f Totila. The blow
was instantly revenged by the faithful Goths: they transported their
dying monarch seven miles beyond the scene of his disgrace; and his
last moments were not imbittered by the presence of an enemy. Compassion
afforded him the shelter of an obscure tomb; but the Romans were not
satisfied of their victory, till they beheld the corpse of the Gothic
king. His hat, enriched with gems, and his bloody robe, were presented
to Justinian by the messengers of triumph.

As soon as Narses had paid his devotions to the Author of victory, and
the blessed Virgin, his peculiar patroness, he praised, rewarded, and
dismissed the Lombards. The villages had been reduced to ashes by these
valiant savages; they ravished matrons and virgins on the altar; their
retreat was diligently watched by a strong detachment of regular forces,
who prevented a repetition of the like disorders. The victorious eunuch
pursued his march through Tuscany, accepted the submission of the Goths,
heard the acclamations, and often the complaints, of the Italians, and
encompassed the walls of Rome with the remainder of his formidable host.
Round the wide circumference, Narses assigned to himself, and to each
of his lieutenants, a real or a feigned attack, while he silently marked
the place of easy and unguarded entrance. Neither the fortifications of
Hadrian's mole, nor of the port, could long delay the progress of the
conqueror; and Justinian once more received the keys of Rome, which,
under his reign, had been five times taken and recovered. But the
deliverance of Rome was the last calamity of the Roman people. The
Barbarian allies of Narses too frequently confounded the privileges of
peace and war. The despair of the flying Goths found some consolation
in sanguinary revenge; and three hundred youths of the noblest families,
who had been sent as hostages beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the
successor of Totila. The fate of the senate suggests an awful lesson
of the vicissitude of human affairs. Of the senators whom Totila
had banished from their country, some were rescued by an officer of
Belisarius, and transported from Campania to Sicily; while others were
too guilty to confide in the clemency of Justinian, or too poor to
provide horses for their escape to the sea-shore. Their brethren
languished five years in a state of indigence and exile: the victory of
Narses revived their hopes; but their premature return to the metropolis
was preven