ius applauds his treason, and justifies the Catholic
bishops--qui ne sub heretico principe degant omnem lapidem movent--a
useful caution. The more rational Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. v. p.
54) hints at the guilt of perjury, and blames at least the imprudence of
Datius.]

[Footnote 99: St. Datius was more successful against devils than against
Barbarians. He travelled with a numerons retinue, and occupied at
Corinth a large house. (Baronius, A.D. 538, No. 89, A.D. 539, No. 20.)]

[Footnote 100: (Compare Procopius, Goth. l. ii. c. 7, 21.) Yet such
population is incredible; and the second or third city of Italy need not
repine if we only decimate the numbers of the present text Both Milan
and Genoa revived in less than thirty years, (Paul Diacon de Gestis
Langobard. l. ii. c. 38.) Note: Procopius says distinctly that Milan was
the second city of the West. Which did Gibbon suppose could compete with
it, Ravenna or Naples; the next page he calls it the second.--M.]

[Footnote 101: Besides Procopius, perhaps too Roman, see the Chronicles
of Marius and Marcellinus, Jornandes, (in Success. Regn. in Muratori,
tom. i. p. 241,) and Gregory of Tours, (l. iii. c. 32, in tom. ii. of
the Historians of France.) Gregory supposes a defeat of Belisarius, who,
in Aimoin, (de Gestis Franc. l. ii. c. 23, in tom. iii. p. 59,) is slain
by the Franks.]

[Footnote 102: Agathias, l. i. p. 14, 15. Could he have seduced or
subdued the Gepidae or Lombards of Pannonia, the Greek historian is
confident that he must have been destroyed in Thrace.]

[Footnote 103: The king pointed his spear--the bull overturned a tree
on his head--he expired the same day. Such is the story of Agathias;
but the original historians of France (tom. ii. p. 202, 403, 558, 667)
impute his death to a fever.]

[Footnote 104: Without losing myself in a labyrinth of species and
names--the aurochs, urus, bisons, bubalus, bonasus, buffalo, &c.,
(Buffon. Hist. Nat. tom. xi., and Supplement, tom. iii. vi.,) it is
certain, that in the sixth century a large wild species of horned cattle
was hunted in the great forests of the Vosges in Lorraine, and the
Ardennes, (Greg. Turon. tom. ii. l. x. c. 10, p. 369.)]

Chapter XLI: Conquests Of Justinian, Charact Of Balisarius.--Part V.

As soon as Belisarius was delivered from his foreign and domestic
enemies, he seriously applied his forces to the final reduction of
Italy. In the siege of Osimo, the general was nearly transpi