age, 'wilt thou strike thy lord?' But it is too late. Asbad's lance
goes through his back, and he drops on his horse's neck. Scipwar
(Shipward) the Goth wounds Asbad, and falls wounded himself. The rest
carry off Totila. He dies that night, after reigning eleven stormy
years.

The Goths flee across the Po. There is one more struggle for life, and
one more hero left. Teia by name, 'the slow one,' slow, but strong. He
shall be king now. They lift him on the shield, and gather round him
desperate, but determined to die hard. He finds the treasure of Totila,
hid in Pisa. He sends to Theudebald and his Franks. Will they help him
against the Roman, and they shall have the treasure; the last remnant of
the Nibelungen hoard. No. The Luegenfelden will not come. They will
stand by and see the butchery, on the chance of getting all Italy for
themselves. Narses storms Rome--or rather a little part of it round
Hadrian's Mole, which the Goths had fortified; and the Goths escape down
into Campania, mad with rage.

That victory of Narses, says Procopius, brought only a more dreadful
destruction on the Roman senate and people. The Goths, as they go down,
murder every Roman they meet. The day of grace which Totila had given
them is over. The Teutons in Narses' army do much the same. What matter
to Burgunds and Herules who was who, provided they had any thing to be
plundered of? Totila has allowed many Roman senators to live in
Campania. They hear that Narses has taken Rome, they begin to flock to
the ghastly ruin. Perhaps there will be once again a phantom senate,
phantom consuls, under the Romani nominis umbram. The Goths catch them,
and kill them to a man. And there is an end of the Senatus Populusque
Romanus.

The end is near now. And yet these terrible Goths cannot be killed out
of the way. On the slopes of Vesuvius, by Nuceria, they fortify a camp;
and as long as they are masters of the neighbouring sea, for two months
they keep Narses at bay. At last he brings up an innumerable fleet, cuts
off their supplies; and then the end comes. The Goths will die like
desperate men on foot. They burst out of camp, turn their horses loose,
after the fashion of German knights--One hears of the fashion again and
again in the middle age,--and rush upon the enemy in deep solid column.
The Romans have hardly time to form some sort of line; and then not the
real Romans, I presume, but the Burgunds and Gepids, turn thei