uare before the feebler and less perfectly
equipped soldiers of the legions of the line. With this phalanx,
presenting its closely serried shields and long lances to the repeated
charges of the _kataphraktoi_, he foiled every attack of the victorious
Persians, and saved his army.[17]

Belisarius, however, acquired more favour at the court of Justinian, and
secured the personal affection of the Emperor more, by slaughtering the
people of Constantinople in a city rebellion, originating out of the
factions of the Circus, than by his exploits against the distant enemies
of the empire. The affair was called the Day of Victory. The scene was
repeated on the 4th of October 1795, in the city of Paris, and was
called the Day of the Sections. The part of the Thracian Belisarius was
then performed by the Corsican Bonaparte. In the tragedy of old, three
thousand citizens were massacred by the mild Belisarius, in that of
Paris, hardly three hundred perished by the inexorable Napoleon.

The personal conduct of Belisarius is presented to us under two totally
different points of view, in the works of his Secretary Procopius. In
the authentic history of the Persian, Vandal, and Gothic wars, he
appears as the commander-in-chief of the Roman armies, his actions are
narrated by a Roman historian, and his conduct is held up to the
admiration of Roman society. In the secret history, on the contrary, we
have, it is true, the same man described by the same author, but the
work is addressed to the Greek race, and not to their Roman rulers, and
it presents Belisarius as the instrument of a corrupt and tyrannical
court, engaged in plundering the people, while crouching under the
oppression of which he was the minister. The history of Procopius was
written for the libraries of the Byzantine nobles; the anecdotes for the
clubs of the Greek people. Though composed in the same language, they
belong not only to two different classes of literature, but even to the
literature of two different races of men.[18]

Belisarius was a fortunate, as well as a great general. His victories
over the Vandals and the Goths prove his military talents; but the
spectacle of their kings, Gelimer and Witiges, the representatives of
the dreaded Genseric and the mighty Theoderic, walking as captives
through the streets of Constantinople, made a deeper impression on men's
minds than the slaughter of the bloodiest battle. Nor was the
restoration of the sacred plate of the