CHAPTER XVII

TRIUMPH OF BELISARIUS

THE same author writes as follows. “When Belisarius had subdued the Vandals, he returned to Byzantium, bringing the spoils and prisoners, and among them Gelimer, king of the Vandals. A triumph was granted him, and he carried in procession through the Hippodrome whatever would be an object of wonder. Among these were considerable treasures obtained by Genseric from the plunder of the palace at Rome, as I have already narrated; when Eudoxia, the wife of Valentinian, emperor of the West, having been both deprived of her husband and subjected to an outrage on her chastity by Maximus, invited Genseric, with a promise of surrendering the city to him: on which occasion, after burning Rome, he conveyed Eudoxia and her daughters to the country of the Vandals. Together with the other treasures, he then carried off all that Titus, the son of Vespasian, had brought to Rome on the capture of Jerusalem; offerings which Solomon had dedicated to God. These Justinian, in honour of Christ our God, sent back to Jerusalem; an act of becoming reverence to the Deity, to whom they had in the first instance been dedicated. On this occasion, Procopius says that Gelimer, prostrating himself on the ground in the hippodrome, before the imperial throne on which Justinian was sitting to witness the proceedings, made application, in his own language, of the divine oracle: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”