gerous attack. When the Goths advanced their movable
towers against the walls, drawn forward by innumerable yokes of oxen,
Belisarius, placing himself on the ramparts, ordered the garrison to
allow the towers to advance unmolested by the machines to within
bow-shot. Then taking up a long bow, which might have graced the hand of
Robin Hood, and choosing two shafts of a yard in length, he drew the
bowstring to his ear, and shot his shaft at the tower. The Gothic
captain, who was directing its movements from the summit, had trusted
too much to the workmanship of his Milan armour. The fabric was not
equal to that of Byzantium. The shaft pierced him to the heart; he
tottered a moment on the edge of the tower, and then fell headlong
forward. The second shaft brought down another Goth. Belisarius then
ordered his archers to shoot at the oxen, which soon fell, pierced by a
thousand arrows; and the towers that the Gothic army counted on to
enable them to make a general assault, remained immovable until the
Romans could burn them.[15]

Belisarius, fond of cavalry, seems to have overlooked, nay, even to have
neglected, the discipline of the Roman infantry. While besieged in Rome,
he defended the place by a series of cavalry skirmishes, and allowed all
the officers of the infantry who could mount themselves to serve on
horse-back. Some of the native officers of the legionaries, jealous of
their reputation, offered to lead their troops on foot. Belisarius would
hardly allow them to quit the walls, and plainly expressed his want of
confidence in the Roman infantry on the field of battle, while he showed
his utter contempt for the city militia, by keeping it carefully shut up
within the walls. The battle in which the infantry took part proved
unsuccessful; but the officers who led it died bravely, sustaining the
combat after the cavalry had fled.[16]

Yet Belisarius knew well how to appreciate the tactics of the old Roman
legion; and he made use of a singular method of obtaining the great
military advantages to be derived from the possession of a body of the
best infantry. At the battle of Kallinikon, when his cavalry was broken
by the iron-cased horsemen of Persia--the renowned _kataphraktoi_, or
original steel lobsters--the Roman general, with the genius of a Scipio
or a Caesar, saw that the steadiness of a body of infantry could alone
save his army. He immediately ordered the heavy lancers of his own guard
to dismount, and form sq