me when Justinian was in the tenth year of his
reign. [536-537 A.D.]

[536 A.D.] At the opening of spring, when the Christians were
celebrating the feast which they call Easter, there arose a mutiny among
the soldiers in Libya. I shall now tell how it arose and to what end it
came.

After the Vandals had been defeated in the battle, as I have told
previously,[47] the Roman soldiers took their daughters and wives and
made them their own by lawful marriage. And each one of these women kept
urging her husband to lay claim to the possession of the lands which she
had owned previously, saying that it was not right or fitting if, while
living with the Vandals, they had enjoyed these lands, but after
entering into marriage with the conquerors of the Vandals they were then
to be deprived of their possessions. And having these things in mind,
the soldiers did not think that they were bound to yield the lands of
the Vandals to Solomon, who wished to register them as belonging to the
commonwealth and to the emperor's house and said that while it was not
unreasonable that the slaves and all other things of value should go as
booty to the soldiers, the land itself belonged to the emperor and the
empire of the Romans, which had nourished them and caused them to be
called soldiers and to be such, not in order to win for themselves such
land as they should wrest from the barbarians who were trespassing on
the Roman empire, but that this land might come to the commonwealth,
from which both they and all others secured their maintenance. This was
one cause of the mutiny. And there was a second, concurrent, cause also,
which was no less, perhaps even more, effective in throwing all Libya
into confusion. It was as follows: In the Roman army there were, as it
happened, not less than one thousand soldiers of the Arian faith; and
the most of these were barbarians, some of these being of the
Erulian[48] nation. Now these men were urged on to the mutiny by the
priests of the Vandals with the greatest zeal. For it was not possible
for them to worship God in their accustomed way, but they were excluded
both from all sacraments and from all sacred rites. For the Emperor
Justinian did not allow any Christian who did not espouse the orthodox
faith to receive baptism or any other sacrament. But most of all they
were agitated by the feast of Easter, during which they found themselves
unable to baptize[49] their own children with the sacred water, or d