the camp in the
Plain of Nero were being bewailed by the Goths, men whom Bochas had
killed in his first charge.

And other encounters also, though of no great importance, took place,
which it has seemed to me unnecessary to chronicle. This, however, I
will state, that altogether sixty-seven encounters occurred during this
siege, besides two final ones which will be described in the following
narrative. And at that time the winter drew to its close, and thus ended
the second year of this war, the history of which Procopius has
written.

FOOTNOTE:

[142] Inflammation of the brain.

III

But at the beginning of the spring equinox famine and pestilence
together fell upon the inhabitants of the city. There was still, it is
true, some grain for the soldiers, though no other kind of provisions,
but the grain-supply of the rest of the Romans had been exhausted, and
actual famine as well as pestilence was pressing hard upon them. And the
Goths, perceiving this, no longer cared to risk a decisive battle with
their enemy, but they kept guard that nothing in future should be
brought in to them. Now there are two aqueducts between the Latin and
the Appian Ways, exceedingly high and carried on arches for a great
distance. These two aqueducts meet at a place fifty stades distant from
Rome[143] and cross each other, so that for a little space they reverse
their relative position. For the one which previously lay to the right
from then on continues on the left side. And again coming together, they
resume their former places, and thereafter remain apart. Consequently
the space between them, enclosed, as it is, by the aqueducts, comes to
be a fortress. And the barbarians walled up the lower arches of the
aqueducts here with stones and mud and in this way gave it the form of a
fort, and encamping there to the number of no fewer than seven thousand
men, they kept guard that no provisions should thereafter be brought
into the city by the enemy.

Then indeed every hope of better things abandoned the Romans, and every
form of evil encompassed them round about. As long as there was ripe
grain, however, the most daring of the soldiers, led on by lust of
money, went by night to the grain-fields not far from the city mounted
on horses and leading other horses after them. Then they cut off the
heads of grain, and putting them on the horses which they led, would
carry them into the city without being seen by the enemy and sell them