nstant theme, that national vice
and ruin are inseparably connected; that victory is the fruit of moral
as well as military virtue; and that the prince, and even the people,
are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish. [Footnote
7: Sylverius, bishop of Rome, was first transported to Patara, in Lycia,
and at length starved (sub eorum custodia inedia confectus) in the Isle
of Palmaria, A.D. 538, June 20, (Liberat. in Breviar. c. 22. Anastasius,
in Sylverio. Baronius, A.D. 540, No. 2, 3. Pagi, in Vit. Pont. tom. i.
p. 285, 286.) Procopius (Anecdot. c. 1) accuses only the empress and
Antonina.]

[Footnote 8: Palmaria, a small island, opposite to Terracina and the
coast of the Volsci, (Cluver. Ital. Antiq. l. iii. c. 7, p. 1014.)]

[Footnote 9: As the Logothete Alexander, and most of his civil and
military colleagues, were either disgraced or despised, the ink of the
Anecdotes (c. 4, 5, 18) is scarcely blacker than that of the Gothic
History (l. iii. c. 1, 3, 4, 9, 20, 21, &c.)]

[Footnote 10: Procopius (l. iii. c. 2, 8, &c.,) does ample and willing
justice to the merit of Totila. The Roman historians, from Sallust
and Tacitus were happy to forget the vices of their countrymen in the
contemplation of Barbaric virtue.]

The return of Belisarius to save the country which he had subdued, was
pressed with equal vehemence by his friends and enemies; and the Gothic
war was imposed as a trust or an exile on the veteran commander. A hero
on the banks of the Euphrates, a slave in the palace of Constantinople,
he accepted with reluctance the painful task of supporting his own
reputation, and retrieving the faults of his successors. The sea was
open to the Romans: the ships and soldiers were assembled at Salona,
near the palace of Diocletian: he refreshed and reviewed his troops at
Pola in Istria, coasted round the head of the Adriatic, entered the
port of Ravenna, and despatched orders rather than supplies to the
subordinate cities. His first public oration was addressed to the Goths
and Romans, in the name of the emperor, who had suspended for a while
the conquest of Persia, and listened to the prayers of his Italian
subjects. He gently touched on the causes and the authors of the recent
disasters; striving to remove the fear of punishment for the past, and
the hope of impunity for the future, and laboring, with more zeal than
success, to unite all the members of his government in a firm league of
affection and ob