ed and
upheld the laws, polity, culture of Rome, would soon, it was thought,
be utterly destroyed, or vanish in flight beyond the Alps. Yet war did
not come to an end. In the plain of the great river there was once more
a chieftain whom the Goths had raised upon their shields, a king, men
said, glorious in youth and strength, and able, even yet, to worst the
Emperor's generals. His fame increased. Ere long he was known to be
moving southward, to have crossed the Apennines, to have won a battle
in Etruria. The name of this young hero was Totila.

In these days the senators of Rome, heirs to a title whose ancient
power and dignity were half-forgotten, abode within the City, under
constraint disguised as honour, the conqueror's hostages. One among
them, of noblest name, Flavius Anicius Maximus, broken in health by the
troubles of the time and by private sorrow, languishing all but unto
death in the heavy air of the Tiber, was permitted to seek relief in a
visit to which he would of his domains in Italy. His birth, his repute,
gave warrant of loyalty to the empire, and his coffers furnished the
price put upon such a favour by Byzantine greed. Maximus chose for
refuge his villa by the Campanian shore, vast, beautiful, half in ruin,
which had been enjoyed by generations of the Anician family; situated
above the little town of Surrentum it caught the cooler breeze, and on
its mountainous promontory lay apart from the tramp of armies. Here, as
summer burned into autumn, the sick man lived in brooding silence,
feeling his strength waste, and holding to the world only by one desire.

The household comprised his unwedded sister Petronilla, a lady in
middle age, his nephew Basil, and another kinsman, Decius, a student
and an invalid; together with a physician, certain freedmen who
rendered services of trust, a eunuch at the Command of Petronilla, and
the usual body of male and female slaves. Some score of glebe-bound
peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's behoof.
Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman nobility,
many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the Anicii still
controlled large means; and the disposal of these possessions at his
death was matter of interest to many persons--not least to the clergy
of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister a piously tenacious
advocate. Children had been born to Maximus, but the only son who
reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence whe