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 chap, xli] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 331 surprised the sentinels, and gave admittance to their com- panions, who on all sides scaled the walls and burst open the gates of the city. Every crime which is punished by social justice, was practised as the rights of war ; the Huns were distinguished by cruelty and sacrilege ; and Belisarius alone appeared in the streets and churches of Naples to moderate the calamities which he predicted. "The gold and silver," he re- peatedly exclaimed, " are the just rewards of your valour. But spare the inhabitants, they are Christians, they are suppliants, they are now your fellow-subjects. Restore the children to their parents, the wives to their husbands ; and shew them, by your generosity, of what friends they have obstinately deprived themselves." The city was saved by the virtue and authority of its conqueror, 78 and, when the Neapolitans returned to their houses, they found some consolation in the secret enjoyment of their hidden treasures. The Barbarian garrison enlisted in the service of the emperor ; Apulia and Calabria, delivered from the odious presence of the Goths, acknowledged his dominion ; and the tusks of the Calydonian boar, which were still shewn at Beneventum, are curiously described by the historian of Belisarius. 79 The faithful soldiers and citizens of Naples had expected vitiges, their deliverance from a prince, who remained the inactive and itaiy. a.d. almost indifferent spectator of their ruin. Theodatus secured [Decem- his person within the walls of Rome, while his cavalry advanced 540 forty miles on the Appian way, and encamped in the Pomptine marshes ; which, by a canal of nineteen miles in length, had been recently drained and converted into excellent pastures. 80 But the principal forces of the Goths were dispersed in 78 Belisarius was reproved by Pope Sylverius for the massacre. He repeopled Naples, and imported colonies of African captives into Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia (Hist. Miscell. 1. xvi. in Muratori, torn. i. p. 106, 107). [Leuthold, op. cit., 45 sqq., has shown that Naples was probably captured in Nov. a.d. 536. The assassination of Theodahad falls in Dec, see Annales Ravennatenses, ed. Holder-Egger, in Neues Archiv, i. p. 365.] 79 Beneventum was built by Diomede, the nephew of Meleager (Cluver. torn, ii. p. 1195, 1196). The Calydonian hunt is a picture of savage life (Ovid. Metamorph. 1. viii.). Thirty or forty heroes were leagued against a hog ; the brutes (not the hog) quarrelled with a lady for the head. 80 The Decennoviimi is strangely confounded by Cluverius (torn. ii. p. 1007) with the river Ufens. It was in truth a canal of nineteen miles, from Forum Appii to Terracina, on which Horace embarked in the night. The Decennovium which is mentioned by Lucan, Dion Cassius, and Cassiodorius, has been sufficiently ruined, restored, and obliterated (d'Anville Analyse de l'ltalie, p. 185, &c). [Cp. Appendix 9.]