“That I am a slave of thy empire not even I myself would deny, but the Moors, having suffered unholy treatment at the hands of Solomon in time of peace, have taken up arms under the most severe constraint, not lifting them against thee, but warding off our personal enemy; and this is especially true of me.  For he not only decided to deprive me of the maintenance, which Belisarius long before specified and thou didst grant, but he also killed my own brother, although he had no wrongdoing to charge against him.  We have therefore taken vengeance upon him who wronged us.  And if it is thy will that the Moors be in subjection to thy empire and serve it in all things as they are accustomed to do, command Sergius, the nephew of Solomon, to depart from here and return to thee, and send another general to Libya.  For thou wilt not be lacking in men of discretion and more worthy than Sergius in every way; for as long as this man commands thy army, it is impossible for peace to be established between the Romans and the Moors.”

Such was the letter written by Antalas.  But the emperor, even after reading these things and learning the common enmity of all toward Sergius, was still unwilling to remove him from his office, out of respect for the virtues of Solomon and especially the manner of his death.  Such, then, was the course of these events.

But Solomon, the brother of Sergius, who was supposed to have disappeared from the world together with his uncle Solomon, was forgotten by his brother and by the rest as well; for no one had learned that he was alive.  But the Moors, as it happened, had taken him alive, since he was very young; and they enquired of him who he was.  And he said that he was a Vandal by birth, and a slave of Solomon.  He said, moreover, that he had a friend, a physician, Pegasius by name, in the city of Laribus near by, who would purchase him by giving ransom.  So the Moors came up close to the fortifications of the city and called Pegasius and displayed Solomon to him, and asked whether it was his pleasure to purchase the man.  And since he agreed to purchase him, they sold Solomon to him for fifty pieces of gold.  But upon getting inside the fortifications, Solomon taunted the Moors as having been deceived by him, a mere lad; for he said that he was no other than Solomon, the son of Bacchus and nephew of Solomon.  And the Moors, being deeply stung by what had happened, and counting it a terrible thing that, while having a strong security for the conduct of Sergius and the Romans, they had relinquished it so carelessly, came to Laribus and laid siege to the place, in order to capture Solomon with the city.  And the besieged, in terror at being shut in by the barbarians, for they had not even carried in provisions, as it happened, opened negotiations with the Moors, proposing that upon receiving a great sum of money they should straightway abandon the siege.  Whereupon the barbarians, thinking that they could never take the city by force—­for the Moors are not at all practised in the storming of walls—­and at the same time not knowing that provisions were scarce for the besieged, welcomed their words, and when they had received three thousand pieces of gold, they abandoned the siege, and all the Leuathae retired homeward.