rison of Naples whom
Totila had treated with great generosity after the surrender of that
city. They remembered the kindness then shown them; they were weary of
the siege, and disgusted with the selfish avarice of their generals, and
they soon came to terms with the besiegers. Four of the bravest Goths
being hoisted over the walls at night by the friendly Isaurians, ran
round to the Asinarian Gate, battered its bolts and bars to pieces, and
let in their waiting comrades. Unopposed, the Gothic army marched
in,[150] unresisting, the Imperial troops marched out by the Flaminian
Gate. The play was precisely the same that had been enacted ten years
before when Belisarius won the city from Leudaris, but with the parts
reversed. What Witigis with his one hundred and fifty thousand Goths had
failed to accomplish, an army of not more than a tenth of that
number[151] had accomplished under Totila. Bessas and the other generals
fled headlong with the rest of the crowd that pressed out of the
Flaminian Gate, and the treasure, accumulated with such brutal disregard
of human suffering, fell into the hands of the besiegers.

[Footnote 150: 17th December, 546.]

[Footnote 151: Apparently, but we do not seem to have a precise
statement of the numbers of Totila's army at this time.]

At first murder and plunder raged unchecked through the streets of the
City, the exasperation which had been caused by the events of the long
siege having made every Gothic heart bitter against Rome and Romans. But
after sixty citizens had been slain, Totila, who had gone to St. Peter's
to offer up his prayers and thanksgivings, listened to the intercession
of the deacon Pelagius[152] and commanded that slaughter should cease.
But there were only five hundred citizens left in Rome to receive the
benefit of the amnesty, so great had been the depopulation of the City
by war and famine.[153]

[Footnote 152: Pelagius was at this time, owing to the absence of Pope
Vigilius on a journey to Constantinople, the most influential
ecclesiastic in Rome, and eight years later he succeeded Vigilius in the
Papal Chair]

[Footnote 153: At a certain point of the siege the non-combatants had
been sent out of the City by Bessas, but the number of those who passed
safely through the lines of the besiegers was not great.]

And now had come a fateful moment in the history of Roma AEterna. A
conqueror stood within her walls, not in mere joyousness of heart like
Alaric, plea