The White Prince

Belisarius was a brave man and a heroic general, to whom the Emperor Justinian was principally indebted for the military glory of his reign. He was born in Illyria 505 A. D., and died 565 A. D. His military skill in the Eastern Empire so renewed, for a time, the glorious triumphs of Rome under the Republic, that he was called the "Africanus of New Rome." In Constantinople, the strife of the two parties, styled the "greens" and the "blues," had endangered the authority and even the life of Justinian, when the life guards, with Belisarius at their head, attacked and slew, in the race-course, 30,000 of the "green," or anti-royalist party, and thus restored tranquillity.

The military career of Belisarius may be divided into two great epochs--the war against the Vandals, in Africa (where he was called the "White Prince"), and the war against the Goths in Italy. In both wars he was so successful that a triumphal entry, the first that had graced the city of Constantinople, and the first in any part of the empire since the days of Tiberius, was granted him. Forty years of faithful military service did not shelter him from the false accusation of conspiracy against the emperor. He was imprisoned and reduced to poverty. The biographers of Belisarius have differed in their accounts of the ingratitude shown to him in his last years by Justinian. The French tale, "Belisaire" (upon which the opera is founded), and the well-known picture painted by Gerard, have served to keep alive the impression that his eyes were put out by order of the emperor, and that he begged his daily bread in the well-known saying, "Date obolum Belisario," "Give an obolus to Belisarius." In disposition Belisarius was humane and generous; in morals, pure; in habits, temperate; in appearance, majestic; a valiant soldier, a skillful general, and possessed of a sublime spirit of loyalty to his sovereign.