OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
405
Garganus[1] one of the camps of Hannibal[2] The senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortresses of Campania; the citizens, with their wives and children, were dispersed in exile; and during forty days Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.[3]
Recovered by Belisarius. A.D. 547, February The loss of Rome was speedily retrieved by an action to which, according to the event, the public opinion would apply a the names of rashness or heroism. After the departure of Totila, the Roman general sallied from the port at the head of a thousand horse, cut in pieces the enemy who opposed his progress, and visited with pity and reverence the vacant space of the eternal city. Resolved to maintain a station so conspicuous in the eyes of mankind, he summoned the greatest part of his troops to the standard which he erected on the Capitol; the old inhabitants were recalled by the love of their country and the hopes of food; and the keys of Rome were sent a second time to the emperor Justinian. The walls, as far as they had been demolished by the Goths, were repaired with rude and dissimilar materials; the ditch was restored; iron spikes[4] were profusely scattered on the highways to annoy the feet of the horses; and, as new gates could not suddenly be procured, the entrance was guarded by a Spartan rampart of his bravest soldiers. At the expiration of twenty-five days, Totila returned by hasty marches from Apulia, to avenge the injury and disgrace. Belisarius expected his approach. The Goths were thrice repulsed in three general assaults; they lost the flower of their troops; the royal standard had almost- ↑ Mount Garganus (now Monte St. Angelo), in the kingdom of Naples, runs three hundred stadia into the Hadriatic Sea (Strab. l. vi. p. 436 [3, § 9]), and in the darker ages was illustrated by the apparition, miracles, and church of St. Michael the archangel. Horace, a native of Apulia or Lucania, had seen the elms and oaks of Garganus labouring and bellowing with the north wind that blew on that lofty coast (Carm. ii. 9; Epist. ii. i. 201 [leg. 202]).
- ↑ I cannot ascertain this particular camp of Hannibal; but the Punic quarters were long and often in the neighbourhood of Arpi (T. Liv. xxii. 9, 12; xxiv. 3, &c.).
- ↑ Totila ... Romam ingreditur ... ac evertit muros domos aliquantas igni comburens, ac omnes Romanorum res in prædam accepit, hos ipsos Romanos in Campaniam captivos abduxit. Post quam devastationem, xl. aut amplius dies, Roma fuit ita desolata, ut nemo ibi hominum, nisi (nullae?) bestiæ morarentur (Marcellin. in Chron. p. 54).
- ↑ The tribuli are small engines with four spikes, one fixed in the ground, the three others erect or adverse (Procopius, Gothic. l. iii. c. 24; Just. Lipsius, Poliorcet, l. v. c. 3). [Rather the opposite; three fixed in the ground, one always erect, however thrown. The description of Procopius is quite clear.] The metaphor was borrowed from the tribuli (land-caltrops), an herb with a prickly fruit common in Italy (Martin, ad Virgil. Georgic. i. 153, vol. ii. p. 33).
