rode hard, covering themselves with their shields and warding off their assailants with their spears.  And in this way Diogenes escaped the enemy, losing two of his followers, but saving the rest.  He himself, however, received three blows in this encounter on the neck and the face, from which indeed he came within a little of dying, and one blow also on the left hand, as a result of which he was thereafter unable to move his little finger.  This, then, took place in this way.

And Belisarius offered great sums of money to the artisans engaged in the building trade and to the general throng of workmen, and by this means he dug a trench deserving of great admiration about the circuit-wall, and setting stakes close together along it he made an excellent stockade about the fortifications.  And not only this, but he built up in a short time the portions of the wall which had suffered, a thing which seemed worthy of wonder not only to the Carthaginians, but also to Gelimer himself at a later time.  For when he came as a captive to Carthage, he marvelled when he saw the wall and said that his own negligence had proved the cause of all his present troubles.  This, then, was accomplished by Belisarius while in Carthage.

XXIV

But Tzazon, the brother of Gelimer, reached Sardinia with the expedition which has been mentioned above[61] and disembarked at the harbour of Caranalis[62]; and at the first onset he captured the city and killed the tyrant Godas and all the fighting men about him.  And when he heard that the emperor’s expedition was in the land of Libya, having as yet learned nothing of what had been done there, he wrote to Gelimer as follows:  “Know, O King of the Vandals and Alani, that the tyrant Godas has perished, having fallen into our hands, and that the island is again under thy kingdom, and celebrate the festival of triumph.  And as for the enemy who have had the daring to march against our land, expect that their attempt will come to the same fate as that experienced by those who in former times marched against our ancestors.”  And those who took this letter sailed into the harbour of Carthage with no thought of the enemy in mind.  And being brought by the guards before the general, they put the letter into his hands and gave him information on the matters about which he enquired, being thunderstruck at what they beheld and awed at the suddenness of the change; however, they suffered nothing unpleasant at the hand of Belisarius.

At this same time another event also occurred as follows.  A short time before the emperor’s expedition reached Libya, Gelimer had sent envoys into Spain, among whom were Gothaeus and Fuscias, in order to persuade Theudis, the ruler of the Visigoths,[63] to establish an alliance with the Vandals.  And these envoys, upon disembarking on the mainland after crossing the strait at Gadira, found Theudis in a place situated far from the sea.  And when they had come up to