Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/509

 Chap. XLIII] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 445 were not embittered by the presence of an enemy. Compassion afforded him the shelter of an obscure tomb ; but the Bomans were not satisfied of their victory, till they beheld the corpse of the Gothic king. His hat, enriched with gems, and his bloody robe, were presented to Justinian by the messengers of triumph. 07 As soon as Narses had paid his devotions to the Author conquest of victory, and the blessed Virgin, his peculiar patroness, 68 he by Narsee praised, rewarded, and dismissed the Lombards. The villages had been reduced to ashes by these valiant savages; they ravished matrons and virgins on the altar; their retreat was diligently watched by a strong detachment of regular forces, who prevented a repetition of the like disorders. The victorious eunuch pursued his march through Tuscany, accepted the submission of the Goths, heard the acclamations and often the complaints of the Italians, and encompassed the walls of Borne with the remainder of his formidable host. Bound the wide circumference, Narses assigned to himself, and to each of his lieutenants, a real or a feigned attack, while he silently marked the place of easy and unguarded entrance. Neither the fortifi- cations of Hadrian's mole, nor of the port, could long delay the progress of the conqueror; and Justinian once more received the keys of Borne, which, under his reign, had been five times taken and recovered. 69 But the deliverance of Borne was the last calamity of the Boman people. The Barbarian allies of Narses too frequently confounded the privileges of peace and war; the despair of the flying Goths found some consolation in sanguinary revenge; and three hundred youths of the noblest families, who had been sent as hostages beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the successor of Totila. The fate of the senate suggests an awful lesson of the vicissitude of human affairs. Of the senators whom Totila had banished from their " 7 Theophanes, Chron. p. 193 [a.m. 6044, John Malalas, 18, p. 486, ed. Bonn, is the source of Theophanes ; and the notice is important as giving the date of the arrival of the robe — August, and so rendering it probable that the battle was fought in July]. Hist. Miscell. 1. xvi. p. 208. a8 Evagrius, 1. iv. c. 24. The inspiration of the Virgin revealed to Narses the day, and the word, of battle (Paul Diacon. 1. ii. c. 3, p. 776). 89 'E7TI tovtov f3a<rttvovTos rb trf/xtrToi/ eaKw. In the year 536 by Beli6arius, in 546 by Totila, in 547 by Belisarius, in 549 by Totila, and in 552 by Narses. Maltretus had inadvertently translated sextum : a mistake which he afterwards retracts ; but the mischief was done ; and C usin, with a train of French and Latin readers, have fallen into the snare.