Veranilda
Gissing, George, 1857-1903
English
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Below is a summary of Veranilda
Edited by Charles Aldarondo (aldarondo@yahoo.com)
Veranilda
By George Gissing
CHAPTER I
THE VANQUISHED ROMAN
Seven years long had the armies of Justinian warred against the
Goths in Italy. Victor from Rhegium to Ravenna, the great commander
Belisarius had returned to the East, Carrying captive a Gothic king.
The cities of the conquered land were garrisoned by barbarians of
many tongues, who bore the name of Roman soldiers; the Italian
people, brought low by slaughter, dearth, and plague, crouched under
the rapacious tyranny of governors from Byzantium.
Though children born when King Theodoric still reigned had yet
scarce grown to manhood, that golden age seemed already a legend of
the past. Athalaric, Amalasuntha, Theodahad, last of the Amal blood,
had held the throne in brief succession and were gone; warriors
chosen at will by the Gothic host, mere kings of the battlefield,
had risen and perished; reduced to a wandering tribe, the nation
which alone of her invaders had given peace and hope to Italy, which
alone had reverenced and upheld the laws, polity, culture of Rome,
would soon, it was thought, be utterly destroyed, or vanish in
flight beyond the Alps. Yet war did not come to an end. In the plain
of the great river there was once more a chieftain whom the Goths
had raised upon their shields, a king, men said, glorious in youth
and strength, and able, even yet, to worst the Emperor's generals.
His fame increased. Ere long he was known to be moving southward, to
have crossed the Apennines, to have won a battle in Etruria. The
name of this young hero was Totila.
In these days the senators of Rome, heirs to a title whose ancient
power and dignity were half-forgotten, abode within the City, under
constraint disguised as honour, the conqueror's hostages. One among
them, of noblest name, Flavius Anicius Maximus, broken in health by
the troubles of the time and by private sorrow, languishing all but
unto death in the heavy air of the Tiber, was permitted to seek
relief in a visit to which he would of his domains in Italy. His
birth, his repute, gave warrant of loyalty to the empire, and his
coffers furnished the price put upon such a favour by Byzantine
greed. Maximus chose for refuge his villa by the Campanian shore,
vast, beautiful, half in ruin, which had been enjoyed by generations
of the Anician family; situated above the little town of Surrentum
it caught the cooler breeze, and on its mountainous promontory lay
apart from the tramp of armies. Here, as summer burned into autumn,
the sick man lived in brooding silence, feeling his strength waste,
and holding to the world only by one desire.
The household comprised his unwedded sister Petronilla, a lady in
middle age, his nephew Basil, and another kinsman, Decius, a student
and an invalid; together with a physician, certain freedmen who
rendered services of trust, a eunuch at the Command of Petronilla,
and the usual body of male and female slaves. Some score of
glebe-bound peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's
behoof. Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman
nobility, many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the
Anicii still controlled large means; and the disposal of these
possessions at his death was matter of interest to many persons--
not least to the clergy of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister
a piously tenacious advocate. Children had been born to Maximus, but
the only son who reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence
when Vitiges was camped about the City. There survived one daughter,
Aurelia. Her the father had not seen for years; her he longed to see
and to pardon ere he died. For Aurelia, widowed of her first husband
in early youth, had used her liberty to love and wed a flaxen-haired
barbarian, a lord of the Goths; and, worse still, had renounced the
Catholic faith for the religion of the Gothic people, that heresy of
Arianism condemned and abhorred by Rome. In Consequence she became
an outcast from her kith and kin. Her husband commanded in the city
of Cumae, hard by Neapolis. When this stronghold fell before the
advance of Belisarius, the Goth escaped, soon after to die in
battle; Aurelia, a captive of the Conquerors, remained at Cumae, and
still was living there, though no longer under restraint. Because of
its strength, this ancient city became the retreat of many ladies
who fled from Rome before the hardships and perils of the siege;
from them the proud and unhappy woman. ever held apart, yet she
refused to quit the town when she would have been permitted to do
so. From his terrace above the Surrentine shore, Maximus gazed
across the broad gulf to the hills that concealed Cumae, yearning
for the last of his children. When at length he wrote her a letter,
a letter of sad kindness, inviting rather than beseeching her to
visit him, Aurelia made no reply. Wounded, he sunk again into
silence, until his heart could no longer bear its secret burden, and
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