Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/414

 390 THE DECLINE AND EALL eight thousand insurgents, assembling in the field of Bulla, elected Stoza - for their chief, a private soldier, who possessed in a superior degree the virtues of a rebel. Under the mask of fi"eedom, his eloquence could lead, or at least impel, the passions of his equals. He raised himself to a level with Belisarius and the nephew of the emperor, by daring to encounter them in the field ; and the victorious generals were compelled to acknow- ledge that Stoza deserved a purer cause and a more legitimate command. Vanquished in battle -^ he dexterously employed the arts of negotiation ; a Roman army was seduced from their allegiance, and the chiefs who had trusted to his faithless promise were murdered by his order in a church of Numidia. When every resource either of force or perfidy was exhausted, Stoza, with some desperate Vandals, retired to the wilds of Mauritania, obtained the daughter of a Barbarian prince, and eluded the pursuit of his enemies by the report of his death. The personal weight of Belisarius, the rank, the spirit, and the [AD. 537-539] tcmpcr, of Gcrmanus, the emperor's nephew, and the vigour [A. D. 539-543] .^j^jj succcss of the sccond administration of the eunuch Solomon, restored the modesty of the camp, and maintained for a while the tranquillity of Africa. But the vices of the Byzantine court were felt in that distant province ; the troops complained that they were neither paid nor relieved, and, as soon as the public disorders were sufficiently mature, Stoza was again alive, in arms, and at the gates of Carthage. He fell in a single [Battle of combat, but he smiled in the agonies of death, when he was 545] informed that his own javelin had reached the heart of his antagonist.' The example of Stoza, and the assurance that a - [The name appears as Stutias in Corippus, Stuza in Victor Tonn.] ■' [Stutias was defeated first by Belisarius, A.D. 536, at Membressa (Medjez el Bab), on the Bagradas, 50 miles from Carthage, cp. Procop. Vand. 2, 14, with (.'orippus, Joh. 3, 311 : — hunc Membressa suis vidit concurrere campis, &c. Then by Germanus, .V.D. 537, at Cellas Vatari (KaAAac^^aTapo? Procop. ; cp. the village Vatari in Tab. Peuting. iii. F. The idea that this name represents a Latin form Sea/at- I'cft'res must be wrong). There was a third battle in which Germanus was again victor at Autenti in Byzacium. See Corippus, ib. 316 : — similique viros virtute necabas Germane spargente ferum victumque tyrannum. te Cfllas Vatari miro spectabat amore, te Autenti saevos mactantem viderat hostes.] ■* [The battle in which Stutias fell took place in A.D. 545, towards the end of the year, while Areobindus was Mag. Mil. The Romans were led by John son of Sisin- niolus. The battle consisted of two engagements, in the fiist of which the Romans had the worst of it, and in the second were distinctly defeated. Stutias was killed by an arrow from the hand of the Roman general, but John himself