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 330 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xli replied the Koman chief, with an haughty smile, " I am more accustomed to give than to receive counsel ; but I hold in one hand inevitable ruin, and in the other, peace and freedom, such as Sicily now enjoys." The impatience of delay urged him to grant the most liberal terms ; his honour secured their perform- ance ; but Naples was divided into two factions ; and the Greek democracy was inflamed by their orators, who, with much spirit and some truth, represented to the multitude that the Goths would punish their defection and that Belisarius himself must esteem their loyalty and valour. Their deliberations, however, were not perfectly free : the city was commanded by eight hundred Barbarians, whose wives and children were detained at Eavenna as the pledge of their fidelity ; and even the Jews, who were rich and numerous, resisted, with desperate enthusi- asm, the intolerant laws of Justinian. In a much later period, the circumference of Naples 70 measured only two thousand three hundred and sixty -three paces : 7V the fortifications were defended by precipices or the sea; when the aqueducts were intercepted, a supply of water might be drawn from wells and fountains ; and the stock of provisions was sufficient to consume the patience of the besiegers. At the end of twenty days, that of Belisarius was almost exhausted, and he had reconciled him- self to the disgrace of abandoning the siege, that he might march, before the winter season, against Rome and the Gothic king. But his anxiety was relieved by the bold curiosity of an Isaurian, who explored the dry channel of an aqueduct, and secretly reported that a passage might be perforated to intro- duce a file of armed soldiers into the heart of the city. When the work had been silently executed, the humane general risked the discovery of his secret, by a last and fruitless ad- monition of the impending danger. In the darkness of the night, four hundred Romans entered the aqueduct, raised them- selves by a rope, which they fastened to an olive tree, into the house or garden of a solitary matron, sounded their trumpets, 76 This measure was taken by Eoger I. after the conquest of Naples (a.d. 1139), which he made the capital of his new kingdom (Giannone, Istoria Civile, torn. ii. p. 169). That city, the third in Christian Europe, is now at least twelve miles in circumference (Jul. Caesar. Capaccii Hist. Neapol. 1. i. p. 47), and contains more inhabitants (350,000) in a given space than any other spot in the known world. 77 Not geometrical, but common, paces or steps of 22 French inches (d'Anville, Mesures Itineraires, p. 7, 8) : the 2363 do not make an English mile.