In the first place it must be admitted that the capture of Ravenna by stratagem was not the final catastrophe it appeared for the Goths.  It is true that that triumph seemed to give, and indeed did give, all Italy into the hands of the Romans, but that gift was never secured.  Belisarius, partly from necessity, partly on account of the suspicious jealousy of the emperor, was withdrawn from Italy too soon.  He was victorious, but he was not given time to secure his victories.  The extraordinary incompetence and rivalries of the committee of generals which succeeded him let the opportunity for securing and establishing an enduring peace slip through its fingers; the inevitable reaction that followed the departure of Belisarius was not met at all, the whole situation that then developed was misunderstood, with the result that the Goths were soon able to find a leader, perhaps the most formidable, and certainly the most destructive, that they had ever produced.

The cause of the imperial incompetence and failure would appear to have been financial.  The empire had been perhaps always, certainly for two hundred years, bankrupt.  Its administration and above all its defence were beyond its means.  The Gothic war had been a tremendous strain upon the imperial finances already incredibly involved in the defence of the East.  It was necessary to find in Italy the money for that war and for the future defence of that country; but Italy had been ruined by the Gothic war and above all things needed capital and a period of reproductive repose.  These Justinian was unable to give her.  His necessities forced him to cover the peninsula with tax gatherers, to bleed an already ruined country of the little that remained to her.  If the result was a reaction, in the north actively Gothic, in the centre and south certainly indifferent to the imperial cause, we cannot wonder at it.  The spiritual situation and the economic or material would not chime.  The result was the appalling confusion we know as the second Gothic war.

[Illustration:  Colour Plate S. VITALE:  THE GALLERY]

I say it was a confusion.  No clear issue seems to present itself from beginning to end; the old democratic cause, the Catholicism of the people rising in rage and fury against the Arianism of the courts, burnt low for a moment, and was indeed in part extinguished by the appalling misery of the material situation of Italy.  Upon this materialism, the material benefits that Theodoric had undoubtedly conferred upon the Italian people, Totila, that formidable chieftain who now came to the front as the Gothic leader, based his appeal and his hope of victory.  “Surely,” he says to the Roman senate, “you must remember sometimes in these evil days the benefits which you received not so very long ago at the hands of Theodoric and Amalasuntha.”  And again:  “What harm did the Goths ever do you?  And tell me then what good you received from Justinian the emperor?...