man with the flowing beard, marching before his troop
and carrying a stone axe? He looks as if the lightning of Zeus had
missed him in the battle with the Titans."

"It is Theodoric's old master-at-arms; he marches against this gate,"
answered the Prefect.

"And who is the richly-accoutred man upon the brown charger, with the
wolfs head upon his helmet? He is marching towards the Porta
Portuensis."

"That is Duke Guntharis, the Woelfung," said Lucius Licinius.

"And see there, too, on the eastern side of the city, away over the
river, as far as the eye can reach, the ranks of the enemy advance
against all the gates," cried Piso.

"But where is the King himself!" asked Kallistratos.

"Look! there in the middle you see the Gothic standard. There he is,
opposite the Pancratian Gate," answered the Prefect.

"He alone, with his strong division, stands motionless far behind the
lines," said Salvius Julianus, the young jurist.

"Will he not join in the fight!" asked Massurius.

"It would be against his habit not to do so. But let us go down upon
the ramparts; the fight begins," said Cethegus.

"Hildebrand has reached the trench."

"There stand my Byzantines, under Gregorius. The Gothic archers aim
well. The ramparts become thinned. Massurius, bring up my Abasgian
archers, and the best archers of the legions. They must aim at the oxen
and horses of the battering-rams."

Very soon the battle was kindled upon all sides, and Cethegus remarked
with rage that the Goths progressed everywhere.

The Byzantines seemed to miss their leader; they shot at random and
fell back from the walls, against which the Goths pressed with unusual
daring.

They had already crossed the trenches at many points, and Duke
Guntharis had even erected ladders against the walls near the
Portuensian Gate; while the old master-at-arms had dragged a strong
battering-ram to the Pancratian Gate, and had caused it to be protected
by a penthouse against the fiery darts from above.

Already the first strokes of the ram thundered through the uproar of
the battle against the beams of the gate.

This well-known sound gave the Prefect a shock.

"It is evident," he said to himself, "that they are in good earnest."

Again a thundering stroke,

Gregorius, the Byzantine, looked at him inquiringly.

"This must not continue any longer," cried Cethegus angrily; and he
tore a bow and quiver from an archer who stood near him, and hurried to
the battlemen