wrote those memorable words:  ’Religious faith we have no power to impose, seeing that no man can be made to believe against his will.’  Upon the murder of Amalasuntha, when the base Theodahad ruled alone, and ruin lay before the Gothic monarchy, Probus, despairing of Italy, following the example of numerous Roman nobles, migrated to Byzantium.  His wife being dead, and his daughter having entered a convent, he was accompanied only by Basil, then eighteen years of age.  A new world thus opened before Basil’s mind; its brilliancy at first dazzled and delighted him, but very soon he perceived the difference between a noble’s life at Rome or Ravenna under the mild rule of the Goths, and that led by so-called Romans in the fear of Justinian and of Theodora.  His father, disappointed in hopes of preferment which had been held out to him, gladly accepted a mission which would take him back to Italy:  he was one of the envoys sent to Belisarius during the siege of Ravenna, to urge the conclusion of the Gothic war and command the return of the Patricius as soon as might be for service against the Persians; and with him came Basil.  On the journey Probus fell ill; he was able to cross the Adriatic, but no sooner touched Italian Soil than he breathed his last.

Then it was that Basil, representing his father in the Imperial mission, came face to face with Belisarius, and conceived a boundless enthusiasm for the great commander, whose personal qualities—­the large courtesy, the ready kindliness, the frequent laugh—­made intimate appeal to one of his disposition.  He stayed in the camp before Ravenna until the city surrendered, and no one listened with more ardent approval to the suggestion which began as a whisper between Italians and Goths that Belisarius should accept the purple of the Western Empire.  This, to be sure, would have been treachery, but treachery against Justinian seemed a small thing to Basil, and a thing of no moment at all when one thought of Rome as once more an Imperial city, and Italy with such a ruler as the laurelled Patricius.  Treachery the general did commit, but not against Byzantium.  Having made pretence of accepting the crown which the Goths offered him, he entered into Ravenna, took possession in Justinian’s name, and presently sailed for the East, carrying with him the King Vitiges and his wife Matasuntha, grand-daughter of Theodoric.  It was a bitter disappointment to Basil, who had imagined for himself a brilliant career under the auspices of the new Roman Emperor, and who now saw himself merely a conquered Italian, set under the authority of Byzantine governors.  He had no temptation to remain in the North, for Cassiodorus was no longer here, having withdrawn a twelvemonth ago to his own country by the Ionian Sea, and there entered the monastery founded by himself; at Ravenna ruled the logothete Alexandros, soon to win a surname from his cleverness in coin-clipping.  So Basil journeyed to Rome, where his kinsfolk met him with news of deaths and miseries.  The city was but raising her head after the long agony of the Gothic siege.  He entered his silent home on the Caelian, and began a life of dispirited idleness.