Count Belisarius

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Most people find it difficult to make a logical connexion in their minds between the characters of the straightforward Classical age and those of the romantic age of medieval legend. King Arthur, for example, seems to belong to a far more antique epoch than Julius Caesar; yet his Christianity dates liim some centuries later.

How these two ages overlapped will be seen in this story of Count Belisarius. Here is a Roman general whose victories are not less Roman, nor his strategical principles less classical, than Julius Caesar's. Yet the army has by now changed almost beyond recognition, the old infantry legion having at last disappeared, and Belisarius (one of the last Romans to be awarded the dignity of the Consulship and the last to be awarded a triumph) is a Christian commander of mail-clad Household knights, nearly all of barbarian birth, whose individual feats rival those of King Arthur's heroes. In his time occur characteristically Romantic situations. For example, caitiff rogues lead away captive maidens to dolorous castles in the hills (during the Moorish raids on Roman Africa), and his knights chivalrously prick out to the rescue with banners and lances.

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