self. Among
these must be reckoned the newness of his authority and the necessity
of consolidating it by a marriage with a princess of the blood of
Theodoric. As it happened, this retreat enabled him to prolong a war
that at first looked like coming to an end in a few months for four
more years.

Vitiges then abandoned Rome, but it seems not altogether. What he may
be supposed to have imagined Belisarius doing to his disadvantage,
that he himself did. He left in Rome a garrison of four thousand men
under a veteran general Leudaris, while he himself with the Gothic
army fell back upon Ravenna. No sooner was he gone than the surrender
of the City was offered to Belisarius by pope Silverius who spoke for
the citizens and the Roman people. This was the reality of the
situation. Then indeed an almost incredible blunder was committed, but
not by Vitiges. The four thousand Goths whom he had left to hold the
City, and at least to delay and waste the imperialists, marched out of
Rome along the Flaminian Way as Belisarius entered from the south by
the Via Latina. Leudaris alone refused to quit this post. He was taken
prisoner, and sent with the keys of the Eternal City to Justinian.

Belisarius established himself upon the Pincian Hill, and his first
act after his occupation of the City is significant both of his
profound knowledge of the barbarians and of the immutable
characteristics of a Latin people.

It is possible that the Romans, seeing the fall of Palermo and Naples
and the occupation of Rome itself obtained so easily, believed that
the Goths were finally disposed of. But Belisarius' vast experience of
the character of the barbarians taught him otherwise. He immediately
began to provision Rome from Sicily as fast as he could, and he at
once undertook the fortification of the City, the repair of the
Aurelian Wall. In these acts of Belisarius two things become evident.
We see that he expected the return of the Goths, and we are made aware
of the fact that they had neglected to fortify the City.

It must be well seized by the reader, that the Gothic armies very
greatly outnumbered the imperial troops, who were but a small
expedition of not more than eight thousand men face to face with an
immense horde of barbarians. The great advantage of the imperialists
was that they were fighting in a friendly country, and they had too
certain superiorities of armament which civilisation may always depend
upon having at its command