way or another, as it chanced in each case, except that they
were unable to capture, either by surrender or by storm, the fortress of
Caesena,[4] which is three hundred stades distant from Ravenna, and
Ravenna itself, where Odoacer happened to be. For this city of Ravenna
lies in a level plain at the extremity of the Ionian Gulf, lacking two
stades of being on the sea, and it is so situated as not to be easily
approached either by ships or by a land army. Ships cannot possibly put
in to shore there because the sea itself prevents them by forming shoals
for not less than thirty stades; consequently the beach at Ravenna,
although to the eye of mariners it is very near at hand, is in reality
very far away by reason of the great extent of the shoal-water. And a
land army cannot approach it at all; for the river Po, also called the
Eridanus, which flows past Ravenna, coming from the boundaries of
Celtica, and other navigable rivers together with some marshes, encircle
it on all sides and so cause the city to be surrounded by water. In that
place a very wonderful thing takes place every day. For early in the
morning the sea forms a kind of river and comes up over the land for the
distance of a day's journey for an unencumbered traveller and becomes
navigable in the midst of the mainland, and then in the late afternoon
it turns back again, causing the inlet to disappear, and gathers the
stream to itself.[5] All those, therefore, who have to convey provisions
into the city or carry them out from there for trade or for any other
reason, place their cargoes in boats, and drawing them down to the place
where the inlet is regularly formed, they await the inflow of the water.
And when this comes, the boats are lifted little by little from the
ground and float, and the sailors on them set to work and from that time
on are seafaring men. And this is not the only place where this happens,
but it is the regular occurrence along the whole coast in this region as
far as the city of Aquileia. However, it does not always take place in
the same way at every time, but when the light of the moon is faint, the
advance of the sea is not strong either, but from the first[6] half-moon
until the second the inflow has a tendency to be greater. So much for
this matter.

DATES:
[E] 489 A.D.

But when the third year had already been spent by the Goths and
Theoderic in their siege of Ravenna, the Goths, who were weary of the
sie