d
blood, it was difficult to recognise him, and many fugitives had
brought word from the field of battle that the commander had fallen,
and that all was lost.

At last Antonina, who waited anxiously upon the walls, recognised her
husband.

He was admitted at the Pincian Gate, which was afterwards named Porta
Belisaria.

Beacons on the walls, between the Flaminian and Pincian Grates,
announced his entrance to Cethegus, who then, under cover of night,
accomplished his retreat in good order, scarcely followed by the
wearied victors.

Teja alone, with a few of his horsemen, pressed forward to the hilly
country, where the Villa Borghese is now situated, and as far as the
Aqua Acetosa.

CHAPTER VII.

The following day the immense army of the Goths appeared before the
walls of the Eternal City, which it surrounded in seven camps.

And now began that memorable siege, which was to develop the military
talent and inventive genius of Belisarius no less than the courage of
the besiegers.

The citizens of Rome had with consternation beheld from the walls the
interminable march of the Goths.

"Look, Prefect, they outflank all your walls."

"Yes, in breadth! but in height? They cannot get over them without
wings."

Witichis had left only two thousand men behind in Ravenna; eight
thousand he had sent, under Earl Uligis of Urbssalvia, and Earl Ansa of
Asculum, to Dalmatia, to wrest that province and Liburnia from the
Byzantines, and to reconquer the strong fortress of Salona. These
troops were to be reinforced by mercenaries recruited in Savia.

The Gothic fleet--against Teja's advice--was also to repair thither,
and not to Portus, the harbour of Rome.

But the King now surrounded, with a hundred and fifty thousand
warriors, the city of Rome and its far-stretching ramparts, the walls
of Aurelian and the Prefect.

Rome had at that time fifteen principal gates and a few smaller ones.

The weaker part of the ramparts--the space between the Flaminian Gate
in the north (on the east of the present Porta del Popolo) to the
Praenestinian Gate--was completely surrounded by six camps, thus: the
walls from the Flaminian Gate eastwards as far as the Pincian and
Salarian Gates; then to the Nomentanian Gate (south-east of Porta Pia);
farther towards the "closed gate," or Porta Clausa; and finally
southwards, the Tiburtinian (now Porta San Lorenzo), the Asinarian,
Metronian, and Latin Gates (on t