• Belisarius, the famous general, to whom Justinian gave the leadership of his armies in Africa and Italy. In his old age he was suspected of conspiring against the Emperor’s life; but the accusation was not proved. Gibbon, Decline and Fall , Ch. XLI , speaks of him thus:⁠— “The Africanus of new Rome was born, and perhaps educated, among the Thracian peasants, without any of those advantages which had formed the virtues of the elder and the younger Scipio, a noble origin, liberal studies, and the emulation 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 valor and reputation, among the private guards of Justinian; and when his patron became Emperor, the domestic was promoted to military command.” And of his last years as follows, Ch. XLIII :⁠— “Capricious pardon and arbitrary punishment embittered the irksomeness and discontent of a long reign; a conspiracy was formed in the palace, and, unless we are deceived by the names of Marcellus and Sergius, the most virtuous and the most profligate of the courtiers were associated in the same designs.