n your order?"

"Have I retracted it?" said Cethegus severely. "Lucius, you and the
other tribunes must follow me. Isaurians, you, under your chief,
Asgares, will march between the Baths and the Tiburtinian Gate."

He did not believe there was danger for Rome. He thought he knew what
the barbarians really intended at this moment.

"The feint of a general attack," he argued, "is only meant to prevent
the Byzantines from thinking of the danger of their commander outside
the walls."

He soon reached and ascended a tower of the Capitol, whence he could
overlook the whole plain.

It was filled with Gothic weapons.

It was a splendid spectacle.

From all the gates of the encampment poured the Gothic troops,
encircling the whole circumference of the city.

It was evident that the assault was intended to be carried on
simultaneously against all the gates of Rome.

Foremost came the archers and slingers, in light groups of skirmishers,
whose business it was to rid the ramparts of their defenders.

Then followed battering-rams and wall-breakers, taken from Roman
arsenals or constructed on Roman models, though often clumsily enough;
harnessed with horses and oxen and served by soldiers without weapons
of attack, whose sole business it was to protect themselves and their
teams against the projectiles of the enemy by means of their shields.

Close behind, in thick ranks and fully armed, furnished with
battle-axes and strong knives for the hand-to-hand struggle, and
dragging heavy ladders, came the warriors who were to undertake the
assault.

These three separate lines of attack advanced steadily, in good order,
and with an even step. The sun glittered upon their helmets; at
intervals of equal lengths sounded the long-drawn summons of the Gothic
horns.

"They have learned something of us," cried Cethegus, with a soldier's
pride in the fine array. "The man who has ordered these ranks
understands war."

"Who is it?" asked Kallistratos, who, in splendid armour, stood near
Lucius Licinius.

"King Witichis, without doubt," answered Cethegus.

"I should not have thought that simple man, with his modest expression,
capable of such generalship."

"These barbarians are often unfathomable," remarked Cethegus.

And now he rode away from the Capitol, over the river to the ramparts
at the Pancratian Gate, where the first attack seemed to threaten.

There he ascended the corner tower with his followers.

"Who is the old