to obey him.  Such an astonishing proposal must have filled Belisarius with delight.  He, indeed, had no intention of receiving from such hands a gift so fantastic, for he hated the name of usurper; but he saw at once how this proposal might help his ends.  He immediately called his generals and the ambassadors together and asked them if they did not think it a matter of importance to make all the Goths and Vitiges the emperor’s captives, to capture their wealth, and to recover all Italy to the Romans.  They answered it would be an extreme high fortune and bade him effect it if he could.  Then Belisarius sent to the Goths and bade them perform what they had offered.  And they, for the famine was too hard to bear, agreed and sent ambassadors to take the oath of the great Roman for their indemnity and that he would be King of Italy, and when they had it, to return into Ravenna with the Roman army.  Now as to their indemnity Belisarius bound himself, but touching the kingdom he said he would swear it to Vitiges himself and the Gothic commanders.  And the ambassadors, not thinking he would forego the kingdom, but that he desired it above all things, prayed him forthwith to march into Ravenna.  And he himself with his army and the Gothic ambassadors entered Ravenna; and he commanded also ships to be laden with corn and to come into Classis.

“When I saw,” says Procopius, whose account of the siege and fall of Ravenna I have followed so far, “when I saw the entrance of their army into Ravenna, I considered how actions are not concluded by valour, multitudes, or human virtue, but by some Divinity that steers the acts and judgements of men.  The Goths had much the advantage in numbers and power, and since they came to Ravenna no defeat there had overthrown them, yet they became prisoners and thought it no shame to be slaves to fewer in number.  The women (who had heard from their husbands that the enemy were tall and gallant men and not to be numbered) looked with contempt upon the Roman soldiers when they saw them in the city, and spat in the faces of their husbands, reviling them with cowardice, pointing at their conquerors.”

Thus Ravenna, the impregnable city, was taken by stratagem and willingly; never again to pass out of Roman hands till Aistulf the Lombard in 752 seized it for a few years and thus caused Pepin to cross the Alps to vindicate the Roman name.

* * * * *

The first Gothic war, against Vitiges, (536-540) had thus for its crown and end, the capture of Ravenna; the second, against Totila (541-553), proceeded from Ravenna for the reconquest, yet once again, of Italy.

In 540, after Ravenna had been occupied, Belisarius recalled, and Vitiges taken as a captive to Constantinople, the Romans held all Italy except the city of Pavia.  In 544, when Belisarius returned, they held only Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, and a few other strongholds such as Perugia and Piacenza.  Nor was this all.  In this second war all Italy was laid waste and ruined, Rome was twice besieged and occupied by the Goths, and in 546, when Totila had done with her, during a space of forty days the City remained utterly desolate, without a single inhabitant.  How had such a miserable and unexpected catastrophe befallen the Catholic cause?