Belisarius was the last of Romans. He was a Byzantine General who restored much of Rome’s vanished glory in the 6th century, half a century after it had gone bust in the West.
He was one of Justinian’s best generals. Together or in spite of his cohort/frenemy Narses the Eunuch, he attempted and succeeded in returning much of North Africa, Italy and parts of Spain back into the folds of the Empire, the Eastern Empire.
The man who did all this in the name of his military oath of allegiance to the Throne, was later abandoned by his Emperor, ending up a beggar on the streets of the greatest city in the world, Byzantium.
There he peddled the wares of a blind beggar who lived on the Christian mercy of his brothers and sisters.
…Belisarius, who, after having obtained many glorious victories over the enemies of his country, is said to have been reduced to such extremity of indigence, that, in his old age, when he was deprived of his eyesight, he sat upon the highway like a common mendicant, imploring the charity of passengers in the piteous exclamation of Date obolum Belisario; that is, “Spare a farthing to your poor old soldier Belisarius.”
Such are the cruel ways of fate that the man who had once reduced the Mighty Goths, Italy’s masters, to tears, was himself brought down to his knees.
The Great General Belisarius went from the ecstasy of glorious victory:
Gothic tears made the gardens of Italy fertile.
Belisarius, Farya Faraji’s YouTube song comment by @Duke_of_Lorraine
To a state of indigent agony:
Date obolum Belisarie!
Marmontel, Belisarius (1768).
Life is a roller coaster, my friends. And the only safeguard against its vagaries are family and friends.
Götterdämmerung 