The Vandal war has been given up, and for what pitiable reasons! You know that I have thought it far wiser for our rulers to attend to the matters immediately around us than to meddle with the Barbarians. For so long as this unbearable burden of taxation and abuse of official power continues in the Roman Empire, so long every conquest, every increase in the number of our subjects, will merely swell the list of unfortunates. Yet if Africa could be restored to the Empire, we ought not to relinquish the proud thought from sheer cowardice! There stands the ugly word,--unhappily a true one. From cowardice? Not Theodora's. Indeed, that is not one of the faults of this delicate, otherwise womanly woman. Two years ago, when the terrible insurrection of the Greens and Blues in the Circus swept victoriously over the whole city, when Justinian despaired and wished to fly, Theodora's courage kept him in the palace, and Belisarius's fidelity saved him. But this time the blame does not rest upon the Emperor; it is the cowardice of the Roman army, or especially, the fleet. True, Justinian's zeal has cooled considerably since the failure of the crafty plan to destroy Genseric's kingdom; almost without a battle, principally by "arts,"--treachery, ordinary people term them. Hilderic, at an appointed time, was to send his whole army into the interior for a great campaign against the Moors; our fleet was to run into the unprotected harbors of Carthage, land the army, occupy the city, and make Hilderic, Hoamer, and a Senator the Emperor's three governors of the recovered province of Africa. But this time we crafty ones were outwitted by a brain still more subtle. Our friend from Tripolis writes that he was deceived in the Arian priest whom he believed he had won for our cause. This man, at first well disposed, afterwards became wavering, warned, dissuaded--nay, perhaps even betrayed the plan to the Vandals. So an open attack must be made. This pleased Belisarius, but not the Emperor. He hesitated.