Saxon conquerors.

[Footnote 154: As the passage is an important one I will give a literal
translation of the words of Procopius ("De Bell. Gotthico", iii., 22):
"Of the Romans, however, he kept the members of the Senate with him, but
sent away all the others with their wives and children to the regions
bordering on Campania, having permitted not a single human being to
remain in Rome, but having left her absolutely desolate". (Greek: en
Roome anthropon oudena eassas, all' eremon auten to parapan apolipoon.)

The contemporary chronicler Marcellinus Comes confirms this statement:
"Post quam devastationem XL. aut amplius dies Roma fuit ita desolata ut
nemo ibi hominum nisi bestiae morarentur".]

And then came another change--one of the most marvellous in the history
of that City whose whole life has been a marvel. While Totila abode in
his camp on the Alban Hills, Belisarius, rising from the bed to which
fever had for so many weeks chained him, made a visit to Rome,
accompanied by a thousand soldiers, that he might see with his own eyes
into what depth of calamity she had fallen. At first, it would seem,
mere curiosity led him to the ruined City, but when he was there, gazing
on Totila's work of devastation, a brilliant thought flashed through his
brain. After all the demolitions of Totila, the ruin was not
irretrievable. By repairing the rents in the walls, Rome might yet be
made defensible. He would re-occupy it, and the Goths should find that
they had all their work to do over again. The idea seemed at first to
his counsellors like the suggestion of delirium, but as it rapidly took
shape under his hands, it was recognised as being indeed a masterstroke
of well-calculated audacity. Leaving a small body of men to guard his
base of operations at Portus, he moved every available man to Rome,
crowded them up to the gaps made by Totila, bade them build anyhow, with
any sort of material--mortar was out of the question; it must be mere
dry walling that they could accomplish,--only let them preserve some
semblance of an upright wall, and crown the summit of it with a rampart
of stakes. The deep fosse below fortunately remained as it was, not
filled up. So in five and twenty days the circuit of the walls was
completed, truly in a most slovenly style of building, the marks of
which we can see even to this day, but Rome was once again a "fenced
city". As soon as Totila heard the unwelcome tidings, he marched with
his whole army