ges of Rome.

Totila had quite determined not to repeat the mistake of Witigis, by
dashing his army to pieces against the walls of Rome, but, for all that,
he could not feel his recovery of Italy to be complete so long as the
Eternal City defied his power. He therefore slowly tightened his grasp
on the City, capturing one town after another in its neighbourhood and
watching the roads to prevent convoys of provisions from entering it.
He was on good terms with the peasants of the surrounding country, paid
liberally for all the provisions required by his army (far smaller than
that of Witigis), and kept his soldiers in good heart and in high
health, while the unhappy citizens were seeing the great
enemy--Famine--slowly approach nearer and nearer to their homes.

Within the City there was now no such provident and resourceful general
as Belisarius. Bessas, the commandant, himself an Ostrogoth of Moesia by
birth, was a brave man, but coarse, selfish, and unfeeling. Intent only
on filling his own coffers by selling the corn which he had stored up in
his warehouses at a famine-price to the citizens, he was not touched by
the increasing misery around him, and made no effectual attempt to break
the net which Totila had drawn round Rome. Belisarius himself, "flitting
from point to point of the coast", had come to Portus eighteen miles
from Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber. It was no want of good-will on his
part that prevented him from bringing his provision-ships up the river
to the help of the famished City, but about four miles above Portus
Totila had placed a strong boom of timber, protected in front by an iron
chain and guarded by two towers, one at each end of the bridge which was
above the boom. Belisarius made his preparations for destroying the
boom: a floating tower as high as the bridge placed on two barges, a
large vessel filled with "Greek fire" at the top of the tower, soldiers
below to hew the boom in pieces and sever the chain, a long train of
merchantmen behind laden with provisions for the hungry Romans, and
manned by archers who poured a deadly volley of arrows on the defenders
of the bridge. All went well with his design up to a certain point. The
chain was severed, the Goths fell fast under the arrows from the ships,
the vessel of "Greek fire" was hurled upon one of the forts, which was
soon wrapped in flames. With might and main the Imperial soldiers began
to hack at the boom, and it seemed as if in a few mi