A Struggle For Rome Volume Iii Part 14

"I shall see thee again, my Gotho," he cried, and signed a farewell.

Presently he crossed the threshold of the simple alpine cottage.

The stars had scarcely begun to pale; fresh and exhilarating the night-wind blew from the mountains around his temples.

He looked up at the silent sky.

All at once a falling star shot in a bright semicircle over his head.

It fell towards the south.

The youth raised his shepherd's staff, and cried:

"The stars beckon thither! Now beware, Cethegus the traitor!"

CHAPTER V.

On seeing the disastrous result of the battle at the bridge across the Padus, the Prefect had sent messengers back to his troops and the armed citizens of Ravenna, who were following him, to order them to return at once to the latter city. He left the defeated troops of Demetrius to their fate.

Totila had taken all the flags and field-badges of the twelve thousand, a thing which, as Procopius angrily writes, "never before happened to the Romans."

Cethegus himself, with his small band of trusty adherents, hastened across the aemilia to the west coast of Italy, which he reached at Populonium. There he went on board a swift ship of war, and, favoured by a strong breeze from the north-east (sent, as he said, by the ancient G.o.ds of Latium), sailed to the harbour of Rome--Portus.

He could never have succeeded in reaching Rome by land, for, after Totila's victory, all Tuscany and Valeria fell to the Goths; the plains unconditionally, and also such cities as were held by weak Byzantine garrisons.

Near Mucella, a day's march from Florence, the King once again vanquished a powerful army of Byzantines, under the command of eleven disunited leaders, who had gathered together the imperial garrisons of the Tuscan fortresses to block his way. The commander-in-chief of this army, Justinus, escaped to Florence with difficulty.

The King treated his numerous prisoners with such lenity, that very many Italians and imperial mercenaries deserted their flag and joined the Gothic army.

And now all the roads of Central Italy were covered by Goths and natives who hastened to join Totila on his march to Rome.

Arrived at the latter city, Cethegus had at once taken the necessary measures for its defence.

For Totila, after this new victory at Mucella, approached rapidly, scarcely detained by anything but the ovations made to him by the cities and castles on his way, which rivalled each other in opening wide their gates to the conqueror.

The few forts which still resisted were invested by small divisions of Italians, kept in order by a few chosen Gothic troops. Totila was enabled to do this without weakening his army, as, during his march to Rome, his power was increased, like a river, by the inflowing of greater or smaller parties of Goths and Italians. Not only did the Italian peasants join him by thousands, but even the mercenaries of Belisarius, who for months had received no pay, now offered their weapons to the Goths, so that a few days after the arrival of the Prefect, Totila led a very considerable army before the walls of Rome.

With loud hurrahs the troops in the Gothic encampment greeted the arrival of the brave Duke Guntharis, Wisand the bandalarius. Earl Markja, and old Grippa, whose release Totila had procured by exchanging them for the prisoners taken at the battle of the Padus.

And now the almost impossible task was laid upon Cethegus of manning effectually his grandly-designed fortifications. The whole army of Belisarius was missing--besides the greater part of his own soldiers, who were slowly sailing to the harbour of Portcus from Ravenna.

In order, even insufficiently, to defend the entire circle of the ramparts, Cethegus was obliged, not only to demand unusual and unexpected exertions from the Roman legionaries, but also to increase their numbers by despotic measures.

From boys of sixteen years of age to old men of sixty, he called "all the sons of Romulus, Camillus, and Caesar to arms; to protect the sanctuary of their forefathers against the barbarians."

But his appeal was scarcely read or propagated, and was responded to by very few volunteers; while he saw with mortification that the manifesto of the Gothic King, which was thrown every night over the walls in many places, was carried about and read by crowds; so that he angrily proclaimed that anyone found picking up, pasting on the walls, or reading this manifesto, or in any way facilitating its publication, would be punished by the confiscation of his property or the loss of his liberty.

In spite of this, the manifesto still spread among the citizens, and the list of volunteers remained empty.

He then sent his Isaurians into all the houses to drag boys and old men to the walls by force; and very soon he was more feared, and even hated, than beloved.

His stern will, and the gradual arrival of his troops from Ravenna, alone checked the growing discontent of the Roman population.

But in the Gothic camp messengers of good fortune overtook each other.

Teja and Hildebrand had pursued the Byzantines to the gates of Ravenna.

The defence of that city was conducted by Demetrius, one of the exchanged prisoners, and by b.l.o.o.d.y Johannes; that of the harbour town of Cla.s.sis by Constantia.n.u.s against Hildebrand, who had won Ariminum in pa.s.sing, for the citizens had disarmed the Armenian mercenaries of Artasires and opened the gates.

Teja had beaten the troops of the Byzantine general Verus, who had defended the crossing of the Santernus; had killed the general with his own hand, and had then hastened through the whole of North Italy with the manifesto in his left hand, his sword in his right, and in a few weeks had won by force or by persuasion all towns and castles as far as Mediolanum.

But Totila, taught by the experience of the first siege of Rome, would not expose his troops by attempting to storm the formidable defences of the Prefect, and also desired to spare his future capital.

"I will get into Rome with linen wings, and on wooden bridges," he one day said to Duke Guntharis; left to him the investment of the city; and taking all his hors.e.m.e.n with him, marched for Neapolis.

There in the harbour lay, very inefficiently manned, an imperial fleet.

Totila's march upon the Appian Way through South Italy resembled a triumphal procession.

Those districts which had suffered the longest under the yoke of the Byzantines were now most willing to greet the Goths as liberators.

The maidens of Terracina went to meet the King of the Goths with wreaths of flowers.

The people of Minturnae brought out a golden chariot, made the King descend from his white horse, and dragged him into the town in triumph.

"Look! look!" was the cry in the streets of Casilinum--an ancient place once dedicated to the worship of the Campanian Diana--"Ph[oe]bus Apollo himself has descended from Olympus and comes as a saviour to the sanctuary of his sister!"

The citizens of Capua begged him to impress the first gold coins of his reign with the inscription, "_Capua revindicata_."

Thus it continued until he reached Neapolis; the very same road he had once pa.s.sed as a wounded fugitive.

The commander of the Armenian mercenaries in Neapolis, who had a very brave but small troop, did not dare to trust the fidelity of the population in case of a siege.

He therefore led his lance-bearers and the armed citizens to meet the King outside the gates.

But before the battle commenced, a man on a white horse rode out of the lines of Goths, took his helmet from his head, and cried:

"Have you forgotten me, men of the Parthenopaeian city? I am Totila. You loved me when I was commander of your harbour. You shall bless me as your King. Do you not recollect how I saved in my ships your wives and children from the Huns of Belisarius? Listen. These very wives and children are again in my power; not as fugitives, but as prisoners. To protect them from the Byzantines (perhaps from me also), you sent them into the strong fortress of c.u.mae. But know that c.u.mae has surrendered, and all the fugitives are in my power. I have been advised to keep them as hostages in order to compel you to capitulate. But that is repugnant to my feelings. I have set them at liberty; the wives of the Roman senators I have sent to Rome. But your wives and children, men of Neapolis, I have brought with me; not as my hostages, not as my prisoners, but as my guests. Look how they stream out of my tents! Open your arms to receive them--they are free! Will you now fight against me? I cannot believe it! Who will be the first to aim at this breast?"

and he opened wide his arms.

"Hail to King Totila the Good!" was the universal acclamation.

And the warm-hearted men threw down their weapons, rushed forward, and greeted with tears of joy their liberated wives and children, kissing the hem of Totila's mantle.

The commander of the mercenaries rode up to him.