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 432 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliii they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the city, and begged their bread, per- haps without success, before the gates of their hereditary man- sions. The riches of Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and widow of Boethius, had been generously devoted to alleviate the calamities of famine. But the Barbarians were exasper- ated by the report that she had prompted the people to over- throw the statues of the great Theodoric ; and the life of that venerable matron would have been sacrificed to his memory, if Totila had not respected her birth, her virtues, and even the pious motive of her revenge. The next day he pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish his victorious Goths, and to reproach the senate, as the vilest of slaves, with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude ; sternly declaring that their estates and honours were justly forfeited to the companions of his arms. Yet he consented to forgive their revolt, and the senators repaid his clemency by dispatching circular letters to their tenants and vassals in the provinces of Italy, strictly to enjoin them to desert the standard of the Greeks, to cultivate their lands in peace, and to learn from their masters the duty of obedience to a Gothic sovereign. Against the city which had so long delayed the course of his victories he appeared in- exorable : one-third of the walls, in different parts, were demo- lished by his command ; fire and engines prepared to consume or subvert the most stately works of antiquity ; and the world was astonished by the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into a pasture for cattle. The firm and temperate remonstrance of Belisarius suspended the execution ; he warned the Barbarian not to sully his fame by the destruction of those monuments which were the glory of the dead and the delight of the living ; and Totila was persuaded by the advice of an enemy to preserve Rome as the ornament of his kingdom or the fairest pledge of peace and reconciliation. When he had signified to the ambas- sadors of Belisarius his intention of sparing the city, he stationed an army at the distance of one hundred and twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general. With the remainder of his forces, he marched into Lucania and Apulia, and occupied on the summit of mount Garganus 35 one of the camps of Han- 35 Mount Garganus (now Monte St. Angelo), in the kingdom of Naples, runs three hundred stadia into the Hadriatio Sea (Strab. 1. vi. p. 436 [3, § 9]), and in the