Cloadarius, and they received Gaul and the
money, and divided the land among them according to the territory ruled
by each one, and they agreed to be exceedingly friendly to the Goths,
and secretly to send them auxiliary troops, not Franks, however, but
soldiers drawn from the nations subject to them. For they were unable to
make an alliance with them openly against the Romans, because they had a
little before agreed to assist the emperor in this war. So the envoys,
having accomplished the mission on which they had been sent, returned to
Ravenna. At that time also Vittigis summoned Marcias with his followers.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] Cf. chap. xii. 24 ff.

[60] Procopius resumes his narrative, which was interrupted by the
digression beginning in chap. xii.

[61] Cf. Book I. xxii. 4; III. vi. 2 and note.

[62] Cf. chap. xi. 28.

[63] Cf. Thuc. i. 35, [Greek: thesthai to paron], "to deal with the
actual situation"; Hor. _Od._ iii. 29, 32, "quod adest memento |
Componere."

XIV

But while Vittigis was carrying on these negotiations, Belisarius was
preparing to go to Rome. He accordingly selected three hundred men from
the infantry forces with Herodian as their leader, and assigned them
the duty of guarding Naples. And he also sent to Cumae as large a
garrison as he thought would be sufficient to guard the fortress there.
For there was no stronghold in Campania except those at Cumae and at
Naples. It is in this city of Cumae that the inhabitants point out the
cave of the Sibyl, where they say her oracular shrine was; and Cumae is
on the sea, one hundred and twenty-eight stades distant from Naples.
Belisarius, then, was thus engaged in putting his army in order; but the
inhabitants of Rome, fearing lest all the calamities should befall them
which had befallen the Neapolitans, decided after considering the matter
that it was better to receive the emperor's army into the city. And more
than any other Silverius,[64] the chief priest of the city, urged them
to adopt this course. So they sent Fidelius, a native of Milan, which is
situated in Liguria, a man who had been previously an adviser of
Atalaric (such an official is called "quaestor"[65] by the Romans), and
invited Belisarius to come to Rome, promising to put the city into his
hands without a battle. So Belisarius led his army from Naples by the
Latin Way, leaving on the left the Appian Way, which Appius, the consul
of the Romans, had made nine hundred years be