Note 9 — Chapter III · JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA [525-548 A.D.]

The army of Belisarius was chiefly composed of barbarian mercenaries, whom he had trained to Roman discipline and strategy. But the inferiority of the Vandals, whose ancestors had conquered hosts still better drilled, proceeded from the degeneracy which was already commencing, after a residence of only thirty years in Africa. Now that they had been for a century masters of the country, the cause, which was shown then to have enervated them, had operated with progressive effect, and reduced them to a state almost as helpless and hopeless as that of the people whom they had subjugated.