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 resistance. He represented to them that on account of their determined defence against Belisarius he not only regarded them with no animosity, but was even grateful for the loyalty they had shown on that occasion. He besought them, therefore, to let him take peaceful possession, and to receive him as a friend whose intentions were wholly amicable. They asked for thirty days; he replied by granting them three months; but in a short time they surrendered voluntarily, glad to be relieved from the intolerable state of destitution to which they had been reduced. Totila then acted with the greatest benignancy. The small Byzantine garrison were dismissed safe and sound, and even assisted with horses and supplies to enable them to make their way to Rome. As for the inhabitants, he was so solicitous about their health that he posted guards at the gates to see that food-stuffs were at first introduced sparingly, lest a sudden surfeit of the long-famished stomachs should engender a fatal illness throughout the city. His last procedure was to level the greater part of the walls to the ground, a method of treatment he applied to all other strongholds when captured, in order to deprive the Byzantines of places of shelter from which they could safely carry on the warfare.

In those cases, however, where Totila considered severity to be expedient he showed himself to be as relentless as the most tyrannical monarch. Thus, among his prisoners was one Demetrius, the commissary of Naples, who during the siege had thought fit to provoke him by the most unlicensed insults if he came within earshot of the walls. This man he punished by excising his tongue and amputating both his hands, after which infliction he set him at liberty. In another instance an Italian complained to the King that his daughter had been ravished by a Gothic guard, who hap