance that he should receive honourable
treatment, in spite of the fact that he had murdered the emperor’s
friend Hilderic.
In the spring of 534 Belisarius was able to return in triumph to
Constantinople, bringing with him the king and most of the surviving
Vandals as captives. His ships were loaded with all the plunder of the
palace of Carthage, the trophies of a century of successful pirate
raids, including the plate and ornaments which Gaiseric had carried off
from Rome in 455. It is said that the emperor recognised among this
store the seven-branched candlestick and golden vessels of the temple of
Jerusalem, which Titus Caesar had taken to Rome when he conquered Judea
four hundred years back. He sent them to be placed in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, in the Holy City where they had been first consecrated.
Belisarius was allowed the honours of an ancient Roman triumph, a
privilege denied to a subject for four centuries; he entered the
Hippodrome in state, and laid his prisoners and his booty at Justinian’s
feet, while senate and people saluted him as the new Scipio Africanus, a
title which he had fairly earned. Next year he was promoted to the
consulship, and given every honour that the emperor could devise. His
captive, king Geilamir, was kindly treated, and presented with a great
estate in Phrygia, where he and his family long dwelt in ease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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