ith them all kinds of provisions, to put an end to our
destitution and to bury the camps of the barbarians under a multitude of
missiles. I have therefore reasoned that it was better to put off the
time of conflict until they are present, and thus gain the victory in
the war with safety, than to make a show of daring in unreasoning haste
and thus throw away the salvation of our whole cause. To secure their
immediate arrival and to prevent their loitering longer shall be my
concern."

FOOTNOTE:

[143] Torre Fiscale; but it is only about thirty stades from Rome.

IV

With these words Belisarius encouraged the Roman populace and then
dismissed them; and Procopius, who wrote this history, he immediately
commanded to go to Naples. For a rumour was going about that the emperor
had sent an army there. And he commissioned him to load as many ships as
possible with grain, to gather all the soldiers who at the moment had
arrived from Byzantium, or had been left about Naples in charge of
horses or for any other purpose whatever--for he had heard that many
such were coming to the various places in Campania--and to withdraw
some of the men from the garrisons there, and then to come back with
them, convoying the grain to Ostia, where the harbour of the Romans was.
And Procopius, accompanied by Mundilas the guardsman and a few horsemen,
passed out by night through the gate which bears the name of the Apostle
Paul,[144] eluding the enemy's camp which had been established very
close to the Appian Way to keep guard over it. And when Mundilas and his
men, returning to Rome, announced that Procopius had already arrived in
Campania without meeting any of the barbarians,--for at night, they
said, the enemy never went outside their camp,--everybody became
hopeful, and Belisarius, now emboldened, devised the following plan. He
sent out many of his horsemen to the neighbouring strongholds, directing
them, in case any of the enemy should come that way in order to bring
provisions into their camps, that they should constantly make sallies
upon them from their positions and lay ambushes everywhere about this
region, and thus keep them from succeeding; on the contrary, they should
with all their might hedge them in, so that the city might be in less
distress than formerly through lack of provisions, and also that the
barbarians might seem to be besieged rather than to be themselves
besieging the Romans. So he commanded Martinus and Traj