Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/205

 by the Asinarian gate, that named the Flaminian was being kept open on the north to give egress to the Gothic brigade. The day was the ninth of December, in the year 536, and just sixty years since the metropolis had fallen into the hands of the barbarians led by Odovacar. On this occasion the formality was gone through of sending the keys of the city to the Emperor at Constantinople.

Rome at this time, notwithstanding the vicissitudes it had experienced, had lost, to the superficial eye, but little of its Imperial splendour. A numerous population, amounting probably to more than one million, still maintained itself in affluence within the ample circuit of walls built two centuries and a half previously by Aurelian. The construction of those walls had been necessitated by the expansion the city had undergone since the age of the Republic and the first emperors. Fourteen principal gates provided for communication with the surrounding country, and an equal number of lofty aqueducts, in many situations architecturally decorative and imposing, supplied water to the interior from various outlying districts within a circumference extending to sixty miles. The transformation of Rome from a city of dingy and tasteless aspect, which had arisen on the borderland of civilization, to a handsome capital adorned by all