OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 21 ing confession of their own weakness. The expiring dignity of Rome was only marked by the freedom and energy of lier complaints : " If you are incapable, ' she said, "of delivering us from the sword of the Lombards, save us at least from the calamity of famine ". Tiberius forgave the reproach, and relieved the distress : a supply of corn was transported from Egypt to the Tiber ; and the Roman people, invoking the name, not of Camillus, but of St. Peter, repulsed the barbarians from their walls. But the relief was accidental, the danger was perpetual and pressing ; and the clergy and senate, collecting the remains of their ancient opulence, a sum of three thousand pounds of gold, dispatched the patrician Pamphronius to lay their gifts [a.d. 577] and their complaints at the foot of the Byzantine throne. The attention of the court, and the forces of the East, were diverted by the Persian war ; but the justice of Tiberius apj)lied the subsidy to the defence of the city ; and he dismissed the patrician with his best advice, either to bribe the Lombard chiefs or to purchase the aid of the kings of France. Notwith- standing this weak invention, Italy was still afflicted, Rome was again besieged, and the suburb of Classe, only three miles from [a.d. 579] Ravenna, was pillaged and occupied by the troops of a simple duke of Spoleto. Maurice gave audience to a second deputa- tion of priests and senators ; the duties and the menaces of religion were forcibly urged in the letters of the Roman pontiff ; and his nuncio, the deacon Gregory, was alike qualified to solicit the powers either of heaven or of the earth. The emperor adopted, with stronger effect, the measures of his predecessor ; some formidable chiefs were persuaded to embrace the friend- ship of the Romans, and one of them, a mild and faithful bar- barian, lived and died in the service of the exarch ; the passes of the Alps were delivered to the Franks ; and the pope en- couraged them to violate, without scruple, their oaths and engagements to the misbelievers. Childebert, the great-grand- [a.d. 534] son of Clovis, was persuaded to invade Italy by the payment of fifty thousand pieces ; but, as he had viewed with delight some [£3o,ooo] Byzantine coin of the weight of one pound of gold, the king of Austrasia might stipulate that the gift should be rendered more worthy of his acceptance by a proper mixture of these respect- able medals. The dukes of the Lombards had provoked by [a.d. ses 5751 frequent inroads their powerful neighbours of Gaul. As soon as they were apprehensive of a just retaliation, they renounced their feeble and disorderly independence ; the advantages of regal government, union, secrecy, and vigour, were unanimously
