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His fall was even greater than that of Belisarius, who, after having obtained many glorious victories over the enemies of his country, is said to have been reduced to such extremity of indigence, that, in his old age, when he was deprived of his eyesight, he sat upon the highway like a common mendicant, imploring the charity of passengers in the piteous exclamation of Date obolum Belisario; that is, "Spare a farthing to your poor old soldier Belisarius."
Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius begging for an obolum? Would the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic? In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your King.
It is said that he stood in front of his former palace with a wooden dish for alms. "Date obolum Belisario," give a penny to Belisarius, has become a proverb. However, Justinian seems to have repented, and he restored to Belisarius his wealth and his palace, in which, shortly after, the old man died on the 13th of March, 565, only eight months before his ungrateful sovereign. By HENRY G. HEWLETT
His petitions to the King and Buckingham ceased to be for office, but for the clearing of his name and for the means of living. It is piteous to read the earnestness of his requests. The words are from a carefully-prepared and rhetorical letter which was not sent, but they express what he added to a letter presenting the De Augmentis; "det Vestra Majestas obolum Belisario."
It was mere fiddling; and, absurd as it looked, there was nothing but an honest meaning in it: '20,000l. Date Obolum Belisario! My dear father had translated the little Latin inscription for me, and I had written it down as a sort of exercise of memory; and also, perhaps, as expressive of that sort of compassion which my uncle's fall and miserable fate excited invariably in me.
Had Belisarius, with his dying boy in his arms, himself appeared at my gate, as seen in the French print, crying, "Date obolum Belsario," I should have pronounced him at once an impostor, and given him nothing, and, indeed, not pronounced wrongly, for the whole story is a fiction. But at this peculiar moment of hunger and of avarice, I confess I was too ready, and gave a check for the amount.
Ploravit nec frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter, Queis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herilia jussa Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei Tædia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat.
His fall was even greater than that of Belisarius, who, after having obtained many glorious victories over the enemies of his country, is said to have been reduced to such extremity of indigence, that, in his old age, when he was deprived of his eyesight, he sat upon the highway like a common mendicant, imploring the charity of passengers in the piteous exclamation of Date obolum Belisario; that is, "Spare a farthing to your poor old soldier Belisarius."
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