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 292 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xli and his counsellors were constrained, to give credit to this seasonable revelation ; but they derived more rational hope from the revolt which the adherents of Hilderic or Athanasius had already excited on the borders of the Vandal monarchy. Pudentius, an African subject, had privately signified his loyal intentions, and a small military aid restored the province of Tripoli to the obedience of the Romans. The government of Sardinia had been entrusted to Godas, a valiant Barbarian ; he suspended the payment of tribute, disclaimed his allegiance to the usurper, and gave audience to the emissaries of Justinian, who found him master of that fruitful island, at the head of his guards, and proudly invested with the ensigns of royalty. The forces of the Vandals were diminished by discord and suspicion ; the Eoman armies were animated by the spirit of Belisarius : one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation, character The Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps edu- ofBeiisar- cated, among the Thracian peasants, 7 without any of those ius • • advantages which had formed the virtues of the elder and the younger Scipio : a noble origin, liberal studies, and the emula- tion of a free state. The silence of a loquacious secretary may be admitted to prove that the youth of Belisarius could not afford any subject of praise: he served, most assuredly with valour and reputation, among the private guards of Justinian ; and, when his patron became emperor, the domestic was pro- moted to military command. After a bold inroad into Persar- menia, in which his glory was shared by a colleague and his progress was checked by an enemy, Belisarius repaired to the important station of Dara, where he first accepted the service of Procopius, the faithful companion, and diligent historian, of His services his exploits. 8 The Mirranes 9 of Persia advanced, with forty Persian thousand of her best troops, to raze the fortifications of Dara ; war. a-d. *■ 1 "{lp/j.r)TO 5« 6 Bei(rdpios Ik repfiavias, % Bpaicaiv re na) 'iWvplwv /xera^ii Ktlrai (Procop. Vandal. 1. i. o. 11). Aleman. (Not. ad Anecdot. p. 5), an Italian, could easily reject the German vanity of Giphanius and Velserus, who wished to claim the hero ; but his Germania, a metropolis of Thrace, I cannot find in any civil or ecclesiastical lists of the provinces and cities. Tepixavt), near Sardica, is mentioned by Proc, de Md. 4, 1 ; Ttp^it] obviously the same place, by Hierocles, under Dacia Medit. p. 14, ed. Burckhardt (rep/Mav6s in Const. Porph. iii. 56).] 8 The two first Persian campaigns of Belisarius are fairly and copiously related by his secretary (Persic. 1. i. c. 12-18). 9 [Mihran is the name, not of an office, but of a family. Cp. Theophylactus Simoc, 3, 18, and Noldeke, Geschichte der Perser, &c. p. 139.] 539-532