The name of Belisarius can never die; but instead of the funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read that his treasures, the spoils of the Goths and Vandals, were immediately confiscated for the Emperor. Some decent portion was reserved, however, for the use of his widow; and as Antonina had much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the foundation of a convent. Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. That he was deprived of his eyes, and reduced by envy to beg his bread—‘Give a penny to Belisarius the general!’—is a fiction of later times, which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the vicissitudes, of fortune.”
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